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To Cass’s left is the distinctive click of an unlocked door. Cass, wide-eyed and caught red-handed, whips around. She broke their contract.
Tim walks in. Scrolling on his phone, he doesn’t notice her until he puts it down. Flinches in surprise. Says, “Oh. Hey, Cass.” His eyes linger on her curiously with an undertone of irritation before they quickly flit down and away.
Content to pretend she isn’t here for now, he shrugs off his jacket and hangs it on a coat rack next to the door. He busies himself with anything that isn’t her.
Of course Tim has a coat rack, Cass thinks, weirdly bitter. But then she remembers that she has a coat rack, now, and they’re both people who have coat racks—they’re both people, with a father and friends and a lover and a life each, and Cass needs to get it together. She gently places the tea on his coffee table.
“Hello,” she tries, playing at normal. “How are you,” she asks. Her tone is flat, her expression is guarded, and she remembers too late that those are the kinds of not-normal things that remind Tim of how much he doesn’t like her, so she makes a questioning hum after. Nothing can ever make up for anything, but it’ll soothe Tim’s annoyance at the broken terms anyway.
Their unspoken contract: stay out of sight. How things are supposed to happen: Cass will climb through the window while Tim is in class, use his shower, drink his lemon tea, and leave—the only evidence of her should be the empty packet of a tea flavor that he never drinks in the trash. How things are supposed to happen: Tim will lock-pick her door while she’s patrolling, eat her snacks, write down inventions and ideas, and leave—the only evidence of him should be the crumpled notebook pages in Cass’s trash that she can’t read.
How things are not supposed to happen: Tim gets home early and sees Cass, terrible and thieving and guilty.
He drops his backpack and pours himself a cup of still-hot water from the kettle. “You’re, uh. You’re with Steph now. Right?” He doesn’t seem angry yet, Cass thinks, but Tim is always so muddled and conflicted and she doesn’t have the energy to extract sense out of his turned back, so she’s not sure. “Dick told me. There was a paper about it,” he continues quietly.
Being “with” Steph doesn’t begin to describe their relationship. But that’s true of all words for all things, so Cass just nods and then says “Yes,” when she remembers Tim isn’t looking at her.
“Right,” he mutters. Cass hates small talk. “Right.” He turns around with his own mug of tea, now—green, not lemon—and sits tentatively on the couch. The mug he chose is plain, thin, and white: he places it on a coaster and frowns at Cass’s patterned mug sat directly on the wood.
“That’ll leave a stain,” he murmurs.
Cass picks it back up. “Sorry.”
“No, uh, doesn’t matter. You’re fine.”
The quiet is tense and awkward. If only Steph were here—she never lets silences stretch.
Tim starts, “You—“ and cuts himself off. His lips curl into a sneer like he’s holding in his words or maybe forcing them out. He runs a hand through his hair and, face flushed in anger-shame-guilt, lowers the arm to grasp his knee with a stressed, white-knuckled grip. “You’re… good,” he continues. A glance sideways, frustration shining in his eyes. “You’re better with Steph than I am.” Pause. Stumble. “I mean—was.”
It means a lot of things; Tim always does. He’s a liar, most often, but his lies are meant to be truthful or they have kernels of truth in them, or they’re meant to make you overthink them to get sidetracked, or… whatever. Cass hates it. Every time he speaks she misses so much, only able to see what his body tells.
And his body thinks that she’s… mean. He thinks she’s weird and impolite and condescending because she doesn’t respond to his fake-words— she hates it. Can’t he just hit her already?
Cass responds after many moments of tripping over meanings she just can’t figure out. “Yes.” She looks at him warily and raises her chin. “I am good. I am better.”
That sounder meaner than Cass wanted it to be. But she is not the type of person to correct word-mistakes with more of them, so she just keeps her mouth shut and raises the mug to her face.
Tim rolls his eyes. He is hostile, disappointed, and thinking about how terrible she is again, but shoves those feelings to the side to make way for peace. “I’m.” Pause. Tim always stops and starts, chooses his words so carefully. Cass just wants him to hit her. “I’m happy for you,” he says finally. Resigned, quiet, and sad: Tim is very sad.
He’s waiting for her to say something that isn’t meaner than she wants. If Cass says something nice, even if he can tell she doesn’t mean it or that she doesn’t know why it has to be said, Tim will leave his own apartment to let her stay here while he hurts worse people than her. But he’ll leave unsatisfied and angry and quiet, and he will not sneak into her apartment during patrol: he won’t leave notes and he’ll be mad if Cass does.
Tim is always so sad and so complicated. She hates it.
“Okay,” she says finally. It’s not mean but it’s not nice either, so Tim freezes like the moment after you hit something, before the pain is processed.
He wants more. Getting her to say something nice hasn’t worked so he’s, against his own judgement, going to bait her into saying something mean. Cass can see how he prepares for making his statement: he is glaring eyes and bared teeth and curled lips, and his fingers tap against his knee in thought like he’s playing the violin. He only makes horror-movie screeches when Cass plucks him.
Finally, “She isn’t good at what we do,” he spits bitterly.
Cass thumps her mug down on the table. Hot tea sloshes onto her hand but she doesn’t flinch and Tim can see that from the corner of his eye. He isn’t scared—but he isn’t not, either.
He thinks she’s so terrible. Maybe she is.
“Don’t,” she demands harshly.
It’s clear he doesn’t… believe that, not really. That Steph is… bad. It’s more defensive: rearing back when hurt and spitting out venom. But he doesn’t not believe it, either.
Tim wants to hurt her. Tim always wants to hurt someone, and he never wants to want to hurt someone, and he doesn’t know what to do about it.
If he just hit her, it’d be… sorted out. It’d be simple. Easy. A winner and a loser and an argument laid to rest.
But Tim isn’t those things— he isn’t simple or easy and Cass is so, so terrible. So, enraged, he shouts: “What happened to It’s not Batman fault? What happened to She messed up and she died?”
He is asking, not with his mouth, Why are we always fighting? Why can’t we agree on just one thing?
Cass wants to tell him, Because we’re People-Who-Fight. You can’t… change that. And she wants to tell him, Just hit me and get it over with!
“Steph is Batgirl,” she growls.
“She’s not like you. She can’t—“
“No one’s like me!“
Tim scoffs. “What about Batman?” His tone is mocking.
What is that supposed to mean? Cass scans his eyes but they’re guarded, a thousand colors that make brown instead of a rainbow: muddy and terrible instead of clear and varied.
Cass can’t figure them out. She’s stupid. She is stupid and so terrible and Batman could never be those things—is that it? Is that what he’s trying to tell her?
“Don’t say that to me,” Cass growls.
Tim springs up from the couch. His face is scrunched and furious. “What am I supposed to say to you, huh? What would you understand?”
Cass stands up and hits him.
He didn’t expect it, she knows that. A bruise will blossom, visible and clear and varied in color, on his cheekbone by tomorrow—tomorrow, which means Tuesday, which means school because Tim is a normal person and so people will notice. Cass is ruining things again.
“Fuck you,” he spits and lunges for her.
Cass could dodge. She doesn’t. Tim didn’t expect that, either. He braces for hitting the floor: begins to roll how he should, tucks himself up into a hard-to-hurt package, and is shocked to find a body still underneath him. His hands flutter— they want to take advantage of this, they want to hurt her. Tim wants to hurt her, but he doesn’t want to want to, so he hesitates.
And Cass wants to be hurt, so she provokes him. She lifts up and headbutts him right in the forehead.
Now, Tim’s angry. Now, he’ll finally give in and do what they both want.
Knuckles meet her face—finally, finally, finally. Their bruises will match. Her cheekbone smarts in a way that it hasn’t for years and Cass relishes it. Tim lifts his other hand and it’s more knuckles, more pain, more bruises. Cass’ nose will bleed in a minute from now.
She smiles. Finally, something familiar and simple and easy. Thank you, she wants to say but doesn’t because Tim is speaking her language now.
The smile confuses him. His attack stops short and the guilt comes back tenfold.
“Wh—“
Cass shushes him. Her words, now.
She starts to sit up and, pacified, Tim scrambles off of her— he’s so confused and guilty that’s it’s like he’s taken Cass’ place. He sits with knees collected beneath him; she mimics it.
Cass presses against his hurt cheekbone gently but firmly and he flinches in pain. She presses against her own ten times harder, smiling all the while, and he flinches but in shame this time.
It’s okay, she tells him in her language. This is what you’re supposed to do. This is who we’re supposed to be.
Cass presses a kiss to his forehead and takes her leave silently, satisfied as she can only be while in pain.