Fourth fic for Alternative NaNoWriMo. (Alternative NaNoWriMo - One drabble fic each day of November inspired by a Radical Face song.)

November 4 - Family Portrait

So when we first meet him, canon puts Sean at literally sixteen years younger than Aaron. Which doesn't necessarily gel with the show's timeline, but got me thinking about a what if, if Sean had been two when their father died and never knew what happened to Aaron.

Warnings: slight language, heavy implications of past child abuse

Oh my there was a storm then

There was a flood of a different kind

Father's eyes were often vacant

But his hands were rarely quiet

- Radical Face, Family Portrait

"I don't see why you won't just come with me." Sean's voice is more than sort of irritated, snapping down the phone in sharp vowels and blunt consonants.

"I'm too busy to take time to go see-" that bastard, Aaron finishes silently. He clears his throat and amends the rest of that sentence. "-him. I just can't, so why don't you just drop it?"

"Because he was our father and he's dead and it's Father's Day, christ Aaron, show a little respect!"

The words hit Aaron in the chest like an anvil, knocking the breath from his lungs. Hearing Sean say things like this to him, accuse him and badger him and guilt trip him over a dead man whose one good act towards his sons had been to die… And Sean doesn't know any of it. He'd been so young when the man died, just two, and he doesn't remember.

Aaron wants it that way. He has kept this piece of their family's history a secret for a reason. But sometimes, times like this with his brother's voice harsh and accusing in his ear, he wishes he could just tell Sean everything.

He can't. Sean's heart is too precious to him to break it like that. But he sometimes wishes he could.

"Please," Aaron says in a voice that is bitterness and a hint of anger. "Please drop it. I don't ask a lot of you, but I'm asking you this. Drop it."

"It's not like I want you to skydive off Mount Everest, I just want you to take three hours out of your oh so busy and important life to come with me to our dad's grave on Father's Day."

God, Aaron hates Father's Day.

"I can't, Sean. I can't."

"You can be such a selfish bastard sometimes."

The line clicks dead and Aaron drops the phone into his lap with an unsteady, shaking breath.

He doesn't remember the father Sean remembers, the sanitized and glorified image of a stern but fair family man who did his best to care for his children. The truth Aaron knows is not the truth Sean knows, and Aaron will be grateful for the rest of his life that the man had died before he'd had the chance to fuck up Sean the way he'd done to his older son.

Aaron has done a lot to keep this truth hidden in his chest, a piece of the storm that had flooded whatever childhood he could have had, washed it away. He has done a lot to maintain the fantasy that was Sean's father. But this is one thing he cannot do.

And he'll fight with his blissfully, blessedly unaware kid brother every year if he has to. Aaron won't pay his respects to a dead monster.