Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Usually when awkward shit happens, Ivy can count on Harley to cut the tension with an endless string of nonsense. But in the dark cab of the prison transport truck, there’s nothing but silence between them.

Admittedly, “awkward” falls far short of describing what happened back there in the desert after Ivy plucked Harley from the jaws of death. There’s a dick-ton of other words she could use to describe it though: perfect; scary; dangerous; inevitable; hot as fuck.

And listen: It shouldn’t have taken a near-death experience for Ivy to realize that she was stupid attracted to her best friend. Which would be a whole thing even if she wasn’t marrying Kite Man in less than a month.

But it doesn’t have to mean anything, right? She and Harley are two smokin’ hot badasses who love each other a lot (platonically!), and the stakes were high as fuck. Just this crazy one-time thing. Hell, once the dust has settled, they’ll probably have a good laugh about it.

Yeah, okay, maybe it was the best kiss of Ivy’s life, and maybe she can’t stop thinking about the electric shiver that ran through her when they brushed nips through the starchy polyester of their prison uniforms, and maybe Harley’s heroic sacrifice was unbelievably romantic. But, like, whatever.

She nearly jumps out of her skin when Harley clears her throat a little too loudly. “So, uh…”

“Yep.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Yeah. But, like, we should talk about it.”

“What is there to talk about?” Ivy says, staring a little too intently at the empty highway stretching out in front of them. “It was just a heat-of-the-moment thing. Plus, y’know, like, prison is…lesbians.”

She can feel Harley’s eyes boring a hole into the side of her face. “Prison is lesbians?”

“You know what I mean. It was a dumb mistake. We can move on. Pretend like it never happened.”

With a frustrated growl, Harley cuts the steering wheel sharply to the left and veers onto the side of the road. 

“What the fuck, man!”

Harley switches off the engine and turns to face Ivy fully. “Sometimes I feel like you forget that I have a literal PhD in psychiatry. Not that I even need one to realize that what you’re doing right now is textbook avoidant behavior.”

“I’m engaged, Harley!”

“To a guy you turned down twice!”

“But then I said yes!”

“Lemme try this another way.” Harley grabs Ivy’s hands and looks her right in the eye with painful sincerity. “I wasn’t planning on smoochin’ ya. Not that the thought hasn’t crossed my mind—like, a lot—but I figured it was just ’cause you’re a total smokeshow and I love ya. But then when it actually happened, I was like: Hold up—Ivy’s a smokeshow and you love her. There’s no just about that. And I couldn’t help but notice—”

“Harley—”

“And I couldn’t help but notice,” she plows on, like a clown car with no brakes, “that you were enthusiastically participating. And not in a ‘heat-of-the-moment,’ ‘prison-is-lesbians’ type of way. So just level with me? Please?”

Ivy knows that Harley deserves nothing but raw honesty. But she’s been deciding between napkin color swatches for the past two weeks and Chuck’s big, loving eyes for the past two years, and she just…can’t. So she disentangles their fingers and says quietly, “It was a mistake.”

Harley couldn’t look more devastated if Ivy had stabbed in the heart with a sharpened nettle stalk. And it takes all her willpower not to gather her friend up in her arms and tell her the truth, even if she hasn’t articulated it to herself yet.

She braces for Harley to put up a fight, but it never comes. Instead, she wipes a tear from her eye, resparks the wires under the steering column, and drives back to Gotham in icy silence. It’s only after she’s pulled the truck into a spot behind the mall (well, three spots, the way she parks) that Ivy realizes how badly she wanted Harley to call bullshit.

Chapter Text

Harley doesn’t get a lick of sleep that night. She can practically feel Ivy two bedrooms down, roiling with emotions she refuses to express. When she jerks off in the shower to the memory of Ivy’s lips on hers, she wonders if her friend is also flicking the bean. Talk about blue balls (or maybe in this case, green balls). 

She’s out the door before sunrise, bat strapped to her back, in search of trouble that will be all too easy to find. But even taking out half a dozen of Two Face’s goons and cleaning out Gotham Jewelry Planet doesn’t ease the restless ache. 

Mortifyingly, she breaks out in tears when she raids the display case of engagement rings. No question: If things had shaken out differently, she’d propose to Ivy in a heartbeat.

These goopy feelings aren’t anything new. But Harley had long ago resigned herself to the idea that Ivy only loved her as a friend, which was more than enough. It had to be. At first, she was completely bewildered by the whole Kite Man thing; but her attitude softened when she realized what a genuinely good guy he seemed to be under all those layers of kite—and just how devoted he was to Ivy.

But now that Harley knows that her friend is in just as deep, and exactly what her lips taste like, and how she can work goddamn miracles with her tongue? Like, absolutely fuck Kite Man. 

With no goon heads left to bash in, she trains her bat on the metal trash cans in a gloomy alley—the same one, she’s pretty sure, where the Waynes got shot back in the day.

“Well, this is interesting.” 

Harley looks up from the fucked pile of tin at her feet to see Catwoman perched on a fire escape two stories up, eyes glinting in the dark.

“Scram, kitty.”

Selina does not. Instead, she lands silently on the pavement and crosses her arms. “Where else am I supposed to go? You beat me to Jewelry Planet, and now I’m bored.”

“Wanna fight about it?” Harley asks hopefully.

“That would be extremely tacky.”

“Ugh. What do you want, then?”

“The tea, darling. Clearly something’s got your panties in a twist.”

Y’know what? Fuck it. Harley needs to unload, and Selina will give her better advice than friggin’ Clayface.

“It’s about Ivy.”

Selina snorts. “Naturally.” 

“We kind of, uh…made out hardcore earlier tonight. By accident.”

Selina’s grins like, well, the cat that’s caught the canary. “Finally. I’ve been waiting for you two to cut the bullshit ever since you cut Joker loose.”

“Well, apparently she doesn’t feel the same way,” Harley grumbles.

“And you actually believe her?”

“Of course I don’t! She was clearly just as into it as I was.”

“Let me guess: She told you it didn’t mean anything and went back to talking about that idiot with the kite.”

“Yeppp.”

Selina sighs. “Classic Ivy. Won’t admit she has feelings unless someone puts a gun to her head.”

“I’d never put a gun to Ivy’s head!” Harley exclaims, horrified. “That’s my favorite head in the whole wide world!”

“Christ, you two are hopeless.”

“And this whole Kite Man thing! Do you think she’s just, like, super closeted?”

An expression crosses Selina’s face that Harley’s seen in a thousand therapy sessions—one that means she’s deciding whether or not to divulge a big secret. 

“You’re not her first brush with bisexuality, you know.”

Harley leans in, suddenly rapt.

“Ivy and I had an…arrangement. Way before the two of you had your little meet-cute in Arkham.”

“An arrangement as in…fuck buddies?”

“That’s what I took it to be. But turned out she couldn’t handle sex without feelings, so I ended things. She likes people who make her feel safe—and no one’s a safer bet than Kite Man.”

“And I’m not?”

“Harley, I just watched you pulverize ten garbage cans for no good goddamn reason. Do you seriously need me to answer that?”

“I can be safe! Safer than a safety cone!” Harley declares.

“Well, will you look at the time,” Selina says, consulting a diamond-studded wrist watch she definitely wasn’t wearing a few minutes ago. “I’m all out of patience for heartsick clowns.” 

Harley rifles through the backpack where she stashed her loot, and wouldn’t ya know: empty as Gordo’s voicemail inbox. “You’re such an asshole!” she shouts up at Selina’s silhouette as she leaps onto the opposite roof. 

“My services don’t come free!” she calls back before vanishing into the night. 

Dammit, Harley’s gotta get less shitty friends.

The sun has barely risen when she slumps back into the mall, feeling more lost than ever. 

“And just what sort of time do you call this, young lady?” Clayface demands, hands on his hips. 

“Eat a dick, dude,” Harley mutters, flinging her empty backpack across the room.

Dr. Psycho leans toward Clayface and stage-whispers, “I think she’s on the rag.”

Oh, that is fuckin’ it. “I’ll show you a rag, you human fuckin’ Bobblehead!” 

“Hurtful,” Psycho says, moments before Harley leaps on top of him and gets down to punching. It’s a hell of a lot more satisfying than pulverizing garbage cans—especially when she hears something snap in his ugly little nose.

“Yeahhhhh, I’m gonna go get breakfast…somewhere not here.”

Harley whips around to see Ivy speed-walking toward the exit.

“Ive, wait!” she cries, backflipping directly into her path. “Are you, uh…”

Her friend gives her a dead-eyed glare. “You’ve got Psycho blood on you.”

“But I wanted to tell you that I’m a safety cone! Or, I’m gonna be!”

Ivy doesn’t spare her a parting glance before disappearing out of the double doors.

“Damn. What exactly happened down there in the Pit?” King Shark asks as he helps Psycho up from the floor.

“Dunno, but safe to say our girls are on the outs,” Frank mutters.

Harley growls in frustration and makes a beeline for her bedroom.

“Who’s gonna clean up all this blood?” Psycho shouts after her. “Because it’s sure as shit not gonna be me!”

Chapter Text

“This is the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make in my life.”

Ivy forces down a snort as she watches her future husband fret in front of a full-length mirror at Men’s Wearhouse with a cummerbund in each hand.

“They both look great, babe,” she says, totally failing to sound like she gives two wet sharts about fuckin’ cummerbunds.

“That doesn’t help at all!”

The hardest decision I’ve ever had to make. Ivy should be so lucky. The hardest decision she’s ever had to make was choosing to stay with this man, even as the memory of kissing Harley has been giving her sexy dreams on the regular. But, she reminds herself, what Kite Man lacks in perspective and life experience, he makes up for in kindness and steadiness. So if he cares this fucking much about cummerbunds, then Ivy does, too.

“The green one,” she says finally. 

“But the red one matches your hair,” Chuck says, cocking his head like a lost puppy. 

It absolutely does not. The cummerbund is scarlet, and Ivy’s hair is auburn. But he doesn’t need to know that.

“Sure, but the green one matches my skin. And your kite.”

His face lights up adorably. “Of course! You’re a genius, babe.”

“Just doing my…ya know…wifely duties.” (Wifely duties? The fuck?)

Ivy has spent the better part of the afternoon watching Chuck fuss over his outfit for the big day. She’d scheduled a bridesmaids’ dress fitting this morning, but she canceled at the last minute because she doesn’t think she can handle facing Selina and Nora right now—and, more to the point, she’s going to great lengths to avoid being in the same room with her maid of honor.

Not that Ivy gives a wet shart about bridesmaids’ dresses—or linen napkins, or vows, or venues, or something old/new/borrowed/blue. Or, for that matter, the bridal-industrial complex at large.

Hell, she only agreed to this whole wedding thing because she knew it would make Chuck happy. A lonely, abusive childhood isn’t exactly conducive to princess fantasies. Not like she thought she’d ever get married anyway, what with the general shittiness of most human beings. The only reason she was able to open up her heart to Kite Man in this first place was because of…

Harley. It always comes back to Harley.

“Fuckin’…shits of an asscheek.”

“What’s that, babe?”

“Ugh. Nothing,” she covers. “Just pre-wedding jitters, I guess.”

Kite Man’s expression falls. “You’re not having second thoughts, are you?”

“No! Of course not! I’m, like, sooooo fucking ready to put on a body-hugging white dress and tie the knot at the Corn Factory in front of everyone we’ve ever met. ’Cause you know how much I…love…the…spotlight.”

It’s maybe the least convincing lie she’s ever told; but sweet, guileless Chuck believes every word. 

“You’re gonna knock ’em dead,” he says, then gives her an affectionate peck on the lips. It’s nice.

She’s got this. She’s got this. 

She doesn’t got this. 

Ivy can’t sleep, so 1 a.m. finds her lounging on the couch in her sweats and Tree Hugger shirt, digging into a bag of sriracha Hippeas and watching shitty reality TV. But just as her intrusive thoughts are dissipating into a brainless fog, Harley bursts through the mall doors like fuckin’ Kramer—dented bat slung over her shoulder, spattered in gore from pigtails to pom-poms. Ivy tries to turn away, but she can’t take her eyes off Harley—never more incandescent than when she’s drenched in the blood of her enemies.

When she sees Ivy, her cocky posture falls away. “Oh. Sorry. Didn’t mean to, uh…”

“You’re allowed to, like, walk through the lobby of your own abandoned mall,” Ivy says, voice studiously casual. 

Harley deposits her bat on the kitchen counter and approaches the couch tentatively. “Whatcha watching?”

“Oh, uh. Great British Bake Off.” 

“Didn’t you watch this season already?”

Christ, it’s way too endearing that she knows which seasons of friggin’ Bake Off Ivy’s seen. “Yeah, but I sorta like going back to old episodes. Comfort food, or whatever.”

“Guess we could both use a little comfort food right now,” Harley mutters. 

This is stupid. Just because they made out one time and just because Harley declared her undying love doesn’t mean they aren’t still besties.

“You wanna watch?” Ivy asks.

With a nervous smile, Harley takes a seat at the far end of the couch.

“Oooh, the Nadiya season! I love her.”

“Right? She’s super insecure at first, and then she’s all like, Bam! I showed all you Brexit fuckers.”

“Hell, yeah. Also, she’s kinda hot.”

“Not as hot as Tamal.”

“I mean, two great tastes that go great together.”

This is fine. This is great. Ivy definitely isn’t thinking about how good Harley smells, or the way the shifting light of the television highlights her sharp cheekbones and the muscular curve of her jaw.

After the credits roll, though, the silence is deafening.

“I miss you,” Harley says after a painfully long moment. “And I’m sorry I was all pushy about…y’know. Can we just move past it and be friends again?”

The relief is like aloe against Ivy’s skin. “Shit. Of course, Harls. I don’t think I could stop being friends with you if I tried.”

“Oh, thank fuck,” Harley says. “’Cause you’re my person, y’know?”

Ivy smirks. “Who’s the Meredith and who’s the Cristina?” 

“Um, obviously we’re both Cristina.”

“Obviously.”

When Harley scoots closer, Ivy wraps an arm around her—in a friendly way, like friends do.

“Whose blood is that, anyway?” she asks.

“Oh. Clock King’s. I was having a drink at Noonan’s, and he looked at me funny.”

“Babe, his face is literally a clock.”

“Well, his minute hand was givin’ me the stink eye. Then it turned into a whole bar fight, naturally.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“Yeah. Felt good to blow off some steam,” Harley says.

“I didn’t even know clocks had blood.” 

“Yeah, you’d think it’d be gear oil or something.”

“Maybe he jizzes gear oil.”

“We oughta ask Riddler next time we see him.”

They both crack up, and it’s easy; it’s good. Shit is complicated, but there’s no world where Ivy would cut Harley out of her life. It’d be like lopping off a limb. And as much plant DNA as she has, she’s still human—and human arms don’t regrow.

Chapter Text

As soon as they hit cruising altitude, Ivy flees to the bathroom and vomits. Not that she has any privacy, since Wonder Woman’s jet is fuckin’ invisible.

“You okay in there?” Nora asks. 

“M’fine,” Ivy croaks between dry heaves. “Just went a little too hard last night.”

It isn’t a total lie—she does have a nasty hangover from all those margs. But the true reason she’s hurling her guts out is that, twenty-odd minutes ago, she looked her best friend dead in the eye and said the cruelest thing she could think of. Ivy meant what she said about her fear of giving her heart over to Harley’s flightiness; but she could’ve found a kinder way to say it.

Once she’s rinsed the bile from her mouth, Ivy returns to her seat and finds herself gazing at the back of Harley’s head. Even though she can’t see her face, Ivy can tell from the way her shoulders shake, the way she occasionally raises her hand to her cheek, that Harley’s crying and trying very hard to make sure no one notices. And when has that bitch ever tried to conceal her emotions?

Ivy searches her memories for the last time she saw Harley like this, and it hits her like a knife in the chest: half a lifetime ago at Arkham, when she was Dr. Quinzel. Ivy had come to her office for their biweekly therapy sesh and found the good doctor bent over her desk, shaking with silent tears. When Ivy asked what was wrong, Harleen told her that, earlier that day, “Mistah J” had made some utterly vile comment about her appearance.

“It’s nothing,” she’d said, wiping the corner of her eyes with a tremulous smile. “I know he loves me. He just has a temper sometimes, is all.”

Joker, Ivy thinks bitterly. I treated her like goddamn Joker did. The thought makes the vomit rise in her throat, but she swallows it back like a bitter pill.

“What the hell happened last night?”

Ivy turns to see Selina watching her from across the aisle with a characteristically shrewd expression.

Ivy straightens her spine, clears her throat, and says, “It’s nothing.”

Ivy is absolutely one hundo percent focused on the centerpieces arrayed in front of her, and not at all on the memory of Harley looking at her like she’d just stabbed her through the chest.

It was the kindest thing to do, she reminds herself for the trillionth time. She would’ve broken your heart in the end, or you would have broken hers. Better to pull the fucker out by the root before it starts sprouting leaves.

But the fucker has already sprouted leaves—and branches, and flowers that have ripened into fruit. Really, it’s a whole entire tree.

“CENTERPIECES!” she shouts abruptly.

“Uhhh…babe?”

Cheeks red as Anthurium, Ivy looks between Chuck and the wedding planner’s alarmed face.

“Sorry! I’m just, ya know, really fuckin’ jazzed about—” Her eyes land on the centerpiece directly in front of her. “Hang on, is that baby’s breath? You know that shit is invasive as fuck, right?”

“We can pivot to a different varietal if you’d prefer,” the wedding planner says. 

“And bridal wreath spiria? Jesus, Gwendolyn!”

“It’s Jacqueline, actually.”

“Sweetie, can you maybe take it down juuuust a skosh?” Kite Man whispers through a plastered-on smile.

It occurs to Ivy that perhaps her hair-trigger rage is less about how much she hates invasive species and more about how she’s an insensitive piece of shit. And that feeling is only gonna get worse if she doesn’t clear the air with Harley right fuckin’ now. Maybe the air isn’t clearable, but at least she’ll have tried.

“Sorry,” she says as calmly as she can manage. “I’m just feeling a little…overwhelmed.”

“Why don’t you take a breather,” Chuck says, looking at Ivy with a naked compassion she for sure doesn’t deserve. “I can pick out a few and show you photos later, k?”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutomundo. Ol’ Kitey’s got everything under control.”

“Thank you,” she says, giving him a grateful kiss on the cheek. “And sorry for blowing up at you, Marilyn.”

The wedding planner visibly seethes. “It’s Jacque— You know what? Forget it.”

Ivy starts shouting Harley’s name the moment she walks through the double doors of the mall. But she doesn’t get an answer—only pitying looks from King Shark and Clayface, who are eating Chinese takeout on the couch.

“Harley’s gone,” King tells her.

“Gone? The fuck does that mean?”

“She left a farewell missive for thee uponst the countertop,” Clayface announces in his hammiest Shakespeare voice.

Heart pounding out of her chest, Ivy pulls a torn slip of paper from underneath a coffee mug. 

You said the only thing I know how to do is run, so here I am, running. Guess I’m more predictable than I thought. I left the rings with Selina. See ya when I see ya. 

— H

Even though Ivy’s words on the jet were designed to push Harley away, she never believed her friend would actually leave. Turns out that even someone as infinitely loyal as Harley Quinn has her limits.

“Hey, Ivy? I know you’re going through it in a big way, but can you stop doing that?” King says.

“…Doing what?”

“That.” He points to the vertical garden she’s been cultivating on the wall of the old Pacific Sunwear, and is horrified to discover that every plant has shriveled and is sprouting a layer of corpse-green aspergillus.

Ivy can feed herself all the bullshit she wants, but the Green never lies. 

“Sorry, guys, but I gotta go,” she says, grabbing her car keys from the coffee table. “Just…don’t inhale too much till I get back, ’cause those spores are toxic as nards.”

“So you’re just abandoning us to the whims of your poisonous emotional repression mushrooms?” Clayface exclaims as he leaps from the couch.

“Emotional repression mold, but…yeah. Remember, no breathing!”

“I need you to tell me where she went.”

“Hello to you, too, Ivy,” Selina purrs, not looking up from her copy of Cat Fancy.

“Selina. Please?”

“Oh, we’re begging? You must’ve really fucked things up.”

Ivy’s desperation turns to anger. “Since when are you Harley’s confidante?”

“Since you tossed her aside like yesterday’s trash,” Selina deadpans.

Too exhausted to stand, Ivy deposits her ass on the pristine white sofa and buries her face in her hands. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“You’re your own worst enemy, Ivy. You always have been. And you have a very unattractive tendency to blame your shit on the people who care about you.”

“But that’s exactly what I’m trying to fix by marrying Chuck!” Ivy exclaims. “Letting myself say yes to a good thing when it comes my way.”

“Do you actually love Kite Man, or do you love the idea of Kite Man?”

Ivy knows the answer, of course, but saying it out loud is a whole other can of dicks.

“Look,” Selina says, dropping her harsh tone. “Harley didn’t tell me what you said that made her take off, but it’s pretty damn obvious that it was something deeply bitchy.”

Ivy laughs bitterly. “Yerp. And that’s putting it mildly.”

“There’s a lot I’ll never understand about Harley—I mean, her fashion choices; why? But I’ll give her this: The second she figures out what she wants, she goes for it immediately. And what she wants more than anything is you, darling. So the question you need to ask yourself is: What do you want?”

When Ivy looks back on her life, she sees a long, dark hallway—right up until Harley broke through her walls like the Kool-Aid Man. She’d broken a lot of other things, too; but nothing Ivy really needed in the first place.

Harley had trusted her immediately and unconditionally, even when Ivy still saw her as the enemy. And when she finally ditched Joker, Ivy burst with secondhand pride. After that, even when Harley did something reckless or selfish—which, admittedly, happened a lot—she always learned from her mistakes in the end. 

And she was always there for Ivy, always ready to listen or deliver a pounding, as the situation merited. Even when Ivy was at her lowest, Harley sat down with her in the dirt and distracted her with dumb jokes until she felt better. She made Ivy feel understood. Seen. Known. No one had ever done that for her before. Things between them were effortless. They just fit, whether they were kicking ass or talking shit or plotting a prison break. 

In the immediate aftermath of their escape from the Pit, Ivy figured her sudden ferocious need to jam her tongue down Harley’s throat came out of nowhere. But it didn’t, did it? She’d always needed Harley, loved Harley, wanted Harley. All it took for her to figure it out was a brush with death.

“I’m such a fucking idiot.”

With a knowing smile, Selina pulls a slip of paper from her cleavage and passes it to Ivy. “Here’s where she went. Fucked if I know why. But I have a hunch it’s not a day spa.”

When Ivy reads the address, she feels an unpleasant mix of exasperation, anxiety, and dogged determination.

“Thank you for this,” she tells Selina halfway out the door. “I’ll find a way to make it up to you.”

Catwoman holds up her left hand, and Ivy catches the glint of two solid-gold wedding bands. “Don’t worry, dear. You already have.”

Chapter Text

“It’s nothin’ personal, kiddo,” Nick Quinzel says, reclining on the paisley couch and chewing on a cigar.

“This feels pretty fuckin’ personal, Dad!” Harley glares up at him from the shag carpet, caught in the iron grip of a muscled goon whose breath reeks of day-old knish.

She’s such a goddamn sucker. First, she hands Ivy her heart on a silver platter only for her to pop it like a water balloon; then, she shows up in Bensonhurst hoping her family had gotten over the whole trying-to-murder-her schtick. 

“Don’t be so dramatic, Harleen. They’re not gonna kill you. They’ll probably lop off a coupla fingers at most,” Sheila says, sipping on a mai tai as she watches her daughter struggle.

“With all the love in the world, Ma, please immediately eat a bag of rotten dicks.”

As per uszh, things only get worse from there: Harley finds herself pinned to the dining room table, watching Two Face’s mob associate, Frankie “The Mohel” Rothstein, assess a set of kitchen knives for sharpness.

“Jesus, Sheil. Do yourself a favor and invest in a whetstone,” he grumbles as he runs one calloused forefinger along a dull blade. 

“Maybe after we get the money for givin’ you Harleen, I will,” she tells him.

“They sell real nice ones at the Williams Sonoma in Bay Ridge,” the goon offers.

“Couldn’t you just chop off a lock of hair or somethin’?” Harley tries. She hates the obvious fear in her voice; but in her defense, shit’s pretty fucking dire.

“Two Face ain’t gonna accept nothin’ less than genuine fingerprints, Quinn,” The Mohel says, admiring the razor edge of a meat cleaver that’s apparently passed the sniff test.

Maybe this is what Harley deserves for being a chump. Like, of course her parents have never loved her. Just like Joker. Just like Ivy.

“Mazel tov, Ive,” she murmurs as The Mohel holds the cleaver a few inches above her knuckles. She squeezes her eyes shut and waits for the inevitable.

But the slice never comes. Instead, there’s the bang of the front door bursting open, a sudden gust of wind as something whooshes past her ear, and a delirious sensation of freedom when the goon releases his death grip on her wrists. 

Then, a low, familiar voice growls, “Hey, dicks for brains! Don’t you fucking touch her.”

Harley opens her eyes and sits up, wrists aching but fingers intact, to see Poison Ivy hovering a few feet above the ugly living room carpet. Vines snake out from her back, one each for Nick, Sheila, and the two mafiosos. She feels a rush of wild elation when one tightens around Frankie’s neck until his head pops off like a ripe pomegranate. The goon follows shortly thereafter.

That’s when Ivy turns her death glare on the Quinzels. “WAIT!” Harley shouts. “Don’t kill ’em. Just, like, fuck ’em up a little.”

“Heard, chef,” Ivy says, then tosses Nick and Sheila through the window into the backyard, where they land on the grass, limp as rag dolls. The vermillion light fades from Ivy’s eyes as she rushes to Harley’s side.

“You been watchin’ The Bear again, huh?” Harley remarks, but Ivy seems to be more concerned with the bruises on her wrists.

“Are you alright?”

“I’ll live,” Harley says. Then: “You saved me.”

“Well, yeah.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re Harley,” Ivy says, like that explains everything.

“Yeah. That’s me. The fuckup who ran off and got herself into deep shit, just like always.”

“You’re not a fuckup,” Ivy says. “I mean, you are, but like, who isn’t?”

“Sorry you had to interrupt your whole life to get me out of a jam. Again.”

Grasping Harley’s hand with an expression of undisguised affection, Ivy says, “There is no life without you.”

That’s romantic and all, but like, absolutely fuck this. “Will you quit it with the mixed signals already?” Harley shouts. “One second it’s like, ‘Hey, you’re my favorite person of ever, wanna go bang each other stupid?’ And then the next it’s like, ‘Yo, you suck and I don’t trust you with my heart!’ Which is it, Ive?”

Ivy opens her mouth to answer, then glances around the room in distaste. “Is there any place we can talk that’s less, ya know…corpsey?”

Harley leads Ivy to the spot on the roof where she used to hide when her parents’ fighting got particularly ugly. She’s delighted to discover that there’s still an old pack of American Spirits jammed under a loose shingle. 

After a few bracing drags, she begins, “What you said on Themyscira really dicked with my head.”

Ivy runs nervous fingers through her hair. “Yeah. I am. Um. The fucking worst.”

“You were freaked. I get it,” Harley says, drawing her knees into her chest. “Even if I didn’t like it.”

“I wasn’t freaked, Harls. I was terrified.”

“That someone would find out we banged?”

Ivy shakes her head. “Of the way I feel about you.”

A tiny ember of hope sparks in Harley’s chest.

“I thought I wanted what I had with Kite Man,” Ivy continues. “Y’know, safe. Normal.”

“Since when do you give a flying fuck about normal?”

Ivy sighs. “Look. I don’t have a blueprint for any of this. For how to, like, let people in without assuming they’ll turn on me.”

“You’re talking to the fucking poster child for toxic relationship trauma,” Harley says.

“But you’re brave, Harls. Even though Joker—not to mention your fucking parents—manipulated you and treated you like shit, you’ve never stopped loving people with your whole heart, which is so fucking impressive. I’m not like that.”

Harley’s not about to let her get away with this garbage. “Are you shittin’ me? You’ve been saving my bacon and supporting my dreams since basically the day we met! If you hadn’t been around, I’d have bought the farm years ago. Or worse, I’d still be with him. You’re the most caring person I’ve ever met. That’s why I love you so much.”

“I love you, too,” Ivy says tremulously. 

Harley feels her shoulders relax for the first time since the Pit. But she’s still not sure how much she’s allowed to ask for. 

“Does this mean I still get to be your maid of honor?”

Ivy looks at her like she just said the dumbest thing in history. “Dude. I’m not marrying Chuck.”

The ember bursts into a house fire. “You called off the wedding?”

“I—” Ivy’s eyes go wide. “Oh, nards. One sec.” She fishes her phone out of her jacket pocket and pulls Kite Man up on her favorites. 

“Heyyyyyy, Chuck. So I know it’s incredibly shitty of me to do this over voicemail, but it’s kind of urgent: I’m, uh, breaking up with you. Also, I’m in love with Harley. Also, I cheated on you multiple times—which I am super, super sorry about—so you probably don’t want to marry me anyway. So. Yeah. Sorry again. …Sorry.”

After she hangs up, Ivy stares at her phone like it’s going to sprout hands and slap her across the face. Then she tosses it off the roof with a manic laugh, which only redoubles when it hits Nick Quinzel point-blank in the forehead. She wipes a tear from her eye and turns to Harley with an expression completely unclouded by doubt. 

“For the record, I do trust you with my heart. And with my everything else.”

Harley feels like her stomach is full of soda and Pop Rocks, moments away from exploding into a sugary volcano. “I mean, I already knew you trusted me with your vag.”

Ivy laughs and pushes a strand of hair behind Harley’s ear, and Harley’s waited years for this moment, even if it took her a while to figure out where her friendly-type love ended and her wife-you-up–type love began. Maybe that’s a false binary anyways; because the way she feels about this woman’s bangin’ bod and sexy green eyes is inextricably tied up with the way she feels about her weird sense of humor and her unerring support. Part of her wants to put all of these big feelings into words, but a much louder part wants to tear her clothes off right here in front of God and all of Bensonhurst. 

So all she says before jamming her tongue down Ivy’s throat is: “Hard same.”

Chapter Text

Harley 

If you’d told tween Harley that, at the age of thirty-four, she’d be going down to Poundtown with the woman of her dreams in the same twin-sized bed where she once flicked her bean to a cover spread of Frankie Munez in Teen People, she’d have been like, We did it, girl. (A lot has changed since back then, but her insatiable horniness hasn’t.)

This is hardly the first time she and Ivy have blown each other’s backs out. But bonings one, two, and three happened when they were both blackout schwasted. This, though—this one’s in technicolor. Specifically, ten thousand shades of green: vermillion, cadmium, moss, emerald, and…well, that’s all the greens Harley’s got in her vocabulary. 

Not that she needs words to express the way she feels when Ivy stands over her and divests herself of her jacket and tank top, revealing rockin’ abs and a sexy clavicle and…

“Oh, my god, Ive, bra! Lose the bra!”

“So impatient,” Ivy says in a low purr that would give Catwoman a run for her money.

“Yuh-duh. Have you met me?”

Thankfully, Ivy doesn’t keep her waiting; fuck knows she’s been patient enough for several lifetimes. 

“Boobs,” Harley observes eloquently as Ivy’s bra drifts to the ground like a maple leaf in autumn. (She’s doing tree similes all of a sudden? Now Harley knows she’s smitten.)

Ivy raises one eyebrow. “You gonna also boobs?”

Harley looks down at herself and is horrified to discover that she’s still fully dressed. Once she’s solved this problem, Ivy’s pupils go wide and she whispers, “Fuck a duck.”

All of Ivy’s green-goddess grace vanishes as she fumbles out of the rest of her clothes, so fast that she trips on the hideous carpet and lands directly on top of Harley.

They both laugh brightly, the same way they do when they’re pissing off the Riddler or watching Bane make an ass of himself on The Tawny Show; because they may be incredibly horny for each other, but they’re also still best friends.

Kissing Ivy on the roof was great and all, but it’s nothing compared to kissing Ivy while they’re pressed together from nips to thighs, with nothing between them but…well, nothing. No lingering guilt, no insecurity, no Kite Man. Just skin and skin and skin and also, incidentally, skin.

The two of them gasp in unison when Ivy’s fingers make contact with Harley’s clit.

“Jesus, Harls, you’re…”

“Five seconds away from breaking the long-distance record for female ejaculation? Yeah, I’m pretty friggin’ aware.”

Ivy

“Awww!” Harley coos between moans.

Ivy huffs out a laugh as she speeds up the rhythm of her thrusts. “What exactly is adorable about this?”

“That ya knew I could take three fingers without me having to say!”

Of course Ivy knows how many fingers Harley can take. She may have been eight to ten margaritas in when they did the deed back on Themyscira, but her memory of those nights isn’t a total blur. ’Cause, like, how could anyone with a pulse forget what it’s like to coax an orgasm out of Harley Quinn, how insatiable she is, how unabashed, how hard and deep she likes it?

Not that there’s much coaxing necessary; it takes less than a minute to send Harley over the edge—which does, as advertised, come with epic squirting. Any other day, Ivy would tease her about it, call her an extra from American Pie or some shit. But not today; today, she needs it fast and hot and now. Ivy knows this because she’s just hornt up herself.

It must be a gymnastics stamina thing that Harley requires zero recovery time before she flips Ivy onto her back and yanks her down to the edge of the mattress by the ankles, offering a goofy smile before diving directly into her muff.

“Tits of a fartwhistle!” Ivy blurts out when the flat of Harley’s tongue presses against her.

“Oh, man, I can’t wait to find out how many weird swears I can make you say.”

Ivy does, in fact, coin several new weird swears that afternoon; but none come close to conveying how unbelievably fucking good it feels to have Harley’s mouth on her, Harley’s tongue inside her, licking, stroking, thrusting, sucking, with the same boundless enthusiasm she brings to anything she sets her mind to. 

When the wave of pleasure finally crests, Ivy bursts open like a perennial after the winter thaw. She opens her eyes to discover that what used to be a chintzy teen bedroom is now an impossible forest: NSYNC posters camouflaged beneath layers of shivering pothos leaves, ceiling dripping with vivid icicles of columbine and Solomon’s seal and fuchsia encliandra, Asiatic lilies bursting like sunspots from Barbie-pink headboard. The shag carpet has disappeared beneath soft, bulbous puffs of dicranum moss; there’s even a seven-foot-tall magnolia campbellii unfurling its petals overhead, nevermind the fact that Bensonhurst is 7,500 miles from the nearest Himalaya. 

“Holy Georgia O’Keeffe, Batman,” Harley murmurs, taking in the superbloom that Ivy’s orgasm has wrought. “Does this usually happen when you get off?”

Ivy’s just as amazed. “Nope. This is brand-new territory for me.”

“So you’re sayin’ I made this happen?”

“You, me, and the Green.” Though her limbs feel like silly putty, Ivy manages to grab Harley’s wrist and yank her onto the mattress. 

“But, like…how?”

“No fucking clue. This kind of unconscious connection…” Ivy’s heart leaps toward the beauty around her. “It’s never happened before. At least, not on this scale.”

“Damn. Guess you really like me.”

Ivy diverts all her attention to the woman pressed against her side. “Harls, I have never loved anyone or anything more than you. Not even plants.”

“But plants are, like, your whole entire thing.”

“The Green has had my full attention for years now. Right now, my priority is you.” When Harley gives her an uncertain look Ivy adds, “You don’t believe me.”

“I mean…I want to.”

Ivy rubs soothing circles against Harley’s back. “But that’s hard to do ’cause I fucked with your head about it.”

“It’s okay. You don’t have to apologize again.”

“It’s not okay,” Ivy says firmly, feeling that old self-loathing wrap clammy fingers around her throat. 

Harley props herself up on one elbow with an uncharacteristically serious expression. “In the interest of radical honesty: It scares the crap out of me, how easily you can fuck up my shit. ’Cause I don’t have the Green; I only have you.”

Ivy opens her mouth to tell Harley that she has so much more than that—like, how many people in Gotham can claim supervillains and superheroes as friends?—but Harley claps a hand over her mouth. (It smells like cum.)

“You’re allowed to be a bitch sometimes, Ive,” she says. “You’re allowed to self-sabotage and fuck up and lose your way. That’s just, like, the human experience! Or I guess the metahuman experience in your case, but same diff. All I care about is that you make it up to me. And to yourself.”

“I will. I swear.”

“I know,” Harley says, pressing her lips to Ivy’s. (They taste like cum.) “Tbh, you kind of already have.”

Ivy doesn’t deserve this woman’s voluminous love, but she has it anyway. And she’s beyond done trying to fight it. All that’s led to is pain—for Chuck, for Harley, for herself. That’s when it hits her: It was never Harley she didn’t trust; it was the idea that happiness could be possible for someone as prickly (sometimes literally) and toxic (again, sometimes literally) as her.

“Did I just watch you have a personal breakthrough?” Harley asks.

Ivy chuckles. “Ya know, it’s pretty unethical for you to be my therapist and my girlfriend.”

Harley’s eyes go wide with surprise. “I’m your girlfriend?”

“I mean…yeah?”

“And you’re my girlfriend?”

“That’s generally how it works.”

“Sick,” Harley says easily, her uncertainty transforming into delight. “Not to ruin the moment, but I gotta pee sooooo bad.”

“Boooooooo,” Ivy crows when her girlfriend gives her a quick, filthy kiss before backflipping onto the moss.

“Don’t worry, Red, I’ll be back in a flash.”

“‘Red’? That’s a new one.”

“You like? I came up with it just now.”

“Dare I ask why?”

With a possessive glance toward Ivy’s vag, Harley says, “’Cause the carpet matches the drapes.”

“Oh, my god. Go pee before I die of needing to fuck you again.”

Harley tosses her a wink and a casual, “Gonna suck on your titties when I get back.”

“HARLEY. GO PEE.”

Chapter Text

“Welllllll, if it isn’t Cheater McGee and her two-timing hussy.” 

Harley and Ivy freeze in the mall entryway as Kite Man rises from the sofa, a shower of Cheeto crumbs falling from his hot dog–print bathrobe. 

“Chuck. Shit. Fuck. Shit. Hi?” Ivy babbles.

“Hi? HI?!”

“What do you want me to say? That I’m the worst? That you have every right to hate me forever? That I’m an irredeemable piece of shit?”

“Yes!” he shouts. Then: “I mean…no! You shouldn’t say all that mean stuff about yourself. You’re the best! But also, you suck!” He collapses back onto the sofa and starts sobbing into his hands.

Goddammit. It would be so much easier if he was a dick about this.

“Look, man, I’ll do whatever you want,” Ivy says, approaching him tentatively. “I’ll pay for all the wedding expenses. I’ll make you a sick kite out of a giant taro leaf. I’ll…I’ll leave Gotham!”

“But you won’t leave her,” Chuck murmurs. He inclines his head toward the far corner of the lobby, where Harley is slowly inching backwards like that GIF of Homer Simpson.

“No,” Ivy tells him flatly.

Kite Man narrows his eyes at her. “How many times?”

“Uh…”

“How many times, Ivy.”

This sucks lukewarm ass, but she owes him the truth. “Four. Or…four and a quarter, I guess”

“The fuck counts as a quarter?”

“First base,” Harley provides helpfully.

Kite Man rounds on her with surprising viciousness. “You need to shut the hell up.” 

“Hey,” Ivy shoots back, deadly rage rising in her chest. “Don’t you dare talk to her like that.”

“Or what? You’ll break my heart? Ruin my life? Lie to me through your teeth? ’Cause that train has sailed, Ivy!”

“You wanna beat me up about it?”

They both turn to look at Harley, who’s setting her bat on the ground and stretching out her fingers. 

Chuck’s features screw up in confusion. “Do I want to what now?”

“You and me, mano-a-mano. A good old-fashioned slugfest, and you get to win. It’ll make ya feel better, I promise.”

Ivy’s blood turns to ice. “Dude, what the fuck?”

“I don’t want to fight you, Harley. Jesus,” Kite Man says.

“Why the hell not?” She strides toward him, arms spread wide in challenge.

“Um, because you’re a girl?”

“Oookay, that’s kinda sexist,” Ivy cuts in.

“I’m sorry—you’re mad at me for not wanting to wail on your best friend?”

Ivy sighs and walks to Harley. “Sweetie, I really wish you wouldn’t volunteer yourself as a punching bag. It’s super fucked up.”

“But I wanna make things right.”

“You know this isn’t on you, right? I’m the one who did the cheating.”

“Sure, but if he doesn’t beat me up, he’s gonna beat you up. So let me do this for you, Ive. Think of it as a, ya know, romantic gesture.”

“Oh, my god. I don’t want to beat either of you up!” Kite Man exclaims. “I may be a bad guy, but I’m not a bad guy.”

Ivy looks at Harley—brash, confident, unapologetic Harley—and tries to figure out why in the name of shit she’d assume a beating is the inevitable punishment for bad behavior. Then she gets it.

“Hey,” she says, cupping Harley’s cheek. “This is Chuck we’re talking about, not Joker. He’d never hurt either of us, no matter how justifiably pissed he is.”

a complicated thing happens behind Harley’s eyes. “Right. Sorry. I guess sometimes I still…”

”I know,” Ivy says, trying to project all the love this woman went most of her life without. “This shit takes time. And that’s okay.”

Between her own parents and Jason fucking Woodrue, Ivy gets it: No matter how much progress you make, no matter how much time passes, you don’t get over that kind of abuse. Some invasives always grow back, even if you’re sure you’ve torn them out by the root.

They’ll have time to unpack all that later; right now, she just pulls Harley into a bracing hug and squeezes her like a human thundershirt. 

Chuck walks up to them, nervously scratching the back of his neck. This close, he reeks of Long Island iced teas and sad-guy sweat. “Look. I’m suuuuper peeved at both of you, but I don’t think me hanging around yelling my balls off is gonna do any of us any good. Time this cuckold went back to his man cave to lick his wounds,” he says with an alarming burp. 

“Are you sure you’re okay to drive? Or, like, kite?” Ivy asks.

“Oh, dolfinitely not. You’re paying for an Uber. No, wait—an Uber X. Also, I’m sending you the bill for the venue rental. And for the wedding planner. And the caterer. And the cummerbunds. That’s right, I bought both of them. Hashtag self-care.”

Ivy’ll probably have to pull a bank heist or three to cover it all, but it’s a small price to pay for breaking the heart of the sweetest himbo in Gotham. Besides, a crime spree always cheers Harley up. 

And unlike a certain incel clown, Ivy will let her take all the credit.

Chapter Text

After Psycho levels the mall, after the Eat Bang Kill Tour, after Kite Man moves on with Golden Glider, the novelty starts to fade from Harley and Ivy’s relationship. But that’s okay—fuckin’ dope, actually—because it makes Harley realize that the thrill ride was never the point. Real love, the kind that doesn’t come with strings (that are actually barbed wire), isn’t about the freefall; it’s about where you land. 

Harley can’t remember a time when she’s felt solid ground under her feet. Maybe that’s why she got into gymnastics all those years ago: If the earth is always shifting beneath you, you learn to defy gravity, to never stay in one place for too long in case it turns out to be a trap. 

Until Ivy came along and planted seeds that grew into trees and flowers hardy enough to cover over all the cracks and made her feel safe enough to stand still for the first time in her whole chaotic life. Not that she’s put chaos behind her; far from it. Chaos fuckin’ rules, as long as you’re the one doing it.

But she’s less restless now on the nights when Ivy wants to stay in. Because staying in means cuddling up on Catwoman’s sofa, stuffing their faces with microwave popcorn and shit-talking the Real Housewives of Bludhaven. Besides, they never sit through a whole episode before tearing each other’s clothes off and getting competitive about who can make the other one squirt the most times. 

One rainy, unremarkable morning, Harley wakes up to the sight of Ivy spread-eagled on the other side of the mattress with a string of drool hanging from her open mouth. And she just smiles to herself and thinks: You get to keep this. The nasty little imp who’s always claimed squatter’s rights in her brain—the one that whispers that Ivy is gonna get sick of her shit and toss her out of a helicopter—has been quiet for a long damn time.

She gets to have Ivy, and Ivy gets to have her. They get to build a whole-ass life together. And nothing and no one can take that away from them, except maybe death. And even then, the survivor could probably blackmail Talia al Ghul into doing a bit of light resurrection. 

“Harls? You okay?”

She turns to see Ivy wiping crusty goop from her eyes, not looking at Harley like she’s a miracle or whatever, but like they did this yesterday and they’ll do it again tomorrow and the day after that. Because, like, why wouldn’t they? 

She’s been through too much to fool herself into believing that things will be okay forever; but there is such a thing as okay for now, and now, and now.

“Yeah, Ive,” Harley says into her BFF/GFF’s mouth, so stupid in love that even the taste of her gross morning breath is a turn-on. “Fuckin’ aces.”