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Dick is having the time of his life. He’s bound face down on a bed, wrists above his head on the head board, legs spread wide, and Slade is beating the everloving shit out of him with a cane.
They’ve done this before, but not quite like this.
“No,” Dick gasps, trying to writhe, reveling in being completely helpless. “Slade, don’t, stop—” His body goes rigid with pain as the cane impacts again.
Slade is pretending like he can’t even hear him, and Dick’s ass is throbbing.
“Look at how lovely you look,” Slade murmurs, running a hand along Dick’s thigh. “All trussed up just for me, nice and red, and—” He steps to the head of the bed and lifts Dick’s head by his hair. “—crying, of course.”
Dick glares at him through the tears, but both of them know his heart isn’t in it.
He was the one who suggested to Slade they play another way, that they pretend Dick doesn’t want it. Dick loves to be helpless, loves to be overcome, and this is just the next natural step in exploring that.
“Fuck you,” he spits out. “Let me go—” Slade drops his head down and Dick turns his head at the last minute to avoid his nose impacting the bed painfully.
“This isn’t about you,” Slade says, voice absolutely calm. “It’s about what I want. And I want to see you break.”
With each precise word, the cane slams down onto Dick.
Only now, instead of enjoying it, Slade’s words are worming uncomfortably into Dick’s head.
Slade will…he’ll stop if Dick uses the real safeword, Dick doesn’t doubt that.
Right?
Slade brushes a hand gently over Dick’s abused skin, and Dick is sensitive enough that he yelps with the sensation, trying to twist away, a little more authentically than he was a few minutes ago. His mind feels both sharper than a moment ago, but also like his thoughts are slipping away. Pain makes it hard to focus, and he should know better, he should—
The cane hits Dick again, and he’s slipping away.
“Slade, stop,” he breathes out, panic rising.
Slade doesn’t stop.
He’s—he’s always stopped, right, okay, Dick needs to safeword.
“Red,” he gasps, and slumps on the bed.
He wanted to try, he wanted—
Pain, slicing through him, surely his skin is split open, but he can’t turn and look—
“Red?” Slade asks. “You think that’s going to stop me?”
“Stop,” Dick begs, because he can’t stop Slade, and he said red, he did and—
A thought bubble floats up, untouched by the agony and fear, and he remembers what to do.
“April,” he blurts out, and then fresh pain surges through him.
Slade…Slade hit him again. After he said his safeword. Slade…isn’t going to stop.
No.
Slade is enjoying this more than he thought he would. He’s watched Dick struggle under him in a variety of ways, but never with such fire.
His partner is writhing and crying and still spitting insults at him, and Slade uses one pause to adjust himself. It’s going to feel amazing sliding into that burningly hot ass, feeling Dick tighten around him every time Slade’s hips brush Dick’s bruised skin.
“Red,” Dick gasps, slumping limp on the bed, and Slade pauses for a breath but then hits Dick again.
That’s not their agreed upon safeword for this scene, and Dick hadn’t tried to pretend to safeword out yet, but if he wants to play that way, Slade will indulge him.
“Red?” Slade asks. “You think that’s going to stop me?”
“Stop,” Dick begs, and the sound of tears in his voice might make another man worry about the jolt of pure arousal, but Slade’s made his peace with his predilections. And Dick wants this, badly.
Slade lifts the cane up and swings it toward Dick’s exposed backside.
The cane is a fraction away from his skin when Dick blurts out, “April,” and Slade—Slade is a metahuman, he’s damn near immortal, his reflexes are unparalled, he can do pretty much anything he fucking wants, but he’s not fast enough to pull the hit.
So Dick calls his safeword, and Slade hits him again.
And Dick goes wild.
If Slade had any doubt that Dick was playing before, he doesn’t have it now. Dick is using every bit of his unnatural flexibility to try to pull free, twisting his body in ways that Slade didn’t think were humanly possible, and he’s sobbing ragged, broken breaths.
“Slade, please, stop,” he begs, as Slade drops the cane on the floor, feeling frozen. “Please, red, April, stop, safeword, whatever you want to hear, stop, please, I’m not—”
Another twist of his wrists in the bindings, and Slade can see he’s pulling too hard, it’s going to hurt him.
“Dick,” he says softly, moving forward, and watches his partner flinch on the bed.
“I’m sorry,” Dick sobs, going unsettlingly still. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—I just want—I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please stop.” His heaving chest is the only thing about him that’s moving, muscles limp.
Slade hasn’t made a mistake in over a decade, but he’d make a mistake every day for the rest of his life to be able to go back in time and stop the cane before it hit Dick.
This is not the kind of mistake he can easily correct with another shot, or killing a target another day.
This is—
“It’s okay,” he says gently, and Dick shudders.
“Please,” his partner begs, and Slade didn’t think he’d ever feel this stabbing sensation in his chest again.
“I’m uncuffing you,” he says, slowly reaching a hand to Dick’s wrists, ready for the man to start fighting like a wildcat again.
But Dick is quiet, too quiet, and he merely curls his hands under his chest as soon as they’re free.
“Now your ankles,” Slade says, wishing he dared to run a hand along Dick’s side for comfort as he moved down the bed.
Dick is free on the bed, and Slade is wondering if he should offer cream, or a blanket, or get some chocolate or water or—
Dick curls up into a small ball, body shaking with sobs, and brokenly whispers, “I’m sorry.”
Slade sits next to him on the bed, not touching him, and feels absolutely helpless. “What happened?” he asks, because maybe if he knows where Dick’s mind went, he can bring him back.
“I’m sorry,” Dick sobs, impossibly small on the bed. Slade’s never seen the hero brought so low before, and to think he caused it— “I don’t know, I just—it hurt, and it wasn’t—” He breaks off, and doesn’t speak again.
“Can I see your wrists?” Slade asks, because he knows what he did Dick’s ass, but he doesn’t know what Dick did to himself when he was desperate to get free.
Dick flinches at the request, and then slowly stretches out one hand to Slade. Slade gently takes it, turning Dick’s hand to and fro, noticing the red marks darkening into painful bruises.
“And the other one?” he asks, careful to keep his voice gentle, to not let any of the fury he feels at himself slip into his voice.
Perhaps not as careful as he’d like, because Dick flinches again, and says, “Slade,” in a small, broken tone. “Slade, please, I’m sorry.”
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Slade tries to reassure him, only Dick doesn’t relax.
“You hit me,” he says softly, shakily. “I said April and you hit me.” His voice breaks and although it’s not accusatory, it might as well be for how gutted Slade feels.
Later, he’ll regain his ability to be coldly logical, to know he couldn’t pull the hit, and Dick will agree it was the worst possible timing. No one is at fault. But that comes much, much later.
For now, he’s speechless. An apology is empty words, I didn’t mean to sounds like bullshit and it was too late to stop makes it seem like Dick’s fault when it’s squarely on Slade.
“I’m not going to hit you again,” Slade tries, but he’s not sure Dick hears him.
“I know I said I wanted this,” Dick says, voice starting to go high. “I know, I’m sorry, but I couldn’t—I didn’t—I said red and you didn’t stop—” The words are coming faster and faster and Slade wants to fix this.
Why the hell did neither of them realize red as a fake safeword when he’s used it as a real safeword was the worst fucking idea?
“—I didn’t mean—please don’t be angry, I’m sorry, I couldn’t, I thought—”
Slade can’t listen to any more of this. He gently settles a hand on Dick’s shoulder and the man tenses, abruptly shutting up.
“I’m not mad,” Slade says. “You called your safeword. It’s over. I’m not going to hurt you again.”
Dick is trembling under his hand.
“Dick,” Slade says softly. “Little bird. What do you need?” Help me fix this.
Slowly lifting his head, Dick looks at Slade with red-rimmed eyes.
“We’re done?” he asks.
“Yes,” Slade confirms.
“You’re not—” He shivers. “You’re not going to hurt me?”
“Fuck no,” Slade says, itching with the need to do something, as though he hasn’t done enough.
He wants to say I’d never hurt you but that’s a lie. He wants to say I won’t hurt you unless you ask but he ignored Dick’s safeword.
Impulsively, he leans down and picks up the cane and realizes too late how it looks when Dick stops breathing. Internally castigating himself for making it worse, Slade snaps the cane in half with one hand.
“I’m not hurting you,” he says, letting the pieces drop back to the floor. “The scene is over.”
Dick glances between him and the cane, his face twisting in some internal battle Slade doesn't want to imagine, and then Dick uses his legendary Nightwing speed. He lunges for Slade, ending up in the mercenary’s lap, wrapping his around Slade’s neck and sobbing into his shoulder.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he raggedly whispers over and over again.
Slade wraps an arm around Dick, holding him close and steady, rubbing his free hand up and down Dick’s back.
“Shhh,” he soothes. “Sweetheart, shh, it’s okay. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
It’s as though Dick doesn’t hear him, clinging and sobbing and desperately apologizing. Slade holds him, pets him, and hates himself for doing this to someone he cares about.
They stay on the bed far past the time a normal man would get stiff or tired, but Slade can’t think of anything that would get him to move Dick. The apologies die off, eventually, but the tears last longer.
Dick weeps into Slade’s shoulder until he’s merely trembling, tears dried out, face pushed firmly into Slade’s skin for whatever comfort it gives him.
And still Slade doesn’t move.
He waits, as Dick’s breathing slowly evens out, the ragged edges smoothing away and holds him as his trembling stops between one breath and the next.
And then Dick lifts his head.
There are deep shadows under his eyes, his face is drawn and pale, and Slade can feel his own mouth drawing into a thin line of displeasure at the obvious signs of distress.
Dick’s fingers tighten momentarily on Slade’s shoulder as he sits up, and then he lets them fall away.
“Ow,” he says, wincing as his weight shifts more to his heavily bruised ass.
Slade doesn’t hesitate; he picks Dick up, careful not to touch his bruises, and carries him into the bathroom.
“Bath or cream?” he asks, surprised at how hoarse his voice is.
He wants to explain what happened, to make sure Dick understands it wasn’t on purpose, that it was terrible timing and Slade would never—
“Cream,” Dick says, and Slade sets him down gently.
The second time they played, Dick’s legs gave out and Slade had to catch him and now he makes Dick drink a bottle of water before every scene.
The dried tears on his shoulder, though, don’t give him confidence in Dick’s stability.
But his partner simply leans and braces on the counter, and Slade grabs the cream he’d set out what feels like days ago instead of a couple hours, when they were both excited to try this scene.
Wordlessly, Slade squeezes some cream out onto his hands and smooths it gently as possible into Dick’s skin.
Halfway through, Dick breaks the silence.
“What happened?” he asks quietly, still and composed under Slade’s touch. “I called my safeword and you hit me.” His voice doesn’t even shake.
“I couldn’t stop,” Slade says quietly. “And not in a bullshit way, but the cane was about to hit you and I couldn’t stop it.” His throat is tight, voice intense, but his hands remain gentle.
Silence stretches again.
“Oh,” Dick finally says, tension Slade hadn’t noticed until that moment slipping out of his body. “Oh, that’s…”
“I should have stopped when you called red,” Slade adds, smoothing the last bit of cream on and snapping the tube closed.
Dick turns around as Slade straightens up.
“But it wasn’t my safeword,” he points out.
“Last week it was,” Slade says. “And we chose a scene in which you could lose yourself and I should have realized you calling red wasn’t part of the game.”
Dick’s mouth twists. “That wasn’t our best idea,” he agrees, stepping forward and leaning on Slade.
Slade is—relief doesn’t cover it. He didn’t know how Dick would react, if he’d believe him, if he’d ever want to see Slade again, if Slade was going to be harassed by the Bats for the rest of his too-long life.
But no. Dick is…trusting him. Leaning on him. Yawning, and Slade gently picks him back up.
“Bedtime,” Slade says, and it’s a mark of how drained Dick must be that he doesn’t argue.
Slade settles him in bed, brings him juice and chocolate and nuts. Then he clears away the plates, turns off the light, and slips in the bed next to Dick. Another emotion too sharp to be relief slides through him when Dick burrows into him, cuddling up as though it’s a normal night.
They’re going to have a much longer conversation tomorrow.
Dick’s breathing deepens and slows, his body relaxing. It’s only when Slade is sure he’s asleep that he whispers, “I’m sorry.”