I thought this was going to be shorter. Honestly.
The first time he saw her with her chemistry textbook, she was hunched over the thick, peeling book while sitting on the couch, her lips moving as she glanced back and forth between the answers on the silky page and the problems scribbled in her harsh handwriting in her test, the ones scratched out with thick red pen.
"Whatcha up do, Arty?" he asked her as he sauntered by. Before she could tell him not to nickname her like they were friends, before she could make fun of his hew haircut, swear at him, shove her fist down his stupid throat, a sudden breeze whistled through her hair and he had grabbed her test from her hands
Wally peered down at the pages with narrowed, hard eyes. "Ooooooh," he whistled mockingly. "Chemistry isn't your best subject, is it?" He jabbed his finger at the forty-eight at the top of her paper.
She snarled and snatched her test back from him. No one was supposed to see that. She wasn't exactly sure if there were academic requirements she had to maintain in order to be on the team, but if there were, a failure as drastic as that was definitely well below it. Her pulse throbbed in her cheeks angrily and she could hear her heartbeat. "You're an asshole."
"Do you want me to tutor you?"
Artemis glared at him, and did respond, and was exhilarated when he felt uncomfortable enough to leave. Good riddance, you idiot.
She sat at the kitchen eating ice cream, glaring at the pen scribbles on her hand that had appeared there during a daydream she couldn't quite remember now. It had something to do with eternal summers, though, and graduation, and it left behind a pleasant taste in her brain that made up for the soreness on her lip where she bit it too hard and it began bleeding. Her notebook was by her left elbow.
It was midnight, and she'd hoped to be alone, but Artemis had forgotten the consistant irregularity of everyone at Mount Justice. Wally ran into the kitchen at exactly twelve thirty-seven AM, straight into the refridgerator. His forehead hit the stainless steel with a resounding smack, and he reeled back and landed on the floor. Artemis flattened her palm on the table and nearly stood up, but he beat her to it, and, as she reminded herself, she didn't care anyway.
"Hello," he mumbled as he staggered back up, clutching the handle of the freezer for support.
"That was probably the most utterly stupid thing I've ever seen," she said lightly.
He blinked and squinted up at her, probably trying to figure out who she was in his concussed state. "And who – look, sleep I sometimes run," he said, huffily. He stiffened. "I mean – I mean run in my sleep, uh."
She widened her eyes, not knowing whether he could actually see her do so in the dim light that the clock above the stove provided. "Oh, do you?"
Wally glared at her. "Hey, you know what's more utterly stupid, Artemis? Do you? Because I'm pretty sure needing a tutor because you failed a test on chemical bonds – bonds, Artemis, it's like the easiest concept in the entire field of chemistry – is slightly more stupid than me running in me sleep."
It was her turn to storm out.
She got a ninety-three on her next test. It would be the only A she would ever get in that class and it was a grade driven by significantly more spite than ambition or any actual desire to learn the material, but she didn't care. She brought it to Mount Justice after school and tacked it on the fridge, where she knew he would find it within three minutes of arriving.
"Guess I don't need that tutor," she crowed when he walked into the kitchen and saw her grade.
He'd rolled his eyes at her. "You got the date wrong," he snapped, and he stalked out of the kitchen with merely a single package of Oreos in his hands.
"Momentarily Martian Manhunter will immerse your minds into one universe. It is vital that you remember that this is not real. Additonally …"
"Artemis," murmurs Wally from the flat, unforgiving lab bench next to hers. "Artemis. Artemis –"
"What," she says without inflection, and if they hadn't been instructed to lie completely still, she would've had her hands at her temples in a sorry attempt to combat her raging headache. It was too early for this. "What is it, Wally?"
An enraging pause, and then, "I was serious, you know."
"About what?"
"About, like, tutoring you – helping you. Um. Like, if you really –"
"Oh my God – no. No no no. Just – can you just get off my back, for once, about this one thing? I don't need your goddamn pity, you dick."
"I wasn't saying you were -"
The drone of Batman's voice stopped momentarily so he could glare in their direction. "Silence," he said, "is required."
Later they gave her details that she hadn't asked or wanted to know: the way his scream splintered the ice in the air, the half-broken desperation in his eyes that was sloppily hidden under a forced manic sort of smile as he assured them over and over again that her death had not been permanent, the color of the explosion that melted his bones and turned him into ash.
Of course, all of it was second hand information, and Artemis could block it out sufficiently enough for her to function normally during the day (although the imagining was possibly more horrible than actually seeing it). What she couldn't block out was the incessant knocking at her door at three am.
She stumbled out of bed and flung the door open, not wincing when it swung too hard to the right and made a painful knocking sound. Wally stood behind it, his hand still clenched in a fist, his eyes wild and his bones tired.
"Hello," she said blearily, not sure of what was going on.
"Talk to me," he said, and she was terrified to realize he was begging. "I – I just need you to talk to me, right now, and I can't go back to sleep so don't even suggest it and I just need you to say something right his goddamn instant, Artemis please!"
His hands were on her shoulders now and she could feel his fingertips on her bone. "Wally," she whispered. "It was an exercise."
He shook his head. "I didn't – didn't feel like one.
Artemis hesitated, but not only had he seen her die but she had felt herself die, and maybe convincing him she was of the living would do them both some good. "Okay – I, okay, I really wish I was back at my house because the blankets here are too, um, too new, if that makes any sense, and they haven't been washed enough and aren't soft enough? I don't know. And tomorrow I was planning on taking your Iron Man DVDs and erasing them and putting a bunch of internet safety videos I found online on them, as a prank, but I'll probably be really tired tomorrow because we are up now, and also I just told you so I don't think I will, and I'm passing chem but only barely and if I fail any class I can lose my scholarship and you'd probably be a good tutor and I'm sorry we all died and the world went to shit and why the fuck am I crying damnit."
She fell into his chest, because it was the only thing left to do, and they fell asleep leaning against the corner of the wall, and all she could see was him screaming while they burnt his heart.
"I got a seventy-nine on my test," she told him several weeks later.
He squinted for several moments before deciding to nod at her, his lips flattening in what she was sure was supposed to be a grin. "I guess you won't need that tutor, then."
She shrugged. "Well, there's still two months before midterms." He smiled.
Zatanna appeared – and by appeared Artemis literally means manifested from no discernible source – the second Wally moved out of the room, an empty bowl in his hands. "Excuse me, but may I inquire –"
Artemis started, choking on the popcorn in her throat and spilling her water on her foot. "What the fuck, Zee -"
"- as to what in the even heck is going on?" asked Zatanna, the casual tone of her voice not quite enough to hide the astonished bewilderment in her eyes. "It was like two seconds ago that you were complaining he was a disgrace to all of mankind and dumping his chocolate bars in the toilet, and now you're all buddy-buddy, or should I say fuck-buddy-buddy, and I am not angry because quite frankly there's been a lot of sexual tension ever since I got here and now it seems to be a little less tense but please explain."
It was humiliating how hard Artemis had to work not to smile. "I don't, uh – we were being dicks to each other. We were just being dicks to each other and now we're not. That doesn't mean we're, like, or anything. We just are friends now."
She raised one perfectly manicured eyebrow. "Don't hate me if I don't believe you?"
Artemis scoffed, shoving Zatanna over with her foot. "He's helping me study for my chem midterm. Jesus."
Zatanna pursed her lips, her mouth in the shape of a perfect o. "Chemistry, huh?"
"He's a science genius and I suck at chem, okay?" grunted Artemis. She really would've liked to get up at that point but there was no way for her to stand up without seeming suspicious. It was a trap.
"Look, I've seen every episode of Boy Meets World at least eight times, and I know how this whole 'tutoring' routine ends." She frowned, cocking her head slightly. "Well, on Boy Meets World they always end in meaningful and relevant life lessons, but, besides that part, there is generally a good deal of making out."
Wally chose to enter the room at the exact moments the words making out left Zatanna's lips. "So I –" He paused, hovering awkwardly in the doorway. "Oh, uh… hi, Zatanna."
Zatanna winked at Artemis. "Hey, Wally," she called, a lilt in her voice that was altogether too amused to make anyone comfortable. "I was just leaving."
"Oh, no – I didn't mean that, um, we, uh, there's no –"
Her laugh was completely impish. "I get it, okay? Molecules just don't bond in threes." She ruffled Artemis's hair, and then flipped herself over the back of the couch and scrambled away.
Wally's face wasn't exactly red, but he was flushed. He started to reach up to rub his neck with one hand before he remembered the popcorn. "Molecules do bond in threes," he grumbled, as if he was personally offended. "Hydrogen dioxide...?"
This time it was far harder not to smile, and in the end she let herself go.
Now it was her turn to stand outside his door.
Like before, night cloaked her shoulders and her eyes were the exact shade of sweaty hopeless dreams. What was new was the hole in her stomach that an odd sort of belonging once inhabited, a space now filled by frustrated, angry, desperate, guilt.
And, unlike before, he didn't hear or he did hear her and just didn't acknowledge her knocking, despite how burnt her knuckles were. The wood did not break under her fist but it did break her.
"Wally," she croaked. "Don't do this. Open the door. Please just open the door, okay?"
She'd walked by the trophy room on the way to this damn hallway, to this goddamn closed door, and she'd seen the blinking light of the tracker, its batteries not yet removed, and she'd wondered if Jade had ever stood outside someone's door and asked for forgiveness and felt the horrible scream that, once murdered, can never leave her throat.
She leaned her forehead against the cool grain of the white painted door. "Wally. I know you're awake." This was a bluff. "Can you – can just fucking say something? I'm sorry, okay? But we – you can't stop being my friend, not now, and I – my chem exam is in two weeks, Wally. I need help. Just – just don't do this, okay?"
There was no reply.
She passed her test into her teacher without really knowing what had just happened; she felt like she had a week's worth of suppressed vomit no now longer able to be withheld and an odd dizzying sensation that happened whenever she tried to read anything. She was deliriously relieved, appallingly exhausted, somehow incredibly stressed.
And more than a little bit sad, because she'd bought a gift card to her favorite pie shop for Wally as a thank you for helping her not fail, and they would've used it together after the test, and things would've been very much okay.
She bought a slice of apple pie and ate it alone at a sticky plastic cafe table and reminded herself that there was no reason for her to cry.
Well, this is sort of chemistry, said a very small, detached voice in Artemis' currently very engaged mind, as Wally cradled her in his arms like she was something precious and kissed her lips like she was someone worthwhile.
But it's much better.
Someone was knocking on her door. Artemis, lying on her back while reading a book, tilts her head back to see Wally leaning against her door, his hands in his pockets. "Hey."
"Hey," says Artemis slowly, folding the corner down on the page she's on and sitting up. It's January 8th, a week after the Justice League both fell and was saved, a week after Vandal Savage disappeared, a week after the earth below them suddenly seemed insignificant for a few bizarre, wonderful eternities. She rolls her neck, ending with an awkward jerk towards the other end of her room that she immediately regrets. "Come – come in, ow."
Wally meanders into her room, slowly, his eyes glancing at each and every item, every surface, every stain and tear and open book in her room. "So," he says, stopping by her desk to fiddle with her house keys. "How were your midterms?"
She blinks, surprised but not really. "I got a seventy-five. Which is high enough for me to keep my scholarship, but low enough that my mom doesn't really expect anything from me next term. So I guess it, uh, it went pretty well."
He nods several times, his brow furrowed. "Good. Good, good." He doesn't look at her. directly, but instead at the ceiling fan above her head that hasn't been turned on since October.
"Your help, it really… it really helped. Um, the LEO the lion says GER, the stuff like that."
His head snaps up, and he looks so genuinely happy, so honestly glad that he managed to do something good, and she nearly laughs aloud. "Really?"
"Really, so thanks. Thank you." She smiles, and then she shuffles, tugging on the edges of her sleeves. "Hey, Wally -?"
"Yeah?" he asks, too suddenly, like he's been waiting for this chance, this moment, and in a single second he moves a greater distance than most people can in such a short time, and he hovers by her bed with fidgety muscles. "What is it?"
Her pulse throbs in her cheeks and she can feel her heartbeat, clattering in her ribcages,. "I – uh, you know, when… when that thing in chem, when it like… spontaneously combusts, and it, um – oh, fuck that."
She surged forward and cupped his face in her hands and kissed him in one fluid movement, and it all sounds sort of like the sweet sound of a violin, long and clear and beautiful.
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