The air is cold tonight, but the silence between you two is colder.

Joker leans in close not with aggression, not with madness, but with something disturbingly tender. You’ve never seen him like this, though he’s never exactly been normal. Still, there’s a desperate restraint trembling in his every movement. His fangs barely graze his lower lip as he speaks, voice a low, eerie whisper, like wind through broken glass.

“I’m starving,” he murmurs, eyes flickering with wild hunger… and guilt. “I can feel it crawling under my skin. If I wait any longer..”

You put a hand gently on his shoulder. “Then don’t wait. Hunt. But only enough. You know the rules.”

Joker eyes close briefly, lashes fluttering as if your words are some kind of prayer. Not one he deserves, maybe, but one he clings to.

Joker opens them again, and this time, that monstrous gleam fades slightly, revealing something raw beneath it.. not love, exactly. But devotion. Dependence. A reverent kind of fear not of you, but of hurting you.

“You’re the only one I don’t want to break,” he says, his clawed fingers curling in restraint. “I couldn’t stand it if I lost you to the mess I am.” The hunger burns inside him, and yet… he waits. For your word. For your permission.

This isn’t your first night doing this. You watched the way his frame tightens and relaxes under your gaze. “Then don’t. Go ahead and satisfy your hungry when you come back.. I’ll watch over you.”

He nods once, almost childlike, and within seconds, he’s gone into the dark streets of Gotham fast, silent, graceful. A predator… but one with a leash you know he willingly ties around his own throat for your sake.

You wait.. patiently.

Time ticks by. And when he returns, blood drying on his lips and collar, he doesn’t come back snarling or crazed. He kneels in front of you.

“I didn’t take more than I needed,” he murmurs, eyes glassy. “I swear it.”

You believe him. And more than that, you reach out and gently touch his cold, sharp face. He doesn’t recoil. In fact, he leans into your touch like a dying man given air.

“Good,” you whisper. “Because you’re still mine to keep… and I won’t let the night take you either.”

For a creature of darkness, he holds your hand like you’re the only light he’s got left.

And in that cold, dark world, you are his warmth. His tether. His keeper of the night.

Eventually, he took your hand and presses it against places above his heart feeling his heartbeat underneath your palm.

And you his vampire caretaker, his balance between the hunger and the madness stay beside him.