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It's a late night in Barbara's apartment.
They've just finished having sex and are lying in bed. Barbara's tracing her hand over Dick's chest, around the outside of his admittedly well-defined pectoral muscle, flicking her thumb over his nipple, tracing her fingers over the series of scars. Most of what she sees is a kind of molted burn scar from Deathstroke's baton during Crisis. There might be something else under there, but she can't be sure.
She wants to wrap him in a protective hug, but she doesn’t. It's sort of the rules superheroes have – you don't really talk about the many injuries you've each picked up, or at least, she wouldn't appreciate Dick doing so for her. If you did talk about it, it'd turn too quickly into some self-flagellating ritual. I should have protected you. No, I should have protected you. And so on and so forth until people die of old age. So even though she feels like yes, she should have been there to protect him, no matter how impossible that would be, she doesn't say so.
Besides, no one wants to hear how them getting injured made you feel bad. It's just tacky.
Barbara stretches up and kisses Dick's collarbone gently, hoping she didn't pause noticeably on the scar. Dick reaches up and pushes back her hair, tucking it behind her ear, and then leans forward and kisses her back.
“You know,” Dick says once he pulls back. “I haven't gone to the beach in forever.”
Barbara furrows her brow, trying to figure out how this is relevant.
Dick casually touches his chest, like he's not referencing a near-fatal injury. “You know, cuz... you don't really want to advertise that you used to be a teenage vigilante.”
Barbara snorts. “'Used to be'?”
“Well I used to be a teenager, at least.” He flashes a grin that could melt ice. A 334 Joule smile, she'd called it once. What the hell does that mean? h e'd asked. The heat of fusion for ice. The amount of energy required to melt one gram of ice at zero degrees Celsius.
Stop implying that my smile only weighs one gram! It's a huge-ass smile.
Joules don't have weight, Grayson; you're ruining my romantic science analogy!
And he'd called her a nerd, she'd called him a pedant, and they both laughed. That was the comfort that is Dick Grayson, she thinks. Someone you can laugh with, whom you can make fun of and who can make fun of you.
“You know,” Barbara says. “You could still go to the beach. They have those suits surfers wear.”
“I can't hide my body, people would think I'm ashamed of it.”
Barbara sighs and rolls her eyes, but with a smile. “It's skin-tight. It's not hiding anything.”
“What about you?” Dick asks. “Have you been to the beach?”
Barbara doesn't know if he means because of the scar issue or the wheelchair issue. Because for her it's the second. Not like she doesn't like her chair, but she says, “Have you seen the beach wheelchairs, Dick?”
“They make beach wheelchairs?”
“How did you think wheelchair users roll over sand?”
“Uh, with a wheelie?” He frowns slightly. “I mean that's how you get over grass, right?”
Barbara nods. Yeah, it's how you go over grass. As for sand, it'd be possible , but probably more trouble than it's worth. “Try biking over sand, then get back to me,” she says. “No, they make these wheelchairs with enormous inflatable tires that are too big to sink in the sand.”
“Well that sounds perfect! Let's get a surfer suit and go to the beach!” Thankfully he doesn't actually hop out of bed upon saying it, because you know, it's night time. But his tone of voice indicates that he might think a three a.m. beach trip is a possibility.
“The enormous inflatable tires don't have handrims, Dick,” Barbara says. “There's no place to put them. They're just transport chairs. Someone pushes you.”
Dick nods a little. He knows she doesn't like to be pushed – she was never shy about that. After one too many well-meaning yet incredibly condescending nurses tried pushing her around without asking her in the hospital, she'd decided her permanent chair would be handle-less, and she hasn't regretted that decision in over 10 years. “Well,” Dick says, “we'll invent a better one. With water-proofing and some electrical parts and the motor thing underneath like the motorized chairs. And you can move around with a joystick instead of being pushed.”
Barbara smiles a little. It'd be expensive. Non-commercially viable. And definitely not possible to do on her own.
“That is,” Dick says, “assuming you actually want to go to the beach.”
She leans forward and kisses right where his jaw meets his neck. He sighs happily.
“It sounds fair,” she says. “I invent a new piece of technology and you put on a shirt.”
“So you see that the task is equally difficult for both of us,” Dick says.
She laughs and snuggles a bit closer to him, because that is the comfort of Dick Grayson.