Aiden went home after our accidental nap. He said he wanted to go for a run to process all the craziness from today, and I wasn’t expecting him to come back tonight.

So the knock on my door is a surprise, but the bigger surprise comes when I pull it open to find Noah.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey.” I lean against the doorframe, wondering what he’s doing here. My initial thought is that something already went wrong with him and Melanie and Raj, but he doesn’t have a bag, and he seems fine. His expression is calm, his hands resting comfortably in the pockets of his bomber jacket.

“So, um,” I begin. “Today was - just-”

“Yeah.” Noah nods rapidly. “Yep. Yes, it was.”

“How are you doing?”

He shrugs, then seems to reconsider and actually think about it.

“I’m… okay. Dunno. Feel a little - not like I’m tired, but like my brain is tired.”

“Yeah, dude. You actually used it to think for more than five straight minutes at a time. It’s probably exhausted.”

“Fuck you,” Noah laughs. “Whatever, man.”

I smile at him, relieved to see that he’s in decent spirits. I had no idea what things would be like at the house after we left, but based on how Noah is right now, it must be going alright.

“Honestly, your brain is probably tired because today was an emotional rollercoaster,” I tell him. “And not just any rollercoaster, a giant one, like - what’s the biggest one in the world?”

“Kingda Ka at Six Flags in New Jersey,” Noah answers immediately.

My eyebrows shoot up. “Okay, what the fuck, why do you know that?”

“Duh, because it’s on my bucket list.”

“Oh, Jesus. I shudder to think of what other things might be on that list. Anyways, today was an emotional - that.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Noah sighs. “Somehow even you got dragged into it. What a fucking mess.” He chews his lip for a moment. “Are you like, the same, right now? Not tired, but your brain is?”

“Um. Yes. Aiden and I took a nap and woke up at 9:30 PM, so. My sleep cycle is probably ruined forever. No way I get to bed at a reasonable time tonight.”

“Ah, well.” Noah suddenly grins. “Good thing I know exactly who you should talk to about solving that problem.”

I frown at him. “What? Who?’

Noah pulls a hand out of his jacket pocket and holds up a clear case with a joint inside. “Brother Weed.”

I laugh, then groan, then step back to let him in.

~~~~

So I guess this is a thing, now? Noah just shows up at my place for a smoke sesh and some video games whenever one of us is going through it emotionally?

I mean, it’s fine. It’s actually sort of nice. In fact, I think this is exactly what we both need right now, even if Noah thought of it first.

I push open a window to prevent an accidental hotbox situation, then drop into the armchair right next to it. Noah throws himself down on the edge of the couch nearest to me, pulls off his jacket, and tosses me a lighter. I light up, then pass to Noah and use a controller to turn on my Xbox.

“So what’s the deal? You didn’t want to hang out with Raj and Melanie tonight?”

“Figured…” Noah shrugs, blowing out a few smoke rings. “It’s their first night in their new house, they probably want it to themselves. Thought I’d peace out, give them some time.”

“Oh.” That’s actually considerate of him, and I’m glad that so far he isn’t making me regret my promise to Melanie. “Here I was thinking Mel changed her mind and kicked you out already.”

“Nope,” he sighs. “But I wouldn’t be shocked if she did. Haven’t made the best impression on her over the years. We’re not exactly friends. I can’t even think of the last time I saw her before today.”

“She told me, it was the year you - the last time you went to the Fling Thing.”

Noah freezes, halfway through reaching to take the jay back from me. “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Fuck.”

“I mean - yeah.”

“Shit, man, I don’t even remember that night.” Noah winces. “But I do remember that people were pissed about it. I was getting nasty looks for like a week afterwards.”

“Yes, well, you guys decided to put on an extraordinary display of stupidity and complete lack of impulse control, at the one party of the year that everybody goes to.”

“Don’t suppose you remember what I actually did?”

“You were - no, I don’t. I don’t remember.”

“Oh my fucking god, Jamie, how can you literally not get through one lie? All you had to say was no.”

“Not - no. Yeah, no.”

“Wow.” Noah quirks an eyebrow, tapping the joint over the ashtray. “That was actually worse than the first time.”

“Come on, man, do you really want me to tell you?” I breathe out my hit and reach for my water bottle. “It’s not going to help with anything, and you’re gonna end up fixating on it, now that you know it’s the most recent time Melanie saw you.”

Noah opens his mouth to argue, then hesitates.

“I - yeah, that’s probably true. How the fuck did you know that?”

“Feel like I know you pretty well by now, Noah. We’re friends.”

He sinks into thought, rolling the joint between his fingers. A haze of smoke is slowly gathering around us, drifting lazily above our heads.

“Jamie,” he says, after a minute. “I’ve been thinking about what Melanie said.”

“What she said about what?” I ask, tucking my knees up on the armchair.

“About…” Noah stares down at the jay, instead of looking at me. “How I was always right there with Aiden to rain down hell on you, or whoever else. But mostly you.”

“Oh.” I don’t know what to say to that, but I don’t think I should say anything, anyways. I get the sense that Noah is pulling his thoughts together so that he can tell me something, and I don’t want to make it more difficult than it apparently already is.

“This is - this is gonna sound weird, man, and I know that. Bear with me.”

Oh, god. “Okay…?”

Noah takes a breath before he starts.

“I actually remember the day that you came out. I mean, I remember hearing about it. Grant told us. Someone texted him.”

I thought I’d hit my max capacity on unexpected conversations today, but here we are.

“We were at a party when we found out,” Noah presses on. “But I was driving, so I wasn’t drinking or anything that night. Aiden was always really intense about us not driving while we were fucked up. Guess he’d seen a bad accident once, or something?”

Aiden has probably witnessed more car accidents than Noah could fathom, so this makes sense to me.

“Okay.”

“So yeah, I remember that kind of clearly, and it sort of - popped into my head tonight, when I was thinking about what Melanie said. And... I wanted to ask you…” Noah looks up, but stares straight over my head. “Did you choose that day because Grant, Aiden, Ralph, and I all skipped school? Did you - like, was it because we weren’t there?”

I’m thrown by the question, but I do have an answer.

“I had already made up my mind that I was going to do it,” I tell him. “But yeah, when I realized you all weren’t there… it seemed like a good moment. I was worried you guys might take that info and run with it.”

Noah nods slowly.

“Based on how everyone reacted, I think we probably would have, except that Aiden gave us a look that suggested he’d skin us alive if we did. So we didn’t.” Noah's eyes flit down to his hands again. “And I was thinking… if Aiden had decided to give you shit about that… I don’t know what I would have done, but. Probably just whatever everyone else was doing. And - knowing that - it doesn’t feel good.”

He finally looks at me. His grey eyes are filled with guilt, and he takes a very large hit when I hand him back the joint.

“I feel like Aiden prevented me from saying some shit to you that I would have really regretted,” Noah continues, talking around a mouthful of smoke. “But he shouldn’t have had to, right? Like. I knew that wasn’t an okay thing for us to beat you over the head with, and I wouldn’t have meant a fucking word of it. But there I was, waiting for everyone else’s reaction, instead of following my own, and…” He fades off, chewing his lip. “That’s just one example of a thousand times when I could have said something about what we were doing to you, or at least just not participated, or… I don’t know.” He tosses his long hair out of his face, then shoots me an anxious look. “Are you gonna fucking say something?”

Honestly, no. I have no idea what to say.

Noah blows out a frustrated breath, like he’s about to say something snippy, but instead he leans back against the couch and takes a second to steady himself out.

“I’m - I’m sorry.” He kneads his palm, dropping his gaze down to it. “About all the shit, but - especially that you felt like you had to wait until we weren’t around. To tell people.”

I can’t do much more than stare at Noah right now, because I am staggered. He finally looks at me again, and I fix him with such a massive grin that he lets out a startled laugh.

“Dear God, Jamie, what’s that fucking face?”

“This is my holy shit, but in a good way face.” I lean over to slap his knee, stubbing out the joint at the same time. “Noah!”

“Don’t make it a big thing,” he groans.

“It is a big thing. In fact, I can’t fucking believe it. Wow.”

“Okay, okay.” He flaps a tattooed hand at me, his cheeks turning pink. “You want to accept my apology, or not?”

“I do want to, yes.”

His shoulders sag, and he nods, taking a breath. “Good. Cool, bro. Thanks.”

“Mhm. Just don’t do the shit again. Or let your friends do it. No matter who you’re hanging out with.”

“No, I-” Noah absently touches his fingers to the place where Ralph blacked out his eye. “I’m done with sitting quietly and putting up with shit. Should have been a long time ago. Probably could have saved myself some grief.”

I beam at him. “How do you say ‘proud of you, man’ in French?”

“Tu as le QI d’une huitre.”

“Really? That doesn’t sound right.”

“Look it up, if you don’t believe me.”

I use the translation app on my phone. The phrase in fact means ‘you have the IQ of an oyster’.

I look up at Noah, scowling. “You fucking asshole!”

Noah laughs, and I fling my phone at him. He catches it, grinning. Some of the very un-Noah-like seriousness dissipates from the room.

“So are we playing, or what?” he asks, reaching for one of my Xbox controllers.

“Sure. You using that controller? You always use the other one when we play that racing game you’re obsessed with.”

“That’s because of the split-screen,” Noah explains.

“Oh?”

“Yeah, I like being on the bottom, don’t perform as well when I’m on top.”

I let out a snort of laughter, and he raises an eyebrow.

“What?”

“Your phrasing, um-” I begin, then bite my lip, trying to contain another laugh.

“Hurts my neck to stare at the top of the screen, that’s all,” he says, clearly confused.

“Nevermind. Let’s play.”

“Okay, then.” He scooches down the couch to make room for me. “I want to be the carry this time.”

“You never want to play support, I swear.” I hop out of the armchair and join him on the couch, reaching for my own controller. “I’ll be support, but don’t throw a fucking hand grenade to launch what was supposed to be a silent ambush, this time.”

“The grenade was strategic,” Noah says, knotting his hair into a bun and cracking his fingers.

“Oh, really?”

“Yes, really, it destroyed all the cover the enemies had.”

“Yeah, and it was also loud enough to attract like every single enemy in the area!”

“Maybe, but the - I had the - we were - what am I trying to say?” He chortles to himself. “Oh, god. I’m high.”

“Probably has to do with the grenade we smoked. I mean the smoke grenade. I mean the jay! Shit. I’m high, too.”

We both laugh, then fall silent as we scroll through the playable characters and make our choices.

Noah says, without taking his eyes off of the screen: “Seriously, man, are we cool?”

I know that Noah isn’t particularly big on hugs - unless they come from Raj, apparently - so I nudge him with my elbow instead.

“We’re cool. Cooler than we were before, actually. Thank you for saying something.”

He nods, watching the map spread out around our characters.

“Yeah, and - look, don’t worry about paying me for fixing the power at your place by the river.”

“Stop it. Of course I’m going to pay you.”

“Please don’t,” he answers, flicking through the equipable weapons. “Just - please. At least let me do one fucking thing.”

“No,” I tell him firmly. “I’m accepting your apology. You don’t always have to do more, dude.”

“Can I just-?”

“No. You want to do me a favor? Fine. Don’t equip that grenade.”

Noah considers for a moment, then pops the grenade into his weapon slot. I let out an agonized groan and smack his arm. He looks over at me, grinning again.

“One step at a time, Keane,” he says, and I can’t help but laugh.

~~~~

I step back to let Aiden into my apartment. He shuts the door after himself and takes my face into his hands, treating me to a soft hello kiss that briefly makes me forget everything I had to tell him.

“Hi.” I smile against his lips, warm inside in that perfect way that only happens when I'm around him. “How was work?”

“Good.” He nuzzles my nose with his. “How was your day? Did you get the thing?”

“Right, so.” I cringe. “Here’s the situation. I called the hardware store. The one in West Harbor, not the Ketterbridge one, so that nobody would recognize my voice. And I blocked my number, obviously.”

Aiden nods approvingly. “Good.”

“I asked them if they sell projectors that make it look like there’s a ghost. Ghost projectors, I guess.”

“What did they say?”

“They informed me that Halloween isn’t for a while, and I told them that I didn’t need it for Halloween.”

“Okay…”

“Then they asked me what I needed it for, and I panicked and told them that it wasn’t for me, and that I was looking for it on behalf of a friend.”

“Sounds totally normal.” Aiden presses his fingers to his temple, clearly biting back a laugh. “Not suspicious at all.”

“They said that they won’t have anything like that until Halloween, so I asked them if they knew another place where I could get it. Like a store that sells ghost projectors year-round.”

“And?”

“They said they didn’t know of anywhere.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah, so, I asked them, if a person theoretically already owned that kind of projector, but didn’t want it anymore, where might they be selling it second hand?”

“And...?”

“Well - I could tell they weren’t really listening, by that point.”

Aiden bursts into laughter, and I groan, dropping my forehead onto his chest.

“I’m sorry! I tried, honestly. I still don’t see a way we can buy it online without leaving a trail, but I don’t even think we need it. You’re putting on a very convincing show all on your own.”

“It’s okay.” Aiden smiles brightly, smoothing his thumb over my cheek. “Might have been too on the nose, anyways. We want this to sneak up on Coburn, diving right in with the ghost projector may have been too much.”

“True,” I admit, and Aiden taps my nose.

“You feeling ready to go back tomorrow?” he asks. “Put down some more groundwork?”

“Mhm.” I lean up to press a kiss onto Aiden’s jaw, and he twines his arms around my waist. “As long as we’re together, I’m all good.”

In heists, yes, but also in all things.