maskormenace | Valentines for Barbara, Beck, Kirk, and Joker

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Valentines for Barbara, Beck, Kirk, and Joker

Valentine Gift Mishaps for Beck and Barbara:

Harley sent both Barbara and Beck flowers and gigantic boxes of chocolates along with a note thanking them for giving her a temporary place to stay.

What they actually each get is the following:
The aforementioned chocolates, this insane bouquet, and this card (minus the part that says 'Happy Anniversary').

The card is signed:
xoxo,
Harley

Valentine Gift (that is miraculously what Harley actually ordered) for Kirk:

This mug and the note:

Thanks for the rescue.
Jsyk for next time I, too, like ice cream cones.
Your bud,
Bud the Hyena

Valentine Gift (that actually arrived as sent) for Joker:

Harley set this one up all the way back at the beginning of January through a different company and canceling it just completely slipped her mind.

He'll find his office at the Laugh Factory completely covered with roses, a la this. And a note:

Let's play tonight. You choose the game.
Love,
Your Pumpkin Pie

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Thank you and you're welcome?

That's a lot of flowers and chocolates.

And possibly a misunderstanding.

Yeah, I figured you wouldn’t really dig the flowers. But I also figured that if there was chocolate around I’d probably eat half of it anyway so I got the big box. Also, you’re out of cereal. So. Breakfast!

You do have a very healthy appetite.

The last thing I want is to be one of those people who takes and takes and takes and doesn’t give anything back. So Happy Valentine’s Day!

It's appreciated, Harley.

Your company has been very interesting.

Usually I get quirky, but I'll take interesting.

[It isn't every day someone chases down a hyena, so it isn't hard to send a thank you to the right person.]

Thank you.

Is it really all right for the hyena to have ice cream?

He's got a steal stomach.

I've seen him eat a five-day-old carcass.

I'm sure ice cream would be just fine.

Probably.

[Kirk does a couple of quick yahoogle searches before replying. He may have majored in biochemistry, but his specialty was bats, not hyenas.]

I knew hyenas were scavengers, but apparently they're capable of eating and digesting most organic matter. Fascinating.

Give Bud my apologies.

Bud says he’ll forgive you if you admit to his gastrointestinal superiority. Those are actually Lou’s words but Bud thought it sounded good.

I thought I just did.

Would Lou like an ice cream too?

He doesn't mind hearing it daily.

I've never known Lou to turn down ice cream.

He's a peanut butter swirl kinda fella.

Well then, his stomach is a marvel of science.

And let me see what postmates can do.

[ It's such a Harley move — hackneyed, overdone, desperate beyond belief — that Joker momentarily forgets they've broken up. God, this is why he hates Valentine's Day! It should be a hilarious day; it's positively overflowing with comedic potential. But no, she insists upon ruining it, year after year, by turning it into a day-long gauntlet of torture disguised as romance.

He takes one look at all the roses and actually snarls. What in the hell is he going to do with all of these? She's made his office smell like a fucking funeral parlor, and he doesn't have time to haul these all out to the dumpster right now, and good lord, the amount of cash she must have blown on this stupid stunt... Oh, when he gets home, he's going to take his belt to her straightaway, give her half a dozen good "love thwaps" across the behind just to get her warmed up. She wants to try Valentine's Day on difficult mode, well, two can play at that game.

And then he remembers that, oh, right: he left her, didn't he?

So what the devil's going on here, then? Another mix-up, courtesy of Tina Belcher's App of Doom? Or a desperate, over-the-top, love-me-please-love-me attempt to win him back?

He reads the card, and my, my, that's actually a thoughtful sentiment, for once. Normally Valentine's Day is all about Harley's idea of romance, but this time, she's going to let him choose how they play? Despite himself, he's tempted.

If she's gone to these lengths to please him, then the seed of doubt he tried to plant in her mind a few days ago must have taken hold. She's blaming herself for their break-up. She'll do anything to have him back.

He doesn't want her back, of course. But an evening of her being a good little girl for him again, eager to show him how obedient she can be, how sorry she is for having let him down before... That doesn't sound terrible at all.

If, of course, it was a serious offer.

He sits down at his desk, shoving roses out of his way to make room, and sends his former Pumpkin Pie a text. ]

Any game I want, hm? You're certain?

[ She’d been being so good: she’s stopped texting him, she’s squashed any desire to hear his voice or see his face by turning off her phone before she can do something stupid, she’s even pushed him as far from her mind as humanly possible by keeping busy. In the past few days, Harley’s gotten the basics of the act for her new job sketched out, she’s signed up to handle daytime practice sessions (complete with being the performers’ very own best cheerleader), she’s learned how to make a really great Mai Tai, she’s done rough drafts of half a dozen costumes for Beck’s show, she’s made sure to take Lucy and the babies to a secluded park at least twice a day so they can get fresh air, she’s started looking into the porters’ security systems, and she’s rearranged Beck’s entire kitchen.

In short, she’s been keeping herself preoccupied.

So preoccupied that she’s completely forgotten the ‘surprise’ she set up over a month earlier.

At the time, Harley had thought it might help smooth things over. Never mind that Joker’s never appreciated any Valentine’s or anniversary or any other gift she’s planned for him.

And even when she gets his text it doesn’t immediately click. She’s too surprised to hear anything from him to really process what he’s asking.

God, what the fuck now? Isn’t it enough that he dumped her and told her to get out? Enough that, even with Barbara’s and Beck’s company, she still feels lonelier than she can remember feeling since before she first stepped foot in Arkham? She’s behaving, she’s staying away, she’s taking the first steps towards her sobriety from the motherfucker. And she’s doing a damn good job of it too, especially considering her history on the matter.

Now he’s texting her, like he a) thinks he has any right to and b) believes she has any clue what he’s even talking about. ]

I don’t know what number you were trying to text. But you should try 1-800-FUCK-OFF next.

[ Well, wonderful. It's seeming more and more like Tina's app has struck again, though even that doesn't really explain this.

Surely, if Harley had intended this monstrosity of a gift to go to someone else, she wouldn't have signed the card Pumpkin Pie. That's his name for her — alongside Sweetpea and half a dozen others, of course — and he can't imagine she'd let anyone else call her by it, especially so soon after their break-up.

So what happened, then? Is this a prank from some third party? Or just Harley being so daft that she doesn't know (or is pretending she doesn't know) what she's done?

He should just walk away from this whole mess toot sweet, but now she's gotten him thinking about other ways he might spend this evening, and he really doubts any of the other ladies in his address book are going to be interested in those sorts of games at the moment. No, the only thing to be done here is to see how much entertainment he can wring out of Harley. ]

And here I was, touched by the sight of all these roses choking my office.

I said to myself, why, Self, Harley must really want to make things right between us, if she's gone to this much trouble! And I was still angry, of course, but how could I overlook such a grand gesture?

But now that I know they're not from you, well

I admit, I'm sorry to hear it.

I didn't send you anything.

[ Of course, a split second after she hits send, Harley remembers that she had in fact sent him something.

Fuck.

What, exactly, had she done to piss the universe off so much? Sure, there was the mayhem, and the assault, some battery in there if she was being honest, theft to the nth degree, and some murder for good measure. But what all that in the face of true love?

You know, when she'd thought it had been true love. ]

Dammit. I forgot to cancel that.

[ Which necessarily implied that she had actually managed to put him for a couple of days. ]

Burn them.

You've got gasoline and matches, don't you?

[ Joker frowns at the screen.

He's gotten the answers he needed in terms of understanding what happened here, but those answers only raise more questions. Such as: how could she possibly have forgotten sending him a Valentine's Day gift? Valentine's is always a huge deal with her, and surely he's been at the very forefront of her thoughts! Is she just trying to hurt him by saying this? Or did her time as Ronnie snap her mind in some completely new way?

Her entire response annoys him, and it actually sort of does hurt his feelings, and that only annoys him more. He's supposed to be the indifferent one in this relationship, after all. He's the one who uses and forgets her, not the other way around. But somehow, it's all gotten twisted, and now here he is, alone and actually sort of missing her, while she's over there just telling him to burn it all! What the hell?

This is exactly the kind of emotional weakness he's been trying to eradicate in himself here lately, and it serves as a fine piece of evidence that he still has plenty of work to do on that front.

Perhaps messaging her wasn't such a good idea, after all.

He looks around him at all the roses. They would make quite the bonfire, but as he sits there, letting the minutes pass by, an even better idea dawns on him.

Of course he's still hung up on Harley, he thinks. He hasn't given himself a chance to find anyone to replace her with yet. It's not emotional weakness on his part, or any sort of deeper attachment. It's just that a clown has certain needs, and he's yet to find anyone new to scratch that itch for him. Fortunately, Harley's just provided him with exactly what he needs to move on.

She has her uses, it turns out, even when she's being completely useless.

He doesn't bother texting her back. ]

[ See, this is the problem with getting cards from Joker and Harley. You don't know if there was a mistake, or if they're joking, or if they're deadly serious. ]

Thanks.

But that wasn't what I meant about experimenting with your bag.

[ By now it’s clear this company made a lot of mistakes. ]

What did you get? Candy dildo? Edible panties? Fuzzy handcuffs?

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Valentines for Barbara, Beck, Kirk, and Joker

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