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The last thing that he wanted to do was try and carry her back to the heli-carrier that was going to get them all home. But looking at her, he knew that there wasn’t going to be much of another choice—there was no way that she was going to be able to walk. Her one thigh was torn right through by two bullets, luckily ones that didn’t hit any vital arteries. And sure, he could’ve tried to make her limp along, but he never would’ve heard the end of it from her and everyone else.
Although as he walked down the street with Harley draped over his arms and her arms looped around his neck, he realized that he wasn’t going to be hearing the end of this either.
“Why don’t we do this all the time?” she asked, laughter in her voice despite the makeshift tourniquets wrapped around her thigh that were keeping her from bleeding out.
“Because you don’t get shot like that all the time,” Rick muttered as he carefully stepped over some of the debris that was littering the street. As soon as he said it, he saw the expression on Harley’s face shift and he corrected himself. “Don’t get any ideas.”
“Too late!” She paused, going back and forth between looking around as they retreated, and looking at Rick’s face. It was a mixture of focus and annoyance. More of one of those than the other. “Who knew you were so chivalrous, Flag?”
He didn’t dignify the question with a response. Lucky enough for him, before Harley could keep going, he was walking up the ramp onto the helicopter. The thought crossed his mind for a moment, because he could feel the way she was practically beaming up at him as he carried her, to just drop her into her seat rather than setting her down. He fought the urge, though.
“C’mon,” he grumbled, lowering himself just enough so that when he took his arms out from underneath her, it was a short drop.
“You gonna buckle me in, too?” she asked, dazed in a way that Rick was choosing to blame on the blood loss.
He took his seat next to her, blatantly avoiding eye contact as he strapped himself in. “I think you got that part under control just fine.”
He was staring dead ahead at the empty seat across from him as Harley buckled herself in. He pretended not to hear the fit of giggles that she was descending into, mumbling things more to herself than to him. But even with his attempt to make his thoughts louder than her voice, he still caught a few words here and there. For some reason, the post-mission banter among the rest of the crew just didn’t seem quite as loud as it usually did. He knew that he heard her say his name once or twice, and he chalked it up to her usual rambles, trails of thought that really didn’t lead anywhere in particular.
They were only a few minutes into the ride when he felt the weight of her head pressing against his shoulder. He tensed at the contact. Once he realized what it was, he panicked for a moment, wondering if she was just resting against him to bother him, or because she actually fell asleep, or if she passed out from the blood loss.
He turned his head just slightly, just enough to look at her. He couldn’t see her face well, but he could tell that she was still breathing. He leaned slightly, trying to get a better look at her expression. He saw enough to see that there was a tiny upwards curve to her lips. That was all he needed to see to be sure that she wasn’t dying against him like that.
“All those muscles,” DuBois spoke up from the other side of the heli-carrier, “and you’re still just her fuckin’ pillow after all this.”
Rick shook his head. He wanted to have a quip in return, but he knew that anything he said was just going to dig himself deeper into the hole that he was already in. Most everyone else on their crew would get distracted and move onto the next thing within a few minutes, and if not that quickly, they’d forget about it once they got back to Belle Reve. Not Robert, though, and Rick knew it. And it was annoying.
Instead, Rick shut his eyes too, leaning back against the wall behind him. He made sure to sit straight enough that his head wouldn’t drop and rest against Harley’s.
He woke her when they got back to the prison. She groaned, swatting him away like that would change the circumstances at all. Rick rolled his eyes. “C’mon, Harley. Time to go.”
“You at least gonna carry me again?” she asked, prying her eyes open.
“No,” Rick answered without hesitation as he undid the straps keeping him in place. “They got a stretcher for you.”
“You’re gonna come visit me though, right? When I’m all laid up?” Her usual grin was back on her face.
Before he could answer, give her the sarcastic remark that was resting on the tip of his tongue, the door opened and the medical team came to get her.
As she was carried off, she called back, “If I get a cast, Flag, you gotta make sure you sign it!”
Rick was shaking his head, grabbing his bags from the floor. He didn’t even realize that DuBois hadn’t gotten off the carrier until the man was talking right behind him. “Put a heart around your fucking name while you’re at it, yea?”
Rick shook his head as he shouldered his bag. “Congrats on ten more years off your sentence.” He walked towards the exit door, not bothering to turn back around as he asked, “How many does that leave you with again?”
He could hear DuBois’ laughter, and that was good enough. He walked in the opposite direction of the prison, knowing that he was going to have to go to HQ to talk to Waller now that all of this was over with. Wrapping up one thing and no doubt she was already going to have something else lined up. He wondered what the lag time between missions was going to be this time around.
When Harley came-to in the medical bay, she had no idea how long she’d been out. For all she knew, it could’ve been hours, or it could’ve been weeks. What she did know, though, was that her head hurt and every muscle in her body felt sore, stiff. Groaning, she started to pry her eyes open. She tried to bring her hands to her face, wipe the sleep from the corners of her eyes, but she only was able to lift them a few inches before they were stopped. The clinking of metal on metal sounded through the room, and she felt the cold pull of handcuffs against her wrists.
“God, even when I’m asleep?” she whined. “Come on, guys, that’s just not fair!”
She heard someone huff out a chuckle from beside her bed. “Don’t think they were convinced you weren’t faking.”
Her eyes popped open at the sound of his voice. Turning her head, she looked over at him. “Flag?”
He kept his eyes trained on the folder in front of him, but the smile that was slowly starting to creep onto his face spoke volumes. “Welcome back, Harley.”
“Did I die?”
He chuckled, shaking his head. “No. They just knocked you out.”
“If they knocked me out, then why,” she shook her wrists, causing the cuffs to jingle against the bed railings, “why did they—”
Rick silenced her with a look. All he had to do was flick his eyes over to her, eyebrows raised slightly, and she knew.
She laughed, head dropping back against the pillow. “I guess.”
He let his gaze drift back to the file in his lap. “How you feelin’?”
“Like I wanna touch my face, and I can’t.” She thrashed slightly against the mattress, the best she could do for a tantrum given the circumstances. “They can’t just give me one hand?”
“I’ve seen the damage you can do with one hand,” he argued.
“What are you even doing here if you’re not helpin’ me get out?”
Closing the folder that he’d been looking at, he finally leaned back and took a good, long look at the woman lying on the bed next to him. “Came to talk to the new team. Thought I’d stop in and see if you were conscious yet on my way out.”
She smiled, her previous annoyance with him instantly fading. “How long you been waitin’ there for me?”
“Long enough,” he responded sarcastically.
“Aw, you waited for me!”
He rolled his eyes. “Somethin’ like that, I guess, yea.”
She shimmied up as best she could, trying to get herself a little more upright even though the bandages wrapping around her leg felt like they were constricting her movement. “So, new team, huh?” She leaned her head back but still turned to look at him. “Where we goin’?”
“We?”
“Yea!” she chirped. “Next mission! Where is it?”
“Harley,” he shook his head, and for a moment it almost looked like pity crossed his face, “you can’t go.”
Her brows furrowed. “Why not?”
He nodded towards her leg. “Expectin’ me to carry you everywhere?”
“I mean,” she looked down at her bandaged leg and then back at him, “it would be nice.”
He laughed. “Ain’t gonna happen, though.”
“So you’re goin’ without me?” she sounded genuinely hurt at the mere idea of it.
Rick couldn’t believe that he found himself feeling bad about it. Things were so different now than they were the first time he met her.
“C’mon, Harley,” he said, his drawl shining through a little more, “you know how it goes—I don’t pick the team.”
“But if you did, you’d wait for me to get better before you go, right?”
He studied her face for a moment. Under different circumstances he would assume that she was just trying to yank his chain again. More slick commentary just to get a rise out of him. But as she was laying there gazing over at him, handcuffed to a hospital bed that they weren’t going to let her out of anytime soon, he couldn’t help but to think that she was being genuine. She was actually upset that she wasn’t going to be going back out into the field with him for whatever the next mission was.
“You know it.”
Her smile was small, but genuine. “Good. You know, you could tell Waller that she can’t send you out there without me. Who’s gonna keep you company, really, you know?”
Rick chuckled. “Trust me, I know.”
“You’re a real softie underneath all those muscles, aren’t you?”
“Harley…” his tone had a hint of warning to it, not that she’d ever heeded it before.
“I mean, look at us!” She motioned between them with her hand as well as she could with the cuffs binding her wrists. “You came here to hang out with me!”
“I didn’t come here—”
“And you never would’ve done that a few years ago when you met me.”
He sucked in a deep breath, knowing that he wasn’t going to win the argument against her. “No,” he conceded, “I wouldn’t have.”
She laughed at his agreement. A real laugh, not the fabricated ones she used to let out way back when he first met her. Not the same delirious giggles that she’d made on the way back from their mission when she was light-headed from blood loss. It was a genuine laugh, like she was really enjoying the little moment between them despite all of the circumstances surrounding them trying to make it impossible to find a good moment in the midst of any of it. If bullet holes and hand cuffs couldn’t strip her of her joy, Rick was pretty sure nothing could.
Even with the cuts and bruises, even with her hair in a mess because no one in the prison hospital was going to take the time to really do it right, do it the way that she wanted it done, she still looked good. Even without her makeup, her lipstick, even with all the chips in her nail polish, it still crossed Rick’s mind that he wouldn’t mind sitting there in that uncomfortable prison hospital chair for a little while longer.
That train of thought caught him off-guard. His eyes widened for a split second as he realized what he was thinking before he shook his head at himself and tried to focus on just about anything else.
“I’ll be good to go for the next one, at least,” she said, giving a definitive nod of her head.
“Sure thing.” He stood up out of his seat before gesturing to her bandaged leg. “They didn’t even give you a cast. You’ll be fine.”
“Means you can’t sign it, though.”
“I think you’ll manage.” He rapped his knuckles against the railing running along the side of her bed. “I’ll see you soon, Harley.”
“You better.” She flashed him a smile, feeling a fleeting sense of victory when he mirrored one back to you. He got a couple strides away before she piped up again. “Flag?”
He stopped, turning to face her. “Yea?”
“Be safe out there. You know, since you don’t got me watching your back.”
“No promises but I’ll try.”
The mission didn’t go smoothly, to say the least. They never did. That was the whole reason his team got assigned to things in the first place. If missions were easy, if they would be straight-forward victories, it wouldn’t be a Task Force X problem. It wasn’t as though when Harley was running missions with him they miraculously went well, but this was the first one he’d run without her and it seemed more hellish than usual.
He’d missed that somewhere along the way that the two of them had gotten good at working together. It was a far cry from where they were when they started out. As the weeks turned into months, he vaguely remembered being less and less bothered by her, by the work they were doing together. It was a slow shift for sure, because it wasn’t as though their jobs were pleasant ones. But things crept along so slowly and quietly that he had gotten taken for a ride he didn’t even realize was happening.
The last thing he wanted to do was tell her any of that, though. The entire chopper-ride back to Belle Reve all he could do was sit and stew in those thoughts. Now that the adrenaline had worn off, the mission was complete, and most of the team was coming back alive and in one piece, all he had time to do was sit there and think.
When it came time to make the decision to either go inside Belle Reve or take off towards his car so that he could get back and wrap things up with Waller to go home, he didn’t know which direction to go in. He was exhausted, and clearly not thinking straight, so maybe whatever would get him home faster would be best. But he also found himself wanting to go and check on Harley, no matter how stupid it seemed when it spelled it all out.
The decision was made for him when his phone started to ring, Waller’s name flashing across it. He turned and started to walk towards his car as he answered, saying an unenthusiastic, “Yeah?” into the phone as he walked.
When he saw Harley next, it was weeks later, and she was all patched up like nothing had ever even happened. She strolled onto the chopper with her bag slung over her shoulder, all decked out in red and black like a few weeks before she hadn’t been shackled to a hospital bed.
“Got to pick this team then, Flag?” she asked with a laugh as she dropped her bag to the floor between the two rows of seats lining each side of the heli-carrier.
And just like that, it all came rushing back. In the weeks away, he told himself that he was just too tired and overemotional, that he was letting his very normal concern for a teammate who got shot turn into something that it wasn’t. Chalked it up to some sort of reverse Stockholm Syndrome. He told himself that some time away, a somewhat decent sleep schedule, and not being shot at for a bit, would get his mind right and he would be able to keep his head on straight. And it was working when he didn’t have to look her in the eyes and hold a conversation with her. Now he had to again, and all of the lies that he had been feeding himself came to a screeching halt.
He cleared his throat, shaking his head and hoping that his expression was as neutral or as unamused as it usually was. “You know that’s not how it works.”
She rolled her eyes but she was still smiling. “You gotta get better at lying. At least to make me feel better.”
He chuckled, shaking his head before gesturing to the empty seat. “Park it, Harley.”
She gave a fake salute. “Whatever you say, Colonel.”
They were dropped down into the thick of it, just like always. The only ones who had even a sliver of their shit together were Rick, Harley, and DuBois, as per usual. Not that they ever really gave each other that kind of credit out loud.
Harley huffed, resting her head back against the wall that she and Rick were both pinning themselves back against, just out of reach of the bullets flying in their direction. “Oh, fuck this,” she snapped. Reaching across Rick’s torso, she grabbed the gun from his hand, one that was much larger than the handgun that she always carried with her.
Rick’s eyes nearly popped out of his skull when he realized what she was doing. “Harley!” he yelled, like that was going to do anything to stop her.
Harley was already around the corner and shooting before Rick even finished calling out her name. He might not have been successful in stopping her, but Harley was certainly successful in getting both Rick and DuBois to come out from their somewhat safe waiting spots and start doing some damage to get them to move forward. It was reckless, but then again that was their whole purpose, wasn’t it?
When they made it to the makeshift checkpoint, Rick immediately pulled Harley off to the side. He kept his voice low, but anger was dripping off every word. “You’ve gotta stop doing that shit!”
“What?” she sounded genuinely confused, her eyes flitting back and forth between his face and his hand that was resting on her shoulder.
“What?” he repeated back, eyes wide. “Going out there with no cover! You could’a—”
“We always could’a, Flag,” she cut him off. “That’s kind of our whole thing here.”
“You just got outta the—”
“Can you two find time to do this later?” DuBois interrupted, annoyance heavy in his tone. “We have a fucking mission, in case you forgot.”
Both Harley and Rick had looks on their faces like they had plenty to say in response to his comment, but there wasn’t time to get into it all. Instead, they took it on the chin and got back to business. There would be time for arguing later.
No one had to be carried back to the chopper this time. A few of the team were limping, worse for wear, but nothing that some bandages, painkillers, and down-time wouldn’t fix. Rick and Harley were walking side-by-side at the front of the pack. They matched each other’s strides, but neither of them were looking at each other. Outside of orders and confirmations, there had been no discussion between the two of them, no side-commentary like they usually had.
They didn’t look at each other the whole flight back to Belle Reve.
“Alright, Quinn,” one of the guards said when they got back, “looks like you’re checkin’ out of Hotel Belle Reve.” He laughed. “For now, at least.”
“Screw you,” she snapped, taking the small bag containing the few things that she had on her when she was arrested and brought in the latest time.
Rick’s angry expression shifted to surprise. “That was it?”
“That was it?” she sounded shocked, almost offended. “How many missions have we done? At ten years a piece?”
He frowned, not having thought about it that way with her. Mostly because she never brought up that part of it whenever they were working, unlike everyone else who was vocal about the fact that they were only doing what they were doing with Task Force X because of what they were getting out of it.
“Right.”
She started walking towards the gate, still in her mission getup. “I’m getting the fuck outta here! See ya!”
It took him a moment, but Rick eventually got his legs working alongside the rest of him and he took off after her. It only took a few long strides to close the gap, but even once he was beside her again, it wasn’t as though Harley was turning to look at him or talk to him. He didn’t take his eyes off her, waiting for her anger to falter for even just a brief moment so she would glance over at him. With the speed that she was walking away, they were going to run out of parking lot soon.
“Just gonna follow me? Wait for me to slip up again?” Harley asked, still not looking at him.
“No. Can you—will you just stop?” he snapped, exasperated.
She huffed, loud and dramatic, but she didn’t keep walking. Folding her arms over her chest, she turned so that she was looking at him head-on. She waited a moment for him to speak up and say something, and when he didn’t, she raised her eyebrows and shook her head slightly. “Well? What?”
He furrowed his brows, the words that came out of his mouth not the ones that he had been planning on saying when he first started going after her. “What’re you gonna do now?”
She rolled her eyes, propping her hand on her hip. “That what you came here to ask me?” She paused. “And since when do you care so much, anyway?”
He shook his head, knowing that he couldn’t really blame her for her annoyance at the moment. “Just never thought about it.”
She sighed. “What do you want, Flag?”
“About earlier—”
“I know, I know,” she cut him off, throwing her hands up in defeat. “It was stupid, reckless—”
“Will you just let me fuckin’ talk?” he snapped.
She recoiled, knowing it was a little deserved. “Fine.”
He took a breath, straightening himself out and getting himself together. “It was stupid, and it was reckless,” he said, making the same small gestures with his hands that he did when he was getting serious while they were out on a mission. “The whole reason we get sent out there as a fuckin’ team is so no one has to do cowboy shit like that.”
She shrugged. “It worked, though.”
He shook his head, looking up at the sky for a moment before looking back at her again. “Yea. But what if it didn’t? What if you got shot again?”
“Since when are you so concerned about everyone’s safety?” She scoffed. “They call us the fucking Suicide Squad!”
“Yea, but that doesn’t mean you gotta live up to the name. You almost died last time!”
“I was fine! They didn’t even give me a cast!”
Rick knew it must’ve looked ridiculous, the two of them descending into a screaming match at the edge of the prison parking lot. But he was too deep in it now to let it go. “That doesn’t mean I wanted it to happen again!” Sucking in a deep breath, he let his head hang so that he was staring down at the blacktop. “Dammit, Harley, why do you have such a problem with that?”
When he finally peeled his gaze up from the pavement and looked at Harley, the anger had faded from her face. She had a smug grin on instead. “You were actually worried, huh?”
“Don’t.”
“You were!” She laughed and gave him a light shove. “Colonel Flag. Big ol’ mush.”
He was shaking his head, like that would undo the heat flaring up in his face. “Alright. Enough.”
“You could’a just said that.”
He raised his eyebrows. “I was tryin’ to get there but you started yellin’ at me before I could.”
She pointed at him. “You yelled at me first.”
“You took my gun,” he retorted.
She laughed. “I did. I did do that.”
They stood there silently for a moment before Rick finally asked, “Now what?”
Harley tilted her head slightly. She made a big show of thinking, like she was weighing out a dozen different options. Rick was watching her expectantly, unable to even pretend he knew what she was going to say to him next. More often than not, he didn’t know what to expect with her. But he really didn’t expect her to step in and kiss him. She did, though. She had one hand resting against the side of his face and Rick froze up for a moment at her touch before he finally kissed her back.
When she pulled away, she was still smiling. She watched him try and sputter out a few sentences before finally putting him out of his misery and saying something first. “Figured it took you that long to just say you were worried about me. Who knows how old I would’a been before you got around to kissin’ me.”
The laugh he let out was choked with surprise. “Wow. I—alright.”
“Whaddya say, Flag?” She batted her eyelashes, like she didn’t already have him hook, line, and sinker. “We leavin’? Or you gonna make me walk?”
He laughed as he nodded, already reaching for his keys. “We’re leavin’.”