a/n - apologies that this is way later than I intended for it to be- I unexpectedly just had two of the busiest weeks of my life. I hope to maintain a more regular update schedule till this is done now!
pretty standard warnings for this chapter- more discussion of Jerome's youth, canon-typical, not much by way of detail. don't pay any attention to the chapter song, I'm sure it's not significant in any way. Enjoy!
10.
You're an angel, I'm a dog
Or you're a dog and I'm your man
You believe me like a god
I destroy you like I am
I'm sorry I'm the one you love
No one will ever love me like you again
So, when you leave me, I should die
I deserve it, don't I? – Mitski | I'm Your Man
The snow didn't last. Christmas Day dawned with warmer temperatures and a downpour, washing away every last bit of white that had accumulated the day before.
Isabel was distraught. Jerome had begun to feel a bit confined in the bedroom they were sharing, so they'd relocated to a front room with a lot of windows, where he locked in on the news—all the waiting around had him feeling a little raw, a little anxious—and was obsessively watching the updates on how the GCPD were faring rounding up the Arkham escapees (not particularly well, since Jerome had most of the ones with half a brain here at Cobblepot's with him) in between worried reports about how the rain would affect the annual Christmas Day Parade and little puff pieces like polls about favorite Christmas movies and songs.
He'd found a tough little rubber ball in a drawer somewhere, and paced in front of the TV, tossing the ball up against the ceiling, thwack, thwack, thwack, as he kept his eyes peeled for any sign of Jeremiah (not that he expected one) and any sign of trouble. Every now and again, an Arkham crony would hover in the doorway, and Jerome, glad for the distraction, would take aim and hurl the ball at them as hard as he could, hitting them more often than not. It was a marker of Isabel's depression that she didn't chew him out for it.
She'd spent a while standing in front of the window, arms crossed, scowling as she watched the rain turn the white world a muddy gray. By now, she was facedown on a couch nearby, occasionally making noises of profound discontent. If he wasn't so sure it was just a symptom of the same cabin fever he was feeling, he'd be worried that she was over him already.
"I'm over this," she said into the couch cushion.
Jerome tossed the ball up into the ceiling with another loud thwack. "You want me to call you a cab?"
"That would be great, thanks."
"Okay," he said amiably. "You're a cab." She couldn't stop the snicker that jumped out of her—he could see the edge of her grin even though her face was buried in the couch.
"Shitty, shitty Christmas," she pronounced, which might have hurt Jerome's feelings if he didn't know it was just a way of reclaiming her dignity after laughing at the bad joke.
"Oh, I don't know," said Bridgit airily. "I've had worse." She'd joined them maybe half an hour ago, like Isabel seeming to prefer the company of another woman to any of the others, though neither girl was exactly what he would call warm to the other. It seemed to be a girl thing—strength in numbers, friendships not necessary for alliances. He'd seen it with Barbara and Tabitha (they'd certainly become friendly, though, which he didn't exactly see happening with Bridgit and Isabel); it was unfolding again before his eyes. Probably wise. He was pretty sure that they were safe enough inside the mansion, but then, it was crawling with former Arkham inmates—unpredictable at best—and also Jervis Tetch, who, while incredibly useful, had that undeniable creep factor. Jerome was pretty sure he'd fucked his sister. That kind of thing eventually started to show in the eyes.
Isabel turned her head so her face was pointed towards Bridgit, seizing the distraction. "How much worse?"
Bridgit rose to the challenge. "Burst pipe at 5 AM worse," she said, lifting her chin arrogantly. "Tree flooded, presents gone, me and my brothers out on the street during the worst cold snap in twenty years."
Isabel thought it over then admitted, "You're right, that is worse."
Jerome caught movement out of the corner of his eye and turned to whip the ball as hard as he could at the doorway. His victim bolted, but not quickly enough—he heard a sharp yelp as the tough ball made contact, and he barked, "Throw it back!"
"Jerome," complained Isabel, finally deciding to intervene, pushing herself upright on both hands. "Stop torturing them."
"Keeps em on their toes," Jerome muttered, catching the ball as someone lobbed it timidly back into the room. "You're on the news, by the way."
"What?" Isabel turned to see what Jerome had already noticed—a photo of herself imposed on the screen, clearly taken at some fancy event, because she was dressed up nicely and looking a little bit like the cat that ate the canary. It was a good likeness, one that had obviously been cropped from a wider shot that likely featured her more prominent colleagues.
"Police have named twenty-year-old Isabel Montalvo a person of interest in the case. Montalvo, along with Coil heiress Jane Vanderholt, was abducted by Valeska's gang 'the Maniax' back in 2015, and escaped unharmed after his death. She has been missing since at least Saturday, when her colleagues became worried when she failed to show up for work for the second day in a row and called police. A source in the police department tells us that she may once again be in Valeska's company, and is wanted for questioning. Anyone who believes they've seen Montalvo should contact the GCPD tip line."
"They got your age wrong," Jerome noted.
"What's that supposed to mean, 'in Valeska's company?'" Isabel demanded.
"Told you."
"Told me what?"
"That they'll jump at any chance they get to charge you as an accomplice," he said, chucking the ball hard against the ceiling and dodging it on the way down.
"I think that ship has sailed," Isabel sighed, collapsing onto her back on the couch. "Gordon saw me at Jeremiah's, and I definitely wasn't there at gunpoint."
Jerome shrugged. "Big deal. Tell him you were hypnotized."
"How does Hatter feel about being everybody's scapegoat?" Bridgit wondered idly.
"That's the whole reason he's here," Jerome said, scooping up the ball. "Well. That and the mind control. He knows the deal."
"I think Gordon would see through that," Isabel said.
"So what? He's not your dad."
Isabel made a face. "No shit. He's only, like, thirty."
Jerome gave her the most withering look he could muster. "He's, like, forty. And anyway, he can suspect all he likes, but he'd have to prove that you weren't hypnotized to get anything to stick."
"That or just convince people he's right. Not like the justice system in this city goes by the book."
"How do you figure?"
Isabel shot him a narrow little look—be serious—and sure, he was playing dumb a little bit, but he wanted to see where she was going with this, so he just gave her a wide-eyed, earnest look in response. "Well, I mean, do you really think you should be in Arkham Asylum instead of Blackgate Prison?"
Jerome shrugged. "My shrinks do." He threw the ball at her without warning, and, displaying her typically-impressive hand-eye coordination, she caught it without batting an eyelash.
"Then they're quacks," she said, and lobbed the ball back (kind of hard, actually, but he forgave her—she was obviously working through some frustrations today). "It's like they think just because you laughed when you were caught, then you must be crazy. You're not, though."
"Aww," he said, putting his hand flat to his chest like he was touched.
"You've definitely got some kind of cluster b personality disorder—maybe several," she continued, and Jerome frowned, going from fake-touched to fake-wounded at the drop of a hat, though she ignored him. "But that's not the same thing as being legally insane. You know the difference between right and wrong, you're not, like, so divorced from reality that you don't see that you're breaking the law, you just don't care. The ability to distinguish is what's in question when you're on trial, and… I don't know. Gotham's just strange that way. All of you who came out of Arkham seem perfectly sane to me, you're all just antisocial and a bit weird."
"I am not weird," muttered Bridgit.
"But," Isabel continued, ignoring her, "the other thing you all have in common is a shtick. A costume, a larger-than-life persona, a theme. I feel like in this city, you get caught breaking the law and you have that going on, then the courts just immediately write you off as crazy and send you to Arkham. There's an ocean of difference between you guys and the catatonics and the people who don't even know they're on planet earth, but you're all tossed in there together anyway. It's… not great."
"Another problem for Saint Isabel to take on?" Jerome jabbed, throwing her the ball again. She fumbled it this time, then glared at him like it was his fault she had butterfingers. "Do me a favor and leave that one alone. Arkham's a get-out-of-jail free card. Easy in, easy out. You don't want to ruin that for us, do you?" he asked, pulling a mock frown.
Isabel narrowed her eyes like maybe she did want to ruin it for him, but before they could really dig into that, someone in the doorway said "Mr. Valeska." He turned to find Oswald standing there—looking annoyed, but he was pretty much always some stage of pissed-off, so Jerome didn't bother taking it personally.
"Ozzie!" he boomed, extra loudly, just for the joy of seeing Oswald flinch (he'd seemed extra-jumpy around Jerome ever since the little laughing gas demonstration—Jerome wondered what that was about). "Come on in, pull up a chair. We were having a riveting discussion about Gotham's justice system." The ball hit him hard in the shoulder while he wasn't looking, Isabel punishing him for being nasty to Oswald, or for the implication that she'd been boring him, or just because she felt like it—one reason was as likely as any other. He ignored the blow.
Oswald gave him that forced smile of his, the one that looked like he'd just swallowed a lemon. "Another time, perhaps. I need to speak with you." His eyes flitted to Isabel. "In private."
Oh, that was interesting. Jerome swiveled at the waist to look directly at Isabel, even though Oswald had clearly been trying to be discreet (and heard an exasperated sigh behind him as he did). Everyone in the gang, more or less, had regarded her presence here with at least faint suspicion, given her clean record and lack of explanation for her tagging along (aside from the lawyer one, which amused Jerome to keep giving out, because it was bullshit, and everyone knew it was bullshit, but nobody seemed to want to call him out on it), but Jerome vouching for her combined with her refusal to be intimidated by any of them had kept the skeptics at bay. Looked like the grace period was about to expire.
For her part, Isabel had clocked that she was being excluded, her dark brows furrowed into a frown as she met Jerome's eyes, like she was asking what he wanted to do here. God, we know each other so well, he thought with relish, and loudly announced, "Be right back. Oz wants to talk shit about you behind your back."
Oswald made a disgusted little sound, but he didn't contradict Jerome, turning to hobble angrily off down the hall. For Isabel's part, she glared, but stayed put as Jerome spun around to follow Oswald and get the scoop.
Oswald led the way into one of the several kitchens the manor boasted. Staff moved in and out (mostly out, especially once they spotted Jerome), preparing for a Christmas dinner to which he and Isabel hadn't been invited. Maybe they'd crash it anyways, maybe not—he'd see what she thought. Or maybe Oswald had pulled him aside to invite him now.
"As happy as I am to play host to our little gathering, I'm afraid the household staff has put forward some complaints they asked me to address with you," Oswald began without preamble the moment Jerome followed him in.
Then again, maybe not. Jerome made a beeline to an island that held a platter with a tasteful charcuterie spread, pulling himself backwards to sit on the countertop beside it and collecting a couple of prosciutto-wrapped mozzarella sticks. "Like what?"
Oswald was glaring at him like maybe he shouldn't have touched the platter, but once again, Jerome had gotten hungry without realizing it, and he wasn't just going to ignore easily-accessible meat and cheese. Oswald picked a different battle, at any rate: "Well, there's the issue of the bedding in the room you've been staying in."
Jerome raised his eyebrows, shook his head briefly. What about it?
"Covered in black stains? Impossible to wash out? Ringing any bells?" Oswald prodded.
Oh. Oops. A smirk stretched one corner of Jerome's mouth—he hadn't noticed at the time, a little preoccupied, but clearly Isabel had sweated some of the black marker he'd been using to doodle on her legs off onto the sheets. The thought of explaining didn't even cross his mind (funnier for them to believe and potentially spread rumors that he had demon cum), and he just said, as insincerely as possible, "Ah. Sorry about that. We'll be more careful."
"Well, that's just it, isn't it?" asked Oswald, squinting his eyes in what was supposed to be a smile, and in what was clearly designed to be about as sincere as Jerome's apology. "I wasn't expecting a we. I didn't invite a we. So imagine my surprise when you showed up with an unexpected, uninvited guest in tow."
Jerome, chewing away at his snack, frowned dramatically. "Is this about Jonny? I mean, I know he's a little weird, but—"
"You know very well who I'm talking about," Oswald said coldly. "Your… attorney. Who the news says is only twenty years old."
Oswald was looking at him like that was supposed to be some kind of gotchya. Jerome squinted at him and asked, "You never heard of Doogie Howser?"
"The jig is up, Jerome!" snapped Oswald, his grip on his temper finally slipping. (Jerome was impressed it had lasted this long. He'd seen the tantrums Ozzie had thrown in the Asylum—he wasn't the type of guy who valued calm and control.) "It's all over the news! Why in God's name would you bring your former hostage into my home?"
Jerome smacked the counter loud with both hands, making Oswald flinch and wresting the conversation away from him with ease. "That's what I've been waiting for," he declared, pointing emphatically at his host. "Some anger. Some fire! That's the Oswald I recruited all those months ago. Welcome back, pal."
"I don't feel like you are listening to me," Oswald said, obviously spitting mad. "When you bring someone like Isabel Montalvo into my house, it endangers all of us. Me most of all. She's been privy to things she should not have seen or heard. Need I remind you how she reacted to Ms. Bainbridge's demise? All it takes is one slip-up, then she'll be arrested, and before you know it, she'll be testifying against us all."
Jerome flapped a hand at him, dismissing his concerns. "Aw, so what? So we go back to Arkham, if they manage to catch us?" He blew a loud raspberry. "Big deal."
"It's a very big deal for me," Oswald argued, getting visibly madder by the second. "You might be looking at fugitive status for the rest of your life, but I was released. I'm not keen on going back there. And now," he added, an angry little laugh coming into his voice as he jabbed a finger back through the door, "there's a girl in my parlor who can link me to you—can put me at the scene of a particularly grotesque murder!"
Jerome looked at him like he was crazy, mouth drawn down into a dramatic frown. "Whoa," he said, grabbing up some crackers off the charcuterie board. "Take it easy, Oz. Just watching a murder doesn't implicate ya."
Oswald was clearly just revving up, though, not in the mood to be reassured. "And you just brought her in through the front door. To my house. Uninvited. You know, most people would know that that is just rude." Jerome, chowing down on fancy crackers now, just stared at him, still pulling the unfazed, slightly-confused-as-to-why-you-are-yelling-at-me act. Oswald's eyes narrowed nastily, and he added, "Then again, I suppose not all of us here had mothers who loved us enough to teach us some manners."
Before Jerome could even begin to decide how to react to that, though, there was a flash of motion, a thud of flesh on flesh, and then Oswald was hunched against the pantry door behind him holding his face and Isabel was glaring down at him, fists balled tight and held stiff at her side, looking like some sort of avenging angel. A sexy avenging angel.
"Say it again," she snapped. "Go ahead. I want to make sure I heard you right."
Jerome had frozen mid-chew, for once unsure of what to say or think of this new development, his eyes darting between Oswald and Isabel to see how this would play out. On cue, Oswald straightened abruptly up, dropping his hand from his already-purpling jaw (Jerome pressed two fingertips into the scabbed-over scratches on his own jaw, awakening a little pain there, remembering how it felt to take a punch from Isabel—not an experience for the faint of heart), shaking his hair out of his face, and jutting his chin out defiantly.
"Some of us also had mothers that taught us we shouldn't fight a lady."
"Oh, I'll show you a lady," Isabel ground out through clenched teeth, and Jerome, seeing her take a step forward, swallowed quickly and hopped off the counter, figuring it was high time he intervened.
He caught her around the waist before she could hit Oswald again, hauling her back as their host sneered at them both. "That's a fair point," he said. "I don't think even my mother would consider you a lady."
"Not really helping your situation, there, pal," Jerome said, under some considerable strain as Isabel threw everything she had into escaping his grip (and nearly succeeding, until he lifted her completely off her feet).
"Let me go," she demanded, legs thrashing in the air. "You think I'm gonna let that weaselly little shit talk to you that way?"
Huh. The question sparked a strange feeling in Jerome, a weird warm glow, a mix of boyish glee and… uncertainty, like this order of events wasn't right, like at any second someone was going to hit rewind and rearrange things so they'd play out differently. He set Isabel back on her feet—mostly because she felt twice as heavy when she was actively fighting him; usually when he picked her up she was motivated to work with him and it was easier—but kept both arms tight around her waist, and she quit fighting quite as hard, gripping his forearms with both hands now, but less like she was trying to pry them off and more like she just wanted hands on him. He could only see the top of her head and just the edge of her face, but he could tell that she was fixing Oswald with a killer glare right now.
Oswald, who clearly didn't know when to shut up. "Mr. Valeska," he said archly, "could you please get your guard dog under control?"
At that, Jerome felt a pang of what Isabel must be feeling—a very brief flash of white-hot fury, disconcerting, because he didn't usually care what anyone said about him or anyone else, but hearing Oswald talk about her in that tone of contempt instantly pissed him off. He very nearly let her go again, and probably should have—but there were too many ways it could go wrong, too many ways it could ruin the meticulous plan for tomorrow. At the very least, he knew that if Isabel beat the shit out of Oswald, then the rest of the Horribles would take Oswald's side just by nature of her being an outsider, and he didn't need a mutiny on his hands at this late stage. Every person in the house had a part to play in the plan.
So don't get mad. Just get even. He penciled in a couple of mental notes about Oswald's ultimate role in the plan, then put his mouth to Isabel's ear and whispered, just for her: "I've got a plan to take care of him, baby. Just trust me now."
She didn't stop glaring, but he felt the strain against his arms disappear as she relaxed back into his embrace—he gave her a quick little squeeze of approval, then treated Oswald to a transparently fake smile. "Sorry about that, Oz," he graveled. "You're right. She's not my lawyer. She's my girlfriend. And she's, ah, very protective." He felt Isabel jump just a little bit at that word, girlfriend, but they'd been dancing around it for enough time, hadn't they? Jerome wasn't huge on labels, but that one seemed particularly apt for their situation at this specific point in time.
Oswald straightened his clothing, a bit rumpled from the scuffle, and drew himself up as tall as he could—he still had to look up at them both. Far from forgiving, he hissed, "Most people have the sense not to bring their girlfriend to the evil plan."
"Yeah, well, you'd have to get a girlfriend first, am I right?" Jerome loosed one arm from around Isabel to hold up his hand high. He didn't think she'd have played along if she was any less furious at their host, but as it was, she granted him a crisp high five, maintaining her glare at Oswald the entire time. Jerome, fitting the arm back around her waist, frowned as if a thought had just hit him: "Or, uh, boyfriend. Y'know. I never did figure out your exact deal."
Oswald had clearly had enough. "Just—" he began, raising both hands in a gesture that said SHUT UP more effectively than if he'd screamed it. "Let me go on record here as saying that having her around is a bad idea. It's going to backfire on you. Sooner rather than later."
Hmm. That sounded interestingly like a threat. Jerome didn't let on to the fact that he was noting any treacherous tendencies in Oswald, instead going for a wheedling, cajoling approach. "Ozzie, ol buddy, ol pal," he crooned. "You act like I don't have a plan. And if you don't trust in the plan, then what are any of us even doing here, huh?"
"It might be easier to trust the plan," Oswald said, "if any of us knew what it actually was."
If he hadn't been busy hanging on to Isabel (who he still wasn't sure wouldn't attack again if released), Jerome would have reached out and patted him on his bruised cheek affectionately. "All good things to those who wait," he promised. "It's gonna knock your socks off, Oz. Soon. But now…" He pulled Isabel a step back, towards the open doorway. "Seems like we're crashing the party. We wouldn't want to be rude, would we, Izzy?"
"Oh, no," she said in a poisonous little voice. "We wouldn't want that." She hadn't stopped glaring at Oswald since she'd entered the room, and to his credit, the little man didn't wilt under the pressure.
"Yeah, I thought not," Jerome said. "We'll make ourselves scarce." He relaxed his arms, caught one of Isabel's wrists, and twirled her around so that she was facing the exit. "Put some ice on that," he advised Oswald gravely, and then, putting a hand to the small of Isabel's back, he pushed her from the room and followed her quickly out.
Overall, Jerome would be feeling pretty good about the interaction if not for the sense he was getting that Isabel, for some unknowable reason, was mad at him. She batted his hand away from her after a few paces, and sped up, power-walking to their room without him. He gave her her space—limited, for sure; he was still following, but at a stroll, letting her out of his sight, giving her plenty of time to get to the room before him. Maybe she'd try locking him out. That could be fun.
She didn't, though. When he arrived to the room, the door was ajar, and he pushed it open to find Isabel shucking the case off of one of the bed's deluge of throw pillows, which she then proceeded to tear open with her bare hands, shaking feathers all over the floor.
Jerome was torn between thinking this girl needs a rage room, stat and hm. Looks fun. Some small voice in his head reminded him that Oswald had already complained about damaged bedding once, but really, that was just more incentive to join her. They were only here for one more night, after all. He didn't think he'd be welcomed back after the events of the following day. (He made a mental side note—figure out his next safe house.) He locked the door behind him, went to the opposite side of the bed from her, and grabbed a pillow of his own.
The next five minutes or so were filled with wanton, near-silent destruction as they ripped up every throw pillow in the room. Once the pillows were shredded and the room was filled with feathers, Isabel stalked past him, tore the window open, then gathered an armful of feathers and dumped them out. Jerome giggled as he watched. "Making it snow," he mumbled as she made trip after trip, dumping the feathers out into the cold, rainy night, where they'd end up a sodden mess that would certainly end up someone's problem. (Not his. He was planning to move on early, before he could be held accountable.)
Finally, Isabel had cleared out an obscene amount of feathers, and the room was cold from the open window, and… she didn't look like she felt better at all. Instead, when she turned to look at him, she was almost glaring. Jerome took his cue. "Ready to talk about why you're angry with me?"
"I'm not," she practically snarled.
Jerome tipped the corners of his mouth down into a frown, nodding thoughtfully. "Okay. Okay. Kinda seems like you are, though."
She raked a hand through her hair and said, "Why didn't you let me kick his ass?"
"Knew it."
"He had it coming, and you know I could beat him in a fight. Maybe a sound ass-kicking would help him remember to watch his mouth."
"I love this side of you," Jerome said, shaking his head in wonder. "Is that really all it takes to bring it out? Someone being a little rude to me?"
"He wasn't just 'a little rude,'" snapped Isabel. "He was talking like your mom was your fault."
"I mean. Maybe it was, a little bit," said Jerome, willing to be generous even to his mother if it meant he could play the devil's advocate.
Unfortunately, Isabel immediately caught on to what he was doing. "Don't," she said flatly. "Not even as a joke. I can't hear that shit."
Huh. There was that strange feeling again. Jerome really hadn't realized until this very moment that Isabel not only believed every word he'd told her about his youth, but that she had some pretty serious feelings about them. And it wasn't even that he'd lied to her—he hadn't, he always told the truth about his childhood, because it made people uncomfortable and because he didn't think it was his job to keep his family's secrets anymore after eighteen years of doing just that—but, it was dawning on him, it was that he was used to people thinking that he was lying.
Isabel clearly didn't think he was lying. Isabel believed every word, and not only that, she was clearly ready to throw down on behalf of little Jerome.
Huh.
Weird.
He'd been silent a second too long—she moved on to her next target. "What was that girlfriend shit, anyway?" she asked, hands on her hips. Jerome was getting the feeling that he was in trouble—and he sensed she was making him feel that way on purpose, deflecting from something.
He squinted at her. "Are you not? I could have sworn…"
"Jerome. Seriously."
He put up his hands. I surrender. "Look, we don't have to label it if you're not into it. That's fine. But you were the one telling Jane it's 'real.'"
Her hands were still on her hips, but she was shifting her weight from one foot to the other, and he could see her chewing on the inside of her bottom lip. Nervous. Interesting. "It's not—I just mean… we never had a conversation about it."
"Okay," he said agreeably. "Let's have a conversation about it, then."
She looked unsure, but he didn't do anything to ease the tension—this was her show; he fully intended to let her run it. He just stared at her expectantly, waiting, and finally, she said, "Is that… what you want?"
"Would I have said it if it wasn't?"
"I thought you said you don't do relationships."
"I lied," he said simply, then frowned. "Or I changed my mind. Or you're not like the other girls." He waved his hand dismissively. "Pick the one you like best."
"Well, what does that mean to you?"
He shook his head. "What are you asking?"
"I don't know. I just—most people don't really bother to have a conversation about terms when they, I guess, go official, then they get all mad when one of them crosses the other's boundaries that they never really communicated about. I have no idea what 'being boyfriend-girlfriend' means to you."
He shook his head. He figured he was Isabel's number one fan at this point, but this was a little too overthinky and opaque even for him. "Gonna need an example."
"Of the kind of thing I'm talking about?" When he nodded, she tilted her chin up, a little defiant, and said, "How about monogamy?"
Jerome stuck his pointer finger into his open mouth, reaching almost to the back of his throat, and pretended to gag.
"Okay. So you're cool with me fucking other people, then?"
A low little growl escaped him before he realized it was happening. "Okayyyy," he sing-songed through clenched teeth, readjusting. "So maybe you've got a point."
"So, yes to monogamy."
He made a show of sighing. "If you insist."
She stared at him, nodding her head just a little bit for a few seconds. "Good," she said eventually. "Really good. Cause remember a couple of days ago when I told you I don't get jealous?"
"Yeah?"
"Yeah, that was a total fucking lie," she said frankly. "I keep a tight lid on it because it honestly makes me feel like a crazy person if I let it take hold. But I'm not okay with the idea of you getting physical with other people, either. You do that, it's over. Cool?"
Jerome tilted his head, acquiescing. "Cool."
She visibly relaxed at that, like a string that had been pulling her upright and rigid had finally been cut, and Jerome, watching her closely, was surprised when instead of contempt at how much she clearly cared about this, he felt a swell of affection. It had been an easy enough thing for him to agree to—he knew if he changed his mind about it, he'd go ahead and act on it, he'd just said a word, not sworn a blood oath, but in truth, at least with the way he was feeling right now, having her locked in was worth being locked in with her. Not like he was seriously thinking about fucking anyone other than Isabel nowadays, anyway.
That could change. It probably would. He'd burn that bridge when he came to it.
"Okay," Isabel said. "You got anything for me?"
"I do, actually." She raised her eyebrows expectantly at him, but he took his time, prowling over to the foot of the bed, pulling the hems of his trousers clear of his shoes, taking a seat on the edge, watching her the whole time. She was still standing over by the open window, the rainfall pattering in the background, and she was starting to look a little nervous, which he always enjoyed. He let the tension stretch for a few more seconds—
"Spit it out," Isabel said, starting to sound annoyed.
"Yeah," he said. "So when you talk about past, uh, dalliances… seems like they were always with girls." Isabel's annoyance shifted—clearly seeing where this was going, she cracked a smirk. Jerome, by contrast, played it as serious as the grave. "Have you ever had a boyfriend, or…?"
"Does Lucio Martin back in the second grade count?"
"Probably not."
"Yeah. So no, not really."
He waited for her to clarify, but in a thrilling twist of events, she'd turned the tables on him, crossing her arms and letting the silence linger and looking smug while she waited for him to ask another question. He almost didn't want to give her the satisfaction, just because it would be funny to leave it at that, but in truth, he was burning with curiosity, and gave it up easily: "So is there a reason for that, orrr…?"
"Are you afraid I'm just going to jerk you along then ditch you when I meet the love of my life, who happens to be a girl? Because that's actually super biphobic."
"I can't be biphobic."
"Why, cause you're bi?"
"Cause I'm bi," he agreed.
"I knew it," she whispered to herself, then, louder: "No, I mean… I've had situationships with boys. I've had friends-with-benefits arrangements with boys. We just… always stopped short of an actual relationship, I guess?"
Jerome nodded understandingly, before realizing he understood nothing. "Uh. Why?"
"Because," she said with a long, drawn-out sigh, eyes rolling up towards the ceiling, his line of inquiry clearly awakening some memories, "guys—at least guys our age—are not exactly relationship material."
Jerome, again, waited for her to elaborate, but when she didn't say anything for a full three seconds, prompted her, a little impatiently this time. "And… I'm relationship material?"
She dropped her gaze down to meet his. Her smile turned wry. She strolled across the room, joining him at the foot of the bed, sitting down about a foot away from him. "Would you believe me if I told you yes?" He narrowed his eyes skeptically—he was a prize, a prince, but nobody ever seemed to see that, and he knew for a fact that even Isabel had her objections—and she narrowed hers back like a challenge. "I'm serious. Aside from the extremely obvious—which is big enough to be a dealbreaker on its own, by the way—" Jerome shrugged, agree to disagree—"you're actually kind of annoyingly what I'm into."
"Which is…?" he prompted her. (He was shamelessly fishing for compliments, true, but he was also deathly curious at this point.)
"Funny. Surprisingly emotionally astute, even though you hide it behind like seven layers of jokes. Interesting. Interested. We've spent like the last four days together and I don't think there's been even a lull in the conversation, unless we're sleeping, which is insane to me, but we just… don't run out of stuff to talk about. We're sexually compatible, that's important. You don't give me shit about wearing condoms. I don't think you've ever once told me to quiet down or be nicer or sweeter or easier to swallow. Actually, there's a ton of stuff you do right, but just as important is the stuff you don't do wrong."
"Such as?"
She shook her head. "I don't even think you can take credit for half of them because it's mostly the life you live, and this could change in a heartbeat, but like, you don't spend two-thirds of your life playing video games."
"No time for that. Gotta take over the city."
"Exactly what I'm talking about. I don't wake up to find you mainlining porn on your phone."
He shrugged. "Not claiming I've never dabbled, but I do prefer the real thing."
"And—this one's probably because you don't have your own place—but you don't keep a sink full of moldy dishes, you brush your teeth and wash your ass, you don't practically live in a sewer."
"What, you were thinking about dating a sewer man?"
"I got too close, one time," she said, laughing ruefully. "But he had crunchy floors and my socks were always black on the bottoms after visiting him and that killed it for me pretty quick. Not quick enough, in hindsight, but you live and you learn."
Jerome shook his head. "I feel like I'm learning more about your exes than I thought there was to know."
"I'm just saying. You talk at least as much about me as you talk about yourself, which is a change of pace—"
"In fairness, you do the same," he said graciously.
"—and you look out for me, you always have, even before I knew I could trust it, and you're a killer flirt, a good kisser, and a great lay. All those things combined with the total lack of like… the banal, boring, domestically bad qualities that so many guys have, and I'm seriously in trouble. Seriously. Like, blowing up my life and ignoring the fact that you're literally homicidal just to get to spend a few days with you." Jerome snorted out a little laugh, she did the same. "And Jane was right—you know, she said I've always been her smartest friend. Always the one who talked sense into the girls who were tearing themselves to pieces over some guy. I know that, and I see it, and here I am anyway. It's genuinely scary, Jerome. It's like an obsession. Like clinically."
Jerome, who'd been quite enjoying the parade of compliments, felt his heart skip a beat at that word, obsession, which was discomfiting. "You gonna start secretly feeding me your hair and fingernails?" he joked to distract himself from the weird sensation.
"Oh, you're out of your mind if you don't think I've already started."
"Come'ere," he said, feeling a flood of something close to aggression in response to the teasing and reaching out a hand, flicking his fingers in command. She was too far away.
She came to him like she'd only been waiting for him to ask, climbing onto his lap as if it was where she belonged, straddling him as he anchored her in place with both hands on her ass. Her fingertips dug firmly into the opposite lines of his jaw, insistently turning his face up, and he gladly let her direct him, meeting her eager, open mouth with his own.
That was one of the nice things about Isabel—one of his favorite things, in fact. She always seemed to want him. And it wasn't as if Jerome was a stranger to being an object of sexual desire: they hadn't really discussed his history, but one of the things about essentially being a nomad was that you really only had to think in the short term, and short-term, Jerome could win just about anyone over, could pretend to be whoever or whatever they wanted for as long as it took the circus to pull up stakes and move on to the next town. He knew for a fact that he'd left more than a few broken hearts behind.
But those brokenhearts didn't know him, not really, not at all. They knew the sensitive, dutiful snake-charmer's son for the most part (it was one of his favorite acts, pretending to be an open wound of a boy—if Lee Thompkins found that act hard to resist, then he knew for a fact it was pretty much bulletproof), or sometimes the slightly dangerous loudmouth circus wild child, always ready with a prank or a plan, with his usual violent inclinations largely suppressed, since those had the tendency to scare conquests off. Plenty of people wanted to fuck him, then and now—but that wasn't this. Usually, prolonged proximity to him seemed to cool people's ardor, revealing the nasty little bits that he really only had the attention span to conceal temporarily. He'd seen enough people change their minds about him once they'd seen just one jagged edge, just a little flash of sharp teeth, that he'd come to embrace it, revel in it, the idea that he—the real him, unfiltered—was deeply unwanted. He'd developed a real taste for throwing it in people's faces nowadays, whether you want me or not, here I am to stay. It satisfied something old and stinging deep-down in him.
But—and he hadn't really planned it this way, it had just been the way the chips fell—Isabel had seen more of him than… well, anyone, really, at least since his brother left. She hadn't shied away—the opposite, really. For all her fussing and griping about a little murder (and for his money, that was just a temporary grievance, the death rattle of her societal conditioning, because Isabel, like Jerome, was a creature of violence, and with every punch she threw, she got a little closer to finally surrendering to it), she was sticking to him like glue, closer with every day. It didn't really surprise him, he'd confidently discerned her interest in him shortly after they'd met, and had only gotten more assured of it over time, but the repeated affirmation of that interest stoked something hot in him, something that was beginning to feel like a need. She'd called him a personal drug, and she certainly acted like an addict, never going far before snapping right back to him. It was deeply satisfying. It was also a feeling he was beginning to relate to.
That really should have concerned him, but shirts were coming off, things getting hot and heavy, and he wasn't going to let some faint sense of misgiving ruin it for him, especially as Isabel pried his hands away from her and slid to her knees on the floor.
She paused and looked up at him as he swallowed past the sudden dryness as his throat. Her face was flushed, the silky black of her hair a rumpled wreck (he'd developed a tendency, almost unconscious, almost a compulsion, to fuck with it whenever she was in reach, the result of which—and he wasn't sure if she'd noticed this yet—was that she practically always looked like she had just been having sex), and her already-dark eyes were even darker, almost glazed over.
Jerome couldn't resist touching—his impulse control was dogshit at the best of times— tangling his fingers in her hair, cupping her soft jaw in his other hand, pressing his thumb hard into the bone beneath the skin. Isabel didn't seem put-off by the nearly too-forceful touch. In fact, he thought he spotted a flash of recognition in her eyes, a little gleam of pleasure, and she leaned into it, turning her head a fraction to kiss the palm of his hand, eyelids drifting pleasantly shut.
He felt the warmth of her breath against his hand, a shaky little exhale that could be nerves or could be lust—or really, could easily be both—then her eyes snapped open and she pulled slightly back, out of his grip. Holding eye contact, in that calm, impersonal tone he was really starting to develop a thing for, she said, "Put your hands behind your back, please."
Always with the manners. Per usual, Jerome took a second to think about it. It wasn't in his nature to comply with orders. In fact, he'd spent the vast majority of his life—and still did, as a matter of fact—flouting orders, and rules, and anything that threatened to attempt to prod and poke him into place. What made hers so different?
Well, they're a sex thing, for one. The thought was reason enough for him to move, albeit slowly and deliberately, crossing one wrist over another behind his back. "You know," he said, drawing her gaze again—she'd been watching his hands move, watching them disappear from her view. Her eyes, when they met his once more, seemed even blacker now, which actually made his mind bluescreen a bit. It took him a second to remember what he was going to say. "You know," he said again, disguising the temporary lapse as just casual carelessness, "I'm pretty sure I've got a set of handcuffs around here. Took 'em off a security guard a couple of days ago. Y'know. If this is the kind of game you want to play."
For a second, Isabel looked at him like he was speaking a completely different language. At length, sounding measured and quiet, she said, "I think that would defeat the purpose."
He bent his head slightly down, like they were sharing secrets. "Which is?"
"It's the choice that matters," she said, idly stroking his knee with her fingertips even as she stared at him with eyes that never seemed to blink. "You have to choose to obey."
For some reason, that turned his mouth into the motherfucking Sahara. He was suddenly, fervently glad that she didn't seem to be expecting him to speak again, as she continued on after pausing a mere beat to let that settle in. "Now," she said, shifting her weight and rising slightly on her knees and going for his belt buckle. "Keep your hands behind your back. Don't touch me. If you touch, I stop. Understand?"
Jerome, always a fan of clearly-stated expectations, just nodded. She nodded back, then set to work getting his belt unbuckled, working his pants down—he generously shifted his weight to assist—and then, once his cock was free and clear, she paused, and she just looked at him for a moment, eyes sweeping him all over, like she was assessing him for something. It gave Jerome a weird feeling, one of many that were becoming par for the course with her—a sort of foreign neediness, an eagerness to please that really should have been repulsive, made him feel pathetic. In truth, it did, a little bit, which really only made the whole thing better for him in this context. This wasn't the way of things, Jerome Valeska in supplication, waiting for some girl to decide he was good enough. It felt perverse, and perversely, he was probably more turned-on than he'd ever been in his life, waiting, each of his hands gripping their opposite wrist tight enough to leave marks.
After a moment, Isabel seemed to reach a conclusion. She wrapped a hand around the base of him and leaned forward, and even though he'd been anticipating it, the sudden warmth and wetness of her mouth was a shock to the system. Jerome arched slightly back, fingers biting into his own skin in an effort to keep his hands in place.
If he'd been capable of rational thought at the moment—or even just cynical thought—he'd think that this was why he obeyed her orders: because she came through, always, because she never disappointed him, because there was always a payoff. It was true, and it wasn't. He'd bucked anyone who tried to position themselves into authority over him his entire life. He was used to people trying to take it from him. It was another thing entirely, he was finding, for him to give it over on purpose, to choose submission, and he wasn't sure it would work with anyone but Isabel—Isabel, who was so fucking… good, whom he implicitly trusted with the control he handed over to her. She wouldn't be able to trust him like that, he was pretty sure. It was a rare thing, certainly not to be found in him, maybe not to be found in anyone but her.
He would arrive at none of that with any real clarity until later—at the moment, he didn't have enough blood flow to think clearly about anything but keeping his hands to himself so that Isabel wouldn't stop. She gave head like she was getting more out of it than he was, a little messy, making soft little sounds in the back of her throat that went straight to his dick, and honestly, it wasn't fair—if she'd had more of an attitude like this was a chore, or somehow transactional, he might have been able to keep his wits about him, take control of the situation even without his hands in play (or get her to let him have his hands back). As it was, with her obvious enjoyment of the act, with those dark eyes looking up at him to watch him watching her, Jerome felt himself approaching the edge quickly, almost embarrassingly so, for him, at least.
He figured he should let her know, so that if she was expecting him to stop and fuck her instead she could cut it out now, or just to give her a heads-up that cum was inevitable, but all he managed in, again, a frankly embarrassing moan, was "Isabel—"
She just redoubled her efforts. There was no hope for him. When he came, she swallowed it down. If he'd had the presence of mind, he might have cracked some sort of succubus joke, about her draining his soul out through his dick, but really, that hit a little too close to home—he just collapsed backwards, onto his clasped hands, and lay there, trying not to twitch and drool and otherwise look like a slavering idiot. (It was hard. He felt like he was in a million pieces. That was new.)
Isabel rose up onto her knees to look down at him, almost daintily wiping her mouth on the back of her hand, her eyes still void-black, but otherwise appearing perfectly calm. Librarian calm. Ice queen calm. Jerome wished he hadn't just come so that he could fuck her again immediately. Maybe he could eat her out—that had been a pleasant experience so far, would buy him some time until he was ready to go again. Shit, was he supposed to say something? He couldn't think of a single thing to follow that.
Isabel had him covered. She dropped her hand from her mouth and got to her feet and, in a tone of mild fascination, like she'd just found a cool bug outside, she said, "You know—when you get really, really turned on, you go all pink right here." She laid her fingertips on his sternum, gentle, brief. "Like a blush. I love that."
She turned away then, heading to the bathroom. Jerome, still recuperating, waited till he heard the shower turn on, then, with some effort, rolled himself off the bed and onto his feet. He might not be able to go again quite yet, but Ozzie had those killer rain showers installed, and he could think of a thing or two he could do in there to even the score with Isabel.
Later, lying in the dark, illuminated only by a faint yellow glow from a distant streetlamp entering the room in a thin streak from where the drapes hadn't fully closed, Isabel hit Jerome with a groggy-sounding "Are you asleep?"
"Yeah," he answered. He hadn't been, actually. Nowhere close. He'd been the one to make the call that they should douse the lights and get some shut-eye, figuring that tomorrow would be tricky enough without adding extra sleep deprivation on top of it, but he'd just been lying there on his back, staring at the ceiling as his eyes adjusted to the dark, trying to bore or amuse himself into drifting off by finding horrors hiding in the shadows there. The question was a welcome distraction from the fact that he was way too wired to fall asleep.
He quickly retracted that thought when Isabel asked, "Did you ever love your mom?"
"Jesus, Izzy," was his instant, startled response, a bit of a scold. Might be a better idea to jam a pillow over my face and press down till I pass out. He waited for her to apologize, to take the question back, but she didn't. She just lay there beside him, very still, turned towards him but not touching, her hand on the pillow cradling her face, like a little kid in a cartoon. When he glanced over at her, he could see her eyelashes against the faint light, fluttering as she blinked. Wide awake, then, just like him.
Since she didn't seem keen to let him off the hook, he deflected. "I think pretty much everybody loves their mom for a little while, at least. Before they start to fuck us up. Why do you ask?"
She was silent for a while except the quiet sound of her breathing. He was starting to wonder if maybe he'd read her wrong, if she had actually been on her way to dreamland, when she said, "Just something you said to Jeremiah. I keep thinking back to it."
"What did I say to Jeremiah?" he asked, with some trepidation—nobody got under his skin like his twin, nobody made him mad enough to lose control and go off-script like he did—but he was no bitch, and if he'd unconsciously said something revealing, it was better to know.
Less of a pause this time. "You said that he'd turned everyone you ever loved against you."
Fuck. That was revealing. Shit, that was borderline vulnerable. He shuffled through strategies quickly: the most obvious one was to jump down Isabel's throat for eavesdropping in the first place, put her on the defensive so that she quit picking at him, but she was unfortunately kind of unflappable when it came to that kind of thing, recognizing the bait when he laid it out and refusing to rise to it. He could just straight-up gaslight her, deny ever having said such a thing—she got him well enough to probably think it was funny that he was making the effort, but she wasn't going to believe him over her own ears, either. Even as he was busy trying to decide what to say, though, he heard his own voice, felt his own mouth running lazily and without his permission: "Yeah, well. A last parting gift from the little poindexter before he bailed on me, too."
Isabel was silent for a while, leaving him with an uncomfortable and unfamiliar feeling, like he was ever-so-faintly mortified, like he'd said too much. She was smart enough to put the pieces together—for Jeremiah to have done anything to Jerome's loved ones, Jerome first had to love them.
And he had, was the thing. He hadn't just been blowing smoke up Jeremiah's ass; Jeremiah wouldn't have cared, anyway, incapable of feeling guilt or shame about a single thing he'd ever done to Jerome (because Jerome was the bad kid, Jerome always deserved the bad, even if it wasn't fair). Jerome had always been a tough-to-handle boy, full of strange impulses, destructive, into everything, but despite what Jeremiah had clearly talked himself into believing, he hadn't been born bad. He wasn't bad, not at first. Like any kid, he'd loved his brother and his mother, even when she was a little too harsh with him, a little too mean, and he'd even loved his grumpy uncle, and for a time early on—before he was any older than six, maybe—he'd confidently believed that they all loved him back. That was what families did, wasn't it? Even a weird one like theirs.
Even after Jeremiah left and Lila turned on her sole remaining son, her disappointment, even as the fights got louder and the words got meaner and Jerome's impulses got stranger, more violent, he'd held onto it. He'd given up on Uncle Zach years ago—that guy really had a bug up his ass about Jerome in particular, something he'd realized somewhere around the transition from little kid to big kid—but his mom was his mom. She'd never hate him, not really. She couldn't. He was her son.
Then he'd hit puberty, and shot up eight inches and fifty pounds almost overnight, and it dawned on him very abruptly and very unpleasantly that yes, his mother did hate him. Moreover, she was scared of him, one of her reasons for bringing a different guy home every night, guys even bigger than Jerome, guys that first cowed and intimidated him, and then, when he'd grown used to that and stopped giving them a reaction, assisted his mother in beating Jerome's ass for any number of imagined slights. Eventually he gave up on trying to play nice, and gave them real reasons to do it—furthering his mother's justification for doing the shit she did, he was sure.
He'd never touched her on the rare occasion that she'd come back to the trailer alone, though, even though on those occasions she'd been muted and jumpy and clearly afraid that he'd take the opportunity to get his revenge now that she was defenseless. She was his mom. He couldn't hurt her. He'd spent years telling himself that, first thing in the morning, during fights, after she'd passed out and he laid awake listening to her snore in the other room—she's your mom. You can't hurt her—until one day he'd woken up and realized that he didn't have a single clue why he was still talking himself out of the inevitable.
Lila was dead within a week. It was almost frightening, how quickly and easily everything had changed. Like the flip of a switch. He hadn't looked back since.
But for a long time, he had loved her, or at least thought he did—her and Jeremiah both. He wasn't incapable of it, after all, never had been. He'd just learned that it was a sucker's game. Nobody had ever given him back what he'd put in. Better not to do it at all.
Beside him, Isabel, clearly sensing his discomfort with the subject, seemed compelled to even the playing field by whispering an uncomfortable truth of her own: "Sometimes I'm glad my mom is dead."
It worked like a charm. Jerome's attention snapped away from the dark deep thunderclouds of his own ugly family history and onto hers. For all that hearing about the shit that had happened to her stoked a weird, cold anger in his chest, it was way less complicated than thinking about his own shit. It hadn't happened to him. Made it easier. "Why?" Sure, he didn't know a lot about the situation (him and moms, touchy subject, so he'd never really asked), but he'd never gotten even a whiff of resentment of her mom off her, never picked up on any indicators that she'd been mistreated by her. This was an interesting development.
She took a couple of shallow breaths, like she was psyching herself up, or like she'd said something she'd been scared to say without meaning to say it. Finally, so softly that he wouldn't have heard her if she hadn't been so close, she said, "Because if she's dead I don't have to blame her for David."
Jerome turned on his side, facing her, mirroring her. In the shadows her face looked like something out of a Cronenberg movie, and he felt a little burst of affection at the sight. "You can still blame her even though she's dead, you know. I mean, dead or not, she still scraped that guy off the bottom of somebody's shoe and brought him home and made him your problem."
"I know. It's easier not to be mad at her for marrying him when I'm busy being sad that she's dead, though."
"Which makes you kind of glad that she's dead."
He thought she cracked a little smile at that. It was hard to tell in the dark. "Exactly."
Silence fell between them again for a few seconds, ten, maybe fifteen, then, breathing soft and slowly, she admitted, "I've never told anyone that."
"Not even Jane?" he teased.
She stayed as serious as the grave. "Nobody."
"Cause you're worried they'll think you're a bad person for it," he surmised. She nodded, a tiny motion in the dark. "But you're telling me because you know I don't care whether or not you're a bad person." Another nod, even tinier. It was costing her something to admit this, and he knew why, and now it was his turn not to ease off on the pressure. "And that's one of the reasons you like me the way you do," he guessed, hearing the smugness in his own voice. "I don't make you live up to any bullshit expectations about good or bad or blah, blah, blah. You just get to be you."
"Nobody makes me live up to any expectations," she pointed out dryly, but Jerome, king of deflections, recognized one when he heard it.
"That's not a denial."
She was silent for a bit. He thought maybe she was sulking. When she spoke again, though, her voice was contemplative, almost timid. "You're right," she breathed. "It's not."
Just like that, an almost overwhelming, deeply weird feeling bubbled up in Jerome, one he felt from time to time with her and always had difficulty parsing, one he always opted to shove back down without thinking too hard about it. It had happened first when she'd been the Maniax's hostage, shortly after they'd made out the first time and she'd wiped her own glitter off his face with a look of almost unbearable affection, and next in the alleyway hiding from the cops, just a few days ago, when he'd caught her looking at him like he was the answer to all her problems. It had happened again earlier tonight, when he'd realized that not only did she believe all his tales of woe, but she was ready to fight people over them, and now, in what seemed frankly excessive, it was happening again.
It was, he understood now with a strange jolt, the realization that Isabel was either falling in love with him or had already fallen, and the weirdness there came from the fact that that realization made him very uncomfortable. He should have been over the moon. Lovesick people were incredibly easy to manipulate—he had an entire semi-active cult who could attest. Part of the game with Isabel from the beginning had been to see if he could manage to wrap a tough, stubborn girl like her around his finger, and he'd just won that game.
It upset him that he wasn't bouncing off the walls right now. It upset him that he felt unsettled down in his guts, almost sick, and he felt a brief flash of irrational anger towards her, like she'd ruined a favorite hobby of his, broken a favorite toy. Stupid girl, he thought, glaring at her in the dark, his face so deeply shadowed on his side of the bed that he knew she wouldn't see. Don't you know what you're risking? Don't you know what I'm going to do?
Because tomorrow… well, tomorrow was Paisley Square. Tomorrow, Jeremiah would face the consequences for what he'd done—throw Bruce Wayne in there as well, just because Jerome was miffed that the kid was proving so hard to kill, and also that Isabel seemed to like him at all—and for good measure, he'd commit a splashy, stylish mass murder that only the Jerome Valeska could pull off. If he hadn't been the city's most hated before, he certainly would be by nightfall tomorrow.
And Isabel wouldn't be able to look past it. Not this time. In fact, Jerome planned to have her front and center, just so she could see exactly who she'd been fool enough to fall for. This time, he didn't think he'd have any luck in talking her into sticking around despite the carnage. This time, he wasn't sure he was even going to try.
He turned onto his back again and closed his eyes, focusing on making his breathing slow and level. He was still just as wired as ever, but for once, he was tired of talking to Isabel, and found that he preferred feigning sleep to continuing the conversation. She seemed to get the picture, mostly—after maybe twenty minutes of both of them lying completely still, she whispered, "Jerome?", so quiet, like she believed he was actually asleep and didn't want to wake him if he was.
He didn't respond. After a while longer, she shifted in the bed, rolling over, turning her back to him. Close but not touching.
He didn't sleep a wink all night, too caught up in the promise of tomorrow, too fixated on the girl sleeping beside him for the last time.
next up: Paisley Square. Jerome's timer ticks down to zero. Again. See you then!