Aaron almost laughed when the thief confirmed his suspicions. What a small, stupid world this was. “If I had a choice, I never would’ve been gone in the first – ”
Maybe it was a good thing that was the moment Harper Kelly decided to check up on them. Aaron got along too easily with people, including people he was better off not talking to at all. How many times had he told the wrong person all about his life, from back when he was kid to only a few short months ago when a reporter pretended to befriend him and printed a trashy article that attributed his refusal to believe the official story about his father’s murder to an Oedipal complex? Though he still didn’t know her name and probably never would, he was this close to telling the thief all about Eleanor and why she was looking for him when Harper walked through the door. This close to telling her everything just because he needed to talk to somebody, and right now she was the closest thing to the person he wanted to talk to more than anyone else.
Leave it to Harley Quinn to save him from making that mistake again.
At the sound of her voice, Aaron visibly stiffened, then stuffed his hands back into his pockets. His shoulders fell back into a hunch he could never totally get rid of, because he spent all of his life overly conscious of his tall frame and therefore unconsciously tried to minimize it when he was the most uncomfortable. Being around Harper certainly qualified, but caution outweighed discomfort with her. He knew he wasn’t intimidating like Bruce – like Batman – and it wouldn’t matter even if he was. Harper held all the power in this relationship, and Aaron had no way to challenge that. Not if he wanted to stay alive.
He glanced between the women, a small crease forming between his brows at Harper’s pointed barb and the thief’s cool rebuttal. They knew each other, that much was obvious, but he felt like he was missing something. Something really obvious.
Something Bruce had already figured out, judging by the cold sweat that was breaking out all over his body.
Before he could figure it out or ask Bruce to maybe share whatever it was that was bothering him so much, the thief caught him in a trap. A small one, sure, but the kind that felt like no matter how he answered Harper’s question – if he agreed with the thief that everything had gone smoothly, or if he told his handler she’d tried to stiff them – he’d be the one to pay for it. At the same time, though, it wasn’t much of a choice at all. Not for him, anyway. Even if the Resistance had been spying on them somehow, there was only one right thing to do.
“Uh, yeah. Yeah, we’re all good.” Aaron kept his face perfectly neutral while he answered. He wasn’t the best liar, but this wasn’t so different from what he and Nora used to do with their parents, working together to keep both of them out of trouble when one of them had done something wrong. “Everything’s here, so I think we’re good to go.”
He stepped up to the table and started putting the weapons in the bag unasked, maybe a little too eager to get this over with. The move brought him closer to the thief, and he couldn’t help but glance at her again, still trying to solve a puzzle that was missing most of the pieces. “That cat thing,” he said to her finally, aware that Harper would hear but not really caring. “Was that just a bad burglar joke?”