Title: Exit Wounds
Rating: T
Words Count: 850+
Character Dynamics: Spitfire
Summary: Sometimes, she gives him her skin to play with.
Prompt: Spitfire. Skin. — For elrickeyblade
As his fingers zip down her spine, she shudders in tortured delight, scraping up her bottom lip between her teeth to prevent a scream of pain from unleashing hell in the Medical bay. It doesn't matter how gentle Wally's being as she gives him her skin to play with, it still hurts. Slamming her eyelids shut, she tries to focus on the other hospitalized teammates, hoping their pain can, in comparison, make her burns look like a measly paper cut. M'gann, having suffered the brunt of the explosion from tonight's mission, is groaning in a language that Artemis is guessing is Martian. She had gone under in her bioship, slumped on the emergency medical cot, the burns on her skin being too much for her. Robin hadn't been completely knocked out by the blaze, but his cape was singed and his back had started to color crudely, and the pain had been blinding. Even now, after being treated, he was vacillating between consciousness and a dreamless sleep.
Wally pushes a few straggling strands of hair over her shoulder, skimming his fingers against the fine fringe at the nape of her neck. Her skin quivers at the contact that's barely there, and she sits up a little straighter from her perch at the edge of the cot. Her hair is pooling into her lap, and her arms are crossed in an attempt to hold her unclasped bra to her chest. Black Canary, who was currently rummaging though the various creams and instruments strewn over the bedside medical tray, had bluntly told Wally that he couldn't be on this side of the privacy curtain. Yet here he was, sitting cross-legged behind her, delicately leaving his fingerprints all over her bare back. It wasn't like he was being horny and, even though the pressure he put against her nearly provoked agonized yelps from her mouth, it felt good to know that he was trying his best to take care of her.
Capping a tube of paste that nearly scalded her blotchy, angry marks worse than the actual explosion had, Wally hands it to their "den mother" in exchange for a gauze wrap. Just when she's about to grit out that, yeah, she can wrap herself thank you very much, his hands are back to toying with her skin. Her spine goes rigid, positure immediately stiffening as his fingers begin to swirl around three particular marks that dot her shoulder blades.
He's in the middle of muttering an apology, probably thinking that he's rubbed against a sensitive spot, but then everything freezes and Artemis nearly shivers as his fingers stop. "Artemis," his voice is dangerously calm, but the passion in it ruffles hotly against the back of her neck. She knows that tone. He's angry.
"Yeah?" she returns in monotone. Maybe an emotionless, it's-no-big-deal facade can pull her out of this one.
He presses his thumb against a bright patch of scar tissue. She can't help but quake beneath his touch. "These are exit wounds."
Something metal clatters horribly from Black Canary's hands. Artemis keeps on staring at her lap, hugging the coverage closer to her chest, trying her best to ignore the older woman's burning gaze. After a tense pause in this little niche they've curtained everyone else from, Artemis watches in her peripheral as Black Canary's boots tread briskly past the dangling fabric, evading her view. Now it's just her and Wally.
"Great, you made her leave."
"I'm not done, Artemis." She winces at the severity in his voice and, yeah, she's a little pissed off at that because she didn't want to discuss this with him right now, especially when the whole team can hear (of course, with the intimate way their relationship had been progressing, she knew he'd have to see these marks eventually. But now? Like this?).
"Well I am. I don't want to talk about it."
He snakes a hand around her side, his palm pressing into her ribs, alarmingly close to the supple curvature of her chest. She wouldn't mind it, she supposes, if she wasn't so frustrated with him at the moment. The springs of the cot groan pitifully as he leans forward, and his lips are suddenly flush against her ear.
"Was it your dad?" his low, velvety growl makes her blood bubble. The shell of her ear is hot with his breath. Everything smells like antiseptics. She nearly gags.
"He tried to teach his little girls to pay attention."
From beyond the curtain, she recognizes the hushed voices of Robin and Kaldur, the delirious Martian-speak of M'gann, and Conner's grave silence. Wally's nose nudges against her temple, his teeth dragging against her earlobe in frustration. She's shivering again, and she feels horrible about it. Like she's going to throw up.
"There's more on my leg." She angles her head in his direction, looking for relief in the soft feel of his lips. He lets her have it, and places downy soft kisses that trail down to her neck.
She doesn't even care that they're distracted, halfhearted; the rest of his feeling lost in thoughts of exit wounds.