A Man NOT Gone with the Wind
There was no other logical explanation. He'd lulled them into a false sense of security last night, then run as soon as they were asleep.
Wally cursed under his breath, fists clenching at his sides. He'd been so sure after their conversation last night that Dick would stay, that he wouldn't go all solo-Bat on them again.
That maybe they could work together on this one.
Conner responded to Artemis' request for help by flipping his middle finger in her general direction. It was surprisingly accurate, given that he still had his head buried beneath a mound of blankets.
The super-clone was usually grumpy in the mornings, but not this grumpy. That, and Wally'd thought the guy had a soft spot for their absent vigilante. He could at least pretend to be concerned for Dick's safety.
Evidently Conner didn't care, especially if his flaunted middle finger was anything to go by.
"Wally, I need you to use your speed and check the nearest streets. If he left recently, then he couldn't have gotten too far and there's still a chance we could find him."
"Right," he pulled himself upward, kicking out of the rest of his blankets and glancing around for some proper clothes.
Artemis froze for a moment, then spun away from him. "And put a shirt on before you leave. You'll distract traffic."
He frowned, looking down at himself. He'd honestly forgotten he wasn't wearing one. And how could he 'distract traffic'? With his pale skin? "Uh, okay."
Kaldur facepalmed from his place in the kitchen and muttered something under his breath about oblivious idiots. Wally's frown deepened; was he being insulted? But why?
"Hopeless," the Atlantean muttered under his breath before stepping out from behind the kitchenette countertop. "Alright, Artemis can check the roof for him while I—"
The door popped open, creaking on its hinges as the object of their search stepped inside, wearing pyjama pants and a pair of bulky headphones. There was a toothbrush sticking horizontally out of his mouth, one hand lingering on it as if the motion were an afterthought.
They all froze—except Conner, who was still buried under the blankets with a sleeping M'gann.
It was the first time in awhile Wally had seen Artemis truly speechless.
The man padded over to the kitchenette sink, his limp even more defined than it'd been last night, and pulled his toothbrush out. He spat, then glanced up at them all.
He slipped the headphones off slowly, like he'd been caught doing something illegal. Which, given who they were dealing with, was entirely possible. "Whaw's with all your faces?" He spat again; voice much clearer when he spoke. "You lose something?"
They stared, stunned into silence, before M'gann sat up from where she'd been asleep seconds before and smiled at him. "Good morning, Dick. How was the couch last night?"
He spat again, seemingly unbothered by their stupefied expressions. That, or he was just used to them.
(They were stupefied quite a lot, to be fair).
"Not bad. A bit stiff, but that's to be expected."
Artemis finally regained sentience, her eyes widening as her system rebooted. "You—" Then she spun on Conner, "And you, you knew he was still here. You could hear him in his apartment. Why didn't you say anything?"
Conner's voice was somewhat muffled by the blanket. "Didn't see the point. I knew where he was."
Artemis growled something at him before rounding on Dick. "And where were you? We were about to send out a search party."
He waved the toothbrush at her, like it was a crucial piece of evidence and she the judge in charge of his court case. "Grabbing my toothbrush."
Artemis stared at him. "You can't be serious."
"Well, what'd you expect me to do?" Dick grimaced. "Use Wally's?"
Wally fake-gagged into his hand, and Dick gestured at him again as if his point had been perfectly made. Which, in a way, it had.
Kaldur pinched the bridge of his nose. "You could've at least told us."
Dick stared at them like he was thinking about how incredibly stupid they all were. Wally really couldn't blame him. "Told you." He parroted. "Told you what?"
"Told us that you weren't running or bolting away or—or vigilante-ing!" Artemis said, arms swinging outwards. "We woke up and you were gone, what were we supposed to think?"
"I dunno, Artemis," he crossed his arms, the change of posture awakening every uh-oh instinct in Wally's brain. "Maybe you were supposed to exercise some trust in the guy who'd just exposed his super secret identity to you all. Or, I don't know, maybe give him a call?"
He pulled a phone out of his pocket, waving it back-and-forth in front of her.
Artemis flushed, head ducking towards the floor. "I didn't think of that."
"No," Dick said, though his tone was softer than before, "you didn't."
The silence was uncomfortable for a moment, broken only by the two-minutes-late ticking of their apartment's clock.
Dick sighed, running a hand through his hair. With it laid back against his head, kept there by the grease and dirt from his beatdown last night, he looked much more like the detective they were all familiar with.
"Besides, how was I even supposed to 'bolt' anywhere? It hurts to walk, and talk. And breathe." He raised his bandaged arms. "Only place I'd be bolting to right now is the ICU."
"Good," Artemis muttered. "Save the ambulance a trip."
Dick barked out a laugh before immediately doubling over, bandaged arms wrapped around his chest. "Do not make me laugh right now. That's a threat."
Wally rolled his eyes. "Threats are usually threatening, Dick. You're basically a bruise with legs right now."
The detective smirked at him. Even with a beaten-up face and swollen eye, Wally could see what the tabloid's where always raving about. "And jokes are usually funny, Wallace, but you don't hear me complaining."
"Oh," M'gann whispered, shoving an elbow into Conner's side like the clone had somehow missed the last several seconds of conversation. "Got 'im."
"I still think you could've just used Wally's toothbrush," Kaldur said.
Their vigilante grimaced. "I'd probably catch some kind of undocumented mouth disease."
Wally inspected his nails. They weren't painted, but he felt like the gesture gave him a certain dignified grace. (It did not). "Or some morals, since you seemed to have lost yours."
"Or scurvy," Dick deadpanned. "Definitely scurvy."
"Scurvy's not transmittable through saliva," M'gann added brightly. "I learned about it on Mars. Apparently it's a real concern for humanity if you ever evolve towards space travel. Dehydrated foods just won't cut it."
Wally wasn't sure why he expected Dick to bark at M'gann—maybe because that's how most people responded to her info dumps—but he just smiled.
"Thanks, M'gann." His smile squashed into another grimace. "But I'm still not using Wally's toothbrush."
The Martian laughed, elbowing Conner again even though there's no way he missed the exchange.
Absently, Wally wondered if the clone had a bruise there from all her not-so subtle whacking.
Could he even bruise? Or did he have super-skin?
He blinked at his teammate, wondering if punching Conner to test his hypothesis would be worth M'gann's wrath, when Kaldur's heavy sigh pulled him out of his calculating.
"I understand where you're coming from," the Atlantean said, "but please tell us where you're going next time."
"Why?" Dick bristled. "So you can make sure I don't try to 'bolt'? Or so the League doesn't get to me first and you lose your prize?"
Another sigh from Kaldur. If he wasn't half-bald already, Wally would've worried about the fish-man getting early grey hairs. "No, Dick. You have at least one extremely dangerous individual after you. We don't know all the details, but clearly you're in danger."
"We just want to help," Artemis said softly. She glanced up, meeting Dick's gaze for the first time that morning. "I know I've kind of been an ass to you, and I'm. . .sorry, about that. But we really do just want to keep you safe."
Wally's jaw almost cracked the floor as it dropped. Did she just apologize?
Why didn't she ever apologize to him about stuff?
He had to start filing a list of grievances. If Artemis was giving out sorries, he wanted in.
There was that time she threw him over her shoulder, when she lit his second favourite bathrobe on fire, when she—
"We're not telling the League until you want us to," Conner said, entirely too casual with the way M'gann was trying to fuse herself to his side.
It still didn't look like Dick believed them, but he nodded and settled back into the rumpled couch. "Okay. Now what?"
Artemis grinned, the expression looking especially savage in the early morning light. "Now, we solve a case."
Dick felt like he'd just entered a parallel universe.
A new dimension.
One where there were no 'heroes' or villains, just insane college-aged kids with too much time on their hands.
It quickly became apparent that Dick's definition of solving a case was very, very different than the Team's.
He sat there as Wally materialized a Monopoly board out of thin air, slamming it down onto the crooked coffee table as Kaldur wandered over to the kitchenette and started bustling around in the fridge.
"I thought we were solving the case," he asked as everyone started crowding around the board, like sharks before a kill.
"Yeah." Artemis looked at him like he was stupid. "The case of Wally's mysterious and crushing Monopoly defeat."
"Hey," the speedster said. "At least wait till we're playing before you start the smack-talk."
"No."
M'gann was already leaning over the table, hovering a small metal shoe playing piece towards herself with telekinesis only to have Conner snatch it out of midair.
He glared at her. "I'm the shoe."
"You were the shoe last time."
"That doesn't count," Conner clenched the shoe in his fist. "I always lose if I'm not the shoe."
"You always lose 'cause you suck," Wally interjected from beneath Artemis, who had him subdued in an impressive neck lock.
She smacked him on the head, gently enough that it probably felt like getting swatted by a kitten. "I thought you said no smack-talk, stupid."
"The only thing stupid here is your face."
Dick watched as they started to brawl again. He'd thought they were getting over their obvious denial, but apparently he'd been wrong.
They were still very much in denial.
Eventually they settled down and gathered around the table again, ushering Dick forward when he hung back on the outskirts of the living room.
"We saved you the hat," M'gann said, placing a small metal token of a top hat into his hand and smiling up at him. "Have you ever played before?"
And then they were playing, the afternoon passing in a surprisingly pleasant blur of cheap board games and Kaldur's questionable cooking.
Dick didn't even realize he'd stopped thinking about Deathstroke until the day was almost over, the Monopoly game having long since devolved into a lawless free-for-all.
He was pretty sure Conner had robbed the bank at least eight times, and Wally kept illegally slipping his plastic houses onto the board when he thought no one was paying attention.
Even Artemis, who he thought would be above petty cheating, had a suspicious amount of property under her belt.
"How about we call it a draw?" M'gann asked as her boyfriend stuck his hand into the bank again, not bothering to cover up his blatant thievery. "I'm getting tired."
Dick glanced at the clock, eyes widening when he saw the time. They'd been playing practically all day, not even stopping for lunch (although Kaldur had insisted they at least eat some snacks).
"I thought we were going to talk about the case," he tried, only to be immediately shot down.
"You're still on vacation, man." Wally said, shoving him back onto the carpet when he tried to stand up. "And you look like you just went through a meat grinder. We're calling Griffin and telling her you broke yourself again."
He sputtered. "That's not fair."
"What's not fair is that you almost died last night," Kaldur interjected smoothly. "We're just going to tell her you need some time off. Knowing her, she'll be ecstatic that you're finally taking your health seriously."
At a loss for words, he just sat there. Staring up at them all. "You don't have her number."
Artemis rolled her eyes. "And that's what he focuses on. Kaldur doesn't have the balls to say it, but this is an intervention. We're intervening so you don't work yourself into the ground or get killed because you can't walk in a straight line."
"I could so walk in a straight line."
Wally poked him in the shoulder and Dick almost keeled over, surprised by the sheer amount of ouch the motion caused.
"Yeah, no." Artemis shook her head. "You couldn't even crawl your way across a rooftop right now."
"We can still work on the case, but let's wait until you're feeling better. Yeah?" M'gann smiled at him. It was frustratingly hard to be mad at her.
Actually, it was getting hard to be genuinely mad at any of them.
Ugh.
He desperately wanted to say no, to take a page out of his old book and disappear when they weren't expecting it.
But he was tired, and his bones hurt.
He didn't want to disappear.
"Fine." He crossed his arms and glared at them. "I'll stay here, or whatever."
Wally pretended to swoon in shock, a limp wrist pressed to his forehead. "I never thought I'd see the day," he said as Artemis caught him, effortlessly keeping his weight off the ground.
"I'm glad you agreed," Kaldur added. "Our second option was to trap you in the apartment. Forever.
M'gann nodded. "We'd play Monopoly until you died of old age then bury you in one of the couches."
They laughed, and Dick couldn't help the small smile that curled his lips. It pulled on the bandages covering his face, but he found himself unable to stop.
He was happy.
He hoped it lasted.
(A/N): happy 30 chapters (!) everybody, thanks for hangin in there with me :)
I updated this on ao3 but it totally slipped my mind to update it here! so sorry, ill try not to forget again
have a great week everyone, i thrive off reviews if you have time to leave one 33