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He assumed it was Harvey.
Harvey had just left, left his jacket draped over the arm of the couch too. He'd taken his hat but left his coat-- Jim had noticed in the moment he walked out the door but he hadn't had the energy to stop him. Today had been too much.
But five minutes later there was a knock. Sighing with a glass of rum in his hand, Jim picked up the jacket by the collar and walked it toward the door.
Just as he did his phone buzzed in his pocket.
He pulled it out idly and looked down at the small screen on the front. A text from Harvey. He flipped it open to find the words 'Left my jacket. Bring it to work tomorrow for me?' In a text and Jim stopped just short of the door.
It was well after midnight. If Harvey wasn't the one knocking then who?
Faces flashed through his mind. Jervis Tetch, Jonathan Crane... he set the rum and jacket down and side-stepped to pull his gun from the holster strewn across a side-table. The knocking persisted, louder and more impatient.
He turned slowly once his hand was on the knob and then threw the door open, taking aim as soon as he saw eyes--
"Hello Jim!" The greeting was laced with a sarcastic cheer and a smile full of teeth that may have wanted to rip into him. Jim turned the gun up, then let it fall to his side. "How are you this evening? Well I hope. Ask me how I am."
"Oswald," Jim greeted monotone. Oswald was visibly angry and Jim was too exhausted. "How are you?" He did as he was told even though he knew he wouldn't like the answer.
"Just fine, thank you!" Oswald spat, the smile remaining for a moment before it disappeared and Jim took a deep breath to brace himself. "You left me on that blimp for hours!" Oswald spat and shook with rage, his cane vibrating agains the floorboards.
Jim heaved a sigh of protest, "it took a while to get someone up there who could land it," he explained with little energy. He turned, and walked away from his verbal attacker but left his apartment door open as he picked up the glass of rum again and crossed the room to put some distance between himself and Oswald's shouting.
"Just admit you asked for my help and then forgot about me!" Oswald stalked inside and closed the door behind him like he'd been invited and stood menacingly six or seven feet behind Jim, glaring at the back of his head.
"I didn't forget, and that can't be the only reason you're here."
"It is!" Oswald barked. "Unless you'd rather I be here to exact my revenge against you for using Sofia Falcone to destroy me and everything I built."
Somewhat threatened, Jim turned to face him now, leaning against the table behind him but not unguarded.
"It's been a long day, Oswald." Jim said, lowly. "Go home."
"Oh, you think it's been a long day? Try driving a blimp in circles for six hours!" He shouted, voice more than just cracking.
"I told you, Gotham thanks you, what more do you want?" Jim tilted the glass back against his lips until it was empty. There was a pause of silence during which Oswald seemed to consider as if he'd taken it as an offer.
"Protection." Oswald spilled, pre-maturely, then pursed his lips sheepishly.
"What?"
Oswald sighed heavily, dropping his rage like a load off an exhausted mule as he hunched his formerly tensed shoulders, then fell onto the sofa that was conveniently behind him.
"Crane and Tetch could be anywhere. Ed isn't answering my calls- typical- and I have absolutely nowhere to go." He spilled the facts and Jim took a moment to take them in.
"So you came here?"
"They'll be after both of us and we stand a much better chance together." Oswald reasoned.
"I can handle myself alone."
"You o--"
"Don't say I owe you." Jim interrupted.
"You really do!" Oswald was vibrating with frustration again.
"I know, I just don't want to hear it." Jim barked too aggressively, hands flat on what passed in his home for a dining table as he leaned over it. He was too tired.
Asking Bruce to risk his life, asking Jeremiah, his plan that ensured their safety nearly failing, losing all those cops on the roof, watching Jerome fall to his death after promising mayhem. It wasn't a new feeling to need to unwind after being overwhelmed but Oswald didn't know how thin the ice was in that room. Harvey had known. It's why he left.
He heard Oswald sigh, and hopefully calm down again. "You've been drinking." He observed the empty glass-- though he'd noticed it far earlier. "Perhaps it has been a rough day for you." His tone was only half-sarcastic, the other half betraying something sympathetic.
Harvey Bullock would have said Jim Gordon had a soft spot for the Penguin, but Oswald would have argued it the other way around. The ways Jim had torn him from his throne, over and over again-- he should have been slitting his throat right here and now to prevent it ever happening again.
But there was Jim, having allowed him to simply walk into his home and remain with his back turned as if he couldn't fathom the possibility despite all he'd done. It was just who they both were- and something in Jim, not just the dumb, clearly a little drunk Jim, trusted him that way. To not stab him in the neck for all that shit with Sofia Falcone and everything before it.
He'd be dead if it weren't for Jim on that pier all those years ago, but now it went beyond that.
His ears perked up from his thoughts when he heard glass clanking from across the room.
"No." Oswald stood abruptly, crossed the space between them and snatched the bottle from Jim's hand before he could pour more than a drop into the glass.
"Oswald!" Jim's voice boomed as he turned, Oswald skittering back and hugging the bottle against his chest and giving Jim his best expression of 'im unarmed but I will bite you!'
"You seem like you've had enough," Oswald insisted, nodding with assurance and still backing away.
"Get the hell out of my house," Jim sounded like he'd added extra werewolf to his voice tone on top of the usual amount.
"You can't help me fight off Tetch and Crane if you're too drunk to stand and you and I both know there's a chance they'll come here!"
"I told you you're not staying," Jim took two threatening steps toward him. Oswald narrowed his eyes, allowed tension to build between their mutual glares, and then made a run for the kitchen sink.
"Oswald!" Jim's eyes widened and he ran after him. Oswald's chest slammed against the counter in front of the sink and he held the bottle over the drain and started to turn it upside-down. But the thundering footsteps behind him were too close and he knew it was too vulnerable, so after only disposing of less than a glass, he yanked it back to his chest, spilling some on himself in the process.
Jim's hands came down on either side of the counter, pinning him there.
"Give it back to me," Jim demanded.
"No!" Oswald spat, simultaneously trying to see if any of the booze had gotten on his favorite vest.
"I won't drink any more but it's too expensive for you to pour it out!" Jim promised, hand trying to get a grip on some part of the bottle but Oswald was jerking around and he had his arms wrapped around every square inch of it.
"I'll buy you more of this cheap garbage when I get my empire back but right now I need you sober!" Oswald fumbled with his words as Jim's hands tried to peel his arms off the bottle. He was all but pinning Oswald to the sink counter with his body now. The window was open, he noticed, but there was no room to make a run to throw it out.
A moment of lost concentration, and Jim had gotten his grip on the neck of the bottle and started to pull it free.
"No!" Now it was at least half just about honor and finishing what he'd started. Oswald held onto the bottle for dear life and jerked it around as much as he could as Jim pulled on it. Jim was equally resistant and he had the strength. He was managing to pull it away from Oswald's body, forcing his arms to stretch out in front of him where so he had only a double-handed grip on the square of the bottle-- but his leather gloves were doing him a favor in making it stronger. Jim's chest was hard against Oswald's back now, and the edge of the counter was digging sorely into Oswald's stomach. He could feel strained breaths against his ear as Jim fought with him and he put every ounce of purpose he had into holding onto that damn bottle because that was the task at hand and like hell was he going to lose to Jim Gordon.
It took him a moment or more to notice Jim was slowing down. Another to notice Jim's hips were now snug against his ass which was at very least embarrassing, and another to register how close Jim's lips were to the back of his neck.
Jim's breath came again, not fast and strained anymore but slow and rough and long and Oswald's body shuddered in time with it. He swallowed, hard.
Jim's hand jerked at the bottle again and Oswald almost lost it, but he held firm and Jim growled a sigh of frustration.
"Oswald," Jim's voice was darker now, suddenly threatening but in a much different way. He wasn't receding to any degree, and Oswald was half-convinced he'd just smelled his hair. "Give me the bottle," he demanded.
Jim's nose was now at the back of his hairline, shamelessly breathing him in, lips creeping along his neck, free hand squeezing Oswald's hip like he was holding himself from pulling it back against him.
Oswald had to know.
He arched his hips and pressed backward against the front of Jim's pants. He didn't feel anything but Jim's abdomen twitched in response, pushing just the slightest amount of harder against him, breath catching in his throat before coming out shaking. He rolled and angled his hips differently and then Oswald felt something apparent and half-hard against him. Jim's body tensed, froze, hesitating for just a moment before he relaxed into it further and rocked his front against Oswald's back. Oswald's mouth fell open at the shamelessness of it all and he looked down into the filthy, clogged sink drain as he felt himself responding far too eagerly.
The hand on Oswald's hip slid down, teased the idea of slipping around to the front before retreating back and up as Jim's breath came in low growls.
"Give it to me or let me fuck you," Jim finally whispered, close enough, needy enough that Oswald could feel his lips moving against the back of his hair. Oswald's eyes fluttered shut, and if there had been any stops left to pull they were gone now.
It wasn't the first time-- it was the first time but not the beginning. It may have been there in the past. In looks, in touches. A possibly, a maybe, a hopeful, sometimes playful what-if. All of the almosts had drawn a line that Oswald wasn't sure they'd ever cross. But now Jim had just leapt over it like a hurdle on a race track.
Oswald's grip on the bottle loosened slightly in the mix, and Jim noticed and pulled at it swiftly only to have Oswald catch it just in time and yank it back down out of his grasp, pulling it back tight against his chest again.
"Stop." The word came on a breath from the pit of Oswald's stomach and he wasn't sure why he said it. But as soon as he did, every part of Jim loosened if only slightly, and reeled back.
It was easy to take something distracting from man you hated-- resented-- were indifferent toward-- when his back was turned to you. Easy to disassociate a warm body from who owned it and get what little you needed. Oswald used the space he'd been given to turn around and face Jim, to look him in the eyes. He wasn't opposed but he would not be used.
Jim's gaze was dark, maybe a little sad, perhaps nervous or uncertain, but far from unwanting as his eyes traveled to Oswald's lips.
"Jim--" Oswald shook at the sight of it.
"Sh." Jim interrupted sharply. He placed his first two fingers on the mouth of the bottle, sliding them down the neck before wrapping his hand around it and pulling up. Oswald watched it happen with his mouth agape and allowed Jim to take it from him.
For a moment Oswald thought-- that was it. He'd gotten what he was after. But then Jim was setting the bottle down on the counter beside the sink, and not backing off.
"Jim..." Oswald muttered with slight desperation as he searched Jim's eyes for answers to all his questions.
"Relax, Oswald." Jim leaned in, tilting his head to align their lips. "You've had a rough day."