Pick Your Poison, Monday

[joan_of_bark]

There were a multitude of reasons why Pam was happy to keep her lab on Fandom. Lack of sudden super-villain drive-bys, for one. A quiet, focused place to work. And... somewhere to retreat to when you'd just digested an entire evil apartment building's worth of toxins and you came home to find your girlfriend had bailed again for the week. Something about the Bats?

Pam preferred not to think about the Bats.

So she'd come home - to the shack, to here - early. And while she badly wanted to get back to her research, the ache in her body said no thank you.

The sign on the door said 'open'. Pam, herself, was inside, curled up on the sofa between the shelves, sipping some herbal tea she'd drawn for herself.

She really hoped this feeling would go away soon. There was work to do.

[[ open ]]

Comments

[totalwildcard]

Harley hadn't been on the island for -- well, whatever day it'd been she'd been at the museum, and whatever day this was, that was how many days she'd been gone. She'd dropped Bruce off with Cass and she'd gone cruisin' and bruisin' on a little road trip along the coast, getting into all kinds of fun trouble along the way.

Well, she'd attempted fun, anyway.

Now, Bruce was still at the kid's place, but Harley was back on Fandom. Just landed, in fact! She'd parked the Chevelle in its usual spot - except its usual spot was gone, because the usual spot would've been next to Marc's bike, and Marc's bike wasn't there.

Which could mean nothing.

He could just be out, somewhere. That was what the bike was for.

But something about it made Harley not want to go home just yet.

And where else could she go?

The 'open' sign being a literal sign was more than good enough! "Pammy?" Harley called, pushing into the store, trying to mask the tired and the hopeful in her tone and failing miserably.

[joan_of_bark]

For once, she would see Pam immediately upon entering - the benefit of having the sofa in the store, facing the door (even if it was half-obscured by a shelf, having this shade of red hair made it difficult to conceal herself that way). Pam, who was lowering her cup of tea, a surprised but pleased smile on her face.

"Harley," she said. "Hey."

[totalwildcard]

Harley was wearing giant sunglasses, the kind you might wear coming off a long weekend of various stimulants and shenanigans. It was the first clue as to what sort of time she'd been having.

The hesitation in her little wave was another. "Hiya."

The lack of an exclamation point may have been one, too.

[joan_of_bark]

Well. Pam hoped she didn't feel like shit for reasons as dramatic as her own. "Do you want to sit down?" she asked, patting the sofa. "I can make more tea."

[totalwildcard]

"Yeah, sure," Harley said, and made an attempt at a little smile as she drifted away from the door and closer to the sofa.

It was a pretty weak attempt, but genuine all the same.

[joan_of_bark]

"I'll see if I have anything sweet, too," Pam said.

She rose. Carefully, and yet something immediately twinged in her guts. Her hand shot up to cover the offending patch of her body.

She righted herself, and turned towards the back room.

[totalwildcard]

Harley caught that, and frowned.

"You okay? Someone kick ya in the midsection?"

It was a valid question for a pair of Gothamites of their caliber.

[joan_of_bark]

"I ate a building," Pam said dryly. "More or less."

At least she could actually do things like 'walk to the back room by herself', which was a vast improvement on yesterday morning.

[totalwildcard]

Harley stared after her.

"You ate a building?! What, like -- like Hansel and Gretel? Was there a witch?"

[joan_of_bark]

"I guess you could say that, from a certain point of view," Pam called.

She rummaged around the kitchen, quickly heating up some water. Herbs, cup, pour. Now, did she have anything to eat? That was usually more of a sure thing, but Adrian had been hollyhocks for a while, and so hadn't been able to do any baking.

Eventually she returned with some sugar cookies and a cup of tea. She held them out for Harley to take. "It's a long story," she said, "But I can tell it if you want me to."

[totalwildcard]

"Please," Harley said, reaching for the offered things. She'd at least managed to sit down in the meantime, good job, Harls. "I'll take anything that isn't me bein' bummed over someone's wheels."

[joan_of_bark]

Pam raised her eyebrows at the wheels, but let it go without comment. She sat down, instead.

"I told you about the shack," she said. "I had it on loan, more or less, pending a favor to a friend of mine called Killer Croc."

She'd learned quickly not to assume this Harley knew anyone she knew.

"The favor was to look into this housing development. He said it looked like it was going to be one of those places where the rich buy apartments just so they have somewhere to put their money, so I agreed." She picked up her own tea. "But it turned out something funny was going on. The developer, Peter Undine, had put his own special brand of steel into the building. And it turns out that type of steel creates a lot of really bad toxins that twist everything around it..."

[totalwildcard]

While Pam was talking, Harley took her first sip from her cup - or tried to, anyway. The sunglasses slid down her nose, and she yanked them up to her forehead (her eyes weren't that bloodshot anymore, it was fine), and proceeded to take a slurp from the cup instead.

And then raised her eyebrows.

"What, like the place is -- haunted? By itself?"

And raised them even higher.

"Wait, Croc lives in a shack? Thought he was a sewer guy!"

[joan_of_bark]

A little smile passed over Pam's features, pleased, at the sign that Harley recognized Croc. (She had a soft spot for the prehistoric lug, so help her.) "He is," she said. "But all the redevelopment in Gotham lately - and some of my own mess - has made the sewer hard to navigate. So that's part of why I was there."

She took another careful sip. "But yes, the place was haunted," she said. "By itself - a lot of hallways to nowhere, upside down staircases, dead construction workers... that kind of thing. But also by its developer. The stuff that was in the steel had changed him, too. He had me trapped there."

[totalwildcard]

Harley scowled a little at the end, there. "Okay, see, I was all set to call it a funhouse until that," she said. "I don't like a cage."

This was an understatement.

[joan_of_bark]

Pam chuckled. "Croc called it a funhouse, too," she said. "When he broke in to help me. Of course, then both of us were stuck, but at least he could keep the developer occupied."

[totalwildcard]

"While you...?" Harley prompted.

[joan_of_bark]

"...Ate all the poisoned steel," Pam said. "Well. In a manner of speaking. I let the fungus inside of me out, and it chewed up all the chemicals."

She looked down at her cup of tea. "Gave me one hell of a supercharged case of food poisoning," she said. "But it also brought the house down. Literally."

[totalwildcard]

"Damn," Harley said, suitably impressed.

And then, either because she was Harley, or because this was always a concern, or both: "It's not givin' you the shits, right?"

[joan_of_bark]

"Nah," Pam said, reaching for a cookie. "But I threw up a ton yesterday."

[totalwildcard]

"Well hey," Harley replied, lifting her cup in a little salute, something wry and tired on her face, "me too! At least, I think it was yesterday?"

[joan_of_bark]

"How are you holding up?" Pam asked. She took a bite.

[totalwildcard]

"Peachy," Harley said, dunking one of the cookies into her tea. There was an attempt at a light tone, but it didn't quite get there. Sort of a 'high wattage smile that lit up nothing in her eyes' sort of situation. "Less pukey today, at least? I think that's usually a good thing, I s'pose."

[joan_of_bark]

"Means the poison is leaving your body," Pam agreed.

[totalwildcard]

Harley choked on nothing in particular, resulting in a noise that sounded like she wasn't sure if she wanted to laugh or cry.

"Ain't that the truth," she managed.