The knock at the door, while unexpected, didn’t get questioned. One of their helpful neighbors bringing the boys leftovers. Or someone needing to borrow a cup of… something that the boys maybe had in their pantry. Or could they get Dick or Jason to help them reach something that was up high? This wasn’t Blüdhaven. This wasn’t Gotham. Their neighbors were (mostly) good people.
Flowers? Very unexpected. Dick frowned at the bouquet left at the base of the door, leaning out to listen for any retreating steps since he didn’t see anyone there. The frown deepened but he scooped up the vase in a smooth motion and nudged the door shut with his foot, his free hand blindly finding the deadbolt. Just because it wasn’t Blüdhaven or Gotham didn’t mean they were stupid enough to just leave the door unlocked without reason.
“Hey, Jay?” Dick called out with a tone of curiosity, turning the flowers to look for a card. He leaned in and caught the scent which was a pleasant smell but Dick Grayson was an idiot of epic proportions. How often had they gone up against Poison Ivy, for example? Which was the last thought he had just before his body hit the floor like a discarded doll. The vase tumbled from his limp hand, spilling water as it rolled away and dislodged the arrangement. Well. He hadn’t slept in nearly thirty-two hours…
The hump got Jason's attention from where he was cleaning a gun in his room. "Dick?"
When he got nothing back, he put his gun down and pushed himself to his feet. "If you're fucking with me, I'm going to fuck with you back even harder. You know that, right?"
Still no response, which made sense with Dick laying on the floor like that. Jason noticed the flowers on the floor immediately; he wasn't an idiot, he put two and two together on that one pretty fast. His heart was in his throat when he knelt beside Dick to check for signs of life.
When he found them, he breathed a sigh of relief. Okay. It was okay, Dick was fine, he was just... asleep? Yeah, a little weird, but nothing immediately dangerous. Not to the point where he couldn't do a little research before he took action.
"Well, Dickybird, this isn't the worst scrape you've gotten into, but I never had to deal with the others." Jason pulled out his phone and pulled up the network. Maybe someone would know what to do about this.
Feb 4: Sunday Morning…
Dick awakened with a violent jerk of his body, primed for a fight.
"Oh, hey." Jason looked up from his bean bag chair to where Dick had been laying, still on the couch in case he needed to have Quentin come back to take another look at him, see if the curse had changed. "You're up."
He pushed into a sitting position and felt every muscle in his body protest, like he had been asleep for a good twelve hours. Maybe more, if he thought long and hard about it. He also had no frame of reference for what that actually felt like and he winced as he shoved a hand through his hair.
"What-" Holy shit, his voice sounded like gravel without even trying to do the Batman voice. (The Nightwing voice wasn't as bad and he would argue that point into the ground.) "What happened?" he tried again and focused on Jason. He felt parched; nothing dangerous but, again, like he'd gotten a solid and deep sleep in. A coma kind of felt like that, actually. Without waiting for Jason to answer, Dick experimentally poked his own thigh. Okay. Muscle mass seemed to be fine.
"Cursed flowers," Jason told him, like it was no big deal, just another day in this weird ass building. "You've been out for three days."
Not too long. Longer than a normal sleep, but as far as curses went? It was kind of a vacation. Aside from Jason having to buy a bean bag chair to have another place to sit... yeah, it hadn't really impacted their lives much. He'd called Dick in sick to work, which... "If anybody in the real world asks, you had strep."
A nice, normal story that also explained why Dick couldn't talk to his boss on the phone.
Why did Cursed Flowers seem normal? Dick took Jason at his word because, really, what else was there to say? "Oh, good," was what was apparently left to say, "I always wanted to revisit strep."
Dick pushed himself up off the couch and immediately regretted it as his blood pressure dropped and he swayed. That had less to do with whatever could have gone medically without him being under actually-professional observation and more to do with his getting fully vertical too quickly after being horizontal for so long. His stomach growled and Dick pressed one hand there as his other reached out to steady himself on the arm of the couch. He was fine. Dick didn't even need to wave Jason off; the other would have been watching and there was a whole range of 'fine' to 'not-fine' that would make most people faint if they heard what it encompassed. This was like a two on a scale to ten.
"I'm going to soak in the tub," he announced. "Can you order in--shit, what time of day is it? I want carbs. I want carbs so bad right now," Dick went on as he made his way toward the bathroom. He looked stiff. Which, okay, it was Dick. That was also a broken sort of scale when balanced against the average person.
"Pizza?" Jason called out after him. Look, it was carbs and grease and everything that Dick probably needed after being unconscious for three days.
Well. By some standards. There was probably a bland meal that would give him all the nutritional value he'd missed out on, but pizza tasted better anyway. And he had the app for a local pizza place on his phone already, so...
God, he loved this city.
February 13…
The knock on the door came not long after Jason's network post. Part of him already knew, okay, he already knew what it was. He'd reminded whoever was out there fucking with them that he hadn't been hit by this yet, and here it was. No big deal though. Like he'd said, all he had to do was not smell them. Easy. He could just...
Yeah. Okay, that was a plan. Jason pulled his shirt up over the lower half of his face as he moved toward the door. It wasn't the best mask, but it'd do in a pinch. All he had to do was block out the scent long enough to get them to an area with better lighting. Then, he could call someone to come look at them (Quentin, whispered a traitorous little voice in the back of his head) and they'd have a live curse to check out.
Pretty pleased with himself, Jason opened the door and looked down to see, yep, an arrangement of flowers. He held his breath and picked it up, a double layer of protection just in case. He moved quickly, but smoothly, and placed them carefully on the kitchen table. So far so good... Jason retreated across the room before tugging his shirt down from his face.
What he hadn't counted on was how far the scent of the flowers would carry.
"And aren't you a thick slab of meat?" a little voice with a thick cockney accent asked from beside his ear.
Jason turned his head slowly to see a tiny figure hovering in the air, clad in a little dress that looked like it was made of leaves and flowers. "Fuck."
"Little scrawny down bottom, though," the fairy (because that's what she had to be, right?) continued. "Didn't anyone ever tell you not to skip leg day?"
"My legs are fine," Jason argued.
"Are they really though? Can you even see them past that oversized torso?" The fairy fluttered a little closer. Jason swatted at her instinctively and felt immediately bad about it. Except, apparently he didn't have to, because his fingers passed right through her.
"Don't look none too bright either," she added. "More muscle in your arms than in your brain."
"Brains don't have muscles," Jason pointed out.
"Right, and you'd know that, being so smart, wouldn't you?"
Jason sighed. "Are you just going to be mean to me for... how long?"
"Long as I want, meathead."
"Right. Okay. Just..." Jason reached for his phone with a sigh. Looked like it was time to make an edit to his last post.
The laughter that came from Dick's room said everything and he appeared in the doorway immediately after responding with the cheeky make me complete with sparkle emoji. He was in only sweatpants because he'd been doing yoga and other flexibility stretches and his arm let him lean casually.
"What happened, little wing?" Dick asked, grinning with all the mirth that was pure Dick Grayson in his eyes.
"Shut up," Jason told him, pointing at him as if there were any way he'd be talking to anyone else. Well...
The buzz of the fairy's wings as she fluttered closer was even more annoying than her tiny voice. "Now he's the handsome one. What happened to you, short end of the good looks stick?"
Jason sighed. "We're not related, okay?"
"Never said you were, you got wax in your ears?"
The Shut up was absolutely what he had been going for and his broad grin said as much. And then it flickered and faded as Jason continued. Dick's expression went into the curious range with the smallest of frowns. We're not related, okay? The frown deepened.
"Who are you talking to?" Dick asked, pushing off the wall fluidly with the usual cat-like grace. The words hadn't been meant for him, that much he knew. Because of course they weren't related by blood. And that was what related meant. Dick approached slowly but there was no caution in his body language, like he was concerned about Jason having mentally lost it or was a danger to Dick.
"The... you can't see her?" Jason jerked a thumb toward the fairy that he thought was in a fairly obvious place beside his head, buzzing and flitting around.
"No one but you, big boy," the fairy told him, gleefully. "As far as all the rest of them are concerned you're just talking to yourself. They say it's the only way to have an intelligent conversation but, well, in your case..."
"She's right here," Jason insisted, tone vaguely pleading. "Oh shit, unless the flowers are making me hallucinate. Fuck."
Dick stopped at a precise distance away from Jason: not within his personal bubble but also not just outside of the man's reach if he launched into an attack. It was the best Dick could do in the moment as he watched Jason gesture at air and insist that he was talking to a her. If the pleading tone hadn't been in Jason's voice, even with as vague of a hint as it was, Dick might have been tempted to tease and shift back into their usual mode of giving each other shit over anything and everything. "It's okay if they are," he said quietly, folding his arms across his chest. "Whoever she is, I can't see her. That doesn't mean you aren't. I can't hear her and, again, that doesn't mean you can't. But you know you're not crazy so it'll be fine. We know better," Dick said, firm and unyielding in that belief. The joke to be made about their sanity was right there, ripe for the picking. "What's she saying?"
"...you know what, it's probably better that you can't hear her," Jason told him.
The fairy snorted. "Why, 'cause you know he'd agree with me?"
"She's not very nice," Jason said. The words had teeth. He just... maybe if he didn't respond to her, she'd stop? If he just ignored her…
Dick really, really hadn't meant to bark out a laugh but it slipped out anyway. "She's not very nice?" he asked, hands dropping to spread in a vague gesture. "Who have we gone up against, Jay? We've heard the worst that anyone can dish out. Alfred probably gave us the worst tongue lashings and all he had to say was two words and one of those was our names."
He stepped forward, all relaxed swagger. "So get your head in the game, little wing and ignore the shit out of her. You've ignored better all your life," Dick pointed out.
"They weren't as high-pitched," Jason pointed out, but he straightened his shoulders and ignored the next insult being flung his way (something about pitching his... you know what, nevermind, he didn't want to process the rest of that). "Shut up, Dick, I never said it bothered me. Just didn't want you to feel like you had to defend my honor."
He wasn't going to call Jason out on that. Actually, on second thought-- "Oh. Sure. I'm positive it isn't bothering you," Dick smirked, all sass in his tone as he didn't drop his eye contact. Push Jason's buttons. Get him to focus on Dick. The fact that Jason hadn't called him a name was what had bothered him for that half-second of considering whether or not to push Jason.
The smirk turned into a full grin. "Do you want me to defend your honor?" Dick offered, a mix of challenge and laughter in his eyes.
"You fucking asshole, I don't need you to defend my anything," Jason insisted.
And yeah, he knew what Dick was doing. He was well aware that he was playing mind games with him on that one. But... it was kind of nice of him to try.
"What's worth defending?" the fairy asked. "You ain't got nothing worth the trouble."
Alright. There was the name. It was uncreative but it gave him a taste of Jason's headspace; sure, they had a seriously messed up relationship but they were both trained by the world's greatest detective and understood mind games. The small things, the big things, the little things that one could catch in the heat of a moment.
"So. We're dealing with something with the flowers," Dick said, calm and solid and he was within reach, "and you aren't playing the role of Sleeping Beauty like I did. We know the flowers are a myriad of things and this one is apparently in the form of a fairy that only you can see and hear." Logic was easier to deal with than magic. "Want to sit around here and deal with it or want to see if you can lose her on the bikes?" Dick asked, his grin all challenge and sass now. What Batkid could resist some speed and the danger that tended to come along with said speed? Maybe Jason could outrun the voice. At least for a little while.
Even if the fairy managed to keep up, Jason would bet that she wouldn't have the breath for insults. And if she did? The chances of him hearing her over the wind were pretty low. So... yeah. Dick had hit that one pretty much perfectly.
Jason's smile was frankly terrifying. "You know what? I am feeling a need for speed. Let's take a ride, Dickiebird."