Track Ten: “Wannabe”
“Well, well, well,” said a new voice, cheerful and entirely unhurried. “What have we here?”
Maya was standing at the top of the pool steps in a pale yellow sundress and enormous sunglasses, a mug in one hand, entirely unbothered by whatever she was walking into. She strolled down the steps to the water’s edge, sat neatly on the tiles with her feet dangling in the pool, and surveyed the three of them.
“I came out for a quiet coffee,” she said, “and I find my boyfriend, my boyfriend’s brother, and,” she raised the mug in Jordan’s direction with a small smile, “my boyfriend’s brother’s fiancé, huddled at the shallow end of a pool with red eyes and grave expressions. Somebody explain, please.”
“Nothing,” said Henri and Theo, in perfect unison.
“Nothing at all,” Theo added. “Just a swim. A morning swim. Very healthy.”
“Very healthy,” Henri agreed.
Maya looked at Jordan.
“They cornered me,” Jordan said instantly.
“Traitor,” said Theo.
“I told you not to trust him,” said Henri.
“They cornered me,” Jordan continued, ignoring both of them, “under the entirely transparent pretext of a family interrogation, and grilled me at length about my intentions with Alfie, and threatened me with tribbles and Cardassian lighting arrangements, and then, in an absolutely appalling turn of events, they welcomed me into the family formally and got the three of us into a right state about it.”
Maya took a slow sip of her coffee, considering. “Oh, isn’t that sweet,” she said. “Look at you both.”
“Do not,” said Theo, “make it worse.”
“I’m going to make it worse.” Maya set her mug down. “It’s adorable that you two thought you needed to protect Alfie’s honour. Truly. It’s an old-fashioned instinct, and I respect it. But, boys, you do know Alfie is a big boy, don’t you? Alfie is a big boy who can look after himself.”
Theo and Henri both started laughing before she finished the sentence.
“Oh, we know he’s a big boy,” Theo said. “That’s not information we require. That is not fresh news. Henri and I are extremely well briefed on Alfie being, quote, a big boy, and specifically on his capacity to look after himself, or rather to be looked after, in various forms, in the mornings, on a bed, with the door regrettably unlocked.”
Maya was laughing now too, delighted. “Oh yeah! You walked in.”
“We walked in,” Henri confirmed.
“Both of you!”
“Both of us,” Theo said with immense grief. “I was in front. Henri had the good grace to look at the floor. I did not have the good grace to look at anything.”
“And Alfie is not innocent,” Henri remarked.
“Alfie is spectacularly not innocent, Maya. Alfie is entirely un-innocent. Alfie is, on the evidence, the very opposite of innocent. So while we appreciate the theory of us protecting his honour, I would like it on record that Jordan and Alfie between them are perfectly well equipped to look after each other’s honour, and everybody else’s honour, and the honour of the entire villa if required.” Theo stated with conviction.
“Right,” said Maya. She turned deliberately to Henri and smiled at him sweetly. “Speaking of which.”
Henri’s face changed.
“No.”
“I haven’t said anything yet.”
“I know that face, Maya, don’t.”
“I’m just saying, Henri, that if you were that impressed by what you saw, and you were, because I know you were, because you immediately gave me a play-by-play I did not ask for, in enormous detail, then you had, in fact, options. I said so at the time.”
“Maya.”
“I said, Henri, if you are that jealous of what Alfie is getting, then the sensible thing to do is to go and ask him for tips. Or better yet, to go and ask Jordan for tips, since he is the actual expert.”
Jordan, at the pool wall, put both hands flat over his face.
“Maya.”
“He is right there,” Maya continued, addressing Henri and pointing serenely across the pool at Jordan. “He is not busy. This would be an excellent moment to consult him. I have been open to educational suggestions for some months now. I am telling you this in front of witnesses, Henri, because you refused to consider the idea at the time, went bright red, and changed the subject. So really, this pool is a professional development opportunity.”
Theo had actually gone under the water.
He came back up choking on chlorine and laughing so hard he could not stand up straight, and as he did so he reached down into the front of his swim shorts and produced a PADD, dry, glowing, and entirely functional, and continued laughing as he wiped nothing off the screen.
There was a small pause in the pool.
“Right,” said Jordan carefully. “I have been meaning to ask about that.”
“About what,” said Theo.
“The PADD.”
“What about the PADD?”
“You keep producing it. From your shorts. That’s the third time this morning.”
“It’s waterproof.”
“I don’t doubt that it is waterproof, Theo; it’s a Federation-issue PADD, they’ve been waterproof since before we were born. My question is more about, I suppose, the storage arrangement.”
“It’s a good storage arrangement.”
“It’s in your swimshorts, Theo,” said Henri, matter-of-fact. “That’s where it lives. That’s the arrangement.”
“It is near where I need quick access to it.”
“It is in your shorts close to your… well, I can see the outline. It has been there the whole morning.”
“It is,” Maya said, sipping her coffee, “an interestingly intimate place for a work device.”
“It’s a private device.”
“It is certainly stored in a private space,” Jordan repeated. “Well, that clears it up.”
“Should we,” Henri asked the ceiling, “be worried about him and the PADD? As a family?”
“It’s a professional partnership,” said Theo firmly.
“Theo,” Jordan said, “please tell me that the PADD does not have a name.”
“It has a name.”
“Of course it does.”
“I am not,” said Theo, “telling you the name. That is between me and the device.”
“Are we,” Maya said gently, “going to have to make room for it at the wedding?”
“It will require its own chair,” Henri agreed.
“Its own place setting,” Maya added.
“Its own toast,” Jordan suggested.
“I hate all of you,” Theo announced serenely, and slid the PADD back down inside his shorts with immense dignity.
“It has been an extremely productive morning, and none of you are helping.”
Henri, who had been watching his brother the whole time, spoke up mildly. “Theo.”
“Yes.”
“Are you alright?”
“I am extremely alright.”
“No, Theo. I mean actually. Are you alright? It’s been a long year.”
Theo looked at Henri properly for a second, and something in his face softened. “I am,” he said. “Genuinely. Thank you for asking. Yes.”
“Nobody on the horizon?” Henri said, gentle, “Or one you haven’t told us about.”
“Nobody on the horizon.”
“Sure?”
“Very sure. I would tell you. You would be the second to know.”
“Who’s the first?” Maya asked.
“Him, probably,” said Theo, gesturing at the PADD. “We are extremely close.”
Jordan pushed off the wall and drifted across the pool to Theo, entirely serene. “Well,” he said. “If it’s any consolation. If, hypothetically, things did not work out between Alfie and me, I would be prepared to give it a go with you. Just so you know. As a fallback. As a sort of family option.”
“Jordan.”
“I am being generous.”
“You are being terrifying. No offence, mate, but after what Henri and I saw yesterday morning, I would be genuinely concerned about my safety. I do not have the constitution for what you are apparently doing to my brother, which I appreciate he enjoys a lot. I just fear that I would end up in a medical bay. I have concerts booked.”
“That’s fair,” Jordan conceded.
“It’s a very generous offer,” Theo added, sincere. “I am flattered, and I do appreciate it. But it is a no, for now. No offence.”
“No hard feelings, Theo”, Jordan smirked.
“None whatsoever, Jord.”
“I could,” Maya said, considering, “introduce you to some of my friends from Cestus. I have a good circle. Interesting women, interesting men, a few of them entirely single, all of them, and this is important, prepared to deal with your general Theo-ness.”
“Ooh,” Theo said, interested despite himself.
“I could,” Jordan added, “introduce you to any of the Astra cadets properly. Beatrice is single. So is Athena. So is Jib, if you are open. There is a whole crop of them just downstairs who would fall down a flight of steps if you looked at them.”
Theo pressed a hand to his own chest in mock-flattery.
“Both of you,” he said, “are very kind. Genuinely. I love that you are offering. But no. Not yet. I am, and this is going to sound annoying, actually enjoying being single right now. It’s the first extended stretch I’ve had in years. It’s quite nice not owing anyone an answer to anything. Also,” he added, more practically, “management prefer it. All five of us. They have been very clear that we sell better if we appear available. It is one of the less romantic aspects of the job. We are contractually encouraged to be single, or if we are not single, to be discreet about it.”
Henri raised an eyebrow.
“Contractually.”
“Contractually. I signed the contract. I read it. I understood it. It is not a hardship right now. When I want the arrangement to change, I will change it.” Theo shrugged, entirely peaceful. “Honestly, I am just happy that both my brothers have somebody important in their lives. That is a lot for me, right now. Alfie has Jordan, Henri has Maya, and I get to watch both of those things happen and be involved in them, and honestly, that is a lot of the good bits of love without any of the paperwork. So I am content. I really am. When the time is right, somebody will come along. I believe that. Until then, I have a career and a family and, apparently, my brother’s girlfriend who is going to be running this family in about a decade whether we like it or not.”
Maya, on the pool edge, raised her mug in acknowledgement, slid down off the tiled edge and into the water in her sundress, entirely unbothered by it, waded across, and put her arm around Theo’s neck as though she had known him for a long time.
“Damn right,” she said pleasantly, into his ear.
“Ten years,” said Henri, from across the pool, entirely mild. “Interesting number, that.”
“What.”
“Ten years. Very specific. Very confident. Sounds a bit like planning.”
Maya, still with her arm around Theo, glanced at Henri sidelong.
“It might.”
“Maya.”
“Henri.”
“Are you telling me, in front of witnesses, in a pool, that you see a future in this?”
Maya considered the idea for a moment. “I might be,” she said. “I might not be. I am not making any promises. I am not asking for any. All I am saying is that if somebody, hypothetically, at some hypothetical point down the line, were to ask me about a future, I would not, hypothetically, say no.” She smiled at him serenely. “That is all I am saying.”
Henri, from the far side of the pool, went the colour of a sunset for the second time that morning. “Right,” he said.
“Right,” Maya agreed.
“Good to know.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Yes, Maya,” said Theo faintly, from underneath her arm, entirely to himself.
“Yes, Maya,” said Henri.
Jordan raised his mug in her direction, and she raised hers back, and something briefly and quietly settled between the two of them across the water. Nothing said. Nothing that needed saying. Only that they had seen each other clearly for the first time and both of them had, in the same second, decided they were going to be friends.
“That was extraordinary,” Jordan said. “Thank you. I owe you.”
“Oh, thank Alfie, not me,” Maya said cheerfully as she pushed herself out of the water and got a nearby towel to start drying herself with. “He tipped me off last night. Said his brothers had been muttering all evening and looking at you sideways at dinner, and if I didn’t get down here first thing they’d have you cornered in a pool before you finished your laps. He was, as usual, correct.”
Jordan sat with that for a second, and then began, slowly, to smile. “He tipped you off,” he repeated.
“He did.”
“Last night. Without telling me.”
“He didn’t want to worry you.”
“Oh, that man.” Jordan laughed, mostly to himself, and shook his head at the water. “That absolute man.” He looked up at Theo and Henri. “You two. You were that obvious.”
“We were not,” Theo protested.
“Alfie clocked you at dinner and briefed Maya. There is a rescue party for me because you two could not manage discretion for one evening.”
“In our defence,” Henri said, “Alfie has known us for twenty-one years.”
“And in my defence,” said Theo, “I did think we were being subtle.”
“Sweetheart,” Maya said kindly, “you were not.”
Sometime later, Alfie and Will came back up from the town.
They arrived at the villa terrace, sun-flushed and full of harbour-front breakfast, in the middle of Will explaining an idiom he had researched on the tram home, and Alfie stopped at the top of the steps that led down to the pool, because he had suddenly become aware that the tone of the villa had changed while he was out.
His brothers were in the pool. Maya was by the pool with a towel wrapped around her. Jordan was in the pool, propped against the wall, looking obscurely proud. All four of them were talking over each other, and the sound of them was different from the sound of them the night before at dinner. It had gone one register warmer.
Alfie looked at his fiancé for a long moment before he said anything. “Jordan.”
“Yes.”
“What have you done to my brothers?”
“Nothing.”
“You’ve done something to my brothers. Look at them.”
“I merely,” Jordan said, entirely deadpan, “answered some questions that they had.”
Alfie squinted at Theo, who was floating on his back and quietly wiping his eye against his own shoulder in a way that was not fooling anyone.
“Jord. Did you make them cry?”
Jordan grinned. Proud of himself.
“You did. You made them cry. You did the thing where you go all sincere at people, and they can’t defend themselves.” Alfie was starting to smile too, because he could not help himself. “Was it the speech?”
“Which speech?”
“The one you do about the family. The one about nieces and nephews.”
“It may have come up.”
“Oh no.”
“It came up in some detail.”
“Oh, Jord.”
“I named their roles.”
“Jordan.”
“I told Henri he was in charge of teaching them sports. I told Theo he was in charge of teaching them how to sing at the top of their voices. I told them both they had to be there for everything.”
“And they cried.”
“Everybody cried. Everybody in this pool cried. Nobody is going to admit it. Please don’t bring it up in front of them.”
Alfie put a hand across his mouth for a second, because he could feel his own face doing the thing his fiancé’s face had done, and he was not going to let his brothers see it happening.
“I love you,” he said, quietly enough that only Jordan could hear.
“I know.”
“I want that on record.”
“It’s on record.”
“You wonderful, terrible, sincere man.”
“Come here,” Jordan said, and reached up out of the pool and hooked his fingers into Alfie’s belt loop. “Come in.”
“I’m dressed.”
“I know.”
“Jordan.”
“In.”
Alfie let his fiancé pull him in because his fiancé had that look on him, and he was not going to fight it. He went into the pool in his linen shirt and his sun-warm shorts and came up spluttering to find the whole shallow end applauding.
Behind him, Will paused at the top of the steps. He looked at the scene before him and shrugged. He took off his shoes, sat down neatly on the top step, and removed his black vest. He was already wearing swimming shorts.
“Room for one more?” he asked.
“Always,” said Theo.
“Come and be interrogated,” said Henri.
“Oh no.”
“Oh yes. There is a whole list.”
“Alfie,” Will said, quiet and alarmed, from the top of the steps, “Alfie, they have a list.”
“You will be fine,” Alfie called back through the water. “They love you. They just do not know how to say it yet.”
“That sounds inefficient.”
“It is inefficient, Will. It is a family trait. You will get used to it.”
Will came down the steps, one at a time, and lowered himself carefully into the water at the shallow end, and looked around at the assembled McCallister-Reyases and Duncan-Courts and one soggy-looking PADD.
Jordan pushed off the wall and waded across to him.
“Will,” he said. “While I have you.”
“Yes.”
“I have been meaning to ask you something, and I think I would like to ask you now, because Alfie already did his version of this yesterday and it was very good, and I do not think mine will be as good, but I would like to try.”
“Alright.”
Jordan took a breath. Everyone else in the pool, tactfully, developed a sudden interest in the far end.
“Right.” Jordan took a second breath. “So. We have been through everything together. And when Alfie asked me to marry him, one of the first thoughts I had, after yes, and after I love you, was that I could not do the whole thing without you standing next to me. I had a whole speech about this, and I have already lost most of it.” He made a face at himself. “I was going to say something about how you being my brother is one of the two or three most important facts about my life. But it sounds pompous in my head. So I am just going to say the important part. You are my brother. I love you. I would like you to be my best man when I marry Alfie. Please say yes.”
Will considered this seriously for several seconds, because that was how Will considered things. Then he looked at Jordan. “Yes,” he said.
“Yes?”
“Yes. Obviously. I would like to.” He paused, and then, because he had thought of a thing that mattered to him, added: “Does this mean that Alfie is officially another brother from another mother now?”
Alfie, in the middle of the pool in his soaked linen shirt, made a small noise as though he had been hit in the chest.
“That is,” Jordan said, “an extremely fair question. Alfie. Are you?”
“Yes,” Alfie said, wet-eyed. “Yes, Will. Officially.”
“Oh, come on,” said Theo, wading over, “if we are formalising this, we are all in on it. Alfie is my brother. Alfie is marrying your brother, so your brother is my brother. And now you are my brother, and Henri is your brother, and Jordan is my brother. I lost track of that sentence, but the principle holds. We are all brothers. All of us. It is decided. Welcome to the family, Will, again, but this time for the record.”
“There are,” Henri agreed, “now five of us.”
“Five,” Will repeated, quietly delighted.
“Five brothers,” Theo confirmed. “Three of us from one family, two of you from another, all of us now bound by matrimonial arithmetic, whether we like it or not.”
“I like it,” Will said.
“So do I,” said Alfie.
“So do I,” said Jordan, and then, because he had been given far too many sincere moments in one morning and no longer knew what to do with any of them, added, “right, that is enough of that.”
“Enough of that,” Theo agreed. “Henri.”
“Yep.”
“New brother.”
“Yep.”
“In the water.”
“Legs?”
“Legs.”
Will, who had exactly as much time to react as Alfie had had yesterday on the reef, did not react in time, and was hoisted off the pool step and dropped into the shallow end in a movement so practised that Theo and Henri did not appear to communicate about it at all. Will came up spluttering and outraged in exactly the way Alfie had come up spluttering yesterday.
“Welcome to the family,” said Henri.
“I have already been welcomed to the family,” Will protested.
“That was verbal. This is physical. Now it is real.”
“I have,” said Will, wiping his eyes, “a great deal to learn about this family.”
“You really do,” Alfie agreed cheerfully.
Maya, sitting on the pool edge with her sundress skirt bunched in her lap, watched the whole thing with quiet amusement, and Henri, halfway across the pool, turned and looked at her properly.
“Maya.”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“About what?”
“About all of this. Us. Being part of it. Coming here with me and meeting all of them and getting pulled into the middle of, you know. Us.” He gestured helplessly at himself, at his brothers, at Alfie and Jordan and Will, at the drenched PADD, at the entire cheerful disaster area of the shallow end. “I know we are early, and I am not asking about anything else. I am just asking about now. You are seeing all of us properly this morning, at close range. Are you sure this is a family you want to keep being around?”
Maya looked at him for a long, warm moment. Then she slid forward off the tiled edge, until she was standing barefoot on the top pool step, and leaned down to him.
“Absolutely sure,” she said. “Come here.”
Henri went to her, close enough for her to slide a hand round the back of his neck and draw him in, and she was about to kiss him properly when two pairs of hands (Theo’s and Jordan’s, moving with the same unspoken coordination as Theo and Henri had a minute earlier) closed around her forearms and pulled her, sundress and all, into the shallow end.
She came up laughing. “You,” she informed Jordan, dripping, “are a menace.”
“I am your ally,” Jordan corrected. “There is a difference.”
“There is no difference at all.”
“There is a small difference.”
Henri, who had not quite been kissed, wrapped his arms round his soaked girlfriend and held her, and Maya, still laughing, put her forehead against his and said something quietly that nobody else in the pool could hear. Henri’s face did a very small and very private thing in response, and that was all any of them needed to see.
The terrace door slid open.
Lian, hair still damp from his own morning, coffee in one hand, came out onto the top of the pool steps and took in the scene beneath him: everyone in the water laughing and screaming with delight before his eyes caught a PADD glowing serenely in what was clearly still Theo’s waistband.
“Theo,” he called down.
“What?”
“Management.”
“What about them?”
“They have been on. They want us out today. Sightseeing. In town. Being seen. Photographs. The full spread. They think it will help sell the last of the tickets and land well with the locals. Nael and Harren are getting ready. I need you upstairs in the next hour.”
Theo made a sound of profound wounded resignation.
“Duty calls,” he announced, to everybody, and hauled himself out of the shallow end with the specific reluctance of somebody being dragged out of a warm bath.
He paused at the top of the steps and looked back over his shoulder at the pool: at Alfie in his soaked shirt, still wet-eyed; at Jordan floating on his back with his arms out; at Will, who had already begun asking Alfie a precise question about the exact mechanics of the leg-and-arm lift technique; at Maya and Henri, who were talking to each other in the low voices of two people who were entirely settled.
For a very small second, Theo’s face did something almost sober.
Then he grinned, produced the PADD one last time from his shorts to a chorus of noises from the shallow end, saluted with it in the general direction of Lian, and disappeared inside.
