Chapter Text
Life in Gotham was never boring, to say the least.
Living here your whole life, you see a thing or two. One of these things happens to be clowns.
Selina crouched upon a ledge overlooking a dark alley in the Fashion District. Below her is one of the many Joker gangs, The— what were they called? Smilers? Smirkers? Gigglers? Who knows , Selina thinks, they’re all stupid anyways .
Over the past few weeks, there have been rumors of a purple diamond tiara with matching earrings and necklace being sold for a whopping $83,200 tomorrow night, but Selina was going to get them for free. Why an interest in a purple diamond tiara with matching earrings and necklace? Because they are pretty, and sometimes, all a girl needs is to feel pretty.
Selina observed the group of wannabe clowns spray painting the brick wall across from her with a disgusting shade of blue. Joker would be revolted by the color if he saw it.
At night, Gotham was never silent, much like during the day, but despite the ongoing noise, police sirens tear through the air and rip Selina’s attention away from the thugs. Too far to see, but close enough to hear, were several police cars responding to an armed robbery about 12 blocks away. Lucky for Miss Kyle, the police would be distracted enough for her to sneak in and out of Gotham Jeweler's without hassle.
For the past week, she has been delicately observing and meticulously planning for her break-in at the jeweler’s, a surprisingly large building with thousands upon millions of dollars worth of jewels, armed with the finest security system with a goal to prevent people like the Catwoman from even touching the glass after-hours without alarms going off. Despite their almost excessive precautions (if it weren’t Gotham), they failed to consider the ventilation system as being a possible entry and exit point.
With the delight of the police being distracted, Selina leaped from rooftop to rooftop until she was on top of Gotham Jeweler’s. She was careful not to make much noise as she took the grate off of the opening to the system, for while there weren’t any security measures on the vents themselves, they were loud, and there was a security guard on duty that could hear the metal clanging if she made too much noise. Once the grate was off, she gracefully slinked inside.
Slowly and quietly crawling through the vents, Selina finally reached the opening that led to the doorless room with the purple diamond set. As she opened the vent, she heard a strange sound… almost as if someone was tenderizing a steak.
After looking around and determining that she was alone in the room, she hopped out of the vent and landed quietly on her feet. Still hearing the strange noise, she decides it’s better to investigate and find out it was nothing, than to have not been alone and ended up on someone’s hit-list by morning.
She crept towards the sound, but alarmingly, the scent of blood attacked her nostrils.
Click clack. Click clack. Click clack.
Someone was coming.
As Selina turned to retreat back to her vent above the doorway, she froze. In the hallway across the room stood a man dressed in a trademark purple suit with dark stains on it and acid-washed green hair.
For a moment, they both stared at each other with the same bewildered, “deer-in-the-headlights” look.
“ What the fuck did you do?! ” came a harsh whisper from the cat.
“Me ?! What do you mean ‘what did I do,’ what did you do?! ” The clown accusingly whispered back.
Selina cautiously walked closer to him, he was one of the biggest threats to the city, after all. As she approached, she saw that those dark stains were, in fact, blood. She could assume the security guard won’t be a problem, then.
Joker stood rigidly as he watched her approach, unsure whether to shoo, stay, or stab. Quite the predicament he had on his hands.
“What are you doing here, Joker,” she demanded. Her curiosity of his presence ushered her to press further as to why he was here.
“I’m here for the same reason as you, I assume,” the cheeriness in his voice sounded forced, even to himself. While he wasn’t surprised that she was here, he certainly was irritated; he had been planning to swipe that diamond set since the second he heard the rumors. Purple is his color, after all.
“What interest do you have in a tiara set? Jewelry theft isn’t really your scene.”
“Why, Selina, I was sure that you of all people would understand! Sometimes all a gal needs is to feel pretty!” The clown batted his eyelids and clasped his hands together.
Selina thought for a moment about the Joker gang she saw in the alley not even an hour ago. “I would be willing to bet that you sent your goons to stage an armed robbery to distract them while you took the diamonds. You probably sent them to several parts of the district to keep the GCPD occupied… but what’s interesting is that you rarely , if ever , perform thefts alone.” Her vigilant thinking brought her to fairly obvious conclusions, but led to an interesting observation. Why was he alone? Is he alone?
A flash of irritance crossed his face. Selina was, undoubtedly, amused.
“I wasn’t supposed to be alone. Eddie, for one, was going to help me… by ‘help me,’ I mean he was going to do all the work while I took the set and ditch him at the last minute,” he spoke quickly, “That didn’t work out because someone gave him the flu, so I’m currently alone,” was alone , he thought.
While they continuously bickered and interrogated each other, a certain bird-man made his way into the building with his own set of goons, not bothering to worry about the security system. This, of course, set off every single alarm in Gotham Jeweler’s.
“Oh fuck ,” both muttered simultaneously.
Penguin’s umbrella gun was firing into the glass cases holding various valuable rocks as his goons raided the building, luckily for the cat and clown, the room they were in was separate from the main room. They had time to flee with the tiara set, but they needed to act quickly if they didn’t want to be used as target practice and/or arrested.
While Selina was devising a quick get-away, Joker had shattered the case that protected the purple diamond jewelry because of course he would draw attention to himself at exactly the wrong moment.
Penguin could be heard yelling at his goons to go to the sound of the breaking glass. He’s probably here for the same reason we are , Selina thought.
“Damnit, Joker! Just grab the diamonds and follow me!” Selina hissed at him. She made her way up to the open vent. Joker was hot on her tail, not wishing to become swiss cheese.
After Selina elegantly pulled herself back into the vent, she tried to help Joker up, but unfortunately for him, Penguin and some of his henchmen made their way to the end of the hallway where Joker was when Selina first saw him. Joker was still trying to maneuver his long limbs into the vent above the doorway, but his left leg was still dangling outside long enough for one of the goons to shoot him in the foot.
“ FUCK !” So much for not becoming swiss cheese. “Bitch, help me!” he cried out desperately.
“I’m trying, you asswipe ! This wouldn’t have happened if you didn’t break the case!” Selina yanked him by his arms with all her might and successfully pulled him into the vent just as Penguin and his goons entered the room.
“Well if you had just done your fancy glass-cutting thing,” Joker reached into his jacket, “I wouldn’t have had to break the glass! And I wouldn’t have gotten shot!” He pulls out a grenade… not just any grenade, but one of his special Joker Venom TM grenades. Before the goons even had a chance to aim their weapons at the vent, Joker pulled the pin and threw the bomb, which almost immediately filled the room with gas.
The gas was beginning to reach the vent.
Both criminals began to move quickly through the vents in an attempt to escape Joker’s stupid idea of a distraction. After a couple of minutes of frantic crawling, they finally reach the roof.
The brisk night air engulfs their lungs, and the laughing gas dissipates as it exits the vent. Selina turns around to face Joker, who is the current holder of the purple diamond set. He’s leaning against the left side of the vent, trying to keep his weight off of his bleeding foot.
“The cops will be here soon, I’d be happy to take those jewels off your hands so that you can crawl back to whichever shit -hole you came from,” Selina takes a step towards him and holds out her hand expectantly.
“There’s no way in hell that you’re leaving with these, sweetheart,” he swats her hand away with a wheezy laugh and places the tiara on his head, “Plus, you’d have to catch me first!” The clown turns away quickly and leaps as best as he can to the next rooftop over, trying to ignore the pain in his left foot. Selina leaps after him with whip in hand; she manages to wrap it around his good leg and trip him, allowing her to catch up.
“Well, darling , what if we made a deal?” Selina walks over and sits on his chest, pinning the weakened clown down. “I’ll take that gorgeous tiara off your hands, and you can take the earrings and necklace, how’s that sound?”
“No dice, honey ,” Joker sneers at her and tries to free himself with no luck, “the only part of the set I even wanted was the tiara, you can take the earrings and necklace, but I’m keeping this gorgeous tiara,” his smugness never fails to anger her.
Selina rips the tiara off of the clown’s head, how it managed to stay on during the fall, she doesn’t know. She quickly stands up and tries to run off with the tiara, but Joker grabs her by the ankle and trips her. Payback’s a bitch , he remarks in his head. When Selina falls, she drops the tiara, and Joker launches himself after it like a rabid animal.
Selina manages to kick it away from him to buy herself some time to get it back, but as she gets up to go after it, Joker sinks a knife into her shoulder.
She cries out, and Joker goes after it again while she is distracted. As soon as he has the tiara in hand, Selina tackles him to the ground, causing him to drop it off of the roof. They both watch it fall to the ground and shatter on impact.
“God DAMNIT!” they both screech at once.
“Look at what you did, you useless fucking clown!” Selina barks at him and clasps her hands around his skinny, white neck.
“ You’re the one who tackled me ,” Joker manages to choke out as he’s being strangled.
“Give me one good reason not to slit your throat right now,” she hisses and puts one of her razor-sharp nails up to his neck, drawing a line of blood.
“Because we’ll both be arrested before you even get the chance!” Joker points up to the police helicopter above that is shining their spotlight on them.
Selina looks up and, sure enough, the police are about to arrest them, and they will if they don’t leave right now . She looks back down at Joker and considers leaving him to be sent back to Arkham, but decides against it. He did help them escape Penguin’s goons, even if it was in an asinine way. She quickly stands and holds out her hand to help him up, which he takes without hesitation.
Because she knows this district better than him, she leads them over several roof tops and down into and through alleys. The helicopter tries to keep track of them in their attempt to flee, but thankfully, their frantic escape worked. They managed to lose the cops, but who knows for how long.
The alley they were currently in was familiar to Selina, and the graffiti on the wall adjacent to the two criminals confirms the familiarity. It was the same alley she had seen the Joker gang spray painting before this whole fiasco began. Joker looks over to the graffiti, which was supposed to resemble Joker’s face, but it was very poorly done.
“That’s the ugliest fucking blue I’ve ever seen,” he mutters more to himself than anyone else.
Selina has to cover her mouth to keep from bursting with laughter, which results in several ugly snorts and silent wheezes.
“What? It is!” Joker whispers indignantly.
Selina tries but fails to regain her composure. “I completely agree with you. That is the ugliest fucking blue I’ve ever seen.” Her laughter rings through the alley way, and soon enough, Joker is joining her.
🐈🃏🐈🃏
The Joker and Catwoman were two of the first costumed villains to make their appearance in Gotham, not long after the Batman began his career of vigilantism. When the two first began their respective criminal careers, they became close. They gossiped about the other rogues to each other, shared secret plans, and even had fairly regular movie and spa nights. Over the years, though, their relationship grew cold and they became distant. Selina believes their relationship ended when she started seeing the Bat. Mainly due to jealousy, she assumed, because he wanted the Bat, and has shown that he’ll stop at nothing to get him. At first, she thought that he found her love for the vigilante as betrayal, but she has come to realize that his jealousy was embedded with envy . He loved the Bat as well.
Despite their strained relationship, they managed to have some good moments, like this one.
“We should leave before the cops find us,” Joker says after their laughter has died down.
“We’re both injured and need medical attention, my apartment isn’t too far if you’d like to stay there while the police search dies down,” Selina suggests to him. He takes a moment to consider, but eventually agrees. They begin making their way to her cat-filled apartment.
🐈🃏🐈🃏
After about an hour of walking, or limping in Joker’s case, they finally reach her apartment building. They make their way up the stairs, thankfully not running into other residents of the building, and Selina unlocks her apartment door to allow the two bleeding criminals to enter. She reminds herself to clean up Joker’s blood trail later, but for now, they need to deal with their wounds.
Selina directs Joker to sit on the kitchen island counter and remove his shoe and sock, both of which were sticky with blood. She has never been more grateful to have hardwood and linoleum floors. As he hisses in pain while removing his sock and shoe, Selina removes her cowl and gloves and goes to grab her first aid kit.
When she comes back, there is a small puddle of blood pooling beneath Joker’s dangling, mangled foot, and he is trying to fend off her cats.
“I swear, if I died in your apartment, your cats would not hesitate to eat me,” Joker says exasperatedly. Selina is amused at his remark and successfully shoos away her cats.
She kneels in front of him, avoiding the blood puddle, and begins her work on patching up his foot. “This is going to sting… Don’t you dare kick me.”
“Don’t tempt me— Fuck!” Selina presses a rubbing alcohol soaked towel to his wound. She wasn’t kidding when she said it would sting. Much to Selina’s relief, he didn’t kick her; his kicks hurt . She continues to clean his foot of the blood and grime that has covered it so that she can stitch it and patch it. He should probably see an actual doctor for this, but she knows him. The only time he would see one was if his life was on the line, and even then, maybe not.
Despite not being a professional, she admires her relatively-nicely done stitches. She wraps his foot in gauze and medical tape, and finally his whining stops. She knows he has a high pain tolerance, and her cleaning and stitching of the wound probably didn’t hurt as much as he says, but he does like to complain.
She stands up to help him off the counter, but he refuses. “Let me do your shoulder. It’s a pretty deep wound, and it’ll be hard for you to fix up by yourself.” This catches Selina off-guard. Even though he was the one that caused the wound, it is a weirdly kind offer coming from the Harlequin of Hate. It was almost as if he was extending to her an olive branch to say that he doesn’t entirely hate her.
She is certainly in no position to decline, so she takes a chair from her dining table and drags it in front of Joker. She sits and he begins to clean and patch her stab wound. Both remain silent apart from the occasional hiss of pain from Selina.
🐈🃏🐈🃏
After both criminals were patched up and the trails and pools of blood were cleaned, they found themselves in Selina’s living room on her couch, surrounded by purring cats. They had both changed into more comfortable clothes; Selina wore an old tank top and pajama bottoms, and Joker wore one of Bruce’s old shirts and sweatpants, which hung loosely on his lithe frame. They watch the news reports in silence as they pass a bottle of wine between each other, sans wine glasses. Joker had made himself comfortable by sitting sideways on the couch and resting his legs on Selina’s. By the time the news had informed the viewers that the GCPD had given up on their search for Catwoman and the Joker, but had taken Penguin and his goons into custody, they were on their third bottle. Joker was too drunk to leave, and Selina was too drunk to make him.
They both decided, with what coherencey they had left, that they would watch a movie while they finished the rest of the bottle. The only movie on TV right now that was worth their attention was Bridesmaids. Selina and Joker were both suckers for chick-flicks, even if they denied it.
About halfway through the movie, Selina felt a pair of eyes boring holes into her skull. She turned to her right to see Joker staring at her. This intensity of staring would cause most people to become uneasy, especially from Joker, but Selina was really too out of it to care right now.
“What?”
After a moment of silence, Joker spoke. “Tonight was fun.”
Fun? This night couldn’t have gone more wrong . How did he see it as fun ?
“You’re drunk,” Selina dismissed.
“So are you,” Joker muttered with suggestive undertones as a sly smile crept onto his face.
Selina stared at him in bewilderment. Is he really suggesting— no. Is he? “Are… are you suggesting that we have sex ?”
“What? No! I mean… unless you want to—”
“No.”
Exactly three minutes and twenty-four seconds passed as they stared at each other. It was exactly three minutes and twenty -five seconds before Selina shoved Joker’s legs off of her own and pounced on him.
Selina’s nostrils flooded with the scent of blood, cinnamon candles, and smoke. It wasn’t a terrible combination, there were worse ones. His mouth was hot and tasted of the wine they shared, but she could also taste cigarettes on his tongue; from the years Selina has known him, she knows that his smoking habits only get worse when his anxiety does. Ignoring this observation, she drags her fingers through his messy green hair and down his pale neck, leaving angry red marks from her nails.
The spontaneous make-out session surprised Joker, to say the least. As soon as her tongue met his, he was done for. Her expensive perfume that smells like cherry chapstick and roses engulfs him. Her tongue still has the taste of wine on it, which only intoxicates him further. The aggressive kissing distracts him from the pain in his foot caused by Selina shoving it to the ground. Her nails raking the back of his neck sends jolts of pleasure throughout his body, and he responds by digging his own nails into her toned, pajama clad thighs.
Selina moves from her straddling position to stand in front of Joker. She moved her hands from his neck and placed one hand under his ass and one hand under his thigh, all while never breaking the kiss; she lifted him up with little struggle. Selina is much stronger than she appears.
Out of shock of being suddenly lifted by someone about a foot shorter than himself, Joker broke the kiss. In a feeble attempt to keep himself from falling, he hooked himself around her, much like a koala.
“Ohmygod… ” he muttered breathlessly with his eyes wide with lust and mouth agape in disbelief. Now, Joker has never been one to have preferences for the people he’s attracted to, however , a common theme between all of them is that they could easily beat the shit out of him (and often do). Selina, of course, knows this, and flashes him a sultry smile as she carries him to her bedroom.
🐈🃏🐈🃏
Once they reach the bed, she drops him and he’s straddled again in an instant. Their makeout session resumes, but is even more heated than the previous one, now with more biting and clashing teeth. A needy moan escapes Joker’s lips as Selina parts from the kiss and stares down at him seductively.
“Are you ready?” Selina asked in a sultry voice.
“Oh god yes,” Joker hazily replies.
Selina leans forward to peck him on his blushed cheek, and then lays beside him and wraps her arms around his petite waist. As she snuggles closer, Joker’s confusion grows.
“Wait, what’s happening? I thought we were—”
“Thought we were what ?” she responds coyly, “I was just asking if you were ready to sleep, you useless bottom. No need to make it weird.”
Joker made a series of indignant sounds before bursting in laughter. Selina soon joins him.
“Oh fuck you, Selina!”
“You were hoping to, weren’t you?”
Their laughter doesn’t last very long due to the two tipsy criminals falling asleep on top of Selina’s messy, pillow-clad bed.