Chapter Text
Gotham is as cold and cruel as Dick remembers it. It’s nothing like Bludhaven; Bludhaven is vicious and callous, too, but Bludhaven doesn’t care what happens to you. Gotham, on the other hand?
Gotham is out to hurt you. To drive you mad.
The worst part is, it’s still home. It still feels right, crouched on one of the hideous gargoyles at the top of one of the old manors. The air is cool, the sun setting in smog-colors over the city. The jet is parked on the top of Wayne tower, in the one of the places that Dick knows nobody will go looking for it. For a big company, people are easy to misdirect. Especially when the CEO has it set up specifically for that reason.
Dick’s hand hovers over his comm. He could call Tim, let him know what the problem is, why he’s here. Except he can expect Tim’s reaction; just like Kori, it would simply be condemnation. He doesn’t understand Slade; doesn’t understand why Dick needs to be here. Dick can’t let Slade get to him.
Seconds later he’s flying through the air, flipping and landing on another building. He has no choice but to do a simple circuit, one hand on his comm, tapping almost absently into the police radios. Dick has no idea what he’s going to do. Hopefully Tim hasn’t met Slade yet, just heard that he was in town. Dick had been too stunned to ask for details.
Idiot.
This is what he gets for being sloppy. Dick feels the cool night air wash over him and realize that the cold sweat from this morning—or was it yesterday? Yesterday, maybe, with how long the ride was and how tired he is. This is more important than any rest.
The first alert he gets is a quick burglar. Dick ducks behind a street corner so that Tim doesn’t see him. He can’t risk a conflict. Instead, he figures that Tim hasn’t met Slade yet. Good.
The next one doesn’t do anything, either. But something else catches his attention—a secondhand alert from a radio he’d almost thought not to tap into, one that makes his spine prickle. A security alarm that had gone off in the office of one of Gotham’s Senators, a controversial figure so far as he remembers. Something Simons. Much more rich than simple politics would show—
The exact target that Slade would go after. Dick is turning around as fast as he can before he knows what he’s doing. He knows how to handle Slade. He’ll get him out of here. That’s what’s going to happen.
Slade will not hurt Tim.
Tim can take care of the museum that blares in the police radio. That’s probably just Selina Kyle, or god knows who else looking for precious jewels. This is more important.
Dick lights down on the roof in the rich side of Gotham. Large windows line the side of the mansion, and Dick can’t help but think of how bad that is for security. Anyone could just . . . fly through one. Not Slade, though. He has more finesse than that.
A backhand to his face for being sloppy. Slade grabbing his neck and hissing in his ear about his form.
Dick shakes his head. You’re going to see Slade. Dick grits his teeth. He has to do this. For Tim. Get Slade out of here, make his attention something else, anything.
What happened to Damian won’t happen again, because I won’t let it.
Dick slips down. There’s no commotion in the house; all seems to be as it should be, dark and cool. He works at the window. This one isn’t undone, Slade must have gotten in another way—
You don’t know it’s Slade.
But he can feel it. Dick’s instincts for the man, borne of months with him every minute, swear to him that Slade is here. He can feel the tracks of his soul, bloody things, burning through this building on their way to wreak something terrible. Dick steps into the house, eyes narrowing in the dark, determined to find what he needs to.
Then he hears the noise. It’s muffled, like—
A hand over a mouth while a scream bubbles up in his throat—
Dick is bolting towards it. What is Slade doing? Is he doing to another person what he did to Dick, what he probably did to Damian—
Dick doesn’t notice the splatters of blood that his boots make until he’s halfway through the puddles. Dark bodies litter the floor, and footprints that aren’t Dick’s make their way to the bedroom. He can’t even see the ostentatious carpeting that’s being ruined in the darkness of it, let alone the dark red color of the blood spilled, but he can almost feel the orange and black piercing his eyelids as he jolts towards the room. His escrima sticks come out, a dull roar in the back of his mind. This is Slade.
Slade pulls the sword out of the king-sized bed, out of the man that lays on it, the weapon streaked with darkened blood. All Dick can see is the silhouetted back of him, a monster in the closet, looming in the darkness of the richly decorated room.
Dick doesn’t have to yell. Slade knows he’s here. He yells anyways, coming at him with everything he has. Slade just murdered—several people, to get to this man, who was probably his target. Slade raped him, and Slade—Slade hurt Damian. The fury of it might make him shake, but instead it makes his strike swing true.
Slade stumbles before spinning around, eye narrowed dangerously, a sneer Dick recognizes under his mask.
“You killed them,” Dick snarls, and he’s not angry he’s furious, he’s livid. All the anger begins to bubble up inside him. Dick draws his escrima, running at Slade again. This time it clangs onto his sword. Dick doesn’t waste any time before kicking hard at the man’s legs, hoping to throw him off balance before spinning into another jab.
This one lands. Dick knew it would. He didn’t spend months under Slade’s tutelage for nothing, because he did learn the most important thing—how Slade works. How he thinks, how he moves, every little thing about him that he never wanted to know. Dick is making it into a weapon.
The stick legs out enough electricity to at least stun a regular man, but Slade simply takes it in stride before striking back. A sword to the ankles, a jump back to force Dick to come to him, to give Slade more time to plan his next move. Dick doesn’t indulge him, moving with him, getting in close. He can smell the sweat, almost feel the man’s hands—
Dick’s elbow lashes out with all the force he has in his body. Slade’s chin snaps back, and Dick prays that the man tastes blood. The blood Dick has been tasting for years. He sees an opening, right there in the fight, Slade’s neck bent back so that Dick can see all of it, the jugular pulsing beneath the fabric—
Dick jumps at his chance. He’s not thinking straight, he knows that, but the fury thrums in his blood and makes him want something it feels he’s never truly admitted to himself. He wants Slade dead.
The escrima goes towards Slade’s head with every ounce of pressure Dick has behind it, spinning so that he can get to it—
Slade ducks. One second his head is there and the next it’s gone, like some kind of speedster, and Dick is left staring at nothing at all while the escrima buries itself in the wall. His brow scrunches, and he’s almost aware of what he just tried to do—
A hand clamps down on his forearm with the pressure of a vice.
“That was a killing blow, kid,” Slade purrs. There is one emotion strong in his voice: Slade is pleased.
Dick opens his mouth to snarl but another equally strong hand is pressed into his shoulder. Slade heaves in all one motion, stepping out of the way to shove Dick forward, and Dick realizes that he faces one of the large ceiling to floor windows. He only has time to think that he was lured in before another cruel force is in the small of his back. Dick is falling forward, forearms crossed in front of his face to shield himself from the glass—
Falling through the air. Only Slade could pervert falling like this, make it something horrible, uncontrollably careening through the air for only half a second before his body is slammed against the concrete. Dick chokes, tastes blood. It wasn’t very far. Even now he knows that. Maybe some of his ribs cracked, but nothing else—
Dick is starting to pull himself to his feet when Slade lands next to him. His body is so heavy that Dick almost wouldn’t have been surprised if he dented the concrete. Dick looks up. It was only a story.
Slade clicks his tongue. Dick dodges a backhand. Predictable—
But the sweep of his leg under him leaves Dick’s distracted form falling once again to the concrete. He swears, arms under him—
Slade’s boot cracks ribs as he leans his body weight on Dick’s form, a knife slipping out of his sleeve. It lands next to Dick’s ear, so close he can feel the metal brush past his skin. Dick bares his teeth, still struggling. He should stop and think but all he can feel is the vicious rage of it all. How dare he.
Slade stomps. This time Dick spews blood, spilling down his front in a wet gasp as he stares up at the sky. He hears two or three ribs audibly crack, and he hopes none of them have pierced his lungs.
“Listen to me, boy,” Slade murmurs, and yet it’s loud, and it’s every time Slade has talked down to him from above.
“Go fuck yourself,” Dick snarls.
“Not in my evening plans.”
Dick claws at his foot, a nail coming loose. The anger bleeds out of him with the strong iron tang in his mouth, gasping for breath under the pressure of Slade’s boot. Suddenly it all feels so meaningless. So worthless.
“Too bad,” Dick says. His teeth are stained a vicious pink with blood. His chest is starting to hurt.
“Red Robin is going to have a run in with Deathstroke, I suppose,” Slade says, deceptively casual.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” Dick hisses. There is more desperation than anger now, to his own humiliation.
Slade laughs. “Are you going to stop me, little one?”
“I’m not going to let you—” Dick chokes. Why is he chokes. Why can’t he get the words out? Slade has seen him lower, more worthless, sobbing on his knees, face covered in—
“—not going to let you hurt him.”
Slade leans over. More pressure on Dick’s ribs, pressure enough that the spearing agony begins to spike in other parts of his body too. “That’s not a decision you get to make.”
Dick spits blood at him, but it just lands on the front of his uniform, smearing itself further, making it filthy. He’s not afraid that he’s going to die. Slade isn’t going to kill him, there isn’t murder in that cloaked face, he can’t feel the intent. He just intends to hurt him. Like he always does.
“But,” Slade says softly, “perhaps I’m open to . . . persuasion.”
Dick stares at him.
Vomit aches in the back of his throat.
That look in Slade’s eye? That one he knows.
“No,” he hisses.
Slade raises a brow, face twisting under his mask. “Have it your way, Grayson. Just know—your little Red Robin is still out there. And you—” he taps Dick’s broken ribs “—don’t seem to be in much of a state to help him.”
Dick winces. He tastes blood and bile and his eyes are widening as Slade’s boot finally moves. Dick stumbles to his feet. Something is definitely broken, and something definitely got into one of his lungs. Internal organs . . . seem to be all intact. Mostly.
“Slade,” he rasps. Slade begins to turn, to walk away—to ignore him.
To hurt Tim.
To hurt Tim.
Dick throws himself at Slade’s back, because even though his internal organs might be in danger, his legs are perfectly intact. Slade spins instantly on his heel. Pain explodes in stars on one side of Dick’s face, pain spears the back of his head as it bangs against the side of the alleyway. Dick shudders, falling down the side of the building, feeling sick. He blinks a bruised eye, squinting at Slade.
He’s leaving.
Dick can’t fight him. Not like this. Maybe not ever. He should be able to, and yet—
Here and now—
“Wait. Slade.” Dick’s voice is rough and he doesn’t know if it’s the emotion, the situation, or the pain. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, isn’t the owner of his own voice as it speaks.
Slade stops, and slowly, agonizingly he turns. Dick wants to throw up, but he doesn’t let himself. Instead he swallows the bile down. It feels like his heartbeat is beginning to slow, like a deep-sea diver, Dick beginning to drift away into the sea. He feels himself try to stumble again to his feet.
“On your knees,” Slade orders. Dick’s body obeys as if it was made to. It was made to. Made to by Slade, so many years ago, and now it responds by staying there on the filthy ground, trash against the alley wall, dirt on the knees of his uniform.
This can’t be happening.
This is happening.
He is here, this is real, this is happening.
Dick should move, should do something. He wants, needs, to pretend that what is happening isn’t, because it can’t be, shouldn’t be. Instead he’s frozen here.
“Don’t hurt Red Robin,” he means to demand, but it comes out pale and sickly. He stares up at Slade, now a silhouette that comes closer and closer in monstrous, loud footsteps.
“Don’t worry,” Slade murmurs, so familiar, sickeningly familiar. Normal. This is wrong.
Move.
Dick doesn’t move, he just stands there, staring up at Slade. A gloved hand cards through his hair, pushing his head back. Dick lets it. He feels limp, ineffectual. Frozen. He begs his body to move, but nothing happens.
Dick knows what’s going to happen next.
He knows.
Slade’s hand goes to the belt of his suit. He’s flicking the latches that hold it on apart with low clicking sounds. Unfamiliar. Not the one he’d had when Dick was young. That makes him twitch, but he doesn’t move. Bile forms in the back of his throat. All he can feel is Slade’s fingers digging into the back of his neck.
This is happening.
Slade is going to rape him again, and Dick just . . . kneels there, in front of the man, as childish as the day he was fourteen and Slade had him in his grasp. Except now, he’s older, he should be able to fight back.
But he can’t.
The belt slips free, and Slade works on his fly. Dick can see him pushing the cup aside, see the instant the outline of his cock is visible in the spandex. Big. Not as big as it was then, when Dick was smaller. But big.
Big enough to hurt.
Dick feels himself start to make a noise, but no sound comes out. Slade jerks Dick’s head back, facing him up towards his fly.
“Open your mouth,” he murmurs.
Dick stares.
He feels a leather clad thumb at the corner of his mouth, prying him open and he lets it. Dick lets it. He’s letting Slade do this.
Slade’s other hand is moving around his cock. Dick can’t move. He’s frozen here, under a thousand feet of water pressure, so much of it weighing him down that he should be crushed under it. He can see the veins in it, in the skin, smell Slade’s sweat. It makes his stomach heave, and he should throw up, but he’s too frozen too.
It tastes sour on his tongue. Slade makes a pleased noise, prying Dick’s mouth wider, and Dick is fourteen.
Slade pushes down his throat so far so Dick can’t breathe at all. Slade’s cock tastes of bitter skin and sweat. Dick’s face is pressed to Slade’s crotch, the hair against his lips. Dick shudders bodily, trying not to throw up. Dick can’t make Slade angry. Not after what happened last time. Dick can’t move, frozen on the ground. Slade’s cock moves in and out of his throat. The disgusting noises are the same, loud and slick. Slade jams himself further and further, over and over. The slap of skin on skin is loud in his ears. Slade’s groans of pleasure are loud. Time seems to slow. The ticks of the clock take forever. Dick is living in between them, in this hell.
It doesn’t end.
Not for a long, long time.
Dick can feel pinpricks all over his body. Something is moving inside him, and this didn’t happen last time. This time his body is older, more accustomed to this—
This time his cock is hard between his thighs, in tandem with Slade moving in and out of him, brutally fucking his throat like this is the last orgasm he’ll ever get to have. Dick realizes belatedly that there are tears in his eyes, trickling down his face, and he wonders if they’re from more than his gag reflex. He feels numb, too out of touch with what he’s feeling to know why he’s crying.
“I knew you enjoyed this, boy,” Slade growls, and his boot presses down on Dick’s cock—not to make him feel anything, just out of cruelty, just so that Dick knows that Slade knows that the man sees. Dick sobs around Slade’s cock, and he tries so hard to stop himself but this is unstoppable, agonizing in his pained gasps. He can’t like this. Maybe he does want this. He’s not moving, is he? It doesn’t make any sense.
“Go on,” Slade mocks, “cry. I know you wanted this.”
Dick sobs again.
It doesn’t end.
It doesn’t end.
Dick stays there on his knees until Slade’s hip stutter. Until he pulls himself out, finally, the string of saliva connecting him to Dick’s mouth. Dick glances up at him, and all he can see is the red and glistening head of Slade’s cock before the first string of come lands against his forehead. Dick shuts his eyes, hearing Slade’s low groans as he orgasms, come spilling on Dick’s face and mixing with the salty tears. It’s hot – and it’s familiar.
Slade is degrading you.
Dick’s mouth tastes of vomit.
“Good boy,” Slade murmurs, and there is mirth low in his tone. It’s all a joke to him.
It’s all a game to him.
Slade is, after all, enjoying himself.
Dick is still hard, still sitting there in his uniform, come spattered over his face. He can hear Slade moving, but he doesn’t touch him again, Dick sitting there in a daze. He doesn’t want to come out from behind his eyes. He wants to stay there forever, untouched, untainted. In the darkness where there is no Slade.
Where there is nothing to hurt him.
Dick’s hand moves to his own cock. He thinks of Slade, again, and then suddenly he doesn’t want to jerk himself off. Dick’s eyes are wide open just so he can find a dirty spot in the alleyway to retch, the little remains of what he’d eaten coming up and splattering on the sidewalk. His tears spill further with his gag reflex. Dick wipes come and vomit and tears off of his chin before heaving again, but this time all that comes up is water and stomach acid.
Dick doesn’t know what he feels. Cold, maybe. Too hot? Numb. More than numb, as if his nerves have been burned so deep that there is no sensation left in them. It’s all he can do to just sit there on the Gotham streetway.
There are footsteps behind him. Fear spikes so loudly in Dick’s head that something is screaming there. He spins, a hand going to where one of his escrima sticks should be, but all he sees is a small shape against the wall. It steps out into the light.
Dick squints.
“D – Robin?” His throat aches from Slade, and from the vomit.
Damian just looks at him. He’s taking him in, Dick thinks, and he should care about that. But this isn’t going to hurt him. Dick only feels a little less numb.
Wordlessly, Damian moves closer. Dick flinches away, despite himself.
“Shh,” Damian says, and his voice is low. In a tone barely familiar, and Dick recalls that it’s the way he talks to Batcow or Alfred or any other scared animal. “It’s—going to be alright,” he tries.
Slowly, purposefully, Damian reaches inside his jacket. He pulls a small bottle out of it, taking another slow step towards Dick.
Dick stays still.
Everything aches.
Another slow step. Damian is closer now, close enough to reach out and touch. Dick doesn’t. Maybe he should.
“Here.” The voice is still low. Damian shakes out the pillbottle onto his hand, and he offers it to Dick.
Grape flavored children’s ibuprofen.
Wordlessly, Dick takes it. He doesn’t know if it’s supposed to help with the pain, because he doesn’t feel any (not yet). It has a sharpness to it, and that’s the medicine, but it fills his mouth with something that is not vomit and is not Slade’s sweat. He chews, and swallows.
“Thank you,” Dick says softly, and he’s surprised he can speak. He still stares ahead blankly, past Damian, looking at the alley walls. This shouldn’t be happening. Dick should be too strong to be in this kind of state over just Slade. This has all happened before, hasn’t it, and it wasn’t so bad?
It wasn’t so bad.
Damian scoots in closer, taking one knee, and then the other. From this height, he’s much smaller than Dick. Dick doesn’t shy away from the physical contact. He can see it coming. He knows what’s going to happen.
“You need help,” Damian says softly. Dick looks at him, and follows Damian’s eyes to between Dick’s own legs.
Oh. That.
Dick stares at him helplessly. He feels like he’s thinking underwater, moving slowly, but even he can feel teeth. This is wrong. This should be so wrong. He needs help.
Hands rest on Dick’s thighs, small. So small. Too small, too young, too Damian.
“Do you want help?” Damian asks.
Dick . . . doesn’t know.
“I don’t . . . want to be like him,” he says softly.
“You,” Damian says firmly, “are nothing like him, Grayson.”
Dick sobs. Damian doesn’t understand. That this is Dick’s fault, that this is all wrong, how trapped he is here in this alley with Damian in front of him. There is nothing that is going to make this go away, make this alright, make Dick stop hurting. Stop existing. Stop wanting Damian.
“Help me,” he pleads.
Damian’s hands are small and clumsy as they move over the top of Dick’s uniform. It’s too much trouble to take it off, so Damian just leans in, moving against Dick’s trapped cock as it strains against the Kevlar weave.
Dick still throws his head back and moans as Damian works against him. He can hear his small gasps but he can’t bring himself to look at him, because this is wrong, all wrong, and Dick is—
Dick is here, he is moaning loudly even as he doesn’t speak and making a mess of his uniform in a dirty alley in Gotham’s night.