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Jason's stiff fingers ached and shook as he slowly untied his boots and tugged them off of his feet. He knew he should have listened when Dick suggested taking the night off, offering to cover his patrol route but he didn't realise it would be this bad.
It was the rain that did it this time, Jason decided. It was the rain that caused this flare-up, the rain and probably all of the jumping and grappling that he did trying to keep up with the gang member he was tailing for half the evening. He lost that trail anyway.
Somewhere between stripping off his uniform and falling into bed, he'd taken a shower almost as hot as his apartment's shitty hot water system could go, and even that wasn't helping the way it normally would.
“Definitely the rain” He thought as he sat internally debating whether it was worth digging through his wardrobe to find the hot water bottle that he knew was in one of the boxes Alfred packed up for him months ago, or if forcing the movement would just end up making the pain worse.
Jason lay awake for hours just staring at his ceiling, silently cursing himself for not calling tonight off, listening to the storm outside rattle his windows. And it sucked.
It took another four hours of laying still before he could get himself up and into the kitchen to make some kind of food that he didn't feel like eating anyway, standing at his open fridge debating with himself on what he should eat, before settling on just putting the kettle on and setting out a mug to make tea. He would make food in the morning, he decided.
He sat at his table and dug his phone from his pocket, scrolling through notifications and messages, reading the concerned-sounding messages from Dick, timestamped to just after he took a hard landing just before losing the gang member he was trailing. He debated what to message back. Knowing that Dick would be worried no matter what he sent, he decided to just message back a ”yeah whatever Dickhead, care about yourself”.
He knew Dick wouldn't take the aggression at face value, and even if he did it wasnt Jason's problem. In fact, Dick probably would have been more worried if Jason had been nice.
The kettle finished boiling and Jason pushed himself up from where he sat, wincing as his wrists screamed and his knees cracked. It wasn't normal but it was normal for him.