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It started back before Artemy was Artemy, but even then, he was Cub. He used to wear his hair in two messy braids, and people would see him and Grief and call them “six and half a dozen.” Thick as thieves, inseparable . People would also say that about Artemy and Stakh, Grief and Gravel, and all the possible combinations thereof. But it was Artemy and Grief who started sleeping over together every Friday night at Grief’s apartment in the Crude Sprawl. The reason, though they quickly forgot it, was that Artemy had started studying with his father, which meant he couldn’t just spend all day with his friends anymore, which meant he had to make it up to Grief. They’d sit on Grief’s bed and talk and show off stolen trinkets until well after midnight, then fall asleep back to back. That wasn’t really the start of it. They just missed running around together.
It really started when they were fifteen, and Grief was trying to climb a swing set. Artemy stood under him, ready to catch him when he inevitably fell, and Maria mocked, “What are you, boyfriends?” She was ten years old, pouring water in the sandbox to make it easier to mold.
“Uh, yeah,” said Grief as if it was obvious, with his arms and legs wrapped tightly around a bar he was inching his way up. He winked down at Artemy. “Course we are.” Artemy stifled a laugh, but didn’t take his eyes off Grief.
“No, you aren’t,” Maria replied, putting her hands on her hips. “You’re messing with me.”
“It’s true,” Artemy agreed. “We’re in love.”
Grief got his hands on the top of the frame and disentangled his legs, then dropped down to the ground. Artemy had already stepped back in anticipation. “Totally in love,” Grief echoed with a cruel smile directed at Maria.
“Oh, really?” she asked disbelievingly as the two boys approached her. “Do you kiss, then?”
“Yeah,” said Artemy.
“Every day,” said Grief.
She screwed up her face in revulsion. “That’s disgusting. At least this way no one else will ever have to kiss you!”
Artemy couldn’t stop laughing as Grief recounted the story to Stakh and Gravel. “Do you kiss!” he echoed breathlessly when Grief cued him with a grin. Gravel snorted, poking at their fire with a long stick.
“I can’t believe she fell for it,” Grief said gleefully.
“It’s no surprise,” Stakh grumbled, opening and closing a straight razor in one hand. “You two are always holding hands and hanging off each other.”
Artemy rolled his eyes at his brother. “I just think it’s stupid to say we’re ‘too old’ to all hold hands, Stakh. Get over yourself.”
“And since we’re the only ones who seem to agree on that…” Grief continued on Artemy’s behalf as he fed a fallen leaf to the fire. Sitting on the ground with his legs bent comfortably, Artemy reached out to Lara to prove their point.
She pulled her hand to her chest, giving him a withering glare. “As if I’m going to hold hands with a boy.” All three of her friends laughed at that, and Artemy leaned back on his palms. “You two do act like you’re dating,” she reprimanded, turning on them as punishment for their mockery. Regardless of her motives, Stakh gestured to her as if revealing a checkmate.
Grief gave a barking laugh and shifted around so he could rest his side against Artemy’s leg, lifting one hand in the air to play with the firelight. “Maybe we are, then,” he teased, sharp grey eyes flicking up to share his joke with Artemy.
Artemy snorted. “Totally in love,” he repeated, and then they were dating— or so they said.
It was the joke that never stopped being funny, every time Grief wrapped his arms around Artemy’s waist and loudly called him honey and darling and Artemy tried to play along without breaking character. It became an endless game, like when one of them used to remember they were still it from their last round of tag. It was funny even when the two of them were alone, and got funnier the longer they kept it up, so months turned into years. Lara once thought she had them cornered— they weren’t sure why she wanted to expose the trick they all knew was a trick, just Gravel being Gravel, but it was part of the game— with a “You should kiss him, then.” She didn’t expect Artemy to do it.
Artemy and Grief’s biggest fight, the one time they were really almost separated, was when they were nineteen. The idea of Artemy leaving for school wasn’t brand new, but for the first time it had become concrete. Stakh was looking forward to it on Artemy’s behalf, though he seemed split between resenting that Artemy got to go and being glad that he got to stay. Lara gave Artemy a tight hug and said he had to start focusing on his studies more so he wouldn’t be behind when he got there, even though it was over a year away. But something closed off in Grief’s eyes. “Yeah, yeah,” Grief mocked. “A proper surgeon you’ll be… Too good for little old us, of course.” There was a painful line of honesty in his voice. He went home early and didn’t let Artemy into his hideout in the Warehouses the next day. Artemy banged on the door for ten minutes, but whatever Grief had blocked the door with didn’t budge.
“He feels like you’re abandoning us… but particularly him,” Lara explained later, after Grief let her in. “He’s really upset.”
“Then he should talk to me about it,” Artemy growled. “He’s being a coward and a baby. He knew this was going to happen, didn’t he?”
Lara rolled her eyes. “I’m not your messenger. All I care about is that he’s going to be alright.” She paused, then sighed and rested a hand on Artemy’s shoulder. “Maybe it’s good for you two to spend some time apart while you work through this.”
“You act like we’re actually dating,” Artemy remarked, and she laughed softly. And they did spend some time apart; a week and a half, the longest they’d gone without seeing each other for as long as they could remember.
On a Friday night, Artemy found himself unable to get to sleep. He pulled out a medicine text from under his bed and started reading it in the light that filtered in through the window. After Rubin woke up and got some water, he sat down on the floor next to Artemy’s bed and leaned over the book as well. “Isn’t this outdated? There’s a new edition at the Trammel…”
“I don’t care. I just can’t sleep,” Artemy replied.
“You’re pining,” Stakh accused.
“You’re an idiot. I’m just pissed that he would throw a fit like this.” He closed the book with a huff. “I mean, I’m not— abandoning anyone! You know that, right? If he’d just listen to me— we’ve been friends all these years, and he just…”
“Lara’s been trying to talk sense into him.” Rubin sighed and climbed back into his own bed, turning his back on Artemy pointedly. “I wasn’t inviting a whole conversation. Just go kiss and make up, or whatever it is you do.”
Artemy bit the inside of his cheek and glanced out the window at the darkened street below, then back at Stakh. “It’s late…”
“I’ll cover for you,” Stakh grumbled, which is what Artemy was prodding him for.
His chest tightening, Artemy nodded and grabbed his coat before heading downstairs, instinctively avoiding the creaky spots of the old wooden floor. He kept to the shadows on his way to Grief’s current residence nearby, coming up with a list of ideas of what to say and hating each one. When he reached his destination, a typical two-story apartment building, he sighed to himself and grabbed some pebbles off the ground. His aim wasn’t great, but a golden light already filled Grief’s bedroom window, so it took just a couple taps against the glass pane before Grief’s pale face appeared and frowned down at Artemy. When he disappeared again and the light went out, Artemy was almost convinced he’d just gone to sleep until the door of the building creaked open and Grief stepped out, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “What.”
What? “It’s Friday,” Artemy offered lamely, but it meant something important.
“So it is,” Grief replied, cutting a cold look at Artemy. “You ought to start getting used to Friday nights without me.”
“I don’t want to,” Artemy insisted as Grief crossed his arms, mostly because of the cold. “I’m telling you, it isn’t as if I asked for this. And you know I’ll come back, right? You’re being…” He sighed. “It doesn’t matter. I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry too,” Grief muttered, leaning back against the brick wall. “Gravel’s been lettin’ me have it, really. Says I’m a damned child… maybe I am. But what’s the point of hanging out if you’re just gonna leave?”
“That doesn’t sound like you at all. You always tell me to live in the moment or whatever. What’s the point of missing me if I’m just gonna come back?”
“Touché.” Grief rolled his eyes at himself. “You know what sucks? I’ve never once left town, for all that messing about with the trains, and it’s safe to say I never will. Never even set foot on the other side of the river. But you… heh, and you’ve never been much for wanderlust.”
That was one of the worst parts of this whole situation: there were so many people who should be allowed to go instead of Artemy. Bad Grief used to say he wanted to see the world. After a moment, Artemy said, “Then let’s cross the river.” Come to think of it, he hadn’t been across either, always wandering south over (mostly) dry ground.
Grief’s eyebrows rose. “What, tonight?”
“Yeah, tonight.” He could see the gears in Grief’s head starting to spin, putting together a plan of action, and his own resolve came together as he spoke. “Let’s swim across.”
There was a glint in Grief’s eyes that told Artemy all he needed to know. “We could die, pulling a stunt like that.” He wasn’t reluctant; in fact, he was shifting into the playful tone he could use to convince Artemy to do all kinds of similar stunts.
“Well… who gives a shit.” Artemy laughed humorlessly, but there was a kind of happiness in his voice. “Come on. I’m the one asking you this time.” In response, a grin spread across Grief’s face. He disappeared back into the building, leaving Artemy to stick his thumbs in his pockets and glance around uncomfortably until she returned with a steel flask in her coat and an oilskin bag over his shoulder. Artemy gave Grief a careful smile, and they held hands all the way to the rocks north of the Termitary.
A ferryman whose name Artemy didn’t know rested beside their grounded boat, and their eyes opened when they heard the boys approach. “Where go you tonight, yargachin?” they asked, their voice a strange rumble.
“Across the river,” Artemy replied. “I’m guessing you won’t take us there.”
They turned their head, fixing their eyes on the far bank, barely visible in the night. “No. But the current is kind here. The river will take you.” The ferryman closed their eyes again at that, indicating that the conversation was over.
The two of them shared a look before Grief pulled Artemy along to find a good entry point. Their boots sank into the silt at the river’s edge, stuffing their coats into Grief’s bag and working together to close it as tightly as they could, and then they let the moving water swallow them. It was even colder than they’d expected; Grief let out a string of curses and Artemy laughed at him as they waded out through the cattails, up to their chests, and then Artemy was the first to kick off the bottom. The river drew him, as always, towards the Abattoir, as he forced himself to swim perpendicular to the bank in a broad breast-stroke. The water was clear and, if not clean, cleansing in its own way as it rushed over their skin. The river was wide, but Grief was a stronger swimmer than Artemy, and soon enough found himself climbing up onto the far bank, shaking out his soggy sleeves, and turning to taunt and encourage his best friend. At last, Artemy grabbed on to a clump of reeds several paces downstream, and Grief hurried over to offer a hand. They clasped arms firmly; once Grief had helped pull Artemy up onto the grassy hill, Artemy pulled Grief into a hug.
“How about that?” he asked against Grief’s wet hair, then pulled back to look across the river at the Town. “Do you feel different?”
“...Maybe so,” Grief remarked, with a grin Artemy didn’t need to look at to hear. “Colder, at least.”
Artemy snorted. “Alright, funny guy. Let’s find a place for a fire.”
Bad Grief could start a fire anywhere, or so he said. It wasn’t just about destruction; he liked the motion, the light, the sparks. He understood, in that way, how things moved together and ground against each other. Artemy fed the fire, and they settled down beside it, looking out at the hazy, middle-distant lights of their hometown as if they were leaving together. They weren’t. They never would. But for the moment, it didn’t matter. Artemy kissed Grief on the mouth to get him laughing; it always got him laughing, he could never keep it up long. And there could never be distance between them when they were laughing at their endless game. He kissed him again and again, as they shifted around to get as comfortable and as close as they could on the bumpy ground.
Artemy’s eyes were gold as he watched shapes dance in the fire, and he radiated a warmth of his own that Grief was drawn to like a moth, painting the starlight over his rough, near-dry shirt. They were friends, best friends, six of one and half a dozen of the other, everything that mattered, and their joined silhouettes were clearer than ever as, for once, they were decontextualized in every way except Grief and Cub .
As Grief’s lips brushed against Artemy’s neck, warm and deliberate, Artemy laughed softly, but was it really a joke? Her shoulder was pressed under his arm like puzzle pieces fit together. Grief always plays to the gallery, but he’s not cheating out now— where’s the audience? Is it the river, the grass, the stars? Is it you? It doesn’t feel like it.
It felt like, for the moment and maybe always, it was all for Artemy. The realization settled heavy in both of their chests. What else is love? An inside joke, a prestige shared intimately, a comedy performed before the universe but written for just one person to understand. There’s nothing else, no tricks, no games. Just love. Grief loves Artemy in every way he possibly can. And Artemy laughs because he understands the joke; because they are the joke; because he loves Bad Grief.
Kind waters separated them from their world. The earth was warm beneath them, the fire was warm beside them, the river was cold at their backs and the sky was cold on their hands.
The performance continues, but not for you.
Everything had changed. Artemy and Grigory had changed most of all, as hard as it was sometimes to admit. New scars, new shapes, new circles under their eyes, a new grasp on time. But the seasons were starting to turn, and maybe not everything had to be completely different. Grief knew exactly how to climb the wall of the Burakh house, exactly which little promontories to cling to and which crevices to dig the tips of his boots into, and when he got an elbow up on the windowsill he paused to look out at the Town around and below him. With the Tower fallen, it was the same skyline that had carried him here when he was young, to visit Artemy and Rubin at the most unexpected hours. But on the other side of the window, Grief’s window, as the brothers had taken to calling it, were two new children. He shifted around, eyeing the gap between his window and the glowing light from the room that had been Isidor’s, and mapped out a new route in his head before carefully bouldering across.
Artemy never locked his windows-- although, with Grief’s history, one would have imagined he’d pick up the habit. Grief carefully tugged the window outward with his fingertips pressing against the side of the little ridge between panes, and then got his hand through the crack and swung it open the rest of the way. He climbed into the room one leg at a time, casting Artemy a grin when he looked up from mending a hole in his gloves. “Friday night,” Grief offered, and it meant something important. Artemy smiled, and stood up to kiss Grief in greeting. Inseparable.
The performance continues, but not for you.