Narcissism

by Anarkitty

Fandom: Batman

Pairing: Joker/Harley Quinn

Genre: General/Drama

Rating: R (sexual references, mild violence)

Summary: Just a short drabble-ish piece from Joker's POV.

Disclaimer: DC own all, I own nothing, Joker owns me.

It's rare he gets to go inside her room, since she's always at his polished heels like an excitable pup. Where he walks, she'll follow. Or she'll wake at the witching hour and tiptoe to his door. Always knocks, but then enters with tousled hair and adoring blue eyes. She knows he doesn't like it - there's proof in the bruises.

But sometimes, just sometimes, he's the one knocking. And on occasion she'll be there. The way her face lights up doesn't warm him, but the room does. The walls are drab, but there's a little space above the bed about a square metre across, with newspaper clippings. Some with photographs of him, many others that merely mention his name. Completely insignificant, really, but not to his biggest fan. The doll-faced blonde who sits perched on the mattress. Like a small child, enchanted with this twisted fairy-tale of a man.

The clippings serve as a welcome reminder, like her frenzied kisses and labored gasps, of just how much he owns her. Not only her body - that which his bears his signature in welted blue and blood congealed. Or her heart, for which he could care less, so simple to drain and break. But her conscious and subconscious.

So when he strides into the room and she jumps from the bed like Daddy's home, he glances at the reflections of himself on the wall and there's that widespread smile. She thinks it's for her. And when she's writhing beneath him, eyes squeezed shut, he'll look at the wall again. Rather than look at her, while she's whispering those pet names and goddamned whines of affection. He forces a white hand over her mouth, but it only muffles, doesn't silence. So he stares up at the pictures, and he's the only one there. Even with his girl, shuddering in ecstasy and tangled in the sheets.

It's a fleeting pleasure; it snaps away when he catches himself believing he needs validation. Her devotion was a given, yet superfluous. Her love dismissed. And he wants to tear the newsprint and the sticky tape, rip it into a thousand shreds. He would, if he'd care to move - but his grip is tight on her wrists. His claw-like fingernails dig dents of frustration, flesh-deep. She protests, falsely. If he remembers she likes it, then he stops.

The urge fades, and the clippings blend into the wall once more. By then he's spent and she's sprawled below, covered in another round of premature scars. If she knew, would she take the photos down? Should he make her take the photos down? No, because she masturbates to them when he's not there. Not that he's thinking in the way of charity. Just narcissism.

Narcissism. Such a comfortable word, sang in the mind and rolled off the tongue. A better bedfellow than his Harley.

-fin-