Shine - 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.
The warm lights of the living room cast soft golden veils over the walls. Out beyond the pushed-open windows, the trees are glistening with raindrops, their leaves filling the air with a soft murmur of rustling movement.
But it’s warm and dry inside, cozy against the chill. The fire snaps and pops quietly as I pad across the room with two mugs of tea in my hands. Stirred with honey and spices, the way Aiden likes it.
He’s been sitting still on the couch in perfect silence for a long time.
He’s staring blankly at the wall, his blue eyes revealing just how far away in his thoughts he is. I’m not even sure he realizes that I gently drew him inside out of the rain.
He stirs a little when I stop before him with the two mugs. He sits up slowly, blinking hard, finally drawn out of the subterranean depths where he was swimming.
“Which one is mine?” he asks, in a quiet, rough voice.
“They’re the same.” I hand Aiden one of the mugs, trying not to let show how relieved I am just to hear him say something. He takes the mug, but then sets it down on the coffee table. “Both with honey. We’re out of sugar.”
Aiden hesitates, then reaches up and gently but purposefully pokes my chest. I drop my gaze to his finger, caught by surprise.
“What are you doing, Aiden?”
“Poking a little hole in you. Feel like we should be able to harvest enough sugar to fill up this whole house, right?”
I let out a surprised, sputtering little laugh. “Stop it!”
Aiden smiles a tiny bit, but he doesn’t laugh. He watches me laugh, and - out of nowhere, his expression collapses.
Suddenly he looks pained to the point of agony. He runs an anguished hand through his hair, then drops his head again.
“Doesn’t-” His voice is hoarse, and he has to cut himself off to take a stuttering breath before he can keep going. “Doesn’t it hurt you?”
I press my fingers to my lips, heartrended by the texture of his deep voice, the sight of him like this. Slowly, I sit down next to him, set down my mug, and rest a hand on the warm curve of his shoulder.
I don’t say anything. I don’t need to answer Aiden’s question. He wasn’t really asking, I don’t think. It’s his emotions that I feel when I take away his nightmares. He knows better than anyone what they feel like.
He knows exactly how bad it hurts.
There’s a heavy silence, and then Aiden raises his head again. He closes his eyes, lifts a hand to swipe away the tears falling from them.
“Jamie….” He breathes his words out on a shaky exhale, so quietly that I have to lean closer to hear him. “You - you’ve gotta stop.”
“Okay, um.” I fidget with a stray strand of my hair, looking at him anxiously. “I knew you would have - opinions on this-”
“Oh, I have opinions. Believe me, I’ve got opinions.”
“Cool, yeah. Are they open to revision, though?”
“Jamie, so help me god-”
I reach over and catch Aiden’s hand, trying not to sound desperate. “Can’t we at least talk about it?”
“Talk about-? Keane, we’re lucky that I’m not the one of us who’s asthmatic, because I’m trying not to get hysterical, right now!” Aiden looks at me like what I’ve been doing is insane, verging on incomprehensible. “I try and try to keep you as far away as possible from the bad parts of being a Guardian, and then I find out that for months, you’ve secretly been putting yourself right in the worst of it to try and keep me safe from it, basically torturing yourself for - f-for me…”
Aiden stammers into silence, staring at me, his wide blue eyes shimmering with tears again. He bites his lip, then sweeps me up into his arms, has me straddling his lap before I can blink.
“Oh, god,” he whispers, between the kisses he’s brushing up the side of my neck. His voice sounds shattered apart. “I love you, Jamie, I love you so much, you idiot, you-”
“I love you too,” I whisper back, turning my head to bury my nose in his hair. “That’s why I’ve been doing it. Please don’t ask me to stop.”
Aiden makes a pained sound, then draws back to look up at me. “Jamie, you don’t have to do this. I’ve had those nightmares since forever. I can cope without help. Matter of fact, I’ve done that without any help for as long as I can remember.”
“Isn’t that all the more reason you deserve a break?” I take Aiden’s jaw in my hands and smooth my fingers over his stubbled cheeks, my heart aching for him. “It doesn’t have to be on your shoulders all the time, Aiden. Not anymore. Just let me carry it for you for a little bit.”
Aiden shakes his head fiercely. “Not at the expense of you getting hurt. No fucking way.”
“I love you, Aiden.” I look deeply into his eyes, then nuzzle my nose into his. “Love means sacrifice, sometimes. Don’t tell me that you wouldn’t do the same for me in a heartbeat, if the situation was reversed. Don’t tell me that you’ve never been ready to make sacrifices for me. I know that you have. That you would.”
Aiden stops still, suddenly silent. His blue eyes quickly dart away from mine, blinking hard and fast.
I push my fingers into his hair, winding them through the messy chestnut softness.
“I’ve always wished that I could take some of the burden off of you.” My cheeks are burning, my fragile voice scraping. I’m speaking right from my heart, and I feel exposed and vulnerable. “This - this is the only way I can find to do that. So please, please just let me.”
Aiden lifts his gaze to mine again. The ocean of thought and emotion storming within it is too complicated for me to read.
“Doesn’t it feel good?” I find myself whispering again, stroking my fingertips through Aiden’s hair. “To be able to put it all down for a second? To rest?”
Aiden looks ready to argue with me, but he stops, closes his mouth. He drops his head again, closes his eyes tightly. Suddenly he looks exhausted.
A tear falls from his face as he gives me a tiny, barely-perceptible nod.
“So let me.” I tuck my fingers beneath Aiden’s chin and tilt his face up to mine. I need him to see the earnestness, the sincerity in my eyes. “I want to. I’m asking. I’m begging.”
Aiden falls silent for a long moment.
“What…” he finally begins, half-stammering, his deep voice still roughened with tears. “What does it feel like, after? You don’t - take any of it with you, do you? You feel okay?”
I think of the night I spent with Aiden before he fell asleep. How it felt like magic, how it left me with an overflow of love to pour into him. My soul glows happily as my mind drifts through everything sexy or sweet or both that Aiden did tonight, before he caught me easing his nightmare and everything went sideways.
“Anything that it takes from me,” I tell Aiden, “You give back to me a thousand times over, Companion Plant. And you know I can’t lie.”
Aiden doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t react at all, only goes on looking up at me. I look down at him, silently begging him with my eyes.
Aiden swallows hard, then breaks his gaze away from mine. Looks down at his lap.
“Not - not too often, okay?” he rumbles, his deep voice fragile. “Barely ever, please. You can always just wake me up, too.”
I could nearly sink to the floor, my relief is so immense and all-consuming. I wrap my arms around Aiden’s head and press his face into my chest, hugging him tightly.
“Thank you,” I breathe, and Aiden lets out a ragged, disbelieving little noise.
“Thank you? You’re thanking me, Keane? What the fuck? Something is wrong with you. Honestly, I’ve never known a guy who’s so-”
Aiden cuts himself off. He had drawn back again, and was looking up at me like he was going to laugh. But now, out of the blue, he suddenly looks like he’s going to cry again.
He bites his lip, staring up at me with wide eyes.
“I don’t-” he blurts out, a deep blush spreading over his cheeks - “I don’t know how to be loved like this, man. The way you love me, it’s - I don’t deserve it.”
“Yes, you do.” I take Aiden’s face in my hands, peering earnestly into his eyes. “That’s your mom talking again. Don’t listen to her.”
Aiden swallows, his adam’s apple moving softly in his throat. A glow comes into his eyes, incandescent, shining. He looks a little dazed, still half in disbelief.
He blinks hard, then hides his face in my chest again. I sink my fingertips into his hair, holding him close, and take a deep breath of vetiver. In the familiar warmth of his arms, my breaths are growing deep again, finally giving me all the oxygen I need.
“Aiden… I can’t believe you’ve carried all this on your own, this whole time. You never told me that it felt like that. It would be enough to crush anyone’s spirit, but - here you are.” I bury my nose in his hair, give him a tight squeeze. “Your courage is so quiet. Like everything you do, I guess. But I see it. I understand the real scope of it. I just want you to know that.”
Aiden doesn’t answer, but I can hear him breathing slowly and deeply. He presses closer to me.
We share another long silence, but this one is deep, rich, intimate. I feel something immeasurably sweet distilling in my chest. Something that has its source in Aiden, but has nothing to do with Heliomancer magic.
His body heat comes to me through our intertwined bodies, right through my jeans, my t-shirt, his clothes. It works into me, melting me against him. Everything that felt tense and knotted up in my chest releases, slowly but completely.
Aiden tightens his strong, gentle arms around me. Safe harbor. I let out a long, slow exhale.
“What happens?” I ask softly. “On your end? I’ve always wondered, but I haven’t been able to ask.”
“When you take the nightmares away?”
“Yeah. What is it like for you?”
There’s a silence as Aiden chooses his words. I wait, twining my fingertips through his hair.
“It’s… a little different, depending on which nightmare it is.” Aiden sits back to look up at me, speaking very slowly. “But nightmares about rescues that I fucked up usually start in a similar way. With me running to try and get there in time to save someone. And it all feels familiar, because - I mean, it is. It already happened, and I’ve already relived it in my nightmares more fuckin’ times than I can count. So I don’t realize that it’s a dream, but in some way I just know that I’m not - I’m not gonna get there in time… and then I get there, and I am too late, and - it all goes downhill from there…”
Aiden trails off, his blue eyes clouded. I can only sit there on his lap, wide-eyed, my heart aching.
“When you stop the nightmare,” he goes on slowly, after a moment, “It still starts with me running and panicking. But the scenery really gradually changes, becomes super beautiful. The road goes on and on, all the way off into the distance. And I forget where I’m going, what I was doing. I forget everything, I just run. And it - it feels…”
He gives me a tiny, helpless smile.
“Real damn good,” he admits, and I let out a soft, wondering laugh.
I’m smiling to myself even as I fall silent again. The happy glow in my heart is shining even more brightly than it was before.
I like to think of that. Even if it only lasts for a moment, even if it’s only in his dreams.
Aiden, running free.
~~~~
Jamie. Did you fall asleep yet?
Mmm, I don’t think so… no, I’m still up. Is there a reason we’re talking through the connection?
Oh. No, it was an accident. The barriers really must be down tonight… I just touched you, I didn’t mean to open it.
I turn over in bed, moving slowly, so that Aiden’s hand doesn’t fall away and break the connection. I find him on his side, facing me. His warm hand is gently curled around the side of my neck, the point of contact the current of the connection is humming through. His hand is easily big enough to cover my whole neck, and he uses it to draw me in close for a gentle kiss on my forehead.
I just wanted to say sorry again. Aiden settles his head back onto the pillow, pulling away to look at me. For panicking so badly earlier. The shit that Leigh - that my mom used to tell me… sometimes it comes at me out of nowhere, no matter how far behind I think I’ve left it.
I reach out and gently trace my fingertips up Aiden’s muscled side, looking deep into his guilt-filled blue eyes.
I understand, Sugar Maple. Really. It’s okay.
Aiden stares at me, his eyes warm with relief and gratitude, and love. The moonlight pools in them, kisses the sweet, heartthrob smile on his face.
Okay, there is one thing I don’t get, I tell him, unable to stop myself. One thing I’ve never been able to wrap my head around.
Aiden looks at me curiously. What’s that?
I know that your mom told you nobody could love you for who you are, as a Guardian. And I know she really drove it home. But - how could you believe her, when who you are is this?
Aiden sinks his face deeper into the pillow, looking up at me with a shy, bright smile on his face. You trying to warm my pride, Keane? It’s working.
No, Aiden - really. I shake my head slowly, seriously. How could you believe that? Can you tell me? Because I don’t understand. Maybe it’s just because I love you so much, but - I don’t understand.
Aiden grows serious, drifts for a moment into his thoughts. I watch him in the moonlight, the slow rise and fall of his shoulders with his breathing.
I’m not sure if he’s going to answer me. He rarely talks about anything to do with his mom. But I feel like we’ve been our most intimate and secret selves with each other tonight. Like Aiden said - the barriers are down.
You - you know how it is, when you’re a kid, Aiden suddenly murmurs. His deep voice vibrates through my body even when he’s speaking silently. You’re all receptivity. You trust what your parents tell you about how the world works, for a while. And my mom was more than my parent. She was the only other Guardian that I knew. What she told me about Guardians, I believed. I had no one else to ask, except my aunt. And I love my aunt, but… she’s not a Guardian.
I keep quiet, gently stroking Aiden with my thumb. He hesitates for a second, avoiding my eyes.
There’s also the fact that I - I saw my mom go through what she warned me about. I saw what it did to her, firsthand. And that was… terrifying, for me. To think of going through what she did. Changing the way she did. She was a whole different person, after…
Aiden pauses for a moment, takes a deep breath. I don’t move to fill the silence. Partially because I know that he has more to say, if I give him time to say it. And partially because I’m at a loss for words.
By the time I was in high school, what my mom told me about Guardians and love wasn’t a question of belief, in my mind. It was just - reality. The objective truth. But I always had this hope, deep down, that it wasn’t actually true. Somehow that survived in me, all that time. I don’t know how. I was always trying to crush it down and starve it out. Couldn’t.
And then, Jamie… I met you.
I blink at Aiden, then tilt my head to the side on the pillow, looking at him with startled, questioning eyes. Aiden hesitates, his cheeks coloring up to a soft, dusky scarlet. He lifts his thumb to gently drag it up my jaw, shy again.
I met you, he murmurs, and we had that moment at the beach. In like, two minutes, you changed everything. What I had believed for years, for my whole life - what I had thought was a bitter, tragic fucking truth that there was no way around… all of a sudden I wasn’t sure anymore. All of a sudden I almost believed the opposite. I mean…
Aiden looks deeply into my eyes, then uses the hand on my neck to draw me a little closer to him.
I can hear the entire score, Jamie, he says softly. But for some reason I couldn’t fathom, you were singing to me. Your one little note, singing to me over all the rest. And you don’t know how beautiful you sound. I wish I could fucking tell you, but there’s no word in any language for something that beautiful, and there never will be. Like right now, you sound… you sound… oh…
Aiden trails off, melting deeper into the bed, a glowing smile turning up his lips.
Keane. I’m glad that you’re happy, but can you tone it down? I can’t concentrate when you sound this good. And stop looking at me like that.
I’m sorry. I can’t help it. You’re saying very nice things.
Am I? That’s good. I was worried this might weird you out.
No.
Oh, Aiden says, with obvious relief. Well, yeah. You got me all confused about what my mom told me. And you kept getting me all confused about it, from that day on.
What - even after high school?
Yeah. After that day at the beach, I could always hear you singing, and - I swear, it sounded like you were singing to me. To me, and for me. I can’t explain, but that’s how it sounds. And all I had to hold onto was that day at the beach, that one golden moment we had together… but that was enough. Once you know what perfection feels like, you - you just don’t forget.
My heart trips wildly over itself. I lift my hand, slowly brush my knuckles over Aiden’s cheek. Yeah, I… I know what you mean about that.
Aiden blushes deeper, breaks his gaze from mine again.
You sang to me everywhere, Jamie. Everywhere I went. When I was hurting the worst, when I was lost, or lonely… you were there to sing to me. Every time. You don’t know what you did for me, singing like that.
Aiden leans across the pillow and brushes a soft, slow, intimate kiss onto my lips.
“You said you always wished there was a way you could help.” His deep, warm voice breaks the silence of the room, rolls through me like a rumble of gentle thunder. “You already have, Linden. You always have. You - should know that.”
I’m silent, struck speechless, staring at Aiden with enormous eyes. What he’s telling me right now is gonna take me some time to process.
Aiden seems to understand that. He presses one more kiss onto my mouth, then lets me go and rolls onto his back, gently letting the connection fall closed. He stretches his arms over his head, the muscles of his ribs rippling beneath his smooth bronze skin.
“That stuff with my mom is in the past, now,” he says quietly. “But it was just so ground-in, for so long… sometimes it tries to come back for me. I thought it was a fundamental truth, once. I - made a lot of stupid decisions, based on it. Very stupid. To put it lightly.”
“Hm,” I manage, finally finding my voice again. “Well… your mom said that the day you caught the person you love sneaking around using your magic, that would be the day you knew that she’d been right all along. Didn’t she?”
“Mhm.”
“And that day came and went, didn’t it?” I snuggle up against Aiden, folding my thigh over him. “And here we are.”
“It - yeah. Here we are.”
“So. Your mom was wrong about that. And everything else, too.” I press a kiss against his jaw. “You’ve got the concrete proof in your hands, Callahan. I’m gonna prove it again, too. I’ll get you believing the real truth. Don’t care if it takes forever.”
Aiden stares at me for a long moment, then turns his unseeing gaze to the ceiling. I lift my head to look at him, then let out a startled laugh when I see the glowing, elated smile on his face. It deepens the fine lines at the corners of his eyes, rounds out his cheeks.
It shines bright enough to make my already-glowing face light up, too.
I tap a fingertip on his smile, still half-laughing. “Is that from what I said, or because of how we sound, right now?”
Aiden makes a helpless little sound. “Both. All of it. Everything. I don’t know. I’m dying.”
“You’re dying? After what you just said to me? I’m starting to feel like I should be keeping a backup cache of canisters for my inhaler somewhere around here. Fifty of them. Maybe more.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Aiden huffs out a soft, deep laugh, then rolls over and gathers me up against him. “Go to sleep, Keane. I’m gonna try to do something with the connection. See if it works.”
“What are you gonna do?”
“I just - want to show you something.”
I’m curious about what this means, but back in the cozy safety of Aiden’s arms, feeling perfectly at home, perfectly toasty with my face against the firm warmth of his chest - I can’t keep my eyes open.
I close them, and fall asleep after only a few happy, peaceful breaths.
I dream of running, endlessly and effortlessly, a soft breeze pushing through my hair. I feel miraculously free, light, unburdened. Full of bliss. My exhilarated heart is pounding in my chest, my lungs full of cold, clean, crisp air.
I sense someone running with me. Some bright, warm presence at my side, panting and eager, arms thrown open to the sunlight, the lush green beauty of everything around us.
I catch his hand, and he closes his fingers around mine.
We run together, and our wild laughter mingles in the treetops, rising up into the sky.
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