A/N: I didn't post this already? Found in my files. Still bummed Colin doesn't exist anymore, cute as his replacement is, so have some obsolete futurefic.
The dorm room door flew open with a maximum of drama. "Wilkes!"
Colin jolted awake. "Mnuh?" He blinked once, peeled his cheek from his physics textbook, and blinked again, this time at the roommate silhouetted in the door. "Wha'izzit, Damian? I was studying.
"And why aren't you calling me Colin?" he asked, partly to stave off the inevitable smart remark about attempting to learn through osmosis and partly because it had occurred to him that a retreat to greater formality of address might mean his friend was angry with him. For some reason.
Damian waved off the question and strode through the doorway, shoving it closed behind him. As ever, the tiny room made him look even taller than his six feet four inches. "This is important."
Colin blinked again, this time stubbornly. Nine years of friendship had taught him a lot. "I know you don't think studying is important, but some of us have to work for our grades."
Damian opened his mouth to say something dismissive, then closed it again. "Alright," he said. "I will wait until you are ready to give me your full attention."
And then he sat down, in his own desk chair. And propped his chin on his hands. And stared at Colin.
What he was employing wasn't his glare—that could blister paint at twenty paces. It wasn't even hostile. This was a sort of blend of truculent patience and resigned melancholy that he had probably perfected on his oldest brother, and Colin held out for fifteen minutes and three pages from which he absorbed very little, before leafing back to where he'd fallen asleep, sticking in a sheet of notes as a bookmark, and snapping the book closed. "Okay, fine. Like I can concentrate with you buzzing to tell me the thing."
It wouldn't, he reflected, have worked so well if Damian hadn't genuinely (if poorly) been showing hard-learned self-restraint and respect for other people's needs.
Though sometimes he wondered if his best friend only learned those things to win himself brownie points in the first place. (He shoved the little spark of anger down where he always put that kind of thing, knowing Abuse would drink it up and turn it into something useful.)
Still, it was what it was. Damian was a good friend and a good guy, even if he was also kind of a jerk.
Having gotten his way, Damian returned to that sweeping magnanimity that said he was feeling very pleased with himself. He rolled his chair over so he could lean into Colin's space and whisper, "I'm going to be Batman next week."
He straightened up and said a little louder, "Father's…out of town for the week, and Grayson's hurt his foot. And Cain declined," he added, making a sour face that there had been someone in the line of consideration between the previous Batmans and himself.
(Also, the significant-pause type of out-of-town usually meant outer space. Was Mr. Wayne ever going to slow down? He had to be almost sixty by now.)
"Wow," Colin said, meaning it completely. "That's awesome. You think you're ready?"
"Born ready," Damian volleyed back, and Colin laughed. "More seriously," Damian continued, "I do think I'm ready, but I want you watching my back."
The depth of sincerity in Damian's eyes when he said things like that never failed to blow Colin away. No one had ever needed him before, not really, but Damian had never stopped. So he almost opened his mouth to say, Of course.
Instead he caught up with himself and said, "Won't…Tim…be there?"
Incredulous look. "You want me to trust my back on my first excursion to someone who hates me?"
"He doesn't hate you."
Damian's eyebrows begged to differ.
"Well, if he does, it's only in proportion to things you've done to make him. It's not like he's going to sabotage you."
"Tt. I am uninterested in the justness of Drake's feelings. My feelings are that I want you with me, not him."
Colin kind of liked Redhawk, who was sensible and had never taken out his feelings toward Damian on Colin, but it wasn't worth pursuing the topic. He'd been pushed back to his real objection. "It's finals week. Next week. All week."
"Which means we'll only be bound to school obligations for between zero and three hours each day. Convenient."
Colin was already shaking his head. "No. I know how these things go, remember? I'm not risking missing exams because a chase ran long, and the rest of that time I need to be studying. Or resting."
He swallowed, because the look Damian was giving him was making him feel like such a traitor, but he knew he was in the right. "I know it doesn't seem like a big deal to you. Your future is assured no matter what; even if you flunk everything nothing bad will happen. But I need to score high. I need to do well, I need my scholarship because I need my degree, I need to be able to support myself."
"I can always support you," Damian grumbled, looking away in the way he did when Colin had a point but he didn't want to actually concede.
Colin half-laughed. "Seven," he said, and Damian groaned. He'd had no idea how often he sounded like he was proposing marriage until Colin started keeping him updated on the monthly total. (Damian had assured him he was not romantically interested; Colin had been far more relieved than disappointed. He wasn't sure if he was attracted to Damian or not, but he did know being Damian's best friend and his boyfriend at the same time would smother anyone to death.) "But anyway, that's…not something I want."
Damian nodded, because even if he liked to ignore such details he did realize that having to be dependent for everything on generosity, even your best friend's, would be awful. "I understand," he said.
Flopped his weight backward in his fancy upholstered black-leather ergonomic swiveling desk chair. (Colin had an identical one a size smaller; they'd arrived in the mail at the same time and Damian had assembled them both without comment, and made the wooden chairs that had come with the room disappear.) Let out a breath. "I suppose Brown and Cain will turn up," he allowed. "Unfortunately there's no real chance of Todd staying away. Gordon's promised to be on comms."
"I like your family," said Colin. Though they were pretty over-the-top. He was only sometimes jealous.
"Hmph. They're all idiots." Which was to say, Damian loved them. Even Redhawk, Colin was pretty sure. He'd spent an entire session of their three-hour Achaemenid Archeology seminar staring straight through the professor with eyes like chips of stone, that time last semester Drake had been missing, presumed dead.
"But I am certainly capable of handling myself on my own," the incipient Batman announced in his third-snootiest voice. "You will simply have to clear space in your busy study schedule to listen to tales of my exploits."
Colin laughed. "Pretty sure I can manage that much."
A smile pulled at Damian's mouth, and…it was just a little sad. The way he looked when, on rare occasions, he talked about his mother.
Feeling like a complete idiot, Colin realized that what Damian wanted next week wasn't really Abuse's strength to guard him. He knew he was ready for the fighting, had been preparing for this all his life and facing Batman's enemies for nine years as Robin by now. He wasn't scared.
This was what he'd been working towards his whole life. He wanted his best friend there to see it. Saying no was like if Damian dropped out of Gotham U, and then refused to come to Colin's graduation.
He sighed. "I'll come on Monday night," he said. "Tuesday is just Spanish Literature in the afternoon, and I know the material already."
"You can tell me about it while we work," declared Damian, surprise at the sudden turnaround already melting into a cat-soft satisfaction as he settled more comfortably into the thronelike depths of his chair.
Batman, swinging from roof to roof in the company of a hulking rage monster that was lecturing him on the life and times of Gabriel García Marquez.
…Colin was already looking forward to it.