alwaysroomforhope | (no subject)

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shatterverse

(no subject)

Steph's talk with Batman has cleared up precisely nothing. It's nearing daylight by the time the window slides up soundlessly again and she slips inside, cloak blending with the shadows, tired and only wanting to slide into bed with a snuggly, snoring boyfriend. Which she promptly does.

Somewhere that's way too early in the morning, the warm snuggling goes away. There might have been some talking, but Steph couldn't swear to it, because it's nearly evening by the time she actually wakes up, finding herself curled up in a tight ball alone in bed with exactly zero answers more than she started with.

She crawls out of bed, shaking her limbs out to clear the cramps from sleeping so huddled, and shaking her head to clear the bad dreams. (Running, always running, with her father behind her laughing and his friends, and Batman ahead - so far ahead she'll never catch up - and then a long line of people she's known, people who've died, people who she might have killed. Phil and his two stupid cannibal sons are there, staring at her. Babs is there, watching her run. Sokka isn't there, she can't find him anywhere, she can't find anyone who won't look at her like she's a failure -- and alwaays the running.)

Cleaning her teeth is the first thing she does; after sleeping all day it feels like her tongue is a dirty fuzzy old sock. Then she wanders out to the balcony to look down at the city spread out below the apartment. It's Metropolis - too clean, too shiny. It's not home, not the way that Gotham was or the farm is now. But maybe she can learn to live with that.

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"I didn't mean to," Sokka repeats, but he sounds a little more hopeful to see her giggling. "I swear, I didn't, and there was just the one girl, and I totally tried not to look, I promise."

But there were BOOBS.

And TASSLES.

(Sokka quite likes breasts, too. It was hard not to look.)

"You totally looked. Oh, maaaaan. Am I allowed to beat this girl up?"

Insecure Steph is insecure!

"... was she pretty?"

Sokka has ENORMOUSLY WIDE EYES NOW. How do you answer that without getting murdered?

"Um... I don't know, I could only think about you?"

WILL THAT WORK?

NO. NO. Noooooooooo. Nooooooooooooooooo --

-- oh, fine, giggling again, softer this time. Steph pokes him in the chest. "You're a terrible liar."

Oh maaaaan, she was totally pretty. :(

"No, no, I'm not!" Sokka insists, and his hands tighten around her nervously. "I swear, I totally talked about you the whole time, I think it really annoyed her. And Dean paid for her to drag me to some back room but we just talked the whole time and I asked her to stay on the other side of the room and... okay, well, she's really nice and I promised to bring her stuff from the farm, but you'll come with me, right?"

WON'T YOU STEPH PLEEEEEASE?

Steph is okay with hands tightening. More than. She can't help half-grinning, half-worrying-frown-...-ing. "Sure, if you - if you want me to. But is it OK if I punch her just a little bit?"

Usually, Sokka would absolute forbid the punching of an innocent person, but his guilt doesn't allow him to forbid Steph anything at this point. "Um... I'd... rather you didn't?"

But it's not much of an order.

"Yes, I do. Please do?"

Steph winds her arms around his waist again. MORE SNUGGLING. "Okay, okay. No punching, and I'll totally come meet ... this other girl who was parading around naked in front of my boyfriend."

She considers for a minute, and then, hopefully: "She was just doing her job, right? But can I punch Dean?"

"She wasn't naked!" Sokka assures her quickly, as if this will fix everything. "I mean-- well, she wasn't clothed, but she wasn't naked either, I swear."

There's a lot of swearing and promising going on tonight.

As for Dean, Steph gets an emphatic nod. "Yes, absolutely, you can totally punch Dean."

"I will," Steph mutters quietly into his chest, resting against him and holding tight.

She's totally fine with Sokka hanging out with strippers and talking to them and making friends with them. Totally. She's a grownup and she's mature and she can handle this just like she handles everything else, all the time --

(a memory: her dad coming home with other women, or stinking of cheap perfume and stained with bright lipstick; her mom sighing and looking away, every time. "You and your strippers!" "Shut up, Crystal!" and the smack of fist hitting flesh.)

It's been a long, long few weeks, and Steph's been kicked out of the Bats and helped Sokka bring his sister back to life and found out that Mel's sister did the opposite, and still doesn't know how to be a good person and not turn into her dad while being okay with Sokka and Mel killing people, and she just woke up and she lied to Sokka about sneaking out to meet the man who threatened to kill him and didn't get any answers anyway, and Dean's been taking him to see strippers even though Dean knows perfectly well Sokka has a girlfriend, and actually... actually ...

... actually Sokka has a very tired girlfriend with quiet tears trickling down her face now, head pressed into his chest and hoping desperately he won't notice. Because it isn't about the strippers, it really isn't, it's just ... it's just everything.

When she presses closer, Sokka holds tighter to her, wracked with guilt. He hadn't wanted to go because he'd seen it as a betrayal, and he hadn't left because it had seemed rude to Jane-- Aurora. But he'd never thought about it hurting Steph.

He bows his head to her hair and tightens his arms around her. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," he whispers. "It won't happen again, I swear, I'm sorry."

"Shut up," Steph tells him, sniffly and angry. "I don't care 'f you go again. I trust you. I love you.

"I just hate everything else in this whole stupid world."

Um...

Well, that's new.

Sokka blinks and releases her, but only a tiny bit. Just enough to rub her back and stop keeping her in such a death grip. "Oh... so... you're not mad at me?"

Butbutbutbut the CRYING.

"You'd be hilarious in a strip club," Steph points out, sniffing. "You'd be constantly bright red and trying not to look anywhere in case you accidentally saw anything." It's almost a laugh, even though there are still tears.

"Seriously, it's fine. Just ... weirded me out f'a bit." Until she remembered that he's Sokka, not any ex-boyfriend or her father.

He's still worried, especially when she's still sniffling and her face is still wet. "I'm sorry, really," he assures her again, still nervous and unsure, even as he lifts a hand to her hair comfortingly. "Do you... do you still want to meet her? I promised I'd go back and bring them stuff from the farm, but it'll be after hours, I don't think we'll actually hafta go in."

"Anything that means I don't have to go back to the farm is good," Steph says, lifting a hand to run it through her hair and finding his in the way; she turns the movement into catching his hand to squeeze. "We can go hang out with her. You can go on your own if you want, I don' mind."

Mind, well, maybe a little - but he's still Sokka. He's the first man she's ever really trusted a hundred percent. It'd be dumb of her to think he'd change just because some stripper wiggled her butt at him.

None of what she's doing is stopping Sokka from worrying at all. "Why don't you want to go back to the farm?" he asks quietly, and when she catches his hand, his fingers lace with hers and squeeze back. "Did something happen while I was gone?"

"No, no." She sighs, peeling herself away and drifting over to the mirror to wipe at her face angrily. "I'm just sick of all the looks. From Babs an' everyone."

Sokka has plenty of his own to worry about. She hadn't meant to tell him just how stressed she's been. But that seems kind of pointless, when she's still sniffly just from hardly anything important at all.

"I don't wanna go have that fight with her because I don't know what I'll say."

Sokka lets her pull away from him, but follows her to the mirror. Angry movements of her fingers against her face get him to grab her wrists gently, pull them back.

He wraps his arms around her shoulders from behind, uses the mirror to wipe away her tears with his fingers.

"Why would you fight?"

Steph leans backwards into his arms, tension easing with his fingers. "The whole ... everything. The killing people. The cannibals. She thinks I'm - I don't know what she thinks."

It's a much bigger deal than Steph's been pretending it was.

Well, shit.

Sokka curls around her, trying to protect and envelop and comfort all at the same time.

"...maybe I'll run back to the farm, pick up the fruit, and then come straight back? And then we can... we can kinda vacation or something here for a few days?"

It works. Sokka is good like that. Steph turns around to wrap her arms around him, eyes shut and just - letting herself be held.

Letting yourself be the weak one is sometimes OK. ... only sometimes, though.

"You don't want to go back and stay with Katara? I can cope, it's not that bad..."

Sokka has his own issues with his sister, what it means to have her back, to have her at all... issues he won't talk about either.

He hugs Steph tighter and kisses her cheek. "Mel's looking out for her. I want to make sure you want to go back before we do. I don't wanna go without you."

Steph hesitates, and when she looks up at him she's not quite smiling but her eyes are shining anyway.

"See, that is why you're allowed to go to as many strip clubs as you want," she teases gently. "'Cause you say things like that." Things like Steph, you're more important than my sister to me. It's a rush way better than jumping off any building, 'cause it lasts.

"If you wanna stay here a bit longer ... I'd like that."

Sokka blinks, surprised, and then smiles at her. "I say them just to manipulate you into loving me," he admits softly, running fingers through her hair again. "I'll hit the farm real quick and come straight back. Today. Now. When do you want me to go?"