I stumble back into my apartment, the happy haze left over from Aiden’s visit fleeing my brain at a dizzying speed. Noah seizes a fistful of my t-shirt and forces me all the way down the hall and into my living room. His one open eye is narrowed and furious. For some reason he has a shabby backpack on his shoulder, and he lets it drop to the floor as the door swings shut after us.
“You,” he snarls, using his free hand to stab a finger into my chest. “This is all your fault.”
“My fault, what?” I instinctively close my hands around his wrists, trying unsuccessfully to push him off. “What happened to you? Your eye, Noah, oh my god!”
It’s not just bad, it’s stunning. His right eye is swollen completely shut, the ring of purple around it so dark that it looks painted on. There’s a coppery smell clinging to him that makes me think his eye might be bleeding, but I quickly realize that it’s coming from the hand gripping my shirt. Noah’s knuckles are torn up, red and inflamed and covered with little beads of blood.
“Are you okay?” I ask, and he lets out a laugh that almost sounds like a sob.
“You’re so fucking annoying!” His voice is heavy with rage, and he uses my shirt to give me a shake. His breath in my face is so alcoholic that I’m pretty sure it’s going to get me tipsy if he remains this close. “What kind of question is that?”
“Would you get off of me?”
“NO!” he shouts, so loudly that I jump. “Would you just get fucking mad, just for once? You fucking - you-” He releases my shirt, and I seize the moment of respite, scrambling to put the kitchen island between us.
“Noah, what are you-?”
He grabs the water glasses I had been about to rinse and throws one on the floor. It smashes into pieces, and I wince, wondering how many fucking things in my apartment can get broken in one day. A thought I have to put on hold as he hurls the other water glass at me. I duck below the kitchen island, gasping at the shattering sound coming from somewhere over my head.
“Noah! Stop it!” I spring upright, if only to keep an eye on him, and find him walking slowly around the kitchen island towards me. I start backing up, and now somehow I’m being slow-mo chased around my own home. “What did I do to you? What’s my fucking fault, dude?”
“You said that I should just do whatever I want.” He keeps walking towards me as I hurry to put the couch between us, and then the armchair, and then the kitchen island again, and now we’ve gone in a big circle.
“No, I most definitely did not! I said you don’t need Ralph’s permission to do what you want!”
“No difference.”
“Big difference.” I test out stopping, holding out my hands to keep him a safe distance away. “Who did that to your eye? Let me look at it. Your knuckles are bleeding, you need help.”
“Stop it!” he shouts hoarsely, his hands balling into fists at his sides. “I want to punch you in the fucking face, just give me a reason, I just need one fucking reason!” He’s close enough now to give me another shove, and I impact with something hard: I’ve backed myself up against a wall. Nowhere to go.
Aiden will come and save me if I’m in real danger, right?
“Noah, stop.” I press my hands flat on the wall, trying to seem calm, even though my fingers are shaking. “Stop, just-”
“Shut up!”
“Listen, I’m sorry.”
He stops, staring at me.
“What?”
“I said I’m sorry.” I point to his injured eye. “I’m sorry that this happened to you.”
There’s a lengthy, precarious silence.
Is he crying? It’s hard to tell with one eye swollen shut, but the open one is damp, his lashes clinging together. I haltingly reach out a hand and put it on his shoulder. He freezes, his open eye fixed on my face.
“It’s okay,” I tell him. “Take a breath.”
He stares at me, his chest heaving.
“You-” he begins, and stops.
“Look, do you want some water or something?” I ask tentatively. “Have you eaten anything tonight?”
He doesn’t move, so I carefully shift around him. It’s scary to put my back to him - I don’t know what he’s going to do - but I open my fridge and look around inside.
“I think I have some leftovers in here, do you want someth-?” I stop, hearing a movement behind me, and turn around just in time to see Noah pull a full bottle of vodka from my liquor shelf. “Wait, Noah, no, no no no-”
He cracks the cap, puts the bottle to his mouth, and takes a giant swig. My heart sinks, and I stand there watching helplessly, the fridge starting to make my back cold. It takes me a moment to get moving again. He gets in another full gulp before I reach him.
“You moron,” I groan, snatching the bottle out of his hands as he cringes against the taste. “Are you fucking kidding me? Don’t you think you’ve had enough? You show up at my place, destroy my dishes, break my no drinking directly from the bottle rule, and now you’re probably going to vom on my carpet-”
“Shut the fuck up,” he mutters, trying to grab the bottle from my hand. I take a step back and set it down in the sink, blocking it with my body.
“No, go sit the hell down and I’m going to find you something to eat. Get out of my kitchen. Out. Let’s go.”
Noah looks like he’s prepared to argue, but he runs the back of his hand over his mouth and turns away, mumbling something unintelligible. I wait until he collapses onto my couch, then open the fridge again.
“Are you allergic to anything, Noah? What do you want? I have some mashed potatoes my mom made, or-?”
No answer from the couch, so I scoop a few spoonfuls of mashed potatoes onto a plate, grab a fork, and pour a new glass of water.
By the time I join him in the living room, he’s flat on his back against my couch cushions, both eyes shut.
“Noah.” I prod his ribs with the fork, but he doesn’t move. “Are you serious? Oh, my fucking-”
I drop everything onto the coffee table. Press my fingers below his jaw, wait until I feel a pulse, and then unleash a tirade of relieved curses into his face. I have no idea what kind of cocktail of things is in his system, although I guess if he needed urgent medical help, Aiden would have shown up by now.
He’s just asleep, or at least knocked unconscious by those last few swigs of vodka.
“And now shoes on my couch, too?” I complain, pulling his sneakers off. “You asshole, honestly, Noah...”
I deposit his shoes near the door and return to the living room. One of his arms is dangling off of the couch, and I gather up his hand, taking a closer look at his knuckles. The skin is split pretty evenly across the top; shallow cuts, not too bad. His thumb, however, is sitting at an angle that doesn’t feel totally right to me. It’s swollen and stiff, purple bruises blossoming around it.
Which is how I find myself, at whatever hour of the morning, carefully cleaning off Noah’s knuckles with peroxide and binding his thumb in elastic wrap dug out of my first aid kit. He’s silent and still the whole time, except when I lift his thumb to bandage it. A low moan escapes him, but he doesn’t wake up.
He didn’t eat the food, so I take the plate to my bedroom and eat a bunch of potatoes in my bed like some kind of absurd Irish stereotype, wondering when the fuck my life got so strange. I send a quick text to Aiden, take a shower, and fall face-first into my pillows.
I’ve had more than enough excitement for one day.
~~~~
My first thought upon waking up to a loud banging sound is that Noah has revived and is in the process of destroying my apartment. All of my drowsiness disappears at once, and before I fully know what I’m doing, I stumble out into the living room, pulling a t-shirt over my head, blinking in the sunlight.
Everything is the same as it was when I went to bed. Noah is still on the couch, snoring softly. The thumping starts again - it’s coming from my front door. I pull it open and jump as someone immediately grabs my arms.
“What-?”
“Jamie!” Oh, it’s Aiden, thank fucking god. I slump forward and bury my nose into his warm chest, but he pushes me back so that he can see my face. The moment I get a better look at his, I freeze, concerned. He's out of breath, about as pale as he can get, his blue eyes searching mine wildly. “Are you okay?” he asks, cupping my face in his hands.
“Yeah, what-?”
He stares over my head into the apartment, and his eyes land on my couch. Only Noah’s feet are visible from here. Aiden’s hands drop from my cheeks.
“Who is that?”
“It’s Noah.”
“Noah? What-?”
He strides into the apartment and stops at the couch, staring down at Noah, his jaw set and his eyes unreadable. It’s only now that I realize Aiden is in his pajamas. The look on his face is something else. Did he run here?
“Aiden.” I cross to him and slide a hand over his ribs. “Everything is alright. Noah crashed here last night, he was really fucked up.”
Aiden closes his eyes for a moment, apparently steadying himself. He unlocks his phone and shows me our chat.
“You can’t send me texts like this, okay?” he says, his voice shaking slightly. I reread what I sent him last night: something happened, I’m not hurt but I need to talk to you ASAP, sent at 3:04 AM.
“Oh, shit. Yeah, that’s - that’s pretty unclear. Oh, god, Aiden, I’m so sorry, I was so tired when I sent that, I didn’t even reread it. I won’t do it again, I promise.”
He lets out a long breath and folds his arms around me. I go to return his embrace, but he takes a handful of my hair and roughly pulls my head back, kisses me so urgently that I forget everything else for a moment. He presses his nose against mine when we break apart. The hand I have against his chest picks up the racing of his heartbeat.
“Don’t. Do. That. Ever. Again. Please,” he says, punctuating each word with another kiss, and I feel a weird mixture of guilty for making him worry and delighted at the punishment I’m getting for doing so.
“I’m sorry. I’m an idiot.”
“Yes, you are.”
I glance over at my microwave so I can read the time.
“You came straight here?” I ask, touching my fingertip to his chin. “Aren’t you going to be late for work?”
“Can you please just tell me what happened? Why is Noah on your couch? What happened to his eye?”
“Okay, but don’t get mad."
A useless thing to say, as it turns out, because by the time I’m done explaining, Aiden’s blue eyes are burning like they could actually set Noah on fire. His face is dark with anger. I forgot how it looks on him, and it sends goosebumps down my back.
"Look, I don’t think he was really going to hurt me," I begin, but Aiden is no longer listening, and he moves before I can stop him.
He leans over the couch, puts his nose about one inch away from Noah’s, and digs his elbow down directly into Noah’s ribs.
Noah gasps. His eyes fly open, and he scrambles backward.
“Good morning, sunshine,” Aiden snaps, seizing him by the shirt.
“Aiden,” Noah stammers, pressing himself as far down into the couch cushions as he can go. I can only imagine what it would be like to wake up and find a man Aiden’s size staring at you with this particular look on his face.
“You really thought,” Aiden says, and I haven’t heard his voice like this in such a long time, so cold and low and frightening, “That you could-?”
I grab Aiden’s arm. He looks up at me, holding Noah half off the couch by his shirt.
“Don’t." I squeeze him gently. “That’s the old you.”
He stares at me for a moment, clearly fighting with himself, then drops Noah onto his back. He gets to his feet and shakes out his hands, taking long, deep breaths, and I’m so proud of him, I want to kiss his face off, but, you know. Not the right moment for that.
Noah sits up unsteadily, leaning on his injured hand and then letting out a hiss of pain. He lifts it to his face, staring at the bandages. I cross to the fridge and extract an ice pack as he gingerly lowers his legs to the ground. His eye actually looks worse than it did last night, somehow.
“Get talking, Noah,” Aiden growls, folding his arms over his chest. “Now.”
“Urgh.” Noah sways for a moment, his face a little green.
“What happened?” Aiden asks, as I slap the ice pack into Noah’s hand. He accepts and presses it against his eye, cringing. “Did Ralph decide he’s done with you?”
Apparently this hits closer to home than Aiden expected, because Noah suddenly looks down at the rug, pressing a hand over his mouth. Aiden’s expression softens, just a little bit. I can tell that he didn’t mean for the dig to sting that hard.
“I made the mistake of listening to you two fuckers,” Noah mumbles, still not looking at us. “Cameron and his guys started leaving us creepy notes. He left one about my sister, but Ralph still didn’t care, so I-” He blows out a frustrated breath. “Got Ralph and Grant really fucked up and waited until they passed out and then took the Corvette and gave it back.”
“You gave it back?” I ask, startled. “Like, you went to that guy’s house? Did he do this to you?”
“No.” Noah finally looks at me, scowling. “Ralph did, when he figured it out.”
Aiden moves suddenly to take Noah’s busted hand. He flips it over and examines the damage. Noah stares up at him, clearly surprised, and I have to admit that I am, too. I almost forgot that they used to be friends, once. A long time ago. There’s been so little love lost between Aiden and his old group that I keep forgetting - they’ve got history. Right now, watching the careful way that he handles Noah’s injured fingers, I can tell that Aiden is remembering that, too.
“Fought back, did you?” he asks, his voice more exasperated than icy now. “Come on, man. What did I tell you, when I showed you how to do this?”
“Don’t have your thumb in your fist for the punch,” Noah mutters, and Aiden lets his hand go. “I forgot, okay? We were both trashed, anyways.”
“You never listen.” Aiden shakes his head, frowning deeply. “That’s a bad sprain. You should have it looked at.”
“Sorry, but-" I have to ask. "Ralph wouldn’t give the car back even when Cameron threatened your sister?”
“He said it was all talk,” Noah answers, wincing again. “But they wrote her name and address on the paper - Jesus, my fucking head. You got Advil or something, Keane?”
“Noah, what are you going to do, now?” Aiden asks, as I move to the kitchen again and start rifling through my cabinets. “Just - go back to Ralph’s and-?”
“Shit, no. I can’t go back there. Believe me, he made it clear that I’m not welcome.” Noah takes the ice pack from his eye and presses it to his thumb instead. “I’ve, uh. Kind of been crashing there. Grant and I both have.” He hesitates, then adds: “I gave up the lease on my place, and my mom and my sister definitely won’t let me back with them, I - I don’t know where to go.”
I abruptly remember that Noah brought a backpack with him last night. It’s still on the floor near the hallway. I also remember telling Kent that I was going to stop doing so many favors for people. Especially favors I don’t want to do.
Noah has nowhere to go.
Apparently Aiden can see something playing out on my face, because he strides around the couch and joins me in the kitchen.
“No,” he says. “Jamie, no. No, no, no.”
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