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Dick stood on the Manor’s porch, shaking slightly in the night air.
When he had been younger, he’d never gotten cold. It was why he’d been able to wear the original Robin suit the way it had been, despite the dubious glances from Bruce, Alfred, even Commissioner Gordon, as the days grew short.
He’d never known how to say it, but he’d spent the winters of his childhood in Russia, in the village where his mother had grown up, where the cold was like an ice pick in your lungs, where even things that weren’t wet, froze. How could he explain that Gotham’s perpetual gloom, its unceasing rain, was not a cold to him. That the perpetual gloom was actually warmer than the blinding burn of a weak sun on snow.
Now, apparently, his pregnant body couldn’t deal with Gotham cold either.
He wrapped his arms tighter around his body, snuggling deeper into his coat. Pregnancy had made him so needy, in so many ways; the food he ate, the textures on his skin, even the hands and scents around him had to be precisely, exactly right for him to find any comfort. He never felt relaxed, never felt warm, nowadays.
If Bruce turned him away, it would be a long, cold trek back to New York.
He shivered again. Usually the sensors up the path would have alerted Alfred of a visitor, so that he could open the door only moments after they knocked. But Dick knew the way around them, had wanted as much time to gather himself before alerting the Manor’s inhabitants of his presence.
After all, this might be the last time he got to call the Manor home. He wanted to savor it, no matter how cold it was.
Finally, the door swung open.
“Master Dick!” said Alfred, sounding as excited as he ever did, before the old beta froze in the doorway.
“Hi, Alfie,” Dick said, smiling weakly. The man Dick had always considered something of a father just stared back at him.
It was okay. It was a shock. He knew how he looked right now, the dark circles under his eyes, the pale pallor to his skin, the glaringly obvious bump under his clothes.
“Alfie, move,” came a petulant voice, and Jason Todd raced into view, hip checking the older man out of the way.
“Jay,” Dick protested, seeing the poor man stumble to the side, resting a hand against the wall, but Jason had already grabbed one of Dick’s arms, hurrying him into the house.
Walking into the foyer, seeing Jason and Alfred and smelling their familiar scents, really was a balm. Dick already felt a little better.
“Can I take your coat?” asked Jason, holding out a hand. Dick was struck by the changes the last six months had wrought on his successor; he was inches taller than Dick now, his shoulders and chest having finally succeeding the promise shown by his massive hands and feet.
He suddenly felt very small, very aware of Jason’s status as an alpha. It seemed like only yesterday he’d been a boy, a tiny, scowling little thing. Dick had missed so much, birthdays and milestones and the moments that made a pack. It was hard to believe that the time had flown so quickly.
Dick was halfway between accepting that he suddenly felt much warmer and giving up his coat, or listening to the past few months’ experience and keeping it for when the cold seeped back in, when a voice echoed down the hall.
“Alfred, why is the door open?”
That was Bruce. It was like every muscle in Dick’s body went tight at the sound of his alpha’s voice, like a cold lump of snow had dropped directly into his belly.
“Dick?” Bruce asked, coming into the room. He sounded surprised, but not angry or disappointed to see Dick standing in his house. “What are you…”
He trailed off, as Dick knew he would, upon getting a good look at his pack’s only omega.
For so much of his pregnancy, there had been little to no change in Dick’s appearance, to the point where he hadn’t even known he was pregnant for four long months. It was almost like some switch had been flipped when he realized six weeks ago, and suddenly he was the size of a balloon.
Dick opened his mouth, to offer a greeting, an explanation, maybe an excuse, but the thick, alpha scent of confusion and upset stopped the words in his throat.
Bruce had the best control over his emotions of anyone Dick had ever met. For him to be giving off such a strong scent meant that Bruce was very angry.
A hand wrapped gently around Dick’s back.
“Why don’t we move this to the sitting room?” said Alfred, pushing him forward.
Bruce, and even Jason, let out a low, deep growl. It must be so hard, to see a trusted pack member getting close to a compromised figure like Dick, but Alfred ignored them as he often did, leading Dick further into the house.
Everything looked reassuringly the same. Dick hadn’t been back to the Manor in half a year, not since that whole mess with Ivy and her pollen. He hadn’t meant to stay away for so long, but a week after leaving, his real heat had hit. He’d hoped he’d get to skip it, with the false heat so recently in the past, but at least the symptoms were quite mild this time, more like a head cold than the full on aches of a heat, his body no doubt exhausted by the hormone release it had already completed.
And then there had been just one thing after another, a swimming mess of problems that he couldn’t pull away from. Still, he shouldn’t have stayed away so long.
“Here, my boy,” Alfred said, wrapping a thick throw over Dick’s shoulders and gently pushing him into one side of the sofa. “Let me let me get you some tea.”
Seconds later, there was a full tea set on the coffee table, steam escaping from the spout. Dick had no idea how the beta did it.
There was a brisk knock on the door jam, and Bruce walked in, sitting down in the armchair right across the table.
Dick was glad he’d kept his coat. He was feeling very cold again.
A moment later, Jason bounded into the room, looking oddly serious and focused. Dick opened his mouth to speak, just as Bruce did the same, but Alfred managed to beat them both.
“Here, Master Bruce,” he said, handing the alpha teacup. “Let’s take a moment to think carefully about our words.”
Dick accepted his own drink, the perfect amount of sugar and milk already stirred in, pathetically thankful for Alfred’s lack of subtlety. He was aware his hands were shaking. It was suddenly very warm, a flush preemptively crawling across his face.
How angry was Bruce going to be? Was he ever going to accept Dick as a hero again?
Jason was staring at him, a tiny furrow between his brows. For all that his body had transformed into that of a fully grown alpha, his face was still sweet and rounded by baby fat. Dick felt terrible for worrying him.
“I’m okay, Jay. Really,” he said, flashing him the best smile he could manage.
“You’re pregnant.” It was said in wonder, no condemnation or judgment in his voice, but Dick could hear it anyway. How could he not? He was a constantly broke, single, 20 year old omega, who’d dropped out of college and was a leader of a superhero team of teenagers. He had responsibilities, duties, a life with no room for a child.
How could he have let this happen?
“So this is why you’ve been avoiding Gotham so much, recently,” Bruce rumbled, an undercurrent of disapproval clear in his voice, even as he was visibly trying to control his scent. “Did you…get married? Who is your new alpha?”
New alpha. The words sounded so final in Bruce’s mouth. Dick’s stomach seemed to shrivel up inside him.
New alpha. A new pack. How disappointed was Bruce going to be, to have to take Dick back when it sounded like he was expecting to be done with him for good.
“No—” he couldn’t get the words out his mouth. It was shameful, unseemly, to be a pregnant omega without an alpha. How low, how pitiful, to have to return like this, to beg for his place back after being gone so long. But he had to do this, had to get Bruce to let him stay. It wasn’t about just him anymore. “I thought—I thought I was still part of this pack.”
“Of course you’re still part of this pack,” Jason exclaimed vehemently, as Alfred said, “that’s not what he’s saying, my dear boy.”
Dick felt a rush of warmth spread through him at the rest of the pack’s support, but he couldn’t take his eyes off Bruce, as the alpha got to his feet and walked closer. As much as he appreciated it, at the end of the day, it was Bruce’s decision. If he didn’t want Dick, didn’t want a strange alpha’s child in his home, then there was nothing anyone could do.
“Of course you’re part of this pack, Dick,” Bruce said gruffly, his voice and scent tightly controlled. He knelt and took one of Dick’s hands, his skin warm and calloused. “You will always be, even if you technically have a pack of your own. Does the father need a pack as well? Do you want to bring him here?”
That was a kindness beyond anything Dick had expected. He felt his throat grow tight, as he forced out, “No, he doesn’t need a pack.”
“Oh?” Alfred asked gently, taking Dick’s other hand. “Is he…not in the picture anymore?”
“There—he—there is no picture. There’s no alpha, not that I know of.” The tears had begun to drip from his face, but he felt like he’d shatter if he released Alfred’s or Bruce’s hands to wipe them away. “I’m anywhere from 21 to 23 weeks pregnant, and I haven’t had sex in over a year, not since Kory left.”
He could feel Jason staring at him.
“Master Dick,” Alfred breathed out.
Bruce’s fingers were digging into Dick’s hand. His anger was like a physical thing in the air. “You don’t have any idea?”
The words spilled from him, a torrent of explanations, trying to get them to understand something he could barely wrap his head around.
“I had my last heat a week, maybe two, after I was last here. The whole month after that, I was at the Tower. We left for cases and stuff, but nothing big, exactly. It was busy, it always was, but I slept in the tower, or in one of the spacecrafts the whole time. I never got—got captured or kidnapped, and there were no signs of a—a break in or anything like that.” He could feel his voice grow small. “I didn’t even know I was pregnant until six weeks ago.”
“My boy.” Alfred refilled Dick’s mug, pulling his hands free to press the mug between his palms. “You reached the second trimester without realizing you were pregnant?”
“I just—I thought it was stress,” Dick admitted. “I was feeling weird, but things have been weird, and—you know that I get stressed out sometimes”
He’d barely been out of heat when there had been that trouble with Raven. And with Joey. And then Donna, Vic and STAR labs, and then those Russians. The money problems, the arguments in front the New York mayor’s office. More trouble with Raven. Plus, he’d still been dealing with his breakup with Kory and her return to Tamaran.
He’d always been prone to stomach issues when he was stressed. Was it any wonder that he didn’t notice the morning sickness? What was another round of vomiting?
“This timeline starts right after you got dosed with pollen,” Bruce asked stiffly, like Batman assessing damage after patrol. He’d gotten his scent back under control, at least, though it made Dick nervous to have no idea what he was thinking. “Could that have anything to do with it?”
“I don’t think so,” Dick said, sitting up straighter. The response to that tone had been drilled into him long ago. “I had a heat after, though it was shorter than usual. But the fake one was such a release of hormones and chemicals, I don’t know how the real one could have been as bad. And Ivy wouldn’t do something like this.”
Bruce didn’t move, but Dick could see Alfred and Jason exchange glances out of the corner of his eye. He didn’t wait for any of them to ask the question.
“I don’t suspect the Titans,” he said firmly. “Any of them. They’re my best friends in the world.”
“Even Wilson’s kid?” Bruce shot back. “And I’ve heard that Oliver’s boy’s been getting into some trouble lately."
“Especially Roy and Joey.” Dick struggled to keep his voice steady under his alpha’s scrutiny. “Them, Donna, Vic…I trust them all with my life.”
He released a heavy breath. “But I’m not stupid. Something happened to me. I just—I don’t know what. And I won’t know, not until the baby’s born.
“That’s why I’m here,” he said, unable to meet anyone’s eyes. “That’s why I’m hoping I can—I can stay for a while. Just til the baby’s born. The doctor said I need pack, that my body’s pretty stressed out, to be pregnant without a claiming bite. I just wasn’t as ready as I could have been to handle all the pregnancy hormones. Close contact with the child’s father would be the next best thing but—” he choked out a laugh, “that’s not exactly possible.”
“You got sick because of the alpha?” Jason burst out. “He needs to—needs to take responsibility or whatever!”
Dick laughed again, though it wasn’t really funny.
“I wish I could make him take responsibility. It would make things a lot easier,” he said. He wanted to know exactly how this alpha had gotten to him, exactly what he’d done that Dick couldn’t remember. The not knowing sometimes felt like a death sentence. Then he could figure out what else to do. “There won't be any clues until the baby’s born. But the doctor said things could still go okay, even without the alpha, as long as I keep my stress levels down.”
Jason looked a great deal more alarmed at that, which was fair. Dick knew he didn’t have the best reputation when it came to stress management.
Bruce’s eyes were dark and careful.
“I’m sure you’ve thought about this,” he said slowly, “but have you thought about terminating? There’s still time.”
Jason’s eyes were wide, his gaze bouncing between them like a tennis match. Alfred was a statue on the couch beside him. There was a lump in his throat, something that made speaking difficult.
He had thought about it, had asked himself, or been asked by his well-meaning friends, that very question so many times over late nights and long mornings. He’d run through the choices in his mind until they were smooth as sea glass. He knew that by almost every measure, every count of pros and cons, he was making the wrong choice.
“Maybe if I’d realized sooner. But now…the baby’s almost viable. It’s—it’s almost here. And I am strong enough to finish things, even without an alpha. I can find a good family, I know I can. Someone who will take care of it.”
Bruce studied him for a moment, before nodding once, getting to his feet. “I’ll start looking through my contacts.”
Dick felt like he was about to cry again. He felt like there was a lodestone in his stomach. He felt loved, he felt ashamed, like a treasure and a burden in equal measure.
He felt Bruce’s hand on the back of his neck, Alfred’s on his knee. Jason just kept staring, looking like he wanted to dive across the coffee table.
“Just get over here, Jay,” Dick said, letting out a weak, watery chuckle as Jason all but launched himself out of his chair. He threw himself down between Dick and the couch arm, pushing Dick’s head down on his shoulder.
Dick snuggled in, embracing his young pack member, enjoying the heavy spiciness of a protective alpha’s scent.
Honestly, he felt so much better already.
That night, Dick tucked himself back into his childhood bed, and lost himself in the most delicious dream.
Huge, gentle hands were running down his sides, tracing warm patterns into his skin. Warm breath washed over his growing breasts, and it took just one rough stroke of a tongue across his increasingly sensitive nipples to make his back arch off the bed.
He could almost taste the thick scent of the most delicious smelling alpha in the air, something dark and dominant and so intensely focused on his body, on the lines and growing curves of him.
He let out a plaintive, submissive whine, and got a low, possessive growl back.
The alpha straddled him, a pressure low across his hips, careful not to rest any of their might on his legs or his belly. Hands pinned his to the pillow, fingers interlocked; he felt so small, like he was about to be swallowed beneath the alpha’s bulk. Protected, under their skin.
Tenderly, one massive hand slid under his thigh, caressing the skin with a thumb, before slowly bringing Dick’s knee to the side.
He could feel the way that position opened him up, made his cock settle against his stomach, and his cunt stretch wide for his alpha’s eyes. A hand pressed gently against his massive belly, followed by a reverent press of lips to the top of the swell.
Thick fingers traced his folds, moving around the slick already seeping out of him.
At any other time, Dick might have been embarrassed at that, the visual evidence of how badly he wanted it, the slick gushing out of him, wetter than he’d ever been before. But this was his dream, and there was nothing to be ashamed of here.
He whined, rocking his hips forward. His free hand reached out, for what, he wasn’t sure, but the alpha just growled, grabbing both his arms and crossing his wrists above his head.
The alpha’s hands were so big, just one could keep both of his trapped.
Fingers returned to his entrance, dancing across the delicate skin so lightly Dick shivered; a moment later, two sunk deep inside of him, wiggling slightly and then beginning to scissor him open.
It didn’t take that long for a third finger to join, to drum against his walls and make his hips strain upward even as the weight across his thighs kept him pinned.
Something thick and hot pressed into him, sliding deep inside, to the places fingers could never reach. Pressing into him with a warm, steady pressure, kind and gentle but unyielding, unescapable. Like there was nowhere else in the world he could go, besides here. It was like the alpha was forcing sensation back into his body, awakening all the nerve endings that had gone silent with the baby.
He was a needy, craving thing, melting under his alphas hands. He wanted to be filled completely,
The alpha chuckled, a nice, indulgent laugh. Suddenly, hands were beneath Dick’s shoulder blades, and he was being picked up, easy, like he weighed nothing at all. The hands slowly shifted Dick forward, so he was sitting up in his alpha’s lap, the weight of his heavy, pregnant body sinking onto the cock in his cunt, deeper and deeper, just like he wanted. His face was pressed against his alpha’s neck, that delicious scent filling his head, the position so open and trusting he collapsed even more bonelessly against that strong chest.
“...how’s that, sweetheart?”
The words reached him from far, far away. Dick moaned, rubbing his face against the alpha’s shoulder. He didn’t want the dream to end.
“You’re so beautiful like this, Dickie,” the voice whispered.
…Jason?
“I’m so close, Dickie,” said the voice. It sounded like Jason, but there was a growl to it Dick had never heard before. “I’m sorry the bond will settle without me, but I couldn’t let you suffer anymore. I didn’t know it’d be so bad without a proper claiming.”
None of these words were making sense. Dick fought through the hazy pressure of his body, using all his strength to pry his eyes open.
“...Jay?” he said, his mouth full of cotton. He really was sitting up, his legs open around something, his chest against something solid. His head felt too heavy for his neck.
“Hey, Dickie.” Jason’s handsome face was smiling down at him from inches away. Dick realized, the first thread of alarm streaking through his satisfaction, that they were both naked.
Jason pressed a kiss against his clavicle, and then there was a slight pressure behind his knees and at his hips, like he was being lifted off of something, before he was dropped back onto it, sending it deep into his cunt. Dick’s eyes slammed shut again, his head falling back and his mouth in a wide “O,” as an intense spike of pleasure coursed up his spine.
Jason was inside of him, thrusting deeper than he’d ever known someone could go.
“Jason,” Dick gasped through another thrust, “what—nhhh—are you doing?”
“I’m sorry, I should have finished the job last time. I didn’t know it’d be hard on you. But I’m gonna fix that. I’m gonna fix everything now.”
“What do you—” but he couldn’t even get the words out, as Jason buried himself inside again, a hand wrapping around Dick’s cock, giving it a stroke. His mouth found one of Dick’s sensitive nipples, and sucked on it hard before switching to the other one.
It was his dream, his dream brought to life, his dream that apparently wasn’t a dream.
Jason kept Dick balanced across his hips, one hand between his shoulder blades to keep them close together, driving his cock into Dick’s dripping pussy in a steady rhythm. All Dick’s stupid omega brain could think was, strong, so strong, my alpha is so powerful.
He could feel his cunt clenching down in anticipation of a knot, as heat spread throughout his body. He was close, so close, to what was building into an intense, body shaking orgasm, both from the alpha knot forming a deep pressure inside of him, and from the hand wrapped around his cock.
Dick’s belly was a balloon between them, but that just made Dick feel smaller, his spine forced into a curve where his head was still limply pressed against Jason’s scent gland. The alpha seemed content to rub his hands against the bump, down Dick’s sides and up his back in an endless loop.
“Gonna take such good care of you. Gonna show the whole world that you’re mine,” the alpha whispered, as he continued to thrust his hips. The feeling of sharp teeth at his neck raced through Dick’s mind like a sudden bolt of clarity. “You’re mine.”
“Wait—Jason, slow down, please—”
But Jason’s teeth were already around Dick’s mating gland, and he bit down hard as they both came.
Dick had been laying in his bed for hours, tracing the bandage around his neck.
After his scream had brought Bruce and Alfred racing into his bedroom, Bruce had torn Jason off of him without realizing that Jason’s teeth were still clamped around his shoulder, knot locked in his cunt. The spike of pain between his legs was nothing compared to the ugly, gaping wound across Dick’s mating gland, the kind of mark that spoke of a violence that never went away. He’d screamed again, and hadn’t been able to stop screaming, no matter what Jason or Bruce said, until both alphas were out of the room.
Even with his calming beta scent, it had taken Alfred a long, long time to calm Dick down.
Jason. Jason was the alpha who’d fathered Dick’s child. Jason was the mystery alpha who’d held him down and fucked him when he couldn’t say no.
Well, he mused with only a half-hysterical note, at least he could go back to the Tower. He wouldn’t have to DNA test anyone else. He tried not to think about those long, lonely weeks of wondering, of ignoring the eyes on him and forcing himself not to be suspicious. The whole time, it had been Jason.
The false heat had completely removed him from suspicion, but apparently it wasn't actually that uncommon, to have heat-like symptoms if a pregnancy occurred right at the end of a cycle. Dick no longer had it in him to be angry with himself for not realizing that was possible.
Jason had done it, had raped him, and yet, somehow, Dick knew a deep, omega part of him was more angry at Bruce, for interrupting his claiming than at anything else. Was still crying out for an alpha, asking why he’d been abandoned. He was pregnant, was officially claimed, and yet he was still alone. What had he done to deserve that.
That’s why, as soon as Alfred had patched him up last night, he’d run. Ignored Bruce’s 25 calls, Alfred’s 5, and gone straight to one of his old Gotham safehouses, locking the door and shuttering the windows, the dust and the spoiled food in the fridge be damned.
He wasn’t hungry, anyway.
Jason had tried calling him, just once, in the early hours of the morning. He’d been sitting on the couch, staring at nothing, when his phone lit up, a photo of him and Jason flashing across the screen. They’d just been joking around in the Manor, laughing about who knows what, when Alfred taken it.
He’d left the phone on the coffee table and collapsed into his bed. He hadn’t turned on the lights, and he’d watched as his ceiling grew lighter and lighter and then darkened again.
Out in the hall, there was a small creak of wood against wood. Any sane person would have shrugged it off as nothing. Any sane person wouldn’t have picked this safehouse because they knew that the board right in front of the window creaked.
Dick considered doing nothing, forcing whoever it was out there (Jason?, he wondered half in longing and half in fear) to come to him. But the idea of another alpha pushing him down in another bedroom in another one of his homes, was just too much.
He didn’t turn on any lights as he stepped out of the hallway. Pain still radiated between his legs, and it made him hobble, bowlegged. He didn’t have the energy to feel the humiliation of it.
The dark shadow of the Bat stepped out of the dark corner of the living room. “Is Jason here?”
“No,” Dick said, feeling nervous and guarded and indignant. “You told me you were going to keep him away from me.”
He didn’t mean to sound accusatory, but it was the one thing that he’d heard Bruce shout last night. After everything, how could Bruce come here and ask him that?
“He got out,” Bruce admitted. “I’d locked him in his room yesterday, but he jimmied open a window sometime this morning.”
“This morning? You seriously didn’t know where he was for that long?” Dick asked, his knees buckling. He sank into the couch as emotions coursed through him. A surge of pride, and a thread of unease. Dick had taught Jason how to pick locks, how to escape a locked room, and it was clear he’d had a good student. But if Bruce’s locks couldn’t keep him in, what good would Dick’s be at keeping him out?
“His bike was abandoned halfway to New York. His tracker said he’d left the country.”
“You think he ran?” Dick didn’t want that, didn’t want the thought of Jason out there alone.
“I don’t,” said Bruce slowly. “Not without you. That’s why I came here right after the bike.”
Dick couldn’t help a small shiver. He could still see Jason’s bright eyes, practically glowing as he pinned Dick down with an alpha’s hands and an alpha’s scent.
Mine, he’d said. You’re mine.
“Jason hasn’t been here,” Dick said faintly, tracing his fingers against the bandage on his neck. “He tried to call me this morning, but I didn’t pick up.”
“Was there a voicemail?” Bruce asked gruffly. “Might have a clue to where he went.”
Dick nodded his head to the coffee table, where his phone still sat. Bruce tapped it, then plugged it into the charger Dick kept under the couch. It must have died.
The silence stretched out between them.
“Where did your tracker say he’s gone?” Dick asked abruptly, suddenly curious.
Bruce frowned, his thick fingers tapping the phone screen, waiting for it to power on.
“The Middle East. But I don’t know why Jason would ever be in Ethiopia.”
Dick made a wordless noise of agreement. He hoped Jason hadn’t felt like he needed to run. Dick didn’t want that. He wanted him home at the Manor. He never wanted to see him again. He wanted things to go back to before Jason had done this. He wanted to go back to not knowing.
He didn’t know what he wanted.
He watched Bruce fiddle with the phone, a fidget he hadn’t seen in a long, long time. Bruce would find him, bring him back. He was the great detective for a reason, after all. He’d bring Jason back, and then they could all sit down, and figure this out together, as a pack.
And Dick? Dick would just have to decide what he wanted before then.