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Home. She was finally home.
He couldn't believe that he had gone to such extremes for this woman. He almost didn't want to admit how much he missed her, because missing her was a sign of weakness. And he was anything but weak.
Joker, SWAT JOKER uniform long gone, watched his Harley prance around their makeshift home in her prison uniform, lips curling at her bouncing hair. She moved around the guns and knives and roses and computers and money with a smile on her face.
She reached down and picked up a knife, turning towards her man. She smiled as she dragged it down her torso. Joker moved towards her fasert then she thought he would (it had been a long day and he had seemed tired in the car over) and snatched the blade out of her hand.
Harley giggled as he held it between them, blade facing her, in the valley of her breasts. Joker watched Harley's eyes as the blade traced her shirt. He inhaled sharply, so sharply that Harley looked up at him, her grin slipping slightly.
Harley placed her hands on either side of his face. Joker lowered his head and staggered forward into her arms, dropping the knife. He let his pale arms hang loose as hers came to wrap around his shoulders. His head rested in the crook of her neck.
"Miss me, Puddin'?" She asked, all humour gone from her voice. Joker doesn't want to say anything, doesn't want to admit this weakness of his to himself, let alone Harley. So he kept quiet, let her stroke his dyed hair. "I missed ya lots." It's said so quietly that for a moment, Joker thought he imagined it.
Harley pulled back and cupped his tattooed face again. She smiled lightly, shrugged her shoulders and closed her eyes. She leaned in and rested their foreheads together. Her eyes were still closed, but Joker couldn't stop watching her.
"When the plane when down, Puddin'," Harley exhaled shakily. She opened her eyes and leaned back, scowling and still holding his face. "I couldn't breath. It felt like the world stopped, and it did. Because you weren't with me. You're not aloud to leave me again."
Joker just watched her, eyes blazing with fire and tears. He'd never seen her so...angry with him. He started to laugh at her tears and pushed her back. Joker bent over and held his stomach comically as he laughed humourlessly. He looked up at her with a glint in his eyes. He lunged forward and trapped her mouth in a bruising kiss.
Joker pushed her up against the wall with such force that Harley banged her head hard enough to have a concussion. He ignored the sound of her pained "ow" and continued his assault on her neck. His hands ripped the fabric of her orange shirt off her shoulders and threw it aside. Harley smiled when he picked her up, wrapping her legs around his waist.
Harley thought that Joker was leading them to their bedroom, where they could properly celebrate her return home, but he moved towards the bathroom instead. It had been while since they had shower sex. But Harley we up for anything. Always was.
Joker kicked open the door and sunk to the floor. He pushed Harley against the outside of the bath tub, reached behind her to turn on the hot water tap on. Harley had attached herself to his neck like a leach, determined to suck bruises onto his pale skin. Joker pushed her away and glared, capturing her mouth once again.
He pushed his hand inside her pants, past her underwear and -
"Ah! Puddin', Puddin'!" Harley threw her head back and Joker watched as she came undone. He wondered, briefly, which fuckers thought they could touch her like this in Belle Reve? Did they see the faces she made? Hear the sounds that tumbled from her panting lips? It got him mad, mad enough go at a faster, more brutal pace with his fingers.
"P-Puddin'! Right there!" Harley made eye contact with Joker in that second and he knew. He knew she wouldn't have let anyone close enough to her to see the way she fell apart.
Good.
Joker withdrew his fingers and stopped the water. Harley was panting and trying get a hold on her breathing. She giggled when he dropped a hand down to her. Joker lifted her up, but stopped her from taking off her prison uniform. She frowned slightly, but it soon dissolved when he kissed her soundly on the lips, tugging her to his chest.
Joker pulled back, and saw Harley's eye still closed. He grinned a little. Then she opened her eyes and he dropped his grin, replaced it with something placid that she still adored.
"Let's get you cleaned up, yeah?" He pulled his shirt off and lets her eyes wander for a moment, before he turned her around and told her to strip. She obliged and waited for him to get into the water first. Harley then climbed in after Joker and pressed her back to his chest. He pulled her arms up and rubbed them with a wet cloth he must have thrown in when she hadn't noticed.
Harley sighed, let her head fall onto Joker's shoulder. "That feels good, Mister J." She closed her eyes.
Joker dropped one arm to slap her cheek with the back of his hand. "Stay awake, Harley-pie. Wouldn't want you to...drown, would we, hm? No after all the effort I put into getting you back."
Harley snapped her eyes open. "Sorry, Puddin'." She reached over to grab the bubble mix for the bath and pouted her bottom lip out at him. "Can I?"
Joker hummed, slightly annoyed at her insistence for bubbles. But it was too late to tell her no, she'd poured what seemed like half the mix into the steaming water. She splashed around the tub, moving from Joker's chest to try and get the bath foamed up with bubbles. Joker was about to tell her off for knocking water over the edge of the tub, when she turned and grinned like it was the first time she'd seen bubbles.
He caught his words before they left his tongue.
"I've missed this."
"Bubbles?" He sneered.
Harley shook her head. "Being clean."
Joker stopped rubbing the cloth on the back of his neck and watched her for a moment. Only then did he seem to notice the dirt caked under her nails, the dust on her pale skin and the grease in her hair. How long had it been since she had the chance to be clean? To bathe herself fully? With her record of violent tendencies when anyone approached her, he wasn't surprised that they didn't trust her to bathe herself. He remembers how long it had been before they let him shower in Arkham. Days, sometimes once a week.
His Harley wasn't supposed to be treated like a rat. She was a Queen, and anyone who thought otherwise got a bullet to the head.
Joker reached out his hand and pulled Harley back to him by her bicep.
"Now, you're home. You can take a bath whenever you want, Harley girl." She grinned and put a bubbled finger to his nose. Joker smiled that rare smile Harley only got to seen once in a blue moon. She giggled and he chuckled before she pounced on him, kissing him soundly. He pulled her closer and closer and closer still. It had been too long since he felt her against him like this. Too long indeed.
She made him mad. She made him crazier then he thought he could be. She made him made him feel alive.
Later, when they lay in bed naked after another round of celebration-welcome home sex, Joke sat up, cigarette in his hand. His pale arms shone in the moonlight that peaked in through the windows. They were wrapped around his knees loosely and his eyes were staring ahead, looking at the prison uniform that lay discarded on the floor of their room.
He lifted the cigarette to his lips and inhaled. Joker looked over at Harley as he blew the smoke out. She was asleep, on her stomach, soft snores that she snored only after she was fully satisfied. His expression was blank as he watch the rise and fall of her back.
Joker looked back to the clothes and felt rage swell in his chest.
He flung the sheet off his naked form, got up and grabbed the uniform roughly, as if someone were wearing it and he was about to throw them to the ground for the beating of their life. But he walked to the balcony over the kitchen and tipped over a metal drum.
Joker tossed the uniform in and grabbed some gasoline, pouring too much into the bin. He took the cigarette from his lips and inhaled one last time before throwing it into the bin. He watched the flames dance, burned the last piece of the imprisoned life Harley never should have had thrust upon her.
Joker didn't know how long he had been outside before the door slid open. But looked over his shoulder to see Harley wrapped in a thick blanket, hair tossed from where it scrapped along the mattress. She smiled.
"What'cha' doin', Puddin'?" She walked over and wrapped her body around his, bringing the blanket to cover them both. He looked at her for a second, and Harley leaned up to kiss him.
He accepted it, but didn't reciprocate. Just let it happen.
When she pulled back, he looked away, back to the fire.
"Getting clean." She understood him with that little explanation, could see the orange cloth still burning at the base of the drum. She nodded and giggled, watched the fire dance too.
Joker moved to wrap his arm around her, held her close.
She made him crazy. She made him feel alive.
In a sick sense, she made him, in all his twisted ways, whole.
She made him weak.