gotham stories

revelations~ oswald

The raven haired man sitting on your couch were clean now, free from the feathers that someone so cruelly had covered him in. His clothes had to be thrown away, there wasn't a washing machine in the world that could get rid of all that mess. So now he had one of your sweatpants on him and a black t-shirt that had been left behind by an old boyfriend.
Oswald Cobblepot. That was his name. He had told you that when you found him sitting on the filthy cobblestones in one of the dark alleys of Gotham city. And he had smiled at you when he explained what happened to him, said that they actually wanted to kill him and that he could consider himself lucky. Staring at him in disbelief, you couldn't believe that someone could be that nice and you found his smile to be very eerie, how could he smile when someone had degraded him like that? Didn't he have a single angry fibre in his body?

The moment he said his name, you knew who he was. Everyone in Gotham knew who he was, unless you had been living under a rock. This was the Penguin, the former King of Gotham, the man who had killed the mayor, Theo Galavan. And yet you hadn't been afraid, that wasn't part of your nature. Neither had you asked how he got out of Arkham, if he had escaped or was released. You just helped him up on his feet and took him home.

When you entered your apartment, you had immediately drawn him a bath and he had been awkwardly standing in your living room fumbling with that beanie in his hand. As you had shown him to the bathroom, he undressed quickly, eager to get his body clean again. A blush flushed your cheeks when Oswald unseemly unshyly discarded his clothes and stood naked before you with a cheerful smile. His manner reminded you of that of a child, it was like he wasn't aware of his own body and didn't care if anyone saw him naked. Oswald almost jumped into the bath and started blowing away all the bubbles that filled the bathtub to the rim. A smile couldn't help but to ghost over your lips when you watched his childish behaviour and you shook your head as you left the bathroom to fetch him some new clothes.

***********

Thinking about it now, you really didn't know what compelled you to help this man you didn't even know, a former crime lord and a murderer. There was just something there, underneath the surface, locked inside his mind that pulled you in. All you wanted was to see the man he once was, to see the power he once possessed. You had always relished in the taste of dark and powerful men, men who could easily dominate and manipulate everyone around them. And you knew that this former crime lord had been one of those men. But now he had been turned into something else, something different, something unnatural and you wanted to draw the real him out of its hiding place.
Carefully your eyes gazed over at him as you were making some tea. That smile was still there and you shuddered. It looked fake somehow, like it didn't reach into his soul. Almost if someone had hypnotized him and ordered him to smile all the time. And the way he ended every sentence with a "Yes miss" or "No miss" or "Thank you miss" started to irritate you.

"Here you go Oswald," you said with a smile and put down the cup on the table.

"Thank you miss." Oswald said with a smile and those blue-green eyes sparkled as he looked at you.

Somehow it was impossible for you to not smile back at him. Even though it might be a fake smile, it was the cutest smile ever. He looked so innocent, like a little puppy discovering the world for the first time. It made your body ache for him, made you want to help him discover all the wonderful pleasures in life.

"I told you my name is _____. Please call me that," you said irritated. Oswald smiled back at you again.

"Yes miss."

You sighed as you sat down next to Oswald and drank your tea. Gazing over at him, you examined his features. He was...handsome in your eyes. Maybe not in a traditional way, but in a weird unusual way. His beak-like nose stood out, defined his features and you thought it fitted his face perfectly. And the freckles that covered it and spread across his cheeks made him look even cuter. Your gaze wandered up to his eyes. You had only known this guy for a couple of hours but already you found yourself lost when you looked into those bright eyes. It was like when you looked into them you saw past that plastered smile and gazed straight into his soul. And what a dark delicious soul it was.
You decided right then and there that you wanted him, the real him. Not this fake shell that sat here and smiled so politely at you. No, you wanted his real self, the one you knew could run an entire city and command people to do his bidding. And you knew the perfect way to pull him out.