“I can’t believe we just did that,” I mutter, guiding the car towards the Ghost Office.

“It was your idea,” Aiden laughs.

“I know, but like, still.”

He smiles and turns down the music a little bit. The rain hasn’t slowed, and droplets are running down the windshield, picking up the moonlight.

“It’s going to be a late night.”

“It already is late.” I glance at the clock on the radio and wince. “Oh, god. We’re going to be up until like - an absurd hour of the morning. Thank god we don’t have work tomorrow. Regular work, I mean.”

Aiden yawns and rubs his eyes.

“How many trips have we done, now?”

“Enough.” The trunk of my car is filled to overflowing, a tremendous pile of glass. “Sorry, I know this probably isn’t going to be the most fun thing ever. More work than fun, just for a bit.”

“Mmm, well, I got to have a bit of fun earlier. Probably should switch my attention to work, anyways.” Aiden reaches over to rest a hand on my thigh. Under normal circumstances, this might make me crash the car, but we’re both so tired that it feels less sexual and more… just - intimate, I guess? I don’t know. There’s something about the warmth and pressure of his touch, steady and reassuring in the midst of the rain and the darkness and the absurdity of what we’re doing right now.

Yes, I'm in for a long night of work, but if I had to do that with anybody… well, Aiden is never a bad choice.

We made a stop back at Kent’s before setting out on our quest, so that Aiden didn’t have to totally destroy his work clothes. He’s back in his usual look, complete with the snapback. I glance at him in the rearview, and he meets my eyes with his. My heart does a tiny flip as I pull us into the driveway.

We add our most recent haul to the growing mountain in the middle of the Ghost Office. While Aiden brings in the last few armfuls, I unpack the bag of stuff we got from the 24-hour pharmacy: two big bottles of pre-made iced coffee, a few snacks, and a whole shitload of those sticky tabs used to attach posters to walls. The cashier gave us a weird look, but you know. It’s not like we could explain that we need all this stuff for our ghost hunt.

I sync up my phone to the speaker and let Aiden choose a playlist, then do my best not to blush with delight when he immediately selects the one that I made for him. All set up, we stop and survey the massive pile at the center of the room. Bottles and jars, glass in all colors, green and blue and purple and red. We left behind the ones we deemed too gross to use, so most of what we took is still polished enough that the pile as a whole seems to glow.

It’s quite the view. Aiden and I stare at it in silence for a moment.

“Okay, this has to be documented,” I finally say. “Go stand by it, dude, I want to take a picture.”

Aiden rolls his eyes, but he's smiling. He goes and crouches in front of the little mountain of our own making. I snap a photo and stare down at my phone, taking in the results. There he is, posed in front of this thing that looks like some wildly conceptual sculpture. His silly grin, the tiredness around his eyes that somehow doesn’t detract from how fucking adorable his face is. The moonlight spilling down through the giant windows of the Ghost Office, rain on the glass in the background.

“How’s it look?” Aiden gets back to his feet, brushing his hands off.

“It-” Honestly. Jesus. For fuck’s sake.

Aiden stops in front of me, waiting for the verdict. I put a hand on his neck and lean up to place a soft kiss on his mouth. He catches me, surprised, but responds happily.

We break apart a minute or so later, and I look down at the phone again.

“God, you’re so annoyingly hot,” I grumble, and he laughs again. “No, like, I hate you so much. Can’t even look at you right now. What is this!” I shove the phone in his face so he can see what I mean. “It sucks that we can’t make a ghost hunting Instagram page. If I posted this we’d get like, a billion followers, purely due to your stupid fucking face-”

“Jamie, don’t you dare."

"Yeah yeah, I know-"

"Do I need to confiscate your phone?”

“Nope. That picture is just for me.” I tuck the phone into my pocket and twine my arms around Aiden’s waist. “Ready to get started?”

~~~~

I thought that this would be tedious. I should have learned by now that basically nothing is, not with him. We work on either side of the thing we’re building, sometimes talking, sometimes just enjoying the music. I’m thrilled to find that Aiden has already memorized some lyrics from the songs I put on his playlist.

As the night goes on, I switch us to something a little more upbeat, more like party music, so that we don’t fall asleep. Aiden laughs as the chill, calm vibe abruptly switches to one dominated mostly by Kesha.

We hit the point where we’ve been awake long enough that literally everything is funny. We have to take a break to slump into each other, laughing hysterically over some immediately forgotten joke. I take pictures the whole night. Aiden steals my phone and takes a few of me. When he hands it back, I notice that he’s already texted all of them to himself, and I smile like an idiot, even as I reach for yet another discarded jar.

The rain slows to a drizzle, then stops.

The power at the Ghost Office still isn’t fixed, which means we’re working by those little balls of light that Aiden creates. They drift around us peacefully, their glow reflecting off of the rising wall of glass.

The next time I look up, I realize that the light has grown paler, rosier. Dawn is coming.

Aiden puts a sticky tab on the last bottle, adds it to the top, and steps back. We’re all out of materials to work with, which I think means that we’re done.

“Ready?” I ask, gathering his hand in mine.

“Yep. It’s going to get really hot, though.”

“What temperature does glass actually melt at? Is it going to be too much for us to handle?” I unlock my phone and do a quick search. “Oh, shit, Aiden, this says 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit!”

“I’m not using heat to melt them, Jamie,” Aiden says, his huffing laugh just as sweet even when it sounds this tired. “I’m going to try and pull away the energy that keeps them solid, it’s only going to release some heat. You thought I was going to make it hot enough to melt glass in the Ghost Office?”

“Well - duh, of course not!” I answer at once. “But we’ve been up all night, my brain is tired, you said you could melt them - you know what, you’re two thousand six hundred degrees of awful, you big huge-”

“Shush.” He presses a finger over my lips, smiling. “I need to focus. Can you pause that?”

I’d switched us back to a calmer playlist a few hours ago. I hit pause and let the Ghost Office fall into silence. Aiden and I back away from the giant, glittering structure before us. He slips his palm into mine again.

The connection opens, energy gently pushing up my arm from the point of contact between us. I take a deep breath and hold it, listening to the music of Aiden’s heartbeat.

A moment of stillness passes.

My nose suddenly feels the way it does when I get a bad sunburn. The feeling spreads down my body, at first a pleasant warmth in the predawn chill, then an uncomfortable level of heat, and then a sweltering sort of blast against us.

Aiden lets go of my fingers. The connection closes, and I open my eyes.

~~~~

I blink up at the thing we made, anxious to see whether we fucked everything up after an all-nighter of hard work.

But we didn’t. There it is, stable and solid, the manifold pieces melted too firmly together to fall apart. Finished, ready for the reading glasses tomorrow. I look over at Aiden, a dazed smile on my face, and he grins back, a mixture of triumph and exhaustion in his eyes.

I want to say something, but it’s way too fucking hot in here for me to think. I swivel around and start marching towards the door, dropping my phone onto the workbench on my way out. I step barefoot out onto the pebbled beach.

“Jamie?” Aiden hurries out after me, wiping sweat from his forehead. “Where are you going?”

“Into the river.”

“What-? No, hang on, Jamie, it’s not summer anymore, that water is going to be freezing-”

“Don’t care, I am boiling.” And too tired to think about anything else, honestly. Now that the idea is in my brain, it’s happening.

“Seriously, dude, it’s going to be so cold - no no no -”

He makes an unsuccessful swipe for my arm as I step into the water. An icy shock races up my legs, but strangely - it’s not as bad as I thought. In fact, after the first cold sting, it feels pleasantly cool, like the creek we swam in behind Ms. Callahan’s house. It’s a mercy on my overheated skin. I toss my flannel at the riverbank and dive in completely.

Just like that, I’m wide awake again. I surface from the water just in time to see Aiden toss his hat on top of my flannel and dive in after me. He doesn’t come up for a long moment. I twist on the spot, looking for him, but it’s too dark to see beneath the water’s surface.

He pops up right in front of me and slicks his hair out of his eyes. Encircles my waist in his arms and draws me closer. I fold my arms around his neck, watching the droplets escaping from his stubble, which has grown darker overnight. He shakes his head, smiling, and presses his forehead against mine.

“Idiot,” he says.

“Are you standing? My feet are barely touching the bottom.”

“Jamie.”

“Oh, whatever, it’s not even actually that cold.”

“Yeah, and why do you think that is?” He shakes his head again, moving mine with it. “You’re lucky you happen to be with someone who can make you a comfortable spot in a freezing river, dummy.”

I should have known. Of course Aiden wouldn’t let me plunge directly into ice water, not when he can act as a magical radiator. My heart swells wildly.

“I do feel lucky. Like, not just about that.” I pull back and meet his eyes. Move some of his wet hair out of his face, trace my finger down his cheek. His arms tighten around me. “I’m so glad that you came home, Aiden.”

His teasing grin falls away, exchanged for a different kind of smile. He still looks happy, but now he looks serious, too. He turns us in a little circle in the water, touches the tip of his nose to mine.

“I’m glad, too.”

Something in his voice catches my attention.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Clearly something.”

He pauses, drops his gaze to the water.

“You’re not the only one who feels lucky,” he says softly. “Before I came back, it had occurred to me that you might already be serious with someone else. Or just not interested in being with me, which would have been more than fair.”

“Good thing you were wrong on all accounts,” I tell him, smiling. “But - you used to call your aunt sometimes, right? You could have asked her what I was up to.”

“No, I-” He stops, chews his lip. “I figured it was easier if I just didn’t know. I wasn’t sure what the hell I was going to do with myself if you’d already gotten married, or something.”

“Married! Dear god.”

“In my defense, at the time I had no idea that you’re such a commitment-phobe.”

He says it like a joke, but I feel like it merits a serious answer.

“It’s not that, it’s just… I mean... no one before you ever felt so…”

I fade off, not sure what I’m trying to say, my cheeks burning.

A muscle in Aiden’s jaw does a tiny little jump. He leans forward and puts an exceedingly gentle kiss on my lips, sending my heart cartwheeling. When he pulls back, his gaze travels slowly over my face, lingering on my lips, my eyes, and finally my hair, which I’m sure looks wild right now.

“Jesus Christ, dude,” he half-laughs, half-groans, covering his face with his hand. “You’re killing me, you know that?”

“What did I do?”

“You just-”

He stops, his eyes caught on something over my shoulder. I let him go and turn in the water, my toes brushing the pebbles at the bottom.

The sun must be rising, somewhere below the treeline. The sky overhead is a stunning sheet of unfolding pink and indigo, the tops of the trees turned sherbert orange. Mist rolls along the water’s surface, a sifting cloud of lilac. A few birds call to each other and lift off, streaking across the clouds, wings turned golden by the approaching daylight.

The sky pours its colors onto the glassy surface of the river, setting it on fire. My breath stops in my throat.

Aiden closes his arms around me from behind and rests his chin on my shoulder, stubble pressing against my skin.

“Good morning,” he murmurs, and I tip my head back and laugh.

~~~~

I wake up in a cozy nest of warmth, blinking up at unfamiliar rafters. It takes me a moment to place myself. The little loft is filled with brighter sunlight, now. Dawn must be long behind us.

I’m on my side, and an arm is draped over my waist. I roll over and find Aiden there, already awake, watching me. He blinks and glances away when I turn to face him.

“Hi,” I say sleepily, nuzzling my face into his neck. “What time is it?”

“Time for you two to explain yourselves,” someone answers.

I jolt upright, startling Aiden.

“Jamie?” He sits up, bewildered. “You okay?”

“You didn’t hear-?” My eyes land on the third person in the room, and I realize. “Holy shit. Kasey. You scared the hell out of me!”

“Why are you guys sleeping at the Ghost Office?” She’s standing right next to the mattress, bent over us, her arms crossed and her eyes narrowed. “Did you two actually come here just to fool around, the day before your deadline? Instead of getting the glasses to work? Because I’m going to kill you, if so. And what the fuck is that thing downstairs? Aiden’s been awake for like twenty minutes just looking at you, but he couldn’t hear me, and it’s so damn annoying to not be able to get anyone’s attention-”

“Stop it," I mumble, rubbing my eyes. "We stayed here because we were too tired to drive home, it wasn’t like that.”

I barely remember my head hitting the pillow last night. I think I might have fallen asleep before Aiden even joined me in bed.

“Kasey’s here?” he asks, reaching for his shirt.

“Oh, he doesn’t have to cover up on my account,” Kasey says, straightening up and smirking.

“Put your shirt on,” I tell him firmly. “She is both thirsty and pissed off this morning.”

“You're damn right I am!"

“I’ll have you know, Kase-face, that we’ve been on a work marathon. You’re going to be stoked, I promise.”

Her irritated expression falls away at once.

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, let me show you.”

I slept in my clothes, since Aiden dried us off with some controlled heat after we came inside last night. I’m glad I don’t have to bother getting dressed right now, because I can’t wait to show Kasey what we came up with.

I race down the stairs of the loft, and she follows right behind me, as excited now as she was mad a minute earlier.

“Check this out!” I point proudly to mine and Aiden’s great glass creation.

“Yeah, I see it, obviously,” she says. “What is it? And what are you going to do with it?”

I grin at her, unable to hide my excitement.

“We’re going to destroy it.”