Chapter Text
They were reasonably young, they were in good health, they'd been married just over a year.
They were being pursued by an actual mob of bounty hunters, because yesterday Owlman had quadrupled the price on their heads.
It still wasn't high enough to attract the real heavy hitters of the murder world, thank goodness, but that kind of balloon in payoff without any significant spike in risk, and in a city where the police could be counted on not to interfere in Owlman's affairs, had drawn every part-time or up-and-coming bounty chaser and hitman in the state.
The well-intentioned types that had gone ahead and taken work from a person like Owlman in spite of probable misgivings, on the basis that the clowns were criminals after all, had all dropped out at this point. Watching two people ambushed at their grocery shopping keep ahead of the homicidal mob you were part of while going out of their way to prevent collateral damage was demoralizing, if you cared about anything besides money.
The amount of money on offer was high enough it wasn't surprising they'd taken the job at first, though. The targets were even now giving serious consideration to trying to set up a scam where one of them in disguise turned the other in, collected the bounty, and then broke them out, though the conversation had wandered from logistics to the reasons it would or would not make sense to take that risk for forty thousand dollars, and from there back to the grocery shopping.
"But I mean," Jokester said, stealing a glance around the corner of one of the buildings framing the dead end alley they'd ducked into, and sighing a little to see they'd been spotted after all, "am I acting poorer than usual lately? People have been making leading comments about our income."
Harlequin laughed, going to her knees to roll across the open street and take cover behind a heavy raised flower bed before any of their pursuers could shoot her. Being left with no angles of retreat was more alarming right now than being surrounded, and people could clear (and had cleared) the empty street that was now behind her more easily than they could the buildings that would otherwise have backstopped the gunshots, and which couldn't have been counted on to actually stop the bullets. "I bet it's because you make rice all the time lately!"
J followed her, kneecapping a man with one of the paralytic dart guns they'd taken off their second attacker as he dashed across the street. "There's nothing wrong with rice!"
"Sweetie, you've used the rice to meet you joke the last five times you've cooked! Is this commentary on how many friends people are bringing over?"
"What, no, you know I love guests!" They both dropped flat for a second as a wall of bullets passed screaming over them, and Jokester turned his head to murmur, "Okay, you're right, I'm overworking it."
Harlequin knocked their foreheads together gently, and then the fire stuttered off and they leapt up, her dart gun firing one precise shot into the throat of the maniac with the machine gun, who slowly keeled over without managing to reload. "I like a man who can admit when he's wrong." She vaulted forward over the flower bed and into the enemy lines, where the bounty hunters would have a harder time bringing guns into play without killing each other.
They'd lost everyone they were going to just by running, it was time to thin the horde a little.
"Sign of character," Jokester bragged. His hammer scythed through the air, knocking down men like ninepins.
"You are certainly that." Harley elbowed a man in the balls on her way up to punch somebody else. "It's not that I'm complaining about it, I don't mind if you actually want to cook rice. I know I make too much pasta."
"You make amazing pasta."
"Awww." She rolled across his back to bring both her feet down on the face of a man with a snake tattooed on his neck and entirely too many guns, and dropped a kiss on her husband's cheek on the way past. "Thanks, plumcake." He chortled, and his hammer punched two people in the face.
"But seriously," Harlequin continued, dodging around a knife, skipping over a bullet, and narrowing her eyes at the knife-fighter, who had a swastika pin on the strap of his shoulder holster, "if they're offering to help we can direct them toward one of the aid groups, but if they're gettin' judgey? Screw 'em."
She broke the Nazi's jaw so hard she had to dodge one of his teeth. "I like rice!"