To think the world would owe anything was such a puerile concept, one dreamt up by children that believed the stars and the moon aligned for them. The ones what would trust in the lord’s plan, for they’d believe someone out there truly cared. They’d believe that in this universe, there was a single thing that served them.
He’d learn it the hard way, like so many before him would. Under battered breaths, hands wring together as nails dig into the flesh. He’d pray. Knees burnt from the carpet beneath them, stinging. He’d know his father to stand at the door.
Embodiment of the lord himself. For only something that cruel could learn from the holy heavens. A smile so divine to the town, would twist in a way Noah would lean to mimic in the mirror. Beneath brutality and shattered glass.
He’d think now he spends his days sickly and in bed perhaps the boy would learn to break the grasp that ties him to the monster in the mirror. But if that was the case- he would have left with Alice a long time ago.
“It doesn’t mean we weren’t friendly.” A smile grotesque paints across his face, as his eyes dance with the amusement to his own words. “If you want, we can retrace those steps.”
The words leave his mouth, vulgar- yet Noah Bennett recalls flashes, perhaps moments or a memory or a nightmare. Which he’s unsure of. And the girl Neve speaks of, he doesn’t recall her. Not by name or physique.
Perhaps he was seeing ghosts again.
His eyes feel heavy where they look, but he somehow manages to keep them on the woman before him. His head dense, as were his movements as he adjusts in his seat. “Is this our first date?”
He thinks he can recall the car spinning, or pulling over to a stop. Something in the outskirts. Heart pounding against the dust kicked up in the headlights, and an inky blackness that washed over the desert at night. “We can take my car if you want to visit the back seat after?”
there was something in noah that was caustic, but endearing despite it. he reminded neve of the little boy in the secret garden, in the way that she could only remember him from her childhood: endlessly childish and indignant, spoiled and rotten--and, yet somehow sympathetic. it wasn’t that she felt pity for him. or, if she did, it was an emotion she had never quantified as pity, which seemed patronizing in the worst of ways. no, neve felt something else about noah. that he was lonely. that he was self-destructive.. that he probably needed a friend like her in lieu of any other decent influences ( not that she was the paragon of personal success or enlightenment herself ) or he’d probably end up in the emergency department more often for much worse reasons.
as he tries to get a rise out of her, neve rolls her eyes and waves at him to follow her with a resigned sigh. she doesn’t bother addressing it; that’ll just egg him on. certainly he’s kidding. noah bennett seems content to find the small cuts that were only ever present when bathed in hand sanitizer and hardly visible. once found, he loved to provoke them open, shoving his hands underneath the subject’s skin--an expedition in searching for soft spots to exploit. it was better then, as much as possible, to give him no reaction at all. or, when neve simply couldn’t resist making a statement, to keep it amused and aloof.
it takes so much acting just to do her job, she wonders just how much it bleeds out into her personal life. is neve channing simply a role she has perfected over the years? or the sum of many parts--nurse, daughter, victim, survivor. if nothing else, she is method in her acting; fully committed, just as noah is, at affecting the image she wants to portray. her illusion just happens to be peace and stability, while his is chaos.
“hardly, our first date.” neve speaks dryly as she grabs her purse from behind the triage desk and gestures for him to follow. she scoffs at his request and rolls her eyes again. “fuck, noah, don’t be gross.” does that mean he’s won? earning a scoff seems like a point in his corner. “i’m old enough to have been your babysitter, which--” a smirk tugs at her lips as they way and she raises a brow at him. “--seems really fitting. all things considered.” too bad his parents didn’t pay her by the hour, wherever they were.
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