joan_of_bark | Pick Your Poison, Friday Afternoon

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Pick Your Poison, Friday Afternoon

Well, Adrian was a plant, so dinner wasn't happening tonight. Pam could live with that. It gave her time to finish up the salve she'd been working on for Octavia.

Which meant spending most of the day upstairs, messing around with chemicals, but... eventually, it was done.

Done and tested, if in a limited way.

She eyed the little container, and let out a breath. Right. Time to go downstairs, make some coffee, and blow off some steam.

Maybe, she reflected, once finally downstairs, she could get Adrian some fertilizer, as a treat.

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It was Harley's usual day of actually working at her store - and she had been. Originally. Earlier.

But of course, she'd already been to the tattoo parlor since then.

Where, as the guy had been inking the outline of the pretty mermaid lady's top half onto her arm, to turn the big J into a tail, Harley had experienced something of an epiphany.

Long story short, the mermaid remained an outline with none of the planned shading, when Harley came bursting through the doors of Pick Your Poison: "Pammy!! I figured out what you were talking about!!"

Like three weeks ago. Shut up.

There was a brief moment of confusion-slash-alarm, that culminated in an expression on Pam's face before the voice and the colors registered and it fell back into normalcy.

"Harley," Pam greeted. "You have?"

Harley nodded way too seriously, and way too many times. "It must've been so frustrating, watchin' me go back to him over and over and over!" she exclaimed. Also, did she sound sort of breathless? Like maybe she'd run all the way there? "I did deserve better. And I get how listenin' to me not get that for however long it was for ya 'cause I was just... throat-deep in denial about how it was gonna get better must've sucked for you."

She'd be more mindful of all the pronouns with regard to Other Harley at... some point, when she wasn't so... whatever this was. Hyper?

"And I'm sorry for reminding you of that."

"I..."

Well. It was not what Pam had expected. Then again, with Harley, when was it, really?

"...Thank you," she settled on, both because an apology like that deserved it, and because it bought her some time to come up with... other words.

Harley gave her another very serious nod.

"I'm not that bad anymore, either," she added, after a beat. "But I'm more like kinda somewhere in the middle? 'Cause I'm not great yet, either. Maybe one day! But not yet."

"Well," Pam said. She finally straightened herself, tugging on her ponytail. "And I'm... sorry for leaping to conclusions."

She'd already said so, but it was Harley; repetition wouldn't hurt. "I'm... genuinely glad to hear it."

"And I'm sorry for runnin' away, after," Harley replied, earnestly - only to reconsider, her head tilting quizzically to the side. "Oh, right, you don't even know the extent of it!" And her head straightened again. "But it was pretty bad."

Pam's hand found her hairtie, and tugged it loose. She immediately bundled all the red hair that fell out back up into her hand.

Just... redoing that ponytail for no reason at all.

"How bad?" she asked.

That was kind of a familiar sight. One that had Harley watching it sort of transfixed - for a few seconds, anyway, before she shook it off. "Uhhh, kinda holed up with the kid for like a week?"

No, Pam probably didn't know who 'the kid' was. And no, Harley did not realize that.

She gave a big shrug.

Yeah, as Pam worked the scrunchie back around, she looked at Harley. "You haven't told me about the kid yet," she offered.

Gently.

Harley's eyebrows quirked, like she had the gall to be surprised. "The kid's... the kid?" she offered. "Cass. I've got het set up with her own pad on the mainland!"

That explained enough, right?

"Which is where you stayed for a week," Pam said, because prompting for more information wasn't likely to help much. "Why, Harls?"

Oh look, another big shrug! An even bigger one, actually, one that involved the arms in the action, not just the shoulders.

"I dunno?" Harley said. "Felt right."

"Well, I really didn't mean to chase you away to the mainland," Pam said.

And finally picked her almost-forgotten coffee mug from the counter. "Hearing you talk like that just triggered something. Which... you already figured out."

And her tattoo artist had all but had to tackle her to at least be able to put the protective film on his work before she'd taken off for it, too!

"It's fine," she said, waving a hand. "We've all got deep-seated psychological stuff that can be very tough to rein in when we get startled by it, it's human."

"A little too long to make it the new Arkham motto," Pam said wryly, and brought her mug up for a sip, "But they could fit it on there as an acronym."

"Oh, I don't give a shit what those people do, anymore," Harley replied, much too seriously again. "They're the ones that got my licence revoked!"

Through no fault or malpractice of her own, of course!

"I know," Pam said, "But you-- her-- we haven't always had a choice in whether we get to give a shit."

Wait, what?

"You haven't been in there," Harley said, slowly, by Harley standards, "have ya?"

She sounded concerned.

... And looked it. Her face had never been particularly subtle, after all.

Pam lifted her coffee to her mouth.

"It's where we met."

Harley blinked.

And then made such a face, offended and appalled. "Jesus Christ," she said. "Really?! They put ya in there? What for?"

"Initially? Because I threatened to release bio-toxins into Gotham if they didn't send the industrialists poisoning our earth packing," Pam said. She gave an idle shrug. "And also for killing a few cops who tried to get in my way. The Bats showed up. You know how it is..."

"Yeah, he's treatin' Arkham like his personal pocket universe," Harley replied, still deeply offended, with the huffiness to prove it. "And always sticking his big bat nose in other people's business!"

"I hate him," Pam said flatly. Something like passion snuck into her voice. "So high and mighty, so full of his own moral greatness, and yet what does he do with it? Run around town, helping the cops, covering for the real bad guys."

"Yeah!"

Granted, Harley didn't have as much of a 'moral greatness' stance on it, but it was always Hate on Batsy o'clock in her timezone!

"Stupid winged jerk, I mean, who does he think he is?"

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