Chapter Text
There was something to be said for how cold the air was, how it rippled in waves across the exposed skin of Dick’s face, calming the fever bubbling beneath his skin. He felt distant, unsettled. His eyes had difficulty focusing on any one thing. They flickered across the city skyline, dimly registering the lights in windows, his ears vaguely filtered through the conversations of late-night passerby below him. The humidity clung to his skin, to his hair; the aftermath of the rain that had pelted the city during the day. The concrete beneath his feet was wet, would be all night. Dick sighed. He was forgetting something, he knew it. His escrima were loose in his hands, and he tucked them back away. He felt unfocused, uneasy. He had had a difficult month in Gotham, helping the Bats deal with a particularly violent Arkham breakout. His skin was mottled with bruises and new scars, and every grapple between buildings stretched his sore muscles beyond belief. He needed rest. He needed sleep. He was forgetting something.
Still, guilt lingered on his skin, joining the humidity in an uncomfortable cloak. He had been gone from his city for too long. That was one of the issues he had with Bruce, with himself. Bruce would ask for help, and Dick would always go. Blüdhaven was more lost than Gotham in all the regular ways. A regular cesspool of crime and corruption, without all the weirdness of the Arkham rogues. Every time he left, it sank further into the abyss he’d been trying so hard to lift it from. Dick went through the motions of his patrol, but he couldn’t comprehend where he was, what he was meant to be doing. He just knew he was doing it. He was forgetting something.
He was swinging between buildings when he felt it. Waves of heat rippled beneath his skin, flooded his senses with need. The cool, humid air wasn’t doing anything to help. Dick flipped directions mid-swing, ignored the swooping sensation in his stomach, and hastily made his way home.
The fire escape of his apartment was rickety, and creaked with every movement as he made his way down from the roof and into his bedroom window.
He needed to stop the heat. He couldn’t go into it now, he had things to do. He had already taken too much time off work. He went through the motions of locking his apartment, setting his security settings. His legs shook, sweat coated his legs, his arms, his forehead. Slick leaked from him in a sudden rush, and Dick hurriedly stripped himself of his suit, peeling it off him in quick, practiced motions, slowed only by the shaking of his hands. He flipped the shower on, made the water as cold as possible, and slipped beneath it. If the water was cold, maybe he could stop it. He plugged the tub and sat down beneath the torrential spray and hastily scrubbed himself with unscented soap. The heat beneath his skin trickled away with the water, and he felt like he could breathe. Maybe he would feel better in the morning. Maybe he could go in, alert his supervisors, and then go home. If they smelled him, surely they’d forgive his extended absence. He just needed time to prepare. Time to set everything up. He had forgotten. He cursed himself for his own stupidity.
He was supposed to be the best, the brightest, the fastest. He was not supposed to forget things like this. He had tracking apps and reminders set in his phone. He was supposed to know.
He woke in the middle of the night and fumbled with his phone. Slick was coating the insides of his thighs, his fever reaching new heights. He sent two text messages. One to his boss explaining the situation, and one to someone else. He fell back asleep mid type, and dimly registered hitting the send button before unconsciousness hit him.
He woke to a room that felt significantly cooler than it had when he fell asleep. He remembered heat, wanting to tear off his skin in anguish. He remembered, in the middle of the night, waking to a pool of slick beneath him. Now, a small fan in the corner of his room was whirring diligently, cooling the room just enough to be noticeable. Distantly, he recognized the sounds of movement in his kitchen, and when he took a deep breath in, he recognized the musky, gunmetal and oil scent of alpha. He remembered, in the middle of the night, texting him.
Dick sighed, sitting up. He winced when the movement awakened cramps in his abdomen. He looked at his side table, aiming for his phone, but he stopped when he noticed a glass of water on his side table, beside two pain killers and his birth control. He knew, logically, that it was the last possible moment to take it, and he knew, intrinsically, that pregnancy was not something he wanted. But his inner omega cried out in protest. The omega in him wanted to be bred. He shoved the pills into his mouth, downing the glass of water like a man dying of thirst. He struggled to the bathroom on shaky legs, wincing at the uncomfortable squelch of slick between his legs. He sat on the toilet with a huff of relief.
As he was washing his hands, he heard the bedroom door creak open, and the scent of alpha got immediately stronger. Behind him, the man himself leaned against the bathroom door frame, his hulking mass taking up the whole doorway. There weren’t a lot of people who could make Dick feel small. He was muscular, sure, and tall, though not as tall as most of the rest of his family. But Slade Wilson, all muscle and overbearing power, he made Dick feel small.
“I must say, I was surprised to get your message, little bird,” and that familiar smirk that filled Dick with rage and arousal in equal measure was spread across the man’s face. His single blue eye glinted with mirth. “That being said, it was not your most eloquent message.”
Dick’s cheeks flushed. “It got you here.”
Slade pushed off the door frame and towered over him deliberately. “That it did,” he murmured. He pushed a stray hair from Dick’s face, tilted his face up. Dick’s breath caught in his throat, and Slade met his lips in a kiss, so gentle compared to their usual games.
The tension between them had been high since Dick presented at eighteen, a drastic shift from the violence that had encompassed their relationship before then. Dick knew, logically, that Slade was a bit of a creep, but he also knew the man knew what he was doing. And now, Dick was twenty-five, and the man was still interested, so maybe he wasn’t that much of a creep.
This wasn’t the first time Dick had asked for the man’s help with a heat, but it had been a while. Dick tried to avoid it, if he could. If he kept their interactions limited to one-night stands and heavy BDSM encounters that allowed for a degree of separation between themselves and their actions, then he could pretend this hadn’t gone on as long as it had. It was difficult enough to keep anything normal from Bruce, so the fact that they’d gone on this long undetected, or at least unmentioned, didn’t escape Dick’s notice.
He let himself melt into Slade’s touch, let those calloused hands slip beneath his sweatpants, rough against his own scarred skin. His grip was firm, unrelenting, but not hard enough to bruise.
Normally, during Dick’s heats, he was too far gone to really want anything other than to be filled. And he could feel that mindset approaching, could feel his body’s reactions straying dangerously close to instinct rather than his own direction, but for now he knew what he wanted. And he wanted to be taken care of, but right now, he also wanted to hurt.
He broke their kiss, a strand of spit chased their lips, and clutched Slade’s shoulders. “Today,” he whispered, “can you make it hurt?”
Slade’s lips widened to that familiar, sinister smirk. “Of course, little bird.”
Slade’s sadist streak was a mile wide, and Dick’s own tendency towards masochism complemented it nicely. Slade stripped his bird of his sweat pants and t-shirt, and with a firm hand in his hair, dragged him into the bedroom, ignoring the boy’s hissing. He threw him down on the bed, and Dick whined in response. Slade dug their box of toys out from beneath Dick’s bed and picked out a nice bit of rope. He pulled Dick’s arms together behind his back and tied them together roughly, before gently checking that they weren’t too tight. He nudged open Dick’s legs, exposing his already slick vulva, and slapped it. A few slaps had Dick leaking even more profusely, his clit throbbing with pain and pleasure, and then used one denim covered knee to press against it roughly, dragging across it with force. Dick let out a high-pitched keen. Slade loved fucking him like this. Their normal trysts were fun, but Dick avoided being vocal during them, disliking being too loud or too much. During his heats, he had no such reservations. Slade loved to have him like this, at his mercy, succumbed to his whims. He let Dick hump his leg aggressively while he contemplated what to do next. The kid–man really, but once a man reached Slade’s age everyone that much younger was a kid–needed a firm hand, wanted a bit of pain, but he was in a delicate state. Lowered inhibitions, desperate to please, Slade couldn’t trust him to tell if it was too much. And Slade liked to see the kid cry, but not enough that he’d consider pushing him too far when he wasn’t ready for it. He unzipped his jeans, pulled his dick out and stroked it to hardness. Dick must have smelled it, because his hips bucked against Slade’s knee. Slade wound a hand in Dick’s hair and pulled him back to his chest. Dick keened, high and desperate, tinged with pain and need. Slade could taste his desperation like salt on his tongue, but when he looked down, he saw the tears on Dick’s face. He shifted his hand from Dick’s hair to hold onto his bound forearms.
“Oh, little bird,” he crooned. “You’ve been untouched for too long, hm? Long weeks away from home, at daddy’s beck and call. You’ve needed this, haven’t you?”
Dick glared at him, but the accompanying buck of his hips into empty air was a tell-tale sign. Slade grinned. “Yeah, you have.” He lined his cock up with Dick’s entrance, and enjoyed the feeling of Dick trying to take more of it in, but not being able to. The tip rested just inside, enough to tempt but not enough to make a difference. Dick tried to push himself down, but Slade tsked, holding him still.
“Please,” Dick begged. “Please, Slade. I need it. Please.”
Slade hummed consideringly.
Dick whined desperately. “Please,” he begged. “Please, I need it, please give me, give me, please please ple-.”
His last plea erupted into a wanton moan when Slade pushed inside him fully, using his grip on his arms to bounce him up and down, and shifted Dick’s legs to encompass his hips. It was a stretch, Slade knew, but his little bird was flexible. He could take it. Slade shoved Dick back down onto the bed and bent over him, a hand on the back of his neck, pushing him into the mattress, fucking him with vigor. Dick’s moans became muffled by the sheets, his face shoved into a wet spot of his own slick. Slade dragged him through it, fucking into him harder, untying Dick’s wrists part way through so that he could see Dick spread out, gripping desperately at the sheets as he did, scrabbling for purchase. His hands seized as Slade rubbed his clit, and Slade felt him clench around him as Dick came with a soft cry, slumping to the bed, but Slade kept fucking him until he felt his knot begin to swell, and buried himself deep. Dick mewled beneath him, and Slade twisted the kid’s head before releasing his neck. He knelt over, moving deeper minutely, and hushed Dick’s whine with a deep kiss, before licking over his scent gland, nipping at it gently. He knew better than to bite it fully, no matter how much Dick begged (and he would beg). Instead, Slade picked the usual spot a few inches beneath it and bit it, hard enough to draw blood. Dick cried out, but he remained limp beneath him while Slade pumped him full of come for the first time during their encounter. It wouldn’t be the last.
The rest of Dick’s heat passes in a haze of sex and come, bruising kisses and a refresh of the scar on his shoulder. Dick rarely remembered the sex itself, but he felt the bruises on his hips, the soreness inside him from being used and knotted. His injuries from his month in Gotham had begun to fade, but the marks from his heat were bright and fresh across his body. (Bent over the sink in his bathroom, eyes on the mirror, he would clean and admire the wounds, loving the way they felt and hating himself for it.) In the final throes of his heat, Slade had made sure to take care of him. One of the reasons Dick kept crawling back to the man was because even though he made out like he was some uncaring, unkind asshole of an alpha (and really, he was), he also knew the importance of proper BDSM etiquette, and knew how to take care of an omega after heat. So, Dick’s bedsheets had been washed and replaced, his fridge filled with easy-to-eat nutritious snacks, and his water bottles filled. The musky scent of alpha (gunmetal and oil and blood) lingered in his apartment, coating the fresh sheets, the couch, the counters. They’d fucked on nearly every surface, but no amount of all-purpose cleaner erased the smell of heat and musk and alpha.
Dick sat uncomfortably in his living room, clean for the first time in months, as it usually was after Slade’s visits. The man was anal about it. He ached, everywhere. He wanted, more than anything, to curl into his alpha’s side. Internally, he chastised himself. Slade Wilson was not his alpha. He brought his shirt closer to his nose, and breathed in open-mouthed Slade’s heavy scent, letting the gunmetal taste settle over his tongue, comforting his anxious nerves.
As much as Slade cleaned and took care of him afterwards, the man never stayed. Dick ached for comfort, for a sturdy chest to curl up against. If anyone was there to smell him, he’s sure he would reek of distress. Dick settled for breathing in the lingering smell of Slade on his sofa and clothes, and curled up on the sofa to sleep.