Most Eligible Bachelor 4 (Patreon)

That started the oddest relationship Dick had ever been in.

Poison Ivy was now his sex slave. She was unabashedly enthusiastic about the idea, but that was only because she’d been intending to enslave his mind and accidentally visited that same fate upon herself.

Dick tried to get her to turn herself in and go back to Arkham, but she became inconsolable at the prospect of abandoning him, even if it was to follow his orders. Dick worried he had traumatized her before reversing his edict; then she was in the same high spirits she always seemed to be in around him.

And, thankfully, she faithfully obeyed every order he gave her about not harming anyone, not breaking the law, and so on—though enough of her old personality remained that she pestered him about the environment, from using less drinking straws to trying to get him to go to a fundraiser for the rainforest. Dick humored her as best he could.

Ivy also respected some of his boundaries. She allowed him to go to work, though she insisted on making him a boxed lunch to go with it and voluptuously ‘welcoming him back’ the moment he returned through the front door.

Ivy was a smart woman, but when she questioned him about his secrets, he simply told her not to worry about it and got a cheery “Okay!” in reply. Just like that, case closed. If only all his relationships could’ve sidestepped that issue so simply.

Actually being Nightwing was a bit harder, given that Ivy wanted to cuddle with him all night, but after some experimentation, Dick worked out a system. Saying he wanted her to keep a regular sleep schedule, he would tie her to the bed, bound and gagged, and tell her to get some sleep—resisting the urge to try and break free to be with him.

Ivy took it as the kind of sensual torture she loved to inflict on her mates. When he came back from his patrols, he either found her still awake, and ‘punished’ her with a hard spanking, or found that she’d gotten some sleep, and rewarded her with a slow, sensual massage that inevitably led to lovemaking.

He mixed it up a bit from there. Sometimes, if he was tired, simply climbing into bed with her and undoing her restraints before further challenging her to let him sleep. This usually ended with Dick being woken up a few hours later with his cock in Ivy’s mouth, but by then he was rested enough to start the day.

Or if she were awake, he’d knock her out with chloroform. Ivy was actually pretty cute when she woke up unbound, but held in his arms, full of frustrated lust but sated somewhat by feeling his embrace. She usually masturbated herself back to sleep, helped along by Dick coming half-awake himself and whispering a few sultry words into her ear.

The ethics of the whole thing bothered Dick a little. Ivy was no longer a danger to herself or others. She seemed happy—a sane, well-adjusted, law-abiding citizen, aside from her devotion to him, which was of course way better than her taking out her moods on the people of Gotham.

But the whole thing had come about because her old personality had been altered. Dick had to consider whether the right thing to do might not be to restore her, even if undoing this accident of fate would ruin Ivy’s own happiness and endanger who knew how many countless victims.

Maybe it was a stroke of luck that when Dick asked her about undoing the formula, she insisted that it was irreversible. There was no way to go back to the old her. This was Poison Ivy now. He would just have to make the best of it.

Though Dick wondered how truthful she was being. No one else had the combination of smarts and metahumans biology to replicate Ivy’s work. If she’d managed to lie to him, there was no way for him to double-check. But then, if she refused to reverse the change, wasn’t that her choice, in a way? She certainly wasn’t some unthinking automaton. She was a living, breathing woman and if she found happiness in slavery—and, more importantly, an end to the incessant crime sprees and terrorist plots—who was Dick to quibble?

***

One night, the sound of sobbing invaded Dick’s sleep. For a moment he lay there, wondering if it were Ivy. Sitting up, he looked to his side. Ivy was nestled against him, the warmth of her naked body like a living reassurance of her contentment. But the crying persisted…

Easing her arms off of his body, he quietly slipped away from Ivy. In the dark, he managed to find his pants and pull them on without waking her. She seemed to note his absence, but took comfort in grabbing his pillow and trying to hug it to death.

Dick tiptoed out of his bedroom and shut the door behind him, muting Ivy’s gentle snoring. The sobs persisted. Dick closed his eyes, concentrating on his hearing, trying to pinpoint where the sound was in the many rooms of his penthouse. Try as he might, it didn’t sound like it was coming from any of them. Then he realized…

Walking to the north face of the building, where a bank of windows let the starlight into his living room, Dick saw that one of them was open. Harley Quinn knelt on the fire escape, holding her head in her hands and weeping.

Dick stopped short. He’d never seen Harley quite like this before. Sure, she’d been a crybaby, but there was always a performative air to it, an exaggerated quality. Now her crying seemed plaintive and… real. Quiet sniffles instead of those big, bawling tears. And she was naked, or next to it. Missing any of her usual red and black fetishwear, instead she had on his softball jersey. In fact, Dick recalled that he’d dumped it in the hamper two days ago.

She breaks in, strips naked, goes through my dirty laundry, puts on an old shirt… even for Harley Quinn, this is a lot…

Her crying wasn’t exactly getting on his nerves, but it was tugging on his heartstrings almost as irritatingly. Dick knew Harley wasn’t all bad. It was as likely that this was genuine anguish as it was her playing possum. And, hell, he just hated to see a grown woman cry, even Harley Quinn.

He walked to her, his strides lengthening into a trot until he’d climbed out onto the makeshift balcony with her, knelt down beside her, and taken her into his arms. She immediately threw her own arms around him, holding Dick tight.

“Dick! You’re here! You’re here!” she managed to wretch out between her gulping sobs.

“I live here,” Dick whispered, caressing her frazzled, pink-blue hair. Out of her usual pigtails, the mop of tangled hair made her look younger and more vulnerable than ever. “What are you doing here?”

Harley shook her head before nestling her face into the hollow of his shoulder. “You’ll think I’m dumb.”

“I won’t think you’re dumb,” Dick assured her, his voice calm and soothing. “You have a Ph.D., right?”

“Yeah… right…” Harley sniffed a bit, too verklempt even to grab onto that usual bit of ego-stroking. She lifted her head to him, eyes red, tears streaming down her face to slurry her usual greasepaint. But she managed a small smile. “And you’re Dick Grayson. You wouldn’t ever think anything too bad a’me… you’re Gotham’s Most Eligible Bachelor!”

Dick wasn’t sure what that had to do with anything, what Harley was even doing here. She didn’t know he was Nightwing, did she? He could only assume it had to do with Ivy, but even with the change that she’d been through, he couldn’t imagine Ivy’s cool logic would ever produce Harley breaking into his apartment in the middle of the night. It had to be something to do with their tangled, give and take love triangle with the Joker, but what, Dick couldn’t figure out.

“I might ask for a recount there,” Dick chuckled, hoping to cheer her up. “But if you need help…”

“Oh, Dick… you’re such a goodie… even to a crumb like me!”

Harley broke into a low-key wail, her body quaking violently. There was nothing Dick could do but hold her and let her work the sobs out of her system. This high up, the only one to hear it was him.

At least ten minutes passed before her crying died down and let the howling wind take its place in Dick’s hearing. Harley still clung to Dick. As worried as he was about her emotional state, he couldn’t help but think about all the pollution that jersey had picked up since it’d last seen a washing machine. Not to mention Harley’s own grip on hygiene, which was pretty good—when she was lucid.

If she were Ivy, he would’ve dragged her to the shower by now, insisting her experiments could wait until she’d bathed, changed clothes, and had some TLC from that Most Eligible Bachelor guy. But of course, if he tried that on Harley, she might turn homicidal.

Still, like some mangy alley cat that’d slowly made peace with his presence, she let him pet her back and wipe her tears away. Even blow her nose, thanks to a box of tissues that he thankfully kept on the windowsill. When she was done, Dick balled up the tissue and tossed it over the guardrail. What Ivy didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.

Besides, she was the one who had insisted on getting the biodegradable brand.

“Feel better?” Dick asked, running his fingers through Harley’s hair to sort out the blue from the pink.

Harley shook her head impetuously—with a kind of little-girl insolence that reminded Dick of the old her. He took it as a sign he’d succeeded in lifting her spirits somewhat. “I’m just cried out. Got no more tears in me. Surprised I even had that many. You’d think I’d’a run out a long time ago.”

Dick took a deep breath. He could guess what she meant. “The Joker?”

“Same old story.” Harley looked at him, her eyes caked with colorful mascara that looked like it had been applied a lifetime ago. “Why can’t I change? He don’t even like me. Ivy, she likes me… but I can’t ever seem to make it work with her. The one real constant in my life is those Batboys. They’re always so nice t’me, in their own way… so strong… always willing to give me a sympathetic ear no matter how much I mess up. You remind me a’one of those guys…”

“I do?” Dick asked, shoving down his panic. As harmless as Harley appeared, the Joker’s on-again, off-again girlfriend knowing his secret was an apocalypse waiting to happen.

“Yeah. It’s the abs. And the delts. And the quads. You’ve got an eight-pack, Dick. Probably even better than any of those Bats, since they have to spend all their time saving the world—you can go to the gym for eight hours a day. Rich prick,” she said with gleeful anger. “I’d hate ya if ya weren’t so shredded.”

“Thanks.”

“Mistah J isn’t that built. He’s not even well-hung. Not that he ever wants to do me anyway…”

Dick settled in, getting comfortable and setting up a rhythm of stroking and soothing her while she told her story. He’d literally heard it all before, but even if she knew that Nightwing and the present listener to her tale of woe were one and the same, he doubted she would’ve stopped. Some people just needed to be heard.

So he listened to how Joker had used her, treated her as property—alternately ignored her, owned her, attacked her, and neglected her. Until Harley wasn’t even sure what she wanted: for him to pay attention to her or leave her alone. She still wanted love, like everyone did, but she no longer knew what that was, only that it came from the Joker.

Except it didn’t. She was at least smart enough, at least wounded enough, to realize that.