A/N - Socio you never annoy me and I'm glad to see you back! You should make an account so I can message you in response to your reviews :)
and we're back with some housekeeping! I have no idea if anyone cares about timeline issues besides me, but Gotham has... a lot of timeline issues. When I was writing this I eventually went and got episode dates to use as sort of a baseline and then hammered out a fairly specific timeline that seemed reasonable and matched up with canon (more or less) for the events of Crush going into the events of IYM. The reason I'm bringing it up now is that Jerome's asylum escape episodes aired in April, even though it was clearly winter (and, if we're going by Bruce's birthday being in one of them, canonically February). I'm going to move things around a little bit. We're pushing the escape back to December/Christmas, with the story tumbling into New Year's. I'll post my specific timeline notes on the blog soon, but for now, if this little bit of canon divergence hasn't put you off forever, then enjoy the chapter :)
4.
But oh, I know, it's coming 'round again
Another birthday and another year older
Oh, I know, it's comin' 'round again
Just take a breath and get yourself together, I swear…
You got them big dreams, you wanna get out of here? – Amyl and the Sniffers | Big Dreams
Jerome broke out of Arkham Asylum late one night in late December, but due to an unusually busy evening wherein she barely glanced at her phone and most of the police response being on the other side of the city from where she lived, Isabel was unaware that he was out until she came home from a night out with friends to find him waiting in her apartment.
It was about one in the morning when she unlocked her door, loose and cheerful from the variety of shots she'd had throughout the course of the evening (and she didn't typically drink on a work night, but given that they'd been bought for her, she'd felt obligated). Inside, she dropped her coat and her bag in a clattering heap on the floor, toed off her boots, and only then realized that the TV was on, even though she never left it running when she was away from the apartment.
Her apartment was a one-bedroom, designed so the entry door led directly into the kitchen area, which was divided from the living space by an interior wall. The mounted TV was just visible from the kitchen, but the rest of the living space was hidden by the wall, meaning that whoever was watching it was out of her view.
Not that it was a great mystery. She had a pretty good guess who she was dealing with, but still: it was Gotham, and it wasn't beyond the realm of possibility that she had a confused junkie, or more alarmingly, a themed axe murderer sitting on her couch, so she leaned over quick to grab a cleaver from the knife block on the counter, and then, carefully and quietly in her sock feet, she moved towards the divider wall.
The television was playing Casablanca. "If that plane leaves the ground and you're not with him, you'll regret it," Humphrey Bogart was droning as Isabel edged close. "Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life." Isabel reached the wall, carefully peered around the edge—
—and deflated as she saw that there was no one in the living area, just an empty couch illuminated by the blue light of the TV's glow.
Before she could re-calibrate, the water ran in the bathroom. Isabel whipped around in time to see the light under the door behind her before it went out, and she took a step back as the door flew open. The room yawned dark behind him, but Jerome was unmistakable, standing in the doorway and meticulously drying his hands on a towel.
Even though she'd been about seventy-five percent sure he was her unexpected visitor, it was still a bit of a shock to the system to see him here, standing right in front of her, larger than life in her dinky little apartment. She'd kept a lock on daydreams and fantasies alike, especially since her last visit had ended in such catastrophe, so she'd never really entertained even the possibility that he'd ever enter her apartment, with its chronically cluttered surfaces and band posters taped directly to the walls that she'd been beginning to feel were better suited to a teenager's living space.
She felt her cheeks flush as she stared at him, tongue-tied, until he broke the silence himself. "Um… is that a knife in your hand," he rasped, "or are you just happy to see me?"
She looked down. She'd already forgotten all about the knife, which she'd inadvertently held out between them when the door opened. She didn't bother to reply, instead shooting him a narrow, disapproving little look—bad joke—before going back into the kitchen to replace it in the knife block. No use brandishing it at him when they both knew she wasn't going to use it anytime soon, and she'd be more comfortable if there wasn't a blade in play.
She turned, expecting him to have snuck up on her like he liked to do, and was slightly mollified to see him lurking instead at the edge of the kitchen, just inside the pool of fluorescent light. She kept meaning to change those bulbs—they made everyone look dead or dying. Jerome leaned his shoulder against the wall and crossed his arms over his chest (he was wearing his Arkham pants and suspenders over a half-unbuttoned undershirt, which unfortunately was doing marvelous things to his chest and arms), and softly observed, "You look nice. What's that on your eyes?
She reflexively dabbed a finger to the corner of her eye. It came away covered in white shimmer—she'd forgotten about it as soon as she put it on, or at least as soon as the drinks started flowing, out of sight, out of mind. "Just, um, glitter," she said, feeling uncharacteristically shy under his intent stare, which might generously be described as only hungry. It didn't help that she was still dressed up from going out, in torn black jeans and a blood-red corset top that revealed what was suddenly starting to feel like a dangerous amount of flesh.
In the way tipsy minds did, though, hers changed direction fast as she observed a few things that she hadn't noticed right off. The off-white knit of Jerome's undershirt was marked with stains, some in slightly grotesque but not alarming shades of yellow and brown, and others more sinister, notably one across his stomach that looked like a splatter of what might have been formerly red, rapidly drying down to a rust color.
"Are you—" she started, taking a step forward, then shook her head, rethinking that line of questioning. "What happened?" she asked instead.
Jerome raised his eyebrows at her and shook his head slightly, acting confused. "What do you mean?"
Okay, fair, kind of a broad question, she thought, studying him through suspiciously narrowed eyes. His voice, the low grate of it, lacking the energized lilt she was used to, helped her realize that it wasn't just the lighting: he truly looked about as worn out as she'd ever seen him, though of course he wasn't letting on. Clearly, he'd had an intense night, but since he just as clearly didn't feel like being forthcoming about it, she figured they should start slow.
She approached him, and despite the weariness she could now see etched in every line of his face, something in his eyes stirred, marking interest at her nearness. She drew out one of the chairs at her little four-person kitchen table, placing it between them, and said, "Here. You look like you're about to fall over."
Jerome looked down at the chair, then back at her, insolence written all over his face. He kicked the chair to the side and advanced on her. Isabel had liquid courage going for her, though, and brought her hands up to brace against his chest, holding him at bay before he could really invade her space per his typical habit. He paused, curious as always to see what she had in mind, and she pushed him a step back, then turning them both ninety degrees so the chair was behind him again. He seemed to like it sometimes when she ordered him around, so she channeled the most commanding elements she could find in herself, slid her hands up to his shoulders, and, as icily as possible, she said, "Jerome. Sit down. Now."
When she pushed down on his shoulders, she met no resistance—he dropped into the chair like a ton of bricks, legs sprawling open, all the while staring at her with eyes burning into her like coals. She was either doing something very, very right or very, very wrong, and given that he wasn't visibly armed, she decided to gamble on the former. "Hands holding tight to the bottom of the chair, please," she said coolly. "Don't let go till I say you can."
He obeyed—slowly, but he obeyed, watching her as his hands drifted to the seat of the chair. Isabel watched until his grip tightened and his knuckles turned white, then nodded her approval and stepped close to stand between his legs, sliding her hand under his chin and directing his face up so she could get a better look at him under the light.
His coloring was so fair that she hadn't noticed he was sporting a slight five o'clock shadow until her palm scraped pleasantly against it. She realized quickly, in direct light, that he wasn't only tired (although he was obviously that as well, his eyes half-shut, heavy-lidded even as he seemed determined to keep them fixed on her face), but injured. There were fresh blisters bubbling up at the edge of his mouth, the skin below it an angry red, and on a hunch, she peeked lower to see that—yes, what she could see of his chest from the undone buttons of his shirt was red in the same way.
"You wanna tell me what happened?" she asked in a tone of mild reproof, like this might all be his own fault (and knowing him, she wasn't far off).
He was careful not to move his jaw too much as he answered: "Little family dispute. All settled now."
Surprise broke her out of the ice queen act for just a second; her eyes flew to his and, unwilling to say the name out loud but needing to know, she mouthed, "Jeremiah?"
Jerome's brows swooped down into a frown and he shook his head, clearly displeased by the question, though she sensed that she wasn't the one who'd earned his ire. She nodded thoughtfully, looking again at his face. He'd been burned pretty badly, and his skin was hot against her fingers—he usually ran considerably hotter than she did, but this was beyond that. Struck with a sudden fear, she lifted her hand away from him and asked, "Am I hurting you?"
"No," he muttered immediately, his eyes sliding shut, just for a second, as he exhaled briefly through his nose. "Feels good."
Taking that as permission, she touched him again, this time with both hands clasped gently around either side of his neck, trading the coolness of her skin for the heat of his. He made a low sound, something close to a growl (or maybe a purr), and she felt the rumble of it vibrate against the heels of her hands where they rested lightly against his larynx. She brushed the tips of her thumbs against the point where his jaw met his ears, enjoying the way he was obviously basking in her touch, enjoying touching him—but those blisters looked bad, and her hands weren't cold enough on their own to do any good.
Her hands slipped away from him. He immediately opened his eyes to glare his displeasure at her—but his fingers still stiffly clutched at the seat.
"Stay," she said simply, stepping backwards away from him and then going to the refrigerator to look for something more useful.
The cold air rolling out from the freezer was welcome on her face, which felt hot and flushed. She took a deep, controlled breath, making sure her voice wouldn't waver, and then, as neutrally as she could manage, she said, "I didn't know you had any other family left. Who's responsible for all this?"
She heard him breathe in, then exhale, then he said, "I guess I never told you my mother has a brother."
"You didn't," she said after a thoughtful pause wherein she tried to recall if she had ever known that. She grabbed the bag of frozen corn she'd seen the moment she'd opened the freezer and closed the door. Jerome had craned his neck to look at her, a bit of the old mischief alive in his eyes.
"Well," he added, "I guess I should say… had a brother. I shot him in the back of the head about an hour ago."
Isabel nodded meditatively, absorbing the information without so much as a ripple in her calm—she'd expected as much as soon as he'd mentioned his uncle. "Not a guy made of sunshine and rainbows, I take it," she said, going back to Jerome, stepping back between his knees and applying the frozen bag gently to the blistered edge of his mouth.
He dragged in a hissing breath through his teeth at the touch but didn't flinch. "Not exactly," he said, once again moving his mouth very little as he trained his eyes on her face. "He and ma… two peas in a pod, really. Twins, you know. They run in the family."
If Jerome was telling the truth—and she didn't think he'd lie to her about this, shitty, abusive family, the first thing they'd found in common—then he was telling her a lot with just a little, and she didn't have any further questions about his motive for shooting his uncle. Instead, adding a little more pressure now that he'd had a chance to adjust to the coldness of the bag, she said, "Uh-huh. And did you shoot this man… before, during, or after you sprang yourself out of Arkham?"
His mouth moved slightly, curving up into a smug little grin. "After."
"Well," she said, "I'd really have expected some cops beating down my door by now. You know, since I'm a 'known associate.' You must have kept your escape pretty quiet."
"Oh, no." He giggled at the idea. "Definitely not. Just… hmm. Quarantined."
She frowned and lifted the bag so she could see his whole face. "What does that mean?"
He shrugged his shoulders and changed the subject before she could figure out how to press him. "Where's Jane tonight, anyway? I expected both of you here."
She shook her head. "She moved out earlier this year."
"Uh-oh. Trouble in paradise?"
"No, she just needs to be close to the east side, she's working a lot in the theater district over there. Even if we still lived together, she wouldn't be here tonight, she couldn't get away from rehearsals, but we still see each other almost every day. We can just finally afford our own apartments now." Speaking of which—"How'd you know where I live, anyway? Scratch that—how'd you get in here in the first place? The door was locked."
"The window wasn't. You oughta be more careful, Izzy. Fire escape leads right up to your place." As she absorbed this, kicking herself, he brought his knees closer together, pinning her between them (fair's fair, she thought as she realized she hadn't told him not to touch her, just to remove his hands from play), and he said, "So—I take it you're not mad at me anymore."
He was still radiating smugness, eyes narrowed slightly as if to say gotchya. She narrowed hers back for a moment before pushing the frozen bag back to his mouth, a little more roughly this time. "I'm still very mad at you, and we're going to keep fighting about what happened last time I saw you," she said truthfully, and then, even more truthfully: "but I had… two shots of tequila. Two shots of vodka. One shot of whiskey, and one shot of gin over the course of the last six hours or so—" Jerome made a face at the mention of gin specifically—"and while I wouldn't say I'm drunk, I'm definitely… happily buzzed. Not really in the mood to follow through on a grudge right now, so you've got an extremely temporary reprieve. You can let go now, by the way."
Before she'd even finished her sentence, his hands were up and grasping at her hips, pulling her down into his lap at once, and she put the last nail in the coffin of her calm-and-in-control act with a startled, breathless little giggle at the shock of contact. Once he had her secured, one arm coiled tight around her waist to hold her in place, he lifted his free hand and took the frozen bag from her, lifting it away from his mouth so he could ask, "Oh, really? What's the occasion? Are you the kind of person who goes networking at bars now?" His tone dripped with sarcastic disdain.
Isabel hesitated, and he clocked it immediately, of course, his eyes narrowing even further in suspicion. She'd never been particularly shy in general, and specifically not with him, so of course it'd ping as weird that she was reluctant to give him an answer right away. She didn't know herself why she felt embarrassed to tell him, except that she'd always shied away from the traditional sort of situation that put her squarely in the center of attention. (The non-traditional ones, on the other hand, she had no problem with.)
"It's, um," she said, dropping her hand down to the collar of his shirt, plucking at it and frowning briefly in disgust when she found it damp, soaked in something almost green—is that soup?—before dragging herself back to the topic. "It's my birthday," she admitted, glancing up in time to see that she'd surprised him, his eyebrows darting up for a split second before his face settled back into its practiced nonchalance.
"No kidding," he said, his arm tightening slightly in a squeeze that was almost a hug. "Well. Many happy returns, and all that. How old, again?"
"Twenty-one."
"And you're not staying out the rest of the night getting hammered?" He clicked his tongue in disapproval. "Square."
She scoffed. "Yeah, well, my friends tried their best."
"Friends," he muttered, almost interrupting, almost under his breath.
"Yes, friends," she said, poking him in the chest, careful to avoid the redness that marked where he'd been burned—by soup, apparently. "I do have friends besides, like, you and Jane."
He pulled a skeptical face. "First I'm hearing of it."
"Anyway, I have work in the morning. Birthday or not, I can't go get blackout drunk when I have to get up at seven AM."
He faked a cough that did nothing to cover his second accusation of "Square!" Before she could think up an appropriately withering line about him stealing his insults from the 1920s, he said, "Wait, hold on. Back up. Are you saying we're a May-December romance?"
"Easy," she said sternly. "I saw your birth record. You're seven months older than me. Like, almost to the day."
"Mmm," he hummed doubtfully, "yeahhh, but… I was dead for a while, remember? Pretty sure that whole year doesn't count."
"Right, sure, you're just an innocent little baby until it'll give you an advantage to be older, then it'll be I don't know what you're talking about, Isabel, I've always been older, look at my date of birth. I know you." The corner of his mouth hitched up in a little grin—as much confirmation as she needed to know she was right on the money—before he got it back under control, pulling it down into an exaggerated frown.
"Hm, I'm not sure I feel comfortable in this relationship anymore. Problematic age gap and all that. You're practically robbing the cradle at this point."
Oh, fuck this, she thought, and squirmed in a valiant effort to get out of his grasp (despite his words, he still had her in a death grip) as she said, "Oh, far be it from me to make you feel 'uncomfortable,' I'll just escort you to the door and—"
"Wait, wait, wait, I just remembered something," he said, suddenly deathly serious.
Isabel froze—knowing Jerome, this could be anything from there's a hostage tied up in your bedroom to I forgot, I'm double-parked, and the annoying thing was there was no way of telling which it was. "What?"
He tossed the frozen bag onto the table, freeing up his other hand, which was her only warning before he said, "You haven't gotten a birthday spanking yet."
A noise that was partially a laugh but mostly a shriek escaped her as he got both hands on her hips, and she fought him with everything she had as he tried to flip her over. "Jerome, nonono, don't you fucking dare—!"
The little scuffle resolved abruptly when the chair they were in decided to hell with this and their struggling toppled it over. Isabel's one and only instinct was to keep her ass shielded from him, so she managed to twist and land on her back, Jerome falling heavy across her lower half. She got her elbows underneath her, fully intending to drag herself backwards out of the battle zone, but it was a clumsy maneuver, and before she could really make a run for it, Jerome had crawled the rest of the way on top of her body.
She should probably be worried that escape now seemed firmly out of reach—he told you to your face he's already killed at least one man tonight, piped up a voice in the back of her mind, and it was worrisome that that wasn't more worrisome—but she could only seem to laugh breathlessly, in semi-dire straits vis à vis oxygen between her tight top and Jerome's not-insubstantial weight on her torso. For his part, he stretched out languidly, resting some of his weight on his forearms planted on each side of her but otherwise chest to chest, groin to groin, hooking one of his ankles lazily around hers.
The smugness was back. "Told you you'd be over it by the next time I saw you."
A flicker of annoyance, one that she couldn't seem to hold onto just now. "I told you that whole discussion isn't over. Just paused for now."
He grinned. "Because you're happy I'm out."
She narrowed her eyes at him. "Two things can be true. Multitasking," she added in a low, insulting voice that was clearly meant to be a mimicry of his own. "Anyway, I'm tipsy. You can't hold me responsible for anything right now."
"That sounds like an excuse in advance," he said. "What exactly do you have in mind?"
He didn't wait for a response, lowering himself towards her—she saw his blistered mouth incoming and made a noise embarrassingly akin to a squeak, wrenching her head to the side so that instead of targeting her mouth, he just clumsily bussed her cheek. "No fucking way!"
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him rear back, obviously offended. She turned her head again to face him. "Don't give me that kicked puppy look," she protested. "Your mouth looks like Anakin Skywalker at the end of Revenge of the Sith. There's no way it wouldn't hurt you like crazy to make out right now."
He gave her a look that was full to the brim with contempt. "Since when have I chickened out because of a little pain?"
"Okay, fine, you don't care if it hurts, but I don't exactly want to kiss you right now. Seriously. You look like that lady in that Silent Hill movie. It's gross."
"Isabel." The tone of shocked reproof in which he said her name was so uncharacteristic of him that she tipped her head back against the floor and cackled long and loud while he huffed on top of her. She was pretty sure he'd never been the one to chide her for stepping over the line before.
"I'm serious," she said, lifting her head up again after gasping for a recovery breath. "You need, like, ointment and recuperation time, and I don't want one of your burn blisters popping in or on my mouth, or anywhere else on my body."
He was honest-to-god pouting, not a trace of feint anywhere in his expression. After a second or two, though, he rallied with: "Well. There are plenty of other things we can do that don't involve my mouth."
She lifted her hand, grazing it along the short hair on the back of his head, affectionate despite herself. "Yeah, about that. We're several negotiations away from doing any of those things." He huffed out a little noise of disgust; she pressed on earnestly. "No, seriously, do you ever think about it? Just making out has been pretty good, but what if we fuck and there's, like, zero chemistry? You're a jackhammer, I'm a starfish, or hell, vice versa? Worst sex ever?"
"I can think of a way to find out," he muttered under his breath.
She ignored him. "And you were dead for a long time, are you sure everything still works right? Oh, my god," she said, talking over him as he tried indignantly to protest, dropping her head back to the floor, "what if you can't even find my clit?"
He got his hands under him and pushed himself halfway upright at that, looking more deeply offended than she'd ever seen him. After a beat of shocked, stunned silence, he announced, "I know where the clitoris is, thank you."
She looked him in the eye and swung for the KO. "Do you even have condoms on hand? I mean, I have it on good authority that twins run in your family—we don't want to fuck around with that, or next thing you know we'll be raising two Jerome Juniors."
He let his hands slide out from under him, resting his full weight on her now and pressing his face into the crook of her neck. "Jesus, Izzy," he griped against her skin. "You've gotta be world champion at killing the mood."
She laughed, low and affectionate, and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, her legs around his legs, hugging him tight. "We have time now," she murmured to him, her lips brushing his ear. "No need to rush it and fuck everything up."
Jerome sighed, a long, slow exhale, then dragged his forearms beneath him and pressed himself up again—not far, bringing himself face to face with her. He stared at her through heavy-lidded eyes for a moment, then dropped his gaze to her mouth. He shifted slightly onto one arm, and then he was rubbing the pad of his thumb slow across her bottom lip, and she felt his warm breath on her mouth, mingling with hers. He drifted slightly closer, close enough that she imagined she could almost feel the touch of his lips, and despite all her extremely valid arguments, she felt her eyes drift shut, realized that if he tried again, she wouldn't stop him this time.
Then the weight of him disappeared. Isabel opened her eyes to see that he'd rolled off her and was getting to his feet, not bothering to offer her a hand up. "Ah, well," he said, dusting himself off. "Not like we really have time, anyway. Uh—what is the time?" He sidestepped the fallen chair and went further into the kitchen as she sat up at the waist, realizing that she was all but spilling out of the corset top and quickly adjusting things until she was decent again.
She was standing up when he came back towards her. "Yeah, it's—I'm running late. It's time to go." He paused, eyeing her up and down, as she busied herself trying to straighten her hair, feeling caught out and embarrassed, though Lord knew why—it wasn't as if she'd been the one trying to cajole him into a quickie. "You got a jacket?"
"Um." She froze in place as her brain ground back into action. She'd learned that if he was asking a question and she didn't have a clue where it was coming from, it was a sign of danger, and so she knew she needed to be careful with her answer, but she couldn't for the life of her discern his motive here. "Yeah, I mean…" It is December, and his clothes don't exactly look warm. "Do you need to borrow something?"
"Me?" His brows knit together and he shook his head. "No, for you. It's nippy out tonight, and uh…" He stepped closer, lowering his voice, just a touch of lasciviousness coming through: "Not that I don't appreciate the show, but that doesn't exactly look warm."
Isabel stepped reflexively backwards. "I'm not coming with you?" She hated how it came out sounding like a question.
Jerome looked confused, but this time, it was mocking, exaggerated, the telltale signs that he was clowning. "Of course you are. What did you think, that I was here for a quick catch-up before we went our separate ways?" He didn't wait for an answer, which was good, because she was temporarily struck speechless. "No," he said, scratching idly at his collar. "I seem to remember you daring me to come find you when I got out. Well… I'm out. And I found you. And you and me, we're in this together now. Like you said: we've got time."
She turned to look at her bag on the floor where her cell phone was hidden away, a complicated knot of feelings swelling to a bursting point inside of her. Mostly, most powerfully, she felt guilt—guilt that the proposal sparked genuine excitement somewhere deep in her, guilt that something in her wanted to go along with him, guilt that she wasn't already screaming and crying and calling the police.
Jerome, scrutinizing her carefully, prodded at her: "You don't have to come willingly, you know."
She turned her eyes back to him, and felt a hot little shock when she realized he was gazing at her with the closest thing to sincerity she'd seen all night. Encouraged by her attention, he added, "I can make it look like there was a struggle—" for emphasis, he reached out and knocked over yet another dining chair—"and, you know, if you're really having trouble with the idea, I can carry you out of here kicking and screaming. You don't have to come willingly, Isabel," he repeated.
On the surface, it was a threat, but as their eye contact drew out, lingered, she felt warmth blooming in her chest, the uncommon sensation of being seen, never so potent as when she was talking to Jerome. He knew she wanted to come with him. He knew she was conflicted, and the offer was an uncharacteristic one for him, pure generosity, offering pre-emptively to take the fall for her just so she could get what she actually wanted. After all, he was the crazy one, he was the living dead psycho killer asylum escapee—she was the normal girl with a with a tough lot in life who'd risen above her bad background to give back to her community on a daily basis. Nobody would hesitate to blame him for this. Nobody would look twice at her, not with signs of a fight in her apartment, not with the words written on the wall in blood about him for years now, declaring him a bad egg.
All of her (more than reasonable) concerns seemed to get caught up in a vortex, sucked down into a deep part of herself where she wouldn't have to face them again, leaving her with a sense of complete certainty. For once, she would make the irresponsible choice, and she wouldn't feel bad about it—not today, anyway, not until those concerns inevitably bubbled back up to confront her.
She approached him then, seeing wariness spark in his eyes as she came, like he thought she might be about to take a swing at him, but she just reached up and grasped the back of his neck, and she put her mouth to the side of his face, avoiding the burned spots but bearing down hard so that he could feel the pressure of her kiss beneath the rippled scar tissue on his cheek. She lingered for a few seconds, then pulled back and locked eyes with him, seeing understanding surface in his as he saw the determination in hers. She gave him a firm little nod, then let him go and went to put on her coat and boots.
"Give me a second before you take off," she said. "I want to lock the door behind us."
A/N - If you're enjoying this, come say hello!
Next: Jerome and Isabel demonstrate that without a time limit imposed by prison guards, they simply won't stop talking to each other. (They've got to make up for lost time!) See you then!
