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Damian Wayne was perfectly normal.
He was better than normal, in fact. Having been raised by the richest man in Jordan, he’d grown up with all the elite education expected of someone from his class. He was fluent in five languages (almost six, as Richard was currently teaching him Romani) and well-versed in classic literature and social etiquette.
And, just like all other normal people, Damian had his routines.
The morning started out as any other. Immediately after waking up, Damian got out of bed and stripped his sheets. They had to be washed daily, after all. Then, he went to his window and inspected the latch to ensure it had not somehow come unlocked during the night. His father had assured him that the Wayne Estate boasted state-of-the-art security, but one could never be too careful.
After checking (and double-checking) his window, it was time to shower. Damian always showered at least twice a day. Cleanliness was of utmost importance. As the water warmed up, he brushed his teeth. It took exactly 182 seconds: seven for each of his twenty-six teeth.
Once he was clean and dressed, Damian headed down to the kitchen. Alfred Pennyworth always had breakfast ready at 7:00 on schooldays. The youngest Wayne ate the same exact thing every single weekday morning: one hard boiled egg (eight minutes exactly), two pieces of toast (with the crust cut off so they’re perfectly square), six green olives, and a two-inch square of Akkawi cheese. All with a steaming cup of black tea with three mint leaves. He only ever deviated on holidays and weekends. It had taken the butler a while to get it right after Damian had moved in, but he’d finally gotten the hang of it.
His siblings always joked about him being a “prince” and “high-maintenance.” Damian wasn’t trying to be high-maintenance. He just needed things to be right. Because if they weren’t… well, all kinds of terrible things could happen.
“Good morning, Master Damian,” Alfred welcomed with a warm smile. He greeted Damian the same exact way every single morning. Damian very much appreciated it.
“Good morning, Alfred,” he returned. He still felt a twinge of discomfort using the butler’s first name (his grandfather would have been horrified), but his father had made it clear that since Alfred was family, formal terms of address weren’t necessary. When Damian had pointed out that the butler used formal terms of address for them, Bruce had merely shrugged and given some lame excuse about the man being British.
Damian pulled out his chair – the same one he sat in every morning. Except, one of the legs made a noise as it scraped against the floor, so he had to push it back in and pull it out again before he could finally sit down.
It didn’t take his siblings long to start filtering in after that.
They followed their usual pattern. Cassandra came in first, followed by Jason. Timothy was always last. This was partly due to the fact that he had an abysmal sleep schedule and partly due to his extensive morning medication regimen required for his cystic fibrosis. Their father, of course, was already at the hospital.
“Mornin’, Squirt,” Jason greeted as he plopped down beside him. Damian watched as his brother opened the app that controlled his insulin pump and calculated his bolus for breakfast. The process had always fascinated him.
Damian wiped his mouth with a napkin exactly three times before replying. “Good morning.”
It was now time for his egg. Damian always ate his breakfast in a specific order: toast, olives, egg, then cheese. He picked up the hard boiled egg and took a bite.
That’s when everything went horribly wrong.
One of his teeth must have been loose. When he bit into the egg, the tooth got stuck and was ripped out of his mouth. It didn’t hurt, much, but it did shock him.
Alfred acted quickly. “Oh, dear, Master Damian. Here’s an extra napkin, lad.”
Damian took a deep breath as he held the napkin to his bleeding gum. He told himself it was no big deal. He’d lost plenty of teeth before. It was nothing to work himself up over. He could handle a tiny bit of blood.
“Hey, at least that’s one less to brush!” Jason joked.
Damian’s eyes widened. He hadn’t thought of that. His routine was perfect. But now, there was no even way to divide 182 by twenty-five. He was going to have to rework everything.
Cassandra narrowed her eyes. “You’re scared, Baby Brother. Why?”
Damian couldn’t answer. It felt like he couldn’t breathe.
“Whoa, Dames, what’s wrong?” Jason pressed. He put a grounding hand on his little brother’s shoulder. “You’re hyperventilating.”
“I-it doesn’t work,” the youngest Wayne forced out. “It won’t work.”
Alfred looked worried. “What won’t work, Lad?”
He brushed away some of the tears streaming down his face. He would have been embarrassed about crying had he not been so terrified. “I-I have to brush my teeth for 182 seconds. Having twenty-five teeth won’t work.”
He saw the three of them share a look he couldn’t decipher.
“Okay, Damian, let’s take a walk,” Jason offered calmly. “We can go find Titus or Alfred, if you want.”
“B-but it’s only 7:08,” Damian lamented. “Breakfast is until 7:20. We have to stay here.”
His entire morning was becoming unraveled. He had to regain some semblance of control before something horrible happened.
“Buddy, we can leave the table early if you need to. No one will get mad,” his big brother assured.
Damian was inconsolable. “We have to follow the rules! If we don’t, bad things will happen!”
He’d been taught that entire life. Obedience wasn’t optional. It wasn’t Damian’s fault there were so many rules!
Alfred frowned. “Master Damian, I can assure you, there is no rule regarding the length of time one is required to be present at the breakfast table.”
They didn’t understand. Why couldn’t he make them understand? “It’s not just your rules I have to follow.”
Of course, that’s when Tim decided to come in.
His eyes immediately locked onto his little brother. “What’s wrong, Dames?”
“He lost a tooth,” Jason explained. He still had a hand on Damian’s shoulder. “I think he got a little overwhelmed. Here, Damian, let’s try one of your breathing exercises that Dinah showed you. Can you do that for me? Just inhale for four seconds, and exhale for six.”
Damian tried. At first, he kept hiccuping between breaths. But after a minute or two, he finally leveled out a bit.
“Good job, buddy,” Jason praised. “Now, can you try to explain what’s scaring you most right now?”
“I-I need to follow the rules,” Damian repeated, his lip quivering. He took another, shuddering breath. “Because if I don’t, then bad things will happen.”
Cass cocked her head. “Like what?”
“I don’t know! Really bad things! I don’t want to find out exactly what; that’s why I follow the rules!”
“And where do these ‘rules’ come from?” Tim asked.
“I don’t know that, either. I just know I have to obey them. Except I can’t anymore because the rule is I have to brush my teeth for 182 seconds, and I can’t do that anymore. So something terrible is going to happen, and I don’t know what it’s going to be or how to stop it.”
He was sobbing again. Any control he’d regained with the breathing exercise was now gone.
Strong arms wrapped around him. Jason pulled Damian against his chest and held his tightly. “Breathe, Dames,”’ he soothed. “It’s going to be okay. I know it’s scary, but nothing bad is going to happen because you lost your tooth. We’ll protect you.”
“But how could you know that?” He asked, his voice weak and small.
“Well, because I’ve lost all of my baby teeth, and nothing bad ever happened because the number changed. The same goes for Dick, Cass, and Tim. And you, too. Think back to the last tooth you lost. Nothing bad happened then, did it?”
Damian thought for a moment. He couldn’t remember, but maybe the rule hadn’t been set yet. New rules were always popping up, after all. In any case, it didn’t bring him much comfort.
So instead of answering, he buried his face into his big brother’s chest and sobbed until he had no tears left.
Bruce was in dire need of coffee.
He’d had a heck of a morning already. Jervis Tetch, a frequent-flyer schizophrenic (who never took his meds), had already assaulted two of his nurses and gotten put into four-point restraints. Then, someone had come in with a stab wound to the chest. Who got stabbed before 8:00 in the morning?
As much as he loved his city, Gotham was seriously the worst.
Bruce had just finished ordering his usual when his phone rang. He fished it out of his vest pocket and frowned when he saw the ID:
Jason.
It was Tuesday. Jason had an 8:00 class on Tuesdays. The boy never missed class outside of an emergency. And he certainly never called Bruce at work, either. Something had to be very wrong.
He answered the phone.
“Jason? Is everything alright?”
Per usual, the boy didn’t sugarcoat things. “I think something is seriously wrong with Damian.”
Bruce’s stomach dropped. “What do you mean? Did something happen?”
“He just had a panic attack over losing a tooth. He said he had to brush his teeth for exactly 182 seconds, which no longer works now that he has twenty-five teeth. The kid was seriously freaked, Dad. He kept going on about having to ‘follow the rules’ or else ‘bad things would happen.’ But he couldn’t say where the rules came from or what kinds of bad things he was afraid of. I don’t know what’s going on with him, but this is different than our typical brand of post-abuse trauma. Trust me.”
Bruce took a moment to absorb all of the information that was being presented. He’d always known that Damian was… particular. His youngest simply preferred things a specific way. A lot of his behaviors, however, had been brushed off as being attributed to his upbringing, both as an abused child and an elitist’s heir. But now that Jason had pointed it out, there were certain “rituals” that Damian always performed: the teeth brushing, making Alfred change his sheets daily, triple checking the lock on his window before bed, only eating certain foods in certain ways in certain orders – and that was just a few of them. If any of these were interrupted, Damian got extremely upset. His other children always just assumed he was being a spoiled prince, but what if he was actually driven by fear?
Damn. How had he missed this?
“How is he now?” Bruce asked, rubbing his hand over his face.
“He finally wore himself out. He’s in his room now with Alfred. We called him out from school. I decided to stay home and help. It was the only way Tim and Cass agreed to leave.”
“Thank you, Jaylad. I really appreciate it. I’m going to reach out to Harley and see what she thinks. I’ll call you back when I know more.”
His second oldest sighed. “Okay, that sounds like a plan. I’m really worried about him, Dad.”
Bruce’s heart clenched. “I know, sweetheart. We’ll figure out a way to help him, I promise.”
***
As soon as Bruce explained what was going on to Harley, she asked to see Damian in person.
“I can’t know for sure until I talk to him, but it sounds like OCD to me,” the psychiatrist explained. “If it were trauma related, he’d be getting better, not worse. You said his compulsions are escalating?”
Bruce nodded. “He’s lost teeth in the past with no issue. But today, he had a total meltdown.”
“Yeah, I don’t like that one bit. I have a few consults to see, but if you can get him here, I’ll talk to him in my office.”
Relief flooded him. “Thank you, Harley. I appreciate it so much.”
His old friend smiled and pat him on the shoulder. “Glad I could help, Brucie.”
Damian Wayne was not normal.
Dr. Quinzel had made it official: he had Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
A part of him was relieved. All the “rules” that his brain forcibly imposed on him (and the consequences they threatened) weren’t real. They were simply compulsions fabricated by a mental disorder he had. That meant, with treatment, he’d get better. He’d be able to live his life without the fear of bad things happening if he didn’t tap his doorknob six times before leaving his bedroom.
His father had already assured Damian that he loved him no less due to his…ailment. They weren’t going to pump him full of drugs or throw him into an insane asylum. Instead, he was going to be meeting with Dinah at least weekly for the foreseeable future to engage in a special type of therapy called Exposure and Response Prevention. Harley had provided him with some literature on the subject so he could know what to expect. It seemed scary, being forced to break the rules, but he was willing to try.
“Hey, Squirt. Mind if I come in?”
Upon returning from the hospital, Damian had sequestered himself in his room to conduct his research. Though, seeing Jason in his doorway offered a welcome reprieve.
Damian closed his laptop. “You may.”
His brother came in and sat down on the edge of his bed. “I just wanted to come check on you and see how you were doing. Getting slapped with a psychiatric diagnosis is never fun.”
Right. Jason had a few mental disorders of his own. He’d been seeing Dinah since long before Damian had arrived to Gotham. Though, Damian was not privy to details. He just knew that Jason sometimes had panic attacks and nightmares.
“I am… coping,” he decided. “Though, I cannot help but think of how disappointed my mother and grandfather would be.”
He was supposed to be their perfect heir. It was what he had been trained and brought up for. But how could he live up to those expectations now?
Jason nodded. “It’s understandable to worry about that. Truthfully, I don’t know how your mother would react. From what I’ve heard, she loves you, so I’d hope that would mean she’d support you through this. Your grandfather, on the other hand, is clearly an asshole, seeing as he broke your fucking back, so I wouldn’t give a shit about what he thinks. But for what it's worth, no one in this family is going to think less of you. We get it. Every single one of us had to grow up too quickly, and that’s left its scars on everyone.”
That was true. Every child Father had adopted either had chronic medical conditions or psychological ailments (or both). So, if anything, getting diagnosed with OCD made Damian more like his siblings.
It was a strange thought, but for some reason, it gave him comfort. Father loved his other children deeply and unconditionally despite their imperfections. If he could do that for them, then Damian had no reason to believe the Wayne patriarch’s earlier promises had been empty.
He slid out of his desk chair and joined Jason on the bed. Then, he threw his arms around his big brother’s waist.
“Thank you,” he whispered. “I am… scared, of what this means for me, and of how things will change because of it.”
Jason held him tightly. “I know, Dames. It’s okay to be scared. It’s gonna get better, I promise. It may take a while, but we’re all going to help you get through this.”
Damian felt himself relax into the embrace. He may not have been normal, but neither was his family. And for now, that was enough to silence the distant echoes of his grandfather’s voice.