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Stephanie Brown was completely and utterly fed up.
"Perfect, Mr Todd." Her professor beamed at the Red Hood, scourge of criminals across Gotham, normally found wearing copious leather and a red helmet, today found wearing jeans and a freaking plaid button-up.
"Thanks, Dr Scott," Jason said. Then, as soon as the professor turned back towards the board, he turned around and smiled at Steph.
She knew how everyone else in the room probably thought she was supposed to interpret that smile. They would think 'aw, look at him, he's smiling at his friend because he's so proud of getting that question right and wants her to share in that nice moment with him, how sweet, how humble, how lovely.'
Steph, however, had seen Jason give his dad a pretty damn similar grin right as he gave Batman two middle fingers while backflipping off a roof. She'd seen it that time Tim fell in that puddle (Tim was still convinced that Jason had somehow orchestrated that incident, and Steph was absolutely with him on that). And she'd seen it every time he'd shown her up in a class they had together. It meant 'What does it feel like not to be the smartest person in the room for the sole reason that I'm here? How does it feel to know that you're just a little bit slower than me? Because those things are somewhat amusing to me, and all the more so because I know they're keeping you up at night.' It was infuriating.
As soon as class let out, she was out of there in a flash. Almost literally - she sometimes imagined Tim's friend Bart talking when she wanted to walk faster and it really worked.
Jason, unfortunately, had longer legs and his ridiculous shoulders and general stature meant the mass exodus of students weren't the impediment to him that they were to her. "Hey, Steph, wait up!"
She tried her best to speed up. It didn't go great for her.
He lightly grabbed her shoulder. "Hey, didn't you hear me?"
"Nope," she said, removing his hand from her person and continuing to fight the tide. She wanted to get a good spot in the quad to eat her lunch and all the spots in the shade went fast at this time of year.
"No, you didn't hear me, or no, you did hear me?"
"All of the above."
"Well that doesn't make any sense."
She whirled around. "I'm sure you'd know all about making sense, Mr Four-Point-Oh. Perfect marks in Introduction to Logic as well?"
He scratched the back of his neck, but seemed utterly unphased by her blatant hostility. "Actually, I tested out of the intro class. They put me in Intermediate Logic instead. But hey, a math credit's a math credit." He suddenly grinned. "So yeah, I guess!"
"Ugh," she groaned, shoving a few people aside in pursuit of her dream of stomping away from this conversation.
The plaid-covered moving mountain followed. "Hey, are you mad at me? Because I really didn't think I'd done anything to piss you off this week. Is this about what I may or may not have done with the replacement's cape? I didn't know he'd triggered it yet, but I absolutely thought you of all people would enjoy that."
Steph had no idea what Jason might or might not have done with Tim's cape. She really hoped she got to see whatever it was when it happened. She finally pushed through the crowd to the door, and was disappointed to see the quad already packed. Definitely no room under the tree or close enough to the far wall for shade, so sitting in the sun it was. Ugh, Gotham got weather like this for about 3 weeks a year, and nobody was ready for it.
"We do have to see each other basically every day, you know," Jason said, still following her as she made her way to an empty patch of grass near the water fountain. "You can't just give me the silent treatment every time you're mad at me for something and just not tell me why. You're going to make both of us miserable."
"Why do you even care if I talk to you?" she asked, glaring up at him. She hated the fact that she had to crane her neck to do it when they were standing this close. It reminded her too much of talking to Bruce.
"Why wouldn't I care?" he replied, looking genuinely bewildered.
It was her turn to look confused. "You're acing all of your classes somehow while I'm barely scraping by in mine, all while patrolling an area twice the size of mine every night, and you feel like you've still got time to be best friends?"
His face fell. "You're really struggling with your classes? Why didn't you say so? We could be studying together for Dr Scott's class, and I know you're taking that Lit class I did last semester."
"That was really what you got from that? That you think I want you to, what, tutor me or something?"
"Well, what do you want?"
"I want you to stop being so freaking amazing at everything and rubbing it in my face!"
Steph felt horrible for yelling the moment she saw the look on his face. "Wait, no, Jason, I didn't mean-"
He held his hand up to stop her talking. She snapped her mouth closed. "I wasn't much of a stand out in high school, you know?" he said. "Bruce sent me to that stupid fancy school with uniforms, and the classes were great and the teachers were nice and it was cool not to be stuck at the back of a room full of 40 kids where the teachers were mostly doing crowd control. But Dick had just graduated from there as the star pupil, speaking five languages, captain of the mathletes or whatever, and even though everyone knew we weren't actually related, they still expected me to live up to that. And I wasn't stupid, I learnt fast - in school and in training with Bruce, when he covered all that forensic science and criminology stuff. But you don't know what nobody's ever taught you, and I didn't know how to multiply fractions or what the capital of Italy was."
Some how, they had ended up sat next to each other on the grass, legs stretched out in front of them, far enough away from all the other groups of students that in the noisy area, they weren't going to be overheard.
"I didn't know if I would ever go to college when I was younger," Steph said. "My mom got her nursing qualifications taking online classes at the library when she was pregnant with me. My school was only a few blocks East of yours." She swallowed. "And I had to take some time out of school when I was fifteen."
Jason nodded. Clearly, she didn't have to explain what she meant by that. She didn't know if someone in the family had told him that she had been a teen mother, or if he'd snuck a peek at everyone's files at some point. She didn't care.
"I also took some time away from formal education starting when I was about fifteen," he said. She turned towards him incredulously and spotted the slight smile on his face that meant he'd just made a joke he was really proud of.
She slapped him on the arm. "Dude!"
"Hey, if I'm not allowed to joke about dying, what am I allowed to joke about?" He laughed. "But after, Talia got me the best tutors in the world. Not just in ways to kill people, although there was a lot of that." He looked at her. "A lot. I technically know how to train snakes now. Anyway, they caught me up and more. No judgement for being a teenager and not knowing all my world capitals or prime numbers. They were expecting an idiot American kid, after all."
Steph nodded slowly. "Okay, I get what you're saying. You came to college because you knew you weren't a step behind anymore. You had a leg up."
"For the first time in my life, I'm finding school stuff easy. Don't get me wrong, I'm still challenging myself, not just coasting through easy As. But it's nice, you know? To be able to balance this stuff with the night-time stuff without feeling like I was milliseconds away from dropping one of the balls, the way I did when I was a kid."
She laughed. "Meanwhile, behold." She gestured broadly at the grass in front of them. "My balls."
Jason cracked up, and Steph followed a beat later.
He wiped his eyes. "Oh man, I needed that," he said. He leaned towards her and wrapped a warm arm around her shoulders. "But Steph, you're doing great. Really. You're doing an amazing job covering Burnley. Trust me, I still hear things from over there, and I wouldn't be just leaving you to it if I thought you needed any help."
"You going to say something encouraging about how I'm one more D away from flunking?" she said, leaning into him.
"Well, I did already patronisingly offer to tutor you," he joked.
She shoved him again. "I should probably take you up on that."
"Well, can we start by studying for Dr Scott's quiz next week together?"
Steph looked up at him. It was a lot easier when they were both sat on the ground. "Yeah. That would be great."