In the short amount of time that Stephanie Brown had found herself under work study in her university's library many titles had stuck out.
Everyone Poops, The Haunted Vagina, A Billionaire Dinosaur Forced Me Gay; In fact, all these titles could likely be used in some way to explain the titles before her.
"Tim Drake-Wayne, Missing from Yet Another Event of the Gotham Social Elite." She had to say it aloud just to believe that anyone really cared that much. God, their speculations on the side of the tabloid could easily be supplemented. Was he busy with drugs, sex, or hiding his sexual orientation at the moment? Perhaps all three, perhaps he had found himself inside a haunted vagina with a Billionaire Dinosaur trying to pay him to shit.
She wasn't really sure.
The next headline wasn't that much better.
"Tim Drake, Alone and Stoned." It's like they've never even talked to him, Stephanie mused to herself, just about choking on the idea of Tim doing anything that would allow him to be stoned.
"Tim Drake, Gay and Afraid." That would explain ninety percent of her teenage years.Tim don't touch me there, the boy virgin of Gotham city.
"Find Me Somebody to Love, Demands Tim Drake to Father." It was that one that sent her over the edge, giggling slightly under her breath she whispered, "Yes Damian, of course we will continue patrolling the streets, but only after I find someone for your brother to love."
"Something has to be done."
"I don't know what you mean, Bruce." Tim responded, picking over the dinner Alfred had prepared so diligently for them that day. Bruce sat across the other end of the long table, Damian nestled somewhere in the absurd amount of seats between them and Dick planted to the left of Bruce.
Tim honestly had no clue.
"Tt," Damian began, replying in a condescending tone, "As if you don't know, you haven't become that much of a social pariah have you-"
"Damian." Bruce interrupted, "Tim has never been interested in the ways of the press."
Press?
"You think he would be more concerned, maybe all those drugs he's been taking have impaired that? Or maybe it's like the daily scribe said, 'Tim is too tempted by the male body to allow himself near finer company again'?" Dick grinned towards the aforementioned brother, "Tell me, can you see through the tears of your loneliness?"
What? "What?"
"Tabloids Timmy, you're all over the tabloids." Dick found obvious humor in this.
"Normally this would be of no concern of mine," Bruce began, clearing his throat, "But as they've begun getting more desperate for a story about you, their movements have began to follow yours more closely. It's too risky to allow this to continue."
Something clicked in his head. "So you're asking me to become more interesting? Just to play with a bunch of wannabe journalists for a day?"
"You really have no concept of how the press works, do you?" Damian snarked, practically stabbing his steak in frustration.
"It's not one story I'm asking for, its continuous movement in a press want something to report on, you understand. Lacking that is how you've gotten into this situation."
"So what, you want me to become a drug dealer or something? Fake an overdose?" Dancing around the subject was beginning to annoy him, if there was something to be corrected then it should be stated outright.
His response, however, was met with silence.
Either they had an idea and no way to put it, or the collective Wayne family was brainstorming.
He was about to dismiss the topic entirely when Dick responded once more. "A girlfriend would be nice." Bruce seemed in agreement.
A girlfriend.
"I'm sorry to tell you this, but the only women I've been interacting with want to kill me." True, definitely true, last night he had a heel driven into his stomach by a C list villain after a failed bank robbery.
"I'm sure Todd knows a prostitute or two," Damian. The literal devil.
Dick ignored him, "You don't have anything? Any ex girlfriends who would be interested in helping or?"
"Not that I know of-"
"He does." Bruce interrupted. "He happens to have one who I think would be instrumental to the dissolution of rumors of the press."
Instrumental?
"College enrolled, cheerful, blonde-"
"Oh," Smiling again, Dick's always smiling. "Leg's up to here…" His arm raised above his head in a far exaggeration of the measurement.
The figurative brick seemed to hit both Damian and Tim at the same time.
"Fatgirl."
"Steph." How they managed to be so insync and yet so different was beyond anyone within the batfamily.
The only problem was getting her to agree.
"Alright Fatso," Steph rolled her eyes as the overweight alleycat that made a habit of eating her leftovers climbed onto her shoulder. He was at least a good fifty pounds. "It's you, me, and John Travolta vs. the world tonight." She stated, hauling him over to the beaten up old couch in the middle of the room.
Having her own apartment was good, too good. She almost wished she'd thought of the idea of moving out of her mother's place sooner so she could collect furniture off the side of the road without her mother fussing over bedbugs and bloodstains too much. She could own a couch with a a buttmark already worn in, not have to bother with doing it herself.
Bonus points in the fact that said buttmark was large enough for her to curl up in. God bless the overweight and forty.
"I hope you like the movie Grease as much as you like hamburger grease, because both of those are on the menu tonight. It's my day off, as the crick in my shoulder says, and god damn I am gonna spend it with a man."
The cat diligently stayed put on the other side of the couch where she placed him, his combination of mangy fur and missing eye seeming to be in contrast with the large purring he was emitting.
He was broken, but nearly all good things in life were.
"Meow?" He asked, What's wrong, why is a super sexy fly lady like you alone in this part of town?
Okay maybe that's not what meow meant, but in her mind Fatso as a human would be an overweight ginger man in his late fifties who always had his shirt unbuttoned down to his navel and flashed girls tacky smiles.
"I'm twenty one, I live on my own, I have no boyfriend, my hair smells mildly like this sweaty guy at the library, my ex boyfriend is apparently a lonely gay drug dealer of which I am only okay with one of those things and it rhymes with hey, and I'm spending my Friday night with a cat that isn't even mine." She answered evenly.
"But it doesn't matter because Grease is on channel nine in five minutes." Defeated, she sighed, "And I got a burger from a place called Nice to Meat You."
She gestured to the burger in grease soaked wrapping on her pastel green dining table. (It was yet another roadside find.)
If cats could nod in approval this one definitely would.
God bless Fatso, she thought, the cat I never asked for. Shaking her head she waltzed over to the window to close it, the summer breeze having provided too much fresh air for her personal pity party.
Using one hand to brace herself and the other to fiddle with the lock on the window, she found it jammed and herself forced to look at the track for the window with her head mildly out of the building.
Great.
"Hold on Fatso, I gotta go get a hanger and fix this."
"Meow," the cat responded, turning to the tv.
She was back with a bent coat hanger within a matter of seconds, climbing out the window and onto the fire escape to begin to fix the damage. She wedged a shoe in the bottom of the window to prevent herself from being locked out and went to town on it.
"I must give amazing handjobs with the amount of jerking off I have to do to this thing."
And for a while everything was okay…
Until she heard the creaking.
"Go away, cat. I already have a stray in my house." She announced to the escape.
Creak.
"Oh come on cat."
Creak, creak, creak, creak, CREAK.
That's not a cat, she came to the comprehensive conclusion.
That is definitely not a cat.
The creak came up her level of the escape and she thought to herself how she thought she'd die.
Falling off a roof was her main bet in the past.
Not being stabbed to death on her fire escape.
The creaking, far too loud to be a cat, began to approach her, the perpetrator placing their hand on her shoulder.
Her wire coat hanger made contact first, before she'd even thought about it she'd whirled around and began mercilessly beating a hooded stranger without a second thought. Hooded meant bad, people who wore hoods were bad. Damian wore a hood up once or twice, case and point.
"Don't worry Fatso," She called over her shoulder. "Steph refuses to go down this way!"
The hooded stranger began shielding his face, screaming at her to stop. "Steph, for the-"
Oh.
She raised her coat hanger above her shoulders, raising an eyebrow as she questioned. "Tim?"
