8. Stargate SG1

 

JC hangs out with Howie, or maybe it's the other way round. They've hooked up, Aaron thinks it's safe to assume when he finds them sprawled on a bed, making out.

He goes back to the living room where Nick's watching TV and watches him for a while. Nick doesn't look upset, but then, Aaron thinks, it's not like he can tell anymore.

"I need a ride home," he says during the commercials.

"Call a cab," Nick says, not looking up.

Aaron does.

 

 

There's a club where he's allowed in, and people don't ask questions and Lisa knows about it well enough that when there was an accident involving a camera, she fixed it before his mother or Nick found out. The Firm pay her, and he pays the Firm. He thinks that makes her his employee. He's not sure.

He thinks a lot more these days.

He dances and the music's loud enough to drown out everything else. Techno, and he could take something but he doesn't trust the drugs here, and if he closes his eyes and looks up at the flashing strobe lights, it's all sparkling stars anyway. High on life he thinks and laughs.

He's almost fifteen, and he starts having a lot of anonymous sex. He can buy condoms on his own, thankyouverymuch, no big brother needed, but the bodyguards are with him in the supermarket, and they never say anything, and Lisa never says anything, so he guesses it's okay with the Firm.

Nick never did this, he thinks.

His neck hurts, bent so he can look back at the man pushing him up against the wall in the bathroom stall. Jeans down and he can't spread his legs, denim round his ankles trapping him, though god he wants to. No thinking. Fumbling with his hands for the condom, slick and hard and fast, and the guy's tall and skinny, wiry muscles on his arms that Aaron licks as the guy pounds into him, and not even a fucking reach-around, but he forgives everything when the guy drops on his knees and blows him.

He goes home, showers and goes to Nick's room.

He drips on Nick's floor, the towel tucked around his waist, loose enough that he could shake it off, stand there naked and clean.

Nick's asleep and he doesn't wake up. Aaron thinks about saying his name. Going over to the bed. Touching him. His thoughts skitter away and his teeth start chattering. He's freezing, and he can't move.

He does, because Nick doesn't wake up, just sleeps steadily, snoring quietly.

He wakes up late, and his clothes are still on the floor, stinking of club smoke, torn gold foil falling out of the pockets. His mother shakes him awake and tells him he has a two o'clock appointment, don't be late.

He gets up, and he calls Angel.

She doesn't live at home anymore. She likes her house, likes the people she's with, and Nicks says things are better this way, and their mother nods and agrees, her hands pressed tightly together on her lap. Their father doesn't say anything, anyway, and Leslie wrote last week, said she and Angel were going out, museums and parks and stuff. Normal stuff, she wrote, and Aaron was glad for them.

His hands shake when he dials, and he thinks it's the hangover, except he only had one drink.

He tells her that he got fucked in a bathroom stall and he can't remember the guy's face, except that he had black hair and nothing felt right and he keeps showering but he can't.

He says, "I can't."

Angel doesn't say anything for a while. Aaron cries, soundlessly, with the heel of his hand pushed against his eyes. He has a headache now, his nose is running and his ear hurts from the phone pressed so hard against it.

"I'll send you some stuff," she says. "You can come here."

"Oh baby," he says. "Baby, you know I can't."

No-one else gets to call her baby, and no-one else knows about the promises Aaron's made on paper and skin, on his knees. Aaron looks at AJ sometimes with disgust, because he's seen the look on Kevin's face when Germany comes up, and he's old enough now. Nothing comes with a price, and everyone pays for Nick's free ride.

Aaron washes his face and gets dressed. He has to go for a run, no time to work-out and he wants to run. Stretch his legs and think. He thinks about crying some more but decides not to.

 

 

Angel sends him Stargate stories, a couple of DVDs, the rest on VHS. He watches them when Nick's asleep, before he goes out clubbing. Two months in Orlando, finish the record, take off on tour, and Nick's working at the studio too, and somehow Aaron's schedule never gives them free time together.

He gets Lisa a mocha from Starbucks and she drinks it without thanking him. He learns his lines, sings them back and learns some more about production, sits in on the video meetings this time.

He watches Stargate, and it's great cheesy sci-fi, smart enough that he pays attention, and nothing makes sense, but it does anyway. Daniel dies, and dies again, and Jack watches, and Aaron reads the stories.

Season five comes, and Aaron watches two then three episodes at a time. Angel warns him about Meridian, but he watches it anyway.

He goes out and this time it's a woman, maybe in her thirties, he doesn't know. He's never been good at guessing ages. She's got crows-feet around her eyes and they're beautiful and he wants to kiss them, except he's high and ends up kissing her instead. She's a little taller in her heels and they sway together, and then he pushes up her skirt, and he's not surprised at all that she's got nothing on underneath. It's that kind of club, and she pulls a condom out of his pocket, unzips him in the dark with her mouth on neck, and when he sinks home, he closes his eyes and thinks, "Jack."

Duncan, Fox, Buffy, Harry, Han.

He comes and she asks for his autograph while she's re-applying her lipstick.

 

 

He goes home and reads all the stories that end happily. Daniel comes back, Jack says he was wrong. We can't, and then they can, and it's nearly dawn when he finishes.

He shuts down his laptop and goes to Nick's room.

He hasn't showered and his clothes stink. He takes them off and climbs into bed next to Nick, presses his face against the crook of Nick's shoulder and breathes deeply, the scent of warm-clean-Nick stronger than the perfume the woman had, cigarette smoke and sweat.

He breathes and he kisses lightly, and Nick wakes up and looks at him, and Aaron thinks he should start crying now. Nick's not especially smart, he's a sucker for tears, and Aaron knows he could work this.

He stays silent and still and waits.

Nick turns a little, shifts his arms so Aaron can lie down inside them. Nick kisses his cheek, sleep-clumsy, and then tucks his head against Aaron's, and goes back to sleep.

In the morning, Aaron wakes up alone. He's stiff and his eyes sting, and he jacks off in the shower, thinking about nothing, a blinding empty stretch of nothing. He makes coffee and drinks it in the empty kitchen. Everyone's left for the day, his schedule printed out and left on top of the newspaper. He drinks slowly and thinks about Abydos.

 

next