Oh my god, it's been forever, hasn't it? Soooo sorry, everyone!! I'm going to try to keep writing, I swear it! I've been tied up with other things that have been begging for my attention… I have this tendency to obsess, and I obsess over one or two things at a time, so the Joker and Harley took a back seat for a while. But they're back in control, I think, so here I am!
This chapter is…. Long. I wanted to chop it in half somewhere but I couldn't find a place to end chapter 14 and carry it on to 15, so I just kinda kept going. Sorry, I don't like chapters to be too long, but here we are.
Characterization might be a bit off, as haven't written in a while. Will re-assess in a while and might end up re-writing. Less Joker POV this time, as his head is the more difficult to get into. But there's a little switch halfway through. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I don't own Mad Love, the Joker, or Harley Quinn. No sue, kthx. I is poor.
P.S. Many thanks once more to all the wonderful people who have reviewed! You're all so very kind and I really do appreciate it:)
Running in high heels wasn't as easy as it looked.
Harley bounded up the steps towards Arkham, a bundle of files clutched to her chest with one arm, the other hand scrambling to find the phone that buzzed in her purse.
She found it, finally, and lifted it to her ear just as it stopped ringing.
"Fuck!"
"Somethin' wrong, Dr. Quinzel?"
Harley stopped in the doorway to the Asylum and sighed, tucking her cellphone away. She gave the curious guard a tired smile.
"Just one of those mornings, Danny."
"Yeah? You don't look like you got much sleep, if you don't mind me sayin' it."
Harley winced slightly and tucked a stray lock of hair behind an ear. A stray lock? Unlike her, to say the least… she probably looked as if she'd just fallen off the back of a truck.
"Late night," she explained to the security guard as he helped her through the door with her files. "And I must have forgotten to set my alarm this morning, slept in, woke up like fifteen minutes ago. I feel like I'm still asleep."
The guard chuckled. "You look it! Why didn't you just ring and come in late? Got a session this morning?"
Harley nodded. "With the Joker." She yawned, covering her mouth with a hand. "Damnit…"
"Grab a coffee before your session, Dr Quinzel," Danny told her with a pat on the shoulder. "Don't worry too much about being late…"
Harley snorted indelicately. "I wouldn't be all there anyway, if I didn't," she said. "Thanks for the help, Danny."
"Anytime. Have a good day, Dr Quinzel."
Harley quickened pace again, racing down the hallways as fast as she dared, dodging orderlies and almost running right into Joan Leland. The other doctor accepted her stammered apology and handed her a cup of coffee.
"Here, take mine," she said with a smile. "You take milk, right?"
"I'll take anything this morning," Harley said gratefully, sipping at the hot liquid with almost tangible relief. "God, Joan, you're a lifesaver."
"Anytime," said the brunette. "I'm glad I ran into you, I rang you earlier – "
"Yes, sorry, I was rushing and I couldn't reach my phone – "
Joan waved a hand in dismissal, her lips curving slightly in amusement. "That's okay, I'm just glad you made it in. About our meeting this afternoon, I'd like to push it back, maybe to tomorrow if we can't do it this evening…. There's quite a bit of trouble about Fries and…"
Harley wrinkled her nose in irritation, wondering how the other woman could talk on so calmly while time was ticking away. She was meant to be in session! Didn't that mean anything to anyone?
Joan paused, and Harley leapt. "Sure, Joan, that's fine, just give me a call or leave a message at my office. Sorry but I really have to get going, I have a session…"
Joan laughed gently, and rested a hand on Harley's arm. "Calm down, Harley. You're not late for an exam or anything, alright? There's no need to go running about like that. The guards will wait with the Joker until you get there."
The muscle under Harley's right eye twitched slightly. She forced a smile.
"Hard to stop rushing," she admitted. "Just rolled out of bed a quarter hour ago. My mind still hasn't worked out what's going on."
"Drink your coffee," Joan said kindly. "And don't run, you'll spill it."
Grumbling to herself, Harley stepped into the elevator and, after a bit of thought and minor juggling of files and coffee, pushed the appropriate button with a foot. Being flexible had its advantages.
The doors slid open, and Harley set off down the Rogues' Gallery, oblivious to the men and women in the cells to each side. She turned her head just once, to glance into the Joker's cell.
Not there. Fuck.
Would he be angry? He wouldn't be angry, would he? He was angry at other people, but he'd never been mad to her.
Harley, you stupid fool! You are not special!
She quickened her pace as she neared the session room. Three men stood just inside the doorway: the Joker, flanked by two guards.
"I'm here!" she called, waving a coffee-laden hand as she raced down the hall. Her next comment turned into a shriek as she tripped in her high heels and stumbled into the room, landing in a heap of papers on the floor.
The Joker looked down at the young woman who, trying hard not to cry, was scrambling for the papers that had tumbled from her files. Through great, inhuman force of will, he managed to keep from laughing. He nudged one of the guards in the ribs.
"Well, Chaz? Aren't you going to help the Doc with her things?"
Charlie scowled down at the Joker. "Sorry, Dr Quinzel," he said, turning sympathetic eyes to the young doctor. "We really can't – "
"It's alright, Charlie," Harley said, not looking up as she shoved some papers haphazardly into a file. "I understand."
The Joker frowned. "Help the girl, Charlie," he said, his voice tightening. "I'll stand here like a good little boy with your friend here, I promise."
Charlie shook his head, impassive.
"Or, you could get your damn paws off me and I'll help her."
Charlie's friend gave his colleague a grin and released the Joker's arm to cross the floor and close the session-room door.
"C'mon, Charlie," the man said, "we're here, we're armed. He wants to help, let him help."
The Joker's eyes glinted as the taller guard sighed and shrugged a shoulder.
"Fine. But if anyone asks it was your idea."
The Joker shook off Charlie's grip with some satisfaction. He reached up to massage his arm a moment, pouting, before setting his shoulders and crouching to help his Dr. Harlequin gather her things.
Paperwork? Damn… he had been hoping that the files were on him, or some of the other criminals within Arkham's walls. No such luck. His sharp eyes caught nothing of even slight interest.
Harley reached over to take a piece of paper from his hand with a weak smile.
"Thank you," she said pointedly, and he released the page.
"Can't blame a man for trying," he said, picking up her now empty coffee cup and crushing it in his hand.
"I could, but I won't," she said. "They're not very interesting, anyway. Just some paperwork. Bet you were hoping they were about you, huh?"
"Never crossed my mind."
She chuckled, stacking her files and clutching them to her chest as she stood. She gave the Joker a tired but genuine smile.
"Thanks for the help."
The Joker waved a gloved hand dismissively, but the gesture was interrupted as a larger hand grabbed his wrist in a tight grip.
"C'mon, clown," Charlie's pal said, clamping his own mitt on the Joker's shoulder. "Playtime's over."
The Joker narrowed his eyes, distinctly annoyed and frustrated that he couldn't do anything about it. Instead, he amused himself by making lewd comments on the shape of his shrink's ass as she bent to set her files on the desk.
"Shut your mouth, clown!" said Charlie, pushing the Joker onto the psychiatrist's couch with more force than was strictly necessary.
"Oh, I don't mind."
Charlie looked up in surprise, pausing in the act of strapping a restraint about the Joker's wrist. Harley, looking more attractive than ever in her slightly dishevelled state, gave the guards a soft smile that deepened as her eyes drifted to the pale form of her patient.
"What was that, Dr. Quinzel?"
"The comments. I don't mind." She shrugged. "I got used to that sort of thing a long time ago."
Charlie continued to stare at her. "But… he's insulting you, Dr Quinzel! You shouldn't let him do that, you're his doctor and you're in charge, after all. He shouldn't disrespect you."
"Disrespect me?" Dr. Harlequin raised a pale eyebrow, commendably together despite the wrinkles in her skirt and the coffee stains on her blouse. "I thought he was giving me a compliment." Her eyes flicked from the guard to settle on the Joker's face. "Weren't you?"
"'Course I was, sweets," he said, his tone relaxed despite the restraints that tightened around his ankles. "You're my doctor! Whyever would I insult you?"
Charlie's friend – what was his name, again? Denny? – took this opportunity to make an ass of himself. The oversized guard wrinkled his nose and attempted to be clever.
"Didn't you kill your last doctor, clown?"
The Joker shot him a venomous look that softened rapidly into one of deceptive sweetness. "Why, so I did, Denny-boy," he said. "Howgood of you to remind me."
Denny wasn't all that stupid after all. His eyes widened ever-so-slightly as the implications of the Joker's words and smile crept into his brain. The Joker began to chuckle.
Charlie tightened the last of the restraints and straightened, frowning at the patient as his laughter grew in volume. Denny looked slightly shaken, a rarity in a guard who had survived in Arkham as long as they had.
He scratched the back of his neck. "Maybe we should just take him back to his cell," he offered.
"No, don't," Harley said quickly. "I – I want to talk to him about some progress we made the other day. It's important." Please, please…
The guards shrugged.
"If you say so, Dr. Quinzel," said Denny. "Remember, call us if you need anything."
"I will."
The two men left, and Harley breathed a sigh of relief as the door closed behind them. Free at last – free from the scrutiny of others. Free to be here, in this room…
Harley sat on her chair and looked about the room with renewed interest as the Joker's laughs subsided to chuckles. What was it about this room now? Why did it feel like such a sanctuary from the world?
The Joker's chuckles quietened, and he grinned at her. "Penny for your thoughts, toots," he offered.
Harley smiled, and shook her head. "It was nothing important." She cocked her head to one side and looked the pale clown up and down, strapped as he was to the psychiatrist's couch. Certain thoughts presented themselves, ones that had run through her mind on Saturday morning, and she coloured slightly, hiding a smile behind one hand.
The Joker narrowed his eyes slightly at her. "Hmm. Maybe those thoughts are worth more than a penny."
She laughed. "I'm not telling!" she said impishly.
"Why?" He leaned towards her as far as his restraints would let her. "Are they nauuughty?"
"They might be," she admitted, dropping her eyes.
"Oooh, doc, and here was me thinking you were such an innocent little thing…"
The glint in his eyes made a shiver run down her spine, and she felt herself grinning, rising to his challenge despite the voice at the back of her head that shouted in protest.
"Innocent?" She giggled. "You have no idea."
The Joker scoffed, that twinkle still in his eye. "You? What could you possibly have done? Dr. Prim and Professional?" He threw his head back and cackled. "I'm tied up and you still look more restrained than I do!"
Harley looked over her glasses at him, a wicked smile inching across her face. "That's part of the fun," she heard herself saying.
The eager curiosity in his face warmed her, somehow.
"Tell!" he demanded. "C'mon, Harl', don't hold out on me!"
"Alright," she said, crossing one leg over the other. "When I was in grad school, I got a bad mark on a thesis."
The Joker's face dropped. "A bad mark?" He rolled his eyes. "Oh, Harley, how bad you are."
"Let me finish." She smirked. "I'd worked hard on it, and I did a good job. My colleagues had read my thesis and thought it was great. I only got a bad mark because my professor didn't like my ideas and opinions." She shifted slightly on her chair. "He thought I was too… indulgent. Too willing to think that, just maybe, some of those criminals were thinking logically after all."
He looked bored – head resting on the couch, eyes closed – but he asked the question anyway. "So you argued with him, or something?"
Harley shook her head. "Those complaints take far too long to go through and usually your mark isn't changed anyway…" She leant back in her chair and looked at him over her glasses again. "So I slept with him."
The Joker's eyes snapped open, and his laughter echoed off the walls. "You?!"
"Me," she said, grinning easily. "I've been known to break the rules on occasion."
The look in his eyes was making her feel… funny. As if he had somereally naughty idea…
He shifted his shoulders, and her eyes flicked to the bindings around his wrists.
"Would you like to get out?" she asked, rising to her feet even as she said it.
He raised a brow, as if he hadn't expected the offer. "What if I steal your glasses again?" he teased.
Her hand paused over his restraint. "You wouldn't would you?" she asked with a sigh. "With all the trouble I went to to get them back the other day –"
The Joker rolled his eyes. "No, I won't take them, as long as you take them off."
"Deal," she said, yanking hard on the leather restraint to open it.
She stepped back to allow him to unfasten the rest of the restraints himself.
He did so with speed and ease, rubbing his left wrist to restore the circulation. Harley's eyes lingered on the small strip of white skin revealed a moment, until she closed them and shook her head vigorously.
No. BAD girl. No naughty thoughts for patients. No cookie.
The Joker looked up at her and grinned lasciviously. "So, toots," he said, crossing his legs at the ankle and putting his hands behind his head, "late night?" He waggled his eyebrows, as if she hadn't caught the connotations in his voice.
"Yeah – nothing interesting, though," she said, taking off her glasses and setting them on her desk. "Just this paperwork." She leant back against the desk and looked down at the coffee-stained documents mournfully. "I suppose now I'll have to re-do them."
"But they're so boring, Harley," her patient complained.
"Maybe, but they're necessary."
He snorted. "Just write anything. They don't read them, anyway." He swung his legs around with unnerving speed and leant forward, one forearm resting on his knee. "We could make something up together!"
She shook her head. "You may be right, but this has to be done properly. If we don't fill out the paperwork properly, we could stand to get sued – or one of our patients might be released on a technicality."
The Joker grunted. "Yeah, that'd be a damn shame."
Harley opened her mouth to say something comforting, but before she could speak her patient cocked his head to one side and fastened his gaze on her chest. Having a man's eyes drift lower than her face wasn't anything new to the blonde psychiatrist, but the intensity in the Joker's eyes gave her the sudden compulsion to find something to hold in front of her chest.
"What?" she asked, trying to resist the desire to back away. "Do I have something on my shirt?"
He nodded. "Coffee. Isn't it uncomfortable? It's been there for a while, must be getting cold by now."
"Oh!" She looked down, surprised to see a large stain spread down her shirt. Her wet blouse clung to her stomach, the liquid rapidly cooling.
"Crap," she sighed. "I hadn't even noticed." She picked at her shirt and pulled the material away from her stomach. She released it, and it stuck back to her skin. "Typical. And here I was thinking the worst part about spilling coffee was losing the coffee."
"It's just a shirt. You need some new ones, anyway. Wear that purple one, I liked that one."
"It's not that," she said, picking at the blouse again. "I don't have anything else to wear. I'm going to be uncomfortable until I can go grab a new shirt at lunch."
"Well…" Her patient raised one gloved hand and waved it vaguely. "You could always take it off." He grinned at the suspicious look she shot his way. "Better than being uncomfortable, right toots?"
Harley considered her options. Now she was aware of it, the cooling coffee really did feel disgusting. She doubted that the Joker would do anything untoward – besides, if he planned to, whether or not she was wearing a shirt wouldn't change anything.
On the other hand, it was sure to raise eyebrows if someone walked in, especially with the Joker unrestrained. Besides that… the very idea of walking around in just a bra in front of the Joker made a blush rise to her cheeks.
Don't be stupid, Harley, she scolded herself. You're a mature, professional woman. This is not a sexual situation. You wear a bikini to the beach, don't you? What's the difference?
She narrowed her eyes slightly. "Well, alright," she said. "But no comments, okay? You're my patient, and I'm only doing this because it feels really gross."
"Who, me?"
The innocent expression on his face made her giggle. To her surprise, he cheerfully turned his gaze to the ceiling as she unbuttoned her shirt.
"So, doc, anything in particular you'd like to talk about today?" he asked, eyes still turned skyward.
"Hmm? Oh… I hadn't really thought about it," she admitted. "With all the rushing about this morning, all my ideas have slipped my mind." She pulled her blouse over her shoulders and wiped her wet belly with the inside of one sleeve. Ick. Why had she grabbed a pale blouse this morning? Why couldn't it have been one of the darker ones? And why wasn't she wearing her damn lab coat, anyway?
She set her shirt down on the desk, spreading it out to help it dry.
"You can look now," she said, turning to lean back against the desk.
She smiled nervously as the Joker turned his head, but instead of the exaggeratedly salacious expression she had expected, he gave her a warm smile.
"Very nice," he said mildly.
Harley accepted the compliment quietly and crossed back to her chair. She coloured faintly as she sat, clutching her notepad as if it was any real protection from the Joker's gaze.
He smirked at her. "Relax, doc," he said easily. "You've certainly got nothing to be embarrassed about."
She blushed deeper, but couldn't stop a smile rising to her face.
"Now, should we get down to business?"
"I thought you said you didn't have anything to talk about."
The words 'your sex life' flashed through her brain. It was actually a legitimate area for a psychiatrist to focus on, and the professional part of her mind was genuinely interested.
"Well," she smirked, "we could talk about your sex life, but I think we might lose focus if I'm not wearing a shirt… so we can leave that for another day. What?" she asked, trying not to laugh at the expression on his face. "We'd have to talk about it eventually anyway! Didn't any of your other psychiatrists ask you about it?"
"You're the one with the file, doc," he replied, closing his eyes. "You tell me."
Harley tried to remember whether anyone had added anything about his sexuality. If any had been brave enough to ask, they hadn't mentioned it in the file.
"Just because they didn't write about it, doesn't mean they didn't ask," she pointed out. She leant forward in her chair, curious now. "Did anyone ask, at least?"
"One or two."
"And did you answer?"
"Yes… and if you ask, I'll tell you what I told him." The Joker swung his legs around and planted his feet on the floor. He leant forward, grinning. "'If I tell you, I'll have to kill you.'"
A certain crime scene photo popped into her mind, of a psychiatrist – or at least, what was left of him – in this very room. Harley paled, sat back in her chair, and pretended to focus on her blank notepad.
The Joker chuckled, a low sound that made her shiver. "Not to worry, sweets," he told her. "I don't plan to tell you."
"That's reassuring," she said, a small smile curving her lips.
"Why don't you talk today?" the Joker suggested. "I talked last time, anyway. It's your turn." He grinned. "You can tell me more about that professor of yours."
The turmoil of the last session was still fresh in Harley's mind. The sessions before, when she had talked and the Joker had listened, had been such easy and pleasant hours. The temptation to return to that relaxed back-and-forth was too strong to resist.
"Well, alright," said Harley, setting aside her notepad. "But just this once. We can't keep spending our sessions like this."
Still, once she wrote up what he had given her the other day, she could probably spend every session like this, and no one would care.
No. There was a book to write. Why was she here? She was here to get to the core of the Joker, to understand him. She was here to help him, not to spend every psychiatric session sharing anecdotes.
Just this one more time.
In the Next Episode, Bats turns up! Crap. I haven't written Bats before. I apologize in advance if I screw him up ;)