#robzie

“Oh wow that’s tragic” he comments. For John’s benefit. For his own. If he says it out loud, he might believe it. Might rework the image into one that does not bother him. Knows he is fighting a losing battle even before he starts.

Tears his eyes from Roberts back finally to look at John. A quick nod goodbye. Looks away before he the image is any more committed to memory. Can’t help but know he will be picturing all the other ways Robert gives himself to people anyways. Too easily. Too quickly. As if they deserve to see him, have him. As if he is not something to be worshiped and guarded.

He walks away and doesn’t look at them. Pretends he cannot feel Robert’s eyes following him. Pretends it is not those eyes that make him hold his head higher.

(Finds an excuse to leave. To drive away – quick text to John and Vinny with some vague excuse about work. Knows he will not be able to take seeing Robert in that same shirt tomorrow. Hair tousled by someone else’s hands. Lips bruised by another’s teeth. Knows he will fall apart if he has to look at a Robert who is truly no longer his)

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The week and a half do him good. Make him almost believe he is ready to face a Robert who is more a stranger than a missing piece of him. The hole is still there – festering and ugly, red and angry and rotting at his insides. He knows he will never be rid of it. Could never even clean out the wound much less close it. But he also knows the Robert he will find will no longer be the cure. Aaron is too far gone to save. He must simply live with the stench of decay.

He has pictured this new Robert over the past handful of days – a Robert who belongs to another man. Cocky the way he was when he first got Aaron. When his mother hated him and Paddy would rather have Aaron throw himself off a cliff than into his arms. A Robert who would look them both in the eye and dare them to push him away. Sure, of himself to a fault – all mocking grins and fighting words. Sure, he would win. (Knowing he already had.)

The days he is less sure he still knows Robert he pictures a softer scene. A Robert that won’t shout it from the pub not because he’s afraid but because he does not have to. A Robert who can make that statement in gestures that come easily to him now. Arm around a man who is too tall and too lean. Whose clothing fit him to tightly and who doesn’t have to hide his skin under layers out of fear of his own past. A man who does not weigh him down with his issues the way Aaron always had. A Robert who can as easily give himself to a bloke as he so often did to women.

The Robert he finds when he enters the pub however is not any of those. He is a Robert whose smiles come easier – more genuine but also more fleeting. As if the fight is not to get them on his face but to make them stick. He is laughing with Mackenzie and Matty. A beat after both other men but genuinely. Over some anecdote Aaron was too late to properly catch. Robert seems to be the object of mockery, but they are laughing with him rather than at him. The rot on Aaron’s chest spreads. Infects parts of his life Robert was not supposed to have touch. The Mack’s easy quips which Aaron had gravitated towards like a castaway drifting. The grins he had stored in a separate part of himself refusing to see them as similar – refusing to acknowledge that those similarities had drawn him to the Scot.

Robert sees him and lifts his pint in greeting. (It takes him to long. Minutes after Aaron had walked through the door. Like his brain is no longer attuned to Aaron’s location instinctively. Like Aaron’s eyes don’t burn into skin like Robert’s burn into his. Like he is just another body that walked in – faintly familiar but not intimately known. Like Robert couldn’t undo him with a look. Like Aaron hadn’t once been able to do the same.)

Aaron stops looking. Knows he should have turned away long before Robert noticed.  Nods at Kerry for a pint and pretends that the lack of Robert’s eyes on him don’t burn more than their presence.

“Hey mate” Aaron reaction is delayed by his inhale. Not because it was not the voice he was hoping for. Not because the air in his lungs seems to be lacking since he entered the pub. (Pushes at that door of himself – the one that had crept open without his permission. Puts as much of himself he still has into shoving all the ugly red angry things back there. In the space of himself he has long known he would never get back.)

“Heya” He mumbles into his glass. Wants to drown in it. Settles for nodding at Mack instead giving him a once over before he turns away “Don’t let me ruin your fun”

“Ah” Mack replies as he signals Kerry down for another round of drinks. Laugh easy in his voice because he is not trying to hide it. “Prickly still, are we?”

Aaron’s anger spikes at the words. Grip tights on the fist he has half hidden in his sleeve. Wishes he could feel the nails biting skin. “Do one”

Mack’s laugh is easy again, mocking in a way that is not meant to sting but does. Hurts more when he can feel Robert’s eyes on him again. On them. “Settle down. Not gonna steal your man, Dingle. Well-“ he leans is head into Aaron. Voice conspiratory but a grin on his face that knows what it’s doing “Not so much yours to steal no more is he?”

“Excuse me?” He can’t help but look back at the table. Catches Robert’s eyes before his brain catches up to the burning heat of his body at the thought. A taller man. Taller than him and Robert. No longer unknown black styled hair but familiar curly brown as it peaks through Robert’s pale fingers. A large back of hard muscle Aaron knows can support real effort. Robert’s palm displayed against sun kissed skin. Mack’s easy laugh swallowed by a mouth that he knows too well. There is no heart in his chest to break. But he can feel his world rearrange. Collapse on itself as the door is ripped off his hinges and all that is Robert and Aaron and RobertandAaron comes pouring out.

He can hear Mack still talking but he has not been listing. His eyes are locked on green ones who have not looked away. There is a challenge there, the barest hint of a smirk on his lips. The left corner just barely lifted. Aaron feels like he will throw up. All that rot with nowhere to go. Too all-consuming to be kept inside. “What did you just say.” Comes out instead. Clipped and breathless as if Aaron’s lungs had given up the fight.