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The first time he says it, he isn't really aware of how true it is, he's just aware that it seems like the exact quip he should be using, given the circumstances. Random dude got the drop on him, hauled him halfway down an alleyway and got him roped up before Dick's vision even cleared or his balance started to come back to him. He's still dizzy, still a little disoriented when he slurs out, "Jokes on you. I like being tied up!"
He's stuck sitting with his comment, which garners no response at all from the dude who's standing guard at the mouth of the alley now, baseball bat dangling at his side, which explains a lot about how much Dick's head is still spinning.
Still... he works the ropes open, quick and efficient. Bruce would be proud. Maybe. Probably. Okay, possibly, Dick thinks.
He's gone, melted into the shadows and away, knowing he can't possible do anything but drag his sorry ass all the way home like this. Dizzy and stumbling and, yeah, he should probably go to a hospital or something. Just... not like this. Not as Nightwing anyway.
By the time he's home, he realizes he could have used his comms to call in literally anyone and just... hadn't. Self-preservation 0: Stupidity 1, apparently. He sighs heavily and does what he can of his own concussion test and yup, that's a fuckin' thing.
So he calls up Jason and slurs - okay maybe it's worse than he thinks it is - out what's wrong with him and how he needs, of all things, a babysitter for the night. It says a lot that Jason doesn't give him shit nor argue with him and Dick second-guesses himself for his assessment of being okay enough to just cope, and puts in a call to Leslie, too.
Both converge on his little apartment about the same time, one with a whirlwind of mood and one with scoldings and a bag of medical equipment. Dick tolerates both things, bobble-heads along with their words, returns some slurred out ones of his own a few times until Leslie shushes him and just keeps right on testing him.
She confirms concussion, sets the no patrol, no screen time in stone and hands Jason a paper with all the latest protocols for concussions like he hasn't, just a month ago, had the same protocol cast upon him as well.
Jason sits and Dick lays there and after a while, Jason turns on some music on Dick's stereo, nice and low, and picks up a novel he's been working on each time he has to come over and play babysitter for Dick - the twin to Dick's videogame he leaves at Jason's so he stays up when Jason's down for the count.
The world swims and Dick swims with it, done fighting it. His mind dips and sways and he spirals off into his own world, one thought front and center. He told a random guy he likes being tied up... and he kinda meant it.
---
There's a full month between the first time Dick said it and when he says it again. This time it isn't a quip. It's on purpose. A deep breath, a ghost of his breath over his lower lip as he sighs some of it back out and then a his confession, a trade with Tim when Tim gets a little too close to a couple lines with his bouts of depression. A truth for a truth. Something hidden or deep or that needs to be worked out.
Tim told him all about a case that's gripped onto his soul and started to drag him down with it. Whispered his fragile confessions of feeling like it'd be so easy to fall back into the old pit in the dimness of his living room, voice right at the edge of tears. And Dick... Dick can still only think of what he did, what he said, in that damned alleyway.
So he says it. "When I got that concussion... I told the guy who did it the joke was on him, that I liked being tied up." He's quiet for a moment and Tim lets him be. Knows by now Dick won't brush him off with something meaningless in trade for his deepness.
Dick closes his eyes and leans back on the couch. Sighs and rubs his palm over his face before dropping his hand to the couch beside him. "I fucking told him something I didn't even realize was true, trying to be a smartass. Then I said it and now it's real and I just... fuck," he says empathetically, "Fuck."
Tim makes a little encouraging noise and Dick rolls his head side to side for a moment before continuing. "I meant it. I keep looking back at the past and my mental reaction to situations where I've been tied up in the past and, yeah, it's there. Right there. Blindingly obvious. And I have no idea what to do about it."
Tim chuckles. Lifts his leg and shoves his foot hard against Dick's knee. Grins at him when Dick opens an eye to peer at him. "Get someone to tie you up in a sexy kind of way. Obviously."
Dick chokes on air. Sputters. Attempts to swat at Tim's foot, but he's faster, pulls it back and grins like the damn Cheshire Cat at him. "I mean it. Ask someone to do it. Someone you trust."
"No one I sleep with is into that kind of thing," Dick returns, perhaps too quickly, because Tim arches an eyebrow at him and smoothly queries, "No one? You sure about that?," and maybe Tim knows something Dick doesn't because all he can do is shrug helplessly.
There's a brief combat over Dick's phone, which Tim wins, and he rapidly types something out to someone, then shoves the phone in Dick's face and proudly declares, "Hit send!"
On the screen is a contact Dick wasn't even aware Tim knew he had. Slade Wilson. Mother fucking Deathstroke. Dick's eons old booty call that he also hasn't called in literal years at this point. Though he isn't quite sure why. He'd been a good way to work out frustration. No strings. Just sex. Fucking. The good shit. His cock twitches a little as he thinks about it. Starts to stiffen as he thinks about sending Tim's text. So fucking blunt: 'I keep thinking about being tied up and fucked. You down?' It's insane how up-front that is.
He isn't sure what demon grips him, but surely one does as he thumbs the Send button and then sits there staring at the screen as he gets a doublecheckmark on the Read screen. Then bubbles as Slade types. More bubbles. A full minute later and he finally gets a message.
I can work with that. Even have the supplies to work with that. Place? Time?
Dick thinks about all the messages he must have typed and erased in a full minute. Then debates that Slade is just that much older than him that maybe, just maybe, it took him that long to type all that. Regardless, he returns: 'Your place, 2 hours?' and gets a thumbs up in return.
He swallows. Stares past Tim at the wall and says, "Two hours and he's going to..." he trails off, closes his eyes, huffs a small laugh, "well, he's gonna tie me up, I guess."
"Not the first time," Tim deadpans and Dick, Dick is gone. Deceased. Laughing so hard his sides hurt and he's crying from the laughter. Because a truer thing has never been said.
---
Not the first time, indeed, Dick thinks now that he's here. At Slade's place. Kneeling on a soft padded rug in front of the gently crackling fireplace. His arms are behind his back and Slade's back there, a warm presence at his back, hands working intricate knots and neat lines of rope across Dick's body.
It surprised him at first, the request to disrobe right up front. The long length of blue silken rope coiled on the floor by the kneeling pad. Now he understands what Slade meant by having the tools here. Knows, too, that he's done this to other people. Tied them up, maybe right here, right before the gentle flames of his fireplace. He doesn't mind the image.
Slade's fingers are ghost-like over his skin, a soft and consistent touch, dragging delicate rope over his body. Around, between, over, against. Dick feels... at peace. Like nothing else matters except letting Slade do this to him. The fire, the little crackles and snaps and gentle noises. Their breath mingled between. His thoughts ceasing to matter somewhere between one knot and the next.
He drifts for a long while, Slade's hands still working, more and more of the rope meeting Dick's body. Framing him like he's a deliberate art project and the center of Slade's universe. Maybe he is for these sparce moments.
When Slade is done, he kneels in front of Dick, so very close, taking the place of the fire. And then he works Dick into feeling like the flames he'd been watching. One touch, one stroke, one ghost of his breath at a time. Until Dick's leaning heavy on him, straining at the ropes, cock so stiff he can barely stand it, body jerking awkwardly as his hips pump, cock fucking Slade's spit-slick fist.
He stares down between them now. His focus there. On his cock pumping into Slade's fist. On Slade's cock so hard and thick and weeping precum, just for him. For this. For the freedom of whatever it is that's happening here.
Dick cums. Abrupt. Like he's slamming into a brick mile at a hundred miles an hour. Rushing toward it and then bam, involved in it. He hears himself shouting, but doesn't really register that it's him making all that racket. He's cumming and that's the only damn thing that matters because it feels like it's being dragged out from the very pit of him, like he's releasing everything and not just his semen all over Slade's thigh and rug.
On the other side of it, wrung out and panting, all it takes for Slade to get off is a single long glide of his length against Dick's spent one and then a tiny hip-jerk at the end. Then he's shooting all over Dick's cock. Holding them both there and pumping it all out until he's settling back from where he'd been straining and his breath is desperately trying to match Dick's own.
It's when Slade's untying him that Dick finally breathes out a little chuckle and murmurs, "Guess the joke's actually on me, because I like being tied up." Slade's smirk is a level of arrogant that makes Dick roll his eyes, but he still tacks on, "Guess I'll be over for a little something else from time to time, hmm?" and Slade's grin is fast, wicked, filled with so much damn promise. And Dick... Dick hopes like hell they both make good on that promise and probably on that contract thing Slade tried to get him to sign if they were going to, as he put it, 'engage in this kind of act'.
He sits and stares into the fire and thinks to himself that he's kind of lucky if he thinks about it. Lucky he was trying to be a shit to a two-bit criminal who got the drop on his tired ass. Lucky he told Tim and Tim's a take-action kind of guy. Lucky Slade was willing and practiced and here. Just damn fucking lucky.