By midnight, I had three samples from three crazed frat boys near the university. One had tried to have sex with me as I was knocking out his teeth one by one with my elbow, one tried to break my arm with his bare hands, and the third had done his best to eat me. I had a bloody chunk missing from my shoulder and a hole in my bodysuit, and the doctors are only about 30% sure he'll ever walk again - and they still can't figure out what happened to his tongue.
It was not a good night.
I busted up 6 more altercations on my way back to Oracle, including chasing a man in a 2000 dollar suit out of a butcher's garbage can, where he was mindlessly stuffing his face on weeks-old meat. If I survived this, I was sure the sight of his vacant, bloodstained face was going to show up in my nightmares.
I swept in like the conquering hero, brandishing my spoils. "It's like a Goddamn Romero movie out there. You would not BELIEVE some of the shit that went down tonight!"
His voice burned through the shadows, and I would know it anywhere. I was also pretty sure it might be the last voice I would ever hear. If anyone could kill me, it would be him, and if it came to that, I might welcome it. "Did you get the samples?"
I flipped on the light and he was standing right there, less than two feet from me, motionless in black, head to toe, with the bat on his chest squarely at eye level.
"I told them not to call you."
He snatched the syringes from my hand without another word, storming over to the bank of microscopes on the stainless steel worktable.
"Well, if my work here is done..." I turned to go.
"Wait." I stopped. I might fuck with Oracle, but I knew better than to fuck with him.
"What?" I asked defiantly. I might actually be afraid of him, but that didn't mean I had to admit it.
"I need to know what happened last night. Every detail. Nightwing's memory is too fuzzy."
"Can I change clothes first?"
He dismissed me with a wave of his hand and, borrowing another t-shirt and jeans from Dinah's dresser, I stripped off the sweaty, torn, bloody remains of my bodysuit, dropping it into the incinerator chute. Soaking a rag in the sink, I began to sponge the blood off my shoulder, wincing as the warm water stung the new scab.
He was suddenly behind me, and I spun, my eyes burning holes in his face. I saw his expression soften as he took in the bruises covering my ribcage, arms and legs, my olive skin marred by blotch after blotch in varying shades of purples, reds, yellows and greens. I was suddenly glad I hadn't stripped down any further than my bra and underwear, but faced with that intense gaze, I might as well have been naked. I just didn't want to explain the handprints on my ass from tonight's Contestant #1.
"You're hurt." He slipped off his gloves, took the rag from me firmly, and soaked it in peroxide from the bottle beside the sink. I steeled myself, and to my credit I didn't even flinch when he laid it on my shoulder, the tiny bubbles stinging and burning as they cleaned the jagged bite.
He was surprisingly gentle, and thoroughly professional as he cleaned off the detritus of the night's adventures. His fingertips on my bare skin were more of him than I had ever touched before, and I found myself having to continuously recount the reasons I hated him, over and over again, silently to myself. It had been months since the last time Dick had let himself in my bedroom window, and I was feeling the absence of a good roll in the hay, that was all. I would make a date with that car salesman this weekend, that would solve... everything. He firmly pushed me down onto Dinah's bed. I stared up at him, vaguely aware that he'd said something, but I'd been lost so far in my own little world that I had no idea what it had been. He was clearly waiting for a response, though.
"..what?" I managed to spit out, cursing the day I had ever been born.
"Your shoulder. You need stitches. Do you want anesthetic first?"
Not what I had been thinking. At all. A small part of me was disappointed.
"Oh... um... No. Don't need it." I flipped my hair, looking up at him confidently. He nodded, opening a package of suture from the medicine cabinet and kneeling in front of the bed. He had put himself at eye level with the bite, in a stable position where he could see what he was doing. So why did it feel like any second, he would plunge his face into my breasts?
Dick found us like that, nearly half an hour later as the Bat was finishing his tiny, neat stitches on my shoulder. His reaction was not nearly as cool as his mentor's, and I watched his jaw drop at the sight of me on the bed in my underwear, with Batman leaning over my chest. I felt a quick surge of triumph that at least I'd worn something presentable today. This would have been far more mortifying if I'd been wearing ratty pink granny panties. Besides, it was nothing he hadn't seen a dozen times before.
He sat down beside me, still wearing his costume, and picked up my free arm to study the pattern of bruises on it. His voice was quiet, and I was pale, and shaking from the pain of the stitches and the willpower it had taken not to make a sound during the agonizing process, and before the words had even left his mouth I was crying.
"Huntress, did I do this to y-? Huntress? What is it?" My tears clearly alarmed him, and he looked at Batman, startled. I couldn't deny my gratitude when he just brushed it off with a wave of his free hand.
"I gave her something for the pain, it's making her emotional." He clipped the tail of the stitches and tossed the gauze he'd been using for cleanup and the left-over suture in the garbage as I scrubbed at my eyes, ignoring the burn in my shoulder.
He distracted Dick, asking him about where he'd been that night and what he'd seen, giving me a chance to regain my composure. As soon as I stopped crying, he headed for the door like he hadn't even noticed. He paused, leaning arrogantly on the doorframe and looking at me.
"Oh, and Huntress?" I looked back, my expression perfectly calm. "Nice bunnies." And he was gone.
I could neither hide nor fight the crimson blush I felt blossom across my cheeks as Dick collapsed beside me, laughing uncontrollably. I swore up and down that I was never, never, ever buying anything but basic black underwear. Ever. Again. Ever. As long as I lived.
Things suddenly got serious as Dick sat back up, and we both realized we were alone on a bed, and I was mostly naked. His eyes met mine, and he leaned in for a wild, hungry kiss, his arms enveloping me completely and crushing my battered body against his. He smelled of motor oil and garbage, salt and sand, and it was the most wonderful scent I had ever experienced at that moment. I kissed back, tangling my hands in his hair, ignoring the slicing pain against the scrapes on my palms, as if I could pull his essence into myself if I just kissed a -little-harder...
The approaching hum of Oracle's wheelchair startled us apart, and he had disappeared into the bathroom before she reached the door. I blinked at her, searching for words. Fortunately, she didn't seem to need any from me, and even better, didn't seem to suspect anything was wrong.
"Will you tell Dick when he's done cleaning up that Batman wants him to go back to Gotham with him tonight?" She smiled at me, a detached smile that didn't reach her eyes. She was disappointed he wouldn't be staying here. But then, he never did. They didn't have that kind of a relationship. He loved her. He slept with me. I knew. She didn't. Her loss. Or was it mine?
I nodded, mutely, and she departed.