Noah whipped toward David instantly, curls bouncing into his eyes. “I am not that small!” 

Before I could even process the fact that we were arguing power scaling with an eldritch horror in a hospital room, Noah elbowed David directly in the ribs. And I’m talking hard enough for the impact to make a dull thud against David’s trench coat, chains clinking softly against his jeans.  

The guy barely reacted. Didn’t even spill his coffee. He just slowly lowered the cup and looked at Noah with the exhausted patience of a man who had survived wars, conspiracies, and several emotional disasters involving the same stubborn cosmic entity. “Behave,” he said flatly. “You are in hospital.”

“I don’t care!” Noah snapped, still flushed bright red. “And stop calling me small!”

“You are small,” David replied with a lazy shrug before taking another sip of coffee. “Malenkiy zloy kahlmar.” He added under his breath in Russian. 

“I am literally older than human civilization!” Noah protested and shoved him, this time with both hands, heels dug into the ground. “And I’m not a goddamn squid! Asshole!” 

I held my face in my hands and tried taking a few deep breaths while they dissolved into annoyed bickering. Because somehow, the most horrifying thing in the room was no longer the fact that Noah Riley was some kind of horror capable of ripping a full-grown man apart. But the fact that David and Noah clearly did this all the time. This wasn’t some dramatic revelation to them. This was a routine argument. 

And Christ, that did something weird to me.

Twenty-four hours ago, lying in Noah Riley’s front yard, bleeding out, convinced I was about to die. And somehow…sitting here watching him argue with David. All I could think about was how it felt to kiss him for the first time. How it felt like running towards something I’d been looking for, for a long time.

The room began to blur, and their argument faded into the background. Then something in my head just snapped like a quiet decision falling into place. 

I didn’t want to be in bed anymore, hooked to a bunch of fucking monitors. I didn’t want wires or tubes. And I especially didn’t want to be the fragile thing in the room while everything else was impossible and alive and too big to hold in my head all at once. 

I started getting out of bed as slowly as possible, one hand clamped over my ribs. Noah was mid-argument with David when I reached for the leads in my arm. 

“—you dated me four months before we even slept together. You knew Michael four minutes—”

“He has a mullet,” Noah cut in immediately, like that was a legally binding defense. “And his dick is huge.”

“You are horny little squid—”

Beep.

The monitor next to me hiccuped as I ripped my wires out, and both of them stopped. Noah turned around first, immediate concern crossing his expression. “Michael!” 

“It’s fine,” I muttered, already half sitting up. “I just need a second.”

David’s eyes narrowed, and he started towards the bed, one hand reaching as if to grab me. “Do not—”

“I’m just going to the bathroom, you piece of shit. Don’t start acting all worried about me.” I unhooked another wire and then ripped the clip off my finger and tossed it. The monitors started going wild now, irritated electronic screeching filling the room. 

Noah had gone completely still now, like he didn’t want to spook me into doing something worse. His voice dropped into something careful. “Hey… you don’t have to—you can just sit there; it’s okay. We’ll leave if we’re being too loud.”

That almost made me stop, but my hand was already on the railing. And I wasn’t about to take no for an answer. I wasn’t the type of guy who let others see my weakness. Especially not David, who was looking at me with that annoyed look on his face. 

I swung my legs over the edge of the bed, and the room tilted a little. Not dramatically, just enough to remind me my body had been through a window recently and was still very much not in agreement with this plan. 

The floor was ice cold under my socked feet, and I felt every inch of pain simultaneously fire off in my body as I pushed myself into an upright position. Ribs on fire. Shoulder feeling like it got ripped off and stapled back on. 

I made it three steps, and then my legs betrayed me a fraction of a second later. I dipped, and the world tilted sharply, my body finally deciding it had had enough bullshit for one day. 

I heard Noah say my name. 

Then everything just stopped. A hand caught a handful of my hospital gown, firm and fast, pulling me back before I could hit the floor. David. I barely had time to process before his arm slid under mine and steadied me, keeping me upright with irritating ease. “You are done,” he said flatly.

“I’m fine,” I snapped immediately. “Get the fuck off. I can walk.”

“No,” David replied, his voice calm in a way that meant he was absolutely done arguing. “You can’t.” His arm locked around my middle, pressing me against him before I could pull away. My nose pressed against his chest, one hand gripped the front of his jacket, and I could smell rain and coffee clinging to him. For a second, I just stood there, half-held upright, letting him hold me. 

I became suddenly, annoyingly aware of how good it felt to have someone holding me. And my brain, still half scrambled from pain and adrenaline, briefly supplied a very unhelpful thought:

“He’s kind of…”

Oh, fuck no. I clamped down on that thought immediately. 

“Noah,” David said, sharp and immediate. 

“I’m here,” Noah answered, and he was at my other side again in an instant, hands hovering before he helped David guide me back towards the bed. Together, they helped me sit back down. David shifted his grip and, without ceremony, lifted my legs by the calves, swinging them back onto the bed like I weighed nothing more than inconvenience. The mattress dipped as I hit it, and suddenly the world stopped trying to spin away from me.

My head met the pillow again, and breath came a little easier. Not good, but better. 

David watched me for a second longer, fingers pushing into my chest, then tapping lightly before he pulled back. “No more standing,” he said, in that clipped way of his. “Idiot.”

I lifted my arm in the cast and shot the middle finger at him, which earned me a look that said he was either going to kill me in my sleep or let me hit the ground next time. Then he adjusted his coat, glanced toward the hallway, and shrugged. “I will go get nurse now.”

Noah straightened immediately, like he’d been waiting for instructions without realizing it. “What?”

David didn’t elaborate; he just turned and headed for the door. “You will talk. I will get them.” And before either of us could argue, he was gone, vanishing out into the hallway, door wide fucking open behind him.

Noah stood there like he didn’t know what to do with the sudden absence of control in the room. Then slowly and very carefully, he sat back down beside me again, closer this time. His voice came out softer. “You okay?” he asked.

I let my head sink a little deeper into the pillow. “Define 'okay,'" I muttered. “I just found out that the cute guy I hooked up with has, like, a million tentacles and oozes slime.”

Noah hesitated. Then he reached out, not quite touching me at first, like he was checking to see if I’d pull away like last time. And when I didn’t, his fingers settled lightly against mine. “I don’t have a single fixed shape,” he admitted. “Not really. What you saw…last night…that was me without restraint. Without the version of me that fits into your world.”

He glanced at me then, checking for recoil or a look of disgust or something. But I didn’t really know how to respond to that, so I just kind of looked at him, waiting for him to continue. I didn’t understand how someone so beautiful and gentle like him could be harboring something so horrifying inside of him. 

Noah’s eyes stayed on the knitted white blanket between us, his cheeks flushed. “When I came through,” he started, voice quieter now, “I didn’t arrive like a person stepping into a room. I tore into this place all wrong. Loud and unstable. I didn’t know how to hold myself together yet.” 

“There were alarms,” he continued. “Containment systems. People shouting in languages I didn’t understand yet. I remember lights hurting. Cold hurting. Everything hurting.”

He let go of my hand and wrapped his arms around himself. 

“And there were people there who wanted to kill me.”

I felt my throat tighten. I wanted to take his hand again, but something wouldn’t let me. 

“David was there,” Noah added more quietly. “He was younger then.”

I frowned slightly. “David was there?”

Noah nodded a little. “His dad was part of the research team that brought me over,” he explained. “They had a station in Antarctica. A base, deep underground. David would come to see me down there. He taught me all kinds of things. Language. How humans behave. How to hold shape properly. He used to sit with me for hours.”

I wanted to ask more.

About how the hell they ended up here in Astoria.

About David and the rest of the gang and whatever disaster had somehow turned them into their own weird little pack of violent cryptids and emotionally unavailable idiots.

I wanted to ask what happened to the base. To David’s father. To Noah.

But exhaustion was starting to drag at me hard now, slow and heavy like deep water.

And Noah’s voice—

Christ.

Noah’s voice was dangerously relaxing. Maybe it was because he spoke softly. Or because there was something almost rhythmic about the way he talked, careful and smooth and strangely grounding. Or maybe it was because for the first time since I woke up in this hospital, I didn’t feel alone with the fear in my head.

Noah noticed my eyes drooping a little and immediately quieted. “You should sleep,” he murmured.

“I’m listening,” I muttered automatically, even though my words were already starting to blur together around the edges.

A soft laugh escaped him. “You’re barely conscious.”

I went quiet for a long moment and just listened to him breathe next to me. I almost fell asleep right there, too. “Hey,” I rasped eventually, turning my head back toward him.

Noah glanced over immediately, head propped up on my knee, one hand smoothing down the blanket on my other leg absentmindedly. “Yeah?”

I stared at him for a second too long. At the soft dark curls falling into his face. At the nervous gentleness he carried around like he didn’t know what to do with it. At the fact that something capable of tearing reality apart was looking at me like I might break first.

“We didn’t finish what we started last night,” I whispered.

Noah froze, his cheeks burning bright red almost instantly. “Michael!” he hissed.

“What? I’m serious.”

“You have three broken ribs!” Noah whispered and smacked my foot lightly. 

“Yeah, and my dick still works fine,” I replied. And then thought about it. “Just don’t throw me through another window, alright? I’m hard-headed, but I don’t think I can survive two falls in two days.”

Noah was so shocked that he laughed, one hand covering his face. Even the tips of his ears were bright red now. Then he asked, “You want me to close the door?”

“Thought you’d never ask.” I crossed my good arm behind my head and leaned back, smirking a little at him, even if it pulled on my split lip and the stitches in my chin. “Hurry up before David comes back with that nurse.”

Noah got up so fast the chair squeaked under him, and ran to close the door. Not gracefully, either. Damn, one would have thought I offered him a whole ice cream sundae. Who would have thought the little booknerd was so dirty or...er... Cthulu? Guess it was always the innocent-looking ones, as I'd come to find out.

The door clicked shut. A second later, the privacy curtain rattled violently along the ceiling track as Noah yanked it closed around the bed, too, sealing us off into our own tiny little world of bad decisions and fluorescent lighting.

When he came back, he nearly launched himself onto the mattress in a panic to beat whatever imaginary countdown David’s existence had apparently created in his head. The bed shifted hard beneath his weight.

"Jesus," I laughed weakly, and put my hand in his curls, tilting his head back. "You trying to kill me, Riley?"

Noah's gaze dropped briefly to my mouth. Then lower.

I grinned despite the ache in my chest. "C'mere, squid boy."

Noah made an offended noise, only to quiet when I pressed my mouth to his and pulled him closer.