There was no slate, no clapper, not even the ritual of calling action. Just the two of them in the pale circle, and a page of dialogue that Anne had already memorized weeks ago but now felt as slippery as wet glass.
She let Selina Kyle into her bones. It was a movement of muscle memory, one she could summon in a glance: hips loose but ready to coil, lips parted for a smirk, every glance up through the lashes calibrated for both invitation and warning.
She flicked an imaginary strand of hair behind her ear, then pivoted, crossing in front of Marcus, measuring the room for boundaries.
He did not follow. He did not even turn his head.
She delivered the first line: "You know, you'd have an easier time making friends if you didn't set the room on fire every time you walked in."
A slow exhale from Marcus, the sound loaded with chemical amusement.
"Fire's only a problem if you're flammable, darling."
Anne walked a measured arc around him, keeping her center of gravity low, the way a real cat burglar would.
"Oh, I can burn. I just make it look good."
Now he moved. A single step, then a pivot, his body unfolding with the patience of a mantis, not quite human in the slowness of it. The eyes never lost her.
"You know what I like about cats?" he said, voice almost conversational. "No one ever knows if they want to love you or kill you."
She felt the edge in the line, more than she'd seen on the page. She let it play, pressed in closer, letting Selina's confidence override her own nerves.
"Maybe I'll let you find out," she shot back. "Just don't mistake my patience for permission."
The words were good—she'd worked them with the dialect coach until they landed like velvet-wrapped darts. But as soon as they left her mouth, she saw it: Marcus clocked every syllable, every micro-expression, and instead of volleying it back, he let it ricochet around in the silence. He left the words in the air, untended.
Anne's heart rate ticked up, a counter-tempo to the crawl of the scene.
He took another step, closing the gap.
"You ever notice how people like us always end up in the dark, talking about what we're not going to do?"
Anne breathed out through her nose, pivoting away from him, but her pulse fluttered as he tracked her—not with his body, but with the orbit of his stare.
"People like us don't have anything to talk about in the light," she replied, a fraction sharper than intended.
He smiled—not the rictus, but a slow, sour blossom that made the scars around his mouth seem less painted, more lived-in.
"Maybe that's why we like it," he said, and for a moment, the scene was gone, replaced by a kind of raw intimacy.
Anne tried to recover, switching to the next line, but he beat her there:
"Let's cut the shit, Selina. You want to know what I want?"
She hesitated, just for a frame, but he'd already stepped in, the toes of their shoes nearly touching.
"I want you to see me," he whispered, and the words were so soft they nearly slid past her ears.
Anne stared up at him, waiting for the script to catch up, but it didn't. There was no stage direction for this. He was off the page now, and the gravity of it forced her to make a choice: break character, or see it through.
She chose the latter.
She leaned forward, letting her breath paint a warm stripe on his jaw. "I see you," she murmured.
"You're not as invisible as you think."
He grinned, this time all teeth, but before she could pivot away, he moved—so fast and so controlled it was like the air had snapped. One gloved hand wrapped her wrist, the grip perfectly calibrated, not quite tight enough to hurt but with the implicit threat that it could be, at any moment.
Anne gasped, and the sound was real.
He angled his face so close she could see the brush strokes in the paint, the little rivers where sweat had run through and dried again.
"Scared, kitty?" he purred, voice dipped in honey and bleach.
This wasn't in the script. Anne's mind raced through the standard comebacks, but all of them felt like shields, not weapons.
She forced a smirk, shot back, "Only scared of you missing your mark."
He laughed, low and private, the sound vibrating through his chest and into her palm, which he still held captive.
The scene was supposed to end with a standoff: Selina yanking free, Joker letting her go, a moment of respect in the release. Instead, Marcus leaned in, breathing her in, every movement slow enough that she could see it coming and yet could not predict the endpoint.
He brought her hand—still gloved—to his mouth. His lips parted. And with the deliberation of a predator savoring the kill, he ran his tongue, wet and shockingly warm, up the center of her palm.
Anne's whole body jerked, a nerve-reflex from wrist to jaw. She made a sound, not quite a moan, not quite a yelp, but definitely not rehearsed. The taste of greasepaint and mint exploded against her skin, the sensation both obscene and electric.
For a moment, time stopped. His tongue pressed flat, then retreated, leaving behind a glossy stripe of heat and chemical sweetness.
She looked up. His eyes were unblinking, locked on her. For the first time, she realized she had no idea where Marcus ended and the Joker began.
"Cut," came the voice from the intercom, brittle and immediate. But Marcus didn't let go.
He held her gaze for three more seconds—counted, intentional, the way a snake sizes up a bird right before deciding if it's worth the trouble to eat.
When he did release, her hand dropped to her side, fingers trembling.
She stared at him, trying to find the line between violation and invitation. He wiped his lips with the back of his gloved hand, never looking away.
"Good scene," he said, voice raw with an aftertaste of something darker than performance.
Anne forced her body to move, stepping back into herself. She had been licked by stranger men, but never in a room with cameras and a million-dollar insurance policy on her face.
The silence in the room was a third actor now, breathing between them.
Anne straightened her spine, flicked the moisture from her glove, and laughed—not the cutesy, pageant sound, but a real bark, raw and serrated.
"You are a freak," she said, admiration coloring the insult.
Marcus grinned, shrugging.
"Takes one to know one."
For the first time in her career, Anne Hathaway was left with nothing to say.
She turned, walked off the circle of light, and left him standing there, the only real Joker she'd ever met.
.....
Anne walked the corridor like a woman climbing out of a car crash, not knowing if she was actually hurt or just adrenalized past the capacity for pain.
The air in the hallway was too thin, and the afterimage of the studio lights followed her, searing little purple polka dots across her vision. She pressed two fingers to her throat. The pulse was riotous.
She wanted to say she was composed. She wanted to say that nothing could rattle her after ten years in this business, three Oscar nominations, a thousand hours in therapy and movement class and press tour micro-aggression. But the shake in her hands said otherwise, and so did the sweat forming a cold bridge between her shoulder blades.
She passed the mannequin receptionist, who gave her the same non-smile as before. Anne flashed her best movie star wave, then ducked around the corner, finding the dressing room by muscle memory.
The door stuck.
Of course it did.
She fumbled the handle, almost dropped it, and when it finally gave way she tumbled inside and threw the deadbolt with the frantic precision of someone barricading against a nightmare. She sagged against the back of the door, then let herself slide down until her knees found the edge of the makeup bench.
It was a standard studio cell: dimmer bulbs flanking the mirror, bottles of Evian lined up next to mismatched makeup wipes and an unopened bag of kettle chips.
Anne's bag—Birkin, red, fake; she never traveled with the real thing—sat where she'd left it, zipper half-open and spilling lipstick and Altoids. In the mirror, her face was a study in defeat: flushed at the cheekbones, eyes pinwheeling between feral and ashamed.
She peeled off her gloves, first the right, then the left, using her teeth to work the fabric loose from her damp palm.
The left one stuck, clinging at the base of the fingers, and when she finally got it off, she just stared at it, the matte black material marked with a faint, iridescent streak from where his tongue had been.
Anne pressed the glove flat to the Formica countertop. She ran her index finger down the stripe, half expecting it to still be warm, but it was already cold and drying at the edges.
A knock at the door.
She froze, then gathered herself, voice a register too high:
"Yeah?"
"Anne? Five minutes till touch-up," said the makeup girl, tone chipper and forced.
Anne cleared her throat.
"Thanks. Give me—give me five, okay?"
"Sure thing, hon."
Silence again. Anne flexed her hand, stretching the fingers wide, then made a fist and held it to her chest.
She stared at herself in the mirror, searching for a tell. Her eyes looked even darker than usual, pupils so big they nearly erased the iris. She tried on a few smiles: the ingénue, the ingénue-with-venom, the mask of confidence. None of them held. None of them fit.
Her phone buzzed, the vibration skittering across the counter. She grabbed for it with the wrong hand and almost knocked it over. Agent, of course.
"How'd it go?" read the message.
She considered the question for a long time.
Typed "Professional. Intense."
Deleted it.
Tried "He's a psycho."
Deleted that, too.
Then she typed "Call you later." and set the phone face down.
She lifted the glove again, bringing it up to her nose. It smelled faintly of paint, of spearmint, of something else—something sweet and wild, like a fairground at midnight. She caught herself breathing it in, slow and deep, and forced the hand down to the countertop.
Anne looked at her reflection, at the small, involuntary smirk that was starting to curl up at the corner of her mouth.
She did not know how to feel about what had just happened. She only knew that it wasn't going away.
She stood, straightened her spine, and snapped the gloves together, tucking them into her bag. She wiped her palm on the hem of her skirt, then patted her cheeks until the color started to bleed back from shock to artifice.
She opened the door. The makeup artist was waiting, a set of brushes fanned out like a surgeon's tray.
"Ready when you are," said Anne, and her voice came out steady, strong.
She let the girl fuss over her, retouching foundation, dabbing away the evidence of the sweat, re-powdering the tip of her nose.
Through it all, Anne watched the mirror, the girl's hands moving around her face, and let the moment settle in.
When she was finished, she thanked the artist and left the room, walking back down the hall, every step lighter and more deliberate.
She felt changed, but not in a way she could name. She wanted to laugh, or maybe to scream, but instead she just let herself feel the ghost of his tongue on her palm, and the memory of a voice that was not meant to be heard by human ears.
As she pushed through the glass doors into the November daylight, Anne realized she would never again think of the Joker as a mask.
It was a mouth, and it knew how to eat you alive.
.........
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