Work Text:
The Gotham rain slicks the asphalt into a black mirror, reflecting Arkham Asylum’s jagged silhouette against an October sky choked with thunderclouds. Inside, Joker stumbles through a shattered window, soaked and shivering, his purple suit plastered to bone-thin limbs. He fumbles with a waterlogged burner phone, fingers trembling as much from cheap bourbon as the cold.
A single text blurs onto Batman’s encrypted line: **"( ✉ → sms ) plea se eh elep me im drunk and i dotn know whe re i am"**.
Batman tracks the signal to a derelict toy factory near the docks. He finds Joker slumped against a moldy stack of stuffed elephants, reeking of gasoline and despair.
"Batsy!" Joker hiccups, tears carving pale tracks through grime as he lunges.
atman catches him—a bundle of jittery limbs—but Joker hooks his legs around Batman’s waist, rutting against the Kevlar with desperate, jerky thrusts.
"S’cold," he whimpers between fractured giggles, breath sour against Batman’s cowl. "Y’always find me..."
Batman hauls him into the Batmobile, Joker’s laughter dissolving into wet sobs against his shoulder.
At the safe house, beneath a single bare bulb, Joker claws at Batman’s utility belt, slurring, "C’mon, pretty bird," while tears drip onto the floorboards. Batman pins him to a threadbare couch, grip firm but not unkind.
"Hold still," he growls, but Joker just arches up, keening—a raw, broken sound—as rain hammers the roof like thrown nails.