Chapter 2: I could have provided proof enough of a broken heart.

Aidan Wynne is not a jolly drunk. Technically, he’s not a jolly anything, but he’ll frankly and genuinely admit that whatever he can usually muster to feign as happiness goes completely out the window the moment his vices are involved – and, lately, they have been of the narcotics variety. He is, understandably, upset with himself that it’s all once again come to this, but no number of stimulating nor hallucinogenic substances can change the fact that he is worse off than he’s ever been before – and it’s all the fault of one man.

“This isn’t fair,” Blake Kettering says, pouring a bottle of expensive Bordeaux down the sink.

Aidan has his head in his hands, but he’s not tearful yet, much to his own surprise. Likely the alcohol is putting a normally welcome delay on his emotions. Numbness is never a blessing or a curse. It simply is.

“Well, on that we agree,” Aidan manages. “You leaving me to perish violently in a fight that isn’t ours isn’t fair at all.”

This rends a sigh from Blake, but not one of exasperation. Not yet.

“I am fighting for us, Aidan. Long since has this war not been just about the jews. They won’t even send our kind to a camp. Every day we hear word of men gunned down in the streets, and I know you are not so naive as to believe that a tragic misunderstanding as the papers report.”

“So, we’ll go to America! My family dreams of the day they’ll be shot of me. I have enough performance money put away to get us both across the Atlantic. None of this has to end in us apart and your life in imminent danger,” Aidan pleads, finally meeting Blake’s eyes.

Instantly, he wishes he hadn’t. The look of steely determination chiselled into Blake’s features makes the grief well up unbridled in Aidan’s chest.

Blake’s face softens.

He sets aside the half-drunk bottles of wine and doesn’t afford the morphine another glance; moving to perch snug against Aidan on the divan. He twines their fingers together.

“As you have your own reasons for ducking the draft, I have mine for joining. It’s the right thing to do. The noble thing. I know it doesn’t appear that way, but I cannot in good conscience sit idly by while hundreds of men risk their lives to bring an end to the pointless massacre one man’s twisted views have forced upon us.”

A sob so violent tears through Aidan, his heart may as well have ripped free of his chest and launched itself across the room.

“I can’t bear it, Blake. Please…” he begs.

The utter torrent of tears blind him to anything except pain at the thought of losing the only person by whom he’s ever felt loved.

“We have time, love,” Blake whispers between them, pulling Aidan close.

The latter collapses into Blake’s chest, the poultice of wine and pain reliever in his veins turning from numbness to a depression so completely overwhelming, Aidan fears it may kill him.

Hopes, if it is indeed Blake’s wish to leave for the war.

“No time,” Aidan sobs, attempting to gather himself, “none in the world will ever be enough with our end on the horizon.”

* * *

And just sometimes, if he’s in a particularly wretched state of mind to begin with, the drink and the syringe make him mighty pleasant to be around.

“Heavens, Lawrence, you misunderstand!” Aidan laughs from his perch in his friend’s lap. “The war, regardless of which side you’re on, is nothing but the perpetuation of a fascist regime designed to snuff out individuality and enforce toxic norms on a biologically diverse society. You’re supposed to be the history major! Tell you me that you believe certain communities deserve oppression?”

Conspicuously awkward, Lawrence shifts Aidan onto the bench beside him, maintaining a surprisingly stern expression for one whose trousers appear to be tightening by the second.

“Of course I don’t support fascists, but without oppression there would not have been revolutions! No actionable change would have occurred. Say you we must simply accept the world as it is and not fight for a better one?”

He peers at Aidan over the rim of his beer glass, eyebrow cocked like he’s just checked Aidan’s king in a particularly rousing game of chess.

“So why can’t we, as civilised folk and learned people, simply sit and have a meaningful and productive discussion about the changes we wish to implement? Does revolution necessarily require killing and bloodshed?” Aidan returns before draining another glass of his own.

The warmth coursing through him, together with the bright and blurry state of the bar around him, has him feeling cheerier and lighter than he’s felt since Blake’s damned departure.

It’s been days and so far Aidan has managed to duck and dive every last one of Her Majesty’s Royal Army recruiters. Tonight, he has given himself permission to celebrate – and what better a way than to drink and be merry?

Oh, if only others shared his love for uninhibited behaviour. Especially Roger Lawrence, who is so clearly attracted to him.

“I concede,” Lawrence says with great reluctance, “that you may well have a point, Wynne. Senseless murder is not a solution to anything. Perhaps Kettering, himself a scholar of psychology and now a soldier, can shed some light on why men prefer violence over discussion. How has he been keeping?”

Aidan frowns, suddenly far less keen to continue talking to his friend. “How would I know? He chose to go off and become a killer himself, convincing himself that his pursuit is noble.”

He hadn’t intended to spit out that last word quite so venomously, but as narcotics can change one’s mood, they can also make one’s emotions far more difficult to rein in.

Lawrence has the nerve to appear concerned, then. “You two were so close. I only assumed—”

“Assumption is the enemy of truth, Lawrence. As a scholar yourself, you should be well aware.”

Aidan rises, then, quite unsteadily. Taking a moment to find his sea legs, he aims for the bar to return his glass, reasoning a nice shot of morphine ought to be enough to leave his mind blissfully void of dreams for the rest of the night.

“Aidan! Aidan Wynne!”

This stops him dead in all four of his tracks, if he’s honest with himself.

Through the doors to the pub comes rushing a young woman. He has enough wits about him to note she cannot be much younger than himself, but not enough even to venture a guess as to why she appears to be crying.

“Oh, you are Aidan Wynne, aren’t you?” the woman asks, peering tearfully up at him.

“It is what I’m called,” he hiccoughs. He tries to shake some sense into himself. “You look familiar. Have we met?”

“You know— Knew,” she corrects, fresh tears spilling down her face, “my brother. Blake Kettering.”

Knew?

Surely not…

“I told him,” Aidan starts. “I told him. War is nothing but a bloodbath! I told him not to go and now he’s… He’s—”

The woman throws her arms around him, undoing him completely.

Not at all familiar with the sensation, Aidan cannot imagine being shot in the chest at close range to feel much different from the pain blooming there for him now. A howl, pure and agonising grief, comes from deep within him, taking the last of his strength with it.

He collapses, but the woman, his last remnant of Blake, helps him to the floor.

She rocks them, his head in her lap as they sob miserably together. Only barely registering the sensation, he is nevertheless soothed by her gentle fingers in his hair; as though her pain is secondary to his own.

Soon, though, he realises that she understands.

She understands and she accepts and she wants nothing more from him than to be an anchor to her brother as she is to his lover.

“He loved you so much,” she whispers down at him. “In his last letter, he made sure to send you his affections were he not to survive this latest deployment.”

“Wynne?” Lawrence comes to kneel at his side.

But Aidan hasn’t the space for anyone besides Blake and his darling sister at the moment.

“Leave me, Lawrence,” he chokes out.

“I only mean to commiserate. He was my friend as well—”

“F*ck your friendship!” Aidan turns on him, tone savage. “I loved him, and I wish to grieve on my own terms. Leave us!”

If he’d been less drunk, less overcome, he would’ve noticed the rejection he’d afforded Lawrence that night turn to cruel spite in Lawrence’s eyes.

Alas, Aidan Wynne suffered unaware of his impending betrayal.