Chapter Text
Aaron gets the date confirmation for his trial on a Tuesday morning in late January. He’s just begun the trek from the coffee cart to the library when his phone buzzes with Waterhouse’s name. His stomach clenches and rolls at the sight of those awful letters in a neat little row on the screen. He answers.
The older man’s words go in one ear and out the other. They take a loop into Aaron’s brain first so he knows that even though he can’t think of the date or details of their next meeting right now, when he gets home and breathes deep after a likely spell of hyperventilating, he’ll recall all the necessary information with no problem. Waterhouse wishes him well before hanging up but Aaron keeps the phone to his ear an extra twenty seconds, not trusting his fingers not to slip on the way down and drop it. He can handle a murder trial, mid-terms, an ongoing fight with his girlfriend, a cold war with his brother, and the pulsing ache in his skull from caffeine withdrawal, but a cracked screen is just too fucking far.
With slow movements Aaron finds his pocket, slips the phone inside and slumps onto the stone edge of the quad fountain. He just sits there letting his coffee cool, presumably breathing but he can’t be certain. He takes a long sip of the lukewarm latte and chokes on his next inhale. Seizing and sputtering, his stomach and lungs spasm as the coughs hack through his frame without remorse or care for the fool he’s making of himself in public. A couple in his BioChem class stop to see if he’s alright. He can’t remember their names or faces, or what they say to him, but by the time they’re gone his lungs are making hesitant peace with the cool air around him, and there’s a water bottle in his hand he didn’t have before. He drinks deeply and nearly chokes again. By the grace of god he manages to get the water down, its cool slide down his throat almost painfully good.
Aaron doesn’t feel bad about killing Drake. Really, he doesn’t. The bastard deserved to be reanimated and summarily bludgeoned on at least a bimonthly basis. Kate keeps trying to let him know that regret is normal, even though Drake was a monster. That the physical act of taking a life is traumatizing regardless of the circumstances. It’s true, Aaron thinks. It was traumatizing. But what nobody seems to understand, is the bit that Aaron regrets is not the part where he crushed a man’s eye into the back of his skull and through the wet mass of his brain. The part that Aaron regrets happened from about three seconds before he swung, and all the way back through the previous 6 years of his life, give or take a few months. He regrets the weight of human scum crushing his brother into a mattress in the house Aaron may as well have grown up in. He regrets the deals and why they were necessary, he regrets grieving his mother, or ever needing to, he regrets meeting Andrew in the first place, and he regrets giving up on him most of all.
Aaron’s life before was never gravy, but it was more or less alright until Tilda’s blows went from typical southern corporal punishment to outright attempted murder. He’s never actually told anyone about the time she knocked his head against the wall and held him there by the throat. That was the farthest it ever got, but he’ll never be sure if she would have stopped before his heart did. Lucky for him, the doorbell had rung in time. He can’t remember if it was a date picking her up, someone there to do a repair, or just someone selling something door to door. Aaron had slouched to his room and stayed there until the bruises were yellow enough to touch without the pain knocking him out. Aaron’s life was never gravy, but he cannot understand how Andrew made it through more than a decade of what he did, arrived in the hell of Aaron’s world, and didn’t so much as flinch at his problems.
He can’t really forgive Andrew for killing Tilda, but nobody’s asking him to so it doesn’t matter anyway. The problem is Aaron can’t forgive himself for not looking deeply enough to see what was right in front of him the whole time. He can’t forgive himself for being so caught in the net of his own misery that it never occurred to him Andrew had monsters under his bed too. Monsters in his bed. Therapy sessions with Betsey have been a mess of tension and grief that mainly goes unexpressed, but he did get at least that little tidbit - that Drake was not the first “by far” Andrew had said. By far. He didn’t give a number, and Aaron didn’t ask for one, but maybe he should have because here is the truth nobody - Kate, Betsy, probably Andrew himself- nobody understands. Aaron would relive every blow Tilda ever dealt him, all in a row for just the chance to eliminate every man, woman or kid who ever laid a hand on his brother. He would kill them with his bare hands, and he regrets not what it would do to him or to his soul, what Aaron will always regret is that he will never get the chance to do it. He got one, and that’s all. So this rage under his skin at the suffocating memory of Andrew bloodied and bent on that mattress, has fucking nowhere to go. It just stays there, simmering under his skin, rotting every conversation, chipping away at his reality with no sign of stopping.
Aaron’s phone chirps again and this time it’s Matt asking him if he can pick up bread on his way home. He sighs, knees popping as he stands. He’ll have to reheat his coffee in the cafeteria before heading to the library, or maybe he should just try to study at home. That’s looking like the better option as he winds his way toward the green and onto Perimeter road. Aaron doesn’t really want to see anyone right now.
Beautifully, and with spiteful quickness, the universe interprets his desire for solitude and toys with Aaron by manifesting one Neil Josten pulling up in his brother's car next to Aaron on the sidewalk.
“What do you want Josten.”
“I was going to ask if you wanted a ride back to the dorm. I’m about to pick Andrew up from Reddin.”
Neil’s scarred face is illuminated by the high winter sun. The grotesque burns pulling at the edges of his liar eyes make Aaron’s fists twitch. The circles burned into his knuckles tapping on the steering wheel remind Aaron of Andrew’s hands twisted around Kevin’s neck. Aaron didn’t understand then and he still doesn’t now. How is it that this little shit swooped into their lives on wings of death and violence and managed to worm his way in so deep you couldn’t pull him out with pliers. Aaron would certainly like to try. The thought gets a dash of his usual rage fizzing in his ears.
“I’m going to the store.”
Aaron’s tone is clearly dismissive, so Neil just shrugs in a way that says ‘suit yourself’ and pulls back into traffic. The bastard, pretending to be decent by offering Aaron a ride. More likely a smug chirp in Aaron’s face that Neil is the one Andrew asks to pick up him. Not Aaron. Never Aaron.
The rage threatens to boil over in the bread isle of the grocery store. Aaron’s been doing the steady breath counting thing Kate taught him to calm himself down but he just can’t stop seeing Josten’s face behind the wheel and thinking that if he’d never shown up none of this would have happened. Aaron’s not really sure what he actually means by ‘this’ but it doesn’t matter. He’s angry and he needs someone to blame, and the fucking toast he likes is missing from its usual shelf. Fucking Josten.
Aaron puts a loaf of the closest replica in his grocery bag and stalks to the checkout. Then he doubles back and storms to the toiletry aisle because he actually needs shaving cream and toothpaste. This leads him to remember that they’re running out of toilet paper, and toilet bowl cleaner. Then he’s looking for vinegar, and baking soda, and in the baking isle he remembers that it’s Dan’s birthday next week and Matt has been talking about trying to make her this cavity summoning monstrosity called a ‘brookie’ so he gets brownie mix and cookie mix and then he feels a bit sick from thinking of that many sweets and decides to be a good athlete and get some broccoli. It spirals from there.
One thing Aaron will never tell you, is that he shares the same unfortunate shopaholic tendencies as his brother and Nicky. While Andrew likes cars and alcohol and clothes that eat his money as fast as possible, and Nicky just over does it in every possible category, Aaron is a bit of a food and home-goods slut. It’s almost definitely trauma from not getting enough to eat the years he hid from his mum, or that time he was forced to detox in a bathroom with only canned food, but it’s also about having some place that’s his. Something he’s in control of. Something that needs him to conduct it, to shape it and keep it alive. Making his own food, having knives and napkins and bowls that are his, it gives all the shit in his head something to pour around. Something real, so that when his thoughts are in front of him, he can judge if they’re real too. Much of the time, they’re not.
What certainly is real, is the strain in his arms as he carries many pounds of mostly unnecessary shit all the way from the store back to the dorm. Yet another way in which Josten has interfered in Aaron’s daily life and added stress he absolutely did not want. The grocery bag is close to bursting, but his wallet is notably lighter.
“Fuck you Josten.”
Aaron harrumphs as he struggles to get his dorm key out of his pocket without dropping anything.
“What the hell did I do to you ?”
The sound of Neil’s voice coming out of nowhere lights a line of cold shock up Aaron’s spine and he jumps, dropping the bag and the key. A small army of oranges Aaron did not need tumble out of the bag and roll to a stop at two pairs of black boots next to the elevator. Aaron’s eyes lift to take in Andrew and Neil wearing matching smirks. Aaron must have taken so long walking from the store he only just beat them on their way back from Betsey. Fucking Neil, fucking Andrew.
“Are you going to help or not?”
Neil snorts a bit, and the two bend down to collect the offering of spilled oranges. Aaron sulks over to them with the bag and they eye both him and it warily before trying to wedge the fruits back in without anything falling out.
“I did offer to drive you.”
Neil’s voice is smug sandpaper to the tender saplings of Aaron’s ears.
“Shove it up you-“
“Bee says we have to cancel next week.”
Aaron aborts his curse on Neil’s scant remaining bloodline and looks to his brother with muted shock.
“Why?”
“She’s getting surgery that day. She’ll be out until the session after anyway so there’s no point in postponing.”
He doesn’t know how yet, but there is a way he can pin the blame for this on Josten. There just has to be. Not that he wants to go to the sessions at all…
“Whatever.”
Aaron turns and fetches the key before turning it in the slot and squishing himself through the door. It swings wide, and Aaron stumbles a bit, turning around to see Josten being “helpful” holding it open with a scarred hand. Aaron grits his teeth and sort of slams the door in Neil’s face, catching a glimpse of eyeroll before it closes all the way. This day should be doused in gasoline and set on fire.
Aaron wakes up to a line of drool sticking a worksheet to his cheek, and a nice ache in his neck that adds a fun little spice to the usual cocktail of tendon strain, muscle strain, and mental strain that take turns being the top-note on his sensory radar. He can tell Matt has been home and gone back out by the coffee mug next to the sink, and the lack of boots by the door. A glance at the clock tells him Nicky will be back from class in fifteen, after which they'll have about five minutes to get in the car again and head to practice. Aaron is so tired. He just wants a nap. The one he woke up from doesn’t count because he collapsed into it accidentally. A true nap requires properly secured time, space, and directed autonomy applied in the direction of sleep as not a dire necessity, but as somewhat of a secret gift one can use to lavish their own mind, likely hoping in return to procure the favour of improved mood and motor function. Aaron is a net zero in both departments, so practice should be a good time.
Before Aaron can chicken out, he sends two texts. One to Andrew, and one to Katelynn letting them know the date of the trial. Andrew has probably been contacted already as he’ll likely be called as a witness, but Aaron can’t have this hanging between them unaddressed. He gets a predictable
I heard.
From Andrew, and an immediate call from Katelynn. He doesn’t have the energy to say anything back but lets her talk to him gently, trying his best to soak up her support like rays off precious sun in hurricane season.
Twenty very short minutes later find Aaron, Nicky and Matt trickling down to the parking lot, their shoulders in varying degrees of slump. Nicky goes to lean against the back door of Andrew’s car to wait, and Aaron stops short of doing the same. It’s not panic, but rather the smell of .panic coming slowly around the corner that locks his joints and tightens his ribs. He hears the door to the building swing open behind him, sees the brief light of recognition in Nicky’s eyes, and darts quickly into Matt’s truck.
The man behind the wheel looks to him, the question written into the confused knit of his brow. Aaron just stares back at him for a couple seconds past what is comfortable for either of them.
“Is it alright if I ride with-“
“Yep of course let’s go.”
Matt doesn’t ask any questions for the rest of the ride which is good because Aaron wouldn’t have answers anyway. And he himself would love to know what the fuck is going on in this cracked head of his. The ride isn’t long enough to get any kind of clue what his deal is, but he does manage to slow his heartbeat and calm down enough that he doesn’t feel like he needs to run away when they eventually park at the stadium. Andrew drives, not like a mad man per se, - certainly not like Nicky does - but he drives with speed you almost don’t notice, thanks to either the smoothness of the mas, or his mastery over it. Needless to say its passengers are already part way through changing when Aaron and Matt show up in the locker room.
He beelines to his locker and gets changed without even turning around.
“You alright?”
Nicky’s usually boisterous voice is softer around the German words. Aaron answers him in kind.
“I’m fine, just a bit out of it. Test coming up.”
He takes a look in his cousin's direction and gets a smile for it. The squeezing in his stomach takes a bit of a break in that. He manages to rally his mouth into a small smile back and heads out to the court after Nicky.
He ducks his head through warmups, the queasiness rising with every small flash he gets of Andrew out of the corner of his eye. Is he walking funny? Are the bags under his eyes worse than normal? Is that a bruise on his neck? If it is, is it the good kind or the bad kind- you can’t always tell at first glance. It does dawn on Aaron that he really doesn’t want to think about the “good” bruises when they’re on his brother. Gross no thank you.
The likely bruise-giver in question catches Aaron’s eye across the court a while later when it’s his turn in a shooting drill Wymack has the strikers running. Josten’s lean frame weaves in and out of a series of pylons, intercepting passes and sending lightning quick shots at the goal. He’s small, almost as small as Neil and Andrew but with less solid muscle. More of a runner than a lifter. He doesn’t look like much, Aaron thinks. Aaron isn’t stupid or blind okay he knows when someone is attractive, and Josten is… Well he’s just Josten. He’s not tall and built like Kevin, or friendly like Matt. He was hardly worth a second glance before the Ravens dyed his hair and made him take out the contacts. Even then, Aaron never really understood what made him special, not including his notable talent for pissing people off. Now of course most people will be unable to keep from staring at him for a couple seconds at least. The scars, the hair, the eyes, the height, it’s all very conspicuous. He doesn’t look like much physically, but if there’s anything Aaron’s learned, it’s that people are capable of anything. You might know someone for your whole life and never know what they could do to hurt another person. Aaron is never taking that chance again. Not when it comes to his family.
On break he watches Andrew walk laps with Renee on the court. He sees the relaxed set of Andrew’s shoulders and the way he always willingly meets Renee’s eyes. He watches Neil approach them at half court, Kevin hot on his trail with some bullshit lecture still spewing from behind the cage of his helmet, and sees Andrew stop dead, waiting for Neil to catch up. Sees the way Andrew never looks away as Neil speaks to Renee. Is that normal? Is that fine? None of it makes any fucking sense and the more he tries to grasp the edges with his sweaty, uncertain fingers the more his head feels like it’s going to split open and the contents tumble to the linoleum. At least then maybe someone with a little more perspective could put the pieces in order in a way Aaron can understand.
The week trickles by in a monotony of class, practice, arguing with Kate about summer plans, and slowly killing himself studying every night. Aaron doesn’t really notice when the constant nausea turns into paranoia, but Kate does, especially now that she knows the trial has been set. She’s finally safe to come over to the dorm now that he doesn’t live with Andrew, but even the gift of her soothing presence isn’t enough to quell the twitching when Aaron lies awake at night, scared to death of Andrew in a bed he can’t see, where who knows what could happen. Aaron knows. He knows exactly what could happen. More than once he gets up in the middle of the night resolved to just go over there and make sure Andrew's alright, but his movement always wakes Kate, and then she wants to know why he’s up and he can’t explain it without her making him talk about his feelings. He wants to punch a wall. Or Neil.
He does neither, and as the hours tick by, the dread in his stomach turns steadily to rage at even a glimpse of short ginger hair in a crowd. When the genuine article is actually in front of him Aaron is quiet. He watches, he waits. Aaron is not unaware that he’s a little over committed to this. He’s not unaware that this sounds crazy, but really he doesn’t care. Couldn't be brought to care even in a courtroom, charges of his grand, obsessive treachery laid out before God and everyone he's ever met. If his being crazy is what stands in the way of Andrew being hurt again, then so be it. He still has a working brain, he understands logic, he’s just not using it to talk himself out of his vigilance. Has he ever seen Andrew flinch away from Neil? No. Has he ever seen Neil lay a hand on Andrew that looked creepy or unwanted? Also no, but he can’t prove beyond reasonable doubt that those things haven’t happened.
Realistically, he sees the way Andrew chooses to be around Neil, and he knows that’s got to count for something, but the fact remains that Andrew has put himself directly in harms way again and again in the past if it meant he could protect the people around him. Andrew literally went to jail to protect Aaron from Drake. There’s no telling what he would do to protect Aaron and Nicky and Kevin.
Aaron needs to know Andrew’s safe, but beyond his quiet staring at practice and in the car, he has no real access to his brother. They don’t really hang out in the dorm together, and neither of them are massive texters. They only talk properly at therapy and there’s none of that until next week. It’s unfair that outside the supervision of a shrink, Aaron’s own blood hardly says a word to him, but he lets this wannabe mobster trail after him day in day out. Aaron is going to buzz out of his skin with the injustice of it all. Aaron almost does buzz out of his skin when his phone vibrates against the couch from inside his pocket.
Andrew:
Columbia this weekend
You coming?
It’s just a text but even seeing Andrew’s name on his phone makes Aaron’s breaths come easier. If he’s texting, and he’s asking Aaron this, it’s as good as an invitation. Neil will likely be there, meaning Aaron is permitted to spend time in Josten’s vicinity, meaning Andrew must think it’s safe. Is that right? Maybe. Aaron’s head swims, crashing into rocks and bleeding into the water, surely attracting sharks.
Nicky wants to leave right after the game friday.
Too late for sweeties but just eden’s is fine with the rest of us.
The rest of us. Kevin. Neil. Andrew’s family. God Aaron has got to get a grip. It really isn’t normal for your brother’s fling or whatever the fuck Josten is to Andrew to take up so much space in Aaron’s head. He doesn’t like the guy in the first place, it’s abysmal that he has to spend this much of his precious time thinking about him. But the sick twist in Aaron’s stomach is relentless every time he so much as sees Josten in a room with other people to focus on. How is he going to make it through hours in the car and a weekend in the same house when he's feeling like this? Aaron breathes in and out as slow as he can. What is it Betsy’s always trying to get him to do when something gets too heated in his head? Reframe or something. Feel the feeling, and try to find something else to use to put it in context. Or something… It’s not like Aaron really listens to whatever she spews, but in the privacy of his own dorm, Aaron can suffer through one exercise. Just one.
He lets his mind take stock of the clench in his stomach, of the anger that bubbles in his throat, the twist of his rage poorly masking a wider grief stings his nostrils and he needs to clear his throat. He feels the heat and stick of shame and the storm of his fear. He feels in one clear moment the pain of utter loneliness, pure and infinite before it becomes too much and he forces a lid back on his emotions. Onto the context bit. Or whatever. He doesn’t have to rack his brain for long to come up with a reframe. He even dares to say it out loud into the empty dorm around him.
“It will be good to see Andrew in an environment we’re all comfortable in, Nicky and I can finish watching Bleach at the house, and it will be good to hang out with Kevin for a bit away from exy.”
He exhales and sends Andrew a quick affirmative text. This will be good. Right?
Wrong.
Days later on the way to Columbia Aaron makes it thirty minutes into the drive, squished in the back seat next to Neil and Nicky (Kevin, the princess that he is claimed shotgun for his stupid long legs) before the anxiety in his stomach takes a sour note and plummets him into a nauseous mix of paranoia and rage. Every accidental glance at Neil in the clothes Andrew bought him, or brief knock of his knee against Neil’s twists him further and further into the fire. By the time Andrew pulls off the highway Aaron is genuinely convinced he’s going to puke as soon as he gets out of the car. He doesn’t, but the feeling just stays trapped in his throat, screaming at him every time Neil’s shoulders brush Andrew’s as they walk to the door.
This can’t be real. This can’t be normal. Aaron’s heartbeat is in his mouth having a go at his teeth. If he tries to speak it’s sure to be ejected onto the cigarette butt laden pavement beneath him. This panic, it cannot stay. But Aaron can only watch, trapped in his own mind as it gets worse and worse.
Yesterday he’d gone to their dorm for a study session with Kevin and got next to nothing done for how busy he was trying to read the line of Andrew’s shoulders when Neil entered or exited the room.
Today he’d watched Neil calmly play spectator in some irrelevant conversation the upperclassmen were having before the game. They have him right in their fold, but they also liked Seth to some degree, so can their Judgement really mean anything? He’d watched Nicky dance around Neil when they pulled out the win, watched Neil clack sticks with Kevin and share quick excited words in french. He’d watched Neil’s dark grin as he knocked his glove against the top of Andrew’s helmet- a move none of the others are usually permitted to make. Andrew had looked relaxed, standing next to Neil after the team left the showers, his eyes stuck to Neil’s even as Aaron slipped on the wet floor and almost ate shit on the tile.
He comes back to his wretched body as they enter the hot dark of the club. At the bar Andrew talks to Roland with bored tolerance and doesn’t look at Neil, but keeps his one arm free from the bar to hold back anyone stumbling into Neil’s space. He watches Andrew take a shot with Roland, watches Neil think about taking his shot too long, so Andrew decides for him and takes it himself. Aaron watches as Roland turns his back to mix drinks for other customers, and Andrew finally looks at Neil, shot glasses returned to the bar, and holds Neil’s gaze as he slides some whiskey cocktail across the tray to Neil in question. Watches Neil manage to shape his wrecked face into a possibly genuine smile. Andrew doesn’t smile back. Aaron wants to kick someone. Maybe Roland, the bastard.
Aaron drinks enough to sanitize his liver. He knows that’s not a thing but it doesn’t matter because that’s not the kind of doctor he’s going to be anyway. He dozes through the ride home, and stumbles through the door of the house, knocking Nicky into the potted fern by the staircase.
“Waachit”
Nicky just drunkenly pinches his cheek and clumsily takes himself down to his room in the basement. Through the pounding of metabolized booze in Aaron’s ears he hears Kevin collapse in a heap on Aaron’s carpet, and two other sets of footsteps pause at the doorway to the stairs. He hears the tap tap tap of socked feet on the hardwood, and the door to Andrew’s room close with a quiet thud. He’s sure he’d have some frustrated thought if the world wasn’t swimming and upside down. He crawls into bed and forgets to notice when the door to the shared bathroom opens and two pairs of wet feet sound on the tiles. Mercifully, he doesn’t dream.
Aaron wakes up hungover enough to complain, but not enough be sick. With the way he’s been feeling lately, he hardly notices the anxious float of leftover booze in his system. He doesn’t notice the anxiety itself as much either with the slow pace his head is moving at. He showers, and there’s only like five minutes of properly hot water. Maybe the others got up early and showered but something about it irks Aaron more than it should. His mood starts on a steadier decline when he gets to the kitchen and there’s no coffee left in the pot when there should be at least one cup. The new pot he makes gurgles away as he takes stock of their scant fridge. He’s mentally running through the coursework he needs to go over today and pulling out a carton of eggs when the door to Andrew’s room shuts with a dull thud. Something about it pricks Aaron's ears, but he pushes it aside and continues cracking eggs and fishing out all the tiny pieces of shell his excessive force has sent into the bowl. He’s picking a fork out of the drawer when he hears the short, telltale brassy whine of furniture shifting above the ceiling. He’s out of the kitchen and on the stairs in a second.
His muscles strain as he races the stairs two at a time. Panic sinks deep into his bones, taking him back to a dark hallway and set of stairs he knew just as well as these, to movement behind a locked door that still haunts his nightmares just as it torments his waking thoughts. If Andrew is hurt- if that fucker hurt him, Aaron will do just what everyone has come to realize he is capable of, and he will stop the threat.
The memory of it paralyzes him for one deadly moment and Aaron thinks the rage and the fear may have permanently fried his brain. He snaps out of it when a muffled moan sounds through the door. Aaron doesn’t need to think, he grips the handle hard enough to break, and slams the door open. His blood is thundering so loud in his head he has to fight to focus on the image in front of him.
When the scene settles into his brain he really wishes it hadn’t.
Revulsion swirls in his gut as he takes in Neil’s scarred torso laid out on Andrew’s bed. One hand pressed to the headboard above him and the other lost in the mounds of blankets and pillows starting at his waist.
He scans the room with wild eyes looking for Andrew. Only the tiniest parcel of relief washes over him that Andrew isn’t there. Isn’t hurt. And then his eyes find Neil’s and the disgust shoots right back up his throat.
“Jesus fuck!” Aaron squeezes his eyes shut and turns from the bed.
“What do you want?” Neils voice, out of breath and nearly inaudible with rasp.
“Are you seriously in here by yourself …’ Aaron’s words struggle their way out from gritted teeth. ‘In Andrew’s bed… God you make me sick you know that? What kind of fucking pervert-“
“What. Do. You. Want?”
Aaron’s eyes reluctantly find their way back to Neil and at least the fucker looks embarrassed out of his mind. That is the narrative Aaron chooses to apply as cause for the red flush crawling up over Neil’s skin. If not only because the other options make him want to spit his brain out his eyes.
“Where is Andrew?” Aaron demands. “I swear to god Josten if you even-
“He’s… he’s out smoking.” Neil stammers. “He um .. went out for smokes.”
Neil’s words come out disjointed and sort of frozen. Aaron clenches his fist hard enough for nails to break skin. His eyes don't move from Neil’s as he tears into him. It doesn’t matter if it’s the truth or not. Neil is a good enough liar that he fooled them all for months, but he’s not so talented that Aaron will ever believe him to be anything other than a shifty, meddlesome asshole. He had his fears about Neil after Baltimore and the sudden, alarming revelation that he and Andrew… Whatever. An ounce of relief settles over him as he realizes that at least Josten hasn’t got Andrew in here against his will, but the atrocity remains. Josten can’t be trusted in Andrew’s space. He can only imagine what it would be like for Andrew to walk in on his room being defiled like this. How could Neil, knowing what he knows, and seeing what they saw that night, ever do something like this and not be a goddamned monster.
“You’re disgusting you know that? You make me fucking sick. How fucking dare you come into this house and .. and .. desecrate Andrew’s ..' Aaron’s whole body goes hot with rage, it’s an effort to not combust where he stands. "Man I should kill you. I fucking will if you ever come near him again I swear to god you are going to wish you’d stayed on the butcher’s block do you fucking hea-“
“Aaron. Get out.”
The muffled words hardly register as a mere nuisance to Aaron’s focused torrent.
“I’ll kill you myself. Or better yet I’ll call up the Moriyamas and tell them their loose end is-”
Aaron’s words falter as the reality sets in. He’s been giving Neil his most vitriolic glare, his gaze vicious and unbroken, and well… Aaron had been looking pretty closely and unless Neil has spent life on the run learning ventriloquy… He’s pretty sure Neil’s lips had not moved with those last words. With sudden and sheer horror, it occurs to him that the muffled tone of voice wasn’t quite the same as Josten’s ragged stammering. It was maybe lower and quieter, and also maybe it’s a little odd how very dense the blankets around Neil’s legs look when Aaron risks a glance downward. Aaron’s vision whites out, his stomach heaving sideways, and his words wobble like he might throw them up as he asks “… Andrew?”
The voice comes again and informs Aaron that it will not repeat its request.
“Jesus FUCK, shit!” Aaron’s mind begins to lock into place the image before him; of Neil’s red cheeks and wide eyes glued to the ceiling, the blankets shifting just a little wrong for how he’s situated on the bed. Aaron's stomach receives this image from his brain and promptly alerts him that it would be best to find somewhere to be sick. Curses and broken noises of panic spill from Aaron’s teeth as he shuts his eyes and wishes for brain bleach. Aaron, prioritizing keeping his eyes closed and getting the fuck away from the terror before him over his bodily safety, promptly slams his head into the doorway on his way out, falling to the ground and hitting his head once more from a different angle. He risks another sighting as he scrambles to stand and shuts the door so hard it could possibly crack the ceiling. That might be for the best. Let the roof come down on all of them and wash this horrid memory away in a deluge of brick and shingle and suffering. Aaron nearly falls once more, skidding down the stairs as fast as possible. As fate would have him as her fool, he runs smack into Kevin and Nicky.
“Dude what the fuck are you ok? What was that noise?” Nicky looks from Aaron to the stairs from which he so recently fled. “Were you in Andrew’s room? What’s wrong?”
Aaron slumps his back against the wall, fighting to control his breath. Kevin looks down on him and grabs his chin to turn his head “Did you just fall? Did you hit your head?”
Nicky crowds him. “Aaron what the hell! Why did you just slam the door to Andrew’s room? Did you fight? Or ….’ Nicky’s eyes go wide and his mouth hangs open like a dead fish. Aaron would love to be a dead fish. “Noooo. OOOh my god are you serious?! What did you see?” Nicky demands, the scent of gossip like blood in the water, his eyes alive with the promise of fresh bounty.
“Shut up. Shut UP I swear to god I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you all.” Aaron squeezes the heels of his thumbs to his poor tarnished eyes. He’ll never be the same again.
“Hoooo my god it must have been good Aaron you’ve got to-‘
“Nicky move out of the way he might be concussed. You know damn well you cannot hold the line on your own and we can't afford to be down a backliner this close to championships.” Their bickering meaningless and irritating, but a balm to the open wound in his mind. Aaron closes his eyes and tries his hardest not to think about what he’s just seen. It doesn’t occur to him until later that this still doesn’t really answer his question about their relationship. Yeah maybe they’re hooking up. As much as it horrified Aaron to witness first hand, it does serve to show that it’s unlikely Neil is forcing Andrew into anything. Which is… good obviously. Still awful and brain bleach will be required but, at least he knows that if Andrew is in danger from Neil, there’s a chance it won’t be…that kind of danger.
Aaron sleeps in Nicky’s room the rest of the weekend.