Work Text:
Alfred could tell as soon as he entered the cave that it was one of the bad nights.
Bruce’s body was pulled tightly into itself as he leaned over the desk and peered into the faintly flickering monitors, reviewing the footage his specialized contacts had gathered over the past several hours. His eyes, always irritated and glassy from the black makeup, the contacts, the light, were obviously bothering him as he squinted at the screen. His hair fell in a limp tangle over his brow and his chapped lips were bitten raw.
Alfred’s attention flicked briefly to the footage on the monitor before settling back squarely on Bruce’s haggard form. “Looks like a relatively uneventful evening,” he commented, sliding a glass of water next to Bruce’s pale hand.
“They’re not moving yet,” Bruce rasped, his voice just as overstretched and strained as the rest of him. “I can’t do anything until they start shifting the drugs.”
“Then might I suggest you take a little time off to rest? Get your strength back?” His suggestion earned him a scoff and a tired blink at the looping footage of an empty warehouse. “You’ve planted the trackers on their trucks?” He got a barely discernible nod in response. “Then you’re doing what, exactly? Counting shadows?”
Bruce let out a small, irritated breath. “I might have missed something.” His dark gaze was beaded with tears, the black makeup caked into the delicate creases around his sensitive eyes, the screen’s light reflecting in them like the flood lights that lined Gotham’s seawall.
“Sleep will help you think more clearly.”
Alfred knew that to Bruce, it didn't matter that he deserved a night of uninterrupted slumber, a night without dreams. It didn't matter that he deserved some peace from that demanding brain of his, always screaming at him to do more, to figure out the puzzle of life before it was too late, and damn what happened to him in the process. Instead of appealing to his sense of well-being, the only tactic Alfred found Bruce would respond to was the argument that he would be a better martyr if he gave in and slept for a few hours.
“Maybe you’ll notice something new in the morning.”
Bruce blinked slowly at the monitors, the only indication that he’d heard and was considering what Alfred had said. It was enough acquiescence for Alfred to lean forward and, with a long enough pause for Bruce to stop him if he wanted, take the mouse from under Bruce’s cold fingers and put the computer on standby.
Only then did Bruce turn towards him and sigh, softly, like he hadn’t allowed himself to breathe until that moment.
Alfred reached out, intending to take Bruce’s chin in his own roughened hand. He hesitated to touch him, the moment delicate and taciturn, the possibility of rejection looming large. The wrong movement, the wrong word, would have Bruce turning away and shutting down.
His chest seized painfully tight as Bruce let his chin settle into his palm, his soft breath releasing warm onto Alfred’s bare wrist. He swallowed, feeling the weight of Bruce’s head press into his hand. Heavy. Exhausted.
He held still for a moment, just cradling Bruce’s skull. Still slowly, ever so slowly, his thumb moved to stroke the stubble of Bruce’s jaw. His stomach clenched, waiting for the moment Bruce pulled back. Instead, his tar-streaked eyes fluttered closed, his body relaxing incrementally, leaning into Alfred’s touch.
“Shower,” Alfred murmured, dragging his thick fingers through Bruce’s hair, the strands over-soft with oil and sweat.
He would like very much to get some food into him, but experience told Alfred that he’d have a better chance in the morning, so he mentally planned a breakfast with eggs, waffles, bacon, fruit… anything he thought Bruce might take a forkful of up to his mouth, chew, swallow. Alfred contented himself with picking up the glass of water and taking it with them upstairs, holding it with one hand while gently steering Bruce by the small of his back with the other.
Bruce stirred and gazed around once they were in the main house, something he did when he was past his limit as he was now, half-dreaming. Alfred often wondered if Bruce was looking for his parents, as though no time had passed and he still expected them to come around the corner, the past several decades nothing more than a nightmare. Sometimes Alfred still expected to look up and see Thomas beaming at him, charismatic and wonderfully alive, that something in his gaze that had always made Alfred stop in his tracks, confused and awed.
They entered the enormous bathroom together, the walls a deep indigo, dark and beautiful and overwrought, just like the rest of the house. Alfred set the water on the counter before he opened the medicine cabinet concealed behind a large mirror over the sink, avoiding the reflection of his own eyes. He snatched up the package of wipes, a gentle formula for removing waterproof eye makeup, and fiddled with getting one out, pretending he didn’t notice Bruce stripping out of his clothes.
He approached once Bruce was seated on the antique bench, one of the many pieces of ostentatious furniture in the bathroom. Alfred tried to picture him sitting on a closed toilet seat like a normal man in an ordinary bathroom, not a tufted velvet settee in a grotto of marble. He would have, before. Bruce hadn’t always been secluded to these walls. Once he’d had a life outside of the Wayne building and the cave. Outside of Alfred.
He blinked hard. Refocused on Bruce, who was peering up at him, offering his face to the only person who knew the real reason his eyes were ringed in black. The only person he trusted to wipe away the evidence of who he was at night. Alfred cupped Bruce’s cheek and began to clean the black grease from the delicate folds of his eyelids, stroking his cheekbone with his thumb in apology for rubbing at his already sore eyes.
Alfred took more time than the task truly needed, examining him closely from all angles, knowing that no matter how careful he was there would always be a bit of black under Bruce’s eyes in the morning like he had wept ink tears in the night. The eyes that looked blearily back at him were red and raw. Alfred tisked and reluctantly let go of his face to fetch the eyedrops he insisted Bruce use and knew he rarely did.
He met no resistance tilting Bruce’s face and squeezing the drops into his eyes. Bruce hissed as the medication stung his irritated eyes, before letting out a small sigh of relief as the drops began to work, soothing the redness and the pain.
Alfred liked this part. Liked when something he did brought Bruce relief. When he actually helped. It was how he’d gotten himself blown up during the Riddler case. So eager to help, to spare Bruce the time, the sleepless night trying to crack yet another cypher. He had looked down at the package addressed to Bruce and felt no hesitation opening it himself. He would do it again and again and again, knowing that he might have saved Bruce’s life. Knowing, too, that Bruce likely would have spotted the bomb for what it was much earlier. But what if he hadn’t? What if he’d opened that package himself and not noticed the lights flashing, his eyes so bloodshot, so full of tears, taking a moment too long to blink them away…
No. No.
He stroked through Bruce’s lank hair like he could card all the harm and anguish away from him. Like he could keep him safe in the armor of his all-encompassing devotion alone.
Bruce lifted his eyes to Alfred’s face, clearer now, less hazy. From one breath to another, Bruce reached up for him, pulling Alfred to himself and demanding his mouth. Bruce kissed like no one Alfred had ever known, like he was only vaguely present but always ready, opening just enough for Alfred’s lips, his tongue, his teeth, giving over exactly what was required, somehow vacant and urgent all at the same time.
Alfred’s thoughts swam as he moved both hands up to maneuver Bruce’s head against his own in a facsimile of control.
He sometimes wondered how it had happened. The shift. How Bruce had become his whole universe, blocking out all else until only he remained, a bright load star with so much gravitational pull all of Alfred’s molecules flowed towards it, inescapable.
It was a series of small choices, he supposed. Staying after Thomas and Martha were killed, even though his own heart was broken. He had looked at Bruce’s small face, empty with pain and loss, and he hadn’t been able to leave. And then again, through the destructive teenage years, the anger and the guilt pouring out of Bruce in rageful bursts, destructive and wild. He’d stayed. He’d stayed long after the boy had become a teenager and the teenager had become a man. He stayed when the bat had arrived in all its inevitable wretched righteousness. How Alfred hated the bat some nights. Hated that the bat would, someday, take away his entire world.
He held onto Bruce fiercely, protectively, aching in some intangible place inside his own body, unable to pour all his devotion into this man, though he longed to. God, did he long to.
He’d thought once that Bruce would have a normal life. A partner. Children, if that's what he wanted. He had labored to make that future possible for him, while caving to Bruce’s demand that he teach him how to fight. Never seeing it coming until it was too late. Never anticipating the bat until it was there, seemingly full-fledged at birth and consuming both of their lives. No turning back.
That’s when it happened. Bruce had reached for him, demanding, as always, to be the center of Alfred’s universe, only this time in a new, more terrifying way. And Alfred had gone, not reluctant enough, greedy and possessive and shockingly relieved, while at the same time grief-stricken. The bat had claimed both of them, locked them together in an unbreakable cycle, revolving tightly around one another. It was not what he had wanted for Bruce. But just as he had failed to foresee the bat and somehow save Bruce from himself, he also could not tear Thomas Wayne’s son out of his arms and send him away.
Bruce pulled back from the kiss and stroked Alfred’s beard absently with one slender finger, studying his face. Alfred wondered what he saw there. Why he chose Alfred, a man old enough to be his father, though not his father, as Bruce was so fond of reminding him. Why not someone younger, someone without dark memories reflecting back at him every time their eyes met.
He would never know. But he was grateful, oh so grateful (guilty ashamed horrified delighted transcendent) that Bruce saw something in him he wanted. Something he needed.
Bruce grabbed Alfred’s hand, brought it between his legs where he was hard and straining, his other hand pulling Alfred’s face to his for another of his sleepwalker kisses, present and vacant all at once, but entirely demanding. Alfred wrapped his hand around him, his grip trembling for a moment. Touching Bruce always staggered him.
Bruce dictated the pace and the rhythm, fast, but with a lighter grip than Alfred used on himself. He seemed to like the stimulation of soft friction over pressure. Alfred held him securely around his shoulders and back with one arm while moving his other hand over him, gentle and quick, his fist barely clenched. Bruce clung to him, both arms locked around his neck, panting into a kiss that was becoming little more than teeth.
“Alfred!” he gasped and arched back, shaking and groaning as he filled Alfred’s loose grip with come. Alfred could only look down at him in helpless adoration and make sure that he didn’t fall off that ridiculous bench.
He collected Bruce to his side, holding him together while he floated somewhere else for a few long minutes, his eyes softly closed and his breath slowing. His body was so loose in his arms, such a contrast to how tense he usually was. Alfred kissed his temple and held on, knowing that Bruce would stir all too soon. That he would need a shower and sleep. A good breakfast in the morning that he would hopefully eat any portion of before the bat took over again and Bruce, his Bruce, took a back seat to the needs of an entire city.
But for now, he was Alfred’s.
He held him until Bruce sat up, some of the tension returning to his frame. Alfred left him just long enough to wash his hands and fetch the glass of water from the marble countertop, pressing it into Bruce’s lax grip. He sat down next to him again, wrapping one protective arm around him as he drank, watching to make sure he finished the whole glass.
It was the small things. The small things he was able to do to help. They kept adding up and adding up until it was a feeling too large to carry around inside himself. If only he could give Bruce everything all at once, hand over all the stores of his body like some heirloom necklace all in one go, solid and real and lasting, then maybe it would be enough.
He took the empty glass from Bruce’s shaky hand, eyeing the scars that ran up his arm like hieroglyphics. Bruce swayed to his feet, gleaming against the dark walls. He reached for Alfred, pulling him close and kissing his cheek right at the edge of his carefully kept facial hair.
“Thank you Alfred.”
Alfred blinked at him.
“You’re welcome.” He swept his hand one more time through Bruce’s hair, dropping a soft kiss on his forehead. “Into the shower with you.”
Bruce gave him a rare smile, small and precious. Then he turned and the water began running in the shower as Alfred bent to grab the scattered clothes, black as shadows, from the marble floor.