3.
And I'm out at a party, they're playing our song
I cry on the dance floor, it's so embarrassing
Don't send me photos, you're making it worse
'Cause you're so hot it's hurting my feelings
I get a little lonely… get a little more close to me
You're the only one who knows me, babe
So hot you're hurting my feelings—can't deal! – Caroline Polachek | So Hot You're Hurting My Feelings
In the end, Jerome was right. Isabel would be face-to-face with him at the Asylum again in less than a month.
The night was already abnormal, in that it was a Thursday night and Isabel wasn't working—her time with the organization had seen her responsibilities steadily multiply, since there was always more to do than there were people to do it, and it wasn't unusual for her to put in seventy-hour work weeks these days. She'd been forcibly given the night off, though, when she mentioned that a friend of hers was having a release party (a release pre-party, to be precise, but it didn't seem to matter to her superior when she'd tried to clarify), and she figured she'd better take it, since they were heading into the holidays and there was no telling when she'd get another one.
The friend was Antonia (mononymous), a singer friend of Jane's that had quickly become a singer friend of Isabel's as well, and her album wasn't actually dropping until the next day. She was having an official release party Friday night, but the album was her debut and had generated a fair amount of buzz, and Friday's party was going to be more "industry people," so Thursday night was more of a chill house (well, apartment) party with less than ten people, friends rather than colleagues.
It was actually starting to wind down at the time of the messages—it was a weeknight, so the people present who weren't artists (about half of them) had to work the next morning, and a different half were sober, so nothing illicit was really flying around except a few joints. Isabel was draped over the love seat, Jane sitting on the floor just in front of her, loose-limbed, puffing on a joint and exhaling before continuing to wheedle at Isabel.
"It could open doors, is all I'm saying. It's an opportunity, why not take it?"
"I think I would rather shoot myself in the brain," Isabel said, then waved a no thanks as Jane lifted the joint up to her. "No, I want to get my head straight before bed; pass that to Jasmine."
"You're being dramatic," Jane said, giggling lazily.
"It's a dramatic thing! Of all the face careers, it's gotta be the worst. It pays jack shit, you get, like, negative exposure unless you end up being one of the mega-famous ones, and that's only five years and six different eating disorders into it, and half the time, it's a total scam, anyway. Traffickers just taking advantage of girls who are desperate to jump-start their careers. I don't love the idea of being forced into porn."
"You are not being trafficked. That was Gale Stapleton trying to scout you, and even I know who she is."
"Still," Isabel said, tilting her head backwards onto the arm of the couch and looking up at Antonia's popcorn ceiling (Antonia might have been on the cusp of fame, but in the meantime was still jammed into an affordable, inelegant Gotham City apartment, just like the rest of them). "Even if I wanted to do it, I don't have the time. It's a miracle I made it here tonight."
"What are you guys talking about?" Jasmine asked, her face obscured behind a cloud of marijuana smoke.
"She came backstage after Salesman last week and Gale Stapleton gave her her card," Jane clarified.
"Okay. And Gale Stapleton is…?"
"Modeling scout," said Jane. Isabel blew a raspberry and felt her phone vibrate in her pocket.
"You don't want to do it?"
Isabel pushed herself backwards so that she was half-hanging upside-down on the arm of the loveseat, looking at Jasmine. "They only want me cause I'm tall. Guarantee they'd want me to lose like thirty pounds first. No, thank you."
"Well, give me her card, then," said Jasmine. "I'll do it."
Isabel laughed as she lifted her hips and dug her phone out of her pocket—it was going off like crazy; she'd better check it, something might have happened at work. "I will. Swear to God. I don't want it."
"It's not like you have time, either," Jane was saying to Jasmine as Isabel checked her screen to see that she had three messages from an unknown number. "Isn't Hairspray opening in, like, a week?"
Their voices faded to a background murmur as Isabel opened the messages and scrolled through them. At first, she didn't really know what she was looking at: it was just a dark, blurry picture with a ball of light fuzzy in the top left corner, a few shadows in the foreground that she couldn't make out.
The second photo had been taken with flash, and this time, she could see details, though her brain—still a little spacey and unfocused from the couple of tokes she'd had before deciding she'd had enough—couldn't quite add them up into anything that made sense. It was the same space from the first picture, presumably, but with the added flash she could tell that it was concrete, dirty, windowless, probably underground somewhere. Slightly off-center, there was a man on the floor, and from his pose it looked like he was trying to push himself upright after being thrown onto his face on the concrete floor—his cheek had burst open and was bloodied, and something about him looked vaguely familiar to Isabel.
She didn't place him till she scrolled down to the third photo, though, which was also taken with flash, much closer on his face. An arm clad in nondescript black appeared to be wrapped around his throat, holding him in place. His forehead was bleeding and there was a look of terror on his face. Ted Billings.
As she stared in a half-stoned stupor at her phone, another photo came through. Billings was out of focus in the background in this one, mostly just a beige lump in his trench coat, crumpled on the ground. In focus instead was whoever was behind the camera, holding something directly in front of the lens, something fleshy, stained with red. Given that the object was divorced from its usual context, it took Isabel a moment to recognize it for what it was: a severed ear.
She was typing before she knew it. STOP RIGHT NOW.
For a breathless minute, there was nothing. Finally, one line in response: talk to the boss.
"Isabel." Isabel looked up to find Jane watching her with an expression that suggested she'd been trying to get her attention for a bit. "What's going on? You look like you've seen a ghost."
Not quite. Isabel just stared at her for a second, speechless. She couldn't tell Jane about this, for any number of reasons, not the least of which was that it would mean giving her context, admitting that she'd been to see Jerome, which Jane would certainly disapprove of. Something in the back of her mind, something lazy, remarked that it probably wasn't a good sign that she was keeping secrets for him—for him, about him, same difference.
But secret or no secret, she wasn't helpless here. She'd been given pretty clear instruction on how to move forward. But first: she had to get out of this party.
Smiling it off would be too dramatic a shift and too hard, but changing her expression from dread and horror to just stress was easy enough, given that she was also stressed out. She scrubbed a hand over her face and, with her hand covering her eyes so they couldn't betray her, she said, "No, it's nothing—it's just another fire at work I need to put out."
"What, like right now?"
"Yeah," said Isabel, getting up from the couch and looking for her bag. When she noticed Jane doing the same, she stretched out her hands. "No, no—you're staying."
"I drove you here," objected Jane.
"So? I can take the train there and the train home when I'm through; there's a stop, like, two blocks from here." Jane appeared to be ignoring her, picking up her purse in preparation to jet, so Isabel pulled out the big guns. "Jane. You're blazed out of your gourd."
That gave Jane pause. She looked doubtfully up at Isabel, who gave her one more little nudge. "You wanna make headlines as the billionaire disinheritess turned actress who got her first DUI tonight? You know that the media loves a starlet at the start of her downfall."
"Jesus," said Jasmine.
"I'm not a starlet," huffed Jane. "And they've done studies that say that if anything, people drive safer when they're high."
"I know that," said Isabel, finally finding her bag and slinging it across her body. "But most other people don't. You stay put. Trust me, I'll knock it out in no time. No need to ruin both of our fun."
Jane looked reluctant, but sank still back down onto the couch. Isabel blew her a distracted kiss, staring at her inactive phone screen, and all but bolted from the room. She didn't quite get away with an Irish goodbye—Antonia was close to the door, so Isabel had to pause, congratulate her and make her excuses and hug her goodbye, but the delay was minor. In minutes she was on a train to Arkham.
Still high as she was, she didn't really think about the fact that it was well outside usual visiting hours until she was approaching the visitor's entrance—but the door was unlocked, the usual bored-eyed guard overseeing the metal detector. Maybe it's a holiday, she thought, more focused on getting herself through the security checkpoint than questioning it.
And the room she was taken to, the same one she'd visited the first time, without the phones and plexiglass barricades, had other visitors in it, two small clusters scattered to different tables. She'd left her phone with her bag in the security locker, and wished she hadn't had to—her fingers itched with the urge to check, to see if any further messages had come through.
"Hey," called the sharp-voiced guard by the prison-side door. "Sit down or get out." Isabel hadn't realized she'd been pacing, and, disgruntled, plopped herself in the chair furthest from the door. The guard stared at her suspiciously; Isabel glowered back.
The weed had mostly faded, but it had always been hard for her to discern when it was completely out of her system and she was back to total sobriety, so she couldn't quite tell if the way time seemed to elongate was a result of anxiety or the lingering THC. At any rate, it seemed to take an eternity before the door buzzed open again, an eternity in which Isabel was able to work herself up to a towering, anxious fume.
Finally, finally, though, that door did buzz, and Jerome strolled through, dressed head to toe in black-and-white stripes, those stupid gloves covering his hands. He was doing a bit where he pretended not to see her, scanning the room with a flat hand held at his brow, as if the dim sodium lights would ever necessitate shielding one's eyes. At any rate, Isabel wasn't in the mood. She popped both pointer fingers under her tongue and blasted a shrill whistle that had ever head in the room turning towards her.
Including Jerome's. She thrust a hand high in the air and waved it aggressively, and a smile split across his face, menacing, the cat that ate the canary, but he took his time moseying over to her, hands in his pockets, whistling idly. He was performing nonchalance—for her or for the guards, she had no idea, but she wasn't about to play along. "We need to talk," she said, projecting her voice to reach him, since he seemed in no hurry to reach her and discuss the issue in confidence.
His grin only widened, betraying not an ounce of worry that she'd rat him out right here in front of the guards—and he was right, probably; telling on him would leave her at a dead end and they both knew it. She glared at him as he finished his dawdling trek across the room, finally pulling out the chair across from her and taking a seat, legs stretched out long in front of him, crossed at the ankle. She noted with a little jolt that with him so close now and not obscured behind smudgy plexiglass, she could see that he seemed notably bigger, broader through the chest and shoulders than she remembered. It was possible it was just a trick of the uniform—for once he had it buttoned up properly, making him look a little less slim all over, but she doubted it. There was an underlying solidity to him now, and besides, what else was there to do in lockup but work out?
"Isabel," he said with a polite little nod, wiping the smile abruptly off his face in favor of a somber expression, eyebrows swooping low. "Always a pleasure to see you. I'm doing well, thanks for asking, how are you?"
"Cut the shit," she hissed, glad there was a table between them. "Call off your people."
The furrow in his brow only deepened. "Uhhh… what are you talking about?"
"You know exactly what I'm talking about," she snapped, grasping the edge of the table with both hands and squeezing as if she had her fingers wrapped around his neck.
Jerome just widened his eyes, playing innocent, placing one hand against his chest and stretching the other out behind him to indicate the asylum as a whole. "I've been here. What people do you think I have?"
Isabel closed her eyes for a second and took a deep breath in through her nose. She regretted partaking of the joint earlier—it made her feel just unsure enough of herself that she was suddenly second-guessing her approach, doubting that she'd made the right move. She opened her eyes and met his again, searching for the usual sparkle of mischief, the look he got when he was teasing her, but he just looked wide-eyed and earnest, which made her all the more angry and frustrated. Carefully, this time keeping her voice low and calm, she backtracked and started again.
"Maybe half an hour ago I started getting photos on my phone. They show Ted Billings being held and tortured somewhere underground. When I texted back saying to stop, whoever was on the other end just said to talk to the boss."
Jerome, who by appearances was listening intently, looked surprised at Isabel's conclusion. "And… you think I'm the boss?"
She gave him a nasty look. Get real. "I think considering that we were just talking about Ted Billings a month ago—yeah, I think you're the boss."
He shot her a pitying look. "Isabel. It's Gotham."
She tamped down the flare of rage she felt at his condescending tone. "So?"
"Do you know how many two-bit criminals are running around calling themselves 'the boss?' That could be anyone."
Isabel narrowed her eyes, shaking her head in disgust. "Why are you doing this? Why the fakeout? I know it's you, and we're running out of time—"
"I'm flattered that you think I can run things out there from in here," Jerome said dryly. "If that was the case, don't you think I'd be out of this joint by now?"
Isabel, all at once, decided that she'd had enough. "Okay. Enough with the games," she said, pointing a finger at him. "Either you talk to me for real, or I talk to a guard about what you've been up to. Your choice."
Jerome spread his hands, shrugging—by all means. "Go ahead."
She stared at him for a second through narrowed eyes, waiting for the switch to flip, for him to give this up, but he wasn't yielding. She nodded then, placed her palms flat on the tabletop, and rose, crossing the room to approach the guard on duty.
"Excuse me," she said, "I need to report something. Something big."
He barely looked at her before glancing past her. Jerome's voice from behind her startled her—she hadn't heard him get up, let alone follow her. "Dryden, take a break, would ya? Actually—everyone: take a lap."
Isabel turned as the sound of metal chairs scraping against the floor rang out all at once, and as one, both clusters of visitors headed towards the door, where Dryden was waving them out. Her confusion paralyzed her, kept her from doing much more than staring, and she noticed as she did that several of the "visitors" looked doped up, a few grinning at her in a knowing way that sent a chill down her spine.
Belatedly, she started looking for an escape, but even as she scoped out the door she came through, she felt Jerome's gloved hand tighten around her wrist. As she tried unsuccessfully to shake him off, Dryden left the room and closed the door behind him, and all at once, they were alone.
Jerome wasted no time in jerking her wrist, hard, pulling her off her balance towards him. He caught her in both arms just before she collided with him, spun her around, dipped her deep, and, before her brain could catch up with the rest of her body and suggest an appropriate reaction to… all this, he kissed her briefly but emphatically on the mouth.
Then he dropped her completely. He'd dipped her close enough to the floor that it was a short fall, but it shocked her into temporary stillness anyway as he turned away and stretched both arms out high and rolled his shoulders back, like he was emerging from a cramped little space after far too long. "God, it feels good to be back in play," he crowed.
Isabel's immobilization was short-lived. He'd only taken a step away; she pushed herself to a sitting position, lunged forward to wrap her entire body around both his legs, and she sank her teeth hard into the first spot she could reach—just above the back side of his knee, unfortunately through his prison pants, but she'd work with what she could get. She expected to get kicked or slapped immediately and was taken slightly aback when he just groaned and grabbed a fistful of her hair, not pulling hard, just enough to get her attention. He said—from the sound of it through tightly gritted teeth—"Better stop that if you're hoping to get any talking done."
The warning combined with his lack of retaliation was enough to get her to let go (and besides, she figured they were more or less even now). She untangled herself from him rapidly and scrambled to her feet, only to find him completely inside of her personal space even before she truly had her balance. He leaned in close, chest-to-chest, and pressed his nose down into the dip where her neck met her shoulder, inhaling deep. "You smell… mm," he groaned, his breath hot on her skin.
Adrenaline shot through Isabel, and she felt goosebumps break out up and down her arms. The urgency of the situation, the reason she was here—she hadn't forgotten, but it beat fruitlessly at the back of her mind as the rest of her froze in place. She hadn't expected to be confronted with this, Jerome free and unchecked, free to attack, free to touch (though an irritating little voice in the back of her head told her she should have, that she'd noted several things that hadn't added up about tonight and should have paid attention, but she'd been too scared and angry and focused on confronting him to heed her own intuition). The sudden proximity to him made her head spin, especially as, somewhat guiltily, she realized that she was craving it as much as he seemed to be.
So use it, she thought, and since she didn't have any better ideas presenting themselves…
He wasn't holding her in place, didn't really need to, since she wasn't exactly running away from him, so his arms were by his sides, tense, like he was expending some effort to keep them there. Easy enough then to lift her arms and wrap them both tight around his neck, transforming the weird little standoff into a genuine embrace. It's not just the uniform, she thought, feeling the solidity of his chest against hers, his hard shoulders beneath her arms. There was something frightening about the feel of him now, different from when they were both teenagers in Theo Galavan's penthouse, where most of the time he had seemed like he was just a kid playing a game. Now, Jerome felt like a coiled spring.
He turned his head, burying his face in the side of her neck, the touch of his mouth against the sensitive skin there making her shiver, and she felt the press of his chest as he drew another long, deep breath. She hugged him tighter for a moment, distantly aware that the moment couldn't last, holding onto it for the few seconds she could manage before she remembered the reason she was here, before she started to care about anything but this again. She'd known she'd wanted this, this close contact with him, since his resurrection—since before his resurrection, since at least the night of his death. It was why she'd stayed away: even the sight of him made her heart beat quicker, and she couldn't let herself get used to this, this flood of chemicals hitting her body and brain. She couldn't get to a point where she needed him.
Jerome was the one to break their little spell, inadvertently or not. She felt his shoulders move, felt his hands skim her sides, and it was as if her brain slammed back into her skull at the touch, her good sense along with it. She whipped her arms away from him and instead wedged her hands against his chest between them, shoving him backwards, away from her. He didn't snatch at her or plant his feet against the force of her hands, but he also didn't go too far, letting her push him about two steps back before refusing to budge any further, leaning comfortably forward into her hands, heavy enough that she knew if she removed them he'd fall right back into her.
"Stop it," she snapped, digging her heels in so she could support his weight a little easier.
He cocked his head inquisitively. "Stop what?"
So we're back to playing dumb. She changed the subject. "What is going on? Why did that guard just… listen to you?"
"Isn't there some kind of saying about the inmates running the asylum? Well," he said, checking himself, tilting his chin down modestly, "inmate."
Isabel looked dumbly at him for a second or two, then pushed him again, nudging him up from his slight slant into a properly upright position. This time, he stayed, allowing her to remove her hands from him only so she could cross her arms over her stomach, feeling a faint flare of alarm. "What do you mean?"
Jerome put his own arms patiently behind his back. "Well, what does it look like?" Isabel just stared at him, knowing the most obvious answer even as she refused to entertain the idea by speaking it out loud. He didn't give her long to answer, anyway, getting visibly bored within a couple of seconds and continuing on: "But you knew that already, didn't you? You know visiting hours are only on the weekend. You know they're only in the afternoon. Hm?" He lowered his eyebrows at her, giving her a mock scowl. "Come on. You're smart, Izzy; you knew this was no ordinary visit."
She shook her head, still not quite willing to believe it. "So you bribed a guard… or two," she added, remembering that she'd had to go through security to get here, "and, what, talked some inmates into posing as visitors too? Just so I wouldn't see through all this right away?"
"If it helps you to believe it's that small-scale, sure," he said, unbothered. "I told you I'd get you back here quicker than you thought."
Isabel tucked the implications of his first statement away to examine later as the weight of his second smacked into her, reminding her of her reason for coming in the first place. He must have seen her expression change as she geared up to press the issue again, because his face changed, too, the scowl flattening out and his eyes narrowing slightly into something that looked like boredom.
"Call your people off of Billings," she said again.
"I'm not gonna do that, Isabel," he said, sounding perfectly polite but completely uninterested.
"You targeted him because you knew it would get me here. Well, I'm here now. You win, now call them off," she insisted. Funnily enough—and maybe it was just because Jerome had more or less behaved himself so far, but she didn't really think so—she wasn't afraid, although she should have been at least wary of her current situation, alone in a locked room with him, with apparently no one to call for help. Though he looked sinister enough, especially now with that deadened resting face staring at her, her heart was beating hard for reasons entirely unconnected to the prospect that he might physically harm her. She just knew, somehow, deep in her guts, that he didn't want to do that anymore than she wanted to harm him. It was a strange feeling to have about Jerome Valeska, and the novelty of it took her aback a bit.
"I can have two reasons for one thing," Jerome was explaining. "It's called multi-tasking. You should try it sometime. You can get a lot more done."
"Jerome," she said, lifting her hands up in front of her chest, palms flat and facing out, "just stop." He closed his mouth abruptly and just stared at her. His reattached face had resulted in his eyes being deeper-set and more hooded than they had been before, and from inside the permanent rings of dark shadows like bruises, they glittered out at her with mischief and malice as he waited for further instructions.
She felt a snap of frustration in her chest, felt her face contort in anger. "Why even bother with this guy?" she demanded. "He's nothing. He doesn't deserve the effort. Why aren't you focused on getting out of here instead?"
She'd tripped up, she realized even as the words were in the process of leaving her mouth, but she couldn't bring herself to stop—they needed to be said. The light in Jerome's eyes seemed to grow brighter, and the long curved edges of his scarred mouth tipped up, up, into a knowing, malicious smile. "Ohh," he purred, "that's it—are you getting impatient? Tired of waiting for me to bust out? If you want me in your bed—"
"Not about me," Isabel said firmly, shaking her head like that would make the statement any truer.
"Sure it's not," he said, giving her a coy little wink that made her, to her horror, almost lose control of her face and actually smile at him. She caught hold of herself just in time and scowled at him instead.
"I'm saying that Billings is a total waste of resources—and it endangers you." He put a gloved hand to his chest and pulled an exaggerated I'm touched expression; Isabel shook her head in irritation. "Think," she said severely. "Your people—I'm assuming they're cultists?—they aren't exactly subtle. They kill him and someone like Jim Gordon gets wind of it? Whatever you're putting together here at Arkham, it'll all come tumbling down as soon as he takes another good look at you, and then where will you be?"
"I think you think more highly of Jimmy Gordon than he deserves," Jerome confided dryly in her.
"Maybe so. Fact remains that your energy's wasted on some low-rent cheapskate minor politician who has to get his kicks by trying to bully charities. Tell your people on the outside. Let him go."
Her words appeared to have made some headway, though she was unsure of exactly what kind. The smile had dropped off of his face, leaving her with just his unsettling stare, his brow furrowed as he appeared to think hard for a moment. After a few tense seconds, he appeared to reach some sort of decision: he took a step towards her (and she stepped back), cleared his throat, and, in an obnoxiously didactic tone, he said, "You, uh… you're operating under a false assumption. Understandable, but it sets up your whole argument for failure."
She shook her head, impatient, exasperated. "What false assumption?"
Jerome kept advancing, step by step, as Isabel retreated, step by step. "You're talking like you think I targeted him because of his status… his power, as insignificant as it is," he said, gesturing idly with one hand for emphasis, an almost playful little lilt in his voice now. "Like maybe I believe he's a threat to me, like it'd be best to take him out now before it becomes a problem."
"That's not—" Isabel started, then flinched as her back unexpectedly collided with the visiting room windows. She started to slide sideways, but found Jerome's arm already there, barring her in even as he crowded close to pin her down. She huffed out an annoyed sigh even as her heart raced, crossing her arms again to put some sort of barrier between them and looking past his shoulder in a mostly-perfunctory scan for a way out, or any sign of anyone coming to intervene.
Jerome wasn't content to leave her be, though, and in the span of a second, he was pinching either side of her chin between his gloved forefinger and thumb, turning her head slightly so that she was looking him in the eye. She'd never been one to back down from a dare, and turned her stare on him, uncowed and defiant. What have you got for me now? she thought, knowing he'd read the challenge in her eyes.
He just watched her for a second, again with that mildly terrifying resting face. The moment stretched out a little too long, and Isabel started thinking about shoving him away again—he must have seen the temptation in her face, because he finally spoke up again, his voice now just a low rasp: "Ted Billings is going to die because he tried to fuck with you. No other reason."
Isabel's blood thrummed, rushing loud in her ears. She'd suspected, especially given the conversation they'd had during her last visit, the offer Jerome had made even then, but she'd been trying to convince herself that he was too self-serving and scatterbrained to actually follow through and make a stupid move like that. She protested, "I told you I didn't want that. I told you not to—"
Jerome shook his head, quick and jerky, like he was dislodging a mosquito. "Doesn't matter. You're too caught up in right and wrong—imaginary concepts, by the way, Izzy, I keep telling you. You're not in the right headspace to make this call. I stepped up. You're welcome."
Isabel felt lightheaded from the flood of blood and adrenaline. She hadn't even wanted to consider the idea that she was directly responsible for what was happening to Billings right now (although she'd known, she knew, from the second she recognized him in those photos, that this was her fault), and now Jerome was confirming her worst fear. "I should never have said his name," she whispered, almost to herself.
"But you did," Jerome said as if he was teasing her, as if this was all just a cute little game, wagging her chin back and forth between his finger and thumb as he spoke. "And I think if you're really honest with yourself, you'll admit that it's a real gas, me having someone offed all because they disrespected you."
The worst part about it was that he was right—not about the core concept, that was of course psychotic, but about the fact that it was Jerome, that he'd paid attention and taken pains to hunt down a man who'd angered her so badly back then, that this was obviously a gesture designed specifically for her. It didn't make the situation itself any more palatable, any less fucked up, but she felt it anyway, the liquid heat sinking down through her core, into her thighs. Isabel was the fighter, the person who did the standing up for other people, the person who never seemed to find herself on the other end of things. As much as she still objected to the reality of what he was actually doing, nobody had ever done something even remotely like this for her before.
Jerome saw it in her expression—of course he did, he was still holding her so she couldn't look away and had ducked his head to peer closely into her eyes, the arm that had been previously caging her in now resting on the glass above her head as he leaned in close, clearly determined not to let her hide a thing from him. She saw the satisfaction bloom over his face, and she thought she'd explode if he gloated about being right about this, at least if he did it right this second, when the shame and attraction to him were both rising so insurmountable and potent in her, so she rerouted the discussion. She brought one hand up and wrapped her fingers around his wrist, where there was a sliver of skin between where his uniform sleeve ended and his glove began.
"I hate these stupid gloves," she whispered, looking him dead in the eyes. "Why do you wear them?"
He obviously recognized the deflection for what it was, she could see it in his eyes, but he didn't call her out on it. Neither did he answer the question—instead, he just released her chin and brought his hand up to his mouth, removing the glove fast with his teeth. In seconds, the skin of his bare hand was hot against the side of her face instead, the calluses at the base of his fingers scraping her cheek, his thumb pressed against the corner of her lips. As she stared at him, pliant and still, he pushed his thumb into her mouth.
Her skin buzzed from head to toe. For such a simple thing, it felt obscene, especially with him pressed in so close, waves of heat radiating off of him and into her. The taste of salt from his skin hit her in a burst, and she held intent eye contact as she dragged the flat of her tongue hot and slow along the underside of his thumb, watching in flushed fascination as the black of his pupils rapidly expanded, eating up the green of his eyes, and his Adam's apple jerked down and up again as he swallowed hard.
Then she caught it between her molars, holding it tight, not biting (yet), but warning him. He understood immediately, removing his thumb from her mouth—she allowed it—and bowing forward instead, finally, finally kissing her with an open mouth.
Again came the realization that she'd been waiting for this since the last time she'd kissed him—literal years—and with it, the distinct swooping sensation that she was teetering on the edge of a deep ravine, one there'd be no climbing back out of, but she ignored it (along with every other qualm that had kept her away from him before) and slid her hands up the sides of his face, ensuring that he wasn't going anywhere. She didn't really need to worry—he was leaning into her again, his body hot and taut and flush against hers at nearly every point, his bare-skinned hand resting over her throat as his tongue dipped lazily into her mouth.
He tasted just like she remembered—another thing she hadn't thought about, or hadn't let herself think about, in so long that it was almost a shock how intensely the recognition came to her. She'd told him once that he kissed well for a boy, and it was true: she'd have guessed from looking at him (or spending just two seconds in his company) that he'd be a pushy, impatient kisser, all tongue and teeth, but he kissed now like he was teasing her, like he hadn't been dead and then locked away for years now, stroking languidly and wet along her tongue. She was the eager one, making a move to rise up on tiptoe to press her lips harder to his, to urge for more, but his hand at her throat held her firm and helpless in place when she tried. It was infuriating. More worryingly, it was hot. To express her annoyance at this turn of events, she drew her nails through the buzzcut hair above his ears, perhaps a touch more harshly than was fair.
He'd always liked a little pain, and the growl that the scrape of her nails elicited from him went straight to her knees. He removed the arm pressed against the glass over her head; she slid her hand on that side down to his bicep, gripping it and feeling it work under her fingers as he reached down and grabbed her by the meat of her thigh, fingers sinking in hard just beneath her ass as he lifted her leg, pulling her close to slot against him. He was erect inside his pants; involuntarily, she wriggled against his hardness, trying with little success to ease the growing ache between her own legs.
His kiss was getting wetter, messier, and Isabel was pleased to find that despite the chaos raging in her own head, she still had the presence of mind to laugh low in her throat at the evidence that she was getting to him. By way of reproof, he tightened his hand on her leg until she gasped, the little shock of pain telling her that she was definitely going to bruise, and he took the opportunity to break the kiss and run his saliva-slick mouth down the side of her neck, pausing at the halfway mark to suck at the skin there, and—yeah, that's going to end up a hickey. At this rate, Isabel wouldn't be able to face Jane for weeks.
Before he could do more damage, she splayed her hand open beneath his ear, pushing insistently until he finally unlatched from her neck and lifted his head and met her eye again. She'd been planning to tell him it was time to knock it off, but the sight of him rendered her briefly speechless—the scarred skin of his face remained a bloodless white, but his mouth blazed red, and there was a light in his eyes she'd never seen before. She felt a pang of real fear, which was immediately subdued and suffocated down by pure want. She didn't know how she'd gone this long without him. She didn't know how she'd ever be able to leave. She wanted to pry open his mouth and push herself inside, inch by inch, until she could live inside his skin with him, and they'd never have to part ways again.
Something of her thought process must have shown in her face, because he was grinning that mad grin again. She leaned up towards him; making use of the three whole inches he had on her, he lifted his chin and held her still by the throat so she couldn't reach his mouth, cackling at her the best he could manage given that he was audibly breathing heavily. She pressed her nails into the skin behind his ear, feeling him stiffen against her at the little pain, and she said, "If you're trying to get me to bite you again, you can just ask. I'll do it for free."
A sharp huff of air that she was pretty sure was an honest laugh escaped him, and he yielded, surging forward to kiss her again with enough force that her head hit the glass behind her with an audible thump. Her impulse to laugh vanished into sudden alarm as he dropped the hand at her throat and used that arm to encircle her waist instead, lifting her fully off her feet without warning.
Like most tall girls with a healthy body type, Isabel had an ingrained fear response to people trying (and failing) to pick her up, and now was no exception. She broke the kiss and grabbed frantically at his shoulders and hissed, "Jerome."
He froze, but sounded genuinely annoyed when he barked back, "What?"
"Put me down. You're gonna drop me."
There was a silent, baffled beat, then he scoffed. "Oh, fuckin'… please," he muttered, more to himself than her, and notably did not put her down, moving instead across the room (leaving her little choice but to cling hard to him with her arms around his shoulders and her legs around his waist, which should have been humiliating but was mostly just annoying—and yes, a tiny bit funny when it became clear that he was not actually struggling to carry her) and finally depositing her onto the edge of a visitor's table. Isabel grasped the table immediately to anchor herself, and Jerome, seeing her death grip on the edge, snorted. Pressing his palms flat on either side of her and leaning in close, he bumped her nose with his and said, "Someday—when we have more time—you're gonna tell me what that bullshit's about."
"Probably not," said Isabel, partially sacrificing her secure grip on the table to reach up with one hand, grabbing the collar of his prison shirt and pulling him in again. He came to her gladly this time, crowding in between her legs, and she ground against him, enjoying the pressure of his mouth, the heat of it, even as the sinking feeling she was getting grew and grew. How much longer can this last?
Not very long, as it turned out. Alarm bells finally went off when she felt Jerome's fingers hooking into the waistband of her pants, skimming at the soft material of her underwear, and she broke the kiss at last, catching him by the wrist—not pushing him away, just holding him there, in stasis, as she tried to catch her breath.
Jerome, for his part, cocked an eyebrow at her, and when she didn't speak up immediately, prompted her: "Something on your mind?"
She had many things on her mind, as a matter of fact, but before she could decide which one to go with, a motion behind him caught her eye—she stared past him at the camera mounted in the far corner, performing its routine oscillation, like it had been every 30 seconds since she'd come in. Jerome glanced over his shoulder, and again, he scoffed. "That?" he asked, returning his attention to her and shaking his head. "Don't worry about that. It's just for show. It's not even recording. Trust me."
"I don't," she said, fighting back a hysterical laugh just in time. "Not that far, anyway."
Jerome rolled his eyes. She rolled hers right back before tightening her grip on his collar to ensure she had his attention. He licked his lips and looked bright-eyed at her, an edge of mockery to the display of focus, as always, but she could work with what he was giving her.
"Look," she said, just above a whisper. "If you've got as much power in this place as you're implying, why don't we just… walk out, right now?"
The sarcastic edge to his expression faded. He raised his eyebrows slightly, just enough that she could tell he was actually surprised by the suggestion. Encouraged, she urged him further: "I don't want to just leave you in here again. Not… not now. It's been long enough, hasn't it? Call your people. Tell them to let Billings loose, and you and I can just… go. We'll figure something out. Please?"
Jerome stared at her for a long moment, some unreadable expression overtaking his face. Finally, he slid his hand out of her pants and straightened up again, looming over her as she stared up at him with rapidly-diminishing hope. "You know," he said, stepping back and taking a second to adjust himself, "if I wasn't so certain you're at least as into me as I am into you, I'd call you a conniving, manipulative bitch right now."
"Hey," she said, a sharp edge of warning to her voice.
He showed her his hands, a gesture for peace. "It's a compliment. Swear. Conniving, manipulative bitches are some of my favorite—well, you met Barbara."
Isabel wasn't in the mood to laugh anymore. The high of getting to make out with Jerome again—something she hadn't even been willing to admit to herself that she still wanted—was crashing rapidly and hard into a sense of dread and crushing disappointment. He's not going for it, she realized with a pang of upset that seemed to reach beyond her admittedly only duty-driven feelings about Billings' fate. That was bad enough as it was—and now he appeared to be rejecting her on top of it.
Jerome turned away, pacing a few steps, then he put his hands on his hips and tilted his head back to look at the ceiling and muttered in his typical lilt, "Wellll, probably best to do this now, anyway, I guess."
"Do what?" Isabel asked, sliding off the table to get her feet under her as the sense of dread was overtaken quickly by alarm.
Jerome lowered his gaze to her again, and stared for a second before jerking his head slightly to the side—fuck it—and turning completely towards her. "Forget about Billings, Izzy. Billings has been dead since last night."
Isabel's eyebrows rushed down. She stared at him in uncomprehending disbelief. Jerome clicked his tongue abruptly and came towards her, digging around in his back waistband—she tried stepping back, forgetting that the table was behind her and hissing when she banged her already bruised thigh on the metal edge. The unexpected pain distracted her enough that she didn't run when Jerome moved to stand side-by-side with her, and then his arm was tight around her shoulders, hugging her close against his side, and she was stuck again.
"Look—look," Jerome said, and she saw that he'd produced a flip phone with a dinky little screen, on which a photo was loading rapidly from the top down. As it appeared, she recognized it as the first photo she'd received that night. "Check the time—check the date."
She did. The date was from the previous night; the time was 8:29 PM. He scrolled through, letting the pictures load one at a time, showing her all four photos she'd received—but then he kept scrolling to a fifth picture, which appeared to show a beige trenchcoat-clad lump shaped like a body lying limp in a large pool of murky blood, then a sixth, which was a closeup on a severed head lying on the concrete. Isabel recognized it as Billings, but it was purely a cerebral note, not an emotional one—to her, it looked like a cheap Halloween decoration, with overkill on the fake blood.
"Wow," Jerome said, squeezing her shoulders approvingly. "You're doing great. Most people would've started puking by now."
"Why would I puke over something that's not real?" she asked, still staring at the screen. The time on the last photo read 9:01 PM.
Jerome chuckled. "Okay," he said under his breath, snapping the phone closed abruptly, tucking it back into his waistband and letting her go so he could move away from her. "You're in denial, that's fine. He'll pop up on the news as a missing person soon, if he hasn't already—you can process it then. Ah—don't worry, though," he said, turning back to her with a frown, giving her the hand gesture for settle down, as if she was doing anything but standing there stock still and silent. "You were right, you know. Can't risk being found out this late in the game, so my people are under strict orders to handle the disposal discreetly. No Jim Gordon poking his nose in, I guarantee it."
Isabel stared at him. Her face must have been doing something ominous, because Jerome pulled a pout. "Don't be mad," he said. "I knew if you had even a shot, you'd do whatever it took to make me stop. It had to happen before you knew about it. You got outplayed, don't be a sore loser, happens to the best of us."
Chaos battered around in Isabel's head, in her chest. She didn't quite know what to say, the words coming out of her mouth as much a surprise to her as to anyone: "And jerking me around, making me think I had a chance at saving him? Am I supposed to not be mad about that?"
"Okay, you are mad," said Jerome defensively, taking a step back from her and holding his hands up like he could ward her off that way (he was safe, for now, even if he didn't know it—Isabel would rather brain herself on the table than touch him again right this second). "But see? That's why I'm telling you now. See: I can't leave here. Not yet. There are… things in motion," he said, spinning one hand vaguely in the air. "Plans I have to see through. You can go process all the… whatever you need to process in the meantime. Then, when I do get out, you won't be mad at me anymore." He clapped his hands together then held them out like a magician finishing a trick. "Everybody's happy."
"I'm not happy," Isabel said, staring at him with eyes that she suddenly didn't need to blink. "I'm pretty fucking far from happy right about now, Jerome."
He seemed to recognize the intensity for what it was, because he dropped the peppy entrepreneur act. He took one long step towards her, then seemed to think better of coming any closer and instead met her eyes, matching her stare for stare. "I told you you'd be back sooner than you thought. I gave you a gift, Izzy. Now you don't even have to wonder if maybe you could've saved him. You couldn't, by the way. Even if you hadn't named him: I'd have found him out. And I think with a little time, you'll come to admit that the world is better off without him in it."
"So you're an altruist now?" Isabel's voice was wavering. Her eyes felt hot, which was weird, because she wasn't even close to crying.
Jerome barked out a single sharp, alarming laugh. "Ah. No. That's your scene. I already told you—I did it for you. Eventually you'll come to admit how you feel about that, too."
Not fucking likely. Removed from close proximity to Jerome, Isabel had already locked those thoughts and feelings away and thrown away the fucking key. She watched him as he crossed the room again, humming jauntily, stooping down to pick up the glove he'd dropped on the ground and putting it back on. She felt a nearly-uncontrollable urge to rush him, tackle him into the window, which ideally would shatter and send them both tumbling the several stories to the ground.
In the end, she reined the impulse in, telling herself that the glass would be reinforced and even if it wasn't, with his luck—and hers—he'd move at the last second and she'd be the only one plummeting headfirst into the dark. "I want to leave now," she said tersely, and headed for the door she'd come in through.
Jerome came to meet her, and she tightened her hands into fists, tensing up as he approached, trying her best not to haul off and clock him in the side of the head. He eyed her up and down briefly. "It's okay that you feel this way," he said, and banged on the door five times in rapid succession. It buzzed immediately, swinging open, and he leaned his back against the door jamb, crossing his arms and leveling another serious look at her. "By the next time I see you, you won't anymore."
She had a few things to say to that, somewhat tempered by the recollection that last time he'd made a prediction about that, he'd been correct. She settled on a brief "Eat shit and die, Jerome," as she brushed past him to leave the room.
"See you soon," he crooned, low enough that she wasn't completely sure that she'd heard him right, and then the door slammed behind her, metal locks springing into place, locking him in and locking her out for the last time.
A/N - :)
That's the end of act one, and the beginning of a temporary holiday break in updates! I'll be back after New Year's. I hope everyone has a lovely holiday/end-of-year couple of weeks.
Next: act 2 begins. It's a special day for Isabel, and Jerome's concurrent escape from Arkham Asylum has nothing to do with it. (Well, very little to do with it, anyway.) Until next time!
