Got bored, liked Artemis Fowl, picked my two favorite characters, and below are the results. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: The plot is mine. Sadly, nothing else is.


Foaly tapped at the keyboard, almost absent-mindedly. At the moment, his brain was more concerned with stringing together rather eloquent cuss-intensive sentences.

Two words could sum it up: Mulch Diggums. Damn the little dwarf. Damn the little medallion the little dwarf had. And above all, damn the Mud Man ability to link memories to material items!

Root was foaming at the mouth over it.

The official story was that the thief had tunneled under Fowl Manor to wind up a scant two inches away from the now-filled tunnel in the wine cellar that he had used two years ago. Then, the general breaking and entering gist, as well as finding the boy and showing him the medallion (security hadn't been what it once was, what with all of the fairy technology that was hidden for defense reasons around the manor having been pinched and secured by the LEP. It was pathetic; couldn't Mud Men do anything themselves?). After that, the memory of fairies spread like a wildfire throughout Fowl Manor. Or, at least, it had spread over the occupants who actually had remembered the fairies at one point.

Foaly's department's shoestring budget was being stretched to its thinnest, and the centaur was tired, irritated, hungry, and bored.

Holly had gone up to see what she could see. Her pod should be coming down in a matter of moments.

Foaly glanced at some of the clocks in the Ops booth. It was two in the morning on the surface of the Earth, and about two-thirty underneath it. The Ops booth was the only one with lights still on.

"Come on, Short, if you're that hot at piloting, get down here already," Foaly muttered into the mic.

"Hey, Foaly?" Holly voice responded.

"Yes?"

"Shut it. I'll be there in a sec, hold your horns on."

Foaly smirked. Holly could still bring a smile to his face, be it two-thirty.

"Do you know how many cups of coffee I've gone through?" he asked.

"Do I care?"

"Four, Holly. Four! And do you know how hard it is to get coffee down here?"

"Again, Foaly. Do I care?"

"Apparently not."

Foaly pouted.

"Stop pouting; like I said, I'll be there in a sec."

"I expect that you recompense me a cup of some drinkable liquid for putting up with you at this time," Foaly said, hoping she'd get the meaning behind his words.

"Would sulfuric acid work?" She didn't.

"Nice, Captain Short, very nice. Aren't you in a wonderful mood."

"Well, thanks to Mulch Diggums, I should hope I'm an improvement over Commander Root."

'You have no idea,' Foaly thought, rolling his eyes.

Though he wouldn't admit it to anyone, not even a deity, if they didn't already know, he had felt the sting of Cupid's arrow. Or, perhaps, he hadn't felt the sting and was dealing with one of those wounds that didn't hurt until you registered that it did, in fact, hurt.

He had realized it rather early in Holly's career, when she and Foaly had just started getting along. She had sent him a short e-card from some Mud Man website for something called a "Happy Bunny".

He had laughed then, as it was snarky and rude and something he cataloged it to memory for future use. Once he had taken a second look at it, he felt like he had been whacked in the back of the head with a wine bottle. Except it didn't hurt and he hadn't been knocked out.

That was when he realized that she had sent it with the full intension of making him smile.

He liked that feeling. After that, he began noticing subtle things about her, like how she walked or flied or talked to him. And, just before the B'wa Kell incident, he had been more than a little bit jealous of Chix, who was able to work with Holly for extended periods of time, getting to show off for the pretty officer, even getting cared for by her. Foaly made sure that Chix's computer crashed at least once a week during that period of time.

And secretly, when he was alone in the Ops booth and very, very bored, he would entertain himself by imagining himself…well, it wasn't really important what, exactly, he imagined himself doing to Holly (different species, he kept telling himself, even though it didn't work. Different species). It was extremely embarrassing when either Root or an officer or even Holly herself came in when he was having one of those moments. It was a good thing that the Ops booth was always slightly warm, and one could blame the flushing of one's skin on that.

He knew it was more, much more than simply friendship or lust. He didn't know quite what it was.

But, as aforementioned, he wouldn't tell anyone.

Never.

Ever.

Ever, ever, ever.

No.

The End.

"S'wrong, Foaly? Out of sarcasm? Asleep in front of the controls?" Holly's taunting voice buzzed over the com unit.

"With four cups of coffee in me? And you on the other end? Not likely, sweetie," Foaly said, putting just slightly under his usual amount of annoying into the last word.

"I'm coming in. Look out."

A beat-up, nearly retired pod crashed into the landing tube outside the Ops booth. Captain Short came out, pulled off her helmet, checked to see that her ears hadn't crumbled, and waved with a smug grin at the Ops booth.

"You're full of it," Foaly said as he came out.

"Then we're two of a kind. Hey, Foaly…"

"Yes?" the centaur asked, turning to look at Holly. She looked tired, but happy.

"You wanna…find an all night restaurant? We'll get something to eat," she said, as she hung her helmet on a nearby rack. If sweeter words had ever been spoken, Foaly hadn't heard them.

"Why under Earth would I want to do that?" he asked, teasing her a bit. "I've already got too much caffeine in my system. Why should I go for a snack with you?"

"Because, Foaly," Holly said, lowering her eyelids to a half-closed position and leaning up towards him in a seductive manner. (Foaly would've pinched himself, but if this was a dream, he didn't want to wake up. At this point, all thoughts of Mulch Diggums and Artemis Fowl the Second were gone.) She reached up and placed one arm around his shoulders, the other near his head.

In one fluid movement, she plucked his tin foil hat off. Holly pulled herself back and started running towards the door as Foaly's brain worked feverishly to register what just happened.

"Because, Foaly," she said, over her shoulder. "I've got your hat, and I won't give it back unless you let me take you for food!"

Four feet are faster than two, and soon Foaly had caught up to her. He backed her into a corner.

"The hat, Miss Short," he said, trying not to smile.

"And what if I don't give it to you?" she asked mischievously, also trying not to smile.

"I'll tell all of the other officers you were flirting with the tech nerd," he said, leaning his head down so that his mouth was just beside her ear.

He heard her sigh, and felt his hat return to his head.

"Now," he said, adjusting his hat slightly, "what was that about an all night restaurant?"

"You realize, of course," Holly said, as they walked out of the LEPrecon police department, "that I could just as easily say that the tech nerd went out on a date with an officer?"

"Yes. But this isn't a date, this is…the compensation for difficult goods purchasing."

"What, do I have to kiss you to make it a date?" she asked, jokingly.

'Please do,' her companion thought.

Later, as he walked to his smallish apartment, his lips still tingling slightly, he decided that Holly could read minds.


Mushy, ain't it? Please review, but flame and I'll toast you in another fic. ((BEWARE!))

More HollyFoaly stuff later...