OC Kiss Week: "Almost"
I'll be using the prompt list for OC kiss week, so we're starting with "almost"! This is Noah and Teagan, main characters from my WIP Ways To Be Cunning.
Words: 822
Taglist: @jezifster @kk7-rbs @multi-lefaiye @written-in-gold (if you want to be added or removed lmk!)
“It’s my fault, Teagan,” Noah whispers, sat alone with her in the bedroom. It’s just the two of them; usually they might all go and hang out with her since she can’t go out of bed, but Noah asked for privacy. “You put your trust in me.”
“Yeah,” Teagan answers. She looks OK, other than looking tired and pale. But that electric shock could’ve killed her. “I did put my trust in you. And that was my decision, not yours. And you got us out of it, didn’t you?”
“You- you almost died, I don’t know what I'd do without-”
“You won’t have to find out,” Teagan says, and reaches her hand out. He takes her hand and squeezes it gently.
To Noah, Teagan always seems to smell of pine needles and sea salt. It’s fresh and comforting and he loves the smell of pine now more than he ever did. It’s a difficult thing to come to terms with, that he’d walk through a forest because it would remind him of her, that she’s become so important to him that he’d love every second.
The Electricity trial was maybe the worst they’ve been through so far. None of the others were a walk in the park either, but the shock of this one—for a moment, they all thought Teagan was dead.
Noah can feel the weight of it in the air now. He can almost see Zach hovering near the door outside, wanting to come in and check she’s OK; Ari frightened of the future, frightened to lose anyone; Ethan trying to overprepare for the next trial, trying to prevent something they have no power to prevent.
“Stop worrying,” Teagan says, and Noah looks at her again. Her blonde hair messy and tangled, one of the first times he’s seen it out of a braid; her pale eyelashes and scattered freckles. The small smile on her face when he looks at her again.
“It seems so real now,” Noah answers, still holding her hand, holding it tighter, now. “We’re only on round one. Someone might really die.”
“We won’t let that happen, Noah.”
“There's nothing we could’ve done today. Someone had to do it. We have no power, Teagan. I should’ve put myself at risk, not you.”
“We couldn’t lose you, you were the only one who knew what was going on.”
“Maybe. I don’t know,” Noah says, and drops his head in his hands for a second, breathing in. “It should’ve been anyone but you.”
He knows he couldn’t have stopped her. She’d never have let anyone else put themselves in harm’s way. She’d have been angry with him if he’d tried to stop her; you can’t tell Teagan what to do.
“Noah.”
Noah looks up to find that Teagan has sat up, leaned forward on her knees to be closer to him.
“Get out of your head. Get out of your head and just- look at me,” she says. “Listen to me. I want you to see me.”
Noah looks at her, properly, for a moment. Her hair. Her eyelashes. Her freckles. Sky blue eyes, suddenly hopeful, desperate; pale cheeks, now flushed pink right up to her nose; and her lips, pale with her sickness, parted like she’s waiting.
Noah feels he might know what she’s waiting for.
“Let me...” Teagan begins, softly, and leans forward, and Noah feels himself flush with self-consciousness, excited suddenly for something, anything from her. For her to finally notice him, like he’s always wanted.
And then he pulls away.
“Teagan-” he begins, somehow breathless, maybe from nerves. But before he can finish what he’s saying, the door slams open.
“We’re all having dinner, do you want any?” Mackenzie says, so loudly that Noah feels he must be been deaf a moment ago, and the sound was suddenly turned back on. “Am I interrupting something?”
“Mackenzie, oh my God,” Zach says, appearing behind her, “they asked for privacy in the bedroom, the least you could do is knock, I’m so sorry, Teagan how are you feeling-”
“Nothing was going on,” Noah says, standing up, and he feels Teagan’s turn to look up at him. “I’ll just get us dinner, Teagan. I’ll shout out what there is to you?”
“I’m on it!” Mackenzie yells, and turns around, out of sight, and starts practically shrieking their options to them; “Potatoes, uhh, more potatoes, there’s beans... salted fish, it’s really salty though, uhh, the biscuit things-”
“It’s called fucking hard tack,” Hector’s voice interrupts.
“Alright fancy-pants. Teagan, do you want some goddamn hard tack? I’ll get you some hard tack.”
Noah sees Teagan sigh, and he smiles a bit at her. “It’s just because they care,” he answers. “I’ll come back in a minute.”
He leaves the room, and his heart suddenly allows itself to start thudding. It’s so loud, he worries that everyone else on the ship can hear it just as well as him.
