✩ SIT DOWN BESIDE ME ﹒ ʲᵒⁿᵃᵗʰᵃⁿ ᶜʳᵃⁿᵉ ˣ ʳᵉᵃᵈᵉʳ

─ chapter i ; patience

jonathan crane was what many doctors in arkham asylum wanted to be; unreadable, incredulously intelligent, and focused. and that's all that he ever seemed to be. y/n l/n had never been made aware of his interest in her, not with the disguise of his constant disinterested, flat expression.

with a steady pace, jonathan developed into a familiar face for y/n. passing by her in the asylum's halls, catching glances in the employee break room, and incidental meetings became routine, all became semi-calculated parts of his schedule.

alongside every academic paper he'd ever read or written, every psychology textbook he'd studied, every formula he remembered, she dwelled in his mind. above it all. firmly wrapped around his cortex, she was a warm and inescapable infatuation of his.

it was a steady downhill that'd ended up leading jonathan into the depths of infatuation. dark depths.

it started at a delicate pace, a steady stroll. if you'd asked him then, he might've called it falling in love. he he noticed how ardent she was with her work, her meticulousness, focus, and confident intelligence. and imperceptibly, for only a few seconds in passing, the way the threads of her well put together demeanor seemed to come undone under his gaze.

she feels it, too. i know she does.

it wasn't admiration for her, or in the very least hadn't started out that way. she'd been a mild interest of his. a sloping hill had turned into a rabbit hole, too fast for him to've realized it before he was already lost in its endless depths; it was obsession.

every thought — going to the break room to make coffee, skimming through patient files, even sitting at home in his own living room watching television the evenings—had become laced with a toxin more intense than any that he'd ever created himself; y/n l/n.

locked deep behind his clinical and detached appearance, he kept those feelings contained, nothing but the rapid beating of his heart, whenever she came into his view would be able to give it away. seeing her and having brief, almost always work related, interactions only barely graced the surface of what he ached for with her.

it was inevitable that eventually seeing her every day would come to an end, as all things did. employees came and went at arkham asylum, nothing new. people had been unceremoniously fired or quit regularly, it was hardly anything to draw attention to.

but jonathan hadn't thought about that. so used to seeing her every day, needing to see her everyday, he never even considered that it might end, or what he would have to do if it did.

to y/n, jonathan was nothing more than a prior colleague, only barely knew him on a first name basis and for his work at the arkham. but to jonathan, saying that he knew y/n on a first name basis would be the understatement of a lifetime.

in his (relatively short) time working with her, he'd come to know more about her than most would think possible, considering the fact that they'd hardly spoken at all beyond professional communication during work in the asylum.

jonathan was intimately familiar with y/n's date of birth, address, names of family members (not that there were many to know - the only notable ones being an absent mother and a deceased father), habits, and a loose idea of her schedule. armed with this information, it was not difficult to pinpoint her whereabouts after she left arkham asylum.