Once the girl left Damian let his trembling limbs fall apart. His head hit the desk behind him in a light thud as he finally slipped off the edge he’d been clinging to since she arrived. His fingers traced the ghost of her lips on his, the steady impression where she’d placed herself above him and demanded he rise to her challenge in a torrid flurry of desire that Damian thought he’d never experience.
Such was the life of an assassin turned vigilante, short, brutal, and violent. Fun, as much as he wouldn’t admit it to certain siblings, but they did tend to have violent ends, these violent delights.
And for a moment, he’d thought this one was his. The girl-no-Marinette, actually. Damian paused and let his fingers tumble across his face, his hand hitting the table like a red carpet unraveling until he was limp. He couldn’t call her the girl even in his mind, not after that. She was too imprinted on him, and it was a simple truth that he would never hear that name again without reflexively thinking of her face.
Particularly the slightly wicked and promising expression she’d had on while sucking on her finger…
Damian groaned lightly, his limp hand rapping in frustration on the table in an attempt to shake the image out of his mind. His knuckles protested at the contact, the pain providing a distraction. They were still a little raw from scraping up the wall while trying to contain the gi-Marinette’s hips. Yes. Violent delights indeed. And there would almost certainly be more violence between them if he had to throw her up against every wall and table in the room to ensure it.
Because that girl was dangerous.
And not just for her looks. Damian could count on one hand the number of people near his age who could casually break one of his wrist locks. Admittedly, the number of his elders who could was much higher (he shoved away the thought that this girl was technically his elder too, because thinking about how he’d found out would only mean replaying the whole encounter in his head and there were certain parts he’d certainly end up lingering on just for… instructional… purposes). That spoke to experience and training, the kind of thing most people his age didn’t have. And even if they did, they usually were a few years behind him for the simple reason that most parents weren’t as psychotically invested in training a prepubescent as his mother and grandfather.
It was even more odd when weighed against the fact that she was a fashion designer, albeit not a terribly well known one even if Kory and Donna considered her a, “fun, if somewhat disorganized,” up and comer. So Damian didn’t feel unjustified in suspecting she was an assassin. At least at first.
It had quickly become obvious there were holes in her style. She wasn’t traditionally trained, and some of her moves reeked of amateur improvisation. Talent, or perhaps experience, had taught her more than practice. He couldn’t tell from exchanging a few moves in the middle of this small room, and he hadn’t been exerting full effort for the first set of exchanges, so he would need to spar to figure out if she were simply a talent with rowdy siblings (as Damian now knew, they were a source of endless experience whether welcome or not) or a brawler with an uneven foundation.
Either way, he intended to fill all her holes.
In her style. He was just thinking about her fighting style.
Just the way she moved.
To fight. Just to fight.
Damian ground his teeth in frustration as his mind again drifted back to the encounter. He steadfastly refused to look at the wall she’d been writhing against in his hands only a short time ago, instead casting his gaze toward the table. Where her sketchbook was. Damian forced his jaw to unclench as he looked elsewhere again, settling on the door. Where she’d come into the room. Letting out a light hiss he threw his eyes up to the ceiling, evidently the only safe place in the room.
And as much as he hated to admit it, she actually could teach him things as well. Her unexpected angles had reminded him of Jason’s streetwise moveset, full of sucker punches and improvisation. Damian knew he was technically proficient to the point of near flawlessness. But he lost more often than he won against Jason, and it wasn’t entirely due to the age gap. It was because being technical meant also being predictable, something every born Gothamite avoided whenever possible. The issue was, Jason was a man. His style was excellent training for the various thugs employed by the Gothamite rogue gallery, but it faltered when Damian encountered female villains.
Gotham’s ladies were, by definition, several orders of magnitude more vicious than most of the men and significantly more creative. Crime was, after all, a man’s world. And making it to the bottom of the proverbial pit meant making up for whatever perceived deficiencies their sex conferred with sheer ruthlessness and unpredictability.
Given Marinette’s frenetic speech patterns and unorthodox fighting style he’d say her closest comparison was Harley. Not the sometimes do-gooder Harley either. No, the one that had been fully capable of getting her PhD and yet chose to sleep with her professors anyway. The one who could carefully bandage a paw splinter on one of her hyenas and then batter someone’s skull in using an oversized novelty sledgehammer without changing expressions. The one who got deeper into the Joker’s mind than anyone except perhaps father. And unlike him, she liked what she found.
When Marinette had kept him a maddening hairsbreadth away from her lips, leaving a connected trail of saliva between the two Damian had been forced to admit that she was both undeniably cruel when necessary and significantly more creative than him.
So, he had a lot to learn. Both when sparring and when sparring.
Damian forcibly set that thought aside. It was just training.
She would educate him, and he would educate her in turn. Just mutual learning. On whatever subjects she requested instruction on. Just because Damian had a lot to teach (and learn) didn’t mean there was anything ulterior about his motives.
Just for the fact that it would be just the two of them. Together.
He felt like he was standing on the ramparts of his walls, feeling the rumble of the stones slowly giving way as they went tumbling underneath him. With how treacherous his footing was becoming, there was certainly going to be a fall in his future. But in the meantime he was stuck balancing on what little scaffolding of his walls he had left and hoping Marinette was the one knocking things down.
Now he was stuck sitting in this chair while his body repaired itself (somehow, she’d done more to put him out of commission in the space of one kiss than almost any villain ever had). Worse, the ceiling was mocking him by existing. Damian knew he’d come a long way since the League, but it was incredibly annoying to be staring up at that expanse of plain tile when he knew he could be looking through the rest of her sketchbook.
His childhood was telling him to leaf through it, pore over every page to glean whatever secrets she’d penciled into them, anything to gain the edge in their upcoming negotiations. His teen years were reminding him he was supposed to be a hero, and that doing so would be a violation of her trust. The last few minutes were reminding him that she’d willingly let him see a few pages. It would be a compromise for him to only look back at those, right?
Dragging his eyes away from the offending ceiling he spun himself in a burst of motion, hoisting the chair and repositioning it in front of the small space where she’d nestled the book atop a swathe of fabric that was suspiciously close to Koriand'r’s alien skin tone. Slowly, delicately, he opened it from the back and paged through the blanks until he was at the page with the drawing of an outfit that blatantly had him in mind.
Damian wasn’t particularly interested in fashion. He’d had the chance to make alterations to the Robin suit as he required upon taking up the mantle, but most of those were for functionality and not style. Still, it was hard not to feel drawn to her creation. It was like she’d looked into his soul while making it, even if through a distorted lens. Because how else did she land on the red and black colors, the pointed hood reminiscent of the Robin suit, the wavy blade pattern on the zipper?
Those things were personal to the point that for a long moment he’d suspected her of sussing out his secret identity. But that was just a moment, because Damian was no fool. The odds of running into a superhero hiding out in the back room like he’d been were astronomically low, there was no way she would suspect that one random boy out of hundreds was anything more than exactly who he presented himself as to the world; a scion of the bumbling but kind hearted Bruce Wayne in the midst of a teenage rebellion. Despite how trite it was to pretend his distaste for the media was due to teen angst and not genuine dislike he had to admit it was an effective disguise.
The trick, as he’d discovered, was that when it came to secret identities it wasn’t about zealously guarding every scrap of information. No, it was about layers and expectations.
Everyone expected Bruce Wayne to have some kind of dark side given his parents deaths and obscene wealth. So he gave them one in the form of being a serial dater, unable to fully commit and prone to extravagant displays of wealth. Displays that were both extremely pointless such as donating a dorm to Gotham U just so Tim had a shorter walk to class and incidentally heartfelt such as “accidentally” putting an extra zero on the checks he wrote for various charities because he was so “unused to writing his own.”
Occasionally, the two intersected in ways Damian suspected father found privately amusing, such as buying out an entire city block of half-built skyscrapers and turning it into a park overnight just to ensure his latest paramour wouldn’t lose her waterfront view. Or building the world's largest big cat sanctuary so Selina’s pet Isis would never be lonely.
As for Damian, his dark side was predictably an over-generous helping of teen angst driven by daddy issues brought on by his childhood with a single mother. At least, that was the pop culture psych diagnosis some quack had penned in an article for the Gotham Gazette. The kind of thing that seemed plausible, and touched on just enough of the truth to be convincing, but was so far from the actual truth that it made the whole notion of him being some kind of vigilante laughable.
And that was the point, secrets within secrets. Give the inquiring minds one so they thought they’d figured things out. Give them the bait so they bit the hook and swallowed the line.
Yet this girl had somehow driven through all that like the Bat-Tank with Jason behind the wheel. So it was a good thing he’d figured out her secret in turn. Knowing she was MDC was the kind of thing that would be extremely useful as leverage if necessary. And while he didn’t think it would be, father’s example with Superman was worth learning from. The more dangerous someone was the more important proper precautions were, even if you hoped and intended never to use them.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
And Marinette was certainly dangerous.
Even when he’d tried intimidating her, giving her a glimpse of his training to kill and warning her she’d brushed it off as if it were nothing, as if she dealt with these kinds of threats on a weekly basis. Maddening, that kind of fearlessness. Particularly paired with however it was she generated such insight into his secrets. Damian would simply have to hope it was restricted to her fashion designing skills, because his arsenal of redirection was fairly limited and if she did figure out too much then he would have to involve father.
The likely outcome of that would be some combination of blackmail, bribes, and complete cessation of contact between the two of them to prevent escalation. And Damian did not want to risk losing the chance to be in contact with Marinette. Because he would be losing a valuable training partner.
Just a partner.
A training partner.
Damian grit his teeth and stamped out that line of inquiry. Something needed to be done about this situation before it spiraled even more out of his control.
His hand framed the outfit the same way he’d done before, the edge of his fingers on the edge of the design. It really was compelling. The more he inspected it the more he liked the thought of himself in it. The zippers that would be visible even in the dark based on her note that they were a silver metal would have been a concern if it weren’t for the fact that she’d also drawn buttonable flaps that could cover them when necessary. Simultaneously practical and capable of transforming if necessary, it appealed to him on an innate level. He could move through a crowd in this, blending in by leaving out the hints of color so he looked like just another person and then use the feature to transition to a much darker aesthetic to blend into the shadows within seconds.
And if he wanted to intimidate, she’d conveniently made the zippers a polished silver that could shine through the darkness if necessary. It was exceptionally functional, on top of containing that wave pattern that gave just the smallest hint of his katana skills. Something about that made it all… more.
Damian couldn’t really put it into words, but his eye came back to that pattern over and over as he inspected the jacket, and he found himself liking the idea of that subtle nod. Like Jason wearing his leather jackets in and out of costume or Dick favoring tight pants, it just seemed natural.
And that was just the zippers. The rest of the leather was hardened, drawn in clear segments that almost looked like a significantly thinned out flak jacket. In several places, particularly covering his vitals, Damian got the sense that the leather wouldn’t look bulky but it would be thick enough to provide far more protection than a casual inspection would suggest. Deception and armor in one, he wanted it.
Almost as badly as he wanted her.
Although, according to Connor, if her hands made the jacket and he put it on then by the transitive property of indirect fondling (a universal principle all boys with normal childhoods apparently knew already) she’d have taken him to a place dubbed second base. It wouldn’t even matter that he would be wearing other clothing, since Connor insisted that over-the-shirt, while indirect, still counted. Of course, Damian wasn’t entirely clear on how the rule worked. But that wasn’t really an issue since he didn’t plan on doing anything indirectly.
At least, not when it came to his hands and her hands and their bodies.
Yes, something certainly needed to be done about all this. Particularly before it spiraled any further out of control. Damian nodded to himself and turned the page, revealing the hoodie and pant combination.
He’d seen it before as well, and still he could appreciate the details. The pants weren’t tight as Dick preferred, but they weren’t the loose grunge kind that Jason favored or the ones from Tim’s fancy suits. Instead they were sharp, clean lines and pressed creases visible in a way that would allow him to slip seamlessly between one of father’s odious public outings and the relative freedom of spending time with his animals with ease. The material was tough enough to handle Titus’ rough affection if necessary or enable him to trek through what passed for the wilder dog trails in Gotham’s parks. And despite that it would clean up easily, resisting the natural wear and damage that had destroyed several of the suits he’d been roped into in the past.
The hoodie was similarly functional. Even on paper it looked comfortable, with a large enough hood that he could hide his face when necessary, a few spacious pockets that could hold dog treats or weapons without leaving a visible outline, and a darker red that would fit in at night or during the day. The shoulders were padded enough that Alfred’s claws wouldn’t dig in or tear the material when he sat on him either. And, Damian noted, the hood was rigid enough enough for his cat to use as additional leverage for leaping or sleeping as desired when thrown back.
His brothers often complained that his pets were only barely housebroken, but that was simply a difference of perspectives. Damian had no interest in domestication. His cat, his dog, Hell even his cow all had a wild side. Something untamable in their kindred spirits that prevented them from ever fully integrating into the routinization of society. It was why Titus almost never wore a collar, and the one he had for the public was designed specifically so he could slip it. Or why Alfred still had his claws, sharpened daily on a scratching post in the batcave as he kept himself lethal by hunting the eponymous winged rodents. And while Bat-Cow wasn’t quite as adventurous as the others, Damian had seen him eying up father’s cowl more than once.
It was a part of him he’d thought only father really saw, and perhaps Dick (although he was beginning to suspect Koriand’r’s involvement there, the alien was far too adept at deciphering his emotions to be as much of an airhead as her inhumanly cheerful attitude sometimes suggested). But here it was, drawn in clean lines in Marinette’s sketchbook, the edges of ferality in the way she’d combined all those things that would give a surface impression of civilization and yet allowed him to peek through.
From the blade pattern zipper to the hardened leather to the colors, it was him in a trick mirror outside one of the Joker’s endless deathtraps. Not quite his secrets laid bare, but far too close for comfort (and yet somehow the fact that she’d seen them comforted him anyway). A glimpse behind the mask from a man so consumed by madness it sometimes seemed like he didn’t just look behind the curtain, but stood behind the curtain and intermittently looked out into the real world, generating leaps of insight nobody but the world’s greatest detective could fully keep up with.
And, apparently, a nondescript but dauntless fashion designer suspiciously skilled at hand to hand combat and kissing.
It was concerning, worrisome, and so on. Damian was running out of words to describe how dire things were becoming, and he hadn’t even touched on the fact that she’d managed to assert herself enough during that kiss that he’d have been willing to give her just about anything she wanted, including himself.
Damian ran a hand through his hair in frustration, feeling the ghostly impression of the way fingers had tangled in it. He would need to rearrange it before leaving the room, or give Dick all the ammunition he needed to bully him into attending another day of the shoot.
Not that he wasn’t going to already, on the off chance that she’d be back, but he didn’t want to admit that to his brother of all people. Nor get any unsolicited advice, because while Koriand’r had largely been a positive influence on Dick, shaking him out of the emotionally repressed child soldier he’d been on his way to becoming because father hadn’t known the warning signs at the time, she had a somewhat frank and blunt way of describing sex that often left his ears burning and Dick shifting uncomfortably in his suddenly far too-tight pants. A sight Damian didn’t need, even if he begrudgingly would admit her advice had been particularly useful over the past… whatever amount of time they’d been kissing.
The thing she’d suggested regarding necks had been exceptionally useful. Just the thought of how Marinette’s body had reacted, how the rhythm of her movements broke down in a torrent of bare want and a feral need to simply use her and be used by her in turn.
Damian willed his hands to stop shaking.
He was just remembering what happened so he could ensure she never got on top of him like that again. Unless he asked. For training purposes.
Just because he was the one who needed to be on top. Of the situation. Which involved her. He just needed to stay on top of it. Her. The situation, that was just what he meant.
His hands were shaking again. It was probably unrelated. Just a natural consequence of his exertions over the past indeterminate amount of time since she walked into the room.
He slapped his palm down on the table, splaying out the fingers to still them before they clawed back into the wood, driving into the material in frustration as he envisioned himself driving into a more pliable surface instead. Damian’s nails furrowed across the surface, thinking about digging into something more responsive. He wanted to sink himself into every part of her, every bit possessed by his hands like he could reach through her, grab hold of the core of her, and, like the jaws of a predator on the neck of its prey, never let go.
His fingers buckled against the wood as Damian sprung to his feet and began pacing around the room. He’d promised to wait, but part of him desperately needed to move. He needed action, anything to distract him from the smell of her still embedded in the room and his hands.
It wasn’t a pleasant dilemma, like one of Two-Face’s traps. Heads, tails. Stay, go. Two choices, neither particularly easy. It wasn’t a decision made any easier by the fact that no matter where he looked she was still here, haunting him with her non-presence. For a long moment, Damian felt that he understood Mad Hatter much, much better than he ever wanted to. Because while he would never do what Jervis did he could suddenly understand the madness a girl could inspire. How you could end up seeing her everywhere, how that could drive you to places dark and twisted. Of course, the relationship wasn’t the same. Damian wasn’t interested in a mind controlled Alice the way Tetch was, and frankly it was far more likely that Marinette would end up controlling him than the other way around.
Not that he was entirely opposed to the idea, depending on the circumstances.
Damian’s hand brushed his chin, thinking of how she’d put him on his knees and leaned in, trying to impose her will. How she’d grabbed onto him like he was the only thing holding her up. Clung to his body like she was about to fall and he was the lone rock in the middle of a vast and terrible ocean. No, depending on the circumstances he wasn’t opposed to giving her control at all. Not if it was what she needed from him, no, Damian could admit he wanted to give her whatever she needed and he had to admit it was… interesting… to see where she would take him.
He’d told himself he was just baiting her into overconfidence, letting her hold him down like that, giving her the chance to ramble (she certainly did) until she revealed more details he could use against her if necessary.
And then, of course, he’d been forced to confront the fact that her face was extremely close to his own. He hadn’t wanted to calculate the exact distance, except it was a matter of his own safety of course. Just a precaution to ensure he could react in time if necessary.
Just ensuring he was prepared to respond appropriately if she’d decided to eliminate the distance between their faces. To attack him. Just ensuring his safety, via an appropriate response. Just in case of an attack.
Just because faces included mouths wasn’t why he’d calculated it from that distance either, it was just prudence. Nobody would suspect what he was really doing that way, it was just subterfuge to stare at her lips and how she licked them so agonizingly slowly it was like she knew he was watching and wanted him to see, wanted him thinking all the while about what dangerous things she could do to him with both lips and tongue. Just basic subterfuge.
Damian swallowed lightly, his throat feeling a little dry. It had been just a handful of centimeters. No more than one or two handfuls, depending on whose hands were used to measure.
Just for the sake of being correct, Damian compared the size of her hand on his chin to his memory. He was, as usual, correct about the distance. But, just to be certain, he replayed the memory one or two times.
Just for the sake of accuracy.
Damian forced himself to stop. This line of thought was dangerous and getting more so with each passing thought. He needed to get out of this room, even if only for a minute.
He stood and strode across the room, trying to rearrange his hair as he fled the space. Before stepping out, he looked back. The sketchbook was still open. Possibilities on the pages. The fabric was still there too. Promises in the stitching.
He would be back. For her. For her sketchbook, that was.
He wasn’t even going to leave the building, or the set, he just needed to ground himself for a few moments. Long enough to reassure himself that reality existed, that there wasn’t some cosmic catastrophe that had somehow sent him from one universe into this new one where she existed. Doing what Jason would irascibly refer to as touching grass, even if he wasn’t going outside.
He was just centering himself. He would be back.