Work Text:
The long and the short of it was that you were stressed. You were a student at Gotham University, and it was finals week. Reason enough by itself right? Wrong. In addition, you were just hired as a secretary for Wayne Enterprises and had to go through orientation and training. And to top it all off, that job apparently entails being a go-for for whoever demanded your attention at any particular moment. Meaning you had to go and grab whatever they wanted for them.
Which was how you ended up where you were: hunched over a table in the corner of a coffee shop in the upscale district of Gotham (a far step away from your terrible, cheap, grungy neck of the woods) trying desperately to cram for a test you had in the morning.
So focused, you were, that you didn’t realize that there was a young man your age sitting at the table on the opposite side of the shop doing much the same thing. If you talked to him, you would realize that he was in a similar situation. A simple college student (ignoring what he got up to in the crime-ridden streets at night) trying to balance a job and school while trying desperately to stay awake despite it all. If you talked to him, you’d realize that the only difference was that he was actively trying to run the company you’d just gotten hired at. If you talked to him, you’d realize just how much you had in common between your interest in bettering Gotham, solving crime, and a minor (major, both your and his friends would argue) coffee addiction. If you talked to him, you might have realized that he was a kindred soul in this world, someone that would keep you company even when you were lonely, a romantic partner perhaps.
But, alas, you didn’t. Because you didn’t even realize he existed. Because he didn’t know you did, either.
However, Gotham always seemed smaller than it really was. There’s always next time.