A New Variable to the Equation- Part II: Off to Oz; Chapter Two: The Emerald City (II)
Authors: Paigery (obi_luvr ) and Amadeus (regularbean ).
Disclaimer: We own NOTHING.
The Joker felt as if he were the latest addition to some dazzling museum exhibit, the way he was being stared at. The young man with an affinity for purple hadn’t expected this at all, and usually he was rather able to predict people’s future actions and reactions, which of course included Batman’s. But not this time. The cloaked (well, not so much cloaked at the moment) vigilante before him looked absolutely dazed. Usually Batman’s eyes, no, always Batman’s eyes were sharp and watchful, so as to let not a single detail get past his already quite astute attention. But at the moment the dark knight was anything but that. The Joker would have taken advantage of it, actually, but on second thought he abandoned the wanton desire, for he didn’t want to make a sudden lunge and end up damaging himself further than he already was. No, not out of some self-preservation instinct, it was that he just wasn’t going to give the Bat the satisfaction of dying by his own follies.
“Eeeeee…?” the Joker sounded, questioning, when he was pulled inwards closer to the other man by a strong grip on his waist. Then the Bat’s head loomed downward and the Joker swore he could feel his forehead break out into a sweat. His mind was degrading now, even past its usual chaotic jumble of thought. Now he couldn’t think straight, or even crooked for that matter. He couldn’t even think at all! All he could do was watch and try not to laugh (because of any consequent pain) as his bruised and battered midsection was poked and prodded. The Joker’s hands levitated at his sides as he watched the ritual, as if ready at any second to take action…but of what sort even he didn’t know. Maybe a good shove to the other man’s shoulders. He had no clue.
Gotham’s utmost terror simply hated how hard it was to handle Batman actually touching him when it wasn’t a punch to the face, while it was so easy to crack gibes about condoms and erections. Then again, the Joker hated a great deal of things.
“Oh, yipeee! I’ll live. Lets throw a party…” the Joker muttered sarcastically when Batman gave the prognosis. He exhaled for the first time in what felt like an hour, eyes dashing downwards. A vague, thick uncertainty held in the air when Batman’s hands…well, did nothing. They didn’t move. They staid put. The Joker’s breath hitched and he forced himself not to squirm. Slowly the explosives-enthusiast slid his hands down his own sides to settle on top of the Bat’s, remaining there for just a moment before removing the strong hands and practically tossing them to the Bat’s chest. It was a very harsh and childish gesture of scorn.
The Joker scooted across the bed, beginning to make an attempt to reach down for his discarded shirt, which was hard seeing as he wasn’t feeling quite so flexible at the moment. Before silence could takeover, the harlequin of hate asked,
“So…any idea who those men at the bar were, Bats?”
~*!*~
Bruce watched, a bizarre expression seizing the face beneath his bat-like persona; dejected. He kept his head turned forward, though, following the retreating figure of his mortal enemy out of the corner of his peripherals until he felt the mattress dip alongside him. What a parallel--sitting next to your own worst enemy; hell, having a decent conversation with them...kind of.
It took a while before Batman registered the question. How often had he ever heard a genuine question fall from that glasglow smile? He rubbed his shoulder absently, working at the sore, exhausted muscles. He spotted the rest of his armor; stacked neatly on the floor beside the cot. As if to accentuate his vulnerability, a vague shiver coiled around the base of his spine, making the hair on the Bat's arms prickle.
"They're assassins...professionals." Bruce replied, carefully easing himself off the bed. Most of the pain was in his upper back so he kept his right arm cradled against his chest to keep his wounded shoulder stationary. "And they were wearing uniforms; meaning that there are probably more out there somewhere,” he deduced while shuffling over to the corner of the bed. Batman knelt down on one knee, making a brief inventory of the rest of his armor. He was rather impressed when he found the compression suit underneath had not been simply shredded away by one of the Joker's crude blades. It seemed that someone had taken the time to unclasp all of the buckles and made use of every zipper that separated the top half of the suit from his trousers.
'But who hired them?' Bruce pondered internally. Gears and cogs began to spin wildly within the confines of his intellect as he questioned the origins of the mercenaries' presence. In short, who had the Joker and Batman pissed off enough to go through all the trouble of hiring a professional group of assassins. They were most likely being paid a great sum so whoever employed them had to have quite a bit of cash. The drug gangs...
Bruce craned his head back to judge the madman's expression. Was he thinking the same thing?
"You know, you don't look half bad without all that shit on your face." he jibed, pulling his arm through the sleeve of his bat-suit. Something in the back of his conscious hoped to wipe that morbid expression off the jester's face with a snide comment like that. Solemn didn't suit the Joker. Batman, on the other hand, was quite possibly the living definition of 'solemn'.
~*!*~
“Oh well thanks Captain Obvious,” the Joker grumbled crossly when Batman stated that the men who had attempted to kill them were assassins. He finally managed to make a good surging lean forward and snatch up the corner of his shirt. He practically tossed the thing on, but still took the time to button it all the way, rather meticulously. It was a similar meticulousness that drove the Joker to formulate his dramatic, detailed plans, the same drive that caused him to organize his DVD collection in alphabetical order, and of course the very same impetus that caused him to remove the Bat’s suit, earlier, with the utmost precision. In fact, when the ‘oaf’ (as Joker had put it) had been knocked out cold and the Joker had to drag his heavy, armored frame to his…abode, the Joker had taken his sweet time with each piece. Every individual plate and panel he had looked over, and each and every one of their details of contours had been memorized. ‘This is the Bat…and there’s a person underneath’ he could remember thinking as he realized that there was organic, pulsating flesh and muscle under that cool, black shielding. Of course soon after that the Joker had shrieked out some laughter when he thought of the ever infamous, “Hey, where’s the cream filling!”
Currently, however, the jester was not laughing. He was wondering if Batman really had something there, about the uniform thing--
"You know, you don't look half bad without all that shit on your face."
“…HA!” The Joker suddenly barked out a laugh like it had been a piece of food he had been choking on. Clutching his sides, he practically flopped down onto the bed in a fit of giggles. “Batty made a funny!” he announced, as if the whole world were just waiting for that moment. “Ooo, you’re such a bitch though, really,” he suddenly came out with, still snickering and smiling widely, his eyes bright, attentive and mischievous again. “I mean, it’s not ‘shit’. If you’d like to see what a face actually smeared in shit looks like grab a mirror and go dunk yourself in the nearest septic tank. So, excuuuuse me while I correct you, but my make-up is not ‘shit’ and this all-“ he paused to circle his pointer finger around his face “-is definitely not my face.”
“Anyway…” he said with a sigh, in order to catch his labored breath, “Is it me or was that a…compliment?” He laughed further at the thought of it. “Well...don’t expect one in return, bub,” he concluded, sitting up a little energetically now. Although, his arm immediately secured itself back around his middle when he did so, for it had caused an all-new eruption of fiery pain.
Gazing over at the vigilante, the Joker could recall all that had happened during their interactions with the assassins. How Batman had ordered that one killer with a snarl ‘don’t touch him’. The Joker’s tongue slithered out and moistened his scars as he thought over this puzzling event of the past.
~*!*~
Bruce whipped his head back around as soon as he heard a pained gasp somehow wriggle its way from the Clown Prince's throat. There the Joker was, clutching at his belly and curling in on himself as more pain wracked his body with each breathy laugh. On impulse, the masked vigilante rose up on his feet once more and confronted the other man in two purposefully strides. A pair of steady, calloused hands curled around the jester's shoulders, pushing him back down until he was laying on the bed. He still only had one arm in his suit but that didn't seem to cross his mind as he moved back down to the end of the bed and lifted both of the Joker's feet up onto his cot; leveling him out.
"Lay still." he ordered in his best 'Batman' voice. Straightening back up, the dark-haired man worked agonizingly slow to pull his other arm--the injured shoulder--through the sleeve.
His nose wrinkled up with the initial buzz of discomfort but otherwise, he ignored his own body's protests. Zippers where zipped and clasps were clasped. Slowly, the black-clad persona of Batman was being recreated. He replaced all of his armor--gauntlets, gloves, and cape--with deft fluidity. It was something he'd done countless times before. It was a silent ritual. At last, he could feel the plated 'scales' that protected his neck had jostled loose from his helmet. He needed to re-adjust the headpiece. But with the wounded harlequin laying there no more than two feet away, Bruce disputed with himself.
Walking over to the furthest edge of the room, the Caped Crusader unfastened his cowl, placing it on the table next to the Joker's growing DVD collection. Dark, dampened tendrils of hair were plastered firmly to the back of his neck and brow. But all the other man could see was the back of his head. He listened acutely for any sound of movement, one hand still resting upon the hard surface of his mask in case the clown decided to try and take a peek. He shook his head, forcing his hair free and wiped the cold sweat from his forehead before gently re-arranging the rest of his neck armor. With a deep breath, he relished the way the cold air of the room grazed his face before shoving the cowl back over his head completely.
~*!*~
Feeling exactly like a young child being tucked in bed his by their mother, the Joker stared rather pointedly at the Bat, a bit…tired. Yes, tired. It had been quite the day. Wrestling with Batman, getting kicked around by some sadist (a ‘wannabe’ sadist, in the Joker’s opinion) assassin and his humorless (even more so than the Bat!) buddy. And now his other half was here with him, in his ‘home’…putting him to bed. “Oh my….” The Joker muttered at the realization, his voice a tad hoarse.
And then with complete fascination the Joker began to sit up as he watched Batman become…more like Batman. It reminded the clown, vividly, of his own routine. Every time he needed to (because usually his schedule was not a normal day-night schedule with the sort of life he led) he’d reapply his face. First it was the white base-coat, with wide swathing strokes. Then the jet-black kohl smeared around his eyes with a curving swoop. As the finale, the real curtain-dropper: the red greasepaint. That always came with the most gleeful flourish, running along the mountains of scars, along the valley of his lips, and then to the other portion of his Glasgow smile. The Joker relished every second of the routine, but could accomplish the entire ritual in a matter of seconds he had done it so many times.
It would seem that it was the same with the Bat. The harlequin of hate could tell, without a doubt, that there wasn’t a single falter in Batman’s motions as he slid and locked into place the various components of his armor. Each movement was precise, and no motion was wasted at all.
His already racing heart nearly skipped a beat when the vigilante walked as far away as possible and removed his cowl. His face, he took it off! The Joker’s emerald eyes bulged, and although he couldn’t see the other man’s face, memorized every single idea that he could: the deep, satisfying brown hair, sticking to that broad, muscular neck with the moisture of physical exertion, how each chunk of strands were layered, the tone of his skin-and then as quickly as the moment had started it ended when Batman again went under the secrecy of his cowl.
“Nice haircut~!” the Joker couldn’t help but say, not as compliment, but as he way of letting Batman know that the entire event didn’t go at all unnoticed by him.
“Oh, oh, have you seen any of them!” the Joker suddenly asked loudly and excitedly, franticly jabbing his finger in the direction of his movie collection. They were all comedies. Titles such as ‘A Comedy of Terrors’, ‘Arsenic and Old Lace’, ‘Some Like it Hot’ and ‘Doctor Strange Love’. With some horror thrown in, actually. All old stuff, though. Things like ‘Nightmare on Elmstreet’. The original ‘House of Wax’, obscurities like ‘Creature of the Black Lagoon’. As if to cancel out the seeming...humanity of having a store of movies, there was a little purple handkerchief with some knives splayed out upon it close by.
~*!*~
Bruce started at the sudden breach of silence. The Joker's voice cut through the air; reminding him that he was, indeed, not in Kansas anymore...
But where was the Emerald City? Turning on his heels, he found it. There, in the madman's eyes; deep, foreboding, forest green eyes. He caught himself diverting from the real world--that vacancy spreading back into his own eyes and extinguishing the piercing light that always resided there like the North Star against the voiding, black pit of the night sky.
Was there something beneath that ever-smiling mask? Perhaps not human, but something alive; something that felt. This man--this entity--had been less than a hairs width from him. He had clutched him in a poor form of embrace. He had kissed his fingers. But this man had also stolen innocent lives and cast Batman's world into a fiery inferno of chaotic flames. This man wan an enigma; a contradiction to the very theory of human nature all the while serving as the most prime specimen of carnal incentive. Darwin would have been so very proud.
Flexing his hands slowly, Batman came back to himself. Yes, he was Batman now--he had to be. But he had done so many things thus far that the Dark Knight would have never done. He played into the Joker's mauve-gloved hands and scrutinized the Joker in his own. They really were two sides of the same coin sometimes...though, Batman would rather die than ever admit that aloud. Ever admitting that something that came from the Harlequin's mouth was true just...well, it was just blasphemy!
The bat-like vigilante came back to his conscious mind with the pointed end of the Joker's finger hovering in mid air as his eyes' focus. He turned back to the rickety little table by his hip and eyed the stack of DVD's like they were the long-lost answer to some eternal riddle. Picking up first case on the top of the pile, he turned it in his hands; azure eyes skimming over the bold title.
"Can't say that I have," The masked man lifted his gaze back up to meet the Clown Prince's. What was he getting at?
~*!*~
“Just…”…wondering. But, how disgusting, how vile, how…could he say that? Small talk, conversation-bah, it was useless. Half the stuff people said was pure lies. Therefore, the Joker thought any conversation without an accompanying knife pointed at someone’s jugular was useless…although, on that point he was being hypocritical seeing as there was a certain blind man who lived next door that he seemed to have yet to murder. Anyway, the jester thought for sure that people would only tell the complete truth when under a threat. Otherwise, they were simply dirty swine rolling in the mud, looking for what was best for themselves. As if the truth mattered in the first place anyway.
But Batman…well, was different. The Joker was beginning to wonder quite a lot about him lately. He remembered how he had called off the blood-reign for Batman’s identity, saying something about how a world without him would just be boring. Right. How ever would I have fun? Afterwards, he was completely satisfied with only knowing of the man’s persona in the suit. The stalwart beacon of justice…or attempted justice. The Joker didn’t believe that in an unjust world, that there could be justice. In any case, the Batman was absolutely enthralling. The Joker could smell all that bundled up rage and fire within the other man (for after all the Joker knew such feelings, personally, entirely to well) and it struck him as…honest. Pure. So, the clown was absolutely delighted with his nocturnal playmate, in that sense. But now, with all those glimpses of the human body underneath the suit the Joker found himself getting dangerously curious about the man behind the mask.
“\Gee Bats, you act like I just asked you for the meaning of life,” the Joker observed with a snide little laugh, watching how the vigilante looked at the stack in only the most absolutely confounded manner as if it were an impossible-to-solve Rubik’s cube. Glancing over to the hero with some amount of skepticism, the harlequin crossed his arms. His then eyes tore away from the other’s gaze like the seeds being ripped out of a peach. It was a sloppy, entirely forced, break.
~*!*~
As if pulled by some imaginary thread of streamline thought, Bruce opened one of the DVD cases, carefully extracted the reflective disk, and popped it into the adjacent DVD player duct taped on top of a small television set. The screen was a solid blue with the faintest white noise crackling through the built-in speakers.
He searched around the morbid array of knives for a taped-up remote control (possibly homemade) and cautiously padded back over towards the cot shoved up against the opposing wall. It was kind of sad: the apartment flat was so small, he wasn't at all concerned with whether or not he could see the movie clearly from across the room.
Tossing the remote into the Joker's lap, Bruce gingerly twisted himself around to unclasp his cloak and use it as a cushion for his smarting shoulder. When he turned, finally, to face the maniacal clown's expression; he frowned substantially.
"Are you going to watch the movie or just stare at me all night?" he quipped, crossing his arms over his plated chest and tucking his chin closer to his collar bone. If it weren't for all the armor and the permanent scowling face of his cowl, the Caped Crusader could have been mistaken for...pouting. Alas, he forced himself under the physical definition of 'brooding'.
He didn't bother to explain himself and say something like 'looks like I'll have to camp out here for the night until those mercenaries give up the hunt' or 'you don't look so good--I better make sure you don't drown in your own saliva'. He didn't need to justify why he was still here; why he was sitting next to his mortal enemy watching Creature of the Black Lagoon. The Joker hadn't kicked him out yet so he might as well stay.
Venture onwards for more!
Disclaimer: We own NOTHING.
The Joker felt as if he were the latest addition to some dazzling museum exhibit, the way he was being stared at. The young man with an affinity for purple hadn’t expected this at all, and usually he was rather able to predict people’s future actions and reactions, which of course included Batman’s. But not this time. The cloaked (well, not so much cloaked at the moment) vigilante before him looked absolutely dazed. Usually Batman’s eyes, no, always Batman’s eyes were sharp and watchful, so as to let not a single detail get past his already quite astute attention. But at the moment the dark knight was anything but that. The Joker would have taken advantage of it, actually, but on second thought he abandoned the wanton desire, for he didn’t want to make a sudden lunge and end up damaging himself further than he already was. No, not out of some self-preservation instinct, it was that he just wasn’t going to give the Bat the satisfaction of dying by his own follies.
“Eeeeee…?” the Joker sounded, questioning, when he was pulled inwards closer to the other man by a strong grip on his waist. Then the Bat’s head loomed downward and the Joker swore he could feel his forehead break out into a sweat. His mind was degrading now, even past its usual chaotic jumble of thought. Now he couldn’t think straight, or even crooked for that matter. He couldn’t even think at all! All he could do was watch and try not to laugh (because of any consequent pain) as his bruised and battered midsection was poked and prodded. The Joker’s hands levitated at his sides as he watched the ritual, as if ready at any second to take action…but of what sort even he didn’t know. Maybe a good shove to the other man’s shoulders. He had no clue.
Gotham’s utmost terror simply hated how hard it was to handle Batman actually touching him when it wasn’t a punch to the face, while it was so easy to crack gibes about condoms and erections. Then again, the Joker hated a great deal of things.
“Oh, yipeee! I’ll live. Lets throw a party…” the Joker muttered sarcastically when Batman gave the prognosis. He exhaled for the first time in what felt like an hour, eyes dashing downwards. A vague, thick uncertainty held in the air when Batman’s hands…well, did nothing. They didn’t move. They staid put. The Joker’s breath hitched and he forced himself not to squirm. Slowly the explosives-enthusiast slid his hands down his own sides to settle on top of the Bat’s, remaining there for just a moment before removing the strong hands and practically tossing them to the Bat’s chest. It was a very harsh and childish gesture of scorn.
The Joker scooted across the bed, beginning to make an attempt to reach down for his discarded shirt, which was hard seeing as he wasn’t feeling quite so flexible at the moment. Before silence could takeover, the harlequin of hate asked,
“So…any idea who those men at the bar were, Bats?”
~*!*~
Bruce watched, a bizarre expression seizing the face beneath his bat-like persona; dejected. He kept his head turned forward, though, following the retreating figure of his mortal enemy out of the corner of his peripherals until he felt the mattress dip alongside him. What a parallel--sitting next to your own worst enemy; hell, having a decent conversation with them...kind of.
It took a while before Batman registered the question. How often had he ever heard a genuine question fall from that glasglow smile? He rubbed his shoulder absently, working at the sore, exhausted muscles. He spotted the rest of his armor; stacked neatly on the floor beside the cot. As if to accentuate his vulnerability, a vague shiver coiled around the base of his spine, making the hair on the Bat's arms prickle.
"They're assassins...professionals." Bruce replied, carefully easing himself off the bed. Most of the pain was in his upper back so he kept his right arm cradled against his chest to keep his wounded shoulder stationary. "And they were wearing uniforms; meaning that there are probably more out there somewhere,” he deduced while shuffling over to the corner of the bed. Batman knelt down on one knee, making a brief inventory of the rest of his armor. He was rather impressed when he found the compression suit underneath had not been simply shredded away by one of the Joker's crude blades. It seemed that someone had taken the time to unclasp all of the buckles and made use of every zipper that separated the top half of the suit from his trousers.
'But who hired them?' Bruce pondered internally. Gears and cogs began to spin wildly within the confines of his intellect as he questioned the origins of the mercenaries' presence. In short, who had the Joker and Batman pissed off enough to go through all the trouble of hiring a professional group of assassins. They were most likely being paid a great sum so whoever employed them had to have quite a bit of cash. The drug gangs...
Bruce craned his head back to judge the madman's expression. Was he thinking the same thing?
"You know, you don't look half bad without all that shit on your face." he jibed, pulling his arm through the sleeve of his bat-suit. Something in the back of his conscious hoped to wipe that morbid expression off the jester's face with a snide comment like that. Solemn didn't suit the Joker. Batman, on the other hand, was quite possibly the living definition of 'solemn'.
~*!*~
“Oh well thanks Captain Obvious,” the Joker grumbled crossly when Batman stated that the men who had attempted to kill them were assassins. He finally managed to make a good surging lean forward and snatch up the corner of his shirt. He practically tossed the thing on, but still took the time to button it all the way, rather meticulously. It was a similar meticulousness that drove the Joker to formulate his dramatic, detailed plans, the same drive that caused him to organize his DVD collection in alphabetical order, and of course the very same impetus that caused him to remove the Bat’s suit, earlier, with the utmost precision. In fact, when the ‘oaf’ (as Joker had put it) had been knocked out cold and the Joker had to drag his heavy, armored frame to his…abode, the Joker had taken his sweet time with each piece. Every individual plate and panel he had looked over, and each and every one of their details of contours had been memorized. ‘This is the Bat…and there’s a person underneath’ he could remember thinking as he realized that there was organic, pulsating flesh and muscle under that cool, black shielding. Of course soon after that the Joker had shrieked out some laughter when he thought of the ever infamous, “Hey, where’s the cream filling!”
Currently, however, the jester was not laughing. He was wondering if Batman really had something there, about the uniform thing--
"You know, you don't look half bad without all that shit on your face."
“…HA!” The Joker suddenly barked out a laugh like it had been a piece of food he had been choking on. Clutching his sides, he practically flopped down onto the bed in a fit of giggles. “Batty made a funny!” he announced, as if the whole world were just waiting for that moment. “Ooo, you’re such a bitch though, really,” he suddenly came out with, still snickering and smiling widely, his eyes bright, attentive and mischievous again. “I mean, it’s not ‘shit’. If you’d like to see what a face actually smeared in shit looks like grab a mirror and go dunk yourself in the nearest septic tank. So, excuuuuse me while I correct you, but my make-up is not ‘shit’ and this all-“ he paused to circle his pointer finger around his face “-is definitely not my face.”
“Anyway…” he said with a sigh, in order to catch his labored breath, “Is it me or was that a…compliment?” He laughed further at the thought of it. “Well...don’t expect one in return, bub,” he concluded, sitting up a little energetically now. Although, his arm immediately secured itself back around his middle when he did so, for it had caused an all-new eruption of fiery pain.
Gazing over at the vigilante, the Joker could recall all that had happened during their interactions with the assassins. How Batman had ordered that one killer with a snarl ‘don’t touch him’. The Joker’s tongue slithered out and moistened his scars as he thought over this puzzling event of the past.
~*!*~
Bruce whipped his head back around as soon as he heard a pained gasp somehow wriggle its way from the Clown Prince's throat. There the Joker was, clutching at his belly and curling in on himself as more pain wracked his body with each breathy laugh. On impulse, the masked vigilante rose up on his feet once more and confronted the other man in two purposefully strides. A pair of steady, calloused hands curled around the jester's shoulders, pushing him back down until he was laying on the bed. He still only had one arm in his suit but that didn't seem to cross his mind as he moved back down to the end of the bed and lifted both of the Joker's feet up onto his cot; leveling him out.
"Lay still." he ordered in his best 'Batman' voice. Straightening back up, the dark-haired man worked agonizingly slow to pull his other arm--the injured shoulder--through the sleeve.
His nose wrinkled up with the initial buzz of discomfort but otherwise, he ignored his own body's protests. Zippers where zipped and clasps were clasped. Slowly, the black-clad persona of Batman was being recreated. He replaced all of his armor--gauntlets, gloves, and cape--with deft fluidity. It was something he'd done countless times before. It was a silent ritual. At last, he could feel the plated 'scales' that protected his neck had jostled loose from his helmet. He needed to re-adjust the headpiece. But with the wounded harlequin laying there no more than two feet away, Bruce disputed with himself.
Walking over to the furthest edge of the room, the Caped Crusader unfastened his cowl, placing it on the table next to the Joker's growing DVD collection. Dark, dampened tendrils of hair were plastered firmly to the back of his neck and brow. But all the other man could see was the back of his head. He listened acutely for any sound of movement, one hand still resting upon the hard surface of his mask in case the clown decided to try and take a peek. He shook his head, forcing his hair free and wiped the cold sweat from his forehead before gently re-arranging the rest of his neck armor. With a deep breath, he relished the way the cold air of the room grazed his face before shoving the cowl back over his head completely.
~*!*~
Feeling exactly like a young child being tucked in bed his by their mother, the Joker stared rather pointedly at the Bat, a bit…tired. Yes, tired. It had been quite the day. Wrestling with Batman, getting kicked around by some sadist (a ‘wannabe’ sadist, in the Joker’s opinion) assassin and his humorless (even more so than the Bat!) buddy. And now his other half was here with him, in his ‘home’…putting him to bed. “Oh my….” The Joker muttered at the realization, his voice a tad hoarse.
And then with complete fascination the Joker began to sit up as he watched Batman become…more like Batman. It reminded the clown, vividly, of his own routine. Every time he needed to (because usually his schedule was not a normal day-night schedule with the sort of life he led) he’d reapply his face. First it was the white base-coat, with wide swathing strokes. Then the jet-black kohl smeared around his eyes with a curving swoop. As the finale, the real curtain-dropper: the red greasepaint. That always came with the most gleeful flourish, running along the mountains of scars, along the valley of his lips, and then to the other portion of his Glasgow smile. The Joker relished every second of the routine, but could accomplish the entire ritual in a matter of seconds he had done it so many times.
It would seem that it was the same with the Bat. The harlequin of hate could tell, without a doubt, that there wasn’t a single falter in Batman’s motions as he slid and locked into place the various components of his armor. Each movement was precise, and no motion was wasted at all.
His already racing heart nearly skipped a beat when the vigilante walked as far away as possible and removed his cowl. His face, he took it off! The Joker’s emerald eyes bulged, and although he couldn’t see the other man’s face, memorized every single idea that he could: the deep, satisfying brown hair, sticking to that broad, muscular neck with the moisture of physical exertion, how each chunk of strands were layered, the tone of his skin-and then as quickly as the moment had started it ended when Batman again went under the secrecy of his cowl.
“Nice haircut~!” the Joker couldn’t help but say, not as compliment, but as he way of letting Batman know that the entire event didn’t go at all unnoticed by him.
“Oh, oh, have you seen any of them!” the Joker suddenly asked loudly and excitedly, franticly jabbing his finger in the direction of his movie collection. They were all comedies. Titles such as ‘A Comedy of Terrors’, ‘Arsenic and Old Lace’, ‘Some Like it Hot’ and ‘Doctor Strange Love’. With some horror thrown in, actually. All old stuff, though. Things like ‘Nightmare on Elmstreet’. The original ‘House of Wax’, obscurities like ‘Creature of the Black Lagoon’. As if to cancel out the seeming...humanity of having a store of movies, there was a little purple handkerchief with some knives splayed out upon it close by.
~*!*~
Bruce started at the sudden breach of silence. The Joker's voice cut through the air; reminding him that he was, indeed, not in Kansas anymore...
But where was the Emerald City? Turning on his heels, he found it. There, in the madman's eyes; deep, foreboding, forest green eyes. He caught himself diverting from the real world--that vacancy spreading back into his own eyes and extinguishing the piercing light that always resided there like the North Star against the voiding, black pit of the night sky.
Was there something beneath that ever-smiling mask? Perhaps not human, but something alive; something that felt. This man--this entity--had been less than a hairs width from him. He had clutched him in a poor form of embrace. He had kissed his fingers. But this man had also stolen innocent lives and cast Batman's world into a fiery inferno of chaotic flames. This man wan an enigma; a contradiction to the very theory of human nature all the while serving as the most prime specimen of carnal incentive. Darwin would have been so very proud.
Flexing his hands slowly, Batman came back to himself. Yes, he was Batman now--he had to be. But he had done so many things thus far that the Dark Knight would have never done. He played into the Joker's mauve-gloved hands and scrutinized the Joker in his own. They really were two sides of the same coin sometimes...though, Batman would rather die than ever admit that aloud. Ever admitting that something that came from the Harlequin's mouth was true just...well, it was just blasphemy!
The bat-like vigilante came back to his conscious mind with the pointed end of the Joker's finger hovering in mid air as his eyes' focus. He turned back to the rickety little table by his hip and eyed the stack of DVD's like they were the long-lost answer to some eternal riddle. Picking up first case on the top of the pile, he turned it in his hands; azure eyes skimming over the bold title.
"Can't say that I have," The masked man lifted his gaze back up to meet the Clown Prince's. What was he getting at?
~*!*~
“Just…”…wondering. But, how disgusting, how vile, how…could he say that? Small talk, conversation-bah, it was useless. Half the stuff people said was pure lies. Therefore, the Joker thought any conversation without an accompanying knife pointed at someone’s jugular was useless…although, on that point he was being hypocritical seeing as there was a certain blind man who lived next door that he seemed to have yet to murder. Anyway, the jester thought for sure that people would only tell the complete truth when under a threat. Otherwise, they were simply dirty swine rolling in the mud, looking for what was best for themselves. As if the truth mattered in the first place anyway.
But Batman…well, was different. The Joker was beginning to wonder quite a lot about him lately. He remembered how he had called off the blood-reign for Batman’s identity, saying something about how a world without him would just be boring. Right. How ever would I have fun? Afterwards, he was completely satisfied with only knowing of the man’s persona in the suit. The stalwart beacon of justice…or attempted justice. The Joker didn’t believe that in an unjust world, that there could be justice. In any case, the Batman was absolutely enthralling. The Joker could smell all that bundled up rage and fire within the other man (for after all the Joker knew such feelings, personally, entirely to well) and it struck him as…honest. Pure. So, the clown was absolutely delighted with his nocturnal playmate, in that sense. But now, with all those glimpses of the human body underneath the suit the Joker found himself getting dangerously curious about the man behind the mask.
“\Gee Bats, you act like I just asked you for the meaning of life,” the Joker observed with a snide little laugh, watching how the vigilante looked at the stack in only the most absolutely confounded manner as if it were an impossible-to-solve Rubik’s cube. Glancing over to the hero with some amount of skepticism, the harlequin crossed his arms. His then eyes tore away from the other’s gaze like the seeds being ripped out of a peach. It was a sloppy, entirely forced, break.
~*!*~
As if pulled by some imaginary thread of streamline thought, Bruce opened one of the DVD cases, carefully extracted the reflective disk, and popped it into the adjacent DVD player duct taped on top of a small television set. The screen was a solid blue with the faintest white noise crackling through the built-in speakers.
He searched around the morbid array of knives for a taped-up remote control (possibly homemade) and cautiously padded back over towards the cot shoved up against the opposing wall. It was kind of sad: the apartment flat was so small, he wasn't at all concerned with whether or not he could see the movie clearly from across the room.
Tossing the remote into the Joker's lap, Bruce gingerly twisted himself around to unclasp his cloak and use it as a cushion for his smarting shoulder. When he turned, finally, to face the maniacal clown's expression; he frowned substantially.
"Are you going to watch the movie or just stare at me all night?" he quipped, crossing his arms over his plated chest and tucking his chin closer to his collar bone. If it weren't for all the armor and the permanent scowling face of his cowl, the Caped Crusader could have been mistaken for...pouting. Alas, he forced himself under the physical definition of 'brooding'.
He didn't bother to explain himself and say something like 'looks like I'll have to camp out here for the night until those mercenaries give up the hunt' or 'you don't look so good--I better make sure you don't drown in your own saliva'. He didn't need to justify why he was still here; why he was sitting next to his mortal enemy watching Creature of the Black Lagoon. The Joker hadn't kicked him out yet so he might as well stay.
Venture onwards for more!