Super Special Ep: The Bar
This episode is part of a larger story, Soft Touch. If you haven’t yet, you can go back and read it from the beginning right here.
Aiden lets himself into Ralph’s house without knocking, the way he always has.
He can hear that the TV is on in the living room, so he heads straight there to look for Ralph. But when he stops in the entryway he finds Shawn there instead. Relaxing on the couch, apparently watching the basketball game, but in reality keeping a close eye on two workmen in the hallway as they sort through their toolboxes.
Looks like they’re just doing some repairs in the wall, but trust Ralph to have watchful eyes on them all the same.
Guess the Warlord can’t be too careful, Aiden thinks, with some fond amusement.
Shawn looks over and grins when he spots Aiden, holds out a hand as he crosses to the couch. “What’s good, Aiden?”
“Hey, Shawn.” Aiden slaps his hand, glancing around for Ralph. “Is he home?”
“In his office. He said no one’s allowed to disturb him while he’s busy, though-” Shawn sits up in scandalized alarm, watching Aiden stride off towards the stairs. “No, seriously! You can’t just go into the boss’s office like that when he said not to, man! You won’t, will you?”
Aiden gives Shawn a quick thumbs-up, already halfway up the stairs. He strolls out onto the second floor, lets himself directly into Ralph’s office, and shuts the door after himself.
Ralph is leaning on his hands over his desk, looking over some papers spread out over it. His phone is flat on the desk, open to a call and left on speaker. He was talking into it, but he breaks off and looks up sharply when he hears the door open.
A scalding, venomous glare springs into his sage green eyes.
“Didn’t I fucking say-?” he begins, then stops in surprise when he sees who’s there.
Aiden gives him a wide grin, spreading one hand in a wave. Then he crosses to the desk, picks up the sandwich Ralph was halfway through, and helps himself to a bite.
Ralph tosses his blonde hair out of his eyes, trying to look exasperated. Not quite managing it.
“Are you still there, baby?” comes Calla’s raspy voice from his phone.
Ralph immediately tries to snatch it up and take it off speaker, but Aiden snags it first and dances away with it. Ralph makes a swipe for the phone, realizes he can’t reach it with Aiden holding it up above his head, and shouts -
“I’m still here, but I’ve gotta run! Someone just came in, so – let’s just make a decision! You want me to go there, or are you coming here?”
“Mmm… let’s just do your place,” Calla says brightly, as Ralph throws an elbow into Aiden’s ribs, nearly succeeding in taking his phone back when Aiden doubles over. “I know I was just there, but I wouldn’t mind coming back for another weekend. I’ve been craving a sandwich from that deli in Ketterbridge, anyways.”
Ralph wheezes as Aiden pins him sideways to the desk to keep the phone out of reach. “Sounds good, so long as you don’t mind driving all the way back here again!”
“No, it’s worth it. You know I like your house. Even if the shower doesn’t get nearly hot enough.”
“This again?” Ralph asks, kicking Aiden’s knee out from under him. “You don’t like the shower at my place, why don’t you try the one at Raj and Ripley’s workshop?”
Calla lets out a giggling laugh. “Nice try, but I know that’s a trap. Alix already told me about that shower.”
“Told you what?” Ralph asks innocently.
“That it fucking explodes every time you turn it on. Also, are you having a brawl with someone right now? Like, while you’re on the phone with me?”
“Everything’s totally fine!” Ralph finally manages to snag the phone from Aiden’s hand and holds it to his mouth, panting hard. “Call you later!”
He ends the call, then turns around to meet Aiden’s innocent smile with a grim scowl.
“Some guard dog you are,” he says heatedly to Tycho, who’s still deeply asleep beneath his desk, sprawled out on her back with her paws up in the air.
“She knows I’m a friend,” Aiden says affectionately.
“Yeah, thanks a lot for that, A, that was real friendly. Just great. I love sounding like I’m in the process of getting my ass kicked while I’m on the phone with my girl.”
“That’s what you get for failing to tell your boys that I have free roam of this house,” Aiden informs him. “You know Shawn thought I wasn’t allowed up here just because you said so?”
“Oh, I’m sure they’ll figure it out soon enough,” Ralph growls, going back behind his desk. “Everyone just shows up whenever they fuckin’ feel like it these days. You know Keane came by here with a box of blueberries for me while I was in the middle of a war conference?”
“Of course he did,” Aiden sighs, picturing it with a burst of answering love in his heart.
Ralph breaks into a knowing smirk, catching the look on Aiden’s face. “You’re obsessed with him, you know. Jamie.”
“Right, and you don’t have a manic, out of control obsession with Calla?”
“Oh, no,” Ralph answers very seriously. “It’s way worse than just that.”
Aiden breathes out a laugh, then nods at the door, hearing a drilling sound from downstairs. “So what’s going on? You having some work done on the house?”
Ralph shrugs his shoulders, stacking up the papers and the cash on his desk. “There some reason I shouldn’t fix things around here when they break?”
“No, I’m just surprised you didn’t get Raj and Noah to do whatever it is. Didn’t want a brotherly discount, or-?”
“Maybe I just don’t need all you guys knowing every little thing I’m doing, alright?” Ralph cuts in sharply. “Mind your own fucking business.”
Aiden bites back a smile. Ralph sounds pissed off, and looks pissed off, but Aiden knows him better than that. He has that expression in his grey-green eyes. Aiden recognizes it from whenever he showed up to hang out with Ralph when they were kids. It’s the barely visible glitter of a startled smile, like for some reason he’s surprised and confused that Aiden showed up at all.
Between that and the way his pale gold hair is all messed up from their tussle, he reminds Aiden of how he was when they were kids.
Ralph irritably sweeps a hand through his ruffled hair, trying to straighten it out. Aiden finds himself gazing across the desk at him with a flame of deep affection in his heart.
“Why won’t you tell me what you’re doing to the house?” he asks, dropping into the chair across from Ralph, leaning down to scratch Tycho’s ears. “I’m not hating. I like what you’ve changed so far. This room looks way better as your office than it did as Grant’s bedroom.”
“Give it a rest, would you? I own this house, so I can damn well make any changes I please without having to explain them to anybody-” Ralph breaks off as a knock comes at the office door. “Yeah, what?”
Shawn opens the door and leans in, then freezes when he spots Aiden. “Shit. Sorry, boss, I told him not to, I didn’t think he would!”
Ralph waves a dismissive hand at Shawn. “It’s fine. It’s always fine when it’s him. Like with Noah.”
“Oh, good.” Shawn steps further into the office, visibly relieved. “Well, just wanted to let you know that the fancy new water heater is all installed, and the workmen are gone. You need me for anything else?”
Aiden stares at Shawn, his eyebrows flying up, and Ralph closes his eyes, slowly rubs his temples.
“No,” he says, through gritted teeth. “That’s all.”
“Cool.” Shawn gives Ralph a two-fingered salute as he heads out. “Later.”
Aiden turns back to Ralph and folds his arms over his chest, grinning enormously. “Oh, okay. I see.”
“Not one fucking word, A,” he growls, without opening his eyes.
“Man,” Aiden laughs, shaking his head. “First all that nice new bedding, now the hot water heater. If Calla keeps wanting things this place might start operating like a real house. Did you tell her you’re fixing the problem with the shower? Sounded on the phone like she didn’t know.”
“Shouldn’t you be with Jamie, doing – whatever cupcakes do in their free time?” Ralph asks, pointedly ignoring all of that.
“He’s at home,” Aiden explains, slowing all the way down, “Getting our… our new rooster settled in. And setting up the coop.”
Ralph arches his eyebrows all the way up, then leans back in his chair, breaking into a gigantic smirky grin of his own.
“Well, well. Keane got the chicken he wanted, huh? What happened to, I hope he’s not serious about that, because we’re never ever doing it, I’ll put my foot down if I have to-”
“Yeah, yeah,” Aiden sighs, wrenching off his snapback to push an exasperated hand through his hair. “You try facing down those big giant doe eyes and tell me how you do.”
“Jesus, dude,” Ralph laughs. “What happened to us?”
Aiden breathes out a laugh, too, giving his shoulders a helpless shrug. “I don’t fuckin’ know.”
“We’re weak now.”
“Yeah, but also it’s – better. Way better.”
“I know.” Ralph matches Aiden’s baffled expression. “Weird how that turned out.”
“Yeah. Huh.”
“What the hell are you two even gonna do with a rooster, anyways? Isn’t the whole point of keeping chickens to have eggs?”
“Yeah, so we’re gonna have some hens, too,” Aiden admits reluctantly, with a deep grimace. “Jamie is holding off on getting them because… he wants our rooster to look nice first. He’s worried that Blue might be embarrassed to meet the hens right now, given that his feathers are all messed up. Said it would probably be bad for his – for his self-esteem. Thinks we should be sensitive to that.”
Ralph bites his lip silently, but the laughter is obvious in his eyes.
“Will you shut the fuck up?” Aiden complains, even though Ralph hasn’t said anything out loud. He swipes a hand at him as he lets out a snicker of laughter. “This conversation is not why I came here.”
“Obviously.” Ralph rises to his feet, stacks up the cash, and begins tucking it away into his safe. “So why did you come here?”
Fighting back a grin, Aiden holds up what he brought with him: a DVD in a clear plastic case.
“I’ve got a surprise for you.”
Ralph stops and looks over his shoulder at Aiden, his eyebrows furrowed. “Yeah? What’s that?”
“Jamie’s dad is getting all his old VHS tapes transferred onto DVDs. Most of them are home videos, but some of them are just recordings of channels Jamie liked when he was a kid. And guess which show just so happened to be on one of them?”
“Couldn’t begin to guess.” Ralph turns around and leans back against his safe, staring at the DVD with mounting curiosity in his eyes. “What sort of shows do cupcakes watch? Flower – love – time?”
“Not sure that’s a real show. But this one definitely is. It aired on Toonami.” Aiden sets the DVD down on the desk and slides it across to Ralph. “Reruns of old episodes of Transformers from the ‘90s. A marathon programming block, so it’s like a whole season.”
Ralph stares at Aiden in disbelief, then breaks into a startled, eager grin before he can stop himself. “Are you fucking serious? No goddamn way!”
“I’m completely serious. It’s Beast Wars: Transformers. Which I don’t think I ever watched. There are way more Transformers shows and movies than I realized.”
“Oh, yeah. Tons.” Ralph picks up the DVD and enthusiastically knocks his knuckle on the case. “In Beast Wars it’s Optimus Primal instead of Optimus Prime. He’s – just a giant gorilla, basically. But he can still transform.”
“Yeah, you know, I watched a little bit of it,” Aiden says, raising an eyebrow. “The CGI was, um-”
“Genuinely very impressive for its time,” Ralph growls, drawing a laugh from Aiden.
“Alright. Let’s go with that, since I can see you’re gonna tear my head off if I argue. But the minute I realized what it was I knew I had to cut you a copy.”
“How the hell do you even remember that I like this stuff?” Ralph asks, looking genuinely dumbfounded. “When was I even going crazy for this shit, when I was like twelve?”
“When we met, so when we were thirteen,” Aiden corrects him. “And what, you thought I just forgot? I may have lost a lot of memories to the booze haze, but I wasn’t drinking all the way back then.”
Ralph slowly shakes his head, then drops his gaze to the DVD, fidgeting with the case. “Still…”
Aiden bites back a victorious smile. It’s so fucking hard to surprise Ralph, and he can tell that he did it this time. Ralph is obviously more excited than he’s letting on. His mouth is twisted to the side, but his eyes are giving everything away.
“We’re definitely gonna invite Noah over and watch that shit together, right?” Aiden asks.
Ralph looks up, breaking into an eager grin. “Should we just do that right now?”
“Shit, I’m sorry, I can’t right now. Got someplace I need to be tonight.” Aiden hesitates, tapping a finger on Ralph’s desk. “Actually… I know you’re busy with work, but would you come along? I could stand to have you there with me for this.”
Ralph tilts his head to the side, gazing searchingly at Aiden’s face.
“What’s going on?” he asks, his voice growing serious.
Aiden gets to his feet, beckons to him with a toss of his head at the door. “I’ll tell you on the way there. Suffice it to say you’d be doing me a really big favor if you came with me.”
“So transparent,” Ralph sighs, taking his jacket from the back of his chair. “Give me a present and then immediately ask me for a favor. I should say no just to make a point.”
As if he’s not already coming around the side of the desk to join Aiden.
“Yeah, yeah.” Aiden braces his shoulders appreciatively, then shoves him through the door by a handful of his threadbare shirt. “Stop complaining.”
“Just let me get Tycho in her crate before we go. Do I need to bring anything?”
“No, just yourself.”
A minute later they step out into the falling dusk, heading down the gravel driveway together right as the streetlights flicker on.
They take Ralph’s car, but Aiden drives, since he’s the one who knows where they’re going. He switches on some music, puts down the windows. Keeps the conversation on nothing in particular, talking about the Fling Thing, and how big Tycho is getting, stuff like that. Ralph listens and answers, but now and then he glances over at Aiden with narrowed eyes.
Aiden senses that he’s starting to get suspicious. A feeling confirmed when Ralph suddenly cuts him off mid-sentence to ask -
“What’s going on, Aiden? Where are we headed right now?”
Aiden flashes a swift, apologetic glance at him. “All the way to Greenrock. Sorry, I know it’s far.”
“To Greenrock,” Ralph repeats, his searching eyes fixed on Aiden’s profile. “Why?”
“Well… you know Father Leo is dating my aunt, now. Seems like it’s serious between them, so I’m trying to get to know him better. He’s a regular at this bar in Greenrock, and he said I could come by there to hang out and chat if I wanted to. But I don’t want to go alone, since I won’t know anybody there, so – you mind coming with me? Like I said, you’d be doing me a huge favor.”
Ralph thinks about that, then comes back with: “Liar.”
Aiden looks sharply at him, startled. “What?”
Ralph closes his eyes, slowly shaking his head. “Don’t fuck with me, Aiden. You’re taking me to talk to Father Leo. Aren’t you?”
Aiden bites his lip, quickly getting his eyes back on the road. “What are you talking about?”
“Come on, man.” Ralph opens his eyes again, revealing that they’re full of blazing exasperation. “Leo told me before the Fling Thing that I could come by that G.I. bar in Greenrock if I ever wanted to talk to someone about – about my dad. You knew I had no intention of taking him up on that, so you tricked me into going. He didn’t even invite you to meet him there, did he? You completely made that up.”
Aiden sits in silence for a moment, then sighs deeply, running a hand down his face.
“It’s so fucking hard to get one thing around you, man. How did you know I made that part up?”
“Because why would Leo invite you, a recovering alcoholic, to meet him at a bar?” Ralph snaps. “Especially when he could meet you at your aunt’s house, which is like down the road from yours? Admit it. I’m right, aren’t I? You’re taking me to see Leo.”
Aiden shoots Ralph an exasperated look, but his voice comes out with a tone of warm affection he can’t quite help.
“Damn, dude. You know it’s annoying how smart you are?”
Ralph screws up his whole face in frustration, his hand curling into a fist on his knee. “Aiden, god fucking damnit…”
“It’s fine, though. I knew we wouldn’t make it there before you figured it out. Just wanted to get a few miles behind us first.”
Ralph places his fist against the dash of his car like he needs to steady himself, gritting his teeth. “Aiden.”
“Okay, why are you so set against doing this?” Aiden waits a second, then slaps Ralph’s shoulder when he doesn’t answer. “C’mon, man. This is me you’re talking to. Just tell me why.”
“Because I don’t want to,” Ralph blurts out in a rush, with obvious difficulty. “Just because my dad was – look, I’m no fan of the U.S. Military, alright? Pretty fucking far from it, in fact, the exact opposite. I wish my dad never had anything to do with it. I know for a fact that he never wanted to be part of it, either.”
Aiden lifts his eyebrows incredulously.
“First of all, do you really think you have to tell me that? How long have we known each other? And second of all, you think I’m a fan?” Aiden widens his eyes at Ralph incredulously. “That’s ridiculous on dozens of levels. Don’t you remember what we did to the military recruiter who parked himself in front of school when we were there? And we spent years throwing beer cans at the TV every time one of those propaganda-ass recruitment commercials came up.”
Ralph spreads his hands in disbelief. “Right, so you should know that I’m not a good match for the energy of a G.I. bar!”
“Me neither, but I don’t think it’s gonna be what you’re picturing, man. Leo definitely isn’t like that, he hasn’t got that whole oorah energy going.”
“Oorah is Marines, dude,” Ralph answers distractedly. “Leo is ex-Navy.”
Aiden lowers his eyebrows, puzzled. “They can’t all just say it? Marines, Navy, Army, whatever? What difference does it make?”
Ralph opens his eyes very wide, touching his fingertips to his temples.
“Oh, Aiden,” he mutters beneath his breath. “It might actually be dangerous for you to go to this bar.”
“Leo isn’t like that, is what I’m saying,” Aiden insists. “He’s a really committed environmental activist now, and the military is hell on the environment, so he’s probably got complicated feelings, a complicated relationship with it all-”
“Well, my feelings on this are pretty goddamn straightforward.”
“Fair enough, and again, I agree, but it’s not about the military, okay? Forget about that part for now.” Aiden tries to catch Ralph’s eye, with no success. “It’s about you, man, and your family, and – I just don’t think it would hurt to talk to someone with real insight into what you’ve-”
“A fucking priest, Aiden?” Ralph interrupts incredulously.
“Yeah… That’s not our thing either, I know. But Leo said it doesn’t have to be about that, and he’s sure as hell not the type to trick you into a conversation about church. Just talk to him for a few minutes, see how it feels, and then if you want to leave, we’ll leave. We’ll go straight back to your house and watch Beast Wars, see the autocars-”
“Autobots.”
“-defeat the deceptors.”
Ralph widens his eyes at Aiden. “Decepticons.”
Aiden shrugs his shoulders, unconcerned. “Whatever, nerd. We’ll do that, then. If we get to the bar and you don’t want to stay.”
Ralph rubs his eyes, letting out a hard, hissing breath. “Fucking fuck. I need – where’s-?”
He breaks off as Aiden takes the pack from the cupholder and hands it to him. Ralph snatches a cigarette from it and lights up, all without looking at him.
“Why do you even give a fuck if I do this or not?” he snaps, his grey-green eyes smoldering.
“Because you’re my brother,” Aiden says calmly, as if he hasn’t noticed Ralph trying to murder him with his eyes at all, “And I’m glad you’re doing better with all this stuff these days. But it’s probably good to talk to someone about it, too. Someone who’s in a position to really understand. So just do me this favor. Give it five minutes, and if you hate it, we’ll leave. I promise.”
Ralph opens his mouth to argue, then abruptly lapses into silence. He looks away into the distance, staring out through the window at the trees sliding past.
“How is it me doing a favor for you,” he asks slowly, “If what’s really happening is that you’re taking a big chunk out of your night to come with me all the way out to Greenrock, so that I can talk to him, and so I don’t have to go alone? And meanwhile you’ll have to hang out in a bar, the one type of place where you can’t have any fun? That’s me doing a favor for you, somehow?”
“Big fucking deal, dude. I don’t mind.” Aiden gives him a hopeful look. “So will you go?”
Ralph gazes at Aiden out of stormy, unreadable eyes, falling silent again. He turns his face away, rolling the cigarette between his fingers.
“Man, I only just made my peace with this,” he says haltingly, in a much quieter voice. “I don’t want to… talk about it and… risk slipping backwards. With how I’ve been doing lately. Living with it.”
There it is. The real reason. Aiden steals a swift, sympathetic glance at Ralph, who’s still determinedly avoiding his eyes.
“I get that, but it’s – it’s a process, right? Making peace with it? You’re in a better place about it, and I’m really glad that you are, but like you just said… it’s still hard for you to talk about.”
Again, he tries to catch Ralph’s eye, but Ralph won’t look at him.
“I was there when you went into the memory with your dad,” Aiden murmurs earnestly. “I know exactly how important he was to you. So – don’t you want to be able to talk about him? Don’t you want to be able to tell your son about him?”
Ralph turns his head sharply to stare at Aiden, startled and bewildered. “My son?”
Aiden’s mind goes back to the little voices he heard when Noah asked him to look into Nikita’s future. There were two other tiny voices, besides Nik’s. Two unknowns: Kit, and Adam.
Kit remains a mystery, but Aiden knows that Ralph’s dad was named Adam, too. So he has a pretty good guess on that one.
But the future is never certain. Things can always change. They could have changed already, since Aiden listened ahead. That’s why he decided against saying anything about it, and he has to stick to that now.
“Maybe, one day,” he says instead, then impatiently flicks a hand at Ralph. “Son, daughter, kid, whatever. They’re gonna want to know about their grandfather. And I’m guessing you’re gonna want to tell them, right?”
Ralph silently chews his lip, his arms folded tightly over his chest.
“Then you should probably get some practice talking about it,” Aiden tells him. “So you can.”
Ralph doesn’t answer. If this was back when they were teenagers, he probably would’ve flicked his lit cigarette right at Aiden by now, or started chain-smoking in silent fury – but he doesn’t. He just sits there stiffly, twisting his fingers through his leather wristbands over and over again. After a while the cig between his fingers goes out, forgotten.
Aiden isn’t even sure if Ralph is angry. Maybe he’s just lost in his thoughts. His piercing eyes are narrowed, gazing off into the distance through the window. Hard to say what exactly is going on beneath that wind-tousled blonde hair. But he hasn’t told Aiden to take him back to Ketterbridge, so Aiden merges onto the road to Greenrock.
Ralph silently keeps his face turned away from Aiden for the rest of the drive. It’s only when they pull up to the address Father Leo gave them that he finally turns his head, to look out through the windshield at the bar.
Aiden takes an appraising look at it, too. The bar is just up ahead of them, set into the side of a big, grassy, boulder-strewn hill. A mid-sized building, with nothing else around. It has shabby wooden walls, faded neon beer signs in the dusty windows. It’s on the outskirts of Greenrock, and the town is visible off in the distance, a cluster of lights nestled together. There’s probably a nice view of them from the bar.
The door is closed, but the bar is obviously open for business. Warm, mellow light glows from within, escaping from under the door. A few cars are parked in the little lot off to one side, and someone is smoking a cigarette by the door, chatting with somebody else.
Aiden pulls over at the bottom of the hill and kills the engine. He looks at Ralph, waiting for him to say something, but he doesn’t. He just sits there with his head tilted down, fidgeting with the chocolate-brown leather of his jacket, his hair falling over his eyes.
“Look… I’m not gonna force you,” Aiden tells him quietly. “I’d actually feel really bad if you did this just because you felt pressure from me. That’s not what I was trying to – do you want to just go home? We can. It’s – it’s okay. Honestly. Say the word and I’ll take us home, and it’ll be Transformers time. No problem.” He gives Ralph’s arm a gentle swat. “Your call.”
“And I’m supposed to not feel bad that you already drove me all the way out here?” Ralph asks, keeping his face tilted out of the glow from the streetlamps.
“Oh, yeah,” Aiden sighs dramatically. “Fuck you for making me go on a windows-down cruise on a fine autumn night with my brother. Except – oh, wait, I made myself do that. Thanks, me. It was nice.”
It’s impossible to say for sure in the shadowy darkness, but Aiden thinks he senses a little smile on Ralph’s face.
The atmosphere in the car grows serious again very quickly, though. Aiden can practically hear Ralph thinking in the passenger’s seat.
Without warning, Ralph wordlessly opens the door of the car and gets out.
Aiden blinks hard in surprise, then grabs the keys and steps out to join him. They walk silently together up the hill towards the bar.
Father Leo is one of the people standing outside by the door, Aiden realizes as they get closer. He’s not smoking a cigarette, but he’s talking to someone who is. A young, heavily tattooed guy, who sets off down the hill right as Aiden and Ralph approach.
“Thanks, Padre!” he calls over his shoulder, giving Leo an affectionate wave goodbye.
“Next time come see me sooner, son, I’m always here for you!” Leo calls after him, then stops still, catching sight of Ralph and Aiden. He breaks into a bright, startled smile, lifts his hand in a wave. “Oh, and what do we have here? Am I seeing what I think I’m seeing?”
He comes striding down the hill to meet them halfway. Aiden stops before him, and Ralph stops just behind Aiden’s shoulder, his hands stuffed deep in the pockets of his jacket. Father Leo meets his mistrustful gaze with a warm smile.
“Ralph, Aiden!” he says, clearly making a concerted effort to keep his volume reasonable. “What a nice surprise! I’m glad you could make it.”
Ralph looks decidedly pale and uneasy, but he gives Father Leo a nod.
“I didn’t think you’d take me up on my offer,” Leo says more slowly, taking in Ralph’s expression.
Ralph shoots Aiden a swift look. “Yeah, I didn’t think I would either.”
Leo’s eyes flit between Aiden and Ralph. Aiden gets the distinct impression that he’s already figured out everything, but if he’s offended that Ralph had to be dragged to come see him, it doesn’t show. He lets out a deep, hearty chuckle, fixing his kindly eyes on Ralph.
“Stranger things have happened, son. Case in point, we’ve got Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force all peacefully coexisting in one bar up there. Although I know from experience that all it would take is one from the Coast Guard to tip the balance, unleash chaos.”
Ralph lets out a quiet laugh, and Leo beams at him.
“Well, just let me run to my truck real quick and put these brownies away.” Leo nods to the wrapped-up baking pan in his hands, then sets off towards the parking lot. “A friend’s grandmother sent them for me. Gotta stash ‘em before those hooligans in the bar get a sniff. Why don’t you two go ahead and head in? You can introduce yourself to some of the boys, if you want. Aiden, are you gonna be okay in a bar…?”
“Yeah, I’ll be fine!” Aiden catches Ralph’s arm and sets off towards the bar, pulling him into movement. “We’ll see you in there.”
“Just knock real loud if the door gets stuck!” Leo calls back. “It opens easier from the inside!”
Ralph and Aiden walk together for the door of the G.I. bar. Ralph is going very slowly, so Aiden matches his pace. The night deepens around them while they walk, growing steadily darker. A very light drizzle begins to fall, gently blurring the landscape into a shimmering watercolor of dark blue and deep green, with the warm orange lights of the bar windows at the center.
Ralph mumbles something so quietly that Aiden almost can’t make it out, but it sounds roughly like –
“Thanks for coming with me.”
“No problem.” Aiden heaves out a huge sigh, flashing Ralph a suffering look. “It was this or go help with the coop. Face my failure to prevent the rooster adoption. His name is Blue, by the way. You’ll probably get to meet him soon.”
Ralph laughs softly, shaking his head.
“Leo’s nice, though, right? Not a bad guy to chat with.” Aiden gestures at the guy who just drove off. “Clearly other people come see him when they need someone to talk to.”
“Not saying otherwise,” Ralph mutters under his breath. “Just don’t want to talk about my dad with anyone.”
“I know. You’ll barely talk to me about him.”
Ralph tilts his head back with a deep sigh, tossing his hair out of his face. “Showed you the fuckin’ photo, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, and I still can’t believe how much you grew up to look like him,” Aiden says, meaning it completely. “It’s crazy. Twins, you and your dad.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. Calla said the same thing when she saw the picture.”
Faint rock ‘n roll drifts out from the bar to meet them as they stop in front of it. Aiden tries the door, but as Leo predicted, it’s stuck. He lets go of the handle, lifts a hand to knock, and realizes that Ralph is lingering a few paces back. Staring at the door of the bar with his jaw flexed, his hands in tight fists in the pockets of his jacket.
“It’ll be okay, man,” Aiden says softly, looking him full in the eyes. “I wouldn’t bring you here if I thought this would make you feel worse. This might actually make you feel better. Who knows?”
He falls silent, waiting.
Ralph stands there motionless for a long moment, then slowly joins Aiden at the door. He takes a deep breath, then knocks loudly, like Leo told them to.
“Somebody undog the hatch!” a voice shouts from inside. “You’re closest, Hilevich!”
There’s a short silence, and then the door swings open, letting out a spill of orange-gold light.
A tall, dark-eyed man with inky hair, a short beard, and two sets of dog tags around his neck opens the door. He leans out to see who’s there, squinting into the darkness.
Aiden opens his mouth to say something. Before he can get a single word out, the man in the doorway drops his beer. The bottle slips out of his fingers and breaks against the concrete step, but he doesn’t even notice. He’s staring at Ralph, his eyes perfectly round with shock.
“Adam?” he stammers.
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