Chapter Text
Telling Dick she’s pregnant is much more stressful than she was hoping it would be.
She’d had a pregnancy scare with Jason Bard years ago, and it wasn’t until a morning spent panicking and the fifth test coming back negative that relief had come, though it had been tinged with a hint of disappointment. Then, a year after that, the Joker had shot her and left her on her own doorstep, leaving her with doctors puttering around her and taking any chances of carrying a family of her own with him. Leslie had come to her, too, breaking the news to her softly and gently, and Barbara had watched her from her bed, stoic.
Her tears had come, fat and hot, and Jason Todd had come to sit at her bedside, squeezing her hand and telling her he’d kill the Joker. There had been anger too, not at the loss per say, but at the option for something she could have wanted somewhere down the line being taken from her.
She hadn’t told Dick at first, not until after one night of fooling around she’d watched his face pale, and his expression had twisted before he said they hadn’t used a condom. Barbara had shrugged because it hadn’t been the first time they’d gone without, and after her previous insistence that it wasn’t totally necessary he hadn’t pushed it, and they hadn’t ventured into territory she wasn’t sure she was ready to discuss. This time, though, he’d apologized, run his hand down his face, and she’d picked at a loose thread on the bedspread and she said he didn’t need to worry about it so much.
“I can’t have kids, Dick,” she said, voice barely above a whisper. To say it aloud made it all too real, and Barbara had never truly sat down and considered children until things had started getting serious with Dick. While they hadn’t broached the subject itself, he’d skirted around the ideas of having his own someday in a wistful tone that said nothing was set in stone, but he wasn’t opposed.
Her throat had been tight and Dick hadn’t said anything at first. They’d spent the rest of the night curled around one another and brought up the idea of adoption, and Barbara had fallen asleep with her head tucked into his neck as she tried to ward off guilt.
“You don’t have to worry about surprises,” she’d murmured, and they hadn’t touched the topic again.
And so now, in the middle of March and a week before Dick’s birthday, Barbara has to put her foot in her mouth.
“You have got to be kidding me,” she mutters at the third test in a row. The two lines in the first had been too faded to make any sort of guess, and so she’d traveled back to the corner store in the next borough to ensure no one would recognize her. That had been a trip in itself.
Now, three tests sit in a neat little row, each one positive.
“Well, damn.”
Barbara sits back, tugging at her necklace, and takes a breath in an attempt to sooth her nerves.
It does anything but.
Waiting for Dick to get home only gives her more time to stress, and she alternates between running her hands through her hair and reorganizing a bookshelf three times. In the background, she runs updates on software. Part of her chastises herself for not being more excited, but she also hasn’t verbalized it yet and made it a reality.
She probably isn’t, anyway. Home tests can give a lot of false positives, can’t they? (Despite cycling through three different brands.)
Barbara glances up at the sound of keys jangling against the door, and Dick smiles by way of greeting as he lets himself in.
“Long time no see,” she says, tone forcibly light as he toes off his shoes and deposits his bag on the floor.
“Hey yourself,” he says before hanging up his coat on the hooks by the door. He bends to kiss her temple, as he always does. His presence is warm and welcome, and Dick straightens again, stretching out with a sigh at the resounding cracks from his back and knee. A quick glance down tells her he isn’t wearing his brace as much as he should, despite Leslie’s insistence it would be in his best interest.
Dick clears his throat, diverting her attention as he picks up his bag again and makes for the bedroom, chatting amicably about his EMT night course all the while.
“I’ve got about forty hours in. Field training’s definitely more interesting than sitting in a class room for six hours straight, I gotta admit,” he’s saying, and Barbara struggles to focus on his words as he disappears further into the apartment. She moves into the living room partway through him making a crack about how learning CPR and how to make a tourniquet is coming in handy more than he thought it would.
Barbara looks out the window without really seeing anything, and can’t settle between drumming her fingers on the arm of her chair or folding them in her lap. Working her way through a couple deep breathing exercises does little to relax her as she listens to Dick change in the next room. Pragmatic as she is, Barbara very much so enjoys having a plan whenever she can help it. Hell, she has contingency plans for her contingency plans. In theory, telling Dick was much easier than the actual execution is turning out to be.
“So… I’m off tonight and patrol doesn’t start for another couple hours. Any exciting plans for Oracle?” he asks and Barbara turns to watch him wander back into the living area in his pajama clad glory, pushing his hair out of his eyes with a yawn. He quickly tries to mask it with a grin.
“Ah, no, no not really,” she murmurs, but if Dick thinks anything is off he doesn’t say it.
“Huh, in that case…” He reaches up to scratch the side of his nose, pausing in thought. His grin is soft. “Wanna bum it on the couch for a couple hours before Batman interrupts? We can watch Jeopardy and I can pretend to be affronted when you try to cop a feel.”
“I guess we—” Barbara freezes, narrowing her eyes as Dick moves to mill about her kitchen, opening and shutting cupboards and the fridge like something will appear the more he checks. “Wait, are you just trying to get laid?”
Dick pulls his head back out of the fridge with a pitcher of iced tea in hand. “Barbara, you think so little of me?” He nudges the door closed. “But I mean… if you want to...”
“Richard.”
“Kidding, kidding,” he says, turning back to the counter after she shakes her head when he offers her a glass.
“Sit for a second, would you? I want to talk to you,” she finally gets out before she loses her nerve, hands gathered in her lip with a grip so tight her knuckles are almost white. Dick turns to regard her with a careful look, one that’s almost guarded, and she feels a sharp pang of guilt at the nod he gives her before rounding the island, leaving his glass behind.
A worry line forms in his brow, giving way to concern as he settles on the couch, elbows resting on his knees as he faces her.
“Babs, everything okay?” he asks, voice soft and hedging on a whisper as he reaches for her and one of his calloused palms curls over her hands where they’re clenched together. His warm fingers give hers a squeeze. “You’ve been off since I got here.”
She watches his eyes dart from one of hers and then to the other before she averts her gaze as anxiety curls into a small ball behind her sternum, small tendrils of it branching out to the rest of her body. Her stomach flips, like the first drop of a rollercoaster and moment that steals one’s breath away and she can’t get it back.
She doesn’t say anything back, and she can all but feel Dick’s apprehension growing.
“Barbara?” he asks, and it’s the same voice he used the last time she broke up with him. She can remember that in excruciating and vivid detail: the fresh bandage on his shoulder, thanks to Alfred; the tarragon in her hair; and the look on his face she’d been too afraid to turn around and see as she left him. His thumb smooths across her knuckle. “Babs, talk to me.”
“I’m pregnant.”
Dick filters through maybe five different emotions before his expression shifts into something more unreadable. If she isn’t mistaken, something like hope flickers through his eyes. He watches her like he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop, for a gotcha moment and for her to laugh.
He doesn’t speak for a minute, but he never lets go of her hand.
“You aren’t saying anything,” she ventures, anxiety blossoming until it reaches up to her throat. She blinks a few times, and eventually he nods.
“Well shit, really? You’re sure?”
Her throat works and Barbara looks down at their hands. For a split second she imagines another, smaller one, wrapped around her index finger. She closes her eyes.
“Yeah, I…” Barbara swallows and raises her head to meet his gaze again. “Pretty sure.”
Dick purses his lips. He doesn’t look overly upset, but he isn’t exactly jumping for joy, either. Not that Barbara was herself, but, if anything, this is a team effort here. A baby certainly throws a wrench into a couple things and after everything she can’t say she saw one in her future. (That’s not to say she hasn’t thought about it, hasn’t wondered what a child with Dick’s eyes and her nose would look like. That was just a passing fancy of something she couldn’t have. Or at least thought she couldn’t, then.)
“Guess the how is kind of out of the question,” Dick says. He frowns a touch. “Actually, no, that’s probably still a good question, right? Before, you said…”
“That I couldn’t?” Barbara fills in after he trails off, to which he nods again. Her voice is soft when she says: “I didn’t think I could, honestly. After… I just didn’t think it was in the cards. I never planned on something that I didn’t think was ever going to happen—could ever happen.”
Dick’s hand still doesn’t leave hers.
“Well, guess we’re used to things not going as planned.” He lets out a breath she didn’t know he was holding, his exhale a little more forceful like he’s deflating, and then he breaks eye contact. “This is definitely something though. Wow. It’s… it’s a lot, Babs.”
She goes to pull back, all the walls she’s carefully pulled down around him starting to creep back up. This is a lot, she knows this; this isn’t the same as them toying with the idea of sharing an apartment together because he was already over almost every night to begin with. This is a lot more serious than dividing up laundry and dish duty. Their relationship is already delicate enough as it is sometimes, and they’ve only officially been back together a few months now.
If this is not something he’s prepared for… she can’t blame him. She isn’t even sure herself if this is something she’s ready for.
His general lack of reaction leaves a great deal to be desired and gives her little to work with.
“I’ll take care of it,” Barbara murmurs, interrupting Dick’s personal crisis or whatever he’s currently working himself through. “If you don’t want it.”
His eyes snap back to hers. “Babs?”
“No, I don’t mean—I’ll just. I’ll take care of it,” she repeats, straightening a little. It might be an awkward spot to put the both of them in, but now that she’s been presented with the idea of an opportunity she didn’t think she could have, and now that her life is more in order than it was a decade ago, she can’t fathom the idea of… not. “I want to keep it.”
That glimmer of hope returns, and she can’t tell herself it’s just a trick of the light.
“You do?” Dick asks, and her first nod is jerky; her next, tighter.
“I do.”
Dick offers her the ghost of a real smile, and despite her lingering reservations one tugs at the corners of her mouth, too.
“Yeah?” he gets out like he didn’t hear her the first two times, and then his hand leaves hers so he can cup her face with both. He shifts so that he’s on his knees in front of her, thighs bumping the foot rests as he leans into her. Her vision is waterier than she thought it would be, but still she nods into his hands and smiles.
“Yeah,” she manages right before he moves to kiss her, and she can practically feel the tension bleeding from both of them, ebbing its way into something like hesitant relief. Her hands leave her lap and make for his shirtfront, and she can’t tell for certain if the wet spots on her cheeks are from her or him. Dick peppers a series of small kisses around her cheeks and jaw, to which she laughs, and the last one is deeper, lingering.
There is still that anxiety, all those reservations as Dick pulls away, because a few kisses and a smile won’t alleviate all of her worries, but it’s nice to know she isn’t alone in this. A thumb swipes below her eye, catching a stray tear she didn’t realize was there.
“This is you and me, Babs,” he says, whispering between them like they’re kids again and sharing a secret they shouldn’t be.
“You and me,” she echoes while his shirt bunches beneath her fingers. She closes her eyes as Dick leans to rest his forehead against hers. She can feel his gaze wandering across her, finally settling on her stomach despite the layer of cotton and there being nothing to see, yet.
“Do you know how far along?” he asks, and he moves with her as she shakes her head.
“Not too long; just a couple of weeks at most.” Barbara opens her eyes and smooths her hands down his chest, running them back up to rest on his shoulders. “I still need to go to an actual doctor to make sure, but I took a few tests and they all came back positive, so that’s got to be something.”
“I would think so, and I’m going with you,” he says, breath tickling her lip. She can feel the eyelashes she’s always been jealous of brushing against hers. “You took a test without me?”
“I don’t think you wanted to be part of the experience of me peeing on a stick,” she says and then sits back enough that she can truly meet his eyes. Her jaw clenches for a moment. “Besides, I didn’t want to give you any false hope—or any at all until I had some kind of evidence.”
Dick hums and shifts onto his haunches as Barbara makes to move. When he grunts and pulls a face at the twinge in his knee, she gives him a knowing look that he pretends to ignore. He shifts out of the way as she moves her chair though, and puts up little protest after she maneuvers to the couch and pulls him down to join her. Barbara lets him sit and make himself comfortable before she leans into his side, and soon, no thanks to him, they’re a tangle of limbs and she’s unable to tell where she ends and he begins.
Her cheek rests against his chest, where she listens to the steady thrum of his heart and one of his hands glides down her back.
“I don’t want to tell anyone yet,” she says, finally breaking the silence. Beneath her, Dick shifts and she tilts her head along his shoulder. “Just for now, and until we’re certain.”
“I don’t mind keeping secrets.” Their concerns, while unvoiced, do not go unnoticed. It’s too soon, too risky, and Barbara wraps an arm around his chest before settling again. His eyes are soft as he looks down at her, and in them is that gleam of hope she saw traces of earlier. She can feel some of her own, too, bubbling up along the surface to coincide with the relief in that she wasn’t going this alone.
“I love you,” she murmurs, a whispered secret just between the two of them. It isn’t the first time she’s said it since they’d gotten together again, but it still carried the same weight and there was a small thrill she found in saying it.
“I should hope so,” he says around a mock scoff, fingers ghosting back up along her spine to toy with the ends of her hair. “We’ve only just made a baby together.” Barbara narrows her eyes, which Dick only seems to take immense pleasure in when he smiles. The corners of his eyes crinkle; the angle of their next kiss is awkward and she can’t imagine the strain it puts on his neck, but she pulls her hand back in order to reach up and cup his cheek. “Love you too.”
“You better,” Barbara retorts, pulling away to lie down again with an exaggerated sigh. “I only let you put a baby in me.”
“Really glad we’re having this conversation. There is literally nothing I would change about the verbiage, and I know you hate when I use the word literally.”
“I really do,” she mutters, nestling back against his chest. Her teeth bite into her lip as she smiles though, because, and she’s decided, they did make a baby together. They’re having a baby. There’s a thrill that comes with that thought, too, and Dick must notice because his grip on her tightens to match hers on him.
“You literally do.”
“Please stop.”
Dick chuckles softly and his jaw presses against the top of her head. They’re quiet and content, and Barbara’s still nervous, still full of apprehension because who’s to say they can actually do this, and this was not part of her controlled, careful plans. There’s that inkling of dread, too, because she can’t imagine what it would do for the two of them to build up all of these ideas only to be told it was for nothing.
Instead, she works to focus on the here and now.
“You know they’re expecting Oracle to make an appearance in about an hour, right?” she asks against his chest.
“Sure thing,” he says, though neither one of them make any effort to move. If anyone needs her for anything particularly daunting, they all know how to reach her, anyhow. “For now I just want to hold you for a minute.”
Barbara hums, arm shifting like she can pull him any closer. Dick’s still playing with her hair when he pauses, stilling against her, and she cracks an eye open and waits.
“Hey, when we tell everyone, could we maybe not mention the fact I pretty much said oh shit when you told me? Feels like that kind of dampens the mood.”
Barbara starts to laugh, practically vibrating against his chest in a nervous chuckle that gives way to a full blown belly laugh. “No, because I said the same thing!”
Dick sputters, jostling and nearly dislodging her, and then they’re moving again until she presses herself against the back of the couch and he’s balanced precariously on the edge. Her nose crinkles as she grins at him, and he shakes his head against the throw pillow mashed into the arm of the couch.
“Yeah, we’re definitely not saying that.”
“Nah,” Barbara says, reaching up to run her finger along the slope of his nose. Maybe the baby will have his and it’ll be adorned with a smattering of freckles like the ones she used to try to hide. “I’ll just tell my dad you said that.”
He nips at her finger. “Hope you like sleeping on the couch, Barbara.”
“We’ll see,” she hums through a grin, and his hand curls around her hip.
“Yeah, yeah I guess we will.”