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Gotham, NY, 2010
It’s hot as only New York can be when caught in a late summer heat-wave. The kind of heat where you sweat through your clothes and it still doesn’t help. The kind of heat that could make a person go crazy.
And lucky Ed, he gets to bike around delivering pizza and food to people who are spoiled enough to not have to go get it themselves. What a treat. Not.
He already feels sweaty and disheveled by the time he gets to the address for his first delivery. The address is for a third-floor walk-up, which doesn’t help, and the woman who answers the door takes one look at his sleeveless muscle tee and his sweat-mussed hair and glares at him. He waits in the doorway while she inspects her pasta to make sure, he supposes, it didn’t come with sweat instead of alfredo sauce. When she’s done, she looks at him down her nose, hands him one dollar, and all but slams the door to his face.
“You’re welcome,” Ed snarks to the closed door.
It’s not a great start to the night, and it doesn’t get much better. Ed is hot, sweating, and constantly chased by barking dogs and screaming toddlers. At one point, a little girl sits down on his foot and won’t let go of his leg, while her sister puts Princess Barbie stickers all over Ed’s other shoe. “Aren’t children precious?” the girls’ mother beams, snapping photos with her digital camera while her girls terrorize the delivery boy.
She also only tips a dollar, for a thirty-dollar order. Ed’s never had much faith in the Gotham public education system, but after tonight, he’s almost certain whoever’s running the elementary school math program needs to be murdered. Because none of these dumbasses seem to know what fifteen to twenty percent means.
His last delivery of the night is a stack of six pizzas, two orders of breadsticks, and a giant salad to a downtown loft apartment, the kind of fancy building (well, what passes for fancy in a town like this) with a month’s rent roughly the same as a year of Ed’s earnings. He hates places like these, with doormen and mild elevator music and pianists in the “entry lounge.” It’s so stupid. Ed knows most would say he’s just jealous, bitter. Because he can’t afford to live here, and they can. It’s not about that. It’s about the waste. The decadence. The fact that they know kids are suffering, and they could help. But they choose to spend their money on a pianist instead of feeding those poor, hungry orphanage babies whose cries still haunt Ed’s dreams at night.
Still, this is his job. He has to be here. So he rides the elevator up to the tenth floor and knocks on the door of the first apartment to the left. A man with slicked-back hair, one gold tooth, and an unbuttoned silk shirt answers the door. Ed wants to puke; the guy has Falcone’s Bitch written all over him. “Hey! Fellas! Pizza’s here!” he calls out cheerfully. “Just bring ’er on in and stick it in the kitchen, kid. Hey, what happened to your shoe?”
“Don’t ask,” Ed mutters as he hauls the pizzas into the kitchen and sets them down on the immaculate granite countertop. God, he hates rich people. The apartment is huge, open layout, polished-wood floors, shiny new appliances. The one problem is that the AC is apparently just as shitty here as it is in the rest of Gotham’s terrible apartment complexes, because it’s hot as fuck in here. Fans have been perched everywhere, the ceiling fan is on full blast, and there are glasses of half-melted ice everywhere, evidence of a desperate bid to stay hydrated.
He looks around. Eight men in the room, all of them in clothing that reeks of money, all of them missing their jackets and ties, some of them with open shirts. While most of the men are uncomfortably buff, several of them with waxed chests, all of them with slicked-back hair…there’s one of them who is different enough to catch Ed’s eye.
He’s…a beast. Heavy. Round belly, hairy chest, pecs so full and thick the man ought to be wearing a bra. His eyes are dark and inviting, his dark hair is a shoulder-length tangle that blends into his full, curly beard. His shirt is open and hanging off his shoulders so much that it might as well be off. His wrinkled pants cannot contain the swell of his belly. There’s an air of ferality to him that makes Ed’s heart skip a beat and oh, that’s not fair, no, this man is up here in this ivory tower with the rest of these jackasses; he’s one of them, another to be devoured by the wolves when Gotham rises up to eat the rich.
But, God. Ed kind of wants to save this rich bastard for his own personal feast. He hates himself for imagining his head on that pillowy chest, for picturing those strong arms closing around him, the plump hands feeding him bites of tasty food, those thunder-thighs a perfect cushion for Ed to use as his own personal seat. God, he’d love to sit on that lap. He feels himself flushing and is thankful he can blame it on the heat.
The other mobsters have descended on the pizza. (Ed knows they’re mobsters. He’s not dumb. He’s seen an episode or two of The Sopranos and, besides, he’s seen some of them on TV or in the newspaper in Carmine Falcone’s shadow.) The one who answered the door fishes out his wallet and tosses Ed two $20 bill. “Thanks, kid,” he says as he snatches up a slice. “Mmmh, that hits the spot. Hurry up fellas,” he snorts to his fellow goons. “Once Penguin here gets hold ’a this, we’re not gonna have any left, are we boys?”
The feral beast’s eyes darken. A flush rises on what little flesh is visible of his cheeks, and he quickly, much to Ed’s dismay, buttons up his shirt. He shouldn’t care, this man is clearly one of them, what does it matter if he knows how attractive he is? An uncomfortable urge rises in Ed’s chest, a sudden need to comfort the man…
“Pengy,” one of the men grins, “why so shy? Not like we don’t know you’re a hungry bastard, why’d ya think we ordered so much?”
The other mobsters snort. “He might be a penguin,” one of the others chortles, “but he sure as hell don’t eat like a bird.”
The men howl. The man (penguin? why penguin, he looks more like a grizzly bear) shifts uncomfortably and reaches for a slice, only for one of the men to shove a plate of salad into his hands instead. “Eat your veggies, fatty, they’re good for ya,” he snickers.
The discomfort in Ed’s chest is slowly replaced by burning rage. “Falcone’s right-hand man,” one of the mobsters laughs, thwacking the beast on the back, “and he can’t even zip his pants. The crown jewel of Gotham, am I right, boys?”
The rage deepens. So, he’s technically their boss and they still talk to him like this? Ed hates Falcone, hates him with every fiber of his being, but the poor guy who’s apparently his “right-hand man” looks so desperately uncomfortable it’s breaking his heart. The man gives a false laugh and takes a bite of the salad without putting on any dressing. He looks longingly at the pizza, and something inside Ed snaps.
Clearly the man isn’t starving. But Ed knows how it feels to be ridiculed and denied food, and he can’t tolerate seeing it happen to someone else, mobster or not.
(He tells himself later that this is it, that it is only out of moral superiority and has nothing to do with the fact that the feral, beautiful man makes his pulse rise and the blood sink below his belt. No, sir. Nothing to do with that at all.)
With a wolflike howl Ed yanks the switchblade he always carries out of his pocket and stabs the man who gave Penguin the salad, right in the thigh. The man gasps in shock, stumbles, falls. Blood gushes out onto the carpet. He writhes in pain, screams. One of the men quickly kneels beside him and fashions a tourniquet out of a tie and a fork. Ed doesn’t care. The man will live. Ed missed the femoral artery when he stabbed the fucker. Shame.
And then half a dozen guns are pointed at Ed. “Who sent you?” one of the men snarls.
But the feral beast, the beautiful one, looks straight at Ed with something like tenderness in his eyes. “Easy, fellas,” he says, and his voice is low and deep and goes straight to Ed’s pounding heart. “Ain’t nothing like that.” Slowly he withdraws his wallet, pulls out another two $20s, and slips between the pointed guns to press them into Ed’s hand. “All delivery boys get a little antsy when you forget to tip ’em, ya know. C’mon, sweetheart. I’ll walk you out.” The men all glare, but clearly, for all their snarky bravado, none of them have the balls to directly disobey an order from Falcone’s top dog.
It should say something about the nature of Gotham that no one calls the police, no ambulance is brought to the scene. Violence is as common as parking meters here. The beefcake walks Ed to the elevator in silence, power radiating off his hulking body. Ed finds, for once, he doesn’t mind the scent of sweat and money, as long as it comes off of this man.
When they reach the elevators, the man turns Ed to face him, tilts Ed’s chin up with one of those deliciously meaty fingers. “So,” he says in his deep voice. “Why’d you do it, sweetheart? Y’know if I hadn’t said nothing back there you’d be dead. That was stupid on your part. Why risk your cute little ass like that, hmm?”
“They were making fun of you,” Ed says, as if it were obvious.
The man’s brow furrows, then a smile comes across that wild face. “Well, how do ya like that,” he mutters, shaking his head. A throaty chuckle escapes. “You got balls, kid. I’ll give ya that. Where’re yous from, anyway?”
“Around,” Ed says with a shrug. The elevator arrives, dings, and with great reluctance Ed tears himself away from the beautiful man. He pauses halfway through the doors and turns for one last look at the man they called Penguin. “You’re not like the others. You’re better than all of them, you know. You deserve love and respect, Birdie.”
The man’s eyes go wide, but before he can say another word, the elevator doors close. The minute their eye contact is broken Ed’s courage fails him and he leans against the wall, shaking as adrenaline takes him. Fuck but that was stupid. Emotions, he knows, are a liability. He can’t do that again. He has to remember, to a man like that, even if he seems so different, Ed would only be a whim, a toy.
No one will ever love him, but especially not a man like that.
*
Twelve years later
“Nashton, you have a visitor.”
Ed reluctantly raises his head from the cot as a tall, hulking figure is shown into the hall. He doesn’t make any effort to sit up. Probably the stupid bat again. Ed’s just about had enough of his cruel, perfidious ass.
But it’s not Batman. It’s Oswald “Penguin” Cobblepot. Slowly, Ed sits up, his heart skipping in his chest, as the man comes in and puts a hand against the bars of Ed’s cell. He never forgot Oswald, not through all these years…he never forgot, not through all the battles, all the scars, all the weight fluctuations, all the times the man had to walk two steps behind Falcone and pretend not to chafe at his commands…
He’s watched all of Falcone’s goons throughout the years. But he’s always known that Oswald, for all his bravado, wasn’t happy being someone’s capo. And that stayed Ed’s hand every time he had a chance to cripple Falcone’s empire by taking out the mobster’s right-hand man.
“Leave us,” the man says, and the orderlies do. A hand slides through the bars, almost too big to fit, and Ed tentatively goes over to take it. “You remember me, sweetheart?”
“I do, Birdie.” Ed’s heart is in his throat and he’s so happy he could cry. “Yes, I do.”
“Atta boy. C’mon…let’s get outta here.”