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Snow never looks the same in the city. Whirling white flakes melt in the warmth of a million lives, and whatever's left turns to slush in the streets, or freezes over into a sheet of lethal ice. People curse and slip over on the sidewalks, cars get stuck going uphill and churn their wheels pointlessly, and children's street-corner snowmen get knocked down by careless passers-by.
Times like this, Harley gets why Ivy loves green spaces so much. The park isn't exactly a haven of nature, but it's just untouched enough for the snow to be white, blanketing the dying tufts of grass, still tracked through with footprints because nowhere in Gotham could be called deserted, but just a little hidden, all the same. Here, she can feel that quiet that comes with a snow-blanketed morning, everything muted by soft drifts and eddying flakes.
Ivy has mixed feelings about the snow. She's told Harley a thousand times that all the seasons are part of nature's cycle, and so are all the types of weather, but goddammit she still hates seeing her plants suffer and die in the cold. Or something along those lines.
Still. She agreed to come out here, and that's something.
Harley suppresses a shiver, the cold biting into her skin because she refused to destroy her brand by wearing clothes of a weather-appropriate length. Ivy catches her eye and shakes her head.
“I told you so.”
“Are those your favourite words?” Harley mutters, deflecting.
Ivy shrugs. “There are just so many opportunities to use them around you.”
“'Cause you're a know-it-all.”
“Or I'm just right.”
“I'm not cold!” Harley insists, wrapping her arms tighter around herself and trying to stop her teeth from chattering.
“Uh-huh,” Ivy says sceptically, then rolls her eyes and shifts closer to Harley, putting an arm around her shoulders. “Better?”
“I wasn't cold,” Harley says again, leaning in closer to Ivy anyway.
“You're too stubborn for your own good, you know that?”
“But you love me anyway.”
“You know I do.” Ivy says that more seriously, her arm tightening around Harley's shoulders, like it's important.
Harley remembers how Ivy used to tell her she loved her, all the time. And how she stopped saying it, as she and Kiteman got more serious, as the unspoken tension between Harley and Ivy grew until it finally reached a breaking point and everything tumbled into a mess of hook-ups and feelings and tears. And then how she finally said it again, as they drove away from the wreck of the wedding behind them, and Harley felt like this was the start of something better.
Sometimes she thinks Ivy's still a little shy of saying it, not because she doesn't feel it but because she's never exactly been the type to open up. Maybe that's why it still takes Harley's breath away a little, every time she actually says the words, or says something else that means the same. Maybe that's why when Ivy does say it, she makes sure it counts.
“So, hypothetically...” Harley says, smirking at Ivy and reaching up to brush a snowflake out of her hair. “If I were cold, how would you suggest I warm up?”
“Wear a coat,” Ivy says, deadpan, and Harley isn't sure if she's joking or not. Then her sarcastic mask cracks a little and she smiles. “But since you're too stubborn to 'mess with your brand', I guess I might be able to come up with something.”
Harley stops walking and turns to face her. “Something like what?”
Ivy's answer is to lean down and meet her halfway in a kiss, one hand wrapping around her waist to draw her in closer.
Harley remembers the first time they ever kissed, the way that realisation that had been hovering at the edges of her consciousness for so long burst out into her heart like a firework and she finally knew it. Fuck, I'm in love with my best friend. And oh. That's what a first kiss is meant to be like. Because she'd never had anyone kiss her the way Ivy did, even that very first time, like she was everything that mattered in the world.
She thinks it took her so long to know she loved Ivy because loving always meant hurt, before. Not the ache of unrequited feelings or the heart-crushing grief of losing someone, but hurt like violence, hurt like she would never be worth anything, hurt like cruelty and guilt and a constant question, what did I do? why why why am I not good enough?.
No matter how messy it got with Ivy, loving her never once hurt like that. Like all love would ever mean was pain and toxicity.
And no matter how bittersweet a kiss was, Ivy never kissed her like she was worthless, like she was just a plaything.
Even in the heart of her tangled-up confusion, even back when she was trying to run from the truth, even when she's hurting. Ivy still kisses Harley like she means the world to her. Like she's everything.
And every single time, it sets Harley's veins alight, makes her heart explode with love and want and gratitude. It makes her feel warm, in every way she can feel, even now when the world is frozen, even when she can feel snowflakes melting on her eyelashes.
She presses closer to Ivy, like she can breathe her in, link them together forever, but she pushes too far, and then they're both scrambling to stay upright, and tumbling backwards into a snowdrift, and Ivy is cursing and trying not to laugh and Harley is spitting snow out of her mouth and giggling uncontrollably because wow, that did not go how she planned it.
“It's not even funny,” Ivy says, biting her lip to hide her telltale grin, and Harley gets to her feet and looks down at Ivy, lying on the ground like she's given up, with snow dotting her hair and melting into her clothes, and laughs until her stomach hurts.
And Ivy rolls her eyes in that way that Harley's learned translates to I hate you, but actually the opposite, and gets to her feet, and curses again because there's snow melting down the back of her jacket, and absolutely refuses to give into laughter.
“Who's the stubborn one now, huh?” Harley says, and Ivy elbows her and starts walking towards home, brushing snow off her leggings.
She stops a couple of feet away and turns back, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “Fine, whatever. I guess it's sort of funny. Happy now?”
“I told you so!!” Harley shouts, then takes Ivy's hand and grins at her. “I get it, ya know? That is fun to say.”
Then she shivers again, because the warmth of laughter and kissing has faded, and now she's covered in snow.
But hey, if this the price she pays for being cold, she thinks she could get used to it.