Sunbeams - Part Nineteen
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.
“Are you really playing a video game while we’re talking about this?” Aiden asks, watching me with one eyebrow arched up high.
“Mhm, I am.” The Xbox controller clicks softly as I add some upgrades to my spaceship, then hit the button to exit the mods bay. “Do you want me to stop?”
“Not particularly, but I’m curious about your reasoning.”
“Just… sometimes it seems like it’s easier for you to think things out if I’m not looking at you, waiting for you to say something.”
Aiden draws his head back a little, staring at me thoughtfully. He leans back against the couch and runs a hand over his stubble, then shrugs his shoulders, like - yeah, true.
“I’m not gonna know what to say no matter how much time you give me, though,” he murmurs, rubbing his arm anxiously. “Jesus Christ. I’m glad that Noah and Ralph were there.”
I’ve finished relaying to him everything that Luca told me, but something tells me he’s still primarily focused on what Ralph said before he went home last night.
“Wow.” I glance over at Aiden curiously. “I’m surprised you’re not more thrown off by what happened last night. We haven’t had a rescue where we had to, like - interfere with a violent crime in progress.”
Aiden arches an eyebrow back at me. “What are you talking about, dude? Did you forget about the time we rescued Ralph from a squad of huge angry bastards who were about to introduce his face to a baseball bat?”
“Oh, yeah.” I blink at Aiden, caught by surprise. “That’s weird. I had that one in another mental category. Guess because that - kind of seemed like a regular night, for Ralph? At the time? And we literally time-traveled like five minutes later. I broke the rules of time and physics and looked my past self directly in the eye for a second, so that was a bit of a distraction from the night’s earlier events-”
“Oh, my god.” Aiden huffs out a helpless laugh and sinks down on the couch, pressing his hands over his eyes. “Jamie. You’re such a cupcake, but then you’re also like - oh, that bar brawl we were a part of? Forgot about that.”
“I just hadn’t thought about it that way!” I groan, laughing as I coast my spaceship towards the next mission marker. “What do you want me to say? It felt less like stumbling onto a violent crime, more like - running into Ralph while he was going about his night.”
Aiden lets out another soft burst of huffing laughter, dropping his head into his hands. Giving me a chance to steal a lingering, adoring glance at him.
He’s in his sweatpants, his sleep-tousled hair escaping from his backwards snapback to touch his temple. What’s left of the breakfast we just finished eating is on the coffee table before him. It’s pretty much gone, only a few crumbs of lavash bread, fig jam, and feta cheese left. But the two mugs of hot, rose-scented tea Aiden made us aren’t empty yet. They’re still perfuming the sunlit air around us, the sweet-smelling steam rising up to where we’re snuggled up on the couch.
Luna is stretched out on Aiden’s other side, taking her post-breakfast nap on her back. Her grey ears are flattened to the couch, her paws curled on her chest.
Everything about the atmosphere in here says home, in a way that’s deeply comforting to my heart. Maybe Aiden feels it, too. Maybe that’s why he seems okay, even after everything that went down last night.
I blink hard and drag my gaze away when Aiden looks up. Oh, god. He nearly caught me staring his way with everything written all over my face.
Hopeless heart-eyed idiot, I think to myself, my cheeks burning. Same as ever.
“Alright, well - rescues like the one last night, they do happen,” Aiden rumbles, as I silently struggle to focus on the game again. “Good news is, there’s not too much criminal activity in Ketterbridge. Unless you count Ralph, in which case there’s an enormous amount of criminal activity in Ketterbridge.”
“Right. And Noah, given the way he drives sometimes. Oh - I guess what Ripley does is technically a crime, too… and then there’s us, because we’ve done a few thefts and break-ins, impersonated federal agents - hang on, does ninety percent of the crime in this town come from our friend group, dude?”
“That’s - something to think about later, but you get what I’m saying?”
“Mhm, I get it. Crime in this town isn’t typically of the violent, dangerous kind, which means you don’t have to get involved too often. But we may have other rescues like that, in the future.”
Aiden nods in confirmation, and I turn that information over in my mind for a moment.
“God, I just - never thought about this,” I admit, biting the inside of my cheek.
I’m thinking to myself that maybe it actually would be a big help, to have Ralph and Noah on the team for certain kinds of rescues.
“Why’d you think I went out of my way to learn how to hold my own in a fight?” Aiden asks, distractedly nibbling his thumbnail. “And showed Ralph and Noah how to do the same?”
“Um… I just assumed it’s something scary boys like you do for fun?”
Aiden shoots me an exasperated look, which he struggles to keep in place when I smile innocently at him. “Okay, Noah is the one who was always starting fights for fun. Noah. I’m Aiden, remember?”
“Oh, thank you for that clarification, Callahan. Please recall that I knew high school Aiden. At the time he very much seemed like a guy who learned how to fight because he wanted to fight.”
Aiden pauses, then gives his shoulders a sheepish, concessionary shrug. “Okay, fair enough. That’s - yeah.”
“Yeah,” I laugh, and this time he laughs, too. “Jesus, though. From what Luca said, it sounds like Ralph and Noah took what you taught them and ran with it, after you left.”
“We’re lucky for that,” Aiden murmurs thoughtfully.
“Luck was a big part of last night.” I steal another quick glance at Aiden, searching his face. “Have you thought about that butterfly Luca saw?”
“Yeah, and I’m… not sure what it means.” Aiden’s deep voice slows down as he thinks it through. “Maybe… maybe critters that interact with the malachite tree take and keep some of its energy when they go?”
“But what does that mean?” I pause the game again and turn to face Aiden, officially too distracted to play. “Why would that make it turn up when Luca needed guidance? A butterfly doesn’t think in the way a human does. It didn’t mean to fly to Luca, but for some reason it went right to him. Assuming it was the same butterfly.”
Aiden takes a few seconds to think about that, then looks up at me, his blue eyes suddenly troubled.
“Does the malachite tree energy take them over somehow? Start moving them for them? Because - that’s fucked up, isn’t it? I don’t like that.”
“No, that can’t be it. I don’t think that’s how Guardian magic works.” Now I’m the one speaking slowly, thinking out loud. “It’s Fate magic, Aiden, it doesn’t possess things. If the malachite butterfly really was there last night, then what led it there is the way the wind affected its course, what direction it set off in, what time it happened to set off… and there were a few violet flower petals stuck to Luca’s uniform, did you see? I think they were phlox. A species that attracts butterflies. Those guys happened to take the kid to a place where it was growing in the forest. I think… all of that came together to make the butterfly get there right on time, and go the right way. It was fate.”
Aiden nibbles his lip, absorbing my theory for a long moment in thoughtful silence. Then the tension goes out of his shoulders, and the muscle in his jaw relaxes.
“That does sound more like how it would work.” He twists his mouth to the side, looking a little annoyed at himself. “Shouldn’t I have gotten there before you did? Sometimes it’s like you know more about my magic than I do, Keane.”
I wink at him before I turn back to the game. “Science teacher. I’m always taking observations.”
Aiden breathes out a little laugh, then affectionately ruffles my hair. I close my eyes, savoring the heat of his firm, gentle fingers - and instantly crash my spaceship into the wall of a cult spacebase. I open my eyes to find ten cult raiders zooming directly for my damaged little spacecraft. Aiden laughs as I let out a burst of dismayed curses, frantically pushing buttons.
He reaches for his mug, takes a sip of his tea, and falls silent again, thinking.
“Hey,” he says abruptly. “If the malachite tree really is affecting the wildlife, and that really is what’s going on with the butterfly-”
“That’s a big if, okay? I should be clear that what I threw out is just an untested hypothesis-”
“-then what about the other critters that have been around the tree?” Aiden glances at the open windows facing the back garden. The malachite tree is tall enough now that we can see its veined leaves from here. “Those animals and bugs are just out there somewhere, carrying a tiny amount of malachite and Guardian energy? Do they affect whoever’s around them, when they cross paths with humans? Like the butterfly did?”
“I mean, if they do…”
I fade off slowly as the implications dawn on me. I pause the game again, then sit very still for a long moment, my head spinning. Aiden watches me, a faintly confused expression on his face.
“Aiden, are… are we growing luck in our garden?” I murmur slowly, staring at him with wide, wondering eyes. “Are we making little, living, free-roaming, like… protection spirits? Every time a critter interacts with our malachite tree?”
Aiden stares at me, then sits up very fast, his eyes widening and eyebrows furrowing.
“So, hang on, science teacher - what scope of effect would that have? If we were?”
“Not… too big, I don’t think.” I turn it over in my mind for a moment. “There’s our tree, and the one I gave to my mom. Still, that’s only two trees. And lots of the critters are the kind that rarely interact with humans, anyways, so… in the grand scheme of things… yeah, not huge. It’s also possible that the malachite energy wears off of the critters eventually. But even if it doesn’t, their lifespans are much shorter than ours, the bugs in particular. There won’t be enough malachite critters out there in the world at the same time to make a giant, game-changing impact. If they do have an effect, it’ll be much smaller in scope… definitely no bigger than the effect you have, doing Guardian rescues.”
“Alright, so…” Aiden stares at me with fretful blue eyes, anxiously tapping his thumb on the mug in his hands. “What you’re saying is, we didn’t just tip some kind of universal balance and fuck everything up.”
“No.” I let out an affectionate laugh, shaking my head at him. “With two trees? No.”
But my magic garden is off to an even better start than I thought, I think brightly.
I’d been planning to add things that make the wild, overgrown garden feel like the magic garden it truly is. Especially after Aiden and I had the talk about future kids. If the day ever comes we have little ones roaming around out there, I want it to be a magic place for them.
I’ve been weaving a long, slender, fairy-sized ladder out of twine to wrap around the trunk of the weeping willow. Sketching out miniature mushroom houses with doors and chimneys, planning to ask Raj if he could carve them, so I can paint them and hide them around the garden. Checking the thrift store for little lanterns I can string together, slowly building a collection.
I didn’t think there was any more literal magic to be added to my magic garden. Not that I felt like it was missing any. One magic plant from Aiden was the gift of a lifetime, to me.
But if what Aiden and I are talking about is true, if our garden has been turning out little wandering, protective spirits… That’s a whole new kind of magic, growing in my garden.
A glowing bubble of happiness rises and bursts in my heart at the thought.
I turn my eyes back to the TV, unpause Chorus, and start playing again. Mostly so that Aiden doesn’t catch the giant, delighted smile on my face.
He sets his mug down on the coffee table, then sits back and folds his burly arms over his chest. I can tell from the clouded expression in his beautiful blue eyes that he’s deep in thought.
“I guess we don’t know if we’re actually right about any of this,” I add, reminding myself just as much as I’m reminding him. “I have no idea if there’s a way to put any of our theories to the test.”
“Might just have to wait and see,” Aiden murmurs. “But as long as we haven’t fucked anything up, I guess it’s fine.”
All of a sudden he lets out a heavy, weary sigh. He shuts his eyes, rubs them in an irritated kind of way.
“Wish that nothing I did had any kind of potentially serious significance for me to consider first,” he grumbles softly. “At least for a minute or two, you know?”
I reach out to tug on a strand of his hair, adjusting the way I’m sitting on the couch. Making room. “How about this minute? And the next one.”
Aiden pauses, looking over at me, then breaks into a tired smile. He takes off his snapback, tips over, and stretches out on the couch beside me. Rests his head in my lap.
Biting down on a small, peaceful smile of my own, I spend a minute working my fingertips through his hair, then start playing again.
He watches what I’m doing, but I can tell he’s gone deep into his thoughts. However much he didn’t want to think about anything for a few minutes, he clearly couldn't help himself.
Gentle silence falls over the living room, aside from the noises of the game and the whispering, chiming song of the malachite leaves shifting in the breeze.
“Are you thinking about what Ralph said?” I ask eventually.
Aiden draws in a slow, deep breath, bringing himself back to the present. He nods, his cheek moving against my thigh.
“I want to tell him and Noah,” he murmurs quietly, without looking at me. There’s a long pause, and then he adds - “I - I just don’t want them to have the same kind of nightmares I do.”
I drop my eyes to Aiden and give his arm a gentle, sympathetic squeeze. He’s clearly figured out by now that Ralph and Noah are going to insist on helping us with rescues, if we could use their particular skillset. They would be exposed to all the associated dangers. There’s a chance of them seeing things like Aiden’s seen. And feeling responsible when things go wrong, like Aiden has.
I know that Aiden doesn’t want that, for his brothers. But clearly he knows he can’t stop them, if he tells them the truth.
He looks deeply conflicted, silently struggling with himself.
“They’re big boys, Aiden. They can make their own decisions.” I give one glossy chestnut lock a gentle tug. “They’ve always made the right decisions about how to handle this. Even way back when. We know that now.”
Aiden shakes his head slowly, deep blue eyes dazed. “Can’t believe they both knew something was up, and never said anything even to me, and - remembered the specifics, all this time…”
“Ralph guessed that your head would be hurting,” I tell Aiden, and he nods slowly again.
“He’s put up with a lot of my headaches. Usually after I had to run off on a bad or difficult rescue. But also just when things were too loud, so I - I just didn’t realize he was paying such close attention to the timing of them. Or able to tell the difference between them.”
“Hey, if we’re talking about people who are always gathering observations, Ralph is probably top of the list. But honestly, I think he and Noah just know you really, really well. Which is probably why they’d do pretty much anything for you.” I bend down to press a kiss onto the side of Aiden’s face. “I’ve got that one in common with them.”
Aiden presses his lips together and shakes his head, trying to look exasperated. But a soft little huff of laughter escapes him, and I catch the soft, warm blush that colors up his cheeks.
“Alright, you know what?” He stands up and stretches his arms over his head, then reaches for his snapback. “I need to think about this without you around me doing cute, distracting things. It’s like trying to do math and watch one of Angie’s baby bunny livestreams at the same time.”
I let out a sputter of indignant laughter, staring up at Aiden from the couch, spreading my hands wide. “What did I-?”
“You know what you’re doing, man.” Aiden tilts his head to the side, gazing down at me with fiery warmth in his blue eyes. He takes a step closer, catching his lip between his teeth. “Actually, maybe I should just stay, and we can-”
“No, you just said you need to go think!” I laugh, putting up my foot to keep him back.
I meant for it to land on his lower stomach, but my aim was off, and instead it ends up pressed flat to the front of his sweatpants.
Aiden looks down at it, then looks up at me. “Tell me again you’re not doing this on purpose?”
“I’m honestly not,” I protest, and he wrinkles his nose in a yeah-okay face at me before he turns away, pulling his shirt off over his head. “Where are you going, though?”
“To get changed. I’m gonna go for a run.” Aiden is talking over his shoulder, already striding towards the stairs. “Probably to the farmer’s market, then I’ll walk back. We’re out of sumac and tarragon, and I need rose water for that rice pudding dessert you liked. We have saffron rice, right? Can you get some mint from the garden, Jamie?”
“Sure, yeah! It’s growing wild out there, I found a whole patch of it.”
“Okay,” he says distractedly. “Then I’ll just get that other stuff, and some green raisins, maybe if I have extra time I’ll use them…”
I sit there listening until Aiden reaches the bedroom, and I can’t make out any words. Just the soft, distant rumble of his deep voice. I find myself gazing after him with a smile of pure, deep affection on my face.
A run, a long walk, and time spent cooking something complicated. All things my Companion Plant does when he needs time to think. But something tells me that’s not it, this time. I get the feeling that he’s not doing all this because he needs to think more about how to handle the situation with Noah and Ralph.
I think he’s doing it because he’s nervous, and he needs calm.
Because deep down, he’s already made up his mind.
~~~~
After Aiden leaves, I stand alone in the living room for a few minutes, thinking.
I’ve definitely got to tell the ghosts that the Port Sitka trip has been postponed. We didn’t make it there, and I wouldn’t ask Aiden to attempt a second trip tonight. He’s still recuperating his magic, and his thoughts are somewhere else completely right now.
Kasey and Will would never be upset that the case got pushed back so we could save someone. They’ll understand. Still, I want a minute to take a breath before I summon them. The last twenty-four hours have been a whirlwind in ways I didn’t anticipate. Just like Aiden, I could use a moment of calm.
I drop back down onto the couch and pick up my controller, then unpause Chorus and start to play again. Luna curls up around my feet, and a breezy, airy silence comes over our house.
The leaves of our garden turn the golden morning sunlight into a pale, shady green color as it streams into the living room. The papery rustling sound of the leaves in movement drifts in through the windows. The song of the malachite tree, too. Like a gentle, distant wind chime.
Every now and then I pause to pet Luna when she does something cute, or to touch my fingers to my tattoo in warm bliss again. Sometimes I have to pause the game when I start drifting into memories of this morning, which send gentle, residual waves of warmth through me.
Someone knocks softly at the door, startling me out of a peaceful reverie I didn’t know I was in.
Tycho trots inside when I open the door, but there’s no one with her. For one absurd, completely bewildering half-second, this leads me to think that she’s the one who knocked, until -
“Hey, Keane,” comes Ralph’s voice, out of the shadows near the doorway. “I forgot my - what’s wrong with you?”
“Jesus, dude, you startled the hell out of me!” I gasp, pressing a hand to my chest. “Were you even trying to hide, or does that just happen naturally?”
“Hide, what?” Ralph spreads his hands at me, taken aback. “I’m just standing here!”
“Oh, my god. Hi, come in.” I step back to let Ralph inside, slowly getting a hold of myself again. “Did you say you forgot something?”
“Tycho’s leash.” Ralph watches her as she hesitantly trots towards Luna, her tail doing a slow, nervous wag. “I keep forgetting it everywhere, ‘cause I almost never need it when it’s not mandatory. She’s always following me, anyways.”
I match Ralph’s affectionate smile, watching Tycho put her paws up on the couch. The move startles Luna awake, which instantly startles Tycho right back. She drops to the floor and crouches low in alarm as Luna springs to her feet. The two of them stare at each other in wary, wide-eyed silence for a moment. Then Tycho leans up, tentatively wagging her tail again, and Luna bends to sniff her face in greeting.
“Tycho is a little more confident than she was before, huh?” I ask Ralph.
He shrugs his shoulders in agreement, a very fast flash of pride going through his eyes.
“Is her leash here?” He turns his gaze on the living room. “Think I left it on the coffee table.”
I head back over to grab it, talking over my shoulder to Ralph. “Want to stay and hang out for a bit, man? I just downloaded a new game, if you want to try it. You play as a fighter pilot in space, shooting down these-”
“Nah, no thanks. Not my kind of game.”
I pause and glance back at Ralph, caught by surprise. I feel like I barely told him anything about it. I was about to mention that the protagonist of the game actually kind of looks like Calla, if he wanted to check it out, but - I can tell by the expression in his dark green eyes that he’s already firmly decided against anything to do with it.
“Oh, um. Okay. Feel like playing something else? Or you could help me harvest some wild mint, I guess?”
Ralph flashes me a regretful, apologetic look. “Wish I could, but I’ve got work to take care of today.”
“Aw, no problem.” I hand Tycho’s leash to Ralph, smiling up at him. “Next time.”
Ralph glances at the stairs. “Aiden’s not home, by the way?”
“Nope, he went for a run.” I fold my arms over my chest, looking at Ralph hesitantly. “Hey, um - about last night. What you and Noah did, and - what you said to Aiden afterwards-”
Ralph’s hand is suddenly pressed over my mouth, cutting off everything I was about to say.
“Keane!” he growls sharply, fixing me with a warning glare. “Shut that shit down right now. You and me, we’re not talking about this, understand? Don’t you say one more word about anything to do with it.”
I push his hand away indignantly, more than a little taken aback. “What - why?”
“Because, man! Your deranged, next-level honesty sometimes leads you to cop to true facts that nobody even asked you for!” Ralph stabs the leash at my face threateningly. “I don’t want to hear it until I hear it from Aiden, alright? Even by accident. He’s the only one who gets to tell me.”
I blink in surprise, staring at Ralph. I was just starting to get mad, so I’m almost getting whiplash from the sudden burst of affectionate warmth that’s happening instead.
I find myself returning Ralph’s dark glare with a big, warm smile that quickly breaks into an all-out grin.
“What are you gonna do if I do say one more word about it, Ralph? Or two?”
Ralph answers this with only the very slightest tilt of his eyebrow, but somehow it says so much that I instantly throw my hands up in alarm and surrender.
“Oh, okay, Jesus! It was just - thank you! That’s all I was gonna say, Ralph. Thank you for helping us. And for saying what you said to Aiden. Seriously, it was such a thoughtful thing to do.”
Ralph pauses, his sage-green eyes blinking at me in surprise. He looks uneasy about me saying that to him, but I think there’s a hint of a pleased smile in his sharp, dark eyes.
“Oh.” He gruffly clears his throat, then shrugs his shoulders and waves a hand at me. “It’s fine. Whatever. Really? Stop. Don’t make it - it was just - nothing’s, like - yeah, okay, just - see you later, man! Bye. Tycho, let’s go!”
I have to fight hard against giving Ralph a grateful hug as he nods at me and strides for the door. It’s a struggle to not say a whole bunch of things I know he wouldn’t like me to say to his face.
I want to tell him how sweet I think it is that he made himself say all of that to Aiden. Even though it meant sacrificing all of his defenses for a few minutes. Even though it makes him so uncomfortable to talk like that, he ends up struggling desperately to get each word out, speaking like a man who’s a few hundred years rusty at communicating through spoken language. But he did it, anyways. For Aiden.
I want to give Ralph some indication of how much that meant to Aiden. How deep the unspoken trust and fraternal love Aiden has for him and Noah truly goes.
But honestly, there’s no real need for me to say anything about it to Ralph.
Aiden is going to make it perfectly clear, himself.
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