NC-17 Scarecrow/Joker, Nolanverse - "You Had Me at Hello"
Oh my God. I'm sitting here, rocking back and forth, keening softly, and wondering how in the name of God I wrote this monstrosity. Many thanks to tafadhali for reading and reassuring me that while I may be going to hell, I'm not (necessarily) a bad writer.

Title: You Had Me at Hello (alternate titles include Old-Fashioned Lover Boy and A Primer on the Misuse of Toxins in a Social Setting, by Dr. Jonathan Crane)
Fandom: Dark Knight (Nolanverse!Batman)
Spoilers: Yes! Fairly major ones.
Pairing: Scarecrow/Joker
Rating: NC-17 (for graphic sex and not-really-con)
Words: 2409
Notes: I blame certain individuals for the inclusion of certain lines and references. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE.

You Had Me at Hello

"Everybody's wearing masks these days." The Joker licked two fingertips, then drew them back over his hair with every appearance of concern. "I hate to be behind the times."

Beneath the burlap, Scarecrow's lips twitched.

"They did tell me you'd be funny."

It had been risky-- of course-- coming down alone into what was becoming known as the Joker's territory. Not that it was wise to have territory, per se; there was nowhere the Bat wouldn't go these days, and few places the cops wouldn't. But nevertheless, they did emerge: Haunts, hangouts, favorite street corners-- and this one just so happened to be his.

It was only lucky, Crane supposed, that he had found him alone.

"Seriously, Doc-- no, no, listen." The Joker held up a hand and tilted his head, as if he were listening himself. His eyes locked on Scarecrow. "I'm a simple guy. It's hard enough to keep track of the people in this city already. Masks-- they just confuse me."

"Unfortunately," Scarecrow noted dryly, "masks of one form or another are a constant of the human condition." Less rasp in his voice now and more Jonathan; the line of his smile was a wry, lilting curve. "I don't imagine, for instance, that you were born wearing that makeup."

The Joker grinned, wicked scars stretching the corners of his mouth wide, wide, wide. Scarecrow wondered idly if he had any henchmen lying around.

"What you see is what you get, Scary-- may I call you Scary?" The grin flipped into a solicitous frown and back in the blink of an eye, as the Joker stepped forward. His walk was heavy, almost stumping; Scarecrow watched with clinical detachment and did not move a muscle. "See, with me, I like to ... foster trust, right off the bat. Not like you. I like to create a little ... friendly rapport. Intimacy."

Scarecrow's laugh rustled dryly.

"Well." He shrugged, shoulders thin and nondescript in his threadbare brown suit. "My identity is the worst-kept secret in Gotham by now-- Judge Kapolski's little affair with that actress notwithstanding." Smoothly, with no sign of hesitation (lunatics were well attuned to fear, something he had learned in his professional life before he'd had a chance to learn it firsthand), he pulled off his mask and tucked it into the briefcase at his side.

With a mildness that could be mistaken for self-deprecation, "I hope I'm at least marginally more trustworthy now."

The Joker smiled like he was something to eat.

"Well hello, beautiful," he said, with a mocking, appreciative whistle. "Now why hide all that under a bushel?"

Jonathan returned his smile with one that was taut and unamused.

"In my line of work, I find that it pays to be a little intimidating. Not to mention anonymous."

"Oh sure, sure." The Joker waved a haphazard hand, as if dismissing his own agreement. "Work." A sudden, tragic-mask frown. "But why so serious, Doc? Why-- so-- serious? I can tell you've got, ah, a pretty good sense of humor from that suit--"

Scarecrow's eyebrows arched. The Joker let out a gravelly chuckle.

"So how about it? Gimme a smile."

He stumped closer, starting to sketch out a lopsided circle. Scarecrow remained where he was, and did not even turn his head to mark his progress.

"Funny you should mention." He addressed the air before him with a small smile. "That's why I'm here."

"... Oh?" The syllable hung like bait dangled from a hook.

"I have a proposition for you."

A pause from behind him, followed by smothered, gleeful sniggering. Scarecrow resisted an urge to roll his eyes.

"Oh, Scary," the Joker snickered, "I'm flattered, I'm-- just-- flattered." The clown's grinning face appeared over his right shoulder. Confidentially, "You do know that's, ah, what she said."

"I don't know if you're aware of exactly what I do here in Gotham," Scarecrow pressed on, sounding dry and bored and calculating the Joker's every shift, "but I think we may be in a position to benefit from each other."

The Joker paused in mid-step, eyebrows arching in mockery of his own.

"You mean ... like a mutually beneficial business arrangement?" He pulled an exaggerated moue. "Honestly, Scary, I was expecting something a little more ... je-ne-say-what ... exciting?"

They were still, as far as Scarecrow could determine, completely alone. This was all well and good-- cutting through lackeys was approximately as irritating as cutting through red tape had been back at Arkham, and besides that, it wasn't far enough out of character on the Joker's part to warrant suspicion.

Much suspicion.

"Oh, I think you will find this exciting," Scarecrow assured him now, smiling slightly. "It's right up your alley."

"Is it now?" Almost a John Wayne drawl in his tone now, and in his heavy tread. Scarecrow noted with some interest that the circle was beginning to widen out again. "And, ah, how do you figure that? Doc? Are there explosions involved? Things that go 'boom'? I told you I'm a simple guy."

Scarecrow smiled.

"I produce a toxin that has some very profound effects on the central nervous system. Recently, I discovered an ... irregularity ... that may be of interest to you." A slight cant of his head. "I presume you know what nitrous oxide can do to a person."

"Laughing gas." The Joker's lips twitched-- the beginnings of a too-wide grin. "Doc. You didn't."

"It's a slightly different compound, of course, but the effects are similar." Smile. "Some of them, anyway."

The Joker laughed. It began as a guttural chuckle, but ricocheted quickly into a harsh, machine-gun staccato.

"Oh, Scary. You had me at hello."

***

The problem with flushing out The Narrows was that you couldn't do it in a clean sweep. There were too many families, too many children, too much collateral. If you were the Batman, you had to take it building by building. Pick and choose. Jonathan knew this, and used the fact to his advantage.

And after all. He knew The Narrows like the back of his hand.

"Now these are some nice digs," the Joker said, with an appreciative glance around the dingy, gutted apartment. "I really appreciate the homey look you have going here. You know? It's in the little touches."

Crane shot him an amused look.

"By all means," he said dryly, "make yourself at home."

He didn't prepare his compounds here, not most of them, and so the apartment was safe enough; he wasn't unduly worried about the Joker making off with something he wouldn't be able to replace.

Setting a bomb, now, that was another story. Crane tried not to let the clown out of his sight while he assembled his toxin sample, though he would probably have to relocate after this little transaction. Just to be safe.

"I do have one question." The Joker's voice in the dark. "Just a teeny, tiny question, really."

Crane turned his head slightly, enough to make out the shadowy silhouette doing nothing threatening. Just lounging, leaning idly against the oversprung couch that was the only piece of furniture left in the place.

"Yes?" he said.

"So, ah, correct me if I'm wrong here-- we're both here to get what we want. Aren't we? To benefit from each other." He spread his hands. "Now me, I'm apparently getting a new toy or two, but you ... what are you getting?"

Crane smiled absently as he pulled a vial from out of his pocket, emptied it into a small canister, then picked a second vial from a drawer and emptied that in too.

"Actually, in a sense I already have it." He glanced through the door. "I admired your work with our mutual friend Miss Dawes." A pause for a moment, bent over his task, to let that sink in. It was a small world, after all. "She was a thorn in my side for the duration of our unfortunate professional relationship. Even attracted the attention of the Batman."

"The Batman." The couch creaked as the Joker-- presumably-- leaned back, lips smacking around the words.

"I've had my own run-ins with him in the past." Crane's smile twisted wryly. "None of them quite so well-publicized as your own."

"Oh, well, no-- but what can I say?" The Joker shrugged; Crane could only assume he was grinning. "I'm a sucker for the limelight."

Crane slid the canister shut with a faint click, gave an experimental spritz out the open window, then moved through the doorway and into the darkened room.

"Now this," he said, with the clinical boredom of a pharmacist filling out a prescription, "is a derivative of the fear toxin I've been producing for some time. It has some of the initial effects of nitrous oxide, as I mentioned before-- most notably laughter and lightheadedness. However ..."

He stepped around the couch, and even in the shadows he was cognizant of the Joker watching him with what could almost be called a schoolboy's attention. Unruffled, he continued.

"However, a sufficiently concentrated dose will result in exaggerated symptoms, an accelerated heartbeat, and fairly rapid death."

The Joker's chuckle scraped across his ears.

"Now that's entertainment." He turned a startlingly puppydoggish expression on Crane. "Tell me I get a free sample."

"That's the idea." Crane quirked another wry smile, tossing the canister lightly into the Joker's waiting grasp. The clown turned it over between his fingers, and regarded it curiously.

"Aw, thanks, Doc," he said. "Of course ..."

His expression turned mournful, theatrical makeup outlining the change in broad strokes.

"Now that I've got this thing, I'm gonna have to test it out."

The Joker was far, far quicker than Crane had expected. Before he could even blink, one hand closed over his wrist with viselike finality, and as the Joker raised the canister, Crane had time only to be grateful for two things:

One, that he had prepared this serum at an extraordinarily low concentration, making death unlikely; and two, that he was so intimately familiar with his own products that despite his current lack of a mask, death continued to be unlikely.


There is a rushing in his ears now, and he's falling down, down, crashing an impossible distance until his back hits springs and stuffing and his wrist is pinned over his head and the Joker's face is filling his vision like some hideous gargoyle.

"No, no, nonono," his voice crackles down from overhead, "don't move, you don't want to move, you'll *spoil* it--"

If Jonathan is logical, which he can be because he has been here or someplace like it before, many many times, he knows his body is in a chemically altered state and none of it is real, it's just adrenaline and nitrates he manufactured and orchestrated all on his own-- but the Joker still has his wrist, is holding him like a butterfly to a wall, and Jonathan is laughing and trembling and even as he recoils and the breath hitches in his throat he can feel that he's getting hard.

"Shhh," the Joker soothes, his voice a harsh buzz in Jonathan's ear that makes him whimper and turn his head even as he aches from the friction of it. "Shh, look at me-- no, hey, LOOK AT ME--"

Strong fingers seize his jaw, and Jonathan is staring with eyes so wide they're going to burst into a wide, wicked leer, stretched like the sky above his face.

"Looks like I've got *you* on the couch, Doc."

And that red, gaping maw is bending close to devour him whole and all Jonathan can do is laugh, bucking his hips as teeth catch him on the side of the neck and bite their way down, fingers releasing his chin to rip at buttons and fabric that give like paper.

"Well look at you, beautiful."

It's almost a sing-song, but the sing and the song are upside-down and all Jonathan knows is the Joker is straddling his thighs and he is panting and laughing and harder than ever. "All drugged up and nowhere to go."

A hand no longer at his wrist-- or is it? he can feel the echo of fingers there-- strokes the bulge between his legs, and Jonathan's whimper is arousal mixed in with his fear.

"Oh, Doc-- you *are* happy to see me." The hand flutters away, Jonathan doesn't know where either one has gone but that horrible mouth has descended to the tatters and scattered buttons of his shirt to bite into a hardened nipple as if it were an apple-- a grape-- something with give in the flesh. Jonathan cries out and twists under the Joker's weight; a hand wipes the sweat from his brow.

Now you see it, now you don't.

"You *know.*" Confidential, as the sound of unzipping fills Jonathan's ears like the drone of an insect. "This is why I'm coming off women. They'e just-- so-- *volatile.*" A hand reaches into his pants, beneath the waistband of his boxers, and begins to stroke again with agonizing slowness. "You wanna know how I got these scars?"

Jonathan moans, eyes fluttering shut, but the Joker's voice is as inescapable as the sensations coursing through his body.

"I had a girlfriend once-- not as pretty as you, dollface. And every couple of weeks, she would get so *moody.* I didn't know what to do with her!" The rhythm of his strokes increases, gains speed; Jonathan groans and twists under his touch but all that seems to do is amuse him. "So finally I say to her, I say, 'Baby, what's with all the whining? They're just cramps!'"

His breath is coming shallower and faster and that's just a symptom, but it's not and he's choking on giggle after helpless giggle and shutting his tearing eyes to avoid the vertigo of looking at him--

"And my girl, she takes out her nail file-- and she does *this* to me, real slow." A slow, slow pull on Jonathan's cock; he lets out another strangled moan--

"*So* high-maintenance. But you, baby doll ... you-- are-- *just*-- what the doctor ordered."

Jonathan comes, then, through a haze of terror and arousal, and he laughs and laughs and barely manages to swallow when the Joker puts sticky fingers to his lips.

"Mmm," he says contentedly, wiping his hand on what is left of Jonathan's shirt. "Oh, *baby*-- I *wish* I knew how to quit you."