Content Warning: n/a (passing mention of vomit, maybe?)
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Under what circumstance Jonathan Crane would allow himself to drop to this level, he did not know. The mundanity of a shared bed, the domestic implication— the sheer humanity of such a thing. The Scarecrow could barely reconcile it, doing exactly what greater society expected all of itsnormal segments to do. He did not consider himself a member of greater society. To his mind, he didn't even resemble such a thing.
Those people were slaves to their primitive instincts— fear, hunger, and others— wielded against them by bodies that would do right to outgrow such things. Like his had.
Jonathan rolled over, examining his bedfellow, who was wide awake and examining right back. His upper lip curled back into a bright little smile, exposing an undoctored overbite.
"What are you thinking about?" His voice was a soft faerie whistle, lilting, like a small child. But this was mostly farce.
Jonathan spoke unflinchingly. "Nothing." He pronounced his 'g' despite teetering on the edge of his natural Southern drawl. Jervis's smile widened. He scooted forward and tucked his fat little face into the craggy intersection of the other man's shoulder and chest, half-humming and half-sighing. "I love you," he said with a nuzzle. "I love you so utterly and completely." He chirped out a laugh, as if remarking on a droll witticism. "You'd think it was stupid, I imagine, if you knew just how much."
The professor (ah, ex-professor) felt what might be called a flutter in his chest, although it was much more powerful than what 'flutter' implied. But the Hatter didn't have to say any more. Jonathan already thought it was stupid.
Jervis did this. Jervis had compromised him. He dredged up the chunks of fallibility that Crane had worked so hard to dull since childhood, as if he'd rammed two stubby fingers down his throat and forced his gorges to rise. At this stage, however, he wasn't liable to resist any further, and he drew Tetch's body in as far as he would go, pressing their frames together as if giving shelter. The Hatter produced another happy noise.
Clean society wouldn't have taken them anyway. They were deviants, even without their repeated high crimes and offenses. This was… diseased. They were diseased, at least as far as the general populace was concerned. The little kisses dotted on Jervis's brow were proof that they were not, nor would they ever be, normal.
But they were still human.
The animal called Jonathan Crane would never be accepted by society's throng, but he couldn't escape from their banal practices. Their instincts. To him, psychology had been no different from observing a hydra through a microscope, sociology akin to ants in a glass farm. But he always knew somehow that he was no less a blind tunneler for it, no matter how it frightened him. He couldn't flee indefinitely, just as little eels could only resist the angler-fish's bauble for so long. And moreover, life was a lonely passage. Especially his.
With a gentle forefinger, the so-called Lord of Despair reached down and lifted his partner's chin, speckling his glowing face with kisses before settling on his lips, provoking sighs and giggles and the girlish bunching of shoulders. Jervis wriggled happily and slid his arms around a wire neck before they parted, stroking the top of its spine with a thumb. "Still mulling over nothing?" he teased. Jonathan responded firmly. "Yes."
Tetch smiled and gave a shake of his head, burrowing back into place. "Nothing whatever."