Chapter Text
“Hey, kid!” Harley yelled. “Our masks came in the mail!”
“Oh, dope. I’ll be there in a sec.” Cass responded from the sofa.
There was a crunching noise that Cass had learned to recognize as the sound of Harley destroying a cardboard box to get at what was inside.
“Don’t get your hopes up, Cass. They’re kinda...boring.”
Harley plunked down next to Cass on the sofa, an exaggerated frown across her face, holding a plain pink cloth mask.
“Yeah, that is kinda boring.” Cass said.
They both stared at the mask for a moment.
The mask said nothing.
“Ooh!” Harley jumped up, “I have an idea!”
She rifled through the cabinets for a moment before grabbing something that looked like a weird white plastic sewing machine/stapler combination, which she held out to Cass.
“What is it?”
Harley’s jaw dropped.
“It’s a bedazzler!” Cass still looked confused, so Harley continued. “You’ve never heard of a fuckin’ bedazzler? They were one of those ‘as-seen-on-TV' things, but I never got one as a kid. Something made me think of them a while back, and you know my impulse control is shoddy at best—”
Cass nodded her agreement.
“--so naturally I had to have one.”
“OK, but what does it do?”
“It is a bedazzler! It fucking bedazzles!”
“I’m just gonna google it, Harley.”
“Can you also look up how to use it, because I’ve forgotten?” Harley got back up and crossed to one of the baskets of random junk on the floor. “I’m gonna find the little plastic jewel things.”
An awkwardly long amount of time later, Harley (plastic bag of jewels in hand) and Cass were crouched around Cass’s phone, propped up on the low table, playing an extremely dated video on how to bedazzle.
“So you put the bead thing on the metal thing and then you push down on the top part. Seems...doable.” Cass said, slowly.
“Nothing advertised on TV infomercials is ever intuitive or simple. Trust me kid--I have experience with stuff like this.”
Cass grabbed the bedazzler, and, muttering the directions to herself, positioned the bead, and pushed the top down.
The bead didn’t stick.
Six beads later, she finally got it to work.
Harley, who had been alternately watching raptly and rambling on about tax evasion or something, clapped in excitement.
“Cass, lemme try!”
She grabbed the bedazzler and somehow, magically, the first bead stuck.
“How did you do that on the first try?” Cass asked in disbelief.
“Clearly, I’m just that fuckin’ talented.”
“Or it’s just beginner’s luck. See, that second one you did just fell off.”
“Well, maybe you’re jinxing it, Cass.” Harley said, picking up the fallen bead.
Cass got up from the sofa. “Wanna pop tart?”
“Would I ever turn down a pop tart?”
Cass grabbed a packet of pop tarts and two mismatched plates. She ripped open the foil and set one pop tart on each plate. She dumped the plates on the table, curled up next to Harley, pulled up a video on infomercial toys, and waited patiently for her turn with the bedazzler.
“Hey kid, three guesses about what I’m making.” Harley said.
Cass surveyed the small piles of pink, purple, and blue beads Harley had made.
“Bisexual pride flag?”
“Yep! High five for getting that on the first try.” Harley paused. “How did you get that on the first try? I used to be able to stump you with these things.”
“I hate to break it to you, Harley. I think you’re becoming predictable.” Cass teased.
“Me? Predictable? Never!” Harley said, pretending to be offended.
“Ok, fine. The only predictable thing about you is that you’ll always do the most feral or unpredictable thing.”
“Much better. I’ll accept that.” Harley held up her mask, now a sparkly bisexual pride flag.
“And I’ll take that.” Cass said, grabbing the bedazzler and the baggie of beads.
She grabbed a red mask from the mask box and set to bedazzling.
After a few minutes of comfortable silence, broken only by the sound of Harley eating a pop tart and whatever the noise a bedazzler makes is, Cass held up her masterpiece.
“It’s not supposed to be anything. I just thought it was cool.” Cass said. It was pretty cool; the plain red mask had been covered in a few swirly lines of orange gems.
“It kinda looks like fire,” Harley though for a minute. “If you turn your head and squint a little, ya know.”
They both turned their heads and squinted a little.
“Ok, Harley. Maybe. Kinda. Wait! I see it.”
The orange swirls did, in fact, look like a fire (if you turned your head and squinted, that is).
“Poi-fect!” Harley said. (Whether saying “poi-fect” was Harley’s accent or just one of the many weird things she said is up for debate). “Do you wanna go buy some hair dye? This is getting boring.”
And so, newly bedazzled masks on, Harley and Cass bounced off to the store in search of hair dye.