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Stephanie Brown flopped back onto the couch like a marionette with cut strings, arms stretching overhead until her shoulders popped loud enough to rival Gotham gunfire. Every muscle screamed in protest — a symphony of pain that had been performing nonstop since Arkham’s latest jailbreak. Gotham’s most unhinged were allergic to peace, apparently.
The TV blinked to life, dragging her back to civilian reality. Some show she’d sworn Cass had to watch — cultural enrichment, Steph called it, as if meme literacy were part of the Bat curriculum. Last week Bruce had made them all watch some prehistoric piece about a snarky talking car. Halfway through, the silent alarm blared. DefCon 2. Classic Gotham: barely one episode in before someone loses their mind and breaks out of an asylum.
Now everyone else was asleep — the boys, Alfred, even the house ghosts. Everyone except her and Cassandra Cain, who currently looked half-melted against the opposite armrest, eyes glazed but watchful. Steph could practically feel Cass’s attention on her, even when the girl pretended to be interested in a cartoon cat’s marital dispute with a mouse.
Steph’s eyelids drooped. She needed something caffeinated, or possibly divine intervention. She should crash — Cass would definitely tell her to. But Cass was here, warm and real and breathing steady across the couch, and Steph wasn’t ready for the night to end.
Then Cass moved, all effortless grace and alarming competency for someone who was technically supposed to be resting. She stood in front of Steph, wordless and expectant. Steph tried to mimic dignity. It worked for about two seconds — or until her exhaustion hit like a freight train. Cass offered her hand. Steph took it. Electricity, or maybe just adrenaline, hummed in her veins.
Cass didn’t speak — she didn’t need to. Her grip said, You’re done, idiot. Bed. Now.
Steph followed. Or maybe Cass carried her; hard to tell where walking ended and being upheld began. The hall blurred into dark wood and identical rugs — part haunted museum, part luxury labyrinth. It wasn’t until Cass stopped before the wrong door that it clicked.
“Wait,” Steph managed. Cass just smiled — small, secretive, devastating.
Inside Cass’s room, warmth replaced all that gothic chill. Mirrors. Ballet bars. Bladed weaponry. Polaroids. Steph. So many pictures of her. She pretended not to notice.
Cass guided her behind a screen, mimed “clothes off.”
Steph obeyed, too tired to argue and too dazed to blush properly. When Cass reappeared with soft, clean clothes, she dressed Steph with the same precision she used when disarming a thug — quick, collecting, quietly thorough.
The zipper whispered shut. Cass’s fingertips brushed skin. Steph’s heart forgot how to function for one alarming, exhilarating beat.
By the time Steph’s brain rebooted, she was warm, horizontal, and wrapped in darkness that smelled faintly of lavender and laundry detergent.
When she woke, there was light slipping across a ceiling she didn’t recognise — until she did.
Cass’s room.
Cass’s bed.
Cass’s clothes.
Steph blinked at the borrowed T-shirt, soft and oversized, and smiled before flopping back into the sheets.
“Yeah,” she murmured to the empty room, “moving out can wait.”