Apartment Above Needful Things; Tuesday Late Morning

[totalwildcard]

Harley had spent most of the weekend on the mainland. Not just Baltimore, either - she'd taken the kid out on a little road trip. Yanno, for life lessons! Most of them criminal, of course, but that was sort of how their mentorship worked, so someone else could handle the boring stuff. Anyway, they'd had fun!

So much of it, in fact, that Harley had only landed back on the island late on Monday evening. Technically probably Tuesday? Which meant that after she'd passed out and slept her fill, the day was already well on its way. She rolled groggily out of bed, shambled her way into the living room --

And groaned when she saw the glitter bomb still waiting on the coffee table, and not downstairs attached to the front door ready to explode on Frenchie if he showed up again this week. Whether he'd already shown up or not, Harley was not in a state to go set it up now.

She shuffled around some more, in search of her phone, which she found discarded on the kitchen counter. No calls, no messages apart from Cass informing her she'd ordered breakfast delivery on Harley's account. Harley looked at the phone for a long moment more anyway, tapping her thumb against the side of it in thought. Groggy, still sleepy, not yet caffeinated thought.

And pulled up a number she'd had for a while but never actually texted before.

(Successfully, anyway. There was that time on her birthday.)

You awake yet?

(expecting one but can be open for other stuff as well!)

Comments

[totalwildcard]

"Exactly!" Harley said, with some of that classic Harley perkiness in her tone. "My legs are fine. I used to hang in the aerial silks in my cell for hours, this is nothing."

[hasaknightjob]

"Hang in the what?" Marc asked.

He did not have a lot of experience with circus acts, no.

[totalwildcard]

"Aerial silks!" Yeah, that wasn't gonna mean anything to him just repeated like that, was it? Of course, Harley was now rolling her eyes at the memory and amending it with, "Well, they weren't real silks, I made 'em all by my little self outta most of my prison clothes, and I can tell ya they do not make that shit out of silk. In fact I'm pretty sure Belle Reve gets their fabric from Chafes-Ya-Butt-Raw'R'Us."

None of that explained anything at all, no.

[hasaknightjob]

"Sure," Marc said. He was absolutely pretending like he knew what she was talking about.

Well, uncomfortable prison clothes he got, so there was that at least.

[totalwildcard]

Harley was now peering at the ceiling with a considering look, anyway.

"I wonder if that's sturdy enough..."

[hasaknightjob]

Marc looked up as well, as though that would somehow help.

"It's a sex thing?"

In his defense he only knew of one thing that regularly threatened the structural integrity of Harley's home.

[totalwildcard]

Harley's gaze flicked back down, unimpressed. "You think I spent hours in a sex thing at fuckin' Belle Reve, the gangrenous armpit of Louisiana?" she asked, making a face like something stunk. "Please, that was like the one fucked up, deeply traumatizing thing they didn't do to me in there."

Although apparently her staying unimpressed was short-lived, because why wallow on any of that when you could be letting new ideas spark instead? So she was looking at the ceiling again. "Although," she said, thoughtful, "the silks could easily double for a sex swing..."

[hasaknightjob]

"How'm I gonna know?" Marc said, in defense of himself. "Maybe you made friends when you were in there."

[totalwildcard]

Harley snorted. It sounded a little... forceful. Derisive.

"They had my ass so deep in solitary that it was like I was in a box, inside another box, inside another box, inside the prison."

[hasaknightjob]

"Dangerous, huh?" Marc asked.

Did he sound a little proud? Probably an illusion.

[totalwildcard]

It softened some of the harsh edges in Harley's expression either way.

"I put half a dozen guards in hospital," she said, like it was no big whoop. "They really didn't like that."

[hasaknightjob]

"People tend to not like getting beat up," Marc agreed.

Not in a way that suggested he felt that meant don't do it.

[totalwildcard]

"And they start getting real overprotective of themselves after they see it happen to someone else."

So foolish, right?

"So that's how ya end up in the smallest box."

[hasaknightjob]

"But big enough to - " Marc tried to see if he was getting the mental image right " - swing."

[totalwildcard]

"A little bit," Harley confirmed. "Mostly just hanging."

[hasaknightjob]

"And that's... fun?" Marc was guessing wildly here. Didn't help that he wasn't good at defining things as fun in general.

[totalwildcard]

Harley gave another snort that sounded a whole bunch more amused than her previous one.

"Sweetie, you're really lost on this one, aren't ya?"

[hasaknightjob]

"No fucking clue," Marc admitted. "I got cloth and up, that's it."

[totalwildcard]

"You got your phone on ya?" Harley asked, as the amused look on her face deepened. "'Cause I don't know where mine is."

She'd had it when he'd texted her from the street, of course, but beyond that? The phone's location was the phone's private and personal business.

[hasaknightjob]

Marc looked curious. He reached into his back pocket with his free hand - jostling Harley a little as he did, though it was actually not on purpose - and pulled out his phone. He used his thumb to put in the code then offered it to her.

[totalwildcard]

"I'm pretty sure you also know how to look things up on the internet," Harley pointed out - not that it stopped her from accepting the phone anyway so she could pull up the browser.

If nothing else, she for sure knew how to spell 'aerial silks'?

[hasaknightjob]

"Thought you were asking for it," Marc said. "'scuse me for trusting you."

Pretend grumping, not at all serious.

[totalwildcard]

"Gonna get yourself in trooouble, bein' that trusting," Harley replied, in a lightly sing-songy tone. Of course, she fully assumed there just wasn't anything of particular note on his phone to begin with. "But I'm gonna be nice this time."

[hasaknightjob]

There wasn't. If she bothered to look she'd see he didn't have any notifications of unread emails or messages (him replying after reading was always another matter). If she looked at their earlier text chain she'd see she was in his contacts as Harley. Pretty much what could be expected for a guy who didn't have a custom phone case and who had never bothered to change his wallpaper background from the default.

(If she dug deeper she might see he did have texts from people listed as Layla, Crawley, and Frenchie. But most of those hadn't been active for at least a few weeks, with Crawley's being the most recent.)

"I'm right here," Marc reminded her, giving a tilt of his head to indicate that he'd see her do it if she tried anything wrong.

[totalwildcard]

"Yeah, being a very comfy chair, I'm aware," Harley replied, batting her eyelashes at him while also making a big show of tilting the phone in a way where he wouldn't see the screen.

She only did a semi-light bit of snooping, anyway. Only enough to get the wrong idea about who he had in there as 'Frenchie', while briefly considering changing her own contact to a different moniker.

But, nah, after a moment she was turning the phone back the way he could actually see it. She'd pulled up an image search for just plain old 'aerial silks', so now the screen was filled with various pictures of mostly athletic women holding themselves aloft on suspended silks of varying colors, in varying poses. "Like this, see?"