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elasticella's fresh femslash salad bar event - specifically for the prompt/salad "dawn, newjeans (cool with you)" on my table.date posted: 2024-02-22
summary: She slips on her own terms.
word count: 1,415 words
content warnings: smoking
notes: written for elasticella's fresh femslash salad bar event - specifically for the prompt/salad "dawn, newjeans (cool with you)" on my table.
"It's cool out here tonight, isn’t it?" Rose says, breaking the silence. Cass watches her lean back more on the rooftop, shifting her weight more onto her elbows. She watches Rose tilt her head up and glance at the sky, briefly, before she looks forward again, into the gaping maw of Gotham City.
They fall into an uncomfortable silence again, Rose staring out at the city, Cass staring into her lap, interspersed with glances to her left at Rose – watching, scanning. Wary.
Cass cuts through the cold quiet.
"What do you want?"
Rose scoffs. Cass' eyes dart to her side, and Rose turns her head abruptly towards Cass, sharp and raw.
"What do you want, huh? What's your aim?" she says, piercing, "how about that, for once?"
Cass keeps her gaze on Rose, and they stare at each other for a moment, Rose's eyes narrowed and head tilted up in a confident gesture. Cass keeps her expression stony, as much as she can, but she feels something slipping, slowly.
Eventually, Rose breaks their contact, and turns her head back towards the cityscape. Cass watches her sit up, slowly, watches her dig into the pocket inside the leather jacket she has on over her Ravager suit, and it puts Cass on edge, has her baring one fist to her right and shifting her stance to her left, towards Rose.
Rose pulls out a box of cigarettes. "Do you mind?"
Cass narrows her eyes, what's your aim and for once in her mind. She shakes her head.
"To each their own," Rose shrugs, and Cass sees a lighter in Rose's grasp that she didn't notice before.
Rose lights her cigarette, takes a short drag, and exhales. The smoke billows out into the cold, rotten Gotham air, bigger than the echos of exhales their breaths conjure every time they breathe in this cold weather.
Rose blinks, then side-eyes Cass.
"You're going to ask me where I got the lighter," she says.
Cass blinks, once, then twice. Squints and looks down into her lap, gazes at her hands folded atop each other. Her hands are icy in this autumn weather. She wonders when the weather will turn colder, when the snow will blanket the city, and then dry up over the weeks, leaving sidewalk stains and dark, muddy sludge in its wake. She wonders who she’ll stay warm with through it.
She wonders how Rose will stay warm through it.
Cass tightens one hand into a fist, slowly, and covers it with her free hand.
"I’m not, now," Cass says, quiet. She watches her breath cascade briefly in front of her, before turning her gaze back to Rose.
Rose shrugs again, her eyes closing momentarily, head tilting to the side lightly.
Cass knows a lot about Rose, on a surface level: her life as Deathstroke’s daughter, the subsequent history between them. Rose’s outsider status on the Titans, always in and out with them. Right now, it’s a blurry in-between, for Rose and the Titans. That’s as much as Cass knows, right now.
But Cass also knows Rose, deeper than that. Intimately.
She knows she favors a right hook when starting a fight, that she aims for the face and the neck, punches up and tries to knock Cass in the jaw until Cass inevitably dodges it. She knows Rose reaches for her swords, and Cass will dodge them, always, but Rose will fight like hell to land a hit on her.
Sometimes, Cass lets herself slip up, lets a blade slice into her cheek or the side of her arm. Sometimes, she lets Rose slip her fingers between her folds, Cass’ head tilted back, heat blooming all over her despite the cold air of the roofs they always cross paths on. Sometimes, Cass lets herself return the favor, biting into the edge of Rose’s neck, her hips swaying and rocking atop her, fervent and furious.
Cass lets it happen, always. She knows this.
She’s scared she enjoys the thrill of it more than she should. She knows this too.
Cass feels her legs twitch, nervous and on edge from her thoughts – shameful. She feels heat rise to her cheeks at the thought of Rose and her, how they’re both on a roof, again.
She lifts her head, glances to the side again, and sees Rose staring back at her, smirking.
"You look like you could use a light," Rose says, casually, her torso turned towards Cass. Cass looks back into her lap, embarrassed, and shakes her head. Her lips are parted, breathing in and out, her mask abandoned and beside her, the wind brushing her hair into a half-unmanageable mess.
She glances yet again at Rose, sees how her hair blows in the sudden wind, how tangled and ragged it is, but there’s a shine to it from the light of dusk, tinting it golden, ever so slightly, the glow of the sun stabbing through Gotham’s overcast skies as much as it can. Gotham’s skyline is a reluctant one to pierce, Cass has noticed, through their seemingly endless cloudy days.
Rose takes a long drag from her cigarette, and the wind blows the smoke in Cass’ direction. It takes everything in her to hide her recoil from the rancid smell, controlling the twitch of her nostrils at the stench.
Cass stares at her lap. Rose smokes. Cass, reluctantly, finds a comfortable stasis in the moment.
They sit like that for a while, the roof ice cold and rock hard, Cass with her legs crossed and Rose with her legs outstretched in front of her, leaning on one elbow as she holds a cigarette in her other hand, taking drags from her cigarette every now and then.
Cass tilts her head towards the sky, sees the sun has risen more, golden and splitting the Gotham skyline however much it can, through Gotham’s stony, hazy skies. The wind gusts again, cutting the sides of her cheeks and the tips of her ears as it blows her hair behind her. Cass relents for a moment – relaxes, even – and lets herself feel the cold wind, ice on her face and neck.
A voice shakes her out of her reverie. Cass jumps, her eyes shooting open with all the force of a car crash.
She looks to her left, and the first thing she sees, through her slightly blurry vision, eyes pricked with tears from the cold wind, is Rose’s illuminated hair, shining and rich with the power of the sun.
All Cass thinks for a moment, is how beautiful Rose is in that second, how her frost-white hair stuns her when lit up this way, this golden color. The thought should unsettle her, she knows.
In that moment, it doesn’t scare her.
Rose narrows her eyes. "I said," she starts, "it’s… nice, right now," Rose says, reluctantly. It’s forced out. Cass regrets not hearing her the first time, hearing her true vulnerability.
If she had heard Rose that vulnerable, before, would Cass have taken advantage of it? Should she have taken advantage of it? It’s in her blood, after all, to take advantage of those who show themselves to her. It’s in her blood as much as it is in Rose; they are their father’s daughters.
But, Cass thinks, she is her father’s daughter. She’s Batman’s daughter, as much as she is Cain’s.
Cass lets herself relax, lets the stiffness droop from her stance, her bones and flesh held so tightly together this whole time. She lays down on the roof, stares at the skyline for a moment, sees the myriad of colors married together, yet still jagged, in purples and oranges and golds and blues, all coexisting together, for their brief time together in this early morning, this sunrise.
She turns her head towards Rose, eyes looking up at her from where Rose is still leaning on her elbow, smoke billowing from the cigarette in the other hand. Rose is frozen, nervous. Vulnerability.
Cass closes her eyes too long to be a blink.
"It’s cool, with you," she agrees, as Rose glances towards the sky. Cass mimics her, looks towards the sky, watches the collage of sharp colors melded together.
Rose snorts. Cass looks back at her, abruptly, and sees her smiling, with only a tinge of a smirk on her face.
"For once," Rose repeats, and chuckles, before bursting into laughter, relieved and relaxed, for once.
Cass, again, slips, and laughs with her.
This time, she slips on her own terms.