Sunbeams - Part Twelve
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.
Aiden has only just changed out of his work clothes and dropped down beside me on the couch when a loud knock comes at our door.
We haven’t invited anyone over - I was actually thinking we might talk a little more about last night - so I twist to look at it in surprise.
“Oh,” Aiden rumbles. “I think that’s probably Noosh.”
“Jamie!” Noah shouts through the door, before Aiden even finishes his sentence. “Let me in!”
I hop up off of the couch and start to cross to the door, looking at Aiden over my shoulder.
“Did you invite him over? Or is he doing that thing where he just shows up because he felt like it?”
“The second one. Kind of.” Aiden adjusts his snapback, then goes on slowly, “I told him and the guys what you said about not wanting your birthday to be a big deal. Told them you don’t want any presents, all that. But I don’t think that Noosh listened to m-”
“I’ve got something for you, Jamie!” Noah shouts from outside. “Open the door!”
“Oh, my god,” I laugh, tipping my head back. “Floyd and Spencer didn’t listen, either! They sent me a shirt that says THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE. So. A perfect gift for me. I’m not mad about that one, actually. I’m wearing it under my flannel right now.”
“Yeah, um…” Aiden winces apologetically. “Tell you the truth, I don’t think that any of the guys really listened to me about the gifts thing-”
“What if he’s not home, man?” Raj anxiously chimes in, his voice muffled through the door. “We should come back later.”
“Raj, we’ve been over this,” Noah answers, knocking again. “This is the only way to do it. Aiden’s gonna warn him. We’ve gotta give him the gifts ambush-style, before it’s too late.”
I turn to face Aiden with disbelieving eyes, then turn back to the door when I hear Ripley’s voice join the others.
“Should we go check the garden? Sometimes he works out there at night.”
“Great idea, Ripples!” I hear the sound of Raj slapping Ripley’s shoulder. “My mans is thinking.”
“Fine,” Noah answers, like it doesn’t really matter to him. “Let’s go jump him out there. Can we go around the side of the house, or do we have to take the roof? Actually - let’s definitely take the roof, that’ll give us the element of surprise. The ladder’s in your truck, right, Raj?”
“Yep! One sec, I’ll go get it!”
“Have we actually checked to see if the door is locked yet?” comes Ralph’s voice.
There’s a pause, and then our front door swings open. Ripley, Noah, Raj, and Ralph all lean inside to cautiously peer around. They find me standing right in front of them, my arms folded and my eyebrows high.
Aiden is fighting down a laugh behind me, taking in their oh shit busted facial expressions.
“Super good ambush,” I tell them.
Noah spreads his hands wide, makes a wounded face at me as he strides into the house. “Why didn’t you open the door, bro? You heard us out there!”
I bend down to greet Tycho as she trots into the house at Ralph’s heels. “Was that step one of the super sneaky ambush? Yelling for me to open the door?”
“No,” Noah says indignantly. “Step one was doing this a few days before your birthday, so you wouldn’t see us coming.”
“What was step two? Just curious.”
There’s a silence, during which Ripley, Raj, and Noah look at each other, blinking hard, like they’re just now realizing that they didn’t get to step two in the planning process. Ralph drops his head, but I can see that he’s biting back a laugh.
“You noticed the problem but chose not to say anything, huh, Ralph?” Aiden snickers.
“Yeah, well.” The corner of Ralph’s mouth quirks up in an irrepressible grin. “The ambushes I plan almost always go off without a hitch. It gets boring. Thought it would be fun to watch one go down in spectacular failure at least one time. And this one was doomed to that, anyways.”
“Wow!” Noah whips around to glare at Ralph, his eyes wide with betrayal. “Okay. I see how the fuck it is. Jamie, where’s Will? Maybe he has something to teach our man here about loyalty to the cause?”
“Loyalty to the cause, what?” I ask, bewildered.
I try to keep my eyes on Noah, but they do briefly flit to Will, who just materialized next to Noah, who just accidentally summoned him.
“Didn’t you say he was alive in the 1700s or whatever?” Noah seems confused by my confusion. “Doesn’t that mean he fought in the Civil War? On team good, I assume, or he wouldn’t be chillin’ at your house. Which was team good in that one, again? The redcoats?”
Will presses his calloused hands over his mouth, breaking into a soft laugh.
“What-?” Ralph turns to look at Noah, his blonde eyebrows furrowing. “The Civil War was the 1860s, dude. Will was already dead before it started.”
“Oh, word?” Noah asks, clearly caught by surprise.
“Yeah, and the redcoats, that’s not even the right-” Ralph breaks off, staring at Noah’s baffled face. He bites back a shadowy smile of his own, then hangs his head again, lets out a quiet laugh. “Nevermind.”
“Alright, whatever.” Noah gives his shoulders an unconcerned shrug, then turns back to me, a bright grin spreading across his face. “The point is, the ambush effectively worked, so joke’s on you, sucker. We’re in your house, we’re staying here, and we’re gonna make it real difficult to get rid of us.”
“Much like the redcoats,” Will tells me.
“Oh, my god.” I press my palms to my eyes, struggling not to laugh. “Guys, I said no presents-”
“Go!” Raj says urgently, shoving Ripley in the direction of the kitchen. “Before he tries to stop us!”
Ripley turns around to run backwards for a second, flashes a grin at me. “Just give us a few hours, Jamie!”
“What-? Seriously?” I shout after him and Raj, as they kick off their shoes and race for the coffee room. “What are you doing?”
I notice suddenly that Raj has his toolbox, and some kind of power tool in his hand. Ripley is wearing the t-shirt and jeans he usually wears to paint, the ones already stained everywhere with colorful splatters. He has a paintbrush tucked behind his ear, his backpack slung over one shoulder.
He and Raj disappear into the coffee room without answering me. I toss my hands up in exasperation, turning back to Noah, Ralph, and Will.
“Come on, guys, really? I don’t like my birthday to be a big deal, that’s why I said-”
“Yeah, no no no, I worked it out,” Noah cuts in, shifting the backpack that he has on his shoulder. “These other clowns are giving you presents like you said not to, but not me. I’m doin’ it right.”
“I…” I stare helplessly at Noah, lost. “What?”
“Got it all figured out.” He leans forward and taps his temple, like he’s about to let me in on something brilliant. “You don’t want a present, right? But I really want to give you the present I have for you. So if you let me give you your present, then that’s really like a present from you to me. So then you gave me a present, which you love doing, but actually, I gave you a present. Everybody wins, bro.”
I just stare at Noah, fascinated by his logic. Aiden and Ralph are staring at him with matching, fond grins on their faces, and Will is trying not to laugh.
“Okay,” I manage, pulling myself back together. “Um - I don’t think-”
“Please, dude?” A begging expression takes over Noah’s grey eyes, and he rocks on his feet a little. “Come on, I’ve been dying to give it to you.”
“Let him do it, brother!” Raj shouts from the other room. “It’s something you’re gonna love, I promise!”
Noah points a tattooed finger in the direction of Raj’s voice, looking at me hopefully.
I hesitate, but only for a few seconds. I can’t pretend that this isn’t striking me as sweet. Clearly Noah has something special in mind, something he feels it’s important to give me.
“Am I gonna regret this?” I ask warily.
Noah breaks into a bright grin. Dimples at the corners of his pierced mouth, silver in his eyes.
~~~~
“I still can’t believe I agreed to this,” I tell Noah, turning my head to try and look over my shoulder.
“Quit moving, man.” He uses the back of his gloved hand to nudge my face forward again, his grey eyes full of concentration. He’s knotted his long black hair into a bun, and he tosses a stray strand out of his face, keeping his gaze on what he’s doing. “You’ve been doing fine. Just relax.”
“I am relaxed!” I protest forcefully.
Noah breathes out a soft laugh, without breaking his eyes away from my shoulder. “You sure? That’s one hell of a fastball grip you’ve got on your own knee.”
I instantly let go of my knee and shake out my fingers, my cheeks burning.
“It’s just - taking a while, that’s all! And what are Raj and Ripley doing in there? I keep thinking I hear them sawing something.”
Noah carefully dips the needle in his fingers into the tiny plastic cup of ink. “Raj has been showing Ripples how to use some of his tools.”
I wait for Noah to go on, but he doesn’t.
“Okay, that definitely doesn’t answer my question. Ralph? Got any answers for me?”
“Nope,” he answers, without looking up.
He’s sitting in the armchair, slowly smoking a joint. He’s been reading in silence for a few minutes, Tycho curled up by his feet.
Spencer and Floyd let me and Aiden borrow a few of their casebooks, since Kasey and Will wanted to see them. They were in a stack near the armchair, and Ralph found them, picked one up out of curiosity.
He’s a fast reader. He’s almost through the first casebook already. Halfway through reading the finalized but unpublished article at the end.
It’s a case about an incident in the 90s where an entire town experienced unexplained electrical disruptions that lasted for exactly eight minutes. During the eight minutes, local radio went down, but multiple residents reported seeing what looked like a strange face in the static on their TVs. Scorch marks were found in the forest by a park ranger the next day, leading him to suspect an electrical fire. But when he returned with others to the scene, they were gone.
Naturally, Floyd and Spencer suspected alien involvement.
Noah glances over at Ralph with growing curiosity. “What’s it say?”
Ralph reads the part he’s on out loud.
The disappearance of the park ranger who found the scorch marks remains a standout question in a case with few answers. No one can explain why Mr. Sketon, by all accounts a loving family man, simply walked out of his home and into the forest two days after discovering the scorch marks. Uncoerced, never to be seen or heard from again.
Mr. Sketon is officially presumed dead. We might ask what killed this perfectly healthy man, a trained park ranger who walked into the woods on a mild summer night. Or we might ask another question, one with far-reaching implications: who took him?
“This… would all sound like conspiracy bullshit to me,” Ralph says slowly, when he’s done reading. “Except that it looks like Floyd and Spencer really know their shit and do their research. They even filed some FOIA requests on Mrs. Sketon’s behalf.”
“Yeah, and the Pentagon released all that actual fucking UFO footage,” I add. “Who knows what’s possible?”
Ralph opens his mouth to answer, but I turn to face Will, who just leaned forward to say something.
“I’m entirely of your opinion, Jamie!” he says earnestly, leaf-green eyes bright with enthusiasm. “If you’d have told the people who lived when I did that men once hunted giant ground sloths on the same land we were farming, they’d have sent you straight to an asylum. Yet Kasey tells me it was so, millions of years ago. If you were even to suggest that a seafaring ship could be made of metal, much less that a ship could be created for the sky, then for the stars! Yet here we are. Anything seems possible, when you think of it like that.”
I repeat this to Ralph, leaving out the part about Kasey. Noah lets out a soft snicker of laughter, shaking his head.
“You make Will seem so real, stopping to listen and shit, then talking all old-school,” he tells me. “You’d honestly think he was there.”
Ralph is staring at me, silent. His grey-green eyes are deep in thought. They slowly move to linger on the place where Will is standing. He can’t see Will, but he saw me looking there when I was listening to him.
Ralph gets up, then slowly crosses to Will. He stops right in front of him and stands there. Staring hard in Will’s direction, his hands deep in his pockets, the joint sticking out of the corner of his mouth releasing a lazy column of smoke. Sage green eyes narrowed.
“Hm,” he says softly.
He’s looking so intently in Will’s direction that Will blinks and experimentally waves a hand at him. But Ralph can’t see him, and his eyes don’t follow it.
Very slowly, Ralph turns away, but he glances searchingly over his shoulder one more time before he drifts over to stand behind Noah.
I have to actively work to stop myself from trying to look over my shoulder again.
“Looks great, Noosh,” Ralph murmurs, gazing down at Noah’s work. “Fucking sick.”
Noah blinks in surprise, then looks back at Ralph, a warm smile rising on his face.
“What is it, Ralph?” I ask, nervously twisting the heist ring around my finger.
“Says Noah Raunier can do a backflip. All caps.”
“What?” I gasp, and Noah throws an elbow in Ralph’s direction.
“Dude!” he groans, as Ralph falls back with a snicker of laughter. “Stop with your bullshit, you’re gonna get him moving around again!”
“Ralph!” I sputter, twisting around to fix him with an enraged glare. “I thought you don’t lie anymore!”
He shrugs his shoulders, one corner of his mouth quirking up in a grin. “Not unless it’s funny.”
“Noah, I’m trusting you to not put anything like that on me!”
“You got it, patron.” Noah gives me a little salute, then firmly holds down my shoulder again. “Just stop fucking moving.”
Ralph leans his elbows on the back of the couch and leans down to say, right to my face: “Panic boy.”
“He’s actually sitting like a rock,” Noah laughs, before I can give my own furious answer. “Especially for his first one. It’s just that he can’t stop gesturing and shit.”
“Hey, A,” Ralph calls, leaning down to pet Tycho.
Aiden is halfway down the stairs, on his way back from checking on the injured bird in our room. “What?”
Ralph jerks his head at me, where I’m sitting on the floor. “Come in here and hold down Keane’s hands.”
Aiden steps back into the living room, one eyebrow arched, and pushes the glasses further up his nose.
“Aiden!” I blurt out in relief. Noah yanks the needle back and out of the way as I fling my arms out wide, reaching for Aiden. “Can you come make sure that Noah isn’t putting anything about backflips on me?”
He does not. He comes over, gently takes my hands, and then sits down on them.
“Better?” he asks Noah, who casts him a grateful look.
“Jesus Christ, yes.”
“How do you not have a Noah original, by the way?” I ask Aiden, my cheeks burning. “Seems like everyone Noah deems worthy ends up with one eventually.”
“I do have one,” Aiden rumbles. “Matter of fact, I’m the first person Noosh ever tattooed.”
“Wh-?” I draw back and tilt my head to the side, staring at Aiden with bewildered eyes. “You don’t have any tattoos. I think I would know.”
Aiden holds out his hand to me, then spreads it so that I can look at the little valley between his index and middle finger. There’s a single dot there, ink-black.
“That?” I sputter. “I always assumed that was a birthmark!”
“Nope. That’s how much we thought we could get away with, without my aunt noticing.”
I let out a disbelieving laugh, and Noah breaks into a small, warm smile.
“Aiden’s covering for me,” he murmurs, his eyes focused on his needle. “It was my first time doing it, and I panicked. Only got that far before I stopped. He wanted a little leaf.”
My eyes go to Aiden’s face. He’s not looking at me, but I see a small, shy smile turn up his mouth.
I stare at him, perfectly motionless, and Noah lets out a little sigh of relief.
“This is more like it. No more talking about UFOs and shit, either. That’s enough to send a drug person like myself into an acid flashback.”
I drop my head onto my knees. “Oh, my god. This from the man with a needle in my shoulder.”
“You’re fine, dude,” Noah laughs. “Chill, chill. Aiden, what’s a good reward for him for after this? Something to motivate him to sit still?”
Aiden shrugs his broad shoulders. “Food? Pretty much anything with sugar in it?”
“Should someone go and fetch a penny’s worth of sweets?” Will offers helpfully.
This draws an affectionate laugh from both me and Aiden. We both glance over at Will, then exchange a little grin.
“That wouldn’t be enough,” Aiden informs Will. “A penny doesn’t get you too many sweets, these days.”
Will blinks at us, taken by surprise. “Indeed?”
“Definitely not,” I tell him sadly. “If only.”
Noah turns my head to make me face forward again, and I realize abruptly that Ralph’s eyes followed mine and Aiden’s to Will.
Ralph stares at me and Aiden, then slowly looks back to where Will is leaning against the fireplace, his fingers hooked into his suspenders.
Ralph’s expression is neutral, but his eyes are slightly narrowed.
“Alright, so we’ll order some food after this.” Noah is back at work already, too used to our conversations with ghosts to take any particular notice. “That was already the plan, anyways. And we can join the blunt rotation when we’re done, Jamie, so. Sit still.”
“We don’t have a blunt.”
“Then I’ll roll us one. You guys got any shag?”
“Finish the tattoo first, Noosh.”
“Duh, Aiden, obviously! But I’m almost done.”
“Really?” I let out a breath of relief, wincing a little. It feels like Noah is putting in a series of scattered dots. “Gimme my hands back, Aiden. I can handle it.”
Aiden eases off of my hands, and I scoop up the Xbox controller, determined to calmly hold my own for at least five minutes of this.
I unpause the game on the TV. Ralph comes to sit on the couch beside Noah, and Will comes over to drop down on Noah’s other side. Aiden stretches out on the rug beside me, then settles his head onto my lap.
He usually lays like that when he’s watching me play, and having him there sends an instant, soothing wave of calm through me. The warm weight of his head on my lap, of his hand spread on my knee.
I take a slow, deep breath, and find the sting in my shoulder much less distracting.
Ralph picks up the other controller and adds himself to the game. The screen splits in two, and he begins flicking through the stats and weaponry of the other saved character.
“What…? Keane, why is this character level six, when yours is level forty-five?”
I bite back a smile, reloading my in-game pistol. “Um… that one is Aiden’s. We tried to play together.”
“Alright,” Aiden groans, as Ralph and Noah both fight down a laugh. “That game is fucking hard, and Jamie was a gunslinger while I was a fucking sword-guy, so-”
He breaks off as Ralph has his character do a little flip over a pit of spikes, slashes through the two enemies on the other side with the sword, and scoops up the coins they dropped.
RANK UP, the game announces, over Ralph’s half. LEVEL 7 REACHED.
“Damn,” Noah laughs. “He did that with a joint in his hand.”
“I hate all of you,” Aiden grumbles.
“Sounds like we came back just in time,” Raj snickers, following Ripley out of the coffee room.
Both of them look pleased with themselves. Their shirts are dusted with sprays of some tan-colored powder, like they were sanding something, and Ripley is cleaning off his paint-stained hands on a rag. There’s a droplet of blue paint darkening one of his green curls.
“We’re all done,” he says, grinning happily.
“Don’t look until morning, okay, Jamie?” Raj is rocking on his feet in excitement. “We want you to get the full effect.”
“Okay…” I let out a helpless laugh, turning my eyes back to the TV. “You guys are so suspicious.”
“Should I order the food?” Raj throws himself down in the armchair, stretching out his legs. “When are you gonna be done, Noah?”
“I’m already done,” Noah says, despite the fact that I can definitely feel him still working with the needle. “He’s just sitting so good now that I’m adding some extra details.”
“When do I get mine, man?” Ripley comes around the couch to look over Noah’s shoulder, messing with the stud in his ear as he watches. “Are you really gonna make me wait until after graduation?”
“Yeah, McKay, I am,” Noah says firmly, using something wet to smooth some ink off of my back. “Go finish having your growth spurts first, kid. And finish working out with Aiden, because Jesus. You’re gonna stretch out anything I put on you, at this rate.”
“Yeah, how jacked are you trying to get, Ripples?” Raj asks, glancing up from his phone. “Should I order an Aiden-sized amount of food for you?”
“Hauling around the power tools with you is like a second routine, Raj.” Ripley winces, rubbing a sore spot on his shoulder. “Not nearly as brutal as the one Aiden has me on, though.”
“Brutal?” Aiden protests, lifting his head from my lap in alarm. “Dude, I’ve got you on the routine I was doing when I was around your weight, which is exactly what you asked me for!”
“Oh, I’m not complaining,” Ripley says brightly, looking down at the new slopes of muscle in his arms, giving them a flex. “It’s fine.”
“None of this matters, Ripples! No tattoo until you’re not a high schooler.” Noah glances at Ripley over his shoulder. “And you know what it’s gonna say? Noah Raunier can do a backflip.”
Ripley’s grin widens. “Perfect, bro. Where are we thinking? Forearm, or?”
Noah lets out a startled laugh, then wipes off my shoulder again, shaking his head. “Ralph, get a picture before I put on the saniderm.”
Ralph hands off the joint to Noah so he can do it, and Noah sits back to take a hit, examining his work in a satisfied kind of way. Will gets up and walks through the couch to take a look. Aiden hops up to follow him, and Raj is right on his tail.
They all stare in silence for a moment.
“Were I called on for my opinion, I’d say it’s fair grand, Noah,” Will says admiringly.
I repeat this to Noah, relieved to hear Will say it. I know that Noah has some serious raw talent for this stuff, but I have no idea what he did.
“Yo, thanks, Will!” Noah breaks into a huge grin, then carefully smooths something that feels like plastic wrap onto the back of my neck, the slope of my shoulder, and a small part of my upper back. “You can put your shirt back on, Jamie.”
I reach for it and pull it on, then scramble to my feet and quickly turn around. Aiden hasn’t said anything, and his opinion is the one I need to know.
I find him smiling warmly at me, the corners of his eyes crinkled up. I let out a breath of relief, then start to reach for my shoulder.
“Don’t touch it, dude!” Noah quickly catches my hand, pushes it gently away, then starts pulling off his black disposable gloves. “Wait until the saniderm falls off, then wash it off and keep it moisturized, but leave it alone for a few days. You’ll get to see it nice and clean, instead of messy and swollen.”
I tip my head back in agony. “I don’t get to know what it is for days?”
Noah grins brightly again, leans back against the couch, and hands me the joint. “Huh, guess that means you’ll get to see it on your birthday.”
I shake my head as I take a hit, trying hard to frown at Noah. Having a hard time of it.
“Okay, we need to get Jamie some sugar,” Noah says, unrolling the sleeves of his ripped-up sweatshirt. “We promised.”
“I’ll go get the brownies from the car!” Raj tugs his keys out of his pocket, flashing me a smile. “Mel made them for your birthday. Oh - but she said it’s not a gift! It’s just a - food.”
“Oh, my god.” I close my eyes for a second, slowly shaking my head. “Did anyone listen to my instructions about my birthday? Ralph? Is it really just you? Or did you also sneak me some gift without my knowing about it?”
Ralph nods at the joint in my hand. “You’re smoking it, man. Top-shelf stuff. The strain you used to buy from me in high school. Assumed that’s your favorite? I brought two more, they’re also out in the car.”
“What-?” I let out a little wail of exasperation, hand the joint off to Raj, then plant one hand on my hip and grab a fistful of my hair with the other. “For fuck’s sake! You - you brainless jerks, all of you, every single one of you flat-out ignored m-”
I break off, realizing that everyone is grinning widely at me.
“He’s trying to get mad, boys,” Noah snickers. “But he’s happy. Right, Aiden?”
Aiden huffs out a soft, rumbling laugh, watching me with adoring eyes. “Mhm.”
“No, I am mad, because this - this-” I falter into silence, losing the battle against the touched smile rising on my face, the melty sensation in my chest. “You - you guys-”
I stop again, shake my head, and give up, dissolving into helpless, happy laughter. The guys all laugh, too, and then Ralph and Noah groan when I sink forward and catch everybody in a big group hug.
I can’t help it. I feel heaped with love. And it has occurred to me that Aiden could have stopped this - he could have warned me, like Noah said - but he didn’t. He must have known I’d feel this way. It wasn’t too much, like I was afraid of. This is perfect, just right.
I catch his eye, and find a warm, knowing smile turning up his lips. He shrugs at me, like - sorry. Had to.
I try to scowl at him. But when the hug breaks apart and he takes the armchair, I go right to him.
I drop down to sit on my Companion Plant’s lap. When no one is looking, I brush a grateful kiss onto his face, just at the corner of his eye. I feel the fine lines there deepen beneath my lips as he smiles.
One more perfect gift to add to the pile.
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