“My middle name,” Dick slurred around red-stained teeth, a split lip making things a bit more crimson than he was strictly comfortable with. “No doctors.” It was a fairly common rule between heroes and vigilantes alike - at least the ones without healing abilities - that unless they were actively dying, there was no need for a hospital. If Richard Grayson went in for treatment, then Bruce Wayne’s Son went in for treatment, making nightly news and a manhunt spurred on in the streets for whomever would deem him worthy to harm like that.
Still, it touched Dick, that even after all of the time they spent apart, Babs still efficiently diagnosed him and began her version of treatment nearly immediately. The throbbing in his side was a dull ache, numbed partially by adrenaline and stress, “Got any thread?” Dick pointed to the sluggishly bleeding hole, now exposed from his suit, hissing when the cool air passed over the wound, “Two stab wounds, one just below the kidney and one just below the liver.”
Naming his injuries had become such a common occurrence for Dick, growing up a hero at Batman’s side, and he remembered fairly vividly for someone whose head was swimming that he and Barbara had been through similar encounters like this more times than he could count. He imagined as Oracle, Barbara was safer now than she ever was at Dick’s side.
A pang of hurt at the thought that Babs wasn’t safe with him.
“You smell good,” Dick hummed, long fingers grabbing for a messy bun of red hair, smiling softly when the tresses looped themselves around the digits and fanned out over Babs’ shoulder. “Miss you.” A delirious smile.
It should mean something, that they could both lay out their anatomy and exactly how a blade could fit within it without thinking twice. He catalogued his injuries like he’d done it before, too many times for either of them to count. She wasn’t shocked because she’d heard it before. She could still hear the way he’d talked her through jumping off buildings, waiting for the grapple line to catch, how to brace herself so their arms didn’t leave their sockets. Even the mundane had a price tag, and everything they did was an exercise in avoiding it.
Dick had dodged right only insofar as he’d avoided his liver. His kidneys. The blood was slow enough to know he hadn’t hit a major vessel, but he was pale and on the edge of delirious and he’d lost enough. Barbara swallowed thickly as she pressed a pillowcase against the exposed wound. “Of course I have thread; hold this here.”
His hands played through her hair and her own stumbled as she rifled through her first aid kit. She had to think: hand sanitizer, thread, needles in sterile packages, betadine...
But his fingers were gentle despite his condition, his voice working around old familiar words. They stumbled around the edges just enough for her to know she had to be quick, to keep moving. To curse the fact that he had to be bleeding out before he’d crawl through her window again, before he’d say ‘I miss you’ without tacking a joke or a deflection on the end.
And curse her if she didn’t want him to say it straight. To say it when he wasn’t asking for stitches. When everything was clear and it wasn’t something laid into the space between ‘help’ and ‘good-bye.’ Curse her if her first response wasn’t ‘I miss you, too’ sitting on the edge of her tongue, like a reflex, something buried working its way up despite her best efforts. They weren’t allowed to say those words anymore, but there he was, and screw the rules.
“Don’t get sappy on me, you’re not that far gone.” Despite the bit to her words, her hands found his wrist where his fingers were wound into her hair. Gentle, finding the steady, still-strong thrum of his heartbeat in the space just below his thumb. She held it there, reluctant to let go. His fingers were warm against her, and they didn’t have to miss each other if they just stayed this close.
"You’re gonna hate this next part. Just do that rambling thing you always do, talk through it.” She let go and tore the suit around his wounds, breaking the seal on the needle and thread. And promptly lost the battle with herself, “And Dick? I miss you, too.”
2087
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