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“Robin?”
“Yeah, boss?”
“What on Earth are you doing?”
Steph shrugs—an impressive feat, considering her predicament. “Oh, you know. Just hanging around.”
“Uh-huh.” Bruce crosses his arms, looking down at her like a high school principal slamming down judgement. Or maybe like a scientist examining a zoo animal. It’s hard to tell, upside-down as she is. “Would you like some help?”
“Nope,” she replies. “I’ve got this completely—” Steph grunts, trying to spin herself back around to face him properly. "Hang on. Gotta work my way around.” She wiggles, her body slowly rotating until an upside-down Batman comes back into view. “Completely under control.”
“Clearly.” And, frankly, that’s pretty insulting. It's not Steph's fault she's prone to unfortunate situations like this one.
At the moment, Steph is hanging by her foot from a building that is...quite a bit high up, if she’s being honest. But Steph is only five or six feet above the ground now, thanks to her stupid grapple which decided to flake out on her at the last second, making her plummet all those stories and end up with her foot caught in the line in the first place. She needs to have a serious talk with Alfred about the many safety violations in their weaponry.
Now, how the
fuck
is she going to get out of this one? Steph reaches up for where the wire is wrapped around her ankle with the intention to untangle it, but she can’t see what she’s doing so that idea is a bust. Maybe she can work it loose with some friction?
Steph starts to rock her body back and forth, picking up speed until she’s swinging in a good arc and her cape brushes the ground on every pass.
“What are you doing?” Bruce asks. Steph looks back and finds him sitting on the ground now, watching her in amusement. What an asshole.
“Swingin’ to get free. What does it look like?”
“I sincerely doubt that will work.”
Steph huffs. “Doubt doesn’t
exist
in this dojo, for your information. Now stop heckling me. I have to focus.”
She kicks her tangled foot this way and that as she swings, hoping it will slip free. After a few minutes of this brilliant strategy, Steph’s vision starts to get wobbly. “Whoa.” She blinks a few times, brain feeling like it’s flopping around in her skull. “This is fucking...trippy.”
“Can I
please
help you down now before you give yourself brain damage?”
“No.
Fuck off. Go…” Steph holds back a groan. All this upside-down swinging is making her nauseous. “Go save a kitten in a tree or something. I can do this myself.”
If she weren’t so dizzy, Steph would be sure that that is a smirk on Bruce’s face. But it’s probably just the discombobulation. The old man doesn’t
smile;
he's too emotionally stunted for that.
“Alfred has grilled cheese waiting,” he says, and it’s more a taunt than anything.
Steph stops struggling. “With bacon?”
“Lots of bacon.”
Steph considers that for half a second, then shakes her head adamantly. “Nope. No way. Nice try, old man, but your witchery won’t fool me. I don’t need your help.”
“You sure?”
“Very,
very
sure.” Like a fish on a hook. Steph wriggles about, trying to reach the line with a batarang from her belt. Her arms are just an inch too short to reach the darn thing. “I can hear you mocking me,” she says.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You’re thinking it.”
Bruce sighs. “Just let me cut you down, Robin. We could have been home already.”
“How many times do I have to tell you that I do
not
need—” The batarang slips from her grasp, falling to the ground after slicing her finger in the process. “Dammit.” Steph kicks her foot in frustration, growling under her breath. Stupid grapple guns. Stupid Batman. Stupid Gotham and its stupid buildings that are so fucking trippable on. She should sue the whole damn city for this.
It takes a minute for Steph to get tired of all her wriggling, and another for her to finally give up with a heaved sigh. She crosses her arms with an upside-down pout. “Batman?”
“Yes?” He’s been preoccupied during her struggles, feeding a sewer mouse with what Steph swears to god is a cracker shaped like the bat symbol. Where does he even get this stuff? What a fucking loser.
“I may...possibly...be in need of some assistance,” she says. Oh, to see the mighty fall. This is the saddest anime moment of her young life.
Bruce leaves the cracker for the mouse and stands, brushing the dirt off his suit. “Glad you came to your senses.”
“Bold of you to assume I ever had any in the first place.”
Bruce just shakes his head and picks up the batarang that Steph dropped. He grabs the wire and slices through it in one swift motion. Steph yelps and shuts her eyes as gravity takes over and she careens the six feet to her death. Luckily, just before her skull smashes into a million pieces on the concrete like a brutalized pumpkin, Bruce grabs her by the ankle and stops her descent.
Steph opens her eyes and grins up at him. “Good catch, boss. You can let me down now.”
But he doesn’t do that. Instead, Bruce keeps his grip on her ankle and carries Steph to the Batmobile like that, hoisting her easily in one hand like he’s a fisherman and she’s a hundred and ten-pound tuna that he snatched out of the water like a hillbilly in a fursuit.
“Hey! Lemme go, you bastard.” Steph struggles valiantly, kicking around wildly but missing anything useful.
“You asked for my help, so I’m helping.”
“I can walk
perfectly
fine on my own.” She swats at his legs, but she might as well be hitting Superman. Curse Bruce and his freakishly strong body. “Wonder Woman would never treat me like this.”
He looks down at her, brow knotted. “Have you ever met Wonder Woman? Diana would
absolutely
do this. Though I think she prefers the classic piggyback.”
Steph gasps. “Did the mean old Batman just make a
joke?
Who are you and what did you do with my crusty mentor?”
She can’t see his eyes under the cowl, but she knows he’s rolling them. “You know, Tim would never have talked to me like this. Or Dick, for that matter.”
“Then it’s about time you had a partner who told it to you straight. You needed the attitude adjustment.”
And then, for the first time since Steph met him, the Batman
laughs.