The air in the abandoned Gotham ballroom was thick with dust and the echo of past grandeur. Moonlight filtered through shattered stained glass, casting fractured rainbows on cracked tile. In the center of it all stood the Joker eyes wide, lips parted, as if he didn’t expect The Dark Knight to actually come.

But he had.

The Dark Knight emerged from the shadows like a storm in slow motion cloak swirling, jaw set, eyes unreadable beneath the cowl. He didn’t say a word at first. He simply closed the distance between them with the kind of deliberate calm that made the Joker’s skin prickle.

“Well,” Joker breathed, voice catching somewhere between amusement and awe. “You’re late, darling.”

The Dark Knight stopped just inches away. “I shouldn’t be here.”

“But you are,” Joker whispered, hand moving almost of its own accord to press against The Dark Knight’s chest. “You always come back.”

A beat of silence passed. The world could have ended in that pause. “Because you keep pulling me in,” The Dark Knight growled, voice low, nearly lost between clenched teeth.

Joker’s fingers slid up toward his shoulder, the movement slow, intimate. “Is that what this is now? Gravity? Magnetism? Or maybe you’re just addicted to me.”

The Dark Knight grabbed Joker’s waist, not roughly but with restraint just sharp enough to sting. “Don’t confuse obsession with attraction.”

“Oh, Bats,” Joker said, voice laced with something dangerously close to tenderness. “I never confuse the two. You think I don’t know the difference?” His hand settled at the base of the Dark Knight’s neck, holding him there. Close. Too close. “Attraction is when you look at someone and see what’s broken in them… and want it anyway.”

The Dark Knight didn’t move. Didn’t push him away. “You think this changes anything?” he finally said, though his voice was softer now.

Joker’s smile was fading, replaced by something far more fragile. “It already has.” And then, in that tension-slick silence, they moved swaying not to music, but to the unbearable weight of unspoken feelings. A dance without steps. A war without weapons.

Their faces hovered close. The Dark Knight’s breath hitched. Joker’s thumb traced his jawline like a prayer.

It wasn’t love. Not exactly.

But it was something terrifyingly close.

They stood chest to chest, breath mingling in the silence. Joker’s hand lingered against The Dark Knight’s chest, unusually still.

“You always come back,” Joker whispered.

The Dark Knight’s voice was low. “And you never let me go.”

Joker leaned in, not laughing now!just watching him with unnerving honesty. “You don’t know if you want to arrest me or kiss me.”

“I know I should arrest you,” The Dark Knight said, his hand rising to the back of Joker’s neck.

“But you won’t.” Joker’s grin flickered, softening. “Not yet.”

The Dark Knight rested his forehead against Joker’s, eyes shut. “This doesn’t change anything.”

Joker’s voice dropped to a murmur. “It already has.”

And in that breathless stillness, neither of them moved caught between war and something dangerously close to wanting.