Oh Fuck Could You Please Make A Full Text Post About Andrew And Aaron's Ways Of Protecting And Caring

Oh fuck could you please make a full text post about Andrew and Aaron's ways of protecting and caring for each other because those tags were fucking beautiful and I might be crying but I'm always ready for more

With TRC, there’s a lot of discussion about how Gansey and his friends speak different love languages, which makes it difficult for them to realize just how much they care for each other? And I think that’s honestly what happens with Andrew and Aaron, because they are both so broken in their own ways, and they both have such twisted concepts of what it means to love and to protect someone. They’re such different views, and both so off-center from the traditional concept of “love”, that it really just doesn’t translate to either of them.

(And I think this probably makes things incredibly difficult for Nicky as their guardian, because while Nicky’s parents are terrible people, he seems to have grown up at least well-adjusted and with some concept of love, even if that wasn’t an unconditional love.)

I think the main problem in the Minyards’ relationship is that they don’t understand each other’s motivations. Aaron does not believe that Andrew is protecting him, because Aaron doesn’t have it in his head that protection is not immediate. For Aaron, protecting his brother means swinging an Exy stick at Drake and putting an immediate end to what was causing Andrew pain. For Aaron, protecting Katelyn is switching rooms with Neil to keep Katelyn out of Andrew’s reach. There is an action, and there is a reaction, and there is not space between the two.

That’s not how Andrew works. That’s not how Andrew’s life has conditioned him to work.

For Andrew, protecting Aaron means finding out that he has a real family and writing a letter that says fuck you I don’t want to know you even though he really, really does, because that means that Aaron is going to be put in Drake’s sights. It means leaving behind Cass Spear and what he thought was his one real chance at having a family and a home, to keep Aaron safe. It means breaking into some place and waiting around for the police to pick him up so that he was thrown in juvie before anyone could arrange a surprise visit between Aaron and his brother’s nightmares.

Protecting Aaron, for Andrew, is plotting for months on how to get rid of Tilda. It’s not immediately stepping between the two of them. It’s not calling the police or getting Luther Hemmick involved, because those are both things that Andrew knows he can’t do–because he grows up with the one cop he knows being close friends with his abuser, and because he told Luther what was happening to him and Luther dismissed him, so why would he trust Luther with Aaron, who he thinks is so much more important? Protecting Aaron from Tilda means making goddamn sure that Tilda will never lay a hand on him again, that Tilda’s drugs will not remain in Aaron’s system, that her influence will not ruin Aaron’s life.

Protecting Aaron, for Andrew, is taking Matt to Columbia when Andrew sees that he’s faltering in his sobriety, and making sure that Matt ends up clean for real so that Aaron, a recovering addict, is not around some kind of influence that will break him and send him back to that hole he was in when Andrew found him.

None of this is as clear cut as a blow to the head. Andrew functions in the details and the planning when it comes to Aaron. He does the clear cut stuff enough with Nicky and Kevin–beating the shit out of those guys who hurt Nicky and giving immediate retaliation to anyone who lays a hand on Kevin–that I think Aaron believes that’s what Andrew’s protection means. And if that’s what he thinks, then it’s not a surprise that he doesn’t believe that Andrew has done anything that he’s done to protect him. It’s not a surprise that Aaron doesn’t understand Andrew’s reaction to him in Columbia, or that he’s shocked by the viciousness of Andrew’s retaliation against Allison when she punches Aaron.

I think Aaron’s well within his rights to never forgive Andrew for what happened with Tilda, and I wouldn’t hold it against him if he didn’t–but I do think that he does start to understand, later on, especially after the trial, that Andrew hasn’t done these things to be cruel to Aaron or to hurt him; he’s done them because Andrew has been protecting him more dearly than he protects himself their whole lives–years before they’d even met.