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A hand comes down around Joker's throat.
He tenses up, instinctively. There's a sort of animal fear in the back of the human brain that just does not want anyone's hands near one's throat unexpectedly, and that goes double for someone who has spent most of his life in one situation or another where people would have very much liked to strangle him.
But the hand on his throat doesn't stay on his throat; it moves up to cup the bottom of his chin and tilt his head back.
With his one good eye, he looks up at the matching one standing over him.
"You're sulking."
"I'm not sulking."
His answer is immediate, petulant, and does nothing to deter the idea that he is in fact sulking.
Which he is definitely not.
"Hm."
The noise Burns makes does nothing to indicate that he believes him.
The hand that's cupping his chin widens so that he's cupping most of his jaw now. His thumb rubs along the edge of it, and Joker hadn't realized the tension he was holding there until he feels it starting to ease.
He's sitting on the couch. There's a television playing across from him, that he's tentatively watching, but it's muted and Joker wouldn't be able to tell him what's playing on it if he tried.
It's all just— visual noise.
Joker narrows his eye at Burns, and he reaches up to grasp one of the horns sticking out of the side of his head.
When he had been an Infernal, those horns had really completed the 'devil' look. Now that he's back to himself except for the horns, it just kind of makes him look like a bull.
A stubborn old bull, to match the proud old lion.
He pulls Burns down towards him. The angle is awkward, upside down for one thing, but all credit to the old man: he goes with it without question even when their noses are crushed into each other's faces as they kiss.
There’s a slow patience to it that only has a little bit to do with the strange angle they have their head at. It has more to do with the fact that they have the time to take— they have all the time in the world, now that it’s not burning down around them, now that Burns isn’t chained the lies he’s spend so long carrying he can’t even comprehend taking that weight from his shoulders, now that Joker isn’t burdened with being one of the only people to give a fuck about saving a world that never wanted him in the first place and tried for most of his life to prove that to him over and over again.
Burns is the one to pull away first, and he does it by sliding his hand from Joker’s jaw to rest on his shoulder, his other hand coming to join it and practically pinning him in place because he unfortunately knows him too fucking well and knows that he’s going to try and follow him up if he doesn’t keep him in place.
“Later,” he says, and Joker doesn’t like that answer because frankly he’s had enough of waiting for good things to happen— he’s always been more of a ‘get out there and make things happen’ kind of guy, never really learned to put his trust into other people to get things done until he met a certain scientist and later on a Devil who both made him realize that sometimes other people aren’t as shit as the world tries to make them be.
“The World Hero Force will be coming back from their expedition soon,” Burns says when he tries to push up against the hands holding him down, half a smile tugging at the edges of his lips like he’s trying not to laugh at how eager he is. “If we leave now, we should be able to be there before they arrive.”
Joker’s eye widens at that as his head whips around in the direction of the clock.
Where the fuck did the time go? The exact reason he was sitting there sulking—
Sitting there definitely not sulking—
Is because he couldn’t think of anything else to do with himself with the energy humming under his skin because he knew what time they would need to leave and nothing else could occupy his brain except for the thought of that time.
Burns does laugh at him this time as he eases off the pressure on his shoulders so he can jump up from the couch without literally throwing Burns off, but shame isn’t something Joker has ever been good about having (about… Most things, at the very least), so he’s content to ignore him as he heads for the door, stopping to grab his coat from where it’s hanging alongside two others, one of which Burns grabs as he joins him while he stops to slip his shoes on.
“Let’s go see what the heroes found this time, huh?” He’s already shuffling a cigarette out of the pack he keeps in his coat pocket— a lighter in hand because, well, he kind of needs to use one nowadays— while Burns throws his coat on over his shoulders in the way he always has, which looks absolutely and completely ineffective for keeping him warm in any way.
Even without fire powers the old man burns as hot as a furnace, making his name still quite appropriate, so maybe that has something to do with it.
“Let’s,” Burns agrees as the two of them head out the door, and off to the World Hero Force Headquarters.
The world that Shinra made in the face of their world of flames turning into a black sun is an odd one. Proportions don’t seem to be quite right. It took everyone a little while to adjust to the strange geometry, their eyes refusing to see things in quite the same way, shapes familiar but simultaneously wrong.
Of course, that’s half the fun of it, right?
It’s not like anyone is going to complain about this new world. The old one was kind of starting to fall apart, and in this one no one has to worry that they’ll just be minding their own business and then suddenly they’ll catch fire and someone will have to put them out of their misery for the greater good.
But it’s definitely been an adjustment in a lot of ways. None of the old rules really apply anymore. People have had to reestablish themselves. Order has set in pretty naturally, because where humans go bureaucracy tends to follow, because the average people— the sheep— really have no idea what to do without something like that and just end up wandering around lost until someone gets them.
Joker, all in all, has found it a pretty fun experience. Having seen the worst of what the old world had to offer, he can’t say he misses it. This new one offers him a lot more choices than the old one did, too.
And it suits his style perfectly.
He and Burns make their way through the streets. Narrow and cobbled at some parts, wide and paved in others, and overall just completely unlike anything they would have ever seen in the old Tokyo— it looks more like something out of a children’s fantasy book than anything they ever could have thought of as a town, but all around them people have started living lives. There are shops that need running and meals that need serving and civilization and the world both turn on, thanks to Shinra.
The World Hero Force headquarters, unsurprisingly, takes the form of the old Company 8 headquarters. Joker is familiar enough with the building even from before, because he can remember a few times breaking into it— not that the 8th had ever known it, except for one member who was never really a member even though by the end of it he was most definitely a member whether he wanted to admit it to himself or not.
The two of them stand in front of it while Burns waits for Joker to finish his cigarette, because it would be rude to smoke inside. When he stubs out the butt of it under his foot (there have been a few times when he’s forgotten he can’t just put it out on his own skin anymore without hurting himself, where someone has had to grab him to stop him from doing it without even thinking about it because the action is so ingrained into him from so many years of it), he shoves his hands into the pockets of his long black peacoat and just stares up at the facade of the building for a few seconds.
Burns doesn’t interrupt him, doesn’t try to urge him to go inside. He just stands there and waits, and Joker can feel the eye that matches his own on him the entire time.
Maybe it would unnerve other people, but he’s gotten used to it.
Finally, he decides that he’s had enough reminiscing about a world that’s gone and never wanted him anyway, and the two of them head inside.
The headquarters is always a busy place. The two of them greet the receptionist at the front, who greets them in return, recognizing them, and doesn’t try to stop them from heading inside even though the two of them aren’t technically members.
The Force is young enough still that the rules are still a little flexible, and evne if they weren’t, Joker’s never been the kind of guy who cares about following rules regardless. They’re there to be broken.
Maybe one day the two of them will be able to teach Burns that. He very much doubts it, though. Can’t teach an old dog— or lion, or bull— new tricks.
When they make their way into the back rooms, a few familiar faces pass them in the halls. Most of them are greeted with nods or a single raised hand as members scurry off to take care of whatever their duties are around the headquarters when the main team is off on their expeditions. They do get stopped once, though, by two of Burns’ old lieutenants— Joker stands off to the side with his hands still tucked into his pockets, leaning against a wall as he watches the three of them exchange pleasantries and talk about whatever it is they talk about.
Normally he would be all about getting himself involved in conversations that really have nothing to do with him, but right now he has other things on his mind and he can’t imagine what they’re talking about is especially interesting anyway.
Burns doesn’t keep him waiting for long— pats the blue-haired one on the shoulder and tells him that they’re going to need to find a time to catch up for real later, because he’s off to see the expedition crew returning, and doesn’t wait for Joker as he turns to keep walking down the hall, knowing he’ll fall easily into step with him.
“I always forget that you used to be popular,” he says as they descend a large staircase into a dimly lit hallway with steaming pipes surrounding them, a place he’s familiar with enough because Viktor’s office used to be down in this part of the building when it was still Company 8’s HQ, although it looks as exaggerated now as everything on the outside does— just maybe a little more detailed because Shinra would have remembered it in more detail than everything else.
“Used to be?” Burns chuckles. Joker laughs, too, and grins at him, knowing he can see him out of the corner of his one good eye even if he’s pretending he’s looking straight ahead and not paying attention to him at all.
“I don’t exactly see you out on the town very much these days,” he says. “In fact, you almost seem pretty boring.”
“Well, it’s not my fault that you’re so high maintenance I don’t have time for anyone else.”
The quips come easily, and Joker laughs with his whole chest at that one, making it echo down the hall.
Burns doesn’t laugh, but he doesn’t do a very good job at hiding his smile, either. Joker isn’t sure that he’s really trying to.
It’s not like the building is an exact one to one replica of what the 8th was like before the entire world burned down and Shinra had to remake it in a whole new image that kept them from being wiped out all over again. This hallway shouldn’t lead to an open almost garage-like space where there are plenty of people milling around— some of them wearing the uniforms of the World Hero Force, some not, all of them looking pretty excited.
Joker is pretty excited too, but probably not for the same reasons as all of them. Or most of them, at least, because he sees a few faces in the milling crowd that might be there for the same reasons as him.
The redhead and the young boy who always followed around the engineer kid Viktor worked alongside so much, the former powerhouse of the 8th and what looks like her father, Sister Iris chit-chatting with the former Captain of the 5th (who turns and waves as soon as she seems to realize he’s looking over at her, and Joker waves back because, well. It would be rude not to, no?), and the trouble making twins from the Asakusa guardhouse alongside the old man who used to run the place before Mr Toughest took over.
There’s a hum in the crowd that matches the hum under his skin and in the back of his brain, and Joker meanders over to a bench to sit himself down. Burns joins him on the other side, and the two of them sit in silence between themselves as they listen to the buzz and watch everyone else around them milling about, talking to each other, and just. Existing.
Joker kind of wants another cigarette, but he’s not going to light up in the middle of all of these people in this garage. He can wait until they get back outside.
He and Burns don’t really need to talk in moments like this. They’ve talked plenty, in the days since the apocalypse that wasn’t. A lot of it has felt like pulling teeth, something painful and difficult but necessary, but the two of them have made it through in one piece.
Maybe even more intact than they were before they began. After all, Shinra remade all of them. They’re all just as new and shiny as the world they find themselves in.
Even if they’re still themselves underneath all of it. Or maybe even more themselves than they were before all of this.
Joker starts bouncing his leg as he stares straight ahead. His eyes aren’t tracking the people moving through the crowd anymore, although his old instincts mean he’s fully aware of them, can never really be anything but. His focus, his attention, is what’s elsewhere.
Burns reaches over and puts his hand on his thigh, just above his knee. He doesn’t try to hold down his leg or stop it from bouncing. He just leaves his hand there, and soon Joker’s leg stops bouncing on its own.
The sound of engines in the distance makes him perk up.
The world in which they find themselves is new and amazing and wonderful and terrifying and completely alien, filled with new landscapes, things that might have been around before the Great Cataclysm but which none of them have ever seen firsthand before, and a bunch of things that have most definitely never existed outside of fantasy books and children’s imaginations. If Adolla is the collective unconscious desires of humanity, the world Shinra has made for all of them is the collective fantasy of humanity, filled with everything they could ever imagine— and he knows there are two brains in particular that are at the heart of it, who gave Shinra the inspiration to build something out of nothing, a place for all of them to come back to when he beat back the flames with sheer fucking determination.
But the thing about the world being new and amazing is that there are so many things about it that they don’t know. Plants and animals no one has ever heard of that are going to need categorizing. Landmasses and landscapes that are going to need to be explored so they can know where is safe to go and where isn’t. Their world is a whole lot bigger now than it was when it was just the most livable parts of one little island adrift in the ocean, with whatever other small patches of civilization they could manage to etch out on distant shores that hadn’t been entirely demolished by the first set of fires that had tried to turn their world into a second sun and had failed.
For Joker, he doesn’t have much interest in the world at large. When it had been a corrupt, rotting corpse, he had wanted to know why; he had felt the urge to discover the truth behind why the world was such a piece of shit, and eventually he had learned that everything everyone had ever been taught had been built on a lie, and wasn’t that an answer to find? An answer that had only inspired more questions that had needed more answers.
The truth had been the point to the search. He had needed to understand why a world like theirs could be as terrible as it was, and he had found his answers. And now there’s a whole new world and he doesn’t need to uncover the truth of it because he already knows the truth of it.
He might not have been at the centre of it happening, but he gets the explanation. More or less.
There are plenty of other people who are interested in discovering this new kind of truth, though. That’s the whole point of the World Hero Force expedition squad; to venture out into the world, to find new places for people to build and live, to discover all the new things that have been born into this world alongside them.
And there’s one person in Joker’s life for whom the knowledge itself has always been the point— which means that this new group heading out into the world to catalogue all of the strange new things in it is like a magnet for him.
Once everyone in the room picks up on the sound of rumbling engines as they get closer, the energy in the room changes entirely. There’s no more idle chatter, something almost like silence falling over as everyone waits to hear if it’s the sound that they’re waiting for, although what else could it be?
The energy in the room doesn’t change, though. If anything, the energy picks up, as people no longer are talking to dispel some of the excitement in the form of chatter. He wouldn’t be surprised to see people literally shaking. This is the first long expedition the World Hero Force has gone on, after all; they’ve been gone for almost three weeks as they try to fill in the gaps in their knowledge about their new world, and everyone is excited to see what they’ve discovered, what they’ve brought back, and most of all to make sure that everyone is still in one piece.
Joker can’t stop himself from sitting up a little straighter, perking up just a little in his seat, his eyes fixated on the doors at the end of the long garage space as he waits for the arrival of the expedition team. Next to him, Burns doesn’t say anything, but he can feel him looking at him— until he’s not, and his attention is just as focused on the doors as everyone else.
The machines that come rumbling in are engineering wonders, he’s sure. Joker doesn’t know or care much about that sort of thing, but he does know that Viktor has a lot to say about how brilliant Vulcan Joseph is and how they pretty much wouldn’t be able to do half the work they do without him.
The brilliant young engineer is one of the first people out of the cars, in fact, as they all pull into their bays. Everyone in the cars must be just as excited to see the people who are waiting for them as vice versa, not to mention happy to be back in civilization.
The redhead jumps out of the driver’s seat of one of the massive trucks and heads straight for the arms of his girlfriend and the kid, and suddenly there are more people spilling out of the vehicles, the entire room exploding into a cacophony of welcome home’s and a flurry of questions, and he’s sure no one can actually hear each other over all of the noise but it doesn’t really matter, does it?
He tries not to show his hand even though— well, no one in this room would judge him for it, but old habits just die hard, he supposes. But still his eyes scan the crowds as people file off the trucks, looking for a messy head of dark hair that stands out above the crowd, taller than almost everyone else.
Viktor, surprising no one, is one of the last people off the truck. The bag he has slung over his shoulder as he moves through the crowd looks a lot more full than it did when he left, and as he tries to push on through the crowd he raises something up above his head so it doesn’t get knocked out of his hands as he moves. That something looks an awful lot like a flower pot, probably because it is in fact a flower pot, which becomes quite clear as he finally manages to break through the crowd.
Joker is on his feet now. He doesn’t quite remember standing up, but he is definitely standing up, and walking in Viktor’s direction to meet him halfway. Burns is somewhere behind him, Joker always having an uncanny sixth sense for where the old man is at any given time in a room; maybe it has something to do with the fact that, in spite of the fact that their matching eyes no longer burn together the way they once did, they’re always going to be connected in some way.
A pair of one-eyes. A matching set, incomplete without the other.
Viktor is grinning from ear to ear as he walks up to him. Joker can already tell from the way his body is moving that he has so much to talk about that it’s practically spilling out of him, practically tearing him apart at the seams with the eagerness to let loose about everything he’s learned— but it’s too noisy here for them to be able to hear him properly and Joker has always given Viktor nothing but his undivided attention, doesn’t feel like changing that routine up now.
“Welcome back,” he says, because, well. That’s the thing you say to someone who’s been away for a while, right?
Viktor is still beaming at him, and Joker can’t resist the urge to put an arm around his waist and tug him forward so he can pull him into a kiss.
No one around them is really paying any attention, and it’s not like they’re the only public display of affection going on, but when he pulls back he can still see the tips of Viktor’s ears turning bright red— how funny it is that he’s completely shameless in some ways and so easy to embarrass in others, and how fun it’s been to try and discover all of the different lines to cross when it comes to that.
“Thanks,” Viktor says, and the smile on his face is a little goofy now, the way it always is when he’s been shown some affection.
Just behind Joker, Burns has been standing there. He doesn’t have to actually look at him to know that his arms will be crossed not with impatience but because that’s just his default pose, his Stern Old Man look, but even though he’s content to just hang back and watch, Viktor turns his attention towards him anyway.
“Brought you a present,” he says, holding up the flower pot. “I mean, it’s a research specimen, but you’ve got a way better green thumb than me, sooooo…”
He offers Burns the plant. It’s a tall flowering plant that has a drooping white and purple blossom at the top, and Burns takes the flowerpot from him while looking…
Surprised? Maybe? Usually it’s easy for Joker to read him like a book (a special skill that no one else seems to possess, and maybe he’s a little giddy about that, but only in his own mind) but right now it’s hard for him to tell as he looks at the plant he’s been given with a slightly widened eye and a slightly raised eyebrow.
“...Thank you,” Burns finally says, like he’s forgotten that he’s supposed to talk and only just suddenly remembered, and Viktor’s grin actually fades a little— but not in a bad way.
It turns into an easy sort of smile as he says.
“Don’t mention it.”
Burns looks like he wants to say something else, but he can’t quite figure out the words. The old man has never been good at dealing with curveballs that have been suddenly pitched at him, especially not now that he no longer has all of his old habits to cling to, so Joker decides to rescue him from his misery by slinging an arm around Viktor’s waist.
“Let’s get you home,” he says, looking up (just a few centimetres but as tall as he is Joker always finds it endearing that Viktor is somehow taller, beanpole of a man that he is) at his once partner and now… Partner, in a different way, mirroring that genuine smile on his face with one of his own because he is just genuinely glad to have him back in one piece.
He almost expects a protest from Viktor saying that he has too much work to do now that they’ve just gotten back home from their expedition, because Viktor loves to argue with him when Joker tells him that he actually needs to take a break for once, but Viktor just leans almost his full body weight into him (Joker keeping him held up easily) as he puts his arm around Joker’s shoulders in return and says,
“Home sounds great.”
Joker doesn’t even know that he could put into words how all of this has happened.
Some days it feels like this is all a dream that he’s suddenly going to wake up from, and curse the world for giving him everything he’s ever wanted and then taking it all away again.
It’s sounds dramatic, but it’s true. It’s hard for him to believe that all of this is real— that the world actually came to an end, that everything was remade by one boy and his brother and mother fighting against the total weight of humanity’s despair with nothing but ending hope and a will to live on their side, that in this world remade he doesn’t have to live in the darkness and steal to be able to eat and live life as a wanted criminal always watching his own back because it’s the only way he would ever be able to really get to the truth.
Some days he finds himself just staring up at the ceiling or out the window or even just at a wall trying to convince himself that it can’t be— until someone pulls his attention back into the world around him and he realizes that no.
It is real.
Joker has never been the sentimental type, but that’s really only because he’s never been able to be. He’s never have anything to be sentimental over. His old family made damn sure that he would always be alone, that if he refused to be a part of the collective he would be a lone wolf without a pack, and in time he came to not only accept that but to embrace it— a stray dog off its leash could do a lot more than an obediently trained one kept chained behind a fence, after all.
So the fact that he has a home now, the fact that he has people to come home to, is still something that he finds himself not really being able to believe.
In the wake of the apocalypse that happened and then was undone, the entire world had changed and everyone had lost their footing. Order had to be reestablished, homes had to be reclaimed because the world they were in now was wholly different to the one that they had burned up in, people had to find new places in the world because what had worked in the old one didn’t work anymore.
There was no more Holy Sol Temple, there was no more Fire Force. With the sum total knowledge of what the Evangelist had done to shape their society and with spontaneous human combustion having been solved once and for all, there was no need for that.
Corporations reestablished themselves, industry started up again. The hallmarks of civilization reappeared because it wasn’t as though Shinra had made the world so different that they had to fend for themselves. He had remade the world from the collective imaginations of all of humanity, after all, or something very much like it, guided by his own hand in making everything a little less connected from the reality they had once known— lessening the value and preciousness of life, sprinkling a little madness in so the despair that had burned them all up wouldn’t have anywhere to take root.
Life, civilization, all started themselves back up again. Just… A little sideways compared to how things used to be. A little more fun.
No Holy Sol Temple, no Shadows, no secrets being kept in the deep dark about the true nature of the world. Everyone knows the story now. The story of how the collective despair of humanity created a God, or something very much like it, and that God rose up to create another God, a civilization that would guide itself to its own destruction, and push them all increasingly to wanting the world to turn into a second sun in order to end their own suffering. Everything’s out in the open now.
No more truths for a seeker to seek. No more shadows that he needs to hide in.
Now, Joker genuinely feels like for the first time in his life he can rest.
The house the three share is nothing impressive. None of them are the kind who need much. There’s a basement that Viktor had been quick to claim as his own and filling it with all of the tools he would need to continue his research into the new world going forward even when he wasn’t at the World Hero Force headquarters, not minding the dark and the damp, actually saying he preferred it that way— “Old habits die hard,” he’d said, and Joker had laughed, asking him if he wanted to make him a Secret Lair sign to match the old one.
(He did hang a No Smoking sign on the door. Just for the familiarity of it. Not to mention the humour.)
There’s a garden in the back which is distinctly Burns territory. Viktor knows the ins and outs of botany as much as he knows the ins and outs of anything (Joker once heard someone ask Viktor what his actual scientific specialty was since he seems to know more than the average person about just about anything, and Viktor had dodged the question with the skill of a ballerina), but Burns is the one with a green thumb, seems to find a certain serenity in the act of growing things. When Joker comes down for his coffee in the morning (when it is morning and not late afternoon, the way it is some days, because even the world burning down and being started anew hasn’t been enough to fix the absolute shit show that is his internal clock it seems), he can often peek out the back window and see him there, getting dirt under his fingernails and sweat on his brow.
Joker doesn’t claim any one particular part of the house, but maybe that in itself is the claim he has to this place— because the whole of it is very distinctly theirs.
After the world didn’t end, Joker found himself not knowing really what to do with himself. He had reached the finish line and everything had just stretched out in front of him. All of the chances he’d never had— and all of them presenting themselves all at once had almost been too much for him.
How do you go about making a life for yourself when you’ve never been given the chance to actually live one?
When everything had been in chaos regardless, he had leaned on that as his excuse. No one knew what they were doing anymore. Nothing was the same. Everything needed to be figured out all over again from the ground up, and at first it had just been a matter of everyone being glad that they were alive, too glad for that to be worried about getting caught up in all of the details.
Now that things have settled down, now that people are figuring out their place in this new world, Joker still feels lost— adrift. Like he doesn’t know what he’s doing with himself, and yet, there’s a sense of peace in all of it.
Having had a mission for so long, having defined himself as a Dark Hero, someone who would do anything to discover the truth even if it meant having to throw away any ties to the world and any last thread of morality he still had— having nothing to do felt like a blessing more than a curse.
It’s the feeling that fills him now as he stands in his kitchen, hair tied back just enough to keep it out of his face, bandana left somewhere upstairs in the bedroom— he doesn’t even remember where, doesn’t care either, might care later if he has any plans to leave the house but for right now there’s no one around who he cares about seeing the old scar or his sightless eye.
In the garden, he sees Burns crouched down in the dirt as he carefully transfers Viktor’s ‘gift’ from the plant pout into the rest of the garden while Viktor watches, no doubt rattling off facts about the environment they found it in, the potential water and sunlight conditions it’s going to need, all of that. Burns turns to say something to him in return, and although Joker can’t hear what the two are saying through the kitchen window—
His heart starts beating that much faster at the way the two look at each other while they talk. At the way Viktor, who hasn’t gotten his hands dirty at all (not afraid to, never has been, but all too happy to leave the gardening to the man who knows what he’s doing), reaches down without even thinking about it mid-sentence to brush a stray bit of dirt from Burns’ face where he must have wiped away sweat without thinking about the state of his hands. At the way Burns leans into the touch, and then pulls away to turn back to what he was doing, and neither of them even seem to notice.
Joker notices.
He turns away to pour himself a cup of coffee, hears the door to the garden open and close. He’s spatially aware of Viktor slouching into the room without even having to glance back over his shoulder. Not only can he feel him, he’s perfectly aware of what Viktor’s footsteps sound like, his slightly odd gait that only gets more strange when he runs— something Viktor is embarrassed about, but Joker just finds endearing. As long as he can run fast enough for his legs to get him out of trouble when he needs it, who cares about how he looks while he’s doing it?
Viktor drapes himself over him from behind and slouches against his back, trusting Joker to stay standing tall even with more or less his full weight on him. Joker chuckles at the way Viktor wraps his arms around him from behind and buries his face in his shoulder.
He might have looked perfectly energetic when he had science talk to be doing with Burns, but with that buzz already wearing off now that he’s left the man himself to his dirt-covered peace, it’s more obvious than ever that Viktor is not a morning person.
Neither is Joker, really, but he’s starting to adjust to this idea of a normal life. A life where he doesn’t have to hide in sewers and sleep when he gets the chance because he doesn’t always know when he might not get one for a while. The fact that he can just get up in the morning and go downstairs and have a cup of coffee and watch both of his lovers gardening and have one of them come in and start acting like all he wants is a hug when what he’s really trying to do is make a not at all subtle grab for his freshly poured cup of coffee.
A cup of coffee he’s going to give to him anyway, along with a warning of, “Careful, it’s hot,” as Viktor makes a downright pleased noise at the smell of freshly brewed coffee and takes a sip in spite of his warning because earning two PhD’s by the age of 23 had turned him into a man who wasn’t afraid of anything a cup of coffee could throw at him.
Joker goes to pour himself a second cup, and without even thinking about it he puts the kettle on because he knows Burns will come in wanting a cup of tea as soon as he’s done rooting through the dirt and checking up on all of his plant.
This might all be new to him, but he’s become so used to it so quickly that it’s almost scary. It’s hard for him to imagine how he managed so long, so fucking long, not living like this.
With coffee in hand, Viktor mumbles something about checking on results that Joker only half understands as he leans in to press a kiss to Joker’s cheek— missing a little bit, kissing him just on the edge of his mouth instead before disappearing into his basement lair.
Sometimes Joker will go down there with him. He says it's because he's interested in knowing what Viktor is studying. It's in small part that, though he doesn't understand most of what Viktor tells him, that brilliant mind of his working far faster and harder and better than Joker's ever could. The unspoken larger part is that he just likes spending time with him, existing in his general vicinity while watching the way Viktor's eyes go wide and he tends to stick his tongue out when he's working away at something that's demanding his full and complete attention. They spend a lot of long days and nights together in that cramped converted maintenance office they called home, and as much as Joker doesn't miss it, sometimes he does.
Just like there's a small part of him that, in spite of everything, still misses the dark.
But as he watches Viktor slouch off down into the basement— as he sips at his second cup of coffee waiting for the sound of the back door to open and shut again, followed by Burns making his way over, stopping only to wash the dirt from his hands before cradling Joker's jaw in his hands and kissing him right on his missing eye—
There's something downright addicting about the light, too.
When the apocalypse that had been undone had settled, when they had all realized that in spite of the fact that their world had burned down around them in uncontrollable black flames they were alive again, Joker had been with Burns.
It made sense because Burns had been the person that had been there with him at the end. They had stood atop a building overlooking the sea of flames as they both came to accept that their roles in the story were finished— that the only thing they could do was to hope that Shinra would be able to play the role he was born for, that he would be the one to save them all, that he would come out on top as a hero.
Burns, back to himself except for the horns that no longer made him look like a demon but instead like a stubborn old bull, had neglected his old subordinates— all of them standing there and looking at him in confusion because the last any of them had known, he was dead— and had turned to him, and though Joker’s first instinct had been to reach up and run his fingers over those horns of his and make a joke about them, his second instinct had caught up quickly as soon as he had seen the look in Burns’ eye. A look he hadn’t seen in a long time.
Softness. Adoration.
Love.
Then, it had been all too easy for Joker to grab him by the collar of his shirt and pull him in for a kiss, heedless of the fact that people were watching— people who no doubt had plenty of questions about who the hell he was and why he was kissing their (former) captain.
That fact hadn’t stopped Burns, either, from wrapping his arms tightly around Joker and kissing him back, the two of them unable to pry themselves away from each other as the adrenaline and the elation of being alive took them over.
Until Joker had suddenly remembered there was someone else out there who he needed to see— someone else who had perished in those flames, someone he had left behind with a promise that he was going on ahead to check out the danger, to see why the flames weren’t dying down, and then had never been able to return to because his doppelgänger had handily wiped the floor with him and most of his blood had ended up outside of his body.
Joker had pulled away, then, to Burns’ confusion— and there was a look in his eye almost like hurt, just a flash before it was gone, hidden behind the same wall that Burns locked all of his feelings behind.
His mouth had flapped uselessly as he tried to think of what to say, what he could possibly say, that wouldn’t just make it worse, considering he had just grabbed him and kissed him— something he had wanted to do for a long time, over a decade, but had always thought of as something that was now beyond his reach because the two of them had chosen such different paths to walk.
How do you tell the man you just kissed with twelve years of built up emotion that you had to go and find the other man you loved, the man you were actually with (even if you had never put as much into words, figuring that with the fate of the world on the line, things like qualifying the relationship could wait), that you had to make sure he was okay before you could even start to process your thoughts and feelings regarding… What you had just done?
You really couldn’t, was something Joker had learned that day; thankfully, Burns must have seen something in his eye, because he had reached up to tuck a long strand of his dark hair that had fallen out of his ponytail, left his hand lingering on his face and run his thumb along the ridge of his cheekbone where it was hidden by his bandana, and had said,
“Go.”
So Joker had gone with not a single other word of explanation, taking off in search of where he had last left the 8th when the world was falling apart, hoping that even in this strange new landscape he would be able to find his way around— enough at least to find who he was looking for, while leaving Burns behind to his no doubt awkward explanations of who exactly he was to some surprised looking subordinates.
The 8th had been gathered together because of course they had been. Shinra had been there, introducing them to his brother and mother, and soon as Joker had seen that familiar head of unruly hair standing tall over the rest of Company 8— taller even than Captain Obi— he had let out the breath that he hadn’t realized he was holding in.
Viktor had taken a moment to spot him, because Joker did nothing to call attention to himself, not wanting to interrupt Shinra and the rest of Company 8 in the little moment they were having, even if it felt like something was going to burst up and out of his skin the longer he spent standing there staring at Viktor and not actually going to him— and then all of a sudden dark eyes met his singular, and the excited grin on Viktor’s face had somehow gotten even wider, and not a moment later he found himself with his arms full of gangly scientist as Viktor all but launched himself at him.
Viktor had grabbed his face and pulled him into a kiss before he could even say anything— and then all of a sudden he hadn’t needed to say anything, because here the two of them were, at the end of the world that had happened and then been undone, alive and together after chasing a dream that had always seemed impossible even as the two of them swore to never give up on it.
Joker had melted under Viktor’s lips, under his hands with their rough finger pads from all of the times he had burned himself touching some piece of lab equipment that was too hot without even thinking about it, melted to the feeling of wrapping his arms around the taller but more slender younger man and holding him to his body like he wanted nothing more than to draw them together until the two of them could never be separated.
The 8th behind them had cheered and whooped, Joker realizing belatedly that the two of them had never actually told or showed the firefighters that they were together, too many things going on all at once from the time when Viktor had revealed that he and Joker had been working together all along to be bothered with details like that— but just like with the 1st who had stared in shock at him and Burns, they hadn’t mattered even one little bit.
When finally the two of them had separated, had broken apart, the giddiness in Viktor couldn’t be contained as he practically bounced with only Joker refusing to let go of him to ground him.
“We’re alive!” he proclaimed loudly, and Joker had laughed, not because it was funny but because it was true and because there was nothing he could do but laugh about it.
They were alive.
All of them.
And when everyone had started to gather together, when people who had worked together to try and put a stop to the end of the world and had eventually looked to Shinra to save them like he was always meant to because they had done all that they could started to drift towards them because there were a lot of things that needed figuring out now that the world hadn’t ended— friends and enemies alike, and some people that were somewhere in the middle— the first person Joker had looked for was Burns, who had stood out from the crowd not only because of the horns but because Joker doubted there would ever be a time when he wouldn’t immediately be able to spot his other half even across a sea of people.
The fires had stopped burning in his eye, but the scar remained, too used to being blind on one side after twelve years to let go of it even once he was reborn, and too used to being part of a set.
In all of the chaos he had put an arm around Viktor’s waist and guided him through the crowd while others were trying to bring together some semblance of order, and Viktor had gone along, the curiosity clear in his face but more than willing to let Joker lead him wherever he was planning on going with a level of trust that made Joker’s stomach do all kinds of crazy things.
And when the two of them had come to stop right in front of Burns, who was standing there waiting for the two of them like he had known exactly what Joker was planning, exactly why he had run off so fast—
All Joker had thought of to say was,
“Hey, Viktor— You’ve met Burns before, yeah?”
Memories have a funny way of making themselves known— or maybe just remembered is the better word— when you’re half asleep. Something about the mind when left to its own devices likes to conjure up these things, like playing movies in your head to try and pass the time.
Maybe that’s why Joker finds himself thinking about the day when all of this— this life that he has now— had begun, while he finds himself sitting on the floor between Burns’ knees as the older of his two lovers runs his fingers through his long hair and carefully braids it.
Burns’ own hair is starting to get long now— let down from the ponytail he had always kept it in as a fire soldier, in order to keep it out of the way, falling in waves around his face and almost long enough for Joker to be able to return the favour, and he hasn’t told him how much he likes it like this but he thinks Burns has gotten the message from how often he finds himself burying his face in it from behind or idly playing with it while they’re in bed.
The lights are off, and there’s a fire burning in the fireplace. Fire is a strange thing for all of them, but Joker has always found more comfort in it than fear, and it provides a nice red glow and a comforting warmth that finds him starting to fall asleep as Burns carefully weaves strands of his dark hair together in a pattern he doesn’t pretend to understand, because he’s never bothered to do anything with his hair except try to keep it out of his face— he only grew it out because it seemed like one more fuck you to the pack that he had run from, that had turned him into a lone wolf because he refused to bow to those who refused to see the truth, when they had done all they could to keep them in line and uniform.
His single eye is halfway shut when he hears the basement door open from the other room.
Viktor stumbles into their living room, looking about as exhausted as he feels. How many nights in a row has he been down there in his new little lab space, trying to unravel the mysteries of this new world?
Too many, as far as Joker is concerned; when he has to make his way down there to practically drag him off to bed to get some actual sleep instead of an awkward power nap on his desk while results are compiling, he knows it’s too much.
“Any luck?” Burns asks, looking up from his project even as his hands keep moving, knowing what to do with Joker’s hair even without the benefit of sight.
Viktor makes a sort of noise and drops himself onto the couch next to Burns, flopping into a position that doesn’t look the least bit comfortable, but which Joker knows he prefers to sitting like a normal person.
Viktor’s head lolls instantly in the direction of Burns’ shoulder. Joker can’t blame him. He knows from personal experience that it’s a very comfortable shoulder to rest on.
Burns doesn’t seem to mind in the least, though it does slow down his braiding efforts. Joker tries to crane his head to be able to see the two of them without making it completely impossible to continue— hard to do when he only has one eye to work with, but that’s life for you.
From this angle, he can at least see the way Viktor has made himself right at home with his head on Burns’ shoulder. Burns is focused on Joker’s hair— but after a moment he glances over at Viktor resting on him, and Joker recognizes that small smile that he has on his face.
Joker reaches out to rest his hand on Viktor’s thigh. Viktor stirs slightly, but it seems like he’s pretty much instantly fallen asleep, and Joker can’t help but chuckle a little at that.
He’s probabloy going to have to carry him up to bed. Provided all three of them don’t end up falling asleep here, just like this.
He knows it’s probably selfish of him, to have this life that he has. They’ve settled into a comfortable intimacy now, but he’s under no illusions that the two of them haven’t come together the way they have because of him, because he wanted to keep both of them, because he wasn’t willing to let either of them go.
Burns would have been willing to agree to anything if it meant Joker didn’t turn away from him again, the way he had all those years ago when they had first realized that so long as one of them wanted to claw his way out of the shadows and the other was trapped in the light, there was nowhere for them together.
Viktor has told him to his face that he’s not sure what he would really do with himself if the two of them parted ways for good, and that it’s never much mattered to him what Joker does when he isn’t around, that he’s just happy to be able to be in his life at all.
So, yeah. Selfish. Hoarding both of them to himself.
But.
Joker has never been allowed to keep anything for himself. If not wanting to let go of either of them now that he has them is selfish, then call him fucking selfish.
Burns finishes with his braid, and one of his hands slides down Joker’s shoulder, hanging in front of his body, where Joker laces their fingers together and brings Burns’ hand up to his mouth so he can press a kiss to the back of his knuckles.
With his other hand, he searches for Viktor’s— and even though their resident scientist has seemingly instantly fallen asleep, as soon as he takes his hand, Viktor squeezes back.
In this place, in this time, with the end of the world behind them and the uncertain future spread out in front of them…
Selfish doesn’t look so bad.