Chapter Text
Rick Flag shouldn’t know anything about Harley Quinn, other than the unavoidable, of course; she was on the debut Task Force X, broke out of prison shortly thereafter, spent the better part of the next four years terrorising Gotham City at the side of a certain Joker, and remains to be an extremely unstable individual. That is where it should end; that is all Rick should know; that’s all he, quite frankly, wants to know.
As it appears now, though, that is not the case.
“What the fuck?” he murmurs to himself, voice gravelly from exhaustion.
Predictably, the paper in his hand has nothing to say to that, nor do the words scrawled across it in sparkly pink pen spontaneously rearrange themselves to give him the answers he needs. Instead, they glint mockingly up at him in the light of his bedside lamp.
It’s right around now that Rick is really wishing he had given in to his baser wants and simply collapsed, face first and still fully clothed, into his bed to sleep. It’s what he had been fantasising about on the long ride home from his latest mission and throughout the subsequent debrief. Even now, his eyes are concerningly heavy and the duration of his blinks grow slowly but undeniably longer.
And yet he has a stack of unanswered mail, accumulated over his months away doing undercover work at Waller’s behest—what else is new?—which, apparently and unfortunately, includes the offending note currently in his grasp:
‘ ‘ You, Colonel Flags, are formally invited to my upcoming birthday celebration. RSVP appreciated but unrequired. 7pm April 6th. Hope to be seeing ya!
-Harley ♡ ’ ’
What the hell is he supposed to do with this?
As he idly twirls the card over in his grasp, his eyes catch sight of the address written in the same awful pen on the other side. An address which he will under no circumstances be visiting.
With a groan that comes out as more of a tired huff than anything, Rick tosses the paper onto his bedside table and allows his head to drop down into his hands.
This is a joke. This has to be some annoying, unfunny, twisted joke of Harley’s design, and he’s much too tired to deal with her ridiculousness right now. A birthday party invite ? Seriously? He cannot think of a single reason why she would even find this funny, but that explanation makes more sense than any alternative. Unless she just wants to lure him into a—painfully apparent—trap, though Rick can’t think what she could possibly gain from him since his last job had him out of the country for so long that he is as thoroughly out of the loop on any useful information as he could possibly be.
Still, surely this invite has to be either a joke or a trap because there is no other explanation. To imply that they are friends wouldn’t just be a generous assessment of their relationship, it would be downright delusional. Hell, Rick hasn’t seen hide nor tail of Harley since the business with Enchantress, something he has considered himself immensely lucky for.
So, that leaves him guessing at which of the two unfortunate likelihoods he apparently finds himself facing.
He sighs, head pounding.
Rick doesn’t have the energy for this today, not after just getting home to his crappy, empty apartment. All he wants to do is to sleep and maybe pretend all this away, not that there’s any chance of the latter happening. The former though…
He forces his tired eyes back open, kicks off his boots, and lays back in bed. The lamp switches off with a click and then it’s just him and the enticing call of darkness. Oh, sleep, how he has longed for you.
But sleep doesn’t come. No matter how long he lays there, no matter how blissfully soft his sheets feel, no matter how bone-weary exhausted his whole body is; his mind refuses to shut off.
The light comes back on with a frustrated SNAP as Rick snatches the letter back off his bedside table to glare at. Hating every second of this damn night, Rick fumbles one-handedly for the planner he keeps tucked away in his drawer to make note of the date of this supposed party.
—
“Flag!” Harley beams as she greets him at the door to what is, from what he can tell at a glance, actually her apartment.
The whole way over, Rick had been running over in his mind what to expect, still half-certain this was bound to be a trap. On his list of possibilities, the address genuinely just being Harley’s actual apartment had ranked considerably lower than most other options. And yet.
Behind her, Rick can make out frames and drawings hung up on the walls of a corridor. There’s a fuzzy rug with only minimal splatters of what is presumably blood—he doesn’t even want to think about whether that’s hers or some other poor soul’s—and drawers, and from the peek of kitchen he sees at the end of the corridor he can see a dog bowl on the floor next to the fridge.
For the occasion, Harley seems to have strung up fairy lights. They flicker absently as Harley widens her grin, one hand settling on her cocked hip as she looks up at Rick.
She’s wearing a red and black jumpsuit with flowy sleeves. The party hat on her head, however, is neon rainbow and does not match her signature colours at all.
“I’m so glad ya made it,” Harley tells him, stepping aside to let him into the space.
Since he’s already come this far, Rick figures he may as well actually enter, no matter how deeply wrong it feels that a soldier such as himself should be entering the personal residence of one of the city’s more infamous criminals.
“I figured I should make sure you didn’t do anything dangerous,” he dismisses, voice gruff.
“Rude,” Harley chides, but she sounds more amused than anything else.
Surely enough, when she turns back around from securing the lock on her door, she’s grinning just as much as before. He supposes she’s in good spirits since this is—supposedly , he’s still not one hundred percent convinced—her birthday party.
And he’s attending.
God, why is he doing this again?
He catches sight of Harley kicking a gun underneath the coridoor’s drawers and thinks: right, that’s why. Harley is dangerous and unpredictable, and it’s probably safer for the general public if Rick keeps an eye on her, even if it is most likely some sort of trap. Or a practical joke.
“And you’re late,” Harley is saying over her shoulder. “Rude and late. Tut-tut, Colonel. But at least you’re here; I invited all the old gang but no one could make it, I guess—’course Boomer wouldn’t have been able since he’s still locked up, but everyone else must just be busy.”
She turns back to face him, stopping so abruptly that Rick collides with her for a moment before stumbling back, utterly baffled.
“I do really appreciate you coming, Flag. I think the birdies were starting to think I don’t have any other friends, but I got lots of pals. Like you!”
Her smile is so genuine that for a moment it floors him.
“Well, uh, we’re… we’re not really friends,” he says dumbly.
Harley just shrugs.
“Says the guy who came to my birthday party.”
Rick doesn’t have anything good to rebuke that with, so he doesn’t say anything at all. He doesn’t know if it’s better or worse to let Harley believe whatever she wants.
She leads him to a door with suspiciously knife-like divots notched into it, splintering some of the wood towards the middle. Based on the straggling remains of cellotape, he’d bet she taped something up to use as target practice. He throws Harley an assessing glance before deciding she probably doesn’t have anywhere on her where she would be able to keep whatever knife had made those marks on her person—unless, of course, there is one quite literally tucked up her sleeve.
If there is, she leaves it be and simply pushes the door open with a joyful:
“Ta-da! See, I told you guys I invited more people.”
Around the room—Harley’s bedroom, given the bed against the centre of the left wall—sit three women and a young girl. There’s even more fairy lights strung up in here, paired with bunting in a tangled trail. Someone has clearly set off party poppers because there's stringy confetti all across the floor and furniture, and he can see one of the used ones tossed on Harley’s vanity.
“Birdies, Colonel Rick Flag. Flag, Birdies,” she unhelpfully introduces.
He nods at them in a brisk, uncertain greeting.
“Holy shit,” one of the women says. “Harley actually does have other friends.” With a confused shake of her head, she recuperates and nods a greeting at Rick. “Helena.”
The other women pipe up to introduce themselves too.
“I’m Renee.”
“Dinah.”
“And the kid?” Rick asks.
Oddly enough, the kid’s the one Rick keeps finding himself throwing glances at. He’d be worried about her potentially being a hostage if she weren’t so clearly at ease, throwing popcorn up into the air and attempting to catch the pieces in her mouth.
“Oh, yeah!” Harley pipes up, turning around from where she was messing with stuff atop her dresser—apparently mixing drinks because she has two plastic cocktail glasses in hand. “That’s Cassandra. She lives with me.”
“I’m her apprentice,” the kid brags, like the idea doesn’t turn Rick’s stomach with anxiety—that can hardly be a good thing.
Despite himself, he throws a questioning look at the adults—not Harley, who is grinning with a proud look on her face—and baulks at their long-suffering expressions. Dinah just shrugs and goes back to her drink.
“We don’t love it either,” Renee tells him.
Harley pays their uncertainty no mind. Instead she loops her arm through Rick’s and leads him over to a bright blue beanbag to seat himself in. Rick lets himself be pushed back into it, sinking far down into the floor. The cocktail that’s pressed into his empty hands is also accepted, albeit with a suspicious look.
“This isn’t poisoned or anything, is it?” he asks as Harley settles herself into a pile of cushions on the floor next to him.
“Oh, you big baby,” she huffs, grabbing his glass to take a pointed swig before passing it back.
When given it this time, Rick does reluctantly raise it to his lips to sip at. It’s fruity and very boozy. Right then and there he promises to not accept any more drinks for the sake of his alertness; she may not be poisoning him, but he wouldn’t put anything else past her. It’s probably safer to be sober while dealing with whatever this celebration entails.
“Why the hell would I want to poison anyone on my birthday? I don’t wanna be disposing of a body and ruining my day with all that work.”
“Right,” Rick nods, not feeling comforted.
Well.
At least, he thinks he believes that this might, actually, just be Harley’s birthday celebration. That's… something. He’s undecided on whether that is a good something, but still.
He doesn’t exactly stop worrying about the possibility of this whole thing being some elaborate trap, but he does loosen the tension that had been running through his body at the idea. Now he just has to figure out why the hell would Harley choose to invite him to her birthday? They had left things on decent enough terms on their last meeting, but that was years ago now and ‘hey, we both survived a potentially apocalyptic threat, that’s a relief’ surely didn’t put them on this good of terms.
Unless, by Harley’s standards, it did.
Rick raises his drink hesitantly to his lips and takes another sip, realising that he should perhaps reconsider any preconceived ideas he has on how Harley acts. He’d thought he knew enough about her by simply having awareness of her reputation to be able to judge her character, but it seems he was mistaken. It’s a somewhat unnerving thought.
“‘Sides,” Harley continues on, oblivious to Rick’s reassessment, “I don’t think the birdies would be too pleased with me doing something like that. Ruins their whole reputation if they get wrapped up in anything bad.”
“And what reputation is that, exactly?”
Something sparks in Helena’s eye. Her back straightens, posture falling into something clearly expertly practiced: “We are—”
“—the Birds of Prey!” Harley jumps in, clearly excited.
“Dammit, Quinn!” Helena groans, slumping back against the headboard of Harley’s bed and thumping a hand against the comforter.
For her part, Harley does look chastised. She shoots Helena a remorseful look but the other women just snicker.
Cassandra tries to use the amusement as a distraction to sneak a drink from the makeshift-bar atop Harley’s dresser but Renee shoos her away, hardly needing to turn away from the conversation at hand at all. The kid flops back onto the bed beside Helena with a disappointed huff.
“Sorry,” Harley says, batting her eyes at Helena.
It throws him off-balance. Seeing Harley in the middle of what was essentially a girls night was not something he ever expected. Despite having spent time with her before, it never occurred to him that Harley would do anything other than try to wind people up and run around at the beck and call of her murderous boyfriend.
“How long had you been practising that for?” Dinah asks her, but Helena just groans miserably.
“Yikes. Too long, then,” Harley says, shooting Rick a look as she hisses through her teeth.
He’s not really sure if he’s meant to laugh, so he doesn’t.
Renee leans over to pat Helena’s shoulder consolingly.
“You’ll get another chance,” she tells her.
“Hey, she can still do it! Flag can hear it again, I’m sure he won’t mind. He’s a good guy like that!”
Rick can only respond to her encouraging smile with a suspicious glance. He really doesn’t know how to act around the woman, not like this. Being her commanding officer in Taskforce X was one thing, which he was admittedly not so great at at the time, but picking up the role of her friend is so far out of his comfort zone that he feels like he’s hardly able to tread water and remain afloat in this conversation. Every time she smiles at him, he half expects it to turn shark-like as she pulls him under the waves.
But she doesn’t, not that he understands why.
“No, the moment’s passed,” Helena sighs, continuing on the conversation.
It snaps him back to the moment, and the soldier in him at least thinks he can twist this to his advantage. He should at least be aware of who else is around him right now, just in case this day does take a turn for the worst. It wouldn’t do him well to be outnumbered with no idea just who he’s up against.
“What are the Birds of Prey, anyway?” he asks, tapping absently at the glass in his hand.
Harley snaps back around to look at him, ponytails whipping through the air.
“What?” she asks, sounding disbelieving and amused. “You’re kidding. You gotta be kidding. They’re the Birds of Prey. Everyone around here’s heard of them.”
Rick shrugs, pausing to take another sip of his drink with practised nonchalance.
“I haven’t been around here for a while.”
“Ahhh,” Harley nods wisely. “Mission?”
“Confidential.”
“Mhm, so definitely a mission.” Harley turns back to her friends. “Flag here goes on world-saving missions and shit all the time. Or he did at least the one time, so I assume he does. That’s how we met, actually.”
That seems to capture their attention. Even Helena, still moping, turns her head to watch him as he shrugs.
“Don’t be so modest, Flag,” Harley chastises goodnaturedly.
She reaches over to Rick’s spot next to her, swatting at his chest with the back of her hand. Rick allows it, reassured by the presence of his gun, tucked into the waistband of his jeans.
“The colonel here,” she turns back around to tell the other women, “lead this team I was on. We stopped this really beautiful, but really nasty ancient goddess lady who wanted to destroy the world. Led us all the way through stopping her, despite the fact she was technically his girlfriend.”
“The Enchantress wasn’t my girlfriend,” Rick feels the need to object as the birds send him varyingly concerned and respecting looks. “June Moone was my girlfriend, Enchantress was just possessing her body.”
“Oh, potato tomato,” Harley huffs, waving a dismissive hand.
Cassandra snorts but no one else seems to react more than amused curls to their smiles at Harley’s butchering of the saying.
“It all looked the same to me. And if ya asked me, Enchantress seemed much cooler than your lady, Flag.”
She gulps down the last of her cocktail and rolls onto her stomach to face him. That manoeuvre almost sends her out of her makeshift-nest of pillows entirely, leaving her shooting out an arm to steady herself.
There’s an unnerving intensity to having Harley Quinn’s undivided focus. Her eyes seem darkened and solid, her gaze unwavering. Even as she smiles up at him with another giddy quirk of her lips, caution shoots through him.
“But anyways, how is ol’ Moonie? Does she miss you on missions? I bet she does.”
Rick clears his throat.
“June and I haven’t been seeing each other for a while now.”
One of the Birds—Dinah—lets out an appreciative whistle.
“Free agent?”
He gives a terse nod. Talking about his dating life has always been a subject of… discomfort for him. The job of being a soldier has come first for as long as he can remember. It only really allows him to meet people under exceptional circumstances—like with June—and doesn’t make maintaining those relationships easy.
Married to the life, he’d been called before. That’s why Waller values him so highly. His dedication makes him an invaluable asset and a useful weapon in her arsenal. It doesn’t matter to her how lonely that leaves him at times. He’s used to it, anyway.
Renee raises her glass, cheersing him, before taking a swig. He wonders if they're all as married to this life as he is, whatever side of the law they happen to fall under.
“There must be something wrong with you to look like that and still be single, then,” Helena mumbles, much to everyone else’s disapproval.
“What?” she asks to their chorusing chastisements. “Is that a bad thing to say? We’re all single.”
“Be nice to Flag,” Harley pouts. “If you send him running for the hills, it’ll ruin my birthday.”
After a quick apology from Helena, Harley turns back to Rick again.
“You ain’t gonna go runnin’ off before the party’s even started, are ya, Rick?”
Rick sighs, taking a bracing gulp of his cocktail. With each taste it's starting to grow on him a little bit more.
“No, Harley, I won’t run off,” he finally manages, somewhat ruefully. “I’ll stick around for your party.”
The grin that response gets is the brightest yet.