Chapter Text
AARON TYLER, twenty six years, six months, six days, six hours and eight minutes old, was lying on a sofa. It was a soft sofa, if a bit worn with age, and comfortable. A perfectly reasonable sofa to be laying on. It was also only barely too short for his long frame, his legs curled under him at a much kinder angle than usual.
Arms wrapped around the throw pillow that cushioned his head, he regarded the room. It looked like the living room of a smallish apartment, with pale mustard wallpaper in a subtle floral pattern and decor that conjured images of another time. From his spot on the sofa, Aaron could see a doorway to a tidy, mint green kitchen and a short hallway leading off to other rooms.
Aaron wasn’t immediately alarmed by the situation. He had fairly keen instincts, when he cared to use them, and despite his strange environment, he didn’t feel like he was in any immediate danger.
That sense was subject to change, however, he thought as someone knocked on the door. The rapping was loud and energetic, and Aaron made a little face as he tentatively stood to go answer it, wiping the side of his mouth. He adjusted the black tee shirt and pajama pants he had on, but had never seen before, and opened the door.
“Ned! There you are!” a small brown-haired woman cried. Aaron’s first immediate thought was of his sister Jaye, but his sister Jaye knew his name. And his sister Jaye wouldn’t be caught dead in the nineteen-fifties style candy colored tea dress the woman in front of him was sporting. Aaron’s brow creased. “Olive and I were getting worried. Did you lose track of time? We put some pies in to bake, so there’ll be some warm ones when we open… your hair looks different.”
Aaron frowned down at the little woman in confusion, and as the little woman looked back up at him, her smile began to fade. “Ned? Are you okay?”
Aaron took a split second to review his options, and decided that the best one was, for the immediate time being, to play along. “Yeah,” he said, frown easing into a smile of his own. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just… let me get ready, and I will meet you downstairs.”
The young woman looked appeased, but Aaron couldn’t tell if she really believed him or not. “Okay… I’ll tell Olive to hold off on opening everything until you get there.”
Aaron nodded. “Thanks.” He closed the door and leaned his forehead on it pensively. Tea Dress Lady certainly seemed to know him, but not as him. She called him Ned… and apparently she wasn’t the only one who knew about this Ned guy, there was a girl named Olive waiting to open a shop or something. Aaron didn’t have long, as Tea Dress Lady was waiting on him. But he decided to do some quick reconnaissance. He headed to the kitchen first, peeking inside the fridge. “Fruits, vegetables… tofu?” So this Ned was a vegetarian. Okay. Unpleasant but good to know. Aaron closed the fridge and looked at the notes pinned to the side with magnets. A shopping list, a couple of vegetarian recipes, and… the phone number for the on-call medical examiner? A phone number with too few digits, that began with the letters ‘KL’?
Tea Dress LAdy hadn’t seemed inherently malevolent, but now something was pricking at the back of Aaron’s mind. He peeked into rooms until he found the bedroom, and that’s when things got weird.
In on corner of the room, there were two twin beds pushed together, a nightstand on each side. That wasn’t inherently wrong, just a little eccentric. What pushed it into the realm of weirdness was the clear vinyl sheet hanging on a frame between the two beds. It had a sleeve sewn into it, a closed sleeve with no arm or hand holes.
Aaron tried to come up with a reason that would exist at all, let alone in the context it existed in, but he failed to think of anything except to keep two bodies from touching at night.
Did everyone in this apartment complex have such freaky abstinence measures installed in their bedrooms?
Aaron blinked. Maybe they did. Maybe he’d been kidnapped, taken from his bed and brought to who knows where to be part of some… cult. Some weird, lost-in-time abstinence vegetarian cult. And Tea Dress Lady was either the brainwasher or a brainwashee, which would kind of explain why she thought his name was Ned and why she just sort of took everything about their conversation in stride. If he went downstairs, would she take him to their cult leader?
Aaron blinked again. It occurred to him that he was being irrational, that he didn’t have any kind of solid proof of a cult. Weirdness does not a religious breakaway sect make. But he couldn’t shake the niggling notion that something wasn’t right, and the fact that he didn’t know how he got to this apartment, with its vinyl sheets and its tofu, was beginning to unsettle him.
He went to the wardrobe and opened it up. Inside were neatly folded pairs of similar dark jeans, plain dark tee shirts in various shades of gray and black, and suit jackets and button down shirts in similarly drab colors, aside from a single white one. Aaron made a face at the clothes, but picked some anyways and changed. They fit him like they’d been made for him, which set off another alarm bell in his head. This situation was getting bizarre. More bizarre. Bizarre-er.
It took some hunting, but he found a pair of converse sneakers and some clean socks. He made a face at the shoes before putting them on. He wasn’t a particular fan of converse. They made him feel flat footed. Aaron preferred a little support.
Quickly, he stepped into the small bathroom to check himself out. He wore a black button-down and jeans, and it made him look somber and withdrawn. After contemplating his appearance a moment longer, he pushed his hair back from his face, adding to the image. Somber and withdrawn it is, then, he thought as he stepped out of the apartment to meet Tea Dress Lady below and go to wherever this shop was.
He met Tea Dress Lady in the lobby, and she smiled up at him. “Well don’t we look all somber and withdrawn today?” she prodded, with a kind of intimate familiarity that made Aaron’s considerable eyebrows twitch northwards. “You know, somber and withdrawn is very good look on you. It makes you all distinguished, like a theatre owner or a funeral director.” She paused. “Did you get some good news or something while you were up there?”
Aron frowned, cocking his head. “No… not particularly. Why?”
“Oh. No reason. You’re just standing very straight. Straighter than normal, I mean.” Tea Dress Lady looked him up and down. “Huh.”
Aaron considered how he was standing. His lovingly strict, well bred parents had tried to breed their children just as well. Sharon was objectively their biggest success, while Jaye… wasn’t. Aaron fell somewhere in the middle, as ever. It hadn’t occurred to him that his posture was particularly good or particularly bad. It just was.
But Aaron didn’t say any of this. He just said “Well… Thanks. I was trying something new.”
Tea Dress Lady’s eyebrows rose. “Oh! Well… new looks nice. You should try new more often.” She smiled and sashayed towards the front of the building. “Now come on, sleepyhead! Customers are queueing. Isn’t that such a neat word? Queue? It’s just like the letter ‘Q’, but with a bunch of little vowels waiting quietly behind it for their turn.”
Aaron followed her, absently wondering if she was on any sort of narcotic, but more intensively wondering about the intimacy she shared with him via her face and voice, but not via her touch. Physical contact is incredibly important to mankind. It holds a nearly mystical sway over the homo sapiens race, which is why, among other things, a good handshake is such a power move. IT is a show, however minute, of dominance and control. Just like a touch, a handhold here, a nudge there, is such a powerful display of affection. Tea Dress Lady was clearly affectionate towards him, in a chirpy birdsong kind of way, but for whatever reason she had made no move to touch him.
This is all very weird, Aaron couldn’t help but think as he followed her to work.
Tea Dress Lady let him in through a door in the back. A mouth watering smell wafted past, reminding him of his housekeeper's cooking.
“Well?” the Tea Dress Lady said, peeping over his shoulders. “You gonna go in or what?”
Aaron shook himself. “Oh, yeah. Right. Going in.” This being said, he went in. The kitchen was warm, that pleasant warmth of happy hearth fires and hot tea on a cold night. The warmth of a home.
“Ned!” a high-pitched voice shrieked. “There you are! People are lining. Up.” A small blonde woman, easily a foot and a half shorter than him, bustled up. Her high heels clicked on the linoleum, and she put her tiny fists on slender hips. “Can I open the doors now or what?”
“Oh… yeah. Sure.”
The small woman, presumably Olive, was not as modest as the Tea Dress Lady. Her tangerine uniform wasn’t quite… zipped in front, and Aaron noticed. Any red-blooded man inclined towards the fairer sex wouldn’t be able to help but notice. She grinned dazzlingly up at him. “Great! I’ll work my magic with the customers, you work your magic with your pies, pie-guy!” And with a friendly punch to the bicep, she was off, bouncing away to let in their patrons. Aaron looked helplessly at Tea Dress Lady, panic stirring in him.
“Oh relax,” the cheerful brunette said, hopping up onto a counter. “She doesn’t know, silly. It’s just a figure of speech.”
Aaron frowned and cocked his head at her before shaking it dismissively. “No, it’s not that…”
“Then what is it?” the young lady asked, kicking her feet as her expression became tinged with concern.
“Nothing,” Aaron said. It’s nothing.” He lied. What it really was was that Aaron had never baked a pie before. Nor had he baked anything before, to be perfectly frank. Yvette, the Tylers’ faux-French Canadian housekeeper had done all the baking and braising and steaming and stewing the family had needed.
But Aaron didn’t tell Tea Dress Lady any of this. Instead, he said with a fake smile on his face and terror in his heart, “Let’s bake some pies.”
“That’s the spirit!” Tea Dress Lady hopped off the counter and opened her mouth to say something, but before her words could find their way out, Olive’s found their way into the kitchen from the front of the store. “Chuck!” Olive called. “Help me with the espresso machine?”
Tea Dress Lady - Chuck - rolled her eyes fondly. “I will be right back.” So saying, she trotted off, dress flouncing about her knees, to go help the waitress with whatever was wrong with the espresso machine. In the kitchen, Aaron leaned on the center island, letting his head fall into his hands. “Let’s bake some pies?” he groaned to himself. “Why, why, why did I say that? Idiot.”
He suddenly became very keenly aware of a pair of eyes on him. Slowly, he looked up to meet the gaze of… a golden retriever. It was looking at him very oddly, apparently confused. Upon meeting Aaron’s gaze, its tail wagged once. Aaron blinked at it and dropped into a crouch. “... Hey there, fella,” he said hesitantly.
Equally hesitantly, the dog stepped a single step closer to him. It wasn’t growling, but it didn’t seem ecstatic to see him, either.
Slowly, Aaron held out a hand for the dog to sniff. Instead of inquisitively snuffling around his fingers, like the dogs Aaron was used to, as the hand neared proximity to this dog it bared its teeth with a soft but pointed growl. Aaron stood up quickly and eyed it with suspicion.
The dog eyed him back.
“Ned? Do we have a triple berry on the rack?” Chuck called. “I forget.”
Right. Pies. He was supposed to be making pies. Averting his eyes from the dog’s penetrating mahogany stare, He glanced at the rack of premade pastries. “Uh… Yeah, looks like. Want me to serve up a slice?”
“Three!” Chuck called back.
Aaron did as he was told, handing off the pieces of pie when the waitress came to collect them. She peered past him into the kitchen. “You haven’t even sifted out the flour yet,” she noted, frown audible. “You sure you’re okay?”
“Who, me? I’m fine, Chuck,” he reassured the young woman cavalierly. He lied. “I’m just… getting a slow start today. Rough night, and all.”
Her frown became visible now, grey-green eyes full of concern. “You slept badly?”
He shrugged and looked away from her gaze. “Eh? It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t horrible. It was mediocre. I promise I’m okay.”
“Okay…” Chuck eyed him once more before turning in a flourish of confectionary skirts and the wafting perfume of fresh triple berry to deliver the slices.
Well… Aaron thought as he retreated to the kitchen, avoiding the weird dog. At least now he knew to sift flour first. He eyed the marble countertop with distaste before ducking into cabinets to find the flour, and hoping whatever was used to sift it was nearby.
Behind him, the two women met in between the pie rack and the front counter to put their heads together.
“Is Ned being weird?” Olive asked.
“He’s being a little weird,” Chuck admitted. “Anytime someone mentions baking to him, he just looks panicked. I’ve tried asking him what’s wrong, but he says he’s fine, which is odd because anyone who could see could see that he wasn’t fine and I know Ned loves secrets… but I thought he’d gotten past keeping them from me.” Chuck sighed and shrugged. “I just… worry about him sometimes.”
“Is he too young to have a midlife crisis?” Olive asked. “Maybe he’s just realizing life is short and pies are a trap. A sticky sweet sugary trap… that he doesn’t ever partake in for some reason.”
“I’m not having a midlife crisis,” Aaron piped up, straightening with th flour and the sifter. “And you two do not need to worry about me.”
Olive turned to him in offense. “Excuse me, Mister, but how did you hear that? I was speaking in hushed. Tones. My tones were hushed!”
“Your voice carries,” Aaron said dryly, setting out the flour before peering at a recipe tacked to a corkboard and ducking back into the refrigerator to hunt for some dough.
The bell on the door rang. Olive giggled. “Hi Emerson!”
“Oh!” said Chuck. “Emerson, hello! Three plum?”
“A la mode,” a new voice said, deep, rough, and sure of himself. “Where’s the pie boy?”
“He’s in the kitchen. Just getting started,” chuck said cheerfully.
“I’ll get him!” Olive said. Aaron heard her heels clicking rapidly over, and felt a little finger tapping his shoulder. “Ned, Emerson’s here. He wants to powwow.”
Powwow? Aaron mouthed to himself skeptically as he straightened. “Oh,” he said, trying to sound like a man who had the slightest idea what he was talking about. “Emerson. Great. Coming!”
Internally, Aaron considered why he was still playing along with these girls. Clearly they weren’t in a cult, and though he didn’t know why they were calling him Ned, he figured now was as good a time as any to break it to them, and to this Emerson character, that they were mistaken. He didn’t want to dig his grave any deeper than he needed to.
… Then Aaron actually laid eyes on 'that Emerson character,' and resolved to dig twice as fast and deep as he had been before. Emerson was huge. Nearly as tall as Aaron’s own six foot five inches, and broad of shoulder, Emerson was a powerfully built black guy of indeterminate age who looked perfectly capable of snapping Aaron in half. Aaron couldn’t help but balk, his subconscious filling his mind with images of what would happen if Emerson learned he was an impostor.
At this very moment, Emerson was chatting with chuck over a plate of three plum pie and vanilla ice cream. “What was that about him just getting started? Usually pie boy is in here before the crack of dawn. Brother is obsessed with those pastries.”
Chuck shrugged. “I dunno. He slept in today.”
“Huh,” Emerson said. “Damn.”
“Emerson,” Aaron said, announcing his presence and trying to control the slight tremor in his voice. “Hi.” He felt himself hunch up under the intimidating man’s gaze.
“Hi,” Emerson said without any real sense of greeting. He was eyeing Aaron suspiciously. “You sick or something?”
“What? No. I’m not sick,” Aaron said, waving a hand as if to wave away the very notion.
“Hm.” Emerson still seemed suspicious. But then he shrugged. “Well, don’t start anything. You missed your chance for pie time this morning. Now it’s crime time.”
Aaron blinked. “Crime time?”
“Crime time,” Emerson confirmed. “You and Dead Girl are taking a ride with me to visit the coroner, you’re gonna do what you do, and we’re gonna get acquainted with a drowned hydro-gymnast. The aqua playhouse he worked for is offering a reward for catching the killer. So we gonna catch ourselves a killer.” Emerson took a vindictive bite of three plum, as though it were a deserving criminal and his esophagus was the fast track to gastrointestinal justice.
Aaron found himself staring, as his mind tried to process the avalanche of information the man had just unleashed upon him. Apparently now he wasn’t just expected to play a pie maker who didn’t know how to make pies, he was also a detective with no knowledge of how to detect! So what, half the time this Ned guy was a happy hometown baker-slash-entrepreneur, and the other half he was… what? A bounty hunter? A detective for hire? What skills could a baker that looked like Aaron possibly have that would make him so invaluable to a man like Emerson?
… And had he just called Chuck ‘Dead Girl?’
As this was all playing out in Aaron Tyler’s mind, he realized that his traitorous feet were obediently following the large man and the small woman out to what seemed to be an off white vintage Lincoln Continental.
Aaron really didn’t see how this could go anywhere but downhill from here.