Chapter Text
Duncan woke up in August. On the 24th.
Aerion was at work, piling up the t-shirts a group of teenagers had messed up, when he’d received the call from the nurse. She was thrilled to deliver the news, her voice happy and the nuance in her words careful in advising him that his alpha was to remain under observation.
Aerion thought nothing of it at the moment, that strong was the joy that overwhelmed him. To have his boyfriend, his alpha back at home, to have his family reunited. Him, Duncan, their dog Norna.
Later that day he’d apologized to her for not being allowed to go to the hospital together, and promised he’d bring Duncan home to her shortly.
But he’d failed.
In hindsight, he should’ve probably listened closer to the nurse’s cautious words about Duncan’s condition over the phone. However, nothing could have prepared him to stand at the threshold of his hospital room and meet his alpha’s curious eyes on him, looking at him like he was an assistant, just another nurse, only dressed in Forever 21 clothes instead of scrubs.
Duncan lay in bed, as he had for weeks, his wounds clean and healing, his broken arm held rigid in a cast. An ugly line of stitches ran from his temple, past his bandaged ear, where his eardrum had burst, and back into his head, darkening as they healed.
That was the culprit. The broken tissue that was mending shaved flesh but not memory.
Doctors had talked him and Duncan through it, explaining the science between the hit and his broken limb, the wounds to his head, what that meant for them now, the reason why it seemed like he couldn’t remember specific parts of his life before the trauma, and the usual time necessary for complete recovery.
A bunch of shit that had made Aerion dizzy.
‘It can happen after such an accident,’ they’d said, ‘memories come back fragmented. It may take some days, weeks, or even months. It depends on the patient.’
‘He is safe, and that is what matters.’ They’d said.
Duncan had apologized to Aerion with his usual honesty, admitting he couldn’t place him anywhere beyond their first hangout with friends in his memories. The openness to his heart and his apologetic face had been too much for Aerion to take. It’d made him sick.
They’d had the time to exchange a few polite words, like they were mere strangers, and the doctor followed, asking Aerion to talk privately.
In her quiet office, Aerion had listened to her careful explanations, her concern for Duncan, and her gentle advice on how not to overwhelm him.
After she’d asked the medical students out, she handed him the results of his second round of check-up, her gestures delicate, her smile tentative.
She was hopeful.
Tentatively, she’d congratulated him and suggested psychological support, if he ever needed it, if he ever felt like talking to someone.
He didn’t have to shoulder everything alone, she’d told him; the choice was his.
Aerion had mentally shut off her voice by the time he felt his cheeks tingling. In the toilets down the corridor, he bent over the wc and emptied his stomach, his clothes clinging to his sweaty skin, diaphragm aching from the strain.
That night, alone in their cold room, Aerion searched retrograde amnesia on the internet, desperate for an unfiltered understanding of it.
Two weeks later, Duncan came home from the hospital to collect his things. His family had found him a small apartment to rent downtown, as he couldn’t keep living with an omega he barely remembered meeting. An omega they’d never liked anyway.
He’d left with only a stuffed backpack, and Aerion didn’t protest.
The bed they usually shared, like everything else Duncan didn’t remember, remained untouched.
It was now December, snow covered the streets in a thick blanket of frost and reflected the warm light of the street lamps. It was a good thing that he’d decided to buy that padded jacket he saw on sale last week. It was warm and comfortable.
Aerion walked at an unhurried pace, and Norna followed at his side, panting out little clouds of cold air at the level of his knee. Every few steps she stopped, here, then there, to sniff at the ground and do her business, lingering longer each time.
By the third stop in a row, the leash drew taut. Aerion turned to look at her.
He gave a gentle pull. “Let’s go,” he said, voice flat. “It’s just a plastic bag.”
He glanced up at it, caught between the bare tree branches, swatting loudly in the wind, insistent and irritating.
The dog didn’t budge on the second, more forceful pull. She tilted her head instead, to one side and the other, and turned to Aerion when he got closer to slide his fingers under her collar.
Her tongue hanging out for a moment, she began to bark, throwing her full weight into the pull as she strained against Aerion’s hold. Despite his effort to keep her in place, she lunged forward, determined to reach it.
“Come on, don’t be stupid,” he sighed, and tugged at her collar to make her follow. “Let’s go home, aren’t you cold too? I’m freezing.”
“Looks pretty smart to me!”
Aerion’s neck could’ve snapped with the way he raised it to the sound of the familiar voice.
Duncan emerged from the direction Norna was fixated onto, sprouting out of nowhere like he wasn’t the tallest man around. Still, Aerion hadn’t seen him.
Duncan crouched down in front of Norna.
“She saw me first,” he happily said to no one, “aw, I’m so sorry I didn’t see you before!” He apologized to the dog, smiling and petting her.
She threw herself at him, and Aerion let go of the leash.
“Sorry I scared you.” He said, “I was right around here enjoying my dinner, but I can’t really see that well without my glasses and, well, I forgot them at home... anyway, I heard her bark,” he looked up from Norna’s thick gray fur, searching for Aerion’s eyes. “I hope you don’t mind?”
The omega met his gaze then. “Dinner?” He asked instead. There was no open kiosk at that time in the park.
“Ah yeah, I bought a hotdog from a cart few streets down from here, you know?”
No. Aerion didn’t know. That shitty food had always been for Duncan to pig out on.
“But I can’t eat properly if I’m not sitting, so...” he trailed off, the rest implied. Aerion didn’t need to know half of those things. He knew.
He knew his boyfriend. His ex-boyfriend.
Norna stood between them, looked like she was going to sit on Duncan if she could, but only ended up leaning on him with her whole weight. She raised a paw, head thrown back to look at Duncan and tongue falling to the side. The alpha’s hand flew to her chest, patting her lovingly.
She looked ridiculously small next to him, even for a mixed Malinois, and dumbly happy to see him.
Aerion’s lips set into a thin line. He was second to their dog, too.
“Do you– have you had dinner already?” Duncan asked then, after silence had stretched too far to be comfortable between them.
Slowly, Aerion leaned down to take the leash back, moving it between one hand to the other.
“Yes.”
Duncan hummed. “Then maybe we could grab something else together? I just finished eating.” He tried again. “A drink?”
Aerion’s body and mind felt like two separate beings, a fracture that’d existed since Duncan woke up.
He now faced the reality of standing before the one he was meant to bond with, only to be met with empty unfamiliarity. He had to wrestle his own instincts into silence, to force both flesh and thought to accept that the alpha he’d chosen was no longer truly there. Worse still, the only alpha who had ever been willing to stay had abandoned him too.
And in the end, Aerion was left to carry everything alone.
“I don’t see why we should.” He replied, earning Duncan’s puzzled gaze on him. “Do you want the dog?” He asked then.
“What?” He straightened up, patting down the creases on his clothes.
“Do you want to take the dog with you?” Aerion asked again, slowly this time. “This why you’re here?”
Duncan’s earnest eyes made Aerion’s blood boil.
“No? No, I was just eating dinner and–”
“I heard you the first time,” Aerion snapped, giving the leash a sharp pull to draw Norna closer. “I can’t have anything, though. And I have to go now.”
He moved to leave, but a hand on his elbow held him in place.
Aerion turned sharply, his gaze dropping to Duncan’s hand on him first, then lifting to him.
“Where do you even need to go at such an hour?” Duncan’s hand came off Aerion naturally now. “It could be dangerous.”
“Seriously...? I’ve been walking the dog alone for months, pretty sure I won’t get assaulted tonight.” Aerion deadpanned. He sighed, shaking his head. “Look, this is no good. I don’t want to do this.”
Duncan’s brows furrowed. “I’m afraid I’m not following you.”
His Duncan would’ve loved a jab here, a little ‘you've never been the brightest’ and they would’ve both laughed it off.
He bit into the inside of his cheek to stop himself from saying it.
“You’re putting me through hell,” he said instead, and pushed the next words out through his teeth. “I appreciate you trying to be nice if you see me around, but you don’t have to do... whatever this is. I’m doing fine.”
His Duncan had always been patient.
This one seemed so, to, when he spoke up again. “I live here, Aerion.” He reasoned.
“Yeah, but you keep on showing up everywhere,” Aerion shot, “and it’s starting to creep me the fuck out. What the hell do you want from me?”
Aerion’s insides twisted in something bitter when he tasted the top of his palate.
Duncan’s shoulders fell a little.
“I just hoped I could ask you a couple of questions about some things I think I’m remembering. You’re the only one who can help me with this.” He said calmly, offering the omega a tentative smile. “You know how the doctor talked about false memories...”
Aerion exhaled slowly, sourness curling in his stomach.
“I’m sorry for acting weirdly. I didn’t know how to contact you and I noticed you walk the dog here every night.” Duncan added quickly, as though excusing himself. “But, really, I don’t want to talk about this here.”
Aerion scoffed. “Oh fuck off, you’re right, we shouldn’t be talking at all.”
Again, he pulled on Norna’s leash, and this time she followed without resistance. Duncan’s footsteps crunched closely behind them, sinking into the fresh snow.
“Wait!”
“It’s my fault,” Aerion said when Duncan caught up, stepping in front of him like a wall. “So stop following me.”
“What are you talking about?”
Their breath fogged the cold air between them, Aerion’s scarf suddenly feeling too tight around his neck, making it harder to breathe freely.
“I was driving.” Aerion said then, fist so tight around Norna’s leash he was sure he’d have half moons shapes pressed in his palm later. “I was the one driving.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I do, they told me.” Duncan said, reaching down for Aerion’s hand. Or for the leash. Aerion couldn’t tell. “They told me how it happened, that you called the emergency number and that you didn’t leave me for weeks. I still don’t have a clear image of everything... but I’m working on it.”
Aerion snatched his hand away and Norna walked in a circle around him.
He didn’t need to be reminded of the days spent in Duncan’s hospital room, exiting only to get a scanty lunch and an even more miserable dinner every day. He’d skip breakfast and only come home to sleep, feed Norna and take her on walks.
He didn’t even care when he got fired.
“Did they also tell you how I almost killed you because I moved you out of your seat?”
“You didn’t know.” Duncan said, “you were trying to help me.”
Silence bloomed and filled the void left by words too heavy to be spoken. Aerion looked everywhere but at Duncan, avoiding him, hoping he would step back and finally leave.
To be left alone was the greatest wish he’d recently developed.
“I should’ve died in that accident.” He croaked out at last. “Not the woman in the other car.”
Duncan’s face fell. “What are you saying... she came at us,” he mumbled like he couldn’t believe him. “You did all you could to avoid her.”
“She came at you,” Aerion stressed the word, matter-of-fact. “You took the blow.”
Duncan’s face tightened. “She was on my side. There was nothing you could’ve done to avoid it.” He looked calm, with the slightest hint of confusion as if something about Aerion didn’t make sense.
Aerion felt like it, his thoughts scattered, his mind nowhere it should have been.
He didn’t listen to Duncan.
“It would be easier for you this way,” he said, almost absently. Words had been sitting in him for far too long. His fingers moved, wrapping the leash once, then twice around his hand. “Easier for me, too. Trust me.”
Even as he spoke, his attention slipped, already following something distant, something only he could grasp.
“A life like this isn’t worth it.” He said it before he could stop himself.
Duncan seemed to take it in slowly. He said nothing at first, then, more carefully this time, he tried again.
“You shouldn’t say things like that. Let’s go somewhere else and talk,” he said, his voice softer now. “Please.”
Aerion shook his head. “No. You, please.”
This time, he met Duncan’s gaze fully, holding it. Looking at him made revulsion set in his chest, and far more down in his stomach.
“Just leave it.” He said, firm in a way that didn’t invite argument. “Leave me alone, stay the fuck away from me.”
Standing much closer to her, Aerion tightened his hold on Norna’s leash and pulled. This time, he led her away.
He didn’t care to look back.
He had to let go, of the park, of the night, of Duncan. And of himself.
He just had to bring this child into the world first.
Only five more months.