RELAPSE - Arthur Fleck | Joker FANFIC/LOVE STORY

Chapter 6: Ha-Ha's

Arthur's POV.

I sat at a table in the store, that I sought refuge in, for what felt like a long time. It was just a little hole-in-the-wall burger joint that smelled like a vat of grease. My eyes hardly left the windows, but I could still tell just how dirty the place was. There were so many handprints smeared on the windows, it must have been years since they did any kind of cleaning. I was tempted to look around at the walls, ceiling and the floor to see what else they neglected, but I couldn't risk missing Anon if she walked out of the bank. What would be taking so long? Did they just hand her a job right then and there and tell her to get to work? I sat there asking myself these questions until I felt a hard tap on my shoulder.

I looked up to see an older waitress, her face was worn of stress and age, peering at me with squinted eyes and her lips were pressed into a hard line, "Excuse me, sir, but you really need to order something or you need to leave."

I took a look around the place.  Empty table, empty table, empty table. The place wasn't busy. How was me sitting here causing any harm to her business. I scoffed, "why?"

"Because I said so. So, are you going to order something or what?" This bitch. I jerked myself up to a standing position and looked down at her, she was quite short. I saw a flicker of fear in her eyes, "Okay, you need to leave or I'm going to call the police."

My sudden change in emotion was triggering my condition and I felt it building up in my chest. I didn't need to deal with this right now, so I told her that I was leaving. As I turned to grab my hoodie, that I had taken off and placed on the table, I happened to look out the window and see Anon exit the bank. And with that, I hurriedly grabbed my hoodie, yanked it onto my body and pushed passed the waitress. She let out a shriek when I pushed her, but I didn't care. She almost made me miss seeing Anon leave. After all that time of waiting, that is when the bitch decided to bug me.

I exited the store and made my way in the direction that Anon was going. I decided to follow her from across the street this time, to lessen my chance of getting caught.

She didn't walk too far before entering a diner. I stopped walking and waited for a few minutes until she came back out to the street. And this pattern continued. She basically went into every restaurant, diner, coffee shop and bakery that she passed. This lead me to believe that the bank didn't hire her, so she was now seeking other options. I followed her as she walked and waited for her every time she entered a building. Each time she was out of my view, I would tell myself to leave and I would struggle to do so. Sometimes, I even started walking away, but she always seemed to come back out onto the street just in time for me to see her and pull me back in.

As I followed her, I took in all if the details of her that I could, from the distance I was at. I would rather be closer to her, but at least I could take in her whole form from here. Her long blonde hair kept dancing in her face, due to the wind, so she ended up putting it in a high ponytail. I was excited that she did this because it completely opened up her face, I could see everything. And not only her face, I could also see her slender neck. Naturally, my eyes wandered from her neck, to her chest, to her waist and then to her ass. She didn't have largely voluptuous curves, but her curves were beautiful, nonetheless. Looking at her like this only made me want to close the gap that was between us. To walk next to her. To wrap my arm around her waist. To...

Suddenly, she disappeared into another building and I decided to sit down for a moment; I was getting myself all flustered. I looked around my surroundings and it didn't take me long to realize how familiar this area was. If Anon kept walking in this direction, down this very street, she would eventually pass Ha Ha's. Surely she wouldn't go in, would she? She wasn't really desperate enough to try and get a job there, was she? While I loved my job, I definitely knew that it was not a place that she should be working at. Not only do they have clowns for hire, but they also have strippers for hire. With how beautiful Anon was, I could definitely see Hoyt trying to talk her into it. Surely Anon wouldn't go for a job like that, but then again, it seemed that she did have some kind of troubled past, so maybe her trauma would drive her to such a job. Sure, I didn't really know anything about her past, so I couldn't say for sure if she had experienced trauma, but she was seeing the same counselor as me. That had to say something, didn't it? I sat there in my thoughts, waiting for Anon to come back out.