Re: Gotham: Penny & Jake & Clem
[Jake had lived small spaces plenty. You couldn't roll over and fart in his grandparents' place without someone asking why and what you ate that nobody else ate and no one cared a lick about privacy. If you wanted privacy, you bought a lock and you put it on a box under your bed and you stowed all the things you wanted kept in there. Privacy didn't mean secrets. There were plenty of secrets just hanging around, but privacy wasn't worth anything.
He yawned, big and he reached for the coffee before he padded over the floor on bare feet for the door, because door-opening needed some sustenance to it. He wasn't awake enough yet for notions of who was behind the door, or he'd have thought Graham, straight as that. Clem was Clem, and Clem didn't seem set on poking him any when it came to his father, which pleased Jake small and quiet on the inside, but Clem wouldn't say no to Graham, same way nobody seemed able to say no to Graham. Even when Jake felt like saying it over and over, without cause.
But he yanked open the door on the smell of smoke and cold caught up with his aunt in the hall and he grinned, shy and rough and eager beneath the mop of unbrushed hair, and he looked Clem-wards.]
Coffee's in there. [He said real helpfully, clutching his own cup like maybe Aunt Penny would take it off him if he didn't hold tight.]