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seriousficTitle: Meet The Grandparents
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Dick/Babs, Kory, Donna, Jim Gordon, Roy, Dinah, Lian,
Word Count: 6,088
Series: The Other Wife
Acknowledgements: Thanks to thyme and M. for the betaing.
General Summary: For a year, Dick and Barbara had the perfect marriage. Then came Kory…
Chapter Summary: Heading into Kory's second trimester, Barbara decides it's time to start telling people about the pregnancy.
Month 3
Month 4/November: Meet The Grandparents
Dick had to be stopped from pushing himself too hard. He got up at six A.M., occasionally catching Barbara at the end of an epic hack, which gave him ample opportunity to remind her why she loved him. Exercises that made hardcore look weak, then a shower, then he made breakfast.
“So, can we keep him?” Dinah asked as Dick threw her another pancake.
“Those are ours,” Kory said.
“We’re entitled to them,” Barbara said.
“Oh, you had sex with him, sooo tough.”
Dinah had been the first to know, on the grounds that she would figure it out if they didn’t tell her (“WHAT? YOU HAD A THREESOME WITHOUT ME?” had been the response. They were still repairing damage from the Canary Cry). She took it in stride, figuring it was no weirder than half-a-dozen other bits of familial metahumanity. Dick begged to differ.
“Orange juice?” Dick asked as he sat down, the pitcher in his hand. Kory held out her glass and Dick topped her off.
“Could it be more disgusting the way he fawns on her?” Dinah asked Barbara.
“No,” Barbara answered seriously. “No, I don’t think so.”
Dick tilted his chair until he was leaning on Barbara’s wheelchair.
“Hey, that’s not…”
He kissed the side of her neck gently, then just below her ear.
“Not going…”
He got up to nibbling on her earlobe before she kissed him, batting at his arms as they took hold of her. Then finally stopping even the most feeble of protests and letting him pull her onto his lap, giggling madly.
“I still can’t believe you had a threesome without me,” Dinah groused as she got up to wash her plate off.
“We can fix that!” Kory said, goosing her.
Dinah casually pressure-pointed her in the neck. Kory sneezed explosively. “Thanks, but no. This place is getting a little too Big Love for my tastes already.”
“It is not like I call Barbara ‘first wife’,” Dick said, a tad defensively.
“Who said I was talking about you, ‘sister-wife’?” Dinah gave Barbara a big hug. “Be good. Don’t common-law marry anyone else while I’m gone.”
Dinah walked away, leaving Dick to start clearing off the kitchen table. Kory sprung to help and Dick put up only a token protest before they were happily scrubbing and drying. Barbara watched them work in concert, feeling a stab of jealousy at the domesticity of it all. She’d known that was never the life for her, and she thought Dick was the same way. Only he had taken to this… parody of family life the same way he had taken to marriage, the same way he had taken to being Robin or Nightwing or Batman. With confidence, enthusiasm, and (she suspected) heart-stopping fright.
Despite Dinah’s teasing, Barbara was sure that Dick wasn’t sleeping with Kory. He was in Barbara’s bed each and every night. Kory was in the guest room. Barbara’s surveillance cameras had confirmed it, not that she distrusted either of them… except maybe Kory. But the woman had lied about the Gordanians that one time and yes, it was kind of the same thing. If you squinted. Point was, she wasn’t entirely trustworthy and Barbara felt a little saner each time she fast-forwarded through the video of that little thermal blob staying put all night.
“You alright?” Dick and Kory said at the same time, Dick because he could sense her mood at a hundred paces, Kory because she could sense anyone’s mood at a hundred paces.
“Jinx, you owe me a Coke!” Dick said quickly, upon which Kory got a can of same from the refrigerator. Dick accepted it like it was the Holy Grail. “Tastes like victory.”
The light-hearted interplay made Barbara feel worse. Since shortly after the honeymoon, when Dick had been as gentle and as giving as any man she’d ever laid with, and solved the mystery of Devil Ray’s buried treasure with her help… shortly after that, she’d begun waiting for the other shoe to drop. She’d thought that shoe was the pregnancy, and was almost relieved until the three of them had managed to form a symbiosis of sorts. But the situation was too precarious to last long, Dick’s affections split too raw between them and the baby growing inside Kory. Sooner or later, something would have to give.
Masochistically, Barbara decided it should be sooner.
“We should start telling people.”
Kory dropped a plate. Dick caught it, splashing them both with cola from the speed of the move.
“Like who?”
“My father, for one,” Barbara said. “Batman, obviously.”
Kory warmed to the idea. “Yes, Donna must know of this! All of our friends should! We have kept this to ourselves for far too long!”
“Batman? Really?” Dick put away the plate Kory had dropped. “Can’t we just wait five months and say we found a baby in an alien space capsule?”
“Dick!”
“It’s not unheard of.”
Dick sat down across from Barbara and, after a gesture from Dick, Kory joined them.
“Okay,” Dick said, his natural leadership skills coming to the fore. “I say we divvy it up. Tell people on a need-to-know basis. Everyone else finds out in the newsletter.”
“That would be a funny newsletter,” Kory observed.
“Right. Kory wants the Titans and she’s four months pregnant, so she has that. That just leaves Batman and Gordon.”
“Do we have to let dad know? I mean, it’s not like I’m pregnant. Can’t we just…”
“You told me how much you would have wanted to know that Jim was your biological father. He deserves to know he’s going to be a grandfather.”
“He will be happy for you!” Kory insisted, patting Barbara on the back.
“I’m sure he will be. It’s what else he’ll be that worries me. I know you think of him as a great man – and he is, he really is – but this is asking a bit much of him.”
“And Batman isn’t?”
Dick leaned back. “Batman probably already knows.”
“So it won’t be a problem for you to tell him.”
Kory caught Dick before he could fall out of his chair.
“Me? Why me?”
“Kory’s telling the Titans, I’m telling dad, that leaves you. And Batman.”
“I want to trade with Kory!”
Kory shook her head. Dick ran a hand through his hair.
“I fixed you guys breakfast…” he whined.
Barbara kissed him on the cheek. “You’ll survive, former boy wonder. And what doesn’t kill you…”
“Makes you wish it had,” Dick finished glumly.
***
The Teen Titans meeting room wasn’t as Kory had remembered it. The newer Titans had put their mark on it, just as previous generations had. Tim’s discipline, Jaime’s slight clutter, Cassie’s freefloating interest in Greek mythology… it was chaos, but it was a good kind of chaos. Kory felt at home, despite not recognizing any of it.
Her friends were gathered around her. Donna and Gar and Vic and Wally, who she had seen so little since his return from the Speed Force. Even Raven was there, returned from New Azarath with a white cloak and a new smile that she showed off every once in a great while.
“You’re pregnant,” Donna repeated.
“Preggers. Knocked up. In the family way…”
“Gar!”
“Sorry, this is all a little much to take.” Gar wiped a bead of sweat from his green brow. “All this time I’ve been fantasizing about that hot rod of a bod and now it’s going to get all spongy on me…”
Kory patted him on the head. “I’m sorry.”
Kory’s pregnancy had only progressed to a bit of a pot belly. Out of respect for Barbara’s wishes she had hidden it with a more conservative costume, to oodles of disappointment from web forums. Not that she fought crime much anymore. For Tamaranian women (and sometimes men), pregnancy was a time of introspection and meditation to reconcile the dual roles of life-giver and death-giver. Kory had sparred with just about everyone in the Birds of Prey while spouting homilies about the cycle of life and death. Her match with Big Barda had lasted two hours and driven the Female Fury to tears.
Scott Free still blamed Barbara for Barda’s plan to adopt an orphan from Cambodia.
“So when are you expecting?” Vic asked, his deep cybernetic bass taking over the conversation.
“March.”
“You look kinda far along.”
“Tamaran pregnancies. Our spawn are born ready to defend themselves and seek nourishment.” Kory smiled and tossed her hair. “I’m told I slew a kkrx’lank for its meat my first week out of the womb.”
“Precious memories,” Raven said. Her voice was as cutting and acerbic as ever, but softer somehow. Happy for her friend.
“So where’s Dickie?” Wally asked. “Me and Roy have got to take him out for drinks, welcome him to the club… oh man, Garth is gonna flip when he hears…”
“Roy already knows,” Kory said sadly. “He… didn’t take it well.”
Donna stood. “Kory?” she said supportively.
“Dick quit the Outsiders to be with us.”
“Whoa.” Wally tugged on his ear uncomfortably. “I thought he just wanted to get clear of those whack-jobs. I had no idea… is he quitting the biz for good?”
“We don’t know yet. I don’t want him to,” Kory added quickly.
“Are you?” Donna wrapped an arm around Kory’s shoulders. “When my son was born, I quit the Titans.”
“But you didn’t have a choice in the matter.” Kory gave her a hug. “Enough. We will talk of these bridges when we burn them! For now, there is only celebration.” She kissed Donna on the forehead. “And your promise to be godmother to my child.”
“Kory, I…” Tears welled in Donna’s eyes. Not just for her friend, but for the son she’d lost before she ever got a chance to know him. “I’d be honored.”
“Right, okay.” Wally fetched his cell-phone. “We are gonna need pizza, beer, and anything with sugar in it.”
Gar had his own cell-phone quick-drawn. “Way ahead of you, Flash-in-the-pan.”
***
After Barbara’s shooting, a group of ex-cops had banded together to create a guarded community for the boys in blue. The lawns were manicured, the trees were done up in neat ovoids, and the houses stood with the same two stories, guarded by sentinel-like old-fashioned mailboxes. Dick felt antsy the moment he set foot on neatly-trimmed grass. Barbara, rolling up the driveway, gave him a semi-nasty look before they got to the door.
“You can handle this,” Dick said, possibly to her, possibly to himself. “You faced down Spy Smasher, you beat up Darkseid, you punk’d General Zod… this’ll be a cinch. He’s just your dad.”
“Don’t remind me,” Barbara said, punctuating the statement with a finger to the doorbell.
A ding-dong later, Commissioner Jim Gordon had answered it. His shirt-sleeves were done up and his tie undone. As soon as he saw who it was, he took his glasses from his shirt pocket and put them on.
“Barb! And Dick Grayson, my favorite son-in-law.”
“Hey, Jim.” Dick got clear as Gordon stooped to give Barbara a hug.
“What brings you to town? Not that you’re ever unwelcome here, but…”
“Ginger snaps!” Dick yelped. “We were just in the neighborhood, Barbara got a craving for ginger snaps, we thought you might have some… and here we are.”
“That’s all?”
“Oh, there might be one or two other things… right Dick?” Barbara nudged Dick in the ribs. “Right?”
“Yeah, maybe…”
“Digging for gift ideas, huh?” Gordon beamed broadly. “My kids, the detectives. Get in here. Don’t tell me what you’re leaning towards, I want to be surprised.”
Dick stepped inside, Barbara on his heels. “Oh, I can pretty much guarantee you’ll be surprised.”
Although there was only a chill in the air, a good-sized fire was roaring away in the fireplace. An easy chair sat in front of it, equidistant from the fire and the TV, with a thick paperback face-down on the arm of the chair. Gordon picked it up and slipped a bookmark inside, then dropped it onto a newspaper stand.
The living room was furnished in Early Nostalgia. Dick couldn’t much blame him. He saw the war between good memories and bad being fought in the pictures on the wall… old times, good times, gone times. While Barbara sneaked a chocolate fix from a candy dish and gossiped with her father, Dick reached out to straighten a picture of Barbara as a girl. About as old as he was when he became Robin. She looked so happy…
That was what he wanted to have back. The carelessness, the fun. And yet, here he was, telling Barbara’s father that he was going to be a grandfather, and it was laden with tension and pressure and… Dick was sure all of this was going to give him an ulcer. Love was supposed to be easy. Just once, he would like for it to be easy. For Barbara to let it be easy instead of… ugh, I shouldn’t blame her. It’s not her fault.
“Hey, why don’t I fix us something while you two catch up?” Dick offered. With Gordon’s attention diverted, Barbara frantically mimed ‘no’. “Up for some hot chocolate?”
“Sure. But don’t spike it with anything just yet!” Gordon chuckled, good-natured as ever.
“He says that now,” Barbara mouthed before chewing on the ear of her glasses. She always fiddled with her glasses when she got nervous as a girl. The habit had come back in spades.
Gordon and Barbara chatted as Dick kept a safe distance. They were evenly-matched. On the one hand, Gordon was a master detective. On the other, Barbara was his daughter and thus a master of keeping secrets from him. Barbara won by diverting him into telling a story of his first days of marriage. Dick got back just in time for the punchline. Barbara fumbled her hot chocolate, spilling some on Gordon’s pantleg.
“Oh, daddy, I’m so sorry…”
“It’s fine, just give me a second…”
Gordon got up to go to the bathroom. As soon as he was out of earshot, Barbara grabbed Dick by the collar and yanked him close.
“I can’t do this!” she hissed desperately.
“Sure you can, he’s your pop. You can tell him anything.”
Never had it been more obvious, Barbara thought, that Dick’s father had died at an early age. Logic having failed, she resorted to the next weapon in her arsenal: Bribery.
“You do this and I will tell Bruce,” Barbara promised. “Gladly.”
“Gladly?”
She shrugged. “I’m not afraid of Bruce.”
“Alright, I’ll tell him.” Dick nodded.
“Tell me what?” Gordon said. He had been suspicious of the couple since their arrival and had hung around behind the corner, listening in.
Dick thought he looked pretty intimidating for a guy with a hot chocolate stain on his pants. “Hey… father-in-law… I’m sure you experimented when you were younger, right?” Barbara slapped her forehead. “Sexually, I mean.” Barbara ground the heel of her hand into her eye. “With Mrs. Gordon.” Barbara used her second hand as well. “Sowing your wild oats… maybe you rented a porno or went to a key party…”
“No,” Gordon said, arms crossed so tightly that the Jaws of Life couldn’t pry them apart.
“Not even a porno? I mean, us neither! We neither! Neither us… did that.” Dick clapped his hands together quickly and looked for Barbara for support. Barbara was of no help, having melted into the ground long ago and left a motionless hologram behind. “But what we did do is… well… there’s this girl, you see… a really nice girl… and the two of us, Barbara and me, decided that since it was our anniversary we ought to have a little fun…” Dick held out his hands placatingly and winded up spinning them. “And so me and Barbara and this other girl started fooling around. I’ll spare you the details… but long story short, this other girl is pregnant with our baby… all three of ours’ baby…” He spread his arms wide. “Grandpa!”
The longest silence in the world followed, only stopping when Barbara managed to both open her eyes and part the fingers covering her eyes.
“I can’t look,” she said, staring dead ahead at Dick. “Is he disapproving?”
“It’s hard to tell. I think he had a stroke. Can you have a stroke that paralyzes both sides of your face?”
“You…” Gordon’s right hand, his gun-hand, rose like Frankenstein’s monster. “You…” It reached for Dick. “You involved my daughter in your perverted sex games!?”
“Actually, it was her…” Barbara elbowed Dick in the crotch. He sang soprano, “Yes, yes I did, my bad.”
“Daddy, remember your heart!” Barbara urged.
“I’ll put him in one of the nice cells, sweetie…” Gordon muttered. “One with hardly any anal rape.”
“Daddy, he’s the father of your grandchild!”
“No anal rape then! We must have something on the books about corruption of a…” Gordon realized, whilst still completely missing the point, that Barbara wasn’t a little girl any more. “Librarian!”
“Daddy!” Barbara said firmly, putting an arm between Dick and her father. “Listen! I love him and he makes me happy. Now, you can be happy for us or not, but stop protecting me. I’m fine.”
Gordon reduced his threat level to a sizable glare. “One false move,” he said to Dick. “Just one and I’ll throw the book at you.”
“Hey, gramps? On the hurting-Barbara scale, I’m not the one who just bit her husband head’s off. I’d die before I hurt Babs. If you don’t trust me on that, fine. But trust Barbara, okay? She seems to think I’m on the level.”
Gordon softened a little. “A grandkid… this soon…” He sat down heavily. “He’s gonna be a cop, of course.”
“Yeah,” Dick said, as Barbara said “We’ll see.”
They looked at each other.
“We’re still ironing out how to not make the same mistakes you parents did about trying to control her life down to the last detail while still… controlling her life right up to the last detail.”
“Good luck,” Gordon wished whole-heartedly. “Her? It’s a girl?”
“We think so, but at this stage of the pregnancy it’s hard to tell.”
“Yeah,” Dick added. “As you might’ve guessed, things are a bit unusual.”
“So it could still be a boy?”
Dick showed his crossed fingers, which Gordon matched. Dick collapsed beside him on the couch.
“Think about it. You’ll finally have someone to tell old cop stories to… we can have multigenerational fishing trips…”
“Barbara, how do you feel about all this?” Gordon asked, breaking free of Dick’s hearty grip.
“Scared. Excited. Everything.”
“Yes, I know what that’s like…” He breathed out. “At least you’re bringing your… kid into a better world then I had for you. And some of that is thanks to the two of you.” He looked between Dick and Barbara. “He or she will be lucky to have you two as parents.”
“Thanks, dad.”
“Yeah, thanks… dad.”
***
They were just out the door when Dick stopped and hunched over a little.
“Something wrong?” Barbara asked, tapping him on the shoulder.
“No, I think my heart finally started beating again.” Dick thumped his chest. “Yep, there it goes.”
“It wasn’t that bad.”
“Neither was the Vietnam War, when you get right down to it.”
“Well, at least it was only one person. Imagine how Kory’s doing.”
***
The party had swelled. The actual reason was carefully under-wraps, no matter how many appletinis Flamebird tried to ply Gar’s tongue with, so most of the newcomers took it as a party for the sake of a party. With the arrival of the ex-YJers, Kory had excused herself. Donna followed her into the hall and they walked in silence, one behind the other, until the sound of the celebration was far muted.
“Do you want to be alone?” Donna asked finally. “Because you keep walking away…”
“If you were the company, Donna, I should never wish to be alone. No, I merely wish… to be less… together.”
“You still have feelings for Dick,” Donna said, understanding, not an accusation.
“Is there someplace we can talk? This new headquarters has none of the old hiding places I used to love.”
Donna took Kory by the arm. “Can you still fly?”
“Yes.”
“Then follow me.”
They found a window, opened it, and did the Peter Pan thing. Whatever the destination was, Point A to Point B quickly became a secondary consideration to the joy of flight. Kory had flown with Dick, his own acrobatics competing with her aerobatics, and she had flown into battle at the side of heroes like Green Lantern and Superman, but flying with Donna was different. The Amazon seemed to enjoy the taste of the same breaths Kory took. Together, they let the wind push them along, riding the thermal updrafts like birds
Their roles reversed. Donna took the lead, pushing and pulling Kory like a stubborn mule to fully enjoy the night. Kory playfully tugged against her and the two of them tumbled through the sky, clothes flaring and flattening against each other. Finally, Donna took hold of Kory from behind and coupled their speed. Screaming like two kids on a roller coaster, they flew through a thunder cloud. The unshed rain drenched them and the heat of the internal lightning that quickened nearby warmed them. They emerged above the clouds, floating effortlessly twenty thousand feet above sea level. Wispy cirrus clouds flowed around them like quicksilver slowed to a crawl. They clung to each other against the cold of the troposphere.
“Donna. My friend,” Kory said, kissing Donna affectionately on the lips. For a moment they held each other, gently pirouetting, watching the interplay of clouds spread out all around them like a mosaic.
“I still have feelings for Kyle,” Donna admitted. “And Roy. And even Terry.”
“And me?”
“Of course.”
“Of course,” Kory repeated, mock-boisterously.
Donna smiled and hugged her tighter.
“I’ve always loved Dick. As long as I can remember and even earlier I wish I had known someone like him. Someone strong and brave and willing to fight for me, to the end.”
Donna rubbed Kory’s back as she spoke.
“I fell in love with him when we first met and that love just deepened the longer we knew each other. And then it wilted, and died, for no reason. Out of neglect or circumstance… it hurt me to realize he wasn’t in my life anymore. And now he is, but he doesn’t love me…”
“Of course he does…”
“Not the way he does Barbara. You’d know if you saw them together. He loves me like a… like a Cocker Spaniel.”
“No he doesn’t!” Donna protested. “Dick may love everyone, sure, but you’re at the top of the list.”
“I’m runner-up. And that makes it worse. I understood how important Bruce and Roy and all his friends were, but those were other spheres. I was the person he truly loved. Not a friend or a father, but a lover. And Barbara’s taken my place.”
Kory rested her head glumly on Donna’s shoulder and they lowered slowly, once more descending past the clouds until they were standing atop a skyscraper’s radio mast. Kory sniffled and felt Donna pet her hair soothingly.
“We all love you,” Donna said. “Don’t let Dick be so important.”
“He’s the father of my child. How unimportant can he be?”
They sat down, legs dangling off the side. Donna rested her head on Kory’s shoulder, still damp from the rainwater.
“What about Barbara?”
“She wants and has him all to herself. I love her, she’s the mother of my child, but I don’t particularly like her.”
“That figures,” Donna said. Her finger lazily spun spirals on the inside of Kory’s forearm. “Does she think you’re trying to steal her man?”
“I am not!” Kory protested.
“I didn’t say you were. But maybe she’s being a little defensive because she’s… scared.”
Kory rested her chin in her hands, staring forward at the cityscape. Donna scooted next to her until the sides of their thighs were touching. Her wet hair fell around her head in ringlets and she brushed it away. Kory reached up to grab a lock of it and twirl it around her finger lovingly. Donna yowled a little when Kory teasingly yanked on it. Pouting, she gave Kory a hurt look. Kory embraced her and Donna instantly forgave her.
“My Donna… you’re very wise.”
“I had good teachers,” Donna said, smiling.
“Thank you for passing it along to me.” She broke out in a laugh. “Race you home?”
“You’re on!”
They kicked off the mast and plummeted for a moment before taking off, Kory leaving behind a bright contrail to mark their passage.
***
“So,” Dick said, piloting the Bat-Copter towards San Fran while talking with Barbara on the vid-screen. “You’re going to tell Bruce, right?”
“Uh-huh. As promised.”
“Good. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a party to go to.”
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
“Depends. What wouldn’t you do for a Klondike Bar?”
“Program in GUSH Basic.”
“Are you sure? Klondike Bars are so pleasantly minty…”
“Enjoy the party.”
And, with Dick conveniently out of earshot, Barbara called up Helena.
***
“Batman! BATMAN!” Huntress finally caught up to the Dark Knight, practically hyperventilating with panic. “You have to help! Dick, Barbara, and Starfire had a threesome and got Starfire pregnant with their baby! All three of them! And they need your help!”
She paused, getting new instructions from Barbara.
“Okay, cancel that part about needing your help. But the triple pregnancy is on the level.”
Batman glowered at her with the force of a thousand suns, if suns could glower, and Helena came to an unpleasant revelation.
“Barbara, you BITCH!” she shouted into her mouthpiece, although Barbara was long gone.
***
Somewhere in the distance, Titans Tower was dancing the night away. Roy had gotten the call from just about every Titan who had his number, and Argent, who he thought could be saving the last dance for him. But Dick would be there and he was in no mood to face him. God, telling him his marriage was a mistake… what were you thinking, Harper? Did you need to wreck every good thing in your life?
“I miss Unca Dick,” Lian said as Roy tucked her in.
“Yeah, me too. You wanna read a bedtime story?”
“I want Unca Dick to read me one!” Lian pouted, firmly set in her conviction. An admirable ploy for a six-year-old.
“Tell you what.” Roy drew the covers up to her chin. “You wait here and I’ll see if I can call him up.”
“Yay!”
She’d try to stay up for him, but Roy could sense his daughter was well and truly tuckered out. She’d be asleep long before she got tired of waiting for Dick. If worst came to worst and she did stay up, Roy really would call Dick and tell him to read Lian a bedtime story over the phone, so it wasn’t really a lie.
“Unca Dickie reads the best stories. He makes the scary ones not scary.”
“Yeah, he has a knack for that. Night, Lian.”
Lian kissed him on the cheek, even though he had forgot, and Roy left, turning on the nightlight just before he shut the door. ‘Unca Dickie’. He was going to have to remember that one.
Dinah was yawning on his couch, watching late-night TV. Roy slid along the couch to plant his head on his leg, letting her rub the back of neck like she’d used to when she and Ollie had been playing surrogate parents.
“Lian’s trying to fix my relationship with Dick,” Roy said. “I have a feeling resistance would be futile.”
“Want me to put in a good word for you?”
Roy shook his head, scratching his cheek against her fishnet stocking. “I can take my own lumps.”
“So you’re going to…”
“Send a tersely-worded e-mail, get a tersely-worded e-mail back, and say we’re in ‘détente’. Then eventually we’ll have to work together on some crisis and things will fall back into place.”
“You couldn’t be slightly more proactive?” Dinah probed, moving up to scratch at his red hair.
He closed his eyes…God, it felt better than a full-body massage. “I have my pride.”
“You don’t have a best friend anymore, though.”
“They’re overrated. I still get jaw aches from where he punched me.”
“Aww, poor baby.” Dinah bent a little over him, lifting his head up by the chin. “Want me to kiss it and make it better?”
Roy really did, as it turned out. Before he could do something stupid like tell her so, Lian was in her footie pajamas, looking at the two of them in the winter glare of the muted (Who had muted it? When had that happened?) television.
“Is Unca Dickie here yet?”
“I’ll call him,” Roy said, getting up. He tripped on something and Dinah caught him. He stayed there as he took his cell-phone out of his pocket, hit Dick’s quick-dial, and tossed it to Lian. “He’ll pick up in a minute.”
Dinah was smiling.
“Something funny?”
“Roy Harper. Leader of the Titans. Leader of the Outsiders. Courted by the JLA. Agent of Checkmate. Six-year-old’s bit—“
Roy put a hand over Dinah’s mouth.
“Auntie Dinah was going to say a bad word,” Lian reported with newscaster instincts.
Dinah pushed Roy’s arm down. “Thank you for stopping me, Roy.”
“Any time.”
“Unca Dickie!” Lian said into the phone. “D’ya wanna talk to Roy?”
“So it’s mutiny then?” Roy said.
“He doesn’t wanna talk to you,” Lian reported sadly.
Her pout was outrageous. Roy beckoned her closer, used the cell-phone to snap a photo of her face, then sent it to Dick.
“The nuclear option,” Dinah said.
“Just being honest.”
He handed the cell phone back to Lian, who listened. “Unca Dickie says he’s not mad at you and he doesn’t have a grudge.”
“Okay. Tell him not to read you a scary story.”
“But he makes them not scary!”
“They still give you nightmares.” Lian started a preemptive pout, but Roy cut her off. “You’re getting a story from ‘Unca Dickie’. Be happy with that. Remember what the Navajo say about contentment.”
“Yes, daddy.”
Clutching the cell-phone to her small chest, she went back to her room. Roy looked around for the remote to unmute the television. He found Dinah smiling at him.
“What now?”
“Nothing. Tell me, do you aim that at the ovaries of every woman that comes in here?”
Roy shrugged. “Just the pretty ones,” he mused.
Dinah kissed him.
“Daddy and Auntie Dinah kissed!”
Roy swiveled his head much like an owl. Lian, giggling, was peeking around the corner of the hallway that led to her bedroom.
“Yeah, they did, didn’t they?” He put on his meanest Mean Daddy face. “Bed! Now!”
Lian scampered off, still with the cell-phone in hand, and Roy imagined he could hear Dick’s laughter coming over it. It felt good. He looked at Dinah. And pretty soon they were in his bedroom, locking the door and fumbling with each others’ clothes, magically on the same wavelength. They were people who’d never needed poems or flowers or chocolates to find their way into bed with someone, they’d just never attuned to each other.
“We have to make this quick. Lian has school in the morning and her nanny can’t drive her in.”
“I am so hot for you right now,” Dinah said.
He grabbed her hair so hard the wig came off, leaving her in that incongruous short black hairdo, and they were kissing and soon doing more than kissing.
***
Dick slipped into the party and did his best wallflower impression while he looked for Kory, but his entrance must have sent an alert to someone because pretty soon Raven had found him and dragged him to the dance floor. She passed a drink to him and he downed it in one go. Tim and Steph were doing that stupid Batusi, Gar was forbidden-dancing (as he referred to the Lambada) with Raven, and Cass was blending into the shadows to be a far more successful wallflower than he was. He had no idea why she’d come in the first place. Probably Barbara’s insistence. He reminded himself to give her a dance later. Do her good, plus with those body language skills she would never step on his toes.
“Where’s Kory?” he asked Raven, yelling to be heard over the jiving dance music, but Wally was pulling him away from her before she could answer. A cigar was shoved between his lips and lit so fast that Freud spun in his grave.
“Three-DNAed baby,” Wally laughed, clapping Dick on the back hard enough for ash to fly from the cigar. “You sure outdid my twins, ya big circus showoff! You and Kory, man, I never thought I’d see the day! Good on ya!”
Dick spat out the cigar. “We’re not… me and Barbara are… Kory’s just…”
He saw her.
“Beautiful.”
Coming through the door, just wet enough to fool him into thinking she had been oiled, her clothes wet as sin and sticking to her body like a second skin. The water dripping off her clothes made damp patches on the floor, turned her footprints on the carpet into swamps.
Wally shoved him into her. They clasped hands, him to stop, her to catch him, and she rocked back on her heels from the impact. And they were dancing.
“You look so nice,” Dick said, as the room spun around them. He felt feverish. Drunk, although he’d only had the one drink. He wouldn’t trust himself to drive.
“As do you.”
“Why are you wet? Were you out in the rain? You could catch cold.”
Kory giggled and Dick’s hand brushed through her damp hair. He grabbed some napkins from one of a dozen fast-food bags and dabbed at her face. Her eyes sparkled. She kissed the napkin when he was done with it and lipstick came off on it. Leaving her plump lips a pale pink. She looked beautiful. He spun her, feeling her weightlessly leave him and then come back, pressing against his chest as she led him through a tango. Laughing. Like old times, the dance clubs and the steps that Kory learned so quick. He always moved so fast, so naturally, but she made him feel like a zombie. In dancing, only Donna could really keep up with her.
Wally was dancing with Linda and Raven was dancing with Gar and Jaime had dragged Cass into a dance, which mirrored his own and improved on it, while Steph pulled Tim into a kiss like she would never see him again. Kory forced Dick against a table, bending him just slightly backwards over it. An impromptu punchbowl’s surface shimmied and several boxes of pizza rattled. She cascaded down his almost-prone body like a waterfall. Her head paused at his crotch, like she would finally suck the life out of him right there. She’d done it before, in those smoky nightclubs, among the throngs of humanity that excited her so.
Cass kissed Jaime on the cheek, sweetly, and Tim kissed Steph, so hard she swooned backward and he had to hold her up with a hand around the back of her waist, and Kory moved up, pushing his shirt up to expose his stomach, and licked him from his belly button up his abs before releasing his shirt to drape back down over him but kept coming up until she met him, her lips against his, tasting of rain and lightning and storms, and he pulled her closer to him and felt the years that laid between them die. He was young, and she was young, and there was nothing wrong.
Then she was moving back from him and everything was wrong, her taste on his teeth and the weight of the ring on his finger and the rising erection in his slacks. Just this once, it was alright. If she knew, like he did, that it was just the heat of the moment and nostalgia and nothing more, then there was no point in upsetting Barbara. He ran a hand along Kory’s cheek.
“That can’t happen again,” he said softly. “That was nothing.”
Kory nodded. “I’m sorry.” She kissed his hand. “You’re a good friend, Dick. Thank you for the dance.”
“You’re welcome,” he said before he staggered away, knees suddenly weak.
Month 5
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Dick/Babs, Kory, Donna, Jim Gordon, Roy, Dinah, Lian,
Word Count: 6,088
Series: The Other Wife
Acknowledgements: Thanks to thyme and M. for the betaing.
General Summary: For a year, Dick and Barbara had the perfect marriage. Then came Kory…
Chapter Summary: Heading into Kory's second trimester, Barbara decides it's time to start telling people about the pregnancy.
Month 3
Month 4/November: Meet The Grandparents
Dick had to be stopped from pushing himself too hard. He got up at six A.M., occasionally catching Barbara at the end of an epic hack, which gave him ample opportunity to remind her why she loved him. Exercises that made hardcore look weak, then a shower, then he made breakfast.
“So, can we keep him?” Dinah asked as Dick threw her another pancake.
“Those are ours,” Kory said.
“We’re entitled to them,” Barbara said.
“Oh, you had sex with him, sooo tough.”
Dinah had been the first to know, on the grounds that she would figure it out if they didn’t tell her (“WHAT? YOU HAD A THREESOME WITHOUT ME?” had been the response. They were still repairing damage from the Canary Cry). She took it in stride, figuring it was no weirder than half-a-dozen other bits of familial metahumanity. Dick begged to differ.
“Orange juice?” Dick asked as he sat down, the pitcher in his hand. Kory held out her glass and Dick topped her off.
“Could it be more disgusting the way he fawns on her?” Dinah asked Barbara.
“No,” Barbara answered seriously. “No, I don’t think so.”
Dick tilted his chair until he was leaning on Barbara’s wheelchair.
“Hey, that’s not…”
He kissed the side of her neck gently, then just below her ear.
“Not going…”
He got up to nibbling on her earlobe before she kissed him, batting at his arms as they took hold of her. Then finally stopping even the most feeble of protests and letting him pull her onto his lap, giggling madly.
“I still can’t believe you had a threesome without me,” Dinah groused as she got up to wash her plate off.
“We can fix that!” Kory said, goosing her.
Dinah casually pressure-pointed her in the neck. Kory sneezed explosively. “Thanks, but no. This place is getting a little too Big Love for my tastes already.”
“It is not like I call Barbara ‘first wife’,” Dick said, a tad defensively.
“Who said I was talking about you, ‘sister-wife’?” Dinah gave Barbara a big hug. “Be good. Don’t common-law marry anyone else while I’m gone.”
Dinah walked away, leaving Dick to start clearing off the kitchen table. Kory sprung to help and Dick put up only a token protest before they were happily scrubbing and drying. Barbara watched them work in concert, feeling a stab of jealousy at the domesticity of it all. She’d known that was never the life for her, and she thought Dick was the same way. Only he had taken to this… parody of family life the same way he had taken to marriage, the same way he had taken to being Robin or Nightwing or Batman. With confidence, enthusiasm, and (she suspected) heart-stopping fright.
Despite Dinah’s teasing, Barbara was sure that Dick wasn’t sleeping with Kory. He was in Barbara’s bed each and every night. Kory was in the guest room. Barbara’s surveillance cameras had confirmed it, not that she distrusted either of them… except maybe Kory. But the woman had lied about the Gordanians that one time and yes, it was kind of the same thing. If you squinted. Point was, she wasn’t entirely trustworthy and Barbara felt a little saner each time she fast-forwarded through the video of that little thermal blob staying put all night.
“You alright?” Dick and Kory said at the same time, Dick because he could sense her mood at a hundred paces, Kory because she could sense anyone’s mood at a hundred paces.
“Jinx, you owe me a Coke!” Dick said quickly, upon which Kory got a can of same from the refrigerator. Dick accepted it like it was the Holy Grail. “Tastes like victory.”
The light-hearted interplay made Barbara feel worse. Since shortly after the honeymoon, when Dick had been as gentle and as giving as any man she’d ever laid with, and solved the mystery of Devil Ray’s buried treasure with her help… shortly after that, she’d begun waiting for the other shoe to drop. She’d thought that shoe was the pregnancy, and was almost relieved until the three of them had managed to form a symbiosis of sorts. But the situation was too precarious to last long, Dick’s affections split too raw between them and the baby growing inside Kory. Sooner or later, something would have to give.
Masochistically, Barbara decided it should be sooner.
“We should start telling people.”
Kory dropped a plate. Dick caught it, splashing them both with cola from the speed of the move.
“Like who?”
“My father, for one,” Barbara said. “Batman, obviously.”
Kory warmed to the idea. “Yes, Donna must know of this! All of our friends should! We have kept this to ourselves for far too long!”
“Batman? Really?” Dick put away the plate Kory had dropped. “Can’t we just wait five months and say we found a baby in an alien space capsule?”
“Dick!”
“It’s not unheard of.”
Dick sat down across from Barbara and, after a gesture from Dick, Kory joined them.
“Okay,” Dick said, his natural leadership skills coming to the fore. “I say we divvy it up. Tell people on a need-to-know basis. Everyone else finds out in the newsletter.”
“That would be a funny newsletter,” Kory observed.
“Right. Kory wants the Titans and she’s four months pregnant, so she has that. That just leaves Batman and Gordon.”
“Do we have to let dad know? I mean, it’s not like I’m pregnant. Can’t we just…”
“You told me how much you would have wanted to know that Jim was your biological father. He deserves to know he’s going to be a grandfather.”
“He will be happy for you!” Kory insisted, patting Barbara on the back.
“I’m sure he will be. It’s what else he’ll be that worries me. I know you think of him as a great man – and he is, he really is – but this is asking a bit much of him.”
“And Batman isn’t?”
Dick leaned back. “Batman probably already knows.”
“So it won’t be a problem for you to tell him.”
Kory caught Dick before he could fall out of his chair.
“Me? Why me?”
“Kory’s telling the Titans, I’m telling dad, that leaves you. And Batman.”
“I want to trade with Kory!”
Kory shook her head. Dick ran a hand through his hair.
“I fixed you guys breakfast…” he whined.
Barbara kissed him on the cheek. “You’ll survive, former boy wonder. And what doesn’t kill you…”
“Makes you wish it had,” Dick finished glumly.
***
The Teen Titans meeting room wasn’t as Kory had remembered it. The newer Titans had put their mark on it, just as previous generations had. Tim’s discipline, Jaime’s slight clutter, Cassie’s freefloating interest in Greek mythology… it was chaos, but it was a good kind of chaos. Kory felt at home, despite not recognizing any of it.
Her friends were gathered around her. Donna and Gar and Vic and Wally, who she had seen so little since his return from the Speed Force. Even Raven was there, returned from New Azarath with a white cloak and a new smile that she showed off every once in a great while.
“You’re pregnant,” Donna repeated.
“Preggers. Knocked up. In the family way…”
“Gar!”
“Sorry, this is all a little much to take.” Gar wiped a bead of sweat from his green brow. “All this time I’ve been fantasizing about that hot rod of a bod and now it’s going to get all spongy on me…”
Kory patted him on the head. “I’m sorry.”
Kory’s pregnancy had only progressed to a bit of a pot belly. Out of respect for Barbara’s wishes she had hidden it with a more conservative costume, to oodles of disappointment from web forums. Not that she fought crime much anymore. For Tamaranian women (and sometimes men), pregnancy was a time of introspection and meditation to reconcile the dual roles of life-giver and death-giver. Kory had sparred with just about everyone in the Birds of Prey while spouting homilies about the cycle of life and death. Her match with Big Barda had lasted two hours and driven the Female Fury to tears.
Scott Free still blamed Barbara for Barda’s plan to adopt an orphan from Cambodia.
“So when are you expecting?” Vic asked, his deep cybernetic bass taking over the conversation.
“March.”
“You look kinda far along.”
“Tamaran pregnancies. Our spawn are born ready to defend themselves and seek nourishment.” Kory smiled and tossed her hair. “I’m told I slew a kkrx’lank for its meat my first week out of the womb.”
“Precious memories,” Raven said. Her voice was as cutting and acerbic as ever, but softer somehow. Happy for her friend.
“So where’s Dickie?” Wally asked. “Me and Roy have got to take him out for drinks, welcome him to the club… oh man, Garth is gonna flip when he hears…”
“Roy already knows,” Kory said sadly. “He… didn’t take it well.”
Donna stood. “Kory?” she said supportively.
“Dick quit the Outsiders to be with us.”
“Whoa.” Wally tugged on his ear uncomfortably. “I thought he just wanted to get clear of those whack-jobs. I had no idea… is he quitting the biz for good?”
“We don’t know yet. I don’t want him to,” Kory added quickly.
“Are you?” Donna wrapped an arm around Kory’s shoulders. “When my son was born, I quit the Titans.”
“But you didn’t have a choice in the matter.” Kory gave her a hug. “Enough. We will talk of these bridges when we burn them! For now, there is only celebration.” She kissed Donna on the forehead. “And your promise to be godmother to my child.”
“Kory, I…” Tears welled in Donna’s eyes. Not just for her friend, but for the son she’d lost before she ever got a chance to know him. “I’d be honored.”
“Right, okay.” Wally fetched his cell-phone. “We are gonna need pizza, beer, and anything with sugar in it.”
Gar had his own cell-phone quick-drawn. “Way ahead of you, Flash-in-the-pan.”
***
After Barbara’s shooting, a group of ex-cops had banded together to create a guarded community for the boys in blue. The lawns were manicured, the trees were done up in neat ovoids, and the houses stood with the same two stories, guarded by sentinel-like old-fashioned mailboxes. Dick felt antsy the moment he set foot on neatly-trimmed grass. Barbara, rolling up the driveway, gave him a semi-nasty look before they got to the door.
“You can handle this,” Dick said, possibly to her, possibly to himself. “You faced down Spy Smasher, you beat up Darkseid, you punk’d General Zod… this’ll be a cinch. He’s just your dad.”
“Don’t remind me,” Barbara said, punctuating the statement with a finger to the doorbell.
A ding-dong later, Commissioner Jim Gordon had answered it. His shirt-sleeves were done up and his tie undone. As soon as he saw who it was, he took his glasses from his shirt pocket and put them on.
“Barb! And Dick Grayson, my favorite son-in-law.”
“Hey, Jim.” Dick got clear as Gordon stooped to give Barbara a hug.
“What brings you to town? Not that you’re ever unwelcome here, but…”
“Ginger snaps!” Dick yelped. “We were just in the neighborhood, Barbara got a craving for ginger snaps, we thought you might have some… and here we are.”
“That’s all?”
“Oh, there might be one or two other things… right Dick?” Barbara nudged Dick in the ribs. “Right?”
“Yeah, maybe…”
“Digging for gift ideas, huh?” Gordon beamed broadly. “My kids, the detectives. Get in here. Don’t tell me what you’re leaning towards, I want to be surprised.”
Dick stepped inside, Barbara on his heels. “Oh, I can pretty much guarantee you’ll be surprised.”
Although there was only a chill in the air, a good-sized fire was roaring away in the fireplace. An easy chair sat in front of it, equidistant from the fire and the TV, with a thick paperback face-down on the arm of the chair. Gordon picked it up and slipped a bookmark inside, then dropped it onto a newspaper stand.
The living room was furnished in Early Nostalgia. Dick couldn’t much blame him. He saw the war between good memories and bad being fought in the pictures on the wall… old times, good times, gone times. While Barbara sneaked a chocolate fix from a candy dish and gossiped with her father, Dick reached out to straighten a picture of Barbara as a girl. About as old as he was when he became Robin. She looked so happy…
That was what he wanted to have back. The carelessness, the fun. And yet, here he was, telling Barbara’s father that he was going to be a grandfather, and it was laden with tension and pressure and… Dick was sure all of this was going to give him an ulcer. Love was supposed to be easy. Just once, he would like for it to be easy. For Barbara to let it be easy instead of… ugh, I shouldn’t blame her. It’s not her fault.
“Hey, why don’t I fix us something while you two catch up?” Dick offered. With Gordon’s attention diverted, Barbara frantically mimed ‘no’. “Up for some hot chocolate?”
“Sure. But don’t spike it with anything just yet!” Gordon chuckled, good-natured as ever.
“He says that now,” Barbara mouthed before chewing on the ear of her glasses. She always fiddled with her glasses when she got nervous as a girl. The habit had come back in spades.
Gordon and Barbara chatted as Dick kept a safe distance. They were evenly-matched. On the one hand, Gordon was a master detective. On the other, Barbara was his daughter and thus a master of keeping secrets from him. Barbara won by diverting him into telling a story of his first days of marriage. Dick got back just in time for the punchline. Barbara fumbled her hot chocolate, spilling some on Gordon’s pantleg.
“Oh, daddy, I’m so sorry…”
“It’s fine, just give me a second…”
Gordon got up to go to the bathroom. As soon as he was out of earshot, Barbara grabbed Dick by the collar and yanked him close.
“I can’t do this!” she hissed desperately.
“Sure you can, he’s your pop. You can tell him anything.”
Never had it been more obvious, Barbara thought, that Dick’s father had died at an early age. Logic having failed, she resorted to the next weapon in her arsenal: Bribery.
“You do this and I will tell Bruce,” Barbara promised. “Gladly.”
“Gladly?”
She shrugged. “I’m not afraid of Bruce.”
“Alright, I’ll tell him.” Dick nodded.
“Tell me what?” Gordon said. He had been suspicious of the couple since their arrival and had hung around behind the corner, listening in.
Dick thought he looked pretty intimidating for a guy with a hot chocolate stain on his pants. “Hey… father-in-law… I’m sure you experimented when you were younger, right?” Barbara slapped her forehead. “Sexually, I mean.” Barbara ground the heel of her hand into her eye. “With Mrs. Gordon.” Barbara used her second hand as well. “Sowing your wild oats… maybe you rented a porno or went to a key party…”
“No,” Gordon said, arms crossed so tightly that the Jaws of Life couldn’t pry them apart.
“Not even a porno? I mean, us neither! We neither! Neither us… did that.” Dick clapped his hands together quickly and looked for Barbara for support. Barbara was of no help, having melted into the ground long ago and left a motionless hologram behind. “But what we did do is… well… there’s this girl, you see… a really nice girl… and the two of us, Barbara and me, decided that since it was our anniversary we ought to have a little fun…” Dick held out his hands placatingly and winded up spinning them. “And so me and Barbara and this other girl started fooling around. I’ll spare you the details… but long story short, this other girl is pregnant with our baby… all three of ours’ baby…” He spread his arms wide. “Grandpa!”
The longest silence in the world followed, only stopping when Barbara managed to both open her eyes and part the fingers covering her eyes.
“I can’t look,” she said, staring dead ahead at Dick. “Is he disapproving?”
“It’s hard to tell. I think he had a stroke. Can you have a stroke that paralyzes both sides of your face?”
“You…” Gordon’s right hand, his gun-hand, rose like Frankenstein’s monster. “You…” It reached for Dick. “You involved my daughter in your perverted sex games!?”
“Actually, it was her…” Barbara elbowed Dick in the crotch. He sang soprano, “Yes, yes I did, my bad.”
“Daddy, remember your heart!” Barbara urged.
“I’ll put him in one of the nice cells, sweetie…” Gordon muttered. “One with hardly any anal rape.”
“Daddy, he’s the father of your grandchild!”
“No anal rape then! We must have something on the books about corruption of a…” Gordon realized, whilst still completely missing the point, that Barbara wasn’t a little girl any more. “Librarian!”
“Daddy!” Barbara said firmly, putting an arm between Dick and her father. “Listen! I love him and he makes me happy. Now, you can be happy for us or not, but stop protecting me. I’m fine.”
Gordon reduced his threat level to a sizable glare. “One false move,” he said to Dick. “Just one and I’ll throw the book at you.”
“Hey, gramps? On the hurting-Barbara scale, I’m not the one who just bit her husband head’s off. I’d die before I hurt Babs. If you don’t trust me on that, fine. But trust Barbara, okay? She seems to think I’m on the level.”
Gordon softened a little. “A grandkid… this soon…” He sat down heavily. “He’s gonna be a cop, of course.”
“Yeah,” Dick said, as Barbara said “We’ll see.”
They looked at each other.
“We’re still ironing out how to not make the same mistakes you parents did about trying to control her life down to the last detail while still… controlling her life right up to the last detail.”
“Good luck,” Gordon wished whole-heartedly. “Her? It’s a girl?”
“We think so, but at this stage of the pregnancy it’s hard to tell.”
“Yeah,” Dick added. “As you might’ve guessed, things are a bit unusual.”
“So it could still be a boy?”
Dick showed his crossed fingers, which Gordon matched. Dick collapsed beside him on the couch.
“Think about it. You’ll finally have someone to tell old cop stories to… we can have multigenerational fishing trips…”
“Barbara, how do you feel about all this?” Gordon asked, breaking free of Dick’s hearty grip.
“Scared. Excited. Everything.”
“Yes, I know what that’s like…” He breathed out. “At least you’re bringing your… kid into a better world then I had for you. And some of that is thanks to the two of you.” He looked between Dick and Barbara. “He or she will be lucky to have you two as parents.”
“Thanks, dad.”
“Yeah, thanks… dad.”
***
They were just out the door when Dick stopped and hunched over a little.
“Something wrong?” Barbara asked, tapping him on the shoulder.
“No, I think my heart finally started beating again.” Dick thumped his chest. “Yep, there it goes.”
“It wasn’t that bad.”
“Neither was the Vietnam War, when you get right down to it.”
“Well, at least it was only one person. Imagine how Kory’s doing.”
***
The party had swelled. The actual reason was carefully under-wraps, no matter how many appletinis Flamebird tried to ply Gar’s tongue with, so most of the newcomers took it as a party for the sake of a party. With the arrival of the ex-YJers, Kory had excused herself. Donna followed her into the hall and they walked in silence, one behind the other, until the sound of the celebration was far muted.
“Do you want to be alone?” Donna asked finally. “Because you keep walking away…”
“If you were the company, Donna, I should never wish to be alone. No, I merely wish… to be less… together.”
“You still have feelings for Dick,” Donna said, understanding, not an accusation.
“Is there someplace we can talk? This new headquarters has none of the old hiding places I used to love.”
Donna took Kory by the arm. “Can you still fly?”
“Yes.”
“Then follow me.”
They found a window, opened it, and did the Peter Pan thing. Whatever the destination was, Point A to Point B quickly became a secondary consideration to the joy of flight. Kory had flown with Dick, his own acrobatics competing with her aerobatics, and she had flown into battle at the side of heroes like Green Lantern and Superman, but flying with Donna was different. The Amazon seemed to enjoy the taste of the same breaths Kory took. Together, they let the wind push them along, riding the thermal updrafts like birds
Their roles reversed. Donna took the lead, pushing and pulling Kory like a stubborn mule to fully enjoy the night. Kory playfully tugged against her and the two of them tumbled through the sky, clothes flaring and flattening against each other. Finally, Donna took hold of Kory from behind and coupled their speed. Screaming like two kids on a roller coaster, they flew through a thunder cloud. The unshed rain drenched them and the heat of the internal lightning that quickened nearby warmed them. They emerged above the clouds, floating effortlessly twenty thousand feet above sea level. Wispy cirrus clouds flowed around them like quicksilver slowed to a crawl. They clung to each other against the cold of the troposphere.
“Donna. My friend,” Kory said, kissing Donna affectionately on the lips. For a moment they held each other, gently pirouetting, watching the interplay of clouds spread out all around them like a mosaic.
“I still have feelings for Kyle,” Donna admitted. “And Roy. And even Terry.”
“And me?”
“Of course.”
“Of course,” Kory repeated, mock-boisterously.
Donna smiled and hugged her tighter.
“I’ve always loved Dick. As long as I can remember and even earlier I wish I had known someone like him. Someone strong and brave and willing to fight for me, to the end.”
Donna rubbed Kory’s back as she spoke.
“I fell in love with him when we first met and that love just deepened the longer we knew each other. And then it wilted, and died, for no reason. Out of neglect or circumstance… it hurt me to realize he wasn’t in my life anymore. And now he is, but he doesn’t love me…”
“Of course he does…”
“Not the way he does Barbara. You’d know if you saw them together. He loves me like a… like a Cocker Spaniel.”
“No he doesn’t!” Donna protested. “Dick may love everyone, sure, but you’re at the top of the list.”
“I’m runner-up. And that makes it worse. I understood how important Bruce and Roy and all his friends were, but those were other spheres. I was the person he truly loved. Not a friend or a father, but a lover. And Barbara’s taken my place.”
Kory rested her head glumly on Donna’s shoulder and they lowered slowly, once more descending past the clouds until they were standing atop a skyscraper’s radio mast. Kory sniffled and felt Donna pet her hair soothingly.
“We all love you,” Donna said. “Don’t let Dick be so important.”
“He’s the father of my child. How unimportant can he be?”
They sat down, legs dangling off the side. Donna rested her head on Kory’s shoulder, still damp from the rainwater.
“What about Barbara?”
“She wants and has him all to herself. I love her, she’s the mother of my child, but I don’t particularly like her.”
“That figures,” Donna said. Her finger lazily spun spirals on the inside of Kory’s forearm. “Does she think you’re trying to steal her man?”
“I am not!” Kory protested.
“I didn’t say you were. But maybe she’s being a little defensive because she’s… scared.”
Kory rested her chin in her hands, staring forward at the cityscape. Donna scooted next to her until the sides of their thighs were touching. Her wet hair fell around her head in ringlets and she brushed it away. Kory reached up to grab a lock of it and twirl it around her finger lovingly. Donna yowled a little when Kory teasingly yanked on it. Pouting, she gave Kory a hurt look. Kory embraced her and Donna instantly forgave her.
“My Donna… you’re very wise.”
“I had good teachers,” Donna said, smiling.
“Thank you for passing it along to me.” She broke out in a laugh. “Race you home?”
“You’re on!”
They kicked off the mast and plummeted for a moment before taking off, Kory leaving behind a bright contrail to mark their passage.
***
“So,” Dick said, piloting the Bat-Copter towards San Fran while talking with Barbara on the vid-screen. “You’re going to tell Bruce, right?”
“Uh-huh. As promised.”
“Good. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a party to go to.”
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
“Depends. What wouldn’t you do for a Klondike Bar?”
“Program in GUSH Basic.”
“Are you sure? Klondike Bars are so pleasantly minty…”
“Enjoy the party.”
And, with Dick conveniently out of earshot, Barbara called up Helena.
***
“Batman! BATMAN!” Huntress finally caught up to the Dark Knight, practically hyperventilating with panic. “You have to help! Dick, Barbara, and Starfire had a threesome and got Starfire pregnant with their baby! All three of them! And they need your help!”
She paused, getting new instructions from Barbara.
“Okay, cancel that part about needing your help. But the triple pregnancy is on the level.”
Batman glowered at her with the force of a thousand suns, if suns could glower, and Helena came to an unpleasant revelation.
“Barbara, you BITCH!” she shouted into her mouthpiece, although Barbara was long gone.
***
Somewhere in the distance, Titans Tower was dancing the night away. Roy had gotten the call from just about every Titan who had his number, and Argent, who he thought could be saving the last dance for him. But Dick would be there and he was in no mood to face him. God, telling him his marriage was a mistake… what were you thinking, Harper? Did you need to wreck every good thing in your life?
“I miss Unca Dick,” Lian said as Roy tucked her in.
“Yeah, me too. You wanna read a bedtime story?”
“I want Unca Dick to read me one!” Lian pouted, firmly set in her conviction. An admirable ploy for a six-year-old.
“Tell you what.” Roy drew the covers up to her chin. “You wait here and I’ll see if I can call him up.”
“Yay!”
She’d try to stay up for him, but Roy could sense his daughter was well and truly tuckered out. She’d be asleep long before she got tired of waiting for Dick. If worst came to worst and she did stay up, Roy really would call Dick and tell him to read Lian a bedtime story over the phone, so it wasn’t really a lie.
“Unca Dickie reads the best stories. He makes the scary ones not scary.”
“Yeah, he has a knack for that. Night, Lian.”
Lian kissed him on the cheek, even though he had forgot, and Roy left, turning on the nightlight just before he shut the door. ‘Unca Dickie’. He was going to have to remember that one.
Dinah was yawning on his couch, watching late-night TV. Roy slid along the couch to plant his head on his leg, letting her rub the back of neck like she’d used to when she and Ollie had been playing surrogate parents.
“Lian’s trying to fix my relationship with Dick,” Roy said. “I have a feeling resistance would be futile.”
“Want me to put in a good word for you?”
Roy shook his head, scratching his cheek against her fishnet stocking. “I can take my own lumps.”
“So you’re going to…”
“Send a tersely-worded e-mail, get a tersely-worded e-mail back, and say we’re in ‘détente’. Then eventually we’ll have to work together on some crisis and things will fall back into place.”
“You couldn’t be slightly more proactive?” Dinah probed, moving up to scratch at his red hair.
He closed his eyes…God, it felt better than a full-body massage. “I have my pride.”
“You don’t have a best friend anymore, though.”
“They’re overrated. I still get jaw aches from where he punched me.”
“Aww, poor baby.” Dinah bent a little over him, lifting his head up by the chin. “Want me to kiss it and make it better?”
Roy really did, as it turned out. Before he could do something stupid like tell her so, Lian was in her footie pajamas, looking at the two of them in the winter glare of the muted (Who had muted it? When had that happened?) television.
“Is Unca Dickie here yet?”
“I’ll call him,” Roy said, getting up. He tripped on something and Dinah caught him. He stayed there as he took his cell-phone out of his pocket, hit Dick’s quick-dial, and tossed it to Lian. “He’ll pick up in a minute.”
Dinah was smiling.
“Something funny?”
“Roy Harper. Leader of the Titans. Leader of the Outsiders. Courted by the JLA. Agent of Checkmate. Six-year-old’s bit—“
Roy put a hand over Dinah’s mouth.
“Auntie Dinah was going to say a bad word,” Lian reported with newscaster instincts.
Dinah pushed Roy’s arm down. “Thank you for stopping me, Roy.”
“Any time.”
“Unca Dickie!” Lian said into the phone. “D’ya wanna talk to Roy?”
“So it’s mutiny then?” Roy said.
“He doesn’t wanna talk to you,” Lian reported sadly.
Her pout was outrageous. Roy beckoned her closer, used the cell-phone to snap a photo of her face, then sent it to Dick.
“The nuclear option,” Dinah said.
“Just being honest.”
He handed the cell phone back to Lian, who listened. “Unca Dickie says he’s not mad at you and he doesn’t have a grudge.”
“Okay. Tell him not to read you a scary story.”
“But he makes them not scary!”
“They still give you nightmares.” Lian started a preemptive pout, but Roy cut her off. “You’re getting a story from ‘Unca Dickie’. Be happy with that. Remember what the Navajo say about contentment.”
“Yes, daddy.”
Clutching the cell-phone to her small chest, she went back to her room. Roy looked around for the remote to unmute the television. He found Dinah smiling at him.
“What now?”
“Nothing. Tell me, do you aim that at the ovaries of every woman that comes in here?”
Roy shrugged. “Just the pretty ones,” he mused.
Dinah kissed him.
“Daddy and Auntie Dinah kissed!”
Roy swiveled his head much like an owl. Lian, giggling, was peeking around the corner of the hallway that led to her bedroom.
“Yeah, they did, didn’t they?” He put on his meanest Mean Daddy face. “Bed! Now!”
Lian scampered off, still with the cell-phone in hand, and Roy imagined he could hear Dick’s laughter coming over it. It felt good. He looked at Dinah. And pretty soon they were in his bedroom, locking the door and fumbling with each others’ clothes, magically on the same wavelength. They were people who’d never needed poems or flowers or chocolates to find their way into bed with someone, they’d just never attuned to each other.
“We have to make this quick. Lian has school in the morning and her nanny can’t drive her in.”
“I am so hot for you right now,” Dinah said.
He grabbed her hair so hard the wig came off, leaving her in that incongruous short black hairdo, and they were kissing and soon doing more than kissing.
***
Dick slipped into the party and did his best wallflower impression while he looked for Kory, but his entrance must have sent an alert to someone because pretty soon Raven had found him and dragged him to the dance floor. She passed a drink to him and he downed it in one go. Tim and Steph were doing that stupid Batusi, Gar was forbidden-dancing (as he referred to the Lambada) with Raven, and Cass was blending into the shadows to be a far more successful wallflower than he was. He had no idea why she’d come in the first place. Probably Barbara’s insistence. He reminded himself to give her a dance later. Do her good, plus with those body language skills she would never step on his toes.
“Where’s Kory?” he asked Raven, yelling to be heard over the jiving dance music, but Wally was pulling him away from her before she could answer. A cigar was shoved between his lips and lit so fast that Freud spun in his grave.
“Three-DNAed baby,” Wally laughed, clapping Dick on the back hard enough for ash to fly from the cigar. “You sure outdid my twins, ya big circus showoff! You and Kory, man, I never thought I’d see the day! Good on ya!”
Dick spat out the cigar. “We’re not… me and Barbara are… Kory’s just…”
He saw her.
“Beautiful.”
Coming through the door, just wet enough to fool him into thinking she had been oiled, her clothes wet as sin and sticking to her body like a second skin. The water dripping off her clothes made damp patches on the floor, turned her footprints on the carpet into swamps.
Wally shoved him into her. They clasped hands, him to stop, her to catch him, and she rocked back on her heels from the impact. And they were dancing.
“You look so nice,” Dick said, as the room spun around them. He felt feverish. Drunk, although he’d only had the one drink. He wouldn’t trust himself to drive.
“As do you.”
“Why are you wet? Were you out in the rain? You could catch cold.”
Kory giggled and Dick’s hand brushed through her damp hair. He grabbed some napkins from one of a dozen fast-food bags and dabbed at her face. Her eyes sparkled. She kissed the napkin when he was done with it and lipstick came off on it. Leaving her plump lips a pale pink. She looked beautiful. He spun her, feeling her weightlessly leave him and then come back, pressing against his chest as she led him through a tango. Laughing. Like old times, the dance clubs and the steps that Kory learned so quick. He always moved so fast, so naturally, but she made him feel like a zombie. In dancing, only Donna could really keep up with her.
Wally was dancing with Linda and Raven was dancing with Gar and Jaime had dragged Cass into a dance, which mirrored his own and improved on it, while Steph pulled Tim into a kiss like she would never see him again. Kory forced Dick against a table, bending him just slightly backwards over it. An impromptu punchbowl’s surface shimmied and several boxes of pizza rattled. She cascaded down his almost-prone body like a waterfall. Her head paused at his crotch, like she would finally suck the life out of him right there. She’d done it before, in those smoky nightclubs, among the throngs of humanity that excited her so.
Cass kissed Jaime on the cheek, sweetly, and Tim kissed Steph, so hard she swooned backward and he had to hold her up with a hand around the back of her waist, and Kory moved up, pushing his shirt up to expose his stomach, and licked him from his belly button up his abs before releasing his shirt to drape back down over him but kept coming up until she met him, her lips against his, tasting of rain and lightning and storms, and he pulled her closer to him and felt the years that laid between them die. He was young, and she was young, and there was nothing wrong.
Then she was moving back from him and everything was wrong, her taste on his teeth and the weight of the ring on his finger and the rising erection in his slacks. Just this once, it was alright. If she knew, like he did, that it was just the heat of the moment and nostalgia and nothing more, then there was no point in upsetting Barbara. He ran a hand along Kory’s cheek.
“That can’t happen again,” he said softly. “That was nothing.”
Kory nodded. “I’m sorry.” She kissed his hand. “You’re a good friend, Dick. Thank you for the dance.”
“You’re welcome,” he said before he staggered away, knees suddenly weak.
Month 5
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Date: 2008-03-28 11:38 pm (UTC)And anything with Lian and her mega-pout in it is insta-win.
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Date: 2008-03-30 03:39 pm (UTC)Ha, that's exactly the opposite reaction my beta gave me. She now hates Kory with the fire of a thousand suns. But, uh, there's a reason I'm posting this with a Dick/Babs icon.
Because none of those short-sighted icon maker fools have thought that Dick/Babs/Kory is the ultimate OT3 of hotness and cuddling.