Author's Note: So I thought I'd toy a little with the Joker. Judging from some of the story summaries, there are some god-awful Joker/OC fics going on, and I wanted to set that whole tendency on edge. I also thought I'd take a different route from the overdone Joker/Harley Quinn plotline. So here's my creation. I would love to hear (or read, I guess) any feedback you people have for me. I live for detailed, intelligent criticism--so please, if I'm doing something wrong with characterization, plot, whatever: don't hold back. Or, you know, if you are just enjoying the story--I like to hear that, too!
Disclaimer: Funny story, I'm not old enough to have created the original Batman, and I'm definitely not Christopher Nolan. So...if you had brief delusions of me owning the rights to the canon characters, I'm sorry to disappoint. They're not mine.
Fever.
Everybody's got the fever
That is something you all know
Fever isn't such a new thing
Fever started long ago
Ward 0651
She kind of reminded him of that girl in the movies who just needs to take her hair out of the bun and get a set of contacts to be sexy, only she wasn't. He'd seen her without the librarian hair-do, without the glasses--without anything, actually--and she still had that stiff, awkward air. She had the potential to be hot, but she just didn't want to be. Even when she was naked with her hair down, she seemed all-brains, all-business. So he decided she was just one of those girls who wasn't sexy. It didn't stop him from screwing her.
He didn't particularly like her as a person--but then he really didn't like too many people, anyway. He liked that she was young and an intern, and that she actually believed that laying down and taking it from him would somehow further her psychiatric career. And he liked her ass in a pencil skirt--when she wore a pencil skirt, which was entirely too rare an occurance for his liking. He'd told her to wear more skirts. He'd even told her she looked pretty on the days she wore skirts (which, essentially, was a lie, because the only part of her that was actually stunning on those days was her ass), but she still put on some bulky trousers that made her look asexual from the waist down and really did nothing for him.
Even her undergarments were boring. A whole year she'd been interning here--six months of which he'd been fucking her--and he had yet to see a thong or lacy little something underneath her grandma clothes. White cotton. She couldn't even venture into colored underwear--not even black. He could probably settle for black. Black was sexy. But no. She wore white: Fruit-of-the-Loom, to be exact. He'd checked one time, hoping maybe, possibly, she'd at least stepped foot in a Victoria's Secret. But the woman absolutely scorned sexiness. It seemed like she scorned sex, and he was pretty sure she scorned him, too.
But she hadn't turned him down yet. And as long as she was going to keep putting out, he wasn't going to stop. He wasn't suave or charming; he wasn't the standardly handsome type that's garaunteed to get laid on a regular basis. So even if she was dowdy and boring, and even if she did hate him, he was going to take what he could get.
When he saw her blurred form through the fogged glass of his office door, he already had an inkling of what she wanted. He knew it was her because she was the only woman over the age of six that walked that awkwardly in heels--and he knew she was planning to consent to a little quid pro quo because she was wearing the heels in the first place. She knocked on the door and he told her to come in, and there she was.
She stood a little taller than average in those ugly, block-like heels. If he hadn't seen her naked, he never would've guessed she had a nice rack under that ratty, oversized sweater. At least she was wearing the skirt--but she was standing in front of him, so it wasn't like he could see her ass. Her red hair was knotted and tied down into a messy, frizzy bun, and a pair of wire-rim glasses sat primly on her nose. She didn't wear make-up, but she must have bummed some mascara off of somebody because her eyelashes were black--not light, as they were naturally--and her lips looked a little pinker. She closed the door behind her and stood stiffly in front of his desk. In one hand, she held a pencil up to her mouth, gnawing on the end thoughtfully. He wanted to smirk and comment about her oral fixation, but that joke was getting old and she hadn't laughed at it yet.
"What can I do for you, Marilyn?"
Marilyn. God, what a waste of a sexy name.
"Ward 0651," she whispered, as if there were people listening outside the door.
"I'm sorry--what did you say?"
She cleared her throat and almost glared at him, taking a step forward. She said again, louder, "Ward 0651. I want to work with him."
He leaned back in his chair, brow furrowed in thought. Her eyes were bright and impatient behind her glasses; she took a cautious step closer.
"He's...he's the Joker, Jona--Dr. Crane."
He rolled his eyes and said that he knew that, even though he hadn't. Marilyn Monaghan was the only freak in this place who had all the ward assignments memorized. He sighed, adjusting his glasses and sitting up straight again.
"I believe I gave that assignment to Dr. Quinzel--"
"I need to write a dissertation," her clipped voice edged on a command. His eyes widened a little, and then his jaw locked. He looked her over with his most pompous air, and she took an uneasy step back.
"Dr. Quinzel's already written her dissertation," he said, assuming a demeaning tone--just to get her riled. "She's a doctor. That's why she gets cherry assignments, and you don't."
She rolled her eyes, huffing a little sigh. She stared at a crack in the ceiling when she muttered, "I'll do whatever you want."
He smirked. "I love it when you say that."
Her expression brightened considerably; "So you'll do it, then? You'll switch me over?"
He shrugged ambiguously, but he could tell that she knew she'd be getting what she wanted. Almost gleefully, she closed the blinds in his office and returned to his desk; if he was stupid, he might think that she was giddy about doing him a favor, but he knew better. Getting to interview a psychotic murderer was the only thing on her mind.
He rolled his chair away from the desk, and she walked around to stand in front of him. Her entire body was tensed, and that bugged him. She couldn't even pretend to enjoy the prospect of being with him for the sake of...gratitude, or what have you. Maybe he should just go back to visiting the sex addicts in the lower levels and forget the intern...At least she didn't run the risk of confessing her situation to one of his colleagues, causing him to have to pay off an obnoxious blackmail sum--most of which he'd have to borrow from loan sharks--eventually leading to an ass-kicking and public humiliation--
"Dr. Crane?"
He pulled himself out of his thoughts and looked up at her with a superior little smile. "Yes, Marilyn?"
"What do you...want?" God, must she always be so painfully inept?
He sighed, glancing at the clock on the wall. "I have a meeting in around...ten minutes or so, so just be quick."
She might have glared at him as she lowered herself to her knees; he wasn't looking at her at the time. He could feel her fingers fiddling with the button on his pants--wasting time--and suddenly her gaze was on his face.
"You'll change the assignment?"
He glanced down, a little taken aback by the skepticism in her eyes. Seriously--had he ever not come through for her? "I'll do it right now."
She watched his hands hover half-heartedly over his stacks of files.
"Ward 0651," she reminded insistently. That tone was bothering him.
"Seven minutes, Marilyn."
