TAS- Jervis & Alice - Before the “Incident” - G
First post! How exciting! I figured I would display the prompts as Anonymous just like in LJ just in case someone wants to request something, but don’t want others to know that some of their Batman kinks run, shall we say,…deep? ;) (Unless for some reason you WANT your name to be shown. If so, let me know and I’ll change it back!) Thanks for all the support you Batman nuts! I got a boat load of followers and inbox messages in just a few hours. Some of them are aaaaaaawesome ideas. I can’t wait to get to them. I hope you all enjoy.
Also, I will set up my titles to read thusly- Fandom - Characters - Prompt - Rating. Cool? Cool. Already, here we go!
He wasn’t answering the lab phone.
This wasn’t uncommon when deadlines where approaching fast and Dr. Kates was angrily tapping her foot and breathing down your neck, waiting for results. Even Alice became nervous when she knew the higher ups were waiting around for whatever it was that Wayn Enterprises and Research Labs did, and the young girl was just a paper pusher. She may have only been a lowly desk secretary, one of hundreds in this section of the building alone, but when it came to crunch time all the scientists became so frazzled and rushed she had to work extra hard to keep up with all the phone calls and flying papers and running errands and typing at double time.
All of them, that was, besides Jervis. Alice wasn’t directly employed under him, but she found herself reporting more to him than to any of the others that shared the floor. Especially Dr. Kates who always seemed rather…angry in general, let alone when Alice approached her with meaningless paper details. She wanted to hear directly from the scientists , not some desk clerk that didn’t know what was going on. Jervis was all too glad to have Alice come to him first, that’s how Alice guessed they became so good work friends. She would barge in, much to the annoyance of the others who shared Jervis’ work space, and ask loudly for Jervis, papers and documents in her arms. He would pop his head up from his microscope, looking board and drained but would brighten up when he laid eyes on the blond beauty in the dingy laboratory. It didn’t matter what questions she had for him. It could have been what date she should put on the paper to what the title of the research was called, he always made some time for her and they would talk…of many things…
Unfortunately that also got both of them in trouble. Jervis never found out if one of his co-workers complained enough or someone else found it annoying that Alice was barely at her desk when they needed her, but Dr. Kates had a stern talking-to with the both of them. About professionalism and carrying around the work place as if it was high school. Jervis just stared at the floor, growing upset that she was taking away the one thing that brought him joy (besides the big breakthrough in his research) at the dismal office. Alice just apologized profusely, promising to never do it again. Clearly she feared her job was on the line for such childish matters. That didn’t stop her from asking Jervis questions though. Jervis thought it rather smart of her to use her desk phone to call his lab phone. Nobody, truly nobody, ever called his personal lab phone in the years he had worked here and what better way to talk to someone you weren’t allowed to see? She would still burst in sometimes when it was truly urgent and catch the shy man off guard, but Jervis would always tell her what a pleasant surprise it was to see her on the rare occasions she did.
Now as Alice twirled one of her fingers in the phone cord, waiting for the ringing to stop, she leaned over her desk as far as she could to look down at the closed lab door. She could only guess that Jervis was so engrossed with …whatever he was working on and didn’t hear the phone or he wasn’t there. Looking up at the center of the office at the slow ticking clock, is was indeed near five. And on a Friday only a handful of people stayed in the research labs so late. But for all the months Alice has worked here she’s never seen Jervis go home early (or miss work for that matter), so she guessed he was still in there. She plopped herself backwards into her chair and hung up the phone. She would bet her paycheck that he was still in there, working hard to get Dr. Kates her results. If Jervis was the only scientist left in the lab nobody would mind if she poked her head in. She had a question to ask anyway, so this was important. She briskly walked over to the glass stained door, the black “LAB” letters stared her in the face for a moment before she opened it up, calling out for her friend.
“Jervis?” No reply as she slinked into the darkness. It was so dark in here she had to squint to see the back of Jervis, he was hunched over and sitting over on the labs high stools on the other side of the room. She called out again as she walked closer and still there was no acknowledgment that Jervis had heard her. She heard soft squeaking as she got closer and saw Jervis’ little white mice scuttling around their glass cage. They stuck their little pink noses up into the hair as she approached. They must have caught a whiff of her perfume, but paid it no mind after a second more and went back to digging around their shredded papers and food pelts.
Alice leaned over Jerivs’ hunched shoulders and looked down into his lap. He wasn’t looking through any microscope, or writing any facts on papers, he wasn’t even brushing up on one of his thick text books about the human brain. Instead Alice unceremoniously shrieked when she realized he was holding a dead lab rat in his folded hands. Jervis jumped clear off his high stool almost crushing the said rat in his hands from the automatic and harsh jerk his body gave when being snuck up on. The blood curling scream of a woman in his ear didn’t help either. Jervis whirled around, just as shocked as Alice. She was trying to hold onto her beating heart, another hand over her mouth as she started to spew out “sorrys!” over and over again.
“I’m so sorry Jervis!” She quickly said looking at him and then back at his cupped hands. “I, I, um, called. I called and you didn’t answer and I thought something was wrong and I saw you were in here but I didn’t think you were holding a dead rat!”
Jervis blinked owlishly at how rapidly the girl could ramble on when startled. Jervis waved a hand at her gently.
“Goodness Alice, you gave me a start. It’s quite alright. My apologizes as well! I should not have worried you like that. I must have been lost in, hmm, thought. I did not realize the phone was ringing.” He placed the little lifeless creature on the counter top next to the cage. The other mice in the cage glanced at it, sniffed at the glass and moved on. “Thank you for your concern however. It’s lovely to see that you came in here to, uh, check up on me like this.” Jervis placed a simple clean Kleenex on it’s little body to cover it up with some respect. Alice looked at the little lump a moment longer and then back at the rather upset man.
He sighed, letting his fingers give it a few soft last pats. “I must have used too much positively charged electrons in the membrane when I was testing to see if the functioning left side could be cut off from a disabled right side. “ Alice nodded and pretended to understand fully what that meant or how that caused the animal to die. Jervis sighed again, running his other hand through his hair, gathering up his train of thought. “It would seem that the test proved negative. Not the first one I’ve lost, but I do dislike losing any if I can help it. Oh, and they are mice dear Alice.Peromyscus leucopus, if you will, but not rats.” A few of them squeaked in agreement from below and he smiled down at them and then back up at her.
“Oh sorry. Mice. Aww. Poor little guy.” Jervis’ mop-like hair bounced up and down in sad agreement. Alice stared at thing while Jervis studied her perfect face and sad crystal blue eyes.
“Did he have a name?” She asked to fill the long silence.
“Seven.” Jervis replied simply and looked back down at his little friend. She arched her delicate eyebrows up at such a bland name.
“Number Seven? Oh.”
Jervis let out a soft snort of a laugh and a crooked smile lifted half of his lips up. “No, no. Not “Number Seven.” Seven. As in the seven of hearts. You know like one of the car-“ He cut himself short when he turned and looked up at the girl’s confused features. He held himself back, as he found himself doing so more and more often around her when it came to his beloved Carroll’s stories. Jervis had no doubt in his mind that she wouldn’t care that he named one of his lab rats after one of the characters from his favorite “Alice in Wonderland” book. She wasn’t one to judge. But that wouldn’t stop her human nature from talking to others though. Jervis knew she ate lunch with the other girls around the office. Of course he knew, he tried to ask her to lunch numerous times but never got the nerve to break through the stupid circle of giggle women, much like the garden of flowers that his Alice in his book stumbles upon. They always took too long deciding if they should drink coffee at this shop or drink coffee at the other shop across the street. Personally Jerivs thought it was all rather silly when they could have a perfectly fine cup of tea, or so be it, their coffee, in the office for free.
They would start talking about their days, about what they did at home once released from work and so forth. Slowly but surely office gossip would start either with themselves, or the people around them. And Alice, his sweet and kind Alice would unintentionally and without malice would bring up how strange little Jerivs was sitting in the lab with a dead rat in his hands. A rat he named after a deck of cards in a children’s book.
No. He wouldn’t have it. He wanted people to like him and he wanted to seem normal. He was normal. He was perfectly normal. He just liked to read a bit more than others is all. And what’s wrong with re-reading a favorite book over and over? People name their pets after book characters all the time, for good Lord’s sake, and he had every right to name his mice whatever the hell he pleased. He didn’t need to explain himself.
“Jervis?”
Shoot. Jervis forgot for a moment that he stopped talking in midsentence and that his hands were clenching themselves a little too tightly for Alice’s comfort.
“Hmm? Oh, I’m sorry my dear. As I was saying, yes, his name is just Number Seven. I have too many of these little fellows to give them all proper names.” She nodded while still looking at the still sheet, the little tail poking out from underneath it. “But nonetheless, always sad to see one go due to my negligence.”
Alice started to tell a story about how she lost a cat herself when she was younger and she understood how he felt. Jervis’ spirits lifted for a moment, imagining she owned a little black cat named Diana. His happy thought was dashed when she mentioned some uncreative and common name for the feline. Jervis nodded along with her story politely, her voice was always so pleasant to listen to at the end of a long day.
“Well anyway, I was going to ask you something, but it can wait until Monday.” She placed a hand on his shoulder, and gave him a few pats. A sign of sorrow for his lose. It was these incredibly far and few between moments that Alice gave Jervis human contact that he craved for everyday. Jerivs kept count actually. The first time was when he actually laid eyes upon her and fell in love with her there and then all those months ago. The second was when she ran into him without looking after turning around and he spilled the tray of glass tubes on the cold ground. That led to their third time when their hands brushed against each other when they were both at Dr. Kates’ feet trying to pick up all the pieces. It felt like an eternity since then, but now Jerivs could count this one as well. A sweet pat and, dare he think, even passionate? All over for the death of a rodent Jervis seemed found of. He thought for one sick second what he would receive from her is he came in on Monday with the news of his mother passing away. Surely that would give him a full hug…one that would last for at least a minute. But then that would make him a liar…unless…
“See ya Jervis!” Alice broke him out of his thoughts once again, and Jervis couldn’t help but smile to himself when her long hair wisped itself near his face as she turned to leave the lab. She smelled like a freshly baked sugary treat. Like the ones he would eat with his afternoon tea every day. He didn’t even say goodbye to her before she closed the laboratory door behind her and out of his eye sight. Jervis was alone again, alone with his little friends to his side, a few soft squeaks escaping them.
He gathered Seven back up in his hand, all folded neatly in his napkin coffin and walked over to his desk.
“So sorry dear chap. But it seems that I have planted the white roses and you had to pay the price for my mistake.” He looked down at the white clump one more time and discarded it into his trash bin. He would pick up a new test subject over the weekend to replace the dead one, but at least he would have the warm memory of Alice’s hand on his shoulder to keep him company until Monday.
