A half dozen Artemas Marchs make the treacherous poolside descent in the dark. It's an uncoordinated procession. A small boy with a dark mop of curls darts between the staggering, stick-thin legs of his teenage counterpart that tries without success to grip for purchase at the nearest stone wall. A young man trails after, wiping his nose. When the teenager inevitably slips, he does so with the full force of his railroad-spike body and collides uncomfortably with a stone-faced child no older than twelve. He, in turn, braces himself against the much larger man behind him. Some follow, others chase.
Such is the act of remembering.
Equally fraught but somehow less difficult to navigate than who joins Artemas in swirling the sink drain is who waits for him at the bottom of the u-bend.
That's the problem, here in the lowest point of gravity: Art's been lazy. He's been neglectful, and worse, tender-hearted. He and Shea shared bite-toothed smiles at the misplacement of sentimentality in the parlor, but only because they know it lives here, greening the pool tile grout beside the algae and colonizing the grooves they've so attentively etched. The piping is fucking plaqued up with it, an artery not completely closed but difficult to squeeze through.
High blood pressure doesn't, technically, run in the March family, but only insofar as its comorbidity to the gaping fucking hole in his immune system shaped like Shea Thomas Walker, which very much does.
All of this to say that Artemas March could have taken a cement scraper to his heart and shaved off the excess any time he wanted to. He does it every fucking day, layer by layer, except for that last and most sensitive. And it's not that he's scared, because the only thing he's ever been scared of is a head that never bobbed back out of dark water, but simply that he's never had a surgeon's hands and the likelihood of sloughing something vital alongside the glut outweighs the risk.
It doesn't explain why he's here, though, kicking off his own shoes and hiking his own trousers to the knees. Why he's crouching, rather than splaying, or why he's not saying a goddamned word until the offered cigarette is between his teeth and the stolen (gently taken) match threatens to burn his fingertips in the too-frigid-for-November-and-only-going-to-get-worse air.
Except the obvious: he's a heart hunting after his own arrhythmia. He wasn't born with the double-beat in his chest, but he likes it there. It's not dangerous, it's not going to kill him, but its wrongness is something he can wrap himself around and squeeze down on. And he never lets it say long enough to hurt.
When Art finally looks at Shea it's with his chin hooked over his shoulder, cheek bunched up against the over-sharp bone and eyes cast upward beneath flat brows. Looking up at Shea, technically speaking. A rare treat, if you ignore how Art contorts himself to do it.
"Fuck off, maybe?" He scoffs around the filter, still not quite committing to a real inhale so the exhale dribbles out sadly between them. There's something wrong with Shea's face. Artemas can name it, and easily, but he won't. "How about what does Mr. Market Oracle say about this morning's pound sterling dip? Any sexy little graffs I can jerk off to when I'm tired of rubbing one out to SOP updates? Starting to chafe a little, if I'm being honest. Might have to sniff around FX for some relief soon."
annaxmalina
