SUMMARY: Biology dictated that it was only a matter of time before Bruce gave in.
AO3 TAGS: Alternate Universe, Omega Verse, Alpha/Omega, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha Joker, Omega Bruce, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Minor Violence, Scenting, Enemies to Lovers, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Knifeplay, Anal, Anal Sex, Top Joker, Bottom Bruce, Marking, Biting, Bonding, Forced Bonding, Knotting, Come Marking, Come Swallowing, Possessive Behavior, Possessive Joker, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Kinktober, Kinktober 2017
AN: So, I had the idea for this fic almost exactly a year ago according to my blog post (didn't know it had been that long), wherein I basically had a sudden and inexplicable desire to write alpha the Joker / omega Batman and I have NO idea why, especially since I tried out BatJokes for a short time about 7? years ago during my dA/FFN days, and haven't thought about it since. I ended up writing the first 2-3k last November, and then dropped it for something else, and forgot about it until the day I picked it up again a week? ago and I decided 'why not' cuz prompt fill months are the best for trying new ships. So… here. we. go.
(Title plays on one of the slang terms for heroin, 'china white').
Cross-posted from AO3 same-day.
Day 19: Prostitution/Sex Work | Olfactophilia (Scent) | Nipple Play
Long before Ra's al Ghul taught him how to be a weapon, Martha and Thomas Wayne taught Bruce that he was born a weapon: "Your superiors, peers, and subordinates will all treat you as if you are less than them, because you are an omega, Bruce. But it is because you are an omega that you have all the power over them."
It was advice that Bruce took to heart, and he armed himself with it before entering every office and every meeting. He learned manipulation through silver-tongued speech, subtle flattery, and even subtler application of pheromones before he even presented. He continued wearing blockers for his own scent paired with carefully selected pheromones after puberty,and when he became Batman, it was just another weapon he kept in his arsenal. Bottled heat scent, never his own though, of course, came in particularly handy during his vigilantism considering most criminals tended to be alphas. Alphas, for all that they were placed on pedestals by the world, were weak to omegas and easily manipulated, no matter how much they believed themselves in control.
Bruce was a weapon, and so was his second gender, and he wielded it as such. The only time it became a weakness was when he was battling the Joker. Because of all the alphas he'd encountered thus far in the world, the Joker was the first he'd met that bore the scent marking him as a true mate, an alpha with whom Bruce was most compatible with, an alpha with whom would help him create the most successful offspring. Because for as successful as he was financially, Bruce had never had much personal luck. Of course the Joker would end up being a true mate.
However, he wasn't sure if the Joker would be able to scent what Bruce was to him. Not that he was willing to test it, but the Joker was never affected by the omega pheromones or heatscent that Bruce applied prior to their fights. Other alphas were effectively stunned by heatscent, eyes glazed, movements uncoordinated, speech slurred but the Joker… the Joker was just as sharp-minded and sharp-tongued as he was when Bruce encountered him smelling like a beta or an alpha. He never pulled his punches, never abstained from any form of violence. It seemed to all be the same to him, and Bruce could only wonder if the accident that had discoloured him had obliterated his sense of smell, diminished it to something closer to a beta's. Still, as much as Bruce wondered, he didn't dare test. It was bad enough that he could get aroused by the psychopath's scent standing in the midst of a murder scene, suppressants or not.
The Joker was actually the sole reason Bruce started taking suppressants in the first place - of all the dangerous things Bruce had ever done, attempting to go against the Joker when Bruce's heat was coming was by far the most dangerous - Bruce was always careful to ensure he only had a heat when the Joker was in jail. Which was why this particular breakout was so… disastrous. There had been no indications the Joker was preparing to escape Arkham, and in hindsight, that should have been a clue in itself because the Joker was always preparing to escape Arkham.
Now here they were, the Joker and his clown-masked crew, terrorizing the occupants of a jewellery shop, and here Batman was, the start of his heat smoldering under his skin, the hastily-swallowed suppressants in his blood burning up before they could even really get the chance to work; at this rate, they might have slowed the onset… if only he couldn't smell his true mate nearby. Bruce's own scent was starting to permeate the smothering restriction of his suit and he could already see the effect of his pheromones on victims and villains alike. Except for the Joker, grinning down at them from the second floor balcony.
"Oh Batsy, you know those silly things never work on me!" he cackled as his minions mobbed Bruce, who could only hope that the Joker's immunity to his pheromones meant that he wouldn't realize they were Bruce's.
Bruce wasn't so lucky. He was never so lucky.
the Joker's scent wasn't muted at the best of times, since he seemed disinclined to take suppressants or scent blockers other than when Arkham forced him, and his personality made his pheromones vibrant to everyone, but Bruce's susceptibility made them especially strong and affecting. It had never mattered what fabric Bruce covered his nose with or what pheromones he smeared under his nose, or how strong there were, there was never a time he wasn't painfully aware of the Joker's proximity. However, now, his oncoming heat amplified the scent hundred-fold, muddled his mind and body like the way his weaponized pheromones affected the alphas he usually fought, and made the dime-a-dozen criminals feel stronger than they actually were. By the time they were unconscious on the floor, Bruce was panting from exhaustion and the rise of his heat, and the Joker had disappeared from his mezzanine.
"Everyone, get out!" Bruce barked at the hostages, waving his arm at the front doors which were now cleared of obstacles and wide open. No one moved. "Now!" A few people squeaked in surprise at his volume and then, almost as one, they ran for the door, like a stampeding herd. They started screaming for the cops before they'd even vacated the premises, even though the store's blaring alarm meant that there'd be sirens in the distance soon anyway.
"Aw, honey, you let all the party favours escape!" The voice floated through the shop, almost ghostly in the way it seemed to echo bodilessly.
Bruce whipped around to search for the source and his head swam, telling him that he needed to finish this and quick. He was already wet, slick smearing between his buttcheeks with every step, a truly disgusting sensation. Soon, it would get infinitely worse when it started sliding down his legs in thick, unignorable trails. He had to take care of the Joker before then.
"Shy?" Bruce called out. "What a poor host."
the Joker's giggle sounded even more eerie when disembodied, and Bruce stalked forward, ignoring the weakness in his knees, the spreading slick, the cramps, the desire to lay down and not get up for a week. the Joker had been in the store for long enough that his scent had made the air a heavy blanket, weighing Bruce down, accelerating his heat, making him vulnerable.
"What can I say? I like to arrive fashionably-" BANG! "-late!" Confetti and shrapnel rained down on Bruce from the ceiling and he ducked under his cape until the debris stopped. When it did, he couldn't stand up again. His body wanted him to stay on his knees, wanted him to prostrate himself and let the alpha to which he was so biologically suited procreate. It almost made him sick.
"What's the problem, Batsy? Can't get it up?"
The voice came from directly behind him, and Bruce managed to stand as he spun and fell into a fighting stance. the Joker was grinning - he was always grinning - and was already throwing a fist before Bruce had even found his balance. He was back on the ground again in a split second, pain blooming across his cheek. He hadn't even gotten his breath back before the Joker was throwing himself onto Bruce, pinning him to the ground.
Normally, the Joker was strong, unreasonably so, considering how much of a beanpole he was, but with Bruce's heat on the Joker's side, he seemed indomitable. It was a struggle to try to push him off. Too much of a struggle. So much of one that… he couldn't actually do it.
"Finally succumbing to my wiles, Batsy? How-" the Joker stopped short, and Bruce got a sick feeling in his stomach.
'Don't notice it don't notice don'tnoticeit.' He made an effort to push the Joker off him one more time, but the alpha caught his wrists and pinned them to the floor next to his head. He loathed how good it felt.
"Hush, Bats. the Joker's thinking." And then he dipped his head down and scented along the line of Bruce's jaw.
"Oooh, what's this?" the Joker hummed, and then licked him. The contact sent shudders through Bruce's spine. "You're not using someone else's pheromones today, Batsy. You're using your own." He sounded awed in the most terrifying kind of way. The way that Bruce has never wanted to hear from his arch nemesis. "My, my, don't you smell delightful. Your heat's coming in nicely. Where's your alpha, Bat-boy?"
'Don't say it don't say it don't you dare-' "I don't have one." 'You are the worst person ever, Bruce.'
"Is that right, honeycakes?"
'It's a miracle you've survived this long.'
"Ya want one?"
"Get off." 'Bruce, no.'
"Mmm, glady."
"Get off of me." 'Bruce, yes.'
"Aw, don't be that way, babe," the Joker purred - purred - as the pheromones in the room increased, flooding the space, offering, inviting.
Nevermind, Bruce was going to throw up.
"I believe I can provide a service. One that you're going to need soon." He leaned in again, inhaling deeply at the underside of Bruce's jaw, the closest he could get with the cowl in the way. Every instinct in his traitorous body demanded that Bruce tilt his head back, offer his throat, but he refused to give in, even though he couldn't seem to force his head down in order to headbutt the Joker away from his neck. "Mmm, very soon."
Bruce tugged weakly at the hold on his wrists, and he was surprised when the Joker let one of them go. The smug, yellow grin made it clear though that he thought Bruce had succumbed, which was what let Bruce get him with an elbow across the jaw. the Joker tumbled off him and Bruce rolled away from the alpha and onto his hands and knees, but just like before, he was stuck there, his body weak, helpless.
He forgot how much of a mistake it was to take his eyes off the Joker.
A body blanketed his from behind, draping over him, providing a weight he hated to need. His back bowed under it, ass sticking out, and the weight increased steadily, pushing him down until he was laying on the floor and the Joker was an unyielding weight all along the length of him. He may have been thinner than Bruce, but he was just as tall, and he easily hooked his chin over Bruce's shoulder. There was a roaming pressure moving up and down his sides like the Joker was stroking along his ribs, but thankfully, the suit prevented Bruce from experiencing the more intimate version of the unwanted contact. Unfortunately, nothing prevented the Joker's breath from wafting warmth along his jawbone or intoxicating scent under his nose. A scent that was steadily growing stronger. More enticing. Irresistable.
"C'mon, Batsy. Let me take care of you." the Joker's voice dropped to a growl, a strong alpha commanding one weaker than him to obey "You know I can take care of you."
It took three tries to get his tongue to work, his mouth was so dry. "I don't want you to take care of me," he finally replied, loathing the breathy quality to his voice.
To his immense and frustratingly-displeased surprise, the weight disappeared from his back immediately and he rolled over onto his back. Bad idea, just like every other thing he'd done so far this evening the Joker was standing over him, and the sight was altogether too appealing. For the first time in his life, Bruce was starting to hate his secondgender.
"Oh, how flush you look. So pretty," the alpha cooed mockingly, somehow conveying both a sincerity and a lack of at the same time. "All that red looks lovely with all that black." the Joker stepped forward, until he was straddling Bruce's waist, but he didn't crouch down, for which Bruce was thankful. Not that the closure in distance did anything for his arousal. He could feel how wet he was, how much wetter he was becoming. He had to get to his feet before he started soaking through his suit and his cape to the floor.
"Aren't you going to get up, Batsy?" the Joker giggled. "I bet it's hard with that suit in the way. So… very… haaa... difficult."
Sitting up was one of the hardest things Bruce had ever tried to do, every muscle protesting such an unnatural movement when all he wanted to do was bow down. Hands intruded in his vision, fingers tangling in the front of his cape, and hauled him to his feet. Vertigo struck him hard, making him wobble dangerously, and the only thing that kept him upright was a thinner body tucking itself against his, giving him shoulders to lean on.
"Mmm, not very steady, are you Bat-boy?" Pressure moved around his sides and around to his back. Arms, hugging him, holding him in place. His skin crawled under his suit at the contact.
"Shut. Up," Bruce ground out. He tried to take a step backwards but his legs crumpled under him, untrustworthy in the face of his weight.
The Joker jerked him back into place, and Bruce found his face planted in a bleach-white neck, nose pressed to one of the strongest scenting points on the body. Surprised, he inhaled to speak, and almost choked on the strange combination of scents. As compatible as they were, as attractive as the Joker's pheromones were to Bruce, his skin carried a chemical taint to it that made Bruce's throat and nose itch in displeasure. Not just displeasure - that was too light of a word. The formaldehyde-like scent repulsed Bruce, and the deeper Bruce dug his nose into the Joker's pulse, the stronger it became, like it was in his blood. Bruce tried to turn his head to get away from it, to get back to the point where all he could smell was the Joker's too-compatible pheromones rather than his tainted skin, but the alpha's clothes smelled only of formaldehyde with none of the Joker's pheromones to temper the stink. Groaning, he turned his face back to the Joker's neck and tried to find the threads of scent he could handle.
As Bruce tried to get himself back under control, tried to gather the energy he would need to get away, he couldn't help but wonder if knowing what the Joker's skin smelled like was better or worse than not knowing. Because when he didn't know, the only imagination he'd leant to the subject had been based on the alpha's scent and the automatic presumption that his skin would smell the same. Now Bruce knew better; now he knew that he couldn't stand the scent of the alpha's skin up close and yet couldn't stop craving it at the same time. He couldn't decide if ignorance had been bliss or… no none of it was bliss. There was no bliss to be had in being a true mate to the Joker.
"Looks like you can't even stand, jello of my heart." The leer in the alpha's voice made Bruce want to stand under a waterfall for three years just to get clean. "However will you get home now? Perhaps by a personalized clown car service?"
"I'm not taking you home," Bruce managed to say, but it was a battle to get the words out. He had more success with getting his hands between them and shoving the Joker away, sending them stumbling apart. Unfortunately, distance meant the harshness of the Joker's skin faded and left his nose filled with nothing but the alpha's pheromones instead.
The Joker stared at him with dark eyes and a darker grin, and his pheromones blossomed in the room, commanding Bruce to submit. Bruce grunted when he fell to his knees but he managed to keep his chin tilted up, glaring warningly at his true mate. His mind was working overtime, trying to find a safe, undetectable way home, but his mental faculties were hazy in the face of his heat setting in. And it was terrifyingly close to peaking. In the distance, Bruce could make out the sound of sirens, the imminent approach of the police who were, possibly, even more dangerous to Batman in his current state than the Joker was.
"Uh-oh!" the Joker sing-songed, skipping forward. "Looks like the party poopers are about to crash our intimate little shindig." Before Bruce could stop or divert him, the alpha had ducked low and somehow managed to haul Bruce up over his shoulders into an uncomfortable fireman's carry without halting his quick steps towards the staircase at the back of the store. Bruce's body was traitorously aroused by the display of strength, slick flowing more copiously even as his stomach flipped from the sudden shift in space and even as Bruce struggled to escape from it. the Joker pinched the inside of his thigh in reprimand as he began to climb the stairs . "I have to hurry to get my little pet all secreted away before his rightful owners find out he's missing."
"My only owner is myself," Bruce protested weakly, clawing at the Joker's back as if he could pull himself off the alpha's shoulders. "I'm not yours and I never will be."
"Au contraire, mi amor," the Joker sang back. "You've always been mine. I would love to tell you all about it but I think we need to muzzle you for a quick escape. Later, toots!"
The last thing Bruce saw before the blackness took over was the pillar standing in the way of his head.
Bruce half-expected to wake up de-masked, de-suited, mounted, and mated. Alphas were animals under their thin veneer of control and power, and anyone except a family member would take a vulnerable omega the second they had a chance to get away with it. He wanted to think the best of humanity, but he'd seen too much of the dark sides of it to hope too hard. He should have known that meant that the Joker would do the opposite.
So when he did wake up, Bruce was so overheated from being stuck in his costume when his heat started that it seemed like his sweat would seep through the fabric before his slick did. He was also face-down on what felt like a mattress, one saturated with the scent of the Joker's pheromones and skin, making it equally appealing and repellent. It was a struggle and a half just to roll onto his back to put some distance between the contradicting smells and his sensitive nose, but when he got there, he found he was indeed on a mattress, set onto the floor of what appeared to be a loft room of a warehouse amidst abandoned tools, cans, trash. The room was also thick with the Joker's scent, thankfully more pheromones than skin, but the alpha himself was nowhere in sight.
For all that he appeared to be alone, there was no way to tell if there were cameras and microphones hidden anywhere in the room, at least not in the state Bruce was in. And even though rape was not one of the Joker's M.O.s, Bruce had no plans on tempting his true mate. So Bruce stayed clothed and he kept his hands tangled in his cape to keep them from staying into his pants. It meant that untold hours passed where he squirmed and sweated and leaked and writhed, the agony of need and of cramps as his heat wreaked havoc on his body. It also meant that he experienced bouts of unconsciousness when his body could no longer handle the lack of stimulation. Whenever that happened, he found the Joker's scent renewed, especially alongside the mattress Bruce couldn't get up from, and food and water lined up within easy reach.
Bruce knew he needed to hydrate, that he needed to eat, but he couldn't trust that the supplies he was seemingly being provided weren't poisoned in some way. He was already weak from heat and he stood no chances fighting off… anything. There was also a knotting dildo at the end of the line of food, one that somehow smelled like the Joker without smelling like his skin, but right after Bruce's hazy mind realized what it was, he promptly pretended it didn't exist. He would survive this heat without water or food, and he would survive it without a cock, real or artificial. And then he would make his escape.
His resolve to not eat lasted all of the first day, but by the time the moon was high enough to send light in through the small window, Bruce's throat was so dry it felt like he was choking on every breath. When he didn't die, he renewed his resolve to ignore the dildo he was pretending didn't exist. That lasted until when day two was melting into day three, and he hated himself just a little more even as he reached for the toy. To his surprise, it crumpled like paper in his hand and gave way to something underneath.
It was paper. The toy was nothing more than an elaborate prank. And beneath it, the punch line: a cellphone with a note:
Dial 2 for personalized room service.
Bruce almost threw the phone across the room, but his insides rebelled, muscles contracting painfully. They had been getting worse the longer he'd ignored his body's urges, and they had already started at levels that pushed Bruce's threshold for pain. It seemed that being filled with nothing for hours on end was even worse than being filled with something fake.
He didn't let himself think as he held down the 2 on the numberpad, and he didn't let himself think as he heard the phone ring, and he especially didn't let himself think when the phone clicked into an automated answering machine and his stomach sank and he hurled the phone across the room. He didn't let himself think at all as he forced his body into a trembling stillness and buried his face in the pillow he couldn't stand, couldn't get enough of. He didn't let himself think so firmly that he didn't notice anyone else had entered the room until someone was straddling the backs of his thighs and leaning down over his back.
"Told ya ya'd give in eventually, Bats," the Joker purred in Bruce's ear, nuzzling the sensitive bit of skin just behind.
"I didn't give in," Bruce lied, even as the Joker's scent began to bloom in the air around him, filling the room with fresh new pheromones, powerful fumes that instantly began to ease the cramps making him weak. The pheromones just made him a different kind of weak, like he was getting high off of them. It was ruined a second later when the Joker leaned in closer to brush their lips together and Bruce got a taste of chemicals and he recoiled.
"You're giving in right now, toots," the Joker retorted, voice smug as he leaned back. He was already hard, pressing against Bruce's ass, a temptation he didn't want to accept as much as he needed it.
"No," Bruce gasped, pressing his forehead hard into the soft give of the mattress, trying to bring himself under control, even as he knew how hopeless it was. This late in his heat, in the presence of a true mate, he didn't stand a chance.
"You're not giving in?" the Joker asked, voice dramatically mocking. "I guess I'll come back later then, when you take down your Do Not Disturb sign. Not that it means much when you're already disturbed, eh Batsy?" the Joker said as he shifted off the back of Bruce's thighs. And then he stood up and away, and Bruce caved. He twisted up onto an elbow as he reached behind him with his other arm to snag the Joker's pant leg, tugging him forward and back down. the Joker fell back over him, sandwiching Bruce between his body and the bed.
"And I'm back," the Joker laughed, that unnerving high-pitched giggle as he scented along the exposed line of Bruce's jaw. "Miss me?"
"No," Bruce growled through gritted teeth. His throat felt terrifyingly vulnerable with an alpha's teeth so close, even though the Joker wouldn't be able to reach it without a great deal of effort combined with a great lack of on Bruce's part. Still, he turned his head as he said "Did you plan to start before my heat was over?"
"Bit overdressed, aren'tya, Batsy?" the Joker asked, ignoring Bruce's question and his attempt to get away and simply moved to the other side of Bruce's neck to scent along the other line of his jaw. It was hard to tell with the Joker, but Bruce thought that that might have been a question and a statement all in one.
"Not around you, I'm not," he replied, ducking his head down and hunching his shoulders up to dislodge the alpha from his neck. the Joker negated his attempt by wedging a hand between Bruce and the bed to grip his chin with terrifying strength, jerking his head around so the Joker could lean up over his shoulder and steal another kiss.
It was easier to take than the last one, though that could have something to do with the tongue that shoved into his mouth. There was still that chemical taint to the alpha's lips, but whatever had affected him had only affected his skin. Tasting his tongue on Bruce's was like tasting his pheromones, and Bruce concentrated on the scent of his mouth until he was rutting against the bed in his need. He had thought the emptiness in his hole and the hardness of his cock had been excruciating the last two days, but it seemed negligible to the sensation of having his true mate there and not inside him. Not in a way that mattered anyway.
The fingers on his chin shifted, and then two of them were pushing between their mouths and into Bruce's. Chemical burst across Bruce's tongue and he jerked back, gagging, and tried to wipe the taste from his tongue by scraping at it with his glove. the Joker glared at him, the first real expression of malice Bruce had ever seen from the alpha, but he didn't have time to examine it before a hand between his shoulder blades shoved him flat to the bed.
"You're not my first true mate, Batsy," the Joker sneered out of sight, and Bruce jerked at the realization that the Joker was actually able to scent their compatibility. Then darkness fell over Bruce's vision and he had to fight the drape of his cape with heavy arms to clear the fabric from where the Joker had flung it over his vision. "I had a pretty little wife and we loved each other more than anything. And then I come home looking like this and suddenly she can't stand the scent of me!" Something sharp slashed from one ass cheek to the opposite thigh, cutting open the seat of his suit with a soft sound that got lost in the Joker's hiss. When it crossed Bruce the other way, forming a stinging, on his backside, Bruce had to tighten his body to keep from jumping - the Joker had something sharp on-hand and Bruce didn't want to attract the madman's attention or provoke him into a stabbing.
The feel of air across his overheated skin was unnerving, especially over the lines of slick trailing down the back of his thighs and their source. There was a prodding at his hole that made him tense, and then the Joker shoved in without warning or preparation. It didn't… hurt. Not exactly. His body welcomed the alpha's cock more quickly than Bruce was truly comfortable with, but the stretch was a great surprise. It wasn't that he'd never been penetrated before, he'd spent heats with trusted alphas in the past and had invited alphas, betas, and omegas into his bed between heats, had topped and bottomed for all three second genders, but it had been some time, it had never been with a true mate, and it had never been with the Joker.
"Ooh, baby, you're so tense!" the Joker cooed in a disturbing, high falsetto. Fingers with a steely strength clamped over Bruce's shoulders, digging in bruisingly, like the Joker was trying to pierce right through his skin to his muscles. "You really should convince the boss to let you have a day off." His eerie voice and words were contradicted by the way his hips snapped sharply forward, burying the full length of him in Bruce. Bruce could only shudder and then relax at the relief of finally being full after two days of complete emptiness, without even a toy or his fingers to stave off the pain.
"As long as you're out, I'll never have a day off," he said, as if the Joker wasn't settling into a steady, if energetic, rhythm, fingers gripping tighter every time he pulled Bruce back into his thrusts.
"Don't think I didn't notice that, Batsy," the Joker said, the strength in his voice unaffected by how rapidly he was fucking into Bruce. "How you always disappear for a few days when I go on vacation. I always wondered why you never fought me during your heat like you've fought others. Never dreamed you were avoiding me because you're mine."
The pain-relieving-pleasure was starting to build, was starting to come into its own as the Joker forced Bruce's willing body to accept his length and the minor swell of his growing knot. Thankfully, Bruce kept himself on a strict regime of birth control pills, both to regulate his heat and to prevent accidental pregnancy when he never knew when he might be called to some event or who he might be taking home with him that night. Otherwise, statistics indicated that spending even one heat, even unbonded, with a true mate, would guarantee a successful pregnancy.
"I'm not yours," Bruce denied, perhaps a bit too late, judging by the Joker's cackle. But he was trying too hard to keep the hypothetical what-ifs of pregnancy out of his heat-hazed mind, nevertheless a pregnancy begot of his arch nemesis.
"You could be," the Joker replied with as if he hadn't laughed at Bruce a moment ago, as if he wasn't already set on Batman being his. Bruce wondered if he would escape this without a mating bite, even as his over-analytical brain began to spin contingencies for what he was sure was now the inevitable. If not this time, then the next. And he knew there would be a next too. "You know Arkham can't keep me for long, especially now that I know I have a omega waiting for me to sate his need every few months on the outside. You don't have to avoid me on your heats."
Bruce knew he was making a mistake as soon as he opened his mouth, but everything about tonight had been a mistake. Starting from the moment he decided to leave to fight a true mate during the onset of his heat. Or maybe his mistakes began when he didn't check in on the Joker when he was so quiet. Or maybe it was before that, when he didn't- It didn't really matter. Bruce had made too many mistakes in his life and he knew better than to dwell on the past. All he could do was live in the present and make efforts to prevent identical mistakes in the future. And in the present, he was making a life-altering mistake.
"I don't have to, you're right," he agreed. He tried to stop himself from continuing, but the pain and the heat and the pleasure had loosened his tongue, just as it had made him weak. "I want to. I still want to. I want to even more now than I did before, now that I know your scent from up close." Bruce closed his eyes even as he spoke. Maybe a part of him did want what he'd just provoked, but whether it was because he actually wanted it or because he lived for self-flagellation, he couldn't be sure.
The Joker didn't still at Bruce's words. In fact, even as he began to growl, a rumbling thing that travelled through his body and into Bruce's, he began to fuck Bruce harder and his knot started increasing in size between each thrust and the one after it. One of the vice-like hands biting into his shoulder finally released him, sending blood rushing black into the skin and making the area tingle, and then there was a sharp, cold line across the back of his head a moment before it bloomed into heat and pain, and Bruce realized the Joker had cut open the back of his costume, separating cowl from cape and exposing the bare skin at the back of his neck.
Bruce gave a token struggle as the knot pushing into couldn't push in any longer and was pressing up against him, stretching him a little more with each violent thrust, but the fingers embedded in his other shoulder just held on tighter. It felt like the Joker was trying to rip him apart, but then that pain became the last thing on his mind when the alpha shoved his knot into Bruce. It started to swell, once it was inside him, and as it did, the Joker sank his fangs into the back of Bruce's neck with a deep, rumbling growl.
Being knotted was already an overwhelming process, and the pleasure of it slammed into Bruce in triplicate as the Joker locked into him, filling Bruce with his release as Bruce bucked against him and came. The added sensation of a mating bond settling into his skin nearly made him black out, his vision and hearing fading in and out so much that he wasn't completely sure he didn't lose consciousness for at least a few seconds. The only thing that made him think he hadn't was that the Joker's already clear scent was crystal sharp, like it would cut him if he breathed too deeply. It was aggressively possessively, and darkly angry, and so so strong that it would send lesser being to their knees, begging for forgiveness for crimes they hadn't committed. It smelled of victory, and in so, also like defeat, like the end of the world. The end of Bruce's world.
The Joker was rocking into him, using Bruce's body to milk his knot, and tracing something sharp and pointed across the unprotected plane of Bruce's back. The knife he'd used to cut open Bruce's costume, and Bruce, twice. "If you kill me, you'll go mad," Bruce found himself saying before he could remind himself that the Joker was already mad.
"Don't worry, toots, I'm already ahead of the curve," the Joker cackled. "My changed scent drove my pretty little wife to suicide and drove me to murder and mayhem. Oh, and you of course. My new pretty little wife. You gonna take the easy way out too, Bat-babe?"
"I'm not that weak," Bruce said, unable to keep the challenge or the affront from his voice.
"Mmm, no you're not, Batman, but you are susceptible, aren't you?" the Joker said, and then clamped his hand over Bruce's nose and mouth, the side of his hand pushing just a little into Bruce's mouth and settling against his teeth, keeping him from closing his mouth against the assault. Because more than having his air cut off, Bruce's sense of smell and taste were rebelling against the chemical scent pressed up against his nostrils and his tongue. It was terrible, in the archaic sense of the word. the Joker's pheromones were still thick in the air, and they were the only thing keeping his body from expelling the contents of his stomach.
The chemical taste spread across his tongue, went up his nose and slithered down the back of his throat. It was like inhaling paint fumes - overwhelming and eye-watering and a bit high-inducing. The world swam in his vision as he struggled weakly against the hand forcing that terrible scent into him, and as his lungs began to protest, he wondered if that chemical taint was embedded in his neck along with the Joker's mating mark now.
The Joker suddenly forced his still-swollen knot out of Bruce, and the unexpected strain, the unexpected ipain/i- shocked Bruce into biting down hard on the hand in his mouth. Blood sprayed across his tongue, turning the chemical taste to a more metallic one, a more pure version of the Joker's scent, and he wanted to unlock his jaw, but shock was keeping him from remembering how. The tips of fingers dug into the hinges of bone in his cheeks, forcing his mouth open, and the hand he'd inadvertently trapped disappeared. The fingertips keeping his mouth open remained though, digging in and cutting him with sharp nails. And then the hand was back, pushing the purest form of his true mate's scent onto his tongue, the musky taste and scent spreading through him and down his throat, filling him.
As the shock faded, Bruce realized the Joker was humming a Jack-in-the-box song under his breath, and that what he was coating Bruce's tongue with was the Joker's cum. From Bruce's ass. When it clicked, what exactly the Joker was doing, Bruce jerked back automatically and tried to snap his mouth shut, but the hand forcing his jaw open was iron-strong and wouldn't let him escape.
"Uh-uh-uh! Growing boys need to take their vitamins!" the Joker said with a laugh, and then smeared the next glob across Bruce's mouth and over and under his nose.
It filled his senses with the Joker, with that scent that called to him, and even though it had been delivered along with minor skin contact, the chemical tain faded quickly. He could feel the Joker smearing more cum across Bruce's skin, calloused fingertips working the substance into the cuts the madman had already made, making them sting. They'd need to be washed and disinfected, and Bruce was thoroughly disgusted by what he was being forced to eat, what was being worked into his skin in an undeniable claim, like the throbbing bite mark at the back of his neck, but at the same time, his most base instincts were quite pleased by his alpha's claiming, at the way any and all suitors would be warned away by what the Joker was doing.
Bruce could struggle, he could fight - he was stronger between rounds of his heat - but he wasn't going to win and he wasn't going to escape. Not in his condition and not when his true mate was so close and had already had him once. So he dealt with it. He focused on centering himself, on conserving his energy, and ignored the proprietary touches and his own disgust because he knew that, as bad as it was, it was going to get worse. And he was right.
By the time his heat had finally run its course, everything but his cowl, cape, and belt were in shreds, and his skin was marked in stinging red lines from the Joker's knife when he'd cut Batman's suit from him. His skin was smeared with sticky trails of the Joker's cum, and some cuts burned from where the Joker had anointed them. The back of his neck ached from the multitude of times the Joker had renewed the mating mark, and the force with which they were applied ("As if I'd let you forget who's knotting you, Batboy" the Joker had said, as if Bruce could forget). It was everything Bruce had expected would happen if he ever let the Joker take him. The one thing that was a surprise was that the Joker never attempted to unmask him when he was most vulnerable, and yet, the Joker had never really been interested in unmasking him. It wouldn't be any fun, Bruce supposed.
The first time he woke up with a clear head, the Joker wasn't in the room, his scent stale amidst the moonbeams shining in from the window. There was a folded notecard on the floor next to the bed, and when Bruce flipped it opened, he grimaced at the calligraphed message:
Bed reserved for private party - 3 months
Bruce crumpled the card in his fist and dropped it on the bed as he stood, every muscle and joint in his body aching and complaining each time he stooped to gather up any evidence of his presence in that warehouse. The mattress was a lost cause, soaked in sweat and slick and cum and dotted with his blood, so he set the surface on fire, burning away the evidence. He stayed only long enough to put out the flames once he was satisfied and then he left, sneaking through the city back to where the Batmobile was hidden. It was strange to smell the city again, to not have his nose filled with the scents of his heat and the Joker's presence, and it was strange that it was strange.
Alfred was at the door as soon as he walked in, the old beta's scent saturated with worry.
"Master Bruce," he greeted, relief suffusing his tone, his scent, his body language. Bruce couldn't stop though, he had to scrub his scent and figure out what to do about the mark at the back of his neck. "I've been-" he started and then stopped, nose finally catching up on the situation. He frowned and raised The Eyebrow of Disappointment. "I should think I warrant at least a notice when you decide to spend your heats elsewhere, sir," he said loftily.
It was only at that did Bruce pause his rapid pace, one foot already on the stairs. "It was the Joker, Alfred," he said at last, after a long deliberation. Alfred was so shocked that he jerked in place.
"The Joker took advantage of you?" he asked, both fearful and doubtful, and altogether confused. He was already aware that they were true mates, so at least that wouldn't come as a surprise to the poor man.
"Yes and no," Bruce conceded, continuing on his mission to the showers. "He took me from the crime scene and put me in an unlockable room because he knew I couldn't leave. And he didn't touch me until… until I asked him to, because he knew that I eventually would."
Alfred was silent for a long time, hurrying ahead of Bruce to start the shower and then he even went a step further and began to draw a bath as Bruce undressed. His lips pursed when he caught sight of the cuts staggered across Bruce's skin, but he didn't comment. On them, at least. "Do we need to worry about any… complications?" he asked instead, eyes lingering on Bruce's flat stomach.
Bruce found the energy to huff out a laugh. "No, Alfred," he said as he closed the shower door behind him. "You know I take birth control." He let silence reign as he washed his hair, but he could tell his butler had yet to leave. "He bonded me." Secrets were almost non-existent between him and Alfred, Alfred was the one person in the world he knew he could trust with any secret, but those three words were somehow the hardest he'd ever had to string together and push out.
Alfred's response was both immediate and comforting, and Bruce couldn't help but smile.
"I'll make an appointment with a discreet bond breaker immediately," he said firmly, as if the mere thought of Bruce going to the appointment erased the bond already.
"No, not yet," Bruce found himself saying, before he'd even settled on the decision to keep it.
"Master Bruce?" Alfred sounded confused but ready to either argue Bruce's points or accept them, depending on what he replied with.
He mulled over his response, and his reasoning, as he finished washing, and when he stepped out of the shower, the bath was ready and smelled of lavender. He raised an eyebrow at Alfred who raised his back. "It's said to be calming, sir," he replied with all the surety of a man who wasn't going to go through the effort of drawing a second bath if his job depended on it.
"Calming," Bruce echoed, slightly mockingly as he got in anyway. He could feel Alfred's eyes on the healing mark as he settled in, until he rested his head back against the sloped tub edge.
"He didn't exactly seem to take much care with… you," Alfred said, voice fading into a slight echo as he turned away. Bruce wondered if the pause was where Alfred had thought about saying 'his mate' and then decided not to.
"No, he didn't," Bruce confirmed, closing his eyes. Even on the drive back home, he could still feel the Joker over him, inside him, like a phantom. He had fucked Bruce hard and fast, had cut him, bruised him, bit him, and not just on the back of the neck either. He had fucked like he fought - reckless and out of control and completely accepting of whatever outcome his actions resulted in. It been terrifying and exhilarating and… addicting.
Bruce wondered how long it would take him to cave to the siren's call of his true mate seeing him through another heat.
Bruce lasted a year.
He was more meticulous than ever before in using scent blockers, including his own carefully crafted blend that was more potent than what was commercially available. More than that, every morning, as soon as he woke, he applied a piece of synthetic skin to his bond bite to keep it secret and didn't remove it until he went to sleep. Not one person noticed he'd been mated, either in his business or his crime-fighting life. Not one person commented on the back of his neck or on the slight change in his natural scent, which he could tell was now paired with something dark, something with a metallic undertone that made him think of blood, made him think of the scattered smooth scars from the Joker's blade.
A week after that fateful heat, Batman put the Joker back into Arkham, and he stayed there until a week before Bruce's next heat. The man was mad, sure, but he was smart, and it was too much of a coincidence for Bruce to believe it was accidental. Still, he wasn't ready, and he locked the Joker back up even as the alpha grinned darkly at him and waggled his eyebrows. He spent his heat alone, with toys.
The heat after that had the Joker breaking out two weeks early, and leaving macabre courting gifts all over Gotham. Like a cat gifting its own with a dead mouse or bird. These wooing attempts, reasonably, had the opposite effect, and resulted in the Joker being returned to Arkham trussed up like a pig. With an apple in his mouth and a broken nose. He spent this heat alone with toys too.
The third heat post-mating told Bruce that, no matter the Joker's original intention of waiting Bruce out, he'd run out of patience. Which became clear when he kidnapped Bruce a full three weeks before his heat. He put Batman in a windowless room that took Bruce a week and a half to escape from. That time, Bruce was sickly proud of the broken arm, leg, and ribs he'd left the Joker with, a reminder that the Joker would never spend another heat with him again if Bruce didn't want him to. That heat he spent with another alpha, one he enjoyed his time with in the past and who could be trusted to keep his silence on Bruce's gender, but more importantly, one who could be trusted not to mate with Bruce. Bruce had fun, as always, but he spent most of the time worried about the prosthetic at the back of his neck. Afterwards, he paid a visit to the Joker with the other alpha's scent still on his skin, and he smiled smugly at the fury on his alpha's face.
His fourth heat after their mating, a year to the day, Bruce submitted. He couldn't really have given a reason to his actions if anyone pressed, but no one did. They returned to the same loft as before, unchanged but for the burned mattress which had been replaced with an intact one that Bruce was going to have to burn too. Although, after his little display, flaunting his coupling with someone else, Bruce expected a great deal more blood to end up on this mattress than the last one. As usual, he was right.
the Joker was… unhinged. Their first time, he had fucked Batman like he was in a fight. This time, the Joker decimated him, tore him apart. Every one of Bruce's actions was met with a severe overreaction. Everything he said or did seemed to trigger the Joker's fight-or-fight instinct, and Bruce's skin was a mess of blue and purple bruises well before the first day was over. The aggression might have been for any number of reasons, but the bite marks made it clear that the alpha whose claim Bruce had accepted and let keep was a violently possessive one.
The bruises he'd gained were accompanied by new mating bites at the back of his neck and at the apex of both biceps and thighs. He was sure that he would have been bitten at his wrists and ankles and at the insides of his elbows and knees if his musculature could have sustained them. Instead, he was bitten deeper than was comfortable on both ass cheeks, calves, and sides. Bites he'd never be able to hide, like the one on the back of his neck. There would be no way to bring anyone into his bed without a great deal of explaining or excuses, which he was sure was the Joker's intention.
The bites left thin trails of blood all over Bruce's body, smears of it neon-bright against the Joker's skin, dripping down to mix with the slick and semen already beginning to soak into the mattress. And that was before the knife came out. Or knives. Bruce was never sure how many there were, only that they left even more stinging lines of cold-hot pain across his skin than the last time. He tried to pay attention to potential patterns, but it was all too chaotic, and he wouldn't be sure the Joker hadn't literally carved his name into Bruce's skin until he could check himself back home.
The fucking itself was ferocious, and it almost seemed like the Joker got less sleep that Bruce did. He was always ready to knot him, sometimes even before Bruce was ready to be knotted. He appeared at have endless stamina, and sometime he ended up pushing into Bruce between rounds of his heat. He always came and long, filling Bruce with more come than seemed reasonable, except when he pulled out at least once each day to smear his release across Bruce's skin, working it into his flesh and his cuts and his bite marks.
As disgusting, and painful, as it all was, it was the only thing that made the touch and taste and smell of the Joker's skin, when forced on him, bearable. Because the Joker's scent never got any easier to bear. That chemical scent was always the discordant note amongst their mixing pheromones, the screech disrupting the otherwise perfect orchestra. Bruce just couldn't get used to it, no matter how hard he tried. He suspected he never would.
The only thing that remained unchanged between their first heat and their second was that the Joker never once tried to unmask him. When Bruce limped home, battered and beaten, like the ashen, tattered remains of the second mattress, he wondered how long he would be be able to do this. How long would he be able to resist returning to the Joker again? How long until he didn't try to resist at all? What would become of them as they got older? Would Bruce ever get the bond broken? Would one of them get killed long before those concerns came to be? Would he ever reveal his identity, on accident or on purpose? Too many questions, too many variables; the future was hazy and unsure, and Bruce did not relish its coming.
Alfred was silent this time around, having already received warning of where Bruce was going to spend his heat. He had disagreed strongly before Bruce had left, had tried to persuade him to make an appointment at a discreet clinic instead, but he'd let Bruce go with only a disapproving air. There was no sign of that air now, only comfort and kindness and relief, though it was all tempered with worry when he finally saw the state of Bruce's skin. To dissuade conversation about his injuries, Bruce didn't make eye contact as he stepped into the already running shower, looking forward to the bath being drawn.
He idly wondered if Alfred would become more or less worried with each heat Bruce spent with his alpha as the water pounded a soothing beat against his skull, and then he let the thought flow down the drain along with the slick and semen and blood flaking off of his skin. The high water pressure made his bites and his cuts sting, the wounds reopening under the force, and he knew his bathwater would be tinged pink by the end of it. It felt like a physical echo of the Joker's bond, that burning under his skin, flaring hot and cold with each contemplative swing between acceptance and rejection.
Rejection…
It was a rarer and rarer thought, the longer he kept the Joker's bond, but it still crossed his mind now and then. The knowledge that he didn't have to keep this connection that had been formed between them. That he always had the chance to obliterate it if he ever found someone he actually wanted to spend his life with. The acceptance came from knowing that if he hadn't found someone that he would willingly reveal his greatest secret to, then he never would. And that the Joker would always be there, whether Bruce wanted him to be or not.
Bruce left his thoughts in the shower with the dirty water washing down the drain and kept his mind empty as he crawled into the tub. Or he tried to. The ache in his ass from how thoroughly the Joker had knotted him made sure the alpha was never far from his mind. It was a great deal of difficult that Bruce forced himself into a meditative state, and then he sunk beneath the water, feeling calm and safe and secret.
It was true that no good would come from avoiding his problems, but no good came of the Joker whether Bruce thought about him or not. Especially not a the Joker who was his mate. No good at all. Bruce expertly ignored his avoidance and let himself sink into the dark and the silence.
FIN
Wow I am not happy with this. Like at all. Like omg I hate it. And it's so long. My Kinktobers were only supposed to be 2k. -; The last person I had so much trouble writing was Hannibal Lecter and now apparently I can add Batman and especially the Joker to that list. So yeah, I hate this, but I hope someone likes it. It's certainly longer and less smutty than I wanted but at least now I can toss this plot bunny into the forest and wash my hands of it. BE GONE, FOUL BEAST, OR ELSE I SHALL VANQUISH YOU WITH THIS THE HOLY HAND GRENADE.
Fun fact: I like to watch/listen to source content when I write so I put on 'The Dark Knight' while I was at work to keep me in the BatJokes mood, BUT THEN after the parade thing and Gordon gets shot and Harvey kidnaps that paranoid schizophrenic for answers, Batman stops Harvey and is all "you're the best for this city you're amazing don't turn bad" and Harvey turns around and goes "no iyou're/i the amazing one just let me do what i have to so you can keep being you". And my traitorous brain goes "wow they're such supportive boyfriends for each other both of them "aw babe sweetie honey no you're the best i love what you i love what you do"".
Reblog the thing (themadkatter13fanfiction tumblr, tagged/No-Rehab-for-Gotham-White).