An Unexpected Betrayal Who: Aidan and Patrick Where: Phone Call When: Noonish
When Patrick responded to his text with just “why”, Aidan didn’t wait to call him up. He’d told Eily that he wouldn’t break the news over text, and he wouldn’t, but he wasn’t going to argue with his older brother about if he should call or not. So he picked up the phone and called, waiting for his brother to pick up on the other end. He might not want to talk, but Aidan was at least going to try, knowing that the sooner he broke the news, the sooner he could put it behind him.
Patrick didn’t like this. He didn’t like this one bit. He didn’t talk to Aidan much and he definitely didn’t call him so the fact that they needed to talk right now was concerning. When the call came through, Pat answered and cleared his throat. “What is happening?”
“Most people answer the phone with a simple ‘hello’,” Aidan sighed. “I needed to talk to you. I thought the phone would be better than a text message.” Though at this point, a text message might’ve been better. He knew things weren’t going to go over well, but he thought they’d at least start out on the right foot.
“Most people don’t get a text like that from their brother. What is happening, Aidan?” He asked, the nerves already setting in. What the hell could he possibly need to tell him that couldn’t wait until they saw each other? There was a giant storm coming and Aidan needed to tell him this now?
Aidan sat back on the couch with a sigh. He hated doing this, but he’d known it would have to happen eventually. “I wanted to let you know that I decided to become a werewolf. Thought it would be better if I told you, than if you figured it out on your own.” Yeah, that wasn’t the best way to approach it, but really, what was?
Patrick’s worry lessened. That was confusing but not what he had been expecting. He’d been thinking bodily harm, death, something horrible, but this was a good step in the right direction. And it made him confused as to why he had been so concerned earlier. “That’s...good news. When?” He asked, trying to figure out when the best time to change Aidan, and how to do that, would be.
“Good news?” Aidan said, now confused himself. He’d expected anger, refusal, but not acceptance. If he’d known Patrick would be so accepting of the idea, he might have gone to him rather than Jack. “Um, a few days ago. After the full moon, obviously.” Because he wouldn’t have risked it when they didn’t know the repercussions.
“You decided a few days ago?” He asked, thinking that through. It made sense to Patrick that he would want to join. With Lochlan and himself as werewolves, it felt right to have Aidan want to join them. “All right. When do you want to try this out?”
“Try what out?” Aidan asked, even more confused. It felt like they were having two very different conversations. If there was something more he needed to know, he was game to listen, but he didn’t think he needed to try anything else out at this point.
“Try this...turning you into a werewolf thing?” Patrick said, shifting the phone a little as he frowned. “You said you wanted to be a werewolf, figured you’d just come over here and we could figure it out, you me and Lochlan.”
“Oh,” Aidan said, visible cringing on his end of the phone. Dammit. Of course now Patrick would want to do the family thing, now that Aidan was firmly not interested in doing it. He couldn’t be. It was already done. “No, I meant I already am one. I had a friend of mine change me a few days ago.”
Patrick was silent and stiff as he let those words process. Aidan was a werewolf. Aidan had let someone else change him into a werewolf. He didn’t belong to this pack, he belonged to someone else’s, and it was starting a slow seethe in Patrick. “Why the fuck would you let someone else change you when you have family in this?”
“Because I didn’t think there was any way you’d change me just because I wanted to,” Aidan said, flopping back on the couch and running his fingers through his hair. “Darcy was pissed and Eily didn’t think it was the best decision. How was I to know you’d just say ‘sure, when do you want to do it?’”
“You could have asked me,” Patrick said, the growl evident in his voice and coming through clearly over the phone. He hadn’t expected to be on board with this so easily. An earlier Patrick might not have been, but he was a werewolf now and it made sense to him that Aidan might want to join. But what didn’t make sense was the utter betrayal Aidan had performed by going to some other werewolf first. “I can’t fucking believe you, Aidan…”
“I was positive you’d say no!” Aidan said, annoyed that Patrick was mad at him not for getting bitten, but for going to someone else to do it. “What’s it matter if the answer was yes?” Was his brother really this pissed that someone else had gotten the job done instead of him? That didn’t make a lot of sense to Aidan, but then he and Patrick rarely saw eye to eye on much.
“You don’t know shit about me, Aidan! It’s really fucked up that you would go to someone else, someone outside the family, when there are two werewolves in your own bloodline!” Patrick needed to talk to Lochlan about this. This was ridiculous and a huge betrayal of trust. “And you didn’t even try us first. That’s wrong, Aidan.”
“I went to someone I knew would say yes,” Aidan snapped. “That wasn’t you. So you know what? You’re right. I don’t know shit about you, and you’re my own fucking brother. You never even told me you were bitten! I found out from Lochlan, who was having his own existential crisis in the bar, asking me for advice. Me, the non-werewolf. If this was about family, you would’ve been there for him. You would’ve been on top of things. But you weren’t, so I went to someone who was.” And he’d helped build the cages, helped pull things together when he was worried about them falling apart. Patrick hadn’t looped him in for any of that. That had been his own doing… and Jack’s.
“You never give this family a chance, Aidan. Of course the first thing you do is go to some friend of yours to get him to change you. You didn’t want to go to me, fine! But Lochlan is a werewolf too and you should have gone to your family first!”
“Excuse me? I never give the family a chance? Where the fuck have you been?” Aidan asked, his temper growing. It was a good thing this conversation was over the phone because he could see how they would have been at each other’s throats in person. “I’m the one that started building cages before there was a team doing so. Then I coordinated with December when I found out there was a group effort. I stayed with you both all fucking night and made sure you had clothes in the morning. I told Darcy about you both being werewolves because no one else bothered to tell her. And I didn’t go to Lochlan because I didn’t want him to have to deal with making that kind of a decision. If something had gone wrong, God forbid, I didn’t want it on his head. So how the hell can you accuse me of not thinking of the family?”
Patrick was livid. “This is a family thing, Aidan! You don’t go to friends for this kind of stuff! We’re a pack and you essentially just told us all ‘Fuck you guys’ when you did this! That’s not ok,” He huffed, very very close to just hanging up. He needed time to think this over. “You should have come to us. Family sticks together and you went off and just decided that your family couldn’t help you…”
“Since when are we a pack?” Aidan asked. He’d never gotten that vibe from Patrick, nor from Lochlan. Furthermore, he wasn’t sure he wanted to be a part of a pack where he had to take orders from Patrick. His brother had been driving him nuts lately, ordering the whole family around like he’d suddenly become head of the family. If he was going to pick up that role, he should have done so long before now. “Look, I didn’t go to you because I didn’t think you’d do it, but I’m glad I didn’t because it’s clear you’d be holding it over my head. This was my decision and I didn’t want to feel like I was asking permission. It had nothing to do with backing the family, which you know I’ve always done.”
Patrick was seated on his stairs now, hand running over his hair as he sighed into the phone. This was ridiculous. He was going to snap at Aidan again, he could feel it coming, and maybe it would be better if he just shut the phone off now. “You should have come to us, Aidan. You should have thought about being in a pack with us. We’re family and it’s ridiculous you would pick someone else over us to begin with…”
“Well, I didn’t, Patrick. What do you want me to do about it now?” He couldn’t change what he’d done and he wasn’t sure he would if he could. It felt like the right choice to him, even if Patrick would’ve said yes. His reaction was just the sort that Aidan wanted to avoid, this whole us or them mentality that Aidan didn’t see. He couldn’t even imagine what his brother would say if he knew he was dating a vampire.
Patrick was quiet for a long time before he answered. "Think about joining our pack." He was a werewolf now and still family, even though he was infuriating. It was hard for Patrick to not want him in the family pack still, even with all the strain between the two of them.
“What does that even mean?” Aidan asked, shaking his head. “You’re family. You’ll always be family. But if you’re asking me to follow you unconditionally just for that, you’re barking up the wrong tree.” Because, thus far, they were too different, no matter how close their blood ran.
"I'm asking you to consider joining our pack. When you decide you need a pack, I'd rather you come to us than your friend you got to turn you. Because we're family, we're blood, and it's bigger than our differences." And he was a shitty pack leader if he didn't get his own damn brother to follow him. Maybe this was a heavier conversation to have at a later time, but he was going to try.
“We’ll see,” Aidan said, still not sure what was up with this pack business. He didn’t become a werewolf to follow anyone else’s orders, even his brothers. This was something he did for himself. “I just thought you should know,” he finally said. “I’ll talk to you later.”
“Yeah...later,” he said, shrugging though it was just to himself since Aidan couldn’t see. “Be careful out there today,” he said, sighing as he pulled the phone from his ear and hung up. Running a hand over his face, Patrick let out a low exhale and groaned. Great.