so im writing this day of, apologies in advance

"This place is a mess," Dick stated, staring amongst the forgotten pieces of furniture and dusty appliances that had been replaced long before. He'd agreed to help clear out Mount Justice before the team moved in, mostly so he could make proper use of the space. It'd been nearly abandoned once the WatchTower was made and they had an HQ in the Museum of Heroes. The most it was used for nowadays was as a high-tech storage centre for everything the League had no more use for. 

"We may have let this get out of hand," Dinah agreed, rubbing the back of her neck. Of course the one day they could use people with super speed and super strength, they were all busy. They had an inkling whatever was keeping people so busy was blown out of proportion but they couldn't be too accusatory. 

"Ya think?" Dick replied. "This'll take hours. I bet we'll find at least four colonies of different pests in here. Do we have a hero that speaks to animals on call?"

"Unless there's a fish outbreak, no," Bruce answered. 

Whilst his dry humour was usually appreciated, the acrobat was in no laughing mood. He could deal with a lot of different bugs, vermin and pests but he usually only had to deal with them when the world was ending so he didn't have many options. 

He wasn't afraid of spiders. Scarecrow had been quite annoyed when his arachnophobia-based plan didn't work out too well. He could catch and release the odd spider that crawled into his room. If they were small, he'd let them crawl on his hands as he brought them to the outside world but like everyone, he had limits. He didn't like spiders with long limbs that scuttled about erratically. He hated the spiders that had long limbs and thick bodies. It more so disgusted him than scared him but he supposed they were different sides of the same coin.

"Diana has animal empathy right?"

"She's busy."

"Busy my ass, she just didn't wanna help clean," Dick complained. "Feels like we need hazmat suits."

"It's just dusty."

"A respirator at least?"

"You live in Gotham. Your lungs are probably already lined with a layer of impenetrable grime already."

"Fine but we're eating lunch outside. I'll get some new antibiotic-resistant infection if I eat in here."

"It's just dust," Bruce soothed, a tinge of mocking in his tone. 

"Says the guy with a twelve-step beauty routine," he teased.

"You have a beauty routine?"

"Can't be a billionaire playboy with dry pimply skin," the younger replied with a smirk. 

Once they got started and Dick had armed himself with a pair of earphones, he got into the groove of things. To make things go faster and not get in each other spaces, they assigned smaller rooms before doing the biggest room together at the end of their cleaning in hopes they'd be so high off seeing clear cleaned rooms that they wouldn't get overwhelmed. He started in a room he guessed used to be a showcase room judging by the shelves and pieces of outdated tech. 

He was about halfway through when, as he was moving a box out of the way, he felt something crawl up the back of his leg. He frowned and stood up straight, wondering if he'd just pulled something the wrong way. He moved his leg. Something crawled further up. He then realised that whatever this something was, it had a lot of limbs. A lot of long limbs. 

Without a second thought, he hit the back of his leg sharply. There was a quick pain and the jumble of limbs climbed down to his calf but he gave it another smack for good measure. It stopped moving and he felt it fall out of his pant leg. Turning around to gaze upon it, he realised it was a spider. A brown spider the size of a dime when he drew the line at handling a spider bigger than a popcorn kernal. A full-body shudder racked his body. Again, he wasn't afraid of spiders but even Bruce would've been creeped out if it'd sneaked up his pant leg. 

"Gross," he muttered. The thing was massive and slowly curling up into a ball. He hoped it hadn't been on his leg for a while. He'd hate to admit that a spider got the jump on him. "Sorry bud but personal space is a must." He guessed the pain he felt was a defensive bite. He'd have to grab some antihistamines when he got back to stave off the inevitable itching. 

Dick grabbed an empty bag and covered his hand with it, grabbing the spider and rolling the bag around it. "This is why we use actual storage centres and not random mountains." Maybe they should get an exterminator. Who knows how Kaldur or Connor would react to spider bites after going their entire lives either underwater or in a test tube? 

The spider bite went to the back of Dick's mind and he would've forgotten about it completely if it wasn't so damn itchy. He did his best not to scratch it, knowing it would only get irritated and ten times itchier if it did, but sometimes he'd forget and come away with blood under his fingernails. 

For the first few days, he felt normal. The itchiness was not the end of his problems though and he'd breathed a sigh of relief far too soon. 

Of course in the middle of a big cleanup and subsequently meeting his new teammates, he'd get sick. His timing was impeccable as always. He'd toughed it out for the majority of it. The fever was nothing he hadn't patrolled with before, even if Bruce wasn't aware of those times he had, and the joint pain was hard to distinguish from the usual ache of saving the city at night and exercising at every chance he got. 

Then the fever got worse. A slow incline from generally warm to feeling like every room was sitting on top of the Earth's molten core. Sweat was constantly gathered on his brow no matter how many cold showers he took. He'd sometimes check it with a thermometer, noting the temperature creep upwards. He wasn't self-loathing enough to suffer through until his body succumbed to the fever. The moment it got past negligible, he told Bruce. All that got him was benched and a steady stream of fluids so he didn't sweat out a body's worth of water every hour. 

"It's not getting much better, chum," Bruce stated as he added another temperature change to his notebook. Despite his love for technology, he reverted to pen and paper from time to time. Usually when he was chronicling things unrelated to his work. Maybe it's how he distinguished when he was Batman and when he was Bruce. Or it was just easier to write in a notebook instead of his phone which was constantly flooded with notifications from various business groups, news outlets and anyone else who thought bothering him was a good idea.

"Could've told you that," he responded. "Told you I'd get sick if I ate in the mountain." He would've complained if they sat in the rain too but he was a sucker for the temptations of 'I told you so'. 

"Not this sick," the older muttered. He appreciated that Bruce took the care to speak it aloud. Had he been any younger, it would've been a thought rather than a statement and he'd only know that he was sick. Not how sick he was. Just knowing he was sick. Sometimes the unknown was just as bad as being sick. "Any symptoms other than the fever?"

"Some joint pain. My stomach feels like it's doing flips," he answered. There was some relief in feeling like they working together to figure it out rather than him being the patient waiting for something to happen.

"And it came out of nowhere?"

"Yeah, a few days after cleaning out the mountain."

"Did you touch anything odd? Breathe in any dust that seemed different?"

"Please tell you didn't leave radioactive stuff in that place."

"I didn't but there could've been some contamination I'm not aware of. Everyone used it as a dump. I think I saw Barry's old couch there," Bruce explained. "Any strange marks? Rashes?" he continued to prompt.

"Spider bit me. Maybe this is my Spider-Man transformation," he joked.

"What did it look like?"

"Ugly," he muttered. "About the size of a dime. Brown." 

"Have you been keeping an eye on the bite?"

"Hard to see when it's on the back of my knee."

"Let me see it." He huffed at having to move but did so anyway, shuffling up and shoving the blankets off. He'd been wearing his summer pyjamas as well as the summer bedsheets which worked out well now since he didn't have long pants to drag up. Instead, he had striped shorts. He rolled onto his side and extended his leg out so Bruce could get a good look. There was a quiet inhale and he knew instantly Leslie was going to be visiting very soon.

"Am I allergic or something? I've been taking antihistamines for the itching."

"Uh, I wouldn't say allergic."

"What would you say then?"

"You got bitten by a brown recluse spider."

"Are they like a less cool black widow?"

"Not as deadly but their bites do have a habit of getting worse. In your case, I'll be grabbing the hospital bag."

"That bad?"

"You've got the beginnings of necrosis."

"That's the last time I help you clean," Dick grumbled. "And you definitely need to call an exterminator."

"I'll make the call in the car." At least Wally hadn't been bitten. His body probably would've tried to burn it off and he'd go into septic shock or something. He wasn't sure how the others would react. He guessed if there was any silver lining, it was a good thing it was just him.