If anybody asked you, you and Dick weren’t a thing. If anyone asked him, he’d say you were the love of his life and he wouldn’t find anyone better.

He was the kind of warmth that wrapped you up like a blanket with hot chocolate between cold hands, the reason why you even opened your phone to send anything other than a text to your family or a work email. Being in the ‘talking stages’ meant different things to both of you— call him a love bomber, but the kind that didn’t leave you after, he held open every door for you, walked on the outside of the pavement, brought you a massive bouquet at every date, everything he could do to be a gentleman. Someone could mark that as performative if he wasn’t a sweetheart encased in cheer.

He knew he was in trouble when he ended up calling you every night just to hear you talk about your day, and you weren’t even his girlfriend, you just went on dates every week— he ended up calling you after a date just to check on you. You knew you were in trouble when you found yourself checking your phone for those calls, sometimes making the call yourself if your patience ran out, you were so fucked, cause how were you supposed to go about this? Somewhere you were waiting for this to go wrong, you were sure it’d go wrong, your conscience was fighting the part of you that begged you to just go with whatever this is.

One night he’d missed the call. Thank God his butler picked up instead, who told you that Dick had come down with an extremely high fever.

His butler? He didn’t mention a butler, or a mansion, or the fact that Bruce Wayne was his fucking dad, and that he was the heir to billions— you were finding this out as you arrived at said mansion after a stupidly expensive care with said butler as the chauffeur pulled up outside your quiet apartment. All of the nosy old ladies that stayed up watching Bake Off reruns were probably chattering about it as you went to see your sick boyfriend— um, not boyfriend, closer-than-normal friend.

Opening his bedroom door, he immediately struck you with his flushed cheeks and nose, it was too early to call him Rudolph, unless he was part of the Christmas-crazy population. The starlet’s smile he had on when he saw you made you feel things— you shouldn’t be feeling something, right? “Hey, you,” He grinned, leaning against the doorframe.

Oh. Holy shirtless.

He looked like absolute shit; his hair was messy, eyes looked like he’d just woken up, but somehow he was still a stupidly beautiful human. “I, uh, didn’t know you were coming.” His voice had some drag on it, probably from sleeping.

He rubbed his face, trying to wake his face muscles up so he didn’t look like a depressed rat, though his depressed rat look made your version of it look homeless. “If I did, I would’a cleaned myself up a little.” He kept his distance, not wanting to make you sick as well, pulling his sweatpants up.

Maybe he should get you something, or ask Alfred if he had any of those Italian coffee pods lying around so he could make a latte for you, but he didn’t have the energy to go downstairs. His eyes landed on the pot of soup in your hands. “Huh.”