Work Text:
i.
His first ever memory is little more than a blur of colour and gentle sounds, but his first memory of his father is crystal clear. Pain sharpens the perception like that.
His hand clutching his father’s desk, hauling himself up on his toes just to see, paper sliding towards him. Aaron rests his chin on the edge. A half-empty glass tips, tilts, spills over, amber rivulets soaking the paper like rivers coursing to the sea.
The glass clinks.
He falls.
ii.
Aaron pushes down on the pedal and the bike rolls forwards, wobbling precariously. He steers in halting increments, too far sideways and overcorrecting back, gaze flicking between the front tyre crunching over gravel and his father.
Ever so slightly sloping, their driveway slants down to the street and this time he doesn’t put a foot down, doesn’t trail the toe of his sneaker, scuffing it up to slow down, and as such the little speed he’s accumulated is also the fastest he’s ridden. Exhilarating and terrifying at six years old, fragile and invincible.
Turning is more difficult and way more frightening than staying straight so he does, coasting along towards the street, the street he plays in, the street which is quiet and rural and to a child who expects it to be devoid of cars, perennially empty.
His father’s rising voice startles him, because Aaron looks up and sees the car further down the street and then he looks back over his shoulder at his father and then the bike veers to the side and he’s listening to his father’s instructions but he can’t figure out what to do.
The problem abruptly solves itself when he peers over his shoulder for too long and that sharp turn both slows him down and puts him at an angle. Asphalt knocks the air out of him. His skin stings with gravel. Aaron’s palms are scraped and beginning to burn, and his knees are already dotting with tiny red pinpricks.
Tears well up in his eyes, for the shock more than the pain. He raises his chin (unharmed, this time, his hands taking the damage) and looks to his father, who crouches and mimics brushing off his hands. “Up you get.”
And so he does, brushes his hands together and swallows a protest at the sore skin, rewarded with the smile which makes his father’s eyes go crinkled at the edges and full of sparks in the deep brown middle and a gruff, “Good man.”
iii.
There’s ice on the porch steps.
See, the guttering running along the roof there is clogged with dead leaves and dirt and slush, the natural detritus which accumulates like it belongs, and it does this every winter. If they’re lucky they get icicles. If not, water drips over and freezes, a thin veneer visible just from the right angle. If the sun is high enough in the sky and broad and bright, light glints off in a coalescent rainbow.
Aaron has lived in this house his entire life. He knows where the ice forms. He knows which floorboards creak.
It is no accident when his feet hit the ice and skid, slip out underneath him, arm burning from wrist to shoulder, lip numb and blood in his mouth. It is no accident when his arm is let go and he goes too. The sickening pain which shoots through his elbow may be unintentional, but it is no accident.
The gouges in his lip where his jaw hit the step and his teeth bit into it? It masks the real cause of the swelling, gives him a reason to dribble blood and spit into a tissue as his physician palpates the bruising and maybe ignores, maybe doesn’t see the ring of lighter marks closer to his wrist. Tells him he ought to be more careful while Aaron doesn’t tell him he ought to be better at noticing.
Intentional or not, it amounts to the same thing.
iv.
Sean runs with the carelessness of a toddler. Unfortunately, he runs with the co-ordination of a toddler too. Time stretches out as Aaron makes a grab for him, realising even before his fingers slide off the back of his jacket that he’s half a second behind, and Sean lurches headfirst. Chubby arms reach out and he’s only got little legs but the momentum is what does it.
The crucial moment after Sean hits the rough concrete, that electrifying fear jolting through him, he looks up. Not with surprise but an expectation, the assumption there’s someone there with him, beside him—and that’s Aaron. It’s mostly Aaron.
He kneels on the sidewalk and ignores the cold soaking through his pants. Brushes his hands like he’s getting dust off his shirt and heaves Sean to his feet with a cheerful, “Up you get.”
His little brother is smiling before it occurs to him he could’ve cried.
v.
Aaron is thirteen and spiteful and if his mother watches him throw himself off his bike just to get back on, swatting away blades of grass clinging to his clothes, first on the grass in their yard then the road, faster and harder each try, she never mentions it.
Bruised and bleeding, he traipses inside into his father’s disdainful scrutiny. “The hell happened to you?”
He lets go of his elbow – the one which aches in the rain and cold and has done for as long as he can remember – and draws himself up, juts his chin out and announces that falling off his bike isn’t going to work for everything.
Aaron’s father says no, it won’t and punches him in the jaw. He crashes into the hall table but stays upright, heart jackrabbiting in his chest, and this is the most alive he’s felt in a goddamn year.
vi.
Books tumble to the carpet and he lands with a thud, jarring the creaking floorboards.
“Aaron?”
He curses, and pulls himself upright as light footsteps hurry along the hall. “I’m fine!”
Haley pokes her head around the door. “That sounded like it hurt.”
Shaking his head, he massages the bursting pain in his shin. “Hit my leg on the table.”
She winces in sympathy and offers him a hand, hauls him to his feet and he starts tossing the books back into the box. “…and that’s why I’m not taking the breakables.”
“I’d have believed you without the dramatics.”
Aaron grins. “Yeah, you love me.”