Work Text:
“Thank you, Aaron,” Ruby calls up to him, pointedly looking at Caleb, who’s watching him with a pinched look. Aaron rolls his eyes, and tries to remember how he’s ended up here.
He’s perched on a rickety ladder, hanging Christmas lights up on the roof of the Mill. He doesn’t even live here anymore! But Ruby had looked at him as he was passing, with big eyes, and a sneaky smile, and said “your uncle’s a wimp, you know that?” and, next thing he knows, he’s 4 meters in the air.
He’s nearly done, thankfully, just one more loop to go over and then he can make his way back down to solid ground and pretend he hasn’t been freaking out about being up so high so precariously. He makes a mental note to thank Robert for not insisting on any outdoor lights at Tall Trees. They’ve only been moved in for about 2 months, and the outside is untouched, but the inside of the cottage looks like winter wonderland threw up in there.
He makes the mistake of glancing down and feels his stomach flip. As if the height’s not bad enough, Ruby and Caleb now seem to be play fighting and grabbing at each other. Aaron would begrudge them it if he didn’t know he and Robert are just as bad. If not worse.
It's with that thought in his head, a small smile on his face, that Aaron reaches forward to finish the last bit and someone – Caleb’s foot or Ruby’s elbow, the two of them giggling and twirling about like kids – knocks the ladder, and Aaron loses his balance and comes tumbling down, dragging the lights with him.
The fall is quick, only a few seconds, but it’s long enough to put him right back at the gorge, where he’d felt like he was falling forever. Maybe he’s still there actually, and the last year and some months were just a figment of his imagination, made up by his brain because he couldn’t comprehend that he’s dying.
Then he hits the ground, landing awkwardly on his right elbow and that pain is definitely real. So, good news, you’re not dead, a snarky voice that sounds a bit like Liv says in his head, bad news, that elbow’s definitely broken.
Ruby and Caleb run over to him, full of apologies and shocked faces, and they attempt to untangle him from the lights. They give up on lifting him to his feet when he yells at the movement.
“I’ll call an ambulance,” Ruby says, stepping away, phone already to her ear.
Aaron’s perception of time as he lies there, blinking against the pain and shock, is disjointed because he feels like he’s been lying in that spot for days, but at the same time just a moment or two, looking up at Caleb’s concerned face, before he comes back to himself enough to speak.
“I think my elbow’s broken…” he says, pushing himself up to a sitting position with his left arm, wincing. He starts to try to get his feet under himself, but Caleb puts a hand on his shoulder, gently but firmly.
“No, no, don’t move too much, we didn’t see if you hit your head, and you were kind of out of it for a second there.”
Aaron groans, but stops trying to stand, instead just shifting enough so he can lean back against the house. There’s a light up elf’s foot sticking into his back, but he can’t be arsed to move again. Ruby comes back over, phone still to her ear.
“The ambulance is coming, they say any minute now. Are you dizzy at all?”
“Maybe a little bit, yeah,” Aaron admits. “But it’s my arm that’s the issue here I think.”
Ruby relays the information to emergency services operator on the phone, and she’s about to ask him another question, when he interrupts her.
“Hey, don’t tell Robert, okay?” the two of them look confused by this, Ruby especially, as she and Robert have become quite close over the last year, but Aaron presses forward. “He’ll only freak out when there’s nothing he can do. May as well get the information first, I’ll call him from the hospital.” He pats his pockets for his phone then, pulls it out of his jeans with a bit of effort. It’s, miraculously, unbroken, and he has a missed call from Mackenzie.
He’s debating calling him back, when the ambulance pulls up and he’s suddenly in a collar, on a gurney and being wheeled in to the back. He’s telling Caleb not to call his mum either, he’ll get Robert to fill her in once he speaks with him, when Mackenzie comes running up to them.
“Aaron! Mate, what the hell?”
“It was just a little fall,” Aaron says, trying to calm him down. The paramedics – who were wearing Santa hats with their uniforms, God give him strength – have given him something for the pain and he can think a little clearer now. “It’s probably just a broken bone, nothing major.”
Mackenzie looks pale as he breathes heavily. He looks like he’s run here all the way from the farm. “Right, okay. Okay.”
“And, Mackenzie, mate, do me a favour, and don’t mention this to Robert, yeah? No need to worry him.”
Mackenzie somehow goes even paler. “Yes, well, actually, about Robert…”
“What about Robert?” Aaron asks, gruffly, and he tries to sit up, but the paramedic pulls him back to the bed.
“Sir, we really need to get goin-”
“What about Robert?” Aaron asks again, cutting her off, staring at Mackenzie.
“Well… there was a, you know, a little… accident at the farm. But he’s fine! Robert’s fine! Just, you know, maybe a little sprained ankle?” Mackenzie shrugs, grimacing, then swallows, and looks down. “Or maybe a broken… leg.”
“Broken?!”
“And possibly a… dislocated shoulder?”
“Mackenzie!”
“In my defence, Ross told me that trailer was properly hooked in!”
“You did this?!” Aaron yells, and the paramedic has to haul him back down onto the gurney again.
“Okay!” she says, clapping her hands once. “We have to go.” She reaches over to close the ambulance door and asks, “Was this Robert taken to Hotten General?”
“Yes, yes, Moira took him.” Mackenzie looks back at Aaron, who is seething in his functionally immobile state. “He asked me not to tell you, because he didn’t want you to worry. Isn’t that sweet? You were both trying to protect each oth-” the door to the ambulance is closed in Mackenzie’s face.
The paramedic lets out a sigh as she sits back down, and they get moving. “You can find out more about your boyfriend’s condition at the hospital.”
Aaron doesn’t question how she guessed at their relationship, supposes the way he reacted to Robert being hurt, along with the bare skin on his wedding finger probably gave it away. Hopefully not for too much longer though, he thinks, mind going to the ring box wrapped in coloured paper covered in reindeer in his night stand and the Christmas card Seb had done up with his art teacher’s help, that says Dad, will you marry Aaron?
The thought calms him a bit. Robert had been awake and alert enough to make the same demands of Mackenzie that Aaron himself had made of Caleb and Ruby, and they hadn’t called an ambulance, he’d been well enough to go in Moira’s car. So he’s probably not dying. And he’s definitely going to marry him again.
The paramedic doesn’t talk much as they go, besides checking his vitals, and it gives Aaron some time to review his thoughts from when he’d been falling. It’s been over a year since the gorge, and he had thought he was well past it, but now he’s not so sure. He makes a note to talk to his counsellor about it, and then while checking his calendar app to remember when his next appointment is, he realises that he’s due to pick Seb up from school in an hour.
He shoots a quick text off to Mackenzie, thanking God for autocorrect as he types with his left hand: As payment for maiming my boyfriend, you have to collect our son from school and not let him worry about why.
It’s mere seconds before the message is read and Mackenzie responds: Aye aye, captain 🫡
Aaron drops his phone down to his lap and tries to focus on his breathing. Finally relaxing a little bit, his eyes dart around the ambulance and he realises there’s tinsel around the cabinets. It’s quite nicely decorated, actually, though he doubts any of it’s standard issue.
When they arrive at the hospital, Aaron’s given a quick neurological exam by a doctor wearing a tie with snowmen on it, who determines that his initial dizziness was likely due to the pain and the shock. They write in his file that he should get a CT before he leaves the hospital, and then direct him to the waiting room, where he joins a group of sad, sore people who have most likely also lost battles with Christmas lights today.
Aaron has had the misfortune of spending a lot of time in hospital waiting rooms over the years and the attempt to fill this one with holiday cheer is frankly abysmal. The tree in the corner is lopsided and barely decorated, there’s some bunting around the wall that’s half falling down and a half hearted attempt at stringing tinsel around the doors and windows, that just looks quite sad. Should’ve gotten the paramedics to help, he thinks as he finds a seat.
Once he’s settled, he digs his phone out of his pocket again and calls Robert, ready to give him a piece of his mind, when he hears, not far behind him, the first few bars of Salt-n-Pepa’s ‘Whatta Man’. That’s Robert’s ringtone for Aaron, downloaded and saved years ago after learning that Aaron knew all the lyrics. Carefully twisting to look over his shoulder without jostling his elbow too much, Aaron spots the love of his life and bane of his existence sitting in a wheelchair just two rows back, pulling his phone from his jacket.
Robert seems to be struggling a bit, holding his left arm stiffly, and Aaron takes the opportunity to give him a once-over. Looks like his left arm and leg are giving him the most trouble, but there are also a number of angry looking scratches on his face that Mackenzie hadn’t mentioned.
He hangs up before Robert can answer and makes his way over, plopping himself down in the seat next to him, cutting off some old biddy who’d been eying that spot. She grumbles and glares daggers at him as she passes, but Aaron’s only got eyes for Robert, who is looking at him wide-eyed.
“I told Mack not to tell you,” he starts, and then blinks as he looks down and sees the makeshift sling Aaron’s in. “Wait, what-”
“Yeah, well…” Aaron feels the fight leave him as he’s flooded with relief just sitting with Robert, and shrugs his left shoulder. “I told Caleb and Ruby not to tell you, so. Go on then, what happened? Mackenzie said something about a trailer?”
Robert blinks, then settles back in his chair as much as he can, keeping his leg stretched out in front of him and his arm as immobile as possible. He reaches his right hand out to rest on Aaron’s knee and Aaron grabs it reflexively, as the last dregs of panic seep from him.
“It came loose somehow and came speeding down the hill, and there were a bunch of families there looking at the Christmas trees,” a business idea of Robert’s for the farm that was going extremely well (Robert’s not the first to sing his own praises, at least not anymore, but Aaron will happily do it for him), “and there was this little girl, maybe four or five, and I couldn’t just let her get hit, so I pulled her out of the way and well…” he lifts their linked hands to gesture to the whole left side of his body. “The rest is self-explanatory, I guess.”
Aaron nods, as he looks at the few marks on Robert’s face, from the gravel on the ground he supposes. “Mackenzie said Moira dropped you in, where’s she gone off to?”
“I told her to go back. They need her there, and the wait here is going to be hours yet.” Robert squeezes his hand then and turns the tables on him. “Go on, then? What’s your story?”
Aaron sighs. “Well, while you were heroically saving a young child’s life,” Robert chuckles and rolls his eyes, “I was heroically saving Ruby Milligan’s Christmas decorations.”
“Huh?”
Aaron closes his eyes and thinks back to the order of events. “Ruby said Caleb was too scared to put the Christmas lights up on the roof of the Mill…”
“Obviously, that would be incredibly dangerous.”
“… Yeah, yeah I suppose it would…” Aaron can feel Robert staring at him as he tries his best to look anywhere else in the room.
“Aaron,” Robert sighs, taking his hand from Aaron’s hold to rub his temple.
“I was nearly done!” Aaron protests, looking back at him. “It would have been fine if they hadn’t knocked into the ladder, blame Caleb and Ruby!”
“Oh, don’t worry, I will!”
“And I’ll blame Mackenzie.”
“No, it wasn’t Mack’s fault…”
“Fine, I’ll blame the family who waited until a few days before Christmas to get their tree. Shouldn’t that child have been in school? In fact, I blame the parents!”
“Look, if you want to blame someone, blame Ross.”
“Oh, no problem, I blame him for most stuff these days anyway!”
They bicker and chat and bicker and laugh and bicker for nearly three hours before someone comes to take Robert for an x-ray and to relocate his shoulder, and then Aaron sits there alone staring unseeing at the mismatched baubles on the sad waiting room Christmas tree until someone comes and takes him for a CT and his own x-ray.
Aaron’s head is fine.
Robert’s shoulder will be tender for a while.
Aaron has an olecranon fracture and he blinks at the excitable young doctor wearing novelty Christmas glasses when he’s told this. They explain he needs a cast but it should heal itself in about six weeks.
Robert’s leg is broken in two places across his tibia and fibula, but, again, should heal in roughly six weeks, as long as he wears a boot and stays off his feet as much as possible.
They’re going to be okay. They’re actually incredibly lucky, all things considered.
“Looks like a pretty stationary Christmas for us this year, then?” Robert quips as he’s rolled to the entrance by an orderly, Aaron walking alongside. Aaron’s fine with that, last year’s Christmas had been more excitement than he’d thought he could handle. Having to hole up in Tall Trees with Robert and Seb for the holiday period sounds like a dream, actually. He’ll still be a little sore by Christmas day, but it’ll take more than a two storey fall to keep him from getting down on one knee.
Aaron had called Mackenzie for a lift home, but it’s his mum waiting for them as they emerge, and he groans. She stalks over to them, giving them a terse once-over before pulling Aaron into a hug. He winces but allows it, knowing she’s probably been up the walls if the missed calls on his phone are anything to go by.
“Why didn’t you call me?” she demands, pulling back, and before Aaron can answer she turning to Robert as well, who’s now trying to balance on his new crutches. “And you! I had to hear about it from Ross of all people!” and she’s wrapping Robert into a careful hug then. He looks at Aaron over her head, surprised, but hugs her back as best he’s able. Chas stands back then, hands on hips, looking between the two of them for an explanation. “Well?!”
Aaron and Robert look at each other, before turning back to her and shrugging.
“Didn’t want to worry you?”