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The rush of adrenaline—electrifying in each pulse, thrumming through his veins in a warmth not unlike the Lazarus—ebbed with each pant of breath Jason sucked into his lungs. A few rooftops away, billowing black clouds of smoke blotted the undulating glow of burning flames; and Jason watched the fire eat away the wreckage of the warehouse. He could still feel the heat on his skin—the flash of hot air against his back as the bomb he planted at its center ticked down to zero. He’d had closer calls, had been knocked down by plenty of blasts—both ones he set off intentionally and ones that caught him by surprise. He’d been singed more times than he could count, could still recall the smell of his own burnt flesh mixed with the dry desert air of Ethiopia.
But when he was in control—when Jason held the detonator in his palm, when he knew every lowlife in the vicinity would escape with minor burns and a splitting case of tinnitus, when he could watch the drugs that killed his mother burn away to a stash of ash and wasted cash—Jason relished the rapid thrum of his blood in his veins. Each pounding thump that echoed in his skull reminded him he was alive; he had survived.
Through the crackling of the fire, Jason heard the near silent pad of boots against the rooftop. He didn’t turn away from the warehouse, mesmerized by each glowing ember that drifted into the night sky like fiery stars—mirrored in the water of the bay in an image of destructive beauty that Gotham painted so well—and he didn’t need to. Jason knew who it was that stepped up to his side.
Deathstroke was silent as he surveyed Jason’s work. Unconscious men zip-tied to light posts, their gaggle of bodies and limbs tangled up in each other in a pretty little present for GCPD. A few low-level goons limped and crawled farther from the wreckage as they grasped at bleeding shoulders and whimpered with every stilted stride that bore weight upon a busted knee. With the sirens of cop cars blaring ever louder—the flashes of red and blue cutting through the orange glow of the fire, adding a new rhythm to the flame’s heartbeat—they wouldn’t make it very far before the boys in blue bagged and tagged them.
To an untrained eye, the whole scene looked chaotic and reckless. But Slade knew better. He’d worked with the wayward bird a few too many times now to be misled by the modulated clip of the kid’s voice, the nonchalant shrug of his shoulders and backhanded comments about being luckier in a second life.
The kid had no lack of guts and rage; but where the Bat saw a reckless streak a mile long, Slade saw adaptability—passion. Dedication to his work. Red Hood threw himself headfirst into every fight he believed in, and Slade respected that. For it wasn’t luck Hood relied on. No, it was the blood and sweat of his training and the instincts the kid honed to a deadly point.
It really was a shame the Bat kept the Red Hood on a leash. But Slade supposed, that for now, the secret partnership between him and Hood worked out in both their favors because of it. The kid got to keep the drugs off his beloved city’s streets, and the distraction at the warehouse made taking out the head of its operation a piece of cake. A single bullet between the eyes completed Slade’s contract and took one more scumbag off Gotham’s streets permanently without the Red Hood breaking Daddy Bat’s one golden rule.
It had become a sort of routine for them. Slade would pick up a contract in the underbelly of Gotham, and he’d just happen to cross paths with Hood out on the rooftops. They asked just enough questions to form a coherent plan. Hood didn’t pry into Deathstroke’s clients, and Slade didn’t accept contracts targeting the Bats. It was a decent partnership, and Slade found himself visiting Gotham for more than just the payouts.
Because like he said, they had a sort of routine going. And while the payouts in Gotham weren’t always the greatest, the prize at the end of one of their joint missions drew Slade back each and every time.
One glance at Hood and Slade knew the kid was waiting for it. He knew it the moment he climbed up over the ledge of the roof and spotted Jason beside the building’s stairwell. The only protruding wall that cast a shadow upon the kid, and it wasn’t so no one could attack Hood from behind. Jason wasn’t trying to hide, least of all from Slade.
Lax in his stance, the kid didn’t flinch when Slade fisted the leather of his jacket and shoved him face first against the wall. A muted grunt escaped him as the Red Hood’s helmet bounced against the concrete, but the gloved hand that grasped at Slade’s hip didn’t push away. It beckoned Slade closer, begging with each flexing squeeze; and when Slade kicked a boot between Hood’s ankles, the kid parted his legs enough for Slade to press a thigh up between them.
An unyielding grip closed around the back of Jason’s neck, and he bowed his forehead against the wall with a heavy pant of breath. His eyes slid shut when Deathstroke’s grip tightened, and the low moan which rumbled in his chest got caught on the pressure of those fingers on his throat.
He tipped his head just enough to allow those bruising fingers access to his helmet’s clasp. The grip remained unrelenting in its squeeze for only a moment longer before easing to a rough kneading of flesh. With a heated exhale, that strangled moan of Jason’s finally rumbled past his lips, low and deep in its satisfaction.
An easy, practiced curve of Slade’s finger released the clasp of the Red Hood helmet, and with it, the chill of Gotham’s night air prickled Jason’s neck and worked its cool embrace up his jaw. As his helmet was tugged none-too-gently from his head, Jason tucked his chin low and twisted to avoid hitting his nose against the lip of the helmet. At the rush of cool air against his flushed cheeks, Jason blinked open his eyes, hearing the clattering thud of the helmet hitting the rooftop.
It bounced a few times, and before the quiet rattle of its rolling came to a complete stop, a sharp wheeze of Jason’s breath silenced it. Two rough hands—one at his shoulder and the other digging into his hip—flipped him around and shoved him hard back against the wall. Being manhandled so easily—limbs molded and controlled like a marionette, invisible strings tugged and pulled in ways no one dared risk with a man of his size and reputation—brought a warm, familiar heat to his gut. Jason ground his hips forward only to have the hand holding them down press him even harder against the wall, and the sharp thrill of it had him knocking his skull back against the concrete with a low, bitten moan.
He hadn’t realized just how tightly he squeezed his eyes shut until he peered through the light budding of moisture clinging to his lashes and blinked wide at the lone, icy blue eye drilling straight through him in its narrowed hunger. Mask tossed haphazardly over Slade’s shoulder, Jason’s eyes flicked briefly to it as it fell, before a rough hand grabbed his chin. Slade’s thumb dug achingly into his jaw, and Jason’s gaze flashed back up to that single eye looming over him.
Cold. That stare sent a wracking shiver down Jason’s spine, but it wasn’t cruelty that Jason saw in that icy iris. No, it reminded Jason of a different kind of cold. The frigid, biting kind of the mountains, the kind that nipped at his cheeks and the tip of his nose, reminding him in its sting that he was alive. It was the same wintry blue as the sky looming over its peak, so clear and bright with only a thin swirling of a cloud streaking through it.
Jason held his breath beneath that intense, ravaging stare. He felt like a rabbit cornered by a starved wolf, except he was no rabbit, at least not by the other bunnies’ standards. A wolf in his own right, and knowing there was some other beast out there not only capable but eagerly willing to tangle with him made his knees weak and his gut tightened with heat.
Still roughly holding Jason by the chin, Slade jerked the kid’s head up and reached with his other hand for the domino mask on his face. It did little to hide Hood’s identity, whether he personally knew Jason or not, but Slade hated those blank white lenses with a passion. They hid the most expressive part of the kid, and as Slade peeled up one edge, he wondered if Jason knew that.
Did the kid know how the green of his eyes licked at the pupils like the flames of the warehouse to the sky? Undulating and alive, constantly shifting with the tides of his mind.
Slade peeled the domino completely off, letting it drop from the pinch of his fingers as he admired the angry red skin its adhesive left behind. Jason’s wrinkled nose and scrunched eyes relaxed with a single stroke of Slade’s thumb over the angry red skin beneath his eye; and when Jason blinked his lashes open, they brushed against the gloved thumb.
Slade dug his grip into Jason’s chin and held the kid’s head high so he could stare down and watch the emotions storming in Jason’s eyes. It started slow, just a rumble and a dull flash of green. Like thunder breaking among the clouds, the crackle of lightning not far behind. Innocent really, not promising more than a light sprinkle from the sparse dusting of clouds in the sky. But with the distinct set of the jaw in his grasp—the clenching of teeth he felt shift against his fingers—those roiling gray clouds blotted out the sun and unleashed streaking bolts that lashed the earth like a bullwhip.
Oh, Slade loved the challenge. He smirked down at Jason and leaned forward to nip at his lips, to bite down in a bruising kiss that would leave Jason’s lips red and swollen, maybe even cracked with a trickle of blood.
But in the prickle at the back of his neck, Slade felt the Bat’s eyes burning through his skull before the shadow descended upon him.
His grip fell from Jason’s chin, and Slade caught the split second of wrinkled confusion—genuine hurt moist in the blue of his irises—before that brilliant blue hardened over with Lazarus green. They shone like emeralds, dazzling but piercing as they narrowed at the angry growl of the Bat over Slade’s shoulder.
Slade ducked the Bat’s fist and leapt in a smooth roll to the side. With a harsh grimace, he was on his feet again and blocked Batman’s next swing. He grabbed the Bat by the wrist of a gauntlet and, in a quick spin, he rammed his shoulder into the Bat’s chest and used its leverage to heave Batman over his shoulder and slam him down against the roof.
“What’s wrong, Bat?” Slade taunted. He drew his bo staff in a quick flourish that had it extending to its full length, and he stood ready on the balls of his feet as Batman got back up. The Bat lunged for him, grabbing the staff and snapping forward as if he was a rabid dog wanting to tear into Slade’s throat.
Slade pushed forward, meeting the Bat’s growl with a haughty laugh. Derisive in his sharp smirk, Slade loomed over the Bat, so close he could feel the heated pants of breath against his cheek. “Pissed you aren’t the one being called daddy anymore?”
The roar that spilled from the Bat’s throat—no, from the very depths of his core, so far down it disturbed the dust and cobwebs shelving every emotion the Bat viewed as a vulnerability—cut through the chill night air like a thunderous rumble of God.
But the bang of a gunshot silenced it. The bullet whizzed between their heads. It caught a few strands of silvery white hair; and immediately, the brawling men jumped apart, both turning to stare at the smoking gun Red Hood had raised.
Steady and unyielding, Jason held his aim fixed between the pair. His narrowed gaze flicked to Slade with the harshness of his warning, but seeming to let the man’s comment go, Jason refocused on Batman. With a slow, deliberate swing of his arm, he trained his gun on his once mentor.
“What the hell are you doing here, B?”
Bruce stood unfazed, not a single twitch to his tightly clenched jaw to indicate he even registered the gun pointed at his chest. With the lens of his cowl, Jason couldn’t be sure where the man’s attention was; but bitterly, Jason knew it wasn’t on him. There was a certain uncomfortable—sweaty, cold—tingle at his nape whenever Batman’s eyes trained on him, and that familiar, cold shiver wasn’t currently working its way down his spine.
With a clipped sigh, Jason holstered his gun. “Don’t make me ask again.”
This time, Bruce did turn, but it wasn’t toward Jason. It was a slight tilt of his head—the tiniest of gestures to the burning warehouse at his back—that allowed him to keep his focus directed on Slade. “An explosion at the warehouse of the upstart gang you were actively investigating,” Bruce said, stiff and stilted, not elaborating any further.
“A controlled explosion. Zero casualties. Wiped out their entire drug supply. End of report.” Jason turned from Bruce. “Now if you’ll excuse me,” he said as he stepped toward Slade, “I was kinda in the middle of something.”
If Slade was any younger, he might’ve flipped off the Batman and spat on his boots for good measure. But seeing the clench of his fists—the leather of his gloves creaking with the strain—was more than enough to quench that childish desire. It didn’t stop him from rubbing it in a little as he smirked at the Bat, flashing his teeth like a cackling hyena.
With a quick flick, his staff retracted to its compact size, and he clipped it back to his utility belt. That same hand slid around Jason’s waist the moment the kid was within reach and settled at Jason’s hip with a possessive grip.
Jason backhanded Slade’s chest with a sharp smack. The kid’s glare flashed to Slade but quickly darted to his mentor—a single flick of his eyes that had the daggers of his irises dulling with rust. “Not here,” he quietly said, quickening his pace to slip out of Slade’s touch.
Slade’s grip fell from his hip, and his fingers hung curled in the air to his shape—to the slight curve of bone and the firm dip of flesh that bruised so beautifully. The disappointment sank like a stone in his gut, but he let that heaviness pass as he stared at the tense line of Jason’s back. The kid bent to pick up both his helmet and Slade’s mask, and when he straightened back up, it wasn’t to his full height. It was with hunched shoulders and a tight, rigid core, clutching his helmet to his abdomen like he wished desperately to put it back on to hide behind its modulated voice and sharp white lenses.
Fuck Batman. Slade’s fingers curled into a tight fist as he finally let his hand drop. That bastard just went and ruined his night. Slade was half tempted to say fuck the kid (or not fuck him, that post-mission adrenaline was obviously drained from Hood’s blood; he’d be no fun) and take his chances swinging at the Bat again. They’d both probably appreciate beating the shit out of the other right about now.
But before he could decide whether he’d be following Jason to one of the kid’s safehouses or abandoning the kid in favor of treating his mentor like a punching bag, the Bat opened his mouth and his words jolted through Jason with a visible jerk of the kid’s shoulders.
“Your brother was right.”
Innocent enough and far too vague to mean anything concrete, yet Slade knew the bomb those few simple words just set off. And sure enough, Jason—dangerously slow—turned a narrowed glare over his shoulder at the Bat. “About what?” he demanded, low and rough, calculatingly cold.
“You’ve been seeking attention from Deathstroke.” Bruce said the name like a curse, bitter and harsh; and Slade was torn between offence and flattery.
Jason bristled, but with a frustrated sigh, he rolled his eyes. “Oh, like we all haven’t fucked a few villains. Big deal.” He took a single step before pausing, parting his lips and biting his tongue on his next comment. But with the pang of betrayal twisting like a knife in his back, he spat it out with a vengeance. “Bet ‘wing didn’t tell ya he sought attention from Deathstroke long before I ever did.”
Bruce remained silent, but the grim line of his lips pursed tighter against his teeth. Jason could imagine the scraping grind of his molars sounding clear as day in his ears, and a small part of him was satisfied with that. He could walk away feeling like he’d won this encounter despite the sinking shame growing heavy in his gut.
Because he’d rather focus on that smallest of victories than try to unravel the discomfort clinging to every inch of his body. His skin itched. Slick and sweaty beneath the armor, all he wanted was to slip away to the nearest safehouse and scrub his skin raw.
He honestly didn’t understand. Jason thought he could’ve ended this little encounter with Slade’s hand on his ass and Batman seething as he was forced to watch them walk away, knowing full well he’d likely find them fucking against a wall only a couple alleys away. But the moment Slade’s arm curled around his waist, Jason’s mind screamed at him to flee. It took every ounce of control not to flinch beneath that touch—a touch he knew intimately well at this point, one that had pressed bruises into his thighs and squeezed purple fingerprints upon the delicate skin of his throat. A touch that was both brutal and rough but never cruel, never malicious or unwanted.
But with the full weight of Bruce’s judgement bearing down upon his shoulders, Jason shied away from the only hand he trusted so intimately. Not even Bruce’s. Not anymore at least. Maybe once, before his death, but not now. Probably never again.
The silence waned with Batman’s gravelly voice. “That’s different.”
A sharp breath flared Jason’s nostrils as the edges of his vision swam green. His glove fisted at the lip of his helmet, his fingers squeezing so tightly the bones burned with the ache of the strain. The pounding thrum of his blood echoed in his ears like the thundering ticks of a bomb; and when Jason whirled around to once more face Bruce, he whipped the Red Hood helmet at the man’s stupid pointy-eared face. “How?” he shouted, the sound ripping up his throat with the rasp of a daggered edge.
With an ease that grated Jason’s temper further—eliciting a low snarl from the young man—Bruce caught the helmet. He held it in both hands, staring at the empty whites of its eyes. When he finally lowered it and raised his gaze across the roof to his son, the deep frown of his lips leveled to a neutral, emotionless line. He spoke with the same rough, unfamiliar comfort the Bat used with the victims of their cases.
“Nightwing knows what a healthy relationship looks like, and he never sought that from Deathstroke. He got his high and moved on. But you… you’re…” Bruce ground his teeth, and the sharp bite of a canine gnawed at his inner cheek. With a subtle swallow, he said as delicately as he could manage, “You’re playing with a fire you have no idea how to control.”
Jason stared—openly gawked—as the words echoed in his head. They looped on repeat, and he barked a startled laugh if only to make them stop. “You’re kidding, right?” But when Bruce didn’t waver—not even a twitch of his lips or a clench of his jaw—Jason’s eyes flashed. The distant glow of the explosion flickered a burnt orange across his irises, bright and shining, open and searching but not finding what he needed. “Right?” he shouted, stalking forward a single step. “Because you are not saying what I think you’re saying.”
With a slight tilt of his head, Bruce frowned. He lifted Jason’s helmet and started to extend it out as an offering for his son to take. “Hood—”
“No,” Jason snapped, and he visibly recoiled a step. With an inhale he swore wasn’t shaky, the fire in his eyes narrowed until there was only a thin ring of smoke—wispy and undulating, a pale snake coiling the iris tighter and tighter. “Please, spell it out for me. I want to hear you say it.”
“Ja—” Batman snapped his teeth together and thickly swallowed. “Hood—”
A bitter laugh that tasted of bile wheezed past Jason’s lips. “Come on, Bruce.” And despite it all—despite the caged heat roiling in his chest, its scalding steam seeping to the very tips of his fingers, how they trembled with an urge to clench tight and swing—his voice still cracked on the name. “We all know each other here. Just say what you gotta say.”
Bruce stared at him. For a long, heart-pounding moment, Jason held his breath. His lungs burned and blood thundered through his veins with a screaming echo, yet Jason didn’t dare suck in a breath. He didn’t dare move a single muscle. It was like he was a little orphan boy in that alley again, tire iron in hand and working on freeing the Batmobile’s last tire, his thoughts of money for new socks and a hoodie that wasn’t threadbare and a hot meal from a midnight diner and maybe even a night in a shitty motel if only to shower and sleep in a warm bed for once were all derailed to a sudden and screeching halt by the Dark Knight’s shadow descending upon his back.
“Jason…” And god, sometimes Jason hated how Bruce said his name. In frustration, dripping with disappointment, laced with guilt. He hated remembering a time when the lilt of his name was accompanied with fondness and a breath of laughter. But worst of all, it was the dregs of pity that weighed down his name like it was too heavy to say. “…you don’t know what love is.”
Jason blinked. Stunned for the second it took to remember how to breathe, his eyes widened as Bruce’s words settled in his head. And when they finally did, he huffed out a heated exhale and swung out his arm in a vague, angry gesture at the world as a whole, as if the universe itself was fucking with his night. “Oh, for fuck’s sake! Who said anything about love? Slade and I aren’t—”
“Listen to me for once!”
Jason’s jaw snapped shut. He was no stranger to shouting matches with the Batman, but the frustration—not lashing with anger or weighed down in disappointment—sounded… unrestrained for once. It wasn’t bit out through the clench of teeth or reigned in with a deep inhale accompanying a pinch to the bridge of his nose. No, it was raw; and the harsh rasp of Batman dropped away to Bruce’s own voice.
Bruce’s fingers flexed in their hold on Jason’s helmet. He steeled himself with not one or even two, but three slow breaths. And when he spoke, it was gentler than the businesslike demeanor Jason was used to with the man. “I’m not saying you two… are together. I’m glad to hear you’re not anything serious. But whatever you have going on with Deathstroke is beginning to look like the same cycle of abuse you grew up with. And we’re…” He paused, swallowing before correcting himself. “I’m concerned you won’t know when to walk away.”
“What are you—” Jason trailed off. He stared at Bruce with a furrowed brow, because what was this? Where was this concern coming from? He might’ve been oddly touched if he stepped back and allowed it all to sink between the gaps of his ribs.
But his mind latched onto the mention of his childhood. Sure, he had been abused by his father. The man had been known to throw beer bottles at his head and slap him and his mother around. But he wasn’t special in having experienced that. Ask any street kid in Crime Alley, and they’d all have similar and even more gruesome tales to tell. And Jason sure as hell didn’t see himself stuck in whatever cycle Bruce—and apparently Dick too, and who else Jason didn’t want to know—was talking about.
“Are you talking about Willis? Cause yeah, he was an abusive bastard but—”
“Jason.” And there it was again. A heaviness accompanying his name that left Jason’s stomach feeling airy and twisted like a pretzel. “I mean Catherine too. She—”
Hot and flaring, Jason snapped at the man, “Shut up!”
No. Just no. Catherine was the one parent who actually loved him. Maybe she wasn’t perfect, but what parent ever was? She struggled; but she tried. She tried, and that was what mattered to Jason.
With a heavy sigh, Bruce’s grip on the Red Hood helmet eased. Jason watched the swing of his helmet as Bruce held it precariously at his side, his fingers just curled around its lip. With his other hand, he reached up to push back the Batman cowl; and Jason choked on a breath—staggering back a single step—when those dark blue eyes looked at him not with their normal steely hardness but with a sadness that glistened and shone like Gotham’s murky waters.
“I’m sorry she didn’t love you the way you deserved to be loved.”
“Bullshit!” Jason seethed. He stomped forward; but a single step was all he could take before the sting of those words ripped through his chest like the scalpel in the mortician’s hand. Squeezing his eyes shut, he clenched his fists at his side and willed the burning moisture to evaporate from his eyes.
“Catherine loved me; she did,” he bit out, but not with the gnashing teeth and venom he wanted to spit at the man.
“More than the drugs?”
Jason sucked in a breath—silent and heavy, settling in his lungs like mercury and lead. “She…” but he couldn’t find the words. Something in him—repressed and ignored, a fear buried so deep it had no hope of clawing its way out on its own—bubbled up into his throat and burned with the acidic taste of bile.
“She abused you, Jason.” Bruce’s open stare narrowed as his gaze redirected, and Jason turned a slight tilt of his head to follow.
In his anger and confusion, Jason had forgotten. Or maybe he had hoped Slade slunk off into the night because Bat drama wasn’t worth his time. But the man stood just off to the side behind him, his face unreadable as that icy eye stared at Jason.
A cold shiver ran down his spine, and Jason ducked his gaze back out across the rooftop. The orange haze of the fire against the smoky black of Gotham’s night sky—the flashes of siren lights extending through the shadows—lost its intricate beauty. It all blurred together until Jason couldn’t make out the spray of a firehose from a streaking beam of a cop car.
A nauseous heat crept up Jason’s neck, and yet he felt incredibly cold. Isolated. The heaviness that settled in his gut anchored him to the rooftop even when the static buzzing along his skin urged him to run, to flee, to hide. To find some corner to hunker down in with his back to the wall and a gun trained on anyone who might try to track him down.
“Shut up,” he muttered, shaking his head to dislodge the icy claws of insecurity that raked at his skull. Then louder, with the flash of emeralds in his eyes, he shouted at Bruce, “Just shut the fuck up! Like you’re one to talk!”
Momentarily, Bruce’s eyes widened and his lips parted on a silent inhale. Jason didn’t miss the subtle flinch or how it rippled through the tail of Batman’s cape; but it brought no smug joy to his chest.
“You’re right,” Bruce said. “I failed you. I couldn’t give you what you needed as Robin, and I can’t give you the one thing you want now.”
“And what is it that I needed?” Jason bit out, tight with the anger that shielded his hurt. Because he didn’t regret his days as Robin, no matter how bittersweet and aching those memories had become. It was the supposed want that left Jason with a gaping wound that just wouldn’t heal. Because Joker’s head on a pike wasn’t a want for him. It was just as much of a need as breathing and nourishment. And he was tired of trying to explain that to a family that wasn’t even trying to listen.
“You needed structure and normalcy and the love of a parent; but I let you join just another world of violence. It’s all you know, Jason. And now it’s getting you hurt in your more… intimate relationships.”
Jason barked a shaky laugh. “Hurt? I’m not—”
“We’ve seen the marks, Jason.”
Jason was reminded of Slade’s hand at his waist, of how those fingers gripped his throat and squeezed until the only sounds escaping him were sharp, breathless whines that got cut off with each flex. Of the almost gentle caressing swipes of a thumb over the already bruising flesh as Jason gasped for each lungful of air, continuing a soothing path over the aching skin as Jason came down from that high one inhale at a time. Of the blossoming purple and blue that marked his flesh for a couple weeks after, and how each day the colors morphed to different cascades of red and yellow, swirls of violet and speckled blue like an ever-shifting galaxy. And for once, when Jason looked at himself in the mirror, he didn’t see scars and bruises of trauma, of betrayal. He wasn’t reminded of the crowbar smashing into his skull or the mangled fingernails and splintered wood puncturing through to his bones or the batarang slicing open his neck. His throat didn’t constrict as if choking on dirt or gasping around gurgles of bloody breaths.
“And?” he dared ask, but Jason didn’t pause for a response. “They’re consensual acts between two consenting adults.”
For once, he didn’t see a body of mangled flesh and bones. He saw himself. Alive. Whole. Surviving through an ache that wasn’t soul-deep, a pain that didn’t haunt him with the echoing trill of laughter.
Ah, as soon as the thought flitted through Jason’s head, he bit his bottom lip. He worried it between his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut. Damn, okay. Perfect time to come to that realization.
With a derisive snort of laughter, Jason said, “Maybe you’re right.” He wanted to hold on to the anger in his chest, but the heat dissipated like smoke caught in a gusty wind. It drained with his will to fight, and when he said, “Maybe pain is the only love I know,” Jason just sounded tired.
Shoulders hunched and head hung low, Jason didn’t see how Bruce shifted forward. If he had, he might’ve wanted to let Bruce close the gap between them, but before Bruce could take an actual step forward, Slade moved. One second, Jason stared at the pebbles which scattered the rooftop, and the next, the orange and black of Deathstroke’s back—the sheath of his sword—filled Jason’s vision.
“That’s enough,” Slade ground out, low and dangerous. He bodily blocked Jason from Bruce’s view, staring down the Bat with every ounce of malice coursing bitter and hot through his veins.
With a clench of his jaw, Batman growled out, “This is none of your bus—”
“Oh, I think it is.” Slade’s one good eye narrowed to a deadly glare as he—deliberately slow—reached to grab hold of the hilt of his sword. A careful shift of its weight upon his back—enough to hear the subtle draw of metal from its sheath—illustrated his willingness to end this little farce of an intervention with bloody violence. “And I said that’s enough.”
Slade held Bruce’s ink black stare, watched as the Bat clenched his hands into fists and gnashed his molars together as if he could snap through his jugular. But when Bruce made no actual move toward them, Slade pushed his blade back into its sheath with a rough clang of metal. It echoed ominously in the night, carrying the promise of Slade’s threat even as he turned away from Bruce.
“Come here, kid.” Slade reached for Jason, cupping his hand to the back of the kid’s neck and pulling him to his chest. Jason stiffened momentarily—his shoulders going rigid—but after a quaky breath, some of the tension eased from his muscles, and he bowed his forehead to the curve of Slade’s shoulder.
Slade could kill a man right now. With flared nostrils, he inhaled a deep breath that did little to settle the heat boiling his blood. If anything, it stoked the flames further; they burned hotter and brighter and crackled in his ears alongside the pounding thunder of his own pulse.
The Red Hood was one of very few men Slade held any ounce of respect for. Jason fascinated him long before he connected the kid to the Bat family tree. It was the passion, the dedication, the willingness to do what the Bat refused to. Where others saw only violence and uncontrolled rage, Slade saw the beauty of carefully honed skill. The kid possessed a pigheaded moral compass, and he stuck by his own code even when it cost him dearly. And Slade respected that.
He'd always known the kid had some baggage dragging behind his every step. Their line of business tended to do that to people; and while he never once confirmed his suspicions with Jason, it wasn’t hard to draw the line between the dead Robin and the Red Hood once the whispers started spreading through the hero community.
But goddamn if Slade wasn’t kicking himself in the ass for never prying further, because this kid—a young man who fought tooth and nail for the safety of Gotham’s forgotten and overlooked, a hero who portrayed himself as a villain to protect the futures of kids just like him, a dead boy who came back angry and alone and made something of himself—wasn’t as strong as Slade believed him to be.
And now, with the cracks in Jason’s armor bared by the one man whose approval he desperately wanted but kept falling short of receiving, they were all Slade could see. They ran the length of the kid’s body like an intricate spiderweb, and there wasn’t a square inch left intact, unmarred or without jagged scars. All these years, Jason held himself together with the sheer force of will; but within Slade’s grasp, the kid felt fragile, as if he’d crumble to tiny plinking shards on the rooftop if Slade let go.
With the set of his jaw, Slade’s teeth ground together when he swallowed. He rested his chin against Jason’s hair and glared across the roof at Bruce.
What Slade wouldn’t give to have his own son back. And here this bastard was letting his miracle child believe he was unloved, unworthy of it even. The next time they crossed fists in battle, Slade was going to rip the Bat a new one.
With a firm squeeze to Jason’s nape, Slade told the kid, “We’re leaving.”
“Jason’s not going anywhere with you.”
For the love of all that was holy; Slade snapped his attention to the Bat. With a snarl to his words, Slade bit out, “Jason can choose for himself.”
Slade’s grip slipped from Jason’s neck, his gloved fingers trailing along the leather of Jason’s jacket. It was normally the Bats who were theatrical, but Slade took one giant step away from the kid with both arms stretched out at his sides. With a raise of his eyebrow, he dared Bruce to take away his son’s right of choice. And maybe the slight smirk of his lips—enough to flash a sharp canine at the Bat—was prideful and superior, a bit childish even when both of them already knew what Jason’s choice would be.
But despite knowing, Slade wasn’t prepared for the desperate grasp of his bicep, for the yank of his arm that had him stepping right back to Jason—the bulk of his body a shield between the kid and Bruce. His widened eye flicked to Jason’s grip and the strained leather stretched tight and thin over the kid’s knuckles. Slade’s smirk fell away, and when he looked to Jason’s face—downturned as it was and his eyes shining with moisture in a way Slade normally relished and loved—Slade narrowed one last glare at Bruce.
It was more than a warning this time. By the hard set of his jaw and the sharp, icy daggers of his stare, it was a promise. A declaration of war should it come to that.
Slade wasn’t giving this little Robin back to the Bat; Jason was his now.
With a touch to the small of Jason’s back, the kid jerked his gaze up. Searching, questioning, unsure. Small. Young in a way Slade often forgot.
A subtle nod from Slade and the slight pressure nudging against his spine spurred Jason into motion. Like the startled bat he was, Jason spun and fled the roof. He leapt off the ledge like the building had gone up in flames and the fiery whips were lashing at his heels. Slade watched him drop into a rolling landing on the next rooftop, bouncing back to his feet in one fluid motion that let him dart for the next building. And this time, when Jason dropped off the edge, the whir of a grapple gun echoed in Slade’s skull.
The moment Jason swung out of sight, Slade followed. Without a backwards glance at the Bat, his boots pounded along the same path as Jason. The kid was fast; and if he truly didn’t want to be followed, he could’ve easily lost Slade among the gothic structures of old Gotham. But at every turn, Slade caught the flash of emeralds glancing back at him—their glowing streaks like a black cat in the night, illuminated by the moon and luring him like a rat to a trap.
They crossed half of Gotham before Jason dropped down onto a fire escape and wrenched open the corner window of an old brick apartment building. It wasn’t one of the safehouses Slade was familiar with—not an abandoned warehouse turned sparse loft or a rundown closet in one the sketchier parts of Gotham—but Slade dropped down from the roof and climbed in through the window after the kid.
Slade quickly scanned the interior when Jason flicked on a lamp. Books everywhere—on shelves lining the wall and piled on the coffee table—an empty mug left beside the TV remote, decorative pillows on a plush-looking couch, dishes drying in a rack next to the sink, magazines and sales fliers haphazardly clumped into a stack on the kitchen island. The place looked cozy—lived in—and Slade couldn’t say the same for the rest of Jason’s safehouses he’d been to.
Unless this wasn’t just a safehouse.
But Slade couldn’t dwell on that thought for long, because Jason stumbled through the living room as he struggled to shed his armor. He shrugged off his leather jacket—letting it fall to the hardwood floor—and his fingers trembled with the release of his utility belt. Softly swearing, the kid knocked his shoulder against the wall when he tried rounding its corner.
Slade stepped after him and caught Jason by the arm as the kid toed off his boots in the doorway of the bathroom. Jason jolted with a soft gasp at the grip, and he tried to shrug off Slade’s touch with a weak, mumbled excuse. “Need a shower first.”
But Slade was relentless, squeezing his hold and rumbling out a low, guttural hum. He backed Jason against the sink’s counter. His other hand trailed slowly along Jason’s chest, dipping into each groove of the armored plate and drifting to the clasps at Jason’s side. With deft fingers and practiced ease, Slade released each catch with a slow, resounding cling of metal echoing off the tiled walls. When he moved to do the same on the other side, his grasp on Jason’s arm eased, and he reached to grab the kid’s chin instead.
He tipped Jason’s head higher and waited until those striking blue eyes—the wisps of emeralds lingering beneath the surface of his irises—finally lifted to his face. Holding that gaze, Slade released the last clasp of the chestplate. Its echo accompanied his deep, gravelly words. “Then let me join you.”
Jason sucked in a sharp breath. The air held steady in his lungs as his eyes darted to the shower and then back to Slade. His nod was slow and the bite of his bottom lip uncertain, but he allowed Slade to raise the chestplate over his head and drop it to the floor.
He remained quiet and pliant as Slade peeled him out of his tactical pants and underlayers. But everywhere Slade’s gloves touched left fine goosebumps and shivers upon Jason’s skin. The almost feathery soft sensation—no rough grabs or harsh fingers digging into muscle—left Jason feeling exposed in a way he normally didn’t in front of Slade. And as soon as Slade pulled the last stretchy leg of his compression pants off his foot, Jason ducked under the older man’s arm and fled to the shower under the guise of turning it on and fiddling with the temperature.
Jason stepped over the tub’s ledge and pulled the curtain just far enough to keep the water from spraying out onto the tiled floor. And despite seeing Slade’s movements in his peripheral—the older man discarding a whole arsenal of weaponry; it might have been comical had Jason taken the time to actually count the items—Jason stared at the off-white grout of the shower’s tiles as he stepped under the hot spray.
The water poured down over him in thick trails. It matted his hair to his forehead and cascaded in slick paths along his cheeks. Drops beaded upon his eyelashes—blurring his vision with a stinging haze—until they grew too heavy and plummeted to the drain below.
The curtain rings rattled along their rod, and the plastic crinkle had Jason tilting his head to Slade.
“Come on, kid, make some room,” the man huffed even as he stepped in behind Jason.
Jason stared, not fully trusting the blur of his vision. So when he blinked and shook the droplets free of his lashes—narrowing his gaze to where he’d usually see the square of a white eyepatch—a jolted beat within his chest ricocheted off his ribs and settled with a hot, burning heat in his bones.
Gnarled, pale tissue surrounded the empty socket, its edges pulling outwards as if blown through by a bullet. And Jason supposed that was likely. Fitting even, that the only scar marking Slade’s body be one with deadly intent. It should’ve killed him.
They both should be dead.
The thought shouldn’t send a thrill of excitement scorching hot and heavy through his veins, but Jason decided he didn’t care. He was going to lose himself in Slade tonight. Slade would make him forget. He’d remind Jason he was alive and whole, his heart still beating, his body still feeling, cheating death every morning he opened his eyes.
Jason grabbed Slade by the arm and yanked him closer until he could crash his lips against Slade’s. Rough and unrestrained, near feral in the bites, Jason tasted the first hint of copper on his tongue as his canine cut through Slade’s bottom lip. The older man grunted and fisted a tight hand in Jason’s hair, but otherwise made no attempt to take control from the kid.
With a sharp bite, Jason sunk his teeth into Slade’s jaw. Slade groaned as he felt Jason grind his teeth, clenching tighter before releasing his bite and laving at the prickle of blood.
“Thought you wanted to get clean,” Slade rumbled with a deep chuckle. His fingers flexed in the kid’s hair, scraping his nails against Jason’s scalp and relishing the hot, breathy gasp the kid moaned against his neck.
Blindly, Jason’s hand fumbled for the shower rack. He grabbed the first bottle he touched and shoved it against Slade’s chest. “Little busy,” he said, nipping at Slade’s jaw. “You do it.”
“Needy little brat.” But Slade uncapped the bottle and squeezed the shampoo into his palm. He worked up a lather in his hands and then sunk his fingers into the kid’s hair.
As Slade washed Jason’s hair—scraping his nails behind the kid’s ears and stroking through the tangles of his matted curls—Jason sunk his teeth into Slade’s neck like a starved man. The kid bit and sucked, marking Slade with deep red bruises that faded before Jason could finish the next.
With his canines latched to Slade’s jugular, Jason moaned. Those magical fingers of Slade’s scratched at his nape, and the sensation ran like an electric jolt down his spine. His hips jerked forward, and Jason exhaled a breathy groan—his teeth releasing their grip, dropping his head to the crook of Slade’s neck, hot breath ghosting the indents of his mark—as he ground his erection against Slade’s thigh.
“Not yet, kid.” He chuckled at Jason’s needy whine, dragging his hand through Jason’s hair, feathering the lobe of his ear, and trailing a firm scratch of his nail along the kid’s jaw. He grasped Jason’s chin and lifted his head up until those hooded eyes of Jason’s stared at him through the veil of mist clinging to his lashes.
The kid was beautiful. Breathtaking in the same way as a storm. The dark, overcast sky hanging above the branches of mighty firs and pines. The wind whipping through the forest, gusts of twigs and dirt swirling in the open drive. Clouds opening up and releasing a downpour of rain that pelted against the windowpanes. The sharp crack of thunder that rumbled the cabin’s door on its hinges. The flash of lightning streaking across the sky, illuminating the scape of the forest for a mere blink of the eye.
Slade pressed forward as he tipped the kid’s head even higher. Baring the skin of his throat, Jason’s eyes slid closed as he was tipped back beneath the spray of the shower head. The water rinsed the suds from his hair, the lather of bubbles sliding down his throat and breaking off into branches along his collarbone.
When Slade slotted his lips against Jason’s, he tasted the bitter edge of soap on his tongue. Water pelted down upon both of them, and the heat of their breaths mixed with the steam of the shower. The kid’s hand clutched Slade’s nape. He squeezed as Slade scratched his fingers over Jason’s scalp, the last of the shampoo washing away.
Jason reached for Slade’s wrist. His fingers circled around it, and he pulled enough to ease Slade’s grip on his chin so he could loll his head forward and blink open his eyes. Water droplets fell from his lashes, and when his gaze narrowed at Slade, it wasn’t from the sting of suds but that of hunger and desire.
He wanted his mouth on Slade. Jason could feel the man’s arousal hot and hard against his when he pressed his hips forward, drinking in the shallow groan the wet friction elicited. He wanted to feel that pulsing heat in his mouth, wanted his throat to constrict painfully around Slade’s cock as he choked, wanted Slade’s grasp fisting his hair and forcing him to take in every inch until his nose was buried in the tight white curls of Slade’s pubic hair.
Jason started to sink to his knees right there in the shower, but Slade grabbed his bicep and held him upright. With a small pout of his lips, Jason tilted his head with a wrinkle of confusion marking his brow.
“Let’s take this to bed,” Slade said as he dragged his other hand down along Jason’s ribs. It rested at Jason’s hip, and with a firm squeeze, he prodded Jason to exit the shower.
Eager to comply—he always was—Jason pushed back the curtain and stumbled out of the tub. He barely took the time to towel off before rushing out the bathroom door and disappearing down the hall.
It left Slade to turn off the shower, and he took his sweet ass time drying his hair and wiping down his body. Because he needed to slow this down. Slow it way down. He had plans for the kid tonight, and he doubted it was whatever Jason expected or even wanted right now.
Because Slade couldn’t get the kid’s earlier words out of his head. Or Bruce’s for that matter. That goddamned Bat! Maybe Slade wasn’t one to talk considering his fractured relationship with his own children, but that bastard had no right apologizing for the actions of Jason’s mother. That wasn’t what Jason wanted. Not even close.
And Slade wasn’t about to apologize for his actions either. His relationship with Jason was never abuse. It was rough and brutal, bloody and feral even, but they had boundaries. Respect. Slade only wished he’d known sooner. Jason came to him experienced—demanding—already knowing exactly what he wanted and not afraid to ask for it.
But if Slade had known the kid only knew how to get off on pain, he would’ve done this a hell of a lot sooner.
By the time Slade wandered down the hall and entered the only room with its door left wide open in invitation, Jason sat waiting at the foot of the bed. His gaze jerked up at the soft padding of Slade’s bare feet against the hardwood, and with a mischievous smirk, he tossed a bottle of lube Slade’s way.
“About time, old man.” Jason crawled backwards upon the bed until he reached the pillows. He settled back on his elbows, and with his legs bent at the knees, he spread them wide. “Gonna keep me waiting?”
“Wouldn’t think of it,” Slade said in a low rumble. With a ravenous smirk, he tossed the lube to the bed, and he stalked after it. Like a leopard hunting its prey, Slade crawled over to Jason, his icy blue eye never leaving the kid’s own hungry stare as he slotted himself between Jason’s legs.
With a palm flat to Jason’s sternum, Slade pushed him back to the pillows; and he followed him down. Those deep-sea eyes of his flashed with a streak of green—a silent, predatory monster lurking just beneath the depths—and Slade hummed, raspy and gruff. He arched down with a subtle flash of his teeth, letting his gaze flick to Jason’s jaw; but just when Jason shuttered out a shaky gasp at the first scratch of Slade’s beard, Slade redirected his nip to Jason’s bottom lip, sucking it into his mouth and rolling it between his teeth with none of the harsh bite Jason was expecting.
Slade kissed the kid and breathed in every open-mouthed gasp and whine. When Jason tipped his head to the side for a shaky inhale of air—his lips red and shining, breaths puffing hot against Slade’s cheek—Slade cupped his jaw. His thumb pressed beneath the bone and tipped Jason’s head higher, and with the pale skin of the kid’s neck beautifully bared, Slade pressed his lips to the tapered edge of the slitted scar there.
The kid always whined and whimpered, choking on his own gasps as his body went rigid, whenever Slade wrapped his hands around his throat and squeezed. But with Slade’s lips upon the scar—firm presses and gentle suction, leaving pale red marks spotting the flesh but not harsh enough to bruise in the lovely shade of violet he normally dyed it in—Jason shivered. The tremble visibly worked its way down Jason’s spine, and Jason keened—high and needy, his back arching off the mattress.
Slade continued sucking marks along Jason’s neck as his hand traveled lower down Jason’s ribs. The kid’s skin was hot to the touch—flushed a brilliant red down his chest. He felt every quiver and tremble that worked its way through Jason’s body; and when he hooked his hand under Jason’s thigh and hiked it higher, the dense muscle constricted beneath his touch.
There was so much strength in the kid’s thighs. Slade’s fingers sunk into the layer of soft flesh, and just beneath, he was met with a mass of sheer muscle. He knew from experience the skull-cracking pressure Jason’s thighs were capable of, and he smirked knowing he’d soon be happily buried between them.
With one last sucking kiss to Jason’s collarbone—letting the slightest scrape of teeth drag over the kid’s skin—Slade leaned back on his knees. He tipped his head to Jason’s inner thigh, pressing firm kisses to the sensitive flesh. With a trail of gentle nips, Slade worked his way lower; Jason squirmed beneath him, sharp gasps trilling higher the closer Slade got to his crotch.
And just as Slade’s breath exhaled in a heated pant along the shaft of Jason’s cock, Jason jerked. “Sla—” He sucked in a sharp breath, eyes wide, as he scrambled to push himself up on his elbows. “Wa— Wait. Stop.”
Slade paused. His eye flicked higher up Jason’s abdomen—his stomach clenching in tremors of breath—and when he met Jason’s eyes—wide and shining, darting about the room—Slade squeezed Jason’s thigh.
The kid’s focus flicked back to Slade and settled on him with a nervous trepidation. His arms trembled where he held himself on his elbows, and quavering breaths shook past his parted lips.
Slade lowered Jason’s thigh until his foot rested back upon the mattress, and he sat back on his haunches. “What’s wrong?” he asked, his words accompanied by the firm stroke of his thumb along the soft flesh of the kid’s thigh.
“I—” Jason clenched his jaw and squeezed his eyes shut. “This isn’t—” But he couldn’t find the right words to explain the panic rampaging through his chest. It crashed into his ribs and clashed against his skin as if trying to break free. It left his skin icy cold and feverishly hot at the same time, and Jason knew nothing of such territory. He didn’t know this soft glow of… something that lingered everywhere Slade touched him. So careful, gentle. A heat too unlike that of bruising aches.
But Jason didn’t know how to say that without sounding naïve, stupid even. Of all the times Slade had fucked him, never once was he wary or nervous of what the man might do. But now… now Jason just didn’t know.
But thankfully for him, Slade understood. “There’s more to pleasure than just pain, boy. Let me show you.”
Jason swallowed a dry lump of air. He didn’t want to think about what Bruce had said. He wanted to forget it, wanted to block it out as just another stupid argument he wouldn’t remember in a week’s time. And the best way to do that, or maybe the only way Jason knew how to do that, was to distract himself with something else, something with a physical ache, a pain he could see and feel reverberating through his muscles. Something more than a sharp pang of his heart and echoed voices in his head.
As the sheets rustled with the shift of Slade’s weight, Jason’s gaze snapped to the older man. He watched as Slade leaned over him and touched his jaw—a gentle tap of the knuckles, and then a smooth caress of those fingers along Jason’s cheek. “You trust me not to kill you when my hands are wrapped around your throat. So, trust me with this.” His hand snaked into Jason’s damp hair and combed back the wavy curls. With a light push, he eased Jason back down to the pillows and pressed a scratchy peck of a kiss to the kid’s jaw. “I’ve got you, Jason.”
Jason sucked in a shaky inhale through his nostrils, closed his eyes, and held his breath in his lungs for a long moment. On the slow exhale, the tip of his tongue peeked out to wet his lips, and he curled his bottom lip between the bite of his teeth. Still unsure—uncertain—but willing to trust Slade, Jason nodded.
That was all Slade needed before he pushed forward, grinding the weight of his arousal against Jason’s own dick, and silencing Jason’s gasp with the press of a kiss. Slow and sensual, he drew each moan from Jason’s lungs with every roll of his hips and caress of Jason’s chest. At the pluck of a dusky nipple, Slade swallowed down Jason’s breathy whine; and, satisfied with the desire once again shining in the kid’s hooded gaze, Slade worked his way further down Jason’s body.
He licked a path down Jason’s sternum, pausing to suck a nipple into his mouth as he rolled the other between his fingers. Slade released it with a wet pop and blew a soft stream of air upon it, grinning as the nipple perked up and another shiver trembled down Jason’s spine. He mirrored the treatment to Jason’s other nipple, his gaze flicking to how Jason fisted his hand into the sheets.
Slade once more grasped the back of Jason’s thighs and pushed his legs higher. With a lick of his lips, he smirked down at the kid; and it was the only warning Jason received before Slade sucked the head of his cock into his mouth.
Eyes squeezing shut, Jason bit back the whimper in his throat. As Slade sucked more of his cock into that delicious heat, Jason turned his head into the pillow and hid behind the drape of his forearm. His other hand fisted so tightly in the sheets that his knuckles whitened, and he couldn’t suppress the high-pitched, needy whine when Slade circled his tongue around his cockhead.
Slade pulled off Jason’s cock with a wet pop and a thin strand of saliva trailing from his lips. He caught the peek of Jason’s eye and held the kid’s gaze as he dropped one of his legs in favor of grabbing the lube. He popped open the cap and squeezed a generous amount onto his fingers. Slade bent back down, nipping and kissing at the junction of Jason’s thigh before licking a thick stripe up the underside of his dick.
With a low, growling rumble, Slade sucked Jason’s cock back into his mouth and gave it a few slow bobs of his head. He continued a leisurely pace as he warmed the lube between the rub of his fingers. And then he pressed the tip of a finger to Jason’s hole, circling the rim a few times before pushing the digit in.
Finally, a breathy exhale fell freely past Jason’s lips, and Slade wanted more of it. He knew the cries this kid was capable of, and he’d be damned if he wasn’t going to draw out every last one of them. So he hollowed his cheeks and relaxed his throat to swallow down the last length of the kid’s cock as he stroked his finger along the velvety heat of Jason’s walls.
“Sla—” His name was a choked off gasp on Jason’s tongue. And when Slade pressed a second finger into Jason, Jason clenched around him. The kid’s thighs trembled, and his toes curled into the sheets.
Prodding and searching, Slade brushed against the kid’s prostate; and the kid’s hand finally grasped for purchase in Slade’s hair. His nails scraped and scratched along Slade’s nape, trailing higher until his fingers fisted the short strands.
“That’s it, boy,” Slade rumbled his praise, voice thick and gravelly. He turned his head into Jason’s trembling thigh and sucked a blossoming bruise into the skin.
As he stretched Jason—brushing against his prostate with every stroke of his fingers—Slade let the kid push him back onto his cock. The fingers tugged and scratched at his scalp, fisting tighter with every swirl of Slade’s tongue. And when Slade once more swallowed the whole of Jason’s length—the vibrations of a rumbling hum tightening his throat—Jason’s thighs clenched, squeezing Slade’s head between them, and he cried out with the release of his orgasm.
Slade swallowed the few spurting bursts of come and continued to finger Jason through the waves of pleasure. And when Jason’s thighs finally gave, Slade pulled back, idly stroking Jason’s inner walls as he licked the lingering bitterness from his lips.
Slade stared down at Jason, hunger narrowing his eye as it drank in the sight of the boy writhing on the sheets. Jason’s chest heaving, the glistening sheen of sweat upon flushed skin, curled wisps of hair falling across his forehead; the kid looked stunning in his debauchery. Little panted puffs of breath blew past parted lips; the kid peered through the veil of his lashes up at Slade, and those pleasure-hazed eyes rolled back with a deep, breathy inhale as Slade idly stroked against Jason’s prostate, releasing the pressure only to push back in.
With every touch—every feathering scrape of nails along Jason’s ribs, every suck of a hickey blossoming a beautiful red splotch along the scar of his neck, every pluck and twist of a hardened nipple, each brush of his fingers against the kid’s prostate, the groping squeezes of those thick thighs—Slade slowly worked Jason back to a state of needy, whining desire.
“Slade,” Jason grabbed desperately at the man’s arm, but Slade only bit down harder at the kid’s inner thigh. At Jason’s moaning plea of “Please,” though, Slade’s gaze drifted to the kid, and he smirked at the dribbling beads of come leaking upon his quivering abdomen.
With one last firm kiss to Jason’s thigh, Slade pulled his fingers out of Jason’s ass and sat back. He reached for the bottle of lube and slicked up his cock. Then, he hooked his hands under the kid’s thighs and pushed them higher until his knees touched his chest. Slade pressed his cock to Jason’s hole; and, leaning down to swallow Jason’s open-mouthed moan, Slade steadily pushed into the kid’s tight heat, the head of his cock slipping past the rim, and stopping only when his hips were flush with the kid’s ass.
With a guttural groan, Slade mouthed at Jason’s jaw. He eased his grip on the kid’s thighs and guided them to his own hips, rumbling an approving growl when they caged him in. “That’s a good boy,” Slade rasped, his breath hot against the lobe of Jason’s ear.
Jason keened, his back arching and his hips grinding down against Slade’s cock.
“Hang on, kid.” Jason whined, his eyes peering through a budding moisture of tears. “Not what I meant,” Slade chuckled, and he grabbed one of Jason’s wrists and guided it to his own shoulder. “Hang on,” he repeated with a punctuated thrust of his hips.
“Ah! Sla— Ade!” Thighs trembling, they squeezed like a vice around Slade’s hips, and Jason’s arms scrambled to wrap around those broad shoulders, his nails digging into Slade’s back.
“That’s it,” Slade growled as he dragged his hips back and then snapped them forward again. “So tight for me.” He set a steady pace—a slow drag of his hips until just the head of his cock was nestled in that clenching heat and then a sharp thrust forward that had his balls slapping against Jason’s ass. “Beautiful,” he rumbled a tight hum, the word raspy as it lodged itself in Slade’s throat, the beginning of a litany that Slade couldn’t utter.
But the way Jason clenched around him—whining, the cut of his nails scratching bloody marks across his shoulders—loosened Slade’s tongue. “Good boy,” he praised, and Jason sucked in a sharp gasp that Slade followed. He kissed the kid, licking into his mouth and nipping at his bottom lip, until they both were panting for air.
Slade touched Jason’s jaw, sliding his fingers behind the kid’s ear until he cupped the back of his head. He squeezed at Jason’s nape; and with his hips flush to the kid’s ass, he ground his cock against Jason’s prostate.
The cry of Jason’s moan echoed around them. He turned his face into Slade’s palm, eyes squeezing shut, as he squirmed and trembled with the continued grind of Slade’s cock.
“Come on, kid,” Slade said. “Look at me.”
With a whimper, Jason shook his head. But when Slade drew back his hips and pushed forward in shallow thrusts just shy of brushing Jason’s prostate, Jason peeled open his eyes with a petulant stare. Bright and glistening, the wisps of emerald green surfaced in the kid’s eyes. Alive and writhing to the same beat as Jason’s breathy moans, undulating in the waves of the kid’s irises; Slade snarled out a strangled word as he thrust forward, and when Jason jolted with a cry, he buried his face against Slade’s throat and clung to the man.
“Stunning.”
Jason clenched around him, whining with each jab of a thrust.
“That’s it, baby boy.”
Jason’s panting breath hitched, choking on a gurgled gasp. Slade snaked his hand between their bodies and closed his fingers around’s Jason’s cock. The smear of come eased his slide, and with a few quick strokes, Slade growled out the demand of, “Come for me, Jason.”
With a sob, Jason came. His whole body clenched tight, strung like a wire; he cried through the overwhelming release of his orgasm. Slade rocked him through the trembling aftershocks, each dragging thrust slow and deep, overstimulating as Slade found his own release; but far from the painful—selfish—reckless abandon the man normally used to chase his own pleasure.
But normally where Jason felt sated and dazed in a satisfied, euphoric heat; his chest twisted with an ache so deep that something inside him snapped. The sobs kept coming, and tears burned thick tracks down his cheeks. His breaths hitched; he choked on an inhale of air, and his lungs seized. He pushed away from Slade, hiccupping another sob as the man’s softening lengths slipped out of him, and he didn’t understand why the sudden feeling of emptiness had him crying even harder.
“Easy, kid.” Slade grabbed Jason by the hip, ignoring the way the kid’s skin jolted at his touch; and, as he rolled off Jason to lie flat on his back, he pulled Jason with him. “You’re okay. Deep breaths, kid.”
Jason trembled and sobbed as Slade tucked him under his arm. He settled his hand in a firmer squeeze upon Jason’s bicep as his other reached to comb the tangled curls out of Jason’s eyes. Slade scratched his fingers through Jason’s hair; and as he listened to the hitched sobs of the kid’s breath, Slade couldn’t deny the searing scorch of an ache that burned through his chest like an iron brand.
He could attribute it to anger. To the protective streak of a father, even a shitty one at that. But that wasn’t it. That wasn’t even close.
Oh, he was angry all right. Livid. To think this passionate, spitfire of a young man was so starved for the slightest bit of affection that he’d seek out the likes of Slade knowing Slade would gladly dish out the right kind of pain. This kid did everything backwards. Pleasure was to come first. Gentle and unsure, the nervous jitters of youth that hardened to a confidence to explore. It was only in understanding pleasure that one could appreciate the ache of pain.
But Jason knew pain too intimately to differentiate the two, and Slade planned to change that. By the time Slade was done with the kid, Jason would have an all-new appreciation for those purpling bruises that adorned his neck as beautifully as a pearl necklace decorating the neck of some high society woman.
As Jason’s sobs quieted and evened out to slow, shaky breaths, Slade squeezed his arm. “You good, kid?”
“I—” Hoarse and raspy, Jason’s voice cracked. He swallowed and lifted his head from Slade’s chest, but his eyes stared past Slade’s shoulder to the small bookcase against the wall. “Yeah. Yeah, I…” His voice small and quiet, he struggled to say, “I don’t know what that was. Sorry.”
Jason tried to roll away as he wiped at the streaking paths of tears on his cheeks. But Slade held him tight; and, with the hand still nestled in Jason’s hair, he pushed the kid’s head down to his shoulder.
“It’s fine,” Slade said, and the murderous growl to his voice had nothing to do with Jason. Or maybe everything, because Slade was going to kill the Joker. He’d maim Batman and track down wherever that son of a bitch Willis was. And if the man was still breathing, Slade’d rip his intestines out his ass. He’d track them all straight to the fiery bowels of hell if that was what it took to beat the same bloody measures of pain into their bones as Jason had endured. He’d give Catherine a pass, if only because the kid seemed to genuinely love her, but everyone else, Slade vowed to hunt to the ends of the earth and put a bullet between their eyes.
Slade tipped his head; and in a gesture of rare occurrence, he pressed his lips to Jason’s hair. “You’ll get used to it.”