Aiden is glowing, after the morning we’ve had together. Or maybe it’s the lingering effects of reading the book I gave him, filled up with loving words. Maybe it's both.

Whatever it is, he keeps looking at me from across the car, watching me with luminous eyes.

My heart stumbles. Looking into Aiden’s eyes never gets old. I could spend lifetimes lost in them. They’re so sweet, so compassionate, so curious, so blue.

He’s almost making me a little shy, looking at me like this. I nibble my lip, folding my hands around my coffee.

And then I’m reaching for his hand, though I don’t remember moving to do it. The way I’m drawn towards him is something like a nerve impulse, subconscious. It just happens.

Aiden was already reaching for me, and our fingers bump into each other halfway across the console, startling both of us. We break eye contact, looking down to see what happened.

We both laugh softly. Aiden folds his fingers around mine, smoothing his thumb along the side of my palm.

The light changes from red to green, and Aiden’s gaze goes back to the road. I sink down in my seat, mentally willing the blush in my cheeks to calm down.

We've been awake for a while, but we got up at dawn, so it’s still early in the day. A bright and rosy morning. The sun is up, but there are very few cars on the road. A sense of stillness is all around us.

I’m happy about that, because I know how much Aiden values a little quiet. The early morning hush is lasting well beyond dawn, although I hear more and more soft bird calls as the sunlight grows richer.

“Where are you taking me?” I ask, since Aiden hasn’t said anything yet.

He shrugs his broad shoulders. “Thought you might want to go for a swim.”

I have no idea what Aiden means by this, but I have a feeling that wherever we’re going, I’ll enjoy myself. It feels good to be with someone I trust so completely, all my intuition telling me that if he’s taking me somewhere, it’s someplace he knows I’d want to be.

Especially if he was willing to leave behind the comfort of his bedroom, where we stayed curled up together for a long time after recreating his dream. He was holding me so close afterwards, reluctant to let me out of his grasp for even a moment.

When I went to put on a pot of coffee, he followed me into the kitchen, two steps behind me the whole way there. Twined his arms around me every time I paused in what I was doing. Kissing the back of my neck while I pulled a filter out of the bag, resting his chin on the top of my head while I tipped coffee beans into the grinder. Smiling so brightly that I stopped and stared every time I turned around and caught sight of it.

Thinking about that smile sends a gentle wave of warmth through my chest. I turn to watch Aiden affectionately as he drives, his wrist resting on the steering wheel, the wind in his glossy chestnut hair.

But I’m a little confused when Aiden pulls into the driveway at the Ghost Office and turns off my car. We didn't have plans to work on the case today, so I'm not sure what we're doing here.

I get out of the car when he does. He reaches for me, and I take his hand, following him towards the river.

The pine trees are heavy with snow. The hush is absolute, except for the crunch of our footsteps on the frozen ground. Our breaths puff before our faces, glowing golden in the growing sunlight.

Finches stir sleepily in the trees overhead, their tiny bodies puffed up by their soft, downy feathers. Winter visitors to the area. Some of them have snowflakes on their little orange beaks. They’re quiet, roosting, but when Aiden and I walk past, they wake up and launch into the air, forming a whirling, feathery white cloud before they settle down on higher branches.

Their bright, chirping songs follow us as we come to a stop on the icy riverbank.

“Aiden,” I say, looking out at the frozen surface of the water. “When you said go for a swim-?”

“Yeah, why not?” Aiden shrugs his jacket off, and I watch with raised eyebrows as he tosses it aside. “It’s just us. There’s no one else around for miles. No one I can hear, anyways. And I can hear everyone in Ketterbridge.”

“Okay, but-” I gesture at the water. “How are we gonna swim in a frozen river?”

Aiden stops, staring at me, and tips his head to the side.

“Um.” He lets out a little laugh. “Did you - forget who you’re here with, or…?”

The instant it hits me, I feel like an idiot.

“Oh, my god. Right, 'cause you’re a Heliomancer, you can… yeah, no, I knew that.”

“Your brain doesn’t work,” Aiden laughs, giving my hair an affectionate ruffle.

“I told you,” I groan. “I think of you as Aiden first. Everything else - Guardian, Heliomancer, archivist, big dumb idiot - that stuff comes after!”

“And I love that,” Aiden says warmly, locking his arms around me, “But I kinda didn’t think you’d forget about it this morning, of all times. After I accidentally lit up my whole apartment last night.”

“Yeah, exactly, that was last night,” I answer, folding my arms around him, too. “So it was before everything that happened this morning. And when we’re together like that, how we were this morning… it’s not just that you’re Aiden first, you’re - you’re just Aiden. And I'm just Jamie. There’s no one else, there’s - nothing else.”

Aiden’s laughing expression suddenly grows serious, though his smile doesn’t fall away at all.

“I don’t know how to explain it,” I add, cringing. “That sounded stupid. Do you know what I mean, though?”

Aiden nods, glides his thumb over my chin, warm blue eyes staring into mine.

“Yeah,” he says. “I know what you mean.”

Disarmed completely by the look on Aiden’s face, I find myself blushing hard. I roll my eyes and try to shove him away, but the movement doesn’t budge him in the slightest. Instead, I actually send myself staggering backward a step, and Aiden has to catch my wrist before I can fall. He presses his lips together, trying not to laugh.

“See?” I ask, when I’ve got my balance back. “Now I’m forgetting that you’re the Bicep Boy, too. Did I even kind of move you?”

“Do you think that you did?” He ruffles my hair again. “If so, that’s very cute of you, Keane.”

“Shut up,” I groan, to another huffing laugh from Aiden.

“You want to go for a swim, or not?” he asks, and pulls off his shirt.

Skinny dipping in the middle of a bright, sunny morning sounds ridiculous, especially looking out at the rock-solid surface of the river. But Aiden said that we’re alone, and he would know. In the gaps in the ice, I can see that the current is flowing slowly and gently. And cold is never a problem, not with my Heliomancer around.

I also don’t want Aiden to put his shirt back on, so.

I slip out of my jacket, then my flannel. I wore the new one that Aiden gave me today. I gently and carefully fold it up, set it on top of the pile of clothing.

We shed our shoes, socks, jeans, everything, until we’re down to our boxers. Aiden’s snapback is the last thing to land on the pile.

I fold my hand into Aiden’s, and he brushes a kiss against my knuckles before he leads me out onto the ice. We walk a few inches above the snowy surface, on an invisible temperature current carefully maintained by my Heliomancer.

We walk until we’re near the middle of the river, then come to a stop.

“Here sound good?” Aiden asks, and I let out a helpless laugh.

“Sure, why the hell not?”

Aiden smiles, and draws me into a long kiss. I cup his face in my hands, then blink in surprise as his fingers slide into my boxers, pushing them down. I smile against his mouth, and do the same to his.

Aiden turns to toss both his pair and mine further away from us, then faces me again.

He takes one look at me, and freezes, his pupils dilating.

I feel a pulse of powerful heat, and the ice disappears from beneath me.

Before I can blink, I’m submerged in the water. I expect it to be a cold shock, but the heat from Aiden - which just melted the surrounding ice in about one second - has already turned the water pleasantly warm. And I was right: the current is forgiving today, meandering and slow.

I burst up through the surface, gasping for breath. Aiden pops up next to me, just as startled as I am, slicking his soaked chestnut hair out of his face.

“Oh my god,” he gasps. “Are you okay?”

“You idiot!” I manage, clearing the water out of my eyes. “What was that?”

“I’m sorry! I meant to do it a lot more gradually! It was an accident, I just-”

“Yeah, an accident, sure it fucking was!” I splash Aiden, shaking my head at him. “You just wanted to dunk me, dude. Admit it!”

“No I didn’t!” Aiden insists, then blinks in surprise when I burst out laughing.

He dissolves into laughter, too, and reaches for me.

He wraps his arms around me, and I fold my legs around his hips. We press our foreheads together, our wet hair mingling.

I remember when we swam together after we pulled our all-nighter at the Ghost Office, building a wall of glass for Aiden to shatter. It was summer, then. Winter, this time. I wonder if we’ll do it again in the spring.

I picture seasons coming and going, and me with Aiden, swimming together in the water. Sometimes surrounded by ice, other times drifting in warm summer waters. The orange and gold of fall. The colorful blossoms and vivid greenery of spring.

I picture us doing this for years, and years. My ever-expanding definition of love has more than enough room for that idea to sit comfortably.

Aiden must hear the way my heart responds to the thought, even if he doesn’t know what caused it. He has natural access to his own invisible world of sound, and I know that my energy speaks to him.

He blinks at me, then draws his head back, peering into my face.

Looking, yes, but also listening. I can tell.

A broad smile turns up his lips, crinkling the corners of his eyes. He lets out a long, happy sigh, then nuzzles his nose into mine.

“You,” he says, “Are easy on the ears.”

I try my best to look offended. “What, not on the eyes?”

Aiden huffs out a little laugh through his nose. He pins his lip between his teeth, his blue eyes roaming over my face. “Why the fuck do you think the ice dissolved like that, man?”

The blush in my cheeks darkens.

“Stop it,” I tell Aiden, burying my face into the curve of his neck. “I can’t handle you. I’m going to die. Literally.”

“No, you aren’t, Keane.” He says it in his firm, inarguable voice, stroking a hand through my hair. “Not while I’m the Guardian, you're not. Only way you die is if I love you to death.”

I let out a helpless groan, drawing back. “But that’s what you’re doing! My fucking heart is gonna pop.”

“Even after I dunked you into the river with no warning?” Aiden taps my nose with his fingertip. “Kinda thought you were mad at me, for a sec.”

“Yeah, I’m furious, obviously.” I try to make an angry face, and Aiden smiles at me like I’m a baby bunny.

Then he hesitates.

“So…” He chews his lip, looks searchingly into my eyes. “No regrets about being with me, then?”

He kind of tried to make it sound like a joke, as if he’s only asking because we once again went unexpectedly tumbling into the river. But he’s suddenly avoiding my gaze, his blue eyes fixed on the frozen river.

I take Aiden’s face in my hands, make him look into my eyes. I want him to see, hear, and feel how sincere I am in my answer.

“No,” I say, stroking my thumbs along his cheekbones. “No regrets, Callahan.”

He smiles, puts his forehead to mine again.

“If I had any regrets, it would just be that you didn’t come back to me sooner,” I pin on.

Aiden pulls back, looking at me.

There’s a long silence before he speaks. The only sounds are the lapping of the water and the soft calls of the birds.

“You know... I always meant to come back for you, Jamie.” Aiden smooths a strand of wet hair out of my face. “I - gave up for a while. For a long time, actually. But that was always my intention.”

I tilt my head to the side, caught by surprise. “What - really?”

Aiden nods earnestly. Looking into my eyes, even though it’s clear that talking about this is making him nervous.

“When I first started planning to leave Ketterbridge,” he continues haltingly, “I was trying to live by my mom’s advice. I didn’t want to risk falling in love with anyone. I had no intention of ever doing it, but you made me feel in serious danger of it.” He glances away, suddenly a little shy. “I hadn’t figured out yet that it was already way too late, that I - loved you, already.”

I have about a billion things I want to say in answer to that, but I don’t say a word. I know how hard this is for Aiden to talk about, and I don’t want to do anything that might throw him off.

“I had already been planning to leave town, anyways,” he continues, in his slow, soft-spoken voice. “And I thought that I could make myself forget about you, if I just stayed away long enough. So ditching Ketterbridge would solve all my problems, including the problem of you. I figured that until I left, I’d make sure that nothing happened between us by making it so that you’d never want anything to happen between us. You know, by being a big fucking jerk to you, all the time.”

There’s a silence again. Aiden looks away from me, old guilt in his eyes. But we talked through this, on that night when we visited our old high school. He knows that I want him to forgive himself for it, and he's trying to.

He gathers himself together, takes a breath.

“Anyways, that was the plan. But by the time I actually left…” Aiden shrugs helplessly. “We’d known each other for years, and those years of knowing you made me realize that I didn’t care what Leigh - what my mom had said.” He puts his forehead against mine again. “I just wanted to be with you, no matter the risk it involved, or how nervous it made me. You have no idea how fucking much I wished I could take back every single thing I’d ever done to push you away."

He takes another deep breath, his bronze cheeks burning.

"So... yeah. By the time I skipped town, I had every intention of coming back for you, one day.”

My heart hammers against my ribcage, trying to leap through to Aiden. I place my palm on his face, thinking that no one else has been able to render me speechless quite so effectively as he has.

It’s a long moment before I pull myself together enough to say anything in response.

“But why did you leave at all?” I ask softly. "Why not stay, and try to work things out with me?"

Aiden hesitates, biting his lip. “It’s - complicated.”

Which means he doesn’t want to go into it, right now.

I’m not going to push him on it. I prefer when Aiden opens up on his own, when it’s natural, when he chooses to share these intimate things with me. It means I only get them in fragments, but I’m slowly and lovingly building a collection of them.

One thing, though. “Aiden - did you say that you gave up for a while? On ever coming back to me?”

“Mhm.” He winces, memories clouding his blue eyes. “Those were dark fucking days, to tell you the truth.”

I tip Aiden’s face up to mine, and press a long, adoring kiss onto his mouth.

“I’m really, really glad that you changed your mind about that,” I tell him. "About giving up on me. On us."

Aiden smiles, glowing again, and pulls me in closer.

“I am, too.”