Chapter Text
“I look like a fucking corpse,” Aerion hisses, standing in the bathroom before the cabinet mounted on the wall, grimacing at the collar of his shirt before he stares at his reflection and pulls at his face as if he's a plastic surgeon testing out the flesh of his next victim.
The shirt is maroon, tight-fitting, with a couple of buttons undone to show off his neck and clavicle. It is his best shirt, and also the only one he has left that isn’t coated in milky baby vomit after Maegor recently started falling into the habit of throwing up after almost every single bottle he’s been fed in recent days. It's normal, according to the feeding team Aerion's been in contact with. It doesn't look normal, though they insisted it was. Strongly.
“Language!” Egg calls from downstairs, sitting in the front room with his nephew. Maegor lies belly down on a fleecy blanket, staring at his warped reflection in a tummy-time mirror that probably looks quite frightening to a child of almost six months old—head enlarged and shaped like an alien, eyes wide and staring.
Aerion tugs at the bottom of his shirt and grimaces, forcibly tucking it into the waistband of his trousers—black, and slightly looser than the shirt, though his arse looks decent, which has to count for something.
He takes a final look at his reflection, trying not to pay too much attention to the dark circles that hang around his eyes like he’s been punched in both of them from too many late nights and too many early starts. He tousles his hair and leaves the bathroom, claiming a dusty pair of black loafers from the foot of the bannister that he had to dig out of a cupboard filled to the brim with miscellaneous shit that should have really been binned when he first moved in—perhaps before he moved in.
He sets off downstairs, the grey–carpeted steps creaking beneath his socked feet, and seeks out his phone as it charges in the kitchen, the smell of some citrus-like cleaner in the air. The washing machine is full to the brim, dirty clothes are trying to escape containment, but the countertops are clean, the hob is free of dirty pans—it will have to do until he gets home and tackles the vomit-covered clothes.
Glancing at the unlit washing machine display, he wonders whether he might be able to ask Egg to sort it whilst he’s out. But, at the thought of pink clothing and clothes too small for a doll to wear, he wrinkles his nose.
He sorts it himself, hoping the clothes won’t smell all too bad come the morning when he throws them all in the tumble dryer to avoid the jarring whirring of the drum if he tries drying them overnight. At least there aren’t any neighbours next door to bang on the wall over the sound if he does try to dry them when he’s home.
Sliding his phone into his pocket and grabbing his wallet from the side, he slips on his shoes after dusting them off and makes his way to the front room to find Egg and Maegor.
Egg, ever the dutiful uncle, talks to his nephew in hushed tones, making a toy plane drift back and forth, knocking over two towering stacks of Stickle Bricks that Aerion eyes with some scrutiny—things that their father dug out of the loft from when they were kids.
“You all set then?” Egg asks, setting the plane down on the floor, a brow raised as he looks up at his brother as Aerion looms by the door.
“I’m too old for a blind date,” Aerion mutters, tugging at the cuffs of his shirt, feeling like a sack of shit tied up around the middle.
“It’s not a blind date. Daeron showed you a picture of him.”
“Okay, well, I’m too old for a date.”
“You’re twenty-four.”
Aerion scoffs, tasting something foul on his tongue. He's brushed his teeth three times. He's sure it's just the aftertaste of his own bitter mood.
He lifts a hand to his hair, runs his fingers through it, and feels a thick, coarse strand that he thinks might very well be a grey, hidden among the white.
“Ugh, don’t remind me,” he mutters at last, trying to fight off the urge to yank out the hair to check.
“You got asked for ID when you bought an energy drink from Tesco this morning,” Egg reminds him.
It would certainly explain why Aerion feels close to jumping out of his skin, his hands jittering like two pale spiders.
Maegor seems to squeak in agreement, a fat fist shoved into his mouth, dribble rolling down his wrist and soaking the sleeve of his shirt—something else that will need washing. Does he have any clean clothes? Aerion isn’t sure. At least the washing machine’s on, so he'll have clean clothes at some point in the morning. He dreads to think what pyjamas Egg will dress him in come bedtime.
“Don’t start, you,” Aerion murmurs, moving from the doorway and kneeling upon the floor as he strokes his son’s cheek with the back of his fingers, feeling the warmth of his chunky little face—his skin as soft as a peach against his hand.
“Bed at seven, remember?” Aerion raises a brow, meeting his brother’s gaze.
“You've told me that at least a dozen times.”
“You’re crap with time-keeping.”
“So you tell me.” Egg smiles, his head tilting as he slips a hand beneath Maegor’s chest, pulling him into his arms and turning him to face Aerion, and makes him wave a dribbly hand. “Say goodbye to Daddy, Maeg. With any luck, he’ll return with a great big smile after a night of—”
“Don’t you dare finish that sentence.”
“—conversing with people without a screen between them.”
Aerion squints, his gaze accusatory, though the expression soon fades when he brushes his hand over Maegor’s blonde-white curls and presses a swift kiss to his forehead.
“Be awful for Uncle Aegon, won’t you? Give him hell.”
“You’re supposed to encourage him to behave,” Egg grunts, though Aerion merely rolls his eyes as he takes a step back, looking between his brother and his son.
“Keep your phone close, please?”
It’s Egg’s turn to roll his eyes, and roll he does, lightly jostling Maegor in his arms. “We’ll be fine.” He gives his nephew a little squeeze, resting his chin on Maegor’s shoulder. “Cocomelon, bottle, and bed.”
“Show him that rot, and I’ll throttle you when I’m home,” Aerion warns, tugging his jacket off the coatrack by the porch. He’s sure that Egg gives him a glimpse of his middle finger when he turns his back, though with one foot already through the front door, Aerion forces himself not to turn back, inhaling almost raggedly once he’s outside.
This is insanity, he thinks. A fucking date. At my age.
He needs to stop thinking that he's old at twenty-four. It's making him feel seventy. Soon enough, he'll develop back problems and liver spots from manifesting it.
He has a mortgage, a child, and no relationship to show for it. Duncan, his date for the evening, likely has some sort of obscure mental illness and lives in a box, seeing as he’s agreeing to a date with him instead of slipping into his DMs and asking for a shag at the Premier Inn.
And yet Aerion begins to walk, wondering where the night might take him, hoping that the house is still standing whenever he gets back home.
He’s been inside the Troll Cart only once, when Egg had been dying for a piss when they’d gone out down the seafront to the arcades and couldn’t find a single bathroom that didn’t look dubious and smell like someone had died inside it.
Aerion sits at the bar, his hand tapping against his thigh, not trusting to touch the sticky-looking countertop as a woman works behind it, her hair a mane of corkscrew blonde curls that bounce up and down as she pulls pints and makes up G&Ts for the other punters. He unclocks his phone time and time again, checking to see if the volume is all the way up in case Egg calls to say that Maegor had thrown himself from the roof or has learned to throw knives and has had a terrible accident. All the phone-touching certainly isn't to contact his date.
He’s only seen the face of the man he’s supposed to be meeting once—a photo that his brother Daeron had flashed at him; blue eyes, ginger-blonde hair and a smile that looked as if it could melt permafrost. He's attractive and really fucking tall, as Daeron has told him. Daeron himself is a too-tall six-foot-three, which seems ridiculous enough to Aerion. It’s difficult for him to picture anyone taller; no man alive has any business being as tall as a goddamn giant.
Duncan—Dunk, as his friends call him—and Daeron first met at some sad sort of medieval fair that Aerion had refused to attend. He’d worn a shirt of mail, a shining steel gorget around his neck, and had a sort of murky green surcoat on top that looked as if it had been stitched by hand.
Daeron has spoken of him often—kind to a fault, good with his hands, being a handyman by trade, and can allegedly drink any man or woman under a table. Daeron himself is a recovering alcoholic, so Aerion isn’t too sure that it’s a good idea for his brother to be surrounded by people drinking themselves to excess. Dunk seems a good enough bloke from what Daeron has told him, so Aerion allows that detail to settle him somewhat, though he remains ever suspicious about his brother's alleged sobriety.
He lifts his phone again, double-taps the screen, and checks the time.
19:12
He’s late, and Aerion does not possess Dunk’s number or account details to ask him where he is and who the hell he thinks he is keeping him waiting. He could pull up Daeron’s Instagram and find Dunk’s account in mere moments.
The service on his phone is terrible; his data won't work.
He could use the WiFi to check. (He won't).
He slips his phone back into his jacket pocket instead, and curls his fingers around his glass—a rum and Coke.
It’s his liquid courage, after all—one that he’s been very slowly nursing, knowing better than to get as pissed as a fart on his first time out since… Well, since whenever it was he’d last gone out and drank with anybody—certainly not since Maegor was born.
At the sound of raucous laughter outside, men drinking pints of Fosters from sweating glasses in the beer garden, the air filling with the sickly-sweet scents of watermelon and mango from vapes, Aerion allows his gaze to pass over the door and falls on the sight of a great hulking shadow with ginger-blonde hair that enters.
The shadow’s eyes scan the room, moving over heads, searching tables to find whoever it is he’s looking for, and at last land on Aerion. The man lifts his head in a small nod and raises a tentative hand in greeting, and Aerion’s irritation at his being late dies as if someone has thrown water on a fire, swallowing thickly as he rises to stand and nods in reply.
His palms are sweating. Why are they sweating?
“You made it, then,” he hums, rubbing his thumb over the small silver hoop on his left ear, nervously twitching and eager to do something with his hands, and Dunk nods.
“Sorry I’m late,” he says, an Irish lilt to his voice that piques Aerion’s interest in mere seconds like a dog hearing a sweet wrapper crinkle.
Daeron certainly didn’t mention that.
“Bus was a nightmare. Some pricks on the bus were checkin' everyone’s tickets and the traffic along the bridge—”
Aerion forces a smile, trying to pretend that he’s even been on a bus since moving to the area. It’s certainly not like London, with buses arriving every ten minutes as if the drivers will be whipped for their lateness.
“Dunk.” The man holds out a hand, then curls his fingers in toward his palm. “Do we hug? Shake hands?”
“First date?” Aerion asks, a brow raised, and Dunk shrugs slightly.
“First in a while. I reckon that makes two of us, though.”
It's not cruelly meant, though Aerion wrinkles his nose all the same, assuming that Daeron told Dunk just how quiet and lonely he is, parenting a child on his own without any friends, and only his family to help. It's a pity date; that's the only explanation.
God, he must think I’m pathetic.
Aerion then looks at Dunk properly—broad shoulders, a few buttons undone. His hair is long—longer than it had been in the photo that Daeron had shown him, though it suits him. He has auburn stubble, his eyes as blue as the goddamn sea, and he is tall. Really. Fucking. Tall.
“Jesus Christ,” is all Aerion can muster, and he holds out a trembling, sweaty hand, unsure whether or not they should shake hands as Dunk had asked.
They end up doing some sort of weird and awkward fist bump instead, which Aerion will certainly be grimacing over in days, weeks, or maybe even months to come.
“I know,” Dunk says awkwardly, rubbing at the back of his neck. “I’m tall.”
He slouches then, trying to make himself look much smaller than he already is, though it makes Aerion think all too vividly of an elephant trying to fit in a child’s playhouse. He might have laughed if he didn't feel so bloody nervous.
“Can I get you a drink?” he asks instead, clearing his throat slightly to try to hide the rasp of his voice, his mouth feeling suddenly very fucking dry.
“A Guinness would be grand, if you’re offering.”
Aerion nods once and turns back to the bar, tugging out his card to pay for Dunk’s drink and a top-up for himself, feeling that he’s in dire need of more alcohol to allow himself to brave any further conversation with the giant at his side.
When he turns at last, Guinness glass in one hand and his own drink in the other, he finds Dunk watching him intently, his eyes almost glassy, his cheeks red as he holds his jacket and fumbles with a loose thread on the collar.
“What?” Aerion asks, wiping his cheek on the shoulder of his jacket, fearing that he’s had something stuck there since he left home and failed to notice it after he’d slunk off to the gents to give himself a final once-over in the mirror.
“Daeron’s photos of you—” Dunk nods towards a vacant table away from the raucous punters around them, and they begin to walk towards it. They pass a bald man who is trying to lick his own elbow, whilst a mortified teenager is trying to use a dog-eared menu to hide the sight of his father embarrassing him in public. “I knew you were stunnin’," Dunk continues, clearing his throat, "but seein' you in person—”
Aerion almost trips over his own feet on the way to slink into a seat, Guinness wobbling almost violently, lapping at the rim of the glass as he goes to set it down and takes off his jacket, suddenly feeling boiling despite the cool air that whips around the open doors.
“Seeing me in person?” Aerion echoes, raising a brow, trying to appear nonchalant, though the previous compliment makes him feel his stomach twist incessantly.
“How the hell’s a good-lookin’ guy like you single? Dad or not.”
Aerion purses his lips and rubs a thumb across the sweating outside of his glass, hearing the faint squeak of his pad rubbing against it before he takes a small sip, trying to calm himself.
Why are you getting dewy-eyed and shy over a compliment? Are you twelve?
“I don’t get out much,” is all Aerion can offer, setting his glass down with a clunk, and watching as Dunk picks up his own.
He frowns at Dunk's glass for a moment, turning his head to see if someone else has left their glass at their table and stolen his. It’s filled with dark stout, a foamy head on it, though the glass in Dunk’s hand looks ridiculously small—shrunken, almost.
His hands are enormous.
“You work from home, your brother said?”
Aerion almost chokes, swallowing thickly, trying not to think of how tiny his own hand would look next to Dunk's—held in Dunk’s.
“IT,” he explains, pushing all thoughts of hand-holding and comparing lengths of their hands aside. “Work’s awful, clients are ridiculous, but I get to spend more time with my son.”
The vast majority of his coworkers are awful, too. Without a lick of sense, sending him the same questions every day—unwilling to learn any information themselves. He can send his colleagues four steps, including screenshots, red outlines showing them what to click, and they’ll still end up in an entirely different place, trying to delete all emails in their inbox when his instructions had shown them how to make their taskbar reappear.
“Is it like in The IT Crowd?” Dunk takes a sip of his drink and then looks at him expectantly.
“Have you tried turning it off and on again?” he and Aerion ask at the same time, which draws a ridiculous grin from Aerion.
What the fuck?
He’s hard-faced with everyone, all but glaring in every single Teams meeting he’s ever been forced to join, because a colleague lacked the mental capacity to type out a ten-word sentence in an email. But here he is, sharing a quote from a mid-noughties TV show with a man whom his brother had befriended after day-drinking at a LARP-fest.
“It works more often than you’d think, restarting things.” Aerion licks his lips, his head tilting slightly as he tries to lick away the humoured expression that clings to his mouth like honey. “I usually set up laptops, create accounts, manage networks and firewalls—that sort of thing.”
“Like your very own hacker man, then?”
The question earns Dunk a shake from Aerion. “More like trying to stop other people from hacking us. Making sure the plebs in the company don’t download malware because they want some random AI tool they found on Google to summarise a one-sentence message for them.”
“Would have thought you’d be more into finance,” Dunk tells him. “Family business, right?”
Aerion nods once. “My uncle’s—or at least it was until he and my cousin passed away. My cousin’s wife took over for a while, but it was too much for her, and my dad took over.”
“What got you changin' your path?” Dunk asks, a brow raised as he sips at his drink and licks away foam when it catches on his lip.
Aerion only allows his gaze to linger upon the sight of Dunk's mouth for a mere three seconds before he finds the words to reply—he counted. He isn’t so inebriated and unused to drinking that he'll get drunk after a glass and a half, though he does keep having images of himself climbing Dunk like a fucking tree to meet his height popping into his head. He’s unsure whether it's because of the booze or his own crude thoughts. Perhaps Daeron was right; he does need to get laid.
“What got me into IT?” Dunk nods, and Aerion continues. “I grew up around computers, and my uncle roped me into working for him for a while, but the hours were ridiculous, and Central was a cesspit.”
Dunk laughs then, shaking his head as a faraway look crosses his face. “Try Redbridge,” he offers. “Ilford.” He shivers, grimacing as if he's said something foul, and Aerion actually laughs, too, unable to hold back the sound, and Dunk smiles even wider.
“What about you?” Aerion asks, knowing that Dunk’s asking more than enough questions for both of them. “What brings a man from Ireland to Ilford, of all places, and then to… Where is it you live again?”
“Gorleston,” Dunk replied. “Not for much longer, hopefully. Tryin' to rent somewhere nearby—have a change of scenery.”
“Gorleston to Yarmouth—life-changing,” Aerion says with a playful roll of his eyes, and Dunk shrugs lightly.
“Men are better-lookin' here, from what I can tell,” is all he replies, cheeks pink again, and Aerion clears his throat, ducking his head as he stares at his glass, condensation wet against his thumbnail.
A loud, shrill sound fills the air, easily heard above the murmurs and jeers of the other pub-goers. Aerion reaches for his phone, his breath catching in his throat as he fumbles with the zip on his jacket pocket. Once in his hand, it takes him a few seconds to realise the screen is black and a picture of a red-cheeked Maegor looks back at him when he wakes it, whilst the noisy phone’s owner rises to stand, her phone pressed to her ear as she walks outside to take the call.
“You thought it was about your littlun, didn’t you?” Dunk asks, nodding at the phone in Aerion’s hand.
He clenches his jaw and sighs, setting his phone down on the table, the image of Maegor fading as the screen turns black again.
“I’ve not been out like this since he was born,” he admits, wiping his clammy palms against his thighs, his pulse still racing from the sound of a ringtone that wasn’t even his.
Almost six months of being at home, nervous to even open his front door and put rubbish in the bins out front, and he’s sitting in a pub, on a date, with an almost insultingly gorgeous man that he’s struggling to even look at properly. Aerion wants to punch himself in the skull or trip on a cobble outside and give himself brain damage so someone at the hospital can open his head and fix whatever's clearly wrong with him.
Aerion peeks across at him between his lashes, noticing the way that Dunk's head is at a tilt, and his lips are moving. Why are they moving?
Oh, he’s speaking.
“Hard, isn’t it?”
Aerion suspects that Dunk is repeating the question, realising that he was miles away and failed to hear him the first time.
Aerion dips his head once more, feeling like a fucking nodding dog, and has to remind himself to rein it in, giving Dunk a small smile, looking up from the blackness of his unlit phone. “More than I thought it would be.”
“Me mate Raymun—he has a littlun. Three now, all curls and smiles and sticky fingers from Wotsits, and the first night he went out with us after she was born, he jumped at every sound like he thought someone would call to tell him the house had burnt down.”
And had it? Aerion wants to ask, wanting to know that he isn’t alone in his fear of leaving his child at home.
“She was sleepin' when he got back—didn’t even twitch when he opened the bedroom door. Granted, her mam was lookin' after her, so he didn’t need to worry…but you do anyway.”
Aerion smiles at the table, trying to picture whether or not Maegor is asleep that very moment, milk-drunk and dreaming already, hands twitching against his head as he rubs his hair in his sleep.
Reaching across the table, Dunk extends a hand and gently places it on Aerion’s for a few short moments. “He’ll be alright,” he says then. “You’ll see.”
They share a small smile, half-drunk drinks sweating on their coasters, and Dunk’s hand almost feels molten against Aerion’s. His palm is dry, his fingers calloused from hard work, and they rasp over his knuckles in a way that makes him shiver when Dunk pulls his hand away, turning his head as a red-faced server walks past with a bowl of peas, seemingly distraught that someone had used the app to jokingly order for a friend who they knew would be at the pub.
“You hungry?” Aerion asks, nodding at the server as she passes, and Dunk raises a brow.
“For peas?”
“For anything.”
Dunk wets his lips, his cheeks beginning to redden as a small, dirty smile tugs at his mouth. Aerion purses his lips so he won’t smirk in return, wondering what sort of illicit activities might be racing through the too-tall man’s mind, though Aerion knows that his own thoughts are less than inappropriate. He thinks of hands in places other than his knuckles, of soft hair brushing against his skin—bright-blue eyes looking up at him from between his thighs.
He pulls down a mental shutter, screwing his eyes shut as he tries to block out the lewd thoughts before he starts readjusting himself in his seat and gets arrested for being some sort of sex pest.
“I’ve not eaten much today,” Dunk quietly explains, the tips of his ears turning as red as his face. “I get so nervous sometimes, I can’t keep a thing down.”
Aerion frowns, rather taken aback, surprised that a man of Dunk’s size would feel so anxious about something as simple as a date that he’d be clutching a toilet bowl, his stomach incessantly churning. He'd never admit that he almost felt the same, having had a stomachache for some hours, jittering from caffeine, and aching to pick up a cigarette when he had never even been a smoker.
“I think it might be the first time that anyone’s ever been anxious to meet me,” Aerion tells him instead, his lips twitching as he raises his drinking glass to his mouth, trying not to let Dunk’s admission go to his head, feeling a gnawing need to preen beneath the weight of his compliments like some scruffy little bird. He’d spent what felt like an age faffing over his hair before he left the house, trying to make it look groomed but not molested—effortless but not uncared for, though he feels as if it still doesn't sit right, and unknowingly lifts a hand to fiddle with it, a trait that seems to have passed on to Maegor, twirling his curls until he pulls out hair and it snags round his fingers.
“I can’t believe how white your hair is,” Dunk murmurs, watching as Aerion plays with it. “I’ve seen a photo of your dad and one of your other brothers. I thought it might’ve been bleached when Daeron showed me.”
“White hair runs in our family.” Aerion quickly lowers his hand and slips it beneath his thigh, squishing it against the seat of his chair, so he won’t keep playing with his hair. “I’ve thought about dyeing it before, trying something new—”
“Don’t.”
Aerion raises a brow, and Dunk gives a sheepish sort of laugh, his lips twitching. “I mean, it’s nice. I like it— I mean— It’s nice how it is. Suits you.” He lifts a hand to his own hair and tousles it slightly. “I’m due a cut of me own, but I keep forgetting to find a good barber. Me mates keep tellin' me it looks shit.”
“Sound like shit mates,” Aerion offers, though Dunk shakes his head.
“Nah, they’re sound, really.”
He doesn’t appear to sound offended, as most people would if their friends had been spoken of poorly. Aerion wonders if he’s the sort of bloke who usually defends his friends, even if they have been particularly shit—one of those men who thinks his friends can do no wrong. Aerion hates that way of thinking, of being loyal. He’s quick to point out the faults of his siblings and father, though, admittedly, he scarcely recognises his own faults, not that he has them, of course. He wonders if Dunk will be the sort of man to point them out for him, if and when he finds them.
He becomes lost somewhat, on another train of thought altogether, as he watches Dunk drink his Guinness, focusing on the way his Adam’s apple dips when he swallows, of how he’s been looking at him nervously beneath his lashes, his cheeks reddening as if he’s been looking at someone he really fancies. Aerion’s sure that he’s likely been looking at Dunk the same way, too, and feels his face heat in mortification.
Aerion wet his lips, preparing to ask Dunk about his work—the joys of handymanning and whether or not he’s any good at putting up shelves, and if he has the app to order them some food, when the world seems to catch up with him. The screen of his phone lights up with a 0.5 picture of Egg’s bulbous face, his ringtone almost violently loud as the name ‘Egghead’ flashes above his brother’s contact photo, and dread curls in the pit of his stomach, bubbling like frogspawn.
Aerion grips his phone with an immediately trembling hand as he answers the call, bile already burning at the back of his throat. Questions pour from his mouth before he’s even given Egg ample time to tell him why he’s calling, the sound of panicked squeaking and crying blares through the speaker.
He swiftly begins to jab his thumb against the volume button to lower the sound, Maegor's shrill crying and Egg’s voice both so loud that other punters begin to turn to seek out the source as if someone is inside and bludgeoning an infant in the pub.
Dunk slumps back against his seat, a brow raised in concern as he looks between Aerion and the phone at his ear, looking almost worried by the crying and obvious panic he’d heard exploding through the phone.
“What’s happened? Why are you calling? What’s wrong?”
The sound of wailing can still be heard in the background, a furious-sounding Maegor as Egg retches loudly, burping as if he’s seconds away from being sick. Water is running, too. The house will likely be flooded once he's back home.
“I know you said that he spewed a lot, but GOD, Aerion, you weren’t lying.”
“What?” Aerion sits ramrod straight, his eyes boring holes into the back of a bald man’s head, staring so harshly as he pictures himself throttling his brother for making Maegor sick that the man turns and pulls a face at him, seemingly feeling his hateful gaze on his bald, sunburnt head.
“What did you do? Did you not burp him between ounces like I told you?”
“I did, and that’s why he was sick! There’s so much of it, Jesus Christ." He retches again. "It was like something from The Exorcist.”
Another burp sounds, and Aerion grimaces, trying not to listen to the sound of his brother heaving in his ear whilst his son cries in the background.
“I’m coming home,” Aerion announces, ending the call as he rises from his seat and tugs on his jacket.
He looks at Dunk, finding the man nodding slowly as he pushes back from the table and stands as well.
Aerion shoves his phone into his pocket, whatever pooling warmth he'd felt in his belly from the heat of the man's hand having died the second his phone had emitted its first ring, replaced by gnawing anxiety as he pictures sodden floors and bile-spattered walls.
“I'm sorry. My son's ill, and my dickhead brother is doing a shit job of looking after him.”
It sounds like utter bullshit, like a poor excuse someone would make to escape a date, except it's real, and Aerion hopes that the obvious sounds of distress from his phone make Dunk think he's being truthful about the whole ordeal instead of lying out of his arse.
“You're fine,” Dunk tells him, so tall, standing before a light that he casts a great, looming shadow over Aerion’s front. “D’you want me to find a cab?”
“No,” Aerion swiftly replies. “Thanks. I'll run home.”
Unfit is not the word for him. He’s been spending too much time at home, going outside very little. His evenings are spent cleaning the kitchen or refolding endless piles of laundry, not hitting the tarmac or doing endurance training in the gym down the road.
Can he even run home? Will he survive that? He’s made one too many jokes about joggers in their Lycra looking as if they’ve pins in their shoes as they pound down the middle of the road in their hi-vis vests—surely karma will finally come to visit him and leave him broken and squished on the road for trying.
“Run?”
“It’ll only take about ten minutes.”
He’ll end up a stitch-ridden, sweaty mess with shin splints, and Aerion knows that he’ll still be wheezing come tomorrow, aching so badly that he’ll be moaning in agony every time he moves. He doesn’t want the hassle of waiting for a cab, getting stuck in traffic near the bridge. He knows what the traffic lights are like, and unless Dunk has a car or a bike nearby, returning on foot is his only choice.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have— I shouldn’t have agreed to this.”
Dunk’s expression falls, the hurt so obvious on his face. He rigidly nods, holding onto the back of the chair he'd just risen from, and Aerion barely spares him another look as he stalks towards the door, sidestepping a bald man with a hefty beard woven into a scraggly plait, and breaks into a run almost immediately once he’s outside.
He dashes over the zebra crossing, scarcely looking left or right as he crosses the one-way street, and flees like a thief into the approaching night, his ankles already aching, his loafers not made for sprinting—long-distance or otherwise—promising to leave him with blisters before he's even halfway home.
Never again, he tells himself. Never fucking again.
Aerion stands outside his house, keys in hand, leaning against the short wall that separates his house from the one next door, feeling as if he might keel over without it as he fumbles for the front door key, feeling as if he’s fled from war.
Lifting his head, he faintly catches sight of his own reflection in the glass, huffing like a beast as he shoves the key into the lock, hair skew-whiff. He thinks that Maegor might be more terrified to see him looking like a red-faced and sweaty animal compared to whatever he might have felt from throwing up so violently before, and tries to control his breathing.
Aerion turns the key sharply, bracing himself with a wheezing breath, expecting to hear more shrill crying from within, though he feels even more sick to his stomach when he opens the door, and the house is entirely devoid of human speech.
The washing machine whirs, the drum bangs loudly as if someone has filled it with several pairs of shoes, overfilled when he’d turned it on earlier, and Aerion jumps almost a foot in the air, clinging to his keys as if he intends to jab them into someone’s eye socket.
Thump, thump, thump.
He recovers quickly, wiping the sweat from his face with the sleeve of his jacket, and clears his throat, feeling raw from running through the cold.
“Aegon?” he asks, trying not to slam the door as he storms through to check the front room, still in his shoes, with blisters on his ankles, and finds it empty.
“Egg?”
He feels ridiculous, calling out the stupid childhood nickname, and feels his heart in his throat as he searches each room downstairs—the kitchen, his office. He even glances outside at the garden through the blinds, though it’s mainly dark and the shed light is off, and only the haunting, orange glow of the light in the alley shines into the garden, and so he paces upstairs instead.
At the top of the stairs, at the far end of the landing across from him, Maegor’s bedroom door is shut, no light glowing beneath the door. The yellow-and-orange macrame decoration that Egg insists is a lion dangles from the nail on the door, not swinging as if someone has recently been in or out.
“Egg?” he hisses, then spying light under the bathroom door, hearing the extractor fan whirring inside, water splashing from the tap.
He wrenches the door open without knocking, his questions dying on his tongue as Egg turns to him, a brow raised as he stands bare-chested, a heap of blue-grey fabric on the floor at his feet from where he’s removed his T-shirt.
“What?” Egg asks, keeping his voice low. “I don’t need help wiping, thanks, Aerion.”
“Maegor was screaming when you called,” Aerion reminds him. “What the fuck happened?”
“Oh.” Egg lifts his hands from the sink, water dribbling onto the floor. Aerion tries not to look at it, knowing that later on he’ll walk across the puddles in his socks, get them wet and feel violent because of it. “He’s fine.”
Fine
Fine?
Aerion wants to drown his brother in the toilet bowl.
“Fine? You said it was like something out of The Exorcist! How much came out?”
Egg dries his damp hands on the thighs of his shorts, then reclaims his shirt from the floor, undoing the bundle to reveal a milky spot that might contain a mere teaspoonful of upchuck. He's cringing as he shows Aerion the dribble on the fabric, and it takes every ounce of restraint that Aerion has not to strangle him.
“He finished his bottle, and I put him to sleep. I had to dress him in one of those Build-A-Bear outfits, by the way. I think the rest of his clothes are manky or in the wash. I did message you again, like nearly ten minutes ago.”
Aerion stares at the vomit stain, blinking across at his brother, wanting to smear the vomit in his face or make him eat it.
“You made me sprint back home from town because he possetted?”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“This!” Aerion seethes, pointing to the lump of milky sick. “This is normal! It’s not like this morning when I said he projectile vomited on the floor. That was like something from The Exorcist.”
At eighteen, Egg suddenly seems smaller. All knees and elbows, taller than his older brother, his shoulders curl inwards, and he avoids Aerion’s gaze as if he’s been screaming at him. Which, if Aerion’s being honest, he sort of has been, just quietly so he doesn't wake Maegor.
“You kept being worried about him being sick before! I didn’t want to—I didn’t want to get shouted at if I pretended he was fine.”
“I wouldn’t have shouted.”
They both glare at one another, knowing that he certainly would have, and Egg merely raises a brow in reply. They fall into silence, the extractor fan still whirring, a neighbour’s dog barking outside in their garden as someone walks down the alley and disturbs it.
“How was he?” Egg then asks, quick to change the subject from sick and films about possessed young girls. “Dunk?”
Aerion pulls a face and turns, not dignifying him with a response, leaving Egg in the bathroom as he begins to make his way downstairs and hangs his jacket on the coat rack by the front door. He hears the click of the bathroom light, the sound of footfalls behind him, and slumps down on the sofa in the front room. A soft toy squeaks furiously beneath his head, though Aerion barely has the energy to care as it lets out a dying wail in his ear, fluffy limbs flailing as if he’s squashed an actual cat.
He throws an arm over his face, shutting out the light of the TV, which sits on mute, Bruce Willis on a high-speed police chase in his flying cab, Leeloo thrown around in the back, mouth open and silently screaming.
Egg hovers by the door, no longer clutching his vomit-stained shirt, covered in goosebumps from the chill of the hallway, unable to find another shirt to cover himself with. He certainly won’t dare ask Aerion for one, not now.
“I’m sorry your date was ruined,” he says quietly, crossing one leg over the other as he leans against the doorframe, unsure whether he is allowed to enter the room or not.
“It was scarcely a date,” Aerion harrumphs, pulling the sad-looking toy lion out from under his head, trying to refrain from throttling it as he launches it across the room, landing in the overspilling toy box that sits beside the radiator.
“Was he nice?”
Aerion waits a beat, then two. He inhales sharply, picking at his nails, remembering how Dunk apologised for his lateness, complimented him, and had been unsure whether to shake his hand or give him a fist bump in greeting.
“Disgustingly so.”
Egg pads into the room, pulls out a chair from the dining table and sits on it, the wood creaking beneath him as he rests an elbow on the table. “What’s the problem then? He’s tall, kind.”
“He was late.”
The younger brother rolls his eyes and then turns towards the window, fumbling with the metal blind slats at the sound of a key in the front door. “Daeron,” he murmurs, spying their brother on the doorstep, glasses atop his head as if the sun is beaming outside.
The front door opens, footsteps sound, plastic bags crinkle. The front door shuts, then the porch door, and a mop of honey-blonde hair pops around the doorway to the front room as Daeron looks at Egg and then frowns at the sight of Aerion sprawled out on the sofa, seemingly surprised to see him there.
“Never,” Aerion begins, his face red and furious as he pushes himself upwards, glaring across at his eldest brother, “try to set me up again.”
“What the hell are you doing home so early?” Daeron asks, twisting his wrist as he looks down at his watch, the display glowing blue-white. His sunglasses slip down his forehead and land on the tip of his nose. He pulls them off and folds them up, shoving them into his pocket. “It’s almost eight.”
“Why are you even here?” Aerion retorts. “You’re meant to be in London.”
“Client fell through,” is all Daeron offers, walking into the front room and setting two bags down on the table, which Egg begins to rifle through in mere seconds, packets rustling as he explores the contents.
“I went to Lidl. I got some picky bits for Egg and me. M&S was closed.” He turns to their youngest brother, a brow raised. “Why have you got your nips out?” he asks, noting Egg’s lack of shirt, and flicks his chest. “Breastfeeding Maegor?”
Egg pulls a face, opens a bag of popcorn and shoves his hand inside, shrugging Daeron off. “He threw up on me,” he grumbles, cramming a handful into his mouth. “I called Aerion. He came back home.”
Pulling off his jacket and hanging it over the back of a dining chair, Daeon then curls his hands over the back of the seat, bending down as he looks at Egg. “You made him come home from a night out, where he could have potentially got his hole filled, over a bit of sick?”
Aerion merely twitches his brows, and Egg grumbles under his breath, mouth filled to the brim with sweet and salty popcorn.
He realises the implication then—Daeron calling him a bottom.
Is he a bottom? He’s not sure. He’s never even been with another guy to know whether or not he’d be getting his hole filled, or if he’d be the one doing the filling.
Aerion opens his mouth to complain, though his words never meet the air.
“You have to go back,” Daeron tells him, a brow raised as he glances across at him. “You look...wet. Did it rain?”
“I will not.” Aerion tugs at his sweat-soaked shirt, grimacing at the sensation of the maroon fabric as it clings to his skin. “I ran back home, practically fleeing the fucking bloke. Aegon made it sound as if Maegor were Regan MacNeil, spraying the walls with the contents of his stomach.”
“Egg, you’re such a little twat,” Daeron mutters, leaning across to smack his hand against his youngest brother’s bald head, earning a muffled complaint as popcorn falls from Egg’s mouth and dapples the table and his lap with damp, sticky puffs.
Aerion begins to unbutton his shirt, fanning himself with the damp fabric, and Daeron throws him a glance, trying not to grin at his next question. “How was Dunk? Charming? Tall?”
“You should have said he was Irish.”
Aerion leaves both brothers in the front room so he can dump his shirt in front of the washing machine, kicking it into a heap in the corner by the cupboard where he keeps the laundry detergent, iron and endless plastic bags.
“What’s wrong with being Irish?” Daeron calls, following after Aerion as he reclaims the Lidl bags from the dining table, a brow raised as he looks over the kitchen, surprised it's clean for once, and finds Aerion rummaging through the tumble dryer in search of a clean top.
“What’s wrong with being Irish?” he repeats, the question somewhat muffled by the whirring of the still-turning washing machine as he sets the shopping bags on the side.
“You know I like accents.” Aerion goes to pull a clean shirt over his head, then grimaces, knowing better than to put a clean shirt on a dirty, sweaty body. “I need a shower,” he complains. “I feel sticky.”
At the sound of a buzz, Daeron pulls his phone from his pocket and proceeds to snort, holding the device out to Aerion, a picture of a smiling Dunk on the screen as the man tries to call him.
“Well, what do you know?” he drawls, just shy of grinning.
“Don’t you fucking dare answer that in front of me,” Aerion warns, feeling his face begin to heat as he bunches up the T-shirt in his hands as if imagining it's his brother’s face.
Daeron tilts his head, swipes to answer the call and holds the phone to his ear. “Speak of the Devil. Alright, mate? How did it go?” he asks, fully grinning as he meets Aerion’s furious gaze.
“Fuck you, Daeron,” he snarls, turning sharply and almost smacking into his brother. “I’m having a shower.”
Daeron almost cackles into his phone, quickly silencing himself so as not to disturb Maegor as Aerion walks upstairs, red-cheeked and furious as he shuts himself in the bathroom and takes in his reflection in the cabinet’s mirrors again.
Hair askew, his face still red, and sweat beading on his brow, his under eyes puffy and somehow darker than before, he wonders if Dunk has functioning eyes.