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Shit.

[ and because jessica's probably thinking it already -- ]

Maybe someone abandoned her.

Maybe.

[ it's unfortunate, but they certainly could've put the baby with worse people than dick grayson. ]

How big is she?

[ jess is gonna stop at a bodega and get diapers, but there's sizes and whatever. gotta get the right one. ]

[ he's just going to send her a photo of the baby, a few months old, sitting on a blanket he's spread out over his bed. rachel's sitting next to her and poking her belly, making her laugh. ]

That help?

Eh, we'll see.

[ turns out: pretty damn helpful. sometimes, as if to spite her worldview, people are nice and jess got some expert advice (with the help of a few lies about whose baby it is she's shopping for and why she doesn't already know what size diapers to get) from a mom also out getting diapers. she also ends up with formula, some baby food, and a few red bulls.

she has a feeling they'll need them soon enough. ]

[ when dick hears the knock on his door, he has a moment where he really damn hopes that's jessica -- supervillains can be surprisingly polite about knocking sometimes -- but, of course, it is. he greets her tersely, waving her inside towards the open door to his bedroom, where rachel's still flopped on the bed and cuddling the baby. she sits straight up when she sees jessica, though.

"is that jessica jones?"

dick arrives a half-minute after, having paused to lock the door behind him, and opts to ignore rachel's question. ]

You have good timing.

[ yeah, jess doesn't get the polite ones often enough to get anxious about knocking.

before dick makes it back to the room, rachel does get a, "no, it's the fucking tooth fairy," from jess before she starts unloading her baby haul onto the bed. ]

What, you never changed a diaper before, Grayson?

Edited 2020-03-06 23:20 (UTC)

[ look.

it's not paranoia if you're right.

rachel, who spends all her time around people like kory and dick, is a little abashed but unoffended by jessica's response. she also gets out her phone immediately and starts typing with an alacrity that suggests she's telling gar about what he's missing out on. ]

You could say I'm out of practice. [ that's a no. ] Have you?

[ she'd probably be a little nicer to the kid if she wasn't already going to have to be nice to this baby. there's only so much of that jess can spread around in one day, and the baby probably needs it more. ]

I babysat for some of the neighbors when I was a kid. [ she does not clarify pre- or post-accident. doesn't really matter, either way it's been a while, but at least it isn't never. ] Not like it's hard.

[ diaper changing is actually pretty easy, and jess has the diapers, the wipes, and some powder just in case. she leans down to bring the baby closer to her on the bed, actually smiling for a moment when she reaches out with little baby hands to grab at jessica's fingers and pull them to her mouth.

this baby, though, smells ripe as hell, so she looks over at dick and says: ] You mind if there's baby shit on your bed?

My extracurricular activities didn't net me any pocket change.

[ and if she looks at him, he'll smile briefly and faintly. because he was adopted by a billionaire, get it!!!!

rachel hops out of the way when jessica starts to move the baby, sitting in the corner unobtrusively to keep texting gar. and maybe try to steathily take a snap of jessica, as evidence.

dick, meanwhile, takes a couple of steps closer to her, feeling like he should make himself useful but not having any fucking clue how. he puts his hands on his hips momentarily at jessica's question, then waves. ]

I'll wash it all later. Should you be cursing in front of Daenerys?

[ from her corner, rachel beams at him. the name's catching on. ]

Edited 2020-03-06 23:41 (UTC)

[ oh, she looks at him for that. more like a glare, followed by a nod over at rachel. if she ends up some mom meme on reddit after this, it's dick's ass that she's gonna kick. ]

Really? At least call her Dani or something. Something the kid can spell.

[ and, now that the baby is closer, jess gets to work with prep -- opening the diapers, pulling the wipes and powder closer, and finally she maneuvers the little one onto her back. at which point, those little legs start to kick and flail. ]

You wanna help you can keep her from kicking me in the face while I do this.

I think spelling's the least of her concerns right now.

[ it'd be easy to say who abandoned her or what's going to happen to her are her biggest concerns, but. honestly. the small child is currently grabbing for any of jessica's hair that falls near her, so having something to play with seems like her biggest concern at the moment.

dick steps in closer, and then reaches over to gently hold onto her little ankles. she wriggles and makes a small noise of discontent, but it's all clear right now. ]

[ yeah, jess is regretting not investing in a hair tie when she was out getting supplies. as it is, she just tries to get to work on opening this diaper up to see the damage.

and, oh boy. jessica wrinkles her nose and just... starts wiping as much as she can. ]

Just because her brain isn't fully formed doesn't mean you gotta insult her with a shitty name. Right, kid?

[ the baby just squawks in protest and tries to kick her little feet out of dick's grip. but, since she's a baby, that doesn't do too much. well, not to free her feet. it does move her little butt around enough that jess now has shit on her hand. ] Aw, fuck-- [ gross! but jess wipes it off on a clean wipe, finishes cleaning the kid, and rolls the used wipes up in the used diaper and sets it to the side. ] --Lift her up a little so I can get the clean one under her.

How is that worse than cursing in front of her?

[ like, he's definitely said fuck in front of rachel and gar and jason, but they're teenagers. teeangers who curse! it's fine. but god forbid this baby start speaking while under his care, and her first word is shit. kory would never let him live it down.

he lifts her up a little as directed. his motions are smooth, careful but not overly so. he isn't hesitant with the child, though it'd be easy to be. (it'll be a different story if he's actually asked to hold the baby.) it's not that gentleness comes to him naturally, so much as control. and control has always been a big part of being dick grayson -- control over his body, as a trapeze artist, control over his anger, as a boy who lost his parents. robin is the antithesis of that. which is the problem. ]

High enough?

It isn't, I just think it sucks.

[ personally, she has absolutely no investment in what people will think of dick if the baby starts cursing while in his care. it'd be kinda funny, honestly, and it's not like jess is planning on staying long enough to be that solid of an influence.

despite appearances, dick isn't the only one with concerns about control. jess is good at keeping her strength in check a lot of the time, but there's a reason she conscripted him into holding little baby feet instead of herself. and it might not seem like she has a filter when she speaks, what with the profanity, but there's plenty she's not saying out loud. worries about this baby and where she came from, where she'll go after this if they can't figure out where she's supposed to be, what exactly happened that brought her into dick's temporary custody. ]

Yeah, you can let her go now.

[ but that's all whatever. just because she's helping a little doesn't mean it's her responsibility to worry about -- not like they dropped this kid in her apartment, after all.

once the diaper is fastened, she looks up between dick and rachel. ]

You two think you can keep her from rolling off the bed while I wash my hands?

[ oh, jessica isn't the only one worried about the baby's provenance, the baby's future. dick can take care of her temporarily, but long-term? impossible. his life is too dangerous for a normal kid, let alone a helpless baby. and if he had any idea of a good place to drop off a child, he would've tried taking rachel there earlier. the best he'd come up with had been hank and dawn, and see where that got them.

wayne manor is no place for a baby, jesus christ. besides, he can't -- won't -- go crying to bruce for every problem that comes his way.

he's thinking of contacts he has in CPS, weighing the futility of looking into the foster care system, as he lets go of little daenerys's chubby legs. she's still so small, soft and warm and trusting. she looks at rachel and jessica and dick with equal expectation of receiving love, and he doesn't want to see that change. ]

We'll manage.

Great.

[ jessica would argue nowhere in gotham is a place for a baby, but... she's not invested enough to argue. instead she just rolls her eyes at dick and straightens up from the bed, just missing a pair of baby hands grasping again for her hair, and goes to wash her hands.

at least she understands the impulse to not go to bruce with this, even though he probably has a home for wayward abandoned babies left in ex-sidekick's apartments that feeds their charges caviar or something. she's got a similar one that's keeping her from calling trish about the situation until it is impossible not to. a combination of pride and not wanting to deal with the reaction.

when she gets back, she immediately starts digging around in her bag. ]

I just wanna ask -- if I didn't show up, were you just gonna let the baby stay naked?

[ in the absence of jessica, the baby takes to grabbing onto fistfuls of dick's shirt. she pulls -- not hard enough to drag him, of course, but he steps closer to her anyway -- bunching up the fabric in her tiny hands.

"i was gonna tell kory and gar to grab something on the way back," rachel says, sounding a little offended. also maybe a little distracted, because she's definitely moved on to taking photos of the baby toothlessly gnawing on dick's shirt.

dick just gives jessica a reproachful look, like, really? he has not noticed the shirt-in-baby's-mouth situation yet. ]

[ you can't reproach jessica. she's immune to that shit. she also just raises her eyebrows at rachel's contribution to the conversation. ]

Yeah, well, in the meantime I brought this.

[ and out comes a shirt -- old and a little ratty looking around the collar, well-worn but clean, with the nirvana smiley face and band name on the front. she goes over to the bed and gently tries to extricate the babymouth from dick's shirt, less because she cares about the state of his shirt and more that she can't put this one on her if her mouth is occupied like that. ]

Now she can drool on her own thing.

Nirvana. Really?

[ but it's only a momentary judgment. he grimaces when he realizes the baby is, in fact, drooling on his shirt, and moves to help jessica with gently separating the child from his shirt.

little dany's pretty much swallowed up by jessica's shirt, but at least it's clothing; she's less likely to catch a chill this way. she blinks, then enthusiastically reaches for the both of them, trying to get a grab on whichever one of them she can. ]

Shut up, if the baby is gonna have a bad name she can at least learn good music.

[ don't talk shit about nirvana, dick. she suspects, though, that he listens to like. numetal or classical music. some horrible emo contrary combination as a side-effect of having fucking batman as his pseudo-dad.

and yeah, the shirt was never gonna be a good fit. jessica accepts that, but just because she had one positive run in with an Actual Mother in the Wild doesn't mean she wants to risk more by going out to buy baby clothes.

for a baby that is, currently, going for jessica's hair before she manages to get her hand in there to be grabbed instead. and, to little dany: ]

You're a yanker, huh? Should've brought a hair tie.

It's not a bad name.

[ he says, mostly for rachel's sake, because it does seem pretty suspect to him. he did name a dog bowie when he was 16, but c'mon. that's just a classic name. daenerys may or may not age well.

the baby pulls enthusiastically on jessica's hand, clasped between chubby little fingers, and immediately tries to put it in her mouth. ]

[ oh, right. rachel is the one that picked it, isn't she? and jessica is an asshole but she does have to appreciate a goth looking kid making bad choices. ]

Whatever you say.

[ she finishes saying that right as little dany gets jessica's fingers in her little mouth and proceeds to gum them. jess actually smiles at this until the baby clamps down hard enough to hurt and she has to work to pull her hand back without doing damage. ]

Ow, shit fuck, she's got a jaw like a steel trap, Jesus.

PICK YOUR POISON
PIC PROMPTS / TFLN / RANDOM SCENARIO
HAN SOLO velocities	BETTY MCRAE bombsheller	RIVER TAM subsulcus	RIVER TAM (AU) comprehender
SIMON TAM vest	BRIA THAREN exulted	NADINE CROSS bridaled	GU JUN-PYO toddler
available on special request: veronica sawyer, benjamin linus, imani, maria deluca, mushu, poseidon, niccolò machiavelli, malik al-sayf, chloe

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