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There are crushed rose petals under Bruce’s knees.
Their fragrance wafts up to him as he shifts his weight on the silk sheets. He doesn’t know how long he has been here, maybe fifteen minutes, maybe thirty, but it is long enough that the discomfort in his knees and thighs is edging towards real pain. All he can hear is his own breathing, harsh exhales through his nose. His vision is black; the silk blindfold is is so tightly woven, he can’t tell the difference when he opens his eyes.
He can’t move very far. The wide leather cuffs around his thighs are clipped to the cuffs on his ankles. He flexes his feet and gets his toes under him. He has to lean forward to do it, and the fragrance of the bruised rose petals intensifies. He grunts as the butt plug shifts inside him. Then he lets out a long exhale in relief as the burn in his thighs eases for a moment.
“Careful,” comes a voice behind him, and the muscles in his shoulders jump. “You’re going to ruin the pretty picture if you keep moving.”
Bruce turns his head, searching for Alfred. He never heard him come in. Has Alfred been standing there this whole time?
Footsteps come rapidly towards him—socked feet on carpet. A hand grabs his hair and yanks his head back, exposing his throat. Bruce grunts. “Impatient, aren’t you?”
You’re impatient, Bruce thinks back, swallowing the spit pooling in his mouth behind the ball gag. As if he can tell Bruce is talking back to him, Alfred drags his head forward until he’s facing front again. “I bet you think it doesn’t matter if you’re careful,” Alfred murmurs in his ear. “This must be old hat for you—tied up in a strange room, hmm?” A thrill runs down Bruce’s spine; Alfred knows very well he’s never been in a situation like this before. “But you’ve never been trapped in a room with me.”
The hand releases his hair. Bruce remains still, breathing evenly through his nose, as Alfred walks around the bed. He tracks Alfred’s presence more by body heat than sound, more by the compression of the air between them than the quiet snick of socks on carpet.
“I have fantasies,” Bruce told Alfred one morning over breakfast. He had eaten the eggs and toast Alfred had made him and left the rest; he wasn’t hungry.
Alfred looked at him over the top of his reading glasses. He was going through the expense reports, the table in front of him littered with receipts. The pads of his fingers rested on the calculator. “What kind of fantasies?”
Bruce shrugged. He moved the bread crumbs around on his plate with his fork. “That I’m abducted by someone, or taken hostage. I can’t see their face. They don’t want anything from me—or maybe we’re waiting for the money.” He swallowed. He dragged a fork tine through a smear of ketchup. “They torture me. And they...make me come until I can’t speak. My throat is raw from screaming. And then they take me.”
“Abducted, you said.” Alfred took off his glasses. They clicked against the table as he rested his hand on the polished wood. “How long do they keep you?”
Bruce shrugged. “A few days. They go somewhere during the day. They use me when they come back at night and in the morning before they leave.”
“I can’t overpower you,” Alfred pointed out matter-of-factly. “I’m not as young as I used to be, and I don’t spend hours a day training like you do.”
“You could,” Bruce said, stirring the crumbs and ketchup together to make a paste, “if you surprised me.”
Alfred’s teeth sink into his shoulder. It shocks Bruce so much he lurches forward and overbalances, his stomach crushing his cock where it rests soft on his thighs. A hand grabs his hair before he faceplants into the sheets. Alfred chuckles. “Ah, I told you to be careful.” The heat of the bite is already fading as Alfred licks over it. Bruce struggles, trying to shove his shoulder into Alfred’s nose without ripping his hair out of Alfred’s hand.
“Such a fighter,” Alfred murmurs, and he grips Bruce’s upper arm in his other hand. He yanks Bruce’s head to the side, exposing the side of his neck. When his teeth sink into the juncture of neck and shoulder, Bruce makes a garbled, angry sound and tries to jerk free. Alfred hangs on, his teeth biting deeper. Bruce finally stills, panting sharply through his nose.
The teeth release. When Bruce makes to jerk out of his grip, fingers dig deep into the meat of his upper arm. “Ah, ah,” says Alfred, and he stills. The seams at the tips of Alfred’s leather gloves scrape against his scalp as Alfred relaxes his grip on his hair. “Don’t waste your energy. You’re going to need it.” His lips brush the shell of Bruce’s ear. Bruce’s skin prickles. Without moving, he turns all his attention on the heat of that mouth on his skin. “What’s your safeword?” Alfred murmurs.
“What’s your safeword, Bruce?” Alfred asked as he unfastened his right cufflink. They were standing beside the open tracery that demarcated the end of the breakfast nook and the start of the stairwell. His voice echoed on the ribbed vaulting of the Gothic ceiling above them.
“Two taps,” Bruce said, watching the gold disappear onto the shelf by the stairs. No jewelry or metal of any kind on either of them, Alfred had said, because he didn’t want to accidentally hurt Bruce. Accidentally: as if it mattered.
“Is there anything else I should know?”
“Don’t call me by my name. I don’t want to know which version of myself this is supposed to be.”
Alfred’s hand paused on his left cufflink. “Alright.” He deftly undid the clasp and slipped it out of his starched cuff. The cufflink joined its partner on the shelf. He patted his pockets and ran his hands over his wrists. Then he looked at Bruce. “Are you ready?”
“Yeah,” said Bruce. “I’m ready.”
“I need an answer,” Alfred says.
Bruce twists his hands in their bindings and taps his own tailbone twice. It’s the only place he can reach.
“Very good. Do you need to use it?”
One tap. No.
Alfred lets go of Bruce’s hair and steps back. “I suppose you’re expecting me to take you now,” Alfred says conversationally. There’s the slide of fabric over fabric; he’s undressing. “You must think I’m in a hurry. Surely someone will be coming to rescue you soon.” Fabric falls to the floor. “But I quite like taking my time. And I foresee no interruptions.”
Bruce showered that morning. It was the first time he’d showered in days, and the black paint from the night before ran down his face and chest before it swirled down the drain. Even after he scrubbed his face, the water was gray with soap suds and dirt.
He spent longer than usual in the steam-filled bathroom. He had left his clothes in his room on purpose, so he shaved with only a towel wrapped around his waist. Clouds of steam obscured his view of the door. He had to wipe the mirror twice with the flat of his hand before he was done scraping the stubble from his jaw, but each time he found himself alone.
The tower was quiet as he opened the bathroom door and padded across the carpet to his bed. He dropped the towel from his waist and slowly dressed, purposefully keeping his gaze lowered. He hesitated as he reached for the clothes he’d laid out, but it was supposed to be a normal day: no need for a suit or a shirt with buttons. He pulled on his sweats and the t-shirt he’d slept in. He left his towel on the floor.
He was halfway down the stairs when someone slammed into his back.
“Got you,” a voice hissed in his ear. Bruce’s his cheek scraped against the wall. An arm like an iron bar pressed diagonally against his back. A strong hand wearing a leather glove caught his left hand and twisted it behind him. He struggled to find purchase with his right hand, but he couldn’t reach his attacker.
“I’ve been looking for you,” the voice purred, and Bruce squeezed his eyes shut, panting. His rapidly thickening cock was trapped between his own thigh and the rough stone wall. “Would you like to beg me to let you go?”
“No,” Bruce rasped. He tried to twist free, but all it did was scrape his cock against the wall. “I don’t beg.”
A cuff snapped around his left wrist. The arm pinning him to the wall was replaced by a knee to his lower back. Alfred was so much stronger than he remembered; even when Bruce tried to wrench his right arm out of his grasp, Alfred’s fingers dug into his flesh and dragged it behind him. The second cuff snapped into place. Bruce growled. A blindfold slid over his eyes.
“I won’t hold it against you if you change your mind,” Alfred said. Then he grabbed Bruce by the hair and dragged him up the stairs.
The bed dips as Alfred kneels behind Bruce. “You can scream if you like,” Alfred says conversationally. “I can’t remember if I already told you, but that gag is more for convenience than necessity. It would be a terrible pity if you bit off your own tongue.” An arm loops around Bruce’s chest and pulls his back flush against Alfred’s bare chest. The seam of a leather glove strokes soothingly across his pectoral. Alfred has taken off his shirt, but he’s still wearing his slacks; the fabric is rough where his thighs bracket Bruce’s hips. “Relax, sweetheart. This will hurt less if you do.”
Bruce relaxes his arms. His palms rest against Alfred’s bare stomach. Skin-to-skin contact. If he needs to tap out, Alfred will feel it. Bruce’s abdomen muscles tense. That means it’s about to get good. “Go ahead. Be as loud as you like,” Alfred says, and then he presses something long and narrow flat against Bruce’s right thigh.
Bruce’s back arches involuntarily. It’s real pain; the only way he stops himself from yelling is by holding his breath. “Breathe,” Alfred murmurs in his ear. He removes the thing, and a half dozen sharp points of pain bloom in its wake.
Bruce pants. Chest heaving, he slumps back against Alfred’s chest. “No?” Alfred says, disappointed. “I was hoping for at least a little noise.” He runs the thing—it’s a vine, Bruce realizes, a vine with thorns—along the outside of his thigh. Sharp points trail through the blood that is rising hot from where the thorns punctured his skin. Then Alfred turns it on its tip and drags something soft over the wounds: flower petals. It’s a rose.
Bruce sags against Alfred, his head falling back in bliss. His lips try to curve into a smile around the ball gag. He’s so hard, he’s aching with it. The adrenaline thrumming through his veins is like nothing he’s ever felt before.
“Oh, look at you,” Alfred murmurs approvingly. The petals brush the tender skin of his inner thigh, and Bruce’s stomach muscles jump. “Such a beauty you are.”
Bruce is sure that Alfred is going to press the thorns into his thigh again, and his cock bobs in anticipation. But Alfred skims the petals over the bleeding wounds again and pulls the rose away.
“Perhaps something different,” Alfred murmurs in his ear. Bruce shifts restlessly against his chest. Sweat is gathering between them, making the skin of his wrists humid where the cuffs chaff at them. He feels Alfred reach in his pocket. There’s the faint clink of metal on metal. When Alfred fastens the clamp over his left nipple, the metal of the clamp is warm from his body heat. Bruce holds very still. “Very good,” Alfred murmurs as he fastens the other in place. “Such a good boy.” Behind the blindfold, Bruce’s eyes flutter closed.
“Do you want marks?” Alfred asked while they were still at the breakfast table.
Bruce swiped a tongue over his lips. “Yes.”
Alfred’s voice was clear and calm. “How long do you want them to last?”
He knew what Alfred was expecting: days, weeks. “I don’t want them to fade.” He watched Alfred’s hand pause as he tapped his receipts into neat little piles. “I want scars.”
“Perhaps you have figured it out by now.” Alfred’s hand strokes Bruce’s hair almost gently. Bruce breathes with deep, even breaths. He knows Alfred won’t remove the clamps right away; all he can do is wait. “This isn’t torture. I don’t want anything from you. There’s nothing you can tell me to make it stop.” Bruce’s spine tingles in warning. His eyes fly open, senses straining, but nothing has changed except the tightening of Alfred’s fingers in his hair. “Between you and me,” he murmurs, “I don’t want them to save you.”
A hand wraps around Bruce’s cock. There’s something between the palm of the leather glove and Bruce’s skin, something long and narrow. The hand squeezes.
The thorns pierce his foreskin and bury themselves in his shaft.
Bruce yells. The pain is white-hot, every nerve ending on fire. He sees white behind his eyelids. He bucks his hips, but the hand doesn’t with withdraw. He can’t stop yelling; his jaw aches as he tries to bite through the gag.
The hand pulls the rose stem away. There must be blood, but he can’t feel it; his blood is on fire. He whimpers as he writhes against the arms restraining him. The white heat ebbs quickly and is replaced with throbbing red. Blood pulses through his cock. Moisture drips down his balls, but blood or sweat, he doesn’t know.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Alfred is murmuring. A strong arm straightens him from where he tried to curl in on himself. “I was sure that would make you come. If that didn’t do it, let’s try again.”
Bruce shakes his head. His face is wet with tears he doesn’t remember crying. His quads shake as he tries to pull his thighs up to protect himself. He whimpers wordlessly around the gag. He can’t do that again; it was too much, please—
“Shh,” Alfred says. “Do you need to use your safeword?”
Bruce struggles to breathe. Every muscle in his body is pulled tight. His fingers trembling, he taps once against Alfred’s stomach.
“Then take a deep breath for me.” Bruce does, a deep, shuddering breath. The gloved hand comes to rest over Bruce’s left pectoral, above his heart. “You take it so well.” The pressure increases. Bruce’s chest heaves as the thorns press into his skin, six sharp points. “I think three is a good number, don’t you?” With a sharp press of Alfred’s palm, the thorns break his skin.
He moans brokenly around the gag. Alfred rips the rose stem away. His chest stings as sweat drips into the wound. Alfred is murmuring assurances against his hair, how good he is, how well he has taken it all, how precious he is. Bruce is too tired to tell him he’s breaking the scene; that he needs to be meaner, that this isn’t rough enough. He swallows wetly around the gag. Bruce tucks his nose in the hollow of Alfred’s throat and breathes shakily. “Good boy,” Alfred says.
Bruce made Alfred work for it. Alfred had to use his full body weight to wrestle Bruce onto the bed, and even that almost wasn’t enough. It wasn’t until he hobbled Bruce with his own sweatpants that Bruce fell onto the sheets facedown and panting.
“Fuck you,” Bruce snarled. He couldn’t see anything, but rose petals had gotten in his mouth and spat them out. Strong hands fastened cuffs around his ankles before pulling off his sweats.
“No underwear?” Alfred said, smoothing his hand over Bruce’s bare backside. “Making my job easier. Pity I’ll have to cut this off.” He tugged at Bruce’s t-shirt. Bruce tried to donkey-kick him, but Alfred had already stepped out of the way. “But first things first.”
Bruce wasn’t expecting the hand on his testicles. He froze, his eyes wide behind the blindfold. “Careful,” Alfred murmured in his ear. His back was flush against Bruce’s. “I have a pretty strong grip.” It was already uncomfortably tight. He breathed shallowly as Alfred picked up something from the bed. The cold metal tip of a butt plug pressed against his hole. His entire body went tight as a wire.
“I’m going to leave you here while I attend to some business,” Alfred told him, his voice as breezy as when he was reading receipts aloud. “But I need a way to make sure you’ll still be waiting for me when I get back.” The tip pressed insistently against the tightly furled muscle. Bruce gritted his teeth and twisted to get away even as his hips rutted against the bed. He could feel now that it was slick with lube. “This will be easier for both of us if you kneel. Go on, that’s it.” Stiffly, Bruce dragged his knees under him. Alfred but a hand on the back of his neck and pressed his face sharply into the sheets.
“I’m not going to beg,” Bruce rasped. The plug had breached him, but it did not stop. All his nerve endings sparked. Each hot, moist breath across his chapped lips was as vivid as the touch of Alfred’s gloved hand on the back of his neck. He trembled with it.
“Good. I love a man of his word.”
The slow, inexorable progress of the steel plug against his hole felt impossible. But it was possible; his body stretched to make room for it even at its widest point. And then, with a punched out gasp, the widest point was past his rim; the rest of it slid inside in a sudden rush. His hole clenched tight around the narrow post before the flared base.
“Now, be a good boy and raise your hips.” Bruce did as he was told. Without protest, he let hands secure wide straps around his thighs and clip him into a kneeling position. Even leaned his head back so strong fingers could fit a ball gag into his mouth and strap it around the back of his head. And then a door closed and he was left with nothing but the scent of crushed rose petals.
Bruce’s body is too wrung out to react when Alfred flicks the clamp on his left nipple. “That’s long enough, isn’t it?”
There’s nothing for a moment after the clamps release. Then pain blooms. As the blood rushes back, the prickly heat goes sharp before it dulls into a throb. Bruce sighs. His cock bobs against his stomach, throbbing in pain and desire in equal measure.
“You take it so well,” Alfred murmurs. The leather glove smooths over Bruce’s chest above the cuts from the rose thorns. “But you’re forgetting that there’s no need for limits here. I don’t care what you can and can’t take.”
Bruce’s eyes snap open. He thrashes against the arm around his chest; he nearly breaks free, but the corded muscle of Alfred’s forearm drags him back. “Ah, ah,” Alfred says. His other hand fumbles with something to the side. A sharp, pungent smell fills the air. It’s familiar; Bruce associates it with his dad. In his moment of confusion, his movements slow; it’s enough.
The rubbing alcohol overpowers the scent of rose petals as it flows down his chest. There’s a moment of relief as the liquid cools his overheated skin. Then it sinks into the wounds. Each mark from a thorn bursts into white-hot heat like a star. He whimpers as it burns. Slowly, the sharp flare of pain fades into a dull burn.
“Do you think you can come for me this time?”
The splash across his thigh is almost expected. His muscles jump and he involuntarily bucks his hips, but Alfred gently pulls him back against his chest. “I have to say, I’m disappointed,” Alfred says, and he sounds it. The disapproval in his voice brings hot flags of color to Bruce’s cheeks. “I’ve heard such good things about your stamina. But surely you’ll break for me?”
The rubbing alcohol falls across the side of his cock in a waterfall. And Bruce screams.
Everything is white—his vision; the burning heat as every ending in his cock is set on fire; the white line of flame that goes up his spine. He doesn’t realize he is coming until he feels a hand cupping his cock, a bare thumb smoothing over the over-sensitive tip.
He is still screaming, the sound garbled but audible around the ball gag. When he stops, his throat is raw. He jerks his hips weakly, trying to escape, but the pressure of Alfred’s thumb over his glans is almost a welcome distraction from the white-hot flare of pain still shuddering down his foreskin.
“Now I will take you.” The bed dips.
As he lays facedown on the sheets, his cheek pressed against silk, he does not know who he is. The stainless steel is hot from the inside of his body as it stretches out his rim and drags over the edge. He smiles as it pops free, as a cock takes it place, breaches his rim and buries deep inside. He moans wetly at the slow drag of the cock head against his prostate. He nearly chokes on his spit when another orgasm is forced out of him, his spent cock twitching painfully as it oozes cum on the sheets. A strong hand tilts his head forward, forehead down, so the spit does not block his throat. Fingers stroke his throat. He swallows obediently. And he smiles.
When he comes to himself, he is in a warm bath. White steam rises around him. His thigh is pulled slightly towards his chest so the top of it clears the water. He stares blankly at it; a square of gauze covers a patch of his skin, and someone has wrapped his upper thigh in cling wrap so it doesn’t get wet. His cock, soft and familiar, bobs in the water. It, too, is wrapped in gauze and cling wrap.
A hand guides his chin back. He lets it. The hand slips to the back of his skull to support his head. He gazes at the steam rising to the white ceiling above him as someone pours warm water over his hair. He closes his eyes and feels peace.
When his hair is clean, the hand guides him to lean forward slightly. Strong fingers dig into his shoulders. They press past bruises and into tight muscle. He looks down at his chest; it is littered with bruises and red patches where Alfred slammed him into the wall. A bandage is taped over his heart.
He raises his fingertips to it. When he presses on it, he hisses. But no blood blooms on the white bandage.
The fingers dig deeper into his shoulders, into the knot he’s never able to reach. “Alfred,” he says.
The fingers pause. A hand cups his cheek. His eyes flutter closed and he turns his face towards the touch. “Bruce.”
Bruce nuzzles into that familiar calloused palm. A thumb smooths across his cheek. A helpless smile spreads across Bruce’s face. He meets Alfred’s calm, familiar eyes. “What happened to using me for days on end?”
Alfred raises his eyebrows. “If you think I’d let some madman keep you locked up for more than two hours when I could move heaven and earth to get him every penny of the Wayne family fortune in under four, I hit your head harder against that wall than I thought.”
Bruce laughs. “Reality isn’t the point.”
Alfred drops his hand from his cheek. The smile slides from Bruce’s face at the expression in Alfred’s eyes. “This is real,” Alfred says softly as he touches the pads of his fingers to the gauze on Bruce’s chest.
Bruce looks down at it. “Yeah,” he says quietly as he slides his hand over Alfred’s. “It is.” With the slightest pressure, he pulls Alfred’s hand over his cock. He tenses as their hands pass over it, but Alfred is very gentle as he cradles it. “So’s this.” Bruce releases his hand and meets his eyes with a wry smile. “I can’t jerk off until it heals, can I?”
“No, you can’t,” Alfred agrees. He releases him and withdraws his hand to the edge of the tub. “I did warn you.”
“Yeah,” Bruce says, his eyes soft. Then they drift and go distant, like the steam rising to the ceiling. Alfred grabs him by the chin and pulls him back.
“Bruce,” Alfred says, and Bruce focuses. “Next time, maybe I won’t get the money together so fast.”
The smile that spreads across Bruce’s face is a soft and wondrous thing. “Next time?”
Alfred pats his cheek. “Turn around so I can work out this knot in your shoulder. Were you going to tell me you’ve been throwing punches with bricks for muscles?”
Smiling, he does.