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“I’m dying.”
“You are not dying.”
“This is it. It’s the end for me. I bet I have some exotic viral disease with no known cure and now I’m going to waste away into nothingness.”
“I highly doubt that, Master Richard.”
Alfred removed the thermometer from his mouth.
“What’s the verdict, Doc?”
Alfred gave him a look that was at once unimpressed and endeared. “One-hundred-point-seven.”
Hmm. He’d thought it would be higher than that.
“Get some rest, my boy.” A cool hand passed his head, brushing the hair off his sweaty forehead. “I’ll be back in a couple hours to check your temperature again. Call if you need anything.”
“Thanks, Al,” Dick said.
The door swung behind Alfred, left open just a crack, no doubt so he could peek in on him later.
Then Dick was left alone in a dim room with nothing but his own thoughts, misery, and a loose thread on the duvet to occupy him.
It sucked.
His head was pounding, his throat was sore, and his skin was the kind of oversensitive that made both wearing clothes and not wearing clothes uncomfortable. The blankets were too hot but the air of the bedroom was too cold, so Dick was basically in hell.
He was pathetic. And all because he lost track of what month it was until flu season was at its peak and one of his germy little gymnastics students - whom he loved very much - had coughed their diseased air all over the gym.
Dick wanted his mom. He wanted his mom in the way you always want your mom when you’re sick. The handful of memories from his early childhood illnesses wavered unhelpfully in his mind. He missed his mother’s quiet humming of songs he couldn't remember the words to anymore. He missed the way his father would pile spare bedding on the cot around him until there was more blanket than boy. He missed the card games Psychic Gina would play with him during shows when his parents had to leave his side. He missed Big Johnny, who would sneak into the tent and slip him a glass of bourbon to relax.
It had taken the better part of a decade for Dick to realize that Big Johnny had actually been giving him apple juice with a little cough syrup mixed in and telling him it was bourbon to get him to sleep.
He missed the way there were always people around, a constant rotation of friends and family making sure he was never alone.
Of course there were always people going in and out of the manor. But everyone else in the family was reclusive by nature, more inclined to send a text message - or a carrier pigeon on one memorable occasion - than to drop by in person. Dick was doomed to suffer through the rest of his sickness in a too-big, too-empty, too-warm bed trying not to go insane from forced isolation-
“Dick.”
“ Jesus!” Dick jerked upright, pressing a hand over his hammering heart. He shot an exasperated look at Cass who had managed to make it 5 feet from his bed without being noticed. Even on his good days, Cass could pull one over on him. In his weakened and distracted state he didn’t stand a chance. “You just about scared me to death, Cass!”
“Oops.” The mirth in her eyes betrayed her complete lack of remorse. She crossed the last few feet between them and loomed over him in a very Bruce-like fashion. “How are you feeling?”
Dick flopped back onto the bed, dizzy from the sudden movement. He gave Cass a weak smile. “Peachy keen, jelly bean.”
And that response earned him a look. One of those Category 5, stare-into-your-soul, super intense looks that always made Dick feel like his skin was made of cellophane and anyone could look straight through it to his insides. Alfred was a connoisseur of those looks. Bruce had never quite gotten it down, but at some point Tim and Damian had, and the rest of the family was often victim to their unnerving, I am mentally dissecting you stares.
Dick wondered if Cass had learned it from them or if they had learned it from her.
He opened his mouth to ask if she wanted to sit down, but he didn’t get a word out before Cass whirled around and zipped out of the room without a sound. Just as quickly as she’d appeared, she was gone, and Dick was alone once again.
He deflated into the mattress.
Cass’s brief visit made the following isolation that much more miserable. It was like someone had sucked all the color out of the room. A violent shiver wracked his frame and he yanked the duvet up, bundling himself up in it like a burrito.
-
It was hard to tell how much time passed after that. With the curtains closed and the only light in the room coming from the lamp on the bedside table, he couldn’t even tell what time of the day it was. The light of his phone screen had seared his retinas and reignited his headache last time he checked, so Dick was uninterested in repeating the process just to figure out whether or not it was still afternoon.
The sheets grated against his skin like sandpaper, but that didn’t stop him from tossing and turning. It was too quiet.
Sleep was just barely tugging at the edges of his vision when the air shifted.
“Dick?” Bruce’s voice was soft and low from the doorway. “Cass said you needed some company.”
The instinctive I’m fine, no need to worry about me response on the tip of his tongue was immediately garbled by a jaw cracking yawn. It gave Bruce enough time to cross the room, his figure casting a shadow over the bed.
It gave him a distinct sense of déjà vu.
“How are you doing, chum?” Bruce asked, gingerly lowering his weight onto the side of the mattress. It dipped and Dick slid towards him, shoulder pressed to the side of his thigh. He lifted one hand and dropped it onto his head, pushing his sweaty hair out of his face. His touch was warm and dry and soothing against his aching scalp.
A sigh slipped past his lips without his permission. “Better.”
Bruce hummed. “I’m glad to hear that.”
The comforting touch lifted from his head and without realizing it, his hand shot out to stop its retreat. Bruce’s pulse thudded faint and steady against the heel of his palm. He could have broken Dick’s grip with ease, but instead he rested his hand back on the top of his head.
“Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’m not going anywhere.”
Reluctantly, Dick released him and Bruce slid fully onto the mattress, back against the headboard, his leg an immovable line along Dick’s body.
The fabric of his slacks was rough to Dick’s raw skin, but that didn’t stop him from leaning in. Blunt fingernails scratched at the nape of his neck before resuming their path through his hair. The constant motion lulled him into a light daze until the sound of scuffling forced him awake once again.
This time when he pried his eyes open, it was to find Cass dragging Damian through the door by his wrist.
“Cassandra, I swear if you don’t release me-”
Cass took the cue to let go before she ended up with teeth marks on her arm, but she didn’t stop walking until she was clambering over Bruce’s legs to land on Dick’s other side. Dick was an adult, and well adept at caring for himself, but he couldn’t deny how consoling it felt to have two of the most dangerous people in the world boxing him in.
“Come,” Cass ordered, waving Damian over.
“I don’t want to get you guys sick,” Dick protested, despite the fact that if they actually did leave, he thought he might cry.
Damian made that face that was half way between an eyeroll and a stilted attempt at sincerity. “My immune system is not so susceptible to common viruses.”
“Also, we all remembered to get our flu shots,” Bruce added.
“ Alfred remembered our flu shots,” Cass corrected.
“Oh. Well, in that case-” Dick stuck out his arms and made grabby hands at Damian, “-you totally have to come cuddle me.”
Damian’s face scrunched up. “I hardly think that’s necessary.”
“Cuddles are healing,” Cass said.
Dick nodded, then stopped when it made his head spin. “You’re legally obligated to get in this bed before I shrivel up like a raisin and die.”
Damian gave him a flat stare.
Dick gave him the puppy dog eyes.
3…2…1…
“ Ugh, fine.”
Dick grinned in triumph, scooting back into the curve of Cassie’s body to make room for Damian between him and Bruce. With a fair amount of grumbling and an elbow to the sternum, the lot of them got settled, a bundle of bats in a bed.
The collective body heat succeeded in chasing away the chill that had plagued him since his diagnosis. There was a natural rhythm to the breaths pressing on either side of his torso, accompanied by the legato strokes through his hair. It was hard to focus on his aches and pains when he was surrounded by the physical proof of how loved he was.
The room didn’t feel so empty and gray anymore.
-
“Well, isn’t this just adorable?”
Dick forced his eyes open for the millionth time that day. He didn’t remember falling asleep, but his heavy limbs certainly did.
“Jay?” He croaked, lifting his head about an inch off the pillow before giving up on that endeavor completely.
There was the click of a phone camera and a familiar warning growl from the teenage boy in his arms.
“Relax, viper. I’m just here to deliver a gift from the spleenless wonder. He sends his condolences for having an immune system too shitty to visit,” Jason said. Dick could tell when he was close by the shadow that fell over the bed. Something long and plush was set across the top of them and Dick fought the pull of unconsciousness to examine it.
It was two or three feet long and forest green. There was a tail. Lizard? Crocodile. Alligator? He could never remember the difference. He knew one had a pointy snout and the other had a round one, but he couldn’t recall which was which. Whatever.
A band of neon orange captured his wavering attention. It coaxed a memory of a lifetime ago from the recesses of his brain, the fuzzy recollection of a night at the county fair years back, before Jason had come back and before Bruce had disappeared, before Cass or Damian was even part of their family, back when it was just Dick in his ratty apartment grieving his brother and missing his dad while being generally angry at the universe for his shit luck.
Tim and him hadn’t been very close yet, but one night some member of the Justice League or Teen Titans had been in town for a reason he couldn’t remember and Tim had convinced him to take the night off and go to the Gotham County Fair with him. He’d phrased it in a way that made it seem like Dick was doing him a favor, but in retrospect it was definitely part of his master plan to end Dick’s self-imposed isolation.
Regardless of the cause, the two of them had spent a glorious two hours surrounded by neon lights and the smell of fry grease and it had reminded him of his childhood in the best way. And after spending way too much money on a rigged carnival game, Dick had won a silly stuffed crocodile and promptly gifted it to his new little brother.
The felt was faded from age and frayed from affection, and the fact that Tim had kept it after all that time kind of made him want to cry.
“Whelp,” Jason said, snapping him out of his reverie, “Have fun being sick, I guess. Try not to die.” He spun around and made for the door.
“Wait,” Dick cried, except it was less of a cry and more of a rasp. “Don’t go.”
Jason turned around and gave him a flat look eerily similar to the one he’d gotten from Damian. “I’m not joining your cuddle pile.”
Dick stuck out his bottom lip and batted his bleary eyes the best he could. “Read to me?”
There was a moment of silence in which Dick was certain Jason would just say, “Perish,” and leave. But surprisingly enough, he let out the most put upon sigh before dragging the desk chair over to the side of the bed, snagging a random novel from the bookshelf on his way. “Just until you fall asleep, alright? I’ve got things to do today.”
“Deal.”
Jason flipped to the first chapter and began reading. Dick wasn’t really paying attention to the story, but the gentle rumble of his little brother’s voice put him at ease. He felt comfortable and safe and cared for. Being sick sucked massively, and there was no real replacement for his mom and dad, but he wasn’t alone.
Dick let his eyes close for the last time that evening, falling into a deep, restful sleep, from which he would wake surrounded by his family.