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All things considered, Dick thinks tonight wasn’t that bad. It was great, actually. Certainly not as bad as Bruce is making it out to be.
“It was reckless,” Bruce growls, trailing Dick around the cave with his dark fur standing on end while the younger springs towards the lockers. He hides the wince of each bounce with practiced ease.
“It was a success,” Dick counters, taking off his mask and equipment. “No hostage casualties, civilian casualties, no police casualties, not even any aggressor casualties,” Dick lists off on his paws after turning to face the wolf again. “And we’re still walking. I’d count that as a success.”
Bruce growls and reaches out quickly, pressing hard against Dick’s bicep and forcing a whimper out of the rabbit before he can swallow it back. “ This is not a success.”
Dick bristles once he controls his pain, his long ears pinching back and tail twitching. He bats Bruce’s paw off him, stepping into a defensive stance. Bruce is aggravatingly right. Dick failed to disarm one of the bombs in time, and got caught in the blast radius. The explosion didn’t cause significant structural complications and no one was affected thanks to him, but it still stung to know that even though he did everything else right, Bruce still harped on the one fault in Dick’s actions. “If I wasn’t there, someone would have died,” Dick spits, paws clenching into fists.
Bruce, unable to argue against that point, growls and pulls himself to his full height, towering over the smaller, but that scare tactic has never worked on this rabbit. Dick rolls his eyes and turns his back to the predator, pulling his burnt suit off himself and changing into something more comfortable while Bruce seethes right behind him. Dick can feel the huffs of his hot breath against his nape, but doesn’t bother turning around.
Eventually, Bruce gives up and stalks off with a huff to put away his own equipment, and Dick is left to release a shaky breath and calm his excited heart. As his adrenaline levels return to baseline, he’s left feeling the pulses of pain against the side of his body exposed to the blast. Looking in the full length mirror, he takes account of his dirtied coat, tinged with soot and little bits of rubble, and the abrasions and surface burns that singed the fur off. He sighs, touching the scrape on his cheek with a wince. Everyone is alive. Success.
When he makes his way back to the center platform of the cave, he finds it populated by one Tim Drake. Sniffing the earthy air reveals that Bruce is still down here somewhere, though Dick doesn’t expend more energy figuring out where exactly, too focused on finishing up his report and ending the night.
“Locker room’s open, y’know? Suit will fuse with your fur if you keep it on too long,” Dick says, sitting beside him at the computer and pulling his legs up under him with only slight discomfort.
“Thanks. Didn’t really want to get in the middle of… whatever that was,” Tim grimaces, tail twitching back and forth against the cave floor anxiously. Dick snorts in agreement. Thankfully, Tim was taking care of a bank robbery uptown at the time of the incident. He lets the sound of typing fill the air before speaking up quietly. “I don’t think Bruce meant that you failed.”
Dick sighs, bobbing his head around noncommittally, uneager to explain or argue the nuance of Bruce’s unattainable standards. He settles on, “It’s complicated,” and internally winces thinking about how many times he must have said that exact thing to Tim regarding Bruce.
Tim’s ears flatten for a moment—in disappointment or sympathy, Dick can’t tell—before he shakes out his fur and slinks out of his chair to change, leaving Dick alone at the console.
It isn’t too long before Dick catches Bruce’s scent getting thicker and thicker, until he knows the wolf is right behind him. He’s unsure whether to expect more scolding or more silently radiating disappointment, so he lets out a squeak of surprise when sharp teeth grip the skin on the back of his neck and pull him out of the chair instead.
His arms and legs tuck close to him involuntarily, and he curses Bruce for pulling such an underhanded ploy. Bruce had scruffed him often as a kitten, but only a handful of times as an adult, making Dick release an irritated mutter. At least Tim wasn’t here to see the humiliating abduction.
Bruce is swift and determined as he carries Dick upstairs to the den, and Dick represses a shiver as Bruce’s hot breath wafts across his sensitive nape again.
The den is dark and dry and warm, in stark contrast to the damp, cold, clinically lit cave below. A fire is kept burning on the room’s hearth and thick carpeting spans the surface of the floor. Bruce wastes no time circling a spot in front of the fire and curling around his quarry, only releasing the rabbit’s neck when he’s sufficiently trapped around the wolf’s bulk.
Dick grunts his annoyance at his kidnapping but makes no move to free himself from his captor. Dick isn’t angry at Bruce. Well, not that angry. He has been angrier. This was nothing. A non-issue, in the grand scheme of things. Being surrounded by Bruce’s scent and warmth has felt great since he was a kitten, and Dick was very willing to forget their little tiff in the cave if Bruce didn’t continue his lecture here.
No, this wasn’t a place for conversation. In here, words were seldom exchanged. It was a refuge for the pack, a place of peace and rest no matter the interpersonal issues. Causing a disturbance in the den was forbidden, even for this volatile clan.
Bruce noses his way across Dick’s head, snuffling about and prodding his snout there for any tender spots. Dick closes his eyes and relaxes, paws sinking into Bruce’s thick coat as his head is inspected. Bruce’s tongue flicks out to wet a patch of dirty fur near the base of Dick’s skull, nibbling lightly to remove bits of gravel stuck to the fluff. Dick squirms at the ticklish sensation and can’t help the soft laugh that leaves him, but is quickly pinned into further submission.
Right. While some may treat this bonding activity as playful, Bruce treats it with as much gravity and seriousness that he treats everything with. He holds the bunny down while he finishes cleaning off the soot from his head, licking once more for good measure before easing up to inspect the injured side of his partner.
Dick’s left arm, flank, and thigh are the main points of injury. A small amount of dry blood sticks to the fur surrounding the abrasions, and more soot and dust cover his entire side. Bruce huffs in obvious admonition, but Dick ignores it, eyes closed and body stretching to ease Bruce’s access.
Bruce starts on Dick’s arm, tentatively passing his tongue along the sides of the wound to moisten the dried blood and take it from his fur. He’s slow and methodical in his process. Some drags of his tongue are so agonizingly slow Dick whines at the prolonged sensation. When Bruce is satisfied with the perimeter of the wound, he starts in on the abrasion itself, characteristically gentle.
It doesn’t hurt. In fact, having wounds tended to in this matter is incredibly relieving. Bruce uses just the right amount of pressure and saliva to cool and soothe the burn, not to mention Bruce’s heady scent and the weight of his attention solely devoted to the task.
Dick sighs. It really shouldn’t feel this blissful.
Too soon, the ministrations lose their soothing factor and start slipping into soreness. The repeated dragging against his bare flesh is reaching a sort of tender level, and Dick whines and pushes at Bruce’s big head to stop.
Bruce grumbles, giving it one last lick before reluctantly pulling back to look for another spot to take care of.
The thing about Bruce is that he licks way more than is necessary. If not pushed away, Dick is sure Bruce would continue on that spot for hours, or until he licks him raw and Dick starts bleeding anew.
It’s not purposeful, that much is obvious. Dick would call it instinctual, the kind of trance Bruce goes into when cleaning his wounds– eyes closed, ears lowered, chuffing against his skin and fur– if not for the fact that he never spends such an unnecessary amount of time licking the other’s wounds.
As Bruce gets to work licking at the side of Dick’s ribcage, Dick gazes at the fire and ponders why their pack leader is so incessant with his wound cleaning. He shutters as the long tongue goes over each bump of his ribs, long since knowing at least two reasons.
The first is an opportunity to soothe in a way he’s never able to in words.
The second is because it feels good for himself.
Licking at wounds is a form of stress relief that Bruce is very well acquainted with, and had abused liberally when his pack was hurt. Bruce’s cleaning of Dick’s wounds as a kitten was just as thorough. Jason seemed to receive similar treatment as a pup, though he refuses any inkling of it nowadays. Tim insisted on being self-sufficient and licking his own wounds, even as a kitten, though Bruce is still able to strongarm him when need be. Steph, Cass, and Damian all take Bruce’s inspection and cleaning without much complaint, but it’s obvious the procedure is clinical compared to what Dick is having done right now.
Jason once earned a snap of Bruce’s jaw for claiming that the wolf was tenderizing his dinner.
Dick purrs as Bruce gently laves the spaces between his rib cage, snuffles the fur on the outside of the burn, takes his sweet time wetting the area and making Dick melt under him. He nuzzles his face against Bruce’s thick fur in appreciation for such careful attention.
When the spot on his side starts feeling too sore, Dick pushes on Bruce’s muzzle and receives a defiant huff in return, Bruce’s ears pinning back in irritation. Dick doesn’t back down, pushing on Bruce harder until the wolf relents with a low whine.
Dick squirms further up the carpet to direct Bruce’s focus on his thigh, which seems to sufficiently distract him.
Dick kneads against Bruce as he begins taking care of the damage on his thigh, grinding his teeth in content. With this angle of Bruce around him and leaning toward his thigh, Dick has new access to the canid’s own scrapes, and wastes little time in lapping at a laceration with his small tongue.
Bruce’s tongue pauses mid-pass when he’s licked, and a soft growl joins the sounds of crackling fire, but it’s an empty threat, and Dick continues as if nothing happened. Soon enough, Bruce’s lapping resumes.
This is the other oddity about Bruce. He only lets Dick clean his wounds, albeit not always without complaint. Ever since his tenure as Robin began, Dick has been returning the favor and soothing Bruce’s ailments. He only realized the discrepancy when he saw the agape faces of the rest of the pack after Dick cleaned Bruce up one night after a Justice League mission.
They continue in companionable silence, pausing momentarily when Tim slinks in and curls up among a pile of pillows and blankets nearby. Dick’s urge to nuzzle against the young kit and groom him before bed is strong, but with all his muscles so relaxed within Bruce’s surrounding fluff and bulk and his injuries being so carefully tended to, it’s impossible to tear himself away.
When the stroking against his thigh becomes uncomfortable, Dick squirms and huffs against Bruce’s shoulder. Thankfully, he takes it graciously and stops, sighing heavily and resting his head right atop of Dick’s.
He’s covered bodily under Bruce, safe and so warm and secure. With his muscles and mind so relaxed, it’s impossible to resist sleep when it pulls for him.