Aiden stares down at his phone in blank disbelief.

He reads his aunt’s text again.

Auntie 5:38 PM: Hi honey I hope your flight was ok! I can’t wait to see you! Jamie Keane was sweet enough to come pick you up from the airport for me. He’ll be there waiting, he has all your flight info. See you when you get home!

Aiden rereads it two more times, his brain refusing to wrap around it. He’s convinced that this is a mistake, a typo, a joke, his aunt typing while distracted - something, anything. There’s just no way that Jamie would ever agree to this, not a chance in hell. And there’s no way that Aiden's aunt would ambush him with this information when he’s already off the plane.

There’s no way. No way.

But no matter how many different ways Aiden tries to interpret the text, there’s only one thing it can mean: exactly what it says.

Aiden experiences a moment of complete numbness, and then a tidal wave of nervous energy crashes through him.

Jamie is here. He’s probably parked outside, right fucking now. Aiden is in the baggage claim area, which means that Jamie could be, like - within a hundred feet of him.

He’s out there, waiting for Aiden.

Aiden’s head is spinning. He’s been agonizing over this first moment with Jamie for so long, imagining how it might go, what he might say.

Aiden planned to take a few days to adjust to being home, first. Coming back to Ketterbridge after eight years away is strange enough already, stirring a confusing blend of emotions within him. He’ll be hit with a deep, profound sadness that he can’t trace to its origin, then moments later realize that he’s smiling to himself, thinking about what he missed while he was away. Everything and everyone he finally gets to come back to.

There’s even something about the air. Hometown air. You forget it the moment you leave, remember it the moment you come back. As soon as Aiden stepped into the airport, he took a long breath, and remembered.

Home, he’d thought, and then - Jamie.

A sense of quiet but extreme nervousness settled over Aiden before his first flight even took off, and it hasn’t stopped since. It flutters around in his chest, heats up his face, makes his hands go cold.

And that was before his aunt hit him with the news that she’d sent Jamie, of all people, to pick him up.

Aiden is swaying on his feet. This is too much. He can't face this. He wonders how much he has left in his bank account. Could he just turn around and buy a ticket to wherever?

He closes his eyes, his grip tightening around the strap of his backpack.

What are you talking about? You’ve been waiting for this moment for forever. This is what you’ve been working towards, all this time. You can handle it. You’re fine.

Aiden takes a deep breath and finally manages to look up from his phone. The baggage claim has two huge sets of automatic sliding doors. Aiden peers through the glass, on the off chance that Jamie parked close enough that Aiden can get a glimpse of him before -

A flame of brilliant red hair catches Aiden’s attention. His searching eyes come to a stop on someone. A man leaning back against a battered blue car, his arms folded over his chest, his foot tapping nervously on the pavement.

It’s been years, it’s been forever, but - Aiden recognizes him instantly. He stares and stares, his breath punched out of his lungs.

It’s Jamie.

After all this time, it’s really him. In real life. That’s actually him.

Aiden can’t breathe, can’t move, can’t think, can’t do anything but stare. His heart soars high enough to shatter against the sky.

Jamie actually, honestly agreed to pick Aiden up at the airport. That’s what this means. How the fuck did that happen? Has he forgotten everything that Aiden put him through?

Aiden is noticing physical differences right off the bat, because Jamie is not eighteen anymore, and he doesn’t look eighteen anymore. There are new things to take in, but the freckles are still there and that mouth made to smile even if it’s turned down into an anxious frown right now and of course that hair the exact shade of which Aiden has never forgotten and holy shit he’s actually wearing a fucking flannel just like he always used to even though summer heat is drifting in through the automatic airport doors and Aiden can tell how anxious Jamie is he’s glancing from person to person on the curb - looking for Aiden, and that’s exhilarating and terrifying at the same time -

“Hey, what the hell just happened?” says an airport employee from behind Aiden. “Somebody get maintenance down here!”

All of the baggage carousels have jolted to a stop at once.

Aiden is responsible, and he knows that he should focus on undoing whatever accidental magic he just did, but he can’t take his eyes off of Jamie.

He wasn’t sure what Jamie would look like after all these years, and he wouldn’t have cared, except that Jamie - he looks really good. Aiden would have been kinda nervous around him even if he wasn’t already hopeless and helpless over this fucking guy - what is he even going to say when he gets out there? Where does he even start?

Aiden seriously feels like he can’t do this, but his aunt isn’t here, and no one else is coming. He has no choice.

“I’ve never seen that happen before,” the airport employee is saying, staring down at the baggage carousels. Other employees are starting to gather around, along with curious passengers. “Everything stopped at once."

Aiden could not agree more. Everything has stopped at once.

Once a shop owner in Greenrock told Aiden and the guys to get out of his store if they weren’t going to buy anything. They were sixteen and angry, looking for an excuse to break something, anyways. They came back after closing with a brick, and Noah threw it through the shop window. The whole thing had crashed apart into a rain of falling glass that caught all the light from the displays. Aiden had thought it was something like a meteor shower. He went home and dreamt of stars falling around his shoulders.

The moment resonates with Aiden now. He’s gone to pieces, but in a way that’s bright, brilliant, beautiful.

His body has gone without air for too long. He takes in a deep, involuntary, shuddering breath, and it snaps him back into the present.

The baggage carousels all lurch into movement again as Aiden stumbles backwards, away from the doors. He retreats deeper into the airport, all the way up against the back wall.

He takes another breath, struggling to pull himself together before he goes outside. At least Jamie doesn’t seem to have noticed the minor commotion within the airport. He’s preoccupied, searching for Aiden in every stranger that walks past.

Aiden takes stock of himself. He’s holding the poetry book he bought in Berlin. He was trying to read it on the plane, to calm himself down. That’s probably gonna seem weird to Jamie, so Aiden quickly stuffs it in his backpack.

He knows that he looks like a fucking disaster right now. This is definitely not how he wanted to look when he saw Jamie for the first time. Goddamnit, Auntie.

Aiden turns his snapback to face forward, pulls it down low, and puts his sunglasses on, hiding his eyes. He’s not sure without a mirror, but there’s a solid chance that his feelings are revealing themselves in the form of blue fire.

He needs to calm down. Automatically, he reaches for Jamie's note.

He’s startled to find it so nearby. He forgot what that sounded like. What it felt like, to have this particular note so close.

Aiden's breath evens out. He finds himself staring at Jamie through the glass, something warm and soft glowing in his heart.

Jamie has been Aiden’s guiding light in every lonely, dark place he’s ever found himself lost in. Now, his sweet, gentle song draws Aiden right out through the airport doors. Aiden doesn’t realize what he’s doing until he’s stopped right in front of him.

Jamie’s gaze is still roaming. He’s twisted halfway around, checking the other side of the street over his shoulder. He doesn’t notice Aiden right away, which gives Aiden a few seconds to look at him.

Jamie is wearing his sunglasses, too. Aiden could honestly laugh. He traveled thousands of miles and worked for years to find his way back to Jamie, and Jamie voluntarily came to get him from the airport, yet - here they are, both hiding from each other.

Aiden can discern a fresh green scent clinging to Jamie’s clothes. He can’t quite identify it. It reminds him of the sprawling botanical gardens he drifted through when he was traveling, his more peaceful moments in nature. He takes a deep breath, without meaning to. And he speaks, without thinking.

“Jamie.”

Jamie turns to face him. He arches an eyebrow, then lifts his sunglasses to look up at Aiden.

Aiden finds himself unexpectedly staring into Jamie’s amber eyes. His pulse spikes almost painfully. He hasn’t seen those eyes for eight years. 

They're just like he remembered them. Rich in color, bright with summer sunshine.

“Um,” Jamie says, clearly uncertain, “Aiden?”

His voice. Aiden would have recognized it even if Jamie had walked up from behind him. It’s everything he knew it would be: warm, open, compassionate. Tentatively friendly, even with the thread of apprehension currently woven through it. And there’s that distinctly Ketterbridge inflection of Jamie’s words. Aiden is struck with powerful homesickness, and then realizes - he is home.

He can’t pull together a full sentence, so he only nods in answer to Jamie’s question. He also can’t keep staring at Jamie without raising questions, so he quickly moves his gaze to the car.

“This your ride?” he manages, hoping that his voice sounds vaguely normal.

Jamie drops his sunglasses back onto his nose, glances down at the car, and spreads a protective hand on the blue hood.

He looks back up at Aiden, tossing his red hair out of his eyes. It catches the sunlight, turns a bright array of all different warm colors.

Jamie has a defensive look on his face, and his chin tilted obstinately up. But his brown eyes are so sweet, they undo any of the supposed hardness in his expression. A thousand sugar cookies have nothing on them.

“This is the height of the luxury airport pickup experience in Ketterbridge, I’m just letting you know.”

He’s trying to act casual, unconcerned, like none of this even matters to him. His note is giving him away. It’s jumping and stuttering nervously, fluttering like an anxious little bird.

The combination of the nervous note and the completely transparent I-don’t-even-care expression on Jamie’s face is adorable. The boundaries of Aiden's heart are being pushed.

It takes him a second or two to process what Jamie actually said. He goes cold when he does. Did he just say something mean about the car? He hadn’t meant to, not at all.

Fuck. He’s already screwing this up.

“I didn’t say anything,” he protests, and instantly feels stupid. He turns hastily and busies himself with getting his backpack put away, mostly so that Jamie doesn’t see the rising color in his cheeks.

Jamie straightens up from against the car, moves past Aiden to get to the driver’s side. A soft wave of that green scent moves with him. The sleeve of his flannel very lightly brushes Aiden’s elbow as he goes by.

Jamie pauses behind the car, about to pop open the trunk. He scans the curb - looking for a suitcase, presumably - then glances back at Aiden. But he doesn’t say anything, just slips around to the driver’s side door.

Aiden is still frozen from the split second of contact that Jamie doesn’t realize they just shared. He gives himself a shake as soon as Jamie disappears into the car.

This is Aiden’s chance to show Jamie that he’s not the person he used to be. It could be his only chance. He has no idea how his aunt persuaded Jamie to come here, but he’s pretty sure that if he fucks this up, that’s it. It’s a miracle that Jamie was willing to see him at all, and miracles don’t often happen twice.

Get this right, Aiden tells himself desperately. Don’t freeze, don't choke. Just because he looks this fucking cute, and he’s doing and saying cute fucking things, that does not mean you have to panic and say something mean to him, or scare him. Not anymore. Just don’t fucking do it. And don’t go silent, either.

Aiden takes a deep breath, holding onto Jamie’s note. So closeby, so easily within his reach. Where he wants it to be forever.

He drops into the passenger’s seat, closes the door, slaps the dash. Jamie pulls them away from the curb. His car also has that scent, something fresh and green and foresty.

Jamie pushes his sunglasses up while he twists to check his blindspot, and Aiden catches another flash of his amber eyes.

Only now does it hit Aiden. After all this time, he’s in Jamie’s car. With Jamie.

He runs a hand over his arm like he’s bored, then covertly pinches himself, hard. It stings. Still, he barely believes this.

He looks out through the windshield, sees the hazy purple outlines of the mountains in the distance. The trees grow up close to the road here, as they do all over Ketterbridge. But Aiden can see far enough to know that home is in his sights.

The windows of Jamie’s car are all rolled down. The fresh air tastes and feels familiar. Swept clean by the rain, now heavy with summer heat, perfumed by the surrounding forest.

The sky is a sheet of deep blue silk, but an orange glow is building on the horizon. The sun is on its way down. The chirpings of frogs, nightbirds, and crickets will start up soon. Familiar sounds, if distant in Aiden’s memory.

He steals a glance at Jamie. His heart stumbles when he sees that Jamie was already looking at him, his head tipped slightly to the side, his brown eyes curious.

He casts Aiden an uncertain little smile, then turns away quickly, like he didn’t mean to do it. He runs a hand through his brilliant hair, strands catching on his slender fingers.

Aiden’s own fingers twitch by his sides. He crosses his arms, half to hide it. Sits back, hoping that if he acts calm, he’ll find calm.

It’s difficult, though, given this rare closeness to Jamie. Aiden’s eyes keep darting back to the freckles that powder his nose and cheeks. Keep watching the way the wind rolls through his hair, ripples the fabric of his flannel.

Ketterbridge is on the horizon, but it’s looking at Jamie that finally makes Aiden feel like he’s come home.

He’s so fucking nervous that it takes him a second to realize that Jamie is saying something.

“-you like, impersonating Aiden Callahan to get his aunt’s money? Or is this sketchy look just how you dress these days?”

Aiden reaches for his seatbelt. He needs something to do with his hands while he comes up with an answer. This is hell on his nerves, but he really, really needs to not choke right now.

He and Jamie have become strangers to each other, but - Aiden wants more than anything to believe that there’s a chance they could start over.

You’ve probably only got one more shot at this, he tells himself. Just one more shot with Jamie. This time, don’t fuck it up.

This time, don’t you dare let him get away.