Chapter Text
The restaurant is small, tucked away on the fringes of China Town, far enough away from the bright lights to be empty even on a Saturday evening. It's somewhere Bruce has been a few times, since he was given an extremely good free takeaway during patrol one night as thanks for protecting the restaurant from some hoodlums.
The man who'd owned it then is long dead, his grandson now running the place, but the food is just as good, too traditionally Sichuanese for a lot of Gothamites, but Bruce has a high tolerance for spice, and Joker will add chillies to practically anything, given half a chance.
It's not Bruce's favourite restaurant in the city. He's a little worried that, despite his promises to be good, the evening is going to end with Joker burning the place to the ground and if that happens he doesn't want to lose any of the places he eats at regularly.
They've got a good table, since they're the only ones in, one with good lines of sight on every exit. Bruce is facing the kitchen, making it easier to catch the server's eye, Joker sitting opposite him in the hope that the wait staff won't look too closely at him. His face has been on the news lately, as reports on Arkham's first breakout in a nearly a decade cover every channel, and Bruce doesn't want their evening spoiled by someone recognising his dinner companion as a supposedly long dead super-villain.
Joker's made up just enough not to raise too many eyebrows, although it's unlikely anyone will be looking at his face when he's wearing the purple tuxedo.
It's not horrifically vivid, might even be called tasteful, at least compared to the rest of Joker's wardrobe, but it's definitely noticeable. In a fit of unusual restraint he's paired it with a shirt in a slightly darker shade of purple, and a black tie which Bruce is pretty sure is his.
His wild mop of green hair has been combed and oiled, so that it hangs in a neat ponytail rather its usual mane like tangles, and his makeup is just enough to make him pass for human, a touch of eyeliner the only concession to his usual feminine appearance.
He looks eccentric, and still decidedly odd looking with his lugubrious face and spindly limbs, but attractive too. Bruce thinks the looks they've been getting from the server have more to do with them being two men than Joker's colourful appearance.
Bruce himself had actually acquired a tux of his own for this little outing, sending his measurements to one of Gotham's old established tailors. It had been a challenge, getting it ordered and collected without Joker realising, but it had been worth it for the look of surprise on the clown's face when he saw Bruce dressed up.
He's worn tailored suits all his life, but he's always had a particular loathing for tuxedos, the associations with pointless vapid parties, and picking up pointless vapid women, too strong.
This is different though, going out already with a... companion. (Not a date, this isn't a date no matter what Joker says). There's no expectations on him tonight, no watching eyes, the only worry whether he'll be able to keep Joker from killing anyone, and that's a pretty small worry. These days Joker tends to be pretty docile so long as he feels Bruce is giving him enough attention.
Bruce is letting Joker order, which is resulting in his eating all the hottest dishes on the menu, while Joker watches him closely for any sign of discomfort. It's childish and petty, but harmless, and since Bruce is enjoying the food so far, he doesn't say anything.
He’d intended to order green tea, but Joker had forestalled him by calling for rice wine, and Bruce is actually enjoying the complex smoky flavour. He's become more willing to drink alcohol in the last fifty years, and while he's not intending to get drunk, he feels comfortable having a drink or two.
Joker is knocking the small glasses back at a rate of knots, but it doesn't seem to be affecting him, and Bruce thinks it's likely that his immunity to toxins includes alcohol.
Their waitress quietly clears away the dirty dishes while Joker talks. He's telling Bruce about the first time his gang went up against Croc, something Bruce had missed at the time, and despite himself Bruce can feel a grin catching at the corners of his mouth. Joker is an engaging storyteller, with great comic timing and, when he feels like being charming, an unerring instinct for what will amuse Bruce.
"And then," he says, leaning back a little to allow the waitress to remove his plate, "Croc leaps out the water and says, "No, that’s the rock."
Bruce laughs. The story had been unusually tame for Joker, but not featuring a single maiming or death, and he knows Joker is doing it on purpose, turning on all his considerable charm and doing all he can to bend to Bruce's whims. Bruce knows why, and he's trying not to think about it. He's still trying to convince himself that the strange attraction he feels to Joker doesn't mean anything, but it's getting harder and harder to convince himself. Joker obviously thinks he's getting laid tonight, hence the toned down clothes and the charm, and Bruce isn't sure how to deal with the knowledge that he's been so obvious in his attraction.
He’s jerked from his reflection by Joker hitting him, relatively gently, with a desert spoon. “Stop it.”
“Stop what?”
“Over thinking. I don’t know what was going on in that noggin of yours, Brucie baby, but I could see the cogs whirring from here. Relax. This is supposed to be a fun evening out, remember? Have a drink.”
“Are you trying to get me drunk?” Bruce asks, amused. It’s a ploy a lot of people have attempted over the years, and it’s never once worked.
“I’ve always wanted to know what you’re like drunk,” Joker says, unashamed. “Do you giggle? I bet you giggle.”
Bruce has only ever once been drunk, back in his college days. He’d gone to a freshman mixer, got completely plastered on cheap champagne cocktails and vomited on a yucca plant. He doesn’t remember much of what happened after that, though he has a vague feeling he might have hit on the school’s star quarter back. The memory was enough to put him off drinking for the rest of his life. He’s been sexually attracted to a grand total of three people in his life, and the knowledge that liquor made him act like, well, like a normal person, hitting on pretty people he barely knew and who couldn’t kill anyone, had been enough to put him off for life.
“That’s one hell of a rueful expression, lamb chop. Don’t tell me you’re a horny drunk? Even my luck isn’t that good.”
Bruce could feel that damn blush rising. It was faint, so faint not even Dick would have spotted it, but Joker had eyes like a hawk, and he never really stopped watching Bruce.
“You are! Oh my, it really is my lucky day. What say you after this we go find a nightclub. One that sells fluorescent coloured drinks with umbrellas in them.”
“You’re not getting me drunk, Joker,” Bruce growled, keeping his voice low to avoid the staff hearing the name. “Just how stupid do you think I am?” He flushed even further at the thought though. That strange part of him he’d discovered in the tunnels under Arkham, the part that wanted to submit to this madman, liked the idea. Liked the idea of letting Joker take advantage.
“You’re so cute when you blush,” Joker said, grinning. “Say, did I ever tell you about the time I caught you and kitty cat going at it on a rooftop?”
Bruce has a moment of panic, before he remembers that he and Selina had only slept together twice, and both times had involved a bed. “Never happened.”
“No,” Joker agreed. “I just wanted to know if you ever had. How boring. I was sure you must have an exhibitionist streak, all those bugs and cameras. But maybe you’re a voyeur, hmm?”
“Joker, this is hardly suitable conversation for the dinner table,” Bruce growls, aware as he says it that it makes him sound like somebody’s maiden aunt.
Joker chuckles. “You’re showing your age darling. No one these days worries about things like that. But have it your way. What shall we talk about, hmm? The weather perhaps? How about rising property prices?”
“What do you know about either topic?”
“Oh, nothing, I live in a cave. But that’s the sort of thing civilised people discuss over their spotty tofu, isn’t it?”
He leans back, allowing the waitress to set down a dish in the centre of the table.
“Ma Po Dofu,” Bruce corrects him.
“Ooo Brucey, speak foreign to me,” Joker says with a grin.
“Do you speak any other languages?” Bruce asks suddenly, realising that he doesn’t know.
“Define speak,” Joker replies, helping himself to a liberal serving. “I can read and write 18, and understand 12 when spoken, but I never bothered trying to speak any of them myself.”
“Why not? If you can already understand them…”
“Image, Batsy. It’s all about image. People underestimate, me, they always have. Except you of course. And that’s the way I like it. They remember my body count, but they forget that that must mean I’m clever. If I let it be known that I speak 12 languages, GCPD would start treating me like an actual threat. IGA wouldn’t let me escape! And then where
would we be?”
“A lot more people would still be alive,” Brice points out. He’s been trying to keep Batman out of the evening’s conversation, but it’s impossible when his dinner companion is the Joker.
“But then just think how much worse the overcrowding would be! It’s already standing room only in most of the city. You know, BC told me the other day that a company applied for planning permission to develop Robinson park. Robinson Park! Half the plants in there attack anyone who gets close, and the homeless children have started their own tribal society!”
“BC?” Bruce asks, raising an eyebrow. Who on earth would Joker have been talking about planning applications with?
“Well I couldn’t just keep calling her the Bat Computer, now could I, not when we’ve grown so close. Hell, we even watch porn together. That’s when you know a friendship is real.”
“You watch porn with the Bat Computer?!”
“Well, more on than with, and more your celebrity sex tapes than porn, but you get the idea.”
Bruce sighs. “How many times have you watched those?”
Joker shrugs. “Lost count after the fourth time. Ooo, can we make a celebrity sex tape? I’ve never been in a home movie that didn’t involve extortion.”
“I’m not even going to dignify that with a response,” Bruce tells him.
“So that’s a maybe? Heh, I’ll talk you round in the end. I can be very… persuasive.”
And God, Bruce is a sick sick man for how that makes him flush, makes his cheeks heat up and his pulse flutter. Joker is a monster, and his ideas of persuasion range from blackmail to torture, but Bruce’s mind has gone straight to that strange heated moment they shared in the caves beneath Arkham Assylum, the way he’d gone pliant before the Clown’s desire.
Joker notices. Of course he does.
“Bruce darling, if you’re going to look at me like that, things are going to… escalate,” he says, his voice caressing the last word. “I’ve been looking forward to tonight, and I’d hate for it to end with us being arrested for public indecency, but I cannot be held responsible for my actions when you’re all but begging me to fuck you.”
Bruce couldn’t help the indignant denial that forced itself out of his lips, even though he knew acknowledging Joker’s… flirting was a bad idea.
“You’re a terrible liar sweetcheeks,” Joker says, grinning at him happily. “Want some Dofu?”
His accent is flawless, and Bruce wonders if the clown had been lying about speaking other languages, or whether it’s his talent for mimicry showing itself. He doesn’t often use it, perfectly happy in his own skin, but Joker is a skilled actor with a remarkable ear for voices. He’d once worked at Arkham Asylum in disguise for a year without anyone spotting him. Bruce had met him several times, as both Batman and Bruce Wayne, and never suspected a thing.
Joker’s right, he’s easy to underestimate, and forgetting just how good a liar he is is the most fatal mistake. He makes such a show of wearing his heart on his sleeve that the unwary start to believe he’s incapable of real deceit. Bruce had made that mistake in the past. Never again.
Wordlessly he holds out his bowl for Joker to fill.
They ate in silence for a few minutes, Bruce focussing on the half forgotten flavours and textures. The last few months he’s been subsisting on various combinations of Joker’s brightly coloured groceries, and before that it had been long years of ration packs. He honestly can’t remember when he’d last experienced the firm but soft texture of tofu, or the numbing heat of Szechuan flower pepper.
Tim had enjoyed the kind of fiercely hot food you found in East Asia, he remembers, and so had Cassie. More than once he’d watched them share a carton of takeaway after a patrol, Steph and Dick pulling faces at the spiciness. Even Dami…
“Do you like it?” Bruce asks, to distract himself from things he’d rather not focus on. “I didn’t actually ask if you enjoyed Chinese food.”
“Oh, I’m not fussy,” Joker says. “And I like anything really spicy. I suspect that bath I took, back before I was me, did something to my taste buds. Not that I know for sure, memories a little sketchy, you know how it is, but as best as I can work it out, tastes are… muted, for me. Bland.”
“Hence the smoked fish and the blue cheese?” Bruce asked, interested. He’d never considered the possibility that Joker’s senses had been affected, but there was no reason for it not to be true. Joker gained nothing by lying.
“Stronger the flavour, the better I can taste it. Don’t know that I’m getting all the complexities of the dish,” he added, gesturing to the tofu with his chop sticks, “but at least it tastes of something.”
“What about the wine?” It had a subtle aroma, nothing like the strong hits of flavour Joker favoured.
“Might as well be water,” Joker replied cheerfully. “But I’m determined to get you drunk Batsy baby, and you aren’t the type to drink alone.” He topped off both of their glasses as he spoke, then downed the contents of his in one gulp.
“And the marshmallows?” Bruce asked, hoping to distract Joker from his ridiculous plans for deflowering Bruce. “They don’t taste of much even to normal people.”
They’re empty calories, which he tries to avoid, but even Batman needs something sweet, and he’s been known to steal some of Joker’s when the clown’s asleep, or absorbed in his ridiculous telenovelas.
“Squishy,” Joker says, enunciating the word carefully, like he’s testing the feel of it in his mouth. “Sticky. If they only made them with some actual flavour, they’d be perfect. Jerk spice flavour.”
Bruce can’t keep from wrinkling his nose at the idea, but he has to concede that they’d probably sell like hotcakes, even if they’d mostly be given as gag gifts.
“Well if you ever decide to give up crime,” he suggests, gracing Joker with a small smile.
“I tried catering. It wasn’t for me.”
“You posed as a caterer to get into the mayor’s birthday party, that’s not the same. Or I hope not. You didn’t actually cook any of the food did you?”
“Oh no, of course not. That’s what hostages are for. I did spike the food with laxatives and aphrodisiacs though.”
Brice winces. He’s glad he decided to stake the party out as Batman rather than attending as Bruce. Although now he thinks about it, he has a feeling Tim had attended. He’d never mentioned anything about any aphrodisiacs. Or the laxatives.
Without really noticing it, they’ve finished the dofu, and the small bottle of rice wine.
Joker sucks excess sauce off his chopsticks, and then very theatrically vanishes them, presumably up a sleeve. Bruce lets him. He’ll pat him down later.
“So,” Joker says, cocking his head to one side and smiling the small intimate smile Bruce likes to imagine was just for him. “You going to invite me out for desert?”