Don’t Leave Me Broken and Free — Won’t You Tell Me Where You Are?
Dick Grayson x Fem!Reader
Themes: angst, fluff if you squint, kinda hurt/comfort, hopeful ending
WC: 1.65k
CW: accidental pregnancy, brief non-descriptive NSFW content
A/N: i found the bare bones of this in my drafts a few hours ago and now it’s 4am and we’re here. i haven’t been inspired to actually write anything in months so i hope you enjoy!!! read on ao3
You’ve known Dick for a long time now. You’re close. Not together, not really, but not not together either. You’re friends. You're more. You're not. You sleep together. You talk everyday. You go without talking for months. You don't hold it against him, it's not for a lack of trying. His job makes friendships, relationships, everything, so much harder than it should be.
It’s a rare quiet night in bed when he tells you he has to go back to Gotham. You pause, hands still clasped around his where you’d been fiddling with his fingers. You can hear the other shoe drop. You’d been living in Bludhaven a little while now, having moved a year or so after Dick had. You got a job in the city and knew you had a friend there in Dick Grayson. A ticket out of Gotham was just what the Doctor ordered. A sea change, or something.
He tells you he’s going undercover. Trying to infiltrate some criminal organisation. He’s skint on the details, per usual. Constantly worried that if he’s too open, too honest. His trouble will make its way back to you somehow. You’ll worry, throw yourself headfirst into danger at the first sign of it, if you know too much. He tries his hardest to keep his vigilante life as separate as possible from his life with you. You’re not Nightwing’s girl. You’re Dick Grayson’s. Kind of.
You sleep together again, fall asleep together, tangled up in the sheets and each other’s legs, but you wake up alone. He leaves you a note, reminds you to contact Alfred if you need anything. Tells you he’ll be back.
You don’t notice anything unusual at first. Willingly drowning yourself in work. Seeing friends. Dedicated time spent rewatching your favourite TV show front to back again. Anything to occupy your overactive mind. It’s just shy of two months before you really take notice. Things are just a little off. You’re moodier. tired. nauseous sometimes. From there it doesn’t take you long to put the pieces together. A missed period here, an odd craving there. One late night trip to the local drug store confirms what you’re trying your best to deny, but had already suspected. You’re pregnant.
You try to contact him immediately. His cell rings out. Texts go unanswered. You knew they would but you had to try. He did say to call Alfred in case of emergency but you can’t really stomach the idea of telling his family you’re knocked up.
‘Hey remember me? Yeah! Exactly! Dick’s friend.’
‘No no I’m good thank you! funny story actually. I’m pregnant and it’s Dick’s. Surprise!’
You’re not together, they know that, and frankly Dick should know first anyway. You don’t even know how he’d feel. What he’d want.
You wallow for a couple of days. It’s not that you didn’t want kids, but you hadn’t exactly planned for this either. It was a someday idea, a maybe if you’re lucky, far off and hazy in your minds eye. If you really sat and pictured it you saw warm smiles and heard excited laughter. In reality you felt cold. The loneliness you were feeling certainly wasn’t what you were hoping for. You let yourself sit in the feeling. Reminding yourself that it’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. You can be strong soon. You get to feel this now. You make your first doctor’s appointment the next morning.
Your doctor reaffirms what you already know. You’re pregnant. Blood doesn’t lie. You’re knocked up. There’s a bun in your oven. She runs you through your options. Offering pamphlets and making recommendations. If you want to continue with the pregnancy you’ll have to start taking prenatal vitamins. She writes you a list of recommendations and tells you to see reception to book in for an ultrasound the following week. You don’t think you’ve really processed the information yet. Your brain feels broken. Pregnant. Pregnant. Pregnant. Baby. Baby. Baby.
You continue on as normal for the next week. Work. Friends. TV. Shitty take out. Before you know it a week has passed and you’re back at the clinic. The ultrasound technician is prepping you. It’s an internal ultrasound, because you’re still in the early stages apparently. You’d never really thought about that before. In the movies it’s all squirting the goo on the stomach and looking at little grey blobs. This is a lot more intimate than you’d planned. You briefly think that maybe you should’ve shaved for this. She’s reassuring even as she digs around in there. Everything looks good. Baby looks healthy. She asks if you want to hear the heartbeat and you say yes. The second the room fills with the sound of the baby’s heartbeat — badum badum badum, something inside you snaps like a rubber band. Everything is different now. Real. It sounds like a hummingbird. You start calling the baby Birdie, or Little Bird. It feels right.
Days turn into weeks turn into months in a blur. You’re about halfway now. You caved at 15 weeks and called Alfred to check in. He still doesn’t know about the baby but he knows that there’s something. He said he doesn’t know when Dick will be back and you believe him. You ask if you can send some letters to the manor, something to give to Dick when he checks in next, or comes home. Alfred says yes, of course, that he will keep them safely guarded up until he can pass them onto Master Dick himself. So you start sending sonograms, updates from the doctors. You write letters telling him how big Birdie is this week. That they’re the size of a pear or a papaya. You cry a little when you tell him you’re having a boy. His son. At this point you know you love Dick. You knew you loved him before. It’s a fact, you’re just not trying to lie to yourself about it anymore. The sky is blue, Bruce Wayne is Batman, and you’re in love with Dick Grayson. You have no expectations, not looking for anything in return. You know he can’t commit to you, even if he wanted to, with his lifestyle, his job. What you do know is that he will be the best father a child could have, and on the worst nights when you feel the most alone, crying in bed with a hand resting on your bump, it almost feels like enough.
You’re eight months along now. Almost at the finish line. Your maternity leave officially started this week and you’re putting the final touches on the nursery you’d set up in your apartment. The little room used to be your office and now your desk sits underneath the living room window, but you think you like it better this way. It’s a worthy sacrifice. The nursery itself is circus themed. Filled with lion and elephant plushies, painted with bright reds and vibrant yellows. You even managed to find an old Flying Graysons poster. You had it framed and hung on the wall above the overflowing bookshelf. It was cheesy but it made you laugh. You like to think that Dick would love it. Maybe roll his eyes a little, but smile all the same.
You go into labor alone at three in the afternoon five weeks later. You spend twenty-seven hours in labor, and for at least ten of them you swear to your doctor that you can’t do this and need to go home. In the end, the second they place your son on your bare chest, you can’t imagine it any other way. All roads lead here. To him. Oliver Richard John Grayson. He’s beautiful. With a shock of black hair and lungs to rival the Black Canary. Despite everything you’ve never been happier. Never felt this kind of all-encompassing love. You will die for him. Kill for him. He is your everything. You can’t wait for Dick to meet him.
Alfred comes to visit you two weeks later. You’d been having semi-regular phone calls since you first reached out to him and on a particularly bad night towards the end of your pregnancy you had confessed. You swore him to secrecy. An oath he took very seriously, fortunately for you. The family wasn’t to know and it stayed that way. Alfred nearly cries when he sees Oliver for the first time. His eyes are misty and you catch him dab at them with a handkerchief. He looks so much like Dick he can’t quite believe it. You make Alfred a cup of tea while he gently rocks Oliver in his arms. He tells you they finally heard from Dick and that he’s on his way home. Anxiety crawls up your spine at the thought. You’ve missed him terribly. More than you even thought possible, but every day that passes with your son in your arms is another reminder that his father doesn’t even know he exists. You don’t know how to tell him. He’ll have the letters sure but it’s not the same. You had months to get used to this, the idea of it. To rearrange your life to fit in this tiny little human. Your heart won’t be able to take it if he doesn’t want this too. Doesn’t want to be involved. As he leaves, Alfred promises again to ensure Dick gets your letters the moment he arrives. You thank him and shut the door, trying your best to breathe. Just breathe.
Two days later you wake up with a jolt to your bedroom window sliding open, almost silently. Oliver stirs in his bassinet beside the bed and you shush him with a gentle hand held to his little face, trying to soothe him back to sleep. Dick stands in front of the window, backlit by the Bludhaven skyline, frozen. His eyes are wet with unshed tears, darting between you and the baby.
‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’
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