#had to write a lil something for this movie even if i felt lukewarm about it....and got hit with a very me idea

[thefudge]

He lets loose the pent-up rage of so many months living in her smothering shadow. Her very smell – like blooms slowly dying in a pretty crystal vase – lingering on him, his wife, even his children.

He feels it all coming undone. (friedrich/ellen + friedrich/ellen/anna)

[jokerownsmysoul]

“The tragic beauty of a fallen angel”, Joker x Reader // angst

Summary: You can’t fall asleep. You just… can’t. You tried, of course you tried, but you can’t help yourself from staring the love of your life sleeping next to you as if he were a fallen angel. He’s too beautiful for this world, for the whole universe actually, so he distracts you and won’t let you sleep. Also you’re a lil clingy and want to wake him up.

Warnings: mention of male genital and private parts (a few sentences, nothing smut or nsfw, just a bit sensual in a soft way),  swearing (only one sentence), mention of past trauma

Word count: 8600ish

A/N: This fic was supposed to be fluffy and short but it turned out the very opposite. I can’t help myself from putting angst everywhere lol. I had a lot of performance anxiety in writing it, I worked on it for two weeks. It was something I kept inside my chest ever since I watched the movie in the theater for the first time so it needed special attention. I hope I did justice to him and to my feelings.

A/N: english is not my first language, so I apologize for any typos or grammar errors, I’m still learning.

You tried. You really tried. But it had been a few hours since Joker fell asleep, and you already given up on forcing yourself to do the same, knowing that you wouldn’t sleep that night.

Your eyelids were heavy and you felt in your eyes the physical need to sleep, the burning pupils and – you would have sworn – your eyes had such a dense red color that anyone who looked at you at that moment would understand you were losing several hours of sleep that your body needed. You were perfectly aware that the next day you would have feel in every part of your body the effects that all the lost sleep would have left you, and that you wouldn’t have the physical faculties to face the new day. You imagined what you’d be like the next day, and it seemed like you could already feel it. 

As if you were already feeling your wandering mind struggling to bear the weight of an endless day, your eyes so tired that you would have had difficulty keeping them open, your exhausted body standing you up with difficulty and the lack of attention you would have put in every task that was waiting for you. You knew your body was exhausted, yet your mind couldn’t surrender to the rest your body asked you to give it. A small hidden zone in the depths of your mind, a very deep zone, wanted to sleep, but as soon as you closed your eyes a foreign power you couldn’t control from under your eyelids forced you to open them again. And to stare at him.

You listened to this foreign power without too much effort, actually in your heart you didn’t need any force to make you look at him. How could it not be so? The love of your life was sleeping right beside you. 

In all those hours you spent staring at him you wondered how it was possible to even imagine, or think of closing your eyes to such a beauty. Why you have to close your eyes to dream when you already had everything you needed in front of your eyes kept open to stare the man who at that very moment was dreaming for both of you?

There was a full moon that night and it reflected its lukewarm light from the glass and curtains of the open window you had forgotten to close a few hours earlier, too busy making love and caressing each other you were. Through the branches of trees shaking on the window on windy nights like that, through the prints of your hands on the glass, which had provided the rhythm of your love a few hours earlier and had still remained in the hot air still floating through the walls the memories of your naked bodies telling each other their secrets, and through the folds of the curtains that were moving sinuously leaded by the wind in an uncoordinated dance, the moon cast its silver light on the room, creating plays of light on the body of the man you loved and who was beside you, enveloping him in an aura of disenchantment which hypnotized you, the same disenchantment that made you fall in love with him every day a little more than the previous one, who kept you up all those hours and wouldn’t let you sleep.

He slept on his back with his head resting on his right arm, which he held folded behind his head, still wearing the nakedness you had left on him the moment you took his clothes off shortly after he returned to your apartment. The lack and hunger you both felt for the other seemed impossible to soften, on the contrary they kept growing more and more and, in particular that day, you had missed each other so much that as soon as Joker had crossed the doorstep your bodies had returned to their place of belonging, right where they were originated and in the only place they resumed working properly.

You ran to Joker and put your arms around his neck, that day you missed him so much that you seemed to rediscover the scent of his long hair, the feeling of his clothes on your hands, the smell of greasepaint you felt when you swam into a kiss so intense that for a few seconds you thought your lips would mix each other. When Joker had moved away enough to look at you, you had noticed his face was full of a hungry smile which left little to the imagination and was enough to understand how much he needed you as you needed him. He put his lips on yours after studying your face, enchanted, and without breaking the kiss you both had reached the bedroom still colored by the warm colors of the sunset, the perfect frame for your love which was being fulfilled.

Throughout the room you could still feel the fragrances of your bodies you had left after making love and which you knew by heart, as a unique poetry written by your fluids to be said quietly in silence through your warm kisses, on the bed you could still see the marks left by the union of your flesh and your sweat as if they were prints of a past dance taken place in the promise of a love you both knew would never end.

The bed was unmade, the blankets had fallen to the ground, each one on a different side of the bed, creating a interweaving of folds and fabrics in which your bodies swam and either of you had bothered to pick them up from the ground; to cover messily only the lower part of your bodies there was only a light white silk sheet and you didn’t care about the fresh that coming from the window froze your bare chest or the wind which grazed your skin making you feel the goose bumps in every part of your skin, because your bodies still kept the warmth of each other. You could still feel the warmth of Joker’s skin on you, so vivid and real that if you closed your eyes, you could still felt him and his weight on your body.

That was one of the rare nights when Joker hadn’t been taken by insomnia, you can tell because since he fell asleep and you had begun to staring at him he hadn’t moved even once, so deeply he was sleeping. A few hours had passed and he was still sleeping on his back, keeping his right leg so bent that the sole of his right foot pressed against his left calf and his right knee pressed against your thighs. Only that slight contact was enough to let the warmth come back to the pit of your stomach, which only he could make grow inside you; even though you had made love a few hours earlier, even though your thighs were touching his right knee, even though he was very close to you, you wanted him. Your body was constantly hungry for him and the desire you felt would never rest, even as you kissed him. 

As you kissed him, actually, the desire could only increase. As you felt your skin tingling for the desperate need to feel him again on you, you staring at him.

You looked at him the way you always looked at him, as if you just saw him for the first time in your whole life. As if you had lived so far without your eyes and, in one moment, they absorbed all the sight of the world only to allow you to look at him and to know his appearance. Every time you looked at him, you fell in love with him again. 

Every time you laid your eyes on him you noticed new details to love, new anecdotes and stories to keep firmly in your mind that from his soul expanded and reached his body, his lips, his gaze, the look on his face in which it was possible to read each one of his experiences. His soul had a past which had marked him in the depths leaving his marks, and it was impossible to make sure these marks didn’t emerge also from his appearance, you could read them all just by looking at him from afar. You knew your eyes would never get used to such an invasive beauty.

The sheet was covering his feet and his legs, and through the loose folds that made their space between his thighs it also covered the left half of his pelvis and the genital whose shape and profile, however, could be seen very well even from above the sheet since illuminated by the moon it created around his genital shadows which delineated its shape, like one of those slideshow that are visible in the sunlight. Or in the moonlight, in this case. A slideshow you knew well. The right half of his pelvis, the groin and part of the crotch were clearly visible and you could see the pubic hair which had remained uncovered freeing from the grip of the sheet, whose extremities had by now bent so irregularly that had fallen to the ground, leaving the rest of his body uncovered.

Still lying on the left side of your body, you approached towards him the right arm you had free and you began to caress with your fingers his pubic curls, giving in to the desperate desire you had of his skin. You knew that when Joker wasn’t caught by insomnia like that night he was deeply sleeping and it wasn’t easy to wake him up, but while you were playing with his pubic curls, rubbing them between your fingers and twirling them around your index finger with a gentle touch, you heard a soft moan coming out of his lips that made you chuckle on your lips. You touched him so gently that it almost looked like you weren’t touching him at all, but it was so.

You felt it from the warmth at your core and from the goosebumps you felt on your skin, which was certainly not caused by the cold, and he felt it too, he was making you understand it through that sweet moan. Even in his deep sleep Joker could feel your touch, you both knew nothing would have stopped him from feeling your hands touching him, not even the nights in which he slept so heavenly, like that night.

You approached with your hand towards the pelvis tracing his V shaped pads clearly visible, made even more evident by the position in which he was sleeping. The right side of his pelvis and the rest of his body were naked but the moon illuminating it made his nakedness look like he was covering by an invisible star fabric formed by this dazzling light coming from the sky. His moonlight skin gave the impression he was made of diamonds, and he was so thin that you could see his veins which, illuminated by the moon, looked light blue color.

It was as if the whole universe had agreed to reside within and around him. His skin glittered thanks to the moonlight mantle that made his body sculptural, and looking at him you thought he really looked like a marble sculpture of classicism.

Anyone who looked at him at that moment would have thought he was from another world, he was a fallen angel who, after absorbing all the dazzling beauty of the universe, had come to earth to make known to every living being the beauty existing in the world, and never forget it.

On his torso, illuminated by the moonlight, were clearly visible the shadows projected by the branches that the wind rattled between them. You watched those shadows dancing together on his moonlike skin and you thought that dance made his body the perfect dance floor on which danced not only the shadows of those branches, but also the shadows of the folds formed by the blankets and by the curtains which, as they fluttered through the air leaded by the wind, reflected on him their sinuous movements. Their shadows seemed to caress him from afar like veils in the twilight ready to protect him from any cold, even from the cold of his nightmares, you thought, used to see him frozen every time he was hit by them. And like those tents made of shadow, you also protected him from his nightmares. After all this time spent loving each other and building a relationship together, you had now managed to get inside his mind and insinuate yourself into his dark dreams so you could soften even the part of him which no one else but you could reach, and he wasn’t drowned yet thanks to you.

The full moon that night was so big and impressive that Joker’s skin had turned white and blue, and looking at that dance of shadows on his stomach you noticed the shadows, very dark, were in complete contrast to his body that looked like it was made of snow. You watched the cadence of his chest rising and falling in a sensual dance as he breathed, as if life wanted to explode in his chest and go out, rip open the sky and rejoin the rest of the universe.

At that moment, with the snowy body illuminated by the moon and the game of shadows, his beauty was so disarming that he seemed otherwordly.

With his eyes closed in search of certainties, swinging between dream and reality with the traces of a dream still kneaded under his eyelids, it seemed like he looked at himself inside his dream, coming to life again, and becoming something else, covering with his grace not only your existence, but the whole world.

You staring at him and wondered how a man of such ethereal beauty could exist. You were out of breath, your hands were shaking and you wondered how a man of such ethereal beauty could love you in such a visceral way.

And you, on your side, loved him in the same visceral way. In your whole life you never thought you could experience love, let alone live a love as intense as the one you had between you.

He lived in everything you could perceive through the senses, he lived out of time and space and in your heart. He surrounded you everywhere, and you could feel him everywhere. You loved him with every part of your soul, your whole life bore his name. You loved him and loved all the things around him which were part of his life, for the very reason that they made him the person he was.

Sure you wanted to see him happy and you wanted to see him smile by the heart, yet you loved what made him the person he was; if he had been different he wouldn’t have been the man you fell in love with, and you would never want him in any other way. You loved him and so you loved the part of the world he filled, in which you were, too.

The love between you wasn’t only helping Joker to make peace with his darkness, he was also teaching you to love yourself. You loved each other and by loving you, each of you was teaching the other to love himself in the same way, and you would never stop doing so.

You loved him so much, and you felt your soul acting so synergistically with his, that you wanted to be his veins to run through him and travel him entirely, blend and reside in him, and never leave him. Ever since the first time you saw him you knew, you just knew, that you would never walk away from him and that your whole life would never get used to living again just by yourself, without the love of your life.

Your mind was enchanted by his beauty while with your fingertips you tried to follow the movements of the curtains projected on his stomach. You tried to keep your fingers right on the outlines of the shadows, letting the fingertips dance with them by caressing him around the belly button, on his soft tummy, on the dark line its short and soft hairs formed under the belly button, on the stomach and on his ribs, but they were moving so fast that keeping up with their dance without waking him up with a start was almost impossible. You had always had a soft spot for his tummy, and it was so soft and warm to the touch that you couldn’t help but slowly approach him and print a light kiss right under the belly button, brushing your lips on it and keeping them for a few seconds still on his skin to inebriate you with his scent, on which you could still recognize yours, and trying to get that smell into your nose, inside you to the soul.

The scent of his skin was sweet and genuine but intense, strong yet pleasant, just like he was, and the first time you smelt it, a long time ago, you knew right away you were already addicted to it. You print another light kiss on his skin and with your mouth traced the dark line formed by his hair under the belly button, before you heard another moan coming from his lips and you missed another chuckle on your lips, as you walked away to resume the position you had before and keep staring at him, hypnotized. Your attempts to wake him up in the sweetest of ways were working, even though that night he was a heavy sleeper and it would take longer than usual. Yet it didn’t matter, you had literally all night to do so.

He was so skinny that his raised bones seemed to expand this play of lights and shadows that was happening on him: his protruding ribs were creating from the skin grooves along the sides of his body, and to their base formed curious shadow lines, which followed his curves and shortly after shuffled to the glow of the rest of the body in an imperceptible shade. You put your fingertips on those grooves and traced gently their outlines as if you were touching a crystal that could break at any moment. Your fingers followed these outlines his body created through the bones, they were so prominent that their shape reminded you of the same shape of the mountains and you could clearly see your hand rising and falling as it imitated the shape of those ribs that you had caressed so many other times.

The base of his sternum was evident too in the same way and inclined his skin creating a soft hill right in the center of the torso, surrounded by a shadow circle which contrasted the rest of the stomach which being completely relaxed left the skin smooth, not allowing to distinguish further shadows except those of the curtains still dancing on his skin. You put the index finger on the tip of his sternum stretched upwards and followed it all around, drawing a line with your finger from the sternum base and back to the belly button and his tummy. You expected another moan coming from his lips as he had before, but you noticed he kept sleeping heavenly.

You didn’t know if it was because your touch was too light, because he was exhausted after making love or because he was a heavy sleeper that night, but you noticed that in all that time you had followed with your fingers every curve and groove his body formed through the skin and bones, he hadn’t woken up. You smiled, thinking that at this point you could have gone a little further with the caresses and at best he would moan again, considering how heavy his sleep was that night.

You approached him again and explored his skin but this time with your mouth, drawing wet circles with your tongue on his tummy and around his belly button as you got closer to reach the profile of his ribs and leave soft kisses on every groove they formed.

Then you started doing the same with his tense muscles that were creating on his body a labyrinth of contractions, swollen veins and flexions muscle in which you wanted to lose yourself, without ever coming out again. They drew and traveled through his body making him look like a gothic stained glass window, whose glass shapes and expands their colors in the church, producing a suggestive atmosphere. At the sight of that piece of art you felt a shiver running all over your body. As you ran your tongue over his skin, you noticed his breathing became rapid. He was feeling you.

Now more than ever you wanted to bring out from those kisses all the love, the devotion you felt for him. You kissed every protruding bone, every rib, every tense muscle and every bruise you encountered along the way. You always wondered how a body so fragile and tormented as his could bear a soul so strong, which every day had to handle a load of fears and traumas so deep and overwhelming.

You knew well the darkness resided within him, but although the moon made his skin so white that it seemed made of snow, never as at that moment his darkness seemed to overwhelm him, never had you seen it so tangible that you can look it into his eyes. The colors of the night dressed him so well at that moment, and he was so ethereal, that you were convinced the night was passing only to be the frame of his existence, and the whole world was created only to welcome him, the fragile but very strong man who slept beside you. 

People hadn’t been good to him, but the way the sky covered him, the way the moon illuminated him and the way the shadows projected were still dancing on him, allowed you to think that the universe, on the other hand, really loved him, that the moon seemed to have been created only to be able to rest on his body while he was dreaming, and that the sunset which had seen him come back home and watched you making love had been the way the universe had blushed before his presence as a king, the same way you blushed when he grabbed you and kissed you passionately with his provocative look, that you loved so much and made you blush every time.

Nature was resting on him perfectly matching his body, and by looking how well Joker could wear the night was happening in front of your eyes still red, as a result of all the hours of lost sleep, you thought if only people had been even half as kind to him as the universe was loving him at that precise moment, he would have had a better life and a heart free of all burden, he would have had someone beside him who would have helped him to carry it. Now, anyway, he had you, and you were helping him.

You laid another white kiss on his stomach before you reached up what had been your main goal all that time: his chest. His chest looked like a snowy white meadow in which his shiny black hairs stood out like thin black flowers which surrounded his nipples and created a perfect circle around them, projecting shadows on his skin so small that you could only see them coming very close, and they seemed to walk moved thanks to his chest rising and falling by the measured rhythm of his hot breath. You started to sow light kisses on his chest, on his nipples, on the soft hair which tickling your nose made you smile every time you came close to kiss his fragrant skin.

You realized he was waking up when you heard him moving, slowly but enough to notice it, another moan came out of his lips and you smiled to yourself; you would never have enough of the moans he let out every time you touch him. He moved so imperceptibly that he still held the same supine position he had before, and you drew an imaginary line with your lips from his chest to his right arm, which he still held bent to support his head, and then popped a kiss on his bicep, right where you could see the flexed muscle. Joker was a very skinny but muscular man and his outlined and clearly visible tense muscles had always made you lose your mind. Another moan came out of his lips, this time deeper and stronger than the previous ones, when you brought your lips on his neck, you nibbled on his skin and kissed, clawed with your teeth every spot you could reach with your mouth. He was waking up.

By now you were so close to him that half of your torso was touching his body and looking at his face you could see every little detail, even those which seemed invisible. The messy way the paint faded on his face made you smile, noticing that he still bore the marks of your union.

There were areas where the sweat had completely erased it, other areas where it was smudged and the colors mixed between them. Also were visible the prints of your mouth on his face that you had left kissing him after he had transferred his own paint to your lips. His face looked like a canvas which your lips and his sweat had painted together while making love, ruining his makeup and transferring it to you, since you knew that your face was also marked by the red prints of his lips and the paint from him had moved on you while you were mixing one another, painting you in the same smudged way. Joker loved to see his greasepaint on you, it was one of his many ways to let you know that you were his, that he lingered inside you and that, deep down, you shared one soul. You were so connected that seeing his identity on your skin helped him to be nicer to himself.

Despite the smudged paint and the colors mixed between them his skin was still visible. His soft features stood out by the look and details on his face, which was marked by everything he had been through in his life. He was young, yet in the face with soft features there was still an inner torment emerging from every corner of his skin marked not only by time but also by pain itself. He radiated a beauty so tragic and painful that while staring at him you were overwhelmed by a magnetic force which hypnotized you, leaving you speechless. Every time you looked at him, you wondered how a man who lived so much pain could be so beautiful that he look like an angel. Joker had the same overwhelming beauty of atmospheric phenomena, just as thunderstorms or volcanic eruptions, which frighten with their destructive power but from whom it’s impossible not to be attracted.

Disenchantment was the word that came into your mind as you were staring at him. His face was pointed out by the green curls which falling messily on the pillow remembered the solemn mane of a werewolf, he floated in the moonlight like a wild animal and the moon dressed him so well that, while looking at his snowy skin standing out his sculptural body and his face, you weren’t surprised to see before you the majestic werewolf who had always lived within him occupying the room and who had emerged and went wild to protect himself from a world that had never shown any compassion for his soul, which only deserved someone to hold his hands and help him to stand up when the rest of the world walked right over him without even seeing him on the sidewalk. His soul deserved only love, and you’ve always made sure he felt your love so in order to fill that lack.

With your index finger you followed the shape and the curves of his lips parted in a smile while he was sleeping and you brushed your fingertip against every bound, every pads and every wrinkle which completed that wonderful painting, every little imperfection you noticed on his body which you loved with all of yourself. The pores on his skin, the deep and rough expression wrinkles on the sides of his mouth, still reddened by the paint, on which you adored to lay your lips, the little soft folds on his chin, the defined lines around the eyes deepening everytime he smiled or was angry, for which you had always had a soft spot, and his unspeakable scar that ran through the cupid’s bow and landed on the upper lip, making his lips even more beautiful and making you feel in your heart a desperate desire to kiss him, a desire you couldn’t resist. 

You got closer to him and started rubbing his face with soft kisses touching him gently so you wouldn’t wake him up, not yet. You kissed his cheeks, the lines which delineated its bags under his eyes, his nose, the vein on his forehead which become swollen every time he gets angry, his chin, the wrinkles around his eyes on which you adore to put your tongue, the scar, the closed eyelids. You hoped that by kissing his eyelids you could also kiss the dream he was having, which had kept him away from you in all that time and had not allowed him to wake up and reach you. At other times you wished you could follow him in his dreams with your own body to physically protect him from the monsters he met and from whom you couldn’t protect him, not as you would have done in reality, at least, but this time, considering the smile on his lips while he was sleeping, you were sure he was having a good dream and whatever he was dreaming about it wasn’t hurting him. The sweet smell of his skin mixed with the pungent smell of the paint and his touch were everywhere around you, so close that you were amazed to be still inside your body and not inside him.

Your desire to wake him up was getting deeper as you kissed and smelt every part of his face, then finally you devoted yourself entirely to the corners of his mouth which you filled with little kisses, over and over until Joker turned his head towards you with a desperate whimper, still with his eyes closed, but you didn’t need him to open his eyes to look at him. You knew his eyes, they were inside you, and even though his eyelids were closed, even though it was late at night, at that very moment you could see their characteristic sparkle as if he was looking straight into your eyes in full light. His eyes were closed, but you knew he was awake.

You let out a little giggle knowing exactly what that movement meant and what he wanted, and by bringing your lips on his lips you satisfied him, so panting of your touch he was.

Still with his eyes closed and not fully awake he followed the motion of your lips in that kiss without too much effort, as if his body was fully aware of what to do of his own free will even when he was asleep and couldn’t guide his moves, while he gradually regained consciousness. At the beginning you had just place your lips on his but the more he woke up, the more he deepened the kiss and the more he opened his warm and soft lips to explore your mouth with his tongue.

Your faces were so close that his thick eyebrows grazed against your forehead and your eyelashes intertwined and hugged each other in a way that tickled your eyes, making you smile in that kiss. You no longer felt the cold, the sheets, you no longer felt the world around you. There was just him, his hot, wet mouth, and his desperate body searching of you.

“What a lovely awakening. What’s up, little doll?” He interrupted the kiss to catch his breath and by placing a rebel strand of your hair behind your right ear he caressed your right cheek, a worried look and a patient smile decorated his still sleepy face. His first thought had been to check if you were okay, many were the times you had woken him up because you had a nightmare or the anxiety didn’t make you sleep.

“Nothin’. I’m just watching you sleep.” You were still out of breath for that long kiss when you answered him casually and acting childlike and innocent, as if until now you had really only looked at him, pretending not to know what his answer would have been. Joker’s taut muscles relaxed and freed him from worry, his sweet and understanding smile he had before turned into his iconic smirk at the exact moment he realized you were fine. 

“This is just watching?” you were just playful, he thought while passing through his mind every caress and every kiss he had felt in his sleep. He had felt everything perfectly, and you both knew it.

“It can be, considering what I would have done to you if you were awake. Did it bother you or something?” Without losing that innocent attitude you brushed distractedly your index finger against his chest, fully aware of the effects that gesture had had on him just before, to make him remember what your touch was like. He certainly hadn’t forgotten what it was like or what you did to him while he was sleeping, but seeing him awake didn’t stop you from still tease him. Joker’s smirk was getting brighter as he delighted of the way you were so clingy that you provoked him without any inhibition; after all, he still was a man who liked to feel wanted, even when he had a smirk on his face with which he wanted to hide the tenderness he felt to the core, as at that time. But you didn’t need to see it on his face to know it was there, and that from his core it had spread in his whole body.

“Not at all. I should be a heavy sleeper more often.” The contrast of his smirk which stood out in his face still softened by the drowsiness made you see both the shades that resided in him, Arthur and Joker, and it had satisfied you for all the hours you spent patient waiting for him to wake up. Joker’s attempt to answer to your provocations caused a shy laugh to come out of your mouth as you settle more comfortably on him, your abdomen and chest pressed against his torso, your legs tangled with his as if they were your fingers. With your right hand you resumed studying every detail of his face, just as you had done so far, bringing out of his mouth a sound of appreciation and planted the left palm on his chest to support your chin and staring at him intensely. He was so beautiful he confused you. “I wouldn’t mind. What were you dreaming about? You smiled in your sleep.”

“So nosy is my little doll.” He was lost in thought while playing with your hair, he wanted to keep his dream still in his mind for a few more minutes; usually for Joker it was so complicated to speaking from the heart and talking about himself, he was so accustomed to never having anyone who was really interested in him and in what he had to say, that now he was used to keep silent and in these moments he needed to stop for a moment and find the courage to confide to you what was inside of him.

But he loved you as he had never loved any human being before you, and with you, he could always find that courage. Shortly after he looked at you in the eyes to answer you, what he was going to say was so important that you didn’t have to hear it only by voice, you had to read it also in his eyes. You had to hear it in any way you could. “I was dreaming of you.” His smirk was still on his face but he had watery eyes full of love and gratitude. You would never stop reading the emotions in his eyes, even though he tried to hide them with his smirk; and he knew it, too.

A smirk which at that moment, to your surprise, had turned into a smile which had highlighted the wrinkles around his mouth and his dimples had become deeper, and you couldn’t help but fill them up by putting your index finger on them and caressing them gently to enjoy every little detail you could feel with that touch. The softness of the skin, the warmth it radiated, the folds which were even more highlighted by the paint, every rough pore of his skin you wanted to kiss. You savored through that contact every detail which made him your Joker. “Really?”

He took your right hand with which you were inspecting his cheek and his left dimple and placed a light kiss right on the palm, now covered with the paint that had stained both your hands by caressing and brushing his face until then. He closed his eyes and lingered to answer as he felt on your hand the taste of the same greasepaint he had painted on himself that morning. He was savoring the sensation of your skin on his lips just like you did and feeling their touch on a sensitive part as the palm tickled you, making you giggle. With that kiss, he wanted to point out how much it meant to him to have dreamed of you that night.

He didn’t very often have good dreams; his insomnia didn’t make him sleep and the few times when he could do it his sleep was light, intermittent, and his dreams were always nightmare about his torments. That’s why you wished you could enter into his eyes while he was sleeping and protect him from his own mind, which didn’t allow him to find serenity even in his sleep. But he was telling you at that moment that you had always protected him even though you thought otherwise, all he needed was only to feel your presence sleeping beside him. He was telling you that on the rare nights he could have good dreams, the only thing he dreamed of was you. You were all his happy dreams, his only happy dream.

“Really. I was dreaming of you and me. What about you? How long have you been awake?” He knew how important it was for you to sleep and your burning eyes made him think you’d been awake for a long time. “Actually…” you said, with a guilty look and your eyes kept fixed on his clenched jaw, “I haven’t slept at all.”

“Have you been awake this whole time?” Even in the dark you could see the shimmer of his surprised eyes and the folds you knew had formed in the center of his forehead in a frowning expression, as he placed his hand under your chin to look you in the eyes and study you. “Yeah, of course you were. I can tell by your red eyes.” He placed his soft left hand on your cheek and with his callous thumb caressed your eyelids, the area under your eyes and your dark circles, hoping that with the care of his touch he could remove the fatigue from your face. “My wakey girl.” That funny nickname got a smile out of you and made him smile, too, while he was noticing that you didn’t look tired at all for all the hours of lost sleep, but was clear that your body was because it readed in your face all the fatigue that your mind didn’t feel, so he brought both his hands on your cheeks to caress them, and muffle the tiredness of your red eyes and your taut cheeks.

“You know how essential is for you to sleep. You look very tired, and your eyes are red.” He said gently, but in a reprimand expression. Joker cared about your well-being more than you did, and he knew that the day after those hours of lost sleep would weigh on your tired mind like boulders. He couldn’t stand it when you neglected you and didn’t take care of yourself. His thoughtful gaze and his raised brow with which he reproached you made you laugh. “I know, it’s because I watched you too much.” Your voice was naive and childlike and you purred by rubbing your cheeks on his hands which were still stroking your face, looking for his contact that was never enough for you.

The frowning expression of Joker had disappeared, his wrinkles and his brow were relaxed and returned to his typical playful smirk, encouraging that roleplay you had started. “Oh yeah? That’s it?” “That’s it. I watched you so long that your red paint even colored my eyes, not only my face. You’re my personal paintbrush.” You smiled softly and Joker could read all the love you felt for him, it came out of every part of you, and those words were really meant even though the playful voice you had at that moment. 

He let out a sweet laugh from his mouth as he noticed that, actually, at that moment you had more paint on you than he did. “It’s because you’re my favorite canvas, my greasepaint looks better on you.” You blushed making a funny face and your attention has once again returned to the curves of his face, which you studied with your index finger and you had returned to look hypnotized, just as you had done during the night.

“I love your dimples and your wrinkles,” you said lost in thought, kissing them and then keeping to inspect his face. You put your fingertip on his scar, “and I love your pretty scar,” you kissed the scar, and you carried your fingertip on his nose, “and your nose, so cute…” you bit his nose softly and rubbing the hollow of the bags under is eyes, and now your fingertip was on his eyebrows and eyelids, which he closed revel in your touch, “and your eyebrows, and your stunning eyes”, you kissed his eyebrows and his eyes, then his wrinkles all around them and you continue this game until you pointed and kissed everything on his face while feeling him giggle under your lips between one kiss and another. That night you already told him everything you loved about him while he was sleeping, but a part of you needed to tell him even when he was awake. And you knew he needed it more than you.

Joker on the outside looked like a colorful flower which diverted attention from his gray roots that no one could see, that had been uprooted, trampled, left on the ground, and had never been picked by anyone. They never had the chance to be cultivated again and grow stronger. It was you who noticed his colorful petals, and it was you too who noticed that under his bright-colored suit was hiding the same man he had always been, a man full of pain so accustomed to never receive love that had convinced himself he didn’t really deserve it. It was you who picked up his broken and fragile roots and watered them every day with your love so they could blossom again.

Joker thought he didn’t deserve you, that he was one of those souls who just no longer have hope. He thought that sooner or later you would have know his darkness as well as he did, and you would have been scared, leaving him to that loneliness he thought he was destined for. If people didn’t love me when I was Arthur, how could they love me now? You heard him talking in the night, when insomnia didn’t allow him to sleep and his mind was tangled with his heavy thoughts. But you knew his darkness a long time ago, and when you saw it, it was the one which made you fall even more in love with him. Darkness cannot be seen without also seeing the light. Where there was darkness, there was light and where there was light, there was darkness. You never could see them separated.

In the same way, he wasn’t Arthur who turned into Joker, he was always the same man to you, and he’s the only man you’ve ever loved in your life. Just like light and darkness, you couldn’t see Arthur without seeing Joker, you couldn’t see Joker without seeing Arthur. They coexist.

And if one day the darkness would take over and that light would fade leaving only a glow, you would have loved him anyway. You’ve always loved one man, no matter what he wanted to be called.

When you get done the list of things to kiss on his face, you put your hand on his hair and caressed them gently, rubbing soft circles of his hair around your fingers. “You’re so beautiful. You know that, right?” You saw his dimples get deeper and deeper when Joker giggled clumsily as you passed your fingers through his hair. Joker would never get used to compliments, even if they were yours. People had laughed at him, called him a freak, avoided him, he had been jumped and left bleeding on the ground. No one ever complimented him, no one ever cared about him before you. 

He would never get used to the idea that someone found him beautiful, that someone even wanted to look at him, to see him, and each time he didn’t know how to answer because he just didn’t believe it was true. He lowered his eyes and remained silent, you knew his face better than yours and you knew that at that moment his torments were coming back like a river in flood.

“Joker, hey, I really meant it. Sweetheart, you are beautiful. Your beauty is otherworldly, and your soul… damn, your soul… is even more beautiful than your look, my love. Please, look at me.” You lifted up his face by putting your index finger on his chin and looked him in the eyes, so close to yours that his gaze has disoriented you, so broken that your heart suffered with them. “Joker, you’re the only man I’ve ever loved, and you’re the only man I’ll ever love in my whole life. And if there are other lives after this, I’ll love you in each one of them, too. Your soul is beautiful. It was beautiful when you were Arthur, and it’s beautiful now that you’re Joker, you know why?” He answered you by moving his head from both sides without saying anything, letting you to speak. You understood him anyway. 

“It has never changed, that’s why. It’s always the same and you are the same. I know you don’t think any of that is true, and I know that telling you every day won’t change your mind, and…” The love you felt for this human being who had never been loved and had difficulty in recognizing that someone could love him, especially after what he had done, was so deep that it hurt you and you couldn’t speak without your voice being broken. “I know… I know, my love, that you’re afraid of what you’ve become, and I know that the love I feel for you won’t make all of your fears disappear by magic… but tonight let me explain to you how beautiful your whole being is, and try to believe me, can you do this for me? For yourself? Can you love yourself tonight like I did so far while you were sleeping?” Joker felt his watery eyes full of tears that he was trying to hold back and didn’t know how to answer those words. “I… Y/N, I… I can do this, doll.” You smiled tenderly and kissed him softly.

“I love you more than my own life. Than my own lives.” You told him, stroking his left cheek. “Y/N.” He wrapped your face with both hands and looked at you so deeply, so long that his intense gaze right inside your eyes put you in awe. “You are my lives.” And then he put his lips back on yours and kissed you hard, making sure that the few traces of paint that were still left on him transferred on your face like the rest of the make up.

He didn’t say much after what you told him, but you knew that in every kiss he gave you, in every caress and while you were making love again that night, through the exchange of your bodies he had told you a thousand, million times I love you, thank you for being close to me. Just like you did when he was sleeping.

That night you told him everything you loved about him, gave all of yourself to the man of your life and loved him through your touch, your kisses, your words. Your presence was beating for him, just for him. Through every part of your body, every way you could touch it, you made him feel loved.

And the universe had also loved him, through the moon, through the shadows projected upon his body, through the sunset that had seen your love blooming on your bed.

Now you wanted him to love himself just like you did in all those hours, even for one night. Maybe, night after night, one day he would forgive himself for faults he never had, but they were faults he believed he had and you couldn’t take this thought out of his mind. Only he could, but you would have been beside him anyway, for all your life. For each of your lives.

That night you couldn’t sleep for how beautiful he was and how much his soul seemed to hover inside the room and have a weight. There’s a beauty in Joker that you never could explain, seeing it is enough for you, it’s always there; an innate grace that emerged from the way he moves or dances, from the way he exists; an elegance he didn’t even try to have, he always had inside of him and that’s all. 

He had inside him the sophistication of things that were broken but are being recomposed by the same pain that broke them at the first place, a gentleness so subtle and rare that few people could see it.

His was a tragic beauty that only those who have experienced the pain can have, an all-embracing beauty which hypnotized you every time you laid your eyes on him. How a man who lived so much pain could be so beautiful that he look like a fallen angel you never knew, and you probably don’t need to know. Certain beauties can’t be explained, you have to keep them safe to prevent them from being violated. Certain beauties must be kept secret and guarded, and his beauty is one of them.

Certain beauties are so pure and ethereal that only those who know the same pain can recognize them; but whoever saw it, you were sure, would never forget such a beauty, just like you wouldn’t have forgotten. You surely don’t.

[howlingwind]

RIVER SELINA MARSHALL who strongly resembles OLIVIA HOLT, has been spotted in Pandæmonium. The CISFEMALE is a EIGHTEEN year old INHUMAN, and has been in Pandæmonium for TWO WEEKS. I hear they’re KIND & DARING and HEADSTRONG & MOODY. If you’re lucky you may catch them working at PHANTOM PARK as a GAME HOSTESS or at NYU as a STUDENT. 

younger sister to rory & reese marshall. middle child of the six total siblings.

lovingly referred to as the moody middle marshall.

absolutely adores her older siblings, roreo & reese’s pieces, annoying big sis to the “lil rye’s” as she calls them.

she’s an inhuman with empathic (emotional) powers and atmoskinesis (steam manipulation). was never in very good control of them in the first place but the big life change of moving to pandemonium as made them even more out of control.

developed her powers at the same time as reese & rory despite being states apart. (more on this below)

loves saunas, okay? loves em. she wishes she could spend her whole life in the sauna.

also fond of partying, video games, and comic books. when she was little, river used to always sneak and read reese’s comics when he was done with them, but she’d deny ever having touched them. she’d also pester rory to play video games with her practically nonstop. 

she discovered her love for partying in high school after reese and rory had already graduated and left. now she was the oldest sibling in the house but the lil rye’s were much closer with each other than her, so she had this sort of lonesome independence thing going on that made her seek out ways to not feel so alone. she ended up always attending the parties the richer, more popular kids threw, and it was one of the few times she’d really let her hair down. mostly thanks to an abundance of weed, booze, and the occasional drop of acid. while she’s definitely beginning to settle down a bit, at the time the partying did help her cope with the loneliness and get through the difficulties of managing her new powers.

freshman at nyu, majoring in psychology, minoring in creative writing.

game hostess at phantom park because what’s a better job for an empath than being near the most excited, happy little kids ever, and giving them prizes for winning at a game and making them feel even more over the moon?? she practically gets high on happiness the whole time she’s at work lol

keeps a diary, a dream journal, and a separate journal dedicated to her writing.

pretty new to her powers, so even the stuff she’s “good” at, she’s not really good at. (aka if she had any decent control over this shit she’d be way op so she’s gotta be clueless)

empathy:

heightened emotions — experiences every emotion far more intensely than most people.

emotion detection — can sense or interpret a person’s emotions, and experience them herself. best controlled and most precise through touching another person, although river can also get a more general sense of a person’s emotions by just being in their general vicinity.

emotion projection — river can make a person feel what she’s feeling. with more experience, she would even be able to project specific emotions that she’s not feeling at the time. however, she’s not very skilled at this technique and will often fail if she tries.

empathic echoes — can send or receive glimpses or flashes of mental imagery associated with a memory or past event.

empathic inundation — overwhelms a target with a flood of emotion that can render them unconscious or even cause aneurysms depending on the strength/severity. river has not experimented with this yet. 

lie detection — lying causes slight changes in emotion, and river can pick up on this if she’s focused. however, she’s inexperienced at this, and the more comfortable and experienced the person is at lying, the more likely it is that the lie will go undetected by her.

clairvoyant empathy — after forming a strong emotional bond with someone, river is able to innately sense their emotion, location, and sense whether or not they’re in danger, even across great distances. she has a bond like this with each of her siblings, and it’s that bond that allowed her to sense what was happening to rory & reese as they underwent their torture and terrigenisis, and awaken her own powers.

empathic conversion — an empath with enough skill, training, and experience can essentially overwrite another person’s emotions and desires into anything they’d like, most commonly to create a loyal follower to carry out their will. unfortunately (or perhaps just fortunately), river has none of the above and is currently incapable of this.

empathic combat — with training, river could theoretically use empathy to her advantage in combat by predicting attacks through her opponent’s emotional state and instincts, or by using emotion projection or empathic inundation as her own form of attack.

atmoskinesis – steam manipulation

whereas empathy is something innate and automatic, steam manipulation is not. thus, river is not very skilled with these techniques, and would likely fail to perform most of these at all.

heat generation / boiling — river can create heat, but as far as she’s aware, can only increase the temperature of water molecules.

steam generation & calo-hydrokinesis — using the powers of heat and water manipulation in conjunction, river can control steam and even create it from water. she cannot use her heat or water powers individually. she can only control the heat levels in water, and to control water, it must first be made hot enough to enter a gaseous state.

geyser creation — can create blasts and eruptions of steam from bodies of water, big or small.

steam constructs — can create object shaped constructs out of steam, the way a water manipulator can for example create a trident out of water, or an air manipulator can create a spinning ball of air.

steam based telekinesis — can use steam to propel herself or other objects into the air, as if in flight, or “surf” on the water by heating the surface into steam.

asphyxiation & internal boiling — can asphyxiate a victim by filling their lungs with steam. can boil a victim from the inside by heating the blood and other water molecules in their body. obviously these are both pretty gruesome and haven’t even really crossed river’s mind. yet. don’t piss her off?

heat resistance — obviously, river has a very high resistance to heat to be able to control and touch boiling water and steam. the heat resistance isn’t just water based, however. she is also very resistant to high temperatures and fire.

when rory left town, river missed her, of course, but she didn’t feel alone. she still had reese. but that year without rory passed by so fast, and before she knew it, reese had left too, and river just felt abandoned. that feeling of abandonment never truly went away, but over time it got easier to forget for a few moments here and there, and when she thought about it, what once felt like a gaping hole in her stomach had become a sort of numbness. she was able to move on for a while, focus on being a good older sister to riley and ryan, getting decent grades, catching up on the latest video games and movies… all the stuff that she’d admittedly put on the back-burner in favor of any and every opportunity to hang out with one of the older siblings she idolized. the keywords however, were for a while. 

river was alone in the school’s bathroom that day. it was a rare occurrence, but fortuitous in the fact that no one saw what happened to her. it started mildly, a dull pain in her side that progressed into a searing, throbbing nightmare against her ribs. a dull ache in her head that grew into a brain melting electric shock. difficulty breathing that quickly started to feel like someone had filled her lungs with water, then reached through her chest and squeezed it out of them. she didn’t even scream – probably couldn’t if she tried. she just collapsed into a ball of agony on the disgusting bathroom floor and endured, sure she was about to die. the face of evil incarnate flashed through her mind, and for a moment when she closed her eyes she was no longer in the bathroom, she was hallucinating a nightmare. reese and rory in chains, each on the receiving end of the torture she was experiencing. she reached out and called to them. they didn’t notice. she ran to the large, evil, man and pounded on his chest and face, but he didn’t react. it was like she wasn’t even there. she cried out, desperate for the man to stop, but all that did was pull her back from wherever she’d gone, the reality of the exploded sinks and scalding water shooting from the pipes all around her surprising her just enough to make her snap out of the delusion.

the water was hot, boiling even, but as it sprayed onto her it barely felt lukewarm. she stood from the floor, a soaked, dripping mess, and took tentative steps at first, squeakily exiting the girl’s room. she wandered lost and confused through the halls, dizzy as so many different emotions flooded through her mind. she was certain she was going crazy, and she had no idea how she’d explain where the screams had come from and why she was soaked from head to toe, so she simply left the building, drifting home in a daze. she barely made it up to her room before she passed out. when she awoke the next morning, she realized she hadn’t been hallucinating, and she wasn’t going crazy, this was all really happening. she reached out to her older siblings to check on them of course, but deep down she knew that somehow they were alright.

river adjusted to her new normal fairly quickly. she wasn’t very good at controlling her powers, but she got used to them. she started partying more and worrying less, and her feelings of abandonment felt so distant now that she could substitute her own feelings with those of someone who was truly happy. things were actually going really well for her, until the college acceptance letters came. stanford, harvard, surprisingly, she was accepted to both. she was also accepted to nyu, and when she saw that, there was no choice to make. for all her growth and new independence, and claims that she’d been fine without them, the second she had a chance to rejoin rory and reese, she took it without hesitation. graduation came and went, and the very next day river had a bag packed and she was heading out to her new school, her new town, and her new life.