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Tim’s exhausted, peering through blurry eyes at surveillance footage, hand groping for his coffee mug. He brings it up to his mouth, tips it, and—nothing comes out. He glances down in confusion, only to feel disappointment.
Empty.
Setting the mug down, he rubs at his eyes. The footage hasn’t made much sense for an hour or more, and he needs to figure this out, needs to know who’s been targeting them, but—
Coffee. Or bed?
The hair on the nape of his neck prickles, and he turns just as he feels an actual prick on his neck. Whirling around in his chair, he looks up at a tall figure, in a red helmet, holding a syringe.
Shit.
Instinctively, he rises to his feet, and ends up catching himself on the side of the desk when he sways on his feet, hit by a sudden wave of dizziness.
Shit.
“You drugged me,” Tim says, lifting a hand to push the panic button on his collar.
“That won’t help,” Hood says, standing a couple steps back and watching him. “Signal won’t go out.” A pause while Tim tries to comprehend this, and Hood carefully tucks the empty syringe back into a pouch. “No one is coming for you.”
Tim’s stomach sinks at the realization, dread filling him. He takes a deep breath, reaching for steadiness that keeps slipping through his hands.
“Where are you taking me?” he asks, hoping the cameras are still going, hoping to leave a clue.
Hood tips his head, studying him. “We’re not going anywhere.”
The cold curl of fear in Tim’s stomach is abruptly off-set by a surge of heat. Tim’s hand tightens on the desk, knuckles white.
“I heard you were smart, Robin,” Hood says in a disappointed tone, and Tim is horrified to feel an urge to apologize rising up in him, a biological response to please he can’t fully push away. “Surely you know what’s happening here.”
His stomach cramps and Tim can’t deny it any longer.
“You’re inducing my heat,” he says, shocked when his voice remains level. Hood inclines his head slightly in agreement.
Tim’s grip on the desk is painful now, but it feels like the only thing grounding him. Alone in the Tower, with someone who tracked him from Gotham, who knows he’s an omega, and who threw him into heat. Who says his panic button won’t work, who didn’t set off any alarms, who plans to—
“I didn’t think you were just another knothead alpha,” Tim says lightly, even as scorching heat rushes through his veins. Someone has to notice something is wrong at the Tower, right? Someone will try to contact him, or notice there’s a signal blackout, or—someone has to come. “I thought you killed rapists.”
Tim’s heart is beating rapidly, limbs beginning to tremble. He needs to get out of the room, break away, and barricade himself in somewhere. Hold out long enough for help to arrive.
“Is it rape if you’re begging for it?” Hood’s voice is idle.
“Yes,” Tim says, with a strength he doesn’t feel.
Hood shrugs. “We’ll have to see.”
There’s a pause, where Tim realizes the heat is worsening with every breath, so if he’s going to move he has to move now. He snaps open his bo staff as he moves forward and if it’s more of a lurch than a controlled lunge, no one has to know.
Hood catches the full force of Tim’s strike on his raised arm, and Tim keeps moving forward, intending to duck under his arm and get through the doorway behind him.
Instead, Hood’s hand locks like iron around Tim’s wrist, halting his desperate movement, yanking him back in front of Hood.
“I expected better from Robin,” Hood says, gaze sweeping over him. “But I suppose you can’t expect much from an omega. What was he thinking, letting an omega play at Robin?”
Tim stares at him for a moment. Is Hood anti-omega?
It doesn’t matter. Tim needs to get out of here. He pulls at his arm, and to his surprise, Hood lets him go.
“That’s the best you got?” he asks lightly, and Tim steps back, hands clenching around his staff.
Hood wants a fight? Robin is always willing to give a fight, but Tim’s in heat. He stands for a moment, considering his options.
“Giving up already, little omega?” Hood asks.
The words sting. Tim isn’t going to give up. Robin isn’t going to give up. Tim shoves down the sensations of a rapidly approaching heat and swings the staff at Hood again.
Hood dodges it easily, and Tim’s pulse flutters in his throat. His movements feel slow, sluggish, heat clouding his mind.
“Really, Robin,” Hood says disparagingly. “It’s a wonder you’ve lasted this long as a hero.” A slight sneer to the words make it clear that he doesn’t think Tim is much of a hero. “Just give in,” Hood says. “You can’t fight what you are.”
Tim is Robin.
Tim is also an omega in heat.
Hood steps towards him, and Tim backs away, unwilling to close with him.
A slight shiver runs through Tim. The heat is lighting up every one one of his nerves, making them ache for touch. He’s spent more heats than he’d like to recall curled in a tight ball, trying to pretend someone else was holding him. The urge to wrap his arms around his abdomen and back into a corner is shockingly strong.
But he can’t. He needs to keep his head, figure a way out, ignore his skin already crawling for a touch from anyone.
And Hood is toying with him. Tim can see the gun and knife holsters and he knows he isn’t quick enough right now to dodge them. He’s not even quick enough to land a single hit on Hood, unless the man allows it.
“What’s the point of this?” Tim snaps out, covering his terror at losing control over his body, teror at the growing need for touch starting to consume him.
“The point?” Hood asks. “To show you how easily broken an omega is, to show you that you’re unfit to be Robin.”
Tim swallows down a protest, because his body is proving the truth of Hood’s words, even as his mind objects.
Hood moves towards Tim again, this time swinging out a fist, and Tim thinks sloppy but can barely get his body to dodge.
“To show you any omega can be made to beg,” Hood adds.
“Not me,” Tim snaps back, even as need floods his body.
He is never going to beg Hood for anything. If Hood wants to play with him, that just leaves more time for someone to find them and help.
The silence stretches as they half-circle each other and Tim focuses on taking deep breaths. He ignores the painful prickling of his skin, ignores the cramps, ignores the sweat forming all over his body. Someone has to come, right?
Hood won’t let Tim get near the door, and seems content to wait for Tim to make the first move. And why wouldn’t he? The longer this takes, the worse off Tim will be.
Tim swings out his staff again in a desperate attempt. Hood catches the staff, twisting it easily from Tim’s grip, and Tim steps back, heart racing.
He frantically runs through what they know of Hood, and it’s not making sense. Hood is aggressive with rapists, heat or not. Bruce has tracked a small decrease in crime in the Bowery, so small it’s almost statistically insignificant, but Tim thinks it’s just going to get more pronounced. Hood’s been cleaning up the streets, so what the hell is he doing in the Tower, waiting for Tim to beg to be raped?
“Is someone paying you?” Tim hears himself ask.
Hood throws the staff to the side, and clattering noise nearly makes Tim jump, nerves stretched nearly to breaking with heat and tension.
“Paying me?” Hood echoes.
“To—to do this,” Tim says, unable to say rape me out loud.
“No,” Hood says. “No one’s paying me. I’m doing this out of the goodness of my heart.” The helmet gives everything he says an ominous quality. “How are you feeling, Robin?”
Tim feels like someone is shoving needles through his skin. He’s burning up for the press of skin against his, and he’d kill for a glass of water.
Settling a flat look on Hood, Tim says, “Just peachy. But if no one’s paying you, why are you doing this? If you wanted to—if you wanted to catch me, you could have done it in Gotham.”
“With Batman breathing down my neck?” Hood asks dismissively. “No thanks.”
“But why?” Tim demands, stepping back from another too-slow strike from Hood, trying to move towards his discarded staff. He has to try something. He can’t just roll over for Hood. “Why do this at all? How did I piss you off? What are you getting out of this?”
He wants to take back the last question as soon as he asks it, because he knows what any alpha would get out of this. Digging his nails into his palms, he tries to ground himself.
“Well,” Hood admits. “This is a bit personal.”
“Personal?” Tim asks, and is horrified when his voice cracks halfway through.
He can feel the air in the room shift with tension, at the proof he’s offered that his heat is getting to him. And it is, is the truth of it. He feels hot tears pressing at the back of his eyes, feels his self-control eroding away with every heartbeat.
This isn’t even a fight. Hood could have Tim flat on his back any moment he wants.
Hood will beat him, pin him, bite him, and then—
Dick says he should never go into a fight thinking he’s going to lose, because then he will lose.
But Tim can’t make himself hope to win. A dull despair is settling over him, and if he can’t stop what’s going to happen, he tries to tell himself at least he won’t break enough to beg.
Hood reaches up and takes off his helmet. Tim really hopes the cameras are recording this, as much as he doesn’t want a record of what comes after, because he’s not sure he’s focused enough to really memorize Hood’s face.
He doesn’t look much older than Tim. He’s—he looks young, compared to who Tim is usually fighting, and he wonders what Hood has gone through, to be twisted so young. It’s a little surprising he’d take off the helmet, but, well.
Alphas like to use their teeth.
Tim pictures Hood above him and finds his body wants it, if only for the contact and nothing else. He shudders, and backs further away, thoughts of retrieving his staff slipping away from him. He—he can’t fight. Not when his body is like this. He bites his lip to keep from saying something he’ll regret.
“Something to say, Robin?” Hood asks softly, and somehow it’s worse without the helmet and modifier. He’s not a faceless, inhuman entity. He’s a person who's deliberately planning to hurt Tim. “Something you want?” Hood adds, almost coaxing.
Tim doesn’t mean to respond, but he hears himself say, “Don’t do this.” He’s not sure he’s ever heard his voice sound so small. He tells himself this doesn’t count as begging.
He wants to be brave, to be strong, to fight, but his body aching and yearning, and he can’t—he wants—
“Would you rather I torture you?” Hood asks silkily, bright green eyes watching him carefully. “You want the blood and pain and fear, the broken bones? Maybe you want to lose a finger, or an eye?”
Tim swallows, sweat making his skin slick. He can’t say yes, but he can’t say no.
And this is a form of torture, and Hood knows it.
Hood reaches out a hand, slowly, but doesn’t quite touch Tim. Tim locks every muscle in his body to keep from leaning forward, to keep from pressing his cheek into the hand of a murderer who plans to—
“I can be nice,” Hood says. “If you ask.”
“Don’t do this,” Tim says again, voice small and wavering. He doesn’t want to beg his rapist to be gentle, but he’s not sure how he’s going to resist.
Send me home, he thinks. Or leave me here to ride this out alone. Just don’t—
“But you’re Robin,” Hood says softly, hand still hovering near Tim’s face. “You’re a hero of Gotham. You’ve been protecting the people for years.”
Hood drops his hand and steps back, sliding his hands into his pockets. It hurts to have him that much further away but Tim doesn’t want him any closer, either.
“But that’s not quite right, is it?” Hood asks thoughtfully, watching Tim intently. “You’re not the first Robin.”
“So?” Tim spits out, furious and hurting and feeling a breath away from crying. At least Hood isn’t pretending like they’re fighting anymore. But now Tim doesn’t have a reason to keep holding himself together. “It’s not a secret.”
“But you’re the first omega,” Hood continues, as though he didn’t hear Tim. “He replaced the last Robin with an omega.”
“Are you anti-omega or something?” Tim asks curtly, ignoring how his voice shakes. “Upset we can have jobs and hold offices and don’t just stay at home and pop out babies?”
Hood looks taken aback for a moment and then he says, “No. Just wondering why Batman thought an omega was better than an alpha.”
I’m not better.
That’s the truth of it. Dick is more fluid, Jason was a stronger and a better fighter, and Tim is just trying to keep Bruce from going down a path he can’t walk back.
Maybe an omega is better suited for his current role, more nurturing than partner.
“An omega can do anything an alpha can do, Hood. You might want to join us in the future,” Tim says acidly, covering his true thoughts.
But he isn’t sure he won’t just hurl himself at Hood and cling if the man steps closer again, he wants to be touched and held so badly.
“You’re doing such a good job fighting me,” Hood says mockingly.
A thought floats up, one that Tim has been trying not to think: this man is going to rape me.
Hood has half a foot on him and probably substantially more—and lethal—training; Tim would be losing even without heat.
He drops his arms from his abdomen, not sure when he wrapped them around his aching core. He’s uncertain on his feet, vision a bit unfocused, and he wonders if arguing that an omega in heat isn’t meant to fight is worth the time.
But Hood didn’t break into the Tower to fight fair, and a growing majority of Tim is desperate for any contact, so he swings out his fist in a strike even he can tell is clumsy.
“Really,” Hood says condescendingly, stepping aside.
“I didn’t ask for criticism,” Tim says through gritted teeth, stepping back and waiting for Hood to make the move this time, expecting another slow, taunting move.
Hood sweeps out a leg and Tim sees it coming, damn it, he does, but his body won’t respond to his orders and there’s a small shrieking voice saying let him touch you!
Tim lands heavily on his back, the shock reverberating through him.
“Get up, Robin,” Hood says, nudging Tim with a steel toed boot before stepping back, giving Tim a chance to continue this farce of a fight.
Tim…Tim doesn’t want to get up. He doesn’t want to beg, doesn’t want to be raped, but he doesn’t want to be alone.
He spent plenty of heats alone, but never alone when there was someone else with him, watching him suffer. Hood could ease his agony with a single touch, but even when he finally touches Tim it’s just going to be worse and—
A tear slips down Tim’s face before he can blink it back.
“Get up, Robin,” Hood says, sounding annoyed. “Do you cry instead of fight when you’re in Gotham?”
“I’m not in heat when I go out,” Tim says, voice breaking. His breath heaves in an almost-sob, and another tear slips down his face. “I’m in heat and you know I can’t—”
Can’t fight back. Can’t win. Can’t argue against basic biology.
Tim closes his eyes.
“Just get it over with,” he whispers, limp on the floor.
Maybe he’ll get some so-called comfort from even an unwanted touch, and Hood will leave when he’s made his point.
“Giving up?” Hood asks sneeringly, and Tim doesn’t bother to look and see his face.
“Yes,” Tim says. He’s not going to beg, but he won’t fight back any more.
He can’t fight back.
Maybe there is some truth to what Hood says about omegas.
Robin’s eyes are closed, tears slipping down his face, his breath uneven, and Jason feels—uneasy.
He was never going to rape the kid, never even come close, he just…just wanted to prove that an omega as Robin was a bad fucking idea.
Without the green egging him, Tim’s gasping breaths are painfully loud and Jason can’t quite figure out why he thought this was a good way to prove Bruce shouldn’t have picked up another kid, let alone an omega.
But Jason’s not prejudiced, just practical. All it takes is heat to bring down an omega, and Robin is clearly proof of that.
I’m not in heat when I go out.
Jason stayed home last week because he was sick, the sickest he’s been since the Pit, because sometimes your body keeps you from fighting, and something like regret winds through him.
“Get up,” Jason snaps, and Robin doesn’t bother to respond this time.
He’s laying there, waiting for Jason to—to rape him.
He wasn’t supposed to do that. Robin was supposed to beg for Jason to ease the heat, and then Jason would know he’s superior but Robin is just—
Giving up.
“Get up,” Jason says more insistently, needing Tim to fight back so Jason can…so Jason can…
Fuck.
There’s an omega in heat, shivering and crying on the floor, and he thinks Jason is going to rape him.
Jason wants to throw himself out the nearest window, crawl back into his grave and never come out, but—
He made this mess.
He crouches next to Robin. “Robin?” he asks softly. “Can you hear me?”
No response.
Jason reaches out a hand and lays it gently on Tim’s face. The teen shudders under him, then curls on his side towards him and whispers, “Just do it, Hood.”
Jason pulls back a little, feeling sick to his stomach.
“I can’t fight back,” Tim says, voice nearly inaudible. “You win. Do—do whatever it is you want to do.”
What does Jason want to do?
He wants to leave. He wants to forget this ever happened. He wants to find the part of him that thought this was a good idea and tear it apart because—because the world’s tilted on its axis and he feels horribly off-kilter.
He was—is—was right. No more dead Robins. If Jason could do this to Robin—with no intention of following through—any other villain could do worse.
Any other villain. With passcodes to the Tower. With intimate knowledge of every hero’s weaknesses. Who knows that Robin III is an omega, who has the resources of a crime lord of Gotham and the favor of Talia al Ghul.
Try as he might, Jason can’t think of anyone who could be standing in his shoes, crouching over a quietly crying Robin who can’t fight back.
Something twists in his stomach, sour and acidic, and Jason scoops up the Replacement before he can think too hard about what he’s doing. The kid makes a loud, choked, gasping sound at that, but doesn’t attempt to fight back. Just lays there, quietly shuddering, limp in Jason’s grasp.
Jason presses his lips together and moves. Through the corridors, up the stairs, past the common room—Tim’s cries turn to hiccups—and down the line of doors before he finds the right one.
Shouldering through the door gets him a sharp inhale. “No,” Tim whispers, so quiet that Jason isn’t sure if it was meant for him, “Not here.”
The room is decorated with Batman posters and has piles of files and an open laptop. There’s no nest on the messy, unmade bed.
No. That won’t do.
“Shh,” Jason says when Tim whimpers as he sets him down in the chair, “Shh, no one’s going to hurt you. You’re safe.” Blue eyes crack open, clearly disbelieving, but Tim makes no move to call him out. “Just relax.”
Jason used to make nests for his mom. He knows what he’s doing.
It’s a couple of trips to head back and forth from the linen closet to get enough blankets and pillows. Jason avoids looking at the Replacement, focused on building a soft, comfortable, warm nest as quickly and efficiently as possible. Heats spent alone are terrible, Jason knows that, but he also knows that biology can be tricked. A couple of heat packs in between the blankets, a microwaved sock of rice tucked into a pillow. Some tea in a thermos on the nightstand.
The kid’s closed his eyes, but his breathing is too harsh to be asleep. When Jason leans over him to pick him up, he can see Tim go rigid.
“Shh,” Jason repeats, adding a low, protective alpha rumble. Tim shudders. “You’re safe,” Jason repeats, gently, carefully, delicately laying him down in the nest.
Tim makes a choked gasp, his face screwed up, cheeks shining wet with tears. Jason tucks him in with two blankets, before sticking another heat pack in a pillow and wrapping Tim’s arms around it.
“It’s okay,” Jason says, soft and soothing. He can’t resist the urge to rub his wrist against Tim’s neck, to replace scared-help-heat with protective-upset-mine. “I’m sorry,” he says quieter, feeling his own eyes prickle.
This was a horrible idea and now he’s reaping the consequences.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Jason forces out, throat tight and thick as he takes a step back, “I’m leaving. I’m sorry.”
At the word leaving, Tim’s eyes snap open. Jason takes a hurried step back, but the look in Tim’s eyes isn’t rational, isn’t focusing. His pupils have blown wide with desperation, and he moves faster than he did all fight to lunge at Jason.
Jason, not prepared for an attack, stumbles with a heavy grunt. The weight clings to him, tighter, and now Jason can hear words underneath the heavy sobs, an unending stream of babbling.
“No—no, don’t leave, please don’t leave, please, alpha, please, I can’t—don’t leave me alone, I can’t be alone, I can’t, I can’t, don’t do this, please—please—please—”
Jason. Jason is. Jason can’t move. He’s frozen to the spot. This is precisely what he came here to do, to reduce the omega Robin to begging, to prove that Jason could push far enough to break the kid.
He’s gotten exactly what he wanted.
Jason curls two stiff, numb arms around the omega pup clinging to him. His cheeks are wet. His throat has closed up. He can feel Sheila Haywood’s hand in his as she smiled sweetly at him.
You’d think that he would’ve learned his lesson about being careful what he wishes for.
—
Tim wakes up to a body sore and aching. Everything is cramping in a familiar way, but he could’ve sworn that his heat was another few weeks out, why was he—
The needle.
Drugged.
The Red Hood.
His muscles turning to fog, being played with like a cat and a mouse, Hood carrying him and manhandling him and—
Tim goes completely still when he registers the unfamiliar scent.
It’s all around him, soaked into his surroundings, into the soft, comfortable nest he’s curled into, and Tim’s breathing stutters when he presses against the hard, firm arm wrapped around his stomach. The other hand is cupping his head, fingers tangled in his hair, and he can hear rhythmic breathing, slow and steady.
Tim has to clamp down on the urge to scream. He’s Robin. He’s the Boy Wonder. He can get himself out of this.
First things first—where is he? A peek through slitted eyes reveals the familiar mess of his room, half obstructed by more pillows and blankets than Tim thinks he owns. But room is good. Room means that his panic button is in the nightstand. Room means that Tim just needs to stretch his arm out four feet to send an alert to Batman.
Tim holds his breath. Sucks in his stomach. Levers his weight onto a knee, off the body pressed up against his back, and shifts forward.
Freezes, as the body groans and rocks forward, wrapping more tightly around him. For a heartbeat, everything is quiet, before there’s a loud, half-yawned exhale and a sleepy grumble. The body goes suddenly, abruptly tense.
The sound of his own heartbeat is the loudest thing in Tim’s ears.
“Shit,” an unfamiliar voice says, “Shit shit fuck.” There’s something about the rough curses that’s pinging in Tim’s head, the half-slurred Crime Alley drawl, the eloquence as the speaker shifts from generic swears to ones Tim swears came out of a book. “Cannot believe I fell asleep,” the speaker thoroughly castigates himself, “Fuck.”
Well, that makes two of them.
The body moves suddenly, a belt now jabbing into Tim’s hip, and Tim can’t hide the yelp. The movement stops. “Shh,” comes half-hissed in an alpha rumble, “Shh, kid, go back to sleep.” It’s accompanied by gentle stroking through his hair and Tim is surprised enough that he instinctively relaxes. “Yes, that’s right,” the alpha croons, “Baby birds go back to sleep.”
The alpha is shifting carefully, his movements slow and delicate as he picks himself free. Cold air follows in his wake, raising chills down Tim’s spine, but before he can shiver, the blanket is wrapped in its place, cocooning him back in warmth. The alpha extricates himself slowly, and even when he shifts out of the nest entirely, his fingers remain stroking through Tim’s hair.
Tim stays where he is, feigning unconsciousness.
“Good,” the alpha whispers, “Just sleep. Nothing to wake up for here. You’re in your nest, you’re all cozy and comfortable, so go back to sleep, okay?” The hair stroking slowly pauses. “I really am sorry,” the alpha says, voice hoarse and cracking, “I—fuck, I messed up. I’m sorry, baby bird.”
The footsteps heading out are near silent. Tim keeps his eyes closed and counts down from five hundred before he springs upright to face an empty room.
The first thing he does is press the panic button. The second thing is to make sure he’s uninjured, that aside from the lingering traces of post-heat fatigue, he’s untouched and unharmed. He feels better than the foggy, dizzy aching he usually gets after heats spent alone, more alert, more awake.
The third thing he does is check the security footage. And pause, screen frozen, to zoom in on a face that looked a whole hell of a lot like Jason Todd.