Chapter Text
Aaron’s grown his hair out, curls long enough for Robert to grip as he moans into his mouth, pressing his tongue behind his teeth. Aaron sighs, twisting his fingers in Robert’s shirt collar, sliding closer over the gearbox; Robert feels starved, wants to climb in his lap until there’s no space between them, wants to kiss him until he forgets where one of them starts and the other begins.
The sound of a horn makes him jump and Robert’s brought back to the reality of Hotten Station on a Thursday afternoon.
“Come on,” Aaron says, squeezing his eyes shut as he catches his breath. “We’ve got to swing by Tesco on the way.”
“God,” Robert says, and straightens his shirt, doing up his seatbelt. He’s half hard in his suit trousers which is just as uncomfortable as always, and he steals the last dregs of Aaron’s shitty, lukewarm tea from the Station café to wash away the taste of him before he does something stupid like try and blow him whilst he’s driving.
Aaron shifts in his seat, starting the car and shuffling in his jeans, and Robert avoids looking at the crude outline of his dick. It’s been ages since he felt him at the back of his throat, and Robert’s not exactly known for his critical thinking.
“Vic’s making Shepherd’s Pie but she’s out of frozen peas,” Aaron says. “Everything’s more expensive at David’s, so…”
“Yeah,” Robert says, running a hand through his hair. “Sure, okay. I think I forgot my toothbrush anyway.”
They take a right at the next roundabout, joining the fray of rush hour traffic, and Aaron curses out three different drivers before snagging a space ‘round the back of Tesco. Robert has to hold his door carefully and squeeze out to not hit the car next to them, rolling his eyes when Aaron laughs, tossing his keys between his hands.
Inside it’s horrible, screaming kids and harried parents, employees blocking the aisles as they rush through online orders, elderly people crashing into shins with trolleys too big for their loaves of bread and Bovril. Robert gets a delivery each week to avoid this, pops to the offie at the end of his street for essentials where he only has to deal with the crowd of bored teenagers and their endless supply of Monster and other late night professionals who’ve realised their milk’s gone sour since their last coffee break.
“I’ll grab the peas while you hit toiletries?” Aaron says. Their arms are pressed together to avoid losing each other in the crowd and Robert misses it the minute he turns away.
“See you on the other side,” Robert agrees, throwing him a stupid little salute that makes Aaron’s nose scrunch up.
He grabs a multipack of cheap plastic brushes, fine until he gets back to his futuristic monstrosity, then loiters by the self-checkout, letting blokes with boxes of beer and mums with dog food get by. When Aaron appears again it’s with a handful of things he doesn’t need, and Robert laughs and helps him balance the bottle of white wine and the tub of Häagan Dazs that’s giving him frostbite.
“Thanks,” Aaron says, slotting in front of a free machine. He grabs Robert’s toothbrushes and scans them with the rest of his stuff, waiting patiently for the young woman to confirm he’s old enough to buy alcohol, and refusing a receipt, and Robert follows him out the store feeling more and more like he needs a shower by the second.
The rest of the drive is easy, Robert complaining about Aaron’s taste in music and Aaron smacking his hand away from the radio until he gives up and just grips Robert’s fingers over the gearstick. Robert runs his thumb over Aaron’s knuckles and sees him smile out the corner of his eye.
It’s almost enough to stop the same, slow dread Robert feels every time he comes back
“So Vic’s cooking tonight?” he asks when they’ve rounded the last major bend and everything starts looking too familiar.
Aaron hums. “Full house.”
Robert shuts his eyes and takes a deep breath. He can do this. He’s always managed before.
Aaron squeezes his fingers and Robert wants to cry a bit.
“Okay,” he says, when he’s feeling more in control. “I need to dump my stuff and shower before I face everyone. What time?”
“Six,” Aaron says, still watching the road. Robert wants to ask him to pull over, to drag him into the back seat until he forgets why he hates it here in the first place. “Diane’s covering a shift at the pub, so a bit later than normal.”
At least that’s one less hour of family time.
Aaron pauses at some temporary traffic lights and twists painfully in his seat to kiss Robert, letting it linger as Robert drinks him in, the woody aftershave and the hair gel and that distinct muskiness that’s all him. Robert lifts his free hand and presses his fingertips to Aaron’s jaw, wanting so badly to stop time.
The car behind them sounds their horn and Aaron jolts back to reality, hands falling away from Robert as he swears and gets into the right gear.
The farm looks the same as always, cluttered and messy and functional in a way that should feel like home and just grates at Robert’s nerves. Friends over the years have asked what it was like growing up here, sighing with a nostalgia that only comes from never living it, and Robert can’t explain the bone deep ache it still leaves him with all these years later. Home but two steps to the right, a double exposure of something that could have been good but can’t, not now.
“You alright?” Aaron asks quietly, helping Robert get his bags from the boot, and Robert grits his teeth on a smile he knows Aaron’ll see right through.
“Sure,” he says, “never better.”
Aaron runs his hand over Robert’s back, just once, expression a little sad, and Robert lets the warmth of it soak into him before heading for the front door. Someone’s in the kitchen, pans clattering in the sink, and Robert makes sure his shoulders are set before letting himself in.
“There you are!” Vic says happily, fighting with her rubber gloves before throwing her arms around his waist, soap suds still caught on her wrists and soaking into his shirt. He hugs her back, pressing his cheek into her hair, and laughs when she pinches his side. “God, you’re skinny. I know London’s expensive but that doesn’t mean you can stop eating!”
“Cheers for that,” Robert says, already feels his accent slipping back like a worn blanket. “Anyway, I hear you’re cooking tonight, so maybe I was just saving space to eat a whole sheep.”
“Cheeky,” Vic says, then reaches around him to put the kettle on and Robert takes a breath. If it was just like this, always, he’d be fine. He’d come and see her for weeks at a time, let her pick on him for his hair and his clothes and his life choices and not think twice about it.
Never is, though.
“Robert,” his dad says, standing up from his seat at the kitchen table. He’s still wearing the jumper Andy bought him for Christmas a good seven, eight years back. “Trains running on time?”
“For once,” Robert says, happy to play along with the small talk if it means they barely have to look at each other.
“Good, good,” his dad says, but his attention’s already drifting back to the accounts on the table and the fresh cup of tea Vic’s placing in front of him. “Dinner’s at six,” he says sternly, like Robert’s still a kid trying to play outside too long.
Robert nods, doesn’t bother pointing out otherwise. “Just gonna grab a quick shower then I’ll come help you peel the spuds, Vic.”
“Bless your heart,” Vic says, grinning at him over her shoulder. Her hair’s longer than the last time he saw her. “Now go, quick, before you change your mind.”
He laughs and takes his bags from where Aaron’s left them; the front door’s still open, so he’s probably back in the yard, and Robert looks at it wistfully for a moment before trudging upstairs and fighting through the mishmash of boxes that have spilled out of storage and into his childhood room. The posters from his teen years are still blu tacked behind the bed, cars and celebrities who’ve fallen off the radar and bands he hasn’t listened to in a decade. There’s a trophy he’d won in a footie match at fourteen and pictures from a school trip he’d got printed at a shop that doesn’t exist anymore, most of them blurry. Hell, there’s probably a dirty mag or two still under the mattress.
It all feels like it belongs to someone else.
The water pressure’s shit so he speeds through a shower, changing into old jeans and a navy sweater he’d bought with the M&S gift voucher Annie had sent him for his last birthday, digging an old pair of socks from the pine chest of drawers and plodding down the stairs in time to hear Andy and Katie greet Jack and Vic in the kitchen.
Robert grips the banister, takes another deep breath as they fade a bit, gone to check on the stables most likely, his dad still holding the literal and metaphorical reigns of everything they do. Probably still drives Katie ‘round the bend, but that’s not any of Robert’s business.
He’s expecting it to just be him and Vic for a bit, a needed respite, but as his foot hits the bottom step another voice starts up, louder and nearer and causing Robert’s throat to seize a little.
“Thanks for picking him up,” John says, and God, he still sounds like as much of a prick as ever. “I know it was out of your way.”
“It’s fine,” Aaron says begrudgingly, like he means the opposite. “Didn’t take long.”
John hums and there’s the sound of shuffling footsteps. “I’ll make it up to you later,” he says, low and meaningful.
“You’d better.” Aaron’s huffed laugh sends a bitter jolt through Robert’s chest. He waits five, ten, fifteen seconds before thudding his foot down and stepping into the sitting room where John’s arms are around Aaron’s waist and the lingering memory of a kiss is on the air.
“Robert,” John says, not bothering to step back, and Robert keeps his expression neutral, nodding back.
“John.”
He slips passed them both, not letting his eyes fall on Aaron at all, and breathes in relief when Vic smiles, handing him a peeler and turning up the crappy old radio on the windowsill.
“Glad you’re here,” she says softly when his hands smell of starch and they’ve both started singing along softly to songs from long before they were born.
He nudges their shoulders together instead of replying.
The others come back eventually, Jack bypassing conversation to go to the little box room he’d turned into a study a few years ago, and Robert and Andy do the uncomfortable half hug thing they’ve been working on, smiles at least a little real as they try and forge something normal from years worth of wreckage. They’re doing the whole bygones be bygones thing — Vic’s idea but also Andy’s, and who’s Robert to say no — which is mostly working now they don’t live within a hundred miles of each other. Katie’s a little harder, gives Robert a nod from the other side of the room, and he nods back and doesn’t try and turn it into anything else; it’s enough for them to be in the same room, practically civil, and that’s all the family’s ever asked.
It helps, of course, that Andy and Katie are ambivalent about John. If they hadn’t been, if they’d taken him under their wings with warm affection and easy camaraderie, Robert may have had to bulldoze the whole place to the ground. Instead they give him polite smiles and ask about his day and don’t lend him the passion that’s a trait the rest of them share, and Robert’s more grateful for it than he can say, willing to make a go at leaving the past behind for that alone.
“Wine?” Katie asks, pulling a bottle of white out the fridge and waving it in Robert and Vic’s direction, pouring when they both nod. “Saw a walking group headed to the pub earlier so Diane might be held up a bit.”
“Oh,” John says on a frown. He’s holding a lukewarm beer from their dad’s stash outside the back door, Diane insisting he can’t take over the whole kitchen with the stuff, never cold enough to really be drinkable. Robert takes the wine glass from Katie with a grateful twitch of his lips.
“I’ll just move the pie to the warming oven,” Vic says, gulping her own drink down. “It’ll keep ’til she’s here. Besides, gives us a chance to rag on Rob a bit without the parentals around.”
“Or not,” Robert says, hoping she’s about to bring up the length of his hair or the watch he’d splurged for a few months ago and was still paying off in instalments. “We could talk about you instead. Heard you’ve been spending a lot of time up at Butlers lately…”
Vic squawks and Andy ducks his head guiltily.
“Traitor,” Vic tells Andy, pointing her wine at him. “Anyway, no clue what you’re talking about.” She tilts her nose in the air and Robert laughs right up until she says. “How’s Sam?” and he chokes on his own spit.
“Sam?” Andy asks, because he really is a gossip. “Who’s Sam?”
“No clue,” Victoria says smugly, grinning at Robert. “But she’s been texting Rob non-stop for the last hour.”
“Jesus, Vic,” he says, scrambling to pick up his phone from the counter and shoving it in his pocket.
Katie laughs, leaning easily into Andy who looks like he wants a full investigation, so Robert avoids his eye and accidentally catches on John’s vague disdain instead. Which is fine, even if Robert thinks he should at least get better at faking.
“You’re good though, yeah?” Andy asks, and it’s nice. Normal. “London’s okay?”
“Yeah, it’s great,” Robert says, which is mostly true. He loves the city, loves his job, loves his crappy flat with the broken microwave and the brilliant water pressure. Has friends he hangs out with at the weekends and a favourite ramen spot and neighbours he doesn’t hate. It’s everything he ever wanted, even if loneliness drags on his bones some days. “Got to lead on a big project last month.”
“That’s brill,” Vic says, squeezing his arm, and Andy crows in agreement even if has no idea what it is Robert actually does.
“We were thinking we might come down for a weekend,” Katie says carefully, testing the waters. “A friend’s got a hen do at one of those fancy brunch places, and we figured, if you’re free, maybe you could show us ‘round your neck of the woods?”
Robert’s chest feels tights, like something’s caught fire beneath his ribs, and he resists the urge to rub at it.
“Yeah,” he says, tries not to sound too eager when Andy grins. “Yeah, ‘course. Any time.”
“Great,” Andy says, looking down at Katie with a smile.
Robert downs the rest of his wine, waits until they won’t think he’s freaking out and excuses himself to the loo, standing over the basin and getting his head screwed back on.
Aaron’s waiting in the hallway when he opens the door, arms crossed and expression distant.
“So,” he says quietly, and Robert frowns, wiping his clean hands on his jeans. “Who’s Sam?”
Robert’s jaw clenches, and Aaron tracks it with narrowed eyes. Jealousy’s a good look on him, not one Robert’s really seen before.
“Didn’t wanna bring her up for the weekend?” Aaron continues when Robert doesn’t answer, steps forward until he’s in Robert’s face. Robert can still taste him behind his teeth if he tries hard enough.
Robert’s eyes dart to his lips — dangerous, dangerous, dangerous — and Aaron’s follow, tip of his tongue darting out. Robert’s heart’s thumping against his ribs, trying to burst out his chest.
“Diane’s here,” Andy calls, and lets Aaron be the one to step back, watching as he squeezes his eyes shut, rubbing a hand over his face.
“Coming,” Robert shouts back, and waits for Aaron to stop looking so mad at himself before leaning closer, lips close to his ear. “Didn’t wanna bring him up for the weekend,” he says, barely above a whisper.
He leaves before he sees Aaron’s reaction.
When his dad kicked him out — “Sent you away for your own good,” he’ll say later, much later, the sort of later that’s left Robert shaky and independent and alone. “Take some responsibility, Robert.” — he drove until his eyes hurt and his stomach cramped and the world felt like it had ended with country roads and northern accents.
He’d had some money in savings, meant for a decent car, that had covered a couple nights in a shitty hostel and a month’s rent on a house share that felt more like squatting than anything else. He’d gone to Primark for the basics, eaten more McDonalds saver meals than he’d ever wanted, and applied for every job advertised. Two months behind the bar in a pub that barely paid minimum wage and tips the manager pocketed, another two with a painter-decorator who’d fractured his foot and needed the help, six answering phones in a call centre.
None of it had been enough to make ends meet, but.
Well.
Robert had other things going for him.
Two years later he’d met someone who knew someone who needed a temp at their advertising company, and Robert had ironed his best shirt, put on the smile that kept him alive, and charmed his way into a job that became permanent when they realised he was willing to work hard. He had his own desk, his own clients, and the eye of people far more important than him.
And then his dad had a heart attack.
It’d been touch and go, Andy told him when Robert finally picked up the phone, but he’d made it. There hadn't been much else to say given the resentment still clinging to them at the time, but Robert had taken annual leave and headed back to Emmerdale, sat around the kitchen table as Vic cried on his shoulder and Diane fussed and Annie called from a bad connection in Spain, and braved himself to see his dad for the first time in three years.
In typical Jack Sugden fashion, he’d barely reacted to Robert’s presence, taking it as a given, and Robert had bitten his tongue and tried not to scream.
He’d gone back to London less than twenty-four hours later, unable to deal with the oppressive normalcy, but he’d answered his dad’s calls when they came every now and then, Vic’s more often, until everyone besides Robert seemed to forget he’d been kicked out at all.
Robert thought about shoving it back in their faces, showing up for Christmas and listing their sins so they couldn’t forget why he wasn’t there, why they didn’t want him. Felt sick with the need to shatter the perfect family they pretended they were to everyone else.
He’d thought about it right up until Vic called and haltingly told him that their dad had been in touch with someone, a bloke a bit younger than Robert, and was he sitting down? A brother.
Another Sugden lad.
John.
“He’s nice,” she’d said, still a little confused herself. “He’s in the army? Or he was in the army? A medic, I think. And, uh, he’s gay, which is cool. I don’t think Dad knew he existed, so he’s really trying now, y’know? Since the heart attack.”
Robert had let her talk and talk and talk and must have said something suitably normal because she’d hung up cheerfully enough while he’d held his phone up to his ear long enough for his wrist to cramp.
Then he’d sat on the disgusting bathroom floor of his shitty house share and laughed until he’d cried.
Dinner’s only marginally awkward.
Diane asks about work and his trip last month to see Annie and whether he got the invite to Bernice’s birthday do, and Robert answers easily, glossing over the long hours and Annie’s stern words about Jack and the fact he has no desire to come back anytime soon, even for his mental step-sister.
The food’s great because of course it is, and Katie fills them in on her new plans for the riding school, whilst Vic ducks Andy’s questions about whatever lad she is or isn’t seeing and their dad tries to bring everything back to the farm whenever there’s a lull in conversation. John talks about the surgery some, gives away what Robert thinks is a little too much confidential information about people they all know, but everyone nods and smiles and includes him the way they would a distant cousin, except for Jack who pats his shoulder and gets him another beer and looks proud as punch.
Katie tops up Robert’s glass without asking, and he might still be in love with her a bit, actually.
Vic and Aaron have been friends for years, quietly chatting at the other end of the table, and Robert keeps having to drag his gaze away from the muscle in Aaron’s neck, the flush in his cheeks as the room gets warmer, the stubble he can still feel against his own chin.
“Actually,” John says, coughing dramatically. Robert thinks he’d have tapped his knife against a glass if Diane wouldn’t have killed him for risking her crockery. “Uh, we have an announcement. Aaron’s family already know, but I wanted to tell you together, like this.” Robert’s hand freezes halfway to his mouth, his whole body going cold. “We’re getting married.”
Somewhere Vic’s gasping, grabbing hold of Aaron and pulling him into a hug, Andy and Katie offering their congratulations whilst Diane claps and starts fluttering around talking about champagne.
That’s not where Robert’s looking, though.
At the far end of the table his dad’s standing, pulling John to his feet and into waiting arms. A manly hug between manly men.
“Congratulations,” Jack Sugden says, smile cracking his usually dour exterior. “I’m happy for you, son.”
That’s nice, Robert thinks somewhere in the periphery of his mind. That’s the right thing to say.
Jack lets John go, slapping a friendly hand on Aaron’s shoulder as he looks at his family and then his eyes snag on Robert and everything just stops.
He can’t be here, he can’t, he—
“Congratulations,” he says, and his voice sounds far away to his own ears. “Diane’s right, we need champagne. I’ll go get some.”
He must sound somewhat normal because they only ask if he’s sure, if he’s good to drive, and Robert nods and doesn’t point out that none of them are particularly good to drive, but he knows these roads like the back of his hands and if he doesn’t get out of here in the next ten seconds then he’s going to do something unforgivably stupid.
He’s trying to be better than that these days, if only as a fuck you.
Robert makes it as far as the old Land Rover they’re all insured on, hoping Andy’s left the keys in like he normally does — cracking jokes about anyone stealing it doing them a favour, the piece of junk — before anyone stops him.
“Robert,” Aaron calls, catching up to him with nervous eyes and a set jaw, already on the defence.
“Did you need anything else?” Robert asks politely. Doesn’t know how to look at him right now.
“Robert,” Aaron says again, tugging on his arm until he’s facing him, the car between them and the house. “Look, I didn’t know how to tell ya…”
“It’s fine,” Robert lies, doesn’t pretend it’s anything else. “Congratulations again. Do you have a ring?”
Aaron shoves his hand in his pocket which means yes, one he wasn’t wearing earlier ‘cause Robert would’ve felt it against his neck, cold and foreboding. He knows Aaron’s looking for a fight, something to make him feel less guilty, but Robert’s so tired. Can’t think about anything except his dad’s easy acceptance and Aaron’s lips on his only hours ago.
Wishes he’d stayed in London, wishes he’d lost all their numbers years ago.
“Right, well,” he says, opening the car door. The keys are in the cup holder, thank God. “I’ll be back in a bit. Tell Diane I’ll see if they’ve got something good for a late dessert, too. Soak up the booze.”
Aaron’s eyes are damp at the edges, the light from the windows catching and making them shine. Robert wants to thumb them away, kiss him until his lip bleeds, and beg for promises he has no right to demand.
He starts the ignition and shuts the door before Aaron can find whatever words are eluding him.
The village shop’s still open, and he picks up three bottles of decent-ish Prosecco because no one up at theirs will know the difference, and a chocolate gateau from the freezer box that says it can be defrosted in the microwave.
“Ah,” Paddy Kirk says as he’s getting ready to check out, a pint of milk between his fingers. “Celebrating?”
Aaron’s family already know, John had said, so Paddy’s sussing the waters, trying not to give anything away just in case, and Robert wants to tell him to go to hell. Wants to explain in perfect detail how it’d felt when Aaron last fucked him over the hay bales in the farthest barn, Robert twenty minutes late for his train, Aaron’s come still dripping out of him because they’d been too desperate to find a condom.
See how he feels about celebrating then.
“Yeah,” he says instead, waving a bottle of Prosecco at him as he digs out his debit card. “They just told us.”
“Oh, brilliant,” Paddy says. “That’s great. I know Aaron was a bit worried about it, wasn’t sure how…But I told him it’d go okay.”
“Everyone’s thrilled,” Robert says, glad when Paddy doesn’t seem to hear the bitten sarcasm behind it.
“Well, I won’t stop ya then. Might be nice to get everyone together at the pub tomorrow, Dingles and Sugdens united and all that.” He’s rocking on his feet, clearly pleased with himself, and Robert wonders if he’s forgotten he’s not a Dingle. Hell, wonders if they’ve all suddenly forgotten Debbie and the kids exist.
“I’ll pass it on,” he says politely, the voice he’s learnt to use with difficult clients. God knows he wasn’t this diplomatic before.
Outside, he dumps everything in the passenger seat and just sits for a bit. His phone’s still digging into his arse, forgotten about, and when he finally checks he has a string of messages from Sam, all of them light and funny, not expecting a response.
Robert hits call, head resting on the steering wheel.
“Hey!” Sam says cheerfully, the distant sounds of London at night in the background. Robert squeezes his eyes closed and wishes he was there. “How’s farm life?”
“Fucking awful,” Robert tells him honestly, and Sam’s laugh isn’t unkind. “My brother’s engaged.”
“Thought he was already married to your ex?” Sam says, because Robert had gotten drunk enough on cheap vodka oranges once to spill at least five percent of his history.
“The other one, the new one,” Robert says, sure he must have brought that up; it was long enough ago now. Sam hums, distracted, and Robert wishes he felt bad for dragging him away from his plans. “Anyway, he’s engaged to a bloke.”
“Cool,” Sam says, because even wasted and messy there are some things Robert’s never been able to talk about. “Full on then?”
“Just buying up the local supply of bubbles,” Robert says, every part of him aching. He should be over this. It shouldn’t still claw at him, make him feel small and useless and lost.
There’s muffled voices over the line, and then Sam’s saying, “Hey, Charlie wants to know if we wanna go to that Vietnamese place in London Fields next weekend. Early birthday thing.”
“Sure,” Robert says, doesn’t have to think about it, can already picture an easy Saturday in the park, drinking cans and kicking a ball around before eating too much good food and stumbling back home to shag on the sofa. Right now it sounds like heaven. “I’m in.”
“Sweet,” Sam says. “Look, I’ve got to go, Rach’s just grabbed a cab. Call if you need a break, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Robert says, throwing his phone on the passenger seat with the slowly defrosting gateau.
Just two more days then he can go back to London.
Two more days.
Fuck.