He wakes up in the middle of the night, startled from sleep by a dream that he cannot remember. The streetlights outside the window throw beams of yellow light across the ceiling and cast slitted shadows on the wall. The room is unfamiliar at best, and as his mind still clings to sleep, he finds himself fearful of what lies in the darker corners.
He feels a weight on his body and he looks down. There, asleep next to him, head pillowed on his bare shoulder, is Harley Quinn.
The sight is comforting to him, and the very thought that she brings him comfort is a disturbing one. A thought comes to his mind, completely unbidden.
My god, he thinks. She's beautiful.
The thought forces him from the realm of half asleep to the realm of being very, very awake. The word echoes in his mind. Beautiful. It isn't something he thought he would ever think about Harley. It isn't something he thought he'd think about anyone. Beautiful.
He looks down at her again, but he can't see much of her from this angle. He slides away from her gently and sits on the floor, next to the bare mattress that serves as their bed. She shifts and he holds his breath, praying that she won't wake up and ruin the moment. Harley puts an arm under her head, and her hand grabs a fistful of sheet where he was laying, but she doesn't wake up.
He looks her over, head cocked to one side, that word still chasing itself around his mind. Beautiful.
Harley looks like she always does, he decides, angry with himself for being something close to sentimental.
Like she always does. Harley's blond hair is tangled and messy, but somehow it shines even in the dim light. A few strands of it are falling across her face.
Like she always does. Her face is covered in caking makeup, the black around her eyes streaking into the faded white majority. Here and there and patches of natural skin color, but they're difficult to really distinguish.
Like she always does. She's stretched out like a cat, slender but not small. She isn't wearing much of anything, and he finds himself thinking about how many times he's ever actually seen her naked.
He takes the opportunity to look at her closely, and he notices a freckle on her left hip, a scar on her knee. He watches her body move as she breathes, struck by the simplicity of the motion. In and out, in and out.
He looks at her like he's never seen her before, his eyes hungry and quick, taking in every detail that he can. She moves slightly, as though she can feel his eyes on her body, and he smiles without thinking about it. The intimacy of the entire situation scares him more than he'll ever admit.
He climbs back into bed slowly, and Harley positions her head back onto his chest. He curls an arm around her back and kisses her hair, all the while puzzled by his own actions. They both know that he isn't an affectionate man by any means.
He lies back, tries to settle himself. The whole sequence of events has turned his stomach somehow, made him jittery and twitchy like a new prison inmate.
Beautiful, his mind whispers.
And as he's falling asleep again, it comes to him. It isn't that she's any more physically attractive than she usually is, or that he's somehow getting soft. No. She's beautiful because she's his. Because she will always be in bed with him at night, no matter what he does to her, no matter how badly he hurts her. She will always bounce back, bounce around, bounce right into his lap, no matter how much he says he hates her.
His.
~~~****
The next morning, he barely remembers waking up in the middle of the night at all. But he does make Harley breakfast in bed, even if he tells her to shut up when she asks why he's being so nice.