Work Text:
Gotham's Eastside Park was not, in general, the safest of places, but today it was significantly more perilous than usual.
Mostly due to the huge ticking time bomb strapped to the underside of one of the wooden tables in the park's campsite. It had taken Nightwing roughly four minutes of fiddling with the wires before he decided that it would probably be easier and quicker to just evacuate the area instead. The bomb contained enough C4 to impact a radius of about fifty meters, most of which were trees and bushes anyway. All Dick had to do was move the people.
So with five and a half minutes still on the clock, Dick started running. The boy scouts setting up tents just past the trees? Instructed to head back another hundred yards, and to leave all non-essentials. The hiker couple just starting out on a walk? Turned around to the other direction. The trio of teenagers sharing a joint behind a thicket? Pointed towards an alley where nobody would bother them.
That was everyone he had noticed, but Dick darted back one more time. Just in case. The bomb was still counting down, but if he'd missed anyone… How much time did he have left to check? He glanced under the table and blanched. Five seconds.
No time, then. He had to run.
Dick turned on his heel and sprinted for the invisible perimeter. He could only hope he'd actually gotten everyone. The park was never too populated in early evening, so it felt like he'd successfully cleared the area, but Dick knew he'd never forgive himself for not disarming it if anyone was hurt.
Too late to change his mind now.
The timer must have reached zero, because behind him, the bomb went off with a crack like thunder. The explosion rattled the branches on the trees and sent Dick flying with its shockwave. He landed hard in the dirt. It didn't look like anything was on fire, though, and he hadn't died, so overall… it could have been worse. A couple of flattened ferns wouldn't cause long-term consequences.
His body hurt where he'd hit the ground, but slowly, slowly, he managed to climb to his feet. The world was muffled around him. Dick could barely hear himself groan as he leaned on a signpost, breathing heavily. Disorientation was the worst.
But the good news was that he didn't seem to be overly injured. A little bruised and scraped from the fall, sure, but nothing was broken. His worst injury seemed to be that his ears were now ringing, drowning out all other sounds around him. It had only been a few seconds, and it was already annoying him.
There wasn't anything he could do about that besides wait for it to go away, though, so Dick forced himself to head for where he'd told the people he'd evacuated to go. He had to make sure they'd all gotten there safely and were okay.
The boy scouts and their leader were indeed waiting where he expected. The conversation didn't last long—Dick could barely hear them—but their lips moved like they were thanking Nightwing, and the headcount matched with what he remembered, which was good enough for him. Time to head back to the Cave and debrief Batman.
Hopefully, he'd be able to hear by then.
And things did seem to be getting better as he pulled his bike into the Batcave and parked in his usual spot. It had been a solid thirty minutes since the explosion, and he could now make out the muffled noise of Bruce asking him what had happened. The pressure in his ears was still an unwelcome distraction, but he could understand well enough. Dick replied with a brief rundown—that'd he'd tried to defuse it, but decided it was safer to clear the area, and had done so with no casualties except a few bruises on himself—to which Bruce nodded sharply.
"I see," Bruce said, voice obscured behind a layer of ringing that only Dick could hear. "We'll have to add a refresher on bomb disposal to the training roster, I believe, but good job today."
Training. Dick apparently couldn't escape it even by becoming Nightwing and moving to another city. Still, he nodded.
"Will you be staying for dinner?" Bruce continued. "Alfred is making pork tenderloin with butternut squash and asparagus shoots. There's always a seat for you."
"I can't," Dick replied, already turning back to his bike. "Gotta get back to Blüdhaven before it's too late."
"Understood." Bruce sat down at the Batcomputer, probably to gather information for his own patrols later. "Let me know if you need anything else. Otherwise, I'll see you Saturday for Damian's art show?"
"Wouldn't miss it for the world." Dick plastered on a grin.
And with that, he headed back out onto the streets of Gotham. His ears, annoyingly, were still doing their best impression of a glockenspiel. It was a miracle he'd been able to focus on Bruce's words at all—which was a large part of the reason he'd declined dinner. Trying to hold an actual conversation in his current state would be torture. It was far simpler to head home where nobody would try to speak to him.
But he hadn't exactly been telling the truth about heading back to Blüdhaven, either. He'd been caught in an explosion, and still bore the scrapes and bruises from that. Surely nobody would blame him for skipping patrol for one night. Besides, the distraction of the constant ringing would keep him from the top of his game anyway. So Dick was now on his way to Leslie's clinic. It had now been over an hour since the bomb went off, and he still couldn't hear properly. It was better than it had been—and thank goodness for that; if it wasn't Dick might have been seriously afraid—but it was still far from good. And if there was anything she could do to help, Dick didn't want to put it off even a minute longer.
Unfortunately… there wasn't much she could offer. Dr. Leslie Thompkins set down her otoscope and gave him an apologetic smile. "Well," she said, "your eardrums appear to be fine. It seems like the explosion gave you some tinnitus from the loud volume, which isn't fun, but it's not dangerous, and I highly doubt it will be permanent. Come back in a week if it isn't resolved by then."
A week? Dick desperately hoped that she had given him a longer range than she expected. He didn't know what he'd do if he had to put up with the ringing for seven more days. Even seven more hours felt daunting. But Leslie couldn't offer him anything more—apparently tinnitus was just one of those things they couldn't do much about—so he left the clinic with a cloud over his heart and bells blaring in his ears. He slid his earbuds in, turned on some music to drown out as much of it as he could, and started for home.
The music actually did help somewhat. It both drowned out the ringing and distracted him from what he could still faintly hear, which was just enough to keep him from actually going insane. But Dick was exhausted, and couldn't stave off sleep forever… and he couldn't sleep with headphones in, either. He'd tried a few times before—when the Titans were traveling and sharing hotel rooms and Beast Boy snored—but the plastic hurt his ears when he lay on his side. So that wasn't going to be an option. Blasting music on speaker loud enough to piss off his neighbors probably wouldn't be good for his ears' recovery either.
He tried the ringing silence for all of five minutes before deciding that was also not viable. Great. Just great. If he couldn't sleep, he'd be an absolute wreck, and it would probably take longer for the tinnitus to go away in the first place—thus making everything worse.
That didn't leave many options. One did come to mind, but… it was a big ask. He needed someone he could trust. Someone who might agree and not be annoyed at the favor. And Dick didn't want to bother her.
Still, he didn't have any better ideas, so he reached for his phone. At least it wasn't unreasonably late to call. "Hey, Kory," he said when she picked up. "Weird request, but, uh… there was an explosion today, and—"
"Are you hurt?" Starfire's voice was filled with unmistakable concern.
"No!" Dick said quickly. "I’m fine, mostly. A couple of bruises but you know how it is. Nothing serious. The only problem is that the explosion was really loud, and my ears haven't stopped ringing yet. Is there any way you could stay on the phone with me until I fall asleep? Your voice would be amazing to hear instead of the tinnitus."
She laughed. "One moment." And then she hung up, leaving Dick to frown at his phone wondering if he'd done something wrong, until he saw a streak of orange and purple heading towards his window.
Dick opened it, a smile on his face despite himself. "I said over the phone would be fine, Kory."
Kory gave him a playful look as she landed on his carpet. "In person is much better, I believe. Am I mistaken?"
"…No. But I didn't want to burden you and make you fly over here."
She reached out a hand, gently caressing his cheek. "You are never a burden to me, Dick Grayson." Her hand drifted lower, to the collar of his t-shirt, tracing along his collarbone. "Now. You wished for me to distract you?"
Dick blushed. He leaned in and gave her a quick kiss, savoring the soft sweet taste of her lips, before taking her hand and lifting it off of him. "Tempting," he said, "but I really am tired. If you're still here in the morning, perhaps you could distract me from the ringing that way then? But for now, I really just want to hear your voice."
"Do not worry. I have no plans to leave. I eagerly await the sunrise and your rested state." She lay down on the bed, on her side, propped up on an elbow facing him. "I have some very long Tamaranian poems I can recite to help you fall asleep, if those would be more suitable?"
"That would be perfect." Dick joined her on the bed and wrapped his arms around her.
She returned the embrace, holding him tightly. And with her warmth pressing against his body, silky hair against his face, and honeyed timbre of her voice as she began to talk, the distant ringing didn't matter one bit.