24, artemiy/daniil?
my child
The first time Daniil refers to Sticky as my child, it’s easy to write off as a mistake. Sticky is hanging around him, making himself an assistant to whatever Daniil needs, and in going to refer to him as Artemy’s assistant, his child, his Bound, Daniil simply slips. It doesn’t mean anything, no matter how the youth’s eyes light up. Daniil is just tired.
The second time he slips is not as easy to excuse. In part, because it’s not Sticky he’s speaking to. The young man is nowhere to be found, which is precisely why Daniil is talking to Artemy. “My child has run off,” Daniil says, trying to keep the panic out of his voice.
Artemy raises an eyebrow at him. Daniil isn’t the one to catch himself there; it’s Artemy who does. “Your child?” he asks. “I didn’t think you were married, oynon.”
“My child?” Daniil asks, frowning. He starts to play back the start of their conversation, and feels the blush rising up in his cheeks. He needs to try and play it cool. “No, you’re mistaken. Your child -”
“Which one?” Artemy interrupts. He isn’t even looking up from the scalpel he’s having repaired. “I’ve adopted half the children in town, in case you didn’t notice.”
Daniil huffs, tapping his foot against the stone. “Sticky, Burakh. The one who’s decided to make himself both our assistants?”
“Ah.” Artemy hums, and Daniil lets him think. He assumes the man is contemplating where the little doctor-in-training ran off to, but there’s a feeling in his stomach telling him his colleague won’t let this go. And he’s right, of course. “So he’s your child now, huh?”
Daniil’s fingers curl, leather of his gloves squeaking. “What?” The word is clipped, only questioning as a fact with no feeling. He hates to be mocked like this.
“Sticky,” he says. Not sounding the least bit worried, at that, which is where Daniil will focus his irritation. “Taking him away from me, are you? I’m hurt, nookherni. It’s a betrayal of our -”
Daniil leaves before Artemy can finish the sentence, turning to let laughter slide off his coat. Wishing, too, that it would slide off his mind as easily. He can fake a barrier in his mind, but it’s only so wide, only so tall.
Daniil lets it go, and forgets about it. Or, he tries to, he should say, because nobody else seems to have picked up on the fact that he wants to just forget it all ever happened. Sticky, he’s willing to forgive - he can understand the wide-eyed idealism behind his smile. When he was younger, he also longed for parents whose interests more clearly matched his own. It’s probably less a family feeling, he tells himself, than it is the sort of pride you wear when a professor names you their favorite student.
The other children who hang around him, the teenagers, not as much. He tries to ignore them, which isn’t so difficult with Sleepy Head, but Shrew seems almost unironically upset that he hasn’t made a mistake and called her his daughter. They follow up now, behind himself and Sticky, nearly tall enough to keep up pace with Daniil.
And when he makes it to his meeting with Burakh, he can tell off the bat that the Haruspex hasn’t forgotten, and won’t let go of it either. Wonderful.
“You’ve got your own flock now, erdem,” Artemy begins. “Picked up siblings for Sticky?”
“Yes, well,” Daniil starts off coolly, “They are friends of our child.”
He can’t pretend he hasn’t heard himself. His eyes go too wide and his face too white to possibly try and talk his way through it, though it doesn’t stop his mind from racing through a hundred different possibilities as he closes the theatre door behind him. The snickering behind him tells him the hour he spends here today with Burakh won’t be the end of it either.
“Our child.” Artemy says it. No questions. He nods, corner of his mouth pulling up. Irritatingly attractive. “Yes, of course, now it all makes sense. Not just my child or your child but our child.” Daniil keeps trying to look away, but his colleague is making it difficult. It’s his height, Daniil thinks. Artemy can take up so much more of his space, in real life and in his mind.
Oh, oh no. Not those thoughts. Not now.
“Which means there’s an us, emshen?”
“It was an exhausted slip of tongue,” Daniil snaps, cheeks burning. He’d like to try and get away, but he seems to have backed himself into a corner here - figuratively and literally, by the desk where their assignments are. No one’s there to greet them and save Daniil whatever embarrassment he’s about to endure for the next fifty-seven minutes.
“Now you’re just teasing me,” Artemy says, and the smirk is present in his voice. “Any place else you’d like to slip your tongue?”
“Shut up,” Daniil says, but his voice just sounds weaker and weaker. “I hate you.” The right feeling just isn’t behind it.
“You don’t,” Artemy says, leaning in his space. His voice comes out too close to Daniil’s ear now. “And no, no I won’t. I’ve never seen you this flustered before, it’s -”
“Entertaining?”
“- cute.” Daniil scoffs. He’s got his face almost completely obscured behind the paper, too close to his face to actually read and most definitely inconspicuous, but it’s the last shred of safety he has left. And now, Artemy is pulling at it. “Why do you hide, kheerkhen?”
“I’m not hiding,” Daniil says ridiculously.
“Ime beshe? Then let me see your face.”
“Stop talking and I will.” His words are all coming out muttered now, face burning in frustration. He doesn’t know for a fact that he’d calm down if Artemy stopped talking, but he doesn’t think it’s possible for him to feel more panicked than he does right now.
“Aw, don’t be like that, Daniil,” he says, the tugging at his paper more insistent. “I thought you liked this language. Didn’t you tell the committee was ‘rather beautiful’?”
“I’m going to kill them,” Daniil says, but it’s too soft. The yelp that escapes his mouth when Artemy successfully pulls the sheet of paper away is much, much louder. “I wasn’t finished reading that,” Daniil says, trying to find something else to look at.
“It says you should stop avoiding me.”
Daniil groans, eyes moving around the desk slowly: the lamp, the other papers, the pen, to the chair and the floor and the railings and the beds and folding screens. His eyes do finally make it to Artemy’s jacket, the pocket in front and going up his chest. He doesn’t hold eye contact long, as a general rule, and thinks he could hold it even less here, in this context. He needn’t worry, though. When his eyes make it to Artemy’s lips, he’s pushed again until his back hits the stage and the lips are too close to look at. He gets to close his eyes again.
(And Artemy’s right, about his tongue wanting to slip other places.)
