Fret not, my friends! There will be Cleave soon—well, more Cleave, for now, Cleave's darting in and out of this. Trust me, this is all part of a plot device and if I explain it, this'll basically ruin everything. I'm just kind of still inwardly debating whether I want Harvey with Cleave or Ivy—or I can be a complete bitch and go for both. I'm actually contemplating both. There's a poll on my profile, so please, feel free to vote :D! And now, onward!
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Cleveland Roger Punsworth found himself completely irate by the thought that he was losing the game. 'The game' was, he had learned, the only way to live life. To take it into your own purple-gloved hands and destroy it, if you wished.
He was also not about to lose to a red-head. He was a blonde and, by definition, much better than the other. A small-time villain, he scoffed to himself, turning the corner in the chilly spring night. A no-talent, miniature crook. Poison Ivy—hah!
The oddity was his lack of obnoxious costuming or face makeup. It was just an overcoat, created of heavy wool (did Gotham ever cease the freeze?), black, accented by the purple vest beneath and the emerald tie to hold together the correct abnormality. Was it possible for his pants to not be terrifically tight? Dark blue jeans clung to his stick-legs and a pair of excessively ratty, dark blue Converses sat on his oafishly oversized feet.
A silly little girrrrrl, he thought, and flicked cleverly at the knife nestled in his pocket. His friend, his only companion.
The sound, when he'd approached the steps of six-hundred-and-sixty-six Bay Terrace, was a loud mewl that he associated slowly with the lightly squeaking cat on the stoop. The thing was, he swore, a massive marshmallow and a pile of sheer snow. There was no way in any kind of hell that ball was a cat.
A cat with a green collar.
His interest piqued, though, and when he swept his messily tied golden hair out of his eyes, he knelt over to pick up the feline. It didn't so much as bat at his hands, and a slow, casual smirk spread across his lips. This feline was not just any feline, oh no, this feline must have belonged to—
"Less hugging, more French toast! Snap to it, whore, I'm hu-hungry here!"
He'd listened for that brief moment, and in seconds the obviously hostile voice registered in his quick mind. Harvey, there could be no other woman so quick to complain about a simple act of affection. Harvey, who he was sure loved him back, and he was sure he loved, himself, but who refused to show any sign of human tendency whatsoever. Hell, the girl was even more an ice-bitch than he was.
The doorbell's sound was dull, and he continued to cradle the fuzzy (did the collar say Fuzzball?) little kitten to his chest, laughing under his breath in a slightly jovial moment. Oh, yes, he was partial to animals—he could never have a dog because Harvey was allergic like a beast.
"You should not be capable o—" A pause, and the red-head at the door almost instantly dug her emerald eyes into his forest ones. Her amusement seemed to spiral downward, whereas his just grew and grew. "You certainly should not be capable of finding this address, you above all people."
"Ya know, Ivy, dearie, baby—" He'd paused, and leaned forward. His eyebrows rose right up into the sky itself, and his lips cracked into a grin that pushed back his permanent dimples, "Ya know what I don't like? Ah—I don't like, oh no, I don't, when people take things that aren't theeeeeeeir's."
"You cannot have something that doesn't even desire you, clown."
His patience with this woman was short, but he wasn't about to lose it. No, if he killed her, it'd make his life all the more difficult with Harvey, wouldn't it? He wasn't objecting to the thought of keeping her in a cage of his making, of locking her up so she would be his forever, but a vaguely sick way he wanted her to be happy in that cage. In his own oh-so-masculine way, Cleveland wanted her to want his cage. Well, in essence, he wanted her to leave the cage and be content with his leash.
"Now, listen. Either you git her little bum out here, or this object I'm so cas-you-a-lly cuddling loses a pulse." Would he kill the cat, though? There were a number of things he'd kill for the goal of romancing the Harley, but the incessantly meowing feline was his only hostage.
"Feel free to end the creature. It's not I you'll be losing points with. The cat is Harvey's object of affection; most certainly not mine." His other eyebrow followed suit to the left. Had he just been undermined by Pamela Isley? Not two or so years ago she was just some little glorified botanist with a degree, and now she had the nerve to talk back to him! "She doesn't want to see you. You raped her in the managerial closet of a Wal-Mart. In what fashion do you possibly believe she'll even be willing to acknowledge you?"
"Guys make mistakes, toots-uh." His voice had gained a dangerously low hiss, and the cat in his hands yowled responsively when his grip intensified.
Bringing up that subject was just the same as taking bat to his nerves and then hacking up the little bits with a chainsaw. Of course he felt guilty about the subject, but he was kicking himself in the rear to find every excuse for the action. She'd already been pregnant, and it was his, so—
No, that didn't make anything better at all.
Was that how it worked? You made one mistake, and were condemned for it for the rest of your natural life?
Okay, so it wasn't one mistake. One mistake was kind of making it menial. He'd terrified (and considerably so) a woman who was already anxious of physical touch. He'd pretty much chased her right away from him (and right away from men in general, he figured sarcastically) with her tail between her legs.
Most men, he understood, were fairly turned on by the subject of women dating women. The thing was, though, that he didn't quite care how admittedly beautiful (and curvy, oh so curvy) Poison Ivy was, he wanted his girl.
"You're gonna have to come to terrrrrms with something here, man-hatin'-bitch. That right in there, that's my Harv-cakes, and that little guy of her's, that little guy is my pro-per-tee, too. Gal or guy, that hellion belongs to me."
The cat's sounds had dulled into a few low whines. Apparently, Fuzzball wasn't too satisfied with her new friend.
"If you had any fashion of intellect, you'd realize that the mere sight of you could push her into a suicidal terror or induce something akin to trauma. For example, the mere sight of you is forcing me into something of an induced rage."
The knife was out in pure seconds, and the cold steel leaned forward to halfway meet Ivy's flesh. He wasn't about to lose, he knew that much. His, his, his, that was what she was. She may have been irrational, illogical, unloving, angry and stupid, but he wanted her for himself. He was willing to gracefully accept the fact that she was more than capable of becoming the ice-bitch-from-hell, and he was willing to try to match that and try to relate, himself.
No one ever said love made sense. Attraction is often a concept people spend hours attempting to pick apart, but it will never be something understandable.
He knew only that he needed his Harley like he knew she needed him. It was a look in her eyes, a scent on her skin, a tremor in her tone that gave that all away.
Because he was, of course, simply irresistible.
It was a casual tap of a red nail that slithered a green vine from the frame of the door, and the red-head just purred, "You put away the blade, I agree to keep my babies from twisting your head from your neck."
His lip pulled into a snarl, his shoulders dropped from their defensive stance, but his eyes were alight and on-guard. Fuzzball had swiped at him hopelessly, then the fluff-and-stuff little thing leapt from his arms and zipped inside. The vine had wrapped around her arm, and Ivy was ever so gently running the nail of her thumb down and up the animated plant.
"The toast is burning and I can't reach the counter! H-Help me, here, and get the fucking Jehovah's witnesses off the goddamn property!"
"You mark my woooorrrrds-uh, sweetie-kins," she could feel his breath on her face, and the tingling undertones of tequila made their ways through her nose, "She ain't yours."
With the spring, he came and went.
She had to admit, his false devotion impressed her.
Exasperated, she knew this was definitely not the end. A nagging possibility told her that it was very probable he felt about the tiny Harvey just as intensely as she did.
Of course, she was reluctant to admit to that.
Why did life complicate like this so often?
The wind murmured a promise that this had only just begun.
"Oh fuck! –My BAGEL!"