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One time Aaron learned that if you throw up and it looks like coffee grounds, it means you're bleeding internally and you gotta either book it to the ER or shoot up and die on a high note. He doesn't remember who he learned that from, or why he's thinking about it at this specific moment, cold tile pressing against his knees through thin jeans, shaking hands just barely hanging onto the ceramic of the toilet bowl as all of his organs come back up and out.
Hematemesis, he thinks. That's the word. For throwing up blood. He vomits again, but he hasn't eaten anything in twelve hours so it mostly just looks clear and watery. No blood, which Aaron feels a little cheated by. It'd tasted like blood, but that was probably the open wounds in his mouth where he'd gnawed gashes into the inside of his cheeks. A pitiful attempt to keep his hands away from the cans stacked across the room from him.
Pull-tabs. The edges of those things could come away razor sharp. It'd be so fucking easy.
But Aaron just threw up what felt like most of his body weight into the toilet, and now he's used the last of his strength to clamber back into the bathtub where he's been sleeping. His psycho of a brother had the forethought to leave him a pillow, but he cut holes in the case so Aaron couldn't suffocate himself. Asshole. He must've known Aaron wouldn't have the strength to hold the pillow over his face. He could always try to run the bath and drown himself, but Andrew would stop him the minute he heard water, and then Aaron would probably get another week in the bathroom just for trying.
It could be worse. He'd been locked in rooms without toilets before, but at least then he usually had a steady supply of something good to ease the discomfort. In here he just had a buzzing light overhead and an array of suicide methods he couldn't hope to carry out.
The cans were still there, with their metal edges just waiting to be pulled open, but Aaron could barely form a circle with his forefinger and thumb, let alone wrench one open. The only food he'd touched so far was a bag of Goldfish crackers, that he'd ripped open with too much anger and spilled half of them over the floor. He'd eaten most of them anyway, on the logic that no bacterial infection could be worse than this already was, and if he got really sick, maybe Nicky would fight Andrew to let him out and win.
He'd imagined all the possible solutions. His mom unlocking the door, because she'd been alive all this time and Aaron was still an only child. Andrew coming to his senses and freeing Aaron, then leaving forever and never coming back. Aaron dying and watching as a ghost as Nicky wept over his cold body and Andrew got taken away for homicide, and in Heaven Aaron's mom was waiting for him and nothing ever hurt again. This one he dreamed of the most. It was always so soft around the edges, like a memory, and his mother's hair was washed and brushed and she hugged him and smelled like flowers and she told him she loved him and they went to IHOP again like they used to, and it didn't cost anything because they were in Heaven, and–
Aaron whacked his forehead into the ceramic side of the tub to snap himself out of it. It'd been a good dream, when he'd been high enough to ignore the rest of it. There was no way in hell his mom had gotten into Heaven, and Aaron was pretty sure he'd been born out of wedlock, which ruled him out too according to his uncle. If Aaron ever met his mom in the afterlife, it'd be to burn alongside her.
After this, Aaron thought he might not mind that so much.
He wakes up, having barely even registered being asleep, and when he prises himself up from the bottom of the tub, his shirt is sticking to his back with sweat. The sensation makes his skin crawl, so Aaron tugs it over his head and tosses it across the room, slumping over the edge of the tub.
There's specks of blood in the lines between the tiles on the floor. He'd never noticed them before, but there they are, clear as anything. Aaron doesn't think he's bled any, lately, not in this room at least. He wonders where they could have come from.
He only just manages to get out of the tub before he's throwing up again, although it's half-hearted with what little actually comes out. His body retches and lurches and the back of his throat burns, but only dribbles of spit fall from his lips into the toilet bowl.
Aaron sits back on his heels when the shaking has subsided, and eats a Goldfish cracker from the floor. Not for the first time, he looks at the stacks of cans across the room that he hasn't touched.
They're sharp enough. More than. Two cuts is all it takes. Quieter than drowning. Easier than suffocating, because you can't fight back against an open wound. He even knows exactly where to cut. Just like Lacey did a couple summers ago. Straight and neat, vertically down the forearm. It hurts, but he's counting on that. Easy as anything.
Aaron whacks his forehead against the tub again, enough to bruise. This time, he's not even sure what he's snapping himself out of, but he just eats another Goldfish cracker, closes his eyes and listens to the rain echo against the tiny frosted window above the mirror.
Again, and again, and again.
Wakes are kinda fucking morbid, now Aaron thinks about it. Hey, we just cremated this person nobody really liked, lets all stand around and talk shit about her. Most of the attendees are people from Luther and Maria's church, and pretty much nobody Aaron remembers ever actually spending time with his mother. Danny, her last boyfriend before Andrew scared him off, didn't even send flowers or anything. Though he probably didn't even know she was dead. None of Tilda's real friends, if you could call them that, had stayed in touch.
Aaron has spent most of the wake standing by his mother's high-school graduation photograph and accepting condolences by not outright insulting those who offered them. Whenever he's ignored, which is often, his gaze drifts back to the photograph. Taken at the start of her senior year in highschool, 1985. She had long blond hair and was smiling, actually smiling at the camera. Aaron isn't sure he's ever seen her smile like that. She'd been seventeen then. Three years older than he is now, and only a year away from having him. All Aaron knew about his mother's life before him was that she found out she was pregnant halfway through her senior year, and got on a plane to California with his dad the next day. Never looked back.
Only for his uncle to drag her back to this shithole thirteen years later, and then she died here. Leaving was the only thing she was ever proud of, and she died in her hometown anyway.
The idea makes Aaron want to throw up, and a couple of seconds later, realise there is an increasing risk of that exact scenario. As much as he yearns to ruin his uncle's pristine living room, he can't stand the heat of this place anymore, so he weasels his way through the crowd and out the door before anyone can notice or care.
The late afternoon air feels more liberating than ever, and with shaking fingers Aaron wrenches his tie from around his neck and stamps it into the dirt under his feet. Next, he tears off his black jacket and tosses it over his uncle's mailbox, going back only to retrieve the pill bottle in the inside pocket. He runs his fingers over the printed letters of his mother's name, shakes three pills into his hand and swallows them dry. Only six left. He needs to ration them, because she won't be picking up any more prescriptions. Aaron stuffs the bottle in his pants pocket, undoes the top two buttons of his shirt, untucks the hem and takes off running.
He doesn't know how far, or how long he runs for, only that his lungs start to burn eventually and he tastes blood in the back of his throat when he finally stops, collapsing in the gravel at the side of the hospital parking lot. It takes a long time for the air to return to him. A voice in his head says Smoking kills; a mirror, taunting him. Aaron's cigarettes disappearing from the table by his bed, one by one, then the pack. Then his lighters too. The knees of his too-big funeral suit are dusty when he stands, and he stumbles his way across the lot to the building.
"Andrew Minyard," is all he tells the receptionist when he makes it inside. He can only imagine how he looks– pale as a cadaver, shaking like he's seen a ghost, hair limp and stringy, hanging over his eyes. She gives him a once-over, unfazed, probably sees worse every day, and taps a couple things into her keyboard. Aaron can't see the screen but he can guess what it tells her.
Minyard. Car crash victim. Broken arm. Radial hairline fracture. Mother deceased. Twin brother.
She tells him the room number, and off he goes.
Andrew is asleep when Aaron reaches the room, or he was pretending to be, because he lolls one head to the side when the door clicks shut.
"It's not visiting hours," he says, but his voice is barely audible. Aaron knows how bad the crash was. Andrew survived, but only because that tree branch that went through the windshield just barely missed him. It didn't save him from the broken arm, or the concussion, or the glass cuts, or the bruises, or the skin the dashboard tore off when the whole car flipped over. Twice. No, three times. The witnesses said it was three.
"You missed the funeral."
"I'm devastated."
That was it. There was nothing to hold Aaron back, nothing to regret. All that came out was venom.
"You fucking did it," he hissed, hands clenching into fists at his side. "I know you did it. Say it."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
Aaron kicked the side of Andrew's bed, and the IV bags rattled on their stand. Andrew looked bored. The heart rate monitor stayed even.
"Say. It." Aaron repeated.
"Tell me you did it. I know I'm fucking right."
What he'll do if Andrew confesses, he doesn't entirely know. But he hasn't known anything since that car went over the midline, and he doesn't care enough to think.
Andrew stares at him, for an agonizingly long breath, and lets out an exhausted sigh at the end of it. As if Aaron's desperation, Aaron's pain, is tiring to him. Aaron should be the one in a fucking hospital bed.
"She was drunk," he says, the apathy in his voice only pouring kerosene on Aaron's fire.
"It was a freak accident. That's what the police said."
"Fuck what they said. They're full of shit. I'm right, aren't I?"
Because he is, he knows he is. Because it all makes too much sense. The bruises and the cuts around Andrew's eye from that bottle are somewhat disguised by the rest of his injuries, but Aaron knows. They swapped places that night. She didn't know, and she hit Andrew instead. So Andrew got in the car, instead of Aaron. Andrew was the only one who got out, instead of her. It made sense.
"She's dead," Andrew says.
"It doesn't matter."
Aaron grabs the rail of the bed, knuckles turning white as every word claws its way up through his throat like a blades.
"It matters. It fucking matters, you asshole. She loved me. She loved me!" He shakes the bed like he can force Andrew to listen, but he just sits there.
"She loved me, and she gave you up and you hated her and then you– you fucking killed her and it's not fucking fair! She was mine! It was my fucking life and you fucking ruined it!"
Aaron's screaming too much to notice the door open behind him, to defend himself when the hands catch hold, two on each arm. There's not enough strength in him to fight back. All he can do is scream, kick out, yell because he knows he's fucking right and if he wasn't, Andrew would be dead. Andrew should be dead. But Andrew doesn't fucking care. Andrew killed his fucking mom.
"I hate you! I fucking hate you! Don't you ever fucking come home! I hope you fucking die in here you fucking asshole!"
Aaron doesn't know exactly when the door opened, only that it did.
One minute he was shivering, with only tile beneath him as he wondered if it was possible for your bones to slip out of your body without your noticing. It would sound stupid if he hadn't been lying here wondering it for a week, but when all you could do was think of new ways to kill yourself, while the tacky crystal lightshade above cast ripple patterns on the walls, it started sounding plausible.
He should've heard the footsteps, lying right next to the door, but he didn't. He should've heard voices, but he didn't. First he was tracing the lines of the grout between the tiles, the next he was squinting under the light of the hall lamp.
"Oh my god, Andrew, is he–?"
Nicky. Nicky drops to his knees and Aaron hears a noise break from his own throat at the impact, something like a whimper. Nicky murmurs an apology and his hands hover for a minute, as if unsure where to touch.
"Get him downstairs." A different voice. Andrew's. Then, a hand, fisting in the collar of his shirt and dragging him upright. The next sound from Aaron is a groan, as a body that has not moved for days is forced to, and Nicky all but drags him from his brother's grip, and toward the stairs. The banister under the clammy skin of his palm is a strange feeling. One he hasn't felt in days. He grabs hold of it like it's the only thing he can touch, and his socked feet take the stairs slowly, as if they will fall from beneath if he puts too much weight on them. Nicky keeps one hand hovering just behind Aaron's back, while he goes down mostly backwards, ready to catch him if he falls forward. He talks as they go, encouragement, Aaron thinks, but he doesn't hear it. He doesn't hear much of anything.
He ends up on the couch, with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. Nicky asks him things, like if he needs more water or he wants something to eat or how he feels. When Aaron doesn't respond, he switches to just filling the silence. Stories about work, and some about Andrew, always carefully weaving around the fact that for the past two weeks, they have lived with a prisoner in their house.
"Why didn't you let me out?" Aaron asks, finally. He thinks his hands have only just stopped shaking. Nicky freezes midway through his anecdote.
"I–"
"Didn't you hear me?"
There are claw marks on the inside of the bathroom door. Aaron knows there are, he can still feel the splinters beneath his fingernails. He'd spent the first few days screaming for help every waking second when he wasn't throwing up. Aaron knows he did, his throat still stings from the effort. He wants to scream again.
"He said it would help."
Andrew is standing in the doorway then. His left arm is in a sling, because it's only been three weeks since the crash and he has to wear it for five.
"And it did," is all he says, and Aaron would laugh if he thought he could stand it.
"I hate you," he tells his brother instead, and Nicky doesn't even berate him for it. Nobody says a word, not for a long, long time, and for once Aaron thinks he's done it. Stunned his brother into silence. See, Andrew? You can 'save' me if you're so noble, and I can still hate you. Because I know I was right.
Aaron doesn't quite hear what his brother says before he leaves the room, but it sounds a little bit like, "Good."
Aaron has only held a couple of bodies in his life. None of them had this much blood on them.
Nicky feels a lot more real like this. All his breaths are shuddering, his whole body moves instead of just his chest. His hands keep reaching up to where Aaron is holding onto him, but he can't do much more than smear blood around Aaron's wrists and gasp. Aaron tries to tune out the sound of flesh hitting concrete and holds Nicky as still as he can, asking him for his phone. He has to fumble through his cousin's pockets to find it, and the metal almost slips through his bloodslick fingers as he dials.
The tone echoes when he puts the phone to his ear. He doesn't want to look at Nicky, so he looks up, instead, at Andrew. Watches him move, like a hurricane, between the four men that turned Nicky into the shuddering, bloody heap Aaron is trying so desperately to hold together. Nicky whimpers, and Aaron looks down to see tears welling in his bloodshot eyes. He realises he's been talking this whole time, voice calm and easily reciting the address and an account of the immediate injuries Aaron can see.
In a morbid way, he thinks, he's good at this. Good at keeping broken people in an imitation of 'together', until real help arrives. Nicky is no different, really, to his mom, or his last girlfriend, or that other kid in that house a couple years ago who needed Narcan and an ambulance and nobody else seemed to care.
Sirens blare in the night, a body drops heavily to the ground beside Aaron and Nicky. Andrew has a split lip and a hard hand on Aaron's shoulder, and looks only at Nicky. Aaron fixes his own gaze firmly past his brother, to the street where he can see the red-blue glare flickering across the brick walls. Two of the men take off running. The others can't stand. They're closer to the road, so at first the paramedics huddle around them alone. Aaron has to shout, twice, before someone takes notice of a third casualty. A uniformed man wearing white gloves comes to them, while the rest of his team begin loading the other two bodies into the back of an ambulance. One look at Andrew's split knuckles and the gash above his eye, the blood on Aaron's shirt and Nicky's broken body, and that's it. That's all it takes. Aaron hasn't exactly been cold sober all night, and it's pushing past two am by then, so he can't put up a fight when they take Nicky from him. Doors slam, wheels spin, and that's all it takes.
Then the cop cars show up. Somebody else must've called them, Aaron knows it wasn't him, but they've got Andrew in cuffs before Aaron can stand. His brother doesn't flinch when the blueshirts slam his body against the hood of the car, but Aaron does. It's strange how much they don't say. He'll make up excuses for it later. It happened so fast. He was in shock. He was trying to focus on Nicky. But the fact remains that he stood there and watched. They took Andrew, and he watched.
Aaron goes home alone that night, picks the lock on his own house because Nicky had the keys in his pocket. He should go to the hospital but he can't drive like this. He's exhausted.
He doesn't sleep.
"Did he touch you?"
Andrew's grip is surprisingly strong. Aaron doesn't find himself in it enough to remember. He thinks this is the first time in at least three years his brother has laid an intentional hand on him. Only ever when blood is drawn first.
Aaron shakes his head. Andrew won't take that as an answer, so he tightens his grip in his hair. It hurts, more than anything Drake could have done, but Aaron finally forces out a verbal answer.
"No," he says, and Andrew's fist unclenches. He lets go, and Aaron has to fight the urge to chase after him. He doesn't move. Doesn't intrude any further into the space around his brother that is so harshly preserved. Except it isn't, because here Andrew is, his pale hair streaked through with blood, fingernail scratches around his neck and on his wrists. There's a thin white sheet covering most of his body, at least, but there's so much blood on it now Aaron thinks it barely matters anyway.
But it isn't Andrew's blood. It isn't, because it's all coming from the body Aaron had to drag off of his brother, the body that now lies unrecognisable on the floor. Flesh and bone and grey matter, all forming an ugly stain on the nice white carpet of Uncle Luther's spare bedroom. Aaron slept in here five years ago. There's still a crucifix on the wall above the bed, knocked askew after the headboard slammed into the wall. That was the thud he'd heard on the stairs. Puzzle pieces, all coming together to form the big picture. But the centre is a blur.
Once again, Aaron doesn't notice the cops arrive. He only realises the ringing in his head as sirens when hard hands grab him by the shoulders, drag him roughly backwards even when he complies. They force him against the wall to get the cuffs around his wrists. He's already being led through the hall when the paramedics rush up the stairs.
Aaron doesn't listen to his rights, could recite them off by heart if you held a gun to his head. He recognises the license plate of the car they shove him into, but not the drivers. The ones who arrested him for possession five years ago must've retired, and the new guys got their car. For some reason this is the train of thought that occupies his mind as the car speeds through streets he used to know like the back of his hand. He wonders how many times he was on the other side of this perspective.
They take his photograph, and his fingerprints. They call him a murderer and shove him in a holding cell. They offer him a phone call, last of all, and he thinks about taking it. There's only one person who doesn't already know where he is. She's probably surrounded by family, looking at her sister's ultrasound pictures, chatting and laughing, chasing her nieces around the back garden. He listened to her explain all their Thanksgiving traditions like it was gospel, and now even picturing her hurts almost as much as Andrew's hand did.
Aaron denies the phone call.