Notes: Unfortunately discontinued. The more improved summary would've been: "Zatanna no likey math homework, Robin kidnaps Zatanna, they follow Artemis and Wally around next chapter for shiggles."

Fancy Seeing You Here

There're a few days left in the semester when Zatanna sighs and stretches and stands from her spot on the couch, and she smiles apologetically at her friends, but she thinks it time that she finally page through her textbooks and charge through the assignment due before midterms. Her friends nod understandingly-Artemis and Wally just finished the last of their own midterms earlier that morning, M'gann and Conner have theirs coming soon, and though Kaldur's not a student any longer, he's well aware of school related stresses and workloads (Raquel and Robin have yet to show up this evening, the latter of whom Zatanna knows is currently taking the last of his own exams). Zatanna bids them all good night and at seven pm, she locks the door of her room and spreads her notes about the floor, a stack for each of her subjects. Then she picks up the stack on trigonometry, climbs on her bed, and begins to leaf through.

The pages are filled with notes and diagrams and proofs, and Zatanna stares at them blankly, trying to remember when she learned any of it; she's sure she had to learn it, but between being busy with the team or with it being math, she just doesn't remember. She decides that she'll need to practice some and then maybe she'll be hit with inspiration, so she flips open her textbook to an odd numbered problem, grabs a piece of scratch paper, and sketches a triangle.

Then she stares at it.

She stares at it, concentrates hard, as though the problem will solve itself if she glares with enough intensity—or maybe it's more likely that it'll light on fire from the sheer force of her hatred, because it certainly isn't about to make any sense. Her tongue sticks out of the corner of her mouth as she sketches the triangle over and over again, tries to make some sense of it in the corners of her paper, but her efforts are largely fruitless and she feels the beginning of a headache as she only gets more and more confused, and she finds that, wow, she's infinitely thankful that Robin isn't at the Cave today, because she promised him a week ago that she'd start her math work ASAP and if she needed his help she'd totally call him. She's sure that if he finds out about her procrastination now a stupid genius like him will act all disappointed or whatever and just chastise her before succumbing to his classic fit of snickers and being largely unhelpful.

Presently, Zatanna shakes her head and turns to another practice problem. First, she's got to figure out what kind of triangle she's looking at—isosceles, scalene, equilateral? No, it can't be the last one because one of the angles is obtuse, so that must mean—ugh, no, wait, just because something looks one way doesn't mean it is—Zatanna learned that the hard way on a quiz a few weeks ago. She scowls at her notes and the textbook, wonders how long she's been at this, and checks the digital clock on her nightstand: 7:20PM.

Huh, she thinks. Sounds like snack time.

Zatanna shoves her school things aside and jumps off her bed, ready to sneak out the door. Even if Wally and Artemis are gone by now, Zatanna knows that M'gann will either ask her how her work's going or will be having a moment with Conner, so Zatanna would prefer not being noticed. As she approaches the kitchen, she can hear echoes of the others' talking down by the television, can confirm that Artemis and Wally haven't left yet by both of their grunts and cursing. She sidles in the direction of the fridge, her stomach rumbling quietly in anticipation of the new bucket of strawberry ice cream (with fruit chunks!) that M'gann brought from the specialty store earlier that morning. Zatanna's had her heart on it all day, but she didn't try it earlier for fear that the others (read: Wally) might down it all, and, hey, Zatanna's an only child and that's her excuse for wanting a sizable portion for herself before she shares.

She ducks behind the counter when she nears them, silently tip-toeing closer to the freezer, and she hopes that Conner doesn't hear her over the sounds of the five them trying out the new race track that she and Conner unlocked the other day. But, hey, thinking back on it, Conner's not actually one to say anything, is he?, so over the cacophony of her friends and video games, Zatanna thinks she's probably okay, and grinning victoriously she pulls open the freezer and pulls out the bright pink carton; she sits on the floor with a bowl and the carton and licking her lips, she scoops herself a helping serving. She piles on some more of the pink ice cream and some hot fudge and, hey, rainbow sprinkles look awesome, too, so why not, and then when she's decided her creation is satisfactory, Zatanna puts in her spoon and tastes it.

Mmm…!

She goes for a second bite before she'll sneak back to her room with her prize; but just as she goes for the sprinkles there's a voice from behind her and she jumps, her spoon flying into the air and her hands scrambling to catch it, her eyes wide and surprised.

"Fancy seeing you here!" says Robin cheerfully, and of course he's grinning, for all the world looking less like her boyfriend and more like the sneaky little cheater at the playground, whispering to his victim, "Caught."

The spoon falls into his open palm as he snickers and crouching next to her puts it back in her hands, then tips it carefully to him and licks it.

"Sweet," he comments as he appraises her snack. Then he looks back at her, says, "But aren't you supposed to be studying or something?"

"I'm taking a break," she says, her arms crossed and to her chest. "Maybe you've heard of them?"

He raises an eyebrow, his expression ever tinged with amusement. "Wally said you left ten minutes ago."

Zatanna gasps, appalled. "Twenty!"

She's being completely seriously, like twenty minutes is a big deal, and, hey, some of them aren't trained to study things on gargoyles for hours without end, okay, but Robin laughs into his palm anyway. "Okay," he says as she looks sadly at her melting ice cream, and he gets himself a bowl and scoops out some for himself, "Let's go." And he puts her bowl into her hands, stands her up and steers her around in the direction of her room.

"But Rob-in," Zatanna whines as they walk down the hall, "Math is stupid."

This time it's Robin's turn to gasp, insulted, like Zatanna's just taken a shot at his first love. "Zatanna! You can't mean that!"

Zatanna rolls her eyes, pulling the door open for both of them to walk inside. "If I have to measure anymore angles, I'm going to stab myself with this pencil, get lead poisoning, and die," she says, and she shuts the door behind them.

Robin's nonplussed. "Actually, mechanical pencil lead is made of—" She whips herself around with frightening speed to glare at him, and he raises his palms up defensively, shrugging, like, hey, I'm just saying, if you want to kill yourself, there's more effective methods. She climbs up on her bed as he crouches on the floor and peers at her piles of notes curiously, reading bits and pieces of what Zatanna's supposedly learned in her other classes like English, History, and… "Bible studies?" Robin asks, and Zatanna makes a face like, yeah, duh, Catholic private school, what d'you expect, before she turns back to the problems she's been working on and moans.

Robin comes to look over her shoulder. "What's the problem, anyway?"

"It's boring and I don't get it," and, yeah, it's as simple as that.

"Well, I'm joining you now," he says, and he's sincere this time, not teasing her or laughing at her and you know, she's not so averse to her boyfriend helping her through her trigonometry after all, so what not? She scoots over on the bed and pats the spot next to her, sticks her pencil in his hand and slides her notebook right in front of him. Then she watches expectantly, lips pursed and hands folded neatly in her lap.

Robin looks at her quizzically, but then he shrugs and after giving it a once over, he starts the problem on a fresh page. "Okay," he says, and she's glad he doesn't punctuate his explanation with things like 'It's easy, look.' He explains the triangles and writes down the givens and the proofs and the calculations in his scratchy handwriting, and Zatanna watches him work, nodding, and, yeah, okay, at first it starts to make a little bit of sense, but then Robin's explanation takes a turn into the more complex aspects of the problems and Zatanna's completely lost again.

"Say that again?" she prods, poking him in the shoulder, and Robin slows down and starts over, patient, adding 'get that?'s and 'right?'s to see if she's following along correctly. Somewhere halfway through he asks if she understands this time, and she shakes her no, her brow furrowed. "Wouldn't it be the other way you showed me before?" she asks.

"Hm?" He glances back at the work he did earlier. "No. This is a different type of problem."

"…It is?"

Robin looks back at her over his shoulder, a smirk playing at his lips. "Are you even paying attention anymore?"

She shrugs, admitting, "I think I lost you somewhere when Johnny wanted to measure the height of the flagpole using the shadow it cast against the sidewalk." She pauses. "Was that two problems ago?"

"Three," he replies, frowning. "Come on, Zee, this'll go a lot faster if you pay attention a little bit more. Try not to let my boyish charm distract you." She pulls a face at him but relents, and Robin begins his explanation once again. "Okay, so, the givens here are…?" He looks to Zatanna expectantly.

"That's a right angle because it looks kind of squareish?"

"No," says Robin, "Unless there's an actual square, don't assume anything. It could be right, acute, or obtuse."

Zatanna groans. "You're obtuse."

"And you're acute," he replies without missing a beat, and, okay, she definitely walked right into that one, but that doesn't prevent her from hitting him with her pillow. Naturally, he snickers in response.

"Evidentially, this is going nowhere."

"In circles, maybe," she agrees, and her lips are quirked upward, because maybe that means Robin's willing to give up and she can procrastinate another day. "Hey," she tries, "do you think I can get my assignments postponed if I say a super dog at my homework?"

For a moment, it looks like Robin's seriously considering it, and Zatanna imagines trying to get Wolf to eat all of her assignments, but her fantasy is burst when Robin admits, "Not likely." There's a beat, and then: "When did you say your assignments are due again?"

"Four days," she replies. "Why?"

"I was just thinking," he says, jumping off the bed and over the rest of her papers so that he lands by the door, and he rubs his palms together, smirking brazenly. "What about if you were kidnapped?"