Chapter Text
No one's ever had me (had me), not like you
Noah planned to never wake up on a plane again.
No, scratch that. Noah planned to never BE on a plane again.
After the clusterfuck that was Total Drama: World Tour, he didn’t think anyone would blame him. In one day, Noah got: manipulated by an eel, almost lost his best friend to a starved, half-animalistic Ezekiel, then thrown out of a moving aeroplane with a parachute that barely worked. (Thanks Chris).
Surprisingly, Noah had a lot of time to think while free falling over London. Although it was really only sixty seconds, as the parachute didn’t deploy until Noah was almost as dead as the late King Henry VIII, which Noah knew all about from Sierra. Apparently, she was quite the musical theater nerd. Apparently, after Henry died his body blew up in the casket due to his … er, size. Cody had vomited after Sierra said that little fact, and she spent the next hour and a half curled into a ball, wailing that she “hurt Cody Bear’s tummy-wummy.” Thankfully, Heather hit her with a pillow. He didn’t think he would ever thank Heather again.
However, while free falling and struggling with his parachute, Noah thought. He thought about his sudden and apparent death, because he was pretty sure he was gonna die, as well as about eels. Specifically, about one manipulating eel.
Noah was pretty sure he was right about Alejandro. He was normally right about people. He could tell Heather was a conniving bitch, that Gwen liked Courtney, that Sierra was insane. Alejandro, though, took a bit longer to figure out, because Alejandro was a lot of things.
For one, he was ridiculously handsome. Like, hotter than Justin, even though Owen said otherwise. Which wasn’t fair to begin with, because for about a day even looking in Alejandro’s general direction made Noah’s brain short circuit.
The accent also does not help matters. The accent does not help matters at all. Oh God, the first time Alejandro opened his mouth, Noah died inside. The first thing Alejandro said to him was a thinly veiled insult, to which he responded with snark, and Alejandro’s eyes sparked at him. Noah felt as if he could never fall from that high, of making Alejandro laugh.
Until he was falling out of an aeroplane.
But the main issue was that Alejandro was not just hot. He wasn’t like Justin was: simply effortlessly attractive but with the brain the size of a peanut. Alejandro was also intelligent, manipulative, and charming. He seemed absolutely perfect, until you turned your back on him and he stabbed you in it.
And yet, Noah couldn’t write him off as the villain of Total Drama: World Tour like so many of his friends did. Because Alejandro showed another side of himself to Noah, one that the cameras didn’t pick up. Sometimes, late at night, after the elimination ceremony finished and they all filed back into economy class, Alejandro would sit besides Noah and just. Talk. Alejandro would talk to Noah, well, whispering as to not wake the other contestants, about random things. Mostly about the past day’s challenge, but sometimes about himself. During these talks, Noah would pretend to be asleep. That was their arrangement, so to speak. Noah would let Alejandro talk to him, but pretend he wasn’t listening, and in return Alejandro would help Noah in challenges, but only a little, and only at the beginning. Eventually, Noah looked forward to these talks, it was almost like the confessional. And Noah was allowed to sleep-cuddle all he wanted. While he obviously didn’t want to cuddle Alejandro, it was simply convenient. It was weird, but it worked for them.
Until Noah decided to not trust Alejandro, trash-talked him to Owen, then got thrown out of the plane for it.
~~
After getting booted, (he did, in fact, not die, no thanks to Chris), Noah tried to ignore Total Drama. Of course he watched the finale; Owen got all the old cast over to his place to watch it. Alejandro and Heather were, obviously, not present, and Noah didn’t think about Alejandro after he fell into the volcano.
Actually, that’s a lie. Noah thought about Alejandro a lot. After Alejandro fell into the volcano and Heather won, Alejandro didn’t appear on any of the Aftermath shows. Noah didn’t notice, obviously, because he definitely wasn’t nervous. Or worried. Or cared at all.
Although Noah did feel cheated out of a million dollars, after a while, he cared less about Alejandro’s cruel actions, especially when Noah thought about it more. Alejandro had said to him, one night when Noah had fallen asleep on him, (he did that a lot more than shown on the show), that Alejandro felt that Noah was the only person who saw him as more than a conniving snake. Then Noah turned around and called him an eel behind his back. He had betrayed Alejandro just as Alejandro betrayed Leshawna and Bridget, and then himself. Noah thought that he saw anger in Alejandro’s eyes in London, as he was being eliminated, Alejandro’s smirk just solidified that feeling.
But, secretly, Noah rewatched his final episode. Alejandro’s smirk didn’t only show satisfaction. His eyes didn’t match. Alejandro’s good at hiding his true emotions, but after being his almost- friend for weeks, Noah started to be able to see through that mask, and it cracked when Noah was eliminated.
Noah didn’t know how to feel about that. He tried not to think about it.
He thought about it constantly.
~~
Noah was falling out of another aeroplane. He figured it was typical for him. The first time he got on an aeroplane since World Tour and the plane went down. It could’ve also been because it was Chris McLean’s plane. Chris had called Noah up a couple of months ago and offered him another assistant job, and Noah was just drunk enough to take it. Sue him, it was Eva’s birthday and he was stripped of cash.
So Noah found himself in another plane, this one much nicer than the beater they flew for the show. It was nice. Like real nice. Private. As far as planes Noah could find himself on, it wasn’t a bad choice.
Noah was enjoying the private array of tiny hand sandwiches, trying each one, just as Owen would, when the plane careened off its axis, and Noah was slammed into the sandwich table. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich fell onto his head. A serving plate fell onto his foot, which was just brilliant.
Chris’ voice blared over the loudspeaker system. “Attention potential funeral subjects! We’re having some slight turbulence, so please try not to die. Head to the back of the plane to jump to your demise!”
Slight, Noah thought. Yeah right.
Thankfully, the floor finished dropping beneath him, and Noah pulled himself up using the sandwich table. Many of the little hand sandwiches had splattered on the floor. What a shame. They were pretty good.
Grabbing his bag (mostly full of books), Noah made his way to the back of the plane, where Chef was passing out parachutes to the rest of the crew. Some people looked like they were about to throw up, one had passed out in the corner. They must be new.
Heading over to Chef, he grabbed a parachute for himself before passing the rest around the cabin. Chef looked surprised to see him, and tried to say something to him, but the back of the plane opened and the cabin got way too loud to hear anything.
So Noah jumped out of an aeroplane. Again.
As he was falling, Noah began to think. He found that he did that a lot when he was falling out of aeroplanes. Not that Noah had fallen out of a lot of aeroplanes; he wasn’t a skydiver. He just found himself falling out of them more than the average person.
Looking down, which Noah learned quickly the first time he jumped out of the Total Drama Jumbo Jet that one shouldn’t do, he realised that they were parachuting to Camp Wawanakwa. He found it was kind of peaceful from above. A poor intern fell screaming past Noah, right into the lake, and probably died, but it was still kind of peaceful. Especially because Noah wasn’t competing this time.
After watching that intern probably die, Noah decided to pull the parachute open and enjoy the ride down, as much as one can enjoy falling out of an aeroplane.