The snow is crisp, clean, cold. Moonbeams hang like icicles in the thin air.

"Doesn't it remind you of…?"

"Don't," he says drily. And instinctively two pairs of eyes dart right to Holly's trigger finger.

It's scarless now. Still, Artemis's memory provides him vividly the half-healed cut, the bright sliver of bone, the neighbouring fingers curled loosely on floor of the train as radiation ate away at precious paling skin.

"That was a fun time."

"We nearly died, Holly."

"Is that… novel?"

"Back then it was."

"No, I don't think so," Holly muses. "Even then."

It's windless tonight, and totally, searingly quiet. Hear-your-best-friend's-heartbeat quiet. The would-be terrifying kind.

But fearlessness becomes them, and so they embrace it. Before them, the expanse of snow-covered countryside almost seems to glow.

Holly sighs, breath visible in the cool air. She shivers, stamps a foot. "Next time, we throw your birthday bash in Argentina."

"Why Argentina?"

"Besides the weather?"

"Knowing you."

"Empanadas," she admits.

Artemis wrinkles his nose. For someone so dutifully cultured, he has a hard time straying away from his French classics, cuisine-wise.

"Your taste in food," says Holly, "is astoundingly bad."

He frowns up at her. She is sitting just above him on the porch steps, the toes of her LEP-regulation boots digging into the ice as she avoids his glare.

"You can't insult me on my birthday," he says.

She glances at her wrist. "Still two minutes till, Mud Boy."

He sighs, leaning his elbow on the step and hooking together the fingers of his two solar cell-heated gloved hands. "All right," he says. "All right."

She drops her head forward, motioning him closer as if to tell him a secret.

"The family's asleep, Holly, as if anyone's going to hear…"

"C'mon, Arty, come here."

He resists the urge to roll his eyes and obliges, tilting his ear toward her.

"You're old now," she whispers, and then laughs twinklingly at full volume, clasping her hands together as she pulls away.

"I'm not that old," he insists, but he's smiling even as his ear rings. "And there's still one minute to go."

Holly tilts her head. "What do you want for your birthday?"

"Now you ask?"

"You know me. I procrastinate."

"Fair. But you know me," he echoes. "I don't need anything."

"Clearly you don't need anything. I asked what you want."

He considers briefly. Thirty seconds.

"I want to become very good at ice skating in the next, say, twelve hours."

"Wh—" Holly laughs again, and his smile splits into a grin, because all these years and all these moments and it's still his favourite sound in the world. "What, can't you? And you let the twins pick this place for vacation?"

"I can skate. I can also simply—fall, very frequently."

"Ten years," she observes, "and you kept the same two left feet."

"Hey," he says, just as she announces, "Midnight," and kisses him soundly.

"Nice," he says when she draws back, and at her amused expression he presses on, flustered, "I just mean, that was nice. Like I feel—thank you."

She's not shivering anymore, but she is trembling—shaking all over, trying to keep herself from hysterics. Thank you.

"I just didn't realize how much I… missed you." His voice folds in on itself, soft, surprised. "Like that."

Holly schools her expression quickly. "You're welcome," she says, and to her credit, does not laugh at him a third time. She can save that for tomorrow.

"You're judging me," he says anyway.

"I mean, yes. We're dating, Artemis."

"Well," he says, voice cracking—and ah, that will be more fodder for tomorrow. "We just… I don't get to see you often enough for it to be…" He squints, thinking. "Not… surprising. In the loveliest of ways."

"Still too casual for you, I see," she says, resting her chin on her knuckles.

"What? No. I like… this. Us. How we are, right now, it's…"

"Comfortable," she murmurs.

"Comfortable," he agrees, and then asks worriedly, "Is that bad, that I think that? Do you want more? Because that would be fine, Holly; that would be more than fine—you know, for you, anything—"

"Are you in love with anyone else?"

"Am I—are you insane?"

"Then no," Holly says, smiling, "I don't need more." She reaches out her hand and Artemis stares at her fleetingly before taking it, heart tender in his throat as their fingers interlock. "Not for a while. We've got a long time, Mud Boy."

Artemis studies her carefully. "You do," he says. "What about me?"

"Like you aren't devising a means of immortality as we speak," she accuses. "Remember, I know you."

He blushes, pink on porcelain.

"It might not work," he mumbles.

"It'll work," she says.

"Maybe."

They let the silence swallow them a moment. Holly usually hates the cold, but right now, she couldn't even if she tried.

"Holly?"

"Yes, Artemis?"

"That night in Mamansk…"

"What about it?"

"You saved me without even knowing it."

She knows what he's technically referencing: While they were unconscious, in contact, her magic had flowed unattended into his battered body; it had nearly killed her, but he had woken woundless.

Still, she gets the feeling that isn't really what he's talking about.

"Birthday boy," she says, squeezing his hand. "Save your solemnity for when we get champagne drunk."

Artemis smiles and squeezes back. He isn't looking at her, but she doesn't blame him, with the view. "I'm old now, Commander."

"Just a little," she says. "Wait til you hit ninety."

"You really want to spend the rest of your life with me," he says, the weight of her words dawning, and now it's her turn to blush.

"Gods, don't say it like that, it sounds so..."

"Romantic?"

"Idiotic," she says, and he pouts at her, feigning hurt. "Oh, don't."

He brings her hand to his lips, eyes glittering. "Maybe I like idiotic," he teases.

She rolls her eyes. "Says boy genius."

"Not a boy," he reminds her, kissing first one knuckle, then the next. She shakes her head, smiling.

"To me, you still kiiiind of are."

"Ah, well, that makes you the villain, not me."

She grimaces. "Don't remind me."

He pulls back from her hand, leaving four kisses burnt into her skin. "I'm in my twenties, Commander Short, please allow me some dignity and try to look a little less guilty."

"It'll be a little weird forever," she says. "Just a little."

He presses his cheek to her hand, smiling up at her, looking so uncannily—young, innocent, normal.

She runs her free hand through his hair. "I love you," she whispers.

His eyes soften. "I love you, too."

The wind picks up. Holly recognizes the mountain air whipping at her cheek but does not shiver—she clears her throat and sits up straighter, trying to reel them back to normalcy. "By the way, don't think that just because it's your birthday I'm not going to kick your ass on the ice later."

He doesn't respond. She looks down to see him staring at their intertwined fingers.

"You know," he says finally, softly, "I think your hands are the only things I've ever been able to grip this tightly."

For all her heart has been through, it could still burst in this moment.

"I love you," she says again, helpless.

He surges forward to kiss her on the mouth once more, murmuring against her mouth, "Please have mercy on me," and she supposes it's up to her to interpret whether he is referring to the ice skating or not.

Maybe not, she thinks, as tenderly he kisses her cheek, her jaw, her neck.

They are cloaked in cold moonlight, like the goddess herself might love them, and it's a brilliant, honest love: Holly can feel it everywhere in her like magic. Like healing. And that means that Artemis, everywhere he touches her, can feel it too.

This time, she wills it to him readily.

happy birthday, artemis.