Title: When Demons Fear and Angels Fall

Author: Tyrror

Pairings: Damian Wayne/Colin Wilkes

Rating: T - for language and boy lovin's

Summary: Several days after Colin's 18th birthday he is required to leave the safety of the orphanage and enter the real world. Before he can pick up that last bag, however, he finds that he has a lot more to work through before he can close that door one last time and Damian is the only person who may be able to save him from himself.

Warnings: Angst from here until doomsday. Self-loathing, foul language and homosexual kisses…you know, the usual…

Disclaimer: If you don't have it down by now then I'm disowning you…AKA yadda yadda yadda I don't own any of them (except for Sister Agnes, totally just pulled her out of nowhere)

It was happening again, and Damian was doing his best to just stand in the doorway of his best friends room at the orphanage because, contrary to popular belief, he actually did have emotions. Normally they were small, fleeting, and easy to ignore; and then there were days like today. On days like today, Colin Wilkes stood in the middle of his nearly empty room, a room that would soon no longer belong to him, with his back to the door while his shoulders shook and his throat made tiny whimpering noises and it took every ounce of control that Damian Wayne could muster to just stand there and not run screaming from the room because he knew what was coming next and every time it happened all he could think about was how he never wanted to see it happen again.

The first sob wrenched itself from the gingers mouth and Damian took that first step into the room, the first one was always the hardest but it always gave him the strength for the next and then the next. He had made it to three and a quarter when a voice thick with mucous and pain ripped through him like a bullet to the chest.

"Why are you still here?"

The words were laced with pain and anger and something that Damian couldn't quite place but immediately registered as far from good; he stopped.

"I'm taking you back to the manor so we can start unpacking your things."

When in doubt, Damian did what Damian always did, stated the facts and sounded as neutral as humanly possible. Colin had turned eighteen three days ago and the orphanage was required to send him on his way, Damian had been waiting for the breakdown. He had seen it before, most holidays and major events, the redhead would collapse in on himself for one reason or another and Damian would stand beside him and act tough until it passed and Colin was Colin again...but this was different. This was anger and torment and despair and unadulterated pain and a dozen other things that Damian couldn't identify rolling off the scrawny boy like waves at high tide and for the first time in a very, very long time Damian was petrified.

"Everyone leaves, it's just the timing that varies." All the things that he had come to like about Colin's voice were gone, replaced by a cold, dead drone that was choked with sobs. "I try so hard to be happy for them, because that's what everyone wants, they want to be around someone who's happy, but they still always leave. I laugh and I smile and I talk about things that everyone loves to hear about even when they treat me like crap, even when they hurt me, and they all still leave."

The redhead was getting louder and louder, his voice starting to echo in the small room, but it wasn't until he turned abruptly that Damian almost lost his composure. His face was a broken shell of what it normally was, hidden behind a mask of tears was all the hurt and loneliness that he had hidden from the world for so long and, in this one moment, everything came pouring out with no strength to hold it in any longer.

"I'm not smart, I'm not funny, and I've been waiting for eight years for you to realize that I'm not good enough and tell me that you're not coming back just like everyone before you; to realize that I'm just a delinquent, just something broken and left behind, a monster and a...just...a thing..."

His voice broke as he tried to form words around the hurt and Damian already knew what he was thinking. He was thinking about being ten years old, being tortured and beaten and turned into a monster because this city takes so much from everyone but that day a psychopath turned him into a beast for his own amusement who would want that and as Damian's mind raced for answers the redheads voice caught again and cut through the suddenly silent room.

"...I'm a thing! Why are you still here?"

The redhead was screaming by this point, fresh tears streaming down his face and Damian wasn't quite sure when or how he did it, but he was standing inches from the other boy and when he opened his mouth he had absolutely no plan, no idea what to say, so the words tumbled from him like fire from the sky on Armageddon: without point or focus but with enough power to bring down mountains.

"You're my thing!"

He shouted the words into the other boy's face, the only emotion he knew well enough to use on command running to the forefront in his confusion and terror: rage. The dark boy was beyond livid, beyond consumed by his own anger, because how could Colin even begin to believe any of the nonsense that was falling out of his face? How could anyone have ever wanted to break someone so badly as to turn what he knew the ginger could have been into this? Hazel eyes snapped open as he used both hands to force the other boy into looking at him and gathered all the strength he could so that he at least wouldn't be yelling into his stupid, broken face the next time he spoke.

"You're my thing." He whispered, working too hard to control his anger and letting some of his fear seep into the words. "And I don't care what you are or what you think you are, if you're a little boy or a grown man or a monster in a trench coat, you will always first and foremost be mine."

The next words caught in his throat and he felt the tears begin to prickle behind his eyes in a way that he tried to ignore because as okay as Damian may be for this to be one of the few moments in his life he let someone else see him cry he would be damned if he didn't at least try to hold it back until he was finished talking.

"I don't need you to be happy for me," he choked on his words again and the next ones were strangled and broken but he kept going because if he didn't then he'd never finish before he completely let go of decorum and gave in to the urge to just hold the other boy. "I just need you to be...just be...with me."

"But..."

"No! I...just...be. We can work on 'happy' together...okay?"

The dark boy paused and made a futile attempt at composing himself but found that impossible as he just kept staring into the huge hazel eyes in front of him while the redhead chewed on his lower lip

in what looked to be an almost painful way and finally he just gave up on composure.

"...Now get your stupid bag and your stupid bear and your stupid face into the car so I can get you to the manor and lock you in a room for the rest of your life just to make sure you never think these things for more than a nanosecond and if you do, you damn well find me because I am not going to leave you and you are not alone and god damn it Wilkes...Colin..." His next word came out as a squeak as his mouth moved uselessly while his throat clamped shut and he suddenly realized that at some point he had started crying but he really, really didn't care anymore. "I love you, you gigantic idiot and...I..."

"Dami..."

Neither of them seemed capable of forming words anymore and there were a few tense seconds in which all Damian was aware of was the way Colin's chin creased and quivered with the effort of holding back, the way his over-large eyes filled with wet that was so close to spilling over and then Colin's face was pressed so hard into his chest and his arms were holding him so tight that it hurt but he prayed to whatever might be listening that the boy hold on until he couldn't breathe if it meant he could take all this away.

His hand was in Colin's hair and the other was fisted in his shirt somewhere between his shoulderblades as they sank to the floor in a tangled mass and the ginger wrapped his legs around Damian's waist in a desperate attempt to meld with his torso. Sobs were wrenching themselves out of the smaller boy's frame and Damian wasn't certain when he had started the chorus of 'I love yous' that he was spouting over and over into the tangled red hair that his face was pressed into but even knowing somewhere in his mind that he should have more dignity than to be clinging to his best friend in the middle of an empty room and sobbing, he couldn't get himself to stop saying it and, further more, he rather thought dignity could go fuck itself for a little while.

The head underneath his lips shifted and he paused at the the word 'love' when a pair of large, terrified eyes looked up at him like they were waiting for him to say something, anything more but Damian was out of words and his mind had shut down awhile back leaving him to run only on adrenaline and instinct so he moved the hand that was tangled in Colin's hair down to his cheek and did the only thing he could think of. His lips were chapped and salty from tears and Damian had no idea if this would make things better or worse but then there was a hand in his hair and the other boy sobbed around his lips as he tried to pull him closer. It was hard and messy, the redhead sobbed from time to time and neither wanted to pull away so the hot breath from their noses constantly swept over their cheeks, leaving cold trails in the wake of tears but eventually the other boy's head slipped lower and lower until they were back to how they had started. Damian was breathing in the scent a generic shampoo and all the little things that he now knew to be unequivocally Colin while the redhead shook in his arms as he slowly came back to himself.

As the tightness that he hadn't realized was in his chest slowly released, Damian realized that the worst was over and his mind slowly cleared to reveal thoughts that he didn't really want but had to acknowledge would be best dealt with now...with the pain fresh. This wouldn't be over any time soon, he forced himself to realize, not today or tomorrow or the day after, but at least now it was out there. Now he could watch for the hidden pain, because he was certain the other boy would try to put the cap back on his bottle and pretend like he always had that life was sunshine and lollipops. Now he knew and he traced small nonsense symbols into the crying boys back as they sat together on the cold hardwood floor that was no longer his while Damian smiled sadly into the other boys scalp because he was the son of the world's greatest detective and, after eight long, lonely, terrifying years for the redhead...he finally knew.

Sister Agnes stood in the doorway with silent tears streaming down her cheeks as she watched the two boys wrapped around one another and rocking back and forth to an unheard beat. She knew everything there was to know about Colin, even the things he didn't think anyone but Damian knew. She knew his past and his present, his real name and the one that he used when he pretended he went to bed early. She had watched him climb out the window and back in so many times and now she knew one more thing about him that she wouldn't tell the other nuns because she didn't care who he loved or what he was, to her he was always what he kept wishing he was...perfect. She crouched as softly as she could, careful not to let the boys hear her, and placed an envelope on top of the only bag left in the room, Colin's tattered backpack, the same one he'd had when he was ten years old, and then she walked away because at this moment that was the only thing left she could do.

'Colin,

You may be too old to be one of the children of the State, but you will always be my baby boy. I will always, always be here for you until such a day as God says otherwise. I love you for all of you, even the big, hulking, scary parts. Remember that...and call me if you need me.

Stay safe, and tell Damian...thank you...

I love you so, so much.

Sister Agnes'