Hello. This is my first story to ever get published. It is a tribute to my favourite pairing and a product of sleep-deprivation. It is also inspired by the amazing song. If you happen to read it, please tell me what you think. I'll be happy to see any review – even two words like 'it sux' do. Sorry for rambling. Sorry for bad English.

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters or places mentioned. No copyright infringement is intended. I do not obtain any profit from this story.

I think I know what's on your mind

A couple words, a great divide

Waiting in the wings, a small respite

Crowding up the foreground from behind

~ Grizzly Bear, Slow life

First there come the dreams.

You woke up in the middle of the night with a shout frozen on your lips. Your legs are tangled in the sheets and you're sweating heavily. Your eyes slowly adjust to the darkness. Contours of familiar shapes replace what you've just seen.

The dreams are full of animalistic passion, of destroying force that you're desperately trying to oppose, but it draws you in and you succumb. There is a fight; rolling over and over on the floor, heaving chests, flashing teeth, vague taste of blood and cinnamon in your mouth, pain and pleasure at once. Flashes of outrageous colors, quick, sneaky fingers, tendrils of hair, planes of chest, thighs and angles of joints, hardness of muscle and softness of skin. And there is the voice.

You can't seem to get rid of it. It mocks you, telling you things about yourself that are true, although you refuse to admit them. Sometimes it erupts in a loud cackle; sometimes it whispers hoarsely against your ear, making the hair on your neck stand up. Sometimes it howls and moans, as it seems, in pain, but it's not pain. You feel it too, as you grit your teeth hard to not groan along.

You wake up feeling dirty, contaminated. And angry. And guilty. And there is something else, something which makes your chest tighten and drives you insane. You are longing.

You're telling yourself it will pass. Soon you'll be over it. Your head will stop snapping up every time you hear the name on television, you'll stop replaying in your head over and over possible scenarios of what could have happen, you'll never again find yourself toying with a tattered card with a red smiley face drawn on it – the same exact card you've found in the Tumblr one day.

You keep telling yourself this, even when a warm summer afternoon finds you driving to a certain lunatic asylum.

The staff is not surprised; after Gordon's campaign no one in this city has any doubts as to who you are. You shepherd the terrified, white-dressed crowd to one of the cells, except from one nurse, who will have all of the cells opened at your demand. You point a gun at the back of his head as you observe his trembling hands hovering over the keyboard. He enters the security code and there is a short shrieking sound. You know you don't have much time now. You knock him out and take off, before all hell breaks loose.

Later that night, the gust swirls your cape as you sit on the edge of the building. The setting sun covers everything in an orange, burning glow. The city looks unreal, like some sort of a desert from a dream. When you hear a light thump, you don't even have to turn around. There is a silence that stretches, and then steps. You're long past caring about your life and safety now. You just sit there, head bowed as the person approaches and comes to a halt right beside you. Everything seems to freeze and finally, there is a loud click of knees as he crouches and sits next to you. Now, there is another pair of long legs dangling from the rooftop, clad in purple pants and ended with expensive Italian shoes. The left one lightly hits your right foot.

'Hi.'

This voice. The voice haunting you for so long. The voice heard in so many different contexts, in reality and in dreams. But now there's something new to it: it's laced with… uncertainty?

You attempt to say something in response, but your throat is completely dry and some unintelligible grunt comes out. Suddenly, you feel extremely self-conscious and awkward; you realize you're sweating heavily. You feel like in highschool, standing before the girl you liked, about to ask her to the prom. You practiced what you will tell her thousand times before, and now that you come to it, you are at a loss of words.

Now it is the same, but many worse. There seems to be some sort of a newly acquired distance - you can't just lurch forward and fight with the man; you must say something. You realize your cheeks are damp with sweat pooling under the mask and you make an attempt to pull at it, but you are stopped by a hand on your arm.

'Bruce Wayne, I know' now the voice is smiling. 'If I told you that I knew it after you took that off, you'd never believe me.' You finally steal a fearful glance of the man's face.

He didn't change, not at all. There are green hair, probably just dyed, smudges of white and red, one-sided quirk of the lip. The black circles around the eyes also remained, but these eyes seem to acquire a new light, a new knowledge – they are watching you with amused interest, not quite concealing the deep hunger. These eyes would follow you everywhere. They are chocolate brown, you notice, and the reddish glow lights gold sparks in them.

You take the cowl off and toss it aside and they change expression; you'd swear you see something like awe and lust. Then, the wrinkles in the corners of the eyes deepen and the man laughs. You feel the icy chill of hurt along your spine.

'What?' you bark.

'Nothing. You just look good with kohled eyes.'

You let your eyelids drop as you feel yourself blushing in embarrassment. Through closed eyes, you still can see that the light is changing: sun is inevitably coming down, sending less and less rays with each second. You head is buzzing with thousand different thoughts and none of them seems to be worth voicing out. When the last sunbeams die, you finally open your eyes and look to your right side.

The legs are gone.

A wave of different emotions floods your brain; you want to kick something, tear yourself apart, get into a pursuit and beat the man to a pulp; you even consider sliding from the roof and falling eleven floors down.

A hand suddenly settles itself on your left shoulder, solid and warm weight, and a giggle elicits vibration that pass between your bodies.

'What are you going to do now, Joker? Burn this city down?' you ask, unconvincingly covering relief that floods you.

'Actually, I don't think so.' He sounds amused.

'Isn't that your ultimate aim?'

Another giggle. 'That, I think, I uh… achieved.'

'And that was?...'

'Getting your attention.' suddenly, there is anxiety, and he absentmindedly licks his lips.

Your eyebrows shot up and end almost in the middle of your forehead.

'So… what now?' you ask, staring back into the peaceful night.

Immediately, a hand in purple glove extends in front of your eyes.

'Come with me.'

This is insane. You know precisely what you should do now, what is the right thing to do. And, despite that, you know exactly what you will do in few seconds. Three. Two. One…

Your hand shots up and closes his in a secure grip.

~ fin.

Review! I wanna know what kind of writer I am!