Words float over his head and thrill his scalp. The words of the patient, the words of the professor, and no words of Jervis’ own. The cock between his lips is deep enough to choke him, and any sound of his own — even one without the articulation to be intelligible — could prompt the professor to cut off his airway for good.

The carpet beneath him will bear two impressions, two gorges, after his knees rise. Though his jaw, back and legs ache in tandem, he remains still. If his weight were to shift the wood beneath the carpet would creak, revealing his position.

His eyelids are shut but they twitch and blink all the same. They paint a shaky grey cell where him and his sister sit on a bench facing a steel-reinforced door. A speaker and a camera hang from each corner of the opposite wall, though the speaker has no voice, the camera no eyes. He squeezes his hand around Alice’s.

And then Hugo will stab through the illusion. He’ll say something like: “Yes, it must have been so hard.”

Or, “Each time you open up to me, you get closer to healing. You’re doing so well.”

He tongues out a few of these phrases, each time shocking Jervis’ eyes open, forcing him to close them again and start creating the cell and Alice anew. Each time Jervis does this her face gets stiller, her body less distinct, so when he draws close he can no longer see her minute hairs and pores. The cell itself loses its texture, the concrete beneath his bare feet turning into plastic.

Hugo brings his feet to tiptoes so he can press his thighs against Jervis’ head. The pinstripe incisions of his suit pants scratch Jervis’ ears, the sound accompanying the thrum of his blood, the tension in his bones, and those noises echoing in the cavern of his mouth, the lapping of his tongue and the slather of spit around Hugo’s cock. Jervis hears no more of Hugo’s messages in the margins, but the pressure around his head deconstructs Alice all over again, her limbs detached and requiring yet more mental glue.

“Oh, no, no. You can try that if you must, Mr. Tetch, but I am afraid it would be futile.”

“I’m sure you think that, Professor. I’m sure you’ve spent hours poring over my case, trying to anticipate my next moves. For, after all, what could be more embarrassing, more devastating, than to be unlocked by the very patient you wish to unlock?”

“Well, yes, I was thorough. I spent hours exposing myself to your… publicity stunts. You proved a very interesting case. I had wondered how and why you had captured so many minds, ceased the beating of so many hearts.”

Jervis sits up in his seat at that, the corners of his lips upturning. Though Hugo’s posture and expression is unchanged, the tilt of his head acknowledges the shift.

“I have some theories about the how… but the radio tapes handed me the why on a platter. You have the power to captivate all the minds you want, but, unfortunately, none of those minds are the ones you want. You spend all of this time trying to wrench control from the worthless minds around you, while knowing that the one person whose mind is really worth anything remains out of your grasp.”

“How dare you speak of my sister’s mind like a mere object to be bought and sold. Better that you listen again, Professor. I don’t think you grasped the story I told.”

“If that is the case, you will do well to listen to me.”

“Ah, so that you’ll tell me my love is sickness, that you’re here to wield the corrective? So you can be lauded for curing not one but two madmen?” Jervis’ eyes fall on the window, his gaze that of starvation in a wasteland. “Distract me if you will, if you dare, but my focus lies far from this house of despair.”

“And therein lies the problem. You searched every building in Gotham. Arkham is one of the only places your pawns could not reach. Mr. Tetch, you do not wish to escape because your sister lies right here with us.”

Jervis’ thumbs squeeze the bottom of his chair’s arms, his wrists throbbing, feeling a life that hasn’t been there for years. His stare launches like a missile. He imagines shattering Hugo’s rose-tinted glasses, and going in by the eyes the way the professor might to mutilate the frontal lobe.

“I wonder who analyses the analyst. How lonely to hold all those secrets and dreams and awful desires locked up, and none of your own to share. And yet if you simply listened to my words, followed the patterns, the lilting rhythm within them, you would finally have someone to share them…” — at the sound of a chime, his voice wanes. “… with.”

Hugo has lifted a palm to stop him, in the process nudging his teacup against its saucer. “I’m sorry,” he says, shaking his head, laughing a little. “Your words are rather grating on me. Simple classical conditioning: pair all the hypnotic material you so helpfully prepared on your broadcasts with an unavoidably unpleasant stimulus. My assistant’s idea, actually, to modify some of the tools from our ECT unit. Each time you speak, my mind remembers a hundred electric shocks.”

“Yet I continue speaking and you are not doubled over in pain, Professor.” Jervis leans forward, a smile of all teeth unveiling itself at each syllable. “Never mind all the brains you’ve fried over the years; you couldn’t risk yours and all the gifts it had yet to give.”

Hugo’s expression is unchanged, as though waiting for a child to tire themselves out screaming and thrashing. “Believe it as you will, but you don’t need such excessive measures to make me comply. It is to both of our benefits if you are reunited with Alice.” He stands from his chair at an angle so one of his arms can linger on the surface of the desk, reaching out to Jervis. “Would you like to see her?”

There are pauses, merciful minutes, when Hugo’s chair edges back and Jervis has more breathing space.

But breathing space has little value when breathing is a trap, when to breathe is to break the mind’s kneecaps. Each breath blurs and thickens the walls of the cell overlaid on top of his vision. Alice grows indistinct and the taste of the professor spreads over his present and drips over his past and future, sealing them from easy penetration like a candied apple.

Hugo stops his patient in the middle of some uncovered memory, letting him know he has ten minutes left. In the process he changes his position and forces his cock to the back wall of Jervis’ throat. An hour’s worth of saliva is pushed from the floor of Jervis’ mouth, dripping from the corners of his lips and lubricating the base of Hugo’s shaft. There’s a half-choking feeling, and his extremities slacken and tingle, but Jervis still doesn’t move. As though to test the lack of give, Hugo inches forward to the edge of his seat till Jervis has him all in his mouth, the wisps of his beard flush with his balls.

The footsteps of the other patient creak away from the desk. With the newfound freedom Jervis takes deeper, louder breaths and in the process makes Alice lose all her clarity. Her lips, her throat, her limbs, fade like a ghost’s.

“Until next week,” Hugo says, a smile in his voice, before the door clicks shut.

“And what is it you want me to do in return?”

“Why, nothing. Without your sister, you grew sick, and so I am here to administer the cure. To leverage that would be contravening my ethical obligations as your psychiatrist. Please. Stand.”

He beckons Jervis behind his desk to the security monitors, stacked in a backwards L. Jervis unevenly follows. After Hugo flips some switches on the control desk the screens flicker to life, leaving a glowing pallor on Jervis’ face. Each of the screens now display the same cell from the same angle. There’s a concrete bench jutting from the walls, and upon that bench is a young woman sitting cross-legged, watching the door opposite. Her hair has grown, her frame lengthened quite a bit, but…

Hugo turns a dial, and the screens zoom in on her face. There remain no more differences, no inconsistencies that could inspire doubt. Her black-hole eyes, the lips that demand his… virtually unchanged.

Jervis draws closer to the screen, bends his knees to bring his face up to one of Alice’s.

“She’s been here? All this time?” His brows furrow. His voice isn’t any different but, as he turns back to look at Hugo, his gaze is burning.

His dear sister, kept in solitary confinement, prodded and tested so that her gift might be quantified. But then without the other side of the coin, without him and his own gifts, Hugo’s puzzle must be incomplete.

He bristles at the thought that for the past few years, Alice has had more words with Hugo Strange than she ever had with him. Maybe not even with Hugo himself. A proxy, more likely, if Hugo doesn’t have the guts or the good sense to expose himself to her condition.

“Well, not exactly here. She is in a secure facility, away from the other patients, for their safety and hers. Your search is over, Mr. Tetch,” Hugo says, patting him on the shoulder. “I told you before that you could find a cure here for the gnawing at your heart. But there are certain measures required first.”

Jervis reaches a hand out to touch one of the screens, but Hugo draws his fingers away.

“I am concerned about the emotional impact of your reunion, how taxing it will be on both of you. I understand you did not part on the best of terms. So, please, take a moment to breathe. Imagine her in your arms again, perhaps. Imagine sinking into the embrace.” He places a hand on each of Jervis’ shoulders, easing them down and extracting the tension. “Soon we will make that a reality.”

Jervis’ eyes clinging to all three of Alice, he mulls the scene over with a warmth growing upon his tongue, his chest, between his thighs. A craving to sit down or even lie down in thin air. The prospect of being in that cell with her, boxed off, away from judgmental eyes, with no hope of her escaping… but no hope of him escaping, either. His knees waver and struggle to keep him standing as he chuckles without a smile. “This is no cure but one more torment to endure.”

“I understand how… cataclysmic this must feel. Even now you are searching for order and reason to regain some control over what is happening. But there is an order in my words, too. I can see in your eyes, in the slowing of your heart, that this could become home to you. And there is nothing saying you couldn’t both be freed, if we found cures for your respective conditions. You could face the outside again. Have a future together.” Hugo gives both of Jervis’ shoulders a squeeze.

A steady breath in and out has replaced all the words on Jervis’ tongue. To speak himself would be to lose track of Hugo’s words, the tantalising rhythm within them.

“Your talents are so potent that just the thought of being close to her inspires your own flight from consciousness. You allowed hundreds of people to drop to their deaths because you were caught in a trance. Nothing lived beneath your skin but the thought of having her. We cannot allow that to happen again, and so we must construct you anew. Here. Speak to her.”

Hugo moves from behind Jervis to pick up a microphone, lifting it to his open mouth.

Jervis’ head throbs, but he tries to keep his tone steady enough to say, “Hello, Alice.” He feels even more attuned to the hollow rhythms of his body, feels the soles of his feet sinking into the floor. His eyes don’t blink a second, unable to stand missing anything.

Alice shivers, her eyes darting to the speaker.

Her trigger couplet has lingered in Jervis’ throat for so long, unable to find its home. He pieces it out with perfect diction, close enough to the microphone that he can taste the metal. She squeezes her eyes shut, her hands coming to her ears, her head shaking. By the end of the phrase she’s screaming. Hugo moves from Jervis to turn down the volume of the monitors.

The screams don’t pierce Jervis. The cell walls will only admit Hugo’s voice. So when he hears “And again,” he doesn’t question. His tongue scratches out the trigger phrase on its agonised canvas like a schoolboy penciling lines.

This time she drops to the floor, crawling beneath the bench into the shadows. Her shoulders convulse, wracked with pain. She wrenches out the first syllables of stop and please. She curls into a foetal position — then, as though rethinking it, for the womb had never been exclusively hers — she sits up halfway, extends her legs, her fists curling and uncurling.

Her fear is to be expected, but such physical agony less so. His unblinking eyes blur over with a film of tears.

“You asked me, Jervis, why I was not doubled over in agony when you spoke to me. To condition myself against your voice was a brief matter, if an unpleasant one. There was no deep-set, remembered physical response to overwrite. But for someone who had been caged by your words for years… well, the process took longer. A necessary evil, unfortunately. The virus she carries would have been quite a threat if she had escaped her containment while under your control. Now I will set you both free as soon as her condition can be treated. So there is no need to worry, no need to speak. If you wish to love her as you had loved her, your only hope is not to speak. You will not find the words. You will not find the thoughts.”

Jervis processes just a few words of the above. Hugo’s sentences spill over the limited capacity of his mind, soaking him through.

“Fortunately, in the interim, I have thought of a use for that silver tongue of yours.” Hugo smiles, lifts Jervis’ hat by the brim and crushes the glue and paper in his hands, before disposing of it in the trash can next to the monitors. “Under the desk. And, please, face the outside.”

Jervis crawls under the desk mechanically, his back pushing against the walled limits but finding no give. He turns around to face the light of the opening, just as Hugo steps back to his chair, his legs engulfing the space in shadow. Jervis’ breaths slow so he can expand against the walls without hitting his head. His consciousness now resides in a different cramped space: the bench in Alice’s cell, wrapping his arms around her convulsing body, touching intuitively where the electrodes would have been placed.

Hugo sits down and rolls the chair in, his legs spreading to accommodate Jervis, till there is less than an inch between Jervis’ head and the half-mast bulge beneath Hugo’s pants.

Jervis still with Alice, there’s a glass barrier between him and him beneath the desk, and another between him and Hugo, and that’s why, when Hugo unfastens his trousers and reveals his cock, he doesn’t draw back.

He hears the word: “Suck,” and his lips open to accommodate him.

Jervis Tetch is formed with nothing but a mouth, with nothing but words.

Hugo rolls the chair back a little and Jervis’ mouth follows, his tongue using the motion to drag a little rougher down Hugo’s shaft. Now free to breathe in shudders (for Jervis had the penultimate appointment of the day), Hugo clenches and quivers his thighs around Jervis’ head. Hugo’s arm slips beneath the desktop and grabs a bundle of his hair, pulling him backwards, Jervis’ scalp electric, till Jervis’ lips just wrap around the head of his cock, thickening and thinning around it. Then Hugo shoves himself back down Jervis’ throat a few times, each a little slower and each a little harsher. His chair tips and his cock twitches and then he exhales hard, fingertips clawing his head as he comes down his throat.

He pulls Jervis back by the hair once more, just far enough back that his receptacle has the room in his throat to swallow his cum without making a mess. He allows him the space to crawl out as he refastens his waistband.

When they’re both standing Hugo brings Jervis back to consciousness, or more accurately a half-consciousness that won’t warrant questions.

No longer distracted by the taste of flesh Jervis reconjures the cell only to find it empty save for him. He tries to open his mouth but his jaw struggles against an invisible barrier.

Touching between his nose and his chin, he feels nothing there but featureless skin.