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The book club, like most things Jason ended up regretting, had been Steph’s idea.
She’d appeared in his safehouse one night with a well-worn, dogeared copy of Dracula under one arm and asked in a quiet voice if she could stay the night. She hadn’t been able to get much sleep. Jason had sat up with her after digging through one of the containers under the bed for his copy of Dracula – a leatherbound edition Bruce had found for him at an estate sale. It had been a peace offering.
It hadn’t repaired Jason and Bruce’s relationship, but it did bring him and Steph closer.
Next up had been Pride and Prejudice, and it had been Jason’s turn to be embarrassed about the state of his copy. Whole passages had been highlighted and underlined in ballpoint pen, and Jason had fallen apart under Steph’s scrutiny.
“Look at what you’ve done to that book,” she’d said.
“I got it out of the Arkham Asylum library!” He’d protested. That was half a lie. It had survived Arkham Asylum, that was true, but it had come in with him.
“And you made fun of me for Dracula,” she chuckled. Jason felt his toes tingle every time he thought about that self-assured smirk on her face.
They were onto Steph’s next suggestion, seeing as how she’d chosen Dracula and he’d picked Pride and Prejudice. She’d wanted to change things up for this month, so the theme was:
Childhood favourites.
Jason wiped his feet on the doormat and offered Stephanie’s mother a charming smile as he stepped inside. He kicked his boots off by the door – Crystal was particular about that – and made his way upstairs, rapping his knuckles against Stephanie’s ajar bedroom door.
“Come in!”
Jason nudged it open with his foot and stepped inside. Steph’s bedroom had a floor-to-ceiling bookcase shoved in one corner, jammed top to bottom with books. Not just classics, but a mix of contemporary, biography, romance, children’s, and middle grade. It was spectacular.
Steph herself was sitting on her bed, with a collection of thin paperbacks spread out in front of her. The covers were all colours from pink to yellow to teal, but it wasn’t until Jason got closer that he realised what they were.
“Really?”
“What?” Steph asked defensively, stroking the cover of one well-loved book. “We agreed on childhood favourites. These were my favourite.”
Jason shook his head, laughing, feeling his affection for her grow that much more.
“What did you bring, anyway?”
Jason thrust the dogeared, spine-creased novel at her, and Steph took it with gentle hands. She flipped it over, scanning the blurb, one delicate eyebrow arched.
“Goosebumps?” She asked.
“You walked in here with The Baby-sitter’s Club,” Jason pointed out. Steph shot him a grin, flopping back onto her bed and sitting cross-legged. She patted the floral bedspread beneath her, and Jason lowered himself onto it, frowning.
“This was your favourite book?”
“Before Bruce, yeah. I checked it out from the library a million times. I was over the moon when I found that copy at the thrift store.”
“I bet.”
Jason picked up one of the Baby-sitter’s Club books spread across the bed. These were well-loved – some pages were creased, some even had stickers on the front – but they were obviously well cared for.
“Which one am I reading?”
“Whichever one you want,” Steph replied. “I do have strong opinions, however, so choose wisely.”
Jason chose Kristy’s Great Idea, by virtue of it being the first book in the series. He knew, from Steph’s approving smile as she opened the Goosebumps book, that he had chosen correctly. He opened it, flicking through the pages until he’d gotten to chapter one.
They read in a companionable silence, Steph inching ever closer in her quest to steal his body heat, until finally she had her head on his shoulder and one of her legs over his. Jason didn’t mind; he could still focus on his book, even with the sweet and heady scent of her shampoo in his face. He half wanted to bury his face in her hair and just breathe in, but that would be weird, and he’d been doing an admirable job thus far of convincing Steph he was cool.
Steph snorted, covering her mouth.
“What’s up?” Jason asked.
“This book is funny,” she replied, shooting him a grin. “It’s trying so hard to be creepy but it’s just…so funny.”
Jason hummed in reply, turning the page. Eventually, he said, “Would you hit me if I said Kristy is a bitch?”
“Oh, you don’t know the half of it!” Steph grabbed a book – Mary Anne’s Makeover – off the bed and said, “She’s deplorable in this. I love her so fucking much.”
She set the book down on the bed and rolled onto her knees, reaching down under the bed. She pulled out a storage basket and turned it out over the duvet, spilling its contents. There were bags upon bags of chips, chocolate bars, and candy. Jason blinked, setting the book aside.
“Grab anything you want,” Steph said, gesturing to it. “I keep them in here for when I have friends over. Easier than heading back downstairs for a snack.”
Jason reached for a bag of Doritos and accepted the Snickers bar Steph handed him. He unwrapped it and took a bite, watching as she used her thumbnail to dig a peanut butter cup out of its wrapper.
“You get the idea from Claudia?” He asked, tapping the cover of Claudia and the Sad Good-bye. “To keep food in your room, I mean.”
“Yeah,” Steph blew a strand of hair off her face and laughed. “I used to sneak five bucks out of Mom’s wallet every so often to restock it. I wasn’t getting an allowance at that point. And food…wasn’t always guaranteed.”
Jason knew all too well what that was like.
Steph swept the snacks back into their container and slid it back under the bed, settling back onto the bed with her back against the headboard. She picked up the Goosebumps book and resumed reading it, eventually extending one of her legs, then both, so they were resting over Jason’s.
Jason smiled to himself and returned to Kristy’s Great Idea. Kristy was a bitch, but it would perhaps be kinder to call her headstrong. She knew what she wanted, and she was determined to get it.
It reminded him, a little, of Steph.
Steph shifted positions again, sitting with her back against his side and her knees tucked up beneath her. Jason had noticed that when they hung out like this, she always found an excuse to touch him. He was probably reading into it, but he hoped it meant she liked him – because he really, really liked her, and he didn’t know what to do about it.
“What are we doing for our next book club,” he asked, turning the page.
“Well, it’s your turn to pick,” Steph replied, turning her book upside down on the bed so it stayed open at the point she was up to. Jason didn’t mind – it stressed the spine, but he had another two copies of the book in storage anyway, at Safehouses One and Two respectively. It didn’t matter if this one got a little more dinged up.
“I don’t know,” Jason said, frowning. He was enjoying Ann M. Martin’s writing more than he cared to admit. “There’s a memoir about the effects of poverty in rural America I’ve been thinking about reading, but-”
“Pass,” Steph said. It didn’t come out with any malice, and she leaned into him, looking up into his eyes. “Been there, lived that. Got anything fun lined up?”
Jason thought for a second. “Do you like mythology?”
From the way Steph’s eyes lit up, he thought he might be onto something.
“There’s a book I’ve been thinking of reading – The Song of Achilles?”
“Oh!” Steph’s enthusiasm was infectious. “I love the story of Achilles and Patroclus! It’s so romantic.”
Jason blushed at the suggestion. Yes, it was very romantic, but that hadn’t been his intention. He pushed the hair back off his face, his skunk stripe stubbornly falling into his eyes. Steph was looking at him with a wide grin, her eyes bright.
“Okay, then,” he said, shuffling a little closer to her. “The Song of Achilles.”
They went back to reading their books in silence. Neither was far from the end – Jason estimated he probably had about three chapters left, Steph about the same. He turned the last page about fifteen minutes later, and entertained himself with the short biography of Ann M. Martin in the back while Steph finished up Piano Lessons Can Be Murder.
He hadn’t lied when he told Steph it was his favourite; it was, because it was gentler than the other books in the series. But he’d also chosen it because he’d hoped it would appeal to Steph. It was a great story, but also, he hoped, something Steph would like.
“What did you think?” Jason asked as she set it aside.
“I know I said it was funny, but it ended up being really sad,” Steph said. “That poor ghost just trying to protect Jerry.”
“Her name was Mara,” Jason said. “It was in one of the collector’s books I had as a kid.”
Steph snorted and swung a pillow at him. “You’re such a nerd. What did you think of the BSC?”
“It was better than I thought,” Jason admitted as the pillow thumped into his shoulder. He brushed it off, laughing. “I kind of expected it to just be, I don’t know, something little girls read. Like, all about babies and decorum or whatever. But it’s surprisingly feminist.”
“You have no idea,” Steph said. “Ann M. Martin rocks. She wrote another series about these girls who lose their parents, and like, how they have to live through that trauma. The other characters all have their own shit going on, too, but they stick together and take care of each other. It’s amazing.”
Jason made a mental note to look up the author’s bibliography on Wikipedia later to see if he could find the series Steph was talking about. He reached out for his Goosebumps book, picking it up and thumbing through the pages.
“I checked this out so many times from the library near my house,” he said quietly. “That place was a godsend. They always had pens and paper for homework, and so many of these books.”
“Our branch had a box of pads and tampons in the bathroom,” Steph drew her knees up to her chest. “It was so helpful when we couldn’t…afford that stuff.”
Jason reached out and squeezed her hand.
“Plus, the computers,” Steph said. “It was so good to be able to log on to Neopets for like, twenty minutes after school. That was the most I ever got to relax.”
“God, yes!” Jason exclaimed. “I always went to every author talk, too. I wanted to be a writer.”
Steph shot him a grin. “You, Jason Todd? A writer? Was being a crime lord not on the agenda then?”
“Not particularly,” Jason ducked his head. “I just wanted to escape Gotham.”
“Me too,” Steph sighed, reaching for one of the Baby-sitter’s Club books that was still on the bed, shoved to the side to make room for hers and Jason’s sprawling bodies. “These books were my escape. I read…probably the whole series, cover to cover. I got them from the library, from second-hand bookstores, from thrift stores. I borrowed them off friends and never returned them. I was desperate to just…live in Stoneybrook. To be a member of the BSC and have friends and parents who loved me. Terrible things happen to these girls, but they are always so, so loved. I wanted that. I guess I still want that.”
“I love you,” Jason blurted out, then immediately wished he could, by divine intervention, punch himself in the face. Maybe if he called Constantine – it didn’t matter. He’d said it. He tried to backtrack. “I mean like – I love you. I care about you. You’re one of my best friends, and one of the few people left in Gotham I feel like I can trust.”
Steph was looking at him with one carefully arched eyebrow. Eventually, she said, “I love you, too.”
Jason swallowed. He had waited a long time to hear those words. But even if she only meant them platonically, at least he’d gotten to hear them, right?
“There’s a Baby-sitter’s Club movie,” Steph grabbed her laptop off the nightstand and opened it, typing in her password without even looking at the keys. Her gaze was still settled on Jason. “I was thinking we could watch it?”
“That sounds great,” Jason said.
Steph pulled it up and curled into Jason’s side, sitting the laptop so it was balanced on their knees. Jason let his head drop onto hers, feeling her reach for his hand as the opening credits rolled. He smiled to himself, his gaze flickering to her face. She was immediately absorbed in the film, her lips moving with the dialogue onscreen. It was so endearing he could have just kissed her.
His attention returned to the movie. The young actresses were familiar to him, but it was bugging him he couldn’t name any of them off the top of his head. Eventually, he said, “Is that Rachael Leigh Cook?”
“Sure is,” Steph said, popping a chip into her mouth and chewing slowly. “Kristy’s played by Schuyler Fisk, too.”
“I’ve seen her in something,” Jason pointed to the screen at Stacey, who was laughing at something the boy who was way too old for her had said. “Maybe an HBO show?”
“Hmm, I’m not sure. I haven’t seen her in anything but this,” Steph picked up her phone and started scrolling through Wikipedia. “Woah, she’s been in an episode of like, every crime show on the planet.”
Jason leaned over at looked at the phone’s screen. “Huh. That might’ve been it.”
“Shh!” Steph’s hand clapped over his mouth. “This part is so good.”
They watched as Kristy sobbed in the rain. Well, Stephanie watched. Jason was watching her, her wide eyes, the hand over her heart. That, too, was endearing.
Without thinking, he leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her temple.
As he pulled away, the panic started to set in. Steph had gone very, very still, like she was a prey animal that had just spotted a wolf stalking her. He opened his mouth to say something, anything, to make up for what he’d just done and how incredibly fucking weird it was, when Steph’s hand whipped upwards and pressed a finger over his lips.
“Jason, shut up,” she said.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Good start. Keep it that way.”
She leaned in, pulling her hand away and pressing her lips to his. Jason’s eyes drifted shut as he positively melted into the kiss, feeling her hand come up and thread its way through his dark hair. She grabbed his shirt with her other hand and pulled him closer, her lips parting as he deepened the kiss. The movie kept playing, but they were in another world entirely, kissing and kissing until they finally broke apart, breathless.
“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that,” Steph said, tucking a blonde strand behind her ear.
“You have?” Jason asked. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You’re joking, right?” Steph paused the movie and turned to face him properly. “You are Jason motherfucking Todd. You are the coolest person I know, and I know Supergirl, Jason. You were voted Gotham’s most eligible bachelor last year!”
“I keep telling them to take me off that damn list,” Jason grumbled. He pushed the white streak off his forehead and gave Steph a sidelong glance. “You think I’m cool?”
“God, yes. Your favourite book is Goosebumps. You’re always down to read books with me even if other people think they’re too lame or pretentious or whatever. You’re respectful to my mom and I’ve never actually seen you lose your temper outside of the hood.”
Jason’s face split into a grin. “I think you’re pretty cool, too.”
“Shut up and kiss me,” Steph grabbed his shirt again, straddling him. Jason looked up at her in awe. She was so utterly perfect.
She was his.
Jason didn’t regret the book club.
And, as their lips met again, he thought he certainly didn’t regret this.