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“No.”
“What do you mean, no?” Eva asks. Threatens is a more accurate term but Noah’s known her long enough to realize that she’s all bark and no bite when it comes to her friends. He takes another sip of his milkshake with a roll of his eyes.
“No, I will not be wearing a stupid Halloween costume, don’t know what you didn’t hear the first time. I don’t want to go to this party at all, much less parade myself like a jackass.”
“Don’t be like that little buddy, where’s your Halloween spirit?” Owen cuts in, spraying bits of half-eaten fries all over their table. Noah glances around the courtyard to see if anyone else is witnessing the utter embarrassment that comprises hanging out with his oddball group of friends in public, but no stranger is hurrying to come to his rescue. “You might see Cody—“
“Please,” interrupts Noah. “I’m on my last string of sanity and you’re close to snapping it.”
Cody is Noah’s roommate’s friend and bandmate which means he sees the other boy in their dorm approximately four days out of seven. Each time Cody stops by for keyboard practice or video games on Harold’s desktop or some other banal activity is a testament to Noah’s immaculate self-control because god, that kid is cute. At first, Noah tried to avoid him like the plague, always locating a convenient excuse to exit the room when Cody would come over, but Harold had pulled him aside last week and informed him that Cody thinks he’s scaring Noah out of their dorm, and would he please try to be cordial with Cody?
Noah is not the type of person to make promises and he had let Harold know that. Thus why he’s finding himself the sudden ringleader of assembling his group of friends to do fuck all in between classes and clubs—he can’t go back to his dorm as freely as he used to after all; Cody might be there, and Noah hasn’t the faintest clue how to compose himself around him.
“Cody and Noah sitting in a tree,” Izzy starts singing and Noah considers slamming his head into the concrete table. He has a strawberry milkshake to slurp down, however, so he can’t die yet. Perhaps when the beverage is done, he’ll pencil in an appointment with the Grim Reaper.
“K-I-S—“ Owen joins in. Noah groans loudly, flipping every one of these assholes he can’t believe he voluntarily spends time with the bird as he takes another long sip of his milkshake. He hates university, hates whoever oversees assigning roommates to dorms, and hates everyone and everything, most of all Cody.
“If we’re done being toddlers, I have another costume idea.”
“No,” says Noah.
“I’ll wear you down, short stuff, I’ll make sure of it,” Eva comminates. He shrugs. What’s she going to do? Trash his already cluttered room? Somehow find a way to corrupt all of his assignment files? As if.
“I’d like to see you try,” he snarks back and Eva slams a clenched fist down, raising her menacing unibrow at him, and he takes that as his cue to sit back and shut up. “How about a compromise? I give you a very tentative maybe to the costume idea and you leave my face unharmed.”
“Shitty deal,” starts Eva. “But I’m in a good mood today so I’ll humor you.”
“Works for me.”
“Let’s go back to Noah’s boyfriend,” suggests Izzy; Noah tunes their amiable teasing out as he surveys the hordes of people scampering around campus. One guy who looks to be their age is wearing a bowler hat and he has to swallow the urge to poke fun at his appearance lest he gets roped back into the conversation. They must interpret his silence as anger because Owen eventually switches subjects to a new restaurant he and Izzy went to dinner at last night and if there’s one thing Noah has strong opinions on, it’s Indian cuisine.
“Gosh,” says Harold, annoyed as he angrily tosses the same pen to the floor for the fifth time. If Noah cared at all about him, he’d ask what the deal is, but as it stands, his Mario Kart match takes precedence. He swerves his character, Toad, around a blue shell, narrowing his eyes at the screen.
A knock on the door startles them both; Harold silently pleads with him to answer but he’s quite comfortable atop his comforter, so Noah jerks a thumb at the entryway, pointedly raising an eyebrow. It’s not like he’s the one expecting any guests. He promptly chokes on his spit when Harold swings the door open with an enthusiastic, “Codester! What’s up, man?”
“Not much, man, just seeing what you’re up to,” says Cody as he saunters in the room like he pays rent here. “Oh, hi Noah, good to see you.”
“Likewise,” says Noah, shrinking into his duvet. He considers burying himself in his blankets for a second if only to escape Cody’s teal eyes boring into him. He grins brightly at Noah, a gesture that Noah does not return before he unpauses the game and almost rams into the side of a bleacher.
“I have to finish this test, it’s timed, but we can do something when I’m done,” says Harold. He picks his pen up off the carpet and parks himself in his uncomfortable wooden dorm chair; Noah suggested that Harold buy a seat cushion like he did at the start of the semester thrice, but he’d steadily learned that Harold is as stubborn as Noah is when he can be.
“Sounds chill,” says Cody. He crosses the room, leaning his weight against Noah’s bedpost. He smells faintly of Old Spice and laundry detergent. “You playing Mario Kart?”
“Mhm,” hums Noah, grip tightening on his controller.
“Can I get in on this?”
“I only have the one controller,” says Noah, hoping that Cody will take his flimsy excuse at face value. He does but he doesn’t get that Noah’s not trying to converse with him as Cody leans against his bedpost, a bit jittery for reasons that has Noah casting a sidelong glance at Harold.
“I’ll just watch then,” replies Cody. “So, what have you been up to? I feel like you’re never here.”
There’s a reason for that, Noah thinks. He pauses before waving a nonchalant hand around. “I don’t see why we’d run into each other.” Toad places third last. He presses his lips into a thin line before he goes back to the main menu, grumbling internally.
“I mean… you live here too,” says Cody, somewhat patronizing. “And I hang with Harold a lot so I don’t know why I wouldn’t see you more often.”
“Word,” Harold chimes in.
“Hate to break it to you, honey, but I don’t sit around my dorm 24/7. How would I know when you’re here?”
Cody flushes, red evident against the stark contrast of his pale skin. He thinks Cody could pass for Casper the Friendly Ghost if he wanted to—maybe if they were friends at all, he’d voice his observation aloud. Noah regards him with an impassive stare, keenly aware of the lack of typing coming from Harold’s side of the room.
“You’re usually always here,” says Harold, the damn sledgehammer to his carefully crafted excuses. Noah files a mental reminder to screw with his laundry later, perhaps stop the dryer halfway through its cycle for that remark. He knows Harold does his laundry today at 7 PM like clockwork. Noah’s never been one for routines but he can appreciate someone having a rigidity to their schedule; it’s one of the few traits that Noah actually likes about him. “Ignore him, Cody, he’s being an asshole because—“
“I’m never an asshole,” Noah cuts in before his nonexistent social credit can take any more jabs. “Don’t you have a test to finish?”
“No fun allowed,” mumbles Harold. Noah scoffs, folding his arms across his chest.
“So, are you, er, done with Mario Kart?” Cody asks hesitantly. He twists a thread in his jeans absentmindedly, huge eyes imploring as he looks at Noah with an expression he can’t entirely place. Noah’s reminded distantly of his family’s dog, the older one they’d had to put down a few years ago due to health complications—he misses him. Colby and Cody are similar in name too—he wonders if Cody has any pets. Then, he wonders why he’s still here.
“Yeah, think I’m about to leave. Don’t put your laundry on my bed again, Harold.”
“That was one time,” Harold scoffs.
“That’s one time too many.”
“Why are you leaving?” Cody inquires. He shifts so that his waist is pressing against the post instead, eyelashes long and fluttery beneath Noah’s vantage point, and he needs an exit strategy now.
“I have plans.”
“Oh," says Cody. He looks a bit disappointed. “Cool.” Noah decides not to dwell on that, stepping past him to sweep his wallet and his keys into his backpack. The keys clang on the floor because of course they do, and Noah can tell his day is only going to go downhill from here.
Fuck, he thinks, dragging a palm against his cheek. He can hear Harold’s grating voice faintly through the door.
“The inner machinations of his mind are an enigma—“
“I don’t think he—“
Noah paces toward the elevator, close to breaking a joint with how rapidly he punches the bottom button. This is so much worse than he thought. He’s growing tired of running away from his own dorm that he—or technically his student aid reimbursement—pays for. The biting chill of fall nips at his nose as he cuts through the center of campus, squinting as the wind billows his shirt and paltry excuse for a jacket. He entertains the brief notion of calling his older brother, trading a few teasing remarks with him, mostly to remove his mind temporarily from the gap-toothed boy plaguing his thoughts. He winds up at a table on the third floor of the library instead, re-reading the same lines of his Statistics textbook over and over, desperate for the muted mid-evening sun to wane.
Izzy drains the last drops of her can of soda obnoxiously, crushing it on her forehead with a maniacal laugh as she drags Eva and Noah into Spirit Halloween. The interior of the store is tacky, loud with the garish shades of orange spread everywhere amongst the cheesy animatronics Noah would find populating his neighbors’ garages. He walks by a particularly cringy, stereotypical depiction of a witch, brushing off the music that triggers with his movement, wondering why his life seems to be a series of bad decisions as of late.
“What about a pirate?” Izzy announces once they reach the costume section, pointing to a crimson outfit complete with a fake eyepatch. “Oh, or a goth pirate? A ghost pirate? Or Dracula, ooh spooky, or—“
“I say you should be a ghost,” interrupts Eva with a swish of her ponytail. “That’s boring enough for you.”
“Possibly,” Noah concedes. “Am I going to resemble a Peanuts character?”
“I’ll cut a bunch of holes out for you,” says Izzy. “All I need from you is a pair of scissors.” She makes a snipping motion with her pointer and middle fingers that causes a full-body shiver to course through Noah.
“Absolutely not,” says Noah, fighting to keep the note of fear out of his voice. She has a sixth sense for detecting fear akin to a botched species of shark. How Owen continues to date her, Noah will never understand. “I’ll never trust you with a sharp object for as long as I live.”
He still vividly recalls when Izzy attempted—keyword: attempted—to give Owen a trim at the beginning of the year and would have left him with an uneven buzz cut had it not been for Noah intervening and dragging him to a barber shop. She’d come dangerously close to pruning the ends of his hair too, weaponizing open scissors like that.
“But Noah—“
“I’m going to close my eyes and whichever costume my hand lands on is what I’m going to buy.”
Eva grunts, already on her phone furiously mashing out a text—Noah feels sorry for the recipient. He lands on a generic, somewhat outdated vampire costume. Izzy snickers, pumping her fist in the air as she giddily exclaims that she called it like she has any control over Noah’s unconscious hand. Actually, she may just be that insane now that he’s on the topic.
“Let’s go, I’m late for the gym,” says Eva. She practically bowls over a pair of scrawny, acne-freckled teenagers in her warpath, and Noah strolls forward. It’s not worth his concern to keep up with her eternally fast-paced gait and the gym on their campus is open for another four hours so he’s not sure what the rush is. As he forks over some cash to the bored cashier, drumming her fingers against the register in a rhythm distinctly off from the song blaring through the store’s speakers, he rolls his shoulders back. He hopes that he comes home to an empty dorm room, that Harold has found someone else to terrorize on a Sunday night.
Eva immediately ditches them outside the store to power-walk to the gym. She’s been irritable all afternoon and there’s only so much of her abrasiveness that he can take per day anyway. Noah, with a lack of anything better to do, reluctantly trails Izzy to wander around Target and slaps her hand away whenever she attempts to pocket something. It’s quieter than usual which could be attributed to the general death of malls and the fact that most people their age are likely scrambling to turn in assignments due later today but it’s a slightly depressing sentiment all the same. How can a city be so dead?
She bids Noah adieu with a renewed bounce in her step once he resolves that he’d much rather be in the sanctuary of his room instead of outdoors, off to wreak havoc on public infrastructure or Owen’s dorm; it’s a fifty-fifty toss-up. He thinks in disjointed fragments of musings—if he should bring food to the upcoming Halloween party or if that’s too nerdy, if he remembered to fold his shirts or not, and did Harold ever return that calculator he lent him a few days ago?
He’s about to flash his ID across the sensor, twirling his keys absentmindedly in his free hand when someone taps him on the shoulder. Startling more than he should, he whirls around, the force of a crack of thunder possessing him as he instinctively steps toward the locked doors.
“Whoa, chill,” says Cody. “Thought that was you.”
“Way to give a man a coronary,” Noah replies, embarrassingly wheezy. He’s beyond relieved that he hadn’t shrieked or worse, toppled into him in his haste to put some distance between him and his attacker.
“Sorry,” says Cody, not looking all that apologetic. He has his hands stuffed into his baggy jeans, wearing two mismatched sweaters that would appear dorky on anyone else, but Noah finds the ensemble more endearing than he should. He ought to enact his retreat, Noah concludes a bit wildly, keys jingling to a stop.
“Who gave you an invitation to loiter?” Noah drawls, letting the both of them inside once he manages to collect his bearings a second later. A grin curves the corners of Cody’s lips, walking close enough to brush their shoulders together, a touch so fleeting Noah thinks it might be a trick of the obnoxiously bright overhead lights.
“I live here too,” utters Cody. He pulls his hand out of his pocket to comb it through his bedraggled, windswept hair. “Which makes me more confused on why we don’t run into each other more, actually.”
“Hm,” says Noah. “We are two parallel lines. Never the twain shall meet.”
“Is that a quote?”
“Yeah. Not sure of the origin.”
“I don’t think I like it very much,” Cody replies, a thoughtful expression firmly in place. He gestures for Noah to enter the elevator first—the other one’s out of service for the second time this month; Noah speculates not for the first time and certainly not the last what exactly he and his peers are paying for. “Do you have a quote for perpendicular lines?”
Noah exhales, too aware of the lack of proximity between them. One inch to the right and Cody would be standing on his sneaker. “No.”
“I can’t think of one either,” says Cody, a tad quieter. “I don’t want to be a parallel line,” he tacks on, more subdued than he ought to sound with the nonsensical sentence he just uttered.
“That’s nice,” Noah deadpans. This elevator ride is lasting light years—he’s on the sixth floor and Cody is apparently one above him so it should not be taking this long to traverse floors. The sight of the ugly yellow canary painting that the sixth floor’s RA tacked to the opposite wall is a blessed one; he shuffles out with a rushed goodbye, not daring to look back.
The universe grants him one small mercy of a dorm devoid of Harold—he rejoices for all of a minute while kicking his socks off. He flicks the kettle on to brew himself a mug of tea while he indulges in a classic film he’s been meaning to watch for ages. The list of movie recommendations in his phone’s files is an ever-expansive one—lurking on IMDB eats far too many of his boring mornings up—but he likes to think he’s whittling away at it slowly but surely.
The kettle whistles. He smiles as he stirs his Earl Grey packet around, the Metro Goldwyn Mayer lion roaring a few feet away. The temperature in his dorm is a few degrees short of comfort but it’s nothing that can’t be fixed with a thick duvet. He presses play and settles back against the seat cushion he’d temporarily migrated from his desk to his bed, ready to shut his brain off for a solid, peaceful hour, until a single knock reverberates from the doorway.
For a moment, Noah tenses, then realizes that it’s some drunk kid stumbling around searching for their dorm. No one else is looking for him and Harold hasn’t sent him a desperate text begging to unlock the door. He resumes his movie, blows on his cup of tea for a microsecond, and is interrupted yet again.
Just how intoxicated is this asshole? He groans, annoyed, pausing the movie with exaggerated aggression before harshly swinging his legs off the bed to stamp across the short distance of the room. All the fight drains from his soul when he glances through the peephole to see Cody, distorted through the smudged fish-eye lens affixed to the wooden interior. He’s frowning at an object Noah can’t see through his limited view into the hallway, rubbing his upper arm. He considers the ramifications of ignoring him. Cody knows that he’s home though, having parted twenty minutes ago at the insistence of the steel hands of an elevator. The universe giveth and the universe taketh.
“Harold’s not here,” says Noah in lieu of a proper greeting as soon as he wrenches the door open.
“I was just—“ Cody swallows thickly. “I wasn’t looking for him.”
“What are you looking for?” He asks, leaning against the frame, not expecting a real answer. Cody tilts his head to the side like a bemused puppy, peering over his shoulder. His sleeve is bunched at the wrist and his ears are a light pink hue—Noah has never considered himself a believer in the divine, but this must be some allotment of divine punishment. Normally, he despises Harold, but he wishes he could be here to act as a buffer.
“Um,” he mumbles instead of turning tail like Noah expects him to. “Can I come in?”
Cody must read the hesitation scribbled all over Noah’s face because his unsteady smile droops, knuckles blanching against the vibrant azure of his sweater. Noah rolls his lips into a thin line as he backpedals against his better judgment. His mug of tea sloshes, a few drops splattering on his sweatpants, and Noah curses internally as he clambers onto his bed.
“I don’t know when he’s coming back.”
“Uh, right, y—yeah,” he stutters. Cody pauses, hovering by the foot of Noah’s bed, gnawing on his bottom lip.
A sudden flash of déjà vu strikes him. There must be a pattern to these ripples in a pond. Or Noah is reading too much into illusory bullshit conjured by his brain which is the more logical but incredibly disappointing answer to the conundrum of Cody visiting him as if it’s a regular occurrence for them.
“What are we watching?”
“Northern Pursuit,” answers Noah around a sip of his beverage. He yanks his duvet back over his lap which Cody interprets as an invitation to hop up and join him. The lack of lighting save for the dim black and white screen of the television is a little too cozy—a vibe that Noah never dreamed would come back to bite him in the ass—and Cody’s a little too close again. He nudges Noah’s leg over, back against the wall instead, but Noah is monastically aware of the multiple points of physical contact. He fumbles with the remote for a split second, unsure of how to handle Cody’s unwavering eye contact. Sometimes, the best thing to do is nothing at all.
Noah unsticks his thigh from Cody’s, shifting into a markedly more uncomfortable position, but he’ll take mild discomfort over the heat of Cody’s leg against his. Self-preservation and all that.
“… This is a really old movie,” states Cody as an avalanche scene rife with poor practical effects plays. It takes Noah a few moments to register that he’d spoken at all. He sticks an arm over his bed frame to plant his half-finished mug on his desk before he slides his knees up to his chest.
“How ever could you tell?” Noah quips. “Don’t tell me it was the monochrome aspect that gave it away.”
“Well,” says Cody, scooting toward him. “It’s cool that you’re into stuff like this.”
Noah’s phone buzzes.
shithead Today at 9:45 PM
Heklo noag i wont be hime
Leshabwnas
Noah Today at 9:45 PM
Are you drunk
shithead Today at 9:45 PM
Mahb
Maybe
Whar the heck
Noah Today at 9:46 PM
K
shithead Today at 9:47 PM
I gott sbe a bro
My man tbis 4 u
Codyl lukes uuyu
Get mann done up RKGBHT
Harold is going to hate himself in the morning. Noah smirks, thinking he’ll stow the Brita filter somewhere hidden before Harold returns just to be a dick. He can’t pretend he has the ability to decipher the ramblings of a drunk person, nor does he care that much save for the misspelling of what he assumes to be Cody’s name. Cody, whom Noah had forgotten about for a moment there, staring at Noah with his eyebrows knit together.
“Who’re you talking to?” Cody questions, mouth pressed into a thin moue. He looks slightly afraid of the answer.
“My dumbass roommate won’t be coming back tonight,” says Noah. He rolls his eyes. “He’s drunk off his ass so…”
“So…” Cody trails off, gaze darting between Noah and the television.
“So, you can leave if you’d like,” says Noah. If the one-sided tension in here were any thicker, he could cut it with a knife. He regrets setting his tea down.
“Do you want me to?” Cody asks, the same subdued tone from earlier resurfacing that Noah still has no clue how to interpret. A rather pathetic no, stay gets caught in his throat, one phrase of many that he has to stifle in Cody’s presence. He settles for a quick shrug, tilting his head toward the door, ignoring the tumultuous storm in his stomach that only worsens with each passing minute.
“… I’m offering you an obvious out.”
“I could tell, dude,” responds Cody, shuffling another inch closer. He worms his way between the wall and Noah’s bundled form, shoulders realigning with his in a casual manner that leaves Noah casually wondering what the literal fuck he must’ve done to deserve this. Half an hour ago, his Sunday evening was unfolding splendidly, limbs unspooled, and brain pleasantly wound down. If there’s anything consistent about his life, it’s the tendency for his days to be ruined at the drop of a hat. He does this to himself, he reckons.
“You must be so very invested in Northern Pursuit,” says Noah, snickering weakly. It’s difficult to hear himself over the blood pounding in his ears.
“Something like that,” says Cody a decibel above a whisper. Noah can physically feel the hot fan of his breath ghosting over the stubble of his chin. He clutches his knees tighter, gluing his eyes to the television and Wagner’s coy plea to be discharged from the RCMP. He’s going to have to rewatch this film at a later date; he must’ve only paid attention to all of the first five minutes. They don’t exchange further conversation and Noah steals tiny glimpses of the other boy out of the corner of his eye on occasion. Noah catches Cody’s eyes once—a muted splash of red on the apples of his cheeks, teal on brown, a pink tongue darting out to wet his lips, and Noah stops looking his way for the rest of the night.
“You didn’t want to bring your feral animal with you?” Noah questions when Owen knocks on his door sans Izzy. Harold had gone to class ten minutes ago and the remainder of Noah’s day is free, so he’d invited Owen to play a few rounds of Super Smash Bros, perhaps indulge in a beer or two.
“She’s in a meeting with her professor. She broke his lab equipment again,” responds Owen in a conspiratorial tone, carelessly tossing his backpack on Noah’s desk before plopping down on his chair. “Do you have any snacks, buddy?”
“I’m not your buddy, guy,” jokes Noah. He crosses the room and throws a half-empty bag of Doritos at him, sighing when he has to start digging through his drawers in search of his spare controller. It’s not often that he has to bust that out considering the majority of his games are single-player and Owen’s the only good sport about video games he knows. He doesn’t trust Izzy enough to let her handle an object that expensive and Eva is prone to rage-quitting—he’d learned his lesson after a particularly grueling game of Don’t Starve Together.
Two minutes of frustrated searching later, he finally locates his joy-cons stowed beneath a red shirt the same shade as his right joy-con—he mentally scolds Noah of the past for being stupid enough to camouflage his controllers and himself for falling for his own trickery. Owen crunches loudly beside him, zero help whatsoever, not that Noah would have let him rifle through his belongings anyway. He sets them on his desk, reminding Owen to wash his hands before touching his controllers while he powers his Switch on, rolling his eyes when the screen starts buffering—he’d gotten it barely two years ago as a Christmas gift, how is the system already this janky?
“I have good news,” says Owen when he returns from the kitchen sink, connecting to the open match Noah had set up. He doesn’t wait for a response, merely informing him far too excitedly that Cody is also attending Geoff’s party.
“Oh, fantastic, just what I wanted to hear,” says Noah with a defeated sigh. It’s been difficult avoiding Cody like he used to; ever since that night he’d hung out with him alone two weeks ago, Cody has taken it upon himself to dramatically up the frequency of his visits, and Harold can only be so much of a distraction. Especially given how he likes to park himself on Noah’s side of the room now, often atop his desk or his bed, needling Noah into giving his and Harold’s band feedback or generally asking too many personal questions. He’s too much to handle and Noah doesn’t think he’s going to last until the end of the semester at this rate.
“I know,” says Owen. “I got you, dude.“ He mimics kissing the air, smacking his lips for dramatic effect. They’re stained orange from Dorito dust; Noah shudders.
“Please don’t,” he interrupts. He watches his character get booted off the platform thanks to Owen’s special attack and grits his teeth. “Every day I regret telling you about him.”
“I thought he was into you too? I see him waiting outside your door sometimes.”
“No,” he replies a tad vehemently. “And how do you keep killing me? Quit spamming the Pokémon trainer.”
“I have eyes. And an empty stomach, do you have anything else?”
Noah sincerely doubts that. He has three days to strategize a plan to avoid Cody—if it’s a big enough party, maybe he can simply sneak outdoors and slink back to his dorm without a care in the world. He’s never done well with huge parties anyway; the few that he has attended in his lifetime, he never lingers around for longer than an hour and a half. He plates a slice of pizza he’d pilfered from the dining hall earlier and snags the top off two bottles of beer.
“Pick a different fucking character,” says Noah when he spots Owen customizing the Pokémon trainer once again, a sentence that Owen again dodges in favor of cramming pizza down his throat. He’ll take whatever keeps his friend’s mind off his poor excuse of a romantic life, even if that entails resorting to toast for dinner.
“What even is that?” Harold questions nasally. Noah ignores him, splattering more fake blood—or what he hopes is fake blood courtesy of Izzy but he hadn’t looked a gift horse in the mouth—across his lips. He maneuvers his laptop a few inches back, wary of spilling any product on a computer he can’t afford to replace. He once knocked a cup of water on it a couple of years ago, thanks to his older sister scaring the ever living shit out of him with a prop cockroach; he’s not sure how this laptop has kept chugging along this far but he’s in no rush to speed up the process of planned obsolescence.
“That’s so cliché,” Harold pipes up when Noah fastens the cape around his shoulders, dragging to the floor in a mess of black fabric that has him wincing. He’ll have no other choice but to throw this cape away before he arrives back; so much for recycling this costume for the next three years. “If there was a costume contest at the party, I’d beat you. I wouldn’t test my mad skill at contests if I were you.”
“I don’t recall wanting the peanut gallery to opine.”
“And that’s, like, not close at all to an accurate depiction of Dracula. I told Cody the same thing. It’s offensive, do these—“
“Okay, great, don’t care. Let’s put this conversation on pause. Bye,” says Noah, rushing out of the room before Harold can comment further. He reminds himself for the umpteenth time to put in a request for a new roommate when the new semester commences as he taps out a quick text to his group chat letting them know he’s leaving the building.
He should’ve drunk a beer before herding himself into the sparsely decorated campus, cape despairingly threatening to flap beneath his shoes every ten seconds; there’s a tangle of orange streamers on the ground and six liquor bottles that he passes on his search for the correct address. How is a frat house this difficult to find? He would’ve assumed those things are akin to homing beacons; then again, he hadn’t paid attention to the initial campus tour. Why should he care about buildings he’s aware he’ll never frequent?
By some odd miracle, he finally pinpoints the building sandwiched between a rundown, decrepit apartment complex—Noah feels sorry for its residents—and another house, assumedly of the sorority or frat variety. This is not a corner of campus he’d be caught dead in normally, but a promise is a promise after all even if the thought of walking in makes him want to put a bullet in his brain. He shoves himself through the crowd, all sharp elbows and drunk teenagers that keep stumbling into his increasingly narrow path. The main area smells like stale booze, body odor, and cheap perfume, a combination that has Noah regretting not purchasing a costume with a mask included. A crowd of party-goers whoop for no apparent reason, blasting Noah’s eardrums. He can barely think past the overwhelming annoyance overtaking any rational thought he might otherwise be experiencing.
Noah Today at 10:14 PM
Where the hell are you
Owen Today at 10:14 PM
Kitchen!
We found your boyyyy - Izzy
His annoyance increases tenfold. Of course, Owen had dragged them all to the kitchen not even fifteen minutes into the party. He narrows his eyes at a girl dressed in a revealing cat costume attempting to catch his attention. How original, truly.
“Your cost—“ She begins to say, cut off by Noah brushing past her in a mad rush to obtain a drink and start putting this disastrous evening behind him. Sure enough, his band of idiots is crowded around a countertop piled high with bottles of every variety. Izzy’s chugging down a cup filled with contents Noah doesn’t want to know the name of while Eva competes with her. He thinks that both of them are likely to end up passed out near a dumpster if they continue drinking like that but not his circus, not his monkeys.
“Finally,” says Noah as soon as he falls into line beside Owen and—oh shit.
“Noah, my man!” Cody shrieks a little too loudly. He’s dressed in an identical vampire costume minus the fake blood and cape, eyes blown wide. He gives him a toothy grin and hooks his arm over his shoulders which Noah immediately shrugs off in favor of forcibly snatching a can of beer.
“Cody, my man,” he drawls back, unenthusiastic, but Cody evidently doesn’t pick up on the sarcasm as his grin broadens.
“I love your costume,” intones Cody. “It’s like we’re partners in crime.”
“Partners in something,” Izzy honest-to-god guffaws.
“How flattering.”
“We’re going to find Geoff, right?” Owen announces, elbowing Izzy incredibly unsubtly, nearly causing her to drop her drink. Traitors, Noah thinks, as they all vanish out of view in five seconds flat with an exaggerated thumbs-up from the chief traitor at the entrance of the crowded archway. Cody doesn’t seem to notice his discomfort either—the unfocused glassiness of his eyes is a good indicator that he’s in for a night that he already would love to forget.
“What’re you drinking? Can I try?” Cody asks, still shouting, and Noah rolls his eyes but hands his can over anyway.
“This is not my scene,” he enunciates as Cody takes a sip, mouth puckering in disgust. To his credit, he at least attempts to bury his contempt behind an oversized puffy, white sleeve, but Noah cracks a smile all the same.
“Ugh, I tried to be cool,” Cody complains. “I don’t like to drink that much either.”
“I meant this whole,” Noah begins, waving his hand in a circle, “thing but props for trying.”
He stares at him for a moment, sort of slack-jawed, and Noah wonders how much truth was behind Cody’s sentence. He’s not the greatest at discerning social clues on his best day. He deftly takes his drink back from Cody’s lax hand, who smiles at him again, like Noah’s doing anything to be smiling about.
“Then we can, uh, talk—go somewhere else?” It’d almost be smooth if not for the way Cody stumbles halfway through his question and flashes him a finger gun. Honestly. It’s pathetic how fast Noah accepts his proposition, stumbling back into the same crowd he’d expended so much effort muscling through; halfway to the door, he realizes his hands are empty and suppresses the urge to sigh. The only somewhat decent reason to make an appearance and he’d ditched it in the kitchen. He doesn’t run into his friends, he notes with a small trace of satisfaction. There’s a threshold to the amount of teasing remarks Noah wants to put up with and the bar has remained extremely low.
“Hey, can I ask you something?” Cody asks as soon as they escape the circle of stoners crowding the front porch.
“Maybe.”
“Wha—maybe?”
“Are you gonna ask?” Noah retorts, more amused than he should be.
“Why’d you come if you don’t like parties?” Cody says into the night air, buzzing with the din of conversation and disco lights for some horrid reason. They end up leaning against the faded black siding; Noah is consciously aware of the piles of rotted leaves staining his shoes and cape, but they’ve got nowhere better to go. Izzy might be too much to get home for a two-person job to handle.
“Because my friends asked me to come,” says Noah after a beat of hesitation. It feels a little too vulnerable to confess outside of the frat’s walls. At least in there, he can drown his words and pretend like all he’s said was swept away in the tidal wave of music blaring through the house.
“You know,” starts Cody. “I’m glad you’re here. I came because, uh—never mind.”
“Couldn’t tell,” says Noah. He glances to the right at two redheads going at it with each other. “Now let me ask you something.”
“Sure.”
“How drunk are you?”
“Not counting that sip I stole from you, I didn’t drink anything. What does that…” Cody trails off, tangling a hand through his gelled hair. It seems to be a nervous habit of his from what Noah has observed of him. “Was I supposed to be drinking? Are you drunk?”
“No. We’re really getting into twenty questions now, aren’t we?” Noah folds his arms, opts to stare at the same tree Cody’s been burning holes into this entire time, and tries to rack his brain for a good excuse to rejoin a party he doesn’t quite feel like rejoining. Noah never does know what to do with himself when he’s alone with him. It’s a blessing and a curse, maybe a thirty-seventy split if Noah’s honest with himself because it’s not like this is leading anywhere.
“You’re so spacey,” says Cody. “What are you thinking about? Is it me? I can just say whatever I want right now because—“
“God, not you. What are we even—“ Noah sighs. “I should find my friends again. Keep them from killing themselves.”
“Wait,” Cody rushes to say, straightening his back with a renowned sense of urgency. “Come on, don’t go, I was kidding.”
Noah raises an eyebrow. He draws his cape a little tighter.
“I just—it’s so hard to talk to you.”
“Thanks,” says Noah curtly. That’s exactly what he wants to hear from the boy he can’t stop thinking about.
“Not like that, it’s—and Harold said—“ Cody laughs at himself, a slightly manic one that succeeds in leaving Noah more puzzled but he decides to stick around for now. “Shit, I’m screwing up so bad.”
“If it helps, I have no idea what you think you’re screwing up.”
“No,” says Cody, upset, and Noah’s not used to existing this far outside of the loop. All he can do is watch as Cody digs his blunt fingernails into his jean-clad thigh. “It’s like, you’re the only reason I’m here and I was hoping to talk to you or just…”
Noah is incredibly grateful for the cover of nighttime because he’s sure whatever emotion is scribbled across his face right now is far too embarrassing to be seen in daylight. He’s the only reason Cody showed up to this party? He doesn’t remember mentioning that he was going to be here in any of their past conversations unless… Noah quits thinking entirely when Cody shoves his hands in his pockets, aiming a feeble smile at him, a ghost of the one he adorned earlier.
“I’m not going to ask how you knew I’d be here.” Noah inhales, takes a grounding breath. “I’m flattered though.”
“What I’m trying to say is that it’s hard to get you alone. I’ve been trying, right, but I’m not getting anywhere, and I don’t know why I’m still listening to Harold’s advice when you don’t like him as much as you don’t like me and…” Cody clears his throat. “I should stop talking.”
“… Oh,” says Noah after a few moments of stunned silence. He’s stuck on, it’s hard to get you alone, it’s hard to get you alone, like a broken record left on loop, and when had…? What is going on? He angles for an explanation with a thankfully level voice, to which Cody’s expression pinches further. He looks like he’s swallowed a lemon.
“Are you gonna make me say it?”
“Say what?”
“Fuck. I like you. Like, a lot. A lot, a lot,” reiterates Cody. Noah wonders if this is all some odd fever dream he’ll wake up from, sweaty and spun out in the suffocating safety of his dorm. He discreetly attempts to pinch himself and bites back the hiss that nearly escapes his lips. “It—yeah. Whatever. I’ll stop wasting your time.”
“Hold on,” says Noah before his brain can catch up. “I don’t get it?” He doesn’t mean to lilt his voice as high as he does but what’s done is done.
“What do you mean?” Cody asks. There are a ton of questions being flung around tonight and not enough answers in Noah’s humble opinion. He wants to say as much but their friendship is standing on thin laths and he’s so unfathomably far out of his depth already; he doesn’t intend to dig himself into a deeper hole.
“You like me? No offense but I don’t see why.”
“… You’re seriously gonna make me say it.” Cody huffs, crossing his arms over his chest as he begins addressing the mounds of dirt beneath them. “Um, you’re hot, you have a good taste in movies, you, uh… I thought you were playing hard to get and I kinda dug that at first but I’m not so sure I want to—want to do that anymore. I was reading, like, the vibe that you liked me too for a little bit there but… do I really have to tell you more?”
“I like you too,” says Noah, feeling like he’s plunged off the side of a cliff with no end in sight. He’s significantly less mortified than he would’ve been if he had to be the one to confess first but still. No one has ever told him he’s hot before. No one is falling all over themselves to gain the attention of someone like him.
“You—huh? Really?”
“I’m not the best at this sort of…” says Noah, hoping that Cody will fill in the blank.
“I like to think otherwise,” replies Cody with another set of finger guns and Noah wonders, how did I fall for him? The answer isn’t as opaque as he likes to pretend. “I totally knew you did.”
“That’s rich coming from the person who started this tangent by saying he finds me horrible to talk to.”
“And that’s a lot of words to say you like me back,” says Cody, sing-songy. “Right? Right?”
“Right? Right?” Noah parrots mockingly, swinging an arm over Cody’s scrawny shoulders. He snorts, leaning into the touch, and Noah softens, allowing himself a small smile. He’s warm against him, a reprieve from the ceaseless wind battering his drafty costume.
“What did the first vampire say to the second vampire?”
Noah hums to let him know he’s listening.
“When I saw you, it was love at first bite.” Cody dissolves into giggles at his own dumb joke, ducking his head into his shoulder while Noah groans, unable to shove him off now that he has confirmation that yes, Cody does somehow like him back despite the avoidance routine he’s been adopting for the majority of the semester.
“You’re incorrigible,” intones Noah with a shake of his head, hushed with the ever-present white noise of drunkards enjoying their Halloween night.
“But you like me,” says Cody. “I want to suck your blood,” he adds in a horrendous impression of Dracula’s accent, waggling his eyebrows like the cheesy dork he actually is, and Noah endeavors to shut him up. He misses his mark, kissing the corner of Cody’s mouth, but the small noise of surprise he involuntarily lets out is music to Noah’s ears. God, he’s in over his head.
“I should actually find my idiot friends now,” says Noah albeit reluctantly on this insistence. If it were up to him, he’d spend all night pressing Cody into the cracked wall of the house, shaded by the awning, but he’s somewhat afraid of what horrid sequence of events combining Izzy and an unsupervised surplus of alcoholic beverages will bring about.
“Fine but I’m coming with. You aren’t getting rid of me that easily.”
“Wouldn’t want to,” says Noah like a promise and they clasp hands in the face of music booming from the multitude of amps and leery, over-excited crowd.