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“And that’s enough for you.”
Bruce watches as Dick snatches the champagne glass from his hand and takes a sip. “Excuse me, my ladies, I’m borrowing him from a moment.”
“What is it?” Bruce asks in a hushed voice once they made it out of the gala crowd.
“I just got word from RH. They found info on you know who. He and BG are moving tonight.”
Bruce nods. He trusts Jason and Steph with the case, and the rest of them are stuck here anyway. Still, he’s grateful to be kept updated.
Dick finishes the flute glass and looks at it with a grimace. “You would think,” he says a little louder. “This kind of event would have some decent champagne.”
And that could have been it.
That interaction could have slipped out of Bruce’s mind if he hadn’t, a few hours later, found Dick in his bathroom, head down the toilet.
“Alcohol poisoning?” he asks.
Dick gives him an unimpressed look. “You think I would let myself get alcohol poisoning?”
“Food then?”
Dick shakes his head. His hair is plastered on his face and Bruce instinctively goes to fill a glass of water. “Everyone else seemed fine.”
Dick takes the offered glass of water with a shaky hand. He washes his mouth, then tentatively takes a small sip and gags. “Maybe it’s just poison poisoned. I knew this champagne tasted weird. Stupid.”
He takes another sip of water, but even that seems too much as he groans and puts his head back in the bowl to gag loudly. “I got poisoned for you,” he whines. “Be grateful.”
“I am,” Bruce says with a smile. “Need a cold compress?”
Dick gives him a small nod.
Bruce gets away to fetch a compress. He’s not away for long, but the second he enters the bathroom again, he sees Dick looking at him with big, tear-filled eyes. “B,” is all he says before he has to heave in the toilet again.
The compress falls on the floor.
Dick is kneeled down, arms around his midsection, body spasming uncontrollably.
There is blood flowing between his teeth.
Bruce is next to him in one second. Before that, he thought it would just mean a bad night to ride it out. Now, he knows it’s more than that.
Dick must know it too, because he clenches Bruce’s shirt for dear life.
“I’m here,” Bruce says. This is my fault, he doesn’t say. It should have been me. “You’re okay.”
Dick shakes his head. “It hurts,” he says, and he spasms again in Bruce’s arms. The next thing Bruce knows, he’s covered in blood. Like that night when he was eight, he’s covered in the blood of a loved one.
But he’s not eight anymore. He’s not that little boy anymore.
“Hang on,” he says. He activates the distress signal. Red Hood and Batgirl are out. They will be able to help. “Don’t fall asleep. Stay with me.”
He’s not eight anymore.
He’s capable.
He’s Batman.
He will save his son.