#bruce and alfred

[mylifeingotham]

[vwikaartt]

Alfred and Bruce Wayne stuff

There can't be enough father-son dynamics))

Alfred is not just a butler, Alfred is a family ✨

[cecexoxo]

Iconic moments featuring Brucie Wayne and Alfred from "Batman Confidential"

[eggrolls-and-fandoms]

Thinking about how Alfred effected Bruce’s parenting style and feeling deranged. Again.

[riverspond]

do you want me to kill myself is that it

[broken-arrow32]

Bruce: soup is just a drink disguised as food

Alfred: get the fuck out of my kitchen.

[mr007pennyworth]

[gcthamgays]

[TEXT ID: Pictured is a set of lines from the podcast "Batman Unburied." Alfred asks, "Does that mean we won?" to which Bruce replies, "Yes, Alfred. We won. I owe you an apology. I should never have pushed you away. I won't make that mistake again. [There is a meaningful pause in the audio not indicated in the script.] I love you, Alfred." Alfred, affected, responds, "And I love you, Master Bruce."]

hi for the love of god hello i will never be over this

[sleepyssnail]

Bruce: When you compare the size of a gummy worm versus a gummy bear, it starts to paint a horrific picture of the gummy universe.

Alfred: No more candy before bed.

[supermanshield]

'I will even act as if your nocturnal excursions don't bother me. That my heart does not cry with each wound.'

Batman Annual #13, in 'Waiting in the Wings' by Kevin Dooley (writer) and Malcolm Jones III (artist), and Adrienne Roy (colorist)

This short story is focused on Alfred, his side of things when Bruce goes out, but also how he uses his theatrical talents to help Bruce. His intention was to go into the theater life when Bruce returned from his travels, but it quickly becomes clear Bruce needs him, for all kinds of things. Disguises, practicing his voice, separating the two identities. Between the lines we can read Alfred's remorse, for letting Bruce go down this path he's chosen, the shame he may feel in failing to take care of his boy. But also the pride he feels for Bruce, and for what he himself can do (the good one man can do). He even finds standing in for Bruce on the phone 'exhilarating'.

I would have posted the whole thing if I could. Instead, these are the panels and text that really got to me.

[mylifeingotham]

Gotta love Alfred

[brucieboy297]

[zero0ycinema]

・I need to be more

・Don’t be sorry, Alfred

・First discoverer

[coyote-nebula]

1, 15, and 20 👀👀

from this ask game

ah yes, good choices :)

1- a cryptid's cryptid Battinson & Cassandra Cain-- Bruce thinks he's seeing things. Specifically, a creepy little girl that always vaporizes before he can catch her. Cass is about 9 and has just run away from Cain after murdering her first (and last) target. I'm gonna drop a good chunk of Bruce & Alfred pertaining to this below the cut... 15- drop Bruce and Clark-- After an intense off-world mission, Bruce attends a fancy new year's party and finds Clark there, making little attempt to pretend he's not there to babysit. This turns out to be for the best, because Bruce's ptsd doesn't distinguish much between fireworks and alien bombshells. 20- men & coyotes (borrows vibes from the Red Sahan album) The misadventures of Red Hood, aspiring slumlord (and how he accidentally becomes Crime Alley’s favorite landlord instead) This one can be considered part of Minefield, before Jason is on good terms with the family. Basically, he buys this crappy apartment building, thinking he's going to make it his Secret HQ. The location is perfect, the facade is unsuspecting, it has very convenient tie-ins to the sewers and a separate garage/utility building-- the only problem is, it still has tenants. He'd love to pay them off or secure them somewhere else to live but he's newly on the lam from Blackgate and he's strapped for cash-- even crappy apartment buildings aren't cheap. But this isn't the only bargain bin place in Crime Alley to go. And how hard can it be, to... encourage the tenants to leave on their own? It turns out... really hard. Part of his master plan is to move in and be the worst neighbor imaginable... but that derails the first time he sees that decrepit old man with COPD in 209 drop a bagful of canned goods down the stairs, and he can't just leave, so he sits the guy down and gathers them all up; the single mom in 113 witnesses this and before Jason knows it he's the night babysitter for her kids so she can work her night job (after being made to swear on his life not to tell the kids what her night job is); the ex-army nurse in 303 with a drinking problem patches him up that night he comes in ripped to shreds... he ends up helping the battered wife in 100 cover up murdering her husband while dodging Nightwing, who is really picking an inconvenient time to be a friendly neighborhood brother.

↓ 1k of Alfred taking care of Bruce from the cryptid wip ↓

__

Suddenly Bruce realized that Alfred would pry everything out of him if he stayed another minute. He’d know Bruce was losing his mind, know he might have already lost it.

“I’m going to bed,” Bruce said, standing abruptly.

The kitchen wavered and he found himself leaning into the table, listening to the ringing and muffled words in his ears.

Pressure on his shoulders… bars braced against his back…

Alfred was very close to his face. Bruce read his lips until the sounds started making sense again. “Were you hurt last night?”

Bruce swallowed and shook his head, feeling thick and prickling with cold sweat.

Alfred studied him skeptically, mouth tight with concern. “Don’t give me technicalities. Are you hurt?”

“No,” he breathed.

“You’re nonetheless in a state,” Alfred muttered. His hand cupped Bruce’s forehead for a moment before relocating it to his shoulder. “Where have you been, then? What’s happened?”

“Hospital.”

Alfred’s eyebrows drew together. “Hospital,” he repeated, tone clipped. “Bruce, if I am to discover you passed out from a premature emergency room discharge in an hour, I wish you’d tell me now.”

Bruce shook his head. “The archives,” he rasped. “But all the paper files… there was a fire. What’s on the server is all there is. There’s nothing else.”

Alfred studied him critically. “You’ve been up all night, then. Scouring their database.”

Bruce nodded.

Alfred closed his eyes for a moment. He nodded once.

He only realized Alfred’s hand was on his chest, pushing him firmly against the back of his chair, when he slowly retracted it and stood from where he was kneeling with a wince.

“Don’t move,” he said firmly. “I’ll be right back.”

Bruce leaned forward to rest his eyes in the heels of his hands and listened to the refrigerator suck open and closed, a wood cabinet knocking shut.

The inevitable glass slid up to his elbow contained, less inevitably, the grape juice he’d passed over earlier. He frowned at it.

“With every glass of orange juice going untouched this week, there seemed little point in getting more,” Alfred remarked, pulling his chair closer to Bruce before sitting stiffly. “Drink.”

Bruce watched Alfred absently rub his bad leg and picked up the glass. Alfred’s hand hovered below it, as if he might lose strength and drop it.

The sugar made his teeth ache. “Sorry. For your knee.”

Alfred sighed. “Nevermind. Better my knee than your head. Do the hospital records have to do with that murder case?”

He swallowed, throat dry with long silence. “…Did Mom have hallucinations?”

Bruce felt Alfred’s attention even while he studied the scattered crumbs.

“The records are gone,” he added quietly.

A long moment passed before Alfred put his tablet aside and turned slowly to face Bruce more fully. “Not as far as I’m aware,” he said. “Though I’m afraid I didn’t learn many details about her hospital visits… that was before my time.”

Bruce closed his eyes, something hard and black coiling in his chest.

“…Are you hallucinating?” Alfred asked.

He regretted filling his mouth with futile questions instead of muting it with a scone.

Alfred waited.

“I don’t know.”

“Alright,” Alfred said gently. “For how long?”

“A week.” The underside of his chair seat was unpolished; splinters crowded under his fingernails. “Since Theodore Mendel’s murder.”

“What exactly are you seeing?”

“…Shadows. A presence.” He hesitated. “A little girl.”

Alfred nodded slowly. “You’ve checked the footage?”

“Inconclusive.”

“Have you come in contact with something?”

Bruce looked up sharply, the brush of the girl’s hair across his jaw.

Alfred frowned back at him. “Poisons? Toxic fumes of some kind?… Drugs?”

“I ran tests,” he said. “They were negative… but I’m not sure I…”

“Trust yourself?” Alfred sighed.

Bruce nodded faintly.

“That’s somewhere to start.” A board creaked as Alfred got up and stepped closer to him. “I’ll check your previous results and we’ll run them again for good measure. And then you will sleep,” he warned. “That is the easiest to rule out, and you could use it.”

Tests. Sleep. The sane oversight was reassuring, extending confidence that whatever was going on, it would soon be solved. Bruce stood and moved to step past Alfred.

Alfred leaned very slightly into his path.

His tight expression had softened. “This is hardly the worst thing that could happen. I’m glad you said something.”

It was too early to be relieved. Bruce had no answers, no confirmation either that he was seeing things or the equally disturbing possibility that he was being pursued through the night by a very small wraith.

He was relieved anyway; the tension that was holding him up retreated only to leave him sagging with exhaustion.

Alfred stepped forward in question; Bruce echoed him with a small step of his own and let himself be folded into an embrace. He folded his own arms carefully around Alfred’s back and sighed.

“You’ll be alright,” Alfred said quietly.

Feeling small, Bruce held tighter.

Alfred pulled back, put his hands on Bruce’s arms and considered him seriously. “Now. Drink that first.”

When Bruce hesitated with a bland look, Alfred raised his eyebrows.

“Think of it as a diagnostic,” he said dryly. “We will rule out thirst, starvation and sleep deprivation as causes and perhaps improve your self care habits at the same time. Go on, then. I’ll wait.”

Bruce sighed and picked up the mug of ginger tea with a pointed look before draining it. The warmth in his throat made him hoarse when he let it clap against the table again and he said, “Happy?”

“Ecstatic,” Alfred said, pressing a scone into Bruce’s hand and turning aside. “The last time I had any indication that you ingested something of nutrition was the sandwich I left out on your desk yesterday. At least, I assume it was you that took it, and not a leprechaun.”

Bruce didn’t reply.

Alfred glanced back at him, pace slowing. “…You did eat the sandwich,” he prompted sternly.

Bruce met his gaze evenly but looked away before he spoke. “I left it for the girl. Outside.”

“…Did she take it?”

Bruce shrugged. “It’s gone.”

Alfred stared at him for a moment before pointing forcefully at the untouched scone in his hand. “Eat that.”

[emma-d-klutz]

Bruce's happy memory is Alfred teaching to play piano I'm-

[batcowmaster]

also not another batman v robin. dc i’m tired. i’m tired. just let damian be with his family, please. i’m so tired.