Page 62 of Don't Shoot Me Santa

But instead of unpacking it, instead of letting himself get soft again, Aaron twisted in close and, pressing his mouth to Kenny’s throat, he sucked hard. His teeth grazed until the sting bloomed sharply.

Kenny didn’t push him away.

No. He wouldn’t. He let him take what he needed and exhaled the sudden pain, cupping the back of Aaron’s head, tilting his neck to allow him more. Because that was the thing about Aaron: softness scared him more than bruises. And Kenny knew how sometimes, letting him bite was the closest he could get to sayinghelp. Classic deflection. Distraction through sensation. Aaron didn’t want to talk about it, so he turned pain into play, made it physical, something he couldcontrol. It wasn’t avoidance. It was preservation, masked in teeth and heat.

Aaron finally let go with apopand leaned back enough to break contact.

“I’ve also got to go to some homeless shelter thing.”

Ah. Kenny tilted his head, watching him from the corner of his eye.

Aaron didn’t quite meet his gaze. His attention landed somewhere vague. Kenny’s hands, maybe. Or the table. “Blackwell wants a photo op. PR fluff. Me and Chaos playing therapy dog and handler. You know… human-interest garnish.”

There it was.

Not nerves exactly, but unease. The tell. Aaron always made himself small when he sensed a performance coming. As if bracing for the moment he’d stop being a person and start being a prop.

“You okay with that?”

Aaron shrugged. “You told me to go for that job.”

“I did, but only if you want to and only if you’re comfortable with it. If you’re not, don’t go.”

“Said I will now.”

Kenny caught his jaw and kissed him. “Call me if anything feels off.”

“Why would anything feel off?”

Kenny flicked his gaze to the files. The photos. Thevictimology.

“Right.” Aaron slipped off his lap, stretching, bones popping. Then sauntered to the door, turning back. “I’ll walk in. Leave you to your corpse fetish. But…can you pick me up? From the centre? After? Wanna check on Lucky before I come home and it’s too fucking cold to walk home.”

Kenny heard what he wasn’t saying.

Not in the words, but in the rhythm beneath them. The shift in cadence, the slight downturn at the end. It was the tell Aaron didn’t know he had: when the bravado slipped, when sarcasm became a shield instead of a sword.

This wasn’t about weather.

It was aboutcontrol. Or the sudden lack of it.

Aaron was voluntarily stepping into a performative space, a place where he’d be on display, shaped by someone else’s agenda. Blackwell’s. And Aaron, for all his sharpness and swagger, didn’t handle that well. He’d been objectified too many times before he ever had a say in who touched his body or used his story.

So now, asking to be picked up wasn’t about transport.

It was about escape.

Reclaiming the ending.

And Kenny, fluent in every flicker of his body language, every emotional micro-shift, recognised it immediately.

“Do you want me to come with you?” He gestured to the desk, the files, the stack of half-read reports. “I can leave this. Say the word.”

Aaron’s mouth tipped into a smirk not quite reaching his eyes. “As if. Who the fuck else is gonna rip the mask off this freak, eh? Go on, Shaggy. Go get ’em.”

“You know that makes you Scooby-Doo.”

“’Cause I’m a good boy.”