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Somewhere under the surface of the Earth
Foaly had been having a rather nice dream. It involved galloping across open green fields dappled in moonlight to an equally dappled buffet of all the best snacks. This nice dream was interrupted by a very much not nice alarm tone. His eyes flicked open instantly, but he still groaned when picking up the communicator. “What?”
“Sir, there’s been an odd ping on the general computing network. We can’t work out what it is. Seems like something you should take a look at.” The voice of one of his tech minions came through the speaker.
“Can’t this wait? I was sleeping.”
“You were? Oh, sorry, I didn’t expect it at this time. I mean, I guess it can wait if you really aren’t worried.”
Gods forbid a centaur take a nap in peace. “I’m on my way.”
A ping wasn’t necessarily something dangerous, but the fact that no one else seemed to be able to work out what the issue was made it another matter. He hoped it would at least be something interesting. Not another one he could solve in five minutes then return to his nap. Curiosity still drew him to a new problem.
“Couldn’t Mayne deal with this?” He asked as he walked into his central lab.
“Mayne’s away, remember, Sir?” Replied a nervous looking pixie.
“Oh.” He flicked his tail. “Oh yes. Very well then, show me what you’ve found.”
He was led to a large bank of computers, complete with a pointing flunky sitting in a chair below it all. Foaly followed the finger to where it was indicating on the screen. He could immediately see why he’d been notified - it was a particular type of abnormality, small, innocuous. Something that may not have been noticed in another context. However, he had set up very strict checking on any signal trying to access a fairy network that was even suspected to emanate from the surface.
Somewhere else below the surface of the Earth
A call from Foaly was a very welcome distraction from paperwork for Commodore Short. She dropped her pen mid-word and shoved the document over to the side of her desk. “Holly here, what’s up, horse boy?”
Foaly’s voice sounded conspiratorial. “I think your Mudman has been poking around in our systems again. But this time he’s made a mistake that might let me get ahead. Do you know anything about it? Is it a trap? Is he drunk?”
The elf rolled her eyes. “Well, my Mudman, as you put it, doesn’t tend to discuss his hacking of the LEP systems with an LEP officer, so no, that’s really between the two of you.”
She heard Foaly huff. “That’s the thing, I don’t think it was the LEP systems that were targeted. It came in through a more general network than that. I’ll get to the bottom of it soon; he’s left the door open just enough that I’ll be able to track down which pages were accessed.”
Oh? That was odd. If Artemis wanted to play about on the fairy internet systems, that wasn’t really officially allowed, but he knew Holly would download and pass him any pages he wanted to read. She’d done that just last week for a fairy art museum she’d mentioned in passing on a call. “Well that’s odd…let’s just ask him.”
She tapped at her communicator before Foaly could protest and added Artemis to the call.
The call switched to video at the same time, so she could see the centaur give her some serious side eye, before muttering that she was no fun under his breath. In her opinion this was the most efficient way of sorting out a potential security issue; Artemis was their friend, not an enemy they had to waste time working out.
A friend that they wouldn’t let have access to their internet servers, but a friend nonetheless.
It took Artemis quite a few rings to pick up. Holly started tapping her fingers; he would normally answer her on the first or second. Then again, it was the late evening on the surface. Maybe he’d had an early night. She glanced at Foaly, but he was looking away at a different screen, so she just let it keep ringing.
Eventually it paid off. Artemis’ face appeared on the screen, perfectly groomed and still in a suit despite the late hour. As she smiled at him she noted something was a little off though; his breathing pattern was too familiar, like someone recovering from exercise. Which she had never known Artemis to voluntarily do. She filed that away for further examination.
“Holly, Foaly.” His voice rang out smoothly. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“What are you looking for this time, Fowl?”
Holly thought she ought to clarify, as they had in fact called him. “Foaly spotted you on our internet earlier. What are you doing? I told you, I’ll just get you anything - that’s legal - that you want to look at. So that makes it illegal. Spit it out before I have to come up there and drag it out of you myself.”
Artemis froze. For a second she thought it was the connection, but no, Foaly looked fine. For the barest second, he looked at a loss for words. “How can you be certain it was me doing this? I don’t care for baseless accusations.”
Foaly snorted. “No, it was definitely you. I recognise your style, and by now we’ve localised the source to your general area. I think we’d have noticed if there was another being as interested in fairies as you are in the region.”
Artemis was silent. Holly met his eyes and raised an eyebrow. He held her gaze for a second and then looked away.
Foaly was also looking away, at his other screen. “Sit in silence if you want, I’ll have all the details in a minute anyway. This was sloppy from you, Artemis. Brain deteriorating now you’re not in life threatening danger every few months?”
Artemis had his “I’m thinking very hard” face on. It irritated Holly a bit. Yes, he was her best friend, but couldn’t he leave their systems unhacked for five minutes? He really could be greedy with knowledge sometimes.
She kept her eyes locked on his face, searching for anything she could get from his expression. He licked his lips before answering slowly. “Well…I was doing some research you see…I was really curious, and I just…”
“Artemis.” Her voice was tense, a warning. He wouldn’t meet her eye. Gods, what had he got into now? Mentally she started rearranging things so she could have someone cover for her while she went in and sorted out the resulting mess.
While she’d had her eyes locked on Artemis, she hadn’t been watching Foaly. Both the elf and the human turned their attention to him immediately as a hysterical laugh escaped him. Sheer panic now showed on Artemis’ face - she would have said he was as white as a sheet but that was his normal complexion.
“Foaly, I…please!” He begged.
Foaly composed himself as he looked back to the videocall screen. “Fowl, if you were that into soap operas, you should have just said something. I would have been very happy to send you the entire back catalogue of People City if you’d just asked!”
He…what? That’s what he was after? She couldn’t help but break into laughter as well. The great Artemis Fowl, the snob of everything below the very highest levels of culture, had broken into the internet servers of another civilisation in order to pirate its soap operas? Frond help her.
“People City?” She teased. “Arty, you never said! It is the highest rated soap in Haven I suppose. It’s never really been my style, but I’d have subscribed to the channel just for you!”
Artemis gave her a weak smile. “Yes. I love that soap opera. It allows me to study the culture of fairies very efficiently. I’m sorry I didn’t just ask, but I feared you both might react like this.”
Holly could feel the smile she could barely contain on her face, so he was right really. “What a time for a lapse in coding ability too! Well, if you’ll excuse me boys, I have lots of paperwork to do and everyone I know to call and share the good news. Artemis, I’ll call you later - we’re going to have a nice long chat all about why you love People City.”
Foaly burst into giggles again as Artemis groaned. She winked at him, hung up on the call, then dissolved into uproarious laughter.
On the surface
Artemis let out a shaky breath and lifted a hand in preparation to end the call from his side. Before he could reach that blessed button, Foaly’s voice cut him off.
“Fowl, if you touch that button before we have a chat I’m telling her what you were really looking at.”
He retracted his hand from the button like it was on fire. Please no. Anything but that. He looked helplessly at Foaly. “What do you want me to say?”
“Maybe start with ‘Thank you for covering for me, Mr. Foaly, Sir, I will leave all your servers unmolested from now on’.”
Artemis supposed that was very well deserved. He’d been horrified upon learning the reason for their call, and almost went into cardiac arrest when he’d thought Foaly was going to out him. The centaur had shown him totally unexpected mercy. “Thank you, Foaly. Sincerely.”
“But seriously, Fowl, I cannot have you looking up kinky porn on our internet servers. I get a ping anytime something of this nature happens, and I do not want to be notified every time you do…that. I would ask what under Earth you were thinking, but it seems like all the blood usually necessary for thinking was otherwise occupied. Frond, no wonder you were sloppy. Remember, your brain is the thing that should be making the decisions.”
Artemis ran his hand through his hair to try and shift some of the awkwardness.
“It wasn’t kinky…” He said uncomfortably.
“Interspecies sex is a kink. Though I suppose you could call the elf thing a fetish if you want to argue semantics.”
Probably correct. Artemis just thought it felt so…normal. He tried with his own species, that was the obvious first port of call. But lately there had been few world ending disasters to divert his attention, which often left parts of his mind unoccupied. And frequently when they were left unoccupied, his hormones liked to take the helm. And those hormones liked Holly, and liked the thought of doing certain, animalistic things with Holly, the sorts of things that made it very hard to concentrate on anything else.
Previously, he’d tried looking at standard, human porn when relieving himself of this affliction on his concentration. It just hadn’t felt right, so he’d just clicked off and let his thoughts run wild instead. Nut brown skin contrasting with pale white in his mind’s eye. But in the back of his head he’d thought…you know exactly where you can get something visual that would be more to your liking. You know how to get it. It would be harmless and feel so, so good.
Today, he had given in to that biblical level of temptation. It had been a few months since he’d first dared to think of the idea so he believed he’d resisted well. The glass of whiskey, call with Holly, and otherwise uneventful day had all combined to crush his resolve into a little tiny ball which was swiftly tossed into the back of his mind. It had taken seconds to get in and find what he wanted and the result was oh so delicious. The elf women shown in the videos ticked something in his brain that human women just hadn’t. Now his brain could infer the correct visuals onto the person he would actually like to see touch themselves like the actresses on the screen.
He’d initially looked up solo videos to keep things simple - he didn’t care for seeing the other species, or male elves, in this context. But even so, the hormonal part of his brain which was now in the pilot's seat had an even better idea. You’re famous down there. So’s Holly. Didn’t she once mention a porn parody of a movie about you?
He had resisted this impulse for approximately 0.3 seconds before tapping their names into the search bar. He almost choked on seeing the amount of results that popped up. Holly and Artemis. Holly and him. He had almost finished right then. He didn’t know, or care, how they’d mocked him up, his eyes were all on the actresses for Holly.
Holly on her knees. Holly on her back. Holly in the shower. Holly, Holly, Holly. Holly doing all those things to him. With him. It was heaven.
He noticed that the videos did in fact have sound. Artemis flicked it on just in time to hear the Holly on the screen breath out his name, voice pleading.
That had been too much and led to the most intense orgasm of his life, Holly’s name on his lips.
The afterglow had thankfully left him with enough presence of mind to download a number of files and securely encrypt them locally.
Foaly, of course, had been right. He’d been distracted, and it had made him sloppy. There was nothing to be ashamed of he knew logically - he was a young man in his early twenties (probably), it was common and healthy to want to relieve oneself sexually. It was more doing so to the thought of your best friend from another species that made it a bit more taboo. And he definitely had a kink for elven women.
He pulled out of his reverie to address Foaly again. “I will leave your servers alone. But please, I beg you…don’t tell her. I can’t live without her; she’d never speak to me again.”
Foaly sighed. “Don’t be dramatic. I won’t tell her, what good would that do? But have you, I don’t know, tried talking to her about how you feel?”
Artemis blushed. “That I wa-”
“No! Frond, no. That you love her. I can see it in your eyes when you look at her.”
He did. He was reminded of it earlier with the piercing stab of loneliness after he’d finished. He wanted to be rolling off Holly and laying on his side next to her, breath mingling in the aftermath of happy exertion. He wanted to wake up with her the next morning and make her breakfast. He wanted to give her everything she wanted, forever. Beautiful, strong, passionate - just a few of the words to describe the one who starred in all his daydreaming.
He didn’t just want her in bed (even though he did, desperately, want that). When his libido wasn’t in the driving seat he thought about how he might take her on a picnic in the grounds and propose the idea of them to her. That she might accompany him to some of the dreary social functions he was forced to attend. Her presence lit up his life and he never wanted to let her go, she was part of him. He absentmindedly reached up to the eye that had been hazel in a previous life.
“One day, I will tell her. And I will accept whatever answer she gives me, and beg her to remain a part of my life even if it’s a rejection. But I can’t face that right now, the possibility she doesn’t feel the same way.”
“I don’t know. But, I need to end this conversation now because, well, I don’t want to be in it any more. Holly is a beautiful elf and you are a young man, so this is all very normal, but also I don’t want to be involved, so please stay the hell off our servers when you’re horny and don’t make me think about this conversation ever again. Oh, and I’ll send you the entire run of People City.”
Artemis was grateful to hear the conversation would be ending so he could attempt to erase it from his memory, but wrinkled his nose at the last comment. “Why would you do that?”
“Well, you did say you would discuss it with her.”
“D’Arvit.”
He hung up and decided it may just be better to leave the planet.