Autumn was angry that year; fierce and rough on the knuckles, on the skin, skinning the trees of their leaves. There was no comfort in hiding from it, not like the snow of the year before, not like hiding from that freezing- which was still. This cold, it moved like a wave over the city. It crashed and screamed and broke, broke the spirit. There is only so much being tossed about like a toy a man can take and it only takes a little rotting, pungent mulch under the feet to obscure what you're walking on and what you're walking towards.

Aidan was resigned to it. He was resigned to most things now and with the roar of the wind in his ears it was easier to forget that there was nothing else to hear, no-one else to speak to. Nothing to be said. It wasn't until an eerily calm, silent evening, the eye of the storm, that his thoughts turned to Lissy and loneliness and last year's Autumn, which had seemed to go from green to gold to bright, light white in a matter of days. A warm bed and a visitor in the morning, or indeed, a visitee, with a mug of something warm, with conversation and a body's weight next to him; with such a soothing presence, like a Mother. He missed her.

Nate was like a ghost in the house, just as rough as the wind and howling at those who got in his way- which Aidan didn't for days on end sometimes, he didn't see the point anymore. It only ached when he thought about it, which was, admittedly, more often than he thought about everyday things like eating or sleeping, but less than if he were to be presented with the angry figure of the man himself each morning.

That night, the night he thought about the year before and how it always seems warmer inside when it's colder outside, was the night it was still and the night they spoke. Or at least, Nate sobbed and Aidan sat and tried to be rational. The door to his room was open, wide, inviting and maybe that was how he had planned it but surely he couldn't have planned to look that way; completely un-Nate-like and scared perhaps, shrunk inside himself, crying like a child.

"Are... Are you alright?" The pause was loud with choked, undignified tears, "Don't Nate... Why are you crying?"

"Sorry, I'm just sorry, I... sorry."

"Don't be. It's...well don't be." Aidan replied, feeling strangely uncomfortable and thinking about all the times he had cried over the years and all the people who had watched him cry, mainly Nate and Lissy of course, but still, all those people and those looks on their faces; that awkward, uncomfortable look, their squirming. He hadn't ever felt bad about that- they weren't in his head, they didn't understand, they were only embarrased because they didn't, "get" it. Now though, with Nate's face all screwed up and tears dripping off his chin, his moments, his own episodes seemed as if they'd happened to someone else entirely- a terrifyingly fragile weeping creature like the one in front of him.

The not touching was the strangest. A friend, a normal friend, a normal man, he would place a comforting hand on Nate's arm, rub his back a little perhaps, make a futile gesture. Aidan stayed a considerable distance away as his friend made more glugging apologies, finally responding with an almost impatient, " I don't know why you're so sorry! I don't, you're... there isn't anything, it's fine. You can cry if you like...I'd rather you didn't but,"

"You cry all the time." Nate muttered with a watery half-laugh.

"It doesn't look right on you."

"What," Nate sat up a little straighter, moved a little closer, looked Aidan straight in the eye with a touch of his usual strength, "I don't look cold or empty or dead?"

Aidan flinched. This felt like an argument now. He didn't like it this way round, he felt like the bad guy without his usual blanket of tears. "I'm sorry."

"You've been avoiding me, you don't talk to me at all, you don't look at me."

"Look," Aidan was aware of Nate leaning forward slightly, he felt oppressed, fenced in, accused, "It's only because it's easier, you're easier when... Okay I'm sorry."

"No I'm sorry," The strangest thing was Nate, leaning his forehead against Aidan's now, crying much more, "You're always there normally, I don't like my own head, I don't like being so lonely or something, God!" He had a grip of Aidan's hair, Aidan, who wasn't far away now, hands slightly on hips, cross eyed the way you get when someone is that close and they're only eyelashes and soaking skin. "God I'm so sorry, but you're mine you know. You have been for so long, since Dad died really and that's not... I don't know if it's right, but you can't, you can't be that for so many years and then just take it away."

He knew, Aidan knew he should be so angry at this. Nate thought that he'd belonged to him all this time, that was what it had been? The indifference and the silence and the not even being friends really, not at all. Just Aidan, following Nate around like a stooge or a servant maybe. "You're mine." It sounded good, it did, and maybe that was why Aidan wasn't as angry as he knew he should be but it was all wrong. Nate crying on him, Nate holding their faces so close together that they were sharing the same air. Nate saying things like that, things that weren't true.

"You're mine. You are still, aren't you?" he was whispering now, Aidan had to close his eyes and breathe deeply, steeling himself to pull away. It was a situation he had thought about for more than a while, close to a hundred years, and he'd never envisioned it this way, with a Nate that wasn't really Nate at all.

"Don't leave!" there were still tear tracks stuck to his face but he didn't seem to be crying anymore, and he tightened his grip upon the other boy's hair, "I do mean it, it's why I wasn't ever afraid really... of Lissy or anything, because I knew that, I knew you were mine."

"Okay, fine." Aidan was angry now, he wished Nate would stop repeating those words; he felt cruel towards this sniffing, desperate stranger, "But what does that actually mean? Because I think to you it meant there was always someone around to love you and to make you feel better about yourself, like you were actually worth a damn and I think to me it meant being the worst kind of..." inspiration struck Aidan, he wasn't the only one who could use old, angry words, "the worst kind of desperate pervert!"

Nate let go. He pulled his head back and dragged his arm from elbow to hand roughly across his face, wiping away the tears. The old, cold Victorian look was returning to him but it was too late, Aidan was too angry. "A desperate pervert. And now you're one too, crying and begging and trying to..." he stood up and exhaled savagely, watching his friend get to his feet, shaking with fury and disgust. They were back on safe ground. He knew this, he would always know this.