Work Text:
Artemis never thought she would be stuck in this position, and with Wally of all people. It had started out innocently enough, him tutoring her in chemistry. It was so easy to forget how smart he was, it still threw her for loop because he didn’t always act like it, then he would recognize chemical compounds just by looking at their shapes or just the fact he recreated his uncle’s accident to create his own superspeed with household products because they could ‘easily be exchanged even if not a pure form, it will perform the same if the hypothesis was right.’ She had miscalculated his attractiveness and easy-going nature when she had asked for help. Now she couldn’t help but watch him as he got excited about chemistry and was trying to explain it to her. Artemis for the life of her couldn’t understand half of what he was saying or make sense of how this problem worked because he was to damn cute when he was talking so animatedly about something he was passionate about.
It was an unexpected complication, she wasn’t looking for a relationship right now and there was no way even going to end well in the long run. She had a lifetime of knowledge of how bad that idea was. Not that she thought Wally was going to turn into her father, but Artemis was still convinced that Ollie and Dinah were going to have a tragic ending. If you spent too much time tempting fate, it was eventually going to catch up with you. That said, she was currently paying way too much attention to the color of his eyes. They were the most beautiful shade of green, and she was unwittingly getting lost in them. His smile when she understood something lit them up and she was slowly becoming weak to them. Every smile and please look was slowly her in and bring her down her walls. The exit sign to this thing they had was far behind them and Artemis was hopelessly lost.
If the mission in the Bialyan desert was her coffin and every little moment after that were the nails to keep her there. But after so much time spent there, Artemis was feeling more alive then she ever had, she was looking forward to each mission, each little tutor study session if that meant she could be with him a little longer. His kindness had become her drug and Artemis was hopelessly addicted, it pulled her into whatever it was they were dancing around but the irritating part was that he seemed completely unaware of what he was doing. He had trapped her in this maze leading to seemly nowhere.
Never in her life had she really felt this way, to allow someone in like this and see her at every level. The worst part was that she hadn’t fought him as he broke down the walls. If Wally was content to play this game of what was probably self-sabotage, then Artemis was going to meet him there. She didn’t know how she was going to break him down, but it was going to happen and he would be just as stuck as she was… Okay. so it sounded creepy but that was her game plan and she was going to roll with it.
In all lot of ways Artemis felt new walls coming up around her but not like the ones that she had used to fortify herself with, these were more like walls created by someone else to keep her safe, but they hadn’t left a map on how to get out or even find her way around. So she was left floundering, and unsure of what new passage would bring but it was almost a bad experience. Wally had effectively ensnared her in a part of herself that she didn’t really embrace and had used the others to lock her in. The final lock had been their acceptance about her family and Artemis wasn’t sure if she minded anymore. The kiss at midnight had sealed her fate and while she was sure that this was going to end badly. Who would have thought that it would take a lot of missions where they barely made it out alive and a lot of coming clean to ensnare him?