Summary: Living in that old house by yourself is lonely they said. Get a roommate they said. It would be fun they said. Yes well fortunately for herself the clowns, sirens, doctors, lawyers, armed assassins, birds, and even bats have decided to make her big "scary house" Gothams #1 crashing pad, how lucky. She should've just opened that damn coffee shop instead
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Apparently, the term "friend" could mean a lot of things. Friend could mean someone your close with, a person you share secrets with and enjoy company, could mean your allies with one another, and what that term means to a pair of armored clad assassins, it meant: person I would kill if it weren't for being scammed by the same employer and therefore shared enemies makes us best friends, or some stupid thing along those lines.
Stephanie had never thought that when she allowed Deathstroke, who up until that point was a stellar renter, paid in full, never asked for anything and chipped in with cooking every now and again, to bring a friend she thought it would be fine. And when she met the guy, Floyd seemed like a decent guy. A bit too done with Harley's antics and beyond the point of dealing with all three sirens (as Catwoman and Harley thought it would be best to keep Ivy company, even though, you know STEPHANIE NEVER AGREED TO IT), something she could honestly relate to. She thought the two men got along well, for the first six hours, until almost shoot her in the face and throw a chicken out a window, guessed they played her as she, along with the sirens found the two having a shoot out in the third ballroom (there were five in total for each floor).
Needless to say, Stephanie nearly had a heart attack seeing them with fully automatic machinery, flipping them around and shooting with the intent to kill circling the room. It took the intrusion of Catwoman's whip and Ivy's vines to put a stop to it, while Harley, she tackled pounced Floyd to the ground. After a look talking and scolding she gave them as well as a rule reminder seeing how she had three new residents she didn't have a day before. Once the rundown was done, Stephanie, exhausted from the whole affair dragged herself upstairs and into bed.
She didn't get a lot of sleep that night.
Waking up at 3 am to the loud screams from the basement, Stephanie threw a pillow over her ears. By 4 am the sounds of the smoke alarms filled her eardrums as she let out an irritated sigh, and by 7 am she couldn't take it anymore as she forced herself out of bed to address the sound.
When she entered the second floor's movie room, she was greeted with a very, very staged sight. Ivy was perched against a couch, Harley on her lap who was turned from her, as Catwoman laid in a totally comfortable back-breaking position on one of the movie stands. Deadshot and Deathstroke were seated next to each other, masks off and completely genuine looking smiles that were certainly not terrifying to look at.
She raised her brow, "Don't mind me, you know not like this is my house or anything." With that, the group of five just watched her as she exited the room. In was perhaps a few minutes later that the noise once again skyrocketed from the room as she groaned in annoyance.
Returning to her room to throw on some clothes and grabbing her car keys, Stephanie decided the best course of action was seeing if one of her friends, or at least of the few that wasn't dead, in jail, in Arkham, turned to a biochemical experiment, or have been MIA, aka the only one not stupid enough to get caught would let her crash there for a few hours.
Was she technically going against Jason's word? Well, she wasn't exactly going into the city, her friend lived out the outskirts of the city and therefore the likeliness of Stephanie running into any villains or crazed criminals was low, probably.
After shooting a quick text and receiving confirmation that she could sleep on her friend's couch, she willfully hoed into her car and drove about 20 minutes to her friend's place.
Her friends place, the Galavan Residence, was a modernized three-story house with a built-in pool and three movie theaters. The Galavan heiress, Paula Galavan daughter of millionaire Theo Galavan was one of the few people who still lived in Gotham that Stephanie was relatively close with. Having grown up with her, as their parents were close business partners and the epitome of Gothamites through and through, the two were brought up very alike.
Entering the password into the security gate and driving up to the house's front, Stephanie entered the house and then proceeded to jump onto the overgrown leather couch in the tv room. Not even caring about her shoes or coat, she fell into a peaceful slumber.
ZAP
Her eyes opened slowly as she turned over, perhaps she was just hearing things.
Zap
Or maybe not she thought as Stephanie sat up and looked around the house. Nothing was there, Paula was gone for the whole morning as she had to deal with Gotham's electoral college about, the maids (to which she herself would have to deal with the Claue one's next week as she had given them and Donovan the gardener an extended month long vacation) were off for the day and from what she knew the Galavan's didn't own any pets.
"Boo!"
Insticetvly, Stephanie smacked the unknown voice with her fist only to be met with a jolting zap that ran through her. Snatching her hand away to her chest, her eyes met the face of a blue-skinned woman with electrifying hair and dark eyes, and lips twisted in an amused look.
"Been a while since someone's it me huh." was all the woman said before turning around to the tv, "Don't mind if I turn on something," and without even touching the remote, the flat screen zapped to life.
While in most cases, Stephanie would've been out the door in two seconds flat, in the sleepless state she groggily asked, "Who are you?"
"Radio Shocks's only decent host, Live Wire!" she exclaimed doing a small twirl as electricity ran along her body theatrically, "and don't bother telling me who you, I already know. You're pretty popular aren't you Miss Claue."
"Right," she responded drawing out the word, deciding that perhaps it would've been smarter if he had ditched earlier, "And why's that Live Wire?"
Said woman smirked as she flipped onto one of the armchairs leaning back in it, "Oh you know, whispers here and there, I'm not actually from the Gotham scene, not my type of heroes, the bat theme is silly, but I was curious to hear that my dearest friend Pamela had found a permanent resident and thought I'd check it out," electricity ran from behind her eye, "To my surprise others were staying there, especially since the owner of the place is one of the richest women in all of Gotham and whose parents had funded the Arkham project. Really was so odd to me."
At that point, the tension could be felt all around almost suffocating as Stephanie confirmed it was most certainly the right moment to excuse herself. Without saying a word to the woman she stood up and marched to the front door, walking out of the house and back to her car. Locking her car doors Stephanie placed her head on the steering wheel as she let out an exhausted sigh.
"As I was saying, by the way, rude to walk out on someone-"
Stephanie face planted on her car honk as she screamed along with it.
Feeling that her attempt to sleep had failed, Stephanie returned to the Claue manor. She had no idea where her 'car guest' had gone but she had the irking feeling it wouldn't be the last time she saw the blue woman. For the last seven hours, the woman not only talked to her about anything and everything, commenting on this and that, she also on eight occasions went into her car's system and blasted the radio on its highest frequency. With the bags under her eyes grown tenfold and her hair in a messy birds nest, all she wanted to do now was to sleep.
Deciding that the best course of action was to pull a Jason and get blackout drunk in order to fall unconscious, she made a b-line to the kitchen. What she didn't expect was the very serious atmosphere she had just walked in on.
She stared at the group circled around her kitchen table, one light on looming over them and the stern looks on their faces as she made eye contact with them. Keeping her face blank as she remained silent, not even willing to ask why a two-faced man in a suit was in her kitchen and giving Ivy a death glare.
Without saying a word Stephanie proceeded to walk right past them to the fridge, grabbing an entire bottle of wine and turned around towards the hallway. Before leaving the room completely she shook her head, "I know nothing that's going on. If anyone asks, you're all playing Monopoly, Livewire's the banker, Catwoman's the richest, Ivy's got the most houses, and Deathstroke's about to bankrupt Harley." And with that she made her way up the stairs, catching the dejected cry of Harley about losing everything, causing Stephanie to smile slightly.
The only thing on her mind at that moment was to curl up in her plush bed with a bottle of wine and sleep off that entire day of craziness in peace. Maybe when she woke up tomorrow they'd all be gone and all she'd have would be peace and quiet, yeah a good dream she thought.
Unfortunately, the night wasn't going towards her direction as a loud noise echoed through the mansion.
CRASH
"THAT WASN'T FROM US!" A voice rang out from the kitchen as the sounds of them came running down the hall, but at this point, Stephanie couldn't give to shits who it was, as long as they cleaned it up it would be fine.
"Why the fuck is that crazy fucking clown, HARLEY JOKER FUCKING QUINN DOING HERE?"
Uh oh. Stephanie slowly turned around, coming face to face with a lividly Jason, his face red and eyes narrowed, he was absolutely pissed. His uniform was slightly ripped, and dried blood soaked his jacket while his face was...covered in whipped creme?
She only shook her head, not even awake enough to deal with it all. Hearing the loud laughter of Harley's voice from downstairs she sighed, herself not even knowing what was happening and it was her house. "Not in the mood right now Jason," she told him as he expectantly waited for an answer, the whip creme sliding down his hair if it had been any other time she would've laughed her ass off, but at that moment all Stephanie wanted was to sleep.
"Who in their right mind decided to let Harley shit face Quinn rig up traps? Better yet why is she living here? I told you don't start trouble and pick up strays, I'm pretty sure she fucking counts as one! Where the fuck are you going? Come back here!" Jason called out to her as she made her way down the hall to her bedroom.
"Not dealing with this Jason, go take a shower and sleep alright? You need it." She added, "Oh and I'm glad you're back safe, now do us all a favor and go get some rest and shut up, thanks." And with that, she left him fuming and confused in the hallway.
"Ooh did lover boy get rejected? How sad! Haha."
Through her door, Stephanie could hear the cry of Jason and the pounding of feet as she, and most likely everyone else in the Claue manor heard him, "Really?! Live Wire?! Why is she even in Gotham and- YOU'VE GOT TL BE FUXKING ME, SELINA?! WHY NOT INVITE THE REST OF GOTHAM WHILE YOU'RE AT IT-" she heard him pause breathing loudly, "Oh, of course, Deadshot is here too not like he and Deathstroke have almost killed one another their friendship looks too normal. Who's next, fucking Killer Croc? Penguin? Two-Face?"
Stephanie heard silence on the other side of her door before she heard Harley pipe up happily as usual, "That's a great idea! We can ask ole Croc next time to-"
"Someone say our name?" Two-face cut in, sounding like he had just entered the scene, his voice most likely coming from the staircase below, "why if it isn't the Red Hood Been a while hasn't it?".
"MUTHAFU-"
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A/N: Yes I stole the name Galavan/Theo Galavan from the tv show Gotham (though none of those events is canon in this). And the name Paula for Stephanie's friend is for Paula Brooks, the second Tigress (the villainess) who in the Gotham tv show was the alias for Theo Galavan's sister Tabitha. She also for a short time was the first Huntress (although for this fic, Helena is going to be the Huntress). Just thought to add that easter egg (as there are so many throughout this fic and I wanted to note this super obscure one...maybe?)