Team Anarchy- Round 2- Title The Superman and The Clown
Title: The Superman and The Clown
Author:Medorikoi
Prompt: Crossovers
Pairing: Batman/Joker
Word Count: 4,658
Disclaimers:I own nothing except my own twisted mind.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Language, Superman/JLA crossover, Joker's mind
Summary: It was no figure of black. No blue eyes to haunt his dreams, to make him feel like he was not alone. No dark gruff inhuman voice...it was blue and red. Bright as the sun...
Have you ever had a daydream where everyone around you died? Where for no reason you hit the gas pedal instead of the break and exploded against the road?
Have you ever had so much coffee that it felt like your heart would explode in your chest?
Have you ever felt the desperation of a man 2 days and 23 hours in the desert knowing a man can live only 3 days without water?
Have you ever fallen in love so hard that you forget what the world was like before them? That you forget how to breathe?
Have you ever known that you were too smart to interface with the people around you? That no matter what you would never be in understood, never in the same book let alone on the same page?
Multiply that by a hundred, a million, and you still would not know what it feels like to be the Joker.
It was building inside of him, a wave of energy, of madness swelling in his chest, threatening to take him over. It was always there, always building, hiding beneath the laughter that tried to repress it. For as long as he could remember it had been with him. Was it a product of genius? Of a childhood gone wrong and birthing in him some dark overwhelming need?
But the time had come.
He needed to release it before it took over, before his mind was swallowed, before it stole him away. If the wave of madness crested over his brain would it be the end of him finally? Would he be able to walk and talk and interact as he did now? Would he be trapped forever within himself unable to reach out and take what he needed? Would he be too far gone to care?
There was only one way to calm the writhing demon inside of him, one person with an answering darkness that shared his burden. There was only one person who fought the madness of genius and ill-born darkness with a ferocity which he never had...
He needed to play with his Bat. To hold him, to hurt him, to feel him, to see him. To see his eyes, beneath the cowl and the gruff exterior, and look into the soul that screamed in agony with him.
His partner.
His soul.
His only anchor of near sanity in a world more twisted than he was.
He heard them talking about him once, the doctors, the nurses, the psychologists with their painted smiles. Why did they think that just because he laughed and played that he could not hear them? Not understand? Super sanity they had called it. A new adaptation too advanced for their time, a mutation hundreds of years further along than his mindless human counterparts. The only mind truly suited to this city, to this day and age.
But they did not understand. He would never tell them that of course but they would never understand. But without a word Bats did. The demon within the Bat clawed at the surface, begging to be released from the suit, from the icon that held him back, The Dark knight, the hero with the devil in his heart. And he was the only one who saw it. The only one who understood. The citizens of Gotham saw the gruff Bat and thought they understood his darkness when what they were looking at was the mask, the pretence that held the creature at bay.
He had seen it the first time they met, but how much sweeter it had been when they were touching so soon after! How when a heavy fist pounded into his fragile cheek and the thin bones shattered he could feel the demons claws digging into him. How when the Bat pinned him down with his body the feeling, the urge to burn, to end life, to end his own suffering diminished. The storm in his chest subsided, the waves calming.
But the waters had risen again. They always did. And it was time to play with his darling, his dear, his Bat.
This one was special. He had waited ages for it, planned for weeks, took days to escape without detection, another month to put it together, to gather the materials, the people. He stood now waiting for his dark knight on the tallest building in Gotham, trigger in hand. The view was spectacular. Familiar.
Would Batman remember this place? Only a few stories above where they had first met? Where their bodies had twisted and their devils had danced? After all it was a year ago today that they had first met. The Bat would never miss their first anniversary.
The clock struck 12, the first tolls of midnight rang through their gothic Gotham. The wave was building, threatening to spill from his throat, his limbs shook. Soon. So soon.
He shut his eyes, letting the breeze comb through his hair like a lover. Their Gotham. Their city which had brought them together.
Below there was panic but it did not matter. If they lived, if they died, who would shed a tear? But it was foolish to think like that. Of course the Bat would save them. That was the game. That is why at this moment he was rushing up to meet him. To save their city, to stop the burning, the sanity that made him teeter on the edge of the dark roof thinking in the flickering of his mind how beautiful, how perfect it would be to fall. The air cradling his body…the lights whipping past… all to see the Bats eyes, to make him feel.
Six tolls. Poison green eyes opened, burning into their city, trigger finger twitching. He was late.
Didn’t he know how long he had waited? Waited and planned until it was perfect! Until the need within him was unbearable, until it reached an agonizing pitch!
Seven.
Eight.
Nine.
No cables in the night, no zip lines to bring his Bat to him.
Ten.
No figure of black swinging below.
Eleven.
No relief. The pain was blinding. He had waited too long and he needed…He fucking needed.
Twelve.
“BATS!” The scream of anguish pierced the night, echoing from stone to metal, filling Gotham, a demon howling in the night. His fingers were slipping, his feet dancing closer to the edge because the wave was at a crescendo…ready to crash…ready to kill.
“Joker.”
It was no figure of black. No blue eyes to haunt his dreams, to make him feel like he was not alone. No dark gruff inhuman voice. No demon to play with his. Not his sweet immovable object, tortured and scarred as he waiting for him, waiting to feel real.
It was blue and red. Bright as the sun, bright as a fucked fairy tale in his heartless black Gotham. It was looking at him with blank blue eyes that wanted to sell him cookies and help him across the street. Eyes that held no life. Thin blue arrogance bathed in spandex and holding out a golden hand.
It was flying. Hovering in front of him, suspended by nothing, hundreds of feet in the air.
SuperDweeb.
Big Blue and Brainless.
“Where is he?” The words were a hiss. His mind was reeling. It was impossible to concentrate while his heart was trying to hammer its way free of his chest, leaving a gaping hole from witch this pain could escape, could wash across the city…
He smiled. The fucker SMILED. The hand held out to him opened as if he were nothing more than a frightened child.
“Who? Batman?” Light and teasing but still bright, like the surface of the goddamn sun. Who did this bastard think he was?!
“Where is he?!” The hiss was half strangled in his mouth, twisted with anguish. He felt like screaming, crying. Where was he? Why didn’t he come?
“We were busy. I could get here faster.”
Faster. He could get here FASTER!? Months of planning, of suppressing his need, his desire. All this for the Bat and he gets some half-wit substitute because he is FASTER?!
The trigger fell to the ground with a clink, dropped from numb hands. It tumbled off the building, its fall lasting less than a blink of an eye before it was in the bastards’ hand, crushed into dust. Mindless power without purpose, without reason.
Why wouldn’t the Bat come?
“Take me to him.” His voice was low, thick and ragged as gravel, as the Bats. The absolute authority in it had the man pausing, giving him an almost dumbfounded look.
“You want-?”
“Take me to the Bat. Now.”
Superman took a moment. Shaking his head, looking at him with a new light. At least the blinding smile was gone, confusion and subtle interest taking its place. Not quite understanding.
“I can’t…he is at the Watchtower he told me to just…”
The Watchtower. So that was it was it? The Bat had found a new high-tech Batcave in the sky to play with. Did he have better things to do now? Entire planets to save? Countries to protect from themselves? Villains with world domination to hinder? Did he no longer merit the Bats time?
Apparently he merited the time of the flying monkey in front of him. Sent on a mission from the Bat. Now that the Bat had acquired a powerful new toy, had SuperDork under his thumb, doing his bidding, was he no longer necessary?
No.
No.
No.
The man…alien…dork, paused mid sentence, a blush of shame painting his cheeks, a nod to no one.
“Tell him this is not funny.”
It drew no response but the tightening of lips, closed against anything else idiotic that might come spilling out.
“The Bat. You are talking to him. He just yelled at you. Now tell him to get the fuck down here.”
SuperDweeb stayed his ground…air. His hand lowered, seeming to realize for the first time that it would not be taken in friendship or surrender. His hands came to his hips with a self-righteousness few people in existence posses. It was his lack of what to say that held his tongue.
The slight cocking of his head gave him away, the Bat was whispering in his ear. So he was paying attention after all.
Then this was the game they would play.
“First time in the city big boy?” He rose to his tip toes, letting his balance waiver, almost falling, the wind pushing his coat over the edge like a cape, like a hero, like the doomed. Blue eyes watched him in mild panic. So unlike his Bat.
“People like you should not wander the streets on their own. Terrible things happen in Gotham.” He formed a gun with his hands, aiming at the crowds below.
“You have super powers right? Hearing, sight, smell?” He squinted, he was mindless in his own brilliance, he could no longer feel his body, the strain on his mind was terrible, the pain. How long could he last? “Can you hear the murders gone on below? The mothers bleeding on their children, their last gift to them? Can you here the drugs coursing through the veins of fathers as they beat their children? Can you hear the pounding hearts of men and women as a stranger, as a friend fucks them against their will?”
He moved his finger like a trigger. “BANG.” In his mind he sees a person below them drop to the ground. Superman looks down so fast he almost misses it.
“Can you smell it?” He smiles, Superman is pale, it looks like he is vibrating so fast it is impossible for his eyes to be sure. “The smell of gunpowder and burning flesh? Of urine and blood where a child sleeps? Can you smell the rotting flesh of a thousand dying bodies?” He aims again with his finger, pulls the ‘trigger’. “BANG”
Superman is watching him with eyes that hold more depth, more pain than they did minutes before. His education was getting the best of him. The Joker smiled, his own heart pounded with need, this was too easy.. Easy as taking down Harvey, easy as taking a scalpel and carving out the heart of an infant.
“Can you see it Supes? Can you see the death?” He brought his finger to his temple, pulling the imaginary trigger, forcing the imaginary bullet through flesh and skull, sending it careening into soft grey matter and superman could see it all in his mind. He laughed as he fell, as his body finally teetered off the edge of the building.
He had been right. It was beautiful. It looked like Halloween, like a million smiling Jack-o-lanterns speeding past him as he fell. Like Gotham was letting out a breath that rushed against every inch of his body.
Down, down, down, down the rabbit hole he fell. He could see the people better now. The terror had passed; their petty lived saved by little more than a split second decision, a falling trigger and an uncaring bat. He could see them approaching when warm arms came around him, grabbing him, holding him safe as they rocketed back up towards the sky.
He was trembling now beneath the spandex, his perfect hair just slightly mused. His soft boy scout eyes were wide with something akin to terror. Could he see the darkness now? Could the Bat hear him? Could he see his pet trembling in his manic embrace?
How could the Bat send a child like this to the Joker?
They were high above the tower they once stood on. Superman looked afraid to let him down, afraid to hold him. Afraid of the words that would come tumbling from his mouth.
How do you bring down the invulnerable man? Tear at his mind, at his all too soft heart.
“Supes.”
“Stop it. Just stop.”
“Take me to the Bat.”
A pause. He was thinking about it. The Bat verses the Joker warring in his head. Who was more intimidating?
“I am taking you to Arkham.”
He was pressed against the hero’s hard body, all muscle, raw power hid beneath nothing but smooth barely there material. He wrapped his arms around his neck, bringing a flicker of confusion, of trepidation to his eyes.
“If you do that I will escape. Tonight. And I will kill every person I see on my way out.”
“No. You will not. I read the escape report from last time, you did not kill anyone.” So hopeful. So innocent. So naïve.
“No I did not.” He wrapped his legs around Superman’s waist, locking his feet in the small of the other mans back. The horror on his face was fully fleshed out now. “But I will. And it will be all your fault.”
In return for the look of dismay, the look of shock and almost anger the Joker gave him a smile, a fair enough trade. “Me? I am just a maniac. A child.” He leaned in, nipped at the beating pulse in the bared neck before him. So much skin, so easy to access, what kind of people did this man fight? “I cannot help myself, but you…if you leave me to them and they die…each death will be on you.” He moved from the neck, leaving a wet trail of biting kisses until he latched an earlobe between his teeth. The alien heart beat fast and hard against him. Just panic or something more?
“Each rotting corpse.” He sucked, hard. “Each orphaned child.” He left the area, wet and cold in the night air, moving across his jaw bone. “Each mourning widow will be on your shoulders.” He panted across Superman’s lips. The man squirmed but there was nowhere to go, nowhere to go unless he dropped him, let him die.
He thrust his hips; ground his covered crotch into the spandex that covered Superman’s groin.
“Can you kill all of those people?”
They stopped in midair, half way to Arkham, hovering lost over Gotham with Superman’s face burning like the sun, his eyes lost, gone, awash with things he had never dreamed of.
He cocked his head but his eyes did not squint, and his face was more longing than anything. The Bat was not talking. But Superman wished he was. Silly fool. So easy to read. To play.
But Batman was watching in his cold indifferent tower. He was listening. He had to be.
“Take. Me. To. The Batman.” Superman was frozen. Staring into his eyes like a lost child. It felt like steeling candy from a baby to lean forward and entrap him in a kiss, to feel too warm steel and wet it with saliva and face paint.
Superman gasped, reared back, he tried to push the Joker away, but the Jokers legs were too tight around him, he would let his own legs break before give up his strangle hold.
It was not like with the Bat. Not even a little. Superman is warm…like he has a fever, and the tights lack…feeling, there is nothing in the world like having your body crushed by Kevlar plates.
“Take me to the Bat. Please?”
Superman’s eyes bore into the night sky, waiting in a moment that stretched for them all.
The focus of both of their universes. The watchtower. The Bat.
There was another moment of indecision, another moment where there was no deep growl in Superman ear, no voice in the night to soothe the screaming in the Jokers soul. Superman had had enough.
They were flying again. Towards the ground, towards Arkham. Faster than before they were moving, the wind whipped by them, stinging his cheeks, pressing against his flesh, his hair tangled in blond green knots, whipping him hard enough to wipe strips of paint from his face like battle scars of humanity painted on him.
“No.”
It had not been enough. He had underestimated the man in the hot red panties. Go figure. The boy scout was determined. They slowed as Arkham came into clear view, the guards walking about. Joker released his hold on the alien’s neck, pointing his imaginary gun again, towards the first man below.
“BANG.”
But Superman did not flinch, his face had hardened, he was not headed towards the ground level after all, he was stopping high above where the peaks of Arkham loomed like jagged teeth on the skyline.
The tallest tower reached hundreds of feet in the air, lingering high above the other perverted outcroppings of masonry. Its roof was flat at the very top, as if its spiral had been amputated like a gangrene limb and only as stump remained, a festering sore on the skin of the building.
This time when Superman pushed him his legs were too weak to hold. He collapsed to the cold surface, alone, so alone.
Like a cruel indifferent god too many times inbred with mothers and fathers being sisters and brothers he flew scant feet away.
How familiar.
But this time Joker knew the game.
Superman only thought he did.
“Stay here. You can not hurt anyone and I will go figure out what Batman wants me to do with you.” He smiled like this was some divine compromise, assured in his self-righteous cockiness once more now that he was safely out of reach.
“No.”
“No? You do not really have a-”
A choice? Of course he did.
He looked at Superman…
smiled…
and jumped.
It was less than a second before he was caught. He could read the horror in his face, it dawning over his shiningly innocent mind only just now, long after the instinct to stop his fall. Maybe there was some beauty in him after all. It was almost cute. He really though the last fall had been an accident. It was cute… but it made the ache for the Bat all the more real.
He was functioning, thinking even as energy and need and madness swept over him…because he knew there was still hope. Only another round, a single blue and red obstacle to bypass and he would see him…he just had to play the right cards, show the Bat once more how perfect they were together, meant to be.
The moment warm arms wrapped around him, crushing him close, he knew it would be his last chance. He lunged. It was no kiss, it was devouring, all the mindless need for the Bat crushing the Superman, making him squirm under his assault, under his lips. When Superman’s mouth opened to him he knew it was over.
They were flying.
It was like getting stuck in a clothes dryer on tumble…but at light speed. It was having the breath sucked out of you like a vacuum breaking into your ribcage and tearing the oxygen from your lungs. Each little whip of a strand of hair was a scalpel that dug and tore deeper into the flesh of his face. It was flying, and then something else…teleporting? And then more flying, slower, less painful. Flashes of metallic, of metal and the black of space.
And then they stopped, stopped as a car stops because it slammed into a tree. He was dropped to the floor, too weak to move, to lift his head even as the air rushed into his lungs. His face was pressed to the ground, solid and real beneath him but through squinted eyes he could see his new surroundings.
It was all dark as night, the area could be no more than a single room or as infinite as space, it was too black to see. There was only light enough to make out looming objects, technology tucked into corners, and every once in awhile in the shapes of darkness was one familiar as a smile. A raised surface on unfeeling metal. The Bat.
He was going to see the Bat.
How long had it been since they were together? How much time would Calander Man say had passed? But what did time matter to gods like them? No, how many breathes, how many heartbeats had been taken without one another?
How many more were left until he was whole once more?
“I do not remember asking you to bring him here.” Dark and brooding and maybe even a little morbidly amused…and wonderful.
He trembled to move his head, his muscles felt insubstantial as jello, as if someone had slit them and they were left to flounder uselessly under his skin. But he twisted until he sat on the floor, legs out in front of him, staring up into the face of his love. His counter piece. His bat.
“He refused to be put away without seeing you!” Superman was standing in that stupid pose again, thrusting out his chest, the big S loomed golden in the darkness as if the light clung to him.
Batman gave Superman a pitying look, belittling more than biting as the words snaked from his mouth and Superman winced as if actually stricken. “In Gotham incarceration is not optional.”
Finally. After being ignored all night, ignored on their anniversary, after all his work, ignored even now that they shared a room, shared the very air, blue eyes bore into him, burning him, not lifting the madness from him but intensifying it. He could barely think.
Blue eyes only for him.“You were going to kill all those people.”
It was like everything else melted away, like Superman was not even there.“You were supposed to come stop me!”
Understanding sparked in Batman’s eyes but they lost no intensity, all Joker could see were his eyes and face, his body blended into the darkness.
“And if I could not come?”
The Joker could not stop the little sad smile that tugged his scarred lips, nothing but brutal self-deprecating honesty. “I would have waited for you.”
Batman’s glare became something warmer, and for those that knew him, really knew him, a smile was growing in his tense frown, hiding beneath the layers and the mask.
The Joker staggered to his feet, needing to be on the same level with him even if it was shaky and painful.
“And our deal?” The gruff Batman voice sounded recognizably human. Superman took a step back in shock at the unfamiliar resonance of it.
The Joker stumbled forward a step, a smile tearing his face now, his eyes watering with relief. So close…
“I did not. I have not killed anyone since…” He swallowed painfully. He was shaking. “Why didn’t you come?’ He took a step back, only half a step, and it hurt.
“Didn’t you know? Did you have any idea…can you understand?!” Fuck. It hurt. All the pain the Bat had put him through and he stood now like a dark Adonis pretending he had never taken his soul and left it to fester and die.
“I had to be sure.” He sounded almost …sorry. He sounded like he hurt too. And then none of it mattered. Then the Bat smiled sad and real. “I understand.”
He fell, he let himself fall and the Bat caught him and they were tangled, they were one. The wave was rising again, threatening to wash him under…to rip him apart and smoldering black fire engulfed him. Batman was holding him, crushing him, kissing him, devouring him. And it was perfect and right, Kevlar and muscle and human. Their devils reached out to one another and danced, their dark souls entwined.
Batman saved his soul.
The unquenchable thirst…the madness was washing away.
Their breaths mingled, he let himself be held by strong arms, pressed to his chest, his own fingers scrambling for weak purchase on his broad chest. Oh to have a knife to pry away that armor…
“What are you doing?!”
Superman.
He had forgotten about him.
But he was wrapped in the Bat now. The Boyscout did not matter. He laid his head on Batman’s shoulder as the deep voice rumbled around him.
“We made a deal. My attention-“ His arms were a crushing hold, it made the blood rush to his face. “as long as he does not kill. He proved tonight and in these last few months that he can do this.”
Superman’s jaw was slack, righteous anger steeling his figure.
“He threatened to kill! Tonight!”
“He also proved that he can fool you.”
The Joker twined his arms around Batman neck. Enough talk- he had waited so long for his Bats attention and it was his, all his now. Forever. He promised. His big bad Bat…He kissed his neck like he had done to Superman a few hours ago. He hoped it had driven the Bat insane. The grunted desperate words from all those nights ago still circled in his mind, the night the Bat had taken him and growled ‘mine’.
“The telepath-” There was breathiness in his voice that made the Joker wrap his hands around more interesting areas.
“J’onn ” Superman growled, his face red with anger and a million feelings indecent and unfit for the Golden boy of Metropolis.
“The telepath already knows.” Batman growled, his fingers dug into his back, not restraining, but not helping…desperate…as needy as him… ”Now you do too. I do not want trouble from the rest of the League.” A breath sucked in between clenched teeth. “Make it happen or I will.”
And then the Superman was gone, gone as fast as a speeding bullet…prick. And Batman was on him, forcing him to the ground.
Have you ever had a daydream where everyone around you died?
Have you ever felt like your heart would explode?
Have you ever felt the desperation of a man on his deathbed?
Have you ever fallen in love so that you forget what the world was like before them?
Multiply that by a hundred, a million and maybe you could understand what it is like to be the Batman.
Author:Medorikoi
Prompt: Crossovers
Pairing: Batman/Joker
Word Count: 4,658
Disclaimers:I own nothing except my own twisted mind.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Language, Superman/JLA crossover, Joker's mind
Summary: It was no figure of black. No blue eyes to haunt his dreams, to make him feel like he was not alone. No dark gruff inhuman voice...it was blue and red. Bright as the sun...
Have you ever had a daydream where everyone around you died? Where for no reason you hit the gas pedal instead of the break and exploded against the road?
Have you ever had so much coffee that it felt like your heart would explode in your chest?
Have you ever felt the desperation of a man 2 days and 23 hours in the desert knowing a man can live only 3 days without water?
Have you ever fallen in love so hard that you forget what the world was like before them? That you forget how to breathe?
Have you ever known that you were too smart to interface with the people around you? That no matter what you would never be in understood, never in the same book let alone on the same page?
Multiply that by a hundred, a million, and you still would not know what it feels like to be the Joker.
It was building inside of him, a wave of energy, of madness swelling in his chest, threatening to take him over. It was always there, always building, hiding beneath the laughter that tried to repress it. For as long as he could remember it had been with him. Was it a product of genius? Of a childhood gone wrong and birthing in him some dark overwhelming need?
But the time had come.
He needed to release it before it took over, before his mind was swallowed, before it stole him away. If the wave of madness crested over his brain would it be the end of him finally? Would he be able to walk and talk and interact as he did now? Would he be trapped forever within himself unable to reach out and take what he needed? Would he be too far gone to care?
There was only one way to calm the writhing demon inside of him, one person with an answering darkness that shared his burden. There was only one person who fought the madness of genius and ill-born darkness with a ferocity which he never had...
He needed to play with his Bat. To hold him, to hurt him, to feel him, to see him. To see his eyes, beneath the cowl and the gruff exterior, and look into the soul that screamed in agony with him.
His partner.
His soul.
His only anchor of near sanity in a world more twisted than he was.
He heard them talking about him once, the doctors, the nurses, the psychologists with their painted smiles. Why did they think that just because he laughed and played that he could not hear them? Not understand? Super sanity they had called it. A new adaptation too advanced for their time, a mutation hundreds of years further along than his mindless human counterparts. The only mind truly suited to this city, to this day and age.
But they did not understand. He would never tell them that of course but they would never understand. But without a word Bats did. The demon within the Bat clawed at the surface, begging to be released from the suit, from the icon that held him back, The Dark knight, the hero with the devil in his heart. And he was the only one who saw it. The only one who understood. The citizens of Gotham saw the gruff Bat and thought they understood his darkness when what they were looking at was the mask, the pretence that held the creature at bay.
He had seen it the first time they met, but how much sweeter it had been when they were touching so soon after! How when a heavy fist pounded into his fragile cheek and the thin bones shattered he could feel the demons claws digging into him. How when the Bat pinned him down with his body the feeling, the urge to burn, to end life, to end his own suffering diminished. The storm in his chest subsided, the waves calming.
But the waters had risen again. They always did. And it was time to play with his darling, his dear, his Bat.
This one was special. He had waited ages for it, planned for weeks, took days to escape without detection, another month to put it together, to gather the materials, the people. He stood now waiting for his dark knight on the tallest building in Gotham, trigger in hand. The view was spectacular. Familiar.
Would Batman remember this place? Only a few stories above where they had first met? Where their bodies had twisted and their devils had danced? After all it was a year ago today that they had first met. The Bat would never miss their first anniversary.
The clock struck 12, the first tolls of midnight rang through their gothic Gotham. The wave was building, threatening to spill from his throat, his limbs shook. Soon. So soon.
He shut his eyes, letting the breeze comb through his hair like a lover. Their Gotham. Their city which had brought them together.
Below there was panic but it did not matter. If they lived, if they died, who would shed a tear? But it was foolish to think like that. Of course the Bat would save them. That was the game. That is why at this moment he was rushing up to meet him. To save their city, to stop the burning, the sanity that made him teeter on the edge of the dark roof thinking in the flickering of his mind how beautiful, how perfect it would be to fall. The air cradling his body…the lights whipping past… all to see the Bats eyes, to make him feel.
Six tolls. Poison green eyes opened, burning into their city, trigger finger twitching. He was late.
Didn’t he know how long he had waited? Waited and planned until it was perfect! Until the need within him was unbearable, until it reached an agonizing pitch!
Seven.
Eight.
Nine.
No cables in the night, no zip lines to bring his Bat to him.
Ten.
No figure of black swinging below.
Eleven.
No relief. The pain was blinding. He had waited too long and he needed…He fucking needed.
Twelve.
“BATS!” The scream of anguish pierced the night, echoing from stone to metal, filling Gotham, a demon howling in the night. His fingers were slipping, his feet dancing closer to the edge because the wave was at a crescendo…ready to crash…ready to kill.
“Joker.”
It was no figure of black. No blue eyes to haunt his dreams, to make him feel like he was not alone. No dark gruff inhuman voice. No demon to play with his. Not his sweet immovable object, tortured and scarred as he waiting for him, waiting to feel real.
It was blue and red. Bright as the sun, bright as a fucked fairy tale in his heartless black Gotham. It was looking at him with blank blue eyes that wanted to sell him cookies and help him across the street. Eyes that held no life. Thin blue arrogance bathed in spandex and holding out a golden hand.
It was flying. Hovering in front of him, suspended by nothing, hundreds of feet in the air.
SuperDweeb.
Big Blue and Brainless.
“Where is he?” The words were a hiss. His mind was reeling. It was impossible to concentrate while his heart was trying to hammer its way free of his chest, leaving a gaping hole from witch this pain could escape, could wash across the city…
He smiled. The fucker SMILED. The hand held out to him opened as if he were nothing more than a frightened child.
“Who? Batman?” Light and teasing but still bright, like the surface of the goddamn sun. Who did this bastard think he was?!
“Where is he?!” The hiss was half strangled in his mouth, twisted with anguish. He felt like screaming, crying. Where was he? Why didn’t he come?
“We were busy. I could get here faster.”
Faster. He could get here FASTER!? Months of planning, of suppressing his need, his desire. All this for the Bat and he gets some half-wit substitute because he is FASTER?!
The trigger fell to the ground with a clink, dropped from numb hands. It tumbled off the building, its fall lasting less than a blink of an eye before it was in the bastards’ hand, crushed into dust. Mindless power without purpose, without reason.
Why wouldn’t the Bat come?
“Take me to him.” His voice was low, thick and ragged as gravel, as the Bats. The absolute authority in it had the man pausing, giving him an almost dumbfounded look.
“You want-?”
“Take me to the Bat. Now.”
Superman took a moment. Shaking his head, looking at him with a new light. At least the blinding smile was gone, confusion and subtle interest taking its place. Not quite understanding.
“I can’t…he is at the Watchtower he told me to just…”
The Watchtower. So that was it was it? The Bat had found a new high-tech Batcave in the sky to play with. Did he have better things to do now? Entire planets to save? Countries to protect from themselves? Villains with world domination to hinder? Did he no longer merit the Bats time?
Apparently he merited the time of the flying monkey in front of him. Sent on a mission from the Bat. Now that the Bat had acquired a powerful new toy, had SuperDork under his thumb, doing his bidding, was he no longer necessary?
No.
No.
No.
The man…alien…dork, paused mid sentence, a blush of shame painting his cheeks, a nod to no one.
“Tell him this is not funny.”
It drew no response but the tightening of lips, closed against anything else idiotic that might come spilling out.
“The Bat. You are talking to him. He just yelled at you. Now tell him to get the fuck down here.”
SuperDweeb stayed his ground…air. His hand lowered, seeming to realize for the first time that it would not be taken in friendship or surrender. His hands came to his hips with a self-righteousness few people in existence posses. It was his lack of what to say that held his tongue.
The slight cocking of his head gave him away, the Bat was whispering in his ear. So he was paying attention after all.
Then this was the game they would play.
“First time in the city big boy?” He rose to his tip toes, letting his balance waiver, almost falling, the wind pushing his coat over the edge like a cape, like a hero, like the doomed. Blue eyes watched him in mild panic. So unlike his Bat.
“People like you should not wander the streets on their own. Terrible things happen in Gotham.” He formed a gun with his hands, aiming at the crowds below.
“You have super powers right? Hearing, sight, smell?” He squinted, he was mindless in his own brilliance, he could no longer feel his body, the strain on his mind was terrible, the pain. How long could he last? “Can you hear the murders gone on below? The mothers bleeding on their children, their last gift to them? Can you here the drugs coursing through the veins of fathers as they beat their children? Can you hear the pounding hearts of men and women as a stranger, as a friend fucks them against their will?”
He moved his finger like a trigger. “BANG.” In his mind he sees a person below them drop to the ground. Superman looks down so fast he almost misses it.
“Can you smell it?” He smiles, Superman is pale, it looks like he is vibrating so fast it is impossible for his eyes to be sure. “The smell of gunpowder and burning flesh? Of urine and blood where a child sleeps? Can you smell the rotting flesh of a thousand dying bodies?” He aims again with his finger, pulls the ‘trigger’. “BANG”
Superman is watching him with eyes that hold more depth, more pain than they did minutes before. His education was getting the best of him. The Joker smiled, his own heart pounded with need, this was too easy.. Easy as taking down Harvey, easy as taking a scalpel and carving out the heart of an infant.
“Can you see it Supes? Can you see the death?” He brought his finger to his temple, pulling the imaginary trigger, forcing the imaginary bullet through flesh and skull, sending it careening into soft grey matter and superman could see it all in his mind. He laughed as he fell, as his body finally teetered off the edge of the building.
He had been right. It was beautiful. It looked like Halloween, like a million smiling Jack-o-lanterns speeding past him as he fell. Like Gotham was letting out a breath that rushed against every inch of his body.
Down, down, down, down the rabbit hole he fell. He could see the people better now. The terror had passed; their petty lived saved by little more than a split second decision, a falling trigger and an uncaring bat. He could see them approaching when warm arms came around him, grabbing him, holding him safe as they rocketed back up towards the sky.
He was trembling now beneath the spandex, his perfect hair just slightly mused. His soft boy scout eyes were wide with something akin to terror. Could he see the darkness now? Could the Bat hear him? Could he see his pet trembling in his manic embrace?
How could the Bat send a child like this to the Joker?
They were high above the tower they once stood on. Superman looked afraid to let him down, afraid to hold him. Afraid of the words that would come tumbling from his mouth.
How do you bring down the invulnerable man? Tear at his mind, at his all too soft heart.
“Supes.”
“Stop it. Just stop.”
“Take me to the Bat.”
A pause. He was thinking about it. The Bat verses the Joker warring in his head. Who was more intimidating?
“I am taking you to Arkham.”
He was pressed against the hero’s hard body, all muscle, raw power hid beneath nothing but smooth barely there material. He wrapped his arms around his neck, bringing a flicker of confusion, of trepidation to his eyes.
“If you do that I will escape. Tonight. And I will kill every person I see on my way out.”
“No. You will not. I read the escape report from last time, you did not kill anyone.” So hopeful. So innocent. So naïve.
“No I did not.” He wrapped his legs around Superman’s waist, locking his feet in the small of the other mans back. The horror on his face was fully fleshed out now. “But I will. And it will be all your fault.”
In return for the look of dismay, the look of shock and almost anger the Joker gave him a smile, a fair enough trade. “Me? I am just a maniac. A child.” He leaned in, nipped at the beating pulse in the bared neck before him. So much skin, so easy to access, what kind of people did this man fight? “I cannot help myself, but you…if you leave me to them and they die…each death will be on you.” He moved from the neck, leaving a wet trail of biting kisses until he latched an earlobe between his teeth. The alien heart beat fast and hard against him. Just panic or something more?
“Each rotting corpse.” He sucked, hard. “Each orphaned child.” He left the area, wet and cold in the night air, moving across his jaw bone. “Each mourning widow will be on your shoulders.” He panted across Superman’s lips. The man squirmed but there was nowhere to go, nowhere to go unless he dropped him, let him die.
He thrust his hips; ground his covered crotch into the spandex that covered Superman’s groin.
“Can you kill all of those people?”
They stopped in midair, half way to Arkham, hovering lost over Gotham with Superman’s face burning like the sun, his eyes lost, gone, awash with things he had never dreamed of.
He cocked his head but his eyes did not squint, and his face was more longing than anything. The Bat was not talking. But Superman wished he was. Silly fool. So easy to read. To play.
But Batman was watching in his cold indifferent tower. He was listening. He had to be.
“Take. Me. To. The Batman.” Superman was frozen. Staring into his eyes like a lost child. It felt like steeling candy from a baby to lean forward and entrap him in a kiss, to feel too warm steel and wet it with saliva and face paint.
Superman gasped, reared back, he tried to push the Joker away, but the Jokers legs were too tight around him, he would let his own legs break before give up his strangle hold.
It was not like with the Bat. Not even a little. Superman is warm…like he has a fever, and the tights lack…feeling, there is nothing in the world like having your body crushed by Kevlar plates.
“Take me to the Bat. Please?”
Superman’s eyes bore into the night sky, waiting in a moment that stretched for them all.
The focus of both of their universes. The watchtower. The Bat.
There was another moment of indecision, another moment where there was no deep growl in Superman ear, no voice in the night to soothe the screaming in the Jokers soul. Superman had had enough.
They were flying again. Towards the ground, towards Arkham. Faster than before they were moving, the wind whipped by them, stinging his cheeks, pressing against his flesh, his hair tangled in blond green knots, whipping him hard enough to wipe strips of paint from his face like battle scars of humanity painted on him.
“No.”
It had not been enough. He had underestimated the man in the hot red panties. Go figure. The boy scout was determined. They slowed as Arkham came into clear view, the guards walking about. Joker released his hold on the alien’s neck, pointing his imaginary gun again, towards the first man below.
“BANG.”
But Superman did not flinch, his face had hardened, he was not headed towards the ground level after all, he was stopping high above where the peaks of Arkham loomed like jagged teeth on the skyline.
The tallest tower reached hundreds of feet in the air, lingering high above the other perverted outcroppings of masonry. Its roof was flat at the very top, as if its spiral had been amputated like a gangrene limb and only as stump remained, a festering sore on the skin of the building.
This time when Superman pushed him his legs were too weak to hold. He collapsed to the cold surface, alone, so alone.
Like a cruel indifferent god too many times inbred with mothers and fathers being sisters and brothers he flew scant feet away.
How familiar.
But this time Joker knew the game.
Superman only thought he did.
“Stay here. You can not hurt anyone and I will go figure out what Batman wants me to do with you.” He smiled like this was some divine compromise, assured in his self-righteous cockiness once more now that he was safely out of reach.
“No.”
“No? You do not really have a-”
A choice? Of course he did.
He looked at Superman…
smiled…
and jumped.
It was less than a second before he was caught. He could read the horror in his face, it dawning over his shiningly innocent mind only just now, long after the instinct to stop his fall. Maybe there was some beauty in him after all. It was almost cute. He really though the last fall had been an accident. It was cute… but it made the ache for the Bat all the more real.
He was functioning, thinking even as energy and need and madness swept over him…because he knew there was still hope. Only another round, a single blue and red obstacle to bypass and he would see him…he just had to play the right cards, show the Bat once more how perfect they were together, meant to be.
The moment warm arms wrapped around him, crushing him close, he knew it would be his last chance. He lunged. It was no kiss, it was devouring, all the mindless need for the Bat crushing the Superman, making him squirm under his assault, under his lips. When Superman’s mouth opened to him he knew it was over.
They were flying.
It was like getting stuck in a clothes dryer on tumble…but at light speed. It was having the breath sucked out of you like a vacuum breaking into your ribcage and tearing the oxygen from your lungs. Each little whip of a strand of hair was a scalpel that dug and tore deeper into the flesh of his face. It was flying, and then something else…teleporting? And then more flying, slower, less painful. Flashes of metallic, of metal and the black of space.
And then they stopped, stopped as a car stops because it slammed into a tree. He was dropped to the floor, too weak to move, to lift his head even as the air rushed into his lungs. His face was pressed to the ground, solid and real beneath him but through squinted eyes he could see his new surroundings.
It was all dark as night, the area could be no more than a single room or as infinite as space, it was too black to see. There was only light enough to make out looming objects, technology tucked into corners, and every once in awhile in the shapes of darkness was one familiar as a smile. A raised surface on unfeeling metal. The Bat.
He was going to see the Bat.
How long had it been since they were together? How much time would Calander Man say had passed? But what did time matter to gods like them? No, how many breathes, how many heartbeats had been taken without one another?
How many more were left until he was whole once more?
“I do not remember asking you to bring him here.” Dark and brooding and maybe even a little morbidly amused…and wonderful.
He trembled to move his head, his muscles felt insubstantial as jello, as if someone had slit them and they were left to flounder uselessly under his skin. But he twisted until he sat on the floor, legs out in front of him, staring up into the face of his love. His counter piece. His bat.
“He refused to be put away without seeing you!” Superman was standing in that stupid pose again, thrusting out his chest, the big S loomed golden in the darkness as if the light clung to him.
Batman gave Superman a pitying look, belittling more than biting as the words snaked from his mouth and Superman winced as if actually stricken. “In Gotham incarceration is not optional.”
Finally. After being ignored all night, ignored on their anniversary, after all his work, ignored even now that they shared a room, shared the very air, blue eyes bore into him, burning him, not lifting the madness from him but intensifying it. He could barely think.
Blue eyes only for him.“You were going to kill all those people.”
It was like everything else melted away, like Superman was not even there.“You were supposed to come stop me!”
Understanding sparked in Batman’s eyes but they lost no intensity, all Joker could see were his eyes and face, his body blended into the darkness.
“And if I could not come?”
The Joker could not stop the little sad smile that tugged his scarred lips, nothing but brutal self-deprecating honesty. “I would have waited for you.”
Batman’s glare became something warmer, and for those that knew him, really knew him, a smile was growing in his tense frown, hiding beneath the layers and the mask.
The Joker staggered to his feet, needing to be on the same level with him even if it was shaky and painful.
“And our deal?” The gruff Batman voice sounded recognizably human. Superman took a step back in shock at the unfamiliar resonance of it.
The Joker stumbled forward a step, a smile tearing his face now, his eyes watering with relief. So close…
“I did not. I have not killed anyone since…” He swallowed painfully. He was shaking. “Why didn’t you come?’ He took a step back, only half a step, and it hurt.
“Didn’t you know? Did you have any idea…can you understand?!” Fuck. It hurt. All the pain the Bat had put him through and he stood now like a dark Adonis pretending he had never taken his soul and left it to fester and die.
“I had to be sure.” He sounded almost …sorry. He sounded like he hurt too. And then none of it mattered. Then the Bat smiled sad and real. “I understand.”
He fell, he let himself fall and the Bat caught him and they were tangled, they were one. The wave was rising again, threatening to wash him under…to rip him apart and smoldering black fire engulfed him. Batman was holding him, crushing him, kissing him, devouring him. And it was perfect and right, Kevlar and muscle and human. Their devils reached out to one another and danced, their dark souls entwined.
Batman saved his soul.
The unquenchable thirst…the madness was washing away.
Their breaths mingled, he let himself be held by strong arms, pressed to his chest, his own fingers scrambling for weak purchase on his broad chest. Oh to have a knife to pry away that armor…
“What are you doing?!”
Superman.
He had forgotten about him.
But he was wrapped in the Bat now. The Boyscout did not matter. He laid his head on Batman’s shoulder as the deep voice rumbled around him.
“We made a deal. My attention-“ His arms were a crushing hold, it made the blood rush to his face. “as long as he does not kill. He proved tonight and in these last few months that he can do this.”
Superman’s jaw was slack, righteous anger steeling his figure.
“He threatened to kill! Tonight!”
“He also proved that he can fool you.”
The Joker twined his arms around Batman neck. Enough talk- he had waited so long for his Bats attention and it was his, all his now. Forever. He promised. His big bad Bat…He kissed his neck like he had done to Superman a few hours ago. He hoped it had driven the Bat insane. The grunted desperate words from all those nights ago still circled in his mind, the night the Bat had taken him and growled ‘mine’.
“The telepath-” There was breathiness in his voice that made the Joker wrap his hands around more interesting areas.
“J’onn ” Superman growled, his face red with anger and a million feelings indecent and unfit for the Golden boy of Metropolis.
“The telepath already knows.” Batman growled, his fingers dug into his back, not restraining, but not helping…desperate…as needy as him… ”Now you do too. I do not want trouble from the rest of the League.” A breath sucked in between clenched teeth. “Make it happen or I will.”
And then the Superman was gone, gone as fast as a speeding bullet…prick. And Batman was on him, forcing him to the ground.
Have you ever had a daydream where everyone around you died?
Have you ever felt like your heart would explode?
Have you ever felt the desperation of a man on his deathbed?
Have you ever fallen in love so that you forget what the world was like before them?
Multiply that by a hundred, a million and maybe you could understand what it is like to be the Batman.