Devil's Playground • Gotham Fanfiction •

XIII - The Greater Good

"I often don't say things out loud, even when I should. I contain and compartmentalize to a disturbing degree: In my belly-basement are hundreds of bottles of rage, despair, fear, but you'd never guess from looking at me." - Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

•••

Jim squinted in the early morning sunlight shining through the curtains of the room. In his groggy state it took him a few moments to remember that today was his first official day back with the GCPD.

Throwing his arm out to the side he grabbed up his phone from the nightstand and flipped it open. His eyebrows lowered when he saw it was currently about ten minutes past the time he was sure he set an alarm for.

In fact, he'd double checked the alarm right before he'd fallen asleep. With it being his first day back on the job he didn't want to show up late.
He'd been away from a steady schedule for so long that he was going to have get back into a routine of waking up at a certain time daily once again.

Raising up some he looked past where Bird was sleeping to see her phone also laying on her nightstand, but he hadn't heard her alarms go off either.

It was then that it hit him; she'd must have gotten up at some point and disabled all of their alarms.
No doubt hoping he'd over sleep long enough that it would be pointless to go into work that day.

She'd repeatedly told him she was happy for him that he finally felt like going back to work, but all of her actions seemed to point the other direction.

It was over dinner Friday night that she'd started suggesting they take off the next week on a vacation; as if she'd innocently forgotten he was returning to work on Monday.

Then he'd spent several hours on Saturday searching for his badge, which Bird swore she had no idea where it had gone. He'd finally found it inside a large decorative vase near the mantle.
An impossible spot for it to wind up there on it's own, but Bird wouldn't admit she'd hid it.

Both of those days had been better than Sunday though.
Yesterday Jim had woke up in the house alone. Bird was nowhere to be found and she wouldn't answer a single one of his calls.

She'd didn't return home until much later that night and when he asked where she'd been all she'd tell him was that she'd spent the day with her best friend.

When Jim had pointed out it would have been nice if she'd left a note or maybe answered one of his many phone calls to let him know she was at least okay and hadn't been kidnapped while he was sleeping -Bird shrugged and coldly responded if he was getting his priorities in order then so was she.

She'd pretty much given him the silent treatment the rest of the night.

Mental warfare, he shook his head, she'd done all of that to him on purpose and even though he knew it, the tactic had still worked. He'd considered calling Barnes to tell him he needed another week.

But it wouldn't have mattered if he took another week or another month before returning. He was going back to the GCPD and she wasn't going to be happy about it.

Dropping the phone back on the table, he turned on his side and stared at the back of her head.
Bird was lying perfectly still, breathing slow and even.

Anyone else would have thought she was asleep; but he knew better.

"Bird." Jim said, his voice heavily from sleep still, "We have to get up."

No response.

"You're still mad at me?" He asked but it came out as more of a statement.

When she still didn't answer him, he scooted closer, wrapped an arm around her side and raised up some to lean over and look at her face. She had her eyes closed, still pretending she couldn't hear him.