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vibrantstarfire · 5 months ago

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silly prompts? silly prompts about dc characters? might i throw: cass cain interacting with crystal brown for you to consider and see if that might intrigue you?

ok so i had an idea the other day about like bruce sucking at being a girl dad and basically forgetting that periods exist. what if crystal brown filled this role instead?

also i KNOW you said silly but i am sooo bad at writing characters having an unabashedly good time so this is as fun and lighthearted as it gets. also remember when i said 1K is the max word count i can have. do you remember that. because not one of these has been under 1K lmao

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Crystal Brown has just finished a 12-hour shift at the clinic and a half-hour commute to boot. She is ready for exactly one microwaveable meal, one chore-check to see if the dishes and laundry have gotten too dire before her next day off, and maybe one episode of shitty reality TV – The Bachelor – that Stephanie will usually sit with her and make fun of before a blissful eight hours of sleep.

So she is surprised to hear the TV already turned on to her shitty reality TV. It’s odd. Stephanie never watches it without her. It's just not as fun for her to make fun of on her own, god forbid her irony-loving daughter watching a show purely for the love of watching it.

“Stephanie?” she calls as she sets her bags down. “I hope you’re not using up the pre-recordings, I don’t want to miss the finale.”

No one answers. Crystal frowns. Maybe she left it on before she left? That would be terrible, she really was looking forward to the season finale, and it's so hard to find the pre-recordings after watching them. She doesn't want to have watched the entire season of The Bachelor just to miss the final episode. And this season was wild, especially after two of the girls left with each other instead, thus making one subsequent episode end with no one going home. Now that it's down to the final two as scheduled, Todd probably doesn’t deserve either Graciela or Kaiden, especially when Stephanie said Todd had at least two DUIs that his wealth and handsome face can’t quite distract from. But it’s fun to watch. It’s not meant to be critically examined, she keeps telling Stephanie.

After she's unpacked the necessities from her purse and refilled her water bottle, she can't help but notice that a few other things are off about her home.

For one, there are more wrappers around the kitchen than usual. Stephanie isn’t the tidiest, but she usually at least throws things away after using them.

Feeling a little frustrated, Crystal scoops the wrappers up, sighs pointedly, and tosses them before they can draw ants. She’ll definitely be talking with Stephanie about this. The last thing she needs after a 12-hour shift is to come home to a mess.

“Stephanie,” she calls again, trying to keep her patience. “If you’re home, answer me.”

And then, she has the sudden sensation of being watched.

Crystal tenses and stands up straight.

And just across the kitchen, standing at the other side of the island as if she's been here the entire time, is an unfamiliar asian girl, around Stephanie's age.

Crystal almost has a heart attack. Crystal holds a hand to her heart, prepared to fight if she needs to, because what the actual hell is this strange girl doing in her house? She opens her mouth to ask who she is and why she's watching TV in her house, when the girl speaks.

"Not Stephanie," she says. "But... Hi, Stephanie's mom."

"Is there a reason you broke into my house, Not Stephanie?"

“Stephanie told me to come if there was … if I had an emergency. I thought she would come home first.” She glances at the suddenly wrapper-less countertop, and does look genuinely apologetic. “Sorry. Meant to clean up.”

Crystal looks at the girl closer. Even from across the countertop island, she can tell this girl is smaller than Stephanie. And, upon slightly closer examination, extensively scarred.

Crystal has a bad feeling she knows just what activity Stephanie knows her from.

She pinches the bridge of her nose and gives herself just a moment to tamp down her frustration. But the girl hasn’t made a move to kill her, so if she’s a vigilante, she’s not that kind of vigilante. And she did say Stephanie had invited her. So for now, Crystal won’t kick her out. She looks seventeen, maybe nineteen at the most. She doesn't exactly look like a threat.

And she did mention an emergency.

“What is the emergency you came here for?” Crystal asks, with a herculean effort at being the adult in the room.

“Bleeding.”

Crystal’s brows raise. She looks at the girl’s extensive scarring, and despite being thoroughly tapped out of nurse mode after twelve hours on the clock, it doesn’t take that much effort to get back into it. At least it makes marginally more sense for Stephanie to have asked her friend to come here if she needed medical attention, though it's odd that the girl had expected Stephanie to be home first if that was the case. “Okay,” she says, professionally. She's already reaching for the first aid kit she keeps in her purse. “Where are you bleeding? I can stitch it, if you need, –I’m sorry, Stephanie didn’t mention you, can you tell me your name?”

��Cassandra. Cass.” The girl, Cass, looks uncomfortable giving it. Or maybe uncomfortable at the thought of stitches. “It can be stitched?”

“Well, where are you bleeding?”

"...Pelvis? Not sure what the right word is." Cass points down below. The kitchen island blocks her view, but it's clear she's indicating her pelvic and pubic area, somewhere in her inner groin. Crystal frowns. If this girl was hurt in such a sensitive area, it seems odd that Stephanie would just leave her alone here.

The more Crystal thinks about it though, the less she’s sure of what Cass means. Has she been cut? Is this a vaginal tear? Some combination of both? Sexual abuse isn’t exactly rare in Gotham, so it’s hard to rule anything out. Either way, it would definitely count as an emergency. Crystal just wishes she knew whether Cass was a minor or not – she’d need to ask different questions, and figure out whether or not CPS or the foster system needed to get involved, if so.

She can’t do anything until she knows exactly what’s wrong, though.

“Can you tell me a little bit more about how you got hurt? Is it a cut that needs stitches, or something else?”

“It doesn’t…” Cass frowns, looking like she’s struggling for the words. “Stephanie said it didn’t need stitches.”

“But it is a cut?”

“It's bleeding.”

“Then whether it needs stitches is for a nurse to decide,” Crystal says, and is going to have A Talk with Stephanie about giving medical advice. “How long have you been bleeding? How much blood have you lost?”

“Two days,” Cass says. “More blood than usual.”

And something shifts.

Crystal tilts her head to the side. “When you say bleeding,” she says, calmly, “Does this bleeding happen often?”

Cass makes a face as she thinks about it. “Not often,” she says. “A few times a year. More, now.”

That doesn’t quite disprove Crystal’s theory, though it does mean there might be other complications. “When you talked with Stephanie about this earlier," she says, "Did Stephanie call it anything?”

“Shark week.” Cass wrinkles her nose.

Crystal heaves a deep sigh, changes the discussion she’s going to have with Stephanie to be one about properly naming medical terms, and puts the first aid kit away. “Okay,” she says, and mentally recalibrates most of their conversation. It now makes perfect sense. Of course Cass would be wary of being stitched up for menstruation. “Did she show you where the extra pads and tampons are? Or ibuprofen?”

Cass shakes her head.

“Alright then. Follow me,” Crystal says, and directs her to the bathroom, where Stephanie usually keeps extra pads and tampons. She realizes now that the girl’s comfortable pants are quite noticeably stained, even from the front, and she feels a pang of sympathy. She also, more self-interestedly, hopes that nothing else is stained. She can’t afford a new couch right now.

Within a few minutes, Crystal has given the girl a new set of underwear and pants, taught her how to apply a pad, and given her a heating pad and some ibuprofen.

(Apparently period cramps don’t hurt nearly as badly as being shot, but after some prodding, she did get Cass to admit that she was a little bit uncomfortable.)

After that, there’s not much to do.

Crystal still wants her microwaved meal and to watch the season finale of The Bachelor. But she’s got the feeling that if she kicks this girl out, she won’t have anywhere else to go. And, well. The couch isn’t ruined, thanks to a few towels the girl had found instead. She's been polite enough, and she's not a threat. There’s no reason she can’t stay in the living room if she’s got nowhere else to go.

So after some careful deliberation, Crystal pulls out two microwave meals, and heats them up simultaneously.

They spin in the microwave for quite some time.

After they're almost done, she asks, “Is Stephanie not coming home tonight?”

Cass watches her curiously from across the kitchen. She shakes her head, no.

“Well, I’m not waiting to watch the season finale without her,” Crystal says with an air of finality, and tries not to listen to the pang of anxiety that always comes with not knowing her daughter's whereabouts. They'll fight about it tomorrow, she knows. She just hopes that her daughter comes home by tomorrow. “You’ll just have to watch it with me instead.”

Cass stares at her.

The microwave dings, and Crystal pulls out two meals, handing one to her strange guest. “I hope you don’t mind Stouffers.”

Cass takes it silently. Surprised, it seems, at the hospitality. Crystal is, too.

As they settle in for the pre-recording, forks scraping the microwaveable plastic tins, Crystal feels strangely in sync with her guest. At least Cass, unlike Stephanie, seems to have a more honest appreciation of The Bachelor.

“Kaiden doesn’t like him as much as Graciela does,” Cass comments mid-way through the finale. She shakes her head in disapproval as the episode cuts to commercial, right before Todd makes his final decision between the final girls. “They won’t be happy together if he chooses her.”

“I know,” Crystal says, shaking her head. “But Kaiden is rich, so Todd will probably pick her.”

“Shallow,” Cass says, mouth half full. “Boo.”

She sounds a little like Stephanie, and Crystal hides a smile in her next bite. “If it makes you feel better, Graciela is probably going to be on the next Bachelorette.”

Cass looks up, brows furrowed. “Bachelorette?”

“Well… yes. Instead of the girls competing for one boy, it's several boys competing for a girl.” Crystal has the spark of an idea. She hesitates, only for a moment. Then, “Do you... want to watch it together, when it comes out?”

It’s a way to keep an eye on this strange, scarred friend of her daughter’s, who’s in her late teens and didn’t quite seem to understand periods. But, even more importantly, if she steals her daughter’s friend, maybe there’ll be some more earnest appreciation of reality TV in the Brown household.

Cass looks at her for a long moment. Then, once and decisively, nods. “Yes,” she says, and then, as if only just remembering her manners, adds- “Yes, please.”

“Well, the next season of the Bachelorette will start a month from now,” Crystal says. “You’ll probably need some more period supplies by then anyway. Stop by and we’ll get you fixed up with that, too.”

Cass’s face changes a little, somewhere between confusion and surprise. She nods again, this time silently. Crystal doesn't press. She has a feeling that a month from now, her strange guest will have reappeared at the end of her shift.

At least by then, she'll have had a chance to buy a few extra period supplies and underwear. Just in case.

#cass cain #crystal brown #cdw writes

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