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"I can't believe this place still exists."
Chris says this, voice tinged with awe, as he follows Artemis to the location of their first kiss. A clearing in the woodland that runs along the edge of the park near their school, one he'd blindly followed her into all those years ago because she was looking for the perfect setting for a scene in her book, and he'd found to be the perfect setting for their very first kiss.
He almost trips over a gnarled root of a tree as he moves further into the clearing, relying on the sound of Artemis' breathing and the faint glimmer of moonlight to guide him safely to her.
"I come here sometimes," she tells him, voice somewhere to his left but before he can ask where she is, she turns on the flashlight on her phone, illuminating the small clearing that would be overlooked by everyone but Artemis Hunter. "When I need inspiration, or when I'm feeling nostalgic." She looks at him over her shoulder, wine stained lips lifting into a smile.
"I can't believe you even remember the way," he murmurs, moving to stand closer to her. He stumbles again but this time it's more to do with him being tipsy than it has with tree roots playing games with him.
"Forget my way to this place?" Artemis scoffs, "No way. This is the place that inspired the final scene in Wild Ones."
"Iris and Leo's first kiss," Chris thinks aloud. He remembers waiting outside the bookstore on the very day her debut novel was set to release, remembers picking up that first copy and spending the whole day reading it. He remembers spending the whole book wondering if Iris was going to choose Leo or George and she chose Leo.
And they had their very first kiss in a forest clearing with twisted tree roots that had tripped Leo up when they first got there. It'd been so much like the two of them except the reason they were in the clearing was because they were running from the bad guy; except Iris and Leo stayed together, until the moment that monster took the choice away from Iris by taking her away altogether in the second book.
"Iris and Leo..." Artemis sighs happily, turning around to face Chris properly, balancing precariously on a particularly large root. "You know, she's not really dead, right?"
"What?" Chris' eyebrows draw together. "But they found—but her locket."
"I've been saying for years that their story isn't over yet," she hums, "Just because it's been, what, three years, doesn't mean I'm done with it. I had this idea, you see—to make the readers wait to know what comes next for as long as Leo and George have to. The third book's almost finished."
Chris laughs. "You know, this date is certainly the most interesting one I've been on in a while."
"Oh yeah?" Artemis steps down from the root to stand before him. "When was your last interesting date?"
"Honestly?" Chris cocks his head to the side. "Tom and Lisa's wedding—you should have met my date then. She liked me so much that she introduced me to her kids."
Chris has committed a lot of things about Artemis to memory over the years he's known her. Things he learned back then, things that have stayed the same, things that are new and just as wonderful. The way she smiles is one of those things he remembers. He's not an artist but he could probably paint it from memory, and yet seeing it still brings the whole world to a stop.
He is almost certain that in every universe, there is a version of him that loves a version of her. Because Chris Evans is certain that he has loved her since the beginning of time, since they were nothing but atoms being split apart, hoping to be put back together again.
He's also certain that of the seven billion people on this planet, Artemis is the one he's supposed to be with. No one else, no other choices, just her. And when she looks at him like that, smiling with her mouth and her eyes, he thinks maybe the same can be said for her, as well.
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idk what this is but have tipsy artechris at the end of their date :(
