"He said what?" Matt asked incredulously, laughing so hard that tears had begun to leak from the corners of his eyes as Jay and Leila related a story about Phil from a shift a few nights prior. "And she told him-"
"-That she wasn't pregnant," Leila finished his sentence, joining in with his infectious laughter. "She said 'I'm on a diet and I can lose weight, but you'll be an idiot forever', all from behind the oxygen mask." More raucous peals of laughter escaped Matt, and Leila watched, smiling as he bent double, nearly hitting his head against the rim of the trash can in his effort to stay standing. Glancing sideways, she caught Jay's eye, where he stood at the corner of the truck, grinning, obviously just as thrilled as she was that their co-worker was feeling so good after what was likely a very sad and emotional leave from work.
Eventually, Matt settled enough to sigh happily, wiping his left eye with the heel of his gloved hand as he helped Leila lower the stretcher. "Well, I'm sorry y'all had to deal with Phil while I was gone," he said, still shaking his head and giggling as he ripped the paper from the stretcher and wadded it up. "When Mitchell told me he was filling in for me, I knew you guys were in for a rough week."
Above them in the ambulance, Jay was picking up and tossing out random detritus from their shift, shrugging as he glanced down at Leila. "He actually wasn't that bad with the patients, besides the slip up with the heavy-set gal," he explained. "He just didn't pay attention or help out much, kept hitting on Leila-"
"He did?" Matt suddenly asked, so abruptly that it caused her to start in surprise and look over at him with a frown. He redirected his question to her, an appalled look on his face. "Did he hit on you?"
With a laugh, Leila shrugged one shoulder, embarrassed by the voracity with which he had asked that question, causing her to put much more concentration than necessary into spraying disinfectant on the bare stretcher. "'Course he did, but he wasn't very tactful about it," she explained, downplaying it purposely to put Matt at ease. She knew he viewed her as something to be protected, like a younger sister, and she did not want to start anything negative between Phil and Matt. "Honestly, he was just trying to annoy me. Asked me to go to that 'Casino Night' thing at the hospital, asked me 'what side I got I got my black on'...annoying stuff like that." She glanced over at Matt subtly, in perfect time to catch him shaking his head with a huff, only able to catch a few short snippets of what he was mumbling under his breath.
"...should tell Mitchell about that...totally inappropriate...such a dick..."
Leila grinned. It was nice to have her usual team back together and even nicer that their first shift reunited was officially over. She had the next day off and was wondering what she was going to do with all her luxurious time away from work when Jay's voice pulled her from her reverie. He was speaking to Matt as they pushed the clean stretcher back into the ambulance before slamming the heavy doors shut.
"So, you got any big plans for your first Saturday night back in the city?" Jay asked, smirking when Matt's shoulders squared and he seemed to swell with a furious pride of some sort. Matt nodded his head once, tucking his thumbs into the line of his pants behind his belt in a thoroughly 'Texas' sort of way. The funeral had been held in Houston, Matt's hometown, so it was no wonder he had picked up some native, cowboy tendencies.
"As a matter of fact, I do have big plans tonight," he announced ostentatiously, even going so far as to pull the front of his pants up a few inches. Leila could not help but stifle a laugh poorly with her hand, earning her a significant glare from Matt, before he proclaimed, "I have a date with a fine blonde medical examiner, how's about that?"
Both Leila and Jay gave loud noises of approval, laughing as Matt ran his freshly de-gloved hand through the front of his hair, leaving traces of latex powder clinging to the product holding his carefully windswept style in place. At that, he disappeared into the building of Firehouse Fourteen with a flourish, leaving Leila and Jay to glance at each other, smiling.
"I'm glad he bounced back pretty quick," Leila muttered as she and Jay moved to follow Matt into the cool, air conditioned interior of the station house. "I don't really like 'Moody Matt'." she added, thinking of the time he had gotten dumped by a very pretty girl a few months back and had spent the better part of a week huffing and puffing sourly.
Jay nodded his agreement but did not reply verbally, seeing how Matt was still standing at his locker when they approached. He had just sprayed two dabs of his obnoxious cologne on his neck when Leila walked past him to her own locker, coughing slightly as she walked through a residual cloud of the scent.
"You are going to shower before you go out, right?" she asked, turning her head and giving him the critical up and down look-over that she had so often received from her mother. "You have latex in your hair and you smell like alcohol and betadine."
"Yes, Mom, I'm gonna shower before I go out," he answered, shaking his head with a healthy roll of his eyes. "Besides, what are you doing tonight? You better not say 'sitting at home with my cat and watching movies'."
There was a long pause as Jay joined Matt in staring at Leila, in expectation of her answer, and she gaped back at them blankly before shrugging. "I'm sitting home with my cat and watching movies...?" she answered, yanking her messenger bag from the locker, letting out a laugh while the two guys groaned in unison. "There's nothing wrong with that! I'd rather sit at home and do stuff there than go out and spend money on drinks and all that. If I'm going to drink at all, I'd want to do it at home where it's...you know, free."
"Man, do you know what I'd give to go out and spend money on booze these days?" Jay asked, his eyes rolling upward as he drifted off into a fantasy, clearly imagining a life without three children. "Molly and I could go-"
As Leila listened to the guys talking spiritedly about their former and present social lives, she could not help but sigh privately, thinking of the night she was about to face. She would glance nervously about her apartment when she walked inside, strain her ears while she showered for noises of the front door opening, check and double check that the door to her bedroom was closed and locked firmly before she would fall into an oftentimes fitful sleep. True, she did normally prefer staying home to going out on some big, nighttime adventure, but the virtual prison the Joker had created within her apartment was something of a nightmare. While she did suppose being out and away from her home was safer than actually being there for whenever he happened to stop by, the chances were too great that she would miss his call. At least at home, she could hear the phone ringing with ease.
It was alarming but not all together surprising that Leila found herself in an inexplicably bad mood when she arrived home from work, and even less surprising that it had deepened further by the time she eventually crawled into bed. Murphy had clearly picked up on this, as after she fed him, he had sequestered himself beneath the bed and stayed there. Leila could not blame him but felt guilty that she had not given him so much as a pat or a greeting upon arriving home. There was something about hearing her coworkers discussing plans for that night, talking so happily about their lives, how carefree they seemed, that had set Leila off, even made her jealous.
But as she lay there in the dark, watching the opposite building with heavy eyes, she remembered that she had chosen this life for herself. The Joker had offered her a choice and she had opted into it, her mind on the money and the money alone, without hardly a second thought for what it might mean for her future. She was being punished for her greed and she knew it, not only by the Joker, who had chosen to torment her at every turn thus far, but also by her own mind. True, she would have been struggling financially to the point of having to move back in with her parents, but at least she would have been safe, free from fear and paranoia, released from the strain of sleeping with one eye open, half-expecting to find a monster sitting on the edge of her bed every time she turned over. This was her choice. Her choice.
A shrill ringing split the silence of her bedroom a mere five minutes after she had fallen asleep, causing Leila to sit straight up in bed with a gasp, her chest heaving as though she had been running. Glancing to her right and blinking furiously at the new source of blueish light in her bedroom, she reached over hastily to the nightstand, where her iPhone sat silent. She grabbed the smaller, more dangerous device next to it instead, hurriedly pressing her thumb to the green button to answer the call from 'Unknown'.
"Yeah..." she answered groggily, her voice deeper and more raspy than usual with the residual vestiges of sleep. A loathsome voice answered.
"Good morniiiiing," sang the Joker into the phone. Leila rolled her eyes toward the alarm clock on her nightstand; '2:57am'. Apparently, she had been asleep for several hours, not the original five minutes she had assumed. "I am in need of your services."
"Right now?" Leila asked, but then cringed into the phone upon realizing what a stupid question that was.
Accordingly, there was a pause on the other end of the call. "...No, I'm planning to get shot in a few hours..." Joker answered, his voice momentarily dropping the note of clowniness and adopting one of heavy sarcasm. He paused again, seemingly to give Leila an opportunity to laugh, but during that moment of silence, she heard a loud groan in the background, followed by a sharp crash and rustling on the phone. The Joker's harsh voice spoke again, this time more distant. "Didn't I tell you being stupid was gonna start getting painful? Didn't I say that?" There was more groaning from the injured person.
Leila finally spoke, in an effort to distract Joker from whatever he was doing. "Where?" she asked flatly, throwing the blankets off of her legs before standing from the bed.
"My house." Click.
Leila sighed, tossing the phone onto the top of her dresser before stepping into a pair of sweatpants. If her mood had been bad before, it was nothing to what it was now. She only hoped she could keep it in check while in the presence of her...'boss'.
At that time of night, or morning as Leila viewed it, the streets of Gotham were all but empty, barely a car nor pedestrian moving about, making her drive to the Narrows pass more quickly than she would have liked. Her eyes glanced about constantly as she turned corners, taking the narrow and dimly lit streets at a more rapid pace than she had done during her previous trip to the Joker's 'house'. There was something about that part of town at three in the morning that she did not particularly enjoy...not that she enjoyed it any more during the day. If she had any sort of luck due to her, this 'emergency' would not be anything too serious and she would be back in her bed before the sun could even begin rising.
Once her car had come to a stop in the narrow lane outside of the garage, and once she had attempted to get out, only to be caught by her fastened seat belt, Leila found herself standing on the 'Bless This Home' welcome mat, glaring holes in the metal door as she waited to be let in. Her medical kit seemed twice as heavy that night, as did the rest of her body, and just as she was about to drop her mouth open in a wide yawn, the door swung inward with a rusty, metallic groan. A tall figure in purple pants and a blue, patterned shirt stood in the way, grinning wildly about something, while Leila looked up at his face, with perfect timing to catch his dark eyes flicker downward over her choice of mid-night wardrobe. She wished she had opted against a white tank-top with her dark gray sweatpants.
"Um-" she began awkwardly, suddenly aware that it had been a week since his 'treatment' of her wound, and finding that it was not nearly enough time for her to get over it. "I'm here." Her voice was flat, laced with copious annoyance and for the first time since coming into contact with this man, she did not attempt to hide it.
If he had heard the tone of her voice, he did not indicate it as Joker stepped back into the dingy hallway, holding the door open while he reached up to rake a bit of his greasy, green hair away from his face. Leila wondered vaguely if he really thought that small action would help his appearance any; it seemed a bit like attempting to polish a turd. "Indeed," he said, extending his arm to allow her entrance. She stepped past him without another word, without even a glance at him, her ears picking up the sound of distant groaning.
The main room of the garage appeared exactly the way it had upon her last visit, with the hydraulic lifts raised toward the ceiling, barren of any cars, the punctured couch oozing stuffing and upturned milk crates in their same positions. There was only one addition: a young man, whom she recognized from her last visit, sprawled out on the couch, his bloody forearm wrapped in a highly unsanitary towel. The Joker's voice from directly behind her caused Leila to jump and grit her teeth.
"The doc got out of bed in the middle of the night to fix your arm, Maxie, isn't that nice?" he asked, going so far as to thump Leila on the top of her head with his hand. Her irritation climbing at a frightful rate, she moved toward the couch, setting down her kit to take a careful seat next to the man's waist. She reached out for his arm, struggling to ignore the way Joker had taken it upon himself to lean over the back of the couch, to watch with apparent interest.
The man whom Leila now knew to be 'Max' spoke, his voice trembling a bit as she unwound the towel slowly and carefully. "Is it gonna have to be chopped off?" he asked, his complexion pale as his eyes searched her face in apprehension. With the wound exposed to reveal a long, fairly deep, jagged cut from the inside of his wrist toward his elbow, Leila frowned, shaking her head, ignoring with difficulty the sigh of impatience given off by Joker over her shoulder.
"No, it doesn't need to be 'chopped off'," she answered shortly, with a bit more of a biting edge than she had intended. "But you do need stitches and I don't think I have any local anesthetic."
Max stiffened on the couch, his shoulders lurching toward her as his eyes widened. "What's that mean?" he asked quickly. "What d'ya mean?"
Leila's teeth clenched in the back of her mouth as she leaned to the side to open her kit, searching for gauze and hydrogen peroxide. She had encountered children with worse injuries and more bravery than this man. "It means," she began, repositioning his arm to begin gently wiping away dried and fresh blood from either side of the cut. "-that I can't numb you-"
"She means 'wont'-" Joker interrupted from the back of the couch. Leila ignored him.
"-so this may hurt a bit-"
"She means 'a lot'-"
With her last nerve absolutely shot and her patient on the verge of full-blown panic while the Joker snickered maliciously to himself, Leila turned her head, locking her stern eyes with his black ones. She struggled for a split second not to glance down at his lips.
"You know? You'rereally not helping and you smell like shit,so back up."
These words came flying out of her mouth before she could stop them, and for a moment, Leila feared she was about to die as a very clear look of surprise flashed across the scarred, painted features inches from her own face. But she did not allow her strong, forceful expression to falter, and to her shock, the Joker bounced his eyebrows once, before he held up both hands and moved away from the couch, toward a beat-up armchair across from them. She watched him go for only a second before she turned her attention back to Max.
"Just try to lay still," she instructed. "The cut isn't that long so this shouldn't be too bad."
Whatever she had said to the contrary in an effort to put the young man at ease, having stitches done without a numbing agent was, in fact, incredibly painful and before long, the garage was ringing with the sound of loud moans and gasps. As the sharp, curved needle slid in and out of his skin, suturing the wound closed, Leila could feel the Joker sitting a few feet away, watching intently, feeling absolutely no sympathy for his lackey. Truth be told, she knew she should not have spoken so harshly to him as he was, in no certain terms, her 'boss', and not only that, but the most dangerous man in the city. It was a wonder he had not cut her throat right then and there as Leila was certain it did not matter to him whether Max's wound was treated. Part of her begged to feel some sort of fear that he might have simply been waiting until she was done to dish out her punishment. That same part of her wondered if she perhaps ought to take longer than necessary to finish closing the cut... She chanced a glance to her left in the direction of the arm chair.
He was smirking from behind his hands as the tips of his fingers pressed together in front of his nose, his eyes cold and calculating as he stared at the profile of her face. One of his long legs was folded, his ankle rested atop his opposite knee, revealing several inches of multi-colored sock where the bottom of his purple-pinstripe pant leg ended. Leila turned her attention back to the sutures, focusing her eyes hard on tying a tiny knot in the end of it.
Max's sweaty shirt stuck to his chest as it heaved up and down with his breathing. "You done?" he asked, looking down at his arm and turning it slightly under the florescent light high above them. "Is that it?"
Leila nodded, using her pair of medical shears to cut the rest of the thread from his arm. "Yes, but I'm going to bandage it," she explained, feeling slightly more relaxed now that her patient was not in near hysterics and the Joker was not breathing down her neck from behind. "Just try to keep it elevated for the rest of the night and as much of tomorrow as you can. The bleeding should stop soon." She placed several stacks of gauze along the wound before wrapping them in place with a bit of cotton and tape.
"And if it doesn't?" Max asked, his eyes once again flashing.
Leila finally spared him a weak grin as she dropped the roll of tape down into her kit. "If it doesn't stop by the time the sun comes up, you'll need to get to the emergency room," she explained. "But it should stop by then. If you'd nicked an artery, you would have been dead before I got here."
Max let out a loud sigh, sinking back into the couch as he folded his forearm very carefully across his middle. "Good," he breathed. "That's good."
"Just uh-" she paused, yelling at herself mentally not to continue. She had to; he was her patient. "-just call me if you have any questions about it or something doesn't seem right." Damnit...
"Yeah, I will," Max replied, nodding as his eyes slid closed. "Thanks, doc."
Leila turned toward the arm chair, where Joker remained seated, dangerously silent. His eyes drifted up to meet hers and his eyebrows rose as she took a deep breath.
"So um- if there's nothing else, I'll just...go?" she asked hesitantly, motioning with her thumb toward the door. If she was really about to leave unscathed from her brash words toward him, it would be a true miracle. She held her breath, waiting on tenterhooks, expecting him to stand up and grab her arm at any second.
What she did not expect, was for him to merely nod his head toward the door and readjust his hands to link his fingers across his middle. "Yep," he answered casually, his face smoothly inscrutable. "Enjoy the rest of your day, Doc."
Leila had never left a building so quickly in her entire life.
Her bed was exactly where she had left it, the blankets still turned down and tousled from when she had thrown them off of her in a small fit of rage over being disturbed. Kicking off her sandals, she sank down onto the soft mattress with a relieved sigh, her eyes flickering toward the tall windows, searching for any hint of orangey, pink light spilling over the top of her building and onto the glass of the one opposite. Fortunately, the sky still appeared dark, the rippling reflection of the moon visible against the building across the street. And with a satisfied grin that she had actually managed to escape her trip to the Joker's house with her life, she closed her eyes, drifting off instantly. Perhaps standing up to him and showing less fear was the only way to go about it. Perhaps that was exactly what he had been waiting for.
…...
Leila knew he was there. She had not even opened her eyes and she already knew he was in her apartment. The brightness on the other side of her eyelids told her that the sun had long since risen, leaving her to wonder foggily what time it was and how long he had been there. She did not want to open her eyes, afraid she might find him sitting on the end of her bed, as she had been dreading from the first time he had entered her home. Slowly moving her foot, she inched her toes forward, then back, feeling for any sort of a depression in her mattress or perhaps an ass, even a leg or a hand. There was nothing. It seemed she was alone in her bed. She sighed, opening her eyes.
If he had come to punish her for her attitude earlier that morning, he had picked a beautiful day to do so. The sun was shining, gleaming brightly through her windows, causing her white comforter to practically glow as she pushed it off of her and sat up, leaning forward to glide her fingers into the front of her hair. It had come down from her ponytail at some point during the second half of her slumber and was now messy as it fell down her shoulders toward the middle of her back. At the moment, she ignored it, finding herself far from caring what her hair looked like when there was a monster sitting on the other side of her bedroom door. She knew she would eventually have to pay for what she had said, but so soon? After such a restful sleep? When the weather outside looked absolutely perfect? Leila walked toward her door, taking a deep, steadying breath as she reached out to open it.
Joker was indeed there, as she had sensed, though instead of standing right there on the other side of the door, waiting, Leila found him seated on the couch, leaned back comfortably in the cushions with both socked feet crossed at the ankle and rested on the coffee table, while a fat, gray cat stared up at him from the floor. His green hair and makeup were as messy and disgusting as always, and just to add to this picture of poor hygiene, the man was currently chewing off one of his fingernails, which he spat carelessly to one side before grinning brightly at Leila. Her face was completely blank of any expression as he spoke.
"Good morning...again," he said, crossing his hands together over his middle, exactly as he had done earlier that day at his house.
Leila blinked. She was too groggy to tell if he was there to kill her. Shaking her head, she turned away from the scene in the living room, skin crawling at the thought of all his bitten off fingernails scattered across her floors, and moved toward the kitchen. If he was going to attack suddenly, she could at least have some coffee first, possibly wake up a bit more and put up a better fight. She heard Joker rise from his place on the couch, his socked footfall approaching the breakfast bar behind her. He stopped there.
"You'll be pleased to hear your uh-" he hesitated, searching for a proper word. "-patient is still alive."
Leila tutted under her breath, casting a quick glance over her shoulder to see that he had rested his arms atop the counter, one hand up with his chin rested on top of his closed fist. "I'm surprised you didn't execute him like you did the last one," she said quietly, struggling to keep the hint of disdain in her voice to a minimum. She had already pushed his buttons once that day and felt it would be wise to refrain from doing so again. With the coffee brewing, she finally turned to face him, to find him shrugging his broad shoulders.
"Max has his uses," he answered simply, pushing his bare fingers up into the front of his long hair to move it away from his face. "That other guy was disposable. He was onlythere as a lab rat."
Leila did not immediately respond with one of the hundreds of replies floating through her brain, seeing how 'you make me sick' did not sound very nice when she was attempting to smooth over her harsh words from earlier. After a pause, she shook her head, arching her eyebrows as she folded her arms across her stomach, once again aware that she was still wearing that white tank top. Thankfully, she still had her bra on.
"What are you doing here anyways?" she asked, glancing down at Joker's vest, at a smudged white stain along the collar where a bit of his greasepaint had wiped off. "I'm betting you didn't come all the way here just to tell me Max is still alive."
Across from her, Joker let out a bark of a laugh, wagging one finger loosely at her. "You're right! I didn't come all the way here for that," he answered, rounding the corner into the kitchen, where he paused in the doorway. Leila took a precautionary half-step backward. Here it was. He was about to punish her, slap her, cut her, stab her-
"I came because you owe me an apology for how very rude you were to me this morning." Joker bounced his eyebrows twice, licking his lips as he smirked.
An apology? Leila fought an insane urge to laugh and instead merely grinned, glancing down at her red, painted toenails against the hardwood floor beneath her. "Fine," she said. "Fine, I'll apologize for the way I spoke to you, but I won't apologize for what I said. You were crowding me, Max was freaking out and..." She finally let out a laugh, tossing her hands. "I'm sorry, but you really do smell bad! You can't pretend like that's news to you."
"I smell like a man-" he countered, but Leila cut him off, turning toward her coffee maker to pour herself a cup and avoid looking him in the face while she spoke.
"You smell like a dumpster," she said, suddenly feeling very odd to be having this conversation with him. He let out a tut of offense, causing Leila to smirk as she moved to retrieve her carton of half and half.
"You may not have noticed, but my house isn't exactly as nice as your place," he said, his eyes following her as she leaned past him into the fridge. "It's hard to stay smelling lovely when all you have is a sink."
Leila hesitated as she twisted on the cap to the carton, blinking as she watched cream swirl about in her cup of coffee. There was a strange sensation tugging at her, one that she had to admit felt eerily close to the feeling she got while treating the indigent, homeless patients she encountered at work and she had never really been able to put her finger on what it was. Was it pity? Compassion? She knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Joker was not vying for her sympathy by saying what he had, but Leila still could not deny that she felt somewhat bad for him in that moment.
Earlier that morning, she had been thinking about how standing up to the Joker and showing less fear toward him had seemed effective toward her situation. But now as she stood there stirring her coffee and listening to his attempts to shoo Murphy away from his pant leg, she had to wonder if perhaps...just maybe, she should try to show him some kindness. When she had been teased relentlessly by bratty classmates back in her middle school days, her mother had told her to 'kill them with kindness'. Leila had always thought that was a crock of bullshit mothers fed their kids to keep them out of trouble, but now, she questioned how the Joker would react were she to show him a hint of her truly compassionate side, the side that had brought her to being a paramedic in the first place. Placing one hand on her hip, she turned toward him resolutely, where he stood scowling down at her cat as he pawed at the tip of his big toe.
"I'll make you a deal," she said, worrying momentarily that her offer might piss him off. Joker looked up, his eyebrows arched sharply, warping the already misshapen black rings around his eyes. "If you take a shower here, I'll apologize for saying you smell like shit...deal?"
Joker hesitated across from her, his eyes squinting as he cocked his head to one side, glancing her up and down as though attempting to spot some sort of catch to her proposition. Leila took a sip of her coffee, raising her eyebrows nonchalantly from behind the mug, in an effort to show him that she was being perfectly serious.
After what felt like an hour, he finally gave a single nod and held out his hand. "Ya got yourself a deal, Doc," he answered. Leila reached out to shake his hand, but gasped when his grip suddenly tightened and pulled her closer, into his stinky aura, laughing when she coughed and pushed him away toward her bedroom.
"There are clean towels in the closet," she explained, pointing to the cupboard he had recently ransacked during his last visit, while he had looked for bandages and alcohol. "There are also new bars of regular soap in there too so you won't have to smell like a girl..." Leila paused, upon sensing that Joker had turned his head to look down at her, and she cowered slightly under his glare, glancing back and forth between his dark eyes. "Unless...you want to smell like a girl?" she offered carefully. Joker grunted a laugh, shaking his head as he glanced through the contents of her cabinet, giving Leila the opportunity to go on, once again eyeing the various grime and makeup stains on his vest. She hated herself for even considering what she was about to offer, but if she was going to show him a certain level of kindness, she might as well do it the right way.
"If you want," she began cautiously. "...you can leave your clothes outside the door here and I'll wash them for you? There's no point in taking a shower just to put dirty clothes on again."
Above her, Joker hummed contemplatively, drumming his fingers against his arm as he leaned against her bathroom counter. "That's true..." he said slowly, his clowny voice echoing strangely in the tiled room around them. Leila turned into her bedroom, moving toward her dresser to pull open one of the bottom drawers and begin digging through the various clothing.
"I have a pair of men's sweatpants and a shirt you can wear once you get out," she said, again returning to the bathroom doorway, holding out a pair of baggy, cotton sweatpants and a black t-shirt. Joker arched one eyebrow, his eyes flickering from her face down to the clean clothes and back up again. He smirked, taking them from her to place them on the counter.
"Ex boyfriend?" he asked curiously, glancing at her in the mirror over his shoulder to wiggle his eyebrows as he tugged on the already loosened knot of his tie.
Leila flushed a delicate shade of pink and shook her head. "I like wearing baggier clothes while I'm at home," she answered, unsure why she suddenly felt so awkward. "More comfortable..."
Joker gave a very perceptive nod as he reached for the door. "Whatever you say, Doc."
As the door closed in her face and locked from the other side, she called out "Use the soap!...And wash your hair too!"
Within a few minutes, the shower was running in the bathroom as Leila could hear it from the kitchen, and in her bedroom, her ears picked up the sound of the door opening, followed shortly by a soft thump of clothing on carpet. The door closed again, so she took that as her cue to peek very carefully around the edge of her bedroom door from the hallway. Sighing in relief, she saw that Joker had simply tossed his filthy clothing out onto the floor in a heap before retreating back into the bathroom. She moved toward the pile of purple, green and blue and knelt down to pick them up, wrinkling her nose as she felt that they were still warm.
"Gross..." she murmured, holding the lump of clothing far out in front of her as she trotted quickly to the washing machine.
The tiny laundry room in her apartment, across from the kitchen, was soon full of the sound of running water while Leila stood at the washing machine, using just her pointer finger and thumb from her right hand to very carefully separate the various articles of the Joker's clothing as though they were something recently dead. She had already debated with herself on whether she ought to break out a pair of latex gloves for this venture, but had decided against it, figuring that she had touched far worse things in her career than a set of dirty clothes. After detaching the suspenders, his long, purple pinstriped pants were sunk into the soapy water, along with his socks and, to Leila's embarrassment, a pair of black boxer-briefs, leaving just his shirt, vest and surprisingly, a white wife-beater undershirt. She tossed the latter two items in and had picked up his blue, hexagon-patterned shirt to do the same, but paused with it held out in front of her. Her curiosity dared her to smell it, and of course, she did, only to cough loudly, her eyes instantly watering as she forcefully dunked it down into the water. Maybe a dash more soap...she thought, tipping a bit more of the blue liquid into the machine.
By then, the time on her microwave had reached eleven o'clock, and Leila's stomach was growling with a fierce intensity. The shower still seemed to be running in her bathroom, which she did not find all that surprising; it had to have been at least a week since he had even pretended to bathe. That same tugging, compassionate sensation flicked at her sympathy muscle when she wondered how long it had been since he had actually taken a full shower, with hot water and soap included. No human, no matter how vile, should ever have to live like that. Turning into her kitchen, she pulled a pan from under the stove, assuming that he would be hungry and would likely eat, whether or not she cooked something for him.
However, the longer she cooked and the longer it went without a single sound from her bathroom or bedroom, the more Leila became suspicious of the silence. There was bacon in the pan and toast cooking in the oven, perfuming the apartment, so the fact that he had not yet come to investigate seemed odd to her. Frowning, she first leaned out of the kitchen into the hallway; just because she was being nice to him, did not, by any stretch, mean that she was not still scared that she'd find him hiding in wait around a corner. The hallway was empty and aside from the washing machine banging away in the laundry room, the apartment seemed entirely silent. Her frown deepened as she took cautious steps toward her bedroom. And that was where she found him.
He was not digging through her drawers as she had half-expected, nor was he standing in her bathroom. The Joker was lying on her bed, soundly and deeply asleep on his back, with Murphy curled into a fat ball against his side. Leila's arms dropped to her hips as she stepped into the doorway, her eyes glancing over his recumbent pose, wearing the sweatpants she had loaned him, though the shirt had been abandoned and left in the bathroom. His left arm was tucked beneath the pillow under his head, while his right lay across his slowly rising and falling middle.
Apparently, he had emerged from the shower some time ago as the clean, wispy green hair at the base of his neck had dried and tightened into curls. How he had managed to wash both his hair and body without allowing the water to touch his face would forever remain a mystery to her. Earlier, after leaving him to his own devices in her bathroom, Leila had wondered curiously to herself whether he would wash the remaining greasepaint from his face, leaving him completely flesh-toned. It seemed he had not thought it wise to do so as the same faded and creased makeup covered his face. Part of Leila was relieved for this; it was awkward enough seeing this terrorist without a shirt on, lying in her bed, let alone without his characteristic painted mask. Very carefully, she took a step toward the sleeping monster, her eyes traveling from his face, down his neck to his bare shoulders. He was absolutely covered in scars. Though admittedly not the scars Leila expected.
Most of his right shoulder and the right, upper portion of his chest was covered by one massive burn, the skin smooth and shiny in some areas, while rippled and malformed in others. The relatively small patch of hair across his chest had seemingly refused to grow back within the confines of the scar, leaving several inches of his skin bare. A moment of insanity told Leila to reach out and touch the flesh there, just to see what it felt like, but she resisted. What were the chances that his hidden left hand bore a knife beneath that pillow? No, she had to let him sleep. She could only guess how long it had been since this man had experienced a decent rest in a nice bed. She continued to study him, however, quite positive that she would never get the opportunity again.
Aside from the burn scar, the green hair and the ugly greasepaint, the Joker appeared as physically normal as any other man, with broad shoulders and a narrow waist, where the line of the sweatpants sat low on his hips. Leila was ashamed to feel her cheeks burning when she noticed a thin line of hair leading from his belly button down past the cotton waistband of the pants. Just as she had felt odd upon finding that his blood ran as red as any other human, she found it odd that yes, the Joker was indeed of the male species, he did indeed have body hair. It just seemed that everything about him should be abnormal.
Leila's eyes suddenly slid back up to his neck as a startling thought flashed through her mind. She could do it. She could end her nightmare right then and there. Joker's head was turned away from her, facing the windows on the far side of her bedroom, the right curve of his neck exposed, so temptingly to her. How easy would it be for Leila to run out into her kitchen, grab the sharpest knife she had before cutting his throat in one clean slice, watch this evil, horrible man bleed to death in her own bed. She could end not only her hellish 'employment' but the fear and chaos all of Gotham had experienced at his hands. The police would likely not even care how or why she had done it. She could claim it was self-defense, set it up to look as though he had attacked her. It could all be over, right then. She knew there was no way this could happen, but it was an interesting and terrifyingly tempting idea.
Leila jumped when the Joker suddenly spoke, without moving so much as an eyelid.
"If you're gonna kill me-" he began, his voice raspier and deeper than usual with residual sleep. "-I suggest you have the knife in your hand before standing over me. That's common sense, Doc." His left hand slipped out from under the pillow, using the back of the silver knife between his fingers to scratch an itch on the tip of his nose.
Leila huffed, rolling her eyes as she turned away from the bed, but paused in the doorway to look back at him. "I wasn't going to kill you," she lied...kind of. "I was coming to tell you I made breakfast and that you're welcome to it if you're hungry."
On the bed across from her, Joker gave a deep, rumbling hum as he rolled onto his left side and continued until he had turned completely onto his stomach, his face smearing old greasepaint all over her white pillows. His back rose and fell heavily as he sighed. "That does sound tempting-" he grumbled. Frowning, Leila watched as Murphy, who had been shifted to the side with the Joker's motion, climbed slowly onto his back and curled into a tight, fluffy spiral. Joker grunted a laugh. "-but I think your animal wants me to stay right here."
With a huff of aggravation that her cat had befriended the most dangerous man in the country, Leila turned out of the room and left them to it, figuring, miserably, that she could eat in peace and lay on the couch until the purple clothing in her dryer was done. Then, if she was lucky, perhaps she could convince the Joker to leave.
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A/N: I hope you enjoyed this little break from the heaviness, ladies and germs. More 'stuff and things' to come soon! It seems like I have found a good writing-posting rhythm for myself, so I can proudly say, there will be no more month-long waits between chapters. For those interested, I have both a Tumblr and Facebook entirely centered around this story and my life while writing it. Check out my Tumblr blog here: .com and my Facebook by searching for the name 'Haven Queenofmean Hunter'. Feel free to add or follow me on either one, but bear in mind that I am on Facebook more often than Tumblr, though they are both usually updated with the same things. SideNote: I have some new, fantastic, rather risque pictures of Leila and Joker together. Let me know if you would like to see. As for the song accompanying this chapter, it is Bad Days by The Flaming Lips. I think it suits this chapter nicely. Anyways, THANK YOU SO MUCH for the outstanding support and feedback! I look forward to hearing from you about what you thought of this chapter. = ] -QoM