Work Text:
The warehouse is nothing special. Gotham is full of warehouses, riddled with them like mushrooms after a rain. Particularly down here near the docks, where they’re always shipping something. But then the window glows green, and you know you’re in the right place. You ignore the entrance (“enter here”, scrawled above the double doors in spray paint) and opt instead to crash through the high window, which they’ve been kind enough to light up for you. Glass rains down below you.
You land in what could generously be termed a party atmosphere. The crates native to the place have been pushed aside and stacked up to make room for a table in the middle, on which there is an oversized, but admittedly delicious looking, cake. Also, there are henchmen.
“Just on time!” a familiar voice crows. You whirl to find its source, searching the shadows for a familiar silhouette. “What a gentleman you are!”
Joker steps into the light, his hands clasped together like a pleased child.
“Harley, dear,” he says, “the party cannon, please.”
You make a dash for cover, but he’s too fast tonight. The shot catches you around the middle, spreading on impact and knocking you across the confetti-covered floor. It’s some kind of binding. You look down, as you skid bodily to a stop against a pile of crates. It’s colorful. Streamers?
A couple of his goons inch forward, hesitant as ever to be the first to come too close to you. You can see him, past their arms as they heft you up and set you down on the nearest stack, bouncing on the toes of his high-topped shoes. He plucks a matchstick apparently from thin air, lights it on the back of his festive bazooka, and touches it to the curling fuse that seems to have taken the place of candles on his garish cake. He tosses the match over his shoulder. A puddle on the floor explodes into furious flames and is swallowed just as quickly by black smoke.
He tosses the bazooka to Harley, who stumbles under its weight. “Alright, everybody out,” he says, slapping his gloves together.
Harley regroups impressively. “Uh,” she says, “Mistah J, don’t you think we oughta—”
Joker removes an old fashioned revolver from the breast of his coat in one smooth motion. He holds it at arm's length, the sights set on Harley’s startled face. “Did I give an order?” he asks.
“Um,” she says. “Right you are. Alright boys, pull out!”
The rest of the henchmen seem plenty glad to leave. Harley hustles off with the bazooka and manages not to look back, leaving just the two of you in the great expanse of the building. And the cake, of course, which is most certainly a bomb.
Joker perches on a crate across from you, the muzzle of his revolver pointed lazily towards the streamer-strewn ceiling. Between the beams you can see glass, and beyond that sky, clear with moonlight. It would be a beautiful night, if it weren’t for all of… this.
“Happy birthday,” Joker says. He shows you more teeth than you could ever want to see.
You’re flex testing the streamers that he’s got you bound up in. They’re not showing much sign of give. “It’s not my birthday.”
“Ooh, don’t be like that,” he pouts, leaning back on his seat. “I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking I’ve pegged you with some civilian persona, and it’s that guy’s birthday. You’re so boring.”
What you’re thinking, of course, is that you would like to have your arms free. He’s sent out all the henchmen and if you could just pop these streamers (who manufactures these things? They must have the tensile strength of industrial cable) you could have him plunked in the trunk of the batmobile before breakfast.
“Maybe you don’t remember?” he’s saying, one gloved finger touched to his lips. “Ever the workaholic, Bats. Do you know what tonight is?”
“Your last night of freedom, if I have anything to say about it.”
Joker cackles. You spend the moment sans supervision priming a heating coil in your gauntlets. Whatever you’re wrapped in might be strong as cable, but it’s not actually cable.
“It’s the anniversary of the first night,” Joker tells you, as soon as he’s done wiping tears from his eyes. “Your first night out on the town. With your face on. I did my research, you know! It was a labor of love, really, pouring through those police reports and cold case files… you know the commissioner takes two sugars in his coffee? I would have pegged him for a no sweetener no fun kind of guy but hey, I guess he’s not quite the grizzled old wet blanket he’d like us to think.”
You don’t twitch a muscle. You don’t let him see how much the simple image gets to you, of him in Gordon’s office with his shoes kicked up on the desk, drinking the man’s cooling coffee.
“So,” he says, waving his gun at nothing in particular, “happy birthday, Batsy old boy. I know what an absolute killjoy you are at parties so I thought, hmm, let’s have something a little more intimate.”
The words click into a slot of your mind, like machinery. Suddenly you’ve got a moving part. The room is empty. There’s no goons, no Harley, no team up–-there’s not even a hostage around. This isolation isn’t an oversight on his part, it’s a calculated risk. But where’s the pay off?
“Just like old times,” he sighs, pressing a glove to his chest. “You and me, a little mayhem, when we were young and wild and still had date night penciled in on the calendar with a little heart. Before the kids. Before the affairs.”
His smile drops into a grimace, and you are watching it. It’s always like this when he brings up your family, remarkably consistent and even, possibly, genuine. You wonder why he fixates on that in particular. The smile is back in the space of a heartbeat, but you’re still clicking cogs into that machine in your head.
“I think you’ll love the cake,” he says, glancing down at the huge frosted thing with the long fuse visibly fizzling away, “they say parties can put a few pounds on but I think this one is gonna take a few off. Make a wish, Batsy.”
You say nothing. There’s enough fuse on that cake for at least another minute of monologuing and you’re going to use all of it you can. He purses his lips and leans forward, disappointed in you.
“Come on,” he says, “get into the spirit! Celebrate! Let loose! I bet there’s something you want…” His tone is wheedling, like a parent trying to entice a toddler. “World peace? A new batmobile. A new… Robin?”
You catch the inside of your lip between your teeth and bite down. This will not succeed in distracting you from the wheels you’re determined to keep turning.
“Come on big guy,” he says, “you can tell me! It’s just the two of us, after all.”
Click. You look up, narrow your eyes at the reclining shape of him. He may be choosing to appear casual, but he is intent.
“Kiss me,” you say, with no particular inflection.
“Pardon?” he replies, with a hand to his ear. He leans forward over his crossed legs. “Thought I heard you say something.”
“Kiss me,” you say again.
He goes completely still. “What.”
You tip your chin up, just a fraction of an angle. You know he heard you. He knows you know he heard you. He’s frozen for a moment longer, and then he’s a blur of motion, all jerking movement and stiffly locked joints as he leaps down from his seat and stalks towards you. He’s not smiling. Good, you think.
He jams the muzzle of the revolver into your throat. This close, you can see the laugh lines around his lips even when they’re pressed into a frown.
“That’s not very friendly of you,” he says, his bright eyes glittering. “Making a joke out of your host when all I was trying to do was give you a happy birthday.”
“I don’t joke,” you say, levelly. “You know that.”
His eyes are flittering down to your lips now, as if he’s having trouble keeping them focused on the place he wants them. Part of you is fascinated. You hardly have to do anything.
He leans forward. The gun remains, but when he tilts his head the metal tilts with him. “A kiss,” he says. “A kiss. Well it’s a little underwhelming but–-I suppose for the man who has everything…” His lips split into a smile, red and slick and wide. “Of course who wouldn’t want a kiss from yours truly? Pretty bold of you, Batsy. Pretty slick.”
You almost want to smile yourself. It’s uncanny. He’s doing all the work for you.
“Can’t think of a better way to spend your last moments on this earth,” Joker says, utterly pleased now, discarding the gun entirely. It clatters on the floor. “Anyways, I hate to see a guy pining.”
He takes your face in his hands, gloves over mask, and for a moment you wonder if he won’t be able to resist the urge to pull it off-–you’re banking on his disinterest, because if you’ve miscalculated then you will have worse problems than any of your current ones. He only smiles though, his fingers perfectly content to rest along your cheekbones. You fit perfectly between them.
“Pucker up,” he says, and he winks at you. For the first time you can remember, you register actual amusement at one of his bizarre flourishes. This might be, you realize, the most painless escape you have ever made. You wonder if you even need to bother with headbutting him. Should you just let him kiss you? Could there be any benefit from allowing this to run its course? You wonder if-
You wonder for too long. He leans in and presses his lips to yours, slick with lipstick he doesn't really need, tugging you into something just a touch too far on the side of mischievous to be chaste. His mouth is as capricious as the rest of him, but his hands are firm where they frame your face. He doesn't want you to pull away. What would he do, you wonder now, if you kissed him back?
This, of course, is when the heating coil in your gauntlet finally burns through the restraints, and so you never do find out.