MEMORY. -- young DG :)
send "MEMORY" for a memory my muse has involving yours (accepting)
"Master Richard...?"
An inquiring knock meets naught but pointed silence from the other side of the door - a not wholly unexpected response, considering the time of night, and yet it is one that still manages to set Alfred with pause; the absence begetting an eerie sense of disquiet, lingering in the manor's spacious halls and seeping slowly into the confines of an old man's mind, like damp through a crack in the boards.
Perhaps he might've been content, to think the young lad asleep in his bed, safe and at peace from whatever troubles all too often ail the waking - but then, he has not seen this house through enough hardship over the years that he cannot tell the good silences from the bad. To believe that he ever worries for nothing.
He knocks once more, knuckle rapping courteous if superflously against the hardwood a second time before he enters, despite, having twice tried and twice failed to garner so much the slightest acknowledgement. Certainly enough, there is no sight of the boy within his dimly lit space, or indeed, any indication that he had been there at all, if not for the small light by his bed illuminating an outline of unmade sheets, a chill breeze sweeping aimlessly through curtains by the balcony door ajar.
He finds him outside, climbed onto the roof. Little but a huddled silouette in the dark.
Against the open sky, he seems almost impossibly small.
"Ah. There you are."
There is a slight shift in the boy's form when he speaks, a minute inclination of a movement that Alfred is just barely able to discern with squinted eyes from his place down below; whether Grayson turns to look towards him or away, he could not say, but as the hush grows longer between them, it becomes evident it is as much of a note for his presence that he will recieve - the muted reception a stark contrast to boy's normally talkative demeanour, the spirited presence he carries as Robin.
But he once took to the stage, himself. And he knows a little something about masks.
"I don't suppose I could convince you to come down? I'm not sure the hydrangeas would quite cushion a fall from this height." Single hand rested idly along the stone railing, he muses with a glance between the gardens and the tiles, an ease to his tone even as a light crease settles onto an already weary brow. Another quiet shuffle is all he gets in turn, the figure seeming to shrink somehow further in on itself, arms wrapped around his knees in a rather half-hearted attempt to brace against the cold. A gentle wind, touching his skin like a whisper.
He sighs, straightens, and reaches for that ledge.
The clumbered ascent appears to invite more of a reaction, if only one of surprise; It is by no means as graceful or effortless as he's sure others of the house might readily demonstrate, but Alfred is nothing if not a man determined - and steady on his feet - feeling his way carefully up the exterior wall through the dark until he is at last able to heft himself over the edge with a short grunt of effort, continuing upwards until he can triumphantly slot himself down at Grayson's side along the top. They meet eyes, then; Wide circles looking up at him, a fragment of that clear bright blue visible by the reflection of the moon - before they falter, again, and fall away.
"...It's alright, son." He speaks softly within a breath, lifting an arm with the thought to place an assuring hand to the lad's shoulder - only to be intercepted in feeling the little one fall unceremoniously against his open side, wordlessly nestled. With his turn to be taken aback, the older man lingers, raised arm hovering above for just a moment, before his expression softens with another slow sigh, and he wraps them into the embrace.
There's no telling how long he's been out here, or how long they'll yet be, like this. But there's no rush for the morning. They have time.
"When you're ready."
