Noel Arden just wants to disappear. 

As a member of a prestigious and influential family known for producing powerful espers and guides, Noel’s D classification is an embarrassment. Determined to work as a guide despite his father’s opposition, Noel spends his days in the D-suite of Halo, the largest, most successful Paradigm agency in the country, keeping his head down and enduring the less pleasant aspects of his job. 

It’s not a bad life; he likes his coworkers, he doesn’t have to rely on his increasingly hostile father, and he’s almost never deployed to Fray sites. As long as he steers clear of his S-class esper half-brother, he can just melt into the background and pretend to be a normal, low level guide, just one of hundreds in Halo’s bottom ranks. Invisible and unremarkable. Exactly the way he wants it.

Then an emergency situation during an unexpected deployment forces Noel to shatter his quiet, boring life with his own hands and thrusts him directly into the notoriety he’s worked so hard to avoid. 

When he witnesses Jade Ransom, Halo’s star esper and one of the only S-classes in the country, melting down from corruption overload, Noel has no choice but to use the ability he swore to never reveal in order to save both Jade and the city from destruction. Jade, desperate after a life of guiding intolerance, latches onto Noel as the only guide he’s ever properly synced with and insists on being exclusive partners. With his back against the wall and his pesky conscience whispering in his ear, Noel agrees. 

Struggling to balance his secret, his normal job, and his connection to Jade, Noel finds the stable life he worked so hard to build crumbling around him. And as he and Jade grow closer, Noel has to reckon with the vast differences between them and decide if he’s prepared to burn himself out just to let Jade shine.

#GUIDEVERSE #ESPER #SLOWBURN 

[ADULT LANGUAGE AND SUBJECT MATTER]

*original cover by me
*character portraits commissioned

Jade is strong enough that if he truly wanted to resist, he could have, easily, but he lets himself be dragged forward and meets Noel in a graceless clash of lips and teeth. Noel presses into the kiss insistently, pushing up onto his toes and wrapping his arms around Jade's neck, and Jade responds by opening his mouth, tangling their tongues together, and plastering his burning hands to the bare plane of Noel's back.


This is a bad idea, some small part of Noel's brain concedes. He's too worked up, anxiety and anger congealing unpleasantly in the pit of his stomach, and guiding in a negative state of mind is never a good idea, not to mention having sex while he feels so awful, but that rational voice quickly dies beneath a tide of clawing heat. No matter what the smart thing to do is, Noel wants this—wants to feel useful and productive and needed, even if it's just temporary. Even if it's just pretend.


Chapter 54 - 54. Rough [EXPLICIT]