Chapter Text
He ran. Bolted.
Dick, true to his word, let him run.
The whole mess set his nesting instinct off something fierce. The compulsive itch set under his skin not ten minutes after he stood in his originally abandoned safe house. The stink of his unsatiated heat still hung in the air, stale but putrid, even days later.
This apartment hadn’t been his first choice and now… fuck, now it wasn’t even going to cut it for a night if the growl in his chest meant anything.
Which meant he had to move. Which means he needs to clean someone out of an apartment, not much to choose from with roughly ten blocks to the entire Alley and his need to stay in his territory, or bite the bullet and triple check his former safe houses.
Not to stay! Just to… look. And if looking involved trying to sniff out something that smelled of ocean-tea-strength then that would have been a coincidence. A test, even.
None of them did.
Each were as empty as he left them. De-odorized and neat for all that some buildings had seen better days. No calling cards, no threats, no new alarms going off as soon as stepped foot in. No sleeping gas or ambush.
He stepped back and away from the upper corner of one room. Not even a new camera!
It wasn’t until he dug into the security codes themselves that he found even a hint that his instincts were correct and Dick really had been there. Everything was running exactly on the parameters he had set it last, as his surface check had revealed, but cracking open his own system revealed that it was running in that crazy, jumbled, bullshit difficult code Dick wired into everything he owned and, ha, some things he didn’t. What else had Dick slipped in there was the real question. And not one easily answered. Jason remembered being fourteen and furious that you could, apparently, code perfectly fine in english and not whatever mathematical bullshit equations Dick had built in to the batcomputer.
He and Barbie genuinely believed it had been Bruce, paranoid and a little behind the times. Instead it turned out Dick had replaced something when he was thirteen and now the whole damn system would collapse and wipe if any of that nonsense-code was pulled or altered.
So. Dick had been here.
Probably after putting him back into Arkham (and, fuck, there was a place he never expected to be bored in)… which raised the question again: why wasn’t anything trapped?
The doors should have locked behind him. He should be gassed and locked in and shipped back to the Asylum before he could say ‘Robin.’
(Like he should have woken up in shackles instead of tangled in sheets?)
Instead he’s in the third-checked and largest of his safe-houses. The one he’d considered “his” more than the rest. If he had a den at all, which he didn’t - he didn’t need one, this was it.
His fingers tapped idly along the spines of his books as he paced past the still full shelves. It didn’t make any sense. These should have been raided at best and turned into cages at worst.
He stopped. Turned sharply.
Unless Arkham wasn’t the end of Dick’s plans for him.
(Dickie and his weird ideas about rehabilitation. He can’t remember if they fought about it when he was Robin. He knows he had it out with Bruce. Searches and finds a blank as to Dick’s reasoning. Did he give one other than “don’t”?)(some part of him wonders if he’d asked. He remembers the commands given. There’d been so few. He’d remember, wouldn’t he?)
Jason sat down, the stale smell of the couch cushions reflecting chemically-emptied air and his own rising warm-sand scent back at him. He still smelled like a clean shoreline rather than his usual desert. (Sea meeting land, lapping waves. Hidden life, sun warming the same water that swirled in the depths.)
So what was?
Why let him go. Why let him leave?
Dick had him.
The Manor was a facade, the entire thing a fortress built over one of the most secure places in the world.
He’d been wiped out. Exhausted and sated and a bite mark on the back of his neck so deep he can still feel it with every tilt of his head. And while his mating-patches were fang free, he had a bond, one that grew heavier with each passing hour, sitting behind his lungs.
He still smelled traces of the alpha every time he sweat, the scent worked deep into his skin. Body unwilling to give any of it up.
(And hadn’t that been a shock. His head pressed to the wall of the shower. Fingers crooking and hooking desperately as his body finally gave up the last of the alpha’s spend. The rush of scent and the sensation of it spilling slowly driving him down to his knees. Having to struggle against the need to scrub his dirty hand over his neck, over his chest, stick those fingers in his mouth and lick them clean.)
His fingers pressed against the scabs along his scruff, shivering at even that light pressure near the bite.
And sure, he’d snarled into those soft morning kisses as the shock worn off. As the reality of his situation crashed into him.
Had bit at Dick’s lips until the sweet laughter turned bloody. The shackling grip turning to redirection as he swung. The nest a casualty as he staggered to his feet, knees weak and hips still feeling sore and loose in the best way.
And maybe he had hissed at the other to stay down (come here) to keep his filthy hands off him (your skin on mine, sea to shore, callouses catching and scars traced like constellations) and far, far away unless he wanted to lose them.
Dick could have stopped him.
Had proven, definitively now, that he was capable of putting Jason down. Had done it, he grimaced to remember, without any biological tricks before this too. Over and over again.
But now Dick had revealed he could subdue him both ways.
Could call him to heel and to heed, could flip him and fill him and keep him, stuck fast and willing. Keep the omega in him soft and playful, willing and desired and ready.
Could have pinned him to the carpet.
Hooked fangs into his neck. Bit him again, bit him for real instead of freezing like prey in their nest. Instead of staring as Jason slung on clothes, stretched the chest out of a grey shirt and growled at him.
Could have followed him out the door, pushed him against the hallway wall. Shoved him to his knees. Reminded him where he could belong.
Could have stopped him from eating up the stairs in long strides.
Done more than let Jason leave with the weight of his eyes on him all the way down the drive.
The bastard. Getting off on watching him grind his teeth and wrestle his instincts with each step away.
Passive and weak and everything that had shocked him when he first came back and saw how quiet Nightwing had become.
Except…
So go on and run, Little Red.
The cursor on the screen blinked at him. Cheerfully not where he last saw it. Sitting proudly behind a line of code that hadn’t been there when Jason had opened the program.
See how far I let you go.
It was Troia’s voice, the lesser amazon according to Mother’s sources, that filtered through.
“-what you’re doing with this? And right now, with Damian-”
Damian felt himself tense unwillingly at the genuine pain in the hero’s voice.
“-and Tim running across Europe...”
“Don, I’m not-“ a long, heavy sigh. Grayson’s voice was worse. Anxious. Pained. Uncertain. …Scared.
He’s never heard Grayson sound like that before and never wants to hear it again. The man has been shot, stabbed, trapped and tricked in front of Damian and not sounded like this. Damian has personally done most of that to Grayson and never heard this tone. It feels wrong. It makes him feel.
“I don’t know, okay? Everything I’ve found is… concerning. At best. I can’t - how am I supposed to-“ he stopped talking before his voice could choke, before it could break. The way it so often did when talking about Father. Especially about Father’s… mistakes. The rows of locks on his door come to mind easily. Grayson’s shock and then cold, steely, disdain. He remembers how his hands shook, gathering reconnaissance then much like he is now, at the snarl he wasn’t meant to hear directed towards the butler later.
“Do you want us to come down?”
Grayson gives a small laugh, some sort of weird, silent communication must happen because the amazon then says, apropos of nothing Damian can follow, in a teasing tone; “I think I can handle his puppy teeth.”
He sits there confused for a long second before he has to stifle the offended rumble in his chest. There’s a laugh in her voice, as if the thought of his teeth on her wrist was a charming one. Sweet. Small, like an animal. His teeth positively itch to prove her assumption wrong, iron skin or no.
“Too much too soon.” Grayson ultimately says and, oh, they’re talking about Grayson’s up coming Rut. “I think I need the space too.” Something rueful in his tone as he says, “It might be… related… but I’m already feeling-“
“Territorial?”
Grayson groaned, this time humor creeped around the edges. Then, muffled, like he’d dropped his head into his hands, “I rattled at a clerk.”
A sharp laugh, “No!”
He had. They’d said some inane comment about the sharpness of Damian’s cheeks and the likeness of their “good looks” and would have lost their reaching hand if not for Grayson’s command to still. Only… it appears that warning hadn’t been meant for Damian at all.
“She tried to pinch his cheeks!”
“Dick!”
They burst into short laughter and sit for a moment, the silence as comfortable between them as Damian was tense.
“I don’t like the idea of you being alone right now.”
Grayson’s eye-roll, a juvenile mannerism, was audible in his voice, “I think we just addressed that I won’t be alone and why we shouldn’t-“
“He’s unmasked you once already. Shot you- how many times now? Do you know what he could do with a Bond?“
Ah. Not him, then. Todd.
At least someone shared his logical concerns.
“I know he needs help-“
“Dick, you can’t keep doing this. Cat-“
“Don’t.”
“Dick,”
“Do not-“
“You have to admit they’re similar. You,” she cut herself off and dropped her voice again. “Are you even attracted to him or is this just-“
“Donna!“
She must hear something in his voice that Damian does not.
“Oh.”
“Just-“
“Oh-Okay, alright. That’s…” she let the matter drop, swapping tracts quickly. “I’m still not wrong.”
Another groan, this one edged in a growl. Troia was not impressed.
“You saw it then, with her. It’s why you tried to help her. If you gave her that much rope just because of the similar-”
“His psych profile-“
Her voice goes soft, cutting the argument down before it could begin. “I know, I heard you, I know,”
“He was doing better,” it was a weak statement. Damian’s lip curled. Todd did not deserve pity. Nor mercy. That Grayson hadn’t put him down the moment he learned of Todd’s transgression (of the Manor, of Robin) all those years ago— he slowly unclenched his fist. Swallowed, breathed in the strange salt-steel-tea that Grayson insisted on spreading everywhere.
He wouldn’t be here either, if that were Grayson’s mien.
None of them would be.
“He’s made his choices, Dick, and he hasn’t shown any sign of stopping or changing.”
“…”
“Blackgate. Tim. Dozens of civilians. Working with mercenaries and assassins. Shooting you, repeatedly trying to kill you, his attempts to dismantle Gotham and destabilize the other costal cities through the arms trade and drug dealin-“
“He’s left the-“
“It’s not enough.” Her voice was level, final. Factual. “Forget Bruce’s code, it’s not enough for yours. It’s not good enough for you. Until he changes, makes real changes to how he moves forward in that mask, he’s not good enough for you.”
“He was dead.”
Oh here he goes. It always seemed to come back to this with Todd.
“He was dead and he came back.”
The line stayed silent. A new, terrible, weight in Grayson’s voice as he continued.
“You know that doesn’t happen. We don’t get our people back. Pantha, Lilith, Don, Hank, Dawn, John, Duela, Joe-“
He wondered if anyone in the League recounted names. Eulogies were not done. His father’s had been faked. Staged. For the mask and not for the man who preferred his time in one.
But when Grayson spoke of Father now it was with the same tremor in his voice as he recited this litany of fallen. (Would he one day be missed? Did Mother say his name now to others and feel-)
“You know who I’ve gotten back? You. You and Jason.”
“I…” the amazon’s voice went thick, “I know you don’t.”
“I know what he’s done, Donna. I just-“
Something changed in the air. Grayson stopped mid-word.
Damian’s heart raced before he forcibly calmed it. He shifted his weight, moving back towards his bedroom as quickly as he was able while maintaining total silence. The man was frustratingly impossible to sneak up on. That he had heard as much as he had before setting off Grayson’s awareness was as much a testament to his skill as it was to the man’s mental state.
He slid into his own bedroom just in time.
“Damian? Are you in here?”
His voice was level, perfectly controlled as always. “What is it, Grayson.”
His pulse tried to quicken on him again and his voice didn’t want to throw properly, to make it sound like was sitting at his desk as he usually was at this hour. He forced both to obey his will and did not touch the back of his teeth with his tongue in nervousness in the seconds long silence.
“…Alright, just wanted to check in on you.” Not unusual, but also not true - this time.
“I’ll be in living room for a bit, alright? Might even break into the cupboard now that Alfie’s asleep.”
Grayson’s usual juvenile teasing about snacks and foodstuffs rang hollow where his voice did not.
Grayson was also a master of his craft.
Damian wondered just how often the older man fooled those around him.
He waited an appropriate amount of time to let Grayson's suspicions settle, but not grow before leaving his room.
He shifted, slowly, knowing that the odds of his movement remaining undetected were low. (But never zero, as Richard liked to crow while losing at whatever nonsense Brown had brought over to waste their time and use their TV.) (He wondered when the teenage alpha would realize the elder was letting her win. Probably never.)
He paused, taking a moment to test his balance on the arm closest to Richard.
Bedtime, as Richard childishly called it, was a nebulous thing in the household. Both of them were guilty of waking in the night or early morning for some reason or other.
Often times they’d meet before dawn and spar. The mats had quickly become one of Damian’s favorite spaces, for all that they had initially frustrated and enraged him. (An accurate summary of sparring with Richard. Why the man continued to waste time with flourishes and faked weakness escaped Damian. Unfortunately, so did victory and so his opinion carried little weight.)
Sometimes they would stalk the hallways of the penthouse or meet near the couch.
The couch arrangement was a recent compromise.
Richard wouldn’t trap Damian in his nefariously placed throw blankets or conniving grip, and Damian would leave his knives in his bedroom and the shared hallway.
Of course, he had attempted to smuggle a few into the space only to discover all of the best spots were already stocked. Sai, daggers of various make and metal, a smallsword, five handguns (of all things), and of copies of Nightwing’s own trademark escrima were tucked away into each and every viable spot Damian had tried.
Pennyworth pointed out that Damian was welcome to assist him the maintenance if he were so curious as to their use, which he had, of course, declined.
He eased closer. His target was distracted tonight. Giving the same, accepting hum to each of Damian’s proclamations.
“Mhm?”
Like so.
“And then I drew my blade and slaughtered them all.”
Richard once again did not look away from the screen but he did laugh. Low and soft, if a sound could be as such, and slowly, not slow enough to be patronizing but slow enough that Damian had ample time to dodge, reached up to press one large hand to Damian’s face. The broad palm cupped gently over his eyes, the light pressure and darkness somehow inexplicably soothing instead of enraging. His shoulders slid loose, already anticipating the sway as Dick rocked his hand and with it Damian’s head. Damian pushed into that grip rather than pull away, sneakily basking the warmth of Richard’s palm and the ocean-safety-bared steel smell as it rolled over him before Richard dutifully moved his hand. His fingers pressed deeper, scrubbing over Damian’s forehead and through his hair.
Scenting had been… confusing, at first. Another strange habit of Richard’s that differed from everywhere else he knew.
In the League, it was custom that the weak were marked by the victor upon each loss. Those fools were never permitted near his mother, and therefore him, but he caught a wiff of them in the halls at times; miserable and injured. Those carrying scent, or worse, multiple scents, were easily singled out as the weakest links. The most expendable.
A lesson.
He had braced himself for the worst the first time Richard disarmed him in a training session and had been horrified, confused, betrayed, the first time Richard had moved to scrub his scent over him in affection for his trivial victory over what had been a child’s mathematics exam.
It had not been the first of their talks, nor the longest, nor the most heated. But it had been the first that Damian had to… concede, in the face of overwhelming evidence as well as Richard’s own earnestness. (Pennyworth had concurred when consulted; scenting was critical to Richard’s health and wellbeing. The old butler had looked somewhat rueful, mind far away and eyes seeing elsewhere. It had been important to the other since he was a child. Even Father had tolerated it.)
Mother had stressed the importance of keeping his scent suppressed. Not only were the scents of the lower-born often base and irritating, but they gave information far too freely.
His father had not encouraged it either, too easy a link to his identity. Too easy for an enemy to identify a softer target. Bruce Wayne also remained blocked and unscented, for all that the more austere members of the upper class would often leave a note of their scent in social gatherings or replicated in their homes. Yet students at the Academy, another change and one he was still negotiating with Richard who refused to hear reason, often carried scents of pack and parents.
It was alarming, the difference he noted when he attended fully blocked, as scent-bare as Robin, versus the days Richard trapped him in a ruffling grip before sending him out the door with Pennyworth or when he insisted on walking Damian to the school’s lobby.
It had been new and nothing at all as he had expected.
There was nothing in it to induce the misery it evoked in the servants. Nothing repulsive or inappropriate as he had feared. Instead of humiliations or a loss of status it seemed…
“Oh yeah? I feel like I’d have gotten a call from the school for that.”
He remembers the comments he knows the children and so-called teachers meant for him to hear.
“Tt. Not likely. They remain incompetent.”
‘He smells like someone actually loves him.’
What a foolish notion.
Mother loved him, regardless of if she left her scent on his skin. Father had been more preoccupied weighing his worthiness of the mantel than lowly social conventions before he departed.
Robin carried no scent. Invisible to the sense.
(Richard had laughed when Damian challenged him if it was to make up for the visual offense of the outfit. Bright colors a truly ignorant choice for stealth. Laughed, and then smiled with his teeth. Offered to let him change the design if he couldn’t hack it. Tt!)
“Sorry, kid.” Another foolish not-name Richard tacked to him. “I did break our deal, huh?”
Richard had missed four nights! Four nights of patrol, three sunrise spars, and, Damian slipped off the arm of the chair and onto the empty cushion, four of these.
He didn’t know what to call them. Pennyworth’s tomes were silent on the matter. The League certainly never permitted such useless frivolity. It was an event wholly to Richard, whatever it was, this mix of edgeless contact and ruffling.
Sometimes it would be a pursuit. A game of returning a single blow and darting about the area. Sometimes Richard would change the rules mid engagement, twisting from prey to hunter, scooping Damian up and tossing him into the air with each successful catch before releasing him once more. Other times Richard would parry his blows for a random number of blocks and passes before grabbing a limb at random and hauling Damian up off the ground by it. He would then be slung over Richard’s shoulders, often upside down, and run through the apartment. (Richard sometimes called for him as if he were hiding, spinning and leaping in increasingly complicated maneuvers to throw off Damian’s retaliatory nerve strikes when Damian capitulated and shouted back that he was here, Grayson, you imbecile!)
And rarely, it was simply this.
Richard waiting, more patiently than his social facade would suggest him capable, for Damian to approach. To attack, surprise, or observe from afar.
He usually stuck to the arm of the couch, idly rubbing his wrist over it in the motion Richard had demonstrated over and over on the walls of the penthouse, across various objects, and on Damian himself. The fabric was smooth, stiff enough to proved an engaging texture under his nails and along his inner wrists but not enough to chafe. It was oddly soothing. He was careful to only indulge in this particular spot so as to not develop a crutch. He would watch as Richard worked away at a case file or organized another sweep of Gotham’s penitentiaries. The alpha occasionally humming a bar of various songs as he did so.
And Damian would sit. And wait. And slowly ease closer.
As he did tonight while Richard politely looked away, the window that had actually consumed his focus put aside for what was likely a more minor project, and pretended to ignore Damian’s slow shift of weight along the couch.
He drew in a deep breath.
Richard’s scent shifted after his distasteful excursion with Todd.
Damian wasn’t sure he liked it.
It rendered him oddly exhausted, a new soporific effect that Richard had been happy to exploit the past evening to curtail his well deserved lecture short. Had robbed him of most of the ensuing reaming that met the meddling butler’s choice to imprison Damian in the penthouse those long days. Even now, he feels his eyes grow heavier as the alpha reaches out idly for another pass. The hand in his hair rubbing down over his back now that Damian is closer.
The ocean scent, briny and filled with a myriad of hidden life, has taken on notes of a shore-line. Baking sand and something green-bitter but fruit-sweet.
Richards tea scent was often savory, rich in the nose for all Damian found the tea it resembled weak on his pallet from a cup. This new bitter-green, orange-sweet neroli has to be from Todd.
It took the dark ocean and dredged up a sandbar, dragged a storm to shore and dispersed it back beneath sun and over sand.
The smell of wet earth rises from his skin and mixes in, brought out by the protective scent marking. Rain after a storm, potential in the soaked air.
The hand travels back up his spine in a warm rub, cups the back of his head as his eyes flutter shut.
“Sir, are you certain this is the best-“
“I’m fine, Alfred.” Another warm pass of scent and pressure. “Nothing I haven’t handled before.” There’s a cutting thread of amusement that Damian can just hear in his voice. Pennyworth’s, however, remains filled with concern.
“You are well off schedule. Early,” the butler’s voice becomes serious. “By more than two months.”
His breath leaves him in a sigh, lids so very heavy. Ocean-drawn steel-comfort.
“… I know.”
“Would you consider allowing-“
“I think you’ve made enough decisions, for all us.”
Damian shifted, something in the hushed tones tugging him back to the surface. Another firm pass of the alpha’s hand, though, sends him deeper towards sleep once more.
The conversation over his head slips in and out of his grasp.
“Oh dear boy, never anything of the kind.”
“I’m glad to hear that…”
His breathing deepens and evens out once more. He tips forward, nose pressed to the alpha’s neck, as he’s carefully lifted up.
The screen slowly darkens and turns off, numbers and charts detailing an unusual spike in hormonal shifts from Dr. Thompkins fading away from attention as well.
He could not settle the fuck down.
Everything was wrong. Too stale, too new, too different. Nothing was right and nothing would satisfy the itching in the back of his head that told him, in increasingly insistent terms, that this was unacceptable.
(The wrong sheets, the wrong smell. God, his lungs ached for it. Worse than any cigarette, any high.)
It was like finding that Dick had made changes to his security system was some sort of permission for his instincts to lose the shaky grip they had on reality. He was looking for signs everywhere with a sick, hope-tinged claw of anticipation despite having triple checked already. He was still working on figuring out what the asshole had added, for fucks sake, there wasn’t anything concrete yet and here he was, pacing the permitter again as if that would somehow magically make the alpha manifest in his apartment.
More than he already was, that is. He hadn’t been able to leave after finding that line of code. Couldn’t make himself relocate, couldn’t tell his backwards instincts that the alpha wasn’t coming. Wasn’t here. He’d built a nest. Torn it down. Stuffed everything in the small, crappy, little dryer as if that would fix the missing scent. Stuffed a tea bag, one of his good stash with whole leaves, in after the third time the nest he couldn’t help but assemble just didn’t smell right.
It didn’t work. Of course it didn’t fucking work. All it did was trick his brain just enough to get him amped up again. Just enough to convince him that it could be stronger. That it should be more. That it was almost but not enough. And that it was his fault; for leaving now, for not being enough then. For not taking Dick’s hand one the half a dozen times he’d offered it.
To pull him up or haul him down - it shouldn’t have mattered.
(Remembered holding his own hand out. Covered in Tim’s blood. Telling, taunting, Dick that he could be his Robin.)
He growled, rolling over again. Rearranging the pillows for the fourth time. Shifting to drag one to his core under one arm as he turned over on his side, not his usual position but he’d try near anything at this rate. He let his head thunk back, sucked in a deep breath, and started the process of slowing his own heart rate.
It feels like it takes an age. He slides under between one beat and the next.
It starts slow. Soft, easy, pressure. Fingers gliding through his hair, dusting down over his temples, tracing the shell of his ear and starting over again. A little more pressure, a little more time. A longer drag of skin on skin. He turns his nose to his pillow, drags it against the fabric and draws in another lungful of the savory tea-smell. A purr rumbles in his chest. Deep and thick with sleep. The sound lazy, content. He lolls his head into the warm palm waiting for him.
“Oh, look at you.” its a rumble to match his own. Content. Rich. And… amused?
That warm palm flattens against his skull.
“Aww, you thought you could hide from me?” The hand presses Jasons head flat to the mattress. Holds him there, grip implacable, cheek squished against the sheets. His breath catches, eyes flying open. Body heavy despite the bubbling rush of adrenalin in his stomach. “Or did you? Didn’t try very hard, Jaybird. Coming right back here, to your nest. Leaving my code active. Like you wanted me to find you. You liked that I was watching.”
The cleaning, the nesting, the shower.
Had he seen all of it?
“All of it.” The Alpha confirmed, voice pleased. “All of you. Being so good for me.”
He shudders at the praise, damning and demeaning and sweeter for it. The hand on his face slides into his hair, pressure slowly letting back up as skin slides against skin, and ruffles it playfully. Tugs a little at the stubborn curls that always snarl up when he sleeps. The pressure there reminds him, suddenly, of being younger. Of being Robin and aching for the older boys attention. His approval. To impress him. Knowing he’d take anything. Anger, disdain, coldness. He pants as different memories swim up. A strong hand around his wrist, hauling him to safety. A grip on his scruff, shaking him into compliance. A warm palm, encompassing his whole shoulder. Bracing him, holding him, scenting him - however incidental. Marking him. Making him his. Naming him Robin.
And Robin was good. Was worth something, was someone worth keeping.
He pushes into Dick’s grip, missing the warmth, missing the grounding weight.
“Awww,” another coo. “Good boy.”
And then pressure, even better, friction, as the alpha’s body slid along his. But it was there and gone again, Dick drawing back and taking his warmth with him. His purr dips into a growl, displeased. A chiding cluck, a click of tongue against molars, echoes in his ears, achingly familiar as it sinks his stomach with the association of not quite, are you joking, c’mon now.
Hands hook at his knees, lever him open. He didn’t- he remembered sleeping in sweats. In pants. He was sure he had but-
“Like you were waiting for me..” his cock jumps against his stomach, body clenching in a ripple of muscle as he’s held open and stared at. The memory of before, of the last time, of a night not nearly so far away pushes to the front of his brain and he feels himself slick at the sense-memory of being open. Of heat in his veins and in his head and dripping spend slipping out of him as his Alpha ducked his head and cleaned him.
“Dick…”
It wasn’t a whine. He didn’t whine.
“Try asking me nicely.”
“Dick.”
Sudden warmth, dripping and then rushing down his thighs. Spit and then his own slick as his traitor body reacted. The hot lick of humiliation lashing through him. Liking it, the same way he liked the edge in Dick’s voice as he threatened him again.
“Nicely… or nothing.”
“Alpha.”
And there it was, warmth, pressure. Dick lying more fully between his legs. Pushing his knees up toward his shoulders, settling between his thighs, pressing him down deep into the mattress. His cock smacks carelessly against Jason’s, bouncing back stickier. Wet with him from both his dribbling holes. He lets go of one knee and Jason grabs it himself. Thoughtless, mindless compliance, focus on the burn in his belly and the stretch in his thighs and the smile on Alpha’s face as he holds himself open. Fingers press against his lips, his third spilling over too now with drool as he opened easy. Gnawed and sucked thoughtlessly on Dick’s fingers. Caught them gently between blunt molars in little nips and releases that did no damage and soothed something coiled in the pit of his stomach.
“So wet for me, Jay. So wet so quick. You just can’t help it, can you?” The fingers pressed in. Or did he suck them down, hold them hostage to smother his answer?
“Made just for me.”
It didn’t matter. His throat vibrated with a groan, loud even around Dick’s fingers.
“Always supposed to be mine. My Little Wing, waiting and good and so strong for me.” Dick rocked his hips with each claim. Slow and heavy and pushing the thoughts out of his head.
That was okay. He didn’t need to think right now. He could just feel.
His jaw fell slack. Dick slid his fingers out, dragging along his tongue only to wipe down his chin and then back up his cheek. Leaving a trail of wet in their wake. He shuddered, half at the chill and half at the way it made him feel…
Another thrust drove a moan out of his empty mouth and the thought skittered away, the burn in his stomach igniting into something better.
The glide was slick now, picking up in force but not speed. Thump. Thump. Thump. The headboard bounced into the wall. Steady, sure, rhythmic. Dick’s wet hand pet at his fingers before taking over the hold, both hands pressing his knees wide. Pressing him, pinning him, splayed, to the mattress. His shoulder blades taking most of his weight as he canted his hips up to meet Dick’s downward thrusts.
A laugh. “Eager…”
“Di-Alpha,” he corrects quickly, voice low and warbling with the purr rolling through him. He tenses, waiting for the reprimand for his slip. Braced, or was he anticipating, hoping, for pain - deprivation - something. But all he got was Alpha’s sweet moan as his cock kicked and his pussy drooled more slick. Crossed fucking wires.
“Good boy, good catch.” Dick always was more gentle than he deserved.
His breath still hitched, purr going reedy halfway through a whine as the alpha did pull his hips back. Only to pick back up in a thunderous rumble as the alpha dragged his cock back along his own and slid down to tease his entrance. He parted easily, the alpha bullying between his lips in a smooth grind that soaked his cock.
“Could just get myself off like this,” Dick mused. “You’ve got me all slicked up. Could just use you to keep my grip smooth, listen to you whine. Hear you beg to take the place of my hand.” He thrust again, dragging Jason’s slick up from his spread pussy along the base of his own cock, pressing the two of them together. The heft and friction of Dick grinding into the bundle of nerves at the base almost as hot as the sheer feeling of being used like this. Spread open and teased and pleasured but not filled. “Going to beg me, Jaybird?”
He breaks, cock leaking like a faucet, a telling clench-gush below sending shakes through his thighs and core and grates the alpha further into his pelvis. A whine, a real one, the one he used in his heat, the one he made every heat, rattles out of his throat.
“Aww, sweetheart.” A mean edge tinged that familiar, warm, voice. “Use your words.”
Like his orgasm wasn’t embarrassing enough. Like the fact that he’d gotten off on just a little grinding and the idea of being used, of begging to be used, wasn’t enough. Another bead of pre, clear and empty and useless, spills out of his hard dick as he clenches again in an aftershock, body despondent at being so empty when Alpha is right there and hard for them.
He calls again, whine ratcheting up in pitch as Dick stops laughing and starts to pull back for real. He chases him, arms pressing into the bed to lever his torso up, pressing into Dick’s grip on the inside of his knees, feeling the burn in his hamstring as he all but folds himself in half - dripping pussy on display.
“Please,”
Its rough and hoarse and low. Broken, just like him and his eyes clench shut and his teeth grind at the useless sound of it.
But those warm hands don’t leave him. Dick’s long fingers shift, pulling him lower, easing the strain on his back and legs but forcing him wider. Somehow more exposed and open now.
The tip notches to his opening. Teasing, beautiful, pressure right where he’s hot and wet.
“All you had to do was ask.”
It’s a stretch. Nerves a feed back of pressure, pleasure, pressure. It’s nothing, it’s just the tip. Just the flared head, thick and blood-hot and wet with pre and his own slick. It’s everything he wants.
He throws his head back and keens. The pressure builds and builds and dry lips brush gently along his bared throat.
He spasms with a gasp and-
-aches, body a line of longing except for where its not.
Empty and limp and soaking the pillow crushed to his chest.
God fucking damnit.
It took an age to get out of the nest. To convince his body that he hadn’t done anything wrong and chased off the Alpha that hadn’t even been there. His muscles locked and tense even after the orgasm that chased him back to reality.
He growls under his breath, confident the helmet will keep it silent as he stalks down the street.
It had been a fight to stop nuzzling down into his sweat-soaked sheets, searching for the scent he can just barely catch. Salt and tea and frustratingly, truly, only his own. A false mirror, a lingering claim. He’d scrunched his face into the wrinkled sheets as he tried to force logic back between the bit of his instincts, losing, over and over as the texture reads back wrong. Not right, not right at all. Body still feeling the phantom warmth, the weight, of the alpha, the broad hands on his sides, the mouth tucked to his bared neck.
Sliding into his armor had helped, more than he thought it would. His fingers all but flying after touching the reinforced weave of his discarded shirt. It’s not until he puts his fist through the tinted windows of a car and hauls out a dealer from the Narrows that he realizes why.
It’s the same damn instinct. The nesting urge spilling out from his apartment onto his streets.
Like if he can clean it up, make it just so, everything will fall into place.
He drops the filth, with a newly broken face, hands, and knee, to the sidewalk. Leaves the car. Knows both will be picked over and gone by the time he comes back along the route.
Continue. Rinse. Repeat.
His feet keep leading him to the north edge of the Alley, circling back towards the road the would eventually lead out to the Manor even though, logically, he knows Dick is in the opposite direction. In some penthouse near the center of the city like a princess in a tower.
He was losing it. Haunted by the phantom sensations and distracted by his instincts all but keening that he go back. Almost hunted, watching the shadows for silhouettes.
He’d spends his whole patrol of the Alley off balance, snarling at even the mundane pickpockets and slamming that one moron who worked for Dent directly into an open dumpster. The pathetic sound the alpha made as Jason gripped his coat’s edges and lifted grating along his nerves almost as badly as the man’s putrid scent.
(His strength wasn’t for him. None of it was for any of them.)
He could hear the edges of comments from the girls, from the kids and the night-shift stragglers.
Red’s hit a dry spell.
Startin’ his rut, d’ja think?
Tall, dark, and dangerous. Would be a fun ride if he wasn’t that kind’a crazy.
His nicest apartment is still a mid-rise shit hole on the upper end of the Alley. He can’t see the horizon even from the roof. Doesn’t get much light, period, due to the crush of taller buildings surrounding the area. But his internal clock is screaming that, despite the rush of energy his nerves keep pumping, he should be headed towards his bed soon.
The tangle of sheets and blankets that only barely smelled right, and only that much at all because he’d all but rolled in them as soon as he’d gotten to that first, crappy, safe house, are still stained with that damn wet spot. He grimaces as he stares down at them, unwilling to crawl back in as the scent of his own arousal and release contaminates the space. The memory of hauling the stained sheets from place to place like a fucked up security blanket as his instincts dragged him around curdles his stomach with equal parts shame and desire.
The scent was fading from the fabric, fast. Smelling less and less of a summer storm in the Manor library and more of the plain old-paper and dry-sand scent of just him despite the clean metal-and-ocean-salt scent still seeping from his pores.
What was he doing, staying locked up and… and… pining?
He whipped his jacket back on with a snarl.
He had an alpha to hunt.
Sun glints off of the solid steel and glossy black of Gotham’s newer architecture. The spires and sharp edges oddly at home among the curling, grim covered stone and gargoyles of the earlier eras. The flashes blind Jason briefly, forcing him to raise a hand to shade his face, eyes locked on one building in particular.
A penthouse with reflective windows and enough, unseen and hidden, security to make Lex Luthor look trusting.
A wild grin steals across his face, fangs bared into the wind.
It was going to be a bitch to break into.