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Birds and Bees	By : defying3reason Category: DC Verse Comics > Batman Views: 2564 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Batman, or any aspect of the broader DC Universe, and I make no money from my fanfiction

Chapter List
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Chapter Two
"I don't like him."
"I didn't think you would."
Damian's glare intensified at Dick's nonchalant attitude. He expected his hopefully temporary (and completely unnecessary for that matter) guardian to hang onto his every word.
"Grayson, it pains me to say this, but you can do better."
"Uh huh." Dick wasn't even paying full attention! Damian bristled while Dick idly turned a page in the history journal he was reading. "This is interesting. Forensic archaeologists are doing some work on mass plague graves in Europe. You might like this article. Want to browse when I'm done?"
"I insist you break up with Red Arrow!" Damian yelled. "And don't patronize me with another subject change."
"I'm not breaking up with Red Arrow, and I don't have anything else to say about it. It's none of your business. You can keep talking if you'd like-"
"You're supposed to listen to me. It's your job!"
Dick lowered the journal and faced Damian with a bemused smile that didn't meet his eyes. "You're ten. I'm twenty six. This means that, however brilliant and skilled you are, I still have sixteen years worth of practical experience on you. For argument's sake, can you accept that I see something in Roy you've missed?"
Damian folded his arms and looked away. "He treats me like a kid."
"You are a kid. Hey, don't give me that look! There are advantages to it, you know. Especially when you're smart. Have you ever tried using peoples' expectations of you against them?"
Damian considered. "I don't think it's worth the expense of my dignity."
Dick shrugged. "I milked people underestimating me as long as I could. When I was Robin, people thought I was incompetent hostage-bait and wondered why Batman brought his weakness around with him in bright, primary colors."
"You wore a tracer, didn't you?"
"Oh hell yes. On the fins of my pixie boots," Dick said with a smirk. "People figured it would be in the utility belt, if they even thought to look."
"Well…I can appreciate the effectiveness of your ridiculous ruses, but my style is different," Damian said loftily. "I won't lower myself for the sake of petty criminals."
"Eh. Don't knock it too hard till you've tried it." Dick picked up the journal again, and Damian seemed to notice that he'd been sidetracked.
"Hey wait! We were talking about Red Arrow!"
Dick let out a long suffering sigh. "Will you please drop this?"
"No I won't! You represent me to the hero community- I demand you associate with more dignified peers. Or at least people who don't laugh at me and pet my head."
"Roy tried that?" Dick was suddenly surprised his boyfriend still had arm function. Maybe the kid was warming up to him.
Damian appeared to follow his train of thought. "I could easily have stopped Red Arrow from touching me if I chose. Out of respect for you I'm asking you not to date him. Although you should respect yourself enough to handle this on your own."
After several weeks of living with, working with and training Damian, Dick was starting to get the gist of his signals. He'd noticed the boy iced over uncannily quickly, leading others to believe that he always behaved that way. Dick had noticed, however, that if Damian felt awkward in a social situation (which was more often than not thanks to his upbringing) he became boastful and snappy. Dick guessed, based on the rate of insults coupled with disdainful sighs, not to mention the subject matter, that this was Damian's peculiar way of trying to look out for him and thus a small show of affection.
He would have been touched if it wasn't so damned annoying.
"You're just going to have to warm up to Roy. I'm not dumping him, and now that you've been introduced he's going to take that as an okay to stop by more."
Damian scowled. "At least your relationships don't last that long."
"What was that?" Dick asked, unsettled.
"Pennyworth said that under his breath when Red Arrow was fondling you the other night-"
"You are not allowed to refer to a goodbye kiss as fondling-that means something else!"
"Well I never moved my hands that much any of the times I kissed Mother goodbye!"
Dick made a mental note to talk to Alfred. He knew Alfred didn't like Roy. Alfred likely still associated Roy with what he was like during his self-destructive teen years, when Dick had been working in vain to help Roy sort out his relationship with his mentor, and worsened his own relationship with Bruce in the process. Regardless, the last thing he needed right now was for Damian to think he had an ally in this argument.
"Look, lay off or I'll invite Roy to every patrol we have for the next month. He'll come to at least a couple."
"Then I won't."
"Then you're on the bench. Remember the doll people? You're not doing patrols on your own."
Damian had had more than one nightmare about that fiasco, although he hadn't wanted to admit it. Roy had actually been the one to hear Damian's screams. He'd left early so that Dick could come up with a way to comfort a terrified ten year old who wouldn't admit weakness.
That had been a fun week.
"Well if you insist on debasing yourself with Red Arrow's obnoxious company, don't expect me to-" Damian was cut off by the doorbell. He narrowed his eyes. "That's not him, is it?"
"If he got a sitter for Lian then it probably is. By the way, Lian, Irey and Jai are going to an amusement park this weekend. You've been invited-"
"I have work to do, and for the last time, I don't need a play date. I don't want to see any of your friends' snot-nosed brats."
"Hey, Lian's nose is adorable. Leave her snot out of this," Roy spoke up from the doorway. He was sans coat and shoes, likely Alfred's doing, although the butler was nowhere in sight. Damian glowered at him, provoking a brash smile from the archer, which was not the intended effect. Damian ran from the room and slammed the door to his bedroom with a loud bang.
"He makes me feel so welcome," Roy said with a sigh.
"The passion of his dislike for you is almost flattering. He thinks very strongly of you," Dick observed dryly. Roy sat down next to him and batted the journal away. Dick snorted.
"Well I'm not here to watch you read." Roy leaned in for what he might possibly have intended as an innocent peck hello, but which descended into groping, tongue tangling, and pulling Dick onto his lap for what could accurately be described as fondling. While Dick was trying to catch his breath, he decided to cede Damian a point.
"Roy, cut it out…we're in the living room," Dick finally ground out, and slid back onto his own couch cushion. Roy smirked at him.
"What does that matter? Alfred and Damian are going to be wherever I'm not."
"Well maybe they'd stop that if you didn't make them feel awkward. I know I'm a slutty sex fiend, you know I'm a slutty sex fiend, but Damian doesn't know that and Alfred likes to pretend he doesn't either."
"Seriously? So you never brought Kory over for dinner?"
Dick didn't dignify that with a direct response. "Alfred always liked Babs you know. He's still trying to push me in that direction."
"Lucky for me she rejected you then," Roy returned without missing a beat. It was a mark of respect for their long years of friendship that he wasn't thrown out for saying something like that.
Dick still wasn't amused.
"If you want to fight, I can come up with some digs on Cheshire."
"Alright, alright. I won't poke the emotional scars. But if you wanna remind me of how much the important people in your life hate me a little less, I'd appreciate it."
"I think Tim likes you well enough," Dick said.
"Okay. I'll channel his support psychically the next time Damian attacks me," Roy said with a nod. "What's the little creeper up to anyway?"
"I don't even know anymore. He won't talk to me," Dick said, frowning.
"Okay, okay, let's talk about something else. Um…d'ya think you'll be able to get Damian to come with the kids this weekend? They really want to meet him."
Dick laughed. "Come on Roy, you saw him just now when I suggested it."
"I know, I know. I just thought you might be able to get him to warm up to the idea."
"What makes you think I can get Damian to warm up to anything?" Dick asked, surly. Roy squeezed his knee.
"Your years of experience working with Batman. Dick, you got Bruce to admit he was wrong before. You can handle the ten year old. In theory he's still impressionable. And remember what you used to tell me about Ollie, just because you can't see the results doesn't mean you're not making a difference?"
"Yeah…I guess." He spared a look for the closed bedroom door. "Do you really think I'm doing okay?"
"Well you haven't killed him, unintentionally or otherwise. You're doing a hell of a lot better than I would be doing already."
"Mm. If the standard is keeping him breathing, then I guess I am doing pretty well. I just…" Dick sighed, and scrubbed a hand through his hair. "I wish he was happy. That's all. None of the other kids are living normal lives exactly, but they're all happy."
"Yeah, and me and Wally have had our kids to raise from birth. You've only had a few weeks with Damian to counter years of damage and abuse from his psychotic mother. Just give it time. And if at all possible, use a little deception to trick him into a playdate," Roy suggested.
"I heard that and I'm not going!" Damian yelled from behind his closed and locked door.
"We could drug him."
"We're not drugging him Roy."

Roy didn't stoop to drugging Damian to get him to tag along for the group outing, but the tactic he did end up adopting was still pretty underhanded.
Damian was sitting at his computer desk in his room reading some Arabic print newspapers online and telling himself he wasn't homesick when he heard a knock on his door. He went to answer it and was timidly greeted by a pretty little girl in pigtails with silly bands almost up to her elbows on both arms.
"Who are you?" Damian asked, taken off guard at the presence of a child in his dwelling.
She looked up at him, a bit startled herself. "That's not very nice you know. You're a'posed to at least say hello first."
"Sorry, you're right. Hello miss. My name is Damian Wayne. Will you please tell me yours?"
"It's Lian Harper. I'm here with my daddy and he said I should come over and say hello. Damian, are you okay? You look like you've got a tummy ache."
Something pained had indeed passed over Damian's expression. His eye was twitching a bit. Still though, it wasn't the child's fault. He invited Lian into his room and shut the door, sure that if her father was in the penthouse, he'd been left alone with Dick long enough that Damian didn't want to see them anyway.
"This is a nice room," Lian lied. It was a very barebones set up, consisting of a bed, a desk and a dresser. Still, it was polite of her to say so. Damian decided he liked Lian better than her father.
"Thank you. Er…what's your room like?"
"It's not done yet."
"Pardon?"
Lian giggled. "We just moved back to Star City and my room's not done yet, so I don't know what it'll look like. We're going to paint it before we set everything up."
"Oh. I've never been to Star City."
"I like it there. Um, I don't wanna insult your home or anything, but Gotham's a little dirty. I think Star's prettier. But you've got cool scary buildings. That must be neat for when you're out fighting crime," Lian said with a serious nod. She walked over to Damian's window and stared out at the city. "Someday when I'm big I'm gonna fight crime just like my daddy and my grandpa Ollie. I heard you get to fight crime already, even though you're still young like me. You must be really good at it for the adults not to get scared for you."
"I am. I'm excellent at it." He refrained from telling her he was much better than her father, since that would be rude even if it was true.
"Maybe we can fight crime together someday." She turned to face him with a grin that stretched from ear to ear, and Damian found himself returning it without realizing it.
"Are you going to be an archer as well?" Damian asked. She nodded excitedly. "You do realize that that's a terribly impractical weapon, right?"
Lian looked a bit thrown. "Impragdigal? No, it's not that. It's what my daddy uses."
Damian frowned. "Well…maybe you could learn archery from your father, and then I could supplement that inefficient skill by training you in the fighting styles I have mastery over."
"Uh…kay. I guess that'd be good. If you're going to help me I should do something to help you though. That's fair."
Damian laughed. "I don't think there's anything I'll need the assistance of a littler girl for."
"Well you need to learn how to make friends."
"Excuse me?"
Lian waved one silly band clad arm at his bare walls. "You don't have any friends. If you did you'd have pictures up. You don't even have pictures of your mommy or daddy on the walls, and the way you've been talking it's like you never talked to a kid before, or even had a kindergarten teacher tell you to share and play nice. Plus you're not coming with me and the twins to the amusement park and that's just weird."
"Is it?"
"Yeah. It's really weird. We're not scary you know."
"I know you're not scary." Damian rolled his eyes. "I've faced psychotic criminals. I've nothing to fear from a daytrip with a bunch of children."
"Then you should come with us," Lian said simply. Damian didn't have anything to say to that. She threw him another beaming smile, which he awkwardly returned, then walked over to the door. "I'm going to go check on my daddy. I think we're s'posed to be leaving soon. I hope you change your mind and come with us Damian. It'd make me sad to think of you sitting here by yourself while we're out having fun together."
She left a highly conflicted boy standing in her wake when she left the room.

Later that afternoon, when Damian was crammed between the West twins in the backseat of a minivan Roy had rented for their trip with a cooler of snacks crushing his feet, he reassessed what he'd so far learned about his guardian's boyfriend. Yes, the man's tactics were underhanded. However, they were highly effective.

Dick was sitting in the living room trying to read, but he couldn't get his mind to focus for more than a paragraph or so of his book. He'd been trying like hell to enjoy an afternoon of Damian-free solitude, but it wasn't working. For one thing, he was suffering a nagging feeling that he should be doing something productive at all times, even though he'd already decided he needed at least an hour to himself or he was going to have a nervous breakdown (See? The downtime was scheduled relaxation and it would be unproductive not to have it).
But really he was anxious for Roy's safety. The man had taken four children-of-costumes for a daytrip, which meant that by all rights the group was going to be taken hostage by a supervillain of some kind. There was also a high likelihood that Damian was going to kill Roy.
At the least, someone was going to come out of that minivan with new emotional scars.
Dick finally gave up on the book and simply sat on the couch with his cell and his JL reserve communicator on his lap. Damian got home around seven, just when Dick was thinking he might have to prepare to go on patrol without his Robin. The door slammed open, Damian stalked off to his bedroom and slammed the door, and Roy hovered in the doorway waiting to be acknowledged.
"Where are the other kids?" Dick asked.
"Wally already picked them up. Lian's sleeping over his place for Irey's first slumber party."
"Oh. So…how'd it go?"
Roy snorted. "It was actually kinda anti-climactic, so you can lose that look-of-dread thing you've got going. They went on a bunch of rides, Damian won each of the kids a stuffed animal that was bigger than they were at one of the rigged games with the crooked gun sights, we ate a bunch of junk food and the kids scared the crap out of him with normal social interactions. I think he's a little off center so you might need to talk to him."
"Yeah, I'd better get in there-"
"Not so fast." Roy grabbed Dick by the arms and pulled him back. "I just told you my little girl's sleeping out tonight."
Dick quirked an eyebrow. "I've still got my kid."
"Send him out on patrol. It's about time, isn't it?"
"We patrol together."
"You used to do patrols alone when you were Robin."
"Not when I was ten," Dick countered. Roy pouted. Dick sighed. "We'll do a quick patrol, and if it's quiet, we'll come back. That's alright, right? You'll stay?"
Roy grinned. "I was starting to think you didn't actually want to see me."
Dick leaned in for a kiss. "That's never the case, so we're clear."
"Go get your damaged little Robin. I'll wait up, I promise."
Dick kissed him again, and was still wearing a goofy smile when he got to Damian's bedroom. He quickly schooled his features into an expression less likely to provoke his sidekick's wrath before walking in.
"Ready for patro-Damian? Are you wearing a silly band?"
Damian turned bright red, and ripped the thing off his wrist so fast Dick was surprised he didn't break it. "I've been told it's a custom. If my information was faulty then it's because of my informants, not me!"
"No, no. It, uh…it looks good. C'mon, let's suit up."
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Birds and Bees