Gavin Lucas (viciouscircle) wrote in shadows_rpg, @ 2019-11-28 01:35:00 |
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Entry tags: | #january 2018, aaron, aaron x gavin, gavin |
Who: Gavin and Aaron
When: afternoon, Monday, Jan 8th
Where: The Back Porch
Status: Complete
It had felt a little strange to get ready to go into work again, but it was good at the same time. Even though he’d been through several jobs before settling into mechanic work, Aaron had been employed pretty much since he was sixteen. It was weird not to work, and while he’d enjoyed lazing around while he healed, and he was grateful for the time to be a mess and grieve over Mila while she’d been gone, he was getting restless now at Caden’s. He was ready to be back out in the world. His chest still hurt, but Aaron could deal with it as long as he didn’t physically strain himself too much. Miles would have to continue being the muscle most of the time, for a while at least.
Aaron had bundled up against the fresh snow and the shitty wind that was ripping through everything, and drove to the Porch. Caden was taking the day off -- possibly why he’d talked to Aaron the night before about working again -- which meant he would be alone with Gavin for a while. It gave Aaron an anxious sort of feeling in his chest. Gavin hadn’t checked up on him much since the hospital, at least not directly. It was probably stupid to feel needy and pouty about that, but Aaron still did. He’d almost died. Gavin was his biggest brother, the one he looked up to. He smothered it as best he could as he parked his truck in the back and hurried inside.
Gavin had been at the bar since that morning and he found he generally preferred coming in late but there were days where the owners needed to deal with some of the business side of things the employees couldn't touch and today just happened to be one of those days. It was pretty quiet today, a couple of regulars were already sitting at the bar and there were a few people seated at the tables but nothing terribly stressing so he felt comfortable leaving Miles out there by himself.
He stepped out of his office when he heard the back door, cracking a little smile for his brother. It was true, he hadn't visited or paid him much attention but things had been insane for a while and every time he thought of Aaron, he thought of Mila and that familiar guilty feeling crept up on him, followed by the dread because of all the shit going on with the witches and Caden. It just wasn't a good head space to be in, but he found he was still happy to see Aaron now. "Ready to work?" he asked, waiting until Aaron had taken off his coat before he moved in and patted his shoulder.
Aaron smiled back faintly and went to hang up his coat on the hooks they had back there for employees. Roxy had been asking for real lockers for years, but they were surprisingly expensive, so hooks it was. Aaron was fine with that. “Hey,” he greeted his brother. “Uh ... yeah, pretty much. Just still light duty, y’know.” He gave a little shrug and subconsciously touched the middle of his chest where the knife wound was still healing. The one in his gut was gone, but Gavin didn’t know that. There were a lot of things he didn’t know. “Anything you need done first, boss?”
"Worry about that in a minute," Gavin muttered with a dismissive hand-wave. "Come talk to me for a bit, I haven't seen you in forever." He pulled his pack of cigarettes out of his chest pocket, cracking the door open just a little bit. Ever since the fog he'd been just a little more lenient about smoking inside. It was against regulations blah blah blah, but they weren't exactly the most law abiding people in the first place. As long as the door was open a crack, who cared? Especially when it was this cold. "How are you holding up?" he asked. He knew he should ask about Mila too but he just couldn't bring himself to say her name to Aaron's face right away and besides, he was more interested in how Aaron was doing. "Healing okay?"
Aaron was still wearing the dark hoodie he’d layered under his coat, and he slipped his hands into the front pocket as he found a spot to lean his shoulder against. A snarky answer about who was responsible for them not seeing each other in forever rose to the back of his throat and then faded again as Aaron licked his lips. “Getting there, yeah,” he said, curling his fingers against the urge to touch his chest again. “Still hurts sometimes, but nothing I can’t handle. I’m doin’ okay.” He felt like how he was ‘holding up’ was a different sort of question, a more complicated one. But he thought it was likely that Gavin didn’t want him to really get into the full answer anyway. “What about you, how’ve you been?”
The real answer to that was scared, worried, guilt ridden and depressed but Gavin just nodded. "Could be worse," he muttered and it really could. It was strange how life just picked up and carried on after the fog, they were still burying people, people were still missing, but Point Pleasant marched on. "Guessin' Caden told you dad's not allowed in here anymore." It had been more that he wasn't allowed in when Caden was working but Caden tended to drop by and so it just felt safer to put an all out ban on Joseph. "It's been nice and quiet without him, should have done that sooner."
It was funny in a sad way to know that Gavin’s answer wasn’t a full one either. They were Lucases, and therefore didn’t talk much about their feelings, especially to one another. In an odd moment of clarity, Aaron saw just how sad that was, and how their parents were completely to blame. Joseph had beaten ‘manliness’ into them from very young ages, with an emphasis on never showing weakness, and he’d tried to pit them against one another to make sure there was no trust. It made him want to hug Gavin, but he didn’t, not yet. “Yeah he told me,” Aaron said in regard to their asshole father. He gave a rueful little smile. “I’m on board with keeping him out for good, old man needs to dry out anyway before he drinks himself to death.” He paused, then arched a brow a bit at his brother. “Kinda surprised you didn’t deck him at the time. I saw Roxy’s face.”
"He was already fucked up," Gavin muttered. "I needed to help Roxy and there was a monster right outside the door so I was a little preoccupied." He knew on some level he would have killed Joseph if that had been Charlie but Roxy was Caden's trigger, not his. "He's not gonna stop drinking just 'cause he can't drink here. Maybe he'll just drink more. Booze is cheaper straight from the store." Maybe it'd speed up the process, Gavin almost hoped it would, that Joseph would croak sooner than later but at the same time it made his chest hurt thinking about it. Stupid family shit. He took a deep drag of his cigarette and leaned his shoulder against the door frame. "You still mixing up your pills with booze?" he asked quietly, since they were on the topic of alcohol.
Aaron hadn’t been there, of course, but he liked to think that if he had, he would’ve defended Roxy, just like any other woman who didn’t deserve to get hit. But he wasn’t going to lecture Gavin about it. Shit like that never helped. Aaron nodded a bit at his brother’s point about Joseph’s drinking -- they couldn’t control what he did at home, but maybe it was good that they stopped enabling him. He would be pissed about it, but Aaron didn’t give much of a shit about that. Gavin’s question wasn’t unexpected, but it irritated him inside just the same. Gavin hadn’t been around for him at all, but apparently he’d heard what Aaron was struggling with. “No,” he said flatly. Aaron straightened up, hands still in his front pocket. “I stopped both, so ... don’t strain yourself worryin’.”
Gavin had no way of knowing if his brother was lying. He knew he would lie, if he was in Aaron's position. Nobody liked having other people fretting and bitching at them for their drinking or drug habits and Gavin knew that better than most. "That's good," he muttered, not wholly oblivious to the tone in Aaron's voice or the way his body language changed. "Don't tell me you've stopped for good," he added with a hint of amusement because that would make Aaron the first Lucas to do so, sometimes Gavin felt like their blood was just too laced with alcohol from birth to ever give it up for good.
He hadn’t thought much about his future with liquor, honestly, but the question made the stubborn part of him want to quit for good just to prove that he could. Aaron shrugged. “We’ll see. Mila’s my priority right now, so ... it’s better to be clear-headed.” He wondered with a vague and fleeting sense of superiority when the last time was that Gavin had a completely clear head. Aaron felt guilty about the thought almost immediately, and he glanced around them a bit. “So you want me up front behind the bar, or ...?” He wasn’t even sure who else was on duty tonight, and Aaron knew they wouldn’t actually talk about anything of substance, so why keep standing there?
Gavin hadn't had a clear head in years - not a sober, clear head at least, so he was really not one to talk. He knew it too, this whole thing made him uncomfortable, especially considering how he was to blame for everything that had happened. He and Caden, meddling with forces too powerful for them, crossing lines that should never be crossed. Why hadn't they minded their own damn business? The guilt was always there, underneath everything, nagging at him and demanding attention but what could he do now? Atone? His church was gone, his priest was missing and telling Aaron the truth would just make everything worse. He was relieved at Aaron's question because it meant ending this stifled conversation even if a part of him wanted and needed to keep talking to Aaron, to try to be there for him and fix some of the damage he'd done. It was impossible, he knew that. "Up front at the bar," he muttered and tossed his cigarette outside before shutting the door. "Can't have you carrying heavy shit until you're fully healed."
Aaron’s thought processes were usually very literal, but that statement struck him in a metaphorical way and made him bark a bitter little laugh and shake his head. He wasn’t fully healed, physically or emotionally, and Aaron wasn’t sure if he ever would be when it came to the latter. He still felt grief at the loss of their baby, he still felt fear about what had happened to Mila, regret that he hadn’t been able to help her more, worry over what Westin might want from him in the future, suppressed trauma over nearly being killed, all of those things. Aaron didn’t know how to fix any of it, but he was carrying it, and it was goddamned heavy. That wasn’t what Gavin meant though, of course, so he turned to head for the front of the bar. “All right, holler if you need me,” Aaron said over his shoulder.
It wasn't like Aaron to be cynical and it hurt to see how he'd changed - how Caden and Gavin had changed him - with the way he laughed and pushed things away. Gavin understood why he'd laughed, he understood how heavy everything was and it wasn't something Aaron should have to carry. Guilt lanced through him again, cold and sharp, making him feel slightly nauseated with it. "I'll do that," he said, so quiet that he wasn't even sure Aaron heard him. He hadn't really gotten drunk in a while, even if he rarely was without a drink, but the urge was overwhelming now, to just get lost at the bottom of a bottle and leave all this bullshit for everyone else to sort out. He lit up another cigarette instead because he needed to keep a clear head right now and at least the cigarettes felt like they calmed him down some.