Chapter Text
Dick sat on Roy’s couch, head leaned back and eyes fixed on the ceiling. In his lap, Lian wiggled and gnawed on her teething ring, making indescribably cute noises of rage. His hands held Lian to him, so that she couldn’t topple over, but he wasn’t paying too much attention, otherwise. Which was fine, since Roy was only a room away.
“What does B think?” Roy asked. Dick could hear how he took a plate from the rack, gave it a cursory once-over with the drying cloth, then situated it in the open cupboard, overhead and to his right.
When had Roy become responsible, anyway?
When had his home gone from bachelor pad, stereotypical clutter and filth and all, to a child-safe environment, clean and cornerless? It wasn’t overnight, but Dick seemed to have only blinked and missed that entire development, only to step back into Roy’s apartment one day and hear his friend vacuuming. Lian was on his hip, wearing huge protective earmuffs (the noise-cancelling kind, like the ones worn by landscapers on industrial mowers or using other loud equipment). She had been burbling and gnawing on a teething biscuit, even though she’d barely hit five months, and Roy had been bouncing her as he vacuumed, clearly at ease and taking on the challenges of parenthood with that good nature that had been missing when Roy’d been using.
“He won’t talk to me,” Dick sighed. “He’s pushing me away, still.”
“I know how that is,” Roy dried off the last plate and put it into his cupboard, then ambled into the living room. He put his hands on the back of the couch and leaned over, beside Dick, to smile down at his baby girl. “Me n’ Ollie aren’t doing great, either, honestly.” How he could admit that, still smiling, was beyond Dick.
Lian pulled the drool-covered teething-ring out of her mouth and whacked it on Dick’s forearm a few times, her baby rage expressed in a thrilled, indignant howl.
Dick lifted his head to smile softly at her for a moment, then sighed again and dropped his head back into place on the back of Roy’s couch. “If it was just... distance? I dunno. That wouldn’t be so bad. But people are getting hurt. Whatever’s been goinging on, people are straight-up dying. Most of them are really bad people, but... but that doesn’t make it right. Or less scary.”
“Mm,” Roy leaned over, propping crossed arms on the back of the couch. “I heard about the heads.”
“Yeah,” Dick breathed.
“Yeah,” Roy agreed.
Lian tossed her teething ring at the other side of the couch.
“But it’s not... it’s not just bad people,” Dick murmured. “This guy, whoever he is, has already gone after Tim once. And he’ll probably do it again. I can’t... I don’t know what to do. If B isn’t going to keep me in the loop, how am I supposed to help?”
“I don’t know what to tell you, man,” Roy reached down to pick up the discarded teething ring, then walked into the kitchen to rinse it off. “Have you tried talking to Alfred?”
“He’s not talking to Alfred, either!” Dick huffed. “Or Tim. He’s keeping things to himself and I... I don’t even know. He’s always been secretive and paranoid, but I have no idea what’s going through his head. I have no idea what he thinks it is that I can’t handle or that I can’t be trusted with.”
“It’s probably not about trust,” Roy walked back into the room and offered the ring back to Lian, before she could quite get around to screwing her face up and pitching a fit. Lian accepted it back with a sharp, high-pitched squeal and shoved it back into her mouth. “I don’t know. Your relationship with Bruce might be rough, but like, there’s always been a measure of trust there that, uh, that I lost. With-with Ollie. You know.”
“I remember,” Dick said quietly. “It was. Bad.”
“Yeah.”
“But you’re getting there, Roy, and we’re all really proud of you. Even Ollie.” Dick met Roy’s eye. “You’re different, now.”
“Thanks,” Roy laughed, once. “Well. You have that trust, even if it’s all messed up with anger and shit. So it’s... it’s probably not that. Trust, I mean. It’s probably another of his misguided attempts to protect you.”
They both quieted, the ghost of Jason’s violent death hanging over them. The ghost of a funeral Dick hadn’t been able to attend, to bid Jason goodbye, hanging over them. An attempt to protect Dick gone horribly, terribly wrong. Another break in their already shattered relationship.
Lian broke the quiet with a bubbling up of giggles.
Dick and Roy glanced down at her. She grinned back up at them, then threw her teething ring – very intentionally – across the room.
Roy snorted.
Dick smiled and let the previous moment pass. “She’s really beautiful, Roy.”
“Best thing to happen to me,” Roy ambled around the couch, making for the teething ring.
“You’re a great dad.”
Roy snorted. “Wish I could say I learned from the best, but...” he tossed a snarky grin at Dick. “I think we both know that Ollie got himself a solid D at best.”
“That’s generous,” Dick bounced Lian in his lap. “I wouldn’t have given him more than an F. I mean. Seriously.”
“Having Dinah around raised his grade.” Roy said. He looked down at the teething ring. “I’m going to put this back in the freezer, I think. If she pitches a fit, you can put her in the pen, on her tummy. She’ll settle and be distracted by her other toys.”
“No giving in to the fits?”
“No,” Roy reached down to smooth down Lian’s unruly, dark hair. He smiled. “She can’t just scream to get what she wants, you know? We’d never be able to go grocery shopping again!”
“Isn’t it a bit early for that?” Dick tilted his head and looked back down at Lian. She had her face screwed up in suspicion, but didn’t look like she was about to let all hell loose. Yet.
Roy shrugged. “I dunno, honestly. Six months is enough for, like, object permanence? She knows who I am, and she sees that I’m comfortable with you, so she knows you’re safe.” He traced her little ear, then straightened. “Seemed as good a time as any to start a few fundamentals.”
Dick blinked and took a moment to process. “You... did you read a parenting book? Like. Honest to god, a whole book about infant-rearing?”
Roy laughed on his way back to the kitchen. “Well, yeah. More than one. I mean. I had no idea what to do with a baby, Dick.” He took a moment to run the teething ring under the faucet in the kitchen, then patted it dry and put it in the freezer. “The last one I read, Elevating Child Care, was given to me by one of the moms in a local... single parent support group thing. I read that. It was great. I found out the writer had a blog, now I’ll head there, first, before fucking around on Google for answers. I never once, in my life, thought I’d bookmark a blog dedicated to childrearing. But, hey. Things change, right?”
“Wow,” Dick looked down at Lian, again. She had her fist shoved into her mouth and was oozing drool. It would have been disturbing if it weren’t unbearably cute. “Your Daddy’s serious about you, kiddo,” he whispered. “Sounds like you’re in good hands.”
“Careful, man, you might give the little Tyrant unrealistic expectations,” Roy dropped his elbows back onto the back of the couch.
“Hardly,” Dick raised her into the air, albeit gently.
She squealed and bounced her limbs back and forth.
“Roy, you’re doing great,” Dick glanced at Roy with a smile. “Really great. Look at her! She’s clean, she’s happy, she has the cutest little onesies. Hell, you apparently read parenting blogs in your spare time, now, instead of engineering manuals!”
“I make time for both,” Roy reached out and let Lian take his finger. She did, then tried to pull it into her mouth. Everything went in her mouth since she’d begun teething. “My Little Monster,” Roy grinned. “But seriously. Janet Lansbury. If you end up with a kid, out of nowhere, I swear her blog saved my life. Or at least my sanity.”
“Not really something I plan for, right now. What with the day job and the night job and the... B. That’s not the situation a baby belongs in.”
Roy nodded. “That’s why I’m remote work, contracting, only,” he said.
“And you know how bad I am when I don’t have constant movement keeping me earthbound. Well. Not earthbound. I don’t think I could pull the remote freelancing like you,” Dick slowly dropped Lian back into his lap. She was delightfully chunky, in that way that made it feel safer to play with her and hold her, and Dick was glad for it, though never more glad than when her chubby cheeks framed an incandescent smile.
“I don’t know how I managed to collect so many ADHD friends,” Roy said.
“Just lucky, probably,” Dick said.
“Oh, sure. You weren’t there for KF’s failed stakeout. I mean, at least you know how to stim while sitting in one place. Quietly. I swear he needs to literally run laps, hourly.”
“That’s adorable!”
“Not on mission, it’s not!”
“Ba!” Lian agreed.
“Oh my god,” Dick just barely resisted squealing. “Roy. Roy. You have the cutest baby, Roy. Oh my god.”
“Hear that, Lian? Gotham’s second-favourite ladies’ man thinks you’re the cutest. High praise, kiddo.” Roy laughed. “But you’re right. She’s the best. I could have had a colicky, constipated baby who doesn’t sleep, like, ever, but I got this perfect little angel.”
“What’s colic, anyway?”
“I don’t know. Stress, I guess? Distress, crying, unexplained misery. I read up on it, just in case, but I’m still clueless. But it sounds like everyone else is, too, so it’s whatever. And Lian’s never been colicky, so it’s a double whatever.”
“Little Angel,” Dick cooed down at Lian.
“Ba!” she agreed, again.