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Steph shifts. She shifts again. She shifts a third time.
Cass looks up from her corner of the couch. “Hurt?” she asks because she tends to forget okay and hasn’t mastered fidgety.
Steph shrugs. Her apartment is hot, too hot for the season. The AC in her building hasn’t been fixed and there’s only so much two fans—one ceiling, one desk—can do. At least their power’s back on. The Narrows was one of the last neighbors to be connected back to the power grid.
She kinda misses siphoning solar power from the Gotham U satellite buildings on the west side of the island. The university’s chancellor returned though and with her, funding for repairs and security. They’re even supposed to have a winter term if they can deal with all their flooded basements in time.
The joys of Chelsea’s elevation.
Maybe Cass’ll take a class with them. They must have ESL classes. ‘Course, English is Cass’ first language. And Steph likes to think she’s been doing a bang up job teaching it to her friend.
“You still want to do reading lessons with me, right?”
Cass is staring at her expectantly. “Hurt?” she repeats, this time with a tinge of frustration because she can read every movement in Steph’s body more accurately than Steph can read her own mind.
“Bored,” she answers. There’s shit to do now that Gotham has ‘laws’ and ‘governmental support.’ “And hot.” She fans herself with a magazine from before the earthquake. There’s a whole stack that had lived in her mom’s bathroom for all the months the plumbing was a bust. Since Gotham’s rejoined the union, the toilets flush and clothing stores are being delivered to again. Cass is in desperate need for clothes that aren’t armor undersuits. “See anything you like?”
Cass frowns at her. Then, her concentration breaks and she holds out the magazine to Steph. She taps on one of the pictures, a gorgeous model in soft green sweats and a loose black t-shirt.
Considering Cass is currently wearing a sweaty gray sports bra and bike shorts, Steph decides to call this an improvement.
‘Course, Steph isn’t much better. She’s forgone the bra all together and is in a thin blue tank top and jean shorts that have about as many holes and she has scars. It’s so damn hot she wishes she could skip half the fabric she’s in anyway.
“As long as your closet isn’t one hundred percent athleisure,” Steph teases, nodding her approval to Cass’ choice. It doesn’t really matter. And with the kind of money Batman seems to be packing, she could probably have every tennis skort and running shirt shipped into the city lining her closet instead of department store racks.
Cass gives her an annoyed-confused look.
“Closet? Percent? Athleisure?”
“Ath-lee-zure,” Cass repeats.
Duh. It’s not like Oracle is giving out fashion advice. She twangs at the bottom of Cass’ bike shorts. “Athleisure. It’s a fashion, a clothing style that you work out in. Train in. It’s all your clothes.”
Her friend mulls that over. She points at Steph’s outfit. “Not athleisure,” she deduces.
“Yep.”
They lull into a brief quiet. Steph hands back the magazine and Cass continues thumbing through it. Outside, the clouds shift and the sun beats through the window. Closed because the city smells worse than after a Killer Croc battle.
Cass wrinkles her nose. “Hot,” she announces. “I’m very hot.” She fans herself the same way Steph did.
She holds out a hair band.
Cass ignores it.
She holds it closer.
Cass leans away.
“Dude.”
An impish grin pools over Cass’ cheeks. “Can’t.”
“Can’t what?”
The hair band, one of the few that survived the entire cataclysm, receives a despondent look. “Can’t do hair.”
“Yes you can. You do your hair all the time.”
Cass gives the mother of all sighs. “Can’t do it.” She gives Steph a pitiful, pathetic look. “Hot.”
She gives a full fledged Eye Roll in response. One that would read clearly even with a mask.
“You can do it,” Cass reminds. She isn’t the best at question intonation but Steph knew what she wanted three sentences back.
“Fine,” Steph grumbles, completely put on. She was the number one babysitter on her block before her dad started Cluemastering sans the clues. She likes to braid hair. Sue her!
She motions for Cass to sit on the floor, the other girl already complying. God, when she finally moves in with Batman, she’s going to get whatever she wants. Bats is such a pushover when it comes to anyone that isn’t Steph.
Positioning herself just so, Steph starts running her fingers through Cass’ hair. Cass’ greasy hair. Cass’ hair that feels like she dunked it in the Harbor on a High Toxin day.
“Dude, is Oracle neglecting you? You know you have to wash your hair, right?”
“Do. I do.” She shimmies forward so her tangles catch on Steph’s finger, forcing the hair through. It must pinch but pain like that doesn’t seem to register to Cass.
Steph grabs another chunk. “And it’s not just dry shampoo that Ivy made out of her weird-ass glowing rice anymore. I know Old Gotham got water back almost a month ago.”
“Water,” Cass promises seriously. She makes the shushing noise of a gentle stream, her fingers trickling in front of her to demonstrate an overhead shower. “Not.” She switches the gesture to one Steph hasn’t encountered before in their many games of charades. It’s not until Cass adds the heavy noise of a harsh stream that Steph puts together the meaning. A hose.
They never showered off with a hose during the months after the earthquake and Steph doubts Oracle or Batman would’ve offered it to Cass either. Another reason to slap her useless father.
Cass looks pleased about her current source of water and Steph has her own shitty parental habits that she ain’t gonna unpack, so she just supplies the word hose and moves on.
“When did you last wash it?”
Dropping the gestures, Cass’ shoulders hunch forward as she thinks. Steph scritches her nails through her scalp, flecks of dust caught in the grease.
Cass shrugs, with a touch of frustration. “One day. Already.”
“Yesterday,” Steph fills in. When you’re in the middle of an anti-annexed disaster zone, there’s no time to dwell on the past. It’s whether the water will last until tomorrow or the rats will take over the sewer next week or the Joker cultists will attack the displacement camps next month. It’s how long you can hold your shaky breath, stay on your aching feet, clamp down on your empty stomach.
“Yes. Stir. Day,” she repeats. Nodding, but careful not to dislodge Steph’s grip as she plays with Cass’ hair. “I shower. Wash.”
Steph raises an eyebrow. “How have you been washing your hair?” she asks, rubbing a section near the nape of Cass’ neck between her thumb and pointer. There’s a bit of muck that she’s slowly working loose. It’s entirely possible that the gunk is newly acquired—Cass has very low standards for sanitation, as does Steph these days—but unless Cass dunked her head in a vat of oil (highly discouraged in Gotham, no matter how good the Jokerised fries look coming out of the fryer), the grease is old.
She mines it, their charades game untold levels of awesomeness. Squirting out imaginary shampoo onto her palm but not much. Rubbing her two hands together but not enough to really make suds. Smearing the shampoo over her hair but not working it in. Rinsing it out but not after any wait.
“Oracle has been neglecting you,” Steph bemoans, flopping backwards. The couch creaks.
“No.” Her eyes are glistening a bit in confusion so Steph doesn’t take it as outright denial.
Steph holds out her hand. “C’mon, Cassie. Time for my mom’s one month of cosmetology school to work its magic.”
A small, adventurous smile forms as she accepts the offer. They journey to the bathroom, its newly restored plumbing a luxury Steph will cherish for the rest of her life. Their blue towels are threadbare, the counter is covered in near empty bottles of scavenged soap, the floor has a creeping of mold along the baseboards. The curtain has an orange stain from hard water pelting it, the vent fan stopped working before the quake, the rug was used to fight off some mutated racoons.
If this were Robin or Oracle, she’d feel deeply embarrassed. But this is Cass. They build each other.
Her best friend is quiet as Steph assesses the space. Steady and peaceful. Attributes Steph does not possess, nor does she strive to. She is the choppy waves that lap at the Narrows’ shores. She is the churning clouds that loom in the Gotham sky. She is the strength to yank a toddler back from an approaching train and the speed to catch a turning bus.
She’s Cass’ friend and teacher. She can wash her hair.
There’s not enough depth under the sink faucet to comfortably stick your head, no matter how likely it is that Cass wouldn’t know to complain. The shower head is detachable though, courtesy of the mother of three that lived here before Steph’s parents signed the lease.
She double folds the towel she dried off with this morning and places it beside the tub. Her shampoo and conditioner, both won from Canadian aid deliveries, quickly join it on the floor.
Cass is picking at the band of her sports bra. “I… less clothes?”
Shrugging, Steph flips her own hair down until all the curls are gathered enough to tuck into her rejected hair band. “Nah. Unless you really don’t want those clothes wet, but they’ll dry out quickly and you can borrow some of mine while they do.” She pops up, her hair flipping behind her. “You wear clothes, also. Oh! Take them off, that’s what you were looking for.”
Cass flicks her as she shifts past her friend, getting to the faucet. They have hot water now, but that doesn’t change that the controls in her home are shit. She gets to fiddling for warm, sticking her tongue out in retaliation. Cass settles down on the cool lip of the tub. “Oracle’s shower… no…” She thumps the stained fiberglass side.
“Tub.”
“O- O’s shower gets no tub.”
“It makes sense that Oracle’s shower doesn’t have a tub,” she answers, absentmindedly modeling the language even though they’re not doing a lesson. “It’s probably hard to use a shower chair with the tub in the way. I’m surprised you haven’t run into tubs yet with how many house calls you do.”
She gains a distant look. “Seen, not know.”
Steph nudges her. “Welp, that’s why you have me. Your one woman guide to all things Gotham, English, and Hair Care. Now.” She pulls down the shower head. “Hop in. Scooch forward a little… Little more… Perfect!”
Reaching out to catch some of the flowing water, Cass gives a thumbs up on the temperature while Steph gets situated kneeling on the outside of the bath. She switches the water to spray out the shower head rather than rushing into the bottom.
A soft hand on Cass’ shoulder has her tilting her head back. Her eyes flutter closed, the small but insistent trust not lost on Steph. With one hand, she coaxes all the straggling hairs off of Cass’ shoulders to dangle across her back. Moving slow, starting at the bottom, she wets it.
Water drips quickly down her back, slipping over and soaking into her bra, creating small streams that run into her shorts. It’s surely uncomfortable, but Cass doesn’t shift or shiver. She extends her neck further as Steph starts moving the water upwards, combing her fingers methodically through the uneven sections of hair, left to right. It clumps together, but doesn’t seem to absorb more than torrents past it. Steph was already planning on two washes, but this confirms it.
The steady hum of the water becomes the only thing Steph hears. Not the harsh beeping of construction vehicles passing through. Not the bulldozing as new gas lines are laid. Not the disjointed humming of the unreliable electricity. The water that is almost warm enough to steam. It runs from her wrists to her elbows, dripping onto her shorts.
Already bits of debris have been caught in the stream and are circling the drain. She lifts the water higher and Cass in turn lifts her hands. Steph jerks a little, and Cass must sense it because she opens her eyes to give a long, trusting cat blink. Her pointer fingers plug her ears, something Steph never would have thought to warn her of as she focuses the water onto the beginnings of her scalp.
The wet layers below hardly shift from where they’re plastered to Cass’ shoulders as Steph continues to card through her dark hair.
She lifts onto her knees rather than sitting against her calves, getting the extra bit of height that she needs to soak the rest of Cass’ crown. A bit of water sprays onto her eyelids and cheeks, but her friend hardly twitches. She breathes in slow, sustaining breathes through her nose, chest rising and falling in time with the movement of the water.
Thoroughly wet, Steph turns off the water, scarcity mindset not misplaced. She doesn’t bother drying her hands on her tank top before popping the cap of the shampoo. A burst of green apple into the air, tickling Steph’s nose as she takes in a heavy breath.
She rubs her hands together where Cass can see, careful to get the gel toward her fingers rather than trapped in her palms.
Starting at Cass’ scalp, she starts working the soap in. Gentle circles of bubbling suds. Her nails catch accidentally in places, craggly as always, but Cass just hums.
Her sharp eyes have fluttered closed again, barely flickering behind the lids. Her stiff jaw has loosened, her shoulders have dipped down, her fingers have unclenched.
Steph continues, getting another dollop of soap as she reaches the base of Cass’ neck. She tenses briefly before relaxing.
She rubs the hair between her hands vigorously, then runs her fingers through the stands, tugging loose the tangles she just created.
Soapy dirt is already starting to tickle down Cass’ back and pool where she sits in the tub. Her tipped face loses some of its light as Steph lets go of the tips of hair, so she scritches her scalp another minute before retrieving the shower head and getting the water back to its previous temperature.
Cass tips her head back as Steph slowly starts washing out the shampoo. She takes longer than she needs to, thoroughly rinsing each ribbon of hair. There’s something deeply satisfying about the task, watching as section after section loses the layer of soapy grime and returns to its jet black status.
The choppiness of the cut becomes apparent, but unremarkable. The shape of Steph’s hair has never been anything satisfying, though she knows her mom would trim Cass’ split ends in a heartbeat.
A deep breath echoes through her lungs at the thought. She misses her mom. Since the quake, since the baby, they haven't seen much of each other.
Her mom used to wash her hair like this when she was younger, she remembers. They had a thick plastic cup with a beer stein handle that they kept under the sink. Her mom would fill it with fresh warm water while she played with foam letter- and animal-shaped toys that she sobbed about when they finally threw away their moldy forms. Her mom would seal the palm of her of hand with Steph’s forehead to protect her eyes from the soap suds. She remembers fighting her, not wanting her hair rinsed out all, no matter how perfect the temperature.
She doesn’t know the last time her mom did that. Before Dad went to jail, maybe. Definitely before he got out.
As she dollops out her next layer of shampoo, the sense memory of strong, sure fingers in her own hair echoes her movements through Cass’.
Another soft hum, content and humble. Gentled.
Even as her fingertips become pruney, she continues. Lending Cass this brief moment of peace, this brief moment of care.
She uses nearly half the bottle by the time she finishes with her third rinse. Her hair is slick, her scalp clean, her clothes soaked.
The towel Steph is knelt down on hasn’t sopped up half the water she’s let escape and when she shifts, she can feel the terry cloth imprints tattooing her knees. Her arms have a soft familiar ache that should’ve been lost by the time she stole Robin’s grapple. And her heartbeat fizzles pleasantly through her whole body like the stream of warm water coating Cass’ hair.
She’s not done though.
Clicking the cap of the shampoo shut, she sets it back on the lip of the tub. It’s not where she usually keeps it and she’ll surely knock it over before they’re done, but Cass hasn’t opened her eyes for some time and she wants to give some warning to the transition.
The conditioner is a cherry scent, a light pink that she thinks Cass would look beautiful in. Maybe when she gets curly hair products again, she’ll give this bottle to Cass, whose hair parts delicately as she works the creamy product in with careful fingers.
Time falls away as she works through every knot and tangle. Cass follows her movement perfectly, pulling away when she needs tension and tipping back when she needs slack. Her head rolls like it’s never known the pain of being forced down.
After several long scritches along her scalp, to which Cass gives pleasant shudders, Steph picks up the shower head one last time. She repeats all the same motions as when she applied the conditioner, moving slowly to make sure none gets left behind.
Palm sealed to the top of Cass’ forehead, she gives one last good rinse, the water now cool.
She leans back, tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. Cass blinks her eyes open, sitting forward slowly. Water drips down her back, her arms, her cheeks. There’s a fine mist over her whole front, a pool of water clumsily draining from her legs. Her hair shines in the poor bathroom light, her lungs breathe in the humid air.
Absently, she swipes away a stray water drop that edges too close to her eyebrow, gaze drifting toward Steph’s sodden hands.
The small movement is enough to jerk her to the next step. Pretending her knees don’t ache and shake as she rises, Steph retrieves her mom’s clean towel from the bar. Cass accepts it for half a moment before letting go.
Steph understands, returning to her kneeling position without thought. Keeping the towel folded in half, she quickly undoes all her detangling work as she draws the water for Cass’ hair. It quickly becomes damp and stringy, but Cass clearly doesn’t mind. Steph dries every nook and cranny of her scalp, scrubbing behind ears before sliding across the base of her neck.
A few new drips collect at the ends of her hair and she swipes those up as well, drying and drying before she’s halfway to a frizzy mess.
She wraps the damp towel around Cass’ shoulders, catching her fingers around Cass’ wrist. She squeezes once before standing. She hears the squeak as Cass steps out of the tub and when she returns with dry clothes, Cass is looking at herself in the mirror. Her fingers thread through her hair, not timid but not free.
Steph watches her a moment too long, hopelessly content with this moment, with her friend.
Cass catches her eye in the mirror and she smiles like pure light will split through her teeth if she doesn’t brighten her features so.
When the sounds of the streets creep in, sunset drawing people home, Steph holds out the clothes. Cass accepts them, rubbing her thumb over the laundry soft fabric of the tee. There’s a reverence in her eyes that Steph doesn’t understand until she realized she picked out her favorite purple shirt.
“Get dressed,” she offers, a deep tenderness spreading through her. “I’ll brush your hair next.”