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It could have been the second time she kissed him. Maybe the hundredth. All he knew is that whenever she pulled away, she would smile this not–smile at him. Sometimes it seemed like she was laughing at him. Maybe with him. And then the curl to her lip would flatten, leaving him swear that he'd simply imagined it and all there had ever been was that mask of cool indifference that settled over her features like a blanket of snow.
And then– then she would turn and resume whatever banter that had been on hold. Resume whatever task, like what she had just done had not simply shattered Jason's entire existence. Shattered whatever he'd thought they were (teammates, friends?) and then never acknowledged it again.
A rose by any other name... right?
Except it was driving him to madness. To name a thing was to make it concrete, tangible. He needed to know– was this... thing tangible, or just as fleeting as the fleeting smirk on Artemis' lip?
He tried to ignore the whirling in his stomach as he tried to find the words. "Okay. So. Boyfriend and girlfriend then? Is that what we are?"
Artemis frowned in distaste and Jason immediately found himself reeling, throat closing as if he'd been strangled. Had he made a miscalculation? A mistake?
Yet she did not pull away from him. Her hands stayed firmly at the back on his neck, fingers burying themselves in his hair. That gentle touch could have kept him frozen there until the universe went cold. "I hate those words," she said, after an eternity. "Boyfriend. Girlfriend." She worried her lip for a moment, thinking. A touch longer than that, actually. Long enough that the absent-minded worrying drew blood at her lip and Jason was beginning to think it was nervousness that drove it.
"It is so casual. So ephemeral. Weightless," she said finally. She met his gaze, something fierce in her eye, like she had trapped the sun itself in her pupils. "You are not weightless to me."
The joking part of brain had half a mind to make a quip about Amazonian super-strength. It died in his throat. "Then what are we?" he found himself whispering instead. The fingers in his hair stilled.
"I am your weakness, your strength. Your affliction and your cure. And you are mine."
There was no quirk to her mouth this time. No play in her eyes. Words stripped bare, and Artemis had the audacity to recite to him such poetry. The earnestness of it all forced the breath from his lungs. If shyness overtook him, forcing his gaze to the ground, she did not say anything.
It took him a minute to regain his own words."And how should I call you?"
"You may call me Lover." She pressed closer, and he was enveloped in the sun. "You may call me Lover, and nothing else."
"Okay, Lover," Jason smiled, and kissed her again, not minding that it tasted like copper.