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Gift giving wasn’t a competition.
But it was for the Waynes.
Damian started it. Before last year, everyone just gave each other something boring but acceptable or something ironically shitty. Damian changed the game with exquisitely beautiful charcoal portraits of everyone in the family, even Tim, which were now proudly displayed above the fireplace. It was personal, practical, heartwarmingly sincere, and it cost his time and energy, not money. It was the perfect gift. He blew everyone else’s gift out of the water, especially the gift card Tim had given him. It was undebatable: Damian won Christmas.
Now that everyone knew it was a competition, no one was gonna let him win two years in a row.
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It was an overcast afternoon in San Francisco.
Bart, Cassie, and Kon fought a swarm of giant spiders on a narrow, residential street lined with cars. Tim squatted on top of a minivan, looking at something on his phone. A spider had Bart trapped in its creepy mouth, dripping spit that was neon green and acidic. Cassie wrapped her lasso around two of its legs and yanked it into the air. It’s bite loosened enough for Bart to escape, but when the spider came back to Earth it crushed a Prius.
“Oops,” Cassie said, giving a side eye to Tim. He didn’t look up.
“They just keep hatching,” Kon said, throwing a spider into the air and punching it.
“Should I smash the eggs? Or go for the Mom?” Bart asked, trying to wipe the spit off so fast his hand was blurring.
“Who are you texting?” Cassie snapped at Tim, lassoing another spider but making sure she smashed it against the sidewalk this time.
Tim looked up and assessed.
“Imp, smash the eggs. SB, get the rest. Wonder Girl and I are going to cut the queen off.”
They broke off with their orders, until finally, Tim and Cassie killed the giant spider who’d been laying the eggs in the first place.
“You seem distracted,” Cassie said, jumping off the dead bug and onto the street next to him.
“Oh,” Tim sounded more awkward than normal, “Uh, no, it’s nothing. I’ve just been waiting for an important email.”
“The Taylor Swift presale code?”
His eyes winded behind his mask, “Did you get one?”
“Not yet. But I had tickets to Loverfest, so I better.” She slowly grinned, “I didn’t realized you were a Swiftie. I can’t believe we haven’t talked about it before.”
“I’m not,” he scoffed, “I’m trying to get Robin tickets for Christmas.”
“Robin’s a Swiftie?”
“Yeah. I blame Nightwing.”
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Last year, Damian wanted everyone to unwrap their gifts at the same time.
Jason hadn’t shown up for Christmas morning, for a variety of reasons. One, he didn’t really do mornings. Two, the manor always reminded him of things he’d rather forget. The holiday decorations made it worse. He’d see an ornament on the tree and remember being nine years old and telling Alfred it was his favorite. He’d see a stocking on the mantle and remember when he was four foot nothing, proudly telling Dick that Santa wasn’t real and that he’d known for years. It was painfully embarrassing to remember the kid he’d been back then, eager to impress, obnoxious, and sweet. That was the most painful part of all, that he’d been so fucking sweet. He had another memory, a Christmas morning at the manor, trying to play it cool while he watched Bruce open his gift, feeling like he was going to throw up from nerves.
Bruce unwrapped the box with the same serious expression he always had. He took off the lid and stared at the gift but, as usual, Jason had no idea what he was thinking.
“I saw it and thought of you,” Jason blurted because he couldn’t take the silence anymore.
It was a white mug that said The World’s Okayest Dad. Bruce picked it up and turned it in his hand. Jason thought it would be funny but Bruce wasn’t even smiling. He felt sick. Maybe Bruce would take it as an insult, even thought it was obviously a joke. Or maybe— Jason’s stomach dropped like his grappling hook missed the next rooftop— maybe Bruce didn’t want to be called Dad. Dick didn’t call him that, not that they talked much anymore. Jason didn’t call him that— but that’s part of why it was so funny. His mouth felt dry. He couldn’t look away from Bruce’s face.
Bruce said, “Thank you,” and Jason never saw the mug again.
Now he was an adult, and if he didn’t want to spend another stifling Christmas morning in Wayne Manor, he didn’t have to. He reluctantly rolled up around 5 for Christmas dinner because Alfred called him personally to invite him. The manor looked the same, the ornaments, the stockings, whatever. He tried to ignore it. He joined everyone in the main living room, and immediately noticed the identical gifts they were holding. Duke, Stephanie, and Tim were on the couch, still in their pajamas. Cass sat on the floor leaning against Stephanie’s legs. Dick sat in the loveseat, holding his gift up to the light as if there was a chance he could see through the paper. Bruce and Alfred were in the doorway, with gifts of their own.
Damian marched up to him and handed him a matching present.
“Everyone needs to open my gift at the same time,” Damian complained, “So you’ve managed to make things needlessly complicated, once again.”
In response to that, Jason ripped open his gift.
“Hey,” Duke complained, scrambling to pick his gift off the ground, “We waited for you.”
His snarky reply died on his tongue. He was staring at a framed portrait of himself.
He didn’t even know Damian was an artist, much less a good one.
He hated pictures of himself. Almost all the photos of him before he’d died were of Robin. There was a framed one in the cave and he wanted to take an elbow to glass every time he saw it. Stalker baby Tim had taken thousands of photos of him back then, and though he’d never seen the full collection, just the thought made him gag. He didn’t like remembering who he’d been back then, much less seeing cold, hard, photographic proof that he’d ever been so small, and sweet, and stupid.
But the framed portrait was different. It was all dark smudges, what he assumed to be charcoal, but through the shadowy lines he appeared. It was as realistic as any photograph, and somehow felt more like him than any picture ever had. Like somehow Damian had drawn a certain tilt of his chin, a look on his face, a light in his eyes that perfectly captured the way he felt when he thought about this family. A little angry. But happy, too. A storm of contradicting emotions that made more sense in the drawing than it did in his head. He looked at this work of art and felt understood.
He finally looked around the room and saw similarly touched expressions on his family’s faces. Even Bruce looked moved. He’d never seen Bruce look like that without the world in ruins around him. His throat burned seeing the matching art, all of them, a part of the same set. Fuck, he’d prepared himself to make awkward small talk with Bruce and eat some ham not confront his overwhelming fear of never truly belonging anywhere. Much less in this family. He lowered the portrait and tried to think of something to say.
Dick beat him to the punch.
“These are beautiful,” he said hoarsely.
“I know,” Damian replied, his hands behind his back, way more smug than any thirteen year old had the right to be. The others complimented him, too, and Jason threw in a thank you but it didn’t feel like enough.
This year, Jason was going to give baby bat the best Christmas gift ever. It would at the very least be better than the gift he gave the kid last year which was a big fat nothing. But what did he really know about Damian? He was Robin. That was unhelpful. He strained to remember anything he’d ever heard about his interests in passing. He liked animals. He liked art, apparently. He liked annoying Tim.
Maybe there was a gift that could combine all three.
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With her laptop, Barbara was nearly unstoppable. That, combined with the fact that she was one of the lucky few to get a Taylor Swift presale code, meant she successfully bought two tickets to the first Gotham show. Then she found out that was the date of Kara’s wedding. It was annoying, and she pulled up a few articles about astral projection, but ultimately she wanted to be there for Kara more than she wanted to see Taylor live.
Now she had two Taylor Swift tickets to resell. She felt a little bad about upcharging, but if some rich idiot wanted to throw money at her, who was she to stop them? She had financial needs.
Barbara, with a Facebook account under a fake name, posted on a Taylor fan page and waited for the comments to roll in. This one guy, Alvin Draper, made the highest bid and now she was talking to him one on one through Messenger. They were talking two thousand per ticket, and she could probably haggle for more. She was starting to feel guilty, even though tickets in the same floor section were going for almost double on SeatGeek. She decided to investigate this guy’s IP address and see who he was. He was obviously rich, but if he was a nice guy maybe she’d stop negotiations where they were. The IP took longer to crack than she anticipated and she wondered if this was someone in the government, or Justice League. The longer it took the more determined she became, until finally, she got her answer.
It was Tim.
Barbara inhaled so sharply she choked and quickly messaged him settling for the two thousand each they agreed on. She still felt kinda guilty. Honestly if Tim had asked her, she would’ve given him the tickets for the price she actually paid, but it was too late to go back now, and realistically she knew 4,000 was nothing to him. She was almost more surprised he wanted to go at all, and wondered if that was why he was using this fake name. Who knew Tim was a secret Swiftie? They’d have to talk soon. And she’d be extra nice to him as Oracle because she’d basically just scammed him. And she’d remind him to double-check who he was really talking to online, because honestly, she’d expected a more thorough background check from the kid she taught to internet stalk.
She transferred the tickets and wished him a fun time at the concert.
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The manor seemed cozier than normal on Christmas morning. There were several explanations. Everyone was together, this year even Jason had showed up, wearing red plaid pajama pants and a black hoodie. The curtains were open and the windows were frosted around the edges from the fresh snow falling outside. The air was filled with the smell of cinnamon bread and the sound of the fireplace crackling. Damian’s family portraits hung above the mantle, which contributed to an atmosphere of family and good vibes. Everyone had a mug of hot chocolate. Dick had a Superman mug, Tim had a matte black mug, Duke had a batgirl mug, Stephanie had a “my other car is a bat mobile” mug, Cass had a heat changing mug that revealed a smiley face, and Damian, Alfred, and Bruce had plain white porcelain mugs. Stephanie guarded a bag of mini marshmallows and passed them out as she saw fit.
Jason walked in, bandaids on most of his fingers, with a hot chocolate of his own. Bruce noticed his choice of mug immediately.
World’s Okayest Dad. Jason took a long sip.
“I’ve never seen that one,” Duke said.
Jason shrugged but he felt anything but casual.
“It was way in the back. Collecting dust.”
“Are you officially Lian’s step-dad?” Stephanie asked.
“Shut up,” Jason said but his heart wasn’t in it. He was too busy trying to discreetly figure out Bruce’s reaction. The old bastard’s blank expression revealed nothing and Jason’s grip tightened around the handle.
“I rarely use it because it’s valuable,” Bruce said as a cryptic explanation.
“It looks dirt cheap,” Damian said like a snob, “And the saying is incredible tacky.”
“It’s valuable to me,” Bruce said, and finally, he looked at Jason.
Jason blinked first, finding a spot on the couch between Stephanie and Tim, and holding out his mug for some marshmallows. He wasn’t sure if he believed Bruce. But this Christmas morning was so different from that cold, quiet morning all those years ago, and this new warm feeling spreading through his chest made him want to give him the benefit of the doubt. He didn’t throw out the dumb gift, at least. That had to count for something. Stephanie gave him a single marshmallow but before Jason could bitch about it, Cass swiped the bag and grabbed him a handful.
“Wow,” Stephanie said long and drawn out.
“This is why Cass is everyone’s favorite,” Jason said.
“Not my favorite. You’re cut off, Cain,” Stephanie folded her arms. Cass looked up at her with sad eyes, holding her marshmallow-less hot chocolate. It was just an empty, brown little drink, unfitting of the smiley face on the outside.
Stephanie hesitated, torn between holding her ground and putting a smile on Cass’s face. Her uncertainty was her downfall, because Tim snuck up behind the couch and grabbed the bag from her hands. Stephanie scrambled to grab it back, but he twisted the top of the bag closed and tossed it to Cass.
“I’m a guest in your home,” Stephanie said, her classic defense when she started feeling ganged up on.
Tim rolled his eyes, “Guests leave.”
Stephanie tensed, like she was about to stand up and walk out, but before she could Cass leaned closer and offered her a handful of marshmallows.
“Don’t leave,” Cass said.
Stephanie couldn’t hide her smile as she held out her mug and accepted the sugar.
“Dammit. You’re just so good at being the favorite.”
Cass grinned.
It was time to open gifts, and this year everyone agreed it would be best to give gifts one recipient at a time. First up was Damian, and Tim crossed the room and handed him an envelope.
“Another gift card?” Damian raised one eyebrow and sliced the envelope open with his pointer finger. “How uncreative.”
“Dami,” Dick said, with a warning note in his tone like this behavior was something they’d talked about.
“Just open it,” Tim said, eager for Damian’s reaction and not for some fake polite phrase Dick trained him to say.
Damian made an unimpressed face and pulled out the card. He opened it without reading it and two Taylor Swift tickets (that Tim created in photoshop and printed) fell to his lap.
“You got him Taylor tickets?” Dick said, shocked and delighted.
Damian picked up the tickets with a carefully guarded expression. Tim sat on the edge of his seat, waiting to see what he’d say.
“Are you gonna go and say hi to your ex?” Jason asked Dick, with mocking excitement.
Duke freaked.
“You dated Taylor Swift? When? What song is about you?”
“Yes, 2009, and Enchanted,” Dick said, so nonchalantly that it came across as bragging. Duke was too thrilled by this news to call him out on it, itching to google their relationship to get the real dirt.
“And The Story of Us,” Jason added pointedly.
“That’s unconfirmed,” Dick said, his mouth in a straight line.
Stephanie and Jason turned to each other, communicating via annoying younger sibling telepathy, before bursting into the best verse.
“Oh, I’m scared to see the ending, why are we pretending, this is nothing? I’d tell you I miss you but I don’t know how, I’ve never heard silence quite this loud! Now I’m standing alone in a crowded room and we’re not speaking—!”
Stephanie jumped up so she was on her knees on the couch, singing with lots of stretched arm movements. Jason sang with just as much exaggerated passion, and yes, his drink was hot chocolate powder mixed with Baileys, but how else was he supposed to walk into this room?
“Okay, okay, we get it,” Dick finally cut them off.
“That is so insane,” Duke said, shaking his head, “So, she dated John Mayer after you?”
Dick made a face, “Yeah. Obviously a downgrade.”
“Superman is about Dick, too,” Stephanie said with a smirk.
“I forgot about the bonus tracks,” Jason said, deeply amused.
“That’s also unconfirmed—” Dick started.
“Hm,” Bruce said, deeply unamused because he was well aware of the rumors that Dick inspired the song Superman and he didn’t like the association existing online, even if it was a pure coincidence. Dick always dated girls who knew a little too much.
Duke pulled up the lyrics on his phone and read the lines that he felt matched up with Dick out loud.
“He’s complicated, he’s irrational…Something in his bright blue eyes has me saying, he’s not all bad like his reputation,” Duke glanced up and Jason and Steph were nodding. While everyone was distracted with Dick’s dating history, Tim and Damian had shared a covert conversation:
“Better than a gift card?” Tim asked, attempting to sound casual but his hands were clenched a bit too tightly around his knees.
“Why did you give me two?” Damian asked, holding the tickets in his hand, and looking at Tim with an unreadable expression.
The question caught Tim off guard.
“You could bring a friend. Or Dick.”
“Oh.” Damian said, sourly, his eyes dropping down to the tickets.
Stephanie and Jason were singing obnoxiously, but Tim tuned them out. He hadn’t expected Damian to hug him or anything, but he’d expected more of a reaction than this. He tried to figure out what he was thinking and came up with a few theories. Maybe he thought Tim was cheap for only buying two tickets? But if Damian had more than two tickets, who would he even take? He didn’t hang out with anyone but Jon. Would Jon even want to go? He didn’t seem like the Taylor Swift type. Come to think of it, would Dick even want to go, or would the possible PR of that situation be a shitstorm he’d want to avoid?
“I thought perhaps you’d force your company on me,” Damian said stiffly.
The rest of the family continued their conversation, oblivious to the mixed feelings warring inside Tim. Damian was basically inviting him to go. Tim had no interest in going, but Damian never wanted him around. And he hadn’t really given Taylor Swift an actual listen since middle school. Maybe he’d like her new stuff.
“Actually, yeah,” Tim said, speaking before he fully considered all possible outcomes, “The second ticket’s for me.”
Damian nodded but Tim could see the knowing look in his eyes. They both knew exactly what just happened, but as long as nobody said it directly, they could pretend this wasn’t a huge milestone in their historically rocky relationship. Damian cleared his throat and Tim went back to his original seat.
Once everyone had calmed down, it was Jason’s turn.
He had to get his gift from where he’d stored it in the coat closet.
He returned with a large cage containing a beautiful albino parrot, perched precariously on a swing in the center. Everyone reacted with appropriate awe, except Damian who looked a little angry.
Jason set the cage down in front of him and tossed him a polaroid.
Damian caught it.
“That’s a picture of the black market poachers I tied up and left for the proper authorities,” he said, aiming that last part at Bruce. Bruce sipped his hot chocolate.
“I rescued the bird from them. He’s a fancy kind of parrot, the kind that can talk. He’s kinda fucked up from captivity,” he wiggled the fingers with bandaids on them, “Obviously. But I figured if anyone could out stubborn the bastard it’s you. He’s kinda cool looking so you could use him in your art or something.”
Damian approached the cage, newly interested now. The bird squawked and the white feathers on top of his head flared up, over dramatic and ready for a fight. Damian mulled over possible names and turned to Jason.
“His name will be Todd.”
The corner of Jason’s mouth quirked up.
“That’s kinda perfect for what I taught him how to say.”
“What did you—” Bruce started to ask, but Todd the parrot interrupted him.
“Tim sucks,” the parrot squawked.
Everyone cracked up, except Bruce who frowned, Damian who grinned deviously, and Tim who just nodded with an expression like yeah that’s about right.
Dick gave him one of his old hoodies and gift cards to every vegan restaurant in Bludhaven, with the promise that they’d try them all together. Duke gave him a year long subscription to a service called Super Fans, where every month you receive a box filled to the brim with Superman merch. Damian wanted to be angry about it, but 100% of the profits went to the Metropolis Children’s Hospital, and Bruce looked so annoyed that the gag gift came back around to be funny. Stephanie gave him an ironic photo album that she custom created and ordered on Shutterfly with lots of predesigned features, like stickers, sayings about family, and silly borders around photos she’d mostly taken (and some that she borrowed from Tim, which were noticeably better quality). She gave it to him like a joke, but held it a little too carefully in her hands. Alfred gave him a bag of his favorite candy from his childhood, he must’ve mentioned to Alfred once before in passing.
Damian opened the box labeled From: Bruce To: Damian in his father’s neat handwriting.
Inside was black tissue paper and a single tie.
He held it up. It seemed unremarkable. A plain black tie, while obviously well made, was almost indistinguishable from the drawer of ties in Damian’s closet.
Then he noticed the stitched initials on the back.
In silver thread: TW.
Damian knew immediately. Thomas Wayne. This tie must’ve belonged to Bruce’s father. His grandfather.
Damian was overcome with emotions. His throat burned like he might cry and it didn’t help that the room was silent as his siblings probably tried to figure out what exactly Bruce had given him.
He placed the tie back in the box as gently as he could, like it was a rare artifact in an ancient, sacred space that might disintegrate with one wrong move. Jason made some comment about Bruce controlling their fashion choices and Damian finally met his father’s gaze.
“Thank you,” he said. He didn’t want to tell the others that the tie had belonged to Thomas. It didn’t feel right to boast about something like this. He surprised himself with the conclusion, but it was a pleasant surprise. He felt very grown up.
“I thought it would suit you,” Bruce said, as serious as ever, but with a softened edge.
The last person to give Damian a gift was Cassandra.
Her gift was poorly wrapped, but he refrained from commenting on the sloppy tape job. To be fair, it was a rather odd shape to wrap. A cylinder, so lightweight it must’ve been a piece of paper rolled up. He opened it and discovered his theory was correct.
He unrolled the paper and was completely unprepared for what he saw.
It was a portrait of him.
Mixed media, with charcoal used for the background to give it a similar vignette effect that his portrait work from last year used. His head and shoulders had been sketched with pencil, then brought into sharper contrast with what must’ve been sharpie.
Cassandra lacked his technical skill. Frankly, it wasn’t good. It wasn’t as realistic as a photo, nowhere near it. The art instead gave the impression of Damian. The sharp lines of his jaw, the expressive pull of his eyebrows, the straight nose in the center. The maker gave it a pop art quality. It was like looking at the building blocks of who he was, brought to life on the page by what must’ve taken Cassandra a very long time.
Everyone gathered around Damian to look at it.
“I didn’t know you could draw,” Stephanie said, impressed.
“Classes,” Cass said as explanation.
She’d taken classes. Just for this. Just for him. So he wouldn’t be the only one with a self portrait above the mantle. It ruined the value of the collective set, but he didn’t care. Cass had worked on this just for him and it would replace his self portrait immediately.
He hugged Cassandra— very quickly— and only because he knew she preferred physical expressions of emotion to language. She hugged him back and he realized he preferred it, too. They continued giving gifts. Damian insisted that his gifts had to be opened by everyone at the same time, just like last year. Finally, it was his turn.
He handed everyone an envelope. All at once, they ripped into their gifts.
Poetry.
He’d crafted the most beautiful poetry, a personal poem, for everyone. Even Bruce teared up.
Damian won again.