Bad Jokes (JokerxHarley Quinn)

we could crash, we could burn, burn

We could, we could crash, we could, we could, burn burn
We could take it, we could we could take it take it in turns
I'm getting down with your new vocation
Getting down with your cute cut wrists
I'm getting down with the kisses and cross-stitches on it
-The Kills, Getting Down

When I regained consciousness countless hours later, it wasn't to J slapping me awake. No, it was to the steady sound of running water.

My eyes flew open, and I experienced a moment of disorientation when I realized that I didn't know where I was. It was only a moment, though—everything flew back to me quickly enough, accompanied by a giant headache.

Directly across from the bed was the bathroom door, which had been thrown open. J was there, and he was standing in front of the sink sans coat and vest, sleeves rolled up, shaving.

I had never thought about it, but of course he would have to shave. Scarred tissue with damaged hair follicles notwithstanding, he still had plenty of healthy skin on his face. Anything much beyond a five o'clock shadow would make the paint look ridiculous in a bad way. I watched, immediately fascinated.

He was shaving with a straight razor, and his hand was flicking around so fast and with such apparent recklessness that I winced involuntarily several times, convinced that he was going to slit his own throat. I underestimated his skill with sharp edges, though—he trimmed the white froth from his face and throat neatly, leaving smooth, pale skin beneath. He steered around the scars so dexterously that I wondered privately how long he'd had them, how many years he'd had to perfect the routine.

All at once, he was finished. As he toweled his face off, he rolled his eyes to the side, looking at me. "Bout time you woke up," he said conversationally. "I was starting to get worried."

I smiled wryly, sitting up and dropping my feet off the edge of the bed. The floor was cold. "What time is it?" I mused aloud.

"Really late," he answered absent-mindedly, reaching out of my field of vision and then coming back with a small container. He dipped bare fingers into it and started smearing it on his face. White greasepaint. His hands stilled for a moment as a thought struck him. "Or really early," he added, and then shrugged and resumed his application of the makeup.

I blinked and rubbed the thin film of sleep out of my eyes, scratching at the corners to remove the black specks of eyeliner that had gathered overnight. I blinked again. I probably looked like shit. I certainly felt like it.

"This is your room," I stated, almost as though I was requesting confirmation, but not quite—really, who else would it belong to?

His fingers didn't pause. "For now," he muttered, almost as though he was answering a voice in his head.

"I'm sorry." He said nothing; his eyes flicked towards me briefly, curiously, before returning to the mirror. "I didn't mean to knock out, at least not in your room," I clarified. "I dunno, it feels like an invasion of privacy or something, and I didn't... I didn't mean to do that."

He set the white greasepaint container on the edge of the sink, finished with it, and searched for another tin. Not bothering to wipe the white off his hands, he dipped his fingertips in. They came out red, and he began smearing the new color on his lips, not paying too much attention to the lines of his mouth, swerving and sketching a red grin out over the scars.

He spoke after he was finished with the lips. "Ya gotta tear down those boundaries you've put up, Haaaarley. I mean, really... they're holding youback."

"What do you mean?"

He scraped the last bit of red paint off onto the edge of a scar and reached for the final pot of black. "Well, you're taught to put up walls, ya know? Now, the theory there being that these, uh, these walls? These barriers will protect you from the big bad wolf outside, at least till he huffs and puffsand blows 'em down." He was carefully applying black in an ellipse around his eyes, which he then filled in shadowing them, darkening them to complete the eerie mask.