“I’m thinking we keep some of the cool gadgets but reexamine the torso,” she starts, absently pawing through her still open bag for her array of colored pencils. Cass leans into her shoulder, spoon caught in her teeth. “A little extra padding around the ribs—not like, super thick or ‘I can’t put my arms down,’ though.”
“Enough that it doesn’t feel like a baseball bat is going to snap you in half?” Barbara offers. Steph leans her head back onto the couch to look at her upside down. Her next breath tugs at her sore ribs a little.
Barbara smirks and rolls her eyes a little, and Steph goes back to her sketch. For a few minutes it’s quiet, and it’s easy to get lost in her drawing. The redesign on the previous page hadn’t exactly been up to her standards this morning, and black ink still stains the side of her palm from where she’d smeared through it earlier. Now, her head tilts a touch as she traces her way along the page, pausing just long enough to swap out one color for the next, letting them blossom across the design before an errant curl catches her in lashes until Cass brushes it out of her eye and breaks her out of her trance.
“You should draw more,” she says. “It suits you. You look peaceful.”
“Probably shouldn’t quit my day job,” Steph says, sticking the end of her pencil in her mouth as she holds up her sketchbook. She nudges Cass with her elbow in a silent thanks.
the snippet above is by the amazing @thychesters who I got to collab with in the @batgirlzine!! we’ve been friends for just over a decade and finally got to do a piece together, and her words just blew me away. working with her and everyone else on the team was a dream come true, and I’m so glad I got to participate!! 🥰
read the fic here, and go check out everyone else’s pieces if you haven’t yet!
