england / october 3, 1948

prompt: "apple cider"

word count: 1,689

xXx

Edmund propped the heavy black telephone receiver awkwardly against his shoulder, freeing both hands to twist a wire on the back of the family radio into place with a pair of pliers as Eustace's electronically distorted voice hummed over the line.

"...because Aunt Polly asked about it in her letter this morning, and I can give a pretty good account of time, you know, but my own map is a guess at best when it comes to direction."

Edmund laughed, and had to shift the receiver again, catching it with one hand before the cord looped under his arm could pull it free. "I should've known what I'd gotten myself into when I gave her your school address." He replaced the pliers onto the table overhead, leaning back where he sat cross-legged on the kitchen floor, radio propped up on a chair in front of him while the phone box rested at his side, allowing the cord to reach where it wouldn't from the wall. "How many days was it from Narrowhaven again?"

"Twenty-five, best as I can remember. Maybe twenty-six. I was still keeping that beastly little diary at the time."

The front door opened with a click and a gust of wind, and Jack Pevensie bustled inside with a paper bag tucked securely under one arm, sharp eyes falling to his son and the makeshift repair station as he shut the door behind him.

Edmund shot his father a silent grin in greeting and earned an answering smirk before he returned his attention to Eustace.

"Well, our bearing was due east, but the storm must have pushed us a few degrees off course at least, and that lasted almost two weeks. Mostly starboard listing, if I remember correctly, so that puts it south of the Lone Islands, and at our speed we could have covered a few thousand nautical miles, though I don't think it looked quite so far as that on Coriakin's map."

"Right," muttered Eustace, in the absent tone that indicated he was writing everything down. "Gosh, that map's something I'd like another look at. I wonder if they kept it at the Cair."

"They'd be fools not to. Hey, did you need anything else? Dad just got home."

"That's all, I think, I remember the island well enough on my own."

"I should think so," laughed Edmund. "She'll be over the moon, I'm telling you. Call you back later?"

"Sure."

Edmund said his goodbyes and placed the receiver back onto its base with a metallic ringing click, stretching his back for the first time in half an hour.

"Cider?" asked his father, producing a glass jug from his paper bag as Edmund stood and returned the telephone to its place on a low cabinet.

"Thanks." He jumped up to sit on the edge of the counter, exactly the way Susan always told him not to. "How was work?"

"Nothing out of the ordinary to report." Mr. Pevensie poured a glass and handed it up to Edmund before pouring his own, leaning back against the table opposite him. "Who was that?" He tipped his glass toward the phone before taking a sip of honey-colored cider, afternoon sunlight splashing in through the kitchen window onto his tan jacket and tie. "Pryer again?"

Edmund shook his head and swallowed his own mouthful of tangy sweetness before answering. "Eustace."

"Mm. You're popular these days."

He shrugged. "He's been writing to Aunt Polly about her books. You know how he is with maps and things. Just needed help with a few details."

"Something from one of your stories, I gather?"

"Something like that."

"And where did you learn to estimate nautical miles?"

Edmund breathed out sharply in what might have been interpreted as a laugh, the answer rising to his lips just as mechanically as it had for the past eight years, every time his parents questioned some piece of knowledge he shouldn't reasonably have been expected to understand at his age. "The Professor's house."

"Ah." His father's knowing smile told him he'd expected it. "I'm beginning to think you kids might have been better served if we'd just sent you there every year instead of school."

Edmund laughed. "I think we could have been made agreeable to that."

Jack Pevensie took another drink of cider and crossed his arms. "You know… once, when you were younger, Lucy tried to tell me it was magical."

Edmund raised an eyebrow. "Did she?"

His father hummed in apparent amusement. "From the look of the man, I could almost have believed her, too."

Edmund smirked. He'd almost forgotten his first impression of the Professor, when they first met him in the foyer of his grand old house, and Edmund had had to pretend to blow his nose to cover his own suppressed laughter at the strange old man's shaggy white hair and beard that almost made him look mad. Before Edmund himself had become an even stranger case of magic than the man he'd thought so odd. He cocked his head. "They do say his uncle was a magician."

His father scoffed a laugh; the sort he always gave when he couldn't quite tell whether Edmund was joking. "Well, he's proved a great help to us, magic or no magic. I feel I've barely needed to teach you boys anything. That summer I took my reserve leave, it was like you came back grown up."

The corner of Edmund's lips twitched into the faintest ghost of a smile, but for a moment a tingling rush washed over him like a wave of electricity, the nerves under his skin buzzing with it. He'd never heard either of his parents put it into words before, though he remembered their surprise well enough from those first few days after they had all come home for good. "Nonsense," he said before the silence became awkward. "You've taught me plenty. How else would I know how to fix that old thing?"

His father laughed good-naturedly and shook his head. "I suppose that is one thing. And I've got a free repair man out of it."

Edmund swallowed the last of his apple cider and grinned. "That's me." He jumped down from the counter and set his glass on the table, exactly where Susan always scolded him for leaving dishes, before crossing to the radio and heaving it up onto its proper shelf.

He plugged it in and turned the knob, at first only tuning in to a burst of static, but slowly a radio announcer's voice toned in over the noise, until it came through crisp and clear. He switched it off again and slapped the top satisfactorily. "Good as new. Just don't let Mum touch it again, or who knows what catastrophic damage she'll cause. I really don't know how she manages to get on so poorly with every piece of technology she comes into contact with, it's like a curse."

His father laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. "I'll do my best to keep her away from it."

Then, a moment later, he spoke again.

"I'm proud of you."

Edmund glanced up sharply, heart jumping with surprise, the back of his neck warming slightly with embarrassment. He blinked. "It wasn't that hard."

His father smirked, blue eyes twinkling with a fondness that Peter's shared and a mischief they didn't. "For everything."

Edmund's heart may as well have stopped beating as the words sank in, some feeling beyond his ability to name swelling in his core, pressing into his lungs. He blinked again and shook his head offhandedly, trying his best not to look stunned, forcing a slight smile. "That's a lot of things," he tried to quip.

But the steadiness of his father's eyes didn't let him completely shake off the sincerity with which it had been spoken.

All at once the emptiness in the rest of the house struck him, the silence, the privacy they almost never shared.

His first term at university didn't start for another two weeks, Lucy had already gone off to school, Peter's summer apprenticeship ran late, and Susan had accompanied their mother to the stores an hour ago.

He couldn't even remember the last time he and his father had been the only two at home.

"Were you waiting until we were alone to say that?"

His father met him with that same clever, teasing expression he himself so often wore without knowing it. "Maybe."

Edmund breathed out sharply, and his father squeezed his shoulder before drawing him into a short, tight hug.

At that moment, Edmund didn't think he would have minded being crushed to death.

He dug his chin into his father's shoulder for only an instant before letting go, and breathed deeply as he straightened up again and recovered his dignity.

They stood nearly at the same level now.

He couldn't remember exactly when that had happened.

"Well," said Mr. Pevensie, snatching the glass pitcher off the table and turning it over for inspection. "I think this would be better if it sat a few more weeks."

Edmund grinned at the abrupt change in subject. "Definitely."

Mr. Pevensie squinted at him. "And where exactly have you had hard cider before?"

He pursed his lips shyly, and the man nodded, as if in answer to his own question.

"The Professor's house," he said before his son could get the words out, and Edmund laughed, shrugging with sheepish admission.

He couldn't exactly explain that he'd been drinking wine by the age of ten, that traditions were different in Narnia, or that he hadn't really been at the Professor's house at all. He hadn't even been in the same world.

But his father only grinned, and tipped the bottle as if in a toast. "He has good taste."

And Edmund thought for a moment he caught a glint of mischievous knowing in his father's eye. Perhaps not of complete understanding, but of affectionate permission. As if to say 'keep your secrets, but I know you have them.'

Or perhaps he was only imagining it. But he couldn't help suppressing a grin of his own anyway. "That he does."