Fandom Island and Town

It was amazing how often Harley managed to keep up the appearances of being at least a somewhat legit business owner and shopkeeper.

This was not one of those weeks.

But! She was in the vicinity of her shop, at least! Because she'd dragged a nice antique armchair out in front of the store, and was sitting in it, reading some tattered romance paperback. Bruce lounged next to her on the ground, people-watching.

Needful Things was open... ish?

(brain says no. but open!)

There were no clocks at Needful Things that Friday. Because Harley held a grudge over the incident on Tuesday, or simply because no new old stock had arrived to replace everything that had been smashed to pieces? Who could say! Instead, the store was filled with lots and lots of antique glass flowers in all sorts of shapes, colors, and sizes.

And how long would those stay safe from a much more accidental smashing?

Who could say!

But at least Harley didn't have another baseball bat in the store with her, this time.

(open!)

Harley's holidays had been chaotic in the best way, and also completely off the island.

So naturally it was mid-January by the time she rolled back into town and (almost) directly to the Perk, sporting giant sunglasses and an even bigger grin.

"Hi! Whaddaya got in an extra large? I'll take two!"

Business as usual!

(open, ofc)

Harley had missed Black Friday last week, on account of general distraction. Not to worry, though! There was a big and bright sign on the Needful Things window on that particular Friday, instead:

NEON PINK FRIDAY
TODAY!!!

There was no actual sale going on, associated with the sign. But then neither was the sign promising a sale, so ha!

Harley was in, with Bruce, ready to sell everything at the usual prices, pretending they were cheaper than normal.

(open!)

Harley hadn't been in a rush to get back into town, between her original reasons for deciding to take a break and the totally fine phone call earlier in the week. But she'd acquired some new loot to bring back to the store, and some people at the park near Cass's place had started making sily noises about calling animal control over just one itty-bitty hyena frequenting the place, so...

She and Bruce showed up at Needful Things again on Friday. He immediately went on a very thorough tour of both the store and the apartment above to see everything seemed in order to his keen hyena senses, while Harley got to dumping various totally legally obtained jewelry and other things onto displays around the store.

Anything else, like seeking people out to talk to them, could wait.

(open!)

Harley's hairdo was looking a little more slicked back than was typical of her. Also if anyone got within sniffing distance, there was going to be a distinct scent of pumpkin spice and coffee to it. Unless, of course, the sniffer happened to also have made the mistake of trying to take a little morning shower that particular Friday.

Anyway!

New-old stock had arrived at the store, and it was absolutely beautiful:

Vintage baseball bats.

"Jackpot!" Harley exclaimed, digging them out of the box they'd turned up, and lovingly running her hand along them. "Oh, maybe I should name one of you guys Jackpot..."

It had been a while - way too long! - since she'd last had a proper bat to work with.

(open!)

Well, what a surprise that Harley's brain wasn't feeling any less itchy another week in, considering the week she'd had! Including Thursday's rudely and cruelly aborted trip to get nice bath stuff from the place that she'd thought was still being run by that intimidating-in-an-alluring-way witch lady. Also on a totally, completely, utterly unrelated sidenote, there was currently a messy situation happening up in Harley's bathroom upstairs that she hadn't bothered to address or deal with in any way since last night. How hard was it to make a fully functional bath bomb at home? Especially one that she'd just tried to pack a tiny bit of extra oomph into? Geez!

Anyway, she was down in the store. Hadn't even strayed two doors down to the tattoo place yet -- what, it'd worked wonders the other week! But she wasn't anywhere near the counter, either. Nah, nope, Harley was in the back of the store with the big-ass antique mirrors, giving critical looks to the big J tattoo on her arm. She knew she wanted to change it somehow, obviously, she was just trying to visualize her options.

Hold on, she should have a Sharpie around here somewhere...

Also, yeah, the holographic dog art was still all over the store. Harley had not noticed.

(open!)

Sometimes a girl and her hyena just needed to get out of the house, so that was what Harley and Bruce were doing right now!

In more specific terms as to where exactly 'out of the house' they were, they were in the park, by the pond. And as for what they were actually doing, Bruce was stalking some of the flamingos, and Harley was watching him do so while taking noisy sips through the big straw in her absolutely monstrous drink concoction from the Perk. Unless it was from J,GoB? Actually, maybe J,GoB. The big cup wasn't even see-through and yet the thing was still managing to look like it was tooth-rottingly sweet.

Anyway, Harley was also calling out encouraging things to Bruce, like "Ya gotta find more cover if you don't want them to run like that!" and "Watch out for that wing, baby!" and "Did you know these pink freaks could get so goddamn loud?!"

Okay, maybe that last one was just a flat out question rather than encouragement, whatever, don't box her in!

(But seriously, did you?)

(open for all your park needs!)

Harley's brain felt itchy. Only figuratively, of course - as far as she could tell, at least - but still. It was annoying. And persistent, to boot, since it had been going on since the previous weekend, which according to the fickle whims of Harley's unstable perception of time meant it had been going on forever.

The feeling also hadn't been helped by her failed glitter bomb attempt earlier in the week. She was going to have to hide the next trap even better - although she also had to wonder just how much of a paranoid wreck poor Frenchie had to be to have apparently checked things closely enough to notice the first one in time to not set it off?

Not her concern on Sunday, though. Oh, sure, she'd got started on building an even smaller rig for all the glitter, but it hadn't been doing anything for the itch, so she'd dropped it, and had taken Bruce out for a long walk instead.

And then on the way back, there it had been, just two doors down from her store: the tattoo place.

Flash forward several long moments and even more tiny needle stabs, and Harley was back in her own store, cheerfully puttering around with a protective second skin wrap over the new-old tattoo on the back of her left shoulder. There, that seemed to have taken some of the edge off of the itch! And if it stopped working, she could always go back for more!

In the meantime, Needful Things was open! No, it wasn't Friday. Considering Harley hadn't bothered opening the store on Friday, she clearly didn't care.

(open!)

A fancy pair of antique arm chairs had landed at the store. In a fit of productivity, Harley had then put them on display in the window.

And then she'd flopped out into one of them, put her feet up on the other, and was now cozily reading one of her novels. What? Her presence in the window was at least letting people know she was in and that the store was open! It was great advertising!

(ooc: open!)

Harley just wanted listen to some music while she did what she was doing at the store that Friday. That was all, a real simple request if she said so herself.

But the radio was only playing Motorhead's Ace of Spades. If she changed the channel, the song just started again from the top. If she let it play all the way through to the end, it just played again.

When she turned off the radio and put an absolutely non-Motorhead CD into the stereo? Ace of Spades.

A vinyl? Ace of Spades.

A fucking 78 on the fucking phonograph? Ace of Spades but make it jazzy.

Harley let out a string of curses - and continued working on the glitter bomb trap she was making.

(open!)

There was a fancy new store in town? Of course Harley was going to have to check it out! Yanno, after stumbling upon it at random because how else, really. It quickly turned out it wasn't really her style - at least, aside from how she was drawn to shiny things like a magpie - and she was pretty sure she had some kinda security person tailing her within about three minutes of her entering the damn place, but whatever. Poking and prodding at things and browsing around was still fun!

Or at least her face was getting a workout from all the unsubtle reactions she was having to some of the things she picked up for closer inspection.

"Sea moss gel? Can't ya just get that for free from the beach?"

Oh, yes, of course she was keeping up a running commentary out loud. The place needed it, okay? So, sorry to the ear drums of anyone within a two aisle radius when Harley made the mistake of looking at how much the sea moss thing in question actually cost:

"The price is what?!"

She was so going to rob this store, and they were going to deserve it.

(open! come gawk with harley)

Okay, so Barbie probably wasn't in Barbieland anymore, that much had become clear. She wasn't... exactly sure what to do with that information, but she was choosing to try and make the best of it! And right now? Right now, that meant she'd found a nice little bakery and coffee place in town, and ordered coffee and a cupcake. The person behind the counted seemed a little weirded out by the money she handed over, but accepted it, so Barbie picked up her things to head to one of the tables.

"... Oh, gosh, that was a close one!"

She really wasn't used to carrying things with actual liquid inside! But it was just a matter of just being a little more careful about holding the cup, right? Right. She made it to one of the window tables without another incident of almost spilling coffee on herself.

She had not yet thought about what the experience drinking it would be like, though.

(open! eta: now with 100% less clashing with Summer's post)

That there was new-old stock in the store that day in the form of Captain Flint's former furniture did not come as a surprise to Harley, since she was the one who'd approved the purchase of them in the first place, not to mention that she'd successfully orchestrated Frenchie having to actually take care of the move!

But there was something else that surprised her when she came down into the store, a little late in the morning.

"What is with all these disco balls?"

Big, small, you name it, they probably had it! All over the front of the shop! And some of the smaller ones set precariously along the sales counter, including some itty bitty ones.

Speaking of: "Oh my God are those ones earrings?!"

(open, buy a disco ball)

Some days you just woke up with an extra strong desire for coffee that your humble coffee machine at home just couldn't really sate. And that was what had Harley rushing into the Perk and right to the counter on that particular Thursday morning.

"Have you guys ever tried puttin' all your different special coffees together?" she asked the nearest barista, with her hands against the edge of said counter, leaning forward way too much. "Espresso, latte, supercalifragilisticexpialimocha, whatever you got, like, all into one thing of coffee?"

It was gonna take a while, because it was now an experiment!

An experiment where the result was going to be just a big thing of coffee with maybe a faint taste of milk in there, if you were being generous, but no one tell Harley that yet! No spoilers.

(open, duh)

Even early on, Harley's day was beginning to resemble a treasure hunt. See, it had started when she'd found one of the tiny plastic ducks in the cash register. At first, she'd thought maybe Frenchie had accepted it as payment for some godforsaken reason (... possibly because it was really cute), but then she'd been sprucing up the watch display and found one of the tiny frogs.

Things had sort of escalated into a hunt around the store from there, Bruce the hyena trailing after her likely in the hopes of treats as she stuffed little bits of cute plastic into her pockets wherever she found them.

Although that wasn't all she found. She was rooting around in a box of decorative plates when one caught her attention. She pulled it out from between the others, then gave it a thoughtful look with her head tilted.

Then she showed the plate to Bruce.

"I should... put this aside, maybe, hunh?"

Bruce provided no opinion.

(open!)