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Andrew hasn’t left his room in two days, not that Tilda has noticed. Aaron’s homeroom teacher had flicked her eyes over the empty seat behind Aaron which he normally occupied, but Andrew’s absence had otherwise gone unremarked upon. The rougher kids still parted before Aaron in the corridors, either because they had mistaken him for his twin or because they knew what Andrew would do to them if Aaron came home with a black eye and their name on his lips.
On the third day, Aaron hovers outside the door to Andrew’s room, counting the minutes until the school bus is supposed to pass by. They’re meant to be doing a joint presentation on photosynthesis in their shared bio class, although “joint” is stretching it. The plan is for Aaron to talk while Andrew stands at the projector and, hopefully, switches the slides when Aaron prompts him. It’s a class Aaron usually enjoys, and Miss Woods is usually nice to him, but she had paired him with Andrew for the project in a misguided attempt to help them bond. Hopefully she will give up on the idea when she sees Andrew slouching over the projector while Aaron does all the work.
As much as his brother’s presence is unnecessary to the presentation, Aaron doesn’t want to do it alone, and the participation grade is all that stands between Andrew and another flunked class.
He knocks on the door. Predictably, there is no answer.
Aaron remembers, suddenly, vividly, the day that he pushed the door to his mother’s room open to find her passed out in a pool of her own vomit.
He swallows back the memory like bile, forces down the twitch of his fingers for something more, something strong enough to make the memories leave him alone.
He knows his brother keeps an iron grip on himself, perhaps stronger even than the grip he keeps on Aaron. Andrew is self-destructive in ways that Aaron will never understand, but they have a deal that Andrew won’t break no matter how much Aaron might wish he would by something so mundane as suicide. Nonetheless, the image of Andrew lying dead and forgotten on the other side of the door is a little too vivid for Aaron’s stomach, so he tentatively pushes the door open. Just to make sure.
The room is dark, the air stale. Unless Andrew has a stash of food in his room like Aaron has, he hasn’t eaten in some time. There’s a pile of covers on the bed and the outline of a body beneath them that might be human-shaped. The crack of light from the doorway slices across it like a clever, too dim to show whether it’s moving. The deathly stillness of the room is enough to make Aaron push the door further open until a square of yellow light sets the bed aglow.
He still can’t pick out the regular rise-and-fall movement of breath, which is the only reason he steps into the room. Andrew is prickly and volatile at the best of times, but Aaron learned the hard way that he has boundaries carved in stone when it comes to his personal space. Aaron doesn’t think he’s been in Andrew’s room since he moved in with them; the lack of personal artefacts leave the spare room indistinguishable from before Andrew moved in aside from a mess of dirty laundry scattered across the floor and a sweaty, teenage-boy musk that tells Aaron exactly how long it has been since Andrew opened a window.
There’s a fluff of blonde hair peaking out from the covers somewhere near the headboard, but still no sign of life. It’s the paranoia that pushes Aaron onwards, taking the corner of the comforter and pulling it down to expose Andrew’s face.
He doesn’t even see the eyes flashing open; it’s the instant clamping of a hand around his wrist that has a rush of air leaving Aaron’s chest as he flinches from the contact. Andrew’s knuckles are white around his arm, cutting off the blood supply to Aaron’s hand so brutally that Aaron feels like he’s about to amputate it.
“I’ll kill you,” says Andrew in a flat croak. It sounds like the first words he’s spoken in days.
“Fuck you.” Aaron writhes instinctively, but Andrew’s grip is steel. “Let go of me.”
Something in Andrew’s gaze shifts as he recognises his own features snarling back at him. “Get out,” he orders, relinquishing his grip.
“We have our presentation today.”
“Oh no.” Andrew’s eyes burn into him. “Miss Woods will be so disappointed. Just don’t offer her a shoulder to cry on. I’d hate to have to intervene.”
Aaron resists the urge to punch Andrew in his stupid, empty face. He hates how Andrew can read him like nobody else, can zero in instantly on any woman who holds his attention a second too long. He doesn’t know when being barred from a little staring during the duller parts of class became part of their deal and detests how much it feels like a one-way street. Andrew has never shown the slightest interest in anyone or anything, so it’s clearly not a huge loss on his end to cut himself off. Aaron, on the other hand, is a human being with actual feelings and desires, and the fact that Andrew expects him to behave otherwise is as absurd as it is true.
Aaron curses Andrew out again before leaving. He yanks the door shut behind him, not caring if the noise wakes Tilda.
Miss Woods makes a concerned sound when Aaron tells her Andrew is off sick, but Aaron won’t meet her eyes. He does the presentation alone.
When he returns home to find Andrew’s door still shut, he wants to be angrier than he is. Aaron is enough of a germophobe that he doesn’t get sick often anymore, but he remembers sweating under his sheets for days when he was younger, unnoticed and unacknowledged. Not that he would have wanted Tilda’s attention had she offered it. That being said, Andrew doesn’t do much to paint himself as a sympathetic figure, and Aaron is tempted to just leave him to stew. It isn’t like Andrew is really sick. Just sick in the head.
Tilda is, typically, nowhere to be seen, so Aaron fixes his own meal to take to his room. After a moment’s hesitation, he scoops half the pasta into another bowl. He only opens the door to Andrew’s room wide enough to scoot the bowl through it before shutting it after him.
He forgets about it until the next day, when he trips over the empty bowl abandoned in front of Andrew’s door. He picks it up, glances towards the closed door, and takes it down to the kitchen to wash up.
The next day, Andrew is back at school, and it’s as though nothing ever happened.
*
“You have to come to class.” Aaron wrinkles his nose as he yanks back the curtains. Andrew won the coin toss when they moved in with Nicky in Columbia, meaning his is the larger room with the south-facing windows which Aaron is convinced Andrew chose just to spite him. It’s no more personal than Andrew’s previous room, nor is it any cleaner. Andrew doesn’t move from under the convers, and Aaron belatedly remembers the effect his new drugs have on Andrew’s sleep patterns.
Aaron picks up a pillow and smacks it down on Andrew’s head before diving out of the way. Andrew bursts into life in a mess of swinging fists and manic fury before recognition clicks into place along with the usual glassy smile.
“Wrong room, Aaron! Did you get mixed up?”
“If your attendance keeps dropping, they’ll report us to social services and Nicky will lose custody.” Nicky, for all his good intentions, has been pulling nightshifts at Eden’s all week and sleeps through most of the day to recover. Each night, Andrew drags himself to the kitchen table and chatters vaguely about his classes as though he actually went to them, but it’s only a matter of time before Nicky notices something is amiss or the school phones home.
“I’m sick,” Andrew says. “Cough, cough.” His eyes are bright and there’s a little too much sway to his stance, but it’s indistinguishable from the normal side effects of his drugs.
Aaron has seen Andrew stubbornly sitting through AP math class with skin so white he looks seconds from fainting dead away, has seen him dive into the toilets between classes to gag like he’s bringing up his stomach lining, but has also seen him blow off a week straight of classes just to lie in bed all day staring at the ceiling. If there’s a rhyme or reason to Andrew’s sick days, Aaron has yet to figure it out, just like he still can’t tell when Andrew is ill or faking or when it’s just the drugs. Sometimes he hides the symptoms like a dog snarling to hide his wounds, while other times he rambles for hours about what the meds have done to his digestive tract, taking delight in grossing Aaron and Nicky out so badly that neither of them can finish their dinner.
Andrew flops back onto his bed with a dismissive gesture. “So much faith in the proactivity of social services. Your naivety is touching.”
Aaron looks at the prone body of his twin and resigns himself to the direct approach. “Are you really sick? Or is this…” He gestures vaguely. “You know. One of your moods.”
Andrew sends him a sharp, considering look. “I’m quite sure I don’t know what you mean,” he replies, his voice lilting up and down almost comically.
Aaron shakes his head, because of course just asking isn’t going to work with Andrew. He moves to put his hand on Andrew’s forehead. Andrew’s hand catches his arm in an instant, smile turning toothy and shark-like. “I would have thought you knew better by now, dear brother,” he says, half-way to that terrible, terrible laugh that means someone is about to die.
“I need to check your temperature,” Aaron says through gritted teeth. “If you’re really sick, I can pick up some medication on the way home. But I’m not buying you anything if you’re just being a fucking weirdo.”
Andrew slaps his free hand to his forehead dramatically. “Woe is me! I’m truly afflicted. Call the leach doctor!”
“If you don’t let me check then I’ll tell Nicky you’re sick and you can deal with him fussing all over you,” Aaron snarls.
“You’re telling Mommy on me? Low blow.”
Aaron flinches. Raw wounds tear open all over again. “Don’t call him that.”
Andrew stares at him for another long moment. Aaron knows better by now than to expect an apology, but Andrew’s grip on his arm loosens until his hand dangles around his wrist like a bangle. For a moment Aaron thinks Andrew is going to put Aaron’s hand to his forehead, but instead he pushes him off.
“It’s one of my moods. Call back tomorrow.”
Aaron huffs, but acknowledges that pushing Andrew any further will only end badly. He leaves Andrew grinning feverishly at his own ceiling and tries not to think about the horrific blackness beneath. Aaron remembers that space, the deep, empty pit of black that he threw himself down night after night with whatever drugs he could lay his hands on. He can’t imagine living there every hour of every day, nor being trapped there by legal mandate. He starts to wonder how Andrew ever manages to get out of bed at all.
Andrew is back in school before the end of the week, and Nicky and the social services remain none the wiser. Andrew always seems to know exactly how far he can push the system before it will break their “family” apart, but that doesn’t make Aaron any more comfortable with how he toes the line.
One more year; one more year of high school and he won’t ever have to think about Andrew and his sick games and his sicker head ever again.
*
Aaron bumps into Neil as they’re both leaving their respective dorm rooms. It’s been months since Neil and Andrew moved into a dorm together, but Aaron still isn’t used to it yet, how Neil will occasionally surface in one of Andrew’s oversized hoodies or vice versa. It’s too early in the day for Aaron to muster up the full force of his usual scowl, but they enter the elevator together in stony silence. It’s becoming rarer and rarer to see Neil without Andrew’s monolithic shadow at his shoulder, but Aaron doesn’t put too much thought into it until Neil turns up to practice on his own.
Neil answers Wymack’s raised eyebrow with a minute shake of his head which goes unnoticed by the others.
On the fourth day, Aaron watches as Wymack takes Neil aside, and they talk for several minutes with muted gestures and worried expressions. When Neil looks his way, Aaron pretends to be fixing his racquet strings. Andrew isn’t his damn responsibility anymore. He doesn’t need to care. Shouldn’t care.
The next day, Aaron pulls on a long-sleeved black shirt and a flat expression and sits in a stupor through several criminology lectures. Andrew’s lecturers know better than to bother calling on him, leaving Aaron mercifully undisturbed. What’s important is that a row of ticks appear next to Andrew’s name on their attendance sheets.
It’s Neil who opens the door to their dorm, so it’s Neil who receives the stack of notes Aaron dumps into his arms.
“Tell him to get his shit together,” Aaron says, leaving before Neil can respond.
*
A week later, Andrew tracks Aaron down at the library. Mercifully, Katelyn isn’t with him; he’s in no mood to be preventing Andrew from murdering her nor himself from murdering Andrew.
“You have a strange definition of ‘letting go’,” says Andrew. He drops Aaron’s notes on the desk.
“I’m not going to sit back and watch you blow up your life for no reason. You’re a college athlete, not a high schooler. Stop handing your lecturers an excuse to kick you out.”
“For no reason,” Andrew repeats. “Is that still what you think this is?”
“I’m not a fucking mind-reader,” Aaron snaps. “You can’t keep playing your stupid games and expect the rest of us to figure out the rules. Why explain yourself when you can jerk the rest of the world around until we all run out of patience and you’re left with nothing and no one but your little fuck-buddy.”
“Language,” says Andrew, the closest thing to a warning Aaron is going to get. Aaron’s gaze flicks down. He’s still learning where the boundaries lie where Neil is involved, the ins and outs of Andrew’s protective instincts. He still isn’t used to being outside that circle, to standing on his own.
“It isn’t a game,” Andrew continues flatly. “I have depression. PTSD. A few other things besides, probably. Sometimes I get sick. Sometimes I can’t function. Sometimes I need a few days to myself. I’m not self-destructing, I’m surviving.”
Aaron stares. He knew his brother was fucked up in ways he could never imagine – the last year had been a brutal wake-up call to the depths of Andrew’s trauma – but he’s never seen it lain bare before, put down in proper terminology and honesty and acknowledgement. “So? Why should you get a free pass to do whatever just because of some shit that’s all in your head?”
“You’re going to make a terrible doctor,” says Andrew. Aaron clenches his fists, waits for the specific brand of murderous intent that Andrew alone can draw from him to pass. “Surely you know better than anyone how difficult it is to control what happens in your own mind.”
“Addiction is different. Addictive chemicals and-”
Andrew raises a finger to silence him. “Yes. Chemicals. Precisely.”
“Whatever.” There’s no worse feeling than when Andrew is right. It makes Aaron doubt every decision he’s ever made. “It doesn’t make a difference when you’re going to get kicked off the team.”
“Bee cleared my absences with the guidance department. Students with mental health difficulties get certain allowances.” Andrew pushes the notes towards him. “I don’t need your pity.”
“It wasn’t pity.”
Andrew raises an eyebrow. “It was something.”
Aaron remains silent. He isn’t sure what it was. “You’re getting help, then.”
Andrew’s gaze remains upon him for several seconds. “Like I said, you have a strange definition of ‘letting go’.” He leaves, knowing that Aaron has no response to give him.
*
The next day, Aaron and Neil bump into each other again outside their dorm rooms, both having a class that starts at the same time in the same building. Instead of greeting Aaron with his usual disdainful glare, he nods briefly. Aaron finds himself returning the gesture. The silence is less stony now, more…quiet.
“Will he be back at practice today?” Aaron asks bluntly, without bothering to specify who he is referring to.
“Tomorrow,” says Neil after a pause. “Probably.”
“Good.”
Aaron doesn’t acknowledge the way Neil’s gaze skates over him like Aaron has turned into a new man since last they spoke. The look of understanding that skates across Neil’s face sends an uncomfortable prickle across Aaron’s skin that he resists the urge to scratch away.
He and Neil reach an understanding that neither wanted nor sought out; they may be different in more ways than Aaron cares to count, but they’ve found their common ground in Andrew.
One day, Aaron might figure out what that means.
*
The patient sitting in Aaron’s consultancy room has long legs, spindly arms and a nervous tick when she speaks. The hood of her hoodie is still pulled over her head like she wants it to swallow her whole, the sleeves pulled down over her hands.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she says quietly. The girl’s eyes haven’t left the floor since she entered. “I can’t make myself eat. I can’t make myself sleep. It’s like I don’t know how to act like a person anymore.”
Aaron nods. She isn’t the first patient to say this to him, and she won’t be the last. He’s had a lot of practice in learning the right thing to say.
“This isn’t your fault.” Bedside manner was not a part of the doctor’s skillset that came to Aaron naturally, but every so often there’s a patient for which he makes the effort. The ones who need it most. “This is a condition, and we are going to help you manage it.”
He glances at the photo of his family that he keeps on his desk and remembers that Andrew will be phoning him tonight. They will make perfunctory enquiries about each other’s partners, talk about their respective jobs, and if Bella is in a good mood Aaron might hand her the phone so she can warble disjointed syllables at her uncle for a few minutes.
“I can’t promise that it will get better right away,” Aaron says. For the first time since she entered, the patient meets his gaze. “But this is the start. Okay?”
She nods. There’s fear in her eyes, but there’s fight too. It’s a look Aaron is more than familiar with. “Okay.”
It’s a long road to recovery, but Aaron knows that better than almost anyone. He also knows what waits on the other end.