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The prison was such a fuck-ugly building Aaron could hardly look at it. He drummed his fingers against the steering wheel, October air spilling in through the cracked car window. Aaron watched a few people approach the building, and could see himself in them. The stooped shoulders, the dragging feet. Visiting. Going to spend the next hour pretending someone they loved was still properly in their lives, not stuck in that strange prison space of suspended animation, where the world carries on without you, literally throws away the key.
His phone pinged from the console and he reached for it, bringing up a text from Liv. The night before he had almost caved and told her she could come along with him, but waking up to his alarm that morning, the one he had been waiting almost a year for, made him pull back his offer. The words Robert Home Today had lit up his screen, and lit his face with the first smile-on-waking he’d had since the last time he had woken to Robert beside him. Wrapped up in his arms, not just the scent of him, ghostly on their bedding.
Liv: is he out yet?
Aaron: not yet
Liv: ☹
Aaron laughed a little under his breath. Twenty pound said when Liv saw Robert again she’d give him a hug, call him a div, and act like she’d hardly noticed he was gone, but they’d all know the truth. She’d come with Aaron on a lot of their visits, getting college work done ahead of time so that she could visit her favourite erstwhile maths tutor. She didn’t tease Aaron for spraying Robert’s cologne around the house, and once or twice since he first got sent down, Aaron had found her curled up on the couch wearing a jumper with elbow patches on. She brought Robert books to read from home, wiped tears away frustratedly when it was just her and Aaron in the car again. She missed him.
Aaron: only a bit longer now
Aaron: he’ll be home soon
Liv: waited long enough
Aaron’s heart clenched. She and Robert had come a long way from him chasing her down in the park and getting kneed in the balls for his trouble.
Liv: just want the numpty home now
Liv: u know how long i’ve been waiting to finish this boxset??
Aaron tapped out a few emojis in reply, the lightness in his chest swelling, the one he’d kept suppressed since just after Christmas. Fair fucks to Billy, he had eventually copped to what he’d been part of in prison, what he did to Aaron in there, but things had gone too far by that point. Marlon and Jessie’s marriage collapsed, her hardly being a Dingle before being dragged into Dingle court for grassing Robert up.
He felt bad for Marlon at the time, but seeing how quickly it all evaporated he couldn’t see it being especially worth holding on to. Not the way what Aaron and Robert had was. it went to show how much stronger they were now. Aaron’s own prison stint had almost broken them – sort of had, as much as what they had could ever be broken. They had really gone through it, this time and the last. Aaron thought that telling Liv about Gerry when she was banged up was as bad as it could get, but having to tell Robert about what happened to Vic… they had promised no secrets this time. Aaron had to tell him.
“I’ll kill him,” Robert had said, seething while Aaron murmured to him, reminded him of everything he had waiting for him at home.
“Right, you keep talking like that and they might as well fit a revolving door on the front of this place.” Aaron dropped his voice low. “Talk to the staff here about it if you need to. Call me, when you can. Get your head right, Rob, because we need ya to get out of here and to stay out of here.”
They had worked through it, like they did everything. Together. Vic was doing as alright as could be expected when her case fell apart, and she could really have used her brother. But Aaron supported her like Robert had supported him, and life moved on.
But not too far.
He looked back at the prison façade, the visitors having disappeared inside by now, only to have his eye fall on a new, lone figure. A figure he could pick out in the dark, across a crowded room, across a crowded year without each other.
He climbed out of the car, saw Robert spot him, moved.
He remembered how it felt for him, when he got out of prison - a ship in harbour when he glided back into Robert’s arms. How safe he felt, how relieved.
They ran to each other.
Aaron jumped, Robert catching him around the waist, pressed so tightly together after months of talking with a table between them, with the carefully constructed distance to keep the other inmates in the dark. They came together so completely, like two sides of a zipper, no space for so much as a breath or a hair to slip through. Aaron slid down Robert’s chest, buried his face at Robert’s neck as Robert threaded his hand up through Aaron’s hair, all the way up along his spine, to nape, to crown, his other hand pressed firm to the small of Aaron’s back, holding him. Aaron breathed Robert in, blinked a wetness against the skin of his neck. They swayed.
“Nearly ten months without you,” Aaron pushed his palms against Robert’s chest, held them there, one over muscle, one over heart. “Never again, yeah?”
Robert shook his head. Fine stubble dusted his face, his spine was curved like he wanted to curl around Aaron and orbit him forever, his clothes were wearing him rather than the other way around but – he was there. In Aaron’s arms again, where he was meant to be. Where they both were.
“Never again. I’m never, ever, leaving you again.”
“That a promise?”
“Cross my heart,” Robert murmured, nudging his nose carefully, gently against Aaron’s, as though they may have forgotten how to do this. Aaron couldn’t forget if he tried.
He kissed his husband, deep. Ten months worth of kisses, their first anniversary’s missed kisses, Robert’s birthday kisses. Warm belly and full heart, it was nourishment after drought, Robert’s mouth fitted to his, bodies aligned.
Life, the stalled engine of it, started up again, some missing piece repaired. With two mechanics on the job, the road was made for driving.