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“Heart shaped balloons?” Cass asked, chewing on the end of a ballpoint pen.
She usually didn't fidget in public. It felt exposed, open. She could read other people, but other people could rarely read her without much effort— Cain had made sure of that.
Babs had gotten her a therapist. She'd been fighting with Bruce, and had picked out a therapist as some kind of revenge. Cass was very aware of this fact, but she was also aware that Babs had definitely done a ton of research and probably had been thinking about it long before the fight, so she went along with it. It was helping a little, probably. Her therapist had told Cass that a way to feel less anxious would be to do things that make her nervous (whether through action or inaction). Fidgeting was something she did alone, or around her family, but in public it felt nerve-wracking. She wasn't about to let the anxiety win, though, and apparently acting relaxed can help someone actually relax? (She wasn't totally sure about that one, but she would give it a shot.)
(It had taken her therapist a few sessions to realize that framing therapy as Cass vs her issues helped motivate Cass to do her therapy homework. Cass had realized what her therapist was doing early on. That didn't mean it had stopped working.)
“Duh,” Steph agreed. She took a sip of her latte. Added it to the supply list in her notes app. “Food? It’ll probably be just us again. Same as last year?”
“Yes,” Cass agreed.
Steph was acting weird. She normally had a lot of opinions on the dance, and a lot of optimism that they'd get a couple people to go this year. Hell, Steph was usually so into planning that she got some single people to come, even if they insisted that they didn't want to third-wheel. Which was just unfair. Cass wished everyone else was third-wheeling because then she'd be dating Steph, but that's just not how it was. She didn't like the little flutters her heart did when someone described hanging out with her and Steph as third-wheeling.
Steph also usually had at least one new thing she wanted to incorporate while they were planning the dance. They planned it together, sure, but a lot of the ideas usually came from Steph. She usually had at least a new food she wanted to grab, or some extra songs to incorporate into the playlist, or a new recipe to try out, or an idea for a anti-valentine's-adjacent theme.
Steph giving up on having a big party, going along with all of Cass's ideas without much input... it was weird. Cass didn't like it. Maybe she was over the dance. Maybe the dances were getting stale, but she didn't want to hurt Cass. Maybe Cass wasn't interesting enough, or maybe Steph was even hiding something. Maybe she'd found a partner, and Cass had missed her chance to ruin their friendship. Maybe she was tired, or starting to catch a cold.
What was the point of being able to read people when you can’t even figure out the root of the problem?
“Did you sleep alright?” Cass asked. Steph usually didn't act quite like this when she was tired, she seemed almost jittery, but. It was the easiest to solve. And maybe she hoped that it was just a sleep thing, and Steph could take a melatonin gummie and they could go back to planning later on.
“Yeah, I slept fine!” Nervous chuckle. Inhale. Slow exhale. Steph was trying to work up the courage to do something. Who knows what. Cass waited silently— eventually, Steph would spit out whatever she was trying to say.
Steph bit the corner of her mouth.
Hands shook, almost imperceptibly.
Nervous.
This wasn't a good sign.
Cass put the pen down. Straightened her back. Pushed her shoulders closer together. Maybe it was bad that she was more comfortable sinking into her anxiety, but her homework would have to wait for a less important moment.
“I know we’ve been doing these anti-Valentine’s day dances ever since me and Tim broke up,” Steph was saying. Her eyes darted around the room, drawn to Cass yet struggling to look directly.
Cass knew Steph well enough to know that Steph didn’t always maintain eye contact. She picked at her nails and messed with the hems of her clothes a lot. Leg bouncing too. Sometimes pacing. Actually, if she was already standing, Steph was usually pacing. If Steph was trying to stay relatively still on a stakeout or something, she sometimes twitched a small muscle (for example, tensing and untensing her forearm or blinking in patterns).
Cass had learned to read people from watching Cain’s men. None of whom were 19-year-old Gothamite women with ADHD. Early on, Cass had misread signals a lot, had been sure Steph's body was saying one thing when it was communicating another. It had taken effort for Cass to read Steph. It was like learning a new dialect of the same language. But that was her best friend, so she was confident that it was worth it.
In any case, Cass had long since learned the telltale signs of Steph’s focused fidgeting vs her anxious fidgeting vs her relaxed fidgeting vs her bored fidgeting. This was anxious.
So, Steph was bringing up her last relationship. The end of which was the reason they had this tradition. Was Steph bringing this up because she'd found someone else?
Fuck. No. Shit. Cass’s stomach dropped. Steph had never even mentioned liking someone, much less seeing them.
The two of them didn’t really talk about their own crushes. Cass didn’t bring up hers because Steph was her crush. She had hoped that, maybe, if she was lucky, Steph was silent for similar reasons. She'd noticed Steph slowly acting a little different from a while, and had let herself think that Steph had a crush on her, but the thought of saying anything intimidated Cass. What if she messed it up? What if she was a bad girlfriend, and she lost her best friend and her romantic partner all at once? Regardless, Steph had complained about Tim (and Cass had complained about Kon) enough that Steph would’ve mentioned if she'd begun seeing someone.
Right?
“This year, I was thinking, what if we made it a normal Valentine’s day dance?” Eyes wide with sincerity. Shoulders slightly tensed. There was an unusual stillness to Steph, something that always meant something on the rare occasions that it occurred. Steph was still being truthful, and still clearly anxious. Cass met her eyes, having two ideas of what Steph could be getting at. She hoped for one as she dreaded the other.
Steph took one final breath, bracing herself.
“I’ve had a crush on you for years.” A moment of silence. The words didn't fit right into Cass's brain. It was exactly what she'd hoped Steph would say, and she almost didn't believe it. Was this a shapeshifter? A hologram? Was she dreaming? “At first it was kind of because you're intimidating and cute and funny and like. Who wouldn't have a little bit of a crush on you?” Steph rambled. “But now it’s just. We’ve been through so much together. At some point, my heart forgot which one of us it belonged to. It’s yours now.” Her voice wavered a little bit. “If you’ll take it.”
Cass pinched herself. Her eyes scanned Steph for any signs of anything out of place, anything abnormal that would indicate that it wasn't her. If it was a fake, it was beyond any that Cass had ever seen and definitely beyond what even Babs had access to. So this was real, she wasn't dreaming, and... it had been a couple moments too long, fuck, she was fumbling the whole thing. Shit. “Go on a date with me?” Cass spat out, a little panicked, like if she waited too long the moment would fly away. She wished she could’ve responded eloquently, but she wasn't a poet. She didn't have enough practice to be able to mold words into art. So, she'd settle for what she could get.
Steph's whole body relaxed, and the nerves in her eyes transformed into excitement. That was the good side of being able to read people: all of the downsides was worth it if only for being able to see the joy explode on Steph's face in real time.
“That was my line!" Steph laughed, the most animated she'd been all day. "Yes, I want to go on a date with you. I want to date you. Please be my girlfriend?”
“Yes,” Cass replied. She couldn’t stop the grin from spreading across her face. Steph stared blankly for a fraction of a moment, almost unable to believe what was happening, before squealing and enveloping Cass in a bone-crushing hug. Cass tensed at first, a little scared that someone at the coffee shop would see and be able to take advantage— but this was exactly the kind of thing her therapist was talking about, so she forced herself to relax into Steph's arms.
“Oh my god,” Steph said. “I wasn’t sure this would ever happen.”
“Me neither,” Cass agreed. Cass let herself close her eyes as she rested her head on Steph's neck. She didn’t need to read Steph, not now. Cass knew exactly how Steph was feeling, because they were feeling the exact same thing.
For a moment, Cass just relaxed. She wanted to memorize this feeling: muscular arms around her rib cage, hair brushing against her cheek, the way she could almost feel Steph’s heartbeat in her neck.
“If you were planning to ask me out,” Cass murmured into Steph’s shoulder, “why’d you invite Damian?”
“Because Nika obviously isn’t going to reject him, and I want him to feel like he has a backup plan,” Steph chuckled. “Besides, I only invited him. It’ll be just us, I'm sure of it.”
“Us and the playlist,” Cass agreed.
“Can’t forget that!” Steph pressed a kiss to Cass’s cheek. Her strawberry-colored (and scented) lip gloss left a residue on Cass's face that she wasn't sure she wanted to wash off. “I can’t wait to dance with you. For real this time.”
Cass just hummed in agreement. Hugging Steph was nice. She could stay like this for hours.
This was going to be the best Valentine’s Day of her life.