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Slade wasn't even supposed to be here.
He'd been doing Rose a favor, since the little bird kept nagging him about his parenting skills (and lack thereof). His latest contract had taken him near enough to Cambodia to pick up her favorite childhood treat (according to Billy, at least). Slade's plan had been to leave it in her room at the Tower, just in time for her to find it on return from her mission. A contact-free drop off and a chance to antagonize the Titans with the evidence of his presence all at once. A perfect plan.
So maybe he'd gotten a little too curious passing Nightwing's room. Maybe he'd stared at the door for just a few seconds too long, mentally calculating whether or not he could afford the diversion of poking around. He couldn't, and he knew as much. That's why he continued on to his exit, approaching just as he heard the Titans entering the Tower from the roof access.
He couldn't have counted on the blast doors falling the moment they were all inside. Quarantine procedures, the alarms now blaring through the building announced. And Slade is still stuck inside.
Well, he decides, might as well see what he can to do help speed this along. The sooner they lift the quarantine, the sooner he can get the hell out of here.
"Do I even want to know?" Nightwing asks the moment he comes into view. The rest of the Titans are strangely dismissive of his presence, seemingly too focused on the threat to care about an intruder in their base. Even his children barely react to his arrival. Dick just looks tired.
"Not here for trouble, pretty bird," he replies. His mask hides the way he drinks in Dick's form, but something must still give him away. Either that, or Rose wrinkles her nose because she knows him far too well.
Dick laughs. "Even if I believe that, trouble seems to have found you." His lip quirks apologetically. "I can't let you leave, Deathstroke. Not until we knows what's causing this."
It's optimistic of the little bird to think he can stop Slade should he truly set his mind to leaving, but he's got time to kill and is unlikely to be in any danger from whatever led Dick to enact quarantine procedures. He's absolutely not worried about leaving Rose and Joey here to face it alone, no matter what Dick may try to say later.
"Then you'd better loop me in, hadn't you?"
"Now hang on," Arsenal cuts in. "Wing, you can't seriously be considering giving him information instead of throwing him in a cell."
"We could use the help figuring this out. Besides," Dick shrugs, "he hasn't done anything wrong yet."
Harper sputters entertainingly. "He's literally trespassing as we speak. And that's assuming—"
"Semantics," Dick cuts him off, clearly rolling his eyes behind the mask.
Several Titans offer objections to this. Dick ignores them, turning fully to Slade to give his report. "While returning to Earth, we realized that something was bringing to life various fantasies of the team."
Slade raises a brow—cocking his head to make it obvious through the mask—but no further explanation is forthcoming. By the kid's slight blush, it seems he'd rather keep the details of those fantasies to himself. "So you needed the Tower's resources to figure it out, but don't want to risk it spreading if it's something your team picked up in space."
Dick nods. Before he can say any more, it starts snowing. In San Francisco. In July. Indoors.
By the time they've warmed the building and cleared out all the melted snow, the sun is closer to rising again than it is to having set. His children never give him a second glance.
A weight settles onto the bed beside Slade, shifting the covers. He's moving before his eyes are even open, pinning the intruder down by their throat.
Nightwing smiles back up at him, naked save for his domino mask. Slade lets up enough not to choke the kid, but he doesn't let go. Dick makes no move to escape.
"Hell of a way," Dick shivers as speaking presses his throat harder into Slade's hand, "to say good morning. Don't you think?"
In Slade's defense, a naked Dick Grayson would be incredibly distracting even if he hadn't just woken up. He thinks he can be forgiven for taking as long as he did to realize that the man beneath him is nothing more than one of the Tower's conjured fantasies.
"Maybe I'd be nicer if you were really him." Slade presses harder on the imposter's throat. He's gracious though. Still leaves him enough air to beg.
"But he wouldn't be here, would he?" The imposter's hand raises; not to fight Slade, but to retract the lenses of his domino. The eyes are too perfect, shining with the sort of mischief that makes Slade's little bird so damn captivating. "You can't have him, but you can have me."
And Slade is a weak, weak man.
When he crashes their lips together, Dick tastes like drugstore mouthwash. The sort he might keep in the Tower to distance himself from Wayne's money. The sort he might have used just before sneaking down the hall and into Slade's room if this were real. It's a good illusion, to care so much for every possible sense-memory. Slade drinks down every detail.
"Careful, pretty bird," he leans into the fantasy when Dick lets out a low moan against his lips. "Don't want your little friends to hear me taking you apart, do you?"
"Maybe I want them to," Dick whispers breathlessly. "Maybe they should know I'm yours."
Something tight settles in Slade's chest at that. He ignores it like he always does, kissing his way down Dick's body.
"Keep yourself quiet, little bird," he orders. Then he takes Dick's cock all the way down in one go.
There are advantages, Slade idly thinks, to the sort of perfect bodily control the serum gives him. He's never done this before, not really. Never met anyone since Addie whose pleasure he cared for more than his own. But the concept is simple enough. Play around a bit, then keep doing more of the things that make Dick gasp and squirm the most.
Licking at his balls makes the kid shiver and jerk. Swallowing him to the root and keeping him there makes his head tilt back with a strangled gasp. But it's slow, even strokes, teasing the head with his tongue every time he nearly pulls off that makes his little bird bite his own wrist to muffle himself.
"Slade," Dick whimpers, revealing a flash of stark white indentations as his teeth release his arm. One of them is even welling up the slightest pinpricks of blood. "Slade, I'm gonna come if you don't—"
"Then come for me, pretty bird," he pulls off just long enough to answer.
For once in his life, Dick obeys.
Slade sits back on his heels, watching Dick catch his breath. He looks ruined. His hair is a mess, there's bruises down his chest where Slade got a little overzealous with his teeth and tongue, and he's flushed in a way that can't be mistaken for anything but pleasure. Still, Slade's little bird is the most stubborn around. Even as his heart is still racing away in his chest, he reaches up to yank Slade closer by the collar of his shirt, licking into his mouth like he's desperate to find every remnant of his own come.
"Off," Dick pulls back just long enough to order. His hands yank at the collar of Slade's shirt, trying to tear it rather than separate long enough to pull it over Slade's head. Slade would tease him for it were he not feeling just as desperate himself.
It takes every scrap of willpower Slade possesses to pull away from Dick. Still, he forces himself to do it. He sheds his clothes quickly and checks the nightstand drawer. It was empty when he cleared the room last night, but if his theory is correct—
Slade smirks triumphantly as his search turns up a small bottle of lube. After all, this wouldn't be much of a magically conjured fantasy if he had a naked and willing Dick Grayson is his bed and no lube to fuck him with, no would it?
Dick drags Slade back to his mouth the moment he's in reach again, and Slade has no desire to pull away. Instead, he trails his hand blindly up Dick's thighs, smearing lube as he goes. Dick groans into his mouth as Slade finds his rim, teasing rather than pressing inside.
"Please," he breathes into Slade's mouth. "Slade, please don't make me wait."
Slade doesn't.
He starts slow, just one finger pumping in and out of Dick. It's barely a minute before the little bird is squirming underneath him, begging for more. What is Slade to do but oblige him?
With two fingers, Slade starts targeting his bird's prostate. Dick gasps, then lurches to sink his teeth into Slade's shoulder to muffle his shout. Slade can feel the bite breaking skin, grateful that it will heal before he'll have to discover whether or not it fades the moment the imposter is gone. Grateful he can pretend for just a little bit longer.
The next pass of his fingers is cruel, adding a third without warning before the imposter is ready for it. A wounded noise leaves Dick's throat, audible even around his mouthful of Slade's skin, and Slade gentles his strokes before he's even fully made the decision to do so. Dick relaxes beneath him. When he guides Dick's mouth back to his, he can taste his own blood.
"I'm ready," Dick murmurs against his lips. "Slade, fuck me."
And Slade is just a man.
The first thrust takes both of their breaths away. It's perfect, so undeniably right that he can barely understand why they haven't been doing this all along. Because the real Dick would never, because all Slade gets is this pale imitation, and even that is the best he's ever—
"Little bird," Slade breathes out. He presses his face into Dick's hair as he fights every instinct to thrust, forces himself to give Dick a moment to adjust. "My little bird."
"Yours," Dick agrees in a whisper so soft that Slade isn't entirely sure he was meant to hear it.
Slade gives a slow thrust at that, then another and another as he drinks down Dick's sweet moans. It feels like he's burning from the inside out, desperate to chase the pleasure he feels, and yet wholly unwilling to shatter this perfect moment. So he stays gentle, hands mapping out every inch of Dick's skin. Committing every detail to memory.
Dick's hands come to tangle in his hair, pulling Slade back down across the few inches between them. He kisses like he's saying goodbye. When he comes, completely untouched into the space between them, Slade follows him over the edge.
Slade gazes into Dick’s eyes as they catch their breath together, watching as the desire and passion fades into something gentler. Something more meaningful. Something the real Dick Grayson could never feel for him. The illusion shatters once and for all. "I’m going to shower," Slade tells the thing in his bed. "Don’t be here when I get back."
Some part of him is grateful that he's able to wash the come off his chest before he has to watch it disappear.
Dick—the real Dick—doesn't give Slade a second glance when he gives up on wallowing meditating and joins the Titans in their mission room. They've all dressed down to civvies and masks, and are now absorbed in conversation with what Slade assumes must be the aliens responsible for this debacle.
Rose and Joey, on the other hand, have finally decided to acknowledge his existence.
"It's good to see you, Pop," Joey signs. "We just…"
"Weren't entirely sure you were really here," Rose finishes after her brother trails off awkwardly.
"Guess I should be flattered to have made enough of an impression on your teammates that you think their nightmares might summon me."
Rose and Joey exchange an odd look at that, the latter's eyes darting briefly towards Dick. Their leader probably wouldn't approve of them divulging their team's weaknesses, even if Slade hasn't really been their enemy in years now.
"We're still wrapping things up, but Wing lifted the quarantine," Rose changes the subject. "You should probably get out of here before they remember you broke in in the first place."
With that she turns and walks away, every bit his daughter. Joey—who was always more Addie's son than his—pauses long enough for sentimental well-wishes before following her.
Slade turns back on the threshold just long enough to catch Dick's notice. The little bird raises his hand, brusque enough that it could pass for a goodbye or a simple acknowledgement of Slade's departure. He doesn't particularly care which. His attention is far too focused on the way Dick's sleeve slides down his arm with the action, revealing two rows of oddly shaped scabs just above his wrist.
It's too faint, hardly distinct enough to stand out amongst the bruises and scars that already litter the little bird's arms. But to Slade, they may as well be a neon light. A perfect bite mark, right where Dick had muffled himself in Slade's bed just that morning.
So his little bird needs an excuse, Slade thinks as he saunters out the door. Some veneer of plausible deniability before he can allow himself to fall into a mercenary's bed. That's alright. Slade can make excuses with the best of them. And the prize of this particular game is more than worth the effort to play it.