Tripped
By
Cold Nostalgia
Disclaimer: Dont own them. Dont sue
Summary: Post Countdown A/U. It was Holly that she'd been thinking of when she had stormed out of the apartment. H/I, H/H.
She'd only gone out for a walk to get a bit of air, to get away from all the snide putdowns Selina Kyle kept firing in her direction. To get out of the apartment before it turned nasty; before Harley said something she would simultaneously regret and be proud of.
It was Holly that she had been thinking of when she'd stormed out of there. Harley had only wanted to save her from being in an awkward position; save her from the embarrassment that Harley knew she had been reeling from even though she hadn't shown it.
Harley had only meant to be gone for an hour, enough time for things to calm down, for Catwoman to get over herself. She hadn't meant for it for to happen.
It'd been an accident. She hadn't been thinking. Just one of those things. A mistake.
It had been pure chance that she'd run into Ivy on the corner of Fifth Avenue, she hadn't been thinking when Ivy had all but demanded that they caught up over coffee, and Harley had caved like a cardboard box in a thunderstorm.
It had always been next to impossible to deny Ivy anything, objecting to a simple cup of coffee seemed silly. It wasn't like she'd agreed to a robbery, or a murder, or any thing else on the wrong side of the law.
It was just a cup of coffee. Nothing more.
And it had been nice. Real nice. Nice to see Ivy so well; so well, and so much saner than the last time they'd met. Nice just to talk to another human being and not have the fact that she'd been sick in the head, or the fact that she couldn't hold down a job that at one time she might have looked down upon constantly thrown in her face.
It'd been like stepping into a pair of comfy old shoes, familiar and not unpleasantly surprising. And maybe this was where Harley had screwed up. Maybe she should have headed for home after the coffee. Maybe she shouldn't have let Ivy talk her into going for cocktails even though she'd never been that much of a drinker.
Harley had only wanted to hear more about Ivy's time with the Injustice League, wanted to see Ivy do more impressions of Luthor and Killer Frost. It was the instant re-connection that did it, the heady nostalgia. It was real, it was there, and it hadn't been that maddening, impenetrable fog that surrounded the East End Trinity. The fog that kept her separate, an outsider.
It'd been a mistake. A simple drunken mistake.
Harley had never been able to handle her liquor, and she didn't know what she was doing when Ivy merrily placed a stabilizing arm around her shoulder and guided Harley back to her hideout and into her bed.
She hadn't known what she was doing. It had been Holly that she'd been thinking of when she'd stormed out of the apartment. Holly's feelings and no one else's.
The problem was Harley didn't have an excuse to cling to when she went back to Ivy's hideout two days later, or the day after that, or the day after that, or the day after that.