Magical Spice - Part Seventeen
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 don’t even get the last word out before Aiden cuts me off with a sharp, sobbing gasp of relief.
He kisses me breathlessly, then sits up and wrenches me into his arms. Almost crushing me, but I don’t care. I’d be crushing him back, if that was possible. I fling my arms around his neck, pressing my nose into the curve of his shoulder.
“You did it!” I say softly again, radiantly happy.
“Jamie!” Aiden gasps, burying his face in my neck in relief, crushing me into his arms. And then, drawing back to glare furiously at me - “Jamie!”
Yeah, I knew this was coming.
I deliberately put my safety at risk when I stepped out in front of the Witch, and there’s no quicker way to make Aiden truly, seriously angry at me. Maybe the connection is still partially open, or maybe he’s spilling off magic by accident, but I feel his white-hot rage like a sweep of scorching desert wind.
“I’m sorry!” I wind my arms around his neck, looking at him with pleading eyes. “I only did it because I knew you could fix things! Don’t be mad-”
I break off with a little gasp, feeling the blistering reprimand from Aiden. He didn’t say anything out loud, but he may as well have shouted all his furious feelings right in my ear, given how clearly I can sense them through his magic right now.
But I happen to know that how angry he gets in these situations is directly proportional to how scared he was for me.
My heart stumbles, trying to carry too much love at once.
“Aw, Aiden!” I place a little kiss on the corner of his mouth. “You were so worried about me.”
“Stop it, man, I’m gonna kill you!” he snaps, his eyes incandescent with blazing anger. He takes me by my shoulders and gives me a shake, like he needs to wake me up. “What were you thinking, jumping out right in front of the Witch like that? What if I couldn’t have fixed it, what if you-?”
He cuts himself off, blinking hard as he catches the adoring smile shining in my eyes.
The rage dissipates just as suddenly as it overwhelmed him, melting away all at once. He takes my face in his hands, his expression telling me that his heart is too crowded with overwhelming emotions to bear. A sound almost like a sob breaks from him again, his lashes fluttering over his fast-blinking blue eyes.
“Are y-you okay, Linden? And you - you remember everything? Really?”
I nod earnestly, peering into his eyes, my own eyes swimming with love.
Aiden stops, takes a deep breath, then sinks against me, holding me tight in his arms. I tighten mine around him, sinking one hand deep into his chestnut hair.
We sit like that for a long moment, just holding each other, lost in pure relief.
Eventually Aiden slips out of the bed, taking me with him. My legs wrap around his waist as he lifts me into his arms. He doesn’t let me go until he can set me down in the shower, then back me up against the wall under the rush of hot water.
I tilt my face up to him. He presses his forehead to mine. We stand there together, and then Aiden slowly sinks down to sit on the floor of the shower, drawing me down into his lap as he goes. I curl up close to him, and he softly folds his arms around me.
After everything that happened, it’s perfect bliss to just sit still in the warmth of his arms. To feel his heartbeat. It was strangely hard for me to not be able to touch him freely, even when I didn’t know him. It feels so good to push my palm over his beard, to toy with a strand of his wet hair, to nuzzle my nose into that tender soft spot just beneath the muscle of his jaw. My hands start going all over him, like they need to make up for lost time.
Aiden sits motionless, seeming perfectly content just to hold me. He lets out a soft, shaky sigh of satisfaction as I snuggle up closer against him. I think he might be crying with sheer relief, but he’s so quiet that I can’t say for sure.
A gentle golden glow begins to radiate out from his bronze skin, making him into a single spot of brilliant sunglow in the falling dusk.
I cozy up in his light, happy to be home.
~~~~
Aiden and I are both so lost in silent relief that we’re dressed and all the way downstairs before either of us finally breaks the silence. It’s me, with a startled laugh when Aiden suddenly tackles me from behind, crushing me down onto the couch.
“You little idiot!” he growls in my ear, his powerful body pinning me in place. “You need - pills! Brain pills! Something to fix your busted-ass thought process!”
I let out a flustered sputter of protest, pushing his face away so he doesn’t see me blushing. “Don’t you even want to hear my reasons?”
“No! Don’t bother to tell me! I don’t even care!”
“Come on, what was I supposed to do?” I groan, pointlessly struggling to free myself. “I couldn’t have helped you, if it was your memory the Witch blocked! Just think about it for a second, you big dumb meatball!”
Aiden breathes out a blissful sigh against the back of my neck. “Why am I so happy to have you calling me a big dumb meatball again?”
“You know I’m right, babe! Jumping out in front of the Witch was the only thing I could’ve done! You already admitted that when my memory was still messed up!”
“I don’t care that you’re right! I can’t take any more of you risking your whole damn life on my behalf!” He lifts himself off of me, but only to flip me over so he can stab a threatening finger at my face. “Promise me that’s the last time you step out into the line of fire for me!”
“Mm…” I bite my lip, then wince apologetically at him. “No.”
Aiden blinks hard, then screws his face up helplessly, turning his head aside.
“Shit,” he breathes softly, in a pained voice. “God. I love you so much.”
He pulls me up into his arms, then falls to sit on the couch, settling me onto his lap. I fold my arms around him, pressing a tender little kiss into his neck.
“I love you, too.”
Only when Aiden sinks against me in relief does it strike me how weird it must have been for him, to have told me he loves me so many times in a row without me saying it back.
I whisper it again in his ear a few times, until he pushes me away, blushing and flustered.
Our eyes meet, and - a sudden jolt of shyness strikes both of us at once.
Everything we said and did when everything was different comes rushing back to my mind. We both… let slip a lot of things to each other that we wouldn’t have under normal circumstances. Not only with what was actually spoken out loud, either.
“Ah…” Aiden chews his lip, nervously searching my eyes with his. “Do you remember everything that happened when you didn’t have your memories?”
Pointless to try to lie, so - “Mhm.”
Aiden falls silent, processing that. There’s a lingering moment where neither of us seems sure what to say. I don’t know about Aiden, but my mind is on a lightning-flash run of everything I said to him when I didn’t remember him. I think he’s doing the same thing about everything he said to me.
We look at each other uncertainly, both of us blushing and embarrassed.
Then I gather Aiden up to me, my heart aching as I suddenly remember how devastated he was when he realized I couldn’t remember. He holds me with trembling arms, and I think we’re both thinking the same thing.
You must have been so scared.
But there’s another overwhelming emotion battling its way to the top in me.
“I’m so proud of you!” I whisper in Aiden’s ear, smiling so hard my cheeks hurt. “You did memory magic, Heliomancer! You did memory magic on me.”
“Two things I said I’d never attempt,” he groans.
“Exactly.” I draw back to beam proudly at him. “And you did it! Perfectly!”
Aiden pauses, taken aback, like it only now struck him. I guess he was too distracted by the relief of having me back to even realize what he did.
“I…” A pleased, startled smile flashes over his face. “Yeah, man, I - I can’t believe it worked. It did fully work, right? Are you sure you remember everything?”
I take a moment to think about it before I answer. None of my memories seem to be missing, except…
“There’s one gap. Or not a gap, exactly, but my memories of the time between when we left for Port Sitka and when the whole thing happened with the Witch - those ones are all blurry.”
Aiden turns that over in his mind for a minute. I wait out the familiar silence as he works through his thoughts, my fingers affectionately toying with a strand of soft coppery chestnut.
“Guess… those memories might have been damaged if you formed them right before you got hit with the illusion magic.” Aiden winces at me apologetically. “I probably won’t be able to fix that, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I reassure him, with an earnest smile. “At least that’s not too long of a time to forget.”
I pause and look at Aiden, realizing how tired he looks from having to do so much talking and explaining already.
“Kasey can bring me up to speed,” I add, gently kissing his cheek. “Where is Kasey, by the way? And Will?”
“They came to see you this morning, but I didn’t wake you up. We were worried-”
Aiden breaks off as I look up sharply, having caught a shimmer of silvery light in my peripheral vision.
I must have accidentally summoned the ghosts. They both just materialized near the fireplace, glowing brightly against the deepening dusk light.
“Jamie!” Kasey gasps, and rushes for me.
I leap to my feet to throw my arms open for her, and she zips the rest of the way to me as a streak of silvery white light. Stopping just short of my arms, so she doesn’t go through me. I do my best to hug her, and she does her best to hug me.
“Oh, thank god!” she wails, overcome with relief. “Jamie! That was so scary!”
Will strides over to join us, his leaf-green eyes full of warm relief, too. “How are ye, lad? You gave us all a fright.”
“Yeah, we’re the ghosts, we’re supposed to scare you!” Kasey protests, letting out a shaky laugh as she steps back to look up at me. “Are your memories restored? Did you put everything back, Aiden?”
Aiden is headed past her to the kitchen to get the ghost goggles, having figured out what’s going on.
“Yeah, he did,” I answer for him.
He has no context, but he must be able to hear how clearly proud of him I am, because he steals a blushing glance at me over his shoulder before he disappears into the kitchen.
“Thank god,” Kasey groans again, slumping back against Will in relief. “Jesus, Jamie! Both you and Aiden nearly scared me to death out there! Second death. Double death.”
“Aiden, too? You mean because he froze up?”
Kasey tilts her head to the side in disbelief.
“No, not because he froze up. You scared the hell out of me by taking two magic bolts to the chest, then nearly falling down that huge hill in the rain. Aiden scared the hell out of me by running up that hill faster than anything I’ve ever seen, like - faster than I ever saw eighteen-year-old hometown hero soccer star Aiden Callahan run - and then catching you basically out of the air, and then falling down the hill himself with you in his arms. You were safe by that point, he had you protected, but basically totally at the expense of doing anything to protect himself. I was terrified for him, watching him go down the hill! His shirt ripped on some thorns before he was able to stop the fall, and I nearly died all over again because I heard it tear and thought he’d torn open his side. It’s a miracle he didn’t!”
I stare at Kasey in thunderstruck silence, thinking of the bruises and scrapes all over Aiden.
I give my head a dazed shake. “He made it sound like he stood there and didn’t do anything.”
Will’s green eyes fill with sympathy. “That’s probably how it felt to him, given what happened to you.”
“Doesn’t make it true, though,” Kasey adds, in a very matter-of-fact voice. “He caught you out of midair, it was crazy! And then he carried you and both of your backpacks through the storm all the way back to the car, which was - I mean, we were camping. It was far away.”
I can only stare at the ghosts in blank disbelief. My wide eyes flit to Aiden as he steps back into the living room with the glasses. He polishes them on his shirt, then slips them on as he comes back over to me.
“What are you guys talking about?” he asks, catching the expression on my face.
“Just - what happened,” I manage, even though I’m reeling.
My fingers come up to gently, tenderly touch one of the bruises on Aiden’s arm. I bite the inside of my cheek so hard that it hurts. I’m almost mad at him for summarizing his whole part in this with you definitely didn’t hit your head, I made sure of that.
I’m also almost dizzy with how much I love him.
Aiden’s worried blue eyes peer into mine. “Are you alright?”
“Yeah, I - yeah.” I take a deep breath, trying to steady myself out. “Just… it’s all been a lot.”
Will and Kasey exchange a look, then fix their understanding eyes on me.
“It’s okay, Jamie,” Kasey says gently. “We know you probably need a minute. We can help you clear up anything you’re confused about later, once you’ve had some time to process.”
“Thanks, you two.” I give the ghosts a grateful look, leaning into Aiden’s side as he folds an arm around my shoulders. “And thanks for coming to check on me earlier.”
“Of course, we were so worried!” Will answers earnestly. “We wanted to speak with you, but we thought you might be bewildered enough without adding two ghosts to the situation.”
“Yeah, that probably would have been confusing,” I laugh tiredly. “I’m okay, though. Just a little shaken up.”
“He is okay, right?” Kasey asks anxiously, directing the question to Aiden.
“He’s a little blurry about the actual trip to the forest, that’s all,” Aiden murmurs reassuringly. “I don’t sense any leftover illusion magic on him.”
Will and Kasey shoot Aiden an infinitely relieved, affectionate look.
“Well done, Aiden,” Will says approvingly, as Kasey gives Aiden a beaming smile.
“Yeah, nice work, Heliomancer!”
“Oh.” He blinks a few times, then shrugs his shoulders nervously, allowing a little smile to turn up his lips. “Thanks.”
“Okay.” Kasey lets out a long breath, then darts over to me. “Okay. Okay. One more hug before we go.”
I give Will and Kasey a grateful ghost-hug each before they disappear, then turn around and snuggle my face into Aiden’s chest.
He slips his arms around my waist, pushes his nose into my hair. Silence gently falls over us. Intimate, familiar, serene silence that I feel completely at home in. Aiden leans heavily into me, like he’s relieved to feel at home again, too.
“Wish you didn’t have to go through stuff like this,” he sighs shakily, nuzzling his nose against me. “Must be exhausting, dating me.”
“Don’t say dumb things,” I murmur adoringly.
Aiden draws back to smile down at me, tired but happy. “What are you gonna do, call me a meatball again?”
“Maybe, yeah, so watch yourself!”
Aiden huffs out a soft laugh. He touches the pad of his thumb to my cheek, then gives my cheek a gentle pinch. “Man, am I happy to see you.”
Technically we were never apart, but I know what he means.
I keep quiet and press my face against his chest again, savoring the fierce, pure joy of getting to hold him close to me like this. The dusk light deepens and darkens around us, a haze of gentle dimness slowly descending over our house. The taste of the air drifting in through the windows makes me think it’s going to rain again.
Aiden draws back, taking a long breath as he pulls himself together. He blinks when he sees how dark it’s gotten, then absent-mindedly flicks his hand at the fireplace, turning away to find his snapback.
I stare with wide eyes as little flames crackle to life in the fireplace, snapping as they catch on the logs we left in there. They flare up brightly, then settle down into a steady, cheerful glow.
Aiden settles his snapback onto his head, then crosses to flip on one of our lamps as a few droplets begin to tap against the windows.
“Are you sure you’ve got everything back?” comes his deep, worried voice from the shadows, before he switches on the light. “I didn’t accidentally erase anything, did I?”
“I’ve got it all, Sugar Maple,” I promise him, tearing my eyes away from the fire he just conjured. “You know I wouldn’t lie to you.”
He rests his palms on the back of the couch, watching me, then tries playfully - “Oh, yeah? What’s the last perfectly clear thing you remember us talking about?”
“Let me see… we were talking about our teenage crushes. I was pestering you to tell me which animated characters you had a crush on. Not a little kid crush, like a real deal, sexy crush. You didn’t want to tell me, but I got it out of you.”
Aiden winces deeply. “You remember that?”
“Mhm, because you said it was Princess Teegra from Fire and Ice. Except you didn’t realize as a kid how bad you had it for Larn, too. So it was actually Teegra and Larn. Claiming both of the main characters for yourself, greedy bisexual.”
I add this last part with a teasing grin. Aiden lets out a startled laugh, then a groan of disbelief.
“Come on,” he sighs wearily, tilting his head back. “That’s the last conversation you remember? That one couldn’t have slipped off into the void?”
“Nope,” I laugh affectionately. “Fire and Ice, dude? Really? That was one of your teenage favorites?”
“Yes, terrible orc design aside.”
I bite my lip adoringly. “Wow, and you called me a little nerd.”
“Okay, first of all, I’m not gonna stand here and make explanations for my horny teenage self, and second of all, whoever made that movie must have set out with bisexual intentions. There’s altogether too much cheek of all genders for anything else to be true.”
I suppress another laugh. “Yes, this argument is sounding familiar. I remember all this.”
“Matter of fact, I’m pretty sure you can get almost any bi or pan person to stay in one place for however long you want, if you leave Fire and Ice playing on a loop in front of them. The shit is like catnip for us, it’s not our fault-” Aiden cuts himself off as he processes what I said, his face lighting up with a sudden, pleased smile. “Oh. You - you do remember everything, then.”
His shoulders sink with relief, and he runs a thoughtful hand over his beard.
“Let me see, we had that conversation when we were hiking out into the woods to meet up with Thorn. Do you remember that he suggested we set out from a different part of the forest?”
I have a vague, jumbled recollection of Thorn, delighted to see us, hurrying along with the support of his staff to meet us.
“Yeah, wait… I kind of remember that after we met up with Thorn we left the forest completely, went back to my car.”
“That’s right. We drove around the forest to an official trailhead, with a tiny old hotel nearby. A different starting point to set out from, so we wouldn’t have to hike across the Sorcerer’s territory to reach a new part of the forest.”
“Oh, yeah…” A vague memory of some stiff, formal room floats through my head. “Did we stay at the hotel?”
“No. You probably remember that we went inside to see if we could get some hot food there before we set back out on the trail. It was a weirdly cold day, for the summer.”
My brow furrows as I try to remember. “Wasn’t the lady who worked at the hotel really mean?”
“Mhm. Apparently it’s a classy hotel. She didn’t like that we came in there with camping backpacks.” Aiden shoots me an affectionate look, suppressing a laugh. “You were mighty unimpressed with her attitude.”
As Aiden fills in these gaps for me, the fractured memories string together into some sort of order. The vivid green walk through the forest, the conference with Thorn, the car again, the stop at the hotel.
“But we can talk about all that later. Team Ghost Office can do the collective catch-up. You don’t need to worry about it right now, and I’m sure you don’t want to.”
I do want to know more, but he’s right. My mind is a little bit too tender and tired to take in much more new information at the moment. Besides, there’s something else on my mind.
“Should we let Noah and Ralph know that I’m okay? Since they came over to see me this morning?”
“Yeah, I texted them while I was in the kitchen. They actually came over twice, by the way. Once when I first got back to the house with you, then again this morning while you were asleep.” Aiden comes around the couch to pull me back into his arms. “They were worried about you.”
“Aw! Did they handle it okay?”
“Ralph was calm as ever, I have no fucking idea how. He wasn’t panicking at all. I’m jealous.” Aiden blows out a sigh of self-directed exasperation. “I could tell he was worried about what was going to happen to you, though. Noah - was… it’s hard to explain. He was more like you, all total faith that there was nothing to worry about because I was gonna fix everything. But then he also couldn’t stand to look at you when you were knocked out like that. He wouldn’t even come into our bedroom.”
I draw back in surprise, hit with a staggering rush of deeply-felt affection for both Noah and Ralph. I open my mouth to answer, then stop as someone pounds on our front door.
I exchange a swift, puzzled look with Aiden, then cross to open it. The door swings open to the night air, letting in a soft gust of rain.
A tall, shadowy silhouette is filling the doorframe, outlined in the moonlit rain, so intimidating that I take an involuntary step back.
The figure in the doorway leans into the light, revealing a flash of pale gold hair and sage green eyes.
“Aiden,” he begins, full of relief. “Dude, why haven’t you been answering my-?”
He breaks off, peering through the misty rain, then lets out a jagged gasp.
Before I can blink, I’ve been wrenched into a crushing embrace, then seized by my shoulder and steered backwards. Out of the rain, into the house.
Ralph closes the door after himself, tosses his damp hair out of his eyes, then looks me up and down like he’s scanning me for injuries.
“Hey, man!” I begin shakily, startled beyond belief to have just gotten - what I think was Ralph’s attempt at a hug? It hurt, and he didn’t give me nearly enough time to hug him back, so it wasn’t like a hug at all. But it seemed like it was supposed to be one. “It’s fine, Ralph, I’m okay-”
“Goddamn you, Jamie!” he snaps, stabbing a finger at my face. “Next time you put yourself in danger like that I’m dragging you down to the pits of hell myself, do you hear me? And leaving you there!”
“Oh, more of this,” I laugh weakly, meeting his furious scowl with a deeply affectionate smile. “You were worried about me too, huh?”
“For fuck’s sake, Jamie, quit putting yourself in mortal peril and magical comas and shit! You got everyone suffering over you!”
“Oh, god, I’m sorry!” I press my fingers to my cheeks, starting to feel guilty as I hear the very real strain in his voice. “I’m sorry, Ralph, I honestly didn’t mean to make everybody so-”
“No, c’mon man, don’t make those big sad Bambi eyes at me, just…” Ralph trails off, running a trembling hand over his face. “Jesus H. Christ. Are you okay?”
Tycho seems to have the same question. She’s anxiously snuffling at my hands, standing up on her hind legs.
“He’s alright,” Aiden calls softly, watching with fond eyes as I bend down to give Tycho a reassuring scratch. “Did you see my text?”
“No, I just decided to come over, I couldn’t take any more sitting around waiting-”
Ralph cuts himself off and whips around as the door suddenly crashes open, so hard it hits the wall. Noah steps in out of the rain, tosses back the hood that was over his long hair, and freezes when his eyes land on me.
“Someone got my text,” Aiden rumbles. “Damn, Noah, how fast did you drive here?”
Ralph presses a hand over his heart to steady himself out, then tries to catch Noah’s arm. “Noosh, it’s okay, he’s alright-”
Noah pushes right past Ralph and strides directly to me. He catches me by my shoulder and holds me still so he can peer down into my face. His face is so pale that it throws the little tattoo beneath his eye into sharp relief. His jaw is flexed, his steel-grey eyes wide with worry.
“I’m okay!” I tell him earnestly, as Ralph slowly sinks down on the couch, steepling his fingers over the broken bridge of his nose. “Honestly, Noah, I’m alright!”
Noah holds perfectly still for a second, then drags in an unsteady breath, his shoulders sagging with relief. “You sure?”
“Yes, definitely,” I promise.
Noah lets me go, then closes his eyes for a second. He drops onto the couch next to Ralph, right as Ralph suddenly gets up to turn his searching gaze on Aiden.
“I’m fine, too,” Aiden murmurs, reading the expression in his grey-green eyes.
Ralph drops back down onto the couch next to Noah, both of them looking beside themselves with relief.
“Gotta say, Keane, what you did was pretty sick,” Noah says, leaning back against the couch to look up at me dazedly. “You’re a goddamn madman. Respect.”
I break into an immediate, beaming smile, and Aiden lets out an anguished groan.
“Don’t encourage him, Noosh!”
“God, though, we’ve been dying,” Noah mutters, rubbing his temple with trembling fingers. He surges to his feet, bouncing restlessly on the heels of his boots. “Just want you guys to know that nothing is ever gonna calm me down from this. Ever.”
I lean closer to Aiden and roll up on my toes. He stoops down a little, so I can whisper in his ear.
“Test your catnip theory, babe. You said it could work on almost any bi or pan person. I assume that includes panromantics?”
Aiden blinks at me in confusion, then bites back a laugh when he realizes what I mean. He quietly flips on the TV, mutes it, and puts on Fire and Ice. Then he seats himself on the arm of the couch, settling his arms over his broad chest. Placing himself near to Ralph, who visibly relaxes a little more at the feeling of having him nearby.
“Thank you guys for coming over to help Aiden,” I say earnestly, as Noah paces around the living room with restless, unspent energy. “And for checking on me this morning. I’m sure it was a little scary to see me all messed up-”
I break off, interrupted by a sharp laugh from Ralph. At the same moment, Noah swings around to stare at me, then at Ralph, his incredulous grey eyes perfectly round.
“Can you believe this fucking guy?” he asks Ralph, sweeping a tattooed hand at me.
“A little scary,” Ralph repeats, flashing me an amazed look. “The word I like is little.”
“I’m sorry!” I put a comforting hand on Ralph’s arm, giving him a gentle squeeze. “I really didn’t mean-”
“Alright, alright,” Ralph says hurriedly. He shrugs my fingers off of his arm, wincing uneasily. “Enough. Stop. You know that shit makes me nervous.”
“What, emotional support?”
“Yeah, that.”
“Okay,” I laugh affectionately, drawing my hand back. “Sorry.”
“Stop apologizing, Jamie!” Noah snaps suddenly, spinning around so fast that his hair does an inky, sweeping arc around his face. “From what Aiden said there was nothing else could’ve been done, and you did it like the lil’ featherweight champ you are!”
“Wh-?” I let out a startled laugh, spreading my hands at him indignantly. “Then why are you yelling at me?”
“I don’t know! I’ve gotta yell at someone!” Noah turns pleadingly to Ralph and Aiden. “Someone hurt Jamie. On purpose. Somebody’s gotta pay, right?”
“No!” I protest immediately.
“Obviously,” Ralph says darkly, at the same time.
“The Witch,” Aiden growls, in tandem with the rest of us.
Noah throws his arms out wide. “Okay, so we’re all in agreement!”
“We are not!” I sputter.
“Jamie!” Noah groans, grabbing two fistfuls of his hair. “After what she did to you?”
“It’s not her fault her energy is going sour, she’s been here for way longer than she was supposed to be! Who knows if she even realized what she was doing? I’m serious, I don’t want us coming at her like that! She needs our help, just like all the rest of them!”
“My god, Keane,” Ralph says in disbelief, as Noah lets out a helpless sound and drops his face into his hands. “Are you being serious?”
Aiden is watching me silently, his blue eyes full of love and frustration and firelight. “Mhm, he is.”
“Aiden, how can we help?” Noah presses on. “Me and Ralph? I know you guys are taking on all the illusions, but at least let us help with the Witch. This one sounds mad dangerous…”
He trails off, doing a double-take at the movie playing on the TV.
“Seriously, A, is there something we could do to help?” Ralph asks, as Noah sort of nonchalantly drifts closer to us, where he can keep an eye on Fire and Ice. “This sounds like a lot for you, Keane, and one ghost to handle. Probably be harder for the Witch to confuse all of us at once, right? Especially if she’s got limited power, like you said.”
Aiden nibbles his lip, surprised at the offer. He shoots me a thoughtful look, and I give my shoulders a slow shrug, turning it over in my mind.
“Think we’d have to talk to our Ghost Office manager first,” I tell Ralph.
“But you’ll ask?”
“Only if you guys promise not to come in thinking the mission is revenge for what happened to me!” I insist, trying to make it sound as unnegotiable as possible. “That’s not what we’re doing here, not the point at all!”
“Yep, sure,” Ralph agrees.
He pats the top of my head indulgently, then mouths something at Aiden.
“Oh, come on,” I groan helplessly. “It was all okay in the end, wasn’t it? I’m fine, Aiden fixed my memory!”
Ralph turns to look up at him over his shoulder. “Yeah, how’d you do it, Aiden?”
“Does it matter? Point is it’s done.”
Ralph narrows his grey-green eyes suspiciously. “Okay…”
“Nice of you guys to offer to help,” Aiden says, his worried eyes flitting from Ralph to Noah. “I’m just not sure about bringing you out into potential danger. Something could happen to one of you. Or both of you.”
“So what, bro?” Noah puts in, without breaking his gaze away from the movie. “Whatever you did to fix Jamie, you could do to me and Ralph. Now that you’ve got it down, you’ve got it down, right? Bet you could even do both of us at once, if need be.”
I burst out laughing, then hurriedly turn it into a cough when Aiden grimly catches my eye. Noah gives us a puzzled look, but Ralph is suddenly smirking to himself, looking like he’s just made some realization.
“Actually, yeah,” Aiden tells Noah, in a hurry to move the conversation along. “I can fix memory illusions now, feel okay doing it. Jamie and I had the added obstacle of getting our connection to open again, but so long as Jamie’s okay, that’s not a problem, and I can control my magic enough to take care of you guys. So - yeah, theoretically you’ll be alright… and it would be harder for the Witch to confuse all of us…”
He and I exchange a glance, realizing simultaneously that having Noah and Ralph with us could be a big help, given the circumstances.
“Let us talk it over,” Aiden tells Ralph, who nods tiredly, then gets to his feet.
“We’ll let you get some rest. You two are hard to look at, right now.”
Aiden breathes out an exasperated sigh, running a hand over his face. “Thank you, Lanham, that’s real nice of you.”
“I mean all the bruises and cuts and stuff,” Ralph clarifies, wincing as he looks at them. “Sincerely hope you boys look better in the morning. Having you this way hurts my eyes, or something. Stings.”
He rubs his eyes, suddenly looking exhausted.
“C’mon, Noosh. Let’s go. They need to sleep, so do we.”
“I’m watching something, yo,” Noah answers, his wide grey eyes following Princess Teegra as she darts across our TV screen with Larn in close pursuit.
Noah groans in protest when Ralph takes a handful of the back of his shirt and drags him upright. A brief, lively tussle ensues, but in the end Ralph manages to wrestle Noah over to the door.
Aiden watches Ralph struggle to drag Noah through the doorway, his shoulders shaking with silent laughter. He lifts one hand and sweeps it at the door, a flash of frosty blue swirling through his eyes.
The door begins to close on its own, nudging Ralph and Noah outside.
“Whoa!” Noah gasps, staring in disbelief. “Ralph, d’you see-?”
The door gently shuts itself before he can finish, only to open a second later so Noah can poke his head back inside.
“Hey, Aiden, send me the name of that movie! Who’s the girl in it? She looks like something right out of those old magazines I found behind my stepbrother’s sneaker collection when I was twelve. She’s cute with that guy, too-”
Noah is cut off as Aiden firmly closes the door, this time by hand. He turns to face me, opens his mouth to say something, then pauses as he realizes that we can still hear Noah and Ralph, arguing as they cross the garden, their voices muffled in the rain.
“Fine!” I hear Ralph groan. “We’ll go to my house and watch it if Aiden texts us the name, but I’m going to fall asleep on the couch! And how are you more focused on that than the fucking door closing by itself?”
That’s the last thing we can make out. I press my fingers over my mouth, and Aiden breathes out a helpless laugh, hanging his head.
“Real grateful for those two, right now,” he says quietly. “Noah ran out of a union meeting to come over here when I called him panicking. Ralph ran out on a work thing, too.”
“Oh, god, I hope we didn’t cause them too much trouble! What kind of work thing did Ralph run out of?”
Aiden shakes his head. “I don’t know. He said if he told me about it I could be implicated later.”
I let out a laugh, then a groan, then cross to Aiden and sink against him, putting my cheek to his chest.
“Everything has been so out of control,” I sigh softly, relaxing again as his arms close around me.
“I know. I’m not even used to this many people checking up on us after a magical disaster. Was used to dealing with it on my own, then used to dealing with it with you, and now… I mean, Gabby and my aunt both called, too. So many people worried about us, all of a sudden. My boss, my aunt, the ghosts, my brothers…”
“It’s nice,” I tell Aiden happily.
Silence for a moment, and then - “Yeah, it is.”
I let out a heavy breath, appreciating every second of being cozied up in his embrace. “What do we do now?”
“Mmm… I don’t know.”
I try again, rephrasing. “What would make you happy?”
“Honestly…” Aiden lets out a helpless laugh. “I just want to cook you something nice for dinner, see you eat it. Then watch you play some video games. Or we can watch a movie, if you’re too tired for that. I don’t know. I just - want to be with you.”
He tightens his arms around me, and I smile quietly into his chest.
“Okay. We’ll do that.”
Later, I want to think more about what Aiden said and did while things were briefly very different between us. I want to think more about the way I behaved, the way I felt about him even when I was cut off from all of my memories.
For now, though, I just want this. Our home, our blankets, our couch, food he cooked for us in our kitchen.
Him, and me.
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