I return to the living room one more time after my shower. I want to make sure that Noah didn’t seize the opportunity to run off, now that we’ve left him alone for a bit.

He’s there, on the couch. He must have woken up at some point, because he found the old pillow he borrowed when he was crashing here the first time. The blanket is pulled all the way up to his cheek, and his hair is tumbling into his face, so I can’t see his expression. But his breathing is slow and deep, his shoulders relaxed. He doesn’t stir when I stop in front of him.

Satisfied that he’s not going anywhere, I head back to my bedroom, where Aiden is waiting for me.

I slip under the blankets and stretch out on my back.

Aiden is on his back, too, and we tip our heads together.

“I keep trying to be upset that you overheard me,” he whispers, “And then I hear how you sound, and I can’t do it. How do you still sound like that?”

I trace my fingertips down the side of his face. “I’m sorry. Is it starting to bug you?”

“Um. No.” Aiden lets out a soft laugh. “Not at all. I feel like I’ve been meditating ever since it started. It’s like I have the opposite of a headache. I don’t know how to explain it.” He blinks at me, slowly and peacefully. “Feeling very tranquil, though. Also feeling very much like I wanna take your clothes off. You’re wearing way too many clothes right now.”

“I’m wearing boxers and a t-shirt,” I laugh quietly, “And you’re wearing the same amount of clothes as me, dude. Also, Noah is outside, so. Do not start taking my clothes off.”

“Fair enough.” Aiden hesitates, glancing at the door. “So - he’s asleep? Can’t hear us?”

“Mhm.”

There’s a brief pause, and then Aiden lets go of the calm he’s carefully maintained since he stepped into my apartment.

“Oh, my fucking god!” he whisper-shouts, his eyes wide.

“I know! I know!” I smack his arm excitedly, grinning from ear to ear. “Can you believe?”

“I mean - holy shit! Noah!”

“Right!” I curl closer to Aiden, warm with relief. It feels so good that he’s finally in on this. “I’m so glad you were here, babe. I think there might have been a crash-landing without you. You think he’s okay?”

“Yeah, I do.” Aiden stretches his burly arms up over his head, drops them to rest on the pillows. “I’m more concerned about how Raj and Mellie feel about all this. Really hope it doesn’t go wrong, after we told Noah that he should talk to them.”

I bite my lip. Aiden’s eyes catch the movement, and narrow.

“What’s that, what are you doing? Oh - oh, my god.” He sits up, staring down at me in disbelief. “You talked to them already, didn’t you? Dude, you didn’t tell me?”

“I’ve been dying to tell you!” I whisper, sitting up, too. “That’s what I’ve been trying so hard not to tell you! They both swore me to secrecy. Separately. You shouldn’t even know that I talked to them!”

Aiden’s eyebrows shoot all the way up. “You actually kept that to yourself for this long?”

“Yes. It’s been ridiculously hard. You may not know this, but I kind of like to talk a lot-”

“Oh, do you?” Aiden laughs.

“-and keeping my mouth shut about this was my equivalent of running a marathon.”

“Wow. Okay. You know what? I’m a tiny bit impressed.”

“A tiny bit!” I glare at him. “I should win a fucking medal. I deserve some type of reward.”

Aiden slips a warm hand onto my thigh, a teasing smile turning up his lips. “What type were you thinking of?”

“Stop it,” I laugh, bringing my face to his.

He treats me to a sweet, soft kiss before he lays back down, and it really does feel like a reward.

Smiling to myself, I cuddle up next to him again.

“Seriously, Aiden, thank you for helping me out tonight. I think that Noah might have jumped through the window and gone down the fire escape if you hadn’t been here.”

Aiden waves an impatient hand. “It’s no problem, but - what did Raj and Mellie say?”

“No, I’m not supposed to tell you!” I groan. “Come on, don’t-”

“Jamie.” Aiden puts a fingertip over my mouth. His blue eyes are serious and intense, stopping me mid-sentence. “Come on. I won’t say a word to anyone, but at least let me know if I just sent my boy into a conversation that’s going to be a disaster for him. Are Raj and Mellie open to this?”

I fight hard for control over my expression. “I can’t - really can’t say-”

Aiden reads the answer right off of my face.

“Oh my fucking god, they are, aren’t they?”

“Aiden! I’m not supposed to-”

“Holy shit, they are!” He props himself up on his elbow, looking down at me with wide eyes. “So, wait - Raj, too?”

I glance hastily at the door, then climb out of the bed. I peek into the living room again, double-checking that Noah isn’t listening. He’s firmly asleep, one arm flung over his face.

I go back to Aiden and slip under the covers.

“Yes. Raj, too. I don’t know if he feels the exact same way that Noah does, but he definitely feels some type of way.”

“Wow.” Aiden takes a moment to process that. “And he didn’t have a crisis about it?”

“No, I - I guess he didn’t, really. I think that Raj is such a lovebug that it just made sense to him, right away.”

“That checks out,” Aiden murmurs, and I laugh softly. “I guess everyone goes through it differently.” He stretches out his long legs, a thoughtful expression on his face. “My crisis went on for a minute. One second I'd think that I was gay, and lying to myself about being straight. Next second I would think that I was straight, lying to myself about being gay.”

“Aw.” I spread a hand on Aiden's chest, snuggling closer. “I’m sorry. That sounds confusing as fuck.”

“Yeah, it was. I’d hook up with Mellie, have a great time, and think - okay, so clearly I’m not gay, that can’t make sense.” Aiden gazes down at me, smooths his fingers along my hairline. “Then I’d run into you at school, or have a dream about you, and think - no, I’m definitely gay, so I don’t know what that was with Mellie. I felt like an imposter, no matter what I did.” He sighs, folding an arm around me. “It’s so damn helpful to just have the right name for it. I hope that it helps Noah, too. Saves him some struggle.”

I’ve been listening quietly, studying Aiden’s face.

I'm thinking about how Aiden is the one who saved Noah from Ralph. Put himself through heavy emotional turmoil, used the version of himself he’d worked so hard to put behind him.

And after that, when Ralph dropped all of Noah's stuff off at the house, Aiden played a major role in stopping Noah from skipping town.

Tonight, when Noah was blindsided by his own feelings, almost in shock - Aiden was here, to help me talk him through it.

Aiden is a force of fate in the most literal sense. I already knew that. He’s tasked with throwing the switch at just the right moment to stop the train from derailing. For more people than he’s bothered to count, he’s been the difference between life and death.

But the rescues we do, the fatalities he prevents - I’m starting to think that these are not the full breadth of Aiden’s covenant.

After Gabby crashed her car, Aiden told me that we needed to take her to Kent’s house, not the hospital. When I’d asked why, he said:

I don’t know, that’s just where we need to take her.

Aiden is a Guardian in more ways than he realizes.

Protection isn’t the only thing he provides for those of us sheltered within his wingspan. He also offers healing, hope - harmony. Nudges in the right direction, connections formed at the right moment, smaller sufferings averted. In all these little ways, he changes fates.

Sometimes he doesn’t even need the help of magic.

Tonight, he did it for Noah. Helped him come to an answer, so that he doesn’t have to struggle the same way that Aiden once did, himself.

I’m pretty sure that Aiden doesn’t even realize that he’s doing it. But I think that this is built into him. Partly because of his promise, and partly because of who he is.

Once again, I’m unraveled, love-drunk, overcome with the way I feel about him. He hears it, as he always does, and looks faintly puzzled.

“What-?” he begins, and I cut him off with a long, enthusiastic kiss, one that flattens him out onto the bed.

He laughs against my mouth, his fingers tangling in my hair.

“Stop it,” I mumble, my cheeks heating up. “It's too much, I can’t handle it.”

“Stop what?” he asks, drifting his nose over mine.

“Just - just-”

I pull back and stare down at him. The rich blue of his eyes, the glow they catch when he looks at me, light from some interstellar process. The warm smile on his face, the subtle movements of his fingertips as they stir through my hair. The gentle dose of vetiver on his skin, lingering on his body, my sheets, my hands.

Very suddenly, I’m all out of words.

Goddamnit. I don’t understand how he does this to me. It’s a mystery. Even knowing everything I do about Aiden, there’s always another mystery. I want to be mad about it, but the truth is... I kind of love that about him. Along with a whole heap of other things.

I struggle to explain, and give up.

“Just - nothing! Ugh. You dumb idiot jerkface!”

Aiden doesn’t answer. He’s listening to the other part of me, the one singing out the way I feel about him. He’s got a smile on his face that tells me my words are doing nothing to undercut that sound, what it means.

“You dumb, stupid-” Aiden's eyes turn all soft and adoring, and I falter. “Numbskull-”

I officially can’t take any more of this. My heart is going to pop.

I flop onto my back and press my hands over my face. Aiden huffs out a low laugh, rolling to curl an arm around me again.

“Mmm,” he sighs happily, nuzzling his nose into my neck. “I love you, too.”

I didn’t say anything to prompt that.

As is often the case with my Companion Plant, I didn’t have to, for him to know what I meant.

~~~~

After letting everything spill over last night, Noah has burned himself out. It’s a quiet, tired kind of nervousness that hangs over him now.

I come outside to find him awake, standing in the kitchen, one hand resting on the countertop. He’s pale in the face, alternating between fidgeting with his lip piercing and hugging himself in a self-defense kind of way.

Soft sunlight falls through the windows, and he leans into it, closing his eyes.

He's silent on the drive over to the house. By the time we turn onto his street, he’s biting his lip so hard that it looks ready to bleed.

“Hey, it’s gonna be fine,” I tell him. “You don’t have to go into it right away, you can take some time to-”

“Yeah, I’ve got it.” Noah stares straight ahead, his arms crossed. “I just feel like it’s gonna be weird, now that I know how I...”

He fades off, a confused look taking over his face. He leans forward, squints through the windshield. I follow his gaze to find Raj pacing laps up and down the driveway of the house, shivering in the cold.

“What is he doing?” Noah murmurs.

When I pull into the driveway, Raj stops still. His entire body sags with relief, and he rushes to meet us, reaching the car just as Noah shuts the passenger’s side door behind himself.

“Holy shit, thank god!” Raj flings his arms around Noah, dragging him into a tight hug. “Dude, why didn’t you text me back all night?”

Noah is clearly startled. He froze when Raj grabbed him, but now he slowly moves to hug him back.

“I told you that I was going to Jamie’s, man.”

“Yeah, but you left looking kind of - I didn’t know that you were staying over there, and - just-” Raj lets out a heavy breath, then drops his forehead onto Noah’s shoulder. “Felt weird and bad that we were apart for a night, and then another night. Two in a row. Would have been fine, I guess, except that we weren’t even texting, or anything, and I - I don’t know, but we should definitely never do that again.”

It seems to take Noah a moment to fully absorb that. When he does, his eyes glitter with that magnesium color. The confusion and anxiety on his face melts away. Suddenly he’s looking at Raj with all the warmth and love completely unmasked.

Raj doesn’t see it. His forehead is still on Noah’s shoulder.

“Just glad to have you back,” he mumbles, and Noah laughs.

He squirms free of the hug - with difficulty, as Raj tries to stop him - and shakes his hair out of his face.

“Well, I’m fine, no need for-”

“Oh, thank god!” someone says, and we all turn to see Melanie striding out of the house, Nik bundled up in her arms. “Noah!”

As she comes closer, I can see that her braid is badly done, her eyes bruised with exhaustion. She goes directly to Noah, wearing a relieved expression to match Raj.

She frees a hand so she can rest it on Noah’s cheek. “We were so worried about you!”

Noah looks taken aback.

“What-?” He stares at the two of them, then starts to laugh again. “I was gone for one-”

Nik makes an unhappy noise, her little face screwing up.

“She won’t stop crying,” Melanie says desperately, smoothing her hand up and down Nikita’s back. “It’s been all night. All. Night.”

Noah reaches for her, and Melanie carefully hands her over. Nik already had her mouth open to start wailing, but she pauses, looking up at Noah with slow-blinking eyes.

“Hello, ma petite Niki,” he says softly. “Quel est le problème, hmm?”

The early sunlight is catching on his piercings, making them glimmer, and Nik fixes her fascinated gaze on them. She wraps her hand around one of his tattooed fingers, blows a spit bubble at him.

“Oh, finally,” Melanie groans, tipping her head back. “One more minute of that and I was gonna fall the fuck apart.”

“I’m sorry.” Noah settles Nik against his chest, a flustered look on his face. “I guess I should have told you guys that I was staying over at Jamie’s. I didn’t plan to, and my phone-”

“It’s okay,” Raj says quickly. “We’re not mad, we’re just - just happy that you’re back.” He shivers again, glancing at the house. “Can we go inside, please? It’s chilly out here, and if Nik gets cold and starts crying again, my ears are actually gonna bleed.”

Noah turns and nods a goodbye at me, a small smile on his face. Melanie falls into step by his side as he sets off up the driveway. Raj moves to go after them, and I catch his sleeve.

“Hey,” I whisper. “Didn’t you want to talk? Grab a coffee, or-?”

“Yeah, I-” Raj’s eyes dart to Noah and Mel, then back to me. “I’m dying to, man, but I wasn’t kidding, two days and two nights without getting to talk to Noah, that was - I kinda just want to hang out with him for a bit. Can we meet up later?”

“Aw!” I smile at him, touched on Noah’s behalf. “Yeah, of course!”

“I’m sorry, bro, I just need to stand on solid ground for a minute.”

“Raj, I totally understand. Take all the time you need.”

He clasps my shoulder, then takes off after Noah and Mel. He catches them halfway to the door, puts his hand on Noah’s back and starts saying something to him.

Noah turns his head to listen, and he almost looks a little shy, holding only fleeting eye contact with Raj, fidgeting with the blanket wrapped around Nik.

He’s the last one to go in, and his grey eyes drift back to me when he reaches the door. I give him what I hope is an encouraging smile.

He rolls his eyes, but kind of smiles back at me before he turns and follows Mel and Raj inside.