Note: This piece was co-written by me (JasonBall34) with another author, who isn't on this site but is on the Ao3 website as "theFowlestofthemall," where we have also posted this.
Usual disclaimer: This co-production contains romantic Artemis/Holly content, so don't read this if that sort of thing is not your cup of tea. In our humble opinion, though, that sort of thing is the best tea there is.
And now, without further ado, the story:
Artemis Fowl's first indication that something was different upon arriving home was the noticeable green glow emanating from the living room window, visible through curtains that were normally quite white.
He got out of his electric vehicle and stood in the driveway of the house he'd designed in the Haven City suburbs, glancing around the street to see if any of the neighbours' houses had been similarly afflicted by green. They hadn't. One house down the street was being gutted by demo dwarves because of a stink-worm infestation, the smell of which made one green around the gills, but that wasn't quite the same thing.
The exterior of Artemis' home looked as it usually did otherwise– a wide bungalow hewn almost entirely out of rock, conspicuously ordinary and homogeneous with the other houses lining the street, considering its occupants. It had the same limestone exterior, the same acrylic windows and touch-sensitive sliding doors. At first glance, there was nothing about it that stood out from all the many others that hogged the pages of popular middle-class Havenite e-magazines. But at second, third, fourth observations… there were certain touches that betrayed its typical suburban façade. The most noticeable of these were the finishings: the flecks of gold embedded in the rock winked slyly at anyone who lingered at the end of the drive, while the thin, decorative piping framing the windows and the finial crowning marked its owners as outdated in their tastes.
If, of course, one didn't also note the striking resemblance the finial bore to restricted-access Section 8 antennae. Or how the black slits in the piping were the perfect dimensions to allow the passage of Neutrino laserfire from within. Or how the speckled gold was a little too reflective in places, with the same malevolent shine as a well-hidden lens.
Even harder to detect were the twin grooves in the borders of the driveway, the only street-facing indication of the complex DOME defence system Artemis had devised as part of his emergency lockdown plans.
He might not have gone to the effort to devise such convoluted defences had he not had someone to protect other than himself. As it was, though, he did, and she regularly alternated between grateful for the security and exasperated at his home-improvement antics. Holly Short was far from the first wife in history to accidentally trip the household alarm system when traipsing about in pursuit of a midnight snack, but that didn't make her any less annoyed when she was doused with fluid midway to a mouthful of Fruit Chutes.
"That's odd. I could swear I implemented the facial recognition software on the gel cannons," Artemis had insisted late that night, which did very little to make Holly feel better as she scrubbed freezing hydrogel out of her hair.
Holly wouldn't entertain some of his more "eccentric" defence ideas – such as his perfectly practical magma moat – but the mammoth DOME (Deployable Overhead Manor Enveloper) that could encompass the house, her vegetable garden, and part of the adjacent street (to "protect the roots"), all at a moment's notice, was sensibility itself.
Artemis hadn't even had to conjure up a manner of camouflaging the furrow from which the dome unfolded, since the gaggle of flora spilling over the seams did such a good job of it. Their riot of vermillion leaves and tuscan bulbs lined the drive like a row of runway lights.
The "runway lights" evidently didn't help much, though, as Holly's own electric vehicle was parked sloppily in the driveway with half the flowerbed painting its treads. With nothing out of the ordinary, then, Artemis decided he ought to simply see what was up with the green glow in the window. The house's security systems were unrivalled by anything on the planet. If there was danger, or perhaps even if there wasn't, he'd have been alerted by now.
Upon electronically verifying his identity and entering the house, Artemis's first impression was that he'd walked into a home owned by Americans who really wanted to be Irish. The kind of Americans who throw up shamrock decorations all over their living room and call it the Emerald Isle. Artemis probably got that impression because there were shamrock decorations all over the living room. What was normally a quite homely interior, a pleasant merger of human and fairy sensibilities, had now been taken over by all manner of shamrock paraphernalia.
Before he could fully take in the décor, Artemis was alerted to a presence in the kitchen by a loud crash and a litany of curses, an inspired mixture of English and Gnommish.
"Having trouble cooking? That's supposed to be my trick," observed Artemis, entering the kitchen. The source of the racket was quite the sight in a mussed t-shirt and joggers, cooking up… something.
Towers of pots and pans occupied every inch of the hard granite counter she stood beside, ladles and spatulas and allsorts sticking up out of them like a sea of tiny waving hands. Tiny… green… waving hands. Artemis thought he spotted one particular utensil with the striking three leafs of a clover, but he shook his head to dispel that thought as quickly as it came. It was probably the stale museum air from earlier, meddling with his mind again.
He eyed the stools usually tucked under the island, but they, too, had been dragged out of place and hijacked by kitchen apparatus. The only clear space was the area encircling Holly, who stood furiously beating away at something in a battered-looking metal bowl. Her ratty apron was barely visible under a truly impressive selection of stains and smears, which were not entirely confined to the borders of the garment.
"Arty! You're home early!" she cried, slightly panicked. She gave her husband a quick one-armed hug, transferring some of the stains to his previously-spotless Armani suit, before rushing back to peer into the oven. "Sorry, dinner isn't ready yet. I've been a bit busy."
Artemis wiped butter off his blazer as he poked his head back into the living room for a second. As he suspected, all the green was still out there. "I noticed. Is something… happening? You don't make a habit of early arrivals yourself."
Holly poked at a bowl of cabbage and looked at Artemis, confused. "It's today," she reminded him.
"I should hope so. I'm not sure I'm up for visiting another day again."
The exasperated elf held up the cabbage. "It's St. Patrick's Day, Artemis! It's why I'm here making this disaster of a dinner, instead of filling out perp files at work. Duh."
Artemis scanned the kitchen, observing the dinner preparation. "Ah, yes. Of course. Corned beef and cabbage, I take it?"
"You can tell what I'm making. That's something, at least. Cooking is hard," grunted Holly, letting off steam by violently mashing steamed potatoes from the garden. "I'm sorry the day hasn't turned out to be all that I hoped."
"I wasn't expecting anything, so you've therefore already exceeded my expectations."
"Well, I know it's been a big change, living down here," explained Holly. Her pace slowed; she found herself staring at the clumps of potato clinging together within the bowl's depths. Artemis had taken to Haven life like a dwarf to dirt, but she saw the moments when something unfamiliar struck him, when all his distant expertise on fairy culture paled in the face of the sheer lived experience of native Havenites. Artemis didn't wear uncertainty well.
And there was so much he'd sacrificed by moving here and sharing a home with her. The sim-sun didn't burn the same, the rain was too clean and the stars too clear, and, worst of all, his homeland was only a hundred kilometres above their heads. The tacky flyers advertising cheap rides to Tara and the compact Ireland memorabilia stands wouldn't let him forget that. "I know it's hard to find time and clearance for us to visit the surface these days," continued Holly. "So I figured I'd bring some surface cheer down here. Just a little something to remind you of home."
Artemis smiled, touched. "I appreciate the gesture, Holly," he said, fingers alighting on her wrist to stay her hand. Her eyes followed the contact up to his face, "But you've forgotten one thing: when I'm with you, I am home."
At dinner, Artemis couldn't help commenting on the decorations. "It's practically the Irish embassy in here."
Holly shot Artemis a dirty look, forcefully stabbing a piece of faux beef with her fork. "Do you have any idea how hard it was to hang the garland along the ceiling?"
"With a ladder? Not hard at all, I would think."
"Yeah, you'd think that, wouldn't you? Well, I didn't use a ladder at first. I thought I could use the Hummingbirds."
Artemis paled. "Oh no. You didn't–"
"I spent two hours untangling green tinsel from the motor."
There was a pause as Holly allowed the weight of her sacrifices to sink in. She stabbed at another piece of 'beef'.
"And how was your day?"
"Better than yours, apparently," confessed Artemis, taking a bite of home-grown cabbage. "But not particularly productive. The museum gave me the runaround again, and I'm still not allowed into the LEP archives."
Artemis was deep into a months-long research project tracking the history and evolution of the LEP in an attempt to uncover the extent to which fairy activity played a part in human history. The problem was, the LEP weren't exactly the most transparent organisation under the world, and were refusing Artemis access to their archives.
Naturally, the LEP's digital archives were something Artemis had hacked and combed through when he was thirteen. What he was interested in now were their physical records and exhibits, things that couldn't be as easily accessed with simple computer know-how. There were rooms full of paper records that certain lazy centaurs hadn't gotten around to digitising, and a warehouse full of carefully preserved cases of old LEP equipment dating back to the bow-and-arrow days of law enforcement. Artemis was dying to take a look at the artefacts they had (though not if it meant actually dying– Artemis hadn't particularly enjoyed the six-month free trial). Even one single historical relic could inform so much.
"I don't suppose you've made any more headway on the clearance request?" he inquired. Artemis was hoping his association with a certain LEP commodore might help get him into the archives. Unfortunately, it was that very association, and her general recklessness for procedure, that made Commander Kelp, and the Council, wary of handing Holly the keys to the kingdom. Members of government, whether human or fairy, had a lot to hide.
"Well, as you can see, I've been a little busy," noted Holly. "The shamrock string lights don't hang themselves. You're welcome."
"I did say I appreciate the gesture, and I meant it," sighed Artemis, buttering a roll. Then a stray thought struck him. "Self-hanging string lights… Now there's an idea. But, I digress."
"You were in the middle of making fun of my decorations, dear."
"I was doing nothing of the sort," he insisted. "It's just that, I mean, the shamrock doormat, the shamrock lamp, the shamrock tablecloth, it's all just sort of…" Artemis motioned around the room with his knife.
There wasn't a single surface unplagued by St. Paddy's Day bibelots. Their modest lampshades had been disappeared in favour of fringed canopies that cast a slight green hue, striking against the usual white lighting. It fell in circular pools on the resin flooring, like oddly spaced streetlights amongst the velvet-and-glass curves of their fern-tinted furniture. When late afternoon slipped into early evening, though, the overhead fluorescent-white bulbs had clicked awake and diluted the colour into something more palatable. Their living room now had a quality more like a lightly edited Fae-cebook picture and less like the world's newest rainforest had swallowed their home.
Meanwhile, gold-pot-themed bunting (which held his attention an extra beat) criss-crossed the wall that bore their various accolades, its elliptical shadows cloaking the anhua vase that sat on a pedestal in the corner. It, too, was unspared, laid with a lace clover placemat.
He was almost afraid to leave this room for fear of what he'd find in the others. Would the plush rug in the library be replaced by a great, lolling shamrock mat? Would his Bunsen burner now spout a three-leafed flame? Were the gel cannons loaded with Lucky Charms? Maybe the fourth bedroom had been converted into a four-leaf-clover incubator. Artemis was silently grateful he hadn't been served green eggs and ham.
"Sort of what?" pressed Holly.
"Well, it's a lot," confessed Artemis. "I wasn't expecting the whole house to be green inside today, that's all." He set his knife down and replaced it with a fork, observing his green-tinted reflection in the tines.
"It's not the whole house," corrected Holly. "There's no decorations in Mulch's bathroom, I'll have you know."
The house had started out with two guest bathrooms. It now had one guest bathroom and one bathroom reserved for Mulch, and only Mulch. He was a mercifully infrequent houseguest.
"Understandable," chuckled Artemis, taking a bite of potatoes. "But still, the whole shamrock theme… It's not exactly an accurate representation of Irish culture. We don't spend all day picking and worshipping four-leaf clovers, you see."
Holly held her breath, an overstaying habit, waiting for the flinch or wince that used to follow the number. She smiled when it didn't come, and nodded slowly. "I see... So you're saying that stereotypes don't represent you."
"Exactly! I'm glad you understand." Artemis smiled back pleasantly, relieved that an argument wasn't in the cards after all.
"And so that stereotype about Irishmen taking gold from leprechauns, I suppose that's all rubbish too?"
Artemis dropped his fork. "Uh…"
Holly leaned across the table, getting right into Artemis's personal space. Her eyes gleamed, on the hunt. Her grin was all-knowing. "Not a hint of truth to the stories, you're saying?"
A daring thought lit up Artemis's eyes. "Now that you mention it," he whispered, "That old fairy tale is actually rather incomplete, to be honest."
Holly cocked her head. "Oh? And how so?"
"I didn't just get the gold," he explained, smug. "I got the leprechaun, too."
"Excuse you! You did not get me–" protested Holly, and then her point was forgotten, as Artemis closed the remaining gap between them with a kiss.
"Thank you for dinner, love. It was genuinely excellent," declared Artemis, finishing the last of his potatoes. He chose to ignore the shamrock design that had been uncovered on the plate's surface.
"It was alright," shrugged a modest Holly.
"Indeed it was," agreed Artemis. "Corned beef for St. Patrick's Day is somewhat more of an Americanism, but it was delectable nonetheless. The People grow excellent meat synthetics."
Holly paled. "Wait, what? I went online and Bugled holiday dishes for today and that's what came up! I'm sorry–"
"Don't worry about it," insisted Artemis. "Humans have countless misconceptions about fairy culture. It seems only fair for me to be on the opposite end from time to time."
Holly hid her mortified expression with a cough. After all those times she'd ranted to him about humans' insulting depictions of fairies in popular media!
"So, now what?" inquired Artemis, genuinely unaffected. "Anything else on the docket for the holiday celebration?"
Holly put the meal mishap behind her, resolved to do better next time, and rejoined the conversation. "Asking about what's next, eh? I guess that means you're all-in on St. Patrick's Day now?"
"I never said I wasn't. It's just… a new experience, that's all."
Holly tilted her head inquisitively, the light shifting on the surface of her hair. "Celebrating St. Patrick's Day is new to you? But you're Irish."
Artemis cleared his throat awkwardly. "Let's just say my family wasn't much for holidays when I was growing up."
"Oh… I'm so sorry." She looked at him with concern. "If this all is bringing up bad memories for you–"
"Nonsense." Artemis wiped the slate clean with a wave. "It's in the past." He reached across the table, taking Holly's hand. "Personally, I prefer to look to the future. You've done a wonderful thing here tonight. Thank you."
"Don't mention it." Holly was assuaged somewhat, but her heart still stung for Artemis' lost childhood. Maybe she could help cheer him up… "Now, as it happens, I do have one more holiday surprise."
Holly pushed all the dishes to one side of the table, and then leaned back in her chair to grab a smooth, large package from the mantle behind her. Artemis would have questioned his observational skills, except the parcel, with its green-on-green clover print, blended into the background with ease.
She set it down on the dinner table and motioned for him to open it. "It's sensitive," she said. "Be careful."
He poked it. The area his fingertip had recently vacated sank, then rose once again.
"Artemis. I said be careful."
She pulled it back towards her and slowly peeled away the first layer of wrapping, followed quickly by the actual packaging, which turned out wasn't packaging at all, or at least it was unlike anything Artemis had seen before. It slipped away with Holly's fingers to reveal a thick green fabric. More green, thought Artemis, convinced his cone cells were on the verge of violent self-extinction. How pleasant.
Holly was still taking her time with what looked to be some sort of garment. She shook it out, and, with an uncharacteristic flourish, laid it across the cleared surface of the table.
"You're welcome," she said smugly, settling back into her chair.
Artemis blinked at the set of clothes. A green blazer with a matching green waistcoat and knickerbockers rested on the table beside a little brown belt, two tiny buckled brown boots, and a collapsible green top-hat. There was a well-worn sheath with gold accents hanging from the belt, obviously meant for some sort of blade. A sturdy wooden shillelagh gleamed beside the set.
"Holly," he started, indignant. "Surely you don't expect me to wear this sartorial catastrophe? Aside from being an attack on all forms of fashion, it's eight sizes too small! Why would I be thankful, it's–"
Holly raised her eyebrows, her typical 'You're an idiot, Arty' expression.
"–it's a decommissioned LEP uniform, isn't it?"
"Bingo."
Artemis smiled, though he wasn't sure whether that was due to Holly's increasing use of human phrases or the fact that, after all these months, he had finally got his hands on this set.
"At long last," he breathed, his eyes sparkling with barely contained wonder, "I can analyse the fairy's history and development in a new way. The shifts in material manipulation and composition, which substances have fallen in and out of use, which initial ideas have remained and which have evolved and which have been abandoned entirely. The secrets of the origins of the elements that have come to form the modern LEP uniform lie before me." He raised his head to find Holly with her chin in her hand, affection tugging her lips into a gentle curve. "But first…"
He bent over the table to peck his wife's cheek. "Thank you."
She grinned. "It was nothing."
"No, really," he said, settling back into his seat. "Nothing I said to the Comman– Trouble would sway him. I thought that his insisting we be on first-name basis meant that I'd finally propitiated him, but still he refused."
"Maybe because you'd only been on a first-name basis for four hours when you asked him for archive access."
Artemis paused. "The point is," he continued, pointedly ignoring her point, "You have managed something that all my many efforts couldn't. I'm grateful, truly."
He placed his hand beside the material, careful not to touch it until he could retrieve his gloves. "And also curious. What did you say to convince him?"
Tilting her chair back, Holly ran her hand through her hair and laughed. "Oh, you know me and my persuasive skills. The fact that we're good friends helped; he couldn't refuse me."
Artemis observed her a little longer, and hid his smile behind his hand. "You didn't ask, did you?"
Holly froze, her chair mid-rock. "We're good friends. He won't mind."
"His minding is irrelevant. It's LEP property. Whenever I try to appropriate LEP property, their personnel don't react well."
"Well, I'm LEP personnel, borrowing LEP property. It's routine."
"Not if it's unapproved. I believe," he said, tapping his finger against his chin in mock-thought, "that this particular action is colloquially known as 'stealing'."
Holly's eyes narrowed at that, but she quickly relaxed into a nonchalant shrug. A little too quickly. "Fine. I'm sure the LEP will be glad to have its borrowed property back early, then."
She reached for the uniform, only to have it snatched away, gloves and all momentarily forgotten as Artemis scrambled to keep it with him.
"I'd prefer to keep it for the full loan period, actually," he said, the uniform in all its comical coriander glory clutched against his chest.
She threw her hands in the air. "Gods, I swear you only act like this to rile me up."
Artemis smiled, "Maybe I do. You're quite cute when you're irritated, you know, with that little wrinkle in your brow–"
"Call me that one more time and I will find an actual leprechaun costume your size, force you into it, and parade you down the streets tied to the Stick."
"Vicious," Artemis remarked.
"Irritated," Holly replied.
A hot mug of tea appeared beside Artemis' head, billows of steam clouding around and fogging up his loupe.
"Don't spill, you'll damage the fabric," he mumbled, half to himself.
"Gee, there goes my fun. Here I was, planning on spilling on purpose." Holly rolled her eyes and dragged a chair across the flooring, the piercing screech that accompanied it enough to make Artemis wince. She plopped herself down beside him and craned her neck towards the material, where Artemis' gloved hands pressed gently against the surface.
"What're you doing?" she asked, forcing her face under his arm like a curious chick. "Wait… that's not the uniform."
"No," he agreed, scratching his gloved nail against the underside of the packaging sheet. "There's a fascinating kind of preservative lining used here, with properties that suggest it could maintain a variety of products in close-to-original state for a significant period of time."
Holly gave him a flat, unimpressed glare. "I give you a millennia-old set of fairy clothing, one which is timed to today's date and is culturally significant to our police force, and you fixate on the Seal-Peel packaging?"
"Seal-Peel?" He repeated, slowly. "It's mass-produced?"
"Yes!"
Artemis sighed, deflated. "I thought I'd start on this first, since I'll need to acquire a mannequin before I can adequately examine the uniform itself. My mind is daunting in its brilliance–"
"Ah, modesty, your best quality."
"–But I can't be thorough until I can properly explore the functionality and fit of the uniform."
He looked down at Holly, awkwardly nestled in the crook of his left elbow. "If only I had a model."
"Yeah," Holly laughed nervously, and began to extricate herself from Artemis' arm. "Wouldn't that be nice?"
Artemis set his loupe down and used his newly free hand to keep her in place, smiling his pointy smile all the while.
"Don't even think about it, Mud Man," Holly said, abruptly changing tact. "Don't you dare–"
"I didn't say anything."
"No, but you were thinking it. I could almost see the wheels turning in that big head of yours. I'm not doing it." She eyed the jacket as if it had personally offended her. "It's too big, anyway. I'm not making a fool of myself so you can sit around being smug. And what happened to being afraid to damage it?"
Artemis shrugged. "I trust you. Just don't shield with it."
"Why would I need to shield?"
"No reason. It was just a thought."
Holly wasn't listening, more preoccupied with her rant. She threw her hands up, barely missing Artemis' nose. "Why am I even entertaining this discussion? It's a ridiculous costume, and I'm not going to do it. It wouldn't lay correctly even if I did; it's men's."
"I'd be happy to help you into it if the fitting's a concern."
"Oh, I don't doubt that," Holly muttered under her breath. Louder, she said, "It's not happening."
Artemis adopted his 'my idea is objectively a good one and here's why you should want to go along with it too' tone of voice. A tone of voice Holly preferred to call shamelessly manipulative. "You wished to bring some Irish cheer to our house, right? To make me feel at home? Well, I might point out that modelling as a traditional leprechaun would go a long way in accomplishing that goal."
Holly crossed her arms, well-practised in resisting Artemis' shameless manipulations. "No way. There's a lot you can learn about the uniform without a mannequin or a model. You don't need me."
Artemis' smile softened, "I always need you, Holly."
She melted for a moment in spite of herself, decidedly more responsive to pretty words when they came from her husband, but she stiffened just as quickly. "You're buttering me up. Just like your mashed potatoes."
"I'm not," he said, and removed his arm from around her as if to emphasise this, sighing. "Oh well. It was worth a try, but I could never make you do anything you didn't want to."
Holly stood, affectionately bumping his side with her shoulder, and made her way around his chair, "Damn right."
She started towards the door, then, reconsidering, swiftly pinched the collection from the table and darted out.
"You better not laugh," insisted Holly from the hall, around the corner.
Artemis leaned forward in his chair, trying to sneak a peek, but all he could see was the tip of her walking stick. "You know it's difficult to prevent a natural physiological reaction, Holly," he said casually, slipping off his gloves.
"Promise you won't laugh, Artemis, or no fashion show!"
"Alright, I promise."
She needn't have worried. Upon Holly's hesitant entry into the room, Artemis' only reaction was, "Wow."
Holly stamped her foot. "See? I look ludicrous." She lifted her arms, the sleeves drooping sullenly in response, "Like an over-eager Mud Child on Halloween. Look at me, and tell me I'm wrong."
He did. The uniform was slightly oversized, the jacket sagging around Holly's shoulders like limp lettuce. She managed to pull it off, though, having tucked a crisp white shirt into the trousers and pinched the waistcoat in around the dip of her waist, so they followed the line of her soldier-straight shoulders to lay silhouetted against the wide lime expanse of the blazer.
"You're wrong," Artemis said, with an air of pleased complacence. This was not an unusual occurrence.
"Artemis, look." Holly fidgeted with the gold-buckled belt. "The pants are baggy, the blazer is the wrong shape, and the hat is so last millennium."
"Trust me, I'm looking. It may not be as sleek as your usual suit, but it has its own sort of charm. I love the way the hat rests on your ears, actually. All in all, you look absolutely ado–"
Holly's eyes sizzled with the intensity of buzz batons. She adjusted the shillelagh in her hands, holding it threateningly.
"–Dapper. You look positively dapper, is what I was going to say. Comely, even. The shillelagh really completes the look." He peered at the stick, "Now that I think about it, that must be the ancestor of the modern buzz baton."
The buzz batons in Holly's eyes receded, and her expression turned to disgust as she examined the stick. "Can you believe they used to chop down trees to carve these things? The LEP ought to be ashamed of themselves."
"I'm sure they are. But really, Holly, this whole ensemble is quite stylish on you."
Holly sighed, adjusting the top hat so it sat further back, and a stray tuft of hair poked out. "If you say so."
"Wonderful, so you agree." A camera appeared in Artemis' hands.
"Where'd you get that from?" Holly shrieked, leaping behind a recently potted clover patch, which provided about as much protection as an umbrella in a hurricane.
Artemis squinted into the screen and levelled the lens at her, entirely unfazed. "That is wholly irrelevant. Now, smile."
Immediately, Holly frowned. "No! This is blackmail, I refuse t–" she cut herself off and retreated further behind her defence of choice as Artemis crept closer. "I'll shield!" she threatened.
"I doubt it." Artemis paused to engage in one of his favourite activities, that being lecturing. "As you well know, shielding would decimate the fabric. It hails from a time before LEP uniforms were integrated with fairy shields, hence the high number of leprechaun sightings back in the day. You'll be needing to return the uniform intact, and therefore can't afford to shield."
"Watch me," Holly growled.
Artemis called her bluff, once again focusing his camera on the elf as he moved around her cover for a better shot. "A challenging demand if you're shielded, love. It wouldn't do you any good, though. This camera's frame-rate is quite exemplary, if I do say so myself."
"One step further, Arty, and you're sleeping on the sofa for the rest of the week. The fairy one."
He relented, stepping back and motioning for her to free herself from the corner as he lowered the camera. "Fine, fine. But I fail to see the issue. You have a gallery of materials which you frequently exploit at the cost of my dignity. Why am I denied the same?"
"Because," Holly said, hovering behind a chair (just in case). "You with luminescent gel in your hair is funny. You with your shirt on inside-out is funny. You cocooned in a dwarf spit shell because you wouldn't stop goading Mulch is fu– no, actually, that one was hilarious. This, on the other hand," she shifted to show off her green ensemble, "is embarrassing, especially for a decorated officer of the law."
"But your officers of the law once wore that uniform proudly, did they not?"
Holly stood up straight, turning up her nose and crossing her arms indignantly. "Well, not this officer–"
A muted click followed by a triumphant, "Aha!" stopped her short.
"Oh Holly, Holly, Holly," Artemis tutted, his strut imbued with fresh confidence. He studied the screen and smiled appreciatively at his prized photograph. "The dangers of distraction on the field."
"Look at you," he continued, turning the screen to face her. "You look so loveable. Adorable, even. Not to adulate, but one might even be so inclined as to call you…" he allowed a pause for dramatic effect, "...cute."
Artemis finally took note of Holly's disposition, which was reminiscent of a lioness going in for the kill, and began slowly backing further into the living room. "Uh, Holly? You know, I didn't really mean–"
She was on him before he could blink. "Give… me… that!" shouted Holly, tossing the shillelagh aside and clambering up Artemis' torso like a climbing frame.
Artemis struggled to hold her off as he held the camera high above his head, which was not altogether very high for human standards, but was nothing to sneeze at down amongst the People. "Oof! Gedoffme!"
He peddled back, stumbling with his usual grace into a rack of ornaments that took up the corner shelves. They rattled irritably in their cases, as if chastising the pair's antics. The admonishment was ignored by both.
Holly was wrapped around his upper torso, struggling to reach across Artemis' face to grab the camera in his outstretched arm. "You think this is funny, Mud?!"
"Indeed I do! It's certainly funnier than being trapped in dwarf saliva– Aah!"
Artemis, not being of sure footing on the best of days, had tripped backwards over his own shoes in his attempt to evade the crazy girly commodore. The geometric carpet provided practically no purchase and the two of them landed on the sofa, where Holly finally managed to pry the offending item from Artemis' grasp.
"Ha!" she cried triumphantly.
Artemis lay on the sofa, out of breath. And as Holly orientated the device, he couldn't help continuing to admire how fiercely adorable his wife looked in the old-timey leprechaun uniform, despite her self-consciousness.
Which was why it was rather a big shock when Holly, upon studying the photo for a few moments, said, "Huh. I don't look too bad in this."
Artemis huffed, "That's what I've been trying to tell you! Green is your colour, after all."
"I've never been a model before," remarked Holly. Artemis was circling her, taking note of how the seams on the green blazer were stitched. "Other than being a model citizen," she amended.
"Of course," agreed Artemis, inspecting her shoulder. "Fairy youths can only dream of being as willfully destructive of property as you are."
"Hey, I haven't burst a seam on this thing yet," pouted Holly. "That's something."
"That might be owed more to the craftsmanship, actually. I believe this is gold thread woven into the material."
Holly craned her neck so she could see her shoulder. "Really? No wonder you people were always trying to capture us." She winked up at Artemis. "And succeeding."
"Uh-huh," murmured Artemis, who was beginning to pat Holly down.
"Hey!" swatted Holly. "No being handsy when I'm in borrowed clothes. There'll be time for that later."
Artemis blushed as he backed away. "I was searching for hidden functions or devices in the uniform, actually."
"Oh. Did you find any?"
"I didn't get very far."
"Right. Well, carry on."
Artemis knelt down to tentatively feel around the lining of the blazer, but he found nothing hidden. He looked a little disappointed.
Holly removed her top-hat. "Maybe in here," she suggested, feeling around the brim, before sticking her hand inside. "Whoa! There's a rabbit in here!" she cried.
Artemis' eyes widened. "Really?"
"No."
Artemis' eyes dropped. "Oh."
"Sorry," grinned Holly. "It was on my mind. N°1's been working on rediscovering the lost art."
"The lost art of… pulling rabbits out of hats?"
"Yeah. Something about quantum tunnels. You'd love it." Holly reached back inside. "But in our case, sadly there's nothing in here but dust and– Wait a spell, what's this?"
Artemis wasn't fooled this time. "Don't tell me: a dove up your sleeve?"
"No, I actually think there's some kind of wind-up mechanism in the hat," insisted Holly, feeling around. "Should I turn it?"
"Sure," retorted Artemis drily. "Maybe there's a trick deck of cards in there, too."
"Ye of little faith," scolded Holly, turning the tiny crank which she had, in fact, discovered. After a dozen rotations, the top of the hat popped open, and a rainbow of light appeared on the ceiling.
"Oh!" exclaimed Artemis. "It's projecting a rainbow!"
Holly scratched her chin, unimpressed. "Sure is," she agreed.
Holly pointed the rainbow of light around the room. It hit the edge of their glass coffee table and lit it up in an explosion of colour, the beam scattering at the curved Reuleaux edge to line the surface with dazzling strips of pigmentation. Other planes of the room were similarly affected, various vases and glass trinkets refracting the spectrum.
"Fancy light show, but that's about it." Holly eyed the hat. "I guess this belonged to a physics professor or something. Hey, maybe there's a star chart tucked away somewhere too."
Artemis hopped to his feet, animated. "No, don't you see? It's so obvious in hindsight, I don't know why I didn't see it!"
"Lovely. Can Captain Obvious spare a moment to fill us mere mortals in on the joke?"
"Sorry, old habit. Think about leprechauns," explained Artemis. "The human folklore around them. Rainbows always ostensibly led to gold, remember? Well, this hat contains a light projector capable of throwing rainbows up into the sky."
Holly was getting it now. "Okay, I see the connection, but why would a member of the LEPrecon intentionally broadcast his location into the sky?"
"It must've been an S.O.S.," reasoned Artemis. "To alert other leprechauns. By the time any nearby humans got to the 'end of the rainbow', he'd have been rescued."
"Huh," said Holly. "Tricky."
"Did you not learn about any of this at the academy?" inquired Artemis.
"They might've taught it, but that doesn't mean I was listening at the time."
"Of course," chuckled Artemis. "The size of one's ears has no bearing on her desire to listen, after all."
"Say again?"
The evening was finally winding down after a session of reluctant modelling, with Holly leaning snugly against her husband on the futon (the human one). He softly stroked her arm under the guise of "studying the fabric," which was about as convincing as a dwarf saying he was breaking into a bank to test the security.
Abruptly, the synthetic knit disappeared from under his thumb. Artemis jerked out of a sleepy lull to follow the smudge of his wife as she dashed back into the kitchen.
"I thought you said the uniform was the last of your surprises?" Artemis asked as Holly reappeared, two glasses clasped in one hand and a large bottle with a plain label held in the other.
"Well," she said unabashedly, as she spread the items on the coffee table and began tipping the drink into the glasses, "I lied." She handed a glass to Artemis.
Artemis sniffed the drink, but couldn't detect anything. "Oh? The great Commodore Holly Short, stooping to falsehoods and deception? Careful, I might yet become the 'better half'."
Holly rolled her eyes good-naturedly, "When centaurs fly."
Artemis paused with the rim of the glass halfway to his lips. "Yet another intriguing venture," he mused, setting the flute back on the table, the muted clink of glass-on-glass accompanying a contemplative hum. "I might talk to Foaly about that."
"Ohhh no," warned Holly, wagging her finger threateningly. "I've always put up with your mad-science ventures, but even I have my limits. If I ever walk into the Ops Booth to find Foaly flapping around like a pegasus, I'm officially labelling you a disturber of the peace and kicking you out of Haven."
Artemis tapped the ring on his finger thoughtfully. "I'm afraid you've already promised to keep me in sickness and in health."
"True," chuckled Holly. She waved the fingers on her left hand, where a matching claddagh ring rested comfortably against her knuckle. "I know what I signed up for when I accepted this."
She moved onto busying herself with the drink, taking a swig straight from the bottle. Artemis slipped it from her fingers, alarmed. "It's half eight in the evening, Holly. Surely spirits can wait until a more sensible hour?"
Holly laughed and filched it right back. "It's not alcohol, Artemis." She squinted at the label, suddenly terrified she'd unwittingly forfeited her magic. "No, it's 'Two-Quid Liquid' Irish Spring Water."
She took another hearty draught in relief.
"Ah," commented Artemis. "Good to know there won't be another leprechaun throwing up in here, then."
Holly furrowed her brow. "Another?"
Artemis gestured vaguely to the living room walls. "Have you seen the decorations in here? It's the only plausible explanation."
She hit him with a shamrock cushion. "Take it back, or no Irish spring water for you!"
"Fine, I take it back. What did you say the water brand was called again?"
Holly shoved the bottle in his face, twisting it so the label was clearly visible.
Artemis read the sticker. "Two-Quid Liquid. How classy." He wrinkled his nose a touch.
"It is, isn't it?" she said, without a trace of irony. She shook the bottle lightly, enraptured by the clear bubbles zipping to the surface, "It's nice stuff. Way better than the processed Haven supply."
Artemis inspected Holly's face, searching for any trace of her trademark sarcasm. In its apparent absence, Artemis stepped up. "Two quid, wow. You really spared no expense here."
Holly shrugged. "It was more than I'd usually pay, especially with import tax and shipping added on, but I wanted to do something special for the occasion. Catchy brand name, isn't it?"
"Holly…" began Artemis, as gently as he could. "Do you, er, know what a quid is?"
She seemed to sense something in his tone, and dragged her gaze from the bottle to investigate it. After a moment, she shifted against a cushion, "Well, yes. Of course I do."
Holly bristled at his raised eyebrow. "Okay, no. Isn't it another word for 'ingot'?"
"Not quite," explained Artemis. "Do you know that vending machine in Police Plaza's lobby where you get your smoothies, and where the irksome little Kelp gets his snack bars?"
Holly wondered, briefly, which of the two Kelp brothers Artemis considered little.
"Yeah, I know it…"
"Just about everything in there is worth more than two quid."
Holly's face fell. "Oh… But the merchant said…"
"I appreciate the thought, dear, but I'm afraid you've been swindled. This brand is barely a step above tap water." Artemis' tone and turned-up nose was a good measure of just what his opinion on tap water was.
Holly's face, meanwhile, had kept right on falling. The edges of her lips curled southward in the beginnings of a scowl. "Why, that no-good, stinkworm-oil peddling thief! I ought to go back there and arrest that vendor where he stands."
Artemis stilled her hand, which was now curled into a fist. "No need for that," he chuckled. "Luxury or not, this is still water from my homeland, and I'm grateful for it." As if to emphasise his point, he picked his glass from its perch on the coffee table and took a small sip.
"You don't have to drink it, you know. It's barely a step above tap water, like you said."
"That it may be," he said, stifling a grimace. It was Irish spring water, undoubtedly, but his refined palate made it abundantly clear to him that it wasn't the desirable sort. "But my wife has gone to great lengths to acquire it, and I refuse to see her efforts wasted."
"I'd be more worried about our money going to waste than the effort," laughed Holly.
"Don't worry, we have plenty of it," said Artemis with a wave. "May I ask what you spent on this, exactly?"
"I don't remember the exact figure. Let's just say it was a lot," she huffed.
"That's perfectly alright. As I said, we have plenty. I'm curious about the import market down here, though. Do you have the receipt?"
"The guy didn't give me one." Holly frowned. "Now that I think about it, I don't even know if he was selling it legally."
Artemis gasped. "You mean to say you may have been acting outside the law? Why, that's reprehensible, Holly. Twice in one day, no less."
She moodily punched his shoulder at that, but didn't hurt him. She never did. "Oh, stuff it."
"An officer of the LEP purchasing contraband human water?" Artemis wagged his finger. "Tsk, tsk. It's a good thing I love you too much to let your rampant criminal activity drive us apart."
Holly snuggled in close, perhaps to hide her embarrassment. And an eye roll. "Thanks, Arty."
"Don't mention it. And if the LEP come after you for your crimes, we always have the DOME. I'm well-practised in repelling their sieges, after all."
They both chuckled at the imagery, one account out of their continuing history, and settled into silence. In the old days, Holly was unrepentant when she ignored the rulebook. These days, though, she really was trying to be a model career officer. Taking a command position meant a lot of fine fairies' lives now depended on her showing them good sense.
Eventually, Holly felt her eyelids start to droop. "I'm getting kinda tired. I guess all that rampant criminal activity took more out of me than I thought."
Artemis smiled. "Being a fashion model can take it out of a person too, so I hear."
"Oh, yeah, that was not how I expected to spend my time today, I'll have you know. Or any day, for that matter," lamented Holly. "But I can't deny I ended up looking not irredeemably awful."
"In a way, it's a pity you feel that way," sighed Artemis, as if in mourning. "I can't exactly blackmail you with that photograph now that you've embraced the look."
"Oh no, my poor Arty, how will you ever recover?"
"Don't worry, I'm sure I'll think of something."
"You always do," agreed Holly, stifling a yawn and shifting to get more comfortable under his arm. "I'm probably tired from being on my feet cooking all afternoon, now that I think about it," she said, thinking aloud.
Artemis silently agreed with a nod, and then took another drink of the maybe-contraband, not-fancy water. It wasn't so bad. There were definitely worse options out there. At least it wasn't that H-2-OMG brand, which was named as such probably because "OMG" was what people said as they spat it out. Artemis had been forced to endure many such horrors of sustenance on some of his globe-trotting jaunts over the years, not to mention the recycled… stuff on his space jaunt.
Holly pushed herself further against his body, settling after a bout of squirming. The large salmon and ochre settee that took up the entire back wall of their living room was the fanciest thing she'd ever owned, and so cosily ancient that it sank and sagged with their weight like the face of a gnome in the back half of their life. She loved it.
The neck of the bottle hung from her fingers, her nails clicking against the plastic in a constant, extended rhythm. It dipped and waned, fading into the night as sleep wrapped her up in its embrace. Soon, all was silent. Even the dwarf demolition crew down the street had gone home for the day.
Artemis dropped his head against Holly's bed of hair, her hat having been discarded shortly after they'd folded themselves into the sofa. The uniform was crumpled in the places where Holly's limbs were twisted around him, the sheath on the belt now bunched and warped. The archivists would turn him into their own brand of mash when they saw the state of the thing, he knew, but he couldn't help his complete lack of care in the moment. She looked too comfortable for him to mind. And cute. Very, very cute.
"I can hear you, you know," she whispered.
Artemis braced himself. Perhaps he needn't have worried about archivists at all.
"You can be pretty adorable yourself."
And with that gentle blow, she left him in the world of the wakeful.
The End
Authors Note:
The premise here was largely based on a few parts in the first book that mention that the classic leprechaun outfit was the LEP uniform hundreds of years ago. Holly thinks back to the days of "buckled shoes and knickerbockers" at one point, and Root says at another point, "I did my basic training in Ireland. Back in the top hat and shillelagh days."
JasonBall34 here: Co-writing this has been one of the highlights of my A/H career. And it was truly a co-production! It's not simply two halves written by different people that got duct-taped together in the middle. We tossed all sorts of scenes and ideas and a myriad of edits and improvements back and forth, making the entire thing truly a blend from start to finish. Eoin Colfer has said that with the books he collaborates with other authors on, he feels that he's able to be publicly proud of those books more than his solo books because he's promoting others' work instead of just his own (which as an Irishman he's reluctant to do). I am not an Irishman, but I feel the same way! It was a joy to be writing partners with this talented author, all of whose fics I heartily recommend you check out! Again, they're on Ao3 under "theFowlestofthemall."
theFowlestofthemall: The above does a pretty good job of encompassing my thoughts on this, but I'll throw in a couple more words to make a second author's note worthwhile. It was a pleasure to work on this alongside a writer whose work I absolutely adore (and wholeheartedly recommend! I'd like to redirect anyone who was on their way to check out my stuff to make better use of their time and read everything Jason's released. And then do it again.) This fic really is a thorough amalgamation of our writing styles, and it was wonderful watching the bare skeleton of a plot gain some muscle as we threw our ideas and humour at a page in an effort to get past the 2k-word mark (for the numerically challenged out there– we succeeded!). Thank you for taking the time to read our elaborate 8k-word ploy to promote each other's work, disguised as a holiday fic.
We hope you enjoyed the piece! If you did (or even if you didn't), leaving a comment would make our collective day here. Happy St. Patrick's Day!
