Alfred has a sadistic streak hidden under that all that old-world polish.
Sunlight falls across his face like a slap, and Bruce curls away from it, flailing an arm out in search of a pillow to hide under. There isn't one. He fumbles farther, and cracks one eye to find that there aren't any goddammed pillows on the bed. In fact, there isn't anything: he's lying in a pair of boxer shorts on a fitted sheet, and his butler is a looming shadow in a bow tie above him, white hair backlit and glowing in the daylight. He suffers a vivid flashback to fifth grade, being dragged whining and cranky out of twisted blankets and bad dreams, stuffed into the shower, dressed in time for school. The memory knocks the protest he's about to make right out of his mouth, and he blinks up at Alfred, speechless and sleep-stupid.
"Rise and shine, master Wayne, it's a new day."
"Where are the blankets?"
"Heading for the wash. More likely the bin, as I rather doubt they can be salvaged. I believe I'll look into crime scene clean-up operations for your laundry service, sir."
He's in for a long day.
He squints down at his scarred stomach, fingers sliding over the bandage, which has crumpled and warped in whatever gymnastics he performed in his sleep. Either that or in the short-lived fight he had with a would-be mugger on the corner of 33rd and Washburn on the way back to the penthouse at 4 am. He should probably have stitched it shut himself before falling into bed, but his limbs had been slow and heavy by the time he'd gotten the suit off, and in the living room Tweedle was stirring, getting ready to trade shifts with his partner.
Dry, tacky blood smears his skin from ribs to hip bone. The sheet under him looks like it belongs at some of the crime scenes he's visited. Bruce pushes himself up on an elbow, frowning, pressing in where he can feel the edges of the wound. It hurts, but not nearly as much as he'd expect. Alfred leans a little closer, examines the mess, and taps one stub-nailed finger on the rolled edge of the bandage.
Then he rips it off like a magician doing the old tablecloth trick, taking a hundred fine tiny hairs with it. Bruce stuffs his knuckles in his mouth, glaring.
"Best done quickly, sir," Alfred says with no sympathy whatsoever.
It's not bleeding anymore, which is probably good, Bruce decides. But it looks ragged and swollen, and something pulls inside when he moves his leg- so there is some muscle damage. He can't believe he didn't notice that last night when he was rappelling down the side of the MCU.
He can't believe it doesn't hurt more right now.
"Looks like Batman's getting a little slow. Maybe you ought to think about taking a night off, sir."
"There were seven of them, Alfred."
"Time was, seven thugs couldn't hardly make Batman break a sweat. Now you come home with holes in you and ruin the bedding. Will you be wanting breakfast, master Wayne?"
Oh yes, Alfred's pissed off.
Bruce eyes him, mostly naked, sleep crusted in his eyes and dried sweat making his hair arc stiffly off his forehead in a way that probably makes him impossible to take seriously right now. His butler is as smooth-faced as always, but there's a shadow in his firm gaze, and new lines have drawn themselves at the edges of his eyes and mouth. Alfred's getting older. It's not a new thought -he grew up with the man- but he must still be half-asleep, because thinking it right now while he's shivering in the cool air and trying to make the rest of his neurons fire fills him with pure, unreasoning panic.
Fear's something he wrapped both his hands around a long time ago, but this is a bit different.
"Time was Batman didn't have to dodge the police while fighting crime," Bruce says coolly, and pushes himself out of bed, because Alfred's going to sit right here and nag until he does, he just knows it. The twitch of a pale eyebrow tells him he just inadvertently made Alfred's point for him.
Christ, he needs coffee. Why isn't there coffee? He shouldn't be forced to speak coherently in his own defense at -he glances at the clock. Freezes. Then he turns and glowers.
"Eight am?" he says. "I've only been asleep for a few hours."
"Four, technically, sir."
"It's morning."
"Funny how that keeps coming after night, sir, isn't it. Mr. Fox wanted to speak with you about the drugs stolen from Gotham's hospitals. Perhaps you could ask him about improvements in Batman's armor while he's here."
It's too early for withering British sarcasm.
Bruce rubs his face, contemplating pushups, but his left side looks like it might start leaking again if he tries and he's starting to worry a little about how numb it is. He's had knife wounds before. They're in a class of their own for pain, a burrowing, hard kind that feels like the blade is still trapped in the flesh, except he knows for a fact that actually feels far worse. He presses on the red, raised skin around the cut again.
"Looks like you had a hard night, Mr. Wayne," Lucius drawls, and Bruce sighs, defeated. Even Batman has no hope of taking on Lucius and Alfred at the same time.
"Yeah," he mutters. "Don't suppose you've come up with something that blocks bullets and knives yet."
"Sure. We have a tank in R&D that ought to do the trick." Lucius tosses a briefcase on the bed and sticks his hands in the pockets of his creased khakis, the picture of casual Southern elegance. Bruce remembers he's in his underwear and casts a desperate glance around his bedroom, hoping clothes will magically appear before him. A bathrobe. Something. His gaze hits the mirror and bounces away in horror. He's still got traces of black paint around his eyelids. His hair looks outraged to find itself on his head. He's a little appalled it's there himself, to be honest. Lucius usually waits in the living room.
He's definitely not in the living room now. He comes closer, peers at the knife wound. "That looks a little odd, Mr. Wayne," he says, managing to make getting stabbed sound like maybe having a funny-shaped mole appear on your back. Bruce is starting to feel fairly ridiculous. He snatches a bathrobe out of the closet as Lucius snaps his briefcase open and pulls out a swab kit.
It's a sad state of affairs, Bruce thinks, when his CEO feels it necessary to bring something like that along to morning meetings just in case.
"Mind?" Lucius murmurs, and swipes an overlong q-tip around the edge of the wound. Bruce sucks in a breath and doesn't flinch. "That hurt?"
"Not much."
Lucius straightens, gives him a cool, skeptical look. "So either you're slowly killing your response to pain, Mr. Wayne, or there's something a little sinister going on here, that about right?"
He really needs coffee. He folds the robe around himself. "I guess."
"Well, let's run this and see what pops, Mr. Wayne. In the meantime, I think you ought to have something for that."
Alfred approaches, holding a syringe.
"What do I need to know?" Bruce asks, flat and resigned. Lucius slides a sheet out of the briefcase, passes it over. Bruce gives it a quick look, just long enough to understand he's seeing molecular diagrams and lists of chemical compounds. It reminds him unpleasantly of trying to pass chem at Princeton: he always preferred physics, even when he was busy giving his professors reasons to fail him in spite of his full tuition. "It's too early for this. Can you please just give me the highlights?"
"Norucon, Mr. Wayne. Norucon and oxycontin. Those were the targets of the supply thefts at Gotham's hospitals."
Bruce eyes the syringe warily. "I know what oxy is. What's norucon?"
Lucius tips his head, folds his arms. "A muscle relaxant. They use it before surgery to prevent patients from moving while they're out. And the GCPD's crime lab has been finding traces of a new chemical compound present at what they're calling abandoned meth labs, and also a few crime scenes: that compound is oxy and norucon. Not easy to make. Somebody who knows that they're doing has cooked up a new drug, Mr. Wayne, a drug meant to slow a person down, keep them from knowing they're hurt. Or how badly they're hurt, anyway. Seems like there are only a few uses for something like that, really."
More than one new player in town, apparently.
Unless his mysterious faceless man in the Narrows is also a chemist. It seems unlikely. Better chance faceless is working with the chemist, or for the chemist. Bruce chews his lip and thinks, running over the forensics gathered from the last few drug deals Batman cleaned out, the odd behavior of Rugetti's grunts.
What the chemist is after is a question, and at this point, he's already got plenty of questions he needs to answer. Wayne's hairbrained babbling at the charity ball may actually in handy: the GCPD crime lab is definitely going to need a serious upgrade. Batman may need some backup. He hates it when he needs backup.
People always seem to get killed when he needs backup.
He's clutching the paper too hard; it's crumpled. He sets it on the bed and stares down at his side, up at Lucius, who has a faint, amused glint in his eye that says he's already worked out the solution, but also the familiar grim set to his jaw that means he doesn't think he's won the day quite yet. He points at the syringe. "So that..."
"Neostigmine and naloxin. Reverses the effects."
"Good thing I've got you on my side," Bruce quips, but it doesn't come out as light as he planned. Out of the corner of his eye he sees the look Lucius and Alfred trade, one that he's caught them exchanging more and more in the last month: but it's not worth wondering what they're on about. He's got a lot to do. Not much of it can be done from this penthouse.
"I think Wayne Enterprises needs to make a donation to the GCPD."
"The forensic lab? Oh, I think we can find some old equipment lying around they might be willing to take." Trust Lucius to know exactly what he plans. He gets another one of those looks: sly, from the side, but with worry hiding behind that cool intelligence. "And with Bruce Wayne under their protection, well, it only makes sense they should have the best."
That's as good a reason as any, but just the idea of playing it out, of press conferences and board meetings and grinning until his face hurts, of Gordon wearing that gentle, impatient look that says he's too kind to give away that he thinks he's dealing with a hopeless idiot, makes Bruce tired and irritated. Getting stabbed with a drug-coated knife seems more appealing. He swallows a sigh, sits on the edge of the bed so Alfred can slide the needle into the muscle beside the wound. Alfred's expression doesn't change while he pushes the plunger home. The new lines at Alfred's eyes are still kicking things loose inside him, so he stares out the window instead. "I don't suppose this makes me immune to it in the future?"
"Not remotely, Mr. Wayne." Lucius is dipping the swab into a test tube, where it turns the fluid inside to a vivid pinkish color. He grimaces, dumps the contents into a container and packs everything into a small biohazard container that goes right back in the suitcase, and dear god, the man does come prepared. "Coated the knife with it," he mutters. "Not a very effective means of delivery, which is probably why you didn't drop like a stone. But you're going to want to carry some of my concoction around with you until we find out who's doing this."
The we is heartening.
Lucius has left a handful of needle-free syringes on the bare bed. Sunlight sparks off the pale amber fluid inside them. "I have some leads," Bruce says.
Not many, though. He sees several nights chasing criminals and dodging cops ahead of him, and the thought wakes him up a little more.
"I'll bet you do, Mr. Wayne. I'll bet you do. Come by sometime this week and we'll run through a few improvements to your wardrobe. A man should be at his best when he goes out for a night on the town in this city."
Nothing ever knocks Lucius off balance. Lucius strolls out the bedroom door like he's in a park taking in the view, an admirable ease, a man pleased with his morning's work.
"I suppose I'd better stitch myself up," Bruce murmurs. It's becoming very clear that something was hiding the depth of the damage last night: he can feel every centimeter of it now. Laying down seems like an appealing way to spend the rest of the day. "Is Candi still here?"
"I saw her out an hour ago, sir. She was very impressed with your commitment to your handball team."
He pauses on the way to the shower; hangs his head. Handball. Alfred has all sorts of ways of getting revenge, but the alibis he creates for Bruce's endless disappearances are his favorite.
"That's very droll, Alfred," Bruce mutters, and hears a soft hum of satisfaction behind him before he shuts the door.