Welcome! So, starting the 100 prompts back up, this is number 5, 'Seeking Solace'. The request was for TimDami (and I sorta did that)! There's no official mention of it, really, but it's TimDami interaction? Anyway, hope you enjoy! XD
No warnings for this!
Damian shuts his laptop, the international call on it already ended, but the physical closing of it seeming so much more of a symbol than the simple exiting of a program. His chest and hands feels heavy, and his face feels frozen into the hard mask he's had to keep his expression in to avoid being seen right through. The dismissively cruel words of his grandfather linger in his mind, digging thousands of tiny hooks into him and clinging tight, refusing to be shaken.
It's absurd. Why does he somehow still expect some level of familial respect — or, impossibly, kindness — from his grandfather? He should know better by now.
He has never been good enough, he was never going to be good enough, and yet every time he thinks he's made peace with that fact his grandfather manages to wound him again. The very fact he is wounded by mere words is proof that he is still inferior and unworthy of his eventual inheritance of his grandfather's title and organization. Not that he truly believes that promise anymore; he hasn't for many years. Still, the thought refuses to leave the back of his mind; it was his entire life for so many years, and expunging it is… difficult.
Numbly, he gets to his feet and leaves his room. It is automatic to head downstairs and to the kitchen, checking the kettle resting on the stove and then turning the heat on below it. He stares at the kettle for a minute, watching the heat fog the sides of the metal, before he forces himself to move. He retrieves his favorite mug — in a lower cabinet and hidden behind a larger mug; a holdover from his younger years where that was all he could reach — and then his favorite blend of tea from Pennyworth's stores. The kettle shrieks, and he takes it off the heat and immediately to the cup, pouring it in over the bag.
As he retrieves a teaspoon, and the small jar of brown sugar, he counts seconds in his head. He focuses as much as he can on those seconds, and the curl of steam from the cup, to avoid any other thoughts in his head. It's not particularly effective, but it does seem to help a little bit. He manages not to sink too deeply into himself during the four minutes he allows the tea to sit, before he removes the bag and carefully shakes in a couple spoonfuls of sugar.
His hand shakes a touch as his mind vividly supplies him the image of the look of distaste his grandfather would wear at seeing him add any kind of sweetener to his tea.
He sets the spoon aside to be washed, and carefully puts away the supplies he'd taken out to make the tea. Then he wraps both his hands around the mug — it's hot enough to sting his hands — and walks out of the kitchen to the secondary library's living room. He sits down in the corner of the couch across from the empty fireplace, deliberately drawing his legs up onto the couch and leaning against the arm of it, bringing the mug in against his chest so that almost-painful heat sinks down into the center of his sternum. The delicately interweaving scents of vanilla, caramel, and the underlying black base of the tea curls up with the steam, and he resists taking deeper breaths and closing his eyes to soak in that scent. So familiar and yet so very different in its intricacies than the tea he'd drank as a child in the League.
Instead he stares at the stone and marble of the empty fireplace, taking calm, even breaths and emptying his mind as much as is possible. He does not need his grandfather's approval, and he will never get it so it is pointless to even desire it. There are other people that he would be better off working to gain respect from, people who have standards he is actually capable of meeting, more or less. Just because his grandfather is family does not automatically make him someone that he must strive to impress. As if his grandfather would ever admit to being impressed by anything he did, even if it were true.
He pulls in a sharper breath, then closes his eyes for a moment to breath out, slow and even. Dwelling on these thoughts is not conducive to banishing them from his mind.
His eyes snap open at the sound of the door opening, and he tilts his head to look over at it. Drake is entering, laptop balanced on one arm and a mug in the other hand, gaze lowered as he steps in and balances his weight to push the door closed again with one foot. He doesn't move, doesn't speak, and it takes Drake several seconds to actually look up and spot him.
Drake stalls for a moment, gaze fixing on his for a second and then flicking over the rest of him. A moment after that, Drake is moving forward, joining him on the couch. He watches, silently, as Drake sets the mug down on the table before them, taking the middle seat of the couch, just a few inches from his legs. The laptop opens, and Drake's files pop back up, various half-finished projects, from what he can see.
"Tea?" Drake asks, not actually looking at him.
He shifts his head in a small nod. "Chai," he confirms. "Coffee?"
"Yep," Drake answers, relaxing back against the couch. "Lots of work; Barbara asked me to be a second set of eyes on a few cases, see if I spot anything she might have missed. Might open up a new lead somewhere."
He doesn't answer, just lets his gaze drift back to the fireplace, taking another breath that's full of the scent of his tea. Drake's presence is not as unwelcome as it once was, when he was a child insistent on proving himself by any and all means necessary, often to the detriment of anyone he was not directly attempting to prove himself to. Drake was the target of that more often than not, in both senses. Drake was relatively the weakest of his predecessors, in a purely physical sense, so he made a good target to belittle to boost his own appearance. However, Drake was also a respected member of this side of his family.
As long as it took him to admit it, he always desired Drake's approval as well. That is part of why he continually pushed Drake, continually challenged him. He wanted to prove he was capable, wanted to earn respect , but without ever appearing weak.
He's managed to calm himself over the years, managed to learn ways to earn that respect without having to challenge the people he wants to respect him, and that's made things between Drake and him much smoother. They are not precisely friends, but perhaps they are something close, and they are unquestionably allies. Drake is impressive, and he no longer feels the need to match that. He is dangerous in his own ways, and they have different specialties, so he's learned to accept that difference.
He swallows, tightening his grip on the mug cradled against his chest. Without looking at Drake, he murmurs, "I belong here."
"Of course you do," Drake says, without even a moment of hesitation. "Something make you think you don't?"
He hesitates, and then carefully responds, "You know my grandfather."
There's a moment of silence. Then he sees Drake moving out of the corner of his eye, and feels warmth press up against his feet and ankles. "Yeah, I do."
Drake is pressed up against his legs, not looking at him, but simply there. He is still working on that laptop, and that… that is better. He does not enjoy being studied when he is not in full control of himself, and though Drake would likely never criticize him for that failure it is still a failure. He is weak enough right now without someone else digging into those open wounds, and he does not desire pity. He has never desired pity.
He is a warrior, born and bred, and all of this emotional vulnerability is beneath him. A flaw. A weakness. It is the reason he will never be good enough and he hates how that makes him feel. Hates how he feels inferior and worthless despite knowing he is anything but. Despises that his grandfather can still reduce him so with nothing but a few words. He should be better than that. He should have given up on everything to do with his grandfather by now because it has been proven , time and again, that his grandfather does not care about him except for how he may be used as a weapon or tool against others.
Family is not blood, and he has learned that the hard way. Family is the steady support of his father, it is the open friendliness Grayson treats him with, it is the way Drake sits next to him now, perhaps not exactly understanding but willing to offer a silent and passive type of support anyway. Family is loyalty, and caring, and trust . He does not share any of that with his grandfather; sometimes, not even with his mother. He would be better off if he just stopped trying .
He shuts his eyes, tries not to hear the whisper of his grandfather's voice in the back of his head, or the heavy weight of his mother's silence in the face of it. They only grow louder.
The blackness doesn't help, so he returns to looking at the fireplace. That doesn't help either, but it is marginally better than the darkness of his own thoughts. Carefully, in case his hands are shaking, he raises the mug and takes his first sip of the tea. There's a faint pang of homesickness; nostalgia for the days he remembers as a small child, holding a drink much like this one and tucked underneath the safety of his mother's arm. Sore, bruised, but safe and secure in the knowledge that his mother would not let him come to unnecessary harm.
His childhood made him what he is, and he does not regret that. What he regrets is that he has allowed the ingrained conditioning present in that training to influence his ability to stand up to his grandfather.
That dark weakness coils up in his chest and spreads out, invading the bits of his mind one by one. Slowly, he shifts himself on the couch, removing his weight from the arm and then pausing. After a moment where Drake does not react, he shifts a little further, curling himself back up and lowering his head to press against Drake's shoulder. The typing continues, not even a pause in it, and he relaxes a bit and cradles his tea to his chest again. Drake smells of some sort of floral scent — something used in his body wash, if he were to guess — and the bitter tang of coffee on top of it. It is comforting in an entirely different way than the vanilla and caramel of his chai.
He idly watches Drake's progress through the files, feeling the different yet similarly pleasant sensation of both the tea against his chest and the heat of Drake's skin against his own. He leans into that warmth, watching the flicker of various pages, various images, of a chat screen in the bottom right corner.
The weight to his chest eases, making it easier to breathe, making him feel light again. He turns his head in against Drake's shoulder, burying his face against the soft fabric of the shirt covering it. Every breath slips him further towards relaxation, every comforting intake of flowers and coffee lets him drop his guard a bit more, secure in the same way as he feels in the arms of his father, or Grayson. Drake is certainly no father figure, but he is still safe . Of all members of their family, Drake knows best what his grandfather is capable of, and how cruel that can be.
He barely registers when Drake stops typing, or the faint click of the laptop closing. He only becomes fully aware when Drake shifts against him, and then only enough to blink open his eyes and raise his head a bit. Before he can come fully back to awareness, Drake's arm is sliding around his shoulders and pulling him a little closer. He pulls away a little bit but Drake's grip doesn't loosen, and he doesn't want to pull hard enough to make it, so he relaxes again, into Drake's side where it is warm and safe, and he is surrounded by someone he can trust with his safety.
Drake doesn't speak, simply stays with that arm hooked around him and with the quiet warmth of his presence stable and there.
It takes him a long few moments to realize that his lashes are damp, and by then there's a tear slipping down his cheek, and the next breath he takes is shallow and a bit shaky. He presses his face against Drake's side, unwilling to let the evidence show even though Drake could hardly have missed the quake in his breath. The next moment, a hand is very gently touching his arm, and then pulling the mug of tea away from his hands. He hears the faint clink of it being set down, before that other arm is circling around him, and Drake — despite being smaller, lighter, shorter — is gathering him into something like an embrace.
He lets it happen, because he cannot quite control the trembling of his hands. He also cannot stop the slow drip of tears down his cheeks, nor the faint shake to his inhalations. He can control the desire to make noise though, so he does. He strangles it down and ensures that he remains quiet, even if he cannot fix the rest.
"You're one of us, you know," Drake says quietly. "You have been for a long time, Damian, and that's not something that you have to prove or earn, remember?"
He does not trust his voice, so he doesn't answer.
"You're right; I know Ra's. I know he's a manipulative, old-fashioned, bastard, and you defied him." Drake's hand squeezes his shoulder. "Not many people can say that they defied the Demon's Head and lived; you know that. If you weren't a threat, he wouldn't be bothering with you at all."
He shivers, presses closer to Drake's warmth, and manages to say, "Perhaps that would be easier."
Drake gives a little laugh, other hand rubbing up and down his arm. "Trust me, I've had that same thought a hundred times."
"But you have never enacted it?" he asks, as the taste of salt spreads over his tongue from a stray tear.
The arm around his shoulders tightens just a bit, before Drake murmurs, "No, never. No matter how much I hate having him focused on me, I'm not willing to give up my skills or stop helping the friends and family I have just to make it stop. I can handle Ra's, and someday, I'm going to beat him outright. Maybe not soon, but someday."
His hands have stopped shaking, and his next breath comes clear, easier. "I would not wish to give up being Robin," he admits, into Drake's side. "I— I would not wish to let any of you down." He pauses, and then asks, "Do you really intend to topple my grandfather, someday?"
Drake sounds almost satisfied when he answers, "Yeah, I do. Want to join me?"
He shifts, feeling secure enough that he can uncurl a bit, raise his head to rest against Drake's shoulder and look up to those crystal blue eyes. Drake is not the strongest of them, but he is the smartest, perhaps even the most ruthless when pushed. Drake is, against all the initial thoughts he had, perhaps the best ally he could have against the might of his grandfather.
"Yes," he answers, and then lets his mouth curl into a faint smirk. "I would enjoy that."