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Batman returns from Europe a changed man. Alfted can tell something’s deeply wrong, but he doesn’t know how to come about asking. This isn’t like the previous times, he can tell, because he’s Alfred and he can always tell.
Bruce is looking at a photograph of Jason. One of the many, many photographs he has of the boy smiling. He takes it off the shelf and puts it close to his chest. For a moment that’s all he can do.
And Alfred can tell. That it’s something that’s long overdue. It’s something that’s terrified him.
It’s Alfred who broaches the topic first. Because for days – DAYS – Bruce hasn’t been able to speak to him, either directly or indirectly about what happened in Europe. He just knows the Joker was involved. And he just knows they came close to dying.
Batman’s talking to Nightwing. He doesn’t know how to speak what’s coming out into the world. His tongue is tied. So he simply lets Nightwing tell him about the job.
Batgirl’s with them. For the first time, there’s someone who’s even more silent than she is. Batman wants to crack a joke at that, at being rendered so speechless, so shocked by his time in Europe that he isn’t sure that he’ll be able to speak about it – but then at the mere notion of jokes his throat seizes up even more.
It’s Nightwing that makes that joke: ’’God, Batman, you’re quieter than Batgirl tonight.’’
Batgirl shrugs her shoulders.
Batman doesn’t respond.
Alfred insists that he take a day off. That he speak with Dr Thompson.
Batman tries to speak, he really does, but he just really wants to laugh instead and that’s NOT the reaction Alfred would take lightly. So he nods his head. ’’Sure,’’ and he forces himself to speak, ’’Please schedule her, Alfred.’’
’’Right away, Master Bruce.’’
Dr Thompson asks him: ’’Did something happen?’’
And Alfred’s asked the same thing. So has Dick. So has Cassandra. So has Tim, when he came back from Europe. Hell, even Selena noticed something was off about him on the field. Even she asked.
Bruce fiddles with his cufflinks, then remembers that paints weakness, then stops, then remembers where he is, then continues fiddling with the cufflinks. He’s allowed to be weak in front of Dr Thompson.
She notices the same tug of war inside of him. And she smiles, though rueflly. ’’Bruce, did someone die?’’
’’Ah,’’ he says, ’’no. Nobody did.’’
’’You went to Europe recently.’’ She taps her pen on the notebook, ’’How about you tell me about how it went.’’
And so Bruce does. He tells her everything. All until he comes to the end, and that’s when his breath hitches, and that’s when his hands ball into tightly wound fists. ’’The Joker, he –’’ it’s torture, pure and simple, ’’he was dying. I was watching him die. And I couldn’t do anyhting.’’
’’You’ve known the Joker for a very long time.’’ She says. ’’His death may very well have triggered something for you. When you know someone as long as you have, you start to think of them as a permanent fixture in your life. Just like you imagine your parents are.’’ She dares to pinpoint on something, not particularly THE thing that’s bothering, Bruce, but something that’s definitely eerily close. ’’Do you believe you felt so strongly about it because it reminded you of your own parents’ deaths?’’
’’I’ve seen plenty of death, doctor.’’ Bruce whispers, pained. All of this is nothing but painful. He should not have entertained this. ’’You have to, in this field of work.’’
’’Yes, but you’ve never known someone as long as you’ve known the Joker. Young Bruce didn’t think his parents could die.’’
’’The Joker dying is...’’ He settles on, ’’...the least of my problems from Europe.’’
’’Would you care to tell me what you feel is a bigger problem.’’
And it’s Bruce that speaks this, it’s not Batman – and maybe it should’ve been Batman, but it’s not and he can’t take it back: ’’I have a brand to uphold, Leslie...’’
’’The Batman?’’
He grimaces and he doesn’t know where this honesty is coming from. Perhaps because he still can’t get the taste of the Joker’s lips off his mind and out of his mouth. That when he runs his tongue over his teeth he can still taste his blood. ’’Yes...but also Bruce Wayne.’’
’’A man can’t be a brand, Bruce.’’ A pause, as she remembers whom she’s dealing with here. ’’A man shouldn’t be a brand. He’s alowed to be a person with his own needs and thoughts and desires off the screen. Away from the cameras.’’
It’s like someone’s pulling words out of his mouth like teeth with rusty tweezers, live, with no anesthesia to numb the pain. Blood spills from Bruce’s mouth, he’s sure, even though he can’t see it. It’s there, dripping down his chin and smearing his dress shirt. The only reason why Dr Leslie isn’t reacting is because she must have become desensitsed to him. ’’I believe I’m attracted to the Joker.’’
’’Aha.’’ There’s no surprise in her voice. If anything, she finally seems to have some alertness in her eyes, because this is new teritory – or worse yet – this is teritory she looks like she’s been actively preparing for. For how long? ’’Is it the Joker, or is it just men?’’
How can she articulate that that’s been making Bruce stumble around for the past weeks. ’’I don’t know.’’ A pause. ’’I’ve never had sex with a man before.’’
’’Because of the brand.’’ She finally begins to understand. ’’You’re the Young Billionaire Playboy. There’s a different girl at your arm at every charity event, at every gala. You’re a womanizer.’’ A pause. ’’But that’s not who you are, though, so why should it matter?’’
’’I can’t be seen with him. I can’t ruin my family’s reputation by having – by indulging this – whatever this crisis is. I musn’t succumb to whatever neurosis-’’
’’Being attracted to men can hardly be called a neurosis.’’ She scoffs.
He looks pained. ’’I know that – but it’s the Joker?’’
’’But you’re not sure if it’s the Joker. Or if he’s the first man who’s finally tried something with you. Did you feel taken advantage of?’’
Bruce remembers thinking that the Joker’s going to lunge for a punch, preparing to punch him back and stop him. Because he’s the one who always puts a stop to him. But then the Joker’s surprised him – like he almost always does – and he lunged to kiss him. It was the perfect disarment. He remembers letting go of that fight response, woozy from the virus coursing through him still, and he rememebrs the Joker biting his lip so hard that blood gushed out of it, remembers the feverish, desperate attempt of that man’s survival instinct gearing up. He remembers the Joker laughing against him, saying how he’s finally done what he’s always craved. And Bruce remembers kissing him back. Growling, animalistic and opportunistic. Because, dear god, when will he get this chance again?
’’No, I didn’t feel taken advantage of.’’
’’That’s good.’’ She says, in a simple tone. She’s not judging him nor encouraging him. Instead she’s here to listen to him. ’’Have you been in contact at all after Europe?’’
’’No. He’s in Arkham.’’ Then. ’’Well, he’s bound to escape soon. He always does this. Lulls me into a false sense of security before breaking out at the worst opportune moment for me.’’
’’So, you would say you’ve got a bit of a routine with him, wouldn’t you, Bruce?’’
He heaves a sigh. ’’Perhaps.’’ And bites out. Because he doesn’t like thinking about the Joker as something so permanent in his life, as something he knows, as something he wants to know. Know carnally even. An even more horrified grimace slips past his shield – unfortunately trained too well that with Dr Leslie, it’s okay to slip the shield down. But here, now, with this conversation – he wishes he doesn’t do that.
Routine, huh?
’’I think you should have sex with a man, Bruce. Any man. See if it’s the idea of being with men what’s causing this – this desire you’re too scared will ruin your brand – again, though, a man shouldn’t be a brand – or if it may be the Joker himself who’s the object of your desire.’’
’’What if it’s the latter?’’ Bruce asks.
Dr Leslie looks at him and says, with the most neutral tone a human being has ever embodied: ’’Then you know how to pick them.’’ But she cracks a small smile, noticing her attempt to lighten the mood caused the opposite. ’’Then we’ll talk about it, Bruce. Don’t worry. Just explore yourself.’’ A pause. ’’Not the Bat.’’ A bigger pause. ’’Tell me you understand the difference.’’
Bruce nods and pretends he does.
’’Yoo-hoo!’’ the Joker waves, his face alight with such a ferocious glow of life. Like he wasn’t dying in his arms.
Bruce doesn’t know how to talk to him anymore.
’’Oh, should I swing first?’’ The Joker’s rearing for a punch. He’s grinning widely, madly.
Bruce prepares to block the punch, or to lunge, or to dodge. Anything goes with the Joker, really.
But he doesn’t expect the Joker to lower his arms and pout. ’’What’s wrong with you? You’re being boring, and not your kind of brooding boring – that’s sometimes endearing and oftentimes hot!’’ He cracks a smile.
Bruce is here with no backup. Not that he needs it, well – all right – maybe he needs it sometimes, it’s always better not to be alone. But now he’s alone and he knows how to handle it.
’’You almost died.’’
’’Yes.’’ The Joker just says, still chipper. ’’So did you,’’ he turns the tables back on him as he points. ’’Do you wanna talk about our feelings?’’ An idea envelops him and his smile blossoms into something truly thorny. A perfect rose. ’’LET’S PLAY DOCTOR! Oooh! Ooo!’’ he whirls and manages to dig out prop glasses from his pocket. To appear smarter. And then he mimes holding a pen. ’’Now,’’ pushes the glasses up, sounds eerily like Dr Crane, ’’you can tell Dr Joker everything.’’
’’I already have a psychologist, thank you.’’
It’s not meant to be joke, but it sends the Joker peeling with laughter. ’’You know, I’ve always wondered!’’
And Bruce is being way too much Bruce and not enough Batman (but Batman can’t talk, rendered so terribly shocked still, so it’s up to Bruce to steer), because he says another thing that’s funny: ’’I am in dire need of psychological help: I dress up as a bat.’’
’’So? I dress up as a clown.’’ The Joker’s giggling. The glasses are askew on his face. And he takes them off and he continues laughing, while waving them around. ’’Don’t let that shrink of yours tell you how to live your life. I don’t let mine.’’
’’You’ve seen my face.’’ Bruce says. And maybe that’s why it’s more Bruce than Batman right now.
’’Ah, I promise I didn’t!’’ The Joker placates him. ’’I don’t want the game to end. So you don’t have to worry about that.’’ Then. ’’Besides, I knew long before Europe.’’
’’How long?’’
’’Well, pre-mullet.’’
Half of the Gotham population counts the time as Pre and Post Dick getting that mullet as Nightwing. It started as a joke, but it caught on.
Bruce grimaces. ’’That’s a long time to know something that interesting.’’
’’Not that interesting, would you believe me?’’
’’Huh.’’
The Joker peers at him a little more intesely. ’’You don’t want to fight tonight, do you?’’
’’I’d avoid it if I can.’’
’’I’ve got hostages and everything.’’
’’I sent Nightwing to get them.’’
’’What about the bombs? I mean, since we’re retiring the subject for tonight, I might as well spoil you: they’re not real bombs. I aimed for Fireworks that look like bombs. Bringing back an old classic.’’
’’Good to know. I sent Robin and Batgirl to get them anyway.’’
’’You don’t let that one do anything by himself, do you?’’
And Bruce’s lips curl in a distasteful frown.
The Joker changes the topic quickly. He pockets the glasses. ’’If you want to talk, I’ll give you a freeby tonight. I won’t pull anything.’’ He whirls. ’’But!’’ And glares. ’’No sending me back to Arkham and no trying to find me for at least a week.’’
And any other day, it’d be steep. Any other day, Bruce would refuse. But it’s Batman that finally talks: ’’All right.’’
And the Joker’s eyes widen in delight, because of course he can tell the difference. ’’Batsy! What’s troubling you?’’
This questions leads to what Bruce assumes is, quite frankly, the most awkward conversation he’s ever had in his entire life.
’’So...where do...gay men go out in Gotham?’’
Bruce’s line of thinking was: Joker’s clearly in that bandwagon – so it’s better to ask someone who’d know than google it.
Now he’s kind of regretting his decision to ask.
’’What are you asking me here exactly?’’ Joker narrows his eyes and looks him over.
’’You know,’’ Bruce waves his gauntled clad hand, an absurdly Bruce Wayne gesture that would baffle anyone that didn’t know he was Batman, also. ’’Where’s the place to be? Where do men of a certain orientation meet up?’’
The Joker’s not laughing and this is weirding Bruce out more than if he were being laughed at. This kind of feels like the Joker’s judging him. ’’You know, Batsy, you’re really creeping me out here.’’
There’s something brutally honest in his question: ’’How am I creeping you out by asking that?’’
’’Because of the way you’re asking me. Like you couldn’t have just googled gay clubs in Gotham and gone – like you feel the need to ask a criminal to tell you about a speakesy in prohibition time. Nobody’s going to hunt you down if you’re queer, jeez.’’ The Joker sees Bruce’s miniscule, blink and you’ll miss it reaction just in time. It rips out a gasp from him, utterly flabberghasted. ’’SO IT WAS INTERNALIZED HOMOPHOBIA ALL ALONG!’’
There’s a running bet among the Rogues Gallery that the reason why Batman hasn’t made an honest clown out of the Joker is because he’s neck deep in internalized homophobia. This was started by Harleen Quinzel.
Very few of the Gallery believe Batman to simply be straight.
It’s better that it’s internalized homophobia. Joker’s tired of having to flip straight men, to be honest.
Batman doesn’t like the fact that he goes against his promise to the Joker and knocks him out cold, hands him over to the police, and flees in the dead of night because the Joker just calling him out was too difficult to bear.
Without his cowl, Bruce stands. Faces the mirror. Looks at himself. And sees a deeply closeted gay man dressed as a bat.
Well, bisexual. Maybe even queer. But he really doesn’t have the strenght for labels right now.
He goes to Arkham around midnight, hiding in blind spots, approaching the Joker like a clandestine lover. The Joker’s giving him the silent treatment because he went against their deal.
’’I am not certain if it’s you. Or if it’s just men in general. That’s why I asked about the gay bars.’’ It’s the most distraught Batman’s ever sounded, yet so calm in the face of mortal peril: ’’I need to sleep with a man.’’
This causes the Joker to just look at him in horror. Silent treatment forgotten: ’’You’ve never slept with a MAN?’’
The Batman flees yet again.
Surprisingly the Joker doesn’t laugh at him, not even when given the funniest joke of his entire life.
Joker escapes from Arkham. It really doesn’t take him a long time. Especially because this time he’s driven by a p-ass-ion project the likes of which no one, least of all Batman, would ever consider.
Though, of course, Batman, because he’s a detective, and not because he might find this clown attractive or whatever, follows some rather sloppy clues and is led to a gay bar. Where the Joker’s dressed like he’s well aquainted with the place and all its neon favouring dress code. He lifts up a suit on a hanger. Bruce doesn’t know what colour it is. Joker unzips the cover. It’s black. ’’Come on, I’m taking you to a gay bar.’’ He presses the suit to Batman and tells him to ’suit up’. Then proceeds to maniacally giggle at the blank wall he’s getting from Batman’s expression.
Somehow, Bruce knows he sees the confusion. Somehow, Bruce knows he’s always been seen without the cowl even with it on. That the cowl is an illusion just as much as the purple suit is a brand in an of itself. That they both hide in plain sight. That they both find each other because the other understands on a significant level what the other is and isn’t and pretends to be.
Freedom, for all its intents and purposes, cannot exist for either of them.
Batman holds onto the suit. He grips it tightly with his gauntlent. He whispers, barely audibly: ’’I’m keeping the cowl.’’
’’Of course, darling.’’ The Joker winks at him. He takes out a gun from his rather skimpy set of leather pants. God only knows how it fits in there. ’’Wouldn’t work otherwise, now would it?’’
They enter the gay bar.
It takes them exactly two drinks to start making out.
Another two for Bruce to figure that he may or may not be down for this continuing.
Maybe four more drinks for the Joker to tell him to just come out and say he’s bisexual.
Three more drinks and a plea to get some food for Batman to say he’s not ready to put any labels on him.
A shit ton of garlic and kebabs at a Balkan food joint later, the Joker’s telling him he didn’t sleep with a man until his wife died and that, yeah, he gets it. But it’s really starting to look unnatractive on a guy built like a brick wall to be this repressed. Like, that’s Croc teritory right here. That’s, there’s somehting physically deformed about me and I don’t know how to work through it teritory that really should be addressed with a professional – and maybe you shiouldn’t be dating that doll chick because she’s even more toxic than you are – anyway, oh yeah – no, Jeannie dying kind of fucked me up but I did finally give in and fuck this random mobster. Not a good lay. Oh hey, yeah! You know what you should do, Bats, you should fuck someone random just to get it out of your system because if you fuck me – and you wind up liking it – I THINK that’ll be the end of ya. Hey Jimbo, me and the Bats are coming back in, yeah yeah let these two hunks through – well, if I’ll be honest, I’m more of a power-bottomg twink – no, yeah, you’re like a baby gay, my guy, you have no idea what any of that is. I’ll head to the bar to get us another drink. But I’m warning you here, you really gotta dance – it’s what you do at a gay bar, BRUCE – oh okay, okay, fine – fine – no government names. But the essence of a gay bar is to get yourself so shitfaced you forget you came from a family of degenerates that want to put you, an even bigger degenerate, into a mental instituttion. There’s a collective trauma about being gay in this country. I mean, let’s put it like this, if you were Batman like 80 years ago, you’d be putting all of these people behind bars. Ohhh, no wonder it’s fucking you up. You’re kinda trapped, not evolving, worried what others might think way too much. But ask yourself this, hotshot, batshot, what happens if everyone around you doesn’t matter? Here you goo, here’s a fruity tutty pattootie cocktail for youu, good sir! Thanks a bunch Jimbo! Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yeah, I mean, my life could end at any moment. I’m well aware of that. So why not fuck who I want to fuck? Anyway, you really shouldn’t have sex with me as your first guy, Bats, I think it’d fuck you up, like in a oh wow I can’t get better than this, every other man is RUINED for me FOREVER – NOW – look over there, there’s a twink with a trust fund whose daddy doesn’t know he likes to call older men daddy and moan around their cocks like a whore, that’s as close as we’ll get to one of your many bimbo blonde models. I say you go and -
Bruce leans in and kisses the Joker. The Joker throws his drink over his shoulder. The glass shatters on the dance floor.
Batman wakes up with the Joker naked in his bed. He looks around and finds that they’re in the Gotham penthouse. ’’Well, at least I didn’t take him home.’’ He finds as consolation. Slowly he goes out of bed and begins dressing.
’’Congatulations baby girl,’’ the Joker raises a thumbs up, and continues, voice muffled in the many pillows Bruce Wayne’s massive bed sports, ’’you’re super duper gay.’’
Bruce snorts. ’’Right, thanks. You’re not bad yourself.’’
Joker bursts into giggles.