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Dick sniffled and rearranged the blankets in his nest dispassionately. No one loved him. Bruce didn’t love him. Alfred didn’t love him. Dick was in heat, alone, and no one would come cuddle him and make the emptiness inside him go away. Instead, he had to live with the emptiness alone.
He keened for his pack, for his family. Where were they? Dad? Alfred?
Dick flopped face-first into the blankets, wriggling his nose in annoyance when that hurt. The nest was harder than he’d thought.
A scuff of feet, and Dick’s head snapped up. Was it a bad alpha? Someone who had come and found Dick because his family didn’t love him anymore? Why wouldn’t dad protect him?
Dick’s watery eyes met startled blue ones in the face of a tiny little boy. Oh right. His baby brother. Dick sniffled and curled miserably back up in his nest. His brother was new, so Dick could be forgiven for forgetting about him. Bruce would not be forgiven. Alfred would be forgiven if he gave Dick cookies, but Bruce would not.
Why…
Why wasn’t the baby getting in the nest? Did he not love Dick either? Did he want Dick to die of loneliness?
Dick raised his head and keened, hopeless and betrayed, to his brother.
The pup twitched forward, then stopped. Dick keened more insistently. He needed someone! He couldn’t be alone!
The pup hesitated a moment longer, but the next keen broke him. His brother chirped back, a puppy answer to an older packmate, and he climbed into Dick’s nest at last.
Dick purred as he wrapped the little pup up in his arms. His brother was so small! Dick needed to hold him more before he got big, and he needed to make sure the pup smelled just like Dick, and he needed to give the pup all the hugs and kisses.
Mmhmm, Dick had a mission.
Bruce stared down at the pup curled up in Dick’s arms. The pup stared back, unblinking. He didn’t seem in the least bit afraid of Bruce, even though most street pups were, especially when Bruce was looming over him.
Bruce tilted his head. “What’s wrong with Robin?”
The pup shrugged his shoulders as far as he could with them being penned in so tight by Dick’s octopus hug. “I don’t know. He just stole my nest and cried at me until I cuddled him.”
…That explained everything and nothing.
“You live here?” Bruce wouldn’t allow that.
Pups needed homes. They needed nests. Bruce couldn’t smell anyone other than Dick and the pup in the room, not even traces of a pack.
The pup nodded. “Yeah. It’s better than foster care.”
Bruce considered. He was working on the foster care issue, but he was making slow progress. Trafficking and abuse were still rampant, and all the good homes Leslie had personally approved were full.
That left one option.
Oh, what a tragedy.
“Why don’t you come home with us?” Bruce suggested.
The pup squinted at Bruce. “Why?”
Bruce shrugged. “Robin wants to cuddle you. He’ll be very sad if I take him and not you.”
Dick keened dramatically, as though to agree, though Bruce wasn’t sure Dick could really understand what was going on.
The pup wriggled a hand free and reached back to rub his scent over Dick’s cheek, and Dick calmed with a pleased warble.
When the pup glanced back to Bruce, though, he didn’t look completely convinced. “I dunno…”
“I’ll pay you five hundred dollars if you’ll cuddle with him until his heat is over,” Bruce offered.
“Done.” The pup blinked in surprise, like he hadn't meant to say it so quickly, but he didn’t take it back.
Bruce smiled and slowly approached the pups in their nest. “I’ll hold him for a minute if you want to gather up your things. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Bruce leaned over the pup and pulled Dick into a hug, subtly maneuvering his son’s arms so the pup could escape. As soon as the pup was away, though, Dick started keening desperately for him.
Bruce winced. “Hurry, please.”
The pup nodded and started scrambling around the little hideout, gathering a few things and shoving them into his ratty backpack. It took him a minute, tops, to finish and get back to Bruce.
Bruce released Dick, who tackled his pup into a hug and clung on tight. The pup yelped, but Bruce just chuckled and took Dick’s arm.
It was an awkward business, guiding a dramatically sad omega who was dead-set on clutching a small pup to his chest, but Bruce managed to lead Dick in a crab walk out of the building and to the curb where the Batmobile was parked.
Dick spent the entire drive home scenting the pup, which the boy—Jason, he revealed—suffered through with only mild complaining. Bruce smiled as he listened to Jason’s spluttering indignity when Dick started trying to claim-bite him, but he did notice that Jason wasn’t trying to stop Dick. Maybe the pup wanted a pack too.
That was convenient, because Bruce didn’t think that either he or Dick would ever be able to give Jason up.