#ciyh!noah

“I’m drunk.”“Are you?”“I only get silly like this when I’m drunk.”“I jump on tables when I’m drunk.”Blue gasps.  “No!”Noah nods gravely.  The effect is only slightly diminished by the fact that he’s upside down on the couch beside her.  “I polished off a bottle of my mom’s fancy schnapps right before my cousin Gayle’s bat mitzvah and jumped on one of the tables to tell her how boring I thought her party was, but I don’t remember anything between thinking ‘that folding table can definitely hold my weight!’ and waking up in the ER.”She has to put her chopsticks down to avoid choking on her food as he regales her with another story, also involving underage drinking and climbing on tables, that ended in being uninvited to Gayle’s sweet sixteen while the party was in progress.  “So really it made perfect sense she didn’t invite me to her wedding, either.”Blue wails and buries her face in her arms, her mostly empty glass carefully taken from her and moved before she knocks it over.When Noah told her he’d have Monmouth to himself this weekend, Blue made a convincing excuse to switch shifts with Cialina to make herself available.  Between his teaching schedule and her classes and job, they don’t get many chances to be alone, and so far they’ve spent eighteen hours making each other laugh until they cry, making out, getting pleasantly stoned, and eating takeout from every place in town they can get delivery from.It’s perfect and easy and they’re pointedly not dwelling on the fact that, at any moment, the illusion could be shattered if Ronan gets sick of Declan and comes home before Sunday.“I don’t want to just be friends with benefits,” Noah says, unprompted, after several minutes where they’re both content to eat in silence.  It takes a moment for Blue’s understanding to catch up with her ears, and when it does she looks up from her pan see awe.  “I do want something more, though, I just can’t figure out what.”  Noah looks at her, then pointedly at the carton in her hands.  “You’re gonna drop that shrimp.”Blue watches it tumble out of the perfectly constructed bite she’d managed to put together, and stabs the chopsticks into the noodles in annoyance.  She sets it on the coffee table and turns to him, tilting her head to try and look at him right-side up.  “See, you can’t just go around saying things like that without warning,” she scolds, without any real heat.  “They deserve my full attention.”“We’d be here all night,” Noah says.  He gestures between them with his fork.  “What with the profound deficit of attention between us.”“We’d manage.”  She picks a piece of pineapple off the top of the container of rice resting on his stomach and rests her cheek on her knee.He laugh-groans and turns towards the ceiling, away from her, and scrunches his eyes closed.  “You’re being all cute and it’s fucking me up,” he whines.  Noah frowns in an overly committed way that makes Blue grin and mumbles to himself, “This is serious.  I’m being serious.  Serious business.”  He peeks one eye open and looks at her, then turns away from her completely with a laughing groan.  “Stop!  How do you do that?”Blue bites her lip to stifle her giggles and nudges him with her elbow.  “I’m not doing anything!” “You’re making that face with your face when I’m trying to be serious.  It’s making my brain useless.” Blue reaches for his face and turns him back to her.  “You’re right,” she says.  “This is serious.  It’s so serious, Noah, oh my god.”“It’s so super cereal right now,” he says, eyes bright and charmed his own joke.She laughs.  “Yes, it’s that.  So super cereal.  Pull your shit together, Czerny.”  She puts her palms on his cheeks and leans in close.   She tries to keep her expression playfully serious, but it’s hard when she knows she’s about to completely set him off.  “The fate of huge manatees rides on this.”  He laughs so hard at her suddenly grim tone it makes him choke, and she takes his fried rice from him when he tries to sit up.  As he rights himself, she climbs up onto the couch and for several minutes they keep falling into the trap of sobering up, making eye contact, and being set off into another fit of laughter.   “I’ve just been wondering what it is we’re doing,” Noah says, when they finally manage to stop.  “I know I like you a whole lot.”Blue’s insides go mushy.  “I like you a whole lot, too.”  Noah smiles, even though he’s clearly trying not to.  “I’m a grown-ass man, I shouldn’t get all twisted up over a girl like this anymore.  I’m regressing and it’s all your fault.”  “Pshaw.”  She puts her hands on his cheeks again, pushing them together to give him a fish face.  “Getting lowkey turnt and stupid is what we’re doing right now, and maybe tomorrow we’ll go out.  I dunno.  It depends on how the rest of tonight goes.”“It’s going pretty great,” Noah says.  Blue smiles.   “Yeah, it is.”

This hardware store smells like concrete and dust, and he can’t hear anything with the phone to his ear, but it had been just less than disorientingly loud when he came in.  He’s already had to dodge no less than three people in store aprons who wanted to help him. “Is Ronan there?” Adam asks. “He’s out with Gansey.  Groceries, I think?  Gansey wanted orange juice, we ran out yesterday.”  He can’t tell if the tone in Noah’s voice is exhaustion from grading finals, stoned boredom, a depressive episode, or some combination of the three.   “Are you okay?” “I’m here,” Noah says cryptically.  “I’m alive.  I exist because I bleed.” Adam’s patience for this entire endeavor is wearing thin, and Noah’s Byronic melancholy is trying even with a full tank of patience.  Adam is running on fumes.  “Can you have Ronan call me when he gets back?” Noah exhales in a way that definitely involves smoke of some kind.  “Why Ronan?” Adam gestures vaguely at the small, fake kitchen he’s standing in front of even though Noah can’t see him.  “He does this home improvement shit.  I’m assuming he can help me figure out what I’m doing.” “You know what they say about assuming,” Noah mumbles.  More clearly he says, “You know, as a homeowner myself, I’m not completely useless with this stuff, either.” “You rent,” Adam reminds him, “A bedroom in an apartment that you’re not on the lease of.” “I am an adult.”  Noah sounds significantly more lucid in his offense.  “I have a mortgage.” “You absolutely don’t.” “If you’re gonna be like that, I’m never inviting you to Passover.” “At your imaginary house?" “You’re an ass.  I’ll tell Ronan to call you.” “Thanks.”

The story proper ends in January 2017, eleven months after the start of it the February before, during winter break between the fall and spring semesters of Adam’s senior year.  By that time, the following things happen to the following characters, in no particular order: Ronan babysits Fletcher’s boyfriend’s baby for a weekend while they’re away. Adam works his ass off to catch-up and earn his BS in Computer Science, study for the GREs, and start applying to grad schools.  Gansey is offered an opportunity and takes it, without hesitation, without telling anyone.Blue gets on a plane for the first time in her life.   Henry finally makes a few appearances and it turns out he’s Gansey’s secret boyfriend.Tad gets his top surgery, starts HRT, and achieves a goal, not necessarily in that order.  It’ll be a big year for him and no one will care but me. Kavinsky is around, and then he isn’t.Fletcher gets married and the wedding happens in the fic.  No one but myself and @archer-and-anders​ will care.