A Guardian.

You’d think that I was trying to turn myself invisible, how still I am, barely breathing, sitting there staring at him.

Aiden just told me what he is.

I don’t want to say that it was easy for him. I know that it wasn’t, but - he just said it. Just like that.

Is it because we’ve admitted that we love each other? Is it the letter from Ariana, or the successful rescue last night? Or is it that I happened to walk in while he was rereading the poem?

Maybe it’s the combination of all those things.

Whatever it is, all he needed was a deep breath and a moment to gather up his courage. For Aiden, that is something. Especially when it comes to this.

I’m struck with a whole lot of love and warmth, along with a melty feeling at my core. I start climbing up towards Aiden, a stupid grin on my face.

He sits back, surprised. “What’s-?”

I straddle his lap, take his jaw in my hands, and tip his face up to mine. His hands spread on my thighs, automatically. Sun-warm, as always.

I bend to plant a kiss on the soft curve of his lips.

“Heliomancer,” I say, then kiss him again. “Guardian.” Another kiss. “Love of mine.”

“Stop it,” Aiden laughs, and then, when I start to move away - “No, don’t actually stop it.”

I settle myself back onto his lap, then smile at the way I feel the heat of his body start to simmer beneath me.

“I think it’s probably good that you’re not an angel.” I drag my fingernails in slow circles through his stubble. “You might not know this, but I grew up in a religious household-”

“Right, hadn’t noticed that at all.”

“-and I don’t know how I’d get my head around the idea that an actual angel woke me up yesterday by biting my thigh.”

“Those were gentle bites,” Aiden protests, “And I was trying to wake you up and get you out of bed-”

“As I recall, it resulted in us spending significantly more time in bed.”

“Yes, but my intentions were pure.”

“Oh, were they?”

“Yeah,” Aiden says, all innocent, and I bend to bite down on his lip.

“Liar.”

He smiles against my mouth. “Whatever.”

“So are there actual angels, then?” I sit back on his lap. “And if so, are they like, annoyed when people mix them up with Guardians?”

“Oh, my god.” Aiden laughs, then drops his head forward, drags his nose along my collarbone. “I have no idea.” He draws back and looks up into my eyes, smoothing a strand of hair out of my face. “You’re the closest thing to a real-life angel I’ve ever met.”

My toes curl, and that melty feeling in my core spreads to my limbs.

“Don’t say stuff like that,” I groan, dropping my face into my hands. “You - you - fucking-”

Aiden frowns, concerned. “I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t - don’t be sorry, but - I can’t take-” I manage a deep breath, then put my finger over his lips. “Just gonna close these forever, before I die. You’re always saying this stuff I don’t even know how to handle.”

“Me?” His eyes go wide again. “I’m the one always doing that?”

“Yes. You.”

“Alright,” Aiden laughs. “Get off of me, you dummy.”

“Mmm.” I push the tip of my nose into his neck. “Nope. You’re not getting rid of me. You may be the bicep boy, but I can hold onto things like nobody else. Do you know that I snapped the side view mirror off of Gabby’s car, holding onto it too hard?”

A competitive fire sparks in Aiden’s eyes. “Is that a challenge, Keane?”

“No.” I adjust how I’m sitting, holding him a little tighter between my thighs, getting a better grip on his arms. “Wait - okay, yes. Now it is.”

Aiden grins, then bucks his hips up, pushing my body up with them. I laugh, my balance thrown, and cling to him harder. Aiden starts laughing, too. He braces one hand behind him on the bed; the other goes wandering over my chest, my legs, my shoulders, looking for a sensitive spot where he could dig his fingers to make me slide off.

I swat his hand away, and we both laugh as I nearly fly back onto the bed without my grip on his arm to hold me in place. He tries again to push me off with the movement of his hips, and I sink deeper onto his lap, the better to hold onto him.

Aiden stops, and I look down at him. We’re both panting from the effort, our clothes rumpled from all the places our bodies were pressed together during the melee. My flannel has slipped down on one shoulder, pulling at my t-shirt.

Still out of breath, Aiden lifts the hand he’s not leaning on. He curls his fingers, then trails his knuckles along my collarbone. So lightly and gently, a mothwing brush, barely there. But it throws a shiver through my whole body. My eyes catch on his parted lips, and I find myself smoothing my thumb over them, feeling the heat of his breath against my skin.

There’s still a fire burning in his eyes, but competitive is not the word for it.

I open my mouth. I have no idea what I’m about to say, but Aiden stops me from saying anything at all. He tilts forward, bringing his face to mine. He stops there, our lips a hairsbreadth apart, and waits, letting the moment hang.

In the days that followed the first kiss I ever shared with Aiden, there was, to put it mildly, a lot going on in my mind. I thought that I had ruined everything, that he didn’t want me back. I thought he might leave forever. I was pretty sure that I had lost my best friend.

But there was also an underlying fear pulling at me, one I failed to anticipate: that the kiss was so ridiculously perfect, I would never experience anything like it again. It could only be a one-time thing, which meant I would never get back to that height of feeling. The idea that I could feel that way over and over, even if by some miracle Aiden ever kissed me again - it seemed impossible.

Sometimes it feels good to be wrong, and I was so wrong about that.

Aiden doesn’t even need to kiss me, to bring me to that place. He can do it with a look, with his voice. I never realized the power of a voice, before him. There’s something about his low, husky purr. It rolls over my head. Deep and rich, his syllables lazy when he’s feeling unwound. I even love it in its exasperated form. I love it over the phone. I love it when it turns to a whisper, when his lips are brushing against my ear.

The way he handles me, speaks to me, and looks at me is so intimate that sometimes I actually forget that we haven’t done everything just yet.

But right now, sitting on Aiden’s lap like this, I remember.

I can tell that he remembers, too. Or maybe he never forgot in the first place.

Our lips are still so close, but neither of us has moved.

Aiden’s hand trails down my body, then curls around my hip. Magnetic blue eyes flit to my mouth, then back up to meet my gaze.

Achingly slowly, I drag my fingertips along his jaw, then press a hard, hungry kiss onto his lips. At the same time, I sink all of my weight into his lap.

His breath catches.

Something explodes. I hear the familiar, musical sound of broken glass tumbling to the floor.

I had been reaching for the drawstring of Aiden’s sweatpants, but I fall back, startled.

“Fuck, I’m sorry,” Aiden stammers, his cheeks crimson, his eyes hazy.

“Oh - it’s okay.” I kiss his forehead, smiling to myself. “Just took me by surprise. It’s been a minute since our last explosion.”

Aiden drops his forehead onto my shoulder.

“You drive me fucking crazy, dude,” he mumbles.

“I drive you crazy?” I fan my face, willing my cheeks to calm down. “Okay. Okay.”

“What did we break, this time?”

I turn to look around at his room. My eyes stop on the dresser.

“Oh no!” I bounce up off the bed and cross to it, then stand there staring, my fingers pressed to my face. “Fuck!”

“It’s just my aftershave,” Aiden calls. “No big deal.”

It smells beautifully of vetiver in here, now, but I can’t even appreciate it. I turn to Aiden, who blinks when he sees the look on my face. He climbs out of bed and joins me by the dresser. His movements are a little wobbly, his cheeks still pink.

“What’s the matter?”

“Can you get more of this aftershave? You didn’t buy this in Berlin or somewhere, did you?”

“No, I can get more,” Aiden says. “No problem.” Relief rushes through me, but then he pins on: “I’ve been thinking about getting a different one, though. Trying something new. Thought you might be bored with this one.”

“Wow. Congratulations on the worst idea you’ve ever had.”

Aiden huffs out a laugh. “Why exactly are you so worked up about my aftershave?”

“Because-” I feel the blush returning to my face. “I just - really like it on you, okay?”

Aiden pauses, then tips his head to the side, smiling. “Okay.”

Relieved again, I lean against him. He traces his fingers up my arm, pushes his nose into my hair.

Looking at the broken glass from the explosion suddenly reminds me of why I came over here in the first place.

“Oh, my God,” I groan, and Aiden draws back, questioning me with his eyes. “You know, Kasey said that you and I could get distracted in the middle of literally anything, so long as we’re together. I told her she was wrong, but now I actually think it’s true.” I poke Aiden’s arm. “You didn’t fucking explain what a Guardian is!”

Aiden runs a hand through his messy hair, clearly struggling for the right words.

“It’s hard to know where to start.”

“Well, so - you’re not a guardian angel. We can start there. Why is that what people think you are?”

When Aiden speaks, he does so slowly, carefully choosing every word.

“Every now and then, a Guardian is seen or heard during a rescue. It’s pretty much inevitable. For the person they saved - at least, for people who are old enough and aware enough to remember what happened to them…” Aiden sighs. “It’s just not the kind of thing you forget easily, even if you only caught a glimpse. They know that someone saved them and then disappeared. They want an explanation, but there’s no way for them to get one, so they come up with one. The idea that we’re angels, that’s - an explanation that stuck.”

I absorb that, then smile up at Aiden.

“Makes sense, doesn’t it? That this is the explanation that stuck? It looks like divine intervention. You’re basically going around handing out little miracles.”

Aiden blinks his blue eyes at me, then returns my smile.

“You,” he says, leaning down to kiss me, “You just-”

“Aiden.” I put a hand to his chest, holding him back. “You know exactly what’s going to happen if you do that.”

He pouts, but then straightens up, serious again.

“It’s not that I don’t want to tell you, Jamie. It’s just that it’s a long story, and I’m not great with - talking for that long.” He pauses, then says, more slowly, “I would - I would much rather show you.”

I stare up at him. “Show me?”

“Yeah, I-” He bites his lip. “I could show you, the same way my mom showed me when I was a kid.”

“Which would be…?”

Aiden hesitates again.

“You would dream it," he says. "I have the dream. It’s been passed down for generations, in my family. My mom passed it down to me. It’s how we learn our history, when we’re old enough.” Aiden rubs his elbow. “I… already showed you a piece of it, actually. It wasn’t on purpose, I just - I wanted to tell you the truth so badly, I put it in your head by mistake.”

It dawns on me that he’s talking about the dream I was having all summer, of the sapling Guardian Tree, and the three women planting it.

I go back to the bed and sit down, suddenly dizzy.

“So I - I would go to sleep, and then I’d just…?”

Aiden sits down by my side.

“I know it sounds really weird, but yes. You’ll go to sleep, and you’ll see it. It won’t be exactly like a regular dream. You won’t be part of it. You can only watch.”

“Is it - a bad dream?” I ask, haltingly.

Aiden fixes me with an affectionate smile, then touches his thumb to my chin.

“No, it’s not. And I’ll take it right back, afterwards. You’ll only dream it once.”

“I won’t be asleep for thirty hours again, will I?”

“You’ll go to bed like you normally would, and you’ll wake up like you normally would, too.”

I take a minute to think it over. Aiden waits, watching me.

It sounds strange, a little scary, even, but - Aiden loves me. He wouldn’t ask me to do this if he thought it would be too much for me to handle. I trust him, and he’s telling me that it’ll be okay.

The broken bottle of aftershave has released a lot of vetiver into the air. I take a long, soothing breath of it.

“Will you stay with me? While I dream, will you stay with me?”

Aiden puts his forehead to mine.

“Of course. I’ll be right there with you, the whole time. I promise.”

~~~~

I spend the rest of the day with Kasey, who, thankfully, isn’t mad that we missed our Monday deadline to activate the map. We put it off because Aiden expended a whole lot of energy rescuing a drowning kid, and she’s not about to hold that against him. She was happy to help out last night, and she’s been in a great mood ever since Ariana’s letter told us that Will’s rescue is a near certainty.

I don’t say anything to Kasey about Aiden being a Guardian. First of all, I don’t know what it means, and second of all, I don’t know if I’m allowed to share it. Aiden didn’t say. I thought about bringing it up with him, but - he trusted me with a very close-kept secret. It felt wrong to immediately ask if it was cool for me to run off and tell someone else.

I’ll ask him about it later. Maybe when he comes over tonight, with the dream for me.

I’m nervous to dream like this. I don’t know what to expect.

Aiden is getting some much-needed sleep, which means he can’t be around to help take my mind off of things. Kasey can tell that I’m distracted, but she doesn’t bug me about it. We watch a Halloween movie marathon, and her biting commentary on the accuracy of the various ghosts finally makes me laugh, brings my mind back to the present. We end up having a good time, and I forget to worry for a while.

We’re halfway through the 1963 version of The Haunting when I yawn, and realize that it’s gotten late. Aiden will be here any minute now.

Just as my thoughts come back to him, there’s a soft knock on my door.

Kasey gets to her feet, stretching her arms over her head.

“Night night,” she yawns, and disappears, just as my Guardian lets himself in.

~~~~

We sit together on my bed, and he ruffles my hair.

“Are you ready?”

I take a deep breath, then nod. “Yeah. I think so.”

Magic flares in Aiden’s eyes. A gathering of frosty blue light swirls to life around the fingers of his right hand. It doesn’t form into a firefly, though. It's a twisting, glowing thread, circling his fingertips.

Aiden holds it up, to show me.

“This is it,” he says. “I’m gonna give it to you, okay?”

I’m about to hold out my hand, to - take it, I guess? But then Aiden gently taps my forehead with his finger. When his hand comes away, the light is gone.

I blink at him, surprised.

“You’ve got it,” he says.

“Do I? I don’t feel any different.”

“You have it, don’t worry.” Aiden kisses my forehead, on the same spot where he gave me the dream. “Now all you have to do is sleep.”