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Had it really been ten years?
Oswald Cobblepot stood precariously on the edge of the dock. The very same dock where he’d experienced one of the worst days of his life. He was older now, but he would never forget the intense pain he’d felt, both physically and emotionally. His free hand absent-mindedly ran over his abdomen, right where the bullet had pierced right through him. He’d never experienced pain like that before. Oh, sure, he’d been shot before, but a shot to the shoulder or a shot to the leg was nothing compared to what he’d felt that day. Or perhaps it was all about the circumstances? Was it possible that a bullet could hurt more when it came from the one you adored the most?
He closed his eyes, remembering all of the emotions he’d felt that day. He recalled how fear had given way to anger, which had given way to desperation, which had ended on heartbreak. Then there was nothing. Nothing but a cold numbness. He hardly felt the icy sting of the freezing waters as he’d landed in them. He wondered, as he often did during these moments, whether his body had continued sinking after he’d disappeared into its murky depths, or whether he’d eventually been carried someplace else by the current.
It had been Fish Mooney who had discovered him in the end. He hadn’t cared enough at the time to bother enquiring as to the when’s, why’s, and how’s. His mind was too fuzzy, his pains were too great and his anger had been too real. He’d raged and cursed and screamed and cried and he’d begged her to tell him why she couldn’t have just let him have the sweet release of death. He would never forget the reason she’d given him.
“Boy,” she said, reminiscent of how she’d addressed all those years back, when he was still her lowly umbrella boy, her perfectly manicured hand pressed firm against his lips as her last resort after he’d screamed himself hoarse, “I swear to God, if you do not shut up this instant I will make you shut up permanently.”
“Good,” he spat out after she’d allowed him the freedom of speech again, “I don’t even know why you saved me in the first place.” It was like déjà vu and he could feel his throat close up again as he was reminded of the last time someone had saved him when he would have rather died.
Fish’s glare softened and she moved her hand to rest lightly on his cheek, “My little Penguin,” She sighed, “Do you remember, long ago, I once told you that you were like a son to me?” He didn’t answer, but his brow furrowed in confusion, so she continued, “I still think of you like that.”
“But-”
She smiled and got up from her sitting position on his bed, “Oh yes, I know, we’ve both been trying to kill each other for a long, long time now. And, hey, you even succeeded… for a time, at least”
He looked pointedly at her and folded his arms across his chest, “What is your point?”
“My point is, you are still my little Penguin, and I am still your mama, and I will not let one of my children go down like that,” She grabbed one of his hands, gripping tightly to the point where it was almost painful, “No, you are either going down old and content, or you are going down fighting. You are not going down heartbroken, wrists bound, by the man you thought you loved. I thought I taught you better than that”
Oswald’s lips quivered, “I still do love him.” He whispered, voice breaking on the last word as his vision blurred with unshed tears.
And then Fish Mooney did the last thing Oswald had ever expected her to do. She sat by him on the small sick bed, pulled his head down under her chin and held him close to her. And after he’d gotten over the initial shook, he let every emotion that had been welling up inside him pour loose. Sobs wracking his body while she simply stroked his hair and shushed him. When he’d calmed down enough she said to him, “And that is what you will fight for my child. When you get back Gotham city you are going to show Edward Nygma that he is lucky to be loved by you, and you are going to show him what will happen to him if he ever tries anything this stupid again.”
Oswald smiled at the memory. He doesn’t know where Fish had gone after she’d nursed him back to full health. No one had heard from her in years. He wonders, sometimes, if she’s still living on that island with her merry band of freaks and monsters. He knows that, should she choose to make her reappearance, she’d be just as likely to try and kill him as she was before she’d fished him out of the water. He’d be almost disappointed at anything else.
A particularly strong gust of wind knocked him slightly off balance, throwing him out of his own mind as his pale eyes refocused on the lapping waves beneath him. Gotham had been experiencing some abnormally strong gales over the last few weeks and Oswald found himself wondering whether the water would feel as cold now as it did back then, when all of a sudden his all-too keen ears picked up the sound of a soft cough behind him.
“Oswald?”
The man in question allowed a small smile to grace his features, the fingers on his left hand subconsciously twisting to fiddle with the gold band situated perfectly on his ring finger as he turned to greet the man that had called him.
“Oswald, what are you doing out here?” Edward Nygma stood just a stride away from Oswald, and with the way they were facing each other, the smaller man was painfully aware of just how similar the scene looked. As if to reassure himself that he hadn’t magically time travelled to that terrible day, he quickly crossed into that gap, overjoyed in the way his husband’s arms rose instinctively to wrap around his shoulders, bringing them in to a tight embrace. He wrapped his own arms around the taller man’s waists and buried his head against Edward’s neck, breathing in the man’s unique scent that had become such a comfort over the years.
“It’s been ten years you know, Eddie” He whispered eventually, feeling the other man’s muscles tense briefly, before he relaxed once more in to the embrace, his fingers gripping Oswald’s coat a little tighter than it had been before.
After a few moments Edward let out a shaky breath, “No, I hadn’t realised Ozzie,” his own voice barely a whisper itself, “I’m so sorry, if I’d know it was important to you-”
Oswald pulled away from the embrace, effectively cutting off the end of Edward’s apology, “No, no, don’t you dare apologise” He spoke firmly, one hand now planted flat on the other man’s chest, “I know you don’t like to think about what happened. I don’t, usually, but today felt-” He paused, searching for the right word, “Different, I suppose.” He shrugged loosely and turned away with a sigh to face the harsh waters once again.
Edward came to stand next to him, also looking down in to the murky depths, a puzzled frown on his face as he tried to discern what the smaller man meant. He cleared his throat, a nervous habit that hadn’t gone away as the years had gone by, “I must admit Ozzie,” he began, “when I look out over this godforsaken dock, all I can see is the day I made the biggest mistake of my life” At this, Oswald turned to face his husband. They had never spoken quite so openly about that fateful day. Yes, they had both made their apologies, both pleaded and begged forgiveness, but the wounds had been too raw, too open to make discussing the details a good choice for either of them, and then they had been too happy revelling in the newness of their mutual love for one another, so it had seemed silly to bring up such painful memories. Now though, they were older, much less prone to making such catastrophic mistakes, and much more confident in their devotion of each other.
Oswald watched Edward’s eyes dart up, scanning the grey landscape that lie before them as he pondered his next words, “I look in to this water, Oswald, and I can still see you. I can still see your hands reaching out for me. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get that image out of my head.”
Oswald’s slipped one of his hands into the taller man’s. He’d known, of course, not that he’d ever been told but there had been many a night, especially when they had first started their relationship, when he’d woken to the sound of Edward crying out his own name, begging him to come back, to forgive him, to just not be dead. The only thing Oswald could think to do in those moments was to curl his body in to Edward’s, trying to offer his comfort with touch and warmth. Perhaps it had not been enough.
Edward took in a deep breath before he continued, “Did you know I almost jumped in after you?” He let out a breath of self-deprecating laughter, “By the time I stopped feeling numb I thought it was too late. How could I have been such an idiot? I owe Fish more than I could ever imagine. She found you when I was too much of a coward to do it myself.”
“Ed, you’re not-”
“Oh, but I am Ozzie, I couldn’t face up to what I’d done. I knew almost immediately how wrong I’d been. How everything you’d said to me had been true.”
The sky had been getting progressively darker while he’d been listening to Edward, and now he could feel the first few drops of rain starting to fall, a promise of more to come and instinctively he opened his umbrella-cum-cane, raising it above both of their head before returning his hand to the comforting warmth of Edward’s own.
“Come, my love, you were right before. There’s no need to reminisce on such painful memories. There are better things we could be doing with our time” He soothed, even as his tone turned even slightest bit suggestive.
Edward’s lips curled up into a small smirk at his husband’s welcome playfulness, but he stopped the smaller man before he could lead them too far away from the spot where they’d been talking, “Perhaps, yes, but I think actually it was you who was right in the first place. I needed to come back here. I needed to remember just how close I was to loosing you.” He pulled the other man close to him, wrapping an arm around his waist and placing one hand upon his cheek, running his thumb gently over skin, “I love you so much, Oswald, I always have and I always will”
Oswald smiled, leaning into the other man’s touch, fingers roughened and callused over the years but no less welcome on his cold skin, “You are everything to me, my love, you always will be”
Even after years of being able to do this whenever he wanted, without fear of the repercussions, the sensation of their lips meeting never failed to fill him with joy. The way they instinctively melted against each other, lips parting in a silent invitation to allow the other to explore more thoroughly. Where once this was new and exciting, when disbelief and desperation had clouded most of his other senses, now it felt like home to Oswald, like safety and comfort, and most importantly, love. Eventually the need for air forced them to part and for a few seconds they stood there, regaining their breath and relishing the feeling of closeness.
It was Oswald who eventually took the initiative to pull back completely, his hand once more placed flat on the other man’s chest as he cleared his throat slightly, “It’s getting late, perhaps we should take this back home?” He suggested, noting how the sky and turned a significantly darker shade of grey since Edward had first made his appearance known.
Edward frowned, checked his watch, then turned back to his husband, “I suppose you’re right,” a smirk tugged at the man’s mouth, “We wouldn’t want to get caught out here like a couple of naughty teenagers by that ‘masked vigilante’, now would we?”
Oswald could help but let a small chuckle pass his lips, “Now then, Edward, you know all rumours have some basis of truth to them. Perhaps there really is a grown man out there dressing up as a bat in order to ‘rid this city of its criminals’. This is Gotham after all, stranger things have happened.” He paused contemplatively for a moment, “In fact, maybe our good friend Mr Gordon has found himself a new hobby? Wasn’t ridding the city of crime one of his top priorities?”
He watched as his husband’s face darkened. Jim Gordon was something of a sore spot for Edward. The two of them had a bit of a personal vendetta against each other, one that had only worsened when Oswald had confessed to his husband about his past crush on the police detective-turned-commissioner. Edward’s jealousy streak ran high enough to rival even Oswald’s.
“Jim Gordon? I hardly think so. That would require some form of imagination, a trait that our dear commissioner severely lacks.” The timbre of his voice had dropped so low that Oswald could feel the rumble underneath the palm of his hand and he could feel the similar stirrings of arousal forming.
“Edward, dear, I really think we should think about getting in to that lovely car you’ve brought with you, and heading back home now. Don’t you?”
Edward blinked once, furrowed his brow slightly, blinked once more and then his eyes widened as he gasped almost comically, “Oh, shoot, Gabe!”
“Gabe?”
At least the man had the decency to look a little sheepish, “I may have asked poor Gabe over there to drive me around Gotham while I looked for you” Oswald folded his arms across his chest and raising once perfectly arched eyebrow, waiting patiently for Edward to continue, “Well, I mean, I didn’t know where you were, and you hadn’t mentioned that you’d be going anywhere after your business meeting, and I maybe, might have, possibly thought the worst. And panicked. Just a little bit.”
Oswald couldn’t have prevented the warm smile creeping across his lips, no matter how hard he tried, as his arms detangled themselves and he reached forward to take the taller man’s hand in to his own, “Oh, Edward. My dear, sweet, impossibly clever, endearingly foolish husband.” He brought the man’s hand to his lips, pressing down lightly, “Let us go and rescue dear Gabriel from his own boredom, and then we can go home.”
Edward’s lips curled up in a warm smile in response, “Whatever you say, my Penguin”