#quinnflag

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Harley almost always wants sex after she has nightmares—and at first Rick hadn’t understood why. She’d bashfully explained that she finds sex healing and it’s how she feels closest to him. After that it’s been easy to indulge her every whim.

“Shh, Harls, I got you, you’re safe,” he murmurs in her ear as her heartbeat gradually slows down. He hugs her tightly and kisses her hair, letting her know he’s right there and not going anywhere.

It’s not surprising when she asks for a kiss, which quickly leads to more.

His kisses move downward as he slides a hand up her shirt to caress her stomach. His fingers pay extra attention to that god awful brand that Joker had given her. He still wants to shoot that bastard right between the eyes.

She gasps and arches her back into the contact. He absolutely despises the term “making love” but he can’t help but admit that it certainly describes what’s happening currently. This isn’t down and dirty fucking. It’s intimate, and soft, and healing—for both of them if he’s being honest.

He slips her shirt over her head and then starts pressing kisses down her chest—and then lower. He pauses when he gets to the waistband of her panties. “Still with me, Harls?” he asks, with a kiss to her stomach.

She nods frantically. “Keep goin’! Please!”

He slips her panties down her legs and proceeds to trail kisses up her legs, giving her inner thigh a little nip that has her gasping. He can’t help but smirk.

He moans at the first taste of her on his tongue and revels in the gasp she lets out at the sensation. He quickly gets to work making her come on his tongue—which isn’t hard to accomplish.

He’s about to try two for two when she’s yanking on his hair. He takes the hint and kisses his way back up to her mouth. She moans at the taste of herself on his lips.

“Need ya inside of me, right the fuck now,” she pants in his ear—and he happily obliges.

He manages to make her come twice on his cock before he lets himself tumble over the edge with her. He makes a move to roll off of her so he doesn’t crush her but she clamps her arms and legs around him tightly—signaling that she wants what she’s dubbed “weighted blanket cuddles”.

He carefully presses her into the mattress with his full weight and she sighs. She absolutely adores weighted blanket cuddles. He’s asked her before if she can even breathe when he’s laying on top of her like this and her response had been a cheerful, “Nope, not really! But don’t ya dare stop!”

He’s finding that it’s very difficult to deny her of anything. He’ll follow her anywhere and do whatever he possibly can to keep her smiling.

She scratches at his scalp gently as her breathing evens out. He leans into the contact and kisses her collarbone.

Eventually he does move but he makes sure to keep holding her as he does, so she ends up right on top of him—right where she wants to be.

“Think you can sleep now, Harls?”

“Yeah,” she sighs contently. “I love ya, baby.”

“I love you too, Harls,” he replies with a kiss to the top of her head. “Get some sleep.”

The nightmare doesn’t come back.

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Harley has a hard time keeping her hands to herself whenever she sees Rick without a shirt on. She can’t help it—she has a thing for tattoos.

She stumbles into the kitchen around ten to see him already busy making himself coffee. All he’s wearing is a pair of plaid pajama pants—leaving his back and gorgeous arms on full display.

She sneaks up behind him and wraps her arms around his torso—rolling up on her toes so she can playfully bite his shoulder. He chuckles and grabs her hand. “Mornin’, Harls.”

He turns around to face her and leans down to give her a gentle kiss. She quickly deepens it. She really can’t help it—she pretty much wants him 24/7. Luckily the feeling is mutual.

He turns them around to hoist her onto the counter without breaking the kiss. She wraps her legs around him and gasps as his kisses move downward. He playfully nips at that spot that always drives her insane as his hand slides under her shirt to caress her stomach. She’s come a long way since the first time they did something like this. Her Joker scars are still a sore spot but she no longer gets hung up on Rick seeing them.

She tilts her head to give him a better angle as his hand moves up to grasp her breast.

“Want some coffee?” he asks, already knowing what her answer is.

“Maybe later. Right now I need ya to fuck me,” she manages to get out.

“Yes ma’am,” he responds, moving his hands to the waistband of her underwear so he can peel them off of her.

He doesn’t fuck her on the kitchen counter though. Instead, he makes sure he has a good grip on her before carrying her to the living room. He manages to get to the couch without dropping her or tripping over the coffee table. She crashes her lips back into his as her hands fumble with the waistband of his pants. He moans as she grabs his cock and she revels in it—the feeling of having control over him like this is addicting.

She manages to pull him free and wastes no time in sinking down onto his cock with a moan. He grabs her hips hard enough to leave bruises and guides her movements—and it’s not long before they’re careening over the edge together.

She collapses into him—both of them breathing hard. He strokes her back gently as they slowly pull themselves together again. Once she feels coherent enough to speak she picks her head up and tells him, “Mornin’, baby!”

He chuckles and kisses her forehead. “Ready for that coffee now?”

“And waffles!”

She reluctantly gets off his lap and lets him lead her back into the kitchen. He gets to work getting all the ingredients for waffles out while pouring coffee and milk into her favorite mug. She hops up onto the counter and watches him happily as she sips her coffee—he makes it just right every time.

She can’t enough of the sheer domesticity of her life now. Before Rick the idea of that felt unattainable. It was certainly never something Joker could’ve given her.

“I can feel you starin’ at me, Harls.” Rick comments, as he mixes the waffle batter.

“Can ya blame me?” she teases back.

He doesn’t respond verbally but she sees the small smile on his face.

“I just really really love ya,” she tells him.

He pauses what he’s doing and turns to face her, stepping in between her legs to get as close as possible. “Love you too, Harls.”

Her heart skips a beat whenever she hears him say that. She’s the luckiest gal in the world. She feels safe and legitimately happy for the first time in her life and she can’t get enough of that feeling.

She wraps her arms and legs around him tightly and just revels in the feeling of being wrapped up in his presence.

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Sometimes they don’t even make it to the bedroom. Sometimes after a night out they’re a little drunk, a lot horny, and very very in love. And like most things you love, you surround yourself with them, or… pin them to the wall.

Harley pounces on him the second they make it through the door—legs going around his waist. He presses her against the nearest wall and nips at her throat as his hands fumble with the waistband of her shorts. She whines as his hand slips into her underwear to graze against her clit and he moans against her neck when he feels just how wet she is.

“Fuck me!” she pants in his ear. “Please!”

His hand reluctantly retreats and he sets her down so he can get her out of her shorts and panties as quickly as possible. She yanks his shirt off and he groans at the feeling of her nails against his chest.

He lifts her back up and lines them up before thrusting into her wet heat. Both of them moan at the sensation.

He stills for a moment to let her adjust but she’s quickly urging him to move—and he happily complies.

His hand slips down her chest to the bundle of nerves between her legs and she bites his lip—hard—to suppress the scream she wants to let out—the last thing they need is another noise complaint.

It’s not long before she’s coming on his cock and he’s quick to fall right after her.

She’s completely boneless and he grips her tighter to make sure she doesn’t fall.

“Have I told ya lately that I love ya,” she manages to get out as she gets her breathing under control.

He grins. “Does this morning count?”

He pulls out of her reluctantly and makes a move to set her back down but she clamps her legs and arms around him tighter in response. He gets the hint and makes sure he has a good grip on her before walking them to the bedroom.

He sets her down on the bed gently and pulls her shirt over her head. “Think you got one more in you, Harls?” he asks with a wicked grin.

She moans and lays back against the pillows as he crawls on top of her.

The next round is slow and gentle.

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Sometimes the desire hits at the most inconvenient times. Like when they’re in front of other people.

In a very rare occurrence, Rick is out and about with Harley, Ivy, and Selina. They’re in an old rundown dive bar that has the best deals on drinks and the girls are about three rounds of mixed drinks deep.

He lets his mind wander as he watches the baseball game playing on the bar TV and half listens to the women chitchatting—his role here is just to be Harley’s ride home honestly. He has his hand on her thigh—nothing sexual about it, that’s just where he puts his hand when they’re sitting next to each other.

He rubs soothing circles with his thumb and without thinking about it inches his hand higher. Harley doesn’t pause in her storytelling but does tense up under his touch. He makes a move to pull his hand back but she quickly claps her hand over his to keep him right where he is. Oh, now he gets it.

He takes a sip of his beer to hide his smirk and goes to work seeing what kind of reaction he can get out of her without anyone noticing.

“Um, I think we gotta go!” she announces loudly, just before his hand reaches her panties under her dress.

She says her goodbyes quickly and then yanks him out the door and to the truck parked down the street. Once they’re inside she grabs him by the shirt collar to pull him closer so she can crash her lips into his.

“You,” she says, “are a god damn menace.”

He chuckles. “Who was it that was encouraging me, sweetheart?”

“Take me home, right the fuck now, Colonel.”

They make it home in record time but don’t make it to their apartment. As soon as he has the truck in park, Harley is launching herself over the center console and into his lap. She kisses him hard and claws at his belt buckle. He laughs at the whine she lets out when she can’t figure it out.

He pushes her hands out of the way and undoes his own belt before she can scream in frustration and attract unwanted attention.

“This what you want, Harls?” he teases, as his hands crawl up her back.

She nods frantically and presses desperate kisses up his neck and to his ear. “Fuck me, please!”

“Well since you asked nicely…”

He reaches under her dress to find that she’d discarded her panties somewhere on the drive home. She’s practically dripping for him. He curses under his breath and hurries to undo the button and zipper on his jeans.

He’s inside her in the next fifteen seconds and they moan in unison at the sensation. She rides him—hard and fast—and with one swipe of his thumb against her clit she’s tumbling over the edge with him not far behind.

“I love ya, so much,” she says in a daze once she’s coherent enough to speak.

He chuckles. “Love you too, Harls. Now let’s get upstairs.”

She’s completely boneless and insists on being carried upstairs—which he does happily. He would go to the ends of the earth for Harley Quinn and still has trouble believing she’s actually his. She could’ve chosen anyone she wanted and chose his broken, traumatized ass.

She stirs in his hold and nuzzles her nose into his neck. “Mmm, we almost home, baby?” she asks sleepily.

“Almost there, Harls,” he responds with a quiet laugh.

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Contrary to what most people probably think, Rick and Harley aren’t always fucking like rabbits. A lot of times all they do is cuddle—when she’s nursing a hangover, when he’s dealing with a migraine, when they’re too busy paying attention to the cheesy horror movies they’re watching. These moments are some of Harley’s favorites.

There’s no Waller, no bomb in her neck—just her and Rick, sharing an apartment in the bad part of town with a shower that leaks. She never thought she’d get this way back when she first admitted she had feelings for him.

Sure, the sex is fantastic, but more than anything she just loves the fact that she gets to be with him.

He pauses in his ranting about all the inaccuracies in the war movie they just watched once he realizes she’s staring at him with what she’s sure is the dopiest grin ever. “You okay, Harls?”

“I just really love ya. I hope ya know that.”

He gives her a soft smile that makes her heart skip a beat. “I love you too, Harls.”

“Hmm, what about…” Harley trailed off for a moment as she looked over the papers spread out in front of her, “this one?”

Flipping her chopsticks around, she pressed the blunt end into the paper and folder that she was looking at, and slid it over to Rick. He watched her, knowing far better than to question her methods of doing anything at this point. It would’ve been just as fast to hand the folder over to him, but there wasn’t much of a point in saying so.

Setting down the box of takeout that he’d been holding onto while sifting through his own pile, he grabbed the information sheet and its corresponding folder that she’d given him. He looked it over, trying to snag the main highlights to figure out if it was worth doing any kind of deep dive on whoever it was that she was electing to join the team.

At first glance he wasn’t seeing much that was worthwhile.

He looked back up at her, confusion written into his features. He waved the folder in the air. “Why this guy?”

She laughed, leaning back in her chair and carefully balancing her plastic container in one hand, using the other to pluck pieces of chicken and broccoli with her chopsticks. “I dunno. He’s cute in a kinda dopey way, isn’t he?”

Rick rolled his eyes and tossed the folder back onto the table. “Right. Well, I need someone who is lethal in a kinda deadly way.”

With a dramatic huff, she leaned forward again and started to sift through the files once more. “So picky.”

It would’ve been too easy to go down the rabbit hole of how hard he’d fought to be able to be picky about the team. So many years of having no say in the team and having to watch people die over it, and he finally had accumulated enough bargaining chips to get some control over who was on his team. It was going to make things easier in the longrun, even if it seemed tedious right now. He’d told her all that before. He had also told her that she didn’t need to sit around and help him out with it. He would have been perfectly happy going through all of these by himself. It would’ve been a much more peaceful affair that way.

Harley hadn’t so much asked or offered to come over and help as much as called Rick saying that she was on the way with two bags of takeout so he should unlock the door for her now because, “With how I’m drivin’ I’ll be there before you know it!” Going off the laugh that she ended the call with, Rick knew that her being on the phone while being behind the wheel was probably the safest part of whatever she was doing. So he made sure to listen for her so he could unlock the door.

Now here they were, paperwork scattered across Rick’s tiny kitchen table as they tried not to spill anything on the files that he was going to have to bring back to Belle Reeve within the next forty-eight hours so he could tell them what his decision was.

“You can still get most of the old band back together, right?” Harley asked as she skimmed over the file of a man who could apparently shoot flames at people. It would’ve been helpful, even cool, if he could shoot them from his hands instead of his feet but it didn’t appear that that was the case.

Rick aggressively tried to pick up his lo mein with his chopsticks and managed to get a few noodles looped over them. “Old band?”

“Yeah! Boomer’s back in, isn’t he? And Milton never left.”

Rick chuckled, food tucked into his cheek as he said, “You know he hates it when you call him that.”

Harley waved dismissively. “He’s not even here. How’s he gonna find out what I’m callin’ him?”

He shrugged and took another bite of noodles. “Fair.”

It grew quiet between them again as they went back to focusing on the real task at hand. Every time that Rick looked through a file and found nothing promising, he would toss it onto the seat of the empty chair to his right. Each time, the sigh he let out would get a little more dramatic as he reached for the next set of papers. There was a brief moment every time, though, right before he reached for the next folder, that he would look across the table at Harley. Usually she had her nose shoved in a folder, looking amused or bewildered at whatever she was reading. Other times she was mid-bite with broccoli and her chopsticks sticking out of her mouth. Regardless of what she was doing, it got a tiny, split-second smile out of Rick each time before he returned to the land of work-related frustrations.

He knew that he wasn’t the first person Harley called when she got out of Belle Reeve the most recent time. Truth be told, he didn’t want to know who topped the list. At some point, though, in the weeks following her release, she’d gotten ahold of his number and called him up. It had been surprising then, to hear her voice coming through the speaker of his cell phone and not the other end of their comms line for Task Force X.

Rick hadn’t invited her over then either, but she invited herself. It was the first and last time she showed up to his place empty-handed. She stepped in, took one look around, and immediately branded his apartment a ‘certified bachelor pad, and not in the fun way’. For as much as she made comments about the lack of décor in his apartment, it never seemed to stop her from being able to make herself at home. More than a couple times over the weeks he had wanted to ask her where she was staying, but it always felt like an overstep. Harley was a chronic oversharer, and if she wasn’t telling him something, he figured there was probably a reason for it. So he handled all the jokes at his expense as they came, and only grumbled a little bit on the occasions that she would end up staying too late, getting too tired, and passing out on his couch. After it happened the second time, he made a point to leave a blanket draped over the back of it for her. When Harley had come over the time after that, she said it was the closest thing to a decoration that his living room had. She wasn’t too far off.

Now that she was out, Rick knew that he shouldn’t have been telling her about anything having to do with Task Force X. If the wrong people found out that he was telling her things about the missions, and now not only showing her the files of potential members but actually collaborating with her on them, there would be some kind of hell to pay for both of them. But she was always popping in, and she was nosey—she was bound to find out eventually.

The other part of it, the part that Rick barely admitted to himself inside his own head let alone to her or anyone else out loud, was that it felt strange doing anything with the Squad without her. It was good that she was out. Of course it was good that she was out and seemed to be on a hot streak of at least not getting caught causing trouble if not staying out of it completely. That was the goal. That was the main enticing offer that came along with participating in the ops. Rick just hadn’t thought far enough ahead as to what would happen when people actually got released.

He and Harley had been in it from the beginning. They’d both been dragged into this kicking and screaming. Things with Task Force X had never been anything but an uphill battle, but it was even more so in those early days. Every bond and ounce of trust between them, and with the other rotating members of the team, were hard fought and earned. They were all still a mess, but they were a mess that had better understandings of each other. Throughout all the years and each of the missions, Rick and Harley had been the constants, the de facto leaders. It was hard times when they were supposedly the beacons of stability, but that’s what it was. But now she was out and it was down to Rick. He didn’t know what that was going to look like.

Harley tossed another folder across the table and managed to land it where Rick had been piling the rejects. The action snapped him out of his thoughts just in time so that he was paying full attention to her when she said, “They gotta start catching better bad guys.”

Rick let out a tired laugh, but he nodded. “Yeah—that’d be nice.”

“Too bad I won’t be around to help ya, huh?” Harley asked, finally eating the last piece of chicken from her meal.

Rick knew that he was supposed to say something in response to that, but no words were coming. She was expecting a joke, some comment coated in a healthy dose of sarcasm. He couldn’t think of one, though. He was too busy thinking about how right she was.

“Yeah,” he finally said, sounding awfully far away even though he was only across the table from her, “guess I never really thought that far ahead.”

She tilted her head as she studied his reaction. “What, you never thought I was gonna make it outta there?”

He shook his head. “Not that. I just,” he drummed his fingers on the tabletop, “it was always the two of us, y’know? Never stopped to think about what would happen when it wasn’t anymore.”

Her smile grew so wide that it damn near split her face in half. She gave a bashful wave of her hand as she looked away from him. “Oh, stoppit.” When she looked back at him again, she perched her chin in the palm of her hand. “You can't be this much of a softie with the new Squad, you know. They’ll eat you alive.”

He chuckled, his moment of honesty and the way she was looking at him both causing his face to feel warm. Clearing his throat, he tried to play it off and move along. “Yeah, I’ll remember that.”

Still keeping her chin in her hand, she grabbed the next folder out of the pile. Her eyes were scanning over the information in front of her. “You’re just gonna have to find your new Harley. Quinn 2.0.”

He shook his head, unable to stop himself from looking at her, and unable to stop himself from talking as he said, “There ain’t gonna be another Harley.”

She expected him to follow it up with a slightly back-handed remark of some kind, or a laugh, but it never came. Diverting her attention from the pages in front of her back to Rick, she smiled, but this one was almost shy.

“Gettin’ all sentimental on me now, Flag?” she asked, trying to lighten the mood, redirect them from whatever road they were starting to go down. They were going to be out of turnarounds soon enough.

“What’d you think you were gonna do when you got out?”

She shrugged, gesturing around them to Rick’s tiny kitchen, his small minimalist apartment. “Whaddaya think? I’m doin’ it.”

That got him to laugh. “C’mon, Harley. You can’t tell me that you were sittin’ in Belle Reeve all those years wanting to be out, and when you pictured gettin’ out, you pictured it sitting and eating takeout with me while we looked over confidential files you definitely shouldn’t have access to.”

“Alright, so maybe some of the details are a little different,” she conceded with a small laugh. “But, I dunno. I didn’t really have much of a plan, I guess. I just…I knew when I got out I wanted to spend time with my friends. With people who…who cared about me.” Her voice got a little quieter, something that Rick wasn’t quite used to, “People I care about.”

The words hung in the increasingly heavy air between them. There was something so much more real to the words they were saying now than anything they’d said during their excursions together over the years. There were no explosive implants, no one holding guns on them. And, yeah, sure, they made points to save each other over and over again as the years had gone on, and even lorded it over the other’s head when it suited them. They did all those types of things. They refused to leave each other behind. It was all honest and true, too. But at the end of the day during all of that, they would always be returning to two very different worlds. And there was no room for lingering looks and soft spoken confessions once the wrought-iron door slid closed.

There was nothing separating them now, though. There was just one world, and it only reached to the edges of Rick’s one-bedroom apartment. Honesty carried a different weight now, and they were each feeling that weight pulling at their heartstrings.

“Look—”

“Har—”

They both started and stopped at the same time. Rick couldn’t figure out if it relieved some of the tension or thickened it, but it at least got both of them to laugh. Shaking his head, he made a small gesture indicating that she could go first. She looked hesitant for a moment, but Harley had never been one to back down from much of anything, so she forged onward.

“Look,” she repeated with another laugh, “if this is too weird or whatever, I get it. Just tell me that and I’ll go and—”

“No,” he stopped her short. Shaking his head at her, he said, “That’s not what I was gonna say.”

“Yeah, well, you weren’t saying anything. And, I don’t know about you, Rick, but when I tell someone that I care about them and then they don’t say anything, I get a little nervous. Not to tell ya what to do, but usually people say—”

“I care about you too.” It was half-interruption, half-confession.

“We just finish each other’s sentences, don’t we?” Harley joked, her nerves surrounding the situation still evident.

Rick was leaning forward onto the table now. The takeout was long forgotten, his forearms covering up the photos and liner notes buried in the files on the table. None of that was the point of this anymore.

“I mean it, though. I, I do care about you. A lot.”

“If you’re just sayin’ that because I was giving you a hard time…”

He chuckled and shook his head. “You’re always givin’ me a hard time. When has that ever made me change my mind that easy?” She smiled and he felt some of his worry begin to fade. “I don’t think I ever let myself…I never bothered to think of what it was gonna be like when you weren’t on the team anymore because I didn’t wanna think about it. I didn’t want to think about what my life was going to be like when you weren’t a part of it anymore.”

Harley felt the little prickles of tears beginning to form and tried not to think about it. Too many damn emotions crammed into her chest—they always managed to fight their way out through the waterworks.

She blinked a few times in the hopes it would make them go away. It didn’t work. “Well, here I am, right?”

Rick smiled. One of those soft ones that he didn’t have often. His lips curled up and there was the tiniest flash of his teeth, his eyes crinkling at the edges. He wanted to reach across the table and take her hand in his own—it would’ve been so easy to do.

Finally, he nodded. “Yeah, you are. I don’t think I really let it sink in until now. Was afraid…I don’t know…I was afraid that each time was gonna be the last time and then you were gonna be moving onto something else.”

For a moment she looked confused, and then mildly offended. “Onto what?”

He laughed and turned his hands so that his palms were facing upwards, a small gesture to show that it was another one of those things that he hadn’t thought through. “I dunno, Harley. You’re one of those people that’s always gettin’ into something, though.”

She smiled again. “Yeah, I guess that’s fair, huh?” She leaned forward a little more, nearly matching his positioning. “But we don’t leave each other behind, right?”

Even if she hadn’t been pointing at him accusingly, his answer would’ve been the same. He nodded. “That’s right.”

She gave a satisfied nod. “Right.” Taking a deep breath, she slumped back in her chair. “Glad we got that sorted.”

Rick chuckled. “Yeah, right, if that’s what you wanna call it.”

“What would you call it then?”

It wasn’t until he really heard her question that he realized that he had backed himself into a corner. He could either duck his head and back away, or he could face this thing head-on. And he hadn’t ever been the type to run away with his tail tucked between his legs. The honesty carried more weight, but it was worth that much more now than it had ever before.

“I wouldn’t call it sorted. I…I’d say that this is all just barely gettin’ started.”

She pinched her brows, head tilting in confusion. “Say more words.”

The directive got another laugh out of him before he continued, hoping to find his courage and the right words along the way. “We’ve always been there because we, because we had to be. And that was good. Obviously. I cared—we, we both did. But we were also counting on each other. There was no surviving without the other. We had to, you know?” He got up out of his chair and walked over to her side of the table. He loomed over her, something that should’ve made him seem larger than life but the gentle look in his eyes keep him close and tangible. “Now it’s…it’s want. I want you. Here. In my life.”

The tears that were in Harley’s eyes now had no hopes of being blinked away as she looked up at him. “I want that too.”

He didn’t realize just how nervous he had been about her response until he felt his shoulders sag in relief at her words. He reached up and ran his hand back through his hair as he nodded. “Alright,” was all he could manage as he felt a stir in his chest that he hadn’t felt in years, a feeling he didn’t know what to do with just yet.

Harley was giggling now, cheeks taking on a tinge of pink. She reached out, catching Rick’s hand and tangling their fingers in the small space between them. “Feelin’ a little more sorted now?”

He laughed and shook his head. “Absolutely not, but—”

Whatever he was going to say next didn’t end up mattering. Harley hopped up out of her chair and before Rick knew what was happening, she was kissing him. Her hands were cupping the sides of his face, her body flush against his as she leaned into him. It took Rick a second to catch up with it all, but once he did, he wrapped his arms around her. His hands splayed across her bank, fingertips dragging across the soft, thin fabric of her tank top.

Warmth seeped into every inch of Rick’s body in a way he wasn’t sure he’d ever felt before. He could’ve sworn that he felt Harley’s hands everywhere at once. Running over his chest and shoulders, dragging along his neck, carding through his hair. All the while her lips never left his. Kissing him with the type of hunger and intensity he should’ve known to expect from someone like her. There was nothing to do but give into it, try to keep up.

When they pulled apart, Rick thought that Harley must’ve been able to feel the way his heart was thudding. If she could, she didn’t say anything about it. She looked up at him, smiling and batting her eyelashes like she hadn’t just turned his entire world on its head.

He leaned down and kissed her again, softer this time. He dragged it out, like he was trying to make sure that it was all really real. Things in their world just never seemed to go this well—it didn’t hurt to check.

His fingers were interlocked behind her back, her hands resting on the muscular planes of his chest. He was fighting to find the right words as she looked up at him, but his mind was blissfully blank.

When she spoke, her voice had that familiar humorous lilt to it. “You’ve still got a team to pick, Colonel,” she said with a grin.

Rick laughed and shook his head. “I’ll figure that out tomorrow.”

She tossed a quick look over her shoulder before looking at him again. “I mean—”

He kissed her again, short but enough to make her knees knock together. His lips were nearly brushing against hers as he said, “I’m just gettin’ started.”

It was the first time that he’d ever felt someone’s hum of laughter as they kissed him. He steeped himself in the feeling, knowing immediately that it was the kind of thing that people spent their whole lives chasing after.

The objective was simple; he had read it over a million times. All he had to do was go to the epicenter of crime in Gotham City and retrieve the elusive Harley Quinn. It didn’t take the expert deception of Amanda Waller to know that Rick had disabled Harley’s nano-detonator shortly before the fall of Corto Maltese. It also didn’t take an entire army to take down the Clown Queen of Gotham City. That’s why they sent Rick Flag Sr.

A bloodthirsty hound by nature—and dutifully so—Richard Sr. wanted answers from Harley that he intended to rip out of her one way or another. The dead didn’t talk, so interrogation required the target to be alive. A simple extraction: find the girl, bring her in, question her within the hallowed halls of ARGUS headquarters.

But nothing involving Harley Quinn was ever simple; maybe he should have known that.

The older man hesitated outside the hideously graffiti-covered hideout—an old, dilapidated warehouse of some variety or another—very likely a bustling hub of activity once upon a time. He didn’t open the door yet. Not fear—calculation. A soldier’s pause. A long-ingrained instinct to read a room before it existed.

Then, without ceremony, he brought his leg back and kicked the door in.

A bare-bones safe house greeted him—an old couch salvaged from the trash; a fairly new stove; an analog TV complete with rabbit-ear antenna. A dusty mattress was tossed on the floor with a beat-up blanket on top. Empty cups of ramen, crumpled-up sheets of paper, and a small stack of cans someone had used for target practice littered the space. He took it all in with the cold, unimpressed expression of a man who’d seen far worse in warzones.

Gun drawn, Richard swept the small studio with trained precision, sidestepping landmines of moldy food. With a gloved hand, he picked up a crumpled piece of paper and unfolded it. A stick figure drawing of two people holding guns adorned the bottom. “I’m officially a cool kid, Ma! Ain’t that neat? I get ta play hero an’ not be a freak! Mista J ain’t gonna touch me once I get my emancipation!! —Harl”  A tiny doodle of a heart pierced by a baseball bat sat in the corner.

He set it on the messed-up coffee table like a sacred text. More papers were tossed about, but one caught his attention. Sitting at the top of a trash can was an old Polaroid. Harley was in bed with a man, trying to take a selfie, but the man’s hand was blocking the camera. Flipping it over, Richard read the sloppy scrawl: “Ricky don’t like his picture taken. I’ll break ’im in sooner or later. Somethin’ about ‘covert ops protocols’ or whatever. Nerd.”

Richard’s stomach tightened. Personal entanglements complicated missions. He’d drilled that lesson into his son’s head his whole damn life. And yet…

Another note drew him in—stuck to the side of an old microwave, held up by an ARGUS magnet. Harley’s jagged, frantic handwriting sprawled across the page: “He said I can’t fix him, but I told him I’d give it a shot. We didn’t mean ta get so close, but ya throw two busted people together an’ BOOM—chemistry, baby. Real science-y stuff.”  A tiny doodle of a test tube bubbling out hearts sat in the margin.

Under the magnet was a small wallet-sized photo. Harley is on Rick’s shoulders, leaning down to kiss his forehead. Rick smiled like he remembered how, for once.

Richard couldn’t recall seeing his son smile like that since before West Point hardened him. A part of him—not big, but present—hoped the smile had been real. But Richard knew Rick wasn’t the type to settle down, especially not with a career criminal.

Then again, maybe he didn’t know his son anymore.

Richard sat on the broken coffee table, squinting at the photo. Duty and blood—orders and family—It wasn’t a decision he enjoyed contemplating.

Across the room, a dagger pinned a larger photo to the wall. Rick was holding one of Harley’s stuffed hyenas around the collar like a real dog, Harley kneeling next to him in front of a Christmas tree. Both smiling, earnest, warm, and disarming. Richard’s first instinct was to analyze the possibility of his son being coerced. His second was to ignore the warmth in Rick’s eyes.

At the bottom margin, Rick’s blocky handwriting: “If you’re reading this, it means I’m gone. Let her be in peace. She’s out of that life. —R.R. Jr.”

A guarantee Rick had no right to make.

His radio crackled to life with Waller’s hard-edged voice. “Flag. Report. Did you apprehend the girl?”

Richard’s lips twitched, but it wasn’t quite a frown, just irritation. “Stand by.”

He continued scanning the space, nudging clutter with the toe of his steel-toed boot. Then he saw it. Pinned to the back exit: a final photograph. He stared at it, fingers brushing the white outline. The text was written in eyeliner: “Your boy saved my life. Maybe you can save his. —H.Q.”  A lipstick heart smeared beside the initials.

“Flag. Status report.”

He didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he pulled the ten-week sonogram from the door and tucked it into his breast pocket with a small, controlled exhale. “Scrubbed clean,” he said. Calm and flat, like the soldier he was trained to be. “Nothing left but bare bones and garbage. No indication of her destination. She’s on the move.”

Waller exhaled sharply through the radio. She had no reason to suspect fraternization. “Scrub the rest of it. Leave nothing behind.”

“Affirmative.”

As he soaked the building with gasoline, placing charges with practiced efficiency, he caught one last message scrawled in lipstick across a cracked mirror: “See ya soon, Gramps. XOXO —Quinn”  Little bats and hearts danced across the glass.

Somewhere on the opposite end of Gotham, Harley watched the place she’d built with Rick, a sanctuary forged in secrecy, erupt into flames. It wasn’t wholly uncommon for Gotham to be singing the song of sirens, but Harley didn’t find it a comfort anymore. Her hand rested gently over her still-flat stomach.