Chapter Text
Dick gives the blindfold Jason just handed him a dubious look from his curled-up position on the bed. “I’m not sure I’m up to that kind of thing right now, babe.”
“It’s not that kind of blindfold.”
“Actually, this is the exact blindfold that we used on Valentine’s Day, which is when this probably happened,” Dick waves a hand holding a saltine cracker in a vague pattern indicating his stomach area, “and therefore I’m blaming it for how shitty I feel.”
“Okay, okay, it might be the same, but the use I have planned is totally different. And I’m not sure you can blame the blindfold for this.” Jason points to the saltine crackers, ginger ale, mint tea and lemon water on the nightstand with a frown. “I’m more than willing to take full responsibility. Sorry you’re feeling so rough, especially on your birthday.”
Dick softens. “I’m not mad at you. I knew what I was in for; I’m just grumpy and tired. Just give me, um, half an hour maybe, and then you can have your wicked way with me.”
Jason chuckles, low and sinful. “I already told you, that’s not what I had in mind, but I am open to requests.”
Dick sits up, grinning. “That sounds intriguing. I think I’ll be --” but before he can finish his sentence, a wave of nausea, probably from sitting too quickly, takes over and he rushes to the bathroom.
Jason follows. “Maybe an hour would be better.” He turns the water on. “Let’s wait until you feel better. No rush.”
Dick leans over the toilet for a few minutes, while Jason holds a cool damp washcloth on the back of his neck, before straightening. “False alarm. Probably nothing left in my stomach anyway.”
“Go back to sleep. The surprise can wait.”
"Keep me company?" Dick asks as he crawls back in bed.
"Of course," Jason says and curls around Dick, stroking his hair. "Happy birthday, babe.”
Dick wakes up for the second time of the day feeling better, and Jason gives him a bowl of dry cereal and fresh ginger ale to seal the deal. Unfortunately, Dick had realized the other day that mlik, no matter how fresh, smelled off to him. So dry cereal it was. Jason told him to take time to get showered and dressed.
"What should I wear? Are we going anywhere that I need specific clothes for?"
"Nope, not leaving the house, so whatever is fine. I just don't want to take pictures of you in those if you don't want me to." Jason indicates the ancient pair of sweatpants slung low on Dick's hips and the threadbare t shirt that used to be Jason's that Dick stole to use as pajamas.
Dick pulls on decent jeans and a favorite blue v-neck tee shirt as he talks. "Now I'm very curious. You want me to get dressed but say that we're not leaving. You realize that if all of this is just because you forgot to wrap my present, and it's an elaborate ruse so I don't notice, I've already seen through your devious scheme."
Jason laughs. "No, forgetting to wrap birthday presents is your thing, not mine. Are you ready for me to put this on you?"
"Okay, little wing. I'm ready to do the blindfold thing as I'll ever be."
Dick stands still while Jason puts the blindfold around his eyes, double checks that it is truly obscuring Dick's vision, and takes his hand. He puts Dick's hand comfortably on his elbow and leads him out of the bedroom and through their penthouse apartment.
"I'm not really sure what the point is. I know our way around the apartment. Let me guess. This is the hallway."
"You're not going to trick me into monologuing about my master plans, pretty bird, so stop trying with your back chat. I know all of your Robin tricks."
Dick chuckles. "You just opened the door. I thought you said that we're not leaving the apartment."
"I said that we're not leaving house, which includes the whole building. Pay more attention to details, Dick."
"That’s just semantics, and you know it, and I'm not wearing shoes."
"Don't worry! I've got you." Jason assists Dick into his boots.
"Now we're in the elevator." This is their private elevator - no one else could use it unless they had pre-programmed access. Dick waits to see if the elevator is going to go up, to the special rooftop access, or down. The elevator heads down, which doesn’t tell him much - they could be visiting one of their friends on the other floors, or maybe even heading to the main floor lobby which had various rooms to use, or the underground parking lot where they kept their civilian vehicles. Or even lower, below the regular garage, where they have their own version of the bat cave. Dick stops trying to distract Jason with chatter while he waits to see how long they descend for. It's harder to keep track of than he expected, without any dings.
Still, after the descent seemed to go on forever, he ventures, "We must to be going to the bunker."
Jason leans even closer to Dick, whispering right into his ear. "You guessed it."
Jason's breath is warm and soft against Dick's chin, and he shifts a bit. "You're sure we're on the same page for what kind of blindfold this is?"
"Yes, I am."
"Then you whispered in my ear just to tease me, because there is no one else around to hear us."
"Yes I did." Jason's voice is low and dangerous again. Dick squirms ever so slightly, his hand still on Jason's arm.
"You're a terrible person and I hate you."
"I am but you don't," Jason says.
"Stop it. You're a good person."
"Joking!" Jason protests.
The elevator finally dings and Jason guides Dick out, turns right along the walkway, and down the ramp. As they move through the bunker, Dick mentally crosses out places that could be their final destination. They pass the computer area, the med area, the gymnastics equipment. If he'd wanted to go to the locker room or the lab, he would have turned left. Unless Jason is going to lead him in circles. Dick wouldn't put it past him at all.
Finally Jason stops in what Dick is pretty sure is the garage, and a whiff of oil and rubber tires confirms it. A rather strong whiff - Dick wrinkles his nose. Superstrong pregnancy smell has not been exactly a boon so far.
"Okay, we're here. Are you ready babe?" Jason asks.
"I'm more than ready. If you take any longer, I'm going to need to pee again."
"How romantic. Okay, keep your eyes closed until I say open."
"Alright, alright." DIck feels Jason's fingers work at the knot of the blindfold, his calluses briefly sticking in Dick's soft hair, and then eases it off.
The lights of the bunker seem bright even through his eyelids, and Jason waits for a few moments before saying, "Open your eyes!"
Dick looks, and blinks, and looks again. His vision is blurry and the lights still seem too bright, with afterimages flitting across his retina. But he's pretty sure that he sees a car that wasn't there before. A bright blue - Nightwing blue - car.
Dick turns to look at Jason full in the face.
He looks closer, recognizing the aggressive hood and classic lines of the car.
"Jason, tell me that's not a 1969 Mustang Mach 1 in the garage."
Jason laughs, full and delighted. It's a free, expansive kind of laugh that Dick hears so rarely and treasures all the more for its scarcity. God, he must be doing something right though, since he's heard it twice now in less than a month. Just now, and when he told Jason that they were having a baby.
"Okay, okay, that’s not a ‘69 Mustang in our garage."
Dick punches Jason in the arm and heads towards the car. The beautiful, half a century old embodiment of the muscle car phenomenon, Detroit engineering, and the quest for speed. Just looking at it makes Dick feel the promise of freedom and the lure of the open road. And nothing sounded quite the same as a classic pony. Jason had done a fabulous job picking the colors - the body was an electric blue, in a shimmering pearlescent coat, with a metallic black accent line running across each side, meeting on the hood in a dramatic vee.
He runs his hands along the car. "This paint job is amazing. It's exactly matches my uniform, plus it sparkles! It's gotta be a custom job. How long have you been working on this?"
Dick glances back when he finishes his question to see Jason answer. Jason blushes a bit, just his ears. "A while now."
Dick raises one eyebrow. "Just a while?"
"A long while, I guess. I wanted the right car, and I wanted it to be the right kind of project. Not too involved, nothing too heavy, but enough to give you a hobby for a while. And I got it painted by Ramone's out west - they're the best in the . . ."
Dick couldn't help but interrupt. "They're the best in the whole damn country, Jason. I can't believe it."
"So you like it?"
"I fucking love it. Thank you so much."
Jason's flush spreads from his ears to his cheeks. Dick grins back at his husband before turning to admire the car. "But if you said you've been working on this for months, and it must have taken a while for even Ramone's to do this amazing paint job, you've been planning this" - he points to the Mustang - "for much longer than we've known about this" and gestures towards his body. "Before you knew for sure that I would need something to occupy my time once I stopped patrolling."
"I think I started both projects around the same time," Jason admits with a sly little grin. "I wasn't sure what would come through first, but yeah, I wanted the car for your birthday."
"Your timing is perfect."
"I am pretty damned pleased with how it turned out, I have to say," Jason says.
"You should be. This is amazing."
"You haven't seen everything yet." Jason tosses Dick the keys, which he catches easily in one hand. The first thing that Dick does is to pop the trunk. The engine obviously needs work. It's clean, but old and not in the best shape, so Jason was right about the car being a fixer upper.
"Does it run?"
"Yeah, it does, but not super well. Go ahead and get in."
Dick practically sprints to the front passenger door and hops into the car, appreciating the fine black leather on the racing seats. The seats have been replaced with totally new custom ones.
Only slightly slower than Dick, Jason joins Dick in the passenger seat. "I hope you like the color of the leather that I picked out. I was worried about it, a little, but I knew that I had to replace the seats for safety reasons. If you're going to be driving this to the store, I want the best seatbelts."
"You did a great job."
Dick grips the steering wheel like he's driving, grabs the stick, settles back into the seat.
Jason chuckles. "Any second now you're going to start making vrum vrum noises."
"I am not!" Dick says. It's true. But only because Jason called him out on it before he could start.
"All of the gadgets and in dash dials will need to be replaced or updated, but I'm sure that's something you'll want to do anyway. Maybe even get the demonspawn to help."
"Don't call him that," Dick says out of reflex, even while thinking how well Jason knew Dick and the rest of the family to know that it's exactly the kind of thing that Damian would enjoy doing with DIck.
“Yeah, yeah,” Jason grumbles but he’s hiding a smile in his eyes.
"Have I said thank you?” Dick asks. “Because seriously. I think this is the best birthday present anyone has ever gotten me."
"You have, but you're welcome. That is saying a lot coming from someone who got a Ferrari for their 16th birthday. And another one for their 21st since someone crashed the first one."
"That someone is you! You crashed my Ferrari, and you didn't even have a license yet!"
Jason gives Dick a rueful grin. "Yeah, I did wreck it. Still not sorry though - that was one of the best joy rides of my freaking life."
Dick grins back. "At least it wasn't the Batmobile."
"Yeah, I heard those stories about Tim and Damian." Jason reaches over and squeezes Dick's hand on the stick. "But back to this car, there's still something that you haven't seen."
"What is it?" Dick is bewildered. He's already so overwhelmed with the thought, time and effort that went into this gift, the personalization, that he can't imagine anything else. He narrows his eyes at Jason.
"I don't have it! Don't look at me. Look around."
Dick glances around. There is nothing weird in the front seats, or on the dash. He checks the glove box, but nothing’s there. He looks around outside of the car before turning to check the small seat in the back.
There's an infant car seat strapped in.
"What is that?"
"Do you need me to tell you that it's not a baby seat, because if so, I'm a little worried."
"I know what it is! But I'm shocked that it fits!" And amazed that Jason had gone to the extra steps of buying one, making sure that it fit and installing it.
"That's part of the reason why I had to get new seats, to make sure that we could install one of these properly. And safely."
Dick feels his eyes fill with tears. He tries to blink them away. He is entirely positive that pregnancy hormones are 100% to blame. At least, that’s what he’s telling himself.
"So what would you have done with the seat if . . . ?"
"I just wouldn't have put it in here yet, if you weren't pregnant. But I'm glad it worked out this way."
"I'm glad too." Dick leans over and slides his arms around Jason. Jason immediately responds, tilting his body toward Dick and sliding a hand around the back of Dick's neck. Dick tries to put all of his gratitude, all of his overwhelming feelings of awe and amazement and just pure happiness, into the kiss. Based on the enthusiasm it is returned by, Dick thinks at least some of his message got through.
"I love you, Goldie. Happy birthday."
"I love you too, little wing."