Chapter Text
“I apologize for this inconvenience Mr. Wayne,” says one of the waitstaff. The embroidery above her breast reads Linda, below it, manager. Her lip is chewed on and several strands of hair have pulled loose from her braid since Bruce first entered the restaurant. “We’ll be conducting our own investigation into all staff involved in your stay. If anyone had any contact with the press you can be assured they will be dealt with accordingly.”
“These things happen.” Bruce offers her a shrug and understanding smile. What can you do?
“Still,” Linda insists, with a nervous glance in the direction of the restaurant front, where flashes of blinding light pop every few moments, snapping over the clamber and voices of a familiar crowd. “Is there anything we can do to help? I can have one of my staff collect your vehicle—”
Bruce shakes his head. The last thing he wants is a nervous twenty-something behind the wheel, trying to nose his car through a crowd of story-hungry press. “It’ll be okay,” he assures her. “I’ll just have a word with my son, and then we’ll be on our way. I’m sorry for all the excitement.”
Linda smiles wanly. “I’ll leave you to it.”
The manager returns to the front of the house, sharing words with the hostess. Bruce waits till she’s out of earshot. There’s no one seated in the back corner of the restaurant, and other than curious glances from waitstaff behind the kitchen window, and customers dining at window-side tables, there’s privacy for Bruce to kneel at Damian’s level and start to speak.
“Damian,” Bruce begins. “I know you haven’t dealt with much press—”
“The reporters are not a concern,” Damian interrupts. He looks down at Bruce, arms crossed, eyes narrowed. Bruce feels something clench in his stomach looking at him—even standing, he’s so small. Trained assassin or not, that’s Bruce’s son. The urge to tuck him underwing and be home, at the manor, is at the forefront of Bruce’s instincts. But that’s not an option. And it makes Bruce sick.
It’s true Damian doesn’t seem worried about the media, but he also hasn’t been exposed to paparazzi this way. It’s been a short time since Damian’s come to live with Bruce, and an even shorter time since they announced him to society. So far the news and tabloids have printed and showed story after story dissecting what little they know about Bruce Wayne’s newest son. But they haven’t had an opportunity like this yet—an outing where they can ambush Damian, snatch up photos and quotes and story-meat to mash and tear into views and online presence. Damian doesn’t know how it feels to step out doors into the blindside of camera flashes, yelling, pushing—where every move can become a world-wide degradation.
And Bruce doesn’t want him to know that side of his new life. But the cameras are spitting flashes of light and the paparazzi are jostling outside the restaurant door, Damian’s name on their tongues and between their teeth. Hungry.
“The reporters are a concern,” Bruce tells Damian. "I should have prepared you before we were in this situation, but we're here now."
Damian's gaze cuts away, to the windows. One of the press has started arguing with security, his hands flicking in animated emphasis. Bruce follows his line of sight, and lowers his voice further. "When we step out those doors, every single person waiting wants something from you...they want to misrepresent you, embarrass you, and they don't care if they hurt you in the process. Sometimes, they can be physically dangerous too. They don’t always care how they get a story—just that they get one.”
Damian’s eyebrows knit together. There’s something there that Bruce sees when he frowns at a mirror, and the twist in his stomach gets tighter. “I can incapacitate any number of press personnel waiting outside,” Damian reminds him. “They are no threat—”
Bruce reaches out and lays a hand on his shoulder, squeezing. It’s the kind of thing he doesn’t try at the manor, because it hurts when Damian shrugs his hand off. But in public, Damian’s gaze shifts to the other patrons, and he lets the comforting gesture continue, ever mindful of his new responsibility to his identity, to Robin, to Batman.
“They’re not the kind of threat you can handle as Damian Wayne,” Bruce says plainly. “So please, let me?”
Damian stares at him for several moments. Bruce starts to itch—the longer they remain in the building, the longer the media has to congregate outside. The longer the photographers have to get bold. The longer the journalists have to think of questions and taglines sure to burrow under Bruce’s skins. And worse, Damian’s.
“How?” Damian asks, finally.
Bruce relaxes. “When your brothers were your age, we found the best way to avoid escalating these situations was to carry them to the car.”
Damian’s mouth twists at this. It’s so Talia. “Carry me.”
“It’ll be quick,” Bruce assures him. “But we should go now, before the crowd gets any larger.”
Damian shuffles. It’s maybe the most indecisive Bruce has seen him.
“Okay?” Bruce asks, already dreading a no. If Damian declines to be carried, will he allow Bruce to hold his hand? How else can Bruce get him to the car without being separated? Without cameras being pressed into Damian’s face and capturing Bruce’s knitted eyebrows and Talia’s twisted mouth and lapping it all up like a predator on carrion?
“Fine.”
Bruce’s stomach untwists, just enough. He offers Damian a smile, a promise, and shifts the hand on Damian’s shoulder to under his legs, the other wrapping around his back. Damian tenses as he’s lifted, like a small child, to rest against Bruce’s chest. His arms hang limply, still confused at the hold. Bruce is reminded of Tim, turning to stone and awkward limbs in Bruce’s arms, asking timidly to the shell of Bruce’s ears if he should hold on?
Now, Bruce guides Damian’s arms around his neck. “Don’t look,” he tells Damian, already walking. Other patrons and waitstaff are openly staring. The security at the front of the door looks both relieved as Bruce steps by him to leave, and nervous as the paparazzi outside surge forward on all sides, only allowing the minimum of space Bruce needs to leverage the door open.
Damian rests his head on his shoulder.
Face down, Bruce wants to tell him, but the paparazzi have already swallowed them.
There are microphones thrusted into Bruce’s face, the mix of cologne and sweat and shared breath surrounding them as the crowd shouts and surges closer, blinding flashes of light bursting around them like rapid-fire. Every nerve in Bruce’s body is primed to escape as he takes a slow step forward and smiles instead.
“Sorry,” Bruce says to the onslaught. “No questions today.”
He’s ignored.
“Mr. Wayne! Is this your newest ward?” A frantic looking woman with mascara smeared under her left eye and something coffee on her breath lurches in front of him.
She’s quickly pushed aside as a different half-formed question drops into his ears. “—true his mother was recently incarcerated?”
A man claps Bruce on the shoulder opposite of Damian. His hair frizzy, mustache thin, and his voice slick and cold. “Bruce! Have you given any thought to the allegation from Richard Grayson’s former school teacher?”
The questions shift and merge and form a torrent of filth. Bruce walks through the crowd, using one hand to clasp Damian, warm, small, still like stone, to his chest, as the other presses people away carefully. He already knows the photographers are hoping for angles that enhance the passive resistance.
“Mr. Wayne! Has having Damian around brought up any memories around Jason Todd’s death!?”
“Just a quick picture? Let’s capture this father-son outing!”
“—true Damian is from out-of-country? Is he able to speak English? Do you have trouble understanding him?”
“Damian! Is your mother dead?”
“Look this way Mr. Wayne!”
“—Damian your biological child?”
Bruce’s hold on his son tightens as he struggles to block the voices out. He wishes he had enough hands to cover Damian's ears too, but he makes due. They’ve reached parking now anyway—they’re almost out of the woods.
Except. A very tall man, with a very fixed scowl, side-steps around Bruce and pushes himself purposefully behind Damian. Even as Bruce twists to hide his son, the man speaks.
“Look over here buddy! Do you feel safe with Bruce? Is he your actual father?”
And then, the man reaches out, seizes Damian’s shoulder. Bruce feels Damian’s head shift as he looks up, he feels the heat of the camera flash directly in Damian’s face. He feels the flinch.
Bruce feels nothing after that.
He says something. What is it? Get back? Go away? Whatever it is, it’s in the tone Gotham’s media rarely hears. It’s the tone from when he first introduced Dick to the world—when that woman swept in with spitting questions, with implication, about his new ward, the circus orphan. It’s the same tone as when papers from Jason’s visit to a run-down community hospital, before he lived with Bruce, were leaked, and Bruce saw his new ward cry for the first time. It’s the tone from when Jason’s body grew cold in the ground and Bruce was stopped on his way to Wayne Enterprise and how did Bruce feel now that Jason was dead and gone—
Bruce’s brain goes white. His thoughts turn to instinctive movements, take this step, pull away from this person, feel Damian’s breath against your neck—is it too fast?
In a moment, Bruce has pushed out of the crowd. There’s still people all around them, but there’s space now. It’s rare. He takes it. He unlocks the car, he opens the door. There are still questions behind him, camera flashes. He hears none of it. Sees nothing. Nothing except Damian, eyes too wide, as Bruce detaches the grip around his neck, and settles Damian into the car, going so far as to click the seatbelt into place around him.
Acutely aware of the reporters at his back, Bruce spares a moment to card a hand through Damian’s hand, relieved when the boy doesn’t pull back from the comfort, even in the security, the shield, of the car's interior.
In seconds, Bruce is closing the car door, the tinted windows obscuring Damian from him and the camera’s flashing at his back.
The time it takes for Bruce to struggle into the driver’s side, start the car, and force his way out of the crowd of people and into open streets is short, but too long. Bruce drives them a couple of streets over before he deems it safe to pull into a mostly empty parking lot and look back.
Damian is quiet in the back seat. His face is closed off again, bordering on the scowl he’s adopted as his resting expression. Bruce gives him a once over. One of his jacket sleeves is rucked up and the gel Alfred styles his hair with has come loose. Bruce resists the urge to reach out and pat the hair back into place.
“Are you okay?” Bruce asks.
Damian nods immediately. “I sustained no permanent injuries.”
“I’m sorry,” Bruce says, relieved, but sick with upset. “I saw that man grab you—you’re not hurt?”
“No,” Damian says. “It was only once, and it is of no consequence.”
Bruce’s grip on his seat tightens, crumpling leather. “It is,” he says, because no one should be touching Damian, injury or not, Bruce doesn’t want the media so much as looking at him. But it’s too late for that. “I’m sorry that happened.”
Damian stares at him, something like confusion curling in the lines of his face. “It is…alright, Father. I am equipped to handle mental duress as well as physical injuries.”
Bruce swallows. There is…so much wrong with that. There is so much Bruce wants to say to that. But the words clump together and Bruce doesn’t get out any of them.
He just turns back to the road. “I’m glad you’re okay,” Bruce says. “And…I promise, next time I’ll do better. Protect you better.”
“I don’t require protection—”
Bruce reaches back again, he grabs one of Damian’s hands and looks him in the eye and tries to convey how completely permanent what he’s about to say is. “You have it anyway.”
Damian is quiet for the rest of the ride.