Chapter Text
Logically, Dick knew there was nothing wrong with the sheets. He was pretty sure he had bought them himself, or at least directly approved of their acquisition by a third party. Egyptian cotton, some a million or so threads, he hadn’t stopped to retain the information about the specifics. They were soft, and a light blue color that blended well with the room's decoration. They weren’t cheap, or they would not have survived the purge of “truly atrocious” or “simply inappropriate” house items Dick had suffered when Slade had done his best approximation of moving in with your non not-boyfriend.
Despite all this practical listing of facts, Dick felt that the fabric pooling around his legs was scratchy, that it made his skin clammy. There was a stifling heat in the room. He kept turning to find a comfortable position, and failing. Sometimes he would turn his pillow and feel the refreshing cool fabric on his cheek and think “ ah, this is it ”, only for minutes to pass by and his sweaty face start clinging to the fabric again, rinse and repeat.
The clock on the side table read 4 am. He turned the pillow again.
“Stop.” One word, spoken in a voice devoid of any scratchiness or heaviness, carrying a clarity no just-awoken person should have.
Dick could not be sure he hadn’t been awake as long as he had, just silently listening to his discomfort, waiting for the moment where it tipped his patience enough to make him intervene. Or if he had just been disturbed from his sleep by Dick's incessant movements. There was no difference between a asleep Slade and an awake one, the closed eyes being a mere technicality. His breath, the relaxation of his muscles, Slade had a full autonomy of every bodily reaction. It would not surprise Dick if he was able to stop a sneeze from happening through sheer will alone if it caught him at an inopportune time.
“I don’t think I ever saw you sneeze,” he said.
“Shut up.” Slade replied. “Stop moving. Sleep.”
Dick could have scoffed, if exhaustion hadn’t drained him of humor.
“I can’t.”
“You can, you just won’t.” Slade hadn’t turned to him, hadn’t opened his eyes, someone as versed in Sladerism as Dick had become knew that, when he did, it would be a world of bad.
Lack of sleep, unfortunately, had also made away with his self-preservation instincts.
“It’s too hot.” his voice came out a grumble, petulance bleeding into his tone. A perfect childish, rebellious posture to mirror the all-encompassing authority of Slade’s commands, roles they fit into with innate naturality.
This time, Slade didn’t reply. Maybe he had meant to simply freeze Dick out, wait for him to acquiesce his instructions or to disobey and suffer the consequences. Or perhaps, after all this years together, after what they’ve been through, there was in Slade a small, but present molecule, a miraculous thing amidst all the grime, steel and gunpowder of his heart that a half-blind monk might even call mercy. And this was Slade’s way of giving him an out, saying: Dick, my love, my life, I was asleep and I was awoken by you. I dearly wish to go back to my slumber, and shall I be prevented from doing so, I’ll do unspeakable things. So, please, I beseech you, with all my heart, shut your fucking mouth.
Or something along these lines.
So Dick, in a rare moment of clarity, chose to be silent. He laid there quietly, for what could amount for a small handful of minutes. Anything between one and two. But his discomfort was all compassing, the too-warm air of the room making him want to crawl out of his skin. So he did not speak, but he stood up. He looked back, quietly but quickly, to ascertain if he would have 6 feet of furious mercenary rising after him for breaking the second commandment: Thou shalt not move .
Slade remained immobile. Eyes closed. Dick knew that it did not mean unconsciousness, but did mean, at that moment, non-reaction. It was good enough.
He took half a second to close his eyes, centering himself. The next step of his plan would require every bit of bat-training he ever had, every moment he walked a tightrope and swooped through air, trying to incorporate the lightness of feet, the grace of movement to move quietly, swiftly and surely.
He moved out of the room, his feet hardly pressing into the ground. He opened the door, and with a last look to the bed - still housing a unmoving and ominous beast -, closed it. Then he was in the hallway, he went to the kitchen and put a cup in the sink to fill with water. He was not thirsty, this was the diversion.
With the time that it took for an open tap to fill a glass, he quietly jumped to the other side of the room, where, in one of his living room walls, his target sat. The plastic thermometer pointed its red line full of accusation to Dick.
Do not do this, it said, you will live to regret it.
But Dick was beyond logic, full to the brim with determination.
His finger touched the round dial, with the shaky fingers and controlled breath of a man before a revelation, a child before a cookie. The red line diminished, from 70 to 68.
He had done it, in less than 10 seconds, a record time infraction that should earn him a prize. He could still hear the water filling his glass, knowing he would make it back in time before it overflew. He was fucking flying Grayson.
He should have known better.
It was there, waiting for him, when he turned. If Dick moved with the swiftness of a prey bird, it moved with the quiet hovering of a predator. Dick hadn’t even heard the door open.
The Kraken looked at him with a hard, dark eye.
For a frozen moment, neither spoke nor moved, simply regarding one another. Dick’s victory bled into fear seamlessly, instantly.
“I-” he began.
“Put it back.” Slade said-ordered-commanded.
And he should have, is the thing. The damage was already done, and the thermometer was going back to 70, whether it was by his hands now or his hands after (not by Slade’s, Slade never did something he had instructed Dick to do). If he had just done it now, Slade would know he did not need convincing, even though he would still be corrected. Thoroughly.
But that was his M.O, was it not? Bite the bullet now and spit it out bloody later.
“It’s just two degrees, Slade.” he tried for firm and reasonable and landed on strained and petulant. “You wouldn’t even had known, if-”
“What did I say?” Slade asked, and moved one step forward.
Slightly thrown by the approach and with nowhere to go but into the wall behind him or the windows to his right (an option he filled into his mind, although making Slade chase him and free falling seven stories down had equally appealing outcomes).
Slade, all-seeing, all-knowing and all-present, could see Dick making exit strategies and simplified, which spoke more of his impatience than his educational streak. “What did I say about the thermostat?”
“It shouldn’t matter.” Dick caught himself saying. “It’s just two degrees, I was hot, this is my home too!”
The thing is, Slade didn’t pounce on Dick, threw him down on the floor, put his teeth on his jugular and tore it out bloody and wet. Slade prowled. Slowly, one step of the other. The effect was Dick feeling goosebumps break out all through his body, his blood that had frozen when he first saw the mercenary turned boiling hot. He felt himself flush, and his muscles tense in anticipation of what was to come. They danced this dance countless times before, and the steps may change but the rhythm was the same.
It went like this, Slade reached Dick and put his hands on his shoulders. The touch even through his sleep shirt sent electric sparks through him, from his head all the way to his toes. Dick knew he could not break even that deceptively weak hold, so he told himself that was why he did not try to move. They were not yet at the stage where he acknowledged the tightness in his lower abdomen as anything but nervous energy with a hint of dread. He did not acknowledge the way his knees wanted to bulk under that simple pressure, the way he wanted those hands on his neck, on his nape, pulling, squeezing, pressing.
But this would come later. Right now, Dick still was feeling entitlement, and indignity on his own behalf. He was still resenting Slade for the thoughtless ease in which he assumed authority of Dick and his choices, in the way he would place himself in the position of the one that ordered and Dick in the one that obeyed as if it was evidently right. The eye was staring down at Dick (and wasn’t that another salt in the wound? The way Slade towered over him, the way he had to arch his neck to look at his face) and Dick could not name the thoughts behind it. Or rather he could, all to well, but he refused to. He didn’t want to read Slade’s mind, he wanted to listen to him expressing himself, Dick wanted to be listened to in return. And about some things, Slade did listen (which set him leagues above Bruce, who seemed to hear only white noise whenever Dick opened his mouth) but there were some entrenched clauses in which he did not even entertain the thought of budging.
Some were serious, like him expecting an honest answer if he wanted to know where Dick was going to be, or the fact that Dick was not allowed to pry in the details of the mercenary's contracts unless Slade showed it to him. Even if he disagreed or it chafed at him in some way, he could logically understand them.
Some demands, however, Dick could not wrap his head around. Dick should have at least three meals a day, everyday, and not one could consist only of cereal. Dick could not bring any type of animal into the house with the intention of letting it be there for more than one night. Dick could not put Slade’s white socks in the washer with his colorful t-shirts.
They’re socks, Slade! No one's going to see them!
It’s just a cockatoo, it’ll stay in its cage and not bother you. I thought you liked birds.
Well, I happen to like Froot Loops.
All arguments fell on deaf, unflinching and ruthless ears. The results were aches that took days to fade and bruises that lasted weeks. Dick hated Slade sometimes.
“I hate you sometimes.”
Slade tilted his head slightly, “Acknowledged.”
“Now,” Dick didn’t know if he was imagining the faint tightening of the fingers on his shoulder “Answer my question.”
Honestly, the fact Slade was asking for a third time was nothing short of a testament of how far they’d come. They had gone from “me hitting you is the warning” to “I’ll ask you to explain yourself and moderate my strength by how fast it takes you to apologize” to “here’s your third chance. You’re already fucked, but I’m pretendind to be a better person”.
Dick caved. Behind clenched teeth and closed fists, feeling ashamed and angry at Slade and wronged and not slightly guilty. But he caved all the same. “You told me not to touch the thermostat.”
Slade hummed.
“I was hot, Slade.” Dick said again, and now they moved past righteous anger to tentative pleading. Slade hadn’t even done anything yet, but Dick too, had changed. “It was too hot and I couldn’t sleep.”
“No, it wasn’t. And yes, you could.” Slade spoke like he always spoke, with the surety he was the one to breathe truth into existence.
“No, I couldn’t!” Dick was not really screaming, but speaking louder than he should have at four am on his churchly quiet apartment, his voice echoing off the walls. “You saw -”
But it was clear the jury had returned in Slade’s mind with a definitive sentence.
“You can sleep and you will. You need help, and I’ll provide. Now put the thermometer in the right temperature and I’ll put you to bed.”
Put you to bed could mean anything, the possibilities were some horrific, some ecstatic, most both. Dick was feeling so much inside himself he could barely recognize the emotions as they flickered in and out of relevance, all he knew was Slade’s eyes staring him down, Slade’s hands holding him in place and Slade’s voice, giving him a task.
Do I? Dick asked himself. Do I turn the temperature back up?
Then I’ll lose. If I just do it now it’ll be like I agree with him and I don’t!
I think I’ve already lost.
There has to be something for me to do! Talk to him! Fight! Flee!
Fawn.
“I was tired.” Dick let himself sound like it too. He has been having some dog bad days, Bludhaven thugs seemingly appearing out of thin air and catching him unprepared, a bomb he only managed to defuse on the last second, he knocked out a man in an alley and looked back to the woman he was atop of minutes ago only to find out that he was too late. Her name was Lena, she had been eighteen.
“I know.” Slade said, and he did, Dick had told him most of it when he came to Bludhaven the previous night. He had not said anything about the bomb, because if he knew Dick had willingly stood anywhere near an explosive a hair's breadth away from becoming charred meat he would flip a lid. Slade wouldn’t get it, if Dick said that it was the only way to avoid a whole building full of civilians from collapsing, that if he had had time to evacuate them he would, but he hadn’t. No, Slade would raise one white eyebrow and say “ Then the bomb would have taken the civilians and you. Some heroic death, getting blown to bits, failing to save anyone .”
Someday Dick would tell the man he knew him so well he could hold entire conversations with him without Slade being present. It would please him to know that, Dick knew. But now was not the time. Now Dick was employing some deceptively earnest subterfuge, so convincing one might even say he meant every word.
“I didn’t do it to be…” Challenging? Rebellious? God forbid, bratty? “Difficult. I just couldn’t- was not able to sleep.”
“So you’ve said.” Slade’s voice was still hard, his eye was still cold and his hands were still restraining. But he had softened, not in any way in his posture or tone, but Dick could tell, he knew. In the cavernous halls of Slade’s soul there was a crack on the wall and his name was on it. Even a man like Slade could not remain unknowable and inscrutable for ten (non-consecutive) years of a non not-relationship. Their dance consisted of Slade pushing him fifteen steps back and then Dick managing to one step forward. They were small things but they meant the world to him.
“You’ll make me sleep?” he asked.
“I will.”
“I won’t take any pills.” Dick clarified.
"I know."
“Or any injections. Or any fumes. Or-"
“Enough. You'll sleep through means you'll find somewhat acceptable.”
“What means?”
“Does this look like a negotiation table for you? When have you and I ever exchanged terms? You'll take what I give you and be glad it isn't something worse.”
“You're not just going to knock me in the head, will you? That's dangerous. “
Dick had seen things more frightening than Slade's smile, albeit not many.
“You'll see.”
Dick stood there, under Slade's hands, no longer able to convince himself that only fear was making his heart thump. God, what will Slade do to me ? he could ask. Anything , he thought, he can do anything to me .
I'll let him and be glad. How he hated this man, he hated to be his.
“Alright.” He said and could not categorize his voice at the moment, stuck somewhere between trembling and weak and excited, suddenly wondering how he would sleep with how awake and present he suddenly felt. But Slade had said he would sleep so sleep he would. Mary guard him.
Dick turned to leave, to turn his back to this lethal, dangerous and untrustworthy man-shaped creature he willingly laid with. And its hands did almost let him go, Dick could feel only the tips of its fingers on his shoulders when suddenly the scales tipped, the boat turned and the ceiling collapsed.
There was pressure in the shape of a forearm against Dick's neck, and his cheek was acquainted with the egg-shell white of his wall paint with such force he was surprised neither seemed to crack.
“Such a poor, pretty bird I have.” Slade's voice was half chuckle, half growl. “So stupid, yet thinking he's so clever.”
Dick barely heard the words, beyond the pain on his face, the way his breaths were struggling to come and go, beyond the sheer unescapable weight of Slade on his back - his chest to his back, his chin to the top of his head, their hips pressed together, not thrusting but in a bout of uncontrollable instinct or perhaps calculated pleasure-seeking Slade rubbed in, pulled Dick with the hand not strangling him by the waist and made sure he knew where this was going, what Slade wanted, what he was going to take. No, beyond all that was the way the gravel-low of Slade's voice made his mind blank and suddenly he was all sensations, all want.
“Yes.” Slade said as if Dick had spoken. And perhaps he had, in a wordless type of way. “Yes I know. You'll have it, pretty bird, you always have it. When do I ever deny something you need, huh? Even when you think you don't want it.”
The hand on Dick's waist moves, viper-quick, to the nape of his neck, found the hair there and pulled. Dick made sounds he did not care to categorize as his neck arched, as the forearm tightened as the ache on the back of his head sent shivers up his legs, to the center of him.
“And you do want it, don't you, kid?”
Then there was a thigh between Dick's knees and if there was a thinking molecule in him it fled the building in tears.
And Dick was stuck there, Slade's forearm on his neck, Slade's hands on his hair, Slade's thigh where he was warm and wanting. The cold wall holding him up indifferently, the controlled breaths of Slade on his heated skin, beard scratching at his sensitive ear.
Dick wanted it to last forever.
But then Slade used the grip on his hair to jerk him forward, his forehead catching on the wall with a thud. The pressure on his neck went from erotic to lethal (a thin line with the pair of them, but a line regardless).
Slade didn't say anything despite the almost snarl on his ear, but Dick knew he had done something wrong. He gripped fruitlessly at the offending arm depriving him of air, wanting desperately to breathe, to return to the place where his body had been skyrocketing to the high heavens with sensations instead of this. But he had to figure out what he did wrong, before Slade knocked him out or killed him.
“Yes.” Dick struggled to voice, remembering. He forgot to answer Slade's question, a serious infraction, and a stupid one to make while in a chokehold.
The pressure lifted, slightly, and Dick more choked than breathed for a few blessed moments.
“Yes, what?” Slade threatened. But Dick knew what he was asking.
“Yes. I want it, Slade.”
Slade hummed a small laugh and pressed his thigh higher, a reward and Dick moaned in gratitude.
God this wasn't going to take long at all, Dick felt right on the cusp of it, that absolute sensation only Slade had ever given him, could give him, and all from just rubbing his leg.
Like if noticing the same thing Slade did laugh this time, and it was a mean and mocking sound that made Dick clench his teeth so he would not expose how hot it made him feel.
He was not able to hold back, however, opening his mouth to pant as Slade's hand fell from his hair to his hip and he started pushing Dick down against him, guiding his thrusts in the exact rhythm he knew would undo him.
Then that damned, cursed voice came back.
“Stupid boy. You don't even know what you're saying anymore.”
Dick closed his mouth to swallow drool that had pooled under his tongue in time before it overflew, thank God, he could only imagine the picture that would make. He frowned, when what Slade said registered.
“I do. I do know.”
“Oh?” Slade, every god damn him, fucking cooed. “You do, do you? You clever bird, look at you. Daddy would be so proud.”
And Dick wanted to push Slade off him. Tell him to go fuck himself with that sword of his. He wanted to leave and never see his one-eyed face again.
But, in reality, Dick also wanted everything that was happening to him. And the muscles on his abdomen coiled and his movement quicked and his voice pitched, and he wanted Slade to keep talking to him like that because it felt right.
But he said, “Shut up. Fucking shut up.”
And Slade chuckled again, or maybe never stopped.
“Well if you know what you said, then tell me, boy, what is it I said you want?”
And Dick tried to think, he wanted to lose himself to the feeling but even more he didn't want to prove Slade right. He wasn't stupid, he knew what he agreed with.
But try as he might, Dick couldn't remember, not helped by the fact that Slade's thigh was moving with him, carrying him forward, making him ride it whether Dick wanted or not. Dick wanted-
"I want to come." he panted.
"True enough." Slade chuckled.
And that answer didn't sound right, more like Slade was humoring than agreeing with him, but Dick elected it sufficient for the moment. He could argue with Slade some other, when he didn't have Dick against a wall, when he didn't seemed to have perfected the way he moved against Dick's body, when Dick's underpants weren't so wet and stifling, when he couldn't feel his orgasm building in him, brick by brick, he threw his head back looking for, of every ludicrous things, for a kiss from the man-beast-devil he was in love with to seal this moment in all its perfect glory because Dick could feel it would be like nothing ever-
He should have known, by the glint of every single of Slade's teeth, his lips stretched, a tear on his face in the shape of a smile. Instead of kissing him, like Dick wordlessly asked for, Slade's teeth found his lower lips and bit down. Not playfully, not softly. Blood filled his mouth as Slade teared his flesh.
But the worst infraction, the unforgivable sin, was that Slade's hand on his hip held him tight to prevent him from moving and his leg stopped.
Dick screamed, a sound of ragged pain, for his ruined lip, and of utter desolation, at the fleeting fire in his guts.
Slade's eye was glittering with mirth, his smile wide, his teeth red. For a man who seemed carved of ice but moments ago, now he seemed incensed, giddy, almost child-like in his enjoyment. How he loved it when Dick suffered.
“Slade,” Dick began, meaning to say something. To insult him, to beg. But all he managed was “Slade!”
And Slade laughed and buried his face on the side of Dick's neck, his beard scratchy as he went to mouth at Dick's ear, biting it with gentleness compared to the ravage he had left of Dick's lips.
Dick choked on a whine as he shivered at the pleasurable sensation. Trying in vain to move against the leg between his.
“Poor little thing.” His tormentor was back with his cooing. “You wanted, didn't you, wanted to come?”
Dick didn't answer, not in English, instead arching his neck back further as to rest on Slade's shoulder, feeling as he moved to pepper kisses on his forehead and cheek, that ached with bruises he could not see. All the while whining like a... Dick didn't even want to say it.
Slade was doing the talking for him, clearly.
“And it looked like a good one, too, you were making such pretty sounds. Bet you're desperate to go after it.”
He was. If there was a word not even Dick's delusional denial could say that did not belong with him, that word was desperate.
“You said I could.” And god, could he sound less pathetic?
“Did I?” Slade asked, endlessly amused.
“You said! You said whatever I wanted.”
He chuckled. “What you needed was what I said.”
Whatever reply Dick had was swallowed by a moan, when Slade's thigh began its rocking motion.
“I would have let you, you know. You would've come if only you could've admitted it. I will if you do it now.”
Dick pressed his lips, wincing at the pain the still-bleeding wound made him feel, and refused to say anything. Dick was tired of this game, tired of being five steps behind Slade, tired of feeling like a toy he knew exactly how to wind up, how to put down. One of Slade’s hands came down his front, past his chest, down to his stomach and settled between his legs, he squeezed at the flesh there, traced it with his fingers. Through Dick’s clothes, he found the target, the place where Dick was the most sensitive, echoing the beat of his heart.
Slade’s finger teased there, as Slade’s mouth kissed his face, took his mouth. There was no consideration for his wound, nor had Dick really expected there to be. Didn’t make it hurt any less, when Slade’s tongue found it, when he licked into it, hand clenching his chin to make sure he could not turn away.
Dick was making these small gasping sounds, unable to move away from the pain as he tried to thrust against the too-soft fingers where he wanted pressure.
Dick nearly choked when he felt a hand slip past the loose waistband of his sweatpants. Having forgone a underwear, the fingers were met with coarse hair, and petted there for a bit, as Slade kissed him. It almost seemed fond, Slade’s gentle touches opposing his cruel kisses, and when he reached Dick in the wet of his folds he moaned a broken sound. Slade didn’t hesitate then, and his searching touches turned purposeful. To be standing against a wall with another's hand in his pants would, in any other situation, not sound like a circumstance where Dick would be anywhere close to coming.
But Dick was riding those fingers like he wanted nothing else in is life. They didn’t enter him, just passed between to gather wetness and use it to stroke his cock, Dick’s moan were now a constant, open-mouthed against Slade’s smiling lips, feeling every touch in his whole body.
“Slade.” he kept saying. “Slade, please.”
And Slade would smile, and let out that dark laugh of his. He ducked his head and whispered in Dick’s ear, like a terrible secret, “You know I’m not going to let you, do you?”
That almost was enough for him to cry. He felt his eyes sting and he grabbed at this monster behind, one hand to the forearm of the fingers that unmade him, the other backwards to grip at a shoulder.
“Please, Slade.” This was the part of the dance where Dick broke, where he lost and Slade won. “I don’t understand-” Slade’s fingers showed no sign of stopping, stroking him a constant rhythm, just fast and strong enough, another hand slipped under his shirt, started tracing the muscles of his stomach. “What do you want me to say!”
He was close, getting closer at every movement of those fingers, at every note of Slade’s cruel laughter on his ear. Slade wasn’t going to let him, he was going to let Dick feel all these wonderful things only to take them away when he wanted them most, leave Dick wanting and needy and pathetic and was going to laugh when he whined.
Dick wanted to say it made him furious, but he never felt a urge so strong to turn and bury his face on the chest behind him. If Slade wasn’t going to let him, he wanted the teasing to stop. Dick would sleep, if Slade stopped now, if he picked him up and cradled him in bed, put his hand back inside pants, not to tease, only to hold, so that Dick would feel warm and knew he was there. He would never disobey again.
But Slade was not stopping, in fact, he was speeding up. And Dick was getting higher and higher.
“I don’t know!” he whined.
“Don’t know what?” and Dick could hear, only after years of experience, the heaviness almost imperceptible in the man’s breath, there was arousal against his back that told him that what he was seeing pleased him. He was heated at the sight of Dick frustrated, denied, punished. As he always was.
“Don’t know what you want me to say.” Dick did sound on the verge of tears. “Please, Slade. Please, tell me.”
And Slade had the gall to sigh, a deep and disappointed sound. And it was made more terrible by the way it affected Dick wholly, he curved forward, used his arms to brace himself against the wall, wanting to hide his from Slade. Slade followed, of course, adjusting his fingers so as to not be knocked off course by Dick’s movements.
He had sorry at the tip of his tongue, and would have said it, if he thought it would make it any good. Slade didn’t care for apologies, he wanted efficiency.
And maybe it was that he finally went mad enough to be able to see the world through Slade’s lenses, maybe the movement of Slade’s finger and the fact he was careening towards another stolen orgasm was what made him say.
“Slade, I want, I want you to tell me.”
“Tell you what?” Slade asked, voice deceptively blank, still pretending to be disappointed by Dick, despite evidence of the contrary.
“Tell me what I want.” Dick pushed off the wall, used it to arch his back, throw his hips back. “I don’t know, I need you to tell me.”
And Dick knew Slade, and he knew there was a smile twisting that face. The hand on his Dick’s stomach flew to his neck, and pushed him back to where he was originally, pressed against Slade and with nowhere to go.
Against his ear, Slade said “You want me.”
“I do, I do.” Beyond obvious at this point, really, but never was going to Dick say it more willingly than know.
“You want me to take care of you, to take you for myself.” And there was matching movement from Slade’s hips, in tempo with his fingers. Looks like Dick wasn’t the only one willing to get himself off rubbing against something hard and firm.
“I need you Slade, need you more than anything.” Dick panted and he didn’t know if it was true in any moment other than this one, but he wasn’t really lying.
Behind him, Slade made a sound Dick couldn’t name, like he had moaned behind clenched teeth. Then it dissolved into a snarl, and those Dick readily recognized. The hand on his throat tightened in punishment.
“No, you don’t. Not yet. But you will.” he promised and Dick shivered because that was the voice Slade used when he spoke truth into existence.
He half-expected Slade to stop, he was almost there, but he kept going, the fingers on his throat also kept pressing.
“You need this, Dick.” He half-whispered, half-spat in his ear. “Need me to sleep, need me to make you better, make you stop hurting, make you good. You want to be good so much, don’t you, pretty bird?”
“Yes.” he confessed, breathlessly, his voice wet with tears. “I want to be good, I want to- God!” Dick could feel it, climbing him, that burning sensation that would make his mind blank with pleasure. If Slade stopped he wasn’t sure he would survive. “You make me good, Slade, you make me feel good. I feel-” Dick made an embarrassingly loud sound, too close to a squeal for dignity, and Slade's hand kept closed on his neck so every moan he made was now choked.
He couldn’t talk like that, but he thought the words with such intensity he was half-convinced Slade could hear him clearly. Please, only you make me feel like this. I tried to leave you and I keep coming back, there’s no one like you, believe me I fucking looked. Do you think I would be here, taking what you give me, letting you smack me around, push me down, pull my hair because I think there’s better for me out there? There’s no one, Slade, no one like you, not for me, I want you, I want you and I’m yours now fucking please let me come.
It was only a indeterminate amount of time later, when the world was fading back into view that he realized Slade hadn’t stopped, that Slade made him come in a way it momentarily took away his sense of presence. There was a hand between his legs still but the one on his neck was gone, instead a arm was supporting across his chest, keeping him from falling to the ground, because Dick’s legs seemed out of commission.
“Uh.” was all Dick could articulate.
“If you say so.” Slade replied.
He sounded faraway, despite being as close as physically possible to Dick. Dick squirmed slightly trying to get those arms to hold him properly instead of this awkward propped-up against the wall position.
Slade sighed as if Dick was asking him the world, but did move him easily, like a toy. Any other time, Dick would have put up a token protest against the fact that Slade hoisted him up by the waist to carry him, but all Dick did now was circle his legs around his waist and his arms around his shoulders. If Dick knew Slade, and he did, the man was rolling his one eye.
“Kid.”
“Huh.”
“The thermostat.”
And they were right next to the cursed thing, weren’t they. Dick didn’t have it in him to sigh. He reached forward with clumsy fingers, from his advantage point carried by Slade. And turned it up to seventy fucking degrees.
Slade waited a moment, as if expecting Dick to say something.
He didn’t. Silently, they made the way back to the bedroom. When they were almost there, he said:
“Almost got you.”
“No. You didn’t.” Slade sounded firm, but Dick could read his tone. He was amused, and fond.
Slade did throw him on the bed, although not as hard as he could. Dick bounced for a bit, and stared up the ceiling. How had he ever not been sleepy? Every bone on his body was begging for the sweet nothingness of sleep, and he was wont to deny them now. He was almost slipping under when his pants were lowered down.
Suddenly half-naked, Dick raised his head.
Slade was there, dropping his pants to the floor, eye on Dick and Dick alone. Behind him, the curtains were outlined with gold.
“It’s morning.” Dick said.
“It is.”
Slade was climbing in bed, pushing Dick’s legs apart, and even tired and satisfied he felt the weight of Slade’s stare and attention like flames on his skin.
“Didn’t you-”
“No.” Slade cut him.
“Oh.” Turns out one of them couldn’t come from rubbing one out after all. Unsurprising, considering how old Slade is.
Dick was feeling more like himself, so he told him that. Slade gave him a open slap on the sensitive flesh between his thighs for his freedom of speech.
“Slade-” Dick said, meaning it as a warning, sounding like a whine.
“Shut up. Stop moving. Go to sleep.” Slade echoed. “This time I mean it, Grayson.”
“You always meant it.” Like script, petulant in the face of authority.
Another slap on his center, this time sharper, crueler, but Dick knew it could get worse.
He almost opened his mouth to say something useless, but gave up at the last moment. He tried to get comfortable, naked from the waist down, Slade moving amidst his legs, getting ever closer. It should have been harder than it was.
Still, he wondered how Slade expected him to sleep while he was fucking him.
“You’ll manage.” Slade said in a mirthful tone. There was no strike to punish Dick for breaking the rules by talking, even if absent mindedly.
Dick didn’t worry about it too much. Of course Slade knew what he was thinking. He knew what Slade thought too, sometimes. He knew that, right now while Dick’s eyes were closed, there was a fervor in his eye that he only showed when he was fighting Dick, when he was bloody and broken and Dick knew he was going to lose.
It happened more than a handful of times. Deathstroke blows were tattooed on his body, Dick had broken a hundred bones a hundred times but Deathstroke was the one that broke them the most often, the most consistently. It used to scare Dick to death that look, when he was young in a red, green and yellow costume that a man unfathomably bigger and stronger than him, capable of both thoughtless cruelty and calculated sadism was hovering over him when he was too hurt to keep fighting or to get away. And that one eye shone with delight so pure it bordered on rapture. It was the look Slade gave him when he broke down, when he gave in.
After Jason died, face bruised with Bruce’s mad grief and heart aching with the poison he had hurled at Dick, he had buried himself in Slade so desperate and hurt he was begging Slade to hit him, to exchange a pain with another. He didn’t, instead Slade held him like he was a child and rocked him in his lap, shushing him and saying it was not your fault, it was his fault, he chose it, to be Batman, to let you be Robin, to take Robin from you when there’s no one better at it than you, no one who could ever compare. Dick was ashamed that at the time, even though he hadn’t said it, he had agreed. Even now, a part of him was happy that Slade had said it.
So no, he didn’t mind the mad stare, the things Slade took pleasure in, the ways he hurt him. He was past being scared of Slade, at least in that gut-heavy sense that made him think the man was about to jump out of every shadow to kill him when he was a kid. Or torture then kill him. Or torture and kill his friends then torture and kill him. Now he knew Slade wouldn’t kill him, if only for the merit that Slade wanted to keep him. As an apprentice, partner, lover, whore, toy or son, it seemed to vary. But Slade would have him. It’s just his luck Dick had warmed up to the idea of being had.
Dick wasn’t going back to the days where he was alone again, when people would look at him with disappointment or pity. Where every time he would feel desperate enough to go to Bruce, mad enough to believe that if he worded it right, if he managed to say just the right things in the right way, that blank stare on his former guardian’s face would melt, and Bruce would look at him like he had when he was a kid. In those days, Dick didn’t even want an apology, ready to assume blame for everything. Jason, the Titans, anything, there was a night he went to Bruce so raw and hurt he would have apologized for Bruce’s parents being dead if it made a difference. It wouldn’t, it hadn’t. Bruce didn’t care for apologies, he wanted efficiency.
And Dick had outlived his use to him. No pretty words of begging, praise or despair moved him a single inch, if anything it made the whole thing worse. He had lost Bruce forever, and even though it felt nothing close to seeing his parents mangled bodies on the floor, it was a knife to his gut where least expected, from the man who told him he would not leave Dick alone. Had promised.
He wasn’t Batman, he couldn’t cloak himself in his loneliness so often that it solidified around him, became his normal to the point where letting people in required herculean effort (mostly, he knew, Batman just did not bother). No, in the circus, with the Titans, even in the Manor around only Alfred and Bruce, Dick was a people-person. Being isolated, pushed away, denied all the love and friendship in his life, hollowed him out.
Dick wouldn’t have survived these days, without Slade. Slade, who had been in Dick’s bloodiest nightmares since he was ten, who had threatened his friends, threatened him, who had killed unrepentantly and would kill again. That had beat him bloody when he was not even old enough to drive. That one evening, when he was young, far too young, had given him the first taste of the sweet poison he would drown Dick with in later years. Dick had said yes - at the times also afflicted by his love-hungry sickness that was what firmly nailed him by Slade’s side - but if Slade had been a good man, he would not do what he did with someone as young as Dick, would not have thought of him, wanted him that way. Dick had felt like utter filth after. Slade had tried to go after him, but that had only furthered his fear and he had fled, of all places, to Bruce, the only man he knew could stand against the mercenary and win. There had been a notion in Dick’s head then, that if Slade had grabbed him he wouldn’t have let go. Dick had said yes once and he would take it as yes forever. Give you what you need. Even when you think you don't want it. Dick was not a fool. He knew Slade meant what he said, and what it meant that he meant it.
Slade was a bad man, full of poison and wrongness. He would kill and hurt and maim without blinking his single eye. He was everything Bruce hated, and Dick had hated him once too. Still hated some of his actions, in a distant “separate-the-art-from-the-artist” sense, if anyone else did what Dick knew Slade did, Nightwing would take them down, come hell or high water. Dick still could try, sometimes trying to reason to himself that he had to, he couldn’t let Slade keep doing his atrocities unpunished and then curl against him in bed like they were something they could never be.
But then Dick would be without Slade. Without the man that, when he was at his most low and broken, and could have just dragged him down further, picked him up. Gathered him in strong arms and told him all the things Dick wanted to hear. And meant it, Slade only said things he meant. Speaking truth into existence.
Dick had once thought he was strong, Slade tells him he is, sometimes. But Dick is not strong enough to go without this, to go without anyone. And he only has Slade.
And Slade was also right. He did manage to fall asleep.