Work Text
It started with texts. Silly little
I love you
sentiments. Then came the card.
Working in the precinct of the GCPD meant a few things, most noteworthy at the moment being the lack of privacy when receiving mail at work.
The thing was, Edward didn't know what to expect when a mail delivery service member came in and shouted his name, he couldn't think of any reason why it would be delivered to his place of work rather than his home address.
It was a card. Relatively cute. Off-white envelope, a scene with two birds leaning against each other with a heart over both their heads.
Love you.
Read the front in red cursive that matched the heart. It was just cute. Then he opened it, knowing full well who's sent it.
I can't help but be distracted with thoughts of you, my sweet lovebird, I hope your day is going well, and if not I'll do my darndest to improve it when you come home.
Signed, your Foxy.
Edward smiled, too distracted by the sentiment of his fiance to notice one of the detectives sneaking up on him. The card is ripped from his hands before he has time to react.
“Let’s see what we have here!” Arnold Flass exclaimed, a group of other cops moving in, preventing Ed from being able to easily grab it.
“Give it back!” one of the cops shoved him away.
“Let's see, ‘my sweet lovebird’? You couldn't make it anymore obviously a fake!? Oh, look! It's from
fox
y
! Ah, c'mon ya freak, couldn't even think of a good name for your imaginary woman?” the crowd laughed, Edward's ears burned red, he managed to grab the card back.
“
He
is my fiance!” but it didn't matter, no one was listening, too busy laughing and jeering at him for sending himself a card.
He retreated to his office, ashamed and guilty for that shame. He didn't want to tell Lucius about it, but he didn't know how to request that his fiance not send him anything during the workday ever again.
The card was wrinkled and bent. He tried smoothing it out, then placed it under a large book with care. The book was never used for reading, only straightening out papers that were given to him to fill out. The officers were pretty fond of messing with his papers. Actually, they just liked messing with him in general, jeering, taunting, calling him a freak, saying that he needed help. The last one was right but, saying it like
that,
it wasn’t nice, it brought up bad memories. At least he wasn’t being a creep to Ms.Kringle anymore. In hindsight, he really had been awful to her. But at least he’d learned from it, she didn’t seem to hate him as much as before. Especially since he apologized. Though frankly, he thought she had awful taste in men. Though before he started counseling he was almost as bad as Flass. Edward wiped his eyes. He really ought to stop judging her relationships as if he knew what was good for her. Maybe Flass was sweet to her, he didn’t know. What he did know is that Lucius was sweet to him.
What was he going to tell Lucius? The man could read him well enough to know something was bothering, and he would bring up the card. Lucius liked to make sure that Ed liked his little gifts and messages. He was sweet that way.
Edward had been right. As soon as he’d got home Lucius had asked how he liked the card and he just didn’t want to lie.
“I loved it, I really did but, an officer grabbed it and-” he took in a shaky breath, “he accused me of writing cards to myself and said some mean things for the whole precinct to hear,” Lucius looked concerned, with the start of anger in the corners of his eyes.
“Who did it?” Edward looked away, focusing on one of the titles on the far bookshelf. “Ed, I know that you can identify all of your colleagues, please tell me who did it?”
“It’s not a big deal it’s just-”
“Edward, when something hurts me and I say it doesn’t matter, does it?”
“If it matters enough to hurt then it does,”
“If you’re going to continue helping me with that, then you’re going to have to let me help you,” Lucius probably already knew it was Flass, as that was his usual tormentor.
“Arnold Flass, but don’t send anything I don’t want to-”
“I’m not going to send in any complaints unless it gets worse, I just want to know who I have to blame for ruining my gift, so that I can secretly plot his demise!” Ed laughed, Lucius was good at this, knowing how to make people, especially him, feel better. He supposed that if one of your coping mechanism for feeling awful was to help everyone else feel better then you’d get good at it pretty quickly.
The card incident was forgiven, not-quite forgotten. It almost slipped from his mind until once again his name was called by a mail delivery person, this time short with freckles, a pin declaring
‘my pronouns are ze/zir’
, and a crooked but friendly smile. He signed and the short-ish mail-person left. He should have known that Lucius would not let anything get in the way of sending sentiments. It was a soft package. Inside was a sweater. It was the best. So unbelievably soft and fleece-lined for optimum warmth and cuddliness. Edward was so happy that he had signed for it.
But his emotional high had to come crashing down, didn’t it?
“Having all your mail sent here or only stuff from your imaginary girl:
Foxy?
”
“It’s from my fiance, actually, and
his
name is Lucius Fox.” Edward retorted, holding the sweater close to his chest, sick of the torment.
“Whoa whoa, didn’t know you were a cock-sucker-”
“Do yourself a favour and can-it Flass!” A voice shouted. It was Harvey Bullock. Even his partner; Jim looked shocked.
“Are you really gonna defend this little freak?”
“Us
cock-suckers
gotta stick together.” Harvey stated, each word forceful and quite angry. Ed wanted to smack himself, for his first thought was
huh, I didn’t know he was queer.
“I would like to agree with that statement,” Ed turned, Lucius.
How long had he been there?
“Am I correct in assuming you are Arnold Flass?”
“That’s him,” Detective Alvarez answered, eyes narrow.
“I advise you to treat your co-workers with respect for one, and two: I better not hear about you harassing
my fiance
again.” Lucius looked furious, he had a knack of being reasonable when angry and just fuming silently instead of getting violent or shouting.
The next time Flass tried to say something ed could easily shut him down with a simple ‘I don’t appreciate name-calling.’ in a measured tone. Most of the time a detective would come to his aide as well; Harvey Bullock, Carlos Alvarez, Jim Gordon, even Kristen Kringle of the Records Annex told Flass to shut up. It was strange how coming out actually helped him seem like less of a weirdo, not that he thought his queerness was strange, he just knew that a lot of people did, though he was beginning to see that Gotham was pretty open minded about things. Which was a relief. Especially since it meant he had no excuse to not let Lucius send him silly cards during the workday (and no reasons for him not to do the same) despite living together. Besides, they had enough in their salaries to pay for postage for such precious sentiments.