Chapter Text
It was no secret that Edward Nygma was handsome. It was painfully apparent to even the most indifferent students at Gotham University that the man’s features met pleasingly together, and though he was short in stature, his toned physique – noticeable whenever he shucked his blazer in warm weather, revealing a broad chest and lightly muscled forearms – more than made up for it. There had even been, on more than one occasion, groups of students who would slow down or sometimes stop completely whenever they walked past his door, craning their necks to peek through the door’s window.
There was little doubt that the man in question knew of all this. After all, he had an ego the size of a blimp. He kept his snide remarks to matters of intellect though, which was almost worse. Every comment he made, every piece of critique speared through an unsatisfactory essay with red ink, was designed to make the recipient feel small and simple, and it delivered on that with unfailing accuracy. Sometimes, when he was feeling particularly mean, his comments would instead be delivered in a way that made everyone else laugh, which every student hated, when it was directed towards them. This did not stop them from laughing when it happened to someone else though. The confidence with which he did this was only made possible by his unwavering knowledge of his own intellect and there was little doubt among the student body that this such knowledge extended towards his good looks as well.
All in all, this did not create the healthiest of spaces, and yet his drop out rates were shockingly low. Indeed, few students – excepting the ones who just wanted to coast and get an easy pass – left his class after initially signing up for it. There was just something about him, with his easy charisma and charming grin, that kept everyone coming back for more, no matter how cutting he could be. No matter how hard it was to focus when his crystalline blue eyes landed on you, glinting with amusement at a particularly stupid answer or a particularly clever piece of wordplay, when his full lips shifted into a smirk or scowl, depending, or even when he ran a baby-soft hand through his tightly gelled red hair. Really, it was a miracle that anyone could focus on the words he spoke when his appearance was so attention drawing. The way he dressed didn’t help either, with his perfectly tailored three piece suits, always green but never the same shade two days in a row, and his insistence on accessorising himself with a myriad of jewellery combinations. All gold of course; the man knew his colours – There were chains and necklaces, rings and bracelets, elegant tie pins and shiny earrings. Basically, the man glittered.
Still, for all his talking, the man was notoriously tight lipped about his personal life, steering conversation in a different direction if ever such matters came up. It was unprofessional, he claimed. There was some rumour among the third year students though that he only did this to cultivate mystery about himself, which almost anyone could believe – the man was nothing if not dramatic.
There was only one other person in the whole college who rivalled him in terms of dramatics, and he was equally infamous among the student body. He was Professor Jonathan Crane, the University’s sole psychology professor after – rumour had it – he drove away the rest of the department. This rumour was easy to swallow; Crane was, to put it simply, terrifying, and he would frequently deliberately intimidate his students seemingly just for the fun of it. Every Halloween he would do something new that shocked and horrified his class, but no one would ever tell the year one students what it had been the year prior. Some of them never told anyone anything ever again. That particular incident almost had him put on academic probation but apparently he was close with one of the professors on the board so all he got was a warning.
It was hard to believe that the man had any friends given how eccentric and single-minded he seemed to be. Maybe he was different outside of class but within the walls of Gotham University, all the man could talk about was the psychology of fear. Occasionally you could get him to say a few words on whatever book he was currently reading, if he was feeling nice, which he rarely was.
Like Professor Nygma, the man had a surprisingly low rate of drop outs in his classes, though if you asked anyone, they would say that what was truly surprising was that the drop out rate wasn’t a hundred percent. Every lecture with him left students with the distinct feeling that they had just left a haunted house, shaken and dazed. Still, most of them came back. And it certainly wasn’t because of his looks.
The man was incredibly tall, and he cut an imposing figure in spite of how skinny he was. His skin was unnervingly pale, almost bloodless, so much so that you could see his veins clearly, especially in the space beneath his eyes, where they lay blue and prominent. His hair was brown with streaks of grey threaded through it and he wore it pulled back in a loose low ponytail. Strands of it were constantly falling over his eyes and he, too absorbed in his manic lecturing, hardly seemed to notice. Said eyes were sharp and pale and sat behind a pair of rectangular glasses that only seemed to make his facial composition seem even more severe, his sharp cheekbones combined with his strange thinness making him appear almost alien. His hands were large and spindly, with hard bony knuckles, and he gestured excessively with them as he spoke. His lips were thin and hid a set of slightly crooked teeth. There seemed to be a crookedness to his whole self, something unnerving about him. He couldn’t be called ugly, not really, each one of his features fine in isolation, but altogether they made for an unsettling picture of a man. His awkwardly gangly frame was often clothed in a variety of warm plaid shirts, bolo ties, corduroy jackets worn at the elbows, slacks that must have been custom made to fit his curious measurements. Truthfully, he looked not dissimilar to some of the poorer students, though his clothes certainly fit him better.
His academic rigour kept every student’s nose to the grindstone as well, so it was hard to fathom why so many stayed in his class. As it turned out though, the answer was rather simple: they were the adrenaline junkies, the academic elitists with something to prove, and the morbidly curious. The latter appeared to be the largest group, students who cared less about grades than they did about seeing something interesting, and Jonathan Crane could certainly be interesting: there was the time he brought a horse onto campus, and the time he brought a gun into class, which everyone agreed not to mention or he’d almost certainly be fired and they’d lose their main source of entertainment.
So Nygma was there for eye-candy and Crane for entertainment, at least that was the general consensus among the students. There was little overlap between their respective classes though, so most students chose one and only heard vaguely of the other through the usual gossip channels.
Then, there came the incident that would draw the collective interest of the whole student body. It involved both Professor Nygma and Professor Crane, but as of yet, no one knew that.
It had begun with a throwaway comment made by Nygma in one of his lectures, some pithy remark that related only tangentially to the topic at hand about how he, in his youth, had done some modelling. He had then moved swiftly back to the original focus of the lecture, oblivious to – or just ignoring completely – the explosion of intrigue happening in the seats. Fervent whispering immediately spread as everyone turned to their friends, or even just strangers they sat near on a regular basis, to confirm that they had all just heard the same thing. Edward Nygma, their lecturer, was a retired model? The thought wasn’t totally strange – his good looks were of course well known – but it was still mind blowing to hear for the first time.
Immediately, the students who had brought laptops instead of notebooks began frantically googling, searching to see if any photos remained. It was hard to find though, as they had little to go off of but his name and it seemed he had changed it a few times over now, though no one had any idea why. Probably to perpetuate his own mystique, they decided.
Eventually, though, just as Nygma was making his closing remarks, one of the more tech-savvy students – through some method that even the people who had watched them couldn’t explain – was able to locate a single photo, and said photo was quickly screenshotted and sent to the class groupchat just before they were let out.
In the photo he was far younger than he was now, obviously, though the man had clearly been keeping up with either an impressive skincare routine or some tasteful plastic surgery – he did not look whatever age he now was. Still, in the photo he was incredibly youthful, maybe in his late teens or early twenties. He was in a fancy tailored suit, not dissimilar to the ones he wore now, though certainly less green, and was leaning against some car, staring off into the distance with a carefully neutral look. His hair was confined by gel – though not nearly as much as he used now – and just tickled his neck. It looked totally effortless and ridiculously gorgeous. There was a gap between his suit jacket and his button up, revealing a narrow waist that only served to emphasize the broadness of his shoulders. He was sun kissed, with a light dusting of freckles. From the angle he was facing, his plump cheeks and button nose were on full display. His features were slightly sharper now, having lost some of his baby fat with age.
All in all, it was a pretty great picture, and they could see why he had been a model. The picture soon spread across campus and in no time at all Edward found himself looking at a photo he hadn’t seen in years.
He was at home, in the house he and Jon shared on the outskirts of Gotham. He leaned back on the battered brown couch they’d found at the thrift store (which Ed had meticulously cleaned before allowing it anywhere near his custom made wood end tables.) “Jon?” he called, inclining his head to the other man and angling his phone so that his technophobic husband could see the screen easily. The man in question squinted behind his glasses as he looked at the screen, looking every one of his fifty five years and then some. “You’ve really got to take it easy on the plastic surgery,” he said wryly, “soon it’ll look like I’m dating one of my students.” Ed rolled his eyes, “It’s from my old modelling days. Somehow my students found it and have spread it around.”
“So?” Jon looked unbothered and almost turned back to his book, before Ed placed a staying hand on his shoulder.
“So, not a single hand went up when I asked a question last week, yet they have the resources to track down a photo I don’t even remember taking.”
“The horror.”
“What next? They track down our house? Start interviewing our friends?” He picked up speed as he spoke, feeling himself working into a fervour. He had little problem with people knowing his past or wanting to know about him, and the rumours that he was intentionally secretive to create mystique were not entirely unfounded, but primarily, he just didn’t want anyone to dig too deep into his past. Everyone had secrets but most people hadn’t changed their names and moved to a new city to avoid theirs. He really didn’t need his students digging any deeper into his past.
Noticing that Ed was beginning to get panicked about the what ifs of the situation, Jon set down the book he had been holding (a cheap horror-thriller that, if asked, he would deny having read) and slung an arm around his shoulders, pulling him close, and rubbing his arm in what he hoped was a soothing manner (in spite of how long they had been together, he had yet to get the hang of any casual intimacies past a little hand-holding).
“You’re a clever man,” – appealing to Edward’s ego was always a good thing, “I’m sure if you set your mind to it, you could figure out a way of stopping them from finding anything you don’t want found.”
Ed had melted into Jon’s side immediately, his cheek pressed against the other man’s side, soft skin meeting thick plaid flannel. “I could set them a few more essays a week, keep them busy.” He proposed, a wild look coming over his eyes that Jon recognised immediately; it was his scheming look. “Or, or or…. I could – I could leak some other photos and get them focused on something else entirely!” He had lifted himself from Jonathan’s side now and was pacing as he thought, muttering random words under his breath. As Jonathan watched this, he wondered if he had actually helped the situation or instead made it far, far worse.
The next day, a group of students gathered around a single computer in the college library. They were staring open mouthed at a single image on the screen. It had been surprisingly easy to find, most likely a result of their now having more information on what exactly they were looking for. Still, nothing had prepared them for what they were seeing. Compared to this, that first modelling photo was nothing.
In the photo, a young Edward Nygma was dressed casually – well, for him anyway – in a dress shirt that had only half the buttons done up, a close fitting grey-green waistcoat and black slacks. But it wasn’t him that they were focussed on, well not entirely. Because there was someone else in the photo, someone that felt familiar but that they couldn’t recognise. In the photo, Nygma was staring up at this stranger; a cigarette dangling teasingly from his lips. The stranger was tall and lithe, with a strangely classical look about him, elegant and academic all at once. His features were long and thin, with a look of casual indifference and he was wearing an oversized blazer, a battered paperback peeking out of the pocket. He was holding a lighter up for Professor Nygma, his long fingers drawing the eye with surprising efficacy. His eyes were a glittering hazel, warmed by fondness, and with his sharp pale features, he could be a model himself, but there was no mention of who he was.
Just before anyone could say something, their phones pinged and, when they checked it, the class groupchat was blowing up. They almost ignored it, figuring it would be about the photo they had just seen, only to realise that everyone else was talking about a totally different photo. As they scrolled through the rapidly incoming messages, they found the photograph that had sparked all of this.
It was less posed than their photo had been, taken it would seem, without the subjects’ knowledge. Here, Professor Nygma was laughing at something, his button nose crinkling with mirth. He was bent half over and probably would have been totally on the floor were it not for the mysterious stranger they had seen before, keeping him on his feet with one long arm wrapped around his waist. They had a clearer look at the mystery man’s face here. He had been in profile in the previous photo, limiting their view somewhat. He was pretty androgenous, with long brown hair falling in waves just below his shoulders. He was slightly dishevelled, with his clothes having visible mending on the fabric, but it all came together strangely well, especially when he was beside Nygma. The hand around their professor’s waist was ink-stained and possessive, clutching harder than was perhaps necessary, but he was grinning like a fool at the other man anyway. There was something strange in that look, something that unsettled the watcher, and, to distract themselves, the students gathered in the library sent off the photo that they had found, grinning to one another at how the group chat exploded with even greater ferocity.
Still, when they stepped away from the photo and went off to their classes, none of them could keep the million dollar question from their minds: Who was that mysterious man?