Disclaimer: I only own the plot and my OCs. Anything you recognize as not mine belongs to Marvel Studios, Disney, Warner Bros. Entertainment, and/or their otherwise respective owners.
Author's Notes: So...this is like 2x the size that I was expecting it to turn out as lmao. But there was just so much to say! Like, y'all know me when it comes to the internal dialogues of my characters, and I thought it was very crucial for this particular piece. Make sure y'all understand Dick's thought processes here. I could've kept on going, too, but I made sure to stop myself where I did XD We can get into the part that I was going to include later, since this is Dick's side-plot, not Jason's...
Anyways, this makes 2 of 3 companion pieces to black and gold posted. The next one we haven't reached the point in black and gold to be able to post yet without spoilers. So, it'll probably be a while for that one. Maybe in the meantime I can circle back to that one story I haven't gotten around to writing yet...
As always, I hope you all enjoy,
~TGWSI/Selene Borealis
~the black and gold 'verse~
~like omither, like son~
Dick had known that the day when Zatanna would go back to San Francisco was going to come. He'd thought about it a lot, even, as you have already seen and can probably imagine if you haven't.
Still, he felt completely unprepared for the day when it finally came, and he was standing on top of the same rooftop where they'd met with her. It was December 30th; Christmas had already come and past, but not his heat, because he'd decided to make this one of the cycles that he was on suppressants for. He hadn't wanted to waste a single (coherent) second with Zatanna that he could've otherwise before she...left.
"Well, this is it," she said, looking up at him with her dark brown eyes, wide and beautiful. Eyes that he could absolutely get lost in. Her lips quirked at her own way of phrasing the sentence. "God, that sounds awfully cliché, doesn't it?"
"Yeah," he agreed. His voice didn't sound nearly as wrecked as he felt. "It does."
Technically, she wasn't supposed to leave until tomorrow morning, as she was going to take a plane from Gotham to San Francisco like any ordinary person would rather than making a portal to go through – apparently, making a portal for long distances without something called a "sling ring," whatever that was, took a lot out of witches. Still, there wouldn't really be a time for them to meet then because of his family's hectic schedule, even though he knew that Rebecca, at least, if not Tony, or Bruce, or Alfred, would've made time for him to say goodbye to her at the airport if he had asked, no matter how busy it was going to be because of the New Year.
So, yeah...this was it.
"Promise me you'll keep in touch with me?" Zatanna asked, lifting up onto her tiptoes to help cross the distance between them, as she always did. "I want to know everything that's going on with you. You don't have to leave anything out."
"Yeah," Dick agreed again. He lowered his head down some, so that their lips were just about to brush up against each other, though neither of them actually made the move. They'd both known going into their relationship, as wonderful as it was – had been, that this night would be the end of it. "I will. Goodbye, Zatanna."
She smiled. "Goodbye, Dick."
...Of course, he didn't actually keep his promise.
It wasn't intentional at first. He'd set up an email to specifically message Zatanna, one that his family didn't know about, because he really didn't feel like Jason figuring out his email password again and then gleefully reading what he wrote to his ex-girlfriend. Granted, now that his fourteen-year-old brother was getting old enough to start becoming romantically interested in people (well, one person. Dick would bet the entire family's fortune on them getting together eventually, even if it was only as a high school romance) himself, his presentation just on the horizon, it was getting more unlikely that he would tell the rest of the family about it. But, still...the messages weren't things that Jason or anyone else needed to know about, much less read.
Within a month and a half, however, his messages to Zatanna were already becoming sporadic, and though she always replied back quickly and enthusiastically, she didn't message him herself – which, more on that later. Back to his original point, part of the reason why his messages became sporadic was because of school: his second semester of senior year at St. Philomena's had already kicked off with a bang – as in, he was quickly becoming mobbed down with schoolwork, as the professors seemingly became convinced overnight that they needed to shove as much information down their seniors' throats before they graduated as possible. Part of it was also because of Robin, as keeping up with being the vigilante as well as his schoolwork was no easy task.
But part of it, too, the third reason to go along with the others, was that only two weeks after Zatanna had left back for San Francisco, Dick started to feel...off.
It started off as fatigue. Dick didn't complain about this particular symptom to Bruce, Tony, or anybody else, because he figured that it was just caused by his workloads as senior high school student and vigilante. Besides, it wasn't like the fatigue was that bad. He was able to push through it easily, although in the mornings he felt like he needed a lot more caffeine in order to force his body into an alert state than usual.
It didn't just rest (pun intended) with the fatigue, however. Roughly five weeks after Zatanna had left, Dick started to throw up. He thought it was just a stomach flu at first, and so did his parents. Tony had tried to make him stay home from both school and patrol, but Dick countered that he didn't need to, because he didn't have a fever and his symptoms weren't severe enough to be caused by a norovirus or anything like that. Not to mentioned, nobody else besides maybeJason was getting sick. But even if his younger brother was getting sick, it wasn't a stomach flu at work for Dick.
Because on the fourth day of his throwing up, the day that his adoptive omither left for Afghanistan, he already knew what the truth actually was.
Dick, after all, had been around a pregnant male omega for a good portion of his life, given Tony's five pregnancies. Basically three and a half years, if you really wanted to get down into the math of it. He knew what the symptoms of pregnancy for them were.
And on the third day of him getting sick, as he'd been perched in front of the toilet, waiting for the urge to gag to come back, a stray thought had occurred to him. At first, he'd brushed it aside. But then, it had come back with a vengeance, and his eyes had widened as he'd done the math inside his head, and then...
That night, while he'd been out on patrol on his own, he'd broken into a store, using all of the tricks that the criminals of Gotham had inadvertently taught him over the years, and stolen two pregnancy tests. Well, maybe "stolen" wasn't an accurate word. He'd left a note explaining what he'd taken and more than enough cash to make up for the transgression on the counter next to the bodega's register, before he'd locked up the store again. He'd then taken the two tests with him to the nearest subway station. Nobody had been waiting for the train, thank God, so he'd been able to sneak into the deplorable restroom of the station unnoticed to use the tests. Also thankfully, as a male omega, he hadn't needed to squat down like a female omega or beta to pee on them, because the toilet seats had been absolutely filthy.
The next three minutes, after Dick had placed the tests on a paper towel on the sink counter, had been the longest of his life. He'd paced the length of the room, going back and forth, back and forth, until his head had felt like it was spinning. When the three minutes had at last been up, he'd gone over to the pregnancy tastes, only for his face to have physically blanched when he'd seen the results.
Positive. Both of them.
He was freaking pregnant with Zatanna's child.
He'd had a panic attack right then and there in the subway restroom, he wasn't ashamed to admit it. He hadn't known – and still didn't – what he wanted to do. Because, dear Lord, how was he supposed to be an omither at eighteen? Yes, Tony had given birth to Lili and adopted him with Bruce at the age of seventeen, but everything that the older omega did felt worlds different than what Dick did himself! His adoptive omither was a much stabler person and stronger in respects that Dick wasn't. Case in point: he was going to Afghanistan tomorrow, a place where most omegas from the Western world wouldn't dare to go, and –
Oh God, Tony was going to go to Afghanistan for a business trip tomorrow.
Eventually, once he'd calmed himself down, still there in that subway restroom, Dick had decided that he wouldn't make any decisions on anything at all just yet – "anything" being what he was going to do about the baby. Since Tony was going to go off to Afghanistan, he'd decided that he would wait until his adoptive omither got back to tell him, to seek out his advice. Surely, Tony would have a good idea about what to do. And even if he didn't, he would be the beacon of support that Dick so desperately needed right now.
. . .
. . .
But then, Tony didn't come back when he should've.
And he wouldn't come back for another two months, which was a long, long time when you were pregnant, as Dick was about to find out.
When they got the news in the afternoon of the day after Tony had left that something had happened in Afghanistan, something bad, there was chaos in the Stark-Wayne household. There wasn't any other good way to describe it.
And...Dick didn't really want to talk about that day, or most of the day after it. The two days were so chaotic, so full of shock, horror, grief, and uncertainty – they knew that Tony was alive, because his mate bond with Bruce hadn't severed again like it had in the December of 2001, which was an event that haunted Dick's dreams to this day, but that was all that they knew. They didn't know where he was, or if they would find him in time to bring him home, or if Edward, Gemma, and probably even Bea would grow up without any memories of their – that even just thinking about them would send shivers down his spine years later.
So no, he wouldn't talk about those days, except to say first that he made sure to keep his mouth shut about his pregnancy, as had been his plan before Tony had been kidnapped. His family didn't need that stress to be added onto with the knowledge that Dick was pregnant. He knew that if Tony didn't come home...soon, as much as that thought physicallypained him, he would not be able to keep his pregnancy a secret forever, as soon his scent would change and he would start showing – if he decided to keep the pregnancy, although he didn't want to make that decision without Tony's guidance. Not to mention, there would be the lack of his heat in March. But for now, he wanted to be as helpful as he could, since there wasn't anything that he could do to help find his adoptive omither when he was thousands and thousands of miles away.
Second, while he wouldn't talk about that second day, he would talk about what happened that night. Dick went to bed early that night, because he did not have the morale to see the point in patrolling with Bruce, and Bruce was spending the night in the Batcave in the same way that he had the night before anyways: trying to find leads on Tony that the military could not with the help of Rebecca, while Alfred remained in the upstairs in case one of the children needed him.
But, despite the fatigue from his pregnancy, he couldn't sleep. At a quarter past eleven, Dick got out of his bed with a grumble, deciding to go downstairs and make himself some chamomile tea to see if that would help. Of course, he had to go to the bathroom first, because even at a little less than eight weeks, the baby was already pressing down on his bladder.
(And that probably said how likely he was to have an abortion already, the fact that he was referring to it as a "baby."But, he wasn't going to think about that now.)
When he left the bathroom and his room, he headed down the hall. But before he could get very far, he stopped in his tracks, his nose wrinkling as he inhaled a syrupy-sweet scent. His brain was so addled from the events of the past few days and his pregnancy, he couldn't immediately place where he recognized it from, but he knew that it was familiar to him. One he'd smelled on himself and Tony before.
A moment later, as he stood there, he heard a stifled sob.
It was coming from Jason's room.
Dick's head snapped over to his younger brother's closed door. He felt his heart skip a beat, and then he felt it start beating over a mile a minute, so fast that a gasp was drawn between his lips.
After the age of twelve, depending on their designation, people could present at any time. Alphas were specifically limited to the springtime and thetas to the springtime and fall, but betas and omegas could present at any time. And Jason, at fourteen years old, was old enough for this.
But Jason was supposed to present as an alpha. At least, that was what he had thought because of HYDRA. And because he had thought that, that was what they had all thought.
But, could it be possible – ?
Dick walked over to Jason's door. It was only a few steps because their rooms were so close together, but yet it felt like it took him an eternity to cross the distance. It felt like he was walking through molasses.
When he reached the door, he knocked at it. The sound was weak, but not so weak that it couldn't be heard. On the other side, he heard the sobs become silent.
There was a moment of silence, and then there was suddenly a keen, and that –
– That just confirmed it, because there was only one designation that could make that noise.
Jason was presenting as an omega.
Jason was in heat.
That explained why he had been sick the past couple of days, Dick thought stupidly, because it felt like it was a stupid thought for him to have given what was happening. Tony had thought that the fourteen-year-old had been coming down with the same sickness that Dick had, because he hadn't known that Dick wasn't sick at all, and none of them had realized that Jason was getting ready to present, either. If Tony had known even one of those things, Dick had no doubt that he wouldn't have gone on his trip to Afghanistan. He wouldn't be missing right now.
And that was important, because Dick had no idea what to do. He wasn't Tony! He didn't have everything miraculously figured out at seventeen, almost eighteen years old! For Christ's sake, he was pregnant with Zatanna's child in spite of how they'd practiced safe sex and he'd been on birth control and heat suppressants both, and –
– And he didn't know what, because every thought in his brain flew out the window as Jason followed up his keen with a, "Dickie?" It was faint, but it was there.
...Right. It wasn't about him right now. It was about his little brother, who might not even have an idea o what was happening to him, depending on how far gone into the brain fog he was.
"Jay?" Dick asked again, trying to get a grip on his emotions as much as possible. "Can I come in?"
The whine that he got in confirmation was everything that he needed to know.
He sucked in a breath. "JARVIS?"
The AI answered him immediately; he didn't really monitor the inner-goings of the house unless called for, hence why he hadn't been alerted to the fact that Jason was in heat until now. "Yes, Master Grayson?"
"Tell Alfred and Bruce that Jason's presenting and is in...heat, but not to come into his room unless I specifically say so."
"...Sir?" the AI said in return, obviously as confused as a self-learning AI could be.
"Just do it," Dick said.
He didn't wait for a response, opening the door to Jason's room and then shutting it behind him once he had.
Inside the room, the smell of an omega in heat was just that much more potent. Dick felt his eyes nearly water from it, and he wondered if Tony had felt the same way when he'd tended to him when Dick had presented.
Jason was laying in the middle of his queen-sized bed, his legs pulled up to his chest and his arms wrapped around them as he shivered in the dark from his heat, his eyes shut tight while his jaw was clenched, signifying that he was gritting his teeth. Dick walked over to the bed slowly, making his steps very purposeful, but it wasn't until he sat down on the bed tentatively that Jason opened his eyes, those sea glass eyes staring up at him...but also not. He wasn't able to really focus on him.
"Oh, Jay," Dick whispered.
"Dickie," Jason moaned in response. His eyes blinked out of sync. "What's...what's happening to me? My back and down there...they fucking hurt!"
So, he didn't know that he was presenting. Or if he did, the brain fog had made him forget all about it.
Dick felt so out of his depth. He'd had months to accept how he was going to be an omega. It hadn't happened basically overnight like it was now for Jason, like it had with Tony.
"Jason," he said slowly, so that his younger brother would understand, briefly wetting his lips afterwards. "You're presenting. You're in heat."
"Wha – ?" Jason began to say. Then, before he could finish, the words registering in his brain, he shook his head wildly. "No, no, that's not possible! I'm supposed to be an alpha, not an – ah!" He let out a wordless cry as the cramps presumably spiked. Let it never be said that presenting was a painless process, at least not for male omegas.
"You are," Dick said. And seeing his little brother so distraught and in so much pain, combined with the maternal instincts that must've already been developing in his brain because of his pregnancy, must've done something to him. Because then, before he knew it, his brain was kicking into overdrive, his instincts wanting nothing more than to protect, help, soothe the younger omega. "And it's okay. I know – I know it's scary and not what you wanted, but I'm going to help you get through this, okay? I promise."
The reminder of Jason having expected to be an alpha had his breath hitching. "I don't want – I don't want – !" he babbled in agreement.
Dick trilled, the first time he had ever made that noise, as he moved around so that he was laying down on the bed with Jason. He pulled one of the covers that had been kicked away as the fever had started along with Jason's heat over them, then pulled his younger brother into his arms. Jason burrowed his head into the crook of his neck gladly, still sobbing, still shaking. "I want – I want Omi!" he bawled.
Dick's heart felt like it shattered in two at that. "I know," he whispered. "Me, too."
The brain fog eventually became too much for Jason and he fell asleep. This was when Dick was able to get out of the bed, because the fourteen-year-old hadn't wanted him to leave, not even to get some ibuprofen so that the cramps could at least get better. Like Dick, his brother had drawn the short end of the stick when it came to first heats, because Dick remembered Tony saying before that the brain fog hadn't been that bad for him for his first several heats. Jason had gotten the worst of both worlds, and that was just so unfair.
He went to Jason's bathroom first, getting a washcloth from out of the linen closet and running it under the sink faucet, then wringing most of the water out so that it was only just above damp in terms of wetness, before he went back into the bedroom to lay it on the back of Jason's neck. The boy whimpered at the action in his sleep, but other than that, he didn't stir; his eyes were still squeezed shut, making it obvious that his sleep was far from restful.
Oh, Jay, Dick mused again.
When he opened up the door to the hallway, against how he'd already been expecting it and how he was Robin, Dick still jumped in his skin when he saw that Alfred and Bruce were waiting there for him, the lights on the dimmest setting that they could be without being off entirely. Both the butler and Dick's adoptive father looked positively wrecked.
"Master Grayson," Alfred breathed. "Is it – ?"
"What do you think? Can't you smell him?" Dick snapped. Then he ran a hand over his face, cringing at himself. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to – "
"No, no," Alfred reassured him just as quickly. "I'm the one who should be apologizing. I did not mean it like that."
Dick swallowed. "I know." He closed the door behind him, not wanting Jason to wake up and hear them, regardless of how unlikely the prospect was. Then he looked at Bruce. "I'm sorry," he apologized, as they were the only words that would come out of his mouth. He knew that he had nothing to apologize for, that none of them had anything to apologize for, that Jason presenting at the same time that Tony was missing in Afghanistan was none of their faults. But still, he felt like he had to apologize, to say, "I should have recognized that he wasn't sick, that he was going to present. Maybe if I had – "
"This isn't your fault, Dick. That's not your responsibility," his adoptive father told him, saying what he already knew. "It's happened, it's here, and we're going to deal with it."
Dick stared at him. "And by 'we,' you mean 'me.'"
The alpha did not refute his claim, though he shifted uncomfortably. Alfred tried, speaking, "Master Grayson – "
Dick's throat was dry, which led him to coughing when he started to talk. "N – no, Al – Alfred. We all – " he paused here to swallow, rubbing at his throat with his right hand. He should've gotten himself a glass of water while he'd been in Jason's bathroom " – know that it has to be me. With Tony..." He didn't bother to try to finish the remaining part of that dependent clause when attempting to do it the first time failed, just got into the main part of the sentence: "I'm the only omega in the house right now. Jay's not gonna wanna be anywhere near Bruce or Bucky, and while you'd be fine, Alfred...he needs somebody who's been through this before. Somebody who knows and understands what he's been through."
Alfred still didn't look pleased, but Bruce cut over anything he could've said, asking simply, "What are you going to do?"
And that was the million-dollar question, because Dick still didn't know the answer to it.
But –
– He did know what Tony had done six years ago for him, when he had been the one in heat for the first time.
And since Tony had done such a good job then, because it seemed like he knew everything when it came to matters such as these, surely it couldn't hurt to follow in his footsteps?
"I'm...going to stay with Jason for the entirety of his heat," Dick responded after this internal thinking of his. He nodded to himself as he said the words, becoming more and more assured in them. "I'm going to do what Tony did with me."
Bruce nodded as well. "I'll call you out of school in the morning," he said, acting like all of the Stark-Wayne children wouldn't already be called out of school for the next few days because their omither was missing.
Dick went into his own bedroom and bathroom to get out his heat supplies: the sanitary pads with wings, baby wipes, ibuprofen, water bottles, and a queen bed-sized heating pad – all things that Tony had shared with him back when he'd been having his first heat. He took them back to Jason's bedroom and got to work, picking up his younger brother and putting him in his comfy reading armchair after putting a towel over it so that the younger omega didn't stain it with slick. Jason shivered, but he didn't stir at this.
In fact, he didn't stir at all until after Dick had gotten everything ready and him nestled back in his bed, with Dick playing the big spoon to his little. The older omega was continuing to be unable to sleep, what was happening here to him (well, had happened in his case) and Jason and what could be happening to Tony keeping him wide awake. He petted Jason's hair with his right hand absentmindedly as his eyes remained open, staring off into space.
Just after four o'clock in the morning, he felt Jason shift against him. Dick was caught in between moving away to give him his space or remaining as close to him as possible. He wanted to comfort Jason in whatever way he could and was allowed.
Jason was the deciding factor in his decision. "D – Dickie?" he mewled as he shuffled around as best as he could in Dick's hold, until they were facing each other. Jason's eyes were already filled with tears, he could see them even in the darkness. "'M not...'m not dreaming, am I?"
"No," Dick said, as gently as he could. "You're not."
"'M an omega?"
"Yeah."
There was a pause.
Jason sniffled. "This sucks."
It was such a Jason thing of him to say, Dick couldn't stop the laugh that bubbled forth from his lips. "Yeah, Jay. I know it does."
Jason shook his head. "How...how are you and Tony able to do this every three months?"
He was too out of it to make an addendum to that in saying that Tony had spent much of his adult life without heats either because he was pregnant, in the eighteen-month time period after giving birth when an omega (and beta women and thetas too, though it was different with thetas) didn't have heats, or on suppressants, and that the latter was true for Dick. Well, actually...
Dick pushed that thought aside for now. He'd think about his own pregnancy later, when Jason wasn't in heat.
"We do it because we have to," Dick said, answering Jason's question. He moved his hand down to massage at the back of Jason's neck, which was damp from the washcloth and his sweat, but Jason seemed to appreciate this. "You get used to it eventually. It stops becoming completely terrible."
Jason snorted. "You make...it sound...so great."
"I make it sound like it's a fact of life, because it is," Dick returned. Well, unless Jason turned out to be transdesignation, since the movement for awareness of that identity was becoming more well-known, in which case Dick would fullysupport his brother, as he was sure that the rest of their family would. But for now, Jason was in heat and emotions were running high, he wasn't going to mention that possibility.
"Come on," he said then, sitting up and gathering his little brother in his arms. Jason let out a small whine at being moved away from the warmth of the heating pad that was soothing his cramps. "Let's get some ibuprofen in you and a sanitary pad on your underwear." He knew that the latter wouldn't be the easiest of fits, given that Jason hadn't been switched over to omega underwear, but they'd make it work. He doubted that Jason would want to borrow his underwear from a few years ago that he hadn't gotten around to throwing out yet despite them not fitting him anymore, and he wasn't exactly keen on making that offer anyways since...yeah, that'd just be too awkward.
Jason had much of the same reaction to the sanitary pads that Dick had had when Tony had shown him how to put them on, which was disgust and embarrassment at how much like a diaper it felt and at how he had to have his older brother help him put one on in spite of being fourteen. But, while Dick had never particularly wanted to see his brother like thisbefore, he didn't let it show on his face or in his acts, giving nothing but support and comfort, as he would with everything that happened during those four days of Jason's heat.
And, as it would turn out, that was a support comfort that Jason would need, in more ways than one.
While Jason didn't have the health problems that Dick had had with his first heat, he did have quite a few problems of his own. The brain fog made him temporarily forget twice more that he was presenting as an omega, which led to Dick having to remind him of it all over again that just mentally anguished the both of them. Even when he did remember that he'd presented, he was particularly clingy during his coherent moments, wrapping his arms around Dick like a barnacle when he tried to get up, which made the increased number of times that Dick had to pee because of his pregnancy difficult. Not so much his nausea, because miraculously, his morning sickness only occurred during those four days when Jason was well and truly out of it. He wasn't sure if it was because of their hormones mixing together or purely coincidence, but he wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
When it came to Jason's clinginess, it did help that though Jason, true to form, did not want to be around Bruce or Rebecca because they were alphas and wasn't keen on Alfred coming into his room either, he was fine with their younger siblings popping in. Dick only allowed it a handful of times for the entire heat, because he knew that it wasn't exactly typical, but Jason needed all of the comfort that he could get even beyond Dick, most of all when Tony wasn't here to give it to him.
Harley found the entire thing to be kind of gross – which made sense, given how Dick personally thought he would present – so he only came in once or twice, as did Bea because she was only four. But Lili and Peter hung out every single time that he allowed them to. The second time on the third day, their cuddling even gave Dick the opportunity to go take a shower in Jason's bathroom, since Jason would've protested if he went back to his own.
When he came out of the bathroom, feeling much cleaner and more alert as he toweled his hair, he saw Jason and Peter curled around each other, asleep, with Peter's glasses on the nightstand. Lili was sitting up, and when she heard him come out of the bathroom she turned to look at him with a frown. "Who's Cass?" she asked.
Dick hesitated before answering. "I...don't know."
Because that was the third of Jason's problems: while he was never one to have nightmares that made him toss and turn when coherent, albeit Dick was hesitant to call these dreams of his "nightmares," during his heat, he was.
And his dreams all seemed to be centered around the same person, if the way that he said the name "Cass" over and over again was any indicator.
It didn't need to be said that, whoever this Cass person was, Jason had to have known them from his time with HYDRA. He'd never been particularly forthcoming about the first eight and a half years of his life: not to Dick, not to Alfred, not to Bruce and Tony, and not even to Bucky. Even though the female alpha had been held at the same facility he'd been born and raised in up until Bruce had saved the two of them, she'd spent most of that time on ice. It had only been in the last few years of their stay that the HYDRA goons had let her out to train Jason. She knew just as much about the time before that as they all did, which wasn't much.
Whenever anybody tried to get Jason to talk about HYDRA in the past beyond the details that he was willing to give, he always shut them down – viciously, too. Even the therapist that Bruce and Tony had tried to get him to open to had suffered from this fate.
Thus, no matter how much Dick really, really wanted to ask him about who this Cass person was, he was resolved not to do it for at least the duration of Jason's heat. It wouldn't be fair to ask him when he wasn't fully coherent, because what if he really didn't want to say anything and wound up regretting it later when he was? What if he still wasn't ready for anybody else to know the full extent of what HYDRA had done to him?
So Dick comforted Jason when he woke up from these dreams of his in a similar way to when he'd woken up forgetting that he was presenting as an omega, not once asking the questions that he so desperately wanted to, and letting his younger brother cry into his shirt. Although he didn't do it every single time, he had a tendency to either wake up crying or start crying soon after from the dreams. And he wasn't alone in this, because Dick did his own fair share of crying, too: because of how his brother had suffered at the hands of HYDRA, of how Tony was still missing when they needed him so much, and of how he was pregnant and had no idea what to do...
But the fourth night of Jason's heat, when Dick could tell that it was basically over by his scent even if Jason's body was still catching up to the fact, after Jason had woken up and cried again from those dreams of his, in spite of his resolve, Dick couldn't help but ask, "Do you wanna talk about it?"
To be honest, since as he'd said, Jason's heat was winding down and he was therefore becoming more and more coherent, he hadn't been expecting a positive response. So he was surprised when Jason sniffled and asked with a raspy voice from all the crying that he had been doing over the past four days, "Do you promise not to tell anyone?"
Now, this was the one way that Dick knew he would differ from Tony in responding to Jason presenting as an omega. Because no matter how emotionally raw Jason was, Tony wouldn't have made that promise.
But Dick had no problems in doing so. He was Jason's older brother, after all, not their omither. "Yeah, I promise."
"I had a sister, back in HYDRA. Her name was Cass," Jason revealed. And Dick was not able to do anything more than widen his eyes at this, because the younger omega was already plowing on before he could. "Maybe 'half-sister' is more accurate...I think we were – are – related. But even if we weren't, she was still my sister. She was six months younger than me. She couldn't talk, some birth defect with her vocal cords, so we came up with our own sign language to communicate with each other. We grew up together until..." His bottom lip trembled. "We were six. One day, they took her away. I never saw her again. I don't know if she's alive or not. Probably not."
"Oh, little wing," Dick breathed. He had no idea where the nickname had come from (or how accurate it would soon turn out to be), it just slipped off of his tongue with ease.
"I just can't help but think that," Jason said, jerkingly wiping at the tears that were once again streaming down his cheeks, "we always thought that I was going to be the alpha and she the omega. They told us that we were one of each. So, since I'm the omega, does that mean that she was...that she would've been...?"
Dick hugged him as he collapsed back into his sobbing. He hugged him like his life depended on it.
"She sounds like she was an amazing sister," he said after a few moments.
Jason nodded against his shoulder. "She was," he confirmed brokenly. "I haven't thought about her in a long time...it's just easier not to. Because then I wish that – that they hadn't taken her away and Bruce would've been able to save her too, and that's stupid, because – "
"Hey," Dick chastised him, flicking Jason on the nose. It made his younger brother squawk. "It's not stupid."
Jason looked uncertain as he pulled away. "But – "
"It's not," Dick repeated. "You wish that things could've been better for her, because she's your sister. And...I wish things could've been better for her, too. I would've liked to get to know her. It sounds like Bruce and Tony would've loved her."
"They would've," Jason agreed. "But – but you can't tell anybody about her, not yet! I'm not...ready for anyone else to know."
Dick nuzzled his cheek. "I just told you that I wouldn't," he reminded him.
And he didn't. The morning after, when Jason's heat ended but the two of them stayed at home because it was Friday and they might as well just miss out on the entire week of school, he didn't say anything to Bruce, Alfred, or Bucky about Jason's past. The two brothers spent that day cuddled on the couch, as Jason was still tired from his heat, watching movies and eating popcorn as the adults kept on fretting all around them. Dick didn't say anything about it in the days after that, either, nor would he for quite a few years to come.
After all, it wasn't like they didn't have other problems to worry about.
Two days after Jason's heat marked the week after Tony had been kidnapped in Afghanistan, and by then he still hadn't been found.
It hadn't been hard for Dick not to think too much about that while Jason had been in heat, because he'd been too busy taking care of Jason. But now that Jason was pretty much back to normal, Dick had to acknowledge once again that Tony was gone when the almost eighteen-year-old was pregnant and needed his guidance the most, and that...most likely...Tony was going to stay gone by the time that everybody else was going to found out that he was pregnant. Dick needed to make his decision on what to do about his situation before then.
True, he supposed, he technically didn't have to. New Jersey was the first state that had ended limits on abortion in every stage of pregnancy, though they were still bound by the viability limit on the federal level; they'd done so back in 2001. But Dick knew his family, and he knew that he would need to have a decision for when they found out.
He didn't think he could get an abortion. By his calculations, he was only around eight weeks pregnant, so it wasn't like getting an abortion would be too hard for him right now (legality was one thing, doctors actually willing to do abortions the more farther along you got in pregnancy was another), but...he didn't think he could do it. Just taking care of Jason had gotten his brain all mushy, those maternal instincts of his going. It didn't help that this baby was also Zatanna's, and he loved her, so much that...he wanted to keep a piece of her, in a way.
That latter thought obviously made adoption out of the question, too – not that Dick would have considered it anyways. It seemed unfair to put his baby up for adoption when he came from a family with so much wealth and resources, and nor did he think he would wind up becoming an abusive parent. Hell, he would kill himself if he did.
(Not really, but you knew what he meant.)
So really, that just left two possibilities: did he tell Zatanna about his pregnancy, or...did he try...to raise this baby on his own?
A large part of him wanted to tell her. It wasn't like he just straight-up didn't. He knew that if he told her, she probably wouldn't take it too badly. She would probably even be excited about it, once she had a freak-out over it like he had – or maybe she wouldn't even have a freak-out over it at all. They'd need to figure out a few things, like if she wanted to move to this side of the country or if he would move over to hers for college – and in all honesty, it would probably be him. He would need to take at least this fall semester off for the baby anyways because they would be born in the smack-dab middle of it. But that was okay. It would give him time to apply to other colleges in the Bay Area for next year if he couldn't technically transfer from Gotham University or whatever.
But, at the same time, a small part of him...a very vocal small part of him didn't want to tell her. He knew that he should, that it was the right thing to do. Zatanna deserved to know that she had a child, and that child deserved to have their amither in their life if that's what she decided she wanted. More than that, since Zatanna was a witch – half-witch, really, but that was just semantics – it was possible that their child could wind up developing her powers. He wouldn't know the first thing about parenting them if they did. He didn't know anything at all about magic besides the little bit that Zatanna had shared with him.
If she didn't take the news that he was having their baby well, however, Dick didn't know if he could take it. He couldn't imagine why she wouldn't, but just the thought had him curling in on himself, whimpering like he wasn't actually Robin, but a helpless omega. Which was unfortunate, because he did it once that weekend when he was sitting on one of the couches in the living room, and it had Bucky, who was sitting right next to him, turning to look at him and going, "Are you alright?"
"Fine," he said. The lie felt hot and sticky on his tongue.
And what if Zatanna did take the news well, but she didn't want him to move to the other side of the country and she didn't want to do the same? How would co-parenting like that, even when one of the parents was a witch, work? Or what if she was willing to move over here, but it came at the cost of her getting some good offer for her magic education or a job opportunity? Her magic was so important to her, he didn't think he could bear it if she threw her success down the drain for him – well, mostly for their baby, not him, but still. She was going to do magnificent, amazing things; he knew that, and he loved her so much, he didn't want to get in the way of it.
On Monday morning, he made his decision. As soon as he woke up, Dick got up and out of bed and turned on his desktop computer. It always took his computer a hot second to turn on – but he didn't want Tony to get or make him a new one just yet – so he went into his bathroom with the intent to go through his morning routine, but the sight of the toilet had an almost magical hold on him. Before he knew it, he was perched in front of the porcelain throne, gagging up bile because his stomach didn't have anything else in it to give.
Since it wasn't a good idea to brush your teeth immediately after puking, he swished his mouth out with water first and went back to his desk in his bedroom. His computer had finished turning on. He logged in and opened the internet application at once so that he could log in to that specific email address he had for Zatanna.
As he did, he had to let go of the mouse to wipe his right hand off on his flannel pants at least once, because his hands were becoming slick with sweat. It made him grimace.
God, what a coward am I? he thought. Can't even email my baby's amither to tell her that I'm pregnant...
When his email's inbox loaded, he found himself blinking in surprise. Because there, in his inbox was one unread message from Zatanna – which was unusual, as like he'd said before, she never emailed him first. He was always the one who had to make the effort on their emails, unlike how their relationship had been. And maybe this could've been easily explained by how his adoptive omither was missing, so maybe she was just concerned and trying to check in on him, but...
The email was dated as having been sent on February 8th.
Aka, the day that Tony had gone off to Afghanistan. He hadn't been kidnapped there until the 9th.
Dick clicked on the email, dread pooling into his stomach. The email didn't have a subject title – none of their emails did. Thus, it wasn't until it loaded and he read it that he had any idea of what it was about:
Dick,
I'm sorry I haven't been the greatest in my responses, much less initiating emails. I've really loved reading everything you've sent, don't get me wrong, and I hope that that's been clear. But I haven't told you something because I wasn't sure if it was going to pan out – almost as soon as I landed in San Francisco, an internship opportunity for my mother's line of business popped up in Los Angeles, and I applied for it. I just found out this morning that I got accepted! Exciting, isn't it?
The internship starts on February 25th and will last for three months. I probably won't be able to answer any of your emails until it's over because of how busy I'll be between and I'm sorry about that, but –
Before Dick was aware of what he was doing, he was closing out his internet application entirely, not just the email.
Tears came to his eyes. He'd been right.
Oh God, he'd been right.
Zatanna was already on her way to doing the magnificent, amazing things that he knew she would do one day. She already had an internship to do that. He'd thought that they would've had more time to figure out things before then, but now that he knew –
– He couldn't tell her.
No, he amended himself. He wasn't going to tell her. He loved her so much, and he didn't want her to stop doing the things that she needed to in order to become who she was meant to be so much, that he was going to let her go. Even though that would mean that their baby would grow up without their amither in their life.
This was the only choice that he could've made since the moment of conception, he realized that now.
He looked down at his stomach, which only had a small pouch to it. He only looked a little bloated if he his shirts and such were pulled taut against his skin; he wasn't even showing yet.
He placed a hand on top of the skin and flesh that served as the only barriers between his baby and the outside world. "I'm sorry," he murmured, his voice barely audible to even his own ears. "I'm sorry you won't get to know her, because I think she would absolutely adore you, but it's...it's better this way."
The sound of somebody knocking at his door only a second or two after he'd finished speaking had him jumping in his skin once more. The dread in his stomach returned, because if that was Bucky knocking at his door, with her enhanced hearing she would've been able to hear his whispering, and –
But it wasn't the female alpha. "Master Grayson," Alfred said. "Are you up yet? Breakfast is just about ready."
"Y – yeah," Dick called out, grabbing a tissue from the box at his desk and using it to dab at his eyes and salty cheeks. "Just – just give me a sec!"
"Alright," Alfred said.
As the beta man left, Dick allowed himself one audible sob, before he steeled his breath and went through the motions of getting ready for the day.
He hoped that Zatanna would forgive him, if she ever found out.
But, she wouldn't.
He would make sure of it.
(Three months later, just when his family was getting ready to go off to Malibu, he got another email from Zatanna. In it, she apologized extensively for not emailing him after Tony had gone missing despite how she hadn't exactly been able to access the news before or during after her internship, and she asked him about how his family was doing after Tony had been abducted and then rescued, how he specifically was doing since the tabloids had reported that he had mono, what he was doing, and etcetera.
Dick did not reply to this email. He did not reply to the email she sent after it either, or the one after that. Guilt churned in his stomach, but when she stopped after the third time and didn't use her magic to track him down, especially when he was within her teleportation capabilities without the sling ring once they got to Malibu, he once again convinced himself that it was for the better. It had to be.
After all, if it wasn't, then why was he doing this?)
It took a little bit longer than he'd been anticipating for his family to realize that he was pregnant.
Naturally, the majority of this was because of how Tony was still missing. Those first two weeks, Bruce ran himself ragged trying to look for him thousands and thousands of miles away, before he decided that what he was doing wasn't enough – or, perhaps more accurately, what the military was doing wasn't enough.
Dick's adoptive father then made a call, and the next morning he was packing a bag, getting ready for his flight to a military base in the Middle East. He would be working there with the military in their search for Tony in a more hands-on approach. Alfred and Bucky weren't exactly approving of it, and that did little to say at how Dick's siblings felt at how their dad was leaving on top of their omi being gone, but it was obvious that Bruce needed to do it. Otherwise, he'd probably end up going insane.
"Be good," Bruce told all of his children before he left. He already had a short beard from how he hadn't shaved since they'd received the first call. He just didn't seem capable of putting in the effort when his mate was gone and the odds of finding him alive were becoming less and less likely. Dick didn't blame him. "Listen to Alfred, Rebecca, Taryn, and Dick. They're all in charge."
Dick shifted uncomfortably at that. He understood Bruce's reasoning at making him one of the people in charge, he was almost eighteen now, but...he didn't feel ready for the responsibility.
With his decision to keep his baby and raise them as a single parent, however, he reminded himself that he was soon going to be the main person responsible for a life that would be fully and utterly dependent on him very, very soon. Maybe this would be a good practice in that regard.
"And Dick," Bruce added, stirring him out of his train of thought, "when you go out on patrol, listen to Selina and Dinah."
Dick still had been going out on patrol some. He knew that it wasn't exactly a good idea because of him being pregnant, and that he was going to need to stop soon.
Nevertheless, he nodded as Bruce clapped his shoulder. "I will."
The smaller part of the reason for why nobody figured it out was because of Jason. That second week of school after his first heat, he got into a fight with an alpha in his grade after the other boy called him a "catamite." You would think, after the smackdown Tony had given to the administration six years ago, they would've kept instilling the importance of not using that term at school. But, faculty and students alike had short-term memories.
Jason got suspended for two weeks, since this was far from his first fight, and a black eye to boot. Honestly, he was lucky that he hadn't gotten expelled. Their parents' wealth was probably the only reason why he hadn't, given how much worse the other kid looked than him.
Both Alfred and Bucky were most displeased with Jason. Dick was there for them chewing him out as the only other omega in their family present right now. Jason sat on a stool with his back leaning against the island counter and his hand pressing an ice-pack against his right eye.
"Master Todd, I thought you knew better than this," Alfred scolded him. "Violence is not the answer."
Jason scowled back at Alfred, unrepentant. "My dad and older brother go out beating up criminals all the time."
"It's not the answer in this setting," Bucky corrected. "And you know it."
"So what if I do?"
Dick sighed. "Jason."
"I hate this!" Jason snapped. Alfred and Bucky bristled, but Dick was far calmer. He knew that his little brother needed to get this out. He had needed to do the same thing with Tony, after all. "I mean, being an omega I guess isn't that bad, but now that I am, I'm expected to just take what the other kids say about me because of it? Then when I give them a taste of what they deserve, I'm the one that gets in trouble? How is any of that fair?"
"It's not," Dick said at once. "We know that it's not, but – "
"'That's just how it is,' right?" Jason said, snorting. His glower worsened. "I wish Tony was here. Maybe if he was..." Realizing the futility of that statement, he shook his head and stood up from the stool. "I'm going upstairs."
"Master Todd, we're not finished yet!" Alfred called out to him.
But he was already gone.
Alfred looked ready to go and drag him back here, but Dick, and surprisingly Bucky too, metaphorically held him back. "Don't," Dick said.
"He needs his space," Bucky agreed. "You can give him his punishment tomorrow."
Finally, though, at long last, he was found out.
Three days later, that Thursday, Dick came downstairs into the kitchen to get breakfast, which had already been served at the breakfast table. Having just thrown up, he wasn't in the mood for the usual eggs, turkey bacon, hash browns, and toast, so he went to one of the cupboards to get himself out a bowl for cereal.
As soon as he came into the room, Rebecca looked up from her task of feeding Edward and Gemma sharply. Dick saw this out of the corner of his eye, but he didn't think too much about it until he'd finished making his bowl of cereal and turning around to see the female alpha's grey eyes staring straight at him.
Just like that, he knew.
She'd realized that his scent had changed, and there was only one reason barring extreme sickness why his scent would change, and obviously extreme sickness wasn't going on with him.
Logically, Dick had known that this day was coming. He'd wanted Tony, and then both Tony and Bruce, to be back by now...but, that wasn't happening.
In the face of this reality, moreover, since he wasn't really looking to have the undoubtedly batshit – pun intended – conversation take place when it was seven o'clock in the morning, there was only one thing that he could do:
Bucky stood up from her seat. "Dick," she started to say.
"Crap!" Dick exuberantly smacked his hand to his forehead, making Edward and Gemma giggle. He set his bowl of cereal down on the counter. "I just remembered that I need to go to St. Philomena's early this morning in order to...work on a group project with some people, yeah!"
That lie sounded like the most unbelievable one he'd ever told, but he was going to run with it.
Literally.
"Sorry, guys, but I gotta go!" he said as he ran out of the room, grabbing his bag from where he'd placed it on the floor in the hallway, resting up against one of the walls. "I'll see you guys after school!"
"Richard John Grayson, you get back here – !" Rebecca tried to demand.
But he was already out the door.
Never before had Dick been more grateful for the fact that he had his driver's license and his own car. He got into his car and basically peeled straight out of dodge, his hands practically shaking as he held onto the steering wheel, his breaths coming out in hot pants. He had to stop at a Batburger – a new chain of McDonald's-like restaurants, the first of which had opened in 2002 but had taken off quickly, so that now there were more than a handful in Gotham and a few in New York City with the intent to expand beyond even that – before he went to St. Philemona's, because he really couldn't afford to not eat breakfast now that he was pregnant. He was afraid that, if he did, he'd wind up passing out from low blood sugar. The vegetarian breakfast sandwich and hash brown patty were much greasier than Alfred's breakfast would've been, which was hell on his stomach as it triggered the acid reflux he had recently gained from his change in hormones, but they were better than nothing.
When he got to school, he didn't see any of his siblings for the entire day. This was understandable, as with Jason being suspended the next eldest sibling after them was Lili, and she was only in the third grade. Still, Dick would've liked to see one of them, just to get an idea of how Bucky had acted after he'd left...an idea of how bad the interrogation was going to be when he got home.
The day passed by too quickly and too slowly for him, all at once. Knowing that his siblings would be picked up by either Alfred or Taryn, he didn't bother waiting the extra hour that it would take for the elementary school to let out, he just went to his car and drove back home.
The house was quiet when he walked through the front door, a sign that Bea and the twins had been put down for their nap. Dick didn't see anybody in sight as he walked down the hallway towards the stairs, not even Taryn in the living room. He thought that perhaps, just maybe, this would mean that he could sneak up to his bedroom and stave off the –
"Wait."
Shit.
Bucky was leaning against the island counter in the kitchen, her arms crossed. She looked absolutely pissed.
Deep trouble was about to be in his future, he knew it.
"How long?" Bucky asked.
It was a simple question.
Such a simple question.
But, for once in his life, Dick had no concept of self-preservation. "I have no idea what you're talking about," he said, the words practically spilling out of his mouth.
Rebecca's nostrils flared. "Don't play with me, Richard John Grayson. I know that you're pregnant. Your scent's changed, and how you acted this morning told me that you already know. Now, I have two questions, and you're going to answer them: how far along are you, and how long have you known?"
Dick felt his face flush. "If my scent's changed, then you already know how far along I am," he muttered.
"Dick."
"Fine," he huffed. She wasn't the only one with crossed arms anymore, as he did the same as he looked down like he was still Jason's age and not almost eighteen, not almost already an adult, refusing to meet her eyes. Yes, very mature, he was. Totally prepared to become a single omither he was.
Also, when his arms were crossed like this, he was aware of the fact that he could feel his slowly forming bump. It was another reminder of how his days had been numbered in more ways than one up until this morning.
"About ten weeks, give or take a few days," he said.
"And how long have you known?"
"...Since the night before Tony left," he admitted.
He heard Rebecca sigh. "And you didn't tell him before he left?"
His head snapped up. "I thought he was going to come back!" he exclaimed. The reminder of how they all, of course, had assumed that, and how wrong they had been had her and him flinching. His bottom lip trembled as the hormones made his eyes watery. He missed Tony and Bruce so much right now, his adoptive omither most of all. It was a hole in his heart that, though he was doing his best not to focus on, just wasn't going away. It was even worse than when Bruce had been gone for those two months back in 2001/2002, as hard as that was to acknowledge. "I thought..."
His honorary aunt decided to change tactics. "Zatanna's the amither, I take it?"
Dick knew that she was only asking the question try and defuse the tension. However, all it did was make things worse. His shoulders raised instinctively in defense, which made Bucky's eyebrows furrow. He gave a short nod, throwing in a simple, "Yes."
She hesitated in asking her next question, but she did. "Did she not...take the news well?"
"I haven't told her. I'm not – " he hated how he ended up stammering " – I'm not going to."
Bucky gaped at him. "What? Dick, she has a right to – "
"So maybe she does," he said. "But I'm not going to tell her! I'm not going to ruin her life!"
Taking a page out of Jason's book, he walked up the stairs as she spluttered and once again told him to come back, going to his room and making sure to close and lock the door behind him.
Against his expectations, it wasn't Bucky or even Alfred that came to his door first after that, to continue on the conversation and try to convince him that he had to tell Zatanna that he was pregnant.
Fifteen minutes after he'd locked himself in his room, there was a knock at his door. On the other side, Jason asked, "Dick? Can I come in?"
If he'd been either of the other two, Dick wouldn't have allowed it just yet. But, as it was, he wasn't going to shut his brother out in case he needed something. So Dick wiped off his face with the sleeve of his hoodie, got out of bed, and threw open the door with barely a look at Jason before he was turning away, saying over his shoulder, "Sure."
Jason was not perturbed by his tone. He came into the room and locked the door behind him as well, which made Dick snort as he sat back down on his bed, but he didn't say anything else. Jason came over and sat next to him on the bed, their two sets of legs dangling over. "I know," his younger brother said simply.
"Did Bucky and Alfred tell you?" Dick asked.
Jason grinned impishly. "No, I eavesdropped." That earned a proper chuckle from Dick as Jason continued on, "Why don't you want to tell Zatanna?"
Dick let out a long exhale, reaching over to grab the elephant plushie right next to his pillow. Its name was Zitka; it had been made for him by Ana that first Christmas he had come to live with Bruce and Tony. He missed her; he missed Maria, too. They'd been two of the best grandmothers that anybody could ever ask for, and while he did not blame Bucky one bit for killing them since it hadn't been her choice, he full-heartedly and one-hundred-percent blamed HYDRA for that, he felt awful about the fact that he was the only one of his siblings at the time to remember them. Not to mention, Jason, Bea, and the twins had never even gotten to meet the two omega women. He knew that Maria and Ana would've loved them all.
He led Jason through his reasoning, leaving out everything relating to Zatanna being a witch; if their baby wound up having her powers, it would be a moot thing to hide down the line, that was true, but for now he was keeping the secret close to his chest. Jason, to his credit, remained silent the entire time, an active listener. When Dick was done, Jason chewed the inside of his cheek and pulled his legs into the crisscross-applesauce position before speaking. "I can't say that I agree with it, because I think Zatanna does deserve to know," he said. And that absolutely made Dick's heart plummet into his stomach. "But, I don't think it matters what I think, or what Bucky and Alfred do. It's your body, your choice. Doesn't that make it your baby, your choice too?"
Dick was...surprised. That was a very mature response from Jason. Then again, maybe it wasn't that shocking: he was keeping his own secrets from the family. "That's what you think?"
"Yeah, that's what I think." Jason grinned cheekily. "I know that's not what Alfred and Bucky think, though. They're trying to figure out a way to convince you to change your mind."
"I figured that," Dick muttered.
"...And they're getting ready to call Bruce and tell him about it."
"What?" Dick cried. "But they can't do that!"
Now that Bruce was gone to look for Tony with the military, he didn't need any distractions than what was necessary. Obviously, since Alfred and Bucky were talking about it, they must've thought that Dick being pregnant was something that was necessary. But he vehemently disagreed with them: it wasn't like the baby would be popping out of him for almost another seven months yet. True, he needed to get an ultrasound sometime before then, but – "
"Well, they want to, whether they can or not," Jason deadpanned. "I mean, you can try to stop them – "
Dick was already getting to his feet at the very suggestion. He marched out of his room and into the hallway; Jason didn't try to stop him.
He went downstairs and saw that their other siblings had come home from school. They didn't seem to know that he was pregnant; Taryn did, but all she did was eye him with concern as he looked at her inquisitively. "Where are Alfred and Bucky?" he asked. He realized that he hadn't thought to ask Jason that question.
"In the study," she said.
So, to the study was where he went. The doors to it were closed when he got there, but they weren't locked. Dick didn't even bother trying to knock, just walked right on in and glared at the beta man and the alpha woman. Neither of them looked particularly pleased – whether it was at what he had told Bucky, his arrival, or both, only time would tell.
"You can't tell Bruce," he said without preamble. "I – I know he needs to know, but you can't – "
"They already did," Bruce's voice went from the speaker of the landline phone that was on his desk. Honestly, Dick didn't know why he had a landline when his husband was the Tony Stark, but really, that was neither here nor there right now.
Dick's eyes zeroed in on the phone. Once again, he could tangibly feel the blood leave his face.
Alfred and Bucky must've used the time that he and Jason had been talking together to their advantage.
Shit.
"Bruce," he squeaked. He was Robin, a five-foot-eleven-inches-tall omega, and yet he felt as weak and meager as a mouse.
"Dick," Bruce replied. He sounded tired. He sounded like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders.
(And none of them knew just how much worse that was about to become.)
"Please, sit down."
There was no way that Bruce would be able to tell if he did it or not, but Dick did it anyways. He sat down in one of the armchairs on this side of the desk. Alfred and Rebecca remained standing, not sitting, not leaving.
Déjà vu, Dick thought.
Except, the person who was about to get chewed out this time was not Jason. It was him.
Bruce got right into it. "Why didn't you tell me before I left, Dick?"
"Because Tony needs you more," Dick said obstinately. And I need you to get him back, because I need him. He didn't say that second part out loud, obviously.
Bruce didn't question his logic. Either he thought it made sense, or he realized that it was a moot point now when he was on the other side of the world. "Well, I'm doing everything that I can to find him," he agreed instead. Dick knew that he was. But, "what's this about you not wanting to tell Zatanna?"
"I just don't want to," Dick answered simply. "It's not – it's not like she's going to suspect or anything. I was on birth control and heat suppressants for my last heat and we were using condoms the entire time. I can – I will raise this baby on my own." He splayed out a hand against his stomach protectively, as if to prove his point. Even though Bruce couldn't see it, Rebecca did. She looked like she was developing a headache.
"So it has nothing to do with ruining her life, like you told Rebecca?" Bruce returned. "Because, Dick, a baby doesn't ruin somebody's life. It's the choices that they make afterwards that – "
"Like you would know?"
"Master Grayson!" Alfred scolded.
Adoptive father and son both ignored him. "You're right, I don't know. But what I was going to say was – "
"It doesn't matter," Dick cut over him. Tears blurred his vision. Damn hormones. "I don't care what you have to say! I'm not changing my mind. I'm not going to tell Zatanna. So, unless you can figure out her identity from government databases or something, which is impossible – " actually, he wasn't sure if it was, since Zatanna's first name was so unique and she was a naturalized citizen, not a born one. But she'd mentioned something before about her and her father wiping their photos in government databases with magic as soon as they'd become citizens because of how witches didn't want the government to know their identities, since while her dad wasn't a witch, he was related to one. All of this was to say, he was sticking with what he was saying " – you're not going to be able to tell her yourself. And even if you do try, I won't let you."
"Dick – "
"No!" he shouted. "I'll – I'll run away if I have to! I'll do anything that it takes to raise this baby on my own!"
Dick regretted the words as soon as they'd come out of his mouth. Not because he hadn't meant them, but because he hadn't meant to say them...if that made sense.
As Jason had said, this was his decision to make. Just like how the decisions on Bruce and Tony's biological children in the past had been Tony's. His body, his choice.
Like omither, like son.
There was an unearthly silence afterwards. Bucky and Alfred seemed to be in disbelief at what he had said, and he imagined so was Bruce on the other end of the line.
"...I see," his adoptive father, at last, said. There was the sound of him sighing. "We can talk more about this when Tony and I get back. For now, you're grounded from Robin."
Dick said nothing to this. He had been expecting it.
"Master Wayne," Alfred interrupted. "Are you sure that's a good – ?"
"Continuing this conversation isn't going to be beneficial. Right now, we're all frayed," Bruce reasoned. "Dick, in the meantime, since you're going to keep the baby, schedule yourself an obstetrician appointment. You should also start taking prenatal vitamins if you haven't already."
"I have." He'd stuffed them in a pocket of one of his coats in his closet so that they wouldn't be found by Alfred, because he wasn't that reckless, thank you very much. He knew from witnessing Tony's pregnancies just how important it was to keep those vitamin levels up.
"Good." Bruce's tone was clipped, which made Dick feel even worse than he already did, even as there was a pause on the other end. "I have to go. I was supposed to have been following up on a lead already."
That was interesting. It made Dick perk up a little. "Where are you?"
"Oman," Bruce answered. He cleared his throat. "Listen, Dick, I do not agree with this decision you're making. Neither do I think will Tony. But we love you unconditionally, no matter what. You are our son. Never forget that. And we love your siblings as well; send them my love. I'll be in touch again soon."
With that, the line clicked.
The remaining amount of time it took until Bruce and Tony came home was boring for Dick, since his secret was out and he couldn't be Robin.
His other siblings besides Jason – although Jason was too, don't get him wrong – were excited that he was pregnant. "We'll get to be aunts!" Lili gushed to Bea when they were told the news. She was so excited, that of course their four-year-old sister quickly became excited as well, despite her visibly being wary of the prospect that there would be another baby in the household soon. Bea still wasn't all that fond of the twins; she was still jealous of them, but Tony had said before it was something that she would grow out of. They were patient with her in the meantime, not denying of her feelings, but not letting her get away with the times she acted out on them, either.
Harley asked him why he would want to get pregnant at the age of seventeen (conveniently forgetting the fact his own omither had been pregnant with Lili at that age). Taryn helped explain the basic concept of safe sex to him. Lili, Harley, and Peter already knew what sex was; it had led to problems once last year at St. Philomena's when another student had been recounting the story of the stork to their classmates including Peter, and the then six-year-old had gone, "My parents are having a baby, too. They had sex."
Their happiness made Dick feel a bit better. He got his first ultrasound scheduled with Dr. Maxwell, Tony's obstetrician. Rebecca took him to that appointment and the next one, when he had the ultrasound done and found out that he was having a girl. A daughter, all of his own.
There was other stuff that happened while Bruce and Tony were gone – mainly, Jason stealing Dick's first Robin suit and going out in it one night. That led to another phone call from Bruce. But, since Tony had inadvertently given permission for Jason to become a vigilante like Dick when he finally presented, there was no talking him out of the desire, even if Tony hadn't actually given his permission. So, Bruce allowed it, which led to Alfred's and Bucky's disapproval being taken off on Dick's back. Sure, they'd mostly already mellowed out from it by that point, but it'd still been kind of there. They'd still tried talking him out of not telling Zatanna, which had led to him basically rehearsing the same spiel every time they did.
The day that his adoptive parents came back, however...
They'd been given the head's-up in advance that it was happening, so while seeing Tony was great (as an overwhelming understatement) after two months without him, it wasn't like he'd come without notice. Dick couldn't help but think about how haggard he looked as he walked into his line of view in the living room and instantly got bombarded by Dick's younger siblings. He looked thin, terrifyingly thin, and pale. His hair was a mess. Not to mention, there was a light blue glow coming from his chest and through his shirt.
Tony went from his biological children to Jason, and then from Jason to Dick. Dick hadn't gotten up from where he'd been sitting on the couch, because he was too afraid to. He had wanted his omi for so long to come home and comfort him, but with the knowledge that all of the other adults in his life, Selina and Dinah included, were not approving of his choice to not tell Zatanna about their baby, he had no idea how Tony was going to react. Really, he had no idea if Bruce had even told Tony about all of that, or if he'd just told Tony that Dick was pregnant, and now Tony was going to be upset at him for that – disregarding how hypocritical it would be, and hypocriticalness was unlike Tony.
But then, his adoptive omither held out his arms and told him that he was okay, that he wasn't mad, and that they were going to figure it out. And Dick –
– Dick rushed into his arms, bawling like a baby himself. This was everything that he had wanted since he'd first found out that he was pregnant, and now he was getting it. The comfort of his maternal figure after so long was undoubtedly one of the best things he had ever experienced.
Now, for what it was worth, once Tony found out about his refusal to tell Zatanna, since Bruce hadn't told him about that, he did try to convince him to tell her. Like Bruce, though, he refused to let it come to a huge argument that first time. Dick knew it was mostly because he thought that he would have many more chances to try to convince Dick into doing it. However, all too soon, he was swept up in trying to deal with who had been selling his weapons under the table all this time and something else that was very, very important.
Because, as the saying "like omither, like son" went, even with how weird it was in this context:
Tony was pregnant, too.
Word Count: 13,291
