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“Okay,” Joker said, breaking the silence.
Bruce turned over on the mattress, facing the other man. His face was so blank of emotion that an observer might have assumed they were talking about something as insignificant as the weather. But Joker could see it in his eyes: a tiny, hesitant sliver of hope.
“Okay?” Bruce repeated, slowly.
“Yeah,” Joker said, and his smile widened into a grin that really, really should have scared Bruce to his core. Instead he watched with what came disturbingly close to fond amusement as Joker sat up in the makeshift hideout bed. “Yes. Absolutely.”
“You’re sure?” Bruce asked, rising up to lean on his forearm.
“Oh, fuck no,” Joker said, his smile dropping immediately. “This is insane. And that’s me saying that, so you know it’s got to be completely balls-to-the-wall wacko.”
“Hmm,” Bruce said. “You’re giving me mixed signals, here.”
Joker laughed, though the sound was shorter than his typical fare. “Funny. Normally that’s your thing.”
Bruce had the gall to look offended. “It wasn’t on purpose. ”
“Oh, I know, baby,” Joker said, trailing his painted nails across Bruce’s cheek. “You’re just repressed. Very, very repressed.” He raised his hand to his chin, staring at Bruce in deep consideration. “Which raises the inverse question, really. Are you sure about this, Batsy? Because there’s a reason we’ve been keeping this to the shadows, and it sure as hell isn’t me being shy about my feelings.”
Bruce didn’t say anything, just stared up at Joker with those piercing, dubiously hopeful blue eyes. It hadn’t been long into this... new evolution of their relationship that Bruce had puzzled out exactly how distracting Joker found prolonged, unbroken eye contact with his Bat. The man was incorrigibly manipulative, for a superhero.
Joker huffed, looking away. “Besides,” he added. “A little cat told me you’re terrible at commitment.”
Bruce rolled his eyes. “That would be hypocritical of her,” he said, pulling himself up to his elbows, “but I suppose it takes one to know one. Am I supposed to believe you’re on speaking terms with Selina?”
“Please, I’ve always been on speaking terms with Kitty Cat,” Joker said, waving a hand dismissively. “It’s just that usually when we’re speaking, we’re also trying to kill each other.”
“She told you about my commitment issues while you were trying to kill each other,” Bruce rephrased for clarity, a single eyebrow twitching slightly with contained skepticism.
“Selina’s a terrible gossip,” Joker said earnestly, placing a hand over his heart. “She’s how I found out about dear Waylon faking the whole cannibalism thing for the street cred. Not to mention all the Bosley supplements Eddie was taking before that dip in the Lazarus pit restored his hairline.”
Bruce sat all the way up at the words ‘Lazarus pit,’ then slowly leaned back down after a moment’s consideration. “Selina didn’t tell you any of that,” he guessed.
“Of course not, darling,” Joker said, examining his nails with exaggerated indifference. “I wouldn’t dare talk out of school. Honor among thieves, and all that blather. We rogues have to have some secrets from you.”
Bruce gave a short, derision-filled huff that eloquently expressed his disagreement with that sentiment. Joker punched him in the shoulder, hard.
“Let the kiddies have their fun, killjoy,” Joker said, his eyes gleaming with uncharitable amusement. “You’re an acquired taste, Brucie. Not everyone enjoys the Big Bad Bat sniffing around as much as I do.”
“Then they should stop committing crimes,” Bruce said.
They were both silent, then.
“...I know it isn’t that simple,” Bruce said, eventually.
Joker drummed his fingers against a bended knee. “But it is a requirement.”
Bruce rose, crossing his legs to sit facing Joker. “There’s a reason Selina and I never lasted long, J.”
“You’re allergic to cats?” Joker guessed.
Predictably, Bruce didn’t honor that comment with a response. Instead he reached over to take Joker’s still hand into his own, which was terribly unfair.
“I can do this with a criminal,” he said. He gestured to their dingy surroundings, an old getaway that even the most loyal of Joker’s henchmen had never known about, but he was referring to more than that in a way that made Joker’s stomach twist. The implication was casual, a habit that Bruce fell into easily and Joker had lost touch with the moment he had first seen his Bat through the clarifying haze of a bath of chemicals.
“Maybe this is all I want,” Joker said, somewhat petulantly.
“Maybe,” Bruce agreed. “It was all Selina wanted. This, forever.” He let their fingers intertwine, broad and calloused between thin and sharp. “But this doesn’t last long. It never does. Something happens and it falls apart, because it isn’t built on anything stable.”
“I’m criminally insane, darling,” Joker said, colder than he had to be. “I don’t have a stable foundation upon which to build. And you don’t either, otherwise I would never have jumped your bones in the first place.”
If Bruce was offended, he didn’t show it. “Didn’t this conversation start with you agreeing to this?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
“I can agree to something and think it’s a bad idea,” Joker said. “Many of my best ideas have been bad ideas. Besides,” he continued, the hand movements accompanying his words becoming more erratic, “you can’t hold me accountable for what I say immediately after we have sex. That’s just the afterglow talking.”
“You haven’t agreed any of the other times we’ve had sex,” Bruce pointed out, ever the logician.
“And now you’re applying reason? To me?” Joker said, raising the hand not in Bruce’s grasp to his chest in mock offense. “It’s like you don’t even know me anymore.”
“There’s always a method to your madness,” Bruce said, the tiniest hint of a smirk emerging at the edge of his mouth.
Joker raised an eyebrow. “Is there?”
“No,” Bruce said, his voice a disturbing estimation of sweetness, and lifted their intertwined fingers to kiss his hand. “That’s the method.”
“Am I starting to rub off on you?” Joker asked, green eyes flickering suspiciously between the almost-smile on Bruce’s face and their lowering hands.
“Yes,” Bruce agreed easily. “Often quite literally.”
Joker growled in a way that would probably terrify a crowd of Gothamites, but completely failed to intimidate in their current surroundings. He punched Bruce in the shoulder again. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a terrible, manipulative man?”
“Yes,” Bruce said. “Selina. Repeatedly.”
Joker yanked his hand away from Bruce, scowling. “Is she really all you want to talk about?” he asked, not bothering to disguise the bitterness in his voice.
“You brought her up.”
“I was joking,” he said. “You are trying to have a serious emotional conversation about your favorite pussy.”
“Selina is a relevant case example,” Bruce said, wholesale ignoring Joker’s euphemistic implications. “The conversation isn’t about her, it’s about us.”
“It’s about me,” Joker corrected, “and what I have to give up if I don’t want you to eventually and without warning leave me in the lurch.”
“It’s not just about you,” Bruce said, genuine frustration creeping into his voice. “You think I have that guarantee? At any moment, you could decide our old game was more fun. That this is more trouble than it’s worth.”
Joker’s eyes went hard. “Bruce,” he said, tone deadly cold. “There is no commitment I could make that would guarantee otherwise.”
“I’m aware of that,” Bruce said. “But it’s considerably easier to fall into old habits when you’re still an active power in Gotham’s criminal underworld.”
Joker scoffed. “Oh, I get it. You want me to give up my career for you, huh?”
“That’s what Sel—”
“I have a knife under this pillow,” Joker warned. “Do not think that I won’t stab you.”
Bruce relented. “But you understand what I’m saying.”
“You seem to be saying that you think I am more able to give up criminal behavior than the Cat was,” Joker said. “Which is categorically insane, given that Catwoman is an on-and-off crimefighter while I — and I am absolutely saying this with as much hubris as possible — am me. ”
Bruce narrowed his eyes. “That’s not what I’m saying.”
Joker threw up his hands. “Then what the fuck are you saying, Bats?”
“I'm saying that I think you love me more than Selina did,” Bruce snapped.
Joker blinked. “Oh.”
Bruce looked away.
“I mean...” Joker said, digging his nails into his thighs. “Obviously.”
They were silent for a while, and eventually Bruce stood up, walking over to his removed batsuit. On other men it might have communicated anger or resentment, but Joker recognized it for what it was: a tactical retreat.
“Okay.”
Bruce glanced up, pausing as he got dressed. “Okay?”
“If we cycle through this entire conversation again I will stab both of us to death,” Joker warned. “But yes.”
Bruce abandoned his suit entirely, returning to kneel next to the mattress. “Afterglow is long over at this point,” he stated, for clarity.
“God, yes,” Joker said, rolling his eyes. “Believe me, you have killed the mood entirely.”
The expression on Bruce’s face didn’t seem to be an attempt to contain a smile so much as an attempt to smile, which was fascinating and more than a little disturbing, psychologically speaking. “You’re serious?” he asked.
“You know how I feel about that word,” Joker said. “I’m not lying to you, no. But,” he added before Bruce could get another word out, “I have a condition.”
“I’m not un-adopting any of my children,” Bruce said automatically.
“What?” Joker asked, brow scrunching in confusion. “No. Why— okay, no, I see why. But no, that’s not my condition.”
“Then what is your condition?” Bruce asked. His tone was cautiously horrified in a way that Joker found deeply flattering.
“You have to kill me.”
Bruce opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again. “I... think we might have had a fundamental misunderstanding earlier on in the conversation.”
Joker glared at him with a judgmental tilt of his head. “That’s not what I mean, Batbrains,” he said. “I mean you have to kill the Joker.”
“You are the Joker,” Bruce said, the careful patience in his voice very nearly earning him a shiny new stab wound.
“Yes,” Joker said. “I am. And you are asking me to kill the Joker, metaphorically.” Bruce looked like he wanted to object, but Joker steamrolled through any quibbling. “It is the least you can do,” he continued, “to appear to kill me, literally.”
Bruce considered this. “Ah.”
“Yes,” Joker agreed. “Ah.”
“I take it you understand that this would completely ruin my moral credibility when I argue against other heroes killing criminals,” Bruce said.
“I can’t be the only one who gives something up, Brucie,” Joker said innocently. “Besides, it would be evenly impermanent. If I go back on my thing, it cancels out your thing.”
“If my family finds out that I faked killing you,” Bruce said, hesitant, “they would be disappointed.”
“If,” Joker echoed, smile widening. “If is good.”
“It would be difficult,” Bruce continued, but his eyes were already gleaming with consideration. “You appear to die a lot. Most people have stopped believing it when you do. To convince them — to convince anyone — every detail would have to be undeniable. We couldn’t leave ourselves any loose ends.”
“Oh, entirely agreed.”
Bruce narrowed his eyes. “But your pathological need for attention will require the execution to be as dramatic as possible with a completely untenable number of witnesses.”
“Why, Batsy!” Joker gasped through a grin. “You haven’t been talking to my therapist, have you?”
Bruce stood up, beginning to pace. It would look ridiculous, a half-dressed Batman muttering under his breath about how to convincingly commit murder, if it wasn’t the most romantic thing Joker had seen since the time Bats choked him into unconsciousness on Valentine’s Day.
Eventually, Bruce stopped in front of the mattress. “Okay.”
Joker grinned, glad to finally be on the other side of this particular exchange. “Okay?”
“I can do that,” Bruce said.
“Excellent!” Joker clapped. He grabbed the knife out from under his pillow. Bruce only fell into a little bit of a fighting stance, which Joker tactfully decided to take as neither offensive to his threat level or insulting to his intentions.
Bruce watched, gaze indecipherable even to Joker, as the other man knelt down before him on one knee.
“Bruce,” Joker said. “Bruce Batsy Battington Batholomew Wayne. Will you make me the happiest man alive,” he said, raising the knife hilt-first in his lover’s direction, “and do me the honor of murdering me?”
Without his cowl covering his face, Bruce couldn’t hide the roll of his eyes.
But he took the knife.