For a long moment, Aiden and I stare at the TV in stunned, blank silence.

Then, in tandem, we turn to look at each other. Aiden’s expression is a near-match to my own - disbelief, astonishment. But his has an added, massive dose of embarrassment. His cheeks are rapidly coloring up, turning crimson. He’s blinking hard and fast, suddenly shy, scrambling for something to say.

“I-” He hastily breaks his gaze away from mine, running a hand over the scruff on his jaw. “I, um. So, okay. That - was-”

“Oh my god, Aiden,” I stammer, pressing my fingers to my own burning cheeks.

“Well - I don’t know!” he sputters, gesturing wildly to the TV. “You want me to account for myself from before I could talk? You know how much I love the way you sound, you know that I’ve - I've always…”

He falters into silence, arriving a little late at the realization that my heart just tripped over.

“Jesus Christ,” he breathes, staring at me with wide eyes. He reaches out and slowly takes my face in his hands. “Even then…”

I shake my head at him, struck speechless. I very slowly turn and pick up the Xbox controller, play the video again, and fast forward to the part where Aiden first comes crawling to me. The part where he eagerly throws himself onto me, and I catch him in my arms. The sound of our mingled, happy giggles.

Something is pouring through me like a shower of brilliant light, stealing all the breath from my lungs. I could almost cry, for some reason. I turn back to Aiden, still at an absolute loss for words. He stares at me, unable to find any of his own.

“Was that,” I finally manage, in a scraping voice, “Was that the last time we ever saw each other, before my first day of high school?”

“Yeah, it must have been.” Aiden slowly pushes a hand through his hair, reeling just as hard as I am. “You know that it’s nearly impossible for me to pick out one note from the rest. I guess I needed the help of close proximity to pick yours out, the first time. Or the - the second time. High school was the second time. I must have lost it after the first time, I was too little, there was no way I could’ve held on…”

He fades off into dazed silence. Neither of us speaks for a long moment.

My heart is working itself into overdrive, trying to keep up with all the warm feelings flooding through it from every direction. My eyes go back to the TV, where the tiny version of Aiden is trying with all his heart to make his way to me, battling through all of the hands reaching out to stop him.

Aiden looks at the video, too. But his eyes are on the baby version of me. Watching me smile happily as I see him coming, reaching out my arms for him.

The mounting tidal wave of love in my heart is building up in his, too, and at the same pace. I can see it glowing out from his blue eyes.

We both fall apart at the same time. Aiden sinks down on the couch and presses his palms to his eyes, lets out an almost pained whimper. I snatch my inhaler up from the coffee table and give it a hard shake. I put it to my mouth as Aiden sits up and gathers me into his arms, starts pressing rapidfire kisses up my back.

“Look at you,” he groans, his deep voice helpless. “Shit, oh my god. Feeling too much. Hurts. Love you too much. Love my aunt too m-”

“I’m - dying,” I wheeze at him.

“Cool, me too. We’re going out together.”

“Stop it,” I gasp-laugh at him, then use my inhaler again, finally starting to catch my breath. “My god. This is more than any one body is supposed to feel at once. This shit is lethal. Bury me in the garden, please.”

“Fucking tell me about it, man. And I just had that conversation with Ralph - and this?” Aiden picks up the note from my dad, stares down at it with dazed eyes. “How much am I supposed to handle in one day?”

I blink at him, confused. “Sorry - what? The note?”

Aiden points to our two names, scribbled out in my dad’s handwriting. “It’s to both of us.”

I take a second to try and follow his line of thought, but I’m still lost. “So?”

Aiden nibbles his lip, not looking at me. “So, this is the first time I’ve ever had anything that was addressed to me and signed love, dad.”

I stare blankly at Aiden for a long moment, then exhale a soft, punched-out sound and gather him up into my arms. I bury my nose in his soft, shiny hair, which is still saturated with the cold breeze from outside. He sinks into my arms, winding his around me.

“Okay if I thank you for the note, instead of Marcus?” Aiden asks, his deep voice muffled against my chest. “Feel like it’d be weird to thank him, but I've gotta thank someone. You can accept on behalf of the Keane fam.”

“Yes. You’re welcome.” I give Aiden a tight squeeze. “And I’m so sorry.”

He huffs out a soft, ragged laugh. “There’s a lot going on, right now.”

“I know.” I let Aiden go and head for the Xbox. “You know what? I'm turning this off. We can’t have this play one more time. Both of us are gonna fall apart again.”

“Agreed,” Aiden says firmly, his voice rough around the edges.

I press the eject button, and the disc freezes for a second before the screen goes blank. It froze on the part of the video where Aiden was being carried out of the church, both hands desperately reaching out for me.

I stand there in silence long enough that Aiden gets up from the couch and wraps his arms around me from behind. He bends to put his chin on my shoulder, nuzzles his nose into my cheek.

“You okay, Linden?”

“Yeah, I just…” I shake my head, let out a slow breath. “Do you ever think about how things could have been different, Aiden? There are all these moments in time where if just one thing had been different, it could’ve changed everything.”

Aiden doesn’t answer, so I keep going.

“What if my mom had gotten there with me one minute later, after the picture had already been taken? And there was no need to keep us apart? One minute, that could’ve been all the difference. Aunt Sarah would’ve seen more of how we were with each other, and then maybe she would have tried to sneak you out to see me again. And I know your mom worked hard to keep you away from other kids, but Ketterbridge is a tiny town, we - we must have had a thousand near misses…”

Aiden goes silent for a minute or two. I wait for him to surface from his thoughts, reaching back to rest my fingertips on the rich scruff coating his jaw.

“I used to think about that all the time,” he rumbles softly, tightening his arms around me. “If I could only go back and change just one thing. Do one thing differently. Anything that would have brought me back to you sooner, or made it so that I never pushed you away in the first place…”

Aiden stops for a moment, catching his breath.

“But - the way it did happen… that's what brought us here.” He nods at our living room, which is gradually filling up with gentle, golden sunlight. Then he leans in close to me again, brushes a soft kiss onto my cheek. “It brought us this.”

I close my hands around his forearm, leaning back into him. A smile is slowly spreading across my face, warming my whole body.

“I don’t know. Fate works in strange ways.” Aiden snuggles up closer to me. “As we know better than anyone.”

I let out a quiet laugh, and Aiden does, too. There’s a thoughtful silence, and then he adds -

“Now I’m even thinking about… if you and me had been friends when we were little, I would never have met Ralph. I wouldn’t have been walking down that street all mad, the day that he crashed into me. And - it’s gonna sound weird to you, given everything that’s happened, but I definitely wouldn’t want to undo that moment.”

I turn my head and look up at Aiden with questioning eyes.

“He needed me,” Aiden explains, very softly. “Way more than I realized at the time. I knew his home situation wasn’t good, but I didn’t really grasp the full… it wasn’t just me who needed him, is what I’m saying. He held me up when I was down, and I knew I was doing the same for him, but I never understood how much.”

I blink at Aiden, suddenly deep in thought. I had already pieced together that Ralph’s life at home wasn’t an easy one, but now I’m wondering about the true extent of his unhappiness in high school.

I'm thinking about high school Aiden’s ever-present, icy-cold, apathetic expression. I believed it completely when I knew him then, but this version of him was hiding behind it the whole time. A mask, that's all it was. Something to hide behind.

I remember how Ralph used to be. The cocky strut with which he followed Aiden everywhere. The way he would roughly and rudely shoulder his way into conversations. His sudden meanness, which always came from nowhere. His dismissive, mocking laughter. His permanent fuck around and find out facial expression. The nasty way he would look at you like you were nothing, before you’d even have a chance to get a good look at him.

He always acted like he didn’t care about anything. Like Aiden did, but - in his own way. And now I have to wonder…

What was really going on, beneath the surface? Because now it’s abundantly clear that Ralph did care deeply about something. Someone.

And not just Aiden, if my instincts are telling me the right thing.

My thoughts go to Noah, and I nibble my lip, smoothing my thumb up and down Aiden’s wrist. 

“I do wish I hadn’t been so fucking mean to you, though,” Aiden says suddenly, giving me a tight squeeze. “If we’re talking about stuff we wish we could change, that would be right up at the top. I wish I could undo that shit pretty much every goddamn day. Just like how Ralph wishes that he had never…”

Aiden trails off, but I know where that sentence was going.

“Did Ralph say that?” I twist around to face Aiden, more than a little startled. “He actually said it?”

“Not in so many words, but he definitely does. Believe me. Especially because it’s Noah that he did it to.” Aiden smooths a strand of hair out of my face, memories moving through his eyes. “You never really got to see it, but Ralph and Noah used to be - like-”

Aiden stops, struggling for the right words, but there’s no need.

I think of the casual way Noah asked me about how Ralph was doing, when he came over the other night. Even after everything, he wanted to know.

I think of Ralph, his voice when he told Aiden how guilty he’s been feeling. The immense exhaustion that had bruised his eyes and worn him out through and through, but still, he couldn’t sleep thinking about what he did to Noah.

And I think of the way that Noah stared at me, when I said that I think Ralph does care about him, despite what he said. The expression in Noah's grey eyes in that moment.

He looked like he didn’t believe me. He also looked like he very badly wanted to.

“Noah thinks that Ralph doesn’t care about him at all,” I tell Aiden. “He thinks that he doesn’t mean anything to Ralph, and that he never did.”

“What-?” Aiden blinks at me, taken aback. “There’s no way he honestly believes that he never meant anything to Ralph. No fucking way. We were like brothers, the three of us.”

I shake my head at Aiden, letting him see in my eyes how serious I am.

“He does believe that, Aiden. Because - Ralph said it to him. The night Noah left the house, Ralph said that to him. Right to his face.”

Aiden stares at me, stricken, his eyes wide with dismay - then makes an agonized sound. He pinches the bridge of his nose with his fingertips, wincing deeply.

“Ralph,” he groans softly, beneath his breath. “And I thought I could teach the master class on self-destruction.”

He blows out a long, frustrated exhale, folding his muscled arms over his chest. Closes his eyes for a second.

“Well, I can see why Noah would believe him,” he rumbles. “But I see right through that shit. Man, I really hope they talk. Even if they can’t be friends anymore, Noah should know that it isn’t true.”

We both fall into thought, into silence. Luna watches us, slow-blinking from where she’s curled up on top of my Xbox.

“Aiden," I say quietly, after a moment. "Did you say that you and Ralph met because you were walking down the street, and he crashed into you?”

“I was - kinda storming along, honestly. Ralph was running in the opposite direction, so, yeah. He crashed into me.”

“You didn’t see him coming?”

“I wasn’t looking where I was going. I wasn’t really going anywhere specific. I’d had a super terrible day, I was just walking, taking random turns and stuff.” Aiden looks down at me, brows knitting in faint confusion. “Why?”

Aiden didn’t just need Ralph. Ralph needed him, too. Badly, it sounds like. And Aiden happened to run into him when he was walking with no direction in mind, letting his instincts choose the turns.

Aiden, who has the power of Fate running through his veins. Who didn’t look up in time to get out of the way. Ralph would have run right past him, if he had. They wouldn’t have met.

I shake my head, dazed, then look up into Aiden’s ocean eyes.

“I think your Guardian powers manifest in a lot more ways than we realize, Sugar Maple,” I tell him, gently taking his face in my hands. “Subtle ways.”

Aiden absorbs that for a moment, then shakes his head, like he’ll have to think harder about it.

A guilty look suddenly comes into his eyes, which quickly blink away from my face.

“Sometimes I wonder, though…” He’s speaking very slowly, even by Aiden standards. “If Noah had never met us, or if I hadn't agreed to bring him into the group - he would never have gone through all the horrible shit that he did, living with Ralph.”

I let go of Aiden’s jaw and take his hands in mine.

“It sounds to me like all three of you were really important to each other,” I answer, squeezing his fingers. “I don’t think for one second that Noah wishes you never met. And yes, he went through something awful. But he was just telling me the other night how happy he is, now. There’s a real chance he sees it like you see it. He has Mel, Raj, Nikita - and who knows if he would have found his way to them, if things had been different? Or to Ripley, or me, or to you, for that matter? You think he'd be willing to give any of us up?”

Aiden swallows, slowly lifts his eyes to my face.

“I don't think that Noah would make the trade,” I tell him, very seriously. “I don’t think he’d undo things, if it meant he wouldn’t land where he is now.”

Aiden stares at me, then lets out a long exhale. He draws me in close, tips forward, buries his nose in my hair.

“You always make me feel better,” he mumbles. “Don’t know how you do it.”

I smile against his chest, taking two handfuls of his henley.

“Seriously, babe, I think the only thing hurting Noah these days is that he and Ralph left things the way they did.”

“That’s why Ralph needs to tell Noah the truth,” Aiden groans. “About what Noah means to him.”

“Woof. That’s a tall order, for Ralph.”

“I know," Aiden answers, and then, trying to disguise the hope in his voice - "You think he’ll give it a try, though?”

I give it some serious thought before I answer.

“Yes.”

Aiden lets out a little breath. “You think Noah will decide he wants to hear it?”

This one I need to think about for even longer, but my gut is telling me…

“Mhm.” I draw back and look up into Aiden’s eyes, nodding earnestly. “Yeah. I think he will.”