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It's not that she thinks Ivy's going to say anything, not really. Harley knows that Ivy would never fix her mouth to insult her the way she'd grown so used to, but she could think it.
The problem is, Ivy's never seen her without a full face of makeup. Caked in blood, mascara running, hair tangled but still parted and braided properly, sure, but never completely bare-faced and slightly sticky because her moisturizer dries weird. Harley should've thought about that before inviting her to stay the night rather than drive home in the ever-present Gotham rain, but she'd been too distracted by Ivy's quirked lips and low, agreeing voice, and now she's standing too close to the mirror inspecting her pores and the lines that have appeared next to her eyes and the little bump that's sure to turn into a pimple if she doesn't get some acne cream on it pronto.
"You're being stupid," she says to her reflection, then turns away from its answering expression and splashes her face with the too-warm water that's been running in the background for way too long now.
She wipes her makeup off slowly, wondering if it's worth the skin irritation to just go ahead and swipe on some mascara, some lip gloss, a bit of tinted moisturizer to hide the blemishes, and pray her setting spray held through the night. Her eyes look small and tired without the eyeshadow, and without concealer it's a lot easier to see the scarring she's accumulated from ten years of getting tossed around and pretending like it wasn't a problem, and her lips look a little too thin without any color to distract from their shape. One soiled cloth joins another in the trash and she reaches for the cleansing oil, rubbing it into her cheeks even as she watches the rest of her blush give way to her always-too-red cheeks.
Joker'd hated her cheeks in particular, couldn't understand why the color seemed to stay when everything else wiped off.
Not that he'd seen her without her makeup often. She'd used theater grade setting spray to keep it from smearing onto the sheets after learning lessons number one and two in rapid succession, but she'd run out recently and figured she wouldn't need it again when the beauty supply store ones worked just fine for gallivanting around the town with her— girlfriend.
That, at least, brings a smile to her lips.
She can hear Ivy puttering around just outside the door, tripping over something and cursing.
Maybe it's that, or maybe it's the fact that she's been hogging the bathroom and Ivy probably needs to pee and brush her teeth, but Harley finishes double cleansing and slathers on her weird moisturizer, then ties her hair back into a neat bun at the nap of her neck and doesn't even artfully arrange the hair around the back of her neck and ears that always seem to come out of her scrunchie.
Ivy's still rubbing her foot when Harley steps out the bathroom already babbling her apologies about taking so long. She's sitting on the bed in her baggy pajama pants and baggier t-shirt, hair hastily braided down her back and contacts traded for thick-framed glasses, massaging one of the toes of her bare feet and smiling when Harley finally shuts her mouth.
"How do you manage to look cute for sleeping," Ivy complains without any heat, "it's not fair."
She makes grabby hands and Harley goes, fuzzy-socked feet dragging against the floor just a little.
Ivy pulls her down into a kiss and this close, just before their lips touch and her eyes flutter closed, she can see the creases in Ivy's forehead that'd been hidden under a layer of foundation earlier; the matching lines around her eyes and the chapstick smeared just beyond the corner of her lips.
"Why is your face sticky," Ivy mumbles, pulling away just far enough to speak.
Harley laughs, probably a bit too loud for the situation, and wraps her fingers around Ivy's wrist, "my moisturizer dries weird."
Ivy disappears to brush her teeth after a few minutes of trading kisses that aren't going anywhere, brushing one last kiss against Harley's forehead as she goes, and Harley tells herself that despite her wobbly lips she isn't going to cry. She just washed her face. She isn't going to cry, she's going to get her book and read a couple chapters like she always does because she knows Ivy reads before bed too and won't mind a bit; she's going to go off to the kitchen, refill her water bottle and bring back an extra, wrap the throw blanket sitting at the foot of the bed around her shoulders and prop herself up against the headboard with her horrible, trashy, absolutely enthralling romance of the week.
Ivy smiles her small, soft smile when she comes back and sees her all bundled up, pauses for a minute in the doorway just to look, and Harley meets her gaze shyly.
"Can I borrow a pair of socks?" Ivy asks after a minute, padding over to the dresser like she already knows the answer's yes, and Harley laughs a bit too loudly for that too.