Chapter Text
Gotham’s amateur gangs are becoming an insufferable nuisance, Ed thinks.
Oswald has been stabbed in the side, clumsily but painfully by a man who seems to have nicknamed himself Slicer. (Slicer dies a swift death. Ed shoots him twice in the chest and he’s done.) Maybe consulting the Roaches gang for a favour wasn’t one of Ed’s best ideas, but Oswald had trusted it anyway, and to Ed’s surprise, he’d also deferred when Ed tugged him downtown to escape the remnants of the gang.
It’s a rush to get Oswald back to the abandoned office they’ve marked as their temporary base and he snarks at Ed the entire way there. By the time they’ve shut the doors behind them, he’s crumpling in pain, bracing himself on one of the desks and bleeding all over a stack of ancient paperwork.
When Ed fusses, Oswald has the gall to insist, “It’s not that bad.”
“Don’t be difficult,” Ed snaps. He tugs Oswald’s jacket and waistcoat off brusquely and starts applying pressure to the wound. It’s bleeding a fair amount, but the rate of flow isn’t too alarming. He brushes away the discomfort that had been festering in him at the sight of Oswald’s stomach soaked in red, too reminiscent of a scene from their past that he prefers not to think about too much. “Let me take a look at it,” he instructs, reaching for Oswald’s shirt buttons with his free hand.
Oswald refuses with alarming resolve, grabbing his wrist and holding it firmly. “No.”
Oswald doesn’t miss the flash of anger that crosses Ed’s face. He’s good at reading Ed and he can tell that this look is nonthreatening, lacking the predatory glint that means Ed’s about to get violent, but his glare is still irate and trained right on Oswald.
“Oswald, for god’s sake. We don’t have time for this.”
“I said no.” Oswald doesn’t interfere with the hand Ed is pressing to his wound, but he digs his fingernails into the one that had pawed at his shirt.
Ed whips his arm out of Oswald’s grasp, his mind whirring to find an explanation. His first thought is that this must be a trust issue, but that doesn’t add up. Oswald had stood by his plans today, and had trusted him to take him somewhere safe, too.
For a flickering moment, Ed wonders if this has something to do with the bullet scar on Oswald’s belly. He queries Oswald before he can stop himself, but Oswald shuts him down immediately:
“I don’t care,” Oswald spits, “About the damned scar.” It’s an instinctive pushback, but he means it, he really can’t be bothered with the trauma of Ed’s ancient betrayal right now.
“It is about trust, then?”
“Please,” Oswald mutters. “Neither one of us has reason to trust the other, but we forge on anyway, don’t we?”
Ed tilts his head in reluctant agreement.
No matter, the conflict still sits unresolved between them, and they seem to have reached the world’s stupidest stalemate.
Oswald’s wound continues to bleed. The stabbing was off aim and it doesn’t seem like he’s about to die from the slow flow of blood, but it isn’t looking good either. The two of them both look awkwardly down at the patch of red spreading through Oswald’s shirt, having the same thought.
Finally Oswald seems to crumble. “Fine,” he says tightly. “Take it off.”
Ed feels unnerved by how Oswald is acting, so, logically, he anticipates that there’s some secret issue at play—that the injury will be leagues worse than he’s expecting, or that he’ll find a tattoo on Oswald’s chest that reads I hate Ed Nygma.
It’s an anticlimactic reveal. After Ed has fumbled the shirt open, he catches sight of the bullet scar. It’s diminutive and pale against the strip of exposed skin on Oswald’s stomach, sitting just below his cropped undershirt. Near his hip is the fresh stab wound, livid and smeared with blood as Ed expected, but shallow, all things considered. Ed bunches the shirt fabric to the side and applies direct pressure again.
Slightly obstructing the wound is Oswald’s undervest, an odd synthetic thing that cuts off midway down his ribs. With one hand, Ed shrugs the dress shirt from Oswald’s shoulders, and he’s planning to pull the vest over his head too but something makes him hesitate. “Is this a compression garment?” he asks.
There’s a funny expression on Oswald’s face. “Yes.”
Ed frowns at the vest as he uses Oswald’s crumpled shirt to mop the blood from around the wound. “Health reasons?” he asks, thinking distantly of strained intercostal muscles and back injuries.
Oswald scoffs. “In a sense.”
Ed has a distant feeling that something doesn’t add up, but Oswald is prone to being secretive—and to throwing fits when someone sticks their nose in those secrets—so he lets his suspiciousness fade.
Once he’s finished wiping the blood, he balls up Oswald’s thoroughly ruined Versace shirt and uses it as makeshift gauze, pressing it against the puncture with one hand. With his other hand, he touches the hem of the compression vest and says, “Well, off with it.”
“No, thank you,” Oswald says tartly, dodging his attempt.
“Oswald,” Ed grates out, “Must you be so contrary in every single thing you do?”
Oswald looks him in the eye, seething, and says, “Yes.”
“We’re on the same side, you idiot. Look.” Ed gestures emphatically at the wound he’s still applying pressure to. “Tight clothes and abdominal injuries don’t mix. And besides, I need to take a look without the vest in the way. I can’t see it properly and you might need a doctor—“
“Might?” Oswald mocks.
“Exactly, you do need a doctor—”
“Well then. We can let the doctor give the medical advice, can’t we?”
Ed groans, his frustration brimming to capacity, as is always inevitable when Oswald puts his foot down on an issue. He withdraws both hands and stuffs the shirt pointedly into Oswald’s empty hand instead, giving up. “Fine. If you don’t need help.”
Oswald takes Ed’s place in stifling the wound. He gives Ed a sneer, then winces and changes the angle he’s propping himself up at, the compression vest moving rigidly with his body and clearly restricting him. It looks like it’s digging into the edge of the wound.
“Go do something useful,” he declares, uncaring, “And call the doctor.”
Ed turns on his heel and whips out his phone, busying himself with dialling up one of Oswald’s contacts.
“Yes,” he says into the receiver. He pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose with his finger. “Shallow. I doubt it’s fatal, but he’s being ridiculously stubborn about it—”
From across the room, Oswald’s scowl gets considerably darker.
“—And it definitely needs patching up.”
There’s a pause while the person on the other end of the line talks.
“All righty. See you in forty five,” he says, before ending the call and facing Oswald head on. “There’s a road accident in the middle of town. She’ll be a while.”
Oswald gives a half-hearted hum. He’s hunched over and the edge of the undershirt is turning wet with blood. When he tries to adjust his position again, it’s obvious that his movement is restricted.
“You can’t move properly,” Ed points out.
“Well, I’ve been stabbed,” Oswald says tartly. “See how well you’d do.”
Ed doesn’t bother with a comeback. Instead, he watches Oswald, an unhappy curve to his mouth as he eyes the compression vest.
The heat of his gaze is becoming increasingly uncomfortable for Oswald to bear. He tears his eyes away from Ed’s face, but Ed just keeps on looking and looking, so Oswald gives up and finds himself tilting his chin up and glowering back out of spite.
Suddenly Ed frowns. He backs away slowly, disconcerted, as something clicks into place in his head. “Oswald, is this a binder?” he asks.
“Excellent deduction,” Oswald says. “I’m not taking it off.”
“A chest binder? As in, a breast binder?”
Oswald flinches. “Yes,” he says, then readies himself for the awkwardness of Ed’s response. He’s expecting invasive questions about his body, or misguided assumptions, or maybe an apology.
He is not expecting Ed to breeze past the matter to scold Oswald instead.
“And you've been wearing it while we’ve been racing around all day? You got stabbed while you were wearing it and you kept it on? Are you insane? You aren’t even supposed to exercise in one.”
“All right, all right,” Oswald says, taken aback by the way Ed seems to have sidestepped the real issue in favour of prattling about safety. His throat feels tight. “I can’t tolerate my own body and I’m a fool for it. I get the message, Ed.”
“Why didn’t you take it off?”
Oswald’s mouth twists. “I’ve been with you. I didn’t want you to—notice.”
This only seems to agitate Ed further. “You’ve been worried about me noticing and not about cracked ribs, or breathing safely, or—?” Ed trails off at the look on Oswald’s face.
Oswald is fuming. “Do you know what dysphoria is like?” he asks.
“No,” Ed says, “I can’t speak on that topic, but given our history I can tell you that my opinion of all people’s should be irrelevant to you.”
Stunned into silence, Oswald folds his arms protectively, pressing his crumpled shirt to his body. “You’re right,” he remarks, “You don’t deserve to make judgements about me. Neither of us have the right to do that.”
“Precisely—”
“But what you think matters to me anyway,” Oswald says, sounding fiercely regretful even as he continues to speak. “I take your judgements in.”
For a moment Ed almost has to steady himself, to brace against the impulse to say something indecently emotional against his better sense. He wets his lips. “If it helps,” he offers cautiously, “My judgements about you are... largely neutral.”
This seems to have been a suitable thing to say. Oswald doesn’t look angry.
With his heart in his throat, Ed adds, “Or very positive, on occasion.”
Slowly a spark returns to Oswald’s eyes. It’s a familiar expression that Ed has seen plenty of times before, though this is a far more hesitant version of the looks that Oswald used to show, and it’s shielded by an obligatory layer of pretension.
It feels wrong for him to look at Ed like this, so sensitive all of a sudden, despite the only pretext of their current relationship being a strategic alliance. And it feels even worse that some stupid part of Ed wants to let himself return the favour and stare back like he’s looking at his idol once again. It’s getting harder for him to resist the shameful moments of affection that he’s been feeling lately. The unwanted fondness feels like a foreign object lodged inside his body, sharp and distracting.
He swallows past the dryness in his mouth and stifles the impulse to elaborate further on his positive judgements in vulgar detail. It’s not the time for Oswald to hear about his feelings. It’s never the time.
“Please,” he says carefully, “Can we get back to the stab wound now?”
Oswald laughs. Faux-inconvenienced, he says, “You always have to go back to the stab wound, don’t you?”
“I may be fixated.”
Oswald doesn’t brush Ed off, but he doesn’t say anything else either. With a palpable cringe, he adjusts his position, arching his back against the stress of the binder. Ed notices that his breathing is laboured, and that’s the final straw.
“Look, it’s affecting your condition,” Ed says, finding his voice unexpectedly tinged with softness. “Will you please take it off now?”
Oswald’s posture turns unmistakably defensive. As Ed sobers from their spell of openness, he wonders if he has been too delicate. Insultingly delicate. The angled set of Oswald’s shoulders is not a good sign; Ed has seen him tense up like this in the past, and it usually precedes taking a fatal swipe at someone with a switchblade.
Contrary to this, and to Ed’s utter surprise, Oswald simply nods. “I’ll need some help,” he says curtly. “Get it over with.”
“You can cover yourself,” Ed offers.
Oswald gives a withering scoff as he stands up. “That’s implied.”
“Nothing wrong with effective communication.”
Amused by Ed’s frankness, Oswald lets his lips curve upward in something close to a smile. He gives a demonstrative pull at the hem of his binder and asserts, “Help me out.”
Ed obliges and moves closer to offer assistance, but Oswald quickly adds,
“—From behind, please.”
“Right,” Ed mutters, slipping behind Oswald. Cautious of the stab wound, he puts his hands on Oswald’s back and pulls at the binder, helping Oswald raise his arms and brace against the tug of the tight elastic. Ed faces away as he pulls the garment over Oswald’s head, but he still hears his choked-back noises of discomfort.
While Ed lays the bloodied binder on the desk, Oswald moves immediately to cover himself. When Ed turns around again, Oswald is skilfully shielding himself with the ruined shirt that they’d previously used as gauze, pressing it possibly too tightly over his upper body. At the least, there’s still some pressure on the wound.
Ed hastily takes off his own jacket and drapes it over Oswald, who glances down at the thing in distaste but doesn’t shrug it off his shoulders. He’s hunching over at an angle, and Ed doesn’t feel fully reassured yet.
“Can you breathe okay?” Ed asks.
“It’s better now,” Oswald says, though he sounds unhappy about it. His breaths are deep as if he’s catching up on his air intake. He straightens his back, stretching stiffly, then sits down on the edge of the desk again.
Ed makes an effort to keep his eyes off of Oswald out of politeness, and checks his watch. “Thirty five minutes until Dr Jefferson gets here.”
“Fantastic,” Oswald says, sounding uninterested.
Ed isn’t fully sure what he ought to be doing right now. He decides to busy himself by patting his pockets down, checking if he still has the wad of twenties he’d lifted from Slicer’s wallet—no luck, he figures he must have lost them when he was tumbling about with the rest of the gang. He does find his own gun tucked into his waistband though, which he pulls out and idly dumps on the table, pointed away from the two of them.
It’s Oswald who breaks the silence after a short couple of minutes. “Are we going to talk about it?” he asks, a strange edge to his voice.
“Oh,” Ed says. “Which part?”
“Which—?” Oswald echoes incredulously. “The gender part, Edward.”
Ed pauses. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Oswald gives a huff of laughter, but there’s a cold undertone to it. “I think it would be impertinent to gloss over it.”
“I didn’t want to confront you.”
“But that was your impulse?”
Ed furrows his brow thoughtfully. “Not confrontation. But I’m inclined towards a comprehensive exchange of information, yes.”
“God, you’re fond of fancy words,” Oswald mutters, although to be fair, he’s the one who just used the word ‘impertinent’. He sighs and carries on, “I don’t want to talk about this, but I don’t want it going ignored either. I know you like infodumping. Do me a favour and summarise, and I’ll correct you when you insult me.”
“Okay.”
When Ed spends a long time silently considering what to say, Oswald waves his hand irately. “Please stop overthinking,” he implores.
As if brushing away his thoughts, Ed gives a shake of his head and finally speaks. “You’re a transgender man,” he offers, apparently not shying away from the proper language, “Transmasculine at the least. Pre op—or uninterested in medical transition, though I suspect that may not be the case.”
Oswald concedes with a nod of his head.
“You didn’t want me to know,” Ed continues listing on, “And I imagine you’re very uncomfortable about being coerced into disclosing. You’re worried about how I’ll view you, despite your best judgement, and... you’re unfortunately prone to ignoring medical advice to suit yourself. But I think we already knew that.”
Oswald is unsure whether to be alarmed or fascinated. Ed hasn’t missed a trick.
Blandly, Ed asks, “Is that everything?”
“Yes,” Oswald says hoarsely.
“Do you need to correct me on anything?”
“It doesn’t seem so.”
Ed gives a satisfied nod, and with the matter dealt with, he sits down in the chair beside the desk. He’s relatively content to go back to busying himself as he supervises Oswald’s condition in the background.
“Ed,” Oswald says. “Look at me.”
Cautiously, Ed meets Oswald’s gaze.
The eye contact is charged, but it seems like that’s unintentional. Oswald looks something close to lost. There’s hesitance mixed in with the usual haughty annoyance on his face. “I don’t know how to feel about this,” he says.
“Which part?”
Oswald covers his eyes with his hand, and complains, “If you keep asking that, I swear...”
“I like clarifying.”
“—About you knowing, Ed,” Oswald interjects, letting his hand fall from his face. “And addressing it. And having you undress me immediately after finding out.”
Ed is tempted to apologise, but that doesn’t seem like the right thing to do. He’s also tempted to give an abundance of reassurance, but yet again he doesn’t think that would sit well with Oswald. He finds his gaze faltering once more, drifting down to the old paperwork that sits on the desk.
“You can look at me, you know.”
Ed startles and looks up at Oswald again. “I know you said I could, but I figured you might not want me to.”
“It’s done,” Oswald says with some gentleness. “You already know. So I don’t want you shrinking away, even if I might not... pass, right now.”
To Oswald’s credit, he seems to be particularly good at using his body language to make his chest look ambiguous, but Ed knows that isn’t the point.
Their gazes are still locked together when Oswald says, “Time check on Doc Jefferson?”
Ed checks his watch and informs Oswald that there’s twenty five more minutes to wait.
Oswald languishes. He reluctantly asks, “Do you want to talk about anything else before she comes?”
For a brief second, Ed’s heart seizes with selfish impulse. He’s tempted. He’s been presented an opportunity to speak freely; he could easily use it to address his own harshly blossoming feelings for Oswald, and in kind, to ask about Oswald’s presumably coffin-dead love for him. But it would be a cruel thing to bring up what has always been a contentious topic for them while Oswald is in the middle of this ordeal.
Even the voice in the back of Ed’s mind is beginning to sound weary as it whispers ‘not the time.’
“No,” Ed says. “You?”
Oswald licks his lips. He’s clearly trying to psych himself up. It seems like his question to Ed might’ve been a gambit to allow him to share his own thoughts without making it seem that that was his intention. “I want to tell you,” he begins, “You reacted well. I hadn’t imagined it would go this well.”
“I’m not sure that’s something that deserves complimenting.”
“It’s not a compliment,” Oswald says, lukewarm. “It’s an observation. I want to... wrap my head around it.”
“All right. Go ahead,” Ed says, like it’s as simple as setting your mind to it.
Usually an irritating implication like this would be grounds for snapping at Ed. But Oswald doesn’t snap. He fumbles for several moments instead, his brow furrowed, before giving up. “It’s not about being outed. I don’t like when you take care of me, Ed,” he forces out. “When you’re good to me.”
His words hang in the air like settling smoke.
Has Ed been misstepping this entire time? He knows that Oswald doesn’t like to let any softness linger between them anymore. He knows that their roles have shifted, with Ed falling into a slight tendency to care for Oswald, and Oswald recoiling from any kind of pattern of dependence, whether he’s the one giving or receiving.
But what could Oswald possibly want if he doesn’t want to be treated decently? Does he want Ed’s ambivalence again? His violence?
“It isn’t because I don’t want you looking after me, not exactly,” Oswald amends at the confusion painted on Ed’s face, and Ed’s mental spiral stops in its tracks. “It’s because it’s confronting.”
It’s hard to hear Oswald say that, because frankly the same thing is true for Ed—although possibly for very different reasons.
“I don’t like this alliance,” Oswald mutters, nodding between the two of them to illustrate their association. “I know it’s a practical thing. A trust thing. But I feel like I’m on shaky ground.”
“Why? We’ve made promises. I don’t hurt you; you don’t hurt me. You’re safe unless you’ve got a knife behind your back.”
This seems to rile Oswald up further. “I don’t like feeling safe around you. I end up—” He flaps his hand distastefully, “Feeling things.”
“‘Things’,” Ed echoes. He tries not to feel threatened by the bitter twist of Oswald’s expression as he’s met by unbidden memories of Oswald’s fury clashing with his own calculated rage. “Things?”
“It reopens old wounds.”
Something sinks, cold like a stone, in Ed’s chest. He can’t help from glancing down at the bullet scar on Oswald’s stomach, still partly exposed. It’s a perfect physical representation for the metaphor of old wounds.
“Not that,” Oswald says, following his gaze. “Before that.”
The feeling inside Ed changes shape entirely, turning into something tight and hot. An onslaught of flickering thoughts and emotions rush through him like a corrupted videotape on fast-forward.
Idolising Oswald. The golden feeling of standing by his side. The glow of true friendship and of unconditional trust.
The savage rage that tore through Ed when he found out what Oswald had done.
Hating Oswald. Spurning his pleas and rejecting his confessions, loathing the idea of his love. Torturing him, threatening him, dreaming about ripping his life apart until there was nothing left. Turning him blunt with every fresh attack.
And all of this was before the damn bullet scar.
Ed is wary with his response. “How long before that?” he manages, glancing distractedly at Oswald’s scar once again. There’s a drip of blood just beside it, having trailed down from the mostly drying cut on his side.
Oswald lets out a fraught sigh and lifts his free hand to shield his eyes, his body slumping as if suddenly exhausted. “This was a terrible time for me to bring this up,” he says, dropping his hand limply from his face.
It seems like an attempt to end the conversation, and Ed finds himself alarmed at the thought of leaving this unresolved. “Please tell me what you’re getting at,” he says, “Because I’d really prefer to know, and I don’t know what sort of meaning to infer from what you’ve said.”
Briefly, Oswald closes his eyes like he needs a break, even if it’s only for a second and a half. Everything about his manner speaks of resignation, from the grey shadows on his face to the tired slope of his shoulders under Ed’s too-large jacket. His lips tighten as if he doesn’t really want to speak, and then he says, “I’m tired of loving you, Ed.”
“Oh,” Ed chokes out, in the most underwhelming response imaginable.
Oswald waits a good few seconds before straightening up and taking ahold of Ed’s wrist. But it’s not a tender gesture, and the warm touch of his fingers doesn’t linger. He only checks Ed’s watch, then releases his grip and dispassionately murmurs, “Time check, ten minutes.” His expression is empty, and he certainly doesn’t look like a man who just confessed to loving someone who attempted to murder him (—someone who, briefly, successfully murdered him).
Ed is stunned. Have they moved past this topic? Is he just supposed to accept this as part of the background noise of their relationship now? “No,” he finds himself snapping.
“‘No’ what?” Oswald asks, appearing offended that Ed would even attempt to continue this conversation.
“We’re not breezing past that, Oswald, that’s not fair—”
Oswald seethes. “Unlike the gender thing, I think this is something it would be very pertinent to breeze past.”
“Oswald—”
“What could you possibly have to say, Ed? That you love me too?” Oswald derides, entirely mocking.
Ed doesn’t reply: he can’t, because his throat has closed up, and his jaw has tensed so hard he doesn’t know if his teeth will ever unclench. His skin feels hot with anxiety and shame.
Oswald sobers, staring at Ed, his expression both terrified and terrifying. When he speaks, his voice is jarringly quiet. “Ed?”
“What?” Ed manages. He can’t bring himself to say anything else, even though it’s surely impossible to dismiss this as ‘not the time’.
“Edward,” Oswald says insistently, his voice shaking.
It’s at this inopportune moment that the office door opens, courtesy of an early Dr Jefferson, and the fragility of the moment is shattered into approximately a million pieces.