This was given to me as a prompt on Tumblr.
Dick limped up the stairs, clinging to the rail on the side of the wall. He tried his best to suppress the groans of pain that were dying to be torn from his throat. But he only bit the side of his cheek and toughed it out. Another flight of stairs down, only one more to go.
Raven just had to live in a building without elevators, didn't she? Dick thought to himself bitterly.
Just one more flight of stairs, he reminded himself. With more exertion on his part, more than he wanted to give, he finally made it up to the floor that she lived on. He limped the entire time, the cut on his leg burning and his broken ankle screaming in pain.
97 read the apartment door.
Leaning up against the doorframe, Dick pounded on the hollow-sounding wooden door, and listened as he thought he heard footsteps walking towards him.
Oh, please, let her be home, he thought desperately.
His wishes seemed to be answered, for just then the door swung open, and there was a tired looking Raven, dressed in black night clothes and blinking at him slowly. There were bruises underneath her eyes, and crust still lingered on the edges of her lids.
"Dick...?" she asked.
Her voice sounded faraway, and Dick knew that she must have thought that she was dreaming. He offered her a pained smile, leaning forward slightly. The weight he was putting on his good foot was starting to cause cramps, and he wanted so badly to just sit down. Elevate his torn up and broken leg for a little while.
"Can I come in?" he asked slowly. His voice sounded more like a croaking.
"...Uh...yeah, sure..." Raven said at last, and then stood aside for him to enter.
Raven saw him limp his way into her apartment. She closed the door behind them, but not before checking the hallway to make sure no one had seen them. The last thing she needed was for people to know that the notorious Detective Grayson was bunking with her.
Hell only knew what can of worms that would open up.
"So what can I do for you?" Raven asked, spinning around to look at him.
Dick had gone to sit on her couch, and then prop his leg up on the coffee table. He was groaning in pain, his eyes squeezed shut as he tried to fight off the worst of it. It was clear that walking up three flights of stairs had done him in, and now he was paying for it tenfold. Dick waited for the pain to get under control, so he could finally talk to her and tell her what was wrong.
Raven waited patiently.
She sat next to Dick on the couch, quietly observing him. Her eyes were swift, taking in all of his body and zeroing in on his leg. She could sense the trauma there, that lay hidden beneath a pair of jeans, and then his Nightwing suit.
"Let me see," Raven told him, no longer able to just sit idly by.
Dick didn't put up any protest. Slowly and with care, Raven was able to get the jeans off of him. Then she started pulling down the pants of his Nightwing suit. She hissed in surprise and horror. Even with the sloppy bandaging job he'd covered himself with, Raven could see the dark stain of blood seeping through the white gauze.
"What did you do to yourself?" Raven asked him.
"Got stabbed," Dick groaned and croaked. "Knife went deep into my thigh, and then I broke my ankle jumping out of a window. It was on the second story of the building. Drug bust went bad, and there weren't any bushes to break my fall."
Raven said nothing for the longest time, only laid her hands on his thigh and started undoing the gauze. A forlorn look of pain deepened in her eyes as she began to see the extent of his wounds.
"You don't have to go through a death experience just to get on my good graces again," Raven told him. It was a sad attempt at lightening the mood.
"It's not a death experience," he snapped.
"Really?" Raven asked, unwinding the final strand of gauze from his leg. "The amount of blood tells me otherwise." Already a pool of blood lay beneath his leg, thick droplets dripping to the floor to add to the spill.
"Can you heal it or not?" Dick barked at her.
Raven didn't flinch. She knew the pain must have been eating away at his patience and calm. Not to mention, the last time they'd seen each other it had ended in a fight about his physical state, and about the risks he was taking.
"Yes, I can heal it," Raven told him.
She summoned her powers to her, the a calming blue light filled the room as her powers bled from her hands and into the air. She placed her healing hands on Dick's leg, and focused. Rebuilding all the torn muscles, the split blood vessels, soothing the tortured nerves. Dick's groans and moans of pain started to subside as she did so.
"Does Batman know about this?" Raven asked suddenly.
"I don't know," he replied, sounding exasperated. "World's Greatest Detective. He should. Probably does. You know him. Detection. All that." Dick was rambling on and on as Raven continued to heal him.
When the stab wound was stitched up, she moved down the ankle. It was indeed broken, and she thought that the angle of his foot didn't look quite right. Though, if she was only glancing at it instead of staring at it, it would have been unnoticeable. She had to straighten his foot before she could put the bones back together.
"I'm gonna have to reset this," Raven told him.
"Okay..."
"It's gonna hurt. A lot," she warned.
Dick still seemed indifferent. He shrugged, as if to say, What can you do? Raven looked from his pained face down to his foot, and then back up at his face.
"On the count of three," Raven said as she propped his foot on her lap, her hands curling around his sole.
"Just do it!"
"One...two...three!"
He nearly screamed. And then tears started seeping from his eyes as he pounded his fists into the couch and bit down so hard on his lip that blood welled from underneath his teeth.
Great, Raven thought. Another wound for me to heal.
Dick whimpered the entire time she was treating his ankle. She placed the bones flush against each other, then with her blue healing magic saturating his body, she sewed up the torn tendons and ligaments that had been destroyed. Then the soft cushions of fat around that. Then the muscles, and finally the nerve endings.
A sigh of relief escaped him. It rasped and echoed throughout the tired little apartment she lived in. For the longest time, Dick did nothing but bask in the relief. Raven let her hand rest on his still-propped-up foot. She didn't realize it, but her fingers were softly stroking the top of his foot.
Dick did notice, however.
He leaned his head back up, and gave her a wicked smile.
"What?" Raven asked him.
"Nothing," he said coyly. The way he was looking at her, Raven knew that he thought the answer should be obvious. But it wasn't. Not quite. "Thanks for the doctoring," he added.
"No problem," Raven replied.
"So...uh...Rae," Dick said, leaning forward. His now-uninjured leg went back down to the floor. He leaned in close to her face, and Raven could feel his breath against her skin. It felt nice. "I was hurt pretty badly-"
"That's an understatement," she cut him off.
"Yeah. An understatement," he agreed. "So, it's probably a good idea for me to keep some weight off of it. Not travel a whole lot after I just got it healed."
"What are you getting at?" Raven asked.
"Maybe I should bunk here for the night, just to get some rest."
Raven smiled back at him. "Sure. You sleep here." Dick smiled and leaned back on the couch. "But not there. The couch isn't very comfortable," she said. Dick only gave her another wicked smile in retaliation.