Work Text:
Slade never brought it up. He’d allowed Robin to keep wearing his scent blockers, along with his mask, even as he changed every other part of Robin’s uniform. Hadn’t treated him any differently during their fights, and despite his particular brand of assholery, hadn’t made a single gendered taunt. Never once referenced Robin’s secondary gender, in fact, and as days stretched into weeks under the man’s ‘apprenticeship’, Robin dared to hope that despite Slade’s near-omniscience, the man hadn’t figured out that he was an omega.
Yet.
Robin hadn’t paid attention to the signs—the exhaustion, the short temper, the restlessness thrumming in his veins. All could be attributed to his captivity. It was only when he woke up to sweat-soaked sheets and the clawing desire for human touch that he realized his heat was happening earlier than it was supposed to.
Robin stared at himself in the mirror. The red rash from near-constant mask use was particularly inflamed and his skin was visibly flushed. His scent glands were swollen, though that was one thing his suit would conceal, and Robin plastered on so many scent blockers that the scent of cloying neutrality made his head swim. The suit was tight and stuffy on his oversensitive, overheated skin; all Robin wanted to do was strip and snuggle back into bed, to build it into a proper nest and hide where no alphas could get to him.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t. Training began every day at six hundred hours, and Robin knew full well that defiance would not be tolerated.
Robin reluctantly headed to the door.
Slade was waiting for him, as usual, looking over the weapons to choose the day’s tool of choice. Robin teetered on the edge of the mats, but there was no glance, no acknowledgement, no sign that Slade noticed anything out of the ordinary, and Robin settled in his usual spot to run through his stretching routine, heart pounding in his skull.
Slade didn’t make a single comment and the longer it took, the tighter the tension wound.
A staff spun towards Robin’s face and Robin flinched and caught it, fumbling with the grip. Slade’s mask concealed his emotions, but that didn’t help the edge of disdain Robin felt against his spine. He straightened it, determined not to reveal that something was wrong, and waited for the man to attack.
There was no start, no ready?, no go. Slade wasn’t a man that believed in warnings. Except to taunt his prey.
Robin got the staff up in time to block Slade’s strike, and the spar was on.
He knew he was fighting against a master manipulator, that Slade’s plan was so many moves ahead that Robin had no idea what game he was playing, that there was nothing Slade loved more than winding Robin up like a cat toying with a mouse, but Robin still got sucked into the fight, letting his guard down.
“So, are you going to explain why you walked in here looking like a boiled lobster?”
Robin jerked back at the sound of that cold, calmly cruel voice, and Slade’s staff crashed into his face a split second later. Robin went down, landing on his back and quickly rolling to avoid Slade’s follow-up strike. He popped up, more ungainly than usual, and reasserted his defensive guard, resisting the urge to feel along the throbbing pain shooting up his jaw.
“Am I not allowed to take hot showers now?” Robin shot back. He’d spent nearly thirty minutes under the searing spray, scrubbing desperately to wash the sweat and scent off of him.
Slade made a derisive sound. He lunged, and Robin saw the feint too late—he avoided the strike to his legs, but ended up tripping anyway. He didn’t roll fast enough this time, and Slade’s boot clipped his side, a sudden shock of pain magnified by his increased sensitivity. By the time Robin made it to two feet, he was discreetly wheezing for breath.
“Not when it impacts your performance, Robin,” Slade said, a disapproving tone that should not sound as terrifying as it was. “Your reaction time has increased, your movements are sloppy, and you haven’t gone on the offense even once.” There was a pregnant pause—omegas were more defensive when they were in heat, everyone knew this, Slade would know this—and before Slade spoke again, Robin sprung forward.
“Maybe I’m just waiting for you to get overconfident!”
He struck at Slade’s shoulder, the momentum of the block spinning him around Slade. Slade was fast enough to react in time, but Robin aimed at his legs. Slade jumped and Robin dove forward, locking both their staffs together. His wrists creaked, the sudden closeness of Slade making his hindbrain jolt up in alarm, and Robin’s subsequent twist lacked power—instead of disarming Slade, both their staffs went clattering off the mats.
Disappointment wafted off of Slade like a tangible thing. “If you wanted to fight hand-to-hand, Robin,” the dangerous voice purred, “all you had to do was ask.”
Oh fuck no.
Robin jumped back, but Slade was already on him, faster than usual, or maybe Robin was the one who was slow. The first blocked punch sent reverberations through his bone and he barely avoided a concussion when he was too slow to dodge the leg sweep. Slade’s movements sped up, their vicious, controlled motions almost angry, and Robin tried and failed to dodge, tried and failed to attack back, tried and failed to hold his ground.
Slade finally yanked him up by the collar of his suit, like a misbehaving kitten, and flung him in disgust at the mats. Robin, for his part, clawed at his collar as he silently screamed—the pressure on his oversensitive scent glands felt like a molten brand on his skin.
Heavy footsteps vibrated through the ground, and Robin knew he should get up and block the oncoming attack, but the pain was white-hot and searing and he couldn’t move. He finally managed to unlatch the collar and nearly tore off his own skin as he fought to remove the patches from irritated, burning glands.
The slight relaxation tightened up into terror at the sound of that cold voice.
“You’re in heat.” The words managed to be completely emotionless, the mask as unreadable as ever as Robin rolled over and shakily rose to his feet, unwilling to lie helpless at Slade’s mercy. The man was definitely exuding anger now, his aura as cold as ice and just as searing, pinning Robin with that implacable one-eyed gaze.
“What, don’t tell me you’re one of those old-fashioned alphas who think that omegas should be locked up in heats,” Robin retorted, gaze skittering from Slade’s face to his feet, waiting for the next strike. “We’re in the modern world now, old man. Omegas can do anything an alpha can.”
“Can you.” Quiet but no less dangerous.
“I’ll prove it,” Robin bounced on the balls of his feet, less tense now that the secret was revealed and he didn’t feel like he was being slowly suffocated. “Unless you don’t hit poor, heat-addled omegas.”
Slade laughed, short and mocking. “Very well, Robin. Let’s see your best.”
Robin set his stance and attacked.
Slade was an impossible opponent at the best of times, always one step ahead, always a second faster, always with that mocking voice that crawled under Robin’s skin and took up permanent residence like a thorn he couldn’t extract. Now, with Robin flushed with heat and already off-kilter, it felt like the distance between them was unsurmountable.
Robin’s attacks were dodged like he was moving through slow-motion, his punches batted away like softballs, and worst of all, Slade wasn’t retaliating.
“What, are you waiting for an invitation?” Robin snarled, throwing his all into a punch that didn’t connect. He cursed and followed Slade, trying not to pant from the exertion of the chase. “Fight back!”
“I’m waiting for you to show me your best,” the bastard responded with a low chuckle.
Robin growled, the sound eerily Batman-like, and lunged straight at Slade. If he could get the man into a chokehold—
Slade caught him and flipped him to send Robin slamming down on the mat.
The breath exploded from Robin’s lungs and the ceiling overhead grew hazy for several heartstopping seconds. When it slowly cleared up, Slade loomed over him, blocking a good portion of the light.
“Get up,” he said, voice calm and no less terrifying.
Robin scrambled to his feet. His back ached with fresh bruises. He was getting the creeping feeling that challenging Slade had been a very bad idea.
“Again,” Slade demanded.
Robin set his stance. This time, Slade didn’t wait for Robin to attack, he moved on the offensive. Robin was forced on the back foot, dodging attacks that started slow, like Slade was going easy on him, but quickly ramped up. Every time Robin ended on the ground, Slade waited for him to get back up, prowling impatiently as Robin dragged himself upright. It finally ended with Robin wheezing into the mats, sore all over, some part of him balking at getting back up and taking more punishment.
“Up,” Slade ordered, his voice brooking no dissension.
Robin bit down the I don’t want to, and slowly levered up. Slade looked at him with something in between dissatisfaction and disgust. “An omega can do anything an alpha can,” he repeated mockingly.
“They can,” Robin bit back, cheeks flushing.
“Maybe so,” Slade said, low and sinuous, “but you certainly can’t. And an inflated opinion of your self-worth leaves you worse than useless in a fight.” That was unfair, Slade was his opponent, if it had been someone else—“I have to say, Robin, I’m disappointed. I thought you were better than this.”
That struck a little too close to home.
Robin didn’t give any warning besides the tensing of his limbs before he attacked. He wasn’t useless. He wasn’t weak, or a liability, or any of the other words he’d seen cross Bruce’s face when he’d been benched. He was Robin, and he was more than capable of holding his own, especially with stupid, pigheaded alphas.
He didn’t manage to catch Slade off-guard, but he kept the fight close, forcing Slade to avoid his more powerful movements. Robin was small and fast and if he just harried Slade long enough—if he could prove that he wasn’t goddamn useless—if he could win some small measure of achievement from the ruthless, coldhearted, vicious alpha that kept him prisoner and ground him into the dirt every fucking day—
Slade grabbed Robin’s arm and twisted.
Robin instinctively tried to break the hold and jerk away, but Slade’s grip was too tight. His kicks against the hard plates of Slade’s armor were entirely in vain, and this time, Robin crashed against the mats face-first, narrowly avoiding a broken nose.
“Is this what you call your best?” Slade said quietly, twisting Robin’s arm further up his back. A heavy knee landed in the small of Robin’s back, pinning him to the ground and squeezing the air out of his lungs. “Is this the vaunted skill of the great Robin?”
Robin wheezed, flailing blindly with his free arm, trying to catch Slade, trying to make him stop. His shoulder screamed at him, the pain growing sharper every second, and Slade’s weight was crushing, and some primal part of him was shrieking in red-hot alarm.
“Or,” Slade murmured, gloved fingers tracing the edges of swollen and irritated scent glands, “is this merely the last, feeble flight of a broken bird?”
Fingers dug in and Robin screamed.
It hurt, it hurt like blazing fire, it hurt like nails scraping across bone, the agony was unrelenting—please, he wanted it to stop, please, please—he was going to die, he couldn’t bear it, stop—stop it, stop it please, stop, please, please, Alpha please—
“Pathetic.” The hands let go, an abrupt cessation of agony, and Robin slumped to the floor, trembling like a leaf. Footsteps walked away. “Go to your room, and don’t come out until you’re capable of a fight.”
The sob burst from Robin’s chest before the footsteps fully faded away. It took him a small eternity to pull himself together enough to go crawling back to his room, aching and exhausted.
Robin shuddered, drawing the blanket tighter around himself and trying to worm into a smaller ball. It didn’t help, only reminding him that he was cold and alone, shivering in the haphazard remains of a pitiful nest, far away from his pack, from his friends, from home.
A particularly fierce convulsion wracked through him, leaving him trembling and faintly nauseous. There was food and water in his room, but he could barely choke it down, and his last bout of nausea ended with him being violently sick before he could reach the bathroom. He could still smell it, adding to the general air of malaise in the suffocating room.
It smelled like despair. Like abandonment. Like a stupid, stubborn omega that had gotten in over his head and realized just how small he was compared to the rest of the world. Robin desperately wanted someone to come and hold him and tell him it was going to be okay, but he knew no one would.
His friends didn’t know where he was. Slade didn’t care about him outside his usefulness as an apprentice, and if he opened the room to find Robin’s corpse, he’d just sigh and throw him out with the trash. B—Batman wouldn’t come for him.
The keen escaped Robin’s throat before he could stifle it.
He shifted, restless again, trying further to burrow into a nonexistent warmth, wrapping his arms around himself in a facsimile of comfort. Robin had never had a heat this bad; there had always been other people with him. He hadn’t been locked up and alone, the instincts that heat brought to the forefront constantly screaming, his skin crawling so bad he often found himself scratching till he was bleeding. He couldn’t keep down food, he couldn’t keep down water, and the grim thought of what Slade would do when he found his dead body was becoming a greater possibility.
Robin hoped that Slade wouldn’t murder the Titans. He’d become intimately familiar with the man’s notion of tying up loose ends, and if Slade couldn’t get what he wanted with Robin…
He blinked, and tears slid down his cheeks. He was failing so many people like this. Not just his friends, but everyone who’d ever believed in him. And it was all his fault.
Robin, I’m disappointed. I thought you were better than this.
You’re useless.
The last, feeble flight of a broken bird.
I don’t need you. I never needed you. You are a child and this is not a game.
Is that what you call your best?
The words cut sharper than knives, his mind twisting in on itself, over and over and over, and Robin was struck with the abrupt certainty that he was going to die if he didn’t get help.
Getting up was much harder than it sounded. Robin had thoroughly tangled himself in his blankets and extricating them was a slow process. His neck ached, stiff and tight, any time he tried to move his head and he had to hold it as still as possible. The bruises from his fight with Slade had darkened to purple-black splotches on his arms, his legs, and all over his back. Robin clutched one of the blankets to guard him against the creeping chill and carefully scooted to the edge of the bed before attempting to stand up.
The dizziness he expected. It took him a small eternity to go from the bed to the door, each step wavering and weak. When he opened the door, there was no sign that Slade had concerned himself with Robin’s absence, the long metal corridors were as sterile as ever.
Three steps down, Robin lost his balance. He pulled himself up. It happened again at the end of the corridor, where he tried to turn right. He pulled himself up, hearing his breath whistle out in wheezing gasps. When the corridor began to twist around him, the floor spinning under his feet, Robin gave up and slid down the wall.
He could still crawl.
He had to find—someone. Slade. If Slade would even help. Or maybe—if he got to the control room, if he could send a message out. If he could just. If he.
Robin came back to himself sprawled halfway down the stairs, a fresh bruise throbbing on his face. He didn’t know how much time he'd lost. He didn’t even know where he was—Slade’s lair was a maze on the best of days and everything looked so fuzzy and so similar and Robin was so tired.
When he made it to the bottom, he headed for the nearest door and peered inside. Storeroom. The next one. Storeroom. The next one. Locked. The next one. Empty. The next one. The next one. The next one.
The corridor stretched out before him, an unending line of doors, and Robin opened each one, trapped in a nightmare loop. He didn’t remember why he was doing this. He was so tired. He just wanted to stop.
The next one smelled familiar. Like Alpha. There was a reason that was bad, a distantly blaring alarm in the back of his head, but when Robin poked his head in to see a bed, it sealed his decision. He dragged himself the last few feet, climbed onto the bed with quivering arms, and squirmed under the blankets that smelled like Alpha before finally falling still.
He could rest now.
It wasn’t sleep, it wasn’t anything so untroubled, but Robin drifted in and out of awareness. On some instinctual plane, his hindbrain recognized that they were in Alpha’s den and that must mean they were safe. Tense knots along his spine unraveled slowly as he drifted deeper. At some point, the scent deepened—a part of his mind jolted in alarm, aware that they were being watched with a steady, unrelenting stare, but the greater portion continued to float lazily in the ether.
A rough touch scraped across his cheek and Robin tried to turn away from it, whining in protest. The touch vanished for a bit, and when it came back, it was cold and wet. Robin didn’t want more cold, he was cold enough already, but the wetness was…soothing and he didn’t try to get away.
It traced around his mask and it felt like his skin was unpeeling, fresh air stinging but welcome. Then the touch trailed down, past his jaw, to his swollen, throbbing throat. Robin hissed when the touch probed at the sensitive, irritated skin, but it moved gently, in soft circles, spreading the wetness and the accompanying numbness. Soon, Robin’s face and neck felt sort of tingly, but in a nice way. Robin made a pleased hum.
The touch disappeared again, and this time it was gone for a while. Robin was beginning to feel cold again, reaching out for a warmth that was no longer there. He blearily cracked open his eyes, but everything was blurry, and he didn’t manage to make it to the edge of the bed before his arms collapsed underneath him.
“Where do you think you’re going?” the cool voice asked from somewhere right above him.
Robin reached up and caught the edge of something hard and metallic—that must’ve been them. It was hard to move, but Robin managed to get close enough to rest his head against the hard metal plate, fingers curled against the buckle of a belt. The effort exhausted him and he drifted again, only coming to when he was laid in a pile of blankets, supported in a way that felt like a nest.
Something nudged at his lips. “If you don’t drink, you die,” repeated the same emotionless voice, Robin couldn’t tell if it was a warning or a threat. Still, he obediently opened his mouth, taking small, slow sips of a sugary, sour drink with a slight aftertaste of salt. He didn’t know how many sips it was before the bottle vanished too.
It gave Robin a burst of energy, as weak as it was, and his eyes were open the next time Slade returned. This time, he had an IV stand with him and Robin watched with slow blinks as Slade set up a yellow-colored bag on the stand and drew Robin’s arm out of the blankets. He distantly registered that he should do something about that, yank his arm back or something, but by the time the thought made it to his brain and back, there was a dull ache where the IV line was inserted.
That wasn’t the only thing Slade had brought. The other item appeared to be a blanket, which was strange considering the blankets Robin was cocooned in, but then Slade fiddled with something beyond the edge of the bed and the blanket became a delicious layer of warmth. Robin made a low moan as the blissful heat seeped into him, turning his muscles to putty and melting any remaining obstacles to tranquility.
He was purring, he could feel the sound vibrating in his chest, his eyelids getting heavy and slow. Slade was still moving around, but Robin was unconcerned, unwilling to do anything that might disturb his little pocket of peace. Even when Slade returned to his bedside, Robin watched him indifferently, like everything he could see was just a movie. Beyond the reach of hurting him.
Slade reached out and combed a few stray locks of hair out of Robin’s face. He paused there, looming over him and staring. Robin stared back and wondered, not for the first time, what lurked behind that impassive mask.
Then he closed his eyes, and did not open them for a while.