Chapter 8: I have no notion of loving people by halves.

“You’re not looking!” Aidan laughs, pointing. “Look at his bather.”

“It's red, Aidan. He’s a lifeguard. It’s meant to be red.” Edmund might be getting mildly annoyed now, but only because he knows he’s about to be blown out of the proverbial water and it’ll be his own fault.

“So, you notice nothing different about his?” Aidan stares at him, those big, bright eyes a steely sea green today.

“Obviously not.”

They’ve been spending quite a bit of time together as of late. Aidan had approached him two days prior to ask if he played chess. Edmund rather feels as though he would’ve said yes whether he played or not, since he’s only too elated to see Aidan engaged in anything outside of reading alone in his bedroom.

No matter that the middle Wynne sibling seemed to delight in giving Edmund a thorough thrashing every time they partake in a game. When Aidan Wynne smiles, it seems, the whole world smiles with him.

Aidan sighs. “You look, but you do not observe. Look at all the other lifeguards’ bathers. Yes, they’re all regulation red, but his is by far brighter than theirs. Along with the fact that his hair is done up quite fashionably and he’s accessorised, we can ascertain he’s trying to attract attention. By the way he keeps smiling over at a very specific lifeguard, we can assume it’s his. On top of this, he hasn’t been out to the water once since we’ve sat down. He clearly does not want to get his hair or trinkets wet. This is elementary,” he finishes. “Not even a challenge.”

Edmund resists the urge to glare, instead opting for pettiness. “So, you were watching some tarty lifeguard while I was pouring my heart out to you about my childhood?”

Aidan snorts. “I would hardly call venting about being mildly overshadowed by your brother ‘pouring your heart out’; nor would I deign to call what I do ‘watching’.”

“Yes, yes. Alright.” Edmund gives in. “Also, ‘elementary’? Who are you, Sherlock Holmes?”

“Oi, that’s a hero of mine!” Aidan responds immediately, infusing his voice with a sharp enough finality that Edmund turns to look at him. “What? He’s got his sh*t together enough. Bloody aspirational!”

“And what makes you think you don’t?” Edmund probes, trying to sound offhand.

Aidan seems uninterested in answering this question, choosing instead to keep watching the lifeguards and the other beach-goers.

Edmund tries not to look too expectant or stare very hard, but his eyes do catch on the wind playing in Aidan’s hair and flitting it about his head like a black halo, or the way the collar of his coat is turned up deftly against the wind.

After an awkward amount of time, Edmund considers apologising (for what, he has no idea). Anything, really, to nip the heavy silence in the bud.

“People have a tendency not to like me very much, if I’m honest,” Aidan says, suddenly, jarring Edmund back into silence. “Even at college. My dance partner has, multiple times, expressed that, outside of our performing relationship, she wishes to see as little of me as humanly possible.”

“And that makes her quite popular, does it?” Edmund only half-jokes.

“She carries the majority vote.”

Edmund’s tendency, since moving in with the Wynne clan, is to overanalyse anything and everything they say for some deeper meaning or hidden truth. Dealing with an overly blunt Aures on a daily basis and, antithetically, with a pleasantly vague Mr and Mrs Wynne, this is the only real way to glean any kind of clarity from any information they wish to share.

This is what he tends towards now, until he sees the minute tightness around Aidan’s eyes, and he understands.

“Alright, but when have the majority ever been anything but sheep?”

Edmund doesn’t miss the dazed look with which Aidan pins him.

* * *

They’re playing chess in the lounge. The fire is low and warm. Everyone else has gone to bed after the excitement of Aeron radioing home.

It doesn’t matter that Aidan has won every last game in exactly three moves every time, Edmund is just happy that Aidan isn’t pretending not to cry anymore. He hasn’t been able to get out of Aidan exactly what Aeron had said to him during their moment alone, but he is at absolutely no pains to sit around, getting soundly beaten at a board game, if it means taking Aidan’s mind off things.

“Edmund,” Aidan says, after another two wins.

Edmund looks up to meet his gaze.

“Your family… Do they love you?”

The flickering embers make shadows dance across Aidan’s face, but his eyes seem to shine regardless of the dimness. Edmund spots a stray eyelash laying just across his left cheekbone and reaches over to brush it away. He moves slowly, though, to make sure Aidan is comfortable.

By way of consent, Aidan leans into Edmund’s touch.

If he’s honest with himself in regards to Aidan’s question, he’s never actually thought about it much. He’d always assumed so.

His parents have always supported him: they put all his accomplishments in polished wooden frames and hung them about the house; they also called and wrote frequently enough. He guesses if he were more prone to fits of folly like Harry that he may have been able to test that assumption by now, but, as it stands, he never felt particularly inclined. He reckons he’s always been a bit boring that way.

“I believe so, yes.” Edmund nods thoughtfully. “Surely, you don’t question whether or not yours loves you?”

This makes the other man smile, though sardonically. His mind is obviously on a very specific path and is not so easily dissuaded from it.

“But doesn’t it seem such a… a burden?” Aidan barely whispers, staring into the fire now. “Like your life and choices aren’t yours because if you choose anything other than what they want for you, you’re damning them? Wouldn’t it be easier if people, like animals, simply abandoned their young to fend for themselves at some stage? How does anyone live comfortably knowing that any foul decision they make can cause irrevocable damage to those in their orbit?”

“My brother…” Edmund starts, “He used to battle with the same questions. It used to drive him so mad that the drink seemed to be his only solace. But he wants to be a teacher, you see, and no one is going to hire an alcoholic to work with children.

“So, he had us take him to a facility. Quite a few times now, I might add. Every time the doctors assured us that relapse is perfectly normal and, every time, he got a little bit further in his treatment before something tipped him back into the bottle.

“When he finally got sober, met his lady, Darlene, and got back on track with his education, he invited me out for drinks to celebrate. I had a few beers, but Harry? He stuck to his fizzy drink all night, not even looking tempted to deviate. We spoke and I asked him how he did it. How did he finally become sober and stick to it? He replied, “Life is a balancing act. We go through stages of self-destruction because we feel we must make big and life-altering decisions on our own and for ourselves, but we come back to healing when we realise that we are incapable of taking care of ourselves in any meaningful way. So, we walk a tightrope, constantly asking ourselves if it is more important to be autonomous than it is to be loved.””

“And you believe love is more important.”

It’s not a question, but Edmund nods, anyway. “It must be, or existence really serves no purpose.”

Fresh tears spill down Aidan’s face and Edmund automatically reaches out to wipe them away.

Instead, the skinny man with the bird bones, so prone to shivering as he is, comes to press his face into Edmund’s chest. Sensing his need for nearness, Edmund pulls the blanket off Mr Wynne’s chair behind him, draping it over them both.

After so many tears and much trembling, Aidan finally manages to turn himself around to rest his back against Edmund’s front, keeping the blanket tight and close around them and making himself comfortable.

Edmund, for his part, cannot help but notice that Aidan is still wistful.

“What did he say to you?” Edmund isn’t sure where the words come from, but they feel right. “Aeron?”

Aidan lets out a deep sigh before his eyes slide shut. His voice comes out a rather startling imitation of his brother.

“Stop f*cking up.”

Letting go of a pent-up breath of his own, Edmund finds that Aidan isn’t as wrapped up in the blanket as he’d thought. A free hand is still gripping a cigarette like it’s the last drop of water in the desert and, as Edmund watches, Aidan brings it up to his lips to take a rather hefty drag.