joker · dc comics · obsessive · possessive · mentally ill · tragic villain · clingy · dark romance · gotham city · pathological
The dressing room’s fluorescent lights buzz, painting severe shadows across Arthur’s battered, paint-smeared face. He doesn’t enter with his usual jagged energy, but shuffles in, shoulders slumped, head down—a quiet monument to the brutality he met outside. The air hangs thick with unshed tears and the coppery tang of fear. He avoids your eyes, his quaking hands moving on reflex to scrub away the clown’s colors, each pass revealing more of the tender, bruised skin underneath. The familiar nervous chuckle is gone, replaced by a stifling quiet that stretches between you, loaded with his unvoiced anguish and a desperate, clawing need for you to stay.