Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Harley is such a physically affectionate person and Ivy doesn't know how to deal with that. Her girlfriend peppers her nose and cheeks with kisses but reciprocating feels wrong because that's how she treats her enemies, the humans she so despises, and Harleen Quinzel is so much more than just a human to her. Harley sometimes jokes that Ivy would rather kiss Batman than her, with only a little hurt behind her voice. "I mean s'makes sense. He's dreamy."

Ivy scoffs. "Please. Of course I'd kiss him. He's a stupid man, easily manipulated." Harley's face is still sad, so she cocks her head to one side, considering for a few seconds before reaching both hands out for hers. "But then again, would I ever do this?" She pulls Harley close, wrapping both arms around her protectively and resting her cheek ontop of the blonde curls.

Harley laughs softly, nestling into her girlfriend's neck. "Nah Red, this one's just for me." Ivy hums in assent, staying there for a minute before Harley pulls away with a snort of laughter. "But imagine if you did? The look on his face would be priceless."

"Oh no. You've got it in my head now." Ivy winced, her face scrunching up as she brought a hand up to shield her eyes. "Yuck."

"He'd be so confused, oh my god."

"Never speak of this again." Ivy's other hand joined the first to facepalm more thoroughly, muffling her voice.

Suddenly, Harley paused, tucking both hands behind her back with a mischevious glint in her eyes. "Do it."

Ivy dropped her hands. "Harls-..."

Taking a step closer and leaning forward with a huge and (in Ivy's mind) adorable grin on her face, "Hug Batman."

"Harley." Ivy made her best utterly disappointed  and disinterested face knowing that, logically, she was going to end up doing whatever Harley wanted because the woman was too damn cute.

"I, Harleen Quinzel, dare you, Pamela Isley, to hug the Batman."

Ivy crossed her arms, glaring at her girlfriend pointedly, "No."

Harley rocked side to side on her heels, widening her eyes innocently. "What? You scared?"

"No!"

Chapter Text

A week later Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy were up to their usual antics, robbing a bank (and stealing the potted plants on the counter because the poor babies were choking in their too-small pots), when Batman predictably showed up, cornering Ivy in a front hallway. Harley had already escaped successfully with the cash, so it was only her left to deal with the opposition.

"Batman. How good of you to drop by." Huffing out a breath, Ivy took a second to set down the plants carefully before starting a fight (the idiot just liked to stand there awkwardly and would wait for her to make a move. stupid hero.).

"I can't let you do this." He growled, artificially deepening his voice.

"Well fortunately it isn't up to /you/ to /let/ me do anything." Her voice also dropped, although she stuck out her lower lip in a mimicry of the pouty, spoiled child she believed her opponent to be. She was just about to call her new potted plant friends to her aid when she caught sight of Harley, standing by the hallway's open door behind her opponent. 'I dared you.' She mouthed silently, barely concealing the laughter that was threatening to break through.

Batman had proved himself immune to her most recent batch of pheromones (how that had happened she hadn't yet figured out), and so Ivy hadn't planned on kissing him or really actively getting herself involved in the upcoming fight at all. Batman knew this. He was so confident in his understanding of Gotham's villains. However, he did not know about their dare. Rolling her eyes, she stepped forward without warning and wrapped her arms around the Dark Knight's shoulders. She expected him to knee her in the gut or something because this was an utterly idiotic and unsafe move in a battle, but at least Harley would get a kick out of it. However, instead of fighting her, he froze. Apparently he was as utterly baffled in receiving the hug as she was in giving it. Gods. This was embarrassing. Without looking up, she raised one hand to flip off her girlfriend. There could no explanation for this. She was just going to have to kill him permamently this time so no one would ever know.

Suddenly, however, her thoughts were interrupted by a loud KONK and her opponent/hugging partner suddenly falling to her feet. Harley stood over him with her hammer raised in one hand and a gigantic grin on her face. "YES! WE DID IT RED!" Dropping the hammer, she launched herself into her girlfriend's arms and began covering her face with kisses while their nemesis lay unconscious at their feet.

Chapter Text

“Actually sleep for once, they said. It’ll be fun, they said.” Tim Drake was sitting at a Batcave computer, hacking and realigning the data from an assortment of cell towers in an attempt to get a solid location on Batman. It was supposed to have been a (for Gotham) quiet evening, Dick had been over earlier in the day and had somehow managed to guilt Bruce into ordering Tim to attempt to sleep for at least four hours before joining Batman on patrol, and he had been an utter idiot and had actually listened. Thank gods Alfred had let him down here (he was still supposed to be sequestered in his room (definitively not sleeping and with his laptop hooked up to the Batcave mainframe, obviously) for another two hours). Batman of course had had several trackers of several different forms in his suit when he had abruptly ceased communication, but all the obvious ones had been blocked or removed. One, at least, was still functional but its readings were coming in a bit fuzzy, hence the need for further triangulation.

‘Incoming request for communication from Oracle.’ words appeared in the lower corner of one of his screens.

‘Oracle. Is there something I can do for you?’ He typed quickly while waiting for his latest adjusted search to calibrate.

‘I’ve been monitoring the situation with Batman and wanted to ensure that you aren’t planning on going up against Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn on your own.’

‘I’ve got it under control.’

‘Going in outnumbered is not an intelligent choice. You don’t know what state Batman will be in when you get there. I’m sending Batgirl with you.’

‘Fine.’

‘She’ll meet you at the entrance in 10 minutes. I expect you’ll have exact coordinates and a floor plan by then.’

Tim closed the chatbox and turned back to his search. It wasn’t like he needed backup, but at the same time Babs was right. Like always. The woman was extremely frustrating sometimes.

 *****

“Hiya Steph.” Tim deadpanned.

“Tim.” Steph crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes, then broke into a grin. “We haven’t worked together in a while, I missed you!”

“Same here, hopefully this’ll be straightforward.”

“You jinxed it, now we’re certain to have a near-death experience.”

“You should probably get a move on,” Oracle interjected on the comms, “I’m sure Batman would prefer to be rescued sooner rather than later.”

*****

“TWINKLE TWINKLE LITTLE BAT,” Harley Quinn sang at an excessive volume excessively out of tune.

Batman winced. This was going to be a /long/ night.

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“THERE ONCE WAS A BAT WHO LIVED IN A SHOE,” at some point in the past hour, Harley had found a spinny chair in the abandoned warehouse they currently resided in and was now wobbling round and round happily, scream-singing at the roof. Batman had mostly managed to tune her out, but the same could not be said for Ivy, who was repotting the plants they’d stolen from the bank into more reasonably-sized containers with increasing anger.

“Harley.” Ivy’s voice cut through the noise, causing Harley to pause for a full second before continuing on at (if possible) an even louder pitch.

“HE HAD SO MANY ROBINS HE DIDN’T KNOW WHAT TO DO!”

“HARLEY.” Ivy stood up, shooting a glare at her girlfriend.

“HE GAVE THEM SOME SMOKE BOMBS WITHOUT ANY-…” The song cut off with a squeak and a crash of shattered pottery as one of the empty miniature pots flew over Harley’s head and splintered against the wall. The chair teetered precariously for a few seconds before falling sideways. “RED!” Harley did not get up, but glared daggers across the room.

Ivy huffed, massaging her temples with one hand. “Please Harls. Just-… stop singing. Just for fifteen minutes.”

“Ok Red,” Harley pulled herself upright and began arranging the pottery shards into patterns on the floor, “but only ‘cause I love ya,” she added, sticking her out her lower lip in a pout. Ivy turned back to her project but was only granted a minute or so of silence before Harley piped up again. “What’re we gonna do with the Bat?”

“I was hoping he’d die out of sheer annoyance at your singing, but I’ve got some other ideas in mind if that fails.”

“Oooooh can we drop him in a tank of sharks?”

“If you’ve got one handy.”

*****

“I have a feeling we’ve found the right warehouse.” Steph muttered, motioning to the dripping toxic waste barrels covered in venus flytraps that-…. may or may not have turned to watch them, despite their efforts at concealment.

“Whatever gave you that idea?” Tim’s wrist-tracker buzzed and he motioned towards a blank wall to their right. “Tracker’s pointing to a location fifty feet that way and twenty feet down.”

“Lovely. The only non-obvious way down according to the floorplan is in the opposite direction.” She huffed. “Glad I brought two cans of weedkiller.”

“Bat-weedkiller?”

“Nah man, bought it from Walmart,” she shot a sly grin at her companion, “Don’t tell B but I bet you an entire plate of waffles it’ll work just as good.”

“I’ll take that bet.” Oracle spoke over the comms.

*****

Having successfully acquired a large pottery shard (the two villains had of course relieved him of his belt along with the tracking devices), Batman spent a few seconds considering the odds of the pitcher plant imprisoning him eating him the second he attempted to free himself. The odds were around 75/25 in favor of being eaten, and so he had decided to remain patient for a bit longer before attempting it. For the moment neither Harley Quinn nor Poison Ivy were paying attention to him. Ivy had left the room to arrange the dispersal of the proceeds of their bank robbery, and Harley was singing to the newly liberated plants on the opposite side of the room. Ivy had made sure he wasn’t able to talk or move before leaving (although he retained the pottery shard), so there wasn’t much he could accomplish directly until-… a loud clatter disrupted his thoughts. Harley stood and walked towards the noise, “Whoever’s decided to join the party should come out and introduce themselves!” She announced, grabbing a flashlight and turning it to the shadowy corner which only contained a forlorn looking tin can. “Well that’s just boring.” Kicking it grumpily, which caused a loud clang as it hit the wall, “I was hopin’ we’d finally have some excitement around here.” She huffed, crossing her arms and glaring at the can as if this was somehow it’s fault.

Batman knew that the distraction was no accident, and was watching closely to analyze how this new intrusion might provide an opportunity for escape when he recognized Batgirl waving at him from the rafters with a grin. Idiotic move, opening herself up to whatever other threats might be in the room, he’d have to talk to her about that after this was over with.

“Hey! Bat Lady! Come down here where I can get at ya!” Harley yelled, firing a cork gun at Batgirl. See, that was exactly the reason you don’t wave at the person you’re attempting to rescue.

“Nah I don’t think so.” Steph easily sidestepped the cork, which exploded against the roof. “No offense, but you don’t seem too friendly.”

“I’m friendly as heck!” Harley threw a small bomb at her, which successfully blew up the rafter Batgirl was standing on, forcing her to swing across to a different one. “Oooh ‘heck’, that’s a real bad word.” Steph continued to antagonize Harley, skipping across to the opposite side of the roof.

At that moment, Batman decided to chance freeing himself from the pitcher plant, only to have it awkwardly fall sideways, pulling him with it. “I frickin love this stuff.” Tim grinned, dropping the can of weedkiller and helping Batman up with one hand while scanning him for injuries with a device in the other.

“Where’s Ivy?”

Tim opened his mouth to protest that he and Steph deserved some sort of thanks or congratulations for figuring this out, but instead answered the question as concisely as possible. “Oracle has her distracted with a drone outside, should buy us a few minutes.” Another explosion rocked the room, accompanied by Harley cackling, “Do need to take care of that though.”

Chapter Text

Tim had rather hoped that they would ‘take care of that,’ but the fact of the matter was, Ivy had more plants than they had Walmart weed-killer, and as soon as one of them got a solid hit on the woman herself Harley, understandably, freaked.

The money and other resources had already been removed from the warehouse, and there wasn’t any grand plan afoot to replace everyone’s pet cats with carnivorous flowers, so in the end they decided to call it a draw and head back to the batcave instead.

Oracle brought Steph her waffles, and they all had a good laugh over the weird success of no-name-brand weedkiller against Ivy’s plants. Oracle promised to keep an eye on the two villains to which Batman, somewhat surprisingly, actually agreed.

And out in the far reaches of Gotham, out where you couldn’t particularly call it Gotham anymore, two women sat curled in one large comfy chair.

“’m glad most of your babies were ok.” Harley yawned. Ivy had been running her fingers through her hair for the last several minutes and it was putting her to sleep.

Ivy paused for a moment, then grumbled, “Thoughts on attacking Walmart next? Their brand of weedkiller is really a pain. Keep changing up the formula so I can’t get a read on it.”

“I dunno Red.”

Resuming petting her hair with an eye roll, “They also sell oreos.”

“Yah?”

“Oreos which you can steal while I liberate the home and garden department.”

Harley’s eyes lit up, then she sat up straight and cocked her head at the sound of something falling through their door’s mail slot. “Mail!” She jumped up with glee and ran to grab the large white envelope and immediately ripped it open.

Inside was only a photograph, slightly blurry and taken from a security camera, but clearly showing one Pamela Isley hugging the Batman, glaring daggers, and flipping off someone just out of frame. On the back was a short note reading ‘Went through the security footage and found this. Thought you might want a copy. – O’ Harley grinned.

“Hey Red! Guess what Big Brother sent me?”