Chapter Text
“There you are,” Bruce says, finding Joker in their study, hunched over a keyboard. “Writing again?”
“Yup!” Joker turns in his chair to grin at him, bright and easy. “I was just finishing the part about the first day in my new body.”
Bruce’s face freezes. Joker snickers in delight at his discomfort, like the cruel bastard he still is at the core and probably won't ever stop being.
“Don’t worry, baby,” he says, still grinning wide. “I’m gonna keep out the sordid details. Clarky doesn’t need to know just how thoroughly we tested it on that operating table.”
“Well, okay.” Bruce finds himself able to breathe again, and ambles into the room to stand behind Joker’s chair. “As long as you don’t traumatize him.”
“Oh, come on.” Joker laughs, leaning back in the chair and letting Bruce put his hands on his shoulders to rub slow circles into his skin through the purple leather jacket.
Not that Joker needs it. His mechanical muscles don’t exactly get sore or stiff, the way Bruce’s do more and more often the older he gets.
But Bruce likes touching him, especially now that they've finally managed to arrive at an alloy that looks and feels much like human skin does - well, other than Joker insisted on painting it white - and Joker likes being touched. And that’s that.
“Clark’s turning twenty today,” Joker points out, “and he walked in on us how many times now? And you think he’s still got the capacity to be traumatized by sex?”
“Doesn’t mean you should be turning those memoirs into erotica,” Bruce counters.
“I was thinking I could do the erotica separately,” Joker tells him, tilting his head back to grin at Bruce upside-down. “You know, like a saucy supplement. And then release it into the wild rather than give it to Clark. Which reminds me, have you given any thought to my ideas for the next upgrade?”
Bruce bites the inside of his cheek to stop himself from smiling. “I am not giving you a vibrating butthole.”
“Awww, why not?” Joker’s face plunges into a pout. “We’ve already made it self-lubricating and sensitive all over and stuff. Why not let it vibrate, too? Just think about it, baby: you've got a lover whose body can be modified to do whatever the hell we want it to do. The sky's the limit! Why not take advantage and go the extra mile? It only makes sense. Think how good it’d feel.”
“We’re done talking about this,” Bruce says decisively, and makes a mental note to hide his latest schematics better to make sure Joker doesn’t find them when he inevitably goes looting through Bruce's stuff again.
It wouldn’t do to spoil the anniversary surprise.
“Come on,” he says, letting one hand drift into Joker’s hair and combing softly through the messy strands so he can scratch Joker's scalp in a way that never fails to distract him. “Everything’s ready out there. Clark and Diana will be back soon.”
“What!” Joker slams his laptop shut and whirls to his feet. “You promised you’d give me enough time to change!”
“You looked busy,” Bruce explains, pulling him in close by the waist. “I didn’t want to disturb you. But Diana called just now and said they’re on their way back.”
“Well, shit.” Joker frets, pressing a hand to his head. “Did you check if my batteries are all charged? I gotta oil my joints, too. There’ll be dancing! What’s a birthday party without dancing? I gotta make sure I don't freeze in the middle of it and ruin it like I did last time. And my hair, oh god, it’s all over the place, isn’t it? I gotta —”
“Hey.” Bruce grabs him before Joker can leap out of the room and into their bedroom. “Your hair looks fine. It’s okay. The whole party will be fine.”
“Easy for you to say,” Joker scoffs, staying in Bruce's arms even though he could easily escape if he really wanted to; his mechanical body is so much stronger than Bruce's these days, a fact that Joker purposefully plays down unless he's feeling mean. “You didn’t spend the last month planning a surprise birthday party for an intrepid superpowered twenty-year-old. What if he doesn’t like it? What if something goes wrong? It’s his last birthday with us before he goes away, and I still don’t get why he has to, it’s not like we’re kicking him out, the world can wait, he’s still just a baby and —”
Bruce smiles, and gives into the impulse to kiss him. Joker melts into him after only a brief struggle, and lets Bruce hold him close, and stroke his hair.
“It’ll be fine,” Bruce repeats. “You’ll be fine, and he’ll be fine, too.”
“I don’t get how you’re so calm about this,” Joker mumbles into Bruce’s shoulder. “You’re supposed to be the control freak of this outfit.”
“I talked to Diana, Dick and Babs,” Bruce says. “They managed to convince me that it’s something Clark needs to do. Let him help people, J. It’s his destiny. If he can inspire the world the way he used to, we need to give him the chance.”
“But —”
“Besides,” Bruce murmurs into Joker’s hair, “you didn’t think I’d let him go without any precautions, did you?”
Joker pulls back to search his face. Then, he giggles.
“A tracker?”
“Of course.”
“With a distress signal?”
“Definitely.”
“What if he finds it? He’s got x-ray vision, you know.”
“I made sure he wouldn’t,” Bruce assures him. “And frankly, I’m insulted you’d think I wouldn’t do everything I could to make sure he was safe out there, and that we'd always know where to find him.”
Joker laughs, equal parts amused and relieved, and the sound makes the soft place in Bruce melt just a little bit more for him. He leans in for another kiss, and this time Joker gives it eagerly, meeting him halfway with his mouth already open, inviting him in.
“You’re horrible,” he whispers into Bruce’s lips.
“You’re worse,” Bruce counters easily.
“But you love me anyway.”
Bruce smiles and kisses him again, holding him close.
“How soon did Diana say they’ll get here?” Joker asks a bit breathlessly, winding his arms around Bruce’s neck.
“Soon,” Bruce whispers, his heart beating fast at the dark look in Joker’s eyes. “I’m not sure we’ve got enough time.”
“Well then.” Joker pulls him after himself as he walks backward until he bumps against the desk, giggling. “We’d better make it quick.”
Bruce grins, and pushes him down onto the desk.
They’re late to the party, but nobody seems to mind much, or even notice. Clark’s already practicing with the shield he got from Diana by the time they make it outside. He beams at Bruce and Joker, and Joker shrieks Happy birthday, launches himself at him, and immediately sweeps him into a dance, calling for music, which Dick turns up for them.
Bruce comes up to sit next to Diana, and watches them against the backdrop of a ruined — but healing — new Gotham.
“You still haven’t given him your present,” Diana says quietly.
“Later,” Bruce replies.
“Stalling won’t make him stay.”
“No. But if I can put it off for another hour or so, I will.”
“He’ll love the suit,” Diana assures him. “And he’ll love what it stands for. You haven’t changed your mind, have you? You’ll let him be the hero he was always meant to be?”
“I will.” Bruce sighs, watching Clark grab a laughing Joker by the arms and lift off into the air to fly circles around their sunlit yard.
He thinks back to the suit down in the lead-lined lab, the same one he and Joker spent nearly a whole year making. The advanced protections against kryptonite woven into the blue fabric, the red cape, the S on the chest where he hid the tracker.
He thinks about how the symbol made him feel back in the old world, and what it meant to everyone. He thinks about the memoirs Joker’s been writing to pass on to their boy after their deaths, so he’d know their history, and his own.
“But I’m still gonna miss him,” he whispers.
Diana reaches out to take his hand, and squeezes.
“He’ll be back,” she says. “And we’re still here.”
Bruce looks at her, and then at Dick, Barbara and their daughter, congregated around the refreshments table and laughing at Joker and Clark. Jim, swaying to the music. Duke, coming over to them with a full plate.
Clark, up in the air, strong and hopeful and moral to the core, eager to help the world heal.
Joker, in the body they’ve all built for him for a purpose no one articulated but which they all knew nonetheless: so he and Bruce could be with one another in all the ways they could, and had wanted all their lives.
Still changing. Still evolving and upgrading. Still under construction — just like the city beyond, the city they’ve fought for and made theirs.
Just like the world around them, building itself back up.
And just like Bruce is, too. And their relationship. And all of them here, constructing themselves day after day after day in this little slice of home they’ve carved for themselves out of a nightmare.
He swallows, and blinks back the hot wet sting in his eyes.
“Yeah, we are,” he says.
That's when Joker, freshly back on the ground, catches his eye. The music changes into something slow, an old jazz classic. Joker smiles and holds out his hand.
"Go on," Diana says in a warm, amused voice.
Bruce affects a frown, mostly just to keep up appearances. "You know I don't dance."
"Bruce Wayne, that's one of the biggest lies I've ever heard you tell. Go and dance with him already before he comes over and drags you out there."
Bruce grunts, covering up how much his lips want to twitch up.
And then he gets up, and joins his family.