Chapter Text
Riiiiiiiing. Riiiiiiiing. Riiiiiiiing.
Edward squinted his bleary eyes open to see his apartment bathed in the fragile blues of early dawn. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and went to stretch his long limbs. This only caused him to nearly tumble off his couch, which is when he remembered what happened the day before. Right. Oswald had taken his bed as he recovered from his shoulder wound.
Riiiiiiiing. Riiiiiiiing. Riiiiiiiing.
Edward huffed and sat up onto the edge of his couch, pulling his wool throw blanket off his body. The air in his apartment was unusually cold as it hit his bare skin, courtesy of the red-green argyle shorts and thin white t-shirt he was wearing. He then leaned over his coffee table and felt around for his phone, still half-blind without the aid of his glasses. After a moment of fumbling, he finally felt the smooth exterior of the device and grabbed it before flicking it open and holding it against his ear.
“Hello?” he greeted, voice still rough from sleep.
“Hello. This is an automated message from Grundy Apartments.”
Edward hummed, displeased and a little annoyed at such an early message. He leaned over his coffee table again and groped, this time more carefully, around for his glasses and slid the ox-brow frames onto his face when he found them.
“We are sending this message to inform you that the heating in all Grundy Apartments residences will be out for an undetermined time. The cause of this outage is unknown, and we are investigating the H.V.A.C. systems to locate and fix the problem immediately. Thank you for your patience and understanding.” The phone then beeped, indicating the message was over and the line had gone dead.
Edward didn’t register any of the second half of the message. As soon as his brain connected the words, “heating,” and, “out,” he stood up in alarm and stared out the slanted window that spanned from floor to ceiling, phone still held to his face. He processed the information he just received as he watched light flurries of snow and ice dance in the wind behind the glass, back lit by the slowly brightening sky and the large, green, and glowing, “TOYS & GAMES,” sign that hung just outside.
“Oh dear. O-o-h dear,” he said, clicking the phone close and setting it down on the coffee table. He sank back down into the couch cushions and ran a hand through his still sleep-mused hair. No heating in Gotham’s late autumn weather? In a building that was definitely not built to code, what, with large, single-paned windows, thin brick walls, and a sliding metal door? Gotham City’s affinity for poor architecture and cheap construction made sure Edward’s apartment was drafty in the best of times, and blustery at the worst. Though, at least then he had the building’s, albeit, mediocre, heating to combat the worst of the chill. Now he had nothing. Edward scanned his apartment as he pondered where he would go to escape his soon-to-be freezing apartment. His eyes flitted to his woolen coat hanging by the door he would most definitely need if he wanted to brave the cold outside, to his GCPD ID resting on his dresser he could use to get into the police department to wait out his apartment’s heating issues, to his bed where Oswald was tucked in, sleeping soundly. Just then, a realization dawned on Edward and his chest tightened in dread.
Oswald couldn’t leave.
Oswald was a wanted man, and, even worse, bedridden. Oswald, who was still clammy and weedy from blood loss and infections, could barely regulate his temperature when the H.V.A.C. systems were working as intended. Now, he would have no chance at recovery, or even survival, if Edward didn’t figure out how to keep him warm. Edward wouldn’t leave Oswald alone. He couldn’t.
Shaking his head to focus himself, Edward quickly got to work. He slipped into warmer clothes, tugging on brown fleece pants and a thick green sweater over his shorts and shirt. He then put on a pair of wool socks to protect his feet from the cold floor, though he left his hands free from gloves to keep his fine motor skills intact. He strode over to his kitchen, pulling out a kettle and filling it with filtered water before putting it on the stove to boil. While it heated up, Edward moved towards his storage closet, knelt on the floor, and started rummaging through it in search of a plug-in heater. He pulled out boxes and tubs, digging through each one, but no heater turned up. Edward sighed and put each container back in their original spot. He stood up and brushed his thighs off quickly before exhaling into his cold hands and rubbing them together. As he warmed up his hands, he spotted a dark mass on the top shelf of his closet. His one spare comforter. He reached up and grabbed it, tucking it under his arm before closing the closet door. Right when the door clicked shut, the kettle started to whistle. Edward hurried over to the kitchen, briefly depositing the blanket on his butcher block counter before he moved the kettle off the burner.
He grabbed two mugs from a cabinet, one white with a question mark on the front and one a plain black. He put a green tea bag into each of them and filled them with boiling water. He left them on the stove-top counter to steep and made his way over to his bed, to Oswald, grabbing the blanket from the butcher block on the way. Edward stopped at the side of the bed and watched Oswald’s sleeping form for a few moments. He looked pale, even more so than usual thanks to the dawn’s early light and his frail state. A shiver racked through his body and he curled up slightly, which is when Edward leaned in and put a hand on his shoulder and gently shook him. Oswald blinked awake, and stared at Edward with unfocused green eyes.
“Good morning sleepyhead” Edward greeted with a terse smile, face creased more with worry than mirth. Oswald shrank away from Edward, curling up more somehow embedding himself further into the blankets and pillows.
“Wh-where am I?” Oswald questioned groggily as he struggled into a half-sitting position. As he moved, he instinctively kept Edward’s quilt tucked tightly against his body, hands almost greedily clutching the soft material.
“Please stay calm Mr. Penguin, you have extensive injuries and excessive movement and an accelerated heart rate are counter-productive to recovery,” Edward said quickly. Oswald just stared at him, mouth slightly agape.
He then shook his head before saying, “Wait, I know you.”
Edward smiled again. “Yes, we’ve met before, at the GCPD, but we can save introductions and backstories for later. Right now,” he unfolded the blanket and draped it over Oswald in one quick motion, “We have bigger issues to attend to.” He then smoothed the blanket out, making sure there were no folds that could let in cold air.
Oswald stared him briefly, before asking, a little incredulous, “Do you mind explaining these ‘bigger issues?’” He shivered again once he finished his sentence.
Edward took his hands off the blanket and looked at Oswald. He was expecting more of a fight. He glanced at the sedative needle he prepared resting on his wardrobe. He frowned. Either Oswald was much weaker than he thought, or much colder, than he thought. Both options were distressing.
“Right,” Edward replied, moving to the kitchen. He grabbed the two mugs of tea, picking the tea bags out of them and dropping them into the trash as he said, “I got a call from my apartment complex telling me the heating for the entire building has gone out. In your state of blood loss and injury, you cannot adequately produce enough body heat to combat the cold. Your status as a wanted man also assures we cannot leave to seek refuge somewhere warmer, so I must keep you warm here.”
Edward walked back to Oswald, a warm mug in each hand. He offered Oswald the black one and, after a moment of hesitation, he took it. As he grabbed the mug’s handle, their fingers brushed together and Edward had to suppress a gasp at just how cold Oswald’s hands were. Oswald took a small sip of the tea, suspiciously eyeing Edward the whole time.
“I assure you, Mr. Penguin, I have not poisoned your tea,” Edward said, punctuating his point by taking a long drink from his own mug. Oswald rolled his eyes slightly before looking downwards at his chest.
“Where are my clothes?”
“Oh, I threw them away. They smelled,” Edward replied simply.
“Well," Oswald deadpanned, "Do you have anything warmer?” As if to prove his point, he shivered and Edward saw his jaw clench, like he was keeping his teeth from chattering.
“Yes, of course!” Edward answered quickly, a polite smile imposed on his face. He turned to his wardrobe, set his mug in a vacant spot on top before he started searching through his drawers for a suitable garment. After a few moments, he pulled out a deep purple woolen cardigan and handed it over to Oswald, which he traded his now-empty mug for. Edward smiled expectantly. Oswald stared back.
“Are you going to give me some privacy?” He finally asked, impatient.
“Oh, I’ve already seen you bare. I was the one who changed your clothes and dressed your wound, after all,” Edward responded, huffing a small laugh. He didn't mention he saw the thin, twin scars that adorned Oswald's chest, right under his pectoral muscles. Edward knew what they meant, he wasn't stupid, and he hoped his non-mentioning of them showed Oswald he didn't mind. Oswald seemed to catch the implication and didn't press the issue. He still wasn’t similarly amused.
“Turn around,” he demanded and, this time, Edward obeyed. He turned around and walked to his kitchen island. He set Oswald’s mug down and began drumming his fingers on the warped oak of the counter. Once the shuffling of clothes and blankets stopped, Edward turned back around to see Oswald dressed in the purple cardigan with the blue flannel robe Edward put him in overtop it. A strange feeling gripped Edward at the sight of Oswald in his clothes, but he quickly pushed it down. Oswald was shivering persistently now, too, thanks to his brief exposure to the icy apartment air. Edward frowned at the sight of this and stepped back over to the side of the bed. He moved his hand towards Oswald’s face, intending to feel his cheek with the back of his hand to check his temperature. Oswald flinched back and glared at Edward.
“What are you doing,” Oswald asked, voice harsh.
“I’m trying to feel your temperature. With my hand,” Edward replied like it was obvious. Oswald huffed but didn’t move when Edward reached towards him a second time. His hand gently pressed against Oswald’s cheek. Oswald felt freezing, even though Edward’s hand wasn’t particularly warm either.
“Oh golly, you’re freezing, let me-” Edward moved away to go search for any way to heat Oswald up, a hair dryer, a hot towel, more tea, but Oswald interrupted him.
“What’s even the point?” Oswald retorted. He then curled under the blankets and turned his back on Edward before he could even reply.
Edward paused, mouth drawn into a thin line, before inquiring, “I’m sweet and cold, with a stick to hold. What am I?”
Oswald didn’t answer for a beat, then two, and Edward could see his shoulders shuddering under the blankets, then, “A popsicle,” he answered.
“Yes,” Edward said, pleased he played along, “Which is what you’ll be if we don’t get your temperature up.”
Oswald glared over his shoulder and sneered, “It doesn’t matter. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I don’t exactly have a lot going for me right now. I have no friends, I’ve lost my hold on Gotham and,” his voice breaks, softening from disdain to despair, “The one person in the world who actually cared about me is gone. Because of my weakness.” With that, Oswald turned and looked away, still shivering.
Edward’s mouth flattened, his face set in determination, as he said, “Mr. Penguin, you will not die here.” Oswald did not respond. The wind howled outside the apartment.
Edward unceremoniously turned on his heels and walked over his wardrobe, picking up his silver watch from the black felt stand it rested on. He put it on and read the time: 7:04AM. On any normal day, he’d be leaving for the GCPD, but that was currently not an option considering Oswald’s condition. Instead, Edward strode over to his coffee table and picked up his phone. He flipped it over, cold fingers fumbling as he found Captain Barnes’ contact and dialed it.
It rang three times before Barnes’ gruff voice came through with, “Hello?”
“Hi Captain Barnes, this is Edward Nygma,” Edward said, putting on a weak, scratchy inflection. “I won’t be able to make it in today. The heating is out in my building and I’ve contracted influenza.” He cleared his throat, acting like he was getting rid of mucus, for added effect.
“Really Nygma? Now? We need you here,” replied Barnes, exasperated. Edward rolled his eyes and repressed a sneer from entering his voice. If he was actually sick, this was a horrible way to handle the situation.
“I’m sorry Captain, but I will not allow myself to facilitate the spread of disease within the precinct. That would just get other staff members sick and lessen the overall labor force. I’ll be in tomorrow,” Edward said definitively.
“Fine, fine, but if you aren’t, there’ll be consequences,” Barnes sighed.
“Right…,” Edward replied before hanging up, sending his apartment back into silence only broken by the howling wind and Oswald’s faint chattering.
He slipped the phone into his trousers’ back pocket and walked towards his apartment’s metal door. Mounted on the wall next to the door was his thermostat. A bold, “44°” was displayed on the small screen, which then ticked down to “43°.” It was cold, and getting colder by the minute. Edward once again cursed his apartment’s architecture. Whatever residual heat left behind would soon be dispersed and dissolved by his open floor plan and high glass ceilings, and his apartment would be plunged into the freezing temperatures that stalked just beyond his walls. He glanced over at Oswald, who was still a shivering shape under Edward’s blankets. He swallowed down a strange mix of feelings that rose up from the sight and distracted himself with moving to the kitchen, set on making food for the pair.
“Tomato soup and grilled cheese will warm him up,” Edward muttered to himself as he grabbed an unopened carton of tomato soup from the fridge and worked on pouring all of it into a pot and heating it up. Under normal hosting circumstances, he would’ve made the soup from scratch, but he didn’t have that kind of time today, so pre-made soup would have to do. Once the pot was full of soup and being heated up, Edward grabbed a frying pan and set it on a separate burner, turning the heat for it on. He then grabbed a loaf of sourdough bread from his pantry and a stick of butter and a pack of Colby-jack cheese from the fridge. He buttered the pan and made two grilled cheeses, making sure each sandwich was toasted to golden-brown perfection and the cheese was nice and melted, all while periodically exhaling into his hands and rubbing them together.
As he flipped the sandwiches, with nothing but the sound of the howling wind outside and of his thoughts to accompany him, anxiety churned low in his stomach. A voice far in the back of his mind, different from the hallucination he usually dealt with, started to nag at him, saying there was something he wasn’t fully noticing. There was an absence of something, something important. Edward ignored the voice with a practiced mind, pushing it and the anxiety away and mentally sealing it off.
“Everything is fine,” he pointedly reassured himself.
Edward grabbed two plates and two bowls, setting a grilled cheese on each plate and ladling a large serving of tomato soup into each bowl. He savored the heat of the soup leeching through the bowls and into his cold hands before he stuck a spoon into each bowl. He then garnished each soup with a leaf of basil and a pinch of salt. He put Oswald’s serving on a silver platter, leaving his behind on the kitchen counter for now, and carefully walked over to the bedside. Oswald was a still lump under the covers, and the voice from earlier broke into his thoughts again. It badgered him with the same thought. Something was missing. Edward, again, repressed it, but not without some lingering dread settling low in his stomach. He watched Oswald for a few more moments, thinking back on all of their few interactions. Edward hoped he would come around soon. He had to. The Penguin would make a return, with Edward, The Riddler, at his side. With that last thought, Edward balanced the platter on one hand, reached over with his free hand, and gently shook Oswald.
“Mr. Penguin, I made tomato soup and grilled cheese. You need to eat to recover your strength, and it’ll keep you warm,” Edward said, his words coming out in faint white puffs.
Oswald didn’t stir. The pit in Edward’s stomach grew larger, and unease clawed up his throat.
“Mr. Penguin?” Edward repeated before he peeled back the top part of Oswald’s blankets, exposing his head. His eyebrows were pinched together and his eyes were screwed shut in a tense expression of distress. Dark tufts of hair laid against his pale forehead in a soft fringe, and Edward instinctively reached out to brush it to the side, but stopped at the last second. Instead, Edward put the back of his hand up to Oswald’s cheek and hissed when it made contact with Oswald’s frigid skin. He was even colder than before. Edward jerked his hand back, and Oswald didn’t react to the motion. The only movement from him was his slow, shallow breathing. He wasn’t even shivering. Then it clicked.
He wasn’t even shivering.
Edward’s mind was going a mile a minute as he realized what that meant, what that voice was trying to tell him. Oswald had stopped shivering some time while Edward was making food and only his subconscious noticed its absence.
Edward started muttering to himself frantically, “A lack of shivering in cold temperatures is a sign of severe hypothermia, oh dear, oh dear.” He walked over and set the platter of food on his butcher block counter before he began pacing between there and the bed. He racked his brain for any solution for Oswald's hypothermia.
“Should I get more blankets?” He cast a glance at the throw blanket he used when he slept on the couch, but he quickly corrected himself with, “No, more blankets won’t work if he’s not producing his own body heat to be trapped by the blanket, you know this. You know this…” Edward’s mumblings trailed off, and his pacing stopped at the bed, as an idea formed. Edward quickly reached over and shook Oswald, much sharper than before. Oswald startled awake after a few moments, and he turned to look at Edward. His eyes were dull, almost unfocused, lacking the usual clarity they held.
“Wh- What?- Why?” Oswald asked, a deep kind of fatigue tainting his voice.
“You are suffering from severe hypothermia,” Edward prattled nervously, “And you are not able to make enough body heat to combat this, rendering all of these blankets basically useless. You need some other heat source with you for these coverings to do anything.”
Oswald didn’t seem to understand what Edward was saying.
“I need to get in the bed with you,” he elaborated bluntly.
Oswald’s mouth gaped open a little at this, and it took a few moments for him to gather his wits and reply, “I’m not cold.”
“That is just the hypothermia talking, Mr. Penguin. You are extremely cold to the touch, you are just no longer aware of your internal body temperature. It is also why you have stopped shivering.”
Oswald paused again, and Edward was scared he would argue further, but he just asked, “Why are you doing all of this?”
Edward went to answer, relieved, but paused. There was no way Edward could tell Oswald his motivation for saving him, for keeping him alive, for being this persistent. They were already running out of time, if Oswald’s sluggish demeanor was anything to go off of, so Edward just said the first rough oversimplification he thought of.
“I need you.”
The phrase was just meant to convince Oswald into cooperating, a quick way of manipulating him, but it came out more as a confession than anything. The weight of what Edward said rested heavily on his tongue, and Oswald seemed equally stunned.
He gaped at Edward for a few more moments before he simply replied, “Okay,” and shifted slightly in the bed to make more room, too dazed from Edward’s words or hypothermia-induced fatigue to argue further.
Edward nodded fervently and quickly sat on the edge of the bed. He took off his socks, because he’d rather die than wear socks in his bed, before sliding underneath the two comforters. The air under the blankets was barely different from the outside apartment air, and Edward realized just how alarming Oswald’s condition could’ve become. He shook his mind free of those thoughts and settled into the bed. Oswald now laid on his back with only his face peeking above the covers and Edward quickly copied his position, though he rested his hands on top of his chest over the blanket. With both of them staring up at the ceiling, a strained silence fell upon the apartment. Edward became hyper-aware of the small amount of space in between them and how easy it would be to close it.
Instead of doing so, Edward found himself saying, “Did you know emperor penguins huddle together to shield each other from the harsh wind and share body heat?”
Oswald huffed, and Edward could almost hear the eye-roll in his voice as he breathed out, “Do you just research penguins in your spare time?”
“Yes,” Edward replied, ignoring Oswald’s harsh tone. “I research a lot of things in my spare time. Emperor penguins can also dive the deepest out of any penguin species and they are specialized for deep waters.”
Something about this amused Oswald and his next huffs sound more akin to laughter than annoyance.
“How ironic,” Oswald mumbled to himself.
“What was that?” Edward asked earnestly, turning to look at Oswald, repressing a flinch when he saw Oswald was already looking at him. Oswald shook his head ‘no’ and went back to staring at the ceiling, despair painted on his face. Edward continued to stare at him.
The air under the blankets was finally heating up, and Edward appreciated the warmth after an entire morning bereft of it. Soon, he saw Oswald start to shiver again, intense tremors that wracked his whole body and chattered his teeth. Edward smiled to himself, pleased that Oswald’s internal heating system was working again. Edward continued to watch Oswald as his shivers eventually evened out and he became still once more. He then shifted back onto his side, stretching out his bad leg carefully and burrowing slightly into the blankets. A soft hum began emanating from Oswald, and Edward quickly recognized it as My, My Mother’s Love. It was a song on a well-played vinyl from Edward’s collection. He started to softly sing along, the lyrics easily coming to him from the many times he played the vinyl.
“The fire has gone out,”
“Wet from the snow above,”
“But nothing will warm me more,”
“Than my, my mother’s love.”
“I light ano-” Edward began the next lyric before he was interrupted by Oswald.
“How do you know that song?” Oswald asked, almost accusatory, and he looked over at Edward over his shoulder.
“It’s one of my favorites. I have the whole album on vinyl,” he replied with a smile. Oswald looked forward again and didn’t answer for a while.
“My mother used to sing me that song, every night…” He finally said. It sounded like he was about to begin a story, and Edward waited for Oswald to continue, but he didn’t. A few moments later, a soft snore replaced Edward’s anticipatory silence. Edward smiled to himself, knowing how taxing hypothermia must have been on Oswald and his already-weakened state. His smile widened when he realized that Oswald was just about to open up to him.
“There is hope,” Edward said to himself as he watched the gentle rise and fall of Oswald’s sleeping shoulders.
Edward awoke to a quick vibration against his leg. His phone was ringing in his pocket, he realized. His glasses were also smashed against his face painfully, and he quickly readjusted them to sit comfortably on his face again. The third thing he realized was how close he and Oswald had become. The already-small distance between them had shrunk considerably and the pair were now face-to-face. His nose was almost touching Oswald’s forehead. He must’ve fallen asleep some time after Oswald and they both shifted in their unconscious state. Edward quickly, though somewhat regretfully, pulled away before checking the time on his watch. It was 11:18am, four hours after Oswald’s bout of hypothermia. Edward’s phone buzzed against his thigh again, reminding him of its existence. He slipped a hand under the blanket, fumbling his phone out of his pocket and answering it.
“Hello?” He asked softly, mindful of Oswald still sleeping next to him.
“Hello. This is an automated message from Grundy Apartments,” a robotic voice answered him again. “We are sending this message to inform you that the heating for all Grundy units has been repaired and should be online soon. Thank you for your patience and understanding.” As soon as the line clicked dead, Edward heard the soft hum of the heating turn on. A few moments later, he felt warm air finally circulating his icy apartment.
He looked over at Oswald, about to share what he was just told on the phone, but Oswald was still asleep, unaware of the now-fixed heating. Edward reached to wake him up, but hesitated. Then, Edward decided to lay back down, softly settling into his side of the bed again.
“Mr. Penguin needs his rest, and who am I to disturb that?” he quietly asked himself. He didn’t acknowledge his other, more simple motivation, of just wanting to preserve this moment with Oswald.
Edward turned to face Oswald again and watched his face as he slept. He looked calm here, almost angelic in the late morning light. A small smile appeared on Edward’s face.
“Rest well, Mr. Penguin.”