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Molasses, Artemis had no idea what that was but it was all she could think of as she looked at Jason’s eyes. She was lying on the couch, her head resting mere millimeters from his. They where lying together, not romantically of course, and she was studying his eyes because it calmed her, because she enjoyed it.
Molasses is what that woman in the bar last week had compared his eyes too. Artemis had liked her, she was named Carol or something similar, she was tough and charming things that Artemis could appreciate. She had likened Jason’s eyes to molasses. Molasses must be something beautiful Artemis thought, like myrrh or amber.
“Molasses” Artemis said out loud, not quite thinking.
“What?” Jason replied, looking up from his book perplexed. He looked Artemis in the eyes, which must’ve been deliberate.
“That woman in the bar, carol…”
“Sheryl” Jason corrected, Artemis rolled her eyes at the correction.
“Yes, she compared your eyes to molasses, but I do not know what that is.” Artemis started playing with the curls of Jason’s hair as she spoke, a habit that they both seemed to like.
“Oh well it’s what sugar is made out of.” Jason replied, blushing at what was happening.
“It must be beautiful.” Artemis said without much thought, but turning Jason crimson.
“To some people it is I guess.” Jason tried to return to his book, but he couldn’t had Artemis really been that aware of his eyes this whole time? Had she noticed them? “Say Artie, have you been looking at my eyes?” Jason grinned as he said this, hoping to get a blush out of her as well.
“Why yes, I suppose I have.” Artemis said coyly as she blushed slightly. “They are very magnificent.”
“I dunno, I never thought of my eyes as particularly beautiful.” Jason responded with a shrug, they weren’t that beautiful to him not as beautiful as hers.
“Well they are, they are like the rich dark honey that we used to get from the market, or the tea my sister would make that was so strong I would wince.” Artemis gently moved his face so that she could see his eyes better. “And the ridges remind me of the dunes and of tree bark. Your eyes are like bronze. They are like a map to a place that I must’ve been a thousand times, they are my favorite painting. Yes Jason your eyes are beautiful.” She hadn’t desired to say so much, to express herself so fully to him, but his comments had set something off had allowed her to show her full admiration.
Jason was almost shocked, he had been complimented before of course but never so…intimately for lack of a better word. And her words had opened his one flood gates.
“You also have beautiful eyes Artie.” Jason responded without much thought.
“Do I?” Artemis responded with a raised eyebrow. “What do they look like to you?” She said repositioning herself so that her face was practically touching his, only a hairs width of separation. Her eyes boring directly into his.
“Well, umm” Jason was completely flustered, which was an uncommon occurrence for him. Artemis noticed that the lovely brown of his eyes had almost completely receded to the edges of his irises as his pupils dilated outwards. His eyes now reminded him of the oil well that formed the center of the Bana temple to Osiris. It was as if the bronze of his eye had been replaced by obsidian. Artemis found this too beautiful.
In Jason’s mind the two emerald eyes looking at him seemed to be looking directly into the deepest darkest crevasses of his soul, he believed that now Artemis would know him fully, far more fully than he could have ever told her.
“So what do you see?” Artemis asked in a voice akin to the most beautiful song he could imagine. She herself was almost flustered. And he saw so much. When he was a kid his mother, while holding him in a blanket to protect him from the cold of the piercing Gotham winter, told him about the evergreen forests of the Pacific Northwest, “It’s green for miles and miles” she said conjuring an image that Jason could hardly imagine, outside of the city parks Jason had never seen much green, and never in such a wild way. Because these forests where wilderness, and not the wilderness that the news anchors described Gotham as being, nor a hostile waste of violence and neglect, no this was a wilderness devoid of the failings of society, a paradise. And as he pictured this heaven of trees he saw so clearly the same color that was now starting down at him. Perhaps he didn’t at the time, perhaps he saw the green of Ms.Tiller’s nail Polish, or the green on the Irish flag outside of the pub down the street, the green of the linoleum in the Urgent Care, maybe the Green of Father Rourke’s Vestments, or of the neon soda commercial. Maybe back than he saw those greens when he pictured this pristine and unattainable paradise but the moment he saw Artemis’s eyes all of those greens faded and chipped away, now only her fiery deep green eyes remained. He looked deep into her eyes, at the beautiful green at the edges of her own dilated pupils.
“Your eyes remind me of the depictions of Eden on the stained glass windows at church.” Jason said while brushing away a strand of deep red hair from Artemis’s face. “But your eyes are more than that. They are as green and wild and complex and beautiful as the greatest forests that ever existed.” Jason had ceased to think as his stream of consciousness flowed out as if some internal dam had burst open, “Your eyes are like the scales of a dragon, greener than limes and avocado. Your eyes are the color of the Great Plains and as wild as the horses that run across them. Artie your eyes are Daisy’s light and I’m Gatsby!” Jason stopped to breath as the intensity of his emotion swept over the two of them like a wild fire. “Artemis, I love your eyes. I love them, because they are so much like you, and I love you.”
Artemis was completely at a lose for words. She couldn’t say anything, because any words she would utter now would feel meaningless in contrast to the grandiose statement of love Jason had just made. He had laid himself bare Im front of her, and said the thing she had hoped he would at some point say. She felt his breath on her face, she saw his mouth open as if to say something.
But before he could she kissed him. She pressed her mouth against his and the two of them slotted together like puzzle pieces. She didn’t need to say any words now, her actions speaking louder than words.
“I love you too Jason Todd, I love you too.” She said after the two untangled. Her head fell besides his on the couch, and he twisted his body so that once again their gazes would meet.