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Touching Robert had always felt like something sacred.
In the beginning, it had been because he wasn’t really Aaron’s - Aaron had touched Robert gently, reverently, desperate to leave marks on a man who was going home to his wife after he’d taken his fill of Aaron, but knowing he couldn’t stake that physical claim to Robert he had so desperately wanted to, so gentleness had been the only choice.
When they’d gotten together properly, Aaron knew his own fears had dictated the gentle way he’d touched Robert - as though he was only ever waiting for Robert to disappear, for him to have been a figment of his imagination and for Aaron to wake up alone in the pub, and Robert to be in bed with his wife at Home Farm, the fantasy of a life they had begun to share crumbling to dust under Aaron’s harsh, unrelenting touch.
He had never been allowed to be gentle, was the thing; Aaron had needed to claw his way out of every poisonous situation he had been forced into, hands bloody and bruised as he fought his way out of the darkness he had been drowning in his whole life.
Gentleness hadn’t been the kind of thing he felt would aid his struggle, and so Aaron had fought the violence that had been inflicted on him with violence of his own. A self-fulfilling prophecy, of sorts, in some twisted, ironic way.
There had been violence in his relationship with Robert, too. Aaron couldn’t pretend there hadn’t been. Violence borne out of fear; fear of wanting what he couldn’t have, fear of self, fear of the something real they shared and what it meant for carefully constructed lives and buried memories, fear beaten into skin by a father who was eternally disappointed.
Fear of losing each other.
They had lost each other - over, and over, and over again, in every horrible way that you could lose someone you love.
Aaron knew he would never lose the fear of loss, but Robert had come back to him enough times that Aaron knows they would always find their way home to each other, despite the loss, the pain.
Aaron had long since learned how to hold on, even with shredded, bloody hands, the pain a necessary evil to keep Robert in his life.
What they had was real - and it was forever.
Even when Aaron had accepted that, touching Robert had still felt like reverence.
Aaron didn’t believe in god, but he understood what worship was - felt it, every time he sank to his knees in front of Robert and looked up at the man he’d loved since he was twenty two.
It felt like worship when he got his mouth on Robert’s cock, reverence in the way he touched Robert’s body, salvation in the intimacy they had shared for so long now.
It wasn’t prayer, no, but it was as close to prayer as Aaron would ever get.
Robert Sugden had always held the answers to any prayers Aaron might have had anyway.
There had been salvation in the way that Robert had touched him, even at the beginning.
Aaron knows that everyone else would argue it was destruction, and maybe it was - destruction dressed up in the warm robe of salvation, a wolf in sheep's clothing - but Aaron didn’t care.
Robert had saved him, over and over again, with fierce kisses, and gentle touches, and a guiding hand on Aaron’s scalp, bringing him to his knees in front of the only person he could ever worship.
Robert Sugden wasn’t a god.
There was a version of Aaron who might have believed that - who might have sank to his knees in worship of a man who presented himself as godlike, untouchable and ethereal in equal measure.
Not anymore, though.
Aaron knew who was Robert was - knew better than anyone, all the broken, ugly, beautiful parts that made up the whole of Robert Sugden - and he knew he wasn’t a god; Robert wasn’t some infallible, benevolent creature.
Benevolent, maybe, but benevolence hidden under layers of hurt, and violence and manipulation.
Aaron knows he’s happier to worship that kind of a god, than the one he’d learned about in school, the one who’d been content to let him suffer, the one who’d left his prayers unheard, unanswered.
Robert hadn’t fixed everything - had caused plenty of his own hurt - but the way he loved Aaron - fiercely, absolutely, unapologetically - was enough for Aaron to go to his knees and worship in the only way he knew how.
Aaron has a distinct memory of one of the few times in his life he had tried to pray in the traditional sense.
He had been eight years old, and the feeling of his fathers hands on his body had been burned into his skin. He hadn’t understood what had happened to him, not really, but he had known he needed saving; and people turned to god, when they needed saving, and so to a child desperate for salvation, prayer had been worth a try.
Those prayers had never been answered - neither had the ones he’d begged in a garage as he’d tried to kill himself, prayers said in desperation, prayers begging for an end.
Every prayer of his had been left unanswered, until Robert.
Robert. Beautiful, brilliant, horrible Robert, who had fought not to chose Aaron, and through some sort of divine inevitability, had chosen Aaron over, and over, and over again.
Robert, who had answered prayers that Aaron didn’t even known he had - prayers for love, and stability, a home, a family, two toothbrushes sitting side-by-side in an en-suite sink, a stereotype of stability and happily ever after that Robert had given him.
Robert, who had loved him like no one ever had before.
Robert, who had built them a home, a family.
Robert, who had tried to give Aaron his life back, and had trapped Aaron in a prison of grief, in the process.
Robert, who crashed Aaron’s wedding, and made him feel alive for the first time in six years.
Robert, who was quieter, sadder, broken in ways that Aaron was only learning to navigate, edges sharp, and jagged, easy for Aaron to cut his fingers on.
Robert, who was stupid, and selfless, and determined to do the right thing.
Robert, the man he was going to lose again.
“Aaron,” Robert moaned brokenly, reverence in his tone as he said Aaron’s name - as though Aaron was someone worth worshipping, as though he felt the same as Aaron did about him. “Please.”
Aaron would give him anything.
He understood, now, why nations had started wars in the name of the gods they believed in, because Aaron would burn down the world for Robert, and he didn’t care who got in the way.
It was a selfish, horrible admission to make - but Aaron didn’t care.
He’d watch every single person in the village be sent to prison if only it meant that he could keep Robert. Aaron would open the door to Hotten Police himself, if he could send anyone else to them in place of Robert.
He couldn’t lose him again.
Stupid, selfless, determined Robert.
Aaron was stupid too - and selfish.
Selfish enough to beg for one last night, before he drove Robert to the station, and walked beside the love of his life as he threw himself at the mercy of a system that had broken him.
(Aaron wouldn’t let him do it - he wouldn’t. He’d find a way to convince Robert there was another choice; one where Moira didn’t get life in prison, and one where Robert hadn’t broken the terms of his license and would serve years because of it.)
“Aaron,” Robert breathed, and Aaron had never understood art, or religion, or why the two had always been so intertwined until he’d experienced moments like this; Robert, flushed, and breathless, writhing beneath Aaron, pale skin against dark blue sheets, the kind of vision you’d paint if you had an artistic bone in your body, the kind of beauty you felt helpless to do anything except worship.
Aaron wasn’t an artist.
He wasn’t a believer, either.
But he could do this - could worship at an altar of intimacy where Robert was his for the taking, beautiful and vulnerable and Aaron’s, only Aaron’s, always Aaron’s.
“I love you, Robert,” Aaron said, the only prayer he’d ever understood, the only prayer of his that had ever been answered. “I love you.”
Don’t do this.
Don’t leave me.
He wouldn’t survive the grief of it, this time.
Robert’s breath was coming in hiccuping, sharp gasps, a sure sign he was on the verge of orgasm, Robert’s body a familiar instrument Aaron knew how to play. Other’s might have played in the organ, in church - Aaron’s church was here, in their bed, Robert’s body warm, and pliant beneath his own.
Robert’s eyes were wide, and bright, as he looked at Aaron, shining with tears in a way that made the blue and green swim, stained glass in their own way.
“I love you,” Robert gasped, and Aaron had heard that version of it enough times to know Robert was saying it as a goodbye; sweet, and sincere, as though it wouldn’t be the last time Aaron heard it for months, weeks, years.
Aaron pressed his fingers to Robert’s hips, his touch harsh, unyielding, as though he could keep Robert through sheer force alone.
(He’d tried it - he’d held on with bloody, broken hands, and had still ended up at the bottom of a gorge. He’d do it again and again and again, until he had nothing left.)
“Aaron, please,” Robert begged, and he always begged so sweetly, something Aaron could never refuse.
Sacred worship. Divine grace.
Aaron had never known what any of it meant until he had this - Robert, sweet as he pleaded and begged, fucked open on Aaron’s cock, the sex between them a sacrament of a kind.
“I love you,” Robert repeated, and Aaron relented, gave permission, Robert sobbing his way through an orgasm that took over his whole body.
Aaron needed a fucking miracle.