"I'm really sorry but there seems to have been a mix-up with your booking," The hotel receptionist claims, red nails clicking away on her keyboard, "We only have a room with one bed for you. I am so sorry about that, but we're truly swampe with students for spring break."
"Ugh, that's fine," Steph sighs, slipping her credit card across. It doesn't really matter how many beds there are in the room, they just need to set up a base of operations today if they're to go out tonight.
"That is so not cool," Cass deadpans behind her, playing the role of a cool unaffected college girl on her spring break.
"It's whatever, Kaylynn," Steph grins back, jingling the keys of the room on her finger, "It's not like we need it for tonight."
"We're going to get krunk tonight," She agrees, a slight curve to her lips, which look oh so stunning in black lipstick.
"Uh, yeah, totally," Stephanie grins back, hoping her concealer hides the blush.
Steph adjusts her wig before glueing down the lace. She looks strange in dark brown hair, though not as strange as the red wig she traveled in. The red clashed horribly with her natural coloring but the brown looks okay, if just freaky when she's looking at herself.
Once the wig looks natural enough, she begins applying the rest of the makeup. There's a prosethetic nose piece she's supposed to apply and the glue for it feels cold and wet on her face.
Cass has a much less involved process for donning her disguise: makeup, a dress and a long, black wig.
But then again, Cass is not the bait, she is.
She glances at the other woman in the mirror as she brushes concealer all over her face, hiding the faint freckles across her cheeks. Cass is adjusting her own wig, brushing a hairbrush through it, inky black hair spilling over her shoulder like a waterfall on a moonless light, only visible by the light it reflects.
She's never seen Cass with long hair. Back when they were still young, just barely getting to know each other and what it means to be a hero, Cass had longer hair--reaching just a little below her shoulder--before she cut it to the bob-length she keep it at now.
She looks... older, with the long hair. More elegant, more refined.
She looks a lot like her mom.
Steph cuts her gaze back to her own reflection, thrown into a well of unnamed emotions with the recollection of Shiva, and consequently her own father. With the brown hair and dark contacts in her eyes, she doesn't look like her father.
Underneath this veneer, Steph can admit that she's a lot more like her father than she wants--and not just in looks.
The long, blonde hair. The thin face and the strong nose. Blue-grey eyes. Long, lithe builds.
They were both headstrong, ambitious, petty thieves who tried to steal their way into the spotlight.
"Hey." A gentle nudge against her elbow. "What's wrong?"
"Oh," Steph blinked, breaking out of her reverie, "Nothing. Just thinking."
Cass gazed at her, eyes deep and dark and drawing her in by the second, the urge to spill all this heartsick misery rising by the second within her.
"Really, it's nothing," She tries again, giving a grin this time.
Cass hums, seeming to accept that as an answer, turning back to conceal her own moles and then draw on a few new ones.
Just focus on the mission, Steph. Think about the people going missing. She thinks to herself, turning back to keep applying her own makeup. Channel your inner Bruce.
Sitting in the backseat of the Uber, Steph takes a few selfies on her phone for the cover but also for herself.
"Pose for the camera!" Holding up the sparkly phone above her, she pulls Cass in, squishing them together. Cass throws up a peace sign, a suave smirk playing on her lips as Steph pouts and does an exagerrated wink.
She snaps a few, changing their poses every so often before she deems it enough. She scrolls through, liking a few for later. Cass looks so hot, dressed in a goth-y aesthetic. Her dress is technically a two-piece, short black minit skirt and a tight crop top, with a sheer sparkly mesh over it and down her arms. The smokey eye look only draws out her gorgeous black eyes. The black lipstick has not made return, this time a dark red glossy lip makes her look oh so kissable.
Cass is biting her lip and Steph wants to kiss that worry away. She swallows the desire down, choosing to say, "Nervous?"
"Lipstick feels weird. Too sticky." Cass says out loud, while privately signing 'Never been to club before' behind the driver and the sign being reversed so Steph can read it.
'No big deal," She signs back, 'Let me do the work with the marks. You just keep an eye on the place and place the bugs. Not like we're going to be drinking.'
The music is booming in the club, feeling the bass in her bones. It's Pitbull, something or other playing and Steph is just another college girl partying the night away. In the writhing mass of bodies, she dances her night away, moves only the tipsy would do, or the especially bold like Steph.
When she lifts her head, she sees Cass on the edge of her vision. Underneath the dazzling lights, she's a smexy, hot, smoking fox--and right now, she's giving her the signal. Her thumb taps the rim of her mocktail before it's followed by the sign of 'bathroom'.
Their marks have arrived.
Steph heads towards the bathroom too, side-stepping and 'exuse me'-ing between the tens of people dancing and frotting on each other, too lost in the club sauce to really hear her. or just hear her in general, over the music.
She shivers once she makes it out of the crowd, no longer kept warm by the dancing and the hot heat of bodies breathing around her.
As soon as she steps into the bathroom, there's a hand around her wrist and she's being pulled into an empty stall, past a gaggle of drunk girls chorusing 'no, *you're* beautiful' and being pushed to sit on the toilet seat.
"Um," She stares up at Cass who's looming over her with a look in her eye.
"Need to look drunker." Is all she says, stepping closer into her space. Steph automatically spreads her leg, as much as she can in this tight dress, for her, head tilting back follow the action. A delicate, scarred hand reaches for her temple, beginning to run through it gently. Even this, she does so beautiful, so smoothly, like she's telling water to part.
"Um," is all she can repeat, as a second hand closes in on her brow, a gentle finger skimming her brow before it alights on the edge of her eye. Soft as... as... as a butterfly kiss, barely there and begin to smear her mascara and eyeshadow together.
She doesn't breathe, lungs still like this is a moment in time that can last forever.
The hand in her hair leaves its role, traveling down to her chin and tipping it up.
Cass leans, and Steph can't look away, sucked into the dark whirlpool of her eyes as desire pools in her gut.
Her lipstick is sticky, is the last thought running through her head before it whites out as Cass's lips meet her, gentle but unyielding. Nerves tingle white-hot as they kiss, noses smushed together, still figuring out to slot in next to each other.
It was only seconds, a single moment before Cass pulls away, a hand still holding her face.
Steph can only look at her, heart hammering in her chest, lips agape and surely red, if not for the kissing then because of the lipstick transfer.
In a voice lower than usual, huskier, one that Steph hasn't heard before, Cass says, "You look better now."
"Of course," Luis starts leading her towards a dark alley in the streets of Miami, "Let's get you the tickets."
"You're like soooo nice." She pats at his face, taking a certain glee at annoying these two scumbags before she and Cass beat the shit out of them. They'll get what's coming to them before the weekend is over. "Has anyone told you that you look like Esteban Julio Ricardo Montoya de la Rosa Ramíre?"
"Who?" He cocks his head, a suspicious gleam entering his eye.
Thankfully, that's when Cass chooses to step in, figured shaded at the entrance of alleyway. "Hey! Where do you think you're taking my friend!"
Is it just her, but did Cass emphasize the word 'friend'? Does that mean she wants to stay friends or does she want to be like, more than friends?
Luis and Rodrigo whip around, dropping their hands off her. "Oh sorry-" Luis starts, before Steph cuts in,
"Oh Em Gee! Mina, they said they can get us DisneyLand tickets! Like, you said you've never been, we should totally go! Orlando is like, right here! I wanna get a picture with Thor's abs!" She grins loopily, loving to put on a high-pitched valley girl accent.
"-we were just taking her to an uber, right? Uh, Grace--uh, Mary?" Luis tries to explain but in those few words, Cass has already crossed the distance. With a set to her jaw, she looks them up down, gripping Steph and pulling her further away.
"That's nice of you." Her tone is like ice and it's clear that she means the exact opposite, "But I'll take it from here."
"But Mina~" Steph whines, shooting a puppydog face at Cass who drags her away. Even with Steph usually being taller by her by a solid inches, now reduced to a mere three in their heels, Cass just pulls her along. She can feel her biceps flexing her chest and gah! Hot!
"Here we go," Steph mutters as she pulls up the program on the work laptop. The trackers show up onscreen, happily pinging away. "There are our bad boys!"
Cass hums an agreement, face now clear of makeup and the wig is off, leaving only the net beneath.
"I'd say that was pretty successful! Only needed to hit like, four clubs to find them?" Steph can't help but chatter as a nervous energy hums in her veins. Her head's still running that moment in the stall, lips still tingling even though the make-up has been long washed off.
It's approaching 5 am and the blackout blinds have been drawn, the room only lit from the screens and the bathroom light.
Steph tries to ignore that even though she's seen Cass a million times in pyjamas and she's also been pyjamas around Cass a bajillion times, she doesn't know where to look, how to act.
It's like that kiss tipped her whole world upside down and all that she stood on is ice cracking beneath her.
"Anyways," She turns back to the screen, beginning to type in an update for the Batcomputer before she goes to sleep, "The real fun begins tomorrow!"
"Is already tomorrow," There's the rustle of blankets as Cass gets settled in.
"You know what I mean!"
She takes a long time writing the report, really going into the nonexistent details. Inserting an emoji just about between every word to piss of Bruce, but also to test the computer's programs and how it'll react to it.
She then spends another half hour scrolling through social media, steadily ignoring the draw of sleep until she thinks Cass is finally asleep.
Quietly, Steph sets an alarm on her phone, a bright 6:52 AM blinding her eyes as she sets it down. Using every single drop of her Bat-training, she tries to sneak into bed, perched on the edge of the bed, face turned away from Cass.
Minutes pass and the sleep that was calling to her from her position the floor is dead-silent. Her palms are sweaty as she tries to mentally dance around **the kiss** that is taking up all 1 TB of processor power in her head.
She shifts, sidling closer into the bed, flipping over to look at Cass in what little light cracks in from the rising dawn.
Messy black hair falls down around her, black as the night. There's the subtlest rise and fall of her back as she dreams, pretty eyelashes on a pale cheek.
Steph just stares as she drinks in the look of her. She likes Cass, as a friend and... possibly something more. She maybe even loves Cass, enough to not want to lose her forever. It was hard enough with Tim, a bitter break up and months of conflict before they cooled to a solid friendship, one that was fundamentally changed by their romantic relationship
She doesn't want what Dick and Babs have, this teasing waltz between the two of them, lovers one second and exes the next. That edge of flirting and friendship which they seem to constantly dance around before they blow up in a fight, yet forever drawn back into the dance between the two of them.
She wants... She wants Cass, just like she is but maybe now she can kiss the mole on her cheek which is located exactly where her dimple appears when she smiles wide. She wants to kiss every single scar on those hands and warm her cold fingers in her own.
She wants to reach across this bed and draw her into her arms, bury her face into her hair and fall asleep in a sweet symphony of quiet exhales.
And maybe... Cass wants her too.
Steph does not reach across to hold Cass. Steph does not snuggle closer. They fall asleep, arms-length apart.
But if in the middle of the day, hours before the two of them are to wake up, an arm slithers across her waist, drawing her in... Well, who's to know?