Chapter Text
PART ONE
Puffs of visible breaths fill the air. It's just turning night, but the light coming off the bar's large sign is coming off bright, and it reflects right off his breath, making it almost look like a solid cloud of white. Aaron cups his hands together up to his mouth and breathes hard into them to keep them warm. It's cold, way colder than he expected, but it doesn't matter. He can't risk missing them again. He needs to catch them this time. If he misses them again, he won't have another chance for another week, and he's done waiting. He's waited long enough.
He blows hard into his hands again, harder than the last time, hoping to get back a bit of feeling on his fingers, and continues to wait. This bloke better be worth it. He's about to blow another breath into his hands when his pocket vibrates, and he reaches into it, fishing out his phone. It's Liv.
Debbie says you've been gone for a couple of days. Everything alright?
He can't help but roll his eyes. He knows she means well, but he's not a child, he can take care of himself. It's then that he remembers just why he left, why he decided to get away for a while. His family was too much. They always have been. For all their best efforts all they do is get in the way. In the way of his head, his thoughts, his heart. He needed to get away from them, to really think, to figure things out.
After everything, it's what he needed most. His long list of one night stands in such a short time was evidence enough, as every bit of pressure he had felt from his family drove him to find an outlet for his frustrations. He was tired of feeling guilty for being heartbroken, for grieving over the future he had been robbed of, and being told to move on. He chuckled out of frustration at the thought. Moving on. As if he could ever fucking do that.
At the same time he gets that pang of guilt, of disappointment in himself, again. It's something that really started eating away at him when he left home. Robert. Robert was all he thought about, all he dreamt about, and he remembered. And what he remembered the most was how Robert never gave up on him. The steering wheel that pinned him down in that car, the one at the bottom of the quarry. Sunken. Flooding. Their certain deaths imminent. And Robert...Robert refused to give up on him. He refused to leave him behind.
When he was sentenced to over a year in prison, Robert didn't accept it. Robert fought, the courts be damned, Robert fought. He never gave up.
"How could you just give up on him?" He chastises himself as he wipes at his eyes, feeling it all too well. In his heart, in his bones, in every inch of his body that spoke to him. He felt like he had betrayed him, let him down.
He takes a deep breath then hears the rumble of the bus coming to a stop. It's what he had been waiting on. He blows into his hands one last time and watches as a few people step off the bus, and waits until he spots what he was looking for, for who he was looking.
He takes a deep breath, gulps past the lump in his throat, slips his hands into his pockets, and begins to walk.
It's time to fight.