Work Text:
Blue
If they handed out Olympic medals for fidgeting, Barbara was pretty sure Dick would have been one of the most highly decorated. She side-eyed him carefully, trying to see if there was a reason he’d changed position in his chair for the millionth time. Not that he really needed a reason; Dick was always moving. He was shifting shining sunlight, melting his way through the stillness that always seemed to settle over her.
“You okay?” she asked, after she had watched him open and close his mouth at least three times without saying anything.
He jumped like he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t. “Who me?”
“Dick, we’re the only ones here,” Barbara pointed out, her hand gesturing to the empty room. They were alone in the manor’s library, textbooks piled up on the table between them. Every twenty minutes or so, Alfred would pop in, sometimes just walking by, other times offering fresh baked cookies or hot chocolate. He had outright refused to make them coffee; indifferent to their pleas, he said that at sixteen, they should not be drinking coffee after 4 PM, no matter what they had planned for nightly activities. Alfred’s diligence was the only reason Barbara’s dad still let her go to the manor for homework after school.
“Well, I was thinking,” the boy beside her said, the left side of his mouth starting to turn up in the type of smile that made her heart beat just a little bit faster. “Your birthday is in what? Two weeks?”
Twelve days. Her birthday was in twelve days, something he knew very well, because he had been more excited for it than she was.
“And?” she asked, eyebrow raised.
“And I was thinking maybe I wanted to give you your birthday present now.”
Barbara sighed, dropping her head to the table. “Dick Grayson, we talked about this!”
“You talked,” he corrected. “I listened. And I still think I should get to give it to you now.”
“No!”
“Babs,” he laughed. “I think you’re being over dramatic.” Dick leaned over to pull her up off the table. His smirk now a full blown smile, his blue eyes dancing.
“It’s twelve days, Dick,” she reminded him. “If I can wait twelve days for it to be my birthday you can wait to give me a present. I don’t see what the big deal is anyway.” He knew she didn’t like birthdays, didn’t like it when the attention was unavoidably centered on her and yet in the last six years they had been friends and whatever they were now, Dick Grayson had always insisted on making a big deal of her birthday.
“I’m gonna do it,” he whispered, going full gremlin mode. Before Barbara could stop him, Dick was out of his chair and flying down the hallway towards his room.
“Ms. Gordon?” Alfred questioned from the doorway, clearly having just witnessed Dick’s sprint.
“He’s getting my birthday present,” she mumbled, resigned.
“Ah,” Alfred chuckled softly. “He really is quite proud of himself.”
“Because it’s perfect, Al,” Dick announced, strolling back into the room with his hands behind his back.
“As you have said Master Richard. Repeatedly.” The wink Alfred sent her as he turned from the room did nothing to quell the butterflies now cavorting through her stomach.
“What did you do, Boy Wonder?”
“C’mon Babs,” Dick laughed, moving until he was standing in front of her, still bouncing on the balls of his feet. “You know I switched over to a new name.”
Barbara closed her eyes. She still had a hard time seeing him as Nightwing, as a boy who grew to be just tall enough that if she wanted to kiss him, she would have to stand on her toes. The blue of his new emblem exploded behind her closed lids. It really did suit him – so close to the color of eyes he hid behind a domino mask.
“You still with me?” he teased, his fingers trailing against her cheek.
“I’m here,” she sighed, smiling a little despite herself. “So what did you get me?”
“Oh so now you want it?” His laughter filled her, warming the shadows of birthday’s past when she had sat alone at the kitchen table, her dad at work, or even earlier ones where her mother would have an episode all because baby Barbara had asked if there would be cake.
She leaned into him, pushing the memories aside. “ I could still wait. Can you?”
Dick shook his head, pulling her over to sit on the couch by the fire, their homework long forgotten.
“I know green’s your favorite color, but…” He pressed a flat square box into her hands, the barest hint of nervousness creeping onto his face in the form of a blush.
Carefully, she pulled back the wrapping paper, loving it all the more for its messiness; a clear indication Dick had done it himself. And just for a second, with the smooth gray colored box in her hands, she could feel Dick Grayson go completely still. Inside, resting against a silk pillow, were a pair of sapphire stud earrings, the all too familiar blue of them shimmering in the sunlight still filtering in through the window.
“ Dick, ” she whispered, once she realized she could breathe again. She looked up, her eyes locking with his, the same shade of blue sparking back just as brightly as the earrings.
“You like them?” he asked, anxious as he reached out to touch her hand, his foot tapping out his own version of Morse Code against the couch.
“Of course I do but – ”
“No,” he stopped her. “Don’t tell me they’re too expensive or anything like that. I know – I know – you don’t think you get to have things like this, Babs. But you do. You’re smart and funny and one of the most aggressively kind people I know.”
Barbara could feel tears beginning to prik at her eyes, the walls inside her shifting and shaking like they always seemed to do when he looked at her like he was now. Like she was special, important, worth putting first.
“Thank you,” she sighed, moving to wrap her arms around him, cheek buried in his neck to try and hide the tears. The words couldn’t do justice to the warmth that filled her, but it was what she could manage, and by the way he tightened around her, he knew it too. And it was enough.
Green may have been her favorite color but Barbara was pretty sure she was falling in love with blue.