TITLE: Camping Trip

AUTHOR: LOTSlover

CHARACTERS: Batman / Wonder Woman

RATING: M

WARNINGS: Author Chooses Not to Use Warnings

DISCLAIMER: I love Justice League, but especially Batman and Wonder Woman. Unfortunately, I do not own the characters and, if I did, things would be much different for them.

SUMMARY: Bruce and Diana take Nicholas and Kaia camping, but will it go the way Bruce had hoped?

Camping Trip

"Let's go!" Bruce called up the staircase, anxious to get going. He could barely contain his excitement for the plans that he had laid out for the night.

He'd been planning this special event for the last week, making sure that everything would be perfect. He wanted this night to be as memorable for his kids as it had been for him when he was their age. He was flooded with memories as Nicholas bounded down the stairs with barely contained excitement of his own, remembering himself doing the same thing when his father had called him.

"Ready!" Nicholas exclaimed as he leaped off the second to last step to land in the foyer before his father. He proudly held up his backpack which appeared to be packed to the brim. "I got all my stuff."

Bruce gazed down at his son with his hands on his hips and a curious expression on his face. "What all do you have in there?" he asked him.

"My bunny, my blanket, a couple of Justice League action figures, some Legos…" he began to rattle off.

"You really don't need all that stuff," he tried to tell him. "We'll only be gone overnight. Besides, I have plenty of things planned for us to do."

"I can't sleep without my bunny and my blanket," Nicholas insisted in no uncertain terms. He wasn't going to be dissuaded, not even by his father.

"Alright," he relented with a sigh. "Where's your sister?"

"She's coming with mama," he revealed.

"Does she have a bag packed too?"

Bruce looked up at that moment to see Kaia using both hands to drag her backpack down the steps. There was a resounding thud with every step her backpack encountered on its strenuous journey down the staircase to the foyer below.

Bruce ran his hand over his face in an effort to calm his exasperation. "Kaia, what do you have in your backpack?"

Kaia looked up innocently at him from the top of the landing. "Just my stuff."

"We're only going camping overnight," he reminded her. "We'll be back tomorrow morning."

"I know," she replied, huffing as she attempted to lift the bag that was far too heavy for her.

Diana saved the day as she singlehandedly scooped up her daughter and the backpack, taking them the rest of the way down the stairs. "All ready," she announced with a smile. "Are we ready to go camping?"

"Finally," Bruce grumbled. "Daylight is burning. We need to get going."

"Bruce," Diana gently said, her hand coming to rest against his chest. "We're only going to be camping in the backyard."

"I know, but we're already behind schedule," he informed her. "I have the whole camping experience planned out."

She tilted her head and kissed him in an attempt to soothe his already fraying nerves. "It'll be fine," she reassured him. "We'll have plenty of time for everything."

"Right," he agreed, feeling a calming wave wash over him. She always managed to do that for him. "Let's head out."

Alfred appeared with a cooler that he had packed for them. "Call me if you require anything and I will bring it right now."

"No," Bruce said as he took the cooler. "We're roughing it tonight. That's the fun of it. If we forgot something, we'll just have to make do."

Alfred gave Diana a knowing smile which she readily returned. "Thank you, Alfred," Diana replied, waving her cell phone at him. "I have you speed dial."

"Good luck," he said with a grin.

"I think we'll need it," she confessed as she headed out the back door with her husband and children.

Diana knew that this meant a great deal to Bruce, so she was more than happy to do whatever brought him happiness. He had told her how his father had taken him into the woods in the backyard to camp. He was anxious to do it with his children now.

She had reminded him that Nicholas and Kaia were still pretty young, but he reassured her that he had been about the same age when his father had taken him. His excitement had been palpable and more than a little contagious.

She had gone on some overnight wilderness trips herself while growing up on Themyscira, honing her hunting skills and proving herself to be proficient at taking care of herself. Being able to camp overnight with her family would certainly be a fun adventure none of them would forget, perhaps becoming an annual event.

"How much longer?" Kaia asked as they left the expertly manicured lawns of Wayne Manor and entered the woods.

"Just a little further," Bruce told her. "You're going to love this."

Kaia giggled as Nicholas picked up a stick and poked her in the ribs with it. She tried to steal his stick from him but was unsuccessful. She picked up a stick of her own, the siblings play-fighting as they made their way towards the waiting camp.

Entering a clearing, they found a large tent there waiting for them along with a crackling campfire. There was a large crate full of supplies by the fire. Nicholas and Kaia ran towards the tent, immediately crawling inside to see their new sleeping bags waiting for them.

"This is amazing, Bruce," Diana praised him. "You really went to a lot of work to put all of this together."

Bruce grinned at her, eager about the evening ahead. "I can't wait for you and the kids to see what I have planned for us."

"Did your mother ever join you in your camping trips with your father?"

"Once," he revealed, "but she decided that it was something best left to us men to do."

"I'm honored you chose to let me join you," she replied.

He kissed her temple before setting the large cooler down. "I wouldn't have it any other way," he responded. "Come on, Nick and Kaia! We need to get ready to make dinner."

"Is Alfred making dinner?" Kaia asked as she poked her head outside of the tent, her pigtails mussed from crawling around inside.

"No," he told her. "We're going to make supper."

"But daddy, you can't cook," Nicholas added, his head poking out beside Kaia.

Bruce gave him an incredulous look. "I know how to cook."

"That's not what Dick said," Kaia piped up, shaking her head in disagreement.

"Tim said it too," Nick agreed.

"So did Jason," Kaia added.

"Your father knows how to do everything," Diana interrupted before any more family members could be mentioned, her arm slipping around his.

"Really?" Nicholas and Kaia said, their eyes widening in amazement.

Bruce looked incredulously at his wife. "Diana," he murmured her name. "Let's not overdo it. I don't want to get their hopes up too high. It's only hotdogs"

"But you do," she insisted. "It'll be great."

"I love hotdogs," Kaia decided, scrambling out of the tent with Nicholas right behind her.

"Do we have chicken nuggets?" Nicholas asked.

"No, it's hotdogs," Bruce told them, sitting on a log in front of the fire.

He pulled a package of hotdogs out of the cooler, taking one out and sliding it on a stick. "See? You hold it out over the fire to cook it."

"I want to try!" Kaia exclaimed, crawling under Bruce's stretched-out arms and positioning herself between his knees, and partially blocking his line of sight.

She took hold of the stick, the hotdog going straight into the ashes. Bruce quickly grabbed the stick, helping her lift it up to the top of the flames and out of the dirt and ash. Taking a stick Bruce had prepared, Diana helped Nicholas hold his hotdog over the flames.

"This is fun," Nicholas decided. "Can we try cooking a pizza?"

"Pizza?" his four-year-old sister questioned him with a skeptical scowl. "That doesn't fit on a stick!"

"That's an adventure for another day," Bruce replied, trying to help Kaia who didn't really want any help at that moment.

"Here," Diana said, getting on her knees before the fire to help her young son. "Be sure to slowly turn the stick so the hotdog gets cooked on all sides."

"Have you done this before?" Nicholas asked her.

Diana glanced up at Bruce who gave her a smirk. "Actually, yes I have," she confessed.

"You had hot dogs on Thessimascara?" Kaia questioned her, butchering her mother's island home.

"Themyscira," Bruce corrected her with a chuckle.

"No, we didn't have hot dogs," she revealed. "It was a rabbit."

"You ate a rabbit!" Kaia squealed in shock. "Like the rabbits Aunt Zee gave us?"

"How could you eat a rabbit?" Nicholas demanded to know, horrified by the thought.

"People eat rabbits all the time," Bruce tried to calm his children. "It's what they have in the woods on Themyscira to eat."

"There aren't any grocery stores back home on my island," Diana pointed out. "We grew our own fruits and vegetables…hunted and caught our meat."

Kaia thought about it for a while, her lips pursed as she came to a decision. "Okay, let's catch a rabbit," she decided. "I'm in."

"No way!" Nicholas exclaimed. "I'm not eating a rabbit."

"Let's stick to hotdogs tonight," Bruce stated, pulling Kaia's dog from the flames that had encased it.

Taking the stick from her, he carefully wiped off the ash and dirt with a towel before putting it into a bun for her. "Here you go."

Kaia stared down at the hotdog in his hand before looking back up at her father. "Where's the ketchup?"

"Oh…sorry," he murmured, turning, and pulling the ketchup bottle out of the cooler.

Nicholas and Kaia were soon eating their hotdogs and chips as their parents roasted their own hotdogs. Diana chuckled as she gazed into the fire before her, capturing Bruce's attention. "What?"

"I was just thinking of the first hotdog that I ever had."

Bruce laughed at the memory, knowing exactly what she was thinking of. "That was quite the experience."

"I'd only be here for a week," she maintained, slowly turning her hotdog over the flames. "It wasn't my fault."

Bruce's chuckle seemed to grow deeper with the memory. "I thought Wally was going to have a stroke," he replied. "You were taking so long deciding what you wanted that he was about to collapse on the counter."

"You weren't exactly any help you know," she reminded him.

"I wanted to see how you handled yourself."

"That's what you told J'onn when I faced off against those aliens the first time we met," she pointed out.

He looked at her in surprise. "You heard that?"

She smiled knowingly at him before checking her hotdog. "I hear a lot of things."

"Wha ow?" Kaia asked with a mouth stuffed with the last of her hotdog.

"Kaia Alexandria!" Diana admonished her. "Don't talk with your mouth full."

Kaia's shoulders sagged as she swallowed her food. "But we're camping," she claimed. "Daddy said we're roughing it."

"We still have manners even when we're roughing it," Diana told her.

"We can make S'mores, play cards, go on a walk in the woods, tell stories, look at the stars…" Bruce began to list off.

"Mama, I have to go potty," Kaia announced as she bolted to her feet.

"You can go in the woods," Bruce said.

"No!" Kaia cried.

"I'll run her to the house," Diana offered, getting up and going to her daughter.

"Diana, we're supposed to be camping," Bruce told her. "We don't back to the house to use the bathroom."

"She's just a little girl and it'll only take a couple of minutes," Diana insisted.

"Fine," he mumbled as Diana scooped Kaia up in her arms before flying to the manor.

"I'll pee in the woods, daddy," Nicholas excitedly volunteered, renewing Bruce's enthusiasm.

"That's my boy," he said.

XXX

"Are you sure there aren't any monsters out here?" Kaia asked as they sat around the fire roasting marshmallows.

"I personally checked for monsters, and I didn't find any," Bruce assured her.

"Kaia, Batman, and Wonder Woman are our daddy and mama," Nicholas reminded her. "They'll protect us from any monsters."

"It's just really dark," Kaia maintained, looking around her at the darkness that was closing in on them.

"You'll be just fine," Diana said to her. "We won't let anything happen to you."

The sound of an owl hooting caused Kaia to jump, scrambling into her father's lap. "It's okay, Kai," he told her. "It's just an owl."

"Yeah, they don't eat little girls," Nicholas revealed. "They eat mice."

"I know," Kaia replied with a scowl, embarrassed. "I just don't like the dark."

Bruce tightened his hold on his daughter, leaning down to kiss the top of her head. "I promise I'll never let anything happen to either one of you."

"What about mommy?" Kaia asked.

"Her too," he said with a smirk at his wife.

"And you'll protect daddy, mama?" Nicholas questioned her.

"Always," she swore.

"Can you tell us a story?" Kaia asked.

"Not a scary story," Nick clarified. "Dick said you always tell scary stories around the campfire."

"No ghosts!" Kaia readily agreed, burying herself deeper in her father's protective embrace.

"Yeah, what happened when you ate your first hotdog that was so funny?" Nicholas asked.

"Your mother couldn't decide what she wanted on her hotdog," Bruce informed them. "There were too many choices, and she didn't know what half of them were."

"It's not my fault we didn't have ketchup on Themyscira," Diana stated.

"You only changed your mind about a dozen times," Bruce reminded her. "I thought I was going to have to buy you twenty hotdogs."

"Well, being in your Batsuit didn't help matters any," she countered with a laugh. "The poor boy behind the counter couldn't stop shaking long enough to put the toppings on my hotdog. Most of it ended up on the floor. I could hear his knees knocking together the second we entered the diner."

Nicholas and Kaia started laughing. They loved to hear stories about their parents especially when they started teasing each other. "What did you get, mama?" Kaia asked.

"She got a hotdog with a little bit of everything that didn't end up on the floor," Bruce replied.

"It ended up mostly being peanut butter and onions," Diana revealed, causing her children to make gagging noises between fits of laughter.

"Gross!" Nicholas and Kaia cried.

"It was pretty nasty," Diana agreed. "After that, I just stuck to ketchup and mustard…although a chili dog is really good."

"Tell us the story of when you fell in love," Kaia piped up, trying to stifle a yawn.

"Yeah!" Nick concurred, moving to sit on Diana's lap. "It's my favorite story."

Diana looked across the flames of the fire at her husband, noticing the tender look in his eyes. He was even more handsome than when she first saw him without his uniform in Paris if that was even possible. What had started out as love had only grown stronger and deeper, developing into something all its own. There was an unbreakable bond between them now, one that nothing in this world or the next could ever begin to destroy.

Before she could respond, she picked up on the almost imperceptible sound of footsteps in the woods. "Shhh…someone is coming to try to scare us," Diana whispered.

Kaia's eyes got wide as she stood up on Bruce's thighs, her arms wrapping around his neck in a death grip. "Who is it?" she whispered back.

"Jason," she replied in a hushed voice. "Should I scare him first?"

Kaia and Nicholas readily agreed, covering their mouths to keep their laughter from escaping. Nicholas ran over to Bruce, climbing into his lap as Diana disappeared into the woods. After a couple of moments, they heard Jason scream in terror, making all three of them burst out laughing.

Diana soon returned with Jason in her arms, summarily dumping him on the ground by the campfire. Bruce was surprised that Jason's pants weren't wet from Diana sneaking up on him. "What are you doing here?" Bruce asked as Nicholas and Kaia finally released their hold on his neck.

"You wouldn't be sneaking through the woods to scare us, would you?" Diana asked, her hands finding her hips.

"What? No!" Jason maintained as he stood to his feet, brushing the dirt from his jeans.

"Mama scared you!" Kaia said, pointing at him as she laughed.

"No, she didn't!" he tried to tell them.

"We heard you scream," Nicholas said. "You screamed like a girl."

"I did not scream like a girl," Jason claimed. "I was just coming out here to see if you guys needed anything…oh, marshmallows."

"Those are ours!" Kaia stated, running to him, and snatching the bag out of his hand.

"Can't I have some?" he asked.

"No way," Nicholas replied. "You wanted to scare us, but mama got to you first."

"Sorry, looks like the kids have spoken," Bruce told him.

"Fine," Jason decided. "I didn't want to camp with you anyways. Artemis is waiting for me in the house."

With that, Jason turned and left, disappearing into the darkness. The four of them burst out in laughter, Jason yelling, "I can hear you". It only made them laugh that much harder.

"I think it's time we get in our sleeping bags and go to sleep," Diana announced.

"We didn't bring any pajamas," Kaia realized, looking perplexed.

"We're going to sleep in our clothes tonight," Bruce revealed.

"Really?" Nicholas excitedly said.

"This is fun!" Kaia exclaimed as she readily crawled into the tent.

Nicholas and Diana followed as Bruce tended to the fire to make sure it was safe. He crawled inside with his family, finding Diana on the right, then Kaia, and then Nicholas. He crawled into his sleeping bag on the left, sighing with contentment as he turned onto his left side.

The kids were already fast asleep between them, Diana reaching across them. Bruce took her hand in his, lacing his fingers with hers as their arms came to rest on top of their children. "It was a wonderful night," she softly told him.

"It really was," he replied with a crooked smile. "It turned out better than I dreamed."

"Even Kaia's five trips to the bathroom?"

Bruce snickered softly. "Yes, even with the bathroom trips."

"You're an amazing father, Bruce," she tenderly told him. "I couldn't have asked for a better man to be the father of my children."

Bruce felt overwhelming emotion rising inside of him and nearly stealing his breath. "I was thinking the same thing about their mother."

"I love you," she whispered.

"I love you too," he replied. "I think there's only one thing that could've made this night even better."

"What is that?"

"Seeing you eat another peanut butter and onion hotdog."

Diana softly groaned, her stomach churning with the thought. "Good night, my love."

"Good night, princess."