Joker "howls at the moon." It's fucking weird.

Arthur starts laughing when Murray first kisses him.

"Something funny, kid?" Murray asks, clearly unamused, probably hurt but too professional to show it. "I've had women laugh at me before, but my dick is usually out at that point."

"I - I thought that you didn't - didn't go in for that - that sort of humor," Arthur says through giggles. His mouth is smiling, but he's holding himself with an obvious, almost vibrating tension, and his eyes are shiny-wet in distress. "You know, I - I always appreciated your clean - clean jokes," he adds, just to fill the silence with something besides the fading sound of his own laughter.

"That makes one of us," Murray says. "I always thought that the studio could loosen up a bit, but, hey, it's show business, right? Gotta do what the big wigs at the network want."

Arthur smiles, small but genuine. There's greasepaint on Murray's mouth, little smears of red and white. It's a good look on him, Arthur thinks, one that no one else would - could - appreciate. "You have a little something on you," he tells Murray, and makes a motion toward his face that he quickly aborts.

"That's not the only makeup I'm wearing," Murray says. He sounds a little more amused now. "This may come as a shock to you, but they cake me in pounds of the stuff every night. These good looks aren't a hundred percent natural, unfortunately."

"I think that you'd be very handsome without it," Arthur says.

At thtat, Murray grabs Arthur's hand, slow so as not to spook him, and raises their intertwined fingers to Arthur's own mouth. "You've got a little something on you, too," he says, pressing his knuckles to Arthur's mouth.

Arthur parts his lips.

-

"Do you want to hear a joke, Murray?" Arthur asks. He isn't laughing anymore; rather, he's smiling, big, and a bit ghoulish - the face paint gives him the uncanny appearance of a children's illustration, sure, all bold, clashing colors and a cartoonishness about his brow, but the pull of his muscles at the ends of his lips are more prominent than anything else. He smiles like a doll come to life - he means it, with sincerity and gratitude, but he's never done it of his own accord before.

Murray gently runs a hand up Arthur's back; Arthur has him straddled in one of the dressing room chairs, and he can hear it creak every time that they move together. "Sure," he says, watching Arthur's throat move with his words.

"You won't be the first person I call 'Daddy' in bed," Arthur says, still all smiles, and Murray chuckles lowly. "I had you pegged the second I walked in," he tells Arthur, letting his hand crawl farther up his back to tangle in his long hair. "You seem like the type - no offense meant, of course," he adds. "I say, live and let live. You know, I think my nephew may even be a homosexual - "

"No offense taken," Arthur interrupts cheerily. "But I was talking about my mother's boyfriend making me suck his cock!"

"I - " Murray falters. "I - Jesus Christ, kid, I'm sorry. I didn't - "

Arthur wriggles in his lap. The creaking of the chair underneath them sounds ominous. "I know you didn't," he says, almost sympathetically, and leans down to burrow his face in Murray's neck. He breathes him in deep, expensive cigarettes but surprisingly cheap cologne - talk show hosts must not make enough to afford anything better than Drakkar Noir - and says into the skin there, just beginning to sallow with age, "That's not the punchline. The punchline is that he never fucked me in a bed." He lays a kiss there, right where Murray's pulse has just begun to speed, and asks, "Will you take me to bed after the show, Daddy?"

-

The show is a bit of a dud, if Murray is being honest with himself. He's rapidly become too aware of Arthur to in good consciousness make fun of him on live television, but the trade-off for Murray's last-minute change of heart is that he plays Arthur's stand-up tape straight, tempered only with a sort of pity that must come across to the audience as disingenuous and uncharacteristically saccharine for a show that, despite Murray's earlier complaint, does have some bite to it.

Arthur is clearly in his element, though. It helps. The audience is lukewarm at best, but Murray believes in the inherent goodness of mankind, and no one boos Arthur and his childish slapstick. The applause is mild, but, as Murray signs off with his well-worn slogan, it might as well be thunderous for as grateful as he is to be done for tonight.

Arthur is waiting for him in the dressing room. Gene slides Murray a glance that says, loudly, "I don't approve of what you're doing and am disappointed at the mistakes that you're making, but you're the boss," and Murray nods his head to him almost imperceptibly as he wraps an arm around Arthur's slim waist and congratulates him on a job well done.

-

The implicit promise of a bed has Murray feeling almost chivalrous, like Arthur is a three-dollar hooker too tired to react with anything but relief at clean sheets and a man without genital warts. In a way, he sort of is, but Murray pushes that thought to the back of his head and sternly warns it to stay there.

"Why don't you go wash your face, hm? The bathroom is to the right," Murray tells him, "and the bedroom is just down the hall, here."

"But I like playing dress-up," Arthur says, almost girlishly. "I used to wear my mother's makeup, you know - and, of course, she must have known, all those little fingerprints left in her blush, the lipstick left uncapped - but she never knew about the men who fucked me even as she introduced me to them, so maybe she just wasn't a very perceptive woman."

Murray hadn't built a long and storied career in the entertainment sector by being at a loss for words, so he presses on with a sigh and a shake of his head. "You know broads," he says. "If it doesn't involve racking up thousands of dollars of debt on one of my cards, then they're not interested."

A shadow passes over Arthur's face for a moment - not dark, but gloomy. If Murray were to nose behind his ear, he'd smell earth like after rain but no hot lightening-static. "My mother was a good woman," he says, mournful and unconvincingly, before shaking it off with a bounce of his shoulders that's, Murray has to admit, kind of cute. "But enough about Mommy. I want to play with you for a while, Daddy."

Murray's a man in all the ways being a man matters: he's forthright when possible but smart enough for subtlety when the situation calls for it. He's never had trouble getting women to go home with him, and he treats them decently but firmly when the morning comes. He's gotten to where he is today through hard work, and only a professional amount of hobnobbing. He only kissed a boy once, in the seventh grade, and sucked a few dicks at a few auditions. He is fallible, but he is a man nonetheless. He is a man, and so he does what any man would do in this situation.

"Wash your face," he says. "Or I'm turning you out on your ass, you brat."

-

Underneath the face paint, Arthur is drooping. He's a fair bit younger than Murray, still, but the bags under his eyes tell the story of a man who hasn't had a good night sleep's since he was in his mother's womb. He’s stripped down to his underwear, and his hair is damp and curling at the ends, and, without the makeup, his brow is strong in a way that abruptly masculates him; despite that, he’s androgynous in the way that children are, not desexed but unsexed. He looks the picture of sensuality, if sensuality was a man approaching middle age with a face like a water-damaged painting, his colors running but art as context.

“Come here,” Murray tells him, sat at the side of the bed. “Let me see you.”

Arthur comes to him, but he slides onto his knees, not particularly gracefully. He tilts his head up and lets Murray take it into his hands.

“You’re as pretty as a picture,” Murray says, quiet but firm. “Has anyone ever told you that?”

“No, Daddy,” Arthur whispers. “Just you. Only you.”

“Then you need to hear it again: you’re beautiful, Arthur.”

“Please don’t, Daddy,” Arthur whimpers. “I want – ”

“Be quiet,” Murray cuts him off. “You’ll take what I give you or we’re done. Finish getting undressed and lay on the bed.”

“How do you want me?” Arthur asks after he stands and sheds the last of his clothing, outstretching his arms in a self-deprecatingly performative manner, as if to say, “This is me. It’s not much – it’s nothing at all, really – but I’m here.”

Murray stands, too, and loosens his tie. “On your back. I want to see your face.”