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With all the drama in Gotham, Lee always figured that she’d get injured at some point or another.
She had not expected it to happen while picking up yoghurt at the grocery store.
The floor tiles of the dairy aisle seem to be loose and there is a massive and surprisingly deep gap between two of them (a characteristic Narrows safety violation), and Lee’s ankle twists when she steps into it as she picks up a pack of yoghurts.
She knows immediately that it’s a sprain, and a nasty one. Despite the pain, her first impulse is to complain to the manager about safety laws, but she‘s well aware that they probably won’t have the cash to fix up something like this. In the end, she collects herself and wobbles to the counter to pay for her yoghurt with a grimace on her face. The cashier glances her up and down and tells her she should go see the Doc, before giving an abrupt cringe of realisation after a few more seconds of looking at Lee.
At home, Lee examines her ankle. No need for further investigation. A sprain.
She ices it, picks up a pair of elbow crutches, and gets back to her daily life. Unfortunately it’s quite a painful sprain so she is somewhat limited: she limps, and she needs a few rest periods each day.
Ed is incredibly alarmed when he finds out about the injury, and he requests to know who did this to her and if she did anything particularly awful to warrant it.
She blames yoghurt. Ed’s anger dies, and he falters and gives up.
Out of what Lee assumes is silent concern, he ends up spending a fair amount of extra time at her apartment after that. They usually spend most of their time apart, each concerned with their own business, but Ed seems to have decided to ease up on his projects for a few days. Most of the time when she makes her way into the living room on her crutches, he is already sitting there reading. He must’ve flown through about twenty books by now.
Ed decides that the right thing to do is to fetch all their meals and make Lee beverages. He reads, and he glances periodically at her, and he brews her tea. An inordinate amount of tea.
“Ed, it’s not a cold. I don’t really need hot drinks,” she says, side-eyeing him when he sets another teacup down in front of her.
“Oh,” he says, “Well. Yes.”
Four hours later he brings her another cup of tea with extra honey and ginger. He cannot explain himself.
He’s been acting oddly ever since she got hurt.
He’s been feeling odd, too. Ed is no stranger to injury and drama, and he usually isn’t particularly compassionate but he keeps staring at Lee and at her ankle. He assumes that perhaps he is turning soft with empathy, but then one afternoon she stumbles and makes a noise of pain, and he simply finds himself watching curiously without feeling an ounce of rue.
Lee isn’t aware of his lack of compassion, but she has certainly noticed his odd behaviour. She isn’t sure what’s going on but she herself ends up acting in ways she can’t rationalise either. Nothing too dramatic, but noticeably enough that she wonders what on earth she’s doing.
The actual medical advice for a sprain is to avoid walking with a limp since the ankle has no broken bones and can tolerate weight-bearing, but for reasons Lee can’t explain, she lets herself wobble anyway. Although she could probably avoid limping if she put enough effort in, it’s admittedly natural to limp because her ankle hurts, so she doesn’t worry too much about her own motivations for doing so.
It’s only coincidence that Ed stares every time she limps.
She stares back at him the first few times, guessing at first that he’s overly concerned or maybe that she’s making him uncomfortable since he’s used to seeing her as invincible. He looks upset, she thinks.
She thinks. She’s not sure.
Over time, she becomes less and less certain, because she begins to see other emotions as well as agitation on Ed’s face when he sees her on her feet.
“It’s best if I’m moving about for at least a few hours a day,” she defends at one point, wondering if maybe he wants her to rest instead.
“I know,” Ed offers. His brow twitches and he glances her up and down. “If anything, I think you ought to be up more. Get back into the swing of things.”
Lee gives a faltering nod. This has given her no answers whatsoever.
—
Only a day goes by before Ed says something weird again. Lee has just returned home from the clinic, having managed a day with shortened hours, when Ed randomly says,
“You shouldn’t use crutches.”
When Lee glances over at Ed, he is not even looking at her. He’s reading, his nose still tucked in ‘Planet Earth’s Most Disturbing Diseases (With Illustrations)’. She furrows her brow slightly and withdraws her arms from the elbow slots of her crutches, tucking the crutches against the edge of Ed’s chair so she can sit down on the couch opposite him.
“Why not?” she asks, peering at him.
“A cane would be better.”
Lee settles back against the couch cushions and states, “Not for a sprain.”
“No, it would be better,” Ed says, incorrigible.
There’s a long pause. Lee says, “You recall that I have a doctorate in medicine.” ‘And you only have a bachelors in forensics’ goes unsaid, because Lee generally prefers to avoid tearing people down if possible, even when it would be ridiculously satisfying to do so.
“I don’t mean to—” Ed mutters, “Mansplain.”
“What did you mean to do, then?”
Ed hasn’t yet managed to answer when Lee’s ankle twinges, and she leans down and presses her hand to the lower part of her leg as if to stifle the discomfort. Dammit. She ought to fetch another ice pack. She glances up at Ed again and waits for him to answer, but apparently he has become totally distracted by her ankle.
Ed does not voice his thoughts, but right now he can’t stop thinking about how Oswald used to hold onto his leg like that, protectively, when it was hurting. Oswald also used to frown in the same way that Lee is doing now.
Oswald used to do a lot of the things that Lee has been doing this past week.
It’s making him angry to be reminded of Oswald, Ed decides. It’s logical. Although this feeling doesn’t really match the way he’s experienced anger in the past. He feels somehow overcome, for lack of a better word.
“I’m going to make tea,” Ed announces.
“Ed, I—“
“Riddler,” Ed corrects.
Lee tuts, and with only some degree of condescension, she says, “Riddler, sure. I don’t really like tea.”
“Who the hell doesn’t want tea when they have a sore throat?”
Utterly baffled, Lee’s mouth falls open. “Sore throat? I’ve got a sprain. You know that.”
Ed shrinks back in humiliation, shocked at himself. He doesn’t know what just happened—the wires must have gotten crossed in his head somehow. Even if Oswald and tea and certain other things may have been on his mind lately, Oswald never had a sore throat while Ed knew him, so this moment of confusion makes no sense. Although, he did once offer Ed tea for Ed’s own sore throat, tenderly and cautiously with the smallest smile while they sat by the fire—
“I’ve got brain damage,” Ed says vehemently, and it’s technically true, or at least it was for a time, but in all honesty he doesn’t think that’s the sole explanation for what he just said. His emotions have been doing certain things lately, and it’s making his thoughts slip out of place. It just hasn’t affected him quite so obviously until now.
“All right,” Lee says, though she’s still uneasy. “‘No thank you’ to the tea.”
Ed nods. He makes a mug of tea for himself anyway, and drinks it alone.
—
It’s a funny thing: in the first few days following Lee’s injury, Ed doesn’t kiss her or even touch her at all. She figures once again that he is treating her carefully. It would make sense. But she still finds herself curious, because some of his behaviour this week has been simply uncanny.
He’s edgy when she gets too close, and he all but freezes up when she gives him a goodnight kiss on the cheek on the fifth day just to see what will happen.
On the sixth day, his staring is worse. And then it all comes to a bizarre crux when he bumps into her in the slim hallway of her apartment that afternoon: she wobbles for a second and he steadies her, and then out of the blue he kisses her, hard and breathless, almost sweepingly, and she gets caught up in it for a good minute before she pulls away in total bemusement.
“Ed, what...“ she begins.
“I don’t know, I’m not sure,” he says all in a rush before Lee has even finished her question.
And he really doesn’t know. Lately he wants her badly, more than he’s wanted her in a long while. He considers lying and telling her that he’s been very worried about her. He also considers taking a minute to sit down and analyse his own motivations.
Instead Ed kisses her again, more gently, and she slips an arm out of her crutch to touch his face.
He breaks away after a moment and asks, “Can you tie your hair back?”
“What?” Lee half-laughs. Ed is prone to nonsequiturs, but this might just be too many weird things in a row.
Ed dips to meet her mouth again and she responds easily because it’s a satisfying kiss, but she’s still frowning in confusion. In contrast to the passion of the kisses, his hands are lingering in quite a lukewarm place—they rest awkwardly on her elbows, not in her hair or wrapped around her body. Yet another odd detail.
“Tie your hair back, please,” he murmurs against her mouth.
“Why?”
“It’s too long.”
Lee pulls back far enough to shake her head slightly. Her hair is tucked behind her ears and it hasn’t interfered with their kiss in the slightest, and she prefers keeping it loose. “It isn’t in the way.”
“That’s not—you don’t understand.”
“Ed, what’s going on?” she asks. “Tell me what you want.”
Ed has been possessed by some unexplainable energy. He feels wistful, antsy, and he can’t figure out why. “Can we have sex? Now?”
This is a little startling for Lee to hear, but she supposes that Ed has always been blunt. And this sort of eagerness is truthfully quite welcome. She finds herself tempted, because it’s so rare to see Ed open and guileless like this. He’s usually so suppressed, calculating in every move he makes, and he never lets that slip even when she asks him to try acting naturally.
“Maybe,” Lee says, avoiding showing too much enthusiasm so she can keep the upper hand, keep Ed just a little nervous. Ball is in her court. “My ankle is a bit of a mess,” she says honestly.
“No, I’ve thought about logistics,” Ed says.
Admittedly, he doesn’t just mean this week. He has been thinking about accommodation in sexual situations for a long time, in the back of his mind, just as something that he thinks it‘s prudent to consider. Never know if someone you’re fucking might need physical adaptations.
Lee pauses for a long while. Ed is practically vibrating in front of her, and there’s something about all the shit that’s happened over the past few days that is setting her on edge. Her ankle aches and she shifts her weight further onto her left foot to ease it.
Unconsciously, Ed’s eyes flick down to her leg.
“No,” Lee decides eventually, her tone lukewarm. “Let’s not. It’s a bad time. And that thing you said about a sore throat? I think you might be a little under the weather.”
“I’m not under the weather,” Ed says. “I’m fine, I promise.”
“Whether you’re fine or not, it isn’t happening, Ed.”
“Oh,” Ed says. If his stability is irrelevant to the matter, then there’s no point in trying to convince her that he’s okay. He gives a nod. He tries to ignore his deranged internal monologue, which is insisting that the two of them have to have sex at the soonest opportunity otherwise Lee’s leg will get better and they will have missed their chance.
He does not unpack this disturbed narrative.
Crutches still balanced under her arms, Lee detangles herself from where she’s tucked herself slightly between Ed’s feet and steps back. She gives him another glance, and when she sees the way he’s chewing at his lip and turning glassy-eyed, she knows she’s made the right decision.
—
For a day or two, things go back to being relatively normal. Normal enough.
Ed stops staring, and in fact, he almost stops looking at Lee altogether, which honestly isn’t totally out of character. She goes about her daily affairs and he goes about his: managing the clinic and the usual Narrows business on limited hours for her, and scribbling bizarre plans and devouring books for him.
Lee figures that the matter of Ed’s weirdness is over. His injury-related weirdness, at least. She has no hope for his general temperament.
Then Ed accosts her while she’s massaging her ankle after work, and asks her the mother of all nonsequiturs.
“Do you ever think about dressing a bit smarter?” Ed asks.
Lee turns around to face Ed, who is perched on the armchair with his feet tucked on the edge of the seat and a notepad resting on his knees.
“Excuse me?” Lee asks.
Ed has definitely said weirder things over the past week, but this is the most impudent. It’s almost an insult. Ed is often tactless by accident, his bluntness coming across more strongly than his actual intention, but it’s hard to take this as anything other than criticism.
Lee is dressed in black bell bottom pants and a dark red turtleneck along with a matte belt around her hips. Her lab coat lies half-folded on the edge of the couch. There‘s nothing scruffy about the outfit.
Right now, Ed himself is wearing his one and only favourite style of suit, which he has five duplicates of. If you can ignore its garish colour, then it’s stylish enough, but he’s a hypocrite if he’s going to talk about fashion when he has such a naively limited clothing range.
“I really think you should dress up,” Ed muses.
Lee’s eyes narrow. “Like, fancy dress...?” she asks with a vague sense of dread.
“No,” Ed says, like that idea is silly and only his idea makes sense. “Suits. You never wear ties. A cravat would look interesting.”
“Suits are impractical and I really don’t care for cravats, to be honest.”
“All right,” Ed says carefully. “Well, have you ever thought about gelling your hair? You use hairspray but you never do anything with your bangs.”
Lee continues to rub at the twinge in her ankle. Ed is not looking at her leg this time, but he has a distant expression on his face.
“Ed. Please tell me why you’re fixated on my fashion sense.”
“Queen of the Narrows ought to be a spruce goose, don’t you think? Power goes hand in hand with opulence.”
“Not in the Narrows,” Lee says, with flat insistence.
“Oh.”
Ed gives up and scribbles in his notebook once more. From what Lee can see of the page, he seems to be drawing a diagram, probably another engineering idea like the ones he often dreams up. They don’t make much sense these days, but they keep him happy enough.
Lee gets back to work on her ankle, working carefully around the tender spots.
“Well, perhaps you could get some stuff secondhand,” Ed continues shamelessly. “You always look powerful and you always look put-together, but I‘m very curious to see you in something formal. Something distinguished.”
Distinguished. Of everything, that is the word that does it for Lee. Something clicks at the very back of her mind.
In the past, Ed has used the word ‘distinguished’ repeatedly and for one person exclusively.
Jesus Christ. The leg, the hair, the suits. Lee desperately does not want to address the realisation that is creeping in.
“I think black and white and purple would go with your hair and skin tone,” Ed says.
It has taken a lot to push Lee to her limit, but she is finally sick of this, as much as she might be burningly curious of how far they could take this charade before Ed breaks and stops lying to himself.
It’s too much of a can of worms to open. And unfortunately, if Lee plans on making Ed confront his issues, she’ll end up having to confront her own, which she isn’t inclined to do right now.
She stands briskly and collects her crutches. “Look, I’m going back to the clinic,” she says with finality.
“A waistcoat would look nice, too,” Ed says wistfully, as if he didn’t even hear her.
He is compartmentalising again. He can’t stop himself.
Lee sighs through gritted teeth and disappears out the door, while Ed leans back in his seat and clasps his hands together, feeling absurdly pleased despite Lee’s irritation.
“And maybe a top hat,” he murmurs, entirely to himself.