Sunbeams - 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.
The lights of our house spill out softly onto the dark, rainy night. Inside the house, everyone is moving slowly, drowsily. The weariness started to take us all down around roughly the same time.
Aiden is by far the most exhausted out of all of us. Normally he’d be completely knocked out after a night like tonight, but I gave him enough of my energy that he’s still hanging in there. He’s stretched out on our bed, drifting in and out. His stubble is darker and thicker after the long day and long night we’ve had. His eyes are only half-open, when they’re open at all.
I thought about sending everyone home when he laid down, but I think he’s appreciating the soft, tired, warm voices all around him. The exhausted smile sticks on his face when he’s awake, and when he’s half-asleep.
Besides, I don’t think anyone will be staying for much longer. I can tell that everyone is beat.
I leave Roger and Ralph in the kitchen, then come back upstairs with Aiden’s refilled water bottle to find Luca and Noah by the door of our bedroom, having a quiet conversation. Nik is passed out in Noah’s arms, snuggled up with her cheek on his shoulder and her mouth slightly open.
I let out an affectionate laugh beneath my breath when I see her, in disbelief over how much she resembles Raj passed out in the backseat of the car.
“EMT, paramedic, first responder - it’s related to level of practice,” Luca is explaining, as Noah blinks slowly at him. “I’m qualified to be called any one of those three things. But none of those things is the same thing as a doctor. It’s fine that you’re calling me doc, I just - feel like I should explain?”
“That was a lot of words, yo,” Noah yawns. “Tell me again when I’m more awake than this. And also when Ralph is there, so he can explain it to me again after you leave.”
Luca’s eyebrows furrow, and he lets out a small, baffled laugh. “What-?”
“Doesn’t matter anyways, does it?” Noah shrugs his shoulders, looking at Luca with one pierced eyebrow flat, and the other arched high. “You’re the team medic, aren’t you?”
“I-” Luca pauses, faintly surprised, as if that only just dawned on him. “I - guess I am, yeah.”
“Right.” Noah gives Luca a nod, like he should really be following this without help. “Exactly. So you’re the doctor.”
Luca blinks at Noah, waiting for some kind of further explanation, then flashes me a baffled glance when Noah just gives him a sleepy smile, as if the matter is resolved.
“Anyways, I’m fuckin’ wiped out,” he tells Luca, around another deep yawn. “I’m gonna roll before I’m too tired to drive. Nice meeting you, doc. Later, Keane.”
He gives Luca’s shoulder a friendly slap, then does the same to me as he sets off.
“See you, man,” I answer, trying not to laugh at the bewildered expression on Luca’s face.
Ralph is just coming up the stairs, and Noah calls out softly to him.
“Hey, can you help me get Niki into her car seat? And also help me get Raj into some kind of upright position?”
“Yeah, but we’ve gotta get that baby book out of my car before you go,” Ralph informs Noah, turning right around on the top step. “Shit’s bad for my image. It’s about bunnies hugging each other.”
“The kind of stuff you move in that car, and you’re worried about the fucking baby book?” Noah laughs, as the two of them head down the stairs. “At least Hoppity Hugs couldn’t land you in lockup.”
“Um - what was that?” Luca asks me quietly, his startled eyes widening. “What’s he talking about?”
“Oh, um…” Oh, god. This is a very bad moment to be so very bad at lying. I’m fully too tired to even attempt to come up with a creative version of the truth. “Just - probably some, like - he was - pshh, that’s just Noah, you know, he’s all - probably - probably joking! Some kind of - super hilarious joke, flew right over our heads - or he - he was-”
Aiden huffs out a tired laugh from our bed, then calls out from the bedroom. “I dunno what’s going on out there, but it sure sounds like Jamie is trying to lie.”
“Oh, is that what that was?” Luca looks immensely relieved. “God. I was just thinking I might need to take your vitals, dude.”
“Okay!” I rub my hands over my eyes, my cheeks burning, then catch Luca’s elbow and lead him a little further into the hallway, away from the bedroom. “What happened tonight, Luca? I’m actually more confused now than I was before we met up with you.”
“You and me both.” Luca shakes his head, looking a little dazed. “I don’t understand a lot about what happened, to tell you the truth. Who’s the Warlord? Do you know? Because Noah and Ralph are really good at pretending to work for him. He sounds terrifying, by the way.”
“The…?” I stop and close my eyes for a second, grounding myself before I attempt an answer. “Um. Okay. Let’s just start at the beginning. Noah got you there on time, I’m guessing?”
Luca lets out a sputtering little laugh. “Did he ever, man.”
Luca launches into his explanation, and I listen in silence, my eyes slowly getting wider and wider. I’m silent for an Aiden-like amount of time after he winds it up.
“Jesus,” I murmur, running a hand through my hair, blank-faced and dumbfounded. “I’m trying to think of what this night looked like from that kid’s perspective.”
“Seriously, imagine what’s going through his head right now,” Luca says, like he can’t even take a guess. “I mean, he thinks the Warlord’s people really did come and save him!”
He’s right about that, I nearly answer, but I bite it back just in time.
Actually, even the kid doesn’t really understand the truth of what happened. It’s an understatement to say that the Warlord’s people saved him. The Warlord himself showed up to save him. Personally.
“Holy god.” My hand stops in my hair and clutches an anxious fistful. “What the fuck! We’ve never had a rescue like that before! With pipes, and - violence! No wonder Roger was mad at all of us for sending you in! And at you, for going!”
“Yeah, don’t sweat that. I meant what I said about turning that into a sexy punishment situation.”
I let out a helpless, ragged laugh, leaning back against the wall. “God, Luca, I’m just glad that you’re all okay.”
“We’re unbelievably lucky that Noah and Ralph were there,” Luca answers, keeping his voice quiet. “They’ve got a skillset I definitely can’t lay claim to. I honestly have no idea what I would have done if they weren’t there. It was a lucky night all around. You know how I picked what direction to go, after Aiden couldn’t guide us anymore?”
“Guessed and hoped?”
“No. I literally followed a butterfly. A blue butterfly.” Luca drops his head and laughs tiredly. “That’s the kind of decision-making I was doing. Can’t believe everything worked out, considering.”
I breathe out a dazed laugh, too, and we both fall silent for a moment. Our heads turn in tandem at the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Roger stops at the top, his eyes warm and tired, lingering on Luca. He has Luna snuggled up against his chest, purring happily, her paws resting on his muscled forearm.
“Oh my god,” Luca says softly, staring at him with adoring eyes.
“Luc,” Roger yawns, gently setting Luna down. “Home?”
“Mhm, yes.” Luca slaps my shoulder, already heading down the hallway. “Night, man!”
He turns around and jogs backwards for a second, crosses his fingers hopefully, and mouths at me: sexy punishment situation!
“Night,” I laugh, then mouth back at him - get after it!
Luca snickers as he turns around, and Roger watches us both in faint confusion. He opens his mouth to say something, but Luca presses a kiss onto his lips, catches his hand, and leads him down the stairs without slowing down.
I drift into the bedroom, then stop by the mismatched windows to watch Roger and Luca head out through the garden. Luca is walking backwards again, but this time because he’s pulling Roger along by his belt buckle, murmuring quietly to him and gazing up into his eyes, a teasing smile on his face.
Roger is starting to stumble a little on the garden path, looking at Luca instead of where he’s going.
“Luca means business,” I tell Aiden, and he laughs softly from the bed.
I look over at him, surprised to get a response. He’s stretched out on his back on the comforter, breathing deeply and slowly, his arms resting above his head and his eyes shut. But he must be awake.
Only a few of our lamps are switched on, putting the room half in warm, buttery light, and half in shadowy semi-darkness. The raindrops outside are starting to fall harder and faster. The cool breeze drifting in through the branch window brings a few scattered droplets with it.
I sit down on the rug and start poking up the fire in the little corner stove. I know that my Heliomancer is too tired to put off any heat.
“Did Ralph leave?” Aiden murmurs suddenly, a thread of worry showing itself in his deep voice. “Without saying anything?”
I don’t think this would have caught Aiden’s attention on any night but tonight. Tonight, for reasons I don’t have to guess at, I think any unexpected behavior from Ralph or Noah would be enough to make Aiden anxious.
I open my mouth to answer, but someone else answers for me.
“Nah, I’m still here.”
Aiden sits up on his elbows as Ralph wanders into our bedroom. His blonde hair is darkened from the rain, his thin, loose shirt speckled with dark droplets. Tycho is sleepily stumbling after him, trailing his slow steps.
Aiden’s anxious expression relaxes again as soon as his gaze falls on Ralph. He lays back down, shuts his eyes in relief.
Ralph looks at him for a moment, with some complicated expression in his grey-green eyes. I can practically see the gears turning behind them. He glances down at me, maybe feeling my searching gaze on him, but then looks away again without saying anything. He’s pretty clearly a million miles away, sunk deep in his thoughts.
He pauses by our dresser, his gaze catching on something. “Why do you guys have a bird in a box?”
“He flew into our window.” Aiden lifts his hand to make a vague gesture in the direction of the kitchen. “We found him out there, so now we’re looking after him until he can fly again. His name is Jumble.”
“It’s some Snow White shit going on in this house,” Ralph snickers, then laughs softly when Aiden uses his already lifted hand to flash him a middle finger.
Tycho is still a nervous little thing, but she’s warmed to Aiden surprisingly fast. She puts her paws up on the bed, jumps herself up, and trots over to him. She noses around for a moment, making soft snuffling noises, then settles down by his side.
Aiden keeps his eyes shut, but reaches down to give Tycho a little scratch.
“Everyone headed home?” he rumbles tiredly.
“Mhm.” Ralph turns to face Aiden, leans back against the dresser, and folds his arms over his chest. “I’m the only one left.”
Aiden’s fingers stop in Tycho’s fur. He holds still for a moment, then sits up on his elbows again, staring at Ralph with narrowed, searching eyes. Ralph meets his gaze, but doesn’t say anything. His expression stays perfectly neutral, giving nothing away.
Silence falls over the room, aside from the drumming of the rainfall.
Aiden’s slow, deep, soft-spoken voice breaks the quiet.
“You’re looking at me like you want to say something, man.”
Ralph slowly shrugs his shoulders, his arms still folded over his chest. “Are you awake enough to hear it?”
Aiden stares at Ralph in silence for another moment, then sits up on the bed, slowly folding his elbows onto his knees. His eyebrows are dropped low, his blue eyes trying to read Ralph’s.
“Seriously, tell me if you aren’t,” Ralph says. “I don’t want to have to say any of this twice. Because this type of conversation - you and me, we’re not hardwired for this type of thing.”
I think I know what Ralph means. I recognize the look on his face, the pained, struggling, vulnerable expression darkening the grey-green color of his eyes. He always gets this way when he’s trying to force himself to speak right from the heart.
He looks like he’s waging a silent war to make himself do it. Fighting for every word he makes himself say out loud. His face is pale with the effort, his jaw set tightly, his entire body stiffened up.
As soon as Aiden realizes what Ralph means, he looks very much the same way.
He falls flat onto his back again, flings his arms up over his head, and lets out an agonized groan. He’s trying to sound annoyed, but I can hear the truth beneath it, the extreme anxiety hidden in his deep voice.
“Come on, man.” He runs a hand over the stubble on his tensed jaw, screwing up his face in a pained, please no kind of way. “Really? Blah blah blah…”
“I know, and I agree, but this is one of those times when we really fucking have to, man.” Ralph hesitates, twisting his fingers through his soft leather wristbands, then moves to slowly sit down next to Aiden on the bed. He rests his elbows on his knees and loosely laces his fingers together between them, looking sideways at Aiden. “We’ve ignored those times before, and you know what happened.”
Aiden stares at Ralph with searching, fretful eyes. Ralph takes in his expression, then looks away, stares off at the wall of mismatched windows instead. He keeps his eyes on the raindrops, on the breeze stirring the leaves in the branch window.
“If you think I’m about to ask for an explanation about what happened tonight, then you can relax. I’m not, so. Pressure’s off. I’ve just got something I want to say, and it won’t take that long.”
Aiden blinks in surprise, then breathes in a soft, relieved inhale. But he still looks deeply uneasy as he sits up again. He watches Ralph in tense silence, his arms loosely wound around his knees. Waiting.
Ralph chews the inside of his cheek for a few silent seconds, carefully not looking at him. When he breaks the silence, his voice has that rough, strangled texture it gets when he’s forcing himself to keep talking.
“Know - know I haven’t made it easy to trust me, man. But I feel like you and me, we’ve always trusted each other in our own kind of way, something deeper than the surface-level shit. Even when we were kids. Like…” Ralph pauses for a long moment, then goes on, very slowly, “I know that word eventually got around, about me growing up in trailer tin before I moved to Ketterbridge. But you were the only one who knew because I actually told you that.”
Aiden draws his head back sharply, staring at Ralph with wide, startled eyes. Ralph keeps his gaze firmly trained the other way, fixed on the wall straight ahead of him. His fingers are twisting in his leather wristbands, turning through them again and again.
“The last couple years have been a fucking mess,” he goes on, through the strangled roughness in his voice. “For me, pretty much a long fuckin’ chain of one bad decision after another. I recognize that. But you know I’m not the same now as I was then. Not since I spent some time living in my own head, clearing all the bullshit out. And I’m not going back to how I was before. There might be things that set me back some, but - I won’t fuck up again the way I did before.”
Aiden tilts his head to the side, his blue eyes full of surprise and confusion. “Yeah, man, I know. I’m not doubting that.”
“Oh. Okay. Good.” A flash of relief goes through Ralph’s eyes. He swallows, takes a steadying breath, and glances over at Aiden. “But, um… point is, even back then, even when I was fucking up every day, I didn’t make that bad decision.”
Aiden’s eyebrows furrow in confusion.
Ralph bites the inside of his cheek, takes a breath, then says - “I never told anyone. And I never held it over your head.”
Aiden freezes, staring at Ralph with enormous eyes.
“Told anyone…?” he rasps, very slowly.
Ralph narrows his eyes in sudden exasperation, finally meeting Aiden’s gaze.
“Come on, man. You know exactly what I’m talking about. Don’t think I’ve been missing all the signs, just ‘cause I haven’t said anything about them. Or because I didn’t believe in them, until I met you.”
Aiden doesn’t say a word. He just stares at Ralph, perfectly motionless. Not even breathing.
“I get why you didn’t want to talk to me about it back then,” Ralph says, quickly looking away again. “I get why you didn’t think you could trust me with it.”
Aiden finally breaks his silence, in a numb, staggered voice. “I… it’s not because of that, I…”
“Doesn’t matter, alright? Point is, even back then, I kept it to myself.” Ralph bounces his knee as he talks, keeping his eyes on the rainy night beyond the windows. “Noah did, too. We’re brothers, man. We all know the code, even if we’ve never exactly said it out loud.”
Aiden blinks hard at Ralph, frozen, thunderstruck. He opens his mouth, then silently closes it again.
“I’m not going back to how I was,” Ralph goes on, in a very quiet voice. “But even if the whole fucking world flipped upside down and I did, it wouldn’t make a difference. Not about this. Just - just wanted to say that, in case that’s what’s keeping you from talking to me and Noah about it now.”
Aiden stares at Ralph for a long, silent moment with a stunned expression on his face. Ralph opts to simply pretend he’s not doing that. He stares out at the rain, silently chewing the inside of his cheek, his fingers wrapped around his leather wristbands.
Aiden slowly lets his gaze fall to the bedspread,
“I know,” he rumbles softly. “Know you’re not going back. That’s not… I know, man. I swear.”
Ralph looks at Aiden, then gives him a small, shadowy smile.
“Not because I give a fuck about any of you,” he answers, matter-of-factly. “It’s about Calla, so.”
“Right.” Aiden huffs out an exhausted laugh, falling flat onto his back again. “Purely about Calla. Nothing to do with you, or any of us.”
Ralph breaks into a grin, sets his palms behind himself on the bed, and leans back onto them. “What can I say, man? That girl hits like a drug. After I see her I’m fucking useless, for hours. It’s beyond any comprehension whatsoever.”
Aiden laughs again, and this time Ralph does, too.
“You know what I just realized?” Ralph tilts his head to the side, smirking at Aiden. “You’re one of the only people who can actually scare me, and the first time I met her, she was busy scaring the hell out of you.”
Aiden closes his eyes tiredly and shakes his head, half-laughing. “There’s a reason I try to stay off of Calla’s bad side. Even if my success is limited.”
Ralph glances down at him in confusion. “What do you mean? She likes you and Keane. Thinks of you as her buddies.”
“Really?” Aiden opens one eye to look at Ralph, incredulous. “Holy shit. And I thought you keep your feelings to yourself. Sounds like I’ve been scared of her for no reason.”
Ralph laughs softly, giving Tycho’s white ears a scratch. “She’s a little more relaxed than she used to be, these days. Not that I’m complaining about how she was before, but she is. I don’t know why.”
Aiden raises one eyebrow. “But she’s still scary, I assume?”
Ralph lets out a dreamy sigh, smiling adoringly off into the distance. “Yeah, man. The scariest.”
Aiden closes his eyes and laughs again, swatting Ralph’s knee. Ralph laughs, too, then gets up, clicks his tongue for Tycho. She scrambles upright, shakes herself off, and jumps down from the bed to stand at his feet. Aiden lets out a long, exhausted breath, the last of his adrenaline clearly burning up.
Ralph hesitates for a moment, looking down at him. He looks like he’s deciding whether or not to say something.
“There was this one time in high school,” he begins slowly. “This time you were all worked up, Aiden. We were all in the car together, driving back from a party at somebody’s house… I can’t remember his name, he was some friend of mine you guys didn’t know, but we’d gone really far to get there-”
“Seth,” Aiden murmurs instantly. “Was at Seth’s house.”
Ralph’s eyebrows fly up. “Okay, how the hell do you remember that?”
“Because I was freaking the fuck out,” Aiden mumbles, his voice growing husky with oncoming sleep.
“Yeah, I could tell, but why?”
“Because me and Seth made out, and I didn’... know how to handle it... panicked a lil’ bit… and then the whole thing got me thinking about Jamie, so that didn’t help…”
“Wait, wh-?” Ralph stares at Aiden, his dark green eyes going very wide. “You and Seth, dude? At that party?”
Aiden opens his eyes very suddenly. His expression very much makes it seem like he only just now realized what he said.
“Um… no?”
“Yeah, right!” Ralph sputters, around a burst of startled laughter. “I was wondering why the fuck he invited us all back to every party he threw after that one! And why you always got all stressed out and said we shouldn’t go! It’s such a long drive, man, I don’t feel like it, just drop it already-”
“Ugh, shut up,” Aiden groans, turning his face into the pillow. “Can’t believe I just told you that. Remember that the next time you’re wondering whether or not I trust you.”
Ralph breathes out a soft laugh through his nose, drops his head for a second. When he looks up, his eyes have grown serious again.
“The temperature changed,” he murmurs quietly. “On the drive back from that party. I felt the air go hot in the car, right around me. Felt like desert breeze, but not from any desert. Wasn’t the first time I’d noticed something like that, or even the first time I’d noticed the temperature thing specifically. Only the first time we were in a controlled environment, and I could be sure it wasn’t coming from anywhere else. It was cold out. The windows were up. The temp control was switched off. And the car was running smooth. No extra heat from the engine.”
Aiden absorbs that for a slow, sleepy moment. His eyes fly open when it sinks in.
He turns his head and looks at Ralph with wide, searching eyes.
Ralph gives his shoulders a slow shrug, then knocks Aiden’s arm with his fist.
“We’re brothers, A. Whatever happens, we stand shoulder to shoulder. Remember that, when the day comes around that you decide to talk to me and Noah about it.”
Aiden stays frozen for a second, then sits up very fast on his elbows, staring at Ralph.
Ralph heads for the door, without turning around or saying another word.
I’ve been sitting in perfect silence on the rug, my fingers pressed to my mouth, my other hand holding the poker for the fire in the wood-burning stove. Ralph’s eyes glance off of me, then do a double-take. He stops where he is, blinking hard, then gives his head a slow, exasperated shake.
“Keane,” he growls, glaring darkly at me. “You nosy little-”
I cut him off with a sputter of indignant protest, spreading my hands wide. “Dude, I’ve literally been sitting right here, the whole time! You looked right at me when you came in here!”
Ralph tilts his head back and lets out a heavy, aggrieved sigh. “Guess you’d have figured all of that out on your own anyways, Sharpshooter. If you haven’t gone and done that already?”
I bite my lip in a busted kind of way, and Ralph rolls his eyes, like - yeah, figures.
He reaches out and shoves the back of my head down as he walks past, but something about it feels affectionate. And when I call out a soft goodnight to him, a quiet, answering goodnight is called back to me.
He disappears into the shadows as he steps out into the hallway, taking Tycho with him.
Leaving Aiden staring after him.
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