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Damian sometimes loved and hated his girlfriend. Some days, she made him feel that sappy, teenage-drama kind of love, like Ben in the first Descendants movie with Mal. Other times, like now, he didn’t like her.
Nika had introduced him to fanfiction so that he could still consume more media for all the shows he likes but has (unfortunately) completed. And while the sentiment was nice, Damian could no longer stop. In short, he was addicted.
Just recently, Damian finished watching ‘The Disastrous Life of Saiki K’ and wanted more of it. He was now on page twenty-six out of who knows how many for the published works. On the TV, an old rerun of The Great British Bake-Off played as background noise in the lounge nearest to the bedrooms. It’s what he’s been doing all day. Lounging, lazing about, and being a couch potato that Alfred would’ve rectified hours ago.
Damian opened the box of chocolate that Maps gave him for Christmas, inspecting the flavors before choosing. Dark chocolate and Marzipan. Now, he loves dark chocolate, prefers it much more to milk chocolate and it was leagues better than white chocolate. But he’s never really had marzipan. Jason loves it, as does Duke; however, Damian has always had an indifferent opinion of it. Perhaps this will be enjoyable.
It was not.
He finished the piece he started, grabbed the other that remained, and made his way down the hall. Tim was the only one besides him at the manor. “Here.” Damian walked into his brother’s room, placing the chocolate on his nightstand.
“What is it?” Tim shifted his focus from his laptop to Damian. His phone was propped up on the screen, and the display for FaceTime showed the ceiling of the other person’s home.
“Dark chocolate and Marzipan.” Tim echoed as he inspected the food, nibbling off a corner. “I thought I would like it. I didn’t.” A chuckle left him at the sight of his brother’s disgusted face. “Looks like you didn’t either.”
“Yeugh! You tryna poison me again? Gross, that was awful!”
“Yes, that is what I was trying to do,” Damian retorted and made his way back to the lounge.
Not five minutes later, Tim came walking up to him, phone in hand. “What are—oh, hello Konathon.”
“Timian!” On the screen was Kon, one of Tim’s boyfriends. His fringe was held back by a Kerropi clip that was given to him by Otho-Ra. he held his hand up to the camera. “Look! I painted my nails.”
“I see that,” he answered. “Wait—that’s the polish Jon stole from Nika.”
“Is it?” Damian let Kon ramble about how he came to have the nail polish, green eyes watching Tim as he looked at his box of chocolates. The older boy, like Damian, flipped the box back and forth between the contents and the key on the back.
“Alright, bye,” Tim took his phone back, retreating to his room.
Damian’s gaze filled his brother till it landed on his chocolates. That thief! “Hey!” he counted the pieces. “You stole my chocolate!”
“Boohoo! Cry about it!”
He tutted, slumping back into his spot. “Can’t have shit around here,” he mumbled, pulling up his fanfic again.
―—
Tim wiped his hands on his shirt, slightly dusty from his regulated chip intake. He does not have an addiction. He eats the appropriate amount of chips (three bags) without supervision; he does not need one of those automatic cat food dispensers for his Lemon Lays (Jason).
Either way, Tim was heading back to his room after his snack when he saw Damian in one of the front living rooms. It was one of the informal ones, filled with the comfy pillows and throw blankets they used when they lounged. A small TV stood on a table to the side, facing the cluster of couches and Damian.
His brother was folded over himself, legs tucked under him as tight as they could go. His attention was on the cat in front of him. How the kid found it comfortable, Tim doesn’t know, but he wasn’t going to pass up an opportunity like this.
With the stealth honed by both the Bat and Lady Shiva, Tim made his way to his little brother. He was blissfully unaware. Perfect. Tim turned himself around, made sure he was in the correct position, and sat down.
“Ack!” Damian yelped at the force of Tim’s sudden weight. “Get off, fatty!”
“Hmm,” Tim thought. “Just for that, nah.”
He felt Damian try to buck him off like a horse, but he was freshly twelve years old and just barely making the healthy weight range for his age. And while Tm was on the skinnier side, he was eighteen and had a good eighty pounds or so on him.
So, feet firmly planted on the ground, Tim let more of his weight on him. A smile stretched across his lips as Damian pushed him up, “Come on, Dames, I thought you were the ‘Superior Robin?’”
“I am!” He said, and Tim could hear the smile in his voice that he tried to hide. “You’re just obese!”
“Oh. Oh, really? Now I’m really not going to move now.” Tim lay back. His head beside Damian’s, arms extended to the sides, his feet still in their place.
“No!”
“Yes!”
Tim heard Damian laugh as he ‘struggled’ to get him off. They both knew that Damian could’ve freed himself a lot earlier, but he was having too much fun horsing around like a pile of puppies. Still, he stayed where he was, Tim on top and a smile on his face. Eventually, Damian tilted Tim off of him, feeling satisfied at the sound of his “oof!” when he hit the floor.
Damian’s success was short-lived when Tim grabbed Damian’s foot, tucking the kid’s leg under his arm so that he couldn’t retract it. “No! Wait—”
Damian erupted into a fit of laughter as Tim tickled his foot. There was a reason he wore socks everywhere, and Tim was using that to his advantage. He could feel Damian’s other foot on his back, pushing against him to release his appendage. But Tim wasn’t going to.
“Stop! Stop!” Damian shrieked, eyes welling with tears.
“Why’re you crying, Dami?” Tim lighted.
“I’m going to pee! Stop!” Damian yelled.
Tim finally relented, letting go of his brother’s foot and being shoved away by one final kick. He looked back. Damian was sprawled on the floor, his face flushed with tears tracked down his cheeks. “You’re a butt-hole.
Tim simply chuckled and went back to whatever it was he was doing.
—
Tim looked up from his phone as Damian climbed into the passenger seat. The Brentwood prep uniform was discarded for regular attire, and polished shoes were swapped for his (slightly) dirty green Converse. His backpack was discarded on the floor without care. He looked tense—no, anxious, but the kind where he couldn’t wait to spill secrets.
Tim side-eyed his brother warily as he pulled out of the parking lot. “What? Why’re you looking at me like that?”
“You remember I told you the drama club got displaced to the band hall while they fixed the electrical wiring?” Damian buckled his seat belt.
“Yeah.”
“Well, during rehearsal, we were taking a break, and Maps and I were sitting on the Color Guard’s tarp cart. You know, the floor they perform on in their indoor season.”
“Yeah.” Tim flicked his turn signal.
“Well, Colin comes up to us and tells us that we shouldn’t be sitting on the tarp.” He said. “Which was odd, so I pressed for more information—and, you know the Andersen’s daughter and the Han’s son?”
“I think,” Tim furrowed his eyebrows. “They’re, what, a year above you?”
“Han’s son—Felix—is, yes, but Aaliyah Andersen is in my year.”
“Okay, yeah, yeah, I remember. What about them?”
“Well, they are a part of the band, so they are at the academy during the summer for the marching season. Collin is also a part of the band, and he told us that, one day, he came to the band hall to retrieve a music sheet or something that the directors needed for practice, and it was in the second hall.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So, to get to it, Collin had to pass one of the storage rooms in the hall between them. Well, when he did, the tarp cart was against the door on the inside, and the doors have windows so that a student can’t hide there during class.”
“Right, yeah, that makes sense.”
“When he walked past the door, guess what he saw.”
“What?” Tim turned to look at Damian.
“He saw Aaliyah and Felix doing it on the tarp. In the dark. In the middle of the day—while the band was outside practicing!”
“What?! No!”
“Yes!”
“No!”
“Yes, and Collin just barely decided to tell Maps and I about it when we’ve been in the band hall for weeks! Weeks now!”
Tim laughs as his brother complains. Damian sits up animatedly to continue, “And what’s worse, is that I’ve been sitting, and lying, and placing my food on it the entire time we’ve been there. The Entire Time! All of a sudden, now he wants to tell us we’ve been using a defiled tarp as a chaise?!”
Tim’s cheeks hurt from laughing.
“My friendship with Collin has ended; his betrayal has wounded me greatly.”
His laughs turned to cackles as he placed the car in park at home.
―—
Damian wasn’t really aware of where they were going, only that it was a full Wayne outing. All his father’s children were packed into one of the larger, civilian vehicles. Bruce and Dick at the front, Cass squeezed between Jason and Duke in the second row, leaving Damian and Tim at the very back.
Honestly, Damian didn’t mind the seating arrangement. He and Tim were a lot closer than the rest of their siblings (with the exception of Dick, though one could label him as a parent of sorts)
He didn’t know why that was, especially after their rough start, but it was too late to dwell on it.
Beside him, Tim was mindlessly scrolling through Instagram reels, airpod in one ear, and leaning on the pullout armrest between them. Damian himself had just begun a four-hundred-thousand-word fanfic that he had found that morning. So they were the quietest of all the people in the car. Cass included since she was in a semi-heated conversation with Duke about the best place to get boba.
“Dames, check this out,” Tim handed the remaining AirPod to him.
On the screen was a teaser trailer for the newest season of Percy Jackson. Cuts of some finished sequences, a release date, and the title of the season: Sea of Monsters. Watching the show, as well as reading the series, was one of the few ways Damian and Tim had bonded. Tim showed him media that was, not only appropriate for his age but also what he liked and what the other kids his age were enjoying. And Damian, slightly desperate to get closer to him and fit in at school, dove headfirst into the Riordanverse.
“Was that—?” Damian re-watched the screen.
“Chariot races. Tyson.” Tim answered. "And a new OC for the show, too.”
“New OC? Who and why?” Damian questioned, scrolling through the comments before Tim pulled his phone back.
In the next few moments, they erupted into an intense debate over the speculation of the new character. Speaking their ideas and theories, reading others’ opinions, and scavenging any and all information that could be found.
Let it be known, here and now, though it will not be a surprise, that both Damian and Tim are very animated when it comes to things they are passionate about. By themselves, they are tame. Still, they rant and ramble about details and plots and character studies, but it’s usually more subdued. Pair them together, however, their passionate discussions sound similar to those verbal fights that rarely happen anymore.
If one were to actually look to the very back row, one would see that Tim and Damian were very much Not Fighting. But Bruce was driving and could not see that far behind him. All that he could hear were the raised voices of his youngest and younger middle child. “Tim, Damian, stop fighting. This is supposed to be a family outing. Be civil with each other.”
Said boys looked at each other, confused. “But father—”
“I don’t care who started what, just stop.”
“We’re not—”
“I said stop.”
If they weren’t in a pissed-off earlier, they were now.
Had Bruce not seen that they were civil with each other now? That they behaved like actual siblings do? Damian can’t be like this with Jason as he does not live in the manor anymore. Duke was in an early college program with Gotham U. Stephanie and Cass lived in an apartment close to the Bowery, and Dick was all the way in Blüdhaven. Tim was the only one who still lived at the manor and who practically grew up with Damian.
“Whatever,” Tim mumbled. He faced Damian and spoke in a much quieter voice, “New season, you know what that means?”
“Consume every bit of media in preparation?”
“Exactly, this time, you’re watching the musical, too.” Tim smiled and took back the AirPods.
Damian smiled at the thought. He couldn’t wait.