My thoughts are on Aiden, and they have been all day.

I spent the rest of yesterday following the response to Ripley’s latest art attack. The local news station did end up running the story, and it made me laugh to watch the station manager complain to the reporter about it. 

“Never in my life did I think I would have customers complaining because our vending machines aren’t distributing art!” he said, red-faced and offended.

The Bright Future cans and bottles were snapped up even faster than I think Ripley bargained for. I scrolled through the tagged photos of the little works of art during my break at the flower shop, admiring all of the different creations Ripley worked up for them. Proud of him, and happy that all the hard work we've put in on this exhibition won't go unseen. There's definitely some buzz for the show, now.

But Aiden is having a different response to all this.

He was thrilled that the first two days are already sold out, but that quickly dissolved into anxiety. More than ever, he’s feeling the pressure to make the exhibition amazing. To not have it be a let-down after Ripley knocked it out of the park with his advertising for it.

He didn’t say anything, but I could tell. He got quiet on the drive back, nervously tapping his thumb on the wheel. When I dropped him at City Hall, he threw himself into work.

I found myself thinking about him all day. Worrying about him working too hard, getting too stressed out.

I was distracted during my shift at the shop, Aiden on my mind the whole time. I found myself grateful that we didn't have too many customers. It was a particularly icy night, the last farewell of winter before spring starts to fully set in.

I ended up having to stay thirty minutes late, making a last-minute, custom bouquet to be picked up at opening tomorrow. When I stepped outside, I found Aiden waiting for me in the cold. He’d been out there the whole time.

"The door was locked," he said. "And you seemed really focused. I didn't want to knock, or call. Break your concentration."

I realized that he was shivering beneath his jacket. When I stared at him, concerned, he explained that he was fine, just exhausted from work. He didn’t want to expend energy to keep himself warm, because he was worried he wouldn’t have enough to keep me warm on the walk home.

When we got back to my apartment, he opened his work bag and extracted some photocopies of old newspapers he’d archived. He'd been collecting them all week, all the stories he thought I’d find funny or interesting, things with surprising details. We got cozy together on my couch and did dramatic readings of them. At one point I laughed so hard that a tear rolled down my cheek, and Aiden gently kissed it away.

He’s terrible at video games, but he likes to watch me play, especially when he's tired. So when we put the newspaper copies aside, I loaded up Dead Cells, tried to beat it with a new Boss Cell activated. Aiden watched peacefully, his head in my lap, his cheek against the fabric of my boxers.

At some point I sensed a change in his breathing, and realized that he was out.

He was so deeply asleep that I couldn’t bring myself to wake him up. We slept there together, snuggled up on the couch.

I woke up to find him gone the next morning, already back at work. I thought of how he was all night. So sweet, but so thoroughly exhausted. He was smiling and laughing in my arms, but I knew he'd already be stressed out again at work.

So I took some scissors to the printouts of the old newspapers. I rearranged the words into a stupid, ridiculous note for Aiden. I glued them in place on a new sheet of paper. When I stopped by City Hall to bring Aiden a coffee, I left the note on his desk.

He was in the archives all day, trying to get his regular work done so he could get straight back to the exhibition. As a result, he didn’t find the letter until I was already at the shop, and I didn’t answer my phone when he called.

And now here I am, in the backroom, listening to the voicemail he left me.

“Keane,” he laughs. “You dumb, stupid - you have a dirty mind, you know that? How did you even make newspaper articles into something so - what if someone had found this before me, dude? This - this is a place of business, you fucking...”

He stops, dissolves into laughter again.

My toes curl in my Converse. I press the phone closer to my ear.

“God damn you, Linden,” Aiden continues, his words tripped up with his huffing laughter. “You remember I told you that I’m trying to stay focused, right? If there’s an easier way than this to ensure that I’d be distracted, I’d sure like to see it.”

A pause, another soft huff. I can picture him shaking his head.

“Dumbass," he says. "I love you. Text me.”

I hold very still for a moment, my phone pressed against my ear. Eventually I lower it, but only to start the voicemail over. When it reaches the end, I start it over again.

I just stand there, listening to Aiden’s laughter, sinking deeply into my love for him.

I’m glad that my shift is over, because I need some air by the time I finally slip my phone back into my pocket. I step out into the darkness, zip up my jacket, and walk very slowly to the grocery store.

I’m having one of those nights where Aiden somehow touches everything around me. The whole world seems coated in some kind of sparkling brilliance. Every drop of the steady drizzle coming down twinkles brightly, as do the puddles in the roads. The sky is inlaid with diamond stars.

The wind trails its cool fingertips over my cheeks. The soft patter of the drizzle on the road, on the rooftops - a raindrop symphony, whispering music.

All of Ketterbridge becomes a jewel box, filled exclusively with things that glow, that shine.

I have no idea how Aiden manages to place me in this magic world, when he’s not even here.

I let myself into his place, my arms folded around a brown paper bag of groceries. I know that Aiden is tired, that he’s been working really hard, and that I'm rolling up uninvited. But - honestly, I just don’t want to go the rest of the night without seeing him.

I’m hoping he won’t mind that I just showed up like this. Maybe I should go, actually. My Companion Plant does value his alone time.

At the very least, though, I can leave him the cookies I planned to surprise him with. He shouldn't be back for a while. I have time to make them.

I take out the ingredients that I bought and start putting them together. Working in silence, lost in my feelings, in my thoughts about Aiden.

I startle and turn around at the sound of the sliding glass door suddenly being pushed open. Aiden steps inside, his shoulders damp with the drizzle, his chestnut hair uncombed by the breeze. He stops in the doorway, staring at me.

“Um - hi!” I push my hair out of my face with the back of my wrist, since my fingers are covered with cookie dough. “Sorry, I know we didn’t have plans, but - I was just gonna make some cookies for you and go, since you’ve been working so h-”

I break off as Aiden forcefully closes the sliding glass door behind himself, then tosses his jacket and work bag onto the couch. He hooks one finger into the collar of his dress shirt, yanks the topmost button undone, like he needs to breathe. He tosses his hair out of his eyes, and looks at me.

He puts one hand on his hip. With the other, he holds up the note I left him.

I bite my lip, twisting the ring around my finger.

“Am I in trouble?” I ask.

“Yes,” Aiden says, and drops the note onto the coffee table.

He strides across the apartment and takes me by my hips. I stare up at him with wide eyes as he walks me backwards until I’m pressed up against the wall.

A wave of heat comes with him. I see the source of it, the flames burning in those intense blue eyes.

He presses his body into mine as he bends down to kiss me. Pinning me between him and the wall. My heart stumbles, then begins to soar.

One kiss, and my whole body starts on fire, and I’m melting. One kiss, and there’s this throb in my veins, electricity rushing through my body, aching want spreading out from the very core of me.

When Aiden pulls back, I look up at him in a daze. Blinking slowly, completely unraveled.

His husky, low-voiced rumble breaks the breathless silence.

“Read it too many times.”

I stare at him, confused, then suddenly understand.

“What - the note?” I laugh, twisting my fingers into his glossy hair. “You said that it was stupid, not sexy.”

“Yeah,” Aiden says, “Well.”

I wait for him to go on, then let out another laugh when he doesn’t. My cheeks are practically radiating heat from the intensity of the blush in them.

Aiden looks down at me, blue flames burning out of control in his eyes. He takes me by the chin, tips my face up to his. Drags his thumb over my parted lips.

“Do you know,” he whispers, “That sometimes it’s painful, how much I want you?”

He brings our mouths together, and the fire burning in him spills into me.

Just like that, we’re both swept up in the same frantic, wild, all-consuming fever.

We don’t make it to the bed, don’t even make it past the kitchen counter. Even the seconds-long walk to the couch would be too much torment for either of us.

We find ourselves in complete possession of each other, right there where we are.

It feels like a dream, but no dream was ever this vivid.

Aiden’s deep voice enveloping me, growing more rough and breathless the deeper we sink into complete abandon. His expression in the moonlight. The taste of him. His heat seeping into me. With each movement he makes, a powerful wave of pleasure that leaves behind mind-numbing ecstasy in every cell of my body. I feel drunk on it, dizzy, in a spellbinding trance.

I can tell that Aiden is right there with me. Body to body, we both succumb to it completely.

By the time we stop, we're both taking deep, gasping breaths, delirious, struggling to hold ourselves up. I can’t even say where I am, right now. Aiden and I have leapt off of the earth.

I remember suddenly that I had worried that our first time together was so good, there would be no recapturing what it felt like. That's since been disproven time and time again, but at a moment like this, the thought strikes me as so absurd that I let out a soft, hysterical laugh.

“What?” Aiden stammers, against the back of my neck.

I try to answer him, but my mind is still drifting in the resonating echoes of what just happened. I can’t form words.

Instead, I gather up the few items of clothing that we managed to tear off before we couldn't wait any longer. Then I take Aiden’s hand, and lead him into the bedroom.

I glance back at him, and my heart stumbles.

Aiden with no shirt, his pants and belt still undone. His hair all fucked up by my hands, his bronze skin bearing a light sheen of sweat.

His blue eyes, dazzlingly beautiful. Still dreamy and heat-glazed, like mine. Still fixed on me with searing intensity.

We collapse together onto his bed, lay unmoving for a long moment. I look at Aiden, watching the interplay of moonlight and shadow on his face.

My body feels weak and boneless, but at the same time, I feel strangely new again. There’s a blissful, cathartic, unburdened lightness in my chest. It's a feeling that only Aiden gives me. Something about having your every desire met, and then some.

Aiden runs a hand through his hair, staring at the ceiling.

“S’one of those times where I can’t believe it’s real,” he says softly.

“I - I get it.” I’m stammering a little. “Can’t believe you didn’t explode anything.”

He closes his eyes. “Don’t have enough energy.”

I prop myself up on my elbows, arching an eyebrow at him. “But you had enough energy for that?”

Aiden turns his head to look at me. He nibbles his lip, gives his shoulders a bashful shrug. “Yeah. Guess so.”

I laugh, sitting up. Aiden smiles at me, then blinks when I spread a hand on his chest. One last residual shiver of pleasure rolls through his body.

I strip all of his remaining clothes away, then let him do the same with mine. Naked, he rolls onto his stomach, stretches out his long legs, flexes his feet.

I know that I’m in no danger of crushing a man built like Aiden, so I place my body on top of his, my cheek nestled within the cozy valley between his shoulder blades. The front of my thighs against the back of his. I feel wrapped in his warmth.

He lets out a low, rumbling laugh. Flattened against him as I am, I feel the vibration of it deeply.

“You fit pretty good like this, Keane.”

I press a kiss onto Aiden's back, then let out a contented sigh. I lift my fingers to gently stroke his face, feel the stubble where I’ve gotten used to the full beard.

I think again of Aiden as he was when he first came back. So certain that there couldn’t be anything romantic between us, after our history. So sure that he wouldn’t be able to convince me that there should be.

So sure that he would lose, but determined to try, anyways.

I snuggle up against him, endlessly grateful that he did. He lets out a deep breath, a tired, happy smile on his face.

We both swim deeply in the immense ocean of love between us. The drizzling rain taps quietly against the windows.

Aiden rolls over, shifting my body so that it stays on top of his. He looks up at me, tucks a strand of hair out of my face.

“Hey,” he murmurs. “You - you want to start looking, soon? For our place? I know I’ve been slammed with work, but - I don’t want to wait.”

I give Aiden my answer by tipping forward to kiss him. When I'm good and done, I draw back and push my fingers through his hair, its familiar softness.

He doesn't open his eyes to look at me, and I suddenly realize why. He's listening. To me, or to us.

A fiery wave of love melts through my chest. Without looking at me, Aiden senses it. He must have heard it.

Goosebumps sweep down his arms. His shoulders draw in slightly. His gentle hands on my back begin to sink some pressure in. He's holding me closer to him, holding his breath.

He seems submerged in sound for a moment. Motionless, absorbed completely in what he’s hearing, like it's something sublime.

He lets out a stuttering breath, then strokes his hand through my hair, a radiant smile on his face.

“Promise you'll never stop singing for me, Keane,” he murmurs, very quietly.

You're what makes me sing, Companion Plant, I want to tell him. This song is everlasting, so long as you keep loving me back.

“I promise,” I say instead, and Aiden’s smile crinkles the corners of his eyes.

I abruptly remember that this whole thing began because I wanted to take Aiden's mind off of the stress of the exhibition for a minute. That plan worked out much better than I hoped.

I smile victoriously, leaning down to press a kiss onto Aiden's forehead.

I want our new home to feel safe, comforting, nourishing. Our garden, where we’ll grow together. But we don't have it yet, and for now, I want my arms to be that home for Aiden. Someplace where he can breathe, shake off the stress of work or his Guardianship, or whatever else might be weighing on those broad shoulders.

I want him to know that he can rest in my love, just like I rest in his.