Title: "Black Milk"
Author: Lila
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairing: Aaron
Spoiler: through "Leave it to Beaver"
Length: one-shot
Summary: "What if the earth talks to us to arrange its amusements?…Suppose it whispers to me…there is no sin."
Authors Note: This story took me a bit of time to write, but I think I like how it turned out. I've been on a non-L/V kick lately, and having a lot of fun writing more minor characters, Aaron included. I'm not sure what to think of this except I wanted to lock down Aaron's motivation for everything he's done in his life, his relationships with his family, and the affair with Lilly – this is what I came up with. I hope you enjoy. And the summary was shamelessly stolen from my favorite "Deadwood" scene ever in "Boy the Earth Talks To" – I'm gonna miss Wolcott.
"You're the devil in me I brought in from the cold
You said your body was young but your mind was very old
You're coming on strong and I like the way
The visions we had have faded away
You're part of a life I never had
I tell you that it's just too bad."
- "Setting Sun," The Chemical Brothers
The first time you fucked Lilly Kane you wondered if she looked into your eyes and saw your son. Because the only thing you saw when you slid inside you son's girlfriend was his face. You saw his smile freeze and his face break and in your mind's eye you saw him cry, because the last time you saw tears slip down your son's cheeks he was kicking and screaming and Lynn was gleaming at you triumphantly across the sterile, white room. You not sure he's cried since. You know it's your fault. And worse, you don't care.
You love your daughter, and loved her mother before her. Sometimes – when Lynn was alive – you'd stretch across the bed and reach for pale skin and fleshy curves, tried to tangle your fingers through long red curls. Your wife had the body of a goddess, and it was never enough. You'd make do with collagen lips and long, lean limbs and see Kat's face instead. You know you should hate her, for loving you too long and drinking too much and leaving too soon. Trina has her eyes and her hair and her name. You have your memories. You should hate your daughter too, for taking her mother's life to preserve her own, but you don't. With your daughter, you get to play your favorite role, and while you mug for the press as you brush red bangs from her face and hold her hand tightly when you're presented with your Star of Fame, you're nothing if not a doting, loving father. You promised your daughter – on the day she was born and her mother died before your eyes – that you'd make her life perfect. You funded the bad movies and paid for her boobs and you gave her a diamond ring you'd once promised to her mother on her twenty-first birthday. You know she's not perfect. You know she's a screw up and the LA version of Euro trash, but you accept her because you can protect her. You can chase all the demons away. You can make her happy. You can't say the same of your son.
You don't love your son. You never loved your son. Not when Lynn caught you with your pants at your knees and a production assistant wrapped around your waist and told you a baby would make up for it. Not when she pressed your hand to the hard, hot mound under her breasts and you felt your baby's kick, strong and insistent, against your palm. Not when your son slid into your hands, wailing at the top of his lungs, and staring back at you with your own eyes. And when you pushed his girl's thighs apart and your fingers gripped her hips hard enough to bruise, all you could feel was the hate.
The first thing Lamb asks, with shackles still locked around your wrists and stiff hospital linens scratching your skin, is why. Not why you killed Lilly Kane – that much is obvious – but why you fucked your son's girlfriend. There were always girls around you, girls begging and pleading and yearning for you – and instead you chose the one who'd cut the deepest, break your son's heart. He calls you a coward, says you're a monster, tells you to go see the wizard and ask for soul – but it's too late for that.
Sometimes you think you were simply born bad. Evil even, after you split Lilly Kane's skull and left her bleeding in her own backyard and never felt an ounce of guilt. You're an actor, you know how to pretend. You can make yourself into anyone and anything and make everyone else believe it. After you killed Lilly Kane you went home and stared at your twin Oscars and prepared for your most important role, perfecting the minute details and crafting the right game face, and when you clapped Jake Kane across the shoulder and held him while he wiped away tears, it didn't feel like acting anymore. It simply felt real.
You didn't love Lilly Kane. You didn't like her much either. She was selfish and spoiled and she meant nothing to you, and everything to your son. That was what mattered. You tried to love him, once, when he was young and helpless and needed you to survive. You thought he would heal you, erase all the times your mother cried and your father got too drunk and took it out on your back and arms and the smooth skin of your belly. You were four the first time your father hit you, six when he hit hard enough to bruise, eight the first time he broke the skin. And when you held your son in your arms, pink and yawning and just minutes old, you swore you wouldn't be like your father. You wouldn't make Lynn cry. You wouldn't leave scars on your son's body and soul and fuck him up forever the way your father fucked you up.
You want to say you're not like your father. You want to think your son didn't turn you into everything you never wanted to be. You want to pretend you really love your kid the way Lynn loves him, and every time you look into his eyes you don't see your father staring back at you and all your mistakes. You learned long ago, before Mick Jagger said it best of all, that you can't always get what you want. If all your dreams came true, Kat wouldn't be dead and you wouldn't have to buy Trina's happiness and your wife wouldn't hate you as much as you hate what your son's made you become.
He was four the first time you crushed a cigarette on the inside of his arm. Six the first time you hit him hard enough to crush a bone. Eight the first time you wailed Italian leather over the skin of his back and left welts that took weeks to heal. Ten when you wished your son had never been born. Lynn cried the first seven years of his life before she discovered Vicodin and Grey Goose and let it all just float away. You beat him for the next decade. A year ago you stopped pretending you didn't hate him from the moment he was born.
Your son is everything you're not and everything you are and everything you wanted to be. He has your face and your eyes and your hair and your skin, but he doesn't have your life. Sometimes, you think that's what you hate more than anything else. Your father beat you nearly every day of the life you lived with him, and you never won. You were never popular, never funny, never cool or clever or special, not until you nearly killed your old man the day you turned eighteen and made a life for yourself. You bulked up and avoided the past and Kat turned you into a star – with Lynn, you got to stay a star. Being a star was all you had, because you didn't love your wife and you didn't understand your daughter and you couldn't love your son. But your son has everything. You see the way Dick and Beaver hang on his every word, and every anorexic, bleached out blonde clings to his arm and his money and his power. Duncan Kane would do anything for him. Lilly Kane died loving him. Everyone loves him and pretends to love you.
His mother loved him. Your mother never loved you. You heard her say it once to your Aunt Clara, when she was wrapping the raw cuts on her wrist, that if she hadn't had that last baby, maybe the money wouldn't be so tight. Maybe he wouldn't drink so much. Maybe her back wouldn't be a map of cuts and scars and mistakes. Your son doesn't have that. Lynn was weak and selfish, but she loved him – and he knew it. You'd watch him after you kicked the crap out of him, those burning eyes you recognized too well staring back at you – and watch Lynn's face crumple and her eyes well with tears she never cried for you. You think you hated him most in those moments, when Lynn hated you and he hated you and you hated yourself for being the man you hated all your life and not having the balls to stop it. Your son will stop it. He'll never lay a hand on someone he loves. He'll be everything you tried to be and failed to be – and you'll only hate him more.
Nailing Lilly Kane was easy. She might have been Celeste's daughter, but she was hopped full of Jake's genes and when she looked at you that way you didn't even have to try. That she was your son's girlfriend made it even easier. She never asked you why, and you never bothered to tell her. You didn't like sleeping with her. She wasn't good and she wasn't interesting and you preferred stale, old Lynn to the inexperienced teen in your bed. Lynn knew how to work a man – she'd had to before she met you – but Lilly Kane had something Lynn didn't. Lilly Kane had your son, and that was all that mattered. Each time you pumped your hips harder against hers, felt like your fist connecting with your son's jaw. Each little moan that eased through her lips sounded like the crack of a belt against your son's back. And when you seized up inside her you could see the blood welling around his eyes and you smiled because he hurt the way you hurt and nothing was worth more than making your son pay.
You never meant to kill Lilly Kane – it was just icing on the cake. You never thought Lynn would really jump either, and it was an added bonus. Your son sat before you, crying and in pain and devoid of anything he ever loved, and something prickly and foreign and a little like love flowed through you. He had nothing. You had nothing. You were the same. It finally felt right.
Lamb is still talking to you. You're chained down, but you can breathe on your own and your hospital room is filled with flowers from your adoring fans. He keeps asking why you hate your son, because no one with a beating heart would sleep with his son's girl and bash her brains in and play the adoring father for the better part of a year. You have nothing to lose. Your son's new girlfriend has enough evidence to send you away for the rest of your life. You're still Aaron Echolls. The world still loves you. You know how to play the part. You tell Lamb a horror story about Neptune's resident nymphomaniac and an affair gone wrong. You tell him it was a crime of passion, and it sounds like a good movie-of-the-week and he eats it up. You wonder if Lifetime will hire Brian Austin Green to play a younger version of yourself. Lamb takes your story to the papers and the press goes easy on you. You were scared and Lilly Kane was that kind of girl and you recently lost your wife – playing the victim fits like a glove.
Your son won't come see you in prison and you don't request a visit. You read about his downward spiral in the tabloids your roommate's sister leaves behind, and note the pictures of Duncan Kane and Veronica Mars holding hands and kissing on the beach. You know your son's heart has been broken again. Three months after your arrest, a week before your trial, you see him on TV the day he's released from rehab and he's skinny and pale and broken looking..and you smile.
Writers live for feedback – please leave some if you have the time.