Title: A Working Relationship
Pairing: Joker x Wendy
Theme Set: Beta
Timeline: Pre-OAV, mildly AUish.
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#01 – Walking
She's a child yet, he reminds himself sternly against the gritting of his own teeth when his personal assistant, newly twenty and yet to make it through her first day, gives another dismayed yelp when her shoe catches on a stray pile of books and sends her tumbling to the floor.
#02 – Waltz
But he's had a good deal of hope for Miss Wendy, Stephen Earhart's little girl, since her father brought her to the last Christmas party, and she went from stumbling in her unmercifully high-heeled sandals to following Elias through an effortless waltz; clearly, proper guidance can make something more of her than a pretty child.
#03 – Wishes
Ordinarily, she tells the other girls seriously after her first week, she likes Mr. Joker quite well; it's only sometimes, when finds herself smarting under the pain of bruised, scraped knees and his half-amused, half-disgusted expression, that she wishes fervently he would fall down the stairs, just once, and break his nose.
#04 – Wonder
Sometimes, he wonders briefly what her reaction would be if she knew how much time he spent pondering what that lanky, leggy little figure of hers must look like underneath prim black skirts and ugly vests; the rest of the time, her feminine modesty doesn't matter a bit.
#05 – Worry
No matter what Karen tells her, it is a problem, waking up breathless and drenched from inappropriate dreams about your boss; it just seems so horribly invasive of his privacy to imagine things like that, and she wonders what sort of person it makes her.
#06 – Whimsy
He has little use for such silliness, but he has to admit, when he drops by Halloween evening to find her in a few shreds of leaf-green lace and shimmery wings, that she makes an appealing little fairy – especially with that expression of wide-eyed horror and the deep flush creeping into her cheeks when she opens the door, sweets in hand.
#07 - Waste/Wasteland
The first time he invited her to join him for a cup of the steaming hot tea she brought in before trudging back to mountains of paperwork, she blushed, and stammered, and maybe fell just a little bit in love; when he added that she'd made too much and he didn't want to endure the horror of lukewarm or warmed over tea, she pouted.
#08 - Whiskey and rum
"You're the one who insisted on the Whisky Macs to shake off this cold in the first place, Wendy," he reminds her sternly through a badly clogged nose, hurrying on before she can protest that she meant one, not four; "Now, drink your silly rum thing."
#09 – War
She's just come back from a lunch date that didn't happen because bloody Ian couldn't be arsed to show up, so when Mr. Joker sits there, just waiting for her to trip over some of his clutter before starting in about how it's disgraceful for a grown woman to be so awkward, she shoots back without thinking that it's equally disgraceful, then, for a grown man to leave his office looking like a war zone.
#10 – Weddings
"Mr. Joker, that's more than I plan to spend on my own wedding dress!" she protests frantically when he carefully selects and hands her a little frock of pale blue silk – with a little white bow at the skirt, of course, because he has no use for girls who try to dress beyond their own age.
#11 – Birthday
"You have a birthday coming up, don't you?" he asks carelessly, already shoving her gently toward the dressing rooms despite her squeaks and sputters; "I'll need you at this dinner, and you can't come in one of your mother's cast-off skirt suits – or your little fairy costume – so why don't we call this an early gift?"
#12 – Blessing
When someone asks in a conspiratorial mutter if it isn't awfully inconvenient to have a silly child following him around at all times, he replies coolly, a flushed, adoring Wendy at his elbow, that she's been a blessing to their unit, and it's rather a nice change to have an employee that works for their pay.
#13 – Bias
"I don't think he said it because he likes staring at your bottom, Wendy," Yomiko finally says, after deep consideration, when the little blonde relates the bizarre exchange during a visit following a mission; "But…isn't that a good thing?" she adds, bewildered, when this only causes the younger girl to droop with visible disappointment.
#14 – Burning
It was one thing to just have naughty dreams about him, but this, waking up burning with something more potent than lust, from a dream of his arms around her warm and protective, is something else entirely, and she's bloody sure she doesn't like it.
#15 – Breathing
There was no one around to see him sprinting down the stairs after her, muttering frantic pleas the whole way down that he might find her still breathing, that his prediction hasn't come true and her clumsiness been the death of her; but now that he thinks about it, thinks how it might have looked, it worries him that it never occurred to him to check for onlookers.
#16 – Breaking
It worries him far more, though, the hairline cracks he can feel spreading through his resolve to never touch her, each time her shoe catches on something and sends her toppling to the ground, that shapely little backside on excellent display.
#17 – Belief
She knows that his only belief is in the power of human potential, and even though people are still good and kind in her world, she thinks his world must be a depressing place; but they have a system now – she never tells him when she prays for him, and he never tells her that he loves her all the more for her faith and her prayers.
#18 – Balloon
There was something about Mr. Joker's glare at her Just Because balloon from the nice boy in her building she's been out with a few times, that makes her not mind so much when he accidentally jabs it violently with a pen and pops it.
#19 – Balcony
She's over to learn the right way to water his plants while he's away, but she's gotten distracted by the big, gorgeous balcony – it's lovely out here, and he's never even home to enjoy it – and the view of the sunset – I'll bet the sunrise is even nicer – and now by his arms crushing her close and his lips on hers.
#20 – Bane
"We'll talk about this when I get back," he tells her coolly before shoving her out the door to walk home, and for the next two weeks, the promise of that conversation looms in both their minds.
#21 – Quiet
"You're awfully quiet today," he observes with a kind smile on his first day back, and as an extra kindness, doesn't point out that she's also far clumsier than usual, and watching him with eyes wide and panicked as a spooked woodland creature.
#22 – Quirks
That night, while lying awake and trying to will away the effects of the several warm, ecstatic kisses he received before he pushed her gently out of his lap and took her home, he makes a mental checklist of which charming little quirks are generally harmless, and which ones will have to go before she can be taken seriously.
#23 – Question
"But when is he going to shag me?!" the little blonde wails when Yomiko points out happily that she's never seen Mr. Joker in such a good mood, and he clearly loves her very much; and now both girls are bright red under the curious, amused eyes of the entire coffee shop.
#24 – Quarrel
It was supposed to be for her own good, waiting a little while before moving beyond goodnight kisses and little smiles; but for his own part, he has absolutely no quarrel with it when she corners him in his office, after everyone else has gone home, tries to shove him down on his desk, fails miserably, and starts tugging eagerly at his clothes.
#25 – Quitting
"I don't see why that's necessary," Mr. Gentleman says meditatively in response to Joker's clipped, embarrassed assurance that he'll have her transferred to another unit by the end of the week; "Be realistic, Joker - training a new assistant to read your mind would be far more trouble for all of us than a romantic entanglement with the one you've got."
#26 – Jump
When he finds her half climbing out her third floor flat's largest window, trying to scrub off a winter's worth of dirt, he approaches very quietly – because with her soapy hands and precarious position, startling her could be fatal – catches her by the waist, drags her back inside, and shouts at her for doing something so dangerous.
#27 – Jester
"Mr. Joker, if I can make it through an entire day without tripping over anything, will you tell me if your name has anything to do with clowns?"
#28 – Jousting
"Perhaps you ought to consider a safer sport, Wendy," he suggests hastily at her dreamy, slightly slurred comment that jousting must be awfully exciting; "How about chess?"
#29 – Jewel
It's around his birthday that he starts to worry that Mr. Gentleman's twinkling, amused suspicion is true, and his pretty, golden-haired lover is gaining more influence over him than he'd like, when he looks from the ridiculous rhinestone-studded cufflinks, to her hopeful, beaming smile, and clips them in place without a word.
#30 – Just
"I think you ought to be fair, Wendy – the braids certainly don't make you look older, and I've heard my age advanced by a decade or two before," he told her soothingly around twitching lips as she stomped the rest of the way to the park because a kindly old lady just told Mr. Joker that his daughter is such a pretty girl.
#31 – Smirk
"Well, he certainly won't do it again, will he?" Joker points out with a little smirk when Wendy exclaims, horrified, that accidentally dumping scalding hot tea in the man's lap, just because the balding old goat implied mean things about her and how she came to have such a good job, was a severe overreaction.
#32 – Sorrow
When he found out that she came into work today despite a phonecall late last night about her mother, he ordered her home; when she begged him, voice shaking and lashes teardamp, to let her stay because she couldn't bear to be alone, he drove her himself, then spent the night sitting up with her until she fell into an exhausted, uneasy sleep.
#33 – Stupidity
Wendy swears up and down to the other girls at work, and to Yomiko, and even to that Miss Sumiregawa that Yomiko's so close with, that Mr. Joker never tries to make her feel stupid – it just happens sometimes, because he's so smart.
#34 – Serenade
"You might have warned me that we'd be serenaded this morning, Wendy," he grumbles amid the wild giggling of the little barely-clad, pillow-creased blonde at his side and the joyous song of an entire flock of birds just outside her bedroom window; "I'd have brought a rifle."
#35 – Sarcasm
Sometimes, it takes him a few stunned moments of wondering if anyone can really be that naïve, to recall that his Wendy actually has quite a strong grasp on the concept of sarcasm.
#36 – Sordid
It was bound to happen: the extra spice of excitement thrown into the pot by the necessity of secrecy has started to wear off, leaving her feeling cheap, tawdry, and ridiculous.
#37 – Soliloquy
And she manages to keep it to herself fairly well, this needling discontentment and humiliation, until he shows up unexpectedly at her flat in the middle of her impromptu drinking session, and caught off-guard, she lets everything out in one angry burst, concluding by flinging a neatly-typed request for transfer at him.
#38 – Sojourn
"I'm afraid that won't be feasible; I don't relish the idea of my wife scurrying to fulfill another man's every whim," he says gravely, and then smiles and sends her to pack for a weekend by the shore – if anyone asks why his bride-to-be is tearstained and reeking of liquor, he'll just say that she didn't like the wedding dress he chose for her.
#39 – Share
Sharing his flat with her is a minor adjustment – because they've already spent the last several years in far closer quarters – but her cats are a different matter, and it takes all her wide-eyed pleading to stop him from sending one flying out the window.
#40 – Solitary
So, to make it up to him, she makes a point to load Jinx and Gusto into the car every Sunday and give him a quiet day alone – until the third Sunday, when he asks reproachfully where she's been all day; after that, they just shut the cats in the laundry room and themselves in the bedroom.
#41 – Nowhere
"Are you sure it's not irritating, that you don't have anywhere to go to get away from me?" she asks fearfully, and he sighs and kisses the anxious little frown out of her forehead: "Wendy, the only irritating thing is when you ask me that every other day – otherwise, you're a very agreeable flatmate."
#42 – Neutral
It seems like no matter how many people they tell their good news to, there's still someone who hasn't heard yet, until they've lost count of how many times they've been heartily congratulated and pulled into firm handshakes and misty-eyed hugs; and while Mr. Joker is very good at keeping a neutral expression, Wendy is completely aware that she's grinning like an idiot every time.
#43 - Nuance
It's very nice to have a starry-eyed, warm-hearted, relentlessly optimistic little female around to brighten his day, but far more than that, it's very useful; he's learned to catch her little hints that there's more going on in her head than sunshine and happy songs, but not everyone has, and he's gotten some very useful information that way.
#44 - Near
Sometimes, he suspects that people give him too much credit - it's easy to appear organized and perfectly composed at all times when he has her to buzz industriously about and keep him that way.
#45 - Natural
She turns bright red and sheepish even before he's finished forming a frown, because she knows she's not supposed to do things like that at work, but it just feels so natural to kiss him goodbye before she leaves the room.
#46 - Horizon
"Now, did you marry me, or the view?" he chuckles gently behind her ear, arms twining around her waist, when he finds her on the balcony she's so enamoured with, gazing dreamily into the sunrise.
#47 - Valiant
His strengths have always been firmly entrenched with strategy and planning from the safety of an office, so when he says that letting himself love her is the bravest thing he's ever done, it doesn't have quite express just how terrifying it was to realize that so much of his happiness lay with a girl well known for being very sweet, but horribly awkward.
#48 - Virtuous
"It would take a woman to come up with something so stupid," he sighed, rolling his eyes and tracing the line of her shoulder gently through the sheet, when she asked plaintively if spending most of her time wanting desperately to tear his clothes off and drag him to bed made her disgusting and sinful, like Aunt Olivia told her.
#49 - Victory
They've just managed a three-hour stint of overtime without his being persuaded by her gentle coaxing to play, or her being tempted into said coaxing by the subtle scent of his hair, or the warmth of his skin through his shirt, or his smile when he finally caught onto her mood; and it's the first time they've lasted this long, so it feels like a major victory.
#50 – Defeat
But victory comes crashing down into defeat when she announces, annoyed, that her silly lacy red undies bunch up uncomfortably every time she falls down, so she's taking them off until they go home, and he offers kindly to help.
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End Notes: Two out of five! Well, okay, three out of five, since I've got the third theme set with these two ready to go too, but...yeah. Whoo. Go me.
This is my "fluffy pre-OAV AU Joker x Wendy" set, written mostly for the purposes of cheering me up on a bad day. I tried to keep it relatively IC, but I reallyreally didn't wnat to get into the Evil Plot stuff from the TV series. Because I wuvs me my NotSoNice!Joker x Cutesy!Wendy fluff.