Wearing a bulletproof vest on your romantic date in some famous restaurant in Venice and swallowing bullets with his food to hide the hitman from you was not how this was supposed to go.

When Damian met you, he hadn't even pictured this. It was a stupid mix-up — some incompetent junior vet had mixed up Alfred the Cat with your precious Princess (cliche much?) and after days of going back and forth, mere minutes after each other with each visit to the vet, you'd managed to snag the number of the richest man in Gotham and arrange to meet him at a park.

And it was supposed to be left at that, but fuck if you didn't look absolutely divine when you crouched and hugged your pretty kitty like she was the holiest of Earth's holy grails. And before he could stop himself, it slipped out of his mouth — "Would you like to go for coffee sometime?"

He covered it up fast, saying that he'd miss Princess after holding onto her for so long, and surely Alfred the Cat needed more friends than Titus and Ace, a kitty just his type (just like you were his).

And, in typical fashion, you guys were dating within a year. All those coffee dates and pet parks and movie nights and typical, cliche romcom activities really were worth the effort.

Along the lines of typical, cliche romcom, it had been... a comically hard task to keep you from finding out his identity. It was already suspicious that he was rich. Rich. Billions of dollars rich, richer than his father when combined with his Al Ghul wealth.

Then, he had to deal with assassination attempts and nighttime vigilantism, which he cut down on for you, and the 'business trips' every other day, it seemed like. He even bought a neon yellow shirt to wear at night instead of his typical green wardrobe, and cut then switched cables when it began tailing his newest case.

And now he was wearing a vest in Venice, trying to ignore the clatter on his plate with every shot. "How's your food, my love?" he asked, choking down another shell and hiding the sniper from your view.