content: j finally lets you see his face, very intimate moment
part: 1/1
ALL WORK IS MY OWN! PLEASE DO NOT REPOST!
you had been a partner and confidante of j for many months now. you had a mutual understanding of each other and unspoken respect. sometimes he would stay with you for days at a time, crawling in through your window in the middle of the night. yet, you didn’t know what you were. you loved him, but you never knew how he felt about you. he would die before being that vulnerable, doesn’t matter who it is. the two of you have even had nights together where he was able to be intimate, but he had a difficult time with trusting anyone. you were no exception. aside from the clown guise and the performance-like way of speaking, underneath the paint was a broken man. he didn’t let anyone see who he was underneath that smudged facade.
one night he did his usual routine of randomly coming through the window. usually he does so with a giggle and a sarcastic comment as he startles you awake from your sleep. he took great pleasure in scaring you. this night, however, was different. when you woke up you saw he was covered in blood. presumably a mix of his and someone else’s. he didn’t even make a sarcastic comment about your very concerned face. there was no doubt that he got himself into some trouble. the unusual thing about this was that he was not laughing….and when do you ever see a clown not laughing?
“j, are you alright?” you said. you swung your legs out of bed and rushed over to him. he looked defeated and worn. standing before you was no longer Gotham’s most wanted criminal, but this… shell of a broken man. he didn’t speak a word, but you knew he would never tell you what happened. he just leaned forwards to rest his forehead onto your bare shoulder. goosebumps appeared as you could feel his breath so close. you cringed as you felt the blood on his skin being smudged onto yours. his greasy curls fell over your shoulder blades as you stood there, dumbfounded.
you stood him up straight to meet his now slightly annoyed face. you met his eyes and gestured towards your bathroom. you took his hand and led him silently down the hall. you sat him down on the toilet and took off his jacket. you frowned as you saw his bloodstained shirt as well. as you tossed it on the floor, he didn’t say anything. he wasn’t phased by it, but he was now avoiding your eyes.
“let me just clean up your top half off, okay? then ill get you a new shirt. you can shower in the morning.” you said. he grunted in agreement and didn’t even try to argue with you. it was weird how he was allowing all of this. he was obviously so exhausted that he didn’t even care. you were afraid he was going to collapse any second.
he wasn’t flinching at your touch, but he was obviously uncomfortable to be shirtless in front of you. you took a warm washcloth and cleaned up all the stained blood around his collarbones. thankfully, it seemed that he wasn’t the one who was bleeding as much as the other person. you would never admit that you took pride in this. you got him a shirt and then you did something never in a million years you thought you would do. you hesitated for a second before starting to carefully remove the smeared grease from his face. at first he panicked and grabbed your arm to stop you. he looked at your pleading expression and loosened his grip. he then breathed in deeply and said quietly-
“go ahead.” in a gravelly voice. you put down the washcloth and took his face in your hands. he looked up at you with parted lips and a very, very confused face. you smiled at him and said “thank you.” for a second, you swore you could’ve seen a small smile form for just a second before disappearing.
as you wiped away the greasepaint, it felt like you were wiping away years of pain and abuse. he didn’t talk about his childhood much, you just knew it wasn’t a ….preferable situation. you gently wiped until the face of a scared little boy was visible. it was like you suddenly could see right through him. you saw his face and never wanted him to wear the makeup again. he was very handsome, with red lips and big brown eyes. he also had deep dark circles and of course… his scars. they weren’t very bad anymore, time had seemed to healed them. he looked at you curiously and followed you with his eyes. he was the most handsome man you had ever seen. if you weren’t in love before, there was no doubt you were now.
you held his face again, before planting a soft kiss to his forehead. he closed his eyes and for once seemed to relax into someones touch. your touch. “cmon” you said. you took his hand once more and led him to your bed.
as you laid down next to him, cautious to not get too close, he already had his eyes shut. you faced the way opposite from him and also shut your eyes. you felt a million sparks as he wrapped his big arms around your body. he pulled you closer until his lips were practically on the back of your neck. you felt his heartbeat speed up on the skin of your back as he spoke four simple words. you felt his soft breaths as he spoke: “don’t ever leave me.”
it was far from a perfect world. you and he were far from perfect people. in this moment, however, you understood that there aren’t good people and there aren’t bad people. the world was broken along with the people in it. you understood this the moment you were able to see that even the joker was human. holding you in your own bed was a man covered in someone else’s blood not even five minutes ago, and still, you loved him. he may never speak it. he might not ever even understand it. nevertheless, you knew that he loved you too in that moment.
you started to tear up. you were suddenly glad that he couldn’t see your face. you replied “i promise.” as you felt him smile into your neck. you both drifted off to sleep, his grip on you not faltering once.
Imagine wearing the hat Tarrant made for you to your tea party date.
You smiled at your reflection in the mirror as you put on the hat that Tarrant made you. It was your favorite color and it suited you well. It didn’t hurt that every time you saw it you were reminded of the man himself.
You showed up to the tea party Tarrant had set up for the two of you and you found him pouring a cup of tea from an ornate teapot. When he looked up and saw you his face lit up with a smile so big that you couldn’t help but smile right back at him.
"You look radiant, my dear," Tarrant gushed as he hurried over to you. He held your face in his hands for a moment admiring how lovely you looked in the hat. "I shall make you another," he declared. "Would you like that?"
is the gardener who cultivates the vine in no way responsible for the fruit it bears? if I prune the tree and nourish the soil, can the crop be said to spring forth as an act of god? nay, say I, no act of god but an act of ME. I, I who tilled the garden, who planted the seeds, who lovingly hand-plucked which comments to reblog, which branches to nourish, which vines to trim–and I did NOTHING? get out of my garden you whore
You see, this post is both beautiful and terrifies me. I can’t look away, but it’s like watching a dumpster fire, but someone left the sparklers there on accident, so it’s blowing up and hitting the car and the lampposts, and everything around. And then everyone is just screaming and it’s chaos, and someone’s mother is passed out in the driveway, and you have no idea if it’s because she drank too much or because she wanted to look fragile and pretty by fainting for her husband, but her husband left her there and just drove away from the whole scene.
This analogy has gotten a little too specific and has definitely never happened, but what I wanted to say was, the sentences and phrasing, especially of that last comment, are gorgeous, but I feel like someone just threw me off a building.
warnings: discussions of J’s past (purely my opinion), mentions of child abuse (non-explicit details), strong language
summary: “Is it the scars? Ya wanna know how I got ‘em?”
“You know what? I can’t even fucking look at you right now!”
“Well, then, uh…lemme make it real easy on ya and fuckin’ leave!”
"Please!”
“Fuck off…”
“You’re the one who’s fucking off, J! Get the hell out of here!”
The words echoed in your mind as you listened to J stomping around the apartment gathering his things. You heard the front door open and slam shut, the loud sound reverberating throughout your small home until the only noises you were left with were the words whirling in your mind and your own breathing and rapid heartbeat. It took a few seconds before you made any sort of movement. Despite the adrenaline in your veins, you were glued to the spot. You and J hadn’t had a good fight in months. You didn’t remember what you were fighting about, but you’d coaxed him into doing it. J was naturally a fighter and intuition led him to argument. You yelled and screamed at each other until the only thing left to do was kick him out. The image of shock on his face when you’d shouted at him to get out was burned into your brain, your words repeating themselves over and over in your mind: “I can’t even fucking look at you. I can’t even fucking look at you. I can’t even fucking look at you…”It was like you were frozen in place, staring at the spot where J had stood mere seconds ago, stunned by shock as the unkind words you both had uttered held fast like shackles around your body.
Rage and sadness crashed inside you like angry waves during a violent storm. You were both horrified at your actions but pleased with yourself for not giving in and stepping down. You were notgoing to be run into the ground by him. Not this time. You were terribly affected by conflicts like this. You didn’t like to fight, whether you were in the right or the wrong. You often backed down when J voiced opposition. He got his way more often than not because of that, but tonight had been different. Not because you chose to fight, but because Jhad been the one to back down this time, not you. He had left, as you wished, but you still felt empty and dissatisfied. He had done what you wanted but it still wasn’t enough to write it off as a win. Something wasn’t right. The silence inside the house was louder than the fighting and it hurt you to the core. You didn’t need to be around J at the moment but something was telling you that you shouldn’t have kicked him out.
You wiped away the tears that impaired your vision with a harsh hand. You despised yourself for that instant weakness and regret. Guilt. J had made you question your feelings of guilt almost daily. The man had never shown an ounce of guilt for anything he had done his entire life. You shouldn’t feel guilty. You were right, or at least you thought you should be.
You muttered hateful phrases under your breath and swore at yourself as you tried to justify your anger. You wanted to loathe him, you wanted to believe he was the worst, and you tried to make your thoughts become the truth. You knew not the truth and that was the worst part of it all. J never told you the truth and that hurt more than a thousand daggers straight through your heart. He might has well have driven the blade through your chest himself. You were still uncertain that he wouldn’t do so the first chance he got but did you know for sure? Nothing was sure about J and that was the only thing you knew for fact. You were much more uncertain of yourself and perhaps that was the reason you had turned to a man you did not fully understand.
You took a few deep breaths, refusing to cry and give him the satisfaction of your anguish, even if he couldn’t see you. He was with you - he always was. And you loved him so much it scared you sometimes.
***
J had been gone for days. The last time he had left you like this you’d nearly drank yourself to death over it. Where was he? Was he hurt? Was he angry? Was he plotting your demise, what was it? You never knew what he did or where he went whenever he was gone for such lengthy periods of time. He was just gone.
His absence from your life left you feeling like you had a gaping hole in your chest where your heart should have been. You would put your hand there just to feel its steady beating, only to assure yourself that you were still alive. You paced throughout your home from room to room, letting your body carry itself of its own accord. The anticipation of J’s return was eating you alive. You couldn’t sit still any longer. He would surely come back. He hadto. It felt like he had been takenfrom you and as hard as you tried to get him back…you just couldn’t. The connection you once felt to him had vanished and you didn’t know where or when it had gone. You were even unsure whether you would see him again or not. Living in a constant state of uncertainty changed things for you. You couldn’t eat. You forced down every bite of food until your stomach ached so badly you were afraid you might be sick. Food even tasteddifferently. Everything you put into your body tasted foul, like carrion that had been left to rot on the side of the street for days. One moment, you’d be crying so hard you couldn’t breathe and the next you were deep into a dreamless sleep, far away from your thoughts your J. He couldn’t reach you here, so deep in your slumber were you. Any thought of him vanished and you were able to get some peace of mind, finally.
You slept like it was the only thing worth doing. J had turned you into a shell of your former self without so much as lifting a finger. The only thing he’d raised was the sound of his voice and you were reduced to a puddle, void of your usual joy and liveliness that always existed when he was around.
You slept. You didn’t keep track of the hours. It probably would have been horrific to you if you’d known how many hours you laid in bed asleep, hoping and praying that J would come to you there and take you in his arms again. You hated when he left for so long. You never knew when he was coming back or ifhe was coming back. It played tricks on you and you wondered how much of this was pure happenstance or if J was keeping away becauseof how much he knew it bothered you. You knew you would hate him even more if that were true so you decided you’d rather not know. Some things were better left unknown, especially if that meant keeping you from hating the one person who cared enough to make sure you ate, slept and looked after yourself. When he wasn’t there, you were left to do whatever you wanted and sometimes that was a dangerous game for J to be playing, but this time was different and you knew it. You didn’t understand whyit was different, but it was. His expression gave him away. There was something there within him and you had just begun to scratch the surface. Whether he had meant to or not, he had let it slip. What you’d said hurt him. He had felt those words as if you’d grabbed one of his own knives, cut him open and carved him out until his insides were hollow. It was not for you to know, but you did. Sometimes he forgot how well you knew him and it only served to anger him greatly that he couldn’t hide from you like he did with everyone else. He could show himself in a light that everybody else understood. People understood that he was ‘crazy’. They understood that he was a mass-murdering, psychopathic criminal. What wasn’t there to understand? That was the thing about J: it was easy to hate something if you didn’t fully understand it. What they thought they knew…they didn’t. Not really. J didn’t put himself on display for the world to understand how he operated. He wanted people to hate him. He wanted people to hate him so that they eventually would learn to hate each other. He could bring Gotham down with him if he stirred up enough hate to power the entire city. If he was someone they understood, no one would fear him and his one goal would be lost. He was an agent of chaos and therefore, he waschaos.
You had burrowed into your bed, deep beneath the sheets to block out the light of day that shone through the cracks in your blinds. So sound asleep were you that you never heard the front door creak open and shut. You tossed and turned in your warm next of blankets, gripping onto your favorite pillow like it was your lifeline. Still beneath the covers, you felt exposed. You yanked them almost over your head and let out a heavy whine as you turned over yet again in search of a more comfortable position. You bed felt empty without J. The large man took up almost your entire mattress. His feet would hang off the foot of the mattress and you’d tease him about having to cut his legs off at the knee so that he’d fit (he enjoyed your sick sense of humor.) He’d lay beside you, scrunched up on his side and pressed against your back so that he wouldn’t take up too much room. Though J was a messy sleeper and would end up splayed out fully onto your side, sometimes he’d end up laying diagonally, and you would have no choice but to roll him over and sleep on top of him. You missed those times when J was so close and within reach that you could share moments like those. Moments were he would lift his head casually in the morning and place a kiss atop your head, prepared to lay there until you opened your eyes. Should you wake in the middle of the night then he would as well, taking care that you were wedged back in beside him and happy and safe.
J had come home three days after your fight and found the house cloaked in silence. He almost wondered if you were gone because of how deafening the quiet was, but a change in the atmosphere swayed him closer and closer to your bedroom. He could feelthe agony pouring off of you so strongly that you hadto be here somewhere. J was perceptive and could tell when something was troubling you greatly, even if neither of you were in the same room. Somehow, this was his fault and he knew that was true without having to guess. Perhaps he’d stayed away longer than necessary but what was he to do? He grumbled to himself as he scanned the living room on his way to the hall. You were nowhere to be found. He let out an agitated huff and trekked down the hall to your bedroom where he nudged the door open with his body and peered inside. Upon first inspection, he ruled it empty, but shortly after he noticed the almost imperceptible rise and fall of the duvet on your bed. There was a body under there.
He approached the bed as stealthily as he could, the tops of his steel-toed shoes breaking apart the gold bars of sunlight on the floor as he walked. As he grew closer, he could see the top of your head just above the edge of the blankets. You were nestled in tight between several pillows. It looked as if you’d created a makeshift sleeping partner so that you didn’t feel so conscious of having to sleep alone. A jolt of emotion ran through J as he saw that. He didn’t pay much attention to how deeply you relied on him for everything, especially comfort and security. He was a man of his word and he promised he would always keep you safe.
He turned and walked across the room to shut the door and make sure it was good and locked before he went to the window and checked to make sure it was secure. One he had deemed the room safe and thoroughly checked, he grabbed the edge of the duvet and started to yank it out of your grasp. Bleary-eyed and half asleep, you fought an unknown force for your blankets, letting a little moan of protest slip past your dry lips. You had cried yourself to sleep and your red eyes burned from lack of moisture. You had been dragged from your deep slumber so unpleasantly and it made you want to scream. J was unrelenting and soon he had pried the duvet out of your grip and kicked off his shoes, eager to join you in the warm spot. He slid in and angrily shoved the pillows out of the way so that he could get to you.
“Damn…” he whispered on a little chuckle, “is my bunny in here or did the pillows eat her?”
You snorted, still unsure if what you were hearing was a dream or not until strong arms embraced you from behind and your eyes shot open. You felt him wiggling around dramatically behind you as he attempted to get closer, his face finding the crook of your neck to bury itself in. Your skin was laced with smooches when he pulled back, chortling, “found ‘er!”
“J!” you cried out in relief as you twisted in his arms, “oh my god, J! Don’t ever fucking leave like that again!”
“What?” he huffed, “ya told me to get out, so I did. What did ya expect?”
You nuzzled him gently, finding that lovely bare patch of skin beneath his collar to attach your lips to, “I shouldn’t have said what I said. I didn’t mean it, J. I was just being an ass.”
You peppered him with kisses as he laid there, letting you give him what little attention he would not turn his nose up at. He liked having his neck kissed, so long as you stayed away from his face. There had been many a time that he’d pretended to bite you when you got too close to his face. One of these days you worried his teeth might clamp down on your nose or something and as comical as that might be, you decided you’d rather not find out the lengths he’d go to to keep you away from his face.
J grunted at your apology; you didn’t expect him to reciprocate, being that his sudden initiation of affection was forgiveness-worthy enough. He never said the usual ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘I love you’ or any other number of phrases that were common among couples and relationships. Maybe J was too complicated for such simple words or he just didn’t need the constricts of them. He never said it, but the implications were always there and he made up for the decisions he made by coming back to you, eager to pick up where the two of you left off and continue on.
“I shouldn’t have said that I couldn’t look at you,” you sighed, unaware of what those words had stirred within him. You felt his body tense in your arms and you released him a little bit for fear that maybe you’d accidentally squeezed him too hard like you’d done countless times before. You heard him clear his throat and your arms fell away from his body as he sat up in bed. You followed suit, sitting up with the blankets and pillows strewn around you. You watched wordlessly as he stared blankly at a spot on the floor halfway across the room. His right hand fumbled in his coat, searching for his trusted blade that he carried with him at all times. He brought it out and clutched it in his palm, letting the thick stitching of his purple leather glove run across the deep groove on the handle. He flicked it open, brandishing the blade close to his face and his dark pupils followed the slicing patterns as he swished it from side to side, like the lashing of a cats’ tail. His eyes crossed minutely as he stared at the pointy tip. He was lost in his own movements, watching and caressing the blade as he moved it about.
“J…” your fingers flexed, wanting nothing more than to grab onto his arm and bring him back to you. He got lost like this on more than one occasion, but it was telltale when he did this that he had something on his mind that he needed to say. He would rarely say it, you reckoned, knowing now would surely be no different.
He turned to you then, eyes locked on yours as the blade rested on his thigh. He was gripping the handle tight, ready to leap into action if things turned bad. You suppressed a shudder and tried not to look away from him; the intensity in his gaze was almost too much for you.
“Ya couldn’t fucking look at me,” he repeated the words that had echoed themselves in your mind on repeat for the past three days, “is it the scars?”
You reached for his hand which only tightened on the knife; he wasn’t letting go for your hand, oh, no. You drew back in that instant, watching the muscles in his jaw tick as you tried to form words into another apology but the look on his face rendered you silent. He needed not for another apology, nor a look of terror on your face, not now. He wasn’t going to harm you. He only needed you to listen. No interruptions, input, interjections. Nothing. He needed for you to sit there, keep your mouth shut, and just listen.
“Ya wanna know how I got ‘em?”
It took every ounce of will you possessed not to laugh in his face. You’d been down this road before. How many times had you pondered this topic, thinking through every possible scenario until it drove you mad? Some nights it even kept you awake, fearing you’d never have an answer to that age-old question he asked over and over and over again like a broken record. He had to stop this madness. You weren’t getting the truth out of him no matter whether you said yes or not, just like he would tell you another wild tale that was half-true about his life and expect you to file that away as fact. Sometimes you wondered if he didn’t even know which story was true any more than you did. He had told so many he was bound to lose track eventually.
He never wanted to tell anyone the truth. Especially you. When people grew close to him, they always left. J had been abandoned throughout his life, cut down and left out by people who had once proclaimed their love for him and swore they would never, ever leave him. He had learned by now that no one was truly ‘good’. When the chips are down, people show you who they really are.He could bring out that side in everyone. He could show the entire world that it was no better than he. He didn’t create mayhem for any other purpose than that he believed that, under the surface, everyone had a side like he did and he believed that everyone should show who they truly are. He wasn’t a monster; he was just ahead of the curve.
It hit him hard when you told him you couldn’t look at him. The words struck him like a moving train and almost knocked him off his feet. He’d received countless jeers and slurs about his scars from people over the years and it rolled right off his back. He paid no mind to it because of how often he heard it – in one ear and out the other. Though the way you’d said it with such little care as to what you were saying made him realize what kind of effect he was having on you; the same effect he had had on everyone else in his past. J didn’t revisit his past any longer, but how could he not now that you’d said those few words? He was thrust into the past like being thrown into a pool of ice cold water and he loathed it. He didn’t want to remember. He had no reason for a past life. He was the Joker now and all things that came before were nothing but a distant memory he kept in the dark for so long that even he was beginning to forget. The Joker was about possibility, chaos, destruction, darkness. He couldn’t be living in the past and thankfully for his sake he didn’t want to be. He didn’t careanymore. None of it mattered as did anything else in his life. Everything was one giant, bad joke to him. He laughed in the face of his misfortunes. There was but one thing this world had to threaten him with. You.
It was in the moment of that realization that he knew he had to tell you the truth, once and for all.
“J, I don’t want to hear another story. Really, you don’t have to tell me…”
“I said…do you want to know how I got them?”
His enunciation of every word, how he clicked the ‘t’s led on to how brutal and raw, impassioned and desperate he was to make you shut your mouth and hear what he had to say. You closed your mouth in an instant, watching his eyes as he prepared to tell you something no other person had ever had the opportunity to know.
“My father…was a drinker…and a fiend,” he began, clearing his throat as his voice wavered in frequency, “When I was just a little tike, he used to come at me, laughing while he does it. He’d get angry, reach for something heavy…hit me until I bruised.”
Your jaw metaphorically dropped as every bit of information sunk in; you didn’t expect this part of the story to hold much truth or substance but J always surprised you. He forced out a giggle as he submerged himself in those memories, uncaring for what might happen when he was done talking or how you might respond. He’d gotten going now and there was no time to stop and ask questions.
“I fought back the older I got, ya know? Us two, we butt heads a lot, like father like son,” he snorted, a grin pulling at the corner of his lips, “got myself in-tah a lotta trouble back then. When I turned eighteen, I decided I’d had enough so I got out. Had myself a sweetheart-ahback then. Mhm…married ‘er right before I shipped off to the military. Figured it’d be a good fresh start, mainly at her suggestion. Said I worried too much…about the past. She just wanted me to smile more. So I went. Far away from my father and far enough away to gain some, ah, per-spec-tive. Worked my way up into intelligence. I had a knack for it, some would say. Gained the title ‘Sargent’ almost too quickly for someone that age. Went overseas, saw active combat, didn’t cut corners, nothin’. We were on our way back and, uh, it’s funny now but…our bus, must’a run over a landmine or something. Blew us sky high. Not a one of ‘em survived but me. Wasn’t long before somebody found me. We weren’t too far from the rest of the, uh, troops. An’ I had this…piece of metal shrapnel lodged in here good…”
He gestured to the left side of his face and the grizzly scar he wore there as a permanent reminder of his life’s misfortunes.
“Doctors got it out but the way it got itself in there…there was, uh, no way it was gonna heal up real nice or anything like that. I was discharged when I got back home and my wife came to get me. And you know what? She couldn’t stand the sight of me! She left me…Swore I wasn’t the same man she’d married. So one night, after she’s looong gone, I go off crazier than usual. I stick a knife in my mouth,” at this point, he holds the blade toward himself and places it against the inside of his cheek, pressed snugly against the right corner of his mouth, “and do thisto myself. Now I’m always smiling!”
J’s voice had become gravelly towards the end of his monologue as he ground out the last bit of the puzzle you’d tried to hard to put together without all of the missing pieces. With it all finally laid out for you, everything that hadn’t made much sense before finally did. Your J had lived a life you did not know. He had loved, he had lost, he had learned. Your instinct was to pity him, feel sorry for him, but J wasn’t about to hear any of that. The last thing he wanted off of you was any kind of pity. He had no use for it now. He was fine. He did not need pity.
He removed the blade from his mouth, snapped it closed and pushed it back into its rightful pocket inside his coat. He said nothing for a while and you were not sure if you were supposed to talk now or not. You did not, for fear of ruining the moment. You knew not whether this tale of woe was true or not and perhaps you never fully would know. Nothing was one hundred percent where J was concerned. He was an enigma you never would fully crack.
“J…I didn’t mean to phrase it that way,” you tried to clarify, “I didn’t mean that I could stand to look at you. I didn’t mean it like that.”
J was all too aware of his past life now, memories coming forth and he was unable to stop them. His rough, jagged scars ached with phantom pain as if they were fresh. He remembered being unable to cry with pain because of the metal piece in his cheek. He remembered the devastation of having come home from such a horrible situation only for his very own wife to leave him because she couldn’t stand to look at him.
The reality of what you’d said to him shook him to his very core and, within a place deep in his mind that he would never admit aloud to, he was apprehensive that you, too, would leave him for that very reason.
“I know ya didn’t mean it,” he grumbled, not giving away his disturbing thought process by way of his voice, “ya got so worked up, little bunny. You’re like me. Ya say stuff ya don’t mean, am I right?”
You nodded. You weren’t about to acknowledge the years of torment and turmoil J had just unloaded on you, merely because you knew he didn’t want you to. He didn’t want you to say anything. You need not utter a word about it. You’d been with J long enough to know that you should not. Instead, you crept closer, finding your way easily onto his lap as you cupped his cheeks in your hands. Your thumbs traced the length of each deep lesion, feeling his skin twitch and bunch beneath your fingers. He didn’t know whether or not to pull away or sit still. You gentle touches kept him waiting there for more, though, and you were able to touch the rough wounds that you know knew the origin of. He hadn’t liked you to touch them, but you did so reverently, with an intimacy that J had not experienced with another soul but yours. You gave him your heart and he would have scooped it right out of your chest with glee, eager to get his hands dirty. His eyes remained on yours as you touched him and he let you, relaxing slightly as your fingers worked wonders on his sensitive scar tissue. The injuries had damaged the nerve endings but your warm hands made this area feel more alive than it ever had.
“I say a lot of stuff I don’t mean, J,” you said to him, “but know that I mean it when I say I love you.”
J scoffed, working his head out of your grip so that he could have a better look at you, “ya say that all the time, don’t ya know any other words?”
“Well, whenever it comes to you I guess I don’t.”
“Mm…”
You knew J wasn’t the type to get all fuzzy inside and proclaim his undying love for you. That never happened. What you did know was that he cared enough to share a part of himself with you. A part that was so close to his heart that he had kept it locked away for years. You knew the kind of person he was and still it never mattered. You were in love with the man you saw before you, regardless of what was on the outside. He had a love for you that had changed things for the both of you. His behavior never changed, yet it evolved. He didn’t think love was in the cards for him until he met you. There was something about you that made him long to have married youall those years ago. He knew he had been bound to become this, that much was true, but how interesting it might have been nonetheless.
He let memories from the past fade away until he stopped thinking completely, lost in the way you were looking at him. To you, it just looked like he was trying to stare into your soul like sometimes cats will do and it made you uncomfortable. You weren’t to afford him pity, nor were you to elaborate on his dialogue or ask questions. You let the topic drop, but you filed it away in your mind for a time when you might really need it. A time when you needed to understand something about J and you needed to know more about who he was. Those times would come, you knew for sure. J remained just as complex and unreachable as always, but he would open up from time to time. He couldn’t have you leaving. He couldn’t have that. Ever. He had weighed the options in his mind and letting you have the tiniest sliver of insight into his past was better than losing you entirely.
You leaned in and kissed him, finding that the longer you kissed, the more desperate for him you became. You kissed him so desperately that your whole body curved into his. J’s brows furrowed and knitted together as he kissed back with as much passion and zest as you gave him. You moaned against his lips, feeling the tiny scar on his bottom lip every time your lips locked. His arms wound around you, hugging you to his chest. There was not a doubt in his mind that you loved him then. No onecould fall in love with someone suffering a psychosis like he was and yet you had. Everything faded away when you kissed him. You knew what a treacherous climb this was to be on and yet you went with a sure step as you carried on and on and on. Anger and rage were the last thing on either of your minds from the time you had fought. You both were after intimacy, craving each other like nothing else. You were sure that if J himself didn’t kill you that moments like these eventually would.
You held him close to you, counting the seconds you did so like they each represented one sentence from his story. You held him close for all the times you each had needed someone to do so. You held him close not knowing if this would be the last time you ever did. You held him close.
