this chapter involves sexiness and mentions of death. if either of those things bother you, please skip! i am a terrible feminist please forgive me for the fridging *bows dejectedly*. also, this story is probably complete.

X~X~X

Winter in Gotham is always gorgeous. Most of the dirtiness of the city is washed away in the virgin-white snowfall, and the grime that is so ingrained it would take a power hose to clean is covered with ice and tinsel. Some billionaire (cough cough) usually shells up enough dough that there's a Christmas tree in every park and a thousand twinkling lights on every public building. With all the sparkles and holiday cheer, it's hard for Gotham to maintain it's normal level of bitterness during the holidays, although it puts up a good fight.

Tonight was one of those nights where Gotham stubbornly, childishly, refused to let go of its reputation as "the most dangerous city in America". Three-thirty, the day before Christmas Eve, and Catwoman had decided to rob a small private art gallery snuggled on the outskirts of the city.

"Can't you be evil when I don't have work in the morning?" Stephanie huffed, watching the thief flip from rooftop to rooftop carrying a bag of canvases. She juggled a pair of thermal binoculars in one hand and a Rubik's Cube in the other (don't ask). "How does she even do that, anyway? Canvas weighs, like, a ton."

The other end of the line was quiet. She imagined Damian was barely restraining himself from "tt"-ing or calling her "an insufferable cow" or something like that, and she appreciated the effort, she really did- but she was tired and when she is tired she rambles and god dammit, it was snowing, what the hell Gotham.

Steph chewed a chapped lip, then said seriously, "She looks like she's heading toward Fourty-Eighth street. That's almost Bludhaven, 'Wing. Are you sure I shouldn't pursue?" They didn't go into Bluhaven territory nowadays. Since the former Nightwing's "death" (they didn't say the word "retirement" in the superhero community, a sort of immature superstitious thing mixed with the idea that you stop superhero-ing when you're dead), Jason had been given the city to patrol. Jason liked Steph fine, sure, but he not-so-borderline despised Damian, and she stuck up for her secret boyfriend by not going there if she could help it. It was the principle of the thing.

Finally, Damian broke his silence. "No. Let her go. It's Red Hood's problem now." Steph sighed and nodded. Realizing Nightwing couldn't see her (he was on the other side of the city patrolling, after all) she made a noise of confirmation.

The snow was coming down harder now, coating Steph's lashes and eyebrows in a layer of frost. The sweat and dirt from a night of fighting crime was starting to freeze on her face. Steph managed a mix between a grimace and a smile- on the plus side, she only had a half day of work today. On the down side, that half day would be topped off by a semi-mandatory office party that would probably go long into the night and feature uncomfortable questions about her love life. After sending off a quick text to Jason, she fired her grappling hook and swung off towards home. she might as well get as much sleep as she could.

The city was blessedly silent. With the colored LEDs reflecting off the snow and the barely-there chimes of distant church bells (she had to be at work at seven, God), Steph could pretend she was not coming back from a night of getting beaten up and returning the beating. Just taking a swing around town, Steph thought optimistically. Just taking a swing around town with my hot secret boyfriend on the other line.

Speaking of her hot secret boyfriend... Steph churned over Damian's behavior tonight in her head. He had been unusually terse. Sure, when it came to kicking butt he was almost as serious as could be (the #1 and #2 spots in the Batfam went to Bruce and Tim, obviously), but even he was willing to banter with her. Today, though, his arrogant assertions were either half-hearted or nonexistent. With a shudder, she realized he had sounded positively Batman-like.

Steph didn't comprehend she had been standing on her own roof until she caught sight of the landlord's garish moving Rudolph from the corner of her eye. Blinking hard, she slapped some color and sense back into her face and shimmied down the tree on the side of her building. Damian, surprisingly, was waiting for her at her window. She wrinkled her nose affectionately at his politeness. After last time, she had even given him a key, but apparently the archaic chivalry programmed into him overruled his usual practicality.

"Whaddup, Batboy?" she quipped, opening the window and shooting inside. He followed her. "Why are you here? Don't you need to sleep to be all spiffy for that banquet at the manor today?"

Damian scowled like he had been offended by Steph's questions. "I can function without much sleep, and the Wayne Christmas banquet doesn't exactly require my full brain capacity."

Steph nodded knowingly before peeling off her cowl. Her hair oozed melted snow and she was sure a bruise was forming on her jaw where some goon had landed a lucky punch. Great, she could add it to the collection. "Do you want some tea? I think I've got a couple packets of earl grey left and maybe-?"

Damian stepped towards her and she paused the unzipping of her uniform. His red domino lenses were up, and in the darkness of her apartment, with his snow-matted hair, he looked like Dick from ten years ago. She pulled herself out of the past by staring at his bird insignia (blood red, not electric blue, because red inspired more fear).

He took another step, and suddenly they were standing a couple inches away from each other. "What's up, Damian?" Steph asked again, this time more uneasily. He didn't answer, but leaned down to rest his forehead against Steph's. After a couple seconds, he kissed her chastely. His eyelashes fluttered on the skin of her cheeks. Steph brought both hands up to curl into the hair at the nape of his neck, and, like a flipped switch, the kiss devolved into open mouths and tongues and teeth. Impatiently, Damian tugged at the fabric of Steph's suit, and together they tried to undress. Damian threw off his clothes like the ninja he was, and the second Steph's breasts were free from her sports bra, he latched onto a nipple, bit down hard, and sucked. Steph gasped, abandoning her armored leggings to dig her fingers into Damian's shoulders.

"Damian, Damian, what-?" Steph's breath hitched when his hand found her other breast and started to knead. She backed up until she was pressed against her couch, which groaned. Steph thought quickly of her landlord's hate of sex-related noise complaints and shushed it. Damian stopped his ministrations momentarily to look at her, quizzical. Free of her boyfriend's teasing, Steph raised her arms over her head to try and remove her remaining glove, but before she could Damian bent her backwards over the sofa arm. She hissed when his mouth left her breast and traveled down her stomach, skirting the purple and yellow patches of bruised skin.

"What're you doing?" Damian ignored her, instead releasing a "tt!" when he encountered her pants. He unceremoniously pulled her suit and panties down around her boots and began to furiously kiss his way up the inside of her right thigh. She jerked up into the press of his lips to her pubic mound. "Okay hotshot, I get- I g-get that you can't wait for the sexytimes, but my cou- dammit- my couch is definitely not the place I want to get laid tonight."

Damian glared at her, his nose buried in her pubic hair, and Steph laughed at the image. "Too creaky, dude." She forced her way to her feet and, waddling (because her suit was bunched up between her legs and damn that was hard to walk with), led him to her tiny bedroom. Damian took one glance at the wrinkled pile atop the twin bed (she had meant to change her sheets today) and pushed her up against the wall. Steph pulled his face to hers and roughly kissed him before he could descend again, and he obliged. She was just starting to move her own hands to his crotch when he abruptly sank down and pressed his face into the apex of her thighs. Splaying one large hand against her stomach so she couldn't move (and ow, she was definitely going to have a handprint on her stomach in the morning), he set to work. Steph groaned when his mouth met her clit.

"Oh my God,Damian, oh Christ." She squirmed in pleasure as he pressed open-mouthed kisses into her cunt. "Please, oh my God, Damian, seriously-"

"Please what?" she could feel the curve of his mouth drawing away.

"Listen h-here, you little shit-" Steph started, but then he was back and he was tongue-fucking her and she just moaned, buried her fingers in his black locks, and held on for dear life. Through her half-lidded gaze she could see him between her thighs, and wasn't that a pretty sight. An orgasm was just over the horizon and the blonde was slightly rutting up into Damian's touch with every stroke of his tongue. She moved her free hand down to touch her clit, but Damian batted it away and replaced it with his own calloused one. Steph screwed up her eyes and yanked on Damian's hair. He groaned into her and before she could even warn him, she came hard on his face, half-yelling his name.

Damian rubbed her off through her orgasm, then finally rose to kiss her again. Steph grabbed his face between her grateful, trembling hands and shoved her tongue into his mouth. She broke away gasping, and again tried to move her hands to his cock. In the faint glow of the streetlight outside her window, she could see it straining, rock-hard, against his boxer-briefs. Steph yanked them down and made to return the favor, but he was already stroking, using her own slick as lubrication, and one, two-three-four- white spattered her stomach. Steph was a bit surprised and disappointed (because her cocksucking skills were legendary, thank-you-very-much, and Damian knew that), but she knew impatience, and she was still sinking down from her own Big O so she let it slide.

She shimmied down the wall until she was sitting on the floor, because if they were going to have for-real sex, she'd like to be lying down. Yet after a couple moments, Damian pulled himself away, and she watched him pad over to the bathroom and turn on the light. Steph shakily unlaced her boots and pulled away her pants and underwear, and then damian was there again, handing her a wet towel. She wiped herself off and pulled him to the ground next to her. She towelled damian off too, then threw it onto the pile of dirty laundry. "Five pointer!"

"There's no five-pointer in basketball; it's a three pointer."

"Three pointer!" Steph grinned at him and leaned over to press a kiss to his jaw. She slung an arm around shoulders. "Exemplary work, boyfriend of mine. Eight-point-five out of ten."

She waited for a reaction, but Damian was quiet. "Uh, Damian? This is the point where you make angry noises at me and tell me that-" her voice turns deep- "'I was at least a nine, honestly woman, did you see yourself?'" When he didn't react to that, Steph bodily turned and looked at him incredulously. She frowned when she saw him looking away, almost curled into himself.

"Damian?" Steph's voice softened. "Damian, what's going on?" Her mind flashed guiltily back to his strange behavior that night. She had been so caught up- God, how could she be so thoughtless? "Damian, tell me what's wrong."

He turned towards her and she wrapped him in a hug. Against her bare shoulder, he gave an almost undetectable shake of his head. She opened her mouth to press the issue further, than closed it. She understood not wanting to talk about things. Still, her stomach twisted. Damian hadn't even let her get him off. Steph swallowed her curiosity and let him rest his head against her shoulder until his breathing slowed. She was almost asleep (and damn, sleeping leaned against the wall would have been total hell on her back) when she heard the muffled rasp of his rough lips opening.

"My mother is dead."

Steph bit her lip and pushed Damian away to examine him. He looked tired and empty, different than the cocky 18-year-old he usually was. "Your mother?"

"Talia. She's dead. My grandfather-" His voice broke, and anger flashed across his face at his own perceived weakness. "My father told me tonight."

Steph was stunned. She put a hand to his cheek. Shaking for a different reason now, she pressed kisses to his jawline, to his neck, to his mouth. With her other hand, she intertwined her fingers with his. "You're staying here tonight. Bruce can go suck a dick." He huffed out a laugh at that, but it was fluttering and small.

She pulled him down so his head was resting in her lap. After briefly carding her free fingers through his hair, Steph settled a blanket that had fallen off the bed around Damian and herself. The heat and adrenaline from patrol and from sex had started to wear off, and Steph was glad her flat had a working heater. Outside, the snow drifted down in soft, steady flurries. Her comm chirped somewhere from her belt pockets, but Steph made no attempt to get up. It faded away, and the world was silent and white again. Steph sighed and gripped her boyfriend's hand.

"Merry Christmas, huh?"