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Superman has done a thing again.
He’s always doing things, and they’re generally pretty good things, but even if Kate wasn’t up to her eyeballs in college applications, she’d still struggle to find a part of her that cared.
“He’s so brave,“ her sister sighs, chin in her hands as she watches the news footage.
“Easy to be brave when you can shoot lasers out your eyes.” Kate says, eyes firmly on the prospectus on the table.
Susan sniffs. “You don’t understand.”
“Apparently not.” Kate turns the page impatiently. She does understand; sort of. Superman is really cool and shoots lasers out his eyes and has an impeccable jawline. She just can’t quite care. She is very much in favour of him continuing to be a force for good in this ridiculous world, but she refuses to even try and move past grudging admiration.
“I love him.” Susan declares, glaring at her.
“Good for you.” Kate flicks another page of the prospectus, and twists her face. “Gross, shared dorms.”
That gets her father’s interest - he also seems immune to the allure of superpowered men in tights - and he leans over the back of the sofa to pluck the booklet from her hands.
“Gotham?” He raises a questioning eyebrow. “Really?”
She flashes him a brilliant grin. She’s just one girl with an enthusiasm for pointed sticks in a world full of Supermen and Green Lanterns and Flashes - really, where else?
*
She doesn’t end up in a shared dorm, of course. Her dad rents her an impossibly fancy apartment close to the campus with more space than one college-student-cum-vigilante-by-moonlight could possibly need or want.
Kate leans on the obscenely large, white windowsill, and looks out at her new home. It’s quite a contrast: dark, rainy, and maybe sort of mocking the little rich girl pretending she knows what she’s doing.
“Ok,” she says to herself, taking a deep breath. “Ok.”
*
Phil480 is required, because Gotham U is run by sadists - and apparently, attended by morons.
There’s a dudebro in the first row holding forth when Kate hears someone to her left let out a tortured groan. There is a small thud that sounds suspiciously like a head hitting the desk with feeling.
Kate can’t resist a furtive glance to the side, where a mess of blonde hair a few seats down is slumped against a notebook covered in exuberant doodles of bats and angrily scrawled black clouds. Clearly their frustration could no longer be expressed solely with a ballpoint pen.
The head sighs again as the dudebro gets a second wind.
“Must not punch,” it mutters. “Must not punch.”
Kate snorts, and the head lifts, a pair of blue eyes blinking back at her.
“Exceptions to every rule,” Kate mouths, and the girl grins and gives her a thumbs up.
Ok, so not entirely attended by morons.
*
That night, she pulls on the purple and grabs her bow, because she’s got to start at some point, and the longer she leaves it the more time she has to talk herself out of it.
She’s not nervous. Nope. Her stomach doesn’t start churning when she considers the possibility of bumping into one of the Bats, because that would be ridiculous. Why would they have a problem with her? She’s just another idiot in spandex. She’s one of them.
Still, she’s going to steer clear of the caped crusaders for the time being. (Especially the Bat.) Until she’s ready, whatever that means.
She starts small and tries to stick to the outskirts, but it’s unfamiliar. Before long, she finds herself drifting back to where she started. She doesn’t even notice until she spots a distinctive silhouette not even ten meters away, and she panics, whipping round and trying to escape unobtrusively. The rooftop is wet, she’s already a little nervous and clumsy, and to her utter despair she finds herself dangling off the edge by her fingertips and feeling like a completely incompetent idiot.
She’s calculating just how much it’s going to hurt to drop onto the street below when a hand grabs her wrist firmly. A hand attached to a pair of pointy ears and a grin that seems somewhat out of place.
“I got you,” she says brightly, and Kate finds herself being hauled upwards. She lands on her back with an undignified ‘oof’, a concerned pair of blue eyes blinking down at her through a domino mask. “You ok?” It’s definitely a Bat, completed with pointed ears and the blaring symbol on her chest, overwhelmingly black but with panels down the side that are a vibrant- “Loving the color scheme.” The Bat adds, grinning.
Since when was purple one of their colors?
Kate scrabbles to a sitting position, brushes imaginary dust off her shoulder with dignity. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” The Bat gives her a jaunty salute. “Batgirl at your service!”
“Batgirl?” Kate says, taken aback. “But the - the mouth thing?” She gestures towards her chin, vague memories of a blurry photos of a Batgirl wearing a full-face mask, complete with jagged stitches around the mouth area.
Batgirl just laughs. “God, no way, I am nowhere near terrifying enough to pull that off.” She holds out a hand for Kate to grab, and pulls her to her feet. “Yeah, this is a kind of a new thing for me.”
“I like this one better.” Kate says. “And me too, actually. The new thing, I mean.”
“Really?” Batgirl says dryly. “So you didn’t mean to fall off the edge?”
Kate flushes a little, but tosses her hair back defiantly. “I had it under control.”
“Of course,” Batgirl says cheerily, “Sorry I interrupted, then.”
Kate can’t help herself; she pouts. “It’s rainy here. Everything’s so… slippy.”
Batgirl throws back her head and lets out what can only be described as a guffaw. “You are new.”
“You caught me at a bad time!” Kate says indignantly. “That wasn’t one of my best moments.” She reaches round to scrabble in her quiver, trying to find something that can facilitate a bit of shameless showing-off. “Look-”
“Ooooh,” Batgirl says excitedly, clapping her hands. “A demonstration? Excellent!”
Kate produces an apple, hands it to Batgirl. “Here.”
“... You seriously carry this round with you?”
“No,” Kate fights a rising blush. “Well, yes, but it’s only so if I bumped into anyone I could pull the suitably impressive William Tell thing.” She reaches behind her for an arrow, and tries to look haughty. She hadn’t counted on actually being called out on carrying the apple round, her brain just skipped straight to the appreciative applause.
“Awesome!” Batgirl balances the apple on the top of her cowl, and starts backing away. “So you’re shooting it off my head, right?”
“Well.” Kate blinks, taken aback. “I was going to ask you to throw it in the air, but, uh-”
“Off the head is way cooler.” Batgirl says, beaming. “If you can do it, that is-”
“Of course I can do it.” Kate snaps. “I just-”
“Ok, then.” Batgirl grins at her, and it’s such an infuriating mixture of completely unjustified trust and ‘double dog dare ya’ that Kate raises her bow with a furious glare.
“Don’t move. Or I will hit you.”
“Got it.” Batgirl winks. “Should I hum the song or-”
“No.” Kate grinds her teeth. “No song.”
She takes a few steps back. Inhale, aim, and -
The arrow pierces right through the apple (William Tell split it in half, but this is way more exciting) and both land quivering in the wall behind.
“Awesome.” Batgirl breathes. “You have got to teach me how to do that.” And then - because she is the strangest person Kate has ever met on a dark rooftop in the middle of the night, which isn’t actually saying all that much - she reaches behind her, pulls the arrow out, and takes a bite. “Impressive.”
Kate tries not to look too smug. “I can’t believe you let a total stranger shoot sharp things at your head, you have no idea if I could even-”
Batgirl waves that away with a grin. “Nah, I was watching you before. It was fun seeing you sweat, though.”
Kate frowns. “But I didn’t see-”
“Well, yeah. Creepin’ is kinda in the job description.” Batgirl says, pointing at the symbol on her chest. She takes another bite of the apple, chucks it away. “Anyway, see you around, new girl, duty calls-”
“It’s Hawkeye.”
“- see you around, Hawkeye.” Batgirl gives her one last jaunty grin, and backflips over the edge of the building in an excessively flamboyant manner. Kate snorts, but peers over the edge despite herself. Batgirl is nowhere to be seen.
“Is that in the job description, too?” She yells, and she swears she hears an answering giggle.
*
Bolstered by her rooftop encounter, Kate joins the archery club. Impressing and terrifying people with your frightening accuracy is a sure fire route to friendship, she reckons, and she promised her sister she’d try.
She maybe comes on a bit too strong, striding up to the row of targets with her sunglasses on and her fancy bow ready to go. The coach is halfway through a gentle suggestion that she might find it easier to aim if she ‘just took the glasses off’ when she lets loose a languid arrow straight into the centre of the target. He clamps his mouth shut at that, and Kate keeps the glasses on. They’re kind of her thing.
She hears someone laugh, and whips round to fix them with her best death stare. It’s the blonde girl from her Phil480 class; her expression softens a little.
“Do it again,” the girl insists, and Kate shrugs obligingly, letting another arrow fly as requested. It lands with precision in the bullseye, expensive carbon fibre negating the possibility of splitting the previous arrow in two, awesome as that would be. Kate is sure she could do it, given the right materials, but she settles for them sticking out the target flush to each other. She smirks.
“Impressive,” the blonde girl says, and she is grinning at some private joke that has clearly gone way over Kate’s head. “How about a moving target?”
“No,” the coach says shrilly, “No moving targets-”
“I shot an apple off someone’s head yesterday,” Kate says, because she is a horrific show-off and can’t stop herself.
“Did you,” the girl says, and she is shaking with laughter, the hand not holding her bow clutching her stomach. “Nice.”
“No heads,” the coach says weakly, “Please.”
Archery club is boring.
As everyone packs up and Kate reflects on her newfound status of archery club champion, the blonde girl corners her with an energetic grin.
“Can you teach me?” She claps her hands in front of her and shoots Kate a pleading look. “Pretty pretty please?”
Kate sighs. “I’m not sure I’d be a great teacher.”
“I’d be a great student!” The girl redoubles her efforts, eyes wide. “Pleeeeease?”
“I’ll think about it.” Kate snaps her bow case shut. She’s not sure when she’ll ever have the time (or the inclination, if she’s honest) but the girl looks delighted with her answer.
“It’s Steph, by the way,” she says, offering an easy smile. “We’ve met.”
“Sure.” Kate smiles back. “Phil480, right?”
“Right,” Steph says, biting back a laugh for no reason Kate can discern. “Phil480.”
“The wretched hive of scum and villainy,” Kate mutters, earning a grin.
“You’re telling me.” Steph grabs her sleeve. “Look, I’ve got to run, but let me give you my number, and we can talk archery lessons, ok?”
“Ok,” Kate says, and Steph gives her a dazzling smile. She’s still holding her sleeve. “I don’t have my phone-”
“No problemo.” Steph produces a ballpoint pen from her pocket. “I’ll go old school, write it on your hand.”
She’s scribbling numbers on her hand before Kate can formulate a response, and dashing away waving before Kate can even process that.
“I really want those lessons, William Tell!” Steph shouts, “You’d better call!”
Kate’s not even sure what just happened.
*
Batgirl is stalking her. Batgirl is one hundred percent, definitely stalking her.
“You’re stalking me!” Kate accuses her, whirling round in the alleyway. “You started following me at least three blocks ago, and I know you’re a magical creeper or whatever, but I’m not stupid-”
“Hmmm,” Batgirl says non-committally, shrugging expansively. “I’m on a stakeout, care to join?”
“A stakeout?” Kate doesn’t want to give her the satisfaction of knowing how much that intrigues her. “You don’t have to babysit me, you know. I can look after myself. Just because I’m new here-”
“I’ve got night goggles,” Batgirl says, as if that settles the matter.
(It does.)
She also has a utility belt full of cookies, it would seem. They huddle on the rooftop together, eating and giggling as they pass the night goggles between then. The guy in the building opposite is dancing very enthusiastically in just his underwear, and has forgotten (or perhaps intentionally neglected, if his showmanship is anything to go by) to close the blinds. It’s really a very absorbing performance; it would be a shame to miss it.
“Oh man, he just killed that power slide,” Batgirl thrusts the goggles towards Kate. “Quick, you’ll miss the guitar solo-”
Batgirl’s target doesn’t seem to be leaving the house anytime soon, but Kate is having way too much fun to care.
Eventually the man ends his performance with an exaggerated kiss out of the window, and Kate shrieks.
“Oh my god, that was for someone?”
“Yep,” Batgirl grins. “Every Tuesday for the girl in the apartment across the street. The whole block watches.”
“Oh, wow.”
They burst into a fresh round of giggles, and it occurs to Kate that Batgirl has adopted her. It also occurs to her that she really doesn’t mind.
“You know,” Batgirl says conversationally, “Sunglasses aren’t really much of a disguise.”
“And a mask is?” Kate smirks. “You don’t even know what color my eyes are.”
“Sure, but it doesn’t fall off.” Batgirl tugs at it to prove a point. “And glasses can smash-”
“Not these babies.” Kate taps on the glass. “Trust me.”
Batgirl sounds dubious. “Ok.”
“Besides,” Kate flashes her a grin. “I look great in them.”
Batgirl laughs, hands her another cookie. “Priorities.”
“Exactly.” Kate pulls off her gloves, settle back against the wall.
“There’s a number on your hand,” Batgirl points out, and she looks like she’s about to laugh.
“Oh, yeah,” Kate blinks down at it. She didn’t call, but she did put it in her phone. “I do wash, honest.”
“Sunglasses bringing all the boys to the yard?”
Kate snorts. “As if. She wants me to teach her archery.”
“Bringing all the girls to the yard, then.”
“Girl, singular.” Kate corrects. “And, um, I really don’t think it was like that.”
“Maybe it was.” Batgirl says, and wiggles her eyebrows expressively. “I’ve seen it in the movies - to teach someone how to shoot, you have to, like, get up real close behind them, and guide their arms tenderly-”
Kate punches her in the arm.
She never imagined Batgirl would be such a dork.
*
She doesn’t want to teach anyone archery, but she does want to have a friend who is awesome at archery to hang out with and shoot stuff with. As there doesn’t seem to be one in existence, she will simply have to manufacture her own.
So, she calls her. Steph sounds beyond delighted, and they agree to meet up over lunch at the shooting range for their first session.
“So, what should I call you?” Steph asks, her amusement evident even over the phone. “Not that William Tell isn’t fitting, and all…”
She nearly says Hawkeye, bizarrely, but catches herself at the last moment. “Kate.” She grins. “I’ll answer to William Tell, though.”
Steph laughs. “I’ll bear that in mind.”
*
They start with her posture, which is dreadful.
“You’re sticking your elbow out too far,” Kate says critically, walking round to get a full view. “You’ll keep clipping the string, which’ll hurt like hell, and it won’t help your aim, either.”
“Is this better?” Steph is an enthusiastic learner, and she takes in everything Kate tells her and does her best to rectify it. It’s very satisfying.
“A little.” Kate steps into her space and rearranges her arms for her. “Like this.”
She’s not getting super close to her and rearranging her arms tenderly. She’s not. This is just how teaching works. Showing is better than telling.
There’s no reason for her to be blushing.
*
Batgirl has definitely adopted her.
They’re busting a drugs ring. Together. Their first drugs bust. She’s busting a case wide open (that’s the correct terminology, right?) side by side with a Bat and it’s awesome. Kate is living the vigilante dream.
Batgirl is absolutely terrifying in hand to hand combat, and Kate keeps forgetting to actually pull her weight because she’s just staring at her. She packs one hell of a punch.
She’s just gawping when Batgirl looks over her shoulder with grimace.
“Oh, crap. Looks like we’ve got company.”
Kate draws an arrow, ready for action, but Batgirl shakes her head. “Not that kind of company, look-”
Kate follows her finger to a shadowy figure coming towards them across the rooftops.
“Another Bat?” Kate can’t help sounding excited. She wants to meet them all.
“I guess so,” Batgirl says, “Red Robin himself.”
“No way!” Kate enthuses, but Batgirl is pulling a face. “Why, what’s wrong with him?”
“Nothing!” Batgirl says hastily, “It’s just, we used to - we were, uh-”
“Ah.”
Kate doesn’t have time to get anything further out of her, because Red Robin is approaching them, looking very serious and self-righteous and, ok - she has no reason to dislike the guy, but Batgirl looks uncomfortable, and they’re partners, now. So she cares.
“Batgirl.” He nods at her, and Kate feels more than a little slighted.
“Hey, Red,” Batgirl says breezily, “What’s up?”
“I heard some noise, and I assumed-”
“We’ve got it under control,” Batgirl says, very sweetly. “No need to worry.”
“Right.” He casts her a worried look from underneath his bizarre looking cowl, as far as it’s possible to tell, anyway. “And your friend - ?”
“Hi,” Kate says, shooting him a rather nasty grin. “I like your cowl.”
“Thanks,” he says shortly, and it’s obviously a bit of a sore spot.
She presses her advantage. “Did Doctor Midnight sue, or - ”
“Be nice,” Batgirl knocks her shoulder. “Red, this is Hawkeye. She shot an apple off my head.”
“Right.” Red says again, and Kate grins at him again, showing all her teeth. It’s completely unjustified, she’s just come over all aggressive and possessive.“I’ll leave you to it, then?”
“Please.” Kate says, and Batgirl shoots him a grin that was clearly meant to be apologetic, but instead comes out with a bit of a bite. He back away hastily, and they cackle at his retreating form.
“Oh, I feel so bad,” Batgirl wheezes, clutching at her side, “He’s a nice guy, he really is, he’s just-”
“Self-righteous?”
“He doesn’t think I can do this,” Batgirl confesses, gesturing at her costume. “The Batgirl thing, that is. He wanted me to give it up.”
“I don’t see how that’s any of his business.” Kate wants to punch him. She’s had her fair share of interfering do-gooders, and her well of patience has officially dried up.
“He’s just trying to look out for me.”
“If he wanted to look for you,” Kate says, “he’d have had your six when we brought down those ten guys, instead of showing up later to question your abilities.”
Batgirl smiles at her radiantly. “Good job I’ve got you.”
They high five.
*
Steph is coming along nicely in their private archery sessions, and Kate is more than a little proud. She hits her first bullseye after only a few lessons.
“You did well, young padawan.” She announces, and Steph takes a low bow.
That evening, apropos of nothing, Batgirl grabs her bow and takes a shot at a can lying on top of a wall. She misses - only just - and swears loudly.
“Hey, that wasn’t bad!” Kate says, impressed despite herself. “You were pretty close.”
Batgirl shoots her an incredulous look, to which Kate smiles back reassuringly.
“Just figure it out already, would you,” Batgirl mutters. “That way, O can’t kill me.”
Kate clings to the one part of that sentence she can make sense of. “Who’s O?”
Batgirl sighs.
*
It hits her eventually.
Steph sits next to her in Phil480 and vents her frustration on her notepad, as she had been doing the first time they’d met, scrawling grumpy spirals and angry black clouds and the occasional vengeful bat -
- wait. Wait.
Her eyes are blue and her hair is blonde and she has a smile with the force of the sun and Kate is the biggest idiot to ever walk this planet, oh my god.
She doesn’t hear another word of the lecture.
Afterwards, she grabs Steph’s arm as she’s leaving, and pulls her back round the corner.
“What?” Steph eyes her with concern. “Are you ok?”
“You were drawing bats!”
“Yeah,” Steph says innocently, “What of it?”
Kate holds her hands up to Steph’s face, leaving holes between her fingers for her eyes. “I told you eye color was important, but yet you mock my glasses-”
Steph grins, grabbing her wrists and spinning her round enthusiastically. “Finally.”
“You could’ve told me!”
Steph just continues dancing round, Kate caught up in her enthusiasm. “This is so great, I am so happy! We’re going to go out and beat the bad guys up and then we’ll come back and have a sleepover and eat waffles and talk about how everyone in Phil480 is an idiot and I can paint your nails purple and we’ll watch stupid movies and -”
“Breathe.” Kate grabs her hands. She can’t quite make the leap between this excited teenager offering a manicure and the scourge of the underworld who can break bones like it’s nothing.
“My mom will love you!” Steph babbles, still bouncing up and down. “And O definitely can’t kill me this way, because you figured it out all by yourself, right?”
“Well, I -”
“Oh, please please please can we punch people and eat waffles, please.” Steph is practically vibrating.
Kate grins. “Pizza at mine, a bit of punching after, then we can do the nail and movie thing.”
“What about waffles?” Steph pouts.
“Waffles in the morning. They’re a breakfast food.”
“They’re an all-the-time food,” Steph protests, but she’s smiling and bouncing and grabbing a pen and paper and copying down Kate’s address before dashing to her next class.
Kate smiles all the way home, because what could be better than two of her best friends turning out to be the same person? She’s just starting to wrap her head around it, to compare things they’ve said and the way they say them, and concludes that she is the biggest idiot to ever walk this planet.
The only things she can’t quite make sense of are the phone number scrawled on her hand and Batgirl’s jabs about milkshakes and yards, and - what was it? She thinks tentatively of the way she teaches Steph to shoot, the way she ends up in her space more often than not, and she’s not really sure what she’s supposed to make of that.
One thing at a time, anyway.
*
They eat pizza, Steph picking off all the olives and throwing them to Kate, who catches them in her mouth to enthusiastic applause.
They don the purple and do a bit of punching, Steph lends Kate some batarangs to see how lethal she can be with them. (Answer: very.)
Afterwards, they wear matching purple pajamas and watch terrible B movies on Kate’s laptop, each snuggled comfortably on either side of her bed.
Unsurprisingly, Steph’s a cuddler. She falls asleep on Kate’s shoulder and stays surgically attached all night.
*
“When did you move in here, anyway?” Kate says, Steph sprawled across her bed beside her, frowning at a magazine.
“Since you weren’t my mom and had a sweet place all to yourself?” Steph says innocently. “Pass the popcorn.”
Kate doesn’t actually mind that Steph’s become a permanent fixture. It’s a token protest.
She sighs at her laptop screen. “What’s an intelligent way to say someone’s argument is bullshit?”
“Say it’s a fallacy. I use that a lot.” Steph flips the page of the magazine. “More importantly; what does your nail polish say about you?”
“That my best friend has terrible brush control, probably,” Kate says idly, frowning at her laptop. “I’m just not sure that it’s a fallacy, but I can’t think how to say -”
“Kate.” Steph says seriously, putting a hand on her shoulder. “As your best friend, apparently-” here she sneaks Kate a sidelong glance “- I refuse to let Phil480 drive you insane. You don’t need a good mark, just the credits. So just whip up three thousand words of crap and be done with it.”
Kate sighs, shuts her laptop with a click. “Fine. I’ll do it later.”
“That’s the spirit!” Steph says, turning back to the magazine. “Red means you’re in love, by the way.”
“Huh,” Kate looks down at her chipped nails, inexpertly painted over some of the cuticles. “So if you painted them, does that mean you’re in love, or that you think I’m in love, or that you’re in love with - ”
That sentence ran away with her a little. She reigns it in and tries to look nonchalant.
Steph is silent for a terrifying moment, and then laughs, a little weakly. “I don’t think Elle thought it out in that much detail, somehow.”
Kate lets out the breath she’d been holding. “Crappy journalism.”
“Totally.”
There’s another awkward silence, and Kate chews her lip.
“Pizza?” She says finally, and Steph grins, because there’s a language they both understand.
*
“Ah, crap.” Batgirl mutters. “Out of batarangs.”
“Can’t you call them something else?” Kate feels the same way about cheesily named equipment as she does about domino masks. (They’re tacky.) She’ll stick with glasses and some good old fashioned arrows, thank you very much.
“Nope, not negotiable,” Steph rummages around in her belt. “Ahah! Bow, please.”
Kates hands it and an arrow over, frowning. “I can shoot something, if you need-”
“No way,” Steph hisses, eyes narrowing. “That bastard broke my finger, I am taking him down myself.” She stick something small and round on the end of the arrow. “If I aim for his feet…”
“There’s a slight wind,” Kate offers. “Bear a little left.”
“Got it.” Steph takes careful aim, drawing in a steady breathe. “Here goes-”
She makes the shot. It hits the guy in the foot, who falls to the ground with a scream, the little pellet she’d attached fizzing out thick smoke. Perfect distraction.
“Gotcha.” She breathes, and Kate wants to clap. It was amazing. She’s making so much progress.
“Good plan, Batman,” she says, earning a filthy look, and they drop down into the smoke to start phase two: punching.
The guy may have an arrow in his foot, but he’s still got a whole bunch of knives and two good arms. He is no match for a Bat scorned, however, and Steph takes him out with one exuberant punch. This time, Kate can’t help but clap, and Steph turns to give her a bow and a jubilant grin.
Kate knows that Steph is not the most valued member of the Bat clan. She knows that Red Robin has a stick up his ass about her abilities, she knows that Robin makes it clear he preferred the last Batgirl, and that Batman, for all his tact, rains down on her with gentle disapproval.
She just can’t for the life of her see why. Steph is amazing. She’s dedicated and brutal and ruthlessly efficient and kind and beautiful and a total dork and contagiously enthusiastic and -
- oh. Oh.
Is this unexpected? Kate thinks it might be another incident of her being painfully dense.
She needs to mull this over. At length.
*
It’s difficult to mull anything over when the object of your mulling seems to be in your bed more often than not. Snoring quietly and being weirdly adorable whilst doing it.
*
There’s some kind of travelling fair in town, and Steph must have a bizarre sixth sense for this, because she drags Kate all the way across town on a whim - and there it is. Kate sighs at length, because their happy Saturday of shoe-shopping is clearly no more, and lets Steph pull her by the wrist round the various rides and stalls with affected resignation.
“I really do want some new boots, you know,” she says mournfully.
Steph whips round to present her with an enormous bag of cotton candy. “Consolation prize?”
“Oh, wow,” Kate says fervently. “You’re right, this was a brilliant idea. I will never doubt you again.”
Steph grins. “You are such a cheap date.”
Interesting.
Kate stuffs a ridiculously large amount of cotton candy into her mouth and grins back, cheeks comically full. “Don’t forget incredibly sexy.”
“How could I?” Steph says dryly, grabbing her wrist again. “Come on, I wanna moonbounce.”
It turns out there’s some kind of stupid age limit on the moonbounce, and Steph looks devastated. Kate doesn’t like that.
She frowns, whips out her sunglasses, and thrusts the cotton candy towards Steph. “Hold this.”
“What are you-”
Kate is magical, and her daddy didn’t raise no fool, or something, and so she flashes the moonbounce attendant a winning smile and blinds him with her rhetoric. She also lies a little bit (“It’s her birthday”) and impresses on him the gravity of the situation (“Look, I'm trying for a big romantic gesture here. Help a girl out.”) He gives in gracefully, and even gives her a particularly unsubtle thumbs up and wink as she delivers the news to a delighted Steph.
“You’re magic,” Steph squeals, and Kate nods, because duh, but she basks in it anyway.
They kick their shoes off and start bouncing and shrieking. It’s brilliant.
There’s just one problem, though -
“Urgh, my boobs,” Kate whines, “if I’d known we were going to be doing so much bouncing-”
“Pfft,” Steph shoots her a mischievous grin. “Just hold ‘em.” She demonstrates. “So much better!”
Soon, they’re both bouncing and shrieking and also clutching their boobs, and Kate can’t stop laughing. (Hey, it works.)
“That’s inappropriate,” a parent of a concerned child sniffs through the netting (the children themselves couldn’t care less.) “There are children-”
“THEY’RE JUST BOOBS, ASSHOLE,” Steph yells - and that’s about when they get kicked out the moonbounce.
“Sorry, ladies,” the attendant says awkwardly, “I hate to spoil your fun, but-”
“It’s fine,” Kate says quickly, before he can say anything else. “We’re leaving.”
“Happy birthday anyway,” he says to a bemused Steph, “have a nice day!”
He flashes Kate another incredibly seedy wink. It makes her want to gag.
She grabs Steph’s wrist and puts as much distance between them as possible.
“So it’s my birthday, is it?” Steph says, linking her arms through Kate’s. “You know what birthday girls get?”
“What do birthday girls get?” Kate has no idea what she’s going to say, but she’s already autocompleted it in her head with about a hundred things she is definitely not going to say.
“Waffles?” Steph says hopefully, and ok, that’s not quite what she was hoping for, but she can go for that.
“Pizza and waffles,” Kate declares. “My treat.”
*
“There are candles here,” Steph says, “in empty wine bottles.”
“Yes,” Kate says, because there are.
“And easy listening music.”
“Yes.”
“And mood lighting.”
“Yes?” Kate raises her eyebrows. “Do you want to go somewhere else, or-”
“I’m just saying,” Steph says furtively, “this is a couples restaurant. It’s romantic.”
“Oh.” Kate shakes out her napkin. “I suppose.”
There’s a brief silence in which Kate consults her menu nonchalantly and Steph stares her down across the table.
“Is this a date?”
“It’s your birthday,” Kate says, which is both untrue and also not an answer to that question.
“It’s not, though.” Steph says uncertainly. “You know that, right?”
Kate finally looks up to give her a skeptical look. “Of course I do, I’m not that terrible a friend. Do you want any sides?”
“A friend,” Steph echoes, sounding totally bewildered. “Garlic bread. Do friends go on dates?”
“Excellent choice.” Kate signals for the waiter and makes their order, while Steph just sort of blinks down at her cutlery with intense confusion.
Steph evidently decides this line of conversation is getting her nowhere, because she launches into an enthusiastic tirade about the merits of calzone over pizza. (She’s wrong. She’s so very wrong. But she’s super cute when she’s being wrong, so it’s ok.)
After their pizza, Kate orders them a dessert to share, and Steph glares at her.
“Are you messing with me?”
“Nope.” Kate says, licking her spoon clean very thoroughly. “I thought you wanted waffles?”
“Obscene,” Steph mutters, but she attacks her half of the waffle with gusto. “You’re obscene and ridiculous, and really, really bad at this.”
They end up fencing with their spoons for the last piece of waffle.
*
They swap costumes for the night, just for fun.
“Wow,” Kate says, “I think I might have a thing for capes. This is awesome.” She does a little twirl.
“My hips are so cold.” Steph rubs her arms and looks forlorn. “This is so flimsy, I feel naked. And lopsided. And don’t get me started on the underwear situation-”
“Oh hush, you big wuss,” Kate says, and punches her in the arm. Steph winces. “See? It hurts when you do that.”
“Of course it does! I’m actually wearing protective materials!”
“You Bats have no style.” Kate says, but gives the cape another swoosh. “Ok, except the capes. I freaking love the cape.”
Steph casts her costume a longing look. She can pull out all the puppy eyes she wants; it is Kate’s for tonight and she is keeping it. She has spiked things on her arms and she feels super cool.
She does take pity on her later though, when they’re on a mini stake-out, and wraps her cape around Steph in a big Bat cuddle.
*
They have a movie marathon after class. It’s only two in the afternoon, but movie marathons call for pajamas, so they suit up, crack open the popcorn, and sprawl across Kate’s bed.
Kate sort of accidentally maybe on purpose drifts closer and closer until she’s nestled against Steph’s shoulder.
“Kate,” Steph says, between onscreen explosions. “This is probably really bad timing because I’m wearing your pajamas and I don’t want to walk home in the rain without any shoes, so can you promise not to kick me out?”
“Why would I kick you out?”
“Because,” Steph says, “I’m about to ask if you’re trying to seduce me, and I might be wrong?”
Kate sits up, and pretends to consider it. “Do you feel seduced?”
Steph squints at her. “Uh, a little - look, can we be serious about this for one second, because I am asking a serious question and I don’t know if you’re just messing with me or-”
“Shut up,” Kate says, “and let me seduce you in peace.”
Stephs makes a small, confused squeaking noise.
“At least,” Kate adds, remembering her manners, “if that’s ok with you?”
“If that’s ok with - I asked you for archery lessons!” Steph shrieks. “I wrote my phone number on your hand! That’s, like, so classic I can’t even - have you ever watched a movie?”
“Given how many you’ve watched with me, I think that’s a pretty safe bet-”
“Oh my god,” Steph says, rubbing her face with hands, “Oh my god, just shut up and seduce me again. You’re terrible at this, just stop talking.”
“Fine!” Kate yells, and she grabs the front of Steph’s (her) pajamas and hauls her closer. “Maybe I will!”
They’re both laughing too much for it to be much of a kiss, but there’s plenty of time for all that.
It’s only two in the afternoon.
*
Kate does eventually meet Batman. In her head, she’s making an impossible shot and looking impossibly cool while doing it, but in reality, she’s kind of not doing the job he asked them to in favour of making out with her girlfriend. So that’s a pretty sterling first impression right there.
“Um,” Batman says, coughing pointedly. “Hi. Should I come back later? Because I’d hate to interrupt-”
“Nothing to interrupt!” Steph shrieks, and stands to attention comically. “I am so ready to fight crime. Just give me some crime, and I swear I will fight it so hard it won’t know what hit it.”
Kate straightens her sunglasses languidly. “What she said.”
From behind Batman comes a tiny little snigger. Batman swats at the small sniggering human, who surely must be Robin. He looks like Christmas came early.
Neither of them are anything like Kate expected.
“We’re leaving,” Batman says firmly, “O will let you know what’s happening.” He turns to give Kate an extremely un-Batman-like smile. “Nice to meet you, Hawkeye. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“All good, I hope,” Kate says, and Robin starts sniggering again.
Batman glares at him. “He means yes.”
“That’s good,” Kate says, “because I could shoot him in the butt with my taser arrow if he doesn’t.” She smirks at the tiny human, who scowls, but stops laughing. Result.
Batman laughs easily - can this get any weirder? - and leaps backwards onto a wall in an exceedingly spritely way, with a teasingly solemn: “Keep up the good work, ladies.”
They disappear round the corner, and Kate turns to Steph, speechless. “Keep up the good work?”
“He’s trying to be funny. He does that.”
“He’s not what I expected.” Kate says. “Neither of them were.”
“They’re kind of new to this, too.” Steph laughs. “Everyone’s trying out a new suit.”
“Any other vacancies I should be aware of?” Kate says, and it’s half a joke, and half - actually, maybe -
“I’ll keep you posted.” Steph sounds amused and pleased. “Although, I know you like eggplant and capes…”
“Keep talking.”
“I might have something for you.” Steph grins. “It’s got a hood.”
Kate pouts. “Can I keep the glasses?”
“Wouldn’t be you without them, right?”
“Right.” Kate says, pleased, and pulls Steph closer. “So, where were we...?”
“I think shirking our responsibilities?” Steph taps her ear piece. “I’m supposed to call O and -”
“Fine, ok.” Kate sighs, but doesn’t let go. “Let’s wrap this up and then go kiss on a rooftop and make an epic, romantic silhouette. Your cape can billow in the wind.”
Steph giggles. “Your cape thing is out of control. I think you need one.”
“Ok,” Kate says, “we’ll match.”
Steph’s grin is dazzling.