fic: Crime and...
This is...totally not the thing I was supposedly working on, but I couldn't help it.
Title: Crime and...
Fandom: DCU - Batman
Characters: Dick & Babs
Word Count: 1,723
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I don't own Bat-anything.
Warnings: None
Summary: "Are you punishing me with glitter? That's not a very good punishment, Babs."
A/N: Set sometime vaguely after Batgirl: Year One. Inspired by incogneat-oh's ridiculously adorable headcanon.
Dick startles awake to the sound of his window being scraped open. He’s about to fling off the covers and handle the intruder, bad arm or no, when he really looks at the figure behind the glass. From the tips of the pointed cowl to the long arms easing his window upwards, the silhouette is entirely familiar. A scalloped cape is flapping in the wind.
“Babs?” he says, confused.
She ducks her head under the window, her cheeks flushed from the cold. “Be patient, boy wonder, or get a window that doesn’t stick.” Then she pokes her tongue out at him and disappears back into the night.
Dick watches shadow-Babs struggle with the sash. He thinks about telling her that the window sticks less from the inside, but then he’d have to admit that he can’t open it with one hand and she would laugh at him. And she’d still be outside.
Finally, the window rises over Babs’ head with a whoosh, and she flops across the sill lazily, half in, half out. “Hey, kid,” she says. “How’s being south for the winter?”
“Terrible,” Dick grumbles. “What, are you taking over puns for me, too?”
Babs hauls herself the rest of the way into the room and lands neatly on the floor. “Oh, god, am I? That’s disgusting. I can’t help it, patrolling with Bruce is like spending quality time with a rock.”
“I can’t believe I’m missing all of this.”
“I can’t believe you left me with all your work and your grumpy boss. You owe me big time when you can hold a pencil again.”
Dick gives her his best sad puppy look.
“Oh, right,” Babs says. “I brought you something.” She starts to reach back out onto the ledge and hesitates. “How long did Bruce say you’d have to wear that thing?” she asks, nodding at the arm brace on the nightstand.
“At least another week.” Dick pouts.
“Yeah, then this’ll work.” She lifts a small plastic bag through the window and holds it over the bed.
Dick grins and bounces a little on the mattress before he remembers that this is Babs. “Wait,” he says. “Brought me something like a present, or brought me something like paperwork to type one-handed?”
Babs smirks evilly in the faint glow from the window. “Oh, no, Robin,” she says. “This is punishment.”
Babs upends the bag and he feels something tumble out. Dick reaches for the light switch and sees several small, brightly colored glass bottles sitting in his lap. He picks one up, tilting it inquiringly. “It’s…shiny. Are you punishing me with glitter? That’s not a very good punishment, Babs.”
She just smirks again. “Yeah, I figured you like glitter, sparkle motion. That’s not the punishment. These are nail polish.”
“If I can’t hold a pencil, how am I supposed to paint your nails for you?”
Babs lowers her eyelashes in that you-are-so-dumb way that she has, and gives her head a little shake. It shouldn’t be fun to watch, but it is. “No, idiot, I’m painting yours. That’s why it’s a punishment. If you’re going to be stupid enough to get your arm twisted, you’re going to have to deal with some extra decoration.”
“I don’t have a problem with decoration.” Babs looks at him like he’s missing the point or ruining her fun, and he’s probably doing both, but really. “I grew up in the circus, Babs, my dad wore sequins to work.”
“Uh huh,” Babs says, pulling off her cowl and shaking out her ponytail in a way that she has to know is totally unfair. She sits down on the floor and props her elbows on the bed, little red tangles snaking across the covers. Dick rolls the bottle in his hand and doesn’t give her the satisfaction of staring.
“So,” she says after a minute, starting to line the polishes up along a crease in the blanket. “Pick your poison, little bird. We got your classic hot rod red.” She flashes him the bottle and a sly grin. “We got your trendy lime green. I tried to get you yellow, so you’d have the whole ensemble, but they didn’t have it, so you get gold instead. I got you black, in case you were feeling goth to match the boss man. And then, since they were on sale,” she says, prying the last bottle from his hand. “Hot pink. With glitter. ‘Cause I know you’re a sucker for shiny things.”
Dick flutters his fingers, considering. “That’s five, right? So let’s do one of each.”
Babs snorts. “How did I know you were going to say that? You’re ridiculous. Your hands are going to make people blind.”
“Gee, I don’t know, Babs, you’re the one who picked them out. Maybe it’s all part of your evil plan.”
Babs doesn’t so much smile as show her teeth. She spreads the bag out to catch the drips and starts unscrewing the lid of the first bottle, red like sundae cherries. “Hand.”
He gives her his left hand, still cradling the right against his stomach. She shakes it until he lets it go limp in her grip, then strokes the brush across his thumbnail. The polish feels cold. “What’s Bruce going to say when he sees your Technicolor nails?” she asks, eyes squinted over her work.
Dick pulls his shoulders up to his ears and dredges up his best Bat-voice. “Dick, what happened to your hands?” he growls.
Babs pinches his fingers a little, laughing. “Don’t move, you’re going to make me spill.”
“Sorry.” He waits until she caps the bottle and reaches for the next one, then continues in his own voice. “Oh, well, Batgirl came by last night to brief me on her patrol and paint my nails.” He affects Bruce’s posture again. “Hn. Well, tell her to use the Cave entrance next time if she’s in uniform.”
Babs has one hand clamped over her mouth, smothering her laughter. “Oh my god,” she says, a little breathlessly. “You’re not serious. He really doesn’t care?”
Dick shrugs. “I think Bruce sort of gave up telling me what to wear when I was in middle school and I decided I wanted to fight crime in hot pants.”
She cackles and punches him in the arm. “Yeah, okay, I can see that. But if you told him girls were climbing in your window at night, all he’d have to say about it is ‘use the door next time’?”
“No,” Dick says slowly. “If I told him you were climbing in the window, that’s all he’d have to say about it. You know pretty much all our secrets, Babs, I don’t think gossip and slumber parties really ping his radar.”
Babs smiles, and it’s real for a moment, before it turns wolfish. “You wish this was a slumber party, boy wonder,” she says, and opens up the next color.
Dick blushes and bites his lip. “I never figured you for a nail polish girl, Babs,” he says, to cover it.
Her eyes flick up towards him briefly and then back to what she’s doing. “I mean, I’m not, now. You can’t be-even with the gauntlets, it starts chipping as soon as you put it on. Before? Kinda-sorta-not really.” She picks up the black and scrunches up her nose. “I think it’s just one of those things that everyone has to learn sooner or later, or they, like, revoke your visa to girl-land.”
“If you teach me,” Dick says curiously. “Do I get a visa to girl-land?”
Babs snorts again. “Yeah, sure, Dick. I’ll sign it for you right after I get done painting. Just call me Customs Inspector Gordon.”
“Customs Officer Gordon?” Dick says, mouth twisting mischievously.
Babs’ reaction is immediate. She stops shaking the pink polish and points a skinny finger in his face. “Don’t fuck with me, Grayson,” she says dangerously. “I’m still taller than you, both of my arms feel awesome, and I’m holding a bottle of glitter nail polish, which stains like nothing you’ve ever seen. No funny business, capisce?”
And Babs is scary, really she is, but at the same time, Dick cannot help laughing, so he just presses his other hand weakly over his mouth and nods. Babs makes a dismissive sound and goes back to painting.
“Kids these days,” she mutters. “No respect for their elders, no respect for officers of the law, what are we going to do with them?” When she finishes, she blows across his nails and he shivers.
“Yeah, that is some manicure,” she says, holding his hand up for him to admire. “I don’t know what’s the best part, the nightmare-carnival color scheme, or the way one of your nails is, like, diagonal because we didn’t cut them first.”
“If you ever decide to quit being Batgirl,” Dick says. “You could always get a job doing rainbow nail polish.”
“Dick, you’re the only person over the age of five who would let me commit these monstrosities unless I chloroformed them first.”
“Then if B and I ever find ourselves investigating the case of the chloroform manicure murders,” Dick announces with mock solemnity. “I will know exactly where to look.”
Babs stares at him for a minute and then just shakes her head. “You are really, really strange.”
“I have spent my adolescence living with a man who dresses up like a giant bat,” Dick says primly. “All things considered, I think I am very well-adjusted, thank you very much.”
Babs shakes her head again. “Other hand?” she says. “I’ll be nice.”
Dick props his arm across his lap and lets Babs lift his hand. The bruises are still tender where her fingers brush his palm, but Babs spends as much time handling rare books and microchips as she does punching out criminals and he knows she really will be careful. He watches her flick the brush across his nail, and thinks it’s nice not to worry about it, the way it’s a relief not to worry about secrets anymore. After a minute or so, Babs catches him staring and pulls a spectacularly awful face, crossing her eyes and letting her tongue loll out the side of her mouth. Dick has to laugh at that, and screwing up an awful face to give her back, he knows that’s something good, too.