So, I've upped the rating, just in case. AND THIS CHAPTER IS WHY. It's rated M for a reason, folks! And no, it's not for excessive violence.

Also, sorry if they get a bit soppy in the middle there, and sorry for the ending, it's just... I've always wanted to do that.

And, of course, heaps of thanks to ilex-ferox. My go-to person for all bad biblical puns, among other things.

Chapter Fifteen: Breathing Underwater and Other Talents of the Human Body

'I... have no idea what I'm doing,' he admits.

'No, really? I hadn't realised,' she teases, looking up from his shirt buttons.

He pulls away. 'There's no need to be insulting.'

She pulls him back to her. 'I didn't mean it like that. I'm sorry.'

'I just.... I am good at nearly everything. Being incapable frustrates me,' his forehead creases and he purses his lips. 'I don't like not knowing.'

She brushes her fingers along his throat, thinking. Suddenly she smiles. Pushing him away, she stands up, unsteady on the mattress. She tugs her dress over her head and spreads her arms out. His eyes follow the movements of her hands, pupils dilating.

'Then know me,' she says.

'God, Holly, what's wrong with you?' Juliet puts a hand on Holly's jiggling knee. 'You've been twitching all day, what've I missed? Did someone try to run you over when you were out biking or something?'

'Yes. I mean - What? Oh. No. ' Holly's thoughts are clearly elsewhere.

Juliet sighs. 'Then what's the matter?' She speaks slowly, as though to a very small, and very dim, child.

'Nothing. Nothing's the matter with me, I'm fine.' At odds with her words, Holly stands and begins pacing the room.

'Right.' Rolling her eyes, the blonde picks up her paper again. 'Well, when you feel like sharing, let me know.'

Holly, however, doesn't feel like sharing. She has butterflies like she hasn't had since the last time she was turned back into a teenager.

Frond Frond Frond Frond Frond.

Her delicate fingers drag at the skin of her cheeks, I'm not ready, I'm not - oh Frond, I must have been crazy. He's twenty. Seventeen.

Oh Frond Oh Frond Oh Frond.

She pauses for a moment, staring absently through the sliding doors.

I wish I had stayed. For d'Arvit's sake, why isn't it tomorrow yet? No, wait, I mean - oh Frond.

Needless to say, Thursday passes very slowly for Holly.

'Okay, now, make sure you don't leave any candles burning or taps running when you leave the house. And – Oh God, I can't leave you like this; you'll burn the flat down.' Juliet shakes her head at the still jittery Holly.

The woman in question takes a deep breath. 'Don't worry about me. A few more hours and I'll be fine. You go enjoy yourself. I'm fine.'

'I feel like you're one of those people who insist things are fine when, in reality, the sky's about to fall.'

'The sky isn't falling. And I won't burn the flat down. Now go, before I kick you out. Arthur's waiting!' Holly shoves the other girl towards the door.

'Okay, alright, going! But tell Artemis, when he comes by, that there's something for him in the cabinet above the bathroom sink.'

Before Holly can protest that he isn't expected when he obviously is, Juliet disappears through the door.

Curious, she goes into the bathroom and pulls back the mirror to peer into the cabinet behind. Sitting on the vacant top shelf (she has to stand on tip toes to see them) is a stack of square, coloured plastic packets.

'Hilarious, Juliet,' Holly mutters, rolling her eyes, but leaves the condoms where they are.

Returning to the living room, she stands with her hands on her hips and tries to think about something other than Artemis, dinner, or square, coloured plastic packets . She decides cleaning is a good place to start. Rolling up her sleeves, she gets to work.

The table is wiped down, the couch is brushed off and its cushions plumped. The floors are swept. Dishes are washed, the stove is scrubbed. Her laundry is jammed into its basket and hidden in the closet. Books are straightened, dead flowers put in the compost bin and their wine bottle vase in the recycling. Plants are watered and apologized to for having been left so long unattended. Last, but certainly not least, the garbage and recycling is bagged up.

Grumbling to herself, Holly hauls the garbage down to the underground parking. Of course they bought a flat on the top floor. Of course the wheelie-bins are underground. Of course she is too stubborn to take the lift.

Having successfully thrown her garbage into the black wheelie-bin and her dry recycling into the green one (humans make garbage sorting way more complicated than it needs to be), which is always a tricky manoeuvre involving exactly the right angle of release and precisely enough leverage (too much sends it behind the wheelie-bin; nightmare!), Holly wipes her hands on her jeans, feeling very self-satisfied. She checks her watch. Five o'clock. Perfect. Start dinner. Shower. Change. She can do this. Everything is under control.

Oh Frond.

Artemis watches Holly wash their bowls, holding his tea towel at the ready. She has long since given up trying to get him to wash anything; she swears he manages to make the dishes even dirtier. She almost suspects him of doing it on purpose. But damned if she is going to let him get out of doing any work at all, so drying it is. He can't make things wetter, after all.

Artemis, meanwhile, shakes his head at her - in his eyes - perverse perseverance with poverty.

'I'm going to Vancouver for a conference on nuclear physics in the first week of November,' he remarks suddenly. 'Can you come?'

'If someone was going to kill you at a nuclear physics conference, what would they do?' Holly muses, mostly to herself. 'Tie you to a chair and spout equations at you 'til you died of boredom?'

'My sides split at your incredible wit.'

'Not surprising - breathing is about the only exercise they get. Laughing must really do them in.'

He looks up at the ceiling as if asking for patience. 'Will you come, Holly?'

'Artemis, seriously now, do you really think there's any danger?'

'You know perfectly well that's not why I'm asking you to come.'

Holly purses her lips.

'Just out of curiosity, Holly, how long are we going to play this game? I would have thought we were done with it now, after... well, you seemed relatively decided. And yet today we're back where we started.'

She looks down at her hands in the soapy water. The autumn sun is setting and the flat grows dark as neither of them has bothered to turn on the lights. Slowly, she takes her hands out of the water and dries them on the tea towel he's holding.

A sudden thought strikes Artemis and he asks, 'Are you worried about the consequences should we find a cure?'

She laughs a little sadly. But, underneath, her expression is clear and calm. 'Artemis, there is no cure for me. And you know what? I don't really mind.'

This is not the answer he had been expecting.

'It took me a long time to realise but even early on, like with Spiro, when I was with you I didn't miss being anywhere else. I... I didn't think about anything except what we were doing. I mean, admittedly that's because usually we were a hair's breath away from getting killed, but hey. Even now though, just doing little, everyday things... they don't seem quite so every day. It turns out I was right, back in that gorilla's cage; I can do without a lot of things, Artemis Fowl, but not you. No matter what you are, or what you do. Talk about irony.'

In the deepening night she can see his eyes, their eyes, widen.

'Thanks for waiting,' she continues, 'until I realised that.'

'You didn't really give me a choice,' he points out.

'You could have found a way, I'm sure.'

He chuckles. 'I did - it was waiting. And being very, very good. Well, usually,' he concedes.

She blinks at him. 'Is that what you were up to? All those months? Amsterdam? That time you were so cut up - when you first kissed me? "Oh, Holly, I'm so sorry"?' she misquotes. 'I thought that was fishy.'

He shrugs, fighting down his smirk. 'Sorry.'

She takes his head in her hands and lowers his mouth to hers. 'No, you're not,' she says, kissing him.

Leaning his forehead on hers, he smiles at her through the gloom. He has loved her for so long that sometimes he forgets that he does; like breathing, it has become a reflex, something necessary for survival. And then, at other times, he remembers with piercing clarity.

'Though, I still wish you would and come live at the Manor,' he says.

'And I am still going to refuse.'

'Holly-'

'No, Artemis.'

'Never?'

'One day. Maybe.'

'Why?'

Holly opens her mouth to explain, yet again, but finds all of her perfectly logical reasons have suddenly escaped her. 'I... can't quite remember,' she admits.

'Oh yes?' he asks, smug.

'Why did you have bring that up now, of all times, Artemis?' she huffs.

'Because I have just remembered, yet again, how much I dislike you living so far away.'

She laughs, kissing him again: his mouth, his eyes, his forehead.

'But who will keep Juliet company if I leave?' she asks, winding her arms around him.

'I'm finding that I really could not care less,' he says, already half-drunk from how close she is.

She laughs, 'Such a selfish child.'

'Old habits die hard.'

Very true, she reflects. Even now we can't stop goading each other.

But, bickering or not, eventually they make their way to her bed. And, as long as they get there in the end, who's to complain about methodology?

Holly leans on the balcony railing, watching the sun rise over the distant bay. She bends down, resting her chin on her crossed arms.

There are clouds hanging low in the sky, moving ever closer through the cold air. She hopes the storm holds off until the sunrise is finished.

But the rain is impatient. Wind scuttles across the bare skin of her arms, pushing through her hair. She shivers as the first raindrops splatter along her back. The sunlight is swallowed by the clotted, dark clouds. Holly shakes water out of her hair and goes back inside.

The sliding doors snick shut just as the rain begins in earnest. Grey light fills the darkened living room as water hammers down on the glass of the doors and windows. The shadow of raindrops on glass patterns the opposite wall with strands of seaweed.

Through this aquatic world, Holly crosses slowly back to her bedroom, her bare feet leaving damp footprints on the wooden floor. Having only one window, her bedroom is even darker than the living room and she moves through it cautiously. Reaching the bed, she crawls carefully over the lumpy duvet and sinks back into the warmth.

'Get your feet away from me, they're freezing. And your shirt is damp,' comes a voice from under the bedding.

Laughing, she pulls her shirt off, winding herself into his thin limbs which, unlike his mind, are ill-made for trapping and holding.

'What possessed you to go out at such an hour - and in the rain of all things?'

'It wasn't raining when I went out. Besides, the sunrise is so pretty from the balcony,' she yawns into his collar bone.

Artemis rolls his eyes but doesn't argue.

The downpour continues all weekend. The walls drip perpetually with the shadow of falling rain and the dim light takes on a watery quality, as though it is a tangible thing to be waded through. So high above the sodden city, they feel utterly separate from the outside; they are like a world inside an old diving bell, looking down into the ocean flowing below them from their bobbing glass ball.

Their movements become languid and uncharacteristically graceful; they pass through the darkened rooms with ease, though the lights are never once turned on. Conversations are murmured and slow and, for the first time in their lives, never dissolve into fire and spite. They eat fruit and tinned rice pudding because that's all they have. Artemis doesn't complain; he barely notices what he puts in his mouth.

Juliet's Calla lilies bloom out of season and the only music they play is Debussy and O'Halloran. The enormous couch will forever have a dip in its middle after this weekend. Clothes, if attempted, are taken off again before they're even fully put on. He tries to make her enjoy Keats and she tries to make him enjoy gnome wrestling and, sooner rather than later, they give up on both of these and enjoy each other instead.

In the grey half-light, Artemis quickly becomes as well-versed in Holly's body as he is in most other, less concrete, subjects. He has an excellent teacher, after all. And, for perhaps the first time in his life, he is eager to please without any hidden agenda or self-serving ambition. Holly enjoys the uniqueness of that perhaps more than anything else. Perhaps.

Two days seem to stretch into eternity. Holly and Artemis become almost aquatic themselves. Stretching their capacity to go without oxygen, they rock in the pull of an invisible current, slipping in and out of the rain's shadows like fish flickering in and out of the waves.

Lying in bed, Holly combs her fingers through his black hair – it's grown tangled in the past few days. Soft and thick, she can bury her hands in it, though it's not much longer than her own. She chuckles. He looks up at her, feeling her laughter, resting his chin below her collarbone.

'Yes?' he asks, eyebrows raised.

She smiles. 'I was thinking about your long hair, when we went back to rescue Jayjay, and how silly you looked. And about that awful hair gel that you wore when we first met, and how silly you looked.'

'I had no idea my hair was such a continuing source of hilarity.'

'If you wear it slicked back with half a jar of pomade you must realise you're going to be ridiculed.' Her hands slide from his hair to his back and then up again, travelling along his spine.

'I was young,' he sighs, 'and naive. I didn't know any better.'

'Oh yes,' she tugs his face towards hers, 'you were terribly naive.'

His lips twitch as he kisses her. 'Everyone is badly dressed in their youth, even genii. We simply do it with more panache. And my hair during the Jayjay escapade was hardly my own fault. As I recall, your own at the time left something to be desired.'

Holly remembers her silver wig and laughs. 'And I always thought I looked so good in silver,' she sighs in mock-dismay.

'Oh, to be sure,' his mouth lingers on her neck before slipping back down along her collar bone, 'but you look better out of it.'

She chuckles deep in her stomach, stretching her arms above her head. 'What a charmer you are today, Artemis.' Then she snorts. 'I look terrible in silver. Much be-' she shivers, breathing in sharply through her mouth, '-tter in gold,' she finishes a moment later on her exhale.

'Mm,' he replies from somewhere near her left hipbone. 'How fortunate that I have so much of it.'

She can feel his smirk against her skin and smacks him lightly, but not hard enough to dislodge him.

Minerva visits Butler.

'Come to clobber a feeble old man again, have you?' he asks her as he pours them tea.

She laughs; a bright, pretty bell-chime. 'No, I'm not totally heartless. I wanted to hear a story.'

'A story?' Butler raises an eyebrow. 'I can fetch the twins' nanny if you want - I'm not much of a storyteller.'

'No, I want a particular story,' Minerva shakes her head. Her blond curls glint, tumbling around a perfect heart of a face. She is stunning in the warm lamp-light of the study. 'I want to know how Holly and Artemis met.'

Butler looks sceptical. 'How they met? I told you that long ago - he kidnapped her.'

'I know,' she dimples at him over her tea cup and he remembers her doing so in all the days that she had kept him company in the firelight of that tiny, sea-salty cottage. All those years she'd been bright and hopeful and kept him from crumbling to pieces. Wittingly or unwittingly, there is very little he will not share with Minerva. 'But I want to hear the whole story.' She shrugs. 'I'm curious how Artemis' mind works, I suppose. Besides, from the little you told me, it sounded as though it would make a wonderful novel. And you know how much I love fiction.'

Butler smiles. Such a beautiful girl, so brilliant and young, but who would nevertheless come all the way to Ireland simply to console and converse with a lonely old man. Day after day, month after month, year after year. He was grateful to her, at first. As time went by he grew to care for her, to respect her. In some strange way, he had felt that she linked him to Artemis, wherever the boy was.

Lonely, stripped of his purpose, she had been his sole comfort. She had taken care of him when, for the first time in his life, he had needed care. He owes her more than he can repay from those three years, from his life's only moment of weakness. In the end, without any conscious acknowledgement of it, he grew to love with her, so beautiful, brilliant and young. His other child, his only daughter. 'Yes, I know how much you love fiction,' he says. 'But this isn't fiction, this is real.'

Minerva shrugs. 'It may as well be fiction though, really. It will only ever happen once, after all. Besides: action, adventure, revenge, desire, redemption, romance. It has all the makings of an excellent story.'

He laughs. 'Alright, alright, I'll tell you. But I won't do it justice. You'll have to ask Artemis to really get all the details.'

'But I don't want Artemis,' Minerva lies, the lamplight warming her pale skin, 'I'm asking you.'

What man could refuse?

The first thing Juliet does when she gets back is turn all the lights on. 'Hello? Anyone home? Holly, you there? God, is it dark in here or what? Holly? Ho- Artemis!' Juliet stares across the living room at the boy in Holly's bedroom doorway. He is standing just out of reach of the glaring electric light. Looking at him - eerily pale in the silty shadows of Holly's room, his clothes wrinkled, his hair disappearing into the dark behind him, those unnatural eyes boring into hers -Juliet shivers suddenly.

'Holly's asleep,' he says, his words low and even.

'Oh,' Juliet's voice is small. 'Sorry, I didn't know.' She looks out of the windows at the rainy sky, unaccountably ill at ease. 'Some weather we're having, huh, Arty?'

Reluctantly, he surfaces, moving into the light. 'Yes, it appears summer is well and truly over.'

Juliet smiles, beginning to relax as the electric light bulbs strip him of his otherworldly appearance. 'Have a good weekend?' she waggles her eyebrows, her natural good humour quick to return.

Artemis blushes, his dreamy calm quickly washing away under the harsh glare of the real world. 'Yes,' he replies shortly. 'Yourself?''

'Fabulous,' Juliet grins wolfishly.

'Good to hear.' Artemis wishes she would go away and let them be.

Woken by the sound of voices, Holly opens her eyes to see light flooding into her room through the open door, washing away the darkness. Juliet's voice cuts across the silence like an alarm clock, shattering their fragile quiet beyond hope of repair. Holly rolls onto her back, turning her head to watch the rain stream down her window, trying to hold onto the memory of their underwater world. She hears Artemis' terse replies, and sighs. Pushing aside the blankets, she goes in search of clothes.

Juliet is making dinner, humming along to A Hard Day's Night playing at maximum volume. 'Sooo, tell me about your weekend,' she glances at Holly over one shoulder.

'It was rainy,' Holly replies, peeling potatoes.

Juliet rolls her eyes. 'I mean –'

'Juliet, I know what you mean.'

'Not in a sharing mood?'

'Nope. How do you want these sliced?'

The blonde sighs. 'Julienned,' she replies, rolling her eyes.

The intercom buzzes. 'Artemis, would you get that?' Juliet shouts over the music.

Putting down 95 poems, Artemis goes to the phone. 'Hello?'

'It's me,' comes Butler's voice, crackling over the bad line.

Artemis buzzes him up.

Butler enters the flat carrying a long, black umbrella under one arm and a heavy, dark coat over the other. He gives Artemis a once over as he hangs up the coat. 'Been a while, Artemis. I thought maybe you'd drowned in all the rain we've been having.' He speaks softly, so that only the boy can hear.

'You could have called, if you were worried,' Artemis shrugs. 'Or come over.'

Butler smiles. 'I figured you were in good hands.'

'Mmm,' Artemis responds non-committally.

'Well? Did you have a good weekend?' the big man eyes his charge's wrinkled clothing.

'Yes.'

'Better than Amsterdam?'

'Much.'

Butler smiles. 'Good. I just hope that this makes you two get along better instead of worse.'

Artemis shrugs with one shoulder, feeling the blood rise in his cheeks.

'Dom? Is that you?' Juliet's voice comes from the kitchen, shouting over the music. 'Are you coming in or what? Dinner's almost ready!'

Butler catches the tail end of Artemis' brief look of irritation and chuckles. 'Come at a bad time, did she, Juliet?'

Artemis has the good grace to recognise the jab. 'Any time would have been a bad time,' he admits.

Butler laughs, moving towards the kitchen. 'It smells delicious, Juliet.'

'Of course it does - I made it!'

Butler and Artemis return to the Manor after dinner, one satisfied, the other still starving. Artemis' father is waiting for them in the entrance hall.

'Artemis! Oh, thank goodness. We've been worried about you - not one word since Friday! Where on earth did you get to?'

Artemis keeps his jacket on, hiding the state of his shirt. 'I told you when I left - I went to dinner at Holly's. Butler drove me there, after all.'

'Dinners don't usually last three days,' his father points out.

Artemis shrugs and lies. 'We hadn't seen each other in some time. We had catching up to do.'

'She drives you to and from Trinity, doesn't she?'

'There's not much conversation that can be had whilst riding a motorbike,' Artemis notes. Butler makes an indistinct noise of displeasure behind him. He had been less than thrilled when Holly had first come roaring up the Manor drive, one terrified junior lecturer clinging to her waist.

Artemis Senior contemplates his son for a moment before taking the teen by the elbow. 'Artemis, could we talk for a moment? Let's sit down somewhere. Butler, would you fetch us some coffee?'

'Of course, sir.' Discreetly, Butler leaves Artemis to what could be his first ever parental reprimand.

Comfortably installed in a drawing room, father and son face off across an ornate coffee table.

'Artemis,' the older man begins, a little hesitantly, 'I realise that I haven't been the most conscientious of parents but I think the time has come for me to address certain, ah, issues. Now, I'm fully aware that Butler has taken excellent care of you over the years, and that you are a more than competent individual, but I still believe there are certain things which a father should discuss with his son...' he lets the sentence hang, pursing his lips, trying to find a way to broach his subject as casually as possible.

Artemis, on the other hand, is for once utterly perplexed. He tilts his head to the side, eyeing his father quizzically. 'Such as...?' he prompts.

'Well,' Artemis Senior clasps his hands on his knees, 'for example, is there anything you'd like to ask me? About anything - anything at all.'

Artemis thinks for a moment, 'No, nothing is coming to mind, Father.'

'Nothing about, say, Holly?'

'Holly?'

'She's a very pretty girl, isn't she?'

Artemis' lips twitch at "girl", but he answers straight faced. 'Yes, I suppose so, Father.'

'Well, as I'm sure you know, Artemis, when... when boys – men – reach a certain age –'

Artemis - never having had friends with whom to share, either cringingly or mockingly, their parents attempts to explain the birds and the bees - is still totally in the dark. Butler, however, who has chosen this moment to bring the coffee, fights to keep his face neutral.

'- there are certain, er, -' Artemis Senior continues doggedly, '– urges, I suppose you could say, and, well...'

'Sir, ah, may I?' Butler interrupts politely.

'Please,' Artemis Senior tries not to look too relieved.

'What your father is trying to say, Artemis, is wear a condom.' Butler paraphrases the other's stuttering as he pours the cream.

'Oh.' Artemis swallows, too busy being indignant at the inferred slur on his intelligence to be embarrassed. 'Father, really. I am perfectly aware of the consequences of unprotected sexual intercourse.'

Butler rolls his eyes. Trust Artemis to make a father to son chat sound like a biology lesson.

'Well, no, I realise that, I just wanted to be sure... I'm supposed to tell you these things, after all.' Artemis Senior hurries to assure his son. 'Wait,' he pauses suddenly, 'then you are – ah – sleeping with Holly?'

Artemis opens his mouth without having decided on what, exactly, he wants to say. All of this seems worlds away from the past three days, bodies slipping together and apart, deep in the sea. 'Yes,' he responds at last, faintly puzzled by his own answer, and leaves the room.

What an inappropriate euphemism, he thinks as he climbs the stairs, "sleeping" with.