"So this?" said Artemis.
The young man was lying on his back on the picnic blanket, an astrophysics book he had been perusing now resting on his face to block out the sun. The way he'd left it open, the binding was going to get ruined, but he let it be on the assumption that no one else would ever pick it up after he'd finished.
"So what?" Holly muttered.
She was sitting next to him, leaning back on her palms, squinting in the noon light. The weather was progressing from blissfully warm to something that threatened sunburn, and she reveled in it while Artemis hid.
When he spoke, his words were muffled by the pages. "So us."
She turned from the view of the hills to look at him. His shirt was wrinkled now, his tie hanging limp and useless atop it. Their sides were touching. "There's an us?"
"There's always been an us."
The daylight scorched his eyes when she lifted the book. He squeezed them shut, but it still burnt white behind his eyelids. "All right. So what about this us?"
"That's what I asked you."
Holly hummed disapprovingly and slid down to lie beside him. "Well, you're human, and I'm not."
"Right."
"And you're young, and I'm not."
"Youth is so relative."
"Relative to you I'm not."
"Fine."
Holly sighed and sat up a little to lean on her elbow, resting her head in her palm as she let her eyes wander down Artemis's wiry form. "And, well, you've done me a lot of wrongs, Mud Boy."
Artemis opened his eyes. They were bluer in the sun, and all the more piercing.
"But besides that," she continued, before the hurt in his expression could translate into words, "you're my best friend, and you saved my life, and without you I don't know where I'd be. I love you, Artemis, and if you've ever doubted that—don't."
He stared at her.
"I never did," he said. "Not since I came back."
Holly made a face and rearranged herself so that she was sitting up properly, arms draped over her knees. "So you made me get all sentimental for nothing?"
"I thought I did," Artemis explained, following her up. "I thought maybe I wasn't sure. But I just realised there can't ever… not be an us. And because of that, whether you love me as a friend or as—something else, I know you'll always love me, and as long as I know that, then…" A soft smile crossed his face. "I'm happy."
She looked away, back at the rolling hills and the sun that had started falling towards them.
"Now we're even," he said, when she kept quiet.
Holly turned back to him. "Hm?"
"About getting all sentimental."
She broke into a grin. "I guess so." Her gaze drifted down to her lap, and the smile faded. "I figured you knew. You're the genius, after all. I just don't know if… I don't know. I don't want to think about it, you know? Not now. Not yet. Of course I love you as something else; I can't help that, but… it's easy, this. It's nice. Being together like this. As friends, as more, but no labels, just…"
"Us," said Artemis.
"Us," she agreed.
He took her hand. They sat there for a long time, watching the sun float slowly down to earth. It dimmed slowly, reluctantly, from yellow to orange to the soft pink of a blush, and tinged the cheeks of young friends and young lovers and the young in-betweens who knew summer well enough to savour it. It was the kind of light that didn't care what it touched—everything it fell upon was beautiful.
And so they were.