Chapter Text
Gotham was a behemoth of Art Deco bones. It was sprawling with life weaving in and out of its office buildings, its museums, its overpriced coffee shops. Jonathan’s hometown was, at best, a collection of rotting houses and forgotten barns that were good places to hide.
Not that Jonathan needed to hide anymore. Everything with his grandfather was over. It’d been ruled self-defense, and since he had been a minor, his public defender assured him the charges would never come up again. He still recognized he had to get out of Shady Dale anyways. Every derelict house looked like his family’s property— every locked window reminded him of throwing his fists against the shuttered panes, trying to scream against the roaring cicadas. His high school counselor had been more than wary when helping Jonathan sort through colleges with psychiatric programs. No doubt she’d thought Jonathan would continue the deranged experiments of his grandfather.
He never wanted that. He wanted to rid the world of unnecessary fear, of lingering trauma entirely. Jonathan never denied that much of fear was necessary. The caveman who didn’t wander after dark was the caveman who survived. But there was no reason why he should still have to sleep with a lamp on as an adult. And he was an adult now, in a big city, with a nearly full-ride to one of the best universities in the nation (one of the original "Public Ivies", even). He would have to bury Georgia.
Jonathan wasn’t concerned about the difficulty of his courses. He'd spent his whole life studying. He had been named after a Puritan theologian most remembered for the sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”. His grandfather made him memorize it when he was ten. Jonathan learned he was born wicked. At any moment, God could draw his marbled finger across the ground and split the Earth below his feet. Knowledge was his only defense. He devoured it. In high school, he’d checked out every psychology book at the Jasper County Library, some of them twice.
It was only when he walked into the first lecture hall that he realized that familiar, almost pinching twinge of anxiety. He was confronted with a sea of varsity pullovers or relaxed shirts. Jonathan had thought he’d be out of place with his thrifted blazer because of its ill fit, not because he was overdressed. The rafters echoed the sounds of easy, friendly conversation. Pleasant laughter. It was the sort of communion Jonathan was closed off to.
In the upper corner, a comfortable distance from everyone else, he could make out a solitary figure. Jonathan almost thought it was an anatomical model. Their constant fidgeting proved otherwise.
The student was wearing a white button-up that Jonathan imagined was vintage. He didn’t know much about fashion, but he’d never seen that amount of frills or such oddly-shaped buttons on a contemporary shirt. He was a sort of blonde that was almost alarming. It was nothing like the dishwater blondes from his hometown. The dusty champagne of his coat caught the fluorescent lights in a way that only added to his severity.
Jonathan looked down in an effort to avoid being too obvious with his eye contact. He climbed up the rows while his mind overlapped with potential contingency plans. He didn’t want to talk. He wanted to keep his stubborn accent hidden as long as possible. Jonathan began to rethink his decision to sit by the student, whom he had determined to be one of those unafraid city-born eccentrics. He was most likely the pampered child of some fashion designer, forced into higher education to avoid being cut off. Jonathan stopped a few seats short of him and pulled out the chair.
He caught the stranger looking towards him and pulled his notebook out of his messenger bag to avoid conversation. Mercifully, the professor started as he was getting out his pen.
The lecture was uninspired. It was about what Jonathan expected from the first meeting of a first-year class. There was a lot of going over basic expectations, both from the student's conduct and from what they could get out of the class. There was talking about Wundt and James, Freud and Jung, the emergence of Gestalt to combat structuralism. Jonathan was only rescued from boredom when the professor switched the slides to a projected piece of paper.
"On the board,” she began. Jonathan had already made a note on her frequent redundancies. “I've projected an assessment designed by some of these Gestalt psychologists. Fill it out and discuss its design with your nearest classmate."
Jonathan glanced at the stranger, who gave a toothy smile and a wave, and then immediately back to his paper. Jonathan knew he was coming off as rude. It was better to be aloof than a fumbling hick failing at metropolitan etiquette. He filled out the questions, things like, "Are you aware of what your body is feeling right now?" and "How would you describe a dream as if it were happening in the present?". He hadn't heard anything from the stranger and assumed the silence meant he was still writing his answers. Jonathan looked towards him.
"Hello," the stranger greeted, too pleasantly than Jonathan would have expected. Something was off with his vowel pronunciations. "I'm Jervis. Are you done with the questions?"
From the added sounds, Jonathan picked up the accent. It was English. Specifically, one a mediocre actor would have in a made-for-TV fantasy film. It had to have been exaggerated, at least on some level.
"My name is Jonathan. And yes."
"You're not from here either," Jervis said. He seemed oblivious to Jonathan's annoyance. "At least I don't think. I'm still working on learning all the regional differences. Where are you from?"
"Atlanta," Jonathan lied.
"That's in the southern part, right? It’s a big city?"
Jonathan felt somewhat guilty for being so calloused. It was clear Jervis was equally out of place in Gotham's skyscraper teeth. He wasn’t sure what to do with that information.
"Yes," Jonathan said.
"You must feel right at home then," Jervis said, with maybe a hint of envy. "I'm from a small village, Daresbury. It’s in the Northwest of England.”
"I've never heard of it."
"The population's only about 200. The only tourists come to see the birthplace of Lewis Carroll, even though he moved to North Yorkshire early on."
There was a certain quietness in Jervis's tone. Jonathan felt the soreness of unprompted empathy. His own hometown had about the same population, and Jonathan could imagine having similar childhoods. Maybe they could’ve been friends.
"Do you miss it?" Jonathan asked. He didn’t know where the question came from. He knew he was blowing his unaffected cover.
"Well," Jervis started, "I'd like to think I don't. When there was some trouble with my student visa, I argued with the clerk for an entire half hour." Jervis shifted in his seat, only slightly. Jonathan recognized the feeling. He’d promised never to talk about his hometown. He knew just thinking about where he was from made his skin crawl.
"But sometimes..." Jonathan prompted.
"Yes. Sometimes , I can't imagine I’ll never see the window of the All Saints Church again."
With an uncaring mind, Jonathan started preparing his next words. He wanted to clarify that by Atlanta , he actually meant the small town next to it and had never meant to lie to Jervis. He wanted to ask to go for coffee, or to the secondhand bookstore, or see if Jervis had already found a roommate. Before he could string the thoughts together, the lecture resumed. The professor asked for a few people to share their observations and continued barreling through the timeline of early 20th-century psychology.
Jonathan didn't pay attention. His notes consisted only of things like "Daresbury," "Jervis," and "All Saints window." He focused on the left column of his notes, so he could just make out Jervis in his peripheral vision. The way the waves covered up the choppy edges of his haircut. The fluid, looping motions of his fountain pen.
He looked back at the questionnaire. "How would you describe a dream as if it were happening in the present?"
'Like this,' Jonathan thought. 'Like staring at someone through the eyes of fate.'
Sometime in the miasma, the professor wrapped up and wrote the assigned reading pages on the board. Jonathan scrawled down the numbers and clasped his notebook shut before Jervis could see. In the commotion of scraping chairs and jangling bags, Jonathan noticed Jervis getting up to leave their row.
"Jervis," Jonathan interjected, catching the other's attention. "Would you like to study together? Psychology's not my strongest subject."
Jervis smiled, and Jonathan's heart leaped. He wouldn't even mind having to pretend to stumble through his main area of study.
"I'd love to," Jervis said. He scribbled on his notebook and tore out the scrap for Jonathan. "Here's my cell, give me a ring sometime. I'm free most days."
Jonathan took the piece of paper and stared at it. He narrowly resisted the urge to invent a mnemonic and quickly commit it to memory.
"See you around," Jonathan said. As he looked up, Jervis was already halfway down the stairs. Now it was just Jonathan and the emptying lecture hall, grasping onto a half-crumpled note like his life depended on it.
The next few months proved it did. Jonathan excelled in his studies despite neglecting the schoolwork in the classes he didn't share with Jervis. His advisor had told him that since he was on the Ph.D. track, he only had to focus on the research-based classes. There was no need to enroll in the more clinical classes aimed at PsyD students. Against that advice, Jonathan decided to enroll in enough chemistry classes to minor in it. While Jervis was ultimately studying to become a neurologist, he'd chosen chemistry as his pre-med major.
Their studying grew more frequent and informal. Half the time, they ended up discussing their assignments in Jervis's apartment. It turned out he lived off-campus. His unit wasn’t in the heart of the city, instead tottering on the edge of the industrial district. It was cramped. Its most noticeable feature was the splotching of water damage across the ceiling. Jonathan felt it crossed the threshold for an acceptable number of cockroaches. But Jervis never complained. He fawned over the view from the south-facing windows, the original tile in the bathroom.
Despite Jervis’s optimism, Jonathan often found himself worrying about him. It was mostly little gestures. Things Jervis had said under his breath, probably without the intention of anyone else hearing. Jonathan had made subtle, but earnest attempts to break the surface tension of their conversations. Simple questions about if he had siblings, or why he chose neurology. Jervis always had a way of avoiding them.
Jonathan wanted to be more overt. He could offer to go with him to the Alice in Wonderland section of the recently finished park, spending an afternoon winding through overgrown foliage and getting lost in the card maze. Imagining Jervis against the backdrop of colors and whimsy, smile glowing with wonder— it made Jonathan wish he was an artist. The image begged to escape from his mind’s eye.
But It never would. Jonathan already felt he had been too obvious. That he was a doomed vulture circling something that wasn't his to take.
So yes, Jonathan spent an entire afternoon learning how to tell an oolong from a white tea. He read the entirety of both Alice books, annotating them with notes of which passages Jervis had a habit of reciting. And he knew Jervis could never know. It was simply the way things had to be. Jonathan was an impartial observer in the experiment of life, looking out from a two-way mirror. He couldn’t let Jervis jump on the mantle and melt away that reflection.