Aunt Polly

A/N: Hi guys, first upload to . Sorry if I fudge it a tad. Massive thanks to Brencon for being a fab beta. Hope you like

Chapter 1

He had to get away. Away from Smithy, Wishing-Well Cottage and anyone answering to the name of Dingle. They were doing his head in more so than usual with all this talk about his granddad and the funeral. How he ended up at Jackson's Aunt Polly's for Sunday dinner he had no fucking idea. But here he was, standing awkwardly in the overstuffed, over-chinzed front room of someone who obviously went to the same decorating school as Edna Birch, peering in at Howard the Sixth dozing on his perch while the old lady beside him insisted that he give her his expert opinion because "you live with a vet, dear, something is bound to have rubbed off on you".

It had been at that point that Jackson had abandoned him in favour of helping Hazel with the roast. Mind you, from the bangs and muffled grumblings coming from the kitchen he wasn't sure if he wasn't better off where he was.

Jackson's whole family were mad. Fact. His lips twitched as he suddenly got the image of the Walsh's vs the Dingles' on the Jeremy Kyle show. He felt a pair of sharp eyes upon him and coughed to try and disguise his smirk.

"Hazel doesn't know but I do." He swivelled his head to fully look at Aunt Polly, not sure how to respond but suddenly feeling very uncomfortable.

"She was in Jamaica and the paper's long been used to collect Howard's little presents. That boy is the nearest thing I have to a grandson. I'll be keeping a very close eye on you. Hurt him again, in any way and you'll answer to me. Understand?"

How the fuck was he supposed to respond to that? He knew that nothing he said would reassure the suddenly quite terrifying old lady.

After too long a pause, when, if anything her glare became deeper, he took a deep breath and responded, "You'd give my uncle a run for his money with a stare like that." He rubbed the back of his head. Where was Jackson? If he was in here right now he'd know just what to say.

The glare deepened once again. How the fuck did she manage that? He really should take lessons.

"What do you expect me to say?" He winced slightly as he realised just how sharp and defensive he sounded, even to his own hears. To give Polly her due, she hadn't even flinched.

"I don't think there is anything you can say, not that I'd believe. Not here and now. But I will expect you to prove yourself."

Aaron swallowed. Polly seemed to take that as an agreement on his side because she nodded once, decisively, and ordered him to pour her a large sherry. Almost as an afterthought she told him to fetch himself one too.

He hated sherry but somehow this felt like it was all part of some sort of test. "I have changed, you know," he muttered, but he knew that the old lady could hear him. "I am changing." More decisive. Better. "A couple of months ago, I'd have been out through your front door by now, if I'd even come at all."

"And you're saying that this is down to Jackson?"

"No, yes, I don't know… He's part of it, but not really, you know?"

He turned round and walked the two steps to Polly, who was by now sitting with her fluffy slippers propped on some sort of knitted stuffed foot stool thing (he never could remember its name but he vaguely remembered his Nana Livesy having something similar.) She shifted her feet to the side and nodded for him to sit there so that they could converse face to face. He had to admire her tactics. She now had the advantage of height over him.

"Hazel made this, years ago now, in Domestic Science. She's good with her hand's, is My Hazel. Jackson gets it from her. Mind you, he gets his brain from his father. Wizz with numbers, he is, an accountant. That lad out there could have done anything. Don't know why he didn't go to university with brains like that. Still…" She sniffed and knitted her hands together against her chest.

"But we weren't talking about him, were we? Don't worry, the noise those two are making in there," she nodded towards the back of the house where it sounded like Hazel and Jackson were banging saucepans together just for the hell of it. "Where were we? Oh yes, your miraculous transformation into the perfect boyfriend."

Aaron shifted uncomfortably. "It's not like that." He was back to mumbling, finding the clash between the carpet and the sofa the most interesting thing in the world. He felt the bump of a slipper against his leg. A prompt to continue. He took a deep breath, swallowed and forced himself to look up.

"Jackson, he, well, umm… It's like he has faith in me. I've not had that before. Apart from Paddy. He's the vet." Polly nodded again, this time in understanding.

"When me and me mam moved in with him, I went out of my way to make his life hell. He's a nice bloke. Too nice. Too good for me mam. I knew it wouldn't last." He shook his head from side to side, momentarily caught up in his own thoughts.

"I thought he'd be like Sandra, my dad's wife. When they got together she was all about these family outings. Days at the zoo, stuff like that. But it always felt like she saw it as something she was expected to do and then she had her first kid [NOTE – NEED TO CHECK IF GIRL OR BOY – FROM OLD EPS] and all of a sudden it was like I was just this irritating add-on to her perfect family. And her mam and dad never liked me. Never bothered to hide it, did they? And I know I'm not a saint. Never was, but it was easy to play down to their expectations."

He had no idea why he was spilling his soul to the old lady, telling her stuff he'd not told Jackson or Paddy.

"The Gestapo would have nothing on you," he told her. She seemed to take it as a compliment, if anything.

"Thirty seven years of teaching, lad. I pegged your type as soon as you came in. And don't give me that look! You lash out at the world before it lashes out at you. Go on then…"

Her eyes were wide open and staring at him directly and Aaron suddenly realised that it was the same look that Jackson often directed at him. His 'I can see through all your crap' look and, really, he'd have to try and get that comparison out of his head fast otherwise his sex life would be ruined.

"What do you expect me to tell you?" He rubbed the back of his head reflexively and dear god, would she ever blink? He looked away to the wallpaper, trying to collect his thoughts.

"I'm not trying to make excuses. Honest, I'm not. I wish to god that I hadn't punched Jackson. There's a lot of stuff I wish I'd never done but I am trying." He looked back at her, almost pleadingly but he hoped sincerely. "This is all new to me, you know? I… I don't like people getting close. They just let you down every time. But Jackson, he seems different. He's kind. He listens. He, I think…" He looked at her and said softly "I think he understands." He could feel the blush spreading across his cheeks and wanted the ground to open up and swallow him.

Polly looked at him, appraisingly. "Jackson's a good boy. Too good." She left the 'for you' unspoken but Aaron got her meaning. "He never told me about what you did. I read it all in the paper. So, what's your side of the story?"

Aaron took a deep breath. He had to stay calm through this, he knew this was the only chance the old lady would give him and Jackson was too important to him to blow it. He said "I've got a temper." Her eyes narrowed. "I didn't want anyone to know. I was…" He still couldn't bring himself to admit how scared he had been, or how much he still was. "I was in the pub. Everyone was there. My best mate had already caught us out." He knew he was crimson up to the top of his head. Polly's eyebrows raised as she continued to glare but Aaron was too busy tripping over himself to notice.

"It wasn't even a proper snog, Aaron." Aaron froze as he realised that Jackson was leaning against the entrance to the room. "I just came to give you five minutes notice – dinner's almost ready. Mum's just cremating the roasties but seems like I arrived just in time. Leave it alone, Auntie P. We've moved way on. Not really any of your business, is it?"

They were matching each other, glare for glare, but the old lady had the edge. "I have a right to know who you're getting mixed up with and invited into my home."

"Leave it please," Jackson pleaded.

Polly merely sniffed again and ordered Jackson to take Aaron's still full sherry into Hazel. Aaron glared balefully at Jackson's retreating figure.

"Did you really try to gas yourself?" Aunt Polly's tone was softer now but her gaze still left Aaron with nowhere to hide. "There was a piece about it in the Courier. I, unlike those so-called journalists that rag employs, put two-and-two together after you made the front page."

He couldn't help it, Aaron felt tears welling. He squeezed his hands into fists, in an effort to stop them. "I didn't want anyone to know what I was. I hated it. I didn't want to be gay. To be different. I just wanted to be left alone." The nod came again. "Jackson's been great." He looked up in time to catch a genuinely warm smile light up Polly's face briefly as their eyes met. "Everyone else skirts around it or babies me." He scrunched his face up before he relaxed it into a smile. "He treats me like me. Evan Paddy's always checking up on me. Well not so much now, just in case I'm, you know, not alone."

The laugh she gave at that was positively wicked. He couldn't help grinning back.

She shuffled forward and held out her hand to signal for Aaron's help to get up. "Well come on, they're bound to be ready for us now, and you can tell me all about this family of yours over dinner."