"Wait, Dami! A haunted house! I haven't been in one of these since I was a little kid!"

Damian bit back his ready reply about how Richard Grayson had never really stopped being a little kid. He'd resolved to humor the man tonight (to a point. No one had ever called him the most patient person in the world. Or even, you know, patient). They were walking down a tree-lined avenue on an October evening so frigid that even the omnipresent Gotham smog seemed to have frozen out of the air, leaving a hundred stars sparkling down cold and bright above them. The streetlamps lining the block carved warm, orange-yellow cones out of the shadows, illuminating drifting motes of dust and the occasional moth or bat, and the tall buildings in the distance were softly outlined in the last dark purple remnants of sunset. Children and adults tramped doggedly forward along the weathered sidewalks and marble steps of the colonial-style neighborhood in every manner of ridiculous costume. Damian even thought he'd spotted a copy of Grayson's original Nightwing costume a block or two back, although the boy wearing it had disappeared into the crowd before Damian could sufficiently mock Grayson for his horrendous life choices.

Damian sighed heavily and lowered his voice. "Are you certain we are not needed for patrol tonight?"

Grayson smiled down at him. "Well, it is usually even more of a boom night for Gotham than Mischief Night, but with Scarecrow, Joker, Calendar Man, and a lot of the other usual suspects in Arkham B thinks we should have a quiet Halloween for once. He's out patrolling, and Jason, Tim, and Steph are on standby at the Manor. I figured it might be your only chance before you got too old to go trick-or-treating, and Bruce agreed."

Damian grumbled something involving the words "asinine" and "childish" but otherwise offered no protest. He picked at the hem of his sweater as an excuse to look away from that smile. Damian was wearing a black turtleneck, loose black pants, combat boots, and a nametag that simply said "ninja." Grayson had lost a bet and therefore wore the costume chosen for him by Jason. The website had called it "Sexy Batman," which was ironic (Alanis Morissette ironic, not real ironic) in ways Damian didn't want to think about. The costume itself was also something Damian didn't want to think about, or describe. Suffice to say there was a lot of latex. Grayson didn't seem to mind much, though, and neither did a lot of the women they passed as they continued down the avenue.

Grayson stopped again at the next haunted house they passed. It was more low and sprawling than its colonial-style neighbors, with a number of inflatable witches and ghosts on the lawn. The stone walkway toward it was lined with a few of those foam gravestones with humorous sayings that Jason kept replacing his own gravestone in the Manor cemetery with. "Here lies Dee Capitated." "Chris P. Bacon." "R.I.P. Will B. Back." Projected ghosts spun on the walls, and a sign on the front walkway said "Enter if you dare" in dripping blood-red letters, below which a tacked-on piece of paper advertised free chocolate chip cookies and apple cider at the end.

"Okay, wait, we have to go in this one. It'll be fun! And it's been so long since I had hot apple cider."

Damian considered. "I don't think I've ever had hot apple cider."

"Okay, that's it. We're going."

They walked up the path behind a group of middle schoolers, who were turned away at the door by a visibly miserable young woman in a vampire costume. She politely explained that parental supervision was actually required since the scarers were all adults. She started to smile at them but paused when she saw Damian. "Oh, honey, are you sure you want to go in there? She shot Grayson an uncomfortable look. "It's just . . . my brother's friends are doing the scaring this year and I think they got a little too into it." She lowered her voice. "I know they made a lot of kids cry, and I think Mom had to talk to a couple of them about roughing up the adults. Are you sure you don't want to take him to the one down the block?"

Well, that sounded like a challenge. Before the age of six Damian had seen and done scarier things than this woman could even imagine. He drew himself up to his full five foot, five inch height and lifted his chin obstinately, ignoring the eye roll he received from Grayson. "I would like to go through this one, please."

She grimaced and swung open the door. "Suit yourself."

The front windows were papered over, making the entrance hall almost pitch black. An uncomfortably moist layer of fog caressed their ankles as it drifted across the floor from a machine hidden somewhere off to the side. As they walked between two rows of doors, suddenly moaning sounds began to emanate from behind all of them as they clattered and banged open and closed. The last door was thrown open violently, and a man in gory makeup flew out at them, only to be caught short at the last minute by the "chains" on his limbs and dragged backward into the room, hissing and scratching at the floor. Grayson raised an eyebrow. Damian snorted.

The next area wasn't bad either. Plastic covered the floor and ceiling, and a woman screamed while a man apparently sawed off her limbs. The special effects weren't bad, per se, but they wouldn't fool anyone who had seen the real thing. Then three men in masks rushed out from behind them, carrying cleavers, and roughly shoved them forward into the next room. Damian and Grayson had both known they were there and barely even blinked, Grayson only reacting with a mild "Hey, man, personal space" when one guy got a little too enthusiastic and tried to grab him by the arm.

Then a fake jack-in-the-box clown popped up from behind a chair, and Grayson swore and kicked it so hard that the head flew off and hit the window. Stuffing drifted down around them like snow.

Damian shot Grayson a sideways glance. Grayson offered him an embarrassed smile in return. "Sorry. I really hate clowns. Whole family does. You know how it is." Damian shrugged, and they continued.

A variety of slimy fake organs dropped from the ceiling as they walked down a cobweb-strewn hallway. Neither of them reacted. Hands grabbed their ankles from under a long tablecloth. They just kept walking. A zombie with bleeding holes in the place of eyes leapt at them, chittering and growling, from behind a couch, and Grayson high-fived him while Damian rolled his eyes.

A clown was waiting around the next corner. He made a grab for Damian, probably seeing the kid as an easy target. "Jesus fucking–" Grayson kneed him in the balls and punched him so hard in the face when he doubled over that the rainbow wig ended up in the next room.

"Grayson! What the hell are you doing?!"

Grayson had the nerve to look sheepish, turning toward Damian with a shrug. "Sorry, Dami, I can't help it! It's like a reflex. Muscle memory."

"It is not possible to have clown-specific muscle memory!"

Grayson bent over the crumpled guy, looking torn. "Are you okay? I'm sorry, I just kinda reacted, do you want me to get you some ice?"

The guy, when he was able to, rolled over with an ugly look on his face. "Fuck you, man! My friends are going to kick your ass for this!" He turned back to the wall with a wince.

Grayson cringed and stood up. "Um, let's just get through this next room and get our cookies and cider. I mean, that was probably the last clown, right?"

The last room was full of clowns.

Grayson let out a stream of curse words in languages Damian hadn't even heard of as they popped out one by one from behind curtains and around corners. The first one was met with a throat punch, the second had his legs swept out from under him and then took a kick to the ribs that made even Damian flinch, and the third Grayson just straight up roundhouse kicked in the face. He was a hurricane of sharp edges, graceful and deadly. Damian found himself just kind of trailing behind, a little surprised to find himself in the position of not being the one committing senseless acts of violence.

A clown in a green wig took an elbow to the head, and a guy in giant yellow shoes was on the receiving end of a full-on tackle ending in a choke-out hold Damian recognized from Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Halfway to his feet Grayson swept out another clown's feet and ended with an uppercut under his jaw that actually gave the red-nosed idiot some airtime. Then the room was silent except for the sound of Grayson breathing hard and a few of the clowns on the floor moaning vague threats (or just moaning).

Damian clapped slowly and sarcastically to hide how impressed he was in spite of himself. "Wow, Richard. Didn't know you had that in you. Innocent civilians, no less."

Grayson turned around, looking stricken. "I didn't mean–"

And the very last clown, a huge guy in a red wig, chose that moment to run up behind him, face visibly bright red under all the makeup. "Hey, man, the fuck was–"

Grayson swiveled, punched him twice in the stomach, and finished by grabbing him by the throat, lifting him into the air, and slamming him down on the table in the middle of the room. And the table broke.

Grayson turned back around, looked like he was on the verge of saying something. Licked his lips. Paused. Damian could see on his face the moment when he gave up. "Let's just go get your cider." They crossed the last few feet of floorboards and shouldered through the curtain of spooky black streamers hung in the doorway.

The owners of the house, a middle-aged couple, stood on the other side of a freestanding counter in a modest, white-painted kitchen, gazing at them in slack-jawed disbelief. The man held a beer frozen inches from his mouth, and the woman had a new tray of cookies suspended halfway into the oven. Then the man slowly, not taking his eyes off of them, lumbered over to the door they'd come through, flicked the light switch, and pulled back the streamers to reveal no fewer than nine clowns sprawled across the table or lying on the floor, clutching various body parts and groaning.

Grayson started edging toward the street exit door to their right, palms outward. Damian figured that this time and this time only he should just follow his adopted brother's lead. He started backing away slowly as well. Out of the corner of his eye he could see that Grayson had brought out his most blindingly innocent "who, me?" grin, dialling up the charm to 11. "My name is Knut Andersson, I'm a Swiss citizen, and I have full diplomatic immunity for anything that may or may not have happened in there." One hand snaked out to snatch a cookie from the tray on the cooling rack as it passed behind them. Under his breath, he muttered, "Dami?"

"Yes?"

"Run."

They tore out the door and down the darkened street like the Reverse Flash was on their heels, earning more than a few curious stares from the trick-or-treaters still lining the block. Damian heard a shout from behind them, meaning the haunted house owners had finally recovered from their shock, and Grayson yelled over his shoulder, "I'll send you a check!" They didn't stop sprinting until they were ten blocks away on a more dimly-lit street and couldn't hear sirens anymore.

"Bruce can never hear about this."

Damian smirked. He could squeeze a lot of presents out of this one. Also, he was pretty sure the number of concealed weapons he was allowed to carry when Bruce wasn't home had just gone up drastically.

"And if you're thinking about blackmailing me, just remember that I know what Alfred the cat did to his second best cowl."

"Tt."

Bonus:

Dick flopped dramatically full-length onto Bruce's enormous leather couch as soon as they got back to the Manor. "Maybe we should just watch a movie. Dami, do you know any scary movies? I haven't watched TV in, like, forever. Don't even know what's out."

Damian scowled petulantly as he stood in the entrance to the living room. "Grayson, I could not be less interested–" He paused, pretending to be preoccupied with something in the hallway as an excuse to keep his face hidden behind the door frame. "Actually, Jon has informed me of one that his family enjoyed."

Dick perked up, lifting his face from where it had been smushed between two couch cushions. "Really? Is it available on Netflix or Hulu?"

"Probably. I can search for it. Why don't you make yourself less useless and go make some of that popcorn you enjoy so much."

Dick smiled broadly as he started to peel himself off the couch, then seemed to decide that dignity wasn't worth the effort and simply rolled off onto the ground. "Snark all you want; I know you love it." He padded off silently toward the kitchen as Damian sat on the far left side of the couch and took custody of the remote for Bruce's unnecessarily gigantic, ridiculously thin flat screen.

Dick wandered back in ten minutes later with bandages on his knuckles and a steaming bowl of only slightly burnt kernels to find that Damian had already found the movie and had it paused on the intro credits. "Thanks, Dami. What's the movie?"

"It's based on a famous novel about an alien creature that looks like a giant spider. It emerges once every thirty years or so to eat the children in this one town."'

"Like Grundy during his emo phase." He set the popcorn down carefully on the coffee table and dropped back on the couch with an impressive bounce, sliding up next to Damian like the cuddle-addicted douchebag he was. "What's it called?"

Damian crossed his fingers (a habit picked up from Grayson) and tried to keep his face impassive. "It."

"Oh. Nice." Dick grabbed a handful of popcorn and offered the bowl to Damian, who took a singular piece between two fingers and glared at it as if it had insulted his mother or, worse, his curated collection of antique weaponry from the Han Dynasty.

Damian stalled. "Should we call the others, see if they want to watch?"

Dick looked touched by Damian's out-of-character effort to promote family bonding. "Nah, just wait a few minutes. They'll wander in as soon as they smell the popcorn. It's terrifying; they're like sharks."

Sure enough, Jason, Tim, and Stephanie slunk casually in one after another and settled down in the living room with Tim on Dick's right, Jason leaning against the opposite armrest and putting his feet up on a long-suffering Tim's lap, and Steph on the ground leaning back against Tim's legs (his eyes said "help" but also held the silent bitterness of someone resigned to his fate). Damian pressed play on the movie.

The opening scene rolled, the only sounds in the living room being coming from the speakers and the quiet crunching of popcorn (or loud, obnoxious crunching, in Jason's case). They got a few minutes into the movie.

Bang! Bang!

"Dick, you punched me in the stomach!"

"Tim, you punched me in the face."

"Yeah, and kicked me in the head! Also, Jason, what the hell?!"

Tim looked frantically appalled. "He shot the screen! Twice!"

"You can't prove that."

"You're holding a smoking gun!"

Steph glowered. "Which one of you picked this fucking movie?"

Silently, all eyes turned to the end of the couch.

For the second time that night, Damian Wayne ran like hell.