Chapter Text
Growing up, it was him and Piper. Compared to him, she was impossibly mature and sophisticated, floating through the halls of their school and the country club with an ease Lochlan couldn’t imitate. But she was still accessible, and there, and she looked at him when he talked, and laughed about his problems with Ms. Schulte–their ridiculously strict Geometry teacher she’d had four years before–like she was commiserating and not like she was laughing at him. He could sneak into her room at night, and spread out his homework on the soft green rug by her desk, and she’d just smile and turn up her music so they could both listen while they worked.
He saw Piper more than he saw mom–a hazy presence in his childhood, floating in the background with a glass of wine in hand, shooing him in and out of family photos and dad’s company dinners, fixing his hair and smiling abstractly over his shoulder when he tried to show her his latest Minecraft build. “That’s nice, honey,” and then she’d slide her reading glasses back up her nose and go back into whatever book she was reading.
And even she was more accessible than dad. Dad was hard, remote, with sharp eyes that cut through and then dismissed him in less than a heartbeat. When they went around the dinner table and he quizzed them all in turn over their homework and their progress towards their life goals, Lochlan would listen while Sax and Piper rattled off a long list of accomplishments, and he’d watch his dad watch them. His face never gave anything away, but he would nod, and give a word of advice here or there. Piper would sometimes get a smile. And then he’d turn to Lochy, and the muddled list of school projects he’d been scrambling to remember would get stuck in his throat, and he’d just mumble out something like “school’s fine,” or “I’m good,” and his dad would just shake his head and get back to his dinner like he expected nothing less.
So maybe that’s why – maybe that’s what – maybe that’s what drew him to Saxon, why he loomed over the rest of the family, even Piper, in his mind, like – like the Colossus of Rhodes. A golden idol, whose blue eyes would pass over him with something like interest, something like warmth, once in a while. A burnished sun that chose to shine on him sometimes, in ways he couldn’t predict, in patterns he didn’t understand. When Lochy chipped his tooth running at full speed into the pole support of the basketball hoop in the back yard, Sax had rolled his eyes and complained loudly about his idiot little brother ruining the afternoon. When Lochlan got super into ancient Egypt in third grade and excitedly ran up to Saxon’s room to show him his name spelled out in hieroglyphics, Saxon had said “I don’t speak Chinese, dude,” and slammed the door in his face. He’d bring his friends home after school, and they’d be so loud when they piled into the kitchen where Loch was playing Pokemon Omega Ruby, and Sax’s eyes would pass over him like he didn’t exist.
But during family movie nights, he would let Lochlan curl up next to him on the giant couch, let him settle into the solid heat of his side and jab him with his bony knees, and he only complained a little. And he reliably came to every swim meet, even well into high school. Lochlan could always count on hearing his brother’s distinctive ‘WOOOO’ from the stands when his head surfaced from the water, even on days when he wasn’t swimming well. It never failed to send a flush straight through him, riding the wave of his gasping lungs and hammering heart all the way down to his toes as he clung to the side of the pool. His brother, who came straight from work and parked his obnoxious yellow BRZ in front of the rec center at just enough of an angle that no one could park next to him (“not gonna let these high school douchebags wreck my paint job”). Loch would yank his goggles off, not caring if the elastic band snagged in his wet hair, so he could search for that golden head in the stands, that muscled arm pumping the air, Sax shouting “there he is! Show ‘em how it’s done!”
Those flashes of attention fed him like he was starving, made something in him roll over and beg for more. When he was in middle school, Piper would get so annoyed at how he’d wait by the window on the weekends Sax came home from Duke. “Why do you want to hang out with him, anyway?” she’d grouse. “He’s so gross.”
And he kind of was, dumping his rancid duffel bag of dirty laundry in the foyer for someone else to pick up, drinking half of dad’s beers in the fridge, burping and wandering into Lochlan’s room to sprawl on the bed with his shoes still on. But he’d also tell him stuff, like stuff about parties that went til 7am, about the girls who let him go all the way in the sorority showers. And later, when it got darker and he got drunker, he’d get moody and talk about the problem sets he couldn’t figure out, the professor who snapped that he was just coasting on his family name, the nagging feeling that maybe he just didn’t even like finance all that much. And Loch would sit at the head of his bed with his knees curled up to his chin, holding his breath, like if he moved too suddenly the spell would break and Saxon would realize he was just spilling his guts to his dorky kid brother and leave.
The feeling of being included in Saxon’s world – and the soft underbelly he showed to Lochy, and maybe no one else – set him fizzing with anxious excitement that almost made him feel sick. And it only got more intense when Piper went off to college and Saxon graduated. Suddenly, his monthly visits became weekly dinners, with Saxon sometimes catching a ride back from the office with dad, and striding in the door complaining loudly about his last Uber Eats order, and that he might as well eat whatever Maribel had made instead of throwing his money away on reheated garbage.
Instead of quiet nights with Piper, and long conversations about whatever book she’d been reading or the evils of Monsanto or whatever, his nights more often than not featured Saxon sprawled out on his floor with his arms akimbo, bitching about the frigid harpies in risk management who kept shutting him down. Or – even more overwhelming – those nights when Saxon’s blue eyes would swivel onto him and suddenly he’d be the center of the conversation.
That was when Lochlan realized that, even with Piper, he didn’t really talk about himself. He looped every topic back around to something she cared about, and she was happy to roll with it. He was rusty at even thinking about himself. But Saxon would go at him like he was an oyster and Saxon had the oyster knife, demanding to know about his sex life (non-existent), what he ate that day (usually pop-tarts), who his friends were (two girls, a fact that at first thrilled and then flabbergasted Saxon when he realized Lochlan wasn’t trying to get with either of them – and Loch wasn’t about to tell him Olivia and Haleigh were dating, because he knew exactly how that conversation would go). Saxon would sit close, looking straight into his eyes, listening like Lochlan’s stumbled words were something worth picking through. It made him feel dizzy, like Saxon was a black hole and all of the molecules in his body were being pulled towards him.
Suddenly being the focus of all that attention made him fall even deeper into whatever weird spell he was under when it came to Saxon. He would hold his breath when 6 o’clock came around until he heard Saxon’s laugh out in the driveway and his work bag hitting the foyer table. On days when the foyer was empty, he would feel just...dissatisfied, crabby at dinner at the too-empty table as mom and dad talked over his head, kicking at the table leg until his toe bruised.
And that’s probably why, when Saxon stopped talking to him after that night on the boat, it felt like the world was ending.