Blaze - Part Thirteen
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.
It’s a cold and wet morning. A slow, smoky kind of rain is falling outside. The air is chilly, the breeze coming in big bursts that rustle the dripping plants in the garden. The early sunlight can’t push through the heavy bed of rain clouds, so it’s all dark and grey beyond our windows.
Aiden and I woke up to find Luna snuggled under the covers with us, curled up on Aiden’s chest for his warmth. My head was on his chest, too, so I opened my eyes to the bewildering sight of a cat face less than one inch away from mine. Aiden laughed at the startled sound I let out, then snuggled both of us closer, glowing a little.
I lit the woodburning stove in the corner of our room after we got out of bed, but by then we didn’t really need it. Aiden’s warmth had already completely filled up our house. I felt it even when I left him upstairs and went down to the kitchen.
Now I’m standing with my shoulder leaning against the bathroom doorway. Biting my lip, my eyes fixed on him.
I could stand here forever, perfectly still, watching this.
Aiden, surrounded by the raspberry and bottle-green glass tiles of our bathroom. Golden dimness with the lights on, while the sky is grey and stormy outside. The way the glow of the room passes over Aiden as he leans over the sink, sudsing up his face. Soap, hot water, shaving cream, his razor. The subtle rhythm of his quiet, steady movements. His chestnut hair all mussed up and wet from his shower, his eyes still blinking slowly as he wakes up.
He’s only in his pajama pants, which sit low on his hips. My eyes travel slowly over his bronze body in the gold-grey light, roaming appreciatively over every graceful line and sloping curve of muscle.
I even look at his aftershave bottle, his razor, his hairbrush, his watch on the bathroom counter - all of it, everything - with warm love flowing through my heart. There’s a little piece of him in each thing.
The bathroom window is half-overgrown with hanging flowers, and difficult to open. But he’s already pushed it open, and he’s taking deep breaths of the outside air.
He finishes shaving, rinses off his face, then starts pressing a towel to it.
I’m watching with open, obvious adoration in my eyes, and now Aiden is awake enough to notice. It seems to slowly dawn on him how long I’ve just been standing there. He pauses with the towel pressed to his cheek, lifts his blue eyes to look at me in the mirror.
God, those eyes. The bluest eyes I’ve ever seen. The hold they have over me is ridiculous. I stare right into them, unable to do anything else.
Aiden blinks hard and fast when he sees the way I’m looking at him, a gentle blush rising across his cheeks. He lets out a soft, shy laugh, then goes on drying off his face. But now it’s like he’s half-hiding in the towel.
“What are you doing, Keane?”
Only when he asks do I abruptly realize that I have no idea what I’m doing. I catch sight of myself in the bathroom mirror, see the strange, bright expression that was in my eyes as I watched Aiden.
I blush deeply, quickly straightening up in the bathroom doorway. The sweater of Aiden’s that I borrowed is so big on me that the sleeves come down past my fingertips. I start fidgeting with them, searching for a way to explain.
“I was just - you’re, um - I’m allowed to appreciate my own - don’t - listen, okay-”
Aiden’s deep, rumbling laugh kisses my ears again.
“I’m sure all of that meant something, Linden. If you ever figure out what it was, fill me in, yeah? Would love to know.”
“God, forget it!” I let out a loud groan, then cross the bathroom to wind my arms around him from behind, to press my cheek against the velvet heat of his back. “Just - how did I ever think I could just be your friend and not tell you how I feel about you?”
Aiden looks down at me over his shoulder, obviously startled.
The fine lines at the corners of his eyes grow sharper as a slow, giant smile turns up his lips. He puts down the towel, then places his hand over both of mine, strokes his thumb over my knuckles.
He doesn’t say anything in answer, so I just keep talking.
“I was even trying to convince myself, man!” I shake my head in disbelief. “Like - we’re totally just friends. Yeah, sometimes I catch myself just staring at his mouth while he’s talking to me, and I wonder a lot about what his hair feels like, and I’m definitely touching his arms way more than necessary. But that’s normal friends stuff, right?”
Aiden breaks into a little grin. “I mean, yeah, if one friend really wants to have sex with the other one.”
I let out a burst of indignant laughter, and Aiden squeezes my fingers, laughing with me. I feel the intimate vibration of that low rumble where our bodies are pressed together.
I let out a contented sigh. In this moment, I can’t imagine anything better than that sweet, deep, huffing sound. The only thing that could make it better is when it’s wrapped around his words, his voice.
Aiden turns around in my arms and smooths a strand of hair out of my face with his thumb, smiling warmly down at me. “What are you doing up so early? I thought you’d probably go back to bed, fall back asleep.”
“I made us breakfast.” I nod in the direction of the kitchen, settling my arms around his waist. “I just - wanted to get in a little time with you before work.”
It’s not like we’ve been starved for time together, not at all. But I can see from the expression in Aiden’s ocean eyes that he understands.
Ever since what happened with the conduit, the fires in our hearts have been blazing at constant, red-hot intensity.
I’m aching with how much I miss Aiden by the time he gets home from work every day. He keeps swinging by to visit me at the shop during my shifts. I’ve been getting up as early as he does in the morning, regardless of what shift I’m scheduled for at the shop that day. I keep showing up a little early to pick him up from City Hall, hanging out with him in the quiet of the archives as he finishes up.
He keeps calling me about stuff that easily could have been a text. To ask what I want for dinner, to see how my shift is going, to tell me about something he found in the archives.
I answer happily every time, grateful to have even five extra minutes of his voice during the day.
The sex we’ve been having has been wild and intense and ferocious, leaving both of us panting and mindless and blissed-out long after we collapse into a trembling heap against each other. I keep leaving teeth marks on him. I caught him trailing his fingertips over them when he thought I was asleep, smiling to himself.
Some nights Aiden and I sleep cuddled up, and some nights we’re both sprawled out all over the bed. But ever since the conduit, we’ve spent every night closely wrapped together, not even drawing apart in our sleep.
If my thoughts even slightly brush against twenty-four year old Aiden, sobbing and shattered and alone on his sleeping bag - my heart instantly sinks all the way down into the bottoms of my Converse with distress, and simultaneously, my heart floods with fierce, molten, overwhelming love. So much that I don’t even know what to do with it. I immediately have to call Aiden, or go find him, or draw him closer to me if we’re already together. I need to hold him, and then my heart drops wildly when I have to let him go again.
Whatever Aiden saw in the past, it’s clearly having similar effects on him.
I get the sense that he knows, like I do, that it’s time for us to finally talk more about this.
“You want to go on a date tonight?” Aiden rumbles softly, a surprising response to me telling him that I made us breakfast.
“Yes.” I smile up at him happily. “What do you feel like?”
“I’m open to whatever.”
“Should we go for dinner somewhere? My turn to pick the place, right?”
“Mmm. Well, I dunno, Keane. Let’s see what you made for breakfast. Prove you know enough about food to be trusted with picking the place.”
I pause, blinking at him, then burst into a soft, indignant laugh. I weave my fingers through Aiden’s, start to lead him towards the door. He lets me go for a second to go back and put on his aftershave, then comes over and takes my fingers again.
I lead the way to the kitchen, taking deep breaths of vetiver.
Aiden glows softly as we step into the kitchen together, like a piece of sunlight against the shivering, cold, soaked morning. His toasty warmth is saturating the air around him, and around me.
It grows richer when he sees the simple little thing I made for us, what I know he likes on freezing mornings. Two warm, steamy bowls of oatmeal. Mine with a little bit of melted butter and brown sugar, Aiden’s with a drizzle of maple syrup and chopped dates.
He bends down to kiss the top of my head. “You pick the place.”
I smile up at him, then freeze and blush deeply when he stretches his muscled arms up over his head. His sculpted bronze torso is on full display without his shirt. My eyes travel the soft line of fine dark body hair leading down into his low-slung pajama pants.
He catches me looking, pauses, and huffs out a soft little laugh. I hastily put my back to him, trying to pretend that his laughter combined with that arm-stretch didn’t send my heartbeat flying and stumbling over itself.
“Sounds like a date,” I answer, feeling stupid for still getting nervous butterflies over him. “Now go get a fucking shirt, please, before I die.”
His warm, rich laughter again, this time all playful. “Alright.”
I head over to the toaster, since I was planning to make us some hot buttered toast to go with breakfast. It’s on one of the lower kitchen counters, and I have to bend over it to turn it on.
“Is this thing broken?” I straighten up again and make a face at Aiden over my shoulder as he comes up behind me. “I don’t think it’s turning on.”
Aiden stops behind me, shrugs his shoulders. “I don’t know, try it again?”
As soon as I bend over again, he gives my ass a hard slap, then turns and rushes away.
I snap upright instantly with a sharp gasp, automatically swatting at him. “Oh, you nuisance-!”
He’s already disappeared through the kitchen door, but I hear him laughing. I hear his laughter echoing all throughout our house, warming it through every brick and stone and piece of wood. I feel it like a sunbath.
Alone in our kitchen, I laugh softly to myself, swimming in the warmth of my sunlight.
~~~~
The wind has subsided by the afternoon, but it left behind charcoal clouds, white mist, and soft, occasional showers of rain.
I’m spattered with mud and damp with rain, on my knees in the little kitchen-garden lining the side of the house.
I want to grow things for Aiden to cook with, so I’ve been slowly working away on clearing the tangled overgrowth here. I’m finally done with that. I’ve found rich, dark earth underneath it all. I couldn’t help but take off my gardening gloves and sink my fingers into it.
I know I can grow good things here. I can feel it through my fingertips.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my date with Aiden tonight. Even if we’re not going to tell each other what we saw in the past, we both definitely have things to say about the whole experience with the conduit.
I want my head to be clear and calm for that conversation, and when Aiden is busy, this is the best way I know how to achieve that. I know I have rain and mud all over me, and probably some topsoil smeared on my face, but I couldn’t be happier.
I toss my rain-wet hair out of my eyes, then gently nestle another set of young, fragile roots into the black softness of the earth. I love doing this, every time. The rain is making each spot I dig out into a puddle before I can plant anything, but that should only help these little sprouts.
I’m deeply absorbed in my work, all of my focus concentrated on it. So I’m absolutely baffled when I look up and see a muddy little puppy nosing around in the leaves of a wild strawberry plant nearby.
It backs off when I notice it, then sits down, looks at me with shy eyes.
I stare at the puppy blankly, realizing that it has a collar, and - another dog with it?
“Ida?” I say out loud, staring at the much bigger, elderly dog.
She was sniffing through some of the new shoots, but she lifts her rottweiler face to me in happy, panting recognition.
I come out of the boxed-in kitchen garden and stop on the mud and grass, staring at her. She stiffly trots over, her tail wagging, then flings herself down on me, knocking me flat onto my ass.
She gives my startled face a lick, then happily cozies up on my legs, which instantly begin to go numb beneath her weight. She closes her eyes and lets out a heavy sigh, like she’s settling down to go to sleep.
“Um - Floyd?” I call out, bewildered, watching the puppy eagerly roll around in the mud at the edge of the kitchen garden. “Are you here?”
He comes skidding around the corner of our house a second later, a little out of breath.
“So this is where everyone went! Oh - Jamie!” His over-magnetized eyes are huge behind his glasses, his long grey hair wild with its usual flyaways. “Hello! You don’t want a dog, do you?”
“What-?” I stare at Floyd, slightly dazed, wondering if I fell asleep in the garden and this is all some weird dream. “I mean - not right now? We only just got a cat, but - eventually - um, what’s-?”
“Oh, these little devils! Into the mud already!” Floyd’s eyes scan over the situation in dismay, taking in the puppy sniffing at my gardening tools and Ida sprawled out on my lap. “Just push her off if your legs are falling asleep, Jamie!”
They are, so I reach down and give Ida a push. She lets out a lazy snore, without noticing that anything happened and without budging one inch.
“Ida!” Floyd calls, his gesturing hands flapping in her direction. “Come here, my girl! Let that poor boy stand up!”
Ida jerks awake with a little whuff at the clicking of the many rings on Floyd’s fingers. She slowly gets to her feet and goes over to him. I let out an immense breath of relief, then stagger back to my feet, too.
“Oh no, they covered you in mud!” Floyd groans, his enormous eyes mortified. “They jumped out of the car before I could stop them, the monsters!”
“It’s okay,” I laugh, extending my fingers to the tiny puppy to sniff. “I was actually already covered in m-”
I break off in surprise when the puppy instantly skitters away from my fingers and retreats backwards, its eyes very wide, its little body trembling in terror. It makes a soft, anxious whining sound, trying to make itself as small as possible.
“She’s a nervous one,” Floyd explains, rubbing Ida’s ears as he looks down at the puppy. “I’m not sure what she’s been through. She had a broken rib when Ida found her by the highway near my shop!”
I stare down at the puppy, my heart melting with sympathy at the sound of her high, nervous whimpering. She’s practically covered in mud, but I can see she’s a fluffy little thing, with pointed upright ears and a soft pink nose.
“Anyhow, I’m terribly sorry to swing by out of the blue like this!” Floyd winces at me apologetically, his grey flyaways bouncing with every gesture of his hands. “But I’m heading out of Greenrock with Ida to visit a friend for the weekend, and I remembered that you and Aiden both said you love dogs. So I thought I’d come by to see if you might - watch her for the weekend? And to ask if you knew of anyone who might want to keep her. I’ve already got my hands full with this sweet old girl!”
“Oh.” I hesitate, looking at the puppy. “Well, Aiden and I actually have plans for tonight, but - no, it’s okay! I’ll see if one of my friends can watch her.”
“Really? Oh-” Floyd seizes my shoulder gratefully. “Thank you so much, Jamie! She doesn’t bite, I promise.”
“No problem, happy to!” I smile brightly at him, bending to look at the trembling puppy. “Does she have a name?”
“Tycho, after the lunar crater! You’ll see once the mud is off. I’ve been thinking a great deal about the mysteries of space, lately!”
I wonder if that’s why Floyd chose today’s shirt, which has a graphic of a road sign that reads: Roswell, New Mexico - Thank you for visiting!
“The rain might take care of the mud, honestly,” I answer, as Tycho hesitantly, haltingly noses her way back towards me. “God, I wish we could keep her ourselves, but we really have a lot going on at the moment. We have a cat now, and our new house, and-”
“Yes, the new house! You and Aiden moved in together!” Floyd seizes my hand and begins wringing it enthusiastically. “Congratulations, my dear boy, splendid! Quite the milestone in a romantic relationship, I’m told!”
I blink at Floyd in surprise, suddenly curious. “Do you have a partner, Floyd? I just realized I’ve never asked.”
“A partner?” Floyd pauses, considering, his grey eyebrows slightly knit in confusion. “Well - I suppose I have Ida, don’t I? And you all, my partners in solving the case!”
“Yeah, but-” I hesitate, not sure if he gets what I’m saying. “I meant, like - someone you’re in love with?”
“Oh, I see! No, my boy, not me! It’s rather more about mysteries. I suppose you could say that’s what I’m in love with.” Floyd beams at me eagerly from behind his giant eyeglasses, tugging on the rolled-up sleeve of my flannel. “Speaking of which, I watched The Phenomenon last night, Jamie, and we must talk about it, we have to, the footage! Absolutely dynamite! Hard proof of things I’ve been saying for years!”
“Okay, sounds good,” I laugh, looking down at the puppy. “Maybe we can watch it together when you come back to pick up Tycho.”
“Oh, but do see if you can find her a home among your friends,” Floyd says, bending down to scratch her muddy little forehead. “This one needs her own partner.”
~~~~
Tycho makes sense to me for the name of the puppy as soon as I get her washed off.
Beneath everything, she’s turned out to be a soft, fluffy little thing of silver and white fur. She has a pink nose with black speckles and pointed ears, one with a nick in the side that makes it fall slightly, bending forward over itself. She’s so tiny now, but I get the sense that she could turn out to be big. She has pale blue eyes, but her pupils are continuously so enormous that it took me a while to tell.
She’s deeply timid and afraid, scampering beneath our furniture at the slightest unexpected movement from me, scrambling backwards in a panic whenever Luna comes over to sniff at her.
It took a long time and a lot of coaxing for Tycho to let me touch her, much less clean her off. Our kitchen is a muddy mess, and so am I, but she’s all clean now, and bundled in a towel in my arms.
“Oh, you’re so cute,” I groan, looking down at her. “I would so keep you if we had the time to give you all the love you deserve.”
She makes a soft little whimpering sound at me, still uncertain about me holding her.
“Let’s see,” I say softly, thinking through my options. “Who could take you?”
Who might want a puppy? I’m not sure. Angie fosters all kinds of different animals already, Des can’t have pets in her apartment. Kent would murder me if I unexpectedly handed Ellen a puppy to take care of, which also eliminates Gabby, who’s moving in with him soon. Raj, Mel, and Noah have their hands full enough with Nikita, without adding a puppy to the mix, and Ripley’s family already has two dogs…
I look up in surprise as I hear the front door click open.
“Keane?” calls a voice through the house. “You here?”
A possibility I hadn’t considered suddenly occurs to me.
“Hey, Ralph,” I call back, hugging Tycho to my chest. “Yeah, I’m in the kitchen! Come here, there’s someone I want you to meet!”
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