Chapter Text
1. Sugar. Noel and Sugar have been waging a silent war of the wits since they were old enough to produce cognitive thought. They stand in a room and it’s suddenly a battlefield of charm and overblown confidence. Rory suspects it all started after she tried to marry him at a party when Noel was five and Noel turned her down in favour of Angie Cohen (Chang)-Chang. Or possibly when Sugar told Noel that his bow tie was dumb when Noel was four. Regardless the two of them couldn’t pair up if given a written instruction manual and gold stars for effort.
2. One Sue Sylvester. No one should ever want Noel around Coach Sue ever. This is for the same reason one doesn’t willingly pair tonnes of vinegar and baking soda all at once, or coke and mentos or gasoline and a thousandflamethrowers. It may seem like explosions are all fun and games in theory, the reality is that had Noel been there when Coach Sylvester announced that Burt had a baboon heart or that Kurt should never breed the school would not have survived due to Noels hyper over protectiveness.
Rory’s not sure who would have won. But he never, ever wants to find out.
(He also suspects that her constant remarks towards Kurt’s feminine characteristics would have set Noel ablaze in new and unforeseen ways. That nightmare is best left alone.)
3. The fierce protectiveness Noel has of his parents. It should be the other way around, but it never has been. He’s their defender, their protector, slaying imaginary dragons of injustice. The mere presence of the homophobic undercurrent of William McKinley High School would have sent him into histrionics. Coach Sylvester was one thing, once you got use to her. But the hockey and football teams and those who throw slushies and words around as if they weighed nothing would have had Noel up in arms the second he stepped through the doors. Kurt’s relatively mild campaign platform against bullying would have been steamed rolled by a zero-tolerance policy that makes Dalton’s look tame by comparison. Noel doesn’t want suspensions and detentions. He demands lectures and essays, having spearheaded many campaigns that make the Bullywhips of McKinley yesteryear look like small potatoes.
4. The way he carries himself. Noel prides himself on how much he acts like Kurt despite his genetically Anderson persuasion. On a good day he can mirror Kurt in ways that are downright terrifying. Asking him to turn that off is like asking the sun to be a little less bright. Both will just result in an overblown glare.
5. The fact that he can’t help but flirt with every female to cross his path (except Sugar, never Sugar). He would have charmed Quinn and swept Mercedes off her feet. The implications of dating people who will later become your figurative aunts is the stuff of paradoxical nightmares, but Noel would have done it regardless. Damsels in Distress or not, he loves a good flirt. What makes it worse it most people like to flirt right back due to his innate charm.
6. Sebastian (or Chandler, or any time his parents had ever fought during senior year) would have made Noel would have go postal. He would have seen them as threatening to destroy everything either opposing force had ever held dear because Kurt and Blaine are forever and this usurper is merely a pretender to the throne. Rory thinks back on the dark days after the slushy incident and shudders to think what would have happened had Noel witnessed it.
Rory could imagine this unfolding in three ways:
A) Noel would have also jumped in front of the slushy and god knows how that would have turned out.
B) Noel would have tackled Sebastian to the ground after the slushy was thrown and been arrested likely for assault.
C) Noel would have been the best little nursemaid ever and likely raised Kurt’s hackles. There’s, also, no telling what he would have let slip to a drugged up Blaine.
7. Which leads directly to the next reason. Noel has a big mouth. He would be the one to tell Rachel that telling Kurt to do Music of the Night is possibly the dumbest thing she’s ever said (and he has a list on his phone, literally entitled Shit Aunt Rachel Says). He wouldn’t have been subtle telling Kurt that not getting into NYADA doesn’t matter in fact it’s better for everyone because Kurt’s meant to go into fashion. Rory suspects at some point he would have realized that was a terrible idea and shut up, but likely not before recounting the first 4 years of Kurt’s life in New York City.
8. Food. Noel can barely survive Lima for the few sparse visits a year, most of those with home cooked meals. Months of fast-food and Breadstix would have caused him to go post-apocolyptic. He would have been begging for a canape or a bento box withing a month. He’s famous for making the home economics teacher in their New York Charter school cry. Rory can’t imagine what he’d have done to the poor old lady who runs the class at McKinley.
9. Noel is, unsurprisingly, a control freak. He’s led their Glee Club to victory 3 years running and between Mr. Schuester’s lax teaching style, Finn’s strange definition of leadership and Rachel’s ego, he might have staged a revolt. Scratch that. Had Noel been there, he would have joined the Troubletones, poached Kurt, Blaine, Tina and Mike to his team without so much as a blink and New Directions would never have made it to Sectionals, let alone to a National victory.
10. He would have sulked without his little sister there with him. They are almost as co-dependant as Rory and Noel are. It makes Kurt and Blaine laugh, since Noel never wanted a little sister in the first place, and Katy and Noel fight for dominance more often than not, but they love each other to death and he would die for her (and die without her there to change his wayward plans into solid actions).