Damian Wayne (![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} grownup_robin) wrote in ![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} valarlogs,@ 2014-01-01 21:39:00 |
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What: Steph catches Damian beating up some thugs
When: Backdated: Friday, December 27th. Evening
Where: Near the CSUF Campus
Rating: Family Friendly
Status: Complete
Stephanie didn’t enjoy Anaheim at night. It was why she generally scheduled her classes during the day and liked to be away from campus as soon as she finished. Sure, CSUF was a pretty secure campus but in that neighborhood there was always stuff even the most security-minded missed. But none of that stopped her when a friend from the semester before called for help moving from the dorms to a rented room a block or two away from the student center. Thankfully her mother was off that night and so she borrowed the car making the move much easier for the two of them. Of course by the time they finished the sun was well down and she declined to linger about when her friend offered dinner. Her place might have had bars on the window’s but Stephanie’s mother’s little red Fiesta didn’t.
She was about to get in her car when she heard the very distinct and familiar sounds of violence close by. Now she could have gotten into her car and headed off but that wasn’t at all like Steph, she didn’t think about herself in that moment, just that something was going on that probably shouldn’t. Instead she got the tire iron out of the trunk, hid it behind her back then locked the car and started down the shoveled sidewalk to the back alley where she spotted a few figures under a streetlight.
Christmas had gone a lot better than Damian had expected. Of course he’d missed the traditions he’d had with his mother, but he’d enjoyed spending the day with Bran and his family. He’d never spent Christmas with quite so many people before since it had always been just him and Talia after his grandfather had died, so Thanksgiving and Christmas had been pretty intense even with Arya and her boyfriend in Scotland for Christmas. He’d been mostly shocked at the fact that Bran’s parents had gotten him a few gifts and while he assumed it had been mostly Bran’s suggestion, he was still grateful to them all.
He still wasn’t sure what to think about his talk with Alyssa just before Christmas or the crush he was developing on Stephanie and it was because of these two things that he’d decided to go out that night. Even after talking to Bran about everything, he’d still been dwelling and ultimately needed something to take his mind off the redhead and blond for a little while. Since Christmas he’d gone out twice, not really looking for trouble, but when he happened by a robbery or drug deal or whatever, he took it upon himself to intervene. Tonight was no different and was currently in the middle of a fight with two guys who looked like they’d probably dropped out of high school and had resorted to breaking into cars to make money. He hadn’t gone out in his Robin costume yet, instead he was wearing jeans and a black hoodie, with the hood pulled up, which somewhat resembled his cape, which also had a hood. However, unlike the first time he’d gone out like this, tonight he was wearing the domino mask from his costume.
Two on one. Even if the guy in the hood was doing well for himself it was still an unfair fight and Steph always rooted for the underdog. That being said the two guys really were clearly outclassed, both being well over six feet they likely relied on their size to intimidate but the fella in the hood moved like he knew that he was doing. If it hadn’t been violent and real it might have been interesting to watch but she wasn’t into that sort of thing. Violence, especially when one of the two guys could pull out a weapon at any time, was something she always thought needed to be ended quickly.
She came to the edge of where the lamp light was touching but she didn’t step into it, instead she remained there as the fight was obviously drawing to a close. Eventually one broke away, leaving his friend to the hooded man and tried to run past Stephanie. She took the tire iron from behind her and tossed it in a way that she was sure she would never be able to replicate ever again and it struck the man’s knee and slipped between his legs at the knee, causing him to trip. As the guy hit the ground she was already doing a fist pump, “Yes! She shoots, she scores!”
Damian had just delivered a knockout punch to the guy who hadn’t tried to get away when he heard the familiar behind him. As the guy hit the ground, he turned towards the voice, hoping that he’d been wrong and it wasn’t Stephanie, but as soon as he saw her, he knew he wasn’t that lucky. His first thought was that it was just like in the dreams, but then he remembered that unlike him, Stephanie didn’t have any training or abilities from the dreams and could have gotten hurt. After making sure that the guy he’d knocked out wasn’t going to be getting up, he really should invest in some zip ties if he was going to be doing this often, he turned to Stephanie, hood still up, “You could have gotten hurt.” When he spoke, he tried to lower his tone a little, disguise his voice so that she might not realize it was him.
“Psh,” she gave him a look, folding her arms. “Look at these guys, I could have sighed heavily at them and they would have broken in half. And anyway, you could have gotten hurt too. They could have been armed.” she tilted her head to the side and narrowed her eyes trying to decide if the guy was familiar or not. He didn’t exactly talk to her like he didn’t know her, after all most people would have said ‘thank you’, not grumble about her possibly getting hurt. “Is that a mask? Do I know you?” of course the picture finally clicked in her head and she moved her hands to her hips. “Come here, let me have a look at that mask.”
“I know what I’m doing. I would have been fine if they had been armed.” For a moment, the banter reminded him of the dreams, but then she asked to see his mask and it set off warning bells in Damian’s head. His mask wasn’t exactly generic. For one thing, it was green and the edges ended in points on either side. “Yes, it’s a mask. Why do you want to see it?” He lowered his head slightly, his hood casting a shadow over his eyes in an attempt to hide the mask as he took a step back.
Stephanie took a step forward. “Sure you do. Why don’t you want me to see your mask?” and then another. “You worried about something? Like maybe it takes more than a mask to obscure your face enough that someone who knows you won’t be able to tell?” she took another step closer. If he was worried that she would know who he was then it narrowed down the list of possible suspects, after all now many people ran around at night and beat up ‘bad guys’ while wearing a mask. Of course the trouble was that everyone in the picture she got knew her better than she knew them so it was entirely possible that even if this guy took off his mask that she wouldn’t know who he was. “Come on, just tell me who you are, I promise not to snatch your mask away if you tell me.”
If Damian were his dream counterpart, he would have come back with a snide remark in an attempt to hurt her or knocked her out or even used a zipline for a hasty exit, but he didn’t have any of the nifty toys that his utility belt held and he wasn’t the kind of guy who would ever hit a girl; at least not when they weren’t attacking him. It wasn’t that he didn’t want Stephanie to know it was him, but he didn’t know how she’d react to it. He didn’t want her to think that he went out looking for a fight or get lectured about putting himself in harms way.
He almost brought up the whole secret identity excuse, but in the end, he figured that it was probably a moot point, because she already had a picture that he was in where he was in costume and she was going to start dreaming eventually. So with a sigh, he lowered his hood and removed the mask, “It’s me.”
Several sarcastic remarks immediately came to her, her lips curling into an amused smile but she was kind enough not to make any of the jokes in her head. She shouldn’t have been surprised and to tell the truth she wasn’t, given the look of the people in her picture, how they all looked like sorts of super heroes, it only made sense that they try to be the same here. After all, she would probably be doing the same if she had the gear and the training.
“Well, there it is then.” she dropped her arms. “So you’re, what? Prowling the streets, waiting for the criminal element to slip up so you can swoop in and put a stop to their nefarious activities?” she might have been smiling but she wasn’t really making fun of him. “Aren’t you worried about getting caught? You’re so close to CSUF,” she pointed behind her in the general direction of the university. “Those blue light pole looking thingys have buzzers and a direct line to campus police, which are part of the city police, both of which sorta cover about five blocks around the campus and they have a fantastic response time.”
“No. I mean, not exactly.” Damian sighed, running a hand through his hair and slid the mask into his pocket, “I was just...I was trying to keep my mind off some things and…” It occurred to him that he didn’t really need to explain anything to her, but telling her that he hadn’t been out looking for criminals would never fly since he’d the domino mask on. “No one has caught me yet.” Of course this was only the third time or so that he’d gone out like this; of course the first time had just been a coincidence that he’d run into any criminals.
“I caught you.” she pointed out, hands sliding into her pockets as she watched him. She only really knew about his mother though she had read a little bit of his conversation with Danny about his ex-girlfriend. She hadn’t finished it as she had read the part where Danny told his ‘coworker’ that he was planning on marrying her and that had put her off going back to look more. They had only known each other a few days by that point and it had freaked her out more than a little and she had decided to deal with it by pretending she hadn’t seen it. So anything else Damian might have mentioned in his replies she wasn’t wholly aware of, but that was fine. Better he tell her himself if he wanted her to know.
She eventually glanced up at the sky, picking out a few stars before she looked back to him. “Is there more crime to foil or will the masked crimefighter deign to stop his great work for the evening and grab a burger with the lowly Stephanie Brown?”
Damian had no idea that Stephanie might have seen that. He had no idea that Stephanie was the girlfriend that Danny had been talking about. When she asked if he’d join her for a burger, Damian glanced at the two guys they knocked out, checking to see if either one of them was coming to any time soon then pulled out his phone, called the police to tell them where they could find the two guys. “Okay. I could go for a burger now.” He slipped his phone into his pocket and made sure that his mask was still there.
She nodded, more to herself than to him, glad he didn’t try to turn her down. She had a few hundred questions for him and out in the middle of the street at night likely wasn’t the best place to be talking about what he was up to and their soon to be shared dreams. Moving to where the guy she had knocked down was laying she picked up the tire iron, swinging it up and letting rest against her shoulder with a, perhaps over confident, smile. “Do you have the ability to fly or do you need a ride? I have a car.”
Damian smirked a little as he watched her retrieve her tire iron then shook his head, “No, I don’t fly.” Damian had actually taken a bus or two from Laguna Beach to Anaheim, now that he and Alyssa had broken up, he didn’t exactly have access to a car like he had when he was living with her and her mother. He really needed to look into getting one soon. He’d briefly considered declining the offer of a burger, but all that fighting had really helped to work up an appetite and as if on cue, his stomach grumbled, “So, I’m ready when you are.”
“Yeah,” she nodded her head in the direction of the car, telling him where they were headed even if it couldn’t be seen from where they were. “Hopefully the cops are busy tonight, I’d like to be away from here before they show up.” She didn’t hate cops, or not nearly as much as one would have expected given that she had grown up with a father that had serious mafia ties, they simply had a history of being a nuisance as far as she was concerned. They showed up too late or too early, asked the wrong questions the few times they had questioned her, not believed her the first dozen times she had given them information about her father and his mafia bosses. At least it inspired her to do better, though she was usually more concerned with her plans to be a social worker, now it might inspire her to other action.
It was a very short walk and she was very happy to see her mother’s car still sitting there all safe and unmolested as she unlocked the doors. “The place I have in mind, it’s not as high-falutin as even Granny’s, is that gonna be a problem?”
Damian walked beside her as they headed back towards the campus and her car, hands in his pockets. He hoped the police got there before the guys came to, because even though they hadn’t been major criminals, they still deserved to face a little justice. When they reached the car, he quirked a brow at her, “High what?” If he were his dream counterpart he would have come back with some snide remark, probably about how she didn’t need a hamburger, which was extremely rude and how he hadn’t been kicked in the head or hung upside down from some high building, Damian didn’t know. He could only hope that dream Damian got a clue sometime soon.
“Fancy. High-falutin means fancy.” She shot him a ‘do you live under a rock’ look as she got in and started the car up, having to turn down Muse as it came blaring over the sound system. “It’s not a dump but it is a dirty little diner that serves awesome burgers and that saves us from having to drive all the way to Granny’s.” where people know me and would notice if I had a burger with some guy they had never seen before, she thought. Not that she was worried about any trouble from her coworkers but after Ruby put that thing up on the fridge more than a few would likely think Damian was the guy they had been talking about.
“Oh,” Damian nodded as he got into the car, quirking a brow at the look she gave him, “Hey, not all of us have word a day toilet paper.” He teased, smirking then buckled his seatbelt, “And as long as I don’t find any cockroaches in my food then I’m fine,” He’d only been in the diner once so he had no idea the anyone might speculate that Damian was Stephanie’s boyfriend.
“Nah, no cockroaches,” she smirked back, shaking her head as they took off. “Well, no live ones anyway. It might be too dirty to find any live ones. Believe me, a few of the guys in my ‘women, crime and criminal justice’ once spent a very drunk night on their knees searching the place for them. A few pink rabbits but they didn’t find a single live roach.”
The place wasn’t far, thankfully in a nicer and better lit part of town, and Steph knew the way by heart. It was her usual spot for lunch when she was at school and it was always worth the little drive. “So… Crimefighting. Sounds cool. Super hero stuff is cool too. Though with just the mask you didn’t look like one. More like some of the frat guys during rush week.”
“Oh well as long as there are no live ones it should be fine,” Damian smirked as Stephanie drove them to the diner, glancing over at her as she spoke, “Well, it’s more inconspicuous than running around in a red, green and black kevlar suit and cape.” He’d tried on the Robin costume once since it had appeared, but he wasn’t exactly comfortable going out in it, in public yet. The mask by itself was a different story, “And I wasn’t just strolling the streets. I was actually on the roof of that building when I saw the guys. Okay, so the fire escape.” It would have been harder to see the guys from the roof without any type of binoculars so he had been wandering fire escapes and alleys.
She raised an eyebrow at him before looking back at the road, “Yeah, because a guy in a hoodie walking on rooftops and fire escapes in the middle of the night is gonna have an easy time if he’s spotted.This might be California but I still don’t think it’s a good idea to be running around in a hood like that, seems like a good way to get the cops called on you or worse. Besides, if anyone sees you in a costume these days they’ll probably think that you’re just cosplaying something and ignore you.” She might have sounded disapproving of the way he did it but she was actually very interested. “How long have you been doing this?”
So maybe she had a point there. He hadn’t really thought about that before now. In the dreams he didn’t really care about stuff like that, but Gotham was a very different place than Orange County and costumed crime fighters were pretty much the norm. “No, I’ve only done it a few times. The first time I just happened to be out when some guy was trying to steal a girl’s purse and I stopped him.” He turned his head to gaze out the window as he continued, “The last few times I’ve done it purposely to try and take my mind off my recent breakup.” He hadn’t mentioned Alyssa before, but he figured that if he was telling the truth then he might as well tell it all.
It sounded more than a little self-destructive to her, putting one’s self in harm’s way, but she could understand it. Maybe Steph was only so interested because she herself wanted to get out of her father’s long criminal shadow, so she wasn’t about to comment on his reasons other than a, “That’s rough, I’m sorry to hear you’re having a rough time.”
“Do you think you’ll keep at it?” she asked as they pulled onto the street that led to the little diner. “Once you feel better I mean? Or will I still have to carry mace and use my bike helmet as a weapon if I have to leave campus late?”
“Yeah, it kind of sucks. Okay, really sucks.” Damian hadn’t wanted to bring up Alyssa tonight, but he was glad that things hadn’t gotten awkward when he’d brought it up. When she questioned him, he shrugged, “Maybe. I mean, it’s what I do in my dreams and it’s kind of exhilarating. I’ve been training for the last couple of months cause my ex-girlfriend was doing it after she got kidnapped and then I just inherited my abilities from the dreams over time. Like, in the dreams, just from the training I had in them alone, I was a lot stronger than a normal ten year old, so now I’m stronger than a regular seventeen year old.” That came in handy a lot actually.
“Seventeen.” she repeated. “Well, if we get stopped by the cops just remember, I never laid a hand on you.” The age of consent in California was eighteen, Steph had come across that more than once in her criminal justice coursework. She hadn’t realized that she had actually remembered that until that joke left her lips. It was more than a little uncomfortable though so she tried to distance herself from it as they pulled into the parking lot. “So you can actually use that sword then? Congrats on not being an asshole and going after your ex with it, all things considered crime fighting looks like the best option there.”
“Don’t worry. You’re not one of the bad guys I’d want arrested.” Damian felt his cheeks flush slightly as he spoke and was glad that it was dark in the car. Alyssa had been only a little bit older than him, but he supposed she still could have gotten in trouble for dating him if anyone had told on them; then again, he could have turned around and turned Logan in for sleeping with Alyssa, but that would have only showed that he had never really gotten over his jealousy issue. “Yeah I can. It was like….as soon as I picked it up, it just felt right. I just had to learn to use it.” He shook his head at the next thing she said, “I’d never hurt Alyssa.” She might have hurt him when she broke up with him, but he could never physically hurt her.
“Good.” she said, putting the car into park then shutting it off after she found a spot in the mostly empty parking lot. It was a nice change from her father and the boys she had grown up with, anyone weaker was fair game so Steph had gone to lengths to show she wasn’t worth the trouble she would inflict. It might have worked on some bullies and a few of her exes but when it came to her father and how he had treated her mother they had discovered a willingness, if not eagerness, to do harm to each other.
Inside Steph smiled hello to the one waitress and cook on duty, they knew her by face and name now, and led Damian to a booth next to the window. It wasn’t nearly as dirty as Steph had claimed but it wasn’t as nice as Granny’s either. They believed in fat and grease and salt and butter and bacon and all that other stuff that was apparently so bad, and that was why she loved the place. That and the coffee was always under a buck. She didn’t even have to look at the menu, she knew it by heart now. “So can I ask about what happened with you and Alyssa that’s got you upset enough to beat up criminals? You don’t have to answer if you don’t want.”
“So, this is the really dirty diner you were going on about?” Damian quirked a brow, a smirk upon his lips as he slid into the booth across from her, “Think you might have exaggerated a bit there?” He had just opened the menu when she asked about Alyssa and he didn’t answer right away. Bran was the only person he’d told the entire story to so far, but then again Bran was his closest friend. Sure, he was also Alyssa’s friend, but not the same way that his other friends were. He hadn’t realized it until they’d broken up, but Kitty might have been his friend, but she was closer to Alyssa, so he couldn’t exactly talk to her the same way he could talk to Bran, “It was really abrupt. In the end, she has some stuff she has to work out, which she wasn’t able to do while we were together.” He left out the part where she’d told him that she had been pretending for the last couple of months. That would just make Alyssa look like a bitch to anyone who didn’t really understand what she had gone through with Bellatrix.
“Ah, I see.” she really didn’t but she didn’t know the girl and she really didn’t know Damian either beyond the few times they talked and the promise that they would share dreams. “I’m sorry,” she had said that before but it was true. “I gotta say going around, doing what you’re doing, it wouldn’t be the first thing to pop into my head after a break-up. In fact mine is usually ice cream and it’s popping into my mouth because I need to have at least one amusing cliche when it comes to matters of the heart. But I bet it feels good, all cathartic and whatever. And if you do get found out ever it’s a great way to meet a new girl, superheroes are still sexy right? You start getting noticed and you’ll probably have a harem of fan-girls, bright costume or not.”
“Well, I spent the first month and a half moping around when I wasn’t meditating or training. It wasn’t until just recently that I decided to try something else to take my mind off everything.” Arya had a sword too, so they had sparred with each other a few times. Sure, they both had very different types of swords, but it still worked well enough, “In my case it was pizza not ice cream.” He laughed at the next part and shook his head, “It’s the cape, right? Girls love the cape?” He didn’t actually think that he’d wind up with a fan club, but it was nice to think that it was possible, “But then I’d probably wind up with a stalker.”
“Girls love the cape, even if it makes no sense at all in battle where someone could use it to grab you.” He was right though, something about capes were irresistible. She smirked, “You mean you don’t have a stalker already? Just what is the world coming to? And anyway, that’s when you get yourself a sidekick, help you fight off the stalkers and fan-girls and the bad guys. Though at seventeen I don’t want to think about how young your sidekick would have to be. Maybe you could have one of those wolves instead? Girls usually dig dogs too.”
The waitress didn’t as much come to their table as much as she did shout from her spot behind the counter, asking what they wanted. She ordered her usual, a patty melt, lots of fries, strawberry milkshake, then let Damian order. After she slouched into the booth a little and pulled out the picture she had received, setting it down in front of him. Someone had doodled all over it, particularly on Damian who had horns a tail and a pitchfork. “So what does the ‘R’ stand for?”
“A sidekick? I am the sidekick.” Robin had always been Batman’s sidekick; well ever since Dick had originated the role and since then there had been quite a few of them and only one had died. Of course Jason hadn’t stayed dead for long and Damian had the bullet wounds as a reminder. He still didn’t understand how that worked, but he had a number of scars now that he hadn’t before he’d started dreaming. Scars that not too long ago he’d been self conscience about, but now he didn’t mind them so much. “Oh god, if I brought Summer or Nymeria with me there wouldn’t be anything left of the bad guys for the cops to take into custody.” Okay, so maybe there’d be some body parts, but those would go to the morgue.
After Stephanie ordered, Damian ordered a bacon cheeseburger, a side of fries and a chocolate shake then glanced down at the table as Stephanie took out the picture. Sure he’d seen everyone in his dreams, but seeing the picture made it all feel so much more real. “Robin.” He said, softly, blue eyes on the picture as he reached out to turn it towards him, only touching the corner of it since he didn’t want to get fingerprints on it.
“Robin. Like the bird, huh?” she asked, looking over the picture of them and the others. Little did she know that she had once had the mantle of Robin, that she was fired and ‘died’, maybe then the name wouldn’t have made her smirk like it was some kind of joke. “The red makes sense, but what’s with the green and yellow?” she teased.
“I’m guessing you were your Dad’s sidekick?” she nodded towards the picture, eyes on the tallest cowled and caped man that on the back was marked as Bruce Wayne. “Since I’m wearing that same symbol he is does that make me a sidekick too? What is that? A bat or an owl or something?” She wasn’t sure if she liked the idea of being a sidekick or not. On the one hand it was nice to be a part of something bigger but on the other it sort of implied she wasn’t good enough to work on her own. “Oh, and sorry for the doodles, I didn’t do them, even if they are in my handwriting.”
Damian nodded, “I wasn’t the first. Dick Grayson was. I was the fifth Robin.” He lifted his gaze to Stephanie as he pushed the picture to the middle of the table. He’d gotten a picture too, but in his it was him and Dick, swinging from grappling lines between buildings. He’d been able to tell it was Dick as opposed to Bruce, because Dick was smaller than his father. Not quite as imposing, “At first I was.” He didn’t want to get into how Bruce had died. He didn’t want to tell Stephanie everything before she had dreams of her own. “It’s okay. I mean, I’m not surprised. Like I said, we didn’t really get along in the dreams I’ve had.”
“At least you’re not, uh,” she had to flip it over to check the name associated with the guy who had a few teeth blacked out, along with an eyepatch and stink lines, and then flipped it back. “Tim Drake. I guess I really don’t like him. He another brat? And his costume is by far the silliest. Dream me really didn’t need to go the extra mile with this one.” She looked back to him with a gentle shrug and rested her forearms against the table. “But yeah, can I say how weird this all is? Because it really feels weird.”
Damian could have laughed at that, but he didn’t want to tell Stephanie that the reason she wrote on Tim’s picture was cause they’d dated. Damian didn’t know all of what had happened between them, but he knew it hadn’t ended well, but he was pretty sure that everyone in the bat family knew that, “What is? Talking about people and things from a dream world?” Damian would agree and had thought the same thing for months now.
“Yeah, I mean I haven’t even had these dreams yet and I’m trying to piece together what I’m gonna see in them. And this life I see seems crazy. Me, a superhero,” she smirked and shook her head. “I mean, gravity and me, we’re not friends. I might occasionally do a little parkour but I usually end up falling on my ass. It’s a little hard to imagine, you know? Not that I wouldn’t kinda love it, you know? Helping people, stopping crime, getting to smack around criminals a little. It’s more than a little empowering. If I actually had the skills I would be all over it.”
“I could teach you, if you wanted.” Damian hadn’t actually thought about it before he spoke and at that moment the waitress came back with their food so he had to wait until she was gone to say anything else, “If you wanted that is. Like I said, I’ve retained the training I learned in the dreams and have been training here and you saw me. I mean, I don’t think I’m the best or anything, but I thought I’d offer.” Real smooth, Damian.
“That sounds kinda life-threatening and like a really bad idea, but at the same time it’s a totally awesome idea.” she smirked, pointing a fry at him before popping it into her mouth. Even if she just stopped at training, which she knew wouldn’t be enough for her, it would be a lot of extra work for her, her free time would likely be nonexistent and she could end up dead or shot or those thousand other terrible things. But when held up against the weight of the good she could do as well as the good it would do her to learn how to better defend herself, it all fell short and she could only nod as her mouth cleared again. “I’d like that, as long as you don’t bring out the sword.”
Damian hadn’t actually expected her to say yes, “Really? The Starks have a huge backyard, so if they’re okay with you coming over, we can practice out there. Just have to make sure neither of us wind up in the pool.” He couldn’t help but smirk a little and took a sip of his shake to hide it. “And I promise not to bring out the sword. Not till you’re ready anyway.”
“I’m gonna have to invest in some like padding, or something. It’s been ages since I did any gymnastics or anything really physical like that in years. Like I said, me and gravity, we’re not friends.” she smiled. “And if you’re gonna pull out a sword at any point I’m gonna demand full body armor because I could totally see myself getting cut on it simply from being in the same general area.” after a bite she had to pause and let out a quiet laugh. “Let’s hope my enthusiasm makes up for my lack of innate skill.”
“You wouldn’t need padding. I’d go easy on you.” Damian said, taking a bite of his burger, “I definitely wouldn’t spar with you like with those guys before.” Okay, so that had been less sparring and more ass kicking, “And you can’t say that after the way you wielded that tire iron.” He quirked a brow at her and took another sip of his shake, “That was a pretty meant swing. And I mean, I won’t always be around like I was tonight so you should know how to defend yourself against guys like that.” The area was pretty dodgy after all.
“I carry mace, and punch like a heavyweight, I can usually look after myself.” Years of fighting her father had at least taught her how to get someone off her long enough for her to reach for a weapon. She just happened to like weapons in the bat to tire iron range of melee weapons, not a surprise when in the dreams her weapon of choice would be a massive Bo staff. “Can you teach me to take a gun away from someone? That seems like something I really ought to know how to do.”
Damian nodded, “Yeah, I can do that.” In the dreams he’d probably just break the arm of anyone who pulled a gun on him, but in the waking world he’d try to disarm them before resorting to something like that, so he’d show Stephanie the less arm breaky way of doing it, “So, how about when this snow is gone, we decide on a time to start? It’d be better to do it without snow and cold and stuff.”
“Yeah, getting smacked around in the cold is a bit too much for me.” she teased, he was lucky that she wasn’t feeling too mischievous tonight, otherwise she might have said that louder with a ‘please don’t hit me again’ tone to her voice. She swore those impulses were Danny’s influence. “I’ll be going back to class probably by the time the snow is gone, but I’m sure I can find time between that, Granny’s and UPs. I’ll give you my number after we’re finished here, you can give me a call and let me know when is good for you.”
“I mean it’s not as cold here as it can get back in Chicago, but still, snow and ice make for a treacherous training ground.” Damian smirked and picked up a few fries, “I’m gonna be taking my GED soon, but I usually have a good amount of free time even with work.” He was sure that they would be able to figure out time to train and he would be lying if he said he wasn’t looking forward to spending more time with Stephanie.