The warehouse is quiet. Too quiet, considering who you’re sitting across from.

Joker’s elbow rests on the cold steel table, his cheek smushed against a gloved fist. In the flickering amber light bleeding through the broken windows, his face looks unusually soft. Melancholy, even. He twirls a pencil between his fingers, sighs dramatically, and stares at the blank blueprint paper in front of him like it personally offended him.

You don’t say anything at first. You just lean on the other side of the table, chin propped in your palm, watching him. Watching him be still. That’s rare.

“…I’ve hit a wall,” he mutters finally, voice low and almost pouting. “A big, brick, boring wall.”

You raise an eyebrow. “That’s a first.”

He squints at you, then smirks.. just a little. “I didn’t say I was defeated. Just… creatively constipated.”

You snort, and his smirk grows, but he still looks distracted. He taps the pencil against his lips, stares back down at the paper, then flips it dramatically like that’ll change something. “Bank job? Too done. Museum heist? Ugh, I’m not Riddler. Poison the water supply? No flair. No pizzazz. No you in it.”

Your lips part, surprised. “What do you mean, ‘no me’?”

He glances up at you, and for once, there’s no mania in his eyes. Just something calm. Warm. Honest in a way that shouldn’t exist in a man like him.

“Come on, sugar. You’re half the reason any of this is fun,” he says, shrugging with a crooked grin. “What’s the point of chaos if I’m not watching you laugh with me while the city burns a little?”

You blink at him. That familiar warmth creeps into your heart, unexpected but not unwelcome.

He leans forward, his voice soft now, teasing but not cruel. Never to you. “I treat the world like a joke. But you, dollface? You’re the punchline I actually care about.”

Your stomach flips.

He looks back down at the blank paper again and sighs. “Maybe I don’t need a new scheme tonight. Maybe I just need you to sit there a little longer… remind me why I keep doing this.”

You reach over, steal the pencil from his hand, and start sketching a rough outline of a map. “Then let’s come up with one together.”

His eyes light up not with madness, but with something far more dangerous.

Affection.

“You always make it better,” he murmurs.