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Goro’s life had fallen into something of a schedule.
It began at five am. Sharp. Nothing much had changed from his school days, in that regard— the drudgery of an ordinary existence demanded certain sacrifices, but it was nothing he couldn’t handle. He’d head downstairs, straight to the coffeemaker (set on a timer and already going). As much as Joker bemoaned the deficiencies of an automatic coffee machine, if he wasn’t going to wake up and make Goro a better damned cup then Goro would make do.
A few precious minutes were set aside for the sole purpose of waking up, and then he was off again: suits to put on, makeup to arrange, hair to style, and out again through the front door to whatever company he’d decided was worth his time that year.
Sometimes (on good days) Joker would be awake, and that was another story entirely.
--today wasn’t a good day.
Ah, well.
“Moron,” Goro tells the lump on his bed, fondly. The lump on his bed didn’t move. His boyfriend’s night job left him invariably exhausted— and telling him to restrict fool crusades to the courtroom was as hopeless as telling him to not partake in fool crusades at all. Goro had lost hope he’d gain wisdom with age when Joker had declared he was going to law school, of all things.
To become a defense attorney.
Goodness.
But that’s enough time wasted on sentimentality. Sighing, Goro extracts himself from the mess Joker made of the bedsheets and pads quietly down the hall to the kitchen. He’ll be damned if he can’t wring some leisure time out of the morning. A single cup of coffee— that’s all he needs.
A single cup of—
“G’morning,” says the baby sitting on his counter.
“Good morning,” Goro responds, reflexively. Hmm. Inhaling, Goro closes his eyes. Counts to five. Opens them again. The baby hasn’t budged— or, in a burst of refreshing sanity, transformed back into Morgana, who is suspiciously absent. “Not to be rude,” he tries. “But I—”
“S’mean,” says the baby sitting on his counter.
Exhale. “…I see.” The baby is, well, Goro can’t say he’s an expert on this… the baby is perhaps three years old, with wide brown eyes and (messy) black hair. Utterly calm, Goro contemplates the odds the baby is Joker’s— higher than he’d like but unlikely enough he probably won’t be committing murder today.
There is still a baby sitting on his counter.
“I’m going to get…” Goro rolls names around in his head (Joker has several) and contemplates which one the baby is likeliest to know. “Er. Joker-san. Before that, would you like… juice?” Babies like juice, don’t they? He wouldn’t know.
…whatever spirit of chattiness had possessed the baby; it seems to have left. The only response Goro gets is silence.
It isn’t unusual for babies to be shy, he supposes, though he certainly can’t remember being a shy child himself-- of course, much of his childhood is lost to him. Maybe it’s scared. That’s more familiar, in a blurry sort of way. He hadn’t often been kept with children young enough to be considered babies, but they’d all been quite frightened, or at least silent about their anger.
This baby is probably too young for the sorts of cups that Goro has on hand, but it seems to know what to do with it, when he hands it a half-full glass of the only non-alcoholic drink in their fridge. And it’s plastic.
It’s unlikely that a child could hurt itself with a half-full plastic cup of juice, he thinks.
“Well,” he tells it, walking backwards (back to his bedroom). “Well.”
The baby looks at him, as if passing judgement.
“…pardon me,” he adds, returning to the vicinity of the fridge. Pouring himself a glass of juice, this time, Goro speed-walks back to his bedroom-- cup in hand. The lump on his bed hasn’t moved in the minutes since he’d left it.
Goro pours the glass of juice directly onto Joker’s stupid fucking head.
“AHHHHHHH!”
“Are you awake yet? There’s a baby on my goddamned counter.”
“AHHHHH— fuck! Goro!”
Joker emerges from the nest of covers, hair damp (and likely sticky) from the juice that had seeped directly through the fabric. He doesn’t look happy. Well, too-fucking-bad. There is a baby infestation in-progress, and Goro will be damned if he’s missing work and not making his idiot moron bastard suffer a little for the trouble.
“WHAT—” Joker freezes. “Baby… infest—oh, shit!”
“Explain.”
“In a second,” the idiot hisses, untangling himself fully from the sheets. He hits the floor with none of his usual grace, is in the kitchen almost faster than Goro can keep up. The baby drops the cup on-sight-- thankfully having already drunk its contents, or at least spilled most of it onto itself and not the floor.
“Jo!” it gasps, having settled (apparently) on that as easier to say then Jo-kah. Suddenly moving, the baby waves its arms, inadvertently tipping itself up and off the—
--Joker flings himself forward and drops, snagging the baby before it can fall in a catch that would leave a baseball player jealous. “Careful!” he wheezes.
The baby bursts into tears.
“Nice going, idiot.”
The baby cries harder.
“Shhh,” Joker mumbles, arranging the two of them into a less back-breaking position on the floor— Joker, sitting cross-legged, baby settled in his lap. “Shhhhhhh hey, hey, it’s fine… did that big meanie scare you?”
“I did not,” Goro snaps back, affronted, at the same time the baby took a break from bawling its eyes out to shake its head vigorously. “I mean-- Ah hah. Oh, Joker-san, would you care to explain the continued presence of a toddler in my kitchen?”
Joker winces, bouncing the still sniffling child in his lap. “—I was, uh, mildly concussed last night. To be fair.”
Goro closes his eyes and counts to ten. “…Mildly concussed.”
“Less concussed now.”
Christ. Keep breathing. “You left,” Goro says, “a toddler— an unsupervised toddler— alone in my kitchen.”
“…yyyyup.”
“And fell asleep,” Goro continues, “while ‘mildly concussed’.”
“That sure is what happened.”
“Jo!” The baby adds, helpfully. Points at Goro with its tiny pudgy fingers, says-- “Fuck!”
Excellent. Perfect. “Fuck,” Goro repeats.
“Fuckyou!!”
“Absolutely delightful,” Goro replies. Clapping his hands together, he bemoans his perfectly good morning— his perfectly normal, scheduled morning. Says, “I despise that I have to ask this question. I despise it. Joker, where did you get this baby?”
The baby, having calmed down enough to cease crying, crams a lock of Joker’s juice-soaked hair into its mouth and sucks (glaring, Goro thinks, at Goro as it does so). Joker winces. Allows it. “So, I was robbing a guy last night.”
Joker’s night job is what it is. Goro had known he was up to something— the idiot reveled in sending ‘calling cards’ as much as he had when they were children, if not more. Once a Phantom Thief… “The baby.”
“I’m getting to— owch! Don’t pull! I’m getting to that.”
“Pull harder,” Goro tells the baby.
Joker glares at him, an expression that is undercut by the baby chewing insistently on his hair. “…So, I was robbing a guy. And he’s an asshole.”
“Don’t swear near the baby.” Goro cradles his head in his hands, continues, “Joker, you cannot just steal a child because—"
“I was casing that guy for weeks, Goro,” Joker snaps back. “Did you seriously not notice this kid is severely underweight? I’m not giving him back. Ah—” pinwheeling out of the sour mood, Joker bounces the kid in his lap, mumbles more platitudes “--hey, it’s fine, we’re not fighting…”
Goro hadn’t noticed the baby was underweight. Looking closer— he supposed he was a good deal bonier than the children one saw on television. Not… out of place in his own hazy memories, but he’d admit the babies that had flitted in and out of his life probably hadn’t been in best condition. As far as children went.
Probably.
He assumed.
“Ah,” is what he ends up saying. “Still. We can’t—”
“We’re not giving him back to that guy,” Joker corrects. “Specifically. Obviously, we can’t, y’know-- look, Mona went to get somebody.”
“Somebody.”
“I was concussed, cut me a break. ...I think.” Prying the baby off his hair, Joker reaches a hand up to probe at his own skull— as if to feel for any remaining injuries. “Clocked me pretty hard on the way out. Asshole father or not, the guards didn’t take me snagging the kid lightly— or the other stuff, but that’s,” he waves his arms vaguely, “neither here nor there. Uh, literally, I stashed it before I got to the apartment.”
He’s going to regret asking this question. “Stashed what?”
“Don’t give me that look. It’s a personal favor— Yusuke caught wind of another one of his kohai’s paintings resurfacing. He was busy, so...”
“You agreed to recollect it for him.”
“Along with anything else I might pick up from the joint, yeah.” Joker shrugs. Shoots Goro a crooked grin, the kind of insufferably handsome expression only he could make while holding a messy little goblin. “Pro Bono doesn’t pay our bills.”
Goro isn’t moved by the play, obvious as it is. “You choose to do that.”
“Somebody has too, babe.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Somebody’s grouchy,” Joker croons at the baby. It— he? seems to have had enough excitement for the day, settling back into the state of silent watchfulness he must have spent much of the morning (and perhaps many mornings before that) existing in. Goro feels a surge of… something, in his chest. Possibly indigestion.
“…What name should I expect to see on the milk cartons,” Goro sighs.
“Nothing that matters.” Joker considers the kid in his lap. “…I was thinking… Daisuke for now? Kid can do what they want about it later.”
“I don’t know what reference that is,” Goro says, “but if that is some kinnie bullshit I am begging you to remember you are a grown human inflicting that onto a child who may or may not be able to chew solid foods.”
“Daisuke has teeth, Goro.”
“I hope he bites you.”
Joker gasps, before wrapping his arms carefully around the baby and pushing himself to his feet-- swings the kid up, settling him on his waist. He seems... a little green around the gills, to be honest. Now that Goro’s looking for it.
“Give me that—”
The front door bursts open before he can finish the sentence, woman-and-cat tumbling through the cavity.
“AHHHH,” the woman— Yoshizawa-- yells. “NOBODY DIED, RIGHT??” She’s surveying the room with the kind of frantic energy Goro hasn’t seen since the day she’d broken up with one of those shadow operative androids (the blue one…?), hair slipping out of her ponytail in flyaway chunks.
“UNHAND THA— oh, Joker’s awake,” yowls Morgana. “That's fine, then.” He sounds much more relieved than Goro thinks little freeloaders are warranted. Especially since Goro isn’t the one who left a fucking baby unsupervised in a fucking kitchen.
Goro’s theoretical therapist would be delighted by his self-control. “Breaking our door down in a fit of pique isn’t in the terms of our lease, Yoshizawa.” He doesn’t have a therapist. But if he did.
“You’re stressing out the baby,” Joker adds, holding up the offending toddler.
“Sor—”
Joker says, voice entirely flat— “I’m baby.”
Silence.
“You pay taxes,” Morgana meows, dubiously.
“Goro, tell them I can still be baby.”
Goro contemplates the ethics of walking out the door— not for long, it’s his goddamned apartment, but long enough the baby infestation blows over naturally. But that would involve leaving the kid (leaving Daisuke) in Joker’s oh-so-responsible hands for the duration and that…
…is not really an option. Dammit.
“Give me the baby,” Goro tells his idiot moron bastard. “And make breakfast for Yoshizawa, or something, she looks like she’s going to pass out.”
“I… am not…” she wheezes. “…um. Maybe a coffee?”
Joker rolls his eyes to the heavens, as if making his friend a coffee was the greatest possible burden and they should all be pleased he was humoring it. As if he wouldn’t have regardless. Fucking sap. “Yeah, sure. Goro—”
Joker passes the baby. Goro holds Daisuke... awkwardly, he’s sure. He’s not even sure how one is meant to go about holding small animals, let alone… babies. Toddlers. Whichever. And he is reasonably certain, for a variety of reasons, that the kid doesn’t like him much. Well, whatever. They’ll both just have to deal with it! And he’ll—
The baby pokes his face.
“…thanks,” Goro sighs.
“Like Jo more.”
His schedule is in ashes for this. He’s going to have to call out of work for this. “A lot of people like Jo more.” Whispering to the kid, loud enough Joker can most certainly hear it, he says-- “you should bite him.”
“Don’t be such a dick!” Joker yells, busying himself by the pour-over.
“Don’t swear near the baby!” Yoshizawa yelps, looking between the two of them in naked horror. “Have you guys been swearing near the baby!?”
“No,” Goro replies.
“Fuck,” says the baby, watching Yoshizawa carefully. It seems to Goro that the child is clever enough to have realized, on his own, that swearing provoked reactions. Goro can respect that. Honestly-- if Yoshizawa can’t grasp the child’s intelligence, that’s her problem.
“He knew that before,” Joker lies.
Yoshizawa closes her eyes. “...Okay,” she says. “Sure! Don’t... swear near the baby. Okay? No more swearing near the baby.”
“Fuckyou!!”