#the & means it's plutonic and if you think otherwise i'll beat you with a spoon

[intelligent-zombie]

Of fistfights and fathers

Summary: Alfred’s parenting skills are put to the test

Word Count: 1042

Warnings: lgbt slur, fisticuffs

Notes: hi i don’t think ive ever posted a fic before god help me here we go

Bruce’s right hand is resting in a bowl of ice water. His left hand is being gently seen to, fresh gauze pressed down firmly to staunch the bleeding. The dirty strip of torn shirt he used as a temporary bandage lies on the table in front of him. It feels like evidence of a crime.

It’s too quiet. 

“Do you have a clean shirt to wear tomorrow?”

“I’m suspended.” 

“Do you have a clean shirt?”

He won’t meet his eyes, he can’t. Thomas Wayne has been in his grave barely a year and his son’s fists are bloodied in a schoolyard scrap. Not for the first time. Or the second. Definitely not the last.

“I do,” he mumbles.

“Bruce, look at me.”

He won’t. He studies the kitchen light on the water, the ice cubes jostling each other above his skin. He pulls his hand out the water, flexing cold fingers. Alfred hands him a soft towel, which he gladly buries his freezing hand in.

“Do you have a good reason?”

Reason, yes. Good? He isn’t sure.

“No.”

“So… your classes are that boring? You just hit him for fun?”

“No-” he hisses at the sting of alcohol on raw knuckles. 

“Then why?” Alfred presses.

But he’s not angry, he’s just sitting there, holding Bruce’s hand. 

“He called Jeremy a faggot,” he says it quietly, eyes unfocusing. 

He sees it, Derek’s laughter, his stupid pointy chin, narrow little mocking eyes- the mistake was hitting bone. Punching him, however- not a mistake.

“Calls him. Different things, all the time.”

Bruce speaks to a drop of water on the table, rather than look Alfred in the eye.

“He has two dads,” Bruce explains. “Derek said he should give me one, since he has two.”

Silence. It’s too quiet and it aches, worse than his hand, worse than anything. 

“Jeremy told him to shut up-”

‘Shut your fat stupid face, Derek!’

“And then he shoved him.”

Derek doesn’t let up on the barrage of insults, uses slurs as crude weapons. 

“He wouldn’t stop, wouldn’t let him get up.”

Jeremy, muddy and crying, and there’s just enough rain to hide the fact that Bruce is crying too. He won’t let them see that. He’ll never let them see that. 

“And then you hit him?”

“No,” Bruce shakes his head. He wiggles his fingers as Alfred expertly wraps bandages around his knuckles. “I mean. It just… it went wrong, really fast.”

“It usually does.” 

Soft tone, soft touch, and Bruce wishes Alfred would just yell. Putting it in words to him is harder. An angry scolding and being sent to a quiet room to be alone, that would be so much easier. 

“I told him to never touch Jeremy again.”

“Or?”

“Or I’d make him stop.”

There’s more to it than a physical threat. He knows what Derek’s afraid of, and it’s his father. A man who thinks violence alone is strength. 

“I’ll win, you’ll run away. And everyone will know you’re a coward.”

So the first swing isn’t his, which makes him feel more than a little justified when he plants his fist in Derek’s stupid face. There’s a spray of blood, a sickening squish, and Derek gets a botched nose job. 

And Bruce is right. The “fight” lasts just under a minute. And Derek runs. Derek runs like hell is behind him, and maybe it is, because the young Master Bruce has never felt so angry, never heard this roaring in his ears, never wanted to take someone apart and show them their own broken pieces.

So Derek runs. And maybe nobody sees, but Bruce had promised him, so he believes it. Everyone will know.

Alfred has been choosing his words carefully, but he’s spinning wheels now, and there’s no roadmap for this, no one to tell him this is the start of something, a spark, a seed, a dark beginning. There are two ghosts in his head, but they’re both silent. 

“Next time-”

“Next time?” Bruce stares at him, incredulous. 

“Next time you’re squaring off with a bully,” Alfred amends. “Don’t punch him in the face with your bare fists.”

“You’re supposed to tell me not to hit anyone at all,” Bruce can’t believe it.

 Alfred is violating the ancient code of grown-up-people. They wield time-outs and stern talking-to’s. They’re not supposed to be agreeable. 

“Right,” Alfred nods sternly. “Don’t hit anyone at all. But if you do-”

He pats the boy's bandaged hand, gentle, but it draws Bruce’s attention back to a throbbing hand. 

“Soft tissue, Master Bruce,” Alfred suggests. “Always soft tissue, never the skull.”

It’s solid advice. It doesn’t necessarily feel like the appropriate advice, but it’s practical.

“Are you trying to get me expelled?”

“I don’t know,” Alfred sighs, rubbing his temples. “There’s this new trend everyone’s talking about- homeschooling.”

“You want me to stop going to school?”

“Do you want to keep going?”

Bruce is learning: Alfred has an infuriating habit of believing in free will. Questions get answered with questions. There’s an expectation that you think, you don’t wait to be told what to do.

“Jeremy will still be there,” Bruce insists. “All my friends.”

Alfred looks away for a moment, eyes closed, trying not to betray a feeling. Not to be too proud, not too proud of this boy with bloodied knuckles, because ithis is not the kind of behavior you condone. Right? But damn he is proud and what’s he going to do? Hide it? Fat chance of that. He couldn’t hide it if he tried.

“Come here,” he reaches an arm out, beckoning, scooping Bruce into a hug. A small face burrows in his shoulder, anything but weak but he still seems so small, and Alfred holds him as tightly as he can. 

Then the tears come, and one day Alfred will realize it’s the last time Bruce lets himself cry. Maybe he forgets how. But today there’s no stopping it, the dam isn’t just breaking, it’s exploding, and there’s a year of pain and grief and anger spilling out in hot and stinging tears.

“Never stop,” Alfred leans back to look at Bruce. “We’ll never stop looking out for the Jeremy’s. And for the Derek’s, when they come around. When they need us.”

He holds him. There’s a soft rain outside, pattering on the tall windows of the manor. Speckled light filters through, dances on mahogany furniture, dances on oil portraits, refractions that make Thomas and Martha Wayne look like they’re crying. 

“Alright?”

“Alright.”

It’s not the moment, it’s not like the boy wakes the next morning and presents Alfred with a diorama on vigilantism. But there never is the moment; it’s not one singular defining event, it’s not death, it’s not a reaction to one crime, to one injustice, one terrible night. 

It’s a habit. It’s just a habit of standing in between people, refusing to be the bystander. It’s the habit of saying no, no more, this stops now. Of getting back up, no matter what. And never stopping.