Who: Danny & Stephanie What: Freaking out over pregnancy dreams When: 2/8 Where: Casa de Lubbe Rating: Low Status: Complete
Even with school picking up for both of them and Stephanie’s new training regimen she tried her best to make whatever free time she had ‘Danny time’. It hadn’t been easy, though she mostly brought it on herself. She had taken on fifteen credit hours this semester, though six hours of that was her French course which surprisingly only made things more cramped as she had to put a lot of time into studying that. Then there was her UPS job, which may have only been four hours a day, four days a week but it still added up. Then there was Granny’s five days a week. Somewhere in there she found time to exercise, do her strength training and her free running, her training with Damian. It didn’t leave much room for ‘Danny time’ but she tried her best to make it all fit, even if she knew he probably wasn’t having the best time when her exhaustion started to show.
She had come over late the night before, bringing him a little to-go box of cookies from Granny’s that they managed to work their way through as they snuggled together on his bed and watched episodes of old Canadian comedies before she eventually fell asleep on his shoulder. It had been nice, probably as close to a normal ‘date night’ as people like Danny and Stephanie ever tended to have. It was only a shame her dreams hadn’t been as nice.
Something woke her, she wasn’t exactly sure what but it deserved to be hit very hard for disturbing her sleep and making her pick her head up from her ridiculously comfortable pillow, which was actually Danny’s chest. She groaned softly as she looked about the room and that was when the memory of her dreams decided to hit her and she suddenly sat straight up and was completely stone still. “Oh shit.”
Most boys Danny’s age tended to sleep like the dead. Danny wasn’t most boys. Just because he could literally pass out anywhere didn’t mean he stayed asleep all that easily. So when Steph woke up, Danny followed immediately, completely awake as he looked at her all rigid and afraid. Something had gone wrong. Now, Danny was a runner, not a fighter (or okay he was a throw yourself screaming at something if you couldn’t run from it, but that counted as running,) so it took him a second to realize that whatever was chasing her (or similar) wasn’t in the room with them.
“Hey,” he said softly, scooting slowly to sit up so as not to spook her while he rested his hand on her back. “You okay?” Clearly not, but it was the easiest question to ask as far as finding out whether or not she wanted to talk about it went.
Stephanie tensed a little under his hand though she hadn’t meant to. He hadn’t startled her, she wasn’t so lost in her thoughts that he made her jump, she was just knocked a little off balance by the dreams and then her own real memories of when she discovered she was pregnant. Her sweet Danny had only meant to comfort her and all she could do was frown a little in response until she found words again. “Dreams. You know. Unpleasant stuff.”
Her last one had been about Tim Drake and starting a real relationship with him. It had freaked her out a little, after all she was ecstatically happy to be with Danny and even dreaming about being close to another man weirded her out a bit. It had weirded her out with Dean as well, though she had dated Dean back in Jersey and knew he was a shithead so it hadn’t bothered her as much. Or it hadn’t before now when she discovered she was essentially having his baby, again. It was enough to make her say what she was going to say next without realizing Danny could take it in a whole different way than she meant. “I’m pregnant.”
Danny paled. “Oh,” he said, absorbing the shock of that. He took a steadying breath. Alright then. They’d been careful and he’d seen her be pretty regular on taking her pill, but none of that was ever 100% even when it was used exactly. It mighta been 99.99999 but there was still a tiny chance. “Well, whatever you wanna do, I’m gonna support you.” He had been seriously looking for a house, but if he had to save that money and maybe work more so that they could support a kid and she could go to school, then that’d be that. It was her body and her choice and he was pretty sure that he didn’t get a vote in that unless she wanted him to have one.
It’d be okay. Neither of them mighta been ready for it, but hell, Danny could figure out how to be responsible. He could read a bunch of books and...and his dad would absolutely be horrible for advice since he hadn’t actually been a dad until recently. Maybe Dean or Scud might know something, right? They’d figure it out. Him and Steph. They’d be okay. Whatever she wanted, they’d be okay. Fuck, that was an early morning bomb to drop on someone. How long had she been holding off on telling him?
Steph was very confused for a moment and it showed on her face. It wasn’t until he got to the ‘I’m gonna support you’ did it dawn on her what she had accidently implied. Her eyes widened with a look of revelation right before she slapped her forehead. “Oh god, I’m an idiot. No, baby, no. I meant dream me is pregnant. I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t know what I was thinking. I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry.”
She wrapped her arms around him, one over his shoulder and the other under his arm as she held tight to him, resting her forehead against the side of his neck. “I’m not pregnant. Not even a little. I promise. I’m sorry, and even if I was I wouldn’t blurt it out like that.” He had taken it about a million times better than Dean had though, his response had been to tell her to GTFO and then not see or speak to her since. There was no doubt in her mind that Danny was the far better man because he could clearly handle news like that like one. “I… The dreams… I just wasn’t expecting that, you know?”
“Oh,” he said again, though this time there was palpable relief in his body. “Oh, that’s good. I mean...it’s not good that you’re dreaming it. But I was like trying to figure out how much work I’d have to do between now and whenever y’know, you...had the baby so we could be okay and comfortable and like make sure she had a college fund or something.” Danny stroked her back, shifting so she could rest more comfortably in his arms.
“Sorry your dreams suck,” he said softer, still trying to avoid the fact that he knew the general storylines she was stuck in when she slept. “If we could switch and you could dream of me running naked through my dad’s class and I’d dream about the scary stressful shit you do, I’d do it.” She could also dream about puking on Sheldon’s brother and playing polo in the driving school car. It might’ve been kinda boring for Danny, but it was better than what she was getting when she slept.
Stephanie Brown loved Danny Lubbe from the tips of his toes to the top of his often spiky hair. He was indescribably good and good to her. She really wasn’t sure how she had ever gotten along in life without him and had since decided that she really didn’t want to have to find out. His reaction to the possibility of her being pregnant was just the icing on top of the very large cake that was ‘the reasons to hang on to Danny’. She didn’t even notice that Danny had called the baby a ‘she’.
“Hey, everything other than the pregnancy and my dad and being handcuffed to a bed for like two weeks has been pretty awesome.” she smiled weakly, picking up her head to press a kiss to his cheek. “But I wouldn’t say no to watching you streak though, even if it would further traumatize your dad.”
Danny kissed the side of her head as obnoxiously loud as possible just to add some kind of levity to the situation. “Do you want me to go get you a test or something just to make sure?” he asked. “I mean...people seem to get shit out of the dreams all the time.” And if Stephie was gonna be knocked up with some other guy’s kid, well, Danny’d just pretend like it was his anyway. No reason to punish anyone for shit that wasn’t their fault.
He snorted and shook his head. “I don’t think my dad can be any more traumatized than he has been already. I mean...he did half that to himself. What kind of idiot finds out his kid is a porn star and then goes looking for it?” The elder Lubbe was still having issues looking Danny in the eye or speaking to him in any way other than through awkward notes. It at least cut down on the going through his shit and the shrill cries of ‘Danny’ for no apparent reason.
She let out a very loud whimper and buried her face where his neck met his shoulder. She hadn’t thought about that. That pregnancy could be one of those things to cross over from the dreams. She really hadn’t even wanted to consider that was a possibility. She had already had a version of that asshole’s baby before, surely if it was going to cross over that would have taken care of it, but she knew dreams didn’t always work so logically. And what if the dreams had caused her to ovulate more than normal? What if they had made her more fertile, and made her pill stop working and caused holes in their condoms? It was just too much to think about.
“No, I’ll do it,” it came out muffled against his shoulder. “Sweet of you to offer but I’ll do it.” she turned her head so he could hear her better. “I don’t know what to say about your dad. Even I don’t want to see your porn and I didn’t have anything to do with creating you.”
Danny was just gonna keep holding her until she didn’t want him to anymore. Well, until she didn’t want him to anymore for now. Clearly he had every intention of trying to convince her she wanted him to hold her forever. He kissed the side of her head again. “Pretty sure it’s just his way of trying to like, get to know me or something. He tried to have the talk with me. Not the like, sex talk, but like that he’d understand if I was gay and I didn’t have to hide behind you or whatever. Which was...both offensive and I guess kinda cool for...y’know him. Anyway I told him we have wild orgies when he’s not home and I think he might believe me.” It was disturbing the amount of shit he could tell his dad and his dad just bought it as completely plausible. One day he was going to convince him he’d been kidnapped by Mormons or something.
“Oh Danny, you didn’t.” That was just what she needed, his dad looking at her with his big sad eyes, looking all lost and bewildered and pathetic. She liked Danny’s dad even if the older and younger Lubbes rarely seemed to be getting along. Franklin seemed like a nice man, way too delicate to be the father of a teenage boy, let alone a teenage boy like Danny. Very few were prepared to handle the full force of the wild Lubbe after all, even other Lubbes. “If he cries I’m gonna have to hug him and talk to him and one day you’ll come home from school to find we’ve painted each other’s nails and that I braided his hair.”
She did pull slowly out of his arms and move to the edge of the bed. Cuddling with her very attractive boyfriend when she was so terrified that she might be or might become pregnant was a bad idea. “And I promise you, no matter the weather, hot chocolate will be involved in some way.”
“Are you sure you’re not secretly Canadian?” Danny asked, letting her go but not getting out of the bed yet himself. He flopped backwards and scratched his bare stomach. “I don’t think he has enough hair for that. You’re gonna have to find him a wig.” Hey? It wasn’t like he was really against her spending time with his dad. He just...didn’t really see why anyone would want to. Ew.
Danny watched her move, trying to keep the concern less obvious on his face than he was feeling it. “Are you gonna be okay? There um… There anything I can do?”
She exhaled forcefully, her cheeks puffing out and briefly making a raspberry noise before she nodded. “I’ll be okay, babe, don’t worry about me. And if you’ve not been able to find a birthmark in the shape of a maple leaf on me anywhere then I’m gonna maintain that I’m one hundred percent American.”
Steph got off the bed finally going over to her backpack where she had dumped most of her clothes before the shows started. She slipped off the undershirt she was wearing and pulled her bra back on, making sure it was clasped already. She might have claimed that she did that simply because she wasn’t in the mood to bother with clasps when really that was the way she always did it. “Well, my boobs aren’t sore,” she glanced over at Danny. “Last time I was pregnant they were sore like right away. Oh, did I tell you the best part of all of this? I told Tim,” she had been upfront and honest with Danny about everything she did with Tim, which wasn’t much and impossible to become pregnant from, but she felt better that Danny knew about it. “He thought it was his.”
“Wait seriously? Mister brilliant junior detective thought it was his? Did he pass out during biology or do Gotham schools really suck that bad?” Danny’d heard some shit about the American education system, but there was no way it could be as bad as Duckboy legitimately thinking that the pretty much nothing he and Steph had done would get her knocked up. Kid probably actually believed that whole stork story for way too long. Or that the birds and the bees involved actual birds and bees.
“You’re leaving already?” he asked, trying to keep some of the disappointment out of his voice. He really did need to get that house. Like...like maybe somehow that might make it so they could spend some time together more than just in passing or once a week or him trying to help her with French.
“I think I just scared him, I seem to be good at that.” At least she and Danny had been sexually active all through the months they had been together. It made more sense for she and Danny to be pregnant than her and Tim, but the both of them had managed to give her the same look when she announced it. “Batman is awfully possessive of him, maybe he has him in one of those abstinence only programs? That does sound like a typical way to deal with Gotham insanity though, adding more insanity. Maybe he’s worried the Joker goes around handing out tainted condoms to Sex Ed classes.”
She pulled on her jeans as she answered, “Not yet. I’d just feel a little more comfortable with a few more layers of clothing between us. I know, I’m being all silly and paranoid, but well… As nice as little Lubbettes sound I’m not really ready for them right now. Not when I want to start going on patrol with Damian or Kate soon.”
Danny looked down at his briefs and nodded a little to himself. There was an implication there that he didn’t like, but he wasn’t sure what it was and he wasn’t sure how to call her on it. “You’ll be careful, right?” he asked, totally happy letting her think that look was for her patrolling and not her being weird about them being almost naked around each other. But just in the interest of making her more comfortable, he got up and pulled on his moose pants and a t-shirt.
It was awkward for him. He didn’t do well at awkward. It made him avoid eye contact and get all tense and try to think about anything other than the issue at hand which was usually just gonna make the issue worse. “Been looking at places. For me, I mean. And um...you too if you ever wanted to.” Awkward. More awkward. Everything was awkward. Canada somehow seemed way easier than this and Canada was full of fuckin’ awkward.
“Of course I will,” she pulled her white t-shirt back on, essentially back in her Granny’s uniform only without her sneakers and the apron she had to leave at the diner. She looked over at him, running a hand through her messy hair. “I’ve got a really good reason to always come back safe and sound.”
Maybe not as sweet as Danny’s ‘best to ever happen to me’ but she still meant it. She came to sit on the edge of the bed, continuing to watch him. She might have missed things or jumped to conclusions or even sometimes tried to make things fit together when they weren’t meant to, but she could tell when her boyfriend was feeling awkward. She couldn’t blame him though, she wasn’t exactly being herself either. “Oh right yard big enough for a bouncy castle, I remember. Yeah, I’d like to live with you if you’d like me there too. It would be nice. Just us, no worrying about our folks, wouldn’t have to go days without seeing each other.”
He rubbed quickly at the short hair on the back of his head. “Wouldn’t be asking if I didn’t want you there,” he pointed out, smiling at her. “Just...I don’t want you to feel pressured at all, y’know? I mean like me buying a house isn’t a big enough deal even if it will probably be tiny but...still. And we could like set you up a little gym or training whatever in the basement or something? So if shit got OC weird you could still work out if you wanted to.” There, see. That was totally him being supportive.
She smiled back. Danny really was amazing. How could anyone, their parents, and Damian and anyone else who thought they had the right to comment on their relationship just because Danny was a porn star, not realize how marvellous he was or how happy he made her. Sure, she might have been in a bit of a funk now but that wasn’t his fault, and he would probably be the one to make her feel better in the end. “No pressure at all over here. I’ve sort of stopped caring if things are too soon or not, now I’m just on what makes sense for us. Living together makes a lot of sense to me. Oh, and FYI, if we put stuff in the basement for me I’m totally gonna call it the Batcave.”
“Hell yeah you’re gonna call it the Batcave!” Danny said, grinning brightly. “We’ll get it all decked out in black and eggplant and yellow for you. It’ll be fuckin’ sweet.” For...well what they could afford. But shit, it’d be awesome anyway. And he was really, really glad that she’d stopped caring about what was too soon for normal people or not. It was a huge relief not to have to worry about them being on different pages. Things happened when they happened and Danny wanted to embrace shit as it happened and not work on some timeline that some guest star on Oprah made up or something. If you loved someone, you should be able to tell them no matter what anyone else said.
“Hell yes.” she positively beamed, utterly enamored with his enthusiasm and adorable grin. It felt good to smile and see Danny happy after the awkwardness of before. She wasn’t sure if she had heard it in a dream or someone in reality had said it to her but she decided they had been right when they told her she was the root of most of her own problems. Getting weird at Danny after a less than pleasant dream when she had suffered through worse ones was definitely her own fault.
She spotted his purple beanie and got up to grab it, pulling it on after she had made her hair into a quick, messy make-do bun. She loved wearing his clothes, beyond the fact that they smelled like him she couldn’t explain why. Coming back to him she wrapped her arms around his neck and gave his lips a quick peck. “Love you. Sorry if I’m all weird.”
“Love you too,” he said, leaning up to smile into that kiss. “It’s okay. Dreams fuck everyone up and I get it. You’ve been down that road in this life already. No reason for you to have to go through it again there.” He lit up for her and he didn’t care that she knew it, didn’t care if everyone else knew it either. “I’ll send you some of the stuff I’ve been looking at and you can lemme know what you think when you’ve got some time, okay?”
“Yeah, I just…” she shrugged then leaned her head forward to rest against his for a moment. “I kinda hoped that the next time I would have to worry so seriously about this was like years from now when I had been fully accepted into Lubbe society and we had our own den and ways of supporting ourselves that didn’t have to do with either of us serving the drooling masses. And even then it wouldn’t be a worry so much as something we decided for ourselves.” Steph pressed a kiss to the end of his nose, “Mm, okay. Maybe it’ll be enough to help me stop humming that Moulin Rouge song after French class. You know someone has that one line written on the board every time we go in to class, it’s even got like a phone number written under it.”
“It better be Jenny’s number,” Danny said, blushing just a little while she kissed his nose. It always made him feel small and special and he didn’t know why he liked it so much, but he did. “I can teach you more obnoxious French songs, you know. I’m good at that.” He smoothed her hair back out of her face. “But seriously, Stephie Sparkles. I wouldn’t worry about being fully accepted into Lubbe society. You already have been. You’re my sparkles. That’s...that’s the only thing that matters to me.”
She beamed again, “One day you’re going to have to tell me how you manage being so sweet. How do you manage to say things that make me want to kiss you while also bouncing up and down and squeeing like a kid? Mystic and magical powers of the Lubbe, I expect.” She didn’t have any doubts he could teach her more interesting and obnoxious French but she did actually want to pass. “Voulez vous coucher avec moi is a lot of fun to say though, though maybe not to anyone other than you. I have been tempted to go in early and write it and then draw Eggman under it, if I’m gonna be honest.”
Danny beamed up at her. “Eggman is the epitome of class and badassery. Nobody can resist his appeal.” He didn’t need to get the whole of the reference for Eggman and his dream life. It didn’t matter. Eggman was just awesome. “You gonna skype me later to work on your oral stuff for that? I mean I’d rather do it in person but…” They both had homework and Danny knew how bad they were at getting shit done when they could be doing each other instead. Skype dates were sometimes way easier for homework.
“Tomorrow, maybe?” He had a point though, and really she was a little more surprised that she wasn’t antsy about being in each others’ arms. They liked sex, Danny may have made a temporary career of it but she knew that his work and their time together were two wholly different things. For the most part they went at it like teenagers when life didn’t get in the way. But now, getting cockblocked by essentially bad dreams and her nerves, it hurt. Maybe not enough for her to get over her fear of unplanned pregnancy and fuck his sexy, Canadian brains out, but more than enough for her to know it really sucked. “I’ve got like a paper in political science due on Monday and I wanna get that done first. Yay, being responsible. But, uh, maybe we could, uh, do something else over Skype?”
“I ah…” Danny scratched the back of his head. “I’m not really into the idea of Skype sex,” he said sheepishly. “It hits a little too close to work and you’re in a relationship with me, not Brandon.” She’d seen Brandon of course in full glory (sort of) at the AVNs, but he was pretty sure that a camera trained on him even if it was just a webcam and his dick in his hand would trip him over into porn star territory and he wasn’t comfortable with that mixing with Steph like that. “Sorry.”
“Hey, no, you don’t have to be sorry.” She moved to sit down next to him, her hand sliding into and intertwining with his. “I get it, and it’s kind of a silly idea anyway. I used to have a rule about not being naked in front of a camera, a friend of mine broke up with a guy once and he posted naked pictures of her all over the internet. Not that I think you would ever do that of course, I trust you and I know you’re a good and decent human being, but it’s kept me away from it. I guess until now, anyway.”
Danny’s fingers curled a little tighter around her hand, thumb stroking over the ridges of her knuckles in gentle appreciation of just her presence alone. “It’ll...give us time to appreciate each other more when we do get together again. But...honestly I’m kinda a big fan of just having you there when I’m doing homework even if we’re not talking or paying attention to each other. Makes me feel less...I dunno. Alone?”
She turned her head and pressed a loving kiss to his cheek, “I like spending time with you too. I wish we had more time together during the week, I’d bring you around with me everywhere if I could.” Well, almost everywhere, Danny could be distracting when he wanted to be, and given how he had reacted to Damian online he’d probably not take it well if he was there for their training and they went into their very, very casual flirting. “The more I think about it the more I like the idea of moving in together, and maybe, I don’t know, I could quit UPS. Maybe pick up more hours at Granny’s instead. I don’t know how much longer I can burn the candle at both ends.”
“Not that much longer, hopefully,” Danny said, brows knitting worriedly. “I like you whole and as unburnt as possible. Sleep’s good. You need it, y’know.” He kissed her hair lightly,unlacing their fingers so he could pull her into what passed for a half a hug, still not wanting to invade her space too much. “Love you, Stephie Sparkles,” he whispered.
Steph was pretty much convinced that Danny was perfect. He respected her, treated her not only as a fellow human being but as an equal, was caring and kind and loving. He was even willing to help raise her baby if there had turned out to be one. He was the first person she had ever met as wholly good as he was and she absolutely adored every little bit of him, even his half hugs. Knowing he was trying his best and completely appreciating him for it she wrapped both of her arms around him. “Love you, Danny.”
Danny smiled and pulled back to boop her nose once the hug was at a place where it was either a natural stopping point or he was gonna wanna start making out with her. Totally not an okay thing just then. “Go on then. Light your candle and I’ll try and find you some more wick and wax so you don’t burn out.”
Making out would have been a terrible idea given how jumpy Steph felt. This was her Danny but he was still a healthy eightteen year old with a very healthy libido, and likely a very healthy sperm count. And she was still very much the fertile young woman who was very much head-over-heels for him. Put those together and Steph could not help but want to duck any kiss he would have given her, and mostly because she knew how badly she wanted them. She really was going to have to invest in a chastity belt if she was going to keep being so paranoid about her own lack of strength when it came to resisting him, especially when he was being as perfect as he was about it all.
“Yeah. I might be counting down the days until spring break. I promise, if ours overlap or are on the same week, I’m gonna spend it all with you, okay? All day, all week, as much Steph as you can stand and probably much much more.” she slipped from their embrace and moved to put her shoes back on and pick up her bag. She hated to go but there were things they both had to do, her stuff just involved buying out the local Walgreens’ entire supply of pregnancy tests before she had to throw herself into her work. “I, uh, um. If any of the tests come back positive I’m probably gonna blow up your phone, so uh, don’t turn it off. Okay? I just, yeah.”
She kissed his cheek when she came back, “Love you. I’ll probably call you later anyway, so don’t freak you when I do call.” Poor, sweet Danny. Sometimes he really did deserve a medal, the award he had gotten from work just didn’t seem grand enough.