I realized something in the middle of the night and this came up. This cliché is probably written on a cave wall somewhere, but I needed a reason to eradicate the need for love that all other writers seem to tack to Harley once she's gotten off of the Joker Obsession kick. People don't fall back into love after a long relationship; they fall into compulsive sex, trolling bars, drinking too much, etc.


I Spent the Night-:-

Harvey Bullock wasn't exactly a lucky man. To the contrary, most of what his life entailed was dark, ironic, or dumb luck, and what kept him on the force with the Gotham MCU was nothing short of a miracle that he knew ran on near empty most of the time with IAB constantly on his back. That said, on the very rare occasions when he did get lucky, it was all thanks to a bottle or two of Tequila or strong vodka, in a seedy bar, and with a woman who, come morning when she woke up in his apartment, would likely have forgotten his name and would never be likely to see him again because of…well, the less than desirable impression his apartment left on them.

On those nights, he rarely blacked out and forgot her name, but when he did and woke up before her, he'd go for his shower, clean up until he heard the sheets rustle and bed squeak with the relinquishment of weight; this followed by his turning the knob in his shower just enough to lower the stream, until he heard the front door slam, signaling that he was left to his own devices in his own dominion.

This was one of those mornings.

Bullock felt like his head weighed more than his upper torso and had been slammed into the doors of an elevator, his stomach burbling with an effort not to dump the last evening's meal and drinks on the lump beside him covered up in the bed sheets and couldn't remember a single thing about anything after he'd entered that bar at the edge of the docks after he'd left shift of a stake-out to get some dirt on a few opium growing yuppies in their yacht.

The rotund detective looked at the lump under his covers, noting, quite absently the blonde shift of hair just poking out into sight with a right arm grasping his spare pillow to put a lid on the sunlight coming in from his balcony window. Swerving his head, Harvey looked about and also sighted a pair of 'Hello Kitty' thong and panties on his door handle, thus concluding that he'd at the very least had a good night, despite not actually remembering it.

'But, sadly,' Bullock thought, words in his head sifting around like alligators in a bayou; getting up carefully and heading to the bathroom, 'All good lays must come to an end.'

Before he opened and kept himself in the shower until the woman left, Bullock was pleased to see there were not one, but two, condoms inside the waste basket that was near to overflowing. He shut the door to the bathroom with as much of a hop that he could muster without going directly to the toilet to vomit.

An hour was the longest he usually spent in the shower cleaning up, waiting for the sound of the front door to slam shut. An hour and twenty if he woke up from a blackout and wanted to take it easy on the woman so she wouldn't feel completely awful at the sight of his personal environment of poorly maintained trash, ten years out of date furniture and a hole he'd accidentally shot into his wall one night when he thought he was being robbed (which just turned out to be a hoard of roaches scurrying across his walls).

So, after the time lapsed and he'd heard no sounds, Bullock just assumed that this lady was a lot more quiet than the others and had left like a ghost.

He picked up his one clean towel from the rack on the wall and tied it like a toga, unlocking the door and stepping out to make sure she hadn't left anything behind like her own condoms or a hair scrunchy or—like the forth to last woman he'd slept with—some sort of firearm.

Bullock certainly didn't expect the woman to actually still be there, eyes the size of an ostrich, looking at him like he was a kidnapper, hands keeping the sheets tightly wound to her chest; her mouth shut, but most obviously only to keep her from screaming.

A little memory came back to him as he looked at her, from the night before, when she'd been under him and smiling and…reaching the intended point of all sex endeavors.

Now helooked like he wanted to throw up—memory bringing hormones be damned—but not because there was a woman still in his bed after a fabulous night of drinking.

'Fuckfuck, fuck, fuck…'

It was because he actually knew the woman, knew he would end up seeing her again, knew that she hated him and he, likewise, hated her in equal fervor, and…God help him…knew that she was going to start yelling in a moment and he was going to end up staring at her figure under the sheets as she looked for her clothes and they both figured out a way not to mention this incident to any living person on the planet.

However, when she did open her mouth—him flinching a little and holding his towel tighter to him—it was not with a piercing wrath with the accent he had grown to loathe the very first time she shot at him and used him as a toy completely unassociated with sex. She just cleared the morning cotton-mouth that came with her own hangover and spoke normally (which included an accent, but not so horribly mangled as in her less than scrupulous existence).

"Please, please, please, please tell me we used protection. Please."

With his usual demeanor of a gruff, sober Kodiak bear, Bullock lifted a foot and toed the top of his trash, noting the woman's blue eyes turn over in their sockets with relief; a sigh escaping her so strongly that her shoulders sagged and a tiny (not threatening at all) smile graced her features.

Her head tilted forward, shaking back and forth twice before she got up from her position on the bed—hands very careful to keep her covered in the sheet—and made to get her underthings from the doorknob, fully aware that Bullock turned his head when she maneuvered to put her thong on, but let one eye meander when she dropped the sheet and put her bra on.

"I don't suppose you remember anything?"

"Nuh-uh."

She found her jeans from the other night and put them on with all the grace every gymnast anywhere could display, turning her head back to him, "Well, then there's nothing really to say. I'm not in any pain and you're not liable to contract any diseases I might be carrying that my immunity hasn't eradicated. Easy to pretend that it never happened, yeah?"

She found her black T-shirt once she opened the door to his living room and discovered the it was hanging half out of the freezer when he'd shut it last night. Pulling it on, she looked about for her shoes with a little sneer directed at the general state of the apartment, Bullock following her out only to maneuver to his coffee maker, pressing the starter button; echoes of liquid drops falling into the glass pot always there to be filled as she finds the black slip-ons atop his sofa.

"You going to mention this to your little friends in the nuthouse?"

Tromping her shoes on her feet twice to the floor until they fit perfectly to her heels, the blonde, whom he would rather throw himself in front of a train than ever see again, found her wallet and made for the front door, opening it and only glancing back to give the most snobbish, horrifically malevolent grin he'd ever seen on a woman, replying, "No thank you, Coyote Ugly. I have enough crap in my life without mentioning that I slept with youof all people the one night I actually figured out the right amount of alcohol I need to drink before actually getting any sort of buzz, let alone a blackout."

His front door did not slam shut. She just opened and shut it like she was a gust of wind that pushed an already moving door to complete its movement.

Bullock would forget the whole thing ever happened. Coyote Ugly? Indeed.


So early in the morning—the time of day she really likes because it's cleansing and doesn't hurt as much as when the sun is out and stings her skin and eyes (she is nocturnal, perhaps this is how all her kind feel in actual daylight)—Harley can see her breath in the air just before it ascends upwards and joins with the morning mist.

A light buzzing begins in her jean pocket and she is suddenly glad her phone was not forgotten in that disgusting apartment, just before she pulls the phone out and flips it open, cutting off the rest of the score to Queen's 'We Will Rock You'that serves as her ring-tone. She says hello before the other person asks for her, but continues walking the way she hopes—if she's not lost in the map in her head—will lead her to the diner not too far from her apartment. She wants something rich in calories for breakfast to take her mind off of the black, blank place that would have been a memory of last night, if it weren't for how much she drank.

"Oh, hello Mr. Wayne... Yes, I remember that we're having lunch at the diner around twelve… Yes, I'll be there, I'm just out for breakfast before I go shopping. First day off in a week, you know."