#thread: noah1

[keeleybop]

Every teenage girl this side of the Atlantic would have strung Keeley up by her toes for her attitude right now. After all, who in their right mind would be granted backstage access to a Shattered Diamond concert only to skulk around with a face looking like… what was the phrase Fitz used again? Oh, like a smacked arse.

Any one of the fans lined up outside would have given their right arm to be where she was right now: in the wings and on the outskirts of the band’s soundcheck as they warmed up before their show. She wasn’t dumb enough to think that it wasn’t cool - just because she’d grown up around athletes who jumped into veritable rocketships, it didn’t mean she wasn’t prone to getting  a little starstruck. The idea of teenage Keeley, shut up in her poster-wrapped bedroom back in the suburbs of Westchester, spending a prolonged amount of time talking to Diego Rodriguez without getting tongue-tied would have been laughable to her old fangirl self, once upon a time. Now, she took it in her stride. Diego was easy to talk to, Henry had a really dry sense of humour and Poppy had always been nice to her, with one of the best ACNH islands Keeley had ever seen.

Being starstruck around them wasn’t an option now, even if she did hesitate to call the band her friends. They only knew of her through Noah and the last thing Keeley wanted to do was overestimate her importance in someone else’s life. The past few weeks had been enough of a goddamn cautionary tale for her to make a mistake like that again.

She heard the strum of Diego’s guitar and, still enough of a genuine superfan to recognise the song, immediately felt her stomach drop. The intro belonged to a song that had been added to an Instagram post and more than a few stories she’d uploaded, all of them documenting Keeley’s freckly face pressed up against a smiling blond’s. It was Théo’s favourite song.

The same nausea that had been rolling around in her stomach for weeks reared up again and she dry-swallowed as best as she could. Choking out an excuse to Bobbie who remained in the wings, she took large strides down the tiny corridor until she found the first door there was. Immediately, she slammed her hands down on the exit bar and pushed her way outside, spilling out into the evening air.

A few other people were milling around. Roadies, the tech crew, and she could hear the distant shouting of fans as they lined up outside the venue. Puffing air out from her cheeks, Keeley looked around and decided nobody was going to question what she was doing here, too busy with their own jobs. If they did, she had her VIP pass attached to a lanyard and shoved into the front pocket of her shorts.

It was stupid to think the song wouldn’t have been on the setlist. God forbid the Diamonds skip past one of their most famous love songs at the unspoken request of Keeley. She’d just forgotten to mark it off as one of the many things in her life she couldn’t look at in the same way right now, or maybe ever again. Alongside her pink denim jacket, the Polaroids she’d ripped off her wall and the Togepi plush Théo had bought for her that was now shoved down in the very depths of her closet.

An ache pressed against the column of her throat as she tipped her head back against the brick of the building. Cigarette smoke filtered through the air and at least that was an unbiased enough scent for her nostrils to pull at. Théo had never smoked, so that was safe.

“Drag?”

She frowned, dropping her head down to stare at the owner of the voice. The guy in front of her was clad in a leather jacket and holding out a joint to her. A few seconds passed as she took stock of him. Tanned skin, dark curls, a hoop in his right ear, a piercing in his nose. She resisted the urge to nod to herself. Again, he was different and so he was safe. 

Her eyes dipped down to the joint. She wasn’t much of a smoker, even if she’d taken an edible or two before. And she knew better than to take a drag of something someone else had rolled.

“You look like you need it,” the guy said, eyes glinting as he wiggled it in front of her face. 

There was something about the way he was looking at her that excited Keeley. A smirk playing on his lips as he waited patiently. A hunger in his eyes that had never been in Théo’s. And Théo had never wanted her, not really, so maybe that meant this guy did. It felt like a pathetic act of desperation when Keeley eventually nodded and reached out, plucking the joint from his fingers and placing it between her lips.

“Thanks,” she mumbled, just as the door swung open behind her again.

[idkcallum-blog]

heart, don’t fail me now // callum and noah

Callum brushed his long curls back against his head to stop them obscuring his vision. If there was anything about his twin brother that he would have changed it would have been the long locks resembling Tarzan’s he had grown out. Ever since he’d decided to don his brother’s varsity jacket and ink the same generic arrow tattoo on his arm as Petey’s, he’d also been forced to stop trimming his mousey curls and grow them out into wild, untamed tangles of brown.

It was his shoulder length hair that prompted people to do a double take and ask themselves if Petey Cormac had just walked by them, and that never failed to make Callum feel bad. Now that he was out of his house, forced to live in the docks for weeks on end until he built up the courage to visit his twin’s old roommate, there was a sick feeling of nausea that accompanied him every time he channelled the persona of his dead brother. Now that he had started though, he couldn’t find it in himself to stop – not when people much preferred saying hello to ‘Petey’ instead of Callum.

Nevertheless, Petey wouldn’t be able to play football with a crick in his neck from spending restless night sleeping on boat decks, and neither could Callum. He had gathered up what little belongings he had that morning and trudged towards the Messina apartment complex. After his first visit there, he’d successfully located his brother’s old flat, but since then he’d been psyching himself up to go and knock on the door. He wasn’t afraid of facing old memories of Petey, but of facing his brother’s old roommate Noah and hoping the other man would remember that Petey had a twin. It may have been a vain hope though, as nobody cared to remember the quieter and more subdued twin, not when they had the Cormacs’ Golden Boy to entertain them instead.

Callum found himself standing in front of Noah’s door, backpack slung carelessly off one shoulder and hands buried deep in the pockets of his – or, rather, Petey’s – varsity jacket.

“C’mon,” he urged himself quietly, eventually removing one hand from the recesses of the jacket and knocking on the door. It swung open quicker than he expected it to and the man on the other side was unmistakably Noah.

“Hey,” he cut in quickly, not wishing to delay an unpleasant conversation by starting off the meeting with a horrible situation of confusion. “It’s Callum. My name’s Callum. I’m… I was Petey’s twin but… the face gives that away, huh?”

[akacaleb-blog]

lies, living in a fantasy // caleb and noah

As soon as he blinked his eyes open, squinting against the sunlight streaming through the open window, Caleb suddenly became hyperaware of his surroundings. The soft bedsheets were nothing like his scratchy mattress and the pillow was a plain blue, not dotted with various R2-D2 motifs. He knew exactly where he was and the warm body beside him only confirmed that.

A familiar sense of nausea settled in his stomach and, ridiculously, he found himself fighting back the urge to cry. The realisation of what had transpired between him and Noah last night was too overwhelming for him to really handle at such an early hour, especially when the idea of confronting that cold, hard truth simply made him want to burrow further into the other man’s duvet and maybe perhaps suffocate himself. He had told himself repeatedly that, after the last time, there wouldn’t be a next time. But this was the third time that he had found himself waking up next to the other man (the fourth time actually, if the first, mostly innocent, time counted after that eventful party).

He couldn’t even bring himself to turn around a look at the blonde whose even breathing hinted at him still being fast asleep. As slowly as he could, Caleb crept out from under the cover, blindly searching around for his boxers and shifting along the mattress to pull them on and stand up. His jeans were located next, followed by his dumbass Star Trek shirt. He pulled on one sock and allowed himself to think that he would be able to escape from the confines of Noah’s shared apartment without being caught (as soon as he found his other bloody sock) when he heard the tell-tale sound of someone rummaging around in the kitchen outside the closed door.

Realising that Noah’s roommate must be awake, Caleb immediately jumped and knocked his knee painfully off one of Noah’s drawers and silently flailed in agony for a few moments.

“Shit!” he hissed as quietly as he could, glancing over his shoulder towards the bed only for his heart to lurch dangerously. His cheeks coloured when he spotted Noah, wide awake and fixing him with a dry look. How long had he been awake? Before or after the damn drawer incident? Caleb wasn’t really sure he wanted to know.

“I, uh, I have to go. I have to shower before my shift at the arcade,” he babbled on, carelessly lifting books and mugs in a bid to find his troublesome, missing sock, his actions becoming more and more flustered the longer he stood under the other man’s scrutiny.

“Your, uh, your roommate. Is he – I mean, is he going to leave? I don’t want to… I can’t go out if…” he eventually stopped searching and allowed himself to point lamely towards the door. He didn’t want to say it.

[harperforbes-blog]

i suffered through every indignity but i'll rise above it all || harper and noah

With the date of her court case against Clark coming closer and closer, Harper felt less and less prepared even though there was little more to do in order to get ready. She had worked with Grant to prepare her arguments and had gathered all the necessary documents and papers that she needed and Grant had reassured her that this was something they could easily win. Her nerves still didn't disappear though. She was determined that she wasn't going to lose her son to the man that had just sauntered into his life eight years too late and she was doing everything that she could to make sure that didn't happen. She wasn't the most booksmart but she was beginning to understand more about the papers that she had went over with Toby's help a few nights ago. Her face still went red when she thought about that night and how she had fallen asleep on the man. She could have looked back on the moment with a degree of humiliation but the man had reacted rather kindly to waking up and finding her curled against him. He hadn't even been freaked out when she had been pushy and insisted that he stay the night. All in all, the memory actually made her feel light and happy and brought a dopey smile to her face but she was always sure to remind herself that she had more important things to focus on. She really couldn't afford to get distracted at this moment in time. As her phone rang, she picked it up to see Clark's name flashing on her screen and she quickly swiped across her screen and then pressed the red button. She didn't want to talk to him because she knew exactly what he would have to say and didn't want to deal with that at the present moment. She supposed that Clark thought her weak. He had expected her to get scared by the threat of a hearing and just hand Ethan to him but while Harper was a pushover most of the time, she would fight tooth and nail for her son. He had tried a lot of different methods like bribing her and trying to make bargains and had even tried blackmail by kissing her with the promise to drop the charges if she complied. She was cleverer than that though and so now he had simply resorted to pestering her and asking her to meet up with him so they could 'talk things out', but she hadn't paid good money for a lawyer to get backed into a corner. The knock on her apartment door was almost a welcome distraction even though she wondered how the person had been buzzed in. The doorman was getting rather sloppy lately but her usual vistors were a select handful of people she went to open the door without any question. When she did, she spotted a flash of bright blue eyes and dark hair and her heart skipped a beat before she realised that it wasn't Toby standing in front of her, just someone who happened to look remarkably like him. "Um... hi! Can I help you?" she asked, politely.