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“If you train all day, every day, you’re going to burn yourself out. Give yourself a couple minutes to breathe and decompress, alright?”
It was more than a couple of minutes, Aiden knew that when he said it, but if he used the smaller increments of time, Harvard and Seiji wouldn’t panic so much. Granted, most of his team would be panicking, but that was simply their nature. An afternoon without practicing, after they’d been working in the morning and would continue to work in the evening, was more than manageable. Consistent breaks were key.
“And, hey, put on some damn sunscreen. Coach’ll kill me if I let any of you get skin cancer,” Aiden tacked on, tossing a bottle out from his bag towards the trio that was standing in the sand.
Seiji was sitting next to him, poised in a chair with a book under their sunshade. He’d at least had the sensibility to put on sunscreen before they’d even left, which was also a habit Aiden had gotten into after he’d been absolutely fried a few years ago in France. The bright red skin, peeling for days on days after, was not something he needed to do again.
“They’re going to get in the water before it’s been fifteen minutes,” Seiji remarked under his breath as the chattering started back up.
“Hey, I have plausible deniability. I tried. She can’t blame me for that.”
Seiji’s eyebrows raised, glancing over from over the top of his sunglasses with an expression that could have read as annoyed by Seiji’s standards. “Try harder next time.”
“Harvard’s supposed to take a break this trip and he’s the only one capable of herding the kittens like that,” Aiden countered. “Why Coach nominated me is up for debate.”
“I wonder why, too.”
“Oh, fuck off.”
“She should’ve picked Eugene.”
Aiden opened his mouth, but closed it quickly to redirect the thought. “Four siblings. Yeah, you’re probably right.”
“I’m always right.”
“No, Seiji, I’m always right. You’re running at sixty-forty at best.”
Seiji had to partially close his book for that, turning to watch Aiden incredulously. “And you’re sure of that?”
“I know how to be wrong. Which means I’m always right.” Aiden cracked a smile and tapped his nose twice. “Are you gonna swim?”
“Didn’t plan on it.” Seiji checked his phone, then tossed it back into the chair’s cupholder. “Besides, someone has to help Bobby when he gets back.”
“Suit yourself.”
Aiden got up from his towel, a few things sensibly placed on and around it to make him at least look more interesting to the passerby. He was, if nothing else, fantastic at being performative to the untrained eye. Wired headphones were up by the top (out of the sun, intentionally), a worn-in copy of The Devil Wears Prada (the book, anyways, he’d seen the movie), a nice pair of women’s designer sunglasses (okay, he liked tortoiseshell and none of the men’s ones had a good frame with it), and a faded tote bag from a record store that he’d gotten on his last New York trip with Harvard.
If he actually stopped for a moment to think about it, he’d very quickly have realized that performative meant he didn’t actually care about any of the things that he had and it was supposed to be all for show to put it mildly. Unfortunately, he did actually care about or genuinely enjoy those things, alongside the fact he wasn’t doing it to gain favor with women, which meant he probably couldn’t fit the label.
Tossing his shirt back onto the towel, he gave Seiji a salute. “Hold down the fort for me. I’ll be back.”
“I didn’t dream of doing anything else,” Seiji answered, wholly deadpan about it.
Aiden meandered off down the sand, taking a deep breath as he did. Atlantic or Pacific, didn’t matter, the ocean always smelled the same and had the same allure. The Pacific was cooler though, he could admit to that much, and with a day so hot it was a welcome change to step into the waves and properly dive in.
When he remerged, shaking out his head and finding solid footing on a sandbank, Aiden spat out extra water and smoothed out his hair. Contrary to what many would be led to believe, he would always be in the ocean when given an opportunity. Salt water can be great for the hair, definitively his hair.
With a little hop up and over the incoming wave, he turned to face the shadow approaching his corner of the waters. It was only Harvard, a weighted statement in and of itself, who dove straight through a wave that definitely didn’t need to be dove through.
Still, it made Aiden laugh.
“You thought you were actually going to let you get swim time alone?” Harvard posed with a quiet tsk. “Come on, now.”
“Oh, I knew you’d come eventually.” Aiden pressed the back of his hand to his forehead to be dramatic. “You never know, I might’ve started drowning and needed a lifeguard.”
Harvard grinned. “I’m off duty, you know that. I gotta let these West Coast guys show you how it’s done.”
Aiden gasped, allowing himself to faux-stumble into the water. He only was under the water for a few moments before Harvard was tugging him back up and laughing.
It would only be a few minutes before they were joined by Nick and Eugene, who were a little rowdier with their energy, but that was always to be expected. And, oh, what the hell, Aiden wasn’t always pretending to be dignified to the point that he wouldn’t roughhouse with them. It was a trip as it was, maybe not a real vacation, but trip meant there had to be at least a little room for fun.
Sometimes he could stand to take his own advice. Maybe not on the training front, he could actually stand to do that more, but on the letting go and decompressing front. He didn’t always have to be The Aiden Kane. It was part of what surprised him, about Harvard sticking by his side all these years, and part of what he was so utterly grateful for.
By the time they were getting out, Bobby had arrived and elected to lounge with Seiji under the sunshade.
Aiden flopped down onto his towel, stretching out as he did. He never minded the sand while he was wet, he brought a hand towel anyway it didn’t matter. Eventually, he’d get a headband on, but that could wait until he was about to be forcibly moved to join a volleyball game.
Begrudgingly, Seiji would join them for it too. He had to as soon as Aiden was up though, for the sake of keeping it balanced.
They weren’t keeping score, not really. Seiji might have been, at least for a while, but he was very shortly thrown off guard when Eugene on the opposing team started correcting with slight off numbers. Six to four turned into five to four without an actual hit of the ball, then succinctly after, five to five.
If anyone won, Aiden didn’t know. Not that it particularly mattered to him, he was just there to have fun, and he'd say he won anyway. And hey, it allowed for Aiden to go take a nap on his towel when the bickering over who actually won succinctly followed. He opened an eye when he heard someone approaching, looking up at Harvard and cracking a little smile.
“Couldn’t take their heat?” Aiden asked. “All I know is that we won.”
“I’m not so sure we did, but I’ll take your word for it.” Harvard sat down on a towel next to Aiden’s, easing back.
“They’ll figure it out through some kind of means. C’mon, lifeguard, you might need to keep an eye on the water. Seiji might actually try and drown Nicholas over this one.”
“Eugene’s out there, they’ll be fine.”
Aiden paused, cracking a small smile. “You can just say you’d rather hang out with yours truly, you know.”
Harvard laughed quietly and scratched the back of his neck, something he always did when he was nervous. But what reason was there for him to be nervous? “Always wanna hang out with my best friend. Nothing wrong with that.”
“Yeah… I mean, nothing wrong with that.”