30 Days of Demonfire

Jealousy

"Ready?" Chris asks, opening the door to the secondary chamber that will depressurize and let us out without sucking the air out of the entire ship.

"Yeah," I say, forcing myself to pay attention and not think about Damian. Once we're out, everything's quiet. There's no noise in space. The earpieces are so that Damian can maintain contact with us, not the other way around. If we wanted to talk, we'd have to wear a mask around our mouths.

My hair catches fire the second we're in free space. It's cold in space. If there were air, it would freeze. My body heats to warm my body, and the flame from my hair even tickles at the roots of my hair. I wonder for a second if my hair's on fire back at the Tower, but I don't think about it too hard. Chris flashes me a thumbs up and I smile back at him.

The ships come into our line of view and we attack them, Superboy with heat vision and me with starbolts. We're still pretty far away and we're just feeling them out.

"No shields," Lian reports.

Red lasers flare and Superboy, overeager, flies toward it. The lasers are on the outside, and he rips one off with his super strength, shoots heat vision at another. He's missing the point—this is supposed to be a team exercise.

The laser shoots as he's tearing it away from the body of the ship, and it's coming near the ship. The light flares and then solidifies, and it's going to tear a hole through the body of the ship.

"Wait—don't—" Lian shouts, but Chris isn't paying attention. I try to position myself between the laser and the ship to see if I can block it with my gauntlets. It's easy to be brave when it's not real. I'm not quite fast enough, though, and with Chris jerking the point around I can't tell where the laser's going to hit. Before I can tell what's really happening, the simulation starts pixelating and falling into blackness. I don't know whether it's my brain playing tricks on me since this is all fake and I shouldn't be able to feel anything, but my stomach hurts a lot.

"Dammit, you moron," I hear Damian shout through the earpiece as the simulation fades around me. "She's dead and it's your fault!"

Back at the Tower I gasp, spring boarding into a fetal position, tucking my knees around my stomach. Owwww. That sucked.

Everybody else wakes up shortly, although not as violently as I did. Lian rushes over to me, and Damian's watching with narrowed eyes.

"I'm fine," I tell Lian as I bat her hands away from me. "It's not your fault, Chris. You just need more practice, that's all." I hop into a standing position confidently, but my knees buckle under me and Lian catches me.

"A hole was shot through your stomach. Take a minute to recover," she advises, making me sit.

Lian emphasizes that I should do something alone like take a bath or something, except that she keeps saying 'alone' and I know that it's a sign to Damian and not to me. He certainly looks mad and kind of sulky, but he's just leaning against the wall with his cape drawn around his shoulders, so it's not like he looks any different than normal to anybody else, anyway.

I do take a bath, and when I finish I change into pajamas. I'm not sitting in my room for very long when there's a knock on my door.

It's Damian, which I was kind of expecting. He's still in full Robin uniform and all he says when I open the door is, "Grayson."

"Um… What's up?"

He doesn't say anything for a second, and I realize that he's waiting for someone down the hall to get out of view.

Then he takes my face in both hands and he kisses me, taking a step toward me and pushing me back into my room.

He's acting really strangely. I'm fine. It was just a simulation. There's no reason for him to be so worked up.

"Hey," I say, pushing him back gently. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing, of course," he answers defensively.

"You just had a sudden wild urge to kiss me," I conclude doubtfully.

He furrows his brow and takes my wrist, pulling me against him. "Is that so hard to believe?" he asks, tilting my chin up.

That makes a small burst of fireworks go off under my skin. "No, Dami," I say gently, "that's not what I meant." I sigh and take off the domino mask and kiss him, and I only mean for it to be a small, reassuring gesture but he pulls me against him again—not that I mind at all, it just makes it hard to focus.

I totally ruin the kiss by ducking my head and asking, "Are you jealous of Chris?"

His hands tighten around my waist. "No," he answers defensively.

"You are!"

"I just said I'm not," he sulks.

"You don't have to be jealous."

"Are you deaf, woman?" he demands, dropping his hand to his sides exasperatedly. "Besides that, he was hitting on you."

"Well, he doesn't know that he shouldn't," I point out.

"And if I were jealous—which, of course, I am not, because jealousy requires feeling inferior and that is near impossible for me because my genetics are perfect and my skill level is well above what most humans can attain—it would be because he has the ability to fly and breathe in space and I do not."

"You're jealous of his powers?" He doesn't answer, but he shifts his gaze to the ground. "Oh, Damian, don't be jealous of that. That's stupid. I don't want a guy with powers, okay? I want you."

His expression softens and I stand on my tip toes and kiss him once before pushing him onto my bed. I clamber on it next to him, but there's a knock at my door. Damian takes my wrist and pulls me over him, and he says, "Leave it."

And I do.