Work Text:
A fair evening breeze danced through the leaves of the sprawling oak that sat proudly at the edge of the corn fields of the Kent family farm. The shadows were beginning to grow long in that lazy, late summer afternoon that left dappled sunlight spreading over the ground around the tree. The buzzing of cicadas had started up, only interrupted by the occasional bird song or Krypto huffing in his sleep as he sprawled over Jon in the protective way he had done so when Jon was only a baby.
Jon himself was lounging in one of the low hanging limbs of the oak. He busied himself with attempting to throw trick shots with a handful of acorns he had gathered through the decrepit tire swing that hung low on the other side of the tree. He wasn't very good at it. Throwing too hard meant pulverizing the acorn against the side of the much harder bark of the tree. Throwing too gently meant it lacked the momentum to get across the branches. When he did get it right, he usually just missed.
Physics wasn't his strong subject.
Eventually he ran out of acorns. Pinned to the tree as he was, he couldn't get any more and he was bored of his game anyhow. Instead he changed his focus to the reason he was sitting so still in the first place.
The short couple weeks Damian had spent away from the eternal gloom of Gotham had bronzed his skin to a nice, healthy brown. As he sat beneath the tree, hunched over his sketchbook, Jon was also able to notice the smattering of freckles that had appeared across the bridge of his nose and cheeks. He observed as his friend's long dark eyelashes flicked between his sketch and his subject matter, laser focused on his task. Jon was always a bit impressed when he saw Damian concentrate on something, his own brain too fast and busy to give anything his attention for too long.
He was drawing the barn. Jon never really understood what Damian saw in all the boring things he'd seen him drawing. Jon never understood why anyone would draw a barn when they could be drawing fun things like zombies or hamsters or zombie hamsters. He had said as much to Damian who rolled his eyes in his dramatically put upon way and called him dumb. Damian was always calling him dumb. Jon didn't really like it, but he thought Damian didn't really mean it either. After all, he was still spending the end of summer at the farm with him.
He was, however, begging to grow annoyed with how much attention his friend was giving the barn and not him.
"Hey Dami," he started, "you're older than me…"
"Congratulations, you learned to count."
"Ha ha," Jon answered lamely. He began to wriggle out from underneath Krypto. The dog yawned and began to float. The dog drifted over to a different limb to continue his nap. Now freed, Jon scooted off the side of the limb and drifted down towards the ground. Once, when he was younger, before his powers manifested, he had jumped out of the same old tree and twisted his ankle. Ma had wrapped it, lecturing him the whole time about being careful. He didn't really need that lecture anymore.
Sometimes Jon missed the swooping feeling of falling.
He landed gently beside Damian who still hadn't looked up from his work. "Have you ever kissed anyone?"
Damian's hand paused for the first time in an hour. "I assume you mean romantically."
Jon snorted. "Duh. Kissing your mom definitely doesn't count."
Damian hummed, whether in agreement or thought, Jon wasn't sure. "No, I haven't."
"Why not?"
This finally pulled Damian's attention away from his drawing, leveling Jon with a sideways frown. "What do you mean, why not?"
Jon grins at him, glad for a chance to start needling him into annoyance. "There's never been a girl that wanted to kiss you, huh?"
Damian scoffed. "How should I know? If there has been one, they haven't told me. And there hasn't been a girl or a boy that I've wanted to kiss either."
Jon's stomach flipped. He felt unbalanced for some reason over the thought that kissing a boy was also an option. It made sense now that he said it, though.
"You really have never wanted to?"
Damian frowned looking down at his drawing again. "Is that weird?"
Jon's heart ached. In all of their teasing and snarking at each other, it was often easy to forget that Damian simply did not have much experience with people in general and it was a point of some insecurity for him. "No, I don't think so."
They sat in silence for a moment. Jon became interested in a line of ants marching under a root, the dust floating in the air, the steady pounding of Damian's heart beside him.
"Why do you want to know?" His friend asked, uncharacteristically breaking the silence.
Jon shrugged. "Just curious, I guess. It looks… nice."
Jon could practically feel that ever intense gaze direct towards himself. He met it, suddenly shy, but curious to what he might find anyway.
Damian's eyes, like sea green pools, were fixed on Jon in a way that made goosebumps form down his arms. "If you wanted to…"
"Yeah!" Oh. That was loud. Jon blushed deeply.
Damian snorted and began to chuckle softly. "You're such a kid," he said, but his smile was fond and kind for a change. And then, as though it were nothing, he leaned in and kissed Jon on the lips. Sweet and gentle, just a brush of the lips and then he pulled back, color high in his cheeks and a small smile on his face.
Damian turned back to his drawing, his interest renewed in the boring old barn and seemingly oblivious to how Jon was transfixed by him. There was no corn or barn or old oak tree or tire swing or line of ants or dappled sunshine. For Jon in that moment there was only him and Damian and the swooping sensation of falling.