Chapter Text
“I have a school assignment,” Lorna says by way of a greeting as she drops her bag on the kitchen table.
“I have a composition to fine-tune, and Enoch has a budget analysis for the new library to look over,” Uncle Edel says from the living room, and then as if to prove his point, plucks out a couple of notes on the piano before replacing the sound with frustrated scribbling.
Uncle Enoch, who is either in a better mood than his husband, or is as eager to be done with the library budget as Lorna is to be done with her homework, begins pushing his paper aside and removes his reading glasses.
“And what is your school assignment about?” He asks with a smile that she quickly returns.
“We have to write about how our parents proposed for journalism,”
“I can see your issue,” Uncle Enoch says as the piano in the living room spits out a few angry jumbles of notes. Lorna winces, but Uncle Enoch doesn’t so much as flinch, his pleasant smile turned towards her. Uncle Edel must have been working all afternoon. “I assume you’ve discussed it with your teacher,”
“He said I could do it on some other important moment in Auntie’s life, but I had a better idea,”
The noise from the living room smooths itself out into an angry pounding against the keys, but at least it's a melody now.
“Oh?”
A tortured sound that could be Uncle Edel or the piano rings through the room.
“I figured I could just ask you and Uncle about your proposal!” She says with a brilliant smile.
At once, the piano stops making tortured sounds, and Lorna finds that Uncle Enoch’s gaze has grown strange as he stares at her.
For a moment, it is perfectly silent.
And then Uncle Enoch speaks, his words carefully chosen and his expression pensive.
“Beast and I aren’t married.”
Lorna blinks at him, then laughs. The same way, she might laugh if she had been told grass was blue and the sky was green, or that thirst could be slaked by bread alone, or that people were meant to live underwater. It simply wasn’t so, and it was silly to suggest it.
When she calms, she finds Uncle Enoch hasn’t cracked a grin at his excellent joke and that Uncle Edel has trailed back into the room, peering at her oddly.
She looks between them.
Lorna frowns.
“You must be married.” She says at last. She fixes her gaze on Uncle Edel. “You call Uncle Enoch your husband constantly .”
Uncle Enoch grins.
“Constantly, Beast?”
“Lorna, dear girl, Enoch and I have our reasons.”
“For pretending to be married?” Lorna says, and there's a tremble in her voice that would make her go red with shame if Uncle Enoch had not just delivered such a world-changing revelation.
Uncle Edel’s frown grows.
“Yes.” He says, at last, the word stilted and sharp.
“Why?”
Uncle Edel winces away from her demand, but Uncle Enoch soothes him with a gentle hand on his shoulder.
“There’s no harm in telling her. It's been a decade since we retired, sugar.”
Uncle Edel’s lips press into a fine line, and he leans into Uncle Enoch’s hand, but at last, he speaks.
“We feigned marriage for the sake of our….”
Here Uncle Edel pauses, his gaze flickering sharply from Lorna to Uncle Enoch.
"... "Acting" business," He says slowly as if testing the waters. When Lorna doesn't ask for elaboration and Uncle Enoch hides his smile behind the budget forms he’s not doing, he seems to relax a modicum before continuing. “It was a ruthless world in those days. One couldn't simply join up. The kickback it would have caused for two affluent “families” to merger would have left your... career six feet deep.”
Oh.
Oh .
This was, as everything about her Uncles seemed to be, tied in a web of lies and half-truths that was older than Lorna herself.
Uncle Edel deftly sidestepped any line of questioning about his past, assisted by a cold stare and a penchant for ignoring questions he didn’t care for. Uncle Enoch, on the other hand, would meet questions head-on, and then suddenly, you were discussing the value of centipedes in a tomato garden with no idea how you got there and only the faintest memory of what you were asking in the first place.
Lorna had always suspected what her uncles had been up to a few decades ago. Practically everyone in town did, maybe not the specifics, but most could guess at their former careers with some degree of accuracy.
It was an open secret, politely ignored.
Lorna thinks this might be the closest she’s ever come to hearing Uncle Edel discuss it.
“But Enoch and I were old friends, and we had been discussing and had come to the conclusion that it would be entirely to our benefit if we extended our influence to each other's careers. However, the backlash would have been akin to something like a….” He trails off, searching for an adequate phrase.
“Like a turf war?” Lorna asks in her most innocent voice.
Uncle Edel shoots her a dangerous warning glance.
“Yes,” He says through gritted teeth. “Like a turf war. However, if we were married, eloped specifically, it would effectively seal the power vacuum before it began. There would be significantly less room for argument or protest on either side if it seemed that Enoch and I had been alone in our conspiring and had done so without the motive of advancing our careers.”
Uncle Edel steps into the kitchen, and Lorna can hear him rummaging in the cabinets as the kettles shrieks.
“Of course, the ruse had to continue so long as we were in “Acting,” and we grew quite used to each other's company. Of course, after we retired, we never ceased."
“This is the first time we’ve discussed it, actually,” Uncle Enoch says, and he puts his reading glasses back on.
"There was no need to, and it was likely to cause more of a fuss if it ever came out we weren't married.”
"That's not much of an issue anymore, though," Uncle Enoch chimes in. "Most of the folk who would have been outraged are a long time dead, or are similarly retired. Speaking of which, Beast, did you hear that the Weston brothers are dead,"
"You don't say."
"Car crash, all alleged, of course," Uncle Enoch picks up his pen as he says it.
"Hm, that's a shame," Uncle Edel says, and Lorna can hear his brisk movement through the kitchen. "They were so suspicious of us. I would have taken great joy in their anguish if we finally proved them right."
"If you're looking to surprise someone, darling, there's always Nimbus,"
"I would rather drown ."
Lorna frowns.
They had so quickly brushed past everything back into their usual domesticity as if what they had just revealed was nothing. As if it was inconsequential.
"You're not married?" She echoes once more.
"Three decades and counting," Uncle Enoch chimes pleasantly. "Well, if you'd like to be technical, since birth."
Lorna worries her lip between her teeth.
“But you are in love?”
“Don't be daft,” Uncle Edel says as he steps out of the kitchen with two cups of tea. He places one in front of Lorna and the other in front of Enoch, who thanks him by twisting in his chair to place a kiss against Uncle Edel’s jaw. A tidal wave of relief seemed to crash over Lorna, perhaps her uncles weren't married, but they were in love. It seemed that some things simply were fundamental. “Of course, we'd have been damn foolish if we didn’t realize our affection for each other after that first night.”
“The first night?” Lorna asks eagerly, scooting forward in her seat.
“Unimportant,” Uncle Edel waves a hand idly before going to return to his piano, and Lorna deflates in her seat.
Uncle Enoch catches her eye and grins, winking so fast that it's barely a flutter of his eye.
Lorna’s hands drop to her notebook and pen in her lap.
“Oh, there’s no harm in telling her the rest, sugar. You’ve already told her the worst of it.” His eyes twinkle as he speaks. “Besides, I do so love your rendition of it.”
Perhaps Uncle Edel wants a break from his compositions just as much as Uncle Enoch does because he turns and hums, fingers drumming the edge of his jaw as he considers. At last, he slides out one of the chairs and slips into it, stealing Uncle Enoch’s tea and holding it but not sipping.
Lorna watches heat rises off of his cup and combs through the wild wisps of his hair. When he can no longer see them, the panes of his glasses opaque with steam, he begins and spins his story.
“Perhaps ask your Aunt Adelaide about her first husband instead,” Uncle Edel concludes, and Lorna glances down to her notepad.
“No, thank you! This is a way better story!” She says as she grabs her backpack and slings it over her shoulder, and prances quickly out of her Uncle’s house towards home.
“Absolutely not!” Uncle Edel yells, but Lorna’s already to the sidewalk.
Behind her, she can hear Uncle Enoch's raucous laughter and Uncle Edel’s exasperated but fond “Enoch!”