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Dick’s shoulders were aching. That was the first thing that ran through his mind when he came to, but right on the heels of that thought was the realisation that he wasn’t in his bedroom.

Dick opened his eyes into tiny slits, breathing through his mouth as accidentally he accidentally shifted his head, causing a wave of pins and needles to shoot through his arms. He forced himself to hold stock still, going through a breathing exercise until he’d gotten the waves of pain under control.

Then he started registering the room he was in. It was cold, but his body had apparently moved beyond the shivering state while he’d been unconscious, which wasn’t a good sign but at least now there were no slight tremors to agitate his arms.

There was the sound of something wet and dripping, probably water, although Dick wouldn’t be able to tell if it was his own blood at this point, with how numb his body was.

And that was when he realised that the top half of his costume was missing. Dick wrinkled his cheeks as much as he could, to test whether the mask was still in place. He let out a mental sigh of relief when his face pulled at the adhesive.

The worrying part here was just how long he’d been hanging here. He couldn’t tell whether the lack of feeling in his hands was from a lack of blood flow, or if it was from the cold. Neither option seemed good, but he would probably take hypothermia – it was slower than the speed at which he would lose his limbs if the chains that were stringing him up were preventing blood from flowing into his hands.

Dick refused to think (and therefore panic) about what might happen if he couldn’t get free in time. He didn’t want to consider his future if he lost both of his hands from this one patrol gone wrong. There were things he could live with – injuries he could live with – but his hands were an integral part of flying.

He didn’t know how he’d get back to his condition now if he were to lose them.

Dick dragged his mind away from panicked what-ifs, determinedly trying to find a way out of this dank hole that he was locked up in. Besides, Dick was lucky his arms were strung up in front of him and not behind – painful as this may be, it would be nothing compared to the eventual dislocated shoulders that he would’ve been facing otherwise.

There was a sliver of light that was showing in the otherwise dark room, lit only by the light coming from lampposts outside. Dick squinted – was that long line of light getting bigger?

There was a loud clang, and a man walked in. There was obviously water on the ground – his heavy boots splashed as he neared Dick.

Dick opened his eyes to glare at his face. “Finally realised it’s rude to leave guests unattended?” he said, tone showing him to be much calmer than his pounding heart would have one believe.

The man didn’t say anything. He was wearing a giant beanie over his head and face, slits cut into it to make holes for his eyes and nose. His words would probably come out muffled, Dick reflected. The rest of his clothing was plain – black trousers, a black hoodie. There wasn’t much to work off of, but Dick would memorise every inch of him regardless.

Just as he was about to open his mouth again, try to get a rise out of this guy, there was a yanking sensation on his arms, and Dick found himself being pulled upwards.

Words flew from his mind as he struggled to stay conscious, resisting the urge to try and pull himself up with his hands to get leverage from whatever he was hanging from. That would have to wait until this thug disappeared – there was no way Dick was giving up any advantage he had.

But now his feet were no longer within reach of the ground, and the pull was sending sharp shards of stabbing pain through his shoulders. Breathing, focus on the breathing, Dick told himself.

Dick hadn’t even realised he’d screwed his eyes shut until he forced them open, only to see that the man had vanished. He took in two deep huffs of breath, steeling himself for swinging upright, and then glanced up.

The chains holding him up came down from a hole in the ceiling; Dick assumed that the man had been down here to either observe him, or (more likely) to manually press whatever buttons had lifted him higher.

But Dick hadn’t seen him move or do anything.

Again, Dick shoved all his thoughts down and focused on one task: pulling himself up to give his arms a reprieve. Even if he had to hold onto the chain with his feet and knees, it would be enough time for his hands to hopefully get some blood circulating again.

This was going to hurt. Dick looked up as he moved his fingers, seeing them groggily respond to his orders. But there wasn’t enough slack – especially now, with all his weight hanging from his wrists – to grab at anything.

Dick would have to do with using the pressure of the cuffs. He weighed the pros and cons – would this, in the long run, be any better?

But he didn’t know when – or if – rescue was coming. He didn’t know how long he’d been in here. He had to do something, because hanging from here would only make things steadily worse. One risky plan to try and better his odds. He would be getting a better vantage point of the room, anyhow.

Dick almost screamed aloud at the burning sensation as he slowly rose, elbows folding as he lifted himself. Everything in himself was telling him to stop, to take a break, but he knew, from hours spend in the Cave, from countless nights where he’d had to pull, that stopping would only make things worse.

Dick kept going. He brought his legs up to the height of his hands, his back tilting horizontally as he wrapped his legs around the chain.

The thick metal holding him went around his ankles. He had never been more relieved to find himself with his shoes still on – without them, this would’ve been torn through the thin skin of his ankles as well. He tried not to look at the raw flesh of his wrists. He tried even harder to ignore the fact that he couldn’t feel anything; if things went alright, he’d be feeling that for weeks.

But Dick had only gotten a few minutes of reprieve when the door crashed open once more and Dick found himself being yanked to the ground.

Someone had undone the cuffs around his wrists, and he fell to the hard, concrete floor gracelessly. He landed awkwardly on the fleshy part of his butt and thighs, which was unbelievably lucky, but it didn’t keep him from feeling the blows that rained down upon him as his captors let out their anger with their feet.

Dick curled up into a tight ball, knowing his arms and legs were too jelly at this moment to do anything more defensive than protecting his head and hopefully some vital organs.

And then it all stopped.

There was the sound of flesh hitting flesh, loud blows that were met with little resistance, and the sound of bodies dropping unconscious around him.

Hesitantly, Dick looked up to see the sight of a dark shadow accompanied by a tiny traffic light of a boy.

Seeing him stir, Robin raced to Dick’s side.

“Nightwing!” he said, eyes wide and hands hovering just above Dick’s pretzelled body. “Are you okay? We got your emergency beacon!”

Dick tried for a smile, which wasn’t very hard in the face of Tim’s rapid rambling. “’m fine,” he said. “Just help me get up.”

He probably shouldn’t have asked Tim to do that – the kid was half his size in both height and weight, skinnier than anyone his age had the right to be. Tim got an arm around Dick’s back, hesitating when Dick winced as he pressed down on what would hopefully only be bruised ribs.

“Okay,” Dick said. “I got it from here—”

He let out an undignified yelp as Batman came around his other side, lifting him up with a tight grip around his armpits and hips. He was just glad Bruce hadn’t tried to use his arms – he’d probably seen how bloody Dick’s wrists were and come to the right conclusions.

“Alright?” Bruce said once Dick had gotten upright.

At Dick’s nod, he tightened his hold around the utility belt around Dick’s waist, helping him steady on his feet.

“I can walk,” Dick said. “You guys cleaned up in here?”

“The sirens are getting closer,” Tim said in response. “And I found the other half of your costume.”

“Thanks,” Dick said. “Let’s blow this joint. Hung around here a little too long for my taste.”

Tim wrinkled his nose at him. “I’m regretting rescuing you already,” he said to Dick.

Dick huffed a breath, partly from laughter, but mostly to mask the waves of pain at the sensation returning to various parts of his body.

Then there were stairs, because of course there were stairs. This place had evidently been designed to be as vexing as possible; and besides, who even had retractable handcuffs from the ceiling? Who did you even go to, to ask for that?

Dick must’ve been more out of it than he’d thought, because Bruce was responding to him with a list of names.

“Why do you know that?” he asked in genuine confusion.

Bruce frowned at him. “Do you think I built everything downstairs myself?” he asked.

Oh. Dick hadn’t ever really thought about that.

The rest of the trip passed in silence. Tim had gone on ahead, to talk to the police officers. Bruce had a hand hovering behind Dick, which Dick only knew was there because he would sometimes rock backwards and be met with Batman’s gauntlets on the bare skin of his back.

They were about halfway up when Dick really stumbled, swaying a little to the side hitting the wall with his shoulder.

“C’mon,” Bruce was saying. “Just a few more steps. Or I can carry you.”

“No.” Dick forcibly pushed himself forward. “No way am I being carried in front of everyone we know.”

Bruce grunted. “There’s only—”

“Gordon, Montoya, that other guy whose name I can’t remember right now, Robin,” Dick listed, mostly speaking as a way of distracting himself.

Bruce grunted. “If you can’t remember his name, he doesn’t count as ‘everyone we know’.”

“You can’t argue semantics with me after I’ve been strung up for,” Dick paused with a slight frown, “how long was I there, anyway?”

“We got your beacon an hour ago, but the signal couldn’t get through for about ten minutes or so.”

At his words, Dick remembered, with startling clarity, how he’d hesitated in activating it in the first place, how he’d pondered, as he’d been dragged forward by the upper arms, whether this was cause for alarm or not. Because he knew how Bruce would react to seeing his beacon lighting up; nowadays, Bruce dropped everything the moment a beacon went off.

“I’m sorry we weren’t quicker,” Bruce murmured. They’d gotten to the top of the outrageously long staircase; now the trek to the door began. “The signal wasn’t coming through properly; it took a—”

“Hey, you got there at just the right time,” Dick told him, narrowly avoiding saying just in time. “Faster than I expected, too.”

From the set of Bruce’s mouth, Dick knew he disagreed. Neither of them said anything.

They took a side door out. The tiny computer on Bruce’s gauntlet showed Tim had moved the Batmobile – “you let him drive the Batmobile?” Dick said incredulously, to which Bruce responded with, “only a few metres”. The sirens faded as they exited from the other end of the building to the police force.

Dick had rarely been so relieved to see the car. Tim, seeing them approach, opened the doors using the automation that Bruce had added so recently. Dick slipped into the back, sinking into the cushioned seat with a breath of relief.

Immediately, there was a shock blanket draped over him. Dick opened his eyes, blinking forward at Tim leaning over the console between the front two seats, doing as best as his tiny stick arms could to tuck it in around Dick.

Bruce, at some point during this, had gotten into the driver’s seat. Now Dick could feel the wheels whirring beneath him, power coiled up like a racehorse in the starting gate. They should really go street racing in this thing, he thought mildly.

“Street racing is illegal,” Tim informed him. “Also, I think you should sleep.”

“Vigilantism’s illegal too, Timbo,” Dick told him, voice only slightly breathy. “An’ with the Batmobile, we’d win every race. Think about how much cash that’d be.”

He must’ve drifted off, because the next thing he noticed is that he was being placed on one of the cots in the Cave. He was right about his wrists – they were stinging like crazy.

“I could’ve walked if you’d woken me,” he said, turning his head to watch Bruce as he grabbed the medkit.

Bruce didn’t even bother with a reply, arching an eyebrow at him. “You can walk all you want next time,” he said. “Even better if there is no next time.”

They both knew there almost certainly would be one, but Dick didn’t comment on it. Instead, he sat up with a wince. His boots and pants were still the same, but the shock blanket was now wrapped around his shoulders.

Bruce caught him looking at it. “Hypothermia,” he explained. “You’re only in the first stage, though.”

“Yeah, I figured,” Dick said.

Bruce came over now, placing a tray with alcohol swabs and bandages on the little table. “Your shoulders are still in place, which is lucky, all things considered, and you have no broken bones.”

“So very lucky,” Dick said.

Bruce grunted in affirmation. “Take these,” he said, holding out a handful of pills.

Dick eyed them. “Painkillers?” he said sceptically. At Bruce’s nod, he grimaced. “I want to shower, though. I’m all gross.”

Bruce sighed, and Dick knew, because of infinite mutterings under Bruce’s breath that he’d been privy to during his youth, that Bruce was wondering why his sense of hygiene had decided to kick in now, when he’d flaunted the lack of it for a year too many.

In Dick’s defence, though, living part-time on a base with a bunch of other teenagers really had that effect on you, especially considering the amount of physical activity they did.

“After I clean up your wrists,” Bruce said. In his voice was a warning, too, that this would hurt.

Dick nodded. It wasn’t like this was the first time he’d been strung up; it’d just been a while since it had happened without his gauntlets on.

He sucked in a breath as Bruce cleaned up his right wrist, the nails of his left hand digging into the fleshy part of his palm to try and control the pain. Bruce, noticing, handed him a stress ball.

Bruce changed hands a few minutes later, and suddenly Dick had to speak, had to distract himself. “Where’s Alfred? And Tim?”

“Upstairs,” Bruce told him, applying a salve and then wrapping a bandage over it. “Alfred was readying snacks when we came in – your injuries weren’t severe enough to require two people. And I think Tim’s gone to clean up and change.”

Dick nodded. “You heading out again?” he asked. He didn’t want to put his thoughts into words, but at the same time, he couldn’t not acknowledge that he wanted Bruce to stay inside.

Bruce glanced at the time. “No point right now,” he said. “It was a pretty quiet night, besides you.”

Dick huffed. “What did they even want with me,” he said.

Bruce grunted. “Tim grabbed everything he could off their computers. Oracle’s going through it as we speak; we’ll know soon enough.”

The fact that it could’ve just been a sadistic desire to string up Nightwing went unsaid.

“Done,” Bruce told him, leaning back.

“Thanks,” Dick said, standing up with a wince. He added pointedly, “I’m fine to shower alone.”

Bruce grunted, but turned to clean up the medical equipment and probably change out of the suit as well.

Reaching the showers, Dick sat on the bench and undid the laces and straps holding his boots in place. He toed them off, and then his leggings slash pants followed, falling into a crumpled pile atop the shoes. Dick was too tired to care; he just wanted to wash the gross dungeon grime off of himself and then crash for a solid few hours.

Did he have work tomorrow, he idly wondered as he stood beneath the spray. Bruce had already put on the plastic covers over his hands, up to a few centimetres above where the bandages ended.

Dick reached up to take out the hair tie holding his ponytail up, which was when he realised that it was out of the ponytail and had been trailing his back this whole time. He couldn’t believe he was so out of it that he hadn’t noticed until now; it just hadn’t been a priority.

But that made his job easier. Dick got the necessary amount of shampoo into his palm, reaching his arm up to work it through his hair.

Almost immediately, there was a problem. The muscles in Dick’s arms were now stiff and tight, as solid as an oak tree, and he gasped for breath at the pain that he was struck with when he tried to lift any higher than chest level.

Dick tried the other arm – same result. Growling in frustration, he let the shampoo wash away down the drain, settling for just letting the water work its way through his hair.

Drying was another matter, because there was no way he could towel it dry, and moving a hairdryer around his head was probably out of the question, too. Dick resigned himself to going to bed with a damp pillow as he put on sweatpants and a hoodie that zipped up at the front.

Bruce was at the Batcomputer when Dick left the showers. He’d evidently taken the time to change, and his hair stuck up in damp spikes. It really was moments like this that Dick entertained the thought of cutting his hair short again, but he’d spent way too much time growing it out to chop it off after one shitty night.

Bruce glanced up when he saw Dick. “What was the point of showering if you still have clumps of dirt in your hair?” he said with a frown. “I have multiple lists of hairdressers—"

Dick fought down the wave of irritability. “Christ, B,” he snapped. “It’s been a long night. I couldn’t be bothered with shampoo.”

“Yes, but even without shampoo, you could’ve still…” Bruce trailed off, and a look of understanding flashed over his face. “Your arms are sore, I’m guessing?”

Dick glared at him in lieu of response. There was an awkward pause as Bruce very obviously fought to get words out.

“I’m going upstairs,” Dick began, just as Bruce said, “Let me?”

There was another moment’s silence, before Dick said, “What?”

Now that Bruce had actually asked the question, he seemed to gain confidence – or at least, hold his ground.

“Your hair’s going to be a mess in the morning if you don’t wash it now, especially seeing as you’ve already gotten it thoroughly wet. And you can’t sleep with wet hair – you have mild hypothermia.”

“So you want to wash my hair for me? Do you even know how to do that?” Dick didn’t even know why he was protesting so much; he and Bruce had done all sorts of things for each other because of injuries, and this was no different.

Or maybe it was different, because this would be one of the first things – outside of being carried or stitched up, and the like – that was outside their normal injury assistance since Dick had become Nightwing.

Bruce shrugged. “How hard can it be?” he said. “I have hair, that I wash on a regular basis.”

Dick narrowed his eyes. “Hey,” he protested, and the tension in the Cave vanished with his indignant tone, “I wash mine regularly, too.”

“C’mon, we’ll use my bathtub,” Bruce said. “It’s got more sitting space.”

“You can’t call that a tub, B,” Dick said tiredly as they stepped into the elevator. “If it fits more than two people, it’s a mini swimming pool.”

Bruce grunted. “We have a swimming pool. That and my tub are not the same.”

Dick trailed after Bruce as they walked to his bedroom. He moved to take off his jacket when Bruce shook his head.

“Keep it on,” he told him. “We need to get you warmed up.” He nudged a stool in front of the rim of the tub, motioning to Dick to sit on it, and then went to the closet to get another blanket.

“I’m warm,” Dick grumbled, but otherwise accepted it.

Bruce placed a few bath pillows on the side of the tub. When he gestured to it, Dick obligingly leaned his head as far back as it could go, neck on the pillows. Bruce worked his hair out so it draped into the tub.

“Why d’you have so many bath pillows?” Dick asked, needing to fill the silence.

“This is a five-person bathtub,” Bruce informed him. “It came with them.”

Dick wrinkled his nose. “You’re washing my hair in a tub meant for orgies?”

“How old are you, again?”

They lapsed into silence as the sound of the water being turned on filled the room. Bruce sat on one of the little dips meant to house the bath pillows, one leg in the tub and the other on the tiled floor beside Dick.

“This a good temperature?”

Dick braced himself for either freezing his scalp or being scalded, but when the flow of water came, it was pleasantly warm.

“It’s good,” he said, eyes peering up as though he’d be able to see what Bruce was doing if he tried hard enough.

Bruce now had a hand on Dick’s forehead, keeping his head in place and working his fingers through the strands of Dick’s hair in an effort to get out all the grime.

“You’ll give yourself a headache if you keep that up,” he said.

“Eh.”

It was… soothing. Dick tried to stay alert, to stay focused on what Bruce was doing – because who knew what sort of funky products Bruce might try putting into Dick’s very different hair? – but he felt his eyelids drooping at the sensation of the warm water and hands stroking his hair.

There was the smell of something fruity, and a sudden cold. Dick stirred slightly.

“What is that?” he mumbled, brows furrowing. “Are you using the shit you get gifted that you hate and have nowhere to use but think is bad manners to chuck out immediately so you wait till they expire?”

Bruce’s hands paused. “I caught about a quarter of what you just said,” he told Dick. “But, to answer what I think you’re asking, no. It’s just regular shampoo. It won’t dry your hair or anything drastic, so don’t worry.”

Dick settled back into the hazy fog once again, and only stirred when he heard the sound of a blow dryer.

“Done?” he said.

“Almost.”

Dick hadn’t used to blow dry his hair, but now that it was longer, it was a necessary evil. He hated how it made his hair feel, afterwards, but better than constantly catching a cold or having the neck of his shirts wet.

Bruce was apparently one of those people who had either been given a hairdryer tutorial that had stuck, or had taken it upon himself to read the instruction manual. Knowing him, Dick reflected, it was probably both. Bruce moved from hot to cold air, but shielded it from the rest of Dick’s face in an effort to reduce the exposure he had to its chilly blast.

It felt especially quiet when Bruce switched it off, but now Dick was tired enough that he really didn’t care to fill the silence. He sat forward, working free of the warm haze in his head to get his legs under him and stand.

“I still have to comb it,” Bruce said then.

Dick opened his mouth, but all that came out was a yawn. “It’s fine,” he said once he could speak again. What he would give for the ability to raise his hands up to rub at his eyes right now. “I’ll survive a day without brushing it.”

“Your arms will only be getting stiffer,” Bruce told him. “It’ll only take a minute. Sit.”

Dick walked to the nearest seat in Bruce’s room – Bruce’s suddenly very enticing bed. He thought longingly of sleep as he sank down onto the mattress. Then, remembering that his hair was at the back of his head, he turned a little so that one knee was folded under him, wincing at his ribs protesting against the movement.

A moment later, a drawer closing sounded, and Dick heard footsteps coming up to him. Bruce gathered up his hair, holding it at the nape of his neck as he started at the tips.

“You know how to brush hair?” Dick asked. He knew because he’d once asked Kory why she didn’t just start at the roots.

Bruce hummed. “I would often sit by my mother’s vanity table as she got ready,” he said. “She gave me a lot of makeup tips, too.”

Bruce was careful with tangles. It was a little jarring, if Dick were honest – only an hour or so ago, he’d experienced Bruce in full Batman mode, going to town on his captors. But Bruce now made sure he wasn’t pulling at Dick’s hair, and stopped to work knots out with delicate fingers, only continuing once it unravelled.

“Oh,” Dick said in a quiet voice. Even now, so many years later, he had no idea how to respond to that. Bruce so rarely shared. The next words slipped out before he could think about it. “We were touring in winter when I was a kid once, back before the circus was doing well enough to be able to afford the cost of skipping cities. I got a pretty bad fever, I think, but all I can really remember about it is her washing my head, just... I dunno, a lot like how you did it, I think.”

Bruce made a noise, one that echoed Dick’s own awkwardness about answering, but now there was a different sort of silence in the room, a more peaceful one. Dick remembered times like this, after nightmares had made him take that dark trek from his bed to Bruce’s in the middle of the night. He knew there were plenty more hushed conversations that a barely awake Bruce had tried to participate in that he was forgetting, but that didn’t matter so much now as did the fact that they had happened.

While Dick wouldn’t give up the life he had right now, the one he’d worked to build, he missed those nights, the stability. The net.

He would call Wally or Donna tomorrow, he vowed. He hadn’t spoken to the team in much too long.

Bruce had finally gotten to his scalp, and if Dick could purr, he would be doing so right now. The last time he’d had his hair brushed for him was probably as a child, and he could remember the insistence to do it himself. But this? This was probably the most soothing feeling he’d ever experienced in his life.

Bruce continued working the hairbrush through Dick’s hair even once it was entirely knot free, but Dick didn’t mind in the slightest. He was half asleep when Bruce stopped. There was a tiny clatter as Bruce placed the brush down somewhere, and then the rustle of sheets moving.

Dick blinked awake and yawned once again. Bruce glanced at him. “Don’t fall asleep just yet,” he told him. “I’m going to go grab a sandwich or two for you.”

“Yup,” Dick said, but when Bruce got back, he was half curled atop the covers, snoring slightly.