A certain scene with Edward and Iris is based off of one in one of my favorite comedies, "Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle". XD And trouble with Dr. Victor Warner, portrayed by and based off of Jeffrey Combs, coming along. Things are getting tense.

Chapter Seven

Complications with Teachers and Mothers

14 years ago...

Being roommates was slowly growing on the both of them, as Jonathan was slowly opening up to being friends with him, and it made Edward happy. It had been a long time since he had anyone physical to talk to; he and Joan were still communicating over Skype and on the phone, and she was doing well in the early months. She was as hard-working and dedicated as he was. Pathology with Dr. Anya Rogers was coming along but with Dr. Victor Warner in psychology? He had to say things were...interesting, but not in a positive way.

It was due to the fact he didn't like the way Warner looked at Jonathan for an extended period of time than he should.

Edward normally knew his eyes weren't tricking him, so he was sure now was no exception. Jonathan seemed to notice, too, but he would not fool Edward and pretend he didn't. He just seemed to want to deal with this on his own, which he highly doubted.

Three months in the making, and now things got even more strange with Warner. Every day when class ended, Jon had an excuse to stay longer after class or would get called by Warner; Edward would wait outside and watch, finally noticing how Warner would lean so close to Jonathan, and the younger man would take a little step back only for the man to follow him...and sometimes his face was too close to Jonathan's as if he wanted to look into his eyes...or maybe...

He quickly pulled himself away and closed his eyes, tempted to yank off his glasses and rub his eyes but didn't have it in himself. To assume that Dr. Victor Warner might have a sickening infatuation for his roommate and friend was more than he could tolerate. He couldn't just jump to the conclusion that it was what he thought; a theory meant nothing without proof. He had to find some form of Victor Warner's interest in Jonathan, somehow.

~o~

Today

Things went her way since her mother died, her career on the right track, and those she loved protected - with the exception of the Riddler himself breaking into her home in the middle of the night.

In other words, Iris found herself waking up to find a very nude Edward Nygma standing before her dresser mirror, his back facing her. She shrieked and bolted up in her bed, gathering the covers to hide her own nudity. "Hey - what the hell are you doing?!"

He turned around to face her if not all the way to show whatever it was he was doing - she only guessed, but didn't exactly want to know…and then he ruined it by telling her. "Oh, Iris, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to wake you - I thought you slept like a log. I'm trimming my pubes." He spoke as if it were the most obvious thing in the world - but to awake and find a naked man in her bedroom in yet another ungodly hour of the night was enough to drive her on the edge.

"Why aren't you doing this in the bathroom? And what the hell are you doing out of the asylum? You could have rigged the security alarm and ended it all! Might as well have gotten me into trouble!" Iris struggled to keep her voice low so Alice or Jervis wouldn't come in before she remembered that the walls were thick as stone.

Eddie laughed. "Well, let's just say that your room was the fastest I could get to so I can prep for a certain doctor of mine for next time." He turned around to offer a view of his "handiwork". Iris squeaked and quickly averted her eyes. She feared going blind seeing all of him. "Hey, check it out. It's like a bonsai tree, and it makes the little guy look totally bigger."

"Please!" Iris hoped that when she would open her eyes that it would all be a bad dream and that she would fall asleep again and start her morning as normal, but the bad news was that Edward was still in her room - and still in his birthday suit all because he was preparing himself for Joan of all places of all times - and holding… "Are those my scissors?!" Iris bolted up, forgetting her robe and the fact that she, too, was naked to snatch them away from his hand. "You idiot, I trim my nose hair with these!"

He stared first at her, then the scissors in her hand, and then down over her body in disbelief. "Doc, I've used those just now to cut my ass hair for Joan to make shoving a vibrator up there easier."

The images produced were sure to do things to her poor mind after a while. "Get dressed," she ordered, pointing to the bathroom where he surely left his clothing as she did not see them anywhere in the room. "Get dressed and get out of my room." She adverted her eyes once again when he turned away from her to offer another view of his backside, before walking to where she kept her robe and slipped it on, and heading out to the balcony outside her room for some fresh air.

This was what she loved about balconies, especially in her home. The master bedroom was facing the back of the manor outdoors, where she had her views of the vast garden landscape and all. Some minutes passed, and she was sitting on the carved balustrade railing when she heard footsteps join her and saw Eddie sitting on her opposite from the corner of her eye. "Do you always sleep in the nude?" he asked casually, regarding her.

"Do you always treat yourself in the nude?" Iris returned.

He laughed. "Touché." She scoffed in disgust, but he ignored her. "You should have guessed I wasn't here only because of midnight shaving and trimming for my woman. It's Jonathan. I know my best friend that well, and that means how much you two care for each other."

She straightened up and finally looked at him. "How do you know that? Is it because of your romps with one of my doctors despite the fact you two have been together long before that?"

"No, it's because I know how close you guys are. Jonathan is my friend, and I've always looked out for him. Long before you met him as his student. You might have known him for a decade, but for me, it was longer than that. You're the one helping him. You haven't experienced it yet, but you saw how difficult it was to be reduced from doctor to patient in the very same place he ran that was left to you."

"You're right," Iris agreed, remembering her horror when she was informed of her beloved's incarceration. "No, he doesn't belong there. Neither do you, regardless of what everyone else thinks. They say that the Rogues' sanities can't be given back, but I'm proving them wrong."

"Maybe it's more than just that. I love Joan, so I can say the same for you two."

She felt like her heart had exploded into trillions of pieces, blood and all, firing up her system. Edward - he had just said that Jonathan was in LOVE with her! She didn't know what to say. It was the middle of the night and...

"Oh, Iris, come on, don't look so surprised. You know it as well as I do. But you're too proud to admit it like he is. You have so much in common with him that you two still work it out, never mind he's your patient. I told him that he was holding it back and doesn't even know it; I notice everything when I'm not a psychiatrist."

And if he was still her patient, then a relationship was not possible. It might be with Edward and Dr. Leland, but with Iris and Jonathan? She didn't want to further complicate anything, that was all.

~o~

14 years ago...

Edward decided to sneak to the professor's house which was on campus, as he discovered Dr. Victor Warner liked to hit the bar not that far down the block every day after work. He had no family, it seemed, so it was easy for Edward to do what he had to. He wasn't sure if there were any alarms, but all he knew was that he had to move fast. Not that he was a stranger to getting in and out of anything.

As a boy, when his father would pass out drunk, he was free to poke through anything to get anything he wanted; even when his father locked everything up, he would always find means of backup instead of the keys. So it was easy for him to enter through the back of Warner's house. The professor's car was not in the driveway - or could it be in the garage? He had to be extra careful then.

Victor Warner's living was very modest, old-fashioned, and modern at the same time, with leather brown couches and glass tables everywhere, lamps of brass; though some places, and glass shelves filled with antiquities. He must have inherited them from past relatives, some things Russian and Egyptian - he must have a taste for ancient history. There were also numerous portraits of the men in his family before him. Edward felt his lip curl in disgust. It was like he stepped inside the mind of a narcissist.

He found himself distracted when he saw a brass picture frame on a shelf not that far away from him. There looked like a much younger Victor Warner, classified as nearly feminine and not at all different from Jon - with the absence of glasses. Beside him was an exotic-looking woman, young but older than he was. Her hair was in long ebony waves, her eyes light blue and full of life...was this woman his wife or girlfriend?

Either way, she seemed like she was a thing of the past he didn't want to let go.

Edward remembered why he was here and tore his attention to the rest of the house. He began to search for anything that could very much be a clue to Dr. Warner's attraction...

So far, nothing. If he was hiding anything, then he did a "fine" job, Edward would give him that. He had just reached the study, noticing the timeless Old English fashion and appeal, and this might be the last resort. He dove behind the desk and began to rummage through the drawers, seeing nothing but paperwork and important documents like medical health...

"Just what exactly are you looking for, Mr. Nygma?"

The voice forced him to step back, and he gritted his teeth behind tight lips as he looked straight at the man who stood in the doorway. He'd been tricked, after all! Warner anticipated he would come here, so he set him up. Why didn't he expect that?! "You knew I would come."

"I might have," Warner stated casually as he stepped into the room. "But to break into my house was the last thing I expected from an intelligent young man like yourself."

"I know the way you looked at Jonathan," Edward answered, lower lip drawing back. "And I will not let you take him for whatever sick fetishes you have, Professor -"

"Fetishes?" He cut him off with a bark of a laugh. "I'm not the one who harbors an unhealthy fascination with fears and phobias like your friend, which from experience, must have come from some form of trauma in his early life. He isn't even worthy to be a doctor in the field - and what about you, Edward, hmm? Why are you even friends with a clearly unstable young man who hasn't even realized it - and what do you hope to accomplish if your dirtiest secret ever got out if I don't get what I want, and that is your friend?"

Edward felt himself stiffen. His mind was whispering that the man knew what he did, but he would not let himself collapse. "What the hell are you talking about, old man?" he sneered. "You don't know jack about my life."

Warner tsked and held up a finger as he walked into the room, pulling something from his jacket pocket. "On the contrary, Edward, I knew your father. Joseph and I were old drinking buddies before his death, so before I even learned about his demise and his body found in the river, it might have been by chance that I saw everything happen that his only son, seventeen-year-old Edward, had carried his body to the bridge and tossed him from there, in the middle of the night and all. I'm a night owl, as it is."

Well, his father had gotten what he deserved, as he felt no shame in the deed. He wanted nothing more than to call the man's bluff, but every explicit detail was exactly how it happened. "You're bluffing, Professor. No one will believe you as you have no proof of this."

"Don't I?"

His heart fell to the floor when he saw a familiar photograph of himself in a raincoat and gloves to hide his prints and any evidence of himself - and his father's body in the long black trash bag. Correction: wrapped in multiple black bags to cover anything at all. It had been the only means to remove any DNA traces, making it difficult to find as water was known to clean everything away.

And it was caught on camera photograph. Kept secret for a year for what means? Had Warner planned this?

"You might have had drinking rounds with Dad at night," Edward spat, looking up at the man who only smiled, "but you don't really know what kind of man he was."

"On the contrary," Warner repeated, monotoned but otherwise devious, "I knew everything and how much he despised you for being a reminder of your mother, sweet Lilli, who left you and didn't bother to take you with her. But that is beside the point. This going out to the public, for your friend if he wants to become a doctor of psychiatry in a short amount of time. What will it be, Edward?"

~o~

6 years later...

If there was anything Jonathan hated about the high of Gotham society, it was formal affair excuses of birthday parties like Iris' mother hosted for her daughter, nearly resembling a quinceanera. Damn the abuse of money, regardless of how majestic it was. He pitied Iris for her life here before she left for GSU and had to return once in a while for events like these. If he ever encountered Maria DeLaine in person, he would confront her and give her a piece of his mind without a heated outbreak and have the girl end up in greater peril than she was already in.

"Ah, Professor Jonathan Crane, I presume. My daughter informed me that you would come - as her favored teacher and guide in the field she's excelling." Speak of the devil…

"Mrs. DeLaine," Jonathan replied coldly as he turned around to meet face-to-face with the woman who conceived his prized student. "What a surprise, indeed. And you look rather…ravishing. Or ravenous. Or both of them all at once." Ravenous was the perfect term, for the visually striking orange dress dark to the point of resembling blood swirled with her publicly hidden twisted nature. The black crystals around her neck looped numerous times in a similarly twisted fashion. All went well with the sadistic persona of this woman who had made Iris' life hell as his own had been at the hands of his grandmother - whom he was glad to be dead as it had been at his own hands…and that meant that this evil queen had to be offed by Iris sooner or later if not now.

The irresistible, classic scent of the newest fragrance delivered by Maria - cinnamon, peach, rose, sandalwood, and musk - filled his nostrils as soon as his beloved student's mother was in front of him. It would have been delicious if it weren't for who the current wearer was. Maria gave him a twitch of a smirk at the corner of her mouth. "I should say I'm flattered, Professor, but can we agree that it's honest or dishonest of me?"

"Psychologist's instincts tell me that you wish for me to notice you as all the other desirable men around you desire that surgically crafted body of yours, Maria." Time to spring the trap, he thought with a smile at the one fading on the woman's maliciously red mouth.

"Are you calling me a fraud, doctor?" she sneered. "I'd hate to have to haul you out myself for being ungrateful at my daughter's birthday party."

"A party that you only throw every year for the sake of appearances. Do not fool me, Maria DeLaine. As a doctor and professor of psychology, I analyze everyone and I never overdo it, much less underdo it. And I can clearly see for myself the nature of your relationship with your daughter."

Maria let out a sharp hiss of breath through her teeth and drew back an inch. "You know nothing. No one would ever believe you and that little freak bitch over me. I am -"

That just about pushed the last of his buttons. Jonathan leaned forward, avoiding grabbing a hold of the woman as to avoid attention and making it look like the threat of assault. "I know what you are. A narcissistic bipolar who relies on her appearance for what she wants. And who depraves her child, her daughter - her own flesh and blood - of all people to ensure that her foul face isn't overseen. I've read your private therapy file from when you were seventeen years old, not much older than Iris is now. I see more good in Iris than I see of you. In fact, you remind me of my grandmother who got her revenge on me all because her teenage daughter went and had a child with a man who wanted her for sexual reasons only and abandoned us before I was born. She never loved me and so left me before I got into middle school. Grandmother would lock me in with the crows and douse her religion on me - but I never broke." He gave her a twisted grin at the horror in her eyes, but her face remained hard and cold as stone.

"When I graduated high school and got into Gotham State University, I never saw her again. So here is the point I am trying to make, Maria: One day Iris will overshadow you and empower you as I had done so. She's still alive and standing after all this time, and you will lose the battle. Mark my words, for you shall lose everything in the blink of an eye."

He kept the smile when Maria scoffed at his warning. "That girl hasn't the guts to do that to her own mother. I know her all too well - she's nothing but a scrawny skeletal thing compared to this." She gestured to her own body.

Jonathan chuckled and shook his head. "So sure about that." He didn't have the chance to continue at her gob-smacked expression before a collective "Ooooh!" arose from the crowd. All faces were turned upwards to the top of the left side of the grand staircase to where a goddess stood at the base of the final platform of the stairs. The gown she wore was black and teal - her colors - with the sweetheart neckline of the black-flower-and-sequin-embroidered corset outlining her naturally small curves and the skirts of teal satin and black organza tissue billowing like a blue rose in bloom. Her naturally raven curls tumbled down her back, too, in billowing waves, with a delicate and dainty circlet of Celtic filigree accented with a moonstone at her forehead, a matching necklace around her neck, earrings in her ears as well as a cuff adorning her right wrist. Her nails were painted a shimmering teal so dark it was almost black, like her gown.

Jonathan's breath caught in his throat as he realized how bedazzling his student was - and how grown up she truly was. His heart pounded with pride and lust and -

He stopped right there. No, no lust, he told himself even though the feeling was still there. He had been finding it very difficult to keep any emotion regarding lust shoved down further below his heart and stomach. Since the beginning, he had vowed never to have a repeat like what happened between him and Dr. Warner happen again even if he wasn't Warner and the student wasn't him. It had to be purely professional, personal later.

Except it was too difficult considering that Iris was too beautiful to put out of his mind.

She descended the stairs like a petal of a rose with grace and charm like the socialite the public saw her as, except he knew who and what she was beneath that shell. In spite of himself, he left Maria DeLaine - smirking as he saw, from the corner of his eye, how jealous she looked like Snow White's wicked stepmother - and met the young woman at the bottom. She smiled at him. "Professor."

"Iris." He breathed her name. "Beautiful." He sounded like a love-struck teenager to his own ears - a status he had refused to deduce himself to - but at that moment, he didn't care. "Will you care for a dance with your professor?" he asked, holding his right hand out for her. She laid her hand - small, spidery, and graceful as his own - into his palm, and they were the first to enter through the doorway to the ballroom; on either side of them stood a simple Egyptian pillar paired with a bejeweled gold-and-black-and-red pharaoh's sarcophagus that stood less than a foot taller than any man.

Even though he hadn't seen every room of the mansion - not yet, anyway - Jonathan could see, counting the ballroom, that every room of the DeLaine home was ridden with various exotic themes. The few arched windows were influenced by the Middle East, whilst the rest of the room was pure Egyptian - the opulent splendor of the Egyptian pharaohs or the mystics of a Middle Eastern palace combined. The ballroom was lavishly decorated with sweeping lotus columns supporting the ceiling and roof, and ornamentation consisting of a carpet of silk in a vase and mihrab design - the whole room was lit up brightly, too brightly in Jonathan's eyes - with a chandelier that had been constructed from Italian gold and Swarovski crystals and suspended from a carved ceiling of glowing ivory and gold. Ironic that these societal ignorants didn't dare consider that within such lavish walls lurked evil inflicted on a single innocent individual. But someday it would be that innocent to win it all in the end.

A very slow keyboard sound of music began to fill the room as he brought her to the middle of the room, a song he recognized as the slow-moving, death-filled but exotic Cantara. "What were you saying to my mother not too long ago?" Iris questioned quietly as she placed her right hand on his left shoulder while her other hand met his right forearm.

Jonathan brought his right hand to the tiny of her waist. "I warned her if she kept up with her troubles to hide her pathetic insecurities and fraud appearance…she would get her just desserts in the end," he responded, the truth only being by half. He winked at her. "But let's put the insecurities aside for tonight and make this about the birthday girl."

So, in "The Boundaries of Friendship", Jonathan didn't notice the professor's advances and would not believe Bruce at first. It was also implied behind the professor's criticism of Jonathan's interest in phobias that he says his obsession stems from childhood trauma and will never help anyone, ordering him to abandon his hopes of becoming a psychologist. Until Bruce was expelled and left him vulnerable, forced to give in to his professor's wishes to sleep with him so he could get his Ph.D. earlier than anyone else. But here, he is fully aware and is equally forced to go through with it, and Edward is helpless to stop it. If anyone is wondering why they didn't take the opportunity to kill Dr. Warner sooner, it is because they are still in the early stages of embracing their future Rogue identities, and Jonathan needs his doctoral degree there is no other way - and he can't wait THAT long.

The song he and Iris danced to on her birthday was "Cantara" by Lisa Gerrard.