Robert's entire world narrows down to the inside of his own eyelids and the throb of his mark, which pulses with the same pitter-pat trip-lurching beat as his heart.

He loses all sense of place and time to it, and minutes or hours or even days might have passed before he hears a voice saying, "Are you okay?"

It's distorted by the allegro-rhythmic surge of his own blood, drumming in his ears, but clearly Vic's voice, and it's clearly Vic's hand, taking gentle hold of his elbow. Her fingers bore into his flesh like augers, and bile floods his mouth, forcing out the last of the air still trapped there.

"You look terrible." Vic's hand slips from his arm to the small of his back, where she grinds out a soothing circle with the heel of her palm. "I think you need to lie down."

She urges him forward. Robert doesn't protest because he can't protest, even though each step rattles through his bones and pulls every muscle in his body achingly tight.

He grits his teeth against it, and shivers and sweats and endures, and eventually there's the click-swoosh of an opening door, and then stairs, and finally a bed, whose frame groans in protest when Vic eases Robert down onto it.

The mattress sags in the middle, a broken spring digs into the nape of his neck: the narrow bed at Keepers Cottage which is temporarily his own. It's never seemed more welcoming before, and Robert spreads out across it gratefully.

He cautiously slits open his eyes, and the floral patterns on the wallpaper and the duvet cover blur into a sickening, chaotic swirl of clashing colours. He turns his gaze up to the uncomplicated white of the ceiling. It doesn't help lessen the nausea, but the crushing pressure bearing down on the base of his skull does subside slightly.

"Do you want me to ring Dr Bailey?" Vic asks, and she still sounds as if she's talking to him from the bottom of a deep well; muffled and distant.

It takes some effort and a great deal of concentration, but Robert manages to shake his head a little. He doubts this is something a doctor could cure.

Vic lays a hand at his brow, fingertips like knife blades brushing back his hair. "What happened to you, Rob?"

Robert takes a deep breath to answer, but it catches hard behind his ribs and he can't seem to force it back out again, never mind any words. His chest swells with it, then his throat, and his head. The mattress sinks beneath him again, the ceiling flies up and away, and he's falling—
-


-
—back into sleep made fitful by dreams filled with half-glimpsed shadowy figures, abrupt movement, and discordant noise.

Robert wakes with a start when the pain of his mark crescendos once more. It feels as though a heated needle is being dragged along it, slowly and methodically marking out his letters anew, line by agonising line.

He fumbles for the bedside lamp, switches it on, and then hurriedly rolls back his right sleeve. But his vision's still swimming, flickering in and out of focus, and he can barely make out the outline of his arm clearly, never mind his words.

He's not aware of making any sort of a sound in response, but if the frenzied speed with which Vic suddenly bursts into his room is anything to go by, he might well have been screaming.

"Rob," she says, her voice turned shrill with panic. "Rob, are you—"

"My mark," Robert says, forcing the words out through gritted teeth. "Does it... Does it look any different?"

Vic bows her head over his arm. "No, it looks just the same as it always does."

"It feels different," Robert insists.

Vic presses her hand against the mark, just a brief, glancing touch, swiftly withdrawn, but it burns deep, nonetheless.

"Maybe it does to you," she says, "but it feels just the same to me." She shifts her weight uneasily, and then adds, in the mild, hushed tone of someone trying to calm a spooked animal, "Has someone said your words?"

"Yes," Robert says, because it seems a little too late to try and pretend otherwise now. To her, at least.

For a long moment, Vic doesn't say anything more, and Robert thinks she might be waiting for him to tell her who the speaker had been, but as that is a secret he is still able keep, he curls his lips around his teeth, presses them tight together, and stays silent too.

Eventually, Vic relents, and, with a heavy sigh, takes loose hold of his hand. "I've never heard of it making someone ill."

No, this is the point in the film where the strings rise and the music swells. The point in the book where the prose becomes florid or breathless. It's Andy with his sparkling eyes, wide smile, and excitement-thinned voice saying, 'I can't explain it; it's like nothing I've ever felt before.'

Robert hasn't felt like this before, either, but as his brother had been relentlessly fucking gleeful about the formation of his own bond, he can't imagine that their experiences of it are anything approaching the same.

He's always suspected there might be something wrong with his mark; something warped and broken. Maybe that extends to the bond it's formed for him, as well.

But Vic looks anxious enough already, her breathing a little too shallow and her complexion just a little too pale, so he says, "Perhaps it does, and people just don't like to talk about it. I'm sure it's nothing to worry about."
-


-
Vic sits beside him until he dozes off again, and when he wakes for a second time, she presents him with a cup of coffee and a boiled egg and soldiers, just like their mum used to make.

He eats a couple of bites to show willing, but it tastes like nothing but dust in his mouth and tears at his throat when he swallows it down. The coffee's no better, and all he can really stomach is water.

He drinks glass after glass after glass of it, and the sweat pours out of him, soaking through his sheets. He kicks them away from him time and again, but time and again he has to pull them back over him, when the chills set in.

He'd never thought to ask Vic to keep the real cause of his illness to herself, but she seems to know, anyway. He hears her telling Adam that he has the flu, which he's thankful for, and even more so when Adam gives his room a wide berth as a consequence.

The rest of the day passes in a haze, punctuated only by Vic bringing him eggy bread at lunchtime and beans on toast at tea. More comfort food, but Robert can't stand the smell or even the sight of it.

"I'm sorry, Vic," he says, turning his head from it. "I can't."

"It's okay," Vic says, putting her tray down on top of the chest of drawers which marks the furthest point away from Robert in the small room. "I thought you probably still wouldn't feel up to eating, but I had to try." She perches on the end of the bed, starts smoothing the rumpled duvet back over his exposed feet. "Rob, I've been reading some stuff, and..."

"And...?" Robert prompts when she trails into silence.

"Other people do get sick like this sometimes," Vic says. "They reckon it happens when you reject the bond."

Robert hadn't had the time or opportunity to make the conscious choice to do so, but, subconsciously, perhaps he always would have rejected it. He's never liked the idea that a force entirely outside his control could permanently tie – and, apparently, has tied – him to someone else.

Perhaps something in his mind or body or fucking soul is rebelling against that.

Or it might be because the person that's wrong. Not that it's Aaron, per se, but an Aaron that hates him. He never would have chosen that for himself, or for them.

"Did that stuff you read say how to fix this?" he asks.

"No." Vic's lips curve up into a small smile. "I suppose you'll just have to try not rejecting it."

And, for what feels like hours, Robert does try. He tries to persuade himself that he's pleased that this happened, that he's glad that it's Aaron, that the bond...

He can never get past the bond as he's not even sure what or where that is. If it's the fever, queasiness, and aching joints, he certainly doesn't want it. There must be something else there, though. Something he hasn't been able to find yet, because he can't imagine anyone ever wanting to find their soulmate if that's all there is.

It seems there's only one way to know for sure. And probably only one way to ever accept the bond, too.
-


-
The next morning, he shoos Vic off to work against her protests that she can take another day off to look after him, and then drags himself out of bed, dresses in his loosest, most comfortable clothes, and stumbles his way over to the pub.

Thankfully, Aaron's alone in the back room when Robert lets himself in, and, even more fortuitously, he doesn't even look up from his bacon sandwich when Robert approaches him.

It makes it easier. Robert doesn't think he could he could say the word if he had to meet Aaron's eyes as he did so.

"You're my..."

He can't do it, either way. It's irrational, fairy tale nonsense, and he shouldn't be giving it the credence of—

"Soulmate." He forces it out in a sudden rush of bloody-minded determination to just get it over and done with.

Aaron glances towards him, just for a split-second, before returning his attention to his plate again. "I know," he says, addressing the words towards the tabletop.

"What? How?"

"I've read your words, remember? I knew pretty much as soon as I said them." Aaron picks at the crust of his sandwich, pulling it to shreds. "I never would have done it if I was thinking straight."

"Right," Robert says. "Of course."

And then he waits; expectantly, because Aaron knows and that ridiculous word is out there, acknowledged, between them.

But nothing changes. His head and his heart are still pounding, every inch of his body still burns. There's a staticky feeling building, low in the pit of his stomach, but there's nothing comforting about it, nothing pleasurable, so it's more than likely just nerves.

"Oh," he sighs out, disappointed, "that didn't work."

"What didn't?"

Aaron's eyebrows rise infinitesimally, betraying some small measure of interest that Robert finds he wants to encourage.

"My bond" – that word's no less ridiculous, and Robert has to force it out, too – "isn't... There's something wrong with it. It's making me ill, and apparently that can happen if you don't accept it. I thought telling you might be enough, but..." He shrugs one shoulder. "It seems not."

"You do still look like shit," Aaron says, after giving him another quick glance.

"I feel like it, too," Robert says with an equally forced laugh.

Aaron frowns, opens his mouth as if to say something more, but seemingly thinks better of it. Instead, he gets to his feet, grabs his coat, and as he's striding across the room, past Robert, he tosses out over his shoulder. "I've got to get to..."

His destination is doomed to remain a mystery, as he's through the door and away before he finishes his sentence.
-


-
An hour or so later, when Robert has resigned himself to an afternoon of shivering and sweating on the sofa in the living room because his trip to and from the pub had exhausted what little reserves he had left, and without Vic to help him he can't hope to manage the stairs, he's startled by a knock at the front door.

The buzz in his stomach that he'd dismissed with barely a thought earlier returns at the sound, and twice may well be a coincidence, but he's fairly certain this one is meaningful.

Just as he's fairly certain now that his visitor's Aaron.
-


-
Aaron doesn't wait for Robert to answer his knock, and lets himself into the cottage. His footsteps are quick and sure as he strides along the hallway, but pause, uncertain, when he reaches the living room doorway.

He sways back from crossing its threshold, scans the room warily, glances over his shoulder.

"Vic and Adam aren't here," Robert tells him. "They're still out at work."

"Good," Aaron says, staring down at his feet now. He slides the right one into the room and out again, and then does the same the left. "I wanted to speak to you on your own."

The shuffling dance of indecision he was performing ends with those words and he retreats to the kitchen, returning a moment later with two cans of beer, fresh from the fridge. He hands one to Robert, and opens the other, immediately drinks deep from it.

Robert's throat is sore, parched desert dry, but his gorge rises just at the thought of doing the same. He sets his own can down on the floor, and, when he straightens up again, Aaron sits down beside him, keeping a careful handsbreadth of distance between their bodies.

The buzzing intensifies; just a little, Robert wouldn't even have noticed if he hadn't been half expecting it to happen. He closes his eyes and concentrates on the barely-there sensation. It's not good or bad. It's not really much of anything, his bond.

Even naming it changes nothing. His mark still tears at his skin like it's trying to pull free of him.

When he opens his eyes again, Aaron is watching him; obliquely, out of the corner of his eye, but intent all the same.

"Are you feeling any better?" he asks. "After... After what we talked about earlier."

"Not at all."

Aaron gives a tight nod, swallows heavily. "I think that might be my fault." He taps out an irregular tattoo against the side of his can, blunt fingernails ticking across the metal. "I'm the one rejecting the bond, not you."

Whisky-fuelled and strung out on grief, Andy had not only confessed to Robert that his bond with Katie had been unreciprocated, but that she'd never been able to feel it, either. He'd tried and she'd tried, but it'd always remained a blank spot between them. This massive, life-altering thing that Andy claimed was the very core and heart of him, and she couldn't even begin to touch it.

"I don't think that's possible," Robert says.

Aaron's lips and eyebrows both pinch tight together, and he shivers ever so slightly. "I can't," he whispers. "I can't say it. I'll just have to..."

As soon as Aaron starts to unzip his hoody, Robert knows.

He should probably tell Aaron to stop there, that he doesn't need to see. But he wants to. He's wanted that for a long time, so he stays quiet, his gaze fixed avidly on Aaron's hands and his heart beating double-time in his chest.

Aaron shrugs the hoody from his shoulders, exposing the bandage covering the top of his left arm, and then he hesitates, just for an instant, before unwrapping it with brisk, economical flicks of his wrist.

He presents his mark to Robert without comment, and at first, all Robert can see is the shape of it, arranged in a block running down the centre of his biceps.

He then studies the letters themselves. They're blocky, too; all upper case, neatly formed and regularly spaced. Some of them are bisected by scars – feathered with hesitation marks around their lower ends; all angling upwards and to the right; obviously clearly self-inflicted – but their lines are still unbroken and their colour's still true.

Finally, and much more reluctantly, he reads:

YOU'RE
LITERALLY
A
FAILURE
AT
EVERYTHING

He can't bear to look at the words for long, and he wrenches his head aside, stammering out, "I didn't mean it."

"Of course you did," Aaron says, his voice coarsened to a low, bass growl. "Nothing happens if you don't mean it. You told me so yourself."

Aaron's rejection had stung that day in the scrap yard, and Robert had lashed out in instinctive, unthinking retaliation as he always does. He'd meant the words to hurt, but he hadn't believed in them. Not really.

He tries to explain that, but only manages to get as far as, "I," before Aaron interrupts him with: "I don't want to talk about it."

Aaron leans back then, his head falling with a dull thump against the back of the sofa. He's shaking with more violence now, and Robert begins to think that this so-called, sorry excuse for a bond might be harming him, as well.

"Why didn't you tell me about... about any of this?" he asks.

Aaron laughs humourlessly. "And when could I have told you about it, exactly? When you were in a coma? When I was in prison?" He lurches forward again suddenly, meets Robert's eyes directly for the first time since he entered the room. "I felt you get shot, Robert. And after that I... I tried to make it small. I tried to make it not matter, and it did work, for a while. Until the other day, outside the pub, then it changed all over again."

As he was speaking, Aaron had splayed his hand out against his own chest, as though in remembered pain, and now, perhaps unwittingly, he reaches out to touch the same spot on Robert's.

He collects himself just in time, stops just short, but only of pressing against Robert's still-healing scar. His fingertips do brush against the front of Robert's T-shirt, though, and Robert can feel a weak echo of the sensation tingling across his own: the fever-heated warmth of it; the soft, smooth texture.

"What the fuck?" Aaron says, his eyes shocked wide and glassy.

He doesn't wait for Robert to answer – not that Robert has one to give, anyway – before moving his hand again, skirting unerringly around the edge of the swollen flesh surrounding the scar, and then up towards Robert's collarbone, his breath escaping in short, airy gasps through his slightly parted lips all the while.

Robert can feel the pressure of the touch most strongly, but beneath that there's the dip and rise undulations of his own ribs, and, even more faintly, the quickening lub dub rhythm of Aaron's heartbeat.

The buzz grows again, expands, and Robert reaches out for Aaron, too, wondering if he might be able to feel it now, through him.

But Aaron rears away from him; barks out, "Don't." He screws his eyes closed momentarily, exhales sharply through his nose. "I just wanted to see if I could help... I don't want this. I don't want any of it."

He scowls at Robert then, as if he's to blame for whatever the fuck this is, and scrambles to his feet, his movements jerky and uncoordinated. He takes a couple of steps towards the door, then pauses, swivels on his heel, and says, "You should keep your distance now, Robert. Find a way to make it not matter to you, too."
-


-
Notes:

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I'm currently writing a sequel to this fic, and have planned several others in the same series, too.