Couple of screws loose (quite_vexing) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2019-07-22 13:23:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, harley quinn, peter quill (star-lord) |
So when is the counselling part supposed to start?
Who: Quill and Quinn
What: Court Mandated Counseling and maybe some geeking out over illegal things
When: Today!
Where: Harley Quinn's Practice
Status: Complete
Rating: PG-13
Fucking court mandated counselling.
This was bullshit but he couldn’t argue around it. He was lucky he’d managed to convince his PO that the medicinal marijuana was legit (and he really did have a license for it) so he didn’t think he could push his luck on the counselling.
But for real, he didn’t think it would go well anyways. There was a lot in his tiny little head, a lot that he wasn’t sure he wanted figured out , if he was honest. In prison, they’d always encouraged going and speaking to the psychologist or to the wellness worker, but he’d found reasons not to. He hated goign to groups -- hearing everyone else’s problems made his seem stupid, and he just didn’t want to do it.
And yet here he was.
Fuck.
He barely noticed the office he was entering. All he knew was he’d waited a short amount of time before being ushered into a nice looking space. The lady, a Dr. Harleen Quinzel (and holy crap, were her parents on drugs, giving her that name?), still wasn’t there so he took his time staring at a weird painting on her wall.
There were a lot of weird paintings on the wall; a number of classics but others that Harley had painted herself or been gifted by some of her patients. She was particularly fond of the unicorn crapping rainbows.
Harley swept into her office, dressed professionally in black slacks and a blue blouse, her multicolored hair pulled back into a bun. She wasn’t just pale, she was as white as paper, the only color on her face red lipstick and heavy eyeshadow. “Sorry I’m late, there was a thing.”
She held out her hand. “Call me Harley. Do you prefer Pete or Peter?”
“I prefer not to be here,” Peter responded dryly before looking at her hand. With great reluctance, he shook her hand before letting go and putting his hands into his pocket. He was uncomfortable, and she looked like a ghost. Great. Was he supposed to talk to a ghost? Was that what this is about?
“Why is your unicorn crapping rainbows? Isn’t it supposed to vomit them? Isn’t that how it works with unicorns?”
“Art is supposed to generate discussion,” Harley said. “Maybe it’s got some kinda stomach thing goin’ on.”
She closed the door behind her and gestures towards the seating area. There were a variety of chairs, from comfy recliners to a classic lay down couch to actual bean bag chairs. She wanted her patients comfortable and could already tell she was going to have to let Pete get comfortable enough to talk. Sometimes that took a couple of sessions. “Have a seat!”
Peter reluctantly followed her and sat down, his knees bouncing with energy. The lady doctor looked the same too -- like she was brimming with something, although he didn’t know what quite yet.
“I’m sorry,” he said suddenly. “This was probably a mistake. I don’t even know if I believe in counselling, but my PO says I gotta do it and I just think I’m wasting your time and the government’s money.” Not that Peter really cared about the second one really. “Wait, you probably hear this all the time hey? Like a fucking cop out or something? Oh shit -- am I allowed to swear?” He really had no idea. “Is that something you’ll write down? Anti-social tendencies, needs to be hit with a wooden spoon or something?”
When Peter was nervous, he couldn’t help it -- he just talked and talked and talked.
“Swear as much as you fucking want,” Harley pulled a chair out from behind her desk, sitting on it backwards. She felt like she could relax the strict act around him; he might respond to the more out there parts of her personality and it was always nice being more herself around her patients.
“Anything you say in here stays in here.” She leaned her chin on the chair back. “Unless you’re a danger to yourself or something. You can talk, or not, but I gotta tell you that talking is a lot more therapeutic than most people realize. I ain’t gonna judge, because sometimes if you don’t go crazy once in awhile, you’ll go crazy.”
Wait ..did she say ...what? Peter squinted and tried to make sense of what she was saying. And was she backwards on a chair?
“I gotta be honest. I have no fucking clue what to expect here. At all. I’ve never done this before, and all I know is what’s on TV. And you don’t look like Hannibal…..” Peter had loved that show. The food always looked so good. He threw his hands up in the air as a show of defeat. “Fuck. Whatever. I’ll try anything once so why the hell not. I’m Peter. I get called Pete, never Petey, sometimes Quill. Whatever. I answer to most anything.”
“Tv can be all kinds of misleading.”
All right, now that was a good start! Harley grinned at him, “Okay, most anything. I know what the court mandated, but why do you think you’re here? Be brutally honest, I’ve probably heard worse.”
Peter gave a short laugh. Oh, she probably had. She looked like she’d seen worse too, but again, he had no idea what to say. “I robbed a bank? I mean, I was the getaway driver, and did some of the tech work to rig the safe, but it’s not like I killed anyone…… so I think the court says ‘fuck you Peter because you fucked us’ and now that’s why I’m here.”
Or was it? He tried to remember what his PO said.
“Oh! And because it might reduce my parole period, if I do everything he tells me to do.” There it was -- the real motivator.
“I have two years. I would love to only have one.”
Seen worse, done worse, experienced worse. But Harley wasn’t one to compare experiences, though they could help her emphasize with her patients. It wasn’t surprising to her how much it could help someone to know they weren’t alone.
Of course, she was instantly curious about his tech work. “So how’d you crack the safe? Must have been some pretty nimble tech work.”
There was a reason Harley was independently wealthy.
Strange question, but the one way to get Peter talking was to stroke his ego. “Oh, it was just a simple digital lock pick,” he said, downplaying while at the same time knowing this was his moment. “It wasn’t too hard, I just had to re-wire a few things, see if I could tap into the remote locking, and there you have it.” It was something he’d always enjoyed doing, playing with items, tinkering away. “I also modified their guns, but I never told the court that so shhhh.”
It had always surprised him that while the police were confused by the modifications on the weapons, no one had actually asked. One of the other crew blamed it on some russian weapons cartel, and the police went with it. Peter wondered if it would ever come back and bite him but so far so good.
Harley tried very well to hide her excitement; this kind of work sounded like something she’d have borrowed for one of her heists. And the modified weaponry was also exciting. “What did you make ‘em do? More accurate? Less recoil? Shoot faster? Not that I think more deadly guns are a good thing, or anything. But it’s really clever.”
This was not how he pictured his counselling session to be. It was actually pretty good, but only because he hadn’t had to answer a single hard question. “It WAS really clever. And what I did was set up the bearings for what you said -- less recoil. That way you can shoot faster and that energy goes back into you. It was a dope set up. Oh, and the aiming was way better. Did a few things to the barrel.” He grinned. “I mean, yeah, same. Not an advocate for killing but ...if you’re going to have a gun …”
“So you redirect the kinetic energy from the shot, which reduces the recoil and lets you shoot both faster and more accurate… That’s brilliant!” Helena would have loved to know more about that, Harley thought. She’d probably come up with something really clever too.
Harley leaned back, trying to shut down the part of her brain that was all ‘crime spree whee!’ She mostly succeeded.
Mostly.
“You’re upset you got caught. So how did that happen?”
“My loser crew ratted me out for a better bargain. I refused to do the same to them. No fucking clue why, they didn’t deserve my loyalty.” He gave a short laugh. “I don’t even remember half their names. I was so high on coke then, and my girlfriend at the time had introduced me to those guys….” He cleared his throat suddenly. “My grandfather died. I kind of lost it. Went in some binge, agreed to whatever they wanted and then when I got caught, I just accepted it. Drove my lawyer crazy, but it is what it is. Got 7 years, but was out in 5 for good behaviour. Just have parole for 2 years now.”
Or maybe one, if he did super amazingly well. That was the dream anyways.
“I don’t know that I’m upset I got caught. Prison sucked balls, but it was better than what I was doing. At least in the clink, I got my grade 12. GED.” He was proud of that.
God, Harley understood what it was like to give your loyalty to someone only for them to sell you out. Or abuse you. Use you. Try to get you killed.
All of the above and then some.
This was progress, though, and Harley didn't think Peter had even realized he'd opened up.
"We don't always make the smartest choices when grieving. But things kinda have a way of working out, sometimes. You got locked in the clink, but you improved yourself. Just trying to do that hints at the kinda person you can be if you set your mind to it. You got your GED, be proud of that. You're tryin' to stay on the straight and narrow, be proud of that too, and don't worry too much if you step of the sidewalk a bit here and there, because there’ll always be the occasional setback. That’s life. The important part is to keep moving forward. Set some goals, ones that are obtainable, and go for it."
She tapped her chest. "I went through hard times myself once. But I got myself out, once I accepted help. You've already got a head start."
Peter had no idea he was opening up. He was just talking about himself, which was one of his favourite things to do. “Yeah...I did bump into a buddy of mine, we shared a cell for like ...almost the whole time we were in there. Anyways, he said the same thing. I need to really realize how lucky I am, I guess. It’s just hard, you know? I’m used to being a colossal fuckup. This whole being responsible thing is a mind trip.”
He sat back in the chair and looked at the doctor. “So when is the counselling part supposed to start?”
“It is, isn’t it? One day your life is a mess and the next you’ve tidied up a bit, picked up some, an’ you’re looking at a second chance.” Harley sat back as well, clasping her hands and smiling brightly. “What do you mean start? It’s almost over for today.”
Startled, Peter turned and looked at the clock on the wall. How the fuck had an hour almost gone by? He blinked a few times before giving the doctor a wink and a pointy-gun motion with his hand. “Damn, you’re good…….sneaky!”
It was all said in good jest though. He was surprised at how easy it was. After all, Peter did like talking ..and about himself. Maybe there wasn’t anything to this counselling thing. Maybe.
“So...now what?”
Harely gave him fingerguns back, and her best smile. But she didn’t respond right away, considering his question along with the mental notes she’d taken the entire session. “Well, now I’ll give you my cell number in case you need to talk or have a crisis or something like that. Otherwise?”
She gestured at the door with a flourish. “I’ll see you next week!”
“Uh..yeah.” He clapped his hands on his knees before pushing himself up onto his feet. He hadn’t even taken his jacket off. Surprisingly, he did feel a bit better. This was weird.
“I guess...yeah. Next week.” He tipped his head at her and walked out of the room. It might take him a day or so to figure out what even happened in that room, but at least he wasn’t freaked anymore.