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It takes nearly the entire drive from Wayne Enterprises to the manor for Bruce to gather some semblance of his normal calm back into place. Balancing the kindly, well meaning, ineffectual socialite with his own unwillingness to surrender all business acumen is an exercise in tamping down annoyance that builds and builds throughout the day. Bruce has never been particularly adept at being Bruce Wayne, with the attendant expectations of a spoiled child grown into a feckless adult, and ten hours at the office have settled tense claws into his spine.
There is nothing quite so galling as knowing the answers you provide to any question will be noted and ignored. Except, perhaps, knowing that they are rightly being ignored, because Bruce Wayne can’t suddenly show himself to be a late blooming savant.
Bruce tightens his fingers around the steering wheel. He would like to hit something.
Instead, driving over the bridge out of Gotham, he makes himself take a series of long and even breaths. Then, “Message to Tim. I’ll be home in half an hour. Be prepared. Send,” and a soft beep as the car’s computer system obeys.
Knowing that there are others to look after Gotham on the nights when Bruce does not is an odd kind of comfort that he, at times, resents more than appreciates. Kate operates with his sigil and without his help of her own preference, and Bruce isn’t quite so lacking in self-awareness to try and send her elsewhere. “Message to Kate Kane. I’ll be staying in tonight. Be in contact if you need anything. Send.”
Kate will likely take some small umbrage at the suggestion that she can’t handle herself. Bruce doesn’t particularly care, because Gotham has an ability to sense and exploit any weakness shown to it.
There are lights coming from the bottom floor of the manor when Bruce comes down the drive, in the kitchen and dining room and study, and from his bedroom on the second floor. Bruce exhales as he pulls into the garage and returns the car to its place. He looses his tie and tosses it onto the passenger seat.
He can hear Alfred in the kitchen as he passes by -- the soft scrape of utensils in pots, cabinets opening and closing, and Alfred humming very quietly to himself. Bruce smiles, a little, pausing for a moment beside the half-open door. He can see Alfred standing at the stove with his shirtsleeves rolled up and the strings of his apron tied at the small of his back.
Bruce isn’t hungry. He’s restless in the way where his skin is a poor fit, but this is another kind of comfort that he appreciates.
The rest of the manor is quiet as Bruce takes the main foyer stairs to the second floor, leaving his jacket on railing and unbuttoning his collar and cuffs as he goes. There is a voice in the back of his mind, something demanding and unforgiving, that says it’s weakness to go to Tim rather than down to the cave where he is more needed. Bruce pushes it down and away and that he can do that says more about Tim than it does about him.
His bedroom door is closed and Bruce pauses there for a moment, asks himself whether or not he can do this and do it well and decides yes. He can.
Tim is kneeling at the on the floor, naked, at the end of the bed when Bruce pushes into his bedroom, with his head bowed and his hands pressed to his thighs. His undress is unsurprising -- it’s an expectation Bruce reminds himself, because shying away from the reality of this serves neither of them well -- and he appreciates it nonetheless. He sees the little shiver that goes along Tim’s spine and the flutter of his eyelashes against his cheek.
There are purple bruises blotted on his back along the curves of his ribs, from a lucky sucker punch got in by a dealer high on his own product, and fading green rings around his wrists. The disconnect between what the different marks make Bruce’s chest do is something he is learning to live with, because possession and protectiveness are at times uncomfortably closely aligned.
Bruce closes the door behind him and turns the lock, which is less a genuine measure of preserving privacy and more a conscious signal of intent. Tim shivers again, curling his toes into the carpet.
“Good,” Bruce says. “Get on the bed.”
Tim moves with something unlike Dick’s easy grace or Jason’s pointed swagger, as though every action has been carefully considered and planned. Naked, it’s easier to see the wiry, understated strength he has that is so easily hidden behind his civilian clothes. He settles back on his knees in the center of Bruce’s bed, head bowed and hands on his thighs. As he was taught. Bruce swallows with some difficulty, with want.
“On your hands and knees,” he says. Tim obeys.
Bruce lets his eyes roam hungry over the dip in Tim’s spine and the jut of his shoulders, the graceful line of his back and ass and thighs and the fall of his hair over his face. He crosses the space between them with his footfalls deadened by the thick carpet and the tension of the interminable day shifting into something that Bruce goddamn Wayne can’t touch, and that Bruce doesn’t have to share with anyone but Tim.
He opens the top drawer of the bedside table and pulls out a tube of slick and a glove. There are a wealth of purely practical reasons for the precautions -- the sheer number of times combined they’ve been infected with some strange and deadly pathogen is almost laughable. But, if Bruce is at his most honest, he very much enjoys the flush Tim gets at the sound of rubber snapping against Bruce’s wrist. (Tim once, sated and flying so high he was barely anchored to earth, said something about Bruce only touching him when he was hurt. Fetishes are what they are, and Bruce has no place to judge and only allowed himself a small smile.)
Tim bites his bottom lip for a split second when he sees the slick, fingers curling into the blankets. Bruce chuckles quietly, pushes his fingers into Tim’s hair, and pulls his head up. There’s already a cast to his eyes that Bruce has never seen outside these moments. It’s something that tries to be distant and present at once, and it’s beautiful. “And what are you thinking? I’m not asking you to be silent tonight.”
The corner of Tim’s mouth quirks in a smile. “You look like you’ve had a day. That usually works out fairly well for me.”
Bruce hums agreement. Tim certainly isn’t wrong.
“What do you imagine you’re going to get?”
“Don’t know.” Tim flicks his tongue out to wet his lips. It’s neither playful, exactly, or meant to be enticing. The lack of affectation is what makes heat coil in Bruce’s belly. It’s his own particularly selfishness that, at times, has him forget that this isn’t just about his desires. Tim doesn’t function solely as something defined by Bruce.
Bruce lets go of Tim’s hair and smoothes his palm along the line of Tim’s spine, from the top of his neck to the knob of his tailbone. The topography of his musculature is intimately familiar, and his physical reaction are becoming more and moreso as time goes on. His toes curl slightly at the spot just below his shoulder blade that is neither entirely ticklish or erogenous.
“What do you want?” Bruce asks.
“You.”
“That’s a facile answer.”
“But a true one.” It’s not really flip the way Tim says it, but perhaps Bruce’s dissatisfaction is just close enough to the skin for it to make something bare its teeth in his chest. He curls his hand around the back of Tim’s neck and no, it isn’t with enough pressure to hurt but the vulnerability of Tim’s position is implicit. Bruce hears Tim’s breath catch a little, sees the flush of red bloom over his shoulders. “I want you inside me,” Tim says, breathless.
Bruce makes a grumbled noise of assent. “Good. Lay down on your back.”
Tim drops down and rolls onto his back. He folds his arms behind his head and arches his back in a stretch, looking up at Bruce with something easy in his eyes. Bruce quirks a grin back and sits down on the edge of the bed, takes off his shoes and socks and sets them aside. He rolls up his shirtsleeves, aware of Tim watching him and of Tim’s awareness of his awareness. It is a mildly recursive cycle of them being attuned to each other, and pleasant in its way.
“Bend your knees and spread your legs,” Bruce says, without turning. He hears the low rustle of Tim obeying.
He has an idea of where this will go and the question is less whether Tim is willing to follow as much as if he is capable of following. Bruce closes his eyes for a moment and makes himself find calm. He can hear Tim’s soft breathing and the scrape of his fingers against the blanket. Bruce wants.
“Prepare yourself,” he says.
Tim hums a noise. “What are you going to do?”
“You’ll find out.”
Bruce feels far less graceful than Tim crawling onto the bed and settling between his knees. His talent is for physical aggression and imposition -- it’s more difficult to insinuate himself into Tim’s physical space without the shadows giving him cover. Tim’s eyes follow him anyway, bright blue and focused, as he carefully, slowly jerks himself to hardness.
He turns the bottle of slick between his fingers. “You want me inside you?” he asks.
Tim visibly swallows, and nods.
“Say it.”
“Yes, I want.”
Bruce pops the cap. “You want what, Tim?”
“I want you inside me,” Tim growls.
With an eyebrow raised, Bruce pulls on the glove and watches Tim’s eyes narrow.
Bruce pours some of the slick into his palm and covers his first finger. There is some part of him, still sharply edged from the day and prepared to lash out, that wants to demand sweetness from Tim. To demand -- abasement and begging and utterly fucking deference, but. There’s more cruelty and anger in that than want, and Bruce is trying to be better than that.
“Lift your knees,” Bruce says, and Tim makes a soft, almost happy noise and does.
Bruce takes a moment to soothe his hand over the back of Tim’s thigh and his ass. This is more preparation than anything else, familiar and necessary, and there’s pleasure but no real urgency in Tim’s expression. Bruce drags the tip of slick finger over Tim’s hole for the shudder he gets in response and the curl of his toes against empty air.
The push in is slow and mostly easy. Tim gives of himself with an ease in these moments that Bruce is always astonished by. It feels more like relief than anything else and Bruce is -- impressed, always impressed, and grateful. Tim clenches around him and rolls his hips against Bruce’s finger. This is familiar and easy. It settles Bruce as much as Tim.
“How do you feel?”
“Mm,” Tim sighs. “Good. Another?”
“Greedy,” Bruce says mildly, even as he pours more slick onto his second finger and carefully eases out of Tim.
Tim laughs, pressing the back of his hand to his forehead. “Always for you.”
The addition of the second makes the slide in less easy, even with the slick. The tightness of Tim’s musculature does something hot and wanton, almost predatory to Bruce’s stomach. He is the only one who has ever done this to Tim, the only one who has ever seen the shocked-slack expression that slides onto his face when Bruce’s long and callused fingers are in as deep as they will go. And it is still just two.
Tim’s back arches up slightly off the bed and he curls his fingers into the blankets enough to wrinkle them. A flush blossoms on his neck and chest.
There is a dialog for this that Bruce is aware of and has used in different personas as different men. Tim is so tight, Tim is so hot -- Tim is not a fool and he knows these things without being told them. Neither of them much deals in those kind of inconsequentialities. Bruce pulls out and pushes back in. He settles into a rhythm that’s slow and rolling, to match the pulse of Tim’s hips.
“If you keep that up,” Tim says, voice low and almost amused. “I’m going to come.”
“You wanted me inside you. And your control is better than that.”
It says something about Tim that he flushes with pleasure at the praise. Bruce leans forward and kisses the flat of Tim’s stomach, biting at the skin beneath his navel. His abdomen is tense beneath Bruce’s cheek. There is a tension thrumming through him that Bruce has never been able to keep himself from responding to, long before he ever knew what it was.
“Yeah,” Tim sighs. “Yeah, yeah, okay.”
“Are you prepared for a third?”
Tim nods.
Bruce shifts back onto his knees and pours more slick onto his gloved hand. The scent of the rubber is strong and, though he would never admit it, not entirely unpleasant. He presses his free hand to Tim’s thigh, pushing his hips farther up. The curve of his spin has his knees nearly to his chest and the utter exposure of the position is something Bruce knows Tim loves.
He adds the third, pushing in slow and steady. This is the moment when he would usually pull out his cock and fuck Tim with his weight pressing Tim down and Tim clawing at his shoulders hard enough to leave blood. Bruce can see Tim throwing his knees apart in invitation, and Bruce is tempted. The closeness of skin is something that is very easy to get used to.
But no, no. He knows what he wants.
“That isn’t what’s going to happen,” Bruce says.
Tim whines. “What. What is?”
Bruce twists his fingers, crooks them, and brushes against Tim’s prostate. Tim makes a noise punches from the center of his chest, eyes flying open and shoulders yanking up off the pillows. Bruce growls his appreciation, pushing his free hand to the center of Tim’s belly to keep him down. “You wanted me inside you. I will be inside you.”
“Oh God,” Tim groans. “Oh God.”
“Easy.” Bruce soothes a line from navel to pelvis. Tim’s cock is half hard along the curve of his hip, flushed red and leaking slightly at the tip. “Easy, boy.”
Tim is nodding half-frantic, and Bruce suspects it is more than reassure himself than to offer assent to Bruce. Bruce nips at the inside of his thigh, keeping up the steady twist and push of his fingers. The slick sound is wetly obscene. Tim is making soft, keening noises at every thrust in and long, careful drag out. Bruce is so very fucking fond of him.
Bruce can feel the moment when Tim consciously flexes open and gives, when the slide becomes effortless and easy and it feels as though Tim is begging.
“A fourth?” Bruce asks. “Tim.”
“Please,” Tim groans. “It’s so -- so much.”
“I imagine so.”
Bruce hooks his arm around Tim’s thigh and pulls him down on the bed, so his hips land on Bruce’s thighs. He pours more slick onto his hands and pulls out so he can gather his fingers together. There is something slightly ridiculous about it to look at, but the push in is easier than he expected. This is not the part that stretches, he knows, this is not difficult.
He fucks Tim deep and rough, scraping his nails over Tim’s stomach. Tim contorts up off the bed, spine bowing and twisting like he’s being run through with electricity. Bruce feels so calm watching him come apart, certain in a way that he rarely has. His hands can play Tim like an instrument and the sounds he makes -- gasped, groaned, breathless, needy begging without words -- are beautiful.
Bruce bites hard on his inner thigh. “Are you ready for me, Tim?”
“I-I-I-” Tim stutters. “Please.”
Bruce bites him again. “Good boy.”
He shifts back and pours on more slick, then folds in his finger and looks at Tim. His eyes are bright and blown, gone to a place that Tim never has the language to describe when he comes back from it. He’s half hard still and flushed red from his hairline to his chest. He has sweat on his temples and the hollow of his throat and the dip of his sternum.
Tim is shivering. Bruce can feel the random twitch of his musculature and see it in the flex of his fingers and toes. He is unreasonable like this. Bruce kisses the inside of his knee. “Relax, boy,” he says firmly. “Relax.”
The push in is so protracted. Bruce feels the shocking give of Tim’s body around his fingers and thumb, and then slowly and carefully over the width of his knuckles. Tim makes a noise that is nothing honestly but a whimpered cry, flexing his hips open and bearing down with a need that is among the more glorious things Bruce has ever seen in his life.
It’s beyond lucky, he thinks, that puts him in this bed with Tim. It is beyond what is deserved and fair.
And then he is simply inside Tim and for a moment they both hold perfectly, utterly still.
“Good boy,” Bruce says, swallowing hard against a knot in his throat. “Good, good boy.”