CUT-LOOSE — When both feet swing off the rock and all the climber's weight is taken by the hands.

CHAPTER EIGHT

STAR CITY contained a certain charm that Gotham distinctly lacked but compensated for in urban grit. Still, standing on the sidewalk outside Kitty's Bubble Tea, the boba shop Artemis had been raving about since they'd exchanged numbers, it wasn't the fact that every once in awhile, JJ would spot some celebrity she couldn't quite place, or the fact that the sprawling skyline and architecture of Star City seemed to breathe in a way that released tension, diametrically opposed to the constricting Gothamite skyscrapers and exposed brick and that seemed to bury her alive in the concrete streets. It was the fact that there lay 600 miles between Star City and Gotham, and she'd crossed that distance in a blink, that discombobulated JJ.

Her parents hardly brought talk of work home. With how much they travelled for work, JJ had assumed they had a chartered plane ferrying them around the country, at the beck and call of the Justice League. Zeta tubes hadn't ever crossed JJ's mind, nor was it a term that she'd ever considered before joining the team. Granted, it wasn't as if JJ was all that interested in the work her parents were involved in. Her world, as Olivia had so aptly put, was tunnelled into a shiny little bubble that encapsulated her two interests: winning and climbing. Now, though, JJ could feel the darkness peeling back, could feel the blinders receding from her vision.

"JJ, look!" A light giggle to her left drew her attention.

Red hair gleamed in the sunlight, an auburn halo lighting up her lovely features. Bouncing on the balls of her feet, M'gann was practically vibrating with excitement, emanating a vibrance that took JJ a moment to adjust her vision to. Her peach-pink sundress billowed lightly in the breeze that swept through the stretch of strip malls and vintage stores, the white petals printed on the skirt of her dress fluttering, as though she could take flight at any moment, transform into something ethereal, mythic. A fairy, perhaps.

JJ raised a brow as she watched M'gann gently handling a monarch butterfly, coaxing its wings, a mosaic of sunset colours, open upon the back of her hand. When M'gann lifted her hand and brought it closer to her face, JJ ducked out of the way, recoiling instinctively.

"Do not let that thing touch me," JJ bit out, with far more aggression than intended.

M'gann blinked, flummoxed. "It's just a butterfly. Are you afraid?"

"I hate anything that flies in my face," she muttered, arms crossed over her chest, scowling. "Freaks me out."

"It's harmless," M'gann said, a small smile twisting her cherry-glossed lips. She smelled faintly of strawberries and vanilla. The butterfly flexed its wings languidly. M'gann let it crawl over her knuckles, its proboscis extended, tapping gently against her thumb. "So beautiful. We never have anything like this on my home planet. It's too much desert. Nothing this fragile can live there. The diversity on this Earth is fascinating. You are so lucky to live here."

"Do you miss it?" JJ asked, quietly, observing the butterfly as it felt its way up M'gann's slender arm. "Your home?"

"Sometimes." M'gann sighed—even that contained the hint of romanticism, in the way of the ever-whimsical female lead of a romance film—and guided the butterfly back onto her index finger. "But I like it a lot more here. I'm... not as popular there."

"If it makes you feel better," JJ said, eyeing the butterfly with mild mistrust, taking a clear step away as it fluttered its wings and took off into the air, "I'm not popular here, either."

With kind eyes, M'gann appraised JJ. "That's not all true."

"I'm not fishing for reassurance, by the way. I don't really put in the effort to make friends. It's just not something that comes naturally to me, y'know, like you and everyone else." Between JJ and everyone else, the comfortable distance that no one had bothered to make the exodus across was filled with ice and rocks, nothing nurtured and nothing grown. Nothing soft. JJ preferred that.

And yet.

That wasn't all true, was it?

The first person to have crossed it, to have pushed the bounds and shrunk the gap JJ maintained to insulate herself, was Robin.

Then came the next person, bow in hand and boba in the other.

Artemis emerged from the shop bearing their orders and three thick straws, each a different colour. She handed JJ a blue straw, M'gann a pink one, and kept the green one for herself. They took their drinks from Artemis. M'gann looked as though she'd swallowed the sun, glowing as she examined her drink—strawberry milk, slathered with a top layer of salty cream foam, and chewy tapioca pearls—which Artemis had ordered for her on the basis that it matched her outfit, and historically tasted sublime. Artemis herself had ordered sweet green tea, grass jelly and tapioca pearls—her usual, as she'd let JJ know while they waited in line.

"No seating inside the shop, so I guess we're free to roam." Artemis grinned. Her bleach-blonde hair was slicked back into a ponytail at the base of her head, and her large, almond eyes gleamed with mirth. "Any preferences? There's a skate park nearby. We can sit there and watch the skaters wipe out."

"We can sit in bioship and I can fly us somewhere?"

"What do you think, JJ?" Artemis prompted.

JJ shrugged. "I'm cool with whatever. I do like the idea of watching skate-fails in real time, though. You think you can stomach that, M'gann?"

"I've never quite liked seeing people get hurt," M'gann said, unease crossing her face. "I don't know..."

"That's fine, let's do the bioshop thing." Artemis patted M'gann's arm. "Maybe we can fly out to the beach."

JJ poked her straw through the seal on the cup, then let out a groan, slapping a hand over her face in exasperation.

"What's wrong?" M'gann frowned.

"Forgot to shake it," JJ grumbled, glaring at her drink.

Smirking, Artemis let out a whistle as she shook hers. "Rookie mistake, girl."

"Just put me down like a dog already. I've forgotten my roots."

Artemis laughed. "Yeah, your wasian card's been rescinded."

"Is that what you're meant to do?" Curiosity glimmered in M'gann's face, an open palm bearing every emotion. She turned her drink over in her hands, mimicking Artemis exactly. "I suppose that mixes all the flavours, right?"

"It loosens up the toppings," JJ sighed, "all my tapioca's stuck together at the bottom now. Yours should be good, though."

"Can I...?" M'gann reached for JJ's cup tentatively. Resigned, JJ permitted her to take it. With a wave of her hand, the contents of JJ's to-go cup began swirling, the little balls of tapioca soaking in the milk tea whorling to the top like a blender without the blade. In seconds, the liquid settled but the tapioca had come unstuck from the bottom.

JJ took a sip and the pearls shot up her straw with ease. Chewing thoughtfully, she tapped her cup against M'gann's. "God bless telekinesis."

"Try your drink, M'gann," Artemis said, nudging her slightly.

"Don't choke," JJ warned.

"O– Okay?" M'gann let out a nervous laugh. She took a sip from her pink straw, and like a frame-by-frame shot, JJ watched the entire scene play out. The tapioca pearls shot up the straw. M'gann's eyes grew wide with panic at the foreign intrusion, the unexpected burst of texture gunning straight toward the back of her throat.

JJ and Artemis took practised steps back as M'gann spluttered and coughed out a mouthful of strawberry milk and tapioca pearls onto the pavement. Artemis' lips twitched with barely contained amusement.

Their restraint collapsed the moment their eyes met.

Laughter burst out of them, uncontrollable and tear-jerking and bent-double, as M'gann stood on the curb, abject horror and pure, unadulterated embarrassment colouring her face as pink as her dress.

"Welcome to the club, baby!" Artemis crowed, wiping tears from her eyes. "You're no longer a boba virgin!"

"Go slower next time," JJ said, helpfully.

"Oh," M'gann said, a small grin cracking through the shock. Standing with the two other girls, the self-consciousness hardly surfaced.

That was the beauty of female friendships, JJ supposed, the epiphany striking her with such clarity she felt herself jerked out of her body for a moment, a voyeur of her own self watching the three of them from a distance.

This morning, Coach Wymack had JJ test out a new route on the lead climbing wall, just to see if she could, and potentially to punish her—just a little—for missing so many training sessions. At the crux of the route thirty-something feet off the ground, where the incline began to shift at a dramatic angle that forced her to acknowledge the force of gravity, JJ began to struggle. As she fought, with shaking hands to clip her rope in, one hand clamped for dear life onto a sweat-slicked pinch-hold, her feet began to slip. No matter how far she pressed her hips flush against the wall to steady her centre of gravity, she could feel herself losing purchase on the tiny footholds.

At that point, JJ knew there was no point trying to salvage it. Lead climbing was a step below free-soloing. You submitted to gravity with only the rope clipped into the point below you to save you from falling to death. If you fell, you were only set back a good three-four feet. In competition, falling at any point meant losing. In outdoor climbing, it just meant more effort expended and energy wasted, reducing the likelihood of completing the project. In training, a fall just meant a disappointed shake of the head from Coach. That, in itself, was far more devastating than the former two instances.

When you've climbed as much as she has, you just know when it's not going to be a good send. As predicted, her feet cut loose from the footholds, sending her entire body swinging away from the 40° incline. Her stomach heaved as the momentum sent her weightless and flying for a gut-lurching moment. On reflex, she gripped the pinch hold with both hands before she fell away from her position entirely. The rope dropped from her hand, slapping against her thigh on the way down. It tugged lightly on her harness. Below, the rest of the clip-in carabiners rattled in protest. JJ dangled in the air by her hands, a most disconcerting feeling.

Now, JJ felt her feet cut loose from the ground beneath her, that heart-in-your-mouth moment right before gravity wrenches you down. She clung to the moment, both feet unmoored, caught in mid-air.

She saw them, three girls laughing together on the sidewalk about something so stupid and mundane as a blunder, ignoring the passing looks and the odd judgemental stare as the pedestrians filtered past them, eyeing the spilt milk and tapioca pearls on the concrete, the stains on the front of M'gann's dress, cleaned away with a single wave of her hand. Maybe JJ had been wrong.

Girlhood could be magic, sometimes.

Artemis shook her cup at JJ, pulling her back into the present. "Try some? Or are you saliva conscious?"

A little, but because the sun was shining, and because M'gann had mixed her drink, and because Artemis was the one who'd lured JJ out of her clockwork monotony with her first step into that uncharted space, and because the distance was beginning to shrink, and because JJ hadn't felt like this—this warmth, this light—before, she could make an exception. As she bent to drink briefly through Artemis' straw, JJ tilted her cup at Artemis, who took a tentative sip from JJ's drink.

Chewing through a mouthful of honey-sweetened green tea, tapioca pearls, and grass jelly, JJ could sort of understand why Artemis liked this assault of textures. Still, JJ preferred to keep things simple, classic.

Half-traumatised and forcing Artemis to hold her hand for moral support, M'gann took a second sip of her drink, and, having taken JJ's advice, managed a look of surprise—the good kind, the kind that translated to the accidental, resonant exclamation of "wow!" that echoed through their heads in M'gann's sweet voice—before she took a moment to appreciate the added texture of tapioca. "I love it! Can this be our thing? Should we do this every weekend?"

"I'm too broke to do this every weekend," JJ pointed out, tipping her straw as an offering toward M'gann, "but I wouldn't mind."

M'gann took turns trying both their drinks. She hummed in approval after tasting JJ's, and pulled a face when she tried Artemis'.

"What?" Artemis narrowed her eyes. "You don't like it?"

"It's... interesting. I don't know how I feel about the grass jelly."

JJ cackled. "That's M'gann for 'I hate it.'"

Artemis shook her head. "We're going to culture you, Miss Martian. Just wait."

"Should we take a picture?" M'gann asked, beaming. "I want to put this day up on my wall."

"Yeah, the lighting's really good today." Artemis brandished her phone. "JJ, if you don't smile, I'll kick your ass."

"Yes, ma'am," JJ drawled, stepping into the frame, but keeping a discernible space between herself and the two other girls, who were smushed together, a tangle of limbs, their heads inclined toward each other.

Without hesitation, M'gann tugged JJ closer, pressing her surprisingly soft cheek against JJ's, just as Artemis, arm outstretched with her phone in hand, snapped the shot.

As they gathered around Artemis' phone to review, JJ studied her own face.

Compliant with Artemis' thinly veiled threat, she had been smiling at first—she'd engaged the facial muscles to do so, a foreign expression that always made her uncomfortable—but when M'gann had pulled her closer, her awkward, flat, aloof smile had morphed into something else entirely. An expression JJ couldn't quite pinpoint with a word. The slants of her dark eyes, formerly deadpan and unimpressed, were startled wide, brightening her expression entirely. Her brows were arched, lending her face a palette of mirth, and her mouth was half-opened in a look that JJ could classify as a grin, straight teeth and all.

Sure, the camera had captured the faint smattering of freckles scattered across her crooked nose, the high cheekbones and the scar on her pointed chin, but JJ hardly recognised the girl in the picture. She looked happy. She looked like someone thoroughly loved.

This is a stranger, JJ thought, equal parts awe-struck and disconcerted. This can't be me.

"We look adorable!" M'gann gushed. In the picture, her eyes were shut, her grin taking up half of her face, red spots of blush dusting her freckled cheeks a roseate pink, every inch the romantic lead in a romance film. To her right, Artemis' smirk was daring, her pretty face well-loved by the camera. She'd managed to capture all their drinks in the shot.

"This is gonna make Wally so jealous," Artemis snickered, a wicked gleam in her eye as she sent the picture to the group chat. Within seconds, all three of them received the first response.

ROBIN, 2.07PM: Did you coordinate this? You look like the Powerpuff Girls LOL.

Sure enough, Artemis' bomber jacket was army-green, her black skinny jeans acid-washed, tucked into a pair of Doc Martens, rough around the edges. JJ's outfit wasn't as feminine as Bubbles, but the muted powder blue of her cropped sweater, exposing her toned midriff and the matched sweatpants that flared at the ankles, swallowing the top half of her navy blue high-tops converse, fit an off-brand depiction of the character. Of course, M'gann in her pink dress, ballet flats, and the velvet red bow in her soft hair, was every inch an unintentional cosplay of Blossom.

JJ's phone let out a series of rapid vibrations, an angry wasp in her pocket.

KIDFLASH, 2.07PM: BROOOOOOOOO THE FOMO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
KIDFLASH, 2.07PM: I hate u Artemis u suck
KIDFLASH, 2.07PM: You do not know how much I love boba. I should've been invited.
KIDFLASH, 2.07PM: I could've been one of the girls too...
KIDFLASH, 2.08PM: :(

ARTEMIS, 2.08PM: stfu

KIDFLASH, 2.08PM: You are so mean to me for no reason.
KIDFLASH, 2.08PM: :(((((

ARTEMIS, 2.09PM: you just keep handing me those reasons. it's entirely on you, man.

MISS MARTIAN, 2.09PM: Sorry KF!!! it's Girls Day!

KIDFLASH, 2.09PM: :(((((((((((((((

AQUALAD, 2.09PM: Just got cell service. Maybe we should get together for boba some other weekend as a team! Or how about after the next mission?

Ever since Artemis had added JJ's contact to the group chat—a communications channel safeguarded by an encryption designed by Robin himself—Wally had made for the entire team, her phone hadn't stopped buzzing with the messages. JJ was certain her phone had tried to vibrate itself off her nightstand all night, possibly attempting to kill itself from Wally's lightning round of idiocy and brazen lack of shame. In truth, though, it felt nice. This was something JJ hadn't yet come round to admitting to herself. Before this, her world had been silent as stone, steady and unshaken. And this team had cracked it all wide open, pouring into her life all this noise. And boba.

What JJ could admit, though, was that the sudden invasion of this almost-friendship into her otherwise reliable and clear-cut life kept Olivia off her back about being a pathetic loser with no friends and a history of attempted suicide. If tolerating Wally's inability to stop talking, Superboy's hotheadedness, Kaldur's moral superiority, Robin's fleet-footed jabs, Artemis' insistence on banding the girls together and M'gann's blinding light was enough to keep Olivia from worrying unnecessarily about her, then JJ could make this compromise. Besides, it wasn't like she was doing anything particularly exciting this weekend, anyway. Her hands still ached from this morning's climbing training session, and Dinah was going to coach her on combat tonight. This boba run was a deviation from the clockwork routine JJ adhered to, but it wasn't about to send her into a tailspin.

JJ's phone hummed again, three short bursts. She glanced up. Neither M'gann's nor Artemis' did the same.

ROBIN, 2.10PM: Dude what's your boba order????
ROBIN, 2.10PM: I need to know for research purposes.
ROBIN, 2.11PM: And to judge you. (Just a bit.)

JJ rolled her eyes, but couldn't stop the amusement from tugging at the corner of her lips.

JJ, 2.11PM: I'm half Taiwanese, idiot. My mom literally came from the land of boba. If anything, I will be the one judging your boba order.
JJ, 2.11PM: I got soy milk tea with tapioca pearls.

ROBIN, 2.11PM: SOY MILK?! Diabolical.

JJ, 2.11PM: I'm lactose intolerant.

ROBIN, 2.12PM: *weak.
ROBIN, 2.12PM: Can't even take real milk like a real man.

JJ, 2.12PM: Bruh... you're like four feet tall.
JJ, 2.12PM: Let's hear your order, then.

ROBIN, 2.13PM: Oh, y'know... (real) milk tea and tapioca pearls.

JJ, 2.12PM: Kill yourself.

Involuntarily, somewhere in the back of her mind, she could hear Robin's rasping laugh echoing down the corridor of her imagination, almost as though he was just around the corner.

Twenty minutes later, wind and salt in her mouth, the sun beating down on the glistering waves at Star City Beach, bioship bobbing gently like a cork on the water with the top peeled back like a floating convertible, the three of them sipping on their boba, condensation slicking their hands. It's been a long time since JJ had hung around like this for fun. The idyllic, eddying current buoying them reminded her vaguely of the night in the pool with Robin, swimming around aimlessly for the hell of it, floating and star-fished upon the surface of the chlorinated water, weightless despite the baggage shackled around their ankles.

Orphan-to-orphan, Robin had joked, but she knew he hadn't meant it like that. There was no ring of tragedy in his voice. No patronising pity. As if he understood what it was like to have something horrible happen to you and be perceived only as the aftermath.

Now, JJ lay on her back next to M'gann on the floor of bioship, breathing in the sea winds, the ever-present ball of tension in her chest loosening bit by bit.

"Remind me why we can't just do this everyday?" Artemis sighed, stretching her arms over her head like a cat.

"Because some of us have actual lives?" JJ snarked, but her tone was light, jesting.

A tapioca pearl smacked her square in the cheek, startling her upright. Artemis only grinned back, teeth bared, menacing and mirthful, her straw clipped between her teeth. In retaliation, JJ scooped up the pearl and fired it back. It missed colossally, soaring over Artemis' head and landing in the water.

"You should probably work on your aim," Artemis said, smirking.

"You should probably work on your aim," JJ mimicked, pitching her voice high. "Alright, teach me then. Show me some archery."

"Take me climbing, and I will."

"Bet."

"Bet."

"Are you guys going to kiss now, or...?" M'gann teased, glancing between the two.

Artemis scoffed. "She wishes."

"You're not my type either," JJ shot back, coolly, unable to keep the grin off her face.

"We both know who her type is," M'gann said, giggling behind her hand as she traded knowing looks with JJ.

Artemis glowered at them with mild contempt. "I will kill you both."

Affecting an innocent smile, M'gann sipped pointedly on her boba. JJ only put her hands over her face in an attempt to smother her amusement, as well as the laugh that threatened to climb out of her throat. She hadn't laughed like this in a long time. Even as a child, she'd been somewhat solemn, serious and fixated on the object of her obsessions. Olivia had lamented, once, that she hadn't been able to find a picture of JJ smiling genuinely, even as a toddler. When JJ pointed out that the pictures taken at her competitions, the ones with her standing on the podiums featured a smile on her face, Olivia had told her, bluntly, that those smiles weren't real, that it wasn't happiness that crossed her lips but pride, condescension, a brittle and bitter thing that hardly passed for emotion. Wasn't that the same thing, though? JJ had asked, recalling the acute surge of exaltation that flooded her veins when she'd won first place, that burn in her palms, the ache in her joins, the silicone handholds beneath her fingers sanding strips of her skin off. At that point, Olivia had punted a couch cushion at her face in frustration.

Now, JJ understood the distinction.

"So, how did you two get dragged into this team?" JJ wondered aloud, squinting up at a point in the cloudless sky, the sprawling blue where the seagulls circled, their silhouetted wings dark against the sun's glare.

"Oh, I wasn't dragged," Artemis said, lips tugging into a smirk. "I clawed my way in. Green Arrow said Batman was looking to recruit for a covert team, and I've been dying to utilise my skills for ages. I wanted something challenging. Something exciting."

"And is it what you thought?" M'gann asked, curious.

Artemis shrugged. "Guess so. Only drawback is Wally."

"You didn't think you'd be joining a legit, mature team, did you?" JJ drawled. "You put a bunch of teenagers together and you get... whatever the hell this is."

"Kaldur's pretty mature for a teenager," M'gann countered, swishing the last dregs of her drink around.

"Kaldur doesn't count. He's been, like," Artemis waved a hand in the air, as though trying to grasp the proper word for it, "fifty for seventeen years, do you know what I mean?"

"Okay, what about Robin? He's definitely combat experienced."

"Him and Wally riff off each other," Artemis shot back. "You put those two in the same room and you either get one big mega-genius or one big mega-idiot."

"I feel like they're the heart and soul of this group," M'gann said, flipping over onto her stomach, chin resting in her palms. "You need these kinds of people. They keep things light enough that we don't completely fall apart when we realise how dark some of these missions can get."

"So, like, personality hires," JJ deadpanned.

"Basically," Artemis snorted. "Between us girls, we know where the real heavy-lifting comes from."

They toasted to that, grinning as though they bore the world's greatest secret between their palms.

"You know, I actually like Robin," JJ admitted, feeling oddly exposed, like a raw nerve, the moment the words left her tongue. "He's a chill dude."

Artemis narrowed her eyes at JJ. "He's thirteen. And a bit of a weirdo, no?"

"I think he's been through a lot."

M'gann's eyes flicked between Artemis and JJ. "I think what Artemis is trying to convey, or what we're trying to ask is... do you... like-like him?"

JJ blinked, the meaning of M'gann's words sinking in like ice burrowing into her gut, the visceral kick-back of being misunderstood and fighting to make her case wrenching through her like a gunshot. "Oh, fuck no."

Humming thoughtfully, Artemis appraised JJ with a searching look, but said nothing.

JJ pressed two fingers to her temple, resenting the feeling of having to explain herself, dreading their lack of comprehension. "What does that even feel like? To be interested in someone like that?"

The smirk on Artemis' face was scathing as she nudged M'gann, who blushed bright red.

"It's..." M'gann tilted her head to the sky. "It's like the fact that they exist makes you feel all happy for no reason. Like... it's exciting. And you can't stop thinking about them, wondering if they're thinking about you, too. Sometimes that latter part doesn't matter so much. Sometimes you want them to notice you as much as you notice them, because it's nice to be seen—on purpose—like that. Do you know what I mean?"

"Not really, no."

"How many boyfriends have you had?" M'gann asked.

"None."

"Really?" Artemis asks, seeming taken aback. She straightened, leaning toward JJ. "Any girlfriends then?"

There were few facts about her own identity that JJ bothered with, and only paid mind to with how often they were brought up by other people. Beginning with the most obvious one: she was half-asian and barely bilingual—something Olivia often gave her shit for, for forgetting her Mandarin, for ignoring the integral aspects of her culture and identity. She was the child of two superheroes. Two great people, whom, despite their greatness, suffered the hero's fate. She was an orphan. She had an older sister nearly ten years her senior. She was sixteen years old. She never wanted any of this.

Now, the identity that JJ built for herself with her own bare hands: that was what was worth her time. She was a climber. She wanted to study History in college. She was gunning for gold. Her sister's name was Olivia and she was overbearing but unapologetically heart-and-soul and JJ wished she could be more like her.

Not once had her sexuality crossed her mind, nor has the fact that she wasn't like everyone else ever made her feel broken or ashamed. It just was—so what? The nuances of her sexuality wasn't particularly interesting, per se, and whatever bored JJ tended to lack her attention.

"I don't swing," JJ said, plainly, the truth a lump of coal in her palm, extended out for everyone to see.

That drew a laugh out of Artemis, who slapped a hand on JJ's thigh in humour. When she took her hand away, JJ felt the warmth of Artemis' palm linger. They dropped the topic there and then.

Sometimes JJ yearned to be touched. Not sexually, but in the way the light touches the windowpane, the way it glares through the glass, spills into the room to illuminate all its dark corners. To have someone see beyond the stone and the iron thorns, into the ugly scars and the mangled car wreck of her thoughts laid out on the floor of her being, to notice the perpetual thread of loneliness running through her in the red of her blood tying her to nothing and no one—and keep holding her, anyway.

In the same vein, the moment she started to feel this want, a wave of disgust roiled through her body. How pathetic, the enormity of her desire for reliance. To depend on anyone was to be weak, and hasn't she learnt well enough that everything you love would eventually be snatched away? It was this jarring disconnect that shoved the feeling away, tucking it into the darkest corners and drawing the blinds. There will be no light. The less they saw, the stronger she would be.

Eventually that wanting will stop burning a God-sized hole in her chest.

AUTHOR'S NOTE.
Soooo my annual PH update is hereeeee i've recently gotten back into writing for DC so hopefully it sticks around long enough for me to bang all my fics out! anyway. Girls' Day chappie!!!!!! how are we feeling about it? I tried to make this chapter as authentic to girlhood as possible and i hope it does them justice :') given that artemis and jj aren't really accustomed to having fun like this.