Chapter Text
Harvey Bullock had never considered himself a complicated man. He liked food, whiskey, naps, and breasts, though not in that particular order. He enjoyed to be able to rough up a perp when they got out of line. He liked being handsome enough to pull women but not handsome enough for them to expect too much from him. The detective felt he was a remarkably simple man when you boiled it all down.
Of course, then Jim Gordon had signed on with the GCPD and turned the whole damned operation topsy turvy, stamping out corruption wherever he saw it, no matter the position or title of the person feeding on the innocent. Nowadays Harvey considered it a good day when he wasn't getting shot at. It wasn't all bad - for every bullet, there was a bright eyed rookie who looked at him like he stood for some ideal (when all he really stood for was keeping himself and Jim alive). For every stakeout there was more public awareness of the gritty underbelly of Gotham. He'd even ended up with a fiancee for a while, though she dropped him like a bad habit once he made it clear that the Force was where he belonged.
Harvey didn't blame her. It was stressful for her not knowing when he'd stop being bulletproof. It hurt, as all breakups tend to, but Harvey was able to accept it and move on with relative ease, immersing himself in his work. Maybe he cracked a couple more heads than necessary to be effective, but Jim never ratted on him. Gordon might be a golden boy, but even sunshine on a clear day became a bit more dull when filtered through the smog that permeated Gotham.
By the time Galavan came into office, Harvey's primary goal was to make it to retirement alive and at least somewhat intact. The chaos that ensued at the inauguration was no where nearly as surprising to the detective as it might have been for anyone else. At that point in his life, Harvey had hit something of an emotional disconnect from the lunacy that Gotham provided. He had become jaded, content to keep himself and Jim as safe as possible considering Jim's apparent death wish. He tried to remain uncomplex, to keep some normalcy to his life outside of work.
But even Bullock was unprepared for the event that took place upon his return to the station at four in the morning to get started on the stack of paperwork that was the only cure for his adrenaline fueled insomnia. Immediately upon entering the station, Bullock was given the immediate sense that something was wrong. There was no chill in the air, no creaking of the bones of the old building, no dead silence in a place that was active to at least a slight degree even in the wee hours. No, this sense came from many years of being forced to stay on his toes; something was wrong.
His suspicion was confirmed when his somewhat ramshackle dress shoes squeaked and slipped on a telltale substance. As he caught himself and peered down, a hand slid to his side, pulling his gun from the holster in one smooth, practiced motion. Keeping his wits about him and his steps quiet, Harvey followed the morbid path splattered against the smooth stone of the station floor.
Across the station and up the short steps, around the banister and hidden tucked against Jim's desk, a Penguin bled. Harvey was at first stunned by the sight; the man was pale enough without the bullet hole oozing out his life energy... like this, his skin became translucent, and looked as fragile and thin as rice paper. There was a grey hue to his face, his breaths shallow. Harvey's first reaction was to point his Smith & Wesson 5906 directly at Penguin's forehead. The detective had a clean shot and if he didn't get a straight answer he would have used it. Despite his tiny frame and grave wound, he was a dangerous criminal.
“What the hell are you doing here, Penguin?” Bullock snapped, watching as pale eyes lifted to regard him.
“Bleeding to death, it seems.” Came the soft, chuckled answer. Harvey furrowed his brows. Even nearly dead, Oswald Cobblepot managed to be nothing short of sassy.
“If you plan to shoot me, please do it now, and do it somewhere that'll be quicker then this. I'm terribly cold.” Penguin sighed, eyelids fluttering shut.
That sort of talk only served to piss Harvey off, words creeping under his skin, blood starting to boil. He crawled into the station to die? He was all too familiar with suicide by cop; he had seen it in Gotham far more then he cared to remember, and had accidentally granted a death wish once when he was still a rookie. That was an incident that still surfaced in his consciousness when he'd had too much to drink. The memory began to bubble up, and with a quick shake of the head Harvey holstered his gun, bent down despite the protest of his aching back, and pulled the slight man into his arms.
"I'll nurse you back to health and then you're going to jail... or Arkham. You aren't dying this close to Jim's desk. You'd haunt him purposely because you give us both the heebie jeebies." Harvey grumbled in as surly a manner as he could.
The tiny crime boss probably weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet, and Bullock imagined that ten pounds of that was taken up by the finely tailored suit he was so fond of wearing. Carrying him was an easier feat than he thought it would be, and within very little time they were in his squad car, heading to the dissection lab to get help from the only person he believed would be up at this time of night and hanging out in a dissection lab. In transit, Oswald began to chuckle softly, staring at the roof of the car.
“You're weirding me out, Penguin.” Harvey muttered, half expecting the man to have been faking it and stab him, or something equally ridiculous.
“Why are you doing this?” Oswald asked between faint, airy giggles.
“Because you need to go to jail, not die.” Harvey practically grunted as he said it, still angry with the man for... well, everything. The tiny bird had been a thorn in his side since he first met him.
“Forgive me my assumptions, but that seems like sort of a cop-out answer.” Oswald's chuckles stopped, his small, deep-set eyes boring a hole into Harvey's temple.
“I don't have to explain myself to you.” Harvey snapped in return. Oswald closed his eyes.
“You could have left me there to bleed out... No one would have known. And if they did, they wouldn't care enough to penalize you for your inaction.”
Harvey ignored him.
“You could even have moved me elsewhere and I wouldn't have been able to fight it... put a bullet between my eyes in some alley away from the station.”
The detective's fingers twitched on the steering wheel. How was he still talking? He'd been all but passed out a moment before this gentle tirade.
“You still can. If you get me back to health and in jail, I'll find a way out. You know I will. Let me die, Detective Bullock. I know you consider me a problem... that you wish Jim had killed me like he was supposed to.”
Harvey kept his eyes on the road. Was this how Penguin always ended up getting his way? With constant, needling insistence of his point? He wouldn't falter from his mission, though. Not now. Maybe the tiny man would get out of jail if he lived. Maybe not. That was a problem for Future Harvey to deal with, and he sincerely hoped to be either retired or dead before it happened. For now, he just had to persist. Cobblepot didn't appear to be in any shape to run away, and Harvey planned to keep an eye on him anyway. He would ignore the suicidal whispers coming from his right, and when they arrived at the university Harvey was out of the car and at the passenger side in a flash, yanking the mobster up into his arms once more.
"I don't care about what happens tomorrow or the next day. The only thing that matters to me right now is that you get patched up, and I get some goddamned sleep. I'm not letting you die if I can prevent it." Harvey told him, tone harsh.
"You're almost handsome when you get so intense." The bird-like man said in response, the faintest hint of a smile on his lips and a sparkle in his eyes. Unable and unwilling to understand what would possess Cobblepot to compliment him, especially at a time like this, Harvey took him into the dissection lab.