Curse Of The Red-Heads

Chapter One

Pairings: Tim/Kon, Damian/Colin and mentions of Dick/Barbara, Jason/Roy/Kory, and Steph/Cass.

...

It all begins with a pack of cheap red hair dye. Steph waltzes into the manor, incredibly proud of her new, bright-red locks, and Damian grimaces (more for the fact that Steph was in the manor, than over the new look).

"What do you think, baby bat?" Steph questions teasingly, spinning around.

"You look horrid," Damian replies calmly, before sliding a spoonful of cereal into his mouth. He chews, and swallows. "And it makes you look fatter than you already are, fatgirl."

Steph beams.

"You look nice," Cassandra says calmly. Damian frowns, because she was his sister — and the only sibling he had who wasn't completely inadequate — so she was supposed to be on his side. His frown deepens when Steph's smile widens, and it threatens to split his face when she leans over and pecks his sister lightly on the cheek.

Damian shoves another spoonful of cereal into his mouth and chews forcefully. For some reason — and at the moment, he wasn't even sure he knows why — it bothers him.

...

Damian feels a similar sense of unease a week later when Dick and Barbara pop in for dinner. Dick is his usual, beaming, idiotic self, and Barbara...

...has red hair.

Damian cocks his head to the side; obviously he's known from the moment he met her (it'd be pretty hard not to notice) but...in this moment, it seems all the more striking.

Damian shrugs it off. Grayson has always had a certain fondness for red hair, after-all. And a fondness for Gordon. The fact that she is standing in front of him, romantically attached to his adoptive brother, and...incredibly red-headed...isn't a surprise.

...

The fact that Todd is sharing a bed with both Harper and that alien woman should have come as a surprise. Then again, it is Todd, and Todd has always been touched in the head.

Grayson seems far more disturbed by the number of people in the relationship than Damian is. He is standing still, his eyes bugging out of his head, his hands flapping wildly, yelling, "Roy and Kory?! Seriously Jason?!"

Damian is more bothered by the fact that they both have red hair. Surely that was some sort of record? How many red-heads were there in the world?

...

When Damian walks in on his sister — the only hope for his imbecilic family — and Fatgirl, together on the living room couch, he decides that the world must be conspiring against him.

That, or there was some sort of curse — a red-headed curse.

Later on, when he demands that Fatgirl end the relationship, cut off all ties with Cassandra and the family, move to some remote country and — most importantly — change that ridiculous hair colour, she laughs and ruffles his hair.

Damian's eyes narrow. He wonders if his father would allow an exception to the 'no killing' rule in this scenario. After all, desperate times call for desperate measures.

...

For some time, there is hope.

Grayson is attached to a red-head, Cassandra is attached to a (fake) red-head, Todd is attached to two red-heads — but there is hope for the family. And that hope comes in the form of (as much as he hates to say this) Drake.