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The crushing weight of waiting, for someone like Aiden, has always been a slow torture. The mind grating numbness of the silence that envelops you as you stare at the ceiling just waiting for something –anything– to happen, to snap you out of this absolute boredom. In short, Aiden hated waiting. And he's never hated it more.
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Aiden felt the world stop as Ashlyn turned sharply and the sound of the car door slamming open, his head whipping back just enough to see Taylor reaching out for her brother, Ben struggling to hold her back by her waist, warm, salty tears flooding down her flushed cheeks as her face twisted in anguish.
Aiden looked back to where Tyler was hitting the ground, their eyes locking and Aiden suddenly knew what it was like to feel cold. His heart stopped, even as he felt something slamming erratically behind his ribs, his stomach dropped to his feet while bile rose into his stinging, tightening throat. The look in Tyler's rich, coffee brown eyes was enough to raise the fine hairs along Aiden's outstretched arms. The word was slowed, and from the angle he was at, it looked like their hands would touch… but Tyler was already over the cliff, and the trick of the light disappeared.
His flexed fingers, grasping at the air, a small desperate sound leaving him, lost in the sound of Taylors devastated screams. Aiden's hand found hers, their eyes met, hers exactly like the ones Aiden had just lost sight of, and even as Ashyn crashed the car, and Taylor thrashed against Ben's grip, they never let go.
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Aiden hated hospitals. He didn't really know why, there was no proper reason except maybe one too many horror movies. And yet here he was, hours after waiting with the others for any kind of news or update, that just never came. The parents had been looking at them weird, since they had tried to explain the Phantom dimension, and what had happened, but they, predictably, didn't believe them. So now Ash was sitting beside Aiden, knees tucked in close, under her hoodie, eyes vacant as she kept blaming herself, hand limp in Aidens.
Taylor was sitting across from them, her hands clenching and unclenching as she kept replaying the moment she lost her brother. Her mother sat beside her, strangely still and far from them as she stared at her shaking clasped hands. When the door opened, all heads turned to see a doctor in a clean blue uniform, her purple hair pulled into a tight bun, clip board held tight in one hand, pen twisting idly in the other. She quickly scanned the group before her brown eyes fell onto Taylor and her mother. “You are Ms. Hernández right?”
Mariana nodded, finally looking up, hand squeezing her daughters. “Yes,” she replied with a tight smile, "that's me,”
The doctor nodded, “okay, come with me, we have a few results.” Taylor followed her mother as they left the room and Aiden was stuck waiting, watching the clock turn slowly as his leg bounced quickly in a rhythmic pattern only he knew, on time with the frantic beat of his heart.
After a while, Taylor comes back, head bowed, blank face hidden behind the curtain of messy, brown hair. “He's not waking up.” She whispered, hands balling into fists on her knees, legs pressed tightly together as she tried to control the small shake of her shoulders as she sat. “He's in a coma.” The words felt like ice down his back. And Aiden knew that he'd have to wait a whole lot longer than he thought.
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Aiden felt like the world had slowed. Every second was pulled out in wait for Tyler to wake. During the day, they'd be waiting anxiously for anything to update on Tyler. By night they'd be walking around a darkened world, wandering aimlessly trying to find the missing member of their team. Only to wake empty handed, tears stinging the corners of their eyes.
Aiden didn't visit, he couldn't. The thought of seeing Tyler like that, dead to the world, hooked up to machines and contraptions just made him sick. But that didn't stop him from feeling guilty about it. Every time he'd make a stupid unbelievable excuse to skip out on seeing Tyler, the pit that had found permanent residence at the bottom of his gut, widened. Things changed a lot. They all lost interest in going to Savannah, every plan falling apart under their feet. Taylor was just… empty. She barely talked, barely ate and slept even less. In school, her eyes stayed glued to her table, during lunch, she just sat limp against Ben's arm.
Aiden ached to reach out, to comfort her, tell her it wasn't her fault. He wanted to shake Ashlyn, who just spent all her time trying to apologize and narrow down where Tyler could have ended up. He wanted to yell at Logan who had convinced himself that if he had just spotted that thing earlier, Tyler would still be scowling away with his arms crossed. He wanted to jump up and tell them all to stop blaming themselves for something they had no control over. Wanted to shout at Ben to stop being so strong for everyone even though he was hurting too.
Instead, he stayed quiet, not a word of comfort left his usually loose lips. Because he knew what they felt, he knew the heavy weight of the blame, because at the end of the day, Aiden hadn't managed to catch Tyler either, had he?
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“You should come with us today,” Ashlyn spoke softly on the way home, the two of them sitting beside each other on the bus. Since Tyler got stuck in hospital, Ben had taken to walking Taylor home to make sure she got there safe, then took the public bus home, leaving Ashlyn leaning against the window as Aiden slouched beside her.
Aiden turned to her with a sharp frown. “No,” he shut her down straight away, “I have, uh, something to do-”
“Aiden.” Ashlyn turned her head towards him, their eyes locking. “We all know you're making up excuses.” She handed him a pen – the same one he used on Tyler's hand around two weeks ago – and looked to her outstretched hand. “His drawings have faded, you should redo them.”
Aiden blinked at her before wrapping his fingers around the pen and pocketing it, grabbing his bag, "It's our stop,” he mumbled before rushing out of the bus. He got home in record time, something he'd be proud of if he wasn't busy locking his door, slamming the door to his en suite bathroom closed.
He gripped the edge of the sink in shaking hands, the cold of the ceramic biting into his reddening fingers, but it didn't register. His arms started to shake, then his legs. His throat bobbed, thick with held back tears as his stinging eyes blinked fast. He could feel the pen in his pocket and in his hand he could still feel the pressure of Tyler's hand in his as the ink slid across dark chocolate skin broken up with scars, the ghost pressure weeks old.
Aiden was suddenly hit with memories of a person who already felt like a ghost. His knees buckled, and he tucked them to his chest as the lip of the bathtub bit into his back as his curled shoulders shook with soft sobs that he refused to have a sound. Because that would make the grief real. And Aiden wasn't ready for that.
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Aiden didn't know why he decided to go see Tyler two days later on his own. He stayed hunched as he walked through the endless hallways that looked identical to every single other room. Till he reached room 516. Aiden pushed open the door with a shaking hand and he remembered why he hated hospitals. Everything was crisp and clean, a sterile white blinded Aiden as he walked in. His eyes traced the sharp, clean corners of the room, the natural light filtered through thin white curtains.
His eyes stayed wandering till he was brave enough to flitter his eyes to the bed. His heart squeezed as the sight twisted his chest in a crushing grip. Tyler lay limp, dead to the world, only the slight rise and fall of his chest any indication of life. Machines were hooked up to him, tubes pressed into his dark skin, held in place by white tape, an oxygen mask pressed over his mouth and nose.
Aiden tore his eyes away and pulled a seat close to the bed and sat, leg bouncing as he clicked the pen open, closed, open, closed. He kept his gaze on the floor, trying to breath past the lump in his throat, his heart beating at the same pace as the rhythmic beeping of the heart monitor. He stayed there, stationary but his leg, as he fascinated himself with the tiles of the floor before looking up to Tyler's face, eyes closed, eyelashes fanning over his cheeks.
“You could’ve at least stayed alive here, Half-wit,” Aiden muttered softly under his breath. Aiden didn't think when he reached for Tyler's hand, limp in his own, and pulled it closer gently, swallowing as he pressed the pen to dark skin.
He lost track of time as he pulled the ink over skin, drawing a series of fake stitches along Tyler's hand, words started spilling from Aiden's lips as he watched his own work on Tyler's hand. “Stiches fix things, right? So now you have to wake up.” Aiden glanced up to Tyler's relaxed face, “...please wake up,"
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Aiden didn't tell the others he went to see Tyler, but two days later, Ashyln sent him a small text.
Ash🩰💚: tys hand is cool
Aidenn stared at the text before answering.
Aiden😎😎: ik :)
From then on, Ashlyn would every so often make an offhand comment on how the drawings were fading, and that evening Aiden would be back in that sterile room, alone, just yapping to Tyler (who couldn't yell about how stupid his marvel theories were) doodling the most random things all over his hand.
For a while, things were getting better. Aiden's smile was slightly less forced after every visit, the pressure of Tyler's hand in his was a reassuring weight. Taylor wasn't so distant anymore, the news that he was recovering faster than predicted helped them all, Ashlyn was back to making plans for Savannah in between looking for the last member of the group.
Things were far from good, and they were all far from happy, but things were getting easier. Aiden, despite hating hospitals, found himself looking forward to talking about everything and anything to the sleeping boy. By the three month mark, he had gone through multiple pens, and had taken to bringing a notebook, drawing (albeit shit) sketches of the other boy, and other small doodles as he talked.
For a year, things were good-ish, Tyler wasn't getting better, but he wasn't getting worse, they still hadn't found him in the phantom dimension, and they still woke with the crushing desperation to find him, but every time they saw him it reassured them for a small while. Aiden's drawings had gotten significantly better, he had taken to going through old photos on his phone, sketching them out, he had thought of showing the others, but every time he brought the note book to school, with little anecdotes for each picture, his heart tightened and the desire to keep them for himself over ruled the want to share. So drawing became his secret, despite the small feeling of guilt of not sharing, and the day he finally got Tyler's smile right was the first day he finally, truly, felt the hope that he'd get better. If not just so he could see that smile in person once more.
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Everything came crashing down the night Taylor came to them sobbing. Aiden and Ben had invited the others over for the night, Taylor was going to be late because she was with her mother to receive more news on her brother.
Now she was sobbing in Ben's arms as she wailed, “he’s not waking up, he’s never going to wake up,” she cried, shoulders shaking as Aiden went very still, and very cold. Again. His stomach clenched. Not waking…? Aiden suddenly got hit by the need to throw up. Logan was crying too, next to Ashlyn who was standing, pale, hands digging into her crossed arms, leaving red crescent-moon dents in her skin, eyes glazed over, bottom lip trembling. Aiden couldn't think, couldn't breathe. Taylor's sobs filled the room as she pulled at her hair, legs giving up underneath her and she buckled. “he's gone,” she weeped through sniffles, "he's not coming back,”
Each word was another daggered shard of the hope they all held, the hope that things would get better. But it didn't. It never seemed to be anything but worse than it came to them. The threat of throwing up was a very real thing by now, and Aiden couldn't stand another second listening to Taylor, or seeing his cousin trying so very hard to stay strong as he held onto both Logan and Taylor as they cried. And he couldn't stand the self blame that had taken months to pull out of Ashlyn's eyes, root itself back into her chest, making itself home in her gut, nails digging so deep into her skin blood started to well up under her nails.
So Aiden pushed past them and found himself back in a bathroom, legs shaking, arms numb with that indescribable cold, he gripped the edge of the toilet this time as he heaved, bile forcing itself out of him as he gagged on gasping, desperate sobs.
“You know,” Aiden had hummed one day, knees balancing the note book as he spun his pen between his fingers, “it's getting boring waiting for you to get up. You’ve gotten pretty lazy, y’know?” the door creaked open and a nurse walked in, his curly brown hair pulled into a horribly messy bun that looked like he hadn't brushed it out.
“Okay, come on kid, open hours were done twenty minutes ago,”
Aiden let out a little scoff, “okay, okay, give us a sec.” He turned back to Tyler, “you better wake up soon, Ben managed to beat your score at the arcade,” he paused, looking to the nurse who stood, arms crossed, growing under his mask before Aiden looked back to Tyler, rubbing his thumb over his knuckles, “and because we miss you… I dont want to keep waiting,”
Aiden hated waiting, he didn't like the never ending feeling of nothing, it was boring. The seconds being dragged out for something that never seemed to come, but he'd give anything up if it meant he could still be waiting for deep coffee eyes to flicker open again. It was better than the bone deep ache of knowing that would never happen.
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Aiden is clearing out his room, it’s been a few years since Tyler's death and it has taken a lot of time for any of them to recover, but they have gotten there. It's been hard moving on, especially for Taylor, but they got there. Together. They managed to get to Savannah (finally) and figure out what was going on at twelve every night, and had found a way for Ashlyn to pull them back out of the rift along with herself.
Everything was good, and now here he is, packing to go to college. He, Logan and Ash have managed to get accepted to the same university. Ben is already working, since he doesn't need to continue school for his career (who knew Aiden was the one of the two who was going to college?) While Taylor has gotten ready to study abroad, understandably, wanting to leave some things behind, but with the promise to keep in contact with all of them. In fact, today is her last day in Alto, and Aiden is still hungover from last night's goodbye party.
And that's the reason why Aiden is busy rooting around under his bed, trying to pack his bags, tossing away socks and other things he has completely forgotten about with a disgusted wrinkle of his nose. He’s stuck down there, digging through useless shit for a good hour, till he finds an old black notebook with falling off stickers under a heap of year old laundry.
Aiden frowns as he pulls it out, cursing colourfully when he hits his head as he shimmies out from under his bed. Sitting back on his heels, Aiden opens the notebook with furrowed brows, his eyes going wide when he sees the worst stickman drawing he's ever seen labelled ‘Half-wit’, spiky hair exploding out of the round head that sported an angry expression, stars drawn in the surrounding space. A small, sad smile tugs at Aiden's frowned lips as he flicks through old drawings, the doodings getting better each page, until he gets to the last drawing.
It was Tyler, just like Aiden remembers, except instead of the frown that has been engraved into his mind, a tilted grin beamed back from the page, eyes crinkled at the corners, despite the drawing being in grey pencil, Aiden can clearly see the smooth dark skin and deep warm eyes that were often narrowed and cold. He can picture the messy self-cut brown hair that drooped into his eyes. Aiden stares at the sketch before tearing his eyes away, moving them to the small note beside the doodle.
‘Finally got the smile right! Whoo :)’ Aiden laughs softly at his own note before closing the notebook with a soft slam, the selfish feeling of keeping this to himself, bubbling up in his chest again, just like before, but he pushes it down. He stands, grabbing his coat, and tugging on his shoes – hopping to his door – with one hand, the other gripping the notebook in a tight fist. “Ben! I'm going out for a sec, don't wait up!” Aiden calls out, yanking the front door open, not bothering to close it as he races down the steps and drops himself into the driver's seat of his car, plopping the notebook into the passenger seat.
A few minutes of speed driving manages to get him to Taylor's house just as she finishes loading up the back of her car. “Aiden? What are you doing?”
Aiden stumbles out of his own car with a stupid smile, pushing the notebook into a confused Taylor's hands. “Here, a present, for when you get to school, don't open it before then.” Taylor looks utterly stunned as Aiden hops back into his car, “you better get going before you miss your flight!” Then he’s off again. Without the endless pages of memory beside him, except for the carefully folded page that sits in his back pocket.
And this time he doesn't feel guilty for keeping a piece to himself. After all, will Taylor really miss the first page?