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When Slade had been a pup, he had been told that omegas did not get to negotiate. They were the property of their alpha, obedient and docile. Opinions were not a luxury they got to have.
He had believed it at the time. Omegas existed to be bred. They were walking wombs, minds too easily addled by pheromones to handle decision making. Even the omega he and Adeline had used to have their children had been a whimpering mess with barely the sense to remember their names, existing solely to be knotted by the two alphas until they swelled with pups.
And then he had met Dick Grayson.
Dick Grayson was the sort of omega kings had once fought wars over. He was the sort of omega treated like a trophy, adorned in gold and kept tightly leashed. His intoxicating scent, the perfect pout of his lips, the flawless body… If he had been born two millennia ago, he'd have only been spared some emperor's knot on the days he was birthing pups.
But the young man, for all his outer appearance made him the perfect omega, had a stubborn streak. He knew his own mind and would rarely let his own omega instincts have a say.
When Slade had first attempted to breed him, he'd not thought to ask. He’d never taken an omega who wouldn’t accept a pup. But Dick had protested and not slept with Slade for a week because he felt like he was deserving of a frank conversation about what him bearing pups looked like.
If he even let Slade breed him at all.
So they had negotiated. Dick would live in an apartment Slade owned, no more independent flat to retreat to when he was in a mood. He'd forgo all suppressants and patches while they were trying for a pup. And he'd let Slade implant a tracker into his arm in case of emergencies.
In exchange, Slade would allow Dick to maintain his day job running a children's sports centre. He would agree to their new residence being in Bludhaven rather than forcing Dick to move to whatever city took the assassin's fancy. And Slade would have to fill in for Nightwing while Dick was pregnant and nursing.
So Slade had become a vigilante. He called himself Raptor, tried to protect the city in a way that ensured Dick wasn't stressed or tempted to go out. And, as much as Slade had protested the forced heroics, he was finding that he rather enjoyed it.
A night of violence and action topped off by returning to a flat to find his pregnant omega curled up in his nest, swelling with Slade’s pup, eager to press kisses into Slade’s skin as thanks.
He could almost pretend he was some king returning to the breeding chamber after a day of ruling. He'd almost floated the idea of a breeding chamber during their negotiations. Surely, in a city like Bludhaven, there would be old stone buildings with breeding chambers off the main bedrooms? A place to keep your omega while you were doing all you could to pup them, to keep them intoxicated on your scent and whimpering needily even without a heat…
Wayne Manor had one just off the master bedroom. Bruce Wayne, the most peculiar alpha Slade had ever met, used it to store out of season clothes.
Still, all thoughts of his disappointment over the lack of breeding chamber melted away as he slid open the window to his flat. There was the heady scent of an omega swelling with his pups, the soft chirping of a contented omega at rest.
Dick was curled up in the nest he had constructed in the corner of the living room, the TV illuminating his sleeping features. He shifted at Slade’s presence, drawing in a breath to assess whether he knew the scent. He might have awoken at any other scent but the recognition his alpha had returned only made sleep all the easier. Slade knelt beside the young man, basking in the softness of his features, that charming pout to his lips, the way his dark hair playfully explored skin Slade had claimed with possessive bites.
The young man wore one of Slade’s t-shirts and nothing else. It draped over his form, straining a little around his stomach, before coming to hang tauntingly just low enough to hide the omega's beautiful cunt.
He wanted to fill it, to knot the young man and use the sensation to draw him back to consciousness. Pregnancy had not stopped their sex life, after all. Things had slowed. In fact, when Dick had agreed to let Slade pup him, Slade had mounted the young man at every opportunity, knotted him relentlessly even before his heat had swept in. And when Dick had gone into heat, Slade had let him nest and then secured him into the nest with a chained collar so that Dick was always ready to take Slade’s knot.
Both agreed that had only made the whole breeding process all the more fun.
But the pregnancy prevented rough sex and Slade was hesitant to knot the acrobat in any way, no matter how much his body ached for it. He didn’t want to risk the pup, didn’t want to risk making birthing any more painful than it had to be, didn’t want Dick to be uncomfortable given how much he hoped the young man would give him future pups.
Slade reached out, hand lifting up the bottom of Dick’s t-shirt, tracing the curve of his belly. If he had known life with the young man pregnant would be like this… He would have kept Dick knotted for hours on end, carrying him around their flat. He’d have offered to take protection of Bludhaven off his hands years ago, have hired someone to keep the house so Dick could be nothing but a blissed out breeder.
He knew that Dick expected time to recover once he gave birth. He’d probably want at least a year to spend with the pup, to take back control of his body. It would take a couple of months for his body to start even getting heats again while he was nursing an omega pup. But then Slade also knew that it would not be hard to find a doctor who would be more than happy to provide him with the stimulants that would get Dick back into having heats immediately, and between the hormones of pup-rearing and induced heats, the young man would be nothing but putty ready to accept whatever Slade gave him.
It was an image Dick would be turned on by, a roleplay he might even be willing to try with drugs and stimulants. But never something he would accept, especially not with a pup he had to rear.
As content as Dick looked in his nest, Slade knew he would have to wake him, help him relocate to the comfort of the bedroom. At least the nest in there had padding beneath it so Dick could sleep comfortably inside.
“Good morning, Little Bird,” Slade hummed, his gloved hands tracing along Dick’s jaw.
Dick shifted, eyes not opening even as a smile formed on his lips. He pressed a kiss to the gloves.
The costume was new - post Dick finding out a pup had taken - but Slade had to admit it got Dick going even better than his Deathstroke costume did. But then Slade knew that an alpha that was not just a domineering force but a protective one had always appealed to Dick.
“Still night,” Dick murmured into Slade’s glove.
His hands shifted to his belly. When Dick had gotten pregnant, he had confessed to Slade that he was nervous about how attracted Slade would be to him when he was carrying a pup. He’d not been a big baby himself, he had confessed, and he had been nervous that Slade would mourn for the loss of Dick’s perfect musculature without being rewarded with him positively ballooning with Slade’s young. And, it was true, the omega who had given Slade Grant and Joseph had gotten larger than Dick had, had almost looked pathetic with his unsteady and heavy movements but… Dick had never looked better to Slade.
“It’s past midnight,” Slade supplied. “Ergo, morning.”
He collected Dick into his arms and the young man’s eyes slipped open. He smiled up at Slade, asking how patrol had gone, his hands reaching up to pull off Slade’s mask.
The older man carried Dick steadily, eye fixed onto his peaceful face, glancing up only to position himself to open the bedroom door with his elbow.
When he looked down, the sleepy smile had fallen away. Dick was looking up at Slade sorrowfully.
“Little Bird?” Slade questioned.
He moved into the softly lit room, laying Dick down on the nest in the corner. Just as he was about to ask permission to join him, Dick was pulling on his suit, guiding him in. Slade moved to settle in, arm wrapped protectively around him. He wondered if something had happened if he was out. It didn’t seem like any disturbance had happened within the house.
Perhaps something had gone wrong in Gotham with Dick’s family? Perhaps the pup was unwell? Perhaps…
Dick shuffled closer, the only thing between them the pup the young omega so beautifully carried
And yet tears were beginning to soak into the fabric of the nest. Dick was crying.
“Little Bird?”
“You’ve only got one eye,” Dick sniffled.
“That’s not news,” Slade told him.
“But… But doesn’t it upset you?”
The sniffles were becoming more dramatic, growing into a wail.
Slade supposed he should have expected it. Pregnancy hormones and someone like Dick Grayson…
Most of the alphas in his line of duty tended to put their pregnant omegas in the care of the betas of their packs or even pay for them to be held in a gestation center until the pup was born. They didn’t want to burden themselves with the whining and mood swings. Slade and Adeline had kept their omega in the house with them when having Grant and Joseph but then their omega had known better than to actually make a scene. Slade hadn’t even been there when Rose’s mother had been carrying her.
Dick had always made it very clear that just because he was an omega, just because he enjoyed playing rough and being dominated, didn’t mean he was going to accept Slade viewing him as anything less than an equal. The first suggestion he would be sent away or handed off to betas and he would be heading back to Gotham, to the Wayne pack, where there were alphas and betas to protect him and omegas to gently nurse him.
“I trained myself not to need it,” Slade replied. “It doesn’t upset me.”
And it was true. Even at the time, it had not hurt. He had hated Adeline for it, hated her every time he saw his reflection. But the pain of Joseph paying such a terrible price for being his son… Slade didn’t think any gunshot could hurt more than that.
“You’re just saying that,” Dick whimpered.
He scrubbed at his face, embarrassed that he could not stop the tears from falling. Slade caught his wrists, holding his hands down to stop him from irritating the skin around his eyes. For the first time since the young man had been eight, his eyes were not constantly being circled by spirit gum due to the domino masks he wore. Slade didn’t know if it was purely his skin finally being able to fully recover or if it was the pregnancy but his face had truly begun to glow and Slade didn’t want anything to cut that wonderful period short.
“I’m not,” Slade said.
“But you lost an eye!”
“It happens,” Slade told him.
He pressed a soft kiss to Dick’s forehead.
“But… Sunsets! And movies! And Damian’s drawings and the way pups smile at you when you see them in the supermarket… You only get to see half as much.”
“I have other senses,” Slade began.
He wasn’t sure if logic was going to work on the young man in his state but it was all he really had.
“Enhanced senses. What I miss with my one eye, I make up for with them. I cannot escape the scent of you. It lingers on my clothes. Days apart from you and I can still smell you on my skin. I can hear your breath in my sleep, know you are lying beside me, safe. I can hear your breath catching now.”
“I’m-”
“You don’t need to apologise for it. I relish it. And touch… To know you as I do, as intimately as I do… I know the way your body feels in ways you will never know. I feel very flutter when I am inside you, know every texture of your skin… You make for a glorious sight, Little Bird, but I’d happily go blind if it meant every sensation of your body remained mine.”
Dick managed an unsteady breath.
“If you’d have said that sooner, you’d probably not have needed to knot me to knock me up,” Dick managed.
“Knotting you is far more fun,” Slade replied.
He reached out, brushing tears from Dick’s cheeks.
“If something was upsetting me, I’d tell you.”
“You promise?” Dick said.
It wasn’t at all uncommon for an older alpha to have a younger omega. Admittedly, the younger omega tended to be either a replacement for an omega who had gotten past breeding age or some sort of live-in lover. Rich families who found that their younger children were omegas would often accept matches that left them as pack property or secondary breeders simply to ensure that they retained something of a life within high society. For the more traditional alphas, and the older ones tended to have grown up before thoughts of omega rights had become widespread, it was a sign of virility to mate an omega far younger than yourself.
But with Dick… With Dick the age gap sometimes felt like it was never there. The young man had seen so much, had fought in so many battles. He’d watched gods die and monsters rise. He’d travelled the stars and clawed his way back from hell.
And then sometimes he’d make a joke or say something and Slade would be reminded that Grant was actually a few months Dick’s senior.
It drew a protective instinct from Slade and he wanted nothing more than to keep Dick forever in the nest, away from all hands that could do him harm.
“I promise,” Slade said.
He lay there for a moment as silence settled in. He was torn. As much as he wanted to lay with Dick in that nest until they both fell asleep, he didn’t necessarily want to do it while in such a grimy costume. Protecting his precious omega and pup wasn’t just about fighting back any hostile alphas or criminals. He probably shouldn’t even have risked bringing dirt and diseases into the nest.
Just as he went to move, however, fresh tears began to roll down Dick’s cheeks.
“What now?” Slade sighed.
“It’s nothing,” Dick said.
He almost sounded annoyed at Slade. And after he had done so much to charm him through the last bout of tears.
“It’s clearly not nothing,” Slade replied.
“I just… You get to look into two eyes for me and I only get to look into your one. And I want to look into two eyes.”
“You’re jealous because you only get one eye to look into?” Slade frowned.
“Yes!” Dick said.
All attempts to try to cover up his emotions were gone. Slade grumbled. Then he reached out toward Dick. With easy strength, he scooped the young man up, pregnancy and all, and rolled him over so he was spooning the omega. Then he sunk his fingers into Dick’s mouth. It took a moment for the omega to instinctively start to suckle on them. Slade felt it was the best solution. Dick was silenced and soothed while he got the thrill of having a perfect omega ass pressed against his crotch while submission pheromones pooled around them.
“If it makes you less jealous,” Slade sighed. “You can wear a fucking eyepatch so I only get one eye to look into.”
Dick didn’t seem to have any response however, too contented by his alpha wrapped around him.