Chapter Text
Bruce’s life is full of ‘should-have’s and this is one of them.
He should have realised it in the first meeting.
“This is Dick,” he said, bouncing the squirming pup on his hip. The pup, eight months now, had discovered the wonders of crawling and was enamored with his new locomotion. Bruce thought it was so cute to see him tumbling around and squealing in delight as he moved from one place to another. It did make holding him more of a chore though as he tried to get back to the floor.
Harvey considered the pup with mild trepidation. He had heard a lot about Dick and seen him in passing but Bruce has held off from bringing him home.
Dick had been only three months old when Bruce and Harvey first met.
He was so new. Bruce had been so new at motherhood. He was still afraid that Dick would break apart in his arms if he did something wrong. He hadn’t wanted to introduce Harvey into that delicate equation yet. He hadn’t wanted to share Dick or the Manor with Harvey.
He also couldn’t help but feel that the Manor was his. Dick was his beautiful little thing. This space where they both met was his.
Perhaps, it was the new swirl of maternal instincts, the ones that screamed at him to make a nest, to guard it, to keep safe. Perhaps, it was a new protectiveness over his baby. Perhaps, it was simply just him retreating into the familiar when faced with all this new.
But somewhere in beginning to date Harvey, that changed and, for the first time, he had considered sharing it. Him and Harvey had been dating for nearly six months at this point and it seemed right.
Bruce had… he had let himself think about raising Dick with another. He had begun to indulge in a fantasy where he wasn’t alone in this, where there would be someone to share the load. Images of Harvey fawning over Dick or nuzzling into a future child one that had Bruce’s nose and Harvey’s hair or watching them grow up with Bruce, had begun to play in his head as he fell asleep.
He wanted to make that a reality and that began with introducing Dick to Harvey.
“Is he always so… wiggly?” Harvey asked as Dick thrashed in Bruce’s arm again and squawked out his displeasure.
“He’s just fussing,” Bruce answered, rocking Dick back and forth. The pup began to quiet a little bit, apparently coming to terms that he wasn’t going to be let down any time soon. He whimpered a little, babbling small baby sounds. “He may be hungry too. He gets fussy when he’s hungry.”
Harvey was watching them with wide, deer-in-the-headlights eyes.
“Would you like to hold him?” Bruce offered, shifting Dick in his arms and preparing to pass him over.
Harvey threw up his hands and backed up a step. “No, no, no, I’m good.”
The immediate reaction stung and Bruce tucked it away. He also tucked his puppy back into the crook of his arm and rocked the boy. Silence fell between them and it filled the space with tension. The gentle atmosphere had popped and the warmth had been replaced with an iciness that was growing colder. Dick whined again, his fat little lip trembling and his eyes squeezing together. His little hands scrabbled at Bruce’s when he reached to brush some of Dick’s wispy hair from his face.
“Have you ever thought about giving him up?” asked Harvey as he eyed Bruce bouncing Dick on his hip.
Bruce gritted his teeth and turned, nestling his cheek towards his puppy and feeling him burble against his skin. “No. He’s mine.”
He couldn’t see Harvey but he heard the alpha shuffle.
“But, Bruce, you’re sixteen.”
“I am aware of that,” he snapped, whipping around to glare at Harvey over his shoulder. There was a snarl that he wanted to let out, but he swallowed it down. He kept his back to the alpha though, his body between Harvey and the pup.
“Everyone always seems to think I’ve forgotten how old I am,” he added, bitterness stinging on his tongue. “Given how many times it’s been repeated to me.”
“You’re only sixteen,” said his maternity consultant as she had him sit down onto one of the sea green, overstuffed chairs in her office. The room was painted in the pastel colours that had come to dominate his life. Baby blue and puppy pink filled every corner except for the soft bursts of butter yellow and sea green. There were images of puppies, sleeping and dressed only in hats, adoring various points. It was supposed to calming for new mothers, but it always got under Bruce’s skin.
The entire thing always reminded Bruce of a desaturated world, like the bright colours had been taken from his life and fed to the life growing inside of him.
He sat slowly, his body forcing itself to balance against the weight of his belly and the newfound soreness in his muscles and bones. He felt his puppy twitch inside him and could imagine everything inside him sloshing as he settled into the chair with an ‘oof’. His bladder protested the new position and his hips seemed to groan.
His low back though sang from being released from supporting the weight of Bruce’s five month belly. The low back pain was constant and searing as his center of gravity shifted and he found himself always looking for a chair. His ankles had similarly swelled and he swore that his feet were bigger. Though should he be surprised? All of him was bigger these days. It was amazing and horrifying to think that he was only about half way through his pregnancy. So much of him had already grown to accommodate his pup and yet the pup was going to demand even more growth.
“I know,” he said, eyes going to his maternity consultant.
His constant, Susan, had been assigned to him by the hospital, he thinks because of his young age. He hadn’t asked for her. She had rather just shown up on his schedule one day after he went in for an OB/GYN appointment.
He didn’t like her.
She was a soft-voiced beta that always spoke to Bruce like he wouldn’t be able to understand her. She gave him soft eyes filled with clear pity and treated him like he was broken in some permanent way. When Alfred was in the room, she deferred to him instead of Bruce. She answered his questions in the simplest, most sanitized terms when he really just wanted someone to give him objective details.
He wanted someone to tell him what could go wrong. He wanted to know how to prepare for the worst and that required knowing how bad the worst could be. He wanted someone to give him facts to tell him percentage rates.
If she described his puppy to him in units of fruit instead of inches and ounces, he was going to scream.
If she told him ‘not to worry about that! It’s bad for a mother to stress!”, he was going to bite.
“Well,” she said, settling into her own chair and lacing her fingers together over the wood of her desk. There was a statute of a puppy playing in the crescent of a moon, staring at him.”I wanted to talk about your options, Bruce.”
He raised an eyebrow. “My options?”
She nodded and reached out to pluck a pamphlet out the holder.
“You’re lucky to be in New Jersey. There’s no waiting periods or time limits and, even though, you’re a minor, we don’t need parental -” she caught herself when she remembered who she was talking to - “I mean, a guardian’s consent. We can get it arranged today.”
She slid the pamphlet across the desk and Bruce could read the word ‘abortion’ in white letters.
“I’m keeping the pup,” said Bruce, indignation flaring in him like a fire.
In truth, he hadn’t really known if he was keeping the baby until that very moment.
He had only known he was pregnant for about three weeks, following the realisation that his pants were consistently not fitting him and the tenderness in his chest was not a cold. He had barely talked to Alfred about the possibility of a baby, mostly because he could hardly wrap his own head around the idea. In the few times he breached the subject, the conversation was stilted and choppy like they were two strangers that hardly knew each other.
The idea of abortion had flitted across his mind, of course. It only seemed like the natural thing for a fifteen year old omega with no partner and no parents. It hung in his brain like a new coat in his closet. He acknowledged it was there every day. Occasionally, he took it out, tried it on maybe for a minute or maybe for a day, and then hung it back up.
It hadn’t felt wrong, but it also hadn’t felt right. It was just there like a to do item on a chore list. Something he might get around to because everyone said it was needed for a tidy home.
He didn’t have strong feelings about what he was going to do until his “consultant” tried to make the decision for him like it was an inevitability and he didn’t get a choice in the matter.
And so, because Susan told him ‘no’, he decided yes.
(Two decades later, after much prodding and ribbing, Bruce finally tells Dick about the moment he decided to keep him. His puppy was not much of a puppy anymore, but he still curled into Bruce’s nest like it was the only place he truly belonged. Dick laughed as he nestled into Bruce and stuck his ice cold toes right into Bruce’s thighs, making him yelp. He didn’t even look ashamed about it.
“Evil child,” Bruce growled, showing teeth.
Dick grinned like a devil and didn’t move his cold feet.
“Go on, tell me,” Dick prompted, laying his head back on the pillow and tugging the blankets up.
He was on a break from training because of the season and had come back to the Manor to spend his heat in the family nest. Bruce had picked him up from the airport three days ago and almost felt drunk on the happiness of having his pup back home. Neither of them had truly started their heat yet and there weren’t any flowers in their scents, but they couldn’t help settling into each other in the family nest as if they were deep in their season. It was probably all the omega hormones, the in-built need to be close to family, combined with the multiple months of not seeing each other, but Bruce wasn’t complaining.
He had his puppy back and he had somehow produced a son that wanted to see him as much as he wanted to see him.
Bruce reached out and brushed Dick’s inky black hair out of his face. His boy’s eyes sparkled with mirth and crinkled with his soft smile.
So, because he really couldn’t deny his child anything, he told him.
He was a little afraid that Dick would be disappointed that Bruce’s decision to keep him wasn’t a big, important moment, but instead, Dick’s expression brightened into complete, almost manic joy.
And he startled cackling.
“You’re telling me,” he huffed between peals of laughter and Bruce really didn’t understand what was so funny. “You’re telling me that you decided to have a whole-ass baby because someone told you you couldn’t.”
Bruce frowned. He really hadn’t thought about it like that.
Dick’s body was shaking with his laughter and descended into giggles.
“It wasn’t like that,” Bruce argued weakly and Dick absolutely did not accept it. He poked a finger into Bruce’s ribs and wiggles his hips closer.
“Oh it is exactly like that,” Dick said back, his voice still high with his joy.
Silence fell between them except for the occasional sound of Dick starting to laugh again. Bruce didn’t argue anymore, though, he just basked in the moment of obvious joy. Eventually, Dick did settle and leaned in closer to put his head onto Bruce’s chest and nuzzle his nose close to his scent gland.
“Bruce, you stubborn son of a bitch, I love you so much.”
Bruce hummed, which eventually became a full purr that Dick echoed back.)
The maternity consultant’s face pinched making her look like a frog.
“I’m sorry?” she asked, like she had misheard him.
“I’m keeping the puppy,” Bruce repeated. Already the course of action was crystalling in his head. He would keep the pup. He would bring it into the world and then bring it into his home. He would raise it.
It steadied him more than he realise it would to have a plan, albeit a loose one. It made him feel like he knew what to do next, even if he really had no idea what he was doing.
But the immediate next step was clear: wait. Let the puppy grow. Don’t do anything that could negatively impact them for the rest of their life. Pop them out and into the world with all ten fingers and all ten toes.
And once the puppy was here, whole and new to the world, Bruce would form another plan.
The maternity consultant looked at him with narrowed eyes, searching him for the insecurity he didn’t even let himself acknowledge.
“Look Bruce,” she began and Bruce already hated her tone. It was softly pretentious, a learned figure talking down to a kid. “I know you probably have fantasies about what you think raising a baby will be like. You think it will be all painting tiny fingernail and dressing them up in miniature clothes. That’s what you’re hoping for right?”
She looked towards him obviously trying to bait a verbal confirmation and Bruce didn’t give her anything. He sat, as still as a statue, feeling the way that his new weight fit against his skeleton.
When Bruce’s lack of answer grew awkward, she continued with a strained smile.
“Having a puppy is hard work. It’s a lifelong commitment that doesn’t go away. Your puppy will be tied to you forever and you’ll never get an opportunity to chase your own hopes and dreams. It will change your entire course of your life and you can’t go back. You’ll never really be able to be a child again.”
He knew this was supposed to both scare him. It was a warning about all the things he would lose if he brought a child into the world.
But he couldn’t find it in himself to actually feel like he was giving anything up.
His hopes and dreams?
What hopes and dreams?
The possibility of college was a distant thought in his head. He was already on track to graduate from high school early because it was simply another assignment for him at this point. He didn’t have friends there. He didn’t have connections to the institution or the teachers. Most of his days were spent thinking about what had been taken from him - his parents, his chance at a normal life, his belief that the world wouldn’t chew him up and spit him out.
The prospect of a life altering change. An event that could fundamentally break the grief-ridden, fury-filled, never-ending churn of his life… that filled him with hope instead of fear.
It made him feel, for the first time since his parents died, he could live for something greater than himself.
And maybe that was too much pressure to place onto a child before they even took their first breaths, but by god, it had to be something.
“I’m aware that having a pup means a permanent change to my life,” said Bruce. Without even realising it, his hand had come up to rest on his bump. “But I’m prepared to take that step.”
The consultant didn’t look satisfied by the answer and bit her lip.
“You’re only a child, Bruce. You’re fifteen. You have your whole life ahead of you and you’re just… you’re not focusing on the things you should be focusing on.”
Bruce’s anger was getting harder to keep control of.
“I am old enough to make a decision about my life. I am old enough to have a say about what happens to my body.”
“Of course, of course,” the consultant rushed out. “A mother should always have the ability to choose. I just want to make sure that you’re choosing the correct choice.”
“And yet, you don’t seem to think that I could believe having a child is the correct choice,” he snapped back.
The consultant frowned, eyes narrowed. She went with a different tactic.
“What about family Bruce? What are you going to do about childcare? You don’t have parents.” Bruce had to force himself not to flinch about how bluntly she put it. “Are you just going to dump your baby on your guardian when you go to school?”
“I will graduate high school in a few months. I’m not going to college. I’ll have plenty of free time to devote to them,” he said these things so surely even though he hadn’t even really considered it until now. “Money isn’t exactly an object for me. I can also hire help when I need it.”
The consultant looked like she wanted to argue, but gave up.
She sighed heavily and pushed the pamphlet closer to him. “Just… consider it, Bruce. Give yourself some time to really think it through. I’m sure you’ll figure out what is the smartest choice. Perhaps, you’d be interested in exploring adoption options if you plan on bringing the pup to term.”
He was not.
He wished he could say that he stood up and stormed out, but it was hard to make a dramatic exit from anywhere with a baby bump. So instead of a smooth and decisive action that perfectly translated the contempt he had towards this conversion, him rising out of the chair was stilted and awkward and he had to clutch the chair to find his balance. The bump was throwing off his center of gravity when he moved too fast he felt like he would topple over. His low back made its complaints about standing immediately clear.
It was worth it though to watch the consultant’s face further sour.
“Bruce, we still have thirty minutes left in our session.”
“I’m finished, thank you,” he replied smoothly, going to the door. He and his pup left and they did not return again.
“I’m sorry,” said Harvey, looking small in the gentle light of Dick’s nursery room. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
Bruce breathed deeply through his nose and shook his head. Dick made little whiny baby sounds and his tiny hand kept smacked into Bruce’s body. He was hungry and trying to fumble himself towards Bruce’s tit with all his meager power. Unfortunately, Bruce’s shirt was in the way and Dick had the coordination of a drunken sailor.
“It’s alright,” said Bruce, moving to sit down on the nursery's couch. He didn’t think twice about pulling his shirt up and slapping the pup onto his nipple. The pup latched eagerly, little mouth moving, and he settled into nursing. Bruce had long shed his shame about whipping his boobs out to nurse, it was simply too exhausting to care when he had a screaming baby demanding milk.
Harvey, though, stared at Bruce like he had just turned his head completely around, Exorcist-style.
“What?” Bruce said flatly.
“No, sorry. It just surprised me.”
Bruce raised an eyebrow at the alpha. “You know I’m breastfeeding him.”
“I just didn’t expect to see it.”
Bruce wondered exactly what he looked like in that moment. Still a child himself and yet he leaned over a baby and let it suckle from his teat. Did he look as incompetent as he felt when his endless repetitions of ‘I can do this’ failed to convince even him? Did he seem like the f*ck-up that everyone seemed to love to paint him as from the day his pregnancy was discovered? Or was he an object of pity? A lesson to what you shouldn’t become?
Bruce thought this and all the while, Dick fell into the steady rhythm of nursing. His little mouth pulled at Bruce with such strength despite its smallness and Bruce could imagine the pieces of himself being unsuck from his ribcage and passed over. Bruce hoped it was only the best parts of himself being put into this tiny being.
Take my love, he would think. I have some much of it that I’m bursting, so please take it and crystallise it into your bones so that you are a being built on love.
What version of Bruce was Harvey seeing? Was it the failure or the lover? The f*ck-up or the mother-saint? Bruce himself was scared to know.
Bruce half expected to see Havey run for the hills there. He said he wouldn’t be surprised if Harvey turned tail when so immediately faced with the reality that Bruce was a mother, that dating Bruce meant dating a single mom.
And instead of running, Harvey came closer and sat down next to Bruce. He looked down at the pup and watched as he sucked milk out of Bruce. His body was a warm line against Bruce’s side and he felt himself slowly relax into Harvey’s presence.
“He actually is pretty cute,” said Harvey after a while and Bruce smiled.
“He was really ugly when he first came out. All read and puckered, I thought he might stay like that and I would be raising an raisin.”
Harvey chuckled and the sound filled Bruce’s entire heart with fondness.
“I love him so much,” Bruce said, not entirely sure why the words were coming out of him except for the sudden need to say it. “And yes, I know I’m young but… He’s mine. I made him. When he was born, I felt a love for him that consumed my entire being and made me reframe my world. He became my everything and I knew there could be no one else in the world that could love him as fiercely and entirely as I could. And… and that has to mean something. That has to be important. That has to be reason enough for me to be his mother, despite my age.”
Harvey didn’t say anything. He didn’t agree or disagree, but he did lean more into Bruce and wrapped an arm around his shoulders.
Now, when Bruce looks back at this moment, he should have noticed that Harvey did not agree. He should have heard that silence. He should have known.
He should have.
He should have.
He should have
But there’s a lot of things Bruce should have done.
“I want to try us again.”
Bruce nearly spat out his tea. He could feel it burn in the back of his nose. “What?”
Harvey sat across the table from him, hands folded on the wood. His cup of tea was untouched and still steaming next to him. They were sitting in one of the Manor’s sunrooms with wrap-around stained glass windows in the walls of the circular rooms. It looked out onto Alfred’s rose gardens and the beginnings of a hedge maze, a new project for Jason and Tim. It was Bruce’s favourite room for taking guests.
He knew he looked beautiful, relaxing back into his hand-carved chair with pink and blue tinted light falling onto him. Vanity Fair had done a cover shoot with him draped artfully around the room. He had been pregnant with Tim at the time and the magazine mirrored him into the same poses his mother had struck for a maternity shoot decades ago. When he got the photos back, he couldn’t believe how effortlessly striking he had looked when all his memories about the day were focused on how hard it had been to keep a straight face when Tim had decided to pound on his bladder with kicking feet the entire three hours.
Feeling beautiful helped him feel in control, especially when it came to Harvey. The alpha had seen him when he was very not-beautiful in his earliest experiences with mother. Days when he could barely drag himself out of bed to feed a screaming Dick because unhappiness had settled in his bones.
(Bruce will note that Harvey hadn’t been there for when Bruce was at his ugliest.
Jason was born on June 23rd at the Wayne Memorial Hospital after Bruce had labored for 16 hours with him. Harvey had not attended the birth.
Jason’s labor had been long and hard despite all of his OB/GYNs’ promises that the second child was easier. Jason, it seemed, hadn’t been in the right position and hadn’t wanted to leave his hot tub. 16 hours was certainly an improvement from Dick’s 21 hours of labor. ((Tim, bless him, had taken exactly 42 minutes and slipped out of Bruce like a fish)) but there were more complications. It was only months after, that Bruce had learned that his doctor had actually thought Jason was going to die. That he had been mentally written off before he took his first breath.
The pain had been immense and had made Bruce feel like a dying animal on the table, flayed open from his lower half. He had begged for Harvey, his alpha, to come and stop the pain. But Harvey hadn’t come despite the fact that the plane ride was three hours and he certainly could have been there if he really tried.
That fact had burned through Bruce for months after Jason was born. Was it really too much to ask for the alpha who put a kid inside of him to be there for his birth?
But Harvey had a way of making things sound so logical. Of making depositions and trials and meetings with judges sound like the most important things in the world. Of making Bruce feel stupid for trying to place his children’s needs on the same level as Harvey’s court calendar. Of making Bruce’s desperate desire to not be alone, feel childish.)
“Harvey, we’ve been broken up for years. We don’t work. You know we don’t work,” said Bruce, his eyes narrowed.
“I think we could make it work. I think it could be good for Jason and the other pups. It benefits pups to have a father-figure in their lives.”
Bruce’s frown deepened and Harvey immediately began to back track on it.
“I’m not saying that you’re doing a bad job at raising. It’s actually amazing what you’re doing. I’m just… I’m 36 and you’re still the best thing that ever happened to me. I think of you and I see what I lost, what I could have had if I was just better. I was a child when I started to date you and I didn’t realise how lucky I was. I think… I think I might still love you Bruce. I know that I want you more than anything else in my life. I would do anything for another chance now that I’m older and more mature.”
Years ago, Bruce would have given anything to hear these words.
He should have asked Harvey if he wanted the pups too.
He should have remembered that he is more than just himself. He is a body in seperate parts and there are pieces of him imbued into others. He is greater than only one being.
He should have remembered the pups.
He should have… he should have…
But Harvey was right there and the alpha was pleading and his voice still pulled on all the strings in Bruce’s heart. The omega in him would always see its mate, the scent that matched him perfect. Bruce knew for all his stubbornness. He was still sentimental.
“A trial period,” he had said before he even realised it. “But I’m not sleeping with you Harvey, don’t even think about it and one wrong move and you’re out.”
The alpha smiled and Bruce was always such a goddamn sucker for that man’s smile.
