Work Text:
Their first time happens so many different ways; Bruce doesn't even try to distill it down to a single emotion, a single memory.
It happens out of love, and not an apprentice's love for his master or a master's nurturing care for his student. Bruce buries his face in Ducard's neck and shakes after he comes, unable to do anything other than exist in the moment.
It happens out of anger, an explosive phrase that sets a fire under both of them. They fight until their clothes are torn, and Ducard forces his way into Bruce, leaving him sweating and bleeding and marked.
Maybe it happens for no reason at all, just simple loneliness matched up against physical nearness. Hands and mouths seeking warm skin, looking to make things warmer on the coldest night they've faced together yet.
Bruce remembers this: he's the one who made the first move.
He remembers this, too: Ducard seduced him before he realized he wanted to be seduced, touches turning sensual with seemingly no transition from soothing to urgent.
He remembers: there was no first move at all.
There are a thousand first times in Bruce's memories, so many that Bruce doesn't know which time was really the first. Every time Ducard touches him it's a rebirth, the beginning of a new life together. Every time, they're different to each other, filling different needs.
Tonight Ducard slides under Bruce's blankets and puts a hand over his mouth, silencing him before he's even started to touch him. Maybe this is their first time: Bruce giving himself permission to make as many sounds as he needs to, all blunted against Ducard's palm. Ducard's face in darkness, expression unreadable, his own breath steady the way Bruce's may never be again.
Bruce doesn't know myth from reality anymore, and when he wakes up alone, he knows there won't be any evidence either way.
-end-