Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The porch light is still broken.

A thing Joel notes as he watches his daughter repacking things all over again—as though she hasn’t done this three times already. The light from behind him is casting a warm, gooey glimmer over her and the porch. While the front yard, mailbox and sidewalk are lit up by Tommy’s bright fucking headlights due to his shit parking.

Leaning against the open door, he can only watch. Arms folded. Wanting to help, but knowing without asking that he’s not required to help. Sarah eventually shrugs her backpack onto her shoulders, wearing a big grin. She’s all long limbs and elbows now. Fourteen going on adult— bosses him around like she’s the parent instead of him.

“You got your pillow, y’know—”

“Dad…”

“Alright, alright. Won’t say a thing.”

Tommy chooses then to honk the horn, grinning out of the window. Joel resists sticking up a gesture that isn’t a wave.

“Text me when you get there.”

“I always do,” she replies, halfway up to kissing him on the cheek.

She doesn’t. But he lets it go.

Strokes the back of her arm before she skips down the steps and practically dashes to the truck.

He doesn’t move, not even when his brother turns around and waves. In fact, Joel’s eyes don’t leave the vehicle’s backend until there’s nothing left to look at, stepping back only when he’s not heard screeching tyres or music blaring. The door creaks shut behind him, hand at the back of his head, scratching—TV still on from earlier, now changed to some programme he couldn’t begin to name.

Joel should be used to this, being alone.

It’s happened more and more in the last few years as Sarah got invited to more and more sleepovers. Kids from soccer, kids from school, kids from her volunteering work she does during the holidays. Tonight, it’s one at her uncle's. Promise of some horror movie Sarah’s already told him they’d be watching, and Tommy flat out denied ever hearing its name. Joel's never heard of it. 

The refrigerator hums when he opens it, milk bottles and sauces jingling in the door as the off-white glow makes him blink, staring around—not even sure for what—until his eyes land on a beer tucked at the back.

He can’t remember when he bought it. Never mind when he tucked it behind leftovers and oddities.

It’s a twist-top, meaning it’s from some backyard thing he’d been invited to on the street. It twists off easily, the bottle sounding relieved to be freed as he eyeballed it, let the malt scent tickle his nose.

The bottle barely reaches his lips when his phone rings. Not the home phone, his. Tugging it with a finger and thumb from his jeans, having to lean to one side to ease it out—hearing the jingle of quarters and probably screws scratching and moving as he does.

Private number.

Bottle down, hand wiped on the dish towel, he stares at the screen with a frown.

It’s probably a telemarketer. But, could also be something from work.

He considers ignoring it and pressing decline. Hovers his thumb over it to do so, but refrains. Something in him stills, stops. Eyes narrowing as it continues to vibrate and play an annoying tune as he weighs up whether or not to allow his peaceful-but-rather-boring night to be interrupted.

He presses the answer button before rolling his eyes.

“Hello?”

“Is this Joel Miller?” asks a cheery, polite female voice he does not recognise.

He grunts in response, finger tracing the neck of the beer, he has a sinking feeling he won’t be drinking.

“This is Nurse Jones from St. Davids. Your name is listed as an emergency contact for Noa, your girlfriend. She’s stable, still a little loopy post-surgery, but awake. Would you be able to come down so we can talk about a discharge plan—she can’t be alone for the next 24 hours due to the concussion.”

It takes him a second. Then another.

Too much fucking firing around his skull for him to catch up quick enough. Head spinning. Every fact sluggish, words dragging through fog. Processing it all, one at a time. Noa—his neighbour. St. Davids. Girlfriend? Surgery.

“Mr Miller?”

“…Yeah. I—yeah. Is she alright?”

“She took a nasty fall at the end of her shift. She sustained a compound fracture in her right arm, a mild concussion. She’s stable, though. Came through surgery fine. We just wanted to let you know. In case you’d been worrying about her.”

Closing his eyes, scrubbing a hand over his mouth, he nods. To no one. A thing he realises with a heavy sigh.

“Yeah. Be there in twenty.”

Chapter Text

It comes back to her in fragments.

Broken clips of a moment that flow into the next, without any sense or reason.

She remembers logging out of her computer, grabbing her coat, silently waving to Susie—who was on the phone to some disgruntled patient. She remembers feeling bad she was leaving while it was still busy, but being glad she finally had signal when she left through the automatic doors of St. Davids.

Then she recalls being face down in the ambulance bay. Her workplace’s ambulance bay, as shame, pain and dizziness become friends.

Now, she can hear buzzing. Cracking an eyelid open—too bright, too fucking bright—as the fluorescent lights beam down. She feels linen sheets that are scratchy, not soft. The distant beeps of a machine that’s both in rhythm and annoying.

Other things begin to come to her then.

For one, her mouth is dry, like she’s licked several mouthfuls of sand or made out with the glue on an envelope. Either that or her tongue has transformed into paper.

Next, her eyelids drag when she blinks, all heavy, unwilling to open—even with the light being sharp.

Then, her nose catches the scent of disinfectant. Which just about masks copper and surgical gloves, and she has a sinking feeling that the latter two are coming from her.

Attempting to move, she discovers that everything—and she means everything—hurts. It aches, it throbs. Her arm—fuck, her arm—is stiff. Caught, restrained, stuck underneath a thick blanket she both recognises and can’t place. Her mind not able to create the full picture, grimacing and wincing. Trying to do detective skills without any prior experience of solving crimes and with a head that’s more cement-like than quick-thinking.

If Noa were truthful, there’s only dullness stretching around her head. Insistent, slow dullness. A nothingness that even tumbleweeds wouldn’t choose to live in. It begins behind her eyes and ricochets around until it fizzes out behind her left ear. Like she’s come up too fast or—

Fuck she fell.

It floats into her head in murky shapes. Wet concrete, the snap of something before a noise that sounded blood-curdling. Sirens, loud, horrid sirens. Cold air, an array of shouts. Then nothing. Nada. Blank.

A voice murmurs something, low, familiar beside her, and her head scans around what she can see, and finds nothing. Not a nurse, not the TV. Wondering to herself if she’s losing it, if she’s hearing voices now, until she turns her head a fraction and almost jumps out of her skin.

Fuzzy until her eyes focus, she sees the outline of someone sitting in a chair beside her. Later, when whatever is in her system wears off, she’ll be embarrassed that it takes a few blinks for him to turn solid instead of haziness.

“…Joel?”

Her voice is unrecognisable. All hoarse, scratchy.

He straightens, meets her eyes before moving. Reaching for something out of her sight, until he’s bringing it to her—a cup of ice.

“Want me… too?”

She nods, then regrets it as soon as her head pounds and her left eye closes on instinct. Just missing the sight of him bringing the ice to her mouth—only able to feel it—wrapping her lips around the chip before realising, far too late, she’s also touched some of his finger.

“Why…”

She says—assuming attractively too—around the chunk of ice.

“You fell. They called me.”

It’s useless to try, but her mind tries to grab at a memory all the same. Except, it all slips through her grasp before she can make sense of it. Tongue slowly turning the ice around her mouth, too cold, letting it all numb, growing more unwilling to spit it out and have it puddle on her chest.

She frowns, only then processing the end of his sentence.

“You?”

They called you?

He leans back in his chair then, arms folding like he’s bracing for something—mouth twitching, just a little. As though whatever he’s thinking is humorous, and she’s not in on the joke.

“Mmhm,” he says, drawing it out. “You put me down as your emergency contact.”

She stares. He shrugs.

“Said I was your boyfriend?”

Noa’s eyes widen, blinking—albeit slowly.

His smile curls, not smug exactly or mocking. Something else. Something that makes her want to bury herself in the sheets in the hope that they drown her.

“So.” He lets it hang a beat. “There something you need to tell me, sweetheart? ‘Cause I don’t recall us ever starting to date, and I feel I’d remember a detail like that.”

Noa remembers then.

And even in her drowsiness, she wants to crawl out of her bed and find a hole. Because the sheets drowning her wouldn’t be enough. Nothing would be enough. Except, her arm is uncooperative and her legs feel like lead, so she’s not entirely sure she can make that happen. Especially as she tries to move her head and the sensation of goo slides around her skull, all streams of consciousness, rather than a response.

“Noooo. S’not true.”

“Sweetheart, they called me.”

She muffles back a whimper—eyes widening at the nickname. And any form of an explanation goes, vanishes, poof. Not able to hold it for long enough before other words rise, not able to hold onto much except too much truth.

He’s called her that before.

Sweetheart.

The fact that she can think of the exact memory in this current state makes her feel like a teenager and not the adult she is. Feeling her ears burn, cheeks growing warmer. Having to clamp any and all words in her mouth, the one that is too cold and loose from whatever is making everything not hurt as much as she expects it should. Because if she lets herself speak, she’s not sure what will come out.

Maybe it’s that she has a crush. That the scent of him next to her at Kristen’s ‘garden party’ remained stuck in her nose for weeks.

That Joel seeing her in this state may be up there with one of the five worst things that have ever happened to her. With the fall that put her here currently, not even making said list.

Focusing on the blanket over her, she thinks she succeeds in hiding her truth. That is, until he leans forward. Face wearing an expression that needs an answer, a key prising open the unlocked chest.

“Noa?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be, I just…”

“Just...?”

He shrugs, and she realises—even on meds that make her brain loopy—he has no idea how good looking he is. A thing she shouldn’t say. Nope. No. But her mouth is already opening, tongue wrapping around words:

“Oh come on, Joel,” she replies, words slurring slightly as her tongue forms words before her brain realises what sentence she’s stringing together. “Can you blame me? Have you seeeen yourself?”

His eyes widen to the size of a spaceship.

The chair creaks as he leans back, head tilting, before his eyes drop from her face and he shakes his head. Elbow resting on the arm of the chair, hand stroking at the hair around his jaw.

And Noa now wants the hole she’d previously wanted to climb in, to just fucking swallow her and the bed whole. Fuck it, take the entire wing of the hospital.

Her mouth opens to apologise, but she only manages to make a noise that doesn’t seem human and the wish to die of embarrassment doubles. If at all possible.

It’s only when she attempts to shuffle further down the bed does she catch a pink sheen slipping over his nose, and the top of his cheeks. Notices, even in her unfocused state, his eyes keep landing on her and remaining. All brown—chocolatey, enough to slip into and swim around in. A thing she’d thought once when they’d been huddled near some neighbours’ decking, wondering why there were eleven flamingo statues in one singular garden.

She blinks herself back from the memory. Blames the drugs—because it has to be drugs.

“M’sorry,” she says, before slurping and swallowing the ice water pooling in her mouth. “I didn’t know who to put down.”

Looking away from him at that confession, she finds herself honing back in on his face to read it only a second or two later. Able to focus all of a sudden, but only on that, on him.

“S’okay.”

It isn’t, but she doesn’t argue. Even if her mouth falls open to say something more, she finds it’s full of half-melted ice again, and she has to gulp and slurp it back up before she embarrasses herself further.

When she glances back, he’s smirking. Not a real smirk. Not like a normal person smirk. A Joel Miller one. The ghost of one, a slight uptick. But all of his expressions are slight. Just there. Not quite fully spreading or appearing.

“But it can’t be why you put me down, Noa.”

She doesn’t answer, rests her head on the pillow. She’s too tired. Too warm. Too… something.

“Shuddup, Joel.”

“You’re telling me to shut up?”

Her eyes close, before one creeps open, and she makes a shush noise. Seeing, before her eyelid gives a final close, a soft smile trying to slip over his mouth.

“It hurts, Joel.”

Eyelids struggling to flip open, Noa feels herself being pulled under. Things grow murky, dim at the edges. All of a sudden, weightless. Only just able to feel a brief touch, a smooth, soft wipe of a finger that isn’t her own against her cheek. The brief sound of him saying something that oddly sounds like sleep.

JM: Don’t tell Sarah, but I’m at St. Davids. Noa the neighbour had a fall.

TM: You playing the hero, big brother?

TM: Finally get to pick her up bridal style? Make a dream reality?

JM: Shut up, Tommy.

TM: She okay?

JM: Yeah. Out of surgery. Groggy. Might be here a while.

TM: You staying with her?”

JM: Yeah. Just gonna make sure she gets home.

Joel swears he’s heard the same things at least three times.

Once to her, twice to him.

Painkillers. Wound care. Follow up.

As well as a clear list of things Noa shouldn’t do for the next few days. Even though he’s nodded, arms folded—index finger scratching at the crease of his elbow—he still wants to ask one more time. A thing he suspects is readable on his face because moments later, he’s being handed a stack of papers, told to take care of their girl, before the nurse pats him on the shoulder and wishes him good luck.

He feels he’ll need it as soon as he turns his attention back to Noa. Finding her sitting on the edge of the hospital bed, eyes staring off with the most vacant and distant stare he’s ever seen on a person's face.

The thing that tugs at him, though, is how small she looks.

Her face scrunched as she sways slightly under a too-large hoodie that the nurse brought from lost and found, which is partially over her and the hospital gown they’ve permitted her to leave in. The sling on her dominant arm makes her look breakable—another thing that pulls at his chest. So used to seeing her bouncing down her porch, too-large coffee cup in hand and a grin wider than he thinks his face could make. Or, telling one of their more awful neighbours where he can shove the sunshine when he got a bit too tipsy.

“You good?” he asks, voice low.

Her brows lift, but her head doesn’t. “Yeah.”

Liar.

Her voice is timid, scratchy. She doesn’t look much better either, still a little unfocused, but still as stubborn as he can remember from block parties. He saw it when she tried to stand before the nurse had finished going over her discharge papers. Joel, having nudged her back down, a stern look he knows is usually reserved for Sarah, but surprisingly finds works just as well on her.

“Want to take my arm?”

“No, m’good.”

He moves to her side all the same when she stands, watching her sway on two feet as his stomach grumbles at the amount of shit coffee he’s drank to stay awake. 

“Easy,” he murmurs, instinctively placing his hand out, letting it find a home on the small of her back.

A thing which seems to make her tense, but not glance.

“I’m alright.”

“You keep saying that. Don’t make it true.”

That earns him a sidelong glance, before a snort. No argument, though. Not even when he stays close as they shuffle to the exit, or when he carries her handbag. Not even a murmur when he hovers a little closer to make sure she doesn’t stumble either.

There’s no one around, though. No people to avoid or walk around, no rush needed—not at two in the morning. Joel has always thought that hospitals have this half-dead silence at night. Just occasional sounds that break the quiet, like janitors’ squeaking wheels and the slap of a mop on the tiles or someone coughing a few halls over. It’s even eerier right now, not a single other soul floating up or down the corridor.

The only time he hadn’t thought it was when Sarah was born. But that had been different. That had been all excited chaos and energy.

The automatic doors wheeze when they open, darkness trying to swallow them as they move out into the night—streetlights buzzing overhead, all sickly-orange against the backdrop of dark clouds.

It’s only then that he moves from her, realises his palm has been on her spine the entire time and suddenly misses it being there once it’s removed. A thing he will not needle further as he eases her onto a bench and tells her he’ll be five minutes. And fuck does he need the five minutes. The largest exhale blows out of his nose when he slips back into the driver’s seat. He slides a hand down his face, taking big, deep breaths before he rumbles his vehicle to life and heads to pick her up.

When he approaches, he’s surprised to find she hasn’t even attempted to move.

Moving to open the passenger door, he doesn’t offer her help getting in. She’ll ask—he knows she will. Stubborn in her gritted teeth as she shifts herself, almost catches her arm as she does so, before inhaling through her teeth.

Joel only rounds back to the driver’s side when he knows she’s in. The rumble of the engine is seemingly louder now, even if it’s impossible.

“You warm enough?”

His hand reaches to adjust the dial when she nods, barely looking at him. Eyes all heavy again, head bowed slightly.

“Y’can’t sleep, Noa.”

“Sh—”

“Nope.” His finger prods her knee, hearing her murmur. “Stay awake.”

He drives slower than usual. Periodically looking over to check she’s not drifted off, but the window down blasting cool air on her seems to be doing the trick. Her head occasionally tries to whip away from it, eyes squinting, brows pinched.

“Almost there.”

Noa only hums.

He expects, on another day, she’d be nothing but chatter. Seems the kind. Wonders if she’d talk Sarah under the table from the times he’s seen her working a backyard party and somehow even making him talk. It’s kind of eerie seeing her so quiet, not that he’d blame her. Each bump he tries to miss, each pothole he swerves without making it too big a swing.

When they pull up, the street is quieter than the parking lot of the hospital. Enough that when he kills the engine on his drive, he pauses for a moment to allow the world to shift back into peace.

“You want me to walk you in?”

She doesn’t answer right away, just looks down at her lap—face unreadable.

Then, as quiet as a mouse, words all wobbly as they leave: “I don’t think I can get my key out of my bag.”

Mouth twitching, Joel undoes his seatbelt before pressing hers. “That way of saying yes?”

“Be nice, okay?” she mutters, but more playfully than before.

He smirks, says nothing, before opening his door and stepping out to round to the other side.

Chapter Text

The day he brought Sarah home, it surprised him that she was quiet.

It made him more nervous—more on edge—as he stared at this small thing in his arms that he had all of this love for, and she didn’t even know it. Even if her cries wounded him, made him feel hopeless and uncertain, the quiet of the house without her little sobs made it hard to settle.

Weeks later, it had taken him by surprise when he’d come back from grocery shopping to find bags packed. Ones that weren’t his. Instead they belonged to the woman staring at him, withdrawn, empty. The same expression on her face he’d seen when they’d gone for the first scan, to the classes. An absent, bored expression. She may have looked like the woman he had loved in that bar years prior, but she definitely wasn’t in there as she apologised, in that same monotone voice, but offered nothing more as she moved past him.

It surprised him when Tommy found himself a good woman, but it didn’t surprise him that he fucked it up months later.

Another thing he can add to the list of surprises is the inside of Noa’s home.

As soon as the door swings open, handle clanging against the wall and the ceiling light flicking on, the place shifts from shadows to coloured-in reality—and he swears his jaw almost hit the floor.

From the outside, her home looked exactly like his.

Manicured cut grass, little flower pots, the same wooden front door and a weed-free driveway. But inside, if anything, it is the exact opposite of his home—and not because there are no old drawings in crayon and art projects on display as decor.

It’s colourful, bright. Mostly off-white walls with an occasional signature painted wall that adds pigment. Her sofa is grey, with colourful throw cushions—shades from pastel to jewel. Her shelves are equally full of varying shades of pots and ornaments.

The more Joel looks, the more little injections of her all over the place his eyes capture. Sliding his gaze across, beginning to focus in on things.

What he focuses the most on is the artwork on the walls. Places, mainly. He thinks. Caught and frozen in time—all in shades he couldn’t imagine the places actually being, not that he’d ever seen them. 

His eyes flick to the two bookshelves, noting how they’re stuffed full of books or things he wishes to get closer to look at.

“I’ll be right back,” Noa says, voice sounding far away, even if she’s beside him.

“Y’need a hand?”

She looks at him curiously, at least a small improvement that she’s returning to her usual self.

Joel watches as she tries to fold her arms, realises and then her shoulders fall as her good arm hangs limp.  

“You gonna help me pee, Joel?”

There’s a long pause before he finally mumbles no and she leaves him in her living room. 

Remaining in place, hovering, until he can’t hear footsteps anymore on the floorboards above, he decides to wander.

He stares down at the side table, the clutter of things and her bag she’s brought back with her. He gazes at the bookshelves, once, twice, three times, before he traipses over and finds himself gaping at a small framed print. Hand wiping down his jeans—a habit, he thinks—before fingers brush the edge of it, feeling the hardness of the card as his head tilts, staring at what he realises is no larger than a postcard.

It might even be a postcard.

Or was.

There are paint strokes that make up the sky in soft pastel shades and the backdrop a textured intentional mess with a white vase perfectly smooth in the centre—an array of blue, white and green flowers in the centre. Smiling, his gaze flicks to a shelf, and he sees another, similar in size. Placing the one in his hand back, he brushes a fingertip over the second. Allows himself to feel the rough texture of the paint, nail tracing the outline of a single lemon hanging on a branch. Noticing how it’s the same yellow as a dress she wore once.

He clears his throat, putting it back.

It’s then he notices another. Then another.

One lying down on the coffee table he passes, nail hooking under the corner as he realises from the underside that they are postcards. He wonders if they’re all intricately chosen, picked, then painted. Either way, they’re beautiful.

Each of them.

The bowl of peaches, the stack of books, a sunrise. The list goes on.

Hearing noise coming from some distant corner of the house, he retracts his hand, stands straight. Stares around for a moment before dragging himself to her kitchen. Joel is less surprised to find that, like the rest of the place, it’s full of colour. But mirror opposite to his own. The kitchen on the left, the table on the right. 

Her cabinets are olive-green. White countertops. New, he guesses. A soft sunshine yellow refrigerator that he walks up to and pulls open. He’s half-surprised to find a half-open bottle of milk, a plate of leftovers and half a wilting pepper staring back at him.

“I was meant to grocery shop.”

His head turns, cracks, catching movement in his periphery as he spots it. Legs.

Bare legs.

Swallowing, Joel stands straight.

“You know, before I decided to KO myself in front of the people I work with.”

He snorts and closes the refrigerator door.

Battling with himself. Enduring a torment, a war.

Because he’s not sure it’s appropriate to think it, not as she stands, former outfit removed, in shorts and what appears to be a tube top. But fuck is she’s so pretty.

He’s always thought it.

Did so the day she moved in, too. Head thundered with it at the first backyard-thing one of the other neighbours hosted when he was too chickenshit to say anything. His heart reminded him of it in mornings when he’d been caught off guard by her hello or in the evenings when she hovered near the end of his porch and talked to him about whatever and anything.

She must sense him staring, a leg crossing over the other as she plays with her sling.

“Only thing I could pull on without… you know.”

His brow ticks up. And she rolls her eyes, continuing:

“Without asking you to help.”

“Could’ve asked.”

It’s her turn for a brow to raise, lips curling into one cheek. It takes him an embarrassingly long time to realise what he’s just insinuated.

“I mean—”

“Don’t worry, Joel. I know you’re a gentleman.”

Susie: Why is there a rumour that you’ve broken your arm outside of the ER?

Susie: Are you okay???

Susie: Noa? Hello.

Susie: Okay, I may have now heard that you’ve been in surgery. God, I hope you’re okay. Text me whenever you can.

Noa’s phone is politely—because it’s Joel—removed from in front of her, slid to the side on the countertop it had been resting on, before she could even begin to reply to Susie.

"No screens," he gruffed. "Doctor's orders."

She felt rather grateful for it, but there was no way she was about to admit it. Turning her face from him, cheeks burning still from what she’d read, chest all tight.

Because if she’s already been a rumour, it most likely means she’s now gossip.

Muttering about her. Whispering around the coffeepot about the dumb administrative assistant who wiped out.

Thinking about it does nothing to help her head, which still prickles. Makes her lurch her arm to shrug her shoulder—if only for herself—only to then be forced to bite the inside of her cheek to not embarrassingly cry in front of her babysitter.

Joel had ran home. Briefly. Allowing enough time for her to take some deep breaths, ensure none of her underwear is in random places and have a tiny cry. When he returns, it's triumphantly with a bag full of things.

English Muffins that his daughter had previously made, a pot of jam he'd kept hidden (but confirmed once he twisted the lid off that Sarah had already gotten to it) and some butter all in hand. And, while the reason he was here was due to her own idiocy, the gesture may be the sweetest thing someone has done for her for a long time.

He doesn’t ask if she wishes for him to apply them both; he just does it. Juts his head for her to sit at her small, two-person baby-blue table (that really only fits one comfortably) as she shuffles over and does as she is told.

“I like your art,” he says, after a beat.

His back to her—broad back at that. It stretches the confines of his brown, worn-in t-shirt that she hasn’t been admiring, and she also hasn’t been wondering if it feels soft.

“‘They postcards?”

She nods, realises he isn’t looking and finds her ears burning.

“Y’keeping the postal service in business or somethin’?”

Joel looks over his shoulder then. Face expectant. Waiting for her to respond, she can feel it. But she just shakes her head, smirking.

“No. I don’t send them. Just pick them up from thrift stores, or places I visit. Then, I just sketch over the top, capture a moment that pleases me. Then, when I have free time, I just paint over them.”

“All of ‘em?”

“Most. Some are so pretty already, I just add things to them. Like the ghost one?”

He glances back again, confusion there mid-spreading of jam or butter—she can’t be sure from her angle—as she slips from the chair, wincing slightly as she stands. Her head plays catch-up with her movements, fingers massaging the skin there as she moves into the living room, fumbling around. Sliding over the postcard of painted periwinkle fields and an unopened letter. She knocks more mail to the side, moves some pamphlets out of the way and shifts a half-read book there, before her fingers brush it.

Staring at it for a moment, she considers burying it back under the papers. Going back in, changing the conversation, but she stares at the bookshelf—notices two prints already moved, ever so slightly.

Turning on her heels to find him at the table, two plates on the two mats and even a glass of water each.

“This,” Noa says.

He stares at it for a beat before he wipes his hand on his jeans. She wonders if he’s done that each time. He seems like a man who would. As he tentatively reaches out, his face is all neutral as he does so, hesitant, meeting her eyes to be sure he can, as she nods.

She’s aware that she shouldn’t feel a buzz just because his fingers—his thick fingers—have brushed hers. Ones that dwarf hers, and make hers—which are excellent at typing—feel rather small and deft.

But she does.

Joel says nothing. But his face says everything. His hand scratches at his jaw, making that light scraping noise that itches a part of her brain. She fixates on the finger and thumb holding it so delicately—as though he’ll crease or smudge it if he holds more of it than the very edge—how that may have been the pair that she almost licked earlier when she’d taken the ice chip from him.

“You’re good,” he says.

And she believes him.

A thing she feels she should prod, but chooses not to and instead shrugs—ignoring the warmth curling in her stomach, as a smile grows desperate to lift.

“It’s just a bit of paint.”

Lines appear on his forehead, his grip not releasing even when her hand comes to take it.

“Don’t… Don’t do that, Noa.”

Fuck, her ears burn. Her chest, neck and cheeks all follow suit quickly, too. She nods—gentle, soft. An expression that shows she heard him, but won’t push at it.

She’s grateful that she’s particular about where she keeps things, if only for the reprieve from his stare. Allowing herself to compose herself as she reshuffles mail and books, just for a noise to sound before he asks her if she’s okay. Because truthfully, she isn’t. Not that she can answer that. She can hardly go:

No, Joel, I’m not. Because you’re fucking gorgeous and you’re eating English muffins in my small kitchen.

Because that doesn’t seem logical to say, and she fears that if she thinks it for too long, the pain meds she’s been discharged on will betray her and make even more humiliating confessions slip out.

When she joins him, he stares her over for a moment, before nudging her plate towards her. As though she wouldn’t be sure which plate is hers over his. She politely, and because she’s secretly ravenous, takes a nibble, then a bite, then vanishes the rest of the thing in a few mouthfuls, which makes her feel more akin to an animal than a human.

“In an hour, ‘can take more meds.”

Nodding, she pinches the next half with her index and thumb. Weighs up devouring it, before lightly taking another bite, chewing this one for longer. Appreciating the jam, how delicious it is, as she feels him watching her. Like it settles something inside of him.

Which naturally makes her stomach flip stupidly.

Shifting on the seat, she pretends not to notice. Except, she makes more of a point to keep checking that there’s no lingering crumage or jam around her mouth.

When her plate is empty, brushing the flour dust from her fingers, Noa realises the heat of his eyes. How they’re pressing, weighted. More aware. Observant. Like a hawk with a love for secret jam. 

She takes in how Joel is leaning back, a wrist resting on the table—bicep prominent—while the other arm hangs over his lap. The dark hairs on his arms catch the glow of the light above, arm flexing as though he’s noticed her eyes—and fuck does it all make her throat all of a sudden dry.

Ridiculous, she thinks.

All of the times she’s tried to think up reasons to even talk to him, breaking her arm ends up being the catalyst for why she gets him inside her home.

She snorts, without meaning to—stupid drugs—before feeling the need to mutter:

“Just thinking how stupid this is.”

“Stupid?”

She tips her head from side to side. “Fine, embarrassing.”

Her eyes flick up, finding his still fixed on her. Still just as warm, still as brown, still very looking like he’s okay being here and not annoyed in the slightest.

“Because it is embarrassing to not only trip at work, but to do so right in front of your colleagues. And doing so, so spectacularly, you give yourself both a concussion and break your arm, but also to do so and then have to be wheeled back past where you work on a gurney.”

She can tell he tries not to smirk, laugh or smile.

But he fails. Adding: “You’ve got a point.”

Pointing her glass or water at him, she nods. “Damn fucking right, Miller.”

Swallowing his own mouthful, staring at her—his eyes glide up and down her in a way that shouldn’t make her even warmer, but most definitely does. Asking: “Miller?”

Shrugging, she smirks, placing her glass down—focusing on the way it reflects from the light directly above the table, rather than his face. “Fake girlfriend privileges.”

There’s a pause. Not uncomfortable, but there. Present.

Because she’s mentioned it, the elephant in the room. The enormous thing she only half answered in the hospital and had failed to bring up in any kind of seriousness until now.

“I’m sorry…” Noa begins, “For putting you down. Feels silly to say I couldn’t think of anyone else—but that’s… well, that’s the truth of it.”

“No one?”

Shaking her head. “Not a single soul, no.”

His eyes widen a fraction, but she does him a favour by not bringing it up. Then he leans back, the chair slightly creaking before he does that similar smirk again. The one from the hospital.

“How come you added boyfriend?”

Shrugging, more out of mortification than not knowing. Before she clears her throat to explain, it only comes out as a murmur. A murmur he interrupts with her name again, as she picks up the volume and tells him about how ridiculous the hiring process was, how intimidating the woman was who was there when her paperwork was being signed. Judgy. Not taking no for an answer about the emergency contact to begin with, and then brow raising in mockery when Noa left the relationship section blank.

It’s quiet when she finishes. Not heavy, but still there.

Until he clears his throat, brushes some crumbs from his t-shirt and nods. “She sounds like a bitch.”

Noa smiles, grins. “Yeah. She is.”

Scratching at the side of her mouth, she yawns. Tries to suppress it.

“You tired?”

“A little,” she replies, averting her eyes. “Can’t remember if I’m allowed to sleep or not.”

“You can. Just have to wake you after a bit.”

“Well, that seems unfair on you.”

He shrugs, rolls his lips.

“Brought my sleeping bag.”

Smirking, Noa rubs at the skin where the sling is rubbing. “Might have to take back the gentleman comment, feels a bit presumptuous.”

He laughs, but sarcastically. And it’s enough to make her laugh for real.

“Before you suggest it, you’re sleeping on the bed.”

“Noa…”

“The floor is hard, and we’re not in some kind of apocalypse. My sofa was bought for aesthetics, not for sleeping. And you know what…”

“What?”

“I’m not taking a no, so don’t make me stick one finger in my ear and feel sorry for myself, I can’t stick the other in and go la, la, la.”

He seems to smirk at that. Eyes shimmering, ever so slightly.

“Plus…”

“Plus, what?”

“I can see if you snore. Or, talk in your sleep—I bet you do. Bet it’s all contractor this, power tools that.”

Joel does a Joel laugh. 

And she tries not to think about how much she likes the sound.

Chapter Text

Two years ago, Noa shared her bed with a person who had made her smile and laugh.

They had also made her cry.

Their things had been littered across the bedside table; their clothes hanging in the closet beside hers. Both hers and their shoes had been in a not-neat pile close to the rack she prefers to use. They had a mug they preferred their coffee in, a favourite meal she tried to make at least monthly and a side of the bed they loved.

None of those things exist in her home anymore, and Noa hasn’t shared her bed with anyone in exactly sixteen months since.

Which is why when it dawns on her that Joel Miller is going to be sleeping next to her—albeit in a sleeping bag—she has the smallest, inconsequential freakout that has her taking in and out breaths curled over herself (as best as she can with her stupid arm) on the top of the toilet lid.

From a rough estimate, she suspects she’s been in here for a long enough time that he’ll think she’s either really in need of the toilet or that she’s hiding. Neither of which is great.

From the knock on the bathroom door, she assumes that Joel has worked out it’s the latter. He doesn’t strike her as someone who interrupts people relieving themselves. Too polite, like that. 

When she cracks open the door, she’s unaware of how panicked her eyes are or how puffy her cheeks are from not crying. But she sees little point in hiding her freakout, especially when hours ago she’d licked his finger (another thing that came back to her mid-freakout).

Instead of hiding, she lets him assess the situation—as he will do anyway—before informing him, in a tone best described as liar, that she’s okay.

Especially because her fist is balled up, her eyes are shimmering, and her bottom lip is still wobbling.

What she doesn’t expect from him, is his head shaking, fingers scratching at his chin before saying: “I’ma sleep on the floor.”

Standing, with more energy than she’s had since she was discharged, she stares at him. Shoulders squared—as best as she can—and her chin lifted. 

“Over my broken arm, Joel.”

He just stares at her, jaw ticked. She wonders if she listens intently enough, will she hear his teeth grating together. 

She tries not to look apologetic at her quick and brutish tone. But what she absolutely doesn’t do is cower, or bow or bend. But rather holds the stare and returns a more piercing one back.

When that doesn’t seem to work, she softens. Rolls her eyes:

“I’m just… nervous.”

His face settles at that. His arm rises, forearm leaning against the doorframe as he exhales. Expression nothing but understanding, which only seems to pull at her heart even more. Although, she’s not entirely sure if the amount it pulls at is because of him doing the lean or because of the drugs she’s recently taken.

“I get it. Can’t remember the last time I slept overnight in the same bed as a woman.”

Her brow cocks, and his eyes widen.

“I—I,” he begins to splutter, hand rubbing at the back of his head, “I don’t tend—”

“Joel, are you telling me you smash and dash?”

Exhaling through his nose, letting out a sharp ‘tsh’ before his brows furrow.

Then, his face scrunches, all lines and narrowed eyes—the usual gruffness mixed with confusion. A thing that almost makes her laugh.

“No? I… ” There’s a long pause. A small for someone else but large for him widening of his eyes. “Fuck, I think I do.”

Using her one good arm to wipe at her face, she smiles, poking him in his shoulder for no reason other than in the moment, she thinks it’s a good idea.

“This has made me feel a lot better. And I will have more questions on this when I’m less… drugged.”

He smirks, but she suspects it might be a smile. Only because it remains for a while, at least. Stays, just in the edges of his lips, cheeks slightly lifted—unsure if there’s a dimple beneath the wiry hair or if it’s a shadow.

A thing she turns over when he’s in the bathroom, her bathroom—her en-suite—and she’s making sure things are hidden under socks. Her one slow arm ensuring that his side of the bed is as tidy as she can make it. Hearing him brushing his teeth, the door still cracked as she occasionally sees shadows across the floor as he moves around her small space.

She’s about to smile when it hits her. Dawns. Descends like a mist that's weighted and heavy.

Her sheets aren’t clean.

Mouth falling open, staring at the bed. Panicking. Calculating how long it would take to change them—which, on a good day with two arms, is still longer than she has. Because she fights the sheets at the best of times, never mind one arm down and a head swimming in its own ground-headbutt.

Face scrunching, eyes flicking to the bathroom, she curses under her breath before shoving her face into the sheets—inhaling as much as she can, to perform a quick sniff test. Standing straight, scrunching her nose, she can at least count non-smelly sheets as a blessing. Because there’s nothing she can do to make this mildly weird situation better in any capacity.

So she keeps it to herself.

Teeth nursing the inside of her cheek when he comes out and smiles at her in that Joel way he does. Head tips that he’ll help her get into bed, but to wait one more minute. Heading out back to her living room. She tries to think of a line, something funny, something better than—help a lot of women into bed, do you? But nothing seems as witty as she needs it to be, least of all by the time he’s coming back in with most of her sofa.

“Did it for Sarah, when she broke hers.”

“That’s… that’s nice. Thank you, Joel.”

Once he’s done, he helps her get into her side, hand around her bicep, helping her ease down around the many, many throw cushions he’d built into a halo for her arm. So, y’don’t roll over and hurt yourself. Then, he’s hovering the duvet near her chin, asking if she’s comfortable—as though she ever could be with him staring down at her like he currently is.

“Y’need anything else?”

She can only shake her head. Tongue thick in her skull, brain some form of lumpy mush.

When he turns his back to her, she rolls her head on the pillow—eyes wide at the ceiling—thinking, but careful not to mouth, why are you testing me like this? As Joel crosses the foot of the bed, checking his phone on the dresser before heading to the side he’s sleeping on.

It’s only when the light flicks off, the sleeping bag rustles and the bed dips does she recognise something. Another thing.

Her throat makes a noise at it. All pained-animal that she tries, and fails, to clamp behind her teeth. 

“Y’good?”

She weighs up if she can swallow it.

She can’t.

“Joel Miller, are you about to sleep in fucking jeans?”

There’s no sound; no hum or grunt. Just a Mm accompanied by the faint scratch of his beard as she pictures him dragging his hand down his face.

“Oh my god, Miller. Take off the damn jeans—you’re barricaded away in your caterpillar cocoon as it is.”

“You’re not gonna feel uncomfortable?”

She doesn’t dare think of a thing. Because he could lie on top of her in his underwear, and she’s not sure she’d describe it as uncomfortable.

“No. I would feel uncomfortable knowing you’re sleeping in fucking jeans.”

“Alright, alright.”

“Look,” she continues, “I’ll even close my eyes.”

“It’s dark.”

“Still doingggg it,” she singsongs.

And she does. Even turning her head to face the wall near the window, not that he can see her.

What she discovers, though, is that it’s worse to close her eyes. She’s able to hear the pop of his button louder. Almost able to feel the vibration from the drag of his zipper. God, it shouldn’t be so erotic. It shouldn’t make her blood thunder in her ears. But it does. Imagining it, the fabric pulling down, bare skin unveiling—wondering if there are dark hairs there, whether they run from hip to ankle or whether he’s a knee to ankle kind of man.

She only blinks from her daydreams at the second rustle of the sleeping bag, the bed moving a little as he tries and tries to get comfortable, before a deafening zipper sounds as he secures himself away.

“Fuck,” Noa whispers, more under her breath.

But it’s enough for him to catch, hear.

“What?”

She can’t say it. How could she? Oh, sorry, Joel, I think the pillow that you’re now using for your head has most likely had my drool on it. Her head shakes, nose scrunching as she tries to explain it away.

“Don’t worry, alright. Jus’ get some sleep.”

And she realises, with a horrid, sinking, sickening feeling, she just said all of that out loud, instead of in her head.

SM: Dad, if you wondered, Uncle Tommy still screams like a girl when there’s a jumpscare.

TM: I had to tell Sarah about the neighbour because you didn’t answer her text, asshole.

TM: Sarah and I agreed she would stay here until tonight, in case you were both asleep.

TM: Something is wrong with your kid, she’s dragging me around a grocery store right now, shopping for soup ingredients.

TM: Are you dead?

When Joel wakes, he’s warm. Warmer than he ever has been.

Not unpleasant, not by any means. Just a more comfortable warmth. Maybe even relaxed. A foreign concept to him if he’s ever heard one. And more than he swears he even knew he could be. He doesn’t dare open his eyes, just listens to the quiet—how there’s no screaming of the name Dad or Tommy clattering around stealing from kitchen cupboards. It’s only when he begins to hear an inhale and exhale, that he remembers where he is.

Things come to him then, slow, traipsing through treacle as they do. His toes uncurl as he feels the foot of the sleeping bag. Feels the ache right across his right shoulder blade, the twinge in his hip from bending and being crouched in closets fixing shitty electrics. Then there’s the pins and needles in his hand. Thrumming. Almost tickling.

Eyes opening, landing on a wall that isn’t his, lit up by a slat of sunlight—all soft pink and yellow and bright.

It’s then that he becomes aware of something pressing against his lower back. Something warm. It manages to sneak and seep through the layers. When he nudges—ever so slightly—and it nudges back. He realises, with wide-eyed and s thick tongue, that Noa is pressed against him.

Ass to ass.

His heart thunders, hammers, thrashes, something. His eyes grow wide, staring, trying to swallow as he clenches and unclenches his fist to rid himself of the prickling, numb sensation.

It’s nothing. A thing he should have expected to happen. Prepared for. But even as he tells himself that, his face continues to burn. Half-surprised to not hear his sleeping bag or her pillow sizzling against the heat of his cheek.

All too aware now of the feel of her pressing against him. He tries to move away, be a gentleman. But she only follows. Sleeping body seeking him out. Pressing herself—likely as much as she can—against him. As though needing to—a required closeness as she murmurs, but her breaths remain the same heavy, laboured ones they were before. Which he knows is impossible. Stupid. That stupid crush adding pencilled love hearts and their initials all around his mind.

And fuck, he should hate it. But he doesn’t.

Blinking, staring at a spot on the wall, he notices how it’s filled in. Poorly done, too. That there are paintbrush strokes dabbed over some refilled in plaster. Sunlight unwilling to disguise it. Practically illuminating it. Staring, trying to stop his mind from running away and thinking of anything else—

Noa murmurs something. Shifting herself into him a little more. Feeling her leg, even under a duvet, trapped by his body weight, trying to wrap itself close to his.

And he knows it’s natural. He knows it’s just her being asleep, still laced up on drugs—he had to wake her up for her dose as it is. But something warm curdles behind his belly button. It stirs itself with embarrassment and shame that he immediately shoves down elsewhere. Because he can’t get fucking hard over a woman just pressed against him, surely? Fuck, he thinks he might be. Head mixing, swimming. Able to smell the scent of her shampoo on the pillow. The lingering perfume. The noticeable scent he now knows to be just her and her house. The way she looked at him over English muffins, the way words slid from her tongue like silk—

He’s losing himself, drowning. Falling down a canyon, he never wishes to be saved from.

But life is cruel sometimes.

A sound blares out, shrill. All digital-sounding—bleep-bloop-beep erupting.

The sound of thudding vibration follows it. Not in time, but rather intentionally going against the beeping, creating a percussion that matches the horrid, ear-bleeding noise as his phone rumbles, thuds and shrieks from across the room.

Fuck.

Fuck.

F—

If his face wasn’t burning before, it’s a wildfire now. Half-expecting to see a red glow on the wall from his fucking cheeks.

He needs to move. His body protests, not even forty and yet his muscles ache from the twisted position he’s slept in. Feeling Noa, who is stirring next to him, as the awful ringtone that Sarah always teases him about continues screaming out.

The kind of ringtone he knew he was meant to change when he got the damn thing, but never did. Not even entirely sure how to.

It continues to pierce as Noa groans and Joel manages to move, fumbling. Doing so with a body that won’t respond as quickly as he likes, limited by a half-dead hand and a sleeping bag whose only aim is to trap him.

He can hear himself tell Sarah as a kid Don’t run in your sleeping bag, baby girl. Even remembers why he told her that.

But it’s too late.

It’s already tangled like vines around his feet; his body moving at varying degrees of readiness.

And so, gravity wins.

Tripping, expertly, his knees slam—albeit slightly protected by the sleeping bag—to the floor in a one-two drum beat. His pins-and-needle hand connects with the floor, giving away under him. Forcing him into a heap. He groans, loud. Face scrunching before he crawls awkwardly, shoving fabric down to give himself some grip. Dragging himself across the edge of the rug and the hardwood flooring.

Shit, fuck—

“Joel?”

“Hm,” he mumbles, hand reaching, feeling.

His wrist twists at some odd angle to grasp it, snatching it from the dresser before his thumb finds the screen to smash it to silence.

The room quiets. Quickly.

Outside of his panting, that is.

His heart in his throat. Phone in his hand, screen still intermittently lighting before it stops, and fades back to dark. When he looks up, he sees Noa looking down at him. All sleepy-eyed, t-shirt stuck at an odd angle thanks to her sling, face scrunched but also still peaceful. If his heart wasn’t pounding before, it is now. Because while none of those descriptions should ever strike a person as beautiful. But it does. They do.

“Tell me that was an alarm for more drugs.”

She says it sleep-thick, barely awake, hand rubbing at her eye before she squints at him. Heart slowing, he swallows, easing himself up. Standing straight as he unlocks his phone, staring at the unread messages and noticing the time.

“You in pain?”

“I’m something along the lines of pain, yeah.”

“Can get you some?”

Silence. Thick, quiet as hell silence.

Joel lifts his chin, his eyes following, finding Noa staring at him as though he’s grown six heads and each of them is performing party tricks. Her eyes blink, twinkle. Her lips try to slide up into one cheek, but she’s still wearing the disgruntled expression from being yanked awake.

“What?”

She shrugs, doing so with one shoulder. “You got some nice legs, Miller.”

He stares down.

Realising, only then, hands braced on his hips before dropping them, that he’s standing in his t-shirt and underwear, sleeping bag in a heap at his feet.

Chapter Text

Tommy agrees to have Sarah for one more night—Joel having called him back from Noa’s porch at around midday.

As soon as the door clicked behind him, he swore the heat was attempting to suffocate him. Already beating down with the almost midday intensity. Beads of sweat pebbling down his spine as he heard the dial tone, a pool collecting above the band of his jeans as he huffed and hm’d, taking each comment about how the two of them had slept in for a while.

Joel didn’t admit it, but the two of them had slept far longer than even he’d counted on. But he refused to give Tommy any satisfaction.

You owe me, big brother.

Joel chose not to remind his brother that, if anything, this pays off some of his debt to him. He decides to save that for later.

Hanging up, he takes a moment to catch his breath. Really inflate his lungs. Stares around the street, how the sun comes through the trees, and he can hear nearby kids screaming things to one another before laughing.

He can smell her on him.

The coconut wash soap somehow knitted into his clothes. Her shampoo, her body wash. It all clings, sticking. Forming a part of him, even if he’s not showered here or been pressed against her. The next inhale almost makes him dizzy, woozy. The back of his hand drags across his cheek and mouth as he stares at his truck still parked outside her garage.

He needs to move it.

A mental note made that he has no idea is about to be balled up and flung somewhere else. Because when he finds the courage to stuff his feelings away and steps inside, he observes Noa trying to make breakfast for the two of them. A thing that would be charming, but actually entails her pouring Rice Krispies all over the counter, shaky hand going for the milk he’d brought round.

Joel grabs it from her before she even attempts to pour.

“I can do it,” she says, less snap, more pout.

“Yeah? Say that to the counter.”

She scowls, but fuck his heart does a fucking somersault. Plucks at things he long thought had wilted or dried up. Shoulda known it wasn’t the case, even before he’d really gotten to talk to her outside of morning and evening. Felt something twinge under twinkling fairy lights, her laughing at something he’d said under his breath before she’d joined in with a comment of her own.

Fuck he can smell her perfume. Thinks he can anyway. It lives there, in the hairs in his nose as he tries not to take more of it in. But he does. Fuck he does.

“Sit down, Noa.”

“Didn’t know I picked a bossy boyfriend.”

Snorting, he grumbles: “Fake boyfriend.”

And she laughs, and he swears the world gets brighter again.

Just like it did that time she moved in, dropping cushions out from under her arms and swearing like some sailor. He has to force himself to keep his eyes in his skull and his mouth closed—or else he’ll look like an idiot. One that’s more deer in headlights than an actual fucking deer, like Tommy described to him once. Teasing, jabbing at him, as he took it all dry-mouthed and only able to hmph.

When he joins her back at the table, his knee almost knocks into hers when he slides into the seat. Jeans grazing bare skin, her face not changing at the feel, the sensation, all the while his pulse quickens under his skin.

His nose also latches onto coconuts again. Coconuts, coconuts, coconuts.

“You know,” she says, cutting through his mash of thoughts, “I don’t think I’ve eaten cereal at 1 o’clock in the afternoon since I was a kid.”

“Was jus’ thinking the same.”

She hums, all light—airy. It travels across the small table almost like a song, as her hand tries to coordinate scooping up some rogue pieces. Her tongue slipping out, skating over her lower lip—hovering, pausing and fucking torturous. It’s a force to remind himself to blink; it’s an actual thought to remember to drop his gaze to his own bowl as he mixes chunks with milk.

He’s not sure if it’s the oversized tee and sweats that make her look smaller, or the weary look on her face that doesn’t go with a successful spoon of cereal.

“Y’good?” he asks, sincerely.

Not taking his eyes from the path his spoon is drawing in the milk.

She doesn’t answer.

Doesn’t huff, sigh or even make a comment. He looks up just before she leans back in her chair, spoon discarded in the bowl as she stares at it like she wishes her gaze could set things alight. His mouth opens, preparing to say her name, ask, when it dawns on him.

“S’ya dominant arm, ain’t it?”

Nodding, her lips roll. Big, heavy gulps of air being taken—her chest rising and falling under her darker tee like she’s trying to either keep something down or take better breaths. And her face doesn’t lift, doesn’t meet his stare or drag itself away from the bowl.

“Hey?”

She looks up at that. Drenches him in the beautiful shade of her eyes, lit up more by the sunlight coming in, even with the disappointment or frustration simmering in her eyes.

“You wanna watch a movie?”

It’s slow, gradual. But the corners of her mouth lift, eyes glancing off to the side as she takes a heavy, but less frustrated breath.

“Are you asking to go to my bed, Miller, or sit on my not-for-sleep-aesthetic sofa?”

He chews his cheek, then huffs. Not looking up, not daring to, out of fear his face would turn a shade that’d give him away. Then he shrugs, just to punctuate it. Pulling a face before letting out a long exhale.

“…Sofa.”

When the word lands and he dares to look, he finds his gruff response has only made her grin more, as she leans back in her chair.

“I’m picking the movie.”

He lets a beat pass. “S’fine.”

When Sarah was little, she’d jump up and down at the idea of a movie day—eyes as wide as plates.

He’d find as many blankets as he could, more than were necessary for two people. He’d fill the largest bowls he could find with popcorn or chips, and a smaller bowl with an appropriate amount of candy that wouldn’t result in a filling.

When she became older, her grin was still just as wide but her hands carried blankets with him, the bowl set up together, side by side, hers a mix of sweet and salty, and his just a bag of chips. She chooses now, not him. And the movie pick—as it always has been—is still her choice, except on special occasions. She predicts before they’ve clicked play when he’d fall asleep, and most of the time she’d be right unless he’s feeling particularly stubborn.

Apparently, he didn’t snore, but did always end up being annoying about the remote and reminding her that he’s watching it when her smaller hand tried to take it from him.

The movie Noa chooses is a romcom.

But she did give him a choice.

She wears a sloped kind of smile, drags in one single, ridiculously large blanket from a closet and hands him a bag of popcorn each—because I don’t share, Miller. He nods, crinkles the packaging to open it, before a salty smell greets his nose.

At first, he doesn’t go under the blanket, not until she stares at him all stern, and he does as her eyes sharply tell him. When she’s seated and thoroughly propped up by throw cushions, she politely asks (a thing he wasn’t entirely sure she was capable of) if he could open her popcorn for her. Because I have one hand, Joel. The tone she uses makes his mouth slide into his cheek.

No bowls, just crinkling bags and the crackle of a candle in the centre of the coffee table. The flame dances, hops around as Noa tries to get comfortable. The flame breathing across her face in waves, over her cheekbone, over her lips as her butt wiggles in the cushion and her hip occasionally nudges his. It’s her thigh pressing to his that has him struggling to swallow. 

“Ready?”

Joel only makes a noise. 

She narrows her eyes, scrunches her nose and doesn’t break eye contact when she presses play. Plunging the two of them from a semi-lit room into complete, fucking darkness.

And fuck, he can’t breathe.

All but aware of her leg against his. Aware of her eyes, even in the dark, seeking him out. Aware, aware, aware.

Heat skates up his neck, dances along the tops of his ears when she drops a piece of popcorn—somehow—and begins foraging between his thigh and hers. There’s something else with the scent of coconuts now: it's creamy, almost vanillary—making her smell even sweeter than he usually thinks.

It’s then that he begins wondering who he’s pissed off, what punishment he’s being dealt. Unsure how he could have had dreams of this—or being next to her, having her pressed against him—and now having them be true in some different, fucked up kind of way.

“You seen this before?”

Joel makes another noise, but this time it at least sounds like a yeah, and he feels relief when she doesn’t turn to look at him or prod him. Because he’s not sure what he’ll do if he sees how close she is. All within reach.

The opening credits slip into the first scene, and his shoulders find a way to dislodge themselves from his ears. His spine is able to sink into the sofa at the same time as she softly giggles at some joke he’s missed, instead, far too focused on where his body starts and hers finishes. What he does notice is how distant it sounds, like it should be louder, have more power to it.

He hadn’t made a prediction of who would fall asleep first. But he should have bet money on it being her as soon as he feels her tuck further into his side. Doing so barely past the first scene after the opening credits.

He tries to think of anything else and not that this pretty woman could fall asleep on him. He’s thankful her injured arm is far away, protected and still supported by his make-shift tray of cushions. But it’s her good arm that keeps twitching near him. Cradling her bag, elbow brushing over his thigh as he flicks his gaze from the movie to seeing her eyes grow heavier and heavier throughout the scene whenever it gets light enough.

Christ she’s pretty. He’s able to make out the outlines of her features when the screen flares bright between scenes. Allowing him a view, a glimpse. One he’s not sure he deserves to capture, but does so until it goes dark, and he makes a promise to himself to stop staring. 

It’s several minutes of silence, no bag crinkling, no popcorn chewing does he dare look back. And he finds her asleep. Lips slightly parted, cheek pressed against his shoulder as her chest rises and falls.

It would be odd to watch her. So he doesn’t.

Just steals pockets of time between checking his phone as to when he has to wake a person the day after they’ve had a concussion, not wanting to move and grab the paperwork from the coffee table.

Not wanting her to move, not wanting to disrupt this.

Then shame arrives. It bubbles inside his chest. Making him feel small and stupid.

Because none of this is real. Not deep down, anyway. He’s just here because she has no one else. 

Susie: I hope your boyfriend is looking after you. Also, dick move not telling me you’re with someone. There’s me trying to hook you up with the pathologist?

Susie: Babe, for real, please let me know you’re not face down in a bathtub of bubbles because you thought a bubble bath would cure your pain.

Noa: I’m alive. Barely. Not meant to be on screens.

Susie: Thank god, I almost came round to do a welfare check.

Noa: Promise, there’s no need. Joel is looking after me.

Susie: Joel? The boyfriend or the neighbour.

Susie: Wait. IS THAT THE SAME JOEL?

It’s been one night, yet when Noa wakes, she feels for him.

Not immediately. Her good arm swings out to the side of her. Does she risk colliding with him? Maybe. Not that she’s thinking, still caught somewhere between falling from a dream and landing in a new day. So when that comes up short, she slowly slides her leg. Stretching it out, and out, until she realises—with a heavy sigh, and a drop of her stomach—that it’s at full stretch and she cannot feel him.

She confirms this with her eyes (and a struggle) a moment later.

The sheets aren’t cold, but they’re not warm.

Eyes scanning around where the sun kisses her room, trying to spot his sleeping bag—or any evidence of him existing in her room at all.

What hits her then, blinking, face scrunched, is that she maybe shouldn’t be trying to feel for him. Unsure if it’s okay to have grown some sort of attachment to the person who stayed over for two nights in a purely logical, neighbourly way.

Groaning, only in her head, her body goes rigid through force before she relaxes it as she sighs.

Her skin still smells of her body wash. A soft smile appears at the memory of Joel heading home briefly before bringing back tape and grabbing one of her trash bags before signing off that she’s shower-ready. He didn’t ask, but she suspected he wanted to. It had been there, curdling in the air, simmering, empty vowels wishing to flower between them: do you need a hand?

If he’d asked, she would have seriously considered it. Pulled on a swimsuit or something just for the extra hand. Instead, she showered alone—struggling. Using her teeth to flip open the body wash before skirting a good portion of it up her tiles. There was also a serious attempt to avoid adding more steam to the bathroom at the thought of Joel lying on the bed close by in case she needed him.

Once she’s crawled out of her pillow nest (with difficulty), washed her face and used the bathroom, she heads downstairs—one step at a time. Each one takes her closer to the noise occurring.

The noise is Joel trying to use her coffee machine, making some form of breakfast and also opening and closing cupboards.

“Helping yourself, are you?”

He doesn’t need to turn around—she can feel him smirking. Sense it. The one upside to spending an intimate almost 48 hours together.

“Was gonna bring it to you.”

Leaning against the doorway, she licks her lips. “Oh, yeah? You tryin’ to woo me with breakfast in bed, fake boyfriend?”

“If I’m already boyfriend, sweetheart, don’t think I need to do any wooin’.”

You’re damn right she thinks.

And because he doesn’t turn to look at her and the air of the room doesn’t change, she assumes this time she’s kept those words firmly in her mouth.

Breakfast this morning consists of eggs and toast, a coffee and a glass of water. The latter she drinks hurriedly, before tasting the eggs and wondering if Joel Miller is actually a good cook.

She has considered it.

He had a daughter, after all. Maybe he liked to cook, maybe even tried to make homemade things when he could—spend hours researching how to do it. But she also knew from overhearing things that Sarah teased him that she was the better cook. That she made more breakfast than he did. A thing the younger Miller told her, after a small prod about why she’d been grinning so much, as Noa handed her over the notes and thank you gift for keeping her plants alive when she was gone.

Then her heart snagged on the thought of the two of them making breakfast together.

Joel and his daughter.

Then Joel and she. Side by side, mug by mug.

And her face burns.

To help, she changes the conversation from quiet to chatter. Asking him about the list on the pad near his wrist, and how the writing is harder to read than a physician's.

“Groceries.”

“Yours?” she asks, before filling her mouth with egg.

Shaking his head, stabbing at his breakfast with one hand—mouth chewing, the hairs above his lip shifting with each chew.

“Wait, mine?”

He nods, chewing still, leaning back as he rests his fork on the edge of the plate.

“When Sarah gets back, I’ll go.”

“You don’t need to do that, Joel. You’ve done plenty. Too much, in fact.”

“I’m doin’ it.”

She grumbles, even if she tries to bury it.

“It’s what fake boyfriends do.”

She rolls her eyes, does a fake laugh with him as he smirks, lifting her mug to his mouth as she notices—ridiculously—that it looks so small in his grip.

“Before I forget—”

He reaches, fingers grasping at something out of her sight—behind the vase full of fake flowers. She should be interested in what he’s trying to grab. She should be wondering what he could have forgotten. Instead, she’s homed in on his arm again. The stretch of it. How broad his shoulders are, and how she’s noticed this all so many times, but each time is still a complete surprise to her.

“—Here.”

Unscrewing the bottle, he hands them to her: Pain meds. Her salvation.

“Not sure you should take those two together,” he mumbles, head nodding to the coffee—her water glass fully empty.

Shrugging, she smirks. “What’s the worst that can happen? I rebreak my arm?”

She doesn’t rebreak her arm.

When Joel leaves, his sleeping bag and other bags in hand—even if her place is now back to what it was—her place feels emptier, colder. Like the life of it has been removed, hues seemed blunter, paler. A thing that boggles her already dizzy mind as she moves from room to room, trying to spot or notice anything that might have changed fundamentally. There’s nothing, but the energy feels off.

She blames the drugs. Flitting and wandering around her two-story, alternating from sitting and lying, to pacing and half-skipping—a la Kate Bush.

She accuses the drugs again, a few hours later, when the worst thing possible happens.

Having forcibly reassured Joel that she could be left to her own devices, Noa manages to break not one, but two mugs. In spectacular fashion. The first, a ‘I like to send emails’ mug shatters in large clean breaks, her good hand able to wiggle free the broom to sweep at the pieces to move them into the trash can.

A thing that proved difficult one-armed. She resorts to sweeping it into a corner at the very least. The second, however, one of her favourites, seems to shatter into a thousand fragments, ricocheting off everything it can. A scrap even flings into her shin as she steps back, only to feel herself slam her heel down on something sharp, pointy and definitely porcelain.

She stares, unable to do little else. Feeling a lump appear in her throat, something sharp in her chest. Taking it all in. How the pieces glow in the grout of the tiles, a mosaic of stupidity reflected as shame bleeds through her earlier confidence.

It’s silent, the scream she emits in her head. Loud, bellowing. Enough to wake the neighbourhood and then some. Both from the pain and the acknowledgement, after everything else her poor body has been subjected to, she has absolutely, positively sliced her fucking foot open.

When she shifts, she expects scarlet to be pooling under as she whimpers, but becomes too afraid to look. The last log holding the dam in place snaps, eyes stinging with the force of her tears building.

Pathetic-ness, discomfort and the last 48 hours all slam into her at once.

Her sight blurs, the lump in her throat swells, bulging. Wanting nothing more than to clutch her face or hug herself as tightly as she can. But she can’t. She can’t do anything. Pointless. Stupid. The only two words that don’t pop like bubbles in her head.

The first sob rips out. Then the next.

She doesn’t dare move. Afraid that if she sinks to the floor, she won’t be able to get back up. So, she just weeps. Harder. More. Her whole body shaking, her teeth biting at the inside of her cheek, tears stinging her cheeks and falling to her collarbone. Thankful, at least, she’s alone. Able to break apart in solitude without a witness to observe the pity party—

Which, of course, is when a key scrapes the lock of her front door. Boots echo, and Joel Miller steps into her kitchen with her groceries.

Chapter Text

After only ever wanting to hear her say his name when the two of them were alone, the way she holds her hand up to stop him approaching and croaks it out, almost cracks him. A sharp split. The animal within—who only aims to protect—whining and retreating.

And then, when he spots a tear tracking down her face, he swears it breaks him in half. All the way down, throat to lower gut. Turning him from a man into a bunch of tiny fragments. Sliced. Cut. Broken.

All he can do is exhale. 

Eyes tracking more tears hanging from her lower lashes, others having already etched paths into her cheeks. All of them lit up by the spotlights of her kitchen, as though it wished to give centre stage to every one of them.

Distantly, she sniffles. But Joel can only hear his pulse in his ears. All but aware of how his heart is trying to rip from his own chest to marry with hers. As though it’ll help. As though it’ll ease. Every fibre, muscle and tendon of him fights not striding over and pulling her flush to him. Taking it away, whatever it is. Whether it’s the pain or the annoyance, the anger or whatever else.

Instead, he just stares. Rolls his thumb over his fingers. Swallows thickly.

When the paper bag crinkles in his tightening grip, he scratches at his jawline, juts his head that he’s placing it down. Needing her to know his movements, not wishing to spook her.

She doesn’t notice, though. Just stares down, all quiet.

The entire house is so quiet, all that can be heard is the tick of his watch and how it matches the thud of his pulse. Each thud of it echoes through him as Noa purses her lips, bites back more of whatever she’s thinking—and what he assumes from the twisted expression is a sob.

“Want me gone?”

She frowns, deeply. Carving it into her usually smoother skin. She looks more conflicted than he’s known her to be. Shaking her head, she whispers no. Not as frail or as quiet as the hospital, but somehow far worse as the sound barely makes a decibel, barely disrupts the quiet air between them.

Head dropping, eyes following the shards of porcelain scattered across the floor. He swallows. Tries to hide how loud it is—as he sees it. All of it. The tiny pieces, chips and chunks. How the impact site happened somewhere a step in front of her, with the ripple out expanding most of the kitchen. From the dried spot under it, closer to where she’s standing, he suspects this isn’t the first mug-smash either.

A thing confirmed when he drags his gaze over to the bin and sees a small pile scooped up near its base.

“You bleedin’?”

Her face scrunches, body weight shifting as her throat bobs and lower lip trembles. “Think so.”

Sliding the heel of his boot across the floor, hearing the scraping sound of broken pieces grating, he makes a path before dumping the almost crushed bags onto the counter. Then he moves, while firmly telling her not to move, asking for things as she replies curtly and cautiously, as though any other tone might disrupt everything.

When he’s swept up as much as he can, when he’s able to drop down to one knee, he’s about to gesture for her foot. Just like he would with Sarah. All autopilot, no thought there. All give it here, baby girl. But when he looks up, he snaps back from fixing it.

A thought bubbling, threatening to burst. His jaw tightens as he becomes suddenly distinctly aware that within reach is a bare ankle, calf and leg that belongs to a hip and body that makes his head dumb and his heart act even stupider in his chest.

She’s changed, he thinks. Remembers sweats on her legs when he left hours ago, not shorts that seem to skate over the tops of her thighs. Heat climbs up his neck, threatening to kiss over the bridge of his nose and cheeks. 

He wonders if she even knows how pretty she actually is. Even with her arm in a sling and an egg-shaped bruise on her head from her fall. But he shouldn’t think of that. Shakes his head as though it’ll dislodge the thought, remembering she's hurt. It does nothing. Not when he finds her staring down at him with a tenderness he isn’t sure he deserves. Observes it. Unable to break away. Some invisible rope tying him to staring into her eyes, seeing her lips pressing together.

Joel pushes it to the side, the questions. The ones he won’t ask, can’t. Instead, he ghosts his hand over the back of her ankle, not touching, but close. Able to feel the warmth from her skin, able to cup it gently when he brings himself to ask her if he can. Words thicken, but none make it out. All the letters he tries to string together harden in his mouth, tongue so solid he struggles to breathe.

Not able to blink, too locked in—lost in the pools of her eyes as her teeth nip at her lower lip.

“Least I didn’t re-break my arm,” she says softly—just above a whisper.

It’s playful, can tell from the lilt in her tone. But it barely disrupts the tension that thickens between them. The one he can feel, maybe even take a bite of it’s that thick. It drapes over him like fabric, weighty, but not heavy.

Sliding his mouth up into his cheek, mirroring her, he snorts. Notices how her smirk slides up the same side as his—fuck, he likes that. Likes that look on her, and that she does it too.

“Should check if I’m bleeding out, Joel.”

He makes a noise, drops his stare. Shoving the lump in his throat down, head tilting, before slowly and gently, placing his palm against the back of her foot.

For a man who’s had his hand on the small of her back, on her shoulder and even on the delicate underside of her operated-on arm in the space of the last 48 hours, it surprises him how nervous he feels touching her foot. It feels somehow off-limits, wrong. Not bad. Just wrong.

Lifting it, tilting his head, finding a small piece stuck in her foot that he lifts his brows to check is okay to remove, before he smoothly flicks it off. He waits, and waits. Eyes trained on where the skin has dimpled, before assessing that there’s no blood appearing or coming, and that for someone as accident-prone as he feels she is, she seems relatively okay.

“Y’good.”

“Christ, really?”

Nodding, placing her foot down flat—seeing her loosen her hold on the counter—he nods. It’s momentarily wiped when he tries to stand up, knees protesting, legs still aching from being bent up asleep and doing so as rigid as a board out of fear of more parts rubbing against him.

“I… I’m s—”

“Noa.”

She clamps her mouth, nods, and then stares around before sinking into a lean. A moment passes, before another. His hand scratches at the back of his head, just for something to do before he remembers the groceries and makes a step to begin putting them away.

“So, you get me Tampons with my bread?”

His head whips to her so quick, he swears the room spins. And she’s smirking, a laugh desperate to escape.

“Kiddin’, Miller.”

There’s a pause. Light, and if it weren’t almost dark outside, he swears the sun just lit the room up.

Head shaking, he mumbles—right under his breath, “Jesus Christ.” 

By the time he’s crossing the yard and is back on his porch, he already feels the pull of her place plucking at him. It wanted him to stay. His hand balls up at his side, nails digging into his palm, as if the sting will help anchor him to blink away her smile etched into his head. All bright, stubborn. 

Shaking his head, exhaling hard, he slips inside his own front door, toes his boots off, rolling his neck. It doesn't shake the ache in his chest.

Getting to the doorway of his kitchen, Joel feels he should be less surprised that all of his groceries are already put away. In fact, he suspects he could even check the refrigerator and find it even organised by date. Soon to be expired shit at the front, his beers—the ones he says he barely drinks—will be tucked at the back.

The culprit of all of this is sitting at the kitchen table, behind one of the two steaming mugs on the table, with a book flat out in front of her. Finger paused under one of the pages as Sarah lifts her chin, eyes finding his as he trudges in.

Sometimes, he swears she looks at him like she did when she was little. When she was all big eyes and cheeks filled with a smile. She’s so much taller now, smarter too.

“Noa okay?”

“Yea’, she’s good,” he gruffs, dragging a chair beside her out before sinking into it—groaning.

For what, he doesn’t know. Groaning because he wishes he hadn’t left her, even if she’d insisted. That he should have asked her to stay in his bed, he’d sleep on the sofa. Groaning because he twinged his back falling spectacularly in front of Noa this morning, and because his teenage daughter is giving him a look he has no answers for.

Rubbing a hand down his face, his chest is all too aware that he’s just left a woman crying in her home alone with a broken arm and a set of strict instructions to not break any more things. It’s tight, a sharp sting when he inhales deeply. Joel asks about movie night instead of listening to his body.

Sarah, brow cocked, barely waits a beat. Tells him how Uncle Tommy makes an eek noise before trying to smother it in a laugh—Joel smirks, because he knows that sound. She tells him how they went and got stuff to make soup, but they ended up eating it, and did Joel know that Tommy barely eats vegetables?

He just hmms at that.

He listens as intently as he can to the rest. One arm crossed over his body, the other propped up, palm holding his chin as he stares at her. Admires her. Wonders when in the hell she went from being a chatterbox about cartoons to being a chatterbox about real-life things like vegetables and stock.

“Whatcha’ reading?”

Sarah tells him, face all lit up. Turns the cover to show him. Does so all animated. Bounces from one thing to the next. It’s moments like this that he has no idea what people mean about teenagers. That is, until he catches the end of a conversation he knows can’t be right, seeing her eyes glinting, smirking—

“And then you’ll give me fifty bucks because—”

“Wait a damn minute.”

Sarah smirks, grins. All teeth as she leans back, wrists resting on the table. Looking every bit like fucking him.

“You weren’t listening?”

“Darlin’, I was trying.”

She rolls her eyes. “I know, Dad. Don’t worry.” There’s a beat, a pause. “Is she really okay, Noa?”

He nods, scratches at his head before leaning over, elbow resting on the table, exhaling.

“Broke her arm, that’s all.”

Sarah nods, mouth sliding to the side of her face. A question there, he can tell. Fuck, if he’s honest, he’s still got a lot of his own.

“M’sure she wouldn’t mind y’saying hi. Tomorrow, though.”

There’s a different roll of her eyes this time. One that says Of course, Dad, and honestly, he suspects she might actually know more than him. Could likely ask her about those damn pamphlets he was given, and Sarah would already know all about them. Somehow a kid and yet an expert on all things caring for people.

“Think she’ll want a hand again, watering her plants?”

He thinks about her place. Thinks about all of the art—all the colourful blobs of paint, and the leaning books, the comfortable sofa with its mismatch of cushions. The great big plant in the corner he only briefly clocked, but now, on second thought, worries it could eat Noa alive. He barely remembers seeing any others, but she does seem like someone who would have one in each room of the house, if not all over. Especially with how long he’s known Sarah to have been over there.

He mumbles something like probably, the end of it swallowed in a yaw as Sarah smirks. Her own mumble louder, more pronounced than his, about him being an old man. Joel kicks his toes against her leg lightly under the table.

TM: You gonna be in late tomorrow?

JM: No. Why

TM: Being a nurse gotta put you back, right?

JM: No.

TM: Seriously, you wear an outfit.

JM: Fuck off.

TM: Alright.

JM: You taken your pain meds?

N: Who is this?

JM: Funny

N: You know the last text you sent me before this and asking when my appointment was happened to be ‘did you make it back ok’? N: Ten bucks you just made that hmmph noise.

JM: Did you take them?

N: Yes, an hour ago. Is this what I have to look forward to, you texting me?

JM: You shouldn’t even be looking at screens yet.

N: Why’d you text then?

JM: Knew you wouldn’t be following it. 

N: Are you hmphing again?

JM: Yes.

Even if there are already very strict rules about trash cans being out, Noa is also very particular about her trash can.

She’s very precise about a lot of things. Like the way she organises her books, how her shower products sit on the shelf, and also where her bin is placed. She prefers it near her back door. And when it’s not ridiculously warm, she even likes it directly to the right of it, so she can swing out, lift the lid and throw away the contents without so much as needing shoes.

Because another thing she’s very particular about is how often she empties the kitchen bin, too.

The main problem with all of these particularities is that the trash can then require more of a wiggle to unlodge it. That, and the fact that it has to be dragged further than needed.

A struggle on a day with two arms and a head that isn’t swimming in painkillers and lucid dreams about her neighbour being in his boxers and nothing else. There’s a sweat still sheened on her skin from waking up in the middle of her bed, panting from a fantasy—nose catching a hint of mint and wood as she blinks, realising with a dull ache that she’d conjured that too.

Yanking the bin over the stones sends a scrape that drills straight into the bruised part of her skull that she suspects may have been what connected with the sidewalk. She clutches her arm, waits for the black spots to pass, then drags again with stubborn determination. Eventually, it shifts. More by will than strength. And when it finally slides free, the woop she emits between her lips makes her chest and neck burn in embarrassment, before continuing to pull it towards the gate for the street. 

“Hey!”

She jumps, almost from her skin, head whipping far too quickly. The edges of the world blur, head thick with sludge as it all slides to one side before dripping back into its usual place. Blinking, swallowing, able to focus on a halo of chestnut spirals and a pair of big, brown, expressive eyes right next to her.

“Let me help you.”

Noa can barely get the words out before Sarah is taking it from her, and dragging it—with far too much ease—out down the driveway to the sidewalk. A thing she’s both slack-jawed at, because the kid is fourteen, and because she did it so quick, Noa feels like time has just cut out and stitched itself together with a moment ago.

“Hey… wait, did you grow another foot or something?”

Sarah gleams at her, right over her shoulder—chin resting on the mint green t-shirt before she spins around, loops her hands through her backpack handles.

“T-thank you, for that. You okay?”

“Are you?”

Shrugging one shoulder, rolling her lips, she smiles—finding it hard not to. Couldn’t fight it, whether she really wanted too.

Something about Sarah Miller always made her grin. Maybe it was the wit, the smile, the serious level of impossible kindness that had her offering things no sane fourteen-year-old would do. Like watering flowers when Noa had to visit family out of town, or turning up at the Adlers’ with baked cookies.

“I’m all good, kid. Don’t worry. Just had a fight with the floor and lost.”

“Yeah, looks like it.”

“Oi.”

Sarah twists at the hips on the spot, grinning. She smirks like Joel.

She’d suspected it before, but the last two days had practically confirmed it. Same smirk, same glint in the eye. Not that she was about to announce any sort of expertise. That would sound creepy as hell.

It dawns on Noa that maybe she’s been paying far too much attention to him.

“So, I just wondered…”

“Oh, here we go.”

“Now that you’re off work...”

Noa lifts her brow, waiting. Wishing for a small moment that she could fold her arm, until she realises, remembers. Losing half of her intimidation as she lets her good arm hang limp by her side.

“Dad told me. Thought, maybe, if you fancied some company—better company than my dad—I’m around. I can come by? Maybe after school?”

Smiling to herself, Noa licks her lips.

“Also,” Sarah continues, at a slightly higher pitch, “I can water your plants. No big deal.”

Noa had already considered asking. Having made a mental note as she went back and forth this morning with a small glass to feed each inside the house, taking three times as long as usual, without even attempting the ones in the garden.

Noa pretends she’s thinking. Narrowing her eyes, she makes Sarah wait.

She suspects the teenager has already seen right through her. She’s perceptive, Sarah. A thing she’d told Joel once at someone's backyard BBQ before fearing she’d crossed a line until he agreed with her with a heavy sigh.

“The Adlers a lot?”

Sarah’s face shifts. “Sometimes. They’re nice but…”

“Older?”

“Yeah.”

Erasing the guilt in her voice, Noa smirks, fingernails scratching at her forehead: “You know I’m older than you, even if my skin care routine makes it not look like so.”

Sarah grins, shaking her head.

“I don’t mind if you want to come round. If your dad is okay with it.”

“He is.”

“Okay, well, I’m still going to ask him. Don’t want to add kidnapping to my list of problems right now.”

Sarah laughs, light, back of her hand covering her mouth as she rolls her eyes at her. “You know he’ll say yes. He always does.”

“Still going to askkkk,” Noa says, more sing-song. “Maybe…um, we can do tomorrow night, though? Give me a chance to sort some of my life out.”

Nodding, Sarah breaks eye contact, staring at the ground for a moment before meeting her gaze. And Noa knows she’s on a lot of drugs, knows that there’s a chance she’s reading into things that aren’t there, but she swears she sees a light bloom behind the girl’s eyes.

“Maybe can help me with something else, too.”

“Oh yeah?”

Nodding, licking her lips, Noa takes a step closer. “I’ll show you how to paint if you wouldn’t mind helping me organise my fridge.”

“Dad put your groceries away?”

Scrunching her nose, Noa nods.

“I can do that,” Sarah nods, hands pulling on the strap of her bag.

She’s about to tell her that Joel will be looking for her, just as the booming voice of him shouts Sarah’s name, and both of their heads whip in the direction.

Bobbing her head in the direction, Sarah pulls a face. Noa just nods in understanding, fingers grazing over the sling on her elbow, drawing a shape as she watches the teen turn on her heels in a 180 spin, before heading in the direction of clanging tools.

“And Sarah…”

She hums—just like her Dad—twisting to face her, walking backwards.

“I like chocolate chip cookies, not oatmeal.”

She does that lopsided smile like Joel, too.

Chapter Text

The next few days pass in a blur. Less like falling through fog, and more like drifting in and out of a too-warm shower. Less painkiller haze, more a soft folding—one morning creasing into the next.

She finds herself able to follow conversations without losing the thread halfway, though the walls still ripple when she stands too soon. The ground under her feet seems sturdier, even if her arm repeatedly reminds her it is as much of a mess as it was days ago.

Things are interrupted by stitches of Sarah’s gentle knock in the afternoon and Joel’s louder boots on the porch in the evenings. Pills, knocks, boots, food. A rhythm she finds herself leaning into.

Sarah’s cookie drop off on Tuesday only makes it another day—and god can that kid bake—due to the teenager’s determination to finally binge the entire series of Charmed with her. Noa’s surprised she remembered, it having only been a passing conversation at the last block party.

After a committing half-handshake, they agree to only watch it together. Noa also promises that she’ll teach her to paint when her cast is changed. If Sarah minds, she says nothing, humming along to the theme tune and bouncing her foot. Later, when things wind down, the birds less chirping and the pain more pulsing, Joel will visit. Dressing it up as “helping” her—which she suspects is checking in.

He does actually help, though. Either by wrapping her arm for her or bringing her odd things he thinks will help. She feels a pang of guilt whenever she opens the door, hating that she’s become some sort of burden, or—because of the breakdown he witnessed—some loose canon who smashes mugs. He never says that, though. Just huffed a noise when she told him he didn’t need to check on her.

Tonight, he’s later than usual.

A thing she rather wishes she didn’t notice, but has all the same. Her stomach knots at the thought of him not coming, but she also dislikes the idea of him thinking of her as some fragile thing that needs to be checked on. She’s not. Turning her phone in her hands, steam billowing from the mug on the coffee table that took more precision than she had in her to carry. She swears she’s capable. But she likes that she feels less alone when he visits, the easy comfort of being able to have an extra hand to get something from a shelf.

Like last night, watching the muscle under the cuff of his t-shirt flex as he did so. How even covered, she could imagine the way his shoulder and back flexed.

Her phone vibrates and she almost drops it—especially as it pings not twice, but three times.

JM: Is your appointment tomorrow or Friday?

JM: Sarah’s got soccer practice on Friday, we usually grab pizza after if you want some?

She tries—and fails—not to beam. Then, she reads the next message:

Anna: When were you going to tell me that you broke your freaking arm? You are supposed to be my husband.

A different kind of remorse swells in her. Suddenly remembering people outside of the small bubble she’s been living in with the Millers.

She responds to Joel first, spending more time backspacing and ensuring every single text is correctly spelt as she informs him her appointment is also on Friday, and that Pizza would be nice.

When she moves to reply to Anna, her hand is sweating. Guilt is rising like thick bile in her throat, phone flat to her thigh as her finger circles over keys when her phone beeps again:

Susie: You busy tomorrow? Want to drop you off some flowers and meet this boyfriend of yours.

“Fuck.”

It’s a whisper, done so under her breath—even if she’s alone. Something opening up inside of her, ripped open, spread wide. Thunderous dread mixing with guilt, concocting something that sticks and bubbles and builds. Lips rolling, sweat building and collecting on her spine. Fuck. She can’t tell him, can’t ask that of him. Fuck. He’d already done too much, already does too much.

She stares for a punishingly long time at the message. Finger hovering, mind flipping. She thinks of the hospital, her throat dry, nose able to conjure the scent of clinical and the sound of the discharge nurse telling them far too much she couldn’t focus on. The concussion haze doesn’t help, making her sway from the past to slamming into the present, relighting her phone screen to stare again. just to be sure.

Boyfriend.

Imagining him, standing in front of her, steady as a wall—telling him, asking him to help her one more time.

Watching his face twist, picturing it. Because it wouldn’t be one more time, she needs him a lot. Two mugs already paying the price for her stubbornness, and she didn’t fancy trying to eat reheated leftovers from the floor again.

Boyfriend.

It churns worse than a stomach bug. Makes her head hurt; it pulsing in more places than just where her skull connected with the ground. Pacing, dizzying herself as the drugs or her fear began to conjure ideas like hiding and turning all the lights out. Knotting herself in worry, each twist pulling tight until it cuts into her skin. Hand flexing at her side, rottenness in her throat.

When he eventually knocks, she has to stifle a yelp. Mortification seeps out as she pads over, grabs the door handle and twists it open.

As soon as she sees him, it’s like a light switching on—no shadows left to play puppets with her worries. Everything melts, frees, releasing from her shoulders and untangles from her thoughts. Noa blames the warmth in her cheeks on the drugs, though it burns hotter in her ears when he steadies her—having spun too quickly on her heels in a rush to offer him water.

There’s less meandering from him, instantly following and announcing to her tonight’s item: a tray.

Brandishing it to her with a Joel-smile, it reaches his eyes more than his lips. After trying to carry a small, empty sippy cup, they both decide that the strength she has in her non-dominant hand isn’t quite there for tray carrying.

Grumbling, more to herself than to him, she leans against the counter, pouting: “I’d be a shit barmaid.”

“Be a pretty one, though.”

Her eyes snap to his, finding him glancing at something on the toe of his boots, pivoting his ankle as he leans. Arms crossed, all signature-Joel.

She stares until her eyes burn, wishing (hoping) he’d look. Dare to meet her eyes, offer some form of explanation. He doesn’t.

Joel just sighs, changing the conversation back to logistics for Friday.

It had been agreed by Joel that he’d take her days ago. A thing she’d tried to protest—because of the guilt—but realised she had no choice in the matter.

Even less so when Tommy had brought her car back from the hospital on Monday. A slew of tickets on the windscreen that she rolled her eyes at, before Tommy caught her attention by wolf-whistling at her swollen lump-bruise that was now bigger than ever on her head and informing her that it had been Joel who had ordered him to drive it home for her.

She’s not listening as he holds the soup up to her, mumbling about whether she wants it now, or later. But the smell makes her bristle, his presence making her shrink from guilt. He’s thought of everything again—

“Gotta tell you something,” she blurts, interrupting.

A line emerges between his brows when she stands straighter, takes a step closer towards him, resting her hip against her kitchen counter. Fuck she can feel her heart banging into her ribs, it echoing out, ringing in her ears.

Noa tries to smile, forces it. It only earns her another look. Brows more drawn, patient—but only in a way Joel Miller could be—as his head tilts.

“Susiewantstocomeround.”

He stares, blinks. “What?”

Exhaling, licking her lips. “Susie wants to come round. Tomorrow.”

He makes no noise. Nothing. Nada.

“And, she’s heard you’re my boyfriend.”

Joel blinks again. Twice. This time, different from before, something sprouting in his eyes as his hand sets the soup down, nostrils flaring, jaw tight.

Continuing, Noa holds the fake smile in place. “And she might, you know, maybe want to meet you?”

There’s a beat of silence. Her home is too quiet, before there’s a flat, no tone response of her name. It’s all he says. Noa. Pinching the bridge of his nose, eyes closing—like he’s battling a headache.

She suspects she might be the headache.

“Jesus…”

“You don’t—”

She stops when he looks at her. Let the words dissolve on her tongue, fall away.

He grunts, something like a noise and a fuck all in one, before he drops his hand from his face. Swallows. Each micro-movement that flutters across his face, she watches, studies. Worrying, squeezing her fingers into a fist before releasing, then repeating. Her toes doing the same, scratching at a piece of grout, just to ground herself.

“Guess I'd better shave.”

Frowning, all instinct, the words not really having crystallised, as her hand grabs at his arm, staring. “No, you don’t—don’t need to do that, you’re…”

Then his brow lifts, just a bit.

And she realises what she had been so close to admitting, to spilling free.

“I’m what?”

It dawns on her then, as his arm flexes under her touch—makes her tongue thick, body warm. Warmer than it has ever been. And fuck, has she ever been able to stare into his eyes this long? Has she ever noticed the slight grey hairs in his soft, moussed brown hair?

“Is that soup?” she blurts out, louder than any sane person has ever asked about soup.

N: I may have broken my arm, concussed myself and forgotten the world existed for a few days.

Anna: Oh, look who remembered that there are people who worry about you.

N: I’m so sorry, I thought Susie would have messaged.

Anna: She did. But only after she’s assessed whether I’d “had enough sleep”.

N: She’s a good friend.

Anna: Better than you.

N: Oi. I have a broken arm and a second head growing out of my skull.

Anna: You know I’m joking. Anna: Been worrying all day, are you taking care of yourself? When’s your check-up, and have you been avoiding screens?

N: You’re such a nurse.

Anna: I’ll take that as a compliment.

There are many things Joel Miller has taught himself how to do.

How to build a crib, how to make sunny-side-up eggs, and how to braid hair. The list could go on, and on. The one thing he hasn’t learnt how to do since being twenty-one—effectively—is be a boyfriend.

Thumbs pushing buttons through the holes, he stares at himself again—the ceiling last casting a dull glow over him. Making the greys that are beginning to appear glint in it, reflecting back, jaw chewed, eyes hardening.

“Fuck,” he exhales.

Unfastening it, tugging the fabric down his arms before he throws it into the small pile at the foot of the bed. Tongue scraping against his teeth, his chest heaving as he runs a hand down his face.

He grabs the next. Forces his arms through it—green checked, open buttons on the sleeves he struggles to fasten as he judges himself for the sixth time in the last ten or so minutes.

“Don’t you look nice.”

Narrowing his eyes, he sees that pursed-lip smile on his daughter’s face as she stares up at him from the sofa. Wearing all the innocence she can muster. Saying a lot without actually saying a damn thing.

“Jus’ going next door.”

“The aftershave just because then?”

He tips his head. “Watch it.”

Sarah shrugs, unpausing the TV. Some movie playing as she chews her mouth and says nothing more. Christ, sometimes she’s too much like him. He pauses on the porch, suddenly nervous, a lump in his throat. Wants to take a step back and check his reflection one last time in the window of her car. He doesn’t. Knocking instead to avoid doing something stupid.

When Noa answers the door, his heart catches in his throat.

Staring at her. It’s just some long skirt that ends around her ankles and a simple, plain t-shirt, but Jesus, she looks nice, pretty. A thing he has to sweep his eyes up and over—committing it, filing it somewhere in his head.

“Hey.”

“I’m almost done, I’ve got you a surprise.”

“Me?”

She hums as she wanders off into the kitchen, leaving him to close her front door and toes off his boots. He follows, sees that her place looks no different than usual, yet it’s warmer somehow, the low lights of her lamps making it so—seeing Sarah’s scrunchies on the coffee table, one of her books too. He makes a note to apologise when Noa is suddenly in front of him, holding out a plate.

“Here.”

It’s a small one and in the centre of it is a sandwich. One that’s cut haphazardly in half, not perfectly straight, but the attempt had been there.

“It isn’t a lot, and do not ask me how long it took to cut it—I am aware it looks like a child made it.”

“Y’made me a sandwich?”

She shrugs, like it’s nothing. “You bring me food all the time, thought maybe I’d make you something—imagine you’ve been rushin’ around because of me.”

He shakes his head. “Nah, just threw this on.”

Which is an absolute lie; it’s the ninth shirt he’s tried on in the last fifteen minutes after the speediest shower he’s ever had.

“So, what do I need to know?”

He sees it, the nervousness. It fans out across her face. Breaks apart the usual composure, shattering it bit by bit. Her body (somehow) remains exactly as it was in front of him, yet also shrinks too. When he tilts his head, her mouth opens, hanging there, before snapping shut. Her eyes avert next, staring off, blurring the world away as though attempting to stitch things together, but coming up with the same needle and thread she began with.

“Noa?”

She makes a noise before blinking. “Oh. I work with her.”

He swallows, stomach churning as his hands fidget with the corner of the sandwich.

Noa whispers something else, dipping her chin, exhaling. It punches out, leaving a hole in the air.

“I… I don’t think she’ll mention it—but also, she probably fucking will—but I’ve talked about you.”

“Me?”

She stares, that same stare he’s becoming used to, but still makes the corner of his lips twitch.

“Yes, Miller. You.” She rolls her eyes. “Just about some of the backyard things—oh, and you know the time you helped me with my mailbox. Bit about Sarah, how she… how she keeps Alfred alive.”

He must stare with a little more confusion than he wishes to, because it turns out (from a rather rambly explanation, and her shifting on the spot like she had ants in her skirt) Alfred is the plant on the upstairs landing that he most definitely noticed.

“S’ I don’t need to know anythin’?”

“Nope. Just… be yourself.”

The knock comes earlier than they both expect from the look on Noa’s face, her eyes widening, face pulling into a strange expression she tries to immediately hide away. His shoulders stiffen, hands sweating as he places the plate down behind him and wipes his palms on his jeans.

He hasn’t felt this green in years, not even sure the last time he actually felt it.

Not following, Joel immediately thinks he should have. Hanging back, hovering all alone in the kitchen. The clock ticks—loud, piercing. And then it hits him. Slams into his frame, bones and soul: he has no idea how to stand.

Does he slouch? Does he fold his arms—no, he shouldn’t. Trying a few movements out for size before relying (faithfully) on a casual lean as he hears a cheerful voice, a pair of clicking heels and then a gasp. Looking up, Susie is all bright smile, arm full of flowers—and a whole head shorter than Noa—with eyes that pin him to the point he can’t breathe.

“Oh my god,” Susie exclaims, sliding past Noa to place the flowers on the side. “This is him? You told me he was good-looking, but not this good-looking.”

He doesn’t dare look at Noa’s face as she hisses her friend's name. Instead, he clears his throat, tugs at the cuff of his shirt.

“Ma’am,” he mutters, adding a nod.

That single word is like gravel in his throat. Forcing another swallow, shoving it down.

But Susie beams, head tilting. “No wonder you’ve been keeping him a secret.”

Noa moves, visibly shrinking. Crawling away inside herself. It's only when her back is fully to Susie, does he spot her face soften, breaks—before it’s perfectly restructured back into a fake smile when she’s back by his side.

There’s no quiet, not with Noa. Able to fill it immediately with talk of her appointment, how the bruise on her head thumps now, but she thinks it’s going down. It is. But Joel doesn’t say that, sticks to thinking it. Focusing instead on the fact that even if her voice is animated—and as lovely as always—Joel can feel her worrying. It ripples off her in thick waves, chest heaving a little more than usual. Tension palpable. Not able to ignore it now that he’s noticed it. Fingers flexing on the counter as their chatter blurs to the background.

He doesn’t think; his hand just drifts to her back.

All a light press. A flat palm to the space between her shoulders. Nothing more. The aim is only to settle.

But as soon as her warmth melts through the cotton of her t-shirt, his stomach twists. Too familiar. Too much. Not able to pull away—because, of course, he can’t now. Wanting to murmur an apology, right into her ear, press it there.

Because he hadn’t thought to ask. Feels he should have. Done so way before they had company, asked what was okay, what wasn’t.

But then she leans into him. Just a fraction. But it’s obvious to him. Her eyes flicking to him, all warm and beautiful—smile following, it wrapping around words as he reads others being blinked to him by long lashes: thank you.

Christ.

He looks at Susie. Forces himself to. Unclenches his jaw as he huffs a laugh at something Noa says, having assumed it was a joke. Trying to remember something, pluck some memory from his mind of the woman standing before him. Just to say something, add a thing to the conversation unravelling around him that he’s a mere passenger too—

“Noa’s been tellin’ me about those cookies you bake,” he says, voice low, eyes dropping to the side to find Noa staring up at him.

Her lips part, peel away from one another. Surprise replaced her previous look at the next blink, hung like a banner in her eyes. Only half-catching the response from Susie, because his fingers skim along the nodes of Noa’s back. All involuntary, perfume climbing up his nose as he offers a small smile that she returns.

One that traps him, loses him in a moment he knows isn’t real. A thing he forces himself to remind himself quickly that he’s playing a part, as she continues to stare at him. Looking as if he hung the moon.

The moment only ends when Susie clears her throat, grinning. Says that she'd best get home, something knowing on her face Noa must read because her spine straightens against him. Face turning from him. He can only nod at Susie, tongue thick in his skull as he drops his hand, slow, like it’s nothing.

It’s not nothing, though.

Feels it darting through him. Pinching, plucking. Able to home in on them moving through the house as the guilt throbs, almost flooring him. His hand still remembers the feel of her. The press of her shoulder blades against his fingers, heat clinging even as he flexes his fingers. A shameful thing, wanting to keep it there. Wanting to map the rest of her. Have her weight press into his side, until he couldn’t place where she started and he ended.

Staring at the flowers on the counter, it should have been a harmless, steadying thing. But it hums, a dangerous little pulse as he forces himself to notice the shades of the petals as he hears whispers. All high-pitched and giggly.

He rolls the inside of his cheek against his teeth when the door rattles shut, finds himself unable to exhale. Leaning into the kitchen counter, letting it dig in.

Susie had been here ten minutes—if that—but it had felt like an hour.

All too aware of the fact that his fingers were on Noa again, that he did so without thought or question. A reflex. His head shakes at it, guilt cutting through him.

“So, that went—” Noa begins as she walks back in.

“—m’sorry.”

It comes out quick, rushed. Her words die, fading as she blinks. Her weight shifts onto one side, pausing her sniff of the flowers, fingers falling gently away from petals. 

“I didn’t ask. Shouldn’t’ve… put my hand on you like that. Weren’t right.”

Noa tilts her head, not like she’s challenging him—not like she’s daring. Just looking. Observing. A quiet pause that stretches far too long.

“Oh,” she says, softly. “I didn’t mind.”

His breath snags. Jaw tightens, eyes dragging away as though that will hide the heat creeping up his face. His throat working, shuffling itself around it—the one word, the only word he can make:

Oh.

Because there’s a thought he can’t shake. One that burns hotter than the shame. Staring, almost dumbfounded. Not able to think of anything but it. 

That maybe, just maybe, she liked him touching her too.

Chapter Text

It plays on a loop. Not able to be shut off.

A movie he didn’t choose on the back of his eyelids, but refuses to blink away. Her face, her eyes, her voice…

I didn’t mind.

He rolls onto his side, refluffs his pillow. Stares at the moonlight bleeding through, slipping around the creases of his curtain. It replays even then. Her—Noa—sliding eyes from sepals and petals to land on him. Punching the air from his lungs with a single stare. Even now, in his bed, all he can smell is her. Just her, her, and her. Her voice follows, twists like mist in his brain. Not sure he’ll ever forget it. So level, so sure. I didn’t mind.

In his head, he tells her he didn’t mind either. Crossed the space, watched her take him in as he loomed closer, watched her lick her lips like she so often did. And then the movie would crinkle at the edges, burn and fade to black.

Then it would replay again.

In reality, he’d never worked the words out. They’d got stuck. Hardened in his throat. Turned to stone. His phone instead shrilled—loud, all garish in the quiet.

Tommy. Of course, it had been Tommy.

Her cheeks had risen around a smirk, arm holding the other, jutting to his phone. But he swears the expression stitched into her face read typical, before she vanished it, said: I’ll see you tomorrow, Miller? instead.

All he had done was nod. Or, he’s sure that he did. Adamant that he gruffed a noise out that sounded close to an okay, too. Let her lead him out, aware of her hovering at her door. His phone had still been ringing, vibrating and thudding in his dampening palm, echoing up his bones into his wrist.

Joel isn’t sure when he falls asleep, his dreams are a repetition of his thoughts. He does know he’s yanked from lucidity by Sarah shouting his name. The alarm next to his bed beeping too gratingly, desperate to be stopped or snoozed.

Sitting up, his head throbs. His eyes barely wish to open as it rings out like a chorus again: I didn’t mind. It remains one as he showers, water falling down his shoulders and sliding from his chest to his feet; three words haunting as he half-sips orange juice and over-soggy cereal.

By the time he hits the job site, it has grown to a weight around his shoulders. His hands are heavy, lost in his head. A want and wish for a redo. To reply back to her, to do something other than stand there dumbfounded. Christ, he thinks he smells her perfume in the air, thumb circling over fingers.

Shaking his head, he buries himself into work, only to end up cutting one board short, and minutes later drops a box of nails.

Tommy, chewing and looking more puzzled than Joel’s ever known him to be, asks, “Hell’s wrong with you?”

He’s got no answer. Not one that makes sense.

“Nothin’.”

It doesn’t land how he likes. Evidenced by Tommy’s raised brow. But his brother has the good sense to leave it there. Not pushing. An unspoken rule that he’s glad for. In the same way, he’s grateful that Tommy lets him hammer harder than he needs to, his jaw tight, teeth grinding. By the time he has to leave, something bitter has curdled inside of his chest—slithering around behind his belly. Nerves.

“Leavin’ already?” Tommy calls out, smirking. Knowing.

He doesn’t dignify it with a response, just a curt middle finger as he yanks the truck door open and holds in the exhale until he’s kicking up dust. His hands find the natural grooves on the wheel as his fingers whiten, forcing his brain to shift focus from repeating three words like some sort of incantation.

He opts for no radio. Doesn’t want anything to fill the silence. Punishment. When he hits a red light, he rests his head against the headrest, nostrils flaring. The quiet suits him. That’s what he tells himself, muses to himself as the wind whips in through the cracked-open window.

By the time he’s pulling on the street, his heart is settled to a normal pace, his spine softened against the seat, knuckles back to their usual shade.

It all changes when he sees her on his porch.

Not expecting any of it. Not her, there. Not her in an oversized tee, one side sloped off a shoulder—exposing skin—with legs bare from the knees and scuffed trainers at the toes as he pulls the truck up.

His throat is bone dry. Eyes unable to hold themselves in his head and not skirting up and down her frame as she pushes herself up. Hooked in her fingers is the lid of a bottle of water, condensation dripping, droplets sliding down to the step she’d been perched on. Jesus. His heart became a percussion instrument against his ribs.

That’s before he kills the engine and steps out, finding her moving closer and looking—if at all possible—prettier.

“You’re early,” she says, voice light, airy, eyes squinting against the glare of the sun.

Something twists in his chest.

“Or you’re late.”

“Funny.”

“Ain’t you supposed to be restin’?”

Shrugging, crossing the last bit of his front yard to him, she retrieves a bottle from inside her sling as she offers it to him. A gesture. A kindness. One he takes before he preempts her hand finding the passenger handle, getting there first, pulling and opening the door for her.

Christ, the way she looks at him. The tilt of her head and the grin tugging at her mouth. It could kill him. Still might, even.

“Such a gentleman.”

He can only make a noise. Something between a huff and a scoff.

“Keep going and I’ll start expectin’ it,” she adds.

There’s no way he can meet her eyes. His face burns, rising up from his chest. Just twists and cracks the lid from the bottle given to him and waits as she climbs in. Not looking, not daring. Already thinking he’s admired her legs far too much lately.

Joel only drinks when he’s walking around the back to the driver’s side. Soothing his throat with ice-cool water, and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand as he slides in behind the wheel again.

His eyes take another glance at her legs. Head lightly shaking, spine poker straight.

They’ve barely reached the highway when her fingers reach out, fiddling with the dial—music filling the truck bed. Static jumping, then a pop song spilling through; static again, then something with a guitar.

His eyes cut over, sharp. Pointed.

Noa doesn’t flinch. Just smirks, slow, knowing. Staring at him as she continues to fiddle, not even looking at what she’s trying to find until something that pleases her forces her hand to drop.

Joel leaves the radio where she’s set it for the entire drive.

Susie: If you get a chance come and see me, it’s boring without you here

N: I’ll try, Joel has brought me, and he has to get his daughter to soccer practice

Susie: You bitch, btw. Massively undersold how handsome he is. Can understand why you had a crush on him the moment you moved in. I would have too. Wouldn't have spent ages waiting to jump him, though.

Susie: You there? You take ages to reply!

N: I have one fucking hand

This chair in the waiting room creaks in annoyance as he adjusts, shuffling. Questioning how he should sit—

Leaning forward feels too eager. Like he’s impatient, difficult. But slouching feels careless. For his arms, crossing them feels too defensive. He’d read somewhere that it makes a person seem shut off.

The chair squeaks again.

His knee bounces, all restless. Brain whirring nothing and everything as his heel scuffs the leg and the toes of his boots propel up and down on the sterile linoleum.

He’s not the only one. Noa is shifting beside him, but he imagines for different reasons.

Her sling is tucked awkwardly against her chest, fingers fidgeting with the strap. He notices that the line is there between her brows again. The pained one. He drums his fingers on his thighs, wondering if she took her meds or if she’s waiting to be assessed first.

He drags his gaze away, aware he’s been staring for too long. Christ, but not looking at her doesn’t help either—

“I hate hospitals.”

Her voice cuts through the static TV overhead. All light but clipped. Frown still there, all out of place.

Chin turning, dragging his tongue against his lower lip, Joel flattens his palm to his leg for something to do.

“Don’t y’work here?”

She angles him a look. It’s flat, unimpressed. Noa through and through. A small glint, one single star in an otherwise black night sky, sparkling in her eyes.

Then she rolls them, exhaling. “Bit different on this side of the desk, Miller.”

Jesus, he likes it when she calls him that. More so now, than before. A lilt to it that wasn’t there. Something more than just a nickname, more playful. He hides it behind a huff, though. A low, almost a laugh. The kind which coils in his chest, too heavy to be released as his hand flexes against his thigh. His mouth opens to say something, but it doesn’t appear. Doesn’t build into a sentence on his tongue.

Glancing at his watch, the clock on the wall ticks—loud, abrasive—when her leg brushes his when she adjusts in the chair. Air halting in his lungs until it burns.

He doesn’t move his. She doesn’t either. Let’s herself rest against him, pressing. His eyes slope to it—where they connect, join. He’s sure a fire could be started in his throat; it’s gone that dry.

And it feels ridiculous, stupid.

Because it’s his thigh and hers. A barrier of his jeans between her bare skin. Yet, his brain acts like a teenager again, giddy, foolish. His skin feels too tight. Like the air in his lungs is never quite enough. Usually, he feels himself relaxing to the point that he speaks without thinking around her. Only to clam up out of fear of embarrassing himself. Now, though, things are different. Unspoken things that are turning him rigid, wrung-tight. Her words last night dancing in his head to a beat with no music. All sharp, dangerous. But then she looks at him, eases his spine to fall into the curve of the chair, his knees to fall to the side like they would usually. A warm fizziness bubbles in his chest as he clears his throat. Feels her tracing over his face.

“Y’know, Sarah’s got practice later. If you wanna come watch?”

Her head tips. All curious—eyes narrowing when he dares himself to meet them. Her knee presses further into him. Makes his thighs tense; the hand not on his thigh clench.

“I would, but…” her voice trails, head dropping as her hand shifts her sling again. “I promised a friend I’d let them into my house.”

His brow slides, arching up—Christ, when she smirks. And, because the world is cruel, she laughs, sweetly, all-honeyed.

“It’s such a stupid joke. Okay, so. No one’s got a key to my place. Well, except the one I gave to Sarah. And because of that, my friends always say that for them to visit me, they have to be invited in. Like I’m some vampire.”

Crinkling his forehead, Joel shakes his head—a chuckle falling out. A quiet one. Low. Tumbling out from his stomach as his eyes fix on her, watching as her face softens, something playful tugs at her lips.

“Don’t worry. Your neck is safe, Miller.”

He snorts, fingers digging into his jeans. “Didn’t fancy a bite outta me?”

It’s said too quickly, not that he can stop it. It’s slid out into the waiting area before he can stop it. Before he can even think. All he can do is watch it land. See how her eyes widen, if only by a fraction; only feel how heat blooms across his ears when it dawns what he’s said. What he’s inferred.

Noa, though, smirks broader.

Continuing, likely for his sake: “Did you know, Miller, that when I first moved here, it was just you and the Adlers… you know, before the friends I made here. That’s it. That’s all I have.”

A thread tugs in his chest, steady, insistent. Just like it did in the hospital room when she woke up. And again, when he woke up beside her, her body curled and pressed to him.

His shoulder strains as he processes, forced to move it, stretch it out across the back of her chair.

“I never realised. Y’know, at the backyard things.”

She shrugs, but he sees it, the way she hides. Dips her chin, pretends to look elsewhere. A muscle in his neck pulses.

It’s so obvious now. It surges up, sitting there between them. This thing caught between a masked layer and the truth. Tapping his thumb against the back of the chair, he can’t take his eyes from her. Even if he should. Even if he tells himself to. Dread mixing with questions; a wish for an answer smudging into nervousness.

He clears his throat, shuffles in the seat that makes his left cheek numb. “Noa, why’d you put me down instead of one of your friends?”

Her head turns back to him, eyes slow in how they flick up from his chin to his gaze. The room quieting even more, the air halting and time slowing as she leans in. It’s not too close—because he’s not sure she could get too close. There’s not a bit of space he wouldn’t want her in. But close enough that he can see her pupils dilate, the curve of her top lip twitching, and her mouth parting with a slow pop.

He’s afraid to blink. To breathe.

Staring, able to take in so much more of her than he’s ever previously allowed himself to. Waiting, pleading, if only his head. Tell me, Noa. Tell me.

Then her name is called. Including surname. Snapping the room and the tension, forcing her head to spin. Both of them take notice of a man in scrubs holding a clipboard, waiting, drumming his fingers as he hovers outside an open door.

Noa shifts her face, applies a mask. Pushing herself up on her good arm from the chair, she motions, moving, and his breath catches in his chest, in his throat.

Then she pauses, turns back to him. A different smile there. More shy, nervous.

“Because I knew you’d show up, Miller.”

Then she’s gone. Flounced off.

Disappearing behind a door that closes with a thud, leaving him half-folded in the chair, heart thudding, unsure if he’s supposed to smile or groan.

Sarah: It go okay?

N: Shouldn't you be in class?

Sarah: Between them. So???

N: I have a fancy new cast to show you.

Sarah: Dad said you’re coming later.

N: Go. To. Class.

Anna surprisingly visits alone. She brings with her two large coffees, a bag of groceries and some pre-made meals she can warm easily. Because I don’t trust that you’re eating—words Noa had once said to her over a year ago.

Noa only briefly mentions Joel when Anna looks around the stocked fridge.

Unlike Susie, if she has more questions, she keeps them to herself—a thing she’s glad for. Especially when the offer to change her bedding arises.

It’s not that she finds lying to Susie easier, but it is definitely harder to skate past Anna’s lie detectors.

Instead, Noa redirects if things get too close, as she watches uselessly as her sheets are stripped, only able to ask questions as she leans against the wall, doing so to break up the noise of the fabric and the quiet. Asking about her trip had been good, as Anna informed her of every little thing, with a descriptive verbal account of the swingset, the animals and the various food sampled. All of which carries them back downstairs to their coffees.

Before a question can be asked, Noa prods about sleep. Listening, hand cupping around the still-warm drink, she hears how Anna’s sleep is still so shit—having never known tiredness like it—and because of it, she forgot for a whole half a day that she’d been in a different timezone.

When she leaves, a hand on Noa’s shoulder, the other holding her chin, it’s more an order than an affectionate reiteration that she’s there for her: Text me, doofus.

As soon as the door clicks shut, her spine connects to the wood, and she exhales.

A big one. A long one.

All the pent-up stress from earlier sliding out in the breath, her lungs able to sigh in relief, her shoulders slipping free from their place close to her jawline. As she does so, the fabric of the sling settles back into the ridge it’s making. The one sore, making her wince as she motions to touch it, before pulling herself up the stairs.

It’s a losing battle, fighting the look of comfort her bed brings. The scent of fresh linen she cautiously leans herself into, protecting her arm, finger and thumb undoing the sling as she hisses in relief.

It’s a promise of a few seconds, maybe a handful of minutes. But when her eyes next blink open, outside is darkening—all murky grey-blue with the yellow of the street light flickering on. She blinks a few more times before remembering.

Joel. Pizza. Tonight.

Her heart stammers, from her chest to her throat. Throbbing hard as she twists, forgetting herself and hisses a yelp due to her useless fucking limb. Tears prick at the edges of her eyes, face twisted in a wince, teeth biting down hard on the inside of her cheek as she moves more slowly, more cautiously. Fingernails fumbling, grasping for the edge of her phone before she pulls it close, illuminating her screen.

Three messages.

One from Anna, one from Susie, and one, a few minutes old, from Joel.

JM: We’re back. We’ll order soon.

It’s quick, the whore bath, she performs in the bathroom. Staring at the clothes in her closet before she changes from earlier into comfortable pants and a grey t-shirt—simple, casual. A thing she regrets as soon as she’s halfway across his front yard, one foot on a step. Having already passed the rocks and plants in front of his porch.

She hesitates, wonders if there’s enough time to change her t-shirt at least. Maybe something with stripes or a pattern. Instead, she raps her knuckles on his front door. Wondering, worrying, turning over whether she should have dressed up more. If she should have chosen jeans or even tried to zip up a skirt without twisting her hips. Maybe, a wrap-around—

“Hey.”

It’s magic, has to be. No other reason a voice can halt thoughts like he can. All backlit by a warm light that halos around the top of his head. He’s wearing the same brown t-shirt and jeans from earlier, and her body relaxes at the acknowledgement she hasn’t misunderstood some pizza time dress code.

“Hey, Miller.”

Joel beams—but in a way that’s all him. No teeth and a wide smile, just the soft rise of his lips into one cheek and his eyes crinkling at the edges.

When she side steps past him, she slides her sneakers off—even if he tells her not to. Wiggling her toes in her grey socks as she steps up into his living room.

Even if she’s been in here once (maybe twice before), she takes in how different it is from her own place. All dark browns and off-beige blinds, colour-spotted cushions fluffed and placed in the corners of each seat.

Joel heads off to the kitchen, but she lingers. Takes an extra second. Stealing it. Biting her tongue to stop herself from teasing him about not letting her snoop as he did at hers, eyes scanning over photos of Joel with a much younger Sarah, trophies spotted around—golden and silver. As much as she doesn’t want to, she tears herself away, following—even if she itches to check out the DVDs on his coffee table.

As soon as she’s through the doorway, she’s greeted by warm, melted cheese. It weaves calm through her bones, her muscles. Nose taking it all in as she glances around the kitchen.

His place is different when it’s not covered in plain white paper plates, red cups and banners.

Like the living room, his kitchen is all dark wooden cabinets. Magnets stuck to the front of the refrigerator—and she swears she notices new ones. The small, light wooden table, with matching chairs, is by the window; two placemats were already down, used, loved. Scattered mail and a newspaper are in front of another, a cactus in the centre of the table. Hers. One she gave to her ages ago now.

Something in her chest tugs at the sight. Imagining it, breakfasts for The Millers. The two of them, Joel and Sarah, almost knee to knee. Him asking her awkward questions like, had she done her homework, as if the kid wouldn’t have.

She snorts, buries it under a cough. Remembering it, hiding out in here. Catching a breather from the loudness when Joel had come in, wearing an expression that said he was doing the same.

When she looks at him now, he looks at her like he’s recalling the same. Holding her gaze, not releasing it, hand flat to the counter as he leans—and fuck does he look good. Even though the workday still clung to him.

“Y’want something to drink?”

Nodding, she scratches at her bad arm, noticing the dresser—spots the teacups, raises a finger to nudge one.

“You stick your pinky out when you sip from it.”

The look he shoots her almost makes her howl.

“Where’s Sarah?”

“Upstairs,” he grumbles, “I don’t know. Something about a book.”

Smirking, taking the glass offered, her fingers brush his. All momentary, not lingering. But god, it’s enough to make her pulse quicken, to make her suddenly feel more parched than she had been. Taking a sip as she surveys him, moving to the table, rummaging around behind, before brandishing another mat.

“For me?” Her tongue slides into her cheek. “You shouldn’t have.”

He gives a sharp look, head shaking in that displeased way he does when she teases him. “Sit down.”

By the time she has, Sarah joins—all with several thuds and a shout of Noa’s name. All big grin and bright eyes as she slides into a seat near her. When the box is opened, steam billows up to the ceiling light, dancing around it before Noa is asked approximately three thousand questions, none of which she has much of an answer to.

It’s on answering the third that Noa suspects they want her to take a slice first, but she orders Sarah too: you had training, need it for growth. Some snarky teasing comment thrown at Joel as Noa fakes innocence and fights a grin at the two of them.

After a brief rethinking of strategy on how to eat it, her first bite almost scalds her taste buds. She still chews it gratefully. Let’s the tomato sauce burst on her tongue, let’s the cheese tangle around her teeth before it slips down her throat, and she’s biting the next as Sarah tells her about practice—about her game coming up soon. Normal, routine. Like this is a thing they do regularly and not in fact the first time, like it is.

Each of them manages a second slice—the crust this time is left on her plate as she cradles her arm. Fidgeting with a loose thread when the landline rings from some distant room, and Sarah bolts so quickly from her chair, Noa’s half surprised it doesn’t fall backwards and clatter to the ground.

“Jesus.”

“Won’t hear from her for an hour now.”

Noa snorts, but it catches—sticks against the sudden aloneness that dawns on her. Then, her mouth fills with everything but words. The kitchen all of a sudden different, quiet, but not necessarily in a bad way. When she stands, his presence still dominates the space, lifting her plate with her one good hand and setting it near the sink, ready to head back for his when he’s already following. Almost cornering her in, making her eyes bury into his eyes as she takes it—the plate, setting it softly on top of hers.

Fuck, Noa likes the look in his eyes when he leans against the counter. How it traces her. All of a sudden, too conscious of the inches of space between them. Only aware of him. But then, she always is when he’s around. Nothing but aware. Of his eyes, of the twitch of his lips, of the way his hand flexes.

Clearing her throat, she stares at a takeout menu stuck to the door of the fridge. “I appreciate you inviting me. For pizza.”

He hums, gruff—risen from the back of his throat. His palm is flat to the counter as he leans—still staring. She should go. Give him his home back, his space. Having been around him twice already. Probably sick of her.

“Hey, Joel.”

Something—a bug, it definitely has wings—flutters in her chest when he lifts his chin, when the lines around his eyes soften, and he stares like he wishes to read her entire mind all in one go.

“Thank you. You know, for the last week.”

His fingers twitch, his lip doing so too.

“Anytime,” he manages.

And her heart is thumping. Loud, obvious.

She wonders if he can hear it. That and if the air is bubbling and bouncing for him, as it is for her. Usually, it never happens. Not like it has recently. Been around him so many times, but none of them have felt like this. All charged and peaceful. She’s not sure if she can trust it—whether it’s something she should sink into or her mind is playing awful tricks. If it’s a haze of new meds or if her heart skipping is for a reason she should pay attention to.

Fuck she can’t be sure.

Shifting on the balls of her feet, she clears her throat. Smiles. Forces herself to compose before her eyes wander to his hand on the countertop. The one that’s now so close to hers as she moves around the edge. The stillness between them thickens, not unbearably, just full of things. Buzzing.

Noa has to remind herself to breathe, lips pressing together as her nose expands around it, as she flicks her eyes to meet his.

“Joel.” He just hums. “I hope you know that if you ever… contract yourself, I’d be the first one there.”

His brows lift, his forehead creasing.

“Yeah?”

God, she’d love to smooth out all of that surprise. Not sure there are enough words she could string together to do so, never mind any movement that wouldn’t be crossing a line.

Instead, Noa nods, lips rolling together as she stares, holding her arm—not blinking. “In a heartbeat, Miller.”

And that truth slides out easier than she expects.

He says nothing.

But he looks like he wishes too. Face scrunching, if only briefly. The room narrows to the width of his shoulders before his thumb, rough and calloused, finds the back of her hand—makes her breath snag in her throat. Able to hide it, blend it under a clearing. But she doesn’t break from looking at him. Tries to tell herself this is stupid, that it’s in her head.

But what cuts through instead is not a comfort or a lie to make herself feel better, but rather a truth. One she can’t force down, not even if she tries.

Because for one second, she thinks, if he leaned in, she wouldn’t pull away. And she thinks that he might feel the same.

Chapter Text

Rain comes down on Saturday as her head lightly throbs. She hears it tap, tap, tap lightly against the windows, before watching beads of it skate down as she curls herself further and further into the seat of pillows she makes for herself. Inspired by the one Joel had made for her.

She burns a candle, thinks about the leaves she watched that morning swimming down the road before tyres drowned them, and she drinks so much coffee it sloshes in her stomach. Before the sunsets, Noa notices, through pinhole eyes, that the sky remains murky, asphalt in shade.

It doesn’t shift until late Sunday afternoon. Changing. Becoming promises of blue skies and fluffy white clouds.

It’s a nothing weekend. One prior to breaking her arm, she’d have traded anything for. But guilt ebbs at her, bites, nips. Swirling inside of her as she cradles her arm, and her bottom lip sticks out a little further as she stares at sharp, moving colours on her television, but can't focus on them. She wonders, scowling, if concussions can regress. 

Between fits of sleep over the two days, Noa manages to not only reheat some food but also eat it at the table. Something that is no small feat. She’s also able to enjoy a movie—in two sittings, due to tiredness—and reads a book one-handed. The trick to it, she learns after much annoyance, is placing the spine flat on the table initially, before later stacking pillows on her lap and then finding a way to do the same in bed. The last chapter is read as the clock on her nightstand ticks over to a new day.

When Monday arrives, she’s groggy, pulled from dreams she can’t make out, all to the sound of laughter.

Laughter she knows well. Maybe, too well?

It travels up through the open window of her bedroom. Simmering, walking around her off-white walls. She could pick that husky, deep timber of his voice from a lineup. And even if she can only half make out what he says, her smile doesn’t realise that—answering it all the same.

When it hits her that her cheeks hurt for that reason, her eyes flicker open, almost blinded. Realising—or noticing—that she’s smiling at a voice, one that’s not even speaking to her. Even with how wide and warm it is, the actuality of it stills her, all rigid in bed—staring at the ceiling, fixed. Not able to move even an inch until the tyres of the truck vanish down the road, and she tries to dismiss the one singular thought circling.

Because she’s convinced herself by ignoring, it’ll make it less true. If she buries deep enough, it won’t grow any bigger than it already has.

She’s wrong on both accounts.

A thing she tries to smother by seeing if she can paint with her other hand. But by lunch, she’s wearing more paint than she has on the paper in front of her. The postcard is a soggy, saturated mess, and she cries so hard, she’s surprised her tears don’t leave rough, gnarled welts in her cheeks.

It pours from her. Begins as disappointment and transforms into frustration, then anger. Her one good fist clenching, molars grinding. She’s only able to pull herself back together, when she catches her reflection in a serving spoon. Seeing a hunched, worn-out version of herself makes her rush to find a mirror.

When the last bit of her paint supplies is back in its cupboard, she finds she has a message from him. A check-in—a thing that makes her feel giddy before she can remind herself she has absolutely no reason to be. Which only makes a thicker, darker mood cloud over her afternoon until she’s stirred awake on the sofa to Sarah bouncing in.

Thankfully, there are no questions about the paint on her face, or the glum expression on her face. And because Noa has a sinking feeling she doesn’t wish her to, she doesn’t ask Sarah about the scowl on her face either. She remembers what high school is like.

The following day, Sarah spills all anyway. Tells her about some stupid drama that’s sorted now—one that Noa can’t follow even if she tries—before pulling out her secret supply of candy in solidarity. The way the teen thanks and grins at her makes her heart do somersaults. That night, Noa calls Susie and spends an incredible 18 minutes ranting about feelings, until she’s exhausted and weary, thanking her through spluttered tears that she’s grateful she puts up with her.

The next morning, there’s a lighter energy to the day, so much so that when Sarah joins her, the two of them settle in for more Charmed. It’s only Wednesday, and they’ve reached another half a season, and have both sunk so deeply into the sofa—it is slowly beginning to take shape around them. When they both hear Joel’s truck pull into the driveway, Sarah makes no effort to move to greet him at the door like usual. Instead, eyes fixed on the TV, she offers:

“He’s worrying about you.”

Scoffing—loudly too—Noa shakes her head. Trying to ignore the way her entire body goes aflame, how she wants to fidget and also ask more. But she doesn’t, can’t. Stuffs it down in the place she shoves other things that shouldn’t be poked at or prodded.

“He does,” Sarah adds, lighter, words more muffled in a sigh as though hearing the cogs in Noa’s head.

When he knocks, Sarah’s eyes remain glued to the TV, even as she stares at her. Nothing. She buffs, sighs. Still nothing. In fact, there’s no movement from her until Noa pushes herself up, shuffling, feet dragging, seeing the edges of a purple t-shirt and hair rising before Sarah informs her (in a too cheery voice) that she’s going to use the bathroom, before bounding out as far away from the front door.

Noa has to laugh. It's there on her face as she shuffles the last bit to the front door, twisting the handle, only to be greeted by him in a dark blue tee—soft, from the looks of it—dust and dirt smeared in thick fingerprints down his midriff. It’s torture. Has to be. There’s no other reason a breeze blows at the same time, engulfing, no swamping her in the scent of him. All earthy, woody—the scent of sawdust too—clawing a place in her nose she’ll smell long after he’s left. Followed by big brown eyes that seem to pierce and soothe all at once, watching her like she’s the only thing worth ever looking at.

Somehow, all unbeknownst to her, she’s able to find words. A thing that both surprises her and makes her voice go up a pitch as she says hi, before adding:

“I’m sorry to tell you, your kid has selective deafness.”

He clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth, head shaking. “Don’t let her fool you. Girl hears fine when it’s somethin’ she wants.”

Huffing, Noa moves to the side to let him in, and for a brief second, his fingers brush against hers. A moment so quick, she could trick herself into thinking it didn’t happen. But his eyes meet hers, just as fast, just as brief. The door shuts with a soft push, as he stands, just staring, sweeping his gaze up and down her as though assessing every limb is where he thinks it should be.

“Here.”

She stares dubiously at the bag.

“Nothin’ special. Just an oven pizza.”

His hand, the one she’s paid little to no attention to, lifts the bag—hearing something small, likely can-shaped from the outside, with it.

“And a soda.”

When it’s offered again, she peers in. Noticing it, the brand packaging—the one she likes—then the flavour. Head whipping up quick enough that dots appear in the edges, making a noise in her throat in surprise.

“I got the right one?”

He says it casually, all nonchalant. She suspects he's more chalant than he cares to admit. 

You chose the perfect one. “Yeah. This is my favourite?”

The last word hitches, all in question. Not sure how he’d know, trying to think of all the places between here and where she thinks he works to see if there would be a place that would only stock this one—

“Yea’,” he continues, pawing at the back of his neck, tilting it from one side to the next, “Y’told me.”

“I did?”

Nodding, his smile curls up into one cheek—making the hairs move as he does so. “First night I stayed. Kept going on about how you’d murder for one. Reassured me plenty I would make it to the morning, though.”

“Oh, Christ…”

“Apparently, if you murdered me—”

“Alright, Miller,” she says, cutting him off—hearing it. That low chuckle.

The one that blooms warmth in her chest, it simmers out to the ends of her fingers and toes. Makes her want to beam, and curl closer—like some plant that’s hunting for the sun. Fighting the urge to press her lips to his cheek, whispers a thank you. Do so more intimately, softer, more personable than she’s had the chance to before now.

She stops herself, just.

But it’s hard.

Stomach knotting, still fluttering, not at all sure why he cared enough to do this for her.

“Thank you. For this. Starting to make me feel bad—all I’ve done is given you a sandwich.”

He snorts, returning back to quiet blushing—a reminder of backyards and parties—before she watches as he runs his thumb over the teeth of his keys.

“Y’do more than that. And for that, it’s the least I can do,” he says, jutting his head as Sarah approaches with her backpack and a hard-to-read expression. “You ready, kiddo?”

Sarah nods, a smile etching into her full cheeks.

“See you tomorrow?” Noa asks.

And Sarah grins, wide, bright and full of light.

When the door clicks shut behind them, it’s suddenly too silent. The house is too muted. Her spine stays pressed to it for longer than it should, fingers grazing the wood where he’d been moments ago. Like a fool trying to hold onto a moment.

Dragging herself away, she exhales—loud. But the quiet just folds in around her, the sound of his chuckle still ringing around in her head and unfurling in her chest, stubborn and sticky. Her arm throbs, her head pulses—but only faintly. But none is enough to drown him out.

Placing the bag on the counter, she stares. Removing both items, the soda and the stupid oven pizza. Nothing monumental, yet her heart all but tries to hammer through her ribs, her throat, her entire useless body the second his eyes caught hers. It’s a lie when she tells herself it’s the meds, the concussions, the loneliness. In the same way, it’s a fabrication to say it’s all conspiring to make her soft.

But it’s easier than reality.

She can’t dismiss the feeling she has with a snort or a tease.

Staring at the flavour, she hates how it makes her want to cry. How it’s not fair, how careful he is—how considerate. How unthinking and easy he makes looking after her seem. As though it’s second nature for him. Like it’s something he possibly wants to do.

Leaning against her counter, Noa tips her head back, nose scrunching, eyes closing. Because she doesn’t know if he did want to, if he ever would have. She tricked him, placed his name down stupidly because he was nice, and she’d never imagined in a hundred years it would need to be used.

“I’m a fucking idiot,” she whispers, breathes it.

Squeezes her eyes shut as she takes breaths in and out, staying there, exactly like that, until her legs begin to ache.

N: Just to inform you, the city is spared another day thanks to your generosity

JM: The pizza good?

N: The best

JM: You doing good? Any pain.

N: All. The. Time.

JM: Do you need to tell someone?

N: I am sure it’s normal

JM: You need me to come round?

N: Why you got a magic wand you’ve not told me about?

N: Don’t answer that. We’ll blame the drugs

There is absolutely no reason to be nervous. But he is.

Having needed to give himself a talking to in the bathroom mirror. And thank god he did. Noticing the splatter of dinner he was wearing before changing, as Sarah asks (or shouts) if he knows where her boots are.

Flexing his fingers, he hovers his hand a beat too long over the door before he knocks, shoving his fist deep into his pocket as though it’ll hide the hesitation. He tells himself he’s being neighbourly—that it’s just a favour. But the thrum under his ribs disagrees, all loud, traitorous.

By the time she swings the door open, he swears she’ll hear it.

“Hey.”

She leans on her doorway, arm clutching the other. “Hey, Sarah not got practice?”

For a second, he’s forgotten why he’s here. Having been caught in the net of her eyes, lost in the appearance of her—the lean, the smile he hopes is all just for him. And the fact that she’s remembered. A thing that shouldn’t take him back, but does.

“Uh—yeah. Just wanted to ask. Y’know Sunday?”

“I do know the day of the week.”

He chews his cheek, smirks, snorts and shakes his head. “Alright, smartass. Well, Sarah’s at a sleepover tomorrow, won’t be back until later on Sunday. Wondered, if you wanted, I could mow your lawn.”

There’s a beat, a brief narrowing of her warning eyes and a tilt of her head until it rests on her doorframe.

“You came to ask me if I wanted my lawn mowed?”

Scratching at the back of his neck, eyes darting—he tried to land them anywhere but on her. The burnt orange of her trousers, the scrape on her front door where it’s taken the paint from it. Eyes sharpening at it. Fingers slowing on the hair on his neck. He can fix that, too, at some point. Is sure he’s got that shade—

“Joel?”

Heat floods his ears, blinking, gaze snapping to her face. “Jus’ figured you shouldn’t be pushin’ it. Cast and all. Bein’ polite.”

“Is that so?” Her tongue sweeps across her lips, looking him up and down. “What if I think you have a thing for it?”

The way she looks at him forces his throat tight. Like she can hear his thoughts. Knows what he’s offering. Why he is offering it. That it isn’t just a mowed lawn, but time. His time. His presence. An excuse, really. A chance to stand here on her porch a little longer and have him be around.

And Christ, he hopes she says yes.

“A thing?”

“Yeah, for mowing.”

He snorts, wipes at his face, stares at her like she’s grown two heads, but she only seems to grin.

“Fine, I’ll let you, but…” her voice lilts, teasing, “only if you come to a birthday party with me Saturday night.”

His eyes narrow. “A party?”

“It’s for Susie.” A beat, then softer, eyes on him. “She kinda expects you there, if that helps sway you.”

“Well, wouldn’t wanna disappoint.”

Her lips roll, staring. Smile tugging wider, waiting him out. He feels it, the ground shifting, the air tightening as his heart picks up.

“Oh, wait—follow me.”

He almost does. A thought bubbles, bursting in his head as he chews his cheek, fights a smirk. So used to hearing this now, and that his feet always follow. But he halts, stops—boot hovering over the threshold as he calls her name.

“What?”

He levels his breathing, blanks away the smirk, the smile. “Uh… y’mind, invitin’ me in?”

It’s brief, the confusion, before he watches the most beautiful sight of her realising. Her eyes shimmering, cheeks lifting. Her smile cuts up into the apple of her cheeks as her good hand claps to her neck, head shaking. It’s low, the laugh tugged from his mouth. Blending with hers. Merges, combining like it’s meant to as he walks through, following. He notices a jacket and a bag flung over the back of the sofa—not the one she’d had with her when they went to the hospital last week. This handbag is smaller, nicer, made of leather.

“Y’off out?”

Looking over her shoulder, her eyes brighten—all shimmering in the sun through her kitchen window.

It’s slow, the turn on the balls of her feet. One eye narrowed in that Noa-way. And Christ. He swears the way she swipes her tongue over her lower lip is done purposefully to undo him. To ruin him. It succeeding. Making his heart forget how to do heart things, it almost catapulting into his ribs.

Then she shrugs. “Just going out...”

He shouldn’t—knows he shouldn’t—but he feels empty. Suddenly devoid. Both like the air has been sucked from him through a straw, and also like he’s been doused in cold, ice water. Reality falling, cooling him to the bone. Fingers curling into his palm, as he reminded himself to keep his face neutral. To not show what is roaring inside of him. Because out could mean people, others—

“With Anna.”

The threads loosen in his chest. Relieved. “She picking you up?”

“I thought I might take my new cast for a spin. Rip up the freeway.”

“Funny.”

“You don’t think I can do doughnuts in this?” Her good hand is pointing to the one in a sling up that’s pressing close to her chest.

“It’s the fact that I do that’s got me worried.”

She only rolls her eyes, but the corner of her mouth betrays her. Tugging higher, brief—like it can’t be helped. Moving to the counter, she slides a bowl closer and picks up the fork beside it—but not before flicking him a glance. Quick. Knowing.

He takes a step closer, leaning his elbows down—the coolness of her countertop slipping up from his elbows.

“Look what I can do.”

“I’m lookin’.”

There’s a flicker, before she drops her gaze.

And he smiles before she even shows him. Having seen the glee on her face, the way it twinkles threads of joy in her eyes before they broke from him, dropping to the spaghetti and her soon-to-be-twirling fork. It’s messy, but her hand does it and lifts, more coordinated than he expects she has been, as one single piece makes contact with her chin—but the rest finds a home on her tongue. Teeth push the contents free, until it’s gone, leaving her chewing.

To his surprise, she doesn’t stop staring back. Doesn’t seem to baulk under the way he hasn’t taken his eyes from her—unsure if she minds, if she cares. Hears it again in his head, even if it wasn’t the same scenario: I didn’t mind.

It’s now or never.

A steady beat in his ears, a little flutter in his chest. Elbow sliding until he’s aware of his fingers skating her chin. All delicate, grazing. His thumb moves after, brushing, swiping up the sauce left behind on her skin. And he doesn’t retreat. Doesn’t pull away. Finds her skin is softer than he imagined, as the warmth of her cheek presses into the pad of his thumb. He feels her breath stutter, feels her not move away. Aware of the scrape of her cast against his forearm and the faint scent of sauce lingering in the air.

His freezes, a breath stuck—lungs heavy. Every part of him is aware she’s letting him. Just considering him, not moving. Not pulling away, but not leaning either.

Maybe he should pull back? He shouldn’t be this close. Maybe he should make some joke, grumble about her being messy. But he doesn’t. His eyes just soften on her mouth, closer than he has any right to be.

There’s a brief flicker of doubt, a worry he’s read this all wrong. The two of them could be merely friends, doing friendly things. The back and forth just who she is—

She always seems chatty, talkative, friendly.

It’s a whisper, the way she says his name. Almost like it’s delicate, a secret. Joel.

Not sharp like she wishes him to stop. He knows the difference. Can tell. Her body moving, shifting that bit closer—

“Dad?”

His hand snaps back like Noa burns him, just as she takes a whole step back, almost knocking herself into her own counter. Blinking. Doing so more than needed. Hand wiping down her front, before fingers hovering where his had been.

His mouth opens, tugging at words to form from his brain and end on his tongue. Nothing comes. Not one. Not when another bellow of his name echoes through the house, followed by footsteps. Cheeks burning, shame fills his chest like he’s just been caught by a parent as he drops his stare, finds his feet. Shaking his head, if only to himself, before he lifts it, finding her.

Noa.

Who is staring at him with a blend of confusion and surprise? But Jesus Christ, does she look beautiful. Even if there’s the shadow of her spaghetti stain still on her chin.

Chapter Text

Joel Miller is going to have a headache.

Not just from the pacing footsteps overhead, but also because of the dull, continuous voice of his brother. He thinks he’s been talking his ear off for days now, maybe months. An infinite amount of time seated at the table that’s become a prison, listening to him. If it ain’t about work next week, it’s about a girl he met at the bar last night—describing her with noises and adjectives intermittently.

He can’t remember the last time he’d been able to do the same. Not that he ever would have.

Shaking his head at this fact, he chooses instead to focus on the scent of bacon—and coffee. Chewing, swallowing—then washing it down. Doing so as sunlight stretches across his hand when he twirls the fork, shifting in his seat, making it groan. When he moves his food around his plate, his forearm knocks against Sarah’s abandoned, half-zipped backpack. Items shuffling, slipping closer to the teeth of the exit—a book, socks and the leg of her PJs.

Because he’s a good brother, he nods and grunts when he thinks it calls for it. And, when his phone buzzes next to his hand, he ignores it out of politeness.

Tommy, however, doesn’t.

“Who’s Noa, huh?” Tommy grins, snatching it before Joel can drop his fork and grab it. “Not heard that name in about… ten minutes.”

His hand shoots out, trying to take it back, yank it. But Tommy’s quicker. Darting, shit-eating grin spreading across his face like butter on bread, thumb flying over the screen with a speed Joel couldn’t muster even if he spent a solid week texting. He knew the speed because he could hear the clicking noise of each key. A thing he still hadn’t worked out how to turn off.

“Tommy,” Joel warns, low, sharp.

The big brother tone. The only card he has in his arsenal. Unlike when they were teens, Tommy doesn’t care—lifting the phone out of reach.

“There,” Tommy bellows, “Hot New Girlfriend, fixed it.”

It’s instant, the way Joel’s whole chest heats, a flush rising. It crawls up his neck, simmering around his cheeks, before making his ears burn to the point he’s unsure how his hair hasn’t cooked. If he glanced in a mirror, he’d be shocked if he wasn’t red all over. Shaking his head, dipping it, stabbing his fork against the bacon—

“Jesus Christ, Tommy.”

He doesn’t move when it first skids back across the table to him. But his pinky brushes it, as though it’ll soothe. He waits a beat, wrenching it back, grip tight as he chews before pocketing it. Quickly. Glancing up to see Tommy leaning back, smirking behind his coffee.

“Relax,” his brother drawls, “Ain’t like you’re subtle. You been talking about her for months like she patched your damn roof or saved your life.”

Joel pretends to be fascinated by his bacon, fork moving it, swallowing the piece he’d stuffed in his throat a second ago.

“She’s been helpin’ with Sarah, that’s all.”

“That why you’re blushin’ like you’re sixteen?”

Joel swears under his breath, grabbing the nearest thing—which happens to be a pencil case—and launches it at him. It connects with a soft slap and a rumble of pencils moving as it lands in his lap limply. Tommy, as expected, only laughs. Loud enough that Sarah stomps down the stairs, brow cocked halfway up her forehead—like it’s trying to befriend her hairline.

“What are you two fighting about now?”

“Ask your daddy,” Tommy says, grinning.

Joel half expects Sarah to have her hands on her hips when she’s standing next to them both at the kitchen table. Instead, her eyes just flick between them. Suspicious. Lip ticking up in the same way he knows his does.

“Did Uncle Tommy just call Noa your girlfriend?”

Joel chokes on his coffee, spluttering. Tasting bacon oil and burnt beans. “What? No—he… He don’t know what the hell he’s on about.”

It’s slow, the smile. The same one he’s given at Christmas when she unwraps paper and finds out he had listened and had gotten her the thing she really wanted, even if she said she didn’t need it. The same smile when the Adlers invited him round for biscuits, and he lied straight to their face, and she saw through it. Shit.

“Eat your breakfast,” Joel interrupts, before she says a damn thing.

So sure that his ears are already red. Half-surprised there’s no steam coming off them.

N: I know I’m asking too much, but if I can’t figure this out, I’m warning you that you may need to zip me into this dress.

JM: Don’t hurt yourself.

N: I need you to know I am really trying not to.

JM: Need me to come over?

N: No. Let me see if I can figure it out first. Let me work for it.

N: I’ll tell you that crying and begging god doesn’t zip it up, though.

JM: Least you worked those two options out first.

He’s not sure his hand has ever gripped the wheel so tightly as he is doing now—even if there’s been a whole lot of reasons to grip it.

The days when his spine was made of marble, work having needled into him until the only thing he knew how to be was tense. Tommy—just… being Tommy. The day Sarah got a temperature that wouldn’t come down, and he’d been so sick with worry he’d almost hurled in his own lap at a red light.

This is different, though. He’s aware of perfume simmering in the cabin of his truck, and of Noa’s dress having lifted on her knee, exposing more skin than he knows she wishes for him to see. Well, see right now. He’s seen her in shorts. His cheeks smoulder at the memory, imagining them, her long legs, warmth crawling up his neck as he recalls touching the back of her leg—

“We’re here.”

It’s more pitched, her voice. Energetic, bouncy. Reminds him of her hellos at backyard things when she first arrives and tries to make sure she doesn’t exclude anyone. She at least waits for him to park before reaching for the handle—letting the truck quiet, all clicking and cooling.

“Noa…”

When she hums, leg bouncing, he watches as her head turns to face him—all in slow motion. Eyes flicking, washing over him, drowning him in beauty and big pupils due to the darkness of the cabin. Her lips still parted, painted—tip of her tongue sliding over them as she stares, in waiting.

“Can I hold y’hand?”

It’s quick, the smile—before it’s eaten by a smirk. Robbed, gone in a moment, before she nods, calls him a gentleman again and steps out before he can say another word.

The cool, night air drapes around him when he climbs out. Makes the hairs at the back of his neck stand up, doing so until he moves around the truck and takes a breath when her hand slips into his. It’s easy, holding her hand. More so than he thought. It’s small, soft. Too small for his, maybe? But it fits—perfectly. All warm.

Still, he keeps his fingers loose, just in case. Wanting her to have the choice if she wants to pull away. Not that she does. If anything, she squeezes it a little up the path to the gate, guiding him—like she’s done this before.

Which he assumes she must have.

Warm light spills out from around low trees and bushes as soon as the gate is pushed. Laughter swells and dips, music weaves between it in a chaotic, sweet hum as they move in, the hinges creaking behind them, until the gate thuds back into place.

Joel has absolutely no idea who anyone is, except Susie.

When he comes face to face with them, all their faces blur as their eyes linger. His soles feel like they glue themselves to the ground, to the path. Shuffling his grip inside Noa’s, only for hers to tighten. And somehow, he exhales. Breathes. Does so like the two of them have held hands countless times, like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

Everything else feels deeply unnatural. Hell, Joel isn’t sure he remembers the last adult party he attended, that wasn’t his own.

“Hey, you made it!” Susie beams.

It’s unmissable how her eyes lock on their hands before looking up, grinning further. Her flute in hand, catching one of the swinging bulbs in the breeze.

Noa only lets go of him long enough to hug her, careful, more of a lean and an arm with her cast and a soft voice. Then she’s back. Looping their fingers together again, all tight, snug. Eyes locking with him, nodding. Before she’s tugging him gently into the buzz of the party as more people arrive behind them.

It’s not crowded exactly, but the party is noisier than Joel had expected. Some song playing that he has no idea what the words are, the chatter from others all limp under it. A couple of people throw curious glances their way. At him, mostly, then down at their hands again. He’s sure they’re wondering how a man like him ended up with someone like her. Christ, he’s wondering the same.

Each swing of their linked hands makes his heart skip, and a traitor of a heartbeat that won’t quit reminding him this isn’t real. Almost wants to pull away, but he suspects she wouldn’t let him unless he asked.

“Food?”

“I could eat.”

She laughs in response, head leaning on him as she does, and their hands only fall to their sides as he wipes his palms down his jeans before beginning to make a plate. It’s another thing they’ve never done, but anyone would think they had. She points to an item; he places it on the plate for them to share. Him asking about another, and she agreeing. Normal, right. Except, Joel is very much aware of her body pressing against him, so close he only has to twist his head a little to read her expression when she doesn’t reply immediately, deep in thought. And under the low light and the gloss of her lips, it takes everything not to do the only other natural thing he wants to do.

They work through it all until she slips an arm over his, and steers them away from gathering groups and towards the edge of the garden. To a little wrought-iron table under a tree strung with even more lights. It’s quieter here, tucked away. Their plate gives off the smell of grilled meat, while her sweet perfume tries to hang itself between them.

“Thought you might like the corner,” she murmurs, easing herself down carefully, the arm in her cast pressing to herself cautiously.

He rolls his jaw at being too late to move her chair, pulling out the other, sinking into it with an annoyed sigh. Not that she notices. Head dipped, her finger sliding between the cast and her hand as her brows furrow before she looks up. Catching him. Because he’s staring again, admiring. There’s space between the chairs—enough that they’re not touching, but wanting nothing more than to shuffle a little closer—but he still feels her there. Against his side, against his palm.

“Tuck in, Miller.”

He doesn’t, even as she begins talking about Susie, hand nudging the plate to him when she realises. There’s something about last Halloween, and he nods because he missed the beginning. Just makes the right noises, the usual. Listening, anchored by the sound of her voice in this cheery octave. When she shuffles her chair towards him, a spark shoots from his thighs up behind his navel. Not nerves, not really. Just… awareness. Of the weight of her hand earlier. Of the warmth of her thigh if he were to place his hand on it, spread out his fingers.

Then a lull comes. A pause. It’s greeted by a breeze slipping through the garden, but all he can focus on is why she’s looking at him. Properly, now. Her eyes bright and her mouth curved, as if she wants to say something. And Christ does he want her to—

“You look good, by the way,” she says it so suddenly, her eyes drop, and her fingers adjust the plate on the little table as though needing something to do. “Green may be your colour.”

It’s ridiculous. Stupid. Not that his face knows that, pinking, burning. The ground all of a sudden seems less certain under his feet. If Noa notices, she doesn’t give it away with a smirk. Mustn’t be able to tell his pulse has jumped, not as she pops a tomato into her mouth and scans around.

“Yeah?”

Christ, he thinks he’s blushing. Again. Having been subjected to a compliment a moment ago, and another before that. Chewing the corner of the slice, crumbs sliding over his tongue as he swallows, and it dawns. Slow, a trickle—covers him like treacle, making the air sticky and tight.

“Y’flirting with me, Noa?”

She shrugs, chin dipped. “Might be, Miller. Glad you could catch up.”

Leaning back in the plastic chair, he rests his hand on his thigh. Stares, assesses. Feels the bubble of something under his skin again, a warmth that’s spreading through him thicker and faster than he thinks it should be.

Still, though, there’s doubt. A sheet of it—not allowing him a real view over to see if what he thinks is there, is actually there.

“You’re enjoyin’ this?”

“You’re not?”

He just huffs, takes his fork again and slices it through her slice.

“Eat your cake, woman. Quit making me sweat.”

Her tongue sweeps over her lips. “Oh, I make you sweat, do I?”

He wants to answer. Christ, he’s sure the flush crawling up his neck already has. But before he can muster a joke, a reply, their table is swarmed by people he only half-remembers the names of when he’s introduced, listening, trying to anyway. Voices blurring, tripping over one another as someone even tilts her chin like they’re inspecting her.

Joel’s hand tightens on the back of her chair, fighting the urge to slap their hand away.

When they’re both standing, her fingers brush the backs of his before he winds her fingers in between his. Slots them. Just like when they entered.

Someone brings up a Christmas party, and an asshole ‘on rotation’. Joel doesn’t know the story or the person, but the way Noa’s eyes drop tells him enough. Especially when her eyes barely meet theirs, never mind his. Suddenly interested in the toes of her shoes, hand still inside his—fingers looped as though not wanting to loosen.

“—God, and you had to make up that excuse to have him leave you alone, Noa—”

Anger swells, rising. Joel’s head twists so suddenly, he only just catches her chin dropping back to her chest. Her hand tries to loosen, but his grip only tightens, not letting her go. Not letting her make herself small. Having to breathe, inhale and exhale out of his nose until she glances at him, eyes all soft. The edges reflecting fairy lights swinging above them, her head tilting, a forced smile.

“Y’want a drink?”

He doesn’t mean for it to cut through the story, but it does.

Irritation still bubbling, even as she leads him. He tells himself not to ask, not to bring any of it up. For her, and for him. Not like he can do much, can’t rewrite time, can’t attend a Christmas party and glare at a man. Can’t, can’t—

“They’re making it sound worse than it was.”

Her body facing him, nodding. As though it’ll stick the words in a bit deeper. His shoulders soften, round out as his spine relaxes as he takes a real breath, not one he has to think on.

“Y’okay?”

She laughs—a real one. One he knows. Not nervous, not fake.

“Shit.”

His stomach drops, but her hand grabs his chin before he can look over his shoulder to see what her eyes are on.

“Anna is here.”

“S’that a bad thing?”

Her head tips, mouth pulled into a thin line that doesn’t fill him with much confidence. Sees it, threaded beneath the surface like a woven tapestry he isn’t meant to know lives there, but can’t unsee if he tries. He doesn’t pick at that, though. The why. The how. Not sure he should, if he can. If there’s any reason why he should poke at the idea that he knows her microexpressions now, understands them. How they have hidden meanings.

It happens fast, him spinning. Noa’s good arm slips up around his neck, pulling him closer. Her body all of a sudden pressed against his chest, their faces inches apart. The scent of her perfume able to fight its way through the night to creep into his nose. Her breath steals the air from his lungs.

“She’s harder to lie to.”

“Who?”

It’s breathed, whispered, like a child confessing: Anna.

She rolls her lips then—lets them part. A thing he shouldn’t have noticed, but he has. But then, he can’t stop noticing things about her. Like how large her pupils are and how her eyes reflect the light. How he sees each of her lashes and how he discovers the different levels of softness each new bit of skin he touches is.

“Sorry,” she whispers, so close her lips could graze his.

Joel swallows hard. His fingers twitching, wrist resting on her hip. Having found a home there, a place. Unsure when, but it’s there.

“Don’t b’sorry,” he manages, the words rough, low. Just for her.

She shivers, and his arm moves to her back, steadying, reassuring. But before he can think better of it, her hand unloops from his neck and catches it, guiding his hand down, placing it on her hip. Lower than he’d been before.

His pulse hammers. His jaw tightens. The more he tries not to react, the more he finds himself stiffening. All but aware of the heat pooling behind his stomach, the inevitable slowly pressing against the zipper of his jeans. Warmth spreads over the top of his nose and cheeks, staring, unable to tear his eyes away as she smirks, as the edge slides up into one cheek.

Then it bursts, changes. Her body steps back, not out of grasp, but would require him to move too far to pull her back. She’s smiling, grinning—far too big.

Noa shakes her head. “You, Joel Miller, are a terrible actor.”

“Yeah, well,” he mutters, eyes sloping off to the space behind her, “I ain’t actin’. Just…”

“Just, what?”

He swallows, shifts his weight—the urge to close the gap rising, like the swell of a tide.

One step and she’d be against his chest, right where he’s imagined her. His thumb twitches before grazing the back of her arm instead, a pathetic substitute for what he really wants.

“Jus’ reacting. Can’t help it.”

Her smirk widens, teasing. “Reacting to me, huh?”

He huffs, a half-laugh, more a grunt.

“Yeah.” He swallows. “Guess I am.”

It’s long, the stare. Pulled, becoming threadbare by the time she blinks it away and stares off from him.

“I should go say hi,” she mumbles, lower, more questioning than stating.

And he doesn’t stop her. Even if he thinks she may have given him a beat to be able to. And even if every part of him wants to.

N: I need to tell you something, and you cannot freak out, and you cannot tell Susie

Anna: I’m listening.

Anna: Okay, it’s been ten minutes, are you typing or what?

N: I’m thinking how to begin

Anna: Do you need me to call you?

N: No, Joel will be around soon

Anna: Is it a sex thing? Because I think you’re fine to have sex, in my medical opinion.

N: NO. Forget it

Anna: You filthy minx.

On her last birthday, Noa made a bucket list of things she wanted to do.

Handwriting chicken-scratched into a notebook. It had lived inside her work bag for weeks, until she threw it into the back of her dresser drawer. She hadn’t even written on the lines, just rather dropped ideas around the page. All nonsensical.

There were so many, some she thinks she’s done, and some she’s not sure she’d ever do. Like, learn to bake a pineapple upside-down cake. Another—and more likely—was to see a sunrise. Which she supposed, when the clock on the wall ticked to 6 am this morning, she could now tick that off.

Not that she even remembers where the list is. Although, on a technicality, it isn’t like she chose intentionally to see the sun come up. For it to bleed orange into pink and yellow. But rather, tossed and turned so much that she rolled partially onto her arm in her forgetful, stupid state, yelping to no one and crying in the bathroom, again, to no one.

Now hours later, nursing a cold lemonade to wake her up, in the hope it hides how much she wishes for a midday nap, she stares at the reason she can smell wood and pine over sweet sugar.

His jacket.

It had smelt of him, all pine and something deeper. The one he so kindly gave her from his truck to keep her warm, assuming that could be the only human reason she was shivering. Not him. Not him and his stupidly gorgeous eyes; not him and the fact her body had been almost pressed fully to it, and it rewrote some brain chemistry she never thought could be altered.

The other reason is in her backyard.

She remembers, as she pads out into the sunshine—eyes wincing in the sun—that another thing on that list was to see a sight she’d never imagined.

Noa thinks Joel Miller mowing her fucking lawn should cover that off. Not only because a man is mowing her lawn when she lives alone. But also that she’s so single that before she broke her arm, her takeout delivery man had been her only usual, regular male interaction.

Now there’s him.

Joel. Her neighbour, who is on her side of the fence. The same person who makes her skin warmer than the Texas summer. A thing proven, mouth hanging open as she watches him—reminding herself not to drool as she perches on the step of her back door. Heartbeat kicking up like a wild drum in the build up to the chorus when the fabric of his shirt pulls taut over his chest.

The mower hums, steady. Back and forth. It chews through blades of grass as the lemonade in her hand drips down her wrist. Droplets of condensation falling to the leg of her pants, bleeding across the fabric, stretching. But, she’s admiring him. His broad shoulders. How tactile he is shifting the machinery. Seeing him wrestling it with ease around the empty flower beds, as it cuts across in neat, deliberate lines.

On her next mouthful of lemonade, she lies to herself that she’s watching to make sure he doesn’t miss a spot. But her eyes have barely flicked to the grass. Instead, they’ve noticed every single new thing about him.

Like he looks so good like this. The sweat clinging to thin cotton, outlining the planes of muscles on his back, as though intentionally making her throat dry. Studies nothing but the way his forearms tense. How they flex when he draws the machine back. Staring in open-mouthed awe, heat spreading through her, low in her stomach, almost letting out a noise when he crouches for something and the jeans over his thighs are pulled taut.

Then, like the final move in a video game, when he stands, Joel drags the hem of his t-shirt up to wipe his face. And the sun, like the supportive best friend it is, spotlights on him, catching on a narrow stretch of tanned skin—a flash of stomach, dark hair, all damp with sweat. Her chest tightens, stupidly quick. A breath snagging on something in her throat, making her splutter—almost short-circuit.

Fuck, she forgets how to breathe on the next inhale. Engrossed in it, him. The sight of him. All living, breathing, and existing, even if she has to pinch herself because she worries this is another one of her dreams. Because she dreams of him. Has been doing for days now. Finds him appearing when she’s not sure he should.

When she tries to swallow, she chokes. Blaming it on swallowing a fly. But there was no fly. Just her and her treacherous mind that wonders and hopes that he’ll remove the shirt entirely. Show off the shoulders she knows will be broad, the chest she only imagines is firm.

Noa scolds herself. Forces herself to empty her mind, tugging on a plug and hoping it all drains out like soapy water. But, it’s already lodged in her head, a thing she has no business keeping but pins up on a wall and threatens all other memories from removing it.

Heat curls low in her belly, shifting in her seat. She’s not sure she’s meant to want him, but wanting is all she can feel. Stubborn, embarrassing. Humming inside her like a dragonfly, like she’s sixteen again and watching a boy she shouldn’t like a lovesick idiot.

He hadn’t kissed her. Hadn’t even closed the gap.

A part of her had thought he might. Hating herself for it, for how her heart still picks up and how she can’t forget the feel of his breath dancing along her cupid’s bow.

The mower cuts, ends.

The world doesn’t sound right without it. Quiet, except for him. Broad back to her, damp with sweat—shirt clinging, the front brought up to drag across his brow.

Noa can’t even see anything, but she bites her lip. Aware of how ridiculous she is, watching him like this. Like she’s some housewife in a 1950s commercial, waiting on the porch for her man to come home. Except, he’s not hers. Still makes her throat dry when he strides up to her, perspiration beading down his neck as he offers a half-smile.

She offers water, if only to fill the silence. To fill the ache that won’t quit blooming in her chest, spreading from some unknown source behind her belly button. She doesn’t expect him to follow her inside, least of all as close. She isn’t listening for footsteps as she turns the tap on and off before turning to find him there. Body close. So much so, she can smell the grass on him, the salt of his sweat, the trace of soap that clings stubbornly.

His hand takes the water without her so much as breathing a word. His palm catches, brushing, his fingers practically dwarfing the glass. Swallowing the contents before setting the glass on the counter.

“Jesus,” she breathes, half-laughing, palm resting on the counter, needing leverage, support. “You should move.”

It slips out, falls. Trickles past her lips after barely living in her mind. Mouth running before her mind can halt it.

“Why’s that?”

He asks it in a low voice, like he knows. Like it’s written across her face. Like he’s already decided he won’t.

“Keep standing this close, Miller, and I might have to kiss you.”

The words hang, hover. Air charged with electricity as the kitchen turns on its axis.

She means it as a joke, except it comes out softer. Her throat tight, the words sounding truer than she wants. Truer than anything she’s said to him in weeks. And she’s said a lot, admitted just as much. Her heart skips in her chest, not the usual steady thrum, something different, a new beat.

And it’s so silent. All sharp, heavy. He doesn’t laugh; he doesn’t tease.

His eyes are hard, really looking at her. Like he’s piecing together and memorising, writing it down, carving. Her fingers tremble in the sling, and she hates how much she wants. How much her heart is now sprinting.

It slows when he leans in.

Not rushed, not greedy. Just inevitable. Slowly closing, giving her moments and a chance to move, to tell him to stop. But she won’t, god she never will. Staring, loosening her grip on the counter, if only to see if she can find a home on his waist or his chest.

It’s all forgotten when his lips brush hers like he’s asking permission, like he’s giving her every chance to stop him. She doesn’t. Fingers finding the front of his shirt, tipping forward, closing the distance. Feels the warmth of him as her hand curls tight in the fabric of his shirt—it’s all sun-kissed—while her other tightens on her cast.

Her lips move with his, soft, steady. Unravelling ever so slowly against him, feeling the beads of water in the hair above his lip and the coolness of his tongue as it slips over her lower lip.

When they break, she’s breathless. Forehead almost touching his. She’s shaking, just slightly, unsure if it’s from nerves or relief. Or both.

“Close the door, Joel,” she whispers, barely above a decibel.

He hmphs, frowning.

She swallows, finding her voice, nails scratching against the hair at the nape of his neck, “We should close my door.”

Chapter Text

Noa doesn’t move when Joel steps away from her.

Even if every fibre in her being demands that she follow, keep the gap small, minimal. Have her only available hand on him, just a touch, a graze of fingers on fabric or skin.

But she can’t, anyway. Feet glued, chest heaving, only able to watch as he clicks the door shut, drops the latch—locking it. Then turns back to stare at her like she filled his world in colour. Tracking him, studying, head tilting, wondering if he can hear it, the get out she’s allowing him to have. All loud, whirring, the permission: If you’ve changed your mind, now’s your chance. More than cogs churning, but steam and overworked gears churning as he toes off his boots, one by one. It fills her lungs, the nervousness. Simmers like a pot of boiling water.

One of his boots falls to the ground, lands on its side, mud clinging to the soles with blades of grass that dust her kitchen tiles. And even if it irks her—a need to straighten—she doesn’t move. Stays. Right where he left her. Leaning against the counter with the ghost of his kiss and the faint memory of his touch.

“Joel.”

It’s a whisper. Not entirely sure each of the letters even string together to make a noise, never mind his name. But his eyes, they soften—his throat bobbing around a swallow—just as his feet bring him back, all near, gap closed.

He’d taken smaller strides than he had to close the door, approaching her with a slow ease, nothing but calm.

“Noa…”

Her thumb almost brushes his lower lip when he’s close enough, wanting her lips to make a shush noise, but instead they just smother over the edge. Feeling his lips part, nail tracing the hairs that frame them. Instead, she slides her mouth back where it wishes, where it needs. Body curling itself into him, as though it’s a necessity to be pressed to every inch. Dizzy all over again instantly.

It’s good that he holds her tight—right against him, flush. Doing so as though knowing, understanding, that the simple act of kissing him has made her head spin and her knees threaten to buckle.

“Been wanting to do this for ages,” she whispers, admits. Lets it slip out like a sin that needs to be confessed.

He drinks it down, grunts as he does so. Palms either side of her cheeks as he angles and doesn’t hold back this time. Feels the rumble of desperation in him as he presses her spine back against the counter—feeling him all solid against her chest, hips and legs. It’s brief, the consideration, to climb atop the countertop and wrap her thighs around his waist. But from the way he pulls back, rears, then considers her, she suspect he must realise her thought. Turning her 180 on the spot before she can get the letter J out, never mind the rest of it. The tip of his nose bends as it presses to hers, engulfed in the shades of his eyes, kaleidoscoped.

“No climbin’. Your arm,” he says, all but explaining.

“Not even you?” she asks, all low, like butter wouldn’t melt.

Tracing her nose against his like it’s the dot of the question mark. Able to feel his exhale across her upper lip—the warmth of his eyes outlining her.

Then, she smiles. “Where do you want me then, Miller?”

The noise in the back of his throat sounds like everywhere, but she can’t be sure. Not knowing if it’s just willing, or a trick of her mind. Noa hopes it isn’t. Letting his mouth slant over hers instead of asking. His rough, calloused palm cupping her jaw. As though he’s a magician, he emptied her mind. Barely aware he’s walking her backwards, moving, doing so until her spine meets the frame of the doorway, and one of his hands run down the curve of her body.

“Jesus, Noa.”

It’s her turn to make a noise in her throat.

“Make me…”

“Make you, what, Joel?”

Want.

She’s not sure she’s supposed to have heard it, the one-word response. Never mind him actually saying it. Seeing his cheeks pink as her only useful hand slides over his arm, feels it flex under her touch before she’s told, short and firmly, to get upstairs.

Giddily doing so. Almost tripping over her feet. Half expecting to hear a sharp ‘careful’ come from him. Instead, fire licks up her spine from his eyes. Her heart pattering, running, hammering. Doing so until she’s wrapped back in him at the top of the stairs, stumbling together in a four-legged conjoined walk to the bedroom. Breathing one another in, grinning. No space left between them until they pause at the side of her bed.

It’s brief, the moment before either of them move. The air pulsing, shifting. Watches as he stares from her eyes to her kiss-bitten mouth. Noa licks her lower lip just to force him to make that noise in his chest again. The one that reverberates up to his throat.

Before he can even mutter her name, she presses her palm flat to his firm chest and pushes him down. Her bedframe and mattress groaning, springs squeaking. Noa knows he’s done a kindness in letting her—because there’s no way with the weak hand she did it with, she’d topple his broad ass over. And so she admires him, takes him in. How he lies across a spread of daisies stitched into her bedding—clean, thankfully. Scented with fresh linen.

“Take it off.”

It comes out breathless, like she’s run a mile.

Joel doesn’t ask what.

He doesn’t play a game or act coy—just grabs a handful of his collar, wrenches his shirt over his head in one slick, smooth movement. And fuck, she forgets how to swallow. Coming face to face with the chest, shoulders and midriff she’s been thinking up in her head.

The reality is better.

Soft, but toned—dark hairs, and definition. Tongue peeking out as she ogles, swipes it over the sudden dry skin of her lips. Only becoming aware that she’s panting as she moves closer, grabs a handful of her pants leg and hoists it up as she places one knee on her bed, outside his thigh. Before awkwardly—and without asking for help—does the other side. He doesn’t smile at it, doesn’t look as though he wants to laugh. Just steadies her as the mattress dips. Allows her to shuffle herself up his thick thighs until she’s seated above him.

“Hi.”

“Hi,” he whispers back, hands moving from her hips to press flat up her back, wrists on her waist.

Leaning, her head tipping forward, Noa hinges until her lips are pressing back to his. Gentle, sweet. Palm pressing into the bedspread near his neck, nails digging into delicate stitching, as her other arm remains strapped away, useless—pinned back from running down his chest. From carding through his hair and making him vibrate a moan against her lips again.

It’s messier this time. A hand on the back of her head, not allowing her mouth to be anywhere but attached to his. Her hips lower, flush, pressing against him. And fuck, it feels good, nice. Just the press of him beneath her. The heat of his body—all enough to unravel her. Her tongue traces past his teeth, a low sound spilling into his mouth as he lifts his hips to meet hers. Her lungs fight for space, ribs pushing against them; want swelling inside of her, bigger than breath. The need clawing deeper, desperate. Chasing more, needing—

Noa swears she catches his grunt on her tongue when she rolls her hips just right.

And she wishes she weren’t one-armed.

Wishes she had both hands. Wants to pinch the skin beneath her wrist and where her pulse is going wild, just so she knows this isn’t some dream. Some cooked up fantasy that she’ll be panting from as she wakes. Mostly, she wants to drag him closer by the back of his neck, use both hands to anchor herself in the heat of him. Hips beginning to rock—back and forth, back and forth.

Joel seems to read the thoughts before they’ve formed. Must be able to tell she needs something grounding.

Tightening his hold, each of his fingers, dexterous and thick, squeezes her ass to the point it makes her ache. Like he feels the same coil inside of him. His nose running along her jaw, cheek, as her hips rock, absently, drawn by instinct more than decision. Doing so because she’s not sure anything could ever feel as good as him beneath her. Firm, solid, hard. His breath everywhere, all warm, grazing her ear—

She’s hot all over, dizzy from just this. The friction growing sharper, deeper, layers doing little to dull it—all thin fabric of her trousers, lace of her panties and the bulge of his jeans creating some concoction of friction that forces her to moan. Right against the seam of his lips. Right into the place that swallows it whole, moving with her mouth, deepening it. Noa can feel the tension in his hands, the restraint—not saying a single fucking word, but she knows he wants her to keep going.

Can tell from the way his hands flex on her hips, aiding her, dragging her back and forward over him, a hiss there, slithering from the parted space between his mouth.

When he murmurs, “What d’ya need?” it vibrates through her. Rough, low—gravelly. Enough to pull a sound from her that doesn’t sound like a noise at all.

She’s not ashamed to say the way he asks makes her whine in the back of her throat. Palm gripping the bed, moving her hips with more vigour, black dots in her vision not caused by carelessness for once, just intention.

“More.”

She brushes the syllables like a secret against his ear. Unravelling them. His mouth pops from her jaw, gazing, brown eyes trying their best to engulf her. All deep black pupils, and in a lower light, she might find her reflection in it. Come face to face with the wild look on her face, her swollen lips and the ridiculousness of her arm pinned up by fabric.

His hand shifts, guiding, coaxing her movements with a precision that has her pulse hammering. His palm cupping her between them, only aware of the press of him, slide of breath against skin—the soft, whine of a sound that spills from her as he presses fingers and applies more friction. Heat ballooning, the tension coils tighter.

“Oh, fuck—”

It tapers off, caught between a gasp and a moan. The rest of her words fading, dying, breathing out a moan against his jaw. She’s barely aware of him moving them, of how he shifts their weight and draws her back until her shoulders are on her pillows. Her body loosens, muscles relaxing—everything else blurring. His hands, his mouth—the murmured praise against her pulse.

“Y’want me—”

“Yes.”

He doesn’t wait. Joel slips his hand under the band of her pants. Then her underwear. Stars appearing in the black of her vision. Just a mere brush of his calloused, gentle fingers skimming—coating his touch in her—has her squirming, whining, moaning.

And the rest of the world fades away. Eyelashes fluttering shut. Body electric. Hips rocking, hungry in the way they need to meet him. A hand in his hair, clenching, ghosting a moan against his cheek as his thumb finds her clit.

“There…”

“Here?”

She doesn’t need to lift her head. Can hear the tease in the way the word rolls from his tongue, an inflection added to be funny, cute—smart. Rocking against his touch, the thumb pressed so perfectly against her clit, hearing the noises of her pleasure.

Not that she cares.

Too busy feeling nothing and yet everything.

She swears she can even taste it—mouth growing wet. A whine stuck, clawing up her throat—hips chasing his hand. Rapacious. Insatiable. Nothing short of lost in it. Caught. She feels it pulsing behind her chest. Makes her breathless. Head spinning, as she arches, hips stuttering—

Then she snaps. Pushed over the edge. Pleasure rolling through her in waves.

For a beat, there’s nothing but the thrum of her pulse—the tremble of her limbs. Her breath arrives only in ragged bursts, tangled with his. The edges of her vision blurred, ears ringing, the room narrowing. Noa isn’t even aware of her being moved until he leans over, pressing his mouth to the corner of hers—bringing her back to him, to the room, as her legs continue to shake.

“Easy,” he breathes.

Smiling, all-lopsided, sweetly—she kisses him, sliding the tip of her tongue against his lower lip as she shuffles up closer to him. Wanting to thank him, to do more than thank him. To make her hang off the bed and have him feed his cock past her teeth. Taste him. Have him buried in her. Her thoughts appear, one after the other, none bursting. Moving further up the pillows until she can breathe it into him. What she wants, hoping to fill his chest with it: Need you, Joel.

Moaning into his mouth, hand slipping along his waistband—dragging him closer. Bodies sliding on the pillows as though she can pull him inside her with sheer want, ignoring the logic of layers and fabric. The mattress groans as he shifts, warm fingers reaching for the hem of her top—murmuring something she doesn’t quite catch as she twists without thinking.

And she tries to help, moving her bad arm free from the pinch of his palm. Turning, twisting her head seeking freedom. Lost within fabric, like she’s stuck in bedsheets. Blinking against them, needy to see him.

But her balance has gone. Lost in breathy pants and wanting, wishing for it to pull over her face, unable to stop herself as she moves again.

She feels it before she hears it.

The pain booms, radiating—spreading out at the back of her head. A pain so bad it smothers every other thing, before the dull, sickening crack kisses her ear.

Then, there’s so much light, no fabric against her mouth. Fuzziness around her sight, different from how it had been moments ago, blinking, muted, dull.

Hearing only ringing—

and ringing—

and ringing.

SM: Can I stay another hour?

SM: Dad?

SM: I’m gonna take that as permission, see you at 6.30

The noise cuts through him. Slices.

Breath caught in his throat, freezing. Unable to do anything as it echoes around her bedroom and them.

He thinks it’s three seconds before he thinks of what to do. Wrenching the last bit of her shirt over her head, a hand on her, then the next. Steadying her shoulder, her jaw. Tilting her, Joel finds wide eyes that are glazed over.

In his head, that dull crack is still thumping, looping around as though there’s nothing between his ears.

“Noa… hey. Can y’look at me?” he asks, forcing a calm to his voice.

She blinks, slowly. Frowning, nose scrunching.

Manages to focus, tracks him—but not fully focused. Something twists in his chest, makes it tight. Like a full breath can’t be taken, as he levels his breath. Rolling his lips. Trying his damnedest to ignore the way it feels like someone has just put a fist through him. A bitter ugliness unravels from the hole, worsened when she whimpers and he spots a tear slip out from the crease of her eye.

He should have been more gentle.

Something firing inside of him, making him bite down on the inside of his mouth before the pit of regret swallows him. He brushes his thumb over her cheek. More for him, than her. Knows it’s stupid that it makes him feel better.

Slides a palm over her bare hip, shifting her from being over his thigh. That’s for her. Just like how he gently moves her head, peering, snaking his fingers from her face to the place she’d made contact. He swallows hard when she hisses.

“I know, just…”

She makes a noise as though she knows. Noticing the little haze clinging to her stare. Like she’s back being discharged again, a ghost of a person—only this time, one eye is closed, the other staring off.

“Y’not bleeding.”

A faint nod, lips parting. A tiny noise escapes as he exhales. Relief. Not that he moves, not that he lets go fully, just one hand to grab her disposed of shirt before laying it over her chest.

“Good,” she whispers.

He smirks at the shortness, and the diluted way she says it. Before he remembers discharge papers, the things Sarah told him after he hadn’t asked, but she’d volunteered over pasta and sauce.

“Can y’blink for me? Focus on my finger.” He holds it a few inches from her face, and she tracks it slowly. A little off. He grits his teeth. “Good… y-you’re tracking.”

A tight twist of guilt in his gut thrums. Her arm, her head—because he knows he should’ve been more careful. Definitely should’ve seen it coming. Should have stopped her, pressed a hand to her good shoulder when he saw her thrashing when he’d tried to pull her shirt over her head.

“Y’okay?” he asks, tone sharper. “You feel dizzy?”

She nods slightly, a sluggish motion. Joel lets out a short breath, leaning in close, forehead almost brushing hers. And then he worries it’s too intimate, too much. His hands linger, keeping her in place, holding her steady against the bed. Fighting a losing battle with his head.

His compromise, pressing a kiss to her hairline, soft, protective.

“I’ve got you.”

“I know.”

It's so quiet, he fears that if he hadn't been this close, he may have missed it. Tells himself that’s why it’s good he's this close. Intimate be damned. Otherwise, he’d have put it down to a noise. A grumble, a complaint.

Her eyes round when she blinks them open. Jaw working, throat clearing before she swallows. A blink. Another. Coming back to him. Slowly.

“You want me to get you some ice?”

There’s a pause, not long, before enough. “Please.”

Shuffling from the bed, he becomes aware of his half-hard cock that hasn’t got the message yet. Having to adjust himself, hides it behind another movement before he grabs his shirt from the bed and goes hunting for ice. It’s only halfway down her stairs does he pulls the fabric over his head, almost slipping, elbow colliding with the wall as he hisses, fist clenched.

Joel is always surprised by how different her kitchen is. How light, airy. Admires how the low sun slips in through the blinds, leaving slats of gold. He takes a breath in, goes to retrieve his phone out of habit from his pocket, but spots it on the counter from earlier. Swipes his thumb over the screen to wake it. Sees the text message—shakes his head as he snorts to himself. Shit, though. Still barely over an hour before he has to leave to pick Sarah up. Only an hour to sort whatever this is.

It punches him in the gut that she might regret it, as he opens her freezer and is washed in cool-white light. Maybe she’s put it down to bad luck, that they won’t work. Perhaps he doesn’t even know how to be someone's person anyway. He hovers when he grabs the ice pack, holds it, lets the coolness slip up his nerves in the hope it settles his brain. It doesn’t.

Returning back to her and finding Noa in the middle of the pillows, both eyes still fully open, hand rubbing at the back of her head before jutting her head for him to sit on the bed next to her. He must scowl, because she smiles—wicked, wry.

“You usually make a girl see stars like that, Miller?”

His mouth curls into a grin, knows he’s gone red—feels his ears burning. “Shush.”

Seating himself next to her, he places the ice pack for her. His face inches from hers—able to see the shades of her eyes again. The way they soften as his nose almost catches the tip of hers, and Christ, Joel hates the intake of breath and hiss she emits. Even if a second later, her lips are ghosting over his cheek, his jaw. Staring at him, just like she had done when under him not too long ago. All hungry, teeth perched on her swollen lip.

“Noa.”

Her lips curl, all Noa. “Joel.”

Every instinct in him wants to let his mouth connect with hers. Make her make those noises again. But he stays still, rigid. His hand steady as it presses the ice to the back of her head, eyes scanning for any sign she’s worse off than she’s letting on. But his brain, and cock, are still all but aware of the way he’d almost had her under him. How she’d asked for more, needing him, wanting—

He resists. Somehow. 

Hushes his mind. Reminds himself he wants her to be fully here. Shoves it down, the way warmth has fluttered over his chest, thighs. Stares at the corner of her room, hopes silence swallows it all.

Noa, though, has other ideas. Trying to adjust herself next to him, curling closer—or trying. The fabric over her chest falls like mist to her stomach—his eyes catching the straps of her basic underwear against her skin—before he shifts them to focus above her head. Not daring to look down, not wanting to cross some line when she’s concussed and incapacitated.

“Y’could get another concussion.”

“So?”

She says it so quickly, he nearly chuckles.

“Do y’know how easy it is to have another so close to the last?”

He shivers when her lips graze over his neck, teeth pausing right at his earlobe. “Nope.”

And the way she whispers it, emphasises the P to pop, almost makes him forget why he’s not undressing her. Almost.

“God, Miller, you’re so hot.”

“Noa.”

She laughs at his warning, low, breathy. “Sorry, it’s the re-concussion.”

He pauses, tense, fighting a laugh or a snort—but keeping his face as neutral as can be.

“I’m kidding, Joel. It was a fucking headboard. I’m fine.” Her head is in front of his, noses almost touching. “Plus, I’m too horny for the hospital.”

“We should… we shouldn’t, you’re injured.”

“A broken arm not doing it for you now?”

Christ. “Noa, y’could be in a full body cast and I’d be into it. But just…”

She tilts her head. “Just what?”

“Count these,” he asks, putting three fingers up.

Her eyes drift away from him to his hand. Sees something flash in her eyes, something he has the immediate twist in his stomach he knows to be dread.

“Yeah, I think I could take those three fingers, Joel. Plus…”

Her thought doesn’t finish, her hand rising, taking his wrist, inching it closer to her mouth as she flicks her gaze from him to his fingers.

“Look how good my depth perception is—”

“You’re fuckin’ killing me.”

The look on her face is torture. Has to be.

Just like the one from the backyard of her friend's house. Eyeing him. When she’d been so goddamn close he could count how many lashes she has. Now, is worse. For one, she’s half fucking naked. So close he can smell her perfume, knows it’s buried in his head. Can see the want in her eyes, even as it swims in a likely concussion. Even his ears ring with the sounds he made her make minutes ago. How she looks when she’s close. How just his jeans and a few fingers had her writhing and whining—

“To the point you wanna drill me through the headboard?”

His face sharpens, brow cocked. But her smile only widens. Holding the pack still, but letting his stare slope away. It ebbs again, that doubt. The doubt he’d be any good for her. It’s building, rising, brimming. Knocking on his ribs, on his—

“Joel…?”

“’m not sure…” he mutters, cutting himself off.

“About drilling me or?”

He frowns, and Christ, it makes her face soften in a way that makes him want to say sorry. Seeing it, the tease melting from her face, leaving something quieter behind. Something that twists his chest.

“Hey,” she says gently, her good hand sliding over his wrist, head turning to place a kiss there. “I am okay, y’know.”

He exhales through his nose, slowly. “Coulda fooled me.”

It’s soft, the “hey”, as she adjusts and sits up. Taking his wrist and the pack from her head as she leans close to him. Eyes sweeping, reading. Sitting just like that for a beat as the ice melts against his fingers, likely leaving a puddle on her bed, as the tension calms in small pieces around the room. Not good, but steadier. Calmer. Easier to breathe around.

“Talk to me.”

There’s a pause, one she doesn’t interrupt. A thing he’s more grateful for than he can ever put into words. Not sure how to say it, where to begin. Blood having returned to the places it should be, allowing him to think.

“I ain’t… I ain’t sure how to do this,” he says, finally.

“Oh, Joel. Am I your first?”

The smug grin almost makes him laugh. Tutting, tongue clicking against his teeth as she smirks wider, if at all possible. 

But the words won’t come. Heavier than they should be. Tangled behind his teeth.

Until her fingers loop over his, grounding, making the fog clear like she’s the breeze that blew it away.

“‘’m not sure how to be somebody’s boyfriend again.”

She hums, lips curving just slightly—all typical her.

“And, then there’s… y’know, Sarah.”

She makes a noise again.

“Does it help to know you’re a very good fake one?”

That pulls a breath of a laugh from him, one she likes from the soft noise she makes.

“Fake, hmm.”

It’s instinct when he curls into her hand. Needing to. Feeling fervour spread through his chest as her knuckles skim over his cheek. When he finds her eyes, he only wants to sink back into them. Press against her, slant his mouth over hers. Kiss her again. Different from up here, more like downstairs. Gentle, sweet. See if he can write the words he’d like to be able to arrange and say.

Noa clears her throat. “How about, maybe, we could… try being, y’know, real. Just—slowly.”

He swallows, eyes searching hers.

“Where we do that thing with our lips, but we resist concussing until you—and I—feel that we got that bit down, yeah? Can try and… talk. Make sure it’s not just you having a broken arm fetish.”

Shaking his head, pulse beating a little quicker in his neck, he doesn’t bother fighting the smile. Lets it pull across his face.

“That what you want?”

As soon as it’s out, he hates the way it sounds. All shaky, vulnerable. Like the fact that he’s had no time to date has been written all over the walls in his shit handwriting. But if she reads that, her face doesn’t give it away. Just a slight tilt, a kinder smile. Sweeter, if at all possible.

“I’d really like to know what it’s like to not be fake with you, Miller.”

She smiles, but it’s different. Eyes averting, hand playing with the ice pack before she dares to meet him. Shrugging to add to it—and it’s all awkward with the sling. Determined, though. And it dawns on him she’s nervous too.

Clearing her throat, she adds: “If that’s—you know—what you also would want?”

“Yea’, I do. Wanna… y’know.”

Joel says it so quickly, there’s barely a gap between her asking and him responding.

Her mouth shifts into her cheek, eyes widening. “Wanna what, Miller?”

Eyes rolling, he shakes his head. “Spoil ya,” he says quieter, the word clumsy in his mouth. Too soft for a man like him, but he says—feels—it all the same.

There’s a silence that stretches, and he lets it.

“Wanna spoil me now?” She pauses, and he narrows his eyes. “By opening a jar for me?”

He quirks a brow. “How’ve you been copin’ with those so far?”

“Badly,” she says, huffing a small laugh. “Your daughter is strong. She’s the one opening things for me.”

There's a beat. Short, but enough for his eyes to take in her face again. Notice the curve of her lips, her soft lips. He shakes the thought. 

“I’ll, um… give you a minute. To get dressed,” he murmurs, pushing from the bed before she answers. “Gonna, y'know, check the yard. Put it all away. Make sure nothin’s blown over.”

Pathetic.

That’s what he is as he stands on her back porch, cool air descending over him. Hands braced on the railings, head handing between his shoulders. Letting the last half an hour catch up with him—breathing through it as he tenses, tightens his grip. Working the wood as though it’ll ease the coil behind his bellybutton.

Because it’s still there, hammering under his skin. The heat, the want—how her lips has been so close. Only now it’s mixing with the fear of those distant, glazed over eyes. How it had taken everything to hold back—to not rush.

Been over a decade since someone’s looked at him like that. That he’s done this. Since anyone has wanted him for more than a passing smile. Easier building things than figuring out how to hold someone without breaking what’s good.

“Jesus…” he mutters to himself.

He should’ve kissed her.

Should’ve let her know he wanted to. Pressed her back into the sheets, wrote it against her skin what he thinks of her. Instead of letting his head win.

Instead, he’s out here pretending to care about the damn mower.

Joel crosses the grass and rights it all, locks it all away. Better to be useful if he’s going to be an idiot. Taking the time to brush leaves from the table with his fingers, keeping his hands moving while his head spins—the only thing that stops him from marching back in there and finishing what they started.

When it’s all tidied, he heads back inside. Foolishly thinking that the worst of the heat in his chest has cooled—until he sees her there. A jar in hand. Lit up by sunlight. Standing right in the place he’d kissed her almost an hour ago.

“Long time no see, Miller.”

He smirks at her tease. “Shut up.”

She laughs, and Joel takes the jar from her hand and pops the lid with a low twist. Easy. Simple. Her little whoop has him shaking his head. But he doesn’t stop staring at her smile. How soft it is, all grateful. How it lands somewhere deep in his chest, ruffles the feelings he can’t put into words.

“So, maybe I can see you tomorrow?” she asks. “When you’re back from work?”

He hums, feels his ears burning all over again.

“Unless you’d prefer—”

Taking a step closer, his fingers running along his palm, he swallows. “No. Tomorrow is good.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

His phone buzzes on the counter. Loudly. Not that he looks—neither does Noa. Both locked in, staring. Watching as she grins, as he tries to stop his heart from doing flips in his chest.

“Joel?” He hmphs in acknowledgement. “If it isn’t obvious, I like you. I just… didn’t want you to go and not know. Not be sure.”

He nods, swallowing hard. Heart doing something, beating probably? Punching his ribs is also possible. Before he changes his mind, he leans in, pausing. Swears he sees her eyes sparkle in understanding, in hearing him without him speaking, before he presses a kiss to her cheek. One that he lingers there. Hovers. Heart still thumping.

When his truck roars to life, all set to throw it into reverse, does he realise that he can still feel the heat of her cheek on his lips.