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At the end of the day, if anyone wanted to know, he would say that it wasn’t so much an accident as it was a mistake. And there was a difference, mind you. A mistake can be made purposefully, while an accident implies that whatever went wrong wasn’t within his control. Mistakes in this setting were common. All part of the game. No harm done that didn’t at least benefit someone else. Unintended slip-ups were unacceptable if you wanted to win. After all, the last thing this game needed was another klutzy hellion like Izzy.
No, what Noah did was definitely done on purpose; the only accident that occurred was that he got caught in the act—of braiding hair, of all the things in the world for Alejandro to find him doing. Braiding Bridgette’s hair in the plane’s loser cabin where everyone could see seemed like less of a good idea, in hindsight.
“Ah, there you are, Noah!” Alejandro’s voice already dripped with false consideration.
Noah didn’t want it to look like he was perturbed by the interruption, so he simply finished Bridgette’s hair and secured the end with her hairband before answering with a drawled, “Yeah?”
“It’s so nice to see you doing something recreational.” The words “for a change” hung in the air, unspoken but heavily implied through the challenging slope of Alejandro’s dark brows. He regarded Bridgette a second after, tossing her a two-second smile that was so chiseled Noah was amazed she couldn’t tell it was overly-practiced. “And,” he continued, looking at the other boy again, “it’s especially nice that you’ve found such a beautiful woman to direct your affections toward.”
At once, Bridgette shot to her feet, then began scuffing her sandal along the plane’s cheap gray carpeting. “Oh, no, it’s not like that. Not at all,” she said quickly, holding her hands up in front of her chest in defense.
“That makes me muy alegría, señorita. Very happy.” Alejandro ran his fingers along her braid. “Such a lovely look for you. I would want to show it to everyone.”
Bridgette’s giddy smile followed her out of the cabin, leaving a still-smiling Alejandro and a scornfully frowning Noah alone together. What a tragic oxymoron his life had been reduced to, he thought with a mental eye roll.
After a moment of wordlessness, Alejandro moved to sit next to Noah, who immediately felt the need to shatter their previous state of silence when the other’s knee knocked his. “So, what is it, exactly, that you want from me?”
“What do I want?” His fake indignation sounded exactly like molasses. Noah had never understood how that analogy came to fruition, but he was beginning to. Sweet, but sticky…and something he actively avoided.
“Yes, that’s what I asked.”
“So you did.” Alejandro hummed and stroked his chin for all of three seconds. “I just thought I’d try to hold a decent conversation with you. Is that such a bad thing?”
For reasons that Noah only had a vague idea of, his skin prickled at the words—or maybe it was that tone. Molasses.
“Not at all. Knock yourself out.” For good measure, he added another dose of sarcasm: “I can even braid your hair. It’ll be just like a slumber party.”
Alejandro laughed once, twice, three times, hearty and deep. Noah would’ve thought they were genuine if he didn’t know any better. As soon as the laughter dissipated, Alejandro inched closer. “All right,” he said with a grin. “Bridgette seemed to be enjoying herself.”
For the first time in his life, Noah felt his brain short-circuit badly enough to rob him of his shield of clever wit, and instead of what he’d intended to say, all that came out was, “…Excuse me?”
Alejandro’s widened smile had Noah inwardly cursing himself. That was exactly what the eel wanted, wasn’t it? To strip him of his defenses.
When he felt Alejandro shift against his left thigh to turn his back toward him, his face went hot and he instantly felt guilty for thinking the word “strip” in this situation.
“My hair, albeit well-maintained, has been just a little bothersome lately.”
What? Noah furrowed his eyebrows. “Okay, listen, Fabio,” he started with a jolt, having caught himself actually considering doing this and instantly recoiling at the realization. “I don’t know what game you’re playing here, but…” Well. He didn’t actually have a conclusion to that, and his hand was already on the other’s hair, to boot. Excellent. Just peachy.
“But…?” Alejandro prodded, looking back over his shoulder at him with the smug eyes of someone who’d just won an argument.
“But boys don’t usually ask other boys to braid their hair,” he responded at length.
“Does it bother you?”
“I don’t know, should it?” Noah snorted and began separating the strands of dark hair between his fingers. It was almost as soft as Bridgette’s, he noticed, even though it was coarser. He didn’t know why he noticed, but he wasn’t about to dwell on the thought.
“You certainly don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.” He said it more like, ‘You don’t have to, but I know you want to.’ Oh, that self-righteous tone was going to bite him in his handsome ass one day.
Noah’s eyes subconsciously darted downward, then shot back up with speed proportional to his spiking disgust with himself. His hands ignored his brain and tightened their grip on the other’s hair as he started to braid.
“What were you thinking about, amigo?”
“Oh, y’know, how thrilled I am to have been given the privilege of touching His Highness’s hair.” All right, so that might have been a little much on his part, but he couldn’t help it.
“I told you, you’re free to stop at any time.”
He did? Well, hell. What now? He was actually sort of intent on doing this now. It was an intriguing idea, was all; Alejandro did have nice hair, oily eel though he may be.
“What, you don’t trust my hair-styling prowess?” he managed to say, speeding his motions so he wouldn’t be caught looking like he was enjoying himself. When Alejandro hummed, however, he slowed down again without realizing it.
Alejandro’s chuckle rumbled through his body, and Noah could feel it in his leg where it was pressed against the other boy's lower back. Then, in a strangely knowing voice, he replied, “I’m enjoying myself. You are very talented with your hands.”
Noah suddenly felt as though he’d gotten himself into a very precarious situation. “Uh, yeah...” He fought the urge to clear his throat at risk of making things more awkward. There was a strong suspicion nestled in his brain that Alejandro was playing a very sensitive card here.
“Well,” he said, “I learned to do this because I have a sister…and brothers with long hair.”
“That’s an excellent way to learn these things.”
Noah rolled his eyes and, for good measure, mumbled, “Obviously.”
Alejandro laughed softly again, body vibrating the same way it had before. This time Noah made himself scoot away.
“We’ll see how good you are soon enough, ¿sí?”
The way he said those words made Noah feel like a present about to be unwrapped. Or, more appropriately, taken out of the closet.
“Take a look and be amazed,” he said flatly, snatching his hands away from Alejandro’s hair, shiny and enticing in its neat little braid.
Alejandro tugged a hairband from the trio on his wrist and used it to secure the end of the braid before standing. Instead of heading for the bathroom mirror, he simply tucked his bangs behind his ears and aimed a calculating gaze at Noah, who was walking the line between sitting comfortably and trying too hard to look like he was sitting comfortably. He felt like he’d just let Alejandro uncover some sort of dark secret—which wasn’t exactly true. Noah’s sexuality wasn’t a secret, per se, but it still wasn’t something he wanted everyone on this show (Heather) to know about. And he guessed that Alejandro would be telling someone at some point.
Silence fell in the cabin while Alejandro fingered his hair for a few deliberative moments.
Eventually, Noah piped up with, “Are you actually going to look at it, or are you just going to keep touching it?”
“Better to touch and not look than to look and never touch, right?” Alejandro’s innocent smile made Noah’s skin crawl, yet he couldn’t help but smile, amused for a second. “Plus,” he continued, “eres lindo. I’d much rather look at you.”
There it was: the bomb that Noah had been expecting but had still been shocked into silence upon hearing. Alejandro should’ve been boasting an alligator-esque grin, for all the mischief in his eyes, yet he didn’t. His smile was perfectly civil and unthreatening. “Es cierto.” Under his breath, he added, “Eres monótono tambien, pero…”
“That’s so sweet,” Noah said flatly, still reeling but trying to redeem at least a fraction of his self-respect through sarcasm. “Because, y’know, I understood that part.” Well, he didn’t completely, but he was able to figure out “monótono” without much difficulty, at least.
“Good.” Alejandro’s expression finally gained a note of smugness, as expected. “So, cerebrito, does my hair look nice?”
Noah was too busy trying to un-blur the line between his teammate’s compliments and insults to tell him to just look in the damn mirror. Even if he had said that, there would’ve only been something witty and subtly insulting in response, anyway, so he merely supplied a drawled, “Of course, honey.”
Alejandro’s eyes suddenly seemed so, so green. They looked pond-like with that poisonous glimmer in them, too. (Noah had, incidentally, picked a simile that implied natural beauty while still involving something filled with scum, and this was his own private victory.)
“Thank you so much, amigo. I’m glad we had this chance to bond.”
“Not as glad as I am,” Noah deadpanned, his own dark eyes evenly holding the other’s grinning stare.
Alejandro may know of his rather ambiguous sexuality, but at least Noah had backup info to suggest that Alejandro wasn’t one-hundred percent indifferent during their conversation, either. He did, however, allow himself to wonder how Alejandro would respond to such an allegation. He pictured the boy’s mouth against Bridgette’s ear, assuring her of his infatuation with her through whispered insults about Noah’s character.
He found that he didn’t really mind.
“So, because I like to be gentlemanly,” Alejandro started, interrupting the other’s thoughts by sitting next to him on the bench again, this time on his right side, “I would like to return the favor.”
“I do like a man who returns favors.” Noah rolled his eyes theatrically. “But our teammates should be back any minute now.” He reached for his book, a decrepit paperback copy of A Tale of Two Cities, and scooped it up from the spot between his right thigh and Alejandro’s left. Presently, the latter slid over and closed the gap.
Noah was unsurprised at first, but that was before Alejandro’s lips were on his ear and he found himself in the same predicament as his mind’s rendition of Bridgette—red-faced and unfortunately attracted to the game’s schemer. The words being whispered to him were not insults, however, but a low, warm declaration of, “Believe me, cariño, I’ll always return the favor.”
Just as he pulled away, Owen burst into the cabin bearing several wrapped muffins of dubious origins. Behind him came the other two components of the team, each of them carrying striped bags and looking tremendously excited about their findings.
Alejandro didn’t so much as glance at Noah on his way to his self-appointed seat at the end of the cabin, which was an oddity. If he’d been trying to out Noah, he would’ve stayed and flirted as conspicuously as possible, right? He ultimately ascribed it to Alejandro wanting to preserve his self-image, even though he had a feeling his reputation wouldn’t really suffer a blow because of something like that.
“Hey, Al!” Owen plunked into the seat beside the boy in question while Noah looked on in amusement. “I like what you did with your hair!”
“Actually…” Alejandro usually regarded Owen with a pretty constant frown, but here he smiled. Before Noah remembered that decent people don’t typically keep a hard-focused stare in the direction of (extremely attractive) boys they’re supposed to hate, Alejandro had glanced over and shot him a wink. “My talented friend did this for me.”
Before Owen could pester the boy into divulging the mystery hair-braider (it wasn’t that hard a guess, but Owen—bless his heart—was always so clueless), Chris’s voice announced their arrival at their next stop.
The teams trickled out of the plane into a grumbling puddle, and right before Noah could exit, he felt himself being swept against the current and back into the cabin by arms of an unsurprising musculature.
“I do not think our team would miss us if we were to, say, skip this challenge…”
Noah raised an eyebrow and utilized his sarcasm as though his heart wasn’t beating out of his rib cage. “You’re probably right. I mean, why would they miss you, their best player?”
“So that would be a no?” Alejandro’s eyes quirked up at the corners.
Noah looked over his shoulder and kept his gaze trained on the plane’s open door as he weighed his options. Either he could do the sensible thing and leave right now, or he could shrug everything off to go fulfill an intriguing daydream that, an hour ago, seemed very far-fetched. Eventually he replied, “…I never said that.”
“For such a bookish type, you’re being astonishingly forward about this, Noah.” Alejandro’s fingers curled around the other’s wrists and pulled, landing the two of them against the cabin wall—or, rather, landing Alejandro against the wall and Noah against his chest. It probably felt about the same, Noah guessed. Only Alejandro’s chest was warm.
“I’m the one being forward?”
“Well, I expected you to feign indifference, honestly.”
Feign indifference? Noah scoffed. “Honey, I already know what you’re doing here. I might as well have some fun playing along.” He leveled an expectant stare at him, ready to see what honeyed bullshit came in response.
And indeed it came, in the form of the words: “I only wish to learn more about you.”
“Uh, yeah, to exploit me.”
“You could use the same argument against me, then.” Alejandro’s brows furrowed. “That is, if I’m correctly analyzing what you’re telling me.”
Noah didn’t bother fighting the urge to roll his eyes. “Yes, I am telling you that I’m gay.”
“What about Bridgette? I thought you may’ve been appraising her looks, if I may be so bold.”
“I’m gay, not blind. She’s, ah, cute and all. Just not my type.”
“I see.” Alejandro’s mouth turned upward at one corner. “Am I, perhaps, your type?”
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
“I would never.” Alejandro's smirk widened into a full-blown grin. “What do you say we procure Chris’s hot tub while he is gone?”
“That would piss him off, you know.” Alejandro shrugged and a rather mischievous smile adorned Noah’s lips. “I’m in.”