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Damian finds himself in the driver’s seat of Richard’s 2009 silver Audi, white-knuckling the steering wheel. It’s not an unfamiliar feeling, driving someone's car, but Damian can’t help but fidget in the still slightly-too-big leather seat.
They haven’t left the parking garage of Richard’s apartment, but he feels on edge all the same.
“Why are we doing this?” Damian asks, a tiredness to his voice masking his trepidation. “I know how to drive.”
Richard laughs. “I know you do, but you’re fifteen now, you should get proper driver’s ed training!”
“Tt,” he scoffs, flexing his tense fingers on the wheel. “And I am supposed to get that from you?”
“Come on,” Richard whines, knocking his shoulder into Damian’s. “It’s the experience—I learned from Bruce, you can learn from me.”
“Should Father not, then, teach me, too?” Not that Damian particularly wants him to, but he does feel like being a petulant child for just one more second.
But at Richard’s hesitation and the minute twitch to his brow, Damian regrets his joke.
“Y’know what, you’re right,” Richard sighs, leaning back into his seat. A long strand of hair falls into his eyes and he makes no move to readjust it. He pouts, just like Alfred the Cat when Damian doesn’t set up enough time to play with him. “You already know how to drive, you don’t need this. Let’s just—let’s head back upstairs, yeah?”
Damian frowns.
One hand tightens over the steering wheel, the other throws the Audi in reverse.
“No,” he states, and maneuvers the car out of the lot. As they reach the main road, where the actual cars are, making their midday commute, Damian adds, “Go on, then. Teach me how to drive.”
Richard smiles at him, just barely—and Damian only spots it out of the corner of his eye as he merges into traffic—but it’s there.
He really doesn’t need the supervision, they join the surge of cars and by the first intersection, they’ve blended seamlessly into the masses, as if he were any other Gotham driver.
Damian’s known the rules of the road since before he could reach the pedals, and he’s driven in high-stakes scenarios since his age was in the single digits. But for Richard’s sake, he can pretend to be a normal fifteen year old for the day.
“Take a left at this light,” Richard says, and watches Damian to make sure he uses his blinker, looks over his shoulder, et cetera to change lanes and eventually make the turn.
It’s child’s play, but Damian doesn’t say it. If Richard figures out a single fault in his driving, Damian will be surprised. Most of his faults were smoothened over by his mother and his League training over the years.
At a red light—because he knows Richard really would scold him, or at least pretend to, if he did it while driving—he turns the radio up a few notches.
Richard smacks his hand away. “No music.”
“No music?” It’s even a radio station Richard prefers. The too-loud rock music with bass that shakes the entire car. It's irritating, leaning on infuriating, when they make the drive between Gotham and Bludhaven. But it makes Grayson happy, so it stays. “Why?”
“B never let me when he was teaching me,” he says, turning the radio all the way off. At the green light, he nodded for Damian to continue straight. “Said it was, ‘too distracting.’”
“I know how to drive,” Damian argues, though he isn’t sure why. He barely likes Richard’s taste in music, he doesn’t need to defend it to Richard himself.
“Humor me,” he says, as if that wasn’t what Damian was doing the entire time, thus far.
After nearly fifteen minutes of (not entirely uncomfortable) silence beyond the occasional “switch lanes here,” “turn right,” “turn left,” “get on the highway up here,” Damian realizes Richard isn’t spouting out random directions without reason.
“Where are we going?” he asks, suspicion tinging his voice.
They’re about to hit Bludhaven’s westernmost city limit, and Damian’s never traveled this far out of Gotham, by car. There are faster ways to leave the city, and, unfortunately, he is barely fifteen in the eyes of the law.
“Nowhere in particular,” Richard says, with a feigned nonchalance that Damian picks up immediately.
“If you don’t tell me, it can be classified as kidnapping.”
Richard laughs, and simply turns the music back on.
“So now we can listen to music,” Damian snarks, with no real venom behind it. “I see how it is.”
He just laughs again, and even rolls down both windows for maximum distractions. Damian thinks the official “driving lesson” has ended.
After an annoying first batch of songs, Damian actually finds himself humming along to one good one he recognizes. He shuts that down before Richard can catch on, but it’s too late, Richard is already smiling at him from across the car.
“What.”
“Nothing,” Richard says, leaning his cheek on the arm propped up against the window sill. “You’re really good, you know that?”
“Of course I am, I told you I already know how to drive.”
But Richard’s face turns completely soft, and Damian braces himself for something sappy and emotional, and entirely uncouth for a car ride down Gotham highways.
“Yeah, you do,” he says, his voice now just as soft as his smile. “But, I meant you’re a good kid.”
And Damian’s stomach drops. Or fills with butterflies. He’s not exactly sure about the terminology, but both his hands grip the steering wheel tighter as he fights the heat forming under his skin and the weight pushing inside his chest.
“Oh,” is what he says, and it’s mostly drowned out by the radio.
“I missed being able to see you all the time, like back when… well,” Richard continues, and Damian wonders if he’s just saying it to himself, at this point. “We really were the best, is what I mean. I’m glad you agreed to come today.”
“Well, there’s nowhere more important I had to be,” Damian says flippantly. He means it more than his words convey, but Richard has known him long enough now to understand his meaning.
That he wanted to be here, that there’s nowhere more important because Richard’s company is the most important.
That despite everything they’ve gone through—or maybe because of it—Richard is likely his favorite person on the planet. And Damian doesn’t give praise like that to just anybody.
“Pull over,” Richard rushes out, and his voice is heavy and thick.
Damian whips his head around to look at him. Richard seems fine, just a bit emotional, but that’s usually his baseline around Damian lately.
“What—? Where? There’s another mile until the next exit.”
“Then hurry,” he says. “You need to stop driving so I can hug you.”
Oh. Disgusting.
Or, Damian supposes, the unnecessary, and rather extravagant, emotional display would be disgusting if it were anyone other than Richard Grayson.
Instead of ignoring it, Damian sighs and takes the next exit, the tiniest of smiles pulling on his lips.
Finding street parking is abysmal—Damian refuses to use the “park anywhere lights,” as coined by Brown; they are hazard lights and are used for emergencies only—but eventually they manage.
He’s barely got the parking brake locked on when Richard absolutely flies over the center console to envelop him in a bone-crushing hug.
“I love you, kid.”
Damian lifts the hand that was on the brake onto Richard’s back, halfway returning the hug, despite there being no expectation for him to. Richard never did treat Damian like any other kid, he knew what he’d get from Damian, mostly,
“Yeah,” Damian says in return, which is as close to an, “I love you, too,” as he’ll get without anyone seriously maimed or dying.
Quickly getting himself under control, Richard surveys the area, and absolutely lights up when he spots something in the distance.
“Perfect,” Richard says, mostly to himself, before turning to Damian with a bright smile. “Let’s take a walk.”
“What happened to driving?” Damian scoffs. It's just like Richard to make new plans while the current plans are still in motion.
“We drove, now we’re here,” he says, like he had this in mind from the start—though it’s clear he had not. “Let’s go.”
“Tt, fine,” Damian complains. He’d really better be getting something good out of this, humoring Richard all day. Anyone who insists he’s a bad son or brother hasn’t seen him on days like these—for dealing with the family he has, he’s a saint.
Down the block, they stop in front of a slightly run-down building. A shop that hasn’t seen too many customers in a while, probably because of the leftover crime still leaking out of a slowly healing Bludhaven.
“Ice cream?” Damian asks, looking warily at the flickering neon sign above their heads. It barely reads, “I E CR A,” with how many letters burnt out, but the inside of the shop looks clean, at least.
“Why not? It’s not forty degrees out like it’s been the rest of the week.” Richard pulls open the glass door, waiting for Damian to make his decision.
“I’m not a child.” He crosses his arms, though he knows it makes him look younger, like he’s pouting. “I don’t need to be taken out for ice cream.”
Richard rolls his eyes and lets himself into the ice cream shop.
“Well, I’m getting ice cream,” he says, and Damian has to step inside to avoid the door hitting him as it shuts. “So you can sit there and watch me eat it.”
Damian splutters, like it’s the first time Richard called his stupid bluff with an even more stupid bluff, though by this point Damian should be the expert.
“Not fair,” Damian sulks, but joins Richard at the counter to look through flavor options.
They end up with a small cup of pistachio ice cream for Damian and a huge sugar cone of bubblegum for Richard. Damian gazes upon the gigantic pink scoop with disgust, but also does not refuse a taste of it when offered. It’s acceptable, but not anywhere near a top favorite.
Eventually, and with pink splotches dotting his lips, Richard says, “Give me the keys, I’ll drive us back.”
“What happened to me driving?”
He smirks, but wipes his face. “Guess you’ll have to keep coming on more driving lessons with me.”
“When I get my license I will be driving all the time,” Damian fumes, but hands over the overstuffed key ring. “You’ll never get these back again.”
He doesn’t mean it, but he also doesn’t particularly enjoy being treated like the resident baby of the family. He’s fifteen, not some helpless child. He hasn’t been a real child in well over a decade, really.
Richard laughs, “I mean, I hope I’d get them back at some point, my house keys are on here. You wouldn’t let your favorite older brother become homeless just to hold my ten year old car hostage, would you?”
“It’s thirteen years old, and you don’t want to know the answer to that.” Damian stares him down.
“I’d better cherish the time I have left with her, then,” Richard says, cupping his hands around the thick ring of keys like it’s something precious.
He ends up letting Damian drive them both home, but he refuses to give Damian any directions the whole way back.
Whatever Richard claims, getting lost for an extra twenty minutes does not “build character.” And Damian definitely did not have any fun at all the entire way home, and especially did not fall asleep with a smile on his face for the first time in months because of it. He didn’t.