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Jon let out a breath as he put the controller down. “Gosh, these people just do not want to do damage.”
Damian rolled his eyes without looking up from his sketch. “You could always switch.”
“Then we wouldn’t have a tank! And then everybody dies.”
“You don’t have to martyr yourself in videogames, Jon, they’re supposed to be an escape from reality.”
“Oh my god.”
“You can be a gremlin like the majority of people, I won’t tell.”
“You’re the only gremlin I need in my life.”
“Is that your way of asking me to carry you?”
“If you’re offering, I’d be down. We should play ranked.”
Damian scoffed. “Why would anyone play norms?”
Jon laughed, then he got up and plopped himself down next to where Damian was sitting on his bed. “Weirdo. Hey, are there maybe snacks or something?”
“You cannot be serious.”
“W-well, I just–”
“You’ve been a guest here too many times, over too long of a period to not realize you can simply demand food. Don’t grovel.”
“Grovel? That’s just being polite! I don’t like demanding things!”
“Do you like being hungry?”
Jon groaned and rubbed his eyes. “...No. Fine. Damian, I want something to eat.”
Damian looked up at him with a smirk. “Well you’re out of luck, Pennyworth is out of town.”
Jon stared at him. “...I see Manchester is not the only person trying to push me to kill.”
Damian winced at that one, his teasing smile faltering a bit. “That’s…that’s not funny.”
Jon shrugged. “I gotta laugh about it at some point.”
“I mean, sure…but–”
“Are you really telling me you don’t know how to cook?”
“I can cook!”
“Then why would we need Alfred? Why don’t we just go and get something out of the fridge?”
Damian hesitated. “W-well…It’s…it is not that I cannot successfully operate a kitchen…”
Jon raised an eyebrow. “...But?”
“I’m…temporarily banned from using the kitchen without supervision.”
Jon really did want to laugh and tease him about that (because what?), but frankly his confusion was stronger than his amusement. “...D, what could you have possibly–”
“I can just order food! It’s fine, I’ll just…have food delivered.”
“That’s a waste of money!”
“I could order you enough burgers to equal the weight of a pregnant cow and I don’t think Father would notice it as any more than a rounding error.”
Jon opened his mouth to say something to that, then closed it, then opened it again, and repeated this four or so times before he managed to put a thought together.
“We’re going to use the kitchen.”
Damian huffed. “You can’t just demand the use of–shit. Look, I know what I just said, but–”
“We can flip this one of two ways: Either you’re not using the kitchen and just supervising me instead, which gets around your ban, or I’m supervising you using the kitchen, and really, what vision is more super than mine?” Jon smirked as Damian’s eraser bounced angrily off of the center of his forehead.
“I hate you.”
Jon smiled and blew a little gust to mess up Damian’s hair, which was ungelled and currently vulnerable. “Do you have, like, avocados? Or almonds? Maybe even salmon or something? My muscles kind of hurt.”
Damian’s irritated retort was killed by the bewildering end of Jon’s sentence. “...What?”
Jon quickly shook his head. “It’s fine, I just overdid some strength training earlier, could use some protein.”
He could tell that Damian could tell that he wasn’t being completely transparent, but decided not to press anyway.
“Fine. Fine, we…yes we probably have salmon.”
***
Damian laid out seven or so filets, and Jon looked at them with some surprise.
“D, that’s a lot of salmon, and you don’t eat meat–”
“Both of those statements are so obvious that you may as well be informing me that the sky is blue, Booster Gold is a disaster, or that you shouldn’t be allowed to pick your own clothes–”
“My point is that you don’t have to give me so much–”
“But you need it, yes?”
Jon’s eyes narrowed slightly. “I mean, yeah, I’m hungry–”
“The foods you asked for were specific. Sure, they all contain protein, but outside of the salmon, most people wouldn’t have immediately suggested them for that, so you need something specific, and then remembering that you complained of muscle pain, and that you require certain minerals more than the standard–I’m guessing you need magnesium in significant quantities.”
Jon balked. “Um. Well…okay, maybe. That detective stuff is super scary.”
“You can tell when I’m sore because you can hear that my muscles sound different when they’re tight. Now that’s scary.”
“As if I pay that much attention to you–stop doing that with your heartbeat, I hate when you do that!”
“See? Freaky.”
Jon crossed his arms and looked down at his feet. “Well excuse me for wanting to make sure you don’t die again.”
Damian felt a little pang of…something in his chest. He cleared his throat. “W-well, all I was trying to say is that I don’t care how much fish you eat or whatever.”
Jon looked up to find Damian pointedly looking away. He bit his cheek. “Well, I mean…thanks, D. Sorry I got snappy.”
“What? You didn’t get–” Damian looked back up and stumbled into direct eye-contact with him. Words failed them both for a moment as they took each other in. He’d tried to avoid looking directly into Jon’s eyes since that first sleepover on Goliath’s back. The experience made him feel weird, and he had no interest in investigating that. But there he was, caught staring into Jon’s almost impossibly violet eyes.
Jon could never understand why Damian looked at him like that sometimes. Not in general, Damian glared at him and analyzed him all the time–that was normal. But this…wasn’t that. It was a different look that made Damian seem so much more fragile than he usually did. And Damian was fragile, at least on Jon’s scale. As soon as his strength really started coming in, he’d been really careful about how he played with his squishy little buddy. He had this occasional nightmare where he’d reach out to touch Damian and somehow not manage to moderate his strength at all and–
“Alright,” Damian suddenly broke eye contact. “That’s enough being gay. Let’s uh…we look dumb just standing around with a bunch of uncooked fish. Go turn the stove on.”
Jon blinked a few times. “We…I…Damian we shouldn’t use ‘gay’ as an insult–”
“I’m not.” Damian mumbled. He’d already started digging around in the spice cabinet, mainly so Jon couldn’t easily see his expression. “But our goal is feeding your nightmare reactor of a body so we can go to sleep, and that’s what we should focus on.”
Jon thought that was a weird interaction, but…Damian was weird, that wasn’t new. So he figured he’d just follow along, and got to work on the fish.
***
“...Now watch as the insatiable, Feral Kryptonian unhinges his jaw and consumes the flesh of the dead–”
“Stop narrating me eating! I don’t care how good your David Attenborough impression is!”
Damian tipped an imaginary hat, and smiled at Jon’s pout. “Do you feel any better?”
Jon swallowed the last bite of fish and thought the question over for a moment. “Well I mean…a little, yeah.”
“Good. Do I have room in the budget to tease you about how bland you like your food, or are we approaching the straw that breaks my back?”
Jon giggled. “Shut up! I can taste super good, I don’t need tons of salt. And anyway, I’d never break your back, that’s so gross.”
Damian smirked and raised an eyebrow. “Notably, you didn’t say you’d never kill me, which was kind of the point–”
“Bro, I’ve never forgiven myself for Goldie. I dunno what I’d do if I hurt you. I think it’d be bad though.”
The smile slipped from Damian’s lips at the casual admission. “...Jonathan–”
Jon suddenly stood up. “Alright, I’m full. Thanks, buddy. You wanna play a couple more matches before we go to bed? I don’t get a healer this good all the time and I want to--”
Damian glared at him and joined him in standing. “I’m not stupid! I notice that you keep redirecting me–Jon!” Damian angrily pounded on Jon’s back as he was picked up carried over-the-shoulder like a bag of flour. “Put me down!”
“Your Cloak and Dagger is really good. Loki too. Did you know that there’s a universe out there where they’re actual people? Mr. Terrific says that–”
“I don’t care what that nerd has to say about the omniverse at this very moment!”
“Damian–”
“Put me down and stop dodging my–”
“Dami–”
“I’m putting a lot of effort into being attentive, why did you pick now to act like my family?!”
Jon froze in front of Damian’s bedroom door. He took a deep breath before putting him down.
“...What?”
Damian crossed his arms and tried to look furious to disguise the maelstrom of other feelings he was trying to wrangle.
“You just…I’m used to being misdirected and misled and lied to, sure, but I thought your thing was being honest and open or whatever, that’s what I lo–that’s what I respect about you. So what the fuck?”
Jon hadn’t been hit with a round that high caliber in a long time. His lips wobbled and he looked down at his hands.
“...I don’t want it to always be about the bad stuff with us.”
Damian’s eyes widened. “...What?”
“I want us to just be able to be friends, like normal sometimes, and have fun and just…not think about sad stuff.”
Damian crossed his arms behind his back in an attempt to maintain his composure.
“Well it’s not like we sit around talking about all the alarming things we’ve seen–”
“Cause we don’t have to. We already know. And sometimes I feel like I think about that kind of stuff more when we’re together, and I don’t…I don’t want that. So I’m trying to split it up in my head more, but clearly I’m still bad at that. Sorry–oh!”
Damian reached up suddenly and cupped Jon’s cheeks. “I prefer being in your company to not, generally. So…so I don’t care what we talk about. If you want to hide things and that’s how it works now, fine, that’s fine, I can do that–”
“No! No that’s not…I don’t want that, I just…I don’t wanna end up weird with each other like our dads. I dunno if they were ever normal friends, but whatever they are now...isn’t what I want.”
Damian sighed. “...Yeah. Alright. That would be…embarrassing. I’m more competent than that, and I’m confident I can drag you along as well.”
Jon smiled. “...You’re so annoying.”
Damian let go of his cheeks. “Oh? You are wildly stupid considering that your species at one point had a whole eugenics kick that prized more powerful brains–”
“I will laser your eyebrows off.”
“Shutting up.”
Jon snorted and gently patted his shoulder. “I love you, buddy–”
Damian slapped his hand away. “I will stab you.”
“Promise?”
“What.”
“What.”
Damian stared at him. “...Right so, the uh, the video–”
“To the video game!”
Their next few matches were terrible, both of them were wildly off their game. Damian complained that it was because Jon kept leaning into him, Jon blamed Damian for leaning into him. In truth, neither could really remember who started leaning first.
But they didn’t stop.