Halloween Prompts No 31 (part 4)

me, seeing a fic writer I like in the comments of an random fic

Okay but listen to me-

by this post

Dead Serious Oblivious Dating Trope

AKA "Damian thinks flirting/dating entails a lot more violence than the average person and Danny's confused as to why this vigilante keeps prepositioning him for battles" idea!

Okay, so, I know Damian went to live with Bruce when he was still a kid, 10 or something, but what if he joined the Batfam when he was older? Like imagine he's had an entire childhood and adolescence in the League of Assassins, so he's raised in this culture of being The Best (i.e., strongest fighter, intelligent and knowledgeable, etc.). And maybe the LoA typically follows the tradition of arranged marriages, but you may court someone if they're seen as an equal. Talia with Bruce, for example. And!! It's not courting like the "sweet serenading, fan-fluttering, going for a walk in a park with a chaperone" Bridgerton-type courting.

In the League of Assassins, you court by battling your intended's guardian to the death.

So, fast-forward to Damian learning how to assimilate into Gotham city culture. He still struggles to learn his place in the Batfam, but he's older and has a better grasp on his emotions; no trying to kill Tim, no constant threats of death and dismemberment, no jealously protecting the title of Heir. He's... kind of like Bruce actually. Damian is scarily competent, logical, and level-headed but super intense.

Danny, who's been living in Gotham for awhile and has gotten to know the Batfam fairly well, meets the newest addition while on patrol. Let's say he's still Phantom but cosplays as a Meta. Bruce let him stay in Gotham because he's a sucker for a black-haired, blue-eyed, abused kids.

Their introduction goes about as well as the Batfam expects. Damian is all business, only offering a quick nod and his name before returning his focus to patrol. Danny's maybe a bit taken aback but doesn't take it too personally since he'd already been given the rundown by Tim.

Damian and Danny end up patrolling together while Batman and Cass investigate some lead by the docks or something. Their night turns pretty badly when Clayface attacks. Damian ends up being the damsel in distress since he's only ever faced human enemies; even the deadliest opponents in the League could still be killed using swords or the usual combat weapons. Danny ends up using his powers to defeat Clayface before Batman can come back.

And then Danny goes home, content that he was able to let loose a little without Batman there to supervise him, and doesn't think about it after. Damian, however, is downright enamored because Danny was terrifying while fighting. His movements were lupine like a panther, a comfortability in his posture that spoke of decades in combat; his eyes turned Lazarus Pit green, chilling in its intensity. His skin took on a ghostly pallor and Damian could've sworn his teeth sharpened. He looked like a deity of War.

(Danny doesn't know this, of course; he was just happy to enjoy a really good fight since he hasn't unleased his Full Ghost powers in a long minute.)

A couple weeks pass and Danny's invited to a Wayne family dinner. Except when he shows up, Damian - who he thought he'd kind of bonded with since he'd literally saved the guy from Clayface - tries to kill him. Straight up: full assassin regalia, recently polished sword, genuinely throwing his all into the battle.

The Batfam try to intervene but Damian easily (and painfully, as Jason was flipped face-first into a table, Steph was stabbed, Dick broke his elbow) fought off. In the end, it was Danny who froze Damian and yelped a frazzled, "What the fuck, dude?" Bruce agreed to dethaw his son if he never, ever drew his sword at the dinner table again and explained why in the world he randomly attacked Danny unprompted.

Except Damian's response is to apologize and formally proposition Danny to a "battle to rights"... and the Batfam are all like, wtf?? What is that?? They're thinking maybe the rights to the Wayne inheritance, but Danny was never adopted by Bruce (he'd had enough of millionaires trying to adopt him so he'd politely declined all the Batfam's attempts to rope him into the family; Dick, Babs, and Jason of all people included).

The thing is that Danny's parents disowned him, he doesn't consider Vlad to be his guardian, and Jazz isn't really in the picture here. Bruce isn't considered his adopted father figure, either. So, Damian concluded the next reasonable course of action was to fight Danny for his right to marry him.

Cue months of hilarious misunderstandings where the Batfam try to keep Damian separated from Danny since he keeps trying to fight him... and worse, is that Damian loses every damn fight. Danny has non-human powers and endless knowledge of dead languages, cultures, space, history, etc. Damian likes him so, so much but he can't win the battle to rights and it's driving him insane!! He calls his mother to vent his frustrations and she only encourages him, tells him that he shouldn't want to marry someone he can beat so easily, that he picked his intended well.

It gets to the point where Damian's trying to use any and all knowledge of Danny's weaknesses. It just makes him more obsessed because there doesn't seem to be any (there are, but they aren't on Earth and/or are locked down in the Fenton Works labs, untraceable to anyone not in the GIW).

And Danny's just like, what the hell!! Why the hell is this guy targeting him over and over again? The worst part is that Damian is actually very intelligent and thoughtful - during their duels, they quip back and forth in ancient languages, discuss thought-proving topics, and when Danny beats him, they have a quiet moment to compliment each other's fighting styles. They discuss ancient history and art together. Damian is one of the few people who can actually match Danny's odd tidbits of random knowledge, as he'd been extensively educated while in the LoA.

Finally, Danny just asks, "Why do you keep trying to fight me?? Do you just hate me or something??" (He hopes not. Danny's starting to like Damian a bit too much, especially after their fights when Damian offers to cook him some of Alfred's most popular recipes. Danny's a terrible cook so he actually looks forward to having a surprisingly good meal, sans the attempted poisoning at times.)

And Damian just... stops. He's utterly flabbergasted and perhaps a little bit exasperated since it's been months of being unable to win the battle to rights. "Why would I request to court you if I hate you, habibi?"

Danny's like, "Huh???"

Damian explains how courting works in the LoA and why it's been on-sight ever since the Clayface fight. And everything just clicks for Danny!! He's also kind of... flattered? Like, he's never been wanted so badly that someone would fight to the death for him (Danny's just like "he's confused but he's got the spirit!" about the whole "if Danny doesn't have a guardian, I'll just fight him instead" logic).

So, he's like, "Of course, I'll date you!!"

It'd probably be an adjustment period since Damian's idea of a romantic date is watching his boyfriend go Full Ghost on supervillains. He'd just be heart-eyeing at him the entire time. And it's not like Danny's not having a good time!! He just expected there'd be more date-night activities and less patrol-night activities. So, Danny introduces Damian to more "regular" hobbies, like going to the zoo, movie nights, bookshop dates, etc.

(another side idea in my head is Damian introducing Danny to Talia and Ra's al Ghul, like, "This is Danny Fenton, my intended." But Danny is decked out in his Ghost King attire, crown included, and introduces himself as King of Infinite Realms, Space, and the Dead. Meanwhile his boyfriend is just looking at him with this look of utter besotted lovesick pride. There's so much potential!!)

Danny gets adopted a lot

Danny travels a lot, always looking for the best places to see the stars and dealing with ghost shenanigans and lot of people think this poor sleep deprived kid needs help and before he knows it he’s been adopted.

His parent don’t mind and actually love the fact that so many nice people care about their son so much they decide to adopt him.

Of course they add them to the rotation of adults in charge of reminding him to eat and sleep, and keep a close eye on him.

None of the heroes that adopted him are aware that they are one of many. Not until the Fentons send out a parent network message informing them that Danny would be going to another dimension for awhile and not to worry his grandfather Chronos will make sure he’s eating daily

The heroes end up joining a an adopter anonymous group

(Sam and tuck have a betting pool on who will adopt hm next while jazz takes this opportunity to psychoanalyze loving super heroes)

"Baba!"

Danny smiled as he toweled his hair dry. He loved hearing his little one yell from the living room of his-now thier- lair.

The circumstances of his conception were irrelevant. He loved his kiddo very much, hence the abundance of photo albums and home videos chalked full of his kid doing random stuff. The one with him in his high chair stuffing cheerios into his mouth is his favorite solely for the fact it caught him trying to stuff them up his nose a few times. Definitely something to show future dates when he's older.

His smile fell when he heard anothers voice. No one should have access to his lair. They were in the Infinite Realms for stars sake.

Rushing out of the bathroom in only his sweatpants he charged into the living room to find it filled with capes. More specifically different (largely in costume) versions of Tim Drake. Uh oh.

How did this happen?

"Baba!" He looked down at thier child who was smiling up at him from the arms of one of the younger Tims, showing off his brand new baby fang and bloody hand. Danny rushed into the kitchen to get some alcohol pads and some bravery badges, walking past the summoning circle he had on his wall and taking note of the tiny bloody handprints near the bottom of it.

Crap. That was meant to summon friends and family into the lair. His little star must have tried summoning his father.

After bandaging his kid up and kissing the area he smiled and said, "all better!" Which earned him a giggle from the one year old and an odd look from the child still holding him.

"Tim?" The vigilante looked startled, but Danny didn't give him a chance to recover, "How about you take the little one into the living room and wait with the others? I need to make myself decent before I come explain things."

The kid looked skeptical but agreed and left in that direction.

Danny made his way to his room, and after chasing out two teenage birds who somehow snuck past him into there, he finally got dressed and chased more out of his toddlers room before making it to the living room.

Feeling a room full of eyes on him he sighed and conjured more couches from the ectoplasm in his lair, ignoring some startled shouts as he sat down.

There were a lot of different Tims here. Three adults all in gear, one good two evil, about seven teens, three in gear while four in civvies. Two of the civilian ones were the boys he had caught snooping in his room for clues.

Lastly there were three boys, two in gear with one in a civilian outfit.

Thats a total of thirteen (13) Tims.

"Okay, to start off id like to apologize on behalf of my son. We didn't mean to summon any of you."

The Robin holding Danny son chimed in, "How did he summon us?"

"Kiddo is too small to properly pronounce things yet. Hence why his calling you "baba" instead of "papa"."

He ignored the surprised sounds and questions and just let that sink in before adding, "To clarify, no. None of you are actually the father."

Danny waited patiently for them to calm down and ignored more questions, "I was with an alternate version of you who turned out to be evil-ish and wanted to eliminate all superpowers from existence or something, a fact I didn't know at the time."

"Anyway, he purposely sabotaged my birth control to get me pregnant knowing I wouldn't abort. He did this knowing that when his plan started to come to fruition I'd be too far along to stop him. He had a counter to everything, even things we never told him about. I ended up having to sever the connection between this place- the Infinite Realms- and my home dimension, trapping him there with no way for him to get out and leaving me with no way to ever see my friends or family again. Questions?"

There were many.

This would go double since Uncle Ben was raising Peter for more of his formative years and would have a greater impact on his personality and habits.

Peter being flippy and quippy aside, he absolutely would have more act more like Jason.

Heck he’d most likely inherit Jason’s fashion sense as well.

Looks like Jason + Acts like Jason? Yeah that’s totally Jason’s kid

Peter brings up Uncle Ben directly or indirectly and imagine the batfam think that Uncle Ben is Dick. They have it all switched around.

It does not help that Uncle Ben is a police officer, and so is Dick.

Hiii, stumbling out of my mindscape with snippets of Spidey in Gotham embedded in my psyche like thorns on cheap flipflops after a walk on uncleared nature.

I'm just dying at the fact that according to canon jason and Dick look so alike they could have mistaken for one another in their teens, so people seeing Peter might think he's the child of either of the two. And I die againnn. Bc imagine him seeing Jason (Ben) and reacting bc of course he would, and everyone thinks he's the dad??? Screeching.

REAL istg Peter in Gotham is gonna be the reason I fail my bio course and end up in debt for no reason,,, worth it

But no seriously!! I've seen 1 (one!) Fic of Peter getting mistaken for Jason's mini me (welcome to the show by prodby_error) and it SLAPS

Listen. Right ok listen. Things go down, the usual happens, batfamily is stalking Peter, with the assumption this is either Jason's kid from the future or he's a lab baby, doesn't matter, they're stalking him THINKING they know who the daddy is. Dick, among everyone else, is lightly teasing Jason as they try to bring the sassy spider child into their folds. Only, wait, hold up, they just got a DNA sample and Jason,,, isn't the dad?

Dick's hear drops when he sees the test results. He's the father? But the kids a total copy of Jason!

And, sure, Dick and Jason look notably different NOW, what with Jason's height and scarred and lazarus makeover, but Bruce has distinct memories of mixing them up, of calling the wrong name at the wrong black-haired blue-eyed teen.

Jason feels,, kind of sad. He'd already mentally adopted the kid, who isn't even his apparently, but also he's now an uncle???

Not sure how Dick would respond. Disbelief? Anger? Confusion? Adoption mode? Hit or miss tbh

DPxDC idea that has been floating around my head for a few months now:

Gotham, given its whole... thing with Lazurus Pools and general bad vibes, has a ghostly representative. Lady Gotham, when she bothers to be coporeal, looks like an influential lady from the 1920s, straight art deco elegance. A real classy girl.

Jazz is touring college campuses around the US. She has full ride offers from Gotham University, Metroplis College, and Star City State, to name a few. Danny, upon hearing that his sister is going to GOTHAM of all cities, decides he is going on this trip with her. He might be only 15, but his big sister isn't getting mugged while he has half an afterlife left to live!

Lady Gotham is all a flutter! Why the last ghost king was so frumpy! King Phantom is so handsome and powerful, and he is coming to her city. She absolutely has to show off her best side! She feels like a teenaged girl getting her home ready before a new beau comes to visit. She's flustered, she's nervous.

Meanwhile, John Constatine wakes up with cosmic alarm bells going off because something really, really bad is happening. He investigates to dicsover that for the past three days Gotham has not had a single crime.

No murders, muggings, hell not even a single jay walker!

Gotham the most cursed place on the North Or South American continent is suddenly more squeaky clean than whatever small farm town Superman grew up in.

No crimes, no smog in the air. Crime Lords seemingly gone in a puff of smoke, Assassins asleep in their beds.

Its so freaky. Even Batman is spooked and he is never spooked by anything.

Constantine is certain some demon or other nefarious being is harnessing Gothams cursed energy for some evil plot. Gathering the power to use it like a nuclear blast. Batman is concerned about mass mind control.

Lady Gotham is doing the metaphysical equivalent of hiding all of your stuff in a closet before a guest comes over because you dont have time to actually clean. She had to shoulder the thing closed! She just knows that when the lock fails there will be a huge mess.

Jazz and her family are just surprised about how nice Gotham U's campus is. She'd heard it was so dark and dangerous, but everyone is smiling and pleasant to her! Danny is just happy Jazz is safe from various villains.

So we have Batman investigating his rogues gallery for mind control plots, Constatine hunting for demons, Jazz and her family taking a walking tour of Gotham U, and Lady Gotham using every bit of her ghostly powers to make sure her damned, cursed city doesnt embarrass her in front of her crush!

Danny had been following...ok, stalking his bio dad for a while now. He didn't have anywhere to go after Amity blew up and Clockwork just came out of no where almost a week after the initial incident to pretty much say, "Hey! You're adopted! Also you're a clone baby! This is the name and main alias of your parent and here's how you get to your home dimension!" Then he was gone.

Ancients.

Again, its not like he had anywhere to go and he had nothing better to do. So following around his fourteen year old father (his original?) and his scary bat mentor around a gross crime filled city at night seemed better than nothing. It felt kinda wierd calling him dad in his head but at the same time he didn't want to call him anything else. His inner Jazz said it might be his subconscious grasping for any safe or familial connections it can find, but whatever. He'll call him dad. Who will ever know?

He knows Clockwork told him not to interfere with any of the battles here. He was only ever meant to be a fly on the wall (actually he wasn't even supposed to be here but the old stopwatch couldn't really stop him) but it was so frustrating to see this Red Hood guy appear one day and start hurting his dad and not being able to do anything without exposing himself.

But nothing prepared him for the new Robin.

He hated the new Robin. He had everything Danny ever wanted and he chose to treat his family like that? The anger he felt towards RH was nothing compared to what he felt towards the new little bird. Damian would look around whenever he was alone, likely feeling they eyes on him from Phantoms intense glare. Good. He wanted the kid to know he was unwelcome.

Danny may have died at eight and become a superhero, but that didn't mean he couldn't hate another child vigilante if he was given enough reason to. Danny stopped aging after the explosion that ruined his afterlife and his inner Jazz had a lot of theories about that but in reality he knew why.

He had been waiting.

He knew the bats were mortal and one day Batman would be too old to fight and Robin -now Red Robin- would need a protégé of his own, right? Then he'd pop in and reveal himself as Tim Drakes long lost clone son and everything would be perfect.

Damian didn't just put a wrench in those plans. He ruined them entirely! If Batman is replaced by Damian than Red Robin will likely always be a sidekick.

And sidekicks don't need sidekicks of thier own.

So Phantom made it his afterlifes mission to make Damians stay in Gotham as miserable as possible to make him leave. He would make sure Damian would go back to whereever he came from at the first available opportunity, even if he had to possess the whole city to do it.

----

Danny took cover with some other kids in a nearby clothing store. The riddler was one of Batmans common rogues and was dangerous. He and the others watched in horror as a third party, likely a gang of some kind that didn't appreciate a hero battle on thier turf, stupidly fired a freaking rocket launcher at the two of them. The projectile missed the mark by a large margin and hit a nearby business tower, sending rubble and debris down of the two fighters. Riddler was quickly pinned while Batman eventually got pinned after a few really cool evasive maneuvers. Red Robin went to assist while Robin went to fight the gang members. A lucky shot from one of the gang members got RR in the leg, sending him down momentarily.

Danny managed to rally the other kids to help dig Batman and Riddler out from where they were trapped by stealing a bunch of black hoodies for them to wear and ripping up a black shirt for them to wear as blindfolds. They could see out of them just fine, but it would hide thier identities from all parties.

Together they rescued the pair and Danny silently rejoiced at helping Red Robin limp away and treat his wound at a safer location. As much as he wanted to let this interaction last, he knew he had to bouce once RR started asking him questions.

Phantom later looked at himself in the reflection of a piece of building material. He had been told before that a ghosts appearance could change based on significant events in thier afterlives. Seeing his former symbol on his chest had disappeared and the smooth crisp edges of the black blindfold that had materialized on his face he knew what had happened. And he knew he would do anything to be with his father again.

His efforts to get rid of Damian intensified.

Do yall remember that thread about how someone can win in a fight against a geologist with an obsidian blade?

And also that one with how cool scythe look but aren't v good weapons?

(Me subtly combines the two for maximum Danny phantom and the batfam shenanigans)

Danny is doing some training with Tim, who is like "bro u need a weapon" and Danny is like "oh i have one check it out 😃 "

Danny pulls out a scythe(and it's the most fantasy looking bs that seems like a strong blow could shatter) and Tim, known melee weapons expert, is like "hoho a scythe, while aesthetically pleasing, actually has no real maneuverability and will more than likely-"

and danny just knocks them out with the Fenton Creep stick he had behind his back.

Tim is unconscious and Dick comes in and is like"why is Tim on the floor?" And Danny us like "😃 oh i was just showing of my skills with my scythe! Isn't it cool? It glows in the dark!" And Dick is like "That is indeed a v cool looking weapon but in all actuality it takes too much energy to use-"

danny again, knocks a robin unconscious. Jason comes in, sees Tim and Dick on the ground knocked out and is like "what the hell just happened??!!"

And danny, being the lil shit that he is, is like "yeah they didn't believe me when I said I had skills with my scythe so they both lost the fights"

Jason is like "bullshit u did this with a scythe, lemme see it! it must be magical or ghostly bs"

danny again, summons his scythe and shows it off, maybe does a few swings. Jason is like "there's no way u knocked out 2 robins with a scythe that just glows" and danny is like "wanna bet?"

Same thing happens, Jason gets knocked out with the fenton creep stick and at this point danny is like "damn this is slightly concerning"

but then Damian shows up. And Damian is suspicious bc he sees 3 former robins knocked out and pulled off to the side. Danny may actually have scythe skills. But Danny is pushing his luck trying to see if he could get a Robin bingo and is like "hey look at my cool scythe! It makes lightsaber noises when you swing it really fast!!"(and it does) and Damian is like "tsh, that scythe doesn't even look like it can cut through paper, it looks ridiculous and-"

Fenton creep stick again strikes true and danny has beaten all 4 former and current robins(not including Stephanie who was out of town at the time) in single combat without getting hurt once.

Danny makes some tshirts that has "scythe:4-robins:0"printed on them and puts them on everyone he won against while they r still knocked out.

a severely underrated and underused pre-reveal-Red-Hood-plot is the one where Dick finds out that he’s Jason first, and out of desperation to make up for past failings at being a big brother and wanting to reconnect with Jason, he decides to keep it from the rest of the family and use it as a way for them to bond. clearly this could be funny for like a thousand different reasons, but the first way this could turn out that i can think of is obviously Bruce watching Nightwing and Red Hood getting closer and closer and instead of automatically coming to the realisation that it’s Dick getting to know and hanging out with his little brother, he immediately assumes that Nightwing and Red Hood are dating.

i’m torn between Jason finding this hysterical while Dick is horrified about it (Jason doesn’t have to deal with the sexual jokes from the family and talks about safety within villain/hero relationships) and both of them deciding it’s a prime opportunity to pull the greatest prank on Bruce possible (both of them leaning into the relationship thing publicly and then Jason casually taking off his helmet to give Dick a cheek-kiss and Bruce a fucking heart attack), but mostly i just think it would be funny if Dick got stressed about his web of lies and decided to rant to a friend, idk who probably Wally, and he gets to have this conversation:

Dick, pacing back and forth: i don’t know what to do, i mean my dad thinks i’m fucking my brother!

Wally, incredulous: …what the fuck did you do to make Bruce think you’re fucking Tim???

Dick, horrified: OH MY GOD NO? I MEANT JASON!

Wally: HE THINKS YOU’RE FUCKING A CORPSE!?

Dick: OK NO- I SHOULD HAVE EXPLAINED BETTER WAIT A SECOND-

Wally: *distressed noises*