AN: Thanks for the reviews! I'm sorry to say that there may not be a chapter tomorrow, as I'll be driving back to college and getting everything resettled after Thanksgiving break, but it should be up soon.

The cold woke him up.

He hadn't been able to drift off until late; he wasn't sure of the exact time, but it was several hours after he'd shut off the lights, long after the Joker had fallen asleep. Hours spent staring up in the darkness, listening to the Joker's breathing and rats scurrying through the walls, wondering what horrific purpose the clown could want fear toxin for. Whatever it was, it couldn't be good.

Crane knew before he opened his eyes that he hadn't slept enough, as usual. He really should stay there and try to sleep more, but now that he was up, it'd take another several hours to get him out again. Besides, he was freezing.

Unsurprising, given that the Joker still had all the blankets. He'd tried stealing them back during the night, and Joker had growled at him, apparently in his sleep. If he was that aggressive when unconscious, Crane didn't want to aggravate him further by waking him up, and had decided to make do without the sheets.

He opened his eyes and found, to his dismay, that he was lying against the Joker. Lovely. Intellectually, he knew that it had been his body's unconscious need for heat that had put him in such as position, but intellect didn't stop his face from flaming as he pulled back. Well, it could have been worse. The last time he'd done that, around six months ago, Joker had been awake, and had a camera.

Crane sat up, noting that the blankets were still wrapped around the Joker, tighter than ever. So much for trying to take them back. He pulled the sleeves of the straitjacket down over his hands for warmth and looked around the room with growing disgust. Even in the dim light, the filth was apparent. It wasn't as if he needed everything to be spotless. Crane had grown accustomed to living in a fair amount of disorder himself, whenever he broke out, given that when he was doing research, he tended to neglect things like cleaning or eating. Still, scattered papers and piles of discarded clothes were one thing, a layer of dust an inch thick was quite another. Antipsychotics or not, the filth alone made him seriously consider leaving.

Oh, he thought, straightening. The antipsychotics. If it was morning by now, and he guessed it was, he'd be needing some about now. Of course, without a watch, he couldn't be sure. He found himself carefully crawling over the Joker's body, to the foot of the bed where the clown's vest hung from the bedpost. One pocket contained a cell phone, clearly stolen judging by its Disney Princess cover, but the battery appeared to be dead. After searching through several more pockets—nicking his fingers on the blades concealed in a few—he happened upon a pocket watch. Six until eight. So it was morning. So he'd have to wake the Joker up. Joy.

"Er…Joker?" He put a hand on his shoulder. No response. He tried pressing down a little. The clown didn't move. "Excuse me?"

Nothing.

"Joker?" He pushed harder, and less than a second a hand shot out and closed tightly around his wrist.

"Ya had better have a good reason for waking me up."

"I need the pills."

"And this can't wait until a reasonable hour?"

He did not mention that he considered eight in the morning to be a very reasonable hour. "They're not as effective if I don't take them at the same time each day."

Joker let go of him and sat up, looking equal parts tired, annoyed, and horrified. "Ya mean we've gotta do this every morning?"

Crane nodded, massaging the wrist the Joker had had hold of. "If it bothers you, you could always let me keep the pills," he offered, without much hope of success.

"Ha ha ha no." He sat up, hand emerging from his pocket with the prescription bottle in hand. "How many do ya need?"

"Two."

He pushed them into Crane's hand. "There. Have fun. I'm going back to sleep, don't wake me up unless Batman shows up or something."

"Is that likely?"

He'd already gone back to sleep, or at least a convincing imitation thereof. With a sigh, Crane stood and made his way to the kitchen, feeling the dirt under his feet with each step and growing steadily more disgusted. After washing the pills down, he turned his attention to searching the cupboards for some kind of cleaning product or implement. Anything.

The cabinet closest to the old, rattling refrigerator contained a broom and dust pan as disused and dust covered as everything else, but still useable. He picked the broom up, cursed, dropped it, pulled the splinter out of his hand, and picked it up again, this time more carefully. Crane glanced around the room, taking in the enormity of the task at hand. He felt a bit like Sisyphus must have at the start of a new day pushing his boulder uphill.

It was slow going, given that every few minutes amassed a pile of dust so large he had to stop and transfer it to the dust pan, and then to the trash can, which was slowly but surely filling. Nor did it remove all the filth; there was still a layer of grime caked onto the floor that he guessed would have to be mopped away. As his search yielded no mops, he continued sweeping, leaving what remained as a problem for another day.

Several hours later, he had progressed out of the kitchen and down the hall into the bedroom. Much to his dismay, the Joker chose that moment to wake up. Crane turned his back to him, hoping he'd fall back asleep as quickly as he had before, but of course that didn't happen. That would have been too easy.

"Whaddya doing, Jonny?" He sounded amused.

"Cleaning."

There was a rasping giggling from behind him that slowly evolved into roars of laughter. It sounded almost like a scream, really. "God, you're such a woman."

He rolled his eyes. The Joker was one of the most dangerous men in the world, yes, certainly not someone to underestimate, but when he said things that childish, it was hard to be intimidated by him. "What, only women prefer not to wallow in filth?"

"No, but only a woman would get up and do something about it before noon." He turned to face the Joker, who was sprawled out on the bed, watching his progress. His makeup had become a smeared mess in the night, which would have looked ridiculous on anyone else, but still seemed intimidated on him. "Tell me something, kitten, did the shrinks ever say if ya met the, uh, criteria for a gender identity disorder?"

Crane wondered if that statement was meant to be insulting or just irritating. If it was the latter, it was successful. "I believe I have made clear several times now my dislike for that particular term of…endearment."

"God, you're so touchy." The Joker sat up, stretching his arms over his head. "Whaddya want me to call you, beautiful?"

Crane stared. "Tell me, do you hope to gain something in your attempts to screw with my head, or are you just doing this for fun?"

"My attempts to what?" His hurt expression might have been more believable were it not for the amused tone in his voice. "Can't ya take a compliment? Just like a woman. You're beautiful, and I'm not just saying that. Have ya ever really looked at your eyes?"

He had. They were blue and rather ordinary to him, but he'd received compliments on them before. Never from a psychotic terrorist, though. "Fine, I have nice eyes. That doesn't change the fact that you can't stand me."

The Joker tilted his head. "Where the hell didya get that idea?" This time the hurt in his voice sounded honest, if mild. "I don't hate ya, scaredy cat. I think you're a control freak pretty boy who could stand to lighten up a few hundred lumens, but that doesn't mean I don't like ya."

"You broke my arm," Crane said, "and now you're trying to tell me we're friends?"

"Are ya still bitter about that? It was like nine months ago."

"Seven."

"Whatever." He stood, shaking his head in an attempt to shift his hair back into place. "The point is, I've slapped Harley around more than a few times, and we still have sex. I don't mean to brag—well, actually I do—but we have sex a lot. Now, I know you're not the best with people, kitten, but I'm sure even you know that sex tends to imply, uh, togetherness? Love, friendship, a relationship of that kind."

"You left her at Arkham."

"I didn't say it was a stable relationship. Look, what I mean is, I consider us friends. Don't you?"

He considered him more of a friend than say, Batman or the GPD, but that was about it. "I consider us forced business partners."

Joker pouted, somehow managing to look childish and absolutely psychotic at the same time. "Oh, c'mon, don't be like that."

"You're forcing me to stay here with the threat of withholding incredibly necessary medication, without telling me what you want me to do for you. How should I be?"

And abruptly the broom went flying from his hand as Joker closed the space between them, grabbing Crane in what could only be described as a tackle-hug. He managed to keep his balance enough to avoid falling to the floor, instead only falling against the maniac. "What in God's name are you doing?"

"Hugging. It's a friend thing. You and Harley used to do it, remember?"

"I know that." He tried not to let the Joker get to him, and failed miserably. "Could you please let go now?"

"That depends, beautiful. Are ya gonna admit that we're friends?"

Crane sighed. "Sure, why not?"

"Yay." The Joker left go, though he did ruffle Crane's hair first. "So, ya wanna hear the plan?"

He arched a brow. "Are you actually going to tell me this time?"

"Yeah." The Joker took hold of his wrist, leading him back to the bed. They sat, the clown's legs kicking absentmindedly as he spoke, bringing clouds of dust up from the floor. "Ya know nitrous oxide?"

Crane blinked. It almost made sense. "You want laughing gas? Why don't you just steal it?"

"Because I don't want that kind of laughing gas, I want something special. Something that'll make people as frightened and hallucinate-y as your toxin, but that'll make 'em smile like this." He grinned widely, showing off his yellowed teeth.

"What, wide enough to rip the skin?" Crane asked, staring at the scars.

Joker's eyes widened like those of a child spotting Santa Claus in a mall. "Ya think ya could do that?"

"No idea. Possibly. But you want them to smile?"

"And laugh, yeah. Oh, and do ya think ya could rig it so they're still smiling once it kills 'em?"

"Maybe." His hand twitched for want of a pen, to write down the ideas racing through his head. It might work, could work. One of early toxin formulas had had uncontrollable giggling as a side effect, if he could just revisit that recipe, figure out what caused that irregularity and expand on it. Then there was the smiling, he wasn't quite sure how to isolate muscle paralysis to the cheeks, but there could be a way. There had to be a way, because he wanted to make it, test it, watch the new level of fear facial disfigurement would add. It would be challenging, entertaining, fun.

"Do you have a pen?" he asked, chemical names and mixtures racing through his head, half-begging to be written down. The Joker handed over a Sharpie, lime green in color. "Paper?"

"Nope."

Slightly irritated but too intrigued to really let it affect him, Crane took off down the hall, uncapping the marker as he stepped into the bathroom. Joker followed, with a confused look, tongue pushing against his scars from the inside as he tried to puzzle out whether or not his companion had lost it. "Whaddya doing?"

"Writing," Crane said, barely hearing him as he scribbled on the mirror. He attempted to make his notes as small as possible, to conserve space, though the odd angle he had to write at in order to reach the top of the mirror made that difficult.

"Ya know you're leaving a huge sign that we've been here, not to mention giving away what we're planning, right?"

"It'll wipe off," he said distractedly, trying to remember exactly what he'd used in that compound.

"My men are bringing paper in a couple hours," Joker offered, still looking somewhat wary, if it were possible for the Clown Prince of Crime to look that way.

"That's nice. I need to write now." He glanced down at the toilet paper, wondering if he could use that without objection when the mirror ran out.

"They're bringing clothes too. I figured you'd want to get out of the straitjacket…uh, you're not hearing a word I'm saying, are ya?"

"Okay." Oh, if this worked it was going to kick so much ass.

"Right. Well, I just thought ya might like to that I had told them they were gonna be cleaning this place, so ya did all that sweeping for nothing."

If Crane heard him, he didn't show it.

Joker laughed softly, watching as Crane's reflection slowly became obscured by green writing. "You're really cute when you're concentrating, ya know that?"

"Yeah, sure."

"I think," he said, leaning against the doorway, "that this could be the start of a beautiful friendship."