I have to admit there's a small part of me that's terrified you'll wake up one day and realize you don't need me anymore... that you'll leave.❞
— @bruisednotes for jordi
There's something about Aiden that's different now - after the job and the coma, and all the mess that had come with it - a sensitivity about him that Jordi's never seen before. He's quieter, calmer, most still, and his eyes linger on Jordi in ways that make him itch, make him want to lash out. Make him think of a quiet call and haunting words, a thank you that had almost felt like a goodbye, and a declaration that had made him feel fear, real fear, for the first time in a very, very long time.
— "I'm going to hang around for a while, still have some lost time to make up for. I actually just wanted to say thanks for setting this up, and, well… I love you."
Yeah, Aiden had nearly killed him with that one, nearly caused him to have a widow-maker heart attack right there in the fucking produce aisle. Fucking oranges in his hands and vomit in his throat, and a shake to his voice that he'd just barely disguised as confusion. It had felt like a goodbye, and between the call ending and his next one beginning, Jordi had forgotten the oranges and his cart and had gotten on the first flight to Europe.
He'd been in a fog, at the time, nearly the whole time. Could barely remember anything but The Call, and nothing of the ones that he must have made directly after. Jordi didn't remember the flight, or the bartering, the stupid amount of money he'd spent on clothes and supplies when he realized he'd forgotten his to-go bag.
He remembered the boat trip though, the way that it'd felt like a trip down the River Styx... And he remembers seeing Aiden after. Aiden and his wide and confused eyes when he'd come through that shitty apartment door. Aiden alive and well and healing but not the same. Quieter and softer with eyes and hands that lingered, and a mouth that didn't know how to form the same sharp grins or insults, but knew how to smile wider and with more feeling than Jordi felt he'd seen for years.
A man that spewed soft sentimentality where once he would have said harsh realities - a new habit that he carried with him back to Jordi's hastily rented condo, one that kept going and going and going until —
"I have to admit there's a small part of me that's terrified you'll wake up one day and realize you don't need me anymore... that you'll leave." Said in the safety of night, while they're illuminated by the flickering colors of a muted television. Murmured just loud enough to be heard above the whisper of fabric shifting, of weight settling. Pressed into the heat of Jordi's shirt, against the ache of a shoulder that had never quiet healed after a job in Belarus.
He's such a fucking idiot. They both are, they have to be if it's taken them this long to fucking talk about it. Them and their future, and what it meant now that they were both out of the field.
"Aiden," Jordi starts, voice not exactly unkind, but not warm either - not yet. "I've invested way too much in you to throw you away like that. It'd be a waste of almost two decades of both our lives to split up now."
I love you. I've loved you since you were stupid and clever, and I was clever and stupid, and we fell into each other like intimacy-hungry idiots while a city burned around us.
"I'm not going anywhere, and you're not going anywhere but bed. Jesus Christ, maybe the coma did leave you with some brain trauma."