Would you please do “The ladies love a guy who’s good with kids.” with Dick? Either with the reader as a single mom or them babysitting for someone.
I’m happy to do this!!! I know you asked for this with the Gwennie in mind, but it ran away from me. I just loved the idea of a rambunctious little boy absorbing all of Dick’s attention at a playground they shouldn’t even be loitering in, and so here that is. xD
I hope you like it even though it isn’t entirely what you had in mind!
Also, I’m naming the boy Benjamin. No idea why, not particularly even interested in the name, but yeah. That’s where we at with this one.
Tag List: @possiblyelven , @thepuckishrogue , @jinkies-its-a-writer, @queeniepearls (If you want to be tagged, let me know! For more fics, check out my masterlist.)
It would be a euphemism to say that your son is adventurous. That’s usually what you go with when the other moms on the playground stare in horror as your wily boy finagles himself to the tippy-top of jungle gyms or backflips out of the seat of his swing. You fuss at Ben when he does things like this, of course. Warn him that it’s dangerous and caution that one day he’ll hurt himself badly if he doesn’t learn to be more careful. These warnings seem to do nothing but encourage him, often resulting in epic bouts of the-floor-is-lava that involve scrambling on top of bookshelves that aren’t strong enough for his weight. That’s what happened last Wednesday, at least. You and Ben made it home from the park perfectly whole, save one biting, judgemental comment from another mother about your lack of vigilance. Comparatively, an extremely successful day at the park. Safely at home in the apartment, however, things went terribly awry with the aforementioned bookshelf.Ben wound up with four staples in the top of his head and a very interesting haircut. You were hoping, once the gauze was no longer necessary, that you could ruffle his mop of shaggy hair enough to hide the indications of his injury. It would be such a shame to cut his hair. You love it so, reminded fondly of Ben’s father by the fluffy, messy curls that tumble all over his darling little head.The gauze though, and the awkward length to which part of his hair was trimmed in the ER, has you nervous about encountering some of those other moms at your usual park this afternoon. And so, braving the commute and selling it to Ben as an adventure (rather than social avoidance), you head to one of the large and well-maintained playgrounds in Gotham City’s Robinson Park. Ben gets rowdier as you approach the sprawling playground, barely containing himself and he starts to drag you forward. He’s tucked into a brightly colored jacket bearing the emblem of Robin, the ever beloved Gotham child-vigilante. Ben is obsessed with him and often refuses to leave the house without this hoodie and a makeshift mask in place. When his feet hit the rubber playmats beneath the first section of the playground, he’s off like a rocket and half-way up the slide before you can spout your usual cautions. You do anyway, starting with a slide-specific rule. “Ben! Please, honey, don’t go up the slide! Slides are for sliding down. You promised to be careful today!”
He responds with a distracted acknowledgment that echoes oddly in the tube of the slide, still climbing upwards. “Remember, at the park I’m Robin!” he reminds you with very little patience in his tone. You chuckle to yourself, happy to see that this particular section of the park isn’t very busy. Ben can’t disturb the other children if all of the other children are playing elsewhere. You look over the six main jungle gyms, remembering a much smaller, dingier park from your girlhood days. Each of these sections has aesthetically matched slides, monkey bars, and other accouterments to give them flavor as individual play areas. Wayne Enterprises donated all of the materials for fixing up Robinson Park last fall, and the renovation is less than two months finished. You rarely leave your borough over in East End, and so it is as exciting for you to see someplace different as it is for Ben to have somewhere new to explore.
As your son vies for control over a game of make-believe with the two other children in this same area, you let your mind and eyes wander. You lived downtown near this neighborhood with your parents when you were young. Neat brick townhouses with mullioned windows and iron fences. Cream-colored stone with planters full of flowers and almost no litter. All of the trash neatly tucked into bins and dumpsters instead of heaped on the streets with dogs and desperate people competing for scraps…
Raising your son in the East End hadn’t been your idea. You gave up security and familiarity for love, made a baby with it, and then it disappeared in the middle of the night. No word. No note. Not even a goodbye.
You try to pull yourself from your melancholy thoughts and dredge up the eagerness that buzzed in your chest for the entire journey here. Your eyes seek out your son, as they so often do when you feel yourself teetering toward heartache. You expect to see him atop some dangerous portion of the playground, crowing his little lungs out and boasting about being the best Robin. Instead, you find Ben speaking with a stranger who had, to your knowledge, not been there a few minutes before.
The man is tall. Rather, he’s taller than you and taller than your husband had been. Admittedly, these are not exactly feats of height. Still, something about him sets your heart racing and has you ambling over, mentally fumbling for the most socially appropriate way to extract your son. He’s speaking to the entire set of children in an animated fashion, winks at a brunette woman who’s made it there before you, and then breaks into a chain of back handsprings?You stop in your tracks, further confused. The last time you saw another adult do gymnastics on a playground had been... never. You’d never seen that. It’s weird, and now all the kids and the other mom are gathering around him to clap and cheer as though it is a perfectly normal, respectable thing to do.Perhaps he’s the father of the other children? That would maybe be okay. You could handle that.
But no? It would appear not, as the child he selects to lift up and set on his shoulder is yours?
“Ben!” Your voice comes out more hoarse than you’d intended, and you sprint the last bit of distance.
“Gosh,” your son sighs, hiding his face behind a hand and motioning toward you with the other. “This is my mom, everyone. She’s really embarrassing.”
“Hey, that’s not very nice,” the man says, jostling your boy on his shoulder. “Hello, it’s good to meet you. I’m Dick Grayson. I own Haly’s Circus, and we’re setting up the tents not too far away from here. Thought I’d take a walk and see if I couldn’t sell some tickets!” You reach to shake his hand, still unsure and uncomfortable with the fact that he’s holding your son. Trying to communicate that with your gaze alone seems ineffective, and so you are again left adrift as you think of a polite way to scream put down my child, strange man from the circus!
The other woman, the dark-haired mom, beats you to his hand in the same way she’d beaten you to the show. She grabs onto him with acrylic claws and gushes about how he’ll be seeing her at the show for sure. Mildly horrified by the blatant nature of the woman’s flirtation and doing nothing to hide this, you clear your throat. “Ben, honey, please?” You hold your arms up, waiting for him to dive off of the man and into the safety of your person. “Ben?”
“Can we go to the circus, Mom?” he asks, pretending not to see that you’re reaching for him.
You huff, resigning to the fact that you’ll have to speak to the man in order to retrieve your son. You grit your teeth, swallowing a lifetime of reflexive shyness, and look up to meet the man’s very blue eyes. “I’d like my son back, thank you.”
“Sure,” Dick chirps, pleased to finally get some eye contact from the pretty redheaded mom he’d caught daydreaming on the other end of the park. He plops the boy into her waiting arms and smiles his best smile. “Sorry to see him go though. Kid’s a natural!”
The praise gets Ben glowing, little chest puffed and cheeks pink from more than the early autumn chill. Your heart softened some, feeling your kindergartener safely on your hip. Ease settles over your cresting anxiety only after you’ve checked the bandage beneath Ben’s hat and double checked that he’s alright.
Dick takes it well enough, understanding that it is perhaps unnerving as a parent to be unfamiliar with an adult who is socially engaging your child. “Will we be seeing you at the circus?” he asks quietly, having waited out your back and forth with Ben as well as the overt advances from the other lady.
“Um?” You’re not sure how to answer, trapped beneath the eager gazes of both the man and your son. Ben whines like a puppy, an irritating game that had somehow been endearing when he was a toddler. “I dunno’ Ben. We can’t do Friday night skating with your soccer team and go to the circus. Not in the same pay period. I’m sorry.”
Before the boy gets a chance to go entirely crestfallen, Dick intervenes. “I have some tickets on reserve. There’s a show starting a few hours from now, if you don’t have any plans. I don’t mind giving you two a couple tickets.”
You eye him again, no longer feeling pressured and leaning back toward suspicious.
“I also teach gymnastics classes which-” Dick holds up a finger. “I feel would benefit Ben a lot more than soccer, judging by the way that he lept from the top of that playground."
“Excuse me?”
“Too far?” Dick backtracks some, wondering where to lead this conversation. Usually, particularly with women, he found it easy to construct his desired outcome.
You’re making things difficult.
“Yup,” you say with a nod, earning another woeful sigh from your son.
Dick goes for a drastic measure, hoping that you’d pick up the bait if given proper breathing room. He turns and begins to walk away, calling back, “Don’t worry about the classes then, forget I said anything. Just come to the show! Ask for Grayson’s tickets at the counter. Enjoy the circus or don’t, but the option’s there!”
He hears the little pretend Robin begging behind him and hopes that he’ll see the both of you there.
