'All I want is for you to be happy. Please try to be.'
That was how Harvey had finished his farewell letter, the one that asked him not to judge him too harshly for needing to make what they had both always known explicit, and not to think that he was trying to put pressure on Jim with his unwanted love declarations. All he really wanted from Jim now, so he said, was the freedom to be able to move on.
The problem was that Jim hadn't known. Had never really considered it possible until he read it in Harvey's familiar script, laid out like something irrefutable, and it was just sparking all kinds of too obvious realizations when it hit him that it was too little too late.
Harvey didn't need to be bogged down with his own burgeoning understanding of what he had been hoping for every time he pushed too close, and why he had felt so angry and hard done by when he heard only half the story - Harvey had moved back in with Scottie Mullens.
Had everything he had ever wanted, the home and the partner and the family, and when the reality sank in - when he was given the date and time for Scottie's funeral - Jim was so ashamed of himself that he couldn't enter the church. Understood, really understood, why Harvey hadn't been able to face Patel, and watched the burial from the sanctuary of the footpath. He hated himself even more when Sofia demanded an audience in the city park, setting down her latest charges for services rendered.
He tried to follow Harvey's instructions, truly he did. It was the very least he owed him. He was on a course for self-destruction though. Drank, and sobbed, and got himself beaten almost to death, over and over again, because he needed so badly to be punished. He was laying in a hospital bed when he finally broke down and booked a plane ticket.
Handed in the request for leave as soon as he was able and fantasized, endlessly, of the life they might lead once he had convinced Harvey to take another chance on him. It wouldn't be easy, wouldn't happen overnight, but he couldn't live without Harvey. Would never be happy until he had his partner at his side once more.
Except Gotham was beset by a whole new outbreak of crazy and all scheduled leave was cancelled. He was going to go anyway, was going to prove that he could put Harvey first when he needed to, and then Lee came to him and demanded that he do his duty. Looked at him with tears in her eyes and reminded him of the life debt he still owed her.
His flight left without him.
He failed anyway. Did his best, gave it his all, and was left standing in the debris of his bad decisions, Lee shaking her head in frustrated disgust as she told him that the only winner of the entire scenario had been Harvey. If he had gone, if he had seen him, he would have surely ruined whatever peace the man had managed to build for himself.
He ruined everything he came into contact with.
It was those words he thought of when the detective from Internal Affairs arrived to investigate what had gone wrong, and whether or not he could have prevented it.
"The way I see it," the guy said eventually, brown eyes fixed on his own, "you couldn't have done anything differently."
"But," Jim tried, unable to believe the verdict, and David stroked a thumb across his hand and asked quietly,
"Don't you think you've punished yourself enough, Jim?"
Jim was no match for it. Was so pathetically desperate for understanding, for affection, that he leaned into the touch and clung to broad shoulders, trembling, when David pressed their lips together.
Later, much later, he realized what it was David had actually been saying.
It was time to let somebody else dole out the punishment.
In the moment it seemed like the answer to all his problems, a real chance at contentment if not happiness - a reward for staying away from Harvey and the new life he had built for himself and his daughter.
He couldn't quite quit wishing though. Never stopped wanting. Spent too much time trawling through glimpses of Harvey's life on social media, and re-read the letter until the paper was worn and dog eared. It was that letter which highlighted just how awful things really were, when David caught him with it and things turned violent for the first time.
The bruising was bad, purpling around his eye socket, but David said he was sorry and it wasn't as though Jim had any real frame of reference for what a healthy relationship ought to look like. Nobody commented on the state of his face, assumed it was the result of the job, and as it slowly began to become routine he supposed that David knew what he was talking about when he said that it was to be expected when two guys spent so much time together.
Harvey had punched him a couple of times, even, and if he could incite that kind of reaction from somebody who had faced death over and over again for him, then it stood to reason that it was inevitable David would lose his temper.
It was his fault, probably, because part of him was ashamed of what he was doing. Part of him did hope his Mother would never find out about it. David insisted he tell her, all the same, and the line went so silent he thought that she had simply put the phone down. Then he heard a sharp intake of breath and the solemn finality of,
"I don't know why think I'm interested. You're already dead to me."
She had said as much, when his name was splashed all across the newspapers as a convicted murderer, but to hear it confirmed all over again hurt worse than any of the cuts or bruises. The broken bones, even, and David stroked a soothing hand over his back as he told him plainly that now he had nobody else left to turn to.
He had no friends and no family. His work colleagues were acquaintances at best, all deliberately held at arm's length, and the thought of being left entirely alone filled him with such terror that he did as he was told and didn't complain about it afterwards. Stared unseeingly at the far wall, the tears he refused to let fall stinging and burning, and wondered if this was how it would be forever.
Because he was no longer under any illusions about it being normal. He just didn't know how to break free of it. How he had let things get so bad in the first place.
"You don't understand," a woman sporting a black eye to match his own told him across the interrogation table a few weeks later, "I can't give evidence against him. I just can't."
"You don't owe him anything," Harper tried at his side, "Don't you think he deserves to be in prison for what he's done to you?"
Their witness shut down at that, was adamant she wouldn't answer any more questions, and back in the bullpen he let Harper's incensed outrage wash over him. It wasn't as easy as leaving. Wasn't as simple as saying that you had had enough.
He had tried both, had the scars to prove it both on his body and inside his head, and nothing felt quite real that evening as he drained the bottles they kept under the sink and strung a makeshift noose from the light fitting. He re-read Harvey's letter one last time, fingers tracing over Harvey's penmanship, and tried not to think about the things David said when he really wanted to hurt him, about how if he had boarded that flight he would have ended up black and blue just the same, because it was his nature - his toxicity - that had driven them to the mess they were in.
It was David who found him and David who rang an ambulance. Who told the doctor it was lucky their apartment building wasn't up to code and that his appetite hadn't completely deserted him. There was still plaster everywhere when Jim discharged himself, either way, the rafters exposed and vulnerable, and rather than do anything about it he just sat there, silent and exhausted.
He was still there when a key sounded in the lock, the room so dark that he couldn't make out the expression on David's face even as he came to stand before him.
"I'm leaving Gotham," David said, croaked really, "I should have done it a long time ago."
Jim didn't answer. Had nothing to say anyway.
"I did love you, Jim. I just," he sighed, shoved his hands in his pockets and started again, "Three's a crowd. All I wanted was for you to pick me over him and mean it."
He waited for the temper tantrum. The blows he was too tired to challenge. They never came. Instead the door clicked shut and he was left with nothing but a lifetime of regrets to keep him company. When he did force himself to move he found all of David's stuff gone. Most anything of saleable value too, and the photographs he had kept hidden in the sleeve of some boring looking textbook torn to pieces.
The letter too, the one that proved there was somebody out there who cared if were alive or dead, and it didn't matter that he knew the entire thing word for word. He curled up and cried like a baby.
All he could do was throw himself into the job. Present a stable face for his psych evaluation and pay somebody to fix up his ceiling. Pretend that the late night phone had no impact on him, and that his blood didn't run cold when postcards started turning up at his new apartment, pretty picture reminders that it would never really be over.
Not until he clawed back his life. Not unless he could regain some control over where it was going.
It was tough going, was only made harder by the endless stream of vicious murder cases that crossed his desk, but the threat of filing a report - the first time he had ever dared to suggest letting anyone at the Department know anything - began to make a difference. He unpacked the belongings that mattered to him, one by one, and bought a set of prints at a flea market to make it look less like he lived in a featureless white box.
He went for the Deputy Commissioner position when it became available and told the interview panel the truth. He had faltered along the way, and he had made some terrible mistakes. But he was committed to making Gotham a better - a safer - place to live. It was what got him out of bed in the mornings, and even if he didn't get the job it would still be his number one priority.
One of the city councillors raised an eyebrow at that, asking him about his family, and he felt the smile slip even as he admitted that he didn't have any.
Perhaps it was the deciding factor, perhaps it had no bearing, but by the end of the year he was sat in his new office, the smell of fresh paint thick in the air, when he chanced across a call for conference papers. He didn't believe in fate, had no time for kismet or superstition, but it still felt like it was meant to be when the letter arrived confirming his place as keynote speaker - and the news that the Department was going to pay for it.
It was the kind of thing they wanted to see, he was told. The GCPD needed to shake off its reputation of being reactionary and outdated, and so he finally boarded that flight to Ireland, excitement churning in his gut even as he ploughed through a worthy presentation on Responsive Policing in a Crisis Situation.
Gotham was always in the middle of a crisis situation.
When it was done he couldn't leave fast enough. Fidgeted helplessly all through the journey, then sat for almost an hour on a low wall opposite Harvey's place of work gathering up the courage to speak to the man he had spent so many years in love with.
Harvey looked so good when he pushed the cafe door open it took his breath away. The Irish lilt to his voice made his heart race, even as the overblown joky love confession he was making to his daughter made it ache in longing.
Then Harvey was looking right at him, pinning him in place with the weight of the moment, and though Jim had imagined a thousand things he might say, all that actually fell from his lips was,
"I was in the area. Well, almost. I was in Dublin for a conference."
Harvey carried on staring at him, not fooled for a moment, and Jim felt the awkwardness burn at the back of his neck as he tried again with,
"So this must be Barbara."
There was no doubt about it. She had the red hair, and the blue eyes, and besides he had charted her growth from a baby into her own person for all that he had been half a world away. Harvey nodded anyway. Spoke stiltedly at first, let Barbara ask him questions about whether or not he had known her Mother, and the next thing they were all sat eating dinner together.
"I want to be a Garda when I grow up," Barbara told him, tone solemn, and Harvey translated needlessly,
"Police." To Barbara he added, "No, you don't. You want to go to school and get a nice cushy desk job."
"I do," Barbara reaffirmed when Harvey disappeared with their empty plates, "I'll take out all the bad guys."
Jim smiled in spite of himself. Had clear memories of his own ten-year-old self coming out with almost the exact same thing, and as Harvey approached he gave her a look that told her not to worry. It could be their secret.
Harvey knew, maybe, because when he glanced up the older man was looking at him with a strange expression. Just wasn't certain whether or not he liked the idea of Jim touching their lives at all, probably, so that Jim had to fight not to come across desperately eager when Harvey invited him back to see where they were living.
It was cosy. Comfortable. Had him blinking back tears with wistful thoughts of things that might have been, and sitting as close to Harvey as he dared, Barbara showing him photo albums and talking nineteen to the dozen until Harvey told her it was late and she had school in the morning. The sky outside the window was dark, it was true, and Jim watched the two of them negotiate five more minutes with a fond smile even as miserable reality began to creep in around the edges.
He would have to get going soon. Had a plane to catch and a city to keep from imploding in on itself.
"Why are you really here, Jim?" asked him softly when they were alone, so gorgeous Jim had to swallow a couple of times before he could get his mouth and his brain to co-operate.
"I've thought of you a lot over the years, Harvey," he managed, uncertain how much he ought to confess.
How much he was capable of confessing.
"Yeah?" Harvey snorted in disbelief, just the way David had always warned him he would. "Probably why my phone never stopped ringing, eh? All those letters piling up on my doormat."
Jim looked down at his hands. Hated himself for the way he tensed, the way he expected the words to be accompanied by a fist, and rather than protest that staying away was what Harvey had asked of him he said simply,
"I didn't think you'd want to hear from me."
Harvey sighed. Ran a hand through his hair, and Jim waited to be told that nothing at all had changed. The years hadn't softened his opinion any - their friendship was over, and there was no point in continuing the conversation. Instead Harvey sounded as overwhelmed as he felt.
"Why now then?"
Because if he had come before he couldn't have walked away again. He would have clung to Harvey, broken and bloodied, and begged him to fix the nightmare his life had become. Because this had been the pay-off he had been promising himself ever since that night he woke with the cord still wound around his neck. He would be strong enough to take what Harvey could give without making him feel guilty for what he couldn't.
"I couldn't stay away any longer," he finally confessed, scarcely more than a whisper, and they sat in silence for long minutes, each absorbing what this might mean for the future.
It was Harvey who broke the silence. Harvey who fussed with the mug in his hands and admitted,
"Even now I hear stuff and think, I'll tell Jim that later. Jim will think that's funny. You got my letter, yeah?"
Jim nodded, throat clogged up with all the history bound up in that piece of paper. Harvey exhaled shakily,
"I had to spell it out. I had to know that I had done everything I could. You understand that, don't you?"
"I never realized," Jim whispered, eyes stinging now, "I thought you and Scottie were - I was an idiot. You have no idea how much of an idiot I was."
"You'd be surprised," Harvey countered, all forced joviality, "It was something you made a habit of."
He laughed at that, wet and startled, and agreed to another drink - served in a mug instead of a bottle - and some more chit-chat while he drank it. It was so perfect, so much more than he had believed Harvey would grant him, and when he really had to go, when it couldn't be put off any longer, his heart raced frantically as he asked,
"Can I call you when I'm back in Gotham? Maybe I could visit you again. Perhaps we could catch up properly."
It was too much too soon, was only going to push Harvey into cutting links entirely, but Harvey didn't even hesitate before telling him maybe. Jim couldn't bite back the smile. Was having a hard enough time not flinging his arms about him, and at the door Harvey clasped his shoulder, just for a moment.
He could feel the ghost of it all the way back to Gotham.
There, in the gray and the cold, it seemed like some kind of fever dream. Too good to have actually happened. He penned a letter all the same, wishing he didn't sound as stilted and awkward in writing as he did in person, and mailed it before he could think better of it. The reply was slow in coming, though he had given Harvey his email address and his cell number so he could pick his method, and he had almost given up hope when old Mrs Phipps from the floor above knocked his door and said she had been meaning to tell him that there had been a letter for him in her pigeonhole.
He had to thank her as an afterthought, clung to the thing too tightly, and had to keep pausing as he read it through, so happy that he couldn't sit in one place for more than a few moments.
After that they wrote regularly, Harvey full of pride for Barbara's latest achievements and a wicked sense of humor about the mundane trials of work and the weather, and Jim slowly letting down his barriers, not overthinking every word and simply letting it flow. He wrote about the job, and the people they had both known, and - finally - how much he had missed having his best friend around.
'I'm so sorry,' he wrote one night, run down and maudlin from yet another horrific crime scene, 'I thought you'd be better off without me.'
'You did what I asked you to do,' Harvey wrote him back, telling him that he had come to peace with it, 'it was always a given you'd choose the request I never really wanted you to stick to.'
Jim rang him when he got that letter, carefully calculating the time difference, and the sound of Harvey's voice in his ear made his skin tingle all over.
"I want to see you," he blurted, just as suave as he had ever been, and Harvey pointed out reasonably that it wasn't exactly practicable. "I have all my leave owing to me," Jim argued, "let me know which dates would be best for you two."
Harvey told him that he'd never actually make it. That Gotham would pull him back in at the last minute - though Jim had never told him about that first attempt - and that he wasn't going to tell Barbara and let her get her hopes up. He could hear the hope in Harvey's tone though, the idea that they might be able to mend the bonds of their friendship, and they exchanged calls a few times a week in the run up, falling back into the push and pull of familiar banter.
He still feared that Harvey's prediction would come true. Clock watched the entire day he was due to go, gut lurching every time the phone rang or there was a rap on his office door, and it wasn't until they were actually in the air that he allowed himself to relax and start looking forward to it. To feel his heart seize up in his chest, totally lost to the sight Harvey made, because he had said not to bother meeting him at the airport yet there was Harvey anyway, exactly the way he was in the sickly romantic fantasies nobody would ever get him to admit to indulging in.
"Dad said you don't trust taxi drivers."
Harvey gave him a sheepish look in lieu of an apology but Jim was more charmed than he could say. Had always found it difficult not to be the one at the wheel, and certainly wasn't going to try that when he was expected to drive on the wrong side of the road.
"Let me buy you guys dinner then," Jim offered, "to say thank you."
On the surface it was nothing like the meals he and Harvey had used to share away from their apartments. They went to some chain restaurant, kids everywhere, and in place of the hip flask Harvey drank sweetened tea, something Barbara assured him was expected of people of her father's advanced years.
"Does that mean I should be drinking it too?" Jim asked, still unable to shake the dumb smile from the airport, and she nodded seriously.
Soda wasn't going to be doing him any favors at his age.
Harvey laughed, helpless, and the feeling it gave him - the sense of belonging - was exactly the same as it had been back then. This was it, this was everything he had ever wanted, and that night he breathed in deeply to capture the scent of Harvey clinging to the blankets as he curled into the cushions of the couch.
There was no way he was going to go to the hotel room he had actually booked when Harvey was willing to let him crash under his own roof.
In the morning they ate breakfast together like - well, like a family, and then they set out on all the sights the local area had to offer. It was the school holidays, Harvey had arranged for somebody to cover his own shifts, and Jim felt like an overgrown kid, beside himself with glee at the idea of having a whole week of this ahead of him.
They visited castles and went to look at ancient stone ruins. Pulled stupid faces for windswept photos and walked along the beach, though it was raining heavily and he was soaked through to the skin by the time they made it to some rustic looking pub, complete with crackling fireplace.
"See, Jim is demonstrating why you should always bring your coat," Harvey said, in full parental mode, and when he caught sight of the smile curling Jim's lips he unzipped his own waterproof and said unapologetically,
"I know, I've turned into my Mother."
"She must have been really handsome," Jim said in turn, and when it was met with silence hurried to clarify, "that was a joke."
"I'd forgotten about your sense of humor," Harvey said, clearly not offended, "My Ma was a real looker if you must know. I take after my old man."
Harvey had never had a good word to say about his dad, not in all the time Jim had known him, so it seemed the most natural thing in the world to say,
"You're nothing like him."
He would have said more. Would have apologized for overstepping the mark, maybe, but their food arrived then, and Barbara returned from petting one of the other patron's dog to tell him excitedly about the forthcoming itinerary.
Harvey protested when he paid the bill again, and pulled him aside when he let Barbara pick whatever she wanted from the gift shop of the next site of historical interest, bruised pride on display as he said he didn't need to throw his money around.
"I know," Jim stated, not sure how to explain that it wasn't as though he had anything else to spend it on. He paid his bills and he bought sandwiches on the way to the office. He drank, sometimes, and he bought raffle tickets at all the awful functions he was expected to show his face at. The rest of the time he was either sleeping or working. "Think of it as me making up for all the drinks I would have bought you." He thought of the letters they had written each other, Harvey talking about his battle to stay clear of it. "Tea is expensive."
"Just take it easy," Harvey asked, dubious but resigned, and that was how Jim came up with the great idea that he would cook dinner.
It was his last night already, the unwanted spectre of his upcoming departure hanging over him, and Barbara was going to a friend's birthday party. Was going to be spending the night because, as she told Harvey curtly, she wasn't a baby and going to change her mind when she got there, and Jim laid his purchases out on the kitchen counter as she wrangled with Harvey over what she was going to wear for the occasion.
Jim smiled to himself, hearing Harvey crumble like the soft hearted pushover he was, and set about following the instructions he brought up on his cell phone, determined that his meal would be edible. He wasn't particularly accomplished in the kitchen, was never going to be the kind of guy who hosted dinner parties, but it smelled pretty good and when Harvey left to drive Barbara to her friend's house he set about laying the table.
Found Harvey's wine glasses and filled them from a non-alcoholic bottle that looked the part. Stuck a plaster over the finger he had cut while chopping vegetables, and plated up the food impressed that he had managed not to burn it too badly. He even found a couple of candles while he was searching for a clean dish cloth and just as he was sure it was a step way too far it was too late to do anything about it.
Harvey gave a low whistle, appreciative, and said that he felt underdressed for the occasion.
"You look fine to me," Jim said, completely genuine, and suddenly he had no appetite for food, not when they were sat opposite each other, feet almost touching under the little table. The candlelight reflecting in Harvey's eyes and shining in his hair, more gray than it had been but no less attractive for it.
He pushed food around his plate, pulse fast and fluttery, and when he missed something Harvey said, his concentration on Harvey's lips rather than the sounds falling from them, Harvey put his cutlery down with a clatter.
"Jim, what are you trying to do here?"
"I just wanted to make you dinner. To say thank you for playing host this week."
"Really?" Harvey challenged, meeting his gaze, "Because, to me, this looks like an attempt at seduction."
Jim supposed it did, even if that hadn't been his intention. He had promised himself that he would go slow. That he would let Harvey decide if and when there was hope of something more between them.
"Is that a bad thing?" He asked finally, feeling as though he were laying all his cards on the table, and Harvey only heaved a sigh in response. Pushed a hand through his hair, restless, and then told it like it was.
"How do you see this panning out? My life is here now. Barbara's life is here - her family, her friends. Do you think I'd take her away from everything she knows to make her live in a place like Gotham?"
The turnaround was crushing. The certainty in Harvey's tone heart breaking. What had he been thinking?
"I could move here," he tried, voice scratched up and scarcely recognizable.
Harvey shook his head. "No, you couldn't. You're somebody there, the lynch pin that holds the whole shambles together. What would you have here?"
"You?"
It was all going wrong, all falling apart in front of him, and Harvey laughed bitterly and looked up at the ceiling for a moment. Jim focused on keeping it together. On not letting the tears burning behind his eyelids fall, nor the panicked pleas for Harvey to forget he had ever said anything leave his tongue.
"And what am I supposed to do in a few months time when you accept that that isn't enough for you? When I'm so in love with you again it feels like I'll die if I have to go a day without you? Don't say you won't - I know you, Jim. I can't do it. I won't."
Jim reached for his glass and took a sip, anything to try and hide the despair overwhelming him, and felt the weight of Harvey's gaze on him, following the movement of his throat as he swallowed. Jim knew then what he was going to. Put the glass down with a hand that wasn't quite steady, and licked his lips clean nervously.
He met Harvey's eye, determined, and said,
"Then let me have tonight. Let me have something to remember you by."
He jumped when Harvey slammed a fist down on the table, crockery and glassware jostling. Feared, just for a moment, that Harvey was going to give him the beating he had never succeeded in convincing himself he didn't deserve. But Harvey only put his head in his hands, shoulders shaking a little, and Jim didn't need to be able to see the evidence to know he was crying, not when he asked him in anguish,
"Why do you always do this to me? I should have kicked you out the second you walked through the door."
"I'm sorry," Jim rasped, apologizing never seeming as difficult as it once had. It never fixed anything, anyway. "I just - I'm sorry."
His hand hovered above Harvey's shoulder for a moment, his heart aching with the need to close the distance, but he pulled it back and forced himself to leave the room. Started packing his suitcase, numb but methodical, and he tried again when it was done, only for Harvey to turn away from him, clearly not trusting himself to speak without emotion getting the better of him.
He called a cab and went to the hotel he had paid in advance for. Collapsed atop the bed feeling sick and shaky. Broken, somehow, and buried his nose in the t-shirt he had slept in the night before, seeking out the faint traces of Harvey transferred from the blankets and way they had sat pressed up close long into the night, exchanging stories and memories.
It was past midnight when there was a knock at the door. He debated ignoring it. Couldn't care less if the place was burning to the ground, not now, but the knock came again and he heaved himself up to go and answer it. Stared dumbly at the sight awaiting him, just for a moment, and then Harvey's hands were framing his face and he was being kissed. Ravished, really, so that all he could do was kick the door shut and cling to the back of Harvey's jacket.
"I didn't mean what I said," Harvey told him when he broke away, as though he hadn't said a whole avalanche of things. He must have got that though, because he stroked a thumb along his cheekbone, hand cradling the side of his face, "I'm so glad you came back into my life, Jim. I just - I don't know how this can work."
"We'll find a way," Jim pledged, tears brimming even as a stupid grin spread across his face.
Even as it felt like he was flying, soaring, and then they were kissing again, years and years of wanting finally finding an outlet.
Harvey pushed him down onto the bed, started frying his brain cells with a mouth at his neck and his solid weight blanketed over him, so that Jim moved without grace or finesse. Rutted helplessly against first Harvey's hip, and then the thigh he wedged between his legs for the purpose, hands roaming everywhere.
"Oh God, I don't even know where to start," Harvey groaned, pushing up to straddle his hips and shoulder out of his jacket, "I want to make you see stars, Jim. I want to make you feel so good you never want to leave my side again."
"Do it," Jim begged, openly admiring the way Harvey was unbuttoning his shirt, his own hand stealing up and under the cotton undershirt to the heat of Harvey's bare skin. "Make me yours, Harvey."
He had never said anything like it in his life, would probably cringe at the memory in the cold light of the morning, but in the moment he couldn't help himself. He wanted Harvey to leave his mark. To raise love bites down the length of his throat and to fill him so completely he would feel it even back in the cold gray of Gotham.
Harvey cursed in response. Palmed himself roughly for a moment, and then refocused all of his attention on Jim. Divested him of his black button down and the matching pants, then took his time mapping what felt like every inch of him. Jim was trembling with it, squirming with the need for more, and the whole while Harvey kept up a running commentary whenever his mouth wasn't otherwise occupied, telling him that he was hot, and gorgeous, and that the entire week he had been wanting to push him up against the nearest flat surface and make love to him.
"You smell so good," Harvey praised, kissing his way up his thigh until his nose was nudging at the leg of his boxer shorts. "I bet you taste good too. You want me to find out? You want to come in my mouth?"
Jim made a desperate sounding noise, hips bucking instinctively, but Harvey just kept on talking, the rising flush in his cheeks only making him look even more perfect by Jim's reckoning.
"Or would you rather come on my dick? Tell me, Jim, do you ever think about that back in Gotham? When we're on the phone, maybe, you wish I was right there with you, fucking into you so nice you can't help but touch yourself?"
He tried to do just that, was so worked up he couldn't think of anything else, but Harvey captured hold of his hand and pressed a kiss to his knuckles, mock stern as he said,
"I'm waiting for an answer."
Jim tugged at the hand in his own. Pulled Harvey into a frantic kiss, all tongue and desire, and then latched onto the skin of Harvey's neck, needing to leave a mark of his own.
"Your cock," he managed against the skin, arms wrapped around Harvey so that they were pressed close and intimate. "Please, Harvey."
He expected to be rolled over and pushed down. To get a finger or two, perhaps, and then have Harvey slam into him. Instead Harvey sucked him a little anyway, had him teetering on the edge in moments, so close it didn't even register at first that Harvey was dipping a finger inside of him. After that it was all he could focus on, all he could think about, because Harvey was dropping his head still lower and licking at his hole, pausing only to talk filth about how tight he was and how good it was going to feel.
It already felt amazing, better than he could have imagined, then Harvey was spearing his tongue into him and it was a good job it was his last night in the place - he was probably keeping half the hotel awake. He just couldn't keep quiet, was in such bliss that he couldn't find the motivation to care about it, and Harvey only compounded the matter by saying,
"I never thought you'd be loud. It's so fucking hot, Jim, knowing that you like what I'm doing."
"How couldn't I?" Jim panted, writhing back on two of Harvey's fingers, and he had never dreamed it would be like this because the look Harvey gave him wasn't about lust or even light hearted playfulness. Harvey was looking at him like he was the answer to all his prayers, like he thought him every bit as wonderful and special as his pillow talk suggested, and Jim had to kiss him.
Had to run fingers through his hair and try to convey to Harvey what he was feeling, his body trembling and his heart fit to burst with how much he loved him.
Harvey braced himself on his forearms to keep kissing him. Stayed close and held eye contact, only looking away to fumble with a condom and help guide the head of his cock into position. The sharp flash of pain didn't come, Harvey watching him carefully as he trailed fingertips down his side and stroked his cock in distraction.
Was gentle about it, tender, until he was all the way in and whispering in his ear if it was okay if he started moving.
Jim nodded, too overcome to form words, Harvey experimented with the angle a little. Thrust into him again and again, careful and controlled, until Jim's stomach clenched up tight and the cry was wrenched from his lips, startled out of him as Harvey hit his prostate. Harvey hitched his thighs up in reward. Pounded into the same spot, over and over again, so that Jim's fingers were clenched in a death grip in the sheets, tears on his cheeks as he begged Harvey.
He didn't even know what for - slower, faster, to make him come or to keep him on the edge forever.
"I've got to," Harvey warned finally, thrusts growing ever more erratic, and Jim just spurred him on, whimpering out breathy pleas for more and harder, and raking his fingers down Harvey's back as he did his best to oblige him. He felt Harvey shudder, hips grinding into him as he moaned out his climax, and it was so perfectly in line with his favorite imagined scenarios that it only took a few strokes of his hand before he was following.
They kissed languidly in the aftermath, soft and sated, and he fell asleep in Harvey's embrace, trying desperately to commit everything about the sensation to memory even as sleep pulled him under.
"I don't want to go," Jim confessed in the morning, only a few hours to go before he had to catch his flight, and Harvey kissed his cheeks and his forehead, and told him that it wouldn't be forever.
That they couldn't make it this far only to fall at the final hurdle.
So they washed up and got dressed, but not before he blushed to the tips of his ears and asked Harvey if he could take his undershirt with him. If he didn't need it.
"I don't know if it's sweet or disgusting," Harvey mused, willingly handing it over, "You don't know the last time I changed it."
"You never did like doing your laundry," Jim agreed, and Harvey only waxed lyrical for the 500th time about the wonders of having a house with a working washing machine.
His smile faltered a little at that, at the reminder of things Harvey had here that he couldn't offer him in Gotham, but he refused to let Harvey see. He didn't want anything upsetting their last couple of hours together for months at the very least.
He blushed all over again as he checked out, certain the staff knew all about the noise he had been making just a few short hours ago, and kept touching his neck when they went and got breakfast, half because he was sure people were looking at the visible love bites, and half because he was so thrilled that Harvey had left them there.
"I might have got a little carried away," Harvey offered, contrite, "it's your own fault for being so damn sexy."
"I left a few of my own," Jim reasoned, kind of giddy with the meaning behind it, and then Harvey went to take a call from Barbara and left him to try and actually eat something.
"They're all going out for lunch, so I'm gonna drive you to the airport. No need to thank me, that's just the kind of guy I am."
"I have good taste," Jim grinned, trying and failing to sound casually indifferent, and they both kept getting lost to the sight of each other on the way there, overawed at not having to hide the fact they were mad about the man sat across from them.
They necked like teenagers at the airport, drinking in the view and then kissing all over again, right up until the very last moment.
"I love you," Harvey whispered in his ear, not wanting to let him go, and Jim kissed him one last time and repeated the words as though it was sealing a pact between them.
Some way, somehow, they would make this work.
Back in Gotham the change in his attitude was obvious. He caught himself humming once, in the elevator, and when Alvarez came for his monthly appointment as union rep he asked him if he could try and stop smiling.
"I didn't know your face could make that expression. It's frightening."
Jim only smiled harder, beginning to feel for the first time that he had colleagues not simply people he worked with, and told Harvey about it over the phone later.
"Of course they care about you, Jim," Harvey admonished, sounding like he was in the middle of cooking something, "you were their Captain. They look up to you."
"We both know how I got there," Jim said, half afraid the memory would have Harvey calling a halt to the whole thing, but Harvey only huffed and said bluntly,
"It was always going to happen, sooner or later. What was a few months in the scheme of things?"
Jim had to close his own eyes. Try and arrange his thoughts into some kind of order.
"I wanted to die sometimes, for what I did to you." He didn't know where the words were coming from, just that now he had started he couldn't hold back the tide. "You've every right to hate me."
Harvey swore, loud and vicious, then restarted Jim's heart by explaining that he had just cut his finger open.
"I never hated you, Jim. I was angry at you, sure, but I never once hated you."
It felt like a huge weight lifted off his shoulders, a weight he had never even known he was carrying, and he sent a sickly sweet text message before he went to sleep, not caring at all how much it was going to cost him.
He went back to Ireland every chance he got. Enough to start recognizing the Irish on the road signs, and to give in and start drinking tea. To tentatively broach the subject again of which side of the Atlantic their future might be on, only for Harvey to tense up and go silent.
"There's no rush, is there?" Harvey asked him later, apologizing for his behavior, "You'll probably be sick of me before we ever have to make that kind of decision."
Jim wished he wouldn't say stuff like that. Didn't know how to make Harvey see that he wasn't the fickle superficial type he seemed to have him pegged as, and tried to show him with his body what he couldn't put into words. Worked at removing Harvey's undershirt, something from which he was too rarely parted, and let Harvey see how desperately it did it for him, the sight of so much pale flesh and the faded tattoos he couldn't help but press kisses into.
Harvey looked up at him reverently, fingers gentle at his sides even as his eyes were dark with want, and the air around them felt like it was burning up, Jim having to bite at his lip to keep quiet as he slowly sank down onto Harvey. It was so good, so much better than the pale imitation of fingers he managed back in his own lonely apartment, and the helpless moan he dragged from Harvey's lips when he tried moving was so hot he had to pant for breath and self-control.
"That's it, Jim," Harvey crooned, hips shifting to meet his movements, "take what you want from me."
He had to kiss him. Had to curl fingers into his hair and whisper love confessions before bracing his weight up on his hands and moving shamelessly.
Harvey held him close in the aftermath, hair damp and chest heaving, and Jim simply returned it, hoping it had been enough to make Harvey see that he was never going to tire of his company.
Out of the bedroom was where he had assumed the real problems would be. Was amazed, constantly, that it never seemed to be much of an issue. Harvey introduced him to Barbara's aunt - Scottie's sister - as well as his own relatives and the friends he had made. Was just as touchy feely as he had always been in public, winding an arm around his waist or his shoulders, and even pressing a kiss to his cheek occasionally.
Barbara asked him frankly what his intentions were one evening when Harvey was out running a few errands, like she was the parent and Harvey the innocent child. He hesitated, uncertain how much Harvey would want him to say, then threw caution to the wind and said simply,
"I love him."
"Obviously," Barbara agreed, a little exasperated, "But does it mean you're going to move in here, or are we going to have to go to Gotham?"
That he couldn't answer. Gotham's only claim to fame here were the reports of terrorist attacks and sky high crime rates on the evening news, and even if he was to convince Harvey that he would be happy here it would still take a long time and a mountain of paperwork.
"I want to see it before I make my mind up," Barbara said, oblivious to his internal conflict, "I can't make any promises."
He didn't know what he had been expecting but it certainly wasn't that, and in bed that night he tentatively brought up the topic of Harvey and Barbara coming out to stay with him.
"I can't afford it," Harvey admitted, reluctantly, and Jim just kissed him in response and asked what the point of constantly chasing promotion was if he couldn't spend his wage packet on the people who mattered most to him. "I feel like your kept woman," Harvey huffed, only half joking, and the last few months had really changed how he dealt with life because Jim worked a hand between them and said,
"No, you don't."
"Where do you get these lines from?" Harvey whined, pressing ever so slightly up into his palm all the same, and Jim only beamed widely.
"I learned them all from the master."
He did take it on board though, did try to be mindful of how his actions looked to Harvey, because it wasn't just Harvey with the worries and the hang ups. He was doing a good job of hiding them, at least, or so Jim thought - right up until the long weekend he had fought tooth and nail to get away for and then ruined by flinching violently when Harvey put a hand on the nape of his neck the way that used to signal he was in big trouble.
Jim tried to apologize, tried to laugh it off, but it had been a tough few weeks at work and he had been receiving late night phone calls. Nobody ever spoke, they never lasted long enough to get a trace on, but somehow he knew. He just knew who they had to be from.
Harvey seemed to accept it, appeared to let it slide, then later when Barbara was in bed and it was just the two of them pressed up close on the couch in the living room Harvey turned to look at him and asked if there was a particular reason why he always expected Harvey to swing for him.
"I don't -"
"I know I clocked you one a couple of times back in the day, but we weren't even friends then and you had just signed my death warrant," Harvey sighed, the attempt at light heartedness forgotten, "You have to tell me what I'm doing wrong, Jim. You've got to know that I'd never lay a finger on you."
He had thought he was past it, that it was all a distant memory, and now in the space of a couple of weeks it was right back at the forefront. The fear and the hopelessness, because he was the one who had let it happen. He was the one who had stayed when he should have walked away, and that had to mean he had wanted it, really. No matter how much the rational part of his mind told him otherwise.
"It's not you," he managed eventually, fingers kind of numb with the cold washing over him.
"Is it the job?" Harvey tried, "It makes a man jumpy, I know. Paranoid."
Jim nodded eagerly, ready to latch onto any excuse, but silence settled between them afterwards, awkward and stifling, and when Jim finally fell asleep it was only to lose himself in nightmares where he had never gotten out and Harvey told him that he was sure he was getting exactly what he deserved.
His face was wet when he was shaken awake, Harvey's eyes wide with fear as he told him over and over that it was just a bad dream, so that Jim buried his face in Harvey's shoulder and wished that he could tell him what the problem was. He hadn't at first because he had been ashamed. Hadn't wanted Harvey's indifference or, worse, his pity, and then he hadn't wanted to make Harvey feel guilty for something he couldn't change anyway.
Now it felt like he ought to be over it, like he was deliberately clinging to the past, and the wedge between them only grew wider and deeper for the remainder of his stay.
"Be careful," Harvey implored when they said goodbye at the airport, and Jim clenched his fingers tight in the fabric of Harvey's coat as they hugged, not wanting to be parted from him and not knowing how to make sure Harvey understood that.
He had no choice but to think it all through back in Gotham, none of the ever evolving crises enough to divert his attention completely. It made him cringe, some of it. The things he had accepted without question, and how those untruths had become so deeply ingrained that there was no way Harvey hadn't picked up on them. His too obvious shock that sex didn't have to be rough or painful just because there wasn't a woman involved, and the slow unpicking of decades worth of relationships where disagreements ended in things getting thrown at him or threats that they were going to hurt themselves.
When he did confess it was over the telephone, the words easier to find when he didn't have to see Harvey's reaction to them, and Harvey simply listened as he explained haltingly why he got tense sometimes, and why the teeth on the left side of his jaw had really needed so much dental work.
The silence stretched when he finished speaking, Harvey not wanting his excess baggage perhaps. Wondering how a trained professional - an ex-soldier at that - had ever let himself get into such a position.
"Did you report it?" Harvey asked finally, "Is this guy in prison?"
His own silence said everything.
There was noise in the background on Harvey's end, something that sounded like a whole gaggle of schoolgirls wanting a ride somewhere, and Harvey apologized into the handset and told him that they could talk about it later.
Left him wishing that Ireland wasn't so very far away, and that he was the type of man who would be able to actually voice the way he was feeling even if he were there in person.
"It's not your fault, you know that, right?" Harvey said when he called back, exactly the way they were taught to say it in basic training, "You didn't do anything wrong."
That was debatable, really, but Jim pinched at the bridge of his nose and tried to keep his voice steady, "You don't have to try and make me feel better. It's been years now."
"I'd still kill him if I got the chance."
There was something in the way Harvey said it that made him shiver, no hint of a joke about it, and Jim was glad the opportunity was never likely to arise. He didn't need that on his conscience.
Wished he hadn't opened his mouth at all, truthfully, because the phone calls had probably been nothing and all he had succeeded in doing was tearing open old wounds.
Letting Harvey see what a mess he still was. What an emotional drain he was always going to be.
"When can I see you next?" Harvey asked quietly, dragging him out of his thoughts, and the distance of three months had never felt so unbearably long before.
At least the city's criminal fraternity provided him with plenty of distractions, an escape from Arkham having everyone on high alert, and the Mayoral elections providing a constant headache of needing to supply enough security for heated rallies and over spirited campaigning.
Maybe, he thought six weeks in, it would be better if he called it off now. If he let Harvey go back to his own life, relieve him of all the stress and worry his presence in it was giving him, and he would be free to devote everything he had left to Gotham.
It would be easier, less complicated, and then he got home to find a letter waiting for him. Harvey was making the decision for him, he just knew it. This was going to be the most painful Dear John he had ever endured. Yet when he opened it there was absolutely no talk of ending things. Instead Harvey wrote that he couldn't wait another six weeks to try and explain the thoughts keeping him awake at night.
That he loved him, adored him, and the idea that he had been so lonely and so miserable was almost more than he could handle.
'I knew there was something wrong, that there was something you weren't telling me, but I didn't want to push you. I didn't want you to tell me that you just weren't as into the idea of 'us' as I am. I should have given you more credit, Jim. Can you forgive me?'
He rang Harvey, hoping he wouldn't be too upset with him for waking him up in the early hours.
"Bullock," Harvey answered, years on the Force ingraining the habit, then followed up with a groggy sounding, "Harvey. Er. Who is it, please?"
Jim couldn't help the fond smile it inspired. Told him that he forgave him, of course, and that he loved him more than anything.
"It's half three in the morning," Harvey said in response, "and I'm still happy to hear the sound of your voice. I'm besotted, Jim."
Harvey proved it when they were finally back together, telling him that they could talk about it as much or as little as he wanted to. Went on to say that he was willing to make the trip to Gotham, to let Barbara see for herself how things would be if one day they decided to move there, and then in response to his questions about her whereabouts explained that she was staying over at a friend's house to drink too much Club Orange and watch some God awful movie about makeovers or weddings or something.
"They borrowed something from your DVD collection then?" Jim offered, feeling more like himself than he had in months, and Harvey gave him a death glare before giving it up as a bad show and bursting into laughter.
"The point I was trying to make," Harvey said when he was done, voice dropping a little, "is that I haven't seen you for four months and we have the house to ourselves. I hope for your sake you got some shut-eye on the plane over."
There was never a whole lot else to do, not really, and he had never been more glad of the fact than he was at that moment. Except, possibly, when Harvey was coaxing him through a third orgasm, his entire body so sensitive he couldn't have kept quiet even if he had wanted to. It was so good he never wanted it to stop, didn't know how much longer he could stand for it to go on for, and then he was there, every muscle straining as he sobbed with the intensity of it.
"I knew you could do it for me," Harvey praised, face flushed and voice unsteady even if he couldn't get it up again quite so soon, and Jim all but collapsed into his arms, more than happy to be petted and coddled.
The next day they did speak about it some. Took Barbara shopping, her interests already a world away from the freckle faced kid with pigtails he had met on that very first trip, and exchanged quiet conversation about the years he had spent trapped in his own personal nightmare. Harvey knew him well, better than anyone, and seemed to understand that he could never speak about it if they set aside time and made it into an event to be dealt with.
Like this though, snippets that lacked too much detail, a public place where he would never allow himself to get over emotional. This was about as much as he could manage.
"I don't think any differently of you, Jim," Harvey said, too sincere for him to argue with while Barbara deliberated over shoes he would never understand the attraction of, "I just wish I could have been there for you."
Jim nodded, not trusting himself to speak, so Harvey pressed close and kissed his cheek. Hammed it up a little when Barbara complained about the spectacle they were making, and Jim worried for a moment that maybe she didn't entirely approve of what they were doing until she made it clear that the problem was their age and uncool attire they were drawing attention to, rather than their gender.
"I have always been at the height of fashion," Harvey assured her, "Jim will tell you."
"I'm not getting involved," Jim said, hands held out in placation.
Barbara rolled her eyes. "Of course your boyfriend is going to be on your side. Jim always thinks you look good."
The implication was that this was clearly a sign of Jim's poor dress sense, but Jim nodded anyway. Truer words were never spoken. Harvey chuckled and wound an arm around each of them, steering them out in the direction of the parking lot, and for the first time in longer than he could remember Jim really felt like he was part of a family. He wasn't just some guy who turned up occasionally, an outsider to be put up with for the duration.
These two were going to be the focus of the rest of his life.
Back in Gotham he set about finding interesting things for a 13-year-old to do, was dismayed at just about everything on offer, and then had to blink back tears when Barbara mailed him a card for his birthday. The message told him to stop stressing over the trip, suggested that if he really couldn't help himself he think less about the zoo and more about the mall, and ended with a pep talk about how he ought to make the most of the occasion.
How her dad was sentimental, and kind of romantic, and Jim should really get on with it because neither of them were getting any younger.
He took the missive to heart, started making a few plans, and by the time he met the pair of them at Gotham airport he could scarcely keep still for nervous excitement.
"Did you take my advice?" Barbara asked him the instant they were alone, playing the part of co-conspirator, and Jim had to tease a little and say,
"Yes, and you'll be pleased to hear I decided against the zoo after all."
She gave him an incredulous look, ready to really lose her temper, so he just grinned and showed her the ring box he had been carrying in his pocket.
"You're really going to do it?" Barbara demanded, over eager with enthusiasm, and then they had to be quiet and act innocent because Harvey was approaching.
"What are you two plotting?" Harvey asked, suspicious, and Jim put on the puppy dog eyes Harvey had often bemoaned he was a slave to and said that they had been deciding what to have for dinner.
They ordered take-out, his apartment all but sparkling with the energy he had poured into making the place look presentable, and it all felt so right and so easy that it was kind of terrifying.
"Thank you," Jim said when Barbara went to her own room, the jet lag clearly hitting her, and wound his arms around him.
Harvey pressed a kiss to his nose and asked him what for.
"For coming here. For giving me a chance. For being the person you are."
"I don't know why you keep telling me you're bad with words," Harvey admonished, gaze lost in his own, so Jim outright told him that he had never been so happy. That he hardly knew what to do with himself, so that Harvey grinned at him and suggested that he might be able to think of one or two things.
Switched things up when they made it to the bedroom, and whispered heatedly in his ear that all he had been thinking about for weeks was having Jim's dick inside him. It had him going from interested to desperate in two seconds flat, and he had to kiss Harvey silent so that it was just the lewd sounds of his fingers filling the room as he worked Harvey open.
Harvey arched his head back and groaned as soon as they broke the kiss, and Jim begged him to stroke himself for him, shivering as he watched Harvey push up into his fist and then back against his fingers. It was so hot, so perfect, and Jim didn't even remember to be self-conscious about the size of his own cock, not when Harvey was panting out praise, stifling back moans of pleasure as he told him how amazing it felt as he pushed into him.
It did feel amazing, tight heat that threatened to end the entire experience way too soon, so that he had to hold still for a long moment to regain some semblance of self-control.
"Fuck, that was good," Harvey told him when he slumped on top of him, too wrung out to even roll over, but Harvey didn't seem to care if he wanted to use his chest for a pillow.
If anything, he only encouraged it.
He hadn't been able to take the entire week off work, but in the morning Harvey reassured him that it was fine even as he openly admired the view as Jim dressed and knotted his tie.
"I'm sure I can still find my way around," Harvey said, then added, "Babs wants to see where Scottie lived and worked. We're gonna go and lay some flowers on her grave."
"Oh, Harvey," Jim breathed, appalled that he hadn't really considered how Harvey might feel coming back to Gotham and revisiting the time he had spent with her, but Harvey just gave him a sad smile.
"She always said that one day you'd get your head out of your ass and see what you were missing. The least I can do is go tell her that she was right on the money."
Jim kissed him, softly, and somehow it ended with him flushed and breathless, hair out of place and half his shirt unbuttoned, when the ringing of his cell brought him back to reality.
"Duty calls," Harvey said, smug smile on his face, and Jim made him promise to call him if he needed anything, before taking the call and trying to sound calm and professional.
It was gone 8pm when he got home, still light out but dingy in the hallways of his apartment building, and he was just planning out a shower and some kind of sustenance before Harvey and Barbara got back from dinner when he pushed the door open and felt his heart skip a beat in shock at the sight he was met with.
"Jim," David said, smiling, and Jim knew this scene. Had been through it with Barbara, and Lee, and all the others who had wanted to kill him.
"What are you doing here?" He asked, all the same, and David just launched into some half mad rant about the things he had been posting on social media, and how he wouldn't mind if Jim wasn't so dead set on rubbing his face in it. "We've not been together for a long time," Jim pointed out, weighing up his options, "you can't be here."
"Call it in," David challenged, the too familiar unhinged look in his eyes, "they'll never get here in time."
He wished that he had his gun on him. Had anything on him, really, but he had locked it all up at the precinct rather than risk Harvey's wrath for having a gun in the place with his child. He felt sick at that thought, his blood running ice cold at the idea of Harvey and Barbara walking into this, and he tried again with negotiation, fighting to keep his voice steady.
"I don't want to talk about it," David countered, impatient, "the problem with talking, Jim, is that you never listen. If you did, we wouldn't be in this mess."
It was useless, Jim saw that now. David was too far gone. The idea hit him, suddenly, that perhaps Harvey was already back. That maybe David had been waiting for them.
His training went out the window. All the courses, and the seminars, and the in the field experience. Instead he rushed through to check the other rooms, heart hammering, and before he knew it there was a strange sensation in his side and when he looked down blood was spreading across his work shirt.
He put a hand to it, dumbstruck, and pulled them away slick with blood. Scarcely had chance to register it before he was being shoved to the floor, the knife entering again and again, and though he fought back with everything he had, though he tried to crawl away and retrieve the cell phone he had dumped with his keys in the dish by the door, it dawned on him that this was it.
This time it really was all over.
He must have passed out, he supposed, what with the shock and the pain and the blood loss, and even in his moments of lucidity he heard sounds but couldn't make sense of them. All he wanted was for Harvey and Barbara to be all right. Nothing else mattered now.
That was the first thing he tried to say when he came around, his mouth refusing to co-operate, but he couldn't even focus on the face in front of him before he went under again.
"Jim, thank God!" was what he was met with the second time, Harvey's fingers gentle on his face, and Jim reached for him weakly, needing to know that he really was okay. Harvey reassured him that he was - and so was Barbara. "He tried to make a run for it when we got there, went down the fire escape. They picked him up though."
His tone suggested that it was better for David that way. That Harvey would have torn him limb from limb had he actually got hold of him.
"I'm sorry," Jim tried, scratchy but understandable, "Babs shouldn't have had to see that."
In some ways, Jim told himself, this was a blessing. He had been kidding himself about Gotham. Had been planning to get down on one knee and say to Harvey that they'd carry on the way things were if he wanted, at least until Barbara finished high school. But he had hoped Harvey would choose to stay. That Barbara would be won over by the city lights and Corporate America.
He had wanted to put them both in danger.
"She shouldn't have," Harvey agreed, unknowingly twisting the knife still deeper, but then added, "but that bastard shouldn't have touched you in the first place. It wasn't like you planned for it to happen."
That was true, at least, and he nodded shakily when Harvey asked if he was up to seeing Barbara now, or if he wanted to be left alone.
"I want to see her," he managed, meaning it, and didn't even care about the pain when she flung her arms around him.
"I thought you were dead," she said, face pale and tear stained, "you can't die on us, Jim. I already lost one parent."
He started crying at that, couldn't stop himself, and Harvey correctly deduced the reason, stroking his hair back from his forehead and telling him that the three of them were a family.
The duty nurse came and demanded he get some rest then, muttered under her breath about people over exciting her patients, and still Jim called Harvey back at the last moment to ask if they had somewhere to stay.
"I've mopped up plenty of blood in my time," Harvey said, and then confessed that he may have used and abused Jim's position to ensure the scene of crime officer moved quickly. "You're the Deputy Commissioner, Jim. You can't have the rank and file in and out of your apartment."
Jim smiled in spite of himself, a little awestruck at Harvey's ability to make any situation brighter, and then went out for the count, completely and utterly exhausted.
The next day he felt more aware. More aware of the pain too, but he supposed there always had to be a pay-off. Harvey and Barbara came visiting, their sights of Gotham being rather more constrained than they had probably expected. But Barbara brought him some magazine she thought he'd like because 'it looked boring', and then Harvey sent her off in search of a cup of tea and pulled a chair right up close to his bed.
"They've given me back the contents of your pockets," Harvey said, and went on to lecture him a little for not at least carrying his pepper spray. Then he pulled something from his own pocket, the box blood-stained and a touch misshapen, and Jim sucked in a sharp breath that pulled at all his stitches.
"I was going to get down on one knee," Jim croaked, gaze on the box rather than whatever expression might be on Harvey's face, "I wanted you to see how much you mean to me."
"I know, Jim," Harvey said gently, Jim slowly looking up at him, "I see it in your eyes every time you look at me. I hear it in your voice every time we talk on the phone. I thank God for it each and every day because I feel the exact same way about you."
Harvey was smiling at him, eyes damp, and Jim reached for the box laid on the overbed table. Worked it open with his bandaged hand and fingers - defensive wounds - and carefully manoeuvred the ring onto the hand Harvey held out for him.
"Barbara said I should do it," he confessed, stroking the pad of a fingertip over the smooth metal, "she said that neither of us are getting any younger."
Harvey laughed, used to it, and then leaned in close to kiss him. Had him forgetting he was in a hospital bed and that he was due another dose of painkillers, lost completely in how happy he was.
They were still smiling stupidly at each other when Barbara returned, so that she was just triumphant that her less than subtle hinting had worked.
For all that, the path forward still wasn't clear. By the time he was well enough to leave the hospital it was almost time for Harvey and Barbara to go home, and the sight of his sitting room - the discoloration of his carpet - made him feel sick to his stomach. He promised Harvey that he would be fine, that he just needed to get on with things, then broke out in a cold sweat when he returned from seeing them both off at the airport, afraid to open his own damn front door.
He had to be interviewed and sign statements, and then somebody leaked it to the press so everybody and their grandmother knew. Gossiped about it on the subway and in the diners, and Jim had to swallow convulsively over and over again one evening, two of the cleaners who obviously thought he had already left agreeing with each other that there had to be more to the story, because a guy like him would never have put up with the kind of abuse the papers were claiming.
The same thoughts were visible on the faces of the jury when it went to trial, along with the defending counsel, and Jim had never really been tripped up on the stand before. Had always stuck to his guns and kept things clear, even when he had been on trial for murder. The jury had just been convinced that he was lying - not that he didn't have his story straight.
This time it felt like he was falling apart, like everything that came out of his mouth was being twisted into something he hadn't meant to say, and he was on the verge of accepting defeat before the final whistle for the first time in his life when he glanced up and saw Harvey sitting in the public gallery.
Harvey gave him a small smile, encouraging, and suddenly none of it seemed quite so bad. He could answer the questions and quit looking at the scars on his fingers. Could face the court, in control, and keep his head up high as he returned to his seat, no matter how much he was shaking on the inside.
He went to Harvey as soon as he could. Started in on a thousand questions and got a kiss in answer, along with a simple,
"I couldn't let you do this alone, Jim."
Barbara was waiting out in the lobby, sat with a court official Jim had seen Harvey drinking with a few times back in the old days, and though it was probably immensely uncool she hugged him tight and told him that she had missed him.
"We can't keep going on like this," Harvey said when they went out to lunch, and Jim's stomach lurched a little even as Barbara nodded her head in agreement. "Me and Babs have been talking it over and -"
"And we're going to try it here, for the next school year."
"That's -" Jim started, overcome, but Barbara wasn't finished,
"But if I don't like it, we're not staying. And even if I do we have to go back home every summer."
Harvey shrugged as though to say it had already proven non-negotiable, "Every summer."
Jim had to take a moment. Had to try and get a grip on what he was feeling.
"We can do that," he assured, smile too wide and eyes too bright, and for the first time since his past had gone public he didn't feel like a fraud. A failure masquerading as somebody who deserved his position and the love notes Harvey sent him via text message.
In the end David was given a slap on the wrist. A short custodial sentence and a warning not to do it again. Harvey told him it was down to damn lawyers, harking back to an age old argument between them which would never be settled, and successfully redirected his focus to other matters. Finding a new apartment, one with a full time doorman and no bad memories, and making everything official down at City Hall.
Barbara made them pose for a thousand photographs, like it was some big society affair, and then picked one out for him afterwards and said,
"That's the one you should have on your desk when you're the police commissioner."
"I think that's a long way off yet," Jim told her, though didn't deny it was the ultimate goal.
It always had been.
"I personally think this one," Harvey offered, going for a shot with more than a flash of tongue, so that Barbara pulled a face and Jim flushed up helplessly. "What?" Harvey grinned, "I want all those bigwigs to know he's already taken."
He did get there, eventually. Sooner than he had counted on, really, with Barbara only just left for college and Harvey busy tracking missing persons and lost property.
"You have to go for it," Harvey insisted when the opportunity came up, "I accepted long ago that I would have to share you with the Job."
"It's not my top priority," Jim said, though Harvey couldn't know the significance. It was true, just the same, because it wasn't. Not anymore. Not now he had a family to think about.
"It better not be," Harvey countered, smiling anyway, "I'm not taking second place to anything."
Jim kissed him, grateful, and made sure the photograph Barbara had given him had pride of place on his new desk the first time Harvey came to visit him.
"I still say you should have gone with the other one," Harvey said, even through the proud expression he couldn't hide at all, "it would have livened this place up."
Jim only paused to make sure the blinds were closed and then kissed him soundly.
"What was that for?" Harvey asked, fingers touching his jaw tenderly, and Jim just shrugged and beamed back at him,
"Why settle for a picture when we could just recreate it?"