a/n: Sorry I'm late (again)! It's been busy lately, and I'm going to be running around like crazy next week, getting ready to move back to my apartment. On the bright side, that means that my roommate will physically be there to make me write.
This fic has very little to do with breadsticks, but that was the word that spawned the perfect situation for me to write out one of my personal headcanons.
11. Breadsticks
The fact of the matter was that Alfred Pennyworth was a damn good cook. That was potentially what made the whole situation so damn frustrating in the first place. Damian hunched over the toilet as another wave of nausea rolled over him, clutching his stomach and feeling utterly ridiculous. All of his training had been foiled by some godforsaken food.
It was nearing two weeks since Damian had arrived at the mansion, and still the horrible nausea followed every meal. Despite his claims of superior genetics—which were well-founded, considering Damian's faster than average rate of healing—Pennyworth's cooking seemed to continuously confuse his digestive system. The young boy had endured many different cultures in his quest for the most diverse training possible, but nothing had ever thrown him as off-balance as the Americanized method of preparing meals. This fact would be easier to swallow if Pennyworth's abominations were actually abominable. The fact that his creations never failed to be particularly mouthwatering made the situation all the more insulting.
To add insult to injury, this particular bout of sickness was due to Drake's meal request. Apparently, shrimp alfredo was one of Drake's favorite dishes, and the manor's main butler had taken to preparing it with gusto. He had layered thick noodles with the heavy cream sauce, then added a healthy amount of cheese to the mixture, then served a salad with a much too heavy dressing as a side. Damian was no stranger to pastas, but he had never experienced such a heavy dish consisting of dairy and shellfish, and the mixture was a bit disconcerting. Steaming bread was served with the meal, and Damian appreciated the familiarity of this accompaniment, but the breadsticks had been drizzled with a liberal amount of garlic and butter, and the food sat heavily in his stomach.
Of course, Damian had a reputation to maintain within the house. He refused to be bested in front of his father, and especially not by something as simplistic as food. The boy had carefully examined how his father and the wayward orphans had portioned their meals, then portioned his own food accordingly. Not to be outdone, he cleared his plate of every bit of food, then forced himself to down the milk chocolate monstrosity that had been presented as dessert.
Despite the ingenuity of Pennyworth's creations, Damian couldn't help but hate the man a bit for the meals. He had gone out of his way to prove himself above his father's hired help and false heirs—which was another problem altogether; how did claiming his rightful inheritance label him as an ungrateful brat?—and he was loathe to break that character to ask any of them for relief. Damian knew they made medication for this type of discomfort, but he had no way of getting it without drawing attention to his weakness.
No matter. He had suffered much worse than this.
His stomach gave a loud, unhappy grumble, and Damian lost his stiff posture long enough to rest his cheek against the cool porcelain for just a moment. His mother would scream herself hoarse if she could see how far he'd fallen now. The child could feel a miserable groan working its way up his throat, but he wouldn't make a sound; despite the fact that his room was as far as humanly possible from any of the other mongrels of the house, Damian wouldn't allow himself to potentially expose his discomfort to anyone.
The quiet creak of his door made Damian rocket into an upright position. His stomach churned madly at the violent shift, but Damian did his best to push the sensation away, focusing on the noise outside of his bathroom. The attaching door was firmly shut, so his weakness was hidden from view, but Damian still felt painfully vulnerable. He strained to catch the soft, padding footsteps that sounded on the cushy carpet. The noise stopped, only to be replaced with a quiet rattle and a solid sounding thumps. The padding picked up again, but the sound was receding. The intruder was leaving, then. Odd.
After the door creaked once more, Damian forced himself off of the floor, then crept to the door and listened. His father had given no indication that he was going to test Damian's skills, but the League had often given him impromptu tests like this, and the boy knew that it was never safe to assume anything. Hearing nothing but silence from the other side of the door, Damian decided that a proactive method was better than a reactive one. He quickly threw the door open, making sure that he caught the knob just before it collided with the wall behind it, and burst into his bedroom to find… nothing. Sure that this was some sort of test of his skills, Damian moved so that his back was firmly planted against the wall outside his bathroom and surveyed the room quickly. Nothing out of the ordinary.
That was not entirely true, Damian found, as he swept over the room a second time. There was a glass of water on his nightstand that had not been there previously, and beside it lay an obnoxiously pink bottle. The child crept closer, sure to keep an eye out for traps. Finding none, he turned his full attention to the nightstand.
Damian sniffed at the water first, sure that it was poisoned, but found that it had no discernable scent. Though that didn't discount all types of poisons, it did significantly reduce the possibilities. He took the tiniest sip possible, then smacked his lips quietly. No taste, which almost guaranteed no poison. He set the glass aside for the moment.
The obnoxious bottle revealed itself to be full of pills. Two pills had already been set out on the tabletop, the dusty pink shade matching the color of the medication inside the bottle. A quick skim of the label uncovered a promise of fast acting nausea and digestive medication. Damian gave the bottle a skeptical look, but he had seen commercials that had promoted a bottle looking startlingly like this one. Damian intended to leave the medication untouched, but another unhappy gurgle from his stomach had him gulping the chalky pills with only a hint of regret. After all, nothing could feel too much worse than the hot and cold flashes fueled by nausea. Damian closed the bottle, then hid it in the barren beside drawer, right next to his coveted sketchbook. He pulled the blankets back and settled into his bed, waiting for the effects of the pills to kick in.
After two hours, Damian accepted that what he had taken was probably not poisonous. The nausea had faded, though, and Damian could feel sleep pulling at him. When he woke the next morning, it was to the butler knocking loudly on his door.
"Breakfast is ready, Master Damian." Damian was reluctant to leave his room, knowing he would run into the wannabe heirs at the table, but he could not pass up the opportunity to potentially dine with his father, as slim as the chances may be. He rolled out of his bed and quickly changed out of the clothing he had worn the day before—he still hadn't been able to convince himself that he wouldn't need to be completely ready to move at a moment's notice—and journeyed downstairs. The morning's breakfast was, mercifully, a simple plate of bacon and eggs. Damian ate methodically, thankful for something he knew he could easily digest, and silently blessed the obnoxiously pink medication for ridding him of the nausea that had been plaguing him for days.
Damian was so immersed in his breakfast that he missed the small smile on Alfred's face.
end notes: For any of you that haven't experienced this, you are lucky souls. I, of course, don't have the globe trotting experience that Damian has, but I got pretty ill when I traveled to France and Belgium. England was okay, but the other two countries seriously screwed up my stomach, and then the return trips home to America made me equally sick. From what I can tell, American food is much more processed (surprising no one, scientists everywhere agree), so it would make sense that Damian would be unused to processing the food. My cousins from Germany have to be particularly careful about milk chocolate, because too much can make them incredibly sick.
Also, I heard a headcanon from another fanfiction that I read, and I fell in love with it. Although I can't remember the story, I remember Damian suspecting that his mother had slipped some sort of supplement or enhancement in his food, then encouraged Damian to believe that his good health was just superior genetics. I particularly like that idea because that means that Damian would show signs of weakness as soon as he was sent to Bruce's and no longer given the drug, which would breed the belief that Gotham made Damian weaker. That's the kind of logic I used in this story.
Last thing: I only have nine days to go until I finish my twenty prompt challenge! I'm excited, because this will be the first thing I'm finished in a long time, but I'm also a little worried, because I'm horrible at finishing anything of my own violation. Hopefully the end of this challenge will bring longer, better developed fics. One can hope, right?