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Damian grinned victoriously. He wasn't wise, no, not even the tiniest bit, but he was fun and he enjoyed having fun. If he had to drink in order to feel better, then that was what he wanted to do. Why should he have to be so serious all the time? That's what he was good at his job for, being focused and intense. And he was even a decent parent when he had to be, rare as it was.
Her question halted him for a moment and he had to think about what she was talking about. After a little longer than it should have taken, he snorted, "I can't bring a kid to a bar, Lux. Jeez." He shrugged after his joke and tapped his fingers on the bar top. "He's with the She-Devil. A.k.a. his mother and my ex wife. She's probably mid-brainwash."
There wasn't any shock in his expression when she said she didn't have kids. He hadn't expected her to, but her explanation was enough for him to understand why she was offering to help. He couldn't help the pang of envy he had for her relationship with her father. Damian couldn't even remember his. He supposed that was another reason he wanted so badly to be part of his son's life.
She slid a card across the counter and he glanced down at it before looking back up at her. Once she got up from the bar stool and set his beer down and gave her a nod, "It's been fun. And I appreciate your offer. I'll see ya around, Teddy." He grinned before turning back to the bartender and knocking on the counter to signal he wanted another beer.
Damian scrunched up his nose at the mentioning of his gender being clingy. Even when he'd been married, he couldn't stomach the idea of clinging to anybody. His ex had been suffocating for a while, until she wasn't and he hadn't seen anything wrong with her stopping. Well, before he found out why. He looked down at her as she traced patterns on his stomach and he shrugged, "Well, not everyone can be as amazing and incredible as me. Or as emotionally fucked over."
His eyes lifted to hers when she straddled his lap and he rolled his eyes dramatically, "I see how it is, only using me for my body. Fine, fine. Let's get this over with." He kissed her back and wrapped his arms around her waist so that he could stand up. Without hesitation or struggle, he headed to the small bedroom that he called his own. He tossed her on the bed and smirked, "What are the odds I could join that club you work at? I mean, look at these skills." Damian started humming some silly and supposedly sexual tune as he stripped off his t-shirt.
Damian didn't quite think they needed praise for what they did. They signed up for it, they knew what they were getting into in some degree. Besides, being a cop was easy compared to being in the military. He wasn't undermining being a lawyer, he knew that it was probably harder having to stand in the same room as some of the messed up people that he was looking to put away. Worst yet was defending someone that may or may not have been guilty.
"I don't envy you either. I was never smart enough to be a lawyer, but even if I was, I couldn't imagine that kind of pressure." It sounded like fresh Hell to him. Add to that wearing a suit, dealing with stupid people and not being able to reach across the stand to smack someone, he was not cut out for that.
The continuation of her words made his eyebrows pull together. It always made him uncomfortable when he came across genuinely kind people. She was willing to help him with the custody problems he was having. "I appreciate it, really. I don't talk to lawyers often, which is probably why it got as bad as it is now." He didn't think things would go quite the way he wanted, what with his profession halting him from being a suitable choice for full custody, but more time was better than what he had now. "You got kids?" He asked as he tipped his beer back to his lips.
In her explanation, Damian found some commonalities. If he were to be honest with himself, someone like Lena was who he'd have ended up with, too if everything hadn't happened. She was strong and didn't need anybody. It was something that he'd needed from someone he was with because in his line of work, there was always a chance something bad would happen. His ex held that over his head and expected him to magically change who he was. Lena never gave him flack for what he chose to do with his career.
He frowned, it was hard to find someone perfect for you after you stopped being who you were. While her last relationship was vastly different from his, the results were still the same. Neither of them could withstand functional relationships. And they were terrified at the potential for one. She rested her forehead against his arm and he adjusted so that his arm went around her.
"Not everyone handles getting screwed over the way we do. They become more emotional, we become less emotional. Sex is an emotional thing for a lot of people, women especially. Yikes," He shuddered. "You're the closest thing to having sex with a dude as I'd get because you don't get so clingy and needy. Selfishly, I don't want you to change a fuckin' thing," He stroked her hair and grinned.
Damian looked up at her and he did what he could to smile at her, "You're not and I wouldn't ask you to be." After a moment, his lips stretched into a more genuine smile, "It'd be too likely that you'd fall in love with me if I trusted you with being my keeper." Although he'd never worried about that with her.
He let out another huff and pushed himself back up on the couch beside her. Taking hold of her hand, he tugged at it, "Alright, Cavanaugh, your turn. Lay it on me, what's up with the friend? Did ya like this friend at all? I mean, like, really like. We're allowed to have moments of weakness for pretty faces. If anyone knows a moment of weakness, it's me."
Her question resonated with him and typically he'd have gotten defensive over the way it sounded. It sounded like she didn't know that he would be. It was one thing for him to be self-deprecating, but it always rubbed him the wrong way when someone else made him feel like he wasn't capable of the things he wasn't sure of himself.
He didn't have a right to be angry with her over her question though, and as he was sober, he could see that. Getting irrationally angry wasn't going to get him anywhere in this situation. So he didn't react the way he typically would have. He didn't get defensive. He took a moment to think about what she was asking. Was he going to be better than his ex?
"Yes. I...I want to believe that I would be," He wanted so badly to believe that he could be a good person in one person's eyes. "I would have to be, there's no other option."
More visitation rights was a start, sure, but he didn't know if it would last long. What were they going to do to her if she didn't keep up with the visitation rights? The last thing Damian would let happen to his son was for him to be put into the system because neither parent was fit. If that meant that he was going to need to quit his job, then he was ready to cross that bridge.
"I can't let it get bad, Lena. I can't let him end up..." He laughed and shook his head. He couldn't let his son become like him. Damian was a few years younger when he was put into the system, he didn't remember as much about his family as Jace would if he was taken away. He didn't know if that was going to make it worse or not.
Taking another deep breath, he shrugged, "I'm not cut out for this. I'm a machine, a militant machine that can dissect bombs and kick someone's ass when I need to. I take down criminals and save people. I'm not cut out for being the fun dad that plays ball with his kid every other weekend."
It was sort of amazing that his kid was capable of being as cool as he was. Damian lived for all of the conversations that he had with his son because he could hear the similarities in their voices, in the way Jace spoke. He was a good kid that didn't swear or cause trouble at school, far better than Damian had been at his age. He never thought that it was because of his ex, he didn't think she did much right in the way of raising their son, but she did enough that he knew what not to do.
Of course, that was just his bias, he knew that she must have been doing something.
Her offer to help wasn't surprising. Not at all because he knew that she adored his son almost as much as he did. And Jace had adored her more than Damian was willing to admit. He sighed and his lips quirked briefly, "I need someone to keep me on track. I know we're both a little emotionally stunted, but you love my kid as much as I do. And I need to be a better person for him. No more day drinking, no more being irresponsible. I can't give her anymore reasons to keep him away from me and if she does, I need the court to see that I'm fit to take care of him."
He pinched the bridge of his nose, "The biggest thing I'm worried about is that she'll throw my job back in my face. You know being a cop isn't supposed to be a bad thing, but being a single parent who's a cop...I don't know if it'll fly if I wanted custody of him."
Her words sounded like they could have come right out of his mouth. He wasn't good at feelings either, it was why their arrangement worked. It was the only way that he knew how to do anything, avoiding feelings, putting up walls, clear-cut boundaries. This was pushing their boundaries, but he didn't mind this time. They both needed to unleash what was happening so that they could deal with it, compartmentalize and move on.
"Yeah, well, kinda hard to get into the sexy time thought process when all I can think about is Jace," He took a deep breath and let it out slowly as he walked back towards the couch. He settled for the floor in front of her and leaned against the arm of the couch with one leg bent and his arm resting on his knee. "I can't tell which one of us fucked him up more, me being gone all the time or her being...her."
Damian leaned his head back to look at her, "I need to stop drinking, Lena. I need my son more than once every few weeks if his mother decides that I'm worthy of seeing him. I need to clean up and be a fucking parent. I'm not a kid anymore, I'm supposed to be raising one."
There was a problem with talking to Lena. It wasn't easy to get her to talk first. He tried until he was blue in the face, but more often than not, he was the one who gave up a bit of information first. In this case, he knew he'd been the one to call, but it was sort of frustrating. Neither of them was very forthcoming with their feelings.
Her question, perhaps not very eloquently put, was direct and his smile dropped altogether. Damian stood up and grabbed his glass of water. He took it into the kitchen and dumped it in the sink before returning to the living room. He didn't sit back down, but rather paced back and forth for a minute, considering how he was supposed to start.
"Can't we start with you? I mean, I don't even know what to say about me. It's such a fucking mess, Lena. My life is a fucking mess."
Despite his choice not to join her, he could still admire her while she dressed in his living room. He knew he wouldn't have to tell her that she couldn't do that if Jace was staying over, but it did give him some amusement to think of what would happen if she did once his son reached puberty. If it wasn't obvious already, he knew his son was going to have his first wet dream over the redhead in front of him. Who could blame him?
His eyes dropped when she started drinking heavily because all he could do was envy her. It was driving him crazy, though he didn't peg himself as an alcoholic. He could stop when he wanted to, but that was the problem. He didn't want to stop drinking, he just wanted to be responsible. Drinking numbed him, it gave him a chance to stop worrying about everything going wrong in his life. When he was with his son, that's what his son did for him.
Damian glanced at her when she finally spoke and he laughed, hard. "I feel like I am, yeah. But no. Shit's just extra fucked lately." He ran his fingers through his hair and sighed, "What about you? You don't usually down beer that fast. Everything good?"
Damian knew that she would take him up on his offer and usually in return, he would take her up on hers. He didn't hesitate when sex was on the table. Not even for a minute. Yet, there he was, staring after her as she went down the hall and into his bathroom. She'd even gone so far as to leave his door open, which only caused him to smile.
He went to the kitchen and grabbed a beer for her and a glass of water for him. It felt unnatural not grabbing two beers, but if he was going to become a responsible parent, he had to start somewhere. With the beer and water set on the table, he sat on his couch and leaned back, his hands folded on his stomach. All he could do was think about how weird this was about to be. Lena was his friend, but she was mostly just used for her benefits. Serious personal matters were not touched very often. Not unless he was screaming and yelling about how much he hated the woman that had birthed his son which was typically only when he was drunk and angry.
Damian could hear her coming back down the hall and his head rolled to the side to look at her, "Beer is yours, I had some left over from the last time you brought it over."
It had been a few weeks since Damian had reached out to Lena. Work had been consuming him, along with trying to situate himself legally. He'd last seen her at the club when she talked him into going and since that night, he hadn't bothered a text or a call. Why she remained friends with him was beyond him because he treated her the way he treated everyone else. As though she was expendable.
When he heard the doorbell and a knock, he got up swiftly to answer the door. He opened it after a breath and gave her a once over. "C'mon in," He stepped back so that she could pass him into his apartment while he shut the door behind her. "I forgot you had class today, I wouldn't have asked you over otherwise. If you want, you can get a shower and I'll grab us a couple drinks, yeah?"
He felt awkward, extremely awkward as he spoke because he wasn't buzzed already and therefore he wasn't quite as forward as he usually was. Or maybe he just felt a little vulnerable given what he'd asked her here for. Either way, he wasn't a fan.
It was ironic that the only friend he had was someone that he tried so hard to keep out of his personal life. There was only so much he could do on his own, especially being a father and a good one at that. He didn't want to be a deadbeat, he'd been absent for long enough and now that he was trying to be anything but, he knew he had to make some changes in his general way of living.
He'd talked to a lawyer about the makings of a fight for custody, or at least a fight for something fair. Damian knew that he had to be better if he was going to have his son more frequently. The day drinking had to stop, the angry drinking had to stop, the self-loathing that led to drinking had to stop. And he needed help, a swift kick in the ass to get his shit together. His ex was not helpful in that regard, although he wanted to prove to her that he was better than she gave him credit for.
After getting off the phone with his son, a total of two hours talking, Damian had made the decision to call his only friend, the friend that knew his son better than all others, the friend that wasn't going to tiptoe around what he had to do. He knew that it was going to be strange and that it was going to be awkward, but he was sober as he called her, which was a step in the right direction. When she didn't answer, he texted her asking for her to come over and telling her that it wasn't for the normal reason. With it sent, he decided that he would wait to see what happened.
