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There is no logical end to Bruce’s possessiveness. There is no degree of closeness, no amount of hyper-vigilance that would finally soothe him. Even if he figured out some way to crack open his own chest and stuff his children inside, it still wouldn’t be close enough.
He wouldn’t be able to see them, curled up in his chest cavity.
Being able to see him is an elemental part of this observance, Tim figures.
He gets it. It’s an anxiety that lurks in the corners of his heart, too. Honestly, Tim can’t remember a time when Bruce’s surveillance felt like anything but a weighted blanket. Tim even plays absently with the tracker embedded in the hoop at the midpoint of his ear. He still relishes the memory of Bruce installing it. The others fought him every step of the way, but Tim just quietly laid his head in Bruce’s lap.
How many times has Tim traced the outlines of his own trackers embedded in Bruce’s body?
Their lifestyle affords so few true comforts, why deny themselves this?
How many times has Tim been wracked with the terror of Bruce being gone? How many times has Jason or Dick stumbled into the cave only to find Bruce and Tim staring at each other silently?
It’s not that they don’t all get it, they do. It’s just that Tim and Bruce are so uniquely fucked in a way that makes hiding it a mostly pointless endeavor. There is companionship in that, unfortunately.
Tim gets it. Tim gets it so badly he can’t breathe. He understands Bruce’s concern. It mirrors his own.
There would be no hope of a normal relationship between the two of them. If there were no barriers, no worry over societal, familial backlash to keep them in place— if there was only the two of them, held together with the thinnest veneer of high society expectation… my god, they would eat each other.
Tim is so thankful for the strange conventions that tether him to Bruce.
People can get divorced. People can’t become unadopted.
They don’t get to indulge in it often, maybe twice, three times a year. Just enough so they can stand it. Can stand the agonizing loneliness of being two discrete people.
It takes months for Tim to work himself up to the task, anyway. It’s hard to overstate just how large Bruce’s hands are, even without the gloves. It takes just one look, one particularly disastrous mission and a look, and Tim knows it’s time to start again.
He doesn’t know how to care for himself for himself. But he can care for himself for Bruce’s viewing pleasure.
The voice in his head that reminds him he is unworthy, undeserving of the attention his body screams for, is blissfully silent as he draws a bath for himself, for Bruce’s enjoyment. There are times— Kon can attest to this— where Tim can’t stand being seen. There’s a safety in voyeurism; a distance that soothes Tim’s soul. Tim isn’t an exhibitionist by nature, simply because he can’t quite conceive of deserving to be seen.
But as he settles into the gently rose-scented hot water, he can almost conceive of deserving this. Maybe not in the way people deserve it, but maybe in the way Jason methodically takes apart, cleans, and polishes his guns. Not because the guns themselves are in some way deserving of the respect of personhood, but in the inherent worthiness of a tool that performs its function well. And really? Suffering the indignity of self-care to appease his master, his father, is the least Bruce can ask of him.
The reality is, there exists no humiliation that Tim would not endure for Bruce’s sake, so long as Bruce asked it of him. The fact that he gets to know Bruce is watching him is a gift he probably hasn’t earned, but is too selfish, too greedy by far to give it up. Tim could endure anything, as long as Bruce was watching him take it.
In those early days, at the beginning of the cycle, it’s a struggle to even get a finger or two inside his tight little ass. It sucks, being in his body so thoroughly, forced to feel his own inadequacy as his short, thin fingers fail to give what he really wants.
The beginning also marks the period where Bruce’s resolve is the firmest, and so often Tim gets no feedback. He bathes, combs his hair, softens his skin with the serums and creams Bruce has bought for him, the ones he neglects in his daily life, and spreads himself out on his bed. He touches himself. He tries— he tries to envision the way he would touch something valuable, reverently, and attempts to perform that on his own body, starting at the very roots of his hair all the way down from his neck, chest, torso.
He attempts to shut out the part of him that reflexively, embarrassingly, thinks of Alan Turing programming the Manchester computer. The one that learned to write stilted, hollow love letters. There will probably always be a part of him that sees himself as a hopeless automaton, engaged in a sad parody of human sensuality.
What’s so insane is that give him a wig and a different name, and he knows he can perform well enough. It's the fact that Bruce wants it to be him, that trips him up, that humiliates him. He wants Tim writhing in his sheets, crying out for him, desperately chasing his own release.
He wants Tim. And Tim could absolutely let himself hate him for it.
He ignores the fact that he touches himself the way he imagines he would touch Bruce, if things were different. It’s probably the closest to faith Tim is able to get.
Fingers shoved up his own ass, stretching himself, cunt weeping and neglected, having no clear indication that his god is watching, and yet believing in him, moaning his name, anyway.
If he was stronger, more sure of himself, he’d ask Bruce if he likes it more directly. He’d look right at the bug on his dresser, and arch his back the way Selina does, and ask Bruce if he likes the way Tim’s shame tastes.
He can't, though. It would be obscene. He wants to see the way Bruce's eyes would darken at the challenge— the way he's seen Bruce glower at Selina— but it's simply not an option for him.
Plausible deniability oozes from every facet of this, especially at the start.
He just, has to keep the faith.
Until the night where Tim manages to stick three of his fingers inside himself, until he’s red-faced and panting, whimpering, crying for Bruce to come help him, fix him, until he’s dripping, clenching helplessly on air.
When his phone finally rings, and he audibly sobs with relief, he did it, oh Christ he did it.
He answers, and a few tears slip out at the sound of Bruce’s raggedy breathing on the other end. Oh god, he’s not alone. He did it.
He pushed and pushed until Bruce finally gave in, and that’s his reward, the sound of Bruce groaning in his ear.
He doesn’t get to come the first couple time, which is fine, better than fine actually, because it means he gets to focus on the sound of Bruce falling apart, and that— that is better than anything else in his life.
He doesn’t say anything during those first couple phone calls, just moans and gasps and grunts, but it’s not long before Bruce gets greedy.
It’s not long until Tim is lying with his chest against his mattress, small fist crammed into his own hole, phone pressed tight against his ear, sobbing as Bruce whispers all manner of unspeakable things right into his ear, right into his soul.
When he’s strung out like this, needy, there is nothing Tim wouldn’t agree to, wouldn’t allow Bruce to do to him. And when Bruce finally says he’s allowed to touch himself, allowed to make himself come, all that falls from his lips is an endless string of gratitude, thanking him, thanking him so much for the gift of Tim’s orgasm.
He tries to fall asleep immediately after, leaving himself sticky and messy for his morning self to clean up so he can ignore the hollowness in his chest at the audible click of Bruce hanging up. The painful emptiness of being used and then discarded is enough to trigger a downward spiral if he isn’t careful. Tim is extremely careful. He doesn’t let himself think about it. He doesn’t.
Once he’s able to cram his fist inside himself with ease, he graduates to toys— some from his own personal collection, some just arriving on his doorstep. It’s rote at this point. He can give an entire presentation with a thick plug inside him, without breaking a sweat.
He remembers how terrified he used to be, at the start, of someone catching him, calling him out on it. He’d be working, filling out paperwork, and it’d hit him, the illicitness of wearing a sex toy to work, what a disgusting pervert it made him. He used to obsess over making sure no one could tell, could see the outline through his clothes. Now he just makes sure to pack extra pads so his slick doesn’t ruin his boxer briefs and doesn’t pay it an extra thought. Hell, he even goes on patrol plugged up.
It’s so easy for him to divorce his mind from his physical body, ignore how good it feels to be stretched like that, how hungry his cunt is for more. The hard part is ignoring the way Bruce looks at him. The intensity of the knowledge that Bruce knows what a hateful little slut he is, and there’s absolutely nothing Bruce can do about it.
It’s one of his most vicious thrills, pretending he’s having a hard time adjusting to the size of the plug while he and Bruce go over the newest quarterly report. Shifting minutely in his seat, badly stifling his moans, watching as Bruce’s face gets blanker and blanker as he tries to hide how Tim’s affecting him.
Tim knows he’s not desirable enough to break Bruce’s will, but at the very least he can torture him a little bit, and it makes the next part come so much faster. It only takes a few weeks of sustained teasing. When Tim leaves the bathroom and sees Bruce sitting quietly in the chair next to his bed, he makes only a token gesture at hiding his smile.
It seems Bruce’s resolve crumbles faster and faster every time. Or Tim is just becoming increasingly better, efficient, at tempting him.
Tim has never actually seen Bruce's cock.
There are times where Tim is gripped with an insane desire— he would give anything, anything to even smell it, to have it pressed up warm against his cheek. The thought of it pulsing, spilling hot inside him has got him off more times than he can count.
Tim will never be satisfied in this regard, at least not while Bruce is in his right mind— though he'd be lying if he said it never occurred to him to force a sex pollen scenario. Bruce would never forgive him, but sometimes when he pictures Bruce coming all over his face, it almost seems worth it.
Instead, Tim forces himself to be content with the gift of Bruce's fingers. His thick digits have pried Tim open so many times, and each time feels like a new revelation.
It starts with Tim on his hands and knees, reaching behind himself, Bruce in a chair beside him. He doesn't speak but he's not silent, and Tim's cunt clenches with every quick, quiet inhale.
When Bruce's index finger presses in alongside three of Tim's fingers, he cries out in ecstasy.
By this point in the cycle, Bruce is profoundly, deeply impatient.
It only takes a handful of nights for Bruce to force him through one, two, three of Bruce's fingers fucking him open, stretching his little hole, leaving him gaping. By the fourth finger, Tim is openly screaming, stretched to his limit. Bruce rubs his flank in a soothing, comforting way, and Tim has never felt so reduced to such a state— a dumb, stumbling animal fucked beyond his capacity to think, to reason.
Bruce finger fucks the air out of his lungs, the logic out of his brain— his humanity, his personhood stolen from him by four fingers in his hole and a muttered, "good boy' from his master's lips.
Christ, it's good, though. His god is so good to him. So kind. When Tim gets far enough gone, he starts to beg Bruce to let the lube dry up, to tear him open, and use just him to ease the way instead.
But Bruce never gives in, no matter how pretty Tim begs. He's so kind. When it's time, Bruce stills, he waits for Tim to stop crying, to calm himself.
He wants no distraction when he finally, finally manages to slip the entirety of his hand into Tim's tired, abused, slacken hole.
He screams, loud and guttural, as Bruce slowly fucks his fist into him. He claws at the sheets below him and imagines this is as close as Bruce will ever allow to bearing him a child. The pain, the stretch, all of it obscene, absurd. Tim will have to sit on some frozen peas tomorrow, and he certainly won't be able to walk.
It's worth it, though, a million times over it's worth it.
Because as Bruce's fist settles into his hole, as his knuckles scrape against Tim's sensitive walls, his rim squeezes tight around Bruce's wrist, and Bruce curses like a benediction.
And he's finally full.
Bruce is occupying all the empty space inside of Tim, and while he's dizzy with pain, lust, desire— he swears he can feel Bruce's fingers stroking the back of his throat.
Tim comes without additional touch, solely at the feeling of having his ass stuffed-full. Tim clenches hard when he comes, and Bruce moans at the feeling of Tim's ass trying to milk his fist like a cock.
Bruce plays with his ass for hours as Tim's body goes limp, slack, unable to stand up to the overstimulation.
Tim begs him to come inside him, or at least to paint the rim of his humiliating, ruined hole with his spend, but Bruce always just quietly excuses himself when he's done, retreating to the bathroom to jerk off in peace. Alone.