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Chapter Text

BUTCHER OF BALTIMORE CAPTURED!

In a shocking turn of events, the ‘Butcher of Baltimore,’ the serial killer whose trademark is dismemberment (‘butchering’), and who is assumed to be guilty of 100+ murders in Maryland, has finally been revealed as a 16 year old local*. After a tip-off called in by the killer’s frightened father, the FBI broke into the family home but were unfortunately too late to save the killer’s parents, who were both killed via The Butcher’s preferred method of dismemberment. More details to come as we have them.

*due to child protection laws, this person’s name cannot yet be released.

**

So, twins.

The general consensus is that there’s a kind of telepathy, kind of intuition. A kind of unique equilibrium only possible when one is a perfect half of a perfect whole.

Except Aaron doesn’t know he’s a twin. Except Aaron doesn’t know he’s half of a whole. Except Aaron grows up, alone, and he doesn’t know he’s lopsided. 

When Aaron learns about Andrew – almost fourteen, and his brain already mostly developed – it’s too late for equilibrium. Aaron and Andrew’s relationship becomes an uneasy hourglass where one of them pours into the other, and then the other one pours into the other, and at any given time, one of them is empty.

Aaron learns about Andrew, even though he’s not meant to. The startled surprise of the police officer (Andrew’s police offer) sets him spinning, and Aaron tips the hourglass, and he finds Andrew, and he writes to him, and he sends his uncle to bring him home from juvie.

Andrew arrives, blank and gaunt and sharp enough to cut, and now Andrew tips the hourglass – Andrew sits in Aaron’s childhood home, in the home he was a single child in, and Andrew asks Aaron question after question about himself, and then he follows Aaron to school and positions himself at his shoulder as protector. 

It’s Aaron’s turn next, and he thinks long and hard how to protect Andrew back. He decides to teach Andrew the thing he knows best – how to survive his mother. He teaches Andrew how to diffuse her, how to avoid her, how to calm her quickly. Aaron teaches him everything he’s learned, and Aaron expects Andrew to be as grateful to him as he is to Andrew.

Instead, when it’s Andrew’s turn, Andrew does it all wrong, and instead of sidestepping, instead of enduring her, Andrew inflames their mother into the worst version of herself. Andrew says that this is him taking care of Aaron – but his mother is too scared of Andrew to hit him, and so now Aaron endures not only his own punishments, but Andrew’s too.

The car crashes, and Andrew ends up in the hospital, and Tilda ends up in the morgue, and Aaron wants Andrew to reach for him, needs Andrew to reach for him – but it’s Aaron’s turn, isn’t it? So Aaron compacts his ache into the cluster of nerves jammed behind his eyeballs, and Aaron reaches for Andrew instead. Are you okay? He asks. What do you need?

It’s Andrew’s turn next, but he doesn’t take it. Nicky comes instead, and Andrew’s turn gets postponed, because Nicky’s takes it instead.

It’s still Andrew’s turn, but now Nicky finds them a home, and Nicky finds them jobs, and Nicky builds them a life, and it’s still Andrew’s turn, but when Aaron starts high school again, instead of standing at Aaron’s shoulder, Andrew stays home and teaches himself to blow smoke rings.

Aaron finishes grade eleven, and it’s still Andrew’s turn.

Aaron finishes grade twelve, and it’s still Andrew’s turn.

Aaron graduates, Aaron gets accepted into college, Aaron goes, and it’s all still Andrew’s turn.  

Eventually, Aaron has no choice but to acknowledge that the twin bond is a myth. There is no special equilibrium, not even an uneasy hourglass one. Aaron will tell himself to stop waiting, and that it doesn’t matter to him what Andrew does. Aaron will tell himself that he believed himself to be an only child most of his life, and Aaron will tell himself that if he did it once, he can do it again.

**

So, the trouble with Katelyn Mackenzie is that she’s excruciatingly beautiful, and ten times smarter than him, and these two factors alone should be enough to thoroughly dismantle his crush – but for some reason, she is talking to him again, and if she keeps approaching him , he’s not going to walk away first.

“Okay, but think about it,” Katelyn says, and her face is so bright, and so warm, Aaron feels like curling into her like a leaf.

“About…”

“Joining cheer,” Katelyn says, as if this is not ridiculous.

“You can’t be serious.” 

“Why not?”

Aaron is… flabbergasted. “I can’t, that, why would I do that?”

Katelyn shrugs a shoulder, challenge alight in her expression. “Why wouldn’t you?

“I… I’m not…” Aaron doesn’t want to say it. “You know… I’m not a… a…”

“A?” Katelyn raises one perfectly plucked eyebrow. 

“A…” He coughs.  “A girl , you know.” 

Katelyn tsks at him.

“Boys can be cheerleaders, Aaron Minyard. Don’t be boring.”

Aaron is even more flabbergasted.

“Try again. You don’t want to be a cheerleader,” Katelyn prompts, “because…”

Aaron opens and closes his mouth several times. 

“Because… I’m not… flexible enough?”

Katelyn nods. “Okay, I’ll accept that.” She dimples at him. “Though, that is a fixable problem. Stretching is a thing, you know.”

Aaron still can’t quite find his feet.

“I… yes. But I… don’t want to?” 

Katelyn nods again, face solemn. “Very valid.”

They are standing in the hall outside their Thursday biochem class. When Kate pulled him aside on his way out with a “hey, can I ask you a question?”, he did not anticipate her asking him to join the cheer team. 

“Okay listen,” Katelyn says, and Aaron cannot even fathom what is going to come out of her mouth next. “If you’re not going to join cheer, then we need something else to do together.”

“I… what?”

At this point, Aaron should just keep his mouth closed, so that he stops gaping like an earthed fish.

“I want to see you. My schedule is stupid, with school and with cheer, but there’s gotta be a way?”

Aaron is still stuck on ‘I want to see you.’

“You want to… do stuff… with me?”

Katelyn nods firmly. “Yes.”

“But… why?” Aaron asks, completely at a loss.

“Because I like you,” Katelyn says, like it’s obvious. “I like when we have class together.”

“You… do?”

Another firm nod. “Absolutely. And the other pre-meds are dumbasses, and we need each other.”

We need each other .

“Unless I’m reading this wrong,” Katelyn says, sounding suddenly unsure. “I know I come on too strong sometimes. All the time. Tell me to go away, and I will.”

Aaron stumbles over himself with the speed he tries to get words out of his mouth. “No. I. That. Not. Please. No. Not go away.”

Katelyn laughs once – delighted, relieved – and they look at each other, and Aaron thinks they are wearing matching blushes.

“Would you, uh,” Aaron says, “want to, uh, study. Together. I mean. The two of us. We could. Um. Study?”

“Yes,” Katelyn says, very fast. 

“Okay,” Aaron says, flushed.

“Okay,” Katelyn says back.

And then they smile at each other, awkward, and Aaron thinks this may be the best day of his life.

“So, now it’s the two of us, against the world,” Kate beams. “Well, against a cohort full of morons,” she amends. “A cohort full of future doctors who are morons.”

The two of us, against the world.

“Yeah,” Aaron says. And then again, grinning, “Yeah.”

Katelyn laughs again, and holds out her pinky at him. Aaron, socially deprived child that he was (that he is), has no idea what she means by it.

“Put your pinky in mine, you dork. We’re pinky-promising, and those promises are unbreakable.”

Aaron puts his pinky through hers, maybe a little awkwardly. Katelyn smiles again, a little lopsided, and Aaron, reflexively, smiles back.

**

Aaron is very aware that in their game of ‘whose turn is it to care,’ the ball is currently in Andrew’s court, and Andrew doesn’t like when Aaron has friends who aren’t family, and Andrew likes even less when those friends are girls.

So, Aaron doesn’t tell him. At first.

It’s just…

Being friends with Katelyn is so bright, and so easy, and so good. It’s the zing of unlikely camaraderie, and the surprise shortcut of deep friendship that comes quicker than you expect. Ever since Andrew’s appearance in his life, Aaron has never had a friendship outside his brother’s supervision. He never had the kind of high school friendships other people have, the kind they keep and keep and keep post-graduation.

Aaron meets Kate, and Kate becomes college to him, and Kate becomes friendship to him, and he should tell Andrew, probably. He should tell Nicky, definitely. He knows that not saying anything reads like he’s ashamed of her, and he’s not ashamed. (He’s actually so proud he feels like bursting.)

Katelyn says ‘ two of us against the world ,’ and Aaron comes home, still blushing, still beaming, and the words are on the tip of his tongue.

“I met a girl,” he almost says. “I think she’s important. I think she’s going to be really important.”

Except he opens his mouth, and Andrew levels that unimpressed look at him, and Andrew has driven off every girl who has ever been important to him (has insulted them, has mocked them, has threatened them at knife point).

The words are on the tip of his tongue, and instead he says,

“How was Eden’s? Good shift?”

Andrew grunts and looks away, and doesn’t answer. Aaron shrugs like it doesn’t matter. (It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. If it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t hurt.)

“I’m gonna go study,” he says, and leaves the room without saying goodbye, and takes out his phone to talk to Katelyn instead.

**

“What are you doing for your elective next semester?” Katelyn asks.

They’re partway through their second year. They’ve got their books, and far too many papers, and the coloured cue cards Katelyn is fond of, all spread out in front of them on the floor of Katelyn’s living room. One of Katelyn’s roommates is poking around in the kitchen, and Aaron should really know her name by now, but he really doesn’t.

Aaron worries the edge of his textbook. “Okay, don’t laugh at me.”

“Aaron, I will not laugh at you.”

“You might.”

Katelyn’s face is very solemn. “I promise I will not.”

Aaron sighs. “Okay.”

“Wait,” Katelyn says, eyes brightening. “Can I guess?”

“My elective?”

“Yeah.”

Aaron shrugs. He leans his head in his hand, and feels a tug in his chest when Katelyn unconsciously mirrors him.

“Philosophy of Math?”

“Ha,” he laughs. “No.”

“Christian Symbolism in Contemporary TV?”

“Yeah no.”

“Um…” Katelyn scrunches up her face really tightly, in what Aaron now knows is her concentrating face. Eventually, she sighs in defeat. “Yeah I got nothing. Is it one of those pop culture classes? Anthropology of the Simpsons, or whatever?”

Aaron takes a moment too long to respond (He has become unfortunately distracted by Katelyn’s lips. He slaps himself internally. Focus, man ).

“Um, I was thinking about criminology,” Aaron finally admits.

Kate tilts her head. “Why is that embarrassing?”

Aaron pulls himself up to sitting. 

“The Intro To Crim next semester is focussed on the criminal justice system.”

“Okay?”

Aaron wraps his arms around his drawn up knees. It’s the way he sits most often at the house when he, Andrew and Nicky share the living room. He tells himself it is not a protective posture.

“My brother went to juvie,” Aaron says, too fast, avoiding her eyes. “I don’t really get him. I thought that if I… Yeah, never mind, it’s stupid.”

Now Katelyn sits up.

“K, that’s not stupid. Actually, that’s very beautiful.”

“He probably won’t care,” Aaron says, and he still can’t meet Kate’s eyes. He holds his knees maybe a little tighter.

Katelyn scooches a little closer, so she can put her hand on his knee. Her hands always run a little warm – he can feel her touch through the fabric of his jeans.

“But part of you must think he might?” Kate tries, “For you to even think of it?”

“I don’t know, maybe,” Aaron says, and Katelyn’s hand squeezes his knee.

He finally looks at her, feeling overexposed, and Katelyn smiles that little uneven smile he’s only ever seen her smile at him.

“Would it make you feel better or worse if we took it together?”

“Better,” Aaron says immediately. “Five thousand times better.”

Katelyn smiles wider. 

“Okay,” Katelyn says, and that thing in his chest that is tied to her tugs a little harder, “let’s go fall in love with criminology!”

**

“I am not in love with criminology,” Katelyn says, two weeks into CRIM 1000: Introduction to Criminal System. “I think I actively hate criminology.”

Aaron is inclined to agree. The material is dry and depressing, and their teacher is an older white man who derails their lectures constantly with stories about his ‘friends on the force.’ Two weeks in, Aaron thinks he’s already got his takeaway – the American legal system is shit.

“We could drop it,” Aaron suggests. He roots through his bag for his calendar. “I don’t think we’ve passed the cut off yet.”

Katelyn puts her hand on his arm to stop him. Her fingers linger maybe a little too long. This is something they’ve been trying lately: casual, friendly, platonic touch. They are both pretending that they touch anyone else as much as they’ve been touching each other.

“Aaron,” Kate says, and then, with emphasis: “ Andrew .”

Aaron wants to groan. Katelyn is very good at keeping him accountable, and he appreciates it, and also he hates it.

“It’s going to go bad, Katelyn. It always goes bad.”

“Weren’t you taking this for him?” She purses her lips. “Please tell me we are taking this horrible course for a reason.”

Now Aaron does groan. “Kate, I don’t want to talk to him. He’s going to judge me.”

“Sounds like he already does that all the time.”

“Exactly.”

Katelyn tilts her head at him. “You think this will be worse than usual?”

Aaron shrugs, perhaps too emphatically. “I don’t know.”

“I’m projecting,” Katelyn says, “but maybe you think it might be better than usual? And that’s what’s scary?”

Aaron puts his head in his hands. Kate puts her arm around his shoulders tentatively, and he softens into her. He thinks he likes her touch maybe more than he should.

“You are so much braver than you think,” she says quietly to him. 

For some reason, this puts tears in Aaron’s eyes. He blinks, hard, until his eyes clear.

“You’re not going to let me get away with not doing this, are you?” Aaron asks.

Katelyn squeezes him a little tighter.

“Stop writing your essay here with me,” Kate says. “Go home and work on it there. We’re learning about juvie. Maybe Andrew will help you, if you ask.”

“My brother will not talk to me about juvie for an essay .”

Kate stands, pulls her backpack on, and looks at him, eyes calculating.

“If you talk to him about it, I’ll buy you ice cream. And if he’s an asshole, I’ll buy you fries too, and even pretend I don’t think it’s gross when you dip them in.”

Aaron feels his face pull into a smile. “How about if he’s an asshole, you have to eat the fries dipped in ice cream, and I get to laugh at your this-is-gross face?”

Kate rolls her eyes. “That sounds horrible. Okay.”

“Okay,” Aaron says, smiling, and Katelyn holds out her hand, and he takes it.

(Okay, so this is also something they are doing now. Hand holding can be platonic though. It’s platonic. Just a nice little platonic hand holding, and it doesn’t mean anything. Definitely not.)

**

Even with Katelyn’s urging, Aaron gets home late. In a rare turn of events, Aaron even gets home last. 

When he comes in the front door, Andrew and Nicky are both still wearing their black work clothes, and are nearly liquefied in the living room. Andrew’s bartender apron hangs off the back of his chair, and Nicky’s dark hair is matted to his forehead with sweat. As usual, they are both unintentionally dusted with club glitter.

“Bad shift?” Aaron asks.

Nicky grumbles something incomprehensible. Andrew says nothing at all.

Aaron takes off his shoes, hangs his coat on the back of the door. Feeling like he’s carrying a live bomb, he carries his backpack over with him to his usual spot.

“So I’m taking a criminology class,” Aaron starts. 

Aaron watches Nicky rally himself from exhaustion into support.

“That’s so cool, Aaron!”

Andrew does not turn his way. His eyes are fixed on the TV, which would make more sense if the TV were actually turned on.

“We’re studying the juvie system right now,” Aaron says, and watches Andrew’s shoulders tense, just so. 

“To be honest,” Aaron says, slowly, tentatively, “the whole system seems fucking useless.”

Andrew laughs once, harshly, and Aaron is so fucking proud of himself.

“I have to write this paper,” Aaron says, bolder. “For this unit. On the benefits of juvie. Stupid right?”

(Aaron tries to sound casual. He hopes his phrasing doesn’t belie how much he’s practiced this exact sentence.)

For a moment, it seems like Andrew won’t respond. Aaron’s cheeks heat, and his moment of pride dissipates, and he thinks, I am trying so fucking hard. Will you try just a little bit?

“That is stupid,” Andrew says, without inflection, and Aaron is so deep in his own mental gripes he actually jumps. 

“Right?” Aaron jumps back in, maybe too eagerly. “Like what’s the point? Rehabilitation for youth? Yeah right.” Aaron is going off script now, but Andrew’s actually listening, and Aaron will not lose his attention while he has it. 

“You know what juvie is?” Aaron continues, and he stabs a finger at his textbook, open to the chapter on Juvenile Detention in the USA. “It’s a fucking trauma factory, where adults on a power trip can exert their right to punish children who are not their own. It’s fucking despicable .”

Aaron maybe undercuts his own vehemence with the searching look he throws at Andrew immediately after, but he can’t help it. Was that your experience, Aaron wants to ask . What do you think? What am I missing?  

But they’re having a conversation, kind of, and Aaron’s not going to risk it. He feels strangely giddy with just this.

“But surely, we… need juvie?” Nicky asks, from across the room. 

Aaron had not realized Andrew’s posture softened, until he stiffens again.

“Not for people like you,” Nicky amends quickly. 

“People like me,” Andrew repeats, and Nicky flinches.

“I mean… I just… for the bad ones, I mean. The really bad ones. Like the, oh god I don’t even know his name. The Butcher of Baltimore kid. Wasn’t he sixteen when he was imprisoned? Like that guy’s gotta go to juvie.”

“Tried as an adult,” Aaron and Andrew say in synch, and their eyes flick to each other in surprise. Aaron thinks dazedly, twin telepathy .

“Oh,” Nicky says, blushing. “I didn’t know they could do that.”

Andrew scoffs in judgment, and Aaron tenses and thinks. Why do you always have to be so fucking mean? We’re trying our best.

Andrew looks back at the blank TV, and Aaron can tell they’re losing him. Aaron thinks about Kate, he thinks about being brave, and he makes himself speak again.

“Uh, Andrew, would you, uh, would you help me with this paper?” Aaron says, voice cracking embarrassingly in the middle. “You could be my primary source?”

“No,” Andrew says, flat.

Aaron tries to think quickly. Think about the ice cream , he thinks. Think about Kate eating french fries.

“Uh, if I, uh. Okay, if I write an exposé on why juvie is fucking awful, and potentially throw my grade to do it, will you, uh, will you read it? Just read it, that’s it.”

A pause, and the silence is stretched too tight, and Nicky and Aaron are both braced for impact, and oh god why does asking a question feel like putting your finger on the pin of a grenade – then Andrew dips his chin into a nod, and Aaron thinks that a human heart is not ever supposed to pump this quickly.

“Okay,” Aaron says, breathless. “Okay, great.”

Chapter Text

BUTCHER OF BALTIMORE IS NATHANIEL WESNINSKI*

‘We always knew something was not-right about him,’ a local mother says. ‘You know how sometimes a kid is just wrong? Nathaniel was the kid who dissected birds in his backyard. He was the kid who peeled the wings off butterflies at recess.’ 

More on the young serial killer who killed over 100 people, including his own parents, on page 16…

*Nathaniel Wesninski has been tried and charged as an adult, and his name is now permitted to be shared publicly. 

**

“You’re not handing in this copy, are you?” Katelyn asks.

They’re sitting in the back row of the criminology lecture room. Their feet are touching, in a very platonic way.

“Yes?” Aaron says, suddenly less confident about his writing.  “What’s wrong with it?”

Aaron had re-written this paper three times before he asked Andrew to read it, and then had sat in the other room with his stomach cramping as Andrew took forever-and-a-day to read it. Andrew hadn’t said anything after, only handed it back silently, but he had read it, and that was all Aaron had asked of him, and he had actually done it , and Aaron took it as a win.

“I think you grabbed the wrong copy,” Katelyn says, flipping through quickly. “This one’s covered in edits.”

Aaron freezes. “What?”

Aaron never annotates his papers once he prints them. He writes too slowly, and too messily, and the edits somehow make more sense when he’s reading off a computer.

Katelyn passes the paper to him, and Aaron cannot believe his actual eyes.

“I didn’t write these,” Aaron whispers in wonder.

Andrew’s writing is tidier than his, straight where Aaron’s is slanted, and legible where Aaron’s is decidedly not. And his edits are excellent. He’s even circled a whole section where Aaron pulled from an interview with a kid who also went to juvie in California, and written, i know this guy. he’s a dick, and lying about half this stuff. 

Aaron’s hands are shaking with adrenaline.

“This is Andrew,” Aaron says, looking at Katelyn with wide eyes. “Andrew did this.”

Katelyn nods, eyes equally wide. “Some of his comments are really good.”

“I know,” Aaron says, breath hitching. 

“Go, Andrew,” Kate smiles.

“Guess I’m handing this in late,” Aaron says, and he and Kate are grinning at each other.

**

Their unit on the juvenile criminal system transitions them nicely into a unit on the adult criminal system. Their profs ties the two together by showing them the documentary, Born To Butcher: The Nathaniel Wesninski Story. 

(“Tried as as an adult,” Andrew and Aaron said in synch. Twin telepathy, Aaron thought.)

The documentary itself is very dark, and very dramatic, and features enough gratuitous violence to tip it more towards thriller than documentary. There’s one scene, filmed by actors in the actual basement Wesninski worked out of in Baltimore, that is so disturbing that he turns his head into Katelyn’s shoulder until he hears the screaming stop.

It’s with his eyes closed, and the sound of screams in his ears, that the idea comes to him.

**

“Wanna watch something fucked up?” Aaron asks that night, holding up the DVD. 

Andrew looks at him slowly. When he nods, Aaron fights the impulse to throw his fist in the air in celebration. 

They watch Born To Butcher together, at night, in the dark, and Nicky only lasts the first ten minutes, and Aaron knows he’s going to have nightmares for weeks, but it’s worth it, it’s so fucking worth it , because Andrew is watching with rapt attention. Andrew is actually leaning close enough to the TV that Aaron can see the concrete walls of the Butcher’s murder-basement reflected on the wet of his eyes.

Aaron watches Andrew watch the bio-pic on The Butcher of Baltimore, and suddenly remembers that Andrew and Nathaniel Wesninski were imprisoned at the same age. The lens he’s watching the film with ripples, and he realizes that it’s probably strategic that the actor who’s playing Wesninski is at least 25. In the film, Wesninski doesn’t have parents. His lackeys are played by actors who are younger than him. Aaron fleetingly thinks that watching an actual sixteen year old do what Wesninski was doing at sixteen would probably be just as horrifying, but for different reasons.

Afterwards, they watch the press releases for Wesninski’s arrest, including the clip of him being walked from the cop car and into the maximum security prison in Columbia. In the clip, Wesninski is covered in blood, and his eyes are wild. Aaron thinks he’s fucking terrifying.

“He’s almost twenty one now,” Aaron says. “I haven’t heard anything about him in a long time.”

Andrew grunts in assent.

Surely we need juvie? Nicky said. I mean… I just… for the bad ones, I mean. The really bad ones. Like the, oh god I don’t even know his name. The Butcher of Baltimore kid. Wasn’t he sixteen when he was imprisoned? Like that guy’s gotta go to juvie.”

“Do you ever think,” Aaron starts tentatively. “That maybe he shouldn’t have been tried as an adult? Or at least the only one tried? I mean, there’s gotta be others involved right?”

Andrew turns to look at him, and Aaron doesn’t think he’s ever had Andrew’s full attention before.

“I mean, that documentary is pretty Hollywood-ized. I just think… I don’t know. Sixteen is…” Aaron looks at Andrew. He tries to keep his face blank. “Sixteen is young.”

Aaron’s drawing a connection, Aaron’s reaching for Andrew, Aaron’s trying to say something, without saying something that will turn Andrew away. 

“He would’ve been a menace to meet at juvie,” Andrew says, and Aaron releases his held breath so fast he almost passes out.

**

For Aaron’s next assignment, he finds a way to manipulate the topic so he can write about Nathaniel Wesninski. He casually mentions it to Andrew, and then casually suggests they research for it together, and then suddenly Aaron and Andrew are hanging out every night, trading articles and video clips, and talking, and Andrew keeps leaving edits in pencil on Aaron’s work, and Aaron never thought it could be like this.

“I think… I think we’re friends, Kate,” he says in disbelief.

They’re sharing take out on her living room floor. (There’s a different roommate in the kitchen this time – Melissa? Marissa?. She has been non-subtly waggling her eyebrows at Katelyn, and Katelyn has been non-subtly glaring at her whenever she catches her at it).

“I’m very happy for you,” Katelyn says. Her foot is touching his, and he is very aware of it. “Long time coming, I think.”

Aaron stabs a bite of stir fried broccoli with his fork, and ignores the way all the blood in his body seems to be in his foot. “Was it ever this complicated for you and your sister?” 

“For me and Gabby? Nah.” Katelyn reaches over to pluck a cube of tofu off his plate. “I mean our family is complicated. My granny was not a good parent. But Gabby and I have always been solid.”

“Asshole.”

Kate laughs, and Aaron feels something warm bloom in him.

“She’s younger, yeah?”

“Yeah. Still in high school, and kicking everybody’s ass. She’s already having scouts come see her play exy – and exy’s her hobby ? I hope to god we don’t end up at the same med school. That will be embarrassing for me.”

Aaron scoffs. “Kate, you’re the smartest person I know.”

“Oh, you have not met my sister,” Kate emphasizes. “She’s scary smart. And also a nice person, which is just the universe being rude.”

“She sounds amazing.”

“She’s my baby,” Katelyn says, fondly. “And my best friend.” 

Katelyn gets a glint in her eyes. “Speaking of which.”

Katelyn takes Aaron’s take out container from him, and moves it to the side. There’s a wicked glint in Katelyn’s eyes, and Aaron is already blushing.

“Gabby gave me a stern best-friend pep talk, which mostly consisted of, ‘you and this boy need to get over yourselves and just make out already.’”

Aaron splutters.

“So, if you’re interested – let’s make out?”

Aaron cannot even form words. He must manage to get his chin up and down in an overly eager approximation of a nod, because then Kate is moving between his knees, and then her soft hands are bracketing his face, and then her eyes are twinkling, and then she’s leaning in, and then their lips touch and it’s not even awkward, and no, nothing about this is platonic at all, is it?

**

Aaron’s life has a kind of bizarre lustre on it that takes him too long to identify as happiness.

He and Kate are together now. Things are mostly the same between them, except they consistently miss most of their Ethics of Science class, because they sit in the back and smash their faces together. Things are mostly the same, except the roommates call him “the boyfriend,” and roll their eyes when he shows up at their place even more than he used to. 

Things with Kate are very good, and, strangely, things with Andrew are equally good, albeit in completely different ways (obviously). 

After that first paper (which his prof said was his “finest work yet, great work!”), Aaron finds a way to twist every topic into something to do with the Butcher of Baltimore, plus the criminal system as it intersects with minors. Aaron keeps careful watch for Andrew’s interest to fade, and makes list after list in his notebook about potential topics for them to move onto next (the foster care system? knife crimes?), but Andrew stays engaged and insightful about Wesninski. Andrew continues to research with him, and discuss literature with him, and comment on his assignments, and if they’re not talking about anything personal, and if their only connection to each other is through the unconventional presence of a juvenile serial killer – Aaron tries not to feel disappointed. After so much nothing for so long, he tells himself he will not be greedy, and he will not, absolutely not, fuck this up again.

Everything is going so well, that Aaron starts to pre-emptively feel anxious about how it’s all going to fall apart.

“I don’t think we should take Crim 2000 next semester,” Kate says, as they’re lying together in her bed.

Aaron pauses in the idle circles he’s been drawing on her bare back.

“What?”

“I still don’t like it,” Kate says, burrowing into his collarbones. Her next words come out muffled against his skin. “The syllabus is so biased towards punitive justice, and reading about these structures is just, so frustrating.” Kate kisses just above his pec, and then turns her head so it’s resting on his chest. 

“Maybe if I was going to become a lawyer,” she continues, voice soft with musing, “I’d take this to fuel my rage, and also point me in the right direction to make a difference. But because I’m not, I will stick to medicine, where I will be more helpful.”

“It’s just an elective,” Aaron says, and even to him, his voice sounds defensive.

“I know,” Kate says. “But how many hours have we spent ranting about this class? We pay too much per class to take something we don’t like, and that’s not particularly helpful to where we’re heading. Maybe we take a psychology? Or a sociology?”

Aaron swallows, throat suddenly tight.

“I… uh. I’m gonna keep going with it, I think.”

Kate sits up partially to look at his face. He watches her try to understand.

“Is this about Andrew?” 

“He loves it,” Aaron says, that same defensive note creeping into his voice against his will. “It’s the only thing we talk about. Only thing we can talk about it. I… I’m going to keep taking it. I have to. For him.”

“Aaron, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”

“I want to. I promise. It’s worth it, for me.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

Kate watches his face for a moment more, and then nods to herself, and slowly puts her head back onto his chest. Aaron is glad she’s not looking at him anymore – he feels horrifically exposed.

Kate is his best friend, but Andrew is his brother. He doesn’t know what he’ll do, if he ever has to choose.

**

For Crim 2000, Aaron takes a different approach. Almost all the papers he handed in last semester were co-researched by Andrew, and basically co-authored by him too. When he gets his first assignment, he takes the print-out home and puts it down in front of Andrew.

Andrew eyes it skeptically. “This doesn’t look like an essay,” he says.

“It’s the assignment description.”

Andrew rolls his eyes. “Obviously.”

“I think you should write it,” Aaron says. “Not for me,” he amends at Andrew’s furrowed brow. “Just, I think, well, what if we both wrote a paper? And then compare?”

Aaron can’t tell whether he’s convincing him or not.

“Your analysis is always really good,” Aaron tries. “Why don’t you write your own paper, instead of reading all mine?” 

Andrew is quiet for a long time. Aaron tells himself that sometimes Andrew needs a long time to process. He tells himself that nobody is angry with him. He tells himself that he is not feeling anxious waiting for Andrew to say something, anything. 

“I’m not in your class,” Andrew says finally.

“Do you have to be?” Aaron counters.

“You’re forgetting I never finished high school.”

Aaron fights to keep his voice calm and easy. Why do you always sell yourself so short? He wants to yell. Why can’t you see yourself the way me and Nicky do?

“Does that matter?” Aaron says.  “You have more insightful thoughts than most of the kids in my class, all of whom did finish high school.”

Andrew goes quiet again. Aaron tells himself not to twitch, not to rush this. He tells himself that this is a big step, and that if he doesn’t fuck it up by indicating his impatience, this could be big for Andrew.

“You better write a good paper,” Andrew says, completing whatever internal calculations he’s needed to be able to answer Aaron. “If your paper gets shown up by a high school drop-out, you’re going to be very embarrassed.”

Aaron tucks his smile into the inside of his mouth.

“You’re on.”

**

Aaron writes the best paper he can. The thing that interests him the most is the ways criminal laws are crafted in connection to – and often in contradiction to – human rights. He folds in what he is learning in his ethics classes, and his conversations with Kate about the shared biases between the medical and the justice system, and writes what he thinks is a pretty thorough comparison of punitive versus rehabilitative sentences. 

Andrew takes the same topic, and writes a scathing critique, pointing to the straight line between the slave patrols of the 1700s and modern policing, with a sidebar into the forced labour of inmates and its unacknowledged benefit to the US economy, and then somehow ties the whole thing into a bow made of Nathaniel Wesninski’s case. 

Andrew’s paper is brash as fuck and no-punches-pulled, and Aaron realizes that for all his pushing of his brother towards academia, he severely underestimated his brother’s mind.

“Andrew, this is amazing,” he says when he reads it. 

Andrew waves him off dispassionately, already turning back to his room.

“I win,” he says, and then slams the door behind him.

Aaron can’t stop looking at his brother’s analysis. He takes the bus to Katelyn’s (braving her roommate’s wolf whistles), and shoves the paper at her wordlessly the moment she comes within arm reach.

Kate reads it like that, them standing toe to toe in her foyer, and Aaron watches her eyes get round.

“This is very good,” Kate says.

“I know.”

“This was supposed to be a Crim 2000 paper?”

Aaron can’t keep the smile off his face.

“I know .”

Kate gets to the end, and flips back and reads it again.

“Wow,” she says, eyes still moving. “The case studies he references.”

“I know.”

“His analysis .”

“I know.”

Kate looks up at him.  “The citing’s wrong though.”

Aaron shrugs, unfazed. “Well, he doesn’t know.”

“But could you teach him?” She says, eyes still moving quickly over Andrew’s work. “He could almost publish this, if it were cited right.”

Aaron scoffs. “He would never let me teach him. It would make him feel stupid.”

Kate waves the paper. “He is so not stupid.”

Aaron throws up his hands. “Yeah, I wish I could make him know it.”

Aaron and Kate consider each other. They realize almost at the same time that they are still standing in the doorway, and Aaron is still in his coat.

“Are you coming in?” Kate asks. “Marissa was supposed to cook tonight, but we all just decided to order pizza instead.”

Aaron kicks off his shoes.

“Sounds perfect.”

“Stay the night?”

Aaron grins.

“Yes.”

**

Back on the bus the next morning, Aaron takes Andrew’s essay back out and considers. 

He could almost publish this, if it were cited right.

The stop for his house goes by, but Aaron stays on, stays thinking. He rides it all the way to the college, and gets off, half in a trance. There’s a plan forming, but Aaron can’t look too far ahead or he starts to feel uneasy about it.

He goes to the library and types up Andrew’s handwritten paper. He corrects the citing, and formats it as a real assignment. He even puts his prof’s name on it, and the course code, as if Andrew were actually in the class, and about to actually submit this.

As he does, Aaron’s thoughts stray to his Crim prof. Unlike his and Kate's first teacher, the Crim 2000 teacher is more professional – better researched, more unbiased, and genuinely interesting to learn from.  She is infamous for leaving long comments on student’s assignments, and for assigning further reading she thinks students might enjoy, based on the interests expressed in their papers. 

Aaron thinks, if I bring this home, Andrew won’t care that I typed this. Andrew won’t care that I cited it for him. Aaron thinks, Andrew doesn’t care at all what I think.  

Aaron’s thoughts finally land where he’s been avoiding.

But he might care what this prof thinks .

Aaron breathes deeply, and tries not to think about anything except the action of his fingers as they delete the six letters of Andrew’s name, as they type the five letters of his, as they export the file, as they upload it to his school’s server.

Aaron does not breathe, does not think , until the site tells him that his assignment was successfully uploaded to CRIM 2000. Only then does Aaron finally exhale. He tells himself he feels good about this. He tells himself that the twisting in his gut is irrelevant.

Chapter Text

BALTIMORE MURDER HOUSE BURNS DOWN

Last night, Nathaniel Wesninski’s infamous ‘murder mansion’ was burned to the ground, removing all evidence from the premises. Our sources indicate that Wesninski organized its burning from inside Columbia Penitentiary, which begs the question – who is still working for Wesninski? Lock your doors, and read more on page 10.

**

Aaron’s crim prof thinks he is a genius. 

She writes him two pages of comments, expounding on Andrew’s analysis, and assigns him another Butcher of Baltimore documentary, this one independently produced and less glamorized (this one is just called ‘Wesninski’). 

Aaron lies and tells Andrew that he asked the prof to read Andrew’s paper in addition to his. When it looks like Andrew might ask questions, Aaron rapidly thrusts the teacher’s printed comments at him. Andrew takes them instinctively, and his eyes fall onto her written words.

Aaron watches the slight widening of Andrew’s eyes, the almost perceptible softening of his posture. Aaron watches Andrew’s eyes get to the bottom, and then come back up to read again. It feels strangely intimate; Aaron turns his back and goes to the kitchen and pokes around in the fridge. In his mind’s eye, he keeps seeing the widening of Andrew’s eyes, the vulnerability of his surprise. Aaron’s heart feels unflinching good about what he’s done. Aaron keeps a firm grip on his mind – this is the right thing, he thinks. I am doing the right thing. 

The next paper Aaron submits is also Andrew’s. The one after that is Andrew’s too, and the next. Aaron watches Andrew begrudgingly accept praise from a stranger, the ways he’s never accepted from him or Nicky. He watches Andrew slowly gain confidence, slowly engage academically again, slowly start writing more, and Aaron thinks, why would I sabotage this? 

Aaron starts to hate going to crim class. His prof has started to read from his papers in the classroom, has started to call on him preferentially for his thoughts. Aaron thinks that if he had actually written his papers, this would feel amazing. Instead, he smiles blandly and doesn’t make eye contact, and leaves quickly whenever anyone tries to talk to him about ‘his’ work. 

He doesn’t tell Kate. He doesn’t know why. (He knows why). He lies and tells her that he actually finds criminology fascinating. He laughs a false and empty laugh and tells her that maybe there is something to the twin thing.

Aaron thinks that he would not be able to keep doing this – except Andrew is spending hours and hours every day writing. Except Andrew greets him at the door with new research he’s found that he wants to discuss with him. Except Andrew re-enrolled in high school, and has started completing his credits online.  

Kate must know something is going on. Aaron refuses to talk about criminology, or about Andrew, or to let her read any of his work. She used to walk him to criminology; they used to kiss outside the door. Now, Aaron can’t risk someone coming up to congratulate him.

Aaron knows he’s teering on a edge, and whatever way he falls, he’s fucked. But just here, tip-toeing and firmly not thinking about the edge , everything is good. Everything is fine. Aaron has a relationship with his brother, which is all his child-self ever wanted. Aaron has his relationship with Kate, which is everything his adult-self can dream of. He is keeping his marks up high enough that med school is actually a possibility, and everything is perfect, and if Aaron can’t sleep, and if his stomach is always cramping, and he’s popping antacids like breath mints, it doesn’t matter, because everything is fucking perfect .

“Aaron, can I keep you a sec?” His criminology prof asks, and Aaron knows that he absolutely should not stay for whatever she is about to say, but his brain is too sluggish to supply him with a plausible excuse to refuse. 

And what if she has something nice to say about Andrew’s work? Aaron’s thoughts whisper. How else will Andrew know? 

“Remind me, what’s your major?” the prof asks.

“Science,” Aaron says haltingly. “Pre-med.”

The prof squints at him.

“Have you ever considered a degree in criminal justice?” She asks, and the suggestion feels like suffocating. “You have such an aptitude for it.”

“I…”

“Listen, I sent your recent paper to my colleague at PSU. He wants to publish it in their quarterly journal featuring undergrad work.”

“I, I –”

“And he wants to offer you a full-ride into their Criminal Justice Program.”

Aaron is finding it hard to breathe.

“Oh.”

“You have a very good mind for this, Aaron. If you wanted to, you could make some big changes in the field. If you’re writing like this as an undergrad,” she laughs in delight, “I can’t even imagine what you’ll do as a grad student.”

Now is not the time for Aaron to start feeling nauseous, but he can’t quite help it. The prof misreads his expression.

“You didn’t think I was just going to celebrate your work in class, and not champion you outside of it too, did you?” The prof pats his arm and smiles warmly. “Think about it, will you? I’ll forward you the email from my colleague at PSU. Look for it.”

From the door as she leaves, the prof looks back to where he is still frozen in place.

“Congratulations, Aaron,” she says softly, “You should be very proud of yourself.”

The door closes with a soft click, and Aaron fumbles for the roll of antacids he keeps in his pocket. They taste like chalk, and his stomach turns when he swallows them. He shouldn’t even bother – he’ll taste sick on the back of his throat for the rest of the day anyway.

**

It’s almost a relief when it all falls apart.

He’s dozing on Kate’s shoulder as she reads to them from her psychology textbook. They’re in the library again, and keeping their voices low.

“Why are we still studying Freud ,” Kate grumbles, mid-paragraph. “My god. I do not like saying these words out loud.”

Aaron feels his lips pull into an amused smile, and he turns his head on her shoulder to press a kiss onto her collar bone. Kate’s free hand comes up to card through his hair. This is muscle memory for them now, a year in. It’s nice. It’s so nice.

Kate’s phone dings, and Aaron feels the skin of her shoulder move under his cheek as she reaches from it. It’s because he’s pressed so closely to her, warm skin to warm skin, that he feels her freeze. He cracks an eye open.

“What’s up? You okay?” His voice is gruff with sleep.

Kate doesn’t answer. Aaron starts to feel worried.

“Did something happen to Gabby?” Aaron asks. He can’t imagine anything else that would freeze her this way, anything except –

“Congratulations,” Kate says, and her voice is wooden.

Aaron feels like someone’s pushed his head into ice water.

“I… for what… I…”

“Don’t.”

Kate is shrugging him off, Kate is forcibly putting distance between them, Kate is looking at him with a face creased with hurt, and Aaron never wanted this. 

“Were you going to tell me?” She asks, and her voice is quiet. “About PSU?”

“I… How do you know about that?”

Kate’s eyes bulge. “How do I know about that? That’s what you’re saying right now?”

Aaron doesn’t know what to say that will stop what’s about to happen. Don’t do this , Aaron wants to say. Just do what I do, just pretend, just don’t think about it. Kate. Kate. Kate.

Kate is blinking quickly, too quickly, and Aaron thinks, I’ve never seen her cry , and then just as quickly, I’m making Katelyn cry .

“The school newspaper. I’m subscribed. Which you know. They… they said you wrote a paper so good it got you a full ride at PSU. In Criminal Justice.”

Aaron doesn’t know what to say. Kate, please.

“You don’t even like criminal justice,” Kate says. “You hate that class. You go pale every time I ask you about it.” She shakes her head, back and forth, so quickly that her tears run sideways towards her ears. “I don’t understand. What’s this paper? Why haven’t I read this paper?”

Aaron can always tell, with Andrew, when the conversation has gone far enough sideways that he can’t salvage it. He can always tell when Andrew’s has decided it’s over, and Aaron is stupid, and there’s no use talking about it any further. Aaron looks at Kate, at her wet eyes, at her face creased in betrayal, and he thinks, it’s already over, isn’t it?

“Because Andrew wrote it,” Aaron confesses, finally confesses , and Kate jolts.

“What?”

“Andrew writes all my criminology papers. My prof thinks I’m a genius.”

“Why would you –”

“She thinks I’m so much of a genius that she got me a full ride into PSU.”

Kate’s hands are trembling, Aaron notices. She’s still crying, thin tears that leak out the corners of her eyes. Aaron thinks maybe he should be crying too.

“But… this is not you. You write your own papers. You write good papers. Why would you… Why would you do this?” 

Because this is how my brother and I love each other. Because if I don’t do this, I will lose him again. Because if I lose him, I will break and I will not be able to pick up the pieces.

“Because I want to,” he says flatly. He is surprised to notice that in this intonation, his voice sounds exactly like Andrew’s.

“No you don’t.”

“Yes I do,” he says, and he glazes over his face into cold blankness, and Kate flinches away from him. He realizes detachedly that he is scaring her. If you think you’re scared of me, you should meet my fucking brother . 

“Aaron, don’t do this,” Kate says, and now her hand twitches towards him, as if she might touch him. But of course she won’t. Aaron’s assured that, hasn’t he?

“You want to be a doctor,” Kate continues. “You want to help people. Don’t give up on yourself.”

“I’m not,” he says, but he thinks, everyone has given up on Andrew his whole life. Maybe it’s my turn. 

She goes to speak. Stop. Starts again, softer.

“But it’s killing you, Aaron. Don’t you see? You are hurting yourself to do this.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re hurting Andrew –”

“I am not hurting Andrew,” Aaron laughs, horrifically fragile. “Andrew is happier than he's ever been. Andrew actually cares about his life. Andrew is actually good.”

“Does he know though? What you’re doing?”

“I—“

“Does he know?”

Aaron can’t answer. He doesn’t have to, anyway. He can feel it - the edge. He’s falling and falling, and he can't find the way to stop. 

“Aaron,” Kate says, and her eyes are wet, and this conversation is awful, and he can’t find his way out. “I care about you, I care about you so much, and I can’t let –”

The falling is horrible. It’s free fall, and it’s shame and it’s ache and it’s grief, and he sees it all staring up at him, dragging at him, and he grabs at the closer thing, and it’s the safety of anger.

“You can’t let me do this?” Aaron scoffs, and it’s vicious.  “This is my life, Kate. You don’t understand my life. Just because everything has always been so fucking easy for you, so fucking loving for you, doesn’t meant that for the rest of us ever get–”

“Stop it right now.” Kate’s face is still flushed, but her eyes are fierce. “You’re hurting, and you think hurting me will make you hurt less, but it won’t. Don’t do this. Don’t say something you can’t take back. ” 

Katelyn straightens, and Aaron watches her strengthen herself. 

“I care about you,” Kate says, “and you care about me, and listen to me when I tell you that you are hurting yourself to do this.”

From where Aaron is tenuously holding onto his anger, there is a brief moment where he thinks, I could soften right now. I could let go. I could break. Maybe she would catch me. 

Aaron feels his face pull into a cruel sneer. This one is familiar too. The twin thing: shared interests, shared patterns, shared fucking tendency to claw at anyone who gets too close.

“Who says I care about you,” Aaron says, and his voice is dead, and he is ten thousand miles away from his body. “I couldn’t care less.”

Kate draws back from him as if struck. He watches her struggle to pull on her own blank mask. She is less practiced than him – he can see all of her emotions spilling over underneath.

“Okay.” Kate nods. Another tear falls, but her eyes stay fierce.  “I won’t put myself through this. Not even for you.” She stands up. He can see the tear hanging on the bottom of her chin. 

“But you can do so much better than what you’re doing, Aaron Minyard,” she says, and the tear falls. ”Do fucking better.”

And she turns on her heel and leaves, because that’s what people always fucking do.

**

Aaron goes home, and doesn’t know how to make his face animate again. He feels empty and dead, and suddenly understands that it actually takes zero effort to keep your face indecipherable. It’s easy. If you just – click – disconnect your brain from your body, you don’t actually have to feel anything, and if you don’t feel anything, there’s nothing to show on your fucking face. 

Andrew had it right years ago , Aaron thinks. Don’t try, don’t think, don’t feel. Why didn’t I fucking think of that ?

He gets in the door, and Nicky actually says, “Andrew?”

And Aaron laughs so hard he doubles over. He laughs so hard it scars his throat.

The laughing draws actual-Andrew out of his room, and Nicky does a double take, and then flushes.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry–”

Aaron just looks at him until he stops talking. It’s so much easier not to engage. Just let people throw themself on the rock face of you, and break themselves.

“Aaron?” Andrew says, and there is something under the careful neutrality of his tone, but Aaron does not care enough to dig for it.

“So you know how I said I’ve been handing your papers in alongside mine,” Aaron starts, and now that he doesn’t give a shit, it’s so much easier to just fucking say it. “I lied.” 

He feels almost giddy. “I handed in all your papers under my name.”

Nicky’s makes some kind of startled gasp. Aaron’s eyes are fixed on his brother’s face, which is getting paler and paler. 

“And, as you know, the prof fucking loved them. Best papers in my class. Best papers she’s seen in years. Papers so good they’re sending me to PSU on a full ride. So thank you for that. Appreciate it.”

Andrew’s face is changing colour again – he’s going red.

“What if I wanted to publish those myself?” Andrew asks, too evenly.

“I guess that would be plagiarism.”

And then Andrew just goes quiet. As he does. As he’s done, forever,

“Aaron —” Nciky starts.

“Get out,” Andrew says, vicious, red-hot like a knife heated over the stove.

“Planning on it.”

Aaron shoulders past, shoves his things in a bag. He’s too cold and too hot at the same time, and almost dizzy with adrenaline. He’s lived in this room for over five years. This is a home he’s always co-existed with Nicky and Andrew; he has no memories here that do not include them.

He will be happy to never fucking see it again.

Chapter Text

WESNINSKI’S LAST ALLY SHOT DEAD

The FBI was successful last night in capturing Wensinki’s final accomplice, British crime lord Stuart Hatford. Hatford was killed in the confrontation. Top psychologists weigh in on how 16 year old Wesninski was able to bring Hatford under his thumb. More on page 30.

**

Aaron expects to hate PSU. He expects to hate his courses, and his profs, and this whole fucking life path he’s suddenly found himself on. 

He is surprised to find he can breathe here. PSU Aaron doesn’t have a brother who hates him, doesn’t have a girlfriend who’s disgusted with him, doesn’t have a cousin who sobbed when he left but didn’t try to stop him. 

Nobody knows him here, so he can make himself whoever he wants to be. He makes himself friendly, he makes himself social, he makes himself the kind of person who throws covert parties in his dorm room and buys everyone’s beer.

His profs receive him like an out of town celebrity. They love his work, they love his mind, they’re so grateful he chose to study at PSU. Aaron feels the familiar surge of self-revulsion, but he ignores it. This time, when his teachers fawn over him, Aaron lets himself indulge in the warmth of their praise. It feels fucking good. 

He’s always had a good mind for patterns, and for absorbing vast amounts of information at once (it was one of the things that drew him to medicine). Now, instead of studying the mechanisms of the body, he learns the mechanisms of his brother’s writing. He knows he can’t extrapolate from what Andrew has done, but he notices the types of questions he pursues, the scholars whose research he leans most heavily on, and the more common conclusions of his analyses. He notices how Nathaniel Wesninski factors into most of it, and resigns himself to forcing an obsession with a man he actually doesn’t fucking care about.

Aaron studies Andrew’s writings until he can imitate him passably, and, with that done, stops thinking of Andrew at all. He is single-son Aaron, PSU Aaron, and Andrew doesn’t exist, and yes of course these writings were always mine, who else’s would they be? (and if his gut continues to churn, if he still can’t sleep through the night, if he feels disgusting all the time, if reading the name ‘Nathaniel Wesninski’ gives him an instant cluster headache – what does that matter, even?). He’s studying at the best university in his state on a full ride, and he’s popular, and he’s succeeding, and it’s perfect. He tells himself it’s perfect.

His writings somehow become more than passable – the prof who brought him over from Columbia Community College, Professor Winfield, approaches him in his second term about partnering on a publication to sway public opinion towards re-opening Nathaniel Wesninski’s case.

“Re-open the case?” Aaron asks, startled. “Why?”

“To get him free,” Professor Winfield says slowly, eyebrows furrowing like Aaron’s confusion is confusing her back.

Aaron has never once thought about Nathaniel Wesninski going free. In his mind, Wesninski is almost a fictional character – a character in a novel that he and his brother discuss in the abstract, and who is certainly not real in any literal sense. 

Aaron realizes that all of Andrew’s work has been pointing this way. His singular focus suddenly makes more sense – Andrew was not writing theoretical papers to flex his intellectual muscles; he was working, slowly and surely, toward a goal he deemed worthy. Apparently that goal was not to connect with his brother; apparently it was to free Nathaniel fucking Wesninski.

“What do you say?” Professor Winfield asks, and what can Aaron say, really?

Up to this point, Aaron has – to his surprise –  been enjoying most of his classes. Being chained to Wesninski for his research is boring and painful and not what he would ever choose for himself, but the actual study of criminal justice he finds fascinating. He goes down rabbit hole after rabbit hole on the ins and outs of criminal law, and of juvenile law, and of the ways these intersect (and don’t) with international human rights. He thinks that if he wasn’t relegated to the one corner of it Andrew finds interesting, he might even love studying criminal justice.

“What do you say?” Professor Winfield asks again.

“Yeah of course,” Aaron says blandly, a moment too late.

**

Aaron folds the paper he needs to write for Professor Winfield into his thesis work, and focuses his work on the dangers and long term impacts of prosecuting youth as adults. He writes the name Nathaniel Wesninski so many times that anytime he tries to write any word starting with ‘n,’ he writes Nathaniel on habit first. 

Eventually, even cool PSU Aaron gets infected with Columbia Aaron’s anger, and suddenly everything is too fucking much again, and Aaron’s at a party, and he’s had too many beer, but he’s been drinking casually enough lately that it shouldn’t matter, except he’s also been doing shots, and he drank something suspicious from someone’s waterbottle, and the room is already turning itself upside and back and again in time with his heart beat, and suddenly there’s a hand in front of him, and the hand is holding is holding a small baggy of white pills.

Aaron’s mouth floods with saliva, and he swallows and swallows and swallows. The room is spinning, the room is out of focus, and his eyes are steady on those little white pills. 

His body is confusing him. Most of him is reaching and reaching and reaching, but some small part is remembering the interminable horror of hunching over a toilet, sweating, shaking, clawing at his own skin, with Andrew on the other side of the door, locking him in. Aaron knows, even drunk as he is, that Andrew will kick his ass if he takes pills again.

But Andrew told him to get out. But Andrew doesn’t exist here. But he’s PSU Aaron, and PSU Aaron is fun and friendly and so what if he gets fucked up? He’s allowed. ( he’s allowed and he wants to and he needs to and this will make everything easier and don’t you want it to be easier and you deserve it to be easier don’t you– )

Aaron takes the bag, he shakes a pill out into his hand, and it’s all familiar and familiar and familiar, and he’s done this a million times, and why did he ever fucking stop?

Aaron takes the pill behind thumb and forefingers, and he throws it back dry, and it’s easy , and finally something gets to be easy and —

You can do so much better than what you’re doing, Aaron Minyard .

Her voice is surprisingly clear. Whatever he’s taken as not even hit yet, but he can feel her hair tickling his cheek, her hand brushing his arm, her lips pressing close to his ear. He’s always had a good memory.

Do better, she whispers.

And then Aaron stumbles to the bathroom, and bangs the door open, and shoves his finger down his throat. He vomits the white pill – not even dissolved yet – and several liters of alcohol, and the detritus of the dinner he doesn’t remember eating. 

He puts his head on the cool of the tile, and he was supposed to be new Aaron, he was supposed to be a different Aaron, and how does he keep up back in exactly the same place ?

He stays there, overwhelmed in the smell of his own sick, honest with himself that if he saw the hand with the baggie again, he’s not sure what he would do. He stays there, disgusted with himself, and his subconscious is apparently not done tormenting him – with his eyes shut, Aaron imagines Kate sitting cross-legged beside him. She brushes his sweat-drenched hair from his forehead.

I care about you , she says again. Listen to me when I tell you that you are hurting yourself to do this.

**

Aaron spends the next day vomiting and wishing he could remove his own skin.

He spends the day after that deep cleaning his dorm room, and purging his home of alcohol and prescription pills and anything else that calls to him when he passes.

The day after that, there’s an exy game back at the community college in Columbia, and he knows Kate will be cheering, and he figures that if he sits way in the back and keeps his hood up, it can’t hurt her right, right? He thinks that just seeing her again, just one more time, will be enough to cement her words into his skin, and then maybe he’ll be able to keep his head above the metaphorical water line. Maybe then he’ll find a way to survive this mess he’s made for himself.

Except he goes, and she’s not cheering. She’s not sitting in the stands. She’s not anywhere. Aaron doesn’t watch any of the game – he’s too busy looking for her, his skin suddenly clammy with worry.

After the game, he makes himself move through the crowd, makes himself move faster, makes himself catch Marissa before she disappears into the change room. 

“Where is she? Is she hurt? Did something happen? Is she okay?”

Marissa pulls back her arm from his grasp, and crosses her arms fiercely over her chest. Her fists are so tight her knuckles are white.

“First, don’t touch me. And second, she left, asshole.”

“Left cheerleading?”

“Left the school.”

Aaron’s stomach turns upside down, 

“She dropped out?” No no no no no.

“Oh, how self-centered can you get?” Marissa scoffs. “You are so not that important, whatever your name is.” She knows what his name is.  “Her sister got an exy scholarship to USC, and bargained for Kate to come in under the same scholarship.”

“Gabby got into USC?” Aaron says, and he’s never met Gabby, but he’s damn proud.

“Yes. And now Kate’s gone, so you can fuck right off. You shouldn’t have come in the first place.”

“Okay,” Aaron says.

“Now is when you leave,” Marissa prompts.

Aaron nods twice before his brain actually gets the message.

“Okay, uh, yeah. Thanks. Bye, Marissa.”

She rolls her eyes at him. “Bye asshole.”

**

Aaron catches the bus back to PSU, and thinks of Kate, and thinks of Gabby, and it takes him a long time to figure out what he’s feeling, but he thinks it might actually be some kind of relief that something good happened for them (that good things still happen).

He gets back to his dorm, and it’s pushing midnight, but he feels buoyed enough to do another read through his dissertation. It’s mostly done. The research is done. The analysis is done. The formatting is done. The citation is done. The annotated bibliography is done. 

It’s done, except that Aaron reads it and he hates it. It’s Andrew’s interests, but it’s not Andrew’s work, and Aaron reads it and thinks, what a waste of time . He thinks, does anything ever happen as a result of someone writing a paper? (He thinks, Andrew could’ve written something that actually mattered – then he shuts that thought down quickly).

Aaron decides that he’s going to let himself be done with it. Perfectionist Aaron is off in an alternate reality with Kate at med school at USC. PSU Aaron opens the online school portal, thinks fuck it , and submits his dissertation for review. He expects to feel relief, but he just feels tired, and empty, and both pissed and relieved he has nothing in his cabinets to drink.

When his computer dings an hour later, he thinks there is no way you could have read my thesis that quickly . And then thinks, oh god I formatted it wrong, they’re going to make me write it again .

He goes to his computer, but it’s just an email. 

The sender is David Wymack, and Aaron flinches when he sees the name, though he’s not sure why at first.  He opens the email, and David Wymack introduces himself as Palmetto State Police, FBI liaison, and it comes to him. He’s actually met David Wymack – he’s the officer who told Aaron his mother was dead.

Aaron has cast this man in his head as the bearer of horrific truths, but his email is pleasant. Non-injurious. Nice, even. Wymack acknowledges his upcoming graduation, and shares how he’s been following Aaron’s journey at PSU (“ I’m an alumni myself, like to keep up to date” ). Wymack writes that he’s recruiting for a special unit on the force, and that if Aaron wants a break from academia, there’s a place for him on Wymack’s team.

Aaron's first thought is that he’s horribly unqualified. His stint impersonating Andrew has put him on a track so narrow that Aaron had assumed he would be obligated to stay the course forever, slowly drowning in self-loathing.

Except Google tells him that the only real disqualifiers from becoming an officer in South Carolina are a criminal record and/or a lack of a GED. It’s that simple, and yet…

Andrew could never become a police officer, even if he wanted to. (No GED. A public criminal record). Aaron thinks, this would be something that could only ever be mine.

He does not let himself think about what he took from Andrew. He thinks instead about this thing, which Andrew could never take from him.

He writes back, when do I start?

Chapter Text

BLEEDING HEARTS FOR THE BUTCHER??

Pro-Wesninski activists are making waves at Palmetto State University. Papers by Minyard & Winfield are currently rallying national support for a murderer so vicious he was titled ‘The Butcher of Baltimore’. Readers should note that Wesninski, who these activists claim is ‘a victim of adult coercion’, is currently serving his third week in isolation, after attacking a fellow inmate. (At the time of this writing, Wesninski has served more time in isolation for prison-related violence, than time outside for good behaviour). More on pg. 3…

**

Aaron successfully defends his thesis, professor Winfield tells him he’s sending their work out for publication, and Aaron shakes her hand, and then deactivates his email. He gets the fuck out of there and does not look back.

He falls off the grid, he falls out of the public eye, and it’s a relief. He stops writing about Wesninski, and it’s a relief. He starts a new life, for the third time, and he tells himself it’s a relief.

Wymack treats him like he’s some schmoe he picked up off the side of the road, who’s pretty useless, but probably has potential. It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to him. The weight of everyone’s expectations lifts, and Aaron gulps breath into his bruised lungs.

He moves in with Wymack’s other hand-picked recruit, a sunny man from Maryland named Mal (“okay it’s Malcolm, but please don’t call me that it’s a family name and my family is shit ”). 

Mal is very good at making decisions – Mal finds them a place, Mal finds them furniture, Mal sets up all their utilities. Mal makes it so that Aaron doesn't have to do anything but step into this new life, and Aaron, if he weren’t quite so burned out, would be so deeply grateful.

For all his other many skills, Mal can cook exactly one thing  – Quebec-style poutine ( “I watched a YouTube video and it changed my life, man” ).  Aaron’s cooking is contained to microwave dinners and those packets of pre-cooked, jellified rice ( “that shit’s nasty, do not put that in your body” ). They try cooking their first week, hate their lives, and then spend their next year using their meager officer-in-training funds on massive pizzas they’ll order Sunday night and then eat all week.

In their first six months living together, Aaron confesses to Mal he’s trying to stay sober, and Mal accepts that like a champ. They never go to bars, but they hit up cafes and 24 hour McDonalds, and even try a ‘mocktail bar’ downtown (it’s massively expensive and not worth it).

They play video games ( “hey do you think Wymack would accept Call of Duty Hours as training hours?” ), and they watch shitty movies, and they talk a lot, but not about any of the hard things.

Mal’s got baggage too, Aaron can tell – he never talks about home, he smudges out often, he gets a hard and scary glint in his eyes when they’re doing firearm training. There’s something fucked up in Mal, and there’s something fucked up in Aaron, and like recognizes like, and it’s a relief that they don’t have to talk about it. 

(Later, of course, he will regret this. Later, Aaron will look back on these early years with horror, and think, I should’ve known .)

**

Their first year, they do a lot of physical training, a lot of theoretical exercises, and a lot of community work. Eventually they pass their assessments, and in their second year, they spend more time in the field, and more time with Wymack in his messy office. (Wymack enjoys bringing them in to ask their thoughts on cases that start out hypothetical, and slowly evolve into actual cases.)

Today when they come in for their debrief, Wymack’s wearing drugstore reading glasses and parsing through a novel called In The Upside Down House .

“Reading on the job, boss?” Mal teases, and Aaron laughs, and Wymack lowers his book enough to glare.

(To their embarrassment, Aaron and Mal immediately freeze like school children in trouble).

“Have you read this?” Wymack asks, waving the novel. 

“Can’t say I have –” Mal starts.

“Not you,” Wymack says, and he places the novel down on his desk in front of Aaron.

In The Upside Down House , Aaron reads. By Andrew Doe.

Aaron’s throat closes up, too fast. 

“I don’t know an Andrew Doe,” Aaron says, less convincingly than he’s aimed for.

Wymack’s glare deepens.

“Sure you don’t. Look at the last page.”

Aaron cannot bring himself to touch any part of this book. He has a creeping sensation that if he opens it, his brother’s spirit will emerge from its center like a horrible book ghost, and strangle him.

“You good, buddy?” Mal leans towards him to ask, voice soft with concern, and Aaron is not going to have a break down in his boss’s office over a fucking book goddamn it .

Aaron cracks open the book, maybe too violently, and he flips through too roughly, and it looks like fiction, and none of the characters are named ‘Aaron,’ and he starts to feel like maybe it’s going to be okay. And then he flips to the last page, where under acknowledgments, Andrew has written,

This work is inspired and informed by research published by Aaron Minyard.

And then Andrew lists every one of his papers that Aaron has published falsely under his own name.

Aaron swallows, and looks up at Wymack slowly. Can the police charge for academic dishonesty? 

“My wife read this first,” Wymack says. “Read it in a day. Loved it. Gave it to me. I read it, and didn’t even realize it wasn’t fiction until I read—”

“The dedication,” Aaron guesses, gut heavy.

Wymack nods. “Doe published this, Doe put your name in the credits, and suddenly we’ve got lots of people looking into your research on the Wesninski case.” 

Wymack points at the cover of the novel. 

“Doe never explicitly says that this book is about Wesninski,” Wymack leads.

“But he doesn’t have to,” Aaron surmises.

Wymack leans back in chair, folding his hands behind his head. 

“Did you know searches for all of your old school papers are up four hundred percent?” Wymack asks. 

Aaron wants to scream. 

“No, sir,” Aaron says calmly. Are there levels to academic dishonesty? Is the crime worse if your work gets famous?

“Because Wesninski’s imprisoned here, his release is going to fall under my jurisdiction.”

“We can’t know for sure he’s going to be released,” Mal tries, eyes jumping to Aaron with a bugged out expression that Aaron thinks is meant to look supportive.

“Oh, he’s going to be released.” Wymack takes his glasses off and sighs. “Aaron, the public’s going to want you to be part of it.”

At first, Aaron doesn’t understand. He thought this was about plagiarism.

When Aaron realizes what is actually happening, he thinks that he may vomit.

“No thank you, sir.”

“Yeah, too bad,” Wymack says.

Aaron hears Mal splutter on his behalf.

“It’s going to take at least six months for everything to go through,” Wymack continues, very obviously ignoring Aaron and Mal twitching in front of him. “Maybe more. Maybe a year. Either way, by then, you’ll be established enough here, and you and I will tackle Wesninski’s release together.”

“Sir –”

“No complaints. The FBI’s looking over my shoulder on this one. They want you. So they’ll get you.” The severity of Wymack’s face lessens, infinitesimally. “But I’ll be there with you. I’ll do what I can.”

Aaron thought he was done with Wesninski. It’s been two years of this, two years of pizza and video games and reinventing himself. 

“Take that book with you,” Wymack says. “No doubt they’re going to quote it in the trial. You should know what it says.”

Aaron takes the book with fingertips gone cold. 

“The FBI ran him,” Wymack says casually. “Doe. Apparently his last name is actually Minyard.”

Aaron thinks he may pass out.

“Oh,” Aaron says, stupidly.

“Read the book,” Wymack says, and then the door closes behind them, and Aaron shoves the book into Mal’s fumbling fingers.

Aaron focuses very hard on putting one foot in front of the other, and Mal inhales to start speaking three times before he actually does. 

“What?” Aaron finally snaps.

Mal’s hesitation pressurizes the air around them.

“So… is this Andrew… Wymack said his last name is Minyard too?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Aaron picks up his pace. One step, then another. He wishes his fucking legs were longer. 

“But why didn’t he publish as Andrew Minyard?” Mal says, jogging a little to keep up.

Because Minyard is my last name too. Because he doesn’t want to share anything with me ever again.

“I don’t know.”

Mal goes quiet, considering. No doubt he is thinking of something encouraging to say. 

“Mal, drop it,” Aaron pleads. Aaron has no interest at all in hearing whatever platitude Mal thinks he can whip up. “I’m not thinking about this until I have to.”

Mal looks at him, and Aaron can’t look back. 

And then, because Mal is a champ, and Mal is his friend, and Mal actually listens to him, he drops it.

“Pizza AND wings tonight?” Mal offers in a tentative segue.

“No,” Aaron says, and has to clear his throat when his voice comes out rough. “No pizza.”

“Who are you?”

“Poutine.”

Mal groans. “I’m guessing you want homemade gravy.”

“The three hour recipe.”

“Bastard,” Mal says, fondly.

“Says you,” Aaron shoots back.

The banter is familiar enough that Aaron can stay grounded in the present, can stay firmly in the body of the man he is now. He tries not to let his eyes stray to the book Mal has surreptitiously tucked under his armpit, nearly out of sight.

Books can’t hurt you , Aaron tells himself. You're a cop now. Get a grip .

**

Because Mal is a champ, he not only makes the three hour gravy, but he does the fries by hand too. He makes so much food that they both eat until their stomachs cramp. Mal does the dishes too, and then he reads passages from Andrew’s book in the most horrendous Scottish accent Aaron has ever heard, and Aaron laughs so hard he almost vomits up his three-hour poutine. 

“You’re the best,” Aaron says, when he catches his breath. Aaron even thinks he thinks he means it. His friendship with Mal is uncomplicated, and reliable, and a bright spot in what had been a lot of dark. This is what brothership is supposed to feel like , Aaron thinks fleetingly – and then stops. He doesn’t think about his brother. He will not, he will not, he will not. 

“I’m the best ?” Mal repeats, fluttering his eyelashes dramatically.

“Don’t make me take it back.”

“See, cuz I think you’re the worst. I’m so sorry to have misled you.”

“Shut up.”

“I make poutine for all my enemies, you see.” 

Aaron grabs the couch cushion from where he’s sprawled on the ground, and swings it at Mal as hard as he can. Mal doesn’t even flinch.

“…That’s all you got, after two years of training? Sad.”

Aaron rolls his eyes, and then Mal grabs the cushion and thwaps him – decidedly harder.

“Oh, it is on.”

**

That night, Aaron creeps back into the living room after Mal has gone to sleep, and picks up his brother’s novel. In The Upside Down House, as he learns, follows a young boy named Neil, who, to all his neighbors, lives an exceedingly normal life. 

Every night, Neil’s father takes him up to a special attic that he opens with a special key. 

Inside the attic is the most unexpected of sights – a verdant conservatory, full of butterflies, of every colour, of every size. Neil thinks that this is the most beautiful place he’s ever seen.

Neil’s father brings him, nearly every night. He brings him so often that the butterflies start to recognize him, start to land gently on his clothes, start to brush his cheeks with their luminescent wings. Neil realizes he loves the butterflies. He loves their beauty, their delicacy, their gentleness.

Neil’s father loves them too. He loves them so much that he shows Neil how to coax them into landing on his palm. How to cup his hands around them so that he can feel their delicate wings flutter against the underside of his fingers. 

“This is the best part,” his father says, and then he teaches him how to hold their small bodies down with his thumb, and peel their wings from their bodies, one by one.

Chapter Text

THE BUTCHER GOES FREE

Lock your doors, and hide your children. Wesninski goes free January 19th.

**

As predicted, the double-punch of Andrew’s book meeting Aaron’s published work rushes Wesninski’s court proceedings. As Professor Winfield had hoped, all those years ago, a galvanized public lights enough of a fire under the North Carolina judge’s seat to get Wesninski released under probation within the year, subject to supervision and extended work with a psychiatrist.

Wymack calls him into his office to tell him that they’ll be starting Wesninski’s pre-release prison visits within the month, and Aaron barely hears him. (There is a butterfly hovering outside the window just behind Wymack’s head. One of its wings is slightly crushed. Aaron feels nauseous.) 

Wesninski is everywhere these days. Aaron cannot turn on the TV or the radio, or open a newspaper, without seeing his name and his indecently young mugshot. Aaron spent many years pretending to care about this man, and then many years pretending he didn’t exist, and now, Aaron has to pretend that he’s ready to meet him. (Aaron has to pretend that Wesninski doesn’t scare the shit out of him).

The stress has made Aaron gaunt, has made Aaron twitchy, has made Aaron a creature who doesn’t sleep through the night and who dreads the morning with an ferocity that threatens to consume him.

Strangely, the stress-by-proxy has the opposite effect on Mal. 

Mal seems to get firmer, get more intense, get more electric. Like everybody else in South Carolina, Mal also sees Wesninski’s creepy photo everywhere. Where Aaron flinches every time he sees it, Mal descends into something more dark and focussed. Aaron and Mal have an unspoken agreement not to talk about their lives before they knew each other, but Aaron clocks the quiet viciousness in him whenever Wesninski is mentioned, and forcibly restrains himself from going through the database to see if anyone with Mal’s last name shows up on Wesninski’s victim list.

Aaron’s impulse – overwhelmed and anxious and not sleeping well – is to stay home and hyperventilate. Mal, fueled perhaps by his own history, does not let Aaron choose helplessness. 

Mal makes them review their self defense lessons, and makes them practice again and again until they can both disarm each other at multiple angles and speeds. Mal makes them go to the gun range more often than Aaron thinks is necessary. He makes them practice identifying shifty behavior, and practice bursting into action quickly. 

“Remember that he is a felon who just did eight years for murder,” Mal emphasizes, and his voice is rough. “He is a felon, and you are a peace officer, and if he tries anything,” and here Mal looks at him intensely, that dark thing visible behind his eyes, “Kill him.”

Aaron is not the one prone to violence. He’s not the one who pulled knives on high school bullies. He is not the one who beat homophobes until they broke outside Eden’s.

“Aaron, if you have to do it, do it. Promise me you’ll do it.”

Something wobbles in him uneasily. Promise me you’ll do it .

“Okay,” Aaron whispers, and then, “Yes. I promise.”

Mal hits him on the arm, hard, and Aaron understands that it’s affection. 

“Just don’t die,” Mal says, too exposed, too earnest. And then he laughs, and his seriousness evaporates. “I’m trying to save your life, man. Say thank you.”

“Thank you,” Aaron says. And then hits him back in the arm. (Affectionately)

**

In the week leading up to Wesninski’s release – to Aaron actually having to meet the mugshot made flesh – Aaron becomes excruciatingly aware of every day of his sobriety (1277 days, and 12 hours). The temptation to backslide is aggressive and loud and so so tempting, but he tells Mal, and Mal keeps him honest.

Mal is always with him in the day time, and only the next room over in the nighttime, and as long as Aaron is among the awake, Mal has his back. 

The trouble is that his subconscious has picked this week as the perfect time to schedule reruns of the nightmare he got from watching Born To Butcher , back at Columbia College. This time, it’s not him chained to that horrible concrete floor, no this time it’s Mal, or it’s his mom, or it’s Nicky, or it’s Andrew, or it’s Katelyn, and everyone he loves only ever visits him in his nightmares, where they come to die.

Two nights before Wesninski’s release, Aaron wakes in a cold sweat, and Andrew’s screams are still echoing in his ears, except no – that’s his phone, ringing. 

He fumbles in the dark. If Wymack is calling him, in the middle of the night, two nights before the fucking Butcher of Baltimore gets released into their custody, Aaron thinks he might take a page out of Wesninski’s book and turn a knife on Wymack himself.

Incoming call from [KATELYN MACKENZIE] .

Aaron freezes. 

It’s 4:12am in South Carolina. They’re three hours behind in California. Kate calling him at 1:12am, on Friday, means… a drunk dial? They haven’t talked in years. She’s not supposed to still be thinking about him. She’s supposed to be in LA, with her sister Gabby, living her dream life.

Aaron almost misses the call because his hands are shaking so badly he keeps missing the ‘accept’ button.

“Kate?” Aaron says, heart racing.

On the other end of the line, Katelyn is having a panic attack, and Aaron’s heart plummets.

“I… I … I can’t, she…  I don’t know what to do… I…”

“What’s going on? Are you safe?”

“My sister… they… don’t know who… she’s… I can’t… I…”

Kate is gasping and gasping, and Aaron thinks that she’s going to pass out. In the background of the call, Aaron hears voices, and sirens.

“Kate, breathe right now.”

Her breath hisses in and out, too light, too fast.

“Listen to me right now, follow my voice, breathe.”

A shaky, awful rasping breath in.

“And now breathe out. Please”

The breath that comes out is a wail.

“Cmon Kate, breathe in again, that’s it, that’s…”

Kate’s breath stays choppy (stays ragged, stays awful), but she doesn’t pass out, and slowly her breath becomes interspersed with words again. The siren gets louder and louder, and then cuts off sharply.

“Aaron… My… my sister… They… we don’t know who…her face, can’t even recognize…”

Aaron feels his stomach turn over.

“They … she… hit and run and she… she… and the police… are useless, and I don’t…” Kate hiccups on her breath. “I don’t know what… my sister… my baby, my Gabby… I can’t…” 

Aaron wishes he could climb through the phone and arrive at her side.

“What do you need? Do you need help with the police? Tell me what you need.”

“I… I can’t think… everything is… Aaron, why did this happen? Why is this happening?”

Kate huffs and huffs and huffs on her breath, and then she gets really quiet, and just when Aaron starts to get really scared, she speaks again.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know, I don’t why I called. We don’t… we’re not…I’m so sorry.”

“Can I come to you?” Aaron asks. “Would that help?”

“I…” Kate shudders out another horrible sob. “I think yes.”

Aaron can hear her struggling for her breath again.

“What’s your address, Kate?”

“I… oh my god… Gabby …”

“Tell me your address, Kate.”

He makes her tell him twice, and by the end of the second time, his overnight bag is packed, and he’s standing on the street hailing cab.

“I’m coming,” he says, and he’s pressing the phone so close to his ear that he’s rubbing the skin raw. “I’m coming.”

**

The last funeral Aaron attended was his mother’s. Uncle Luther did most of it – Aaron was so fuzzy with grief, and so determined to somehow care for his indifferent brother, and he remembers that lots of people touched him, and Aunt Maria cried, and there were prayers, and he couldn’t understand a single word that was said to him.

Gabby deserves a funeral, and Kate deserves a funeral for Gabby – but Kate and Gabby have been on their own for a while, and there’s no money for anything. Kate pays $1600 for the cremation, and $100 for the urn, and she pays for both with a credit card she doesn’t know how she will pay off. (As if Gabby’s death is not enough of a blow, USC has revoked Kate’s scholarship in the absence of her sister’s ability to ‘fulfill the terms of the scholarship agreement.’ USC sent her an email to apologize for her loss, and to ask her to kindly remit this year’s med school tuition of $70,000.)

Kate and Aaron take Gabby to the ocean, and Kate tells story after story about her beautiful, generous sister, and her voice cracks, and she sobs, and watching someone you care about go through the most horrible thing imaginable is its own kind of hell.

Kate holds Aaron’s hand in her left hand, and holds Gabby’s urn to her chest with her right, and the plan was to release her ashes to the ocean, but instead they sit and watch the sun set over the water, and Kate holds her baby sister just a little bit longer.

As darkness settles around them, Aaron thinks about California being the place where Andrew ended up in foster care, and then in juvie. This is Aaron’s first time in California, and sitting there with Kate, heavy with grief, Aaron thinks that the sunniness is deceptive. 

California is a horrible place.

Chapter Text

Because Aaron can’t seem to make a single decision in his life without it hurting someone else, his abrupt departure means that his caseload passes back to Wymack to redistribute. Wymack is not as pissed as Aaron expected. He is gruffly compassionate (“family is family, take the time you need”), and he approves Aaron’s extended leave, and re-assigns Nathaniel Wesninski to Mal instead.

Aaron is devastated.

“It makes sense,” Mal says over the phone, forcefully bright. Kate is sleeping fitfully on the couch, still holding Aaron’s hand tightly as he sits below her on the floor. 

(Aaron technically has a hotel down the road, but Kate sees Gabby’s ghost everywhere, and she sees Gabby’s broken body every time she closes her eyes, and Kate asked Aaron to stay, and he said yes.)

“I’ve been with you the whole time you’ve been preparing,” Mal says, and it's only the slight waver of his voice which betrays his unease. “I’m more ready than anyone else. It was always going to be me.”

“I’m so sorry, Mal,” Aaron whispers.

“Hey, no. Not your fault. Glad you could be there.”

“You weren’t supposed to have to deal with this.”

Over the phone, Aaron can hear the floor creak as Mal paces back and forth in their shitty apartment.

“It’ll be okay. Wymack went to the first prison meeting by himself – thank God  – so I have more time to prep. I won’t see Wesninski until he’s released next week, which is already too soon, but more doable.”

Better you than me , Aaron thinks instinctively, and then feels horrifically guilty.

“I could book a flight?” Aaron offers, still holding Kate’s hand. “You don’t actually have to do this.”

“No,” Mal says, firmly, and Aaron exhales in relief, and his guilt shoves at him again.

 “Be there for her,” Mal says. “She needs you.”  And then a little more quietly:  

“Being brave is good for me, Aaron. I’ll grow into it.”

**

Somehow, Kate returns to class. Aaron thinks she deserves compassionate leave, but USC’s policy is strict – if you step away from the program, you step away for good.

Kate switches out her stethoscope for her sister’s, she takes out an obscenely large student loan, and she goes back.

To her classmates, she must seem impossibly strong, or perhaps uncomprehendingly heartless. She has steel in her eyes, steel in her spine. She does her rounds on hospital placement, and she is unshakeable.

She comes home, and she falls to her knees, and she sobs and sobs and sobs.

Aaron hasn’t talked to Nicky in years, but remembers the hard times when he and Andrew and Aaron first moved in together. Aaron remembers the tense, hurting silences, and Andrew’s rage, and Aaron’s grief, and Nicky putting on the kettle, again and again.

Aaron tries not to hover. He tries to have the kettle on when she comes home, and something warm for her to eat. He cleans, and he cooks, and he watches Kate drowning in the chasm of her grief, and he tries to be something solid she can hold on to.

(They don’t really know each other now, but that something between them, that tie even from college, is still there. Wymack said ‘family is family,’ and Aaron is not quite sure when Kate become his, and he hers, but he still feels it, all these years later.)

They sit in silence in the living room for hours every night, and it’s painful, and it’s familiar, and Aaron remembers hours of sitting in a small living room in Columbia in tense, hurting silences, and he thinks he finally understands how Nicky felt.

Aaron anxiously emulates his cousin, and he makes tea, and he folds laundry, and he cleans the coffee table too many times, and he still hovers and hovers and hovers. The day Kate moves from staring at the wall with blank eyes to staring at her study notes with blank eyes instead, Aaron nods in relief, and shifts from anxious-housekeeping to anxious-co-reading. 

Kate's non-medical reading selection is limited. He tries his luck with some of her non-fictions, and then he waits until the next time Kate is at the hospital, and wanders out to find himself something more accessible to read.

He’s feeling pleased with himself for navigating LA on his own, and pleased with himself for finding an indie bookstore, and feeling more than pleased that Kate will be home soon and they’ll be able to read together, and he enters the bookstore, and all of his pleasure drains right out.

The cover of In The Upside Down House has been blown up and made into a poster large enough that he can see the “Times Bestseller” sticker from across the room. It is large enough that he can read Professor Abigail Winfield’s front cover review (“a generation-defining work of creative fiction”). It is not large enough to distract from the life-size cardboard cut out of his brother which accompanies it. 

“Oh my god,” Aaron says.

Someone is taking a picture with the cut out. There is a lineup of someones taking pictures with the cut out. Aaron zooms out, and now he sees Andrew’s book in arms all over the store. He sees the pyramid of books on the table, depleted and uneven. He sees the poster, he sees the cutout, he hears his brother’s name bouncing around the room in enthusiastic voices, and he has to close his eyes.

Aaron knows the book is famous. The Wesninski trial is high profile enough that it consistently makes international news. Aaron knows that In The Upside Down House has become synonymous with the public movement for Wensinki’s release. He knows that a butterfly-in-hand has become a universally recognized symbol of solidarity. He knows the book is famous. He does.

Somehow, he did not infer that this would make Andrew famous too.

Aaron looks at the cardboard cut out, and the lineup, and posters, and the people, and he feels something. He feels something – but it’s big and it’s overwhelming and it’s awful, and he closes his eyes and breathes until it goes away.

When he comes back to himself, he turns his back on the display and the people and the cut out, and walks to whatever section is furthest away. He grabs at a book as thick as his arm and tells himself that reading this will take him so long that by the time he needs something else, the bookstore will have to have a different fucking display.

He grabs his book, and he also impulse-grabs a Grey’s Anatomy-adjacent romance novel that even he can tell is not medically accurate. He thinks Kate might get a kick out of it, and he focuses on what her smile might look like, instead of the cashier with her butterfly-in-hand tattoo, which is so fresh it is still under cling wrap.

He shoves out the bookstore door, too forceful, and his phone dings with a text from from Mal.

Just met him. 

For the second time in an hour, Aaron freezes in the doorway of the bookstore.

Still shaking. Soulless, Aaron. This man is soulless.

And then a sneaky, slightly blurry shot of a young white man with matted, unruly auburn hair and eyes so blue they burn. His handcuffs do not look nearly thick enough for the tension Aaron can see radiating through him, even through a blurry photo. 

Creepy as fuck , Aaron writes. And then, you okay?

A small pause.

Still alive lol .

Aaron feels a spike of concern.

Hey remember when you told me to watch out? And not die? That goes for you too.

Yeah I know 

and then 

oh shit Wymack wants to debrief, c u

C u 

By the time Aaron’s message goes through, Mal is already in his debrief. Aaron clutches his books to his chest a little too tightly. He realizes his heart still beating too fast. He thinks, a little absurdly, that Kate would know just how much irreversible damage the prolonged stress is leaving on all of their bodies.

**

Bereavement leave in South Carolina is five days. California’s is three days.

Aaron’s been at Kate’s for almost three months. 

Aaron is working long-distance, kind of. He does a lot of paperwork. He does some analysis. He does some research. He takes calls from Wymack and from an increasingly exhausted Mal. 

Aaron sits in the arm chair across from Kate, both of them reading quietly together, and he dares Wymack to make him choose. He looks forward to getting to say ‘no.’

**

Aaron is reading the Grey’s Anatomy-wanna-be book. 

Last week, Kate read it in a single evening after class, and the medical malpractice was so bad that she kept stopping to wheeze and read passages out loud. Aaron figures he’s heard most of it already, but Kate is insistent he ‘experiences it for himself.’ Aaron does not enjoy this book, but he does enjoy that it let Kate laugh for the first time in three months, so he’s reading it.

Across from him, Kate is reading Andrew’s new release. She asked for his permission, before she bought it. (He never told her about the bookstore fiasco, but he’s sure she somehow already knows). She asked, and he told her it was fine, and it is. Mostly. He still feels like the cover is watching him, anytime she holds it up.

“This one’s about you, did you know?” Kate says, and Aaron jumps.

This book is titled Take To The Dock And Drown, and it’s about your shadow becoming sentient, and haunting you to your grave.

“That one is not about me.”

“Did you read it?”

Aaron refuses to touch the book, and gives it a wide berth every time he skirts the coffee table. 

“No.”

“It’s actually helping me. About Gabby.”

Aaron cannot imagine how. He read a single review for the book online, which called it violent and ‘deceptively disturbing,’ and that told him everything he needed to know. He tries to school his face into something supportive.

“Yeah?”

“Grief is ugly, you know. And horrifying. And siblingship, as a dynamic, is so messy and beautiful. And ugly. And horrifying.”

“That book is about shadows, not siblings.”

Kate raises an eyebrow. 

“Not that I looked it up or anything,” Aaron says hastily.

Kate looks back at her book, and reads: 

“What is a shadow but the smoke of what you burned and which stayed anyways? What is a shadow but your own reflection, inverted? ”

“Don’t read into it too deeply. Andrew despises me.”

Kates puts down her book.

“When’s the last time you two talked?”

Aaron will never admit that he counts the days as closely as the days of his sobriety.

“I don’t know. Four years. Five.”

Kate’s face spasms, but she speaks evenly. “As someone who no longer has the chance to talk to my sibling, I think you should call him.”

“He does not want to speak to me.”

Kate tilts her head. “How do you know?”

Get out, Andrew said, and meant it.

“I just do.”

Kate and Aaron both look at the book on the coffee table. The cover is pretty, and sad – a young girl sits on a dock at night, watched from behind by her shadow.

“You don’t write a hundred thousand words about someone who is not important to you,” Kate says gently. 

“No?” Aaron says weakly.

“No.”

**

The call to Andrew goes like this:

Aaron hits call, and Kate holds his hand, but she doesn’t let him put the phone on speaker mode. It rings and rings and rings, and Aaron thinks, thank God, he changed his number. And then it goes to voicemail, and it’s Andrew’s voice, and Aaron gasps like someone hit him hard in the solar plexus.

“He didn’t even pick up,” he gasps out.

Kate’s hand leaves his to come to his back. 

“Oh, Aaron, I’m so–”

Aaron’s phone lights up with an incoming call from [ANDREW MINYARD].

Aaron’s breath has left him, and he thinks he’s actually very not okay right now, and he doesn’t even consciously decide to hit ‘accept,’ but the line connects and he feels that old string, the one tied between him and this man he’s lived half his life without.

“Hi,” Aaron says shakily, and his chest hurts.

He can hear his brother breathing. He tries to picture him, and realizes his last reference was so long ago. Realizes his last reference was a fucking cardboard cut out. What do you look like now? What do you do? Where do you go?

“I’m in Los Angeles.” Aaron is not sure why he’s started with this. “With Kate.”

“Right,” Andrew says, and his voice is deeper, and rougher, and Aaron remembers him blowing smoke rings in high school, and wonders if he still smokes.

A long pause, and then:

“I’ll be in LA in February,” his brother says. “Book tour.”

It’s not an offer, really, except that Andrew wouldn’t tell him if he didn’t want him to know.

“Yeah?” Aaron says.

Aaron’s not sure what’s happening on his face, but Kate squeezes his hand, and nods encouragingly.

“Yes,” Andrew says.

“We’ll, uh, we’ll be there,” Aaron says. “If you, uh. If you want.”

“Good.”

There’s another pause after, and it’s awkward, and Aaron keeps expecting Andrew to hang up, but he doesn’t.

Aaron can’t think of anything to say. All the easy things he’s already said. (But Andrew is there, on the other side of the line not hanging up, and Aaron feels their jagged symmetry, and he can’t hang up either.)

He and his shadow stay on the line in silence for nearly an hour, and Aaron thinks that he’s going to need to read Take To The Dock And Drown.

Chapter Text

“I can’t believe I don’t know this,” Kate says. “Are you fraternal twins? Or–” 

“Identical,” Aaron says.

Kate shakes her head from where she’s dicing onions, (very neatly, surgeon-in-training neatly). “I’m realizing now I never actually met him.”

Aaron pauses where he’s peeling potatoes.

“You never met him?”

“No, remember? He was so… I don’t want to say protective, but… restrictive for you. Remember? You told me about your high school girlfriend?”

Who Andrew threatened at knife point when she came by the house.

“Ah. I… Yeah. I haven’t thought about that for a while.”  Aaron puts down the potato in his hands, considers what he wants to say. “To be honest, I try really hard not to think about high school, or college. Especially college.”

“Why?” Kate transfers the onions to the hot pan. They sizzle. The sound should be soothing, but today it grates on him.

“I don’t like who I was then,” Aaron confesses, and takes another potato and he doesn’t want to look up, but he is brave, he can be brave goddammit. “I regret a lot of my choices. I regret what I did to Andrew.” He exhales, and says it. “And I regret what I did to you.”

Something in her face pulls, and Aaron doesn’t let himself stop.

“You were right, and I was cruel to you for it. I’m sorry. I’ve been sorry.”

Aaron’s hands are shaking, a little. He surrenders his bravery, and returns his focus to the potato in his hands.

“Aaron,” Kate says, quietly.

Aaron finishes peeling the potato. Puts it in the bowl. Takes another potato. Keeps his eyes on the potato. Peels it.

“Aaron,” Kate says, more firmly.

Aaron looks up slowly, already tensing.

“Aaron, I’m not holding on to any pain. It doesn’t haunt me.” 

Aaron can smell the onions, suddenly fragrant. Kate doesn’t look at them; she looks at him.

“I don’t condone what you did, Aaron, but I understand why you did it. Of course I do.”

Aaron realizes he’s finished his last potato. He puts it in the bowl, and suddenly has no idea what to do with his hands. Or his face. 

I understand why you did it. Of course I do.

“...But?” Aaron prompts, and then braces for whatever words he’ll carry as scars next. "Do fucking better” has been a pretty constant refrain for years now.

“You broke my heart,” Kate says easily, like a fact, and she turns off the stove, and Aaron thinks, oh, we’re having this conversation right now.

“But mostly because it broke my heart to watch you be so cruel to yourself,” Kate says.

Without something to hold, something to do, Aaron’s hands are still shaking. He doesn’t know how to make them stop. He presses them into the countertop, and still, they spasm.

“You were throwing away your entire life for Andrew, and you didn’t even seem to care. And you wouldn’t let me care for you. And that broke my heart, Aaron. That.”

Aaron swallows down the sudden lump in his throat.

“I’m sorry,” he rasps, and then he starts to mentally make a list of all the things he’s left in Kate’s apartment. He thinks that when she asks him to leave, he can grab all of it and be out of her space in less than ten minutes.

To his tremendous surprise, when Aaron says “I’m sorry,” Kate laughs.

“Aaron, I know . You came here, when I called, no questions asked. You held me together, when you had no obligation to. You’ve been kind and gracious and perfect. And you’ve stayed, even though you could’ve left when I went to school, or when I started being able to make it through the day without sobbing.” Kate finds his eyes. “But you didn’t.”

Aaron doesn’t know what’s going on in this conversation. He doesn’t know what to say.“Are you saying…” Aaron feels sudden horror. “That I overstayed? I’ve been imposing?” Aaron wants to hit himself in the face. “God, I’m sorry. I’ll just –”

“No,” Kate says, cutting him off. “No. That’s not it. I’m not being clear. I’m saying you are not who you were, and I am not who I was, and I’m very glad you’re here, because I’ve missed you. A lot.” She straightens her shoulders. “If it wasn't asking you to give up your whole life, I would even ask you to stay. To keep staying.”

There’s a slight flush on her cheeks, and Aaron thinks, no way is this where this conversation is going.

“... You would?”

“Yes,” Kate says, and her flush is more pronounced, but her eyes are bright, fierce. 

Aaron feels his own flush starting. 

“I would…. If I could… I want…”  Aaron doesn’t know how to say what he wants to say. “I missed you too,” he settles on. 

There’s a pause, but somehow it’s not loaded, and somehow it’s not awkward, and Katelyn turns back on the stove, and the onions sizzle, and Aaron sighs in relief.

“Do you know I went back to Columbia Community College?” Aaron confesses to her turned back. “To try and see you?”

“Really?” 

“Marissa tore a strip off of me.”

“Marissa ,” Kate laughs. “Damn, I haven’t talked to her in ages.”

“She has your back,” Aaron says, and remembers: You are so not that important, whatever your name is. “‘Til death, I’d wager.”

Kate turns from the stove to smile at him.

“She was a good one.” Kate bites her lip. “Though she was not your biggest fan.”

“I gathered.”

Kate laughs.

“She also wasn’t the best person to give me advice about you, to be honest. I think… we were very ‘college.’ Not so good at nuance. Not so good at understanding conflicting priorities, or, um, emotional regulation.”

Kate’s shoulders sag, and she finds his eyes again, and she is so earnest it almost hurts Aaron to look at her. He comes beside her to put the water on for the potatoes, and she touches his arm.

“I regret the way I went about it,” she says, eyes deep. “I regret leaving so fast. I… would like another chance. For us. As we are now. If, if you want –”

“I do,” Aaron says, probably too quickly. “Yes.”

Kate nods, too many times. Aaron watches her face go into problem-solving mode, and she suddenly looks so much like the young person she was in college.

“I’m almost done med school,” she says, fast, words tumbling out like there's not enough time. “I won’t be stuck here forever. For my residency, I can try to get myself somewhere closer to Columbia. We can make it work. There’s a way.”

Now Aaron nods. The stove sizzles, the water starts to heat, and the quiet domesticity of it all makes him feel very soft. “Yeah. Yeah. There is. There’s gotta be.”

Kate laughs, and then leans across the kitchen island to touch his cheek, gently, fleetingly.

“Hi, baby.”

**

It is either hilarious or horrifying that Kate and Aaron’s 'first date' ends up being Andrew’s book event. Kate comes straight from the hospital, and they enter together, and Andrew had texted “ reading + signing @ barnsdale gallery ” and Aaron had imagined something small and dimly lit and probably intimately intense – but Kate and Aaron walk in, and it’s a full-on theatre, and it’s packed. 

It’s so packed that there are no seats left. Aaron and Kate lean on the back wall of the theatre, Kate shifting her weight slowly between her two sore feet. Andrew is introduced, and Andrew enters, and Aaron forgot about the – (what did Andrew write? What is a shadow but your own reflection, inverted? ). Aaron watches his identical twin brother come on stage, and there’s a moment, just a moment, where it’s like peeking into a parallel life, and seeing himself there.

What if I wanted to publish those myself? Andrew had asked, so many years ago. Aaron considers the eager crowd, considers the books lining Kate’s bookshelf, and he feels fiercely proud of Andrew, and deeply ashamed of himself.

Andrew settles behind the podium, Andrew angles the mic towards himself, and somehow – across a theatre of over 500 people – Andrew tilts his head, and finds Aaron.

Aaron has heard that stage lights are blinding, but Andrew looks at him, and Aaron looks back, and somehow Aaron is sure Andrew is actually seeing him. The light on stage is bright – and, by consequence, the shadow on the audience is deep.

What is a shadow , Andrew wrote, but the smoke of what you burned and which stayed anyways?

**

After the reading, Kate and Aaron wait in the line to have their copies of Andrew’s upcoming release, The Flesh Is A Flickerlight , signed. Aaron is wearing his hood, and also Kate’s sunglasses, and feeling absolutely ridiculous (an unfortunate amount of strangers have already mistaken him for Andrew – Kate was insistent on this course of action). 

They are maybe fifty people away from Andrew (who is signing books and refusing all attempts by fans at conversation), when Aaron’s phone buzzes. It’s on do-not-disturb. There are only four people programmed to override his do-not-disturb, and two of them are in the room right now.

Incoming call from [MAL SMITH].

“Hey, Mal,” Aaron says, and Kate smiles at him. “Say hi,” she mouths, and Aaron nods.

Mal has still not said anything. Did he call by accident?

“Hello? Mal, you there?”

“Aaron?” Mal’s voice is very small, very shaky, and Aaron immediately tenses. 

“Mal?”

“Fuck,” Mal says. “ Fuck.”

Aaron looks at Kate, and she nods back at him in understanding. Aaron steps out of line, and looks for a quiet corner. He can feel Andrew’s eyes on his back as he slips through the crowd.

“What’s happening? Are you okay?”

“I… I’m sorry to call. I shouldn’t have called.”

“Hey, no, I’m glad you did. Tell me what’s going on. I’m here for you.”

Mal gulps, and Aaron is pressing the phone very hard against his ear.

“I think something bad’s about to happen. I think something bad’s about to happen to me.”

“What? What’s happened?”

“N-nothing. Really.” Mal exhales slowly, shakily, and Aaron's gut clenches. “But Wesninski, he, uh, you know he likes to run his mouth. He tells me all the time how he’s going to kill me, how he’s going to slice me apart, how he’s going to–” Mal chokes off.

Aaron’s phone creaks between his tight fingers.

“And his eyes,” Mal says, when he finds his voice again, “you can just see, he means it. He’s planning it.” Mal must bring the phone closer to him – his voice gets more clear, more urgent. 

“He’s smart, Aaron. Nobody realizes how smart he is. Today when I came, he had slipped his handcuffs. He didn’t do anything, but just put them down in front of me. Just showed me he could.”

“What did Wymack say?”

Mal scoffs. “You know Wymack. Big old softie for fuck ups. He thinks Wesninski can be ‘redeemed .’”

“He’s not protecting you?”

“Last time we went together, Wymack didn’t even load his gun.”

“Shit.”

“I’m on Wesninski tomorrow night. By myself. I just have a bad feeling, man. Really bad.”

Someone puts their hand on his arm, and Aaron jerks away. He turns, and it’s Kate, hand still outstretched, face deeply creased with concern.

“You okay?” She says quietly, and Aaron shakes his head.

“Hey, what can I do?” Aaron asks. “Who can I call for you?”

Mal laughs, and there’s something unhinged in it, and Aaron doesn’t like any of this.

“Nothing, man. There’s nothing to do. If you’re the praying type, pray for me. Otherwise, call me on Wednesday and hopefully I won’t pick up from the fucking hospital.”

From the fucking hospital .

“Of course,” Aaron says. “I… Be safe, Mal.”

“Just for you, buddy,” Mal says, and then the line clicks.

Aaron stares at the screen for a moment more, and then he puts it back in his pocket with unsteady hands.

“Is Mal…?”

Aaron can’t form any words. He shakes his head back and forth, again and again. 

Kate folds him into her arms. “Sh, it’s okay, baby. He’s going to be okay. He’s tough. He’s trained. He’s got this.”

Aaron is shaking so hard that Kate’s arms are shaking around him, and he knows he’s supposed to be doing something, but he can’t fucking think.

“Do you need to go home?” Kate asks, and Aaron’s falling into that old place, where everything is too loud and too bright and too much.

“Andrew,” he gasps out.

“I’ll tell him,” she says. “You stay here, and breathe.”

Through blurred eyes, Aaron watches Kate push through people, watches her unabashedly cut to the front of the line, watches her say something to Andrew, watches his security forcibly push her back. Aaron blinks, and he thinks Andrew’s eyes are on him again, but he must not be breathing, because everything is starting to go dark. 

“Aaron, you are having a panic attack. This is Kate. I need you to breathe, love.”

Aaron hadn’t realized she was already back beside him.

Aaron lets Kate coax him back into his skin, and then she ushers him out the front doors of the theatre until the air is fresh and cold and Aaron can actually put some of it into his body. 

Kate helps him into the back of a cab, and he is so out of it that he has no idea where he is. 

Aaron has thought about Mal and Wesninski together often enough, has formed mental images based on the stories Mal’s passed him over the telephone. He’s also dreamt of Mal in the Wesninski murder-house more often he would ever tell him.  In the back of the cab, all the images blend together, and now Mal narrates his worst mental images –  his eyes, you can just see, he means it. He’s planning it. He’s smart, Aaron. Nobody realizes how smart he is.

Aaron is shivering. Kate puts her coat over him, and he still can’t stop shivering.

There’s nothing to do. If you’re the praying type, pray for me. Otherwise, call me Wednesday and hopefully I won’t pick up from this hospital.

Aaron puts his head in his hands, and he’s still shaking, and Kate puts her hand on his back, and Aaron is sure the cabbie must smell his terror.

Chapter Text

In the end, Aaron doesn’t need to call on Wednesday.

Aaron’s Tuesday is spent trying to make amends with a brother who is refusing his calls, and ignoring his panic for the friend who is currently locked in with a serial killer, and waiting not-patiently for Kate to come home so that he doesn’t have to think about either of them any more.

Kate is actually very close to home when it happens. She’s been off for an hour, and on the bus for forty minutes, and she should be home anytime, and when his phone rings, Aaron sighs in anticipated relief of whatever hospital horror story Kate will tell him to distract him from the horror of their lives.

“Hi, Kate. Give me your best story; I fucking need it.”

“Aaron,” the voice on the phone says solemnly, and it’s Wymack. It’s Wymack, and it’s the voice Aaron knows, the voice he himself has been trained to use.

“No,” Aaron gasps. 

“Are you somewhere private?”

“Wymack,” Aaron pleads.

“I need to tell you that Malcolm Smith died from injuries sustained in the line of duty tonight, at 8:54pm.” Wymack’s voice hitches, just a little. Aaron’s breath is so shallow.

“No.”

“I’m calling, because he had you down as his emergency contact. The news is not public yet. I will ask you to keep it private.”

“Wymack, please.”

I’m on Wesninski tomorrow night. By myself. I just have a bad feeling, man. Really bad.

“I want you to know he fought very bravely, and very hard. It wasn’t a quick death, but it was honourable. I’m very proud of him.”

Aaron is shaking, and he can’t figure out how to unlock his knees.

“You should be very proud of him.”

The phone falls out of his numb hands, and Aaron is retching. The phone is… somewhere. The floor is… somewhere. 

Dimly, Aaron is aware that Kate’s come in, that she’s crouched on the floor with him, that she’s saying small, soothing things to him. From somewhere near him, Wymack is still speaking, voice tinny over the phone.

 Aaron catches snatches – “... and Wesninski is back behind bars, for good probably … funeral for Mal in two weeks …”

And then Aaron can’t hear anything at all, and he realizes it’s because he’s sobbing. Katelyn’s light hands run up and down his back, and Aaron sobs, and he can’t stop thinking it should have been me it should have been me it should have been me.

**

Because Aaron’s life is built exclusively of grotesque parallels, now it’s Kate who goes with him on the plane. Now it’s Kate who goes with him to the funeral. Now it’s she who holds him, and she who doesn’t let go.

Because Aaron’s life is built exclusively of grotesque parallels, now his best friend’s funeral is held in the same church his mother’s was. It doesn’t seem to matter that Aaron is ten years older - he sits in a front pew and shakes so hard he makes himself sick, so apparently nothing much has changed. 

**

Ever since their botched catch up at Andrew’s book reading, Andrew has declined all of Aaron’s calls, and ignored all of his texts. When Andrew does call, weeks later, he’s timed it to hurt.

Aaron has just watched Mal’s coffin lower into the earth, and Aaron has just thrown his handful of dirt, and Aaron has just stepped back – and his phone rings. (There is a very real moment where Aaron considers tossing his cell phone into the maw of the open grave. He thinks, if I never have to pick up another phone call with bad news, it will be too soon).

But Aaron’s phone rings, and he is overstrung and vulnerable and so, so angry (at Wesninski, at Wymack, at Andrew, at himself ), and he should not pick up the phone, but he does.

“What.”

“Aaron,” Andrew says, and his voice is low, almost urgent. “I’ve just heard that Wesninski killed his officer.”

No hello. No apology. No how are you.

“I know, asshole,” Aaron says, and his words are sharp again, and his words haven’t been sharp for years, but it feels kind of good, doesn’t it?

“It’s a set up,” Andrew says urgently, “and now Wesninski’s in prison, but he’s not safe there –”

“Oh, just stop, Andrew,” Aaron snaps. “Nobody fucking cares. Wesninski this, Wesninski that. I’m done indulging you.”

“Aaron –”

“STOP Andrew,” Aaron yells, and it feels good to yell. It feels good to lash out, and hit.  “He is not a good person, Andrew. He is not misunderstood. He is not you.” 

“Aaron –”

Aaron’s voice turns vicious. “He is bad, he is evil, Andrew, and you got him out of prison. You did that. You got him free, so he could kill someone else. A good person. You did that, Andrew.”

Andrew inhales to say… something… but Aaron is not done. He is raw, and he is broken, and there’s a lifetime of bad blood between them, and this time Aaron is striking first, and it feels awful and it feels fucking beautiful.

“You must be so proud of yourself, Andrew.” Aaron sneers, “Or do you wish you’d done it yourself? Do you feel too removed? What did that judge call you again? After juvie? Irredeemably cruel? You’re a fucking piece of shit and –”

Aaron doesn’t get the chance to say anything further, because Andrew hangs up. Aaron blinks and his phone is in the grass, and he is hunched over his knees, panting.  

Kate is hovering, ten feet away. Her face is ashen.

Aaron thanks, oh great, I’ve fucked this one up now too. Fuck.

But when Aaron’s retches turn to sobs, Kate does not leave him. She moves towards him, slow step by slow, until she’s beside him. She helps him sit in the soft grass. She sits beside him and tilts his head onto her shoulder.

“Just breathe, Aaron. Please breathe.”

**

They don’t stay long in Columbia. Kate needs to get back to the hospital. Aaron needs to go with her. Obviously.

(Aaron doesn’t need to go with her. In another reality Aaron stays by himself, and he goes to see Nicky. Maybe Nicky teaches him to pray, so that he can pray for Mal, like he asked. Maybe in that reality, when Aaron breaks, Nicky holds him, and tells him he loves him, and that he will always have a home with him. Maybe in that reality, Aaron believes him.)

In this reality, Aaron leaves with Kate the day after the funeral, and he talks to no one, and he vows to never come back.

**

They arrive back, and California is dizzy and different now that it's actually, irrevocably home. Now that there is nothing for Aaron in Columbia anymore, California feels messy and foreign to him.

California is fully Kate’s world – her school, her friends, her home, her restaurants, her streets, her work. With Columbia closed to him, Aaron suddenly feels parasitic. 

He feels the same impulse – towards self-revulsion, towards self-destruction. Towards lashing out. He breathes it down, he breathes it down, he breathes it down.

He's ruined everything else, but he will not let himself wreck what he's built with Kate. He won't. He won't.

**

Six weeks after the colossal heartache of Columbia, Aaron sprawls on the carpet, and Kate recites facts about obscure prescription drugs and their effects, and Aaron keeps her honest with the thick stack of cue cards she handed him, and he suddenly says it.

“I got a job.”

Kate sits up. Her face is cautiously excited.

“Congrats?”

“As a social worker. Or a social worker supporter. At the shelter. Apparently my degree qualifies me. I won’t have to do much training. I can start my life here.”

Kate nods slowly. “That’s great. I’m happy for you.”

“I don’t want to be a cop any more,” he says. “I hate being a cop.”

“I know.”

Kate looks at the cue cards he’s still clutching in his hands. She chooses her words carefully.

“Medicine is not lost to you, you know,” Kate says gently. “If you wanted to. I know that was your dream, once.”

Aaron cannot even access the version of himself who wanted that. That version of him lived and died in the house in Columbia where he thought he and Andrew might actually be brothers to each other. (That version of him is screaming in anguish in the back of his head, but he doesn't let himself listen to it. What does it matter, after all that's happened?).

Kate has been watching his face. As always, she reads him better than he reads himself.

“Okay, so that’s a no. That’s fine. Social work is great. Social work is challenging and rigorous. If it appeals to you, if you enjoy it, then it’s perfect.” She hesitates. “But you’re allowed a fresh start too, if you want. You could do college as yourself this time.”

Aaron bristles, too exposed, and Kate stops him before he says something he will inevitably regret. 

“I’m not discounting what you did last time. I’m just saying, when I first met you, you loved learning. You loved patterns, and problem-solving, and integrating new information. Medicine’s good for that, because there’s a massive amount to learn, and it’s always updating. But there are lots of fields where there’s a massive amount to learn. Including social work, if that’s what you actually care about.”

Aaron flops back on the carpet and presses his hands over his closed eyes. 

“I don’t actually care about social work,” he confesses. 

Kate could gloat about having caught him out, but of course she doesn't.

“Think about what you do care about then,” she says. "Start life here in a good way."

Aaron cannot imagine how that will be possible.

Think about what you do care about then.

Aaron breathes.

Aaron breathes, and then he does.

Chapter Text

Years later –

Aaron is sitting with his laptop open, and Kate has her hands on his shoulders, and this is where they were Kate matched into her dream residency, and this is where they were when Kate passed her boards, and this is where they are when Aaron passes the bar.

“Oh,” he says, in disbelief as his results come up on screen.

“Oh my god!” Kate yells, and then they are jumping up and down, and then they are yelling, and neither of them are in their twenties any more, but they’re running around like college kids, and yelling. 

“A LAWYER! My husband is a LAWYER!”

“I’m a LAWYER! I’M A FUCKING LAWYER!”

Aaron is laughing. He can’t stop laughing. He can’t stop beaming. Kate is doing a happy dance which is suspiciously similar to the dance she used to do in the club, and Aaron is laughing and does life really get this good?

“A LAWYER!!” Kate screams. 

“A MOTHERFUCKING LAWYER!” Aaron screams back. 

Aaron is so full of warmth, he thinks he might melt out of his own skin.

“We did it,” Aaron says, croaky and quiet, and he can’t quite believe it.

“You did it, baby. You fucking did that.” 

Aaron snorts. “You know, you helped me study so much, you probably could pass it yourse –”

Aaron is cut off by the pop of a cork as Kately showers them both in champagne. And then they are both laughing again. 

“Watch out world,” Kate says, holding the bottle aloft like a torch, “here he fucking comes!”

“Kate, I love you,” Aaron, voice only a little hoarse from all the yelling (and not from emotion).

“Aaron Minyard, I love you with my whole heart,” Kate says, and when she kisses him, lips sticky from champagne, Aaron thinks that younger him had no idea what a beautiful future was waiting for him.

**

This time, when Aaron went back to school, he specialized in what was interesting for him. He remembered the parts of his crim degree he had cherished in secret, and then he let himself cherish them publicly. Again and again, he found himself drawn back to the rights of the child, and the intersection of these rights with the laws surrounding juvenile delinquency. In his last year of law school, his focus led him to an internship at an agency advocating for youth in care without access to private legal teams. 

“They offered me a permanent position for post-grad,” he had said to Kate, heart still beating so fast. “I said yes as myself. For me. Because I wanted to. Because I liked it. My choice, for me.”

Kate had put her hand on his knee. “Yes, baby. Yes.”

**

So, Aaron graduates, Aaron starts to build his practice, Aaron weaves together the learnings of his past, and this time it’s for him, and he is new, and he is himself, and this is about him, and Aaron pretends that he doesn’t still see his brother’s teenage face superimposed on all of his clients. 

Aaron knows a little about Andrew’s juvie experiences, from the papers they shared. He knows nothing about his experience in the foster system. He meets foster kid after foster kid, and he sees Andrew in all of them, and he thinks, how did Andrew hide all the horrors?

For almost a year, he sees Andrew and Andrew and Andrew, and then one day, he’s sitting with a teenager who’s had more foster homes than years on this planet, and he even speaks a little like Andrew, and Aaron just sees him.

It startles him, and then it makes him lean in and listen. Aaron sees him, and then he sees his next client, and then his next, and eventually, he actually sees all his clients as they are – full people, with full, complicated lives, and people who are disproportionately Black and Indigenous youth. 

Aaron starts to see, and Aaron starts to listen, and Aaron realizes there is so much more to learn than his degree offered.

When I first met you, you loved learning, Kate said. You loved patterns, and problem-solving, and integrating new information. Kate said, think about what do you care about.

He and Kate cross-reference the surprisingly similar biases in law and in medicine. They have the same conversations they had in college, except now, they have ten years of academic and professional experience on them, spanning several professions, and friends and clients with different lived experiences than theirs to supplement their own life experiences. So they have the same conversations – except that what was before was a vague, limited understanding of systemic injustice is now substantiated with actual knowledge, research and experience. 

Aaron starts reading about restorative justice, about prison abolition, about the social reintegration of inmates. (He has the fleeting thought that if his high school self could see his current book shelf, he might actually pass out.)

Aaron learns that it’s not a new fight that he is joining, and that he is not the first to fight it. Aaron asks himself what corner he can work on himself, and actually make a difference. 

Aaron knows from his textbooks – and from his own fucking eyes – that there are not enough supports or structures regarding prisoner re-entry, particularly for youth released as adults. 

Aaron thinks, let’s start here.

**

His life would be perfect, except that it’s haunted. 

It’s haunted by his brother, but that’s nothing new. Aaron has become quite adept at building fences in his mind that keep him from getting anywhere near his twin. He’s haunted by Nicky, but he remembers Nicky’s tear-stained face as he let Aaron go and did not stop him, and he puts Nicky behind the fence too.

Mal will not stay behind the fence.

Aaron feels acutely the wrongness of his success, of his happiness. Aaron let Mal step in front of the metaphorical bullet for him, and now Aaron gets the life of his dreams, and Mal gets to rot in the earth in Columbia without a family to mourn him.

Aaron feels guilt, and Aaron feels grief, and once a year, on the anniversary of Mal’s death, Aaron goes back to the place he hates most, to beg forgiveness at Mal’s tombstone. 

Aaron has barely started this year’s repenting when he feels… something. His adrenaline drops, and he stiffens at the pinging of the sixth sense that he’d like to say is from his law enforcement days (but that he fears is more likely from his uneasy childhood). 

Aaron turns, hands grasping for a gun he doesn’t carry anymore, to see David Wymack, maybe five feet away, face solemn. 

Aaron hasn’t seen Wymack in years. Wymack is the face he associates with the death of two people he loved deeply, and Wymack is the face of a life he chose out of love for a person who never loved him back, and Wymack is reminder that Aaron’s life is complicated and still hurting, and Aaron hates him so fiercely it makes his stomach churn.

“I still think about him too,” Wymack says, voice heavy, and he has come to this place, this place where Aaron talks to Mal, and it feels like a violation.

Go away, Aaron wants to say. Nobody wants you here.

“He didn’t deserve to go that way,” Wymack says, oblivious to Aaron’s anger. “None of us do.”

Aaron turns away from Wymack to look at the cold granite of Malcolm's headstone, and his anger falls, and it’s the same guilt, hunting him again.

it should have been me it should have been me it should have been me it –

“Should’ve been me, “ Aaron says, and he doesn’t mean to say it out loud. He’s never said it out loud before. 

Wymack’s brow furrows. “Come again?” 

“It should’ve been me,” Aaron repeats, his guilt heavy in his chest. “He’s dead because I got his murderer free. And then I left him to die when it was supposed to be me.”

“What do you mean, supposed to be you?”

Aaron throws a bitter look over his shoulder. Wymack is stoic and too intense, and Aaron doesn't mean to, but he smiles at him, ugly and jagged.

“You assigned him to me, didn’t you? The FBI asked for me, you said.”

“Mal is dead because Nathaniel Wesninski killed him,” Wymack says, impervious to Aaron’s disdain. “Not you.”

“But if I –”

“No,” Wymack cuts him off. “I don’t agree with your interpretation. At all.” 

Wymack takes a step towards him – Aaron steps back quickly, and he feels Mal’s tombstone with the back of his legs. Wymack stops immediately, takes a step back.

“It was bad justice that put Nathaniel Wesninski behind bars when he was a teenager,” Wymack says. “It was right that he was released.”

“But he –”

“None of us knew what he would do once he was released.” Wymack’s face darkens. “But – and this is the part that blows – even if we could have, it still would not have been right for Wesninski to have been imprisoned the way he initially was.”

Aaron swallows and swallows, and he does not want to cry, but he doesn’t seem to have much control these days.

“But then he fucked up,” Wymack says. “All on his own. No parental coercion. No child psychology. He killed an officer, intentionally, as an adult. He did that. Not you.”

Aaron wipes his nose, too hard. “Is that what you tell yourself? Every time you send an officer out to die?”

Wymack doesn’t even flinch. “Yes.”

“Fuck you,” Aaron says, and he turns his back to Wymack, and puts his hands on top of Mal’s tombstone, and tries to control his fucking breathing. To his credit, Wymack does not try to comfort him. 

Wymack sighs. “Let me know when you’re ready for me to say something you’re going to like even less.”

Aaron wants to scream.

“What?”

“Are you ready for it?” Wymack asks, skeptical.

Yes. “Not really.”

Wymack just sighs again.

“Take your time, kid.”

Aaron is gripping the granite tombstone so hard his fingers creak. He only lets go when he feels the stone warming beneath his touch. He turns to Wymack, shoulders braced.

“Okay. Tell me.”

Wymack’s gruff face is tired. It’s the first time he sees that Wymack is actually getting older.

“The FBI is going to make an appeal for him,” Wymack says, and it's almost an apology. ”Wesninski.”

“What?” Aaron is proud of how still he is keeping himself. His right hand reaches back to grip Mal’s tombstone again.

“They want to find the rest of his circle, and the rest of the bodies. They’re at a dead end.”

“If he hasn’t told them in the fifteen years he’s been imprisoned, I don’t expect he’ll give anything up now.”

Wymack shrugs. “They’re offering him his freedom for it.”

“NO.”

Wymack sees the sudden violence on Aaron’s face. He stays steady. Aaron looks at him, and his mind suddenly catches up.

“Why are you telling me this?” Nothing about this makes sense. None of this concerns him. All of this is decidedly above his clearance. And – “Why haven’t I signed an NDA?”

Wymack grimaces. “There’s one in the car. I figured you’d take off running if I came at you with a pen and paper.”

Aaron thinks he figured right.

“They wanted to approach you directly,” Wymack says, “but I told them that would go even worse than this is going.”

Aaron feels his brow furrowing.

“The FBI wanted to approach me,” he says slowly, as if that will make the words somehow make sense. “Why the fuck would they do that?”

Aaron is starting to get almost frightened. It makes him feel off kilter and vulnerable. He feels the old impulse to redirect his vulnerability into anger. Wymack puts his hands up, placating.

“They want a lawyer overseeing his interviews.”

“Me?”

“Yes.”

Now when Aaron laughs, it’s loud, and it’s vicious.

“They already have a hundred lawyers on retainer.”

“You have the credentials they want, Aaron.” 

Criminology. Sociology. Law Enforcement. Criminal Law, specialization in Juvenile Law. Previous academic specialization in Nathaniel fucking Wesninski.

Aaron opens his mouth to say – something – but Wymack is already speaking.

“They want you to oversee his interviews, and then,” Wymack says, face tightening, “I’m thinking they want you to consult on his release and rehabilitation.”

Rehabilitation.

“Absolutely fucking not.”

“You are one of the most outspoken advocates in the country for prisoner rehabilitation. And you have the history with him. Of course they’re going to ask you.”

Aaron is vibrating, and he can’t tell if it’s from anger, or something much worse.

Just not for him, Aaron wants to say. Everyone in the world can have their rights observed, but not this fucking monster.

Aaron forces down the words, because he knows they’re unfair, and because he knows they’re wrong, and because he chose to leave the notorious-for-power-trips profession, and he doesn’t intend to backslide. Aaron breathes and breathes, and realizes he’s going to say yes to the same thing he didn’t want to do, all those years ago.

“Think about it,” Wymack says, unaware of the turmoil he’s caused in Aaron. 

“They’re going to approach you next week, once you’re back home,” Wymack says, and it’s his goodbye voice, his see you soon voice. “Warn Katelyn. Hide anything in your house you don’t want the FBI to see.”

Belatedly, Aaron nods. 

Wymack gestures back towards his truck. “I’m gonna go get the NDA.” 

Aaron nods again. Wymack’s eyes flick from his, to the tombstone he’s still holding tightly.

“Rest easy, Malcolm,” Wymack says gruffly, and then he finally, finally, leaves.

Aaron looks at the tombstone, here in the graveyard where his mother is also buried, on the cusp of his life changing, again.

“I did say it should’ve been me, didn’t I?” Aaron says quietly.  “Guess I’ll get my wish.”

Chapter Text

Aaron relocates to Columbia, a place he’d assumed he’d never have to return to, and so, had left messily. He usually takes a cab from the airport to the graveyard. He usually doesn’t look at any of it. He usually pretends he’s somewhere else.

Now, he has to walk by the Columbia house to get to the graveyard, and he has to pass the community college to get to Wymack’s station, and he is getting better at walking without turning his head to let himself see his surroundings. 

Kate is still in LA, working on the transfer papers to get approved for locum here, but the processing is slow, and she’s new enough that the hospital in Columbia is resistant. Neither of them can guess at how long Aaron will be waylaid here.

The FBI were irritatingly unhelpful. As Wymack guessed, their desire is for Aaron to be part of both Wesninski’s trial and re-entry, and no one has any idea how long any of this is going to take.

“The terms of Wesninski’s release are still being crafted,” the aggravatingly bubbly FBI agent who came to their house said. She had severe features, overly bright eyes, and red nails that clicked and clicked as she spoke.  “It’ll all be subject to whatever he confesses to them.”

“So the timeline…” Kate prompted.

“Unknown,” the agent said. Click .

Aaron must have grimaced, because the agent rushed on to say, “but we’ll pay for your relocation! But you’ll be well compensated!” click click!

“But will he be safe?” Kate interjected coolly, neatly stopping her blubbering reassurances. 

Click! “Yes of course!”

“Don’t ‘yes of course’ him,” Kate snapped, and Aaron bit the inside of his lip hard to stop from smirking as the agent cowered back from her. “Mal Smith was supposed to be safe, and he died.”

“Ah, yes, that’s…Yes.” Something dark passed over the agent’s face, and Aaron felt something like satisfaction. “Would you feel better if we put a bodyguard on you?”

Aaron looked at Kate for her answer. The lift of her eyebrow said, why are you looking at me? 

Aaron made himself consider the trade off of losing privacy, for having someone watching his back. He had a sudden flash of Andrew, flickering in the strobe lights at Eden’s, pointing a knife at some unlucky bastard who’d tried to taunt Aaron. Aaron shut that memory right the fuck down, before it bloomed into actually having a thought about his brother. 

“No,” Aaron said, “to the bodyguard.”

**

When Aaron finally goes to the prison, sans bodyguard , he is achingly aware of Mal preceding him, so green and so young and so unprepared for what was about to come. Aaron walks slowly, Aaron breathes, Aaron braces. Aaron tells himself he will not let history repeat itself. 

He checks in at the gate, and then at the desk inside. He goes through security. He surrenders his cell phone and his shoes. He’s greeted by the red-nailed officer who came to visit him at his home, who is too pleased to see him. He’s brought, in his sock feet, to what would be an ordinary looking room, except everything’s been cleared from it but a long table, a smattering of restless FBI agents, and Nathaniel Wesninski.

“Wesninski, your lawyer is here,” the agent from LA says, and Wesninski snaps up to look at her, and he is ferocious.

This man has been imprisoned for 15 years, and he should look tired and worn down and beaten. He should be broken. Aaron was counting on him being broken.

Instead, Wesninski is almost vibrating with contained rage, and Aaron remembers Mal saying, Soulless, Aaron. This man is soulless, and then Wesninski turns to look at him.

“You,” Wesninski says, and his voice creaks like he’s not used to using it. Aaron wonders if that might even be true.

He tells me all the time how he’s going to kill me, how he’s going to slice me apart, Mal said. You can just see, he means it.

“My name is Aaron Minyard,” Aaron says, very, very evenly.

“Objection?” the agent says, and Aaron dazedly thinks he is being asked, and yes in fact I have many –  until Wesninski shakes his head decisively. 

“No,” Wesninski says, and then moves his eyes off of Aaron and back onto the agent. “You, however, yes. I agreed to one interviewer, and a lawyer. Every one else can get the fuck out.”

There is something under the jaggedness of Wesninski’s words that is almost brittle. He’s scared , Aaron thinks in surprise. And then, good .

The room clears until it’s Wesninski sitting on one side of the table, the remaining FBI agent on the other (Brown? Browning?), and a small recording device - and Aaron - somewhere in the middle.

Wesninski’s hands are cuffed to the table, and his ankles to the floor. 

The questions, for the most part, are standard. What’s your name? How old are you? What were you imprisoned for? Aaron thinks it’s all a waste of time.

“You were most recently charged for manslaughter,” the agent starts, and Aaron breathes very slowly and does not let himself think of Mal. 

There is nothing on Aaron’s face, he’s sure, but Wesninski’s eyes find him. Aaron has the absurd thought that Wesninski can scent Aaron’s pain, like an animal. The agent continues, and Wesninski doesn’t look away. 

“You were previously charged for multiple homicides, including the murder of your parents, all committed under the moniker of ‘The Butcher of Baltimore.’”

Wesninski is still looking at Aaron. 

“Is that a question?” Wesninski asks. His voice is low, and rough. Aaron feels goosebumps erupt, and he tries to make his face granite – cold and impenetrable. 

“Where did these crimes take place?” the agent asks.

Wesninski finally breaks eye contact – to stare in disbelief at the FBI agent.

“In the house where I grew up in Maryland, Baltimore. Which if you don’t already know, you’re all idiots.”

The agent makes a delicate mark on his clipboard. Aaron is impressed by his composure – Wesninski’s expression is vicious enough to cut.

“Are you aware that, since your arrest, your house in Maryland has burned down?”

Wesninski’s face twitches, and Aaron is strangely sure that his fleeting expression was relief. 

“I was not aware,” Wesninski says, voice scrubbed of emotion.

The agent makes another mark. 

“We are seeking to locate several of your victims whose bodies have never been recovered.”

Wesninski looks up at the ceiling, as if there is an escape for him there. He would look almost casual, except he’s still vibrating (except he’s trembling, just so).

“Besides the house,” the agent prompts, “where else might we find bodies?”

Wesninski flexes his hands, and his knuckles crack. Aaron thinks about Wesninski being chained to the floor, and across the table from an FBI agent, and undoubtedly surrounded outside this room by armed guards. Aaron has a sudden sick feeling that Wesninski could break them all, he wanted to.

“Radar the local dump,” he says finally, and his voice is flat. “You’ll find anyone you’re missing. We weren’t any good at discrete disposal until at least five years in.”

Aaron thinks, you were arrested at age sixteen. How old were you at five years in?

“How many bodies can we expect to find?”

“Probably as many as you’re missing.”

The agent is not satisfied with his glibness. He leans forward, and Aaron tenses.

“Let’s see if our numbers match, Nathaniel. Can you remember how many you killed?”

Aaron thinks, you should. You should remember each of them.

“No,” Wesninski says, voice empty. “And if your numbers are accurate, you would not be expecting me to.”

Aaron exhales sharply, and Wesninski’s eyes find him again. His expression is very cold, and very cutting, and Aaron can feel his own face heating. 

The agent, unfazed, simply makes another mark. “Remember that your freedom is conditional on your full truth, Nathaniel.”

“I am telling you my full truth,” Wesninski says flatly, looking back at him. 

(His eyes leave Aaron, and Aaron tries desperately not to sag in relief).

The agent is now asking Wesninski about other locations, besides the house in Baltimore. 

“We mostly stayed in Maryland,” Wesninski says, “There was a runner who came and went with news from West Virginia, but I never went there myself.”

“Is that the truth?”

“Yes.”

The agent makes his note.

“I hear you say ‘we,’” the agent prompts, “Who was ‘we’?”

Strangely, at this question, Aaron sees a frisson of fear pass over Wesninski. He sees it, and then he sees Wesninski carefully repress it.

“You do realize my information is at least fifteen years out of date?” Wesninski deflects. 

Aaron is suddenly curious. What are you concealing?

“Is it?” The agent asks. “You confirm you haven’t had any communications in all your years here?” 

Wesninski rolls his eyes. “You have me watched every second of every day. What do you think?”

“Alright.” The agent writes his answer, and then starts back on him. 

“Who is still alive, Wesninski?” The agent says, and Aaron thinks they all hear the subtext of, who will trade places with you here if we let you go?

From where he is sitting, Aaron is the only one who can see that Wesninski is clenching his hands so tightly they’ve gone white.

“There’s a woman named Lola Malcolm, and two men: Jackson Plank and Patrick DiMaccio. Lola had a brother,” and here Wesninski’s face darkens, “but he’s dead. I never learned the runner from West Virginia’s name. Something French, I think.”

The agent writes all of this down. “We’ll bring an artist in for you to describe them to.”

“Obviously,” Wesninski says.

“I’m satisfied,” the agent says, pushing back his chair. “We’ll see you again tomorrow.”

“Six interviews,” Wesninski warns. “That’s all I agreed to.”

The agent purses his lips. “Yes.”

“My lawyer will keep you honest,” Wesninski says seriously, nodding at Aaron. and Aaron does not like that everybody in the room has suddenly remembered he is there. 

“Six interviews, and then I go free.” Wesninski’s eyes are alight with something bright and awful, and Aaron thinks that no information should be worth this man’s freedom.

“If you give us what we need,” the agent qualifies.

“No,” Wesninski says. He jabs a crooked finger at Aaron, and Aaron regrets to remember he still has a part to play here.

“My client will answer your questions to the extent of his understanding, over the six agreed sessions,” Aaron says, on auto-pilot. He hasn’t used his lawyer voice for a while (it freaks out the kids he works with). He uses it now, and he thinks he sounds dead.

“In the sessions, you may ask further questions, or you may request clarification on Wesninski’s given answers, but we ask you to remember that my client was a youth at the time of these events, and his interpretation of events may be incomplete or unintentionally misconstrued.”

The FBI agent grunts in acknowledgement, and Wesninski smiles that wicked sharp predator smile. The buzzing in the room intensifies, and Aaron doesn’t like any piece of this.

“See you tomorrow,” Wesninski says. “Aaron Minyard. ”

Chapter Text

When Wesninski is released, it is to a heavily bugged duplex owned by the FBI.

The terms of his release are horrifying, if not inhumane – he is put on house arrest indefinitely, with strictly controlled funds, a refusal to access the internet or any communication devices, a refusal to own anything that could be construed as a weapon (including a shaving razor, and cutlery). He is permitted one guest a day, from a pre-approved list which only includes FBI agents. His front door is locked from the outside, and the inside of the apartment is equipped with cameras in every room. His apartment is subject to random searches, and he is made to wear a permanent tracking device around his left wrist.

Aaron fights for him, a little. He gets him access to a psychologist and to a physiotherapist. He gets him the right to prepare his own food, rather than have it delivered, prison style. 

And, he gets himself on Wesninski’s visitor list.

**

He doesn’t know why he goes, the first time. Mostly, Aaron wants to hurt him, which he knows is unethical (and which he will not do, even though he wants to). 

The first time he goes, he spends the morning preparing himself, hardening himself, for the inevitable confrontation. He readies himself for the challenge, for the standoff, for his own fight for calm in the onslaught of Wesninski’s blood lust. He thinks about his self defense training on the force for the first time in a long time.

Aaron braces, and he goes through the door, and he expects the same buzzing of violence Wesninski carried with him through the interviews. He expects Wesninski to be flushed, and twitchy, and ready for attack. 

He does not expect the stillness. 

Wesninski doesn’t look up at Aaron when he enters. He sits cross legged on the ground, back curved, eyes fixed on a single grain in the wood floor. He is not chained or cuffed here, but he still does not move. Aaron thinks it would be almost rude, if it didn’t look like Wesninski was too dissociated to consciously choose rudeness.

“Wesninki,” Aaron says sharply.

Wesninki’s eyes flick up to him, find the parameters of his face, and then… stop. Aaron watches in real time as Wesninski’s eyes go cloudy, and he sinks back to wherever he exists outside of this moment. 

Wesninski sits, and he sits, and Aaron was prepared for him to be scary, but he was not prepared for him to be subdued. 

“You have access to a therapist, you know,” Aaron says stiffly, twenty minutes into watching this man watch the floor in preternatural stillness.

A too-long pause, and then, “She’s already come,” Wesninski says, without looking up.

Aaron feels… uneasy. Aaron knows the stats linking prison release with increased mental illness in prisoners. He knows that leaving prison, as shitty as prison is, is not an easy transition or an immediately good thing. He knows that many prisoners crash post-release (he’s seen many of the youth he supports crash post-release). In his mind, Wesninski is not supposed to be like other prisoners. 

“Why didn’t you talk to the therapist?”

“I don’t talk to therapists,” Wesninski says flatly.

(Aarons flashes back to being a teenager, taunting his brother about his court mandated therapy. “It helps,” Andrew said. “You should come.” Aaron remembers laughing. “I don’t talk to therapists, Andrew.”)

Aaron breaks from his reverie – and no thank you, we will not be thinking about that today – and Wesninski has gone back to studying the floor. The silence starts to feel physically painful, and there is something heavy happening in Wensinski’s head, and Aaron asks, 

“What are you doing?” 

“Repenting,” Wesninski says, in that same flat voice.

“No you’re not.”

Wesninski sighs.

“No.”

And then silence again. 

Wesninski was imprisoned for over a decade. He was imprisoned as a minor, and released as an adult.This man, hunched over the floor, eyes unfocused, looks like the years, instead of adding heft to him, each took a piece of him by force. The man, deflated from his prison bravado, is so light he is fragile. Aaron feels a twinge of sympathy, and shuts that right down too.

Aaron lasts another half hour in silence, until his body starts remembering how it used to wait and wait and wait and would it kill you to do anything? When we’re fucking trying so hard? We’re your family, Andrew , and then stumbles to the door and leaves too quickly, and he pretends it doesn’t feel like he’s twenty years old and running away again.

**

“He just… does nothing. He just sits there. Like he’s dead.”

Aaron is flopped on the bed in his FBI rental house. He is meant to be catching up on long distance work, and he even has his laptop open to his work portal (he has not done any work all day. He waited until he knew Katelyn was off work, and then he called her, and that is the most productive thing he’s done all day).

On the other end of the line, he hears Katelyn come in the door and hang her keys. He can almost see her as she putters around on the other end of the line.

“Maybe he’s haunted by what he’s done,” Kate says, phone squeezed between her shoulder and neck as she takes off her coat.

“ Haunted by what he’s done . I wish. He looks more apathetic by what he’s done. More couldn’t care less by what he’s done. More utterly bored by what he’s done.”

“Is it suspicious?”

He shoves his laptop away, and rubs his hands over his face. On the other end of the line, Kate kicks off her shoes, and starts to unpack her work bag.

“It’s suspicious because it’s not suspicious at all. He’s barely a person. He might as well be dead.”

Kate sighs. “What did you get him for rehab? Is he getting services?”

I don’t talk to therapists.

“He’s refused services.”

“Stubborn bastard.” Kate opens the fridge; Aaron can hear its little compressor humming.

“Can you do anything else for him?” Kate asks. “Is the FBI being accommodating to your recommendations?”

“I…” Aaron feels his cheeks heat. 

Aaron hears Kate pause as she parses through the fridge. “What, Aaron? Are they not being accommodating?”

“No, they are,” Aaron says. “I think they would be. If I… if I asked.”

“You haven’t asked.”

“No.”

The silence over the line gets thick. Aaron’s cheeks are so hot they burn.

“Your job is to rehab him, Aaron. That’s your job.”

Kate’s voice is firm, is sharp, and he can almost see her face, and he knows she’s disappointed, but –

“He killed Mal, Kate. He killed lots of people’s Mals, and –”

“Aaron, I need you to seriously consider what kind of police power trip you’re being tempted down.”

The heat in Aaron’s cheeks moves down to a hot ball in his chest.  “Kate, I’m not–”

“If it’s not to rehab him, then why bring him out of prison? To punish him?”

“I–”

“Is that your call?”

“But he –”

“No,” Kate says, and Aaron’s mouth snaps shut. “You married a doctor, Aaron. My ethics are airtight.” He hears her lean in. “Are yours?”

Aaron swallows. “I–”

Kate’s pager goes off. Aaron can hear it, even over the line. In synch, they both say,

“Shit.”

Aaron hears Kate flurry into motion. He can imagine her crossing their living room, grabbing her coat, her shoes. He can imagine her refocusing her mind, transitioning back to hospital mode, putting her game face back on. She’s been home less than ten minutes. He wonders fleetingly what new horror awaits her at the hospital.

“I have to go,” she says.

“I know,” Aaron says. “I–”

“I’m going to go save someone’s life,” Kate says, and he hears the door open, he hears her feet down the stairs, he hears her open her car. “And whether they are evil or not, I am still going to do my job. Because that’s what I said yes to.”

“I–” Aaron says, but Kate gets in the car, and the call drops, and Katelyn’s about to go perform a miracle, and Aaron is about to sit on his bed and burn with ugly shame. 

**

Aaron doesn’t go back to see Wesninski for the rest of the week.

He tells himself it’s not avoidance. He has reports to catch up on. He has clients to follow up with, colleagues who have taken over his caseload to follow up with. He attends phone meetings, he writes emails, he checks on the status of his client’s files. He thinks about ‘ and whether they are evil or not, I am still going to do my job ,’ and he thinks about the ‘advocacy’ he did for Wesninski, and he wants to punch himself in the face.

Aaron doesn’t go back to see him, because, somehow, it’s easier to do his job when he’s not at the prison, when he’s not in that house, when he’s not looking at the man who killed his friend, who killed many people’s friends. 

He texts Kate, Thank you. Love you. He makes himself breathe, he makes himself think , and then he writes an amended proposal for the FBI, attaching relevant research and successful precedents, and lightly threatening to go public if the FBI doesn’t comply. 

Kate writes back, stay true , and the FBI acquiesces easier than Aaron expects.

“Wesninski, I have news for you,” Aaron says, and it’s the first time he’s come back, and this time, Wesninski does not even look up.

“You can leave the house with an escort, if you want,” Aaron says, and it’s meant to sound encouraging. “You can access exercise equipment. You can own cutlery.”

Wesninski does not acknowledge him. He is still looking at the same grain of wood, and there is dust accumulating around him, and Aaron suddenly thinks, does he even move from that spot ? 

And then Aaron thinks, how the fuck do we reach him ?

**

Aaron goes back to the hotel, back to where Wesninski is not a person, and thinks. If Wesninski were any other client – traumatized, recently released from prison after almost half his life on the inside, socially isolated, refusing care and actively breaking down – what would he do? 

Aaron hears the answer first in Kate’s voice. 

Stoke his interests. Surround him with people who share his experiences. Encourage exercise and hydration . 

The next voice he hears is Andrew’s, and it’s been so long since he’s thought of his brother, it cracks something in him. 

Give him choices. Give him the agency to make them . 

The last voice he hears is his own. 

Make sure he knows he’s not alone. Make sure he knows he matters.

**

The next time he goes, Aaron brings with him a slim novel. The spine is still stiff and unbroken. Aaron’s hands shook as the cashier ran it through this morning.

Aaron knocks, and calls out, “it’s Aaron, may I come in?” and he waits – for a very long time – until he hears Wesninski’s quiet, slightly confused “yes?”

Aaron comes in through the door, and he takes off his shoes. “May I come into the sitting room?”

Wesniski looks up to him from his place on the floor, his usually blank face creasing slightly.

“...Yes?”

Aaron nods and comes closer. Aaron has visited many clients in their temporary homes. He has entered slowly many times, asked for permission many times. He feels ashamed that he has been coming here for weeks, and this is his first time following protocol.

“I brought you a gift,” Aaron says, and he doesn’t miss the split-second Wesninski’s eyes flick to the tracker he wears around his wrist. 

“Not that,” Aaron says, and Wesninski doesn’t even look disappointed. Just tired. Just empty. Just nothing.

Aaron moves slowly towards him. Wesninski’s eyes follow him, maybe slightly belatedly, maybe slightly out of focus. Aaron holds out the novel when he is just within arm reach, and he sees the slight way Wesnisnki braces himself.

“It’s not going to bite you,” Aaron says, aiming for humour.

Wesninski takes the book from him gently, tentatively.

“ In The Upside Down House ,” Wesninski reads off the cover, voice creaky with disuse. “By Andrew Doe.” 

Aaron has the strangest impulse to turn around to the entrance, as if the speaking of his brother’s name, here with this other empty man, will evoke him.

“I think you’ll like his writing,” Aaron says, too casually, and pretends this offering does not make him feel strangely vulnerable. He has the funny sensation of he and Wesninski both being suddenly very young with each other.

Wesninski flips the book over, and starts to scan the back. His eyes move so slowly Aaron can track their movement, side to side and back again.

“Too many big words for you?” Aaron says lightly, and Wesninski coughs on a laugh, and Aaron feels a flare of something that almost feels like pride.

**

Aaron doesn’t stay to watch Wesninski read. Instead, he sits in his car, and opens the second copy he bought with shaky hands.

Aaron doesn’t think about his brother. He doesn’t think about trying to reach him in high school, he doesn’t think about lying to reach him in college. He doesn’t think about their near-miss of reconnecting as adults. He doesn’t think about that horrible day at Mal’s funeral. He doesn’t think about him. Ever.

Aaron sits in his car, and Andrew is in the apartment with Wesninski, and Andrew is in the car with Aaron, and Aaron looks at this book he last read in the apartment he shared with Mal, and it hurts to breathe.

Aaron finds himself thinking about Andrew writing this, with his second-hand criminology knowledge, and his shoddy English 12 teacher, and his brother who walked out on him. For the first time, he thinks about Andrew’s first novel as being the novel he submitted as his high school English 12 Final, as being the novel that generated enough public pressure to grant a serial killer his release. He reads the novel, and he thinks for the first time since college, my brother is a genius.

**

The next time Aaron stops by, the next time Aaron asks to come in, Wesninski is still sitting in his same spot. Wesninski is still quiet and unmoving. There is still a ring of dust around where he always sits.

But this time, Wesninski reads In The Upside Down House , and he’s over two thirds of the way through already.

“Do you like it?” Aaron asks, trying not to sound too excited, already backing out the door.

“It’s fucking horrifying,” Wesninski says without looking up. 

Incongruously, this sounds like a compliment.

Aaron waits until the door closes behind him before he lets himself smile, just a little.

**

The moment Wesnisnki finishes the book, he tries to give it back.

Aaron has just barely come in the apartment, and Wesninski is on his feet, and Wesninski is out of his spot, and Wesninsnki is trying to force the book back into Aaron’s hands.

“It’s a gift,” Aaron says, only slightly bewildered. He’s learned that it’s often the kids who have nothing, who are not usually allowed to keep anything, who try to give back the things they are finally allowed to own. 

Aaron waves off Wesninski as he holds out the book, almost desperately.

“It’s not conditional,” Aaron emphasizes. “You can keep it. You’re allowed to keep it. I want you to keep it.” 

Wesninski’s apartment is ruthlessly empty, bare for everything but his sleeping roll. Aaron remembers how strictly controlled Wesninski’s funds are, and winces. A book won’t fill much space, but it’s at least something personal . He starts to think about what else he might be able to bring, and should they have a conversation about it? Should Aaron ask the FBI about furniture? 

But Wesninski is shaking his head.

“They’re always doing spot checks,” Wesninski explains, and holds out the book again. His eyes are pleading. “Almost every week, they come in. I don’t want the other officers looking at it.”

Wesninski’s apartment is ruthlessly bare – Aaron suddenly understands that this must make his spot checks less invasive. There’s something about the way Wesninski holds the book. It almost looks like… reverence. I don’t want the other officers looking at it .

“Okay,” Aaron says, and he doesn’t understand, but he takes it back, feeling strangely discombobulated. He clears his throat. “Did you… enjoy it?”

The corners of Wesninski’s lips lift.

“Yes.”

Aaron thinks hard about what he actually wants to ask.

“Lots of people think this book is about you,” Aaron starts tentatively.

“It is about me.”

Okay .

“Did you… like that?” Aaron asks.

Wesninski’s eyes are very clear when he says, “When this was published, the general consensus was that I murdered my parents, who were innocent and unaware of my proclivity for murder.”

“Andrew, uh, Doe was never convinced your parents were innocent.”

The lift of Wesninski’s lips is almost a smile. 

“He’s right.”

“He doesn’t believe you killed them either,” Aaron adds.

Wesninski’s smile falls.

“Well, he’s almost right,” Wesninski says, and Aaron thinks, what does that mean?

**

That night in his hotel room, Aaron goes back and forth with himself, again and again. He takes out his phone. He puts it back. He takes it out. He puts it back.

There are a lot of words he should text first, including an apology, but he can’t make the words come out right. He types, and then he erases, and then he types, and then he erases, and eventually he goes with: 

Nathaniel Wesninski likes In The Upside Down House. He said you were ‘mostly right.’

Aaron doesn’t even know if this number is still active. He has not responded to this text thread in almost five years. 

Less than a minute later, Andrew writes him back.

This is an interesting development.

Chapter Text

The next time Aaron visits, he brings another of Andrew’s books.

Bring him ‘the flesh is a flickerlight,’ Andrew wrote. I want to know what he thinks.

“Another?” Aaron offers.

Wesninski nods, and takes the book Aaron passes him, and he starts reading it right there. (This time, Wesninski is sitting on his bedroll rather than on that same spot on the cold floor, and it feels monumental).

Aaron watches him read, and remembers every nightmare Andrew’s books have ever given him. He still regularly dreams of the butterfly-attic from the Upside Down House. He has a particularly awful nightmare from Take To The Dock, where he dreams he wakes up in bed and his shadow is looming, and then his shadow puts its fist down his throat and suffocates him to death. He read the first fifty pages of the flesh is a flickerlight, and he started dreaming about being burned alive in his own home, and he stopped right there.

Aaron watches Wesninski read the novel in question, and Wesninski is smirking. Every once in a while, Wesninski laughs. Aaron cannot remember a single thing in this book that could be considered funny. 

Aaron is startled to remember just who is sitting across from him. He’d forgotten – about the victims, about their families, about Mal. He stands too quickly, the chair screeching as he launches to his feet. Wesninski immediately drops the novel and puts his hands up. 

“Are you alright?” Wesninski asks, as if that is appropriate, as if he should be asking that, and Aaron is so angry and so frightened and he feels the sudden impulse to draw the gun he no longer wears, and he realizes he is out of control. 

“That book is not funny,” Aaron says, and he flushes when he realizes just how petulant he sounds.

Wesninski’s lip quirks, just a little at the corner. He lowers his hands slowly back to the ground, eyes tracking Aaron. Just as slowly, he picks up the book, opens it again. He very intentionally lowers his eyes from Aaron to his page.

“It’s very funny,” Wesninski says, eyes moving side to side a little faster now, “for those of us whose lives are irrevocably fucked.”

Wesninski keeps reading. Aaron watches him, standing braced against the wall, still too tense. Inappropriately tense. He makes himself sit back down across from him. He makes himself breathe. He lasts ten minutes, and then he takes out his phone and texts Andrew.

NW just told me ’the flesh is a flickerlight’ is funny

Andrew texts him back immediately. thats because it is

I didn’t find it funny. At all. 

Aaron waits for Andrew to text him back, but he doesn’t. Aaron watches Wesninski read, and it’s not until visiting hours are over, and Aaron is in his car driving back to the hotel, that Andrew finally replies.

Of course u didn’t.

**

Aaron visits Wesninski almost every day. Aaron texts his brother almost every day, and his brother texts him back every time (but only if it’s about Nathaniel Wesninski. Aaron tries not to think too hard about that).

**

One time, Aaron comes, and Wesninski has been hurt  – a black eye, bruises disappearing down his collar. Aaron’s brain short circuits. Wesninski is under twenty four hour supervision. Wesninski is being watched by the FBI . Wesninski’s home has a penitentiary-grade security system. 

“What happened to you?” Aaron asks, aghast.

Wesninski is sitting on the bed roll. He moves over a foot, so that there’s space for Aaron if he wants to sit too. Wesninski doesn’t acknowledge Aaron’s questions. 

“Is there a sequel?” He asks instead, waving his most recent read. 

Aaron scrunches his brow, momentarily distracted. “I… Yes. It’s… I have it, but… you…” 

Aaron shakes his head to clear it. Focuses.

“Tell me who hurt you, Nathaniel.” Aaron doesn’t think he’s ever said his first name before. Nathaniel .

“I would like to read the sequel,” Nathaniel says again, and Aaron hears under it the quiet plea. 

Aaron looks at him, and thinks, those blows are too well placed to be accidental, or self inflicted. He thinks, you are watched 24/7 by the FBI. How could someone get by them to hurt you? And then he thinks, oh, you are naïve, Aaron Minyard.

A million years ago, Aaron took his first criminology class and realized almost immediately that most of the people in the system were corrupt. A million years later, he sits across from Nathaniel Wesnisnki, and thinks, fuck.

Almost absently, Aaron reaches into his bag and exchanges Nathaniel’s well-read novel for the new one he’s brought him. He remembers coming here for the first time, with his deepest wish to put his fist through Wesninski’s face. He looks at the bruises now blooming across his face, bruises he incurred under federal care, and feels sick.

“Don’t pity me,” Nathaniel says, tone too much like someone else Aaron knows. 

Aaron freezes, but Nathaniel doesn’t look at him again. Nathaniel opens the book and starts reading it, dismissing Aaron wordlessly. 

**

The books are a good activity for Nathaniel, but Aaron’s suspicion is that Nathaniel enjoys them less because he likes reading, and more because he likes the way Andrew writes. Aaron spends an afternoon cruising goodreads for ‘what to read if you like Andrew Doe,’ and gets new nightmares just from reading plot synopses, and he decides that no, no more spending all day reading horror stories in the apartment. It’s time to branch out.

Nathaniel has been in this apartment, in almost the exact same spot, for over six months now. Before that, he was in prison for over a decade. Experience tells Aaron to take it capital-S Slow.

For the first phase of his ‘Get Nathaniel A Life’ plan, he makes Nathaniel walk the loop around the FBI apartment complex with him (okay, he doesn’t make him. He asks him, and accepts his refusal, and then asks him again. And again. And when Nathaniel eventually says “okay, I guess,” he tries not to let his victory shine too brightly on his face.)

In Phase 2, he extends their walk out of the quiet FBI neighbourhood, and to a little nearby strip mall. There’s a coffee shop there, and every day, they get a little closer to it (eventually, Aaron will say –  “if you’re just going to sit and read, do it somewhere with a comfortable chair, my god.”)

It takes almost a month to get Nathaniel to calm down enough to walk at a normal pace (he starts jittery, jumping at every sound, eyes flying everywhere.) 

It takes another month to get used to walking where other people are walking (Nathaniel’s head swivels so fast Aaron worries he may actually decapitate himself).

Almost three months after Aaron launches his ‘Get Nathaniel A Life Plan,” they actually go into the coffee shop. 

Aaron has his hand on the cafe door handle, and is about to push it open, when he suddenly thinks, “Hey, what do you want me to call you in there?”

Nathaniel pauses. “What?”

“Do you want me to call you by your birth name, or do you want something else? Something more anonymous? If people are eavesdropping?”

Aaron watches this question land on him. Something moves through him, and it looks almost painful.

“Uh, yeah, I’d. Um. Anything but N- uh.” Nathaniel swallows thickly. “Um. Anything. You pick.”

“What about…” Aaron tries to think of something good. Or even something generic. “Alex? Stefan? Chris?” Aaron looks at Nathaniel, and can’t figure out what name he looks like.  “I don’t know. Do you like any of those?”

“Um.”

And suddenly Aaron knows. Of course.

“In The Upside Down House, Andrew used ‘Neil’ as a pseudonym for you. I think it was a play on Nathaniel, but, like not. Do you… do you like that? Or is it too close?”

Something moves over Nathaniel’s face, and this time, Aaron recognizes it as a very small smile.

“Perfect,” Neil says.

Chapter Text

They go to the cafe, almost every day. Neil has never had coffee, and is still not sure about it, but he drinks a cup dutifully every day, black. Aaron drinks his with two sugars. (If Andrew were here, he would take both cream and sugar in his, and complete their coffee triumvirate. It makes Aaron smirk, the first time he thinks of it.)

Andrew is somehow an integral part of Neil’s re-entry to society. Neil reads Andrew’s books, and comments on them to Aaron, and Aaron texts his commentary to Andrew, and Andrew responds back to Aaron, and Aaron reads his words to Neil. It’s a choppy circuit, and time delayed because Andrew is not physically with them, but they find their rhythm, and they build a way, and Aaron finds himself an unexpected voyeur of Neil and Andrew’s burgeoning friendship.

Neil and Andrew talk about Andrew’s books, but they also talk about prison, and they also talk about travel. Andrew’s book tours have taken him all over the world – before imprisonment, Neil had never left Baltimore. 

Aaron and Neil talk, and Andrew and Neil talk, and Aaron and Andrew and Neil talk, and the “Get Neil A Life” plan is working.

They have the books and the conversation for intellectual stimulation, the cafe for gradual socialization, and the walk for fresh air. Aaron thinks all of that is plenty, but Kate, the certified doctor in his phone who has never let him get away with half measures, asks about both his and Neil’s exercise regimes. 

“We walk everyday?” Aaron tries. “Sometimes quite a brisk walk?”

“You wanna come by the hospital for a cardiovascular health test?” Kate challenges.

Aaron has not worked out consistently since he and Mal were training to pass their police fitness test. Aaron gets a little winded keeping up with Neil as he power-walks them to the cafe.

“Okay, point taken,” Aaron says, and he feels Kate’s smug smile over the phone.

The next week, Aaron takes Neil to the gym, and he teaches him what everything is, and he only feels a little uncomfortable seeing Neil with free range around so many heavy things, and he makes himself let it go. Neil doesn’t touch any of the heavy things, anyways. He finds the treadmill with the least amount of buttons, and he runs.

(At first, Neil can’t run for more than five minutes, though it doesn’t seem to bother him. He speedwalks until he finds his breath again, and then he runs some more. Eventually, he’ll run for hours, if Aaron doesn’t stop him.)

Aaron does not want to run. Aaron doesn’t want to do anything at the gym, really, but he knows the one circuit he used to do with Mal, and he falls into the old training, begrudgingly at first, and then slightly less begrudgingly when his creaky joints start to move a little better.

After one of these sessions, Aaron and Neil walk slowly back towards Neil’s apartment. Neil’s hair is still wet, and his eyes are still bright. Neil’s buoyant joy when he runs is contagious, and Aaron finds himself asking,

“Did you have a sport when you were younger?”

Neil looks at him strangely. 

 “Yes,” he says drily, “between all the torture and murder, I was off playing exy.”

Aaron considers his words. “Would you have wanted that?”

Neil’s face flickers. They walk in silence for almost a minute before Neil speaks again.

“I used to, uh. I used to watch it, on TV, when he was out. My father.” Neil doesn’t look at him when he says, “It was that dream, you know the dream you go into when you can’t be in your own life any more?” 

Aaron does know. His was becoming a doctor.

Neil laughs without humour. “In another life, I play exy, and I give the great Kevin Day a run for his money. Imagine that?”

Aaron can tell from Neil’s delivery that he expects him to laugh. Aaron refuses to. 

“Yeah I can picture that,” and then, quieter, “I wish you could’ve done that with your life.”

Neil looks at him, and his face flashes with grief so quickly that Aaron would almost have missed it, except he can still see the afterimage on the back of his eyelids.

“I think we all wish that,” Neil says.

**

That night, Aaron lies on the bed in the rental home and thinks. (He used to lie here, and try to think of Neil in the abstract, as a faceless client, because that would help him do his job better. Now he lies here, and thinks of Neil – of everything he knows about him, of everything that makes him unique, of everything that makes him him – and he does his job better).

At 12:55am, Aaron google searches “community centre near me.”

At 1:02, Aaron searches “registration for community exy team.”

At 1:12am, Aaron writes an email that starts with “I want to propose socially integrating Nathaniel Wesninski by having him participate on the local community exy team.”

**

Aaron wakes up to the FBI’s refusal. They say ‘it’s too dangerous for whoever else is playing.’ They say ‘letting Wesninski play is a gratuitous risk that benefits no one.’ They say, ‘it’s already pushing it to let him go to the gym, and you should think about backing off.’ 

Aaron is viscerally angry. 

He is a person, Aaron thinks. You have to treat him like a person. 

When he calms down, he calls the community centre and asks to book the exy court afterhours every day that it’s available. Aaron goes to bed at nine pm most days, and wakes up at five (sleep habits from marrying a surgeon), and the manager asks him if 10pm is too late, and Aaron says, “nope.” 

Aaron’s next google search is “how to play exy,” and then, slightly embarrassed,  “how to play exy for dummies.”

**

Aaron and Neil teach each other how to play, mostly using YouTube clips Aaron brings up on his phone (retired exy star Kevin Day has a youtube channel called “From Chump 2 Champ,” and they watch obsessively). 

They learn how to play all the positions, mostly so they can make life harder for each other. Neil likes playing striker most. Aaron is decent at goaltending (somehow, his proportions are just right for the exy net), but he prefers backliner. They play against each other, and the community centre doesn’t kick them out when they stay past midnight every day. 

The night manager, Matt Boyd, even cuts them their own key and teaches them how to arm and disarm the alarm system themselves. Aaron tries not to feel ethically complicated about this kind man giving the alarm code to a man he doesn’t know is a felon. (Strangely enough, he gets the sense that Matt wouldn’t revoke their keys if he knew.)

One night, a fierce woman named Dan, who Aaron knows to be Matt’s girlfriend, comes for the end of Matt’s shift. She watches Aaron and Neil play, and then she knocks on the glass and asks if she can play with them. 

Aaron knows he should say no. Aaron knows the FBI would say no. 

Aaron looks at Neil and asks, “What do you think?”

Neil smiles that little smile of surprise. 

“Uh, yeah. I guess. Yeah.”

“Game on,” Dan says. “Matt, don’t hide back there, come here and let me kick your ass.”

Dan and Matt gear up, and they play a little two-on-two scrimmage, and they all laugh a lot, and they sweat more than they probably should, and Aaron thinks that if he had gotten to play a sport in high school, it might have felt like this.

“Not bad for an after hours game,” Matt grins, face flushed.

“Don’t tell the manager how late we stayed,” Aaron quips, and everyone laughs, and what Aaron actually meant was don’t tell anyone we were here.

**

The next night, Dan and Matt come again, and this time, they bring friends. 

“I hope it’s okay?” Matt says. “They wanted to play too.”

“We heard there was fresh meat?” a tall blonde named Allison says. 

“Can we join you?” her girlfriend, a small woman named Renee, asks. 

They all look at him, and Aaron is so uneasy, and so inexplicably guilty. He makes himself look past the other newcomer, a man named Jeremy, to look at Neil, to gauge his reaction. Neil is beaming, and Aaron’s heart clenches.

“Yeah,” Neil says.

“What he said,” Aaron says, as lightly as he can.

They play, and there’s almost enough of them this time for line rotations, but Neil never sits out. He flies up and down the court, electric and fierce like he was in the prison, except that now his fierceness is all brightness and no blade. Aaron feels that feeling he gets when the kids he advocates for start to find their feet, start not to need him anymore. It’s beautiful, and bittersweet.

They leave with a “rematch tomorrow?” and Aaron waits for Neil to go change out before he pulls Dan aside.

“Hey,” he says, lowly. “You can’t tell anyone we’re doing this, okay? Neil, he… He can’t get recognized, it would be dangerous for him. He’s… He’s…” 

Aaron thinks of what lie he can tell. He’s on the run? He’s in witness protection? 

“We know who he is,” Dan says gently, and Aaron startles. 

“What? He –”

“We’ve all seen him on the news,” Dan says, still so gently.

Aaron is aghast. “Then what are you… why do you…” 

Dan smiles, and Aaron recognizes that she has the same steel backbone as his wife. 

“He deserves a chance,” she says simply. 

“Besides,” she tosses over shoulder as she goes to leave,  “it’s damn good exy.”

**

That night, for the first time in a long time, Aaron thinks about Nicky. He remembers that Nicky played for the community league, back when Aaron and Andrew were in high school. 

“It’s an outlet,” Nicky said, smiling too brightly, covering what Aaron now understands as the exhaustion and stress of stepping into parenthood too young, for kids who were already too old. 

Aaron means to go back to his rental, but his feet take him outside the door of the Columbia house. Even standing on the stoop is pulling his body back into memory, into so many days of stepping up here, again and again. The last time he went out this door, he never came back. 

Aaron swallows, and knocks twice.

Hi, Nicky, he plans to say. 

After that he’s not sure what will come out. He wants to say sorry. He wants to say, I’m here now, and I would love to catch up. He wants to say, do you still play exy? and Do you want to play with me and Nathaniel Wesnisnki?

He knocks twice, and no one comes to the door. He knocks again, louder, and waits.

Nothing.

Aaron takes out his phone. 

Are y’all home?

It’s only a slight pause before Andrew texts back.

why?

I’m on your doorstep.

A slightly longer pause and then.

I don’t live there any more.

Aaron tenses. Oh.

Nicky’s not there either. Went back to Germany

Aaron stumbles backwards down the stairs. Now that he’s looking at it, he sees how dark the house is. How dead.

I live on the other side of Columbia now, Andrew finishes.

Aaron reads Andrew’s message, and has the strangest impulse to hold his phone to his chest. His brother lives on the other side of Columbia now, on the rich side.

All that book money, Aaron writes.

Yes.

Aaron doesn’t know what else to say. He wants to write good for you , but he’s worried it will read as sarcastic. He looks at his phone, and he thinks about Nicky, he thinks about coming to this door, and, feeling ridiculous, he texts Andrew,

Neil and I play exy at the community centre at 10pm every day. U could come.

I don’t play exy, Andrew writes.

No pressure, Aaron writes, and feels a funny prickle of adrenaline. 

If it helps, Aaron adds, we all suck.

And he leaves it at that. His adrenaline zaps, fast like electricity, and he thinks with sudden vehemence, Andrew’s going to show up.

Chapter Text

Andrew shows up. 

They haven’t seen each other in years, and still, Aaron feels that ping , like someone flicking him on the back of his head, and he looks down the court from where he is badly covering the goal, and Andrew is standing there, just outside the court.

For a moment, the world around them pauses, and they look at each other, two mirror images, warped by time and circumstance. Andrew, Aaron thinks, Andrew –

“You have a twin! ” Allison yells, and the moment cracks, and Andrew looks away from him, and Aaron is gasping for breath.

Dan, Matt, Renee and Jeremy turn in synch to the other end of the court, where Andrew is standing, almost awkwardly.

And then Neil steps from behind Jeremy, and Andrew sees him, and something… happens.

Aaron knows for a fact that they have never met each other before. They have never seen each other in person. Neil has read Andrew’s books, and Andrew has followed Neil’s case, and they’ve traded text messages through Aaron, but they are otherwise strangers.

Except, Andrew looks at Neil, and Neil looks at Andrew, and there is something between them in this first meeting that feels like a reunion. 

Neil moves towards Andrew, and Aaron floats behind anxiously, and everyone watches, and Aaron feels weirdly protective over everyone. Don’t hurt him, he thinks, and he doesn’t actually know who it’s directed towards. 

The first words Neil says to Andrew are: “In Guilt Is The Anchor We Tie Our Noose To, you stabbed Robin in the thigh, and she took too long to die.”

Andrew raises an eyebrow. 

“You stabbed her in an artery,” Neil says, almost patronizingly, “and then she bled for almost half an hour. I assume you did it to slow the action and make your readers feel… I don’t even know what.”

“Anything else?”

“That was a good book, but that part was stupid.”

A considering pause.

“How’s the skinning in The Flesh Is A Flickerlight ?”

Aaron feels his eyes widen to saucers.

“Better,” Neil concedes. “But he would’ve passed out long before he felt as much pain as you wanted him to.

Andrew does not look offended (Aaron feels offended on his behalf). Andrew looks thrilled. (Aaron does not like the way he is smiling.) 

“Hey–” Aaron starts to say, but Andrew cuts him off, eyes hot on Neil. 

“I’ve been thinking of putting a dismemberment in my upcoming work. Wanna consult?”

Aaron cannot believe his ears. He turns to Neil to… shield him? Apologize? 

Neil is beaming with the same razor-sharp smile.

“Absolutely.”

And Aaron thinks, oh no.

**

Andrew starts to come to the community centre, almost every night. He doesn’t play at first; he mostly stands off-court and chirps at Neil. 

It’s a welcome buffer for Aaron. Part of him wants to run at his brother and shake all of his secrets out of him, and learn him again, and try for the version of brotherhood he dreamed of as a child. A part of him wants to fall to his knees and apologize. An insistent part of him wants Andrew to go away again and never come back.

The exy means that they slowly learn to share a space, without having it have to be intimate. There are teammates, and there is Neil, and Andrew doesn’t play, but Aaron feels him, even when he’s not looking at him. 

One night, Aaron brings donuts for everyone, and he brings the box to Andrew on the sidelines first. There is a long pause when Aaron holds out the box, and Aaron feels his face flood with a familiar embarrassment, but he holds his ground, and he holds out the box, and Andrew finally takes one, and it feels like something.

“Thank you,” Andrew says stiffly, and it’s the first words he’s said to him in person in years, and Aaron can’t do anything but nod too much back.

**

Maybe a month after Andrew’s started coming regularly, he brings a guest.

“I brought you a present,” he says to Neil, and they all turn to look at the man standing beside him.

“Oh my god,” Jeremy stage-whispers. 

“Is that…?” Matt’s jaw is hanging open.

Neil drifts forward. There’s something funny on his face. 

In another life, I play exy, and I give the great Kevin Day a run for his money, Neil said. Imagine that?

Kevin Day looks at Neil, and Neil looks at Kevin Day, and there’s such an intensity, and Aaron thinks does Kevin know who Neil is ? 

It doesn’t seem to matter. All Kevin says is, 

“You any good?”

And Neil, tauntingly, says,

“Come see.”

And it’s enough.

**

“Andrew and I met at the People’s Sexiest Man Alive event two years ago” Kevin explains later, as they take their water break. “We kept in touch.”

Neil turns his laser eyes on Andrew. “Sexiest Man Alive?”

The slight blush on Andrew’s face says maybe he wouldn’t have minded if Kevin didn’t mention this fact. “It’s a magazine thing. You missed it, being locked up.”

Aaron tenses at the mention of Neil’s imprisonment, but nobody else does.

“Maybe you should show me,” Neil says, and Aaron thinks oh hell no.

Andrew smirks, and Aaron wants to gouge his own eyes out. 

“Break time’s over,” Aaron says, hoarsely. “Let’s get back to the court, yeah?”

The rolling of Andrew’s eyes says he knows exactly what Aaron is doing.

“I’ll text you a link,” Andrew promises to Neil as he gears up again.

“No, you won’t.” Aaron says, aghast. “You can only text him through me, and I do NOT want to see that.”

Andrew’s smirk grows. “Maybe I’ll just have to bring a copy in person.”

Neil turns his puppy dog eyes on Aaron, “Could he? Could he come to the house?”

And Aaron thinks, fuck my life.

**

Aaron writes the FBI to get Andrew on Neil’s approved list, and it is an eerie indicator of how deeply Andrew wants to come (and does Andrew want now?) that he subjects himself to the FBI’s screening, and signs all the many NDAs, and fingerprints himself for them for ‘security.’

Watching Andrew see Neil’s apartment for the first time makes Aaron see it for the first time again. It is still hopelessly empty, still helpfully easy for the FBI to spot check.

“How many bugs?” Andrew asks, and Aaron absurdly thinks of insects, until Neil points calmly to behind the heater, to above the fridge, to over the front door and to inside the bathroom.

Aaron cringes. Somehow, he had forgotten that Neil’s apartment was bugged. Somehow, he had forgotten about the tracker Neil wears. Somehow, he had forgotten that not everyone was learning to see Neil as a full person.

“Mics or cameras?” Andrew asks.

“Say something fun, and we’ll see,” Neil challenges, and Andrew smirks again.

“I’m going to kill you, Wesninski” Andrew says slowly, without intonation, eyes moving from Neil over to the heater where Neil had indicated. 

Neil laughs. “That’s not going to work. They would love it if you did that, actually.”

Aaron feels his heart clench, but Andrew just tilts his head. 

“I’m going to torture you, Wesnisnki” he says, in that same voice, “until you tell me all the things you won’t tell the FBI.”

Neil laughs again, louder, and flops onto the floor. 

“Yeah that might work.” He turns his head to look at Andrew. “To be honest, you might not even need to torture me. If you brought the magazine, per se…” 

Neil waggles his eyebrows, and Andrew rolls his eyes, and Aaron has this moment. He realizes that Andrew is good for Neil, that Andrew is making Neil a person too, just like the cafe and the community centre. Andrew is doing it easily. And Neil… Aaron pauses when he thinks, Neil is good for Andrew too.

It leaves him unsettled. 

Andrew has been drawn to Neil for years. From the beginning. The magnetism between them was so strong that it drew Aaron into its orbit. There has always been something between them, at least on Andrew’s end, and things have always been complicated between Andrew and Aaron, but somehow with Neil… Aaron doesn’t know where his thought ends. Somewhere ugly, probably. He doesn’t let himself finish the thought. 

He watches Andrew and Neil talk in mono-syllables, and eyebrow wags, and laughter so sharp it grates. Aaron tries to unfocus himself. Aaron tries to shake the feeling that he’s third-wheeling on two people who were his friends first.

**

It’s not until the next week that Andrew broaches the ‘consult.’ 

They go over Andrew’s manuscript, and Neil describes dismemberment in detail, and Aaron gets nauseous from eavesdropping, and Andrew takes notes, looking darkly thrilled.

Aaron’s stomach has been churning all day (all week, all month), and he doesn’t know how much longer he can watch whatever is happening between these two, and he’s feeling too many things he refuses to examine, and that day when they leave Neil, Aaron stops Andrew on the steps outside Neil’s apartment.

“That doesn’t disturb you?” Aaron hisses, after the door closes behind them. “He’s describing to you the dismemberments he’s performed himself.”

“Yes, I am aware.”

“You don’t find that fucked up?”

Andrew tilts his head. “I see that you do.”

Aaron is done with Andrew’s deflecting. “He’s a serial killer,” Aaron emphasizes.

“I thought you liked him.”

“I do! But it’s that, that, ugh,” Aaron wants to scream. Aaron does like Neil. And Andrew likes Neil, and “How come it’s so easy for you to like him?”

“When I don’t like you, you mean?”

The blow of Andrew’s words hits Aaron so hard he stumbles on the stairs.

Andrew’s face alights with a familiar malice, and Aaron realizes that the last time they fought, it was Aaron lobbing cruel words over the phone. He supposes Andrew is taking his turn now.

“That’s what you’re assuming, isn’t it?” Andrew sneers, “Big bad Andrew, too fucked in the head to care about the people who are kind to him. Has to run off to someone just as fucked up as him.”

“That’s not –”

Neil read flickerlight and said, It is funny, when your life is irrevocably fucked. 

“Andrew, I’ve tried –”

“Don’t.” 

Their chests are both heaving. Andrew shrugs, and it’s too loaded to look casual.

“You’ve already decided I’m selfish and that I don’t care. I’m not going to convince you otherwise.”  

Andrew goes to push past him, and –

“Andrew, Andrew wait.”

Aaron can’t gather his thoughts. His chest hurts. He can’t catch his breath. Andrew is leaving, and why are they always leaving each other? 

“I don’t… I… Just wait, Andrew.”

You don’t write a hundred thousand words about someone who is not important to you , Kate said, a thousand years ago. Did you know this one is about you?

Aaron doesn’t know why it matters. It shouldn’t matter. All they do is hurt each other. Why can’t Aaron just let him leave?

Aaron closes his eyes. It makes him feel braver when he can’t see Andrew.

“Is Take To The Dock about me?”

The silence is so long Aaron thinks that Andrew has just left him standing there with his eyes closed. He opens his eyes in defeat – and Andrew is still there, face clear, eyes very deep.

“Yes,” Andrews says.

And Aaron’s heart cracks.

“Kate says you’re saying you love me.”

“The doctor.”

“Yes, Kate. The doctor. My wife.”

Aaron breathes deeply.

“Was she right?”

Another impossible pause. You’ve already decided I’m selfish and that I don’t care. I’m not going to convince you otherwise.

Finally, finally, when Aaron is bracing himself so tightly he’s begun to shake, Andrew’s chin dips in a shallow nod.

Aaron closes his eyes tightly again. He wants to say, why didn’t you tell me? He wants to say, didn’t you see how badly I needed you? He wants to say, I’m sorry I made you think I hated you. 

“You should meet Kate,” he says instead. “You should know each other.” Because you are both important to me, he doesn’t say.

“Yes,” Andrew says, and Aaron thinks that this moment has been indebted to them for the past ten years. He is abruptly dizzy with the realization they actually made it.

“Come over for coffee tomorrow,” Andrew says, and Aaron hears, Come see my new home. Come see my new life. Come be in it.

Aaron exhales until he is empty. When he breathes again, he feels lighter than he has since he left California.

“Yes,” Aaron says. “Okay.”

Chapter Text

They are in Neil’s apartment, and Andrew and Neil are exchanging tips for knife maintenance, and Aaron is pretending it is not disturbing. 

Andrew has just offered one of the knives he carries in his armbands to Neil, and Neil has just started reaching for it with reverent hands, and then Neil’s head snaps towards the door.

“Hide your knives,” Neil says harshly, and then the door is kicked open.

“This is a spot check!” someone yells, and Neil’s hands go up.

The FBI agents who come in look like SWAT. They are dressed in combat gear, and they are heavily armed, and there are three of them, and two scope out Neil’s apartment, and one of them comes for Neil.

Aaron knows intuitively what his brother will do – what his brother has always done for those he cares about – and he forces his body between Andrew and Neil. He wishes for twin telepathy as he stares at Andrew, as he thinks, as loud as he can, if you attack an FBI agent, you will never be allowed to see Neil again. Aaron takes a micro step closer to Andrew, but does not touch him. Neil needs you to come back, Andrew.

Maybe there is something to the telepathy – Andrew does not take his eyes off of the agent, but he stops reaching towards his armbands.

The agent is patting Neil down, too roughly. Neil is standing, arms outstretched, eyes on the ceiling, and face blank. The evident familiarity of his stance, the routine of it, makes Aaron sick.

Around them, the other two agents are destroying his apartment. They’re rifling through his drawers, they’re flipping over his sleeping roll, they’re kicking his shoes around. The sound of it all is awful. 

Neil looks at the ceiling, and does not move. Aaron would almost think he doesn’t care about what’s happening, except, slowly and surely, his face is going red.

When the agents leave, Neil’s apartment is in upheaval, and his clothes are disheveled, and Neil’s eyes fall from the ceiling to the floor, and he does not look back up.

“Neil?” Aaron asks, when the silence starts to stretch too long. Aaron is reminded of hours and hours of Neil looking at the same grain of wood. “You okay, man?”

Neil looks up slowly, and his face is awful. “I’m sorry,” he says, too formal. 

“For what?” Aaron says, at the same time Andrew says “shut up.”

“I didn’t want you to see them do that,” Neil manages, and then his eyes fall back to the floor, and his cheeks are red, and his chest is heaving, and Aaron realizes he is trying very hard to keep himself together.

Aaron looks at Andrew, feeling horribly out of his depth. Andrew looks at Neil, considering.

“Aaron, go stand by the front door,” Andrew says finally, and Aaron thinks he is telling him to leave.

Except he gets to the front door, and Andrew moves to in front of the heater, and Aaron realizes they are blocking the cameras.

“Go ahead,” Andrew says, quietly, and Neil breaks from the horrible stiffness of his body, and he brings his hands to his face, and he starts to cry.

“Fuck,” Neil says brokenly through his fingers. 

They’re always doing spot checks, Neil said, so long ago, when he asked Aaron to take the first book back. Aaron didn’t picture it like this. He didn’t think it was like this. He remembers coming here to find Neil bruised by FBI hands. He sees it, suddenly. He understands how it’s been happening.

Neil cries, in this place he’s been made to live but which cannot be his home. He cries, and Andrew walks slowly towards him, and Andrew puts his hand on the back of his neck, so light, and Neil shudders, and everything was supposed to be getting better. Neil leans into Andrew, and Andrew’s arm comes around Neil, and it’s so tender, and it’s so raw, and Aaron closes his eyes because he thinks he might cry too.

Neil deserves a home, Aaron thinks. Neil deserves better than this.

**

There are a million words Aaron should say to Nicky first. There are apologies, and questions, and updates, and a million better ways to start the conversation.

Aaron gets Nicky’s German number from Andrew, and he writes,

I’m sorry.

And then,

I need a favour. 

**

Nicky flies out from Leipzig, and he doesn’t need to, Aaron tells him he doesn’t have to drop everything for him, but he does (but he always does).

“I want to do this,” Nicky says, when they call. “I want to help you. And Andrew.” Nicky breathes. “And,” and here he stumbles over his words, just a little, “I want to see you. And hug you.”

Aaron drives to the airport in a rental car to get him, and he thinks the whole drive about what he will say. He still hasn’t decided anything when he sees him. Nicky is coming closer and closer, and it’s been so many years, and he looks healthy, and he looks well, and Aaron missed him so much, and Aaron doesn’t know what to say, and actually it doesn’t matter, because Nicky is here, and the first thing they’re going to do is hug each other, so, so tightly.

**

They clean the Columbia house together, and it hurts Aaron to be there, and it hurts Nicky to be there, but they’re there together, and they clean it, and somehow it gets easier.

“I shouldn’t have let you leave like that,” Nicky says as they’re scrubbing the kitchen floor. “I have nightmares about watching you leave.”

“Oh, I did that all myself,” Aaron says, and squeezes the rag he’s using, hard. “You couldn’t stop me.”

They clean and they clean, and somehow the hard conversations are so much easier when their hands are busy.

“I got married,” Aaron says, as they’re doing the windows. “To a girl from college.”

“Congratulations,” Nicky says, very earnestly. He sniffs, and wipes the window in soft circles, and Aaron says,

“I should’ve invited you.”  

It’s an apology. Aaron watches a tear bead on Nicky’s eyelid, and Aaron says, “I should’ve asked you to plan it.” He laughs.  “I’m not a good event planner.”

“Did you even have a colour scheme?” Nicky asks wetly.

“City hall,” Aaron says, and Nicky groans.

“No, Aaron.”

“My wife’s a doctor. I was a law student. We were very broke.”

The windows are clean. They are so clean that Aaron can see the fragile hope in Nicky’s face when he says,

“Erik and I are getting married in the summer. Maybe, uh, maybe you could come.”

Aaron’s face is doing something he thinks wants to be a smile. It feels painful.

“Don’t feel obligated,” Aaron hears himself say. “I haven’t really been there for you, I know.”

Nicky shrugs. “Sounds like you need schooling on how to host a good wedding.”  Aaron sees his smile reflected on the window. “My wedding is going to be a masterclass.”

Aaron is nodding, and smiling, and he remembers that being young in this house was not always painful. Sometimes it was this: joyful and loving and new.

“Okay,” Aaron says. 

“Bring your wife,” Nicky says. “I want to meet her.”

“Okay,” Aaron says, and this time his smile doesn’t hurt him.

**

It ends up that they don’t need to wait for the wedding for Nicky to meet Katelyn. 

Nicky stays long enough to make the house ready for habitation again, and to commiserate with Aaron when the FBI refuse his initial request to transfer Neil there. 

Nicky learns about Neil, and then he learns about Andrew-and-Neil, and then he extends his trip, because “this is something I need to see with my own eyes, Aaron.”

Nicky comes to exy at the community centre, and he makes moon eyes at Andrew and Neil the whole night, and at the first break, he approaches Neil, bold as anything, and says,

“Did you know Andrew’s had a crush on you since he was a teen?”

Neil’s eyes widen, and Nicky doesn’t stop.

“He followed your case all the way through, and watched your whole trial! I mean, talk about a slow burn, my god!”

Aaron thinks Nicky’s meant this as a delightful anecdote – Aaron doesn’t think Nicky meant for Neil’s face to scrunch in confusion, for him to turn slowly to Andrew and ask lowly,

“What’s a slow burn?”

Andrew looks at Nicky with murder in his eyes, and the lightest of blushes on his cheeks, and Neil says, still so confused, “you had a crush on me?” 

Aaron says loudly,

“Okay, let’s get back to the game. Neil and Andrew, you’re on break.”

And Aaron makes them all play, and he pushes to keep the ball firmly downcourt, and firmly away from whatever conversation is happening on the bench that is making both Neil and Andrew blush furiously.

Nicky draws up beside him and winces as he says, “did I just fuck it up?”

Aaron chances a glance at his brother and Neil, and Andrew’s hand is on Neil’s neck again, and they’re leaning towards each other, and Aaron tears his eyes away and wishes he could bleach them.

“For me? Yes,” Aaron says. “I somehow think you saved them years of miscommunication.”

**

Nicky keeps coming to exy, and Neil and Andrew start progressively standing closer and closer to each other, and there’s a weird balance that’s figuring itself out, and Aaron has the strangest sensation that he’s having a second chance at his youth.

When Kate finally gets approved for locum, and finally flies out, it’s on an exy night. He’s desperate to see her, to hold her, to feel her, to breathe the same air. It’s also… exy night.

“I will meet you, you fanatic,” Kate laughs over the phone. “Go play with your family. Save me a spot in the stands. Can’t wait to see you demolish them all.”

(Aaron won’t demolish anything. He will be too distracted by his wife sitting there – finally sitting there in the same place as him – and he will look up to the stands way too often, and she will be smiling, and sticking out her tongue, and blowing kisses this way, and it’ll be his favorite exy night yet.)

**

The ragtag team becomes this: Kevin, Jeremy and Neil playing striker, Matt, Nicky and Aaron playing backliner, Dan, Katelyn and Allison playing dealer, and Renee and Andrew playing goal. They play scrimmages, and Kevin and Neil take it too seriously, but no one else does, and their first game is so fast, and so fun, and Aaron realizes too late that Katelyn has started crying.

“Katelyn?” He’s rushing to her, and he didn’t see her get injured, but did something happen? Did someone check her too hard? Is she okay?

“Oh, I’m fine,” she says, waving off both him and the rest of the overly concerned team. “It’s just… exy. It got to me.”

“Understandable,” Kevin says, very seriously, and Katelyn laughs.

“My sister was a pro,” Katelyn explains. “I feel close to her when we do this.”

“For which team?” Kevin asks, because of course he does.

“Well, college,” Katelyn amends. “She played for the USC Trojans.”

Kevin focus intensifies on Kate’s face. He watches Kevin flip through his internal USC roster, and then he sees Kevin recognize her.

“Gabby Mackenzie,” Kevin acknowledges, and his face gets solemn with understanding.

There is a weightiness to the pause, Aaron and Katelyn and Kevin all looking at each other.

“What are we missing?” Allison asks, impatient.

Aaron looks at Kate, shakes his head minutely: You don’t have to talk about it. Kate shakes her head back: I don’t mind.

“She was killed,” Kate says easily. “Just before she graduated. Hit and run. Almost eight years ago now.”

Neil twitches, and tries to mask it. Both Aaron and Andrew catch it, stare him down in silent inquiry.

“She would leave you all in the dust if she was here,” Kate smiles.

“I think I could give her a run for her money,” Kevin says.

Kate laughs. “You could try. You’re five years retired now. She would still be playing.”

“Translation,” Allison says, “she’d kick your fucking ass, Kevin Day.”

Kate laughs, and the mood lightens, and Kevin looks abashed, and Aaron is still looking at Neil’s face and he doesn’t understand why it’s suddenly, intentionally, indecipherable.

**

“What was that? At practice, when Kate talked about her sister.”

Andrew is doing an interview, and Neil and Aaron are alone in his apartment, and this has been eating at Aaron.

Neil freezes minutely. He doesn’t look at Aaron when he says, “Don't ask me this, Aaron.”

Aaron concern deepens.

“Why not?”

Neil shakes his head. “Just don't.”

Aaron has been thinking about this. 

“You’re not going to tell me you killed her,” Aaron dismisses. “You were in Columbia, and she died in LA. There’s something else you’re not telling me.”

Neil twitches, and then subdues it. 

“You don’t trust me enough to believe this, but it’s actually safer for you if you don’t know.”

“Safer for me.”

“Yes.”

Talking to Neil without Andrew as a buffer is harder than Aaron remembered. He forgot how cryptically Neil speaks. He didn’t realize how easily Andrew has been deciphering him, until now Aaron is trying by himself, and it’s so hard.

“Believe me,” Neil continues, voice darkening, “when it’s mafia, not knowing is safer than knowing.”

Aaron starts. 

“What do you mean mafia ? Gabby was not mafia. She was going to be a doctor.”

Neil’s eyes are still on his crooked fingers.

“Don’t ask, Aaron. You don’t want to know.”

“Gabby was not mafia. I promise you. Neil.”

Neil is quiet for a moment, and then he says, too heavy,

“No she wasn't.”

“Then why are you talking about the mafia?”

Now Neil does look at him, and the set of his jaw is so stubborn, and his eyes are so hard.

 “Aaron, I’m not going to tell you.”

Aaron feels a flush of hot shame when he immediately thinks about how the privileges he could strip from Neil, to make him tell him. He wishes that horrible, old impulse would go away and die forever.

“Neil, what aren’t you telling me?”

Maybe Andrew would understand better when Neil smiles sadly and says,

 “A lot.”

**

Neil starts to withdraw again. It’s the blank mask from months ago, except this time it's calculated instead of being the inevitability of bone deep exhaustion. Aaron hadn’t realized how much Neil had come alive, until he starts to die again.

“What’s happening to him?” Aaron asks Andrew, because Andrew gets him, because he and Neil are… whatever they are, because Andrew always understands. 

Andrew turns to look at him, face equally indecipherable, and Aaron realizes he has no idea either. 

All these years later, Aaron and Andrew finally find a shared interest – worrying over Neil.

**

When it happens, it’s like this:

It’s another rare evening with no exy, and no Andrew. Aaron orders take out, and he and Neil eat it on the floor. Aaron thinks about all the many months he watched Neil sit on this floor. He thinks about Neil staring at the same wood grain. He thinks about the brightness of his eyes now, as Aaron recounts a hilarious story of Kate’s about her “Carrie” moment in the operating room, when someone’s IV blood transfusion somehow unhooked and sprayed the entire operating team in fresh blood. 

Neil’s face does something strange, almost pained, and Aaron wants to cram all of his words back into his mouth. “Oh god, that was inappropriate of me. I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry.”

Neil looks at Aaron in confusion. “No, what? Sorry myself. I just spaced for a moment I guess.”

“Tired?” Aaron guesses.

“Yeah,” Neil says, and Aaron doesn’t understand why Neil is using his lying face.

They clear their containers, and get to their feet. Aaron realizes that he creaks more now than used to when he sat on the floor in college.

They get to the door, and Aaron can tell Neil is chewing on something to say. Aaron waits. 

Eventually:

“Hey, Aaron?”

“Yeah?”

“Just… Uh. Thank you, for everything.” Neil’s face crinkles into a smile. “You were amazing.”

Aaron feels a trickle of alarm. 

“Is everything okay?”

Neil’s smile stays soft. “Yeah. Just wanted to make sure you knew. Thank you.”

“Uh, yeah,” Aaron scratches behind his ear. He is awkward with affection, and he wishes he wasn’t. “Thanks back, you know, for, uh, everything.”

Neil dimples, and Aaron feels the strangest impulse to hug him. Aaron cannot remember the last time he hugged anyone who wasn’t Kate or Nicky. He crushes the impulse, and waves weirdly instead. Neil waves back, still smiling, and then the door closes, and Aaron goes back home.

Later, when he hears the news, his first reaction will be blank terror, and then the raging guilt of why didn’t I fucking hug him?

Chapter Text

It’s a call from Wymack, because it’s always a fucking call from Wymack. 

Aaron’s phone rings, and even before he picks up, he thinks please god let me never get a call from this man again.

“Wymack?” Aaron sits up too fast in bed. Kate comes up with him. They look at each other, and Kate is holding his hand too hard, and not again not again not again. “What’s happened?”

It’s 3:54am in the morning. The police don’t call you at 3:54am in the morning with good news.

“Is it Andrew?” Aaron asks, voice small. Kate squeezes his hand.

“No.” Wymack’s voice is gruff. 

Aaron feels instant relief, and then floods with terror, because if it’s not Andrew, then –

“Is it Neil?” Aaron is clutching his phone so tightly it creaks. The room is slowly saturating with dread.

“Nathaniel, you mean? Yes, he–”

Aaron sucks in a breath too fast, and everything goes a bit dizzy.

“It’s not what you think,” Wymack says quickly. “He’s alive. He’s injured, but he’s alive.”

“Oh.” 

Belatedly, Aaron realizes he should put his phone on speaker phone. He hits the button, and puts his phone down on the bed between him and Kate. He takes Kate’s other hand with the hand that was holding the phone. They are holding each other very, very tightly.

“He was badly injured, but he’ll live. He, uh,” Wymack clears his throat. “There’s no good way to say this, so I’ll just say it. He had a spot check by an agent last night. He became aggressive with her. The agent tried to subdue him, and he, uh, he –”

“Killed her,” Aaron whispers. And now the dizziness does hit. How did he let himself forget? Nathaniel Wesninski. The Butcher of Baltimore. Serial Killer. Cop Killer. Monster.

“Yes.” Aaron hears Wymack shifting over the phone. 

“They’ve put him back in, of course. They’re transferring him to high security as soon as they can get the papers in. I know you two were getting close. I figured you should know before it hits the press.”

Aaron cannot make a single sound.

“Thanks, Wymack,” Kate whispers.

Aaron feels like the world has flipped itself over into something he cannot make sense of. Absurdly, he thinks I am in the upside down house.

And then his mind catches on something. He sees Neil’s shitty, empty FBI apartment in his memory. Always empty, always ruthlessly bare. He remembers Neil handing him back each of Andrew’s novels – “I don’t want the other officers looking at it” – he remembers Neil’s reverence of the books, his privacy of his experience of them, of his connection with Andrew via his writing. He sees Neil’s shitty, empty FBI apartment, and his mind snags, because last night, there was a copy of In The Upside Down House tucked by his sleeping roll. 

In The Upside Down House is Andrew’s first book, the one about Neil. It’s the first book Aaron gave him, and the first book Neil gave him back. Last night, there was a copy, there in the apartment.

Thank you for everything, Neil said. You were amazing.

“Something’s wrong,” Aaron rasps. His voice is barely more than breath.  “Something is not right.”

“Aaron?” Kate says, worried.

“Minyard?” Wymack asks, tinny through the phone.

Aaron tries to bring his thoughts to order.

You were amazing . 

His mind spins, further back, further back. 

Believe me, when it’s mafia, not knowing is safer than knowing.

“I left something of mine in his apartment,” Aaron says, mind very far from himself. “Last night. Can I get it, before they turn over his apartment?”

“It’s currently an active crime scene,” Wymack says slowly.

“The book’s important to me,” Aaron says. “Wymack, please.”

The briefest hesitation. “Let me call in for a favour. Don’t come in – you’re too close to him, it’ll look bad for you. I’ll get someone to drop it off. Listen for the doorbell.”

Wymack hangs up, and Kate’s face is all worry, and Aaron needs to keep it together, he needs to keep it together dammit. 

**

When the doorbell rings, the entire rag tag crew of them lurches to their feet. Wymack broke his NDA to call Aaron, and Aaron broke his to call them, but he needs them. Neil needs them.

Aaron can’t move from where he’s vice-gripped onto Kate’s hand, so it’s Andrew who goes to the door, and it’s Andrew who takes the book. 

When he called, Aaron had nothing to offer any of them except suspicions, except half remembered conversations with Neil. Aaron could not be sure he was right. Andrew opens the book, and the blood drains from his face, and Aaron knows he was not wrong.

“What is it?”

Andrew doesn’t move. He flips through, and through, and through. And then he shoves the book at Aaron, and pushes away to brace himself on the wall, breathing heavily.

Aaron almost doesn’t want to open the book. He has the foolish thought that if he doesn’t see whatever is in it, it won’t be real. 

But then Kate puts her hand on his shoulder, and he can't flee reality, not this time, and so he doesn’t.

The first half of the book has been intermittently blacked out, so that new sentences can emerge from the graves of Andrew’s writing. The new message reads,

Hello |||||  junior ||||| did you ||||| think ||||| we ||||| forgot about ||||| you ||||| we ||||| just thought ||||| we ||||| would ||||| wait until ||||| you ||||| had ||||| a sad ||||| little ||||| l ||||| i ||||| f ||||| e ||||| that we could ||||| break ||||| for ||||| you ||||| ! ||||| isn’t this ||||| so much more ||||| f ||||| u ||||| n ||||| ! ||||| we will ||||| see ||||| you ||||| very ||||| soon ||||| our ||||| sweet ||||| b ||||| o ||||| y !

The last half of the book is blacked out into a makeshift countdown, starting from twenty. Aaron back tracks in his mind, and watches the apathy of Neil’s face dissipate in reverse.

The last page is completely blacked out.

Aaron passes the book off to someone else. He can’t see who. Everything is spinning around. 

“He had a spot check by an agent last night. He became aggressive with her. The agent tried to subdue him, and he, uh, he –”

and

“Don’t ask, Minyard. You don’t want to know.”

and

“Neil, what aren’t you telling me?”

and

“A lot.”

Aaron sees his horror matched on the faces around the room, these faces who have become his and Neil’s family both. 

“I can’t think,” he whispers, and his eyes find Andrew, who is already looking at him. 

Andrew tilts his head in question. Aaron has never been able to read him, but that, that look, is, do you need help?

Aaron scrunches his face together, and apparently Andrew can read him too, because he takes Aaron’s yes god please, and starts calmly outlining a plan.

**

Aaron forces his way into where they are keeping Neil. He keeps saying, “I’m his lawyer. I’m his lawyer. He has the right to a lawyer. It is unconstitutional to deny him a lawyer. I am his lawyer. I am his lawyer.” 

He says the word ‘lawyer’ so many times, it ceases to sound like an English word. Allison is calling her contacts in the press, and Kate has pulled together a crew of hospital folks to protest outside the prison, and Kevin is putting together a statement, Andrew is about to go on national television to do an emergency interview. Aaron keeps calmly asserting Neil’s right to a fucking lawyer.

The room with Neil, and with the FBI, and the doctors shoulder to shoulder working on Neil, is a blurring mess, and Aaron is speaking and nothing sounds like English any more. 

He thinks he is yelling. He is yelling Neil’s rights word for word, again and again, and he is stupidly grateful for all the hours Katelyn made him study in law school, again and again, until he got it word perfect. He is yelling about human rights, and he is yelling about the constitution, and he is yelling about ethics, and they are trying to force him out the door, but he just will not go. He remembers Allison’s suggestion – he calls Andrew (“put me on speaker!”), and he keeps yelling.

Maybe it’s the call being shared by Andrew on national television, or maybe it’s the gathering protestors outside, or maybe it’s whatever Allison and Kevin are doing, but suddenly the FBI are gone, and there is only one doctor, and Neil is still shackled to the bed, but there is no one putting hands on him. 

Aaron’s throat is hoarse and burning, and he disconnects the call, and he takes Neil’s hand firmly between his, and he turns his yelling on him.

“You fucking idiot, you could have fucking told us, you could have asked for help, you could have fucking died, you stupid fucking idiot martyr motherfucker!”

Aaron is grasping his hand, too tight. Neil is holding him back, equally firm.

“I’m sorry,” Neil rasps, and suddenly Aaron sees him.

There are knife cuts down his face, and down his arms, and down onto the hands that are now bleeding from the pressure of being between Aaron’s. Aaron lets go of him, aghast. Neil is deeply bruised, and bleeding, and his bandages are wrecked, and someone’s burnt him, and somehow he looks more vibrantly alive than Aaron has ever seen him.

“Neil,” Aaron says, and his voice breaks between the syllables.

“Don’t pity me,” Neil says, a call back to so, so long ago, and Aaron thinks he might cry. 

The doctor finishes checking him over. They offer to put Neil out, but he refuses. The doctor grimaces, but doesn’t push it. When they leave, Aaron exhales, hard, and makes his spine strong. He cannot fall apart. He cannot. 

He rises from his chair and does a quick scan for bugs. He finds a small mic taped under Neil’s hospital-style bed, and he hates that he’s had to learn what these look like. Aaron takes a picture of it, sends it to Andrew, and then plucks it off, tosses it to the ground, and crushes it underfoot. When he is satisfied that the rest of the room is clean, he sits back down beside Neil, who is watching him warily. 

“We found the book,” Aaron says, and Neil closes his eyes, grimacing. “Am I right in assuming you knew your attacker?”

“Yes.”

“Am I right in assuming she was not FBI?”

“She was a plant,” Neil confirms, and Aaron tries not to make a connection between how hoarse Neil’s voice is, and how many hours he must have spent screaming. “The other FBI would have assumed she was legit though.”

“But she wasn’t.”

“No.” Neil is trembling, just slightly. “She was there, that first day I was released. The one with the red nails.”

The one who came to Aaron’s home. 

Aaron thinks he might be sick.

“She’s one of my dad’s inner circle, the last one left,” Neil says. “Her name was Lola. Lola Malcolm.”

Neil’s voice does a weird thing when he says Malcolm, and Aaron feels his stomach turn over again. It takes him a moment to understand why.

“Malcolm.”

Neil’s eyes find him, and his face is too compassionate. 

‘Okay it’s Malcolm,’ Mal said. ‘But please don’t call me that it’s a family name and my family is shit.’

“Mal. Malcolm.”

There is ache on Neil’s face, and Aaron doesn’t even want to know what his face is doing in response. No no no no no no.

“Aaron,” Neil says, “we don’t have to do this.”

Aaron breathes out, slowly, and makes himself speak.

“Mal was a plant too.” 

Aaron means for it to be a guess, but it comes out flat and sure.

He remembers the viciousness in Mal, whenever Wesninski was mentioned. He remembers Mal taking him to the gun range, again and again. He remembers Mal’s insistence to kill Neil if he showed any aggression. 

Aaron, if you have to do it, do it. Promise me you’ll do it.

Neil killed Mal. Neil killed Mal, and Neil let Aaron hate him for doing it. Neil killed Mal, and let Aaron hate him, and Mal was a fucking plant.

Neil is watching him process. “His name was actually Romero. Romero Malcolm. Lola’s brother.”

Aaron remembers Mal’s call – I think something bad’s about to happen. I think something bad’s about to happen to me – and remembers being on guard, remembers being… primed.

“But he wasn’t even supposed to be assigned to you,” Aaron says, as if somehow this could still not be true. “You were assigned to me. It was supposed to be me.”

There is something awful on Neil’s face, and Aaron knows there is something else he is missing, and he can’t figure it out fast enough.

Neil killed Mal, and Mal was not even a real person, and Aaron has been grieving a lie for almost a decade, and there is something else, and why can’t Aaron ever be smart enough to figure it out, and “just fucking tell me, Neil.”

Neil closes his eyes again. “Aaron, no.”

You don’t trust me enough to believe this, but it’s actually safer for you if you don’t know.

Mal mal mal mal mal mal mal mal mal mal mal mal

Don’t ask me this, Aaron. You don’t want to know .

Mal mal mal mal mal mal mal mal mal mal mal –

“Tell me,” Aaron growls, so close to out of control. So close to free fall. “I deserve to know.”

Neil opens his eyes, and his expression is anguished. His nose is crooked. All the blood vessels in his right eye are broken. The bandages over his face are slowly going scarlet, and the thin skin of his under eyes has fingernail marks on it.

Neil exhales deeply, and Aaron hears the fluid in his chest crackle, and Aaron’s arms come around himself in a protective hold he hasn’t needed in years. 

“Romero was meant to come for me,” Neil starts, and Aaron doesn’t think he can breathe. “I was a loose end that needed clipping. That was his purpose.”

Romero’s. Mal’s.

Neil’s hand spasms - almost a fist. For the first time, Aaron makes himself think about the logistics of Neil killing Mal. He thinks about premeditated murder. He thinks about Neil surviving premeditated murder. He thinks about fists and teeth and knees and elbows and throats ripped raw. He can’t stop looking at the nail marks under Neil’s eye.

Neil opens his hand, forcing the spasm out.  “I was meant to die, and nobody was supposed to care.”

They look at each other. Neil is saying that Aaron is not supposed to care. Aaron cares so much it hurts him.

“But then Andrew,” Aaron says quietly.

“Yes,” Neil says. “And then you, Aaron.”

Something passes between them, and it hurts.

“I was assigned to you,” Neil continues, “and they couldn’t trust they could corrupt you. You are too good, Aaron. You have always been too good.”

Aaron carries a lifetime of self loathing under his solar plexus. Aaron is the worst person he knows.

“You have been very good to me, Aaron,” Neil says softly. Intimately. “Better than I deserve.”

Aaron’s rejection of this is a full body shudder. “No, Neil.”

“Yes,” Neil says. He smiles, and it’s an open wound. “You are good, Aaron, and my world is not good, and I was assigned to you, and you were in their way.”

In Mal’s way. 

“So they got rid of you, Aaron.”

Aaron shakes his head. He doesn’t understand. He is not gotten rid of. No one has ever come for him. No one has ever hurt Aaron except himself. 

Then Aaron looks at Neil, and Aaron has a horrible, horrible thought.

He remembers Kate calling him, and they … she… hit and run and she… she… and the police… are useless, and I don’t… my sister… my baby, my Gabby… I can’t…

“It was a hit and run,” Aaron says, and he has never heard his own voice sound this way. He sounds like someone has reached down his throat and pulled up his vocal cords. 

“It was an accident.” 

Aaron thinks he might vomit. How does it always get worse?

“It wasn’t an accident,” Neil says firmly. “It was Lola.” and then Neil, taped together and still bleeding, barely surviving recent torture, reaches for him, “Aaron, I am so sorry.”

Neil’s hand touches his arm, and then curls around his arm, and then he pulls, so gently. Aaron is too rigid, Aaron can’t move, Aaron is stuck, Aaron will always be stuck, and Neil pulls, and Aaron lets go.  

Neil folds Aaron into his arms, and Aaron is shaking, and Aaron thinks, can I trust nothing about my life?  Aaron thinks, can we just never catch a break?

Neil’s arms tighten around him, and Aaron is shaking, and Aaron thinks, you know exactly what this feels like, don’t you?  Aaron presses his face against Neil’s shoulder, and his face hurts, and Neil is shaking too, and Aaron thinks, we’re all the fucking same, aren’t we ?

The moment becomes another moment becomes another moment, and they are holding each other, and Aaron doesn’t know how this moment ends. He doesn’t know how they continue from here. He doesn’t know how to stop breaking. 

It’s a long time before Aaron shudders, and pulls back against Neil’s arms. Neil’s arms fall, and they look at each other, and there’s a wet spot on Neil’s shoulder. They look at each other, and Aaron raises his hand slowly, and puts it there. They look at each other, and they breathe, and Aaron puts his other hand on Neil’s other shoulder, and then he looks at him, and he stops trembling.

“I’m gonna get you out, Neil,” Aaron says, and the cold is gone. Now he is so fierce he burns. “They can’t keep you. They’re gonna drop the charges, all of them, and you’re gonna go free. It’s going to get better for you Neil. I promise.”

Neil ducks his head, and Aaron watches a single tear bead on his eyelid, run down over the ruined skin under his eye, over the bloody bandage over his cheek, onto his jaw, then off his jaw and onto the shoulder of his hospital gown, already wet with Aaron’s tears. 

Aaron looks at Neil, and sees a sixteen year old with blood on his hands, so scared, and so alone. Aarons looks at him, and sees an adult who thought he would die alone, and survived instead. Aaron looks at him, and Neil is not scared. And no longer alone.

“We’re getting you out of here,” Aaron says. 

It’s a vow.

Chapter Text

BUTCHER OF BALTIMORE BACK BEHIND BARS!

Early Saturday morning, Nathaniel Wesninski violently murdered a state officer while she was performing a wellness check on him. This is not the first time Wesninski has killed, and not the first time he has killed an officer. Wesninski, who has not yet turned 30, is suspected to have killed over two hundred people. His publicly-pressured release has not rehabilitated him; instead, it has put everyone around him in danger. Readers can console themselves knowing that he is finally back behind bars, and likely facing the death penalty.

Inside sources tell us that pro-Wesninski activists (including Putlitzer-nominated author Andrew Doe) are now calling again for his release. We urge readers not to allow the pressure towards so-called social justice (“wokeness”) to lead them into complicity with murder. 

We mourn the loss of the officers. We wish for swift justice, and for stronger preventative measures and safety for our police force going forward. Lest readers forget, this is an election year. Read on for which candidates are pushing for increased police budgets…

**

Aaron leaves the prison, and he gets back to the rental home, and he doesn’t even take his shoes off before he starts preparing.

It’s going to be a hard case, he knows. The media will be against him. The cops will be against him. The public will be against him. He rolls up his shirtsleeves, and gets to it. 

Aaron works harder than he has ever worked in his life. He researches, he studies, he consults with his colleagues, he consults with Andrew, he tears his own arguments apart, and he shows up to his first preparatory meeting with Neil, and he feels like they might actually have a shot.

Here they are, all these years later, and Neil is in orange again, and he is cuffed to the table again, and last time Neil was vibrating in anticipation.

This time, Neil looks like shit. He is so pale, and patched with bandages he is still leaking blood into. There are deep circles under his eyes, and his shoulders curve in. He looks small. He looks unrecognizable. 

Aaron comes in, bright with purpose, rich with preparation, and so fiercely dedicated to getting his friend free. Aaron opens his binder, and he brings out his notes, and he has a list of questions as long as his arm, and he barely gets through saying hello, when Neil says,

“I am choosing not to proceed with the trial.”

Aaron freezes. “What?”

Neil’s gaunt face is carefully blank, and Aaron does not understand.

“There are factors I hadn’t considered,” Neil continues, and his words sound like he’s practiced saying them. “I am choosing not to proceed.” 

Neil’s voice is wooden and not his own, and Neil is Aaron’s friend, and Aaron doesn’t know what the fuck is going on.

“Are you being threatened?”

Neil jerks his chin to the side. “No.”

“Is somebody else making you say this?”

Another jerk. “No.”

Aaron squints at him. “You can’t want to rot in here again.”

A small pause. “I do.”

“They’re talking about death penalty .” 

Neil’s shoulder half lifts.  “Alright then.” 

Aaron’s stomach turns over.  “No, Neil.” 

Aaron puts his papers back into his folder, pushes it off to the side. He keeps his breathing carefully even.

“Okay, tell me what’s going on.”

Neil jerks his chin again, and there’s a spark in his eyes again, and it may only be petulance, but Aaron is relieved to see it. 

They sit in silence for one minute, for two, for ten. Neil sets his jaw, and it’s I’m not going to tell you, all over again, except Aaron has been enduring awful silences from the people he loves since childhood, and of the two of them, he will not crack first. 

It takes longer than he expects. It takes long enough that he lets his attention wander. He starts to picture the courtroom, starts to imagine himself driving up, parking, exiting the car, mounting the steps. There will be paparazzi; he will refuse to acknowledge them. He’ll hesitate outside the doors, just for a moment, and then he will push them open: sure, confident. He’ll walk the courtroom hall, he’ll enter the courtroom, he’ll pass the gallery where Andrew will be sitting, where Kate will be sitting. He will stand next to his table; he will refuse to sit until Neil is brought in. He will not look at Neil’s shackles; he will look at his face.

In the prison across from him, the real Neil’s facade splinters, just so (just enough to show how much he’s hurting). Aaron nods at him, and it’s go ahead, and Neil finally speaks.

 “If I do this,” Neil says, so quiet, so anguished. “I paint a target on your back. On Andrew’s back. On everyone’s back. I… hadn’t considered that.”

Aaron runs that sentence back through his mind.

“There’s still someone at play,” Aaron guesses. “Some left to come after us. After you. If we do this.”

Neil nods shallowly, and Aaron does not let himself feel fear. He converts to pragmatism, and he pursues logic.

“I thought Lola was the end of your father’s circle.”

“She was.”

“Then…?”

Neil smiles crookedly, and Aaron remembers: With mafia shit, it’s better not to know. 

Aaron nods. This makes sense. (All of Neil’s sentencing has been unforgivably sloppy; during his prep, Aaron had started considering that an outside force was putting money in the right hands, and manipulating his trials. He thought it was Neil’s father’s circle. Lola. Mal. But the mafia… makes sense).

Aaron considers how to ask, without closing Neil off.

“Is there any way to appease them? Whoever’s left?” 

Neil is already shaking his head. “They could probably be paid off. But none of us could afford it.”

“I’m a lawyer,” Aaron says drily. “The money is not terrible.”

Neil is still shaking his head. The bandages on his face are starting to stain.

“My wife is a surgeon,” Aaron continues. “The money is even less terrible.”

“No,” Neil says, fierce. “She has already paid too much.”

Aaron feels that horrible twist in his gut as they both think about Gabby.

“Andrew?” Aaron offers instead, and Neil hesitates.

“Andrew is obscenely wealthy,” Aaron says, encouragingly.  

It’s the wrong thing to say. Neil’s face falls. 

“Live your life, Aaron. Let Andrew live his. You both should get a happy ever after. You deserve it.”

“We will,” Aaron says, firmly.  “You’re going to be part of it.”

And then, for the second time in his life, Aaron enables identity fraud.

**

“Yeah, babes, I think it’s time we all did some education on media bias. Let’s start by looking at who funds the newspaper… oh isn’t that interesting? Let’s look at the viewpoint expressed by this article… how do we think this affirms the aims of the funding body? Oh, you never thought about that? Oh, you thought the newspapers had integrity? Oh honey.” - Allison Reynolds, fashion designer

Andrew Doe has declined the invitation to comment on our recent article about Nathaniel Wesninski, the Butcher of Baltimore. His editor, Catalina Alvarez, says, “Yeah, you should’ve asked for his comment before you started dehumanizing Neil. Now Andrew’s going to spend his time destroying you. Is this a weird time to say that pre-orders for his upcoming novel, about found family and the failures of the American justice system, are now open? Whoops!”

**

Aaron is standing in the kitchen with Kate, and his phone dings.

It’s happening, Aaron thinks. (He doesn’t feel the shame he expects. He feels almost proud.)

“Ah,” he says aloud, “I’ve just signed in at Columbia Penitentiary. They just emailed me a copy of my waiver.”

Kate looks at him as if he’s grown two heads. 

“What…” And then she pauses. “ Aaron .”

They’ve had this conversation before. Almost fifteen years ago now. That one ended with Katelyn leaving, and Aaron plowing headfirst into self-destruction. Aaron braces himself, and Kate inhales to speak, and what she says is,

“I’m not going to ask you, because I’m going to keep my plausible deniability. But… is this your choice?”

“Yes.”

“Do you feel you had another choice?”

“No.”

“If it comes out, will you accept the blame?”

“Yes.”

She nods. “Well, then.”

She goes back to the stove, but throws over her shoulder, “Don’t make a habit of it, yeah?”

“Promise.”

**

“Uh, yeah. I mean, it sucks to lose my job. Dan and I are expecting, so it’s extra bad timing. But if I could go back and do it again, I would. Dan agrees. They keep sharing his mugshot, they keep sharing that photo of him as a teenager. But this is who he is now. I vouch for him, Dan vouches for him. People deserve to see him playing exy, people deserve to see him at the community centre, like anybody else. So yeah. He’s in jail, and badly injured, and people are talking about the death penalty. Posting some pics on Instagram is really not that intense in comparison. Losing my job is not that intense in comparison. Anyway, fuck the community centre, and fuck the police. Free Neil.” –Matt Boyd

**

Andrew calls him, after.

“For no reason at all,” he starts, “I’m selling my mansion, and auctioning off most of my optioning rights, and I’m moving back to the Columbia house.”

“Is that so?”

“And Neil will be moving in with me, because you’re going to get him to go free.”

Aaron grins fiercely. “Count on it.”

**

Kevin! Is this you in the pictures? Is this you with the Butcher of Baltimore? Can you understand how distressing this is to your younger fans? Don’t you feel a responsibility towards better role modeling?”

“Uh… Yeah so, my mom is Kaleigh Day. I think I understand good role modeling. Here’s a message to the young fans: Free Neil.” 

**

The ensuing trial carves all the softness from Aaron’s body. Aaron has never slept or eaten so little. Aaron has never been so conscious of his words. Aaron has never been so furious.

It becomes clear quickly, with Neil’s testimony and with an unbiased, uncorrupted lawyer digging through, that the mafia has been manipulating Neil’s trials and sentencing from the beginning. Neil’s initial arrest was timed very carefully, and his trial as an adult – and subsequent sentencing– was ensured by buying out the judge.  

They all know the public story –  Neil’s father called the FBI in fear, and the FBI showed up too late and Nathan and Mary were already dead. A blood-crazed Neil was arrested, still splattered in his parent’s blood.

(These are the images the papers are printing, again and again. These are the old headlines that are being resuscitated. This is what the media is pressing, so so hard.)

Neil tells the story, and he and his mother are trying to escape. Mary has sent the runner to alert the FBI to the Butcher’s location. The runner is meant to get to the FBI just as Neil and Mary are crossing state lines to rendez-vous with Neil’s uncle, Stuart Hatford. Hatford’s going to get them on a plane, and they’re going to leave the country, and the Wesninski outfit is going to crumble, and everyone is going to be fine.

Except, something goes wrong. Except, Neil’s father finds out, and he chains his wife and his sixteen year old son to the floor, and he starts cutting. Mary Hatford is dismembered a foot away from sixteen year old Neil, and Nathan takes a long time, because when the FBI arrive, she is many pieces but is still alive. 

The FBI shoots Nathan, and Neil doesn’t even notice, because he is shaking and he is hyperventilating and he is splattered in his mother’s blood. The FBI shoots Nathan, and then the FBI shoots Mary, and then there is a gun pressed into the back of Neil’s skull, and then Neil is in handcuffs, and then Neil is in prison.

Neil tells the story, and someone in the back of the room vomits into their lap. Aaron doesn’t even turn around. He nods at Neil, and then he nods towards Kate, who is coming up next to interpret Neil’s medical records and corroborate Neil’s testimony. Aaron has not eaten in eight hours. He has not slept in thirty five hours. He gives Neil a thumbs up, and he keeps going.

**

My name is Renee Walker. I am a proud Disciple of Christ, and a proud friend of Nathaniel Wesninski. No, I am not experiencing cognitive dissonance. No, I am not devil-worshiping. No, I am not abandoning my faith – I am practicing it. My God leads me to listen, to understand, and to advocate for the lost, condemned, and misunderstood. Nathaniel Wesninski is not the devil on earth – who is served when you allow yourself to believe he is? I urge to join the call to #Free Neil.   – Renee Walker’s personal blog

**

Aaron is speaking again. He is measuring every word. He is so tired he feels drunk, and he thinks about Kate on residency, he thinks about performing surgery on zero sleep, he thinks about surgical precision, and he speaks as carefully as he knows how. 

“So, Neil, at sixteen years old, is sent to maximum-security for crimes he did not commit. This is well documented, of course, both by the officers on rotation, and by the media who received news of his arrest suspiciously early. More on that later. The reason that this wrongful sentencing and obfuscation of truth was possible was this: someone in the FBI was a plant, and that someone was mafia, and that person bought out the judge, and then burned down the house, and then murdered Stuart Hatford, and then there was no one to advocate for Neil. The mafia bought themselves time to clean up the mess Nathan Wesninski made, and all it cost was Neil’s innocence.”

Aaron rolls his shoulders, he cracks his neck, he continues.

“The many attempts on Neil’s life while imprisoned – the attempts he mitigated by getting himself sent to solitary as often as feasible – were paid for by mafia money. Romero Malcolm’s implanting into the FBI, and subsequent attack on Neil, and Lola Malcom’s later adopting of the pattern – orchestrated by the mafia. Allow me to substantiate...”

(Aaron says ‘mafia’ in court, but he does not say which one. Andrew has struck a deal with the M********, and Aaron toes the line, very, very carefully.)

“If you will look to the screen here, I will show you the leaked email correspondences which confirm this. Yes, here we are, thank you. Now if we look at this…”

**

“Thank you for asking. The trial is proceeding well. I feel very confident. A loss, at this point, would not only be a personal failure, but a failure of the system and a failure of justice in America. I would also like to say, while I have you – this is a very high profile case, and I am grateful for the attention and the conversation. When this case resolves, when Neil goes free – and he will –  I want everyone to remember that Neil is one of many, many people who are being actively harmed by the American Justice System. There is still work to do. There will be work to do every day until I die.” -Aaron Minyard

**

No one is ready for Aaron, or his rage. No one is ready for how Aaron’s rage makes him still, makes him sharp, makes him lethal. Aaron wonders if he learned this from Andrew – or this the twin thing? Is this what they actually share, beyond their looks – calm lethality?

Aaron destroys the case against Neil, and he destroys the corrupt civil servants who betrayed both Neil and their own oaths. He destroys them, and when it is finished, he is so thin his bones poke at him when he sleeps, and his hair has come out in patches, and his nail beds are bloody from nails torn off. Aaron is halfway dead, but Neil is still alive, and when it is all finished – Neil goes free.

“Prepare for discharge, Mr Wesninski,” the judge says.

“Thank you, ma’am,” Neil says.

Neil leaves the courthouse, head held high, and Aaron holds the hand that is no longer weighted down with cuffs, or with a tracker. Neil and Aaron leave the courthouse hand in hand, and meet their family, who have brought thermoses filled with warm food, and hugs so deep they can feel each other’s heart beats.

“Good job, baby,” Kate whispers to him as she embraces him, and Aaron is too exhausted to do anything but tip his head into the crook of her shoulder, his hand still fixed to Neil’s.

They spend a long time like that, outside the courthouse, arms all around each other. Neil and Aaron and Andrew and Kate and Allison and Kevin and Jeremy and Renee and Nicky and Dan and Matt. 

“Dinner at our old place?” Nicky says finally, eyes flicking to Andrew for confirmation.

Andrew nods, and the group is in motion. They all end up in the back of Matt’s truck (never mind that they leave behind, between them, four cars in the courtroom parking lot). They all cram into the bed of the truck, unwilling to let go of each other, and Matt rolls his window down and whoops and whoops as they drive through Columbia. 

Aaron looks down at Neil’s hand, still held loosely in his. Neil has dropped his head onto Andrew’s chest, and has closed his eyes. Aaron can’t imagine how he’s managed to fall asleep, here among his joyful, yelling friends, all crammed in the back of a shitty truck, driving over even shittier roads – but Aaron supposes anything might be possible, when the danger you’ve carried since birth has finally died the vicious death it deserved.

Aaron raises his eyes from Neil, and meets his brother’s eyes.

“So,” Aaron says, fighting the smile that pulls at the corner of his lips, “I guess it does get better.”

Aaron watches Andrew’s face do something that on anyone else would be a grimace, and on him, is a smile.

“Who would’ve thought,” Andrew says, and it sounds almost like hope.

“Who would’ve fucking thought,” Aaron says, and his smile breaks free.

End.