Title: Resounding
Main Story:
In the HeartFlavors, Toppings, Extras: Peanut butter 4 (earth), cherry vanilla 19 (the dream that isn't a dream),
My Treat(Aaron's life has to be seen to be believed sometimes.), malt (Summer Challenge 212: I wouldn't normally do this kind of thing), caramel (Aaron is forty-three).
Word Count: 408
Rating: PG.
Summary: Aaron likes to think of himself as the patient type.
When you got right down to it, Aaron was pretty sure that surviving to the age of forty-three with his sanity intact was a minor miracle.
He liked calm quiet days, everything running in a smooth rhythm. He liked plans, things working out. He liked knowing what was coming, and he did not like surprises.
That made growing up with Ivy... difficult.
It wasn't that she was a bad person; not at all! Aaron adored his sister and intended to go on doing so until the day one or both of them died. It was just that her favorite thing to do was shake up his life.
It said a lot about their relationship that their first unstructured meeting had involved her putting a mudball down his back.
He seemed to attract those types, really. Lars, dragging him away from homework and out to a concert or a show. Joy, accosting him in a strip club and informing him that he was going to date her. Danny, turning his assumptions on their heads with a sneer.
Clara, appearing in his life and changing everything with one smile. His child, unexpectedly becoming two children.
And yet Ivy, for all the mudpies to the face, was his sister, his flesh and blood in reality if not biology. Lars dragged him out of his self-imposed hermitage in college and into a group of friends he still had. Joy he was still privileged to count as a friend-- hell, she'd been at his wedding, albeit uninvited. Danny made him understand so much more, every day she lived with him.
Clara, oh, Clara. He was so grateful for her, every day. Every time he put his arms around her, every time she smiled at him, he remembered what life had been before her, and how much better everything was just because he shared it with her.
And his children. Molly and Billy. Miracles, both of them, tiny earthquakes shaking up his world, resettling his life into new lines.
He wondered if his father's life had revolved around him and his sisters the way his revolved around his twins. He and Clara, hand in hand, circling their children, wearing ruts in the ground but never for very long because something always, always changed.
He didn't like constant change. He liked things settled, comfortable, everything predictable and right.
His family had never let him have that calm, settled life.
He was pretty okay with that.