Chapter Text
The dry winter air cuts through Aaron’s layers, slicing across his skin and sinking into his bones.
His lips are chapped, skin catching slightly on his teeth as he worries his lower lip. He licks them again, knowing it will only make it worse, but needing the momentary relief.
The thin skin across his knuckles is red and tight from the cold, so he stuffs them into his pockets, leaning back against the freezing metal of the car and curling his shoulders in as a buffer.
He’s spent three days here. Silently watching as the angry teeth of winter gnaw away at him.
The lights in the small cottage click on as the daylight fades. A shape moves around behind the curtains.
Three days. No one has come in or out, but smoke has poured from the chimney, and the lights flick on and off, and the shape moves inside.
Aaron’s phone vibrates in his pocket. He knows it’ll say the same message they’ve all said this week.
When are you coming back?
He hasn’t put words to that thought yet. Doesn’t know how to respond. Knows he’s got a life in Emmerdale. A home and a partner.
But the cold has eroded away his excuses and the wind has filled his lungs with the hope of breathing again.
The shape moves in front of the light, making it flicker across the curtains.
Aaron drags his teeth across his aching lip and he thinks about the response he should type. The one he would write if he were a better man.
If he’ll still have me? I’m not.
He watches the house in silence, stomach uneasy. Swallows around the words caught in his throat, wipes away the watering of his eyes against the wind.
A second light clicks on on the second floor, contrasting with the swiftly falling dark.
Aaron pushes himself off the car, eyes caught on the upper windows. He can’t see in, the curtains have been shut against every angle of the outside world.
He licks his lip again, notices the sting of a crack, and shakes his head. He opens the door of the car and slides in, knees aching a little from the cold and being on the wrong side of forty.
He grips the wheel tight, nearly misses the constant scouring of the wind against his skin.
Tomorrow. He’ll knock tomorrow.
————————————————————————
The bed in the inn is hard. It creaks ominously under Aaron’s weight, old yellowed quilt wrinkling beneath his hand as he kicks off his shoes.
He rolls his shoulders, makes eye contact with himself in the mirror, traces the over grey in his beard. Notes the circles under his eyes and the pink in his cheeks from the chill.
He scrubs his hands over his face, tries to wipe away the doubts creeping in as they always do.
Who’d want you? Damaged goods.
The voice belongs to someone long dead, but decades don’t silence it.
His phone buzzes again. Dozens of missed calls and texts slowly building to a storm of worry. A constant stream of noise from all of them.
He can’t look at them, can’t until he knows for sure who is in that cottage.
He hasn’t let himself think his name, hasn’t had anything but nights of dreams of a deep voice professing secrets and freckled shoulders beneath Aaron’s hands. He’s woken up brittle and aching, reaching out for someone other than the man beside him each morning.
He swallows around the lump in his throat. It’s been there for nearly fifteen years. A goodbye he never got to say.
He scratches blunt nails across dry skin on his hands, watches the wake of white then pink on his skin. Presses harder to ground himself, to focus on whatever it is he’s doing. He knows he can’t stay like this. In this odd grey space between knowing and wishing.
Aaron’s sure it’s him in that quiet cottage, bundled away from everything. But if he’s wrong he doesn’t have any pieces of their life left to burn as fuel for hope.
He reaches to the bedside table. Looks at the postcard of the town center, edges worn and cracked from being stuffed into his pocket. Bent in the middle from where he sat on the drive north.
It had arrived two weeks ago. Blank except for the address to the Mill in handwriting he still knows as well as his own.
He traces the letters of Aaron Dingle, the way they are carefully printed, as if maybe the writer had been unsure of the wisdom of his choice. Allows himself a moment to ache for the name that used to separate those two words.
He doesn’t regret changing his name back, it had become too hard with each year to deal with seeing Sugden nestled next to Dingle on every piece of paper that came through the post. A decade later and he’d managed to scrub away those six letters from nearly every corner of his life.
His mind slips back to the locked box in a bank in Hotten he’s only been to twice. Until a week ago there’d been a sealed envelope inside containing a watch and two rings. The envelope is stuffed in the glovebox of his car. He couldn’t bring it inside the inn with him. Can’t spend more nights sleeping next to the rings without something concrete.
His phone buzzes again. Liv’s name across the screen, making Aaron’s stomach wrench. They don’t talk as much any more. She’s moved to Dublin where she works in a gallery and lives with a couple who love and care for her.
He rejects the call. Stares down at the screen and the countless notifications of slowly mounting concern.
He opens the texts from Liv but doesn’t read them.
Tell them I’m fine. I need to do this.
The typing bubbles appear immediately in response.
Promise me you’re not in danger.
He pauses, thinking about the right answer.
I promise.
It’s not a lie, but it feels like one. He won’t have any scars if this all goes to hell, but the part of his heart that he’s been protecting ever since he was lunged for in a layby, that piece will be burnt to ash.
The photograph of him and Will stares back at him from his lock screen. He turns his phone off, not needing the pecking at his conscience.
————————————————————————
Lying on sheets worn soft from age staring at a water-damaged corner of the ceiling gives Aaron too much space for uncertainty and twisting darkness.
He squeezes his eyes tight against the encroaching panic and practices what his therapist taught him. Focusing on his breathing and counting things he knows are true.
I am Aaron Dingle. I live in Emmerdale. I have two half sisters. I run a scrapyard. My mum owns the Woolpack. My partner owns the cafe. I was married once.
His thoughts are spiraling in on themselves, the seeping oil of guilt slides across his skin.
My ex husband was in prison. My partner’s name is Will. We’ve been together for six years next month. He makes me laugh.
His heart is hammering, and he can’t stop the thoughts. He knows what he should do: recenter, try and quiet it all, focus on the tangible.
I don’t love him enough. He’s not enough.
He throws the blanket off himself, unable to stay still anymore. It’s just gone three and he aches with exhaustion, but there’s no way he’ll be able to fall asleep now.
He begins a bath, hoping the warmth will seep into his bones, keep him strong in the face of what he’s got ahead. That it will relax the tension turning his back into thick wire cables.
Too many years of hard graft.
The voice in his head is affectionate and teasing. It’s one he last heard from the speakers of his computer what feels like a lifetime ago. Aaron wonders if it’s possible to be haunted by someone still alive.
He slips into the water, hissing as the heat hits his chilled skin. Slips down so his head is submerged, the comforting rush of water pushing against his ears the only thing he can hear.
You wish.
He pushes back up and out, resting his head on the rim of the tub, squeezing his eyes shut and choking out a quiet sob.
There were years when he only thought of him on tough days. He survived by avoiding back roads and barns and garages, going on weekend trips with Will or volunteering for a long scrap run.
But mostly he’d been fine. Happy even. Sitting out in the garden in the summer, Will grilling burgers while they drink beers and laugh at Daisy, Will’s geriactric beagle. Going to films together and sharing popcorn while rating explosions.
It was easy. Easy in a way Aaron hadn’t thought he’d find again.
He scrubs his face, the itching guilt scratching over his skin, leaving him feeling raw.
His mind slips back to the way he felt when he saw the card nestled amongst bills and coupons. The way his blood had rushed through his veins, heart soaring and cracking and burning all at once.
He’s never been that interested in easy.
Messed up with you forever.
The water is growing cold, and his knots have loosened enough that pushing himself out of the bath feels less impossible. He wraps himself in a towel, not caring that he’s tracking damp footprints across the carpet of the room.
There’s an electric kettle near the bed, and he clicks it on, knowing he’ll need the fuel for whatever happens.
————————————————————————
He sits for a couple hours, sipping tea and trying to quiet the emotions churning in his chest. Back curled up against the headboard of the bed, one leg hugged to his body, chin resting on his knee.
He stares into the middle nothing as the room brightens around him, feels the prickles of his leg falling asleep even as he remains painfully awake.
The inn has begun to fill with noise as it wakes up. He can hear someone showering, the muffled creaks of footsteps on the ceiling above. The walls are thin enough he can hear the alarm tone from someone’s phone. The generic chimes snoozed twice.
He looks at the clock, relieved that it’s nearly 6:30.
If he’s still on prison time he’ll be getting up now.
Aaron knows that the schedule slowly molds an inmate. All night owls become accustomed to the ebb and flow of life inside.
He used to love to lay in bed on Saturdays while our room became bright from the sun.
He digs his nails into his palm, not needing to retreat into memories long gone.
They’re all grey and hazy now even in his dreams. Slowly degrading in quality like the Prison Break boxset that has gathered dust in a corner closet. Will had elbowed him while cleaning and whispered that he’d always thought Wentworth Miller was fit and that he thought Aaron would look good with a couple of tattoos.
Aaron shakes off the weekend memories of both men, pulling himself in and together. He gets dressed and tugs on shoes.
He avoids looking in the mirror when he’s done. Doesn’t need the visual reminder of the passage of time, the suspicion that he’s changed too much, that he’s too far removed from the man that used to be loved. Loved in a way that made him feel like he was on fire.
He pulls on another layer, knowing the chilled air is worse in the half light of morning. Needing the armor against the blustering doubts that threaten to blow him over.
He looks around at the room before he leaves, needing something, anything, to tell him the choice he’s making is the right one. The postcard sits where he left it, white line of the fold cracking through the image. He tucks it into his pocket, the only scrap he’s sure of.
He passes the front desk and the woman behind it watches him leave. He doesn’t know what she thinks of him, leaving early each day and returning late, windswept with red-rimmed eyes.
He passes a couple on the short walk to the car park, arm in arm on their morning commute. Sees a woman walking her dog. Hears the town coming to life.
He climbs into his car and sighs when the world is shut out around him. His stomach is in knots, palms clammy and tingling.
He rests his forehead on the wheel.
Last chance. You could turn around and go back. Tell them all you had a wobble. Go back to therapy. Get over him.
The thought makes his heart race, stomach rolling.
I have to know.
————————————————————————
The cottage shows as much life as it ever has. There’s lights on behind the curtains, barely visible in the grey.
Aaron sits in the car feeling wrong footed. He leans to the side, opening the glove box and pulling out the envelope. It’s been sealed for a decade.
He tears it open, pouring out the rings and watch.
The two circles sit in his palm, one is scuffed and a bit smaller. He tucks that one into his pocket, feels the chilly indent of it pressing into his thigh.
They weigh almost nothing but his soul feels like it’s tearing from their pull.
He tucks the other and the watch into his jacket pocket. Keeps a hand on them as he climbs out, feels their radiating significance in his bones.
He knows every inch of them. Had kept them in a drawer near his bed for a year, shoved them farther and farther back into the corner as his heart crumbled. They’d moved to a shoebox in the closet after a while. Taken out when Aaron had too much beer and emptiness and echoes off the walls of their room. Finally moved to the deposit box when he’d had enough of feeling like an Aaron shaped shell, and had begun to collect himself and move on.
His feet move without a plan, taking him towards the door, tears already pricking at the corners of his eyes.
It’s a short walk, and too soon he’s at the wooden door. Nondescript, a quiet blue, with lightly worn areas at the edges and handle. The real estate agent in town had said it was the only place she’d sold to a single man that year.
Apparently it’s a buyers market. He got it for a song.
She wouldn’t tell Aaron his name, privacy laws and all that.
Aaron lifts his hand to the bell, breath frozen in his chest, the rushing of blood loud in his ears. He slips the tip of his finger in his pocket into the ring, pinches it slightly and feels the metal warm to his skin.
He swallows and pushes. A muffled buzz inside responds to the press.
He can hear footsteps approach the door, and then a pause. The person inside is hesitating. There’s no peephole, no way to know why there’s a noise at the door at seven in the morning. Aaron can’t clear his throat, can’t find a word to say through the wood. He’s lost, his lips are worn ragged from worrying them and the ever present chill, and he licks them as he tries to remember how to speak.
The handle turns, door opening cautiously to reveal a man who, for the past fifteen years, Aaron has only seen trapped within the confines of a frame or digitally rendered on a screen. The reality of him is blindingly sharp and complex.
They’re frozen for a moment, mouths open in matching inhales.
“Robert.” The name falls from Aaron’s lips in a rush. A rumble of two syllables he’s not allowed himself to even think since the card came.
————————————————————————