weren’t we the salt in the sea?

by thelongerburn

Summary:

Summer 1995. Every year, Wilson Favre trades his home in suburban Texas for the salt marshes of Brittany, France, where he spends his days sketching birds and helping his grandfather harvest salt. But this summer, the quiet rhythm of the seaside is broken: a Hollywood hotel tycoon arrives with plans to build along the coastline, leaving the village uneasy. As the only fluent English speaker in town, Wilson is pulled into the commotion when he’s asked to help the businessman’s son, Brando, learn to sail.

Brando Anderson is everything Wilson isn’t: dashing, dazzling, the kind of boy everyone on the beach seems to orbit—be it giddy towngirls gazing from afar or sturdy surfers clamoring for his handshakes. Wilson, used to living on the margins, knows he shouldn’t hope for more. Yet, as the summer heatens, the boys grow closer, choosing to bask in each other’s blinding light—regardless of the possibly imminent sunburn.

Chapter 1: A Cautionary Tale

Notes:

dear reader helloooo!! this is my first fan fic ever, so i am posting this in between the states of anxiety and pure excitement. the truth is, i told myself i’d write the queer summer romance i’d always dreamed of reading, so i’m hoping you guys enjoy it as much as i did in every single daydream.

please do not hesitate to leave feedback, suggestions or share your reactions in the comments/on twitter (@thelongerburn), i’d love to hear your every thought!! much love <3

PROLOGUE

His name had run through town faster than the Atlantic’s gust that stormy morning. After his arrival, six letters had spilled from giddy mouths to curious ears all summer 1995—and had lingered in the breeze ever since.

The truth is, nothing truly ever happened in this place, so it didn’t take much to stir commotion. Looking back, though, I myself have to admit that Brando Anderson was quite the earthquake.

His father’s car had gotten here first. The shiny black kind you usually see on movie screens, the kind that hide sturdy bodyguards and weeping Hollywood queens. And, though rumors flew just as quick here as they did there, this town was no California. The air was salt, the sea—cold, the seagulls—loud, the houses—old and dirty, white facades stained by the foam of the ocean in its wrathful hours. Here, Hollywood was not even a place—it was a fantasy, an ideal, too many miles away to be fathomable. So, Brando—beautiful, buoyant, bewitching Brando—with his shimmering Ray-Bans and his attitude, stood out like a twinkling slot machine in the middle of a wheat field.

I remember the shape of his name on every girl’s lips: the R hoarse and rusty, the ‘an’ sound flat on French tongues. Le ‘ricain—“the American”—that’s what they called him that summer, and that’s what those same girls still call him thirty years later, even though he’s now far away, and they’ve remained here, stuck in the suffocating alleys of a village no one knows the name of outside a screech’s reach.

Yes, “the American”—I remember how he smirked at the title, though I couldn’t tell if it was out of pride or mockery. I used to think it was a stupid name, because to me Brando was so much more than that—though again, I used to hate anything that came out of almost anyone’s mouth at that time.

I once called him Bran, but that is irrelevant now. Because, no matter how many nights I stayed up wishing to change that, Brando would be Brando. The proof is he went just as he came—like the salty squall hitting you as you step foot outside, a punch in the face, somehow always fading away right as the sun escapes the amber clouds and, sunkissed, you’re expected to forget that, just seconds ago, you were left red, bruised and forever inebriated.

 

---

 

CHAPTER ONE

30 years earlier…

 

Wilson’s chin was already comfortably settled on the stick of his rake when the sound of bicycle bells and laughter forced him out of his daydream. The July sun had hidden behind the clouds that day, and he’d been working on the marsh for several hours, the boredom and tiredness leading him to accidentally trip over large piles of coarse salt and let his mind fly away to more exciting realities. At the noise, however, his eyes shot in surprise to the three bikes passing before him on the narrow concrete road that cut through the marshes.

“I swear, it’s true,” one of the girls was telling the other two, in French. Wilson knew these three faces, he’d seen them in town every summer he’d spent here. “His name is Brando,” she added, rolling the R exaggeratingly.

The group laughed so hard at the foreign name that one of them almost drove into the marshes.

“Be careful, you’re gonna fall!” the third one yelled at her friend, her tone so urgent Wilson felt the warning in his soul.

Wilson watched them with curious eyes as they rode away. He took this distraction as a sign he should get back to work, and was on his way to pick up his wheelbarrow when he heard his grandfather call him from inside the salt shop.

“Wilson!” Francis paused before he got impatient as his grandson walked ever so slowly, still stuck on the mystery of what the three girls were talking about. “Wilson! Come over here!”

Wilson stepped up his speed, tiptoeing over a thin line of grass between the squares of stagnant waters. He walked up to the tiny white house in front of which flashy promotional signs stood proudly, begging to catch the eye of the few that drove by. Francis sat behind the shop’s counter, one still hand on the landline phone as if he’d just gotten off a call.

“What’s wrong?” Wilson asked, a little breathless.

“Olivier needs you over at the school.”

The boy paused. “The sailing school?”

“Yes, the sailing school, Wilson, what other school does Olivier work at?”

Wilson blinked, realising his mind was still somewhere else. Francis would have rolled his eyes if he wasn’t so used to his grandson living in his own bubble.

“Anyways, you need to go now.”

“Wait, what for? I already brought the mended sails back to him yesterday.”

“Listen, c’est urgent,” Francis replied immediately, his French and his impatience coming out. “They need you at the beach, an American’s asking for something and no one understands what he’s trying to say. Olivier says he looks like James Dean.”

Wilson snorted. “How is that urgent?”

“Well, from what I understood, he’s the son of the man who sent that letter about wanting to build this massive modern hotel on the coastline. Apparently, he could buy half the hotels in La Baule, too. Ridiculously rich, he is. Dangerous man. We don’t want him against us just because his spoiled kid threw a tantrum.”

As he spoke, Francis gathered his car keys and stood up from his wooden recliner, a wrinkled hand on Wilson’s back softly pushing him towards his 1970s Renault. Wilson wasn’t given the time to protest when his grandfather put the keys in his palm and opened the car door for him.

“Why me?” Wilson asked, trying to gain time. He didn’t need another mission for the day after his hours on the marsh.

“You’re Texan, Wilson. They need someone who speaks English. Plus, you’re about his age. It wouldn’t hurt you to make one friend here.”

“You want me to become friends with the son of the man the whole town despises?” Wilson scoffed.

“I would let you become friends with anyone at this point, Wilson. You are painfully alone for an eighteen year old on summer holiday.”

Francis’ eyes were a little too serious. Wilson chose to ignore the comment.

“I could take the bike,” he added, changing the topic as he settled in the driver’s seat. “I always take the bike to go to La Baule.”

La Baule was a slightly bigger town right next to the one Wilson’s grandfather lived in. It was quite touristic, famous for its kilometers-long beach and its fancy shops no local actually ever stepped foot into. The small area was already so crowded, no wonder American businessmen were trying to expand their hotel chains to nearby ghost towns. If it weren’t for helping family friends at the sailing school, Wilson would never willingly walk into this ocean of sweaty tourists and bourgeois vacationers. But it truly wasn’t far away, so Wilson did always choose a fifteen minute bike ride and beautiful scenery over a car he dreaded driving.

“No, you’re taking the car, we can’t waste time. And don’t worry, you’re off for the rest of the day.”

“Okay, okay, Jesus…” Wilson sighed, turning the engine on. “See you later, pa.”

“See you, son. And don’t get too carried away!” Francis added.

Wilson’s eyes widened in confusion until he realised his grandpa was pointing at the steering wheel. God, he really needed to wake up.

  ───────── ౨ৎ ─────────

As Wilson made it to the coast, Diana King’s Shy Guy blasted through the car speakers and the ocean’s wind flew through his ebony curls almost violently. He found a parking spot near the beach easily, and turned the radio down, still mouthing the lyrics to himself as he walked out: 'cause I don’t want somebody who’s loving everybody, I need a shy guy… Lord have mercy mercy mercy…

Because the sky was so gray, the place wasn’t as crowded as it usually would be on a Wednesday in the summer—it was actually close to empty, except for a few people walking their dogs or clearly running home. The town’s main avenue, with its colorful casinos and fancy hotels with ocean views, looked like the sea had swallowed its life whole. A storm was imminent, Wilson could tell as he noticed the ominous clouds and the absence of boats out at sea.

He walked down the wooden stairs to the beach, his Converse falling flat on the moving sand. He looked around: all of Olivier’s teaching boats, be it children’s tiny ships or his small catamarans, were on land, by the shore, sails down, though he wasn’t entirely sure as the tide was low and the ships, therefore, almost out of eye sight. The sailing school itself looked closed from the front, so Wilson knocked on the teal back door, hoping for a sign of life.

Almost immediately, he heard footsteps approaching. Olivier, with his usual irritated smile and dishevelled hair, pulled the door open and welcomed Wilson in like thieves would welcome their allies in their secret headquarters.

“Wilson! Good, I was waiting for you,” he said as he walked Wilson into the school’s small office. Olivier sat on the edge of his messy desk as Wilson stood near the door. “Did Francis explain the situation to you?”

“Yeah, hm, sort of—”

“Perfect,” Olivier answered fast as lightning. He lifted his face and stared right at Wilson. “Can you teach him?”

The boy’s eyes widened in surprise.

“Teach him?” Wilson asked, genuinely lost.

“Sailing, he wants lessons.”

“The American guy?”

“Yes, haven’t you heard? He and his father have been the talk of the town since they arrived here this morning. Fancy limousine, straight from the airport. Angela Anderson’s husband and son, can you believe it?”

Wilson’s brows now furrowed in shock, almost cartoonish.

“Angela Anderson? As in, the Hollywood actress? You have to be kidding me.”

“I wish I was, but these are real powerful people. Ah, Wilson,” he said, the syllables of the boy’s name heavy in a French mouth, “only you could be the last to know, always living in your own little world, there at the marsh... The gossip was all over the marketplace this morning. Everyone is terrified that he might have half the town move away so he can build his resort. The mayor himself refuses to answer questions, for God’s sake.”

Wilson paused, trying to wrap his mind around the situation.

“Wait, how do you know he wants sailing lessons? Pa told me you didn’t understand him.”

“My English isn’t that rotten, I got the basics,” he said, looking a little offended. “I just thought that if I told you you had to teach him, you simply wouldn’t have shown up.”

Wilson laid his back against the office’s door and crossed his arms over his chest. “Well, you’re not wrong.”

“I’d pay you, Wilson. He’d pay us. Big. Don’t tell me you won’t enjoy some extra money when you’re strolling down the streets of Paris in October,” he teased.

Wilson thought for a minute. He hated the idea of having to be stuck on a boat with a stranger for several hours every morning. He hated the idea that this stranger, of all people, was a spoiled boy who would probably spend the whole time doing nothing and talking him down. However, Wilson was going to be a broke art student sooner than he realised…

Maybe he could do this for a little while.

“Please, Wilson,” Olivier insisted. “I don’t have anyone who could do private sessions right now, especially not someone who speaks good enough English. Be good to your old friend.”

Wilson sighed.

“Fine. Where is he?”

“By the boats, outside,” Olivier smiled in relief. “I knew I could trust you, Wilson,” he added with a manly pat on the boy’s shoulder.

Wilson gave him a half-smile back and made his way out the door, the sharp wind hitting his cheek like a slap. He walked off the wooden platform that surrounded the school and started walking towards the shore, the boats, the boy.

He couldn’t really see much from here—the stormy weather had turned into a sort of fog that blurred everything in his vision. All Wilson knew was that the sand was ice cold as it filled his holey sneakers, and that his jeans felt heavier than ever as he pushed through the squall. He walked down the beach to the shore like he’d run down a hill. When the sand started hitting his face, he sealed his eyes shut. As he finally reopened them, his vision locked on a tall figure only a few meters away—and that was the moment Wilson’s calf hit a boat’s hull, making him fall hands first on the humid sand. For God’s sake.

He took his time standing up, dusting sand off the hem of his favorite The Cranberries tour shirt. He settled on one knee and sighed, because this always happened to him, because it was always at the worst possible—

“You okay over there?”

Wilson, still irritated at his own clumsiness, was about to mumble that he was fine when he looked up into the air and was stunned into silence. His eyes locked on a boy and the Earth seemed to halt, as if God had put the film on pause. For a second, all he saw was the stranger’s electric-blue eyes, towering over a Wilson so flushed he seemed struck by lightning. His gaze then widened to a slender yet muscular frame, to the delicately open collar of a white linen shirt. As the seconds ticked by, Wilson figured he should probably say something, but he couldn’t help but linger on the boy’s knife-sharp jaw or observe the way the wind fought with his caramel-colored hair.

The stranger’s kind smile widened to a smirk at Wilson’s silence, which brought him right back to reality.

“Yes. Yes! I am, in fact, okay,” Wilson managed to let out as he rose to his feet, almost tumbling down again. “Thank you very much,” he added, breathless for no apparent reason.

If it wouldn’t have looked so strange to the boy in front of him, Wilson would’ve rubbed his palm down his face in shame for at least the next thirty minutes.

“I suppose you’re Wilson?” the stranger asked with his hands in his pockets, infuriatingly relaxed.

Wilson blinked. It took him an embarrassingly long amount of time to answer the question.

“Yes? Yes, Wilson, that is me! Woohoo!”

Woohoo? Wilson breathed in and looked to the sky, screaming internally for someone to come save him from the disaster he turned into when it came to talking to attractive people. Well, when talking to all people, to be completely honest. But especially the attractive ones.

One breath in, one breath out.

“Wait, so, how do you, erm, know who I am?”

“The guy in the polo said a Texan would come meet me so we’d figure out a schedule,” the boy explained, nodding to the sailing school behind Wilson. “Well, at least that’s what I think he said, the French throw me off a bit, to be honest,” he laughed softly to himself, clearly trying to smoothen the conversation. “I figured it was you, you know, considering your accent, and you coming down here when the beach is half empty. And, I don’t know, you look like you sail.”

Wilson’s brain fought back the thought that the stranger possibly did not mean this as a compliment. Instead, it landed on the realization that Olivier had promised the boy that he’d get lessons before Wilson even agreed to doing them… He also noticed the boy had dimples, so he really had to focus on breathing right now.

“Okay, yeah, about that…” Wilson mumbled. “We can’t go sailing today, a storm’s on the way, clearly,” he said, pointing at the sky.

“Right,” the other retorted, dragging on the word. “That makes sense. Could we go out tomorrow, then?”

Eager.

“We should be able to, if the wind calms down overnight. If it stays strong, though, we might not be able to, depending on your level of experience.”

The boy snorted, and Wilson noticed the slightest glint in his eyes. God, they were beautiful—

“Does my level of experience matter as long as you’re there with me? Aren’t you supposed to be a professional or something?”

Wilson pursed his lips. His awe had now turned into the slightest bit of annoyance. Of course a rich kid thought Wilson could handle the whole thing while he just sat there looking pretty.

“I can take a boat out alone, but that doesn’t mean you’re not going to be active. Have you ever sailed before?”

“Couple times in Malibu. I wasn’t really in from the start, but my dad said I should do something with my time here.”

“Right,” Wilson sighed, unimpressed. “Well, if you see that the wind isn’t too violent, you should show up here tomorrow morning at 10 o’clock.”

Wilson had made up that time on the spot, really, but he needed to sound like he knew exactly what he was doing.

“Yeah, you see,” the stranger said, almost cutting him off, “I don’t know if I’ll be able to tell, as you say, and I don’t want to wake up that early for nothing. Could you call my hotel tomorrow morning first? They’ll let me know.”

That’s not how it works, Wilson thought to himself, but held back.

“Fine. Where are you staying?”

“Hôtel de something… Hôtel… de la Tour, yes,” he struggled through the French, which had Wilson fight back a stupid smile. “Tower Hotel, basically.”

“Fancy.”

“So I heard, yeah.”

Wilson hated his confidence. He however also hated how it made his heart jump through his chest. The boy in front of him stood relaxed, but something—well, rather, his feet kicking the sand and his consistently twitching eyes—told Wilson he wasn’t in his right environment here, talking one on one, hidden away from the rest of the world, stuck in the fog. He seemed like the kind of kid that enjoyed forgetting himself at the center of a crowd, and Wilson knew part of him disliked that Wilson noticed. Like he already wanted to leave.

“And who should I leave a message to?” Wilson asked, feigning assurance.

The stranger straightened up, his smile widening, as if he knew Wilson had heard his name before. He took a step towards the shore, now turning his back to a painfully-bewildered Wilson.

“Anderson,” he said over his shoulder, already walking away. “Brando Anderson.”

Notes:

thank you for making it this far! if you are hooked, know that more is coming soon :D

ALSO: massive thank you to everyone from cst who helped me out with this! italo, taylor, sage, ambs, ali, jade… you are all so loved <3

Chapter 2: The Albatross

Summary:

Wilson and Brando’s first sailing lesson together, and more :)

Notes:

this is a longggg one but i figured that because i don’t upload extremely quickly, it’s better to give you something to chew on for all the waiting? anyways, thank you for the love on the first chapter, i hope you guys love this one just as much. had so much fun writing this. just over 4,000 words of stupid loser gay boys yearning like lesbians. enjoy <33

“So, do we have, like, no choice?”

Brando Anderson eyed the red and yellow life vests hung on the wall of the sailing school like he’d been asked to wear a garbage bag. He crossed his arms around his chest as the summer sun caught his wincing eyes.

“Do you want us to drown that badly, Brando?” Wilson retorted, rolling his eyes at the boy’s superficial sense of fashion in moments like these.

“The fact I have to wear one is what isn’t reassuring,” Brando insisted. “This is making me think that we could possibly drown. Which we shouldn’t be able to, because you’re supposed to be a profession–”

“Oh my God, you really are a pain, aren’t you?” Wilson sighed, though he couldn’t tell how performative his annoyance was at this very second. No matter how hard he feigned exasperation, his heart remained generally focused on not beating itself out of his chest at the sight of Brando in a tight, short-sleeved swimshirt.

“It’s a matter of security,” Wilson added, pushing a dark red lifejacket to Brando’s chest. “You never know what might happen on that boat. If you continue acting like that, you know…” he hesitated before saying the following words, but didn’t let his timidity show just yet, making the pause sound knowing rather than fearful. “I might just make sure you do end up overboard.”

Brando’s brows rose in surprise, smiling and looking straight into Wilson’s eyes, a gaze that made the life vest slightly twitch in the boy’s shaking hand. Brando didn’t look like he was about to break first.

“Just…” Wilson’s voice shivered, suddenly losing all his bravado as he looked down in defeat. “Just take it, Brando.”

“Fine,” the other agreed, that stupid smirk still on his lips as he took the humid vest out of Wilson’s hand, pouting like a disappointed child. “Only because I don’t trust that you’re a professional anymore, though.”

Wilson couldn’t hide a soft smile when putting on his own yellow life vest. The funniest part in all of this was that Wilson, in fact, was not exactly a professional. Back when his grandmother was still alive, she’d insist so that he’d take sailing lessons with Olivier every summer—sailing was her passion, and she used to see so much of herself in her grandson. So, she thought he, too, would fall in love with the speed, the thrill, the liberating feel of wind running through your ears—and most of all, the strange sentiment that you are the king of the world, all while being completely isolated from it. And, as always, she’d been absolutely right: Wilson loved sailing. Once he’d made it past fourteen years old, he’d started helping Olivier out with younger students for morning courses, using the opportunity to feel the salt air crawl through his curls and the sun gnaw at his skin for a little while. He hadn’t properly sailed ever since his grandma passed away two years ago, so his technique must have been a little rusty. But Brando didn’t need to know that.

They started walking down to the shore, where was laid out a labyrinth of children’s row boats and catamarans ready to go for the day. Though most of them were already out, as the kids’ sessions had started about an hour ago now, there were still enough adult-sized boats for the two boys to choose from.

Wilson looked around until he pointed to the catamaran nearest to the shore. It definitely wasn’t the biggest boat out at sea, still its mast towered over the two teenage boys by almost two meters. Wilson checked that its ropes weren’t about to give out, that the knots could hold on if the wind was to grow stronger. The sea was rather calm this morning, and the sun had made its grand entrance since yesterday’s stormy afternoon—which had forced Wilson to anxiously call Brando’s hotel to warn him that he in fact had to get out of bed today—but this being the Atlantic, one was never safe from a little outburst of wind here and there.

Wilson hopped on one of the boat’s two white hulls to verify that the sails were correctly hung onto the mast. He pretended he didn’t feel Brando’s eyes on him as he struggled pulling on a rope to raise the mainsail up to the top.

“You need any help up there?” Brando asked, clearly holding back a laugh.

“Nope!” Wilson assured him without a glance. “I’m…” he grunted, pulling a bit stronger, “all…” and stronger again, “good!”

As he figured he’d tightened the rope enough, Wilson smoothly jumped back into the ground and gave Brando a smug smile, as well as an unintentional splash of sand onto his feet. Still, Brando wasn’t giving up on pushing Wilson to the limit.

“Are we genuinely picking this one?” he asked, pointing to the blue-sailed catamaran Wilson selected. “I thought we’d take one of the bigger ones, like the ships I saw at the port.”

“Believe me, a catamaran is the best boat to actually learn sailing with. The fact you have to balance the two hulls yourself and handle the sails by hand forces you to actually think about where the wind is coming from, and how to correctly adjust your boat to go faster. You’ll thank me later.”

“Hm,” Brando hesitated. “It’s still less impressive than I thought it was going to be.”

“You’ll be impressed once you feel the water rush under your feet through the boat’s trampoline,” Wilson retorted, seeming genuinely lost in thought. “Or at that one moment where your sails are so perfectly adjusted that your boat’s hulls start purring against the water… Yeah, that’s the best feeling ever.”

Brando dusted some sand off his shorts and looked over his shoulder, as if making fun of Wilson with someone else.

“Well,” he sighed, “maybe you aren’t a professional, but you definitely are a nerd…”

“Shut up!” Wilson let out, unsuccessfully holding back a smile. “You’ll know what I mean soon enough. Now, instead of always complaining, help me pull that boat from the sand to the water.”

Before grabbing the metal cables which linked the front sail to the tip of the hulls, Brando faked a curtsy.

“Your wish is my command.”

While Brando was about to pull the front of the catamaran and Wilson push from the back, Brando started shifting the boat on the sand by himself, before Wilson even had the chance to start helping out. His lips parted in surprise. Not that pulling a full boat’s weight entirely by himself was completely out of reach for Wilson—but Brando seemed to move so effortlessly… Wilson would be ridiculously jealous if he wasn’t so in awe at the boy’s strength. When Brando eventually settled the catamaran on the shoreline, it took every fiber of Wilson’s self-control to not stare at Brando like he was a super hero from a comic.

“So, everything okay?” Brando asked, a hand still hanging on to the cables. 

“Yeah... Yeah, I’m fine,” Wilson mumbled, still a little in trance.

“Oh, Wilson,” Brando chuckled. “I meant, everything okay with the boat? Are we ready to go?”

Wilson’s cheeks turned thirty different shades of red in the span of five seconds.

“Oh—right, yes. Of course,” he responded, hoping to save face. “I checked everything, I think—the sails, the hulls, the knots… Ready to go!” he added with almost-unproportionate enthusiasm.

 ───────── ౨ৎ ─────────

Brando pretended to not notice how bewildered Wilson seemed the whole way through the session. Once they’d hopped on the right side of the boat, sitting side by side and (at least in Wilson’s head) dangerously close to each other, it seemed the curly-haired boy had lost all sense of direction, which was honestly a little humorous to watch. He kept getting his right and left wrong when giving Brando orders. He’d constantly forget to adjust the mainsail, his eyes busy in other places—sometimes buried in the wrinkles of a turning neck, other times stuck on lazy hands laying on a hull—a distraction which would sometimes have the boat tangle from side to side and give Brando the slightest heart attack.

Wilson was aware of his incompetency that morning—he knew that if Olivier had seen him handle the boat that way, he’d probably have lost his job right away. So, he tried to make up for his poor practice by teaching Brando basic sailing theory.

“As you can see, a catamaran has double hulls, and two sails: the mainsail, which we are sitting in front of right now, and the jib—that’s what we call the smaller sail in the front over there,” he explained to a clearly uninterested Brando. “The mainsail allows for the wind to fuel the boat, whereas the jib helps with directions. Of course, we mainly direct ourselves with the stick I’m holding right now, that we call the tiller—”

“So,” Brando cut him off, casually shaking his hair in the breeze like he’d shaken the subject away. “What’s a Texan doing in the middle of Britanny, France?” 

Wilson paused.

“You haven’t listened to a word of what I just said, have you?”

“A few, here and there. Mainsail, jib, wind, I got the gist. I’ll never remember any of it anyway. I don’t need all the jargon, I go by instinct.”

Wilson nodded into the void, rolling his eyes.

“Of course you do…”

“Now you answer my question,” Brando insisted.

“What question?”

“Come on now, Wilson, I know you heard what I said.”

Wilson breathed in heavily, trying to concentrate on sailing in the right direction. Thank the Lord the sea was calm that day, otherwise his constant lack of attention might have caused them real issues.

“My dad’s from here,” he finally started, pushing on the tiller. “My mom’s Japanese, but she moved to New York in her twenties for work. That’s where they met a few years later, and they eventually moved to a small town in Texas to raise their only child. Happy?”

Brando readjusted himself on the hull, seeming genuinely interested.

“What the hell was your dad doing in America if he’s from here?”

“Professional basketball gets you places.”

Brando raised a brow.

“NBA?” 

“Once, yeah. He was never in any of the big teams, though, and he was forced to stop his career early after an injury. Twisted his knee,” Wilson explained, trying to keep his eyes locked in the boat’s direction. “That’s actually what made him choose a peaceful life as a gym coach in middle-of-nowhere-Texas—well, that and the fact my mother was pregnant. But she’d been tired of her corporate job on the East coast anyway. She had the dream, you know. She wanted the golden retriever, the white picket fence and the dewy Sunday mornings at church. They dreamed of quiet, and well, there’s no better place for quiet than suburban Texas, to be frank,” he laughed to himself. “I come here every summer too, I help out with my grandfather’s salt marsh. So truly I’ve only ever lived in ghost towns.”

Brando nodded, his body turned towards the sail but his eyes locked on Wilson, like he was trying to unfold a mystery.

“What about you?” Wilson asked, forcing himself to stay focused.

“What do you mean?”

“Why are you here?”

“You know why I’m here,” Brando said, shrugging off the topic.

“I know why your dad’s here. Trying to buy off half the coastline and everything,” Wilson added, feigning concentration on a knotty rope. “Why are you here?”

Brando took a deep breath in.

“Well, I suppose I would have been home alone for the summer otherwise, as my mother’s constantly away. But technically, I’m accompanying him, I guess. I’m supposed to attend some of the meetings and ‘help’ him with decisions. Not that I’d have anything to add to their discussions, or that he’d actually listen to anything I’d have to say. The fact I’m so useless is probably the reason why he wants me here taking ‘sailing lessons’. Something to fill my days so I’m not constantly in his hair,” he explained, an emotionless smirk forming on his lips. “But he wants me to take on the helm someday, so you gotta do what you gotta do.”

“Woah,” Wilson looked down at his silver anchor necklace for advice, unsure of what to say. “Future CEO, I see. You really must be crazy rich.”

Brando crossed his feet together on the trampoline.

“Does that matter?”

“Oh, hell yeah,” Wilson responded with a chuckle. “Money changes people a lot.”

Brando’s brows furrowed.

“You think me growing up rich changes who I am fundamentally as a person?”

“Also, hell yeah!” Wilson asserted, looking at Brando like it was the most obvious thought in the world. “From the moment my mother had given up on her job and my dad’s NBA money started fading away, I pretty much grew up poor. And, you know, you were out there, I’m guessing, living in a mansion, going to a fancy school in a uniform or something, never having to worry about kitchen table bills or price tags on supermarket shelves. Everything you’ve ever had has probably been given away to you seamlessly. Silver spoon and shit,” Wilson slowed down a little, realising he was going on a bit of a rant. “So, yeah, you and I can’t possibly see things the same way. You don’t think your view of the world is necessarily modified by the size of your childhood bedroom’s window?”

Brando studied Wilson’s face like he was the weirdest creature he’d ever encountered.

“You’re not wrong. But I do think that’s all a tiny bit radical,” Brando retorted.

“Radical?” Wilson smirked. “Yeah, I get that a lot.” 

“Does your radical thinking mean you don’t think you and I could get along?”

Brando had now fully turned to Wilson, dark blue eyes both playful and strangely intimidating, leaving Wilson dazed and speechless. His silence was only made worse when, due to his inattention, the boat slowed down considerably and the sails started loudly battling in the wind. Both boys burst out of their conversation’s bubble and hurriedly reached out to hold the mainsail so it wouldn’t hit them straight in the face. In the blur of the motion, Wilson could swear he’d felt Brando’s fingers brush over his hand for the shortest second. He could also swear he’d noticed Brando’s lips part open the slightest bit at the contact, but he quickly shook the thought away as he noticed his own ears turning crimson again.

“I…” Wilson mumbled, sitting back down on a boat that felt somehow narrower than before. He was holding Brando’s gaze for the first time on that day, but his spine had never felt so elastic. “I never said that.”

Brando smiled, seemingly satisfied by Wilson’s answer.

“Good,” the boy noted, re-adjusting his life vest like nothing happened. “Now, what were you saying about double hulls?” 

 ───────── ౨ৎ ─────────

“Goddamnit!”

Wilson tore the darkened page away from his notebook as he cursed under his breath. He kept getting it wrong—all, all, all wrong. He’d locked himself in his shed all afternoon, trying to sketch an albatross he’d seen fly by on his way home from La Baule, but it seemed his artistic skills had been thrown out the window the second he’d sat down on his bed and pulled out his pencil. Whenever he’d try and recreate its long dark wings or its core of delicate white feathers, a pencil stroke started to look nothing like an albatross, and everything like a stroke. His mind would wander off, and though he wouldn’t admit to himself where to, he couldn’t hide the traces of sharp cheekbones and bold eyes and soft dimples he kept accidentally sketching. Well, actually, maybe he could, considering how many pages he’d already torn away.

After what felt like a gazillion other attempts, he finally threw his stickers-plastered notebook onto his bedsheets and placed his feet on the creaking wooden floor. He looked around the cabin he always lived in during his summers on the marsh and realised its small size had never felt so synonymous with boredom. A bed, a closet, a nightstand—all dusty and rusty from the salt air of the marshes and the cruel ticking away of the decades.

He looked around in hopes for signs of what to do, glanced over the photographs plastered on his narrow four walls. His grandparents, building sandcastles on the beach. Six-years-old Wilson destroying said sandcastles. His grandma preparing a boat for a day out at sea. Him holding a rake twice his size over his head. His first sailing lesson, his first time helping Francis on the marsh. A bunch of old postcards from Texas…

Wilson willingly brought the daydreaming to a halt: he had a goal in mind and he’d decided he was going to reach it. He would not waste his afternoon thinking about a boy. He grabbed his notebook and abruptly shoved it into his brown messenger bag. He put his Converse back on, grabbed the shed keys, and closed the door behind him. He took in the sunny afternoon air, straddled his bike, and headed off to the place where his albatross was most likely to be found again: the surfers’ beach.

 ───────── ౨ৎ ─────────

Though the feeling of the wind rushing against his face had slightly calmed him down during his ten-minute ride, it seemed Wilson’s frustration persisted as he violently pushed his bike in the high weeds and slid his back down against the wooden fence, his face to the ocean.

The surfers’ beach was his favorite drawing spot in town. Most people decided to surf here because that’s where the wind was the strongest and, therefore, the waves the highest. He decided to sketch here because that’s where the most birds flew by. Over the years, he’d grown fond of just sitting there alone to draw, wander and people watch—but that was not what today was about. Wilson needed to concentrate on sketching the albatross he’d seen earlier.

He’d hoped it would eventually fly by again, its large wings drawn in by the strong gulls of the area, but when he looked around, all Wilson could see really were a few bored seagulls settling in the weeds next to him, or jumping up and down on the thick sand beneath. Still, he got his notebook and pencil out and forced himself to focus, willingly ignoring the few groups of people laughing in the water right under his eyes.

A beak. A feather. A wing, an eye. It all started coming together and Wilson’s concentrated face turned more and more content by the second. He shut the sounds of surfboards sinking into sand and stupid teenage dirty jokes—the loneliness had become part of him, so much that now Wilson was able to cut the rest of the world away like an on and off switch. He was the boy in the bubble, always living nose deep in his notebooks and poems, and in moments like these, when the rough sound of his pen against soft beige paper started to feel like magic to his ears, nothing in the world could ever distract him from—

“Adrien, you asshole!”

The bubble burst. English. With a heavy French accent, surely. But English. At the surfers’ beach. Something was up.

Wilson looked up from his notebook in confusion, his focus landing on the shore, where four teenagers—three boys, one girl—splashed each other with salt water, almost squeaking from laughter. He didn’t care for all of them, though. His eyes locked on him. Brando Anderson.

He was sitting still, on a surfboard over water, floating yet tenacious, like a fantasy in a dreamer’s mind. His back was turned, but Wilson could’ve recognized him from a mile away. He noticed he wore the same red and white striped shorts from the lesson this morning, but had given up on the swimshirt. He was soaked all over, from surfing, probably, but also because the boys around him kept throwing more and more water at his face. From afar, however, the chaos of their childish fight seemed distant. Wilson’s eyes rather lingered on the bony bend of Brando’s spine, the delicate dip of his hip as he stood on one arm, the serpentine shape of wet hair tethered to the back of his bare neck.

Wilson’s admiration was put to a stop when Brando abruptly fell off his surfboard in an attempt to avoid another splash. When he came back to the surface, almost as if he knew he was being watched, he palmed the water away from his face and out of his mouth as he turned to the shore, his eyes landing on Wilson.

An alarm started ringing in the boy’s head. Brando saw him. He was going to think he was insane. That he’d followed him all the way here. That he’d sat there watching and drawing him like a psycho. Brando’s gaze was steady, but expressionless. Wilson wanted to disappear. What was he supposed to do? Leave? Wave? Go back to drawing like nothing happened?

Before he had the time to make a decision, Brando had made it for him.

“Wilson!” he shouted, waving as he walked out of the water like something holy.

There was no going back now. Wilson took a deep breath in and slowly put his notebook and pencil back in his bag before throwing it on his shoulder. He walked down the rocks onto the beach, his sneakers at odds with the humid sand. He didn’t make it far before Brando had made his way up to him.

“Hey again,” Brando started, “what are you, erm, doing here?” he hesitated, giving an awkward glance back to his friend group before fully looking at Wilson. They were watching them, Wilson could feel it on his skin.

“I… I draw.”

“You draw?” Brando chuckled.

His amused stare gave Wilson a revolting taste of how stupid he must’ve sounded right that second.

“Yeah. Birds and… stuff. I actually hoped to see an albatross. They come here often, ‘cause of, you know, the wind.”

“Right. The wind. I know all about how that works now,” Brando joked.

“Yeah,” Wilson awkwardly laughed. “You’re a fast learner, I suppose.”

A silence slowly installed itself. This was so embarrassing. Wilson felt like his heart was about to give out.

“So, did you… see one?” Brando brushed a hand at the back of his neck, accidentally making the sunlight coming from behind him look like a goddamn halo. Infuriating.

“The albatross?” Wilson asked, way too breathlessly for a casual conversation.

Brando held that look again. The one where he investigated Wilson’s face like the boy was an alien, left stranded on the wrong planet.

“Yeah, you said that’s why you came here, right?”

Wilson swallowed heavily.

“Right—”

“Brando!” Wilson heard calling from the back. The blonde boy from Brando’s group walked up to them and patted Brando’s shoulder, and Wilson swore he saw Brando’s expression change from zero to a hundred. His spine straightened. His smile turned cockier. His eyes almost… meaner. But maybe Wilson was just hallucinating.

“You’re not going to introduce us? How rude,” the boy behind him laughed.

They stood like a clique, the three of them behind him, all good-looking and confident. The blonde had been joined by another boy, tall, with dark brown hair, and a girl, also blonde, though her hair seemed a thousand times brighter than the other guy’s under the late afternoon sun. She had remained silent so far, but her unwelcoming green eyes, looking Wilson up and down, probably told him all he needed to know.

“Of course,” Brando immediately snapped back. “That’s Wilson, the guy who gives me sailing lessons in the mornings. “Wilson,” he pointed to the blonde boy, “that’s Adrien,” then to the taller one, “that’s Paul”, and finally to the girl, “and Annabelle. I met them at the restaurant today.”

“My sister,” Adrien jumped in, like he was marking territory. “We call her Belle, though.”

Wilson gave them a half-smile.

“It’s very nice to meet you all,” he responded, fingers hung on his own wrist like an intimidated child.

“So, you’re an American, too?” Paul asked, his accent strong.

“Yeah, but, je parle français,” Wilson explained, his French coming out smoother than he’d expected. “I come here every summer,” he immediately added, like he needed to prove something to them.

“Do you?” Adrien seemed surprised. “We come here every summer, too, and I don’t remember ever seeing you. Do you remember him, Belle?”

“No, I don’t think I remember him,” she said, surprisingly quiet in comparison to her brother’s irksome loudness.

“Yeah, I don’t come around La Baule much. I work on the salt marshes.”

“You work?” Paul snorted. “Over the summer? Shouldn’t summer be about having fun?”

Wilson had a lot to respond to such an entitled answer. He shouldn’t have expected much from a spoiled kid who clearly spent his summers sitting around in fancy restaurants in La Baule. He noticed Brando’s eyes hovering over him, though, and held back.

“Yeah, I’m not much of the ‘fun’ type, I guess—”

“Would you not come to the town fair tonight, then?” Brando jumped in.

Wilson blinked.

“The funfair?”

“Yeah, you never been? Adrien told me all about it. The rollercoasters, the Ferris wheel and everything… We’re going after dinner. You should come with us.”

The first answer that hit Wilson’s mind was: “oh, no, thank you, but I don’t think so.” After all, he really wasn’t the fun type. For him, a funfair was synonymous with hell on earth. The crowd, the lights, the noise, the chaos. It was everything he dreaded. Yet, something in his heart had now lit up at the way Brando had asked him to go. Like there was no other reason than someone maybe actually wanting him around, for once. That didn’t happen often.

He looked into Brando’s kind eyes and heard the echo of his grandfather’s warning ringing in his ear: you are painfully alone for an eighteen year old on summer holiday…

“Yeah, I’d like that actually, thanks,” he finally agreed, hands deep in his pockets, fully smiling now. “Guess I’ll be fun for the night.”

And when Brando smiled back, Wilson could swear he saw an albatross fly right by.

Notes:

hihiii my favourite chapter (the funfair) is next!!!!