[stream]

Joker (2019)

[divingdownthehole]

Like an understudy watching the cast from the shadows of the stage, Alice's eyes, pale as mercury, follow his every move. She notices every gesture of his hands and shoulders, every subtle twitch of his eyes and forehead and jawline. The shocking red around his mouth, contrasting with the white and blue paint on his face and eyes, now appears eerie under the amber glow of the street lamps; his hair has transformed into a vibrant lime-green.

All of this has a profound effect on Alice, the bright colors bringing tears to her eyes and causing a sharp pang of pain, like a rusty hook digging into her scalp. The Joker's bloodcurdling and choked laughter sends shivers through her body, making her chest tighten and her intercostal muscles strain. It feels as if her lungs struggle to release the weight. She closes her eyes, turning her head away like a baby bird seeking refuge under its mother's wing. As her foot goes limp, the skateboard slips away, miscalculating its landing and skidding several feet behind her. The sound of the wheels scraping against the concrete seems distant and hollow to her ears.

"Мені дуже шкода,"* she whispers hoarsely, her heart pounding in her throat. Despite the anger and aggression in his words, Alice remains unafraid. She knows by the shift in his cadence and his own admission that his invective is not directed towards her. She listens attentively, trying to ride out the echoes as she hears Sokol whine and the ghost of his muzzle brushes against her fingers. The cigarette in her other hand smolders, dripping ash. Disgust and fury course through her veins as she listens to the Joker's story, thickening her blood like the layers of a Cranachan cake. Nashton, that narcissist... His audacity knew no bounds… God, those poor kids. "I can't imagine."

A strange smile plays on her lips as she tilts her head, locking eyes with him at his inquiry. "Weeell, I guess all things considered… we still have our home, Dad's job is secure, and miraculously, I could continue my college classes online… so, yeah, I suppose we're pretty lucky. I know others have had it much worse… the only hiccup for us was me slipping into a coma for a week and now I have a titanium plate on my skull after the blast cracked my temple open like an eggshell. But apart from that, thankfully, things have been smooth sailing for us…" she trails off, tries not to dwell on it for much longer, stares at an imaginary point somewhere beyond Joker's head.

"I've heard Brighton Beach is absolutely beautiful... more laid-back than Coney Island, or so they say. Dad actually took me to Brooklyn once or twice, but I don't remember much of it, seeing how I wasn't a great deal older than two or three at the time..." She hooks a finger around her rosary, feels the beads pulse in sync with her carotid. Her expression softens as he mentions the kids; the exaggerated mien of his furrowed brow somehow adds to that, the contrast of the red commas on the white paint. "Ahh... Поздравляю*, by the by."

*Ukrainian translation - "I'm so sorry."

*Russian translation - "Congratulations."

[jokemoved5thewrathofkhan]

Assuming she understands, he replies, “*Спасибо,” with a reverent bow of the head. The skateboard’s gotten several feet away from Alice. At this hour, only super rats will fight her for it. Werewolf gauges the distance between her feet, the wheels, and whatever might lurk behind her through the chain link fence. Dawn’s sprinkled the sky with purples and bright pink. Soon gold will damn any shadow beyond the rusted steel. Inclining his chin makes his suspicion all the more obvious as he peers beyond her shoulder. Few would dare with Joker so close. Fewer would actually lunge knowing what carves his hip from inside his trousers’ waistband.

Werewolf spears his wedding band with his thumb and catches the divots meant to resemble lunar craters. Another Gibeon band crowned by ‘eternity’ sapphires hangs from his neck, though Joker doesn’t make to grasp for that ring hidden under his soda-cap patterned button-down.

That rosary flipping between her fingers continues to pique his curiosity. Shadows fail to cast a black veil over his eyes even as he shifts from foot to foot and bends his torso with the momentum. Brine winds off Gotham Bay kick his hair with them, too, though Joker resits following that gust. He remains rooted at the hips and fluid, white-dusted eyelashes downcast and focused on the crucifix that screams for acknowledgement.

Instead he clears his throat, lifts his eyes to ‘pan’ her strawberry blonde crown for any scarring that’d indicate where that titanium plate is, then suggests, “You should talk to my wife,” in a candied whisper. Joker displaces his weight onto his paw pads and clenches his jaw to train the mist back from his eyes. “She...took a hit meant for me,” when Alice finally receives his undivided attention, capillaries have devoured his sclera, “W-we were already out of that apartment in the Village, but she…” opened a package meant for Arthur Wayne, “No titanium in the head, but…” his shoulders sag into a cringe that the rest of his body rolls with, “She lost two fingers a few years before that.”

Joker lifts his right hand and wiggles his middle and ring fingers. Luckily Sokol’s leash and his cigarette hang from the left, though Joker is quick to shove that filter back in his mouth and let it hang like a bone. Smoke plumes between them.

“I found them, but they’re not the same,” without mimicking Nix’s hindered mobility, he lowers his hands and watches that rosary continue to flip, “I'm guessing your head isn't the same either.” Finally his chin nudges toward the beads, “Ты русская**?” Without a name, Thalia’s half of his mouth quirks. Joker clears his throat without sliding the cigarette free, then places a hand over his chest and explains, “M-My m…mother was off the boat. I can speak, but can’t read or write a fucking thing in Cyrillic, so…” he clears his throat, “According to every form I’ve ever had to fucking fill out, I’m 'not' fluent. B-But I understood about half of what you said,” he scrunches his nose, then adds, “Do you know any Surzhik since you seem to speak both? It’s the only way I can quasi-understand certain people,” The Whisper Gang, “But...”

He breaks for a hideous laugh that sends smoke from his nostrils.

“I completely understand if you don’t. It’s…” Joker leans into a cringe, “Kinda degenerate Russian…b-but I otherwise have a hard time with Ukrainian.”

[absinthundblut]

[jackalsraised]

in a thousand languages a word for this desire

for loving you for loving you loving you (insp.)

[archivist-goldfish]

[banschivs]

It’s a familiar feeling of being constricted. Begins at the neck, slowly tightening as a fist would, and then blooms outward; up all the way to the soft tissue in her temples, and right down into her feet. They lock in place, one quirking her toes up toward the sky and leaving them there, rigid and cold. She succumbs to a tremble that ambles upward from her toes with such a steep climb that she soon feels it twisting and gnawing at her stomach.

Back then it was because the world was far bigger than she’d ever been told, and that she could remember, and that she was a lone figure within it. She’d stood by herself amongst the city’s labyrinthine tracks and attempted to count every light she could see, in every window, on every wall. Found herself dizzy soon enough, and overwhelmed enough to retch in the street where she stood. She wished Arthur’d found her like that, curled inward to nothing, but it wasn’t him.

At least when she was let loose in Arkham’s day room for ostensibly ‘free’ time she was easy to see. Nix stood out like a ghoul in the centre of the room, or a corpse propped up at the checkers table waiting for her partner to teach her exactly how the game differed from chess this time — despite the fact that neither of them cared all that much. But it was no less the same crushing void that would greet her in the wake of Arthur’s fleeting stints behind the walls that were supposed to keep her enclosed for life.

Her gaze drops now, the subtle but warm glow of the fairy lights elongating the shadows her lashes beget. They carve down her cheeks like spider’s leg, exposing the gaunt and pallid canvas of her face; it hasn’t been well rested in days. Nix claims the insides of both cheeks between her teeth and performs a pinch as means to plant her were she is. Arthur’s lap. Arthur’s arms around her. The imprint of Arthur’s teeth on her skin. It’s Arthur’s eyes she’s lost to grief yet again. His neck is so persistent in its want to keep his gaze from her that she sees the strain when his hair drifts from behind his ear on the next balmy breeze.

She drops her head as though it’s made of cement, though somehow avoids clonking their skulls together when she kisses his crown.

“ No. ” She tells him, shapes the word against his scalp. A long, exhausted inhale grants her that which she desperately seeks for comfort. The scent of him, and the damp earth of their garden; the blooming flowers in the beds that she’s somehow managed to coax to life. He’d wanted this duplex for them. They’ve made it their own.

Penny would burn it all down in half a heartbeat were she alive. She still might somehow, even though she isn’t. Nix wastes no time in assuming otherwise, clenching the muscles in her shoulders so that the next cradle she makes of her arms around Arthur is virtually immovable.

“ Like you said, ” Her whisper isn’t caught on the air. It sinks right through his skin instead, “ The second she heard I even existed it was done. ” Wetting her lips with her tongue does nothing to stave off the dustbowl claiming the roof of her mouth. “ I didn’t even say anything to her… she just had to know I was there. Somewhere. Anywhere. ”

An awkward jarring of his shoulders alerts her to the pained wolf’s bark before it erupts from his chest. It sounds like it almost cracks him in two. Nix has to steer her face downward to ensure her husband doesn’t choke on his cigarette before she draws wide circles between his shoulders with her palm.

“ I loved you, like I still do. ” Always, says the pressure of her fingertips against his naked back. “ And you loved me, like you still do. It gave you a look into the outside fucking world. ” She sniffs. “ Like it did to me. Shit like that’s scary to someone who’s put you in a cage. And that cunt’d been trying to own you since you were a baby. ” A tremble betides her features, jerking her brows south and steepening the corners of her downturned pout.

Through the mucus lining her throat, she concludes, “ It was all her. ” but won’t voice exactly what. Her face must have come across his television screen every day for almost three years, and she wonders what Penny did with that — if she could’ve even known who she was looking at when the report presented Arkham’s most lethal escapee at every step in her decay. After some time she wouldn’t have even needed to switch it off. Nix became unrecognisable in weeks.

“ It’s not you. It was never you. ” The report is glum, quiet.

[jokemoved5thewrathofkhan]

Countless hours between the two of them went into their backyard, yet it reeks like steak left to ferment in the sun. Every stone, tree, and shrub has its place. How the blooms survive at all under the smog remains a mystery.

Penny haunts the fairy village that Nix is still perfecting. One step and she’ll crush a purple, red, and yellow cottage Joker helped fasten against a tree. Evelyn takes particular interest in that little mossy staircase and the mushrooms flanking it. Her grandmother remains half-hidden behind the thickest oak bole: red eyes ablaze and elongated nails curved and sharpened. They’ll rend flesh from bone should she lunge. If only she could find the space within her shriveled lungs for breath. Malnourishment’s sunken her face and stolen any semblance of humanity.

Penny’s still beautiful. Her lips are thin, but tended to be lacquered red. What strawberry blonde mats still cling to her head sway like Spanish moss. It was his fault that it lost all luster over the years. He could only afford one brand of women’s shampoo and he had no choice but to wash his own hair with it. Perhaps Nix used to detect that his scent was effeminate whenever his next suicide attempt reunited them within Arkham State Hospital's underfunded, black mold-eaten walls. She didn’t seem to mind VO5’s Strawberries and Cream line. Two dollars a bottle at Rite Aid was about all he could afford. Evelyn also ended up with a strawberry smoothie shampoo variety…and Nix now uses it.

Werewolf sifts his wife's blonde hair between his fingers and winds those soft locks straight to the root. He has a care not to pull too hard or he may uproot an extension. He slides his cigarette between his lips and tilts his head against Nix’s so he can reach for her toes. She has a Roman toe: second runs longer than the rest. He pinches it between two knuckles and wiggles it back and forth to try and loosen its rigidity. Tickling her sole almost bashes him in the face when her knee jerks back and she hides her face in his neck to giggle.

He’s warm from the poison fumes he’s a chimney for. She’s no more comfortable than cradling an ice block. He kisses up along the bridge of her nose and narrowly avoids her eye to stamp kisses up and around her eye socket.

Joker keeps his arm anchored across her back so she doesn’t flip off the loveseat, but finally frees her foot to take the cigarette back from between his lips. He vents smoke away from her before leaning for a kiss. Nix waits for him to tilt his head, pushing his nose into her cheek and warming her with his breath. The same hand holding his cigarette settles under her jaw to stroke backward from her chin without singeing her.

Nix hums, curves her tongue past his teeth, then feels her toes curl as his jaw slackens further. He breathes her in place of air, thieving what he can and petting under her jaw as if it’ll open her mouth wider.

Once their lips click, he keeps his nose shelved alongside hers and whispers, “I always...chose you,” his dark lashes brush her own as he leans for a deeper kiss, “And I always will. Over Mom. Over...everything. But I love her, too…”

Out the corner of his eye, Penny’s silhouette creeps out farther from behind the tree. Her footfalls flatten the grass under her. Joker feels his chest tighten and another tear sting his eye at the corner.

“I always did,” even as he finally killed her.

Werewolf’s eyes collect any gleam from the bumblebee lights that strikes them. Nix winds her bony arms with a clumsiness most would believe suits her. Something unintelligible bubbles from her lips until he steals their plump bottom strip.

“And I shouldn’t…!” his voice loses conviction once a hideous splinter sends his shoulders into Nix’s.

A laugh shrill enough to wake their children echoes throughout their spacious backyard and ripples into the yards nearby. Sallow lights flip on in neighboring apartments and duplexes. Joker notices nothing beyond the wash that tears and his own blown capillaries will reveal.

“I shouldn’t...fucking...need her!" he tries to growl, but his voice is too high naturally for any ferocity to feel legitimate, "Do you know why that pillow went over her god damn head?”

Smog allows no moon, yet the alleged strawberry moon from a few nights ago remains alight where his pupils should be. Rabid animals exhibit less blind fury. Werewolf snaps his teeth and wrenches into another lung-rasping noise he wishes wasn’t a laugh, but there’s nothing he can do to train it back. The sound seesaws and wheezes. More bruised ribs on the way.

Something runs from his nose that his naked arm can’t bat away in time and Nix catches it with her own sleeve. She flips her sleeve around to catch any moisture around his eyes with her thumb, too. Nix uses her own face to try and nudge his back to earth, though his unblinking gaze locks beyond her…on the corpse he can’t charge and embrace while his wife’s perched on his lap. He chooses to remain where he is, legs shaking and a cigarette scorching his palm to the point that a hideous smell from the burn contaminates what little space remains between husband and wife. 

[mattydemise-deactivated20260430]

Date night: One hand around your throat, the other up your skirt.

[banschivs]

Gotham’s faceless denizens move like a murmuration, or a a furious hive of wasps. There’s an onslaught of vibration in the air, and running through the concrete. She can feel it clambering up the long legs of her stilettos in order to gnaw on the bones in her ankles. They feel loose, hardly put together and grinding with every step — half-step. Nix doesn’t quite commit to carving a path through the busy crowd toward Roxy’s, despite how alluring the swathe of light appears in the sheet rain.

The same that which alludes to some visionary fantasy pounds against her scalp. It doesn’t stop even as the buildings grow in height. It falls, straight down, and soaks them both through. In gelid rivulets she counts each droplet’s trajectory down the back of her neck, as well as the wash down her thighs. She worries briefly for Kindness strapped to her thigh. The tie-glock has suffered worse than the weather, and yet instinct guides her free hand south to shelter it.

The street’s a washout. Loose garbage and the remnants of rodents picked apart by the numerous invasive species of owl the city’s now home to will soon wash beyond the gutters. With just how high some of the mountains of black bags and debris are, it’s a wonder that any rainwater flows at all. Realistically they should be stood within a mire, aged and stagnant. It smells like they are, but she hasn’t the will to contort her muscles to a wince.

The silken sleeve of her husband’s shirt is claimed by her free fingers. Those that can bend so tightly that it’s a wonder she doesn’t tear right through to his skin. Where she doesn’t wrench the soft fabric from him, it is beginning to stick to him like a second skin. He’ll be sick soon enough, or sicker — Arthur’s lungs don’t work at the best of times.

And yet, when the crosswalk is theirs, she doesn’t move.

Her heels sink into the slough underfoot, whether in truth she stands on concrete or otherwise. Transfixed, she lays her eyes on those lights ahead, how they jump and flutter with every lashing of rain. Several boards advertise a collection of indie movies and stories that’ll never make it to the mainstream; she can make out colours and shapes, bright fonts and the flashing of neon, but finds no detail in the array. Wants to. Can’t.

Her next breath comes with a scattering of gravel in her lungs. It’s matched by a great heave in her ear. It isn’t Arthur.

Of the many shapes, hunched beneath umbrellas or ducked into coats, only few dare to lift their heads to notice two of the city’s most dreaded, or acclaimed attractions. Nix swallows what feels like a cluster of her own teeth, rooted in old flesh, and turns her head into the rain.

Eyes cast in shadow, sloe-black from beneath the hood of a raincoat lock to hers. The woman’s a gaunt figure, chewing on her bottom lip and shuffling her hands through her pockets. She’s bent almost double like the rest of them as she hurries past her forward to the crosswalk. She doesn’t look for traffic, nor watch her step as she tumbles down the curb side and into the road, but she does watch Nix. Her every tremble, her every blink.

She watches Nix and tells her, harried and bitter, “ He lied. ”

Screwing her eyes shut to clear her face of rain accompanies the manner with which she repels backward. Nix’s shoulder bumps her husband’s with enough force that he twists on his heels should he need to catch her against his chest. Antiseptic clings to his skin; it bites right through the warm amber notes that her palate hunts for.

“ He fucking lied to you. ” The embittered snap of teeth claims her next horrified stare. Much the same ghoulish creature that Gotham innately shits out watches her, though he exists beneath an awning. She doubts Split Pea Catering, whose white-lit sign should illuminate the shroud of the vagrant’s eyes is thrilled by the sleeping bag set-up he has just beneath their window. Spittle falls in a runnel down his chin when throws his upper body forward. “ He fucking. Lied. To you. ”

“ Nixie…? ”

It’s the leer that traps dread in his throat. Arthur grips his wife’s hand with enough force that his knuckles blanch when she takes a too-slow step away from the street. She moves like a cat, certain her prey will flit away should she bend a limb too suddenly or snap a twig. Who she has in her sights is wide-eyed, and pale, staring down the double-barrel of a stare made famous amongst blood and death.

“ The fuck did you just say to me? ”

Silence. A bundle of rock bobs in the old man’s throat.

Arthur wraps both their arms around her waist, tight. She grips his fingers as though he’s likely to get carried away by the next swell of rainwater and piss rushing down the street. He kisses the wet hair having carded across her face in pale tendrils, somewhere above her pierced brow, and again.

“ Come on. ” He’s delicate, reticent, with his mouth now pressed to her ear. It’s a small and cold shell that reminds him yet again that she’s freezing. Gooseflesh stakes a claim on her clavicle, and further below in the valley between her breasts. His sodden jacket can only do so much. “ Let him go, Bunnicula. ” From what, he doesn’t know, but he smiles against her, sacchrinine and slow. “ You have a date. ”

In his arms she performs a semi-graceful pirouette, though her head won’t follow the rest of her body, transfixed on the bundle beneath the awning. While she isn’t looking where she steps, he does so for her, head down against the rain, guiding her around a relative trench of dark water, and forward toward the next curb.

“ You didn’t fucking lie. ” She tells him, abrupt, cutting, though it is supposed to be a comfort. Nix sniffs hard enough to scald her lungs with a gulpful of air. They step onto the sidewalk in unison. Anyone watching would believe it to be choreographed. “ You didn’t tell me. It’s different. ”

Unaware of the jejune petulance she exudes, she lets her hand slip from Kindness at her thigh. She then loops her arm around her husband’s waist. It’s too easy, too small a space. She can count the notches on his spine through his shirt and waistcoat, and notes such a thing with a shuddering intake of breath. While she longs to drop her head to his shoulder and sink her teeth into the line of his throat, the bitter, familiar tang remains on his skin. Clean, too clean. She’d be scrubbed right down to the bone when they were finished.

“ Buy me a drink. ” She says thickly once they’re beneath Roxy’s entryway. Her fingers work against the dip of his waist, pawing over and over again. “ Then I’ll pick. ”

[jokemoved5thewrathofkhan]

A burnished gold, long vertical handle waits within reach. Werewolf stays his paw. Nix rakes at his side without rhythm. Should he stray two steps to the right, she’ll collapse. ‘Another drink’ should be the last thing he buys her.

Their reflection in that tinted glass provides cold comfort. It’s much too late for the theater to see peak crowds. He’ll be shocked if anyone’s still working the joint concession stand and box office.

Raindrops smear most of the posters even under the marquis. Water curtains the entry, shielding the couple from screaming sirens and those only Nix can see. The water’s roar doesn’t soothe as it should. Not when tires slosh through ankle-deep water and spray every bloated garbage bag within range. Nix isn’t breathing as well as he’d like either. 

“Hey…!” keeping his hand knotted in hers, Joker eases his wife around so she faces him and guides her two steps forward until her stilettos poke his drenched patent leather toes. She’d wilt in his arms had he not reaches for her cheek to brush a few sticky, staticky strands from her skin. “I wasn’t honest,” euphemism at best, though he tilts his head and nudges her face with his own. He tastes raindrops mingled with runny makeup. His own face is almost a technicolor wash. “I-I didn’t tell you for your own good,” he softens his voice as much as he can without being outmuscled by the rain.

Joker can’t help tossing glances over his shoulders, too. No one else is approaching The Roxy Cinema. He doesn’t trust it, but doesn’t allow his focus to stray long. Not when those bulbous blue eyes glisten and streak with blood for the answer she already knows.

“God forbid I fucked up — a-and I couldn’t have them frame you,” when he kisses her forehead, a faint red mark stays behind. He windshield wipes the pad of his thumb across her brow to try and clear it. “I…” he grimaces when his lungs refuse to cooperate, “Sh-should’ve told you about the plan, but we can’t...both go away for it. Th-the less you knew, the less chance there’d be that you got hurt.”

“And you didn’t think that you going back in the hole would hurt me more?!” her voice climbs high enough to crack the glass on those heavy double doors should it lift another octave. She doesn’t shove him back, but smacks his chest with her hand-heel and burrows her face in his shoulder. Much to her distress, he doesn’t radiate amber and warm, earthy spice. The storm washed his signature scent away — it’s taken all flavor from his skin, too. Dragging her plush pout along his neck and raking her teeth on his throat where she can doesn’t allow for much taste. He returns her embrace with such tenacity she feels the air push from her waterlogged lungs. Nix shivers, noses her husband’s throat, then digs trenches in his skin with her nails. 

“I couldn’t let them live,” how he hasn’t lifted his voice for any charged inflection perturbs her, “Any of them. Not knowing what they did to you-”

“They can’t,” she wipes her runny nose on his teal satin collar and leans as far back as his embrace will allow so she can look him in the eye. Blonde hair drapes over the bend of his forearm. Their lower abdominals push to solder even stronger plinth. “They can’t hurt me anymore, Baby.” His angular face blurs as she forces herself to shake her head, “Not out here. With you. B-But you know what can?” Nix doesn’t give him time to guess, “Losing you. Now that is worse than fucking death.” She spins on her stiletto to enter the theater first, but wobbles on it and swings back around to grab her husband by the shoulder and pull him close enough to growl, “Worse than fucking death!” 

Joker claims his own fistful of blonde hair, but cradles the small of her back so she won’t stumble and guides her close enough to graft to his side, “I’m not sorry,” for killing her former captors, “But I wish I’d told you sooner. Is that fair?”

“Never keep anything from me again,” she waits for her husband to tug the glass door open. An arctic blast strikes them in the face. Nix didn’t brace for the air conditioner to pump that high, thus it knocks the wind out of her. Brick walls frame a vintage Art-Deco setup. Where a fountain should sit at the center, a crushed red velvet banquette forms a circle. Just as Joker enters the damp-lit atrium behind her, Nix flattens her shoulders against her husband’s chest, pokes her tongue between her teeth, and giggles, “And buy me a burger. ‘Cause I’m worth it.”

“And an overpriced cocktail,” he stamps a kiss on her crown, smiles even though the Strawberry Smoothie shampoo she’d pilfered from Evelyn’s lost its scent, then teases, “Maybe some Sno-Caps.”

Some horrible fern sits atop that circular banquette. Nix can’t help but stare at the bizarre plant’s placement as Joker asks the stand for a menu and list of show times. The concession worker wears a bowtie and full penguin suit. Nix’s eyes stretch open wide, then gawk at the glass-paneled ceiling until the glint from her husband’s wedding ring summons her focus down. 

“You said you wanted a burger, right?” he strains to read the menu, then gives up and fishes ‘Second Addition’ from his inseam. The journal’s lain next to the laminated menu, then flipped open until a lavender laminated sheet’s lain on top of the selections. Nix nestles back under her husband’s arm and hugs his waist as she does her part to find a movie.

“Roxy Burger, please,” Nix scarcely skimmed the menu — upon closer inspection Joker catches ‘brussels-bacon slaw’ and makes eye contact with the employee with slick hair like it’s still the Roaring 20’s. 

“Can you please make it without the bacon slaw?” Joker’s fingers remain settled on the menu, but his eyes meet with the worker’s. Even here he’s angled his shoulders so his back is never fully to anything. Nix closes that gap as much as she can. “My wife doesn’t eat pork.”

“Sure,” their server’s tapping on an iPad to reach the kitchen, “Roxy Burger, no brussels-bacon slaw…” when his eyes meet Joker’s, Thomas Wayne’s heir comes close to staggering, “Anything else?”

“Uh…” he grimaces, white-dusted eyelashes fanned back down on the menu, “Can she also have The Roxy to go with it and…” he lets that last syllable drawl, then nudges her hip with his own as he says, “Throw in a box of Sno-Caps in case she wants dessert.” 

“And for you, Mr. Wayne…?” the mild trepidation in their server’s eyes as he calls Joker that name makes it known that he’s caught his hand in a hornet’s nest. Werewolf flashes his nicotine-stained teeth, suffers a filthy laugh that almost wipes his diluted makeup on his shoulder, then shakes his head and uses his own face to nudge Nix’s profile. 

“Did you find something, Sweetheart?” fingers best suited for a piano settle upon her scalp and soothe the damp roots of her hair. The other hand forgoes burrowing in his pocket and just procures his iPhone for ApplePay. Nix would be proud were she not staring at a poster for an R-rated film called ‘Spring.’ It’s over a decade old, but has a somber young woman with spines protruding from her back on the poster. She nods and points to the oversaturated young woman on the poster. “Spring…?” he doesn’t think much on the title, just waits for her to nod and resume hugging his waist, “Spring, it is.” Joker shifts his weight and finally says, “And two tickets to Spring.”

“Two tickets to Spring…that’ll be $90.63,” the employee swings the same pad he was typing on around, “And you’re doing ApplePay?”

“If it works…” Joker’s comment humors Nix.

She snorts and holds her hand over his to complete the purchase, then seals it with a sweet, “Thank you, Mr. Wayne,” for the ninety dollar Sno-Caps and cheeseburger. She kisses the corner of his mouth and waits for the little beep that’ll complete their purchase. The Sno-Caps box that’d been slid across the counter ends up dropped in Joker’s pant pocket so Nix can enjoy foraging for it during the film. 

“Someone will bring your meal with the cocktail out to you during the film,” their nameless server doesn’t wait for the couple to verbally acknowledge before dismissing them with a canned, “Enjoy.”

[daily-joker]

I don’t want you worrying about money, Mom. Or me.

JOKER 2019 | dir. Todd Phillips

[divingdownthehole]

"Well, in that case, it appears that he’s turned out to be the best version of himself. Quite the gentleman. Boot camp’s not for everybody." Alice's own cigarette glimmers as she takes another puff, her response escaping her lips with a hint of breathiness. A tightness lingers in her chest, intensified by the sight of the stranger's thin shoulders bunching and shifting beneath his suit jacket. The sensation bounces back to Alice, but she remains composed, maintaining a neutral expression as she attentively listens, finding herself both quietly intrigued and amused at turns.

"Think of it like a sneeze," her father had once advised. Jervis’ own history with mirror-touch synesthesia had served as a guide for Alice in navigating her own experiences. She could see him in her mind’s eye, shirt sleeves rolled to the elbow as he stood at the kitchen sink, his pale, scarred hands submerged in the soapy dishwater. “You can't fight it, so you might as well ride it out." The sudden, harsh jolt of the stranger’s laughter reverberates through her, and she feels it in the pit of her stomach as if it were her own.

She stiffens slightly, gripping her cigarette a bit tighter between her index and middle fingers, but she lets the echo wash over her, recognizing it as just another ripple in the strange, shared sea of their mirrored proximity. These moments, as disorienting as they could be, were just part of her reality. Each small motion of his leg, every flutter of his fingers along Sokol’s lead, sends a phantom scraping through her own body.

“Sokol… that’s Russian, right? And Nixie… short for Phoenix? Forgive me if I’m wrong, I don’t mean to assume, but I’m sensing a wee bit of a bird theme.” Alice gives him what she hopes is an innocent, playful smile. Seeing the discomfort and fatigue he wore as prominently as the glitter clinging to his clothes as she gently loops her fingers around the rosary, savoring the smoothness of the jet beads as she rolled them deliberately; the familiar rhythm of the string winding around her neck steadies her.

“Hmm. McDonald’s… I never was much of a Happy Meal girl. But I won’t say no to a Fish Filet and an M&M McFlurry. It’s a shame the ice cream machines always break.” The smoke curls around them both as Alice meets his gaze, curses herself, knowing her attempt to break the ice would likely fall flat. Ringed with exhaustion, the skin around his sockets taut and purpled like bruises, even beneath the white paint, but they’re a startling shade of green. Beautiful, in a way, like dark sea foam.

Meanwhile, her sneaker absently flexes on her skateboard, causing it to roll back and forth on the concrete. She watches the stranger's movements closely. Somehow, even after a lifetime of experiencing someone else's physical reactions as if they were her own, it never ceased to surprise her. How it was completely unpredictable and involuntary, jarring and relentless, but also oddly fascinating. “… before the flood, you said? Seems like a lifetime ago. I hope you and your family weren’t affected by… all of this.” She flexes the cigarette vaguely from where it dangled.

[jokemoved5thewrathofkhan]

Another step backward and he’ll crush whatever’s been crammed into the nearest trash bag. Most of the black heaps have been gutted by foragers. The notion of filth rising past his ankle and sinking into his two-toned spectator shoe almost robs him of breath. Werewolf flashes his crooked teeth and resumes shifting like a thoroughbred at the gate. His green mane collects the street lamps’ glow. Each splash rolls the crest and fold of every wave until his polyester blazer absorbs the rest.

He’s thrust into a bone-splintering laugh that exaggerates his crow’s feet and scrapes a tear from Melpomene’s end of his face. Sokol whines and paws at his master’s shin. Joker coughs into his sleeve, bobs back and forth now that he’s lost his tune upon the hybrid’s leash, and turns his shoulders on a steeper diagonal so he can watch both directions. Any midnight person could emerge from the waste and spear him from behind, too. Werewolf touches his chin to his shoulder as if he can gauge such a thing and guides his cigarette back toward his lips.

What he should’ve been following is Alice’s skateboard. Those wheels grind to and fro — perhaps he’s frightened her. Mentioning that his six-year-old skateboards against his wishes may not sate any ostensible anxiety. Joker angles his head so a gleaming green eye can once again reacquaint with her hands, then swallows what tastes like pulpy rotten flesh so he can attempt to speak. 

“Yeah!” that stage whisper lashes harder than intended.

Expanding his second smile so its scarlet points can dangle from his ears doesn’t help anymore than refusing to breathe so it’ll slow his pulse. Sokol noses his palm and front-guards in cast there are critters creeping in from beyond that fence. Joker sways at the hips only, carrying his torso on taut turns without allowing her to fully leave his sight.

“Once you set aside the exploitative live streams and the riots and…” he exaggerates a cringe, “Attempts on my family’s lives…” Joker flicks the cigarette from one side of his mouth to the other. “Sure, we made out alright.” The harried ‘humor’ he’d attempted to lace his voice with dilutes to sugar water, “B-But…” the complete about-face in tone drifts closer toward how he’d speak to his own small daughters, “I do hope…you…managed to avoid all that.” Joker pacifies himself by rationalizing aloud, “You’re just a kid. M-My own daughters were out on the mainland at the time,” he clears his throat, “With…my…father-in-law.” Before he lets her think he’s forgotten to answer her previous question, he continues, “Phoenix,” but pauses to let his wife's full name resonate, “—and I…we um…” Joker finally expels the smoke from his chest, “We moved our family uptown…to this city's...bullshit version of Brighton Beach," he's hopeful that answers her Russian question, "Which worked out for us…because…”

When he lifts his real eyebrows, the red comma-like pair on his forehead vanish behind its wrinkles.

“On 'bird theme'…" Joker's smile is too dark under the sodium vapor cast, "Our daughter Ava’s due in the fall. And our son was born last year,” he admits, “We needed more space anyway. Hazmat Zodiac just gave us the proverbial kick in the ass to do it.” It wasn’t asked, but he can’t help batting his cigarette’s tail and leaning forward for such an obnoxious stage whisper that he hopes Gordon throws up the Bat-Signal, “My little brother’s fine too, by the way. Didn’t even lose the Tower’s parking garage.”

[iamthecrime]

[jokemoved5thewrathofkhan]

Ahhhhhhh I love your Arthur!!

oh wow thank you so much! he's a beautiful character i've got a great canvas to work with.

[sweetfridays]

♡ samara weaving at paris fashion week 2024

[jokemoved5thewrathofkhan]

Those stupid fangs are always dicing her cheeks from the inside. Opium finds a new home in his pocket. He’s forgotten to cap the flagon. A few blind crawls through tulle curve his fingers around its plastic cap. Joker stashes his mother’s perfume in his pant pocket so that bottle doesn’t accidentally sucker punch him or Nix.

The band plays on, though neither spouse reacts to spectral wind and brass instruments. Ray Noble’s falsetto haunts Joker.

Earth-suffused wheezes torture Nix. Her mother-in-law drops her decomposed head so chapped lips push hard enough against her ear that Penny’s next move very may well be to rip Martha Wayne’s pearl earring from her lobe by biting. Penny was blonde once, Nix recalls, though those matted strands scarcely linger on her skull. Dead suns watch her from the pits where eyes once sat. It’d cane her son to see her like this, though Joker hasn’t noticed. He lifts his revolver next to tuck it in his waistband while Nix feels her limbs lock and a chill she can’t fight shunt up her spine. It bursts like a dying star between her shoulders. Nix wilts into it, pushing the upturned edge of her nose against her husband’s and feeling disgusted once drippings from her nose transfer onto his flesh.

Joker pulls her closer. Off his haunches he lifts and hauls Nix from the chair with him. Penny’s left next to her, dejected and scalded from a life she never led. Joker squares his shoulders and parts his feet enough to steady them.

He squints as he tries to peer under the grand ballroom’s doors. Its handles may turn and creak open for them now that what the Council suspected was a marital dispute has concluded. Shifting shadows suggest someone is patrolling, though their devious chatter has been lost to saxophones. The jazz medley predates every raptor nested in this charnel house — even the Cobblepot matriarch. Doubtless they’ll soon sway to Constance’s creaking wheels as she stews over what Thomas Wayne’s heir could possibly be corrupting her with.

Nix neither notices the marine snow soiling his vision nor the indigo abyss awaiting them at the end of the hall. It’s getting hungrier. Another portrait of a legacy Owl has been consumed. Soon enough, it’ll be them. This hall’s grown colder, but they have nowhere to turn. To his left, more darkness encroaches.

Nix has worked her wounded heart past exhaustion. Blonde flyaways puff in and out of her wet, blood-lined mouth. The structured bodice doesn’t allow her much and the sash around her waist has been fitted much too tight. He’d break the buttons if he tried to loosen it. She’s not as steady in stilettos as she could be. Nix wobbles, grips the back of her husband’s neck with one hand, and snatches one of his elbows with the other. It’d taken over an hour to cover her face tattoos and apply her makeup with doll-like perfection. Now foundation, concealer, and bronzer have diluted from tears. Thick black rings drag below and above her waterlines. One of her false eyelashes is probably hanging off, too…but Joker hasn’t gone to fix anything. Maybe it isn’t.

Werewolf squints at the chandeliers as if the source of the snow is bolted to them. No such luck. Blue fires continue to burn. A deep blue wash ensconces them both. Nix either doesn’t hear the gramophone’s ghosts or doesn’t know to dance to their poison apple performance. Joker squeezes Nix so close by the waist that their hips knock and carve.

Her hand finds his in a grope that comes innately as breathing to everyone else. She keeps the other hand embedded in his hair; frightened to glance over her shoulder for Penny attempting to rip up twelve layers of tulle or bash her in the back of the head with a lit candle. Joker still doesn’t notice her. 

Without any track to back him and an aberrant jazz orchestra only he seems privy to, Joker shifts his shoulders to a twinkly beat only she would know. At least the blue glow masks how a lifetime of smoking has damaged his teeth.

Nix’s lower lip quivers as Lilac’s would, either from dejection or fear of her promise being ignored. The lunar craters carved into is wedding band burrow into her fingers when he holds their knotted hands at chest-height and out so she sways, too. Nix’s heart flutters at first, though she glides along enough to forget Penny in that chair. 

Tilting his head until their lips cross, Joker pushes his face against hers and sings lower than usual and with more gravel, but his throat remains open to keep each vowel smooth, “There’s such a sad love…” he doesn’t wait for the light to hit her eyes before chuckling into a kiss that’s more teeth clacks than anything else, “Deep in your eyes, a kind of pale jewel…” he doesn’t have the right voice for this song — Joker sings with hoarseness and warmth that Jareth the Goblin King lacks, “Open and closed,” he nudges his nose up and down hers so Nix giggles and bites her bottom lip from glee this time, “Within your eyes…” he tries to pull her closer, even if she steps on one of his shoes’ patent leather points, “I’ll place the sky…” his lower rendition still flies higher at the end of each line, “Within your eyes.”

He’d twirl her were she not either laughing or crying — seems like both by how ruddy her cheeks are, yet she’s all teeth.

“There’s such a fooled heart…” he finally leads Nix by the waist to follow his lead even though there’s no music she can hear. Candlelight adores her from every angle. “Beating so fast, in search of new dreams…” this was the only musical number without Muppets to his knowledge, “A love that will last. Within your heart…” he bumps his face against the side of her head and holds their joined hands against his chest, “I’ll place the moon…” Nix can move in stilettos with ease, but to mind her curved spine he’s careful when dipping her, “Within your heart.”

She’s lifted with the same fluidity as that dip, though Nix has been both smiling and shedding tears that he can’t clear away unless he releases her waist. She strengthens her hold on his nape. He kisses white lace upon trying to get at her wrist.

At some point there’s a chord switch. He guesses where it is.

“As the pain sweeps through…” the comma-like scarlet brows almost disappear when his real pair lifts. Joker, in tune, admits, “I’m not David Bowie,” Nix almost trips from blushing and laughing until she snorts, “But I love you…!”

Nix releases the back of his neck to cradle his face and near-trip over her gown’s train.

He keeps driving the allegorical hammer in for a far more impassioned, “As the world falls down…!”

[banschivs]

The dearth of music doesn’t matter to them, it rarely does. Whatever tune plays behind her husband’s eyes is enough to mesmerise her. It filters through the fingertips pressed into her skin and turns itself through his torso for serpentine slants and long, sloped curves which draw her in closer still. All that prevents them from being chest to chest and fusing is the glass bottle slipped into his inner breast pocket. Penny’s old bottle of perfume sits above his heart and holds its desirous beat hostage for Nix who’d otherwise claim it as a metronome for her own.

In this dimly lit hall bedecked with sconces and long unfurling shadows, she thinks she can see the sparks of glitter which should hang in the air and cavort around them, with them. Arthur might not mimic Bowie’s voice by his own admission, but he soars higher, even when tucking his chin toward his chest to train back each note, and paints an image through voice alone.

Nix’s fingers curl through the long waves of his hair as though she’d pull back to find fairy dust adorning her skin. Despite how her heels should distance the two of them moreso than her usual height, she bends forward and lays her cheek to the side of his head. Any lower and she’d duck to shelve herself atop his shoulder. Instead, she hangs there, the crook of her elbow ‘shielding’ him from view of those great oak doors that will no doubt open onto them and carve into their manifested quietude.

Faint sparks drift in the margins of her periphery. Old glitter still dusts her lashes from days previously — in spite of how hard those who dress her up and paint her to be a cleaner vision for the Court work, they know she’s something of a lost cause. Dropping her gaze to the floor, she spies her champagne flute, still half-full, still alive with founts of minikin bubbles that seem to gleam and twinkle along with everything else.

She hasn’t alluded to any sort of discomfort, instead nuzzling against her husband’s hair in some girlish attempt to temper a smile that wobbles at its corners. That simper’s all but tattooed against his scalp, and so too the words she begins to mouth against his skin. The second verse and all it’s nitid promises is her favourite.

“ I’ll paint you moments of gold! ” She shapes each work against the shell of his ear. It is as if she’s incapable of song herself, though he knows that to be a lie. “ I’ll spin you Valentine evenings, though we’re strangers ‘til now…” The deeper his voice sinks, the more gravel he holds on every note. She feels the subtle vibration of his chest and turns that at least her left breast can lay against him. Still the bottle of Opium bars her from flattening against him as she’d like. Their hips knock instead, as he sweeps her around in a graceful spin which lures the tulle train to follow her in an elegant wave.

She’d never be able to create the vision of their suspension above the floor herself, not with twelve weighty layers and a certain diffidence that will only dissolve under his touch.

A mere allusion to a voice that should otherwise boast operatic reaches his ear when they almost share the next line. “ We’re choosing the path between the stars, ” Arthur turns his head, a wry smile lifting the corner of his mouth, nudging at her own. He doesn’t abandon her, but urges that laser canon they’ve discussed to fire just enough to elevate the next line beyond a whisper. “ I’ll leave my love between the stars! ”

A snort overcomes her, buckling her shoulders and throwing her head back. Arthur watches the long line of her nose fleetingly make toward the shadowy, vaulted ceiling as though she’s indulging in sudden rainfall. Her cheeks flush pink, a colouring which blooms down toward her throat and eventually hides beneath the high, lace neckline of her gown. He kisses her there, against the hollow of her throat and inhales faint traces of the watermelon body mist Constance would faint at were she to know Nix was wearing it.

To the music that doesn’t play, they sway from one side to the other, rooted at one another’s hips and waiting ostensibly for the chime of the chorus once again. What comes instead is the flat, dull sound of an antiquated latch.

Immediately his wife's hold on him reaffirms. The fingers threaded through his hair tighten so swiftly that it’s a wonder she avoids carving her long acrylics into his tender skin. She’s dropped her head once again, declined her chin to pin those double doors at the end of the hall with a glower built from the same ice as tumbles from the void ceiling above them. Her grin’s faded to nothing, downturned pout burgeoned by a repulsion she wears all too often now.

Crowned by the orangey light of flame, the Voice heralds dread unlike any other parliament member, and he is supposed to. The long gilded mane of his mask paints him as some cryptid creature; a night bird too tall and distorted to linger unnoticeable as his kin otherwise might. A short, sharp breath claims Nix’s chest when Jacob Kane’s eyes land on her own.

“ I’d quite thought you’d run away. ” He muses, ostensible relief tilting his head as he regards the couple. They’re never not wrapped around one another, but their positioning in the centre of the corridor alludes to his disruption being more unwanted than usual. Ere his eyes can pierce the crown of her husband’s skull, Nix stretches the cradle of her hand through his hair. Kane speaks as if she’s faded into obscurity or slipped through the aged floorboard to leave only empty air before Arthur, “ But your understanding of your responsibility remains. ” In an almost fatherly gesture Arthur can’t see, the Voice beckons them back to him with a sweep of his arm, “ I expect you’ll be re-joining us. ”

[melisica]

[banschivs]

Laughter shouldn’t sound. It’s all wrong, and rings like mockery in her ears. Her own laughter, snapping her teeth and throwing spittle blood specks into the proscenium of her own mouth. That coppery tang should cause her to retch, but she’s grown too used to the taste, and the sensation of canyons drawn down the insides of her cheeks by her canines.

She still cant unwind her fingers from Madeline’s straight edges and pinpoint corners. Already the book has marked the soft trough of palm, carving a shallow divot into her skin and sparking nerves that do the work to ground her in the room much the same as Arthur attempts to. Her fingers flex inward, leaving behind the two dead digits on her right hand. Those just upward, slightly bent and shuddering with every awkward movement her hands perform. Were she held any closer to Arthur, they might crush and bend against his chest without her realising.

Arthur realises. As his wife sputters another laugh that resembles the chime of loose bones in her lungs, he drops one hand atop hers and deftly bends those fingers to mirror the rest. Then he ducks his head, and kisses both pallid knuckles. She can feel him there. She can feel how his next exhale envelops her skin in warmth.

Finally, she says, “ That’s all I do. ” with a straight-forwardness that’s cutting.

Once he’s sure her fingers are safe and comfortable as he’s left them —despite the fact that she’d never feel it otherwise—, Arthur lifts his eyes to hers. Day-old glitter’s been thrown from her eyelids to the zenith of her cheekbones where she’s screwed her eyes shut, wet with girlish tears. Her mascara’s faired no better. She’d be humiliated were she able to see herself. Fortunately each of her monitors is on; there is no black screen to throw her reflection back at her as she sniffs and pleats her doll-like features.

“ ‘Lean on you’, ” Her seemingly embittered timbre isn’t drawn from the cradle he’s made of himself, nor the soft yet urging stare he’s set upon her. That makes her crack, another burst thrown past her lips and snapping her teeth together. She tilts her head as though that’ll hammer home how hateful her piteous idleness should be to him. Doesn’t work. She wipes her nose against her shoulder. “ That’s all I… fucking do. ”

Noting it does nothing; it doesn’t change how she’s all but melted into him, or the brittle blocks her mind has fallen into behind her eyes. When she focuses on the space around them its buzzing static and the crackling of flame. The dying yet wilful embers of a fire still riding the wick effect to its own eventual death. She never saw the husk of her mother's car; somewhere it's perpetually aflame.

Dropping forward until her brow rests on his is easy, weightless. He’d already pulled her from her chair so that she tilts toward him. She can’t cradle his face, her knuckles won’t release the lock on the book in her lap, and so she instead knocks her nose into his cheek and tries to regain her breath through inhaling the warm amber and citrus of his skin. It aids her some, slowing the shrivelling of her lungs inside her chest so that she can at least partially inflate them to claim her voice.

“ I love you. ” It’s reticent, painfully so, and scrapes in her throat. “ Everything you just said, it’s… it’s because I lean… on you. I’m… fucking useless without you, I-I can’t even, ” Her head drops, and she eyes the little girl before the Eiffel Tower once again. Madeline continues to look back at her impassively. Nix’s hands shudder. “ —open a fucking book… without leaning on you. ”

[jokemoved5thewrathofkhan]

“Then do just that,” foggy-eyed, he prompts her chin to bob and acknowledge him.

Another clear track bleeds from what should be Tragedy’s eye. Nix can’t unlock her knuckles to catch it with a finger. Kissing under his eye and brushing that briny river away with her tongue is all she can manage. Her upturned nose pushes on his eye socket, likely jarring another tear loose. He doesn’t react beyond wilting under his own weight and leaning so close their eyelashes might tangle. Hers have crusted and calcified from mascara powerful enough to survive all the micellar water Sephora’s warehouses can house.

Madeline remains in her clutches. Nix blinks until he wipes under her eye and sweeps her off the chair to toss her into a wedding carry. Yellowcake lifts his enormous head and watches Joker unlatch the door to Nix's office with relative ease and carry her toward the staircase. The mutt lowers his head and plods after them. Tessi, too, hops from Nix’s desk and trots toward the staircase. With any luck, they’re headed for their bedroom.

Yellowcake doesn’t gauge the distance enough to wait for his masters to clear the staircase. His enormous body pushes Joker to the left, though Alpha Wolf doesn’t falter. Instead he flashes that missing tooth and nudges Nix’s cheek with his own face. Tessi slips like a ghost past them as he swings around the staircase and glances at their children’s bedroom doors before heading for their own suite and knocking the door shut with his heel. Yellowcake has already staked his claim on what should be Joker’s side of the bed were he to actually sleep.

He drops down on the mattress without letting her go and keeps his back to the open windows should anyone get ideas across the street. Nix’s bare legs stretch across the mattress while her glutes cushion his thighs. Joker pets the back of her head and cradles her cheek so she has little else to look at but him.

Joker is a hideous silhouette without his face. He won’t dare catch a reflection of the dead man. While her own massive eyes shine from tears she’s too ashamed to shed, Joker nudges her face with his own and spares her a gentle smile without teeth.

“We’ve been friends for what, sixteen years…?!” his dark brow lifts to illustrate the point, “And I know,” congestion thickens his voice as he taps her whitened knuckles around the book’s spine, “—that you’re sad. And you’re…” shaping words alone cleaves his chest in two, “—hurt. A-And missing something that you never should’ve lost and I’m here,” his thumb cards her chin even as his inhales splinter, “Phoenix…i-i-it’s n-n-not a-a burden. Or a fucking chore. You are missing. Something. In here,” his knuckles tap her breastbone, “And I can’t give her back to you, but I can help you. I want to help you. However long it takes,” he slackens his jaw, then shrugs, “I think we should go see her together. Even if it’s just to sit in front of the stone. For as long as you need. As often as we need to. Distance isn’t helping — you need…to visit the plot. With me. I need you to trust me as your husband and as your friend.” Though his eyes remain averted, Werewolf tilts his head and touches their hairlines, “Can you please trust me with this?”

For her own safety he fastens his grip on her nape and coils what blonde hair he can around his fingers. The other hand eases Madeline from her knuckles and lays it flat on her lap so she has nowhere to look but the cover. He then wriggles its cover open along with the first few pages so she can see the faded illustration captioned by, ‘In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines…’ Joker taps the page with his left ring finger, throwing gold spangles around their bedroom from his wedding band.

“There’s this hotel in Paris...from behind it looks just like that house,” he kisses the ball of her cheek and noses that bone, “We can find the real thing while we’re there.”

[jackalsraised]

Joker (2019)