Super Special Ep: Realize
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.
It’s one of those blazingly hot days where the heat is blurring the horizon. The sky is a cloudless expanse of azure, melting softly into the russet colors of the earth.
Aiden has his wrist on the wheel, his elbow resting on the window. He’s driving slow, trying to take it easy on the truck.
The complete stranger who gave Aiden the truck asked him to drive it across two states to his cousin. He explained it like this: “You can steal the piece of shit if you want, or you can get the money from my cousin for dropping it off. Either way, I don’t give a damn. That truck has a month left at the most, and my cousin doesn’t even deserve that fuckin’ long using it.”
Works out, because those are two states that Aiden hasn’t passed through yet. He needed to hit them, anyways. Now he has the rare luxury of his own ride for a few days. He’s had to pull over a few times to coax the engine back to life, but the AC works, and so does the radio, and he can sleep in the truck bed at night. This is the luckiest thing to happen to Aiden in as long as he can remember.
Only problem is that he can’t really drink when he’s traveling like this. He typically spends all day in a low-grade level of intoxication that picks up at night, but he won’t drink and drive. Being a Guardian has taught him everything he needs to know about how good of an idea that type of shit is.
Frustrating as fuck. He’s all the way sober right now, which is a long way from how sober he’d like to be. He’s finding it seriously difficult to resist the urge to get the flask out of his backpack. His hand reaches for it automatically like, every couple of minutes. He can’t remember the last time he went this long without something or other in his system, and he doesn’t like the feeling of it. It’s making him itchy all over.
It sucks, but Aiden figures it’s worth it to have the truck for a few days. The truck is solitude, safety, a cozy sanctuary in which to sleep. All things that Aiden gets precious little of.
He’s unused to this, though. When no bus or train will take Aiden where he needs to go, he usually hitches. Driving alone strikes him as a little weird. It’s giving him random stabs of deep, painful loneliness.
Maybe it’s because this is a lonely landscape to drive through.
The towns Aiden passes through are tiny, sparse, thick with dust. Each one is dominated by a plant or factory or smokestack, most of which don’t seem to be in use any longer. The houses are spread out, low and crumbling, often with tin roofs. Hot metal burns Aiden’s eyes if he looks too long, scattering brilliant sparkles of light across his vision.
The landscape is rough and barren. Heat-seared, scalded by the unbroken force of the brutal summer sunlight. No greenery, only dry scrub and brush. The few waterways he sees have dried up into knots of badly polluted, slow-moving sludge.
This endless parade of run-down, rusted-out industrial towns and empty land punctuated with depressing billboards - it’s starting to eat at Aiden. He likes to be alone, but suddenly he desperately wants someone to talk to, someone to be with.
He glances over at the passenger’s seat, thinking of Jamie.
“Miss you,” he whispers softly, then immediately feels like an idiot.
He lifts his gaze to the road again. He’s rolling into another one of these blighted, half-abandoned void towns. Everyone must be inside, hiding from the searing heat. Aiden looks around at the cracked, empty sidewalks, the silent restaurants with sun-bleached pictures of food in the windows. The frail and faltering trees that rise up along the road here and there.
Aiden thinks to himself that he’s probably the only Guardian to ever have even passed through this town. If this place had seen the touch of a Guardian, there would be something, anything to show for it. But there’s not. It’s like the place is dead, and he’s driving through the bones.
There’s a sudden flash-flood of guilt in Aiden’s chest as he remembers that now his own town has no Guardian, either.
God fucking damnit. These are the kind of horrible thoughts that get their grip on him whenever he’s sober. He could really use a fucking drink, especially after driving through this fucked up place. He needs to get out of here and hustle to someplace where he can camp for the night, so he can crack open his flask. Actually - fuck the flask. He’s going right for the bottle of whiskey he’s got stowed in his bag. He didn’t drink, like, all day. He deserves it.
He’s about to give the truck a little more speed when his eyes fall on something that catches his attention.
There’s a guy sitting alone at the dusty, otherwise empty bus stop. He’s silent, pink-cheeked from the heat. Wide-eyed, in some kind of daze, vacantly blinking around at the empty landscape. There’s a backpack tucked between his feet, resting on the sand-blasted sidewalk.
He has deep, rich brown eyes. Short hair almost the exact same color. It looks like he cut it himself, and recently. He’s probably around Aiden’s age.
Aiden wonders how long he’s been sitting here in the boiling heat. Does the bus even come here regularly?
Aiden takes a second to gauge this guy, trying to decide if there’s anything obviously off about him.
His clothes are all slightly too big on him, hanging off of his slender frame, like he took them all from someone else. He’s mostly motionless, but swaying slightly back and forth, his hair glimmering with sweat. Aiden has no idea why the guy would wear so many layers in this heat.
He’s clearly going through some shit. Showing all the symptoms of it, anyways. Aiden knows them from personal experience.
None of that is enough to put Aiden off, though, and he can see that the guy has something in his fist. A handful of individual, crumpled dollar bills. More fare than necessary for a local ride.
Aiden realizes that this isn’t a bus stop, it’s the closest thing this town must have to a bus station. And this guy - he must be trying to go somewhere.
Aiden pulls the truck over and leans out through the open window.
“Hey, man,” he calls.
The guy on the bus stop bench doesn’t so much as lift his gaze from the pavement. He only blinks, like he heard Aiden, but doesn’t realize that he’s talking to him, specifically. Pools of heat-haze shimmer all around him, distorting the sidewalk. He stares into them blankly.
“Hey,” Aiden tries again, snapping his fingers. “Over here, dude!”
Bus Stop Boy finally lifts his head, blinking in surprise. Aiden motions for him to come over.
He haltingly gets to his feet, shoulders his backpack, and approaches the truck, nervous eyes on Aiden. He closes them for a moment when a wave of air-conditioning breaks against his face as he stops by the window.
“You lost, or something?” he asks.
His skin is a pale fawn color, his cheeks burned and still burning from the harsh sunlight. It all seems to make him glow a little bit.
“No,” Aiden answers. “Thought you might need a ride.”
“Oh.” Once again, the guy blinks in surprise. “That - really?”
Aiden stubs out the cigarette he was working on, breathes out a long stream of smoke. “Where you headed?”
The guy suddenly puts his palms on the door of the truck. It should sear his hands, can’t feel good - but he doesn’t even seem to notice.
“Anywhere but here,” he answers, clutching at the door like Aiden just offered him a lifeline.
Still, he’s obviously more than a little apprehensive about getting in a car with a total stranger. He pauses for a long time when Aiden beckons for him to get in. Pauses again before he opens the passenger’s side door. Another pause before he steps forward to get in. So many pauses.
“What do you want?” he asks abruptly, his feet still planted on the dusty blacktop.
Aiden shrugs his shoulders. “A little company.”
The guy bites his lip, faltering. Aiden has hitched enough to know what he’s doing. He’s running through the possibilities of who or what Aiden might secretly be, with vicious, violent monster taking up most of his thoughts.
Aiden is in no mood to wait around, though. He’s getting ready to say something sharp, to snap at him to get in or fuck off - but he finds himself unable to do it.
This dude wasn’t planning on trying to hitch, and Aiden would guess that he’s never done it before. He’s clearly extremely uneasy about this, but he’s considering doing it anyways. He must be seriously desperate to leave this place behind.
Aiden has been there before. So he waits, forcing himself to shut up and be patient.
The guy is breathing nervously. His brown eyes are swimming with anxiety, staring at Aiden searchingly.
He glances back at the town, then seems to come to a decision. He takes a long breath, then bounds up into the truck and hastily throws his bag into the back. He slams the door after himself, runs a shaky hand over his face.
Then he slaps the dash, determination in his eyes. “Step on it.”
This startles a little laugh out of Aiden, who’s surprised to get a sudden firm command from this nervous wreck of a guy. “Yes, sir.”
The guy laughs a little, too. Steals a quick glance at Aiden.
“What’s your name, man?” Aiden asks, adjusting his snapback as he pulls away from the bus stop.
“Ma - Micah.”
Aiden arches an eyebrow, confused. “Mamicah?”
The guy shakes his head, then says, more firmly: “Micah.”
Aiden holds out the hand that’s not on the wheel. “Aiden.”
They slap fingers, and Aiden rolls down the rest of the windows. There’s no breeze in this boiling place, but the truck creates its own with its movement, and the AC does some work on Micah, too. He closes his eyes again, taking long breaths, cooling off. Some of the violent red color in his cheeks starts to go down a little.
Aiden drives in silence, and they put Micah’s town behind them, leaving it in the dust. Micah watches in the rearview as it becomes smaller and smaller, then a speck, then nothing.
As soon as it disappears over the barren, curved horizon line, Micah sags down in his seat in immense relief. Aiden notices for the first time a sort of wild, feverish, fugitive look in his eyes, like the town was going to swallow him if he didn’t get out in time.
“Never even been this far away from home, before,” Micah murmurs, more to himself than to Aiden.
Aiden nods at the changing landscape, the endless blue sky.
“It’s all yours, now,” he answers, lighting up another cigarette. “Take that thought with you to bed tonight.”
Micah looks at him, then gives him a nervous smile. The first one Aiden has seen from him.
His relief is so intense and obvious that Aiden wonders to himself… did he just do a Guardian thing, taking this guy out of there? Completely fucking by accident?
It does feel like a strike of Fate. Aiden just so happened to get his hands on the truck, just so happened to roll through that specific town, feeling lonely and in need of some human contact, at the exact time that Micah was sitting on that bench?
For fuck’s sake. He did it without even trying to.
Aiden turns his face away from Micah and winces in frustration. He just doesn’t understand why it’s so hard for him to put some things from home in the past. No matter how much he wants to, no matter how hard he tries.
~~~~
By the end of the day, they’ve gone far, and the scenery has changed.
It’s still very dry and quiet, but now there are thick walls of peach trees, summer lightning without rain or thunder. There are stars heaped into the sky in vast, blazing quantities. Aiden can see them so clearly, here on the margins of the populated world.
There was a jeweled, glowing sunset of ruby and jasper that Aiden desperately wishes Jamie could have seen.
It’s all faded to black velvet, now. Starlight paints soft shadows all over the interior of the truck.
Aiden is stretched out on his back, laying across the seats. One arm tucked behind his head, the other holding his flask against his chest. He’s had a few swigs from it since they pulled over for the night, but still, he’s a lot more sober than he normally would be.
It’s just for the sake of this guy he picked up. Micah is nervous and jumpy and - sweet. He’s mad sweet.
Aiden has been his usual quiet self, but it’s been nice to have some company, especially the kind of consistently warm and easy company that Micah has offered him. There have been no jarring sharp turns in his words or demeanor, which sometimes you get when you’re dealing with people you don’t know.
Aiden’s soft spot for nice guys pleaded with him, begged him not to get too fucked up and freak the guy out. He gets the sense that Micah has already been through a lot. It shows.
That’s why Aiden offered to sleep in the front of the truck. Micah got all stiff and anxious again when night fell and Aiden pulled off the road. He drove them to the first campsite he saw, and it turns out they’re the only ones sleeping here tonight. They’re parked near a small, splashing river. It provides the only other source of sound and movement.
Aiden understands why Micah tensed up. The campsite is a good long way down a sloping hill, which means that the road isn’t even visible from here. They’re two strangers, completely alone together in the dark.
Aiden cast his mind around for ways to make Micah more comfortable, and eventually said that he could sleep in the truck bed while Micah took the front. Sleeping apart with a locked door between them seemed to Aiden like an easy way to offer an added layer of security.
But Micah didn’t want to be locked up in the truck. So Aiden offered him the truck bed, then crammed himself into the front. He’s having a real hard time getting comfortable, but whatever. Way he looks at it, the tradeoff is worth it. At least Micah is hopefully getting some sleep, back there -
Aiden sits up sharply as he hears the driver’s side door pop open. He was already wide awake, but he wasn’t expecting the noise, or the rush of cool air, or for Micah to be standing there, leaning his shoulder against the door frame.
There’s a short silence. Micah’s deep brown eyes are avoiding Aiden’s gaze. They keep darting back to it and then hastily blinking away.
Aiden barely knows him, but he reads the nervous body language. Micah rubs his elbow, flexes a tense muscle in his jaw. There’s a jolting and uncertain quality to his movements, a second guess behind each one.
“Can’t sleep,” he says.
Aiden nods slowly, then shrugs his shoulders. “Me neither.”
No exaggeration. He was nowhere near passing out. There’s a lot keeping him up.
The too-sober state he’s in. The discomfort of these close quarters. The seatbelts stabbing into his side. The thought he’s had all day of putting his mouth to Micah’s jaw and slowly kissing his way up the delicate line of it.
The fucking nice guys. They just do something to Aiden.
Micah, Aiden learned very quickly, is one of them. He’s very sensitive, very sweet. Shy, hanging back from saying too much. But like most shy people, he’s something special when he lets you in. He’s understanding and kindhearted, easy to talk to, quick to laugh. He has a very warm, sincere smile.
Every time he opened up to Aiden, started talking or let himself laugh - it felt like something rare and intimate.
And he’s cute. No way around that. Aiden found himself stealing longer and longer glances at him as they drove along.
Not that he planned to do anything about it, but here Micah is, saying he can’t sleep.
Stop it, Aiden tells himself.
He slowly sits the rest of the way up, rests his elbows on his knees. “Is it the truck bed? You wanna swap?”
There’s a second, much longer silence before Micah answers.
“I’m sorry,” he says, all in a rush. “It’s really dark out there, and really cold, and I… I just - I don’t want to be alone.”
Aiden absorbs that for a moment, then slides forward and hops down out of the truck. Micah backs up, watches as Aiden locks the truck and strides around to the back. He leaps up, then reaches down to offer Micah a hand.
Micah hesitates, then takes it.
It’s a roomy truck, and there’s space in the bed for them to both stretch out side by side on the one blanket. Aiden’s aching body breathes a sigh of relief.
He feels a lot better out here. The sky overhead is pierced through with so many stars, the surrounding trees soft in the glow of them. The sound of the moving water is a nice white noise against all the rest of the noise in Aiden’s head, which the whiskey is finally starting to dull. The earth has lost the heat it was holding during the day, and crisp, cold air touches Aiden’s face.
He takes a few long breaths, then another swig from his flask. He offers it to Micah, who takes a small sip, but then sets it aside.
Micah is silent for a very long time. Aiden closes his eyes and folds his arm behind his head. His other hand is right next to Micah’s on the blanket. He can feel the warmth of it, and he wishes he could hold it.
“Aiden,” Micah finally murmurs.
Aiden doesn’t open his eyes. It’s already rough enough to keep his hands to himself, right now. Looking at Micah will only make it harder. “Mm?”
“I just wanted to say thank you. For picking me up today.”
“Happy to get out, huh?”
Micah lets out a quiet laugh. “You have no fucking idea. Feel really just, like - free, right now.”
Aiden smiles, because in a way, he knows exactly what he means. “And how’d you like your first day of freedom?”
“A lot. I liked it a lot. Best day I’ve had in - I don’t even know how long.”
Aiden likes to hear that. The smile stays on his face, hurting it a little bit. These muscles don’t get a lot of use.
“Was there anything the day was missing?” Aiden can’t really give Micah anything to make it better, but he wants to know, just in case. “Anything else you wanted to do before it’s over?”
The silence that follows is the longest one yet. And then - Micah slowly, haltingly folds his fingers into Aiden’s.
Aiden opens his eyes and looks at him. Micah stares back at him, the silent question hanging in the air between them.
“This?” Aiden asks softly. “This is what it was missing, man?”
Micah holds very still, but gives Aiden a barely perceptible nod.
Aiden thinks about that for a second, then pulls his hand away from Micah’s. Micah immediately lets him go, quickly turns his head to look up at the sky. Then he twists to look at Aiden again, blinking in surprise as Aiden wraps an arm around him.
Very gently and slowly, Aiden pulls Micah closer to him, until he’s settled against his side. Then Aiden tucks one arm behind his head again, and the other around Micah’s back, holding him in place.
Micah freezes, but he doesn’t look at all unhappy about this. The opposite, actually.
Aiden relaxes back against the truck bed, trailing his fingers in a slow curve beneath Micah’s shoulder blade.
“Better?” he asks softly, looking down at Micah.
Micah nods, then sort of laughs to himself very quietly. “Yeah, perfect.”
Aiden smiles at him, then turns his gaze back to the stars again. He’s hoping to send the message that they can do just this, if that’s all Micah wants. But the next time that Aiden looks down at him, he’s got his sweet, handsome face lifted towards Aiden. His warm eyes stare right into Aiden’s, and - pull him right in.
Aiden moves to kiss Micah right as Micah moves to kiss him. They meet halfway in a soft kiss that turns into a slow, deep, long one. Micah reaches up to bury his fingers in Aiden’s hair, and Aiden leans onto an elbow, propping himself up over Micah.
Aiden sinks all the way into the feeling of this. The feel and taste of Micah, the heat of their bodies and breaths mingling. There’s an immediate and fiery connection between them that warms Aiden from within, unthawing the icy loneliness he always carries with him.
They’re both going very slow, but Aiden can tell that he’s not the only one who was starving for this. Even at this aching pace, there’s intense friction and electricity building between them. When Aiden briefly pulls back to move his mouth to Micah’s neck, Micah’s eyes are hazy with desire, shimmery like those pools of heat that Aiden found him sitting in.
Aiden thinks that those eyes must be the prettiest thing to ever come out of that town.
The two of them are moving more and more against each other, starting to get lost in each other. There’s something deep and subtle, something dreamy and passionate about this that Aiden is loving.
He wants to feel Micah better, and the guy is still wearing all his layers, so Aiden slips his hand beneath all of them, flattens his palm on the smooth warmth of Micah’s stomach. He slowly begins to slide it upwards, gliding up Micah’s sternum, stroking him gently as he goes.
Micah seems to like it. His body rises towards Aiden’s touch, and he lets out a soft breath against Aiden’s mouth. But he can only focus on it for so long. From the looks of him, he’s completely absorbed in the feeling of Aiden nibbling on his lip, not thinking about anything else.
But all of a sudden he breaks away, his eyes flying open.
“Wait a minute - wait!” he gasps.
Aiden immediately falls back and pulls his hand out from under Micah’s shirt, but it’s too late. He’s already felt what Micah didn’t want him to.
They stare at each other in wide-eyed silence for a long moment. Then Micah drops his head back onto the blanket and runs a hand through his hair. His expression is absolutely wretched, all the serene dreaminess gone from his face.
“Fuck, I’m so sorry.” Aiden sits back, some upsetting mixture of confusion and guilt in his chest. “I didn’t - didn’t hear you in time.”
Micah stares at him, biting his lip. He looks like he doesn’t know what to say, and Aiden doesn’t know what to say, either. That’s just - not the body he was expecting to find beneath the clothes.
“Why-” he begins haltingly, “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I…” Micah shakes his head, then swallows. “I didn’t think we were gonna do all this, I just… got a little carried away.”
“But, I mean - I’ve been calling you dude and man and guy ever since I picked you up. Why didn’t you tell me I was wr-?”
“Because you were right,” Micah cuts in urgently, looking up at Aiden with wide, serious eyes. “You had it right the first time.”
Aiden hesitates, trying to wrap his brain around this.
“Okay… man,” he tries, and Micah nods earnestly.
Aiden can feel that Micah has gone all trembly in his arms. He bends forward and gently brushes another kiss onto his mouth.
“Hey,” he murmurs. “No need for the shakes. Do you not want me to touch you there? Or-” He reaches down and gives Micah’s belt loop a little tug. “Here, neither?”
Totally fine, if so. Aiden knows from experience that bodies have sensitive sweet spots all over, plenty of places that can drive a person wild with the right kind of loving attention.
Micah swallows again, slowly slipping his hands back into Aiden’s hair.
“I just want to make you feel good, man,” Aiden tells him, pushing a kiss into the corner of his mouth. “You can stop me whenever. For a minute, or like - for good. Whatever you want.”
This seems to take a second to sink in, but when it does, Micah slowly nods. He wraps his arms around Aiden’s neck and brings their mouths together again.
Aiden eagerly rolls on top of him. But he can still feel Micah’s body trembling in all the places it’s pressed against his, so he doesn’t do more than that just yet.
He simply puts his parted lips against Micah’s, and begins to breathe deeply.
Micah holds very still, tensed up and rigid beneath Aiden. But after a minute or so, his breaths begin to fall into time with Aiden’s. Each one they take, they take together.
Aiden feels Micah’s breaths starting to grow longer, fuller, steadier, until his body relaxes completely. But still, Aiden keeps them doing only this, until their shared breathing starts to have an unexpected effect.
The electricity and desire that was there between them before - it returns in full force and grows richer, deeper. Aiden is enveloped in it, can almost taste it.
They slowly start rocking together, now panting against each other’s mouths. Micah is blushing, coloring in his already sunburned cheeks, holding tight fistfuls of Aiden’s clothes. His pupils are growing bigger and bigger, his eyes glazed over with want, then need.
When Aiden finally kisses him again, Micah lets out a soft, stuttering sound into his mouth.
They melt together in the little sanctuary of the truck bed, the stars high above them, the river whispering in their ears.
~~~~
It must be very, very late by now. But Aiden and Micah sit awake in the truck bed, cozied up together, passing a cigarette back and forth.
Micah let Aiden get him down to his t-shirt and boxers, and he stayed in them after. Aiden is wearing the same thing, his arms wrapped around Micah, who is leaning back against his chest. It’s cold, but the heat of their intertwined bodies is more than enough to keep them comfortable.
Aiden slowly traces a thumb up and down Micah’s sternum. Feeling the warmth of his skin through the fabric, still appreciating his body.
They’re both quiet, residually blissed out from before. When Aiden presses a soft kiss into Micah’s neck, Micah shivers, but not at all in a bad way.
Aiden is taking the occasional pull from his flask, but he was actually really glad not to be wasted during what just happened. He was trying hard to be particularly conscious of everything, to carefully read every sign that Micah’s body gave him. His goosebumps, the way he blushed, what made his back arch, what made his breathing get intense and fast or deep and slow, what coaxed sounds from his mouth, what made him gasp.
All the memories of it swim in Aiden’s head, and he presses his nose into the curve of Micah’s shoulder affectionately.
He likes this one. It’s really too bad that they’ll be splitting up tomorrow.
But Micah says he has a friend one state over who’ll let him crash at his place, and Aiden - Aiden has to keep going. He has to keep going until he finds what he’s looking for.
“That was a nice surprise,” Micah suddenly says.
“Was it?” Aiden gently kneads his knuckles into Micah’s solar plexus. “Here I was thinking I was doing a shit job of hiding the way I was looking at you all day.”
Micah smiles. Aiden can’t see it from this angle, but he sees the way it rounds out his cheeks.
“Nah, I meant - that you still wanted to do that. After you found out, I thought maybe you - you just seemed, um. Kinda confused for a minute. Like it was a pretty foreign concept.”
“Did I?”
“Yeah.” Micah trails his fingertips over Aiden’s knee, careful not to burn him with the cigarette. “Haven’t you ever met a trans person before? Or are you from a town the same size as mine?”
“I mean.” Aiden shrugs his shoulders, taking the cigarette back. “I probably have. I’ve been all over. I guess I just hadn’t really thought too much about it.”
Micah tips his head back to look at him, quirking an eyebrow. “What did you think the T in LGBT stood for?”
Aiden feels like he distantly knew what it meant, but - “I never really thought too far beyond the L and the G.”
Micah blows out a frustrated sigh.
“Yeah, lots of people don’t,” he grumbles.
“I just…” Aiden blows out a long stream of smoke, then hands the cig back over to Micah. “I don’t like to think about any of that stuff. I dunno. It gets me all mixed up, and I feel bad about myself and shit.”
Micah turns to sit facing him, tips his head to the side. “What’s that mean?”
Aiden hesitates, biting back the fucking forget it, it’s none of your business that he was automatically about to answer with.
He hasn’t really talked too much to anyone about this, besides very briefly with Tai all those months ago. But Micah just made himself seriously vulnerable, really trusted Aiden. Aiden feels - like he could do the same, actually. Weirdly enough.
“Just - ‘cause I like girls, too,” he says haltingly. “Guys, girls, once somebody who told me they were neither. I don’t know. I just don’t fit in the fucking categories, and it makes me feel like shit. None of them would want me. Can’t say I’m gay and then go hook up with a girl, or whatever, so - I just try not to think about it. Figure I’ll just do my own thing, and that’s fine.”
Micah is silent for a long moment, thinking that over. “You said you’ve never really thought beyond the L and the G?”
Aiden shrugs again, taking a drag of the cigarette. “Not, like. Not too much.”
“Okay,” Micah says, slowly and gently, “Because - it kinda sounds like you’re bisexual. Based on what you just told me.”
Aiden stares at him for so long that the cigarette singes his fingers.
Micah quickly takes it from him and stubs it out. Aiden is still processing, and he barely even notices.
He feels like he was aware of this word, probably even knew what that letter in the acronym stood for, and yet - his mind has never even touched it, somehow.
“That’s what that fucking means?” he asks, horrified to hear his voice come out hoarse and raspy.
“You’re romantically and sexually attracted to more than one gender?” Micah asks. “Not exclusively to one?”
Aiden nods, and then Micah nods, too, looking at Aiden with a whole lot of meaning in his eyes.
Aiden sits more upright, his head spinning. He doesn’t know what to do with himself. He wants to cry, all of a fucking sudden, he wants to lay down, he wants to breathe out a massive sigh of relief. He’s excited, and he’s also furious at himself, feels like a fucking idiot. His heart is beating too hard.
It’s all a lot. Too much. Aiden closes his eyes and reaches for Jamie’s note. He desperately needs to steady out his heartbeat, to get a hold of himself.
The soft, sweet sound of Jamie holds Aiden still until he can breathe again, but he knows that this realization is going to take him a while to process.
“You must think I’m fucking stupid, dude,” is what he finally says to Micah, after what must have been a way too long silence. “All this goddamn time, I didn’t know-”
“No,” Micah immediately interrupts. “No, not at all. It takes time. To figure it out, or to face it. You know when I did this?”
He points to his very short brown hair. Aiden shakes his head silently.
“This morning,” Micah says. “When I decided to leave, and find someplace where I could really let myself be... myself.”
He gazes into Aiden’s eyes, then adds, very quietly - “You’re the first person to ever call me Micah, actually.”
Aiden stares at him, then reaches out and gently traces his fingers down his face.
“Micah,” he murmurs. “It suits you.”
Micah closes his eyes, then leans into Aiden. Aiden locks his arms around Micah, and Micah presses his cheek against Aiden’s chest.
Aiden’s defenses are all the way down right now, enough for him to hear himself say - “Thank you, man. There’s this guy back home… I guess now I can tell him what I am, if I ever make it back there.”
“You’ve got a guy waiting for you back home?” Micah murmurs, faintly puzzled. “What are you doing here with me?”
“No, he’s not - it’s not that. Nothing ever happened. We were never even friends, I just - knew him.” Aiden can’t believe that he’s saying all this, but he forges on before he can stop to think too hard about it. “I was too fucking crazy about him. Never said a word.”
Micah snuggles up closer to Aiden. “But you’re still thinking about him?”
Jamie’s song sings sweetly in Aiden’s heart as he answers.
“Yeah. Never stopped. I - I fucking miss him like crazy, all the time.” Aiden lets out a heavy breath. “Always hoped that maybe I could go home eventually, see if there’s any chance I could make him like me, too.”
Micah spends a moment in thoughtful silence. “How often do you think about him?”
“Ah…” Aiden shrugs helplessly. “Every day.”
“Wow.” Micah looks up at Aiden with warm, sympathetic eyes. “How long has it been since you’ve seen each other?”
Aiden isn’t sure what month it is, so he has to think. “Like, how many years? It’s been, probably-”
“How many years?” Micah interrupts. He sits back and fixes Aiden with an incredulous, wide-eyed stare. “You haven’t seen him in years, and you were never even friends, and you still think about him every day?”
Aiden blinks up at Micah, taken aback by this response. “Um… yeah.”
“Oh, Aiden.” Micah gently takes Aiden’s face in his hands, looks very seriously into his eyes. “You don’t like him. You love him.”
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