Work Text:
Dick doesn't know how long it's been since Catalina brought him to this hotel (how long it's been since she told him to move and he did, since one gunshot changed everything, since she told him they were free but took something from him—) when Deathstroke shows up.
He doesn't even notice at first, and shit if that doesn't say quite a lot about how far he's fallen. (Like everything about him doesn't scream how he's not the man he used to be.) He's lying in bed on his side, the sheet tossed over him his only form of modesty. He's staring out the window, watching the way the rain splatters down against it and trying to pretend like the sound of it, the sight of it, doesn't make him want to vomit.
Catalina is...not here; is somewhere, he supposes, but he doesn't know where. She comes and goes as she pleases, every once in a while trying to get him to go out with her, but she never pushes when Dick can't even muster up the energy to decline (what good is saying no?) and she always comes back, so what does he care?
(He thinks he might care, if things were different, because sometimes she comes back with blood on her clothes, and he should—Nightwing would—but it's—he just—well. And maybe he might care, because whenever she comes back she has—they have sex, and he...well. It's whatever. It's fine. He would stop her if he really didn't want it, right? So he must want it. She seems to think he wants it, going by her eagerness. Right?)
It takes him too long to recognize the feeling of eyes on him, and even longer to realize that it isn't Catalina. From there, he has a long moment where he just kind of...drifts, unsure if it even matters. Maybe one of his enemies managed to track him down, or one of Catalina's. Or maybe it's the police, here to arrest him. None of these options are particularly worrisome, to Dick; like, sure, those outcomes might be 'bad' ones, but also...but also are they, though?
There's movement, shadows taking shape, and Dick shifts his gaze over to it, watching blankly as a large figure walks towards the bed until they stand right beside it, a sole eye gleaming in the darkness and staring down at him.
Deathstroke, Dick identifies, familiar enough with Slade that even with the man still mainly cloaked in darkness, he can recognize him. And he thinks he'd feel...something (angry? afraid? relieved?) if everything wasn't so numb instead. As it is, he can only blink slowly up at the man and wait for Slade to do whatever it is he came here to do.
"Grayson," Slade greets, tone even, giving nothing away. Is he here on a contract about Dick? Does he want something? Is he looking for a fuck? Is he doing that thing where he drops by to tell Dick when he has a job in Blud? Well, if he's expecting Nightwing to give chase across the rooftops, he's going to be extremely disappointed.
Nightwing is dead. Dick Grayson killed him when he chose to let his...partner shoot a man in the head.
(Dick barely came back from what he did to the Joker, no matter how good it felt to hurt the man in the moment. If Bruce hadn't revived him...A lot of mixed emotions, for sure, but if he'd actually died—no, Dick wouldn't have been the same after.)
After a too-long pause, Dick manages to unglue his tongue from the roof of his mouth and say, "Slade." His voice comes out hoarse, probably from dehydration and disuse—he and Catalina don't exactly talk much. She's not here for his stellar conversational skills. And she's definitely not forcing him to do self-care shit like drink a glass of water.
"That it?" Slade asks, when Dick doesn't say anything else. "A bit of a different reception from the last time I was here."
Yeah, well, Dick gave a shit back then. Dick wasn't a motherfucking hypocrite back then. Dick could say "I won't let you kill anyone" without a trace of irony. Now he's a fuck up, is fucked up, and who is he to get up in a huff over Deathstroke completing a job? Plus, he can barely even get himself to eat anything—how the fuck is he supposed to stop a world-renown mercenary?
Just another facet of the complete and utter failure he's become. His dad (either of them, both of them) would be so damn ashamed of the person he's become.
"What do you want?" Dick says dully. Slade hasn't stopped staring at him. Dick wishes he'd just do whatever it is he came to do and get out. Maybe he'll get lucky and Slade finally took out a contract on his life. Maybe Slade's here for a fuck and they can get this over with—not like Dick's unused to being used for his body, lately.
Another long moment of the man just watching, and then Slade releases a sharp breath through his nose and takes a step away from the bed. He gestures with a hand, the action meaning nothing to Dick until Slade adds, "Get up, kid."
Dick closes his eyes, turning his face into the pillow. No, he's not doing this. He's not giving Slade whatever semblance of a fight the man wants to make himself feel more accomplished for killing Nightwing. If Slade's going to do it, he can do it right here, with Dick an easy and vulnerable target.
Suddenly, a large hand wraps around Dick's bicep and hauls him upright. Dick gasps, startled, instinctively jerking against the grip. It doesn't even budge, and Slade manhandles him to his feet before dragging him roughly across the room. He doesn't seem to care that Dick's naked, not even giving him a once-over like he always does when Dick's on display. Doesn't seem to care about the way Dick is stumbling beside him, barely staying on his feet. He simply pulls Dick along, grip unrelenting.
And, honestly, that hold is the main reason Dick stays upright at all.
"What are you doing?" Dick gasps, blinking owlishly, too stunned to try to do anything, like fight back—not that he'd be able to put up much of a fight at all right now, would he?
Without responding to him, Slade starts ripping open drawers of the dresser with his free hand, each motion clearly displeased, the displeasure getting deeper as he fails to find whatever it is he's looking for. When there are no drawers left to search, he goes over to the closet instead, still dragging Dick along beside him like a ragdoll. Dick doesn't try to ask what's happening again, the small spark he felt before dying out and leaving him numb again. Whatever Slade's doing will happen either way—what's the point in worrying about it?
Slade lets out a noise that kind of resembles a growl when the closet apparently disappoints him as well, and then he's turning on Dick. He pushes Dick's back against the wall and pins him there by the grip on his arm and a hand in the center of his chest. His gaze is piercing, even in the darkness of the room, and Dick just...waits. Stares up at him and waits.
"Where's your shit, kid?" Slade asks gruffly, and Dick just blinks at him. An impatient noise from Slade, and then the man says, "Your clothes, Grayson. Where are your clothes?"
For another moment, Dick can only blink. The confusion is a distant sort, and he eventually manages to get himself to respond even if the question doesn't make much sense. "I don't have any."
And he means that literally; everything he owned went up in flames when his apartment building was burned down. All he had left was his Nightwing suit, and after...everything, he didn't exactly want to wear it. Being naked wasn't actually the goal, just getting out of the suit, but Catalina—well. He was stripping right in front of her, how could that not be taken as invitation?
He doesn't know where the suit ended up. It's somewhere in here he figures, because Catalina wants him in the field at her side too much to get rid of it, but he hasn't worn it in...a while. And it's not like Catalina was all too upset about him always being naked and ready for her. The blankets were an ineffective defense.
Slade doesn't seem to like that answer. Dick doesn't have it in him to be nervous about having Deathstroke the Terminator's anger directed his way.
"Fine," Slade mutters, more to himself than Dick, and then his hands are releasing Dick to instead shrug off the leather jacket he's wearing. Not prepared to support his own weight, Dick doesn't, instead sliding down the wall until his ass hits ground. He blinks absently at Slade's thighs, watching as they suddenly turn from Dick, walking away. That elicits...some kind of emotion, Slade just dropping him here and leaving, but he shoves it away. He doesn't want to feel anything. It hurts too damn much.
He kind of zones out again, and then suddenly Slade is back, once more in front of Dick. This time he crouches down to be at Dick's level, and Dick stares in utmost confusion as Slade tugs his jacket around Dick, manhandling Dick like a doll to get his arms through the sleeves and then zipping it up. It's still warm from Slade's body heat; warmer than Dick's been in a long time, and he can't help the little shudder he gives, curling into the material.
Slade doesn't mock him for it—Dick doesn't know why he expects the man to.
The confusion only gets bigger when Slade produces a blanket, maneuvering it—and Dick—until it's wrapped around him, covering his lower half. Dick...really doesn't understand what's going on here. Even less so when Slade asks, "Do you think you can walk out of here or do I need to carry you?"
"Out?" Dick echoes, mystified. "I..." He shakes his head a little. None of this makes sense. "Leave?"
Slade releases a breath, a sigh, Dick realizes, and doesn't say anything else. Instead, he reaches forward and grabs onto Dick again, pulling him up to his feet. He's careful to grab the blanket as well, to make sure it doesn't fall off, and then the room spins around Dick as he's—lifted.
By the time Dick fully understands that he's being carried bridal-style by Slade Wilson, they're already out of the room and halfway down the hall. But grasping the fact of that brings him absolutely no closer to knowing why this is happening.
He just wants to go back to bed. He wants the quiet and the dark and the emptiness. He wants to stop existing, to slip away from reality. But Deathstroke's presence and actions are making it very hard to do that.
"What are you doing?" Dick asks, or at least thinks he does. His voice sounds a little slurred, even to his own ears.
"Getting you out of this shithole."
And, yeah, Dick can see that, as Slade takes the stairs down to the first floor and heads towards the doors of the crappy motel's 'lobby'. But that still doesn't explain anything.
"Why?" Dick asks next.
There's no response to his question, and, well, Dick can't say he has the ability to care enough to be concerned about that. Maybe Slade's contract is kidnapping. Maybe his client will be the one to put Dick out of his misery, if Slade doesn't just do it himself. Whatever happens...Yeah, no, Dick doesn't have it in him to spare it any more thought. He lets his eyes slip shut.
The burst of cold tells him that they've exited the building, and he can't help the way he whimpers and curls into Slade's chest when the rain begins to hit him. He feels soaked to the bone instantly, even if he knows that's not possible, and there's nothing he can do about the way he's started shivering uncontrollably.
Thankfully, Slade doesn't comment. Just keeps walking until he stops, his grip on Dick shifting, lowering Dick...into a car?
Dick leans against the car door after Slade shuts it, eyes still closed, legs folded up against his chest. This is too much, it's all too much. Catalina is—is a lot of things, but at least she doesn't demand much from him. She doesn't make him go out and about, make him face the world when he doesn't deserve to be in it. He wants Slade to accept that he's not really him anymore, and just get this over with.
Voicing any of that would take far, far too much effort, though. He doesn't bother saying or doing anything as Slade gets into the car beside him, starts it up, and takes off.
The kid is in a terrible state.
And that's saying something coming from him, because Slade's seen Dick in quite a few tough spots over the years—has put him into a lot of them himself. And he was even expecting some level of 'not okay' from the kid, because you only have to take one look at all the shit happening in Bludhaven lately to know that there's no way Nightwing would be up to his usual level.
Slade expected rage, and bitterness, and self-hatred, and probably more than a few unhealthy coping mechanisms. He expected near-suicidal tendencies in the form of Dick throwing himself into too many fights, running himself too hard. He expected depression and exhaustion.
He didn't expect to find the kid in a shitty motel room, naked, with no clothes anywhere and the smell of sex obvious in the air. He didn't expect the astounding level of dissociation. He didn't expect Dick to look up at him with empty eyes like there's nobody home. No fight, no fire, no suspicion, not even any fear if he couldn't muster something more defensive. There were deep circles under his eyes, and his skin was paler than it should be. He didn't move at all.
He looked like a fucking dead man.
Still looks like one, sitting in the passenger seat of Slade's car. The way he's curled in on himself makes him look very young, too, especially with the way Slade's jacket hangs off of him in a way that's nearly ridiculous.
He hasn't put up a word of protest, barely even looked like he cared about the answers when he did ask some questions. Not that Slade had very good answers to give anyway—the kid's in no mental state to make sense of anything, and maybe Slade isn't making it any easier but he doesn't see the point in trying to have an actual conversation with someone who would probably zone out after a minute anyway.
Plus, Slade is less than satisfied with his own reasoning, and the idea of trying to explain it to Dick makes irritation flare in his chest—irritation solely directed at himself.
When he saw the reports of all the shit going down in Blud, it had been curiosity more than anything else that had him traveling to the city; it's not exactly easy to take Nightwing down a few pegs, and it seemed like someone was giving it their best shot—and doing a pretty damn good job of it. Burning down Haly's Circus? Yeah, that's a shot right to the heart.
That's when the curiosity had turned to something more like disquiet, something displeased. Because this 'Blockbuster' is barely two steps above any other worthless mobster, and yet lucked into Nightwing's identity and went about systematically destroying him. And that just did not sit right with Slade. Neither did the way Nightwing vanished, last seen the same night Blockbuster turned up dead.
So, Slade tracked him down. Learned he had a new partner of sorts in the form of a vigilante called Tarantula, and found the motel they were staying in since Dick didn't exactly have an apartment anymore. The place was an absolute shithole, and Slade spared a brief thought to the fact that Dick could've accessed the money Wayne left for him to pay for a better place—but the thought truly is brief, because the kid has too much pride to take shit from Wayne, especially when he's already in a vulnerable mental state.
And then—well. What he found was...unexpected. Disturbing. Much worse than he could've predicted. And he couldn't just leave the kid there, in some disease-infested no-tell motel, devoid of any belongings or any life, completely naked and surrounded by fluids that were easily identifiable. And considering the kid didn't exactly look like he was in any state to consent...
There was no chance of Slade leaving him there, no matter how that fact grates at him. He respects Nightwing too much to abandon him to that kind of fate, appreciates what he did for Joey too much to allow his son's friend and mentor to waste away to nothing. (Couldn't do it to someone he's seen basking in the afterglow of a damn good orgasm, smile crooked and soft and directed Slade's way as he cuddles close.) It was just...wrong. An event that never should've happened.
So, he took the kid with him. Covered him the best he could without any actual fucking clothes, and bundled him into his car, and it isn't long before they arrive at one of Slade's safehouses.
Slade doesn't bother trying to ask Dick if he can walk, or giving him a chance to get out of the car himself—that's so obviously not happening. Instead, he gets out of the car and ignores the rain pouring down, pulling open the passenger side door and catching Dick before the kid can tumble out.
Dick makes a pitiful little noise as Slade hoists him up, flinching when the rain hits him. Slade closes the car door with his foot before heading inside, taking the stairs up to his apartment on the third floor. He grunts as he has to awkwardly shift his grip on Dick in order to get out his keys and put them in the lock, and then relock it behind them once they're inside.
From there, he carries Dick into the bedroom and sits him on the bed. For a moment, Dick sways, and Slade frowns as he wonders if the kid can even manage a somewhat upright position by himself. But he stabilizes, even if he's just staring into the middle distance and not at all present, so Slade leaves him be for a moment to rummage around for something the kid can wear that wouldn't be too massive on him.
He settles on a pair of shorts that have a long drawstring, and a t-shirt that was always a little too tight for Slade. Dick will probably still drown in it, but not as much as he would with Slade's regular shit.
When Slade turns his attention back to the boy on the bed—past just keeping an ear out for any trouble—he finds Dick in the exact same position Slade left him, posture slumped and eyes blinking slowly at the wall. His head tilts vaguely in Slade's direction when Slade reaches his side, but he doesn't make any attempt to focus on Slade. Slade, in turn, doesn't try to snap him out of his funk, instead dropping the clothes on the bed and reaching for the zipper of the jacket.
Dick sits pliantly under the treatment, allowing Slade to remove the jacket and toss it aside without any acknowledgement, and remains that way as Slade gets the shirt on him (as predicted, it hangs slightly off one shoulder and pools around his waist, but not altogether too bad). It isn't until Slade has taken hold of the edge of the blanket with the intention of removing it that Dick reacts—he flinches, and his shoulders curve inward.
"No," Dick mumbles, hair falling like a curtain in front of his eyes. "No, no, no."
Slade pauses, but doesn't let go of the blanket. Instead, he crouches down, balancing on the balls of his feet and catching Dick's gaze the best he can with the kid still so out of it.
"I'm not going to hurt you, Grayson," Slade says firmly, but not unkindly. "I have a pair of shorts for you to wear—as soon as the blanket is off, we'll put those on."
Dick's mouth twists, and presses into a thin line, and then goes slack in tandem with his eyes sliding shut. Slade hates that it feels less like understanding and permission than like resignation.
Still, Slade doesn't have time for—nor care to have—a conversation about what's happening, making Dick understand that he's not stripping him to fuck him or anything like that. And honestly, would Dick even believe him, in the state he's in?
Slade's not a therapist; never been good with words or compassion. Any time the boys were hurt when they were little—in a way that wasn't fixed with some medical care—he left them for Addie to deal with, because he always ended up just making the problem worse by saying something extremely wrong. (Either way, Addie was pissed at him, but that was nothing unusual for them.)
So no, Slade doesn't try to hold Dick's hand and walk him through this, get him to understand what's going on before making Dick be naked from the waist down, for however brief a time. He can't address the obvious implications of what's been done to the kid, can't make him feel safe, can't get rid of the overwhelming shitstorm in his head or fix the sheer amount of trauma this kid has going on.
All he can do is the physical shit, and hope that somewhere along the way that helps, too.
Because this is not where Dick Grayson goes down. This is not what ends Nightwing. When the kid dies, he'll do it on his feet on the battlefield, not wasting away without any connection to reality or care what happens to him.
The kid is strong; he can survive this. The problem is just getting him through the worst of it so he doesn't die in the process.
Slade removes the blanket, ignoring the way Dick's face turns away from him, and then frowns at the burns on the outside of his right thigh. In the darkness of the motel room it had simply looked like blotches, which Slade assumed was bruising, but apparently not. How close was he to the circus' fire, to his apartment burning down? What kind of hero shit did he try to pull before getting out of there?
How close did he come to death?
Acknowledging that this needs to be treated before he can cover the area up with the shorts, Slade pushes to his feet and goes to the bathroom to grab the first aid kit tucked under the sink. It's not a very extensive one, considering Slade very rarely needs any medical attention, but he's pretty sure there's a burn salve in there and that'll suit his purposes just fine.
He glances through the contents on his way back to the bedroom, pulling out the salve and some bandages and then setting the kit down on the dresser as he passes it, walking to the bed.
Unsurprisingly, Dick is still sitting were Slade left him, but he has moved, pulling his knees up against his chest and wrapping his arms around them. Again, Slade is struck by how young he seems here—his youth has never been something Slade was ignorant of, but if you're facing Nightwing in battle in all his glory, you don't see a young person. You see someone who's been at the top of their game for a long time, and who is showing no signs of stopping any time soon.
(And the few times they fell into bed together...Well, there was certainly nothing childish about Grayson in that battlefield, either.)
"I need to treat your burns," Slade says, crouching in front of Dick again. He doesn't try to pull Dick's legs down, force him to give Slade access so they can move on with this like part of him wants to. "So you need to put your legs down."
Dick looks at him for a long moment without moving or saying anything, and Slade swallows an irritated huff—kid's locked so deep in his head that he can't even manage to acknowledge this simple request. Seems like he's going to have to move Dick how he wants him, despite the way Dick's "no, no, no," is still playing on repeat in his head.
But before Slade can move his hand more than an inch in reaching for Dick's ankle, the kid shifts, arms going lax around his legs and then letting them slide off the bed, feet thunking onto the floor with a lack of coordination that is still so strange to see from Dick Grayson, despite having been seeing it for the past hour.
Slade nods his approval and shifts closer, putting a hand on Dick's thigh to tilt it in a way that will let him get a good look at the burns. They go slightly up his side as well, Slade sees, but thankfully stop short enough that Slade won't have to force Dick out of his shirt right after having put it on him.
He sets about treating the burns, putting the salve on them and then covering them with bandages to protect them. Dick is still and silent through it all, and continues to be so after Slade's finished and begins putting the shorts on him, pulling the drawstring tight.
It's after the shorts are settled in place that Dick finally moves. It's a small motion, but it stills Slade all the same, looking down at where Dick's hand rests softly on his wrist. It looks so delicate; would be so easy to snap. Slade could break six of Dick's bones before the boy even had a chance to draw in a breath, let alone scream.
So much trust, in this tiny action. But then, that's always been Dick's way—an expert tactician, a master strategist, but still someone who sometimes just leaps. He always seemed to leap, with Slade. Threw himself into danger again and again, baited him, and then gave himself to Slade. Let Slade in his apartment, his bed, his body. Never seemed afraid of having a terrifying mercenary with a hand around his throat, trusting that Slade wouldn't snap his neck.
In this moment, Slade is more incredulous than ever over it. Because with the fucked up mental state Dick is currently in, and with all the shit he's been through recently—how could he possibly touch Slade like this without fear of retribution?
Slade pushes all of that away for the moment, taking note of the way Dick's eyes are actually on his own instead of drifting off into nothingness. "Kid?" he questions, voice quiet.
Dick's brow furrows, and then he starts leaning forward. Slade holds still despite his wariness, and then blinks in surprise when Dick presses their mouths together.
The kid's lips are chapped and broken, and his breath stinks like alcohol and something sour. But Slade doesn't pull away. He doesn't reciprocate, either, holding still as Dick gives kissing him his best go.
Eventually, Dick seems to notice that Slade isn't engaging with him, because his eyebrows pinch and he pulls back, face scrunched up in a way that might be cute if it didn't look so off-balance, so lost. Instead it's just...depressing.
"Why?" Dick asks after a long moment, voice hoarse, and Slade knows he's asking about more than just Slade's lack of reaction to the kiss. He asked earlier, too; Slade didn't—couldn't—give him an answer.
Slade sighs. "Because you're too good to be taken down by this."
As Slade figured, Dick doesn't look like he has enough brain power to understand what that means right now. Everything he does looks like it's coming through molasses, like he has to work extra hard just to move his hand, to say a one-syllable word.
"What...do you want?" Dick asks next. His blinks are getting slower, heavier. He must be beyond exhausted.
"Nothing," Slade says, and, in a very rare occasion, that's true. "Lie down, kid. Get some sleep."
Slade pushes to his feet, starts turning towards the door to leave Dick be for the next twelve hours or so. But Dick catches Slade's hand before he can even make it a step away from the bed, a weak noise escaping him. The hold is just as weak—Slade could break it by doing nothing more than flicking his fingers.
He doesn't do that. He says, "What is it, kid?"
Dick's eyes are squinted like he's concentrating, like he's trying really hard to be present and communicate, and Slade can't help the way he brushes his free hand over Dick's hair in something like approval.
Like a cat, Dick leans into the touch, chin arching upward and a tiny, wounded noise escaping him. Slade isn't heartless enough to take his hand away, continuing to pet Dick's hair and watching as the boy melts into the touch, putting himself quite literally in Slade's hands.
"Please...don't go," Dick says, the words blurry but still understandable. "I don't want...I just..."
Voicing anything else seems to be too hard for him at the moment, but then, Slade wouldn't actually expect any better from a Dick who's in complete control of his mental faculties, either; kid's never been good about asking for something he wants or even needs, unless it also serves someone else.
Slade doesn't say anything in response, just shifts back towards the bed. He puts his hands on Dick's biceps and maneuvers the kid backwards, pushing him gently to lie down. Then he takes off his boots and jeans, ignoring the way Dick is watching him do it with wary eyes, before climbing in beside the kid.
He pulls Dick against him, letting the kid curl into his side in a way that is very familiar by now; Dick's always soaked up affection like a sponge after sex, craved it, and it actually makes Slade feel a little—better, about this entire shitshow, that that hasn't been stolen from Dick. That someone using and abusing him hasn't destroyed Dick's ability to seek out comfort in the way he has always needed it.
Slade wraps an arm around him, tugging him closer, listening to the kid's steady heartbeat as Dick rests his head over Slade's chest, seemingly doing the exact same thing.
"You're okay, Grayson," Slade murmurs. "You're going to be okay."
Dick doesn't say anything, and Slade can feel tears dampening his shirt, but Slade knows the kid hears him. And there's not a chance in hell Slade's going to let those words be a lie.