you shoot from the hip, you don't always hit

They were flirting. Todd and Brown were meeting in secret to canoodle on rooftops and swap bodily fluids on a single fork.

Suddenly, Damian found himself faced with a decision. To revel himself and disrupt this bizarre affair, or slink back into the shadows and futility try to scrub the image of Todd swiping dripping waffles off of Brown’s lips. It didn’t take long to ponder.

"We should make it a regular thing," Jason agreed, attention focused back on Stephanie. There was an inch of space between them. And all it took was a calculated stumble forward to bridge the gap. Their lips meet, tinged with booze and melted chocolate. Their nose bumped, until Jason remembered to tilt his head. 

The low burn of alchol accompanied by the sticky sugar on Steph’s lips made it one of the more pleasant kisses Jason’d experienced. There was no hurry, no fiery passion, it was just… kind of relaxing. A pressure release of pent up stress and aggravation.

She was startled at first, her brain attempting to process the fact that Jason was kissing her. He tasted sweet, a mixture of what he'd eaten and drank, and after a moment, she responded in kind, pressing against him. Her eyes fluttered shut, and she quietly enjoyed the slow burn before he pulled away, a grin on his lips and amusement in his tone.

"Not that I'm complaining..." A giggle built in her throat to match him, and she teased in an almost sing-song voice. "But you didn't need liquid courage to kiss me, didja, Red?" 

Damian hit the deck and army-crawled towards the ledge to peer after Todd. The former Robin was in a hurry, north-east for the moment, burdened with… take-out bags?

It had been a boring night, Damian reasoned with himself during the pursuit. And besides, when was Todd ever up to any good?

Stealth was of the utmost importance, so he took his time positioning himself at Todd’s apparent destination, a lonely rooftop overlooking a series of Gotham slums.

He pushed the container toward her with the heel of his palm, an offering. By now, he knew Batgirl’s favorite kind of waffle. Chocolate chip with a veritable mountain of whipped cream and some sliced up strawberries. Soon as he found out, he made it a point to spoil her (spoil her, spoiler, god he could be a comedian in his spare time).

The shared fork was halfway to her lips when she took in the intensity of his words, the lethargic roll of his shoulders, and her lips twitched into an amused smirk. Somehow, the well-intended words that's not coffee morphed into "Are you drunk?" with a clear, bubbling laugh somewhere in the middle.

Thursday night had become something of a holiday. Every week, Jason would kick back on the rooftop of a designated IHOP, with a take out box of some the most cavity inducing waffles known to man. Naturally, some Thursday’s the city (or in a couple cases, the world) needed saving and the comfortable routine of waffle munching and coffee guzzling would have to wait until next week.

Exposure dulled the potency of the smell of piping hot Belguim waffles saturated with syrup and powdered sugar, thank fuck. During his first run, the sheer sickly sweet smell almost gave him an honest to God case of diabetes.

She practically bounced towards the rooftop's other occupant, keeping her steps soft, hoping that maybe, just this once, she might surprise the rooftop's other occupant. She didn't know when this had become routine, this strange olive branching friendship between the evens, in the form of late night waffles and coffee. She'd vehemently deny it, of course, but Stephanie found it nice, to find something in common with a Robin that wasn't shiny and clean, or wound quite so tightly. Someone that didn't walk the straight edge that Bruce had set out for the traffic light kids.

His smile turned mocking. “Then what do I gotta do to convince you?” he asked with a long suffering sigh. “I can wax up a pretty story about how I was lonely on my night off, if that’ll help ease your suspicions.” Alright, so he was laying on the sarcasm a little thick, but, despite Steph’s approachability, Jason was at a lost on how to breach his topic of discussion. Unlike drilling Dick for information, Jason was pretty sure he didn’t have to worry about Steph breaking out into a shit eating grin or pestering him with follow up questions.

Shaking her head, she laughed, watching her breath form a ghostlike puff in the air. Then, she swung one of her arms down where he could see it, and brought up the LCD display built into her suit. "Bless Oracle," she said softly, flicking through until she found the remote access to her messages. And, pointedly, the most recent one from a Red (Riding) Hood. "dear batgirl numero III, i need some advice and i got a stack of waffles especially for bribing your ass," she read aloud, tacking on her best impression of him. Tilting her head, she looked over at Jason with a smile. "So, I ask again: what's got you bribing my fine ass with waffles on your night off, Jason?" She hoped throwing in the name rather than a title would ease him into whatever he wanted to talk about, bridging the gap between them or however you wanted to spin it.

He snorted his assent. “Need me some nachos with all that cheese,” he raised his eyes to the heavens. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were still pining after my Pretender.” Jason’s lips twitched as he clapped his palms together. “Thankfully we both know this conversation is coming to a much needed end. You don’t wanna talk about it anymore than I wanna hear about it.” He smacked his lips, tasting traces of syrup on his tongue.

She flinched. She hadn't meant to sound so saccharine, or to bore him, but it really had all come tumbling out, nostalgia laced with every word. "Pining? Hah. It's a good thing you know better, then," she shot back, but nevertheless made a mental note to swing by the Boy Blunder's window sometime soon. After all, things had been looking up last they'd talked. She leaned back on her arms, working the tenseness out of her shoulders. "But enough about me, Red. What about you, huh? I'm still not convinced I'm just here for my sunny disposition and winning company."

"Whoa Blondie," Jason reared back slightly, brows raising. "I didn’t mean spill the whole dirty history." He couldn’t bring himself to comment on her situation. Not when he could nonchalantly cruise past a topic that would probably spark off a riproaring tirade from his end. "I figured you two weren’t a thing anymore. I was mainly wondering about how, like, dates worked." Jason waved a hand errantly. "Did he send you an e-card with digital hearts and nervously sweat every time you came within a mile radius? Actually, fuck, no, he probably left you secret admirer letters tucked under your pillow like the psycho stalker he is." Jason’s smile turned cruel throughout his meanderings.

An embarrassed sort of laugh clawed its way out of her throat then. "Sorry,"she said, shoulders tightening. "I didn't meant to ramble. Sometimes it sort of just...happens." Totally without her consent, her cheeks filled with colour. "He didn't do anything like that. It was--It was actually sort of...nice, y'know? He'd show up at my window after patrol just to talk, or pick me up from school in the stupidest disguises. We'd go on rooftop dates and fight bad guys as Robin and Spoiler and he took me to Lamaze classes...and he was good to me, regardless of what happened after," she stopped herself, a wave of nostalgia washing over her. Sobering, she cleared her throat, straightened and laughed, "Cheesy enough to make you sick, right?"