a soft touch, g, 2.8k, warnings: none. a short fic tracing Aaron’s feelings about Seb.
Aaron always loved kids for a whole host of reasons. There’s the obvious, they have little to no malice in them, except Leo after he builds a Lego tower and crushes it like he’s Godzilla. They simply exist in the world hopefully ignorant of the trials and hardship that go on around them and it makes them brilliant. What would you do if you suddenly became a flying ant for the day? Noah asked him once while they were eating cereal before Noah had to go to school. And even if they do know hardship, they rise above. Just watching Debbie’s Sarah is proof of that.
So, Aaron comes to Seb with eyes wide open. Does he entirely forget the circumstances of him the first time he holds him? No, but his wailing cries stop and he smiles with his scrunched-up baby face, and Aaron loves kids. They sit, and they cuddle, and Robert gets his work done, blonde hair a little less mad and not being pulled out between the baby changing table and printed out spreadsheets. When Seb stops and starts crying as Aaron tries to hand him back, Aaron almost loses it. This tiny mischief maker is having him on. Plain and simple. He isn’t unhappy about it, he’s genuinely amused by this small terror. ADaddy’s boy, huh?
I’ve been thinking about this You’ve Got Mail AU for a while, but only just got round to planning it all out. This is just a short-ish chapter, background mostly, and I’m not very far ahead so updates might be slow (not as slow as the baking AU though). Thanks to @smittenwithsugden for the coffee shop name, and to @amandaj718 for help with the usernames. Posting now because I’m having a bad day.
The back stories for both are mostly the same, the timings of things might be different.
The title is from ‘Anyone at all’ by Carole King (from the soundtrack).
Aaron’s morning routine is pretty set in stone. Get up, make a brew and sit on the windowsill overlooking Hotten High Street, while checking his phone for messages. His day was always better when there was one waiting for him.
He couldn’t tap the screen fast enough when he saw the icon, sipping at his tea while he waited for the app to decide if it would load or not. Finally it opens and he sets his mug down beside him.
PorscheMan422 – Don’t you just love the Dales in the Autumn? I mean, Summer is great and all but when the leaves are falling from the trees and there’s a chill in the air, it’s wonderful.
It’s a lottery every day whether it’ll be something about a film he’s watched, a complaint about some twat he’d met the day before, or like now a wondering about his surroundings.
GreaseMonky92 – Wouldn’t know mate, nothing but tarmac and bricks where I’m sitting. I’ll take your word for it. Did you see the match last night?
He didn’t wait for a reply, knew it was late enough that he’d be on his way to work. Not that he knew what he did for a living. In fact he knew hardly anything about him and he in turn knew nothing about Aaron.
When they first started chatting on some classic car forum they’d said ‘no specifics’. It added to the excitement almost and they’d never changed it. He knew the man was older, but that was it.
It had been going on for about six months now, Aaron only using the site as a favour to Cain, keeping an eye for anyone selling a certain type of car that a customer wanted. Cain didn’t do computers if he could help it and the only thing he used his phone for was calls, so he said. Aaron thought he just didn’t want the hassle.
They’d got into a heated discussion about which was better, a classic Porsche or an Aston Martin. There had been whole posts in bolded capital letters, emojis that Aaron had to look up and links galore as his opponent had tried, and failed in Aaron’s opinion, to make his point. In the end they had been reprimanded by the frankly overzealous moderators and the other man had suggested a messaging app.
He’d been a bit unsure, he thought they guy was an arrogant twat, but he’d enjoyed their banter so he agreed, and now they used it almost every day without fail.
Just as he’s about to get up to shower, his phone pings with another message.
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