We don’t talk. We just sit side by side on the plush blue sofa with our feet kicked up on the shabby wooden coffee table, drinking whiskey in a silence that is shockingly comfortable. I haven’t been comfortable with anyone since … maybe ever if I’m real.
Aaron doesn’t quite relax, but his broad shoulders hold none of their usual tension, and there’s an open, accessible quality to his face that I find difficult not to stare at. He has a strong jaw, clean-shaven usually, but at this very moment I can see a short layer of stubble prickling across it, dark as the hair on his head, which is also longer now than it was, a couple locks curling over his forehead. He probably needs a regulation haircut or something. All I can think about is tugging on those erroneousstrands, twisting them around my fingers, stroking my thumb along them to find out if they’re as soft as they look.
“What did he do?” I ask him without any sort of polite buildup.
Sitting this close, I can see a faint scar that slashes across his right cheek. It cuts into his stubble, paving a way through it like a crack in an age-old mountainside. I wonder how he got it. Bomb shrapnel? A knife? Did someone hold a blade to this man’s handsome face with the intent of marking it forever? Aaron seems the type to lean into a weapon just to get close enough to stick his own knife between someone’s ribs. Calculated risk. That’s what I see when I look at him. A man who takes calculated risks.
I’m dead curious to find out how a man like that got his bones scorched pitch-black with rage.
Aaron turns his head to look at me with a knowing expression on his face, and once again, he doesn’t need an explanation, he doesn’t ask what I mean, or what I’m going on about now. He just knows. Somehow. It’s discomforting to deal with someone so perceptive, who also holds a great deal of power in this thing between us.
“Your father took my son,” he says, and there it is, the seething fury that writhes underneath his skin. I can practically see it thrash, clawing and biting to be freed from its fleshy confines, to cause damage and spill blood without the restraint Aaron puts on it.
“You have a son?” I think for a moment it should be “had.” If my dad took his son, there’s a good chance he never got him back. Something in my gut frosts over, emanating a biting chill at the thought.
Aaron taps his finger against his whiskey glass, an unconscious gesture that I don’t know how to read yet, other than to understand that it is a tell of some kind.
“Yeah,” he says, and there’s a proud tilt to his mouth that indicates how he feels about his son. “Damon.” Then there’s a slight downturn of his mouth, which also suggests there could be some tension between them.
It’s easy to forget that when a kid has daddy issues, the daddy involved probably has a whole shitload of funhouse-mirror fuckary going on inside their heads too.
“Was Damon injected with Liquid Onyx?” Because that would certainly explain Aaron’s personal investment.
“No, but he was meant to be. They took him because he was mine. OI wanted to make a weapon out Senior Agent Aaron North’s son,” Aaron confirms, and just like that, the same white-hot fury is back in his voice, quick as a whip, cruelly slicing open bared skin. It’s so strong, that ferocious emotion like spiked teeth in a willing mouth, designed to rip and shred. His fingers clench around his whiskey glass, the skin of his knuckles slowly turning white from the pressure he’s subconsciously exerting.
It’s interesting to watch Aaron force himself to calm down. He’s a severely reserved man most of the time, but it’s clearly a struggle for him to retain his composure in the face of all that suppressed rage he has thrashing around inside him over what happened to his son.
I’ve seen the same poison burn its way through my dad countless times, except he never bothered to rein himself in, preferring to purge his toxicity by inflicting the pain and inciting the fear that imbued him with the power he craved.
“Did he survive?” I ask bluntly. There’s really no other way to ask whether my dad murdered his son for the sake of scientific advancement.
Aaron doesn’t flinch at the question, so I’m almost certain the answer is in the negative before he says, “Damon was one of the lucky ones who made it out of OI’s labs alive, yeah.”
It’s like hearing a chainsaw blade get dragged across concrete.
“Cute that you think living through it means he’s lucky,” I say acerbically.
Lucky? Cursed, more like.
Although if Damon North had a good home to go back to, unlike so many of the others, then maybe not. Maybe he was lucky in more ways than one.
Aaron doesn’t react to my jibe in any visible way, which is frustrating. He let me see his anger before, a twisted mess of barbed wire, electrified and sparking stray volts. But maybe he regrets that. Although Aaron doesn’t strike me as a man who regrets much. I prefer to imagine we’re alike in that regard even if our reasons for being so are different.
“Are you a good dad?” It’s a double-edged question with no right answer, especially since the answer isn’t the point. I just want him a little off-balance so he’s more likely to be honest with questions I actually care about.
Aaron’s heavy gaze falters, his eyes flickering away, an obvious sign of him feeling self-conscious and exposed. I try not to be too triumphant in the face of it.
His eyes are drawn to the lamp that sits on the coffee table. The living room is dimly lit, the sky pitch black outside, the sun long since set. We didn’t bother to turn the main light on, just the small, shadeless lamp. He would need the illumination more than me, my Liquid Onyx blood providing me with enhanced eyesight that allows me to see easily with the barest hint of light.
“Why?” Aaron prods without looking at me. “Does it matter to you if I am?”
I can see where his mind is going, and he’s laughably wrong. “I’m not looking for a new dad, Aaron,” I tell him, not quite able to conceal my scorn over the idea.
“Glad about that,” he says, droller than I expected, seeming to have recovered some of his spine. Then more sombrely, he admits, “And no, I’m not a good dad.” There’s a conviction init that I’m not sure how to take. Self-flagellation is boring in anyone, but in Aaron it just looks undignified.
“Because you let your son get turned into a mutant freak?” I sound more annoyed than I meant to, which means the question has a bite to it, an accusation that I’m not sure I mean.
Aaron doesn’t seem as bothered this time, though. His attention flips back over to my face, and he raises both his eyebrows at me, appearing almost bemused. “You have a hardcore propensity for projecting, you know that, yeah?”
