AN: Another chapter up! Sorry for the bit of a posting delay, this chapter is actually the longest one I've written so far and naturally was a big pain to edit. I have some house keeping to do but I'll save that for later.
Picks from the playlist are: Two Birds by Regina Spektor, Let It Die by Feist and Expo '86 by Death Cab for Cutie.
Time moves on as it always does; despite any recent revelations they all fall back into their old habits. M'gann bakes. Her and Wally squabble. She walks in once on Garth and Tula and makes a point to never breathe a word of what she saw to Kaldur, no matter how annoyed she gets with him.
For the second time this year everyone grows antsy and suddenly it's not just the her and Wally bickering and turning crimson over trivial things like the settings on the remote control. Both their Roys are still missing and S.T.A.R Labs is taking its time with scanning their premises, and before long they're all at each other's throats, small fights breaking out over misplaced weights in the training room and whose turn it is to do the dishes.
March begins to fade slowly and she catches herself relaxing into Wally; for the first time, maybe ever, she stops looking at the gaping holes and old scars that her life consists of and instead tries to focus only on red hair and freckles. It's easy to get lost in the blisters between his toes and the flaking skin of his elbows, and she almost tricks herself into feeling full. Happy, even.
Despite their best intentions they don't talk, not really, about the broken path and mangled limbs that led them to each other. She doubts they ever will.
Their kisses become less frantic and more comfortable, lips beginning to find rhythm and predictable starting places. She notices the change and is surprised that it's not entirely unwelcome, even though a little strange; like a wire-walker finally placing his feet on the ground she's a little caught off guard by the sudden stability she feels beneath her, toes too busy feeling the forgotten pavement to remember to clench frantically at times of high wind.
And maybe it's alright, the fact that for the first time in years she feels as if she can breathe easily with his hands in her hair and his mouth on hers. Almost constantly she reminds herself it's a good thing that the days when their kisses were a last resort are over, no longer simply something to do when she can't think of anything else to stop him from walking away. There's no longer finger nails breaking the skin of his cheeks and teeth biting her lower lip to stop her from pulling back... Instead there's fingers circling round the belt loops of her jeans, tugging her blushingly closer as they kiss in front of their window, murmuring and bickering against each other's mouths; there's red hair brushing against her jaw as trembling lips press for the first time against her jugular, listening intently to the air that swishes out of her lungs as she sighs.
She reminds herself that she'll get used to it; she'll grow as adjusted to his soft kisses and his arms draping around her as she had once adjusted to his loud laugh and snappy replies. In time she suspects it won't feel strange for her to be almost obsessively counting down the seconds until she sees him again, and maybe one day she won't hesitate before tracing the freckles on his neck lightly with her lips.
Time will go on and she'll get used to being with him, will no longer be as surprised by her own affections for Wally as she is on the twentieth of March, when she jumps slightly upon realizing her lateness for dinner and unthinkingly leans forward to kiss him goodbye for the first time ever. She supposes that eventually she'll stop feeling the need to blush and promptly punch him in the shoulder seconds after this happens; maybe she won't have to utter the words "get a grip" as a reminder to both of them when he raises his brows at her, pleasantly surprised.
On a rainy Tuesday she catches him staring at her while they're doing homework around the coffee table, the eraser of his pencil pressing against the dimple of his chin. "What are you looking at?" She asks a little gruffly, fingers unconsciously running over her scalp as if to smooth flyaway hair back into her pony tail.
Wally taps the pencil once against his face before setting it down on his notebook, dropping her gaze and shaking his head. "I..." He trails off. "Nothing."
She rolls her eyes. "Okay." She says, going back to her work.
It's a few minutes later when Wally reaches for her free hand, fingers winding between hers almost too easily. When she glances up at him curiously he's got a look on his face that reminds her starkly of the same look he wore on the beach; the kind that says there's something he's not telling her, something he can't find the words to say. Keeping his eyes on his notebook she feels him stroke the webbing between her thumb and forefinger, and it occurs to her for the first time that she's completely and utterly terrified of him.
Not of him, exactly. All her anxiety, she realizes, is centered more around these... quiet moments, between them. It had been easier when things between them were more feral, more quick paced and hot blooded. She knows how to be passionate, how to move quickly and attack him with kisses that leave teeth marks on his lips. What she doesn't know is this new stillness between them, the slow-paced trail his finger traces into the back of her hand; the soft moments where he leaves lingering kisses on her lips that say more than her pawing at him ever could and that force her to think herself in circles now that she has the time to analyze their meaning. She hates the quiet moments, hates that they aren't as defined as the (I want you, I need you, touch me now) moments they had before they started dating, hates that the uncertainly of it all twists her stomach unpleasantly in a way she knows it doesn't for him.
It's easy to dismiss that fear when the two of them are laughing or he's running a hand through the end of her pony tail teasingly. It's easy, pretending that whatever lessons her father imparted on her are no longer relevant when Wally is beside her and she feels so untouchable. But sometimes she'll catch herself staring at him a little too closely, eyes a little too focused on the muscles of his shoulders or the line of his clavicle as it pops out of his sweater, still watching him the way a wild cat would watch it's prey... You can't fight who you are.
She can't remember ever feeling like this, feeling so cherished. For some reason the new sensation is as alien as it is comfortable, and despite her best intentions she starts glancing over her shoulder, expecting something to leap out at them and ruin what they have together.
In some ways she feels she can't trust herself with the stillness between them, can't trust herself not to ruin the moment when the bickering between them dies and whatever they've been fighting about becomes trivial again. There's always a pause, in the half second before they dismiss everything hurtful that they've just said, when he looks at her like she's worth the world. It's this moment that gets to her, crushes her from the inside out; the fact that despite her flaws and her meanness that he still thinks her worth something and she's not she's not she's not. As much as she loves the feeling of his arm around her waist or his bare hand in hers it's the foreign closeness that frightens her—she feels as if she's learning an instinct for this kind of thing that everyone already has. All those little things he does to her that make her feel... Safe. Cared for. Valued… aren't ingrained in her the way they are in him, and despite herself she's still perpetually afraid that her brutishness or coldness will in some way hurt him.
Ridiculously she longs for the heated moments, the ones she could allow herself to get lost in, wondering vaguely if it's possible to get them back.
There's nobody in the kitchen but the two of them, the air buzzing between them as they both laugh at something that happened in Wally's gym class earlier that afternoon. He throws his head back, a chuckle bursting out of the back of his throat and his mess of hair flopping against his forehead—without thinking she reaches out, running her hands through it the same way he does when stray pieces of hair fall in her eyes.
"Your hair is getting long." She muses, measuring the scruff by pinching her fingers against his scalp.
To her surprise Wally's bright apple eyes suddenly dim, shifting his head beneath her hand as if he were an animal begging for its ears scratched. "You're one to talk." He tries to say teasingly, voice thick in the way that always ignites her interest and wanting.
She's curious at the reaction, moving her weight so she's no longer leaning against the island like he is and repeating the movement. Her lips quirk upwards when he pushes into her hand again, eyes blinking heavily. "You're like a puppy." She snorts.
"Gee, thanks." He says, rolling his eyes but still looking pleased when she keeps running her hands through his hair, his chin turning when her fingers stray down his temple, his lips pressing against the tendons of her wrist.
It's the little things like this that she doesn't know how to do organically; the little touches and the tenderness that she wants to give but feels so unnatural when she tries to. She only knows how to launch herself at him when he has a moment of weakness, only knows how to grab him and force her tongue in his mouth and make her body verbalize what her mouth won't say. The things he always does that undo her, the wet kisses against her wrist and the way his hands are reaching for her now, fingers curling against the bottom of her tee shirt and pulling her towards him... She has no idea how to do these things, no idea how to convey that kind of sweetness, that intimacy—
She keeps one hand buried in his hair as he drops his jaw, kissing her; it's hard, trying to pay attention to his movements when he's this close and breathing the walnut smell into her. A part of her springs to life, pushing her to do more than simply raise a hand to wind up the back of his neck—she wants her nails digging into his scalp and her body flush against him in a way that feels familiar and safe and almost unfeeling; it's torture, near torture when his chest barely brushes against hers, his hands pressed lightly against her ribs and hardly daring to glide closer to her breasts.
Still, she sighs against him, trying to mirror the pattern of his tongue against hers as it gently tickles the swelling of her lips. Even if they aren't clawing at each other like they used to she still likes kissing him, still likes the soft circles his thumbs press against her torso, the tiny rush of breath against her cheek as he exhales into her mouth. It's warm and sweet and gentle and everything she doesn't know.
Wally shifts his weight, turning her until her back is pressed against the island counter; suddenly his jaw is dropping and the kiss the deepening and without thinking she presses back against him a little too eagerly—this is what she knows, this is how she operates— and she feels his grip on her ribs tightening, a set of fingers skimming down to her waist, hip, thigh—
He loses his nerves last minute, thumb barely grazing the back pocket of her jeans; blood roaring in her ears she spends a fraction of a moment nearly wanting to scream in frustration before she decides to take the matter into her own hands.
Wrapping her arms tighter around his neck and acting without his touch, she hitches her leg up his hip and pulls him closer; abruptly they're pressed flush together, her knee folding around him and tugging him towards her until his growing hardness is suddenly stiff against the part where she needs him most. She almost moans, the unexpected sensation halting when Wally's teeth grind painfully but perfectly against her lower lip, mouth uttering something between a groan and gasp before he jerks back.
"A-Artemis—" He chokes out before she reclaims his mouth for a half-second, not quite willing to give up the closeness until he places a hand on her chin, forcing her to stop and struggling to hold back his breath. "Just give me a—" He pauses, brows furrowing and eyes bright through the haze she's put there "Shit. You're bleeding."
She catches herself blinking in surprise, tongue running once over her mouth and being taken aback by the metallic taste of blood. "Oh." She stammers out, now aware of the flow trickling over her lips, swollen skin stretched almost too tight for her to notice the pain.
"Oh, man." He runs a hand once through his hair, reaching behind her to grab a paper towel and looking stressed instead of hot and bothered, like she is. "I'm sorry, babe. Let me—" He takes her chin, eyes narrowed in concentration as he tilts her face towards him, gently dabbing at her mouth. "Guess I got a little carried away." He says sheepishly, glancing at her and looking for signs of anger on her face.
She wants to tell him that technically she was the one who got carried away, but she supposes that wouldn't exactly be doing her any favors.
She doesn't know how to tell him that she liked it—that when he bit down on her she had felt a rush of heat run through her, how she had wanted him to bite her in other places. Because Wally by nature is soft, sweet, gentle; how do you tell someone like that it's okay to be a little rough with you, when it's so completely opposite their instinct to—
But it's completely opposite of her instinct to be tender, to take his hands and smile at him kindly. And yet that's what she does, tilting her jaw and pressing her swollen lips to the tendons of the wrist that's trying to mop her up. She counts two quick beats beneath her mouth before she pulls back, leaving a smear of blood behind. "You don't have to worry, Wally." She says quietly, letting him resume his dabbing. "… I've had worse than this and survived just fine."
The cloth hesitates once after she says it, a wrinkle appearing between his brows as his eyes flicker to hers, as if wanting to say something or challenge her. Then he drops his eyes, fingers applying pressure to her mouth.
She wonders vaguely just what they were thinking, daring to hope that two people as different as they are could rub along evenly, no bumps between them. It's the same problem as it always is: she's broken and he's determined to fix her; like she's a clock that's stopped ticking and he's taken it upon himself to help it chime out the hours again, counts past the seconds... As always he's over-simplified things, thinking that simply resetting the pendulum or a few scattered kisses can repair her, when really the problem is deeper, darker, more to do with warbled thoughts and malfunctioning cogs...
Yes, some things between them are better stitched together, flowing evenly... But some things, like the look on his face that he's wearing now (brows furrowed, mouth frowning, like it's just now occurring to him that maybe this isn't what he signed up for) feel like the heel of a boot grinding pieces of glass into the pavement; the broken bits are still there, smaller and almost out of sight maybe but still just as painful as they struggle to pick them up, sharp edges digging beneath the seams of their skin...
Wally dabs at her lip once or twice more before tossing the paper towel in the trash.
"Still no word on Red?" She asks Robin the next day, practically pouncing on him when he wanders through the kitchen under the pretext of claiming the fresh baking M'gann has just placed on a platter on the counter.
Dick takes his time answering. "... Not yet." He says simply, avoiding the seven sets of eyes currently staring at him.
All of them exchange tense glances, hands freezing on the way to the pan of cookies just pulled out of the oven. There's a few seconds where the silence is uncomfortably loud and broken only by the sound Wally loudly swallowing a mouthful of milk.
Someone suggests watching a movie and, thankful for the distraction, they all pounce on that too.
She wakes up with a jolt that evening, mind racing—Wally bleeding out on the pavement, Wally full of bullets, Wally not breathing—heart thundering against her ribs.
She can hear herself inhale sharply, eyes not quite seeing as they snap open, squinting at the brightness of the room. Suddenly the sweater she's been wearing is more like a straight jacket, twisting tightly around her waist, her own hair sticking to the back of her throat and choking her, making it impossible to breathe. Someone is grabbing at her wrists, hissing out a breath as she stares through the black spots of her vision, finger nails scraping and one leg kicking out sharply into a torso (they're trying to pin her to the bed again, they're weaving the metal beams of the bridge over her arms and trying to stop her from killing herself) and in the blank pages of her mind she remembers ginger hair and ginger tea, tastes the old bitterness on her tongue just as she knocks the empty mug off a bedside table... Wally's room, she's in Wally's room, and the real Wally who's not full of bullet holes is wincing when the heel of her foot shoves him back into the bed, neck ripping backwards as she gasps in surprise at his appearance, banging her skull against his head board— She's disoriented, not sure what is real, her head pounding and heart racing and—
"Artemis!" She hears him cry out, her skull still throbbing. "Artemis, calm down—"
She feels the tears dribbling off her chin, feels the unevenness of his bed as she plants herself more firmly against it, the tightness of her jeans cutting into her hips before she half unfolds herself, shoulders still clenched like the haunches of a coyote that's just encountered the barreled end of a gun. "I—" She hears her voice break, the pathetic sound pulling herself back into her head, her toes still pressing against Wally's chest and holding him off when he sits up, trying to get close again.
"Babe?" His brows tense before both their eyes drop to his chest, watching her foot flex against the dip between his muscles, toes pinching the fabric of his tee shirt. "Artemis?"
She drops her foot, horrified. "I... Sorry." She breathes, hating that she's suddenly shivering as she collapses the bulk of her weight into the bed, hands quivering as she pulls the end of her pony tail from her mouth.
She gets as far as winding her limbs around herself, dropping her forehead to press against her knee caps before she feels the bed shaking, the sudden warmth along her calves telling her that he's succeeded in moving closer. "What, uh...?" He hesitates, pausing as if reconsidering the question as she scrubs angrily at her wet cheeks. "... Are you okay?"
"Yeah. I'm fine—" She says unconvincingly, inhaling a shaky breath as she lifts her head from her knees, eyes roaming over her surroundings. Wally's room. She had been reading in Wally's room, they had had tea and she had been tired and he had promised to wake her after twenty minutes. She flinches when Wally touches her, the warmth of his hand too much for her icy shoulder; without thinking she shrugs it off, glaring. "What time is it?"
Wally looks concerned before she disappears behind her hands under the pretext of scrubbing the sweat off her forehead, but after a moment she can hear him settle back a bit into the bed, no longer so close. "A little after eleven." When she emerges he's thumbing through the book she fell asleep reading, correcting her folded pages.
She hesitates, and in the quiet she sees him: Wally, realizing he might die. Wally, lips cold for the first time in his life and not responding to her kiss. Wally, lifeless. "God." She mumbles, finding it's easier to be angry at him rather than herself, easier to channel all that fear and panic into her voice than let it linger at the front of her mind. "You were supposed to wake me up hours ago." She says, voice low and hard and not really her own as she moves to stand.
"Whoa, what?" He says, so stunned that she actually manages to get to her feet before he catches her wrist in his hand, tugging her so hard back that she feels the muscles of her bad leg twitch before her backside collides with the mattress again. "Artemis—"
"I need to shower, Wally." She tells him dryly, but she doesn't move, not yet; not when her leg is still twinging and he still has a death grip on her forearm, waiting for her to try to escape again.
Wally looks at her, glaring hard and eyes roaming her face, as if such a critical analysis of her tear-stained features and slept-in make-up will somehow force her to cave or drop the scowl she's wearing. "Artemis." He says her name lowly, and against her better sense she feels her stomach squirm. "You know I'm not an idiot, right?"
"Could have fooled me." She sneers back, immediately feeling guilty when his brows tense; this is misplaced anger and emotion and exactly the reason she needs to leave; she can't be around him like this, can't trust herself not to hurt him or say something stupid...
Wally releases her wrist roughly, glancing down when her other hand automatically goes down to rub at the reddened mark he's left there. "For fuck's sake." He says, barely loud enough to hear as he always does when he swears around her, as if afraid of offending more delicate ears. "Artemis, can you just cut me some slack here? Explain what just happened? Because I can't follow what's going on inside your head if you don't tell me; one second you're asleep and the next you're screaming at me and kicking me off of you and looking at me like you don't really see me... Don't pretend there's nothing wrong when I know there is, it's insulting."
"God." She sneers, actually looking to the ceiling as if praying. "Relax, Wally. It was a nightmare, okay? Can I go?"
She almost half rises until she catches the look on Wally's face; it reminds her sharply of the moments they shared after the exercise, the rawness and the jagged emotion etched so clearly there as he had watched her cry. "A nightmare." He repeats, glaring. "Just a nightmare."
She opens her mouth to snarl something back and hates that she hesitates slightly, mouth open without speaking for only a fraction of a second but giving her away entirely. "Yes." She hisses, grinding her teeth and dropping her jaw, allowing her pony tail to hang like a curtain between them.
There's nearly half a minute of silence between them, the rough sound of her callouses as they trace the red marks he's left on her wrist the only noise in the tiny bedroom. She still feels cold, the sweat that's clinging to her lower back icy on her skin; despite the slight wobbling of the bed she nearly jumps when she feels his feverish fingers against the tendons of her neck, tracing the line of the muscle leading to the shell of her ear before flicking her pony tail down her back so as to better see her face.
"It's okay, you know..." He says quietly, arranging her hair so it falls in an even sheet between her shoulder blades."… I get them sometimes too."
She doesn't know why but it doesn't comfort her, knowing that someone like Wally is plagued by the same vile thoughts she is; there's something in his voice she can't dissect, an emotion she's not familiar with. Screwing her eyes up she reminds herself not to look at him, not to look into his eyes (he had blinked to tell her that he heard her, that he was still alive; he had blinked his glassy eyes once to let her know that he believed the lies she told him... "It's going to be okay, I'm going to figure this out..." and he had pulled her into focus one last time before he had shut them for what he thought was the last time...) should he suddenly be the blood-choked figure she remembers him as.
"... Do you want to talk about it?" He asks after he's abandoned her hair, hand splayed flat on her back.
She feels herself shakes her head, tastes the walnut-flavored breath she sucks past her lips, holding it so long in her lungs that she grows dizzy. "No." She nearly gasps out, wishing she would faint. "It's nothing, Wally." She sighs, forcing the wrinkle that's popped up above her nose to smoothen, wrenching her eyes open and becoming aware that now she's the one with a death grip on her wrist. "It doesn't matter."
"Of course it matters." Wally's hand flexes almost unnoticeably against her back, the same unconscious tightness he always adopts whenever she's anything other than her façade of over-confident sneering.
("This kind of stuff is really hard for you, isn't it?" He had asked her once. His hand had been reaching for her, as if she were a bird perched nervously on a branch, debating on flying to the safety of higher limbs.)
She feels familiar bile rising in her throat and swallows back the memory, shaking her head. "… Yeah. Well." She shrugs her shoulders until he gets the hint to take his hand off of her. "I don't want to talk about anything, okay?"
She's thankful when he runs his hands through his hair, the familiar scent at least providing some comfort and enough courage for her to glance warily at him, watching almost coldly as he slouches, resting the bend of his elbow on his knee. "Look." He sighs, clearly frustrated. "I get it. You don't... You don't have to tell me the details. Can you just not run out on me without an explanation? I can't..." He pauses, sighing again. "That scares me, Artemis. I don't like it."
Something in his voice catches; without blinking she narrows her eyes, teeth gritting as if he's greatly inconveniencing her. "... Fine."
"Fine." He nods back, fingers returning to the cover of her abandoned book, pressing the spine tight together as if to undo the cracking she's left there.
There's a long silence in which she flexes her toes into the plushness of his carpet, elbows still braced against her knees and not really knowing what she wants to say. And what exactly can she say? What do you say to someone like Wally, how do you explain the memories painted onto the darkest corners of your mind, how do you take them there and show them the how the bile and vomit and violence still clings to you like muscle and marrow onto bones? How can she allow herself to taint someone like him, someone who so sweet and soft, with the stickiness of her past and the sharpness of these memories?
This is the same person who winces on her behalf when she stubs her toe, who insists on kissing her fingers better when she slams them accidentally in the folds of cupboards. It would kill him, tear him apart...
Instead of saying anything she reaches out to snatch her book back from his hands, ignoring the affronted look he sends her and instead picking at the pages and refolding all the progress Wally's made in fixing the mutilated edges. She gets the impression that he's waiting for her to say something, eyes patient despite how narrowed they are, watching her intently. For something to do other than look at him with a lost expression on her face she opens the book to a random page, scowling. "… I just..." She starts after a while, glaring at page ninety nine and losing her train of thought. "I wish you wouldn't unmark all my pages."
She says in a frustrated voice. "... I do it for a reason, you know."
"... What?" He asks, and she's a little off put by how hushed his voice is.
"... I don't know." She says, air firing in a huff out of her voice. "Sometimes that I just liked that part of the story. Or that something somebody said made me laugh. Sometimes I just like knowing that I've read up the part before. Whatever."
Finally she feels safe enough to glance at him, a little surprised to see that he's already looking at her, red eyelashes fluttering as he blinks. "Okay." He says simply. "I won't unmark your pages anymore." As if in resolution he folds his hands in his lap, fingers interlocked and no longer threatening the contents of her book.
She doesn't know why but when the corners of his mouth tug up in a crooked grin she loses it slightly, going back to staring at her fingers as they clench tightly about the cover of her book. More to avoid the kindness of his smile she ducks her head again, hiding behind her hair. "... And I wish you wouldn't keep trying to make me talk about stuff all the time." She says quietly, scowling as she fiddles with a random page, beginning to rip the margin. "I know you think it will make me feel better but... I just don't want to, okay?"
When she finally glances at Wally he's blinking at her again. "... Why not?"
"Because I don't." She says severely, thumb and forefinger ripping the margin of the page completely free of the rest of the paper. "... Because I don't know how to, okay? I don't... I don't know how to put some of that stuff into words. I don't know how to say things without... Without making them feel to real, or too awful. I just don't want those thoughts to leave my head."
She can feel Wally looking at her quizzically and instead of glaring back she crumples the torn piece of paper in her fist. "Artemis." He says, voice no longer soft. "You realize that we both... We're both on the Team. We both go through a lot of the same stuff—"
"I know that." She sneers between her teeth.
"So don't you think I'd be a good person to talk to about this kind of stuff? Don't you think I'd understand?"
"That's not the point, Wally." She snaps, and against her better judgment she whips the book impatiently across the room, both of them watching as it smacks hard against the wall before dropping to the floor. "I know you'd understand, I know, Wally... Can you just let this go? Please?"
"No." He says stubbornly, glaring as she flings the crumpled margin out after the book, the tiny piece of paper barely flying a foot out in front of her before falling. "God... I hate this, I hate looking at you and knowing there's something I can't fix—"
"Then stop trying to fix me, Wally!" She bursts out, suddenly wishing she still had the book so she could throw it at him. "Just leave me alone."
She watches him makes a frustrated noise, both his hands scrubbing viciously at his face before he flops dramatically backward, his weight shaking the whole bed. "I don't get you." He snarls through his fingers, one leg kicking out to bang against the frame of his bed angrily and nearly striking her in the process.
They're back to being quiet again, both of them annoyed with each other; she can feel a headache brewing at the back of her skull from where she hit it before. She'd told him before she's not good at this... Not good at opening up to people, letting them in. She hates the feeling that he's peeling her apart, trying to dismantle her walls board by board, ignoring the way the drywall is crumbling and the nails cling together, desperate to keep him out should he discover something he doesn't like.
She had started things with him under the silent agreement that she wouldn't run from him, not anymore... So why is it so hard? Why were things so much easier when they were just kissing frantically? How come she could manage that and not this? Why is all this stillness so difficult, all the quiet and the heartfelt talks, all these things she knows he craves but that she can't give to him, not without digging her nails into her palms and gritting her teeth and forcing herself to do it...
"Wally." She sighs, hanging her head and glaring at the carpet between her feet. "... Is it really so bad that I just want... us... to be about the good stuff? Happy things only?" She pauses, listening to the slight hiss of breath that comes out of his mouth when he pulls his hands back from his face. "I don't want to mess it up with all the other stuff."
The bed jostles, the familiar walnut smell telling her that he's running his hands through his hair again. "Will you please stop pretending to think that you're going to ruin things?" He says, and she's surprised that his voice is still hard. "It's annoying."
She wants to tell him that she's not pretending, that between all the kissing and the laughing that she's been terrified that she'll do something that will hurt him and that she'll lose him forever and she'll never be happy again. As usual it's easier to be quiet.
"... I just want you to feel like you can tell me stuff in the same way that I feel like I can tell you stuff." He hisses, the bed jostling when he sits up, balancing his weight on an elbow. "Sometimes I just feel like... What's wrong with me, you know? Like, why don't you trust me?"
"It's not you." She sighs again, actually wishing that it would be easier to physically beat this information into his skull. "It's not about trust, it's... Just not easy for me to—"
"Artemis—"
"You said you have nightmares too?" She asks, cutting him off as she turns to glare at him over his shoulder.
Instantly something in Wally's face changes, his whole jaw stiffening as he glares at her. "… Yeah." He says curtly, fingers clenching into the folds of his bedspread.
"Tell me, then. If you think it's so easy."
She can sense that she's won the argument, can tell just by the way his shoulders stiffen and his lower lip suddenly tightens against his teeth that she's caught him; for a long time his eyes simply flicker between hers, glaring and looking very much like he'd like nothing better than to strangle her. The silences between them stretches out for nearly a full minute before she allows herself to smirk maliciously, turning her back on him. "That's what I thought." She sneers at her socks. "I'm going to bed."
She feels the bed jostle again; automatically she glances back towards him, half expecting him to be on his way up to grab at her and make another attempt at arguing. She's a little surprised to see him flat on his back again, eyes hard and glaring unseeingly at the ceiling. "... The Exercise." He croaks out suddenly.
It's the thing none of them really talk about, the memory all of them have but never speak of; without thinking her knees knock together a little violently before all her muscles still, half in fright and half in curiosity at the secret he's kept from her all this time.
"... It's always The Exercise." He says after a moment, expressionless. "It messed me up so much. I..." He sits up just as she's tucked her knees under her chin, childishly wishing she had the gall to press her palms to her ears and block out the broken voice he's speaking in. "I kept seeing it, kept seeing everyone who I couldn't save. Dick and Connor and Kaldur and you... I hated you so much. I hated that you died, I hated watching you die. I hated watching your skin fall off your bones and that no matter how many times I went back there I couldn't do anything to stop it and I just—" Something in Wally's voice breaks and he has to stop for a moment, hands clenched together in his lap. She's afraid to touch him. "Are you happy? I watched you die…"
He stops himself to wipe clumsily at his nose, and she finds herself half hiding behind her knees when she speaks. "… I watched you die too." She reminds him quietly, as close to a confession and she'll allow herself to get. He looks at her, jaw cut sharp against his neck; before she can do more than raise her chin up a few inches he's kissing her.
It's almost painful, the intensity in which he rams his mouth against hers; she can feel their teeth biting into each other and can feel all the emotion she's forced out of him bubbling to the surface, can feel the heat of his cheeks burning and half a sob that bubbles up past his lips as he breathes into her. It's awful, it's not the kind of heat she's been wanting; she's pushed him too far, he's coming undone in the same way she is, she shouldn't have said anything—still, she breathes him in, fingers itching to cling to him and cry and let him hold her in the way she's always wanted to be held, protected, but she can't trust herself, can she, she's done enough damage—
Wally pulls back, making a small choking noise in the back of his throat, looking at her with clouded and desperate eyes. "Do you still want to leave?" He breathes.
For once what she wants to say and what she actually says are the same thing; unwinding her limbs she reaches for him, placing her hands on either side of his face. "No." She whispers, pulling his jaw towards her.
The kiss only lasts a fraction of a moment, and even though she still doesn't really understand everything he puts into his soft kisses for the first time ever she feels something back; there's a small stir of emotion in the pit of her stomach as he inhales slowly into her, the dry flakes of skin on his lips and the way they leave something, some unsaid feeling (of safety, of comfort, of neediness and attachment) lingering in the joining tastes of their mouths. She's felt it all before, felt all his emotions he's been trying to say without words, but for once she feels her own awaking at the touch of it; it's everything she's ever felt in all their quick paced moments slowed down, less blurred, more defined and outlined darker... All the emotion, all the clarity she usually tries to keep in the cage of her ribs is trickling off her tongue, both a hope and fear there that this time he'll be able to catch pieces of it in his mouth like he always does with droplets of rain as they fall from the sky; that he'll be able to taste her there, taste all his feelings and the ones just now rising up inside her in response to his touch.
It's frightening, so much so that an actual shiver runs through her body, quivering lips withdrawing from his and foreheads pressing together. She doesn't resist though, when his one hand reaches up to press lightly against her collar bone, guiding her down until her back presses against the mattress.
Wildly and perhaps terrifyingly she gets ahead of herself; for a moment she's half convinced that he's going to scramble on top of her and start pressing frantic kisses against her skin, start fumbling with the buttons of her jeans or the seams of her sweater. A little ridiculously she screws her eyes shut, waiting.
Please... Please.
Instead the bed wobbles and she feels the familiar heat move beside her; she's just managed to snap her eyes open in surprise as he settles next to her, one hand squirming to wedge between her and the mattress and pull her closer. "I know you don't really like cuddling." He says quietly, no doubt noticing the way her muscles at tensing with mild alarm as he wraps his arms around her. "But can we just... Can I just hold you? For a few minutes?" He breathes into her ear. "Please?"
They're both begging each other for completely different things.
It's not necessarily that she doesn't like cuddling; she likes being close to Wally, she likes the way his breath hums in her hair as he settles into her. It's just that she's never been held like this before; never had someone fold themselves around her, arms wrapped around her waist and one leg hitching up to hang over her knees, forcing her to lock her limbs around his calve. It's hot, nearly suffocating as he presses himself against her, head ducking to skim the sensitive part behind her ear.
She can hear herself grinding her teeth with her anxiousness and forces herself to stop, instead reaching up to flick her hair so it's out of his face and hanging over the top of their pillow. "It's stupid." Wally inhales, the tip of his nose grazing the roots of her hair. "But after that day... This is all I wanted to do for the longest time. I just wanted to hold you. " His voice sounds frail, so broken, and she realizes with a jolt that she he's talking about The Exercise again. "I just wanted to be near you, or touch you... I thought I was going crazy."
She shifts slightly, adjusting her hips nervously against the bed and ignoring when she brushes to close to Wally, his breath catching slightly. "… Oh." Is all she thinks to say.
She doesn't tell him of her own misgivings that night; doesn't tell him how much his presence in his bedroom had terrified her, doesn't tell him of how his closeness is frightening her now. She doesn't tell him about how he was the first person she had cried in front of in years; doesn't tell him how she had thought he was going to kiss her and how much his fingers around his wrist had meant to her. She doesn't tell him how much him finding comfort in her for his worries had made her feel better, whole, more like herself and yet completely different than before.
Instead she gives up on trying to force her muscles to unwind; settling her head more firmly beneath his chin she presses at the point on his jugular, counting out his heartbeats.
After a while they stop talking, and in the silence Wally twitches to life. It's slow, at first. The shifting of his limbs against the blankets, the sound of his hair scratching against the pillow. Twice he catches himself tapping his thumb absently against the dip in her flesh between her ribs and hips, and twice he halts it with jutting and abrupt movements.
"Is it hard for you?" She asks quietly, his thumb stuttering to a stop against her skin as Wally pulls himself back into his head, becoming aware of the movement for the third time. "Staying still, I mean?"
Wally exhales near her ear. "Sometimes." He admits. "It's like… Second nature to be moving. When I'm stopped too long… I don't know. It's like every atom in my body fights me on it, sometimes I don't even notice its happening." She feels his head lift slightly off the pillow, surveying the curve of her eyelashes against her cheeks. "If it bothers you—"
As if to prove a point a muscle in Wally's knees jumps, flicking up against her thigh. "I don't mind." She says honestly, and he lets them slip back into familiar silence.
She waits until his breathing evens out (no doubt he's getting tired with the lateness of the hour) before she allows herself to whisper to him, deliberately being quiet and already half hoping he won't hear and save her the embarrassment "Wally?"
She feels his breath stutter slightly in his chest, feels his finger resume the tapping on her hip as he jerks into wakefulness again. "Yeah?"
She hesitates, teeth gnawing at the inside of her cheeks before she decides on the best possible wording, her hands clenching where they're folded beneath their pillow. "... I don't know how to do this." She says a little gruffly.
("I'm sorry." She had told him, to her horror blinking back tears. "I'm not good at this. Just... drink your tea."
He had done what he was told, and a few minutes later he had wrapped his arms around her for the first time, ever.)
"What?" His head lifts again, watching with interest as he cheeks turn crimson. "... Artemis? ...You don't know how to cuddle?"
She turns her head towards the mattress, wanting nothing more than to scream all her frustrations into the depth of the pillow. "Yes." She mutters, even though it's not just that; she has no clue how to be in a relationship, has no idea what to do now that things are slowing down between them and that there's not enough haze and wanting to block out the sound of her anxieties.
There's another silence between them, this one a lot stiffer than the last as his hand stills, all his energy shifting from his body to his mind as he thinks. "... I don't really know how to explain it." He says frankly, and despite not wanting to hear it she still notices the odd note of pity in his voice. "I guess you just... Relax. And enjoy being together."
"This is stupid." She says through clenched teeth.
"Only because you're not relaxed." He says a little insistently, shifting until he's pressed more tightly against her. "Relax, Artemis, it's like I'm spooning a cardboard box here. Just..." He nudges the tip of his nose behind her ear, his hand at her hip beginning to move again; his fingers tracing the lines of her hipbones so carefully they may as well be trace blueprints. The touch is soft, innocent in its nature but still her muscles tense as if waiting to be hit unexpectedly; she can feel the lingering sensation of his finger prints as his he slides his hand over her, ghosting impressions on her body and tracing patterns she can't follow. "It's me, Beautiful." He says softly, breath tickling against her neck like Bialyan wind.
It's soothing in the best way despite her initial rigidness, her muscles tight until he brushes over them—following the tendons he can't see across her lower back, across the indentations of her hips, one finger braver than the others and slipping up past the hem of her sweater to touch the tightness of her abs; creating a path between the two sun spots on her forearm that she got last summer, tracing up to the dip in her shoulder, the blotches of blush on her cheeks, the shell of her ear…
He lingers back down to her shoulder, his index finger pausing almost unnoticeably at the seam of her bra strap. There's another beat of hesitation where he seems to be deciding where to go next, thumb brushing against the ticklish spot below her earlobe; she shifts at the touch and her sweater catches on the blankets, pulling backwards.
She knows instantly there's nothing to hide it; her hair is still pooling at the top of the pillow where she flipped it before, her sweater now gaping open in the back and exposing her—her scar, her fucking scar, intruding on another sweet moment and making it ugly. She's about to roll onto her back and hide it when Wally stops her, one hand pressing against her shoulder momentarily – he's telling her to wait, please, be patient with him—and before she can do much other than settle back into her spot on the blankets she feels his fingers again.
She sighs, shuddering and rougher than she knows is nice to hear, but at once his fingers grow more sure, their touch no longer feather light but more curious; she hears her own heart pound nearly twenty times in her ears as he traces it, feeling all the warbled and uneven skin that she's never let him properly look at before. She feels as if she's naked—not in a good way, never in a good way—waiting for him to pass judgement on her, point out all her flaws.
"You said once that you might tell me the story behind this one." She hears him whisper. His voice sounds thick with something she can't quite identify.
She hesitates for only a moment before she makes up her mind, hearing her own eyelashes skim the pillow case as she blinks. "I did, didn't I?" She says softly, and for a half second she can practically feel Wally's ears perk up as they listen hard, focused and curious for her to say more.
She can sense his disappointment when she moves again but it doesn't stop her from squirming in his arms; shifting her weight and stealing her limbs back from where he's gotten a hold on her, rolling onto her back and hiding the scar and all it's memories from view. Almost defiantly she looks at him, waiting for him to lose patience. "Wally?" She says quietly, wondering if he understands.
She immediately misses his warmth when he extracts his arm from underneath her, the bed wobbling as he rolls onto his back and glares at the ceiling. "It's okay." He says mechanically, and she can tell he doesn't mean it. "You don't have to tell me."
The bed jostles again when he rolls onto his other side, leaving her staring somewhat blankly at his back. He doesn't stop her when she gets up to leave.
It's freezing in her kitchen.
Or at the very least she's freezing; it's not even April yet and already her crappy apartment heating system is overly optimistic, blasting ice cold air through the vents like it's mid-July. Absently she shifts closer to the burner she's just set her kettle on, willing the ancient wiring to warm faster and somehow heat the whole room rather than just her water.
Twice she pulls out her cellphone, debating on summoning Wally to her apartment to provide the mysterious warmth that's always hanging in the air around him. Twice she scrolls through her contacts until she finally sees the pixels reading Baywatch and twice she gets the same unbearable sinking feeling in her stomach as she stares at his contact name, debating.
Things have been... Tense, since that day in his bedroom. Not tense like it used to be before they started dating; it's the kind of tension they're both tip-toeing around rather than throwing in each other's faces. It's less emotional, more untrusting, the kind of tension that can't find release no matter how many times they try to talk normally, no matter how many times she grabs at his hand and squeezes, questioningly, only to have his automatically respond to her pressure.
Twice she snaps her phone shut, going back to scowling at the uncooperative burner. She supposes some things aren't meant to quite work properly, no matter how much you want them to.
Finally she decides to embrace the inevitable and wander back into the depths of the apartment in an almost stiff fashion, her freezing muscles unwilling to move and the familiar ache back in her bad leg from the cold. A little sourly she shoves open the door to her bedroom, spotting immediately what she's looking for: one of Wally's old sweat shirts that she had stolen off the back of his chair the other day. ("Souvenir." She sneered somewhat dryly as she had grabbed it, looping the sleeves a little ridiculous around her shoulders. "Yeah, yeah." He had shrugged, hardly looking up from his homework.)
She feels incredibly unsatisfied when she tugs it over her head despite the immediate warmth the thick cotton of the fabric coats her with. The sweater feels as foreign and strange as Wally himself has been acting lately; it's hardly too-big for her in the way she'd always imagined a boyfriend's sweater should be—but to be fair, Wally's not that much bigger than her, save a few inches. It's an odd fit, the same way it's just occurred to her that she and Wally are an odd fit for each other; his sweater is overlarge in the shoulders and waist yet oddly tight about the hips, so much so that she actually pauses in the action of pulling the zipper up over her breasts to examine herself in the mirror, frowning at how much they jut out against the fabric. Distantly, she hears the lock at the front door click open.
"Mom?" She calls distractedly after a few moments, still staring at her reflection. She realizes, a little jarringly, that she's grown in the past couple months; now that she's properly thinking about it she realizes her jeans have been feeling a bit too snug as of late, the denim stretched too tightly across her hips and a quarter of an inch showing at her ankles. Maybe she just shrunk them in the wash.
"... Mom?" She repeats, a little curious when there's nothing but silence, no shout of greeting or hello in response to her yelling—it's obvious she's here, she's left her quiver right by the front door, she's surprised Paula isn't yelling at her to move it out of the way so she can wheel in— She tugs the zipper up to her chin, listening intently to the silence stretching out in the apartment, broken only by the soft hissing of the half-boiled water on the stove.
Then she hears a set of footsteps.
Like an old reflex her muscles tense up—nobody should be walking in her house, she's the only person who walks here anymore—and suddenly her shoulders are tensing and she's turned to face the doorway to the hallway like a wild animal, nostrils flaring as if trying to smell out a predator and eyes roaming the room for some sort of weapon—he's here, this is the moment she's been waiting for, been sabotaging her relationship with Wally over. Sportsmaster is out of prison, her father has come to seek out his revenge and like some sort of amateur she's left with nothing to defend herself— She could hide, she could still fit in the small space beneath her twin bed if she really tried, she's sure... She hears three footsteps rattling loudly, almost clumsily, against the floorboard, a loud scraping nose telling her that whoever is trespassing has just collided with the edge of the couch and bumped it into an end table.
Biting her tongue, she spots a hair brush on her bedside table.
Okay, a plan. She needs a plan.
Calm down. Focus, focus, focus. Don't be a baby...
It takes her a ridiculous amount of time to get the nerve to leave her bedroom, shaking hands unknotting the laces of her boots and kicking them off as silently as she can, hoping her sock-clad feet will at least disguise her nervous tread and give her some element of surprise. Testing her weight against the creaky floor boards she advances onward, brush raised up almost defensively in front of her; she makes it nearly four steps into the hall before she spots someone sitting on her couch, the same spot her father occupied all those months ago—without thinking she hurls the hairbrush like a projectile into the dim lighting of the living room.
Her brush strikes her quarry in the temple, hard, and she allows them to let out one choice swear before she launches herself at them, clambering over the back of the couch and forcing her foot into the fold of a groin; clumsy fingers attempt to remove her as she flattens herself in an absurd crouching position, hands pinning forearms and knees digging into a muscled chest, her heel still pressing mercilessly into the bulge of a crotch. "What the fuck!" A familiar voice slurs out, swearing cutting off slightly when she accidentally shifts her weight in surprise, heel pushing deeper and forcing the man below her to grunt out in pain.
"Roy?!" She nearly shrieks, one hand slacking and reaching up to fumble for the string of a lamp in the dark.
He winces when the light turns on, hardly recognizable in the save for the sudden grumbling that escaping his lips. He looks worse, so much worse than he did a few weeks ago; his red hair is so over grown and matted with grease that it's catching the light almost like a murky brown, the stubble on his chin overlong and growing in patches on scratched and bleeding cheeks. His unmasked eyes are blood shot and watering from the pain of her assault, one eye so badly swollen and bruised that it's little more than a watery and pus encrusted slit.
"Don't call me that." He slurs out, one clumsy hand raising to push her off and succeeding in doing little more than scratching a little pathetically at the corner of her mouth, gnawed finger nails breaking the skin of her chin.
"What are you—" She starts to ask, cutting herself off when he coughs in her face, several particles of thick saliva hitting her cheeks and the overwhelming scent of alcohol slapping her in the face. "Are you drunk?" She yells, choking on his filthy, cracked finger when he finally gets it into her mouth and tugs, trying to fishhook her loud voice away from him.
"No—" He starts to say defiantly, yelling in surprise when she bites down hard on his forefinger; he tastes like old sweat and dirt, the filth trapped in the webbing of his hand scraping against her teeth and nearly forcing her to swallow the gritty mud that's caked there, mixing unpleasantly with the metallic taste of the blood her bite has produced. "Fuck—" He slurs, retracting his hand in pain.
He winces again when she spits, not bothering to miss him when she coughs a mixture of her own saliva, his blood, and the grit he's left in her mouth onto his chest. "Red!" She snarls, clambering off of him and the couch entirely, watching with wary eyes as his hands claw against the cushions and struggle to raise him into a sitting position.
"Fuck." He swears again, glancing down at the place where she spat at him. "You're disgusting." He tells her frankly.
She shakes her head, disbelieving, watching him rub the rapidly swelling bump on his head where the brush collided with him. She can't believe him, she doesn't understand… "How did you—" She cuts herself off again when he leans back against her couch cushions, one functional eye unfocused and chest heaving with a withheld belch. "Okay, never mind. Why are you here?"
"That," He begins, blinking once at her very slowly. "Wasn't my call."
The kettle behind her starts whistling just as she's about the beat his head in; taking it as a sign she needs to distance herself from him she lets out a frustrated sigh, getting to her feet to walk towards the kitchen. "Well if it wasn't your call, Red, who's was it?" She snarls over her shoulder.
"That would be mine." The kettle goes silent just as she looks around in horror, heart jumping up into the back of her throat.
Jade.
Instantly she's back to tense muscles and clenched fists, her eyes wide as her sister stands mere feet in front of her at the stove, placing the kettle on the cool burner. After weeks, months, of wanting desperately to see her she's suddenly unsure where they stand; unsure if this moment warrants the widening of her stance defensively and the muscles that are beginning to pop beneath Wally's sweater, expecting a fight.
The Cheshire Cat mask surveys her a little curiously, tilting her head almost comically to the side. "Don't be silly, Baby Girl." Jade purrs, one clawed glove flicking at her chin, the mask flipping up her forehead before being set casually on the counter as if it belongs there. "I'm not here to fight you. Besides, we both know you can barely take me with your arrows, what chance do you stand with your bare hands?"
She doesn't miss the taunt that's hidden in the tinkling laugh that echoes through the kitchen, Jade moving effortlessly around the cupboards as if she never left and filling two mugs with loose tea leaves before pouring the boiled water over them. "You can relax, Artemis." She says after a moment, not looking at her but somehow still sensing the tension, her voice no longer low and dangerous like Huntress' once was. "I'm over the whole sibling rivalry thing." As if to prove a point she sets the kettle back on the stove, sharpened fingers taking a mug for herself and offering her the other.
For a moment she surveys her sister curiously. "… Why are you here?" She asks, trying and failing to bare her teeth.
Jade smirks at her, leaning against the counter and oblivious to the fact that the last time she was here she had shoved her little sister's head through a television screen. "What? I can't drop by on my favorite sister from time to time?" She grins wickedly, offering the mug a little more insistently. "Drink up. I know you don't like your tea cold." She purrs, lips twisting into a wicked smile.
For some reason she takes the mug, snatching it so quickly she nearly spills and half debating on tossing the scalding water in Jade's face the whole while. Without saying anything else her sister automatically turns to stare at Roy, the sound of his drunken snores beginning to fill the silence of the room. "… Why?" She asks after a while, not daring to take her eyes off Jade even as she sips her tea, the hot water steaming up and bothering her unblinking eyes. She doesn't really know what she's asking.
"Why am I here?" Jade guesses, side stepping around her and walking back to Roy, surveying him through a dropped chin. "I thought that was obvious given the trouble I went through, what with propping him up so nicely on the couch. I'm returning something of yours that I borrowed."
As if knowing Jade is making a claim on him Roy lets out a gurgling noise, silencing himself with a groan as Jade shoves him until he's lying his side, vomit dripping out of the corner of his mouth and onto the carpet. "How kind of you." She glares. "Any reason in particular you borrowed him in the first place?
Jade lets out a brash laugh that fills the whole room, so loud that she actually feels her ears ache with the noise. "You act like I took him captive."
"You did, Jade." She says through gritted teeth.
Her sister takes a sip of tea, lips smacking and looking untroubled by her icy tone. "Trust me, the first time he came of his own accord. As for the second... Not my fault your little friend Red was trying to give me the slip without fulfilling his part of our bargain."
There's something lecherous in her tone that she chooses to ignores, taking another swig of tea. "So what? Were you helping him find the Real Roy Harper?"
"Mm. At first." Jade muses, downing her tea in one and placing the dirty mug down on the coffee table, unexpectedly taking care to use a coaster. "My help in exchange for... Some of his. Although believe me, I certainly got the better end of the deal. Your Red Arrow certainly is... Energetic."
Jade smirks at her when she unconsciously pulls a face, cheeks reddening and making her wish she could do more than hide behind her mug in revulsion. Rather than deem this with a response she goes back to glaring at Roy, eyes narrowing at the scratches on his cheeks and his swollen eye socket. "What have you two been playing with? Barbed wire and boxing gloves?"
"I don't kiss and tell, Baby Girl." Jade winks, looking pleased at her disgust. "But sadly that wasn't my handy-work. His back, certainly—" Jade stops when she lets out a loud retching noise despite herself, resuming speaking with a smirk. "We got into a bit of a spat the other night—something about me distracting him from his mission, I don't know, I wasn't really listening—but I will tell you that when I found him he was drunk as a skunk and barely breathing in a gutter. Who knows what he got into the last thirty-six hours."
She senses that they're getting down to it, the real reason behind Jade's sudden appearance; in an almost business-like fashion swallows the last of her tea, crossing her arms and glaring at her sister, still warm mug pressed absently against her breasts. "So what? You've had your fun and suddenly he's my problem?"
"In a sense." Jade shrugs, ignoring her annoyance and running a hand through her hair, examining the frayed ends of her hair with interest. "I'm trusting you to return him to his rightful owners with a message—either you and the rest of the League step up and help him find his little twin and let me enjoy my Roy Harper in peace, or the next time I find him in a gutter I leave him to his own devices, regardless if that involves his death." Jade pauses, smoothing her hair back in place and sending her another wicked smile. "And be sure to fix him up nice too. I don't open my legs for ugly boys."
For some reason she's brave enough to snort in her sister's face. "You're crazy." She snarls, shaking her head.
Jade doesn't respond immediately, the corners of her grin drooping slightly as she surveys her. She knows she can feel it too; all the raw, disturbing childhood memories of beatings and hiding in their shared bedroom to avoid their father's wrath suddenly feel as if they're pressing hard on the boundaries of her mind, threatening to prompt her into doing something ridiculous like believe the best of her sister again, like she used to. "… How have you been?" Jade asks, dropping the Cheshire Cat persona completely.
The question is so unexpected that she finds she can't quite respond at first, her eyes going from wide to narrowed and suspicious in a matter of seconds. "… Fine. I mean, it's been okay."
Jade nods. "I know. Red was—" She cuts herself off, glaring at the figure on the couch rather than at her. "I thought it better to keep my distance. After the whole things with Sportsmaster."
"Ah."
"I'm much easier to find than you are. I thought the less I knew, the better. It would keep you safe."
There's a loud silence between them in which she catches herself glaring at the floor, shaking her head. "… Sure it was." She says, not allowing herself to believe it as much as she wants to.
When she glances up Jade's face has hardened; it's not malicious like she's been expecting—it's hurt, real hurt from someone she never expected to feel pain. "I didn't have to bring Red back, you know." The older girl says quietly.
"Right." She snarls, still glaring at the floor. "It's not like you actually care about him. He's just another play thing."
There's another pause, and for a fraction of a moment she almost flinches, expecting to be hit. She's surprised when her sister simply sighs, shouldering roughly past her. "I'm leaving." She registers the sudden shift in Jade again, hears the familiar teasing in her voice and the low and dangerous growl the Cheshire Cat always speaks with. "Tell Arrow to give me a call when he's sober." Her sister says, not even bothering to give her a proper goodbye before she's drifted out of her life again.
As if he knows something she doesn't Roy coughs again, filling the living room with the sound of vomit hitting the carpet.
AN: Phew! Over 12,000 words for this one!
On to house-keeping, I had a few of you express interest in becoming beta-readers. I'm naturally a little private with my work so I'd like to kind of get to know each of you with a quick questionnaire before I decide things, just to see if we will work well together/have similar writing styles/expectations. Expect a private message within a few days!
To be clear, however, I'm not looking for someone to beta-read the entire length of my work but rather someone who would be open to reading select passages that I'm struggling with or talking over sub-plots with me. This is by no means a huge time commitment but simply requires maybe an hour or so of your time each week. You must be comfortable with the fact that you will have parts of this story spoiled for you!
If you are interested in this kind of beta-reading and still haven't let me know please do! The more the merrier.
As always, please read and review.