OH PLAYMATE

Oh playmate.

Come out and play with me

And bring your dollies three

Climb up my apple tree

Slide down my rainbow

Into my cellar door

And we'll be jolly friends

Forevermore

It was, unfortunately and again, a syringe that Joker pulled out of his pocket. Second one of the night. This one filled with a disconcertingly cloudy liquid.

After all: nothing like a syringe of indeterminate contents to liven up an evening!

"How many of those do you have?" asked Wayne. Things were getting a bit blurry--the knife's poison had really been something.

"Are you being funny?" Joker asked, absently, holding the syringe up to the light, making sure it was all prepped. "That's adorable. Actually I have more than you think." He leaned over Bruce again, and Wayne could once again feel his breath on his skin. "It's a real bitch if I sit down wrong, believe you me," he smiled.

He jabbed the needle in. Bruce did not even wince. Just glared his perfect blue glare.

Joker was still smiling, serene. "You're not even going to ask what it is? Fair enough. I just love surprises too. But in case you're interested, this'll pretty much keep you loopy, but stop you from paralysis and death, which is the side effect of my little knife-ty-bo there." He threw up his hands. "Which normally I'm just all into paralysis and death, but I'm feeling here it would kind of be overkill."

He slapped Bruce on the chest, a little too hard, a little too close to the wound. "What do you think, Bats?"

Bruce couldn't help but grunt in sheer pain, the kind that's all sorts of colors before your eyes. After that subsided he discovered Joker was right, that most of the sheer discomfort of the poison was gone. He merely felt dizzy and disoriented. And while he was still bleeding, it was not serious. The flow was already stopping. It would merely require stitches.

"My answer stands, Joker," he growled, and tried to sit up.

Joker actually helped him, with an annoying "Attaboy!" so they were sitting side by side. The clown put his hand again on the other man's chest and grimaced. "Ooh, that looks bad." He sprang up, obviously none of his energy dissipated from his earlier outbursts. He sprang up, made a show of kneeling and looking under the bed, popped back up to attention, looking at Bruce.

"Where do you keep like needle and thread, or like, a first aid kit, or, I dunno, whatever?" he flailed an arm to indicate, presumably, other bandage related materials. "Cause I gotta tell you, I sure don't travel with any myself."

Bruce nodded in direction of he dresser. "Third drawer on the right, from the top," he said. Joker immediately obliged. "Joker, did you hear me?" he asked. "I'm not going with you. I'm not faking my death. I'm not," he continued, wondering just how plainly he could put it, "doing anything close to whatever you even remotely want me to do."

"Oh, I know. I heard you, Batman. I'm not deaf." He had found the box and after a few curious shakes, like he was testing out a gift, came sailing back. "And no, before you ask, I'm not stupid, either." He hopped onto the bed, a kid at a sleepover, and opened the box. Carefully, he started laying out the contents on the now ruined sheets.

Had Bruce been a little less drugged and a little less surprised, he might have conjured up an appropriate reaction.

"Well?" was all he could manage. "Why are you still here?" he decided to add. Batman was never too drugged to be a bit of an ass.

"Oh Batman. Heh. Heh-heh. Oh Bruce," he amended, and it was the first time he had ever called him be his real name, and no matter how much of a sneer or snarl was put into the utterance, it still and would always gave Wayne the chills. "Oh Bruce, I never really expected you to say yes."

"What?"

"Don't be so shocked," the other man said, his lazier drawl, while he fumbled with a needle and thread--Bruce's personal emergency stitch kit. Wayne frowned, knowing the Joker was getting Ideas again. "Like I remind you, oh, pretty much every freaking time I see you. I know you. I know what to expect from you."

He turned his face to Bruce's, finally. "I did not expect you to say yes. We both know I didn't even really want you to say yes. I would have been all disappointed and probably, probably just walked home defeated, if you had. Watched Colin Firth movies and ate ice cream straight out of the container, whatever you're supposed to do if you're all distraught. But no," he said, "you're keeping our narrative on track here. I mean, who cares if Bruce's parents are dead if there's no little Brucie to mourn them?"

Joker sounded distant, if it were any other man he might have been called sad.

"What about you?" Bruce asked. Maybe this was the breakthrough he had been waiting for in the Joker's case--maybe they could finally talk? If only his head wasn't--if only he didn't feel so odd...

"Hmm?" Joker said. "What did you say? Oh! Me? What about me?" he said. "Don't get all boring, Batsy! This isn't about me. This is about..."

Joker, with his usual deft and lightning-quick ferocity, grabbed Wayne's arm and twisted, slammed him down on the bed. Bruce grabbed for him, but was a fraction too late. "Us!" he finished. "I'm gonna fix this, don't you worry," he said, holding up the needle.

Bruce sneered, but remained still, daring him to make a move.

"This is happening, actually," Joker said.

"You think I'm going to let you touch me with that, I see."

"What, so I stab you and poison you, and, and this is even after I've broken into your house and woken you up, if nothing else, and you're gonna get all persnickety about this? Maybe I don't get you."

A pause "You just could have asked me to lean back," Bruce said, groaning. Relaxing enough so Joker might let his guard down a little more. "I might have found that less confrontational."

Joker looked at him blankly, as if the idea had honestly never occurred to him. "Oh. I guess--yeah. Point taken. Anyways," and he shrugged and leaned over, trying to start his work.

"You," he finally smiled, "must be joking," he said, catching Joker's bony wrist in his own grip.

It was the wrong move, Bruce realized. Joker's eyes, which in the last few minutes had been distracted, sad, slightly unfocused, positively crystallized with all that fire and rage and laughter Bruce knew all too well. And the clown smiled again.

Oh how he smiled.

It was indicative of Joker's feverish insanity that his obsessive tendencies seemed to indicate marked gaps in perception, most evident in his complete disdain for the mundane. So while his persona was perfect, his smile harsh and aggressive, his costumes immaculate, his plans perfect--see how the green dye was dripping from his lank hair, see how the red was almost gone from that killer smile, of yellow teeth. He really did think nothing of himself as a person, rather a persona. Mark his complete disregard of personal pain.

The scars puckered, and the eyes flashed, and the clown stood up away from Bruce and pulled a gun.

(Exhibit B, Joker might cry, compare/contrast Bruce's obsession with detail and perfection, never letting any mask slip or crack. See how his eyes never even widen at the drawn weapon.)

Bang went the black gun, through the air, out the window. Bang bang bang. Joker grinning all the while, the gun kicking his long hand back, back, back with each fire.

Finally the glass shattered completely, an oddly musical crunch and crash. Little shards on the immaculate floor, glitter like stars.

"Like I said," Joker said.

Wayne considered his options, and decided to acquiesce. He could stop Joker if he tried anything.

Really, he could. Seriously.

He sat back, semi-recumbent. "What are you waiting for."

The cold night came in from what was left of the window. Joker kneeled, slowly, next to Bruce. His smile was gone. Instead his gaze was dark again, his lip slightly curled. He took a moment to actually start, to actually place his hands on his Bat without express intent to cause further damage. He finally rested one a little too harsh too hard on Wayne's chest. Both men's eyes were on his hand. Their thoughts, no doubt, were on the intriguing new power dynamic asserting itself before their eyes.

Bruce, at least, could not remember being so alarmingly conscious of one touch in recent memory.

Joker, who seemed to be pretty familiar with all this, held the wound together, pressed on the necessary bandaging to hold it. Took the needle, pushed it cold into the other man's skin.

Bruce blinked. A gasp for anyone else.

Joker had, in his lengthy hospitalizations, never had actually been diagnosed with any explicitly psychosexual disorders. He had always archly declared himself above and beyond anything so crass and petty and common. Seemingly paradoxically, though, he had always happily declared that on a level both visceral and intellectual he was fascinated by pain. Batman, although he didn't need any more confirmation, could see it in the way his eye flashed with every stitch. The quickness of breath modulated by each thrust and pull of the needle.

"And don't worry," Joker suddenly started up again, too loud for how close they were. "I'll do a much better job than I did on my face."

"So you did stitch up your own face?"

Joker paused, looked up for a moment at Bruce, then laughed. "Ha. Oh ha-ha Bruce, very clever aren't you. No, I didn't. That is to say, maybe. That is to say, does it even matter?"

He laughed more quietly. "No, Bruce, these scars don't matter. Only that they're there. That I cut myself up and apart and made my own image unto myself. And you did too. Besides, I think--I mean, so pretty much at this point we both know how we got all of these scars."

"Because we gave them to each other, you mean."

"Jeez, I wasn't gonna come out and say that, take all the subtlety away. Now I sound like a ham."

Joker was reprising his old role. Bruce was tired of talking to him about scars. Always the discussion went down the same roads. Always.

Always: I want you to burn, I want you to bleed. All the wrong things made not right again. All the wrong things made bright again. Salamander cicatrice. We are cut apart and make our own image unto ourselves. Or what we once were. What we might have remembered we once were. Puzzle people. How many ways can you put yourself back together? And how many times? And what lines does it leave?

You want to know how I got these scars.

No need to ask, I already know.

Boring, really.

"That should do it," he said. "That should hold you for now for sure." He patted the stitches, gave his fingers a sloppy kiss, and planted it on Wayne's shoulder. "All better!"

He looked down again, repeating it to himself. "All better. All better, all better, all better."

Joker's face went blank, as it was wont to do sometimes when waiting for the next big thing. He slid off the bed and towards the open window. Just standing. Just waiting. The gun lay on the floor by the bed. Bruce lay on the bed, by all the medical supplies.

Bruce groaned, to himself. This was either just ending or just beginning. Because Joker had left the first aid kit on his bed with him, and in the second compartment were most antidotes.

While Joker was off staring at grinning Gotham, Bruce administered the correct antidote to himself. He glanced down at the stitching. Joker had indeed done an impeccable job.

Almost immediately Bruce felt better. It had not been a strong chemical, merely a persistent one. He stretched, unfolding his always impressive physique off the rumpled sheets.

Batman joins the Joker at the window. It is of course still cold. It is of course still drizzling. It hits Bruce's face, and it's been washing the last of the white off the Joker.

There is no more makeup. There are no more masks. When they look at one another, all they see are strangers.

Bruce speaks first. "Why are you here." It is not so much a question, but a demand.

"I told you," the Joker says. He is petulant, now. "Ha. Think of it as an invitation. Like throwing rocks at a window. Come out and play, I'm bored."

"You've never come into my house. Not looking for Batman, at least." Wayne's words, and especially his tone, aren't granting Joker any leeway. Like always.

Joker wasn't meeting his gaze. He still looks out, at their city. Out into the night, at something they cannot see. "No," he says. "But I had to, you know, eventually."

"Why, Joker. Why?"

Joker whips his head around, his now-wet, now-blond hair whipping around too, and sticking in tendrils to his ruined face.

"Because--ha-ha, because, like there's a reason instead of just, like, a compelling force. Batsy. Listen. This is the main narrative thread, you know. We do not exist outside of it. Not beyond each other. I was the first and I will be the last. For you. But for me. You were always the only." The last part was almost gasped.

He was whispering now. Joker never whispered.

"I was only pushing you further, Bruce. Further along. We try as hard as we can to spin our wheels forever. Spin in circles, smile spirals. Stay where we are and how things are, always. Because the end is more terrible than you can possibly imagine."

Suddenly he smiled. On the man he once was, maybe, that beautiful golden boy, it might have been rakish. Charming. On him now it was chilling. Repulsive. "But why worry about that now, eh Bruce? Batsy, Batman, Bats," he said, and that old familiar sneering, whining, drawling was back. "Like I said."

"I think we'll be doing this forever more. If not always."

For all Joker's empty words, for all the cold and the chill of the light, and the crunch of glass still, this was new territory for Bruce. Because even if Joker wasn't right, he believed what he was saying. Even if Joker was wrong, it was Bruce he was trying to speak to, not Batman. Or rather, not just Batman.

He was trying to talk to him. To drag Bruce down with him. Or pull him out of danger. Bruce wasn't sure. To be fair, Joker wasn't certain either.

Suffice to say that neither man had healthy ways of relating.

"You can't believe that," Batman said.

"You can't pretend you don't," the Joker retorted.

There was a pause, a hesitation. The drizzle continued undeterred, and only Gotham was looking on, light sterile as any sociopath.

Because remember. This wasn't intimacy. This is only blurring boundaries. Broken-glass identities. Sharing scars.

It was Bruce who put his hand on the other man's face, to keep their eyes meeting. Too see how much was calculated and how much was genuine, on both their parts. It was the Joker who gave the little sneer smile and grabbed Bruce's wrist--to yank it away, Bruce thought, to try and twist it, but instead just held it there. For a beat too long.

It was impossible to tell which man jerked closer first.

But whoever did, it was the other man who closed the embrace, who planted a long hard sexless kiss on the other man's mouth.

It was held for several seconds, both man's hands gripping hard into the skin of the other, indicating more passion than the simple kiss.

Remember. This was not intimacy.

Not precisely.

But it would keep Bruce Wayne up at night more than anything that ever troubled Batman. Maybe Joker knew this. But then again, maybe it would bother him even more.

Joker pulled back first, and he smiled, his scars twisting. "Oh Batsy. You know why I keep coming back to you?"

Bruce was too shocked to come up with an appropriate answer.

"Here's why," Joker said, patting his shoulder companionably. "And here's why ya let me. Because I let you believe there is something you can hurt. And you let me believe there is something that can actually hurt me." He grinned. "Isn't that hilarious?"

"You need to leave," Bruce said.

"I know," Joker said. "Anyway, I'm done here. For now." He fished a long rope from somewhere in his jacket and handed one end to Bruce. "Hold this," he said, "I'm just gonna let myself out." He nodded his head toward the empty window. "And here you just thought I was being dramatic."

Batman said nothing, just wrapped the rope around his arm several times, pointedly, to show it was braced.

Joker ran his hand though his hair, smoothing it back as much as he could. "Got it? Good. See you later, darling."

He climbed out, climbed down. Bruce watched him disappear into the night, into nothing. He remained silent, staying at the broken window for some time.

Sometimes there is nothing left to do. Sometimes there is nothing left to say. Sometimes that is all there is, always, is nothing.

No rainbow. No cellar door.

But.

Oh playmate

I cannot play with you

My dolly's got the flu

Boo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo

Ain't got no rainbow

Ain't got no cellar door

But we'll be jolly friends

Forevermore

********************

A/N

Haha, remember me? No seriously I exist. I missed you, I missed this, etcetera.

Sorry about the gap. I've been in and out of the hospital, which like sounds really exciting and dramatic and angsty but like anyone with illnesses knows, really it's just interminable boredom and expense times a million. Oh well. What can you do. Everything's going better now.

This story was extremely enjoyable to write. I hope so much you enjoyed it too. These characters are just distractingly dear to me. This last chapter seems different to me in tone somehow, which I can only attribute to a background of TV on the Radio instead of Devendra. (Please do not mock my music. It's SXSW this week and I am completely swept up in the hipster nonsense.)

Oh. Also. Verses are some kid's song, for those out of the country readers. Pretty sure it's American, but I could be completely wrong provided I am not even like remotely sure what the title is.

ANYWAYS.

I hope you enjoyed it.

Love, Dollfayce.

A/N the second.

Obviously I was really sleepy when I posted this because it was RIFE with typos and incorrect usage. RIFE I SAY. So that's all been fixed now.

(It has, right? Gah. Even now I am seized with insecurity)

Enjoy!