stranger things | dick grayson

one

word count: 2.9k

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'Dead girl walking! Move out of the way!' Adrian Jones called and ushered people out of the way for Eleanor Owens, who was blindly walking through the halls of the Detroit police department's precinct and putting her faith in her friend to guide her.

People stared in awe, and slight disgust, at the sight of the poor woman clutching a bag of frozen peas to her face, moaning and groaning in agony.

'Will you shut up?' Eleanor asked and jousted her elbow out towards Adrian, but missed contact, earning a quiet and taunting laugh in response.

The frozen produce that Eleanor was holding to her face was now starting to freeze her fingertips as well as her poor swollen nose. The bag was dripping water everywhere, leaving a slip hazard in her wake. She was just lucky enough that the old woman who owned the nearby corner shop had something to substitute for an ice pack.

'What the hell happened to you?' Andrew Sloan asked and watched as she walked past him to reach her desk, her arm stretched out in front of her to feel for her chair.

Andrew Sloan— Absolutely lived for the drama of the others in the precinct. Even when it wasn't work-related,  he was always first to know when it came to finding out about newly developed or unfolded events. He was friends with just about everybody, for his love of talking alone was greater than his love for his job. This caused Eleanor to be careful around him— tell a friend, tell an Andrew.

'Had a run-in with a guy she arrested a while back,' Adrian answered and sat down on top of her desk as Eleanor picked up her bag from her desk chair and discarded it carelessly on the floor. 'He moved so quickly we never even saw him coming.'

Eleanor raised her eyebrows as if to say, 'No shit' Before she sat down in her desk chair and threw the bag soggy of peas onto an empty spot of her, unsurprisingly, cluttered desk.

She dug around her pocket and pulled her phone out to look at her reflection. She gently prodded at her bloody nose with a deep wince. It wasn't broken but it refused to stop bleeding no matter how many tissues she shoved up her nostrils.

Letting out a small groan, Eleanor took out the tissues from her nose and discarded them in the bin under her desk before replacing them with new ones as carefully as she could. She then went back to holding the peas on her nose and tilting her head back, unaware of a familiar face entering the bullpen.

'I'm nice to everyone, I don't understand why this is the thanks I get!' She groaned and looked over at Adrian, who was laughing and typing rapidly on her keyboard, now more focused on her work than the injury on her friend's face.

'Maybe you're just too slow for the young ones today?' She suggested and shrugged, not understanding the offence she had caused.

'Too slow? Are you implying I'm old?' Eleanor asked with a chuckle of disbelief.

'No, I'm telling you that you're old, Eleanor,' Adrian said and shrugged her shoulders, silently saying she had no control over their inevitable fate of getting older.

Eleanor frowned. She hadn't considered the fact that she might be on the older side of things, but that did not mean she herself was old!

'I bought you a sandwich.'

Eleanor pulled the pea's away from her face and looked at Dick Grayson, who was holding a paper bag out to her with the faintest evidence of a smile on his face. What a rare sight to see.

Dick Grayson, well there was an enigma if one ever existed.

Some days he would be a complete asshole towards everyone, and even to Eleanor, but would later apologise to her— nobody else ever received an apology. On other days he would engage in small talk with the precinct like a normal human being. In Dick's world, small talk was saying good morning or good night.