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Stephanie slumps to the floor, boneless, unworried about things like posture and decorum now that Zatanna has left to fulfill her duties as Prime Magus elsewhere. Cass kneels at her side with a slight hum.
Steph would prefer if Cass sat down fully so she could get the premium head-in-lap experience, but that would have to wait till after this case. Magic had a way of putting Cass on edge; the body language and movement of occult beings read as totally foreign to her. Steph imagines she too would be disoriented if all she’d ever been exposed to was the English language, and then suddenly she was presented with some Spanish text. She’d probably call her mom in a panic and tell her she was having a stroke.
“So, Fae are real, huh.” She turns to face Cass. “You know what that means?”
“No.” Cass wrinkles her nose in the face of Steph's soon-to-be-unleashed tide of enthusiasm.
“That means we need nicknames. You heard Zatanna, using our true names around the Fae can be dangerous.”
“We use Spoiler and Black Bat in the field.”
True. Steph pouts. “Well, who knows why names even have power? Probably Zatanna, but she said she’s too busy to deal with our Fae problem for us, so we can’t call her back and ask. What if our vigilante names are tied closely enough to our identities that they also ‘invite Fae influence?’ Or what if they give the Fae power over our vigilante selves? Surely it’s better to be safe than sorry.”
Cass gives her an amused smile. “Zatanna works with vigilantes all the time. Wouldn’t she have told us if it was something we needed to worry about?”
“Maybe she forgot, and then she’ll feel really terrible about it once we get killed because the Fae heard us calling each other Spoiler and Black Bat. You wouldn’t want to make Zatanna feel bad, would you?”
“I would like you not to die,” Cass says.
“Yeah, and right back at ya,” Steph dons her thinking scowl. “I can call you, uh… Casanova.”
“It’s very similar to Cassandra.”
“Nah, it’s a common nickname for, like, a guy that’s super charismatic. No one will make the connection. They’ll just think I’m calling you handsome and charming! And you can call me…”
Steph flips through her mental catalog of endearments. She chose Cass’s nickname because of its similarity in sound to Cass’s real name. Maybe she could achieve the same thing with hers? Sugar Pie was close sonically, but it didn’t feel right. Snookums, hell no. Sweetie was probably the most likely to be uttered by an older woman working in the service industry, so that one was right out too. Sweet Pea, hm. Sweet Pea. Stephanie. Sweet Pea. Stephanie.
“You can call me Sweet Pea.” Steph grins.
“Sweet Pea?” Cass tests, her head tilted slightly as she peers down at Steph. She nods agreeably. “Sweet Pea.”
“Hell yeah!” Steph exclaims. “I didn’t think you were actually going to go for it.”
“Sweet Pea is right. Nicknames are safer.”
Steph shimmies in place a bit in delight. Today is going to be a great day. To an outsider, her shimmying would look ridiculous; to Cass, it probably looks like pure joy and jubilation. Steph briefly wonders if that played any part in Cass’s decision to go along with the whole nickname thing before deciding it doesn’t matter. They have a case to solve!
It occurs to Steph, as another rush of dopamine hits her from calling Cass “Casanova,” that she might be a Fae. According to Zatanna, the changeling thing was real, though apparently very incredibly rare. But surely no mere human would be getting this drunk on the power of calling someone by an endearment. Steph should ask Zatanna to run some tests or something, or maybe Bruce had a test for this. Maybe Bruce had already known she was a Fae and that’s why he’d never told her his real name before she died. Except, actually, Casanova wasn’t even Cass’s true name. That was the whole point of their new callsigns, so Steph’s theory was bunk anyways.
Still, it felt almost inhumanly good to utter “Casanova” and feel Cass’s gaze swing to her, instant and alert.
Steph catches the other’s gaze and nods her head to the doorway next to her. There wasn’t supposed to be a door here, according to the map of the utility tunnels underneath Gotham University.
When above-ground nature wasn’t available, which it wasn’t on GU’s campus, the next best place to search for those of the Unseelie Court was caves. In this case, that meant the large manmade tunnels that crisscrossed campus ferrying electricity and steam to and fro.
Steph tries to get a closer look at the door, only to be met with a blank wall. “Huh.” She frowns.
The noise sends Cass trotting over. Black Bat runs a hand along the wall until suddenly the door is there again, polite, polished, and wooden with an even politer door knocker at its center.
“Slippery,” Cass comments, her tone dripping with disdain.
“Magic,” Steph spits, matching her best friend’s energy.
Steph makes to lift a hand to the door knocker, but Cass catches it, keeping it trapped at their sides before it’s even fully escaped the reach of her cape. Steph breaks her gaze away from the door, and feels the urge to touch it leave her body.
“We can’t touch what they expect us to touch,” Cass warns.
Steph eyes the wall. Now that she’s not looking at it, the door has disappeared once more. But, having confirmed where it was, they didn’t exactly need it anymore. Especially if their goal was to avoid using the door knocker.
“Are we thinking, like, a controlled demolition?” she asks. “Because that would be cool as hell.”
Cass removes something that looks a bit like a pen light from her utility belt. “Got your Batarangs?”
“Yep,” Steph says, readying a Batarang in her right hand, and loosely holding another two in her left, “one-hundred percent iron and ready to fire. What’s that?”
“A laser cutter. We don’t need the whole wall gone—just the hinges.”
“You’re so smart, Casanova.” Steph braces for the sudden thrill, but that doesn’t stop the butterflies from taking flight in her stomach. She suddenly finds herself hoping Cass isn’t reading her every emotion, and seeing her lame self deriving so much pleasure from just the act of using a nickname.
This hope is squashed when Cass smirks at her and intentionally drops her nickname, advising her to “stay ready, Sweet Pea,” as she turns to the door.
She shoves the swarm in her stomach as far down as she can. Fae folk first. Thoroughly dissecting her reaction to being nicknamed by Cass later.
After Cass removes the hinges, the door falls to one strong kick delivered by yours truly. The room behind it is much larger than Steph expected. Twenty creatures of various shapes, sizes, and colors lounge on the most mismatched seating Steph has ever laid eyes on. She releases her Batarang at the closest one, striking it right in the chest. Cass fires off another three before Steph has even chosen her next target.
Today is one of the rare missions that is entirely ass-kicking, with no taking of names. Fae of the Unseelie Court are otherworldly beings whose presence on Earth can only mean trouble. The solution is prolonged contact with cold iron, which sends them straight back to the Fae realm to lick their wounds, just as Zatanna had predicted. Between the two of them, clearing the room takes less than two minutes.
“Woohoo!” Steph cheers as the last of them turns into black vapor. “What d’ya think, Casanova, should we get some boba to celebrate a job well done?”
“Change first,” Cass insists.
That would mean going all the way back to the cave, getting dressed in civies, then heading right back to GU because all the best boba shops in the city are within a 15-minute walk of campus. Steph would rather just raid the Wayne Manor kitchen at that point.
“Pretty please,” she says, tugging her hood down to make sure Cass gets the full effect of her wide blue eyes. “You can order it online and pick it up without anyone ever seeing you. Treat it like a stealth mission.”
“That is more suspicious,” Cass points out.
“You wouldn’t even do it for me, your Sweet Pea?” Steph tries, cheering when Cass takes her hand and starts dragging her down the tunnel.
Cass doesn’t like verbally admitting defeat once she finally gives in to Steph’s antics, but a lack of protest usually means Steph is getting her way.
Steph waits outside the boba shop on a nearby rooftop while Cass procures their order. In the meantime, she pulls out her phone, and finds herself googling “is it normal to like calling your best friend by a petname.” The host of articles that pop up all seem to have the same advice: nicknames are normal, but romantic nicknames can be weird, so make sure you have a conversation. She hadn’t really done that, oops.
She tries the search again, restricting the site to just Reddit this time. The Redditors, it turns out, mostly agree with everyone else with the caveat that half of them think that the original poster, u/plantgal86, is gay for her friend. Steph has already had this identity crisis, thank you very much, and has come to the conclusion that she is, unfortunately, heterosexual. But she should still probably have a conversation with Cass about the nicknames.
The sound of a boot scuffing the roof somewhere behind her alerts Steph to the fact that Cass has returned, having silently ascended to rooftop height, an impressive feat to accomplish while holding two drinks. Steph puts her phone back in its zipper pocket, making grabby hands at the taro milk tea—120% sugar, less ice, with all the toppings—in Cass’s hand.
Cass hands it over. “You’re melancholic.”
“I am?” Steph asks.
She doesn’t feel it as she shakes her drink vigorously before stabbing it with the straw.
Cass could be noticing something about the research Steph had been doing. Was Steph labeling herself as “unfortunately heterosexual” less of a joke than she thought? She did sometimes feel sad that her relationship with Cass would never be viewed as seriously by others as it would if they were actually lovers. Cass was one of the most important people in her life, and she wanted to be able to show that off without having to go on a full blown rant about their friendship.
Maybe that’s why the nicknames felt so good. It was a shortcut for communicating what her and Cass’s relationship meant to her. That their relationship went beyond most friendships, something not even the label best friend seemed quite qualified for. With the nickname, Steph stakes a claim over part of Cass’s heart, declaring “this is my person. Isn’t what we have special and beautiful?”
Yeah… Steph really needs to have a chat with Cass about the nicknames thing.
“Not melancholic?” Cass asks.
“More contemplative,” Steph decides. “I think you’ve noticed that I really enjoy using our nicknames?”
“I have,” Cass confirms. “And I’ve been enjoying them as well.”
Steph’s stomach loosens a bit. “I’m glad. Did you notice slash know that the ones I chose are usually used between people in a romantic relationship?”
“I suspected.”
“Okay, did you mind that?”
“No.” Cass swirls her own boba pearls thoughtfully. “Those labels do not match what people feel anyways. What people feel is far too…too big for me to classify some of it as strictly platonic affection or strictly romantic affection.”
Steph hadn’t even thought about that aspect of things. Man, Cass is so wise. She adds “consider the socially-constructed nature of relationship labels and what that means for me” to her mental to-do list. There was going to be a lot of googling in Steph’s near future. Not right now though.
“That makes a lot of sense. I can’t believe I was agonizing over this. Um, I also kind of want to continue using our nicknames even though the Fae are gone? Obviously you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to—”
“Sweet Pea”—Cass cuts her off—“worry less. I liked it. I would also like to continue using our nicknames after the case. Besides, we both knew they weren’t necessary for dealing with the Fae.”
“You’re really down to keep using them?” Steph asks.
“Yeah, I really am,” Cass replies. “Though, maybe only in civies, not suits? They are very niche and could present a risk to our identities.”
Steph finally takes a sip of her boba, using it to resist the temptation to tease Cass about how similar to Bruce she is. Besides, Cass has a point, and Steph would much rather only use Casanova in real life than in suits. But yay, Sweet Pea and Casanova are here to stay!
Later, while lying in bed surfing the web, Steph comes across the term “queerplatonic-relationship.” She sends the Wikipedia page to Cass along with the message, “I know labels are all made up, but I feel like this one fits us well and would be useful when talking about our relationship to other people, what do you think?” She gets the thumbs up reaction in response. Finally content for the night, she sets her phone down and closes her eyes. Today was, in fact, a great day.