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He hadn't come here with the intent to beat the shit out of Robert Sugden. He’d just— happened to. One second Robert had been there (lipstick on his ear, stupid grin on his stupid face, told ya I’d bag the fittest King) and then Aaron’s fist (clenched, trembling, nails painfully short from picking at them) had also been there.
Once. Twice. Maybe a couple of times. Aaron came back to himself, suddenly aware of Robert sprawled out on the sidewalk under him only when the blood trickled from the plush pink of Robert’s lips to the back of his pale hand. It clings to his fingertips as he dabs at the skin, broken skin, the ripped tissue of a mouth that’d previously been grinning like the cat that got the cream.
(A stupid cat, a tomcat with energy to spare and a need to mark his territory, to piss on ground that isn’t his with a need to show off and the yowl to back him up— and the cream being Sadie King, supposedly.)
A triumph for Robert; a reminder for Aaron. A gaudy blonde neon sign married to their geography teacher that exists only to say: he’s not yours, Aaron. You’re not what he wants. He can so easily get what he wants. And Aaron can’t even begin to be surprised. Not over Robert’s lofty goal or the fact that he’d achieved it. Not over the way he himself had reacted; Aaron Livesy loves Robert Sugden.
Aaron Livesy also fucking hates Robert Sugden.
“You’re bleeding.” Aaron says, burying his hands in his pockets, Robert’s blood drying on his knuckles. He looks down at Robert the same way one might a dead bird; like he’s something unbearably sad, but inevitable. A microcaseum.
Aaron is not what Robert Sugden wants.
“No shit, really?” Robert coughs out, “Hadn’t noticed. Cheers.”
But Robert takes Aaron’s outstretched hand anyway, clambering up to dust his knees off and press at his reddened face. Some say they’ve been best friends since diapers. Some being Aaron’s mum, who annunciates the words with a certain small village pride, like she hasn’t personally blamed Robert for Aaron’s rough streak since their first disciplinary note. Their first because it had been Robert’s plan and Aaron’s bloodied knuckles in the end.
Others say they’re attached at the hip. Others being Robert’s dad, who inflicts the phrase like Aaron is a sort of growth attached to his son, one that should be frozen and filed off in a clinic, maybe bisected for science. As if it were Aaron coaxing Robert down the truancy path and through halcyon afternoons filled with cigarettes and gameboy at the pavilion.
A student review once phrased them as concerningly attached and recommended they be placed in separate classrooms, lest neither of them learn to read because they can’t be fucked to pay attention. Instead they’d be too busy badly dodging eye contact with each other, chickening the other into an unflattering fit of laughter over an inside joke. And certainly, at some point in their lives, they hadn’t been Aaron and Robert. They’d been separate— Aaron Livesy and Robert Sugden, not AaronandRobert, pronounced so fast that they morphed into one person, one being.
Aaron’s sure that time existed, at some point. The time before Robert in his mind is a grey haze of yelling and a stiflingly quiet bedroom, but surely he’s endured it before; Robert not being around. Robert asking him to cover for him in class because he’s apparently, right now, got to finger Claire whateverhernameis in the supply closet, and thats far more important than maths. Which— Aaron won’t bring up for debate with Robert. Firstly because he’ll never win in a debate against Robert, the man could win a debate against himself in the mirror or against an inanimate object, like a lamp. The other being:
Robert likes maths. Robert likes girls— women. Vaginas, if one wants to be crude about it, which sometimes Robert is with their fellow male students, like Max. Together they make demeaning comments about fellow students and goad each other on with placating bets— but Robert won’t be as blunt with Aaron, simply because Robert knows; Aaron doesn’t do romance. Or sex. Or snogging in the loos during lunch. Or clumsy handjobs in the closet.
Or, rather, Robert thinks he knows this about Aaron. Aaron won’t and can’t ever lead him to believe otherwise. Robert’s never been one to wield homophobic slurs, and Aaron doesn’t want to find out if Robert would when he learns what Aaron thinks about; how he wants it to be him in that supply closet, not Claire. He wants to be the one leaving marks on Robert’s neck, the red love spots right about the press of Robert’s shirt collar.
Aaron’s pencil snaps under his fingers. He’s neither a woman or good at maths, so when the teacher asks where Robert is (in a dark closet, huffing into a neck and fingers up her skirt, hot skin, blonde hair, soft hair—) Aaron has a response ready:
“Pissed himself. Went home to change.”
It’s the smallest revenge he can take.
:::
“You told them I pissed myself?”
Aaron shrugs. “No proof you didn’t.”
They’re at the cricket pavilion, where some piece of Aaron has always been, his name carved into the wood. It’s where he first smoked, Robert and he sharing a cigarette lifted from Diane’s purse, the extra long and thin kind that comes in a swirly blue pack. It’s where he first drank, Robert and he taking swigs off a vodka that should’ve only been used as hand sanitizer, lifted from Aaron’s aunt Charity. They’d met here as boys. Little Aaron, alone, scratching his name into the wood with a dull pocket knife had met a little Robert, donned in a yellow slicker with a question on his chapped lips:
Who are you? and then, has anyone ever told you your hair is ugly? It really is. After that there were a few wayward and weak punches thrown by fists not yet christened with knuckle scars, or even hair— but eventually:
Do ya want to play game boy with me?
The two of them inseparable ever since.
Robert stares at him now from the doorway where Aaron had first puked from drink. Robert had rolled him onto his side so he didn’t die in his sleep and then proceeded to pass out himself, arm flopped over Aaron’s side.
That’d been the best night of Aaron’s life. The weight of Robert’s forearm against Aaron’s hip, the heat of him— it’d seared itself into Aaron’s brain.
“Oh, I see it now.” Robert’s tone is that of a hissing snake, “You’re jealous.”
“Am not.”
Robert laughs. Not his actual laugh, the one unrestrained that leaves him curling in on himself and the sound coming from deep within his gut, no— the taunting one. The that’s not what your mum said last night one. The bet you I can one that Robert wields as a personal weapon, always pretending that he’s got the upper hand.
“Oh, this— this is pathetic, Aaron,” And, well, fuck Robert is kind of beautiful when he’s being a massive prick, “What, I’m not giving you enough attention?”
Aaron burns, a blush across his cheeks; Robert smiles, cocky and cruel. They’re a year apart in age, each just barely skirting the edges of their class age requirements, and that smile of Robert’s has always done something to Aaron. It makes Aaron ball his fists in the pockets of his sweater.
“You in love with me or summat?”
Aaron punches him again and Robert doesn’t accept the peace offering after.
:::
Three months pass. It’s the longest they’ve gone without speaking since they were thirteen. Aaron’s knuckles heal just fine.
Three months becomes six. They don’t speak in the hallways, their only communication is the aggressive bumping of shoulders as they pass each other. Robert’s hair is longer.
Six becomes nine. Mr. King’s divorce is hot news— an affair, supposedly. A dog, killed. At some point Robert shows up to class with a limp, and Aaron watches Robert pull his trouser leg up to show Max the unmistakable shape of a dog bite. Max reaches out to gently touch at the scab.
Nine becomes twelve. A year passes and Aaron no longer knows Robert’s favorite album, but he can list off Adam Barton’s top three. A year has passed and Aaron can’t name Robert’s current girlfriend, but he knows that Adam prefers action movies to sci-fi.
More than 365 days. Aaron has learned that Adam doesn’t hate him after an unrequited and drunken kiss at the pavilion, and he’s the first person Aaron comes out to—
He’d always imagined it’d be Robert.
:::
Aaron is waiting at the pavilion, again. Adam is supposed to meet him here in just a while, the two of them fast friends, and Aaron gets lost in the carving of Aaron n Robert wur here on the stair rail. The edge of the letters catch on the thick callous of his thumb— his boxing gloves have left new and rough spots on his hands.
A new hobby, encouraged by Adam, you can’t keep all that anger in, mate.
Sometimes he imagines Robert’s face on the sandbags. It’s not fair— more than a year and even still Robert haunts him.
Aaron looks up when he hears footsteps coming across the grass, a smile already forming, except— except that’s not Adam. It’s not Adam crossing the damp ground, squishing through mud and dandelions; it’s Robert, headphones on. He’s not looked up yet, not seen Aaron loitering about on the porch, ironically thinking of exactly him as if Aaron had summoned him.
He’s the worst. Robert is awful and Aaron still hates him for the grip he keeps, for their year of separation where Aaron fought the ever clinging memories of friendship and love— and Aaron doesn’t want to fight him anymore. Robert has never felt so far away yet so close, and Aaron follows his body’s instinct: He gets to his knees and turns tail into the pavilion, lest he punches Robert’s lights out again.
:::
Unfortunately, not a single thing has ever gone right in Aaron’s life. He’s crammed into the closet off the back room, the one with the couch, because apparently he’s someone that hides from his problems now. He’s like a child pushing himself in against old coats left behind, hiding from some sort of bogeyman— Robert.
The crack of the closet door bleeds light; it flickers when Robert presumably walks in front of it. The doorknob twists and Aaron holds his breath, trying to bully himself up for the worst moment of his life, being discovered hiding in a literal closet.
Someone else enters the room. The floorboards creak underneath their shoes and Robert’s shadow pauses. For a brief moment Aaron can imagine it’s Adam, finally arrived with the beer and crisps—
“I thought you might not come.”
Aaron recognizes the tone of nervousness in Robert’s sharp inhale. A year has passed and Aaron can still tell the emotions in Robert’s very breath.
The other person is also not Adam.
“Well… always have, haven’t I?” Max’s voice hurts Aaron’s stomach, “Not one to turn down the opportunity.”
Robert laughs in a huffy, breathy way. Nerves. Nerves, all the way down. “Right. Come here, then.”
Blood thrums through Aaron’s veins. He chokes on his own breath— They’re kissing.
They’re kissing. That’s Max’s lips against Robert’s, not Sadie King, not Claire, not some imaginary girl Aaron has conjured up; it’s Max King. With the same bits as Aaron and all.
Robert and Max are on the other side of the door and they’re kissing, they’re kissing— There’s a sound of hot breath and Aaron flinches backwards from the door as Robert’s weight is pushed against it. There’s a— a moan— a moan from Robert, a hushed chuckle, a moment of pure stress for Aaron as someone’s hand brushes the doorknob.
A sharp hiss. Pain. Aaron is familiar with the sound.
“Shit, soz, your leg still bothering you?” Max.
Robert is grinning, Aaron can tell. “A little.”
“Can’t believe you kicked that stupid dog for me,” Max softly says, “Next time just let me take the bite, Robert.”
Aaron struggles to hear over the ba-dump, ba-dump, ba-dump of his own heart:
“Kind of used to taking the hit,” Robert responds, “Might be all I’m good for.”
And Aaron, though hidden and separated by a plank of wood, can’t help but feel that the comment is meant for him.