Title: Come Into My Parlour
Fandom: Artemis Fowl
Challenge: Role Reversal (Also for Do-Over and Not What It Looks Like)
Rating: PG
Length: 400 words (two double drabbles)
Characters: Artemis Fowl II, OFC
Summary: Artemis encounters an intriguing fortune hunter.


When he first started noticing her, he dismissed her as another gold digger, just like all the rest.

But unlike the others, she never tried to approach him, drifting on the edge of his awareness as she wove her web tighter, and tighter.

She was the maid in his hotel in Venice … an assistant chemist at the conference in Cardiff … cheering on the sidelines as the Jade Princess won her third World Title …

Artemis Fowl was no fly, but soon he found himself looking for her wherever he went.

… a dealer in Monte Carlo, smirking as he took the house … front row centre as he won the Dublin International Piano Competition … a waitress pressing a glass of champagne into his hand as his parents renewed their vows …

In Rome, he didn’t see her, and felt strangely incomplete in her absence – until he returned to find her installed in a guest room at Fowl Manor, at his own parents’ invitation.

They made polite conversation at the dinner table under Angeline’s fond gaze: exchanging names and sharing hobbies.

And when she appeared at the side of his bed that night, naked as a renaissance painting, he drew aside the sheets and smiled.

---

He hadn’t expected her to take his heart with her when she left, but he shed no tears. He represented himself as her contest for his fortune was thrown out of court, and then set about weaving a web of his own.

He was on the scholarship advisory board assessing her application to Dublin University … the delivery boy for case after case of her mother’s sherry … a janitor in her apartment building …

She looked straight through him; refused to recognise him. Artemis didn’t press, but he did persevere.

… the long-lost childhood friend of her flat mate … a customer in the fast food joint where she worked to pay her rent … an imperturbable prison clerk as she visited her father …

It was nearly four months before the bus-stop; before she snapped; before she flew at him with fists and fury and tears; before they hit the ground in a confused tangle of limbs; before he held her tightly as she sobbed into his Armani jacket.

“Come back to me,” he whispered, his voice rough. “And this time, stay.”

Caught unprepared in the silken strands of her own snare, she returned to him, and he welcomed her back with open arms.