Open - Part Four
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. The episode below is NSFW and contains mature content.
The cutting from the malachite plant - the one that I used to rescue Aiden - has become the latest addition to the indoor garden in my apartment. The first opportunity I had, I collected it from where we left it on the coffee table. I sterilized my secateurs, then trimmed the end off of the cutting at a sharp angle.
I put it in a jar of filtered water, to which I’ve regularly been adding my own homemade flower-feed. Lemon juice and white sugar, and a few other little touches I’ve found work best. So far as I know, the malachite plant doesn’t flower, but I have no idea what it does do, so. I’m improvising.
So far, though, the malachite cutting seems to like how it’s been treated. I think it might root. If it does, we’ll have two malachite plants, not one.
That’s a relief to me, because I know now that this is a precious resource. It’s my path to Aiden, if he ever gets taken from me again.
It’s also just pretty. Like, it’s beautiful. Veining like you’d find in a gemstone, on every leaf. The sea-green color is like the ocean in soft, dusky light. And it never fails to amaze me that when the satin-soft leaves brush against each other, they make that quiet, chiming music. As if the leaves were made of glass.
Besides, it’s special to me. Aiden made it.
He makes a soft noise in my bed, and I turn to look at him.
It’s late, so late that it’s early. I wasn’t sure what woke me up, or what led me to go check on the malachite cutting. Now I think I know. It must have moved, because Aiden is shifting around in my bed. As I watch, he rolls from his side onto his back, his breathing picking up. His eyebrows are knitted together, his body tense, his hands curled into fists.
He twitches violently in his sleep, then lets out a louder, more anxious sound.
I go back to my bed and get in, slip under the covers. I gather Aiden to me and place his head on my chest. I take a deep breath, brace myself, and open the connection.
A jagged, brutal spike of terror and guilt and despair crashes into me. This always happens when I ease one of Aiden’s nightmares, but this time it’s exceptionally powerful. I gasp, almost instantly burst into tears when I feel what he’s feeling. I have to slap a hand over my mouth to keep quiet.
This one is less like a spike, more like a mountain.
Aiden starts mumbling frantically in his sleep, his broken words slurred together. His voice normally affects me like a warm blanket, like rain on a rooftop. Gentle and comforting in every way. It hurts to hear it shattered apart like this.
This must be a bad nightmare. I normally just wake Aiden up from these ones, but - I don’t want to run from the tougher battles, when it comes to being with a Guardian. I want to get better at this, to learn how to soothe the goliaths of his inner demons, not just the small ones.
It’s not easy. It’s the opposite of that. The combined force of Aiden’s emotions makes my body tremble. They all cut at me, wound me. I’m trembling, struggling to even pull a breath into my lungs, staggered by how much this physically, actually, literally hurts.
My teeth grit together, tears gathering in my eyes. The intensity of this is almost unbearable.
Aiden clutches desperately at me in his sleep. Breathing hard, holding on tightly, a heartrending expression on his face.
I slowly manage to ease Aiden off of me and onto his back. I leave one hand on him, to keep the connection open. Then I bend over him, over the bare bronze skin of his chest. I start feathering soft, loving kisses all over it, this body I know so well by now. I know each place where a kiss or a touch goes the furthest, what each part of him wants. The nuance of each line and slope. I put my mouth to his neck, his face.
Fighting through the red fog of hurt and despair, I think of everything I love and cherish about Aiden. I step forward against the nightmare with those thoughts as my shield and armor.
I believe that his pain, his fears, are not unanswerable. I believe that we can face them together, in rhythm, in harmony. That we can swim upstream against vast currents of coldness and cruelty and heartbreak, as long as his hand is in mine.
I believe it with my whole heart.
With each brush of my lips against his skin, love races into me, then spills into Aiden through the connection. Inch by inch, I draw him out of the dark abyss that he stumbled into.
His heartbeat evens out, slows down to match mine. His breathing begins to grow smoother, deeper. His agonized expression starts to fall away.
Without moving, we rock slowly together, hearts and souls interwoven. I try to send Aiden to dream rivers and forests, beautiful places he can wander, where he could stretch out on the grass or dip his toes in the water.
I keep going until I hear a soft, tranquil sigh emerge from Aiden’s mouth.
I lift my head, thoroughly exhausted, and smooth a strand of chestnut hair from his eyes. I place a few more kisses on Aiden’s chest, which is now rising and falling like gentle swells of peaceful wind.
I fall asleep in Aiden’s arms, still trying to send him my love, the connection still open between us. Distantly aware of words drifting through my head. First in his voice, then in mine, then his, then mine again...
Do you smile in your sleep when they find you, the thousands of kisses I send from my dreams…
~~~~
Dawn sweeps down over Ketterbridge, cool and soft and pale blue. Carrying hints of the slow-falling spring. It stirs me awake in my bedroom.
I could easily fall back asleep, but I remember Aiden’s nightmare and find myself pulled the rest of the way out of my dreams. My eyes blink open, searching for him.
He’s on his side, facing away from me. But I can see the slow, peaceful movements of his breathing.
I press a kiss onto his shoulder blade, then lay back, watching him. Trailing my fingernails up and down the sculpted lines of his back, giving him a little scratch that I hope he feels in his sleep.
I hold onto this moment, let it last a long time.
The crystalline fog on my windows neatly seals out the rest of the world. I listen to Aiden’s breathing, let the movements of my fingers fall into its rhythm.
Eventually I fit my body up against his, my chest to his back, and wrap an arm around him. I hold him for a minute, then brush a kiss onto his cheek before I slip out of bed.
I make two cups of chamomile, have a few sips of mine, and leave Aiden’s on the night table, for when he wakes up.
In the shower, I meticulously collect all of the worries scratching at my mind. The excursion with Ripley tomorrow night, everything we have left to do for the exhibition before opening, the code that Kasey and Will still have yet to crack. I gather them all up and then let them all go, like a handful of water escaping through my fingers. I dust off what remains, and let myself take long, deep breaths.
I leave my towel in the bathroom after I dry myself off, intending to climb back into bed with Aiden, see if I can fall back asleep. But he’s awake when I step into my bedroom.
I stop still in the doorway, staring at him.
He’s on top of the blankets, his back against the headboard, his glossy hair all messy. His long legs are lazily stretched out, slightly bent, slightly parted. I can see those sloping divots of firm muscle at his hips, the soft bare skin of his inner thighs.
The blossoming sunlight is absorbed by his bronze skin, but seems to shine back out through it. That glow that comes from good, unbroken sleep.
It carries into his blue eyes, too, which are still a little sleepy, focused on the cup of tea he was just setting down again. I can tell he already had a few sips of it. But when he lifts his head and sees me, when our eyes lock together - just like that, he’s wide awake.
We both remain perfectly motionless. Only our eyes roam, gazes melting slowly down each other’s bodies, then back up.
By the time Aiden looks at my face again, his blue eyes are hungry, smoldering. I can see the little points of flame enclosed in the dilated black center of each of them. Or maybe it’s a reflection of the ones in mine.
I don’t think I’ve taken a single inhale since I stopped here. Hard to breathe, at this altitude.
At a loss for words, carried by something beyond my ability to resist, I silently cross to my bed. Aiden watches me, and I think that he’s holding his breath, too.
I sink to my knees on the edge of the bed and climb across the rumpled sheets to Aiden, still staring into his eyes. I could swear that I see more looking into them - that I feel more looking into them - than I do when I’m looking up at the stars, even on the clearest of nights.
I straddle Aiden’s lap, and his breath catches in his throat. His adam’s apple moves softly as he swallows, staring up at me.
He’s blushing. Crimson color spreading slowly across his cheeks. I love the sweetness of it, as if this is the first time he’s ever seen me like this. How wide his eyes get, like they’re trying to capture everything.
I slowly wind my fingers into his hair, pull his head back. His lips part with the movement, and I bend to place my tongue between them. Licking deep into his mouth, tightening my grip on the handfuls of chestnut softness held in my fingers.
I hear something shatter and fall apart, but that’s fine. I know it’s not the malachite plant. I thought ahead, didn’t use a glass jar.
I don’t think that Aiden even heard the explosion. He’s opening his mouth more for me, huge hands sliding up my back, everything else eclipsed completely by the fire building between us. Every movement and touch and shared breath feeds the flames. His fingers stroke the dimples at the base of my spine, and then his arms encircle me, locking me where I am.
I’m completely surrounded and encompassed by him, his body like a fortress around me.
I press myself down onto him, not gently. Feel the full length of his longing against me. Aiden’s eyebrows draw together, and he takes a few very fast, sharp breaths, all of which break onto my lips. He moves in some kind of instinctive response, independent of thought - rolling his body up against mine.
I feel it, watching the ripple of muscle that comes with this movement. The electric hum in my veins sparks, flares brilliantly, and climbs to a new level.
I reach for Aiden’s hand and take his fingers into my mouth. Aiden watches what I’m doing, but when he realizes that I’m looking at his face, he meets my gaze. We end up staring right into each other’s eyes as I lick and suck and kiss the joints of his knuckles, the pads of his fingertips.
I release my grasp on his wrist, and he keeps his own hand in place as both of mine start to traverse his body.
His ocean eyes are blazing, overflowing with heat.
His fingers slide out from between my lips, and while I keep his body pinned in place with mine, I let his hands go wherever they want.
We’re both starting to move against each other, traveling further and further into absolute abandon. My surroundings blur around me, and Aiden’s breath hitches as his fingers draw a moaning, breathless laugh of pure pleasure out of me. Whenever our mouths break apart, I open my eyes to drink everything in, and Aiden does the same. Layers of heat and desire and toe-curling pleasure accumulate, one on top of the other, until our bodies are both crying out to come together.
So we let them.
For a moment, we both stay still, breathing hard and fast. Aiden drops his forehead against my collarbone, panting, overwhelmed with sensation - but I wrench his head back for another kiss, and begin to move us.
Aiden lets a deep moan escape into my mouth. I could kiss him forever, but I want to see the look on his face, so I pull back.
I love this. How his expression reads like pain, but I know that it’s the opposite.
His calves are flexing in the white sheets as I move. His lips are parted, his blue eyes hazy and humid with pleasure. His hair is between my fingers, brushing against my wrists. Our bodies feel fused together.
Aiden watches my face as I move, but his hands are everywhere. I feel the tactile echo of every touch he places on me. The lingering taste of his chamomile kisses. Even the warmth of the sunlight that absorbed into his skin transfuses into mine.
Just like last night, we don’t seem to be two separate beings, but one. Flowing back and forth into each other, bound at the soul.
I put my mouth to Aiden’s throat, feel the beat of his blood against my lips, the vibration of the whimper he lets out. I’m overwhelmed with mounting pleasure, can barely keep myself up on my knees. It’s too much, too good, and I know that I can’t slow us down. Not myself, and not him. We’re both seconds away, on the precipice.
Aiden puts his forehead to my chest again, panting against me. I use my fistful of his hair to wrench his head back, to drag him into a deep, searing kiss.
The explosion of ecstasy between us feels big enough to crack the earth open. I gasp Aiden’s name into his mouth, and he lets out a stuttering moan, shuddering so hard that it moves my body, too.
I fall forward against his chest, and he locks his arms around me.
We’re both shivering, breathless, speechless. I can feel goosebumps all over Aiden’s body.
I have no idea how much time passes before I recover enough to even open my eyes again. I sit back slowly, and Aiden stares up at me in wide-eyed silence.
His gaze drops to my chest, and he blinks at it. I look down to discover that he actually drooled on me a little, during that. Our eyes meet, and I see an adorable blush of embarrassment spread over Aiden’s face.
I start to laugh, and Aiden cringes. He swipes a hand over my chest to get rid of the evidence - but he ends up laughing, too. The soft huff of it is the only thing that could make this moment better.
Aiden clumsily slides down the headboard until he’s flat on the bed. I’m still on top of him, and I’m carried by the movement. I let out a startled little laugh that dissolves into a sharp breath as our intertwined bodies rub together. I’m sensitive everywhere, my body humming with bright, sublime pleasure.
Aiden runs a dazed hand through his hair, staring at me.
“Damn, Keane,” he stammers, his voice rough and low and husky. “You… that…”
He fades off, apparently all out of words.
I open my mouth to answer - with no idea of what I’m going to say - but Aiden rolls us onto our sides, easing our bodies apart. Then he draws me up close to him, tangles his legs through mine, and gathers me up against his chest.
We both take a much-needed minute to breathe.
The world is slow to reform around me, to fall back into familiar shapes. It was all such a complete blur that it felt like Aiden and I briefly slipped off to someplace else, somewhere of our own making.
My eyes focus on the small pile of ceramic powder on my night table, the spilled chamomile tea dripping down the side.
Too small of a cup to be the sound of whatever I heard shatter, so - there must have been multiple explosions. But I really don’t care about that. Whatever broke can’t be anywhere near as precious to me as these moments I spend with Aiden.
My head is tucked beneath his chin, so when he speaks again, I feel the vibration of his rumbling voice.
“I love you,” he says softly, trailing his fingers up my spine.
I press a kiss against his collarbone, my heart stumbling. “I love you, too.”
Aiden laughs softly, and I feel him shake his head. “I forgot again. That I can actually say it out loud. I keep forgetting. Spent so long trying to keep it to myself.”
My heart swells up so that I can’t speak.
We lay there in silence for a long time, intimately cocooned in each other’s arms.
It takes me ages to gather my thoughts into anything remotely coherent. They’re all scattered out across blissful, weightless places that only Aiden has ever brought me to. But when I can think again, I find myself thinking of the nightmare he had last night, how badly it hurt me to make it stop.
That’s exactly why I haven’t told Aiden that I’ve been doing this. I’m worried that he’ll want me to stop, or that he’ll see it as a sharp downside of my choosing to be with a Guardian.
But when I take that piece of being with him, when I measure it up against a piece like this - they don’t even compare. A grain of sand, against a planetary body.
I would take that pain into myself a million times over, for Aiden.
I know that when morning comes, he’ll love me until I forget it ever happened at all.
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