All Was Well
It was cold outside and the Christmas was coming soon, so Slade sat in his base watching a Holiday Special. Kind of.
Several months had passed since he and Robin had come to an agreement and the Titans had been allowed to "rescue' the boy but they still hadn't managed to find and remove all of his cameras and spyware.
Currently Slade's focus was on camera 3, as it had a good view of the boy working in the computer lab at ungodly hours again. The camera wasn't angled well enough to see who Robin was doing paperwork on and that was a problem that would be addressed as soon as possible. Regardless, Slade kept watching.
Robin was still in uniform which meant he had probably gone into the lab as soon as the Team had returned from the last call of the night. Slade didn't understand why Robin wouldn't share his real identity with his Team. Slade knew who Robin was, though he hadn't revealed that fact yet, and saw no reason why it would change anything with the others. Even the green idiot could figure it out if he had enough of the pieces.
As Slade continued to watch Robin work he noticed the Boy's fingers slowing on the keyboard and then pick up again.
His fingers slowed again and his head drooped a little. Robin sighed, picked his head back up, shook his hands out, and went back to work.
Robin yawned, stretched his arms out, and went back to work.
Robin's fingers slowed and sped up a couple more times, his head drooping and jerking to the rhythm. At one point his head drooped so drastically that his face almost slammed into the table, but he jerked back up just in time.
"At least he doesn't have any coffee this time", thought Slade. Last time he had dumped over the cup and gone into a cursing fit for nearly an hour.
The sleepiness was almost contagious and Slade found himself yawning a couple times, but finally he saw what he had been watching for: Robin's head dropped and didn't come back up.
Slade left his base and made it to Titan's Tower very quickly. He entered a code onto the door's keypad that launched the disarming program he had installed a while back. The Cyborg had bought some good technology, but he didn't know shit about using it. The sensors were positioned poorly and weren't sensitive enough to certain stimuli that made the entire system a waste of money.
He strode down the halls, taking enough care to step in a way that kept his boots from making noise and positioning his body so that his shadow never stretched before him. Carefully he opened the door to the computer lab, knowing he would have to oil the hinges again if he wanted to keep doing this, and found Robin as he had seen him at the base. If only he could see the boy like this in the daytime: innocent, unburdened, almost relieved.
As gently as if he was disarming a bomb, Slade pulled the chair back and began the delicate process of picking Robin up. He bent down and started by tilting the boy's head so that it rested against his chest. He took his right arm and slid it behind the Robin's back until his hand was under the boy's right arm, then Slade took his left arm and slid it under Boy's knees and slowly lifted the body.
When Slade was fully standing again, Robin shifted a little in his sleep. Slade froze for a second, but the boy just let out s sleepy sigh and snuggled his face against Slade's chest a little more before slipping back into deep sleep.
Slade let out a mental sigh of his own and proceeded to carry Robin to his bedroom. He silently hoped that the boy didn't have any growth spurts any time soon; he almost enjoyed this part of his visits.
He entered Robin's room with no more difficulty than anything else he'd done that night. While still holding the boy he peeled back the covers of the bed. He laid Robin in it and unlaced his shoes, throwing them in the corner so the boy would think he had kicked them off himself. Slade would have loved to remove the rest of the outfit, but he knew Robin only slept this deeply for short periods of time and couldn't risk it.
He tucked Robin in, brushed some of the feathery soft raven locks off of his face, and placed a chaste kiss upon his forehead. He whispered in the boy's ear, "Merry Christmas Apprentice', and saw the Boy's face twitch with a smile for a millisecond.
Slade stood up and as he turned to go he heard the boy murmur, "Master", and all was well.