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Dick blinked himself awake. Then he blinked again, just to watch the colors swirl.
“Hey buddy, how you feelin’?”
Someone was talking. Dick tilted his head, even though it was very heavy, to the right. Oh, there they were. Dick smiled at the man sitting on a chair by his bed. He was wearing a…
“Hat,” he supplied, feeling proud when the man laughed, dragging a hand down his face.
“Yeah, you probably feel pretty amazing right now, don’t you?”
Dick did feel pretty amazing.
“I feel,” he started, but then there was a door, and it was opening, and an actual angel appeared.
“Ah, you’re awake. About time, Dickhead, pretty sure Baby Bat was about to stage a revolution.”
Dick didn’t care about anything but this guy’s face, even when the man paused and just met his eyes for a long while. Not long enough.
"Why are you– why’s he staring at me like that?”
“Beats me, man,” Shush, hat. Angel was talking. “He’s on some serious drugs.”
Irritated, Dick flapped his hand (more like flopped it) at the man in the hat, shushing him. He wanted to touch that white spot in the hair. It looked soft.
“Are you soft?”
He had to know, it was vital.
“What?”
Hat was laughing again but Dick let him. Hat didn’t matter. Angel looked good (he looked bewildered). He wasn’t answering Dick’s question though, so he tried to reach for the white but his arms weren’t long enough.
He expressed his displeasure (he whined like a toddler) and tried in vain to reach Angel who sat down heavily on the other chair in the room, immediately to Dick’s left. This meant that Dick could now reach his leg. It was a good leg.
“I like your leg.”
Angel’s mouth was hanging open so Dick smiled at him. Hat chose this moment to fall off the chair and Dick’s head was so heavy but he still managed to turn it to look. He couldn’t see Hat anymore and got worried.
“Hat?!” He tried to sit up but everything was too heavy. A freckled arm held up the hat, waving it where he could see it, so he calmed down. Hat was okay. “He’s okay.”
“He sure sounds like it,” Angel remarked grumpily, almost too quiet to be heard over Hat’s gasping laughter.
“Oh man, I’m never letting you live this down, Dick.”
Hat was getting up, but Dick had fingers. He had… a lot of them. Several. Many.
“Aight, I can’t handle this. I’m gonna let the rest of the Batclan know that he’s awake, you’ll stay with him, right? Right. Bye, Dick!”
Hat was gone, but Angel was still sitting with him. Dick smiled besottedly at him.
“Are you gonna be here forever?” was what he tried to say but he started coughing in the middle of it. Man, his throat was dry.
“Here.”
A straw was in front of his face. He crossed his eyes to try to look at it but decided to put it in his mouth instead. The water felt good on his dry throat, and he made sure to tell Angel about it. Did Angel have a name?
“It’s… I’m Jason, Dickie.” Jason. Jason was smiling a little and Dick was in love, he was sure of it.
“Are we dating?” he asked, and Jason’s face turned red. It reminded Dick of the colors he’d seen when he first blinked. “There are a lot of colors, Jason.”
“Damn you, Roy, leaving me alone with this…”
Jason sighed, covering his face and Dick didn’t like that so he pouted. This time Jason was close enough that he could touch his hair. Startled, Jason jerked his head up from where he’d buried his face in his hands, elbows resting on his knees.
“You’re very pretty, Jason. I like you.” He grabbed his hand. It felt rough but he liked it anyway, even though he wasn’t sure why. He felt sleepy again. “I’d give you anything…”
“Go the fuck to sleep, Dick.”
He liked the way Jason said his name so fondly, and drifted off with a smile on his face.
———
When Dick awoke again everything felt much less floaty. He gave a pained groan and lifted a hand to rub at the bridge of his nose. Damn, but his head ached.
“Are you with us?”
Blinking against the fluorescent lights, he looked to his left where he found Barbara peering at him over her glasses. There was a computer resting on her lap and a mug of tea, still steaming faintly with heat, on the table beside his bed. He recognized the room as one of the surgery recovery rooms at the manor.
He opened his mouth to give an affirmative but only a dry croak came out. Setting her laptop aside, Barbara leaned over to grab a bottle of water from the mini fridge built into the side table. She put a straw in and he smiled gratefully at her when she placed it within sipping distance. Once he didn’t feel like his throat was made of sandpaper he replied,
“Yeah, I’m with you. What happened?”
Babs put a finger over her mouth, giving a meaningful glance to the window opposite her. When Dick looked over, he found Damian sleeping curled up on the window sill, mouth slightly open and looking his age for once. Dick sent him a fond look before turning back to a softly smiling Babs.
“You got hit by some debris and had to go through surgery. Nothing major, by our standards. The doc’ll go over what you’re not allowed to do for a few weeks,” Babs explained in a quiet voice. Dick was about to ask her to elaborate when the door opened and Roy entered.
“The Hat is back!” he proclaimed with a grin, making Damian jerk awake with a startled noise. “Whoops, sorry, kiddo.”
“Tt. Your voice is grating, Harper.”
Damian gave him a solemn nod and Dick tried his best to return it without giving in to the urge to coo at how cute his little brother was, all flustered and trying to hide it.
“Grayson. It is good to see you awake, and in full command of your sensibilities. I shall inform Pennyworth.”
With that Damian left the room, leaving Dick mildly befuddled.
“My sensibilities?”
He was not reassured by Roy’s answering grin. Quite the opposite. Barbara laughed and picked up her computer again, tapping away.
“Well, you see… when a certain love struck bird is on a rather high dose of painkillers…”
As Roy laid out Dick’s drug addled antics he had to struggle not to just roll off of the bed and straight out the window. He had hit on Jay? And like a complete idiot, too! Great! Fantastic!
“Ugh,” he groaned. “That’s it, I’m never gonna be able to look him in the eyes ever again.”
“Probably not, yeah,” Roy said, cheerfully. Dick groaned and shoved his head underneath the pillow, praying it would be enough to choke him to death.
———
If Jason came by the manor while Dick was bedridden he didn’t deign to visit, and for that Dick was glad. Maybe they’d be able to laugh the incident off, but as more time had passed, the blurry half hour he’d spent alone with Jason had come into focus.
He had been deeply embarrassing, and stupidly obvious, if one knew how to look. And Dick wasn’t confident that he could act like he hadn’t meant every single word he’d said.
“I’d give you anything…”
Yeah, no. Dick grimaced. That one would be hard to explain away, wouldn’t it? He pushed it out of his mind for later contemplation, preferably scheduled for never, and got off the elevator when it stopped on his floor. Fumbling his apartment keys a little, he tried to focus on deciding which prepared meal (supplied by Alfred, of course) he’d heat up that night.
He’d been released from his forced bed rest only three days previous, and was feeling a little lonely in his empty apartment. Damian had been not-so-subtly suggesting he get a pet for months before his surgery and had only gotten less subtle while Dick was confined to the manor. Or at least that was how Dick had chosen to interpret the fact that more often than not he’d woken up to Alfred the cat purring on his chest.
Still, the fact remained that Dick lived alone, and he kept such unreliable hours, what with his Nightwing persona taking up most of his nights, that having a pet would be selfish and careless. In fact, it was because of their shared lifestyle that he’d never suggested that Jason get a pet even if Dick thought it would be good for him and oh damn it, there he went, thinking about Jason again.
With a sigh, he placed his keys in their usual spot beside the door before toeing out of his shoes. He hung up his jacket, and moved toward the kitchen, not noticing at first that there was someone reclining on his couch in spite of having turned the lights on when he entered.
“Seriously?”
Dick spun around so fast he was distantly afraid he’d just reopened his wounds. Jason was sitting up, sans helmet and domino, and raising an eyebrow in incredulity.
“What if I’d been an axe murderer?”
“Did you come in through the window in civvies?” was what came out of Dick’s mouth.
Jason shrugged dismissively.
“No one saw. Probably.”
He was putting on an air of nonchalance. Most people wouldn’t have been able to tell, but Dick had been trained in body language from a young age, by the very same man who had trained Jason to control his. Jason was faking, covering something up.
Dick latched onto that mystery with something akin to desperation, anything to distract him from his mind blaring alarms about how Jason looked so good it was criminal, and oh, wouldn’t he look just delicious in handcuffs? Stupid brain, being stupid and unhelpful.
“So, what brings you here, Little Wing? Something you need?”
And now Jason was also being uncooperative by having the audacity to blush. Adorable. Utterly inconvenient.
“Actually, I wanted to talk. About, you know…” Uh-oh. Involuntarily, Dick tensed as if to prepare for an attack. “I was talking to Babs about it, and then I talked to Roy, and, you know, they said things…”
Dick did not know. What the hell? The adrenaline ebbed away, leaving him mostly confused.
“What?”
“Do you actually like my leg? Legs? Even when not on drugs?“
Jason scratched his head, looking equal parts confused and embarrassed. It worked for him though, and was that a hint of hopefulness he detected? Could it be? Emboldened, Dick couldn’t help but blurt out,
“Yes!” Well, alright. Time to face the music. “I like, uh, all of you. Actually.”
Timidly, he shifted his weight from foot to foot. What if he’d misread the situation? What if Roy was gonna pop out with a hidden camera any second, and his confession would go viral, open for mockery across the world?
Jason was staring at him. The moment stretched on, until Jason’s face broke into a grin. Was this going to be the hidden camera reveal? Dick tried to subtly check behind the couch. Could that shadow be someone hiding there?
“Dickie…” Jason’s awestruck voice drew his eyes back to his fellow vigilante. “I like all of you, too.”
Oh. Dick’s worries melted away as swiftly as they’d come. He started to grin, and Jason let out a delighted laugh, stepping closer.
“Well, besides your absurd love affair with that awful cereal, but I’m willing to overlook that.”
“Very big of you,” Dick laughed, wrapping one arm around Jason’s neck, pulling his head down into a soft kiss.
Jason laughed into the kiss and Dick felt like he was full of bubbles, like the world had been dull and gray, but now it was full of swirling colors.