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In your life, you’ve realized many things. Like, the fact that you probably shouldn’t wash jeans with your colors. Or, the fact that seventy eight hours of sleep is not enough for someone to run on.
Most recently though you’ve come to realize that some people shouldn’t have a license. And also—you are some people. You’ve crashed your car a total of three times, all minor, two were in a parking lot, even. You’ve successfully racked up your parents insurance (they’ve yet to let you forget it) and now, you’re sure they’ll really take your license. You could blame a crash on other people, sure, or maybe even classic Gothamite luck, but a flat tire from hitting a curb in a city on the outskirts of Gotham? Yeah, you’re pretty sure that’s all you.
Your parents would be pissed when they found out. God, how much was it to even fix a tire? You take a deep breath and exit the car. You managed to make it off the main road. You were so fucking lucky. You look at each tire and—yup, you’re so fucked! Two flats. Scratch that luck, you had to be the most unlucky person in whatever godforsaken city you were in.
This was a joke. A cruel joke by whatever god was out there. You had to have done something wrong—sinned or some shit—in some sort of way. Because this, this, was just absolute bullshit.
You wouldn’t be able to afford a tow truck, not on your terrible salary. And alerting your parents was like the last thingyou wanted. Genuinely. You were fifty minutes out from Gotham. Fifty. God, you just had to travel today didn’t you?
You swore you never learned your lesson. You scroll through your contacts and the people you have added on Snap Chat, alerting them all of the disaster. You’re flooded with a bunch of are you okay’s and do you have a spare? Which is also followed by you asking if they can come change it because fuck if you know how to and then several people replying with times they can come—all way later into the night than you could handle. It’s freezing, almost always is in January up in New Jersey. There’s light snow on the ground and you want to blame your terrible driving on that, but you don’t.
You’re reluctant to hit his number at first. It’s eight o’clock at night. He’ll be getting ready for patrol. Plus, there’s some sort of weird feeling that goes through you whenever you ask him for help—one that makes you feel absolutely fucking terrible. Maybe it’s because he’s rich and he can fix all your problems without much thought, or maybe it’s because of the snide comments he’ll make.
But fuck, it’s freezing. And you’re fucking desperate (and on the verge of tears). You hit his number before you can hesitate anymore.
Ring. Ring. Ri—
“What?” Damian’s cold voice rings through the phone. God you should just hang up shouldn’t you? This was a bad idea? Your thumbs hovering over the hangup button when you hear your name followed by an annoyed voice (or maybe that’s just his default tone) saying, “Speak.”
It comes rushing out of you. You’re embarrassed at both the speed and the fact you responded to his command like a dog. “OkaysoIhitacurbandireallysuperduperdontwannabothermyparentsbut—“
“Stop,” He says, you can imagine him shaking his head, and you stop. “Take a breath.” You take a breath. The cold air really wasn’t helping you at all, your coat felt thin in this weather. And, God, Titus really had nothing on you the way you were following what Damian was saying, huh? “Now talk at a normal rate.”
“Stop giving me orders.” You mutter, sure that you had the most embarrassed look on your face.
“I will hang up.”
“Okay, wait,” You take another breath, then it comes spilling out again, this time slower. “Uhm, so I’m in uh,” You give him your location, looking at a nearby sign. “And I sorta-kinda-maybe have a flat.”
“A flat tire?” Damian repeats.
“Well, two.”
“Two flat tires.”
“Yes, that would be what I just said.” You thin your lips, re-entering your car for a bit of warmth.
“How does one manage—“
“Have you seen me drive?”
Damian releases a breath, presumably from his nose, and resumes speaking. “Yes, clearly I’ve forgotten who I’m speaking to. You are the single worst driver I know. And I know Thomas.”
You roll your eyes slightly. “Dukes not a bad driver.”
“In comparison to you?” Damian scoffs. “Of course not.”
“Shut up.”
“If I were you, I’d be nicer. Considering you require my assistance.” Damian says. Stupid, arrogant, idiotic, genius, asshole— “That is why you called me, isn’t it? To help you?”
You let out a sigh. You cars off, to preserve the fifteen miles of gas left in your car (in your defense you were on the way to the gas station!), and as you released your sigh you could see your cold breath in the air. “Damian.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Don’t be an asshole.” He’s silent. “Yes. It is.”
“Thought so.” Damian responded.
“Damian, what’s taking you so long?” A female voice called from his end. It sounded like Stephanie. “Come on dude, we’re going to be late.”
“You don’t have to.” You rush out. “Come, I mean. I’ll try someone else.” Even though your list was running short, which was how you got to him in the first place, you genuinely didn’t want him to go out of his way. “Or maybe my parents—“
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Damian interrupted quickly. He cleared his throat. “Brown. I will not be attending patrol today. I have…things to attend to.”
“Things or people?” Stephanie countered. “Cause I’m pretty sure that’s—“
“Mind your business. I’ll join you in a few hours.” He focused back on you. “Do you have a spare?”
“Uh. Yes.” You do, obviously, you do. But it’s pretty old and busted, probably low on air. “But only one. Look, I’m thinking you could, like, buy one and I’ll send you the money. I just can’t change a wheel for shit and—“
“You’re not paying for it.”
“Damian.”
“You’re not.”
“It’s my tire.”
“Tires. And? Which one of us is a billionaire?”
“Your father’s a billionaire.” You correct quickly.
“And I’m his heir. Not to mention what I inherit on my mother’s side.”
“What do you—“
“Never mind that.” He cuts you off quickly. “Stay in your car. I’ll be there in two hours. Size..15 rims?”
“Uh…”
“Send me a photo of the car information. Should be in the car somewhere. Presumably with the registration. I’ll see you then.”
“I’m paying for the tire.”
“Sure.” He agrees. “Lock your doors. No city around Gothams good at night.” With that, he hangs up and you’re left fumbling with the lock of the car door. You send him a photo of what he asks, he doesn’t reply but he thumbs up the message.
The next hour and a half is spent with you preserving your phone battery and freezing your ass off in your car. Damian pulls up and you hate that he’s your savior because you know he’ll never let you live this down. With shaky hands—you were really regretting not bringing gloves—you make your way to Damian.
He’s dressed for the weather. More so than you, distantly you remember him saying on a quiet night when no when else is around that he hated the cold. You imagine it had something to do with living in the desert for ten years. You step out the car, it’s insanely colder outside of it. “You’re early.”
“And you’re shaking.” His cars in front of yours, just off the shoulder of the road. He’s driving a jeep, not his usual car. “Have you been sitting there with your car off the entire time?”
“I didn’t want to waste gas.” You mumble. He shakes his head and sighs, ridding himself of his gloves and passing them to you. You shake your head “No, Damian—“
Damian rolls his eyes, forcing the gloves onto your hands. “I can’t change a tire wearing them anyway.” He rounds the car to look at the flat tires. “How did you do this again?”
“I hit a curb.”
“A curb?” Damian bends down to examine the tires. “Perhaps you should take a break from driving.”
“Oh, get off your high horse. Don’t act like you’ve never hit a curb.”
“I haven’t.” He confirms cockily. You’d believe him only if Jon had never told you that story about the two of them stealing the BatMobile when they were younger. Seeing your disbelieving look, he continues, “And even if I had, I would never get two flat tires from it.”
“Shut up.” Damian’s lip twitched upwards at your words.
“Open the trunk.” You shuffle to your car and open the trunk, then make your way to him. He’s examining the spare in your trunk.
“This thing is in terrible condition.”
“This is an old car.” You defend.
“Not that old.” He lifts the spare a bit, shakes his head, then puts it down. He grabs everything around it—the jack and other things you never quite learned the name of—so he can change it, but he leaves the spare.
“What are you doing?”
“I suspected it’d be in terrible condition.” Damian walks to his own car and opens the trunk where not one but two brand new 15 inch rim tires are.
“Damian.”
“They weren’t that much.” He grab a tire effortlessly, carrying it until he gets to the right side of your car, where the flats are.
“Damian.”
He ignores you in favor of lifting the car using the jack. “Damian!” You repeat again.
He looks up at you, stopping what he’s doing. With an annoyed expression he dusts off his hands as he stands to his full height, looking straight at you. “Stop being stupid.”
“What?”
“You heard me.” He stands his ground. His nose is red from the cold, doing wonders against his slightly tanned skin (wow, the winter really did make him pale). “Stop being stupid. I can afford it.”
“So can I.”
He gives you a look. “I can afford it and it won’t set me back financially.” You thin your lips at his statement. “I know you don’t like handouts but this isn’t a handout. You’re meant to do things for the people who you care about and I…” He trails off, clearly unsure where he’s going, but he doesn’t look away from you once. “It’s already done. I’m not letting you pay me back. We can both sit here in the cold until you’re desperate enough to accept it, or I can change your tires now and we can be on the way home in thirty minutes.”
“Fine.” You manage and he nods victoriously. He digs into his coat pocket and hands you his keys. “What?”
“Go wait in my car. You’ll die of hypothermia if you’re out here any longer.” It’s an exaggeration to the fullest extent. You’re pretty sure you’re far off from hyperventilating, no matter how cold you are, but you listen to him. You go into his car and turn it on, blasting the heat.
It takes almost exactly thirty minutes for Damian to change both the tires and then he’s knocking on the window of the jeep. Your gloved hands put the window down and he looks at you for several moments. Your nose probably isn’t red anymore, thankfully, and you know for a fact you’re not shaking. Surprisingly, he isn’t either. Though his nose and ears are the rosiest red you’ve seen in ages. “I finished.”
You open the door, immediately hit with the rush of cold air. You fumble in the pocket for your keys and sit in the front seat of the car, starting the ignition. Damian watches, holding the car door open. He stares until the amount of miles comes up on screen and shoots you a raised brow look. “I was on the way to the gas station.” You say in defense, wiggling a bit in your seat, trying to get comfortable.
“Sure.” He rolls his eyes. “Follow my car. Try to drive slowly.”
He slams the car door shut and hops into his car. He waits a few minutes, presumably to allow your car time to warm off, then he’s off on the road. You follow after him, your foot sitting lightly on the accelerator and your seatbelt practically choking you. He leads you to a gas station, a nearby seven eleven, and you pay for a guy to fill your tank while he waits patiently. When your tanks full, he leads the way out.
You two drive in separate cars for ten minutes, your hands finally defrosting enough that you start to fiddle with the radio station. Your phones not connected and you don’t have the energy to connect it. You shuffle through radio stations, settling on one called Adult Hits! that has Aerosmith playing lowly.
Damian leads you into a half empty parking lot—you’d expect nothing else at this hour—and once you see him get out of his car you follow suit. There are a few places open in the plaza you two have stumbled upon, though it looks dead. “What are we doing here?”
Damian points in the direction of several stores and says nothing else, walking in the general direction he had just pointed to. With a tug at your still gloved fingers and a small huff, you follow after him, hastily locking your car. He opens the door to a small diner, holding it open for you. The diner is warm in temperature and also in feeling, a nice 1970’s look fills it. Damian leads the way to a booth in the corner and sits so he’s facing the door. “I’m not really hungry.” You say. “We can just go home.”
“For exactly how long were you waiting in your cold car for my arrival?” Damian asks. “And before you even reached out to me, how long was that?” You don’t answer and he huffs as if to say point proven. You couldn’t answer him if you wanted to—which to be clear you absolutely don’t—because the waiter comes and hands each of you menus.
Damian gets a glass of water and you get a mug of hot chocolate, needing to be more warm than you already are. He orders a salad and after chatting up the waiter enough, you manage to convince her to talk the cooks into making you pancakes well past breakfast hour. You guys sit mostly in silence until your food arrives, Damian rolling his eyes as you make a smiley face out of syrup. “Hey, it’s ten am somewhere.” You say in defense, cutting up the smiling pancake.
“You are a child.”
“Whatever you say.” The pancakes good. If you’re being honest, you drag out finishing it so you don’t have to go back to the coldness of your car.
Damian finishes his salad at a decent pace, but you can tell he’s going slower to match you. “Thank you, by the way.” You say. “For coming out here and changing my tires. And for buying me tires.”
“Don’t thank me for that.”
“Shut up and take the thank you.”
Damian sighs, putting his fork down. “Are we friends?”
You pause, confused by this question. “I mean, I hope so.” You tilt your head in confusion. “If not, I really want these last five years back.”
Damian rolls his eyes. “Yes or no.”
“Yes. Obviously.”
“Good. And do friends do things for one another?”
Okay. Now you see where he’s going with this. “Well, okay, to an extent—”
“Yes or no.”
“Occasion—”
He says your name and fixes you with a look. Your heart skips a beat. “Yes or no.”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Given that we are friends and that you were in need of help it was my duty as a friend to assist you. Do you agree?”
“Why can’t you just say you’re welcome like a normal person?”
“Do you agree?”
Just to annoy him you say “No.”
Damian rolls his eyes. “So I was supposed to leave you stranded on the road like an imbecile.”
“I did not look like an imbecile.” You clarify. “I looked like a girl who maybe hit a curb and blew two tires.” Damian scoffs. “And, it would have been totally okay to say no. For future reference, I don’t want you to feel obligated to help me when I’m in a pinch. Just because we’re friends doesn’t mean our friendship relies entirely on whether or not you come to help me.”
“I see.” Damian nods absentmindedly. “So this means if it had been me in your situation, though I’d like to note that I never would be in said situation, you wouldn’t come to my aid?”
You pause and scrunch your nose up. “No, that’s not what I’m saying.”
“Sounds like it.”
“It’s not what I meant.”
“No,” Damian shakes your head. “Next time I’ll leave you on the side of the road, struggling. Since clearly that is what you would do to me.”
“Oh my God,” You groan, sure your face is flushing a bright shade of pink, “I was just trying to say thank you!”
“And I’m trying to say that friends do things for one another.”
“I just don’t want you to feel obligated.”
“You are an idiot. I do not feel obligated to do anything. I care for you. I want you to be safe. I want you to make it home every night. For you to achieve that, I had to come help you change your tires. It isn’t an obligation that I feel must be fulfilled to maintain our friendship.” Damian says all this without lowering or raising his voice, keeping it extremely steady as if he means every word. At your silence, he continues, “Honestly, I’d prefer if next time—and face it, there will very likely be a next time—you called me first. Before posting on your Snap Chat story and alerting all your other and far less important friends.”
You look down at your messy pancake. “Okay.”
“Glad we had this talk.” Damian nods.
“Me too.” You mumble, not sure if it’s safe to look back up, convinced still that your face is burning red. The waiter comes over with the check and you reach for it first, handing her your card.
Damian immediately interjects. “I’ll pay.”
“You just bought me two new tires.”
“And?” Damian raises his brow.
“And so, I can pay.” You nod at the waiter, who starts to leave.
“No.” Damian shakes his head, getting his black card out of his wallet. “I can pay.”
“Shut up. I’m paying Damian.”
Damian ignores you and turns to the waiter, extending the card to her. Then, he reaches into his wallet and gets six twenty dollar bills. “Take my card and this is your tip.”
The waiter looks over at you apologetically, handing back your card and taking his. You groan at him. “Why do you never let me pay?”
“It’d be wrong.” He says, watching as you start to stack the dishes over one another. “I—”
“—can afford it. I know. I can too.”
Damian rolls his eyes and you two wait in silence until the waiter comes back with the card. When she does, the two of you leave. He walks you to your car and you try not to show how annoyed you are. “Why are you aggravated?”
“I’m not.”
“Don’t lie. It’s unbecoming.”
You sigh and turn to face him, looking up at him. The lighting of the parking lot does him no justice and still, he looks absolutely beautiful. God. Stupid rich beautiful bastard. “You’re not the only one who cares.”
Damian looks down at you slightly, and you swear a light shade of pink coats his tan cheeks. You could blame it on the cold, his ears are a rosy shade too, but part of you wants to pretend you’re the one who caused it. “What?”
“Earlier you said you’re meant to do things for people you care about.”
“Yes.”
“And then in the diner you said you care about me.”
“Yes, I did.”
“Okay. Well, I care about you too, clearly. And you never let me do anything for you. You hate when I get you stuff, you never let me pay for things like food or hang outs. And you’re far too arrogant to ever ask me for help.” Plus, you’ll likely never amount to the other people he can ask for help. For Christs sake he has Superman’s son on speed dial. “I care about you. Let me show it.”
His eyes trace yours, likely searching for sincerity in your words. He must find them because his green eyes busy themselves with other things, like tracing the outline of your face. You watch as his eyes scatter over every inch of your face and try to not overthink this moment. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay.” Damian nods. “I care about you. You…care about me.” He says the second part like it’s hard to understand. “We can do things for each other.”
“Okay.” You smile and continue your walk. After a split second, Damian follows after you. You’re at your car when you realize something. “Wait, how did you know I posted on my snap story before I called you, you don’t even have Snap Chat?”
“I have my sources.” Damian shrugs, walking to his own car. “You go first, I’ll follow after you.”
When you enter your car, you wait several moments for it to warm up. You immediately open your phone and check Snap Chat to see who viewed your story. You scroll until you’re sure you’ve found the culprit. Stupid Jonathan Kent.