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James took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and pressed the button on the gate. It’d taken him mere minutes to find Alfred Pennyworth once he’d started looking. Even after all these years and even given how well he know Alfred could hide if he wanted it; it’d been a simple matter of slipping a couple dollars into an online background search tool. Tax returns, two cell phones, an address.
It took surprisingly longer than expected for someone to answer on the little intercom attached to the wrought iron gate. Long enough standing in the stirring leaves, cold November air swirling about his ankles, that he almost gave up and returned to Gotham proper for a night in a hotel.
When the voice came across the line, he found himself smiling, reminiscing, sinking into an age-old memory like it was yesterday. The darkened corner of a pub, just enough alcohol in their system to make it easy, and something like hero-worship fueling his blunt confessions. It was probably a little odd that after all these years it was the twinkle in Alfred’s eyes, the way he smiled, the laughter on the air at some of James’ confessions that he remembered most fondly and not all the things that had followed. But no one had ever accused James of being like everyone else. Quite the opposite, in fact.
It took a second prompt of, “James?” for him to reel in a breath and look up at the camera. He was more than certain how pleased he was showed on his face as he waved up at the little blinking light and the smoky glass. “Alfred.”
The gate clicked open a moment later and James slipped through it, shut it carefully behind himself. He’d head things about this place; about the way Wayne was a billionaire and reclusive and a little on the odd side. But the touches of things he could see on his way up the gravel drive to the manor left him with the sensation of something other. Less reclusive odd-ball and more secret-to-hide and it left him wondering just what Alfred’s real job here was. All outward appearances pointed to butler, but he sincerely doubted some pieces of Alfred’s past were so easily shed. God knew his wouldn’t be any easier.
He barely had his feet on the short set of steps up to the door before the manor door creaked open and he got his first glimpse of Alfred after so many years. Never in his life had someone so fully embodied the phrase takes my breath away than Alfred did. Aged like a fine wine, all salt n’ pepper hair and properly dressed gentleman. He got his feet moving up the last few steps, hefted the strap of his bag a little further up on his shoulder, and held out his hand despite desperately wanting to do so many other things instead.
Alfred grasped his hand with a murmur of, “Hello, old friend,” and tugged him in for a one-armed, back-patting brand of hug.
When they stepped apart, Alfred slipped back inside the manor doors and ushered him in, through the dimly lit entry hall and into a little atrium. The remnants of breakfast sat on the table, pushed to the side, but two steaming cups of tea sat waiting. He took the offered seat, slipping his pack off and wrapping his hands around the mug when Alfred pushed it toward him and settled across from him.
“So many questions...”
James smiled into his cup, taking a sip, pleased to find Alfred had remembered earl grey with a touch of lavender was his favorite. “I’d suppose so, after so long.” He indulged in another sip before placing the mug back down on the table and straightening up, crossing his legs neatly one over the other, and getting to the point. “I’ve retired. Passed on the old name and job to someone whose joints hurt less and body still works how it’s supposed to. Figured if anyone knew how to settle down after the lives we’ve lived, it’d be you.”
The slight hint of sadness in Alfred’s smile told James a story long before Alfred’s words tried to erase it. “Doubt the life of a butler is for you, James. Can you imagine answering a door for someone else’s home and saying ‘Bond, James Bond’?”
The little dig made James snort and it was with a smile that he offered, “I could answer the door double-oh-seven, but I doubt anyone would like that, least of all a certain unnamed agency.”
“No doubt.”
They sat silently for a few moments before James set his tea cup back down and leaned forward, inappropriately bracing his forearms on the table, gaze rapt on Alfred. “What’s the truth of it? What job do you really have here?”
Behind him, the whisper of someone intentionally trying to let him know they were there despite him having no other inkling they’d arrived. Alfred’s quiet, “Master Bruce,” telling him who it was. Before he could even move to stand, Bruce was waving him back down into his chair.
“No need. Stay seated, Mr. Bond.” James watched as he lifted an iron chair like it was nothing at all and placed it near silently back on the ornate tiles. He settled astride it, leaning against the back and once more James got the impression of something far deeper than simply some odd-ball guy with a whole bag of trauma. He also got the impression he was being shown these pieces for a reason. “Did you meet your replacement? A little young I think, but competent.”
Alfred’s intake of breath sounded a lot like a warning was going to follow it, but James beat him to it. “I did, very briefly. When it’s time to go, we... go. Usually in a body bag, which I’m fortunate enough to have escaped. Quit before it got to that point.”
“It’s good to know our limits.” Bruce wasn’t even looking at him, choosing instead to pick at the sleeve of his overly large sweater.
“It is.” He silenced the rest of his thoughts on the situation. On how he was now questioning where, exactly, Bruce’s limits were or if Alfred had actually retired.
“What exactly are you doing here, Mr. Bond?” Bruce’s voice held an edge to it and James almost felt more like the question was ‘what are your intentions with Alfred’ and he wanted to laugh.
He swallowed the urge down. “Men like Alfred and I don’t do well puttering around and doing nothing in retirement.” He was growing more and more certain Alfred, in fact, wasn’t retired. “I thought I’d see how Alfred’s managing it, learn a thing or two...” he glanced up at Alfred, let a soft little smile grace his lips, “rekindle an old relationship.” He said it like people usually said friendship, but he meant it so much deeper than that and he could see that it impacted how he meant for it to by the soft aversion of Alfred’s gaze, the tamped down smile at the corners of his lips. Still, he wasn’t here to out his old flame.
Bruce’s succinct, “I see,” nearly had James spitting his tea back into his cup. For all the words Bruce didn’t speak, he implied a thousand others. The words told him he understood all of the implications in every single sentence James had just spoken. Never in his life had he been confronted with someone who spoke so much with so few words.
Standing, Bruce reached past Alfred and snatched up the remaining piece of toast despite Alfred’s little swipe at his hand. He returned the chair to where it had been, toast clenched in his teeth, and then bit off a hunk, chewed as he regarded James. Once he’d swallowed, he simply said, “I trust your instincts, Alfred,” and then left just as quietly as he’d arrived.
James blinked after him and it took Alfred saying his name twice for him to return to the present from his swirling thoughts.
“You understand some things should not be repeated, I’m sure...”
“Naturally.” James finished off his tea and, working off a gut feeling, stood, slinging his pack over his shoulder again. “Why don’t you show me instead of tell me.”
Five minutes found him standing inside a cave, in the midst of a million cables, bright screens, and at least eight projects he couldn’t even fathom what they were. It was like a mix of the IT guys and Q smeared all over the work benches and he started to wonder just what level of genius Bruce Wayne really was.
It was only seeing a set of Batarangs sitting neatly on the edge of one of the tables that pushed him over into understanding: Bruce Wayne was that kind of genius. The kind that put their life on the line for others, who got things done, who tried desperately to save a city from itself.
“Men like us don’t retire,” Alfred offered quietly from behind him. “Our missions find us in the end.”
Turning, James rested his rear against the edge of the computer table and lowered his pack to the floor as he gazed around the cave. There were so many things he could see this place being, so many improvements, and from the edges of his vague knowledge of The Batman, he itched to get his hands on Bruce, update his training, his moves, pepper his arsenal with some ideas from the tech he’d been using in the last few years. He had the inkling that Q wouldn’t mind helping an old friend in the name of justice.
Gripping the edge of the table, he smiled up at the stalactites and the flutter of bat wings. “That they do, Alfred... that they do.”
---
It took precisely four days for the past to rush in on them. Four days in which James encouraged Bruce into trusting him enough to let him make suggestions and allow him to sit by Alfred’s side while he was out there on the streets. Four days before he found himself ogling Alfred’s suit-clad ass as he bent over to dust a lower shelf. He was supposed to be changing the sheets in the guest bedroom, playing at the same little butler ruse Alfred was, but he'd never been real good at staying undercover. Particularly when it wasn’t interesting.
Alfred straightened, pulled his vest back into place, and cast a glance over his shoulder. “We haven’t talked about the pub.”
Of course, he knew. Knew how much that one night had been living in James’ veins for all these years and how much it wanted to be free within these new walls.
Abandoning the top sheet and comforter, James settled on the edge of the bed, fingers on the softest sheets he’d ever felt, eyes shining with memories of the past. Whispered confessions, laughing teases, the breath of wheat and barley and sex. He could still feel Alfred’s touch, the way it felt to be pressed against the cold tiles in the garishly bright bathroom, the slide of another man deep inside for the first time in his life.
There was a part of him that could blame that for why he had never forgotten it. Reasonable to never forget the first experience of any kind. But the other part whispered that there was something more, that there was a reason he’d set his feet to stone and plank and found his way across a whole ocean in search of Alfred and no one else.
“I’ve never forgotten that night.”
James watched Alfred carefully place the duster along the already pristine shelf, the way he left his body language open and loose. He felt the words before they ever exited his companion’s mouth. “Nor have I.”
“I think about it all the time.” He swallowed, leaned back onto his hands, and if he were being honest, he was inviting something here. A glance, a certain flick of the eyes down his body. It was far more subtle than anything else he’d ever tried, but this Alfred he’d been learning the past four days seemed far more the subtle type of guy. “I won’t lie about how many others there’s been-“
“For the job, naturally,” Alfred intoned, a smirk in his voice, and James grunted.
“For the job... to forget the job. It is what it is. Point being, I haven’t forgotten you in all of that. Odd thing about it, though... I’ve remembered the smaller things first. Your smile, your laugh, the way your hand felt against my own under the table. All that before the rest.”
James glanced up, held Alfred’s gaze for a moment; the soft expression, something his mother would have called besotted. “In all these years, I’ve never once told Bruce a word of our past. All the same, he came to me yesterday and asked if we were going to keep dancing around our past or do something about it. I was quite under the impression he was tired of our furtive glances and staunch refusal to speak about it.” Alfred smiled fondly, shaking his head as he pushed away from the bookshelf and came to stand in front of James. “Bruce dislikes it when people don’t get to the point.”
Smirking, James leaned back enough to be inviting, spread his thighs just so, “Sounds familiar, Alfie.”
Sliding one knee up on the bed between James’ thighs, Alfred leaned in closer. “Mmm... perhaps some fraction of me may have rubbed off on him.”
“Perhaps,” James echoed amicably, despite the teasing laughter in his tone. He reached up, curled his fist in the pristine, pressed lines of Alfred’s vest, and pushed himself further back on the bed, drawing Alfred with him. Wetting his lips, James arched just enough to gain contact, breathing out, “Still got it, old man?”
Alfred’s quiet rumble of, “You’re one to talk,” slid across James’ senses just the same as the spike of sensation of Alfred’s hand in his long-whitened hair.
Their lips met and James’ world stilled. The frantic flutter of his mind, the ever-winding cogs of a thousand honed processes ground to a halt, leaving him free. His hands shifted, smoothed over starched cuffs and pressed lines and quietly aged musculature, memorizing who Alfred was now.
Alfred trailed kisses down his neck, his fingertips unfastening the long row of buttons of his shirt until he had enough open to shift down and explore there instead. His hands busied themselves with his pants, right to the point just the way James liked it. He’d loved it then and he loved it now, had been looking forward to someone getting him like this again.
He arched as Alfred’s tongue found and laved over his nipple, as his teeth grazed against skin still kissed by the last remnants of a final mission’s sun. It took considerable effort to actually acknowledge his shoes hitting the floor, his pants sliding off his legs, Alfred’s oh-so-brief absence and return. Took less to wrap his legs around Alfred’s suit-clad hips and draw him in close enough to feel the evidence of his arousal pressing against his hip.
With a quiet sigh of, “Alfred,” James dug his heels in, desperate to keep him close now that he had him. Alfred’s lips slipping down his jawline, over day-old stubble, down to his throat splayed his legs back open again, and it was so very expected to find two wet digits against his hole. With a breathy laugh, James managed, “Still got the sleight of hand I see.”
Alfred’s soft rumble of, “Mystical space pocket,” made James release a breathless laugh as Alfred slid his fingers in, expertly searching out the most pleasant spot inside him and making him take in a shaky gasp a second later.
“Fuck,” James intoned and Alfred’s lips moved against his skin as he spoke, near-laughter in his voice, “Eloquent as always, Mr. Bond.”
“Spoken like ah, a man who thinks he knows...”
“Oh, I know, James.” Alfred’s fingertips pressed, massaged, eased over the best spot inside him until James was arching from the bed, thighs shaky, breath a fragile little thing in his chest. “Word gets around,” Alfred offered and James could only moan under the onslaught, somehow even more turned on by the fact that Alfred had clearly kept tabs on him.
Rocking into Alfred’s touch, against his fingers, James arched his neck, tugging against the hold Alfred still had on his hair. His cock dribbled precum against his abdomen with each swipe of Alfred’s fingers, a lazy little river of it sliding over his hipbone to mess the newly changed sheets. Even as James curled his fingers tighter in Alfred’s clothing, he spared a thought for the bed he’d been changing and how pleased he was that this was the room he’d been given.
Alfred’s fingers slid free of his body, left his hair, and the crinkle of a foil packet informed James where this was going. Legs spreading wide, he lay there panting, waiting as he gazed up at the one man James had never forgotten. Their eyes met when Alfred eased himself over James, hands flat on the bed on either side of him, and it was James who reached down between them to grasp Alfred’s cock and guide it home. He arched into it, groaned as his body stretched to accommodate it.
All it took was a somewhat desperate pant of, “Alfred I-“ for the hand to return to his hair, for Alfred’s soft rumble of, “I remember, James... trust me, I remember.” The sting of sensation slid through his nerves, down his spine, and James spared a thought for how incredibly, pathetically fast this was going to be. It was difficult for it not to be; all these years of thoughts spared and fantasies secreted away in the dead of the night. All these years of no one comparing.
The bed creaked beneath them, the headboard threatening to brush against the wall, but just far enough back it didn’t, and that, too, meant something. It spoke to Alfred’s meticulous detail, to a man who planned for his guests, to the potential he had known this was coming.
The hand in his hair tightened, pulled harder, left him arching up harder and harder until he was trembling, muscles stretched to straining. Alfred’s breath of, “Cum,” a quiet command, shook James completely apart. With a cry, he lost it, hips bucking, Alfred’s now-frantic thrusts filling him so deliciously, again and again.
Only when Alfred stilled deep inside him, his cock twitching, a quiet groan giving him away, did James’ body start to settle, start to ease back down toward the bed.
On the other side of it, both trying to catch their breath, both a little hazy, drifting, all James could do was draw Alfred close and repeat the simple words of their past. “It’s quite the lives we live, Pennyworth.”
Alfred’s amusement was exceedingly obvious when he returned, “So it is, Mr. Bond... so it is.”