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The first time it rains, they’re locked in combat -- they’re always fighting, Batman’s noticed, but he has the advantage now. It’s raining hard, pouring, but his suit’s designed to be waterproof and inside it, he is mostly dry. The Joker is not so lucky -- he’s stumbled on the slick grass twice already, and the hair in his eyes must be blocking his vision, because a blade hasn’t gotten through his suit once.
The makeup on his face is smearing as well, drawing streaks down his face, distorting the Joker’s macabre mask into little more than a blob of whiteness.
Then Batman blinks and something shifts, just a little bit. But it’s enough to make him pause.
The Joker looks shockingly human, man instead of monster, and that thought sends Batman’s mind screeching to an unexpected stop. He’d never thought about it before, hadn’t given it a conscious thought, but there’s a person there. He’s not just an enemy sent to test Batman’s devotion to Gotham. He’s human, with likes and dislikes and even a personality.
Batman stares at the Joker, watching the rainwater trickle through his hair and leave behind dirty smears of humanity. The Joker glares back at him, looking suddenly smaller and oddly defiant, blinking and backing away as murky grey water slides into his eyes.
Normally, this would be the point where Batman ends their fight, taking brutal advantage of the Joker’s temporary blindness to bind him and send him (once more) to Arkham. But the Joker’s minions are disabled already, tied up on the side of the road and ready for the police, and something in him, maybe Bruce, says, wait.
The Joker stops, head tilted quizzically, and Batman realizes that he’s said it aloud.
Of its own volition, his hand lifts and drags a rough thumb over the Joker’s cheek. It paints a clean swathe of lightly-tanned skin, revealing momentarily the rough scar on the Joker’s face. Without the red makeup to cover it, it looks ugly -- painful, and Batman sees a brief flash of who the Joker could have been, before someone had hurt him badly enough to mark him forever.
“What,” the Joker rubs water away from his mouth with the back of his hand, and his lips are a pale, pale pink. Batman can see the corners of his mouth, and the shiny flesh where the scars begin. “What are you doing, Batman?”
I want to know you. I want to see who you really are.
He can’t say that -- he can’t say it aloud. But, he reminds himself, he’s your enemy. You don’t have to explain yourself. So he doesn’t. Everything has a strange shimmer of unreality with it, as if a word would shatter the Joker’s tenuous humanity and flip him back into the maniac Batman recognizes.
Because whoever he’s seeing now, he doesn’t recognize.
He catches the Joker’s head between his hands -- there’s no struggle, but now he can see the way his eyebrows are moving, read the confused calculation in the Joker’s eyes and painting the furrow of his brow. He tilts the Joker’s head up, to catch more of the rain, and is mesmerized by the movement in the strong line of tendon in the Joker’s throat when he swallows.
He’s never noticed that before, nor does he recognize the slight darkening of stubble on the Joker’s chin, revealed only by their close proximity and the cold rainwater. “Who are you?” He asks, realizing only after the fact that he has forgotten to roughen his voice.
“I’m the Joker.”
“Is that what you call yourself?”
“It’s what they call me.”
“But what do you call yourself?”
The black rings around the Joker’s eyes are fading away, and when Batman wipes a curious finger over them, revealing pale, unmarred skin, the Joker closes his eyes. When he opens them, Batman can see that they are a rich, deep brown. They remind him of autumn and piles of leaves.
“I don’t. What do you call yourself?”
“Batman.” He calls himself Batman. He’s not Bruce, anymore. He isn’t sure if he ever was, really, or if they have always been two separate people. Batman’s the only one that matters.
The Joker laughs derisively, but without the makeup, Batman can’t see the monster, the killer. Instead, he sees a man with soft, inviting lips, and warm brown eyes, and before he remembers that he’s wrong, he leans forward and brushes their mouths together.
For a second, for the first second, it’s like nothing he’s felt before, different and solid and there. The Joker’s unyielding, strong. There is the brush of stubble against his face, and when Batman trails a curious hand down the Joker’s neck and shoulder, to curl around a bicep, he feels the hard bulge of muscle. Everything about him is clearly, openly masculine in an unexpected, rough way that Batman finds surprisingly appealing, and he thinks, I see why people do this.
At about this point, reality kicks in -- and so does the Joker, driving a powerful kick into his shin and shoving him away hard enough to make him stumble with the unexpectedness of it. There’s a sharp sting in his lower lip, and when he licks it, he is met with the coppery tang of blood.
Figures, he thinks, harshly, and feels the oddness of the moment shake away.
The Joker’s smirking cruelly at him, but without the makeup. His hair is plastered wetly across his forehead and clinging to his cheeks. He looks, still, oddly different -- not vulnerable, maybe, but more human nonetheless.
Batman finds his usual exasperated revulsion missing, but the anger that simmers in his center is still there, steadily rising. It’s familiar and helps mask the embarrassment that’s also rising. How could he do something so stupid? What was he thinking? Was he even thinking?
The Joker’s a snake, sly and dangerous and cruel. And Batman had gotten confused. He’d drawn too near, and now he was going to pay the price.
“Why, Batsy,” the Joker mocks, dancing backwards. “I didn’t know you swung that way. That’s freakish even by our standards. And I dress like a clown, so when I say something’s warped, you know it is.” He cackles in delight, and the sound grates on him like nails on a chalkboard.
When Batman starts to follow -- regardless of what happened between them, he still needs to apprehend the man -- the Joker wags a scolding finger at him. “Ah-ah-ah,” he singsongs, and drags gloved fingers over his lips pointedly. They are still a little swollen. “If I get caught, I think I’ll have a very interesting story to tell the news, don’t you agree? How many people, do you think, would hate it so much, if their precious little Batman’s a pervert?“
“You’ll do it anyways,” he growls, and it is Batman’s voice; Bruce has been weighed and found wanting.
“Would I do that?” Without waiting for an answer, the Joker continues on. He has a tendency to monologue when given the chance, Batman’s noticed. “Oh, wait. Silly me. Of course I would! But not this time. I promise. I give you my word.“
As if that were worth anything.
The Joker’s mouth is stretched wide by his grin, jaw open wide enough to catch a glimpse of pink tongue, and now Batman sees the mask. It’s the phantom image of scarlet overlaid on his mouth and trailing up his cheeks, painting over the scars until they are nothing but vague blurs of roughness. It’s in the twin circles of shadow that obscure his eyes, and a proudly, inhumanly white face that is blinding in its brightness.
Even without the makeup, when it’s all washed off and his face is bare, the Joker still has his mask, and now Batman can see it. Does see it, all the places where the Joker has peeled away his humanity piece by piece and replaced it with madness, horror, and glee.
That’s not something that disappears or goes away. There’s no coming back, no recovering, from what he’s done. He should have realized it sooner, but now that he’s done so, Batman’s not going to lose sight of it again.
He won’t make the same mistake twice.
--
The next time it rains, the Joker wears waterproof makeup.
And even as Batman tells himself he’s not disappointed, a small part of him crumples.