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Robert wakes with a start, eyes alert like something is immediately wrong. At first, he thinks it's instinct that's kicked in, that's telling him to take a look, but when he lies back down in bed and listens, the Mill is blissfully quiet. He turns his head and reads the time on his phone, but the numbers are blurry. He figures he must still be in the fog of tiredness as Aaron sleeps next to him, turned away on his side sometime during the night and their cuddles had finished. With a sigh, Robert decides to go to the bathroom to settle himself, using the main one instead of the en-suite, so he can check the house at the same time.
His hand is on the bathroom door when he hears a soft clinking sound. Worried that it's an intruder, but not wanting to wake everyone else, Robert carefully creeps down the spiral staircase and with no weapon. Part of him wishes he played tennis or golf, something to hold aloft in the hope of protecting his family, but all he has are his bare feet and hands, fists clenched from the tension. He reaches the bottom of the stairs and tries to keep his breathing steady and quiet, even as his heart beats wildly at the sight of someone stood in the kitchen in the dark. Luckily, they are looking out the window. It strikes Robert as odd that they're just standing there, although he's not about to take his chances. His gaze slides briefly to one of the chairs. Sat on it is a length of bloodied rope. He swallows down remembering Aaron being taken from him a couple of weeks ago, how hard he and Cain worked to get him back home safe and sound. This isn't Syd. He wouldn't dare. The stranger in Robert's kitchen is male and broad shouldered, but unlike Syd, he has hair.
“Get out of my house,” Robert says in a low, deep voice, trying for authoritative.
The silhouetted stranger doesn't respond verbally. Instead, Robert inhales sharply when the stranger moves his arm and the glint of a gun can be seen in his hand.
Suddenly, a cry comes through one of the baby monitors that is left on the table for when Seb is having a nap, making Robert glance up. At the thought of his son and faced with grave danger, he grabs for the stairs and races up as fast as he can, intent on getting to Seb. He'll be stuck if the stranger follows, but he has to do it this way. Seb is crying louder and Robert steps on something just outside Liv's room. It's sharp and pulls him up short, making him look down at some pencils broken roughly in half. With his bare foot smarting from splinters, Robert quickly shoulders Liv's room open. She's there and it eases the tightness in the left side of his chest until he rounds her bed and finds her covered in her own vomit. His heart plummets and he reaches out before Seb's feverish cries distract him again. He remembers that the stranger might get upstairs before Robert can think of a plan, so he checks Liv's pulse in her neck. It's weak, but it's present.
“I'll come back for you,” he vows in a whisper then flees.
He stumbles into his and Aaron's room and trips over something softer than broken pencils; dismayed to see the giraffe cuddly toy Seb loves so much torn to pieces, the stuffing thrown out. It feels like a stark warning, so Robert hurries to Seb's cot by his side of the bed and forces himself to slow down. Picking up on his stress won't help Seb calm down, so he tries on a wobbly smile and pulls his wailing son into his arms. He can't believe Aaron slept through such commotion as he bounces Seb gently and presses his lips to his baby-soft head.
“Shhh, it's okay, Daddy's here,” he soothes, sure that Seb can feel his panicked heart against his tiny body. There's a clang downstairs and Robert rushes to the bedroom door with Seb, having forgotten to close and lock it. He does so now to put some distance between them and the intruder, hoping Liv's desperate state will dissuade him from going after her. Looking around the room, he decides to use the lamp on his bedside table if need be and grapples with his phone in shaking hands. “I love you,” he says to Seb, “Always remember that.”
He hears the click of the safety come off from the gun as loud as the bang from a firework as the bedroom door handle jiggles. It's too close to the noise Robert vaguely remembers from being shot last time before it ripped through his lung and everything went black. Trembling, he tries to phone 999 but his fingers are clumsy, he keeps getting the numbers wrong and he really needs Aaron right now. With Seb whimpering into his neck, Robert walks around the bed and falls inelegantly to his knees.
“Aaron – Aaron, please wake up,” he hisses, eyes darting fearfully to the door as banging starts and Seb begins to wail again, both of them terrified, “There's someone in the house, they've got a gun – Aaron, please!” He gasps when he shoves Aaron's shoulder. His skin is cold to the touch – no, it's not the moonlight on his skin, he's blue. His hair is wet and there's a cut across his nose and Robert shakes his head, eyes reddening with tears. “No – no, Aaron - ” The door suddenly crashes off its hinges and Robert knows he's holding Seb too tightly, but he won't let go. His back hits the wall, Aaron dead in their bed and Liv barely conscious and a gunman chasing after him. His chest hurts with the reminder of the past and he frowns when the actual moonlight pulls the intruder's face into the light and focus.
It's like looking in a mirror.
It's him.
It's Robert.
It doesn't make any sense, but the man with a blank look in his eyes raises the gun at Robert crouched below the window. He shields Seb's face in his neck and tells him he loves him one last time. Squinting between wanting to face up to his attacker and screw his eyes shut against the impact, Robert sees the man's arm move. Robert on the floor flinches then again when the man puts the gun to his own chest and pulls the trigger.
The sound of the gun is deafening and makes Robert's vision swim like he's on a boat, disorientated. He expects to feel blood on his face, but fears opening his eyes. He's seen enough dead people to last him a lifetime. Instead, he hears a voice.
“Robert?” What if he's really dead? His chest aches and Seb is still held in his arms. “Robert, can you hear me? Robert!”
It's Aaron. How is that possible?
“Robert, let me - ” Aaron sounds soft, except he's struggling. Robert doesn't want him to struggle. “Robert, you have to let go of Seb – he's crying,”
Crying. His son needs him. He needs to protect Seb, but the relief of Aaron being alive makes him slacken his grip on Seb. He touches Aaron's bicep as his husband takes Seb into his arms, shushing him softly and Robert blinks, finally aware that what he just experienced was a nightmare. He hasn't had one of those, not the so-vivid-it-feels-real kind for a while, but with the stress he's felt lately he should've known it might return.
“What's going on?” he hears another voice. Female, young, sleepy before he connects that it's Liv, that she's alright too.
“Here, have him a second,” Aaron says, thrusting a quieter, wriggly Seb towards his sister.
To her credit, she wakes up enough to do as asked and stands by the doorway, trying to distract Seb by telling him nonsense. Everything feels fuzzy around the edges now and Robert's breathing picks up without him fully realising. His blood pounds in his ears and he feels too heavy for his neck as his head slumps between his knees, suddenly unable to cope until Aaron sharply calls his name and Robert realises why he asked Liv to look after Seb.
“Hey, look at me,” Aaron orders, palms under Robert's jaw pulling his head up anyway. “That's it – hi – now breathe with me.”
It reminds Robert of being on the other side, of coaxing Aaron down from whatever precipice his mind had been determined to dangle him from in the aftermath of Gordon's trial, and so he takes Aaron's advice and they breathe together, slowly and surely coming back to their quiet bedroom, Liv in the doorway and Seb sleepily babbling. The most important thing is that he's unharmed and unaffected by Robert's nightmare and he's grateful that hopefully he'll be too young to remember it or, if not, forgive his dad for it.
“Gerry,”
Aaron frowns, stroking Robert's cheekbone with his thumb. “What?”
“Check – Gerry,” he says, breathless in his guilt that his nightmare hadn't conjured up their lodger.
“Rob - “
“Aaron, please,”
Aaron nods this time and asks Liv to do it for him, Seb passed back to Aaron's arms now that most of the drama is over. Feeling calmer, Robert watches Liv begrudgingly slope off to check on Gerry and Aaron shuffles to sit next to Robert under the window. Knees to his chest, Aaron rests Seb back on them as Robert lifts his t-shirt to wipe the sweat from his brow before he leans his temple on Aaron's shoulder, snuggling in to his husband and watching Seb watch them.
“We should put him back to sleep,”
“In a minute,” Robert murmurs, reaching out for Seb to grab his finger.
It makes them smile when his tiny fist curls around his index and they look up when Liv's head pops around the doorway. She nods and they know it means that Gerry is still here, conked out and no doubt snoring. She leaves them to it to go back to her bed and Robert hears Aaron breathe like he's about to say something.
“Want to talk about what that was?” he asks eventually.
Robert aborts his shake of the head when he remembers their promise to each other to communicate properly. He knows all too well that Aaron has had his own demons to deal with, including being wrongfully locked up for Robert's shooting, and also has some idea why his thoughts converged this way tonight.
“It's just...everything,” he half-laughs at his lack of words to hand, rubbing his cheek into the solid muscle of Aaron's t-shirt covered shoulder. Aaron doesn't interrupt, so he tries once more. “Guess it's caught up to me – worrying about Liv, trying to be good for Seb, making sure you're okay. I just want everyone to be happy.”
Aaron grabs his other free hand and squeezes. “I'm okay and we are – we are happy again. It's over, Robert. Nothing can touch us now.”
Robert lets the tension finally seep out of his body. He hears Aaron's words and believes them; lets the strength of his love fill in the gaps between. “I love you so much.” He looks at Aaron and tilts his head, their mouths slotting home for a chaste kiss borne of bone-deep comfort.
He lets go of Aaron to rub his fingertips to the left side of his chest to rid himself of the phantom ache the contents of the nightmare and panic attack caused, but he could never hide his true feelings from Aaron as he instantly picks up on it. “Alright?”
“Yeah. I saw - ” Robert pauses and swallows. “I saw myself. I got shot, again.”
“Robert,” Aaron breathes in sympathy before their attention is taken away from each other to Seb's head lolling back on Aaron's knees.
Robert huffs a laugh and shields the crown of his head from doing it again. He can see Aaron stare at his profile, quietly awed. “I love you too, y'know.”
“I know.” Robert watches Seb blink tiredly and eases him from Aaron's knees to the crook of his elbow. “Come on, let's get you to bed. Let's all go to bed.”
Aaron scrambles up from the floor with him. “Are you sure?”
Robert smiles down at Seb as he settles him in his cot and nods to their bed. As they climb in and tangle their limbs together, he listens to Seb's sleepy snuffles then squeezes Aaron's waist to silently tell him to go to sleep. Aaron shifts his head comfortably onto Robert's chest and his hand to his hip, satisfied that his family is safe, they live to fight another day and know they are loved.