By: Panties-Pulverizer
The condemned apartment block over Rico’s Taqueria should have been dead quiet.
From the rooftop across the alley, Barbara watched the upper windows: blacked-out glass, plywood, a sagging “NO TRESPASSING – CONDEMNED” sign half-hanging by one nail. All exactly how the paperwork said it should look.
Then she switched to low-light and zoomed.
One window wasn’t blacked out. Light leaked around the edges of a curtain, dull pink and pulsing. On the crumbling brick to its right, somebody had tagged a graffiti heart and a looping scrawl beneath it, letters running together in a lazy red drip:
love stinks
Barbara exhaled slowly. The juxtaposition was odd—cutesy hearts mixed with those green, wavy stink lines emanating from them like cartoon fumes. Gross, but not criminal. Still, reports of "weird activity" in a condemned building warranted a look.
“Penny-One, it’s Batgirl,” she murmured into her comm. “I’ve got unauthorized activity at the condemned block over Rico’s Taqueria. I’ll sweep the third floor and report back. If I go dark… start calling in favors.”
Alfred’s voice came warm but faint in her ear. “Understood, Miss Barbara. Do be careful. These buildings are structurally—”
The line crackled, then stabilized.
“…unsound,” he finished.
She smiled despite the knot in her stomach. “Copy that.”
Grapnel fired with a soft thwip. She swung across the alley, boots hitting the rusted fire escape with a muted clang. Up close, the graffiti heart and its ugly little caption looked rushed, done by someone who’d been laughing too hard to care about clean lines. The stink lines almost seemed to waft off the wall.
She picked the lock on the third-floor window, eased it open, and slid in low.
The air hit first—stale, too sweet. Cheap aerosol trying to bury mildew and old smoke.
Pink hearts sprayed over ruined wallpaper. LOVE STINKS scrawled across a bolted headboard in still-glossy red. A bare bulb dangling from the ceiling, swaying slightly, buzzing like a fly. The bed made tight, sheets pulled so crisp it had to be deliberate. There were cameras bolted high in two corners, tiny red LEDs blinking.
Someone had built a set.
“Cute,” Barbara muttered. “Over-themed, but cute.”
She took two careful steps in, scanning angles, checking corners. Bathroom door half-open, checkerboard tile beyond. No plants in sight—but with Ivy, that meant nothing.
She was just starting to think about exit routes when the door behind her exploded inward.
She spun—
—and Harley’s bat caught her square across the kidneys.
The crack of wood on armor was loud in the little room. White pain flared through her lower back and punched into her gut. Her legs surrendered. She crashed down onto hands and knees, breath blasted out of her lungs in a strangled grunt.
“STRRRRIKE ONE!” Harley Quinn sang somewhere behind her. “Aaaand the crowd goes wild!”
Barbara tried to roll, to get a leg under her, to bring an elbow back.
Harley was already in motion. The second swing hit lower, knocking her arms out from under her, bouncing off her belt and rattling her spine. She sprawled face-first on the filthy carpet.
Boots squeaked around in front of her. Harley dropped into a squat, bat across her shoulders, grinning upside-down in Barbara’s field of view. Classic jester suit, red and black panels, white-painted face split by a delighted smile.
“Hiya, Bats,” she chirped. “Welcome ta the honeymoon suite.”
“Penny-One, I—” Barbara rasped, trying to pull air in and route it through the suit’s mic. Static shivered across the channel, then cleared. “Harley and—”
Vines whipped out from behind.
Something cool and strong wrapped around her wrists. She arched, dragged onto hands and knees again whether she wanted it or not.
“Do hold still,” Ivy’s voice purred, soft and dry from somewhere behind. “You’ll only make it worse on yourself.”
Barbara clawed at the carpet. Her back bent into a forced arch, cape falling to either side.
She felt Ivy’s presence before she saw her: the faint chill, the scent of damp earth under the motel’s cloying air. Fingers—bare, cool—slid under the back of her cape, then under the top edge of her suit.
They didn’t stop until they found cotton.
Barbara’s stomach clenched. “Don’t.”
Ivy’s fingertips traced the waistband of her beige briefs, then curled.
“Practical,” Ivy observed. “Sensible. Let’s see how durable.”
Harley’s grin widened. She shifted her squat, bringing her face closer to Barbara’s, as if interviewing her. “Ohhh, Beige Brigade tonight. You dressed down for me, Batsy? Didn’t wanna clash with the décor?”
Barbara grit her teeth, tried to twist free. The vines held. Harley’s gloved hands slid forward and wrapped around Barbara’s trapped wrists, adding her grip to the green bonds.
“Up we go,” Harley chirped.
Ivy hauled straight up.
The briefs snapped north. Cotton that had been sitting flat was yanked hard up the back of Barbara’s thighs and between her cheeks in one brutal motion, seat rocketing into a place underwear was never meant to go. The waistband bit into the top of her hips, then climbed, dragging fabric and skin with it.
A hot, white line of pain tore up her spine.
A sound escaped her—half gasp, half shocked grunt. Her hips jerked.
Ivy didn’t stop at “enough.” She kept pulling, arm rising, until Barbara felt her weight start to hang off that overstretched strip of cotton. Her knees stayed planted on the carpet. Her shoulders were pinned by vines and Harley’s hands. The briefs became the third anchor, dragging her backward and up at the base of her spine.
Her back bent deeper. Her chest dipped. Her rear hitched up under the strain.
The wedgie wasn’t just humiliating—it was leverage.
Ivy’s fist stayed locked in the band at the small of Barbara’s back. Her other palm pressed between Barbara’s shoulders, keeping her folded in that agonizing arch.
“Manual control,” Ivy said calmly. “See? Simple materials. Excellent results.”
Barbara hissed air between her teeth, fighting to find some posture that didn’t drive the harness deeper. There wasn’t one.
“Delivery confirmed,” Ivy said lightly. “One bat, nose-first seating.”
“I swear,” Barbara rasped, the cloth digging so deep she could feel every fiber, “the two of you—”
Ivy jerked her fist.
The wedgie dragged her forward like a leash.
Her knees scraped over filthy carpet. Her back screamed. She couldn’t stop; the pain at her hips and along that carved track dictated everything. Harley hopped up, spun, and planted herself in front of the charging Batgirl with choreographed precision.
“Customer service is all about placement,” Harley said cheerfully. “Face right here, Babs. We want ya in the splash zone.”
Ivy yanked again.
Barbara’s cowl slammed into Harley’s lower back, nose mashed against the red-and-black seat of the jester costume. Vinyl squeaked. Flesh underneath yielded, warm and soft. The angle of the forced arch and the grip on her arms welded her there; there was no space to turn her head, no angle to breathe around it.
Ivy’s palm settled on the back of her head, the other hand still buried in the harness. Together, they kept Barbara’s face locked in a tight pocket of heat and synthetic squeak.
“Now that’s what I call a front-row seat,” Harley cackled.
Barbara tried to suck air from the side of her mouth, tiny, controlled sips. Don’t breathe through your nose. Don’t give her the—
Harley shifted her weight back, sealing off the last sliver of leeway.
“Ready?” she sang.
Barbara braced.
BRRRT.
The fart exploded against her cowl, crude and wet and violently loud this close. Heat slammed into the sealed space around her nose and mouth. The air thickened in an instant, flooded with a dense, foul layer that made her eyes sting behind the lenses.
Her whole body recoiled. Instinct screamed: back away, cough, spit, get out.
The wedgie harness and Ivy’s hand made “back away” impossible. Harley’s backside pressed harder, pinning her nose.
Her lungs clenched. Held.
Don’t. Don’t. Hold it.
The pressure in her chest built. Black started to creep at the edges of her vision.
“Woof,” Harley wheezed, delighted. “Talk about a love bomb. You still with us back there, Bat-brat?”
Barbara’s muscles trembled. Her ribs ached. Her lungs were caught between two kinds of panic: not that and no air at all.
A gloved hand, not Ivy’s, touched the side of her cowl, light but precise, fingers finding the pulse at her temple.
“Breathe,” a man’s voice said, low and calm, by her ear.
Just one word.
Her chest expanded like he’d yanked a hidden string.
She dragged the tainted air in.
It scorched down her throat, sour and heavy. Her stomach lurched. Her eyes overflowed. But the agony in her ribs eased the second oxygen hit her blood, the suffocating pressure in her chest letting go in a painful, shuddering rush.
The relief landed at the same time as the disgust.
No. No, no, no.
A golden shape slid into the edge of her vision: a smooth, expressionless mask, eyes glowing a muted amber. In its curved surface she saw a warped reflection—Harley’s lower back, her own cowl crushed below it, eyes wide and wet.
Psycho-Pirate.
His gaze flicked across her face, cataloguing.
“Again,” Psycho-Pirate murmured.
Harley obliged.
PFFFT.
A shorter, sharper blast punched straight into the sealed pocket around Barbara’s nose and mouth. Another wave of foul heat flooded her, layered over the first.
Her first impulse was to gag, to wrench back, to claw at anything that would break the seal. Her lungs, after that poisoned relief, panicked at the idea of going without.
“Breathe.”
Her ribs moved anyway.
The Medusa Mask watched her without expression. If he enjoyed this, it didn’t show. He simply observed, lenses bright, as though logging data.
Time broke into a miserable rhythm.
Harness jerk. Shot of pain. Harley’s singsong warning—“Incoming!”—then a burst:
BRRRT.
Her body flinched, braced.
“Breathe.”
Her lungs dragged it in.
Again.
PFFFT.
Short, sharp, like a jab.
Her eyes squeezed shut. Her mind screamed no.
“Breathe.”
Her ribs moved anyway.
At some point she lost track of how many times it happened. The room shrank to that cycle: the bite of cotton carving her in half, the hot, gross pressure against her face, the command, the forced inhale, the horrified little bloom of relief when air—awful, tainted air—finally hit her starved lungs.
Somewhere in the middle of it, the panic shifted.
Not eased. Never eased. But bent.
The next time Harley shifted her weight with a playful hum, Barbara’s muscles tensed a heartbeat early—not just from dread, but from anticipation of something happening. When the inevitable BRRAAP rolled out and the smell slammed into her, she caught herself thinking, How bad is this one going to be? Will it be worse?
Questions, not just revulsion.
Curiosity, she realized with a spike of shame. Twisted, invasive curiosity, wedged in along the disgust and terror. The stink didn’t get any less vile. But some warped instinct was starting to catalog it.
She wanted to retch.
“Penny-One to Batgirl,” Alfred’s voice chimed faintly in her ear, distant through the haze. “Your heart rate is—Miss Barbara, are you in—”
BRRRT.
The next blast drowned him out, a low, prolonged roll that vibrated against her mask. Harley wheezed laughing, and the comm crackle dissolved under the rush of blood in Barbara’s ears and the Pirate’s single, inexorable word.
“Breathe.”
Not a shallow grab this time. A full, deep inhale. The kind she’d take after surfacing from a long dive. It raked every nerve raw on the way in. Her body shook with it. Her knees buckled, making the harness catch her weight again in a flash of bright pain.
Relief hit at the same time as the horror.
Her chest stopped screaming. Her head cleared a fraction. The contrast was so jarring she made a choked sound into Harley’s skin, half-groan, half-sob.
No. No, no, no. I did not just—
Harley wiggled her hips, delighted. “Hear that, Red? Our little bat just gulped one down.”
Barbara fought the vines, fingers digging uselessly at the air. The wedgie harness dug deeper as Ivy took up the slack. The new angle glued Barbara’s face even tighter against Harley’s backside; the squeak of stretched vinyl was loud in her ears.
Then she felt fabric shift.
Harley straightened for a second, fingers fumbling at her waist. There was a rustle, the soft slide of material over skin.
“Latex’s great for crime,” Harley huffed, “but I bet you’re in the mood for organic Harley.”
The red-and-black seat of her costume peeled down out of Barbara’s limited view, leaving nothing between her nose and Harley’s bare skin but the thin line of Barbara’s own mask. Heat radiated off of it, damp and humiliatingly human.
Barbara squeezed her eyes shut. “Don’t—”
BRRRT.
The sound was obscene at this range. The wave that followed felt like it had weight, pressing into her cowl, forcing itself into every breath.
Her body flinched so hard the vines creaked.
“Breathe,” Psycho-Pirate said, a fraction softer.
Her lungs obeyed.
The Medusa Mask’s eyes flared. Psycho-Pirate’s gaze found Barbara’s again over the curve of Harley’s back, steady and intent. She could see her own reflection in those lenses: a cowl mashed into flesh, eyes wide and streaming.
Another cycle. Another.
At some point, he stopped speaking altogether. He didn’t need to. The pattern was carved into her.
Stink. Panic. The edge of blackout. And then—her chest seizing on its own, dragging the tainted air in before her thoughts caught up.
When a lull finally came—Harley shifting, giggles fading to breathless little hums—Barbara’s lungs burned. Not from poison this time, but from emptiness. The pocket of air around her still reeked, but less. The worst of it was dissipating.
She should have been grateful. She was. But under the gratitude, some conditioned corner of her hissed for more. For the awful, lying relief that came with a full breath, no matter what rode on it.
What is happening to me?
“Good enough,” Ivy said at last, voice cool. “We’re not trying to kill her.”
Harley cackled. “Speak for yourself. C’mon, Bat-brat, say ‘thank you’ to Doctor Pirate for your new hobby.”
Barbara spat something hoarse and unprintable into Harley’s skin.
Psycho-Pirate eased back from her cowl, fingers lifting away. The glow in the Medusa Mask’s eyes dimmed to a low ember. He rose, cloak whispering, before turning toward the side door—the one opposite the bolted entrance, the one Barbara hadn’t had a chance to inspect. The locks slid back for him with obedient clacks. He stepped through and vanished, the door closing soft and final behind him.
The moment he left, the vines loosened from Barbara’s wrists, slithering away up the wall. Ivy’s grip on the wedgie harness relaxed by a fraction. Harley stepped away, tugging her costume back up with quick flicks of her hips, bells jingling.
Air—not good air, but less-awful air—washed over Barbara’s face.
She gulped it in automatically, chest heaving. It still tasted like motel and sweat and ghost-stink, but compared to the concentrated pocket she’d been trapped in, it felt almost clean.
She hated that her lungs treated it like a relief.
“Look at you,” Harley sighed happily, circling around to face her. “All stretched out, sniffly, and wedgied to high heaven. You’re gonna remember this room every time you walk past a Glade plug-in.”
“Let… me… go,” Barbara rasped.
Harley’s answer was to tap the overstretched waistband where Ivy’s fist still anchored it.
“Up,” Ivy said.
Her tone was mild, but the hand tightened.
Ivy adjusted her grip on the briefs.
The harness tug hauled Barbara up from her knees in one graceless lurch. Every inch upward dragged the band harder against raw skin. Her lower back spasmed; her legs almost buckled. All her weight seemed to hang from that overstretched strip of cotton, her body dangling from her own underwear.
Every step hurt.
Every little pull of Ivy’s fist translated straight through the wedgie, a line of fire along her spine and deeper.
Barbara ground her teeth and stumbled forward, dragged by her briefs,
Harley rummaged at the bathroom door and came back twirling a cracked, filthy plunger.
“Now that we’ve broken in the nose,” Harley said, delighted, “time for accessories.”
She popped the plunger’s rubber cup down onto the top of Barbara’s cowl, right between the bat-ears. It squished, deformed the silhouette for a second, then sealed with a soggy thup. The wooden handle rose like a ridiculous antenna.
Harley laughed so hard she doubled over. “Oh my god. Look, Red! It’s like a little bat joystick!”
Ivy actually smirked. “Functional.”
She loosened the last of the vines from Barbara’s arms; green tendrils slithered away into cracks in the walls. The only things holding her now were Ivy’s fist in her wedgied briefs and Harley’s hand on the plunger handle.
“Walkies,” Harley chirped.
Ivy tugged the harness; Harley pulled the handle. Between the dragging agony at her hips and the pressure tilting her head, Barbara had no choice but to stumble toward the door.
The barricade bolts slid back with harsh clacks. The hallway beyond was narrow and dim, wallpaper torn, more graffiti hearts scrawled over water stains. The air out there wasn’t exactly fresh—but it was wider. Less concentrated.
Her lungs twitched, not sure whether to be grateful or scared.
At the top of the stairs down to the alley, a broken window let in a sliver of Gotham night—orange streetlight, the murmur of traffic, the distant shout of somebody arguing over nothing.
Barbara swallowed.
It felt weirdly like standing at the edge of a high dive, knowing she was going to go over whether she jumped or not.
Fear swirled in her gut. Humiliation sat heavy under her ribs. And buried deep, tangled up with that new, ugly conditioning, was the littlest spark of something she refused to name—an anticipatory twitch in her chest every time she thought of the stink already anchored in her memory.
She told herself it was dread.
It had to be dread.
Harley leaned in close, breath warm at her ear.
“Round one of Love Stinks is in the bag,” she crooned. “Let’s go see how you handle the sequel, huh?”
The plunger handle turned gently. Ivy’s fist in the beige band pulled.
Batgirl stepped down into the stairwell, guided by her underwear and a toilet plunger, heart pounding, lungs tight, the smell of the room still clinging to her as surely as any rope.
The bond was born.
The night wasn’t over.