A/N- Here's to authors who write three different stories with three different moods all at once. You're amazing. This is hard.
This is Prompt #9-Precious (which is, to be honest, not normally a word I would connect with Damian Wayne) which is going to be a lighthearted piece. Very unlike the...angst-fest, I suppose you could call it...which is No Stars in Gotham. And because it's summer break and I'll have time to write-I'll probably go ahead and start soon. Well. Yay?
Well. Without further ado...
What's in a Name?
AKA 5 Times Someone Used Damian's Unofficial Full Name and 1 Time Someone used the Official One
1. Jason
It started, as these things usually do, with a lazy day at Wayne Manor.
It started with all five, bored Wayne kids gathered in a family room.
It started with an insult war.
It started, as such spectacular messes tended to, with Jason.
The day was hot and humid. Wayne manor, being Wayne Manor, obviously had a central air conditioning system. But for reasons that Damian Wayne would never be able to comprehend, his older siblings preferred to lounge about the room with the windows thrown open and all the fans turned on, complaining about the heat and humidity, snapping and generally being irritable at each other.
(He suspected it to do with the fact that they were all former street children. He would also deny he got that idea from Jason.)
"Oi, Goldie," Jason called from where he was laying on his back on the floor, a book held inches from his face. "Quit hogging the fan."
Dick looked up from the armchair he had plopped into. He was sitting sideways, legs dangling off one end, a Wayne Enterprises tablet set up on his knees. "There's three fans in here, Jay, get your own."
"And there are FIVE of us in here," Jason pointed out. "We can't each have our own fans, Dickie, physically speaking. Thought ya knew basic math. Basic as in, ya know, preschool level."
"I'm the oldest, that gives me the right to my own fan."
Damian snorted. Entering the conversation was probably unwise, but he couldn't resist every time any mention of some sort of...superiority entered the arena. (And no, it was not because he was self-conscious about his place in the family, whatever Drake said, he was the blood son and—well. Never mind.)
"That is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard, Grayson."
Dick waved a hand at him, eyes still on his tablet. "Siblings 101," he announced. "Oldest gets privileges."
"Siblings? Ah. No wonder none of us knew these rules."
Tim looked up, eyebrow raised. He was sitting on the floor in front of the coffee table, various folders and papers held down by all manner of paperweights—the television remote, a coffee mug, was that Damian's pencil case?!-fluttering in the wind from the fans.
"Really, Jason? Back to that? And I thought you were getting better at holding your own in a snark fight."
"Hah, speak for yourself. Middle child gets the short straw, right? Shove that fan over."
"I'm not the middle child, that's Cass."
Across from Tim, Cass pointed a finger at Jason, eyes narrowed. "You can't have my fan, Jason."
"Cass is the girl," Jason said smoothly. "So she doesn't count, which means we skip to the next person. And that's you, Timbo. Siblings 101."
"Sounds more like Siblings 203," Dick interjected.
"And that's because I am better educated than any of you."
"In the art of family?" Damian snorted. "Todd, you are the least experienced of us all. Until recently you were quite eager to murder all of us."
"I'm a fast learner," Jason countered. "And you were all acting very murderable and besides—Siblings 101—it is normal to want to murder your siblings once in a while."
"I'm pretty sure the 'once in a while' is important," Tim noted.
"Ah, what'd you know, Replacement, you were a lonely only like the rest of us."
"Lonely only?" Cass and Dick repeated at the same time, and Jason pointed a finger at them.
"You can't do that, you're not twins."
"All hail Jason Peter Todd," Tim said drily. "High Lord over the laws of siblinghood."
"And don't you forget it, Replacement."
"Oh, sorry, were you talking to me? By the way—what the heck kind of insult is 'Replacement' anyways? The more you say it the more it sounds like it has to do with a table setting."
"It's not an insult, it's a fact," Jason scoffed. "And I thought you were the smart one?" Tim opened his mouth to retort but Jason spoke over him. "See, I'm the replacement for Golden Boy, you're the replacement for me, Cass is Cass, and Demon Brat is the replacement for you. I mean, why the hell else would Bruce adopt four black-haired blue-eyed almost-white siblingless street kids with tragic backstories and their dad's names as middle names?"
Cass chuckled.
Tim raised an eyebrow. "Middle names? That's a new one."
Dick sat up to look at Jason. "But I thought your dad's name was Willis?"
Jason shrugged. "Peter Willis Todd, went by Willis. Dunno why. Don't care either."
"More importantly," Tim interjected, "street kids?"
Jason nodded sagely. "Well, Dickie here was on the streets for a bit after running from JDC, yeah?" Dick nodded slowly. "Well, that makes him a street kid. And you might've had fancy-pants rich parents, Timmy boy, but you also spent every night since you were like, five, running the streets, yeah? Street kid." He looked smug.
Damian waited a moment, but Jason appeared to be done. Annoyed and a little insulted, he cleared his throat. "I'd like to point out that your arguments are completely incorrect, seeing as I am neither a "street kid" nor do I have Father's name as my middle name."
Four sets of eyes swung towards him.
"Hm," Cass said (Damian had no idea what exactly it was supposed to mean).
"True," Dick admitted.
"Seriously?" Jason looked intrigued.
"Wait, what is your middle name then?" Tim asked.
Damian rolled his eyes. "I don't have one, Drake."
"Somehow that really doesn't sound right," Dick said slowly.
The following moments of silence made Damian uncomfortable. Those moments of silence, he knew, never meant anything good.
"Damian Bruce Wayne," Jason announced.
Ah. Point proven. He opened his mouth to protest.
"Sounds good," Cass said solemnly. Dick and Tim were nodding their agreement.
"Don't be inane, Todd. You cannot simply—declare a name for me."
Jason smirked at him before dropping to his back again. "Well, we'll just see about that, Damian B. Wayne. Now, Replacement, if you could FINALLY shove that fan over."
A/N: Yeah, so I messed with Jason's dad's name to fit into the story. But hey, it could completely have happened. Maybe Willis Todd hated whichever Peter he was named after. (Also when I first got this idea I genuinely couldn't remember his name so...)