Chapter Text
The Joker was used to driving shitty cars. How ironic it was that family cars were better for carrying multiple barrels of liquid explosives. He sat in the Chevrolet express he’d stolen that day, jitterier than usual, with baited breath. At any moment, Bruce Wayne would walk out of the building he was parked outside, climb into his sports car, and drive to his reservation at an uptown restaurant. It was one of those fancy places only the rich and famous could afford, Joker had read the reviews, he was sure it was going to be positively smashing. Only if Batman didn’t play by the rules, though.
It had taken so much work to get there, chasing shadows, ears to the ground for any hint of a rumour. Bats had hidden his real identity extremely well, but there were only so many men in Gotham with friends in high places and enough money for millions of dollars worth of customized military-grade equipment. He’d amassed a collection of newspaper clippings of Wayne’s face with the top of the head scribbled out. Fair to say it was his condo's new wallpaper. It was as obvious as a smack in the face when the Joker had finally found him, Bruce Wayne, ‘Billionaire Playboy’, Batman. And he was about to meet the real him, and find out just how much his secret identity meant to him. Joker pictured the look on the Bat's face when his good ol’ pal turned up to his little date. He chuckled.
The Joker had spent so many years causing senseless mayhem in Gotham, in and out of jail, a bountiful but boring sex life. Blowing valuable things up, ransoms, sharp knives, it’d gotten a little tedious. He’d always known his affections and trinkets were wasted on those people. All until the day he’d met The Batman. His life had swung out of perspective, reversed polarity, shifted around a new axis that was that deep-voiced hunk of a "hero". He'd wanted him from the first moment the caped mass had stared steely eyed through the Joker’s bars in Arkham, as if he felt pity for him. Immovable, even when the Joker had giggled and reached through to grab him. Inexplicably resolute, righteous, uncompromising, even after Joker had spent months playing his mind games with the masked vigilante. He’d questioned him oh-so valiantly, raging infernos of fury held back behind that mask, just waiting to bubble over. After that, the silly kevlar ears were in the Jokers every thought, Batman kept him awake at night, gave him a new purpose. And above it all, the man behind the mask, was the Joker's holy grail. His thugs and henchmen had noticed his new obsession, wary of the new glint in his eye. The Joker was going mad all over again, completely nuts, gloriously and helplessly batty for The Batman.
Just on cue, a tall, dark haired man stepped out of the glass doors of the hotel, dressed in a sharp grey suit.
When the man got in his car and pulled away, Joker followed. He was ever so slightly amused when halfway to the restaurant the Lamborghini had taken a turn into a dark side street. Damn, he’d thought, foiled already, what a shame. Not that it mattered, but Joker was looking forward to interrupting Batsy’s expensive night out, the latest one of his foils against Gotham's crusader. He drew the knife concealed in his pocket, ready to get out and meet Bruce Wayne face to face, but the car didn’t show any sign of slowing down.
Joker followed him quietly a few more blocks, staying artfully hidden, always a few cars behind, until Bruce stopped ten minutes later and parked outside a dusty boarded up Laundr-o-mat. Bruce got out the car, now without a jacket and looking decidedly less smart with a few buttons undone. They’d taken the longest, most unnatural route to get there, the kind of thing you do when you do when you don’t want to be followed. Wherever it was, Bruce didn’t want anyone knowing at all. He looked around cautiously and disappeared into another side street. Joker straightened his coat and followed, fascinated.
It was only a few moments later when Joker saw where Bruce was heading. His face lit up like a kid on its birthday. ‘LIVE MEN – XXX – ADULT’ the sign read in glowing pink letters. ‘BoysBoysBoys Bar & Cabaret’ under that. He stifled a delighted laugh as Bruce walked in. Joker stopped for a moment, thinking, and then crept around the back.
A brilliant new idea was forming already and he called to one of his men to tell the guys to go home, the plan was cancelled. He couldn’t have planned this is he’d tried. Hysterical excitement and nervousness simmered dangerously in his stomach, the familiar fluttering of blackness around his eyesight, tunnel vision.
It was easy enough for the Joker to sneak up a rusted set of metal stairs into the back of the club, and quietly knock out a few surprised and scantily clad male strippers stood smoking in the doorway.
There wasn't many rooms backstage, and a few concrete steps led to a lowered area behind a large curtain. Joker peeked out. The place seemed pretty empty apart from a bartender behind the bar, a few customers sat at tables with their cigarettes, and a lone man sat on one of the plush couches facing the stage, swirling his drink and looking less than comfortable. Bingo. Joker wondered what on earth had inspired him to come to this dingy little place, it was possible he came here regularly. Strange, thrilling, considering that Bruce Wayne seemed to have women constantly hanging off his arms. Perhaps it was part of some covert mission, perhaps, just perhaps, Bruce Wayne was... not as straight as his persona would have everyone believe.
Either way, it stirred something primal inside of Joker to see the Bruce Wayne - the aloof face of a capable billionaire, in such a seedy place. The idea of corrupting the ‘Dark Knight’ gave him a rush. Though, perhaps behind that stony exterior, secrets and corruption were already lurking.
He passed a few people backstage walking around, and avoided eye contact with them. No-one looked twice at him. Figured. This place didn't exactly seem high class. Joker retraced his steps to a room labelled crudely 'Dressing Room' and dropped his coat, a few knives and a potato peeler falling out of his coat and clanging on the floor. He stripped the rest of his clothes, then removed his face paint with a wipe in front of the mirror, and found something to wear in a small wardrobe. He sure was going to spark something today. He peered at himself in the mirror. Undyed hair, scars upon scars, and shadowy eyes from lack of sleep stared back, but no clown, so different to the mask of greasepaint he would wear normally while terrorising the city. Joker’s hair had grown out quite a bit, he’d been so busy finding out the Bat's real identity that he hadn’t actually seen him in a while. In fact, he hadn’t met Bruce Wayne face to face yet, this would be the first time seeing him in the flesh, and he wanted it to be very special. His blood raced at the thought of finally seeing him up close, out of the mask. He smiled at the reflection, closing his eyes, feeling a little dizzy with anticipation. He pictured himself naked and laid bare for the Batman and his dick jumped ever so slightly at the thought, threatening an erection. Joker quickly opened his eyes and readjusted himself, trying to think of anything else to keep himself focused on the task.
Something was missing. His makeup. He felt too bare. He hastily applied a small amount of eyeliner, smudged it, and smiled at himself in the mirror. It was more of a grimace. He felt a little nervous actually, now that he was about to go on stage. His stomach fluttered. A very alien feeling for him. Well, it had been many years. It wasn't such an alien feeling at one time in his life.
---
After ordering a large scotch, Bruce had sat down in one of the many empty seats. He knocked it back quickly, trying to quell the ominous feeling he had. Why could he, the Batman, who fought criminals on a daily basis, not go to a strip club without being a nervous wreck? As a rule, Batman didn’t get nervous. Stoicism, that was his thing. This was a bad idea, but the thought of coming to a male strip club had been on his mind for weeks, it was there in his guilty thoughts before sleep and right after waking.
Girls got boring after they started pouncing on him at any given chance, and that was years ago. For a good portion of the last few years Bruce had flirted with the supermodels and the heiresses, but they'd often leave his rooms after dark, storming out when they felt unwanted by a distant Bruce Wayne. Bruce didn't stop them. They were right. It wasn't doing it for him, and if they'd advanced on him, they were unsympathetically ignored. He missed being a young man, travelling the world, not held down by a any sense of responsibility or a need to uphold an image. He'd been free, determined, full of passion. He'd experimented in dark hotel rooms, been to places where the starchy western ideals of sex and gender were completely unknown. It felt like a lifetime ago. The high profile women of Gotham that he'd easily be able to bed were charmless. No, he wanted something, different. He could sleep as many women as he liked and no one would look twice, but anything other than straight was taboo in Gotham's richest upper echelons, in this charade of being a 'billionaire industrialist' and 'playboy'.
For a moment he began to doubt his decision, and then his thoughts were interrupted by a sudden flash of light. He jumped, but it was just a spotlight moving to the stage. There was a second of quietness as the song changed, and then the curtains parted. Bruce held his breath as a man walked out. He had a nice body, Bruce thought, slender but muscled, just straddling the border of too thin and sinewy. Curly blonde hair bubbled over his forehead, hiding his eyes, and Bruce could just make out an unreadable smile beneath it. The stripper padded to the centre of the stage leisurely and for a second Bruce imagined he was walking towards him, his heart doing a little somersault — but the man stopped at the pole, catching it in one hand and swinging ‘round casually until he was faced away from the audience. Bruce let the breath out, wondering if and how he should keep his facial expression measured, and took a moment to enjoy this stranger’s body. (He'd been to plenty of normal strip clubs before, right? This was no different, so… no need to act weird.) His gaze wandered down, the slow bassy music pounding in his ears. Bruce eyed the skimpy black underwear, feeling a touch indecent for a moment, but he reminded himself it was just a stripper. A prickle of excited heat rose in his stomach. He’d watched strippers many times, but he’d never felt like this.
The stripper tilted his head back against the pole before sinking down against it, opening his mouth lewdly before letting the audience glimpse his grin and turning away again. It was as that moment Bruce realised he was the audience, the entire audience; there were no other spectators around him. The fact that just watching a stripper grind against a pole was rising a small tent in his pants told him that this was all a very, very bad idea. Bruce didn’t know what he'd expected, but something was different, it felt too intimate. He wondered if he’d have to pay more for this private show.
He almost rose out of his seat but the man on the stage had swung round the pole again, all fluid movements and long limbs, and was leaning forward tantalisingly, baring his ass and letting it rest against the pole. Bruce was stuck still again. The dim, pink tinted light overhead only revealed as much as was needed of the stripper, leaving himself and the stripper's identity in shadow. Bruce thanked the merciful lord for that peekaboo underwear, and the little bow that sat right above the window that bared the stripper's perfectly muscled ass cheeks.
He supposed it wouldn’t be so bad if he stayed a little longer.
---
The Joker supposed this was the moment. He swallowed and looked over his shoulder just as he bent forward, drinking in the sight of Bruce Wayne. It was everything he’d hoped it’d be and more. Though it wasn’t bright enough to see detail, he could see the man was strikingly handsome, dark hair and an expressive mouth. Unmistakably, Batman’s mouth. The mouth that he’d spent nights dreaming of. He breathed in deeply as he rose, spinning around the pole again in time to the music, sinking down against it in a smooth, languid motion with his knees spread wide. Joker let a huge grin spread across his features. He shakily exhaled a hot breath and tipped his head into the light, eyed lidded in pleasure, and revealed his scarred cheeks to the one-man audience.
---
Time seemed to stand still for Bruce. It was one of those strange moments in life where someone who should definitely remain anonymous, becomes very, extraordinarily familiar.
The Joker?
The Joker.
Bruce’s heart stopped. He was pinned to the spot.
The utter disbelief dropped in a second of awful reality, and Bruce could finally hear the warning bells beginning to sound. As the man stepped lightly off the stage and onto the steps to the floor; it was the scars all across his body, now showing under the pink lights, some faded, some new, and the two on his face, in the shape of a ghastly smile.
"Joker?" Bruce fumbled over his words, horrified and far too taken off guard. He sunk low in his seat, now unable to look the man in the eyes. "This — Um…”
The Joker inched closer, hands resting gently on the chair either side of Bruce, and Bruce could feel the warmth from him radiating through the already stifling air. He shifted, mind racing, unstoppable. What on earth was the Joker doing in this place? No, this obviously wasn’t a coincidence, although he hadn’t been bothered by him for quite a while. Was this what the madman was planning all this time he hadn’t been terrorising the public? But it didn’t make sense, Bruce could clearly see there were no hidden weapons on him, just skin and — oh Jesus Goddamn Christ the Joker was actually moving to sit on him, straddling him, a warm and not uncomfortable weight in his lap. If there was any way Bruce could have imagined this brief experiment to backfire, it would never be this.
"Evening, Batsss," Joker placed his hands neatly on the chair just above Bruce’s shoulders, peered up through his eyelashes at him and leant into the crook of his neck. "Fancy seeing you here." He smiled and turned, brushing Bruce's flushed cheek with his nose, his voice barely audible over the music.
Bruce's thoughts were white noise. Whatever was happening, he was pretty sure it was a nightmare, or a really, really fucked up dream. Master criminals aside, he was hard and not entirely sure that it was going to change with this scarred, graceful body pressed into his. "Uhh.. Joker." He took a short breath and craned his neck so that he could look him in the face, then immediately regretted it as he was now face to face with the practically naked man sat on his knees. This man… was his enemy. If someone was watching right now, Bruce wouldn’t have noticed. "What are you doing?"
"Why, Bats. Can't a man have a hobby?" Joker giggled.
Bruce winced. Nope, definitely the Joker. He could see it now, the subtle way the scars moved when the Joker talked, the tongue that darted out to keep his lips wet, the Joker's telltale little tics. The madman should have smelled like something disgusting, should have been caked in garish makeup with greasy green hair, but he wasn’t. Granted, Bruce had never been close enough to him to smell him, but he certainly was now. The scars were there, but he could have been a different man, with soft blonde hair and smelling faintly of an old fashioned cologne. Bruce cursed under his breath while his mind struggled for an exit plan that didn’t involve being stabbed and bleeding out while in flagrante delicto at a strip joint. God, God, shit, fuck, God!
"I know what you're thinking, Brucie. Can I call you that?" Joker sat back, not even noticing the tent Bruce was pitching. "Where have you been? Why haven’t you killed anyone? I’ve missed you so much." He imitated Batman’s gruff voice, smirking.
"How did you-" Bruce interrupted, but was cut off by Jokers finger pressed to his lips.
"Hush now. You didn’t think I’d forgotten about you, did you? Oh, no Bats. Quite the opposite. It’s just taken a while to find... you. You know, the real you," Joker motioned vaguely in Bruce’s direction. "And now we can finally have some fffun."
"And you’re going to use this as leverage aren’t you?" Bruce allowed himself to think a little more clearly. "Now you know who I am."
Joker dissolved into laughter at that. "Ooh- ahahah... Bats, no, no, no! What would I do without you?" He leant in close, and Bruce couldn’t bring himself to move away. "You complete me."
There was a short silence as Bruce processed the situation. "So you’re-"
"-Not here to kill you, no. And neither are my guys. It's just me, nothing else. Just these underwear actually, I suppose. No hidden tricks."
"Oh." Every single one of Bruce’s instincts told him not to trust this madman. He'd proven time and time again to be corrupt, and completely and utterly crazy. But something primal and dangerous inside him made Bruce unclench his fist and ghost a touch up the Joker’s side. It was warm, and at the touch the Joker shifted closer in his lap, rubbing shamelessly against Bruce. Inhaling through his nose audibly, Bruce wondered what on Earth he was doing, and resisted the urge to grind back into Joker with all of his might. But of course, to even entertain that idea would be complete lunacy.
An unexpected anger struck him. He was enjoying this way too much. He couldn’t let himself be tricked by this clown. The Joker had killed mercilessly, threatened people he loved. He was a psychopath that preferred to carve people up with knives so he could see the look on their faces as they died. Bruce jolted his hand back and looked away. It hadn’t changed the fact he was stuck in a very compromising position.
“What’s wrong Bats? Something got you down?” The Joker looked at exactly the wrong moment, just before Bruce could cover his crotch. “Orrr, maybe not?”
Shit shit shit.
Joker giggled again, his hands moving between Bruce's legs and gently pressing. Bruce bit back a filthy noise before deciding he'd allowed the madman's plot to go way too far. He pushed the Joker off his lap roughly and he landed on the floor with an audible thump. Bruce didn’t stop to look as he thundered out of the bar.