Fic (DCFFA): Waiting for What Will and Won't
Title: Waiting for What Will and Won't
Author: angel_gidget
Claim: Tim Drake/Cassie Sandsmark
Characters/Pairing: Tim/Cassie, Kon/Cassie
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2,322
Prompt: #42. Freeze Ray
Summary: Five comparisons Cassie Sandsmark would come to regret, and one promise that made all the difference. Requested by amichandrn.
Disclaimer: Me no own.
Author's Notes/Warnings: Done for dcu_freeforall. Table found here. So yes, this is that one fic that has just been taking forever 'cause I've been that lazy. Not enough extrapolation for my satisfaction, and not enough subtext, but at least it's there. So the rest of you enjoy.
Cassie isn't sure what she's singing. She knows that the dishwasher--the most faulty piece of equipment in Titan's Tower--is broken again, and she's left to clumsily warble whatever tune she heard last to help pass the time as she does the one job she has at the tower which really involves no pressure at all. She only realizes she's mumbling something about "Doin' it all niiiigghht long..." when Kon comes in, looks her up and down, and waggles his eyebrows suggestively.
The waggling doesn't cease until Cassie takes a dishrag and snaps it against his forehead.
Kon knows his options--help or get out--and he beats a hasty retreat. It's not that he doesn't like to help, but that he knows she wants to do this slowly, and they both know he hasn't the patience for it right now. Not after Bart spent the better part of half an hour lecturing everyone on the merits of Mark Twain so they wouldn't get the wrong impression after fighting and imprisoning a fellow calling himself "The Huckleberry Hustler."
But once Kon waltzes out the door, Cassie is left with her thoughts again. Her memories.
It wasn't long ago that she was washing dishes and singing a different song. It was one of those songs that almost had no business being on the radio, but was anyway. As far as she knew, the rest of the team had gone out for ice cream and a well-deserved break. So it shouldn't have mattered that she was singing at the top of her lungs...
"Let me see your peacock..."
... except that at that moment, she felt him looking at her. When she turned, Tim stood in the doorway, with his mask, cape, and gloves set aside. He was wearing what Cassie thought of as his not-quite-poker face. It was a temporary look that meant he was about to let her know what he was thinking. Maybe. Sort of.
Cassie felt her cheeks begin to burn, followed by her entire face as Tim's lip began to slowly quirk upward. She could feel her blush go one degree hotter and one shade redder, for each millimeter that his mouth moved. One smirk. Just one smirk. It wasn't fair.
He didn't say anything. But he helped her with the dishes.
*
When they come back from tangling with that one evil chick with the swords, Kon's shirt is slashed to pieces. Cassie's patience is already at wits end. It had taken actual willpower to resist the temptation to fight with Rose while dealing with the girl, but Cassie knew if she actually compared Ravager to the deranged hack-and-slash chick, they would never see the end of the fight.
All of Kon's shirts are in the laundry. He refuses to take off the one he's wearing, wrecked as it is. Normally, he wouldn't have had a problem walking around shirtless because Cassie had asked. But she hadn't asked, really. She'd ordered. Rather snappishly, she can now admit to herself.
It's an impasse. When Kon is at the tower, he never wears anything besides his black "S" shirts. They are comfortable. They are his. He lounges in them and he fights in them, even if they are a little messed up. End of story.
But Cassie sees the shirt, torn and bloodied (not his blood, but still)... and it makes her want to scream. She resists telling him that if he let the blood dry, it would be exactly like the shirt she slept with after they buried him. Not unlike the one Tim kept in the basement, preserved as a memorial.
Instead of screaming, Cassie whirls around, striding to her own room to cool off. She yanks off her own shirt, sweat-stained and dirtied, and hops into the shower. When she emerges, searching through her own closet, she looks for anything other than a uniform. Her eyes are continually drawn to a gray v-neck that isn't hers.
It's Tim's.
Cassie doesn't even bother asking herself why she grabs it, and pulls it over her head.
It doesn't smell like blood or dirt. It smells like some crazy-expensive cologne that you could only find in Gotham.
She inhales and exhales.
Cassie remembers how annoyed she used to get about Tim and his civilian clothes. He wore them so rarely at the tower, and when he did, it seemed like he was never consistent. Ragged jeans and hoodies one day. Designer dress-shirts and expensive cologne a week later. Streamlined tank-tops and track pants the week after that.
She was waiting for a clue as to who he was without the mask. He was the closest person to her who was still--around, really--and yet she didn't really know...
She'd thought he was still hiding himself. Still being incognito in some way by never being the same guy without the mask when he was without the mask.
But she gets it now.
Tim was simply more complex than one look or style.
*
Kon treats her bed like it's some kind of designated space, either meant for making out, or else some hallowed ground that he's not supposed to touch. He's never been comfortable just sitting there, without expectation of some sort.
When he visits her that night, he tries to apologize. He's not sure for what, but he eyes the bed apprehensively. If he sits down--if she encourages him to--they're going to have a talk. They're going to bring up everything that happened that day and hammer at it until he knows exactly why she had tears in her eyes. It's going to hurt, and it's going to be intense, and it will be unpleasant, but he is willing to do it. Because she might need it.
She just needs to tell him to sit down.
Instead, she tells him it's okay, and she's having a hormonal day.
He takes her at her word, and goes downstairs to see what's cooking for dinner. It's Gar's turn, and he's good at it.
She blinks and for a moment, sees Tim stretched out casually on her bed, in t-shirt and tights, because the tower always brought out that mix of casual and ready-to-rock in him. Or maybe that was just the fact that he was with friends.
She can't remember the details of a single conversation at the moment. Just that he would slide in-and-out of mundane topics to job-related ones to ones that she wouldn't have touched with a fifty-foot lasso if it weren't for the fact that they all melded with him.
She knows from her studies as a child that the Spartans were the most religious of the Greeks. As the most war-like, they were the most respectful of the dead, the quickest to consider the gravity of life and death because they were always in the thick of it.
She wonders if being a Bat, mortal and breakable in the thick of the madness, makes someone better able to lay down on her bed, take her hand, and gently ask her if she's still thinking of that old man she couldn't save today.
She wonders if maybe it was just being Tim.
*
Kon has this philosophy/strategy/habit-thing. Cassie isn't sure where he learned it, but it usually works on her.
If they argue, he apologizes. Eventually she figured out that half the time he doesn't have a clue what he's apologizing for, but he does it first and he does it so earnestly that it usually does a pretty good job of making her let things go.
But this time, he bought roses.
It's supposed to be romantic and sweet, and usually, it would be, but to Cassie it is painful and just means that he hasn't really gotten to know the girl she's become yet.
Later, when they're all fighting that one sonic-boom robot menacing the city, Cassie... freaks out a little. Bart's communicator is faulty and she panics. Just for a moment. And kind of chews Bart out for it afterwards. Kon defends him and calls her overprotective. Says she needs to trust both of them to handle things more.
He's right, but he doesn't understand.
Kon knows what it's like to see Bart hurt. To see him go down, and rush him to medical. But Kon doesn't know what it's like to lean down and help pick up the coffin knowing Bart's body is in it.
Tim knows better than to send roses for anything. He hates the smell as passionately as she does, remembering the way it mixes with polished wood, ceremonial candles, and the sound of people praying and sniffling in tandem.
Cassie remembers what it's like to break down mid-elegy, only to be held by the one person left. Someone who understands that to be a pallbearer once, is to be it once too many times.
She remembers, and almost wishes someone else would too.
*
When Kon pulls her behind him and takes the brunt of the ice-ray, Cassie just feels... weird.
Kon hasn't gotten all the Tower updates yet, so he has no reason to know that she's a lot tougher than she used to be. That an ice-ray isn't going to phase her any more than an out-of-countrol jet would... except that he doesn't know she can handle that either.
She thanks him, tells him she can handle it, but thanks him anyway. Her eyes almost instinctively scan for snipers among the cult's members... they were usually the biggest threat to Robi--
She doesn't need to watch his back anymore. Even weirder.
A pang of realized nostalgia hits when she figures out that she misses being needed that way.
Wonder Girl knows damn well she shouldn't be waxing nostalgic for a time when some of her nearest and dearest were dead.
So she sucks it up, and tries to focus.
She kind of misses picking him up and carrying him. Sometimes he would smirk sarcastically or hardly notice. Other times, he would be so zeroed in on what they were doing that he would just wrap an arm around her neck and hold on so tightly that...
Focus.
*
When Cassie sees Tim arm-in-arm with Tam Fox on TV, she is unaffected by the girl's beauty, wealth, fame, or politics... but when she makes Tim laugh, Cassie feels her stomach drop.
That coldness at her center makes her stop and think.
It's none of her business. She should be glad that he has anything to laugh about at all. Glad that he visits and smiles when they pull him into those ridiculously huge group hugs. Glad that everyone is alive, and that everyone who didn't die is slowly getting their heads together.
It's strange to realize that Tim is faster at it than her. Strange to miss him this way, and strange to miss being the only one who knows him so well.
When Cassie looks into the proverbial mirror, she finds that she has some growing to do. Funny thing to realize that you need to learn how to be a happier version of yourself.
When Kon leans back on the couch, placing his head in her lap, she unthinkingly runs her fingers through his short hair, and she looks at him.
Really looks at him.
He has patience and kindness in spades, and as much as it frustrates her that he doesn't understand, it occurs to her now that she hasn't really tried to explain.
And he is listening. Has been all along.
He frowns a little when she turns off the TV, but once he realizes that she's staring at him, so intently, he focuses.
Even holds his breath, and it makes the coldness go away.
"Sometimes," she begins, "Sometimes I want to be alone, but it isn't what I need. I get... really bitchy about the things that remind me of when you were dead. Sometimes those things are so stupid, but you... you are wonderful and amazing and I am sorry for any moment when you thought you were the problem."
"Cassie--"
"Shhh. I don't like blood-soaked shirts with S's on them. I hate roses. They were all over your funeral and Bart's. I need you to protect my heart more than my body. I like that you do both, but tomorrow, I'll show you what I can really do."
"The flowers... God... I can..."
"I know what you were trying to do. You do NOT need to apologize for jack shi--"
"Still--"
"I will hurt you if you try to apologize for the flowers."
"... Yes, ma'am."
That smile is back. How the hell has she forgotten how much she missed that smile? She's only seen it a few days ago, doing the dishes...
That smile might also have something to do with the fact that she's gone from letting his head rest in her lap to outright cradling it there, leaning closer and wrapped around him.
He is being very, very good about not looking down her shirt while they hold a serious conversation. The smile on her own lips lets him know he will be rewarded for that.
"I am going to love you better."
It's a promise. He doesn't know the importance of it yet.
But he knows what's important.
He knows and Tim knows. Cassie has been slow on the uptake, but she's getting there now.
"Cass, I..." No apologies. "... I am down with this plan. I can totally get behind this plan. I am ready for this pl--"
She shouldn't have made him wait so long for the kind of kiss he's been wanting all week. She figures he won't mind being interrupted while she makes up for it.
It's the last lesson she takes from Tim for a while. She's been remembering a lot lately, but not what is crucial. She promises to fix it.
She remembers to live.
- end -
Author: angel_gidget
Claim: Tim Drake/Cassie Sandsmark
Characters/Pairing: Tim/Cassie, Kon/Cassie
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2,322
Prompt: #42. Freeze Ray
Summary: Five comparisons Cassie Sandsmark would come to regret, and one promise that made all the difference. Requested by amichandrn.
Disclaimer: Me no own.
Author's Notes/Warnings: Done for dcu_freeforall. Table found here. So yes, this is that one fic that has just been taking forever 'cause I've been that lazy. Not enough extrapolation for my satisfaction, and not enough subtext, but at least it's there. So the rest of you enjoy.
Cassie isn't sure what she's singing. She knows that the dishwasher--the most faulty piece of equipment in Titan's Tower--is broken again, and she's left to clumsily warble whatever tune she heard last to help pass the time as she does the one job she has at the tower which really involves no pressure at all. She only realizes she's mumbling something about "Doin' it all niiiigghht long..." when Kon comes in, looks her up and down, and waggles his eyebrows suggestively.
The waggling doesn't cease until Cassie takes a dishrag and snaps it against his forehead.
Kon knows his options--help or get out--and he beats a hasty retreat. It's not that he doesn't like to help, but that he knows she wants to do this slowly, and they both know he hasn't the patience for it right now. Not after Bart spent the better part of half an hour lecturing everyone on the merits of Mark Twain so they wouldn't get the wrong impression after fighting and imprisoning a fellow calling himself "The Huckleberry Hustler."
But once Kon waltzes out the door, Cassie is left with her thoughts again. Her memories.
It wasn't long ago that she was washing dishes and singing a different song. It was one of those songs that almost had no business being on the radio, but was anyway. As far as she knew, the rest of the team had gone out for ice cream and a well-deserved break. So it shouldn't have mattered that she was singing at the top of her lungs...
"Let me see your peacock..."
... except that at that moment, she felt him looking at her. When she turned, Tim stood in the doorway, with his mask, cape, and gloves set aside. He was wearing what Cassie thought of as his not-quite-poker face. It was a temporary look that meant he was about to let her know what he was thinking. Maybe. Sort of.
Cassie felt her cheeks begin to burn, followed by her entire face as Tim's lip began to slowly quirk upward. She could feel her blush go one degree hotter and one shade redder, for each millimeter that his mouth moved. One smirk. Just one smirk. It wasn't fair.
He didn't say anything. But he helped her with the dishes.
*
When they come back from tangling with that one evil chick with the swords, Kon's shirt is slashed to pieces. Cassie's patience is already at wits end. It had taken actual willpower to resist the temptation to fight with Rose while dealing with the girl, but Cassie knew if she actually compared Ravager to the deranged hack-and-slash chick, they would never see the end of the fight.
All of Kon's shirts are in the laundry. He refuses to take off the one he's wearing, wrecked as it is. Normally, he wouldn't have had a problem walking around shirtless because Cassie had asked. But she hadn't asked, really. She'd ordered. Rather snappishly, she can now admit to herself.
It's an impasse. When Kon is at the tower, he never wears anything besides his black "S" shirts. They are comfortable. They are his. He lounges in them and he fights in them, even if they are a little messed up. End of story.
But Cassie sees the shirt, torn and bloodied (not his blood, but still)... and it makes her want to scream. She resists telling him that if he let the blood dry, it would be exactly like the shirt she slept with after they buried him. Not unlike the one Tim kept in the basement, preserved as a memorial.
Instead of screaming, Cassie whirls around, striding to her own room to cool off. She yanks off her own shirt, sweat-stained and dirtied, and hops into the shower. When she emerges, searching through her own closet, she looks for anything other than a uniform. Her eyes are continually drawn to a gray v-neck that isn't hers.
It's Tim's.
Cassie doesn't even bother asking herself why she grabs it, and pulls it over her head.
It doesn't smell like blood or dirt. It smells like some crazy-expensive cologne that you could only find in Gotham.
She inhales and exhales.
Cassie remembers how annoyed she used to get about Tim and his civilian clothes. He wore them so rarely at the tower, and when he did, it seemed like he was never consistent. Ragged jeans and hoodies one day. Designer dress-shirts and expensive cologne a week later. Streamlined tank-tops and track pants the week after that.
She was waiting for a clue as to who he was without the mask. He was the closest person to her who was still--around, really--and yet she didn't really know...
She'd thought he was still hiding himself. Still being incognito in some way by never being the same guy without the mask when he was without the mask.
But she gets it now.
Tim was simply more complex than one look or style.
*
Kon treats her bed like it's some kind of designated space, either meant for making out, or else some hallowed ground that he's not supposed to touch. He's never been comfortable just sitting there, without expectation of some sort.
When he visits her that night, he tries to apologize. He's not sure for what, but he eyes the bed apprehensively. If he sits down--if she encourages him to--they're going to have a talk. They're going to bring up everything that happened that day and hammer at it until he knows exactly why she had tears in her eyes. It's going to hurt, and it's going to be intense, and it will be unpleasant, but he is willing to do it. Because she might need it.
She just needs to tell him to sit down.
Instead, she tells him it's okay, and she's having a hormonal day.
He takes her at her word, and goes downstairs to see what's cooking for dinner. It's Gar's turn, and he's good at it.
She blinks and for a moment, sees Tim stretched out casually on her bed, in t-shirt and tights, because the tower always brought out that mix of casual and ready-to-rock in him. Or maybe that was just the fact that he was with friends.
She can't remember the details of a single conversation at the moment. Just that he would slide in-and-out of mundane topics to job-related ones to ones that she wouldn't have touched with a fifty-foot lasso if it weren't for the fact that they all melded with him.
She knows from her studies as a child that the Spartans were the most religious of the Greeks. As the most war-like, they were the most respectful of the dead, the quickest to consider the gravity of life and death because they were always in the thick of it.
She wonders if being a Bat, mortal and breakable in the thick of the madness, makes someone better able to lay down on her bed, take her hand, and gently ask her if she's still thinking of that old man she couldn't save today.
She wonders if maybe it was just being Tim.
*
Kon has this philosophy/strategy/habit-thing. Cassie isn't sure where he learned it, but it usually works on her.
If they argue, he apologizes. Eventually she figured out that half the time he doesn't have a clue what he's apologizing for, but he does it first and he does it so earnestly that it usually does a pretty good job of making her let things go.
But this time, he bought roses.
It's supposed to be romantic and sweet, and usually, it would be, but to Cassie it is painful and just means that he hasn't really gotten to know the girl she's become yet.
Later, when they're all fighting that one sonic-boom robot menacing the city, Cassie... freaks out a little. Bart's communicator is faulty and she panics. Just for a moment. And kind of chews Bart out for it afterwards. Kon defends him and calls her overprotective. Says she needs to trust both of them to handle things more.
He's right, but he doesn't understand.
Kon knows what it's like to see Bart hurt. To see him go down, and rush him to medical. But Kon doesn't know what it's like to lean down and help pick up the coffin knowing Bart's body is in it.
Tim knows better than to send roses for anything. He hates the smell as passionately as she does, remembering the way it mixes with polished wood, ceremonial candles, and the sound of people praying and sniffling in tandem.
Cassie remembers what it's like to break down mid-elegy, only to be held by the one person left. Someone who understands that to be a pallbearer once, is to be it once too many times.
She remembers, and almost wishes someone else would too.
*
When Kon pulls her behind him and takes the brunt of the ice-ray, Cassie just feels... weird.
Kon hasn't gotten all the Tower updates yet, so he has no reason to know that she's a lot tougher than she used to be. That an ice-ray isn't going to phase her any more than an out-of-countrol jet would... except that he doesn't know she can handle that either.
She thanks him, tells him she can handle it, but thanks him anyway. Her eyes almost instinctively scan for snipers among the cult's members... they were usually the biggest threat to Robi--
She doesn't need to watch his back anymore. Even weirder.
A pang of realized nostalgia hits when she figures out that she misses being needed that way.
Wonder Girl knows damn well she shouldn't be waxing nostalgic for a time when some of her nearest and dearest were dead.
So she sucks it up, and tries to focus.
She kind of misses picking him up and carrying him. Sometimes he would smirk sarcastically or hardly notice. Other times, he would be so zeroed in on what they were doing that he would just wrap an arm around her neck and hold on so tightly that...
Focus.
*
When Cassie sees Tim arm-in-arm with Tam Fox on TV, she is unaffected by the girl's beauty, wealth, fame, or politics... but when she makes Tim laugh, Cassie feels her stomach drop.
That coldness at her center makes her stop and think.
It's none of her business. She should be glad that he has anything to laugh about at all. Glad that he visits and smiles when they pull him into those ridiculously huge group hugs. Glad that everyone is alive, and that everyone who didn't die is slowly getting their heads together.
It's strange to realize that Tim is faster at it than her. Strange to miss him this way, and strange to miss being the only one who knows him so well.
When Cassie looks into the proverbial mirror, she finds that she has some growing to do. Funny thing to realize that you need to learn how to be a happier version of yourself.
When Kon leans back on the couch, placing his head in her lap, she unthinkingly runs her fingers through his short hair, and she looks at him.
Really looks at him.
He has patience and kindness in spades, and as much as it frustrates her that he doesn't understand, it occurs to her now that she hasn't really tried to explain.
And he is listening. Has been all along.
He frowns a little when she turns off the TV, but once he realizes that she's staring at him, so intently, he focuses.
Even holds his breath, and it makes the coldness go away.
"Sometimes," she begins, "Sometimes I want to be alone, but it isn't what I need. I get... really bitchy about the things that remind me of when you were dead. Sometimes those things are so stupid, but you... you are wonderful and amazing and I am sorry for any moment when you thought you were the problem."
"Cassie--"
"Shhh. I don't like blood-soaked shirts with S's on them. I hate roses. They were all over your funeral and Bart's. I need you to protect my heart more than my body. I like that you do both, but tomorrow, I'll show you what I can really do."
"The flowers... God... I can..."
"I know what you were trying to do. You do NOT need to apologize for jack shi--"
"Still--"
"I will hurt you if you try to apologize for the flowers."
"... Yes, ma'am."
That smile is back. How the hell has she forgotten how much she missed that smile? She's only seen it a few days ago, doing the dishes...
That smile might also have something to do with the fact that she's gone from letting his head rest in her lap to outright cradling it there, leaning closer and wrapped around him.
He is being very, very good about not looking down her shirt while they hold a serious conversation. The smile on her own lips lets him know he will be rewarded for that.
"I am going to love you better."
It's a promise. He doesn't know the importance of it yet.
But he knows what's important.
He knows and Tim knows. Cassie has been slow on the uptake, but she's getting there now.
"Cass, I..." No apologies. "... I am down with this plan. I can totally get behind this plan. I am ready for this pl--"
She shouldn't have made him wait so long for the kind of kiss he's been wanting all week. She figures he won't mind being interrupted while she makes up for it.
It's the last lesson she takes from Tim for a while. She's been remembering a lot lately, but not what is crucial. She promises to fix it.
She remembers to live.
- end -