Chapter Text
The youngest addition of the bats is nothing close to the terms normal, not after the reveal of being the biological child of both Bruce Wayne and Talia Al Ghul. Damian Wayne, previously Damian Al Ghul: the heir to the legacy of the Al Ghul's lineage.
A trained assassin. Therefore he was taught to be the best in every aspect growing up, all to be deserving of his title. Damian Wayne, the abnormal kid is definitely not normal.
Actually, none of them are. Heck, not even Dick himself thinks of himself as ordinary despite being the most outgoing of all the bats. Everyone knew that it was but a speck of what his actual personality is, they had understood him even. It's both a blessing and a distraction. From what? Dick will never elaborate.
But this is different, entirely alien. Dick Grayson is smart enough to know where to draw the line in between normal dysfunctional vigilantes family's behaviours with pure borderline obsession. Therefore, he can almost see the signs in everything that his family members had emitted like it's as easy as breathing. And Damian had been proven to suffer from the latter, hard.
Don't get him wrong. Everyone deserves to confide in things that bring them comfort. For example, on Tim who made it his routine to at least drinks a few cups of coffee to keep him going for the rest of the day or even Cass with her hobby of dancing. Sure, sometimes they'd get lost in the track of time and went a little crazy with it.
But they can always stop once confronted by others. In Damian's case? Not so much.
Damian had been obsessing with his phone for a long while. Actually, it had started on the first week when he had gotten his first phone bought by Bruce himself. Damian was a bit skeptical at first of using it in the excuse of 'forgetting himself in the pursuit of puny human interest'.
Though the words of encouragement from the rest had definitely shaken Damian's wary thoughts of using it. He had then slowly began to indulge himself in actually using the phone rather then not using it at all. Starting from making an account online to a few apps that Steph had recommended Damian to try.
One of them being Discord. Yes, Discord.
At first they were happy. Well of course they are, Damian is finally. Finally loosening up for once rather then obsessing over proving himself to Bruce.
Especially when Damian had 'confessed' into something 'revolting'. A weakness, a mistake.
At first, they were shocked. Simply caught up by surprise. Because this meant terrible news, almost nothing good comes out of Damian's mouth whenever the younger uses the words 'regret' in his sentences. Fuck, the least horrible things that Damian could've done is genuinely murder someone over meeting up with someone online with the excuses of perhaps them "not up to my imagination".
Imagine their surprises when Damian had admitted into having a friend.
Many dishes met the table cloths that day. The occasion had happened during dinner and coincidentally, almost each of them was holding something. Tim's favorite mug was sacrificed in the process and Damian almost. Almost apologized for it.
A friend that Damian had made 'through shared interests', he clarified. Heck, Dick was very much happy.
In fact, he was the first person to further encourage Damian to embrace it. Hoping that the youngest can truly learn the true meaning of friendship, the importance of it and most importantly to understand that this is not a 'weakness' in itself. There were just so little that Dick can teach Damian of being humane, and getting a companion of his own will hopefully teach Damian just that.
And guess what, that may be Dick's greatest mistake yet.
It took weeks. Weeks up until Dick realizes something about Damian little online friend. One, they were friends through shared interests.
Shoot, they were friends through shared interests.
And it's too late to ever confront Damian about it because he is now obsessed with his phone. Hah.