Don't Look Away update

The playground of Cobblepot High—Tim didn’t even know what it was really called in this age group—was a desert of blacktop walled in by privacy hedges. There were amusements ranging from the childish (hopscotch squares) to the intensely physical (hurdles). The girls of the school flowed out to each activity like iron filings being drawn to various magnets. 

Tim wondered in exactly how many ways he was different from them. He wasn’t rich, for one. His family may have been well-off, but he’d only dabbled in private schools—not snob factories like this place. And he didn’t have the athleticism so many of them did. He could keep up, but his moves had a brutal efficiency; not the carefree physicality they were demonstrating.

He wasn’t even on the Justice League or anything, and already these kids were more like animals in a zoo to him than his peers. He wondered how he would see them later, as he got closer and closer to Bruce’s age.

In the blitz of school uniforms, it took Tim a long moment to find Cass and Steph. They were holding two jump ropes between them, trying to get a game of double dutch started.

“No, see, no,” Steph was saying. “You don’t go this way with your left hand, it’s like this—don’t just do what I’m doing, you have to… no, see, with that hand… how do you not know this?”

“I was raised… to be the perfect… assassin…” Cass said slowly.

“Yeah, yeah, I know—“ Steph interrupted, evidently regretting the question.

“By David Cain…”

“I know!”

“My mother—“

 

“Ahh!”

“Was Lady Shiva…”

“Why don’t you try getting one jump rope going?” Tim suggested. “Then you can add the other.”

Steph couldn’t argue with that, especially when Cass tried it, so she simply said “Hot entrance” in a disdainful voice.

“You’re not pulling off the schoolgirl look much better,” Tim told her.

“Now you’re being hurtful,” Steph pouted. 

“Have you found out… anything?” Cass asked. “Besides… the appeal of… Japanese schoolgirls?”

Tim blushed deeply.

“You’re Japanese?” Steph asked.

Tim coughed. “I broke into the school counselor’s office and took a look at her dead tree files. All the girls who’ve gone missing have had major attitude problems. Permanent records taller than I am.”

“So, not that high?” Steph needled.

“Hey!” Tim objected, but by now Cass had picked up circling the other jump rope, and now they had a good double dutch going. 

“I doubt their permanent records… are longer… than he is…” Cass said. “In the penis,” she added.

Tim looked around to check if anyone had heard that.

“Hey, Tim, how about going a round?” Steph asked, the jump ropes in her hand now smoothly looping with Cass’s grip.

“Nah. Dick’s the physical one. I’m more… figuring out the parabola of the ropes as you’re twirling them…”

“You’re plenty flexible enough for us,” Steph teased him. “Even if you’re no Dick Grayson—“

“If you don’t… someone else could… play instead…”

Tim had to admit the soundness of Cass’s argument. With his teeth gritted almost to the point of growling, he stepped in between the whirling ropes, hopping to keep pace with them. 

“Ice cream,” Cass started, trying valiantly to match the circles of the jump ropes, “soda pop… cherries on… top… how many… boyfriends…”

Tim pressed on. “If all the missing girls are troubled teens, it could be they got in over their heads. We should try to retrace their steps.”

“What do you want to do?” Steph asked. “Do a stake-out beneath the bleachers?”

“Not yet,” Tim replied. “Every school has a black market. Try to find who was dealing contraband to them.”

“Huh?”

“The weed guy,” Tim sighed.

Cass kept muttering the rhyme, though the way she said it, it didn’t rhyme very much. 

“You’re doing really good,” Steph observed of Tim. 

“Yeah? Thanks, I—“ Jinxed, Tim’s ankle was snagged and he tripped down to skin his knee.

Steph winced. “Sorry!” 

***

That night in the dorm, Steph laid awake. To help them detective more efficiently—or detect, Steph guessed—Oracle had placed them all in separate dorms. She missed Cass, and Tim. Linda laid in the bed next to hers, scrutinizing a book. The school required everyone to hand in their phones before they went to bed. It was unbearable. Technically, people weren’t even allowed to read after lights out. The book lamp Linda had probably counted as contraband.

Say…

“Hey, Linda. Linda,” Steph whispered across the aisle between their beds.

Linda looked up from her book. Her glasses had been falling down the bridge of her nose, making her look like someone Steph knew, before she straightened them and the resemblance went away. “Shh! We’re not supposed to talk after lights out!”

“We’re not supposed to read either,” Steph pointed out. “Guess you don’t always do as you’re told.”

Linda pinched her lips together guiltily. “What do you want?”

“I need to know where I can buy some weed.”

“Weed?” Linda demanded, her voice skyrocketing, and a chorus of shushes from the other girls did the job for Steph.

“Keep it down,” Steph whispered anyway. “It’s not like that. It’s a medical condition.”

“You have a doctor’s note?”

“Not that kind of medical condition, but a real medical condition.”

“I don’t know,” Linda insisted, looking away. “I wouldn’t know.”

“C’mon,” Steph said. “You must know somebody.”

“No! I don’t! One of the girls did sell… herbal supplements, but…” Linda eyed an empty bed.

“She went missing?” Steph asked.

Linda nodded. “Tina Dunst. They say she ran away, but—we think she might have gotten into trouble with whoever she was getting the drugs from.”

“Who’s that?”

“I don’t know. It’s just a rumor.”

Before Steph could ask anymore, the house mother, Mrs. Rosman, charged into the room.

“What’s going on in here?” she demanded. “Why aren’t you girls asleep?”

Steph nearly covered herself with her bedsheets like she was being accosted by the boogeyman. Linda was frozen like a deer in the headlights of Mrs. Rosman’s glare.

“Sorry, Mrs. Rosman,” she gulped. “We were just finishing up some homework.”

“Homework, eh?” Mrs. Rosman snatched up Linda’s book, the lamp attached to it throwing crazy shadows across her broad, fat face. “’Sapphic Sisters of the Wild West’?”

“It’s for English Lit,” Steph offered helpfully.

Mrs. Rosman gave her a look. “You must think I’m very dumb, young lady!”

“No, I don’t think of you that much,” Steph replied.

“I want everyone in bed and lights out right now! Not another sound!” Mrs. Rosman snapped. She eyed Linda. “You can ask for your… ‘literature’ back from the principal. And both of you can mop some floors tomorrow to find out where back-talking little harridans like you two end up!”

***

Dick Grayson’s voice was a thing of beauty. Not the roughhewn intimidation of Batman’s growl, but not the boyish intellect of Tim’s speaking voice either. Bruce was whiskey, Tim was soda pop, and Dick was cream soda, with a coolness and confidence that Tim lacked, but without verging on the frightening rage of Bruce’s words. Dick could’ve been a lounge singer. If there were male lounge singers. Yeah, that ‘somewhere, beyond the sea’ guy. Dick could’ve been him.

“We don’t actually know who every drug dealer in Gotham is,” he explained over the comms. “If we did, it would make our job a lot easier. But your school is in Two-Face’s turf, so the distributor is probably Big Drano. I’ll pay a visit, see if he knows anything.”

“Would you? Thanks.” Steph twined a finger in her blonde curls. “So, hey, you know how Tim thinks you’re the ‘physical one’? How much more physical are you...”

A pounding palm hit the door of the bathroom stall Steph was in. “Stephanie, c’mon!” Linda ordered her. “I am not doing all this cleaning by myself! Stop talking with your boyfriend and get out here!”

Steph shrunk her comm unit down into the necklace it was disguised as and came out of the stall. “He’s not my boyfriend.”

“Yeah, no crap,” Linda said. “If you’re as much trouble with him as you are with me…”

Steph washed her hands pro forma, looking at her appearance in the mirror to see if she needed any touch-ups. Nope—she was perf. “Someone sounds jealous. Wishing I’d be your ‘sapphic sister’?”

They were walking out of the bathroom when Steph noticed Linda wasn’t following her. She looked back to see Linda standing in the door to the bathroom, stricken, only moving by degrees, reaching down to fidget with some of her jewelry. “I was just… just reading that… you can’t—“

Steph walked back to where Linda was folded in on herself, petting her shoulder. “Hey! Hey, I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant—okay, I was being a bitch. But really, it’s cool. Whatever you’re into. I have a boyfriend and a girlfriend, so either way, you’re good with me.”

“Thanks. I know you wouldn’t be mean about it, but I hear something like that and—“ She looked up sharply. “You’re bisexual?”

“Yeah, like, for starters!” Steph said. “You?”

Linda started to walk, still hugging herself, with Steph moving alongside her. “I don’t even—not like guys—like you, I guess—I’m just really curious about girls and I guess I like girls but I’m not supposed to stand out, you know? I’m here to blend in. Easy for me to say, right?”

“Not with the way you look.” Steph picked up a mop, wrung it out in the bucket’s press, and started over the floor. 

“We’re girls, remember? We’re all about personality. I wish I could be more outgoing, like you. I try to be confident, but I just feel like such a fake.”

“What do you have to be inconfident… unconfident… not confident about?” Steph reasoned. 

“Just stuff,” Linda mused. “Not fitting in.”

“You think I fit in? I…” Steph looked around. “I am way not used to this kind of shindig.”

“Me neither.”

“Something in common.”

“I guess that means we’re bonding.”

They had an entire dance studio to mop up, on top of the studying they had to do. And I have to find clues, Steph thought. So far, all I’ve found is another bicurious blonde.

Then again, she did seem to be gaining Linda’s trust—especially with the way Linda kept looking at her, even snatching glimpses of her reflection in the freshly mopped floor.

“So,” Linda said at last, her voice gratifyingly breaking the silence, “if you have a boyfriend and a girlfriend, then I guess you aren’t… exclusive?”

“No,” Steph said, trying to make her voice exceedingly delicious. “Why ever do you ask?”

“I just wasn’t sure about you having a boyfriend,” Linda said. “A girlfriend, maybe. Half the girls in this school do something with each other. But where would you find a guy?”

“What do you mean, ‘me’?”

“It’s an all-girl school,” Linda explained. “Even the cheerleaders don’t have boyfriends, not really—just booty calls for when they finally manage to slip the leash.”

“And you think I couldn’t outdo a cheerleader?”

“No way.”

“I think that’s called wishful thinking,” Steph grinned. “If I didn’t have a boyfriend, maybe you could have me all to yourself.”

“Dream on,” Linda scoffed, turning away.

“Or maybe I could tell you about it,” Steph continued, taking a step closer to Linda. “I know about guys, if you’re curious. I could tell you how they touch you, how they kiss you, what it’s like when you’re in bed with them.”

Linda looked sorely tempted. Curious, even more. Her body was charged with eagerness as she tightened her grip on the mophandle, fidgeting and adjusting her hands, taking the mophead out of the bucket before she’d wrung it out and slapping a massive puddle down on the floor.

“Or I could just show you.”

Cass was every guy’s cute-hot Asian girl fantasy—she’d dated Superboy—and Tim was the Byronic hero of all Steph’s high school essays. Even Cass’s mom, MILF Shiva, wanted him. When was it her turn? She needed more than being Damian Wayne’s puberty!

Steph took another step nearer to Linda, her Keds splashing into the puddle of water on the floor. “Let’s pretend I’m a guy and we’re on a date. This is how I’d kiss you.”

She kissed Linda’s mouth, finding it to be as suitable for kissing as it looked. There was a split-second, a tangible flicker, of awkwardness and hesitation, but Linda was obviously feeling too much anticipation and excitement already for that to get much headway. She moaned, thrilled, and pressed her body against Steph’s, both of them loving the friction as much or more than they did the press of their lips against each other’s.

Linda shivered with excitement, soon not just returning Steph’s kiss, but dominating it. She wiggled her tongue into Steph’s lips and felt out the strange details of another’s mouth. Steph loved feeling an unfamiliar tongue in her mouth, bringing with it all the exoticness of Linda’s newness. She shivered even more than Linda was. The girls rubbed against each other, stimulating their pussies against one another’s thighs, and Linda’s lust rose as she remembered this wasn’t a pillow she was humping, any kind of toy, it was warm, loving flesh.

Linda felt her arousal burning inside her legs, turning liquid and running along her sex, feeling each drop as it crested her slit and soaked into her panties. Her instincts took over, her body working on its own while her mind was awash in sensation and emotion. Her hips jerked, drawling her pussy along Steph’s thigh, while her nipples stiffly poked through her blouse and into Steph’s chest.

“Someone’s having fun,” Steph panted, barely able to tear her lips away from Linda’s long enough to taunt her.

“I should hope you are,” Linda said, panting. “No talk. Kiss.”

She moved like the boy now, kissing Steph hard, her tongue tracing quickly-learned routes in Stephanie’s mouth, prying moans and gurgles out of Steph’s responsive body. They rubbed their groins together frantically, Steph finding Linda’s softly muffled moans as arousing as Linda found hers.

When Steph finally pulled away for air, Linda chuckled. “If you were a boy,” she said in a husky whisper, “you could fuck me.”

“Since I’m not a boy, what could I do?” Steph asked.

Linda preened. “Touch me.”

It was good that Linda gave her permission, because Steph didn’t see how she could not feel Linda’s body when she was standing with her hands behind her back, her chest thrust out, everything about her soft and appealing. She caressed Linda’s face, Linda moaning as she thought Steph was going in for another kiss, and then was hardly displeased by Steph’s hands flowing down her sleek body instead, finding the curves that best fit her hands: first, Linda’s pouting breasts. She cupped them, her hands squeezing and molding to their contours, while Linda’s head drifted back, lips still puckered in an ecstatic kiss with the air.

“Mmmm—that feels—Steph!” Linda trilled suddenly, feeling Steph’s fingers pinch at her nipples.

She’d never felt someone touching her breasts before. They were more sensitive in another’s hands than in her own, swelling into Steph’s eager caresses, shooting high on her chest with each heaving breath. Her nipples throbbed between Steph’s fingers as the blonde twisted them, gently and not so gently, watching Linda’s eyelids flutter as pleasure turned into pain and went back again.

“Oooh, I’m getting warm,” Linda moaned. “Warm all over…”

“Feel mine too,” Steph said hoarsely. 

Linda cupped Steph’s small breasts, massaging them as Steph squealed with joy. Steph felt the need to reciprocate, to somehow one-up her. She plucked at the buttons on Linda’s blouse until it finally opened, allowing her to reach into Linda’s top and play with her bra-covered tits. Linda wasn’t so restrained. She ripped open Steph’s blouse; Steph tugged Linda’s bra out of the way. They eagerly fondled the flesh they’d bared, tits swelling and warming in their hands, nipples throbbing past stiffness.

“Couldn’t do this with a boy!” Linda giggled.

“You can barely do it with me,” Steph pouted. “I’m so flat, you could show a movie on my chest.”

“I’d watch it,” Linda teased, and cupped Steph’s hot tits tightly. 

Steph did the same, gripping Linda’s breasts tightly, and it didn’t take much more stimulation before they were both writhing with lust, almost knocking each other over as they tried to rake their groins against the other’s body.

“Wouldn’t a guy touch my pussy by now?” Linda moaned.

“Not the guy I’m dating,” Steph moaned back. “I need a girlfriend too just so we can gang up on him and get him to fuck us.”

“Now I believe you,” Linda panted. “No girl would give herself an imaginary boyfriend who doesn’t fuck.”

“He fucks,” Steph insisted. “He fucks me like this!”

She dipped her hand into Linda’s skirt and her panties, palming her cunt, the flesh hot and swollen and juicy in her hand. She tightened her hold, massaging the heel of her hands into Linda’s tender folds. Linda groaned, her head rolling to the side, and a helpless rush of her cream washed Steph’s hand clean.

“Nnnn yes!” she cried. “Steph, keep doing that! Feels so—rao—fucking good!”

“I’m not wearing panties,” Steph gasped, and parted her legs.

Linda returned the favor, sliding her hand up between Steph’s silky thighs and touching the searing heat of her bare pussy, the flesh as velvety and as moist as her own. She did what Steph was doing to her, squeezing the plump lips of her labia with a steady, gentle pressure. Steph squealed, her eyes rolling back in her head, her hand going limp on Linda’s cunt…

“Hey!” Linda cried, squeezing her legs together to trap Steph’s hand. “Don’t forget about me!”

Steph groaned like the teenager she was, angry with Linda for pulling her back just when she’d been getting all kinds of interesting stirring inside her cunt. “I’ll fuck you if you fuck me,” she said hoarsely.

“If only you had a dick,” Linda panted. “Then you wouldn’t forget about my pussy…”

They fingered each other’s cunts, tight and steamy, finding out from the juicy clenches how best to please one another. Linda found that Steph was particularly sensitive in the wrinkled folds that surrounded her pink flesh, and with her two middle fingers she edged around Steph’s womanhood, around and around, never penetrating her, only rubbing friction into her labia lips. Steph soaked her entire hand with the cream that spurted out of her when the pressure proved too much.

“Hnn! Gh! Don’t stop!” she pleaded. “You’re driving me crazy!”

Steph discovered how to satisfy Linda too. Linda’s clit was sensitive, making Linda shy away when Steph tried to touch it, but the more Steph rubbed and massaged her groin, the more familiar Linda became with the sensation. Rivalry spurring her on to make Linda come as quickly as possible, Steph drilled her index finger stiffly into Linda’s clit. This time, Linda responded with squeals of delight. Steph paused, rubbing her palm in frantic circles on all of Linda’s pussy, both pleasuring Linda and making her beg for more. Then, when Linda was all but swearing eternal devotion, Steph started diddling her clit again. Linda’s cream shot from her pussy, finally making up in Steph’s mind for how she’d embarrassed herself by coming all over Linda’s hand.

They masturbated each other faster and faster, staring into each other’s eyes so they could see their lover be wracked with growing passion. Linda felt Steph’s scalding cream erupt from her, like juice being squeezed from a fruit. It amazed her to think that she was coming just as hard—that this was what it felt like for Steph and she was feeling what it felt like for her. She was used to masturbation, but having someone else get her off and making someone come, it was so much more intense than touching herself could ever be. She could see in Steph’s eyes how her friend was enjoying getting her off, and with a smile, she realized she liked it too. So much.

Maybe this was what being in love felt like.

Linda forced her middle and forefinger inside of Steph, curling them to the special spot that always made her orgasm, and Steph’s jaw dropped in a wordless cry, her juices running down her legs until they hit her knee socks.

“Unhh! Shit! Yes, HHHAAAA!” Steph screamed, her voice finally coming back to her.

Linda felt Steph’s cunt clenching and sucking at her deeply lodged finger, some pattern to the rhythm in concert with Steph’s gurgling cries, her dilated eyes rolling in passion. If she were a boy, she would be feeling this around her cock. It was a strange thing for Linda to think, but she wondered how happy she could make a man, just by coming on his thing.

She wondered how a man would feel, having Steph coming this hard all around him.