totalwildcard | Apartment Above Needful Things; Later Friday

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apartment,
marc

Apartment Above Needful Things; Later Friday

It was not as dusty in the upstairs apartment as it had been the last time Marc had been up there. Like, sure, it was still dusty in places because Harley and her attention span had prioritized the spots that she actually used on a daily basis, but still! The living room slash kitchen space that they entered into from the stairs was actually looking lived in now, with stuff like cereal packages and coffee on the kitchen counters and some empty takeaway cartons littering the coffee table Harley had hauled up from the store.

Hey, the narrative had said it wasn't that dusty anymore, not anything about there being no mess. It wasn't too bad, anyway, there was just a little bit of clutter!

So far.

Whatever, Harley had put some personal touches in. Some eclectic decor pieces around the place, a pop art style painting on one of the walls, that sorta thing. (And a taxidermy beaver in a tutu on the counter, but Beaver wasn't decor.)

"Well, here we are!" Harley announced. "I promise this place isn't as much of a sneezing hazard anymore."

(for that guy, continued from here! NSFW)

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"Not leaving yet," Marc confirmed. He rubbed her shoulder in something like reassurance. "And when I do it's not gonna be because I had a bad time."

Not unless one of them really screwed this up before then.

"Mm hmm," Harley agreed, drawing random shapes onto his chest. "It'll be just... normal leaving."

And the odds of them getting to that were looking pretty great.

"Comes with sharing a body," Marc told her. He stretched, coincidentally giving her fingers more room to work with. "Lotta scheduling."

Not as much as there once had been, but still there all the same.

More room clearly meant Harley should make her abstract shapes bigger. Or at least make them reach further in places. Why waste good space, after all?

"I can work with that," she said, watching her hand move. "You've been showing up sometimes, that's plenty to me."

"Same," Marc told her, so she'd know he wasn't putting any expectations on her either. Showing up sometimes was good. Showing up sometimes he could handle, regardless of which one of them was making the overture first.

Then, long as they were sort of explaining stuff, "Steven's not gonna be walking around with anything you leave on me."

Those scratch marks currently on his skin, for example.

Harley was looking right at them, and yet couldn't put two and two together right away.

"Hunh?"

"Any marks," Marc explained. "We get rid of those before we switch."

"Oh!" Harley said, and perked up. "Oh, that's good! Means I dom't have to worry about scandalizing his poor little English head with anything."

As if she'd given that any thought before covering Marc in scratches. But, yanno, good to know for any possible future stuff!

"And it's not personal," Marc said, since that'd been why he mentioned it. "Nothing about you."

At least she'd always be getting a blank canvas?

"Why would it ever be personal?" Harley asked, confused. "Didn't you just say you guys just... do it?"

Yeah, okay, it was going to take a while for Harley to process that he was telling her these things as a courtesy towards the insecurities she'd already shown, instead of just as fun facts.

"I dunno," Marc said, because he knew better than to point out when you were trying to be mindful of someone's possible insecurities. "Never came up before. I'm just guessing here."

So Harley just gave it an easy little shrug (easy in spirit, a little awkward in practice), happy to let it go.

Tracing a line down the center of his chest, she said instead, "Well, good to know anyway. If I ever need to mark you up real good."

Marc stretched out again, giving himself more ability to trail his fingers back and forth from Harley's shoulder to her back. "And why would you need to do a thing like that?"

Why did Harley do most things?

The answer was immediate and bright: "For fun."

"Never heard of it," Marc replied, with a look that said she'd nobody but herself to blame for giving that easy layup.

Harley snorted. "You're lyyying," she sing-songed at him. "Anyway, I don't need you to think it's fun for me to see a perfect body and wanna vandalize it a little bit for kicks."

Marc knew Harley was only having fun in the moment. Even so,

"You can want," he said. Not upset. Just a nudge to let her know something they had in common was not being into the suggestion of things happening to them whether they liked it or not.

"Yeah, that's what I said," Harley agreed, not following.

Marc felt a spark of annoyance as any remnants of languid afterglow dissolved.

"I have enough shit happen whether I like it or not," he told her. "It's not a turn on to hear someone gets off on the idea it doesn't matter if I don't think it's fun."

Harley blinked at him.

Then her head actually lifted off of his arm because how else was she supposed to do her usual confused head tilt?

"When'd we get onto me gettin' off on that?"

Marc rolled his eyes. "Didn't realize you meant you were thinking about vandalizing someone else's body whether or not I found it fun."

Oh, just lifting her head wasn't going to do for this one: Harley needed to actually sit up, now.

"But I sorta was?" she said, her face all scrambled with confusion mixed with... was that concern? While she tried to retrace her conversational steps. Which made her frown even more. "Well, not really," she hedged, "but I wasn't saying what you think I was saying! 'Cause what I think is fun and what you think is fun is one thing, and actually doing whatever it is -"

And now the arm was involved, gesturing towards the opposite wall to signify something really far away.

"- is a whole different thing! But I can still find the idea fun even if you don't, I just can't actually do it then because I don't force people into doing sex shit they don't wanna do!"

And of course she'd gone real shrill and loud at the end there, sorry to his eardrums.

Marc sat up as well, which he'd kind of been thinking of doing anyway so hey that worked. Her look of concern helped dial down the tension he'd been feeling and how quickly his walls were going up.

"Wasn't saying you would," Marc told her, more patient than he'd been a moment ago. "Didn't think you would either. All I'm saying is the phrasing didn't work for me. Because I figured you're not into saying shit the other person isn't into anymore than you are into doing it, right?"

"But I didn't phrase it like that, either!" Harley claimed, which was not her best argument and not even entirely accurate, but in her defense, a lot of her attention was suddenly snatched by the noise that could only come from a giant hyena sprinting up a flight of stairs.

So now she was scrambling her way off the bed so she could try and go intercept the incoming exotic pet missile, muttering, "Great, now I gotta keep Bruce from trying to eat you."

And Marc hadn't meant he'd actually do whatever he wanted to Harley without her permission back at the beginning of this. But when she'd told him she didn't like the way he put it he'd listened and immediately adjusted because how she felt was more important than what he'd meant. All he'd been asking for was the same courtesy in return.

But that was obviously not a conversation that was going to happen with the hyena around. So Marc got up and started putting his clothes on with military style brisk efficiency. "One way to fix that."

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