![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scubatankfilledwithfartsfirst time writing these two like this...i'm still working on the proper voice of it, idk. on the one hand i hate harley vulnerable and hurt like this because i love her so much but on the other hand as powerful and sharp as she is now, i know it's also just a part of her, a key part of her, to be like that.
Nights like these, he likes to take the scenic route home. Just to see how long it takes him to collect the pieces of his thoughts that have inevitably been chased away by fear and the fine edge of desperation and the smell of his own sweat and blood in the air. Just to shake off that tension coiled from his stomach to the tips of his trigger fingers, jaw locked.
It's reasonably late by even the seediest of standards when he finally shuffles into the apartment he shares with his brother, somehow he remembers to toe out of his dust caked shoes just inside the door [where he knows Dave will trip over them as sure as rain] before, guided by the low lamp on the coffee table with the too-short cord, he drags himself to his room.
It's pitch black inside but Badou doesn't bother to flip on the light, more or less knows how to stumble over take out cartons, dirty boxers and piles and piles of papers onto the bed, where he belly flops. A wheezy exhale of gratitude rushes from his mouth as he closes his eye, lets the muffled traffic sounds and someones alarm going off two blocks down wash over him, soothe him into a sense of security [false, because you're never secure here, not even on your own toilet].
The futility of security is further driven home as the bed dips with [familiar, tantalizing] weight; what stops his fingers just as they brush against the gun beside his head are the warm, soft pads of thumbs that trace a line over his shoulders, warmth radiating right through the cloth. She leans in, blonde hair [smells like goddamn strawberries and raw meat] itches and tickles at his neck where it spills into his jumper.
"You are very late, Patches. Don't ya know it's rude to keep a lady waiting? That's what scullery maids and ladies-in-waiting are for." A huff escapes those pretty lips, and though he thankfully doesn't see it hang in the air like mist, he feels it ruffle his hair, the short strands at the back of his neck stand on end.
His reply is muffled due to refusing to leave the sanctity of his pillow. "Gee, sorry I didn't know I was on the job. Usually I'm conscious of my responsibilities so I can run from some of 'em. Next time I see a lady I'll remember that."
He hears that high pitched, tell-tale hmph and unearths his face from the pillow so he can see it; Badou's sight has adjusted to the dark enough to where he can make out the soft shape of her face beside him, the shadow the moue of her mouth makes when she pouts, the whites of those too big blue eyes.
In a flurry of motion and hair she sits up, arms crossed over her chest, brows knit. "I came all this way to see you and this is how you're gonna be? I'll just go see my babies instead, at least they slobber!" Before she can trounce off he's jackknifed up in bed onto his knees, palm catching the curve of one narrow shoulder. He can see her turn her face towards him, chin still lifted in a prime sulk.
"C'mon, I was just kidding. I'm off the clock but that doesn't mean I can't take on a little extra assignment...a very hot assignment. I might get burned on this one," Badou murmurs, lips already formed into a smirk when he leans in to press his mouth to hers, pulls her closer by the shoulder, fingers unknowingly tightening.
Instead of melting in his arms, flush up against his chest and giggling, Harley lets out a whimper and jerks away, spine bowed, which causes him to let go. His hand comes away wet.
"What the hell....?" The coppery, overly familiar smell of blood clues him in right away, he hardly has to look at her pained face to know she's hurt.
"Jesus-- why didn't you say you were hurt! Now's not the time to be fooling around." In an instant he heaves himself over to the side of the bed, snaps on the lamp, swivels to look at her--
The sheepish expression of one Harley Quinn greets him, uniform [if you can call the tight little number that, and he does, just not the one he'd do her in--] in tatters and covered in bloody cuts. Bruises of purple come yellow adorn her pretty face, which is pale and drawn with pain. But her eyes are ever fierce, "I wouldn't be worried about makin' a mess in this sty, kid. If you're that worried about me bringin' trouble--"
All of a sudden Harley actually seems intent to leave, no more teasing this time [rejection burns in her chest, or maybe it's blood loss?], face twisted with a too-stony-for-Harley look, and it's only Badou's voice, strained and reedy but full of steel, that stops her:
"Sit your ass down! You're not leaving like that. If you're that worried about makin' a mess Miss-raw-meat-in-the-tub, we'll use Dave's sheets."
Well what can she say? Harley's always been a sucker for passionate words thrown around with power. That's exactly how she finds herself topless and seated on a ripped and patched up bean bag chair of royal purple, situated between Badou's knees while he gets the expanse of the bed. ["So I can have the whole survey of the land. Don't act like you don't love the chair, either, I see that bouncin' urge in you."
She does bounce, just a little, and he feels the tension in her back lessen just a smidge]
Badou quickly and methodically cleans the deep graze of a bullet in one shoulder. Thankfully it hadn't penetrated her shoulder, just razed the skin to tatters, and there was a lot of blood to blot away. This close, he can smell the anxious sweat on her skin, the rust and dust of warehouses, the strawberry shampoo of her hair. There's a band of sweat and dirt around her ribs, tinted red against her skin, against the cuts and the natural mark of wear and tear from the fabric. [he knows without looking she has a matching one around her waist]
Harley's quiet-- for her, anyway. The constant chatter not present, she throws in comments and anecdotes every now and again, bathing the two of them in a stony tension that goes hand in hand with the sound of the gauze torn from it's packaging and the little grunts she makes every time he swipes a cloth over the wound. She has a lot of scars. Many he doesn't know, can only guess, haven't happened, will never know or touch with tongue or teeth. A burn, from cheap acid flowers, he guesses. He traces a thumb over the raised, red skin of her lower back and wonders if she gave a kidney or got one. [probably gave, she was always giving, giving, giving and for what?]
Dark scars pepper her upper arm from a shotgun he knows too well [holding her shaking form in her arms while she made a wise crack about turtles in crocs, or maybe it was frogs and open toed shoes? because she knew he was this close to hysterical, was dangerously out of cigarettes, his fingers made four perfect marks where he held her close and desperate while old man Mankanshoku prattled on to his wife and made him more and more nervous] are at least healing nicely.
[knowing she'd come to him then, and now, fills him with a warmth that's foreign to him]
"Tapioca." The sound of her voice startles him so much he almost drops the bandage, curses.
"Haaaah?"
"If I popped outta a big vat of the stuff, the pudding, what would you do?" Harley sounds genuinely curious if not dastardly cheeky, he can picture the lowered lashes and the grin.
"Decide if I need a spoon...probably lick it off you starting at those wonderful tits of yours. Why? Do I gotta start fasting?" He hopes he sounds as casual as he's trying for [he doesn't].
[he steadies her with a thumb at her spine, can't help but ponder both the power and the fragility in the shifting muscles]
What she says next shatters a little piece somewhere, probably in the kidney. Maybe it's a kidney stone.
"I coulda fallen for a guy like you." It's said so wistfully, she sighs a little, shoulders relaxed beneath his hand. His guts churn and all he can do is slap on the gauze, earning a yelp in return, and when she whips around to face him [tits shaking, god damn]--
Her mouth is buttoned up in a scowl. "What was that for?! Have ya ever heard of a decent bedside manner? No wonder Dog Chow doesn't wanna patch ya up." She lifts her chin, looking all the more sour.
"Do you two get together and have shit talk Badou days? Maybe he just appreciates blondes...or you're a dude." Food for thought. But Badou's ready for her before she can even start the explicit detail of shit talking him with Heine, fists raised.
Plucking a shirt from the floor, he tugs it over her head, mindful of the shoulder, and sits back to admire his work. Even compared to his slim form she's tiny, the shirt swamps her. A pigtail is askew and disheveled, there's color high on her cheeks, fingers latch into the hem of the shirt. Finally, he leans back on an elbow to stub out his cigarette in a nearby ashtray, his eye never leaving hers.
"Well? You just gonna sit in that chair my brother probably boned someone on or are you gonna get up here?"
He shouldn't laugh at how fast she shoots up because when she flops onto the bed he gets a fist to the gut that knocks the wind out of him. But it also knocks a wheezy chuckle from the bottom of his lungs. Harley's soft and pliant in his arms and when she looks up at him, curious and a little concerned as she gently touches his nose with the tips of her fingers, he feels warm all over. He takes the tissue out of one nostril, and though she wrinkles her own a little, she still leans up to plant a loud smackeroo right on the tip.
"Did you just kiss my nose?"
"Yup, we're screwed."
Sheee-iiiiiit. This girl is gonna kill him, probably. He kinda can't find it in himself to care when she snuggles up close, presses her face to his chest and gives a little satisfied sigh. He only lets her go long enough to yank his eyepatch off, then it's right back to both arms around her middle, settled beneath her shirt.
All is quiet. All is content. He doesn't ask and she doesn't give the story [for now. he knows, over shitty cornflakes and stuff that'll give him five more cavities, she'll yak on and on about it, gesturing and getting milk everywhere]. He closes his eye and settles in.
"It's not that the man didn't know how to juggle. It's just that he didn't have the balls to do it."
Badou groans.
"No? Then how 'bout this one--"
It's gonna be a long night.
[and he wouldn't have it any other way, the sappy fuck]
[note to self, burn the bean bag chair asap]
[or just give it to that green spandex weirdo]
Nights like these, he likes to take the scenic route home. Just to see how long it takes him to collect the pieces of his thoughts that have inevitably been chased away by fear and the fine edge of desperation and the smell of his own sweat and blood in the air. Just to shake off that tension coiled from his stomach to the tips of his trigger fingers, jaw locked.
It's reasonably late by even the seediest of standards when he finally shuffles into the apartment he shares with his brother, somehow he remembers to toe out of his dust caked shoes just inside the door [where he knows Dave will trip over them as sure as rain] before, guided by the low lamp on the coffee table with the too-short cord, he drags himself to his room.
It's pitch black inside but Badou doesn't bother to flip on the light, more or less knows how to stumble over take out cartons, dirty boxers and piles and piles of papers onto the bed, where he belly flops. A wheezy exhale of gratitude rushes from his mouth as he closes his eye, lets the muffled traffic sounds and someones alarm going off two blocks down wash over him, soothe him into a sense of security [false, because you're never secure here, not even on your own toilet].
The futility of security is further driven home as the bed dips with [familiar, tantalizing] weight; what stops his fingers just as they brush against the gun beside his head are the warm, soft pads of thumbs that trace a line over his shoulders, warmth radiating right through the cloth. She leans in, blonde hair [smells like goddamn strawberries and raw meat] itches and tickles at his neck where it spills into his jumper.
"You are very late, Patches. Don't ya know it's rude to keep a lady waiting? That's what scullery maids and ladies-in-waiting are for." A huff escapes those pretty lips, and though he thankfully doesn't see it hang in the air like mist, he feels it ruffle his hair, the short strands at the back of his neck stand on end.
His reply is muffled due to refusing to leave the sanctity of his pillow. "Gee, sorry I didn't know I was on the job. Usually I'm conscious of my responsibilities so I can run from some of 'em. Next time I see a lady I'll remember that."
He hears that high pitched, tell-tale hmph and unearths his face from the pillow so he can see it; Badou's sight has adjusted to the dark enough to where he can make out the soft shape of her face beside him, the shadow the moue of her mouth makes when she pouts, the whites of those too big blue eyes.
In a flurry of motion and hair she sits up, arms crossed over her chest, brows knit. "I came all this way to see you and this is how you're gonna be? I'll just go see my babies instead, at least they slobber!" Before she can trounce off he's jackknifed up in bed onto his knees, palm catching the curve of one narrow shoulder. He can see her turn her face towards him, chin still lifted in a prime sulk.
"C'mon, I was just kidding. I'm off the clock but that doesn't mean I can't take on a little extra assignment...a very hot assignment. I might get burned on this one," Badou murmurs, lips already formed into a smirk when he leans in to press his mouth to hers, pulls her closer by the shoulder, fingers unknowingly tightening.
Instead of melting in his arms, flush up against his chest and giggling, Harley lets out a whimper and jerks away, spine bowed, which causes him to let go. His hand comes away wet.
"What the hell....?" The coppery, overly familiar smell of blood clues him in right away, he hardly has to look at her pained face to know she's hurt.
"Jesus-- why didn't you say you were hurt! Now's not the time to be fooling around." In an instant he heaves himself over to the side of the bed, snaps on the lamp, swivels to look at her--
The sheepish expression of one Harley Quinn greets him, uniform [if you can call the tight little number that, and he does, just not the one he'd do her in--] in tatters and covered in bloody cuts. Bruises of purple come yellow adorn her pretty face, which is pale and drawn with pain. But her eyes are ever fierce, "I wouldn't be worried about makin' a mess in this sty, kid. If you're that worried about me bringin' trouble--"
All of a sudden Harley actually seems intent to leave, no more teasing this time [rejection burns in her chest, or maybe it's blood loss?], face twisted with a too-stony-for-Harley look, and it's only Badou's voice, strained and reedy but full of steel, that stops her:
"Sit your ass down! You're not leaving like that. If you're that worried about makin' a mess Miss-raw-meat-in-the-tub, we'll use Dave's sheets."
Well what can she say? Harley's always been a sucker for passionate words thrown around with power. That's exactly how she finds herself topless and seated on a ripped and patched up bean bag chair of royal purple, situated between Badou's knees while he gets the expanse of the bed. ["So I can have the whole survey of the land. Don't act like you don't love the chair, either, I see that bouncin' urge in you."
She does bounce, just a little, and he feels the tension in her back lessen just a smidge]
Badou quickly and methodically cleans the deep graze of a bullet in one shoulder. Thankfully it hadn't penetrated her shoulder, just razed the skin to tatters, and there was a lot of blood to blot away. This close, he can smell the anxious sweat on her skin, the rust and dust of warehouses, the strawberry shampoo of her hair. There's a band of sweat and dirt around her ribs, tinted red against her skin, against the cuts and the natural mark of wear and tear from the fabric. [he knows without looking she has a matching one around her waist]
Harley's quiet-- for her, anyway. The constant chatter not present, she throws in comments and anecdotes every now and again, bathing the two of them in a stony tension that goes hand in hand with the sound of the gauze torn from it's packaging and the little grunts she makes every time he swipes a cloth over the wound. She has a lot of scars. Many he doesn't know, can only guess, haven't happened, will never know or touch with tongue or teeth. A burn, from cheap acid flowers, he guesses. He traces a thumb over the raised, red skin of her lower back and wonders if she gave a kidney or got one. [probably gave, she was always giving, giving, giving and for what?]
Dark scars pepper her upper arm from a shotgun he knows too well [holding her shaking form in her arms while she made a wise crack about turtles in crocs, or maybe it was frogs and open toed shoes? because she knew he was this close to hysterical, was dangerously out of cigarettes, his fingers made four perfect marks where he held her close and desperate while old man Mankanshoku prattled on to his wife and made him more and more nervous] are at least healing nicely.
[knowing she'd come to him then, and now, fills him with a warmth that's foreign to him]
"Tapioca." The sound of her voice startles him so much he almost drops the bandage, curses.
"Haaaah?"
"If I popped outta a big vat of the stuff, the pudding, what would you do?" Harley sounds genuinely curious if not dastardly cheeky, he can picture the lowered lashes and the grin.
"Decide if I need a spoon...probably lick it off you starting at those wonderful tits of yours. Why? Do I gotta start fasting?" He hopes he sounds as casual as he's trying for [he doesn't].
[he steadies her with a thumb at her spine, can't help but ponder both the power and the fragility in the shifting muscles]
What she says next shatters a little piece somewhere, probably in the kidney. Maybe it's a kidney stone.
"I coulda fallen for a guy like you." It's said so wistfully, she sighs a little, shoulders relaxed beneath his hand. His guts churn and all he can do is slap on the gauze, earning a yelp in return, and when she whips around to face him [tits shaking, god damn]--
Her mouth is buttoned up in a scowl. "What was that for?! Have ya ever heard of a decent bedside manner? No wonder Dog Chow doesn't wanna patch ya up." She lifts her chin, looking all the more sour.
"Do you two get together and have shit talk Badou days? Maybe he just appreciates blondes...or you're a dude." Food for thought. But Badou's ready for her before she can even start the explicit detail of shit talking him with Heine, fists raised.
Plucking a shirt from the floor, he tugs it over her head, mindful of the shoulder, and sits back to admire his work. Even compared to his slim form she's tiny, the shirt swamps her. A pigtail is askew and disheveled, there's color high on her cheeks, fingers latch into the hem of the shirt. Finally, he leans back on an elbow to stub out his cigarette in a nearby ashtray, his eye never leaving hers.
"Well? You just gonna sit in that chair my brother probably boned someone on or are you gonna get up here?"
He shouldn't laugh at how fast she shoots up because when she flops onto the bed he gets a fist to the gut that knocks the wind out of him. But it also knocks a wheezy chuckle from the bottom of his lungs. Harley's soft and pliant in his arms and when she looks up at him, curious and a little concerned as she gently touches his nose with the tips of her fingers, he feels warm all over. He takes the tissue out of one nostril, and though she wrinkles her own a little, she still leans up to plant a loud smackeroo right on the tip.
"Did you just kiss my nose?"
"Yup, we're screwed."
Sheee-iiiiiit. This girl is gonna kill him, probably. He kinda can't find it in himself to care when she snuggles up close, presses her face to his chest and gives a little satisfied sigh. He only lets her go long enough to yank his eyepatch off, then it's right back to both arms around her middle, settled beneath her shirt.
All is quiet. All is content. He doesn't ask and she doesn't give the story [for now. he knows, over shitty cornflakes and stuff that'll give him five more cavities, she'll yak on and on about it, gesturing and getting milk everywhere]. He closes his eye and settles in.
"It's not that the man didn't know how to juggle. It's just that he didn't have the balls to do it."
Badou groans.
"No? Then how 'bout this one--"
It's gonna be a long night.
[and he wouldn't have it any other way, the sappy fuck]
[note to self, burn the bean bag chair asap]
[or just give it to that green spandex weirdo]