Pick Your Poison, Monday

[joan_of_bark]

The shop was haunted. Or rather, the street in front of it seemed to be.

Pam had moved her lab equipment downstairs, to the back room - with the pain coming and going as it did, it felt unsafe to rely on the stairs. It was quiet, for the most part. Except, every so often, she heard it.

A voice. A male voice.

And yet, every time she walked to the front of the store to open the door and see who it was, there was nothing. Just the fleeting sight of brown curls, vanishing into thin air.

"This is the stupidest ghost I've ever encountered," Pam muttered, and turned away from the door.

"Breasts!" the ghost burbled anew.

[[ open ]]

Comments

[totalwildcard]

Either Harley just happened to show up when no ... ghostly? hijinks were happening, or she just barreled right past it with something more important on her mind.

Either way, she burst in in the afternoon to announce, "I taste like fizzy lemon candy!"

[joan_of_bark]

Pam was used to a lot from Harley.

There were still some things that required a double-take.

"Uh?"

[totalwildcard]

"Fizzy lemon candy!" Harley repeated, not at all helpfully. "Okay, prob'ly mostly just lemon candy 'cause it don't actually feel fizzy, but it reminds me of a kind of fizzy candy anyway! See!"

And then she was sticking out her arm in the general directio of Pam's face.

This was what happened when there was an urge that really wanted to swerve towards a certain boarding house, and had to be aggressively wrenched into another direction. Sorry, Pam.

[joan_of_bark]

"... Harley, do you think me licking you is... the best idea?"

Considering, you know. The talk they'd had about boundaries.

[totalwildcard]

Harley's track record with both ideas and boundaries remained stellar, lately.

Impulse control, too.

She let her arm fall again, tilting her head. "Well I guess I coulda just brought the candy...?"

[joan_of_bark]

"I believe you," Pam said, holding up her hands placatingly. "But you were pretty clear a few weeks ago that there's a line."

And apparently sometimes it was up to Pam to guard it?

Sounded like a Harley.

[totalwildcard]

Harley did not look like that rang any bells immediately.

Maybe if she gave it a second she would put two and two together, but by then she had already asked, "... When? What?"

[joan_of_bark]

"When I kissed your hair?" Pam tried cautiously.

[totalwildcard]

"Oh, right," Harley replied, face brightening with recognition. Even if she then immediately followed it up with a very solemn shake of her head. "Yeah, you shouldn't do that." However... "But a consensual forearm lick is a wholly different beast!"

You know.

If you were a Harley, which many people did not have the good fortune to be.

[joan_of_bark]

... Pam tilted her head. "Well, it's your boundary," she allowed.

Pam, no.

[totalwildcard]

Harley shrugged. "You don't hafta if you think it's a bad idea," she said. "Although you should still lick you 'cause maybe you've got a new flavor too."

[joan_of_bark]

"I doubt that," Pam said dryly. But, because she knew Harley would press, she did press her mouth to the inside of her wrist, and--

"Huh. Roses."

[totalwildcard]

"See?" Harley said, as if she'd won something. "It's not just me!"

And she wasn't imagining things, which you also couldn't always count on!

[joan_of_bark]

"I guess not," Pam said. She held her arm to the light, but-- she saw nothing different about it, down to the little lamia fruits creeping against her pulse.

[totalwildcard]

Harley watched her do that, and promptly got briefly distracted by the lamia.

"I think it's the island?" she offered once she shook that off. "Yanno, having fun."

[joan_of_bark]

"Hope it doesn't awaken anything in anyone," Pam said dryly. She lowered her arm.

[totalwildcard]

"Well, there's worse ways to develop new things," Harley replied easily, shrugging. "I'm just glad I don't taste like anything awful."

Like, say, anything rotten.

Which was definitely just a casual thought that wasn't influenced by anything in particular.

[joan_of_bark]

"I don't know why you would," Pam said. "These flavors seem a little... on the nose."

[totalwildcard]

"Exactly," Harley said, as if that made her point --

Well, exactly.

[joan_of_bark]

Oh, Harley. It was always the same worry, wasn't it? In any universe.

Pam looked at her. "You're not awful, Harls."

[totalwildcard]

"Enh," Harley said, and waved one hand in a so-so gesture. "I'm workin' through some stuff right now that says I might be, but it's fine."

She meant every part, too. Including the 'fine', bless her.

[joan_of_bark]

Pam shook her head. "You sound just like Harley back home right now," she said lightly. "She's spent weeks wallowing in that feeling without telling me about it."

[totalwildcard]

And just like that, Harley looked more concerned than anything else.

"Really? What for?"

[joan_of_bark]

"She didn't tell me all that much," Pam said, with a little shrug. "She just... started pulling back. One night, she told me I'd be better off far, far away from her. She changed her mind not long after, thank god."

She rubbed at her arm. "This weekend she finally told me she broke something in reality, apparently," she said. "That she tried to handle it by herself, and it was a bad idea, and now she was eating herself up over disappointing or scaring me."

[totalwildcard]

Whew, did that 'scaring me' pack a punch right now!

"Well didja tell her you weren't scared?" Harley asked, immediately, for reasons that had very little to do with the other Harley. "And did she believe you?"

[joan_of_bark]

"I didn't tell her I wasn't scared. I don't-- think that's what she needed to understand. Not really," Pam said slowly. "I told her I trusted her. That I don't worry over her like she's one of my plants. That she's my partner, and she doesn't need to apologize to me for being what she is."

[totalwildcard]

"Oh," Harley said, weirdly almost disappointed, somehow. (Because she wasn't -- hadn't really been thinking about what they were actually talkng about.) "Well. That's good, right?"

She thought.

"I mean, if she listened. Don't really mean a thing if she didn't."

[joan_of_bark]

Not all things could be so easily transposed on one another.

"She did," Pam said, her mouth twitching into a smile that was both wry and patient. "So what's eating you?"

[totalwildcard]

Most things couldn't be, even, and yet Harley kept trying.

Anyway, now she was waving her hand again. "Oh, nothing," she claimed. "Nothin' important, nothing new. It's not really a thing."

Absolutely a thing.

Just not one she was sure she should bring up to Pam.

[joan_of_bark]

Well, if she thought that, she should absolutely bring it up to Pam, Pam would have felt.

As it stood, since she couldn't read Harley's mind, she just raised an eyebrow.

[totalwildcard]

Briefly, Harley looked - kind of awkwardly - like she was about to say something.

And then she did, but it was, "Ya think this flavor thing's just restricted to people?"

[joan_of_bark]

Smooth, Quinn.

But Pam would be something of a hypocrite if she pushed any harder than this. "That would be relatively easy to find out," she said, "But also probably a bad idea."

Don't go licking raccoons on the street, Harley.

[totalwildcard]

Raccoons? She had something better at home.

"I dunno, Bruce'd probably be cool with just a little lick?"

[joan_of_bark]

"Bruce would," Pam allowed. "I'm not sure about the rest of the island's fauna, though."

[totalwildcard]

"Eh, well, I'll burn that bridge if Brucey tastes like something other'n a hyena first."

Reassuring.