Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was late.

Two in the morning, as a matter of fact.

Jervis snapped from a light doze to full alertness. The front door had slammed shut, and that was what had awoken him.

His thoughts proceeded logically, to the fact that if it had now been shut, someone must have, at some point, opened it. So either he was no longer alone, or someone had just recently left. Both concerning, since he had nary a roommate to speak of.

Jervis had drifted off on his couch, as he occasionally did when he forgot how strong his sleeping pills could be. Oftentimes he would take them, head to the couch for some light reading, and then wake up eight hours later still feeling fuzzy. Not that he minded sleeping on the couch. It was a comfortable couch.

His heavy blue frock coat lay over the back of it. He drew it around his shoulders and stood up. A million thoughts swept through his mind. Robbers. Murderers. Batman. It could be anyone, with any intention. He could have even dreamed the sound of the door slamming. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d hallucinated loud noises when teetering the liminal line between awake and asleep.

There was a gun in the desk-drawer, only a few feet away. Jervis thought about getting it, but grew squeamish. If he shot someone, his life would get complicated. He had only now just stopped looking over his shoulder when heading to the supermarket, lest Batman be following him. If he murdered someone in his apartment, people would talk. He should be… Diplomatic. He had his cards. His hat and the band was on the desk.

Quietly, tip-toeing like a child trying to sneak a treat in the middle of the night, Jervis approached the desk and laid his hat on his head in a fluid, practiced motion. He picked up a handful of thin metal cards.

Now, the matter of the intruder. Jervis was not a stealthy man, or at least, he wouldn’t consider himself one. But he had the home field advantage. He knew how loud his footsteps would be on the floor. He knew how to navigate his apartment in the dark.

If the lack of thumps, curses, or light sources was any indication, so did his intruder. There was a concerning thought.

He tried not to hold onto it.

He passed by the kitchen and bathroom, ignoring the crawling fear settling over him and the shaky flood of adrenaline. The muted glow from the streetlights shone in through his kitchen window; Gotham’s eternal rain pounded against it, creating strange patterns of light and a soft hammering sound as it struck the glass.

It was cold in the silent apartment, but Jervis’s palms were sweaty in their grip around his cards. It was so easy to be afraid of the unknown. He was sure that if he just knew what it was, it wouldn’t be that bad.

There was a bloody smear on the bedroom door knob. Seeing it made him stop and genuinely consider packing up his stuff and leaving. He should’ve picked up the stupid damn gun.

He knocked. Lightly. He really didn’t want to breach the room without trying to communicate first.

“Jervis?” A hoarse, awful-sounding voice asked. Jervis recognized it.

He all but flung the door open, flicking the light on in the same motion. “Jonathan! Good lord, it’s been—”

Jonathan was standing over Jervis’s bed, fully dressed in the garb of the Scarecrow. There was a decidedly unhealthy amount of blood about his person.  

If he gets blood on my carpet it’ll never get out! Jervis’s mind yelled at him. The landlady will kill me!

“Bathtub,” Jervis cut himself off to say. Jonathan immediately made for the door like he had been waiting to be commanded, and Jervis hastily squeezed out into the hallway to let Jonathan through. “Door on the left—”

“I know,” Jonathan said.

Jervis struggled to recall whether Jonathan had been at this apartment before. His recent hidey-holes were all seedy little places that didn’t ask for your real name or a background check; their commonalities blurred them together. Cracked plaster, weird smell, constant setting-up of roach traps.

He couldn’t remember. Jonathan pushed his way into the bathroom.

“In the tub,” Jervis said, but he needn’t have troubled himself, because Jonathan was getting in anyway.

The bathroom was tiny, and really, too small for two people to be in comfortably. There was enough space to stand in the center with your arms out, with the tips of your fingers grazing the wall in both directions.

( Well, someone with longer arms would. Jervis was a little inadequate in the arms length department. But Jonathan’s would, for sure. )

“Scissors,” Jonathan said, grinding his teeth. He looked to be in a fair bit of pain, but not the worst off that Jervis had ever seen. He had seen Jonathan shot in the stomach before. He’d seen Jonathan break his leg and have to hobble on it for a mile to escape from Batman. Whatever this was couldn’t be higher than a six on the agony scale.

“What for” bubbled on Jervis’s lips, and his mouth moved to say it, but he thought better of it and disappeared into the hallway. He had a pair of scissors in the kitchen.

When he returned, Jonathan had taken off his mask, but nothing else. It lay, face-up, on the countertop. Jervis turned it over.

“Goin’ t’need you to cut this off,” Jonathan’s pupils were dark and dilated. Sweat sheened his pallid face. “Tried takin’ it off, it hurts.”

“What happened?” Jervis didn’t want to look closer, but he felt like he had to.

“Jumped outta a window. Glass didn’t take kindly t’that.”

Good lord, he looked like a pincushion. Glass shards were stuck into his forearms, his knees, maybe even his stomach; his arms looked like sliced hamburger. It looked like a hurricane of razor blades had been at his shirt— and the blood—

“Are you kiddin’ me?” Jonathan raged, snapping Jervis out of whatever momentary reverie he’d been in. “ I’m the one with glass in me, you’d better not be going into shock!”

Jervis snapped his head back. He wasn’t a doctor. He would never get over seeing someone bleeding from this many lacerations, so long as he lived. But Jonathan was right. He had to focus.

His hands were shaking.

“God, you would’ve been better off getting caught,” Jervis started cutting away his shirt, being mindful of the blades. The last thing Jonathan needed was another cut. “At least they would take you to someone qualified to treat this— And, you know, you could still do that. I could take you to hospital, and when the police arrive and arrest you, break you out of Arkham later—”

“I am not goin’ back t’Arkham,” Jonathan said, which seemed to be his last word on the subject. “You got anythin’ for the pain, Jervis?”

“... Alcohol?” Jervis tried. He didn’t really have anything stronger than over-the-counter stuff. He’d never needed stronger painkillers except in emergencies, and his last emergency had wiped out his stock.

Jonathan gave him a scathing look. Jervis backpedaled.

“That’s going to hurt. Really, really hurt. Are you sure?”

Jonathan seemed to consider that for a second; then reluctantly shook his head.

“Get this damn glass outta me,” he said through his teeth.

Jervis settled for playing nurse, then. He slipped on a pair of sterile latex gloves from the cabinet, grabbed tweezers, and laid a towel over his least favorite tea-tray. He started a pot of water on the boil, and threw in needles for sterilization. He fastened makeshift tourniquets for Jonathan’s arms, where the worst of the bleed seemed to be.

Jonathan was better-behaved than he had any right to be, bleeding and covered in wounds. For the most part, he did not scream or thrash; which Jervis thought was a tremendous help.

Jervis tried to work methodically. He picked shard after shard of glass out of Jonathan, even though his hands were shaking and he had to force himself to breathe. Jonathan was hardly better off.

Left arm done. After a once-over to make sure he hadn’t missed any pieces, Jervis washed it off, and then, his stomach quivering, soaked a cloth in antibacterial salve (thank god he still had some left) and torturously ran it over the wounds. Jonathan seemed to be doing his best to keep his thrashing restrained. He looked like he was trying to bite right through his own jaw.

Tears welled up. They were spilled. Jervis didn’t say anything. He would be equally pathetic, if not moreso, in Jonathan’s place.

Stitches weren’t as bad as Jervis thought they would be. Jonathan barely even flinched. Jervis was grateful to bandage him afterwards. It put one piece of the raw-hamburger ugliness away.

Next arm.

It took a long time. Long enough for Jervis to be worried about the lake of bloody water gradually accruing in the tub. While picking out glass, his mind kept mentally calculating: how much is two litres? Has he lost that yet?

The towel he laid the glass shards on was soaked in Jonathan’s blood.

I don’t have the equipment for a transfusion.

There was so much glass here he could’ve made a vase if he wanted to.

That’s it. If he passes out, I’m taking him to hospital and he can get angry at me when I break him out of Arkham.

Right arm done. Jervis reached for the cloth and the antibacterial cream. Jonathan made an ugly face and braced himself. There was a brief moment of terror just before contact where the wounded man’s mouth opened to plead with Jervis to stop.

It was a good thing Jonathan snapped his jaw shut, because if he had begged Jervis to stop, he would have.

Jonathan’s face screwed up tightly. His breathing was labored.

“It’s just your knees left,” Jervis assured, putting the cloth away. “You’re almost done.”

“You’d better fuckin’—” Panting. “Stick up a pharmacy. Jervis. I’m goin’ t’need—”

“Painkillers,” Jervis finished for him, gently. “I know. I’ll deal with that once we’re done with… this. I think we should call—”

“I’m not lettin’ those nuts— Pyg and Hush— they’re not gonna fuckin’ touch me,” Jonathan snapped.

“You’re hurt badly and not thinking right,” Jervis told him, patiently.

“I am not gonna git turned int’a a fuckin’ Dollie,” Jonathan insisted, sharply.

Jervis pursed his lips. He stitched a nasty gash on Jonathan’s arm shut and bandaged it.

Knees went much the same as the arms. They were a little less grievously wounded, but it was a miracle that Jonathan had been able to walk on them. Jervis had been throwing around the term raw hamburger in his head a lot, but once he cut most of Jonathan’s pants away, that was all he could envision the whole time he was pulling out glass.

Antibacterial wipe. Jonathan moaning in pain. Lots of blood. It felt like an eternity.

Jervis tended to stray wounds; there were a few lesser glass cuts around his body, but those, too, were bandaged and hidden from sight.

“We’re done,” Jervis told him. Jonathan sagged in relief. “But you’re going to be out of sorts for a while, you know.”

The entire exchange happened completely unspoken.

You’re going to have to ask to stay here; taking care of yourself in this condition is going to end in you going to Arkham or dying.

Yes, I will have to, but I don’t want to, because that would be admitting weakness and you know very well that I am not going to swallow my pride to ask.

I understand that. You can stay here without asking.

Jervis helped Jonathan out of the tub; as much as it pained him to leave it a mess, he helped Jonathan to the bedroom.

Jervis had a freshly laundered housecoat that he generously let Jonathan borrow after the wounded man had helped himself out of the tattered remainders of his clothes. It was an unfortunate but necessary sacrifice.

Jervis tried to arrange a towel or two on the bed, lest there be any leakage through the bandages, and Jonathan finally collapsed and was sound asleep in moments.

Jervis thought about staying with him, just in case— it really wouldn’t do to have a corpse in his bed, especially not Jonathan’s, because Jervis happened to like his company. But he seemed alright. There was no immediate danger. None of his wounds managed to nick an artery, and it wasn’t as if he’d gotten a glass shard in an intestine.

Jervis moved away from Jonathan, closing his eyes and trying to tally up all the responsibilities Jonathan’s late-night break-in ( he didn’t have a key, how the hell? ) had cost him. The bandages would need to be changed regularly, and Jervis would need to break into a pharmacy to get stronger painkillers, and he didn’t even want to think about the mess he’d have to deal with in the bathroom—

Plus Jonathan would need clothes, company, and meals. That was bad enough on its own, but the man was stubbornly independent and wouldn’t take to being nursemaided well. Back in the Asylum, Jervis had heard plenty of his yelling when he was wrapped in a mummy’s-worth of bandages and needed assisted bathing. Jonathan’s nightmarish, whiny caterwauling had been the source of both lots of jokes and lots of terror in Arkham.

Jervis pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to get his priorities in order. Jonathan’s painkillers could wait, since he was asleep now, but it was nearing four in the morning and it would be harder to stick up a pharmacy after sunrise. The bathroom needed cleaning. If the blood dried, it would be a bastard to get out, even if it was tile and porcelain rather than cloth and carpet. And it would start to smell.

The extra food and clothes he’d need to get for Jonathan…

While rubbing his temples, he felt something brush against his leg.

The White Rabbit, impatiently, prodded the face of his pocket-watch. His paw tapped the hour hand.

“What?” Jervis asked, exasperated. “Do you have an opinion on the matter?”

“Yes,” the Rabbit’s voice was frail and nasally. “You should get going.”

The pocket-watch snapped shut, with an air of finality about the click, and the White Rabbit disappeared. Jervis, grumbling to himself, headed to the bathroom.

He cleaned.

Once he could run the bath without the faintest hint of a pinkish tinge, and once all the white fixtures were, well, white, he deemed the bathroom clean. Jonathan’s ruined clothes, the bloodsoaked towels, and shards of glass were carefully disposed of. He threw out his latex gloves. The tweezers were thanked for their admirable work and cleaned, then put away. His tea-tray was washed enthusiastically until it gleamed like it never had before, and then scrubbed again anyway. He wiped the blood off of the door ( both the smear on his bedroom door-knob, and, horrifyingly, one that’d been on his outer front door, available to be seen by anyone who happened to pass through the hallway ) and he scrutinized the walkway up to his door, but there was already so many stains and discolored spots in the hall that he couldn’t even tell if any of it was Jonathan’s blood.

He went back inside to check on Jonathan, who was still breathing despite his blood loss’s best efforts, and then picked up his discarded 10/6 cards and his hat.

The hat would be a dead giveaway. As would his favored blue frock coat. He had to think of something… Inconspicuous.

Inconspicuous proved to be a scarf wrapped up to his nose, a sweatshirt he didn’t remember buying, and a knit cap he really didn’t remember buying. It felt like he was wearing a Halloween costume when he finally left his apartment and locked the door, but that was the sacrifice he would make for Jonathan. The control band sat snugly above his ears. The cards were in hand. He felt a strange, smooth sense of confidence.

It was a very brisk walk to a nicer part of Gotham. The sun was beginning to rise (the clouds had cleared up, but big puddles remained everywhere ) and he could feel a slight squeeze of pressure. The White Rabbit kept weaving around the occasional pedestrian’s legs, wordlessly flicking its whiskers in annoyance and urging Jervis to hurry up. The gryphon soared overhead and vanished over a rooftop.

Entering the pharmacy was easy. He walked right in, and once he did, the White Rabbit gratefully slunk off.

An exhausted-looking girl was sitting at the register up front. Tired brown eyes swept over Jervis, and he felt a brief pang of sympathy for her, because he was pretty sure she knew what he was up to, and was bracing (or resigning) herself to it.

“Can you help me?” Jervis asked, in his politest, most innocent, most English accent that he could manage. Americans liked that, for whatever reason. It made them a little more receptive. “I know it’s early, but a friend of mine broke up with his girlfriend not long ago and I think some drink will lift his spirits.”

He could see it working. The girl stood up, obediently, to escort him to the alcohol case. As she passed by him, he laid a card against the back of her head. She stopped moving, and he carefully slipped it under the headband in her hair for a more permanent fix.

“Now, dear,” He said, gently pressing a card into her hand, “Please go into the pharmacy with this, and place it in whoever is working there’s collar. I’ll tell you when.”

There were aisles between the register and the pharmacy. They would be none the wiser of what Jervis had just done to their employee.

Innocently, Jervis sidled up to the front office. The girl headed through the door with a jingle of keys.

There were two people working there; an old, balding man and a tired-looking woman in the back who looked to be three-forths asleep. There appeared to be no witnesse— customers, to get in the way.

The Cheshire Cat languidly sprawled across the countertop, giving a winning smile. It was encouraging. Goading. Jervis couldn’t help but smile, too.

“Hello, sir,” The balding man came up front, looking tired. The girl shuffled behind him robotically, unnoticed. “Are you here to pick up a prescription?”

“Oh, I am now,” Jervis said. The girl set the card in his collar. His expression glazed over, dull and unprocessing; a perfect mirror image of the cashier. The woman in the back hadn’t stirred through the whole exchange. “Excuse me, dear. If there’s any security footage, I’d like you to get rid of it. Thank you.”

The cashier left the pharmacy, and Jervis kindly handed the man upfront a card.

“Can you put that on her, please?” He pointed, helpfully. The man gingerly placed it behind her ear. She didn’t stir. “Thank you very much.”

Jervis left five minutes later with a bottle of wine (for his own troubles) and a hell of a lot more medicine than he hoped Jonathan would need. After he’d gotten what he asked for, he commanded the employees to sleep, collected his cards, and left. He was very fortunate no one had been around, or it would’ve gotten awkward.

With any luck ( though his luck lately had been pretty bad ) the three employees would shrug it off as just one of those things. Weird things happened in Gotham all the time; surely they could convince themselves they just dozed off due to the monotony of their late-night job?

It was a quarter past five when Jervis got home. He set all his things on the couch, unwound his scarf, and removed his cap and the control band. He put the kettle on the stove, then went to check on Jonathan.

Still breathing, which was nice. His bandages had a little leakage, but not enough to soak through. Not that it mattered. Jervis would need to change them later anyway.

He sat down on the edge of the bed, laid his head in his hands, and tried to think. The pressing concerns were out of the way. Jonathan was safe, the bathroom was clean, and Jervis had the non-prescribed prescription painkillers, antibacterial cream, and alcohol. The clothing situation and food situation could be taken care of later.

This was the first time in nearly three hours that Jervis got the chance to really relax, really breathe, and he found himself incapable of doing it. His instinct was to mindlessly putter around the house looking for things to do; a million tiny anxieties attacked him at once like a hoard of angry bees. Jervis was still in flight mode. He couldn’t settle, no matter how badly he wanted to.

He made tea. That was the one thing he let himself splurge on these days; good, quality tea. Quali-tea, if you will. Ha-ha.

His hands were still shaking when he poured himself a cup. There had been a lot to process tonight, and he wasn’t sure if any of it had really made it through. He had been worried about his fucking carpet when Jonathan was bleeding to death in front of him, for Christ’s sake.

He made camp in his own bedroom. He settled in a corner, wrapping his coat around himself like a blanket, and tried to read.

The familiar poems swirled and spiraled. Sunlight came in through slatted windows, spilling across the creamy pages. His body settled. It was a very slow, gradual thing; and once he finally, fully, let go of those last traces of adrenaline, he was exhausted.

It was shocking, really, just how tired he was. He felt like a gust of wind could knock him over, and it was a damn good thing he was already sitting down, because he was sure if he had been standing he would’ve collapsed by now.

It’s nothing compared to poor Jonathan, Jervis reasoned to himself. He brought his tea-cup to his mouth, blinking against an onrushing urge to narrow and close his eyes. Reading had suddenly become a tremendous chore in the wake of his new exhaustion, but that didn’t matter, because he knew the words of the poem without even looking at them.

And pour the waters of the Nile

On every golden scale!

He wondered when Jonathan would awaken. He wondered what kind of complaints the man would make. Jonathan, for all his repute as the ‘Master of Fear’, was a chronic whiner who raged and whinged whenever things didn’t go his way. Jervis took a moment to imagine the litany: I’m in pain, your bandaging work is shoddy, your apartment has roaches, I can do that myself, I may be infirm but I’m not helpless, if you try to feed me I am going to shove that spoon up your—

Why did he like Jonathan again? Jervis actually, legitimately stopped to think about it.

Well, he’s better than the other villains, seemed to Jervis a very lame reason, so he redoubled his efforts. He’s literary-minded, he puts up with your shenanigans, and it’s really hard to find friends in your line of work—

And, obviously, he came to Jervis for help, which was touching. Friends didn’t need to have things in common if they bonded through near-death experiences.

When Jervis finished his book of poems, he re-read it.

And then he re-read it again.

And again.

And again.

He wearily climbed to his feet and put another pot of tea on to boil.

He went through tea very fast.

He checked on Jonathan. Still breathing.

He wondered briefly if he should try to wake him up, or let Jonathan awaken on his own terms.

He’s had a rough night. You should leave him alone.

I’ve had a rough night, he grumbled to himself. And it’s his fault. At the very least I should make him take some painkillers—

Leave him be. It’s not hurting anyone to let him sleep.

That voice in his head took on the calm, reasonable tone of Alice, steady and sensible, if somewhat naive. Jervis got the feeling that was her last word on the subject, and decided, reluctantly, to heed her advice.

Sunrise came and went. Jervis figured he should probably shower at some point.

He realized, upon stepping into the bathroom, that he hadn’t even looked to make sure none of Jonathan’s blood got on him. He checked the mirror. Nothing immediately visible. Good.

Jervis triple-checked that he properly locked the bathroom door and laid out a change of clothes on the counter, lest Jonathan decide to inconveniently awaken now. His last good, dry towel was hung up, and he stepped into the tub that’d looked like a horror show only a few hours ago.

Not long later, he stepped out of the bathroom, feeling slightly better and refreshed (though the shaky after-tiredness of stale adrenaline still lingered) in clean clothes. Yet again, he went to check on Jonathan. Breathing. The wounded man hadn’t moved at all since he laid down.

He looked horrible. Jervis had seen him in very dire straits before, but it never got any easier to watch someone he knew suffer.

His conscience wouldn’t let him leave without laying out two pills, a glass of water, and a note for Jonathan within arm’s length in case he woke up hurting. God forbid he should get up, tear his stitches, and hunt around for painkillers in his state.

Dearest Jonathan,

I’ve gone out to get you a few things since I anticipate you’ll be staying for a while. Take these if you’re hurting badly. Do NOT get up unless it’s an emergency. I’ll be back soon, and if I’m not, please don’t be an idiot. Arkham is escapable, death is not.

Jervis

Yes, that ought to do. It had just the right sarcastic-acidic flavor, balanced with bitter dryness, and a hint of “I care about you so don’t be stupid”.

The first on the agenda was clothing. Jonathan couldn’t just wear Jervis’s spare bathrobe forever.

But, oh, it was going to be pricey. His pocketbook was already shriveling at the idea of buying a whole new wardrobe of clothes he’d never even get to wear.

Jonathan was good for it, though. Jervis had no doubt in his mind that Jonathan would make it up to him somehow; despite the saying, there was some honor among thieves. Favors for favors was exceptionally common among costumed criminals, and it could be richly rewarding to be known as someone who was “dependable”. Dependable people usually got a split of the take, even if it wasn’t as large as if you swindled the whole thing.

Jervis had a fairly good idea about Jonathan’s measurements, having seen his costume up close and personal on multiple occasions. Why, he’d even made a custom hat for the Scarecrow once!

(He’d sewn a pocket in the interior to store a small canister of fear gas, and from what he’d heard, the Dark Knight hadn’t been expecting it at all.)

Focus, he told himself. A croquet flamingo shied away from him as he pawed through clothing racks, scrutinizing a shirt to see if it was to size. It was. He held it on his arm.

Food was next. He had no idea what Jonathan liked. The man ate as much as a scarecrow.

(He laughed about that to himself while he was in the checkout queue. If he had friends, he would tell that to them, and they would probably laugh, too.)

It was late morning when he got back, burdened with clothes, bandaging material, and food. Opening his apartment door felt like juggling, and he spared a momentary wish for a passerby so he could get someone to help.

Then he remembered he left his control-band inside anyway.

Jervis grumbled, put down his groceries, fiddled with the lock, and pushed his way in.

The apartment, usually freshened with the smell of tea masking the rot, smelled faintly of blood. Jervis hoped to God it wasn’t coming from Jonathan’s bandages.

He set the clothes over back of the couch, left the groceries on the counter, and then headed for the bedroom, gauze in hand. He really wished they could do this over the tub, but he didn’t want to move Jonathan again unless he had to.

( Maybe he should leave Jonathan in the bathroom, actually. Make a little nest for him in the tub. It’d probably make trips to the toilet less stressful… because Jervis had no doubt it must hurt a great deal to walk on his shredded knees. )

He pushed his way into the bedroom. Jonathan was awake.

“Good morning,” Jervis said.

“Good morning,” Jonathan replied, cordially. He looked… better, now that he was awake. More like himself.

A look at the bedside table told Jervis what he suspected: he’d already taken the painkillers. Good thing, too, or “good morning” likely would’ve been expletives instead.

“How are you feeling?” Jervis asked, sitting on the edge of the bed.

“Like a hurricane of knives took umbrage with my ability to walk and move my arms and acted accordingly.” He had, Jervis noticed, lost the accent from last night. It must ebb and flow with his temper.

“Are the painkillers helping?” Jervis probed, gently. Jonathan made a little hmm noise.

“Considerably.” Pause, and more uncomfortably, he continued: “Thank-you. I know I’m imposing a great deal on you—”

“Never you mind that,” Jervis dismissed. It was honestly quite sad watching Jonathan choke on his own pride. Best to cut him off before it became insufferable. “Would you like some tea?”

“Yes,” Jonathan said, hoarsely. “I would love some tea.”

The re-bandaging of his wounds was careful, slow, and accompanied by the occasional wince. Jervis was exceptionally careful about keeping Jonathan’s bedding clean, despite all of the… fluids that kept leaking out.

Jervis had to change the bandages three times that day. He had no earthly idea where he could safely dispose of this sort of thing, but he uncomfortably told himself that could be a concern of future Jervis’s.

He brought Jonathan food twice that day, and as expected, was snapped at when he implied that perhaps Jonathan shouldn’t feed himself due to his severely scarred arms. Jonathan insisted upon feeding himself, and Jervis noticed, with acute displeasure, his limbs violently shook the whole time.

There was a multitude of small embarrassments and hiccups. The first bathroom trip was mortifying for both, as were most following it. A first shower, insisted upon being unassisted, had to become assisted, which was… awkward. Putting on and removing clothes was a challenge for both of them. After a few bandage changes there was stuff that Jervis didn’t even know people had leaking out of him along with his blood. Google said it was normal but it was still a nasty shock to be greeted with on that particular morning.

Jervis became intimately familiar with Jonathan Crane, and Jonathan Crane, in turn, became intimately familiar with Jervis.

After a while, Jonathan was absorbed into the house more than anything. He became another feature; like dusting, cleaning, making tea. Remember to get up off the couch and change Jonathan’s bandages. Remember to get that thing Jonathan likes at the store. Remember to throw out the latest round of bandages directly into the dumpster in a large plastic bag.

Not to say that he was furniture. Jonathan refused to be seen as a mindless beast of burden or a bottomless care receptacle. Although crotchety when off the painkillers, he still socialized. More than just businesslike good mornings or “thank yous” (after the first thank-you Jonathan never said another heartfelt thanks, but that was just who he was, so Jervis let it go). They had real conversations. Speculation on the Batman. Chats about books. They watched television together. Jervis oftentimes ate in the bedroom with Crane. They talked over tea about anything, probing one another for mutual interests. Reading, sewing, small bits and pieces of information about oneself. Jervis learned how Crane liked his tea and Crane got Jervis’s favorite color. Shallow, on the surface, but woven together each individual strip of fluffed information made a deep, rich tapestry.

Jonathan was from Georgia and hid his accent.

Jervis was from England and did likewise, though not as well as Jonathan.

Both had either estranged or dead parents, which was alright, because they hadn’t liked them much anyway.

Both were only children ( as far as they knew ), had been bullied when young, were bookish and well-spoken and college-educated. Jervis was surprised at just how far the similarities went beyond the surface.  

Recovery, initially planned by Jervis to be about a week, stretched on. Jonathan walking into the kitchen without any sign of difficulty one morning had realization snapping on Jervis like a mousetrap’s bar.

Six weeks. It’d been six weeks and Jonathan has sank so comfortably into the apartment Jervis had stopped even consciously acknowledging he was there. Bandaging had stopped a fortnight ago. Having to help Jonathan to the bathroom was three weeks.

He had only planned to let Jonathan stay for a little while, but now the man was comfortably entrenched in Jervis’s routine and he was loathe to give him up.

But he would, right? Even if Jonathan wanted to stay, there was that layer of understanding between the two of them, and it said, I am the Scarecrow, master of fear, and I do not have friends or roommates, I have accomplices and helpers. Jonathan’s reputation wouldn’t let him live here, completely dependent on someone else, unless it was because of a grievous injury.

And they had to acknowledge sometime that Jonathan had healed.

Eight weeks proved to be as long as Jonathan could excuse his own presence here. Over dinner, he said, “I think I’m healed enough to leave.” He was healed enough to leave a month beforehand. They both knew it. They both knew that the other knew. But they both entertained this talk without a goddamn word. “I know this hasn’t been easy for you, but… I do appreciate you… assisting me.”

Each pause contorted his face with physical pain. Jervis had seen him writhing in agony and completely nude and coated in his own blood but he just couldn’t say thank you for taking care of me.

And for some reason, Jervis didn’t hate him for that. It was just who he was.

Those weren’t the words he used, but that was what he meant, and that’s all that mattered.

Jervis cried with the Mock Turtle that night and that was fine. Tears were part of being human.

///

Three weeks after Jonathan left, Jervis awoke to the sound of his apartment door rattling. Muzzily, he looked at the clock on the mantelpiece, got up, and thought, to God as my witness, if that’s the Riddler with seven broken bones, I’m letting him die.

He had taken to sleeping on the couch, as he did when Jonathan was his guest. Old habits, he supposed.

Jervis put the kettle on and went to the door. Someone had softly knocked in-between Jervis getting up and filling the kettle.

He opened the door a slight ways. “Yes?”

“Jervis,” Jonathan sounded slightly relieved. “Good, I was worried you didn’t want me in.”

Wordlessly, Jervis opened the door the rest of the way and ushered Jonathan inside. He shrugged himself out of a long, dark coat. He was wearing the Scarecrow’s costume underneath it, for God knew what reason.

Jonathan turned his back and hung his coat on Jervis’s well-decorated coat rack.

“Are you hurt?” Again, Jervis added mentally. He cursed himself for sounding excited about the prospect of Jonathan being injured.

“... Of a kind,” Jonathan said. He seemed very interested in the coat rack for some reason.

“Not badly,” Jervis observed, hesitantly. There was some game here. He just hadn’t been made aware of the rules yet.

“Not badly,” Jonathan conceded. “Do you mind if I sit down?”

A sudden surge of instinctive politeness seized Jervis. “Oh, of course you can sit, Jonathan! Take anywhere. I already put tea on the boil, it’ll be ready soon.”

Was that the faint ghost of a smile on Jonathan’s face? He looked relieved.

Had he been expecting a chilly reception? What was Jervis to him, precisely? Why would he expect anything less than hospitality?

Jervis chalked it up to his family history and personality. Self-reliance was utmost, and caring for others was unimportant. Perhaps he thought Jervis wouldn’t want any form of burden to darken his doorstep again.

Rubbish. He knew Jervis would be unflinching in his loyalty. You couldn’t get through those weeks of intense care and companionship and just kick someone out when they came back.

Was something else going on here?

Jonathan made room for himself on the couch. He seemed anxious. The claw-tipped gloves of his costume drummed on his now-healthy, though likely still scarred, knee. Jervis busied himself in the kitchen.

“Something stronger to drink? I think it still counts as late night instead of early morning.” Jervis called to him.

“Oh, yes, thank you.” He seemed distracted. Jervis wondered if he was in pain, and if he ought to do something. But Jonathan didn’t look like he was hurt.

Jervis poured him a small glass and headed over to him, gently depositing it into his hand.

“Have you healed alright?”

“Yes,” Jonathan answered. This came easier, more relaxed, like he had practiced for this question. “I’m off of the painkillers now, too.”

There was a small sip. Careful judgement flicked over Jonathan’s face as he worked out whether it was inexpensive enough to take a larger mouthful.

“Excellent to hear.” Jervis was interested in his own drink now. He headed back to the kitchen, but asked Jonathan a question as he went to not seem guarded or cold. “Have you been up to anything nefarious as of late, Jonathan?”

“Truthfully, no.” A larger drink was taken from his glass. He had accurately judged the price. “I’ve been recovering. Batman has his hands full with Joker.”

“I swear, it’s every week with him,” Jervis marveled. “At this point, his bones must be stapled together with so much titanium that he’d set off an airport metal detector.”

Jervis assessed the sound Jonathan made as a cross between a chuckle and a cough. Jonathan did not like the Joker very much.

“I mean it. Who has to do surgical reconstruction on Joker’s face every month when the Batman breaks it into splinters?” Jervis felt nervous. Why did he feel nervous? Why did he feel like there was some prank being played on him? Why did he feel like he needed to set Crane at ease with stupid rants and jokes? “They must get paid a lot restrain themselves from just letting him die.”

Jervis was not the only one suffering from this nervousness. Jonathan’s laugh seemed slightly forced.

Jervis poured himself a small amount from the bottle. It only had a third of its contents left. These past few weeks had been… conductive to alcohol.

“True enough,” Jonathan acknowledged. “Speaking of. I never asked, but do you have any—”

“Batman souvenirs? Certainly.” Jervis patted his hip, though it weren’t as though Jonathan could see. “Lots of screws, pins, and a rod.”

Most of Batman’s rogues gallery were walking jigsaw puzzles of scars, surgical or otherwise. Batman had shattered at least one bone of every inmate in Arkham, though the number was more commonly in the double digits.

Jervis vindictively hoped that he had an equal amount of injuries hiding underneath the cowl.

Jonathan nodded as Jervis rejoined him on the couch. Jervis had already seen his scars, surgical or otherwise, and had obediently filed away Jonathan’s own list of pins, screws, rods, and plates.

“So,” Jervis prompted. “You’re hurt?”

“Oh, yes,” Jonathan said, with a glance back to the kitchen. “But tending to it can wait until after tea.”

“It doesn’t sound serious.”

“It isn’t.”

“Then why come all this way?” Jervis persisted. He knew, almost immediately, he had just broken one of the unspoken rules of this game. Jonathan glared and didn’t answer.

“Right.” Jervis said, as though Jonathan had answered. “Well, perhaps I can offer you something to eat?”

“No thank you.” There was a small trace of relief in his eyes, wordlessly pleased Jervis had corrected his error rather than doubled-down on it.  

Jonathan had the last of his drink just as the kettle whistled. Jervis fetched them tea.

“How was the trip here?” It was all pretense. Pretense for what, Jervis didn’t know.

“Wet,” Jonathan replied. True enough. The rain never stopped in Gotham. Particularly at night, for whatever reason.

“Were you caught out in it long?” Jervis asked.

“I got a ride here.” Jonathan said.

Jervis suppressed a feeling of jealousy before it could even fully impact him. “You’re still keeping henchmen?”

“They’re useful.” Jonathan sounded a touch defensive.

“To each their own,” Jervis said, amiably. “I prefer mine disposable.”

“And blindly obedient to whomever wears your control band,” Jonathan pointed out— he seemed to realize himself, and shook his head. “Let’s not mix work with this.”

This. So this meeting was a This. Jervis found himself intrigued by both that and the fact that Jonathan sounded soft and genuine in his request. Just for that, he would honor it.

Jonathan stirred in an, in Jervis’s opinion, unnecessary amount of sugar into his tea.

“How have you been faring, Jervis?” Jonathan said, evidently determined to kindle conversation.  

“Fine,” Jervis said. “Curiously enough, adjusting to life without a roommate has proved nearly as difficult as having one.”

The statement was fishing for a reaction, but Jonathan’s expression didn’t change. Instead, he nodded, lightly sipped at his tea, and said, “I’ve found it much the same.”

Jervis knew all that the statement implied. It expressed solidarity, but was also a warning. I know how you feel but you know why I couldn’t do that, and why you couldn’t, too.

Jervis wished, fleetingly, that Jonathan could examine himself and realize the emphasis on stifling his own feelings was toxic. That it would only lead to him dying in a ditch, unwilling to call for help out of pride. For not the first time Jervis felt a rise of helpless anger that he could not, reasonably, give a target. Jonathan had his reasons and it would do nothing constructive to tear into him for his stuntedness.

So he swallowed his tea and didn’t say any of what he wanted to. “That poet you like—”

“D’Aboire?”

Jonathan found lots of poets pretentious. D’Aboire, despite the name, was one of the few he didn’t. They had discussed her works at length when Jonathan was bedridden.

“Yes,” Jervis said. “A collection of hers came out. I bought two copies.”

“I have one,” Jonathan confirmed.

“I donated one to Arkham’s library.” Quickly, he added, “Anonymously. Just in case that blasted bandersnatch came knocking before you finished it.”

Jonathan looked genuinely touched. His eyes flicked down to the surface of his tea, and Jervis thought for a moment he might offer a choked word of gratitude.

“Very thoughtful.” He did not sound choked at all.

“I try to be.”

The Dormouse offered Jervis a sleepy look from the floor where it sat. It began snoring.

They made more small-talk. Jonathan had noted there was a live-action Alice in Wonderland TV show that had started production, and asked if Jervis would watch it.

“Likely not,” Jervis said, regretfully. “I’m conscious enough to know that I couldn’t control myself if I watched the poor actress long enough.”

That was a mistake he wouldn’t repeat. Delusions only grew stronger if you fed them, and then once they were powerful enough, you willingly gathered your entire life in both hands and ruined it on a whim.

“Shame,” Jonathan said. “Are you still medicated?”

“No,” Jervis answered, truthfully. “It’s too hard to get out of Arkham.”

He wasn’t even sure he knew what he had been taking in the Asylum. Certainly not the specific dosage. But Jonathan likely did. That was his area of expertise.

“Does that cause problems?”

The Dormouse was yawning. It had a tiny pink mouth and needle teeth. It settled into a curled-up ball.

“No,” Jervis said. “My hallucinations always manifested… benignly.”

There was a gleam of interest that passed through Jonathan’s face.

He was all about terror. No doubt he was wondering what it would be like for Jervis to experience a fear-toxin induced attack.

Jonathan was a scientist. Jervis was a subject, and schizophrenia was an intriguing variable. Jervis didn’t blame his interest in the slightest. He had wondered before what Crane would look like blonde. With longer hair.

Your hair wants for cutting, he might say.

He had entertained the idea of keeping Jonathan here with a card. But he couldn’t stomach it. He didn’t like controlling someone’s will when their will was what he liked about them. It was why he hadn’t placed a card on Alice and simply left for England, far beyond the Batman’s wingspan.

The tea gradually drained to the dregs. Jervis motioned to pour more.

“Oh, I think I’ll be alright,” Jonathan said, waving him off. “I think it’s time we had a look at my injury.”

Jervis started. He had all but forgotten that was the reason Jonathan had come. As a matter of fact, he had forgotten that he had left at all.

Jonathan stood up and headed deeper into the apartment. Jervis thought he would duck into the bathroom— that was where they’d tended to him the last time he’d wandered in with a wound in the middle of the night.

But he didn't. He went straight for the bedroom, pulling the door partially shut behind him. Jervis’s curiosity was, admittedly, piqued. He got up from the couch and headed after Jonathan. He could sooner stop himself from breathing than stop himself from following; he had an impending feeling of weight. Something was going to happen.

When he pushed open the door, Jonathan had dropped the coil of rope around his waist on the floor, and was already partially out of his shirt.

Jervis stood there, hand on the door handle, not sure what to do. Jonathan turned his head, slightly, fixed Jervis with a stare that felt hot enough to burn him to ash, and jerked his head.

It was permission. Jervis entered and closed the door behind him.

Jonathan kept undressing. Jervis got the impression he should do the same. He started unbuttoning his shirt.

“You’re not hurt, are you,” was not posed with the inflection of a question.

“I’m sorry to disappoint.” The clawed gloves went next.

“I’m not disappointed. Just confused.” Jervis wriggled his way out of his shirt and hung it up on the hook hanging off the back of his door. Who knew what’d take up residence in your clothes if you left them on the floor in this place.

Jonathan paused for a second. He was showing nothing that Jervis hadn’t seen before, but for some reason, Jervis’s eyes were drawn to the little trail of dark ginger hair on his lower stomach.

“You can’t be so naive—”

“Not naive,” Jervis said, correcting Jonathan with a touch like velvet and a grip like iron. “Confused.”

“Do I have to say it?” Jonathan sounded immensely displeased.

“Yes, you do. I’d like to know exactly what you think this is.”

Jonathan froze for a moment. His eyes shot to Jervis’s face, and there was a flash of terror there that Jervis didn’t recognize.

Ah.

Jervis prided himself on being able to carefully pick out emotions. Jonathan was worried he had overstepped. Perhaps he had.

“Tell me,” Jervis insisted.

“I was hoping we could have sex,” Jonathan relinquished.

“Why, and you haven’t even taken me out to dinner.” Jervis didn’t even know if he was playfully ribbing or genuinely upset. “I really hope this isn’t your way of paying me back.”

“No,” Jonathan said, hurriedly. “It’s not. Please, Jervis—”

“Why come here? Why ask for this?” Jervis pressed.

“Because I want to.” As if that were enough explanation.

“We haven’t had so much as a semblance of a romantic relationship, and you think you can just walk in here and have sex with me because you asked nicely?” Jervis asked, genuinely astonished. He hadn’t pegged Jonathan as that far removed from reality.

“Jervis, we both know that we’re—” He looked as though he’d like to swallow his own tongue. “I know you far better than I would’ve if we were just— dating. I thought we could just skip that.”

“You are exceptional, Jonathan Crane.” But it did make sense. In a strange, logically-illogical way.

There was an attraction. Jervis hesitated to name it, but he could see it, feel it. Crane was not a base animal who had sex when he pleased. He wouldn’t take a partner and discard them like garbage.

But Jonathan also loathed romantic or familial or even amicably platonic gestures of affection. Jervis could see how he could rationalize “having sex without even making mention of wanting anything more than a business relationship”. It may have literally not even occurred to Crane that Jervis had an opinion in the matter, other than “yes I will” or “no I won’t”.

Really, who knew how Jonathan’s mind worked?

The man stood there, half-undressed, expression cautious. Clearly he was not expecting Jervis to respond like this.

“Did you come prepared?” Jervis asked, trying to not sound exasperated.

“Yes,” Jonathan said, a touch defensively.

“Why now?”

“I wanted to be certain I was fully healed before I propositioned you. I owed you that, at least.” He sounded as one did before they reached their very tough leather gloves into a cat carrier. Cautious. Perhaps foolishly optimistic.

“What, exactly, does this mean to you?” Jervis began unbuckling his belt. The gesture made Jonathan’s tense shoulders loosen. “Why do it? You’d find a prostitute if company was all you wanted.”

Jonathan looked a touch disturbed. Maybe he was questioning his own motivations. “Jervis,” he ground out.

“That won’t do it for me,” Jervis told him, sharply. “You may have been able to get away with having me infer what you want when you were hurt, but not now. This is too important.”

Jonathan’s fists clenched and unclenched uselessly at his sides. Righteous indignation carried Jervis too far for him to care about how difficult this may have been for him.

“I like you.” Jonathan said, lip curled, as if Jervis had forced him to confess an unrepentable sin. “Can we please just—”

“Yes, we can.” Jervis cut him off before he could finish, offering a lopsided grin.

The relief that flooded across Jonathan’s face was pleasure in its own right.

Jervis meandered over to the bed and remedied the pants situation. They’d both seen one another naked before, but in this brave new context, well…

He kept getting distracted watching Jonathan. Sue him.

There was no romantic exchange of oh, you’re so gorgeous, or oh, you look stunning. They were both ugly in their own right, and they knew it. Both of them were marked with countless scars, misshapen wounds, and hair that they’d never needed to shave off since no one saw it. They had fat in odd places. They were older and weren’t models. Jervis, the more romantically minded of the two of them, wouldn’t even call Jonathan pretty, and handsome was stretching it.

That didn’t diminish the experience any, though.

“Any rules you’d like to lay out?” Jonathan asked, quietly. He was currently looming above Jervis, arms braced on either side of him. Jervis laid on his back, slightly propped up on his elbows.

“I don’t like getting hit,” Jervis admitted. The flutter of revulsion that flickered over Jonathan’s face spoke of a similar turnoff. “Or choked. Cut. Anything like that. Call me foolish, but it—”

“Reminds you of Batman,” Jonathan said. “Yes. I feel the same way.”

Jervis hadn’t even realized why he felt so strongly about it; but Jonathan was right. He really didn’t want it to feel like the Batman’s gauntlets were wrapping around his throat during this.

Call him soft and sentimental, but he wanted this to feel safe.

“Nothing to do with fear toxin.” Jervis said.

“I wouldn’t.”

“Still.”

Jonathan nodded. He wet his lips, carefully, and said: “I don’t want you to call me Alice.”

Jervis drew in on himself a little. It was his turn to defend himself. “ I wouldn’t.”

“Still,” Jonathan responded, wryly. “Anything else?”

“I don’t like being tied up— At least, not this time.”

“I’d like to incorporate that later,” Jonathan admitted. “But like you said. Not now.”

Later was an interesting idea. That meant Jonathan wanted to do this again.

“I want this to be exclusive,” Jervis tried.

“I’d very much prefer the same. I don’t like sharing, and I haven’t met anyone else I wanted to do this with.” There was a touch of possessiveness, of jealousy, as he went on: “Are you sure there won’t be any more Alices?”

“I’m over her,” Jervis told him, warningly. “It’ll be you or no one.”

Did he imagine the hard line of Jonathan’s jaw softening?

“Good,” Jonathan said. “Anything else?”

“If I say stop —”

“I’ll stop.”

“I mean it.” Jervis admonished.

“So do I.” Jonathan said. “Have you ever done this before?”

“Does that kind of thing matter to you?”

“No, but I’m… Inexperienced.” That may or may not have counted as a blow to Jonathan’s pride, but Jervis was nevertheless pleased he was able to admit it freely. “There may be some snags.”

Jervis laughed. “Please.”

Snags? He wanted to talk about snags? There was nothing on earth that could go as badly as Jonathan’s first trip to the bathroom when he couldn’t even stand by himself. Humiliation and mortification were irrelevant at this point.

Jonathan was emboldened by the laughter rather than put off. He sucked in a breath through his teeth and laid a hand on Jervis’ stomach. The hatter couldn’t help the trembling flinch. It tickled, for God’s sake.

His hand slid downward.

Jervis inhaled through his nose and grabbed the sheets. Jonathan had a tube he’d salvaged from his pant’s pocket; the first application of his wettened hands was uncomfortably cold, but after a few moments, that didn’t matter.

Later, what Jervis remembered most strongly was how quiet it was. Neither of them were the overly moany type. They weren’t trying to impress anyone. It was just the two of them and their own private little world.

They had both decided, without words, that they weren’t even going to try penetration, which they were both woefully unprepared for. It was, mostly, a combination of frottage and handjobs, an awkward, sweaty, hard-to-classify affair that was not exactly sophisticated or interesting to look at, but it didn’t matter.

Jonathan’s hand slid over Jervis’s cock, gelled and slick, and God, it felt good. His own cock came right after, hot and rigid, on a smooth gliding rhythm. Jervis, with his little internal maid springing forth at the most odd and inconvenient moments, thought, I wonder how hard lube is to clean up; then Jonathan’s thumb was rubbing over his glans and Jervis couldn’t find it in himself to care.

“ Jon!”

Not to say Jervis didn’t reciprocate. He slicked his hands in turn and was not conservative with his strokes. He plied a pleasing selections of whines, grunts, and soft, breathy, strangled “Jervis” es from Jonathan.

Jonathan’s back bent and he stiffened; his rhythm stuttered, he gave a deep, unintelligible groan, and finally, he came. Jervis, taking the initiative, finished himself off not long after.

Jonathan sat there for a second, sweaty and panting; then he rose.

“If you leave—” Jervis inhaled sharply to threaten him, but he needn’t have bothered.

“Shower,” Jonathan grunted. “I’m not going anywhere.”

He rose and left. Jervis slowly sat up, and figured that since Jonathan was gone, it meant he was stuck with the cleanup. Typical.

The shower’s shoddy water pressure roared faintly from the bathroom. Jervis idly swore to himself that he was going to take Jonathan to Arkham personally if he thought about ditching now.

Promises of retribution made, Jervis cleaned up what he could; wet wipes were actually enormously helpful in cleaning up fluidous messes, and underratedly so, in his opinion. Not that he had opinions on preferred cleaning products, because that would be weird.

Jonathan came back out, towel around his waist. Jervis threw a shirt at him when he walked in; Jonathan caught it, and consequently, his towel fell down.

Jonathan scowled at it like it had personally wronged him, then motioned to pick it up; Jervis called: “Nothing I haven’t seen before”, and Jonathan turned his glare on him.

They traded places. Jervis took his own shower (and spared himself any wardrobe malfunctions through the simple act of bringing in a change of bedclothes with him) and slunk back to bed. Jonathan waited for him, propped up on his elbows and anticipatory. He was wearing the shirt Jervis threw at him.

“I didn’t get to finish threatening you,” Jervis said. It was a testament to the strength of their relationship- or maybe just how strange it was- that the corner of Jonathan’s mouth lifted up in a smirk.

Jervis slid into bed beside him.

“Yes?” Jonathan prompted.

“If I wake up and you’re not here, I’ll set Batman on you.”

“Oh no,” Jonathan turned onto his back. The bed was just large enough for them to lay shoulder-to-shoulder without anyone’s core body falling off.

Jervis needed a new one if this was going to be a regular thing.

Or perhaps they could sleep at Jonathan’s place next time.

He didn’t even know where Jonathan lived, come to think of it. Something for tomorrow’s Jervis to ask.

Jonathan interrupted himself with a yawn. “I’d better stay, then.”

Chapter Text

Jonathan Crane did not consider himself a romantic.

He was a sociopathic, misanthropic, crotchety old man with bad knees and a bad back and a dry cough from breathing in so many chemical fumes over the years. He hated the human race with an undying passion, generally saw people as only slightly less disposable than tissues, and figured the only thing a person could be good for was being a test subject or some kind of bodyguard.

This world view of his usually was able to surmount any vestigial dredges of humanity that still resided in his chemically eroded soul, but there were… Exceptions.

When Jonathan was younger- more foolish, more trusting- he fell in love (he still hated that phrase, but it was the most concise way to say it) with a girl. He was very young and she was not much older. They were friends for a long time, until she moved away, and he privately lamented her leaving because he'd never gotten the chance to say I love you. He’d dreamed vivid dreams of running through the fields to her house in the middle of the night, the way lit by thousands of winking lightning bugs, and climbing in through her window and telling her to run away with him.

But he didn’t.

He knew now, of course, that it wasn’t anything. It hadn’t been love. It had been expectation. He was a boy and she was a girl, so they were in love. He had pined for her not because he would miss her, but because that was what the stories he read and the people around him pressed upon him. He had spun the yarn so thick at that tiny age that it was still hard to dig his way out of it as an adult.

( He liked to forget his teenage years. Suitable to say there had been no love there. Not for his classmates, demons and terrors they were.)

When he was in college, though, there was another girl.

He was disillusioned at that point. He had accepted that he was just like that- nonsexual, nonromantic- and it didn’t matter, because he could carve out a fulfilling career for himself and dating status was irrelevant.

At this point, he didn’t want to date. He had convinced himself (although that phrasing irked him, because he was persuading himself of a hard-fought fact, not feeding himself a bitterly choked-down falsehood) that he was just not built for romance. That his bloodline would die and he would be alone.

He hated the connotations of “alone”, too. As if not finding a mate was the worst thing in the world.

But, the girl.

His icy heart did not melt to her right away. He held her at the same distance he did all his classmates. It was only over time- months of study groups and debates about economic policy, government issues, books, media, their classes- that he began to view her as anything other than another acquaintance.

She was intelligent. Well-read. Humorous, but not to an excess. She had a steady temperament. She understood Jonathan had trouble articulating emotions. She had difficulty herself.

He found himself over at her apartment often as the months went by.

He went on a trip with her, the summer after freshman year, to Mexico. They had four others with them, all in the friend group or loosely related; almost all of them were women, except one.

If the man had been more handsome than Jonathan, Jonathan would’ve called him a jock; with rippling muscles and a cleft chin and shiny white teeth and flawless hair. A gormless man with so little brains and so much skull he didn’t need a helmet during football practice.

If he had been less handsome than Jonathan, Jonathan would’ve called him a dickless little parasite. He would have mentioned his unfair money or his viperish charm. He would have found something to seize and use in order to insult him. He would’ve brought up his attitude, his unfairness, his abusive behavior.

But none of that was true.

The matter of fact was, he was impossible to hate. He was perfectly average. Perfectly pleasant. He never gave Jonathan an excuse to hate him, outside the virtue of being competition. And Jonathan could only feel helpless anger on that trip as he watched her smile and laugh at him, and was forced to breathe his air and share his proximity.

Two years later she and the other man were married, and Jonathan still had no degree and no prospects whatsoever.

( Although this was a story for another time, it was around then when his fascination with fear manifested strongly enough for him to do something. Thoughts that had been tossed around idly in his head suddenly came sharp and clear, with the compulsion to act. He scratched equations in his notebook. He hypothesized amounts. And when he could, he underhandedly requisitioned supplies. )

At Gotham University (as a professor, opposed to a student) he met the next.

He was another professor. Around Jonathan’s age, perhaps slightly older. Jonathan had convinced himself at this point that he’d never actually loved before. The girl in his youth was societal pressure on him shaping an innocent childhood friendship into a romantic framework. The woman had simply been a great platonic partner, and he had been disappointed that she had moved on from him. None of it was love.

He fell hard and he fell fast for that professor, but it took him quite a while to work out what it was.

There was a party; birthday, holiday, Jonathan forgot what. The professor had invited him. There had been alcohol.

There was an illicit encounter. Jonathan didn’t know, completely, exactly, but he theorized that he’d lost his virginity that night, though he didn’t know and never would for certain.

The other professor was hit by a drunk driver and killed the night after, and that ended that.

And finally…

Jervis Tetch.

Not mentioning how Jonathan took up the mantle of the Scarecrow would make it hard to set the framework for Jervis Tetch’s introduction, but that was a long and elaborate story in and of itself. Summed, Jonathan may have gotten overzealous with testing an attempt at an aerosolized “fear gas” that would play merry hell with the minds of anyone who breathed it in. Someone may or may not have died, and Jonathan may or may not have gotten a big head and tried to test it out on Gotham’s elite during a charity gala under the guise of a scarecrow, and he may or may not have been arrested and sentenced to Arkham.

It wasn’t in Arkham where he met Jervis, though. It was on the outside. Jonathan broke free (it was very, very easy) and decided he was not going to be no one. He thoroughly embraced the Scarecrow and all it stood for, and let his impulses be his guide rather than society’s norms.

He established a reputation over the years. He went to quite a number of underworld meetings, both of the costumed criminal and mundane mob variety.

And at one of them he met Jervis Tetch.

If he hadn’t been to one these sort of things before, Jonathan may have found him strange, off-putting, or ugly, but the years of weirdness jaded him.

Four foot nine? Mary Dahl was two feet tall and had the proportions of a ragamuffin. Massive overbite? There was a talking crocodile. Hallucinating storybook characters? At least he didn’t cut a mark in his flesh whenever he murdered someone. Mind control with metal cards? Genuinely the most terrifying thing about him, but Jonathan had heard of Music Meister and Spellbinder and Poison Ivy, and they didn’t even need technology to seize your mind from you. Tea and hat obsession? Fine, he was no Mockingbird. Kidnapping a woman? Refer, yet again, to Zsasz. Or Professor Pyg. The Creeper. Joker. Jonathan himself. They’d all kidnapped someone at some point in their career. Maybe not with the intention to do- whatever it was Jervis wanted to do with women- but they had.

And Jervis was polite . His genuine politeness- not the barely contained wrath, sarcastic flattery, or nervous simpering of the likes of Sionis, Joker, and Wesker- was tremendously welcoming.

At the first meeting, Jervis didn’t talk much. When he did speak, it was when spoken to, and with a polite and prim accent and the curious little flare of his fingers for emphasis. Jonathan remembered thinking, at the time, that he was unlike anyone Jonathan had met in the criminal game; though, to be fair, there were a lot of rogues who were like no other.

Despite his novelty, Jonathan did not leave the meeting with Jervis on his mind. At the time, Jervis was only a slight change from the usual criminal drudgery Jonathan subjected himself to; like a slight breeze on a journey in a hot desert, forgotten about after the destination was reached.

Jonathan swore after that Jervis kept appearing at all the meetings he went to. It could’ve been the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon kicking in, but he was convinced the man was everywhere from then on.

Or maybe he had always been there, and Jonathan was just now noticing him.

It was concerning at first- paranoia did that- then sort of relaxing in its reliability. The Englishman was always there, in a nice coat and ridiculous hat and multicolored bowtie, ready with a thoughtful contribution to put forth. Jonathan did not suffer fools very well, and fortunately for him, Jervis was far from one.

They had lots of firsts. First operation done together— a deathtrap for Batman that, shocker, didn’t work, and ended up with a half-dozen crooks heading back to Arkham. First duo operation, after breaking out of Arkham and trying to infect a football stadium with fear gas.

Jonathan began to, however begrudgingly, respect Jervis, and—

Well, they spent years developing a sort of… Criminal relationship. Never anything intimate, of course. But they shared a safehouses. They played chess in Arkham. Jonathan sought his company when he needed someone halfway intelligent to talk to, or when there was a plan that needed more than one body to be enacted. (Both of those were still rare, though. Crane’s preference to be alone was as pervasive as lichen on a boulder.)

There hadn’t been a spark. Their lives were not conducive to that sort of thing. Crane didn’t do that.

But then Batman hunted him. Then he threw himself out the window. Then the glass, and the blood.

Jervis never asked Crane about it, but Crane knew where he was living. Crane had kept tabs on him. Had broken into his apartment once, even.

Jervis’s home was closer than Crane’s own hideout, and everything hurt so much. Every step drove more glass into his knees when he just wanted to lie down and weep from the pain.

Really, his intention had been to go home, but twenty steps- twenty steps of some of the most extreme pain he’d ever been in, twenty steps of hesitation and terror and not knowing how badly he was wounded- was enough to persuade him otherwise. He went to Jervis instead.

And what a choice that had been.

=

“Nmmmh,” Crane twisted. His fists balled, uselessly, then grasped at the sheets.

The Hatter’s smile from between his legs was warm and playful; but that wasn’t a good thing, because it meant he stopped.

“No,” Crane was hot and shivery. His muscles were gelatin; weak and quivering just from the weight of holding himself up.

“ No, dearest?” The bastard nuzzled Crane’s member with his cheek; he moved his head up, parting his mouth ever so slightly so his teeth caught, just for a second, on the glans. Crane’s inhale was sharp.

“For the love of God, you can tease me later, now I’d just like to—”

The Hatter sunk down unexpectedly, and Crane rocked upward with a throaty groan.

He wanted to grab Jervis so badly; his hair made for an inviting handhold, and he could envision himself very vividly controlling the pace at which Jervis’s mouth slid over his cock.

But he couldn’t.

Sex was chess. It had rules that had to be followed. Just as you could not piss on the board and declare yourself a winner when the stream knocked over the king, you could not grab your partner and face-fuck them without their explicit saying-so. Especially not in this circumstance, where they were playing chess with house rules; Jonathan could not touch, and if he did, it was all over.

Why did they have these little games? To torture themselves, is what he would’ve said the moment just before Jervis slid his tongue over the crown of Jonathan’s cock. But it made things interesting. Exciting. It was to flirt with danger instead of bending over for it and consequently getting pushed into a squad car.

Jervis drew back for a moment; had Jonathan been in his right mind, he would’ve known the man was planning a new angle of attack. As it was, Jonathan didn’t really care about anything other than the fact that Jervis’s mouth was no longer wrapped around his dick.

There was a residual thrust or two against the air before Jonathan could control himself. His face, flushed from strain, colored a brighter red. His heartbeat staggered in a shaky tattoo. His face burned.

“Jervis,” he all but begged, trying desperately to keep his hands to himself. “Stop- stopping.”

“But you look so delightful like this, dear,” Jervis said. “Red as a lobster and hard as a turtle shell.”

“Will you—” Jonathan began.

“— Won’t you,” Jervis cut him off. There was a gleam in his eyes.

“Jervis!” Crane snapped. Sweat was starting to feel cold on his back, and it did not mesh well with his superheated skin.

Good lord, he was so close. He was sure that with just a little more contact—

Jervis tutted. “Patience, dear.”

Gently, he stroked Jonathan’s shaft. The Hatter’s gloves were cotton, and rough against the sensitive skin. It was a mite uncomfortable, but it was something.

“This,” Jonathan huffed a deep breath through his nose, “will have consequences. Your punishment will be doubly this.”

“I sense an ‘unless’ coming.” Jervis’s languid strokes hurried, and Jonathan’s breath caught. With the saliva drying, it was beginning to edge on painful.

“You know what— the unless is—”

Jervis tittered. “I’ve said before that you need to learn how to use your words…”

“Your— punishment— will be doubly this,” Jonathan growled, breath labored, “— Unless you stop your childish games and get me off.”

“You need only ask.”

Obediently, Jervis traded his hands for his mouth. The look Jervis gave him- just before he enveloped the head of Jonathan’s cock in his mouth- was nearly enough to finish Crane off then and there.

It was the lidded blue eyes, pupils blown and swollen... almost like they were dilated with fear—

Jervis took him to the root, then slid back, and repeated. He didn’t even have enough time to form a proper rhythm before Crane choked out a warning; Jervis quickly pulled up, just in time for Crane to spend himself.

Jonathan panted, rapid-fire. Exhaustion bore down on him as the haze of orgasm cleared.

If he thought he was tired before…

Crane attempted to slowly lower himself onto his back, but his left arm gave out and he fell back onto the sheets.

Good lord, he was getting old.

“Good?” Jervis asked. He was the sentimental type. He didn’t move from where he was kneeling between Jonathan’s legs, whereas Jonathan would’ve already been out of the room and looking for mouthwash.

Jonathan didn’t respond right away and Jervis playfully rubbed the head of his softening cock; Jonathan groaned, angrily, and nudged Jervis in the ribs with his knee.

Jervis was a very nice person- a gentleman- but once you agreed to “I won’t touch you during sex so long as you eventually get me off”, he took it and ran off with it like a thief who’d just been given royal jewels.

“Yes, it was good,” Jonathan ground out. Jervis always wanted him talking for some reason. Asking for things Jervis already knew he wanted. Sharing his feelings. Jonathan had no earthly idea why he was so insistent about it.

But that annoyance came packaged with Jervis himself, which was worth it. Jonathan would’ve put up with nearly anything to keep him.

(Now that Jonathan could have someone- that they had given themself to him and he had given himself to them in turn- he would sooner kill someone than give it up. He had killed for far, far less than the prolonging of his own happiness.)

Jervis moved, pulling himself up from Jonathan’s thighs to rest above him, on his hands and knees. The Hatter wore a self-satisfied smile.

At their age it’d be a bit before their libidos recovered; if they could even muster the physical strength for a third go-around.

Jonathan didn’t really want to, though. What he wanted now was for Jervis to lie beside him— they had already figured out how to jigsaw their bodies together in a comfortable way that Crane found hopelessly and shamefully pleasing. The feeling of domesticity that radiated from their arrangement- from their, their, their— cuddling- was disgusting, but Crane still wanted it, so strongly and so desperately that it almost scared him.

It was galling how, in the three weeks since he had propositioned Jervis, they had fallen together so neatly. How Crane’s carefully maintained, razor-thorned hedges were bulldozed over in favor of the soft little heart that’d thawed so quickly it was still dripping. How Crane was able to internalize thoughts like I want Jervis to cuddle up to me or I want to put my legs over his lap when we share the couch or I want to have sex with him .

That last one was jarring, because he’d found that the desire was not necessarily correlated to Jervis doing anything particularly salacious. In fact, none of them were prompted by Jervis doing anything particularly romantic or sexual. Jervis would just be working on something in his apartment, and Crane would be quietly reading on his couch, and a great deluge of disgusting softness would flood in from nowhere.

At those moments Crane felt like he was drowning, and the only way to displace the water he was suffocating in was to do the unthinkable: display affection.

He tried, very hard, to keep the need contained at first; but the most horrible thoughts would come right after, borrowing the Scarecrow’s voice like an old coat.

HE HATES YOU, YOU KNOW.

HE WOULD TRADE YOU FOR ALICE IN A MOMENT.

THE ONLY REASON HE’S SETTLING FOR YOU IS BECAUSE HE CAN’T FIND ANYONE ELSE FOOL ENOUGH TO DOTE ON SOMEONE SO UGLY.

The attacks would be multi-pronged. Lauding Jervis and ripping into Crane for how worthless he was, then turning around and insulting Jervis for his looks and desperation, coyly whispering that there was so much better Crane could look for.

Ohh, these days Crane’s mind was in so many pieces. He really wished he could have the medication he took in Arkham back. It had horrible side effects, but it suppressed the worst of his inflamed paranoia. It quieted the loudest of the Scarecrow’s shrieking.

But he would rather walk with broken glass in his knees than return to Arkham.

Jervis sighed, and stooped his head to press his lips against Crane’s collarbone. There was a mutual understanding that mouth kissing after blowjobs was not going to be allowed. Neither of them were particularly interested in tasting their own issue.

Jervis moved to settle peaceably beside Jonathan. Crane’s heart squeezed tightly, the one last hurrah of adrenaline amidst his quivery limbs.

Good God, it was not fair that a human could feel this strongly. Jonathan was the master of fear. The lord of terror. The king of screams! And here he was, in bed with a ridiculous Hatter who was presently using Jonathan’s bicep as a pillow, and his fleshy, traitorous heart loved it.

“You’re sweating,” Jervis observed. There were trace amounts of disgust in his statement.

“You did a good job,” Jonathan grumbled.

He envied Jervis, in a way. If the roles had been reversed, Jonathan would’ve had to shift away after saying something like that, just to protect his own pride. But the Hatter didn’t. He was open about how he felt; adoring, loyal. He had accepted the mushiness that dwelt in his heart, and how that entitled him to complain but not do anything because of love. But Jonathan couldn’t.

“Oh my. High praise from you.” Jervis teased.

“Ha,” Jonathan muttered. Exhaustion was settling in fast. In fact, he’d really like to sleep…

=

Crane woke up a few times throughout the night. He’d always been a disturbed sleeper, and contrary to the opinions of romance novels, a partner definitely only made sleeping worse. The heat that radiated off of Jervis could be unbearable when the nights were hot, and there was the anxiety of extricating himself carefully enough to not wake Jervis, or the half-awake stupidity of not knowing whether the thing he was touching was his arm or Jervis’s, because it’d gone numb in whatever weird position they were lying in and he couldn’t feel it anymore, compounded with the fact that it was dark as hell—

Oh, most definitely learning to sleep together (in both senses of the phrase) had been challenging. Fortunately, Crane did not balk from most challenges presented to him.

Weak grey light spilling in from the window slats heralded the morning. Crane tended to be a late riser, but he got the impression that he was not going to be able to get back to sleep.

He very carefully peeled himself away from Jervis, who continued dozing, blissfully unaware.

It had only taken Crane one ill-timed trip to the living room to learn that Jervis hated waking up alone (consequently subjecting Jonathan to the most feelings-heavy talk he had ever had in his life, but that, too, was a story for another day) but he risked it this time.

Jonathan pulled the covers up around Jervis’s bare shoulders, and quietly trod over the carpet to the door.

Jervis’s apartment had become Crane’s home away from home these days. Jonathan had his own place, of course, but it was a tiny space hidden behind a false wall in a drafty warehouse. It was… far less hospitable than Jervis’s apartment. Here, there was clean bedding, running water, and good company, all of which he couldn’t easily get back at his hideout. In truth, pretense and the difficulty of moving in his equipment were the only things that kept Crane from simply moving in full-time.

Crane slipped out of the bedroom and approached the kitchenette. Jervis had a distaste for coffee, but Jonathan had been a long-time addict ever since he’d moved out of his childhood home. Jervis, gentleman he was, had been willing to begrudge him at least the instant stuff.

Jonathan found a chipped mug in the cabinet, measured into it a spoonful of coffee granules, ran it under the sink until it was nearly full, and gave it a minute in the microwave.

Crane hated cream, in tea or in coffee. His preferred form of diluting the bitterness was a teaspoon of sugar, which he stirred into his cup and tasted.

Being a crook lowered your standards so much it was hard to not trip on the bar; he’d take it.

Since he was already in the kitchen, he started a pot of tea. Jervis drank the stuff like an addict, and there was no point during his day where he wasn’t 1.) preparing it, 2.) drinking it, or 3.) cleaning up from it. The entire flat smelled so strongly of lemon and herbs one could barely detect the underlying smell of water rot and mildew that pervaded the entire apartment complex.

Maybe the living conditions weren’t glitz and glimmer, but this place was hom—

—Ooh. What a disgustingly sentimental thought. It almost hurt.

Jonathan picked up his mug and strolled back to the bedroom. Jervis hadn’t woken up yet. Maybe Jonathan could surprise him with tea in bed; wake him the way a lover ought.

He gently placed his mug down on the nightstand, then sat on the edge of the bed, trying not to consciously acknowledge the urge to ruffle Jervis’s hair.

THE LABORATORY, the Scarecrow said in his mind, with an insistent snarl. It was the mental equivalent of a toddler grabbing onto his sleeve and refusing to let go. WE HAVE TO BREW—

Shut up. Let me enjoy myself.

WHAT IS MORE ENJOYABLE THAN FEAR?

Shut up!

Jonathan hadn’t even realized he’d taken fistfuls of the blanket in his grip; he made an effort to relax.

He leaned over Jervis, stopping just short of resting his forehead on the Hatter’s temple. He hovered there for a moment, indecisive.

He had the notion in his mind to awaken Jervis with a kiss, but it all of the sudden seemed silly. Like something the younger Jonathan would’ve done, before he realized the world was loveless and it was better to be feared than loved, at any rate.

Jervis shifted.

“You’re breathing in my ear,” the Hatter twisted onto his back, blue eyes cloudy with sleep. His hair was tousled and Crane had the queerest urge to flatten it down.

“Sorry.” Crane pulled back, partially thankful he had been given an excuse to withdraw.

“Don’t apologize,” Jervis said. “I would put some clothes on, though.”

There was a sly twist of his mouth, and the hatter stretched indulgently. “Unless there’s a reason you wouldn’t need them...”

Ah. There was an idea.