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He—he couldn't pay attention to what was going on, the itching was under his skin and inside his skull, screaming at him in pins and prickles, shoving nails through his skin and burning fire underneath the rope stretched taut around him as he writhed. He dimly registered a voice booming through a megaphone—too loud, his mind shrieked—and the weight of gazes on him, invisible beneath his blindfold.
Everything from his too-tight suit to the bindings triple-knotted to ensure he wouldn't escape to the hard floor underneath him was too much, sensitivity dialed up to eleven after that puff of glimmering pink-purple dust and the sinking feeling in his stomach. It wasn't oversensitivity, it was his body crying for human contact and, when there was no contact to be found, viciously turning that desire inward, until every breath caused tears to leak from his eyes.
He could almost imagine what he looked like—on his knees, rope crisscrossed over a skintight suit, face covered in sweat and tears, writhing uselessly in place as he gasped around the gag—
A hand on his elbow, and Dick felt lightheaded as his attention honed in on the spot—someone was touching him, someone was holding him, someone was hauling him to too-shaky feet—wait, that was bad, he hadn't been paying attention but they were—they'd told him—they said—
"Congratulations, Nightwing. Someone's paid handsomely for the pleasure of your company." The gruff, amused voice was accompanied by a smack on his ass and strangling the urge to lean into the strike took what was left of Dick's self-control.
Thankfully, there was no more groping as he was led through a hallway on quivering legs, through a room, and—and near a door, he could feel the cool brush of fresh air against his overheated skin like icy needles stabbing at him. "Here he is," the gruff voice said—he let go of Dick's elbow, and Dick crumpled instantly, unable to swallow the keen at the sudden loss of contact. "Finest ass in Bludhaven."
"I'm well aware," a smooth, cold voice rejoined, and a shudder ran through Dick. Fuck. There went his last hope of escaping in transit, though his muddled mind hadn't quite figured out how to move properly when everything in his body was screaming at him to find someone and beg for the touch his body craved.
"Enjoy yourselves," the gruff voice laughed, footsteps walking away, leaving Dick shaky and shivering at Deathstroke's feet.
"How much pollen did they give you, kid?" Slade asked, his voice suddenly much closer. Dick's mind wanted to jerk back. Dick's body wanted to jerk forward. The decision was taken out of his hands when Slade grabbed an arm and hauled him up—oversensitive nerves lit up as Slade pulled him against his bulk, seeking warmth even through the armor, and Dick couldn't strangle the whimper. A gloved hand pressed against his cheek, and Dick melted, turning into a loose pile of limbs.
"Ah," Slade said. The hand disappeared—Dick sucked in a sharp inhale—and Slade wasted no time in marching Dick out the door and into a waiting...car? Dick's brain wasn't available to figure it out, because he registered being dumped against something hard and scratchy, the sudden loss of warmth, and the slam of something sliding shut.
Trunk, one part of his mind whispered, the part that hadn't yet been enveloped in screaming, shrieking pain. It hurt worse now that he'd had a taste of warmth, the needles had turned to red-hot brands and struggling against the rope just made it hurt more but Dick couldn't stop, he—he needed warmth, he needed it, he couldn't, he was drowning, he was going to die, he wished he could die because it was too much and he needed everything to stop.
He didn't process much of anything outside of the excruciating torture, not until something wrapped around his waist and pulled him up, turning his struggles into shivers as he gasped for breath. He processed being lifted out of the trunk and carried somewhere, the icy snap of fresh air replaced by the too-loud hum of an air conditioner, something soft as he was lowered, the arms around him loosening—
"I'm not going anywhere," Slade said levelly as Dick screamed wordless pleas. The arms merely adjusted position, drawing him up until he was curled up against a broad chest—the armor was gone, Dick noted distantly, and he didn't know whether that was a good sign or a bad one. Slade's fingers brushed the back of his hair, working on the knot of the gag. "Did they hit you with anything other than the pollen?"
Dick was trembling all over, and it took him a moment after Slade eased the gag off to remember how to speak. "N—no, j—just pollen—hurts—"
"I can see that." A hand rubbed down his arm before going back up, this time to the knots of his blindfold. "They're advertising the stuff as sex pollen. Ivy won't be pleased."
The thing was, at the moment, Dick was so desperate for contact that he would do almost anything without a second's hesitation. It might not have actually been sex pollen, but it was as good as. If Slade asked him to kneel and suck his cock, Dick would be on the floor in a flash.
The blindfold eased off, and Dick blinked tear-sticky eyes, twisting his head a fraction to observe the room. He was in Slade's lap, curled up against him—Slade had exchanged the armor for a dark gray undershirt and loose cotton pants—on top of the sofa. It looked like an cabin—the curtains were firmly shut, but Dick thought he remembered the eerie chirping of pre-dawn nature, and everything about the room screamed luxury.
He felt the sharp edge of a knife against his wrist. "Stay still," Slade murmured, as though Dick could manage to convince himself to move, and the knife cut smoothly through the lines of rope twining around him. "They wrapped you up like a present."
Auction. Dick had been captured, and drugged, and—and he didn't know how much time he was missing, but he remembered a cage and water and food, remembered sneers and leers and laughter as he writhed uselessly. Of course they'd put him up for auction. There were several people that would love to have a vulnerable Nightwing at their mercy, so desperate for a half-second of contact that he'd lick their boots.
Apparently, Deathstroke was at the top of that list.
The rope slithered free, but all Dick did was move his aching wrists to the front, fingers curling into Slade's shirt and holding him in place as Dick pressed his forehead against the mercenary's collarbone, his breaths shaky and wet.
He didn't know what this was going to cost him, and he didn't want to find out.
But Slade didn't say anything. Didn't move, his arms loosely curled around Dick, anchoring him in place. Breaths slow and even against Dick's hair.
"Where—where are we?"
"Catskills," Slade answered easily, "A safehouse."
The Catskills were a three-hour drive from Bludhaven. Four from Gotham.
"W—why?"
"They were tailing me. Making the turn off to Gotham would've alerted someone. Finally managed to lose them near the NY border."
That wasn't what Dick had meant. "W—why," he forced out, a question he didn't want to ask, an answer he didn't want to hear. "Why did you b—buy me?"
No flinch. No change in breathing pattern. No jump in the steady heartbeat pulsing underneath Dick's cheek. Slade was far too well-trained for that.
"Would you rather I have left you to the scavengers of Bludhaven?" Slade asked mildly, "Several of them were talking about pooling resources to buy you, and then share you amongst themselves."
Dick shivered hard, and the arms around him tightened a fraction.
"What," Dick paused to swallow, his throat dry from lack of water and dread, "What is it going to cost me?"
A long, slow exhale. "You Bats never turn your minds off, not even for a second, huh?"
"Slade." If the man was stalling, then this was going to be ten times worse than what Dick could imagine.
A heavy sigh. "You're going to listen to me, pretty bird. Follow my orders without question. You think you can do that?"
Dick had to do that anyway, but something in his heart jumped at the cool, steady tone. Don't think about it, his mind whispered, because there was no point working himself up over something that hadn't happened yet.
"Till w—when?"
"Till the pollen wears off. I have no illusions about my ability to keep you contained if you're lucid." There was the hint of a laugh in his tone—less merciless Deathstroke, and more Slade's normal dry amusement. Dick could—Dick could endure Slade's whims. If this wasn't a pissed-off Deathstroke looking for revenge, then Dick was marginally more confident about his chances to survive intact.
"Okay," Dick whispered to the man's shirt, well aware that his agreement was pro-forma. Before the man could say anything else, Dick pressed, "Can I—can I get the suit off? And the mask? It—it's too tight." It was too tight, the suit stifling the chance for warmth against his skin, and the mask biting painfully into his face after a couple of days of wearing it, but the main reason was that Dick didn't want to be wearing the Nightwing suit for whatever Slade had planned.
He'd already—in the suit—once—and he wasn't inclined to repeat the—the experience. He didn't want—Nightwing was supposed to be a layer of armor, the cocky vigilante that never stayed down, and Dick didn't want to—to ruin that.
"Please?" Dick whispered plaintively, hoping that begging was the right track.
"Where do you keep the stuff that dissolves the adhesive?" Slade asked, a finger brushing the edge of the mask, and Dick sighed in relief. He managed to free a hand to extract it from a pocket, and Slade daubed the cold solvent against his face before peeling off the mask. It truly did feel better, a breath of cool air against the stinging sweat and pooled tears, and Dick reburied his face against Slade's shirt as the man's hand moved to the zipper of his costume.
Dick stayed limp as Slade maneuvered him out of the suit, kevlar weave peeling off his skin like a days-old sunburn, his heart rate ticking higher as more and more of his armor was taken off. Dick was wearing a sleeveless undershirt and plain black leggings under the suit, but he felt naked as he shivered in Slade's lap, the loss of the armor making the power differential incredibly obvious.
"Feel better?" Slade asked. Dick hummed in reply, still hiding his face. He would take whatever Slade let him get away with.
Dick swallowed as the man shifted, arms tightening around Dick to hold him close as he straightened. Dick kept his eyes closed—he didn't need to see where they were going, and until Slade gave him a direct order, Dick wasn't going to do anything. He heard a drawer opening and closing, the crinkle of plastic, and Slade's grip shifted until he was fully supporting him with one arm—Dick held on tighter, the prickling slowly seeping back in.
They moved to a different room—bed, Dick registered with a stutter in his heartbeat—and Slade deposited whatever he'd taken on the bed with a heavy thump. Dick didn't want to open his eyes and see what it was. More crinkling of plastic, before Slade curled him close and finally gave him an order.
"Open your mouth."
Dick winced, but obediently opened his mouth. Something hard and ridged pressed against his lip, and Dick wasted a second trying to figure out what it was—
"Drink."
Something cool lapped at his lips, and Dick tentatively tasted it. Flavorless and cold. Water? Dick opened his eyes a fraction as Slade nudged the bottle higher, forcing him to either drink or let it spill over him.
It certainly looked like water. Once Dick had finished the bottle at Slade's maddeningly slow pace—he was thirsty—Slade tossed the bottle aside and ripped a new one from the forty-pack sitting next to them on the bed.
That explained the heavy weight.
Dick went through two more bottles before Slade decided that he wasn't going to drown him today, and switched to—were those protein bars?
"Eat," Slade ordered, holding the first one to Dick's mouth
They certainly tasted better than the ones Dick usually stocked. Dick slowly munched his way through four of the bars before his stomach turned at the sudden influx of food. Dick barely had the time to wince—eating and then promptly throwing everything up was not going to be fun—before Slade withdrew his hand.
Dick rested his head back against Slade's chest and watched him quickly and efficiently strip the peel off an orange, one arm laying heavily across Dick's side and grounding him in place. The orange was pulled apart into careful sections. "Eat," Slade said again, pressing an orange slice to Dick's lips.
Dick ate obediently, the fruit settling his stomach, and watched Slade toss the peel onto the bedside table along with the other wrappers. He felt...tired. His tongue was no longer dry, and his stomach wasn't growling, and the fierce wave of prickling receded to something much more manageable with Slade's warmth burning against him—Dick could feel the stress of the past couple of days catch up to him, all at once.
Slade was moving, sliding down the bed, under the sheets, pulling Dick with him. Dick felt his heart skip a beat again, and pressed his face back against Slade's shirt, focusing on breathing slowly as the man twisted until he was almost smothering Dick, sprawled fully on top of him.
"Sleep," he ordered, and all Dick could muster was a faint sense of 'what' amidst the growing trepidation shrieking in the back of his mind and the pleasure purring at the full body contact. The alarm didn't get a chance to rise, and when fingers settled in his hair and began to comb through it, Dick lost the battle against consciousness.
Dick woke up slowly, head aching, body stiff, too-warm and cold at the same time, with a feeling like something was boring into his skull. He blearily fought with sticky eyes, Nightwing-trained instincts of figuring out where he was battling with the urge to go back to sleep.
Head aching, body stiff—he remembered being captured. The too-warm was the blankets twisted around him. The cold was not real, a remembered chill as his body adjusted to being alone. The steely blue-eyed gaze watching him—ah, that would be what was boring through his skull.
"B," Dick managed to croak out, and Bruce leaned forward to give him a sip of water from a Bat-themed bottle. He was dressed in the Batman suit, perched on the side of the bed, but his cowl was off. "Wha' happ'n'd?" Dick forced out, straightening up.
"You were captured," Bruce said levelly.
"R'member that part."
"There was an auction."
Dick squinted—he didn't remember that, but he remembered being drugged, and he remembered...Slade? Dick glanced around the room, as if Deathstroke would magically appear.
"How'd you find me?" They'd fried his tracker on the first day—the most Dick had been hoping for was Jason getting wind of the rumors and being in mellow enough a mood to track him down, but Hood was with the Outlaws, and Dick didn't know if he was even on the planet.
Bruce opened his phone in answer. There was a picture of a sleeping Dick, mask off, dark circles ringing his eyes. 'Missing something?' was the only message.
"It wasn't encrypted. O was able to track you to here. Security system was still armed, though." Bruce looked like he was fighting consternation.
"Slade?"
"Gone before I got here."
Because god forbid the man actually accept doing something nice. Dick stretched, taking note of existing aches and soreness, double-checking that he hadn't gained any injuries. His head was pounding, but that was expected with the pollen. He finished his check and gingerly rolled off the bed, levering himself upright as Bruce straightened off the bed.
Dick caught the level gaze, and winced. "What're the chances of you dropping me back off at my apartment?" Dick tried.
The level gaze drew into a glower.
"Come on, B, I made it out, safe and sound!"
"Getting sold to Slade Wilson is not what I'd consider safe and sound."
"He didn't hurt me," Dick said quietly. Bruce's face spasmed.
Bruce didn't mutter the 'this time' he clearly wanted to. Dick didn't mention that he hadn't actually trusted that Slade wouldn't.
"You're still staying at the Manor until we find the group that captured you."
"Ugh. Gotham," Dick groaned, but he followed Bruce out of the cabin without further protest. Halfway to the plane parked in the open space around the cabin, Dick increased his stride until he could press against Bruce's side. An arm came up wordlessly to tug him into a half hug, and Dick let out a slow exhale, pressing closer to his dad.
The cold receded, nothing but a memory.