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[paxpenguina]

OSWALD ☂ COBBLEPOT

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text | un: mister_e (Shortly after Oswald's Big Night)

[theansweris]

Just checking how you are and if you want to come and have a meal here rather than at the public housing cafeteria.

[paxpenguina]

[It takes Oswald a little while to get to the message, not because he's actively ignoring it, just because he's still trying to see through the groggy curtain of the morning which has arrived all too soon.

And then there's Ed all up in his face. A digital version this time, granted, but it is still Ed. Checking in on him. Being Ed.

The message sits on read for a while then before Oswald finally manages to put his brain sludge into something solid.]

While I appreciate the offer, that won't be necessary. I won't be making an appearance at any of the communal events in that cesspit of public housing any time soon.

[Does he have a solid plan yet? No, not quite, but when has that ever stopped him?]

text; un: Persephone

[ragingnature]

Hello.

My name is Persephone and your partner, Ed, told me to contact you about a potential job at your bar in Insincerity.

text; un: the_penguin

[paxpenguina]

Hello, Persephone.

If Edward has sent you in my direction then I will take that as a sign of his endorsement.

We have several positions open at the moment. Why don't you tell me a bit about where you feel your skills would be most suited to at The Clockhouse.

text;

[turdusmigratoriusmortuus]

Mr. Cobblepot, I had an unfortunate detour back home, and I'm benched for a while.

[paxpenguina]

[At some later time, Oswald will wonder when he began to associate the word 'home' with residences in Duplicity and not with Gotham, but for now--]

It's good of you to make contact, Jason. I was starting to worry.

Did your unfortunate detour involve encountering some unexpected friends that we should consider repaying a favor to?

text; un: hq

[mahem]

hey oz

so remember that whole alternate versions of ourselves thing?
looks like this place decided to bring another me here

thought you should know in case you happen to run into her
but i think there's enough obvious to tell us apart

[ that harley doesn't have the tattoos, for one thing. ]

text; un: the_penguin

[paxpenguina]

Another you?

Somehow I feel this warrants a fair bit of concern.

Delivery on the 24th

[ragingnature]

[ Persephone spent some time trying to find out what everyone’s favorite baked treat is just for this occasion.

A carefully packaged container topped with a ribbon will be delivered to their residence. Within Oswald will find his favorite baked treat, or perhaps his second (or third) favorite if Persephone couldn’t get an answer to his top favorite. The baked goods are as fresh as she could manage.

Attached is a note the reads: ]

christmas delivery—

[mahem]

[ chances are this will show up either a couple of days early or maybe even the day after christmas, because harley's so scattered that she's just been buying gifts at random.

left in a box on oswald's desk in his office are a few ties with penguins on them, ranging from subtle to not so much, and a bottle of de-stressing CBD massage oil. ]

merry xmas oz
take it easy next year
xoxo harl 💋

Xmas Gift

[permanentlyexhaustedbird]

Tim's gift for Penguin will be delivered by courier; a red-headed speedster who will make sure that it's signed for before disappearing in the blink of an eye.

Inside is a penguin corkscrew and a a penguin mug except there a knife that's been drawn into the little penguin's flipper. Also, like someone has been in the staff room of The Clockhouse.

Christmas Eve

[cryfrustration]

[The night before the holiday party, when Oswald heads to bed, he'll find a large, neatly wrapped gift box in his room.

Inside, is a luxuriously velvet-lined dressing gown .

The card attached reads very simply:

Oswald,
Happy Wintersday
However shit this place is, I'm glad that we met and glad that you're here.

Yours,
Vrenille

P.S. I also got you a one year subscription to my favourite underwear-of-the-month club, Bum Chums. Let's face it, you need to branch out a little in that department.]

christmas eve

[covert]

[Sometime in the dead of night (unless Penguin has those motion detector cameras, god Dick hates those) a long thin parcel is left propped up against the door.

Taped to it, a note:

Press the button.

Don't point it at your face when you press the button.

It'll work twice a day, once in each direction. Hold on tight.

D. Grayson.

Inside: a black and white striped umbrella with a silver (looking) handle, shaped like a curved penguin's head. He's made this himself, being still mostly broke, by doing a little freelance mechanic work in return for use of the equipment.

There are two buttons on the handle.

One, with a picture of an umbrella, does what you'd expect: it opens it.

The other has two arrows, up and down. Press it once and it'll generate enough lift to carry Oswald out of harm's way to a relatively low rooftop. Press twice and it's a gentle drift back down.

How some himbo 1 percenter came up with this is anyone's guess. Maybe it was a lucky find at the dollar store.]

[covert]

[It's past closing time. The bars and restaurants of insincerity are packing up and shutting down, their proprietors not looking to overstay their time in the strange second city.

And Dick Grayson's just arrived. In civilian wear, crashing chaotically through the streets. He'd taken a bet that the doors between the cities would have stopped it following him. He'd been wrong. Fear creatures, like fear itself, defy logic. He should know, lately there's been a new one every time he closes his eyes. He's running on 72 hours without sleep now, and it seems like he's dreaming while awake.

Someone emerges from a shuttered storefront and Dick barrels sideways up an alley to get it to follow him, which it does, keeping up its running commentary:

Always were expendable, weren't you, boy? What do you think he picked you up off the circus floor for anyway, wark? Just a brightly colored target to deflect bullets meant for him. Expendable. Not even talented enough to die when you're supposed to.

Sometimes it's barely a wisp of a monster, sometimes it solidifies into nearly-a-man, sometimes it slithers, sometimes it flies.]

Open the door.

[Dick arrives where he was going to arrive all along, and hammers at the closed Clockhouse doors. He needs to know.

He needs to know this isn't real.]

OPEN THE DOOR.

[paxpenguina]

[Chaos is absolutely the state of everything of late. Chaos, disarray, carnage in the physical sense, the mental sense, and the emotional sense. Oswald hasn't even seen much in the way of his own nightmarish thoughts walk the streets and he can already feel the way it claws at him from the way the monsters and the feeling of dread seeps out of others. Even if he hasn't got a clean line from A to B of how these things are coming to be, it seems clear enough that they're being generated from deeply personal places, everything far too specific to be generalised horror.

The escape from the glassy space of Vrenille's mansion in the Up to the Arena in the Down revealed that they had plenty of muscle, though not so much in the way of weapons and additional resource. So during a lapse in the hurricane of horrors, in the eye of the storm perhaps, there's Oswald in the club, rifling through what had been stored there to take back with him to Duplicity.

And that's when the banging starts to filter through.

The first few times, Oswald thinks about ignoring it, though even then he rolls his eyes to start to yell back 'we're CLOSED!' but even as the words start to form even Oswald knows the insistence of that noise isn't someone looking for a drink.

And not only that, he knows that voice. Not in such desperate tones, certainly, but he knows that voice.

It's what drives urgency into his steps, makes him fumble with the lock trying to get it open more quickly as he yanks the door open. No one would need to be a genius to figure out what's going on here--some kind of terror is hot on Dick's trail. This means there's very little preamble, just the door parting with enough space to usher the other man inside.]

Hurry up and get inside!

[Somehow, he still manages to make it sound as if he's the one impatient with Dick here, like the younger man is stalling somehow.]

text; un: kirrilovich

[turdusmigratoriusmortuus]

i can't come in for a couple of weeks

[paxpenguina]

[The message gets a bit of a grumpy, skeptical sideeye and sits on read for a few minutes and in reality SO much longer than that because DW sucks at giving notifs apparently omg as he decides how he wants to approach this absence this time. Ugh! He had best get some facts first before being irritable and snippish like he really wants to.]

Another injury, Jason?

text; un: ShowStopper

[alwayskayaking]

[Tim was directed to Oswald from Jacob Frye when he asked where to buy a gun. What he probably should have also asked about is how one starts a conversation about buying a gun.

He's seen American movies, but those always seemed to start in seedy bars or empty parking lots. He didn't really have a point of reference for sitting in your lounge and texting someone. A text message he writes, deletes, and starts over again several times before finally settling on what he hopes is a simple message that sounds like this isn't the first time he's ever bought a gun before.]

Hello Mr. Cobblepot, I was told you're the man to talk to about buying some specialty items and I'm in the market for something special.

[paxpenguina]

[If this were the movies, there would be a freeze framed moment on Jacob pointing Tim in Oswald's direction and a voice over advising the viewer to take note of this moment, it'll be important later.]

Hello to you too, Mr. Stoker.

If special is what you're looking for, why don't you stop by the club around noon. We can discuss your needs.

text; un: BlackMask - MISFIRE

[ewwww]

Do you think this suit makes me look fat?

[Attached is a picture of Roman in a thirst trap pose, maroon suit half-unbuttoned, showing off his hairy chest as he reclines in bed. He's got the tip of one finger of his gloves between his teeth, like he's about to pull it off.]

[paxpenguina]

[Wow. He did not ask for this.]

Yes, Roman. You either need to find yourself a better tailor, or another solution.

text: un: birdwatcher

[covert]

[It's not a misfire. It's a fragment of a video taken by the city and installed without request on the hard drive of every device Dick owns, being sent out mysteriously now. Kind of a wedding video, of sorts.

At least, it shows Dick Grayson bound by a red rope stolen from the wedding chapel, in an intricate, almost ornate style of shibari which pins his arms behind his back and keeps his knees bent and locked together. He's been pushed down onto a half-stripped heart shaped bed, face only partly visible where his face is pressed into the pillows. His skin's flushed everywhere but where the rope digs deep.

Pressing into him, four thick fingers, exposed thumb smoothing almost tenderly across the stretched skin of his hole as his partner lets him adjust before carefully working on loosening him more. Each slight movement draws obscene sounds from Dick, who looks all but gone to sensation. His partner - out of shot but for an arm and shoulder thicker than most people's thighs, and the occasional glimpse of some quite distinctive hair lets go a stream of praise and reassurance and filth and - as if he's been conditioned that he has to ask for what he wants, eventually Dick gasps out one word:] More.

[paxpenguina]

[At first, Oswald is not entirely sure he knows what he's looking at, his sense of recognition trailing behind the viewing process itself. Maybe it's the surreality of the scene itself, the gaudy red decor surrounding the person at the center of it all. Someone who Oswald does, in fact, know.

That's what makes this strange initially in a way, the fact that he recognises that it' Dick immediately, but he seems so out of place both in the setting and the position he's in that it's almost like putting a jigsaw puzzle together in his mind.

It all slots together quite suddenly though when he hears Dick speak, as if that's the binding force that slams everything together all at once and the realisation of what Oswald is actually looking at becomes so clear that it's a wonder how it could have been at all confusing in the first place.

His first response then is to shove the device away from him very quickly, eyes wide and face flushed as his other hand covers his mouth. Oh no. Oh dear.

Eventually he does turn the device over again, trying to ignore the lingering heat that viewing the content has left under his skin before attempting a very simple means of contact.]

Dick?

text; un: panacea (Misfire)

[apurrstate]

[What arrives on Oswald's device is a text pulled from the history of Anders' phone, no better than a salacious picture for the description.]

Is that what you want first, love? My tongue? Perhaps put to use on the line of your neck? Or maybe you'd prefer it lower, delivering well-deserved attention to those planes of muscle I very much appreciate. Or maybe lower still? Perhaps that's where I should start? With your cock down my throat.

[paxpenguina]

[Receiving the message, Oswald doesn't really clock what he's reading until about part-way through and by that point it's too late to turn back. The confusion briefly flickering at the start of the text is completely swallowed up by a internal wave of warmth at the involuntary mental image of Anders--because he knows that's who this is from at the very least--swallowing him down is humiliatingly appealing. Which also makes him shove his device down, face face, to stop himself from re-reading the message again. Damn this city.

And then the reality returns to his bird brain and Oswald manages, finally, to send back a reply.]

Vivid a mental image as that is, I am under the distinct impression that this was not intended for me.

misfire text | un: sarcasmandcoffee

[permanentlyexhaustedbird]

Look, I'm not the time travel expert between the two of us but I'm pretty sure that's not how that works

[paxpenguina]

Color my curious. How do you figure time travel works exactly, pray tell.

text; un: speed

[mph]

hey so question
do subs need a permission slip to work for u?

text; un: the_penguin

[paxpenguina]

If you have a Marked individual in mind who requires paperwork signing, I have provisions to handle that.

Who are you considering and for what role?