When Worlds Collide

44) They Grow Up So Fast

The sky had begun darkening by the next time he was interrupted.

His door opened, no knocking, and in walked Damian. The boy closed the door behind him before turning around and staring at Nico with wide eyes.

"DiAngelo, I need your opinion," he said, face tinged pink and eyes all wide— looking actually like a 13 year of for the first time in a while.

Nico raised an eyebrow at him before shifting to the side as a way of offering the boy to sit next to him against the foot of his bed.

Weirdly enough, Damian didn't even question why they would sit on the floor, he just sat down. "Did you see my message from yesterday?"

Nico nodded.

"Good," he said, nodding slightly in a haze. "I was on a mission with Jon— I mean Kent. Everything was normal, and then afterwards, I went to his home and spent the night— as we often do after our missions. Then, in the morning, we were supposed to have a relaxing time before I came back here for dinner; however, he was acting strange all day. Then, after lunch, we go and sit on top of the silo on the farm and I ask him about it." Damian sounded like such a teenage boy that it was shocking to Nico. "I expected him to have said that I did something to upset him while on our mission, or that perhaps I forgot his birthday or something— which is absurd, I might add, considering his birthday is September 30th and has not even passed."

Nico just had both eyebrows raised in surprise at the rant his little brother just went on. He opened his mouth to say something, but Damian just continued.

"However, he did not say anything like that. He did something completely preposterous instead," Damian said before running a hand through his hair and then looking at Nico. "I am only telling you this because I cannot be expected to tell nobody, and you are not speaking to anyone at the family right now, so you seemed like the best option. Additionally, I do not know who else I would tell. Grayson would become immediately useless, Todd would make fun of me, Drake would become insufferable, and I would rather go back in the Lazarus pit again than having to deal with telling our father. Of course, I could tell one of the girls, but they would not quite be able to relate in the same way."

Nico waited for him to continue, but when the boy just shifted to staring at the wall, he cleared his throat slightly. "What did he do?"

Damian sucked in a breath, holding it for a moment before he quietly whispered, "he kissed me."

"Oh," Nico said lamely, honestly not seeing that coming. He had never met Jon, but he seemed like the type of kid that would confess a crush first and then attempt a kiss later.

Damian nodded, face now bright red. "Exactly. It was totally unforeseen and out of the blue. Then, he pulls back and begins mumbling his apologies and how he didn't plan to do that. He said he was going to tell me that he had a crush on me for a while, but then he just suddenly did it."

Nico mentally smirked because he was totally in the nose about his guess on what type of kid Jon was. "What did you do?"

Damian sunk lower on the floor, covering his face with both hands before mumbling, "then I kissed him. I wasn't going to, and then suddenly I was doing it. As soon as I realized what I was doing, I pulled away, jumped off the silo, got on my batcycle, and came here."

"Has he texted you?" Nico asked.

Damian shrugged, now fully lying on the floor, hands still covering his face. "I threw my phone somewhere in the cave when I got there. I believe father now thinks I am fighting with Jon— damnit, I meant to say Kent."