I'm Your Man
A/N - important to note for potential newcomers- this is a sequel to a fic called Crush, which you can find in my profile. If you haven't read Crush, you should go read it, and then come back here.
Now that that's out of the way: when I say I have been thinking about this fic nonstop since I finished Crush... I am so happy to be able to share it with you guys finally. The title is from Mitski's I'm Your Man, which will show up as a chapter song later. The usual requests and disclaimers apply- please do not repost this without permission or pass it off as your own. When it comes to specific warnings from chapter to chapter, I will specify in the entry notes for the chapter in question so that everyone is forewarned.
This chapter contains a brief reference to attempted sexual assault.
shoutout + a heartfelt thank you to my buddy Alex, who's been a constant sounding board/brainstorming partner about this fic series in particular and who deserves credit for keeping the spirit of this story alive and exciting. Her own Gotham OC will make a cameo later on. :)
1.
His older brother bagged the valedictorian
His mother, steady, screaming he should be more like him
-I owe you a black eye and two kisses
Tell me when you wanna come and get 'em
I only want him if he says it first to me. – Ethel Cain | Crush
Arkham was easier than ever.
The patients liked Jerome because he was changeable (and because he was a natural leader, of course). Once you became attuned to the screams, the fits, and the fights, life at the Asylum was monotonous, deathly boring in point of fact, and Jerome provided a welcome break in the monotony, always ready with an idea, a rumor, a game. The fact that his schemes always targeted someone seemed to be acceptable to most as the price they paid for the entertainment, and he tried to be unbiased, to make sure he reached everyone eventually.
The guards liked him because he wasn't crazy—and, okay, "liked" was admittedly a strong word; "appreciated" was probably better. Arkham drew a very specific sort of employee, the kind of person deemed too power-hungry and unstable even for the police force, doctors and nurses with sadistic streaks, COs who got off on punching as far down as possible. They appreciated Jerome because he was a more creative bully than they were, really thought outside the box, and they liked to watch him do it.
That's not to say his fairly smooth relationship with the guards had been instantaneous. Things had actually been a little hairy for a while there, especially right after he'd been returned to the Asylum, still healing up from the face incident, from the the beating he'd accepted from the boy. For a couple of weeks, he'd found himself getting cornered fairly often by guards with their nightsticks, and for a while, he'd laughed the attacks off, because what did he care? It wasn't as if he had places to be, or was trying to heal up on a schedule—one of the benefits of growing up constantly under the fists of his mother and whatever random guy she was fucking at the time was that one day spent leaning against the nearest wall and pretending that his ribs weren't busted to shit and breathing as shallowly as possible both to reduce the pain of it and to hide the little wheeze in his lungs as much as possible was much the same as any other.
It wasn't until one guard decided that in addition to beating Jerome, he was going to try to get handsy that Jerome figured it was time to stretch his legs. He put the guy in the hospital without much effort at all (after a few weeks of Jerome doing nothing but laughing in response to the attacks, the guy wasn't expecting to be driven headfirst into the concrete walls, several times). After that, Jerome warded off future beatings by acting quicker and nuttier than his attackers, and by being far less afraid of pain than they were, and from there they settled quickly into a sort of truce. Cowards didn't like challenges.
There was also the fact that all the more "colorful" criminals in Gotham got bundled off into Arkham sight unseen every time that do-gooder Jim Gordon caught them, which provided Jerome with opportunities. Really, he viewed his time at the Asylum as a retreat of sorts, time to plan, to network and collect resources, to heal (his fun times with the guards had definitely set him back a couple of months), and overall, to adjust to being alive again.
He eventually did get his memories back, all of them, he was fairly sure, though some of them (especially the ones of the days immediately leading up to his death) felt more like a first-person perspective on someone else's life—he couldn't really recall what he was thinking or feeling for most of those. It was… annoying, but he mostly managed to ignore it, until he couldn't anymore.
"Valeska!"
He turned to the source of the shout, brows arched, mouth pursed in a passable imitation of innocence, what did I do, even as he smoothly hooked the safety pin he'd been using to discreetly jab Big Joey Rowe whenever Jonathan Crane was in eyesight—he was trying to see if he could Pavlov him—into the back waistband of his pants.
The guard rapped his baton against the metal grating that separated him from the prisoners, but otherwise looked bored, meaning Jerome wasn't caught. "Mail," the guard barked, and Jerome was intrigued enough to mosey over to the slot the guards used to pass things through.
The guard impatiently shoved a yellow envelope his way. "Thank you, Brooks," Jerome said absently, because the guards liked manners, were flattered by the fact that he knew them all by name (they should feel threatened instead, but that was neither here nor there), and he fired off a quick little salute before retreating to an empty corner of the common room to investigate.
He almost never got mail—not, he'd gathered, because no one was writing to him (as far as he knew, his cult was still active, if somewhat diminished), but because naturally the stiffs in charge of that kind of thing went through it all, confiscated anything they thought was "inhibitive to recovery," so basically none of it made it all the way to him. This was an irregularity; Jerome liked those.
The envelope had already been opened, of course, torn carelessly across the top seam. Jerome worked his gloved fingertips inside, caught the thick card between them, and drew it out slowly.
It was a store-bought card, a colorful anthropomorphized cartoon cactus on the front. He frowned and checked the surface of the card and the tips of his gloves for powder or other dubious substances, finding nothing.
Inside, a cheery pre-printed inscription: Hope your birthday is on point! He stared at the card for a minute, maybe more, studying it with a furrowed brow. Huh. It was, in fact, his—their—birthday. He'd lost track. Being dead really shook up a guy's sense of time, and being in this joint, where everything was exactly the same day in and day out, obliterated it entirely. He wondered if it still counted as his twenty-first, given that he'd been dead for the entirety of the previous year, and decided that it did (except in cases where it'd be funnier if it didn't).
Beneath the stock lettering, something had been handwritten in black ink, and scratched out with the same, but not thoroughly enough. He made out the single word, Prick, and smiled, because he had a sudden suspicion that he knew who the card was from, a suspicion confirmed when he read the handwriting below, this not scratched out:
I should've guessed you were a Gemini.
BE GOOD.
-Isabel
Isabel.
He could pretend that he hadn't had much time to think about her, preoccupied as he'd been with whipping the asylum into some semblance of shape, but he'd never really seen the need to lie to himself, of all people. Truth was, recovering from something the doctors—albeit sneeringly—called a "massive trauma" required a lot of downtime, his misadventures with the guards notwithstanding.
Truth was, she'd been on his mind frequently of late. It was something like an irritation, an open sore that just wouldn't heal up. He wished he could remember those last few days better, like they'd happened to him and not like he was just seeing those memories through someone else's eyes—but then, he reminded himself, wishing was no good, useless. Better to focus on what was ahead.
He placed the card open over his face and leaned back, drawing a deep, deep breath, searching for some trace of her, smell, taste. Isabel had handled this, had written her little message—black ink, deep, almost angry scratches. She clearly wasn't over the whole… head trauma thing, but if she was just mad, if she just hated his guts and wanted nothing to do with him ever again…
…well, he was locked up in here, and she was sitting pretty and free out there, and she didn't have to send him a birthday card, did she?
The Arkham uniform didn't have pockets. With careful fingers, Jerome slid the card into its envelope, then tucked it into the heavy elastic waistband of his pants, pressed smooth against his hipbone, which was jutting out a little further these days than was usual (courtesy of a liquid diet while his face took its time reattaching, then just terrible prison food). Then, feeling light in an old, vaguely familiar way—a feeling he identified as anticipation, next-door to excitement—he rose from the table and returned to his wicked work.
Months passed—at least, he thought it was months. Hard to keep track while locked up, but during brief stints in the exercise yard (on weeks when his privileges hadn't been revoked), he noted the days getting sunnier, then hotter.
The whistle in his lungs disappeared. His face got… well, the nerves were pretty shot along the majority of the reattachment area, and that was new, not really being able to feel most of his face, but at least it was sticking, the looseness of the first month or so after surgery fading with time.
Now that his insides and outsides both seemed to be on the mend, Jerome turned his attention towards accumulating resources. That meant using what he'd gathered through months of observation to make strides within the imprisoned population, as well as working out—crazy got him far, but he'd also gotten beat to shit by Jimmy Gordon last time they'd met, so a little extra muscle wouldn't go to waste.
It was still summer, and he was out in the exercise yard when one of the guards barked his name. He'd been lifting weights, and sat up from the bench, wiping a sheen of sweat from his forehead with his arm as he glanced warily over. The guard—Brooks—looked bored, which probably meant he wasn't in trouble, and sure enough: "You've got a visitor. Report to the East Wing."
Huh. Interesting. They didn't let just anyone visit him, otherwise he'd constantly be entertaining a stream of reporters and cultists, so it was likely someone he already knew, and it was definitely someone—ugh—in good standing with the—blegh—law. He didn't have to go see who it was, even looney bin inmates were allowed to turn away visitors, but Jerome wasn't so rich in distractions that he could afford to let a good one go to waste, and anyway, out here in the sun, he was starting to freckle.
He hopped off the bench and strolled out of the yard, idly trying to puzzle out who his unexpected guest could be. He knew who he was hoping for, had three people in mind, in fact (Isabel, Bruce Wayne, and—dark horse candidate—Doctor Lee Thompkins), but he knew who the most likely candidate was. (It probably wasn't Lee, but a guy could wish.)
He wasn't particularly fresh, missing his striped overshirt, and the short-sleeved cotton undershirt he was wearing was sweat-soaked at the collar and armpits from the last hour he'd spent working out in the sun, but hell, if they couldn't take him at his worst, they didn't deserve him at his best.
Arkham wasn't technically a prison, so patients who'd been on their best behavior—i.e. hadn't been violent with anyone in the last two months or so, or at least hadn't been caught—got to see their visitors in an open room, set up with tables and chairs, no glass, no bars. No gifts and no touching, either, aside from one hug at the end of the visit. Jerome was a few months out from his altercation with the guards, to the point where he was in pretty good standing at the Asylum, so he got counted in the same category as the catatonics and the more timid boys and girls alike. It was nuts, but hey, the total lack of common sense in the running of this place was part of its charm.
Brooks led him into the little room with its reinforced windows. It was a slow day for visitors, with just one other little group huddled in the corner. That meant that Isabel, sitting at a table in the dead center of the room, stood out.
Jerome paused inside the door, just for a second as he dragged his gloves off his hands, eyeing her. She was watching him, too, couldn't have failed to notice his entrance, but he didn't bother to meet her gaze, just looked her over in a way that most people would call rude. She was leaning against the back of the metal chair, long legs crossed, one arm reaching across herself to grip the elbow of the other. Closed-off, maybe nervous. That didn't bother him—the way she was dressed did. Gone were the punky, heavy boots, the inclination towards dramatic black and tattered clothes. The dressy slacks she was wearing were black, it was true, but they featured a nauseatingly tasteful white pinstripe, and up top she wore an inoffensively gray blouse, expensive-looking, wrapped around her in a way that shouted professional and simultaneously did away with any sex appeal. Even the neckline barely dipped below her collarbone. Like putting the Mona Lisa behind bars.
Assessment complete, gloves removed, he went into motion once again, skulking over to the table where she waited. He made no move to sit, though, just looked down at her and barked, "Don't tell me you've gone corporate. What's…" Palm out, he waved his hand up and down—"what's all this?"
She blinked, then her eyebrows furrowed in indignation. "Says the guy in horizontal stripes," she countered, her tone making it clear that she thought that was a dig.
Jerome tilted his head to the side and just told the truth. "My ass looks phenomenal in horizontal stripes."
Whether that would have gotten a smile out of her, he would never know. Maynard, the supervising guard for the day, shouted out "Valeska! Sit down or get out!"
Jerome closed his eyes, took a deep, calming breath in through his nose, and released it slowly. What were the meditations Crane did sometimes when he was in the middle of a freakout? I am the tide, rolling in and out, nothing can change me? It didn't really help, but it distracted him enough from his impulse to throw a chair at Maynard—when he put his hand on the back of the chair, it was only to drag it out and flip it around backwards.
"So," he said as he straddled it, hugging the back of it idly against his chest, "what's the tale, nightingale? Why are you here?"
If she'd been nervous to start with, she'd collected herself now. Her arm was no longer crossed in front of her body, and the uncertain frown was gone. She looked like she was telling a joke, mouth slightly ticked up on one side, when she said, "What, I need a reason to visit?"
Evasion. That's… interesting.
"No," Jerome said, calm, nodding thoughtfully, "no… It's just it's been—" He paused, frowning. "How long has it been?"
"Since you got here?" At his noise of confirmation, she said, "Seven months."
"Seven months?" That was a surprise. He'd have guessed it was less than that. He waved the thought away before it could further distract him. "Seven months, and you're only just now… what, passing by? Thought you'd dip in for a visit with your old pal?" He squinted suspiciously at her, pointing an accusing finger. "Are you doing the whole… serial killer bride thing?"
That seemed to startle her out of her inscrutable calm. "The what?"
"You know. Those women who marry serial killers. Ply em with letters, visits, commissary cash… before you know it, it's Mrs. Gacy or Mrs. Dahmer."
"Ah yes, Gacy and Dahmer, both of whom were famously into women," she said. She seemed to realize she was being teased, though, going by the appearance of a tiny smile at the very edges of her mouth, a smile she was clearly trying to kill without much luck. "Anyway," she added, uncrossing her legs as she leaned forward to rest her elbows on the table's edge, "you've got nothing to worry about. I'm not gonna marry you."
"Better not," he threatened, again pointing that accusing finger towards her face before bringing it back to indicate his own eyes. "I'm watching you."
"God," she said. The smile on her face was showing teeth now, just a tiny flash of them—she'd given up trying to hide it, more or less. "I forgot how difficult you are to talk to."
He put a hand delicately to his chest, affecting a wounded frown, though her smile had already removed any possible sting from the words, and he gave up the pretense almost immediately, reaching forward to curl both hands around the edge of the table as he rocked his chair back, up off its two front legs. "Well," he said resignedly, "I guess that's what happens when you spend so much time away. Really, Izzy. Maybe dying scrambled my brains a touch, but I still know it's not like you to be coy."
"It's not like you to be direct," she hit back. He didn't let her off the hook. He raised his eyebrows a bit, watching her as he rocked lightly back and forth on the chair, waiting. She didn't quite roll her eyes, instead leaning back in her chair again and making a show of examining her fingernails—the polish was still black, but instead of being cheap and chipped, the way he remembered it, it was neat and uniform, professional. Ugh.
"I suppose," she said with a belabored sigh to really sell the performance of boredom, "I wanted to check in. Make sure you're still locked away, right where you're supposed to be." Her eyes cut up abruptly, into his, the severe look in them sending a tingly little thrill shooting down his spine.
Far from being cowed, he grinned at her, and set the front legs of his chair firmly down on the ground again. "Aw. You didn't have to come all the way out here for that. You could've always just sent another card."
"You didn't write back."
"To a birthday card? Please." He feigned a yawn. "You're gonna have to send something spicier than that if you want a response." He neglected to mention that he kept the card concealed in the little contraband nook etched into the wall beside his bunk, that sometimes when he was in his own personal throes, the smell or even the touch of it was enough to send him over the edge. He didn't think there was any advantage in giving her that information.
Her gutsiness visibly faltered, although she didn't seem nervous or afraid, just a little embarrassed. She brought a hand up to scratch lightly at an eyebrow—to hide her face—and muttered, "I shouldn't have even sent that."
If he hadn't been listening closely, the words would've been lost to the ambient jail noise, but he was listening, and ducked his head slightly to see under that obscuring hand. It wasn't difficult—her eyes darted right away to his, and he held them as he said, softly, "You shouldn't be here right now, either. Should you?"
He caught a flare of something he realized he recognized, something defiant in her expression, and he remembered abruptly: Isabel wasn't the type to back down from a dare, even just a perceived dare, ever. He'd lost a lot to death—or, well, not lost, exactly, but he'd found that plenty of things were hiding in the back of his mind, gray and dormant until something happened to trigger a recollection, and then there it all was again, back in technicolor. He'd forgotten just how fun it was to push her buttons.
Her spine straightened now, her hand dropping away and a determined little stiffness coming into her jaw as she said, "You're right. I really shouldn't. Jane would kill me if she found out."
Now that Jerome was clearly on the path to getting the answers he wanted, he decided he could play around a bit. "How is Jane?" he asked, brows furrowed in a passable replication of sincerity.
Isabel shot him a wry glance, clearly not buying the display but answering anyway. "She's doing great. Getting a little famous in the Gotham theater scene, actually. She gets more stage work these days than she has time for."
He made a pleasantly surprised little noise. "Good for her."
"It's what she's always wanted," she agreed, then gave him a narrow little look. "You want to keep talking about Jane, or do you want to talk about you?"
"Oooh," he growled, shifting in his seat and squeezing his arms around the back of the chair in an effort to keep his hands from doing anything that wasn't visitation-supervisor-approved (and noticing with pleasure as he did that her gaze tracked the movement, resting perhaps a second too long on his bared forearms as he flexed the muscles there). "Let's talk about me."
She didn't smile exactly, but there was a little crinkle at the edge of her eyes that betrayed her, although it smoothed away quickly enough when she started to talk. "Do you know how hard it is to get information about an incarcerated person if you aren't related to them?"
He abruptly raised a finger as if he had a thought to share, then frowned and lowered his hand. "Aw, wait, no. No, I don't."
She shook her head. That crinkle was back, though—maybe in spite of herself, she thought he was funny, it was obvious (and revealed good taste). "Fucking impossible, that's how hard. I've called this place a dozen times. I say what's up with Valeska. They say we can't share medical records. I say I'm not asking for his medical records, I want to know if he still has a face. They say ma'am don't take that tone with me. I say well maybe I wouldn't have to take a fucking tone if you'd just answer my question. They hang up. I give it a couple of weeks then try again."
Jerome put his elbow on the table and made a fist and rested his chin on the fist, making his eyes as big and as sympathetic as possible as he nodded along—having something to do with his face and hands kept him from laughing at the way she was recounting the events, which he sensed was intentionally funny and therefore he didn't want to give her the satisfaction of knowing he agreed. The performance was wasted on her, anyway, as she blew out a frustrated exhale and tilted her head back to watch the ceiling as she went on.
"So then," she said, "I ask around with the cops I happen to know, which, gross, I shouldn't be on speaking terms with any cops, but my job pretty much means I have to play nice, so unless I want to quit…" She pointed up at the ceiling. "Water damage in that corner. They better watch it. It's gonna turn to mold."
"What's your job?" Jerome asked, less because he was interested and more because he wanted to know what could possibly be worth dressing reputably and talking regularly with pigs.
She dropped her gaze to meet his again. "I'm an organizer at a nonprofit."
He felt his face fold together in disgust. "Ugh."
Isabel laughed out loud, causing the other little group in the corner to fall abruptly silent, and Jerome checked over his shoulder to make sure the guard wasn't going to take issue with them. Maynard was frowning in their direction, but didn't say anything. Jerome returned his attention to Isabel to find her still smiling, her dark eyes practically sparkling. "I knew you'd hate that," she said.
"Well, then, you should've asked me," he said, leaning forward and tapping the table with a fingertip for emphasis as he spoke. "I'd've said join a pyramid scheme instead. At least that way, you fleece gullible idiots, you get to keep some of the money."
"Anyway," she said pointedly, and he raised both hands, palms out, I surrender, before gripping the back of the chair again and ceding the floor to her. "The cops weren't any help, either. I mean, first of all, I work pretty closely with Lee Thompkins—you remember Lee?"
Jerome sighed, the closest to reverent he was capable of getting. "I remember Lee."
Isabel laughed again, more quietly this time, and he saw recognition in her face. "Yeah," she said wryly. "I know. Try seeing her every single week. Took months before I could act normal."
"Jesus, I don't know if I could handle it. That woman is… frighteningly hot."
"I know," she repeated, emphatically.
"But then, I've never been one to shy away from a challenge."
"Well, she broke up with her cop boyfriend."
It took Jerome a moment to retrace old lines in his brain, and then he laid both forearms flat on the table, frowning in exaggerated disappointment. "Awww. She left Jim?"
It was Isabel's turn to look confused for a moment, and then it dawned on her, and she snorted a little laugh through her nose. "I forgot. He was the one to…" She gestured towards her own face to indicate his.
"He also arrested me the first time around," Jerome said helpfully.
"Right," she said, and snorted out another little giggle. "Well, couldn't have happened to a nicer guy."
"So you're telling me Lee is single."
"She was, then she got with—" Isabel caught herself. She waved a threatening finger in his direction. "This is not about Lee, and she'd be pissed if she knew I was talking to you about her at all."
Jerome tried to look and sound as wounded as possible. "You brought it up."
"She has explicitly told me she's not interested in you."
He shrugged that off. "You miss a hundred percent of the shots you don't take."
Isabel chuckled again, glanced away to rub the bridge of her nose, muttering something that this time, Jerome didn't catch. If he were to guess, it would be something like it's appalling, though that didn't make any sense. "I thought you wanted to know why I'm here," she said to him next.
"I'm just wondering what Lee Thompkins and Jim Gordon have to do with all of this."
"Well, I thought Jim might could get some word on you, but he just pulled that sanctimonious face he does—you know the one?—and was like you don't need to worry about him, Isabel." Her voice had dropped in an imitation of Gordon that was exaggeratedly dumbed down, which Jerome appreciated. 'You need to focus on living your own life.' Asshole. If Lee was still with him he'd have done it, bet you anything. And I know a couple of other guys there, but none of them wanted to cross him. He terrorizes that station, you know."
"Believe me," Jerome said dryly, "I know."
She heaved an extended sigh. "So anyway. I kept reaching dead ends and finally got to the point of… why don't I just bite the bullet and come see you in person? So that's what I decided to do. And here I am."
He considered this for a moment, his spine slowly straightening as he sifted through what she'd said to find the inevitable conclusion. "You're telling me you're here to… what, check on my recovery?" If he sounded faintly baffled, he felt that was understandable.
"Last time I saw you, you didn't have a face," she said flatly—not answering the question, he noticed.
"I had a face. It was just, y'know." He pointed vaguely across the room. "Over there."
"I'm genuinely shocked you don't look like Frank from Hellraiser," she went on. "Like, your face should just be one raw nerve. I can't believe that the whole thing didn't just get infected and spread to your brain and kill you. Again."
"Well, I've always been a quick healer."
"I can believe it." She narrowed her eyes, studying him. "Is that really your original face, or is it all grafts? Because by the end of the night, it was kind of looking like a sad lump of chew toy."
"Oh, it's all me, baby," he said, then his eyes rolled up to the ceiling in second thought. "Well. Mostly. Some grafting around the, you know, edges." He sketched a little outline around his face. "Just to help it stick."
"Unbelievable," Isabel breathed. At his modest shrug, she said, "No, I really can't believe it. It shouldn't be possible."
"Umm." He reached forward with one hand, tapping his fingertips against the table to make sure he had her attention before continuing. "Izzy? You're talking to a dead guy."
"Yeah, you see how that makes things worse, don't you? I'd think that being dead, especially for so long, would tank your healing factor and immune response."
"How long was I dead, anyway? It's still a little fuzzy."
"Over a year," she said absently, "but not by much. Fourteen months? But if your immune response isn't in the toilet, maybe it's the opposite, maybe whatever brought you back to life actually accelerated your healing. It would explain why your face actually reattached."
"Yeah, I don't think so," Jerome said, a touch exasperated—this topic was beginning to bore him. "Ribs were broken when I got here. It took a few months for em to heal, just like it always does." He watched her as understanding glimmered in her eyes, as she instantly comprehended how he knew that, and he gave her a second, but she didn't say anything or pull a pitying face or give him anything to work with, really.
He changed the subject. "So. How do I look? I haven't really gotten the best look, y'know, they don't let us have mirrors in here. Just—" he tapped the table to indicate the metal surface, which a few hundred smudges ago might have actually been reflective.
"Can't imagine why," she said, but lifted a hand and crooked two fingers towards herself, beckoning him closer. He obliged, stretching his neck out to lean in. He had seen the results of his surgery in the murky reflective surfaces in the asylum's bathrooms, at least enough to make him stop looking, but it was all a bit mysterious to him still. He wanted to hear it from Isabel.
She took her time, gazing at him long enough that Maynard called times-up for the other group, starting their little parting shuffle. Jerome patiently endured her stare, angling his face to the left, to the right, letting her get her fill. Part of him was watching for any hint of repulsion, that she'd taken on more than she bargained for, but part of him was genuinely curious, wanting to see what she was seeing.
"You've got scars all around the edges where the face was severed," she said at length. "Pink now. I guess they'll probably whiten up with age. And where the skin reattached, there's texture. Ripples, all over. You don't have your baby face anymore, that's for sure. How does it feel?"
"My face?"
She made an affirmative noise. "Does it ever hurt?"
"Nah. Everything detached then reattached doesn't have much sensation. Pressure, maybe." He brought his index finger up to his cheek just below the eye, digging the short fingernail in and dragging it down the length of his face—he didn't think he was drawing blood, but the lack of pain made it hard to be certain. Isabel watched gravely, but didn't try to stop him, and when he reached the line of his jaw he moved his other hand up to join, splaying them in a half-assed jazz hands. "I can feel my mouth. Eyes up to the eyebrows. Everything else is nice and numb."
"I imagine that's convenient," she said dryly.
"Sometimes," he muttered, his gaze boring into hers.
She lifted a finger, drawing little invisible lines in the air to indicate the edges of his mouth. "Long slits there. Very long. The way you talk has changed, have you noticed that?"
"I have, as a matter of fact," he said, leaning doubly into the lockjaw that had been par for the course ever since he'd stapled his skin back on. "Don't want to displace the skin too much while it's healing, and my options were not talking at all, or talking, y'know, a little stiffly." She scoffed a little in understanding; he crinkled her eyes at her in a smile that didn't quite make it to his mouth. "And since the healing process took a while, it just became habit." He flexed his mouth and jaw a couple of times, feeling the sensation that was almost foreign to him by now, and added, "I guess I could go back to the old way, but you know, it just doesn't feel right."
"I guess not. You aren't the same, why should you worry about trying to sound the same?" Her eyes had gone distant again as she stared at him. He'd lost her to her own thoughts, and although patience wasn't his strong suit, he waited for her to work through them, curious as to what was cooking in her head.
Eventually, she said, "I like this look better."
His eyebrows shot up. "Better than…?"
"The way you looked before. I think this is more consistent with who you are."
His brows swooped back down. "With… who I am," he repeated, making sure he'd heard it right.
"You used to look angelic," she said, matter-of-fact. "Now you don't."
Jerome leaned back slowly, until his arms gripping the back of the chair were fully extended, and he stared at her for a moment before finally saying, "That's kind of fucked up."
"Is it?"
"Facial trauma makes a person look demonic?"
"Not even remotely what I said."
He screwed his face up into a skeptical squint. "Seems a little bit like what you said."
"Jerome," she said, dropping her gaze to her hands on the table as she folded them, one over the other, then lifting her eyes again to pierce into him, "you're literally the only person in the world who looks like you do. All I'm saying is that it suits you. And don't get me wrong—you're not ugly. I don't think you'll ever be ugly."
Interesting. Jerome leaned forward again. "You're saying I'm handsome?"
She scoffed. "You know I think you're handsome. We're well past that."
"Awww," he crooned through closed teeth. "Well, I think you're real pretty."
"Thanks," she said, looking faintly amused. "You made that clear before, but I gather things have changed up in the ol' noodle since you, you know, died. So it's nice to hear."
"Are you sure you aren't here to marry me?"
She smiled a poisonous little smile that, honest-to-god, made his heart skip a beat. "I'm not the one locked away. Why would I bother with a dead end when I've got a whole world to choose from outside?"
Jerome sat up ramrod straight, staring intently at her and mostly ignoring the pleasant little swoop in his gut. "Ouch."
She gave him a modest little half-shrug. "It is what it is."
"Oh, I'm sure you believe that."
She smiled wide, like he'd not only surprised her, but delighted her as well. "What, it's not true?"
"Well," he murmured, dropping his gaze modestly to the table, "what do I know?" He gave it a few seconds, then glanced up again, almost coyly, through his lashes. "But that whole world outside… it isn't stuck in your head like I am. Is it?"
She didn't attempt to deny it—her smile just faded into something smaller, something knowing. He skipped ahead of the subject a step or two and said, "Kinda hot, isn't it?"
"What is?" she asked, again with that surprised and delighted look.
He traced an absent shape on the table, drawing a smiley face without lifting his finger away at any point, and said, "You know. Being in here, just a table length apart. You're not allowed to touch me, I'm not allowed to touch you… sort of gets the imagination going, doesn't it?"
Isabel's eyes flicked to a point over his shoulder, looking past him—at Maynard, he realized, checking to see if he was listening in. Her stare remained there, keeping a lookout, and she softly hummed, "Mm-hmm."
He hadn't necessarily expected her to admit it. He warmed to the subject. "What I want to know," he continued, dropping his voice low, prompting her to lean unconsciously forward to listen closely, "is what you're gonna do about it. You leave here all hot and bothered—that doesn't sound very fun. What's next? Go hit up a bar, find a stranger to take home, relieve some urges?"
She was grinning a ferocious, white-toothed little grin, and barely let him get the question out before saying, "You really think you have that much of an impact on my life? God, you're so full of yourself."
He put both hands up. "I'm just callin' it like I see it."
"Cause I'm just sitting here aching with unfulfilled desire," she went on, clutching both hands over her heart and pulling a mock-agonized face. "And it's so sexy and intense and unbearable that I gotta go pick up a Jerome-surrogate to bang one out with so that I can focus for half a second and try to get back to living my poor, pitiful, Jerome-less life."
"That's a lot of detail for someone who's acting like it's some inconceivable scenario," he said, enjoying himself immensely.
She dropped her hands and leaned back in her chair, crossing one leg over the other at the knee. Amused, she said, "I'm going to walk out of here and forget you exist."
Now it was his turn to laugh, a loud, unrestrained cackle that had her glancing quickly over his shoulder at the guard, like he was going to get in trouble for laughing in an insane asylum. "Bullshit," he sing-songed scornfully. "And I'll tell you, Izzy, you wouldn't be trying to lie to me like that if you could see the look you've got in your eyes right now."
It was true—her dark eyes were animated in her face, lit up, almost affectionate, definitely mean. She was having as good a time with this as he was. She said, "If I change my mind, I know where to find you."
"Well. I won't be in here forever."
"Is that right."
He hummed a little affirmative noise. "And you know it. Don't you? I gotta say, Isabel," he said, leaning abruptly forward and squinting conspiratorially at her— "not the smartest move, taunting a guy that'll be on the streets again before you know it. I might take it personally."
"Tell you what," she said. "If you ever get out of here, come find me. Tell me how you really feel about it all then. If."
A tingle shot down his spine and settled firmly into his groin. Now, that's a proposition. "Isabel," he said, dropping his voice into something low and warm, "I'm starting to think you don't believe I'm a man of my word."
"Jerome," she said, matching his tone, "I'm starting to think you don't believe I can handle whatever you might try to throw at me. Anyway—as long as you're in here, it's all just a bullshit hypothetical. Isn't it?"
"You're playing with fire, girl."
"Maybe I'm just trying to motivate you. Boy."
"I strike you as unmotivated?"
"I don't know," she said meditatively. "You're still in Arkham, aren't you?"
"I feel like I'm being negged."
"Then again, maybe I don't want you to break out. Last time you almost gave me a concussion."
"Oh, I did not."
"One of your followers, on your orders. It counts."
"Tomato, tomato."
She laughed out loud again, which he counted as a significant win, given that she'd just brought up an injury that had, despite his quick denial, absolutely been his fault. "You're supposed to say them differently from each other."
"I know," he said, grinning at her.
Her smile disappeared abruptly; she jabbed an angry finger at him. "Stop that."
"Stop what?" he asked, his eyes going wide and wet in confused innocence that was only half-feigned.
"You know what. I'm not here to flirt with you. I'm here to gloat about being free while you're locked up."
"And to check on my recovery."
"That too," she said, narrowing her eyes at him.
"Right, right." He let it slide, or at least didn't call her out on it verbally, instead just shooting her a little look—I know you're lying to me—that she was free to ignore, and studiously did. "Well, in that case—"
"Valeska!" Maynard barked. "Time's up!"
Again, Jerome found himself closing his eyes and taking a long breath in through his nose so that he wouldn't do something to squander all the goodwill with the guards he'd been collecting. When he opened his eyes again, though, Isabel looked relieved, up already, sliding the chair back in under the table in preparation to take off.
Jerome wasn't about to let her get away that easily. "Ah," he said, calling her attention back to him as he stood, and once she was looking, he spread his arms open and gave her a plaintive look and said, "Where's my hug?"
A complicated look crossed her face, some combination of disgust and delight and uncertainty. She said, "I'm not giving you shit if you ask it like that," but in the same breath, with a careful darting glance at Maynard: "Are we allowed?"
"If you make it quick," said Jerome, shrugging, arms still extended.
If Jerome was any bit a coward, the look she gave him then might have set him running for the hills. He was no chickenshit, though, and waited patiently as she approached him—and once she'd made up her mind, she didn't hesitate, coming in like a hurricane to get her arms around him.
She went low, around his waist, and as he closed his arms around her shoulders he was uncharacteristically paralyzed with indecision. He was going to fuck with her, that was a given. The question was how? There were any number of ways to lightly sexually harass her (and he was going to go light; during the course of this visit he'd remembered that Isabel was a fun time, and he wanted her to come back, so doing anything wild enough to drive her away for good was off the table), and now the problem was that he was spoiled for choice. Additionally, her clean hair was tickling his nose, and she smelled so fucking good, and—
He'd waited a second too long. With no warning but the barest movement of her head, her teeth closed over a spot on his collarbone bared by his undershirt—hard. He pulled a pained, pleased breath of air in hissing through his nose and tightened his arms around her like he was trying to break something, like he was trying to meld the two of them together as the pressure of her teeth only intensified.
And Maynard was an idiot, but he wasn't that stupid. "Hey, you two," he called out, sounding pissed and alarmed, "break it up. Now!"
Jerome had no intentions of obeying—what were they going to do, put him behind bars?—but after a second, he felt Isabel get her hands between them, felt her sharp fingers digging in, and she was stronger than he'd remembered, because she was able to break free with only minimal help from his end (he'd been working out, and could have held her there against her will, but again—he wanted her to come back). She staggered backwards, her eyes black and wary, like she expected him to follow.
His pulse throbbed in his neck where she'd bit him, and the skin there felt chilly with dampness—either her saliva, or she'd borne down hard enough to draw blood. God, he hoped she'd drawn blood, but he didn't have the hands free to check and see at the moment, putting them up as Maynard came charging in with his nightstick drawn (his ribs had just healed; he wasn't keen on the idea of another long convalescence).
"You," Maynard said as he got between them, pointing the nightstick aggressively, at Isabel. "Out."
She backed up, but she barely seemed to notice him, staring instead at Jerome, who stared back intently. Not here to flirt with me, my ass, he thought, and she must have read it on his face, because hers twisted into a little sneer—really got his heart pounding—and she backed up a few more steps until she reached the door. They buzzed her through, and she turned and disappeared through the door without another look back.
Maynard, after confirming that she was gone and the door had locked behind her, now jabbed his nightstick at Jerome. "And you. Back to your cell."
By that point, Jerome had turned away for modesty's sake. "Ah, you're gonna have to give me a minute."
It took Maynard a second to comprehend, and when he did, he muttered a disgusted oath under his breath. By then, Jerome had tucked his erection up into the waistband of his pants and covered up with his shirt—not that it would bother him all that much to walk around pointing that thing at everybody, but it could never be said that he wasn't a gentleman.
"All right," he said, presentable once more, "let's go, then."
Later, lying alone in his bunk, he would press his fingers into the bite mark until it throbbed and ached like Isabel's teeth were still sunk into the spot. For the next two weeks he monitored it the best he could in the various blurry reflective surfaces he had access to, watching it turn from red and blue to purple to brown before finally, tragically, fading away completely.
He wouldn't see Isabel again for months after the mark she left on him disappeared.
A/N - they missed each other lol. I really hope y'all enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it! Please leave a review, say hi, let me know what you think- and look up jokerfic on tumblr, since I can't post links here! There's a playlist, there'll be a pinterest board, sometimes we do Q&As... check it out :)
next time: Bruce Wayne is in the house. Isabel faces temptation. Jerome is in trouble. See you soon!