Chapter Text
On Saturdays, when he was not required to temporarily awaken to see Dick off to school, Bruce could sleep in. Thus it was entirely surprising to see Bruce stumbling down the hallway five minutes to 10. Clark uncurled from the couch he had been dozing on and caught up with the lumbering figure, who smelled oddly of drowsily downed espresso and clumsily smeared sunscreen.
“You do know it’s still AM, right?” Clark joked. He got a bleary glare for reminding Bruce of the fact, and only his superhearing allowed him to parse Bruce’s grumble.
“Alfred wants his dirt.” With that bizarre statement, Bruce tromped down the servant stairs.
Now properly puzzled, Clark followed along. Bruce pushed open the side door to the garden, stepped out into the rare Gotham sunshine, looked for all the world like he might hiss at the sky, and then made his way towards the sound of old jazz and Dick’s laughter.
Alfred, who was decked out in a gardening outfit that would have been all the rage a century ago — Clark had certainly never seen overalls look posh — stood from where he had been inspecting a newly cleared out flower bed, dusting his gloved hands off with a few smacks of his palms. His smile was immediate and bright. “Ah! There you are!”
“Where?” Bruce asked with barely more diction than he had used with Clark.
“I had the delivery boys set them right by the gate,” Alfred said, motioning to where Clark could now see a pallet of gardening dirt in fifty pound bags, and a half-pallet of smaller bags of potting soil. “I’ve put flags where I’d like them to go. Two bags in each spot, if you would.”
As Bruce trudged his way to the gate, Clark made to follow him. “I can help —“
Alfred put a stop to that immediately with a single gesture of his hand. “Nonsense. You’re a guest, and Master Bruce is quite capable.” His warm blue eyes followed his grumpy ‘master’ with open affection. Sure enough, Bruce slung one bag over a shoulder and hefted another as if it was nothing. “After all, I certainly feed the man enough to be sure of it.”
It was an argument not entirely foreign to Clark. His Ma had said things quite similar about him, even if the accent had been quite different. Suddenly aware of what was happening, Clark hid a smile behind his hand.
On the second trip to the pallet, Dick appeared breathless from where he had been racing Ace around the gardens. “Can I help?” he asked Bruce, whose brain appeared to completely halt at the sudden shock of remembering he now had a child to raise.
“Ah —“ He briefly glanced at the bag of dirt that was roughly the size of said child with a concerned pinch of his brow. Then his brain jump started, and he turned to the potting soil with clear relief. “One of the small ones. Yes. Ask Alfred where they go.”
“Alfred!” Dick yelled as Bruce helped him pick up a bag. “Where does this go??”
“Start placing them under the window boxes, please!” Alfred called back, not bothering to hide his smile like Clark.
Half the pallet later, Bruce was properly awake, his grey eyes bright even as his pale skin started to glimmer with sweat. Clark cast him a warm smile as he passed with yet another two bags of dirt.
“Don’t let Alfred fool you,” Bruce said casually. “He can carry these himself, he just doesn’t want to.”
“And you’d let him if he did?” Clark asked, raising a knowing eyebrow.
Bruce huffed, his response immediate. “Over my dead body.” Then he continued on, calling back, “But he could!”
Clark let his laugh follow Bruce on his way.