A/N: After their fight, I decided to give them a chapter that was relatively fluffy. Main plot will continue next chapter. Yes, I do actually have a plot in mind for this, believe it or not! ;) This chapter is a direct result of watching Disney movies with my cousins right after watching Dark Knight.
Random fact of the day: the word brunet refers to a man with brown hair, while brunette refers to a woman. Same with blond and blonde.
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"We are here and it is now. The way I see it is, after that, everything tends towards guesswork."
~ Terry Pratchett
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If asked, the vast majority of Gotham, and, indeed, the world, would have said Bruce Wayne was completely out of touch with real life. They would have been entirely wrong. Actually, Bruce made sure he knew what was going on in his city at any given moment. If there was a robbery or murder, he was among the first to know, and Batman was among the first to arrive. His devotion bordered on obsession at times, but short of listening to the police scanner twenty-four/seven, the news was the best way to stay up to date – Gotham news anchors seemed to have a sixth sense when it came to disasters. This was why there was a TV in nearly every room of the penthouse, every one of them set to news channels.
The one in the study, though, had gotten messed up. Someone, and Bruce had more than a sneaking suspicion of who, had switched it to a channel showing old horror movies, and he was having trouble resetting it.
Bruce probably could have just moved to the next room and watched the news there. He didn't particularly want to though. He liked the study, and he would have to reset the TV at some point, he might as just well do it now.
He was still searching for the newscast when Jack wandered in a few minutes later. Bruce wasn't too surprised. It had only been two days since they'd made up, and both of them were still reluctant to let the other out of their sight for more than a few hours at a time. This made their nighttime excursions rather difficult, but for tonight, they were off the hook. Yet another late autumn rainstorm had blown in, and the combination of gale-force winds, slippery concrete, lashing rain, and temperatures just barely above freezing had forced Batman to call it quits. It was only a little past one a.m., and he was already home.
It was frustrating, not being able to be out and active, but, as he fiddled with the remote, he had to admit he could use the sleep. The normally ineffective police were proving entirely too good at searching for Batman, and sleep was something that had been in increasingly short supply lately.
A moment later, Jack had sprawled out next to him on the leather couch, perfectly at ease.
"Whatcha doin'?"
"Looking for the news," Bruce replied, watching him with interest. He never just sat. He might sprawl, flop, lounge, loll, laze, or recline, but he never sat. Jack, Bruce decided, was the only person he knew who could turn the relatively simple, usually passive act of resting your weight on a chair into a full-body activity.
"All right," Jack grinned. "You do that, an' I'll watch you, just in case ya do somethin' entertaining."
Bruce rolled his eyes and went back to flicking through the channels. Basketball games, an old action movie, a talking lion, a game show with a canned laughter track, a boxing match…wait, a talking lion?
He went back a few channels, just in time to hear the last chords of "Circle of Life" fade out. Ah. The Lion King.
"I haven't seen this in forever," Bruce commented, pausing a moment to watch the brightly colored graphics flit across the TV. Must be some twenty-odd years since he'd last watched a Disney movie. Jack stared at the screen in fascination.
"What is this?" he asked as the animated lions assembled. Bruce gaped at him.
"Don't tell me you've never seen The Lion King!"
"Not that I r'member, anyway," he mumbled, still watching the old movie. "Can we watch this instead?"
Which was how Bruce Wayne, billionaire by day, vigilante by night, Gotham City's public enemy number two, found himself watching a Disney cartoon with public enemy number one.
Jack, interestingly enough, seemed utterly mesmerized by it. He watched with rapt attention as Simba and Nala got chased into the Elephant Graveyard. The hyenas drew a low chuckle, but not much more than that. He was being unusually quiet. Bruce had never actually seen him sit still for so long.
"The colors in this are great," he said finally, just when Bruce was beginning to wonder if Jack had learned to sleep with his eyes open.
Jack never failed to surprise him.
"The colors?"
"Yep," Jack nodded. "Too many movies try to go monotone, an' it jus' doesn't work. Ya need a little color. Why d'you think I wear what I wear? Batboy was a nice, solid, boring black, and, uh, Saredy-crow wasn't much better."
"I always just assumed you liked purple," Bruce told him, smiling.
"Well, yeah, I do," Jack admitted, "but I wear more than jus' purple. Red an' green and blue…"
"You haven't got all the colors though," Bruce mused. "No yellow, for one thing…"
"I don't like yellow," he shrugged. "Too…peppy. Ugh. Makes me think of sunshine an' daisies and people being cheerful, an' all that crap."
"Orange then?"
"Only," Jack smirked, "for Halloween, and never in clothes." Too much time in Arkham would ruin orange for anyone, and those jumpsuits were a particularly hideous shade of carroty red. He could think of so many ways to improve them, but no on ever asked his opinion.
"Pink?" Bruce asked lightly.
Instantly, Jack scowled and muttered something under his breath about cotton candy. Bruce decided to drop the subject and went back to watching The Lion King instead.
Jack might have liked the movie, but Bruce soon found himself focusing less and less on the animated lions, and more and more on the man next to him. It had been years since he'd last seen the cartoon, but he remembered most of the plot. He found Jack considerably more interesting to watch. Without the makeup smothering his face, his expressions were surprisingly subtle, and Bruce was pleased to find that he was learning to read Jack's features. That slight lift of the eyebrows meant he was interested, when he pursed his lips he was thinking, the edges of the scars twisting meant he was annoyed or frustrated…
He discovered, to his surprise, that he hardly noticed the scars anymore. They were just part of his face now, like his eyebrows or his nose. Now that the shock of their appearance had worn off, he found himself taking note of the rest of Jack's face, noticing that both of his ears were pierced, and the way his nose was slightly flattened, as though it had been broken.
The scars did still interest him though. He knew a fair bit about scars and scar tissue, having a number of them himself, and he knew that the younger you were when you got a scar, the more it faded as you grew older. The scars around Jack's mouth were badly healed and very, very obvious, so he couldn't have gotten them any earlier than age twenty or so, maybe late teens if you wanted to stretch it. At the same time though, scars like that must make it difficult to speak, or even move your mouth, and Jack seemed to have no problems talking. He must have had them for a few years then, long enough to get used to them and adapt.
Still lost in his thoughts, Bruce noticed a smudge of white paint that had resisted all of Jack's attempts at washing his face, and absently wiped it off. As he did though, he caught sight of Jack's nose, and stopped dead.
Freckles. Scattered across the bridge of his nose, the Joker had freckles. Not many, and they were very light, but still. You did not expect the greatest criminal mastermind the city had ever seen to have freckles at all.
Up until now, in his mental dictionary, under the heading 'bizarre,' the memory of that one college party had taken pride of place. The one he had gone to by accident, with the English major, and the socks, and the octopus... Even by his standards, it was weird. Now though, he might have to reconsider.
He was sitting on the couch watching a Disney animation at two a.m. with the Joker, whom he was currently dating, whom he had suddenly noticed had freckles.
"Somethin' wrong, Bats?" Jack asked, noticing his scrutiny.
"No," Bruce said instantly. "Just thinking."
Jack shrugged and went back to watching the movie, and Bruce went back to watching him.
The study was one of the inner rooms in the penthouse, but Bruce could hear the continuing rainstorm, the pounding roar turned to a gentle tapping by the distance. Where a month ago it might have set his teeth on edge, now he enjoyed it. It seemed to have a soporific effect on both of them though. By the time the credits rolled, Bruce was yawning, and he thought Jack might possibly have been asleep.
"We sleepin' here, or are we gonna have to get up?" Jack mumbled, without opening his eyes.
Maybe not asleep then.
"Bedroom," Bruce yawned back. "Couch isn't big enough for both of us." Jack shrugged, and dragged himself off the couch and down the hall after him, still thinking about the cartoon.
Bruce might not have been watching the old movie, but Jack was, and from what he knew of Bruce Wayne's past, he couldn't help but notice certain…similarities. Bruce as a lion…well, it certainly wasn't the best comparison - he preferred chiroptera - but it was a workable metaphor.
The only problem was that the movie ended too soon. It never said what happened to Simba. He made a choice, he came home…and it ended. Assumedly, it all worked out, and he lived happily ever after with all his lion friends, a nice, pretty little fairy tale ending.
If there was one thing Jack was certain of, apart from knives are fun and Batman is even more fun, it was that there was no such thing as a fairy-tale ending. No way of telling how this story would end, but it would not be with a happily-ever-after-forever-and-ever-amen.
A sudden, rather unpleasant, thought came lancing through the haze of sleep. Joker existed because Batman existed. Without a Bat around, there wouldn't be a Clown Prince. But did it work the other way too, or was one villain as good as another? How much would it really affect the Batman if the Joker were gone for good? Bruce might miss Jack, but Joker and Batman, he wasn't sure about. And it seemed Bruce was still having problems with the reality of his dual identities. If Joker defined himself by his opposite, and his opposite wasn't sure who he was, what did it mean for Jack?
"Hey Brucey?" Jack mumbled, half asleep.
"Yeah?"
" You're Simba o' course, so duzzat make me Scar, or Timon?"
"Actually," Bruce smirked after a moment of thought, "I think that makes you Ed the hyena."
Jack managed a deranged cackle before his eyes shut completely.
A month ago, Bruce marveled as he climbed into bed, if he'd been asked that question, he'd have said Scar in a heartbeat. Now though, he wasn't so sure. Jack was sadistic, and he was still the biggest villain Gotham's long and illustrious history of crime, but he wasn't the pure evil that Bruce had first thought. It wouldn't be fair to cast him as Scar straight off. But at the same time, he was much, much more than just the comic relief, or a tagalong sidekick. He was a different character entirely, a bizarre mix of the two: scars and laughter, villain and victim, friend and enemy, plotting and pratfalling, all rolled together in unequal measure to get…Bruce wasn't sure exactly what. Jack. The Joker. Some combination of the two. Just like he was now a combination of Bruce Wayne and Batman…
That was the last conscious thought he had for a while. Within seconds of collapsing into bed, he was enjoying one of the first untroubled rests he'd had in a week, lulled by the sound of rain.
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When Jack woke up a few hours later, it was to find that Bruce was still asleep next to him and the rainstorm was over. On an impulse, he checked the nearest clock. 5:16. Still early. Plenty of time left to pull off a prank. He'd been lazy these last few days, too busy sulking to be out causing chaos, and it was time to get back in the game. Gotham needed a wakeup call every now and again, and he was the perfect person to provide it.
He wasn't quite ready to get up though, not just yet, and allowed himself a long moment to drink in the sight of the man beside him. Bruce's normally impeccable hair was mussed, sticking up in odd tufts around his head like some demented brunet hedgehog. He looked much younger than when he was awake, with the lines in his face smoothed away by sleep. It was easier to see the carefree man he pretended to be. Jack traced a single finger across his chin, for so long the only feature he'd been able to see under the Batmask, before bringing it up to Bruce's slightly parted lips. Half the girls in this godforsaken city would kill for one kiss from those lips, and a chance with their owner. But they were his. His Bat. No one else's.
He leaned in closer, breathing in the unmasked Batman's scent. Bruce smelled like no one else he had ever encountered before, a peculiar blend of coffee, sweat, cologne, and leather. While Jack might not have enjoyed each of those smells on their own, mixed, they were surprisingly pleasant, and absolutely perfect for Batman.
Struck by a sudden thought, he checked the clock again, and relaxed. 5:25. He had time. He had another hour and a half before showtime; he could make it, if he got moving now. Time to become the Joker.
He emerged from the bathroom a few minutes later, Gotham's Clown Prince of Crime from his boots to his seaweed green hair. After a week's break, he was ready for some action. Time to show this two-bit town just how inventive he could be.
Sliding the glass door open, he stepped out onto the balcony. He hadn't put his blazer or coat on yet, and the air was deliciously smooth and cool against his skin. When he inhaled, he could taste the sweet, cold tang of rainwater in the air. The storm must've only just ended.
The Gotham skyline, dazzlingly bright despite the late hour, drew his eyes. Must be why Batsy chose this hangout, he decided, vaulting casually over the plexiglass safety rail to get a better look, so he wouldn't be far from his beloved dumping ground we call a city. Bats could never leave this place. He might tell himself that someday it would be over, someday he could disappear as quickly as he'd come, but Joker knew better. Bruce was tied to this hell on earth; he always would be. He'd made his mission to save the condemned city, and it would swallow him down without a second thought. He could never truly save it, and so he could never leave it. Batman couldn't put away the cowl.
The cold air began to feel too cold, the chill sinking in past his skin to the layer of muscle underneath. Without looking away from the gleaming, twisted skyline, Joker shrugged his coat on, still balanced on the wrong side of the railing.
He had to admit, it was beautiful. Seen like this, from far away, the whole city glittered like a jewel, the streets still pulsing with life in spite of how late – or early – it was. For a moment, it looked like any other city.
Sometimes, like now, he could almost understand whatever it was Bruce saw in this place. Gotham, he reflected idly, was like a bunch of children playing. There was nothing more beautiful, more innocent, and more perfect…provided you were watching it from a distance, and didn't get close enough to see the layer of inherent viciousness that ran through the beauty, corrupting it from the inside out.
Enough nostalgia, he decided finally. This city might be Bruce's heart and soul, but it was his playground, and his latest misdemeanor was waiting. Time to expose a little of the corruption. Even Bats wouldn't be able to fault him for this one.
Probably.
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"I think I'll dismember the world and then I'll dance in the wreckage."
~ Neil Gaiman
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A/N: Just so's you know, Bruce's octopus incident is borrowed from a story my cousin claims to have witnessed. I'm not just making it up off the top of my head.
If you're wondering about Jack's aversion to pink and cotton candy, go read Could You Try To Mime It Out? by Keeper-of-the-Cheese. Poor Jack. :D
Heath Ledger really did have pierced ears. You can see it in the screenshot where Joker's dressed as a policeman. Oh, and chiropteran is the classification for bats.
