Harley Quinn (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
totalwildcard) wrote2025-02-16 12:13 pm
totalwildcard) wrote2025-02-16 12:13 pm
Apartment Above Needful Things; Sunday
It was supposed have been the most fun week of the year for both Harley and for her gleeful lack of impulse control. And yet, Friday had sucked.
And somehow, Saturday had sucked even worse.
And Sunday? Sunday wasn't really looking up, either. The pollen was gone, but she barely even noticed, because let's be real, she'd stopped noticing sometime on Friday when various other sensations and feelings had completely run over her happy hormone induced high, ruining her fun.
Because that was all she'd tried to have. Fun! Simple! Easy!
(Ha ha.)
So yeah, it was day three of suckage, and as had already been amply demonstrated, not in a fun way. Harley had a headache, first of all, a pounding thing (again: NOT IN A FUN WAY) that felt like her skull was being drilled into by entities that presumably hated her. Whether it was from the drinks she'd tried drowning her sorrows with, or all the helpless and angry (ugly) crying she'd done after that hadn't worked... Well, ¿por qué no los dos? All Harley knew was that everything hurt.
And that it had taken her a very long time to drag herself out of bed. Or, correction: to sit up in bed, since she had limited interest in leaving. What was the point? In her sad, drunken stupor last night, she'd remembered talking to that other... shrink... guy (Harrison? Lester?) and that he'd mentioned the radio, and so she'd set rum out for the filthy rodents to get sloshed with, so that she could keep herself from getting humiliated further by having her private stuff blasted all across the town's radiowaves even more than it presumably already had been.
Consequently, there was also rum all over the stairs leading up into the apartment from the back of the store, now. Someone, at some point, would have to clean that up. But it was nowhere near anyone's priorities.
(Turned out Bruce didn't like rum. Probably good, since Harley had no idea what it did to hyenas.)
So yeah, Harley was just turning her bed into a burrow, like maybe it could swallow her up and save her from the general cruelty of the world. As for sustenance, once the head-drilling demons let up enough for her to feel like whatever went down wouldn't immediately fight its way back up again? An obscene order of takeout. Which she sent Bruce down to get once the delivery guy showed up.
Now, no, of course Bruce couldn't actually get the food from the guy. Or even, in fact, open the door. But what he could do was make very scary hyena noises at the guy through the door (and the window next to it, for an extra scare factor), until the guy abandoned the bags at the door and took off, at which point Harley could slouch her way downstairs and pick the things up without ever having any sort of contact with another human being at all.
(Sure, contactless delivery was an actual option. But where was the fun for Bruce in that?)
(Also, just think of the fun Bruce had experienced earlier when Harley had let him go out for walkies by himself!)
And with her heavy bags of assorted food secured, and brought back upstairs, Harley settled back into her bed nest like some sort of puffy-eyed dragon hoarding its piles of gold (fries) and jewels (burgers and tacos). She grabbed a giant milkshake from one of the bags, her favorite, and took a big gulp, hoping the sugar and various "natural" flavorings would finally bring a little hit of joy into her day.
It barely tasted like anything.
Like, no. It probably tasted just fine. It was Harley that was the problem. Harley's... stupid bruised feelings, over stupid Pam clearly being happy choosing literally any-fucking-body else but her to have fun with, which shouldn't even have surprised her, because Pam (a different Pam, she should have been keeping the two separate but it was hard and this was her meltdown, okay??) had found her so easy to drop years ago, too, and that shouldn't have been a surprise either, because wasn't that the story of Harley's life? She served her purpose, if there ever even was one, and then she got left in the dust or out in the cold or feeling stupid about ever kissing her back --
She really needed to talk to someone. Like, vent? Venting, that was a thing people did, in an effort to not feel quite as shit? And there had to be someone, right, in her phone contacts? Someone who'd help?
Anyone?
There was an obvious number, of course. One that would reach out to someone she'd been missing desperately since Friday (okay, obviously since way before Friday, but a lot of that had been with different parts of her), but one that she wasn't going to call, despite how long her thumb hovered right over the name on the screen. Because, here was her reasoning: either he wasn't going to be there - because why would he? it wasn't his vacation - or he'd come through, thinking it was an emergency, but it wasn't. It was just...
The consequences of her own actions. Second fiddle trying to be something better than she was.
And she obviously wasn't going to call the kid, either. Even Harley had a limit about what she was willing to lay on Cass, and apparently this was it. Now, granted, it was way less about what she thought was appropriate for Cass to hear about, and way more about Harley trying to preserve at least some sense of the kid looking up to her, purely for Harley's own benefit. Crying about being turned down for a casual screw? Not a good look. She was aware of that.
So Marc and Cass were both out.
A whole lotta other people (not everyone, she wasn't organized enough for that) in her contacts were in, though.
... You know. In terms of Harley calling them, not so much the venting. Several people didn't pick up at all. Several did, but only to curse her out, some in very graphic terms. At least one number was no longer in service because the person it had belonged to was dead, and at least one other had been passed on to a little old lady Harley would gladly have talked to, in her desperation, if they'd actually had any sort of a common language.
It wasn't going great, in short. In fact, no matter how much pasted-on cheer she forced into her voice, every call just made her feel worse. Bruce had clambered onto the bed with her, resting his head on her leg. She was absently scritching behind his ear as she scrolled way down to the bottom of her list of contacts. Squared her shoulders, conjured up another desperate smile, pressed the call button.
After a brief moment, the call clearly connected, but the line stayed silent.
Harley wasn't going to let that stop her.
"Hiya!" she called. "Someone there? Or did I call the Perfect Silence Hotline by accident ag--"
"Quinn?" came a gruff voice, terse, suspicious - and, right, that was who Marc had reminded her of when they'd first met! Colonel Rick Flag! "There you are, Flag, how long's it been?" she cooed, only to continue without waiting for an answer. "Too long, I know, but hey, we're still friends, right?"
He sounded confused. "No? What? Where'd you get this --"
No.
Harley hung up.
And tossed her phone across the bed, for good measure, and then stared into the middle distance for a moment. Call it a revelation. The sum of everything that had just happened, of her sitting alone at the bar trying to keep it together, of spending all day long before that rolling around in her misery alone like some sad little pig in its single occupancy sty.
"... I don't have any friends."
Well, fuck.
(NFB, but open?)
And somehow, Saturday had sucked even worse.
And Sunday? Sunday wasn't really looking up, either. The pollen was gone, but she barely even noticed, because let's be real, she'd stopped noticing sometime on Friday when various other sensations and feelings had completely run over her happy hormone induced high, ruining her fun.
Because that was all she'd tried to have. Fun! Simple! Easy!
(Ha ha.)
So yeah, it was day three of suckage, and as had already been amply demonstrated, not in a fun way. Harley had a headache, first of all, a pounding thing (again: NOT IN A FUN WAY) that felt like her skull was being drilled into by entities that presumably hated her. Whether it was from the drinks she'd tried drowning her sorrows with, or all the helpless and angry (ugly) crying she'd done after that hadn't worked... Well, ¿por qué no los dos? All Harley knew was that everything hurt.
And that it had taken her a very long time to drag herself out of bed. Or, correction: to sit up in bed, since she had limited interest in leaving. What was the point? In her sad, drunken stupor last night, she'd remembered talking to that other... shrink... guy (Harrison? Lester?) and that he'd mentioned the radio, and so she'd set rum out for the filthy rodents to get sloshed with, so that she could keep herself from getting humiliated further by having her private stuff blasted all across the town's radiowaves even more than it presumably already had been.
Consequently, there was also rum all over the stairs leading up into the apartment from the back of the store, now. Someone, at some point, would have to clean that up. But it was nowhere near anyone's priorities.
(Turned out Bruce didn't like rum. Probably good, since Harley had no idea what it did to hyenas.)
So yeah, Harley was just turning her bed into a burrow, like maybe it could swallow her up and save her from the general cruelty of the world. As for sustenance, once the head-drilling demons let up enough for her to feel like whatever went down wouldn't immediately fight its way back up again? An obscene order of takeout. Which she sent Bruce down to get once the delivery guy showed up.
Now, no, of course Bruce couldn't actually get the food from the guy. Or even, in fact, open the door. But what he could do was make very scary hyena noises at the guy through the door (and the window next to it, for an extra scare factor), until the guy abandoned the bags at the door and took off, at which point Harley could slouch her way downstairs and pick the things up without ever having any sort of contact with another human being at all.
(Sure, contactless delivery was an actual option. But where was the fun for Bruce in that?)
(Also, just think of the fun Bruce had experienced earlier when Harley had let him go out for walkies by himself!)
And with her heavy bags of assorted food secured, and brought back upstairs, Harley settled back into her bed nest like some sort of puffy-eyed dragon hoarding its piles of gold (fries) and jewels (burgers and tacos). She grabbed a giant milkshake from one of the bags, her favorite, and took a big gulp, hoping the sugar and various "natural" flavorings would finally bring a little hit of joy into her day.
It barely tasted like anything.
Like, no. It probably tasted just fine. It was Harley that was the problem. Harley's... stupid bruised feelings, over stupid Pam clearly being happy choosing literally any-fucking-body else but her to have fun with, which shouldn't even have surprised her, because Pam (a different Pam, she should have been keeping the two separate but it was hard and this was her meltdown, okay??) had found her so easy to drop years ago, too, and that shouldn't have been a surprise either, because wasn't that the story of Harley's life? She served her purpose, if there ever even was one, and then she got left in the dust or out in the cold or feeling stupid about ever kissing her back --
She really needed to talk to someone. Like, vent? Venting, that was a thing people did, in an effort to not feel quite as shit? And there had to be someone, right, in her phone contacts? Someone who'd help?
Anyone?
There was an obvious number, of course. One that would reach out to someone she'd been missing desperately since Friday (okay, obviously since way before Friday, but a lot of that had been with different parts of her), but one that she wasn't going to call, despite how long her thumb hovered right over the name on the screen. Because, here was her reasoning: either he wasn't going to be there - because why would he? it wasn't his vacation - or he'd come through, thinking it was an emergency, but it wasn't. It was just...
The consequences of her own actions. Second fiddle trying to be something better than she was.
And she obviously wasn't going to call the kid, either. Even Harley had a limit about what she was willing to lay on Cass, and apparently this was it. Now, granted, it was way less about what she thought was appropriate for Cass to hear about, and way more about Harley trying to preserve at least some sense of the kid looking up to her, purely for Harley's own benefit. Crying about being turned down for a casual screw? Not a good look. She was aware of that.
So Marc and Cass were both out.
A whole lotta other people (not everyone, she wasn't organized enough for that) in her contacts were in, though.
... You know. In terms of Harley calling them, not so much the venting. Several people didn't pick up at all. Several did, but only to curse her out, some in very graphic terms. At least one number was no longer in service because the person it had belonged to was dead, and at least one other had been passed on to a little old lady Harley would gladly have talked to, in her desperation, if they'd actually had any sort of a common language.
It wasn't going great, in short. In fact, no matter how much pasted-on cheer she forced into her voice, every call just made her feel worse. Bruce had clambered onto the bed with her, resting his head on her leg. She was absently scritching behind his ear as she scrolled way down to the bottom of her list of contacts. Squared her shoulders, conjured up another desperate smile, pressed the call button.
After a brief moment, the call clearly connected, but the line stayed silent.
Harley wasn't going to let that stop her.
"Hiya!" she called. "Someone there? Or did I call the Perfect Silence Hotline by accident ag--"
"Quinn?" came a gruff voice, terse, suspicious - and, right, that was who Marc had reminded her of when they'd first met! Colonel Rick Flag! "There you are, Flag, how long's it been?" she cooed, only to continue without waiting for an answer. "Too long, I know, but hey, we're still friends, right?"
He sounded confused. "No? What? Where'd you get this --"
No.
Harley hung up.
And tossed her phone across the bed, for good measure, and then stared into the middle distance for a moment. Call it a revelation. The sum of everything that had just happened, of her sitting alone at the bar trying to keep it together, of spending all day long before that rolling around in her misery alone like some sad little pig in its single occupancy sty.
"... I don't have any friends."
Well, fuck.
(NFB, but open?)
no subject
And to the stupid conversation with stupid Cade who hadn't stupid known he was alive and had clearly felt stupid bad about it.
Might as well check in with everyone else, right?
hey. it's been a while. hows the island treating you?
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Like... her phone?
Her phone! Harley darted forward for it, startling an affronted Bruce right off her lap in the process, and probably smooshing one or two things of food with her knees, too.
A message!
From Atton! Someone in this wet fart of a multiverse was thinking about her!
She could not have typed and sent her reply any faster:
BAD!!!!
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That was quick.
shit whats going on, he texted back, sympathetically.
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That was... objectively not true in any sense, but, uh. She'd had a couple of days to build this up.
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doesnt sound right to me
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Wait 'til she heard about Marc!
Thats not what i meant
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Might as well just ask instead of argue, right? He was growing as a person.
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She had, in fact, not called everyone. As Atton could likely tell from the simple fact that he had not got a call.
Turns out i dont have friends
Now, that part...
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What? She didn't seem to want reassurance.
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Well what did you DO??
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Of all the questions to respond to that with, Harls.
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And now this was beginning to feel like every conversation he'd ever had with Harley.
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34?
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Very reassuring, Rand.
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And then Bruce settled back in against her, and it made her deflate with a sigh.
Feel like i got kicked in the chest
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And of course she started talking before the phone actually started recording, because she was just too fast for technology. "--at makes everyone all horny and fun? Or at least that's how I was feeling, and the pretty ladies I met at the bar too! But then I ran into my hot ex, sort of -- I mean I did run into her, but she's only sorta my ex, because she used to date a different Harley and I used to date a different Pam? And that was a shit-ton of, like, eons of a long time ago for me, and she's only gotten hotter, and we ran into each other and she kissed me and we got real into it, and then she dropped me 'cause she said it was a bad idea, and I thought maybe it was that she didn't wanna go that far with anyone 'cause of some unresolved stuff with her other Harley, but then she turned up at the fuckin' speed dating thing actually lookin' for a hook-up and now I know it's me, it's always me, I'm the bad idea and that's why literally anyone else is good enough for fun except me and --"
Oh, no, her voice had been getting all kinds of tight and sad and squeaky, and now it just gave in completely into a wail.
"-- and I'd thought that we were gonna be friends!"
There was a choked up noise, and then the message ended.
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"I'm not going to dignify that snark with a response, not because it's insulting, but because you're half-assing it and I'm not going to accept half-assed color commentary," Jack returned, settling back in with his phone.
He thought about it for a second or two. Thought about his own past bullshit. Sighed. Hit the recording button. "Hey, so this might be completely useless advice, but in these kinds of situations, it's usually not you, it's them, all right? People on that island are like ninety percent trauma by volume. Trust me. You don't want to know what kind of shit I've pulled on people in my time, and absolutely none of it had anything to do with them being the problem."
Click. Send.
"Very mature," Dane commented thoughtfully. "Reflective."
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(Maybe there was still a seed of something.)
(Not that Harley would have approved of any plant based metaphors right now.)
But i know what a pattern looks like
She missed Marc something fierce, right now.
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He had no idea about any of these people. And Harley was a little weird. But he also knew what avoidance issues sounded like. (And confirmation bias.)
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Becuz its a bunch
A PATTERN
With a little confirmation bias, abandonment issues, and codependency mixed in. Hush.
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Dane leaned over. "Showing your whole ass, huh," he said. "Interesting play, it might just work."
Jack rolled his eyes up at him.
you hit me with a list i probs got a much worse one.
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More than a few of them had been, in fact.
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Harley stared at the text. Like, for a while. A good while.
... Any response was proving to be a long time coming.
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He watched his phone for a while. Then shrugged, and got up off the sofa. "Well, either she got distracted, or I hit a nerve," he said.
He got a soda shoved into his hand, and a wry smile.
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Maybe the rest of the day, even.