Work Text:
|STANFORD UNIVERSITY
|September 18 2015, 16:11 PST
There's a knowing smirk on her face as Artemis slowly picks her way up the bleachers. Behind her, the boys trying out for Stanford's track team warm up, spring lightly on the balls of their feet and breathe through their mouths deeply, slowly, to calm their inevitable nerves. She knows without looking that Wally will be going through the motions with them.
Still she stops and turns, and there he is, eyes narrowed slightly at the track before him. Wally seems to feel her gaze on him, however, and glances up at just that moment to give her a lopsided grin. The sight of it still makes her tingle inside.
"Alright, guys," a senior member calls, clapping his hands to get the athletes' attention. "It's about to pour on us, so let's get these try-outs started." Wally reluctantly swivels his head back round, and Artemis resumes her jagged path up the bleachers, stepping on each fallen leaf she sees with a satisfying crunch, no matter how much out of her way they are. As she crunches contentedly on, she tugs the sleeves of her sweater down just over her knuckles. (Because she keeps shivering even though it isn't all that cold out today; and because the action alone reminds her of how Wally can't resist kissing her fingertips when they're peeping out from under the soft fabric.)
She finds a good spot just as the runners get into positions along the starting line. When they take off at the blast of a horn, she watches with some sort of pride as he takes off, all long strides and pumping arms. Hair ruffling wildly in the slight breeze. It's middle-distance running, that delicate balance between speed and stamina some athletes never quite find. But Wally has always had a way with fine equilibriums and toeing the line. When to make what decisions and how to tip the scales and nudge the odds to live with whatever consequences may come. He's had to learn, just as she has, to juggle two lives and compartmentalize. At least until the day they both agreed to lock hero work up in a drawer and leave it in some dusty basement of the brain, a relic and a monument.
Artemis watches idly, the grin spreading to the rest of her face in a suffused glow, as Wally pulls ahead of the others, finishing as strong as he started. Then, amidst thumps on the back and panted congratulations, he looks once more to the bleachers — and there it is again, that amazing feeling when someone you love seeks out your gaze, specifically, from across a room or some other crowded space. There's nothing like that assuredness, that casual mutuality, that home you find in someone else's eyes.
Absently, she watches the other boys disperse unevenly across the field, their forms wavering for a moment in her vision. Probably just her eyes, tired out after a long day of lectures. Artemis closes them, breathing in air that smells like rain.
The thud of Wally's track shoes against the wooden bleachers draws rapidly closer. "Hey," she hears him call out. "How's the headache?"
"What headache—" she starts to say, instinctively in denial, before realizing that her fingers are still rubbing slow circles into her temples, a dead giveaway. "...Fine," Artemis amends.
As he takes a seat to her right, she leans her head lightly on his shoulder, skin clammy against the damp warmth of his shirt. She's ready to bat away his hand the moment he tries to put it on her forehead to gauge her temperature.
"You've been a little off all day, Babe; you didn't have to come," Wally berates her with a nevertheless appreciative tone. Absently, he plays a little with her hair; it hasn't been the same since she cut off her long locks for practicality, but he's come to love it in time. "We have to get you home," he muses almost to himself.
"Weather this time of year always gets to me, remember? Don't fuss."
He gets up slowly, giving her time to pull away (how coordinated their movements have become, how few trivial exchanges they must have to understand each other) then slings her bag onto one shoulder. "You know I love you, Artemis, but say that again," he warns mockingly, "and I will personally carry you off campus."
She accepts a hand up and pretends to consider the benevolent threat as they start off. "Fireman's carry?"
"Bridal style," Wally challenges her with a playful grin, holding the exit gate open for her and bowing in an endearingly elaborate fashion that makes her roll her eyes. A faint drizzle starts up then, so they lapse into silence, Wally shooting her a helpless look before grabbing her hand and coaxing her into a jog.
By the time they reach the bus depot, her lungs feel like they're about to splinter from the icy, cutting wind. She's frozen inside out, and without a word, Wally briskly massages warmth back into her arms. Other people stranded by the rain are jostling them in trying to fit under the insufficient shelter, deepening her budding nausea. Worse still, within a few minutes, a bored voice over the too-loud intercom apologizes for the inconvenience, and informs them that bus services have effectively been delayed indefinitely. She can't help but let her fingers return to her temples to massage them.
Wally watches her with a sympathetic wince. "I'm so sorry," he murmurs, thoroughly aware of the pathetic fallacy. "How can I make this less miserable for you?"
A weary shake of her head that turns into a nod halfway through. "You're fussing," Artemis says pointedly.
It's taken him months to not only realize, but adapt to, her stubbornness about physical weakness. But he finally, finally gets it, so he merely raises an eyebrow and smiles willingly. "Well, don't say I didn't warn you."
He's slow and cautious when he picks her up (keeping in mind the dizzy feeling she sometimes gets when these headaches hit her). Nevertheless, they are after all surrounded by increasingly impatient commuters, and attract attention from the immediate area. For one awkward moment they can feel the stares directed at them, and see the glazed-over look dissipate from onlookers' eyes.
Then a single teenager with flowery jeans and a headband gives one loud Whoop that starts a ripple of laughter through the crowd. She shields her eyes from the sheets of rain with one palm and he puts some distance between them and curious eyes before pouring on the speed. Their display draws applause from closet romantics until they move out of earshot; it is a hearty sound that nearly makes her giggle.
And it keeps them laughing, gasping in the middle of the rain, and as he waits for her to finish her warm shower. It keeps them smiling as he deposits her into the nest of quilts he has prepared on the best part of the couch to watch TV from. He is about to join her in the fortress of warmth when that special knock comes at the door, and her headache and his worry all become white noise, eclipsed and sidelined by the movements of the world around that are beyond their control but that they will nevertheless try to maneuver. The drawer they have locked away in their minds is rattling and demanding their attention once more.
And so it is stormy out, the day Dick appears on their front porch, face wet not only from rainwater, with a daring proposition Wally tries, emphatically, to reject right from the outset. The sky is crackling with lightning as two best friends are placed suddenly at odds. And the room rumbles with thunder, low and ominous, when Artemis clears her throat, and Wally turns to see her bright-eyed and sitting upright, and he knows, because he knows her (so well, only too well), that she is about to say yes.