Work Text:
Once again dressed for work, Jim arrives back at the hospital with more than a few thoughts chasing each other in his head. There is a lot that he can take out of what little of a conversation he and Lee had at her apartment, for starters.
Although, hell, it was more than a ‘for starters’; it seemed to sum up the entirety of his confusion, the feeling that he is labeling as The Numb Feeling, capitals in there because of how intensely uncomfortable and profound the whole thing is. But whatever it was, Lee had seen it, had shored him up like a building that was ready to collapse. Putting up scaffolding until the proper repairs could be made.
What those repairs were, he didn’t want to guess at. At least, not right now.
The hospital is quiet, a little bit brighter than it had been when he’d first arrived the afternoon before. It seemed as though the first rays of dawn were starting to seep into the hallways, reminding everyone that it was a new day. A new day, a new start, and hopefully some way of looking at things that wasn’t quite so dark and gloomy.
Bruce was still curled in the chair, right where he’d left him, uncomfortable-looking but exhausted. The blanket that Lee had put over the kid was still tucked around him, barely thick enough to ward off the perpetual cold of a hospital room. The dark shadows under the teen’s eyes weren’t as pronounced as before, thank God for small favors.
He didn’t want to imagine what Alfred would say if he saw those when he woke. And he would wake, he had to. He—no, Bruce needed him to pull through this.
Goddammit, really, when had he become so attached to the man in the bed? When had that actually become a thing?
A guilty little whisper in the back of his brain informs him it was right at the very beginning, when Alfred first arrived at the scene of Mr. and Mrs. Wayne’s murders, coming to pick up Bruce, wanting to pull the boy away from the pain that was the fresh deaths of his parents. Still so raw, even months later, and Jim doesn’t want to think about any of that, Christ.
He does his best not to disturb either the patient or the sleeping boy as he ventures as quietly into the room as he can. He should really think about finding a way to get Bruce home, get him cleaned up, get him dressed. Put on some semblance of normalcy, for the boy’s sake if nothing else. But he finds himself standing at the foot of Alfred’s hospital bed, leaning against it, watching the rise and fall of the man’s chest beneath the blankets and bandages that must be beneath and the hospital gown that looked so damn wrong on the man.
He’s never seen Alfred in anything less than a three piece. His brain supplies that he’d like to see the man in less, but he shakes it off, biting off the nearly hysterical sound that bubbles up in his chest, demanding escape.
At the very least, Alfred no longer looks quite like death warmed over. They’ve removed the plastic tube from the man’s mouth—likely from down the man’s throat—and have replaced it with the far more familiar canula in the man’s nose. He was still hooked up to all the beeping machines, though, and the blood pressure cuff that seemed to go off every twenty minutes.
Still, this quiet, this alone time, is giving him more time than he would like to mull over Lee’s words. The ones that echoed, quieting everything else. The ones that sounded like she wanted to say more beyond, but hadn’t dared.
“You care for him deeply.” It seemed like such an understatement, a contrary opinion. But it was confusing, because it didn’t make any sense. Why would it, after all; he and Alfred were worlds apart, he can’t even say that the two of them had really spent a meaningful amount of time together.
But then, if one was looking critically, the same could be said about his relationship with Lee. Hell, he’d known Lee an even shorter amount of time than Alfred, and there was no question that he, quote, “care deeply” or some such notion. He loves Lee, he knows he does, was one of the few things he’s damn positive about, so what does that say about his feelings for Alfred?
And Lee had said to think about it. As though she knew. Had seen it far more plainly than he obviously did.
He shakes his head silently, letting it fall between his shoulders as he takes a deep breath and leans against the hard plastic of the bed.
When he looks up again after a long moment of contemplation of the floor and the way it seems to be rather universal, that particular tile and hospitals, he finds himself caught off guard by a pair of hazy, storm-grey eyes.
He blinks, making sure that he isn’t seeing things, then jerks back a little bit. For some odd reason, he feels compelled to say he feels that he was caught red-handed, even though it was no such thing.
After all, what would he have been caught with?
Still, though. The feeling of relief that floods him has him smiling brightly, sagging with it as the tension leaves his frame, even as Alfred’s eyes flick to the sleeping figure of Bruce in the chair. The sheer amount of joy that diffuses him, makes his chest tighten, makes the echo of Lee’s words that much louder.
“You care for him, deeply.” It was true, though. He finds the truth of that when, after making sure that Bruce was all in one piece, those eyes turn once more on him. Sharp, and sharpening even more with every passing second. It makes him want to run, to hide, but there is nowhere to go. He can’t help but shift around to the side that is mostly free of the machines, unable to stop himself from touching Alfred’s hand. It’s cool, dry, but the digits twitch before curling around his, understanding, silent and heavy, passing between them. This would be A Conversation that they would have later, hash out. But the night has passed, the two of them unscathed for the most part.
“Alfred?” the soft voice of Bruce waking breaks it, the silence and the hold that Jim had had on Alfred’s hand, causing him to shift back, turning so that the older man in the bed could see the teen in the chair and vice-versa. Bruce’s relieved smile looks like an echo of his own, lighting up the room in a way that eases something that had tightened in his chest. But then there is something else tight in his chest, unknown and something he isn’t sure he actually wants.
“You’re awake,” Bruce breathes the obvious, uncurling from the chair in a way that has Jim wincing in sympathy, but that Bruce seems to take no notice of. He steps up to Jim’s side, his hand going to where Jim’s had been moments before, and—
And suddenly the room is too small, too bright. Too much, and he wants to run. To leave, to not acknowledge the confusion that has lifted, revealing something that his gut has been telling him since before Barbara had left. Something that he’s known, but hasn’t wanted to acknowledge. First because of Barbara, and then because of Lee. Now, it was especially because of Lee that he wants to go running, to run like he had in high school, that kind of freedom that only came with the surety that he could not be caught.
“I’m—I’ll be right back. I’m going to get you something to eat,” he tells Bruce, stumbling over the words, wanting to blame lack of sleep and that what little he’d had the night before had been in the hard chair beside Bruce’s, with Bruce’s heavy head on his shoulder, but that would have been a lie. He’s slept sitting up in a car smelling of onion and awful chili and hotdogs with his partner making the car smell worse, sleeping in the chair had been nothing.
He doesn’t wait for a response, instead nearly running down the hall and to the cafeteria, only to stop just a little bit down the hall, leaning against the cold wall and breathing.
Because, fuck it all, he was fucking in love with Alfred Pennyworth.
The words strain at him, pick at his insides, even as he goes through the motions of actually, finally walking into the cafeteria and getting a bagel for Bruce. It feels mechanical, and it is, because his brain is completely stuck on a loop, getting nowhere with the information that has sprung up on him. He isn’t sure of how, or even why, or even the more important question of when, and his mind isn’t providing him with any of that information. The only thing that is evident is the fact that it is, well, fact.
He takes a moment to close his eyes once he’s left the cafeteria, to press his forehead against the cool brick of the hallway, the weight of the long night pressing in on him. Maybe he was just tired.
…Right. And Oswald Cobblepot is his fairy godmother.
He isn’t sure how this was going to work. What he was going to do about it. If he was going to do anything about it. After all, he loved Lee. And Lee loved him, in return. So, what if this was all nothing? Besides which, what indication did he have that Alfred even thought the same? Felt the same?
It was silly to speculate, and stupid to continue to think in these circles, and fuckall, what was he doing?
He physically shakes himself, shakes his head, before returning with the bagel to Alfred’s room. He needs to get his head on straight, and just standing in the middle of the hallway of the hospital wasn’t going to do anything. It takes everything in him to breathe in and breathe out before finally stepping into the room. Bruce is sitting forward in the chair, messing with Alfred’s ring, and Jim notices for the first time that the boy had had it on the entire time, wearing it. Keeping it safe, as it were. Both of them look up as he steps inside, offering the brown paper bag by way of explanation.
“Slim pickings in the cafeteria, sorry. I brought you a bagel,” he offers to Bruce with a crooked smile, eyes flicking to Alfred. Alfred, who is watching the two of them closely.
Despite being freshly woken, and still healing, Alfred is looking mentally sharp as ever. Sharp as he had earlier, far healthier than he had been the night before.
Christ, what a long night. If he can go the rest of his life without seeing Alfred in a hospital bed ever again, he will be perfectly happy.
“Thanks,” is Bruce’s honest return, but the boy doesn’t open the bag, merely holds onto it like a lifeline, an anchor, that this was real and that nothing more was going to happen to shake his world upside down.
“What, nothing for the invalid?” Alfred teases tiredly, eyeing him expectantly. It takes every fiber of Jim’s resolve not to go rushing off again.
Him, the cop, supposedly brave, rushing off because he’s acting like a teenager with some new crush? Because that wouldn’t be obvious as hell.
“Sorry,” he comes back, the tease easy enough when he finally pushes it forward, digging out his phone to have something to do with his hands. It helps that it’s also buzzing, giving him a decent excuse as he hits the button to shut it up for the moment.
He can’t help the twitch his lips make when he finally answers, tone light and grateful to be teasing, “Hospital food only, for you. Doctor’s orders.” There’s a pause, and he can’t help it. He has to ask, because he has to hear it in Alfred’s own voice, let the accent wash over him and make him truly understand that the night was long gone.
“How you doing?” His question is soft, given with a look up through his eyelashes at the other man. Almost afraid of the answer. The lines around Alfred’s eyes, ones that were put there because of tension rather than smiles, ease a little before he answers.
“Alright,” Alfred returns, eyes still sharp on him. Taking in more than is being said, but leaving it in the air, unspoken for now. Thankfully. “You know, slight puncture; leaked a bit.”
At least he’s well enough to joke. That was a good sign, right? But there’s something under Alfred’s words, something almost… sad and Jim doesn’t know what to do with that. Other than to get serious, and to ask the official questions, to start this on the official path.
Because he wants to make sure that Alfred is safe, that Bruce is safe, and if he has to spend much needed time on the beat to do so, he fucking will. No one was going to hurt Alfred like this again, not if he has anything to say about it.
“So I know that last night must have been a bit of a blur, but do you know anything about who did this?” He’s looking straight at Alfred as he asks, blue eyes narrowed, slipping into cop-mode, as Lee called it. Questioning, with a look that brooked no protests, and made sure that the person he was asking knew that he wanted answers, straight answers, and that he wasn’t going to take anything else.
There is a hesitation in the air, and not just from Alfred. In fact, it isn’t even the injured man who starts to answer.
“It—It was—” Bruce starts, hesitating, looking drawn and tired and very much like he’s been betrayed, only to be cut off.
“It was dark. Very dark,” Alfred cuts in, firmly, giving Bruce a quelling look. Silencing the boy, and it makes Jim’s insides turn, the helplessness he’d felt when Bruce had first called him to say that Alfred had been hurt twisting at his guts again. More than that, though, is a spike of answer.
Both of them—both Bruce and Alfred—know exactly who did this, and because of Alfred’s look, neither of them will be giving him any answers. But the man is healing; had been stabbed. It’s frustrating, but unless Alfred, or Bruce, give him something to work with, there’s nothing that he can do.
“Saw a shadow, then my savior, Master Bruce, was leaning over me.” There is a lot of affection in Alfred’s face, in his words; gratefulness is there, too, and something else that Jim can’t quite put his finger on. Something that has him wanting to frown, to stiffen, to really start grilling Alfred because his gut is telling him to press.
“Did you manage to catch a look at the guy?” Jim asks Bruce after a moment, looking into Bruce’s face, searching for the answers. Even before Bruce lets his head tilt down a little, eyes flicking away, briefly guilty, Jim knows the answer he’s going to get. That it is a lie, in some fashion or another.
“No,” Bruce answers softly, shaking his head as though to punctuate his point, looking back to Alfred briefly.
There’s a lump starting to form in his throat, and he wants to demand, to ask why Alfred doesn’t trust him with this. Even worse, his phone continues to go off, and he’s sorely tempted to answer it, to tell the other person—his captain, by the name on the screen, and boy wouldn’t that be a fun conversation—off. Instead he sighs, glaring at the phone.
“Sorry, my captain keeps calling,” he tells the two, meaning that he’s sorry for the annoyance of the noise and for the interruption.
“It’s fine, detective,” Alfred returns, the gentle, tired tone bringing Jim’s attention away from the offending plastic and back to the man in the hospital bed. “Just—just go.” It’s almost as though Alfred had meant to say more, but Jim can’t even begin to understand what the other man could possibly want to say.
“No, I can stay,” he insists, automatic and wanting to make sure that Alfred knows. That they both know that this is important to him, that he isn’t going anywhere. At least, that’s what he would like to do. Realistically, he knows that he is more than likely going to have to cut out soon, or face the wrath of Ennes.
The woman was very much a mother to those few she trusted on her force, and very fierce. Add into it that he hadn’t exactly followed protocol yesterday, going straight from the crime scene to the hospital? Yeah, she wasn’t going to be happy.
“Look, I do appreciate you sitting with Master Bruce all night, but as you can see, I’m quite alright,” Alfred returns, making sure to catch his eye when he says it. Being firm, once again quelling anything else that could be said. And that it was Jim under that look, now, was uncomfortable. It’s like Alfred knows, can see right through to his heart and soul, and it’s okay, but this was not the place to talk about it.
…Fuck, he probably did know. Dammit.
He opens his mouth, not entirely sure what he was going to say, but he was running basically on empty, here. He doesn’t know what he’s going to admit to, if he’s going to admit to anything at all, but he has to say something. Wants to be here, to help, to make sure that they were safe.
“Go,” Alfred urges, gently, giving him the same look, still. Insistent, but gentle, even with the lingering secret just beyond the edges of what anyone in the room was going to admit to, at the moment. The one about last night, not the other one, and Jim isn’t sure which he wants to demand about first.
Finally Jim has to admit to defeat, especially with his phone going off again. He releases a heavy sigh, lips pressing into a thin, unhappy line.
“Alright,” he grunts, voice gruff, hand tight around the plastic in his hand. “I’ll try and stop by later.” He would like to insist, make it a point to make sure that the two know he’ll be back, but with his job? He can’t make that promise, no matter how much he would like. He shifts, feels like he should say more, but he finds that there is nothing coming to mind. He turns to leave, then, when Bruce standing stops him.
“Detective,” Bruce tells him, moving forward, wide eyed and grateful, far too solemn for someone so young. “Thank you for coming.” And he knows, can tell by Bruce’s words, that the kid means it. More than anything else, the kid is definitely grateful that he’d been here. And what kind of cruel world is it that a kid has to be grateful just for someone being there?
Right, a world where the kid’s parents were gunned down in front of him.
Part of him wants to reach out and give Bruce a hug, wants to wrap the kid up tight and try to protect him from the darkness in the world. But, hell, he knows that is so very far from possible. He can’t do that, not when Bruce has already seen so much of the darkness that lives in the world, hiding in plain sight, lurking just around the corner. So he settles instead for gently pressing his hand to Bruce’s shoulder, once again offering comfort and strength where he can, giving a warm squeeze to add that little bit more.
He pushes himself to leave, then, knowing that if he doesn’t he’s going to fight himself to stay. And he does really have a job to do. He doesn’t look back as he steps out into the hall, walking down it with swift strides, still ignoring the buzzing phone in his hand.