InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Muffins are love."

Stephanie Brown || Batgirl (stephaniebrown) wrote in wariscoming,
@ 2010-08-30 21:57:00

Entry tags:

stephanie brown/batgirl, xander harris

Who: Stephanie Brown and Xander Harris
What: Chatting and stuff. Also, there's ice cream.
When: Night time, April 30th.
Where: The community kitchen! At least in the beginning.
Warnings: It's Steph and Xander. I can't think of anything.

Stephanie was pretty sure that she'd been doing better at keeping up her cheerful front since Ron had started asking her what was bothering her, but there was no way she could have been positive. At least he stopped asking though, because she had no idea how she could explain it outside of going "I'm pretty sure you're going to ditch me for Hermione now that she's here and your age. And why wouldn't I be pretty sure of that? She's the one you're supposed to be with." If she flat out said it then she would come off as a clingy girlfriend. And a suspicious one, at that. She was aware that was how she used to be back when she was with Tim, partly cause of the boyfriend she had before Tim, partly because her dad made her have a hard time really trusting people, but Stephanie didn't want to be that kind of girl any more. It ended up causing more problems than solutions.

In the end, all the pretending to be fine in the world didn't mean that she was really fine. She just didn't really have anyone to talk to about it. Back home if this sort of thing happened (minus it being Ron Weasley, cause the odds of Ron showing up in Gotham were slim to none. Supposedly, at least.) she would have probably gone to Babs. But the Babs here still didn't seem to really like her all that much. Which was fine. Stephanie knew that Babs wasn't her biggest fan before she stepped into the Batgirl boots and proved herself to her, and the Babs here in the building was from sometime before that ever happened.

There was also Dick. And he was just... Dick. He didn't like her, Stephanie knew that. So he was out.

Even back home Stephanie didn't have all that many people she could confide in, so she had gotten used to just keeping a lot of stuff to herself.

That night there was that nagging at the back of her mind that every girl gets when she's upset about something. The one that says that ice cream will make everything better and the world will be wonderful again once vast amounts have been consumed. It never really panned out that way afterwards, but there was always the hope that maybe this time would be the case where it worked. The problem was that Stephanie was out of ice cream. She'd finished off her half gallon of MOO-ionaire's Java the night before and she wasn't in the mood to change out of her comfy monkey print pajamas to go get more from the grocery store. So, instead she just went down to the community kitchen to see if there was any ice cream in the freezer down there, and if so, what kind it was.

There wasn't anything all that special in the kitchen freezer, just a half gallon of vanilla, but that would work well enough. Besides. It was half gone anyway. She'd just replace it when she went to the store the next day.

She pulled the half gallon out of the freezer and grabbed a spoon out of a nearby drawer. Not even willing to bother with a bowl, because she'd probably just eat it all anyway, walked over and flopped down in a chair by the table over in the corner.

(Read comments) - (Post a new comment)

xander_shaped
2010-09-02 12:20 am UTC (link)

This new job was turning out to be a real pain in the ass. Xander was being forced to work both harder and longer than usual on a job that had only half the men it actually required. Not only that, but the job in itself happened to be very, very dangerous. No, he wasn't hunting monsters or trying to save the world. Xander was, in fact, working a construction job. Yet with the amount of experience and knowledge that the man had in regards to the subject, he was well aware that they were going about this entire downtown project in all the wrong ways. First and foremost, they had to tear down (another) building. Unfortunately, that building was well loved by several locals who happened to have been recently kicked out of the premises. As a result, the locals were retaliating in unexpected ways - gangs were hitting the area, people were getting in their way when they were trying to get the wrecking ball on the scene, and they had to repeatedly call the cops to come clear out the property because folks kept sneaking back in to keep them from tearing the place apart. It was nerve-wracking and it definitely had Xander stressed, but he was doing his best to get through it all. He had to stick with his job. Losing his temper and quitting on his boss (who was a moron and was hopefully going to get a long due ass-kicking by the higher ups when they saw his crappy he was handling the job here) was not going to do much by way of letting Xander live as close to a normal life as possible here. Even if Xander was just about finished with it anyway. Quitting might work out for the best, especially if it gave him the opportunity to go on and focus on other things that he needed to do. Like training people in armed combat and helping Babs and the others with all that fun tech stuff.

It was something to consider. He planned on doing so over dinner and a hot cup of coffee to wash it down with. Since his kitchen (as usual) was completely lacking in the food department (save for chips and snacks), Xander popped into the community kitchen with every intention in prepping himself a meal there. It was getting pretty late so Xander mostly expected for it to be empty. Instead, he found no other than Batgirl (she was out of costume, but still very much Batgirl!) digging into a tub of ice cream. Xander rarely saw women eating straight out of the tub - especially in public - but he knew that it was a thing that they did. Steph was either really hungry or really...uh, maybe emotional wasn't the word that Xander needed to be using here. But when Buffy and Willow did it, this sort of thing often had to do with men.

...and women. In Willow's case.

Xander cleared his throat and raised a hand to give Steph a sort of half wave. "Heya. How's the ice cream?"

(Reply to this)

(Read comments) -