Better Watch Out
Danny had just started to feel like he was settling in with the Waynes. It had been... not ideal circumstances that brought him to the family in the first place, so getting used to not having to deal with all that mess was the first hurdle. The second being getting used to dealing with an entirely new- if more pleasant, mess. The Waynes, and Gotham by extension, were- to put it lightly- fucking crazy. He wasn't in Amity anymore and however much he'd thought it was the weirdest place on the planet before- he was absolutely rethinking that now. Where he had been one hero against a handful of villains, Gotham had a whole brigade of vigilantes against an army of villains. And they were... Bat-themed. For the most part. He'd yet to meet any of them, so he hadn't gotten the chance to ask what all that was about.
None of that was the point though. The point was that Danny had only recently stopped feeling like a fish out of water around his new foster family, and now the Holidays were coming. The Holidays that always served to put him in a sour mood. The Holidays that made him more prone to lash out and snap at those that didn't deserve it. The Holidays that, despite being Jewish by heritage, Bruce seemed oddly enthusiastic about celebrating.
(It reminded him, painfully, of Sam. He'd yet to be able to see here since everything went down and he missed her and Tucker something fierce. Which was maybe also putting him in a bad mood.)
So you really couldn't blame him for feeling a little tense about the whole situation. Not only were the Christmas decorations that smothered the Manor making him grouchy, but his grouchiness was also making a guilty pit form in his stomach. He was a moody teenager and adding trauma on top of that didn't help how caustic he could be- and adding fear on top of that made it all the worse. What if he saw Dick in his Santa hat, grinning and innocent, and he snapped? What if he saw Damian, stoic but loving, give Titus a shiny red bow-tie collar for the season and he made a caustic comment that went too far? What if he saw Bruce so much as smile at him while standing near the giant tree in the foyer and he saw green?
What if he ruined Christmas? Again? For people that didn't deserve it? Again? What if he hurt the people he cared about that had only ever shown him care and consideration? Again?
So Danny was just a bit tense. A bit on edge. And he was trying. Oh Ancients was he trying. To not be such a little bitch about all the Christmas stuff. But he had a limit. Bruce, being the rich socialite that seemed far too enthusiastic about family-centered holidays, did not have a limit. Every inch of the manor was covered in tinsel and holly and blinking lights and fake snow. Every spare moment was filled with different siblings being coerced into doing cheesy holiday activities, with Danny being the only one to attend every single one of them. (Cutting down a Christmas tree with Jason. Buying presents at the mall with Tim. Decorating while hanging from the chandelier with Dick. Caroling very badly with Stephanie. Making snow angels with Cass. Watching Christmas movies with Duke.) And he attended them all with a barely restrained snarl and a badly bitten tongue. The one time, one time, he'd told Bruce no- the guilt had eaten him alive (and dead) at seeing the man melt into the most pathetic kicked-puppy look he'd ever seen.
No grown man should ever be able to do that with his face. Danny never wanted to see that again.
In return, though, he had to face the Horrors.
The latest Horror being the worst he'd ever faced to date. A Horror that he thought he'd never have to face. He thought he'd slipped past this particular one by aging out. He was too old for this. He shouldn't be there. Damian, scowling and eyes filled with murderous intent, shouldn't be there. Dick and Bruce seemed to both be having the time of their lives. It was far too disturbing- and the continuous blasting of Christmas music and the overheated crush of a restless crowd only made it worse.
They were in line to see Santa at the mall.
It made his skin crawl. He was fifteen! Damian, the poor bastard, was also fifteen!
He could practically feel Ghostwriter laughing his ass off at his predicament. This was worse than getting stuck in a rhyming Christmas cautionary tale. He would 100% rather be stuck in one of Ghostwriter's cheesy poems than be stuck in the stupidly long line to see the fake mall Santa that probably didn't want to be there just as much as Danny.
But Bruce looked so fucking happy. Genuinely happy.
It was something he'd noticed early on about his foster dad. He smiled a lot and smiled big, but he rarely ever meant it. Now, Danny wasn't usually one to notice things like that. He got pretty wrapped up in his own problems and just- didn't have the skill to notice these things. Usually. But, well, being ghostly gave him a bit of an advantage. He could get a pretty good read on a person's emotions, regardless of what expression they wore. If he felt close enough to them. Frostbite had compared it to, like, family pack bonding. And he really, really didn't want to think about that further (why had it never worked for his parents? why did he feel so close to Bruce so quickly? why?) But, more importantly, he could tell that while Bruce smiled a lot, he rarely meant it.
But whenever Danny or his foster sibling begrudgingly participated in "family holiday activities" he smiled and he meant it. Bruce, fundamentally, was a sad man. Always grieving something. But here and now? In line to see his teenage children visit fucking Santa in the mall? He was smiling from ear to ear and his emotions, for once, matched. Yeah, there was a hint of mischief there, but it was overwhelmed by the giddy joy and excitement.
A suspicious amount of excitement... Like he was expecting something.
And then Bruce was leaning down between him and Damian and with a bright grin, he muttered, "I have a surprise for the both of you."
And even Dick, who had not stopped taking a stupid amount of pictures the entire time, paused to look at Bruce curiously.
"As I've told you both before," he said, looking over at Dick and back to Damian, "I know the real Santa. Met him a few times, saved Christmas with him a few others, and he owed me a favor for the last misadventure we had. So, I asked him to be here, for this one afternoon, for you guys."
Danny barely caught a glimpse of Dick rolling his eyes in the background. Oh, okay, so this was bullshit that has long been established. Nothing new on his account. That was something at least.
"Father," Damian interrupted with scorn and a promise of violence in his voice, "you are aware that this- Santa Claus creature- is fictitious, are you not?"
"Damian, chum," Bruce responded carefully, sincerely saddened, "why would you say that about an old family friend?"
And, poor Damian, looked two parts baffled and three parts murderous. Nonplussed and unable to even fathom a response to his father. He just stared the man down.
Dick huffed in exasperation behind them. "C'mon, B. Will you let that go already?"
Bruce furrowed his brows, eyes already taking on that faint sheen of kicked-puppiness, and looked back up at his eldest. "You don't believe me, Dickie? After all these years?"
Dick responded with a flat stare. Danny kind of wished he had popcorn for this moment. It was like witnessing a mild car crash. Nobody got hurt and it was still wicked to see parts flying everywhere. There was even a chance of things catching fire. Man was he glad he could just watch.
"Danny?" Bruce pleaded, turning to him with those sad, sad eyes. "Do you believe me, chum?"
And fuck how was he supposed to respond to that?
"I have it on good authority," he said, thinking of yearly fight, after fight, after fight, "that his existence is very hotly debated in the scientific community."
He could feel the questioning stares from Damian and Dick but he refused to look away from the innocently tilted head of his unfortunate foster father.
"Is that a yes?" and he sounded so sincerely hopeful. He couldn't crush the man's spirit. He couldn't.
But he also refused to lie and say he believed in Santa. At fifteen.
He clenched his jaw and gritted his teeth, but eventually replied. "It's a hotly debated topic."
And Bruce just smiled that empty smile and patted his shoulder. "Thanks, chum."
He, again, ignored Damian and Dick's stares. If he looked at them, he'd break. If he so much as made partial eye-contact, he was gonna fucking lose it.
"Oh look! We're almost at the front!"
Danny was living his worst life. Officially. This was the bad time-line. Dan's future didn't even come close. He was going to go mega evil any second now and kill everyone in the vicinity and then himself. This wasn't happening and it wasn't real and Santa Claus can't hurt him because he isn't real.
But Bruce, the saddest man in history, utterly and sincerely believed that he was.
So Danny was going to sit on some random old dude's lap and pretend to care about what he wanted for Christmas and whether or not he'd been a good boy this year and he was going to force a smile the entire time and his soul might shrivel up and die all the way inside, but at least Bruce would be happy.
What the fuck kind of afterlife was he living.
And then it was their turn and Danny was forced to go up first because the alternative was Damian committing homicide in the middle of the mall while Dick and Bruce cheerily took pictures.
Okay. Just sit down. Spit out answers to any inane questions. Pose for picture. And leave. Simple and easy and completely unbearable. But- for Bruce- he would bear it.
But, damn it all, a chill went down his spine as he approached.
No. Absolutely not.
There was no way. But he examined the man sitting in the chair and the more he saw the more the sinking pit in his stomach grew. Full thick beard of snow white hair. Brown eyes filled with smug mischief and magnanimity. Thick red velvet jacket made for trapping in heat in extreme cold weather, lined with white fur that looked suspiciously close to trim on cloaks he'd seen in the Far Frozen. A not-quite-ghostly-not-quite-magic-but-something-in-between aura he often got around Gods and Ancients.
Fuck, but Bruce actually knew the real bonafide Santa Fucking Claus.
What, and he means this with a great amount of emotion, the fuck.
He sat down in a stupor and the man just placidly smiled at him, a twinkle in his eye letting him know that he knew Danny was currently experiencing new stages of grief not yet known to man and was just gonna let him ride it out. How nice of him. Because of course he was being nice. He was Santa.
Fuck.
He looked up at the man. Ghost. God. Whatever. And for a good moment that's all either of them did. Just. Stared.
Sorry, Santa, Danny's brain has suddenly gone on vacation. 404 not found. Please leave a message after the tone. Error. Sorry, there's nothing there. Please try again.
After a few agonizing moments he asked, "how? Do you know Bruce?"
And Santa laughed at him, the sound working its way into his bones and filling him with a warmth he hadn't felt in a long time. It tasted just a bit like egg nog. Gross.
"Well," the man started, voice deep and rich like a good cup of hot chocolate, (whatthefuckwhathtefuck). "Why wouldn't I know a man like Bruce? Honorable, righteous, and very skilled. One of the best the Justice League has, if I'm being honest."
And then Danny's brain stopped completely. Because there was no fucking way Santa (FUCK) was implying what he thought he was implying.
But it all made so much sense now. His ears were ringing suddenly and the world was greying out but he was Seeing the Light.
"-nny?" Santa (FUCK!!) was saying. "Are you alright? Want to tell me what you want for Christmas now?"
"Hm," he said airily, still not all the way there, "I'm good, thanks."
And then he slid off the man's lap and walked back to his foster family in a daze. And he looked at Bruce (BATMAN!! FUCK!!!) and he slid a slow hand down his face, attempting to take the skin off it in the process.
"You alright, Danny man?" Dick asked, only half paying attention while he gleefully snapped pictures of a sullen Damian barely restraining himself from committing violence while stubbornly standing next to Santa instead of sitting on his lap.
"That's the real Santa, Bruce is Batman, and I'm half-dead," he replied bluntly.
Dick fumbled his phone in response and Bruce merely raised his eyebrows.
"That's an odd start to a 'three guys walk into a bar' joke there, chum," he said amiably. And Danny wouldn't have noticed the tension in his voice if he weren't ghostly. But he was and unfortunately for them all, it was now everyone's problem.
"Not a joke," he said. "I'll explain the dead part later but Santa outed you on accident."
"Okay, no," Dick interrupted, "we are not leaving the dead part for later, Danny, what the fuck."
"Listen," he said flatly, slapping his hands on either side of Dick's face and smooshing it to convey his seriousness while he spoke. "Santa is real, he's a God, and he's sitting right there." He emphasized with a sweeping wave of his arm in the direction Damian was stomping back towards them from. "We're leaving the dead part for later."
"What is all this about? Dead part? What is going on?" Damian demanded in rapid succession, growing more aggressive and persistent with each question.
Danny, already on his last fucking nerve, was gonna lose it. For real.
"Apparently," Dick drawled, disbelief and an unfair amount of derision in his tone, "that's the real Santa, he told Danny B was Batman, and Danny's now saying he's dead."
"What-"
Damian did not get to finish his sentence because that was the exact moment Danny finally snapped. Every bit of pent up tension and hostility, every bit of restrained Holiday fueled fury he'd been bottling up. Unleashed all at once because Dick decided to be an asshole about not believing him.
Danny snatched one of the giant plastic candy canes that lined the aisle of the queue to see Mall (but actually Real) Santa and gave a good swing in Dick's direction. Dick who had unfairly good reflexes and was able to dodge by jumping over the swing and landing back neatly on his feat.
"Danny?!" he cried, incredulous.
But Danny was no longer listening. Only reveling in the wild swinging of the candy cane and attempting to land a hit on Dick for being an absolute dick and finally unleashing hell upon the world and specifically his asshole foster brother. And maybe he put a little bit more ghostly strength in his last swing than he meant to, because when he finally made contact- he heard a pained off as Dick went down hard.
"Danny, please," he wheezed from the soft bank of fake snow he'd fallen into, "it's Christmas."
He screeched and continued his assault. "It's December 10th!"
And then, promptly; Bruce wrangled the candy cane from Danny's grasp, Damian pulled Dick from the floor, and they were all calmly escorted from the mall and asked politely to never return.
Danny really, truly, hated Christmas. And it looked like that wasn't going to change any time soon.
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sweet girl ~ oscar piastri
Summary: Oscar kept his personal life pretty private, so when he appears at the paddock with his wife and his almost 1-year-old daughter, everyone is shocked.
Words: 1.2k+
Other works: my masterlist
♡♡♡♡♡
"Are you sure she's ready?" you asked Oscar one night, laying in bed facing each other.
"She'll be safe with you and my parents, you don't have to worry about that. We don't have to bring her if you don't want, it was just a thought" he said, tracing your spine with the tips on his fingers.
Ever since Charlotte was born, you've kept it a complete secrete from the public. You hadn't even told anyone that you were pregnant except for your families and the McLaren team. Given that your lives were very public and in the open eye, you wanted to enjoy your pregnancy as something only for the two of you.
"How do you think the world is going to react?" you asked, already picturing the whole paddock going crazy over the fact that you would be bringing your baby to a race.
"They're going to lose their minds" Oscar chuckled, pulling you even closer.
You chuckled alongside him before you settled into a comfortable silence, the baby monitor silent for the moment.
"This past year has been amazing. Just the three of us, nobody commenting on how we should be leading our lives" you said, thinking back on the one year since your girl has entered this world.
Your pregnancy has been amazing, you were lucky that you didn't experience morning sickness at all, you didn't have weird cravings, you hadn't gained that much weight, you weren't tired, you kept active. It was really the dream pregnancy.
Oscar, of course, had become all that more protective of you and the baby. He made sure you were always comfortable, you never had to strain yourself more than necessary, he was practically at your beck and call the entire time.
When it came down to labor, he was with you the whole time you had to push, whispering encouraging words, holding you up and holding your hand. He was the best, helping you with your recovery and being the most hands-on new father that you had ever met.
And you weren't just saying that because you were biased.
"It has. I'm surprised nobody figured it out, to be honest" he said, making the two of you laugh.
"Imagine their surprise when they see us with Char" you said, silently hoping Oscar would get the hint.
He was silent for a moment before he looked down to you, a smile threatening to escape his lips.
"Does that mean you'll come to the race with her?" you giggled, nodding your head.
Oscar pulled you to him, kissing your lips eagerly. Just as you rolled around and ended up on top of him, your hands wordlessly sliding up his shirt, cries erupted from the baby monitor, making you sigh and chuckle.
"I'll get her" Oscar said, kissing your forehead and leaving the room to soothe your daughter.
♡♡♡♡♡
"Do we have everything?" you asked, finishing dressing your baby girl in a papaya onesie the McLaren team had gifted you for the occasion.
"Yes, everything is in the bag" Oscar assured you, picking it up along with his backpack.
"Are you ready to go see daddy race, sweet girl?" you cooed at Charlotte, who smiled wordlessly at the both of you.
Her small hands reached out to Oscar, her eyes twinkling at her father.
"You ready, Char?" Oscar asked in a baby voice, tickling her tummy which prompted your girl to erupt in a fit of giggles, your favorite sound in the world.
After spending a couple more minutes with your little family, you two met up with his parents and started your journey towards the track, Oscar's parents playing with Charlotte the whole way to keep her entertained.
Once you finally arrived, Oscar took the bags and kept you close to him as you held Charlotte, trying to shield her face away from the thousands of flashed coming your way.
She, on the other hand, being the little social butterfly that she was, insisted on being seen, waving to everyone that passed by you.
A couple of interviewers signaled for Oscar to give a statement, so he gently pulled the two of you with him towards one of the friendlier ones.
"Oscar Piastri, the man of the moment. I see you have brought someone special with you to your home race, care to share the news with us?" the kind woman asked, her eyes darting to the happy little girl holding her McLaren teddy in her arms.
"This is my wife, Y/N, as my fans know, but we have an addition to the family. This is our daughter, Charlotte Rose, she's almost 1 year old and she decided she wanted to watch her daddy drive today, isn't that right, Char?" Oscar turned his attention to your daughter, gently caressing her cheek.
She smiled widely at him and squealed "Voom voom!" which made everyone melt and awe.
"She is adorable, congratulations to you both. This is the first time we're hearing about her, how did you come to the decision to keep Y/N's pregnancy a secret?" the woman followed up, smiling at you the whole time.
"I am a public figure and my whole life is being displayed to the public. When we found out that we were expecting, we both made the decision to keep it to ourselves and our families, mainly so we could have a sense of normality for when she would be born and not throw her into the spotlight immediately. We wanted to enjoy it for ourselves for a while" he explained, not even minding that Charlotte was tugging at his hair as she wriggled in your arms.
"We understand. Congratulations to both of you once again, you have made one beautiful young daughter. I wish you good luck on the race and much love in the future with this little one" the interviewer looked at you for permission to touch her, which you gave by simply smiling.
The woman squished her cheeks, making Charlotte smile and babble at her, seemingly happy as a bug.
Oscar thanked the woman and led you through the paddock towards the McLaren hospitality, where you and his parents would be residing in for the race.
Once there, Lando and Zak were waiting for you, eager to see the newest addition to the Papaya army.
"There she is, my favorite little munchkin" Lando cooed before taking her from your arms, your little girl giggling once she laid eyes on her favorite uncle.
"La-do" Charlotte giggled, not being able to pronounce his name correctly yet.
"Yes, it's your uncle Lado. You just get cuter and cuter every time I see you" he bounced her in his arms, making her erupt in a fit of laughter which made everyone in the hospitality smile.
"How are you, Y/N?" Zak asked, putting a hand on the small of your back.
"I'm great, thank God. She's keeping us on our toes, but we love it nonetheless. Oscar really wanted her for the race and I couldn't deny him that" you explained, making Zak nod and smile.
You diverted your eyes back to your husband, who was now sitting on the floor with Lando and playing with Charlotte.
As you watched them, you knew that you would never trade this for anything else in the world. This right here, Oscar and your girl, was everything that you needed.
Just Oscar and your sweet girl.
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