Archive of Our Own ^beta

Noel didn't know when he decided to go to college. It was one of those things that just happened. You went to high school and, if you were lucky enough, you graduated. Then you went to college, if you were even luckier. Kids from places like where Noel grew up rarely made it that far. He would have generally been happy not to end up on a street corner selling dope with the kids he might have dropped out with in seventh grade. Half of his friends had already ventured down that path by junior year, and he had to work hard not to join them.

Really, going to college was his parents' dream for him. They wanted him to be the first generation in either of their families to succeed in life. That's not to say that they were dirt poor or unfit parents, but Noel found himself helping out with bills and taking care of his younger siblings a lot more than he'd ever thought he would have to. Then again, most of the guys he'd grown up with had had to do the same. So finding himself outside of Duke for his freshman year of college (or, rather, University, although he felt so snooty when he used that word) was a little surreal. He had worried when he left home that his parents wouldn't be able to manage everything on their own. He'd been a large source of help for them, but they were so proud when he got that full ride that they assured him they would figure it out no matter what. He had exactly enough money saved up in August to take a bus down to North Carolina and, with a couple of hugs goodbye, he was gone. Just like that.

Checking into his dorm was also surreal. Meeting his Resident Adviser was surreal. Seeing kids who clearly belonged here was surreal. Finding out last minute that they didn't have as many single-bed rooms as they thought and that he would have to bunk with someone else was...less surreal and more annoying. Enter D'artagnan.

D'artagnan wasn't his real name, of course. That's what he called himself but his name was actually Johnny. He insisted that Noel call him by his nickname and, when Noel refused, remarked, "Ugh, I can't get anyone else to call me that either. Fuckin' bummer."

As it turned out, Johnny was also there on scholarship. To Noel, that made perfect sense. He stunk of weed and pickle chips and didn't seem to have brushed his hair in at least a week. Needless to say, he didn't come off as the studious type. He learned that Johnny was pretty upset upon finding out that "D'artagnan" wasn't a viable name for the back of his basketball jersey.

So far, one day in, freshman year wasn't going so hot. Noel was determined to make the best of a not-that-terrible situation, though. He unpacked his bag in the dresser provided by the dorm and made up his bed. On the desk on his side of the room, he laid out the laptop the university had given him as a part of his scholarship to do homework and essays and projects on. It was an IKEA dream on his side of the room. Johnny's side was a real mess, but Noel ignored it. Actually, Noel very pointedly got his roommate's attention and drew an imaginary line with his finger across the room.

"This is simple, dude. My side - your side. My side, your side."

Johnny shrugged. "Cool. But if I can't come over there, you definitely can't come over here. Fair's fair, brother."

Noel made a conscious effort to not let it show how obvious it was that he was never, ever going over to Johnny's side of the room.

The first day of anything is always the hardest one. In it lies the first impression of a new job, new school, possibly even a new life. For Noel, he had all of them going on at once. Durham was almost a culture shock compared to where he was from. It wasn't a super rich town, but it was clearly affluent. It made him nervous, but he was no stranger to serving the upper class. Putting on a barista's uniform wouldn't be at all out of place for him, and he needed the job for pocket money throughout the school year. Yes, the university was letting him learn for free, but they weren't going to feed him or take him out to a movie as well. The dorm did come with a cafeteria, but he already knew that he was going to need more than just that to sustain him. The coffee shop allowed him to work part time in accordance with his class schedule while he went to school and it was a five minute walk from where he now lived. In other words, it was perfect.

Durham residents were very particular about that coffee. Noel learned that in only the first hour. If they said twelve sugars, they meant twelve sugars. Not eleven, not thirteen. Twelve. He almost quit when a woman insisted frappe was pronounced "frappy" and not "frap", but he managed to keep his cool. He was good at being nice to people he didn't care for, especially when he was being paid to keep a smile on his face.

When he got back to his dorm that evening, one shift out of the way and his first class the next morning, he went over the textbooks he'd gotten used off of eBay. Used was an indecent term for them because they looked brand new. Still, he wasn't going to complain at a cheaper price. He honestly felt that his scholarship should have covered the cost of materials other than the laptop, but it was fine. He'd make that money back in no time. He already had tips from his new job settled safely in his wallet. In the bed across the room, a sleeping D'artagnan lightly snored. It didn't bother him, but Noel wondered if he had any worries beyond basketball. Did he need the scholarship to get in, like Noel had? Was he from a relatively normal family background with a nice house and spare money for vacations every year? Noel didn't want to know. Despite being kind of weird, he did like the guy. Enough to share a room with him for one year, at least.

He laid back on his own dorm room bed and tried to relax. The mattress was firm and he didn't know if it would make his muscles ache or feel better in the morning, but at least it didn't come with a rent attached to it. He got up long enough to change, then slid under the covers. Even with all his worrying and thoughts of his family three thousand miles away settling into the back of his mind, he eventually drifted off into a dreamless sleep.

Six months in, Noel's brain began to feel like mush. Coding was hard. Math was harder. The university's graduation rate meant nothing to him because half the time, he felt like giving up. It was the saving grace of a study group that made those thoughts begin to subside. All of the kids were in at least one of the two classes he absolutely had to have a passing grade in in order to move on to the next year, though a couple of them he swore he'd never seen in either one. A girl named Ella was one, and Noel was pretty sure she was from Sweden. Her jokes always seemed to land perfectly in spite of the language barrier, so they got along fine. The other one? Cody. A loud-mouthed smart ass of a frat boy who, Noel knew, hated his guts. This was the problem.

Cody was annoying and Noel made sure that he knew it. They never passed up an opportunity to outdo each other or get in a petty jab. That would all be fine if Cody wasn't the smartest one in the group. Or, well, maybe not the smartest, but certainly the most capable when it came to numbers. Cody didn't feel like Noel belonged in the group because he needed the most help and it was supposed to be a group of intermediate students, freshman or not. Noel didn't like Cody because he was the epitome of everything he'd come to have a distaste for in his life, a white jock with the perfect family in the Great White North; Parents who paid his tuition and gave him an allowance. I.E., he was spoiled. And Noel hated it. The day he learned that Cody had never been an employee anywhere, ever, he almost did a backflip out of the nearest library window. Thankfully he managed to stay seated.

Noel knew Cody had never been in class before. He knew that because he'd have remembered the biggest annoyance of his life probably kissing up to the professor, but Cody admitted he'd been doing all of his classes online because it was easier than getting up in the morning. Noel didn't even know the class was available as an online-only course, but he didn't feel the need to change things. He liked calling his parents and telling them about his classes, and they always sounded so proud of him that he never got around to telling them he'd ended up in a study group and was falling behind. It was true that he was getting okay marks, but he needed to do better. Luckily, freshmen had a tad more leniency than the upperclassmen. Just a bit, though, which was why when he got a C- on a test one afternoon, he swallowed his own pride and approached Cody before study group got started one afternoon.

He caught him as he was walking into the library, a textbook in one hand and what looked to be a bag of swimming gear in the other. His hair was wet enough that if not for the gear, Noel would have assumed he had freshly showered. Now was not the time to be wondering about Cody's extracurricular activities, however.

"Cody," he began. They had the kind of relationship that warranted only calling each other by their last names, but Noel had taken one look at Cody's and didn't even bother to try. He sure as shit wasn't going to ask how to pronounce it.

"Man, don't start. My day's been crap enough as it is already," Cody answered in a huff, reaching out to tug on the handle of the library's front door when Noel stepped ahead and leaned against it. He stood there silently for a few seconds, trying to figure out how to word what he wanted to say. Cody didn't say anything else. Rather, he stared at him expectantly.

Asking for help made Noel nervous. Ordinarily he would never do it, but flunking out of college would be the biggest disappointment in the world to his family and he knew he had to suck it up if he was going to get through the rest of the year. "I need your help," he admitted and braced himself for the inevitable: Cody pushing him aside and heading into the library and pretending like he'd never heard him. Instead, he heard laughter. Bubbly, ridiculous laughter. It didn't fit the moment at all.

"Dude, fuck you," Cody muttered, shaking his head. "You've done nothing but bust my balls ever since we met."

It was Noel's turn to laugh, then, albeit bitterly. "Sorry, I didn't realize you've actually been Mother-goddamn-Teresa this whole time." He swallowed hard after he said it but if nothing else, it did momentarily shut Cody up. "Look, we're not friends. We're not even really acquaintances. We are in the same class, and you're - god help me - better at this stuff than I am. Don't lemme fail just 'cause we aren't in sync."

For a moment, Cody thought about it. He looked Noel up and down one time, thinking about how they were so completely each other's opposite. This wasn't exactly a secret. These things came up when talking during their time in the library, the group's conversations drifting away from coding and onto other things every once in a while. Noel was a cynic and Cody was usually an optimist. Noel put an emphasis on hard work and Cody was more of the carefree, fun-loving type. Noel's jokes tended to have twist endings and Cody preferred a good pun. But right now? Noel just seemed small, and earnest, and genuinely in need of his help. Cody was not one to turn a blind eye to someone who was being honest, either, so the way he saw it, he had no other choice.

"Fine. I'll help you but you have to be open."

It sounded a lot like the start of a bad porn film, but Noel pushed that thought aside. He was grateful that Cody had agreed because otherwise, he wasn't sure what he was going to have to do in order to pass for the semester.

A few weeks later, they were warming up to each other. Like a bad microwave, though, their relationship was still cold in the middle. They had decided to put an end to their feud for a while until Noel was caught up to where he needed to be in class. Sometimes it was hard not to make a dumb joke about Cody's gelled-up hair, or Noel smelling like weed because D'artagnan had lit one up in the dorm the night before, but they were getting through it one session at a time. They had quit their study group so that Cody could focus solely on helping Noel, and sometimes Noel missed having the others around because it didn't feel as private or secretive. He refused to think of the word 'intimate', but occasionally that's what it was. Quiet sections of the library where the hid out for a couple of hours, or Noel meeting Cody in the locker room of the gym because he'd just been swimming and it was the only free time he'd have that day.

Noel had learned that Cody was more than a simple swimmer. He dove. Like, in competitions and stuff and not only for fun. It was occasionally difficult not to make a joke about the fact that Cody had a scholarship for jumping off of a springy board and that was about it, even though he knew that it must've taken some real skill.

"I don't get it," Noel had murmured one day in the otherwise empty locker room. "If you wanna be a diver, what're you doing in a major centered around computers?" It was a question that had been weighing on him for a while but he hadn't wanted to bring it up because, well, it wasn't any of his business. Regardless, he finally decided he had to know.

Cody looked up from his notebook, where he'd written out a problem for Noel to try and solve on his own without help from the textbook. "I don't know," he answered sincerely. "I guess... I know that this is a safe future, and I want to have something to fall back on in case sports don't work out in the end. If I were to break a leg or lose a foot or something, this whole diving thing would be over for me. Computers aren't going anywhere anytime soon, but there's no shortage of people who don't understand them and who'll need some help from a nerdy I.T. guy, right?"

Noel shrugged but it was a sentiment he could understand. He had dreams, but going to Duke was a safety net. He didn't want to be some coder in an office where the company culture could be described on their website as "funky and laid back". He actually had aspirations that amounted to more than that, but if all else failed then at least he had a degree.

"I wanna see you dive."

This statement had been in the back of Noel's mind for two months. He and Cody weren't friends. He didn't know if they'd ever be friends, but he didn't hate sharing small spaces with him anymore. He didn't dislike being in close vicinity with him these days. It was enjoyable, to an extent, and more often than not their conversations veered away from coding. They spent a lot of time in each other's company. Yes, studying, but also talking. About everything they felt like talking about. As it turned out, Cody was more understanding of Noel than Noel had previously thought possible. He understood high expectations and the drive to not fail and it made Noel feel better about his own worries and self doubt. It's not exactly like D'artagnan was an armchair therapist, and the people who came into his coffee shop generally had their own problems to get off of their chests. It was nice having someone else to talk to who expected nothing of him, and who he expected nothing of in return.

"Why?"

It was a good response question. Noel had never given it it that much thought, but he wanted to see if he was really that good. Supposedly, Cody said he could go to the Olympics if he practiced hard enough. Noel just wanted to see if that was true or not, but he decided not to say it quite like that.

"I wanna see what all of the fuss is about. You're such a computer geek that I have a hard time picturing you working out or doing flips in the air wearing a speedo," he teased, bringing about a small smile and an eye-roll from Cody, who he then followed to the university's pool. He had seen the giant pool before, but normally it was empty and he was passing by it to enter the locker room for another study session. It was empty now, too, no practice for anything scheduled for the next few days. Cody had once told Noel he liked to practice on his own at night after classes, what few he actually physically attended, and Noel had to agree that it did seem almost tranquil when it was quiet.

Cody undressed to his underwear, not bothering to change into his actual uniform. He made his way over to a diving board ladder and counted the rungs as he climbed up, which always helped him focus right before a jump. Sometimes he would climb up there and just think about things that were weighing on his mind when the room was empty and he was all alone. It did help, every once in a while. He counted to three before he walked to the end of the platform and jumped off, performing what Noel could only believe was a trick of the eye before landing in the water without much of a splash. No human body should be able to twist like that, he thought.

"Your turn," Cody announced when he'd climbed back out of the pool, and Noel's eyes turned into mini saucers.

"Absolutely not," he shook his head, "it was fun watching you do it, but I'm afraid of heights. No way, man."

Cody laughed and got redressed, and Noel somewhat begrudgingly told him how good he was. For once, Cody was silent. He was in his feelings as he slid his hand into Noel's and then pulled him into the towel closet of the pool room. If Noel wanted to stop him, he could. Cody wasn't using the strength the knew he possessed in order to do this, so it wasn't as though Noel couldn't get away if he wasn't into it.

Noel's back slid up against the door in the dark closet, and for a moment he wasn't sure what was going on. He could tell that Cody was right in front of him because the room was pretty tiny, leaving only enough room for maybe one more body at best. Cody was also pressed up on his chest and he almost pushed him away...almost, until he felt his lips on his neck.

This was not Cody's M.O. He wasn't the type to have a one night stand or sleep with a person he wasn't all that interested in romantically, but something about Noel set him off in ways he didn't have words for. He used to be ready to fight him and now he had him in the towel closet, placing kisses on his neck and collarbone like his whole world depended on doing it. And Noel wasn't stopping him like Cody thought he might have, which egged him on even further and encouraged him to do more. He gained more confidence and pressed his knee between Noel's legs, feeling what was very obviously the beginning of a boner through his sweatpants. That was fine, it's what he was aiming for. Noel's hands slid onto Cody's waist and tried to get him even closer, closing what was left of the small gap between them. His clothes were damp from the residual water on Cody's skin seeping through, but Noel didn't care. He didn't care if his own clothes ended up the same way, and he didn't care that his first experience with another guy was going to be in a closet. Kind of fitting, when he thought about it.

Cody's dominant hand slid into Noel's pants and he bypassed his boxers altogether, wrapping his fingers around Noel's cock and gently tugging until he was as hard as he was going to get in that moment. Maybe he got a little harder after his eyes had adjusted to the nonexistent lighting and he watched Cody sink to his knees. Cody's soft fingers dipped below the waistband of the pants and pulled them down, underwear and all, until what he wanted was evident and exposed. What started with an easy handjob had suddenly escalated to Cody's lips on the tip, kissing around the smooth area before tracing a vein down the length with his tongue. Noel's eyes shut tight as he tried to figure out how the hell this was even happening, because never in his wildest dreams did he imagine ever being that close to Cody of all people.

He reopened his eyes to watch as Cody's mouth sunk down around him, taking him halfway in before his natural gag reflex set in. He watched as that didn't stop Cody from continuing at all. He watched (and then listened) to Cody press his limits, lips stretched around his dick while he looked back up at him with tears forming at the edges of his big blue eyes because he wasn't that experienced yet. Noel was still young too and it didn't take much to make him cum, and he spilled himself down Cody's throat with a choked out moan as a warning.

"You don't have to sw-" Noel stopped short as he saw Cody swallow before he could even get the sentence out. If he could have cum twice in a row, he would have.

A lot can happen in four months' time. People can change, situations can get better or worse. For Noel, his first year at Duke, so far, had been more memorable than he'd ever expected. His closet nights with Cody were some of his favorite memories, but they never spoke about it. In reality they didn't mean much. It was fun with someone he connected with on a basic level, someone he probably would never forget but would likely never see again after college was over. Hell, he may not even see him when their second year started up. He passed all of his classes with, at the very least, a B. He had made his way to a couple of those diving events and watched Cody do...whatever those moves were called; He'd never bothered to learn. Noel figured their time together was over when the summer hit, but actually Cody wasn't going home that first summer either. He had decided to spend summer in the USA rather than fly home for two months where he would probably ultimately sit on his ass and do nothing. In North Carolina, at least, he might be able to explore.

Exploring, to Cody, meant going out into nature and trying new things. Camping out, climbing mountains, white water rafting, all things that Noel had never had time to do before he'd gone to college. He usually spent his summers with his younger siblings but he didn't want to spend the money he'd saved on another bus ticket back home, especially since he likely wouldn't have enough to get back again. His only option would've been calling Cody to spot him a ticket back to NC, and no way in hell was he doing that. It turned out that all of those little outdoorsy things were free, and naturally 'free' was a word that was very appealing to Noel's wallet. Unfortunately, Noel wasn't that big of a risk taker. His heart almost stopped whenever they hit a rock in their rafting boat, he thought it would give out again when he found out Cody had forgotten to secure their ropes when scaling the side of a particularly steep mountain, and he absolutely refused to camp out anywhere that wild animals were known to be present.

They had kept up their intimate behavior whenever possible. Inside of a tent was a wild way to do it, Noel insisting that imminent danger was almost definitely a kink. They had gone from blowjobs to grinding to full on sex, and it was fun. Noel couldn't lie and say it wasn't exciting, but he knew there was a time limit to their enjoyment. One day it would be over and Cody would be a distant memory that he kept locked away in his mind palace, but for now he was enjoying it.

Things were fine. Things were all very well and good, but by mid-July it was all over. School didn't start until August 15th, but Noel couldn't decide whether he was going back or not. Full ride or no. He had spent two weeks laid up in bed, thinking about Cody. Thinking about his parents and his siblings and D'artagnan being back in Ohio for the summer and wishing he was there to share his weed or score them some free beer, because Noel's thoughts were so loud and so overwhelming now that he didn't know what else to do. He absolutely would not cry, no matter what. No matter if the dreams he had at night blossomed into nightmares, or if he couldn't get the smell of iron mixed with salt water out of his head.

Cody was a very convincing person. If he wasn't there's not a snowball's chance in hell that Noel would have been caught doing anything he'd done over the past month. His idea of a good summer was taking his siblings to the Santa Monica Pier and letting them waste all of his money on silly games. But Cody? Cody was a daredevil. A boy who sought adrenaline whenever possible, and because nothing bad had ever come of that, he'd never properly appreciated that his sporty activities might have been dangerous. Noel figured it out firsthand.

"Just come with me, okay? I found out about a waterfall on this hike in the Outer Banks," Cody's over-enthusiastic voice came through the receiver of Noel's cellphone. He knew this was a bad idea just from the word waterfall entering the sentence, but Cody had a way about him. A way of making Noel feel like everything was going to be alright, even if it wasn't. "It overlooks the ocean... Come on, please? It'll be so fun, dude." Noel couldn't believe he was letting this fraternity kid run his whole summer, taking him all over the place seemingly without a care in the world.

Noel thought about that conversation one, two, three hundred times. He could have simply said "No." He could have tried to persuade Cody to do literally anything else. Anything safe. Anything indoors, like going to a movie or out to dinner. And he knew how much those sounded like dates, but after all was said and done Noel knew he'd been lying to himself. It had been more than just a Freshman Fling. It had been a lot more, and he'd fallen for Cody way harder than he would ever have the chance to admit. Maybe it had been love. It sure felt very close to love right now. If he closed his eyes lately the only thing he saw was Cody doing something stupid after beckoning for him to do the stupid thing first, which he did do.

Cody was this close to calling Noel a pussy. He wanted him to dive first because he'd never done it before. He wouldn't even do it in Duke's super safe swimming pool, but Cody had faith that he would get over his fear of heights if he'd dive into the ocean below. He watched as Noel finally gave in and took a running leap off of the cliff, diving awkwardly (but adorably) down into the salty water of the Atlantic Ocean. He leaned over the edge enough to see his figure plunge into the cool water, surfacing a moment later and shaking the liquid out of his hair. It made Cody laugh and he knew he was up next.

This was the part that Noel replayed the most. He wished he hadn't jumped first, and that he'd stuck to his guns. Maybe he could have talked Cody out of it, and maybe they could have gone down to the beach and gotten into the water on foot like normal people. Realistically he knew that things like this weren't as common as he thought they were. It probably didn't happen that much, but it happened right in front of his eyes and now he couldn't fucking sleep without remembering it. If he made it to sleep at all, he would recall watching Cody step back and run from the same spot he'd started at. He would remember how Cody would make it just to the edge of the cliff before his foot slipped and he tumbled off the cliff rather than jumped. His mind would replay how Cody haphazardly fell into the water below, landing between the rocks instead of in the safe zone of water several feet ahead.

If he was lucky, Noel would wake up before his brain played the images of blood coming up and staining the water. He wouldn't have to think about the snippets of conversation from Cody assuring him that jumping off the cliff would be fine, he'd done it a thousand times as a kid and that all they had was right now...

"I'll kiss you first, how 'bout that? You big baby," Cody laughed. His laugh was still bubbly and ridiculous except now it actually seemed to fit the moment. "Go on, hurry up! I'll be down there before you can even start to miss me, I promise."