Work Text:
"What are you doing?" Dick's voice makes you freeze, your fingers lifting from the keyboard of your laptop as you stare at him over the screen.
"I'm resting," you say slowly as your fingers begin typing again, the clicking sounds filling the air as you keep your eyes trained on him. Dick crosses his arms, the knit sweater he's wearing stretching across his shoulders as he frowns.
"You're not," he says pointedly. "You're working."
"From bed," you defend as he moves towards you swiftly and reaches for your laptop. "I'm in bed at midmorning on a weekday. This is resting."
"This is not resting," he says quietly, standing next to you and tapping his foot a bit impatiently as you type away, polite enough to let you finish whatever it is that you needed to be working on. "This is working."
"It's not working if I'm doing it from bed," you argue stubbornly, letting him pluck the laptop from your hands gently and press a slow, soft kiss to your forehead.
"It's work no matter where you do it, babe." You grumble at his words, watching as Dick closes your laptop and places it far enough away that you can't reach it from bed, throwing a loving, long-suffering glance over his shoulder at your antics.
"I don't feel that bad," you push. "I can do a bit of work."
"But you shouldn't," he bites back gently, moving back to you to push you gently into the pillows, pulling the blankets up around you and tucking them in painstakingly. "You need to rest, babe, or you're not going to get better."
"I've been worse and rested less," you quip back, but you let him bury you under blankets nonetheless, shielded under the weight of comfort. "I'm ok, baby."
"You will be," Dick says stubbornly, shooting you a hard look. "And I'll make sure of it. Why do you think I took the day off, huh?"
"I thought you just did that because you love me," you sniff indignantly, and you're rewarded with a gentle kiss to the crown of your head and the feeling of Dick's laugh against you.
"I do love you," he points out easily. "That's why I'm doing this." He leans back then, rocking onto his heels as he assesses his handiwork and deems it acceptable. You watch him as he does, a stubborn pout forming on your lips at his steadfast determination. But then he smiles in that charming, lovely way of his and smooths a hand over your hair.
"I want you to rest now," he says quietly. "Sleep a little if you can."
"It's the middle of the day."
"I'll close the curtains." You huff at his words yet again, rolling over so that your back is to him and watching as your bedroom is blanketed in darkness, the curtains behind you drawn shut. It muffles everything, you find - just a little bit. Makes the world outside feel a little slower, a little further away.
"Do one more thing for me?" You mumble, your face mostly buried in a pillow.
"Anything," is Dick's quick response, and he moves around the bed swiftly to crouch down next to you, his brows drawn together and jaw taut. You reach forward to smooth a palm over his cheek, thumbing at the spot between his eyebrows gently until the tension subsides.
"Stay with me?" You ask quietly, your voice small in a way that has him reaching for you, smoothing a hand over your shoulder and cupping the back of your neck. "Just for a while."
That's all it really takes, of course, to have Dick clambering into bed with you, pulling back the covers just enough to slide into the warmth next to you and tuck you against him. You curl around him, letting your face press against his chest as he wraps his arms firmly around you, keeping you locked to his side as he drops kisses against the crown of your head, over and over and over again.
"I'll stay with you all day, angel," he says softly, his voice muffled against your hair. "That's not something you even have to ask for."
"I don't… like this," you say haltingly, pressing your face further into his sweater, listening to the steady beat of his heart and letting the warmth from his skin bleed into you.
"I know," he offers.
"I don't like being… stuck like this."
"I know, baby," Dick sighs as he says it, a sympathetic sort of thing as he holds you closer, tightening his arms around you and smoothing a hand over the back of your neck, keeping you firmly pressed against him - as if you'd ever want to be anywhere else.
"And I'm sorry for giving you such a hard time," you continue slowly, your voice catching ever so slightly. "I know it's… I know you're just trying to take care of me. I'm sorry."
"You don't have to be sorry for that, babe," and Dick says it so easily - like loving you is easy, like caring for you is simple. "I'd take care of you every day, you know… now until forever."
"But you shouldn't have to," you push. "I shouldn't - I shouldn't need it." Dick smooths his thumb over your skin where his hand stays firmly on the back of your neck and hums lowly at your words.
"We all need it sometimes," he says slowly, like there's a trap that he knows he's walking into but he can't avoid.
"I'll remember that the next time you don't let me help you," you quip back, sure enough - and he feels it like a snare around his ankle tightening. He finds, in a slow, soothing sort of way, though, that it feels a lot less like being trapped and a lot more like being loved. Dick finds, as he holds you to him and lets you poke his ribs chastisingly, that he doesn't mind being caught here so much.
"I don't know what you're talking about, babe," he laughs against you, feigning ignorance with wide, innocent eyes. You reach up to flick him on the forehead, though, and he repays you by grabbing your hand and pressing kisses to the pads of your fingers. The sounds of the city rage on outside, muffled by the closed window and the drawn curtains, and the world seems to tip and slow and settle for just a moment around you - seems to offer some sort of peace, just for a second.
"I wish you didn't have to, is all," you say quietly. Dick just smiles, beaming down at you in that lovesick sort of way that he's mastered.
"I don't," he says easily. "I mean, I love you healthy, of course, but that's because I love you happy. Baby, I mean it when I say I'd do this forever. I'd help you keep yourself whole every day for the rest of our lives if that's what you need."
"What if I never get better?" You ask it haltingly, small and slow as you pick at the threads in his sweater and feel him smooth a hand up and down your back.
"Then we'll have a lot of days like this. Not so bad, right?"
"Just like that, huh?" You huff out, but your lips twitch up into an almost smile and he catches it, returning the effort with a shining smile of his own.
"Just like that," he confirms easily, and a sliver of light shines through the curtains into your bedroom, a stripe of white cutting across Dick's face as he looks down at you. It lights him up, you think slowly, like some kind of angel. Like something holy here on earth.
"Well, for what it's worth," you quip quietly, and his shoulders relax a bit at the mirth that's begun to seep back into your voice. "I hope we don't have to spend the rest of our lives like this."
"Whatever you want, babe," Dick shrugs easily, leaning down to kiss your forehead ever so gently. "Whatever you need."
And as the light passes through the crack in the curtains, as it shines across his face and trickles down onto yours, you think that you probably have everything you need right here in this moment, shut away from the rest of the world and the way that it spins on and on and on. You probably could, if you wanted - if you needed . You probably could spend the rest of your life just like this.