Magical Spice - Part Nine
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.
I slip into the coffee room, hand Aiden his mug of tea, and drop down to sit beside him. Kasey took one of the floor cushions on the other side of the table, and Will is seated behind her, letting her lean back against his broad chest. The glow of the fireplace gently illuminates their translucent bodies, mixing a hazy, iridescent shade of tangerine into their usual silvery white.
I take a long, steadying sip of chamomile, set the mug aside on the tree-trunk coffee table, and pull the potted sugar maple closer until it’s right in front of me. This isn’t the best place to start working on it, but I don’t want to wait.
Aiden watches as I get to work on the sapling with my secateurs. The black kitten is bundled in his fingers, snugly wrapped up in a hand towel. The poor little guy wailed indignantly and imperatively through his whole bath, but now he seems happy to be clean, and dry, and held in gentle hands. He’s slowly falling asleep with his little chin resting flat on the side of Aiden’s index finger.
Aiden reaches around him to get the spare baby bottle that Raj forgot here forever ago. Aiden filled it up with some sweet, creamy goat milk mixture that he just cooked up. It must have cooled off by the time I finished up the chaotic kitten bath, because he feels the bottle with his fingertips, then frowns.
I stop what I’m doing as his eyes light up with a rush of flickering white-blue magic. The baby bottle steams up, the mixture inside growing warm again. Aiden offers it to the kitten, who immediately rouses from his nap and begins struggling eagerly to reach it.
Aiden carefully feeds the kitten for a moment, then catches me staring and arches a questioning eyebrow.
“Nothing,” I say hastily, getting my eyes back on the sapling. “Just, um - you used magic for that, huh? And to dry the kitten off, too.”
“So? I’ve done that kind of stuff before.”
“Yeah, true, but you could’ve done it by hand.”
“I - it’s a Guardian situation, isn’t it?” Aiden drops his puzzled gaze to the kitten, then looks up at me again, confused. “That’s the type of thing I’m supposed to use magic for, right?”
“Right.”
Right. But there was a time when even if somebody’s life was on the line, Aiden would’ve preferred to do anything else besides use his magic. I remember when he refused to dry my hair off because he jokingly said he might melt my brain. Clearly he’s not concerned that he might melt the kitten, or explode the baby bottle.
At some point he began working little pieces of magic like that more frequently, without worrying too much about it. But he still took the time to stop and concentrate on what he was doing, being very careful to avoid a mistake.
To see him do this kind of magic absent-mindedly and effortlessly… that’s something that only started up recently. And it’s - oh, no. It’s sexy. I don’t know why. There’s a turn-on I’d never have known about, if it wasn’t specifically Aiden Callahan I’d fallen in love with.
He catches the smile from me, searching my face with baffled blue eyes. I lean up to stamp a kiss onto his forehead, then quickly turn back to the sapling before he can see me blushing.
“Okay, are we calm?” Kasey asks, watching us with one eyebrow lifted. “Can we explain, now? Without making everything ten times more confusing?”
We can, so I do. I trim up the sugar maple as I tell the ghosts about the visit from the spirit. Stopping to gently nudge Luna’s inquisitive face back every now and then. Snipping away the leaves that are beyond repair, so that the healing ones can breathe. The sapling gets a little taller with each bit of dead weight cut away.
“Whoa!” Kasey breathes, when I finish relaying what happened. Her dark eyes are wide with excitement, her fingers twitching like she wishes she could take notes. “It can just do that? Relay your own voices back to you?”
“And yet it can’t actually speak in any human language, sounds like,” Will murmurs, his leaf-green eyes flitting curiously to Kasey. “It is certainly nothing like us, be that the case.”
“Maybe not, but I was more focused on the fact that it followed us home.” I catch Luna’s paw before she can bat at the sapling leaves, then place a fingertip on her forehead and gently steer her backwards. “That makes me think it can go wherever it wants.”
Aiden looks up from feeding the kitten, a slight frown turning down his lips. “Then why was it lingering around the farmhouse ruins, of all places?”
“Spencer did say that some mythical and magical creatures make their homes in places humans have forsaken.”
“Yeah, Jamie, but what is this one?” Kasey has that checked-out expression in her eyes, the one that means she’s busy skimming through the historical encyclopedia in her head. “It sounds like the spirit had no idea that it could do that with your voices until it tried, so it doesn’t know the full extent of its own powers. It also must be something shy, to keep retreating like this.”
“I wonder what it wants?” Will leans back on his calloused hands, the light of the fireplace glowing through his chest and reflecting in his wondering green eyes. “To follow you all the way here? Quite a ways to go, for such a small creature.”
I run my mind back through the words the little spirit echoed to us, in our own broken-up voices.
Can you understand me? Did you understand me?
“It wants someone to understand,” I answer softly. The strange, musical little noise it made plays again in my head, singing through my thoughts. “It speaks its own language, and - this is the only spirit like this you’ve ever sensed, right, Aiden? It probably has no one it can talk to. Nobody understands its language.”
“I mean - I kind of understood its language,” Aiden says.
Three pairs of startled eyes snap to Aiden.
“What?” Kasey’s long eyelashes flutter as she blinks at him, extracting herself from the invisible encyclopedia. “Seriously, Aiden?”
Aiden is staring at me, his brows knitted in confusion. “You’re telling me you couldn’t understand it at all?”
“You’re telling me you could make something out of that?”
“Sort of…” Aiden falls silent for a long moment, struggling to think of how to explain. “It was like… when you listen to a noisy song for the first time, and you can’t understand the lyrics, but you know you’ll be able to make out more on the next listen.”
Will, Kasey, and I all stare at him in blank-faced, wide-eyed amazement.
“Okay,” I manage slowly. “Well, that was purely instrumental for me. So it’s only you who can potentially understand it, Aiden.”
He blinks hard, drawing back, then looks inquiringly at Kasey.
“You think I have an explanation?” She lets out a giggle of startled laughter, spreading her hands indignantly. “You’re the Heliomancer!”
“That doesn’t mean I know what’s going on!”
“Guess I do know at least one thing that’s going on.” Kasey points at Aiden, adopting a very matter-of-fact tone. “The spirit wants someone to understand it, and you’re the only one who can, Aiden. That’s why it followed you home.”
Aiden and I sit back, then look at each other. I can see in his blue eyes exactly what he’s thinking. Why just me?
It must be because he’s a Guardian, but why that would give him some partial ability to communicate with this strange, shy, extremely powerful little being is unclear.
Aiden sets the baby bottle aside and gently places the kitten down on our coffee table. The kitten looks drowsy again after eating so much, but he launches on an immediate exploratory mission around the table, wobbling precariously on his tiny legs for a moment between every step. He looks adorably soft, now that his inky fur is all clean. His tail is so short that it’s essentially just a triangle.
We all stop to watch him on his adorable little journey for a moment. Walking isn’t something he’s mastered yet, or he wouldn’t be getting his paws crossed like that. His tumbling, unsteady little steps have all the grace of someone way too many drinks in, just trying to make it the last few feet to the cab.
I move the sapling aside and snap a picture. I text it to Raj, and add - found this little guy who needs a home! Any ideas on a name?
I’ve barely set my phone down before he replies.
Raj 🔨 8:42 PM: Holy shit so tiny!!! I love him!!
Raj 🔨 8:42 PM: Name him Eddie, and then introduce him to Ripley!😊
I let out an affectionate laugh as I toss my phone onto one of the cushions.
“We’ve got our mission directives regarding Eddie,” I tell Aiden, when he looks at me questioningly. “If we want to go with Raj’s instincts.”
“Aw.” Aiden turns his smiling ocean eyes back to the kitten. “Eddie. That name sound good to you, bud?”
With a force of effort so huge that it closes his little eyes, Eddie lets out another tiny, pitiful squeak, drawing a laugh of delight from everyone gathered around the coffee table.
“Okay, wait a second,” Kasey giggles, pressing her fingertips to her lips. “We were talking about the mystery spirit who knows where you guys live and can kind of speak with your voices.”
“Right.” I let out a dazed laugh. “How did we all get distracted from that by a kitten?”
“This is what happens if you live with magic every day for long enough,” Aiden tells me helplessly, then turns back to the rest of the team. “But we’re not gonna let a kitten derail us-”
“Aiden,” Kasey whispers, staring at Eddie with enormous, lovestruck eyes. “He’s - he’s turtled.”
We both look down at Eddie to discover that he’s toppled over onto his back. He’s unsuccessfully trying to kick himself back over onto his feet, his little paws scrabbling uselessly at the air. I let out a gasp, and Aiden quickly reaches out to set Eddie upright, then thinks better of it and gathers him back up into his hands. Eddie curls up contentedly on his palm, yawning deeply.
We all smile at him for a long moment, then abruptly look up at each other.
“What were we talking ab-?”
“The spirit!” Will laughs.
“Yeah, what do we want to do about it?” Aiden asks. “I’m happy to try and hear it out, but it keeps running off.”
My eyes wander back to Eddie, and my mind wanders to Ripley.
“I think,” I answer slowly, “It just needs time and patience, like a lot of the shy ones do.”
None of us can think of how to proceed beyond that, so after dinner and a few episodes of The X-Files, Kasey and Will set off walking together. Heading through our garden, off to cross the meadow to their haunted house. They paint a silvery picture in the mysterious dark greenery. Their glow lights up the raspberry canes, and the deep, pink-striped blossoms of the cliff maids sprouting out of the mossy garden wall.
“Keep an eye out for any stray spirits,” I call out softly to the ghosts, as they reach the garden gate.
“Ay, and you!” Will calls back.
It’s a strange way to say goodbye, but it’s our own kind of strangeness. I watch with a fond smile on my face until the ghosts stroll hand-in-hand directly through the garden wall, vanishing out into the deepening night.
~~~~
The malachite sapling doesn’t seem to need anything, so I leave it in the sleepy quiet of the garden and shut the back door after myself.
Aiden is at the kitchen counter, adding warm milk and spices to a bowl to make some kind of rich dough. There’s a smudge of flour on his cheek when he looks up at me, just above where his stubble-beard starts.
He makes a very fine figure standing there, his luxuriant chestnut locks all out of order, his beautiful blue eyes pooled with the warm light. His broad shoulders and hunky biceps are straining the soft cotton of his shirt just a tiny bit. An enticing hint at what’s beneath.
“You’re so pretty,” I purr softly, then blink in surprise when a violent crimson blush instantly rushes to Aiden’s cheeks. “Oh, what happened?”
“I - nothing.” He quickly drops his head, putting the dough out on the floured counter. “You just - you make me nervous sometimes, man. Came at me with that one out of nowhere.”
“As if no one’s ever told you that you’re pretty before,” I laugh, leaning my shoulder against the doorframe and crossing my arms over my chest. “Someone must have cursed you. Made it so you can’t hear when people point out how sexy you are. That’s the only explanation, because otherwise you really should be immune to it by now.”
Aiden huffs out a very quiet laugh, fidgeting with the flour. “It’s - different when you say it.”
I bite back whatever I was about to say next. I watch Aiden with adoring eyes as he starts kneading, carefully not looking up at me.
I retrieve the sugar maple from the coffee room and place it on the kitchen island, on the far side from where Aiden is working. It looks much better already, less weighed down. This one is sure to be picky about its soil, so I made sure to fill the pot with the right kind while I was at the shop. The sapling looks settled in nicely, now, its roots sunken in deeply.
“I think you’re gonna be just fine,” I tell it reassuringly, setting it aside so I can pick up the linden. “Okay, buddy, your turn! What can I do for y-?”
I break off and clear my throat, suddenly remembering that Aiden is right there, and he can hear me talking to the plants. But he’s smiling to himself, twisting his mouth to the side so it’s not so obvious.
“Um - did Noah tell you about the guy who said he’s going after Ripley?” I ask quickly, trying to move us right past that.
“Mhm.”
I sift my fingers through the soil in the linden pot, loosening it up so it can breathe. “Are you worried?”
“He’s got a good right,” Aiden answers simply, as if that’s all that needs to be said on the matter.
“So I’ve heard,” I laugh helplessly. “Apparently that means we’re fine here?”
“Mm. Unless Ripley says otherwise.”
I’ll never know how Aiden does that, says things like they’re just facts. That voice he uses is impossible to argue with. I breathe out a fond laugh as I place the linden near the kitchen window, where the sunlight will pour in on it in the morning.
Aiden puts the ball of dough back in the bowl, covers it with a cloth, and slips it into the fridge. Eddie is asleep in our little fruit hammock, which was empty anyways, awaiting our CSA delivery tomorrow. Aiden gently takes him from it before we head upstairs.
We find Luna curled up at the foot of our bed. She glares indignantly up at Aiden when he places Eddie on top of her. He settles down amidst her grey fur, still mostly asleep. Luna seems to consider for a moment. She gives Eddie’s forehead a little grooming, then settles down to go back to sleep.
Aiden sprawls out on the bed, gives his long legs a good stretch. He rests his head on his folded arms, watching me quietly as I check on the ruby tree, then slowly begin to make my way through our little jungle of houseplants.
Silence falls, and my instincts to fill it automatically kick in.
“Noah is all good, by the way! He had a little argument with Mel, and he was worried about it, but I told him it’s natural. He seemed like he felt better after we talked about it. I hope he does, anyway!”
Aiden doesn’t answer, only looks at me and listens. But I know better than to take that as a discouraging sign.
“I’ll have to go check on your Tree tomorrow morning,” I tell him brightly, dusting off my soil moisture meter. “I think I’ll also swing by the haunted house, make sure it hasn’t gotten messy for the ghosts. They can’t clean it up themselves, and leaves blow in through the ruined wall sometimes. Oh, speaking of that area past the garden - I registered all the peach trees on the Falling Fruit website you told me about. I’m hoping some people will come and harvest, but even if they do, there are about to be tons of ripe peaches out there. Seems like a shame to let it all go to waste, so I’ll probably gather up a few boxes and take them to the food bank, give some to our friends, family, neighbors, I think that’s the best I can do. Oh! That reminds me, I meant to tell you-”
I break off as Aiden breathes out a contented sigh and closes his eyes, a glowing smile spreading across his face.
“This right here has gotta be one of my favorite fuckin’ things,” he murmurs, very softly. “Definitely part of why I’m always rushing right home from work.”
I stop still, blushing hard. I stand there bashfully for a minute, looking at Aiden’s powerful figure sprawled out across the bed, his chestnut hair stirred by the summer breeze, his bronze skin glowing in the light of the corner stove. That sweet smile turning up his lips, deepening the fine lines at the corners of his eyes.
And he thinks I make him nervous.
“Why’d you stop?” he says warmly, his eyes still closed. “What were you going to tell me?”
“I, um - it was-” I struggle to pull myself back together, pushing a flustered hand through my hair. “Oh, right! I met our neighbor.”
“I thought our nearest neighbor was kind of far off.”
“She is, but she’s an old woman, and I’ve seen her sitting out on her porch sometimes. She has a pretty garden. It looks like she used to take really good care of it, but it’s overgrown now. So I left her a note introducing you and me.”
“Oh, I know who you’re talking about. Is that why she waved at me when I went past her porch on my jog?”
“Probably, yeah! I left her some of those croissants you made, and in the note I said I can help with her garden sometimes if she’d like that, and she actually called me! Isn’t that great?”
Aiden smiles, quiet warmth shining in his blue eyes.
“We chatted for a bit,” I add, putting some food into Jumble’s dish. “She’s a little reserved, but she’s nice! Retired. She used to work at the credit union.”
“Oh, yeah? That’s good. We’re gonna need friends at the credit union if we ever want to buy this house.”
“Do we?” I pause by Jumble’s box, casting Aiden a searching glance. “Why’s that?”
There’s a sudden silence from Aiden, and this one feels different from the ones before. The serene smile falls away from his face. He opens his eyes, growing very serious all at once.
“Um… kinda thought you realized…”
I tilt my head to the side, lost. “Realized what?”
“I mean…” Aiden winces deeply, speaking slowly and haltingly even by his standards. “Pretty sure no bank is gonna hook me up with a mortgage, since, you know… technically speaking… I was homeless for almost eight years. Never had a credit card, never had a lease before now, never really had anything to my name… That means my credit is pretty much wrecked, maybe forever. I don’t have any, and it’s gonna be real hard to get any now. I knew that was gonna be the case when I set out, but I decided it was worth it.”
I stare at Aiden, suddenly frozen to the spot. My heartbeat is roaring in my ears, all the color drained from my face.
“What are you talking about?” I hear myself protest forcefully. “Homeless? You weren’t homeless!”
Aiden sits up, staring at me with startled eyes. He’s obviously more than a little taken aback to have me yelling at him. I’m taken aback, too. I didn’t mean to do that.
“I - maybe not in the way you’re thinking,” Aiden rumbles slowly, his pained blue eyes giving away how much he doesn’t want to say any of this. “But yeah, I was homeless. Did you - not realize that?”
“No, you weren’t!” I put my hands over my ears, my voice cracking. “Don’t say that! I can’t be hearing this!”
“Jamie… if I’ve been thrown out of a construction site where I was spending the night, with everything I owned in my backpack, and when security caught me I said sorry, man, I’m homeless, just looking for a place to sleep - I think I was homeless.”
I stare silently at Aiden, pale in the face, at a loss for words. He moves to sit on the edge of the bed, his expression full of mounting alarm.
“Hey,” he says in a strained voice, a begging look coming into his anxious blue eyes. “Please don’t - don’t let that one word for it change how you-”
“No, that’s not what I mean! There’s no shame at all in being homeless! I mean that’s not the right word for you, you couldn’t ever be - even if you didn’t have a place, or a lease, even if that happened, you’ve always had - there was always-”
I cut myself off helplessly, not sure what I’m trying to say.
I guess I knew that Aiden was homeless while he was traveling, but it’s never once occurred to me to think of it that way. Maybe because he’s carefully avoided using that word all this time, but… no, actually. Not because of that. It’s because it just sounds completely wrong to me when applied to Aiden, because -
“Home was always here,” I finish unsteadily, trying to regain my grasp on my hoarse voice. “You always had it, okay? It was just waiting for you to come back. You’ll always have a home somewhere, so long as I…”
I trail off, not sure what words I want, not sure which ones I need, not sure which ones would be a good idea to say out loud.
Aiden stares at me in startled silence, sitting perfectly motionless on the bed. I nervously break my gaze away and let it fall to the floor. Blushing in embarrassment, twisting the malachite necklace in my fingertips.
“And - whatever,” I add hurriedly, not looking at him. “Fuck the banks, then. We’ll go to the credit union. They’re the better option anyways, they don’t fund fossil fuels like the banks! And my credit is okay, if we desperately need a bank for something. We’ll be fine, we - we’ll be just fine.”
Aiden is still just watching me silently. I get the sense that he’s working hard to keep his expression under control, but the anxious look on his face fell away at some point. His blue eyes are full of something warm and glowing, now. Actually - not just his eyes. His whole body is giving off a gentle golden light.
“Glad you’re not against dating a hobo, Keane,” he says quietly, playfully, allowing a little smile to turn up his lips.
I let out a helpless laugh, hanging my head again. “You’re - a very handsome hobo.”
Aiden huffs out a laugh, too. He reaches for me, so I come over and let him pull me down to sit on his lap. I take a deep, steadying breath. The taste of vetiver instantly soothes my racing heartbeat.
“Hobo is alright to say, then?” Aiden asks, enfolding me in the firm warmth of his arms.
“Yes. I know what your situation was, I don’t have any illusions about that, it’s just - specifically homeless that wrecks me, when it’s applied to you. Don’t say it anymore.”
“Okay,” Aiden agrees, his soft-spoken voice growing a little quieter.
Our eyes meet, and lock together for a few seconds.
We both blush at the same time. Aiden clears his throat, holds still, and then makes a sudden, swift movement. I gasp as he catches me by my waist in one heavily-muscled arm. The room spins around me, air sweeping through my hair and ruffling it.
I find myself flat on my back on the bed. Aiden is on top of me, pressing me down, his nose less than an inch away from mine.
“When did I decide it was cool to let some mouthy, petulant little twink boss me around?” he growls.
“Wow, okay! Those are some unproductive criticisms!”
“Telling me what I can and can’t say in my own house,” Aiden complains.
“Oh, you can say it,” I tell him sweetly, winding my arms around his neck. “I’ll just be really mad at you.”
“You know that’s as good as the same thing,” he murmurs, around a huffing laugh that breaks softly against my lips. “You’re lucky that you’re hot enough to get away with this shit.”
“I’m sorry.” I run my knuckles up his stubbled jawline, pouting sympathetically up at him. “This all sounds so tough for you. Can I make you feel better?”
“Maybe. What are you proposing?”
“I’ll give you a kiss.”
“A kiss, dude? That’s all? After what I’ve had to put up with?”
“A really good kiss.”
“Oh,” Aiden laughs softly, bringing his mouth down to mine. “Well, in that case…”
He draws back to gaze down at me with hazy blue eyes once that’s been thoroughly taken care of.
“It was really good,” he laughs, a smoldering scarlet blush blazing across his cheeks.
He’s glowing again.
I sit up, grinning happily, and press a much simpler little kiss onto his jaw. “Did you bring me anything from the Archives today?”
Aiden’s eyes perceptibly brighten, like he was hoping I would say that. He never shows me unprompted. I have to ask him at the end of every workday, but I don’t mind. I always want to see whatever little tidbit he saved for me, something sweet or funny or interesting from the Archives. Somehow he finds something for me pretty much every day.
I can tell from his eager expression that he’s been sitting on something he’s excited to show me.
“Okay, so I started archiving some copies of an old queer magazine from the ‘60s called Tangents. I’m not sure who left these to the Archives, honestly.”
“Wait, Tangents - like tan gents? Is it porn?”
“No.” Aiden pauses. “Well. Yes. Some of it is porn.”
I suppress a laugh, and Aiden swats a hand at me.
“But it’s a lot of other stuff, too! The whole reason logging the magazines is going really slow is because I kinda can’t help myself, I keep stopping to read the articles. They’re honestly really interesting.” Aiden reaches over to pull his laptop out of his work bag as he talks, then clicks around for a second, pulling something up. “Anyways, Tangents ran an article about another magazine that had been hit with obscenity charges. An art magazine called Fuck You. It was published by the Peace Eye Bookstore, a radical anarchist bookshop that was operated by a rock ‘n roll band.”
“Sweet.” I snag Aiden’s water bottle from the night table, listening with interest. “Were the obscenity charges because their magazine was called Fuck You?”
“Nope, that was due to some advertisements that Fuck You ran. Those ads were read out loud in court during the trial, because the prosecution entered them as evidence. I have a few of them here, if you’d like to hear them. Promise I won’t change a word. Exact quotes only.”
“Please,” I answer eagerly, lifting the water bottle to my mouth.
Aiden clears his throat, then begins reading the first one out loud.
“Number one. An ad calling for orgiasts and dick-scrunchers for the underground movie Amphetamine Head.”
I choke on the sip I was taking from the water bottle, then start coughing as Aiden continues very seriously, his eyes twinkling with silent laughter.
“Two, an ad seeking photos of people groping to be used for a Fuck You centerfold, Fuckmate of the Century.”
“Oh my god,” I gasp unsteadily, dragging my sleeve over my face to mop up the water I spilled.
“Let’s see, an ad for grope specialists for the movie-epic Mongolian Clusterfuck, and - here we go. Lastly, my favorite, an ad for their own magazine, with the text: Fuck You/a magazine of the Arts, promoting pornography thru its subsidiary, the Lady Dick-Head Advertizing Company.”
“The Lady - you’re telling me this was all entered as evidence in a court of law? In the 1960s? Read out loud in front of a bunch of lawyers, and judges-?”
“Yes.”
“And then basically recirculated all over again, because the queer magazine ran this story about the trial and quoted all of it?”
“Exactly.”
“Did the prosecution win the case, after accidentally broadcasting those ads to way more people than they ever would have reached if they’d just left Fuck You alone?”
Aiden bites his lip, then shakes his head no, grinning widely.
We look at each other silently for a second, then both burst out laughing at the same time.
“Oh, legendary,” I laugh happily, collapsing back into the pillows. “God, I love queer punks.”
“You can see why I keep stopping to read the articles,” Aiden snickers, setting his laptop aside. “I’ve been dying to show you that all day. Gotta show our resident queer punk artist, too.”
“Oh, man, Ripples would love it! And now I want to ask Floyd and Spencer if they know about that bookstore. Especially because they wrote an article about the harm of censorship laws, remember?” I tilt my head to the side, breaking into a pleased smile. “Those two are gonna make good neighbors for Ripples. They’ve actually got some crossover interests.”
Aiden catches the smile from me. “Ripples said they’ll be putting up the community posting board at the workshop soon. We’ll have to remember to bring down our ad for the Ghost Office.”
“And an ad for dick-scrunchers and orgiasts,” I answer brightly. “Amphetamine Head is probably long overdue for a remake, right? One that pays appropriate homage to the original, of course. Where can we watch the original, by the way? For, um - research.”
Aiden lets out a sharp, startled laugh, then shoves my shoulder. “We’re not gonna be the ones to remake that movie.”
“Well-” I pause, widening my eyes at him in mock confusion. “We can’t exactly do Mongolian Clusterfuck, babe. I just don’t think we have the resources for that. Sometimes we can agree to disagree, but on this one-”
“Jamie, please,” Aiden laughs, in a begging voice.
I laugh, too, slipping out of bed to start pulling off my clothes so I can go shower.
“I love hearing about the things you find in the Archives,” I tell Aiden, casting him an adoring smile across the bed as I toss my shirt at the hamper. “It’s one of my favorite-”
“Keane,” Aiden cuts in desperately, in a hoarse, strained voice. “Jesus!”
I draw back, confused and alarmed. “What?”
“Come on, I-” He runs a hand through his chestnut hair, blushing again. “I held it together alright through the saplings turning out to be a sugar maple and a linden, and then through how you were looking at me outside when we were talking about where to plant them. Then through you telling me I’m pretty, and then through that sweet lil’ fit you threw when I said that I was-”
“Don’t you say it! And it wasn’t sweet, I was mad!”
“It was adorable, you idiot, and now you’re throwing in that kiss, and giving me your reaction to the stuff I found in the Archives, which you know I always goddamn love, and - shirtlessness, on top of everything else!” Aiden lets out an agonized sound, falls flat on his back on the bed, and closes his eyes. “Stop it, already.”
I blink in surprise, then break into a devious grin. “Or fucking what?”
“I’ll die,” Aiden says gravely, startling another laugh out of me.
“You’re not allowed to do that, either.”
“Bossy.”
“You like it, Callahan.”
“No.”
“No? You’re glowing again.”
Aiden doesn’t answer, but I can see him waging war against the big smile that wants to turn up his lips and round out his cheeks. And I wasn’t exaggerating. He's literally glowing. He can’t help it.
I come over to the bed, smooth his hair back from his brow, and softly kiss his forehead, letting the golden Heliomancer light dapple my face.
“Have you noticed yourself doing little pieces of magic all the time lately?” I whisper.
My Companion Plant opens his sweet blue eyes, a shy smile playing around his mouth.
“I dunno, Keane,” he murmurs, twisting a strand of my hair around his finger. “Jumble, Eddie, the saplings, the peach trees, the gemstone plants, the ghost house, Noah, me, my Guardian Tree, the neighbor’s garden… have you?”
“Well-” I blush a little, taken by surprise. “Guess I… hadn’t really realized how many… your magic makes it easier for me to find the ones that could use my help.”
“And watching you do your magic makes me want to do mine,” Aiden answers simply.
“What I do isn’t exactly magic,” I stammer, once I’ve taken a moment to recover from that.
“No, you don’t think so? Hm. Then I guess you were right, Keane.” Aiden kisses my nose, speaking in that firm, inarguable voice again. “Sometimes we’re just gonna have to agree to disagree.”
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The quoted parts of this episode are from Tangents.