Archive of Our Own ^beta

Rain was a constant in Gotham, something to rely on. Even during the summer when the sun was supposed to burn your skin and be too bright during the day, dark gray clouds still hung in the sky and poured. Most of the time it was nothing more than just a quick shower, short spurts in certain areas of the city, stopping as soon as they began. Sometimes there’ll be rain that lasts for a good half hour or spanning the whole morning, leaving the afternoon a humid, sticky mess. 

But it was towards the latter half of summer where one had to be careful. When the heat was at its highest and the leaves were beginning their annual change and the season was just on the cusp of autumn. The rain, then, felt angry. It would slam down upon the city with no warning, engulfing it in a dome of darkness and continue on for hours at a time. The streets would flood, as would the canals and the reservoirs dotted around. Roofs and windows would leak from how much would be raining and car accidents would begin to increase. 

Which was strange, if Damian thought about it. Wouldn’t a city whose notorious for how much it rains, have drivers that would be near experts for the weather? He was positive that was the case, though the amount of times he’s had to help first responders rescue civilians from the wrecks wasn’t helping his statement. Perhaps Drake or Gordon would help him look into the statistics of it. 

A flash of light lit the room for a fraction of a second, the color a startling blueish white, before a crack of thunder boomed. It shook the manor. The ancient oak walls shaking from the force of the sound and the electricity running through the earth. The glass of his windows rattled, though Damian couldn’t tell if it was from the thunder or the wind and rain that attacked it, demanding entrance into his room. Either way, he brought the covers tighter around him, eyes closed shut as he waited for the rumble to pass.

In all honesty, Damian was fine with the rain. It was calming and soothing and more often than not, it put him to sleep on the nights when his mind was running a mile a minute. Even when it was a little more than a simple rain, the consistent sound of water hitting the roof and walls, wetting the ground and the stones of the paths in the garden. A soft thrumming to quiet his thoughts and lull him to a dreamless sleep. 

But when it was angry? When the water slammed the ground in anger, thrashed against the manor, threatening to break through the windows and flood the room within. When the clouds were no longer gray but a terrifying shade of black, a color so dark that Damian couldn’t tell where the sky ended or the clouds began. Damian hated the rain when it was a storm, more specifically a thunder storm.

It was unpredictable. There was no way for him to brace himself for the boom that followed lightning. And yes, Dick had told him that thunder always came after lighting. And he knows scientifically that light travels faster than sound, but the time between the flash of light to the crack of thunder was never consistent. Sometimes it was immediate, like had been just seconds ago. Other times the seconds passed like hours, the tense silence kept him anxious till Damian was nearly tearing his hair out waiting for the sound of the next clap. When it was distant and far away, Damian didn’t mind. It wasn’t as loud and the walls didn’t shake. It was a faded rumble that Damian could pretend was the sound of the Batmobile or Jason’s bike.

A second boom pulled a soft whimper from him. 

God, he hated how weak he felt. Despised how childish he was, curling into his blanket with tears threatening to spill with every crack of thunder. Children cried at the sound, they wrapped their arms around stuffed toys or crawled into their parents beds when it woke them from their sleep. Damian was no child, he has never been and never will be a child. He was never allowed to join his mother in her chambers when the rain threatened the compound, never given the reprieve of being in her safety as thunder roared unpredictably outside the stone walls and terracotta shingles. 

He wondered if he was able to fall back to sleep if he had his eyes closed for long enough. Maybe if exhaustion took over, he’d be able to gain some semblance of rest before he had to wake for school in the morning. But it seemed it wouldn’t work. He was too much aware of the world around him, too frightened of the next boom to occur for it to work. If anything, it might be making it worse. Hiding beneath the covers prevented him from watching the window, it didn’t let him see when the next possible strike of lighting was to somewhat prepare for it mentally. 

Oh, but he didn’t like how he could see his room erupt in light. Like a warning for the inevitable, a premonition of the rumble that made both Damian and the manor shake. He was forever caught in a lose-lose situation. He couldn’t see the lighting if he hid, but he could see the harbinger light his room if he wasn’t beneath the blanket. 

Damian shot out of bed when it was so loud that it woke Titus. Normally, his Great Dane didn’t let the storms wake him. Sleeping peacefully in the bed beside him despite his master shaking in fear.

Where was he going? He doesn’t know. He didn’t want to bother his father or Alfred. The butler needs as much rest as he could get when dealing with their family and his father, like Drake, barely sleeps at all. Speaking of Drake, he wasn’t even in the manor, he was currently in Jump City with the titans. And while Damian was terrified right now of the thunder, he doesn’t know if he was scared enough to seek him out for comfort. Cassandra was spending the night with Brown and Row. Duke was in his dorm at Gotham University. Richard was in Blüdhaven and Damian would not want to risk him getting into an accident driving in the storm that raged outside. 

Maybe if he just walked around the manor he would be able to calm himself? Or what if he stayed in the library, spend the storm reading or something? 

At the end of the hall was a window, large and looming. The shadows of branches flashed against the glass and Damian felt rooted to the ground, watching it flicker multiple times. Dread pooled in his stomach, his hands fisted in his shirt, eyes wide in tearful anticipation for the half a second when the thunder boomed. It was worse, he decided, to stand in the middle of the hall during it. The art shook and wobbled on the old hooks, ceramic and porcelain vases rubbing against the polished wood tables and stands. And somehow it felt as though the sound echoed where he stood. Like it traveled all the way down from the window and reverberated in the quiet halls louder than before.

He dashed into the nearest room when the second flash of lighting lit up the window again. At this moment he didn’t care whose room it was. Damian just didn’t want to be so exposed anymore, the uncertainty of the covers were safer than the bareness of being in the hall. Like that of a common mouse, he lifted the blanket and burrowed into the (surprisingly warm) sheets of the bed. The pillow provided no help in shutting out the near deafening crack of thunder as he held it tight over his head.

“What the…Damian?” He barely registered that he had entered Jason’s room. Why was Jason here? He was hardly ever here, always returning back to his safe houses after patrol no matter the weather. “The fuck are you doing in here?”

“I am inspecting for bed bugs, obviously. You are too incompetent to do so on your own it seems like,” Damian hoped his brother couldn’t hear his voice wavering as he spoke. He already was risking his pride and his image by simply tearing up at the sound of thunder. 

“It’s too fucking late for this shit, man,” Jason grumbled and turned over in his bed. “Get out and go back to your room.”

The mere idea of leaving the warmth of his brother’s bed made him pull the blanket tight around him, or as tight as he could with Jason using the other half. He had already been alone for most of the storm, trying his best to brave it. And while it was almost nauseating to say—though he doesn’t know if it was because of the affection he reluctantly has for his brother or how long he had spent the night trembling—Damian felt a whole lot safer knowing his brother was there beside him. 

There was a part of him, the part that was currently driving this whole show, that so desperately wanted to lay as close as he dared to Jason’s side. To glue himself to his second oldest brother and find the tiniest sliver of sleep before morning came. He wanted Jason to turn around and drag Damian close to his chest, trap him in his arms and tell him it was going to be okay and that the thunder wasn’t going to hurt him like he had done years before in the league. Though, back then, Damian didn’t know that Jason was his brother.

At the time, his mother handed a small, four year old Damian a catatonic Jason Todd and told him to care for him. She had said that he was to be his protector and guard, and Damian was not one to disobey direct orders. He had helped feed him, clean him, and tend to the wounds he got during training and the multiple assassination attempts the leagues enemies had put on Damian. His kindness, disguised as orders, was returned when storms raged outside. Silent, but not mindless, never mindless, Jason would tuck Damian into his side, shielding him from the cold winds and rain that slipped through the cracks. He’d be the impenetrable wall that never shook at the crack of thunder outside the room’s window. 

To his young impressionable mind, Jason was the closest thing to the image of his father in his head. His mother gave him the sparest of details pertaining to his physical traits, preferring to tell him stories of his adventures and all the feats he had accomplished, but sometimes she’d let it slip of what he looked like. (Though there was a debate on if it was an accident or not.) So in his head, Jason met the criteria: Tall, black haired, colored eyes, with large arms and chest. One that pressed him close during the height of storms and quietly hummed him back to sleep, with a hand pressed on his back to keep him secure and the other mindlessly carding through his hair. It worked every time.

“Dude,” Jason called out when Damian lightly grabbed hold of his shirt. “Stop. I told you to go to your room.”

He needed to come up with an excuse to stay here. A good reason that could convince Jason’s sleep addled brain to let Damian remain in the safety of Jason’s shadow. What if he told him that his window had broken? No, he’d still kick him out and drop him off at another person’s room. Damian would use Titus as an excuse, but he was afraid that his dog will know somehow and be angry with him and Jason wouldn’t accept it anyway. What if he told Jason the truth? What if Damian swallowed the hard pill that was his pride and asked his big brother if it was okay to spend the night with him because he was scared of the thunder? Surely Jason would laugh at him, he’d use it for blackmail come morning, or just dump him off in their father’s bed. Three very likely outcomes of this situation. 

To hell with pride, Damian thought when he gathered the tiniest bit of courage to peak his head out of the covers only to see the flash of light that illuminated Jason’s sleeping figure. “Would you—” Thunder cut off his question and Damian wasted no time in scooting himself closer to Jason, hands gripping tightly to his brother’s shirt and body trembling in fear.

“Alright,” Jason sighed, turning over to stare down his annoying little brother. “The fuck is up with you? Why are—whoa, hey, why you crying?”

He wiped a tear away, trying not to meet his brother’s concerned gaze. “Would it be alright if I remained here?”

“Only if you tell me why you’re crying, kid,” Jason said as though he was still going to have Damian remove himself from the bed, instead he turned onto his side and wrapped an arm around him, tucking his head beneath his chin. This was what Damian had been seeking, this was what needed. The security of being pressed so close to someone, the untold promise of being protected. It didn’t matter if Damian didn’t answer him, he knows Jason wouldn’t kick him out now that he saw him teary eyed and shaking. The question was merely a polite gesture; if Damian wanted to answer he could, though Jason wasn’t going to pry if he doesn’t.

That was one thing Damian really like about Jason: he doesn’t dig any deeper than he needs to. His father, Drake, and Gordon would barrage him with questions, practically force him to answer them in case he was compromised, but they did it because they were concerned or worried. Cass was much like Damian himself, a tad bit emotionally disconnected, though his sister was doing a lot better to remedy that than he was. Duke and Dick had good intentions for prying, they just wanted to make sure he was okay. And he was grateful for that! Truly, he was! It felt nice to have someone so concerned about him so genuinely, but at times it was too much. Their worrying was enduring at the best of times and suffocating at the worst. 

“I do not like thunder,” He admitted, voice wobbly and quiet in comparison to the rain outside. 

“Me nether, kid,” Jason rubbed a hand up and down his back. “It’s too close to the sound of an explosion for me. If it’s too loud, sometimes it, uh, sends me back, ya know?” Damian had a feeling that was the case, but he refrained from speaking his thoughts. There was the unspoken question of ‘what about you?’ in the air, another open prompt for Damian to answer if he wanted. But he didn’t know if the next sounds out of his mouth would be words or childish whimpers. 

“It is unpredictable.” Damian sniffled. “I do not like being caught off guard by it, makes me feel vulnerable.”

Another flash of lightning lit the room up and Damian buried himself further into in brother, waiting with a terrified bated breath and shaking hands that couldn’t even reach fully around Jason, when it boomed somewhere nearby. “Don’t worry, Dames, I gotcha,” Jason lifted the blanket over them, shuffling into a more comfortable position. His arm never let go of Damian when he moved, it remained tight around him, kept him secure. “I gotcha.”

Green eyes red rimmed as they watched the rain slam against the window. It was warm, he noticed, a lot more so than his own had been moments before. And the thunder didn’t shake the walls of Jason’s room, neither was it rattling him to his center. Why was that? Why was everything here calmer than before? What had changed? It certainly wasn’t the storm, it still raged on outside and fought the trees and Alfred’s shrubbery outside. The clouds and the sky were still fused into one and the lighting still mistaken for the soft glow of the moon. 

He felt Jason place a sleepy kiss to the top of his head, rubbing the hand resting on his arm up and down as his chest rumbled to the tune of some song Damian couldn’t quite place. 

Oh.

That’s why.

Damian let out a breath he didn’t know he had been holding, settling comfortably against his brother, letting the feeling of Jason’s humming and the simple shapes he was tracing on his back quiet his nerves. It was strange how simply being in someone’s presence could put one at such ease. How the knowledge of just having someone by one’s side can calm a person to the point where their fears have diminished so greatly. Because Damian still tensed when the lightning flashed in the window, his hand still held tightly to the now wrinkled shirt Jason wore. But when the thunder clapped and silenced the sound of rain, Damian wasn’t as scared as he was before. 

His eyelids grew heavy, each blink making the muscles harder to lift them open again. A part of him wanted to complain and grumble about how unfair it was that he was rendered incapacitated by the soothing humming and back rubbing, to shout that he was the heir to the Demon’s head and son of the bat and that he did not need to be comforted. But the longer Jason sang and the rain evened out to the steady fall that indicated the end of the storm, Damian was willing to admit that at this moment, he was just a child. A child who was sleepy and scared of the thunder and sought respite in the safety of his big brother.

“Sleep, habibi,” Jason mumbled in the league dialect before letting himself be taken into the dreamworld. The humming stopped, as did the ministrations on his back, but he didn’t mind. He was content to just stay where he was. Perhaps now that the thunder had passed and the rain evened out, he could rest. As it was, his eyes were begging to finally close and the pre-sleep mind fog was growing rapidly due to how comfortable he was. 

And if the thunder were to return, a second wave that wouldn’t surprise him in the slightest, maybe it wouldn’t startle him awake. Maybe his subconscious will know that he’s safe in the strong hold of his brother and let him stay asleep till the morning when Alfred would wake him for school.

Damian shuffled higher up on Jason, letting his head rest in the crook of his neck where the sound of his heart was stronger, and let himself finally succumb to the weightlessness of sleep. Nothing could harm him now, not with his big brother keeping him safe.