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Joker was lounging in one of the Manor’s smaller sitting rooms, sitting sideways with his long legs propped against the chair’s arm. A cup of coffee that was more cream than actual coffee sat cooling on the table beside him. There was barely room for it with the amount of nail polish bottles that crowded the space.
He’d chosen neon today, every nail a different color. The sweatpants he was wearing, which used to be one of Bruce’s until Joker said that all his clothes were boring and upended a bucket of paint onto them, were baggy and cuffed in thick rolls around his ankles. The baby blue robe Bruce had gotten him for Christmas was slipping from his shoulders, its folds of sheer fabric and fur lining pooling in his lap as he bent almost double to reach around his pulled up knees.
Lingering against the door jamb, Bruce watched him with a soft smile. Savoring the way the rare Gotham sunlight poured in through the tall windows, setting the edges of his sleep mussed hair aflame in neon green. Alabaster skin looking ethereal and glowing.
Joker didn’t even seem to be aware of his presence, wholly focused on his task as he swapped polishes without looking at what color he got. His tongue poked in concentration past his pale lips dyed a delectable pink from so many years of red lipstick not removed properly.
Finally Joker glanced up with a wide grin, “Are you going to come in or are you just going to keep hovering in the shadows of the doorway?”
Bruce huffed, smile dropping, but he claimed the armchair opposite Joker’s anyway. Waiting patiently for Joker’s full attention as he painted his pinkietoe a bright pink.
Twisting the cap back on the bottle with a sharp snap, he threw his legs fully over the arm to let the paint dry. Only then did he tip his head to look at Bruce, smiling brightly and waiting expectantly for the reason he was up before two in the afternoon.
Bruce leaned forward, smoothing a palm over the bruised knuckles of his other hand. Hardly a nervous tick on anyone else, but on Bruce it was as good as flashing neon signs that something was off. “What do you know about my family?”
Joker arched a perfectly shaped green eyebrow, confused by the question but answering baldly nonetheless, “Well, they’re dead.” Bruce’s eye twitched. Joker continued nonplussed, “And the more recent half of them don’t like to be in the same room as me… I think I’m growing on Dick though.” He said with a sly smile.
The corner of Bruce’s mouth ticked upward in exasperation that he refused to acknowledge as fond, saying with what he considered a monumental amount of patience, “Yes. But my extended family, on my mother’s side, is huge. Anyway, they’re having a family reunion later this week.”
When Joker didn’t say anything, Bruce glanced up. He found Joker’s face entirely closed off. Eyes narrowed, heated with a manic, pissed off kind of light. Jaw tensed, and lips pursed. His body hadn’t shifted from its relaxed sprawl but now all the power held in his lithe muscles pulled across his wiry frame as taut as the spring in a loaded gun. There was no hint of his usual smile, angry or otherwise.
Bruce said in a careful, reserved tone, “Joker?”
Joker looked like he was gearing up for an explosive reaction, silently seething. Bruce sat tensed, waiting. This could range from a mere screaming match to a physical attack.
After a few tense moments Joker finally spat, “So, what? You're telling me this so that when you leave I won’t burn the city down to blackmail you back into my arms? You think I'm that much of an attention whore?” He scoffed, leveling a livid scowl at Bruce, “Well, fuck you. Go if you want, I don't care!”
Bruce’s mind jumped to the time he’d been called on a last minute Justice League mission and had informed Joker about it with a text just before he’d boarded the JL spaceship and had been gone. He’d gotten home to reports from his children that Joker had set up bombs in four different hospitals in an effort to get him to come home.
Bruce huffed soundlessly, he had to play this right. Trying to de-escalate a fight with Joker was like trying to move acid from one container to another while a volatile tiger paced behind you.
Bruce prayed he wasn’t making a mistake by initiating contact before Joker was ready for it. He took one of Joker's cold hands in both of his. It was shaking from the impending breakdown he was hurtling towards. “J, I'm telling you because I want you to go with me,” Bruce said, calm and collected, but not soothing or soft in any way Joker would find patronizing and condescending.
Joker’s brows were still drawn, face stony, so he kept going, “It's not because I'm just trying to stave off an emotional reaction to my carelessness.”
Joker laughed softly, tension uncoiling with it, “Therapy might not have worked on me but it sure has done wonders on you. Look at you go, communicating like a big bat!”
Bruce gave a warning growl but even to his own ears he could tell it sounded half-hearted.
Joker bit his lip, uncharacteristically hesitant, “And… you're sure you want me to go? You want to introduce me to your family?” His eyes darted away, restless fingers picking at the fluffy hem of his robe. “If you really were just telling me so you could go alone, I'll understand.”
“No you won’t,” Bruce smiled.
Joker smiled back at him, sharp and mischievous, “No, I won’t.”
Bruce stayed quiet, knowing he had more to say. His more honest anxiety held in the tense jut of his shoulders, the strain around the edges of his smile as he forcibly held it on his face, the twitch in his trigger finger, the way he surveyed the room, head swiveling skittishly, unfocused eyes searching the light and shadows in the corners.
“But… doing a whole happy families, meet the parents, thing. With me…” His eyes shifted to Bruce and away again.
Bruce couldn’t help but huff a laugh, even as he heard the hesitance hidden in Joker’s words, “They’re not exactly normal, but yes I want you to meet them.” He paused, wondering if that was too normal of a thing to ask of him, too domestic, if Joker was going to lash out, thinking he was trying to turn their relationship into something it wasn’t. “But if you’re not interested in doing that—”
“No! Don’t cancel. I want to go, and you’re taking me with you!” Joker brightened, squealing, “Ah, it’s been so long since we’ve gone on vacation together!”
Bruce’s expression flattened, exasperation tugging at his patience. The last time they “went on vacation together,” Bruce was tracking Joker’s bomb threats across Europe. It led to a night full of fireworks atop the Eiffel Tower. Joker called it their five year anniversary of officially being a couple. Bruce called it a pain in his ass that took him away from Gotham for two months too long.
“I’ll let them know they can expect us,” Bruce said.
Joker’s smile had relaxed but his fingers hadn’t settled, itching for the familiar weight of a gun in his hand.
Bruce laced their fingers together. “You’re gonna fit right in,” he said lightly.
~*~*~*~*~
The large front doors opened before they’d even fully climbed the front steps of the Addams family mansion. Lurch nodded in welcome to Bruce as he passed, his undead face warmed in a smile to see the boy again. The nod he gave to Joker was more formal but no less welcoming because of the hand he had tangled in Bruce’s. As Alfred passed into the hall, he and Lurch immediately clasped hands and retreated to the side of the foyer, conversing in low, familiar tones.
Lurch joined the family somewhere in the late eighteenth century after an ancestorial Addams saved him from a large burning pyre in the Arctic. They’d asked him his name and he’d frozen, his intelligent, glassy eyes wide in shock, like no one had ever asked him that before. He’d eventually answered, “Adam.” As in the first man created, the first of his kind with none other quite like him, alone, isolated with none other like himself. And the ancestral Addams had just exclaimed, “Brilliant! Welcome to the family!” Asking if he was really stitched together from corpses in avid fascination. And just like that, like it had always been that easy, he never had to be alone again. It had never been confirmed but it’s been said that they started going by Addams after that because of how happy he looked, because they were Adam’s family.
But that was mostly just hearsay that Bruce was pretty sure Pugsley and Wednesday made up when they were kids, similar to how they were the ones who christened him ‘Lurch.’
Joker hummed idly as he forced the coatrack to hold his hat despite how vehemently it resisted being forced to let something in such a garish purple hang off it. He paid it no mind as he looked at all the extravagant gothic architecture that was so similar to Wayne Manor, with bright eyes.
“Brucie,” Morticia called in her purring voice as she came in from the direction of the conservatory.
“Alfie! Bruce, my boy!” Gomez cried joyously as he bounded down the grand staircase.
Joker gasped, clutching at Bruce’s arm, “They’re as bat-like as you are!”
Bruce ignored him, saying in a much more subdued manner, “Auntie Morticia, Uncle Gomez.”
Gomez and Morticia met up at the base of the stairs, him pressing a kiss to her knuckles then the corner of her mouth, murmuring reverently in Spanish, “Querida Mia.” She smiled, cupping his cheek with a light touch as he lingered against her.
When they finally turned their attention to their newly arrived guests, they took in the riot of color beside Bruce with swiftly concealed surprise.
Bruce put a warm hand on his arm, saying straight faced and without elaboration, “This is Joker.”
Joker grinned at them, wide and sharp and excited.
He didn’t add anything more to Bruce’s statement and after a pause, it didn’t seem like they needed him to, welcoming him without hesitation.
Joker tensed for half a second, twirling around as he sensed a presence behind him thanks to the years he’d spent learning how to feel Batman appearing behind him. He faced a tall, bald man who was nearly as chalky white as him, with dark circles around his sunken eyes and a wide, closed mouth smile.
The man’s shifty eyes darted to where Alfred and Lurch were still sidelined together, offering unprompted, “They’re brothers, you know.”
Joker eyed the butler’s large stature, gray-green skin, and rows of neat stitches holding him together, and gave an entertained but noncommittal hum.
“Really more like cousins,” Bruce commented dryly, and the man laughed in agreement. “Uncle Fester, how are you?”
“Good, Bruce, good. Still afraid of bats, boy?”
“Haven’t managed to shake it, yet.” Bruce responded in a tone that said the two of them had this conversation every time they saw each other.
Fester laughed, wheezing and near hysterical.
Bruce said to Joker in a lowered voice, “You’ll meet a lot of them tonight, around here everyone is a cousin or uncle or unrelated relation to someone. Though, we rarely know who. I swear, every time I come to one of these things there are more people I’ve never met.”
Joker chuckled as Morticia asked Bruce, “Where is the rest of your brood? I miss my Great Nieces and Nephews.”
“Working,” Bruce said. “They’ve all got cases that’re keeping them, in Gotham or abroad, with their teams.”
Marticia smiled as she caught the pride and the hint of bittersweetness that accompanied it. A father proud of his kids but sad to see them go off without him. “Well, tell them they’re not to miss the next reunion. It won’t be permitted.”
Bruce’s mouth quirked, “Yes, Aunt Morticia.”
“It’s been years now since I’ve gotten to see them. The last time Jason was here he brought such a lovely aura of death to the house. It’s an especial shame we have to miss it another year… though,” She said, turning to Joker, “There is a hint of it lingering on him.”
Bruce’s jaw feathered, “Is there.” He said flatly.
Joker giggled, the sound bashful and as close to awkward as he was capable of. “Yes, well, there is probably a reason for that…” He went into the story, ignoring Bruce’s reaction and comfortably looping his arm through Morticia’s as they started walking further into the house.
Bruce took a deep breath and trailed after them, tuning Joker’s voice out. He joined in on the conversation between Gomez and Fester as they joined Morticia and Joker in the lavish sitting room. Lurch paired off from Alfred at the door, his thundering footsteps going in the direction of the kitchen to help Grandmama with the food preparation.
Alfred joined them on the couches, selecting a plush armchair beside Fester. Bruce sat next to Joker as Gomez took his spot beside his wife on the couch parallel to them. Morticia and Joker didn’t pause their conversation at their arrival, the topic now having moved into safer waters. Bruce was content to stay silent, still on the edge of brooding, and Gomez was watching Morticia talk with rapt attention. Joker scooted closer to Bruce, sliding under his arm and curling into his side. Smiling sunnily up at him, clearly happy at conversing so easily with her. Conversation was hard for him, filled with landmines that he tended to gleefully step on just to watch the explosion, between his violent tendencies and odd ways of saying things. But nothing he could say would cow Morticia, and the longer he talked with her the more apparent that was becoming.
Bruce gave a little sigh, pressing an endeared kiss to his temple. Any lingering tightness in his chest eased away under the endless fondness that those adoring eyes and beaming smile warmed to life in his chest.
Eventually Gomez turned, a glint in his eye, fingering the pommel of a sword, “Alfred, old chap. How’s your swordsmanship these days?”
Bruce tensed slightly. Joker felt the shift and let his hand fall to the knife concealed at his side.
Alfred gave a dry look, “I still prefer guns, Gomez, you’re not going to drag me into sword play this time.” Still, his eyes flicked to the two conspicuously placed sword wracks in the room, one beside Gomez’s couch and one beside Bruce’s.
Gomez laughed jovially, “Nonesense!” His smile was sharp. No one missed how his hand gripped the handle now, or how Alfred was tense beneath his placid facade.
Morticia gave Bruce an amused smile as he gently excused them, saying he was going to give Joker the tour. As they closed the doors behind them Bruce said in an aside to Joker, “They do this same song and dance every time. Trust me, you don’t want to be in the room when they do.”
Joker giggled, clasping Bruce’s hand and following him deeper into the house.
Bruce walked through the dark rooms and winding hallways with warm familiarity, telling Joker stories from his childhood spent here. The scant history he knew of the artifacts cluttering every room. The origin of the Alfred-Gomez showdown, how Gomez had originally challenged his father and he was doing so terribly that Alfred stepped in to help him. Gomez saw the skill Alfred possessed and was absolutely enamoured.
They were lingering in the back corner of the library where there was a large bay window piled thick with blankets and pillows. Bruce could remember the hours he’d spent curled up there, devouring books on martial arts, the lost art of paleontology for dragons, detective novels. “I spent almost as much of my life here as I did at the Manor. It was a big help for Alfred and me in the years after my parents.”
He sounded lost in thought and memory. Joker stayed silent, watching the memories play out like shadows behind those sharp blue eyes. After a minute he considered reaching for a knife to help snap him out of it, he was pretty sure he’d heard that was a thing, physical sensation to ground him in the present, or something. He palmed the knife. Just something sharp and sudden to shake off those pesky thoughts. It’d worked for him after all, the buzz of electricity doesn’t leave his teeth for hours afterwards.
Before he could lash out at Bruce’s unprotected middle, he blinked awake, eyes focusing on Joker and the obvious bulge of a knife gripped in his jacket pocket. Bruce gave him a lightly chiding look and tipped a book off the shelf, a secret door opening beside it. Joker gasped in delight. The steep, winding steps creaking ominously beneath their weight. The passageway let out on the second floor, near the bedrooms.
They walked down the hallway, Bruce pretending not to notice as Joker peered into every doorway they passed. Suddenly he froze, an abrupt, shocked laugh catching in his throat. “Brucie, I may just be off my meds but I’m pretty sure I just saw a disembodied hand scurry along the floor.”
Bruce huffed a laugh through his nose, tugging him along, “That’s Thing.”
Joker’s laughter echoed through the drafty halls of the house, shrill and giddy in a way that it had probably never heard before.
~*~*~*~*~
Their room was large, the one Bruce had stayed in for every visit since his parents first introduced him to the family. Not a thing in it had changed, from the old furniture carved from black wood, to the intricate wallpaper and dark panelling of the walls.
Bruce opened their bags as Joker moved to fiddle with the thick drapes that limited the amount of late day sunlight allowed into the room. He left the majority of the room in twilight but tugged open the ones covering the door to the small balcony to give light to the mirror where he’d be getting dressed.
Bruce strapped on the Batman armor piece by piece, relying mostly on muscle memory to guide him through the array of complicated hidden clasps and buckles. His attention was on Joker. On his focused, unsmiling face as he sunk into the routine of getting ready. It was a process Bruce very rarely got to see, it usually only being done in the privacy of a safehouse before a scheme. What came after was the part he was allowed to see, the theatricality and performance tangled up in the rush of the chase, not the intimacy of Joker removing his daytime makeup for something more dramatic, the cream he massaged into his hair to help style his curls, shedding his simple suit piece by piece to put on the one he’d sewn just for this occasion.
Joker started to close out his routine, the intense focus draining away, replaced seamlessly by his usual animated, manic energy. The quiet moments between shifts had always captivated Bruce. He knew it had something to do with the outfits, his carefully cultivated look, how Arkham took away every bit of Joker’s sense of self they could in an effort to rid him of his clown persona, and how every time he escaped again he’d have to go through the motions of putting himself back together. The clothes he made and the makeup he wore were the only way he could be himself, and when he took them off there was always a kind of anxious energy to get it all back in its rightful place again. Like there was an ingrained fear that when they were taken off there was a chance he’d never be able to put them on again.
Bruce was knocked out of his thoughts as Joker twisted and turned, humming under his breath and gleefully watching himself dance in the floorlength mirror. A smile pulled at his lips seeing Joker be so unconsciously happy, no performances or charades in sight.
Bruce came up behind him as he fussed with ruffles and tugged the last buttons into place. He looked beautiful, curls spilling artfully over one side of his forehead, eyes smudged with pink, the lipstick slashing up his cheeks a deep blood red rather than his usual cherry. Bruce’s hand slid into the space between Joker’s ribs and hipbone, gripping possessively. Joker had only accentuated the subtle dip that so perfectly fit the curve of Bruce’s palm, with the sharply tailored green vest and long purple jacket that pulled in just right at the slope of his waist before spilling behind him into folds and ruffles that were designed to flare and twirl with his movements.
He watched with no small amount of satisfaction as Bruce’s eyes slowly raked down his body. Hand flexing as his eyes snagged and lingered on the purple pants lined with thin vertical stripes that made his long legs look even longer. Joker hadn’t worn pinstripe in ages, had been saving it for a rainy day when he wanted to make an impact. He always knew how crazy it drove Bruce, even if at the time Bruce hadn’t.
“You like it, Batsy?” Joker asked coyly. He leaned back into the hard planes of armor, head lolling back to expose his pale throat and eyes going half lidded. The stark ring of his bright green eyelashes darkened the green of his irises alluringly. The talon tipped gauntlet flexed at his waist again. Joker’s smirk widened.
Bruce’s mouth ghosted over the side of his neck, his other hand sliding into place. The way his blue eyes were dark with focus made Joker thrill in the same addicting way as their game did. Bruce’s attention, the only drug Joker ever chased.
The exact shade of purple, the tone of the green, the patterns, the cuts, were reminding Bruce almost violently of their past. Of the early days in their relationship, when the flow of the dead started to ease and the times they’d end up having a halfway honest conversation in between the fighting started to grow in number. How Joker would trick him onto dates with fake bomb threats and even when Bruce knew they were fake, he’d still somehow convince himself to go. When Joker started putting as much time and effort into designing his outfits as he did planning his capers, and Bruce could hardly bring himself to acknowledge any of it half the time; the lessening of the senseless violence Joker indulged in or the complicated tidal wave of emotions that Bruce was drowning in.
Bruce silently took in the way the dying sunlight electrified his hair and shone across the colorful fabric, richening its color. Joker had always looked at home in the gloom, his brightness offsetting the gray of Gotham, his vibrancy always challenging, always refusing to conform to the gray people who lived there. In that way, he’d always reminded Bruce of his kids, not that he’d ever tell them that.
Joker fit with him, shining beautifully within the shadows Bruce had made his home in. He belonged there as surely as Bruce did. But there was something simply breathtaking about the way he glowed in a beam of sunlight.
Bruce wrapped him fully in his arms, tucking his face into Joker’s shoulder so only his eyes peeked out, “Yes,” he breathed, “Yes I do.”
Joker’s face seemed to freeze, registering devoted eyes and plain honesty where he’d been expecting wandering hands and a salacious remark. His face softened and he trailed his fingertips over the arms corded with muscle and scarring all covered up beneath thick plated leather. His touch was light, gentle as it traced the ridges and grooves of the worn but well maintained gauntlets.
It struck him as exceedingly strange that they’d become so domestic. The days they spent in the manor together, the slow mornings, the cases Joker would give his input on, their lives had become so melded together. Even now, Joker was attending something as trite as a family reunion, and yet the urge to break the moment and stab Bruce in the vulnerable space between the plates of armor hadn’t risen at all.
A giggle clogged in his throat. Strange.
Bruce met Joker’s twitching smile with a small one of his own, marvelling at the lanky form in his arms. Joker was a prickly ball of triggers on a good day. Seeing him like this, relaxed, trusting, held in his arms without a flicker of defiance in his eyes, it made Bruce want to go to his knees.
And despite it all, the years of compromise, the changes made, they were still somehow themselves. The stakes were different now, but the thrill of the chase had never left their blood. They were still them. Batman and Joker. The Clown Prince of Crime and his Dark Knight. J and Bruce.
Suddenly Joker brightened, twisting around in Bruce’s arms and tugging him over to the vanity. He shoved Bruce into the chair and straddled him without hesitation or worrying about balance. Bruce was looking at him with something close to exasperation, waiting to see what this was about.
“Hey,” Joker drew the word out with the cadence of someone about to ask for something. “Do you remember that time you were knocked out on painkillers and I drew all over your face?”
Bruce arched a brow, voice tinged with amusement as he said, looping his arms around Joker’s hips as he swayed precariously on the too small chair, “Yes, I do. It was permanent marker and I had a gala to attend in an hour and a half.”
Joker licked his lips, leaning in and toying with the hair at the nape of Bruce’s neck. Trying for distracting and seductive but missing it by a mile. “You remember how much you liked it?”
“Goth was not the look I would’ve chosen to schmooze with rich old white people.”
Joker huffed, tired of the game. He planted his face on Bruce’s shoulder, looking up at him with pleading eyes, murmuring with an audible pout in his voice, “Batsy Darling, let me do your makeup?”
Bruce stared at him, debating if he could get out of this.
Joker said with a growing smile, like he was sweetening the deal, “I’ll do it in real makeup, not marker this time.”
“As long as it’s black,” Bruce sighed, fondness blooming in his chest.
Joker’s ecstatic grin split his face in half. Bruce resolutely kept his face blank and vaguely scowly. If Joker thought he was doing this for any other reason than him, he’d never be able to leave the house without Joker badgering him into doing it again.
Darkness had fallen by the time the bell sounded to signal the start of the party and the arrival of the first guests. Joker excitedly dragged Bruce from their room and down the hall, having given him the most extravagant smokey eye Bruce would allow him to. They started down the main staircase when Wednesday emerged from the hall across from theirs. Pausing on the landing, they watched her glide down towards them.
She was in a high collared gown, made entirely of ornate black lace. Buttons lined the front of the dress, running from the cinched tight collar to the bottom hem. Skirts the color of old bone peeked through the lace as she moved. She was fiddling with the buttons along her wrist, pulling the cuff tight. Her severe face was bare of any trace of makeup and her flat black hair was twisted into a tight knot at the base of her skull.
She greeted Bruce in her usual neutral way, voice carrying in the empty space of the foyer, “Batman.”
Bruce smiled, saying warmly, “Hello, Wednesday.”
Wednesday had referred to Bruce exclusively as Batman for nearly the entire time they’d known each other, it being the name he chose for himself. Bruce could remember the night he’d told her, the two of them curled up side by side in a private corner of the house late at night. She listened silently, dark eyes alert and attentive, free of judgment, as he broke down. Whispering his grief, anger, and guilt, confessing the resolution he’d held onto for the rest of his life. Telling her his true name, the one that was born of fear and rage and the haunting, world shattering, sound of a gunshot echoing off the walls of a grimy alleyway; the name that would become synonymous with justice in a city that had none. She had never called him anything else since.
Joker’s eyes flicked between them as Wednesday came to a stop in front of Bruce. There was a warmth in Bruce’s voice, a light in his eyes, that wasn’t present when they’d met the others. The weight and comfort of years was thick in the air between them. Joker had a feeling he was meeting the favorite cousin.
She angled her head as she stared at Joker with unblinking, flat eyes. Joker guessed it would be unnerving to most, the way the light seemed unable to reflect on their dark surface. After a minute she said without inflection, “You must be Joker.”
Joker gave a bow, taking her hand and brushing the barest hint of a kiss to the knuckles. “Bruce has told me so much about you! Except for the fact that I’ve never heard anything about you, even though you’re obviously his favorite.”
Her lips curved upward, “Wednesday Addams.” She introduced herself, then she turned and swept down the last stretch of stairs and was gone in the direction of the ballroom.
Bruce huffed a laugh, rolling his eyes. Joker followed him down the stairs, grinning and looking very pleased with himself. In the hallway leading towards the largest room in the house, already echoing with music and chatter, they walked over a white bear skin rug.
“Careful,” Bruce warned just before it snapped at his heels.
Joker cackled in delight, immediately playing with it. Jumping in and out of biting range as it snarled, baring its teeth and lunging at him.
Bruce smiled, waiting patiently off to the side for him to lose interest.
By the time they’d made it to the ballroom, it had already halfway filled up with the extended Addams family. Alfred was already there, dressed in a fresh suit, the best one he owned, talking to Cousin Itt and his wife Margaret.
Bruce and Joker made it one rotation around the room, with Bruce quietly introducing Joker to the rest of the family, before Bruce was dragged off in one direction by an insistent aunt and Joker skipped off in the direction of the snack table. It was awhile before Bruce was given a break from being dragged around by relatives who claimed they hadn’t seen him since he was here with his parents.
Wednesday, Bruce, and Pugsley stood at the edge of the dancefloor, watching the dancers. Gomez and Morticia had hardly left the floor all night. It was beautiful. Their yearning for each other still clear as day, prominent and borderline obscene, despite all their years of marriage. Love and desire burning like hellfire in their hooded eyes as they watched each other through every spin and dip, every one of Gomez’s heated kisses placed with ravenous adoration to Morticia’s ghostly skin. It reminded Bruce with a shocking jolt of how Joker tended to kiss him. The hunger, the heat. The savoring reverence in the soft press of lips to pale skin. How despite the adoration, there was no restraint, no hesitation in the nip of teeth, no fear that in their desperation they would break under the weight of their affection.
Bruce’s attention kept snagging on Joker across the room, despite Wednesday and Pugsley talking around him. The flash of color in the monochromatic room was startling. His bright smiles and joyful laughter as he talked with anyone who had the courage to approach the loud riot of color. He was fascinated by these people, just as Bruce knew he would be. Their eccentricities, their shameless joy in the dark. He loved how he seemed to fit with this side of Bruce’s family, even if he’d never admit to the simple joy of belonging, claiming to be above it. But still, it seemed his eyes wandered back to Bruce as often as Bruce’s wandered back to his.
The only real difference between Joker and Gomez, Bruce mused, was that Gomez was so settled in his relationship. Joker was still all wild, sharp edges. Constantly, desperately seeking Bruce’s attention, in a holdover from their violent relationship before they got together. Before the compromises and their sharp edges blunting against each other enough that they could be together without the need to draw blood. Back when Joker had to fight tooth and nail for Bruce’s undivided attention.
Wednesday knew Bruce’s brooding face and was content to wait out his train of thought, but Pugsley had no such patience. He knocked his shoulder into Bruce’s, eyes tracking Joker and grinning approvingly, “Isn’t he the mass murderer we hear about on the tv?”
Bruce clicked his tongue, “The very one.”
Pugsley nodded once, decisively, “I’m going to go ask him about the Bowrey Traintrack Murders!” Completely ignoring Bruce’s call after him of, “He didn’t even do those ones!”
Wednesday hummed in agreement, “Everyone knows those were done by Scarecrow.” She paused before saying thoughtfully, “He’s a good choice. Joker. Your madnesses match. I see his soul reflected in yours.”
Bruce couldn’t help but smile, “He’s been saying that since the first time we fought.”
They stood in silence together, straight backed and expressions somber, in an almost exact mirror of their youth. These parties had always been filled with bright candlelight glinting off the chandeliers and the roar of the boisterous Addams clan, and they would often find each other for a pocket of comfortable silence while they watched the dancing for a while. It was comfortable, their companionship stretching like a well worn glove around them.
“Is there anyone for you?” Bruce asked.
Wednesday replied, “I have no interest in having a soulmate.” She hesitated for the briefest moment, eyes flickering to him and away again, pondering over the twisting form of her parents as they waltzed and kissed. “I sometimes wonder if my parents will understand that… lack of want. Considering what they have.”
Bruce made a thoughtful sound, “They may not understand, but that won’t stop them from encouraging your happiness. In whatever form that takes.”
She wordlessly hummed, nodding as she turned his words over in her mind. She'd needed to hear it, even if she already knew it to be true. Abruptly she asked, “Dance with me, Batman?”
Bruce smiled and took her offered hand, knowing it was as close to a thank you as she came.
They danced the next two dances together before Joker came up with a sharp edged smile and all but demanded Bruce’s attention again. Wednesday paired off with another one of her cousins as Bruce pivoted and took Joker in his arms. They melted into the grand, sweeping waltz of the Addams family twirling in their extravagant formal wear.
Bruce led Joker through deep turns and sharp twists, his lanky form effortlessly elegant as he threw himself into the steps. The movement came as naturally as their midnight trysts across the rainslick Gotham rooftops did. Their dance seeming in sync, despite the push and pull that made up the core of their relationship. They anticipated each other’s movements, no matter how erratically Joker responded to the sweep of the dance, Bruce was able to move with him and guide them through the dense tangle of people crowding the floor.
Joker twisted, pivoting them off balance, and Bruce deftly rolled with him into the space at the center of the dance floor. Joker’s eyes flicked up seductively to look at him through the fan of green lashes, mouth curling distractingly. Bruce’s gaze dipped to his glossy, painted lips. They pulled into a savage grin as he slipped a knife from his sleeve.
The music swelled, gowns swirling by in a blur as both men tensed.
Bruce dodged the flash of quicksilver like it was second nature. Grabbing Joker’s bony wrist, he twisted his arm up and back, pulling him in closer. Joker hitched a leg around Bruce’s hip, dropping the knife into his other hand and slashing up towards Bruce’s exposed middle.
He lurched back, catching Joker’s hand and twirling him, pulling him against the sturdy wall of his chest. Joker leaned back into him. Holding his straining arms securely, Bruce pressed a line of hot kisses to the arched side of his neck.
Joker moaned, arching, hooking a foot behind Bruce’s knee as he shifted to keep them balanced. Twisting, Joker caught him in a dip, blade slipping up to the vulnerable material at his throat.
Bruce growled, snapping his knee up into Joker’s bared side, cape flaring as Joker faltered with a laugh and he twisted away. Joker made to lunge forward, spidery limbs almost trembling with vicious glee. Bruce halted the explosive attack with a solid punch straight into his nose.
Fire built in Bruce’s chest, warmth curling around his spine and in his gut. Adrenaline sang in his eager muscles beside the thrum of the orchestra, a fierce grin pulling at his lips to match Joker’s. They fought with springcoiled muscles, tight and controlled as they twisted around each other in a flurry of blocks and blows, keeping their fight contained to the small pocket of dancefloor allowed to them. The swoosh of their draping coat and cape seeming no different from the dramatic sweep of flowing skirts from the dancers all around them.
The music crested as they found themselves at an impasse; pressed chest to chest, locked together in twin holds they couldn’t break out of without breaking bones, Joker’s knife poised over Bruce’s cheek, and Bruce’s gauntlet spikes pressed to the opposite side of Joker’s exposed throat. Their tangled forms strained with tension, both trying fruitlessly to get closer even as they were pressed together. Hot breath mingled in the scant space between them as their chests heaved together.
The slender knife was only just held back from drawing beautiful lines of red across the pale skin of Bruce’s face. The tendons in Joker’s wrist twinged in pain with how much he wanted to give Bruce a matching smile.
His breath turned shallow, the expression on his face nothing short of rapturous, as Bruce turned his head and took the knife from his suddenly weak grip, the blade between his teeth. There was unfathomable hunger in Bruce’s dark irises as he stared directly into the swirling depths of Joker’s eyes, the same glowing green as the toxic vat of chemicals he’d been thrown into the day both their lives changed forever.
Bruce held his gaze as he spat the knife carelessly to the side. Joker exhaled shakily, pupils blowing wide and lids growing heavy.
Then they were kissing, brutal, demanding, needing, a clashing of tongues and teeth and hunger. Their fight flowed like the rapids in a river, violent and thrashing over the rocks, but its course was well worn. This, they still experienced like it was new, breathless and clutching and stoking the flames of desire with every move.
Joker licked at a nick Bruce had gotten at the corner of his mouth from the knife. Bruce groaned at the sting, nipping harshly at Joker’s bottom lip in retaliation. They panted, dizzy with desire as adrenaline gave way to unfettered lust. Their bodies molding together, the hard angles and sharp edges they could never soften for anyone else, slotting easily together. They were lost in the raw attraction pulling them together, turning the sloppy smearing of spit and red lipstick searing hot.
They parted reluctantly, foreheads pressed together and breath shaky, to the sound of the thunderous applause of the entire Addams clan. Bruce glanced around, his expression going deadpan as he realized Joker had tricked him into a show. Gomez was clapping loudest of all, shouting, “Bravo! Bellissima!” Morticia was smiling amusedly, clapping sedately beside her husband.
“Hm.” Bruce grunted, his eyes scowling and still lust clouded. Joker just smiled impishly at him, pressing a wet kiss to the leather of Bruce’s palm.
He huffed, tugging the tailored purple glove from Joker’s hand. Pressing a neat kiss to the same spot Joker had kissed on him. He lingered over the soft skin at the center, that had remained soft despite the calluses that ringed it along the fingers from years of handling knives and guns. Joker’s fingertips curled to press under his jaw, gentle and coaxing. Bruce dipped a soft stroke of his tongue along the spot before trailing a few more kisses up his wrist.
Joker bit his lip, tangling their hands together in a firm grip. He turned on his heel and abruptly led Bruce to the nearest bathroom. Bruce asked what he was doing. Joker answered, lipstick smeared lips pulling up into a smirk, “To fix my makeup.” His eyes were heavy with promise. Bruce’s cape flared behind him as he quickened his pace.
When they finally returned to the ballroom, lipstick wiped clean and clothes straightened, they were intercepted by Wednesday. Her mouth was quirked in the slightest smile as she took Joker’s hand to lead him back onto the dance floor. Bruce thought he heard her tell Joker as they waltzed away, “Vampire bats french kiss with mouthfuls of blood to deepen their social bonds.”
Joker responded with a pleased hum, “I’ll have to try that with Bruce.”
Bruce shook his head with a grimace. He could see it all too clearly, the only question was if it would be Joker’s blood or someone else’s. He made his way over to Morticia who was still watching the dancers. Her eyes, always so depthless and glittering, were glossed over with a sheen of tears. There was love and well-worn sorrow in her face as she looked at him.
“How your parents would have loved to see this.”
Bruce swallowed back against the instinctive throat-tightening flood of grief, rage, and pain, to say dryly, “See someone finally bringing some color into the family?”
Morticia arched an elegant eyebrow, “He is a colorful one, isn’t he?” Her inflectionless voice was colored with something like disdain.
Bruce angled his head, blue eyes bright with restrained laughter, “He’s psychotic enough to make up for it, believe me.”
She hummed an amused laugh. “They would have loved you bringing another psychopath into the family, your mother moreso than your father,” She added in an aside, seeming almost puzzled, “But he was always a tad strange,” before continuing, “But that’s not what I am talking about, Little Bat. After. Despite all the beautiful darkness you surrounded yourself with, I knew how grieved you were.” She cupped his cheek in a gentle hand, “I’m sure they’re rolling in their graves overjoyed to see you so happy again.”
Bruce’s jaw clenched as he fought the burning in his eyes. “They were so happy together…”
“Our family has been blessed with an extraordinary number of soulmate matches,” Morticia hummed, turning away to give him space to wrestle down the emotions waging war behind his tumultuous eyes. “It is a thing to treasure.”
Bruce leaned ever so slightly into her side, their shoulders brushing together.
“They were fortunate,” She said into the empty space surrounding them where even the music seemed to filter through quiet and apologetic to be there.
Bruce nodded despite the pain lancing through his chest making it hard to breathe. For the first time, the truth of her words sunk in. It felt like bedrock shifting and settling all at once beneath his feet.
His parents, vibrant and alive and so in love. Gone so soon, so young. They were younger than he was now. And that ached down to his bones. The wrongness, the cruelty of it. He still felt that, but for the first time in years he felt a new note in the tide of emotion. Like sunlight filtering through the settling dust of a freshly fallen building. Something only age, a life well lived, and a love well earned, could give him. “They were fortunate. Lucky to die together rather than having to live apart.”
It had been a fact of Bruce’s life that he would die as Batman, out on the streets, fighting to keep another child from losing what he had lost. But he couldn’t imagine dying anywhere but beside Joker. His soulmate. His other half. He was glad his parents hadn’t had to.
Morticia smiled at him, pride in her eyes.
~*~*~*~*~
The night was winding down, the people who weren’t staying at the house had nearly all filtered out. It was late enough that even Bruce and Joker, with their nocturnal schedules, felt the drowsiness weigh on their bones and eyelids like the comfortable drag of a blanket in autumn.
There were only a few couples left on the floor, the lights burning low and the music soft and syrupy. Morticia and Gomez had finished their hostly duties and were indulging in one last dance to round off the night. They were more holding each other close than really dancing, swaying gently as their lips brushed without demanding intent and they exchanged smoldering looks.
Joker and Bruce were moving similarly to them, savoring the warmth of each other and swaying in a slow circle. Joker asked, not moving his head from where it rested on Bruce’s chest, “Darling, do you remember the first time we danced?”
Bruce’s voice was a deep rumble Joker could feel even through the chestplate, “On the catwalks, in Ace Chemicals?” He mused.
Joker clicked his tongue, “No. That was hardly a dance. I didn’t know how to yet.”
Bruce hummed, nosing into the silky green hair that always held a hint of burnt chemical smell in it, no matter what expensive brand of shampoo Bruce threw at it. “The time at Amusement Mile, then.”
Joker smiled reminiscently, closed lipped and sleepy, so different from his usual wide and showy grin. “That bomb was so garish.”
“I almost didn’t deactivate it in time to save the hostages,” Bruce’s lips were fighting a smile.
Joker shook his head, nuzzling into an armored shoulder, mumbling scornfully, “Amaturish. Both of us.”
Bruce huffed a laugh, “We were young.”
Joker blinked up at him dreamily, smile growing, “And already so in love.”
“Eh, I caught up eventually.”
Joker laughed as Bruce leaned in to kiss him.
They went upstairs not long after that, snagging a bottle of wine and a couple glasses on their way up. It was a starless night, bitingly cold, yet they sat out on the balcony with their coat and cape discarded on the bed inside. The fire was roaring in its grate, heating their backs as they’d left the balcony doors open behind them.
Sipping at their glasses in an easy silence, they idly watched the last of the guests as they chattered away in the front drive and trickled one by one to their cars and down the winding driveway. Some of the last people to leave were one of Gomez and Morticia’s married friends, who’d been sticking out like sore thumbs all night worse than Joker did, in pastels, of all things.
Bruce and Joker were listening to the couple fight as they marched to their car, with the distantly amused expressions one gets when being idly entertained by other people's problems. Their argument was only getting louder the longer it went on. Joker and Bruce would forever deny enjoying eavesdropping on the drama of a couple somehow messier than they were. Bruce’s brows furrowed as he tried to make sense of which of them was jealous of their partner’s wandering eyes. Joker perked up as past infidelity was brought up. Bruce was just piecing it together that they’d both cheated on each other at least once but they refused to split or open their marriage, when the woman screamed about her husband sleeping with her sister.
Slowly, their eyes meet in matching side eyes. One of Bruce’s eyebrows was raised, Joker’s mouth was parted in astonishment. Smiles wobbled across their faces. Joker started laughing and Bruce followed him right over the edge.
The argument below them cut off sharply as the couple realized they weren’t alone.
Bruce couldn’t bring himself to care, fighting tears as he pressed his face into Joker’s shoulder; just laughing with the love of his life.