Notes: I don't really remember how the initial idea for this came, but I do remember shooting a few sentences of it at my buddy Leon, who promptly responded with, "Lesbians! Lesbians in the dungeon!" So. His fault.

I Have a Girlfriend in Gotham

She's laughing with her friends at lunch when there's a tapping on her shoulder, and she turns to face the source still laughing, but on turning the giggles turn to chokes and in her struggle to regain control, Zatanna spills her Snapple all over the table. All the other girls around her squeal and jolt out of their seats, and as the pool of red spreads on her uniform and the bench, Zatanna doesn't even notice, because she's too preoccupied with the stranger who tapped her. For her part, the stranger is apologizing profusely and rushing away to retrieve some napkins, and she's smiling despite the mess she's caused but it isn't her sweetness that's got Zatanna so worked up: it's her face.

The girl is cute in her petite stature and her features are soft, with thin pink lips and bright blue eyes; her hair is in long, dark curls down to her chest, a deep shade of black that, questionably, differs from her oddly thick eyebrows. She's dressed in what Zatanna recognizes as an old school uniform, the one they'd had until last year, and she's strumming out a constant string of apologizes as she looks down at Zatanna's ruined skirt, a dent in her brow and her eyes scrunched up in shame. "I'm so, so sorry," she speaks hurriedly, soaking up the seat as Zatanna stands and moves her bag, and the entire cafeteria is watching them, but all Zatanna's watching is the new girl's legs. "The guidance counselor said to look for the black-haired beauty in the lunchroom, I didn't mean to startle you." She looks up helplessly, frowning, and from the looks around the room Zatanna's definitely not the only one who just heard black-haired beauty. "You're Zatanna, right?"

There's really not much to say when your boyfriend shows up at your all girl's Catholic school dressed in a uniform that shows off his nice (?) legs when he's supposed to be off on some mission with Batman at some undisclosed location, and if there is, Zatanna would love to know. For the moment she's trying to regain control of her face, wrestling with expression because it's trying its best to either break into laughter or look absolutely mortified, and this girl isn't Dick, is a stranger, so neither of those reactions seem quite appropriate. Zatanna somehow manages to control herself, swallows once and opens her mouth to speak; her tongue lags before the sound comes out, and she speaks, "Um. Yeah—yeah, Zatanna Zatara." There's a brief pause before she nods and goes, "And… you are…?"

The girl giggles and curtsies, says excitedly, "I'm Robin! Transferring here from Gotham next month. They said you'd show me around today."

Gotham. Robin. Okay.

Really?

Robin looks at Zatanna's skirt, appropriately upset. "I'm really, really sorry for ruining your skirt."

Zatanna looks down to the assess the damage, and, yeah, it's pretty bad; the red stain has spread all over her skirt and the instructors are going to have a fit, so she'll probably have to borrow an extra uniform until the end of the day, or else face their wrath and probably some teasing about her period. She thinks she can be exasperated about it all later, though, because as bad as it is, it's also a pretty good excuse—

"It's okay," Zatanna says, "I can't do much guiding at the moment, though, unless you'd like to join me on an exciting adventure to the lady's room."

Robin's grin almost makes Zatanna want to punch him, but when there's a nod she guides the new girl out of the cafeteria and toward the restroom, but she stops at the sign and thinks, yeah, no, she's not letting Robin in there, even if he does make a lovely lady, so she leads them to a science classroom instead.

"Here we are," she says once they arrive, and she holds the door open for Robin to step in. She props herself up on one of the lab tables and dampens a paper towel, sets to work on her skirt. "So," she says, "what exactly are you doing here?" She crosses her arms and looks at him, and, okay, so she's not one to pout, but she does, because Robinis supposed to be gone, he's been gone for two weeks now, and she didn't expect that the next time she saw her boyfriend he'd be in a skirt and a wig at her school in Manhattan.

"I missed you," Robin says simply, as though that answers everything, and he comes close for a kiss, and okay, yeah, she missed him, too, missed him desperately during the week when he wasn't there to hold her hand, missed him on the weekend when Father's Day flew by and she was alone, missed holding him close and putting her hands in his hair, even if right now it's a wig. She puts her arms around him and pulls him closer, stain on her skirt forgotten, and god, she missed this, too.

"This is different," Zatanna murmurs against his lips. "I've never kissed my girlfriend in my Catholic school before."

Robin snickers. "Recipe for dis-aster?"

The answer comes in the form of a squeak behind them, and they both turn to its source, nonplussed, and, okay, in retrospect, Zatanna probably should've locked the door. "Wait!" she cries, jumping off the table, but it's too late—the freshman at the door saw them kissing and is running down the hall, and there's no way Zatanna'll be able to catch up to her and explain, there's only the hope that she won't go and grab a nun and tell them Zatanna's been possessed by a devil or something again (it's a surprisingly common claim once people find out your father's a stage magician).

"Uh-oh," says Robin, "Caught."

Zatanna glares at him. "And you didn't see this coming?"

He giggles, and his voice changes swiftly to one he was using earlier in the cafeteria, a change that's eerie in that it's not much of a change at all, but it's distinguishable. "Can't say that I did," Robin says, shrugging, and he takes her hand and kneels to check out the stain on her skirt again before nodding once to himself and producing what looks like a bottle of hand sanitizer out of nowhere and spraying it on. The stain disappears almost instantly, and he beams like he's just discovered ten more decimal places of pi, and Zatanna's probably supposed to be watching in wonder, or something, but she thinks of something else entirely: "You brought your utility belt?"

"And it just saved your uniform's life," he confirms. "Respect the belt."

"Where were you even keeping it?"

Robin wiggles his eyebrows and Zatanna decides it better not to ask further. She does, however, point out: "You realize that that girl is going to go tell a teacher that she found two girls making out in an unsupervised science room, right? That's breaking, like, twenty school rules."

"I can see it now," says Robin, and he gestures in the air like he's moving a curtain on a stage, tells the story like he's the narrator of the play. "All the students are peacefully having their lunch in the cafeteria, when one of them suddenly notices the absence of one of their number! She stands, proclaims, 'Alack! We are lacking in number! Wherever is our dearest Cecilia?'!"

"Cecilia?"

Robin hushes her with a finger to her lips, shakes his head: he's not done yet, Zatanna, gosh. "All of a sudden," Robin continues dramatically, "there is a loud crash of thunder in the middle of a bright, sunny day, and an ear piercing scream as a girl – that very same Cecilia of legend, you know – comes running into the room, and she's yelling something…" He brings his hand to his ear, forms a makeshift trumpet, as if to hear the imaginary girl in question, and just as Zatanna's about to ask him what the hell he's doing, he shouts: "LESBIANS! LESBIANS IN THE DUNGEON!"

And then they're both doubled over in laughter and choking and she's trying to reprimand him, but all that comes out is a weak gasp of "Robin," and her face hurts by the time she thinks she's done, but they meet each other's eyes again and they're set off for a second time, and this time, it's so hard and so bad that Robin's wig slides off his head. Which, of course, means Zatanna's on a third round of laughter, and they're both only stopped when there's the sound of someone clearing their throat at the door—

—Uh-oh—

—and Zatanna turns around to an unwanted surprise for the second time that day, and there's the legendary Cecilia standing next to the principal.

"The nuns may want to expel me," Zatanna announces that afternoon, and they can barely hear her over the Zeta Beam's announcement of her arrival. She looks all kinds of disheveled, her hair a mess and her uniform untidy and uneven, and the stain on her skirt has made a dramatic reappearance. Her shoulders are slumped and she drops the backpack at her feet, too tired to be angry. She looks up hopelessly at Artemis, who's raising an eyebrow curiously, like, Yeah? Do tell.

"Everyone thinks I'm gay," says Zatanna, which, not a problem itself, you know, but, like. Potential expulsion.

"Awful," says Robin, appearing out of nowhere, and his grin's against her lips, and, okay, yeah, that was worth it.