Age: Cameron is 15 and Artemis is 14 in the flashback. At present Cameron is 21, Artemis is 20.

Driving Lessons

Fall, 1 Year Before Team Year 1

Standing in front of the bathroom mirror, Artemis jammed her thumb down on the 'Answer' button on her phone, answering a call from Cameron's latest burner phone. "Where the hell are you frostbite?! The bus already left, and we're definitely going to be late for homeroom if we miss the metro bus, which, incase your frozen peabrain forgot, gets here in TWO MINUTES!"

"Relaaaax Arty," Cameron's far too smug voice answered. "We're not taking the metro because yours truly has something waaaay better planned."

"We don't have time for 'something way better' Cam. Ms. Marigold is going to give us both detention if we get another tardy, and I'm not spending one of the last few warm days of the year staring at her knitting for an hour!"

She couldn't see it, but she could feel Cameron dismiss her concerns with a vague wave of his hand. "We'll only be tardy if you take any longer. I'm downstairs already, meet me at the bottom of of the fire escape."

"The bottom of the fire escape? Why are you in the alley?"

"Come down and find out," he answered, hanging the line up. Artemis closed her eyes and willed herself not to smack her forehead, deciding instead she'd smack Cameron when she got down. Twice if she got detention.

Grabbing her backpack, she booked it down the hall, to her room, and out the side window into the sketchy alley. The first thing she noticed was a beat-up tan sedan that was at least ten years old idling very conspicuously in the alley. The fact that it looked suspicious in an alley where no one blinked twice at pleas for help, let alone teenagers climbing up and down the fire escape at all hours of the night, said enough.

Cameron stuck his head outside of the window and stared up at her, hollering "Get in blondie, we're going shopping."

"Whose car is that?" she asked, scurrying down the fire escape as fast she could without cutting herself on a rusted edge or getting grime all over her clothes.

"For this week it's mine. Now hurry up! I'm already regretting wasting that pop culture reference on you."

She plopped down on the alley, narrowly avoiding a puddle of what she suspected was not water, and jogged over to the car to hop into shotgun. The inside of the car was respectable compared to the outside, free of trash or otherwise suspicious stains. Cameron was grinning proudly from the driver's seat, watching her eyes dart around the car for an inspection.

When she didn't find anything glaringly wrong, she looked at him suspiciously. "How'd you get your hands on this? Who the hell gave this to you? And why are you driving it?!"

Cameron's grin somehow got wider. "Details are like potatoes. They don't really matter until they're turned into french fries."

"You don't have a license!"

"I have a permit, which is more than you have. And besides, I practiced with Crystal before I took this baby on the road."

"You think because you barely got your permit and spent a few minutes getting lessons from a villain that I'm going to let you drive me to my death?"

"Driving is like riding a bicycle."

"You haven't had a bike in at least three years!"

"The point this, we're doing this. Buckle up blondie."

"The hell we are!" Artemis shot back, just as the metro bus rumbled past them in the alley, letting them both know that public transportation was no longer an option.

Cameron pulled out some aviators from the center console and flipped them on, striking his best action movie pose. "Looks like hell just froze over."

"My ears are going to ble-aack!" her words were cut off by a shriek as Cameron floored the accelerator, violently lurching the car out of the alley and swerving recklessly right into Gotham traffic. They were greeted by an immediate chorus of angry drivers beeping their horn.

"What are you doing?!" she yelled, quickly shoving her seatbelt on.

"I'm getting us to school on time, obviously," he said nonchalantly, veering precariously through all three lanes of the morning rush hour.

"We're driving! We've got plenty of time to get there! You don't have to drive like an Arkham inmate!" she yelled at him.

"I do if we're gonna stop for some BatBurgers for breakfast."

She shot him a mortified look. "Cam, that's on the other side of town!"

He turned his whole head to look at her with a mischievous grin, answering "Yup" popping the 'p' at the end for dramatic effect.

"Keep your eyes on the road before you kill us!" she hissed, and Cameron looked up just in time to see the light turning yellow.

"Here's our turn!" He hit his blinker and made a hard U-turn at the next intersection, barely missing incoming traffic.

"Cameroooon!"

"Woohoooo!"

Late Summer, Team Year 5

"I still don't understand the point of this. It's a complete waste of time," grouched Cameron.

He was sitting behind the wheel of the sedan that Artemis had gotten from Will. It was a holdover from his days chasing after the 'original' Roy that Jade had condemned as too decrepit to "ever put any child of mine in outside of a life or death situation." As much as Artemis – and disturbingly, Lian – loved watching Jade & Will have a marital argument on the finer points of keeping the vehicle vs buying a new car, in the end she was more than happy to take it off their hands.

Of course, she hadn't been expecting to be handing Cameron the keys inside of two weeks of getting the car, but her life had been full of surprises lately.

"You need to pass the driving exam," she asserted from the passenger seat.

"I know damn well how to drive, I don't care what some pencil pusher sitting at the DMV thinks."

"Sure you don't, but you also don't have a legitimate driver's license, which is a pretty large oversight for someone who went all the way to Romania for a fake identity."

"It was Greece, and the driving license was another fifteen thousand euros, which was completely outrageous! That money paid for another two weeks at my villa."

"Fifteen thousand euros?!" Artemis asked, bug-eyed.

"Well ok, it was more like five. But there was this orphanage with these adorable kids-"

"So you donated five thousand euros to the orphanage? That's actually sweet of you."

"What?" Cameron asked. "God no, those kids were in Luxembourg. That one orphanage had more funding than the entire Gotham Child Protective Services. No, I booked all the kids spots at the resort near my villa. They had a blast, I felt great, my dad probably felt the charity in his bones and got an ulcer-" Cameron shook his head suddenly, realizing how off topic they were getting. "But that's not the point. The point is this is a complete waste of time."

"No it isn't. Law abiding citizens have drivers licenses," Artemis insisted, ignoring the choking irony of invoking that statement.

"I have a dozen driver's licenses."

"No, you don't. Blake Hawthorne has a license. John Richardson has a license. Cameron Johnson has a license. The weirdly Slavic sounding Cameron Dragic has a license. Hell, even Cameron Mahkent has an expired driver's permit. Cameron Frost does not have anything."

"I don't see the issue with that. All of those ID's would stand up to a police check, so if I get pulled over I can just be Mr. Dragic for fifteen minutes."

Artemis grimaced. "Ehhh, maybe. Maybe not. Most of your ID's have been flagged by the Justice League, so those could get burned any day."

"Wait, what? I thought you said they were gonna play nice!"

"They are!" she answered defensively. "You're not in jail and they know you're more a friend than an enemy. It's just...since you know me and stuck your neck out to help a hero, your file's been...moved up a few spots."

"Oh that doesn't sound ominous at all," he replied sarcastically.

"It just means they're paying closer attention to you, which isn't a problem because you've been staying out of trouble."

"I swear, no good deed…" he muttered.

"Anyway, you need to be ready for the road test. That's the real problem here. You have to do a million extra steps that no one ever does in real life. I mean really, no one looks over their shoulder before they make a turn. You're supposed to keep your eyes on the road! How can you see what's on the road if you have to be looking everywhere else but the road in front of you?!"

Cameron recovered from his spoiled mood to pounce on the annoyance in her voice. "Sounds like someone had a very negative experience at the DMV in high school. Guess not everyone is cut out for the driving life."

"First of all, you never even took a driver's license test. Besides, what happened was not my fault," she said petulantly.

"You didn't hit an old lady did you?"

Artemis scoffed. "Don't insult me. I swerved out of the way like a pro. Didn't stop the dickwad from giving me a failing grade."

"And you think you're the right person to teach me how to pass the exam?"

"I'm the one with a driver's license."

"Again...we've established physical possession of a driver's license doesn't mean anything. Because if it did, you?" He pointed at her. "1 license. Me?" He pointed back at himself. "A dozen licenses. I'm not sure how that makes you more qualified."

"Just shut up and start driving."

…

Forty minutes later, the car come to a screeching halt right at the front of the Harper residence.

Inside the car, Artemis was catching her breath, easing up her white knuckled grip on the dash board. In the driver's seat Cameron was leaning over the steering wheel, face down in contemplation. If not for his metahuman powers, there would've been an actual sheen of sweat on his face as opposed to the slightly more flush skin tone.

Eventually, he turned to Artemis with a straight face, speaking slowly. "You are…without a doubt…the single worst driving instructor brought on this earth."

She gave him an incredulous look. "You're a horrible driver!"

"There are no bad students Artemis, only bad teachers!"

"That's a lie. You're the literal proof that it's a lie! I'm blessed to be leaving this vehicle in one piece!"

"We wouldn't have had any issues if you weren't constantly backseat driving!"

"I stopped you from hitting a pedestrian!"

"You reached over and grabbed the steering wheel before I could do anything! You're the reason we almost hit her!"

"Well forgive me if I have lingering trauma from the last time I was in a car with you!"

"Oh noooo," Cameron shook his head. "Your trauma is from your own horrendous driving. You drive on normal roads the way you're supposed to drive in the field. You can't differentiate between the two!"

"Says the guy who, at 15, almost drove into the front of Batburger!"

"Almost. Emphasis on almost. Look Arty, if we're being shot at, I wouldn't pick anyone over you as a driver. But a ride to the library? A quick stop at the mall? I'll take my chances with public transit."

"I can't believe you are lecturing me about irresponsible driving," Artemis said, arms crossed.

"I think I'll take the driver's exam with my own help, thank you very much."

"You won't pass on the first try."

"You wanna bet?" he asked, and she immediately picked up on the eagerness in his voice.

"I'm not a child."

"Sounds like you don't have confidence in your statement," he teased, and whether it was the annoyance from their earlier conversation or her general competitive streak, that was enough for her to take the bait.

"I never lack confidence. What are the terms frostbite?"

Cameron gave her a wicked smile.

A/N: *sniffs air* You smell that? That's some fluff. Anyway I haven't decided what the bet is gonna be so feel free to leave ideas in the comments as I'm going to circle back to this at some point in a future chapter. Thanks for reading!