Chapter Text
Aaron Minyard met Neil Josten at night, in the middle of a thunderstorm, because he nearly ran him over. Which was just as dramatic as it sounded.
He’d been coming home from bar hopping with some fellow students he didn’t know well enough to call friends. Nicky was an ocean away and Andrew and Kevin at least a few hours, so he’d mostly settled on taking what he could get vis-à-vis a social life. He wasn’t drunk-drunk, but also not sober enough to be behind the wheel, if he was being honest with himself.
He tried not to be, as a general rule. He didn’t think he’d like what honesty about himself would get him.
Depression, maybe. Loneliness, definitely.
He wasn’t lonely if he didn’t acknowledge it. That was the secret.
He was also too drunk to be thinking about being lonely. If he didn’t stop soon, he’d probably start crying or something equally embarrassing, and then he’d call one of the two people he had on speed dial – which would be pathetic or catastrophic, depending on whether he got his brother or cousin – and then not only would he have witnesses to his drunk driving and breakdown but also worried people who would drop everything and cross a state/ocean to make sure he was okay.
Which he was, just to be clear.
It was just… lonely.
It started raining, which didn’t really make anything better, and then thundering, which made things actively worse. His windshield wipers were fighting for their life, and he had to slow down because his field of vision went from okay to non-existent within seconds.
Slowing down probably saved Josten’s life.
Outside the car was night and wet and gray buildings and empty streets and suddenly something shot out of an alley to Aaron’s right and onto the street and his foot hit the brakes before he’d even fully registered what it was.
A human.
A human that looked up at the screech of his brakes and dove out of his way. In the same direction as Aaron swerved to avoid running him over, sadly, which meant that despite both of their attempts to avoid collision, Aaron still clipped him.
He came to a halt, hands clenched around the steering wheel, heart racing, ears ringing and feeling vaguely sick.
And very sober, all of a sudden.
Fuck, he thought, before his hands started scrambling for the seatbelt and the door handle and thinking the word was no longer enough. “Fuck shit fucking fuck!”
He half fell out of the car, got immediately drenched to his bones and hurried around the hood. The guy was sitting on the wet asphalt, completely wet and very obviously homeless, and looked up at Aaron’s approach.
“Hey,” he said. “What’s up?”
“What’s up?!” Aaron screeched, because he felt screeching was appropriate in this situation. “I just hit you!”
The guy’s mouth quirked up. “I noticed,” he drawled, and the tiny part of Aaron’s brain that wasn’t busy panicking decided he couldn’t stand him. “Don’t worry,” the idiot continued, “I’ve had worse.” And then he fucking made to stand.
“You can’t move!” Aaron shouted, and pushed him back down.
The guy tilted his head back to look at him better and raised his eyebrows, which Aaron noted only peripherally. Because holy shit, his face. Not in a good way. In a that guy’s definitely been tortured for fun kind of way.
“Why not?” He sounded very calm for someone who might be actively bleeding out from internal injuries.
Aaron floundered for a moment. “What if you have, like, a spinal injury? Or hit your head? You could be making it worse!”
The man had the gal to sigh an exasperated sigh. “Look, dude, I appreciate the concern, but I’ve had worse.” Obviously. “My head is okay and my spine too. Nothing’s broken. Trust me, I’d know. If you’d just, y’know, let me up, we could both go our separate ways.”
Aaron would love nothing more. Aaron also had the sense to stay exactly where he was.
“I don’t believe you,” he said resolutely. “I’m going to call an ambulance.”
“Don’t do that,” the man groaned. “C’mon, look at me. Do I look like I can’t distinguish a broken bone from a hale one?” He looked like a wet cat, sitting there. Scowling, now. “I certainly know better than you, at least.”
“You don’t,” Aaron told him, wondering why he was wasting time arguing with this guy instead of calling that ambulance. “I’m in med school.”
The guy looked like he wanted to say something scathing or argue some more before he suddenly seemed to come to a realization and his expression did an about-turn. “How far are you?”
“Third year. Hospital training,” Aaron answered, again wondering why he was entertaining this bullshit.
“Cool.” The man nodded. “So can you do, like, sutures? Stitch a wound shut nicely?”
“I… yes?”
“Fabulous. Help me up.” Aaron did not help him up. The guy got to his feet anyways. “Because I don’t want to alarm you or anything, since you seem a bit hysteric and stuff, but I’ve been lightly stabbed and it’s on my back so I was wondering if you could help.” He grinned at Aaron. “Y’know, for running me over.”
Aaron stared. The guy was an inch taller than him, maybe two. Maybe three. He hated him all the more for it. “You’ve been stabbed?” It wasn’t even a screech, this time. It just sounded tired.
“Lightly,” the guy corrected, as if that made it any better.
Aaron pinched the bridge of his nose. They’d been talking long enough that the cold was creeping through his wet clothes now. He was also noticing that he was still kind of drunk, now that his blood was no longer mostly adrenaline.
“Fuck no. Get in the car. I’m driving you to the hospital,” was what he finally settled on. He turned his back and went back to the driver’s side and grabbed the door handle and-
Realized that he’d locked himself out of his car in his earlier haste to get out. And that his phone was lying on the passenger seat, also very much out of reach.
Aaron hated everything.
“Did you lock yourself out?” the guy asked, and then had the nerve to laugh when Aaron thunked his head against the frame. As if he hadn’t just gotten run over while stabbed.
Aaron hated everything a bit more.
“Hey, how about this: I get your car open and you stitch me shut and don’t take me to the hospital.”
Aaron looked up, squinted his eyes at the guy. “Without breaking any windows?”
The man scoffed. “What am I, an amateur?”
Aaron considered the offer, then asked himself why and how much deeper he could sink in one night. If that guy murdered him, he’d be dead. Which would suck but would get him out of having to explain his decision-making to Andrew or Nicky.
Plus, Andrew would probably go full John Wick and hunt the guy down in revenge.
So.
“I don’t have anything in the car. I’d have to take you home. Five minute drive?”
The man considered the counteroffer for a moment, then nodded. “I’ll drive,” he told Aaron. “You smell like alcohol and I do not want to die in a car crash.” What a fucking clown. “Now scooch over.” He fluttered his hands until Aaron stepped aside. “Let me do my magic.”
Aaron tried watching the guy’s hands, realized that the skin there looked as bad as if not worse than the rest of him and got distracted trying to figure out what the circular scars all over his knuckles and most of one cheekbone came from.
“Dashboard lighter,” the man said calmly, probably having felt his stare.
Aaron’s stomach turned – mostly because what the fuck but at least partly because of the alcohol – but he ignored the answer to his unasked question. “What were you even doing out here? Were you being chased?” A valid question, in his opinion, because if he had been then he probably would still be, which would make it Aaron’s problem, too.
The guy shrugged his shoulders. “On a run.”
Aaron blinked. He’d probably misheard. The guy had meant on the run, for sure.
Which brought up the question – on the run from who? Or what?
“Are you some kind of criminal?” Aaron asked, then wondered if he was stupid. Because yeah, the stabbed, homeless guy currently breaking into his car was probably a criminal. No fucking shit.
The man surprised him. “Not technically,” he said. “The FBI cleared all my charges after I killed my father in exchange for snitching on the rest of his goons. But they only cleared what they knew about, so…” He waved his hand in a so-so gesture. “Not convicted? Does that help?”
What. The. Fuck.
Aaron wasn’t touching any of that with a ten-foot pole.
Andrew was going to kill him. He could never find out about any of this.
“Anyways.” The guy stopped doing whatever criminal thing he’d been doing, took a step back and swung the door open, forcing Aaron to take a step back to avoid getting hit. “Ta-da!”
He opened his mouth. Thought better, for the first time that night. Close his mouth. Rounded the car and got into the passenger seat.
And let the strange criminal homeless guy drive him home.
Aaron patched him up – he wouldn’t call the stab wound light, but it wasn’t life threatening and yeah, the guy did look like he’d had worse – and entertained the man’s curiosity when he looked through the apartment while Aaron put the first aid kit away.
“Nice place. Bit big for a single person, no?”
“Yeah,” he said absentmindedly. “Been trying to find a roommate, but no luck so far.”
The guy grinned. Said goodbye but not thank you.
Left.
Rang Aaron out of bed at the ass crack of dawn the next day, holding a duffle bag and a wad of cash that more than covered the rent for months to come.
“Neil Josten,” he introduced himself. “I’ll be living with you.”
And Aaron, sleep deprived and annoyed to all hell, thought fuck it. In a long list of bad decisions, this probably wouldn’t be the worst.
As long as Andrew never found out about any of this. Ever.
With his luck, this train wreck of a human being was just his brother’s type.
And Aaron did not hate himself enough for... that.