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A familiar gloved hand brushed through his hair and he woke up gently. A looming figure blocked the moonlight from the window, but Dick’s not worried. He leaned into the touch, closing his eyes against the throbbing pressure building behind them.
“You have a fever,” Batman said, his voice the sound of rumbling earth.
Dick groaned, because he did . He had been feeling under the weather earlier so he called Babs for a night off patrol, but it seemed like Bruce had to check it out for himself. Also his joints ached .
The hand retreated and Dick whined at the loss, a wordless complaint. He was too cold under the sheets but he was also sweating, feeling clammy all over from the sickness, and it was a mounting discomfort. He didn’t want to move to get out from under them though, even to chase the hand that was on his head.
He couldn’t fall asleep with the aches but he was content to just lay there forever. He felt a presence above him and he cracked an eye open to see Batman measuring his temperature.
“103,” he said. That’s bad, Dick knew, but he’s not in any shape to do anything about it.
He closed his eyes. A moment or maybe a minute later, something nudged him and Dick groaned again. His sheets were pulled from where he tucked them as high as possible over his chin without suffocating himself, and he scowled, eyes still closed.
“Up.” Batman’s voice left no room for argument and he helped pull Dick upright. “Water.” Dick felt the bottle at his lips and drank dutifully. Then Batman placed a pill in Dick’s mouth that he also swallowed without question. Dick watched through a hooded gaze as Batman pulled off the cowl and he was Bruce again, his dad. He said, voice a much softer baritone than the earth-shaking tone of Batman, “Do you want soup?”
Bruce lowered him down into the bed and tucked him in up to his chins. Dick sighed as his bare hand brushed through his hair, nails gently scratching his scalp and turning him into a boneless puddle. He mumbled, “You make it bland.”
Despite popular belief from the bats, Bruce was not actually a disaster in the kitchen. He could cook, as it had been a necessary skill he needed to learn, but Dick kind of wanted to yell at whoever taught Bruce during his worldly travels, because it sure as hell wasn’t Alfred. He could make food to survive on—and Dick had no doubt that’s what he was currently doing at the brownstone—but he couldn’t season for the life of him. Must be the white-man gene.
Bruce said, “I can make chicken noodle soup if you want.”
“Mmmm.”
“From a can, of course.”
“Still gotta season it.”
Bruce’s hand came to rest on the side of his face and Dick leaned into it contentedly. His fingers brushed over the throbbing scar hidden underneath his hair, the one Bruce watched be ripped through Dick’s skull. He pulled away and Dick mourned the loss of warmth, burrowing deeper under the blankets. He grumbled when hands shifted him so he was lying on his back and something cold touched his forehead. A cold pack?
“Keep this on. I need to finish patrol.” Of course. Dick hummed an affirmation and as he slipped away into the dark, he swore he felt the ghost of a caress on his cheek.
He wasn’t sure how long he slept for, but he awoke slowly to the aching pain in his body, a throbbing headache that made him want to sink into the ground. He groaned, blinking against the morning sunlight streaming in through his windows that landed directly in his eyes. He hated being sick. Whoever invented being sick should go to jail for subjecting the rest of them to this. Someone should make being sick illegal.
There was a beep. Then, Bruce’s voice surprised him, “102.”
“Wha…” Dick squinted in his direction, and was pleasantly surprised to see Bruce in his black turtleneck instead of Batman. “Oh.”
Bruce set down the thermometer and looked at him. “Good morning.”
“Hmmmmmm – everything hurts and I’m dying .”
“Are you hungry?”
Maybe. He didn’t really want to get up though. He just felt – sore.
“Come one, let’s get you up,” Bruce said and pulled the blankets away. Dick got a weird sense of deja vu.
Dick complained nonverbally the whole way, but Bruce persisted. However, once Bruce managed to get Dick’s one leg off the bed, he went boneless, slipping through Bruce’s arms to flop back onto the bed. He did it often enough as a kid for him to expect the tired sigh from Bruce that followed. Bruce tried again, this time hefting Dick up in a bridal carry. Vertigo hit him and he closed his eyes, leaning his head on Bruce’s shoulder.
“You can lie down on the couch.”
“Hnnnnnn hnn.”
“Because you’ve probably been sweating in bed for almost a whole day already. It can’t be comfortable.”
“Hn.”
“A change of location will do you good. And breakfast.”
“Hn hnnnn .”
“Of course it’s comfortable; I bought the mattress for you myself.”
“Hn?”
“ But – the couch is just as comfortable.”
Bruce gently put him down on the couch and Dick opened his eyes. He lay there for a moment as Bruce disappeared.
The sun lit up his apartment living room and kitchen in a warm glow, and he’s just barely shaded from where he’s sitting. Someone threw open the windows and a soft breeze aired out the suffocating smell of sickness he didn’t realise he had been stewing in. Wind brushed against his hair in a loving caress, strands tickling his cheek, and he heard the rustling of leaves from the line of trees on the boulevard beneath his apartment. He looked out to see a saturated blue sky, a glaring vibrant colour you get once a summer maybe in Gotham. It’s a perfect day, but Dick can’t get up.
Still, the moment he gazed upon the beauty of nature, even in the middle of the dilapidated city, he felt himself immediately soothed. It felt like a balm on his mind and he felt all his aching muscles and joints relax into the comfortable couch beneath him. His head still hurt, but the throbbing pain seemed to flatten, becoming milder as he breathed in. It seemed so different from the usual Gotham smog that suffocated the air, instead it felt cool in his nose, settling in his chest.
Bruce set a thin blanket over Dick, who turned to give Bruce a grateful look.
Bruce coughed, almost sheepishly, “I may have asked Clark to clear the sky a bit.”
Dick laughed lightly, as much as he could without feeling the ache spread over his body. “Sailors love him, meteorologists hate him.”
Bruce grunted.
Dick said, “I thought you hate him ‘Playing God’, as you would call it.”
Bruce grunted again, watching Dick with a soft look, “I thought you deserved a nice day.”
Dick hummed and turned to look out his large window again, trying not to think about the wider implications of that. “I thought you were gonna make me breakfast?”
“Well—”
His apartment door slammed open and Dick tensed, before relaxing when Bruce didn’t move from his side. He looked over, then a wide grin overtook his face.
“Jay!”