From the way the sun fell into the bedroom through the sheen white drapes in a blaze of crisp, golden light, Jayde could estimate, as she rolled onto her back, that it was definitely well after nine, but probably no later than eleven...seeing how the Joker had not yet come in and done something annoying to get her out of the bed. A heavy, sleepy sigh heaved her chest as she reached up to push some of her loose curls away from her face and she turned onto her left side, blinking heavily as she struggled to focus her eyes on reaching over to pick up her phone to read the time- 10:03am. The last bit of her sigh turned the corners of her lips upward as she grinned against the pillow. If she just waited another twenty-seven minutes, she could pretend to be asleep when Joker came bounding through the bedroom door, to see what sort of annoyance he could concoct that morning in an effort to get her up...
It wasn't very often Jayde slept past 10:30, seeing how Joker would either wake up extra early to start his 'work day', taking care to be particularly noisy, or would be doing something else in the house...taking care to be particularly noisy. But on those days when the domestic climate was prime for a good sleeping-in, Jayde would sleep comfortably until exactly 10:30am, only to be woken abruptly by either a rather large man landing heavily on the bed on top of her, or some other loud noise...like the air horn she had forced him to throw away. However, as much as she liked to pretend to be thoroughly annoyed by his antics, she would not have traded those mornings for anything else in the world. But seeing how Jayde's bladder was practically pulsating, waiting those twenty-seven minutes sounded a bit like Chinese water torture, so she sat up mid-yawn and pushed the blankets off of her before rising to round the end of the bed.
It was now mid-summer in Chicago and the weather had grown warm enough to where Jayde could sleep in a sports bra and shorts and be completely comfortable and as she stepped into the bathroom to shut the door behind her, she paused in front of the mirror to stretch. With her arms up over her head and another yawn splitting her face in half, she groaned quietly, grinning to herself as she felt a bit of a pleasant ache below the line of her shorts. This was something she had grown accustomed to since living, and sleeping with, the Joker. No matter how 'gentle' he had tried to be the day or night before, she was always left with a residual, immensely pleasant ache where her legs met her body, something she had started referring to as a 'bangover'...Only Dotcom understood what this terminology meant and he always spared an 'ugh' whenever she mentioned it.
But just as she turned from the mirror, something along her stomach caught her eye and she paused, turning slowly back to face herself in the reflective glass; she exhaled through her nose a moment later. Three thin, lightly scabbed-over cuts ran down the length of her stomach, from only an inch or two below the line of her sports bra down past the waist of her shorts and Jayde bent slightly, touching her finger to the longest one to trace it along her skin. It did not hurt as it had already begun to heal but vaguely, she wondered how she hadn't remembered it while dressing for bed the night before. Perhaps having him cut her hadn't really been as big a deal as she had thought it would be...Perhaps she trusted him more completely than she had originally estimated. With a shrug, she turned from the mirror and moved to finally relieve her bladder.
After brushing her teeth, doing something about her bushy hair and after dressing in a pair of cut-off denim shorts and tank top, Jayde emerged from the bedroom with a single cigarette and lighter in her hand, frowning as she wondered where Joker had gone and how she had not heard him leave that morning. Glancing through the windows behind the leather couch, she noticed that he was not sitting outside, nor was he in the kitchen reading the newspaper, nor was he seemingly in Tre's old room...her frown deepened. There was no sound coming from the garage so with a shrug, Jayde decided to venture out and see if one of the cars was missing.
Indeed, upon stepping out into the garage, she paused on the threshold beyond the door and sighed through her nose when her eyes fell onto the two front ends of both the huge Cadillac Escalade and the sporty, curvacious Corvette, both sitting quietly in their usual places. However, the heavy metal door across the long room from her was raised and wide open, revealing the sunbathed driveway and Lincoln avenue beyond it...and yet no one was in the garage?...
A second later, Jayde jumped with a quiet squeak when a loud clang of metal on concrete cracked the silent air from somewhere beside her, followed by more movement, coming from seemingly underneath the Escalade. Jayde huffed in mild annoyance as a long metal wrench came sliding out from under the huge SUV.
"What are you doing?" she asked rather loudly, placing both of her hands on her hips in that characteristic way, her eyebrows practically touching as she stared down at the space between the bumper and the concrete floor beneath it. A second later, the Joker came sliding into view on a short rolling dolly, his own eyebrows furrowed, his curly green hair tied up into an absurd, high ponytail. He shook his head slightly with a shrug of his shoulders.
"I'm baking a fuckin' cake, whatsit look like I'm doin'?" he asked in return. From the blank look on Jayde's face, it appeared that she had not found his sarcasm funny and Joker's eyes slowly began to squint as his head cocked to the side. He held up one brown, grease-stained hand to wiggle his fingers. "It's chocolaaaate..." he then added with a cheeky grin.
Finally, Jayde broke a smile as she rolled her eyes and moved to sit down on the concrete floor, folding her legs indian style so the top of Joker's head could just barely rest on her folded legs. He grinned placidly up at her as she reached to quickly tuck her hair behind both of her ears.
"Hello there," he greeted her in that simple, genuine way he always did and the smile on Jayde's face intensified as she reached out to place both of her hands flat on his chest, gazing down at his upside-down features.
"Hi," she answered, and without even pausing to think about it, she leaned down over him, gently pressing her lips to his in a 'Spiderman' style, upside-down kiss. As was normal for him now, Joker responded to her affection without hesitation, reaching up with both of his hands to lightly grip her upper arms. Jayde melted, sighing quietly against his lips as his grip tightened slightly before he began dragging his hands down her arms until he had reached her wrists. Of course, Jayde found this sweet and endearing and was just wondering what had made him want to do that when she suddenly remembered the black grease he had just showed her. With a jerk she pulled away but Joker was already laughing against her mouth, flinching slightly as she smacked him on the chest, once she had noticed her now dirt and grime streaked arms.
"You are such an ass..." she grumbled with a shake of her head and Joker nodded, folding his arms proudly over his chest.
"Yeah, but ya love me, dontcha?" he asked, that cheeky, mischievous grin now once again plastered to his face. Above him, Jayde was still scowling but in lieu of giving her answer, she brought both hands to Joker's shoulders and pushed hard, sliding him back under the Escalade, his forehead narrowly missing the bumper in the process. "Hey!" she heard him shout indignantly from under the SUV, his voice now muffled and she could not help but grin as she rose from the concrete floor to shift her attention to her cigarette.
After lighting it, Jayde glanced up, only to find that Joker had managed to push himself to the far, back end of the Escalade and was now rising from the dolly to walk toward her, wiping the remaining grease from his hands on the small towel he had pulled from his back pocket. She tried hard to keep her gaze fixed in a glare but was struggling hard to do so as Joker's amber brown eyes squinted slightly in his half-smirk. However, as he approached, he reached out, using two fingers to pluck Jayde's lit cigarette right from between her lips, and as he took a long pull from it, she folded her stained arms over her middle, tilting her head back slightly to look up at him.
"You don't have to go anywhere today?" she asked in a purposely off-handed tone, in an effort to keep the hopefulness in her voice to a minimum, however when Joker shook his head with a half-shrug, she sighed in relief. "Good," she breathed. "I want you to help me with some stuff around here today." She glanced up again when he held her cigarette in front of her face.
"Like?..." he prodded, raising his eyebrows as he took a step away from her to fold his arms over his chest and lean against the hood of the Corvette across from her. Jayde shrugged, taking a deep pull on the now half-burnt cigarette.
"Like we both have a ton of laundry to do and I'm definitely not doing it all by myself." she insisted boldly, keeping her eyes focused on Joker's and she copied him when he started to squint slowly. He was silent at first, just staring at her for several seconds until he sniffed in an almost bored sort of way.
"I don't know how to use the laundry machine." he finally answered, but then scowled when Jayde huffed across from him.
"It's called a washing machine and yes, you do, I've seen you do it." she countered, but before Joker could reply and say that he had just been 'pretending to do his laundry', she stood up and handed the last few hits of her cigarette to him. "I'm going to make some breakfast." she explained, pausing with her hand on the knob of the door to turn and look back at him. "Finish baking your cake then come inside and get all your dirty clothes." she then commanded, although a second later, she hesitated as though mildly regretting giving him such a direct order. She turned again to him and grinned. "Please, Joker, dear."
This finally pulled a smirk onto his face as she disappeared into the house.
Truth be told, Joker hadn't really been working on anything of that much importance with the car and had only been changing the oil filter when Jayde had emerged but there was something about that falsely annoyed, secretly grinning look on her face that always made him smirk a bit. He loved being sarcastic and even a little bit rude to her, only because he knew she could handle it and wasn't the type of girl to get pissy over something insensitive he had said...which was part of the reason he loved her. Yes, nearly four months had passed since that fateful night in that warehouse, amidst the bodies of Charlie and Michael Craig when he had admitted those three words to her and not a day had passed that he had regretted saying it. No, he did not exactly say it every day but every once in a while, when the timing was just right, he would let it slip out...and every time, Jayde would melt into a puddle.
It was those instances, those times when he would let an 'I love you' out, that he knew Jayde was just right for him. She would not make a huge deal of it, she would not let out an obnoxious 'awww!', but instead, she would blush deeply and kiss him on the cheek, or even just reach out and touch his hand as if she knew how awkward it made him feel to admit such strong personal feelings. Joker smirked to himself upon reflecting on a phone conversation he had had with Maggie a few weeks prior.
"So is Jayde still putting up with ya?" she had asked in that wonderfully familiar New Yorker accent, her voice raised to be heard over what Joker could only assume was a hair dryer in the background. He had rolled his eyes, knowing exactly where that conversation had been going.
"Yes..." he had answered in a growl. "You realize she doesn't really have a choice, Mags..."
"Oh, yes she does," Maggie had answered. Joker could just picture her with her tiny cell phone tucked between her ear and shoulder, using her knuckle to push her artsy, rectangular-framed glasses up her squat nose. "That girl could leave you anytime she wanted and you'd have no say..." Here, it seemed she had been hesitant to give him a chance to cut in and say that he sure as fuck would have a say, so she had continued quickly. "Do you love her?"
If it had been any other person but Maggie, Joker would have lied and said 'no' or something equally as untrue, but knowing she would eventually get it out of him, he had sighed heavily into the phone.
"Yes..." he answered again, his tone lowered and almost bashful as though Maggie had just asked him if he had broken her prized faberge egg with a baseball. There had been a tsk-ing noise on the other end of the phone.
"Jay, I'm tellin' ya, you betta' give that girl a ring or...a finger or something. Girls like Jayde don't come around that often and you'd be a mess if she left you. And you know that's right."
At the time, Joker had found it rather coincidental that Maggie had said that, seeing how he did, in fact, know that was right. When she had left and gone to New York, leaving him by himself, even only for a week, he had been a mess, as much as he absolutely hated to admit it. And now that he had actually confessed, to both himself and Jayde, that he was in full-blown, stupid love with her, having her leave again, for whatever reason, would probably be downright hazardous to his health...and Jayde's for that matter.
But in honesty, he had been an all around delight to live with lately, if he did say so himself. Sure, he put her through her paces and annoyed her to no end when he was bored but overall, he had been a pretty good boy. He cleaned up after himself for the most part, and yes, he did hate doing laundry but if it came down to it, he wouldn't have any problem doing that but... all of this made him wonder... Just how far could he push Jayde before she really lost it with him? She seemed able to endure a tremendous amount of annoyance and badgering and she even tolerated his 'job' and less than humane killing habits but...what would happen if he...tested her a bit?
Joker was just off in this rather deep train of thought when the garage door swung open across from him and he jumped, blinking several times as he brought his gaze up to meet Jayde's eyes beneath her raised eyebrows. She shrugged.
"This laundry isn't gonna do itself," she explained, leaving Joker's blank stare to evolve slowly into a smirk.
"Nope, that's why you're gonna do it," he answered. The way Jayde's eyebrows relaxed rapidly into the beginning stages of annoyance was beyond difficult to resist laughing at, but Joker forced himself to keep a straight face until she had disappeared back into the house with a huff. Oh, this is gonna be fun...
Upon stepping into the house, the first thing Joker noticed was the scent of freshly brewing coffee amidst the hunger-inducing aroma of bread toasting in the oven and he smirked to himself as he passed the kitchen to go back to the bedroom. Every morning, Jayde had a ritual, he had noticed, and every morning it was nearly the same, which he found somewhat funny seeing how ritual and routine was something he had come to avoid. She usually got up around the same time, always took care of herself first, which included brushing her teeth and doing something about her mass of frizzy, slept on curls, at which point she would venture into the kitchen and brew a cup of coffee. It had been the same at the house back in Gotham but due to the size of the house and the fact that they were not fully sharing a bedroom, he had never really noticed it. However, surprisingly, he did not have a problem with it. Jayde's routine kept her predictable and therefore easy to live with...unlike himself, who made a point of it to go about each day differently from the last. It was when she ventured out of her routine that he would start to grow curious.
In the bedroom, his dirty clothes had been strewn from one end of the room to the other, with most of them on the floor, some hanging haphazardly from the dresser and some had even been pushed beneath the edge of the bed, which was exactly how he had chosen to keep his room back in Gotham. Back then, seeing how Jayde did not know him as well as she did now, it had been obvious that she had been tempted to comment on the state of his room but had never opened her mouth about it. Perhaps she had felt like it wasn't her place to say anything, seeing how she had really just been a roommate or...willing hostage or...something. But now, she was...his live-in...girlfriend, she was his companion and 'domestic partner' of sorts and it appeared that she had come into that role and taken it up with an air of ownership. Now, she had no problem whatsoever telling him that he needed to 'pick up his shit and get it off the floor'...and Joker loved every second of it.
It was this not-so-new, more confident Jayde that stood waiting for him in the laundry room, sipping her coffee and tapping one fingernail impatiently against the white metal washing machine when he approached carrying a massive mound of mingled laundry. She turned her head to look up but of course, the moment she had, she sighed, hanging her head slightly.
"See? This is why we do small loads, a few times a week," she explained in a surprisingly patient tone as she set down her coffee mug. "Now you're going to be folding clothes all da-" she had gone on, but Joker was not listening and instead had dropped the entire mound of clothing into the empty washing machine to begin stuffing everything in. However, Jayde made a noise that caused him to stop and look up. He raised his eyebrows, trying hard to keep his face from showing any sign of a grin.
"What? You said we needed to-" he went to say in a highly false, innocent voice but Jayde was already shaking her head and waving his hands away.
"No, Joker, you can't just throw everything in together!" she exclaimed, her voice already betraying a hint of impatience. Joker started to smirk. "You have to separate the whites and the darks or else all your white shirts are going to come out gray."
"I told you, I don't know how to do this," he retorted but Jayde was once again shaking her head with a hefty roll of her eyes and she let out a sound of disdain as she plucked a white undershirt from inside the mass of clothing.
"Your IQ is well north of one-hundred, Joker, you can't tell me you don't know how this thing works." By now, Jayde had pulled several of his white Oxford business shirts from inside the washer, including the one with no buttons from the day before so Joker turned and hopped up onto the dryer to sit and face her. He leaned to the side slightly to fall into her line of vision.
"Well, how 'bout you explain it to me, just one more time," he offered, once again struggling hard to keep a grin off his face while Jayde tossed yet another white undershirt onto his lap on the dryer. Her eyes glanced up at him before she let out a short sigh through her nose.
"First, you have to get all the white clothes out of the dark..." she started, in a tone that suggested she was explaining a glue stick to a toddler. "Then you measure out the soap depending on-..." However at this, she paused and her shoulders dropped when she noticed the way the very upper corners of Joker's scars were starting to twitch. "You know how to do this! Stop laughing!" she then exclaimed, watching with a scowl as Joker laughed once and raised his hands in innocence.
"I'm not laughing!" he answered. "You're doing a wonderful job, dear, please keep going. I'm learning so much."
To his surprise, Jayde went on, although from the way her jaw seemed to tighten and the small muscle there let off a twitch, Joker could sense that he was about two minutes from being permanently excused from laundry duty. He cleared his throat, resting his right elbow on his knee in an effort to appear all too interested in what she was saying.
"So you put the clothes in first, then you measure the soap," she was explaining again, this time skipping the details. "Then you put the soap in and turn this little knob to 'regular' and in your case, 'heavy load'..." Here, she paused when Joker let out a snort of laughter. Jayde rolled her eyes. "What are you, twelve?" When he shook his head, she went on. "Then you pull the knob out and the water starts running..." At this, she did exactly that and the water did indeed start to run, but at that point, Joker was ready to redouble his efforts.
"So first I measure out the soap," he started, pointing with one finger to the orange jug of laundry detergent. "Then, I turn that knob thing, then I put the clo-"
"No," Jayde interrupted, shaking her head. "First you put the clothes in-"
"Then, I turn on the water-"
"NO,then you measure the soap-"
"Then, I put the white clothes in-"
"GET OUT!" she finally cried, reaching out to him with both hands to grab the knees of his jeans and pull him off the dryer. "Go away, just get outta here. It'll just go faster if I do it myself..." With a breathless laugh, Joker conceded defeat and moved to leave the small laundry room, but paused just behind her to gently wrap his arms around her waist and rest his chin on her shoulder.
"I'll take those pressed and folded, love..." he cooed quietly in her ear but only a second later, he jumped with a loud bark of a laugh and scooted from the room when Jayde spun and slapped him hard on the shoulder.
Several minutes later, with the washer now going full blast, Jayde emerged from the laundry room, shutting the door behind her to cut out some of the noise from the rest of the house and Joker glanced up from the section of newspaper he was reading to watch as she walked over to the stove. Unsurprisingly, she did not appear that flustered from his antics in the laundry room and instead seemed rather at-ease with her morning as she retrieved her toast and a couple pats of butter. This was encouraging to Joker; he could continue her testing.
As she sat down with her coffee mug, plate and butter knife, Joker felt her glance over at him and the pile of newspaper he was hoarding so without leaving her time to ask, he used one finger to nudge the stack toward her. Immediately, she reached out and pulled one particular section of the paper from the stack, to begin unfolding and refolding it, first in half, then in half again until she was left with a smaller, more manageable piece on which to work the daily crossword. This was another, more recently added step to her routine. If Joker was home in the morning and had the time to sit and read, he would do it and would typically read the entire paper from front to back, although he would always skip the comics, classified ads and the puzzles. It seemed after a while, Jayde noticed this trend and had decided at some point that if he wasn't going to work the crossword then she would... The only problem was...she wasn't that great at crosswords.
"What's a five-letter word for 'wanderer'..." she asked aloud in an off-handed, quiet sort of voice as if to seem like she had only asked herself, pensively. However, Joker knew better and cleared his throat slightly as he adjusted the location of his ankle on the seat opposite him.
"Nomad," he answered, glancing over the top of the paper to where Jayde was writing the answer into the appropriate boxes. She was then quiet again but Joker was now counting the seconds. Four...three...two...
"Four letter word for 'target'..."
This time, Joker decided not to answer and instead waited to see how long it took her to actually ask him directly and of course, it was not far off.
"Do you know what that one is?" she asked a few moments later, forcing a smirk onto Joker's face from behind the newspaper.
"Mark," he answered instantly.
"What?"
"Mark, a four-letter word for 'target'," he clarified, but only to shake his head when Jayde made a noise of understanding and moved to write the letters into the blanks. "You really suck at those, ya know..."
Across from him, Jayde looked over with a frown, her eyebrows forming that disgustingly adorable wrinkle between them as she scowled. "Well, if you're so good at them, you do it." she challenged, tossing the folded section of paper along with the pencil across the table to where Joker was now setting down the article he had been reading. He grinned pridefully.
"Fine." he answered and pulled the crossword puzzle toward him, leaving Jayde to take a sip of her coffee. However, a moment later, he frowned, looking up from the puzzle. "A five-letter word for 'moron'..." he mumbled pensively, his eyes drifting up toward the ceiling as Jayde watched him, smirking proudly as though she had been expecting him to be caught up by the apparently difficult puzzle. His eyes met hers after a few seconds of thinking. "Your name is spelled with a 'y', right?"
Jayde's smirk disappeared with record timing.
The rest of the afternoon passed at a pleasurable pace, with Jayde floating here and there, changing the laundry over, cleaning this and that, occasionally shooting Joker a dirty look when he pointed out that she had missed a spot and insisting that he had only managed to finish the crossword with the aid of the few answers she had already put in. At one point, Jayde had enlisted his help in wiping down the front windows but had promptly excused him from this duty when she had caught him about to use furniture polish instead of the glass cleaner. She had then mumbled something about 'useless' that had only caused Joker to grin as he retreated to the garage to finish that oil filter from earlier.
At around four that afternoon, Tiny and D-boy had stopped by and Joker was just talking with them out in the garage when Jayde had come out, apparently to smoke a cigarette and see who was out there. Upon stepping out, Jayde's shirt had risen a bit from the line of her shorts, exposing a few inches of her stomach where all three of the guys in the garage instantly noticed three thin cuts against her olive-toned skin. Jayde had been seemingly unaware that this was visible, until Tiny, the one without the mental filter, had commented, jokingly asking Joker if he had gotten bored with cutting strangers. Jayde had immediately flushed a light shade of pink, at which point Joker had taken it upon himself to explain rather shamelessly and descriptively that they had been mid-coitus the day before when she had asked him to cut her.
"I told her I was uncomfortable with it but she insisted..." he had said, joining Tiny and D-boy in a laugh while Jayde promptly gasped in embarrassment before disappearing back into the house.
The sun was now on the verge of setting as Joker sat in Tre's old room, in what was now his makeshift office, sitting at the desk against the far wall with a phone to his ear when he glanced over at the sound of the door being pushed open. Jayde stood in the way, one hand on her hip, the other rested on the knob of the door and she stared somewhat blankly at him as he turned in the chair to face her. He smirked back at her but only for a moment before he frowned into the phone.
"Well, figure out what it is you want then call me." he said to whomever had been speaking, before he ended the call abruptly and dropped the phone onto the desk with a thud. Turning to Jayde again, he sighed, bringing one hand up to beckon her over with a finger and he watched as she walked toward him, her face still blank until she stood in front of him. From her expression, Joker could tell that she was still feeling a bit embarrassed and maybe even a bit offended by what he had told Tiny and D-boy earlier so in an effort to smooth it over, he reached out with both hands to let them rest gently on either side of her hips. Then with a gentle tug, he pulled her closer until his nose was just about level with her bellybutton, before he used his thumbs to slowly lift her shirt, to once again expose those three thin cuts. The forefinger from his left hand reached out to lightly trace the shortest of them.
"Do they hurt?" he asked quietly, his eyes watching as his finger reached the line of her shorts. From above him, he felt Jayde shrug.
"Not really..." she murmured in reply, causing Joker to finally look up at her and blink slowly as he rested his chin on her stomach.
"Did they yesterday?" he asked again, his voice even more quiet in an effort to convey that he was actually asking whether or not she had enjoyed their foray into cutting as a part of their sex. At first, she hesitated but merely shrugged again a moment later, her gaze drifting off from where she had previously been meeting his eyes.
"N-not really...I mean...it didn't at first..." she stammered somewhat awkwardly, as if nervous her answer would disappoint him or even make him a bit annoyed. However instead, Joker merely fought back a grin and cleared his throat slightly as he linked his hands behind her back, lowering his head to place a light kiss on her cut, healing stomach.
"Would you want me to do it again?" he asked a third question against her skin, this time with his voice a bit more level, hoping Jayde would give him a straight answer although Joker already knew what it would be. He just wanted her to feel comfortable enough to tell him honestly, and as he looked up at her, he found Jayde with a small, sheepish grin on her face. She shrugged yet again but kept her eyes on his as she shook her head in the slightest of motions. Joker smirked in reply, using his hands to pull her down onto his lap so she could sit sideways against his chest. "You got it, kiddo."
It grew quiet between them for some time, the only sound in the house coming from the dryer in the distant laundry room, and as Jayde half-sat, half-lay there against Joker's chest with her forehead against his neck, she sighed heavily, watching her finger trace a light pattern across his t-shirt. Against her, Joker was equally at ease with his head lowered, his eyes fixed blankly on some spot on the carpet until he took a deep breath in through his nose, exhaling a moment later as he brought one hand up to take a hold of hers on his chest.
A good amount had changed between them over the past two years, but one thing that had not was the way Joker did not necessarily like to be petted. Unless she was scratching his back or playing with his hair, he did not particularly like for Jayde to sit there and touch him lovingly for long periods at a time. It had nothing to do with her or the fact that she was touching him, but rather a matter of Joker's personal taste. He was never exactly rude about it and would never really grow irritated by it, but he would gently make it known to her that he had had enough by either taking her hand in his or moving in a small way. And to his delight and relief, Jayde seemed to always understand this as she never got offended by it.
So with her small hand now wrapped in his larger one, Jayde sighed comfortably against his chest as she now watched his long fingers wrestle softly with her shorter ones. From the way his opposite knee had started to bounce, Jayde could tell he was thinking about something and was obviously considering speaking, but as she had learned to do, she remained quiet and still, patiently allowing him to come out with it on his own time. And as was usual, he spoke up a few moments later.
"I killed a man and his wife yesterday." he stated in a bald but quiet confession. Jayde felt her stomach clench slightly but she stayed quiet, hoping he was about to go on and explain why he had felt the need to tell her about this. A few heavy seconds later, he continued. "I killed his wife first and-..." Jayde's eyebrows began to furrow against his neck. It was very unlike him to discuss a killing since he knew it unnerved her slightly but again, she remained quiet, knowing he would not have brought it up if it hadn't actually been on his mind...something else that was very unlike him. "-and once she was dead, he begged me to kill him too."
At this, Jayde readjusted her head against his shoulder, hoping to appear as though she had just been getting comfortable, although she had really just wanted to nudge his jaw with her nose affectionately. After another silent moment, she moved her fingers to link them with his and still his constant fidgeting with her fingers in a bout of uncharacteristic awkwardness. She sighed against his chest.
"Well..." she started, wondering how she could explain this to him. "There are some people who just...don't want to live without the person they love. Sometimes...love runs that deeply-..." Here she paused, but continued when she felt him stiffen against her slightly. "-I guess."
"That's what he said too, I just-..." he paused, clearing his throat. "I guess I just don't understand-..." His voice then trailed off as though he could practically hear the way Jayde's heart had just sunk down into the pit of her stomach. Would he be perfectly able to continue on with his life without her? Without even shedding a tear or a feeling of sadness? In an effort to end this rather awkward conversation, Jayde sat up slowly to stretch her arms up over her head.
"I'm gonna-...I'm gonna go make some dinner, are you-...?" she went to ask but Joker was already nodding, turning his head to glance at his computer screen.
"Yeah, I'll be out in a few-..."
And with that, Jayde left the room, beyond anxious to be away from what had turned rapidly into a rather touchy, awkward conversation.
With Jayde now out of the room, Joker turned to the desk, sighing heavily as he placed his face in his hands to rub his eyes. The previous conversation had not turned out anywhere near how he had meant it to and the way Jayde had just practically slunk from the room with her proverbial tail between her legs made him want to kick himself. It was not often, in fact downright rare that he discuss one of his murders with her as by now, he had learned that it was not particularly one of her favorite topics to discuss, which he respected, but there had been something about what that man had said that had gotten to Joker. Perhaps it had been the utter hopelessness he had noticed in the man's eyes after he had watched his wife die, perhaps it had been the way he had said 'a freak like you wouldn't understand', or perhaps it was just...well, Joker wasn't really sure what it could be. He had thought talking, or rather stammering awkwardly to Jayde about it would have helped him figure it out, but his words had seemingly only offended her or hurt her feelings or...something.
It was times like this when Joker really missed Tre. It had been nine, almost ten months since his best friend's untimely death and not a day went by he didn't think of him, or something random would remind him of something funny he once said. If he had been there, Joker would have asked him what was making him feel so weird about that man's words or why what he had just said to Jayde had hurt her feelings and Tre, like the black sage that he was, would have explained in a way that would have been easy for Joker to understand. And yet he was not there...so Joker was left on his own to figure things out.
Perhaps he should just go on, pretend that conversation never happened, continue on with his plan of testing Jayde to see just how deeply her patience with him ran. If there was one thing he was great at doing, besides the obvious, it was changing the subject and pretending that something awkward had not happened. So with that plan set firmly in his mind, he stood up and took a deep breath to erase those pesky, confusing thoughts from his brain.
Out in the kitchen, Jayde was standing at the stove, cooking something that smelled amazing so Joker hopped up onto the counter to watch. She glanced up at him but did not keep her eyes there for long before she turned to the sink to rinse an empty pan out. Joker took another deep breath.
"So..." he started, wondering if asking this next question might be his worst idea of the day. He continued anyway, figuring he might as well find out. "If I was to have...sexual intercourse with someone that...wasn't you..." he paused, trying hard not to grin when Jayde suddenly spun to face him, a dangerous expression on her face. "-that would be considered 'cheating'...right?"
At this, Jayde's hand met her hip and that expression deepened. "Yes, why?" she asked testily, her eyes narrowed and focused hard on his as he shrugged, holding up his hands.
"Relax, I haven't, I was just clarifying." he explained, although as Jayde's eyes began to squint, he grinned, shrugging again, more deeply. A moment later, she turned from him to continue rinsing the pan and Joker went on, hopping down from the counter to go stand next to her with his back to the sink so he could see her face. "But let's just say-...I did happen to...'cheat'...What would you do?"
Without missing a beat, without even pausing to look up from the pan, Jayde answered,
"I'd strangle you in your sleep with a dirty sock."
At this, Joker burst into laughter, doubling slightly as Jayde finally allowed a tiny grin onto her face, however after a few moments of watching him laugh, she continued, once he had started to quiet down.
"The only way I'd be alright with you having sex with someone else was if I was there and involved."
The kitchen grew quiet within a split-second and Jayde looked up when beside her, Joker's face had just gone from laughing to curious in the most obvious way possible.
"Wait, wait, wait...hold on..." he started, but paused to shake his head slightly as though trying to rid his ears of water. "Are you saying-..." he had been about to continue to ask if she had really meant what he thought she did but Jayde cut across him, nodding her head.
"I'm saying if you really get to the point where you wanted it from someone else, I'd be willing to do it with you...and yes, I am talking about a threesome." she clarified, but as Joker laughed again and leaned down to kiss her, she pulled her head back and held up one wet, soapy finger in his face. "But if you cheat on me...I will kill you."
At this, Joker's grin expanded, stretching his scars into foolish proportions and he reached up, wrapping his fingers around her wrist to pull her hand away from his face so he could glare lovingly into her eyes from mere inches.
"You're perfect."
"I know."
Jayde's test had been aced.
Dinner had been wonderfully filling and it seemed, by having the previous conversation, Joker's attempts to smooth over the more awkward talk from earlier had not been in vain as Jayde seemed to have fallen back into her usual, content and happy mood. This change of attitude even went so far as to cause her to leave the remaining dishes from dinner in the sink to be rinsed in the morning and instead, she joined Joker in the living room after she had taken the now toasty warm clothes out of the dryer.
The TV had been turned on and as Jayde stepped over toward the couch, where Joker was now laying on his back, stretched out, she sighed contentedly through her nose. Joker glanced up from the show he had been watching but only to groan comfortably as Jayde lay down on her stomach along his lanky, recumbent form and adjusted herself against his chest so the top of her head could fit just perfectly beneath his chin. Both Joker and Jayde hummed quietly in unison.
Over time, they had tried sitting on the couch together numerous, different ways, from Jayde sitting up with his head in her lap, to Joker sitting up with Jayde's head on his knee, to both sitting up, to both somehow awkwardly laying down across from each other and it seemed through trial and error, they had discovered that this was the way they both liked it best. Jayde's eyes would always slide closed once Joker had linked his hands together across her back and it was common for her to fall asleep within minutes of laying down atop him. However, that night, she was not tired as the conversation from before dinner, in the office remained in the back of her mind, floating there like some pesky gnat that needed a good swatting. She did not know how to bring this up without things growing awkward again so she started somewhere else, in a light, quiet but playful tone.
"You were mean to me today..." she purred against his warm chest, grinning to herself from under his chin as he grunted a laugh.
"I know..." he answered, turning his head from the tv to look at her, in turn causing Jayde to push herself up onto her elbow against his shoulder, so she could peer down at his eyes. He blinked placidly, a tiny smirk pulling upwards on the top corners of his scars. "Can you ever forgive me?" he then asked in what could almost be considered a sarcastic tone. Jayde rolled her eyes and moved to put her head back down but Joker reached up, stopping her by catching both of her lips together with his, his hand moving to slide beneath her hair to the back of her neck.
As usual, Jayde melted into him as he kissed her, wondering how he managed to be an annoying jerk all day then always end it by being impossibly sweet and almost romantic, or at least what he considered romantic. Vaguely, Jayde then wondered if she would really rather have it any other way...She decided that answer was no.
If there was one thing the Joker had taught her, it was that the answers to the riddles and problems in life typically presented themselves in a series of opportune moments, most of them so obvious there was no way to miss it and as Jayde pulled away from his lips ever so slightly, she exhaled slowly through her nose, reaching up with her left hand to tuck a green wavy tendril behind his ear. Her eyes had only opened slightly, but she could see that Joker still had his eyes closed and seemed to be basking in her touch for the moment. She let her thumb lightly trace the top half of his curvy, right scar.
"Just so you know-..." she started. "I don't think I'd want to live without you.." Here, she paused, but as Joker's eyes slowly started to open, his eyebrows arching in what appeared to be slight confusion, Jayde continued, glancing down at the neckline of his shirt awkwardly. "I mean, if something happened to you-.." she went on, but Joker cut her off abruptly, using his hand at the back of her neck to pull her back down to his lips, where he kissed her gently, in an effort to explain that he understood what she was saying. Jayde responded to him; she knew he loved her and that was all that mattered.
After pulling away, Jayde smiled down at him as she sat up on his stomach and with a heavy sigh, he reached up to brush his thumb across her moistened bottom lip. The expression in his eyes was one that Jayde had only seen a handful of times. He appeared slightly frustrated, maybe even a little confused and for the life of her, Jayde wished he would just tell her what he was thinking. However, instead, he blinked and the expression was gone, disappearing back into his eyes as though it had never been there. He smirked up at her.
"You going to bed?" he asked in relation to the way she had just sat up and Jayde nodded, glancing down to where her finger was lightly smoothing out a wrinkle in his t-shirt.
"Are you?" she asked rather hopefully but Joker shook his head.
"No, I think I'm gonna read." he explained, then motioned with his head toward the hallway leading to the bedroom. "You go on. I'll be in there before you know it..." he then added in that cunningly charming voice with which he was so adept. Jayde grinned somewhat halfheartedly and leaned down to kiss him one more time before she stood up and left the room, yawning widely as she went.
Fourteen...fifteen...sixteen...seventeen...eighteen...
The moment Joker reached twenty, his ears picked up the faint, distant sound of the tv being turned on in his bedroom and in an instant, he was up off the couch, pulling his cell phone from his pocket as he quickly journeyed through the kitchen and over to Tre's old room. The door shut silently behind him and after flipping through the contacts on his phone, he located the number he had needed, pressed the green button and was now holding it between his ear and shoulder. While it rang, he walked to Tre's bathroom where he opened the medicine cabinet, only for his eyes to begin scanning the rows of small, clear, glass bottles, but before he could pull the one he needed from the shelf, there was a soft rustling on the other end of the call.
"Hey, Jay! How are ya, baby?" Maggie practically shouted into the phone. Joker smirked, turning his back to the bathroom counter.
"I got a question for ya, Maggie-May..."
A/N: If you know what's coming, KEEP IT TO YOURSELF! AND PLEASE LEAVE A REVIEW! (the more reviews, the faster I write) -QoM
