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The worst part of his month-long trip to Tokyo was that he didn’t even enjoy it. He’d told himself it was the responsible thing to do, when a few days of waking with aching in his joints and with a low fever turned into a week and then two.
A break. He needed a break, that’s all it was. Every old wound seemed lined with hot lead, heavy and burning. It coated the scar lines from old fractures and clung like filmy oil to the joints he’d abused again and again— it ached to lift his arms, to bend his knees, to stand and balance with his hips.
Sleep had been getting more difficult to find and then to hold. He’d stare at the ceiling for sixty separate minutes thinking, I have to be up in three hours, and then slip under only to wake sweating with indistinct flashes of nightmare blown like smoke across his mind.
So, a break was what he needed. It wasn’t even avoidance, at first, exactly. It wasn’t that he consciously thought, Well, I won’t mention this to Dev, or I wonder if Alfred’s noticed? Because of course Alfred had noticed, and what could Dev do except prescribe the same thing Bruce could choose for himself? These were old problems, as painful and comfortable and familiar as the chalk-outline shaped ache in his heart, of two bodies on asphalt.
He was overworked and he knew it. He let Clark know he was taking a vacation and put himself on emergency-only status with the League, booked a ticket to Tokyo and made arrangements to consult on a few WE projects while there. Something small to work on would help him focus, keep him in place, make him feel less guilty for slowing down.
The morning before he left, he woke up with a pounding headache after five straight hours of sleep he’d only procured by some miracle of dead exhaustion, and barely made it to the bathroom before puking in the sink. There wasn’t much to vomit— his appetite had dropped off as it always did when he was rundown. He had plans to fix that in Tokyo with the room service dessert menu.
He washed it down the drain before Alfred came to wake him, and the crush in his chest was his heart sounding an automatic, if irrational and unnecessary, alarm. The headache lingered, pressure that ran from behind his eyes down to where it nearly numbed his neck. He breathed through the erratic rhythm of the throbbing, thinking, Fuck.
That was the point where he decided definitively, I’m not telling Dev, not until after Tokyo. It was paranoia, that’s all it was. Paranoia was another one of those things that had cropped up in excessive force again, another warning sign. He was getting better at catching them, he thought. He checked on Damian asleep every hour for only two nights this time, called Jason at three in the morning only once, before some part of him identified it as excessive.
He desperately looked forward to the next family breakfast all the same, so he could see them together and be certain, be sure, that they were safe. It nearly drove him mad, the waiting.
If he wasn’t better after Tokyo, then he’d bring it up. But he’d be better because Tokyo was the rest he needed that would ease the stress out of him like tension seeping from massaged muscles.
Alfred wasn’t coming with him because there was Damian to consider. He couldn’t afford to miss more school now that he was finally invested in his classes; Bruce couldn’t risk snuffing that spark. He’d call often, video chat frequently, come home early or for a few days if he was needed.
It was a solid, responsible self-care plan, and he assured himself of that when he slipped from his first class seat to puke in the jet’s bulkhead and rub his aching hip away from prying eyes. It would be better in Tokyo.
It wasn’t better in Tokyo.
Tokyo was not a gradual ascent to physical and mental stability, the way it was supposed to be. It wasn’t even a merciful plateau. A week in, he suspected he should call it a loss and go home, but he kept holding on and feigning his way through phone calls. He kept them short, and said he was busy, but all he was busy doing was lying in bed and trying to convince himself he was just more run down than he’d realized.
He ordered meals and desserts that he barely touched. He couldn’t hold down what he did eat. He went to one meeting, just one, and was so close to collapsing that his legs shook the entire elevator ride down and he had to lean on the elevator wall to keep himself upright. It was sheer willpower that got him walking forward when the door slid open, with the single thought, the car the car the car, in his head. He was lucky he had a driver that day, a professional and quiet man who made no small talk and simply dropped him off with a polite and polished English farewell.
The other meetings, he cancelled or called out of. He was wealthy and eccentric and it wasn’t going to hurt him, much, to utilize the carefree part of his image. Let them think he was drinking and larking around the city and going on tourist day-trips.
Bruce curled up under the pile of soft blankets, rang the front desk to have them send up more, listlessly watched movie after movie to distract from the tender joints, the weak and stinging muscles, the nausea, the chills, the headaches, the dizziness, and the occasionally blurring vision.
The blurring vision frightened him when he thought he was past feeling much that wasn’t just pain. He rubbed his eyes, thinking it was fatigue, and it took a full minute to go away.
He was tired.
That’s all it was.
Sometimes this happened, where it all caught up to him at once.
He mixed lie with truth when he called Damian: he wasn’t having fun without Damian, he was looking forward to coming home soon, he was busy with very boring business contracts. He hung up the phone and mixed lie with truth to himself: he was miserable, it would go away soon enough.
The problem with lying to himself was that he knew his tells, and in all his years of recovery vacations, his fingers refusing to hold a glass had never been one of the milestones. His wrist ached and his fingers wouldn’t respond more than a mere useless twitch, when the glass dropped onto the table.
A month in Tokyo and he was going home worse than he’d left, with hazy memories of four weeks spent mostly in a hotel bed feverishly hoping the next minute would be the one where he hit his upswing.
By the time his plane landed in Gotham, his body was a block of wood that refused to move. He’d hit a wall so hard he’d become the wall, every muscle carved into permanent place. He had no memory of getting up and walking down the tunnel, or of going to the Penthouse instead of home, but he must have, because he woke the next morning to a slew of texts and a mouth so dry he thought his tongue would crack.
He sent Alfred a text to let him know he’d landed safely, and then saw he’d already sent one. He followed it up with a pathetic joke about jet lag. Then, without quite knowing why, he showered and dressed for work downstairs in his office. He’d slept on the couch for some reason, and though he felt as sick as ever, he had the vague sense that stopping would be the end of things.
One hour of work, then another, then another. He’d get through the day in pieces and then do another, and breaking it down made it doable.
“Mr. Wayne,” his secretary said, sounding startled, when he walked stiffly onto the floor. He hadn’t told her he was coming in, much less early, so he didn’t blame her for being surprised.
“Hold my calls,” was all he could think to say, because surely there was work to do but the idea of a phone call made him want to finish the work the headache had started with an actual ice pick through one ear.
Bruce sat at his desk with the conviction that something was absolutely, fundamentally wrong, and when his vision blurred again he admitted to himself he had been an idiot.
Brain tumors didn’t go away because you ignored them.
The dizziness wasn’t new, when he rose to his feet, and he was going to go home and then deal with things, but first he just wanted to rest. One nap before the storm hit full force, that was all he could think about.
He’d never been so grateful he’d gone with the extremely comfortable couch, because if this felt like hell he couldn’t imagine what a lousy couch would have felt like.
Sleep was going to come and go in thirty minute waves, but he was used to that by now, and resigned to it.
He slept.
Kiran Devabhaktuni had gone most of his adult life with the anticipation that any meal he sat down to eat was going to be interrupted, so it wasn’t especially alarming when his mobile buzzed at him from the table. He glanced at the caller ID briefly before answering, a smile on his face.
“Welcome back, darling. How was Tokyo, then?”
There was a long silence, softly rasped breathing the only noise, and it had him setting down his fork and standing.
“Wayne?”
“I…I don’t think I can…make it home.” It was Wayne’s voice, but shakier than Dev had heard it in a long while, and it had cracked halfway through.
Ice encased Dev.
“Where are you?” he asked first, trainers already in his hand. He tugged them on and tucked the mobile against his shoulder to knot the laces.
“Office,” came the eventual answer.
“Wayne Tower?” Dev confirmed, grabbing his keys.
“Yes.” The word was hushed and strained.
Dev glanced at his watch jogging down the steps to the car park— it was after nine. What in the sodding hell had kept him at the office that late after a trip? Unless he’d crashed there in the Batman suit.
“Where are you bleeding,” Dev asked.
“Hn. I’m…” he trailed off.
“Sodding talk to me, Wayne. Come on, then. How much suture do I need?”
“N…none,” Bruce said. “I’m not…not bleeding.”
The car beeped at him before he turned the key in the ignition.
“I’m fifteen minutes out. Feel up to telling me what I’m going to bloody find?”
“Tokyo was a mistake,” Bruce said. “M’sick.”
“Sick. Alright, then. We can fix sick. Sick’s nothing, mate.”
“No,” Bruce said, his voice flat. “It’s back.”
“What,” Dev asked, half his attention on the traffic now, as he worked his way toward the Diamond District.
“The headaches, the nausea. The dizziness. It’s all the same,” Bruce said. There was a hitch in the last word, a sharp intake of breath. His voice, already quiet, dropped so low Dev had to struggle to make it out above the street noise. “I don’t want to do this again, Dev.”
Dev, when he should have had the right thing to say, said nothing. He stopped doing everything except slamming the brakes so he didn’t rear end the car in front of him. Reoccurrence wasn’t even unusual, exactly, but if it had resettled over the previous scars that was a whole new level of…
“Wayne,” he said. “Take a breath. I’ll be there and we’ll sort it out, yeah? Whatever’s going on.”
There was no answer. He looked down at the mobile in his hand, and it was blinking the End Call screen. Bruce had hung up.
“Bloody fuck,” Dev snarled, slamming the phone onto the rubberized divider between the seats. He tapped the gas.
It felt like he didn’t stop moving until he got to the tall, frosted glass doors of the building. He stood on the front step, tapping his foot, thinking it was some sort of horrific oversight that he’d never been given an access badge or some sort of buzz in code for emergencies. He had to ring Bruce three times before he picked up, while a security guard went from ignoring him to regarding him with suspicion from inside.
“Wayne, you’ve got to ring me in,” he said quickly, when the call was picked up.
“Oh,” Bruce said, and the line went dead again.
A moment later, the security guard came and opened the door and let Dev in.
“Boss Man says you get in,” the man said, as Dev shifted the medkit on his shoulder impatiently. “He’s on the…”
“…57th, I know,” Dev said. “Thanks.”
His foot tapped more in the lift and then finally, finally he was stepping off into the small foyer outside Wayne’s massive office.
Dev pushed the doors open without knocking and stopped for a mere half-second to scan the room.
“Wayne?” he called at the same time.
“Hnn,” Bruce replied.
He was on the couch, curled up and pressed into the cushions like he was huddling for warmth.
The thing that shot Dev through, that punched right through him with the force of a sledgehammer, was that he didn’t even have to see Bruce on his feet to know he’d dropped a good dozen kilos.
Adjusting to that, more than anything, was why he wasn’t rushed kneeling beside the couch. He set the medkit beside him. Whatever was going on wasn’t the kind of emergency where seconds mattered, and Dev was swallowed in self-reproach. Bruce must have been sick before Tokyo, certainly, for this level of deterioration, and somehow he’d missed it.
He’d thought Tokyo was a good idea.
“Wayne,” he said, gently, pressing the back of his hand on the other man’s cheek. It was flushed with fever, but a low one.
Bruce made a strangled sort of noise in his throat at the contact and then froze.
“Hullo, there,” Dev said, brushing his fingers through the tangled and sweat-stuff hair before moving his hand away. “This is the part where I need you to be bloody honest with me, yeah? If you weren’t truly in Tokyo, if you were off-world or undercover or kidnapped or some shite, now’s when you sodding say.”
“Tokyo,” Bruce rasped. “The…the whole time. Thought it’d go away.”
“Bloody hell,” Dev said, under his breath.
Bruce tensed and then shivered, and Dev clasped the too-thin shoulder for a second.
“That’s…bad, isn’t it,” Bruce said, licking his lips, which were dry and chapped.
“Well, it’s rather not good, you sodding idiot. You ought to have rung. I’ll shout about it later, maybe, if I remember. Right now, we’ve enough to sort without that.” Dev pulled a small water bottle from his medkit and unscrewed the cap. “Can you drink?”
Bruce tried once to take the bottle and his fingers wouldn’t quite close around the plastic. Dev frowned and kept the bottle. He slipped his other hand into Bruce’s.
“Squeeze my hand, Wayne.”
“Hm?”
“Go on, then. Hard as you can.”
The grip was almost what Dev would have expected from a normal handshake, except now Bruce’s arm was trembling and six weeks ago his hardest grip would have broken Dev’s fingers.
“Hm,” Dev said, concern mounting. “Here.” He slipped an arm behind Bruce’s head and held him up enough to sip from the bottle. Bruce swallowed and a trickle also ran down his chin. Bruce wiped that off himself, with his cuff, before cradling his arm to his chest.
“So,” Bruce rasped. “I’m fucked.”
“You’re ill,” Dev said. “That’s for bloody certain. How ill, we’ll find out with some tests. The first thing though, is getting you hydrated. How’re you feeling, then?”
“Feverish,” Bruce said. “Headache, muscle weakness, nausea, blurred vision, joint pain, dizziness, uh…” He rattled off the list in a mechanical matter, something robotic and rehearsed. It was a report, until the end, where he was clearly searching, staring at the ceiling.
“That’s all lovely information,” Dev said. “All important for me to know and I would have asked. But right now, I’m asking how you’re bloody feeling.”
Bruce’s eyes flicked from the ceiling to Dev, and his bewildered expression was all the more severe for the gaunt, pale pallor of his face.
“You were gone a month, mate, and sick the whole time? Wasn’t it bloody lonely? You made it back and into work in this state. You’re quite literally wasting away. You’ve got to feel something about that.”
Bruce’s mouth hung open, and then he twisted in a sideways flop and puked clear liquid on Dev’s folded legs. He sagged chest and face down, on the edge of the couch, hanging over Dev’s lap, panting, and then there was a hoarse, “Sorry.”
“At least it’s not blood,” Dev said, with practiced cheerfulness, dabbing at his knees with a pad from the medkit. “I’m washable.”
It only took a second to realize that Bruce wasn’t turning back over because he was crying, just ragged little inhales and exhales, with quivering shoulders. His forehead was pressed into the rolled hem of the cushion.
Dev rubbed a fist in gentle circles on Bruce’s back and the weeping cracked into something loud and ugly and desperate. He shook under Dev’s hand and Dev kept rubbing circles. The scars under Bruce’s dress shirt were raised in some places and pitted in others, ridges dipping into valleys, and Dev could trace them through the thin material. Bruce hadn’t bothered to wear a long-sleeved underlayer and he wondered if it had been pain or distraction that had kept him from putting one on.
There were times the world was a shining, gorgeous thing, full of people taking their first steps again, and mountain wind pushing through the yielding branches of summer trees, and fire-lit rooms on rainy afternoons.
Then there were times he was so furious at the world it took his breath away, flooded him with acidic anger at the injustice of things. It gnawed with corrosive force until he had to wash it out with a shaky gulp of air between clenched teeth before it spilled onto anyone else.
He had a pair of tightly rolled gym shorts in the medkit, for emergencies, bundled with military precision— one useful skill he’d gotten from his da making him pack and repack a bag until he was close enough to satisfied. Preparation had always been a way of life but now an excessive degree was second nature. He was out of his trousers and into the shorts as fast as he could manage, reluctant for even that span where his hand stopped the hopefully soothing movement between Bruce’s shoulders.
It was hard to tell if it was soothing because the sobs wracking Bruce had only grown more desolate and forlorn.
“Up,” Dev said, more as warning than as an order, when he pushed Bruce up enough so that he could sit on the couch. Bruce more or less fell onto his lap, curling in every way— his legs curled up against the back of the couch, his face curled into Dev’s stomach, his fingers curled into his palm and the fabric of Dev’s shirt.
The animalistic, wounded whine in Bruce’s throat when Dev began stroking his hair was a scalpel dragged through Dev’s gut.
“You sodding idiot,” Dev muttered, tightening his arm around Bruce’s shoulders. His frame was too thin, too hollow, and Dev sniffed. “Wayne. We’ve got to get fluids into you.”
For several minutes, Dev pulled his fingers through Bruce’s hair while Bruce struggled to calm the sobbing. It was a slow process, punctuated by fits and starts, and Dev’s shushing became a kind of litany.
“Shh, you’re alright, mate, you’ll be alright,” Dev kept saying, until Bruce’s breathing evened into a rattling wheeze. Still, he didn’t move.
“I’ve got to ring Alfie,” Dev said. “The sooner we run tests, the better.”
“I can’t…I don’t think I can…” Bruce said, a thin note of hysteria creeping into his tone. “Get up. I can’t.”
“It’s a good thing my New Year’s resolution was lifting until I could lug your arse, then,” Dev said, scrubbing gently at the nape of Bruce’s neck and leaving his hand pressed there. He moved it when Bruce shifted. “I can find a chair, if you like.”
“I’ll try again,” Bruce said, rolling so his face was turned upward. His eyes were closed, with deep shadows stamped under his eyes, even more pronounced while edged by puffy redness and the gray-newsprint pallor.
Dev’s slowly bleeding gut clenched and he had to bury the sensation to deal with later.
“Wayne,” he said, thinking you’re seriously ill, mate, this is sodding bad, whatever it is.
“Hnn?” Bruce answered, half-asleep.
“Nothing,” Dev said.
He reached for his mobile on top of the medkit, stretching fingers to snag it.
“Hullo, Alfie,” he said, when the older man answered. Bruce’s eyelids fluttered at the name and his breathing slowed. Dev tapped a button on the screen. “You’re on speaker, Alfie. Do you want the bad news or the good news, first?”
“The bad, I should think,” Alfred said.
“The bad is that your boy is sick,” Dev said bluntly. “The good is that he’s with me and I’m bringing him home. I need a bit of work done, though, while we’re on our way.”
It was a sign of how often Alfred dealt with emergencies and sudden changes that he didn’t falter on the line.
“I’m quite at your disposal,” Alfred said calmly. “Tell me what you need.”
“It’s a bit of a list,” Dev warned. “If you need to write it down.”
“I’m ready,” Alfred said.
“Saline IV prepped, vials for a full blood work panel, oxygen at the ready, boot the MRI and other diagnostic scanners, and uh,” Dev paused and snagged Bruce’s wrist and felt his pulse. “I’ll need to run an EKG.”
“Is that all?” Alfred asked mildly, any alarm hidden.
Dev studied Bruce, the unnatural thinness of his limbs in his clothes that hung on his frame, and he had to beat back a mix of panic and remorse at the decision.
“No,” Dev said. “An NG tube. There should be nutrient bags in the back fridge downstairs.”
“No,” Bruce mumbled. “Dev. No.”
“Kiran,” Alfred said, a new sharpness in his voice. “What is going on?”
“Wayne,” Dev said gently. “This one’s my call, mate. Alfie, we’ll be there in an hour. I’m not sure what yet, but nothing’s bleeding.”
“A minor consolation,” Alfred said dryly. “Master Bruce?”
“Hi, Al,” Bruce said weakly. “Sorry.”
“As you ought to be,” Alfred said. “But to yourself rather than me, I should think. I’ll see you soon, sir.”
When the call was ended, it was Bruce who sighed.
“He’s angry,” he said.
“Yes,” Dev agreed. “Rather a good bit, I should say, but not much at you.”
“I’m angry,” Bruce said, his voice raw. He blinked and his eyes struggled to focus properly, the pupils expanding and shrinking in jerking glitches before he was really looking up at Dev. “I’m angry and I’m frustrated and I’m tired of feeling like this. I was trying to…to not…it was the right thing to…”
“I know,” Dev said. “Let’s get you home and find out why it didn’t work.”
It took a second of maneuvering for Dev to get up first, but he hefted his medkit and then crouched to slide an arm around Bruce and help him up.
Bruce groaned low in his throat when he stood, and he swayed at first. A small gasp escaped him when he took a step forward, leaning heavily on Dev, and Dev halted.
“Hurts,” Bruce said. “Can make it.”
The progress to the lift was slow but steady, and Dev held Bruce up more and more as they went. If it hadn’t been for the thirty missing pounds it would have been harder, and the ease was its own kind of wound.
When they stopped on the lift, Bruce’s eyes were screwed tightly shut into bunched lines that would have been slick with tears if he wasn’t so dehydrated.
“Halfway there,” Dev said. “You’re a sodding wonder. Catch your breath.”
Bruce nodded and dropped his forehead to Dev’s shoulder until the lift door opened.
Tests, tests, and more tests, Dev thought. They’d figure this out and he’d tie Bruce to the bed if he had to, to make him stay put until he had recovered enough.
The thing that scared him was, the way Bruce was moving, he maybe wouldn’t have to.
If Tokyo had been a foggy blur of days in bed, home was an ocean.
There were times that he was gently adrift, only partially aware of the uncomfortable sensation of being poked and prodded and moved. He woke to find a tube down his throat, a pinch in his arm, diodes taped to his skin and they were separate from him. He had a sort of numbed distance to those things.
When he woke inside the MRI machine he blinked and knew enough to not move, had a vague scrap of memory of being told what was going on, and the sensation that he should be afraid. He was not. He drifted away again, on the endless, cradling lull of deep tide.
Some sensations were not unpleasant, but they weren’t exactly pleasant, either. They were just there, merely facts of physical interaction: a palm on his brow, fingers in his hair, a hand on his wrist. He hummed and moved toward them if he could, little anchors holding him in spots of sunlight or shade.
This was much better than before.
Then, the ocean turned violent.
He woke to crashing waves and thunder and roaring wind, cracking in his head and arcing pain like lightning through every part of him. The room was dark except for a lamp, and whatever noise he’d made upon waking had alerted Alfred.
“There, my boy,” came that quiet, steady voice, the ballast of his entire life. It settled him in the midst of the tossing waves. A cool cloth swiped his skin and a calloused thumb wiped tears from the corners of his eyes. “We’ve let the medication wear off a bit. Kiran needs to speak with you, and you’ll need to be alert, hm? Then we’ll let you rest again.”
“Alright,” Bruce rasped, his aching knuckles flexing and relaxing as his hand, with a mind of its own, hunted for something.
“I’m going to fetch him. I’ll be back in only a moment.”
Then, he was alone in the room. He could barely move, and it frightened him that he couldn’t tell if it was pain or weakness holding him still. There wasn’t an inch of him that didn’t hurt down to the bone. He closed his eyes and tried to escape, but relief was elusive and just beyond his grasp.
When he opened his eyes again, Dev was there, kneeling. His arms were crossed on top of the bed, and his chin rested on them, as he stared at Bruce. His mouth had a sad twist and Bruce wanted to do something to make that expression go away. All he did was stare back.
“Hullo,” Dev said. “I’ve ruled out brain tumor. I thought you’d want to know.”
“Oh,” Bruce said. “That’s…good.”
For some reason, the relief was tempered by disappointment.
“Then, what,” Bruce asked. He clamped down on a wave of nausea from the pain in his legs.
“I’m still working,” Dev said. “You’ve got an alarming vitamin B12 deficiency. I’ve started some, but I’m not sure why it’s not absorbing at the rate it should. I’m ruling things out but it’s going slowly, so I’m sorry. Pain medication could make the wait a bit easier-- it’s what kept you still during tests-- but we’ve a problem. You with me, then?”
Bruce swallowed hard and nodded.
“You’ve built such a tolerance you need a higher dosage. Unfortunately, you’ve lost a good bit of weight, and so quickly, your metabolism hasn’t quite adjusted. I can medicate you, but it’s going to start straining your kidneys, and at the dose to keep you comfortable for more than a day or two, it’s going to mean withdrawal at the other end. Weaning you off slowly means longer stress on your kidneys. I won’t do it. So you’ve a choice to make, or you can ask me to make it for you. You can try to ride out pain now, or you can deal with withdrawal later, and I’m sorry that I don’t know which one will be the harder option.”
“Now,” Bruce rasped, even though his gut said no. Everything in him said no, he couldn’t, there was no way.
“You’re certain?” Dev asked, an eyebrow slightly raised. “Absolutely?”
“Yes,” Bruce said, though again there was that internal no.
“It isn’t Venom, Bruce,” Alfred said gently, leaving off the honorific. Bruce hadn’t even realized he was in the room, on the other side of the room. “It won’t be as severe.”
There was a look that went from Dev to Alfred, and Bruce knew because he was watching Dev’s face, but it did nothing to sway him.
“No,” Bruce said. “I can…handle it.”
Can’t, his brain said, twined with ache.
“Right, then,” Dev said, lifting his chin and unfolding his arms. He patted Bruce’s hand. “If you change your mind, say the word. And I reserve the right to bloody overrule you if I think it’s impeding your healing rate. Alfie, some heating pads might be in order. I’ll get ice.”
Bruce had already cried until his chest felt empty, but he wanted to cry again the moment Dev stood and stepped back. He wanted to say that he’d already changed his mind, that this wasn’t something he could do, and still his tongue was held by some stronger force. The fire washed over and through him, like oil burning on the sea, and the conversation Dev and Alfred had by the door was so muted he only caught snatches.
worried chronic MS impossible exhausted no.
Then, he blinked and Alfred was adjusting heating pads on his thighs and perching on the edge of the bed. Slender, strong fingers cupped his face.
“You stubborn boy,” Alfred said, rueful and fond. He pressed a kiss to Bruce’s brow and then held Bruce’s nearest hand in both of his own. “Hold on to me, then, when you need it. We’ll ride this one out together, hm?”
“M’sorry, Al,” Bruce said, and it was now that tears filled his eyes again.
“Whatever for?” Alfred asked with a frown.
“I don’t know,” Bruce said. “This.”
“My sweet boy,” Alfred said gently. “You have always been too hard on yourself. This is the opposite of deserved, do you understand me?”
“Hn,” Bruce said, shifting on the mattress. It shot fire up his spine and his breath stuttered. The syllable it forced out was simply, “Al.”
“I’m right here,” Alfred said.
“It’s bad, isn’t it,” Bruce said. “It’s not. It doesn’t get better.”
He hated the pleading whine in his voice but he could only manage so much control.
Alfred’s answer was a long silence, and then, “It will, Master Bruce. I’ll make certain of it.”
It was a child’s reassurance, an offering of a promise only a child could believe.
Bruce believed him.
The ocean storm raged, and he lost track of time. Storms at sea had no days or nights, after all, merely the long, charcoal sky of cloud and rain. There were tiny reprieves that were not the dulling of pain or misery, but merely markers of the passage of hours. Distinct moments where another test with currents was being run on his muscles, Alfred’s face over his while an NG tube was replaced after an hour of vomiting into a bucket, an icepack held to the back of his neck while he clutched at his aching head.
The constant was Alfred. Every time he woke, every long stretch of consciousness, Alfred was there soothing and talking and sometimes even singing. He sang most when he thought Bruce was too out of it to bother with talking, and he sang as if he had no audience, and the melodies were like a rope in the storm, lashing him to the deck so he didn’t lose his footing and drown.
Slowly, very slowly, the tempest ebbed. There was a gradual progression, horrifically sluggish, toward minutes and hours not dominated by the pain. He took the NG tube out himself, with shaking hands and arms that he could barely lift, and gagged so hard he puked again. Dev shouted a bit about that, but didn’t insist on putting it back in. Bruce managed to hold down broth, and cranberry Jello, and toast.
Alfred read to him then, filling the creeping days with poetry and old pulp crime fiction, when Bruce could finally breathe but still was weak as a kitten. It tamped down the anger at how useless he felt, being able to listen to Alfred read and chat at him.
Then, one day, he spent most of the day sitting up in bed, mentally present enough to wonder what had changed so that he would feel better. He watched Alfred quietly, as Alfred’s mouth shaped the words from the page into the air. He felt a pang of guilt when he noticed how exhausted Alfred looked, in his slippers and rolled shirtsleeves.
“Al,” he said, his voice scratchy.
Alfred stopped reading and met his gaze.
“Hm?”
“Do you…do you want to lie down. You look tired.”
Alfred pressed his lips together, regarding him, and then whatever he was going to say was severed by a yawn he covered with one hand.
“You’re tired,” Bruce said. “Lie down.”
Whatever quality his voice and bearing had in that moment, it worked. Alfred didn’t argue. He simply toed off the slippers and stretched out on the empty side of the bed, beneath the covers. Bruce tucked them around his narrow shoulders and made a noise, a little pleased hum, that brought a smile to Alfred’s lips even as his eyes were already closed.
Bruce leaned against the headboard. The world outside the window was basked in midday sun, bright and gloom-breaking. He could hear birds chittering and calling to each other and for a long time, he did nothing but listen and bask in the sensation of not being distracted by hurt. Weakness, he could recover from. He could rebuild muscle, he knew that.
When Dev poked his head in, and saw Alfred, he nearly left again right away, but Bruce called to him, low and hushed.
“Dev.”
Dev took the chair beside the bed.
“Hullo. How’re things.”
“Things are…better,” Bruce said, with a tired and wry grin. “I’ve been worse.”
“I’ll bloody say,” Dev said, exhaling. He slouched back in the chair.
“What was it?” Bruce said. “If you’ve told me, I don’t remember.”
“Uh. Well. I thought for a bit it was something called Lambert-Eaton myasthenic syndrome. Was bloody sure, actually, and nearly stopped there. But one of the tests was inconsistent, and I was sodding pissed at the idea anyway, so I kept looking. It was a good thing I did. You had a mutated form of Borrelia burgdorferi in your blood. Something like Lyme’s, and it had gone chronic— I’ve no idea how fast it worked, but my guess is that it damaged your gut so much you stopped absorbing B12.”
“Mutated,” Bruce said.
“Mm.” Dev nodded. “Kent’s taken a sample for tests. He’s going to see if it was a genuine mutation or something extraterrestrial. In the meantime, you responded to treatment after a sodding ton of antibiotics, so you’ll be eating a lot of yogurt for a while.”
“As long as I can eat,” Bruce murmured, closing his eyes. This was the part he hated and didn’t have the energy to hate as much as he wanted; the rapid tiring and need for sleep after sleep.
“Another day and I’ll bring ice cream.”
“Is this the part where I’m well enough for you to yell at me for not telling you sooner?” Bruce asked, tease and dare alike in his voice. Alfred snored softly at his elbow and Bruce was a monster, some Grendel-like serpent, for suffocating however many days it had been from Alfred’s life.
“This is the part where I tell you I’m bloody glad you’re alive,” Dev said earnestly, and Bruce met his intent, dark brown gaze. “This is the part where I tell you I’m sodding glad we’re not currently working out a plan for lifelong management of a degenerative disease that usually ends in lung cancer.”
“Hnn,” Bruce said, his hand finding Alfred’s beneath the covers and holding it, for some reason he couldn’t quite say.
“He was a sodding wreck, you know,” Dev added, nodding to Alfred. This whole time they’d been speaking in whispers but it was only now that Bruce realized that, recognized how still and silent the room was at the edges. “I’m not telling you so you feel worse; the opposite, actually. He loves you, you know, more than his own life. If you work on hating yourself for being sick while you work on recovering, if those go sodding hand in hand, that will hurt him more.”
“Oh,” Bruce said, the furrow cutting through his brow. He looked down at Alfred. “Really?”
“Absolutely,” Dev said. He stood and ruffled Bruce’s hair. “Rest. And if you’re relieved, if you feel good, just bloody enjoy it. That’ll be a balm to him.”
“Huh,” Bruce said. “Alright.”
“And you’re not going anywhere without a chair for a week,” Dev added. “You’ve a solid month of recovery ahead of you. I’d give anyone else three, but well, you’re you, Wayne.”
“I can walk.”
“Then I’ll follow you,” Dev said firmly. “For when you can’t.”
“I thought you were working up to carrying me,” Bruce said, with a smirk. He can’t quite keep the weariness out of his voice but he thinks it’s clear he’s teasing, so he leaves it at that.
“I’m bloody terrible at New Year’s Resolutions,” Dev replied, with a sharp grin. “I’ll get that ice cream now, actually, if you’re feeling up to it.”
“Only if it’s chocolate,” Bruce said. “And I can’t promise it won’t make me sick.”
“That’s a risk worth taking, then,” Dev said. “I’ll be back with a cup.”
“Not the pint?”
“I’m not shouting but I’ve still got a sadist streak,” Dev said. “Bloody hell, I’ve not gone wholly soft.”
In direct contradiction to this, he hesitated a moment and then leaned and hugged Bruce tightly, his chin buried in Bruce’s hair.
“You are strictly ordered to never do that again,” he said. “It scared the sodding shite out of me.”
“Noted,” Bruce said, clasping the arm around his shoulders.
Dev left the room, closing the door behind him.
Bruce thought he might fall asleep, with Alfred’s warm hand in his, but he looked toward the window again and instead just listened to the robins.