Chapter Text
It’s a couple weeks across the country. Maybe less. That’s what Harvard proposed.
He really should have said no, but it wasn’t Aiden’s fault he was convinced. His best friend was too convincing. It was a dreadful curse.
“We could take shifts,” he’d suggested. “To get there faster.” Harvard had his feet kicked up on the headboard, hands on his stomach. The two of them lazed on his king-sized bed, strewn across his sheets in a way that could only be achieved after final exams.
“I don’t like driving,” Aiden announced.
“Passenger princess.”
“Where would we sleep?” Aiden prodded, pointedly ignoring him. “What if the hotel breakfast makes me sick? What if they have no room service? What if they only have body towels?”
Harvard sat up and considered. “We could book some nice places. You’ve been to plenty of luxury hotels, though. This is about a change of pace, Aiden.” He shook Aiden with a captainly smile. “Loosen up!”
“I’m loose!” Aiden insisted. “Much looser than you!”
“Okay, buddy,” Harvard rolled his eyes, narrowly stifling a laugh. “I did look, but it’s pretty difficult to go two weeks in the countryside with only five-star stays. We’d have to stop at a few motels, at least.”
“And risk bedbugs?” Aiden rebuffed.
“I could pack a tent,” Harvard offered cheekily.
Aiden wrinkled his nose. “A tent!”
Harvard and his family were the strange sort of rich where they enjoyed nature enough to pretend like they couldn’t afford an air-conditioned cabin for a weekend getaway. They actually went camping. They made sure Harvard knew to fish and hike and build fires. Harvard, the little boy scout, loved it. Often he was whisked off to fanciful wildlife retreats and came back raving with nerdy little animal facts. Once, he’d returned from Sydney with a koala stuffie, proudly presenting it to Aiden.
A friend for Harvard Paw, he’d said. Aiden’s arms weren’t quite big enough to snuggle with two plushes at night, but he sure tried.
Harvard liked to bring him back all sorts of gifts from his family trips. Aiden went on trips, too, but when he was that old they mostly consisted of him being toddled around a glamorous resort or couple’s cruise while his father and Nathalie (or Giselle, or whichever wife it was that time) effectively ignored him for frivolous honeymoon activities.
They weren’t fun memories.
“If you’re so worried about bedding, we can bring sleeping bags. Like that field trip to the observatory? Sixth grade?” Harvard knocked their shoulders.
Aiden's mouth betrayed him and smiled. That was a fun memory. A lot of it was arguments over dwarf planets. They slept under the stars, projected across the tall ceiling. Harvard Paw slept between them—each with a hand on his soft, fuzzy head and another over his heart. Their fingers touched and intertwined. If Aiden pretended hard enough, he and Harvard were holding each other, not the bear, under the endless night sky.
“I remember.” Aiden thought of how it would be to sleep under the real thing, with real Harvard. He waved off the daydream, but only halfway abandoned it. “What’s going on, anyway? Don’t tell me you want to drive forty hours for thrills.”
Harvard shrugged, like it was no big deal, “My aunt’s having an engagement party in LA. I thought it might be fun to go. With you. And I know we could just catch a flight, that’s what my parents are doing, but, you know … feels like I’ve done everything on a travelling bucket list but a big cross-country road trip. You don’t have to come.” He tacked on that last part quickly.
With every word, he appeared to be less and less sure of himself. Aiden wanted to rectify this. He liked confident Harvard, no-nonsense Harvard. Drag-him-out-of-bed-for-practice Harvard.
See, Aiden was spoilt, but mostly he was a contrarian, and this was purposeful. Calculated. Aiden enjoyed being difficult and relished in the attention when others gave chase. Harvard certainly did. But Harvard, ever the gentleman, had a tendency to retreat into himself given enough resistance. He was firm, never forceful. He never wanted to make him do anything he didn’t want to do. Aiden loved this about him.
Little did he know, Aiden wanted this. Much like Aiden wanted to fence. Fencing he adored, even if for a time it never seemed like it. It was exhilarating. It taught him grace and reflex and more tact than he could ever hope to know. Most of all, fencing was dangerous. Not physically. Fencing scared him. There was a level of commitment. If he went all in, he might embarrass himself.
He might know more about himself than he would like to.
But he’d gone to state championships, hadn’t he?
“I’ll come.” It was only two weeks on the road. He was blowing this out of proportion.
“We can always just—” Harvard blinked. “Seriously?”
“Yes,” Aiden groaned. “Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“Act like you’re so shocked I want to do things with you.”
Harvard’s smile was like a dawning sun. It made Aiden’s chest do—something. It always did.
“Pack light,” Harvard told him.
Aiden made a wounded noise. “It's like you don’t even know me.”
Aiden tried to pack light.
When the day comes, he shows up with three bags. He’s relieved to find Harvard disobeyed his own rule.
The Lees have a beautiful two-story vintage home, ornate but lived in. He knows that inside, the floral walls are covered with pictures from decades past. Their graduation photos (picturing Harvard, Aiden, and Harvard Paw in a mini mortarboard) sit among them. As Aiden rolls up to their driveway and waits at the door, he’s met with the miraculous sight of Harvard in a sleeveless shirt, sweating with the effort of carrying several heavy things. He greets Aiden with a brilliant grin. There’s a decently-sized duffel bag swung over his shoulder. Aiden feels a little less well prepared just looking at him.
For several reasons.
“Need a hand?” He walks out of the entryway beside Harvard, a little bounce to his steps. Excitement or anxiety, he can’t decide.
Rolling his eyes, Harvard presses on. “You’ll just pick the lightest thing I have to carry.”
Aiden hums. “It’s the thought that counts.”
“No,” Harvard laughs, "It's the heavy lifting. You’ve really got to take the workout regimens seriously, Aiden, it can’t all be drills.”
“It’s summer!” Aiden whines. “No fencing team talk yet. Please.”
Much like a puppy told to sit and stay, Harvard frowns but obliges him. He drops his duffel at the bottom of the wraparound porch’s steps. “So, what are we driving in?”
Aiden nods towards the car he left in the driveway.
Harvard pauses. “Aiden. A Corvette?”
Aiden shrugs haplessly.
“Aiden.”
“Do you think I own an SUV?” He knits his brows at the concept. “Or what, a BMW? We're too good for abbreviated cars, Harv.”
Harvard doesn't seem to know where to put his hands—his hips, his head, crossed with his arms? He may as well be doing a furious rendition of the Macarena. “I thought maybe you'd have, like, a Mustang at least! The seats will get hot in the sun, and the roof could get stuck … we’re gonna get robbed…! ”
A practical car was the one thing Harvard had requested. And Aiden often chooses to listen to him, believe it or not. The fact is, though, there was a certain wonder in his eye when Harvard set his gaze upon the convertible. Its rich dark red paint job glimmered in the afternoon sun. The seats were supple, quality leather. It was sleek, and even more so with the top down. Aiden had anticipated the reaction.
While Aiden tends to turn up his nose at the disgustingly, showboating-ly opulent, he does have a particular taste. A flair for the dramatic. This he shares, regrettably, with his father. But he also knows that, under a shield of humble pragmatism, Harvard holds these refined sensibilities as well.
For fuck’s sake, he orders the fancy steak fillet at every restaurant with it on the menu.
(To his credit, he always excuses it as being celebratory for something or other.)
Aiden senses he won’t be professing this anytime soon, however. “It’s got a front trunk,” he supplies.
Harvard makes an illegible sound.
Lips quirked, he leans an elbow against the roof of the car. “Imagine it, will you, Harv? Cruising the 6, top down, wind whipping your h—” Aiden reconsiders, “wind in your face, sun blazing high in the sky. Shiny red Corvette with you at the wheel.”
“Me at the wheel?”
“Heaven knows you're not trusting me behind it.”
Furrowing his brow, Harvard tilts his head then nods as if to say fair. He’s being a little shit, obviously. Harvard trusts Aiden with a lot more than he should be getting away with. Like, for example, providing the car they'd be spending forty-something hours in.
“Still, Aiden. It's … inconvenient,” Harvard struggles.
Aiden smiles brightly. “So am I.”
Beauty is pain, isn’t it? Beauty is a little bit of inconvenience. He’s no stranger to the adage. Aiden likes to surround himself with beautiful things. Case in point, he goes and drapes an arm around Harvard’s shoulders.
“You like it,” he says.
Harvard shakes his head like this is an unfortunate fact. And yet, his lips are curved at the corners. “People are going to think we’re douchebags.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll tell them I’m expensive and you’re just trying to impress me.”
“Aiden!”
He laughs, and helps Harvard pack his bags into the trunk, and his stomach somersaults at the prospect of seeing their toiletries together. It’s stupid. They’ve seen each other in the locker rooms at Kings Row, all of them did. They’ve slept over at each other’s homes for more than a decade. They’ve gone on vacations together before (always Aiden joining the Lees, never the other way around. Aiden’s father hardly had time for him on trips, let alone another kid). It shouldn’t be any different now.
It’s their last summer before university. They’ll be going together, of course. They sent in their applications to Princeton at the same time. Inseparable Harvard and Aiden, attached at the hip.
Nothing had to change.
But they would change. And everything would be different.
As their chameleon, Aiden was adaptive. He watched stepmothers come and go. He watched friends drift in and out of their lives. He watched girlfriends (Harvard’s) and boyfriends (his, barely) dance through and exit stage left. His world expanded with every coming year. He got taller. So did Harvard. The difference was Harvard grew out—out of his baby fat, his bad habits, his immaturities. Aiden seemed to grow backwards. His mouth sharpened. His hair got longer, and so did his neverending list of mistakes and misdemeanors.
So, forgive him if he can’t help but think it’d be childish to believe Harvard wouldn’t grow out of him soon.
University will be important for Harvard. His world will expand too, beyond Aiden. So Aiden will cling to him here, now, before Harvard’s new world leaves him behind.
He’ll take all the closeness he can get, even if it scares him.
“Ready?” Harvard wipes a brow, running an appreciative hand over the leather of his driver’s seat. Aiden knew he’d like it. “Hope you had a big lunch. We won’t be stopping for a while.”
He gives a put-upon sigh. “Remind me why I agreed to this?”
“Because you’d do anything for me,” Harvard says, factually, smiling.
Always. Anytime. As long as you’ll let me. “Shut up and drive, Lee.”
His best friend laughs, and steps on the gas, and Aiden understands they will never go fast enough to outrun the years catching up to them. Time will slip out from underneath him like the road stretching behind them; faces will become passing highway signs blurring at the edges of his vision.
Sunlight catches his eye as the familiar buildings give way to a searing blue sky. The day is gorgeous and cloudless and bleeding away, swifter than he can imagine.
Aiden hopes two weeks will make up for a lifetime.