Work Text:
“Aaron.”
“Mmf.”
“Aaron.”
“Ugh, what?”
“Come on, we need to get up.”
He groans and covers his eyes when the curtains are thrown open, casting a grey morning light over their hotel room.
“Too bright… ”
Robert ignores him, moving from the window to the room’s little kettle and busying himself making coffee. Aaron blindly reaches for his phone, grimacing when he sees the time.
“S’early still.”
“Want to make the most of the day, don’t we?” His twat of a husband calls over his shoulder, teaspoon clinking on the rim of his mug. Aaron can’t see his face, but he just knows there’s a smug grin on it.
He chucks a pillow at Robert’s head.
*
When Robert found out he had a Friday afternoon meeting in London, he’d talked Aaron into taking the day off work and tagging along, so they could make a weekend of it.
“I’ve got so much admin to do, Rob, and we’d need to find a babysitter for Seb,” Aaron had whined at Robert, who was straddling him on their bed with a hopeful expression on his face.
“We’ll ask Vic or Diane, they’d love to spoil him for a couple of days. And you can do some of your paperwork on the train,” he pleaded, pressing light kisses along Aaron’s neck. “Come on, it’ll be fun. I’ll take you up the Shard.”
They both snorted, foreheads knocking together.
“Take me to do touristy crap, more like,” Aaron said when he’d eventually stopped snickering like a teenager.
“Only stuff you’d want to do, I swear. And y’know, it was my home for a while, I wouldn’t mind showing you round a bit.”
Aaron blinked in slight surprise. Robert tended not to bring up his time away from Emmerdale – mainly because it usually either led to discussion of the Whites or to the reason he'd ended up leaving in the first place.
“That’d be nice, see some of your old haunts.”
“Yeah?” The smile Robert gave him had just a hint of shyness behind it, and if Aaron wasn’t about to give in before, he definitely was now.
“Yeah, let’s do it.”
*
When they venture out of their hotel, it soon becomes clear that Robert really had been a Londoner at one point in his life, and therefore knows exactly what he’s was doing. He walks at a brisk pace throughout the day, not even glancing at the map on his phone as he leads them around the city.
Aaron, on the other hand, couldn’t feel more like a tourist. He’s only been to London for the odd lads weekend, which didn't exactly give him the opportunity to see much other than the bars and clubs. He’s not used to the madness of it all.
But while he’s constantly bumping into people, his husband dodges around them with ease, zigging and zagging his way down the busy streets or dragging Aaron through various quieter shortcuts. Even when they’re in a tube station, he sharply yanks Aaron’s arm to stop him from following the crowd and pulls him in the opposite direction.
“No, this way is quicker.”
“But the sign says the Piccadilly line is this – ”
“The sign is lying.”
*
They both agree that the Tower of London is worth the extortionate entry fee. Robert loves the history of it and Aaron loves looking at the different weapons and amour, feeling like a little kid as he presses his nose against the glass to get a better look at a full-scale model of a knight.
“Wow,” Robert comes up behind him, resting a hand on the small of his back. “He’s got a big sword.”
Aaron laughs a little too hard, which makes Robert laugh even harder, and they earn themselves a few dirty looks from a nearby American family.
*
“Should we check out Oxford Street?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’ll lose your temper and push a tourist into traffic, and watching you get arrested for murder will put a bit of a dampener on my weekend.”
*
They amble through the Covent Garden area instead, dipping in and out of the quirky shops and stopping at a tiny Scandinavian bakery for lunch.
“These are so good,” Aaron moans through a mouthful of his second cinnamon bun.
“Knew you’d like it,” Robert smiles from his seat opposite him and sips his drink. “God, they still do the best coffee here”
“I might get another bun.”
“If you eat any more, you might turn into cinnamon bun.”
“Don’t care, I can take them back to the hotel. D’you think they’ll deliver to Yorkshire?”
*
“Huh.”
“What?”
“It’s… smaller than it looks on telly. Bit disappointing, really.”
“Buckingham Palace… isn’t quite big enough for you?”
“I’m just saying, that balcony is surprisingly low, dunno how much of a view they’d get from there.”
*
Robert shows him the office building where he used to work for Lawrence, pointing up at the floor his desk was on. Aaron follows the direction of his arm, craning his neck.
“Looks thrilling.”
“Oi, it was alright. They had a great coffee machine, and a gym in the basement.”
“Did you have any mates there?”
“A few,” Robert shrugs. “The type you can go for after-work drinks at the pub with, anyway. Then I started going out with the boss’s daughter and got promoted and, well… I wasn’t quite so popular after that.”
“Ah.”
“Oh!” Robert suddenly points again, lower down this time. “And if you look at the third floor, second window from the right… that’s the room where I once had a shag on a photocopier.”
“Lovely.”
*
“How much for a few tea bags?”
“Shush, it’s special tea, Aaron,” Robert murmurs absently as he browses Fortnum and Mason’s substantial tea selection and chucks yet another item in his basket. “The Queen drinks it.”
“Oh well, if her majesty drinks it then by all means, go ahead and bankrupt us.”
“I can hear your sarcasm and I’m choosing to ignore it. D’you think Vic will like this shortbread?”
*
Aaron lasts about ten seconds in Hamleys. He’d thought it’d be nice to present Seb with a teddy bear all the way from London, but no. He loves his son, but there’s a limit on what he’ll do for him, and that limit turns out to be having a man in a silly costume blowing bubbles in his face.
*
“Are you gonna show me where you lived, then?” Aaron asks when they stop for a pint, nestled in the corner of a tucked-away pub that Robert used to frequent.
“God no, I was in a shitty houseshare at the dodgy end of Old Kent Road. I’m not taking you down there, we might get stabbed.”
“Fair enough.”
“And after that, I moved into Chrissie’s place in Chelsea,” Robert says, fiddling with a coaster. "I’m guessing you don’t fancy seeing that?”
“Not particularly.”
*
“We should bring Seb with us next time, take him to the Natural History Museum. He’d love the dinosaurs.”
“Mm-hm, Seb will love it. How many fossils do you have in that box at home, again?”
“Piss off.”
*
Aaron can’t feel his feet anymore – they must have walked the length of central London at least twice. As dusk finally begins to fall, they end up meandering along South Bank with their hands intertwined.
“This used to be my favourite place,” Robert tells him.
“Yeah? How come?”
“When I first came to London, I didn’t have much more than the clothes on my back and my car – which I sold so I could afford to stay in a hostel for the first few weeks. I managed to find some bar work pretty quickly, but the pay was shit. Same as every job I had for those first few years, I could barely pay my rent half the time.”
It's unsettling to think of Robert struggling on his own, with no one to call if he was in trouble. Aaron's always had family he could count on, whether he liked it or not. Even when things between him and the Dingles weren't great, he knew they'd come running if he'd asked. He feels a flicker of anxiety for the kid his husband had once been curl in his stomach, as well as a swell of pride in him for actually making it without any help.
“So I tried to save money by walking everywhere instead of paying for the bus or the tube,” Robert continues. “Which was a bit a pain in the arse, but I actually ended up liking it that way. I liked exploring, seeing all the places I’d only seen in films up until then. I'd spend hours just wandering around, and this was one of the best places to do it.”
He gestures to their surroundings.
“There was always something cool happening around here, a festival or an event at the Southbank Centre or something. I couldn’t even afford to have in drink in one of the bars, let alone go any of the events, but I liked coming anyway. Just to people-watch and, I dunno… take in the atmosphere. It was nice, made me feel more at home.”
It is nice, Aaron has to admit. The hustle and bustle of the restaurants and the air filled with the chatter of dozens of people – locals and tourists alike. Couples like them, families, groups of friends… some heading home, some just beginning their night out. Cars and trains rumble noisily across each bridge they pass under.
In stark contrast, the Thames to his right is oddly quiet, water gently lapping against the riverbank. He turns his head to look at a passing boat, then up at the office buildings lining the opposite side of the river, all different shapes and sizes with tiny pockets of light coming from the windows.
There’s so much going on here, yet in a way it feels strangely peaceful. Warm and inviting.
“Hang on,” Robert pulls on his hand as they approach the underside of the next bridge. “I just wanna have a quick look at the books.”
He drags Aaron over to a tiny book market, one that seems completely out-of-place on the river bank.
“Why are there book stalls under a bridge?”
“Dunno,” Robert mutters, already rummaging through a selection of paperbacks. “It’s always been here. I’ll just be two minutes.”
“That’s a lie and you know it.”
“Five at the most, I promise.”
Nearly fifteen minutes later, Robert comes over to the bench Aaron’s slumped on, triumphantly brandishing a small bag of books in his hand.
“Done.”
“That was not five minutes.”
“Okay, grumpy-guts, let’s go.”
They set off again, wandering past a skatepark full of teenagers and a few more bars until the bank becomes slightly quieter, the ornate Victorian lamps casting a soft glow over them as they walk. Eventually, Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament come clearly into view, standing tall and majestic on the other side of the river. Aaron slows to take a proper look at them
“Pretty good view, right?”
“S’alright,” Aaron replies noncommittally, laughing when it gets him a sharp elbow to the ribs.
“You are so hard to impress, Dingle, you know that?”
Grinning widely, he grabs Robert’s arm and links it through his own, leaning forward so they’re both resting on the metal fence and staring out across the water.
“Yeah, I guess it is pretty amazin’. I couldn’t live here, though, too much concrete, too many crowds.”
Robert shivers slightly and pulls him in closer. London is a hell of a lot warmer than Yorkshire, but the darkness brings a chill to the air.
“Yeah, I get it. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t regret living here, but I could never come back now. Country boy at heart, me,” he sighs, resting the side of his head against Aaron’s.
“So you were happy here, then?” Robert had spent the day showing him around, telling him all sorts of stories about the life he had, but that’s the only thing Aaron wants to know, really.
“Yeah, mostly. It was different and exciting, and nobody here knew who I was, which was what I needed. It was a pretty good way to spend my twenties.”
Aaron doesn’t know if he could've coped with that. There were days during his time in France that he thought he might die from homesickness, and he wasn’t on his own. He had Ed, and the sense of isolation still got to him.
“Weren’t you… lonely?”
“Not as lonely as I’d been in Emmerdale.”
And, oh. A wave of sadness sweeps through Aaron’s chest, and he squeezes Robert's arm tighter.
“I fought Chrissie and Lawrence when they said they wanted us to move to Home Farm, I didn't want to leave London, ” Robert adds quietly. “But if I'd stayed, I might never have met you, which doesn't bear thinking about, really. So I'm glad I came home when I did.”
Aaron dislodges their arms so he can turn to face him, leaning up on his tiptoes to kiss him softly.
“I'm glad you did, too.”