Take Me In: Part II
"Ya think he's a night or morning person?" Harley ran her hand across a pillar and pulled it back with a grimace of disgust when a sprinkling of dust spread through the air. A million tiny diamonds floated in the light before scattering.
The Joker straightened up and wiped his mouth, his grin lingering. "Let's hope he's a night owl."
In the dim morning light falling in from the tall fluorescent windows, he looked angelic with the religious statue behind him. His skin glowed faintly and eyes were bright crimson. A fallen angel with a certain appetite. "Nothing's a like birdie for breakfast."
Harley admired his form for another moment before stepping over the body on the altar floor. With narrowing eyes she looked down at the body who squirmed slightly. The blood had spread all over the front of his shirt but dried into clumps and his wounds were starting to close together, ever so slowly.
She kicked the ground once. "Such a surprise for Batsy. The greatest hunter of them all, and his own adopted son –" She burst out laughing and the Joker followed, cackling hysterically, and they almost bent over in their shared glee. He looked at the body.
"Isn't that the greatest joke of them all? Come on. Admit it's funny."
The boy moved weakly, voice raspy and dry. "Help me…"
Harley imitated his voice, pitched high. She knelt down next to him, balancing on her stilettos and smiling widely as she heard him gasping. "Let's see what happens now. Is the big hero's gonna kill you too? Or do ya get a free pass to roam the streets like a zombie?"
She stroked Robin's matted hair, almost gently, seeing the look in her partner's eyes when she focused her attention on the boy. The Joker stepped over and reached out a hand and she took it, falling into his arms. They swirled around as if they were the stars of a dance show in the rainbow light from the windows.
She could see the venom lingering on his lips and she dove in to lick it away, shuddering at the taste. It made her entire body ignite and she let her tongue press against his fangs.
It brought memories back, it always did; she could never forget the sensation of The Virus' first contact with her body. She found herself wrapping arms and legs around the Joker, kissing him aggressively at the memory, growing feral by the moment, embedding her sharp nails into the back of his head. He immediately responded with a growl, trying to keep her from ripping his throat open. With her legs around his waist, he slammed her against the nearest wall in the church, strengthened by the boy's blood flowing in his body.
Harley laughed at the feeling of the back of her head slamming against the stone. She buried her hands in that green hair with more force than before. She didn't remember being human, but she remembered The Virus. How it had coursed its way through her bloodstream, in a thick sensation that was almost pleasurable, and she wanted to kill Robin right there; this belonged to her and Puddin. Something ancient that had been passed to him and now to her, her only. She felt more than heard her partner's groan when she managed to draw blood from his skin.
The young Bat apprentice had been writhing in pain for the last few hours. Sweat ran down his forehead and his lips were dry, when his eyes finally fluttered open, bright red. He grasped his throat, too weak to move.
The Joker turned his attention away from Harley to look at him. Robin gasped for the one thing his being now craved, his gaze involuntary resting on the clowns, and Harley's bared pulse point. The Joker took her hand as he led her towards the exit of the church.
Harley took a theatrical bow, all teeth and giggles. "Bye-bye!"
.
.
Barely a year earlier, Harleen Quinzel had been standing above a chemical vat, declaring her faith as his thumb stroked her bottom lip. Seeing the glimpse in his green eyes, the dark streak of crimson, knowing that it came from someone he had fed from, only made her resolve strengthen. She had proved herself enough, declared her devotion.
I want to be like you.
A devotion that he had fulfilled that night when he sank into the side of her throat. She had closed her eyes to take him in completely. He had grown harsher, unrelenting, drinking and giving at the same time, and she had been encased in a haze as he carried her away from ACE.
When Harleen came around later, it was past midnight and she was back in her apartment.
The first thing she had felt when she woke up, was the scratching heat on the inside of her skin, and the fact that she was alone. She ran around her apartment, looking for him, but found nothing but her own shadows. The Virus must have been incubating since several hours; her heart was beating hotly, painfully, as if it was completing a race against time. As if something physical was attached to her heart and growing in size and temperature.
Harleen turned over a bottle of wine on the table, that she had opened in an attempt to soothe the ache in her throat. She pressed the call signal on her phone, grating her teeth as the empty call signals rung in her ear. She threw the phone against the opposite wall with more strength than she intended and there was a shattering sound as the pieces fell to the floor.
She paced back and forth in her bedroom. She sat with her arms around her body and rocked back and forth, whimpering in anxiety, before crawling back, finding one of her shirts and systematically tearing it apart. The blue color stung her eyes.
There was a bottomless hole in her stomach, and she was hungry.
She tried to make sense of the last hours – days – to collect the pieces. She had stopped a car. A flashing purple car – the sting of her palms when she slammed them into the hood. She had made an oath. She had promised, yelled, taken the plunge. She had been asking, pleading, show me what you are, and he had – what? She tried to remember, only to recall spreading warmth, a pain across her throat.
Confusion mixed with something white-hot behind her hands and she clawed at her own arm. She had never been able to puncture the skin before, but now she saw the pink tears in the skin and the dark droplets that collected upon it, sliding down her white skin in delicious rivers.
Saliva filled her mouth, and a violent urge to bite.
She put the arm to her mouth and sucked, eyes fluttering closed and a strangled moan leaving her lips, feeling the reassuring warmth. All the world's good tastes concentrated into one, and even though it made her stomach turn, it was euphoric.
Then she curled up on the floor in fetal position, still sucking at her forearm, feeling the strange prickling at her skin. It tore and ached. The blood in her mouth soothed her for the time being, but there was an obsessive worry in the pit of her belly, she wanted more. She mumbled to herself, shakily, hiccuping once, licking the wound clean carefully. Her teeth felt sharper than before. Only brushing past the skin felt like small needles.
By the time her energy had faulted and she obsessively started gnawing at her skin again, a shadow filled her entire window. A flash of purple fabric, and her window was open, bringing in a torrent of fresh night air, filled to the brim with sensation of smells. Her stomach turned.
The gesture was there in her window sill, his eyes glowing. Harleen giggled like an intoxicated child at the notion that someone was at her window – a green-haired angel, perhaps a superhero. To pick her up and fly her away into the night.
She pushed herself to sit up. The world was hazy and black flickered behind her eyelids – she had no idea of how much blood she had lost.
The man stood there and he was grinning at her.
"Long time no see, Harls."
A violent need surged up from the bottom of her stomach to the top of her lungs that suddenly scraped dry. She fought back the urge to vomit again.
You left me, she wanted to scream, you disappeared, but it came out as a choked snarl. Another cramp from somewhere inside made her hands turn into claws against the floor. Her nails left clear imprints in the wood. She was trembling, sweat running cold down her back, her breathing strained.
Then, she saw him fully, in the light coming from the streetlamps outside, his open coat and the chiseled grey skin underneath, his sturdy pale neck with its tattoos, a throat with a warm pulse point, soft skin that just waited for her to sink into.
It wasn't the fact that he seemed disinterested in her state of being, even smiling down at her, while he was so completely open and close to her – he was teasing her with his body, his blood, and he had left her to thirst.
Harleen got to her feet, as the room spun around her. Her body was unsteady like a drunken zombie, yet full of lean muscle and power when she surged forward and threw herself at him.
She heard his laughter in her ears when she tackled him down from the window and they collapsed against the wall in the dark room. He felt so fragile beneath her, she was certain she could crush his bones. Her mouth searched for that neck with her teeth bared, and she wouldn't give in until she had it. She snarled as she wrestled him, hands burrowing into his forearms, until he threw her off with a grunt. He was stronger than she had anticipated.
She charged at him again, relentless, until she managed to pin him to the floor and straddled him. Her mouth didn't hit the intended mark when his fingers suddenly grasped her hair with iron strength. Pain spread like a thousand needles down her scalp and her teeth sank into a spot right above his collarbone.
His hand was tight in her hair but she didn't care, pressing their bodies together as she drank greedily, forgetting everything but her victory.
She was taking him, finally.
His fingers twitched and relaxed slightly in her hair, as he grunted from the effort. Desultory images flowed into her, like strange memories, through the thick warmth in her mouth.
He groaned as she finally pulled away from him, dripping blood all over his skin and crocodile coat. She exhaled one time, feeling a kind of relaxation and fullness spread through her. Content and euphoric, she slowly became aware of how hard he was against her and her own face covered in his blood.
Then she realized what she had done and the euphoria turned cold.
Harleen backed away from him, crawled away from his body and into the opposite corner of the room. She placed her arms around her knees. He was still lying on the floor, legs and arm spreads in the way he had given in to her attack.
She had attacked him. After promising how she would do anything for him, die for him, live for him – she could have killed him.
Her tongue licked her lips clean and she stared unblinkingly at him, her new eyes catching every change in the room, every dust particle. The scent of blood and him was overwhelming, dizzying.
She couldn't move, stuck like a scared kitten, when she saw him rise to his feet in one movement and dust his coat off, as if it would help against the blood stains. His fingers tapped against his wound lightly, and she saw it had started to change – almost fade.
His eyes were wild when he approached her with a few steps. She followed the movements of his boots, crunching over the mess she had made before, and his dark eyes glimmered with amusement. He crouched in front of her and she smelled the blood thickly in the air.
"Ya have to finish what ya started, Harley."
There was a threat there somewhere, but she wasn't afraid of him. The feeding had left her feeling like she could throw him across the room if she pleased, and even the sight of his sharp teeth, glinting in the light, only made something warm run down her spine.
She wanted to feel those teeth, she realized as the realization prickled her skin.
She had never felt like this before, the presence of a man who could take her on, who could present something to her she had never seen before. Someone who was a match for her, an opponent of equal ground. Not a college boy left crying in the wake of her betrayal, nor a middle-aged professor with wife and kids who kept coming up with excuses for taking advantages, when she was the one taking the real advantage.
When this man had bit her, she had been pleading for it, asking to become a part of whatever his life was. She had found someone who was her own mirror image.
Harleen stared at his face as the impatience started hinting on it, before leaning in and kissing him hard, pushing her tongue between his lips. He was hers now, and she had just proclaimed it, with her stomach full of his blood, her face and shirt covered in it, and – heavens, his little groan at the touch.
Then, he pushed her away almost violently.
She was left even colder than before, staring at his face, his crouched and tense body.
"Mistah J," she breathed.
"I wanna," he drawled, "hurt ya."
"Do it." She presented her neck to him, anything that he could take she wanted him to take. "Anything."
He grasped her wrist in his hand, it would have bruised her before but she hardly felt it now, bringing it up to his mouth and inhaling.
"Prove it," he said, keeping steady eye contact as he sliced the skin of her wrist open again, all the way from the heel of her palm down to the elbow. Harleen knew what a wound like that would lead to, but she made no resistance, letting him lick it all up way as the blood flowed, drenching his front.
Her skin seemed to be patching itself up again, incredibly slowly but enough to keep her from bleeding out. Yet, she felt a sense of lightheadedness strike her.
His arms encircled her and he lifted her up into his arms, to have better access to her skin. Her consciousness was everywhere and nowhere at the same time, fluttering away and stretching over the dark city then back to his teeth, how he worked her skin over from the inside out, and she realized what he was doing. Leaving his mark all over her, every inch of her skin, with each sharp stinging bite.
Every surge of pain made something tighten inside of her, spreading down her spine and across her hips, focusing in the center, and she pressed closer to him. He grunted against her and she wrapped her arms around his neck, to cradle his head as the desire grew. It was physically painful to have the layers of clothing between them, even as he systematically tore it away if it came in his way.
Every time his lips left her, she yearned to have him back, and she felt her own strength falter momentarily, as he took the blood that she had digested before – they could go on like this forever. Taking and taking back. Giving and giving back, mixing up their own essence over and over. It made a delirious smile stretch across her face and she was barely aware of it when he suddenly pressed his mouth against hers and kissed her, hard.
Warm blood spilled down her throat, almost made her cough, and she swallowed greedily, unable to keep from tearing at his coat.
"Please," she gasped," hands grasping at him, "Please, Mistah J…"
He growled against the skin right underneath her left breast, nipping at the skin.
His tongue made a trail down to her naval, then continued lower to the hem of her jeans.
"Do it," she breathed through her teeth. Chuckling, he slipped three fingers underneath the fabric and into her heat, fucking her with his hand. She shook all over, thrusting back against him as her lips parted, making a guttural sound as his other hand circled her clit, letting his rings push into her. Coating his hand in slick, she came completely apart in front of him. He lowered her onto the floor and brought his hand to his mouth as she watched.
"If you stop now, Mistah J, I'll kill you."
The promise of a challenge glimpsed in his eyes for a moment before he caught her lips between his teeth. He ripped her jeans away without any effort, and she spread her legs while clinging to him, intoxicated by the sense of blood and the Virus taking over her body.
He thrust into her suddenly, hard and deep, locking their gazes together. When he started moving in rough movements, the scratching inside her skin, the heat and never-quenched thirst exploded into one searing sensation. He chuckled into her ear, breathing fast and hard as she moved with him, locking her legs around his waist.
"We're already dead, my dear. You'll gonna die again very soon."
.
.
As the day's colors faded away into pitch black night, Harley rested on her lover's arm in bed. His tongue ran across a spot on her left wrist, that he held in his hands.
"Watcha think happens when Robin wants blood?" she mused.
She felt his teeth scrape the skin and he smiled wryly. "The killer bird strikes."
"Can't wait." She turned to kiss the side of his face as he pressed down into her skin.
A/N: Reviews are very appreciated!