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When Dick steps out of the shower, Artemis is leaning on the doorframe. He tenses slightly, rivulets of water crisscrossing down his bare chest. He's hyperaware of her shameless sightseeing trip down his shower slick body, but he can pass of his flush as a product of his piping hot shower. It's not like Artemis hasn't seen him change or anything. It's that she's usually not waiting outside the shower so she can oogle him. He swallows a little, trying to stop thinking about what Artemis is thinking as her eyes ghost lower and lower.
Their relationship is fairly new, but he doubted anyone could tell, with the way Artemis is barreling forward, full throttle. In the past three weeks, they've rounded third base, and they would've made it to home base if Mount Justice's internal alarms hadn't killed the mood. And Dick isn't shy about taking the fast lane in a relationship. One might say he enjoys the heavy handed touching and barely contained sexual tension all time. But he can't shake the feeling that... it's forced. Maybe she figures the sooner she scares him off, the better; or maybe she thinks she can't possibly keep him, so she might as well cram what's usually a eight month relationship down into one.
And if she thinks that, well- she's just dumping a metric ton of "in" onto their "correct". Dick has zero intention of leaving her. He needs her to understand that, but it'll take time and subtly to drive that point home to Artemis. In the meantime, he wrapped a towel securely around his waist and folded his arms across his chest. There wasn't any real malice in his stance, he simply scrutinized right back at her.
Artemis is wearing an oversized t-shirt, a well-worn gag gift from him that said "I love you like pi". And possibly nothing else, not that Dick was going to dwell on that particular train of thought. Even though he swears she was tugging up the hem, exposing more and more of her muscular thigh. His eyes were drawn upward with the line of her legs. Before he slammed on his mental breaks and yanked his gaze guilty to her face.
She snickers, with a fond little smirk playing around her mouth, nothing short of impish. She's still oogling his chest, eyes dragging, pulling, tugging over his form until she finally decides to met his gaze. Dick feels something stir in his chest as grey eyes met blue. He stands firm, trying not to think about how okay he'd be if she devoured him.
And like hell, if that didn't invoke vivid images in his fertile mind. Images of Artemis kneeling down, hooking her fingers beneath his towel and yanking it away. Oh God, yeah.
"I knew you liked One Direction."
That rips him out of a promising fantasy, and he blinks himself out of his daze.
"What?" He backtracked through their conversation, trying to figure out where she was coming from, a bead of water dripping down his neck.
"I bet the shower head is real impressed with your singing, geekbait," Artemis clarified knowingly, giving him a long suffering look. "You are such a tween girl sometimes."
She turned and waltzed out of the bathroom, humming a few bars of Beautiful Soul as she deliberately swung her hips.
Just like that, Dick's mouth pursed, mood souring like a lemon. He was fighting to keep his indignation down, keep the frothing words from busting out of his chest. There was a serious issue here. But he didn't want invoke her scorn. It was better if he kept quiet on this matter.
But he couldn't do it. He couldn't abandon Artemis to her pop culture depravity.
"That wasn't One Direction!" he hollered after her, gripping the door frame so he didn't slip and slide down the hallway. "That was Jesse McCartney!"
From the kitchen, Artemis laughed as she set out the dinner plates. And Dick was heartened by the sound. Correcting Artemis on the finer points of pop artists may not completely resolve her doubts about their new life together, but it was a step. And he'd walk five hundred miles for her.