a dance of doves & crows ( jonathan crane )

limerence and leather .

notes : and we're back in business baby >:) thanks so much for reading! i cant promise updating as frequently as i used to, but i promise to try. 

here's a shorter chapter to get slowly back into the groove of things. thank you again and lets goo!

song of the chapter: chocolate and mint - duster 

He makes her lunch everyday. 

Jonathan Crane could not tell you what possessed him to do such a thing; but there was no questions asked while he performed the motions. Often times, he was too busy mentally to properly consider what he was doing. His mind stubbornly remained focused on what he had to do that day, planning out each intricate detail. Reminding himself of every little task, determined to never miss a beat.

He had to make up for his sloppy behavior while Harleen had Jules, after all. He slipped up; while he was no where near the level of failure of his coworkers, and would assure you he didn't care about inferior opinions... If only for his own pride, he needed to clean up his own messes. Scrub up his own imperfections. With bleach, if he had to.

Recipes remained burned into his head since childhood; everything from penne alla vodka to hanoi-style pho. All the while, his body was able to run exclusively on autopilot. If he ever faltered on measurements, Scarecrow was there to correct him. He was the bigger glutton, after all.

When his hands are done... every time, without fail, he realizes he packed for two.

He never puts the second away or tosses it out, though. He doesn't consider it. He saw how awful the Arkham food was. It just felt... strange. Strange that he wasn't even embarrassed about it.

After three months, they seem to find a good groove. Jules talks, though still reserved and unable to give Jonathan what he wanted to hear. No grand, beautiful stories of her crimes and immoral acts yet - but he would not let himself get frustrated. Impatient. 

She was back. That was more than enough. He would wait for everything else. Like a moron, yes. But a patient one.

Instead of the detailed stories of what inevitably got her captured and admitted to Arkham, he got more of the small ones. The inconsequential ones that Jules always told with a little grin and hand gestures. The stories that held his attention and would linger in the back of his mind for the rest of the day.

For example - when Jules was fifteen, she was expelled from public school. She had gotten in a scrap with another girl so ugly that other students had to separate the two from one another (a rare display of empathy from Gotham teenagers, Jon thought). She got placed into an alternative schooling to finish high school after that , where she met Selina Kyle. Jules said that they were inseparable immediately, and that reform school in general was "Gotham High on drugs". 

Or when Jules waited tables at a nightclub and mistakenly walked into the private room without knocking - only to witness a very BDSM-centric orgy. She did not hold back any details, despite the fact that Crane repeatedly told her she didn't have to describe every little thing about the scene. 

But... She did, of course. Because it was Jules. 

He got an exhaustive description of what was being done to a very rich CEO of a very famous company. Which company? He wasn't going to say. Wasn't his business.