Chapter Text
Razor-thin raindrops pelted against your bedroom window, splintering the beams of yellow light from the street lamps outside before they could reach your bed. The glass was already decorated with an elaborate spider web of cracks. Every time the bullet train darted by and rattled your entire apartment, you were worried that the glass would just cave in altogether. But it never did.
Thunder rolled through the slums of Gotham. It wasn’t the only part of town where light from the skyscrapers didn’t reach, but it was one of the worst.
You should have been smarter. You should have gone straight to Eddie when your phone first started acting funny – lagging and taking random photos from your front and back cameras throughout the day. You should have noticed that it started crashing only when you tried to text your friends from work or scroll mindlessly through social media. But your phone was already seven years old and hadn’t been properly updated in three.
He always fixed it for you though. Edward was just sweet like that. You weren’t smart like he was, but you trusted that he knew what he was doing when he hooked up your dinky little phone to all of his fancy computers and tapped expertly at the shattered screen. He must be fixing it, because it always miraculously started to work again after you run to him crying.
The sky lit up for a split second and a loud clap of thunder soon followed. Gotham City only ever had three moods: rain, snow, and sleet. Snow wouldn’t start for another few weeks – it was only November – so it was just rain with a few days of sleet in between.
You were about to text your friend from work and ask if she needed you to cover her shift at the club tonight (she hated hailing taxis in the rain) when it happened again. Your phone sputtered and the screen went dead, reflecting your pouty expression in the black mirror.
You barely had enough cash to keep the fridge halfway stocked with your part-time gig across the street; let alone enough to drop on a new cell phone. But at the same time, you hated bothering Eddie about fixing it. Even though he made sure you knew that he didn’t mind, wiping away your stressed tears with the pad of his thumb. He was way too good at that – making you feel loved and cared for.
It made it all too easy for him to coerce you into doing whatever he wanted.
You were about to roll over onto your stomach when the device vibrated against your chest, making you jolt. The screen was still black when you picked it up, aside from the little green question mark blinking in the top left corner. It disappeared for a split second before dancing across the screen, shooting out a string of text in its wake.
<?> Hello.
Oh jeez. The rain seemed to beat louder against your window, rivaling the sound of your own heartbeat. No way was your phone actually hacked. That would suck tremendously. You could say goodbye to that dress you’ve been saving up for. And that month’s heating bill too.
After careful consideration, you shut off your phone, tapping it against your chin as you counted to ten before turning it back on. Maybe you just imagined the little question mark, like how you one time imagined that masked figure standing on the fire escape outside the living room. But to your dismay, the message was still there, greeting you like an unwanted visitor when you clicked the power button.
Eddie told you over and over again to never message strangers online. He made you pinky promise him that before he let you anywhere near the Iceberg Lounge. Too many bad guys in one spot, he said. All of them are just waiting for a sweet little thing like you.
Still, curiosity was eating you alive from the inside out. You sunk back into your pillows, fingers shaking as you typed a quick response.
hi <♡>
The stranger on the other end remained silent for a handful of seconds, like they hadn’t expected you to reply at all. The question mark dipped out of sight and you instantly regretted saying anything back. Did they have access to your bank account information now? Eddie always made it sound like it was that easy; one false move and everything goes wrong.
<?> Do you know who I am?
You sat up straight and bit down hard on your thumbnail. The letters appeared one by one with a little techy-sounding bleep. The stranger’s cursor glared at you – daring you to reply.
You looked up at the door, halfway expecting Edward to be standing there watching you, shaking his head in disappointment. You could hear him chastising you now.
idk <♡>
should i? <♡>
<?> Yes.
You couldn’t help the smile that crept onto your face as you rolled over in bed. If there was one thing that gave away the fact that you and Eddie had grown up together, it was your shared affinity for games. You loved them almost as much as he did, even though you didn’t always win.
you want me to guess? <♡>
Their cursor disappeared and reappeared in a span of seconds.
<?> I want you to behave.
<?> Can you do that?
You chewed on your bottom lip and held your phone under your chin in thought. What were you getting yourself into?
maybe. <♡>
<?> I’ll tell you who I am if you listen closely.
A prize. You always tried harder when there was a prize at stake.
i’ll be good :) <♡>
It feels like a lie even as you type it out. But you want to see where this will go. Besides, you have nothing else to do in your apartment. The water doesn’t come back on for another night and Eddie’s been cooped up in his room since he got home from work over an hour ago.
You always get bored when he’s at work. Dangerously bored. Desperately bored.
<?> Good girl.
<?> Tell me what you’re wearing.
A shiver rolls down your spine as you consider how wrong this actually is. This could be anyone on the planet –literally anyone– and you were sitting there getting all flustered because he called you a good girl.
You’re pathetic.
a sweater <♡>
It’s not entirely a lie , you think, kicking your bare legs behind you as you watch the green letters jump around your phone screen. He didn’t have to know that a sweater was all you were wearing.
<?> Is that all?
You could feel the tips of your ears turning red as you buried your head in your arms. Your little implication was more obvious than you thought. So much for playing this smart.
maybe. <♡>
The question mark looked as if it were short-circuiting – darting around your screen left and right. Like you’d broken it with a single word.
<?> Fuck.
<?> I said behave.
Unknowingly, you stopped kicking your socked feet in the air in favor of pressing your thighs together, suddenly needing friction where there wasn’t any before. A cool wave of clarity washed over you and you gasped, sitting upright in bed, face ablaze. Some sleaze on the other side of the globe had hacked your phone and was trying to use you to get off.
Slowly, like you were trying to sneak up on it, you snatched your phone off of the bed and carried it at arm’s length across the apartment.
“Eddie!” You cried, practically breaking down the door of his bedroom without warning. It was always closed, never locked. He never locked you out. Never. It was the one rule you made him promise he’d never break. No locked doors in the apartment.
Edward slid away from his computer desk, eyes wide like he had been caught. He pulled off his bulky headset and turned to face the door, cheeks flushed cherry red in the dark room. He always insisted on working in the dark, no matter how many times you insisted that it was bad for his eyes. But he must know something you didn’t, because he just kept on doing it.
“Where’s the fire?” he joked, pushing up his glasses with one trembling hand and putting out his cigarette with the other. He knew you hated the smell and only ever indulged himself when you weren’t around.
You were acutely aware of the rats roaming around their cage on top of his dresser as you bounded over to his chair, obediently dropping the device into his awaiting hand. “My phone is broken,” you explained, chewing absentmindedly on your lower lip.
He shot a quick glance from you to his computer screen and back again. “Again?” he asked, eyebrows quirked. A thin ribbon of cigarette smoke was still twirling in front of his face. “Can it wait? I’m in the middle of something.”
“You’re always in the middle of something,” you whine, bouncing up and down on the balls of your feet. The longer he had your phone in his hands, the messages right there for anyone to see, the more vulnerable you felt. You just wanted to get this over with. To get the bug out of your phone and to get both you and it out of his dungeon of a bedroom. “Do you want me to beg?”
Eddie nearly choked. Yes – God, that was exactly what he wanted. Exactly what he’s been wanting for what felt like ages. He wanted to grab your face and make you beg for him. Beg him to do everything he’s ever fantasized about doing to you.
With a defeated sigh, he kicked his wheely chair out further and patted his clothed thigh. You knew this was an invitation to curl up on his lap while he worked his tech-magic. You’ve been in this exact scenario a few too many times than you were comfortable admitting.
You instinctively hid your face against his chest when Eddie began scrolling through the messages, peering up through your eyelashes every so often and interpreting the look on his face as severe disappointment.
Edward bit down hard on the inside of his cheek, flexing the hand that held you in place on his lap. It was a miracle that you hadn’t noticed how his eyes were just barely skimming the content of the messages, as if somehow he already knew exactly what he would find. It was an even bigger miracle that you hadn’t noticed his raging hard-on yet.
It was a shame too. He loved to watch you squirm. “I’ll fix it,” he would say, because he’s already dreamt about this exact situation at least a hundred times before. “But you’re gonna do me a little favor first.”
He clicked his tongue condescendingly, shaking his head slowly as he plugged the device into the largest of his computer monitors. “I thought I told you not to talk to strangers online, (Y/N).”
He didn’t miss your little frown, but he chose to ignore it in favor of tapping away at your device. It was in complete disrepair, and he would have bought you a new one in a heartbeat. But this one was so easy to hack into. It was a waste of good hardware.
“He talked to me first,” you argued. It was pitiful, the way you tried to defend yourself. As if he would actually consider listening to you.
“Doesn’t matter. I’m just trying to keep you safe.”
You nodded with a little whine that said ‘I know’ without really saying it. After dicking around and making it look like he’d actually accomplished something, Edward unplugged your phone and handed it back to you with a little pat to your upper thigh. You inspected it, making sure everything was working to your liking before thanking him with a chaste kiss on the cheek.
As soon as you skipped out of the room, shutting the door softly behind you, Eddie rolled back over to his desk and clicked onto the tab that he’d swiftly closed out of as soon as you barged into his bedroom.
It was a live camera feed. The best that money could buy. One of those hidden cameras that no one really notices until someone points it out and suddenly it becomes painfully obvious. Through it, he watched you flop back down onto your bed and start lazily kicking your legs through the air, playing with your newly ‘repaired’ cell phone.
Eddie sat back, exhaling with a ragged breath. That was a close call. Too close. If he ever wanted the riddler to reach out to you again (and he did) he needed to be more careful.
Eyes flickered back over to the overflowing ashtray next to his keyboard, finger tapping methodically against the wooden surface of the desk.
He also needed to take care of the rock hard ache in his pants.