Chapter Text
Ever since Andrew could remember—which was pretty much forever—he’d had an imaginary friend.
Well, sort of. His imaginary friend was a very distinct voice in his head called Aaron, who didn’t like his mother because she would always hit him, and leave him locked in his room whilst she went off with needles and men. Andrew was sometimes perplexed at how specific his imagination could be.
Aaron knew about Samuel, and James, and Harrison, because Andrew had told him, hidden away in a small, dark closet with his body shaking and aching. Why do they touch you? Aaron had asked, sounding upset. Probably because Andrew was upset, too.
I don’t know, his seven-year-old self had whimpered, lost and scared and alone. I don’t know.
Imaginary friends fell out of fashion pretty fast when Andrew finally went to school: Andrew Doe, the foster kid. Andrew Doe, the weirdo who talked to himself. Don’t go near the short one: He’s a freak.
He spent his time instead in the small, decrepit libraries that those schools had to offer, hiding in the corner with a book that was probably too hard for him to read but he didn’t care: He waddled through it, Aaron asking about what happened at the end of every chapter. He couldn’t read as well as Andrew could. Probably because he wasn’t real.
It was the realisation that Aaron was most certainly a detailed, intricate figure of Andrew’s imagination that forced him to stop talking to him. This lasted for years: The silence was almost echoey in Andrew’s head as he moved from home to home, none of them any good.
Until Cass.
She was warm and gentle. She baked him cookies and taught him how. Richard took him to the movies and drove him too and from school. They were the kindest people Andrew had ever met, and Andrew clung onto them fervently.
Then Drake, their son, came home. He was tall and broad shouldered and smiled like a wolf: He pinned Andrew down into the mattress and Andrew wished his pillows would just swallow him. Mornings were spent squirrelling away bloodied sheets and staring at himself in the mirror as hopeless tears rolled over young adolescent cheeks. Why me? He’d thought, desperate. Why me?
Andrew, Aaron said, astonished after all the years of radio silence. Is that you?
“You’re not real.” Andrew whispered. “You’re not real.”
Is something wrong? Something has to be wrong. Are you hurt?
Andrew ignored him in favour of finding the razor tucked under the spare face clothes in the sink’s spare drawer. When he climbed into the shower, he watched the water dilute his blood, and thought of the way that everything had a cost.
*
Officer Phil Higgins was an overbearing man who knew Andrew from a program for troubled kids within his area, where he gathered them all into a circle and forced them into bonding activities. Board games. Backyard baseball. ‘Buddy’ forming activities. Andrew was required to go, due to his ‘lacking social skills’, but he almost never participated. The pig never pushed him, never asked why he wore black long-sleeves in the middle of a Californian summer and never encroached on Andrew’s personal space, which was why Andrew continued to put up with the man’s antics.
The only actual conversation he and the pig ever had was when the man held Andrew back after one afternoon session, much to Andrew’s irritation.
“I went to a baseball game on the weekend,” he said, like it was something Andrew wanted to hear. “I met someone very interesting.”
Andrew stepped out of his space and made for the exit: When Phil said “Andrew, please listen,” he stood, the revolted shudder making the entire frame of his body tremble. He glanced over his shoulder for merely a second, but the officer took his chance. “I met a boy just like you. He looked identical to you. I think you might have been separated in the system at birth. His name is Aaron.”
That was enough for Andrew, who sprinted away from Phil’s curious gaze. In a brief lapse of control, he silently yelled at Aaron: You’re real?
Yes. Are you?
Yes, Andrew thought, devastated.
I met a police officer, today. He said that you’re real, Andrew. That you’re here, in California. Are you? Can I see you?
Fuck off, Andrew snarled, wishing he could run away from the voice inside his own fucking head. He didn’t want Aaron anywhere near the Spear family, with Cass’s gentle hugs and Richard’s genuine laughs. He didn’t want Aaron near Drake’s malicious intentions, facing the same fate that Andrew did every night. Fuck off, don’t talk to me, don’t come near me.
Andrew—
Andrew shut himself inside his bedroom and made a feral snarling noise, wishing he could cut Aaron out of his head. Rain splattered carelessly against the small window of the bathroom, so uncharacteristic of California’s sunny skies and relentless cheer that he had to look away.
Everything was wrong. Everything was so wrong.
It wasn’t until the pig himself came over and explained to Cass and Richard what had happened that Andrew decided to do something preventative: From the hallway, Drake grinned, fisting a tuft of Andrew’s hair in his too-tight grasp.
“We’ll have so much fun together,” He whispered against the shell of Andrew’s ear. “The three of us. Won’t that be exciting?”
That night, Andrew crept out with a flask of gasoline from Richard’s shed and a box of matches before Drake could sneak his way into Andrew’s room, walking to his school under the veneer of darkness.
He watched the baseball pitch burn, sitting in the batter’s cage and letting the heat lick his sweat from his skin. When the police arrived he went gladly.
“Don’t let there be any more kids,” Andrew insisted as he was being shoved into a cruiser. Phil Higgins looked at him, perplexed. “Promise me that there won’t be anymore.”
“Andrew, what are you talking about?”
It was useless. He burrowed into the corner of the police car and let the cool metal of his handcuffs around his bloody wrists draw him out of his head.
He did it for Aaron. He did it for the voice in his head, who could be real after all.
If that didn’t make him insane, he didn’t know what did.
*
The first time Andrew and Aaron met—in the parking lot of the Seattle Juvenile Detention Facility—they’d just stared at each other. Their mother had been too sick to come all the way to greet him, something about a chronic illness that probably wasn’t very chronic. Instead Luther and Maria, and their squirrelly son Nicholas, welcomed Andrew with open arms.
“We’re very glad to have you,” Luther said.
“Let’s go home,” Maria insisted.
They sat in the back of the rental car, venturing back to the airport with Nicky sitting purposefully between the two brothers. Forever an ice-breaker.
Andrew? Aaron asked, hesitantly. Andrew looked out the window. Please—I just want to know if I’m actually insane or not.
I hate that word, Andrew said, scathingly. Aaron looked down to where his hands were entangled in his lap.
Sorry, he said, and actually sounded like he meant it. He was kinda pathetic. Andrew finally looked around Nicky at his brother, who caught his eye. Aaron was littered with bruises and sickly pale, even if he tried to cover it up with his loose polo shirt.
Does she hurt you? Andrew asked.
Andrew—
I asked you a fucking question.
Slowly, Aaron nodded. Andrew settled back into his chair and glared at the seat in front of him, Maria’s tangle of curls peeking through the gap between the chair’s headrest and body, wondering what kind of woman Tilda Minyard would be, to give up one son and not the other, and then treat the one she had like shit. Ideas wafted across the empty expanse of his mind, forcefully blank to avoid exploitation.
That was fine. Andrew would cross that bridge when he came to it.
*
“No.” Andrew said. It was the first time Andrew had ever spoken to Luther, six months since being initiated into the Minyard-Hemmick household. He’d spent that time convincing Aaron of his plan to get rid of their biological mother, who continued to hit Aaron even when Andrew warned her not to. Aaron didn’t want his mother to die.
(She’s family, Andrew, he’d said silently. She’s family. Andrew had just looked at him and reminded him that he was family, and that they had always been there for each other, and that there was no way he’d leave Aaron now.)
“No?” Luther inquired. “But Cass and Richard would love to see you. They were very shocked when you were arrested. They’d wanted to adopt you, Andrew.”
“No.” Andrew insisted, voice hoarse. “You do not let them anywhere near Aaron.”
Luther still wasn’t sold. “Why not?”
“Drake - he -” Raped me. Because someone always was.
Luther’s smile was beseeching and patronising, and drained every last rivulet of energy from within Andrew, who was exhausted and angry at the world. He’d just found his family - why was fate so insistent on tearing it away from him again?
“I’m sure it was just a misunderstanding, Andrew.”
Misunderstanding. Misunderstanding. Misunderstanding.
Right. Of course.
Andrew turned on his heel and marched out of Luther’s perfect little living room, where he was sat on the white linen couches with a cup of tea and his little wooden cross on the mantelpiece. By the time Andrew had grabbed his coat from the Hemmick’s pristine entrance corridor and ignored Maria’s inquiry about staying for dinner, the plan was already in place.
People always underestimated the lengths to which Andrew would go to protect what little family he had: He supposed that lack of insight about Andrew’s limits would come in handy when orchestrating everything under their noses. The only person who knew him, really, was Aaron, but he spent most of his time hooked up on their mother’s shit to read whatever Andrew was up to now.
Andrew would kill Tilda. Nicky would come back from Germany. Luther would forget all about the Spears, and Aaron would be safe.
Perfect.
*