Archive of Our Own

The nights are long in Arkham because not everyone sleeps, it’s not like insanity has a timetable. For the most part, everything is muted, but the dark drives others to yell and scream. Some are practically nocturnal, not just the ones with the medical conditions requiring a ‘habitat’ opposite the regular circadian rhythms; some require lights when it goes black outside.

Arthur can understand that. Gotham is a dark city. Arkham is its psyche.

He likes walking the corridors, as if he’s wandering through the city’s dreams, all its fears and hopes and confused mutterings, the scars and abuses and flashpoints. He likes to listen to what people say at night, they seem more open and coherent, if that’s possible.

Despite popular, tabloid belief, not all of the inmates at Arkham are criminals. They’ve just lost their way. And Arthur wants to help them, possibly at the wrong end of a knife, but that’s his way, he hasn’t lost his way.

The powerful ones, the actual superstars of Arkham are in a different wing, which Arthur thinks is hubris. It’s ballsy and stupid, who puts all their villains in one wing, unless Dr. Arkham is hoping for an all-out war, a cage match of viciousness and brutality, a chance for the insane to take themselves out of the equation.

Only the insane understand the insane.

That’s one of the flyers in the break room, well, all three break rooms, ‘only the insane understand the insane; don’t try to reason with them.’ Whoever printed it put it in comic sans and Arthur believes that’s the first symptom of insanity right there. At least they didn’t put it in some sort of Gothic font or one of those with the thick, black letters that look like they’re soldiers marching in formation.

Don’t try to reason with them.

Arthur isn’t exactly sure who this ‘them’ is. A guard comes in, sticking his head in the fridge, rooting around for something and Arthur thinks, Pig. He’s proven right when the guard fishes up a couple of sandwiches, a Snickers, a coke, then slams the door shut to wander to the vending machine to punch out a bag of Doritos and a roll of Hostess donuts. The guard smiles with dumb violence, his eyes dead like a doll’s. “Hey, intern, ain’tchoo left yet? These fuckin’ nutcases will break you. Screw your body, then your mind, then screw whatever’s left. You best take your little pink ass and run along home.”

Don’t try to reason with them.

-

They all know the story of Dr. Crane.

Arthur is respectful when he visits, keeps his hands in sight, doesn’t call him Dr. Crane because he’s not anymore. They discuss the inaccuracies in diagnoses and how in the history of the world, people would drill holes into skulls to let out the bad spirits.

He brings him a burlap bunny and when Dr. Crane takes it, his eyes glitter.

-

Gotham is a city. It has its high rises and its gutters. There’s scum in both places.

Arthur’s from the middle. And there’s scum there too. A home invasion, robbery gone wrong, and when he’s thirteen, he loses his father to a shotgun to the face. He’s not Bruce Wayne, Gotham’s favorite son, his parents aren’t killed in an alleyway, as the papers say. His mom died of leukemia when he was ten and his sister raises him, even makes her way to college on a scholarship. Until she was killed by a drunk driver when he was sixteen.

Arthur at sixteen is too old for the foster system, it’s overcrowded anyway, and the Gotham orphanages don’t exactly have the best track record. He’s on his own. He gets to stay in the house since it was his grandmother’s, the taxes dwindling the bank account. He learns to steal and he learns to fight and he learns what the alleyways of Gotham are really like.

The papers weren’t wrong.

When he’s sixteen, he sees the light in the sky, the one the Commissioner isn’t supposed to be using (again, according to the papers and those protest groups stomping around in front of City Hall). He throws on black clothes, including his winter gloves and hat, and trails towards the light like a moth.

It takes some exhausting effort and many long weeks that only seem to be made of night before Arthur gets to see the Devil at work (as Mrs. Grosson calls him). It’s swift and efficiently savage; he really does get to stare the Devil in the eye before there’s a rush of technologically-manufactured wings and the Devil is gone.

He should’ve just robbed an art museum to meet Gotham’s Dark Prince. But Arthur likes art museums and he doesn’t particularly want to spend another night in jail. He’s been there, thank you, and he didn’t much care for it; a tall guy with three teeth missing tried to yank Arthur’s pants down, so Arthur removed a few more teeth and the structural integrity of the degenerate’s arm bones. The cop said, “Yeah, that happens occasionally. Good for you.” Since Arthur was a petty thief, they kicked him out, like he was homeless trying to scam food and a warm bed.

His school is big enough that students fall through the cracks; he’s bored most of the time anyway, the classes are so fucking easy, don’t these people get it, it’s not that hard to grasp a single concept, so he graduates, ta-da, thank fuck he’s out of there. The school counselor pulls Arthur into his office a week before graduation and without even looking up from Arthur’s record, tells him he’s brilliant and needs to go to college and the school system is so happy to have students like Arthur who make them look like they’ve succeeded in reaching a child, so go forth, young man, and make us proud, you’ve helped our budget for the next school year.

Arthur can’t afford college. The counselor isn’t interested in helping.

Instead, Arthur wanders the campus of Gotham’s beloved university, the lighthouse of its intellectuals, and he finds an out-of-towner, a newbie to the city who’s on an Army ROTC scholarship, his parents on their farm are so damn proud, this kid is lucky, an honest-to-God American dream with his wide eyes staring up at the admin building’s giant clock, its scrollwork angels holding books with Latin chiseled into them.

He and the child of the bright-eyed future are the same age.

It’s the night before orientation when Arthur kills him; those alleys are really handy. He takes the kid’s identity, his dorm room single, his books, his parking pass, his classes. The kid had good taste and Arthur can survive these courses through the semester until he can get to what he really wants to study.

He reads the ID and sees that his name is now Arthur. He likes it, it suits him. They’re even born in the same month.

Arthur declares a year later. Psychology.

-

There’s a man in the criminal wing who fascinates Arthur. According to his records, Eames is not only homicidal, he has multiple personality disorder, entire splits in who he is, man woman child, it doesn’t matter. But it’s not as simple as that because the personalities don’t stay, they don’t stick around with names and memories and whether this one likes blueberry pie and this one hates lemon with their tea. Arthur thinks of it as being whomever he wants while staying whoever he is at the core.

Like being human.

But the doctors say this and the doctors say that and Arthur as the intern (the file clerk, the semi-janitor, the gopher, the one brave enough to actually talk to the inmates) doesn’t get a say.

Eames is a motherfucking genius. The fact that he’s murderously crazy only makes his model good looks even better, it makes him a god, gorgeous as he lives and breathes. If he has schisms in his brain, it’s only in how he perceives the rest of the world and its rules.

Arthur stays aloof because Eames is on that side of the door and Arthur is on this side and there’s nothing betwixt or between. The man is a compulsive flirt and talks a lot in Arthur’s presence with a smirk, his fingers curling as if beckoning to Arthur.

On good days, Arthur sits in the hall between Eames and Mr. Dent and helps them gamble against each other. They shoot craps mostly, Arthur rolling for them when they can’t leave their cells, though on the ‘vacation’ days, he sits carefully at a table with them and sometimes Ms. Isley (he makes sure to wear gloves), dealing poker with fake plastic chips. He double checks that Mr. Dent’s coin doesn’t get lost in the mess, and once after a spectacular win over “those degenerate males,” Ms. Isley goes to kiss his cheek, “Arthur, you gave me all the queens, you are too sweet for your own good,” but he ducks away as if shy.

(She poisons someone the next day, so he brings in a baby rose bush after the staff puts her screaming in restraints. It calms her down, her smile as red as her hair, and Arthur wants to massacre the staff. They’re all so devoid of basic intellect, he doesn’t know how they function. They also seem to be unaware thorns can be used to pick locks, if applied appropriately.)

The staff doesn’t like Eames. He likes to fight and he does it well. Arthur thinks he was in the military at some point, which would make sense, the ROTC was fun enough for a while, but Arthur saw people crack under the strain of school and training. He wasn’t one of them and he wasn’t one of them; he got what he could out of it before going AWOL. Well, relatively AWOL since they could find him if they tried, except his CO died of mysterious circumstances and his office was quietly ransacked.

Anyway, Eames likes to fight and he likes to flirt and he likes to steal. He prefers his standard-issue white wifebeater and it makes his tattoos stand out blacker. He likes to smoke, Arthur giving him cigarettes when he can, “spot me a fag, pet, my beautiful nicotine angel.”

He doesn’t take the words to heart. He doesn’t. He doesn’t.

Eames is always ready with a smile for Arthur, one of the stolen poker chips flipping over his knuckles, his accent buttery along Arthur’s sternum and one Monday, he touches Arthur there, fingers slipping down Arthur’s chest to the waistband of his uniform pants.

“Look at you in your clean, pressed uniform. You’re more than this, aren’t you, love.”

Arthur raises his chin. “Wouldn’t you like to know, Mr. Eames.”

Blue eyes flash and Eames leans in close, his nose almost against Arthur’s ear. “Maybe I do already, Arthur.” Then the orderly is yanking Eames away, cussing hurtful at him, and Eames punches the bastard.

Three days later, Eames says, “I heard them talking about you,” then he disappears; they find him after an hour-long search. He’s killed a guard, the one who talked about Arthur’s pink ass, how ‘they’ would break Arthur in two. Eames isn’t gentle, he’s effective: the guard dies slow, drowning in his own blood as Eames fingerpaints on the wall with the thick red. Even smeared, the art is amazing, all his strokes chaotic and clear, dashed sideways, a male nude reclining, clothes clinging to the limbs, the cock and body soft, relaxed, safe.

There’s no head.

In solitary, Eames is alternately kept drugged or left coherent, but regardless, he’s silent.

And Arthur is so very lonely.

-

They all know the story of Dr. Quinzel.

Most people act disgusted. Arthur only feels sympathy.

He brings her shiny red heart-shaped boxes full of chocolates, tied with black ribbon. She flutters her eyelashes, “don’t be doin’ that, Dapper A, you’re gonna make my sweetie jealous, and I gotta warn ya, his sense of humor packs a mighty wallop.”

“Then it’ll be the best surprise party ever,” Arthur says and she laughs, blonde ponytail bouncing.

-

Mr. Tetch is nervous today. He keeps asking Arthur to check his pocket watch for him. The watch is exquisite, gold, a top hat etched into the back, the half-face showing the gears behind it, if it was working. The hands are stuck at what Arthur assumes is teatime.

When they can, he and Mr. Tetch take tea, Eames joining them (when he’s not restrained) as the local Brit who actually knows about tea, “you wankers haven’t known what true tea is since you dumped it in the harbor like a bunch of bloody savages,” and everything is plastic, there are no knives or forks or spoons, no ceramics or china to break, it’s a dismal display of tea and the few sweets Arthur scrounges from the cafeteria.

He prefers coffee, but ever since he met Eames, Arthur drinks tea more often, intrigued by how the piping hot beverage helps Mr. Tetch string his sentences into paragraphs. They talk books and literature, how many mathematical puzzles Lewis Carroll packed into his innocuous children’s book, why Dickens is overrated, whether Don Quixote was delusional or a visionary.

But Mr. Tetch is worried for some reason. There will be no tea today. Eames sulks across the activities room, doing card tricks to amuse himself.

Arthur pulls his notebook out of his pocket. He uses it to take notes on the inmates, to jot down what they’d like to discuss, what they want to do next, what they say late at night. The afternoon is dragging slow, Mr. Tetch looking more like a rabbit than a man as he moves around, searching for a comfortable place to sit.

So Arthur doodles, sketching, not paying attention. The TV blares Spongebob and the manacled Mr. Grundy is laughing, the chains clinking as his shoulders shake.

Then an orderly appears, a guard in tow, but this is unusual, the guard dressed in full riot gear with the stupid visor of his helmet down, like he’s expecting a tomato or a bomb to the face at any minute, “Arthur, we’re going on lockdown for an hour or two, so you’ll need to head to the offices for a staff meeting.”

He glances around with mild concern, not for himself, but because everyone is going to be upset. Tonight might get rowdy. Those are the best nights.

“All right.”

He talks to each inmate separately because the orderlies are bullies and the guards think their armor will protect them; he snaps at a wide beast of a guard, “Just keep your fucking hands to yourself, okay, Harbaugh, I’ve got this under control. You’re only going to make things worse, shithead.”

Harbaugh looks surprised, then rolls his eyes, arm sweeping out in a grand gesture. “After you, Your Excellency.”

A minimum of fuss, only one smashed table, then everyone back in their cells, Eames last of all; he grabs Arthur by the wrist and on instinct, Arthur reverses the hold, almost jerks Eames’s arm up his back.

“You could really hurt someone, Arthur,” Eames says with a grin. “I think I’d like to see that.”

I think I’d like that too, Arthur thinks, I could destroy someone for you.

He says, “Don’t underestimate me.”

Eames winks. “Oh, I don’t, love, I don’t.”

Mr. Tetch almost forgets his watch, which makes Arthur late for his ‘staff meeting.’ He attempts to muffle his footsteps as he runs, a new technique he’s been practicing, but he’s distracted by how Mr. Tetch’s hands shook. Nervous. Worried.

“You shouldn’t be here,” a gruff voice says and Arthur turns to defend himself.

The Devil stares down at him, cold pouring off his black body armor, the edge of the cape trailing on the floor. Arthur stares back: he’s not afraid of the Devil, this is Gotham, where heaven and hell don’t exist. This is Arkham.

The stance changes, as if to intimidate, maybe to get the point across of shouldn’t be here, but Arthur doesn’t care.

“I’m an intern, of course I should be here,” he says, “I’m paid to be here.”

I like it here, he thinks.

A thick finger points at him, jabbing. “No, you don’t need to be here at this precise moment. You have a staff meeting. Go. Now.” This is clearly someone used to giving orders and having people shit themselves to get those orders done. Arthur shrugs, rocks on his heels.

The door swings open to their left and they’re suddenly awash in a push of cop lights, voices barking at each other, the ever important “watch your hands, keep all items out of reach, maintain distance from the prisoner.”

There are only a few angels in the GCPD, Arthur knows this for a fact, so even though these men wear the blue, the high probability is that they aren’t angels, they’re lower demons who’ve captured another “lost soul” as the pamphlet on civil liberties says.

The pamphlet is interesting, dissecting Gotham’s crime problem while it ignores Gotham’s mob foundations, and that stretch of elevated train and track that blew up last year, all because of a man who believed he was immortal.

We’re all immortal until we die. That’s Arthur’s philosophy.

The prisoner is rolled in, restraints, mask, the pupils dilated with a sedative. A thin, wiry man with a shock of muddy brown hair and his gaze tracks across the ceiling as if he’s searching for something.

A wheel of the modified gurney snags on a crack in the floor, the orderly cursing to get it undone.

Arthur hears the new inmate say, “If they are not the riddle, and the untying of the riddle, they are nothing.”

-

Another staff meeting, one to explain why it’s safer not to be ‘present’ at what is officially known as ‘inmate transfer.’ Arthur understands some of the staff live in fearful hero worship of the Devil, but the powers that be regard him as a lunatic who should be residing within the walls of Arkham. Dr. Arkham prefers. Dr. Strange insists. The Commissioner ignores them until it’s time to bring in a new face, then he listens politely and does whatever the hell he wants.

(The Commissioner is the archangel of the GCPD. Despite himself, Arthur likes him, his glasses that make him look like the wise old man from every archetype since the beginning of storytelling. He usually doesn’t like goody-two-shoes, but Arthur is of the opinion that the Commissioner’s seen enough of the dark to know what it tastes like.)

The warden drones on, so Arthur takes out his notebook. He can pretend to look busy. He flips to find an empty page and realizes Eames has taken over his drawings. He likes to doodle almost mindlessly, just whatever he thinks of, off the top of his head.

Eames. It’s all Eames. The curve of his nose, the slash in his eyebrow, the slide of his mouth and chin. His hands. The bend of his spine. His tattoos. His leg snapping out to kick an orderly in the knee.

Arthur’s shocked, then he’s not.

After everyone trails out of the meeting, he stays behind and picks the lock on the records room. It’s his other favorite place to be in Arkham, his solitary confinement; no one else comes here very often. All files and records are kept electronically, but a hard copy is required by the city.

He’s read almost all of them, starting at ‘A’, including his own. It made him laugh himself sick.

Eames isn’t his real name, but it is the one he likes the most, the one he said to Arthur when they first met, “piss off, no one fucking calls me that, it’s not my name, you want me to bloody talk, you call me Eames, gorgeous boy.” He flips through the file until he finds what he wants.

The photographs of Eames’s blood painting.

They disappear into his bag.

-

Arthur stares at Eames in the infirmary. He’s beaten badly this time, blood under his skin, blood outside his skin, blood under his fingernails. Dr. Arkham just left with a hissed warning. There are three orderlies guarding Arthur.

He’s so angry he envies the pyromaniacs for their understanding of fire.

“Darling, I’m not an eldritch horror,” Eames says, mouth swollen where his lips are split and only one eye can see Arthur.

“True,” Arthur agrees, then his pitches his voice low. “But you are a horror.”

For a second, Eames stares at him, wary, as if this is where their precarious trust issues have come to die, but then he grins, gaze clear, his teeth rusty-red.

“You like horror stories?”

In a pretense of checking Eames’s restraints, the pieces of flimsy cloth and metal keeping him bedridden, Arthur leans in. He whispers, “Depends on who wins in the end.”

Then he reaches out, thumbs away the blood from Eames’s lips, and when Eames opens his mouth on a breath, Arthur slicks the blood off his front teeth with two more fingers, Eames biting across the pads of his fingertips. He draws away before the orderlies notice anything out of the ordinary.

Out of the ordinary, ha, it’s funny because this is Arkham, Arthur’s favorite place in the world, everything is so out of the ordinary, it’s Arthur’s normal. He likes it here. It’s cozy.

He moves to check the other patients in the infirmary, but Eames catches his hand, rough, torn nails scratching at his palm, shaping an ‘E’, then he lets go.

Arthur doesn’t look at him.

-

He takes public transportation to get home. He sold the farm kid’s car a semester after he started college; he sold the house when he graduated high school. So now he takes the ferry, then the train, then he walks to the apartment he got when he started working at Arkham.

Some nights, when he’s not on shift, he sees the light in the sky, broken by the clouds, and he thinks, Someone’s not trying hard enough.

He dials for Chinese (with extra egg rolls, they are the breakfast of champions), then he lights a cigarette and scatters the file photographs around his tiny kitchen table. He doesn’t know which doctor took the pictures, but they must’ve been either absolutely repulsed or fascinated because they took several, more than probably necessary.

Running his fingers along the strokes, Arthur wonders who the man is, if Eames was painting from life, from memory. He’s not jealous of this man Eames created from blood; Eames has a history, Arthur has a brief history, no surprises. He’s not jealous.

He eats; he puts the leftovers away; he doesn’t take his eyes off the photographs. Spatter here on these tiles is from when Eames whipped blood off his hand because it was too thick to use for the delicate lines of the chest and hip. Streaks there on the wall are from Eames leaning forward to outline the cock and the vee of the thighs where they touch. The dots indicate gravitational drops where he paused. The puddle of blood from the guard is smeared at the edges as Eames dipped his fingers, swirling it for the right consistency.

-

Arthur’s always had problems dreaming. He believes he usually doesn’t and if he does, he doesn’t remember, he’s only left with an impression, shaky as if his body doesn’t like what his brain’s doing to it.

All his textbooks say that when a person doesn’t dream, they aren’t processing information properly; this can lead to psychosis. Imagine that.

But when Arthur does dream, he’s somewhere he’s experiencing with too many senses, all the colors are hyperreal, the details are overwhelming, the linearity is like a movie with the proper jump edits. It’s sensory overload until he can finally wake.

He dreamt once of being outside and seeing a nuclear explosion. He took cover in the roots of a gargantuan tree, knelt down, his back to the searing light and shockwave. He woke, blasted out of his body, sweating, his back pressed to the mattress and he was hot there, as if he’d been trapped and all his body heat pooled around his spine.

Arthur fucking hates to dream.

He’s at Arkham in the middle of the night and the building casts an impressive profile against the blazing lights of Gotham. Except this profile is broken, the entire complex agape at some horror Arthur can’t see and then he realizes.

Arkham looks as though it’s been bombed from the inside out, blown to pieces on a scream. It’s abandoned; Ms. Isley’s plants are taking over.

He hears his name, yelled over and over, Arthur Arthur, so he runs, skidding over shards of glass and twisted pieces of wrought iron gate, the blind maw of Arkham ready to swallow him as he climbs its bones.

The criminal wing is intact, standing alone like a bunker unaffected by any attempts to bring it down. Electricity is still flowing, the lights on and humming and he hears a rattling noise.

Teeth. No. Knuckles. No.

Dice.

Arthur Arthur, the voice is strong but going hoarse and he knows that accent.

Eames, he says, sprinting down the corridor. He finds Eames’s cell and sees that the entire place is emptied, evacuated. Even Mr. Day’s calendars are still there. But Eames is the only one imprisoned.

Eames, he says, and Eames glances at him, then throws the dice. Boxcars.

Is this an escape? Eames asks, mouth curved up on one side.

This is a rescue, Arthur replies and Eames laughs at that, Like I bloody need rescuing.

Okay, fine, I’ll grant you that, you don’t need rescuing, so I guess it’s an escape.

Fucking beautiful, so let’s get on with the escape, Steve McQueen.

When Arthur unlocks the door, Eames steps out as if he’s expecting a fanfare. Then Gotham explodes.

It’s the sirens that wake Arthur, his face pressed to the photographs, and these aren’t the ordinary ambulance-fire-police sirens, these are the desperately afraid klaxons of Arkham. He stumbles to the window, throwing it open to clamber onto the fire escape. As he passes her window, Mrs. Grosson sticks her head out.

“What is it, Charlie, what is it?” she asks, she’s never gotten his name right, it changes according to her whims, and he waves at her.

“Go back inside, Mrs. Grosson. Turn on the news.”

He takes the stairs as fast as he can, then he’s on the roof. Arkham is lit like a birthday cake, the spotlights spinning, and Arthur runs to the edge, then pulls himself up on the ledge. He’s had dreams about falling off of buildings; they seem harmless. He doesn’t have vertigo, but it’s windy and he widens his stance to watch Arkham worry itself to death.

Arthur stands there until he gets cold, the wind picking up and throwing the smell of water at him, so he leaves the roof, the klaxons still going as he heads down to Mrs. Grosson’s apartment. She almost drags him in and they drink hot chocolate while they watch the news.

Everyone stay inside, lock your doors, yet another inmate has escaped Arkham, officials speculate the manhunt might last up to 48 hours. Proceed with caution. Stay out of the alleys or poorly-lit areas. Blah blah blah.

His cell rings, his boss telling him to stay put, just come in for the night shift tomorrow, the day is going to be shot to shit and we don’t need the interns getting under everyone’s feet. Y’all are like puppies, just waiting to be kicked.

Arthur snarls at the phone as he takes his cup to the sink, rinsing it out.

“Thanks, Mrs. Grosson.”

“Anytime, Charlie. I just love this city, don’t you just love this city? It’s so excitin’.”

“Yes, I do, Mrs. Grosson,” Arthur says and he does, as he steps out onto the fire escape, he does love Gotham, he’s a child of Gotham and he wonders if his heart is the heart of Gotham. All these people insane enough to live here and love it.

He thinks it’d be beautiful, dressed in flame.

-

Arthur believes his apartment is like him: clean, smart, clear lines and room for shadows. It also hides weapons really well, a gun here, a knife there, those alleys provide objects of lethality like a man scattering breadcrumbs to the pigeons.

When he was four, his grandmother knelt in front of him and took his face in her soft, wrinkled hands; he loved her skin, translucent and thin over her bones as if she’d lead a long life of experiencing the world with her hands. She looked him in the eye (he has her eyes, so very dark) and said, Don’t make deals with the devil. You’re a good boy, my sweet grandson, you’re a charm I hang from my necklace so I can show you off.

She wrote something on his palms with her fingertip, wards to avert the evil eye, then she let him help her make brownies and he got to lick the spoon.

He remembers that, the way she smelled of peppermints because she was addicted to them and cigarettes because she was allowed one vice, so she said, and his grandfather’s pipe smoke clung to her clothes even after he died. She was dead two years later.

Don’t make deals with the devil.

I won’t, Nana, he thinks. I won’t.

He channel surfs on his small television, the news still aflutter over Arkham; he can’t sleep now, so he smokes and drinks coffee until the klaxons shut off and the sun comes up.

He wonders who’s dead at Arkham; escapes happen in bursts, like tornados punching straw through trees, someone’s bound to get hurt.

Pounding on his door, hard enough to shake it in the frame. “Sir. Sir!” Pounding again.

Arthur sets his mug down, undoes the chain, and yanks the door open. A uniform fills his vision, the hat pulled down low. An Arkham guard.

“Sir, I need to know if you’ve had any contact from Arkham or if you’ve had any…unusual visitors since last night,” the voice drawls, a boot in the door so Arthur can’t shut it, a hand coming up to brace the man as he leans in.

“No.” Arthur peers closer. Blood under the nails, bruises on the wrists in the shape of restraints. He takes a breath. “Eames.”

The man looks at Arthur properly now, blue eyes and the smug smirk and he tips his hat.

“Mornin’, Arthur. Did I catch you at a bad time? Sir.”

Eames and an American accent, Midwestern, he emphasizes the ‘sir’ as if it’s dirty, as if they’re both filthy, and maybe he broke out of Arkham to see Arthur. Or maybe that’s just what Arthur hopes. Incarceration means ‘no freedom’, thus, the need to escape. Arthur isn’t a romantic.

“What the fuck is that accent. Get in here. The sirens finally stopped, no thanks to you, asshole.”

Grabbing a handful of uniform, he hauls Eames into his apartment, locking the door behind them. He feels giddy, lightheaded, Eames has collided into his world here in Gotham; Eames catches his fever and his gaze, says, “We’re just a couple of blokes looking to have breakfast, aren’t we.”

They are, it’s not surreal at all, it’s normal, it’s Arthur’s normal, because as much as he loves Arkham, he still hides here in his apartment.

“How did you find—“

Eames laughs, tossing him a file, chucking the hat onto Arthur’s crooked couch. “I did my research.”

Arthur’s file, with all his information, “you break into the records room too?”

“Ah, so that’s your sandbox,” Eames says, hands on his hips. “Yes, love, I break into there when I run out of reading material. Those book trolleys are very slow. We need better literature at home.”

He calls it ‘home.’ Arthur laughs. “Whose uniform is that.”

Glancing down, Eames acts like he’s forgotten he’s wearing it. “Harbaugh. Bit of a bastard. He didn’t go down easily.”

Arthur laughs again because Harbaugh had it coming. “Thank you. You’ve done a great service to your people.”

“My people?” Eames shuffles into the kitchen.

“Our people,” Arthur amends, searching for another cup, then Eames makes a noise, a laugh cut off.

He pushes the photographs of his painting around with flicks of his wrist, his teeth set in his lip. “I didn’t know you appreciated my art.”

I do more than appreciate, Arthur almost says. I covet. “You’re very good.” Turning to the sink, he sets to washing a mug for Eames. Then something warm presses against his side.

“Do you want to know who he is,” Eames asks.

“Is he dead?”

Eames mouths no. Broad palm on Arthur’s waist, those hands that have fought and killed, painted in warm blood, dealt cards and doodled with crayons. “Aren’t you frightened?”

Arthur kisses him and Eames growls. He shoves Arthur against the counter, lifting him a little to settle between Arthur’s legs and they kiss, and kiss, and kiss. They don’t talk, just start stripping each other, Eames’s teeth on Arthur’s throat to hold him in place, Arthur digging his thumbs into Eames’s pulse in the crooks of his elbows, fast faster faster.

“Love a man in uniform?” Eames says on an exhale and Arthur laughs, says, “Only when it’s been taken from a dead man who fucking deserved it,” and Eames pushes him against the wall, face-first, pinning him there as he drags Arthur’s wrists over his head.

No, no, Arthur thrashes, “no, please, wait—wait—“ and Eames stops immediately, nails ragged on Arthur’s belly. “I want to watch you fuck me.”

The grin on Eames’s face is worth all the desperately fearful klaxons in the world.

-

Sated, Eames throws Arthur onto the bed, sort of, as if disposing of him, so Arthur tickles him a little, over the scars on his ribs.

“I can’t stay long, darling,” Eames says, mouth somewhere near Arthur’s navel. “I have a few visits to make in our fair city before…” He trails off. Arthur looks at him as Eames stares at the clock.

The tilt of his chin, the curious gloom of his eyes: Arthur realizes Eames doesn’t want to leave Gotham. And neither does Arthur, ever. If Eames wants to keep living, free and naked with Arthur, they’ll just have to force the city to enjoy their presence. Unharmed, unbothered, harassment-free. No more Arkham unless they’re on this side of the door.

“So when you get back, let’s paint the town red,” Arthur says with a shrug.

“You ever see the light in the sky?” Eames asks, arm winding over his hip and he’s so gentle as he pulls Arthur’s thigh closer to his face.

“I don’t make deals with the devil.”

“Me neither.”

Eames’s soft lips on Arthur, his tongue licking out for Arthur’s taste, and Arthur closes his eyes, pushes his cock deeper against the roof of the insane man’s mouth.

-

It’s a red die. He weighs it in his palm, rolls it. Six. Six. Six. Six. Six. And one more for luck, six. Loaded. Arthur grins. The paper it was resting on says ‘cheat.’

Arthur can cheat. Mr. Dent taught him how.

He has night shift and it’s already late afternoon. Eames left him on the bed, one hand tied to the headboard with a pillowcase. One of the photographs is on the mattress next to him, familiar scrawled handwriting on the back.

‘You. I did a little guesswork.’ Eames thickly circled the genitalia, the thighs. ‘But I was right. To the victor go the spoils.’

When Arthur gets to Arkham, he expects chaos. The extension to the criminal wing affectionately known as the ‘aquarium’ has flooded parts of the floors, due to certain inmates’ anger and frustrations. He’ll have to go check on them, see if there’s any raw salmon in the cafeteria kitchen; the aquarium’s inhabitants require a lot of food to feed their anger.

At the desolate end of the wing, the ice lab is still, as usual, except for faint trickling of music, ‘Coppélia’ or ‘The Sleeping Beauty’ perhaps.

Dr. Quinzel and Ms. Isley are piled on a couch, braiding their hair together, like a candy cane, blonde red blonde red blonde red, and they look like they haven’t slept. They watch Arthur as he walks in; he sees it in their hard expressions. Jealousy.

A lug of an orderly is openly staring at the women, so Arthur smacks at him, “hey, Big Jim, stop it, this isn’t the circus and they aren’t a freak show. Go get a mop and start cleaning up all that salt water. Someone’s going to slip and break their neck.”

“You hear about Harbaugh?” Big Jim rumbles, knotting his fingers together. He’s a good guy, he looks ashamed, so Arthur pats him.

“Yeah, I heard.”

“Slit his throat from ear to ear, Arthur. That’s a sick fuck. A strong sick fuck.”

Arthur wants to tell him Eames is a strong, sick, mind-blowing fuck, but that information is personal, he wants to keep it to himself.

Most of the other inmates are in their cells. Another intern appears at Arthur’s elbow. “Punishment. An escape is an escape is an escape, but c’mon, it’s like the military, one of ‘em screws up, the others are screwed over,” Dietrich says, smug. Then he spots the two women with their peppermint hair. “Hey, you two ain’t ‘sposed to be out here!”

The jackass waves his hands as if he’s going for intimidation, then signals for backup guards before Arthur can stop him (or strangle him). It takes a ridiculous clown parade of five of them to hustle Dr. Quinzel and Ms. Isley down the hall, the women yelling as the jerk-offs push at them like sheep.

“Motherfucker!” Arthur explodes, he can’t help it, Eames escaped to Arthur, he’s off dangerously roaming the city and now the inmates are being treated like shit. This isn’t Arthur’s cozy home anymore. “You do not treat them that way. Get the fuck away from them before I call the fucking warden. You trying to start a riot?” He steps right in their path, ignoring the guns pointed his way. “You want to get yourself eviscerated by some of our more talented guests?”

Dr. Quinzel smirks and a guard mouths off, “A riot sounds just swell, you little shit. Give us a chance to open school, start handin’ out lessons.”

Arthur slams the heel of his hand into the guard’s nose, disarming him as blood spurts between them. He removes the clip as the man howls, slings the gun under his arm, takes it apart.

“Get the fuck out of here,” Arthur hisses. They hesitate, Dietrich scowling, before Arthur darts forward, ready to throttle them, but they scurry away, trailing fat red drops. In disgusted awe, Arthur cannot believe they don’t realize they outnumber him; he throws the gun in pieces at their backs. Sliding the bullet clip into his pocket, he thinks, Yeah, while Rome burns, the inmates run the asylum, I’m sure they could teach you a thing or two.

Behind her hand, Dr. Quinzel is giggling, her eyes bright and manic. “Look at you, Arthur, look at you.” Ms. Isley smiles and says, “Such a hero. Let me give our knight a kiss.”

Arthur lets her kiss him. Then the lights go black, like he expected.

-

The infirmary smells like every hospital Arthur’s ever been in and he’s been in a few: Gotham General where he was born; Gotham General again when his mom was slowly dying; Our Lady of Mercy where his father was rushed, missing part of his head; and St. Luke’s where his sister died, fighting to breathe through a tube with tire tracks across her chest. The infirmaries in the precincts. The time when he was cut by a cokehead with a broken bottle. That was Gotham General again.

He hears a noise and turns his head to see Eames, battered and back in Arkham.

Arthur stares at him in disbelief.

He’s asleep. He has fresh bruises on top of fading bruises and he breathes through his mouth, his nose a little swollen, his jaw a little crooked. Held in restraints, he’s facing Arthur, body tilted slightly. He’s keeping his weight off his right knee, legs curled together, half-twisted fetal position.

Eames looks like a little boy fallen out of a tree, scrapes along his arms and Arthur doesn’t know what to think. He’s obsessed with this cracked-put-back-together genius of a man, all high-speed good looks and pill-popping insanity. Eames caught him, fucked him, fucked him, fucked him, then disappeared without word that he was coming back to catch Arthur again.

What are they, Arthur doesn’t know what they are, except he isn’t home if Eames isn’t there with him, flirting and calling Arthur pet names, miraculously dealing every heart to Arthur out of a shuffled deck.

He told a philosophy professor once he didn’t know what love is. Chemistry tells you it’s chemicals. Psychology tells you it’s nature versus nurture and how your parents treated you, how their parents treated them, how societal norms have changed in regards to gender and sex, there’s good love and bad love and codependency and obsession and— Biology tells you it’s genes and pheromones, evolutionary progress driving people to look for certain aspects in possible mates. History tells you it leaves its mark. Literature tells you bullshit. Art makes it dramatic. Hollywood tells you love is a many splendored thing, love is a stalker, love is a romantic comedy not worth the price of admission.

The professor gathered up his books and sighed. This particular professor had asked Arthur out to dinner twice and Arthur had refused twice because he didn’t like the way the man tried to touch him, subtle and sneaky. He said, Love is love is love is love is love. It’s a pointless tautology.

Which made Arthur want to gut him. He really considered it, for the rest of the semester.

Lying in Arkham’s infirmary with the antidote to Ms. Isley’s poison running through his bloodstream, Arthur decides he doesn’t care what the answer is. He wants to keep Eames. He wants to destroy for Eames. He wants Eames to catch him. Arkham has given him someone he trusts, someone who leaves him a loaded die and tells him to cheat.

Someone who painted him in blood.

Arkham gave him a home, twice over.

“Arthur,” Eames whispers, eyes open.

“Eames,” Arthur whispers back. “What’re you doing here?”

Eames smiles, shy, a kid who’s been caught stealing cookies. “You were here working the night shift. I missed you. I couldn’t figure out the coffee machine in your apartment, the bloody thing wouldn’t start. Then when I asked Mrs. Grosson, she kept trying to pinch my arse.”

“Did she give you hot chocolate?”

Nodding, Eames grins again, hair tumbling over his forehead. “She called me Mikey.”

Arthur hums.

“Hey, Mikey.”

“Yes, love.”

“Let’s take over the asylum.”

“Oh, angel, I can’t this Wednesday, but how about next? I think I’m free then.”

-

The blueprints to Arkham are beautiful; Arthur wants to frame them or use them as wallpaper. The original buildings have been built and rebuilt and added onto and transformed so many times over the years, it makes Arthur smile. Forgotten hallways, underground service tunnels, the whole area opened up by the aquarium and the ice lab, the greenhouse that’s outgrown itself because of special attention: it’s like the diagram of a heart. Arthur draws arrows down paths, through exits, around the cameras as if he’s directing bloodflow.

He doesn’t remember who originally hired him out at Arkham, but they really should’ve thought twice. Only the insane understand the insane. If Arthur wanted to needlepoint a proverb, it’d be that one. He’d give it to Mrs. Grosson in one of those homemade wooden frames, the type with the knots in the wood.

He knows the guards, he knows the orderlies, he knows the deputy warden and the warden. He knows the medical staff, he knows the rotations, he knows the interns.

He smokes on the fire escape, fingers black with magic marker, and the light comes on in the sky. Arkham is quiet. It’s Gotham that has the problems. It’s infectious, contagious, giving all its diseases to Arkham like a little kid with sticky hands who wants to share its lollipop.

Police sirens, and the Devil’s at work. Arthur lights another cigarette against the dying tip of the one in his mouth. He wonders if that professor is still alive. He has the day off tomorrow, he won’t get to see Eames (who’s in solitary, singing show tunes).

-

The campus air is fresh, there are leaves on the ground, Arthur swears there’s a damn bird twittering somewhere, and he spots a squirrel. He’d forgotten how picturesque the campus was. (O Gotham U, O Gotham U, your false reality is so jarring.) The philosophy professor is just sitting down to enjoy a good-sized Greek salad. He remembers Arthur as Arthur locks the door, smiles, says, “I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

They shake hands (Arthur wearing gloves, “it’s so brisk out, and I can’t stay long, you’re about to eat lunch anyway”) and before the professor can start in with the let’s-catch-up questions, Arthur says, “Do you remember our conversation about love?”

The professor nods, attempting to look professorial. “Yes, I do. You weren’t satisfied with my answer.”

“Well, it certainly wasn’t Socrates, was it,” Arthur replies with a laugh.

“I wasn’t trying to corrupt any youth,” the professor says with an exaggerated wink and when Arthur kills him, he makes sure there’s no blood in the salad. It really does look delicious. The dressing alone was probably worth the price. And hey, free lunch.

-

With any plan, there are unknown variables, that’s a constant, ha. Arthur is focusing on Eames, but he has to consider the other inmates at play.

Not all of the inmates get along with Arthur. Dr. Elliot won’t give him the time of day, no matter how often Arthur brings him a chess set, ready to pick his brain because Arthur loves high intelligence and the man is a neurosurgeon, it must be amazing to literally pick someone’s brain. (In a fit of anger, Arthur almost brought him Operation, just to piss him off.) Mr. Karlo oozes malcontent at anyone and everyone; the only way to keep him stable is an endless stream of films, no one’s allowed near his tiny theater kingdom; to him, the rest of the world doesn’t exist. As Arthur stands out in the hall, listening to the dialogue and sound effects, he hears in his head, ‘Just us, the cameras, and those wonderful people out there in the dark.’ Arkham loves Mr. Karlo as much as Mr. Karlo loves his moving pictures.

There are others, scattered throughout the cells, generally unhappy and violent, and while they won’t openly oppose Arthur, they are dangerous, there is a reason they’re in Arkham. (The forgotten inmate, with tally marks scored into his body, is a nightmare Arthur never wishes to have. The rumor is he’s died down in his dark cell under the aquarium; rumor is he cut into his skin a little too deep. Even though he’s in chains, his hands kept apart most of the time. Dr. Arkham hasn’t said a word. Dr. Strange bares his teeth, as if he’s grinning.)

Arthur wants to see them let loose in action. He prefers to live through the experience. He prefers to live long enough to set fire to everything around him as Eames laughs next to him, possibly singing show tunes.

It’s not entirely feasible, but Arthur can dream. He can’t plan around the other inmates; he has to manipulate them. He doesn’t want Mr. Day’s calendars to be ruined; Mr. Day never forgets Arthur’s (true) birthday, giving him an origami crane each birthday, because origami is methodical, like Mr. Day. He doesn’t want Mr. Tetch’s clocks to break. He doesn’t want Dr. Crane to lose his psychology journals about fear.

-

In a heavy London accent, Eames says, “Charlie, I know something you don’t know.”

Arthur replies, “What’s that, Mikey.”

“I’ve this friend, yeah? He looks harmless, just this gorgeous boy with a thing for magazines full of men in expensive suits, but here’s the beauty, the absolute mad beauty – he’s one of the most dangerous people I’ve ever met. I’m lucky he loves me. It’s why I’m still alive. ‘Cause I think some day he’ll get away with murder.”

-

Arthur also knows: passwords, codes, where all the keycards are kept, how to break into the armory.

-

He has vacation time piled up and waiting for him, so Arthur waltzes into his boss’s office, demands three weeks, at the minimum. Eighteen days, there you go, good enough to get started.

He wants to give gifts, but it feels like goodbye and he’s not leaving Arkham. It’s in his (and Eames’s) best interest to remain available in a professional capacity to work at Arkham, to breathe this happy-home air in this astounding building. He has a specific daydream of him and Eames taking control of Gotham as their castle, with Arkham as their guest house; Eames comes up with the ideas, Arthur organizes, together they execute. His name in Gotham will be different from his name in Arkham; maybe he won’t even have a face in Gotham. Some people wear masks. The Devil understands.

Dr. Quinzel squints at him as she perches on the back of a couch, stolen red and black crayons jammed into her ponytail.

“You’re fixin’ to bust out, aren’tcha,” she says in a low tone, elbows her on knees, chin on her hands and Arthur likes that she thinks of him as a fellow inmate. “You go into Gotham and find my sugarplum. He’s not that hard to miss. But you tell him hi from me. He’ll set you up right. Then you can do whatever you want, Dapper A.” She grins, cracking her gum, then she waves for the midnight blue crayon. Scribbling on her nails, she glances at him. “You’ll do alright. Just don’t let ‘em get ya down.”

Arthur grins back and while no one’s looking, he gives her a kiss on the cheek. She smells like wax and flowers and she giggles like a little girl. He knows how fucking smart she is; he knows why her story turned out the way it did.

“A pleasure,” he says and she rolls her eyes.

“Fresh. But you come back and visit,” she says. “I’m sure I’ll see ya ‘round.”

Eames is constructing a house of cards, as Mr. Grundy stares at the delicate structure, hands hovering like he wants to poke at it.

“This your new architect?” Arthur asks. Eames purses his lips.

“Maybe, since you’re busy canoodling with the doctor over there.”

“Which doctor. There are a lot of doctors here. I think we’re in a medical institution.”

Mr. Grundy grunts and Eames hands him a card, Arthur holding his breath as the large man slowly balances a card horizontally, creating a beam.

“Delicate touch,” Big Jim says from over Arthur’s shoulder. “Good job, Mr. Grundy.”

Arthur wonders if he can take Big Jim with him; the man would be as loyal as a junkyard dog and just as vicious if necessary.

“Mr. Eames, I need to discuss with you your request for newer literature,” he says instead, clearing his throat. Eames doesn’t take his eyes off the towering cards.

“Finally. It would be nice to have some Dickens for a change.”

Mr. Tetch throws a frown at them and hunches down into his bony shoulders.

“I do get jealous, darling,” Eames says as they walk away from the table. “Beauty Queen Harleen is luscious, but—“

“Oh for fuck’s sake, Eames, what do you even think—“

“I think obsession is the name of the game.”

Eames is serious, the look he gets when he whispers to Arthur how he’ll take down any guard glancing at Arthur’s ass, how he’d like to go to the canyons of Gotham’s streets and fire bullets into the air to hear them echo.

He doesn’t know that Arthur sleeps with the blood paintings pinned above the bed. He doesn’t know that Arthur rolls the die in the morning to make sure he’s awake because each day he feels like cheating. He doesn’t know that Arthur is ready to delete Eames’s file completely from the Arkham system because he belongs to Arthur and no one else.

“Just obsession?” Arthur asks. Eames raises an eyebrow, the one with the slash through it, the tip of his tongue slipping between his teeth.

“No.”

“So tell me, Eames, do you know what love is.”

Mr. Grundy folds a card to make a roof.

Grinning, Eames holds up a poker chip.

“A psychotic gamble.”

-

One night, they can actually hear the sirens of the city and Arthur tells Eames his daydream.

Eames smiles, his face pure happiness, then his expression goes completely nonchalant, his fingertips tapping his thumb, like they do when he wants a cigarette.

“As long as we leave time to shag.”

“We’ll be lucky to get anything else done,” Arthur says; randomly, he feels embarrassed, but Eames laughs and laughs and laughs, covering the noise of the sirens.

-

Arthur’s second day of vacation, he walks to the train, takes the ferry, and goes to Arkham at the shift change, the clock turning over to night. He’s forgotten his bag, it has a few things he needs before he heads out of town, he needs to fetch something from his locker, etc. etc. It’s all sort of true.

A week ago, he logged in as the warden and, along with deleting Eames from the system, Arthur sent out a message about a safety drill. Today. At shift change. The clock turning over to night. It helps that the warden is a pompous asshole, so he can’t say he doesn’t remember sending the email without looking like an idiotic pompous asshole and he might as well have a safety drill to get in good with the city regulators.

A drill calls for organized chaos, the guards checking the hallways and exits, each wing, floor by floor. The rest of the guards and orderlies escort the visitors and non-essential staff, number one priority, then attempt to track the inmates because only the insane understand the insane.

Don’t try to reason with them.

Mr. Dent said, It takes two to cheat. The sucker and the con man. Watch out, you could be both.

Once the drill starts, as staff, Arthur will be required to remain, even though he’s on vacation; he’s staff, he knows the rules, he can subdue if necessary. Visitors must remain in a secure location unless extreme emergencies demand their safe removal from the premises. Arthur likes those heists in crowded places, easier for the monsters to mingle with the gentlefolk.

(He should feel sorry for the visitors, those come to see the non-criminal insane, they’re going to get quite the show, those poor people who already look afraid to be at Arkham’s doors, he does feel sorry for that girl, she’s from Nebraska; that man, he’s from Salt Lake City; the new cafeteria kid from grand ol’ Georgia. None of them are from Gotham, none of them understand.)

He spends his time checking the art room to make sure it’s stocked while he’s gone, saying hi to Big Jim. When he visits his favorites, they wolf-whistle at him in jeans, jacket, and t-shirt.

Mr. Tetch is nervous again. Arthur avoids him.

He tells Eames there’s new paint in the art room, to make something for Arthur while he’s gone and Eames flips his poker chip in the air, big silent grin.

In a drill, they test all the systems: doors, cameras, keypads, klaxons, lights. A torrid ballet of control gone purposefully amok. Gotham will hear the klaxons, but don’t worry, folks, it’s just a safety drill, look at how safe we keep you, protecting you from the madness you’ve helped create, go to sleep and don’t look out the window.

The klaxons wail to alert the beginning of the drill, so Arthur locates his boss, locates his checklist, locates his opportunity to break into the records room. The lights go off, then the cameras, then Arthur steals Eames’s file. As he slips out the door, he hears the keypads click, then the doors, and finally, stealthy footsteps.

In an actual emergency, all the doors would open, heaven forbid any insane souls perished in a tragic accident caused by faulty systems; in a drill, only certain cell doors open, and the inmates are forcibly reminded to stay inside unless instructed otherwise.

Arthur instructed Eames otherwise. Eames instructs everyone else.

It’s nice to have friends.

As everything comes back on, the actual proper mayhem kicks in. The cameras catch inmates running loose, possibly armed, definitely dangerous; there’s a tremendous roar from the aquarium and Mr. Grundy yells from down the hallway, the sounds of his chains loud and heavy.

Guards stream in from everywhere to the criminal wing, Arthur making himself as small as possible, he might even look like a kid again, as if he’s scared and vulnerable and lost, so very lost.

A huge crash, glass and a crunch of metal, and now it’s time for all visitors to be escorted out, all non-security personnel to be sent to safety.

Dr. Quinzel waves merrily at Arthur as she sprints past, hair streaming, blood on her clothes, a hammer in her hands. He’s honestly surprised, he’s not sure where she got the hammer. Ms. Isley chases after her, vines following them both, guards choking in their wake.

Arthur catches a glimpse of Dr. Crane, eyes wide, as he grabs an orderly around the throat; the good doctor whispers something in his ear and the man screams, clawing at the air before he’s dragged away.

A guard grabs his elbow, “as staff, sir, you really need to—“ and Arthur jerks until he hears, “Sir, sir.”

Eames, in uniform again, riot gear, a shotgun hefted in his hands and a Glock strapped to his leg.

“You found the new paints,” Arthur says, grinning, almost delirious and happy because his madman is ready for a vacation.

“Yes, sir, now if you’ll come along,” Eames says, a different accent, tinged Bostonian, his face blank as if he’s hiding stoic, helping an intern he probably thinks should’ve kept his ass at home.

The only flaw in Arthur’s plan is possible injury to his favorites, to their important possessions, but as Mr. Dent said they’re all big boys and girls, and sometimes that’s just how the chips fall.

They’re walking fast, avoiding spurts of violence, then running, feet pounding along the slick hallways.

Ahead of them, Mr. Dent thumbs his coin into the air, grinning before he lets a lucky intern go.

Gunfire, and Dietrich slams into them, babbling, “the motherfuckers are loose, they’re loose and they’re practically eating people, oh God, Arthur, they’re loose.” Then he spots Eames behind the visor and he screams, hoarse and high. Calmly, Eames punches him in the stomach, the scream cutting off, and he hauls Dietrich towards a stairwell.

“It’s Eames, you’re Eames, don’t—don’t, just—,” Dietrich stutters, horror caught in his throat, “Arthur, he’s going to kill you, he’s gonna fuckin’ pull you apart like a fly,” then he notices Arthur’s hand on Eames’s neck and utter panic floods into his eyes, “Arthur, what’re you, are you—are you helping him? You psycho freak!”

Furious, Arthur snatches the gun out of Eames’s thigh holster and shoots Dietrich between the eyes.

“Darling, that was glorious,” Eames breathes and they try to kiss over the body, but there’s no time, no time, Eames sheds his heavy gear, they have to head out again, they join a stream of screaming people, Arkham visitors with their usual expressions of delicate fear stretched further into absolute terror, mouths open. Eames’s grip on Arthur tightens.

Then they break out into the courtyard, the night spread wide overhead, and the lights of Arkham are so bright, the whole of the universe might not exist out in the blackness.

-

A non-descript guard and a young man in jeans and a jacket with a dark smear along one sleeve board the ferry separately. The young man lights a cigarette and leans on the rail, staring at the city, blowing smoke at it.

The guard strolls, hands in his pockets, and sometimes he grins to himself, as if he’s heard a dirty joke.

-

They start a fire on the roof using Eames’s file as kindling. Arthur’s saved for himself the stuff he loves: the Rorschach results, the psychological notes and diagnoses, the basic stats, look, Eames’s birthday is in four months. The rest is bullshit that can be left to burn.

Arthur watches the flames and Eames sings show tunes and Gotham waits all around them.

Later, Eames fetches a late lunch and comes back with a lawyer’s wallet and he buys Arthur a whole wardrobe of bespoke suits before disappearing to return with clothes so hideous, the tailor almost kicks him out. They fuck as soon as they get to Arthur’s apartment, Arthur clutching hard at Eames because this is now his home. They fuck and talk and watch TV and smoke and fall asleep half-naked on the couch.

Eames says, “To escapes. May you get what you’re obsessed about.” He grins, dark, before kissing Arthur, as if insanity comes with a grand prize.

Eventually, they’ll arrange to have a meeting to deliver Dr. Quinzel’s affectionate greetings, and Arthur’s met him before, he’s not worried, he’s more curious. The city is, so far, big enough for all of them. And Eames has friends in the city, the kind of friends who like gunfire in daylight and explosions at night and know their way around the mazes of Gotham.

Arthur acquires a surveyor’s map of Gotham City (“a plat, look, you’ve learned a word for Scrabble, pet”) and puts it up in their new apartment, ready to mark out their sections as they paint the town a stunning shade of red. It fits nicely next to the blueprints of Arkham.

No deals with the devil.

Don’t try to reason, just make people know who you are.

-

There’s a postcard in Arthur’s mailbox. The front is a glossy picture of Gotham City from the air, the gleaming skyline thrown at an angle, Gorgeous Greetings from Gotham City! The return address is Arkham. A bloody thumbprint at the corner. A big smiley face. A conga line of stick figures with party hats. We miss you in red crayon.