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In this world, pretty boys had a weird, mysterious power.
That was a fact Noah had come to terms with, strange as it was. There was something about conventionally attractive men that enthralled even the most frigid of people, swaying them under the influence of their handsomeness; as if every objectively good looking guy was blessed to always roll a natural 20 on every charisma roll they made, even if they weren’t all that charismatic.
He’d even had the displeasure of meeting the epitome of this fact; a model known as Justin who he’d initially met at Camp Wawanakwa. Justin was as entitled as he was attractive, which was an awful combination of traits to have, which made the teen almost impossible to be around for an extended period of time. Luckily, he’d always been the quiet sort (something about maintaining a ‘mewing’ streak?), so Noah’s suffering through the pretty idiot’s company wasn’t entirely unbearable. At the very least he made for good eye-candy. It was a shame that was all he really had to offer.
Justin had bewitched the majority of the Total Drama cast as early as his introduction to the show, through means of just standing there and looking nice. And Noah meant that literally; the model had a good third of the cast entranced as he stepped onto the docks of Wawanakwa, to the point that a few of them didn’t even catch his name over the sheer intensity of the pretty boy energy they’d been assaulted by.
And later, another prime example of this fact was introduced to the same show; this time under the name of Alejandro Burromuerto, who was not only unfairly blessed in the looks department but had wits and athleticism to match. Of course, no one was infallible- despite how hard Alejandro tried to present himself as a paragon of perfection, his sly temperament and competitive ruthlessness betrayed his less-than-pretty personality underneath all those layers of Hispanic hotness. To be fair, Noah wasn’t sure why anyone expected the guy who initially qualified for ‘Total Drama Dirtbags’ to not be, well, a dirtbag.
He’d even used his pretty boy privilege to seduce and consequently eliminate Bridgette, in a manner far more artfully deceitful than Justin ever could’ve dreamed of doing. Noah was almost impressed.
Almost.
The thing about ‘pretty boy privilege’, as the bookworm had come to dub it, was that it made no sense. It was as derisory as it was annoying. ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder’, as the saying goes, and yet the powers that be seemed to favour those who were conventionally attractive anyway? What a joke.
Luckily, this was easily combated by making the pretty boys, well, not pretty. Either by ruining their own beauty, or by presenting a ‘better’ alternative.
—
At first, Noah had tried to sabotage Alejandro’s own looks to negate his beguiling powers. Something similar had befallen Justin during his tenure on Total Drama Action after all, even if the effects were only temporary.
He didn’t quite anticipate just how protective the latino was over his appearance.
Swapping his conditioner for some of Chef’s used cooking oil was a bust.
Alejandro had stormed out of the communal showers of their latest pit stop- the jet itself didn’t have anything more than a few toilet cubicles, so it landed in dedicated pit stops between challenges once every 24 hours to give the competitors the opportunity to shower or ‘freshen up’- with nothing but a towel around his waist, dripping with shower water and face contorted into a scowl as he crushed the offending bottle in an iron grip.
“Who did this?!” He roared, gesturing towards the bottle of conditioner-turned-oil.
Predictably, the cast were too enraptured by the sight of a wet, barely dressed Alejandro (and really, the towel left very little to the imagination) to answer the enraged Spaniard, resulting in him stomping off to presumably accost one of the poor interns into retrieving him a new bottle of conditioner.
“...Is it hot in here, or is it just him.” Leshawna commented saucily. Muttered agreements resounded from the rest of the cast.
The worst part? His hair wasn’t even greasy. Alejandro had noticed the swap before it could damage his hair.
His second attempt at aesthetic sabotage was also a bust. As was the third.
Eventually, Noah ran out of hygiene products to ruin, and Alejandro’s own paranoia made endeavouring to do so more trouble than it was worth. Seriously; the slimy sleazeball had resorted to ferreting away his belongings into the vents, just to prevent anyone from tampering with them. Noah wasn’t about to start crawling through the enclosed tunnels for any reason- he wasn’t that desperate.
So trying to unpretty the pretty boy fell onto the backburner.
—
It wasn’t until his tentative friendship acquaintanceship with Lindsay evolved into the bimbo (she’d reclaimed ‘bimbo’ as a term of empowerment, and who was Noah to deny her that?) asking to give him a ‘glow up’ that Noah was inadvertently bestowed a new method of depowering the slippery seductor.
What better way to fight fire than with more fire?
His relationship with the ditzy girl had really blossomed during their shared stay in the Economy cabin- when she and Tyler weren’t too busy sucking face (though that had been a very recent development, given Lindsay’s faulty memory), and when Noah himself wasn’t occupied with wrangling both Owen and Izzy into some semblance of docility, he and the bottle-blonde often shared time together. Lindsay, as inherently kind as she was, was a huge gossip, and the cynic had a not-so-guilty pleasure for spilling tea, so the two usually bonded over sharing secrets and scandals.
After their challenge in Germany, wherein Team Amazon had claimed victory over their competitors yet again (though Noah had his doubts that their win was as well-earned as they’d assumed) and the lovely Leshawna had plummeted from their aerial prison, Lindsay and Noah huddled up together to discuss the latest hot topic; Heather’s facial reconstruction surgery á la Leshawna’s fists.
“I think even her nose is a little crooked now! And did you see the shiner she has?”
“I sure did, but I don’t think she’ll be doing a lot of ‘seeing’ anytime soon with her eye swollen like that. And what about her cheeks? They’re puffed up like she’s just had her wisdom teeth removed- do you think Leshawna managed to knock one of those out too?”
Their hushed exchange was all but drowned out in the sea of voices, varied in their levels of disgruntlement, that ebbed and flowed through the Economy cabin. So neither had to worry about eavesdroppers overhearing what had devolved into a Heather roasting session. (Not that anyone would intrude- it was Heather, after all. No one was racing to defend Her Highness from an insult or two.)
“Oh my gosh! The symmetry of her whole face is totally ruined now. I bet she’s so mad.”
Lindsay paused thoughtfully- an incredibly rare occurrence- after her last statement, seeming to consider the nerd in front of her in a manner that was almost pensive. Noah would’ve questioned her sudden bout of uncharacteristic rumination, but he was too surprised by the fact Lindsay knew what ‘symmetry’ was to process her sudden change in demeanour.
“You know, your face is super symmetrical too. You could be really pretty if you weren’t so, you know, frowny.” She commented, tilting her head closer to get a better look at Noah’s apparently symmetrical face.
“Gee, thanks. I’ll let my cosmetologist know they’re doing a great job.” Noah rolled his eyes, brushing off the odd compliment with disbelief souring his tone.
“You have a cosmo-tolly-gist? Me too!”
“No, Linds, I was being sarcastic.”
“Oh. Well, you could really use one! I bet you’d look great with a little work.” The bimbo smiled earnestly at her companion, who feigned thoughtfulness with a hum before responding in a dry deadpan.
“Hm, yeah. No thanks.”
The taller reacted to his declination with a disappointed huff. After a split-second of whatever constituted ‘thought’ for Lindsay, she cupped his face between her hands, all but forcing Noah to look up at her sincere cornflower eyes with reignited vigour.
“No, really! Let me give you a makeover and you’ll see.” She implored, excitement tinging the edges of her voice.
Noah didn’t like the giddy sheen of enthusiasm in her eyes.
“A makeover? What next, a tea party? Painting each other’s nails? This isn’t a sleepover, Barbie. Save that kind of stuff for your Dreamhouse.”
Deflection via sarcasm, his go-to for potentially volatile situations.
“Don’t be silly Nolan, we can’t have a tea party until after the competition. But we can paint each other’s nails! After the makeover.”
Damn it, he forgot that Lindsay was both too stubborn and too simple for deflection; new plan, Noah was going to sprint to the nearest fire exit and throw himself off of the jet.
(He staunchly refused to acknowledge the bottle-blonde’s butchering of his name. By this point, everyone on the jet was used to Lindsay’s brand of airheadedness.)
Before Noah could launch himself out of her hold towards the fire exit, the taller hit him with a devastating blow; sad puppy eyes. His only weakness.
“Pleeeeeeease? Just let me give you one makeover, that’s all I’m asking.”
The cynic heaved out a long-suffering sigh, placing his own hands tentatively over Lindsay’s that were still clasped on his cheeks and moving them to rest in the space between them, cupping her perfectly manicured fingernails between his palms.
“Fine.” He groaned, defeated, “One, and I’m changing back before the next challenge.”
Lindsay responded with a delighted squeal.
—
A makeover under the merciless guidance of one self-titled fashionista was not how Noah expected to spend the next few hours of his life, but what are expectations if not something to be defied? It wasn’t like he had anything better to do whilst the Jumbo Jet continued its journey to their next challenge location, wherever that may be.
And when Noah described it as merciless, he wasn’t exaggerating. Lindsay had decided that just about everything about him had to change; from the clothes he wore to his haircut.
She’d accosted some poor interns into gathering together what little spare clothing they had on the jet that would fit Noah’s admittedly lacking frame, and somehow managed to get her hands on a pair of scissors that she brandished with frankly far too much glee. The bookworm would’ve actively feared for his safety, had he not already forgone any pretences of ‘safety’ under the tender care of Total Drama.
Which is why, when the bimbo told him to sit cross-legged on the floor in the corner of the Economy cabin, Noah was quick to comply.
He knew when to pick his battles.
The blonde utilised one of the few blankets the Economy cabin had been provided to set up a make-shift curtain around their corner, hiding the pair from the others’ prying eyes- though prying was perhaps an overstatement, as most of them eyed Noah with silent amusement, as if they couldn’t wait to see the fool Lindsay would turn him into, but otherwise weren’t all that interested in the duo’s endeavour.
So long as they stayed silent, Noah couldn’t find it in himself to care what they thought.
Satisfied with their set up, Lindsay plucked an array of miscellaneous beauty kits from her luggage and set them down by her begrudging captive, followed swiftly by a pile of clothing that was delivered by an intern who smiled almost coyly at Noah as they skittered away from the pair. Jerk.
The makeover itself was… fairly dull, really. Noah had grown up with eight sisters, so he wasn’t as ignorant to the trials and tribulations of modern beauty standards as most other boys his age.
Having his eyebrows meticulously plucked and sculpted was annoying, but not unbearable. Having his face slathered in moisturiser, with a pointed comment or two from Lindsay about his massive forehead and ‘premature worry line’, was weird but not entirely uncomfortable (despite how much she had lamented her pigmented skin products not being dark enough to match his shade). The pinch of an eyelash curler against his vulnerable eyelids had him apprehensive for a moment, but ultimately he wasn’t too bothered (Lindsay’s remark about his ‘long girly eyelashes’ as she threatened to poke his eye out with a mascara wand could’ve been foregone, however.)
He bore it all with quiet, carefully crafted blankness; the perfect canvas for Lindsay to work on. She seemed to appreciate it if the upwards tilt of her lips was anything to go by.
After a while, the pampering was almost enjoyable. She’d even buffed and shaped his nails for him, painting them a shiny black. Noah wasn’t sure how he felt about that.
Then came the haircut.
Noah… fell asleep during it. Sue him, Lindsay kept playing with his hair and it felt really nice. Of course he was going to fall asleep! Sharp objects be damned!
The nerd was woken by a gentle hand shaking his shoulder.
“Norman… No, wait, that’s not right. Noooo… Noah! That’s it, Noah! Wakey wakey!”
Wow, she’d actually remembered his name. And all it took was letting her use him as a human canvas. He’d have to give some pointers to Tyler- not that the jock would listen, given his attempt as wingmanship in New York had been misconstrued.
Noah stirred awake and went to rub at his sleep-dusted eyes, but was stopped by an iron grip on his forearm.
“You’re not ruining your lashes after I worked so hard on them!” Lindsay chided.
“Oh, right. Sorry.” Noah condeeded. The two shared a frozen moment of stillness, before the shorter spoke up once more, “Can I have my arm back?”
“Are you going to touch your eyes?”
“...No?”
“Alright then!”
The taller eased her white-knuckled grip on his forearm, allowing Noah’s hand to fall back into his lap. He raised an inquisitive eyebrow up towards the authoritative blonde, a non-verbal question hanging in the still air between them.
Well?
“I’m all finished with your hair, now we just have to pick out an outfit!”
Oh, joy.
Noah spared a glance to the floor, eyeing the scattered strands of ebony hair that pooled beneath him like a puddle of mud. Hairy mud.
A wave of trepidation washed across him; just how much of his hair did she cut off?
“Do I get to see myself first?” He asked meekly in little more than a whisper, mindful of the contestants outside of their hovel that could potentially overhear his moment of weakness.
Lindsay raised a considerate finger to her chin, her gaze drifted to the wall as she pondered over his request.
“No, outfit first. And then you can see yourself.”
Double joy.
And so, the two spent the better half of an hour sifting through the surprisingly large pile of spare clothing the interns had to offer. By the two, Noah meant just Lindsay, of course. The cynic was blind to all things fashion related, even with his contacts in, so his input for this stage of his ‘glow up’ was ignored. Not that he was complaining, it meant he got a few minutes of blessedly quiet solitude, in which he cracked open his book.
(He’d retrieved the reading material from his luggage, which was fortuitously close by to their set up, so the nerd only had to extend a prying hand out from behind the blanket and reach blindly for a few moments before claiming his prize.)
Regrettably, all good things must come to an end. Lindsay eventually came to a decision on what clothes she wanted Noah to wear and shoved the apparel into his arms, resulting in the pessimist dropping his book to the ground with a thump.
Triple joy.
“Alright, just put this on and then call me back so I can make sure it looks good, okay?” Lindsay instructed as she made her way towards the blanket-curtain.
“Whatever you say, Admiral Lindsay.” Noah jokingly saluted his companion with his free hand, the other occupied with holding her chosen outfit. (Book long forgotten on the cold, unforgiving floor.)
The bimbo offered him a blinding grin, and her own amused salute back, before her head ducked behind the veil.
—
Emerging from behind the blanket-curtain, Lindsay in tow, shouldn’t have been as daunting as it was.
He’d called the taller back into their ‘makeover corner’ after donning her chosen outfit. Lindsay’s eyes had glimmered with something at the sight of him, a weird amalgamation of pride, joy and other foreign emotions Noah wasn’t nearly socially literate enough to decipher. The cynic was surprised she hadn’t started squealing again, though the hands clamped over her mouth suggested that she really wanted to.
Those same hands had quickly and wordlessly latched themselves to the collar of the his shirt- Noah absolutely didn’t yelp out in shock at the action- and swiftly popped open the first few buttons, exposing his collarbone to the chilled air of the Economy cabin. The pessimist internally weighed the pros and cons of stubbornly re-buttoning his collar and ultimately decided that Lindsay was just as bullheaded as himself; she’d probably just unbutton it again, and his effort would be wasted.
Thankfully the dark teal sweater (a shade he’d mentally dubbed McLean teal, since it shared its colour with their illustrious host’s iconic shirt) he’d been provided abated most of coldness he would’ve otherwise suffered from, though it’s low hanging v-neck did little to hide the uncharacteristic display of skin.
It seemed like he was going for a tits out kind of look today, then.
Needless to say, Noah was extremely worried curious about how he appeared.
He’d stated as such, and so he and Lindsay were on their way to the confessional cubicle- the only place on the jet with an accessible mirror. But that meant leaving the comfort of his curtain-hidden corner and facing the rest of his team (and the remnants of Team Victory) without knowing what exactly Lindsay had done to his looks.
Noah didn’t care about appearances. They were fickle, and meaningless, and his intelligence would always be more important than how he looked. How others physically perceived him didn’t matter.
…So why was he so anxious?
Stepping gingerly out into the greater cabin, Noah tried his best to sneak towards the exit, only to be stopped by a gasp. Several gasps, actually.
“Woah!”
“Who would’ve thought…”
“Lindsay, what did you do?”
“Little buddy, is that you?”
Owen’s venerate voice echoed across the room, his whispered utterance just slightly louder than the gentle cacophony of murmurs resounding through the Economy cabin.
Noah caught sight of him quickly, his larger form hard to miss even among the crowd, and he felt a lot of the tension in his shoulders ease at the sight of a friendly face. Owen’s seaweed eyes were locked on to him, almost bulbous at the spectacle he apparently made, and his cheeks grew slightly rosy- second hand embarrassment, maybe? At least no one had started laughing yet.
The cynic offered his best friend a sardonic smile.
“That bad, huh?”
A hush swept over the room, disbelief palatable in the otherwise stale air. Noah cocked his head to the side in confusion and raised a concerned eyebrow. At the motion, stray locks of hair fell across his cheeks- unusual, as his previous hairstyle had sent any flyaway strands outwards, not towards his face. What had Lindsay done to his hair?
To his side, the bottle-blonde let out an offended huff at the slight against her makeover abilities.
“It’s not bad, I did a really good job! Tell him!” She cried, glaring pointedly at Owen, who had stood from his seat on the rickety Economy benches to skitter towards the pair. His blown gaze never left the nervously hunched over form of his little buddy, despite being addressed by Lindsay.
“Uh, yeah. Yeah, you look really good, Noah. Like, really good.” Owen spluttered out, gargling around his words as if he couldn’t decide if he wanted to say them or swallow them.
“Alright, there’s no need for false platitudes. I’m not exactly a good looking guy.” Noah scoffed (which was met with an array of incredulous noises from the crowd that the nerd was too preoccupied to acknowledge), then turned to face Lindsay with a resigned shrug, “Might as well see what you’ve done to me, though. Let’s go.”
A few steps towards the exit later, followed in kind by an indignant Lindsay, Noah paused in place as he was struck by a sudden realisation.
“Oh, wait. My book. It's still on the floor.”
He backtracked towards the curtained off corner, pushing the blanket aside to reveal their make-shift hovel to the rest of the cabin. A scattering of makeup appliances littered across the floor, alongside messy piles of discarded clothing and a shiny pair of scissors sitting innocently next to the remnants of Noah’s hair. In the centre of the mess, his book laid innocently on the ground.
Noah gingerly bent down to grab at the callously dropped novel, ignoring the discomfort of how comparatively less baggy the burgundy slacks Lindsay had picked out for him were to his cargo shorts. Unfortunately, it seemed the rest of the cabin had also picked up on his issue.
A wolf whistle rang across the room piercing against the awkward quietness, like the clattering of dropped metal pipe in a silent warehouse. Then, much to the cynic’s mortification, someone uttered.
“Dang, they’re like two perfect apples.”
Noah jolted upwards, clutching his book self-consciously to his chest as he pivoted around to face the crowd. Their eyes, all collectively trained on where his… behind previously would’ve been, flickered upwards to his face- which was aglow with his embarrassment.
He spared an appalled glance towards Lindsay, who’s previous indignation has thawed into an airy, somewhat gloating grin at the comment. A similar glance towards Owen revealed his best friend had decided to mentally vacate from the situation entirely- he’d frozen in spot, the promise of words trapped inside his throat but never breaching the vacancy of his slack jaw. His face was equally as flushed as Noah’s own.
So much for supporting him in these trying times.
Through the oppressive force of his own humiliation, the bookworm managed to squeak out.
“Lindsay. Confessional. Now.”
Then he promptly bolted through the exit.
The clacking of heeled boots soon accompanied him.
“Why are we running?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
—
Noah hesitated at the door of the confessional. The enlightening experience he’d had in the Economy cabin notwithstanding, he’d never been one for caring about his appearance, and yet the idea of seeing just how unsightly he must’ve looked to warrant such a reaction from his competitors had him feeling oddly meek. Uncharacteristic of his usual unbothered self. (He obstinately ignored the fact that they’d apparently been ogling his arse, because he really wasn’t ready to unpack that suitcase of mortification.)
It was silly, entirely irrational, he reassured himself; even if he wasn’t aesthetically pleasing, it didn’t matter. Looks were insignificant. Being Lindsay’s dress-up doll was an enrichment activity for the blonde, and a token of their friendship- it didn’t matter what he ended up looking like so long as she’d had fun.
And yet, he still stalled at the door.
Lindsay hovered impatiently behind him, growing increasingly frustrated with his indecision, until her simmering restlessness met its boiling point.
“Come on already! Just open the door!”
“I’m going to. Eventually.”
“Do you need help opening it? Door handles are confusing sometimes, so I won’t judge.”
Noah blanked at the suggestion. Really? Was she really asking him that? He sighed in exasperation, resisting the urge to pinch at the bridge of his nose, or slam his head into the adjacent wall. Either action would just rile up the blonde behind him- he’d been all but forbidden from touching his face after all, in fear of ruining Lindsay’s hard work.
“No, Linds. I know how to open the door just fine.”
“Oh. So why aren’t you opening it?”
And wasn’t that just the question of the hour? Why wasn’t he opening the door?
Deep down, Noah knew why; he was, for some inane and inexplicable reason, terrified of what he might see in the confessional mirror. Whilst admitting such was painful for his usually unshakable ego, it was the regrettable truth.
So, knowing that the taller wouldn’t be satisfied without an answer, the pessimist answered honestly.
“I’m scared, alright? I’ve never had to worry about how I look before, and now everyone’s making a huge deal out of how ugly I am, and I just- Woah!”
Noah didn’t have time to finish bewailing the woes of his bleeding heart, as Lindsay grabbed him by the shoulders, spinning him around to face her with a determined snarl.
“No. You listen to me, mister!” She growled, and poked him in the chest with an accusing finger, “You’re gonna march your butt in there and appreciate what I’ve done for you. And then you’re gonna admit that I was right, that you’re super pretty behind all of that frowny-ness, and you’re gonna thank me for helping you!”
And with that, the blonde spun her friend around to once again face the daunting door, opening it with her free hand and shoving his lankier frame into the cubicle, before slamming it shut behind him.
…Why were all of his friends so quick to manhandle him into inconvenient situations?
Noah glared at the door in front of him. The same daunting blockade, this time from the opposite perspective, remained just as unreactive as it had from outside the cubicle. Not that he expected anything more- it was just a door, after all.
Just like the gleaming, reflective surface that loomed tauntingly in the corners of his vision was just a mirror.
Well. It was better to just get it over with, really.
Taking a steeling breath, and internally chastising himself for getting so worked up over nothing, Noah approached the sink counter and peered into the mirror.
…
…
…
Oh for fuck’s sake, he was a total twink!
Lindsay had considerably chopped away at his hair’s length. Where previously the ends had brushed at his shoulders, they now floated just past his chin. Without the previous weight holding it down, its natural slight waviness made his hair frame his face almost buoyantly, like an ebony halo. She’d also decided to ditch his side part, instead opting to part his hair from the middle which left stray inquisitive strands to fall across his forehead and into his eyes.
And his eyes! If Noah was less obstinate, he’d admit that the blonde had a point- his eyelashes really were ridiculously long with a little mascara. Of course, being the prideful, stubborn nerd he was, he instead chose to ignore that little tidbit of information and never acknowledge it again, because admitting that Lindsay was right about that would be synonymous with admitting that she was right about everything concerning his appearance.
And she wasn’t. Not at all.
…
She was totally right, and Noah hated it.
If he didn’t know any better, the cynic would’ve thought someone else was looking back at him from the mirror; like it was some sort of cross-dimensional window, where an alternate version of himself from a universe where he was unfairly, uncannily pretty peered into his reality. Of course, the only peering happening in the confessional was Noah’s own disbelieving, scrutinising stare at his own altered appearance.
Looking into a mirror and barely recognising yourself was a weird experience.
His dumbstruck gaze drifted down towards his new apparel, the outfit Lindsay had flung at him after complaining about his awful fashion taste; a white button-up (sans the top few buttons, courtesy of the fashionista herself), a dark teal sweater (significantly too big for him, but remarkably soft), deep maroon slacks accompanied by a belt (slimmer and more restrictive than his usual choice of baggy cargo shorts, unfortunately) and a pair of dark dress shoes (Noah was not insecure about the size of his feet, though he was reluctant to part with his clunky hiking boots).
He looked like an elitist private school attendee or the brooding, bookish love interest from an English Major’s wish-fulfilment romance novel.
Noah was surprisingly okay with that.
The sweater Lindsay had chosen for him near enough swamped his torso, with the v-shaped neckline all but falling off of his shoulders due to how obscenely oversized it was, exposing more of the white button-up beneath than he would’ve preferred. He’d tucked the ends of the fabric into his waistline whilst changing, though briefly considered untucking the sweater so its excessive length could hide his… assets. The last thing Noah wanted was a repeat of his humiliation in the Economy cabin.
Before he could act on that consideration the confessional door slid open, revealing the expectant smirk that had split across Lindsay’s face. The blonde tentatively stepped into the cubicle, her cowboy boots clicking against the tiled floor with every careful step, until she too leant over the sink counter to admire her work.
“So, what do you think?” She asked.
Noah raised a tentative hand towards the surface of the mirror, watching intently as his reflection followed the motion. There was a strange sort of cognitive dissonance in watching an unfamiliar version of himself mimicking his actions, but Noah was quickly growing accustomed to the fact that the stranger in the glass was him, and he looked good.
“I’m… still taking it in.”
A contemplative pause washed over the pair for a few moments as the bookworm studied himself in the mirror. Had he been less focused on the incredulous situation before him, Noah would’ve chastised himself for acting so Justin-like.
“Soooooooo,” Lindsay began after a few awkward moments of silence, dragging out the vowel playfully, “do I get a ‘thank you, Lindsay, you were totally right’?” She suggested coyly, slightly deepening her voice into a nasal imitation of Noah’s usual stoic drone.
Well, if she wanted to play that game with him, Noah was more than happy to oblige.
“Thank you, Lindsay, you were totally right! I’m supes adorbs, like, oh em gee!” The pessimist quipped, straining his tone into a high-pitched valley girl impression and delivering his reply with as much faux-excitement he could muster.
“Eeeee! I knew you’d love it!”
Oh, right. Lindsay didn’t get sarcasm. Now he’d made a fool of himself for nothing. Though the bottle-blonde’s ecstatic, triumphant grin- that practically glowed in the reflective sheen of the mirror- swiftly overwrote his chagrin.
Noah was getting way too soft around his blondes. First Owen, and now Lindsay! He really needed to step up his ‘cold, indifferent snarker’ game.
“Yeah. You did a great job, Linds.”
—
The pair’s return to the Economy cabin was just as awkward and irksome as the pessimist had anticipated.
As soon as he and Lindsay had stepped into the cabin, everyone’s attention was on him. Like they’d entered a room full of illusory paintings- the kind that have eyes that follow your every movement- a comparison made even more accurate by the unnatural stillness of everyone present, as if they really were still-life paintings against the backdrop of the Economy benches. The competitors’ searching eyes stilled on the bookworm’s shorter form, burning with inquisition and interest and something weirdly reminiscent of reverence.
Well. That was new. Noah was usually able to slink from room to room unnoticed- one of his favourite perks about being a bit of a wallflower- and he’d been more than thankful for that ability. It wasn’t as if he’d commanded everyone’s attention as he entered; he wasn’t Alejandro, who couldn’t so much as blink without demanding someone notice. So why was everyone so suddenly interested in him now?
…No. No, surely not. There was no fucking way.
A pregnant pause weighed over the room, a metaphysical mass that crushed its occupants beneath heavy trepidation.
Noah had the opportunity to do something really funny here, if his theory was correct.
“...Um.” He began, then swivelled his head back to peer outside of the Economy cabin. There was no one behind him, of course, but Noah wanted to at least appear oblivious to why everyone was staring at him. Upon seeing no one, he turned his attention back towards the Loser Class occupants and raised a questioning finger towards his face, tilting his head innocently.
“Is there something on my face?”