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Alfred had survived worse arrangements than Wayne Manor. He reminded himself of that on the mornings when the house felt too large, too quiet, the kind of quiet that made his shoulders itch and his jaw ache from clenching through dreams he didn’t quite remember. He had survived tents that smelled of oil and blood, orders barked through static, nights where sleep was a suggestion and not a promise. A mansion with polished floors and soft light should not have been the thing that undid him.
And yet.
Six months in, he still startled when Thomas Wayne greeted him with a cheerful, "Morning, Alfie," like it was the most natural thing in the world to address one’s employee by a nickname and a grin. Three months in, he still woke up sometimes tangled in sheets that were not his own, with Martha’s bare foot warm against his calf and Thomas’s arm heavy across his ribs, and lay there staring at the ceiling, wondering how the hell this had happened. One month in, he had been told, plainly, without ceremony, that they loved him.
Loved him.
The word sat in his chest like a foreign object. He prodded at it in the quiet moments, suspicious. It didn’t belong there.
He was not, by any reasonable metric, a good butler. He forgot things. He bristled at orders. He had a tendency to go very still when someone raised their voice, even if they were only calling across the room. He woke from nightmares with his hands already clenched, heart racing, mind halfway somewhere else. He flinched at fireworks. He drank too much some nights and went stone-cold sober others, with no clear reason for either.
He was, in short, a mess.
And the Waynes, for reasons he could not fathom, seemed to think this made him worth keeping.
Martha, especially, looked at him like he was something shiny she’d pocketed on a dare and decided to treasure. She drifted through rooms in silk and sharp smiles, kissed Thomas on the mouth when he least expected it, winked at Alfred when he caught her slipping on earrings that could probably buy a small house. She flirted like breathing, reckless and deliberate all at once.
Thomas was easier, in some ways. A brilliant surgeon with the earnestness of a golden retriever and the build of a man who forgot his own strength. He laughed too loud, stared at Martha like she’d hung the moon, and treated Alfred with a casual warmth that felt more dangerous than distance ever could have. There was no calculation in Thomas Wayne. That, too, set Alfred on edge.
So he decided, quietly, to be a problem.
If he was difficult enough, surely they would come to their senses. They would thank him for his service, perhaps give him a reference, and he would go somewhere else. Somewhere simpler. Somewhere that did not require him to navigate the impossible idea that he was wanted.
It started small. He talked back more. When Martha asked him to fetch something, he did it slowly, deliberately misinterpreting her instructions just enough to be irritating. He corrected Thomas in front of guests. He skipped polishing a side table, left a faint smear on a mirror. He let his temper show when a delivery man was rude, sharp words snapping out of him before he could stop them.
Nothing happened.
If anything, Martha seemed amused. "Look at him," she told Thomas one afternoon, sprawled across the sofa with her legs over her husband’s lap. "He’s got opinions."
Thomas beamed like this was a compliment. "Good," he said. "I hate a yes-man."
Alfred stood there with a tray in his hands, jaw tight, thinking that this was not how this was supposed to go.
He escalated.
In bed, when the lights were low and the air thick with the familiar warmth of shared bodies, he started saying no. Not to everything, not dramatically. Just small refusals. A hand moved where he didn’t want it, and he shook his head. A kiss lingered too long, and he turned his face away. His heart hammered each time, waiting for irritation, for disappointment, for that subtle withdrawal that meant he’d failed some unspoken test.
Instead, Thomas froze instantly, pulling back like he’d been burned. "Sorry," he said, soft and immediate. "You okay?"
Martha’s hand found Alfred’s wrist, light, grounding. "We can stop," she said, eyes searching his. "Or change things. Or just… talk."
They always listened. Every time.
It made him furious.
After a few days of this, after a dinner where he barely spoke and a morning where he snapped at Thomas over coffee and then felt sick with guilt, Martha finally cornered him in the kitchen. She had that look on her face, the one that meant she was about to do something reckless or honest or both.
"Sit," she said, pointing at the table.
"I’m working," Alfred replied automatically.
"Alfred," she said, sweet as sugar and sharp as a blade, "sit before I steal your watch and sell it out of spite."
He sat.
Thomas hovered near the doorway, clearly unsure if he was meant to be part of this conversation or if he should flee. Martha shot him a look. "You too. Don’t be a coward."
Thomas mouthed sorry at Alfred as he took the seat opposite him.
For a moment, none of them spoke. The refrigerator hummed. Somewhere in the house, a clock ticked, steady and unforgiving.
Martha leaned forward, elbows on the table. "Okay," she said. "Something’s wrong. And before you do that thing where you insist you’re fine and we all pretend to believe you, let’s skip ahead."
Alfred folded his hands together to keep them from shaking. "I don’t know what you want me to say."
Thomas frowned, earnest as ever. "We want to understand."
"That’s the problem," Alfred said, and surprised himself with how bitter it sounded. "There’s nothing to understand."
Martha’s eyes narrowed. "That’s bullshit."
He laughed, sharp and humorless. "You’ve known me for six months. Three, intimately. One where you’ve decided, for reasons known only to you, that you love me. I’m not what you think I am."
Thomas opened his mouth, but Alfred pressed on, words tumbling out now that they’d started. "I’m not loyal in the way you expect. I don’t take orders well. I’m not particularly kind. I wake up ready for a fight more often than not. I bring home things I shouldn’t from the market because they remind me of places I’d rather forget. I’m—" He swallowed. "I’m broken."
The word hung there, ugly and heavy.
Martha stood abruptly, walked around the table, and leaned down until she was eye level with him. "Alfred Pennyworth," she said quietly, "if you think Thomas and I don’t know exactly who you are by now, you’re underestimating us."
Thomas nodded vigorously. "You don’t hide it very well," he added, then winced. "I mean, not that you should. Hide. I just mean—"
Martha waved him off and went on. "We’re not in love with some imaginary version of you. We’re in love with the man who gets twitchy when the news comes on. The man who argues with me about wine pairings and is wrong half the time. The man who flinches and then pretends he didn’t."
Alfred looked away. His throat burned.
"And this," Martha said, softer now, "this little campaign you’ve been running to make yourself unbearable? We noticed."
He huffed. "Clearly ineffective."
"Because it’s based on a bad assumption," Thomas said gently. "You think we only want you when you’re easy."
Martha crouched in front of Alfred, her hands resting on his knees, solid and warm. "We want you when you’re difficult," she said. "When you’re sad. When you’re scared. When you’re complicated and annoying and shutting us out."
Alfred shook his head, a reflex. "That’s not how it works."
"Maybe not how it worked before," Thomas said. "But it’s how it works here."
Silence stretched. Alfred stared at the worn edge of the table, at the faint scratches from decades of use. He thought of foxholes and hospitals, of love offered conditionally, of the cost of being a burden.
"What if I get worse?" he asked quietly.
Martha didn’t hesitate. "Then we’ll deal with that too."
Something in his chest cracked, just a little. Not a shattering. A hairline fracture. Enough to let air in.
That night, in bed, Alfred lay between them, rigid with the effort of not retreating into himself. Thomas’s hand rested on his back, steady and unassuming. Martha’s fingers traced idle patterns on his arm.
Alfred stared into the dark, listening to their breathing, feeling the weight of their presence on either side of him. Loved, whether he understood it or not. Loved, without qualifiers.
He didn’t know what to do with that. But he didn’t feel the need to run anymore.