"I think I'm going to miss hanging out with you during my off periods." Dick Grayson stretched backwards on his chair popping his back after he finished braiding his girlfriend's hair. Dick and Barbara as well as their occasional friend and other students who needed to catch up on work.
Today was just them and Mary was glad for it.
"I can't believe they fired you, Mary." Barbara says unhappy with the outcome of Mary and Bruce's meeting with the school board.
"They didn't fire me, they suggested I resign, and I agreed so long as I could choose my replacement and was given severance pay. It's not like this was going to be longer than a semester." Mary does not look up from her textbook. "It's not like you guys won't see me after next week." Yup, in one week another teacher, a gay man so that he wouldn't get pregnant or impregnate any women, would replace her and Mary had to break the news to her total of maybe forty students. The good news was, they would have snacks and a movie on Friday that inspired several students into surprising her with gender-neutral baby gift sets, none of them in beige thank god.
"Well, yeah, but I won't get to vibe with the new teacher like I do with you." Dick pouts which makes his girlfriend roll her eyes.
"Dude, I am literally having dinner with you and your family every Sunday for the rest of my life. You won't die from not seeing me every day at ten in the morning. Besides, I personally vetted Andy and he's a great guy."
Andrew Ramirez was a study buddy -and fellow member of the National Latinx Law Student Association- who needed a job that was temporary as he was starting his internship with the D.A.'s office in spring. That her new circle of friends was mostly composed of gay people and people of color did not bother her as it bothered her now former boss.
"I am sure Andy's great, but you don't have Bruce within earshot here. I can't have Bruce knowing I want to become a police officer before I find a way to break it to him." Dick reminded her that she had been roped into helping him get into a Police Academy as well as getting his bachelor's degree before he starts his training.
"Have you considered letting Bruce know you don't want to run Wayne Enterprises? I can help you let him down gently if you would like to have that conversation before your eighteenth birthday instead of graduation." Mary writes down something in her notes. She cannot wait for the week to be over, so she could focus more on law school.
"My birthday is next month and ten days before Thanksgiving. I'm not going to ruin either, Mary," Dick argues.
"Just saying it's better to rip off the band aid now. My parents were against me moving out for college, but once we talked it over, they came around. Bruce is much more reasonable than my mom and you have someone on your side who can help your dad come around." She reasoned.
"She's right, Dickie, Bruce can never say no to her and Mary could convince him to let you go to Bludhaven without any fuss." Barbara points out before muttering, "Fucking pen doesn't work."
"I doubt I can convince him to let you go to Bludhaven. That place is as bad as Gotham City, I thought you were going to head somewhere safer like Princeton." Mary admits and holds up the application he just asked her to review for him.
"How about you get both Mary and Selina to talk Bruce into letting you move out?" Barbara suggested and both teenagers looked at Mary remembering that she has yet to meet Selina Kyle.
"I haven't met her yet, but if you can get her to agree I will try to casually corner her so we can put a two-pronged attack on convincing your dad to let you follow your dreams. Even if I think Bludhaven is pretty dangerous and I am just thinking about your safety." Mary smiles and pretends not to feel some trepidation at meeting Bruce's on and off again girlfriend who could decide she is a threat and make her life a living hell. Oh, when did her life start to turn into a telenovela?
"I can't believe you didn't tell me your son's favorite teacher is having your child." Selina scrolled down on her smartphone skimming through one of the many articles talking about him and Mary.
"I'm sorry, Cat, I planned on telling you earlier, but I wasn't sure if she was okay with that." He apologizes and locks the door to his office. It had been a while since he had time to catch up with Selina.
"It's fine, but I do want to meet the poor girl Gotham is now fixated on." Selina did not hesitate to climb onto his lap and wrap her arms around his neck.
"Would you believe me if I told you I missed you?" Bruce asks his lips inches away from hers.
"Not unless you show me, tiger."
They kissed ardently, and he pretended not to feel guilty that he cannot bring himself to tell her that he is Batman.
This Saturday dinner -no one would be free for their usual Sunday dinners- was not vastly different from their other family dinners that now included them. Sure, Barbara had visited twice, and Clark and Lois had taken a rain check, but never had Mary felt underdressed and, though she hated to admit to such things, kind of ugly.
Selina Kyle was beautiful and dressed to the nines in a black cocktail dress topped off with a pearl necklace and stunning makeup. Bruce had not wanted for Selina to wear that necklace and Mary once again pretends she didn't skip her meds -a bad thing for more than just the obvious reasons- just to have an advantage in this dinner. They were the famous Mrs. Wayne pearls, and Selina was wary of her even without knowing the full story.
Mary on the other hand, wore dark wash skinny jeans with well-worn tan ballet flats and a floral wrap long sleeved blouse she found at a garage sale. The fanciest part of her outfit was the handmade filigree earrings she had bought during that trip to Oaxaca. If she had not already felt insecure by just being in her presence, then knowing Selina Kyle was really sizing her up made it even worse.
"I heard some of the teachers made you a surprise baby shower at the teacher's lounge, did you cry there as well?" Dick asks Mary, breaking some of the tension she was feeling and reminding her that she was now a semipermanent fixture in their household and if Selina did not like it then fuck her.
"Yup, and lucky for me I always have makeup in my purse." Mary had gotten wind of it on Wednesday, but even then, being surprised with a cake and several gifts-not counting the ones by her students- had made her cry at least four times that day, that was not counting that sad part in the last Hunger Games movie she played in class.
"Bruce, did you know she hates the color beige?" Dick mentions to his adoptive father. Bruce already knew that after he discovered beige clothing were a trigger for her, well he walked in on her throwing the beige long sleeve shirt she had worn when they had coffee in her apartment and that was self-explanatory.
"Beige brings out the yellow undertone in my skin and makes me look anemic." Mary supplies making sure Bruce and Dick know she is uncomfortable discussing one of her triggers with a morally ambiguous person she does not know.
"You are anemic, Mary." Maggie points out never missing an opportunity to make that joke.
"Yeah, but I don't like looking like I am. It makes people act weird around me." Mary tries not to look too annoyed at having said this and changes the topic. "Selina, it is very nice to meet you and let me just say I love the color of your lipstick."
"Thank you, Mary. I like your earrings." She returned the compliment.
"It did not end there, Mary. Dinner couldn't have been that bad." Cati, Catherine Todd, her former neighbor and the one who had gotten her the gig at the community center, wanted to know how dinner with her baby daddy and his girlfriend had been.
"Don't you have to prepare for the citizenship class?" Mary dodges the question and eats her raisins faster. Catí taught a citizenship class in the same building Mary assisted Mr. Sanchez, the Immigration lawyer.
"And didn't I tell you to stop eating my snacks?" Catherine asks holding out her hand for the other little box of raisins she was going to eat it later.
"Can I keep my raisins if I tell you what happened?" Mary bargained. Omitting all the parts where her superpowers and Bruce's alter ego are mentioned, of course.
"Fine, but you better not spare any details, Maruja." Catherine gives her back the box of raisins.
"Bruce told me you are a law student. I am curious what inspired you to choose law as a career?" Selina asked and for a moment Mary gets flashbacks to her interview with the admissions office at both A & M and Gotham U.
Mary can go several ways with this. She could:
1:throw the question back at her and ask her why she keeps her thieving ways even though she no longer must steal things to survive.
2:She could answer with the whole ass essay she remembered for this specific question
3:Or she could just relax and answer it like she always does when she is with family.
Let's see which one she picks.
"It combines two of my favorite things, helping people who get fucked by a broken justice system and arguing." Mary answers innocently. Number three it is.
Those were the two reasons and a very personal anecdote she had written one-thousand two hundred words telling Gotham U why she deserved to finish her two remaining years of law school with them.
"Then I hope your baby takes after you, Mary." Selina smiles reminding Mary of her black cat back home.
"Thank you, but I guess we'll just have to wait see who she takes after." Mary doesn't stop herself from calling her baby she. She's sort of known since Friday when she went to get a read with Frankie's witch mom, Doña Isaura.
"You said girl, are we-?" Bruce catches on to her slip up and asks with hope. Sure, he wouldn't mind having another son, but a little girl with wavy brown hair he could see playing dress up with his late mother's things sounded nice.
"Oh, no its just a hunch, I swear." Mary says lightly trying to play off her super-secret superpowers as an inside joke and not a secret Selina is not privy to. "But we do have an appointment for the results of last weeks blood test on Monday morning, so we might find out their biological sex then."
"You go to her appointments?" She asks him. For someone who has broken into motherfucking Arkham, Catwoman was either oblivious to the life of the man she is in a relationship with or not as bright as Mary had believed.
"It's my baby too, Selina. I wouldn't miss it for the world." He takes her hand and Mary pretends she doesn't feel just a little bit jealous of her.
"I would take her, but I have class on Mondays and my sister knows that I can't take any days off if I want to be a surgeon." Maggie interrupts the kinda romantic moment between their host and his girlfriend.
"Your parents must be so proud of you two". There's a tinge of envy and sadness, the kind someone with a bad family life or no parents has for those who seem to have it all. Selina doesn't dwell on it and asks, "What do your three other siblings do for a living, if you don't mind me asking?"
"Our oldest sister, Miranda, is hoping to open her own pharmacy before Christmas just to one-up her old boss at CVS. Our brother, Ricky, is a welder for some space exploration company that moved to our region and Ivan wants to be a professional mariachi singer, but he wanted to be a professional gamer last week so who knows what career he is going to want once he finishes high school." Mary tries to summarize everything their siblings are doing into a neat paragraph without going into detail how they struggled to get there in the first place.
Although there wasn't much of struggle for Ivan getting into his high school's mariachi band, something all four of his older siblings had been forced into by their parents and grandparents, as he did have a good singing voice and loved playing the trumpet, but it's difficult trying to live your best life while keeping like thirty percent of your life a secret.
"Your baby will be very lucky to grow up with a family like Mary's." Selina says approval in her voice. Little did she know, Mary's family was not as perfect as it seemed, but she wasn't going to bring that up around three orphans with more issues than a longstanding comic book series.
"Yeah, I would've punched you if you were being ungrateful for your crazy family, Maruja. Some of us would fucking kill for a dad who always picks up the phone on the first ring, a mom who always calls to make sure you are ok or even a Tia who always reminds you that you are fucking fantastic," Catherine lectured her, reminding Mary that not everyone was lucky to have a family who didn't discard you like last week's trash because her new man doesn't want to raise another man's kids.
So, I am back after taking the month of November off, but this fic was being difficult, and I'll be honest, I was writing my other fanfics. I want to avoid the Madonna/whore complex, and the girlfriend/wife hates newcomer, but I don't know if that is discernible in this chapter.
Maruja is a nickname for Maria some people in Puerto Rico use, or so my Puerto Rican cousin-in-law and Google say.
I don't know why I felt like I needed to add that last part, I think I might write a fanfic that's a shameless retcon of Jason Todd's backstory that combines some parts and completely ignores the rest.
Please leave a review, I run on comments and kudos, but sadly kudos are only given once and don't provide substantial writing motivation as does a review. Y'all can also visit me at my Tumblr and like talk to me about the fandom or the fic or whatever y'all want.