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Artemis needs some space.
Miles of it, the way this night is going. The air in this bar is way too stuffy and the people are way too close to her and even though Gotham is a densely-packed city, people know how to keep their distance there. This place, in comparison, is becoming severely claustrophobic.
But it’s probably because the people in this bar, and in this nice downtown in Middle-of-Nowhere, Oklahoma, don’t have to worry about getting pickpocketed from head-to-toe if they let their guard down. Artemis grew up being wary and hypervigilant on all metro lines, busy sidewalks, and alleyways. These people go to their bathrooms and leave their wallets and their unattended drinks on their tables.
Their cultures are not the same.
Tragically, though, the only other people on the Team who would recognize her discomfort are stationed in different areas. Robin is on lookout duty with Kaldur and M’Gann on a rooftop on the other end of the street, and Zatanna is with Connor investigating a warehouse on the outskirts of town.
Which means she’s stuck with Wally.
It was Kaldur’s idea to put them together undercover inside. Wally’s Midwestern background would help him easily blend in with the community, Kal argued, and Artemis would be there to have his back in case anything went wrong. “You two look perfectly natural,” Kaldur grinned, the minute they left their changing room, dressed in ungodly amounts of flannel and denim. The others held their laughter behind their hands. Artemis has never been so close to strangling them.
“C’mon Kal, make me lookout. Put M’gann in there; she’s a redhead, she’ll fit right in!” Artemis had begged.
But Kaldur was unyielding. “I’ve already given you your assignment, I’m not going to change it just because you and Wally aren’t best friends.”
“But how the hell do I look natural in there at all? Do they even have Asians in Oklahoma?”
“Artemis,” Kaldur said, with that all-too-familiar tone that tells her she’s being a brat. Still, he smiled, in spite of himself. “You’ll be fine. You look great. All you have to do is eat some food, watch some dancers, and keep an eye out for our target. All easy tasks you are extremely capable of doing.”
She frowned. “But—”
Kaldur waved his hand and walked away.
That was a few hours ago. It’s ten o’clock now, and the people around her have been drinking themselves to oblivion, so maybe blending in isn’t as stressful as it was before. Anything? She asks through the mind link.
Same answer as the last time, and the time before that, and the other five times in the last twenty minutes, Zatanna says. Nothing yet.
Artemis puts her head in her hands and tries her best to convey sheer boredom through the link.
You need to get whelmed, Robin laughs. Asshole. You have the best job of the night and you’re being a baby.
Am not! She scowls.
Are too. Robin says.
Why don’t you and Wally relax, and do something to take the edge off? Zee asks, and Artemis doesn’t need to see her face to hear the suggestive undertones in that.
Where is Wally, anyway? We haven’t heard from him in a while. M’gann pipes up.
Crap, she’s right. Artemis looks around for the speedster, but she doesn’t see him right away. Despite knowing full well that he can protect himself, her heart still beats a little faster.
Great. She was too busy focusing on herself that she lost him. Idiot idiot idiot.
She pushes her way through the people crowded around the bar, past the bathrooms, and down the stairs, towards the dancefloor. This is where most of the patrons have congregated; live musicians play on a makeshift stage in the corner, with an older man going off on the last few bars of some generic country song. Once he’s done, the crowd erupts into cheers.
Someone taps her shoulder. She whips around, arms up.
“Whoa, whoa, chill! Jeez, did someone spit into your mocktail or something?” Wally says, grinning smugly at her like he didn’t just give her a heart attack after disappearing. She balls up her fists and waits a few seconds to steel her nerves— if her adrenaline spiked out of concern in the few moments she lost sight of him, nobody had to know.
“You’re an idiot,” she hisses. “Where did you even go?”
“Shots, duh.”
“You’re getting drunk? During the mission?”
"Ever heard of blending in?"
She's close to throttling him. "Are you serious right now?"
But all he does is roll his eyes. “Hello, speedy metabolism. It’s like water, it does nothing,” He says, flippant. “These guys are great, huh?”
“I— what? What are you even talking about?”
Wally wistfully stares at the stage. “They said they were giving out CDs at the end of their show, I’m gonna try and get one.”
“Seriously?”
“What? It’d make a great souvenir. We can’t all be buzzkills.”
She scowls. “Whatever.”
“I wanna thank everyone for comin’ out tonight. We’ve had a blast playin’ for y’all so far, and the night is just getting started!” The singer exclaims, beaming at the crowd. “Aight, now y’all know this next one, so I wanna see everyone on the floor.”
His guitarist starts out with a riff Artemis thinks she might recognize, and the crowd starts moving again. Wally’s eyes light up and his hands clap together. “Ha! This one’s a classic.”
“You know this song?”
“Know this song? Artemis, this is ‘Achy Breaky Heart’. Who doesn’t?”
She stares at him blankly.
“Seriously? Have you not heard of Billy Ray Cyrus?”
“Uh… should I have?”
Wally’s eyes are about to bug out of his head. “Did you not watch Hannah Montana as a kid?”
“No?”
“Did you not do line dancing in P.E.?”
“Who does line dancing in P.E.?!”
“Everybody!” Wally exclaims, throwing his hands up in exasperation. “Doesn’t matter. Tonight, you’re catching up.” And then he grabs his wrist and pulls her deeper into the crowd.
You can tell the world you never was my girl
You can burn my clothes up when I’m gone
Or you can tell your friends just what a fool I’ve been
Or laugh and joke about me on the phone
“What the hell are you doing?” She asks, stumbling along to where his hands are guiding her. He leads her around him in a semi-circle until she’s facing forward to his side. Around them, the crowd moves in-sync to a dance she doesn’t know if they choreographed beforehand or all know intrinsically, like characters in a musical.
“Showing you how fun line-dancing is, duh.” His right hand never lets go of her left.
Her face, despite her best efforts, heats up. “We’re supposed to be looking out for the guy.”
“And we’re also supposed to blend in. No reason we can’t do both. C’mon, Crock, loosen up,” he says, shooting her a wide, toothy smile. Something about the way he’s looking at her under the yellow lights of the dance floor, wearing dusty flannels and fitted jeans and a cowboy hat that’s verging on too ridiculous is making her smile, and she can feel her will crumbling.
“You’re an idiot,” she reminds him.
He smiles even wider. “Alright, Congeniality, watch and learn.”
She looks down at his feet as he starts grapevining to his right, with a couple of heel taps forward and some toe taps backward, before grapevining and turning left. His tongue pokes out in concentration, and after a few spins, he starts adding flourishes with his hat for good measure.
He’s such a dork, Artemis thinks, not knowing where the fondness came from but not questioning it either.
Wally looks up from the floor and smiles at her again, this time completely earnest, and she can hear Robin over the mindlink, Who is?
Shit. She thought that out loud.
“You ready?” He asks her, holding out his hand.
What, to look stupid? She thinks to herself, and though that’s something she’d normally say, something holds her back. “Yeah, alright, Baywatch. Let me show you how it’s done.”
She twirls back in place by his side, and starts copying his movements. He laughs out loud and claps in enthusiasm, “There you go! You’re a natural!”
Artemis spins around in perfect time with him, and flips her hair over her shoulder. It’s weird having her hair down from the ponytail it’s normally in, and it’s even weirder seeing Wally tracking the way the blond hair falls back down her exposed shoulder very intently. Not a bad weird, or anything… just. Weird. “If you think this choreography is hard, you should try the waltz. Cranky, elderly women yelling at you for not being dainty enough, and it’s in ¾ too.”
“They yelled at you for not being dainty?”
Artemis rolls her eyes at the memory. “I was too broad and too muscular and taller than a lot of the girls in my class. They were pissed because I wasn’t as ‘ladylike’ as they wanted.”
“Ah. That seems…”
“Racist and misogynistic?”
“Yeah.”
“Pretty much.”
“That sucks.”
“Yep.”
“Well, this probably doesn’t mean much coming from me, but you’re one of the most graceful people I know. On the battlefield,” he playfully nudges her side with his elbow, “and off of it too.”
And it wouldn’t have meant anything a month ago, but for some reason, now it does. “Thanks,” she says. And before the moment can become too sentimental, she adds, “Kid Klutz,” for good measure.
“Oh, come on!” He complains, causing her to crack up. They spin around again. “I’m smooth as hell,” he insists.
“Oh, are you?”
“I could sweep you off your feet right now if I wanted to,” he says, and before her brain can register the new tone of the conversation, he dramatically holds his hand out to her and goes, “But don’t tell my heart, my achy breaky heart.”
She swats his shoulder, laughing again. “You’re such a geek, Wally.”
“I just don’t think it’d understand! And if you tell my heart, my achy breaky heart, he might blow up and kill this man!”
“I’m embarrassed to be seen with you,” she says, right as the last note of the song ends.
The crowd bursts into cheers again, and surprisingly, she claps along with them. “If you thought that was embarrassing, just wait until they play ‘She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy’,” Wally says.
She gapes at him. “That is not a real song.”
He raises an eyebrow at her as a challenge. “It isn’t?”
And she knows him too well at this point, that right as he opens his mouth, she’s already laughing and turning away and telling him to Shut Up, Wally, seriously—
“She thinks my tractors sexyyyyyyyy,” He belts out, crowding her. “It really turns her onnnnnn.”
“Oh my god —”
“She’s always starin’ at meeeeeeeeeeeee, while I’m chugging alooooooooong!”
“—People are looking! —”
“She likes the way it’s pulling while we’re tillin’ up her land,” He continues, but his laughs are starting to break up the flow. “She’s even kinda crazy ‘bout my farmer’s tan.”
“—You’re impossible—”
“She’s the only one who really understands what gets meeeeeeeeee!” Wally leans into her, cupping his hands around his mouth and getting close to her ear. “SHE THINKS MY TRACTOR’S SEXYYYYYYYYYY.” And she must look seriously disturbed, because he takes one good look at her face and cracks up.
If that gets Artemis to laugh too, nobody has to know.
She bites her lip to stop giggling and tries her best to seem serious. “I’m telling M’gann to start the ship without you later.”
“Oh please, you’re all talk. You constantly call me annoying but at the end of the day, you’re always smiling at me.”
That can’t be true, can it? She’s not ‘always smiling’ at Wally. She just smiles whenever he does something stupid and embarrassing, which happens to be all the time because he’s an idiot. It’s not like she finds him funny or at all likable, because, c’mon, it’s Wally. “I—”
If you two are done flirting, Conner spotted our guy talking to some goons, Robin says, voice suddenly coming through very loudly through the link.
Wally stiffens, and they both are suddenly very aware of how close they’ve gotten during their conversation. Wally’s standing right in front of her, staring down at her with those stupid, bright green eyes of his. After a moment’s pause, they move apart so fast they might as well both be speedsters.
We weren’t flirting! Wally insists.
Right, right. Sure. Zee responds.
Artemis, Kid Flash. Can you be at our location in five minutes? Your suits should still be on the bioship. Kaldur says, taking pity on them. Thank God for Kaldur.
You got it, boss. Be there in a flash. Wally responds.
Zee groans through the link. Boooooooooo.
Tomato, tomato, tomato, Conner adds.
He turns to her and nods toward the exit. “You ready?”
She nods, and silently they both walk up the stairs back to the bar and shuffle quietly out the door.
___
They don’t see much of each other in the days following the dance. They’re both busy with their midterm prep, and Artemis hardly talks to anyone outside of Dick, Barbara, and Bette and hardly talks about anything that isn’t discussed in her AP Euro textbook. As far as she knows the rest of the Team is in the same boat—Zatanna sends very descriptive emojis about her suffering and Robin sends pictures of him flipping off his English essays with the personal details blurred—with the exception of Kaldur and Conner, the former who wishes them luck on their tests, and the ladder who brags about his infinite knowledge thanks to CADMUS.
Two weeks later she finds Wally in the common area of the Mountain. He’s sitting at a dining table staring intently at his AP French textbook like it’s wronged him somehow, and every so often he lets out a noise of frustration.
She drops into the chair next to him and throws a small package on the table next to the book.
He looks up. “What?”
“That’s for you, Kid Klutz. Open it.”
He looks at her, then at the small square box wrapped in newspaper, and then back at her again. “For… me?”
“Just open it.”
Gingerly, he reaches over the table and picks it up. It’s light in his hands, and he wastes no time tearing it up and discovering its contents. “It’s the CD.”
“Mhm.”
“It’s their CD! From the—”
“Mhm.”
“How did you— why did you—”
She raises a hand to shush him, and says, “We left before you got a chance to buy it. I had fun watching you trip over your own left feet, so… I thought this would be my way to say thank you. You said it yourself: it would make for a great souvenir.”
“I— you—” She thinks she’s gonna be subjected to more of his inability to speak English for a while, but he surprises her and pulls her into a hug instead. “Thanks, Artemis. This is great.”
“Don’t mention it.” And really, don’t. Because Artemis spent all of last week staring up at her ceiling wondering if it’s possible she’s developed feelings for one of the most annoying people she knows; the last thing she needs is him being extra nice and thoughtful and genuine.
“Guess I’ll go put it on the stand, then. Take a short study break.” He stands up from his chair and stretches his arms up. Artemis pretends not to notice the small sliver of exposed torso (damn it, he’s muscular too) and looks at his textbook instead.
“Savez-vous parler français?” She asks him.
If he’s surprised she knows French, he doesn’t show it. “Je n’aime pas étudier ce langue,” he groans, dragging a hand over his face. “All this work just to get some dumb seal of biliteracy and maybe skip a college class. I’m going to cry.”
She nods sagely. If that isn’t the AP mood. “C’est tragique.”
“Oui. Oui.” He makes his way for the hallway, but something stops him in his tracks. He turns back toward her and puts a hand on the back of his neck, chalantly staring at a point on the wall behind her. “Since I’m taking a study break and all, and there’s no food left in our fridge, would you wanna… I don’t know… get something to eat at the pier maybe?”
“If you promise not to sing anymore, I’d like that.”
He recovers from his surprise pretty fast. “Cool. Cool cool cool. I’ll just put the CD away and then we’ll go, okay?” He smiles at her and speeds out of the room.
Artemis sits back in her chair. She feels that strange twist in the air again, the same one she felt back in the bar. A more peaceful version of it maybe, a version where she doesn’t feel like booking it back home and leaving Wally to wonder where she disappeared to.
She lets her fingers trace out the names of her team members on the wooden table. And if the security cameras pick up her humming “Achy Breaky Heart” while she traces Wally’s name, well, nobody has to know.