Super Special Ep: Show and Tell (Part III)
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.
“This situation feels awfully familiar,” Aiden mumbles.
His words draw an immediate, sleepy snicker of laughter from both Noah and Ralph.
They’d accidentally stayed out talking all the way to dawn. Noah didn’t want to go home and wake up Niki at this hour, and Aiden knew that Jamie would wake all the way up as soon as he heard the garden gate open. He’s probably anxious to know what happened. Aiden would rather let him sleep.
So here they all are, sprawled out in Ralph’s living room. Noah has flung himself across the armchair at an absurd angle, his legs hanging both over the side and back of it, one knee folded over the armrest. Ralph is stretched out on his back on the couch, his arms folded behind his head. Aiden is on his stomach on the other part of the couch, his cheek against his forearms, his face turned towards his brothers.
Many intoxicated nights have ended with the three of them in exactly this position.
“Weird that we all landed in our usual spots, even though we’re not fucked up.” Noah’s voice is slow and soft and drowsy, but still understandable in the quiet dawn hush of the living room. “Or… is being really tired technically the same thing as being drunk? I feel like they said that in driver’s ed.”
“You misunderstood, dude,” Ralph yawns. “But I’m too tired to explain it right now.”
Noah fights down a yawn of his own. “Tomorrow, then?”
Ralph waves a hand at him without opening his eyes. “Fine, sure.”
“Ralph, your couch feels way better than I remember.” Aiden stretches out some more, nestling his arms into the soft blanket beneath himself. “Since when are there blankets and stuff?”
Ralph doesn’t open his eyes, but his mouth turns up in a smile. “Since Calla? Girlfriends require blankets, turns out.”
“Oh, cool,” Aiden grumbles. “I’ve only slept on this couch five million times, you never once thought I’d like a blanket?”
“To be fair, do they actually make one big enough for you, dude? You can’t expect Ralph to go out and buy five blankets and stitch them together.”
Aiden lazily aims a kick at Noah for that comment, then follows up with a swat at Ralph when he lets out a snicker of drowsy laughter.
“You don’t even need a blanket.” Ralph slowly pulls Tycho’s broken ear through his curled fingers as he speaks, being very gentle with it. She closes her eyes peacefully, letting out a little puppy sigh. “You know damn well you can keep yourself warm, Heliomancer.”
“For that, I get my blanket privileges revoked? Wow. Knew I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Oh, my god. What are you, a kindergartner? You need an adult to go get you a blanket?”
“I bet Calla doesn’t get this treatment from you when she asks for a blanket.”
Ralph finally opens his eyes, apparently profoundly alarmed at the mere idea of saying something like that to Calla. Aiden and Noah both burst into sleepy laughter when they catch the expression on his face. Ralph tries his best to scowl at them, but after a few seconds he lapses into quiet laughter, too.
Silence falls for a moment after it trails off.
“Do you actually need another blanket? I don’t think I have anymore… Guess I got my comforter upstairs? I can get it.”
“Oh - nah, I’m alright.” Aiden opens his eyes again, glances over at Ralph in surprise. “Thanks, though.”
Ralph nods, then pulls himself upright on the couch. He sits there gently stroking Tycho’s muzzle for a moment, his shoulders heavy with exhaustion. She tilts her furry nose towards him, her tail wagging on the couch.
Ralph gets up, stretches his arms over his head, and sets off for the kitchen. Tycho scrambles to her feet, shakes herself off, hops down from the couch to follow after him. Aiden and Noah automatically get up and follow after her. Noah does a lazy little dance along the way, spinning in a slow circle on his heels, rolling his shoulders, then shaking them out.
Ralph slows to a stop when he realizes that Aiden and Noah followed him into the kitchen. He turns around by the fridge and arches a questioning eyebrow. Aiden and Noah glance at each other, then look back at him, confused.
Noah nods at the dawn sky beyond the kitchen windows. “Isn’t this usually the time of night when we order the pizza?”
Ralph blinks hard at Noah and Aiden a few times, then lets out a sharp, startled laugh, his eyes widening.
“When we were absolutely trashed in high school, yeah! That’s what you guys followed me in here for, pizza? How fucking long has it been since we were actually in that situation?”
“We’re on autopilot, okay?” Aiden protests, dropping to sit down at the kitchen table. “We’re fucking exhausted, this has been one hell of a night!”
“Yeah, it’s not our fault!” Noah sinks down at the other side of the table, tucking a stray strand from his bun behind his ear. “And what does this mean, no pizza? Now I feel like I need it. Shit, nowhere’s gonna be open…”
“Wow,” Ralph laughs, folding his arms over his chest. “Some old habits never die, huh?”
Aiden and Noah both laugh tiredly in agreement.
Ralph stands still for a moment, staring at Aiden and Noah at his kitchen table. Aiden catches a glimpse of something, some glowing expression in his dark green eyes.
He turns away suddenly and swiftly, before Aiden can get a better look. He reaches to take down a glass from one of the kitchen shelves, fills it with water, then carefully carries it over to a potted plant on the windowsill.
Aiden watches Ralph water the plant, admiring it with the new appreciation Jamie has given him for nature’s little details. The leaves are rich and dark, but the flowers look light as air, infinitely delicate, like they’re spun from light. Arching, snowy petals, dusted with purple.
Aiden blinks a few times, rubs his eyes, and looks at the plant again.
“Whoa, Ralph, wait a minute - is that the same plant Jamie gave you to take care of?”
Ralph shrugs his shoulders, already turning away to put the glass back. Aiden stares at the plant in startled, impressed silence for a moment. He remembers what it looked like before.
When Aiden raises his gaze to Ralph again, he’s pouring some dog food into a bowl for Tycho, who pants eagerly and scrambles in little circles around his feet until he sets it down on the floor. He crouches down beside her and gently murmurs something to her, scratching her furry white ears. Her tail begins to wag happily as she wolfs her food down.
Ralph straightens up, rinses off his hands, and goes to the fridge. Aiden and Noah watch him in sleepy curiosity, then both perk up with a happy gasp as he pulls a pizza box out.
“Fortunately I had one last night, boys. Or - night before last night, now.”
“Oh, yes,” Noah sighs blissfully, opening up the box. “Thank god. I was literally gonna be thinking of pizza, and only pizza.”
“Really, dude?” Ralph laughs, dropping down next to him at the table. “Not magic? That’s not at least putting up a fight for top-priority thought, right now? Even after the night we’ve had?”
“I know it sounds weird, but no,” Noah says helplessly, then points at his own temple. “Pizza. There’s nothing else.”
Aiden and Ralph exchange an affectionate grin across the kitchen table. Ralph laughs, then groans, then shoves the pizza box at Noah.
Eating something has the unintended effect of waking them all up a bit. They all sit in comfortable silence over the cold pizza and the cold drinks Noah digs out of the fridge. The sun slowly begins to color up the sky outside in glowing shades of peach and apricot. The early light falls in through the kitchen windows and scatters on the walls. Gives the white flower petals of Ralph’s plant a warm, rosy glow.
Aiden glances at Ralph, then does a double-take. He caught Ralph looking at him with a guilty expression in his eyes.
He drops his gaze to the table when Aiden looks back at him, starts kneading his thumb into his palm.
“Hey,” he murmurs, keeping his eyes on his fidgeting fingers. “I’m - I’m sorry that I already asked you for something. I know you said we can’t really ask you for magical stuff like that, and I - guess it was the first thing I did.”
Aiden gazes across the table at Ralph with smiling eyes, full of affection.
“It’s alright, man,” he answers, and means it. “Don’t feel bad about that.”
There was a time when Ralph doing that might have gotten Aiden worked up. But Aiden is finally starting to get all the way past some of the things his mom put in his head. He’s got thoughts about being a Guardian now that come only from himself, or in part from Jamie. When he works through his thoughts these days, he sees them with clear eyes.
He’s come to think that it’s only natural. Faced with magic, anyone who desperately wants something is probably going to ask for that thing. That’s not the same thing as exploiting Aiden’s powers, or any indication that things are headed that way. It’s just - natural. It’s okay.
Especially in Ralph’s case. The last thing Aiden wants is for Ralph to feel guilty or ashamed that he asked, and based on the look in his eyes, he’s feeling both of those things in serious quantities.
“I understand why you asked,” Aiden tells him, hoping he can make out the sincerity in his voice. “It’s only a problem if people abuse my powers. That’s not what you were doing.”
Ralph hesitates, keeping his eyes on the kitchen table. He blinks a few times, then quickly flashes Aiden an immensely relieved look, breathing a little easier.
Aiden glances over at Noah, who’s been listening with his chin on his palm. He looks a little distant, some thought moving around behind his grey eyes.
Aiden tilts his head slightly to the side. “I’m surprised you couldn’t think of something you wanted to ask for, Noosh.”
“Oh, I can think of one,” Noah says immediately, then stops and bites his lip. He drops his hands to the table, starts nervously tapping his fingertips on it. “Um, I just didn’t… I thought you probably wouldn’t be happy if I asked, right after you told us we can’t really do that.”
“No, it’s okay,” Aiden says earnestly, without thinking. “Honestly, whatever it is, I’ll try to do it for you. I’ve never given either of you a magic thing, I can get away with it once or twice. And I - I want to. I want to do something for you guys.”
Aiden maybe didn’t totally realize this last part until he said it out loud, but it’s true. Noah looks at him with apprehensive, fast-blinking eyes, obviously a little anxious.
“At least tell me what it is, dude,” Aiden tries again, looking at Noah with pleading eyes. “I mean, I can’t guarantee it’s something I can do. Probably not, realistically. But let me try.”
Noah nibbles his lip reluctantly, then slowly looks over at Ralph where he sits in the purple shadows made by the pale orange sunlight.
“Are you gonna be mad if Aiden can do my thing, but he couldn’t do yours?” he asks softly.
Ralph draws back a little, then quickly shakes his head.
“I’m past thinking about things that way, man.” He gives Noah an encouraging slap on the back, then tosses his head at Aiden. “Get your thing, if Aiden can give you your thing. That would make me happy, too, actually.”
Noah meets Ralph’s gaze for a moment, searching his eyes, but it’s abundantly clear that Ralph meant what he said. Aiden can tell, and Noah can, too.
Noah slowly looks back at Aiden, a hopeful little flame kindled in his grey eyes.
“Can you - can you look into the future for me, Aiden?” he says suddenly, all in a rush. “Can you check and make sure that Niki is having a happy life?”
Ralph and Aiden both stare at Noah in surprise, then flash a small, startled smile at each other.
“What, Noosh, you’re not gonna ask for a Shelby with - flamethrowers instead of exhaust pipes, or something?” Aiden laughs, staring at him with wide eyes.
Noah laughs helplessly, shaking his head. “Priorities have changed, man.”
Aiden never would have expected that Noah would be the first of the brothers to become a father, but he’s happy it happened that way. Turned out he was the most ready out of all of them, and the fact that his thoughts went straight to his baby when Aiden gave him the chance to ask for any magical thing he wants is probably the proof of that.
Shit, though. Noah wants Aiden to look into the future, and Aiden is pretty sure he can’t do that. The smile slowly falls from his face as he thinks it over.
There’s no way, is there? If a Guardian could see into the future just from wishing hard enough, Aiden would have done it by accident already, the way he worries about things... and reading the future is definitely not one of the things his mom taught him how to do before she left.
Although - although…
There’s a long silence. When Aiden finally breaks it, he’s a little startled by his own answer.
“I… yeah, maybe I can.”
~~~~
Noah and Ralph follow Aiden back into the living room, where he goes right to his backpack.
It’s mostly full of crumpled-up packaging from the food they ate in the park, which Aiden hands off to Ralph to throw out. Ralph practically scampers off to do it.
He doesn’t want to miss anything, because Aiden is about to attempt some magic.
“This stands a very good chance of not working at all,” Aiden warns Noah again.
“No worries,” Noah says eagerly, nervously. “Shit, man, it’s cool just to watch you try.”
“If I can even find what I’m looking for.” Aiden feels around in one of the inner pouches of his backpack, nudging aside a long-forgotten roll of archival tape with his knuckles. “I never clear my backpack out, but sometimes Jamie does it for me, he might have taken out the - oh, got it!”
Aiden extracts what he was looking for from his backpack, straightens up, and shows it to Noah.
“What is it, dude?” Noah asks, as Ralph rushes back over to stare down at it, too. “Some kind of - magical artifact?”
“Nope,” Aiden answers. “It’s a box.”
At first glance, an unspecial box. Simple and wooden, almost like a cigar box, but one that could only fit about two cigars. Small and slender and light enough that Aiden has left it forgotten in his backpack for ages without noticing.
It’s the box that the time-travel conduits were kept in. Which wouldn’t mean anything, except…
It used to be that Aiden couldn’t think about his mom without an onrush of painful emotions, which would inevitably send him retreating all the way back from memories that had anything to do with her.
But Aiden has let go of so much anger. He’s standing on much more solid ground, these days. He can walk further into memories he hasn’t dared to think about in ages, and stay on steady footing.
As a result, some of the Guardian training that Aiden’s mom gave him before she left is coming back to him.
“Magical objects need to be stored very carefully, Aiden. We only have a few heirlooms left in the family, but that’s not the only reason why. Magical objects have their own energy, and they can affect the energy of other things.”
Aiden remembers sitting cross-legged on the attic floor, picking at his shoelaces, longing to go outside and play soccer. Watching his mom take meticulous care as she put their very small pile of family heirlooms away. Each item into its own box.
“We have a case for each thing, so that only the case is affected by the object,” she explained. “This way it’s only the case that loses energy.”
“Loses energy, mom?” Aiden had asked, confused.
He had been imagining energy radiating out from the magical object to saturate its surroundings. It sounded like his mom was describing the opposite of that.
“Yes, loses it. The magical item produces a certain type of energy, but it may need to draw that energy from its surroundings in order to amplify it. It can use all that energy up, leaving only the opposite kind of energy behind.”
Aiden’s mom paused, glancing at Aiden to see if he was following.
“For example, if you have a magical object that can give you heat and warmth…” She put one of the cases into his hands, and he gasped in surprise at the sudden chill in his fingers. “Eventually its case will always be cold.”
Aiden hasn’t so much as brushed against that memory in the attic in forever, but it’s suddenly come back to him now. Now that he’s remembered the case for the time-travel conduits, which he’s left forgotten in his bag all this time.
When he’d gone looking for the conduits in the attic, he’d taken them out of the case, had a look at them to make sure he had what he needed, then stuffed them into the front of his backpack and tossed the case into whichever pouch had happened to be open. Carried everything like that to the Ghost Office.
He winces a little. Oops. Sorry, mom. Forgot that lesson.
But it might be to his advantage, this time.
Aiden thinks it through for a minute, gazing down at the conduit case, slowly turning it over in his hands.
The conduits were for time travel, yes, but - in all directions? Aiden doesn’t think so. Both conduits took Aiden and Jamie back, into the past. Delivered them to the present, too, but never once took them into the future. Might be that’s not what Ariana designed them to do. They may have been designed purely as a means of navigating the past. And if the conduits were full of the energy of the past…
Maybe the case is full of the future.
It’s a long shot, but Aiden figures it’s worth a try.
“So, um - I’m gonna try to channel my magic through this,” Aiden explains, pointing at the case on his palm. “I have no idea if it’s gonna work, but there were two magical objects stored in here for - well, for about as long as Will has been a ghost. Something like two hundred years. That’s a long time for the case to be losing past energy. It should only have future energy left to it, by now… but don’t get your hopes up too high, okay, Noosh?”
“Okay!” Noah looks miles past bewildered, but excited all the same. He grabs Ralph’s shoulder, rocking on his feet. “Holy shit. This is about to be crazy.”
Ralph is waiting with wide, fascinated eyes, just like Noah. “Go for it, Aiden.”
Aiden takes a deep breath, then closes his hands around the case. Icy blue light flickers to life in his eyes just before he closes them.
It suddenly strikes Aiden that the conduits were single-use. The physical object itself becomes a sort of sacrifice, gone after it’s activated. The case will probably be the same way, if it works. This could be - probably is - Aiden’s only shot at looking into the future.
For a split second, he desperately wants to use it to see how he and Jamie are doing, down the road. See if his hopes for the future are looking possible.
But Aiden shakes that thought off about as soon as it rises in his mind. He promised to try this for Noah, and he’s gonna do just that. If he can, that is. He’s going to have to do this by feel, by instinct, and he’d really prefer to have instructions to follow. And it would be good to have Jamie here, to have the help of their connection.
Focus, Aiden scolds himself gently. You can do it. That’s what Jamie would say.
Aiden takes another deep breath, then calls softly to his magic, easing it awake as slowly and carefully as he can. He carefully draws it down into his fingertips where they’re wrapped around the case.
He lets his thoughts drift to Nikita. Her adorable little scowl, her silly laughter, the way she buries her face into Noah’s chest when she gets shy. How cute she looked when Aiden put his snapback on her head the other night. Sitting up in Noah’s arms, her tiny hands playing with the leather necklace around his neck, the one that holds Raj’s carved wedding vow.
Nik’s little tumble of dark curls, like Raj. Her sweet, rounded face, like Melanie. Her giddy adrenaline giggles, like Noah.
Aiden wraps his energy around his memories of Nikita until they’re all folded up into the flow of his magic. Then he pushes all of that magic out through his fingertips, lets it spill into the conduit case in his hands.
After a moment he lifts his head and looks around. He wasn’t thrown into movement, like with the conduits. Actually… looks like nothing happened at all. Aiden is still in Ralph’s living room, with Noah and Ralph in front of him, holding their breaths in nervous anticipation.
“Aw, man - did it really not work?” Aiden asks, crestfallen. “I had a feeling like - like I unlocked something…”
He trails off, bewildered. He knows he just said all of that out loud, but he didn’t hear his own voice. Noah starts saying something - asking a question, based on the way he spreads his tattooed hands - but Aiden doesn’t hear that, either.
“Adam!” a little voice suddenly calls out.
Aiden blinks hard, then closes his eyes, listening in startled silence. A voice is suddenly speaking in his head. A bright, sweet, chirping voice. Full of wild energy and puppy-like eagerness, to the point that the words occasionally stumble over each other. A voice that can only belong to a little child.
“Adam!” the voice is saying earnestly. “Let’s go, like you wanted to! Let’s go right now! What are we waiting around for?”
Another voice answers the first. This one sounds like it belongs to a little boy. His voice is quiet and shy, sensitive. Maybe slightly younger than the first voice.
He lets out a burst of startled, giggling laughter. “We can’t actually go, Nik!”
“Why not? I think we can! Kit wants to go, too! Don’t you, Kit?”
A new bright little voice pipes up to answer. Another little boy. His small voice is remarkably sweet, boundlessly gentle in a way that vaguely reminds Aiden of Jamie.
“I’ll go if it makes Adam happy!” he says.
“You heard him, Adam! Let’s go! I’ve got my wooden sword, we’ll be okay! Come on, come on!”
“Nik, we can’t - with a sword?” laughs the first little boy. The anxiety is gone from his voice, which is starting to grow breathless and eager. “Wait - Kit, Niki, wait for me! I’m coming, too!”
“We weren’t gonna go without you!” comes the other boy’s voice, in a loving, reassuring rush.
“I knew you weren’t scared!” Nik says excitedly.
“Scared, no, I’m not scared!” protests the youngest and littlest of the voices. “I’m brave, like my dad!”
The voices blow away like the wind carried them off. Aiden slowly opens his eyes, listening to the last traces of breathless, childish laughter. The sound of little feet scampering on the floor.
All of a sudden he can hear the sounds of the spring night around him again. The breeze moving the trees outside, the soft snap of the fire. He looks down at his hands, slowly unfolds them. The conduit case is gone.
Ralph and Noah are staring at Aiden with wide eyes, waiting. They can clearly tell that something happened, even if they didn’t hear any of it. Noah suddenly looks pale and anxious, his finger fidgeting very fast with his lip piercing.
“Jesus Christ!” Aiden shakes his head as he blinks the magic out of his eyes, half in disbelief. “It actually fucking worked, kind of! It didn’t have enough energy to show me anything, but it gave me a few seconds to listen.”
“And?” Noah asks, holding perfectly still, staring hard at Aiden.
“It didn’t put me too far in the future,” Aiden explains, breaking into a big smile. “But from what I’ve heard, Nik is running around, having fun. Got herself some little friends. Sounded like she was leading them directly into some mischief and mayhem, too. She sounded happy.”
Noah stares at Aiden in silence for a second, his fingers pressed to his mouth. Then he drops his head, but not before he breaks into an enormous smile. Ralph breaks into a wide smile, too. He clasps Noah’s shoulder, gives him a gentle shake.
“The future can change, Noah,” Aiden warns him again. He’d made that clear when he offered to do this, but he wants to make sure there’s no confusion. “Things can always-”
“I know,” Noah rasps quietly, running a hand over his face. “Just - feels good to know that’s the kind of track we’re on right now. Makes me feel like I must be hanging in there, right? As a dad? Even though I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing?”
“Sounds like you do know what you’re doing,” Ralph answers, slapping his back.
Aiden gives Noah a nod of confirmation. Noah glances gratefully back and forth between him and Ralph, then throws himself down on the armchair, looking relieved beyond compare.
“Oh, man,” he laughs happily, tiredly, pressing his palms over his eyes. “Goddamn. Aiden.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I’m sorry, you guys just - you have no idea how nerve-wracking being a dad is, sometimes. Feels like you’ve got all your love out there facing the world in the tiniest, most fragile, most helpless form possible.”
Ralph drops back down onto the couch, shuddering in fear. “I can’t even imagine, dude.”
“But it’s worth it, though,” Noah sighs tiredly, happily, sinking deeper into the armchair. “To me, anyways.”
Aiden sits down on the other side of the couch, rubbing his tired eyes. “You okay, Ralph? What’s that face?”
“Just realized I watched my brother look into the future, forreal, right in front of my eyes. What the fuck?”
“Yeah, this - this has been kind of a strange night, boys,” Noah murmurs, sounding half-asleep.
A ripple of soft, helpless laughter breaks from Aiden and Ralph, and Noah joins in. Ralph stretches out on his back again, stares thoughtfully into the fire he lit when they got back to his house. Noah closes his eyes and settles back into the armchair, lost in his thoughts. Aiden leans back into his part of the couch, takes off his snapback.
Silence falls over the three of them like a gentle rain.
Dawn is in full spread outside, but Ralph’s living room is cool and shadowy, all in shades of dark blue except for the low glow of the fire. A car goes past outside, leaving a soft drift of distant music in its wake, briefly making the light on the walls flicker. Everything is very still and soft.
After some time, Noah’s breaths grow deeper and slower, and he snuggles deeper into the armchair. Asleep. But Aiden can tell that Ralph is still awake, thinking.
Aiden hesitates, then moves over to the part of the couch Ralph is on. He sits down on the edge of the couch, gently knocks Ralph’s arm. “Hey.”
Ralph opens his eyes, looks up at Aiden without moving.
Aiden keeps his voice to a whisper, so he doesn’t wake up Noah.
“I’m really sorry about your dad. Here if you ever want to talk some more about it. You know Noah is, too.”
This is met with silence from Ralph, and his expression is half-hidden in the shadowy darkness. Aiden turns away and rests his elbows on his knees, so Ralph doesn’t feel like he’s staring at him.
After a moment, there’s a whispered answer.
“Thanks, man. I - I, um - I really-” Ralph stops, roughly clears his throat. “Really appreciate that. I’m doing alright with it these days, though. I miss him, but… you know. Made my peace with it.”
Aiden is glad to hear that, and it honestly does sound like Ralph means it. Still, Aiden can’t imagine how devastating that loss must have been for him. Aiden’s feelings about his own father start and stop with good fucking riddance, but he knows it was just about the opposite with Ralph and his dad.
“You had a picture of him you showed me once,” he remembers out loud.
Ralph doesn’t answer, but after a moment he gets up and disappears upstairs. When he comes back down, he’s got something in his hand, and he offers it to Aiden. Then he stretches out on the couch again, nearly vanishing back into the shadows as Aiden looks down at the picture.
Aiden’s heart twists. Ralph is so little in the photo, and so happy. Holding onto his dad with total trust and admiration written all over his beaming face. The haunted sadness in his eyes that’s been there ever since Aiden can remember - there’s none of that.
The picture gives Aiden a kick of crushing pain so heart-wrenching that it forces him to take in a fast little breath. At the same time, he’s hit with a rush of deep warmth and affection for Ralph. He said once that there was a time when Aiden was literally all he had. But Aiden thought he was the only one Ralph had here, in Ketterbridge. Now a lot of things suddenly make sense, but Aiden didn’t know, he never knew…
His arms ache to give Ralph another hug. It's one hell of a fight to stop himself.
“God, Ralph, you look just like him,” he manages, pulling himself back together a little. “Makes me wonder if your kid would look like a mini version of you. Bite-sized Ralph.”
Ralph doesn’t answer, but he breathes out a soft laugh. Aiden does, too, then runs his eyes over the photo again. He’s realizing that it must be the original. Based on the creases, the frayed edges, the sun fading…
Aiden gently sets the picture down, gets up, and crosses to his backpack. He rummages around inside until he tracks down his extra work stuff and finds what he was looking for.
Ralph sits up on his elbow curiously as Aiden comes back, leaning over Tycho for a better look at what he’s holding.
“What is that?” he asks, keeping his voice to a whisper for Noah.
“It’s a polyester archival photo sleeve,” Aiden whispers back. He very carefully slips the photo inside, taking care to smooth out a bent corner first. “It’ll keep the picture from getting damaged.”
“Oh. Thanks. Should I - not take it out of there, or…?”
“The best thing to do would be to get it framed by a professional,” Aiden explains, sealing off the archival sleeve. “Then it’s enclosed safely in something, and you can ask for glass that filters UV. And you can put the picture out where you can see it.”
Aiden pauses, then quickly adds - “Only if you wanted to put it out, obviously. If you felt okay with people seeing it. I guess you could put it in your bedroom. But then Calla would still see it, right?”
Ralph hesitates for a moment, fidgeting with a strand of his blonde hair.
“She’s seen it,” he whispers. “I - I already showed it to her.”
Aiden’s eyebrows fly up, and Ralph laughs softly, like he can’t believe it, either.
Aiden finds himself smiling widely down at Ralph. He and Calla must be building up some real trust between them, for Ralph to have done something like that.
“You know that night at the bar, when you saved me?” Ralph holds out his two index fingers, then draws one apart from the other, like he’s tracing a line on an invisible map. “I’m trying to figure out how I got from there, to being able to pull a girl like Calla. Calla.”
“You worked hard as hell, made yourself better.” Aiden gives him a fond smile, messes up his blonde hair. “Proud of you.”
Ralph shoots Aiden an annoyed face, swats his hand away. But his features relax almost instantly, and he breathes out a quiet laugh through his nose.
“I don’t want to jinx it,” he whispers. “And I know it’s early days, but - I think things are going really good with me and her.”
“You know what’s weird, man? I know. I can hear it in your voice.”
“Yeah? Maybe that shouldn’t come as a surprise to me, I dunno. She’s…” Ralph shakes his head, his grey-green eyes full of warmth, even half-hidden in the shadows. “Sometimes when I’m with her, I have these moments when - when I can finally kinda remember how it is to feel like… like nothing’s - missing.”
Aiden blinks hard at Ralph, caught by surprise.
He knows exactly what Ralph means. There are moments when Aiden has Jamie close in his arms, and he feels like a person who’s never once known heartbreak. It’s sweet, peaceful heaven, that feeling. A peace like sleep, like dreaming, but while so vividly awake.
Aiden didn’t realize that Ralph had found his version of the same thing in Calla. He breaks into a little smile, turning his face away so that Ralph doesn’t see it.
“Hard to stop myself from catching high hopes for the future, sometimes,” Ralph adds, with a hint of anxiety showing itself in his voice.
Aiden laughs softly. “And that shit feels so dangerous, right? Catching high hopes?”
“Yes! God. Scares me to death!” Ralph throws a punch at the ceiling in self-directed frustration. “But then you can’t fucking help it, anyways!”
“Yep, I know the feeling,” Aiden whispers sympathetically. “I know it from being with Jamie.”
Ralph doesn’t open his eyes, but a small, shadowy smile curves up his mouth. “I bet if I could only pick out one note from all the rest, it would be her.”
Aiden smiles silently at Ralph for a moment, then breaks into a grin and slaps his shoulder. Ralph laughs quietly, shoving Aiden’s hand away.
“By the way, you repeat one word of this conversation to anyone - and yes, that includes Keane, so don’t ask-”
“Yeah, yeah, I know, you’ll kill-”
“-I’ll kill you.”
“Mhm, yeah. Go on thinking that you could, man. It’s cute.”
Ralph lets out a little choke of laughter, then lazily flashes a middle finger in Aiden’s approximate direction.
Still smiling, Aiden gets up and heads back to his place on the couch. He sits down and looks closely at the picture through the transparent sleeve. He’s running his archivist’s eye over it for any worrying frays or the beginnings of any tears. Sometimes those things can be prevented, and even if Ralph has this photo digitized somewhere, he’s held onto the original, too. All this time. It’s clearly precious to him.
Aiden carefully turns the photo over to examine the back, then freezes.
There’s a date written there in pen, in the way people used to label their printed photos. And beneath it, written in the same faded ink:
Adam and Ralph, Adam’s Basic Military Training Graduation.
Aiden looks up sharply from the photo of Ralph and his father. He stares at present-day Ralph, stretched out on his back on the couch. His eyes are closed, his arms loosely folded over his head. The arm holes of the threadbare shirt he’s wearing go all the way down to his waist, and from here Aiden can see the angel wings tattooed onto the side of his ribs. Moving softly with his slow breaths.
“Your - your dad’s name was Adam?”
“Yeah,” Ralph whispers back, sleepily scratching Tycho’s ears as she snuggles herself up against his side. “Why?”
Aiden shakes his head slowly, sinks down onto his back on the couch, and gazes up at the ceiling. “No reason.”
“Sounds like you’re smiling real big over there, Callahan,” Ralph whispers suspiciously.
“I’m fucking not,” Aiden answers, beaming up at the shadows spangled across the ceiling. “Huh. I wonder who Kit is, then…”
Actually, Kit’s voice stood out to Aiden in some way he can’t quite put a finger on. Maybe because it was just so cute. That Jamie-like kind of earnest sweetness, in such an adorable little voice. Tugged on Aiden’s heartstrings, but he’s not sure why, and he’s too tired to think it out.
“What’d you say?” Ralph murmurs, his words melting together, growing slower and slower. “What’re you even talking about? Don’t make me come over there and…”
His exhausted voice slowly trails off into silence. His deep, sleeping breaths join Noah’s in the quiet living room.
Aiden carefully sets the photo aside in its sleeve, then turns on his side, rests his head on one of the soft folded blankets. He’s cozy in the low glow of the fire, and his eyelids are almost too heavy to keep open.
His mind runs over everything that happened tonight.
He makes himself open his tired eyes one more time. He looks for a long moment at Noah, then at Ralph. Neither of them has reached for one of the blankets, and Aiden realizes after a second that he must be keeping them warm.
He can’t help it. He’s full of immense affection for both of them, to the point it’s bound to get away from him. Be more tiring to try and hold the energy back than it would be to just let it go. It’s just too much to keep contained in his body. He’s smiling to himself even as he finally falls asleep.
Aiden understands perfectly what Ralph meant about high hopes for the future.
Sometimes you just can’t help it.
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