Batman Begins/Dark Knight 1. Comfort Honor Keep

The Joker's boisterous, echoing laugh was punctuated heavily by the equally loud, however highly contradictory sound of sobbing as he stepped between his two newest victims, circling them like a vulture around wounded animals. His ears were ringing deafeningly but not due to the two contrasting sounds echoing through the empty building, but rather from that itchy, overwhelming energy that flowed through his body, through his veins, as though laced into his very blood itself. The entire room seemed to be pulsating with every beat of his heart and as he turned to lean down, to loom into the terrified man's face, his scars stretched into a wide, horrible smile.

"So how would you like to die, James?" he asked in a forcefully casual tone, his voice clowny and bouncing off the barren walls around them. "Slowly, with a _knife?..."_ The Joker's black gloved hand disappeared, only to reappear a split second later, wiggling a sharp, shiny knife between his thumb and middle finger, waving it tauntingly in front of the man's tear-streaked, petrified face. When no reply came from James, Joker inched toward him, raising his eyebrows, stretching the smeared black rings of greasepaint around his eyes. "_Hm?_" he prompted again, tilting his head to one side. However, instead of an answer, all James could muster was another pitiful sob as he shook his head, flinging blood-laced drops of sweat onto the light gray concrete below him. Before him, the Joker made a falsely sympathetic noise with his tongue behind his teeth. "_No?" _he asked again, his voice wavering with excitement and adrenaline. "Well, since you can't decide, how about we let your wife go first...To give you a little extra _time _to reach a decis-"

He moved to stand up as he finished his sentence but both spouses let out loud noises of panic simultaneously, cutting him off. Rebecca, James' wife, had let out a short squeak of a scream, just as James shouted a loud 'no' but Joker was already knelt down behind the wife, using the palm of his gloved hand to tilt her head back forcefully.

"No, _James," _he growled, turning his wife slightly so they could both face her husband as he rested his chin on her shoulder. "See, when you two got married, you both made vows, right?" Joker asked, raising his eyebrows as he nodded at James before turning his head slightly to look sideways into Rebecca's leaking, horrified eyes. "Now, let me see, I'm not married myself but how do those things go..." he began speaking again, this time in a more lowered voice as though trying to recollect a phone number. A moment later, he clicked his tongue with a nod, just before he flicked his wrist, easily flipping open the blade to that knife he had produced moments ago. Rebecca began screaming in earnest as he brought it to the corner of her mouth. "_Oh, _yeah, I remember now!" he exclaimed with a ravenous, delighted giggle. "Do _you, _James, take _Rebecca, _to be your wedded wife?..._" _he started, gritting his teeth behind his red painted lips as James began screaming, watching from only a few feet of distance as that knife began to split his wife's cheek from the corner of her mouth. Joker continued, taking his time in pulling the knife back toward her ear, to relish in her closed-mouth screams. "Do you _promise_ to _love _her, _comfort_ her, _honor_ and _keep_ her?" Against his chest, Joker could feel Rebecca's body trembling violently as he switched sides, bringing the knife over to the uninjured corner of her mouth, all while James continued to sob and plead with him to stop. Joker continued once again, turning his head to watch as the razor sharp blade began to split her skin and sinew a second time.

"_For better or for worse..." _Joker growled deeply, watching closely as Rebecca's already pale skin began to grow ashen, gray, cold beneath the exposed skin on his wrist holding her head back. "In sickness and in health, until _death_ do you part?"

Fortunately, he had timed this perfectly, keeping the movement of his knife slow enough so that by the time he finished speaking, Rebecca had already bled out almost completely and fell heavily to the concrete floor as he released her to land in a thin, slowly thickening pool of her own blood. Across from them, James was absolutely beside himself, his skin white and shimmering with bloody sweat, his entire body trembling so violently, Joker could swear he was having a seizure. His back was bent, his elbows rested on his knees, his hands fisted into his shorter hair as he rocked slightly, the palms of his hands over his ears, pointlessly trying to block himself from hearing the Joker's next words.

"LOOK, JAMES!" Joker shouted, raising his voice into a loud bark, a demonic, rattling sound that practically filled the entire room. "LOOK AT YOUR BRIDE." Rising quickly, Joker stood and moved behind James, using both of his hands to lift his head, shaking him roughly in an effort to force his eyes open. "Look at what happened because of your greed, your need to rat out your partner..." Here, he paused, lowering his voice as he knelt behind James, placing his face just next to his so they could both stare down at the dead, mutilated face of his once beautiful wife. "It's a basic law of physics, James...For every action, there is an equal and opposite _re-_action...It's unfortunate that your wife had to pay the consequences for your...avarice..." Joker finished his sentence with a low hiss, rising again to begin circling his one remaining victim. "She _was _really pretty, too...Such a shame-" He was interrupted once more when James' cracked, ruined voice cried out through the buzz of malicious, evil energy resonating through the room.

"KILL ME!" he screamed. "PLEASE JUST KILL ME NOW!"

For a second, as James' hands reached out toward him, Joker thought he was about to clutch the bottom of his coat and actually beg for his life to be taken, which caused him to take a step back and scowl down at the man. However, instead, he reached out, placing both of his hands flat on the floor before him, to practically bow before the Joker. He tsked reproachfully,

disappointedly as he took a step closer and leaned down.

"Ah, James, I really pegged you as more of a fighter, seeing how you're a _big,_ _strong _policeman...Really thought you'd put up more...effort toward saving your own life." Joker explained, shaking his head as leaned forward to glance up at James' defeated face. His victim seemed to have expended what little energy he had possessed earlier and was now shaking his head slowly back and forth, breathing deeply.

"My wife is dead..." he began in a surprisingly even, astonishingly calm voice. "A _freak _like you wouldn't understand what it's like...to have someone that you literally do not want to live without...Someone...you h-had...fully planned on spending the rest of your life with...She..." he paused, allowing one final, quiet sob to leave him as more bloody tears dropped from his eyes onto his wife's cold, blonde hair beneath him. "She was everything to me..._please..._kill me now."

At this, Joker rolled his eyes, but in a split second, had stood up and kicked James hard in the ribs, knocking him over onto his back as another surge of energy flowed through him, dimming his vision and causing his ears to ring loudly again.

"Ya know, you and your _wife _really were no fun, James. Perhaps being married does that to a person...I wouldn't know." he was saying in something of a casual tone as he placed one foot on either side of James and knelt down to one knee, reaching out with both hands to fit them around the front of his neck. "Although _normally, _I would leave you alive for a few days, just to prolong your misery..." Joker paused, gritting his teeth as he tightened his grip rapidly. "...-and let you relive those last few _precious_ moments of your wife's life. Let you...bask in the scent of her blood for awhile..." As he spoke, he leaned down, widening his eyes as he stared deeply into James', watching with enjoyment as the life began to drain quickly from behind the blue. "But believe it or not, I _do _have someone waiting at home for me...and I'm sure she'll be _very _happy to hear what a _wonderful _day at work I had..."

The back of the door collided heavily with the wall behind it, echoing like a gunshot through the house as Jayde and Joker stumbled into the bedroom blindly, their lips locked heatedly. The force of the door against the wall caused it to recoil slightly but Joker quickly reached out with his right hand, holding it back to prevent it from hitting them, giving Jayde the perfect opportunity to hastily reach down to untuck his white shirt from his black and gray pinstriped pants. His vest had yet to be undone but seeing how Jayde was finding it rather difficult to pull back from Joker's lips, she merely whined into his mouth frustratedly, tugging impatiently on the top of the clothing. Smirking against her, Joker pulled away, opening his eyes into mere slits to peer down at her as he reached up to begin undoing the buttons, watching the almost crazed, lustful way she licked her swollen lips as she eyed him hungrily. Their breathing had already grown ragged and shallow, making it rather difficult to put any thought into speaking, even just to say hi to each other...Joker had _kind of _come barging into the house and kissed her, hoping she would get the point that he _really _needed to fuck without him having to explain. Luckily, as Joker tossed his vest to the side absentmindedly, it seemed Jayde was feeling some of the same pent up energy he was experiencing as she immediately reached down to peel off her tank top.

Within seconds, Joker had moved forward again, using his hands on either side of her waist to pick her up, but just as Jayde expected him to carry her toward the bed, she gasped in both surprise and delight when he practically slammed her up against the wall next to the dresser. Her shoulder blades made sharp contact with the hard surface behind her, but at the moment, it seemed Jayde's body was incapable of feeling anything other than sheer adrenaline, anticipation and pleasure. She moaned, tilting her head back as Joker sank his teeth into the curve of her neck.

"You just killed someone, d-didn't you..." she asked, her voice raspy and desperate as Joker pulled back momentarily, but only to catch her lips quickly. He pulled away after a second, glancing down as he used his hips to pin her to the wall so he could use one hand to unbutton the top button of her jeans.

"Yeah," he answered gruffly, giving clear indication to Jayde of just how badly he needed this; it seemed his impatience was rendering him incapable of coming up with a clever, sarcastic reply to her question. Again, Jayde moaned, tilting her head to the side as Joker returned to trace his previous bite marks with his tongue.

"_God, _that's so hot..." she groaned, digging her nails into his shoulders as Joker grunted a laugh against her neck. A moment later, Jayde opened her eyes, somehow registering in her foggy brain a hint of hope that he had not taken that the wrong way. It was not the fact that he killed people that turned her on, really, but rather the fact that he more often than not turned to Jayde as a final release for the remainder of that pent-up, ravenous energy that consumed him when it was hunting time. It was the primal, animalistic side of him she found so unabashedly sexy and how he nearly _always _needed to fuck her, _hard, _after making a kill. Needless to say, Jayde always strived to make herself available for just such circumstances as this.

It seemed from the way she was pinned against the wall with her knees locked firmly on either side of Joker's narrow waist that it would have been nearly impossible to remove their remaining clothing without her having to stand on her feet at some point and Joker seemed to realize this as he took a step back from the wall, taking her with him. Another split-second later, Jayde was on her back, bouncing slightly at the foot of the bed as Joker practically threw her there and he followed, reaching up with one hand to begin undoing the buttons on his shirt. However, as Jayde sat up, grinning playfully at him, she reached out, impatiently moving his hands so she could curl her fingers around either edge of his shirt and yank hard, popping the remaining buttons from the fabric. The small white buttons could be heard hitting the carpet and bed around them in a series of soft taps and as Joker growled in partial annoyance, his eyes narrowed and Jayde giggled, leaning back to rest on her elbows behind her.

"I really _liked _this shirt, ya know..." he growled, taking a step closer to the bed as he reached behind himself to pull the sleeves from his arms, watching lustfully as Jayde bit down on her bottom lip, shamelessly eying those delicious cuts over his hipbones leading downward beyond the low line of his black pants.

"I'll fix it for you," she purred, once again sitting up to rest her hands lightly on his stomach, dragging them downward slowly to his black leather belt. Her fingers tucked behind the material against his warm skin, just as she leaned forward to press her lips lightly against his torso. A moment later, she just barely let the tip of her tongue sneak out to trace that groove over his hip, something she knew turned him into an absolute puddle of goo but as Joker suddenly reached out to wrap his hand around the front of her throat, Jayde gasped. Before she could blink, she was on her back again, instinctively parting her knees in preparation for Joker to rest himself between them, but to her surprise, he stayed in place at the foot of the bed, rocking his hips slightly.

The location of his hand around her throat did not unnerve her even in the slightest and she stared up at him, grinning sassily as his eyes roved up and down her exposed torso. She was still wearing her bra and was just about to ask if he wanted her to take that off when he seemed to notice it and reached back into his pocket. Before he had even produced it, Jayde knew exactly what was coming and as the silver glint of a knife caught the sunlight in the room, her eyes flew to it and her grin expanded. It used to be that she had a problem with him cutting her clothes off, but seeing how he usually always replaced them with something new, she had grown to not only allow him to do so but actually enjoy it tremendously. Her breath hitched in her throat as he brought the dull edge of the knife to her sternum before slipping it beneath the strip of fabric between her breasts, to easily sever the material. With a pop, the bra came away from her body, exposing both of her perfectly shaped, perfect handful-sized breasts and the pink, erect nipples that came with them.

Completely abandoning it's place at her neck, both of Joker's hands, knife included, came down to firmly grab both breasts and knead them just roughly enough to hurt slightly. Jayde moaned loudly, her back arching beneath his grip as Joker practically panted in anticipation, his black ringed eyes half-lidded, glazed over and dilated as he watched the glint of his knife against her olive toned skin. He groaned a moment later, his breath leaving him roughly as his hips rocked against the foot of the bed.

"I wanna cut you _so _bad..." he growled raggedly, pulling the knife away to drag the blunt edge lightly down her torso as though imagining what it would feel like to use the other, dangerously sharp edge instead. Beneath him, Jayde shivered at the feel of the cold metal against her warm skin, giant goosebumps raising up along her arms, causing her nipples to grow almost painful as they hardened again.

"Do it."

These words left her mouth with such swiftness, in such a direct and level tone that she surprised even herself. Her eyes flew open in shock at how quickly she had decided to allow him to do this and her gaze met his, where she found him staring down at her slightly wide-eyed in equal shock. She did not have to tell him twice.

It happened so quickly, Jayde was not even sure he had done it, but as she looked down, her eyes instantly spotted a tiny, quarter inch fleck on her stomach where he had just barely touched her with the tip of the knife and was now staring down at her, watching her reaction to that first, initial test cut. She sighed a moment later, resting her head back down on the bed to close her eyes, silently telling Joker that she had not even felt it and that if he really wanted to, he could go on.

However, after just a second of hesitation, Joker reached out again, pressing the full blade against her torso, just beneath her left breast and began to slowly pull it downward, lightly, as gently as he could manage. Beneath the knife, Jayde moaned in both pleasure and pain, completely shocked and beyond stunned that she was not only actually allowing him to do this, but mildly enjoying it as well. She had never before enjoyed pain, had never _ever _considered herself a masochist in any sense of the word, but the affect this was having on Joker was driving most of the pleasure she was experiencing. He growled deep in his chest, watching from above as the wake of the blade left a thin, red line down her stomach to her hipbone, where tiny droplets of bright red blood began bubbling to the cuts surface.

It was rather astonishing to Jayde, as she lay there trembling, how gentle Joker was being, how he possessed not just the ability to brutally murder someone with that knife but also the skill to use it gently, as if gliding a feather along her skin. But of course, as was usual with him, it seemed as though he was reading her mind.

Jayde cried out, arching her back sharply as Joker suddenly reached out with two fingers, dragging them down the cut heavily to smear her blood along her torso, groaning deeply as he watched her struggle between pleasure and pain. If she was being honest, it really did hurt now and as Joker brought the knife back a third time, resting the blade delicately against her opposite hip bone, she whimpered, opening her eyes. Joker's attention moved quickly from the knife against her skin to her eyes where his expression appeared to her as slightly frustrated. Her head twitched to the side in the tiniest and slightest of movements, her eyes widened as she prayed Joker would pick up what she was silently hoping to tell him. However, a moment later, he looked back down at her hip, pressing the tip of the knife lightly against her skin.

"If ya can't stand the heat..." he started in a low growl. "...- don't set anything on fire."

Again, Jayde cried out, arching her back slightly in an effort to dig her hips into the bed, to put as much distance between her skin and the Joker's knife as possible although by the time she had taken another breath, he stopped and pulled his hand away. Her chest was heaving slightly, her eyes now open and watching as Joker reached out with both hands, skillfully holding his knife between his middle and ring finger so he could tug hard on the line of her jeans, where a few drops of her blood had already soaked into the denim. The tight material moved cleanly down her legs, past her ankles and feet before he threw them behind him blindly. His eyes then met hers as she panted, watching his deft fingers undo the two, old-fashioned buttons at the line of his black and gray pinstriped pants.

To his surprise, she did not seem entirely turned off or shut down by his cutting, and instead seemed ravenous once again, excited that he had decided to take things to the next step. This forced a smirk to twitch Joker's scars as he reminded himself one more countless time of how he really could not have found a more perfect woman, _ever. _With his pants finally undone and Jayde practically panting in anticipation before him, Joker reached out, that knife still tucked tightly between his fingers, and he gripped her hips, tugging her toward him forcefully until she was right at the edge of the bed. His heart was pounding hard against the inside of his ribcage and as Joker glanced upward to where Jayde had just been laying a moment prior, his eyes caught sight of a few darkening spots of blood on the white comforter beneath her. A foreboding shiver wracked his chest, causing him to groan as he wondered vaguely whether or not it would be a good idea to fuck Jayde with a knife in his hand, when he was already feeling so wound up...But seeing how he could practically taste the pheromones her body was putting off and could see the way her underwear was sticking to her, there was no way he could help himself at this point...

Jayde had just opened her eyes when she noticed Joker reach out with his empty hand, using one finger to tug her underwear to the side, but just when she expected to feel another warm finger begin to stroke her, she gasped, throwing her head back to arch herself off the bed when Joker suddenly pushed himself into her roughly. Apparently, he had decided the teasing had gone on long enough and was beyond waiting any longer to feel that primal, intimate connection between them. Jayde shivered slightly, her stomach quivering as Joker remained completely still inside her, his eyes open and watching her expression grow from slightly relieved, to confused. Her eyebrows arched as she lifted her head to glance down at his hips. Her mouth opened a second later but she merely whined in frustration, grinding herself against him. Joker shook his head slowly, his black eyes fixed on her blue ones.

"I'll move when I'm ready," he growled dominantly, bringing that knife up from where he had rested it against her stomach; Jayde froze when she felt the cold steel grace her jaw lightly. "Gotta learn to be patient, darling..." he then added, smirking evilly as Jayde stared up at him, defiantly doing her best to ignore the chilling sensation of that knife on her skin, where it now rested delicately against the front of her neck.

Silence descended through the room, a thick, powerful silence where Jayde could swear she could hear his heart beating but after several seconds of Joker just standing there, his thick, solid dick rested completely inside of her, she whined again, more desperately this time as she adjusted her hips in an effort to break this ritual. Again, Joker shook his head back and forth, his smirk expanding a bit to show a few of his teeth.

"Ah, ah..." he warned lightly, his voice clowny yet soft. "Gotta wai-" he went on but stopped mid-word as his breath hitched in his throat. Now, it was Jayde's turn to grin. As he had been about to continue, she clenched her inner muscles as tightly as she could around him, using the wetness and warmth as encouragement, a prodding tease to silently ask him if he _really _wanted to wait any longer. She knew he had just been asserting his dominance over her, in a pure attempt to show her that he really could control her by displaying how well he could control himself to keep her from getting what she really wanted...but as she clenched around him again, as tightly as she could, she hoped he understood that she had learned how to manipulate him, in more ways than he realized. Again, she tightened her muscles around him, grinning sassily up at him as he let out a low growl...The Joker was losing control.

His gaze had moved from her eyes and his knife down to where he could visibly see her juices leaking out over him, and as she clenched again, more tightly than before, he could not stop himself from groaning deeply, sliding his eyes closed. His hips gave a short involuntary buck of impatience, as though his own body was yelling at him to get to it. But as Jayde giggled softly, his eyes opened to focus on hers where his gaze narrowed irritably.

"Oh, clever girl...thinking you can jus-"

Again, Joker's word caught in his throat with a slight gasp as Jayde clenched the hardest she had yet and he groaned loudly, shaking some of his hair out of his face as he pulled back out of her by several inches. Jayde giggled and was about to ask playfully to go on with what he had been saying when Joker suddenly bucked his hips against hers forcefully, pulling a loud, raspy squeak of surprise from within her. Within an instant, Jayde's formerly playful, bold streak had come to an end and she was now rapidly losing her mind as Joker's hips swung forward and back in a pace that was not necessarily fast, but was instead deep and powerful.

A while ago, Joker had told Jayde confidently that she would never, _ever, _no matter how hard she tried, find another man who could do this to her like he could, who could have her reaching that so sought-after climax more than once each time they did this. Jayde had never once doubted his words and had decided long ago that she had absolutely no desire to find out if he had been right. As cliché as it sounded, Jayde truly felt as though she could ONLY have sex with _this _man for the rest of her life and be completely and totally satisfied in every way possible...a tall order for any person involved in a relationship. She hoped and prayed Joker felt the same way about her.

Above her, at the end of the bed, Joker was still standing, his head lowered as he watched himself moving in and out of her at a steady, powerful pace. With his attention completely focused on this, he seemed too distracted to remember that he still held a knife between his fingers where his left, dominant hand remained rested on her still slowly bleeding stomach. Jayde watched him, her eyes roving across his lightly painted features, absorbing and enjoying the way his brow had furrowed in concentration and the way his teeth occasionally rolled his bottom lip beneath them, until he suddenly let out a low growl of a breath as if he had been holding it. His eyes slid closed as he tilted his head back, but only for a moment before he was looking back down at her, having seemingly felt her watching him. A playful grin spread its way across Jayde's lips. At this, Joker took an abrupt half-step back, removing himself from her completely; he raised a hand to twirl one finger in the air. Jayde's stomach fluttered excitedly...this was her _favorite_.

Turning over, Jayde pushed herself onto her hands and knees, arching her back to toss her hair over her shoulder and look back at Joker standing behind her, watching as he brought his left thumb up to his mouth, to moisten the pad of his finger with his tongue. His half-lidded eyes were fixed on her now dripping entrance, now at a more even level with his hips and he reached out, gently but firmly gliding the damp plane of his thumb along her pussy. In front of him, Jayde shivered, rocking her hips slightly back toward him in a silent plead for him to continue.

In relation to how ravenous and seemingly sex-starved they had acted when Joker had gotten home, it was rather surprising to Jayde how attentive and almost calculated he was behaving, how he seemed to be taking his time, hitting all the right spots, doing things he knew she liked, versus flying into some frenzied fuck where he only worried about getting what _he _wanted. This really showed Jayde how much he had grown to respect her over the near-on two years they had been 'together'. However, for the time being, Jayde felt she needed to send just a little..._encouragement _his way...a frenzied fuck wasn't _always _a bad thing.

Jayde tried not to give any sort of response when Joker finally rocked his hips forward, pushing himself into her, although she had to bite hard on her bottom lip to keep from moaning loudly. There was something about this angle and the size of him that never failed to have her practically screaming his name within moments. Yet surprisingly, Joker was still moving more slowly than usual as though he knew this would frustrate Jayde to no end and he seemed to be taking great pleasure in watching her glance back at him over her shoulder with furrowed, arched eyebrows. He exhaled in a breathy laugh as Jayde whined in frustration, using her knees to rock her hips back toward him forcefully.

"_Damnit, _Joker, FUCK me!" she then suddenly exclaimed, throwing her hair further over her shoulder so she could glare back fully at him and only then did Joker growl a laugh.

"_That's _what I was waiting for..."

With that, Jayde cried out, her voice cracking slightly in a raspy moan as Joker suddenly bucked his hips and flew into that powerful, painfully rough rhythm, thrusting so deeply, Jayde could swear he was hitting the inside of her belly button each time his hips made contact with the rounded cheeks of her ass. His breathing was now labored and heavy, ragged as his thumbs dug into those perfect, identical dimples on the small of her back, his other eight fingers splayed wide and tightly gripping her dangerous curves, pulling her hips back toward him in perfect time with his thrusts. Jayde's jaw had since dropped as her cheek grew closer and closer to the comforter beneath her, her back arching more sharply by the second. It was in times like this, where Jayde was perfectly incapable of making any sound at all but always managed a loud cry at one point or another. Joker used that moment as his cue to ask her a question.

"Who's pussy is it..." he growled, his voice deep but loud enough to be heard over the rush of her blood pounding in her ears. Jayde whimpered, tossing her hair away from her face.

"Yours, Joker," she answered in a breathy, raspy cry. He hummed delightedly in his chest at her reply.

"_Mine..."_

This word had barely left Joker's throat in a loud growl before he reached around her hip quickly, using the cold metal handle of that nearly forgotten knife to rub deeply against her clit. Jayde cried out, rocking backward against Joker's thrusts to practically dig herself against him, begging for the release that he was so deft at bringing on her. He had memorized every single thing that took her to that point and it had gotten to where Jayde didn't necessarily need to do anything but allow Joker to have complete and total control...However, every once in a while, she did like to tease him mid-stride...just for the fun of it.

Being infinitely careful not to let the blade of the knife touch her stomach, Jayde abruptly and quickly moved away from Joker on her knees, toward the head of the bed, forcing him to slide out of her. With her eyes slightly widened, Jayde looked back at him over her shoulder to where he now stood at the end of the bed several feet behind her, looking slightly confused but also slightly annoyed in the most unabashedly sexy way possible as his chest heaved evenly, deeply. His already parted lips were licked quickly, in preparation to ask just what the fuck she thought she was doing by interrupting him, but instead of allowing him to ask, she explained, grinning playfully back at him as she swayed her hips from side to side.

"Come get it..." she purred, narrowing her eyes onto his as Joker glared down at her. An instant later, he had thrown the knife in his hand to the side where it collided with the wall in a loud, metallic thud before he climbed onto the bed and was to her in seconds. His hands reached her first where he used them to grab her hips roughly, tightening his grip to pull her back toward him by a half-foot in one seemingly effortless motion. Jayde's eyes squeezed shut, her head flew back and her body tightened into a sharp, concave arch as Joker forced himself into her yet again, his low, animalistic growl indicating that he had had quite enough of their sexual games for one encounter. Jayde knew he liked it when she played with him but she always thoroughly enjoyed the way it both frustrated him_ and _turned him on...it always led to one or both of them getting off.

Through his years of experience in these sort of situations, Joker had learned and perfected his ability to hold off and time his release to where he could finish just moments after the girl did and with Jayde, this art was particularly easy and rewarding. The signs of her oncoming release were always tell-tale and Joker had memorized her body so thoroughly, he could practically sense when she was going to finish, probably before _she _even realized it. So once he had brought his fingers around her hips to rub deep circles around her clit, her noises diminished until she could only manage a soft squeak every so often. She was close and so was he...Joker held off.

Moments later, her walls began to quiver and contract into a surprising level of tightness, forcing a deep, steady growl from Joker's chest as he closed his eyes. He could feel her thighs trembling against his hand- another sign that she was growing closer. It was upon them, she was about there and with just a _few...more...seconds..._

Joker groaned as Jayde let out the most beautiful, perfect cry of pleasure he had ever heard while hot, slick cum leaked out over him from inside her, easing his movement and making his own impending release almost unbearable to resist. Truthfully, he could continue on for at least another hour, probably get her off a few more times before he really _needed _ to finish, but Jayde was practically writhing in front of him, panting and whimpering as her release began to drip down her legs and Joker could not fight it any longer.

His breath escaped him in a series of rough pants as he bucked his hips several last times, reaching as deeply as he could, spilling himself into her heavily. Before him, Jayde shivered, just as she always did, and he took that to mean that she could feel him cum and liked the way it felt spilling deeply into her. He had to admit...deciding to have a vasectomy had to have been the best fucking decision he had ever made in his life.

For several long moments, Joker remained in place, rocking his hips slowly back and forth, easing both he and Jayde down from their orgasms, taking the time to gently massage any remaining tension their bodies were feeling and by the time he pulled back, Jayde was beyond ready to collapse onto her stomach and did so a bit less than gently. Joker watched from his place on his knees, grinning breathlessly down at her as she giggled into the bed and turned onto her side to peer up at him from one squinted blue eye. With a huff, she blew a long curly tendril of her hair from where it had landed on her face.

"Have a nice day, dear?" she asked with another breathy giggle. Joker nodded, leaning down over her to press his lips to hers.

"You have no idea..."

A/N: THEY'RE BACK! I missed these two crazies and I'm sure you all did too. You know the game- leave me a review and that next installment gets posted faster! This will be a three-part one-shot, something I've started to refer to as a three-shot, so if you already know the jyst of this little mini-story, PLEASE for the love of all things Joker, keep it to yourself! DON'T RUIN THE SURPREESE! LEAVE A REVIEW! -QoM


	2. There's One Thing Left To Do

From the way the sun fell into the bedroom through the sheen white drapes in a blaze of crisp, golden light, Jayde could estimate, as she rolled onto her back, that it was definitely well after nine, but probably no later than eleven...seeing how the Joker had not yet come in and done something annoying to get her out of the bed. A heavy, sleepy sigh heaved her chest as she reached up to push some of her loose curls away from her face and she turned onto her left side, blinking heavily as she struggled to focus her eyes on reaching over to pick up her phone to read the time- 10:03am. The last bit of her sigh turned the corners of her lips upward as she grinned against the pillow. If she _just _waited another twenty-seven minutes, she could pretend to be asleep when Joker came bounding through the bedroom door, to see what sort of annoyance he could concoct that morning in an effort to get her up...

It wasn't very often Jayde slept past 10:30, seeing how Joker would either wake up extra early to start his 'work day', taking care to be particularly noisy, or would be doing something _else _in the house...taking care to be particularly noisy. But on those days when the domestic climate was prime for a good sleeping-in, Jayde would sleep comfortably until _exactly _10:30am, only to be woken abruptly by either a rather large man landing heavily on the bed on top of her, or some other loud noise...like the air horn she had forced him to throw away. However, as much as she liked to pretend to be thoroughly annoyed by his antics, she would not have traded those mornings for anything else in the world. But seeing how Jayde's bladder was practically pulsating, waiting those twenty-seven minutes sounded a bit like Chinese water torture, so she sat up mid-yawn and pushed the blankets off of her before rising to round the end of the bed.

It was now mid-summer in Chicago and the weather had grown warm enough to where Jayde could sleep in a sports bra and shorts and be completely comfortable and as she stepped into the bathroom to shut the door behind her, she paused in front of the mirror to stretch. With her arms up over her head and another yawn splitting her face in half, she groaned quietly, grinning to herself as she felt a bit of a pleasant ache below the line of her shorts. This was something she had grown accustomed to since living, and _sleeping with_, the Joker. No matter how 'gentle' he had tried to be the day or night before, she was always left with a residual, immensely pleasant ache where her legs met her body, something she had started referring to as a 'bangover'...Only Dotcom understood what this terminology meant and he always spared an 'ugh' whenever she mentioned it.

But just as she turned from the mirror, something along her stomach caught her eye and she paused, turning slowly back to face herself in the reflective glass; she exhaled through her nose a moment later. Three thin, lightly scabbed-over cuts ran down the length of her stomach, from only an inch or two below the line of her sports bra down past the waist of her shorts and Jayde bent slightly, touching her finger to the longest one to trace it along her skin. It did not hurt as it had already begun to heal but vaguely, she wondered how she hadn't remembered it while dressing for bed the night before. Perhaps having him cut her hadn't really been as big a deal as she had thought it would be...Perhaps she trusted him more completely than she had originally estimated. With a shrug, she turned from the mirror and moved to finally relieve her bladder.

After brushing her teeth, doing something about her bushy hair and after dressing in a pair of cut-off denim shorts and tank top, Jayde emerged from the bedroom with a single cigarette and lighter in her hand, frowning as she wondered where Joker had gone and how she had not heard him leave that morning. Glancing through the windows behind the leather couch, she noticed that he was not sitting outside, nor was he in the kitchen reading the newspaper, nor was he seemingly in Tre's old room...her frown deepened. There was no sound coming from the garage so with a shrug, Jayde decided to venture out and see if one of the cars was missing.

Indeed, upon stepping out into the garage, she paused on the threshold beyond the door and sighed through her nose when her eyes fell onto the two front ends of both the huge Cadillac Escalade and the sporty, curvacious Corvette, both sitting quietly in their usual places. However, the heavy metal door across the long room from her was raised and wide open, revealing the sunbathed driveway and Lincoln avenue beyond it...and yet no one was in the garage?...

A second later, Jayde jumped with a quiet squeak when a loud clang of metal on concrete cracked the silent air from somewhere beside her, followed by more movement, coming from seemingly_ underneath _the Escalade. Jayde huffed in mild annoyance as a long metal wrench came sliding out from under the huge SUV.

"What are you _doing?" _she asked rather loudly, placing both of her hands on her hips in that characteristic way, her eyebrows practically touching as she stared down at the space between the bumper and the concrete floor beneath it. A second later, the Joker came sliding into view on a short rolling dolly, his own eyebrows furrowed, his curly green hair tied up into an absurd, high ponytail. He shook his head slightly with a shrug of his shoulders.

"I'm baking a fuckin' cake, whatsit look like I'm doin'?" he asked in return. From the blank look on Jayde's face, it appeared that she had not found his sarcasm funny and Joker's eyes slowly began to squint as his head cocked to the side. He held up one brown, grease-stained hand to wiggle his fingers. "It's _chocolaaaate..."_ he then added with a cheeky grin.

Finally, Jayde broke a smile as she rolled her eyes and moved to sit down on the concrete floor, folding her legs indian style so the top of Joker's head could just barely rest on her folded legs. He grinned placidly up at her as she reached to quickly tuck her hair behind both of her ears.

"Hello there," he greeted her in that simple, genuine way he always did and the smile on Jayde's face intensified as she reached out to place both of her hands flat on his chest, gazing down at his upside-down features.

"Hi," she answered, and without even pausing to think about it, she leaned down over him, gently pressing her lips to his in a 'Spiderman' style, upside-down kiss. As was normal for him now, Joker responded to her affection without hesitation, reaching up with both of his hands to lightly grip her upper arms. Jayde melted, sighing quietly against his lips as his grip tightened slightly before he began dragging his hands down her arms until he had reached her wrists. Of course, Jayde found this sweet and endearing and was just wondering what had made him want to do that when she suddenly remembered the black grease he had just showed her. With a jerk she pulled away but Joker was already laughing against her mouth, flinching slightly as she smacked him on the chest, once she had noticed her now dirt and grime streaked arms.

"You are such an ass..." she grumbled with a shake of her head and Joker nodded, folding his arms proudly over his chest.

"Yeah, but ya love me, dontcha?" he asked, that cheeky, mischievous grin now once again plastered to his face. Above him, Jayde was still scowling but in lieu of giving her answer, she brought both hands to Joker's shoulders and pushed hard, sliding him back under the Escalade, his forehead narrowly missing the bumper in the process. "Hey!" she heard him shout indignantly from under the SUV, his voice now muffled and she could not help but grin as she rose from the concrete floor to shift her attention to her cigarette.

After lighting it, Jayde glanced up, only to find that Joker had managed to push himself to the far, back end of the Escalade and was now rising from the dolly to walk toward her, wiping the remaining grease from his hands on the small towel he had pulled from his back pocket. She tried hard to keep her gaze fixed in a glare but was struggling hard to do so as Joker's amber brown eyes squinted slightly in his half-smirk. However, as he approached, he reached out, using two fingers to pluck Jayde's lit cigarette right from between her lips, and as he took a long pull from it, she folded her stained arms over her middle, tilting her head back slightly to look up at him.

"You don't have to go anywhere today?" she asked in a purposely off-handed tone, in an effort to keep the hopefulness in her voice to a minimum, however when Joker shook his head with a half-shrug, she sighed in relief. "Good," she breathed. "I want you to help me with some stuff around here today." She glanced up again when he held her cigarette in front of her face.

"_Like?..."_ he prodded, raising his eyebrows as he took a step away from her to fold his arms over his chest and lean against the hood of the Corvette across from her. Jayde shrugged, taking a deep pull on the now half-burnt cigarette.

"_Like_ we both have a ton of laundry to do and I'm definitely not doing it all by myself." she insisted boldly, keeping her eyes focused on Joker's and she copied him when he started to squint slowly. He was silent at first, just staring at her for several seconds until he sniffed in an almost bored sort of way.

"I don't know how to use the laundry machine." he finally answered, but then scowled when Jayde huffed across from him.

"It's called a _washing _machine and yes, you do, I've seen you do it." she countered, but before Joker could reply and say that he had just been 'pretending to do his laundry', she stood up and handed the last few hits of her cigarette to him. "I'm going to make some breakfast." she explained, pausing with her hand on the knob of the door to turn and look back at him. "Finish baking your cake then come inside and get all your dirty clothes." she then commanded, although a second later, she hesitated as though mildly regretting giving him such a direct order. She turned again to him and grinned. "Please, Joker, dear."

This finally pulled a smirk onto his face as she disappeared into the house.

Truth be told, Joker hadn't really been working on anything of that much importance with the car and had only been changing the oil filter when Jayde had emerged but there was something about that falsely annoyed, secretly grinning look on her face that always made him smirk a bit. He loved being sarcastic and even a little bit rude to her, only because he knew she could handle it and wasn't the type of girl to get pissy over something insensitive he had said...which was part of the reason he loved her. Yes, nearly four months had passed since that fateful night in that warehouse, amidst the bodies of Charlie and Michael Craig when he had admitted those three words to her and not a day had passed that he had regretted saying it. No, he did not exactly say it _every day _but every once in a while, when the timing was _just _right, he would let it slip out...and every time, Jayde would melt into a puddle.

It was those instances, those times when he would let an 'I love you' out, that he knew Jayde was just right for him. She would not make a huge deal of it, she would not let out an obnoxious 'awww!', but instead, she would blush deeply and kiss him on the cheek, or even just reach out and touch his hand as if she knew how awkward it made him feel to admit such strong personal feelings. Joker smirked to himself upon reflecting on a phone conversation he had had with Maggie a few weeks prior.

"_So is Jayde still putting up with ya?" _she had asked in that wonderfully familiar New Yorker accent, her voice raised to be heard over what Joker could only assume was a hair dryer in the background. He had rolled his eyes, knowing exactly where that conversation had been going.

"_Yes..." _he had answered in a growl. "_You realize she doesn't really have a choice, Mags..." _

_ "Oh, yes she does," _Maggie had answered. Joker could just picture her with her tiny cell phone tucked between her ear and shoulder, using her knuckle to push her artsy, rectangular-framed glasses up her squat nose. "_That girl could leave you anytime she wanted and you'd have no say..." _Here, it seemed she had been hesitant to give him a chance to cut in and say that he sure as _fuck _would have a say, so she had continued quickly. "_Do you love her?" _

If it had been _any _other person but Maggie, Joker would have lied and said 'no' or something equally as untrue, but knowing she would eventually get it out of him, he had sighed heavily into the phone.

"_Yes..."_ he answered again, his tone lowered and almost bashful as though Maggie had just asked him if he had broken her prized faberge egg with a baseball. There had been a tsk-ing noise on the other end of the phone.

"_Jay, I'm tellin' ya, you betta' give that girl a ring or...a finger or __something__. Girls like Jayde don't come around that often and you'd be a __mess__ if she left you. And you __know__ that's right." _

At the time, Joker had found it rather coincidental that Maggie had said that, seeing how he did, in fact, know that was right. When she had left and gone to New York, leaving him by himself, even only for a week, he _had _been a mess, as much as he absolutely _hated _to admit it. And now that he had actually confessed, to both himself and Jayde, that he was in full-blown, stupid love with her, having her leave again, for whatever reason, would probably be downright hazardous to his health..._and _Jayde's for that matter.

But in honesty, he had been an all around delight to live with lately, if he did say so himself. Sure, he put her through her paces and annoyed her to no end when he was bored but overall, he had been a pretty good boy. He cleaned up after himself for the most part, and yes, he did _hate _doing laundry but if it came down to it, he wouldn't have any problem doing that but... all of this made him wonder... Just how far could he push Jayde before she really lost it with him? She seemed able to endure a tremendous amount of annoyance and badgering and she even tolerated his 'job' and less than humane killing habits but...what would happen if he...tested her a bit?

Joker was just off in this rather deep train of thought when the garage door swung open across from him and he jumped, blinking several times as he brought his gaze up to meet Jayde's eyes beneath her raised eyebrows. She shrugged.

"This laundry isn't gonna do itself," she explained, leaving Joker's blank stare to evolve slowly into a smirk.

"Nope, that's why _you're _gonna do it," he answered. The way Jayde's eyebrows relaxed rapidly into the beginning stages of annoyance was beyond difficult to resist laughing at, but Joker forced himself to keep a straight face until she had disappeared back into the house with a huff. _Oh, __**this **__is gonna be fun..._

Upon stepping into the house, the first thing Joker noticed was the scent of freshly brewing coffee amidst the hunger-inducing aroma of bread toasting in the oven and he smirked to himself as he passed the kitchen to go back to the bedroom. Every morning, Jayde had a ritual, he had noticed, and every morning it was nearly the same, which he found somewhat funny seeing how ritual and routine was something he had come to avoid. She usually got up around the same time, always took care of herself first, which included brushing her teeth and doing something about her mass of frizzy, slept on curls, at which point she would venture into the kitchen and brew a cup of coffee. It had been the same at the house back in Gotham but due to the size of the house and the fact that they were not fully sharing a bedroom, he had never really noticed it. However, surprisingly, he did not have a problem with it. Jayde's routine kept her predictable and therefore easy to live with...unlike himself, who made a point of it to go about each day differently from the last. It was when she ventured _out _of her routine that he would start to grow curious.

In the bedroom, his dirty clothes had been strewn from one end of the room to the other, with most of them on the floor, some hanging haphazardly from the dresser and some had even been pushed beneath the edge of the bed, which was exactly how he had chosen to keep his room back in Gotham. Back then, seeing how Jayde did not know him as well as she did now, it had been obvious that she had been tempted to comment on the state of his room but had never opened her mouth about it. Perhaps she had felt like it wasn't her place to say anything, seeing how she had really just been a roommate or...willing hostage or...something. But _now, _she was...his live-in..._girlfriend, _she was his companion and 'domestic partner' of sorts and it appeared that she had come into that role and taken it up with an air of ownership. _Now, _she had no problem whatsoever telling him that he needed to 'pick up his shit and get it off the floor'...and Joker loved every second of it.

It was this not-so-new, more confident Jayde that stood waiting for him in the laundry room, sipping her coffee and tapping one fingernail impatiently against the white metal washing machine when he approached carrying a massive mound of mingled laundry. She turned her head to look up but of course, the moment she had, she sighed, hanging her head slightly.

"See? This is why we do _small _loads, a few times a week," she explained in a surprisingly patient tone as she set down her coffee mug. "Now you're going to be folding clothes all da-" she had gone on, but Joker was not listening and instead had dropped the entire mound of clothing into the empty washing machine to begin stuffing everything in. However, Jayde made a noise that caused him to stop and look up. He raised his eyebrows, trying hard to keep his face from showing any sign of a grin.

"What? You said we needed to-" he went to say in a highly false, innocent voice but Jayde was already shaking her head and waving his hands away.

"No, Joker, you can't just throw everything in together!" she exclaimed, her voice already betraying a hint of impatience. Joker started to smirk. "You have to separate the whites and the darks or else all your white shirts are going to come out gray."

"I _told _you, I don't know how to do this," he retorted but Jayde was once again shaking her head with a hefty roll of her eyes and she let out a sound of disdain as she plucked a white undershirt from inside the mass of clothing.

"Your IQ is well north of one-hundred, Joker, you can't _tell _me you don't know how this thing works." By now, Jayde had pulled several of his white Oxford business shirts from inside the washer, including the one with no buttons from the day before so Joker turned and hopped up onto the dryer to sit and face her. He leaned to the side slightly to fall into her line of vision.

"Well, how 'bout you explain it to me, just one more time," he offered, once again struggling hard to keep a grin off his face while Jayde tossed yet another white undershirt onto his lap on the dryer. Her eyes glanced up at him before she let out a short sigh through her nose.

"_First, _you have to get all the _white _clothes out of the dark..." she started, in a tone that suggested she was explaining a glue stick to a toddler. "_Then_ you measure out the soap depending on-..." However at this, she paused and her shoulders dropped when she noticed the way the very upper corners of Joker's scars were starting to twitch. "You know how to do this! Stop laughing!" she then exclaimed, watching with a scowl as Joker laughed once and raised his hands in innocence.

"I'm not laughing!" he answered. "You're doing a wonderful job, dear, _please _keep going. I'm learning so much."

To his surprise, Jayde went on, although from the way her jaw seemed to tighten and the small muscle there let off a twitch, Joker could sense that he was about two minutes from being permanently excused from laundry duty. He cleared his throat, resting his right elbow on his knee in an effort to appear all too interested in what she was saying.

"So you put the clothes in first, then you measure the soap," she was explaining again, this time skipping the details. "Then you put the soap in and turn this little knob to 'regular' and in _your _case, 'heavy load'..." Here, she paused when Joker let out a snort of laughter. Jayde rolled her eyes. "What are you, twelve?" When he shook his head, she went on. "Then you pull the knob out and the water starts running..." At this, she did exactly that and the water did indeed start to run, but at that point, Joker was ready to redouble his efforts.

"So first I measure out the soap," he started, pointing with one finger to the orange jug of laundry detergent. "_Then, _I turn that knob thing, then I put the clo-"

"_No," _Jayde interrupted, shaking her head. "First you put the clothes in-"

"_Then, _I turn on the water-"

"NO,then you measure the soap-"

"Then, I put the white clothes in-"

"GET OUT!" she finally cried, reaching out to him with both hands to grab the knees of his jeans and pull him off the dryer. "Go away, just get outta here. It'll just go faster if I do it myself..." With a breathless laugh, Joker conceded defeat and moved to leave the small laundry room, but paused just behind her to gently wrap his arms around her waist and rest his chin on her shoulder.

"I'll take those pressed and folded, love..." he cooed quietly in her ear but only a second later, he jumped with a loud bark of a laugh and scooted from the room when Jayde spun and slapped him hard on the shoulder.

Several minutes later, with the washer now going full blast, Jayde emerged from the laundry room, shutting the door behind her to cut out some of the noise from the rest of the house and Joker glanced up from the section of newspaper he was reading to watch as she walked over to the stove. Unsurprisingly, she did not appear that flustered from his antics in the laundry room and instead seemed rather at-ease with her morning as she retrieved her toast and a couple pats of butter. This was encouraging to Joker; he could continue her testing.

As she sat down with her coffee mug, plate and butter knife, Joker felt her glance over at him and the pile of newspaper he was hoarding so without leaving her time to ask, he used one finger to nudge the stack toward her. Immediately, she reached out and pulled one particular section of the paper from the stack, to begin unfolding and refolding it, first in half, then in half again until she was left with a smaller, more manageable piece on which to work the daily crossword. This was another, more recently added step to her routine. If Joker was home in the morning and had the time to sit and read, he would do it and would typically read the entire paper from front to back, although he would always skip the comics, classified ads and the puzzles. It seemed after a while, Jayde noticed this trend and had decided at some point that if he wasn't going to work the crossword then _she _would... The only problem was...she wasn't that great at crosswords.

"What's a five-letter word for 'wanderer'..." she asked aloud in an off-handed, quiet sort of voice as if to seem like she had only asked herself, pensively. However, Joker knew better and cleared his throat slightly as he adjusted the location of his ankle on the seat opposite him.

"Nomad," he answered, glancing over the top of the paper to where Jayde was writing the answer into the appropriate boxes. She was then quiet again but Joker was now counting the seconds. _Four...three...two..._

"Four letter word for 'target'..."

This time, Joker decided not to answer and instead waited to see how long it took her to actually ask him directly and of course, it was not far off.

"Do you know what that one is?" she asked a few moments later, forcing a smirk onto Joker's face from behind the newspaper.

"Mark," he answered instantly.

"What?"

"_Mark, _a four-letter word for 'target'," he clarified, but only to shake his head when Jayde made a noise of understanding and moved to write the letters into the blanks. "You really suck at those, ya know..."

Across from him, Jayde looked over with a frown, her eyebrows forming that disgustingly adorable wrinkle between them as she scowled. "Well, if _you're _so good at them, _you _do it." she challenged, tossing the folded section of paper along with the pencil across the table to where Joker was now setting down the article he had been reading. He grinned pridefully.

"Fine." he answered and pulled the crossword puzzle toward him, leaving Jayde to take a sip of her coffee. However, a moment later, he frowned, looking up from the puzzle. "A five-letter word for 'moron'..." he mumbled pensively, his eyes drifting up toward the ceiling as Jayde watched him, smirking proudly as though she had been expecting him to be caught up by the apparently difficult puzzle. His eyes met hers after a few seconds of thinking. "Your name is spelled with a 'y', right?"

Jayde's smirk disappeared with record timing.

The rest of the afternoon passed at a pleasurable pace, with Jayde floating here and there, changing the laundry over, cleaning this and that, occasionally shooting Joker a dirty look when he pointed out that she had missed a spot and insisting that he had only managed to finish the crossword with the aid of the few answers she had already put in. At one point, Jayde had enlisted his help in wiping down the front windows but had promptly excused him from this duty when she had caught him about to use furniture polish instead of the glass cleaner. She had then mumbled something about 'useless' that had only caused Joker to grin as he retreated to the garage to finish that oil filter from earlier.

At around four that afternoon, Tiny and D-boy had stopped by and Joker was just talking with them out in the garage when Jayde had come out, apparently to smoke a cigarette and see who was out there. Upon stepping out, Jayde's shirt had risen a bit from the line of her shorts, exposing a few inches of her stomach where all three of the guys in the garage instantly noticed three thin cuts against her olive-toned skin. Jayde had been seemingly unaware that this was visible, until Tiny, the one _without_ the mental filter, had commented, jokingly asking Joker if he had gotten bored with cutting strangers. Jayde had immediately flushed a light shade of pink, at which point Joker had taken it upon himself to explain rather shamelessly and descriptively that they had been mid-coitus the day before when she had asked him to cut her.

"I told her I was uncomfortable with it but she _insisted..."_ he had said, joining Tiny and D-boy in a laugh while Jayde promptly gasped in embarrassment before disappearing back into the house.

The sun was now on the verge of setting as Joker sat in Tre's old room, in what was now his makeshift office, sitting at the desk against the far wall with a phone to his ear when he glanced over at the sound of the door being pushed open. Jayde stood in the way, one hand on her hip, the other rested on the knob of the door and she stared somewhat blankly at him as he turned in the chair to face her. He smirked back at her but only for a moment before he frowned into the phone.

"Well, figure out what it is you want _then _call me." he said to whomever had been speaking, before he ended the call abruptly and dropped the phone onto the desk with a thud. Turning to Jayde again, he sighed, bringing one hand up to beckon her over with a finger and he watched as she walked toward him, her face still blank until she stood in front of him. From her expression, Joker could tell that she was still feeling a bit embarrassed and maybe even a bit offended by what he had told Tiny and D-boy earlier so in an effort to smooth it over, he reached out with both hands to let them rest gently on either side of her hips. Then with a gentle tug, he pulled her closer until his nose was just about level with her bellybutton, before he used his thumbs to slowly lift her shirt, to once again expose those three thin cuts. The forefinger from his left hand reached out to lightly trace the shortest of them.

"Do they hurt?" he asked quietly, his eyes watching as his finger reached the line of her shorts. From above him, he felt Jayde shrug.

"Not really..." she murmured in reply, causing Joker to finally look up at her and blink slowly as he rested his chin on her stomach.

"Did they yesterday?" he asked again, his voice even more quiet in an effort to convey that he was actually asking whether or not she had enjoyed their foray into cutting as a part of their sex. At first, she hesitated but merely shrugged again a moment later, her gaze drifting off from where she had previously been meeting his eyes.

"N-not really...I mean...it didn't at first..." she stammered somewhat awkwardly, as if nervous her answer would disappoint him or even make him a bit annoyed. However instead, Joker merely fought back a grin and cleared his throat slightly as he linked his hands behind her back, lowering his head to place a light kiss on her cut, healing stomach.

"Would you want me to do it again?" he asked a third question against her skin, this time with his voice a bit more level, hoping Jayde would give him a straight answer although Joker already knew what it would be. He just wanted her to feel comfortable enough to tell him honestly, and as he looked up at her, he found Jayde with a small, sheepish grin on her face. She shrugged yet again but kept her eyes on his as she shook her head in the slightest of motions. Joker smirked in reply, using his hands to pull her down onto his lap so she could sit sideways against his chest. "You got it, kiddo."

It grew quiet between them for some time, the only sound in the house coming from the dryer in the distant laundry room, and as Jayde half-sat, half-lay there against Joker's chest with her forehead against his neck, she sighed heavily, watching her finger trace a light pattern across his t-shirt. Against her, Joker was equally at ease with his head lowered, his eyes fixed blankly on some spot on the carpet until he took a deep breath in through his nose, exhaling a moment later as he brought one hand up to take a hold of hers on his chest.

A good amount had changed between them over the past two years, but one thing that had not was the way Joker did not necessarily like to be petted. Unless she was scratching his back or playing with his hair, he did not particularly like for Jayde to sit there and touch him lovingly for long periods at a time. It had nothing to do with her or the fact that she was touching him, but rather a matter of Joker's personal taste. He was never exactly rude about it and would never really grow irritated by it, but he would gently make it known to her that he had had enough by either taking her hand in his or moving in a small way. And to his delight and relief, Jayde seemed to always understand this as she never got offended by it.

So with her small hand now wrapped in his larger one, Jayde sighed comfortably against his chest as she now watched his long fingers wrestle softly with her shorter ones. From the way his opposite knee had started to bounce, Jayde could tell he was thinking about something and was obviously considering speaking, but as she had learned to do, she remained quiet and still, patiently allowing him to come out with it on his own time. And as was usual, he spoke up a few moments later.

"I killed a man and his wife yesterday." he stated in a bald but quiet confession. Jayde felt her stomach clench slightly but she stayed quiet, hoping he was about to go on and explain why he had felt the need to tell her about this. A few heavy seconds later, he continued. "I killed his wife first and-..." Jayde's eyebrows began to furrow against his neck. It was very unlike him to discuss a killing since he knew it unnerved her slightly but again, she remained quiet, knowing he would not have brought it up if it hadn't actually been on his mind...something _else _that was very unlike him. "-and once she was dead, he _begged _me to kill him too."

At this, Jayde readjusted her head against his shoulder, hoping to appear as though she had just been getting comfortable, although she had _really _just wanted to nudge his jaw with her nose affectionately. After another silent moment, she moved her fingers to link them with his and still his constant fidgeting with her fingers in a bout of uncharacteristic awkwardness. She sighed against his chest.

"Well..." she started, wondering how she could explain this to him. "There are some people who just...don't want to live without the person they love. Sometimes...love runs that deeply-..." Here she paused, but continued when she felt him stiffen against her slightly. "-I guess."

"That's what he said too, I just-..." he paused, clearing his throat. "I guess I just don't understand-..." His voice then trailed off as though he could practically hear the way Jayde's heart had just sunk down into the pit of her stomach. Would he be perfectly able to continue on with his life without her? Without even shedding a tear or a feeling of sadness? In an effort to end this rather awkward conversation, Jayde sat up slowly to stretch her arms up over her head.

"I'm gonna-...I'm gonna go make some dinner, are you-...?" she went to ask but Joker was already nodding, turning his head to glance at his computer screen.

"Yeah, I'll be out in a few-..."

And with that, Jayde left the room, beyond anxious to be away from what had turned rapidly into a rather touchy, awkward conversation.

With Jayde now out of the room, Joker turned to the desk, sighing heavily as he placed his face in his hands to rub his eyes. The previous conversation had not turned out anywhere near how he had meant it to and the way Jayde had just practically slunk from the room with her proverbial tail between her legs made him want to kick himself. It was not often, in fact downright _rare _that he discuss one of his murders with her as by now, he had learned that it was not particularly one of her favorite topics to discuss, which he respected, but there had been something about what that man had said that had gotten to Joker. Perhaps it had been the utter hopelessness he had noticed in the man's eyes after he had watched his wife die, perhaps it had been the way he had said 'a freak like you wouldn't understand', or perhaps it was just...well, Joker wasn't really sure what it could be. He had thought talking, or rather stammering awkwardly to Jayde about it would have helped him figure it out, but his words had seemingly only offended her or hurt her feelings or...something.

It was times like this when Joker _really _missed Tre. It had been nine, almost ten months since his best friend's untimely death and not a day went by he didn't think of him, or something random would remind him of something funny he once said. If he had been there, Joker would have asked him what was making him feel so weird about that man's words or why what he had just said to Jayde had hurt her feelings and Tre, like the black sage that he was, would have explained in a way that would have been easy for Joker to understand. And yet he was not there...so Joker was left on his own to figure things out.

Perhaps he should just go on, pretend that conversation never happened, continue on with his plan of testing Jayde to see just how deeply her patience with him ran. If there was one thing he was great at doing, besides the obvious, it was changing the subject and pretending that something awkward had not happened. So with that plan set firmly in his mind, he stood up and took a deep breath to erase those pesky, confusing thoughts from his brain.

Out in the kitchen, Jayde was standing at the stove, cooking something that smelled amazing so Joker hopped up onto the counter to watch. She glanced up at him but did not keep her eyes there for long before she turned to the sink to rinse an empty pan out. Joker took another deep breath.

"So..." he started, wondering if asking this next question might be his worst idea of the day. He continued anyway, figuring he might as well find out. "If I was to have..._sexual intercourse _with someone that..._wasn't _you..." he paused, trying hard not to grin when Jayde suddenly spun to face him, a dangerous expression on her face. "-that would be considered 'cheating'...right?"

At this, Jayde's hand met her hip and that expression deepened. "_Yes, why?" _she asked testily, her eyes narrowed and focused hard on his as he shrugged, holding up his hands.

"Relax, I haven't, I was just clarifying." he explained, although as Jayde's eyes began to squint, he grinned, shrugging again, more deeply. A moment later, she turned from him to continue rinsing the pan and Joker went on, hopping down from the counter to go stand next to her with his back to the sink so he could see her face. "But let's just say-...I _did _happen to...'cheat'...What would you do?"

Without missing a beat, without even pausing to look up from the pan, Jayde answered,

"I'd strangle you in your sleep with a dirty sock."

At this, Joker burst into laughter, doubling slightly as Jayde finally allowed a tiny grin onto her face, however after a few moments of watching him laugh, she continued, once he had started to quiet down.

"The only way I'd be alright with you having sex with someone else was if I was there and involved."

The kitchen grew quiet within a split-second and Jayde looked up when beside her, Joker's face had just gone from laughing to curious in the most obvious way possible.

"Wait, wait, wait...hold on..." he started, but paused to shake his head slightly as though trying to rid his ears of water. "Are you saying-..." he had been about to continue to ask if she had _really _meant what he thought she did but Jayde cut across him, nodding her head.

"I'm saying if you _really _get to the point where you wanted it from someone else, I'd be willing to do it with you...and yes, I am talking about a threesome." she clarified, but as Joker laughed again and leaned down to kiss her, she pulled her head back and held up one wet, soapy finger in his face. "But if you cheat on me...I _will _kill you."

At this, Joker's grin expanded, stretching his scars into foolish proportions and he reached up, wrapping his fingers around her wrist to pull her hand away from his face so he could glare lovingly into her eyes from mere inches.

"You're perfect."

"I know."

Jayde's test had been aced.

Dinner had been wonderfully filling and it seemed, by having the previous conversation, Joker's attempts to smooth over the more awkward talk from earlier had not been in vain as Jayde seemed to have fallen back into her usual, content and happy mood. This change of attitude even went so far as to cause her to leave the remaining dishes from dinner in the sink to be rinsed in the morning and instead, she joined Joker in the living room after she had taken the now toasty warm clothes out of the dryer.

The TV had been turned on and as Jayde stepped over toward the couch, where Joker was now laying on his back, stretched out, she sighed contentedly through her nose. Joker glanced up from the show he had been watching but only to groan comfortably as Jayde lay down on her stomach along his lanky, recumbent form and adjusted herself against his chest so the top of her head could fit just perfectly beneath his chin. Both Joker and Jayde hummed quietly in unison.

Over time, they had tried sitting on the couch together numerous, different ways, from Jayde sitting up with his head in her lap, to Joker sitting up with Jayde's head on his knee, to both sitting up, to both somehow awkwardly laying down across from each other and it seemed through trial and error, they had discovered that this was the way they both liked it best. Jayde's eyes would always slide closed once Joker had linked his hands together across her back and it was common for her to fall asleep within minutes of laying down atop him. However, that night, she was not tired as the conversation from before dinner, in the office remained in the back of her mind, floating there like some pesky gnat that needed a good swatting. She did not know how to bring this up without things growing awkward again so she started somewhere else, in a light, quiet but playful tone.

"You were mean to me today..." she purred against his warm chest, grinning to herself from under his chin as he grunted a laugh.

"I know..." he answered, turning his head from the tv to look at her, in turn causing Jayde to push herself up onto her elbow against his shoulder, so she could peer down at his eyes. He blinked placidly, a tiny smirk pulling upwards on the top corners of his scars. "Can you _ever _forgive me?" he then asked in what could almost be considered a sarcastic tone. Jayde rolled her eyes and moved to put her head back down but Joker reached up, stopping her by catching both of her lips together with his, his hand moving to slide beneath her hair to the back of her neck.

As usual, Jayde melted into him as he kissed her, wondering how he managed to be an annoying jerk all day then always end it by being impossibly sweet and _almost _romantic, or at least what _he _considered romantic. Vaguely, Jayde then wondered if she would really rather have it any other way...She decided that answer was no.

If there was one thing the Joker had taught her, it was that the answers to the riddles and problems in life typically presented themselves in a series of opportune moments, most of them so obvious there was no way to miss it and as Jayde pulled away from his lips ever so slightly, she exhaled slowly through her nose, reaching up with her left hand to tuck a green wavy tendril behind his ear. Her eyes had only opened slightly, but she could see that Joker still had his eyes closed and seemed to be basking in her touch for the moment. She let her thumb lightly trace the top half of his curvy, right scar.

"Just so you know-..." she started. "I don't think I'd want to live without you.." Here, she paused, but as Joker's eyes slowly started to open, his eyebrows arching in what appeared to be slight confusion, Jayde continued, glancing down at the neckline of his shirt awkwardly. "I mean, if something happened to you-.." she went on, but Joker cut her off abruptly, using his hand at the back of her neck to pull her back down to his lips, where he kissed her gently, in an effort to explain that he understood what she was saying. Jayde responded to him; she knew he loved her and that was all that mattered.

After pulling away, Jayde smiled down at him as she sat up on his stomach and with a heavy sigh, he reached up to brush his thumb across her moistened bottom lip. The expression in his eyes was one that Jayde had only seen a handful of times. He appeared slightly frustrated, maybe even a little confused and for the life of her, Jayde wished he would just tell her what he was thinking. However, instead, he blinked and the expression was gone, disappearing back into his eyes as though it had never been there. He smirked up at her.

"You going to bed?" he asked in relation to the way she had just sat up and Jayde nodded, glancing down to where her finger was lightly smoothing out a wrinkle in his t-shirt.

"Are you?" she asked rather hopefully but Joker shook his head.

"No, I think I'm gonna read." he explained, then motioned with his head toward the hallway leading to the bedroom. "You go on. I'll be in there before you know it..." he then added in that cunningly charming voice with which he was so adept. Jayde grinned somewhat halfheartedly and leaned down to kiss him one more time before she stood up and left the room, yawning widely as she went.

_Fourteen...fifteen...sixteen...seventeen...eighteen..._

The moment Joker reached twenty, his ears picked up the faint, distant sound of the tv being turned on in his bedroom and in an instant, he was up off the couch, pulling his cell phone from his pocket as he quickly journeyed through the kitchen and over to Tre's old room. The door shut silently behind him and after flipping through the contacts on his phone, he located the number he had needed, pressed the green button and was now holding it between his ear and shoulder. While it rang, he walked to Tre's bathroom where he opened the medicine cabinet, only for his eyes to begin scanning the rows of small, clear, glass bottles, but before he could pull the one he needed from the shelf, there was a soft rustling on the other end of the call.

"_Hey, Jay! How are ya, baby?" _Maggie practically shouted into the phone. Joker smirked, turning his back to the bathroom counter.

"I got a question for ya, Maggie-May..."

A/N: If you know what's coming, KEEP IT TO YOURSELF! AND PLEASE LEAVE A REVIEW! (the more reviews, the faster I write) -QoM


	3. For Better or For Worse

As Jayde rolled over to an empty bed behind her, she sighed, the breath escaping her nose slowly, her right arm reaching out to the space next to her. Unsurprisingly, it felt cold, as though no one had ever been there, and yet her foggy brain could remember a few fleeting seconds of a hazy memory from just a few hours prior. She did not know what time it had been when she finally felt the Joker slide into the bed next to her but could vaguely remember the sensation of two sets of long fingers wrapping around her wrists, gently pulling them down away from her face, where her hands had come to rest on the pillow just inches from her nose as she had been laying on her side. She could remember the deep breath Joker had taken in, only to release it a few seconds later in a quiet sigh. The room had been completely black, as the sleep timer had since shut off the tv, so Jayde could remember opening her dark-accustomed eyes, only to find herself face to face with Joker.

He apparently had not realized she was watching him and as Jayde lay there, observing him semi-consciously through the tiny space between her eyelids, he seemed to be studying her hands with a furrowed brow, the way they lay together, her fingers interlaced comfortably in her sleep. It was then that Jayde had closed her eyes again, unable to keep them open any longer and with that, she had fallen back into a deep sleep.

Now, she lay in that familiar empty bed, staring at a long, wavy single strand of Joker's green hair as it lay noticeably, forgotten on his white pillow case and a tiny smirk met her lips when she reached out to pluck it from the material. As she brought it closer to inspect the noticeable line on the strand where his blonde roots had started to grow in against the green, she wondered vaguely if he had needed to leave early that day or if she would find him doing something random and interesting around the house. A few moments later, her internal query was answered.

That sleepy smirk from earlier expanded slowly into a full, relieved grin when her ears picked up the faint sound of rustling flimsy newspaper from out in the open house, through the partially open bedroom door. With her stomach now fluttering either with hunger or butterflies, she wasn't sure, Jayde pushed the sheets off of her, sitting up to yawn and glance at the time on her phone. Her eyes widened when she noticed the time had only just reached nine, but without even sparing a second thought on going back to sleep, she stood from the bed to walk to the bathroom, to hurry through brushing her teeth.

Joker glanced up from behind the newspaper, only to spot Jayde emerging from the bedroom, wearing a pair of her favorite, ankle-hugging skinny jeans, a tight-fitting t-shirt and a soft smile as she approached the carved kitchen table. He did not return the grin but merely cleared his throat and went back to the article although he not immediately begin reading again as he knew what was coming. Any second, Jayde was going to lean down and murmur-

"G'morning," she purred against his scarred cheek, pursing her lips to leave a soft kiss there. Joker glanced up from the paper but she was already walking away, seemingly content with the fact that he had not turned his head to meet her lips...yet another thing he was so grateful for. It seemed over time, she had grown accustomed to the fact that sometimes, he just wasn't in an affectionate mood and she apparently understood that perfectly without getting offended. "I'm surprised you're up this early," she was now commenting from across the kitchen at the cabinets where she had just flipped the on-switch on the coffee maker. "You didn't come to bed until kinda late."

Joker wanted to reply and explain that there had been some things he needed to take care of while she was not around, but he remained quiet, watching now as Jayde pulled down her favorite mug from the cabinet, his eyes staring intently at her. Across the kitchen, her movement slowed as she seemed to sense that she was being watched and she turned quickly to look behind her to where Joker was sitting, staring in an almost anticipatory way. Her hand dropped to the counter next to her as she apparently picked up on the way he was watching her.

"What?" she asked rather defensively, but Joker merely shrugged with a quick bounce of his eyebrows.

"Nothin'," he answered innocently, again rustling the newspaper as he forced his eyes back to the article he had been reading. From the way she was quiet, it seemed Jayde had decided there was nothing to worry about as Joker could hear her mug move again. However, the second he tried to sneak another glance at her, he jumped when his eyes met Jayde's a second time and she tossed her hands.

"Seriously, what are you looking at?" she asked again, this time turning to fully face him as her hand met her hip in that characteristic stance. "Did you-..." she went to ask a second question but stopped as she glanced behind her at her mug on the counter. "Did you do something to my mug again?" Her third question came out sounding rather accusatory, which caused Joker to grunt a laugh as he shook his head.

"No, _dear, _I haven't touched your mug." he answered honestly, reaching out to pick up his own half-finished glass of orange juice. Again, Jayde was silent but when he looked back over to find her in the exact same position, with the exact same expression, he laughed more loudly. "I swear!" he then added, but paused with his own cup halfway to his lips as Jayde began to walk over, holding her empty coffee mug.

"If there's nothing in my mug..." she started, reaching out for Joker's half-empty orange juice. "Then _you_ drink out of it." she then finished, setting her mug in front of him, once she had poured the contents of Joker's glass into it and she stood there, watching intently as Joker reached out for it. He brought it to his lips a moment later, taking a long swig of the tart orange juice from the perfectly untainted mug before he smacked his lips and let out a dramatic sound of refreshment. Seemingly satisfied, with a heavy roll of her eyes, Jayde turned to walk to the sink so she could rinse the remaining orange juice droplets from what was formerly Joker's cup.

"Do you have anything to do today?" she asked, now pouring some of the freshly made coffee into the freshly rinsed coffee cup. At the table, Joker shook his head, still watching her but as Jayde turned to raise her eyebrows at him expectantly, he reanswered her question, once he realized she could not hear his head move.

"Nope," he replied aloud this time. "I'm not doing anything. Why?" he went on to ask casually as Jayde sat down across from him with her steaming coffee. She took a long sip before explaining.

"I need to go to the grocery store and then I wanted to smoke with you." she answered honestly, grinning from around the curve of the mug when Joker's eyebrows rose.

"Weed?" he clarified in a surprised, somewhat falsely taken aback voice. "I don't do drugs, Jayde." he then went on jokingly with a playfully condescending sniff. Across from him, Jayde let out a short laugh.

"Yeah, sure you don-" she began to say but she cut herself off mid-word. Joker's eyes slowly began to rise from the bottom of the newspaper, meeting her now wide-eyed stare and she blinked hard several times as she clumsily set her coffee mug down on the table in front of her, with such force, some of the tan liquid sloshed over the side. By now, Joker was beginning to grin but raised his eyebrows innocently as her panicking eyes met his. It was obvious she was growing a bit dizzy as she swayed dangerously but managed to hold herself up straight for the time being. "But-..." she started, her speech already slurring. "I-...this isn't my-...yours..." Joker's grin had now expanded into a plainly mischievous smile, his scars stretching ridiculously and across from him, Jayde's rapidly increasingly foggy brain put everything together. "Oh, you son of a-...I'm gonna kil-..."

Just then, Jayde's eyes rolled back and Joker quickly rose from his chair, reaching out instantly across the table with both hands to catch her head before it could hit the wood with a loud thud. It was then that he started laughing, hard. From past experience, Joker had known Jayde would find his staring as she prepared her coffee suspicious and he had known that she would make some sort of attempt at foiling his plan, such as switching her mug with his, as if he hadn't predicted that exact move. For this reason, he had _instead _painted the inside of the glass coffee pot with a potent little mix of sedatives, which upon ingestion, was really only supposed to make the victim heavily woozy...not knock them out completely within moments. With his laughter subsiding, Joker rounded the edge of the table toward the unconscious Jayde, using his hands to tilt her head back so it could instead rest against the back of the chair. A slight frown tightened Joker's scars as he stared down at her sleep-like expression in confusion.

With two fingers against her carotid artery at her neck, Joker scowled down at his watch, waiting the allotted sixty-seconds while he counted her heart beats in an effort to estimate her pulse. It was at 70, which was normal, so he figured he had probably just gone a bit heavy in applying the sedative to the glass. He let out another low chuckle as he leaned down to scoop Jayde out of her chair, up into his arms before he carried her toward the open door to his new office.

She felt as limp as a wet rag doll in his arms, her dead weight making her feel a bit heavier than she normally did, but Joker still set her down with ease, on top of his favorite new toy- his brand new, shiny metal surgical table. It was exactly like it's Gotham predecessor in every way possible, from the four locking and unlocking wheels, right down to the lever that lowered and raised the height to suit his current need. With a smirk, he stood there, staring down over Jayde's limp body as she lay there on her back before him, her face peaceful, as though she had not just been about to start screaming at him before she had passed out...A small smirk tugged upward on Joker's lips as his mind took him back to a particular memory.

The very first night Jayde spent in that mansion out in the far reaches of Gotham had been surprisingly low key. She had not really struggled too hard to resist him, she hadn't really attempted any form of an escape, almost as though she had been hoping and praying something exciting would happen to her life. It _almost _appeared as though she didn't _want _to leave as she had merely gone upstairs and into that room in what could have been considered a willing manner. Joker could remember feeling somewhat surprised and rather disappointed at the time that she had not been putting up much of a fight but had decided to count it as a win in his books that he would not have to put forth much effort in keeping his new 'toy' subdued.

In the present, a tiny, nearly unnoticeable shudder wracked his spine as Joker gazed down over Jayde on the table, reflecting back on what his original plan for her had been. Upon getting her back to the mansion, he had fully planned to play with her, rape her, torture her, watch her scream in agony, watch her cry and beg for her life, as he had done with so many other female victims before her. He had planned the next few days entirely around her, around the slow death she would experience at his hands. Sure, he had thought she was uncommonly pretty at the time, but that had never stopped him before. Women were fascinating to him; he loved studying the psyche of a female while under such traumatizing circumstances. Jayde would have been immensely entertaining to watch in the throes of her death and Joker had been beyond excited to get started. He had drugged that water bottle in the 'guest' bedroom, had set out a set of razor sharp scalpels, hypodermic needles, even surgical clamps in his office... and yet something had changed almost the exact moment he had gotten her onto that table. Some sort of light bulb, some small voice in the back of his mind had gone off, telling him to wait...maybe give her a few days...just to see if she would be of any use to him. _Perhaps she can be a long-term toy...something to fuck after a long day, something I can corrupt, destroy slowly..._the voice had sounded incredibly convincing, as if it knew exactly what it was talking about...so Joker had listened. Instead, he had tattooed a large, intricate 'J' into the middle of her back, to brand her as his property for the rest of her life, however long that would turn out to be.

Of course, over the next few days, weeks, eventually months, he had come to find that Jayde had been _everything _but corruptible, dispensable. Over time, he had found himself _wanting _to spend his rare free time around her, learning about her...kissing her. She was someone that could not, _would not_, let herself fall into his mindset, someone who just wanted to be near him, despite his psychological games, someone he could let loose with, until eventually, he had grown to trust her more than any other human being walking the face of that earth. He still could not believe how far he had deviated from the original plan.

And now there she lay, in front of him on her back, one arm draped lightly across her middle, the other, left arm dangling uselessly from the edge of the table. With a slow breath escaping through his nose, Joker reached down, to take her left hand in his before he brought it up closer to his face, inspecting her fingers closely, just as he had the night before. They were not too short, but not terribly long either and as his mind continued to wander and dart through the past two years, that smirk from moments earlier returned to assault his face when he thought back to the first time she had wrapped those delicate fingers around his dick. She had been so unsure, so _prude _even and, at the time, Joker had found it rather amusing yet slightly endearing. Her hesitation in touching him had been so severe, it had almost seemed as though she feared she would be stung by some unseen stinger or that he would lash out and kill her if she did it wrong... In the present, Joker shook his head slowly back and forth with a quiet grunt of a laugh. She had come a long, _long _way since her first time and nowadays, it was somewhat common for Jayde to just walk up and grab him by the crotch if she wanted him...and Joker _looooooved _it...

Yes, he was making the right decision. Everything, and he truly meant _everything _about this girl was perfect for him, in just about every way possible. She was smart, funny, plainly adorable but not in a forced, purposeful way. She did not anger too easily, she was beyond patient with him and most importantly, she _understood _him. She understood that he didn't always want to be touched, that he needed his time to be alone, to think, to plan, to gather his racing thoughts. She understood that he cared more deeply for her than he had ever cared for anyone in his entire life but yet, also knew that that simple fact alone did not give her the right to take advantage of him. She still respected him, still feared him in a way. She was still fully aware that any given day, at any given moment, he could snap and kill her and that no one would _ever _find her body...And yet, she trusted him, entirely, completely, in the most passionate, unyielding way possible...And for this, Joker loved her.

_A killer and his girl..._ he thought randomly to himself, as though reading the tagline for an intense romance/thriller novel and that smirk widened slightly as he set Jayde's hand down next to her waist. None of it made sense to him and he didn't really think it ever would, but then again, there was a lot about his life that didn't necessarily make sense, so he figured he was still on the right track.

The latex gloves were exactly where he had set them the night before, just next to the rolling metal, multi-leveled tray table, atop which sat his faithful tattoo gun, attached by a long cord to a small black, power box. After applying a pair of the tight-fitting black gloves and rolling over a short swiveling stool, he sat down and was just about to reach for the ink and needles when he suddenly remembered the loaded syringe just below the tattooing stuff on the second tray. He glanced at Jayde to the right of him. She seemed pretty unconscious still as she had not moved besides the slowly rising and falling of her stomach, but just to make sure she would not wake up halfway through her 'procedure', Joker reached out, using his middle finger to flick her hard several times in the cheek. To his surprise, she flinched slightly after the second or third time and let out a low groan, so quickly, Joker reached for the syringe and rubber tubing, to tie a tight tourniquet around her upper arm, to help raise her veins on the inside of her elbow. Then with the syringe cap between his teeth, he hastily pushed the needle into the fat, raised vein before plunging the clear liquid directly into her blood stream. And with that, Jayde was pushed further into a state of deep, painless sleep...She shouldn't feel a thing...

Jayde's eyelids felt uncommonly heavy, and her chest felt as though someone had been sitting on it although she did not struggle to breathe. Her wrist was sore for reasons that were beyond her at the moment, as her brain was full of a foggy, vaguely familiar mist that made thinking clearly somewhat hard to do. She tried to open her eyes, but the bright sunlight filtering into whatever room she was currently in made her head feel as though it were moments from exploding, so she kept them closed, resorting to a heavy, quiet groan. Instead of looking to see where she had ended up, Jayde took a deep breath in through her nose, hoping the smells she encountered would give her some indication as to where she was. But as she recognized a faint, familiar scent of masculine cologne and something sharp, like medical soap, she realized that _someone _was sitting near her...and that certain _someone_ was about to be in really serious _shit. _Without even opening her eyes, Jayde took another deep breath.

"What...the _fuck..._Joker..."

From his place on the floor with his back against the edge of the couch, Joker turned his head, that characteristic grin already in place as he shifted to face Jayde, as she lay on her back. Her eyes had not yet opened but the expression on her face was unmistakable...She was _pissed. _He did not speak yet, but waited to see what her next words or actions would be and a few moments later, she slowly started to force her eyes open.

Her forehead wrinkled heavily as she squinted hard against the bright, early afternoon sunlight, glaring unhindered through the large window behind the couch. Her breathing was moving through her nose at a slightly quickened pace as clearly, she was assuming the worst in her state of drug-induced lethargy. Joker finally spoke as she turned her head to groggily glance to her right, but only to find herself facing the cushions.

"Good morning, sleepy-tits," he growled in that clowny voice of his, his teeth now exposed in a grin as Jayde slowly turned her head to glare groggily up at him. "It's about time you-"

"You _promised..."_ she mumbled, and at first, Joker's grin faded slightly as it appeared that Jayde was speaking incoherently. He paused, to see if she would go on with something less inane-sounding...and she did. "You _promised _you would never drug me again, Joker."

At this, he finally let out a quiet laugh, turning toward the couch more fully when he realized what she was talking about. "I didn't _drug _you, Jayde, I just-..." he began to explain, reaching out to lightly take her hand, but Jayde snatched it away from him in a surprisingly quick movement.

"Then _explain _to me why I'm laying on the couch and I don't remember how I got here!" she suddenly exclaimed, her voice now at a normal, angry level. Joker blinked. Was that sedative supposed to wear off this quickly?

"I needed to get-" he went to speak yet again, but clearly Jayde was having none of his explanations as she suddenly sat up off the couch. "Jayde, you really shouldn't-..."

"No!" she cried, her voice wavering slightly as drug-laced tears met her eyes. "You promised me you wouldn't-...I don't really care." she stammered, first in another accusation that only ended in an answer to what he had been about to warn previously. Joker fought back another laugh as he moved to sit up on his knees.

"Jayde, just listen," he started, again reaching out with both hands to take hers. "Just sit here and lis-...Jayde!" At that moment, she had decided to get up quickly from the couch and move to storm off, but just as he had been about to warn her, the residual drugs in her system and the fact that she had been laying down for two hours, caused her knees to give way and she stumbled at the end of the couch. Joker's arm caught her waist just as she had been about to fully fall and he pulled her back gently, forcing her to sit down on the couch facing him, where she suddenly slumped her shoulders. A rather pathetic sniffle escaped her, causing Joker to grunt a laugh as he rested his arms on her legs. "Jaydie..." he cooed quietly, but it seemed she had already moved past anger into hurt.

"No, not _Jaydie..." _she whimpered defiantly and adorably, shaking her head groggily as she let her hands come to rest on his forearms, despite how upset she clearly was and Joker laughed again quietly as he reached up to push some of her loose curly hair away from her face. It sounded like she was crying but as he revealed her face, he found that her eyes were perfectly dry and she was merely pouting heavily with her eyes closed. "_No," _she demanded yet again, this time moving her body to the side away from his hand. Joker sat back to shake some of his own hair out of his eyes, sighing exasperatedly through his nose.

"Well, fine then. I'll just leave you alone." he said a few moments later and he moved to stand up, but of course, the second she felt him about to leave, Jayde reached out with both hands, to grab his arms, although he had only moved slightly. Joker's grin expanded.

"No..." she whimpered again, shaking her head as she finally opened her eyes. "Just-...just tell me why." she went on to ask, this time in a more steady, even voice as she forced herself to make eye contact with him. A moment later, she frowned, releasing her grip on his forearm with her left hand. "Did you cut me? My hand hurts..." she asked confusedly, bringing up her left wrist to twirl her hand, wincing as it smarted slightly as though something had been strapping it down...and that was when her eyes finally fell onto her finger.

"I needed to knock you out so I could give you a new tattoo." he eventually explained, his voice quiet as he watched Jayde's eyes widen slightly.

There, on her left, fourth finger, the one just right of her pinky, was a fresh, black tattoo, the letters 'J-O-K-E-R' carved into her skin in the shape of a band. Jayde's mouth opened and closed a few times, wordlessly before she could mentally register the right question to ask.

"Is that-...what is-...is that your name?" she asked somewhat stupidly, but was already shaking her head in preparation to ask another question when Joker cut across her, nodding his head.

"Yeah, and so is that," he answered her, using his hands to turn her smaller one over, stretching out her fingers to reveal yet another new tattoo on the underside, in the same fashion as the one she had just seen.

'K-I-E-R-O-N'.

The two tattoos nearly connected around her finger, forming one band of the Joker's two aliases, and Jayde looked up quickly from her hand to meet his slightly squinting, grinning brown eyes.

"Are you saying..." she asked baldly, the remaining drugs in her system rendering her unable to come up with a more covert question in which to ask whether or not this meant what she thought it did and Joker nodded, hoping to answer her question without actually answering it. However, when she did not react, he went on, clearing his throat.

"I'm saying I want you to be...mine.." he answered somewhat awkwardly. "...forever."

This was not the response he had been meaning to give, but it seemed, from the way big, fat tears began to well up along her bottom lids, that this was the response Jayde had needed. She sniffed once, shaking her head in slight confusion.

"Are you-..." she began, but paused and Joker nearly rolled his eyes. Why was this so hard for her to understand? He waited for her to go on this time. "Are you..._proposing _to me?" she finally asked in a highly incredulous tone of voice and at this, Joker did roll his eyes slightly, but just as he did, he glanced down at floor beneath him...

He was on one knee.

With a grin, he nodded once as he brought his eyes back up to meet hers.

"Yeah, I guess I am," he answered a moment later, but went on when Jayde's eyes lit up. "But you don't get to say no." he went on to explain hastily, motioning toward her hand with his head. "That tattoo is permanent."

From the way Jayde let out a teary laugh, it seemed her anger from just moments earlier had dissipated rapidly and she was now grinning girlishly as she shook her head in what Joker could only assume was either surprise or...yeah, surprise. She sniffed a second later, meeting his eyes again.

"So...does this mean I'm your..._wife _now?" she asked in another blatant, honest question and she watched, in heavy anticipation as Joker's eyes drifted upward again to squint contemplatively at the ceiling before he shrugged.

"I prefer...'domestic partner'...or...'willing, permanent hostage', but...yeah," he finally answered, the corners of his eyes wrinkling slightly in his grin. "_Wife..._that works too. Not as many words, easier to sa-" Joker had been in the process of rambling awkwardly but Jayde cut him off by leaning forward to catch his lips against her own, instantly silencing him and he hummed quietly against her mouth. His left hand moved toward her face, to move her hair from the side of her neck so his fingers could be there instead, but it seemed Jayde was ready to look at her new tattoo again as she pulled away from his lips only a few seconds later. She laughed, shaking her head.

"I really can't get over this!" she exclaimed, in a completely lucid voice now. "I mean, you didn't really have to drug me to do this, you could've just-..." At this, she stopped speaking abruptly but Joker was already answering with another roll of his eyes.

"You would've asked me five million questions and probably wouldn't have held still long enough for me to-..." he was in the process of explaining his logic when Jayde reached out with both of her hands, to take his left one into her lap, where she stared down at _his _ring finger...

'_Jayde'_

Her name had been tattooed in the same fashion as Joker's, in black, curvy script against his skin, forming a thicker band across the top of his finger. Those big, warm tears from earlier immediately returned to her eyes, welling up and spilling over as she brought her gaze up from his hand to where he was now watching her, a satisfied grin stretching his scars. Before she could ask, he cut in.

"The guy wears one too right?"

At this, Jayde nodded, her face crumpling into more tears as she leaned forward to place her hands on either side of his neck, to kiss him gently, and he responded for a second or two before he laughed against her lips and pulled back slightly.

"Why are you _crying?" _he asked, glancing back and forth between her eyes as Jayde too laughed and shook her head.

"I'm happy!...I didn't think...I had no idea you even _felt _like...this..." she explained somewhat awkwardly and Joker grunted a laugh from before her, still on his knee in front of the couch.

"I didn't either, I just...figured I might as well," he answered. "I didn't want you going out in public and people thinking you weren't already accounted for. Which is _why..._" he paused, momentarily releasing Jayde's hand to reach behind him into his back pocket. A second later, his hand reappeared, where Jayde's eyes found one plain, silver band resting around the tip of his pointer finger. "-You're going to wear _this _when you leave the house...Just to cover my name so you wont get asked a thousand questions."

Again, Jayde's lips tightened together as a few more tears dripped down her cheeks and again, Joker paused to laugh at her silly, girly reaction to something rather simple before he took her left hand, to push that silver band onto her finger. As Maggie had estimated, it fit her perfectly, was just wide enough to cover his name and as he let go of her hand, Jayde raised it front of her to sniffle and admire the way it looked against her skin. She seemed momentarily speechless so he spoke for her.

"So how 'bout it, kid," he started. "You wanna be Mrs. Joker?"

In front of him, Jayde lowered her hand to take both of his and with that, she nodded with a gentle smile.

"I do."

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Read the author's note in the next chapter, please!


	4. A Note from the Queen of Mean

Ahhh, yes, I'm sure many of you knew this was coming but I still couldn't help myself. And yes, I'm sure there are many of you who, right now, are going 'Ewww, the Joker would never wanna be _married _to anyone!' Well, this is fan FICTION, kiddies and to those who wanna hate on this little one-shot, I have only one thing to say... WHATEVA, WHATEVA, I DO WHAT I WAWNT. Yes, I love my characters and I think this is the perfect ending/beginning to their saga and again, if you have a problem with it, go ahead and send an email to my complaint department. Don't flame on my reviews, please. I've been known to bite back.

So anyways, if you absolutely loved this, love my characters, and love me, please please please leave a review. This was a bit of a challenge to write so I'd looooove to hear your feedback. Let me know what your favorite part was and I'll looooove you forevah.

Oh and if you'd really like to, add my fanbook Facebook if you'd like to see some pictures of Joker and Jayde, Tre, Dotcom and get updates on upcoming stories and one-shots. And yes, there is a new Joker/OC story in the works so if you like my writing, feel free to add me for news on the new story. You'll find me under 'Haven QueenofMean Hunter'

Thugs n' kisses, QoM


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Batman Begins/Dark Knight, Humor, Romance