Super Special Ep: The Ache (Part II)
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 checks out his reflection in the window. Not great, but he only needs to look okay enough that he doesn’t get thrown out immediately. He takes a deep breath, pushes open the door of the tiny restaurant, and slips inside.
The girl behind the counter is reading a book, her dark hair haloed in blue by the neon light of the sign outside. The bored, impatient expression on her face tells Aiden that she’s counting down the final few minutes left in her shift. She looks up and opens her mouth to say something when Aiden steps in, then freezes, staring at him.
Shit, does he really look that bad? It’s hard to tell from her wide-eyed stare what she’s thinking.
“Buenas noches, señorita,” Aiden tries softly, stopping in front of the counter.
She stares at him for another moment, then gets up, setting the book aside.
“Tu voz es tan profunda,” she giggles, a rosy blush coloring up her cheeks.
Aiden is still trying to work out what that might mean when she asks him something else, shyly but too quickly for him to follow.
“Más - más despacio, por favor?” he tries, speaking even softer than normal, wincing at his own pronunciation.
She pauses in surprise, putting her head slightly to one side. “English?”
“Yes,” he says, gratefully. “You speak English?”
“A little.” She smiles at him, twisting a strand of her hair between her fingertips, then nods back at the kitchen. “More good than my sister, at least. What can we get you?”
“I - I actually saw that you guys were about to close up. I’m sorry to ask, but I just wanted to see if I could have anything you were about to throw away…”
She stares at him in confusion, then blinks a few times, taking a better look at him in the soft blue glow of the sign outside. He lets her do it, his fingers fidgeting with the strap of his backpack. He’s really hoping she won’t make him tell her that he’s homeless. He’s really hoping she can just tell. It’s surprising how many people don’t realize until he has to say it to them.
“Oh,” she murmurs, considerably startled, then a little sad. She hesitates, considering, then holds up a finger. “You will wait?”
“Yeah, sure,” Aiden says gratefully.
She nods, then slips into the half-lit kitchen. Aiden stands tensed up, ready to get out fast in case she comes back with a manager or something.
Instead she comes back with a wrapped-up package of food. She even must have heated it up, because it’s nice and warm when she places it in his hands. She slides a condensating to-go cup with a straw across the counter at him, too.
Aiden smiles in relief, gives her an earnest thank you as he collects up what she brought him. She smiles gently, but still looks a little sad.
“Cuídate,” she calls softly after him, as he pushes the door open.
Aiden doesn’t know that one, either. But it sounds real nice to him in her voice, and she brought him everything so sweetly. She’s representative of all the goodness in the whole world to him, for a few minutes. He thinks of her tenderly and appreciatively as he reaches the building he came from.
Zipping the food into his jacket and tucking the drink into the bottle holder on his backpack, he pulls himself up onto the roof access ladder around the back of the three-story building, then climbs all the way up to the roof.
Reid startles and sits up on his sleeping bag, peering anxiously through the darkness. “Hello?”
“It’s okay, it’s me,” Aiden calls softly, wincing at him. “Keep it down, though, man. We’re right on top of someone’s apartment. They might call the cops if they realize we’re sleeping up here.”
“Right, sorry.” Reid drops his voice to a whisper as Aiden comes over and sits down on his own sleeping bag. “How’d it go, did you find anything?”
He lets out a delighted gasp when Aiden unwraps the package to reveal the hot, crispy tostadas inside. Aiden sighs blissfully, too, calling down silent blessings on that sweet girl’s head.
He adds some whiskey to whatever this drink is she put in the cup, and Reid helps himself to one of the tostadas.
“How much do I owe you, Aiden?”
“The girl in the restaurant gave it to me.”
“Oh…” Reid looks down at the food, running a guilty finger beneath his beanie. “But - shouldn’t we have paid for it?”
“Would if we could, dude. You think I like begging? I asked for anything they were about to throw away, anyways. And I thought you said you’ve got like fifty bucks to your name.”
Reid sucks anxiously on his lower lip. “That’s more than enough to pay for dinner.”
“It isn’t,” Aiden says firmly. “Not if it’s all you’ve got, total. What if you decide you want a bus ticket back home?”
“I won’t!” Reid insists, fiercely and immediately.
Aiden doesn’t answer that right away. It’s not like he’s been a traveler all his life, but he’s been at it way longer than Reid, and something tells him that very soon the guy will want some real walls around him again, feel the longing for a real place to go home to. Aiden knows that feeling. The fastest way to get it is by looking at the glow of light in the windows of people’s homes, from the outside. You realize there’s nowhere like that for you, that for you it’s unreachable, and it hurts.
“I wasn’t saying it like it’s a bad thing,” Aiden explains, around some sips of the whiskey-spiked drink. “Living like this is fucking hard, man. Especially in the winter, or places where it’s always cold. You probably shouldn’t have started out in the middle of fall.”
“I thought you said that’s around when you started out…”
“More around summer, and not ‘cause I wanted to, because I left the minute I graduated high school. Dropped my diploma on my bed and set out straight from there.”
“Well, I didn’t know it got this cold here at night,” Reid answers, shivering. “I’ve only seen it in movies. This is the first time being out of the country, for me.”
Aiden pauses, looking at him with sympathetic eyes. He’s only known Reid for a day and a night, but he’d really like to see him go back home.
He first came to Aiden’s attention in a dive bar, where he was about to join up with another traveler. One telling a lot of big stories about the places he’d been, but eyeing Reid with something in his gaze that Aiden deeply didn’t like. Otherwise Aiden wouldn’t have gone over and suggested that the two of them travel together for a few days, instead.
Reid can’t have been out on the street for too long, or he’d know better than to listen to a character like that. And he absolutely shouldn’t have told Aiden that he has fifty dollars on him. Aiden has woken up to find his stuff being searched by other temporary travel companions for much less.
Reid is a sweet guy, with trusting jade green eyes and a tendency to suck on his lower lip when he’s nervous about something, which so far as Aiden can tell he almost always is. It also turned out that he and Aiden share the same home state, but they haven’t talked about that too much. They started to, enthusiastically, and after a moment realized it was making them both painfully homesick.
As with all of Aiden’s traveling companions, the time he and Reid are going to spend together will have to be very brief, but Aiden is increasingly worried about where Reid is going to end up after they part ways.
“Do you have a plan for where you’re going?” he asks, catching Reid’s eye.
He lowers his head a little in the moonlight. “No, not really. Where’d you just come from?”
It takes Aiden a second or two to remember. He’s been to so many places, now.
“From Santa María del Tule, in Oaxaca. With a few stops along the way. It’s nice.”
“Then maybe I’ll go there,” Reid answers hollowly. And then, with much more enthusiasm - “Unless… where are you going next, Aiden?”
“I’ve actually got a flight to catch.”
Reid’s face falls. “A flight? Where to?”
“I don’t know. Figured I’ll just go to the airport and buy the cheapest ticket that’ll take me the right direction. Need to start working my way across the Pacific. Hawai’i, Tonga, New Zealand… I’ve gotta keep moving. Haven’t found what I’m looking for here.”
He senses that if he even sets foot in the forest or place that holds the first Tree, that will be enough. He’ll know, or the Tree will know, or - something. And he hasn’t had that feeling.
“Wait, so you-” Reid shakes his head in disbelief. “You’re just gonna leave this whole entire part of the world, and - and not go home first?”
Aiden takes a long sip of the drink, grateful for the increasing effects of the whiskey. “Can’t go back yet.”
He’d given it a lot of thought, though. Going home for a break before he keeps searching. He’s homesick as hell, and he sorely wants to see his aunt. Maybe, if he was lucky, he could also see Jamie. It would be worth it, even if it was just for a minute, from afar. Aiden is so fucking exhausted, right down to his core, and he can’t think of anything that would restore him like that would.
But it wasn’t even worth thinking about. Aiden can’t go home, not like this. He doesn’t even want his aunt to see him this way, much less Jamie. He’ll go home once he’s found it, once he’s fixed everything.
The panic that this isn’t going to work out, that he isn’t going to find the first Tree, that he should have by now - it makes a sharp, cold swipe at him from the pit of his stomach. He crushes it down, then realizes the cup is empty, and he’s sipping on a straw full of air.
He sets it aside and gets his flask from his backpack instead.
Reid is looking at him uncertainly, his brow furrowed. “Are - are we partying tonight, or something?”
Aiden stares at him in confusion, then follows his gaze to the flask. He hesitates, aware that maybe he’s just had a lot more alcohol than your average person drinks just to relax. By Reid’s standards it probably looked like a lot.
Aiden quickly pours some of the whiskey in his flask into the cup, then hands it to Reid. “Yeah, why not. Just don’t fall off the roof.”
“No, I won’t,” Reid laughs tiredly, taking a very timid sip from the cup. “I’m not getting up again. My legs are tired, and my feet are sore.”
Aiden lets out a rough laugh, lighting up a cigarette. “Get used to that feeling.”
He looks up when Reid doesn’t answer. Finds him staring sadly at the twinkling, orange-gold lights of the city far off in the distance. His glossy eyes are unseeing and forlorn, reflecting back the glow. His lip quivers a little.
Aiden’s heart stirs with a sympathetic ache. He normally doesn’t give much of a damn about getting involved in other people’s business, but…
“Hey,” he says, softly and earnestly, drawing Reid’s eyes back to him. “It’s not too late, man. You can still go back home-”
“No!” Reid blurts out, quickly looking away again. “No, I can’t - I can’t go back there.”
Aiden narrows his eyes at him. “You on the run from the law?”
“What?” Reid looks at him again, considerably taken aback. “No!”
“Then you didn’t have to skip the whole country to get away from whatever it was that happened back home.”
Reid blinks at him a few times, then slowly lowers his gaze to his knees. “No, guess not… it felt like I did, at the time.”
“Look, there’s nothing wrong with staying here, but it would be better if you were someplace with someone you actually know, right? Isn’t there anyone you can stay with?”
“I have a brother who’s about to move to California,” Reid admits slowly. “We don’t get along anymore, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t give a damn about me, but… he’s there.”
“Yeah? Cali’s not the worst place to spend a winter. Gets cold, but not too bad. I worked on a farm there that was willing to put up travelers for the night if you helped them out. And there are some national parks that give out seasonal jobs. They don’t really care if you’re homeless, they just want the gift shops restocked in time once winter is over and all the tourists show up. Some of the workers I met actually camped at the park while they worked there.”
Reid glances swiftly at him, then rubs his knees nervously. He’s shivering a little, so Aiden digs a sweater out of his backpack and hands it to him.
“Oh - thank you,” Reid murmurs, surprised.
Aiden pauses, taking a second look at him. It might be the sunburn, but it definitely seemed to him like a faint blush just spread across Reid’s cheeks as he pulled on Aiden’s sweater.
Aiden kicks the thought around in his head. Reid is cute, with a sweetness about him that Aiden likes.
“You said your brother is about to move to California?” he asks, finishing off some of the food.
“Yeah. He got a place there, but he’s finishing up college back home first. In-state tuition, and all that. But he’s actually somewhere further south of us right now. In Guatemala for an exchange program, for a few weeks? He’s getting his degree in botany. They’re collecting plant or soil samples or something to bring back. He should be there for a couple more days.”
Aiden wonders if Reid instinctively started coming down this way in the hopes of finding him. If so, it feels like a safe bet to send Reid off to California to meet up with his brother. Clearly he’s the only one Reid feels like he might be able to go to, even if they haven’t been getting along.
Aiden feels a stab of deep, blazing pain for missing his own brothers. He quickly takes another long swig from his flask. Reid starts to take one from his cup, and Aiden catches his hand.
“Don’t try to keep up with me, man. I’m twice your size.”
“Yeah, I - I’m already a little drunk,” Reid laughs helplessly, his cheeks burning with an alcohol glow. “Shit.”
“S’okay,” Aiden murmurs, pleased to see him smiling. “If you’re going to California you should try to enjoy the time you spend here first, right?”
“Right,” Reid sighs, then leans his head against Aiden’s shoulder and closes his eyes. “You’re right. Maybe you’re right about California too… but I don’t know… exactly when he’s getting back.”
“Is there a way to check?” Aiden asks, smiling in surprise at having Reid cozy up to him like this.
“Mmm… he emailed me the program info forever ago, hang on…”
Reid clumsily digs through his phone until he comes up with a PDF from his email. It’s full of information from a college back home, for a botany program that planned to bring a group of exchange students to San Cristóbal Verapaz for two weeks. The address of the house where they’ll be staying is listed. So are the names of the participating students, in order of last name. Small group. Looks like they should be there for two more days.
Aiden’s eyes aimlessly roam down the names on the list, then come to a sudden stop.
He blinks hard a few times, then sits up sharply, staring down at Reid’s phone. He honestly thinks it must be the whiskey talking, but no, there it is.
Keane, J
Aiden’s heart stops. No way… no fucking way…
Keane isn’t the most uncommon last name, and that J could stand for anything, but - this college is in their home state, and it’s a botany program… there’s a chance - there’s a chance -
“Two days,” Reid hiccups, too tipsy to realize that Aiden is suddenly frozen stiff. “I guess he’ll be back around the same time I get there. If… if I want to go…”
He does. It shows in his voice.
“We’ll get you a bus ticket tomorrow morning,” Aiden murmurs, without thinking, without hearing himself.
~~~~
Reid is a little short of being able to afford the bus ticket, as it turns out.
“Told you we didn’t have enough to pay for dinner,” Aiden tells him, to a blushing, apologetic look.
Aiden pays the difference himself. Means he’ll have to stop and find work somewhere for a few days sooner than he’d hoped, but that’s the last thought on his mind right now.
He’s startled out of his thoughts when he finds himself on the receiving end of a tight hug from Reid, just before he has to get on his bus.
“Thank you for everything, Aiden,” he stammers, stepping back and dragging the back of his trembling hand over his eyes. “Seriously. For looking after me, and - for being cool about - I’m so sorry I fell asleep on you like that last night, I was drunk, and - and I’m so embarrassed-”
“It’s okay.” Aiden distractedly brushes a kiss onto his mouth, then roughly pinches his cheek. “Good luck in California.”
He’s so far away that he doesn’t even realize what he did until he sees Reid blushing and smiling shyly at him through the window of the bus. Jesus, he’s really not thinking. Pure luck that no one saw that.
He gives Reid a wave goodbye as the bus pulls away, then crosses the circular lobby of the bus station and immediately buys another ticket, this one to Tapachula. The first stop on the route he planned out last night.
Should’ve been the airplane ticket he was buying next, but that’s just gonna have to wait.
~~~~
Aiden’s blood has caught fire. All through the journey, he stares out through the bus windows without seeing, his heart beating wildly.
His cheeks are burning, his foot bouncing against the floor of the bus like it’s not sore at all. He’s forgotten soreness, he’s forgotten tiredness, he’s forgotten everything. Almost forgot his backpack when he switched buses in Guatemala City, and it only has everything he’s fucking got in the world inside.
He feels like he threw off a thousand-pound weight that he was dragging around everywhere with him. Like he was roused from a waking sleep. He’s been broken open to everything. The world, which he’d startled to traverse with a kind of unseeing numbness, rushes back to him in vivid fullness. He’s so brilliantly awake.
His inner world is in excited uproar, too. He felt like an empty husk of a person yesterday, but so much is stirring in him now that he’s overwhelmed by the richness of it all, humming with it. White-hot fire keeps running up and down his restless body. Desire flames up in him in unbearable waves, to an extent that seems ridiculous even to him. He lapsed into shallow half-sleep on the second bus and was startled awake, blushing deeply, by the dreams he had.
His soul is flying somewhere high above the bus, singing with hope. The other passengers on board were gazing around curiously during the night, trying to figure out where the new lights in the bus were. That’s how bright he was glowing, you couldn’t even see it was coming from him.
The endless road finally leads somewhere, for once. As he gazes out through the bus window Jamie’s image rises up in Aiden’s heart, almost before his eyes. Those gentle curls, thick and soft-looking, in that startling shade of fire red. His sweet amber eyes, shining like sunset fire opals when the light hits them just right. Beautiful even when veiled with sadness, but Aiden’s favorite is when they’re smiling.
The freckles, all the freckles.
Aiden has done enough secret staring to have memorized everything, enough to lovingly put the picture back together in his mind. He can see him so clearly that he could believe Jamie is really there, just on the other side of the glass.
He knows this backtracking is taking him off-route, over territory he’s already covered, and that now he’s had to pay for a bunch more bus tickets. None of that seems to matter at all right now. The chance is one in a million, but it’s worth it for that.
Aiden stumbles off the bus in Santa Cruz Verapaz and immediately sets off walking the remaining four miles. It strikes him as impossible to stand around waiting for a taxi, and four miles doesn’t sound far at all to him right now. He’s got the energy for it. It’s all he can do not to run as he makes his way along the forest-lined road.
He actually does break out into a jog as he gets closer, then into a sprint as San Cristóbal Verapaz comes into view. He streaks past the weather-worn buildings, open fields, and thick forest that alternately line the road, drawing the curious attention of people passing by on motorcycles or walking up the rain-drenched sidewalk.
People have always stopped to watch him when he runs. Aiden has never been able to figure that one out, but apparently it’s no different here. Although maybe he just cuts a strange picture sprinting up the road this fast with his backpack and his hiking boots. The wind rushes through his hair, and the rain blows softly against his face.
When’s the last time he ran like this? Maybe not since high school, Ketterbridge, soccer, the rescues…
He slows up when he reaches the town and stops to look around, panting hard. Small and colorful buildings line the road here, in pretty shades of lime and sky blue and peach sherbert. The rain is still falling, so not too many people are out and about.
“Excuse me!” Aiden calls out, to the very first person he sees. A guy leaning against his truck, who was already staring at him, having seen him come sprinting into town. Aiden rushes over to him, still trying to get his breath back. “Where’s Jamie staying?”
The man stares at him blankly.
“What?” he asks, after a moment. “Who?”
Shit, of course. What a dumb question, what is he thinking? But this guy does speak English, that’s lucky.
“I’m - I’m sorry, dude,” Aiden stammers breathlessly, struggling to pull it together. “I’ve been traveling for like twenty-nine hours straight to get here, been on so many buses, my head’s a little - but he was gonna leave in like forty-eight hours, so he - he should still be here… I made it in time, didn’t I? Even if they left early to get to the airport?”
The young man shifts his snapback over his hair, blinking up at Aiden in confusion.
“You are okay, man?” he asks, with obvious concern in his hazel eyes.
“Yes. Shit, I’m so sorry. Can you just-” Aiden fumbles his wallet out of his pocket to get the slip of paper he wrote the address down on, taking a second to lovingly brush his thumb against Jamie’s poem before he closes it up again. “Can you tell me how to get there?”
He hands the slip of paper to the guy, starts to take out his map, then stops when he realizes the guy is just going to show him on his phone. He has to force himself to pay attention as the other man explains. He keeps looking around like Jamie might come down the street at any minute. But he manages to memorize the directions, and nods appreciatively.
“Thank you!” he calls out, already trotting across the street. Unable to help himself, he smiles radiantly at the stranger over his shoulder, glowing with excitement. “He might be there! I might get to see him! There’s a chance!”
The confused man stares after Aiden in bewildered alarm as he breaks into a sprint again.
Sawdust and stray flowers blow across the road in the rainy breeze as Aiden races past. Altitude be damned, apparently, it’s not slowing him down at all. He takes huge breaths of the damp air. They flood his chest, but do nothing to cool down his burning cheeks. He’s trembling inside with excitement, with hope, strangely with a bit of preemptive happiness.
He finally slows to a stop at the end of the right street, double-checks the address, and finds himself gazing up at a building with red-ochre walls. He raises his arrested eyes to it. Smiling, waiting shyly, working hard to breathe around the soft, molten heaving in his chest.
He realizes abruptly that some of the lights in the buildings down the street are switched on, but not in the little red house. He pauses uncertainly, then checks his watch and realizes it’s 6:05 AM. No wonder the streets are so empty, and no wonder the lights aren’t on in the house. Nobody in there is awake yet.
Right, yeah. Okay. He’s got some time. He probably didn’t need to run here, and now that he’s stopped a few vague thoughts are catching up with him. He should probably eat, he can’t remember the last time he stopped for that. Was it on the rooftop?
He glances down a different street and spots a faded sign that says JUGO FRIO in large painted letters. Lights are on in the shop beneath it.
He buys a bottle of water and some kind of cold, sweet pink juice from the shop, then finds some passion fruit to pull down from a vine-draped tree at the end of the street. The tree is a nice shady spot, protected from the rain. Kind of tucked away, too. Aiden tries to take a nap sitting with his back against the trunk after he’s eaten. He hasn’t slept in way too long, now. But he’s too deeply restless, too worked up. He gets up and smokes a cigarette, for the first time asking himself what the plan is.
It’s not like he can just go up to Jamie and talk to him. Aiden is painfully aware of the way they left things. It makes him hurt to even let his mind glance off the thought, but he knows that Jamie wouldn’t be at all happy to see him. Besides, how the hell could Aiden possibly explain this? Any of this?
The matter of Aiden’s appearance basically takes the question off of the table. He needs to look so much better than this when Jamie lays eyes on him next. The rain might have helped some, rinsing him off, but still. No chance.
He’ll just stay back here and try to get a glimpse of Jamie from afar. That’s all he really wanted, anyway. He was so crushed and defeated when he understood he wasn’t going to find the Tree anywhere in the Americas, but just one glimpse of Jamie would be enough to keep him going.
Even from afar, and he really should stay this far back. Can’t risk Jamie spotting him, that would be a disaster.
Still, Aiden finds himself slowly drifting further down the street, closer and closer to the red-ochre house. It’s like some burning invisible thread is connected to his chest, pulling him in. He stops still when he realizes the lights have gone on.
The door opens. Aiden takes a hasty step back, but he’s already way too close. He turns his snapback around and pulls it down low over his eyes, silently starts to back away, then stops again when a tall brunette girl comes out of the house.
A taxi glides up the street and stops along the curb as the girl begins to drag a heavy suitcase down the steps to the road. A blonde girl follows her out with a duffel bag and an enormous backpack.
Aiden hesitates uncertainly. He’s reluctant to approach some girls on the street who don’t know him. He knows he’s an imposing figure, especially looking how he must look right now. He doesn’t want to scare the girls, but - he can’t help himself. He draws closer, then gently sets a hand on the suitcase the brunette is struggling to haul down the stairs.
“Can I help you with that?” he offers quietly, as she looks up at him in surprise.
“Oh, I-” she begins, then stops, blinking up at him. “Oh, you - wow. Hey. Yeah, go ahead. Thank you!”
Aiden sets the suitcase in the trunk of the taxi - being careful in case the samples they collected are in there - then turns back to her, his heart hammering.
“Are you with our group, somehow?” the brunette asks, drawing closer to him, now smiling. “Can’t be! I feel like I’d remember you.”
“No, just traveling, just - passing through,” Aiden says eagerly, over the wild pounding of his heartbeat. “But, um - crazy coincidence, I think I might know someone in your group. You guys are the botany students, right? Is there someone with you named-?”
“Joy,” the blonde girl calls, tapping her watch. “We don’t want to miss our flight! Haven’t you flirted with enough cute strangers on this trip? Do you really need to squeeze one more in before we go?”
Joy blushes fiercely, indignantly mouthing something at the other girl. Aiden freezes, then slowly looks back at Joy. Some sinking feeling in his heart is telling him…
“Joy Keane?” he asks softly.
She draws back, caught by surprise. “Do we know each other? Oh, wait… did we meet at that bar last weekend, when we all went down to…? But I swear I’d remember you!”
“No.” Aiden drops his gaze to the sidewalk, struggling to keep his voice under control. “Sorry, my mistake. I thought - I thought someone else was here-”
He breaks off as another botany student comes out through the door of the red building. Aiden blinks hard at him a few times. For a bewildered moment he thought he was looking at Reid, somehow. But this guy is taller and maybe slightly older than Reid, with hair a shade darker, and a deeply worried expression in his jade-green eyes. He drags a suitcase out of the house after himself and makes directly for the cab.
“What are you doing, Dakota?” the blonde asks in surprise. “I thought you were leaving with the afternoon group.”
“I moved my flight up,” he answers, already stuffing his bag into the trunk. “Need to get back stateside.”
The girls exchange a glance.
“Everything okay?” Joy asks, with obvious concern.
“I don’t know. I got a weird voicemail from my brother.”
“I thought you don’t talk to your-”
“Yeah, Megan, that’s why it was a weird voicemail!” Dakota blurts out anxiously, slamming the trunk of the taxi closed. “He wouldn’t call me unless it was - maybe something happened, I don’t know. He just said he’ll meet up with me when I get back. I think he might be waiting in the not-even-furnished apartment I got for after graduation, or he’s on his way there or something, so I need to get to California. Like, right now.”
“Straight to California? Not home?”
“Yes, straight there,” Dakota says urgently, his eyes wide with worry as he wrenches the door of the cab open. “He could be - are we going to the airport or not?”
So this is definitely the right group of botany students, then. Joy is definitely the Keane, J who was on the list.
Aiden puts his hands in the pockets of his hoodie, then quietly starts to back away.
“Hey, did you need a ride, cute stranger?” Joy calls. “To the airport? You said you’re traveling, right?”
Aiden knows he should accept, but he shakes his head, trying to smile appreciatively at her.
“It’s okay, thanks - thanks anyways,” he stammers hoarsely, turning away.
He walks slowly, aimlessly down the street. Eventually he finds himself back out on the forested road he came running up, now heading back down. The fields and forest, the shops and gas stations all pass by in a blur. The rain falls in sweeping gusts, making tapping sounds against his waterproof backpack. His boots make their infinitely familiar thumping sound against the wet pavement, his wet hair falling down over his face.
He stops suddenly at the edge of a field and hangs his head. He bites his lip hard, but a strange, strangled sob tears itself from him. It’s a soft sound, accompanied by a soft cracking sound as his watch face shatters from the blast of energy he just accidentally put off. The plants in the field sway and bend with it, shuddering and dancing as if from a sudden gust of wind.
In crestfallen silence, Aiden leans heavily against one of the posts at the edge of the field and just tries to breathe.
He’d almost forgotten about the noise. It all comes roaring back now, as he silently breaks down. It’s unbearable, too much for him to take when he’s already this crushed. Especially given he’s barely had anything to drink today, he didn’t want to be drunk when he saw Jamie… He gasps as the rush of soul-noise roars rises over his head like an angry ocean at gale-force. Panicking under the onslaught, Aiden reaches desperately, automatically for his lifeline.
Soft singing weaves through it all. Delicate and complex, like an invisible flower. Radiant, sweet, infinitely gentle, harmonizing beautifully off of Aiden’s own note. Aiden finally catches a real breath, then another.
The other noise gradually falls back, hushing itself so that Aiden can lose himself in that sweet, bright little note. He’s helplessly in its power, but he loves it. He listens with passionate intensity, with wonder and awe streaming through him, longing powerfully roused in his heart until it aches. He never dreamed of music like this.
Their shared song makes Aiden open his eyes to the colorful morning blossoming overhead. The way the iridescent mist makes the sky, the forest, and the mountains look so soft and dreamy. Massive clouds are streaming out from behind the rim of the mountains, lined with silvery gold sunlight.
Aiden watches the birds winging across the cool sky, over trees dancing with the fall of glittering little raindrops. He distantly hears a few children further off down the road giggling and shouting. He can smell the sky, and he can smell the soil, feel the cold against his cheek as a sudden breeze springs up and then softly dies down.
It all soaks right into him, pulled in on every breath. With his and Jamie’s music in the background it can’t not be beautiful enough to stop a man’s heart. It sinks right into Aiden’s soul, spills over it gently and lightly and sweetly, like dewfall.
Aiden finds himself smiling sadly, after a few minutes. Somehow it is like he got a little time with Jamie, this morning. Aiden is aching to actually put his arms around him, but at least they can always be together like this.
After a moment he pushes himself up off of the field post, runs his sleeve under his nose, and starts walking again. New, fierce resolve sings through his heart. Things didn’t work out the way he hoped, but just the possibility of getting to see Jamie for a minute filled him with so much fire. This is what it’s going to feel like when he finally gets home…
“Shit, though, I’m so sorry this is taking so long,” he rasps hoarsely, gazing up at the peach-colored sky overhead. “You - you didn’t run off and get married to someone else already, did you? I worry about that a lot. Felt like someone or other was always trying to snap you up, not that I blame them…”
As if Jamie could hear him. As if Jamie knows anything about any of this. Even if everything miraculously works out, even if Jamie miraculously forgives him for like a thousand unforgivable things - Aiden has no idea how he could ever explain it to him. That’s a task that sounds impossible, but - whatever. He’d take on impossible things for Jamie in a heartbeat. He’d break the constraints of the universe for him. That’s what he’s trying to do right now.
I know it seems like I’m going everywhere but home, he adds silently, too shy to say these words out loud even to the air. But one day this will all lead me back to you. I promise.
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