Aaron

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107.

Aaron woke to warmth. He vaguely remembered pain, a deadening desire to sleep, and then rambling stupidly to Spencer, but none of it was connected. Just thin, foggy memories that were impossible to pin down and make sense of. But here, he was warm, so warm, and comfortable …

He could smell food. Eyes snapping open, he sat up, shedding dæmons as he turned towards the scent of food and found a bowl of steaming soup sitting beside his makeshift bed. The speed in which he dived at it almost pulled a muscle in his back, the spoon hard to grasp with his clumsy fingers.

"Hey, you're awake." Spencer's voice was soft as he came towards Aaron and crouched. Aaron looked up, about to thank him for the soup, and blinked. Spencer was …

"You're naked?"

Spencer just grinned. "So are you," he pointed out, accurately. "Our clothes are dry, we just wanted to get clean before getting dressed again and you've been asleep for hours. We're kinda used to it now."

Aaron heard a splash, swallowing another spoonful of soup, oh god, it hurt it was so good, before asking, "What's that?"

"Oh, nothing special … we might have just worked out how to have a hot bath …"

He was dead, Aaron decided. Clearly, he'd died and this was some wonderful dream.

If it was, he didn't ever want to wake up.

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108.

Clean and full and warm, Aaron was put back into his blanket nest while the others bustled around him, cleaning up the mess and leaving notes of what they'd eaten or used, along with a promise to return with money when they could. It was the best they could do. Aaron watched Emily and Spencer working together to patch up the broken glass in the door as best as they could beyond the rudimentary cardboard they'd taped over it to warm the cabin.

While Aaron had been sleeping off the hypothermia caused by the blizzard still raging outside, Emily and Spencer had been busy. One of them had brought more wood in from outside, refilling the stack. Another had heated endless huge cooking pots of snow on the stove, using that to fill the clawed bathtub. Aaron, for the first time in what felt like weeks, was clean from top to bottom, the scent of soap and shampoo drifting around him from his skin and hair for once instead of sweat and dirt. They'd made food from the canned soup in the cupboard, cleaned the broken glass, and even — most impressively and using a manual Spencer had dug out of a drawer — gotten the power turned back on by the switch outside and started the furnace. The cabin was comfortable now, comfortable enough that none of them was in any hurry to put on their grimy clothes.

Door fixed, the two ambled back into the room, looking exhausted but pleased. Aaron swallowed down something that was heavy and proud, unable to find words to express how much this all meant to him. While he'd been out of it, they'd pulled together. They'd handled it.

"Budge over," Emily announced, crouching and shuffling on her knees towards the nest. Aaron, carefully not looking too closely at how much she was showing under the half-open plaid shirt, made room for her on one side and was rewarded with a sleepy Spencer crawling in on his other and snuggling close. "Turn the light off, Serge."

The dæmon did so and then lay next to Emily, the other two curling up at the end of their nest. Aaron lay his head on Spencer's chest, listening to his heart beat and feeling Spencer trace his fingers through his hair, certain that this cabin was a reward from the hell they'd been through.

"I've been on anti-depressants since I was fifteen years old," Spencer said suddenly. They all looked at him, his face strange in the dark of the room contrasted with the slight flickering light from within the stove. "We didn't feel well, Aureilo and me, I mean. I guess we were 'we' back then though, I was always so lonely except for him. It's a pretty common thing, actually. Children who are deprived of social contact tend to create stronger bonds with their dæmons, as though the dæmon is a separate being instead of a fragment of themselves. Aureilo was my best friend."

"I was your only friend," Aureilo corrected, Spencer nodding jerkily along.

"Until Ethan," said Emily, Spencer nodding at that too.

Aaron huddled closer, his heart hammering. "Why didn't you tell us?"

"I didn't think it was important, or that you'd still want me if you found out how defective I truly am. That … that you'd leave like my mom …"

"Oh, Spence …" Emily whispered, rolling over and pressing close to Aaron in order to reach her arm across and touch Spencer's hand. "Never."

"Never," chimed in the dæmons, all of them.

"Never," agreed Aaron.

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109.

He woke in the soft hours of the morning to the wind having finally stopped. The cabin, the world, was silent except for measured breathing, the crackle of the fire, and a clock ticking somewhere. It was a beautiful silence, and Aaron luxuriated in it. The van was so rarely quiet, or warm.

A cold breeze brushed his neck and he rolled over to find Spencer gone. Emily was still there, curled in a tiny ball of person that hurt his heart to look at, and fast asleep with her face on her arm, drooling, but Spencer was gone. Slipping out of the nest and tucking the blankets back neatly around Em so she didn't notice the chill, Aaron grabbed pants and a coat — dry and smelling more of wood-smoke than anything else — and pulled them on before going to the bedroom, following that icy breeze.

There were things Aaron would never forget, mostly bad. This was one of those things but filed deeply into the 'beautiful' section of his brain, an image he'd revisit for a long time to come anytime he thought about being young again. Spencer propped in the open window, loose slacks and a shirt the only barrier he had against the heaped snow and seeping cold outside. His head was tilted back against the frame, outlined in the frosty white-blue of the dawn, smoke pluming gently around him from the orange glow of the cigarette in his mouth. Even as Aaron watched, he took the cigarette from between his lips and blew a half-hearted smoke-ring out the window, his breath almost a sigh.

"Morning," Aaron murmured, hating to break this frozen moment but also unable to just walk away and let it end naturally. It took him three steps to get to the window, sliding his arms around Spencer's waist and hooking his thumbs into the band of his slacks, hugging close. Aureilo appeared, a bird with pointed wings perching on the window and watching them beadily. Hal slunk in behind them, moving to the window and standing upright as a squirrel to nose at Aureilo's beak.

Spencer held the cigarette out. Aaron shook his head, smiling as a, "Morning," rumbled through Spencer in return, the boy stretching like a cat back into his arms. A melancholy silence pressed between them.

"What are you thinking about?" Aaron asked. There was no way a scene like this wasn't knee-deep in introspection.

Spencer looked back out the window, into the icy-white wasteland bared to them. The whisper of morning light caught the frost on the trees, lightning them first and reflecting down onto the dark shadows in the snow.

"About what would have happened if I'd told you about my … depression … earlier."

Put like that, it was inevitable. Aaron tried it out in his head: 'my boyfriend is depressed. My boyfriend has depression.'

No matter which way he put it, it didn't change anything.

"Well, what was the worst outcome?" he asked, making sure his grip didn't shift. This moment couldn't be a rejection: it would make or break them. "I know you've only really thought about the negatives, so what's the worst you can come up with? Tell me, so I can tell you what would have really happened."

"You'd leave," Spencer replied in a voice that was a whisper.

"Nope, I wouldn't have left. I'd have supported you. Loved you still … hurt with you when you needed me to and been strong for you when you needed that instead. And I would have never, ever left you — not for that reason. Never for that reason."

Spencer stared at him, something relentless in his eyes and the cigarette burning down in his fingers. Finally, before the orange tip could burn him, Aaron took it from him and leaned out the window to put it out, setting it aside before turning Spencer to face him. His feet thumped the floor, his hands loose in his lap, and Aaron shuffled closer and took those cold hands in his.

"Tell me what you're hiding," Aaron murmured, bringing his lips down to press against Spencer's nose so he could be sure his boyfriend was listening. "Trust me. Trust in how much I love you."

The dæmons were silent. The snow had stopped falling. The world was quiet.

Spencer told him.

"I tried to kill myself, Aaron," he said, his voice too loud for this little room. Expected words, sure, but that didn't stop them from slamming home hard, Aaron closing his eyes with the pain they brought, the imagery. But Spencer wasn't done; the dam had broken and, if he didn't say it now, he likely never would. "I woke up on my fifteenth birthday and decided that that was as old as I wanted to be, that nothing was ever going to get better and that I was stuck as I was: a lonely, shadow of a person with a mouse-dæmon that reflected all the worst parts of me. Want to know how I did it?"

No.

But that wasn't what he said.

What he said was, "If you want to tell me then, yes."

Spencer nodded and obstinately continued: "I overdosed. Found every pill in my father's medicine cabinet and downed them all with a glass of water. Do you know, I barely remember anything from that day … but I remember a few things? I remember how bitter the pills were, I remember that the glass I used was one I'd made him — you know in elementary when you paint onto things with that gel-based paint? Happy Father's Day, this read, and the irony is really there, I guess. I also remember that I didn't regret it, even when I felt myself beginning to die. Well, Aureilo. I felt Aureilo beginning to die … and I was glad he was going first, because I couldn't bear him to suffer with me gone."

Aaron thought he might throw up, or pass out, or fall down, but he did none of those things because they all involved letting go and he'd promised he wouldn't do that.

"You know," Spencer said, his voice still too loud, too strong, for what he was saying, "There's something that bothers me about that day."

"What?" Aaron rasped, needing to know, not wanting.

Spencer hunched, breath fogging white and, finally, beginning to shiver. "I took every pill in that cabinet, except the ones I knew would kill me." His eyes flickered up, catching Aaron's and holding them. "I knew they'd hurt me, maybe even permanently. I knew there was a chance they'd destroy Aureilo … but I also knew that, if Dad came home, if he found me in time … that I'd live. That's who I am, Aaron. I not only quit when it gets hard, but I do so in the most destructive way possible. I died that day to spite him, knowing that I'd live to see the results."

Aaron hugged him tighter, saying nothing until the sun began to peek over the trees, cloudy and dreary and likely to be quickly hidden as the day crept on.

"Out of the window," he murmured, finally realising what happened now. It felt impossible that it didn't. It felt like a dream that it would. Spencer slid out the window, his socked feet tapping gently on the floor, and Aaron shut it. Locked it. Drew the blind. Turned with him in his arms and said, "Come with me."

"Where?" Spencer asked, his eyes wide in the half-gloom.

Aaron didn't answer, just took his hand and led him towards the bed.

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110.

Aaron didn't regret a minute of it. Not as they undressed, eyes wide and the moment just as frozen as the world outside. They shut the door between them and Emily, every sound amplified by this silent morning. The whisper of a zip, the muffled sound of clothing hitting floor. The whoosh when they shook one of their own blankets out over the bed; the rattle of Aaron opening the drawer for what he knew was in there. The creak of the springs below them, a suspiciously audible noise that drew a sharp gasp from them both as they turned to stare at the closed door.

"Why?" asked Spencer. "Why now?"

"So many reasons," was the honest reply. Aaron was scared of being vulnerable, but all he was with Spencer was vulnerable. That was what it truly meant to love someone so completely, to let them so deeply into his life that he even allowed them to lay a hand upon the deepest fragment of his soul. "Let me show you how completely I trust you — how completely I need you. How much I need you to stay, no matter where we go or how long it takes us."

Spencer made a noise he'd never made before. They were on the bed now, awkward and frightened and unsure of what to do next, all elbows and legs and worried hearts.

"Why?" he asked again.

"Because I love you and I'll fight for you," Aaron murmured, finding that mouth. "Fight to make sure you never feel like you need to quit again."

"Sex won't fix what's wrong with me." Spencer's eyes were downcast still, his breath unpleasantly musky with nicotine.

Aaron handed him the lubricant, seeing his eyes widen as he realised what Aaron was asking him to do. "I don't know," he said, turning to look at the dæmons and finding them curled as close as possible together, their entire focuses latched on one another. "Half your problem is that you think you're not special, but you are to me."

"And if I hurt you?"

Aaron kissed him once, twice, again. "You never will," he said. "Never."

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111.

Sneaking past Emily to get into the bathroom was easy because she'd buried herself so deep in the blankets that all they could see of her was a tangle of dark hair and Sergio curled up as a cat on her side. In the bathroom, they were quiet, using the cold water from their bath to wash each other. Naked in the single light overhead, every mark on each other was visible. The ones they'd put there, and the ones they hadn't. Spencer traced his fingers on a pock-mark on Aaron's hip, left by a belt-buckle, and his eyes were sadder than Aaron had ever seen them even as they stepped close to each other. Aaron let him, sore in a way that was new — sore in a way that meant he'd let himself be vulnerable but hadn't been hurt by the experience, still reeling from the touch-memory of what Spencer had felt like on him, in him, a warmth that was more than just temperature.

Spencer suddenly smiled, the dæmons lurking but saying nothing. "Are you going to be weird about this being our first time?"

"No," said Aaron. But, secretly, he cherished that fact: no matter what happened in the future, no matter what went wrong, he'd always have this moment. He'd always be on Spencer's mind and his memory for even just one thing, no matter how far from each other they went.

No one could take this from them.