Hey guys! As always, thank you to all those people that left me a review. I needed a bit of reassurance after that last chapter, and I'm so so glad you enjoyed it... or, at least, didn't hate it too much. Now who's ready for a bit of morning-after awkwardness? I am!
On with chapter 12!
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Upon opening his eyes, Jonathan had to spend a moment lying still, breathing slowly and staring up at the plain off-white ceiling in order to force his vision back into focus. The room was almost pitch black – every single candle had burnt out apart from the one at his bedside that flickered on determinedly – and the air was thick and oppressive. He swallowed and went to kick off the heavy bedspread, but he stopped himself when he realised that in doing so he would disturb a certain dark-haired sleeping beauty whose breath he could feel coming slowly, evenly against his skin. He looked down at Rachel. She lay against his arm, which seemed to have moved around her during the night, and her cheek rested against his chest, her own arm draped across his waist. He shifted slightly and tightened his hold on her, turning to the side without even considering his actions and pulling her close. The corners of her lips turned up slightly and she groaned, flexing her fingers like a drowsy infant would, her nails gently biting into his skin.
"Go back to sleep," he murmured into her hair, praying for her to fall unconscious once more and wake later on in the best and least hostile mood possible. It was imperative that she was reasonable today.
She moaned again, causing hazy but somehow almost tangible memories to resurface and swim in his mind, then nodded in consent and relaxed once more. Her breathing became steady once more, and he exhaled slowly, content that she was completely asleep. As he lay there, involuntarily rubbing small circles into Rachel's side with his thumb, his thoughts returned to the previous night, and a fresh, electric bolt of desire hummed through his body in response. He glanced down at the sleeping girl beside him and bit his lip in satisfaction as he carefully brushed the fingertips of his free hand across the purpling bruise at her throat, so gently that there was no way it would disturb her, the dark shades bold against her pale skin and punctuated by the indented marks left by his own teeth. He knew that there would be identical marks around his own neck, given to him by a similarly frenzied and drug-fuelled Rachel, and he leant his head down against hers on the pillow, a possessiveness he had never known before coursing through him; he noticed that her skin was hot, uncomfortably so, and he frowned.
"Rachel," he whispered, moving his hand to her forehead and pushing loose strands of her hair back from her clammy face.
"Mmm?" she groaned quietly, her eyes closed as she tiled her face up toward him.
"You're burning up," he told her, repeating his own words from that early morning in his apartment after that fateful night, after the incident which had taken place at the asylum that, to Jonathan, felt like a lifetime ago. Since then, his world had been turned upside down by the girl that lay beside him and, despite his logical, straightforward, analytical brain, he found it impossible to even begin to order, count or categorise the number of things that had changed between them. That night, the first night when an inebriated, tearful Rachel had fallen asleep in his arms, had been bittersweet, resentful, tinged with regret and just about as far from his idea of 'romantic' as any experience was capable of being. But now, as they lay together, tangled up in the bed sheets, their bare skin touching, their legs crossed over one another as though they were a pair of lovers, he wanted nothing more than to hold onto her forever.
Lay off, you're making me gag.
He swallowed hard. It couldn't be... he had repressed the taunting voice of the Scarecrow for so long, buried the malicious secondary half of his fragmented personality inescapably deep and built it a mental prison, forced it so far down below the surface of his consciousness that he had finally started to believe he would never hear from it again. I should be so lucky.
Yeah, you should, it retorted bitterly. You can dream. You can't get rid of me that easily.
It could only be the drugs that had brought on this relapse of his mental condition. He hadn't used anything that could be considered recreational for years. While there was a time near the end of his high school career during which he had been a regular user, turning to cheap, low-quality narcotics as a means of escape, he had managed to avoid taking anything that could be harmful or testing any of his own compounds on himself throughout his adulthood – mainly this was because he preferred not to get his hands dirty when he had access to plenty of unsuspecting and expendable volunteers, but he was also dubious about testing the boundaries of his already volatile mental health. He really hadn't been acting sensibly when he had pulled in that first lungful of perfumed smoke the previous night, hadn't given a second thought to the consequences of his actions, hadn't considered what could happen to him – all he had been thinking of was Rachel.
And wasn't she glorious? Scarecrow asked, a smirk clear in his voice. Didn't you love it? Watching her come apart in front of us, giving herself to you?
He didn't rise to the taunt. Instead, he sat up, releasing her from his hold, and pushed the sheets back off of them until they rested down around their hips – while he had replaced his underwear before falling asleep, he recalled that she had not, and knew she would prefer to preserve her modesty slightly - earning a sigh from Rachel and a blissful feeling of freedom as the comparatively cool air came into contact with his skin. He lay back and rolled toward the centre of the bed to come face to face with her – her eyes were wide and did not meet his, even when he lifted his hand and brought the backs of his knuckles gently across her cheekbone.
"Morning," he murmured.
A spectrum of emotions flitted across Rachel's pale face. First came a small smile of contentment, then she bit her lip and her forehead wrinkled with worry. Then came regret, tinged with... was that fear? Fear of what? Fear of him? Or fear of what she felt? She didn't speak. She opened her mouth, but words seemed to fail her.
"How do you feel?" he asked, unsure himself as to what aspect of her psyche he was referring to.
"I'm not sure." Her voice was hoarse and thick with sleep. He watched as she swallowed, her eyes growing to the size of dinner plates, and opened her mouth, her breathing suddenly shallow. A look of horror came onto her face, and Jonathan knew instantly what was wrong. He jumped out of bed, helped her to her feet as quickly as he could and led her out of the bedroom to the bathroom next door, where she dropped to her knees and was promptly sick into the toilet bowl, her hands gripping the porcelain, her face damp with cold sweat. He crouched beside her and held her dark hair back, rubbing her shoulder soothingly as she emptied the contents of her stomach then jadedly pulled herself into a slumped sitting position. She leant her head back against the cool tiled wall and gasped as she looked down at her body, pulling her knees up to her chest as if she had only just realised that she was not clothed. Her cheeks flushed pink.
"Oh god," she groaned, covering her mouth with her hand.
He chuckled once and rose to his feet, pulling down his own terrycloth bath robe from the hook on the back of the door and passing it to her. She nodded in thanks, her gaze fixed on the floor, and draped it across her shoulders, tying the belt in a loose bow at her hip.
"Haven't felt these effects in a while," she muttered for what felt more like her own benefit than his. She leant gingerly up to the sink and pulled down a bottle of mouthwash, taking a large glug of the pungent green liquid into her mouth and swilling it around before spitting it out. Her eyebrows pulled together and she eyed the bottle cynically as she replaced it, a bitter expression on her face.
"Since your second year of college, right?" He kept his expression smooth, his tone neither berating nor accusative but inquisitive. She stared at him, eyes wary.
She's scared. Good. As she should be. Jonathan ignored the gloating voice in his head. "I did say I looked you up," he reminded her, settling against the opposite wall and finding himself having to fight back a smile. "I don't like to take a hostage without doing my research."
"Oh, of course," she retorted scathingly, her eyes narrowed.
"You did the same thing for me."
She didn't flinch. "That was different. You're a criminal."
"And you're not?" He laughed, genuinely amused by Rachel's unwavering insincerity and sense of self-righteousness – ever the level-headed lawyer she had trained all her life to become, ever the professional, always fighting for the moral high ground. How far would he have to push her in order to make her realise that she had already lost it completely in his eyes? The last forty-eight hours had taught him that they were more similar than he could ever have dreamed. His own depravity was something that he had personally come to terms with long ago and gone on to revel in, to learn to embrace. Why couldn't Rachel do the same thing? She'll learn, Scarecrow mused, pushing past Jonathan's momentarily lowered defences and into the forefront of his subconscious that was still cloudy after the previous night. She'll get over herself soon enough... when she realises she's just as bad as the rest of us.
Rachel swallowed and folded her arms across her chest. "I was. That's the difference."
Her words were empty, cold and meaningless, and her voice trembled as though she was having difficulty believing them herself. Jonathan didn't fall for them for a second. He moved towards her, his hand coming to rest on her knee. He felt her shudder beneath his touch, despite her efforts to suppress it. "What was last night then, Rachel? A relapse?" He laughed blackly.
"I never said that," she whispered, and her voice cracked.
He decided to take advantage of her stunned silence and leant forward so that they were inches apart, snaking an arm around her slight waist inside the cloth robe she wore so that his hand rested on the small of her back. She didn't pull away when he brought his lips down to her neck, leaving a deliberate, torturously slow trail of kisses down the line between her earlobe and her trembling pulse point. "Was it a moment of weakness?" he murmured against her ivory skin, and he felt her shiver.
"I don't..." she began, but broke off and inhaled sharply as he changed tack, moving to shower kisses across her collarbones, her shoulders, grazing her throat with his teeth, drawing a moan from her lips. Her hand was fisted at his chest, and she seemed to simultaneously be attempting to push him away and pull him closer. She doesn't know what she wants, Scarecrow taunted, his voice brimming with excitement. Make the decision for her. When he looked up, her lips were parted, her pupils dilated with anticipation.
"Do you regret what happened?" he asked, his eyes boring into hers, the fearful yet wholly exhilarated way in which she bit her lip sending a thrill of arousal through his body. She sighed as he withdrew his hand and trailed it calculatingly along her thigh, his fingers dipping languidly above the hem of the robe.
"No," she said, and she held onto his wrist, stopping his hand from travelling any further. Her eyes were burning, but remained somewhat subdued – that ever-present thread of control was still firmly in place, despite his efforts. "I don't regret what happened," she murmured, melting closer to him. "But it was wrong."
"Why?" He took both of her hands in his. "Why was it wrong? What's wrong with letting go and handing control over to someone else? Why can't you just listening to your senses?"
"I've got to be in control," she offered by way of uneasy explanation. "Since... what happened in college... I can't let myself spiral out of control like that again. I swore that I wouldn't." She sighed and looked right at him, her eyes burning as though she could suddenly read and unravel the very fabric of his soul. "Do you know where they found me?" she asked, her voice laced with a trepidation he had never heard there so potently before. "The day of my first arrest, do you know where they found me?"
He didn't answer. She leant closer gently so that their noses were touching, and he found that she smelt deliciously of perfumed smoke, perspiration and his own cologne, a combination which thrilled his senses. An infinite moment passed, then the silence that had risen up like a thick, repressive wall between them was broken as Rachel breathed in sharply and glanced down, her eyes wide. Jonathan followed suit, his eyebrows pulling together as he spotted what seemed to be causing her distress – whether consciously or not, he was unsure, Rachel had balled the fingers of her left hand, her free hand, into a tight fist with such fervent determination that her nails had broken through the skin of her palm, and a dark trickle of blood now threatened to leak down onto her leg.
"Rachel," he tried to reason with her, attempting to take her hand.
She ignored him, shaking her head, pulling her bleeding hand out of his reach and in toward her chest. "Do you know where they found me, Jonathan?" she murmured, her eyes fixed on his once more.
"No," he said, hoping to placate her, imploring her to let go of the emotions that were clearly holding her in chains.
"Lying in a ditch at the side of the street, completely paralytic, so off my head on the drugs that I didn't know where I was or how I'd come to be there," she finished, a wistful half-smile on her face that seemed so at odds with the subject matter to which she was referring that he had to suppress a perplexed laugh. For a moment, as they stared one another down, they both reverted back to their old ways, the habits of a time long passed – he was a doctor, she an addict, and analysing her came easily to him. She was an open book. Her behaviour over the last twelve hours, the way in which her eyes widened and burnt with a morbid fascination when she had seen the cigarette in his hand the previous night and did a similar thing as she recalled her past experiences now, the bitter, unmistakeable hint of anguish behind her words when she mentioned the state she had found herself in after that particular experience in college. Her tone was similar to that of a person reflecting on being deceived by a best friend – mildly understanding but predominantly resentful – and he supposed that was exactly how Rachel felt; betrayed by that which had protected and comforted her so fully and for so long.
She shuddered, dropping her pensive gaze to the tiled floor, and her head came to rest on his shoulder. "I can't let that happen again. I just can't."
"Rachel, I'm not going to let that happen to you," he told her, placing his hands on her forearms and turning her around to face him head-on. "I promise you, if you stay here with me, I'll never let that happen."
As soon as the words left his mouth, he knew he had said too much. Her brow furrowed and she cocked her head, taken aback, her eyes glinting with traces of fear. "If I stay here?" she repeated, confused. She hesitated. "Are... are you saying I have a choice?"
He closed his eyes for a moment, piecing his argument together in his head. "You can stay or you can go," he clarified quietly, pinching the bridge of his noses between his thumb and forefinger and reopening his eyes. Tell her the truth. He sighed. "But I want you to stay here with me."
She eyed him warily, her expression a mixture of trepidation and disbelief that, in any other situation, he probably would have found rather amusing. "What are you offering?" she asked, her voice low, and he smiled. Told you this one's no idiot, Johnny, Scarecrow gloated gleefully. Now give it to her straight. Make her stay. She's ours.
He pursed his lips, weighing the words on his tongue for a moment. "A job," he decided on finally. "A job, here, with me."
"A job involving what?" she asked instantly, her eyebrows raised, physically cringing back slightly, despite his hold on her hand with both of his own, as though she were afraid of what the answer could be.
She has to accept, came the Scarecrow's nagging voice. Otherwise she'll run away now and... she knows too much. Suddenly possibilities began turning over in Jonathan's head. Images of himself in a courtroom, on trial as members of Rachel's office questioned him about his plans, his compounds, his far-reaching underground drug trafficking network, while Rachel sat by in the stalls, flashed in and out of focus in his mind's eye, hypothetical proof but proof nonetheless of the dangers of truly opening up to her, the risks involved with bringing a third party into his work in a way so different to those he had attempted in the past. During his experiments with his patients at Arkham, he had always acted guardedly and kept the nature of the tests entirely secret, slipping his toxin into daily medication or administering it via injection while his subjects slept – this way they never knew, and nobody suspected a thing. However, if he went ahead with this, if he allowed himself to trust Rachel in a way he had never trusted anyone else in the past, he would have to make sure his hold on her remained tight and unwavering. She couldn't wander, she couldn't stray... not anymore.
Too late to back out now, Johnny. He swallowed. "What happened last night," he began. "But controlled, and repeated... with different compounds."
To his surprise, she didn't back away immediately. Instead, she stared down at the floor for a moment, absently twirling a dark tendril of hair around her finger. "I don't understand."
"Rachel." He rolled up onto his knees and leant toward her, wrapping his arms around her waist and bringing his face to within inches of hers. Her skin felt hot against his and he pulled her even closer, savouring her warmth and the way in which their bodies seemed to fit together like corresponding jigsaw pieces. "I want you stay here and help me to further my studies. I want you to assist me in my work," he told her, feeling her eyelashes flutter against his skin as he gently kissed her temple. "Last night... you might not want to admit it, but the drugs changed you, Rachel. They released you from whatever had been holding you down – your life, your job, this whole fucking city – even if it only lasted for a few hours. And I want you to feel that freedom again. I want to help you to feel like that again."
She closed her eyes as his nose brushed against her cheekbone. "So... what?" Her tone showed no signs of either agreement or disgust, just a bemused kind of curiosity he had never heard there before.
"So stay with me. Stay with me and help me test my compounds, help me to make them perfect. You won't have to worry about anything ever again."
"I have a job," she reminded him quietly, but there was something half-hearted, something lackadaisical in the way she spoke. It was as if she was forcing her mind to think rationally for a moment. "Remember?"
"A job that's going nowhere," he said, his tone more harsh than he had intended. Her eyes flew open and fixed on his. "You're fighting a losing battle, Rachel. You're fighting on behalf of a society that you disagree with and that's so completely broken criminals and mob bosses are able to walk around the streets right under the noses of judges and police officers without batting an eyelid." He trailed one of his hands down beneath the robe to the small of her back, caressing it gently. "If you can't beat them, join them, right?"
"Jonathan, I can't go back to how I was then, I just can't..." she argued weakly, her resolve visibly slipping as his hand moved forward, around her hip until it reached the apex of her thighs.
"Why not?" he murmured against the skin of her neck, his fingers dextrously teasing her sensitive flesh and earning a shuddering moan from Rachel. "You've let them hold you back for too long, Rachel. Be who you were meant to be." Her spine arched and her legs parted slightly, allowing him more leeway with his movements. "Stay with me. You'll be able to feel whatever you want as easily as swallowing a pill. And I won't let anybody hurt you. You'll be safe. Whatever happened to you all those years ago... it won't happen now. I'll look after you."
Her breathing was coming quick and hot against his cheek and she wrapped her arms around his neck as her lust slowly consumed her – her muscles began to contract and ripple around his fingers and she held on to him more tightly, whispering his name like a prayer against his lips as her pleasure peaked like a tidal wave and came crashing down over her seconds later.
He held her close as she came down from her cloud of ecstasy and stroked her hair, smiling as he felt her eyelashes flutter like the delicate wings of a butterfly against his chest.
"What if I say no?" she murmured, her voice trembling, her hand coming to rest over his heart, her fingers curling.
"You'll have to leave," he said simply, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger, not even wanting to entertain the possibility of a negative response.
An infinite moment passed in which they sat completely still, the only slight movements of their bodies created by their pounding hearts, thudding out a steady rhythm. Then he felt her body shake, her lips curl up, as though she had laughed. He looked down. "Ok," she whispered, so quietly that he thought it may have been his imagination.
He pushed her hair back out her face, his heart skipping a beat, his head requiring confirmation. "What?"
"I'll do it," she told him, her cheeks flushed, her face set in steely determination. "I'll stay with you."
And with that, she brought their lips together before he had the opportunity to do so himself. Well played, Johnny, Scarecrow congratulated him grudgingly as Jonathan swung Rachel up into his arms and carried her out of the bathroom. Well played indeed.
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A/N: From here on is where things begin to get dark and twisted, if that wasn't obvious enough ;D see you all soon (I say soon, hopefully soon) for chapter thirteen!