Work Text:
As much as Edward loves flaunting his red hair and green eyes, his appearance is not natural (though he does go to great lengths to keep up the glitzy illusion).
In truth, Edward is a brown-eyed brunette.
Perhaps he could’ve made his peace with it if it hadn’t made him goddamned invisible in his childhood. Edward grew up blending in with the crowd, and Edward grew up hating it. At the very least, people had given so little thought to the shy girl dressed in ambiguous and ill-fitting clothes that he’d passed as male quite easily.
But suppression was so hard to bear. As a teen, he’d been increasingly tempted to snap, to start grabbing people by the collar and begging them to see him... but with his awkward posture and faltering voice, he knows they probably never would’ve taken him seriously. And then he wouldn’t have just been invisible, he would have been invisible and humiliated.
Even as an adult, now extravagant and brassy, Edward finds the idea of being overlooked so devastating that he goes to egregious lengths to prevent it. These days his sparkling wit does a fine job of getting people’s attention—but of course, he’s always partial to having an extra edge if there’s some advantage he can snatch. And his looks are an easy thing to remedy, fixable with just a little ginger hair dye and a pair of green contacts.
Although sometimes, having a distinctive look is a drawback. Any Gothamite can recognise the Riddler in a flash by his emerald-green suits and red hair, so going covert is somewhat of a problem—if he ever, regrettably, needs to do so. But once again he’s a smart cookie, and there are remedies for everything. His usual fix for that situation is to take his contacts out and strip his hair back to its natural colour. Problem solved.
It’s the sunny month of July when Edward finds himself needing to go stealth again. The dreary regret he feels as he strips the dye and packs away his contacts is a stark opposite to the warm light streaming through his window.
He holes up in a safe house with Jonathan, whose appearance out of costume is so undistinctive that he doesn’t even have to change it to fade into the woodwork. Spoilsport that Jonathan is, Edward has never known him to bother sprucing himself up once in his life. While Jonathan does wear formal button-ups every now and then, he has refused every one of Edward’s attempts to decorate him with glitter or bright colour or spandex.
While undercover, shopping runs become Edward’s prime source of fun (—that, and poring over the ninety-eight library books he lifted before the two of them went stealth.)
As it turns out, there’s something just a little thrilling about walking through a crowd of idiots who have no idea who Edward is, what he’s capable of, or how many times he’s been on the front page of the Gotham Gazette. And walking with Jonathan only makes disappearing all that much easier. Jonathan’s civilian look is so drab that it seems to give secondhand camouflage to Edward, to the point where Edward can loiter around public places draping himself all over Jon without even drawing a glance from passers by. Folks’ eyes easily gloss over them, and unexpectedly, it gives Edward a stupid thrill to be invisible for once.
Jonathan manages to turn being overlooked into a positive, he supposes. It helps a lot that Jonathan is more lenient when Edward is sulking about his looks—he lets Edward kiss his face and grants a few rare smiles and touches to Edward as something of a treat. Though, just like with everything else in life, he does so with a vague sense of detachment.
“Dependence is unattractive on you, Edward,” Jonathan says as Edward sits on his lap and forcibly wraps Jon’s arms around him.
Persevering, Edward settles against him. “You’re misguided, sweetheart. Everything is attractive on me.” He pets fondly at Jonathan’s cheek.
Jonathan sighs. “Grabby,” he mutters, pulling Edward’s hand from his face. “I’ve got a mind to tie your damn hands together, y’know.”
Edward would be put off—but Jonathan’s actions belie his words. He holds Edward’s hand in his own with a gentle grip, and settles Ed’s body steadily against his chest.
—
The two of them have been undercover for a couple of weeks when Edward finally has a fantastic epiphany. He hadn’t had any epiphanies yet this month, so he figures one was due.
“Jonathan,” he says gleefully, perching on a seat at the table and propping his chin on his elbows.
Jonathan is staring down at a fine-ruled notepad. Edward cannot imagine that it’s more captivating than himself, but Jon seems thoroughly committed to the spread of formulas and chemical lists in front of him. He doesn’t look up at first. Brow furrowed, he spends a leisurely moment ticking several boxes on the page, then finally sets the notepad down on the table and meets Edward’s eye. “Yes?”
“I have a bright idea. Luminously bright.”
“Oh, dear,” Jonathan says, his shoulders sinking in resignation.
Edward waves his hand flippantly. “Don’t fuss, this one is really good.” He takes a refreshing breath and dives in: “I have the most delicious plan to tease the Bat.”
“Again? Does it really do that much good to taunt the poor rodent?”
“Bats are chordates,” Edward corrects compulsively.
Jonathan raises a brow at him, and when he replies, the lilt of his Southern accent comes out: “I have a minor in biology, Edward, but a rat’s a rat.”
After a pause, Edward relents. He inclines his head to the side then pitches himself off his seat and begins pacing. “Regardless of what species he is, that pretentious little crusader needs to be put in his place. You know it, I know it, even Batman knows it, deep down.” Then Edward falters, and purses his lips in consideration. “All right, maybe Batman doesn’t know it, but that doesn’t mean I can’t have some fun playing with him!”
Jonathan stares dubiously at Edward for a long while. “What sort of fun?”
“Tricksy fun,” Edward says. “Covert mayhem. No one will ever know.”
“Covert?” Jonathan murmurs. This is a bizarre thing to hear from Edward, who has been a sparkling showman since the day Jonathan met him (and long before that, too). “That doesn’t sound like you. What’s the point if no one knows about it?”
Edward gives Jonathan a smile, both dark and absurdly joyful. “We’ll know.”
Though Jonathan isn’t fully swayed, he gives a noncommittal hum.
Suddenly the unsettling quality vanishes from Edward’s smile, and he lets out an abrasively self-satisfied laugh before diving to kiss Jonathan, electric with delight at his own plan. Jonathan can’t help but be sceptical of the sting but Edward’s joy makes him turn soft, and he kisses back as if he wholly approves, hands sliding under Edward’s jacket and coming to rest on his hips as he yields to Ed’s touch, like always.
—
Jonathan is tired.
Talking Edward through his flights of fancy is a drudging exercise, especially considering that each and every time, Edward thinks he has concocted The Plot To End All Plots.
To give Edward credit, most of his ideas are sharp and creative enough to rival (or sometimes surpass) Jonathan’s own. Edward is brilliant, endlessly so, and the terrifying focus he can put into his schemes is astounding. However sometimes this focus is—misguided, perhaps. Edward doesn’t seem to have any way to tell the difference between his breathtakingly smart epiphanies, and what Jonathan can only describe as his stupid ideas.
While it’s decidedly not in Jonathan’s nature to feel empathy, he finds himself almost reluctant to shut Edward down when he sees the guileless determination on Edward’s face, directed lovingly at his newest plan.
Edward sits cross-legged on the couch next to Jonathan, dressed in casualwear to make him look unassuming. He could almost pass for normal, Jonathan thinks, if only he didn’t have that razor edged glint in his eye every time he talked about his new pet plot.
Edward’s plot, as it turns out, is to take advantage of his current drab look and parade himself in the Bat’s face, with the view that the Bat will never recognise him if he’s stripped of his usual style.
“This is genius,” Edward babbles, mostly to himself.
In truth, this is one of the weakest ideas Edward has ever had. Blame it on his pathological need to feel control over how people see him, Jonathan figures... a lingering remnant from his childhood, tied far too pertinently to his history.
“I’m not quite seeing it,” Jonathan says flatly.
Irked, Edward says, “Then open your eyes. And splash some water on your face, while you’re at it. You look half dead.”
“Charmer.”
While Edward always has ruddy cheeks like a child from a Dickens novel, Jonathan’s skin has a grey tone beneath his natural dark complexion. He looks ill all the time, but he‘s not self conscious about it, and he skims easily over Edward’s blunt comment.
Jonathan carries on, “So the plan is for Batman not to recognise you. To what end?”
As he waits for a reply, he folds his arms and squarely faces Edward, who is so pleased with himself that he can barely sit still. Ed paints an uncanny picture, all long limbs and weird angles as he balances there like a bush baby.
“My own sense of satisfaction,” Edward announces in reply.
Well. At least he’s self aware.
“Just—“ Jonathan begins. “Let me get it straight. You’re not fixing to hustle anyone. And you don’t want the Bat to figure out it’s you at all, not even as an endgame. It’s an utter secret, forever.”
“Now you’re getting it,” Edward says, his eyes sparkling.
Jonathan’s eyes, meanwhile, are dimly narrowed. “Is this what stir crazy looks like?”
Edward’s reply is instantaneous and cutting: “Don’t ‘crazy’ me.”
Jonathan sobers. Admittedly that was not a smart thing to say to Edward in particular, and they have had this conversation before. But before Jonathan has a chance to say anything else, Edward seems to leap straight past the misstep.
“It’s a valuable use of my time. And it’s fun, Jonathan,” Ed emphasises, before adding as an aside, “A concept regrettably lost on you, dear.” He gives Jonathan a derisive once-over.
“Fun isn’t lost on me,” Jonathan says. His hand rises to stroke at the side of Edward’s neck, and he eyes Ed in a manner both bizarrely clinical and heated, all at once. “Not entirely.”
Edward chews the inside of his mouth, thoughtful for a moment before settling on pleased. He situates himself closer to Jonathan and slings an affectionate arm over his shoulder, then dips to press his mouth to Jonathan’s neck. Naturally, Jonathan expects kisses. Edward bites instead, inappropriately hard, and murmurs, “So you’ll come along?”
Jonathan hardly reacts to the brutal sting of Edward’s teeth. Well, at the very least, he doesn’t react in pain. If it were another time, he might consider indulging himself with the distraction and letting Ed press him into the couch, but instead he sits wearily still. “You’re aware I’m opposed to this.”
“Yes,” Edward says, kissing his jaw above the bite mark, “And your feelings are invalid and wrong.”
Jonathan growls. Although he doesn’t put much menace into it, anyone else would have the good sense to be shaken up.
Edward ceases his kisses, and for a moment Jonathan is surprised that he’s backed down—then Edward immediately starts nuzzling at his cheek instead, humming in idle satisfaction. “Stay home if you like, Jon.”
“Oh?”
“I do love you,” Edward says, overindulgently, “—But I can have a good time without you there, easy. You’ll only be missing the sport, Scarecrow.”
The unexpected use of Jonathan’s pseud startles him. This is Edward’s intention, obviously. To catch him off guard and rope him in through the Rogues angle. It’s a flimsy play, considering that Edward knows Jon isn’t in the game for mayhem and merrymaking like some of their kind (inclusive of Ed)... but Edward’s desperation to trip him up makes Jonathan’s stomach twist up a little bit. He fights against the confronting reminder of his weak spot for Edward, then he gives up and thaws.
If Edward is going to get himself battered, Jonathan might as well be on the sidelines to scrape his remains off the concrete.
“I’m there as your handler,” Jonathan relents.
“Excellent,” Edward says, clasping his hands together as he basks in his victory. Then his demeanour changes, not losing its intensity but turning sharper instead. Apropos of nothing, he asks, “Can I get you off now?”
“God, Edward,” Jonathan mutters as Edward rests his fingers on his waistband. “No. Not while you’re fixating.”
Surprisingly, Edward doesn’t bother denying that he’s fixated. He hums noncommittally and his hands withdraw from Jonathan’s belt, settling on his waist instead, just below his ribcage. “Frigid,” Edward mutters with no real intention to it. “Can I kiss you?”
Jonathan exhales quietly and lifts a hand to Edward’s cheek, his expression permissive. It’s quite a clear nonverbal ‘yes’, but Edward just watches and waits, until Jonathan gets sick of it and leans to capture Ed’s mouth himself.
It’s a gentle kiss, fond and familiar even despite Jonathan’s irritation and Ed’s buzzing energy. In all Jonathan’s forty years, he’s never met someone who makes him soft like Edward does; who has the ability to rile him up and make him yield entirely at the same time.
Edward is an oddity, Jonathan thinks as he leans into the press of Ed’s lips.
It’s ludicrous to think that Edward is the only one who’s ever truly challenged Jonathan, and yet here Ed is, about to fling himself into a plan that will inevitably fail and inevitably upset him. And Jonathan knows that Edward’s resolve is catastrophically unstoppable. With his mouth still parted against Edward’s, Jonathan slows the kiss and lays a hand on Ed’s bicep, more sensitively than he intends to.
Too perceptive, Edward notices the hesitance of the touch and breaks them apart. “You want me to stop?” Edward asks immediately, well aware of Jonathan’s on and off bouts of touch aversion.
“Don’t stop,” Jonathan says. He squeezes Edward’s arm and guides him closer, settling Edward against him in a position less sexually charged and more intimate—a cuddly position, Jonathan begrudgingly admits to himself. “Just come here.”
Edward goes easily, content with any kind of attention that Jonathan might be willing to give. He seems especially pleased when Jonathan touches his hair, and presses a kiss to the edge of his temple where the chestnut of his hairline blurs against the colour of his skin. “Jon,” Edward murmurs.
Feeling unusually lenient, Jonathan lets himself continue with the gentle touches, brushing his mouth to Edward’s cheek now.
“Oh,” Edward breathes, and for a moment Jonathan thinks it’s because of the affectionate attention, before Edward dreamily adds, “Oh, I’m going to humiliate the Bat. And he won’t even know I’ve bested him.”
Jonathan sighs. He gives up on the kisses.
“I’m going to stand right in front of his face,” Edward fantasises, “And laugh at him.”
Dissuading Edward from his current epiphany is clearly hopeless by now but Jonathan tugs at him anyway, gripping at Ed’s shoulder more firmly than before, though he avoids digging his pointed nails into the flesh there. “Edward,” he says as a last ditch effort, “Please do not do that.”
Around an hour later, Edward Does That.
Jonathan watches from the sidelines under cover of shadows, refusing to participate as Edward marches up to Batman in the evening light, dressed tamely in his undercover attire but with a painfully distinctive strut to his step.
To Edward’s credit, the Bat doesn’t immediately recognise him.
In fact, Batman seems nonplussed, curious that a random citizen has managed to corner him in the midst of one of his slinky nighttime romps. And with Edward’s genuinely happy smile and his themeless aesthetic, Batman probably doesn’t even consider him a threat right now, only a nosy civilian.
Jonathan finds himself almost impressed—not by Ed’s idea, which he still maintains is moronic, but by Edward’s sheer dumb luck that the Bat can’t recognise him without his shtick.
The endeavour is going remarkably well.
Edward’s methods usually are not to Jonathan’s taste. There’s a reason for that. Ed is theatrical, narcissistic, and downright pathological, and it doesn’t serve him well.
Rapidly, Edward’s faults always seem to catch up with him, and this incident ends up being no different. In the end Edward’s undoing is the riddle he offers Batman, falling unbidden from his loud mouth.
Really, a riddle.
Because nothing screams ‘normal citizen, definitely not a rogue!’ like a convoluted puzzle. Jonathan fights the urge to whisk Edward away from the Bat by force and stands his ground in the shadows instead, while Edward digs himself further and further into the ground with his compulsive spiel.
About half a minute later a thought hits Jonathan—the solution to the riddle Edward posed to Batman. With exponentially growing exasperation, it dawns on Jon that the answer is ‘a disguise’. Subtle.
While Batman has made no attempt to answer Edward’s riddle, he has made a move to whip out a pair of cuffs from his irritating utility belt, and is now pinning Edward’s hands behind his back.
“No,” Edward says, increasingly alarmed, “You can’t arrest me, I haven’t done a damn thing. And you don’t have the rights.”
“Nygma,” Batman sighs, his voice overly deep, “This is a citizen’s arrest. You’re wanted for about eleven counts of library theft this month, and, uh.” He gestures one handedly. “All of that Riddler business, too.”
Edward thrashes as Batman clicks the cuffs over his wrists. “You don’t know I’m the Riddler.”
Batman looks about as tired as Jonathan feels. “Edward,” the Bat chides, as if Edward is his wilful teenage son and not a thirty-six year old career criminal.
“I don’t look anything like him,” Edward declares as Batman takes ahold of his arms and starts frogmarching him away. “Sure, we’re both white men in the 18-40 demographic, but that’s statistically meaningless. You should know that, Batman.” Edward’s words are self assured, but his tone is becoming more fraught by the second.
It’s almost painful to watch Edward’s doomed plan collapse so inevitably.
Batman doesn’t even bother to indulge Edward with a reply, and Jonathan feels a tiny, distant stab of disapproval that Edward isn’t getting even a crumb of recognition for his efforts.
“I’m unrecognisable,” Edward insists, shouting the words out as Batman drags him down the street. “I’m invisible—“
Jonathan raises a hand to his brow and turns away, trying to ignore Edward’s chagrined protests. “Dammit, Edward,” he mutters flatly.
Well. No use throwing himself out there in Edward’s defence and outing the both of them, Jonathan thinks. There won’t be anyone left to deal with bail.
—
After Jonathan bails Edward out and bundles him back to the safe house, Edward collapses—both metaphorically and physically, flinging himself across Jonathan’s lap and lamenting his failure.
“Now, now,” Jonathan coaxes, threading his fingers through Edward’s brown hair in practiced motions. This is not his first time caring for the soggy puddle that Edward Nygma melts into after one of his hit-or-miss schemes inevitably misses. “All’s not lost, Edward.”
“It’s not?” Edward says against Jonathan’s knee.
Jonathan sighs and tugs at Edward’s miserably pliant body until he’s sat upright and they’re side by side.
Edward looks a sight in his crumpled stealth clothes: they’re grey all over and painfully mismatched to his personal style, and Jonathan finds himself smoothing down the creases distastefully, anything to fix Edward up. Once satisfied, he draws Edward close and squeezes him.
“Of course not, darlin’,” Jonathan murmurs conspiratorially. “You’ll be due another epiphany in a few weeks.”