Work Text:
“Just another few reps,” Stephanie says, for what’s probably the thirteenth time that night.
Cass doesn’t know if it’s actually the thirteenth. She’s not sure about the numbers; they’re almost as foreign as words. But she knows that according to Stephanie, thirteen is unlucky, and it’s a big number for gym repetitions. So it’s thirteen in Cass’s heart, even if it’s not exactly reality.
Cass tilts her head to the side as she watches her girlfriend do another fifteen pull-ups.
Stephanie’s personal record is 200 in a row, and 500 on the same night spread over two hours. She accomplished both on the same night, and has never quite been able to beat it. She had been sore for three days afterwards, and Cass had to rub her shoulders. But the excited, goofy smiles she’d worn that night had been enough to give Cass butterflies in her stomach for weeks.
The smiles weren’t pretty or poised or ladylike—and neither was her language as she cursed while doing pull-ups. But they were so Stephanie that Cass felt a little like she was looking at sunlight.
Cass wonders if Stephanie has beat 500 yet tonight. Tonight feels about the same, but without as many excited smiles or loud groans of pain to accompany Stephanie’s hard work.
It’s strange to see Stephanie so serious during a workout.
Without thinking, Cass approaches the pull-up bar, and gently tugs on her girlfriend’s ankle. Predictably, Stephanie can only just pull up the extra weight, and she falters the next motion. She doesn’t crash and fall, not exactly, but it’s not the most graceful landing she’s ever had either. When Stephanie ends up on her knees, Cass kneels down in front of her.
“Finished?”
Stephanie huffs, but doesn’t look angry, either. Instead, she tucks a lock of blonde hair behind her ear and pouts at her girlfriend. “I wasn’t.”
“But now?” Cass stands, then offers Stephanie a hand.
Stephanie takes it, but winces oh so slightly when the motion of taking Cass’s hand strains her exhausted shoulders. “Guess that’ll be it, then.”
“Should have been done twenty minutes ago.” Cass steps closer. She reaches for Stephanie’s shoulder, then frowns as she feels the tension and the twitching muscles. “Mm. Bad form.”
Stephanie lets out a pleased hum, and Cass gently digs her thumb into a spot that’s a little extra tense. Her girlfriend predictably winces, but after some gentle probing, it must feel more like a massage than an examination. Cass keeps her motions gentle—not wanting to hurt Stephanie—though she almost wants to press just a bit harder. If it’ll keep her girlfriend from over-training during workouts, the minor pain will be worth it.
But that philosophy is too much like… His. David Cain’s. Cass abruptly pulls her hand away, not trusting herself not to inflict pain.
Stephanie doesn’t know her thought process—can’t possibly know it, when it came on so suddenly—and looks a little surprised that Cass jerked away from seemingly nothing. “You okay?” she asks, and steps closer to close the distance. She takes hold of Cass’s hands at the wrist, then pulls them close to her face. She kisses both of Cass’s palms, then sets Cass’s hands on her—Stephanie’s—cheeks. They’re still hot and pink from exercising, but Cass likes to imagine that it’s because Cass is close. “I’m here. It’s alright.”
Despite the pink on Stephanie’s cheeks, when she speaks that softly, it’s Cass who blushes. She’s glad that Stephanie’s hands aren’t on her warm face, but only the other way around. She likes feeling the softness of her girlfriend’s face, no matter how sweaty and hot it is underneath her hands. It’s a nice change from her own sharp cheeks.
“I’m okay,” Cass says after a moment. She leans forward then presses a sweet, barely-there kiss on Stephanie’s lips. They taste like banana-flavored chapstick—the kind Cass bought Stephanie specifically for the unique flavor. She gently traces her thumbs over Stephanie’s cheeks, and she remembers why Stephanie’s face is so warm. “Overtraining is bad for you. Are you okay?”
“Fine.” Stephanie’s smile pushes against Cass’s hands. “You worried?”
“Mm.”
“Don’t ‘mm’ me.”
“Mmmm.”
Stephanie laughs. “C’mon, don’t let Bruce corrupt you. Use your words.”
Cass sticks her tongue out at her. But after a moment, she sobers once more, and looks up at Stephanie through her lashes. She parts her lips, words not coming easily to her at first. But then, finally, “I’m worried.”
“Worried?”
“Why the… over-doing it?” Cass asks. “I don’t understand the why.”
Stephanie finally lets Cass’s hands move away from her face, coaxing them down by the wrist. Their still-joined hands lay to rest in-between their bodies. Cass tries not to look at the stained sports-bra—or remember what lies underneath—as her gaze follows their hands down.
“I have to stay in shape,” Stephanie finally says. She looks away, and Cass sees the subtle shift of her form, the undeniable tensing of muscles.
Cass’s brows furrow as she looks at abdominal muscles that are far too tight for just standing in front of her girlfriend. “You… are,” she says. She lets go of Stephanie’s hands, then rests her hands on her girlfriend’s hips. “You are very in shape. …This is the shape you need to be in to fight. To fly.”
Stephanie’s face is even pinker than it was a moment ago. This time, Cass knows it’s not related to exercise.
Cass gently squeezes her firm hips. “Very in shape,” she repeats. Then she reaches one hand onto Stephanie’s shoulder, light chastising in her voice. “Overdoing it means grappling mistakes. Dangerous.”
Stephanie rests one hand on top of Cass’s—the one on her hip. Cass doesn’t know if Stephanie does it to coax Cass’s hand off of her, or if she wants Cass to keep it on.
In order for Cass to not know which it is, it means Stephanie doesn’t know, either.
Cass leans in for another kiss, distracting her girlfriend from the decision. Truth be told, she wants to keep her hand on her girlfriend’s hip. Even if Stephanie doesn’t know if she wants it right now, it still feels good. Almost guilty-good. And it’s always felt good to Stephanie, before. For Stephanie to be indecisive, there must be a bigger problem at play here.
When Cass pulls back, Stephanie looks star-struck only for a moment. But when the moment passes, she bites her lip—the lip that Cass had been so happy to kiss—and looks away. “Not as in shape as I want to be,” she says. “I’ll spread out my workouts better to avoid overtraining if it’s that big of a deal.”
“Not if it’s a big deal,” Cass says. “It is. You’re the big deal. Your health… it’s important. To me.”
Stephanie’s face looks hot again. Cass goes on her toes to give her a kiss on those warm cheeks of hers.
Cass doesn’t know why Stephanie’s finding it so hard to find the words. She’s been able to speak since she was a toddler—Cass should be the one struggling. And yet, Stephanie looks like her head is spinning from the affection. From the words. From the lack of ability to find words, maybe.
Cass leans back to get a good look at her. Something is wrong, and she knows it. The only trouble is figuring out how to get Stephanie to tell her.
“Want to talk about why you feel so…? Ah…”
Cass doesn’t know what word she’s looking for. But the good thing about not knowing is sometimes the person she’s talking to will understand what she’s getting at—or better yet, volunteer information themselves, thinking that Cass knows what she’s asking already.
For the record, she doesn’t. Not this time. But Stephanie doesn’t need to know that.
It takes a moment, but finally, Stephanie’s lips pull out of the thin line they had worn down into.
“My belt felt a little more, um, snug tonight,” Stephanie finally says. “I need to fix it.”
“So you did… more pull-ups?”
“Well, I mean, I ran a lot, too.”
“I don’t understand,” Cass admits. “You know how to loosen the utility belt, yes?”
“That’s not the problem,” Stephanie gets out in a rush. She looks flustered, and it’s all Cass can do to stop herself from cupping her cheeks again and kissing all the worry from her face. “I have to stay on top of exercising, more than the others. So my belt being tight—that’s not good.”
“…Why more than the others?”
Stephanie makes a face. Then she looks down, presumably at the stained sports bra she’s wearing. But when Cass follows her gaze lower, she finds that Stephanie is looking at her stomach.
There’s only a few inches of it bare from the way her workout shorts are cut, and from how low her sports-bra goes. But it’s enough to see stretch-marks from when Stephanie was pregnant as a teenager. At fifteen. A year and a half before Cass met her. A full six years ago, now.
There’s still the tiniest bit of softness that pushes against both the shorts and the bra. Cass rests her hand on Stephanie’s waist, her thumb the only part of her hand actually touching that softness. The rest of her hand stays on her hips, where Stephanie is more comfortable with touch.
“I had a kid. It, um, changes you,” Stephanie mumbles. “You’re the only other girl out in the field, and you’ve never… you know.”
Cass tilts her head to the side. She doesn’t know.
“You’ve never been pregnant or been bigger, or anything.”
Cass stays quiet.
The mortification on Stephanie’s face says plenty.
“…You’ve got the … the most beautiful body anyone’s ever seen,” Stephanie finally says. “I just wanted to look as… pretty. Half as pretty.”
“You think it’s… beautiful?”
Another time, Cass would have been pleased at the compliment. She likes the idea that her body can be something more than a weapon. Something beautiful. Something that can be loved as something other than lethal, or violent.
But that isn’t how Stephanie means it. Or at least, not only.
Stephanie is using it as a measuring stick against her own. And impossibly, Stephanie’s own is falling short.
Cass’s expression softens, and she traces her thumb over the softness and stretch marks. Then, she steps forward and uses one hand to cup her cheek. She kisses Stephanie slow and sweet, wanting her to associate this kiss with every gentle brush of skin against her middle. Stephanie deserves to be kissed, and she deserves to have touch that feels good even on places that she doesn’t feel good about.
When Cass pulls away this time, Stephanie doesn’t look so much starstruck as embarrassed. But Cass will have none of it, and she pecks a sweet kiss against her lips once more, this one soft and chaste. “Don’t compare,” she says. “You don’t need to look like me to do a good job as Spoiler. And…” She pauses, words feeling stuck. Finally, she frowns and tries anyways. “You don’t need to be pretty at all. I don’t need you to be pretty to love you. But I think you’re beautiful, too.”
If she was better with words, she might have phrased it better—made it poetic, like the soap-operas Stephanie sometimes watches with the boys.
But Cass isn’t a soap-opera character, and Cass isn’t a smooth rich gentleman that sweeps those characters off their feet. She’s just Cass.
And from the relieved look on Stephanie’s face, just Cass is enough.
Stephanie laughs, then wipes a tear from her eye. “Okay,” she says. “I guess that’s plenty, huh?”
Cass isn’t much for appearances, and she loves the way Stephanie’s face feels just as much as she likes the way it looks. It doesn’t need to be pretty for her to admire it as a good face. The fact that this is the face that belongs to her girlfriend is plenty.
But, she will admit, the one change she wants to make on Stephanie’s face, or body, or general person—is to make sure that those tears aren’t there for any longer than they need to be.
So she gently wipes away those tears. Then Cass goes on her toes and presses one more sweet kiss against Stephanie’s lips once the tears are gone. “Plenty,” she says simply. “Now… shower?”
“What, like, together?”
“Yes.”
Stephanie looks alarmed for just a moment, and Cass’s heart sinks, wondering if maybe things aren’t fixed after all.
But the worry in Stephanie’s eyes lasts only a moment. Then, she takes Cass’s hand and pulls it to her lips, pressing a kiss against the knuckles. “…Actually, yeah, together sounds great,” Stephanie says. “Let’s do it.”
Cass knows the meaning underneath it, and she feels proud that he girlfriend would be so willing to share herself with Cass after being so vulnerable only moments ago.
She wasn’t lying earlier, when she said that she didn’t need Stephanie to be beautiful in order to adore her.
But all the same, Cass can’t help but think that Stephanie’s mischievous smile as they head to the gym’s showers is the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen. And she’s glad she gets it all to herself tonight.