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“What do you want, Oswald.”
Jim approaches; determined steps punctuated by sharp clicks of heel on marbled floor and suddenly for all his intellect and cunning Oswald can not for the life of him form a coherent thought.
He came in here with purpose, to talk and hopefully dissuade Jim from hating him so if only a little bit.
He knows Jim doesn’t like him, he can feel it come off him in waves of thinly veiled abhorrence, but the way he’s moving now is doing things it shouldn’t to Oswald’s mind.
Each step is fluid and purposed, a shift of muscle under crisp uniform and the fluorescent lighting glints off the polished badge that sits like a beacon of purity in an institution that’s long since gone to the very criminals it was built to fight.
It makes him think of the shine the sun lends to dark scales slithering through high grass. He’s been called a rat many times in his life, but he now knows with startling clarity that this is what it truly feels like to be one.
“I-”
Jim halts in front of him, staring with those expressive eyes. Calling him scum without a syllable uttered between them, and it’s truly disconcerting in it’s effectiveness.
The GCPD bustles around them, heedless of the rat and the reptile as one trembles and the other continues staring while a question that feels like it was asked hours ago hangs thick in the air still.
The card in his hand, expensive paper with even more expensive ink, is in ruins. Soiled and crumpled between habitual nervousness and sweaty palm.
The question comes again, fainter, almost as if an echo of its predecessor and still Oswald can‘t form a single word.
The silence stretches and grows like a night sky, tinged with irritation and impatience instead of stars and moon.
It’s when Jim has turned on his heel and is leaving him there surrounded by people, too used to seeing the bad around them to notice when it comes limping into the room, that he speaks.
“You.”
It’s not what he meant to say, not even close, but it’s too damn late because Jim is looking at him again and the hate is still there but it’s a different shade of contempt.
And Oswald goes right on talking against the increasing urge to shut up.
“You,” he says again, and he’s not shaking anymore, not stuttering.
“You make me feel like nothing, a great feat I must say. I go against everything you believe in, my very existence could not be a sharper contrast to your own and yet, you tolerate me. You sever ties with me you stand to lose so much, so you tolerate me.”
Jim’s face is like the stone building they’re standing in but Oswald can practically hear the inhabitants of thought as he waits for Oswald to finish.
“Your tolerance is intolerable.”
That earns a quirked brow and a slow blink.
“I’m useful,” there’s confidence in Oswald’s tone now, pure and strong because it’s a truth, blunt but cutting.
“I’m useful, Jim, so use me.”
The words are dropped like a stone in a pond, and he can see the ripple of effect they cause.
Jim, all short stature and broad steps, is a hairs-breadth away from him in a fraction of the time it would take Oswald to make one limping movement.
They’re too close, they’re far too close, and if he were to move just an inch forward, maybe two, he could get rid of the damnedable gap between them that somehow feels too fucking far.
He doesn’t so much as breath.
Just watches the hypnotic clenching and unclenching of jaw before Jim finally speaks.
“And how would you suggest I do that.”
_____________
The locker room tiles are cool against his bare skin as he slides down them.
He watches from the floor as Jim’s hands button up his uniform with quick precision and smooth out the wrinkles that are as crumpled as the fabric that is pooled around Oswald’s ankles.
Their eyes catch for a moment, and only a moment, before Jim is gone. The only evidence of his being there the soreness between Oswald’s thighs and the thick splashes of white across his face.
The taste of Jim remains on his lips long after he’s licked it away.