Who:Dick and Zee When:Recently before the genderswap plot Where:His apartment Warnings/ratings:None, low. STATUS:Complete~
It was really quite mystifying how completely inept some of the most important people in her life were at taking care of themselves. Dick especially - and perhaps they weren’t romantically involved anymore, but Zatanna loved him, she probably always would, because when you did love someone the connection remained. It just changed sometimes, it shifted, it became something else. But it didn’t break, necessarily. And for her, she was a person with a large, warm heart who had quite a bit of love to give anyway. She wanted them to be friends and she wanted to actually speak to him.
She also wanted him to remember to eat and sleep regularly, but beggars could not be choosers.
Wearing a garden party sundress, since the weather was still pleasant enough to do so, one calm and clear night - on the night she said she wasn’t going to take no for an answer, essentially - she showed up at his apartment and knocked on the door (rather than simply appearing in his place; she knew he was still a little twitchy about her magic). He’d gone home as soon as someone at the station took care of the scum in custody, and he better have held himself to that promise. Or else she would find him. Really, she would.
Don’t test her, Grayson.
Of course Dick hadn’t come straight home. How could he? This was Dick Grayson, unable to ignore someone in need even while he was burning up. It’d earned him a nice shiny bruise beneath the eye, but hey another criminal was behind bars for a few hours. It was just petty theft as far as he knew. Normally he was better than this, he should have been able to dodge that fist that’d come at him but his vision was so blurry he was seeing things in doubles.
The stairs up to his apartment seemed like a mountain with convenient grip rails. Everything ached, but he wasn’t expecting anyone’s help so he continued to push himself. He got to the final stair when he saw her standing there before him.
“So I wasn’t hallucinating that conversation?” He grinned cheekily but it looked rather miserable.
Zatanna turned, the look on her face less than impressed - pouty lips pursed into a thin line, and her hands went to her hips, set to reprimand, but all that came out was a syek and she had the keys to Dick’s apartment in her hand. His door was unlocked, and she ushered him inside. “No hallucinating, but it has been too long since we’ve spoken,” she said, and Zee supposed that she was partly to blame for that. It took two to tango, after all.
Once inside the familiar space, she realized it seemed kind of lonely and empty - Dick hadn’t been spending much time here, likely. She was right, he really did work too much.
“Sit somewhere,” she insisted. “I’ll make tea.” A wince. “And get you a bag of peas or something to put on your eye.” Actually, she’d heal it right now, but she wanted him to get comfortable first. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”
“I wasn’t sure that we were talking.” He admitted as she opened the door, which was better because in that moment he really wasn’t sure where his keys were. He’d forgotten she still had keys, but he didn’t feel a need to ask for them back either. They’d ended on decent terms, but he had been pretty damn lonely since then. His apartment didn’t do much to help that feeling. It was now only a roof, some place to sleep when he wasn’t at work. He had a few new things from the dreams spread out on a simple wooden round table, but aside from that not much had changed since Zee saw it.
He sank onto the couch with a sigh and rubbed a hand through his hair, it felt all sticky and gross thanks to the fever. “You don’t have to do this you know.” He said over his shoulder, if it was awkward for her he didn’t want her to be stuck there. “I’ll be fine at some point.” The memory of being shot however was still rather vivid in his memory and it was a little less jarring with someone near by. Dick just didn’t want to put anyone out.
“Heh I have no idea what’s in there for the record.” He responded as far as frozen things went, he didn’t bother eating much at home.
Tsk was the sound Zatanna made in response, and after she began boiling water for tea (he needed fluids, and she had packets here somewhere - she knew because she’d left them, even if it wasn’t the loose leaf variety that she had in her own home) she settled next to Dick on the sofa, tucking her legs up underneath her. He looked awful, feverish and flushed and sweaty - of course, he shouldn’t be working when he was a walking germ factory but there was really no point in telling him that.
“Well, we’re officially talking,” she said, fingertips passing over his hair briefly, to attempt to fix some of the disarray. “And I am officially around for you if you need anything. Including the task of helping to make you look like something other than a hot mess.” Those fingertips pressed to his face, gently where the bruise was - and the were heated, they glowed slightly as she murmured a mih laeh to take care of the shiner. Colds were tricker, but luckily in her handbag she had a healing potion from Elaine, which she’d dump into his tea when it was ready.
For all his late nights and terrible food habits it was a surprise really that Dick didn’t get sick more often. However it was rare with him. He was in impossibly good shape and it made up for a lot of his self neglect. His head felt like a sack of bricks as he held it in his hand when Zee came over. “There were a few times I almost called you, but you wanted space.” He tried to respect that, though he spent a few nights worrying about things especially during all the recent insanity.
“S’okay.” He didn’t know what he was saying that to, but he didn’t care. His body ached, but comfortable in this apartment wasn’t a thing that happened. He hated this apartment. It just reminded him how alone he was. He hadn’t made much effort to reach out to anyone after they broke up, hell even Roy hadn’t known and that was one of the few friends he’d bothered making. He just wasn’t one to talk about his personal life much.
His eyes closed for a moment as she touched the skin to heal the wound. “I didn’t want to come back here.” If he came back it would have just been to be alone, and he was tired of that feeling. This place only echoed it.
“Remember when you told me to take care of myself, Richard?” Zee asked, holding his face and looking carefully to make sure that the black eye, and all traces of purple, were gone completely. They were - no bag of peas required. “The opposite is true for you too. You have to take better care of yourself. It’s important.”
She got up from the couch, as the water finished boiling. Tea steeped, a soothing chamomile with a little bit of honey and cinnamon (it was good on its own for helping with sickness), she carried the mug to him. “Drink this, then go right to bed. I brought something to help you sleep, as promised.”
Just her words, really. But it would be a deep, dreamless sleep to help him replenish. Something he sorely needed.
“Doesn’t seem it.” He said with little hesitation. He didn’t care much at all for his own well being. It was difficult to when all he had to return to was an empty apartment and an endless job. In fact he’d actually started wondering lately if this job was his real calling. Sure he got some satisfaction helping people, but most of the time they just slipped through the system and wound up back on the streets no matter what he did.
There was no magic behind the shiner he’d gotten, it faded away fairly easily with Zee’s skill. Her touch on the other hand lingered like a phantom, and Dick rested his head in his hand. He’d considered moving back to New York, but hadn’t told anyone. “Yeah, sure.” He reached for the tea with his other hand. “I’m not even sure magical sleep will actually be restful.” Even as he said it he cracked a strained smile, nobody liked a downer after all. “Nevermind, it’s the headache talking.”
Zatanna pursed her lips, relaxing on the sofa a little while Dick drank his tea - she’d watch him like a hawk too, in order to ensure that he got down every last drop. Then his cold would dissipate and he wouldn’t be so hazy after a good sleep. “You can’t keep going on like this, you know,” she informed him. “Something has to change. I don’t want you to be miserable.”
Why would he stay there, in a rut? It didn’t make sense - he was too young, and had too many talents to just waste it all and be caught in gloom. And while she fervently believed that something should change, she wasn’t sure what. Only Grayson knew that.
“I’m okay, I’ve got work.” Most of the time work kept him out of his rut, but lately it hadn’t been. Lately he was unhappy but not sure how to change it. “It’s what I’ve always wanted to do and it’s..” he didn’t finish it immediately, instead he looked up at her. “I don’t fit there.” He was good at his job, but something was out of place.
“I was fine there until these dreams happened. Now I have no idea.” He admitted, he found himself daydreaming often at work wondering if he shouldn’t just take the law in his own hands. He had the skill and ability to, but he spent the last few weeks trying to convince himself that justice wasn’t found at the top of some rooftop. It wasn’t working out well.
Having work was probably part of the problem - if Dick wasn’t content with his job, then it would affect every other facet of his life too. “You can figure out where you belong,” Zee said quietly, in her worldly and knowing way. “That’s...the beauty of this place, I think. It feels like it takes so much sometimes. But it gives as well. This extraordinary life we’ve been given - a window to an extraordinary world.”
Not that Gotham was anything cheery. Stained with blood, dirt, dust, sorrow - it all sank down deep into the very soil, and no one person could keep the city clean. But to see who they had been there, well, it opened your eyes.
“Just don’t give up. Make choices and make more, choose to be happy. Experience it all.” Now was the time.
"The way you say it makes it sound easy. " He was second guessing everything recently. The system seemed like it should work but it had major flaws, Dick was seeing them from both sides of the law, the grey middle ground wasn’t an easy thing for him to stomach. Being a cop was something he'd wanted since he was a kid and his parents had died. He wasn’t ready for a career change, or black and blue tights but the urge to accept them as a way of life was so strong stove days it felt impossible to ignore. Today was one of those days.
He'd been fighting the dreams a while now. "Damian and the others call us the bat family now. " finger quotes for emphasis on bats. "I've spent my entire career by the book. Now it seems like it's out the window now. I don't know what choices to make here, this used to make me happy..." He couldn't even finish the tea in one sitting, he just felt queasy.
“Maybe it’s just not as complicated as you’re making it out to be,” Zatanna said, and while she wouldn’t define anything as easy here, by any stretch of the imagination, it still didn’t have to be rocket science. If you knew something wasn’t right for you, then it wasn’t right. “Listen to your heart, your gut instincts,” she advised. “They’re usually not wrong. There must be something, if you keep constantly going back to the questions.”
Grabbing the half-drunk mug of tea, she shooed Dick off to bed. He’d gotten most of the healing potion into him - she wasn’t so stubborn that she’d pour it down his throat, but she would ensure he actually slept well. No wonder he was such a mess - his brain was on overload, it couldn’t take much more stress.
He hadn’t talked to anyone really since they’d broken up. Dick found it difficult to be so open about things. He’d been upset of course, but it wasn’t so much the case anymore. He was mostly confused. Every bit of him said he was supposed to be a cop his entire life, but now he was seeing things quite a bit differently these days. He wasn’t so sure that was what he was supposed to be doing.
Dick didn’t protest to the idea of bed this time around. He didn’t bother undressing, he was too fried to do much at all. “Very little has made sense since all this started except that I missed you.” He was a bit delirious, not everything he said was going to make sense, but that was true. He missed Zee nearly constantly. He’d thought of calling her up a few times, but never knew what to say.
“I miss you too. And I want us to be friends, Dick, if it’s possible. I want you to be happy also.” Truly, she did. Perhaps that happiness wouldn’t be found with her - besides, Zatanna thought that there were many things he had to sort out first, before he could actually get there. Things she couldn’t rush him on, things he had to discover and do on his own.
When he flopped into bed, she fluffed the pillows and got him comfortable - shoes off, shirt off too, it literally disappeared with the right spoken word. He was probably too fried to notice that also. “Just rest now. That’s all you need to do.”
With that, her fingertips touched his forehead. Peels, she uttered softly, and he’d be out like a light.
He’d hit a rough patch between the dreams and losing Zee, but the fact that she came by gave him just a little hope that maybe things could at least go back to normal at some point even if they weren’t just then. “Yeah..I don’t like not talking.” The happy thing, he’d work on it. Something had to give he just wasn’t sure what yet but he had a little more hope that things would even themselves out. He liked being around Zee, even if it was a little uncomfortable. She still managed to make him smile.
She wasn’t kidding with that magical mojo, the second she spoke it felt like everything just lifted away. All the fuzz of the day was gone and he was left with nothing but a peaceful darkness that engulfed him with ease.