Chapter Text
“Jesus.”
You blink awake, wondering who the hell just swore -- by Marceline’s standards, anyway -- then realize that it was you who swore and with good reason: you’re crushed up against a terrified sleeping body that’s gripping you far too tightly. He’s heaving and crying and squeezing you and shit it’s happening again.
“’Oo the fuck jus’ swore in my ‘ouse?” That would be Marcie, now awake and thoroughly pissed.
“She didn’ swear, an’ it ain’ your ‘ouse any’ow!” There goes Tina, also awake and thoroughly pissed that Marcie keeps trying to claim ownership of the flat even though she can’t hold down a job and Tina’s the one who pays the rent. It was her flat to begin with anyway.
“If the two a you don’ stop yer squawkin’ I’ll be bangin’ on yer skulls, ya hear me?” There’s Rosie from the roof, not a yell, far from it, but the volume in her tone is more than enough. All arguments cease immediately.
You reach around the body ensnaring yours and flick on the bedside lamp. Noodle is near coiled around you, long lanky limbs clasping you close tight enough to bruise. His heart’s frantically pounding in your head as if it were your own. His face is streaked in tears.
“Oh Noodle baby, hush,” you croon as you pry his arms off of you and scoop him up from amidst all the junk he keeps on the bed, all 5-feet-ten-inches of him, cradling him as if he were still eight years old. He thrashes for only a moment when he’s separated from you, then curls into himself and tucks his head against your neck, sobbing. While you try to calm him down from the horrors of his nightmare, shooshing him and rubbing his back, you inspect yourself. No bruises this time, thankfully. You think you’re out of Icy-Hot anyway.
This sudden change in behavior was startling at first, still is, nothing like the eight-year-old you grew up with, language barrier aside, camping out under the stars at night and building blanket forts in the lounge of Kong Studios, watching stupid Japanese game shows and Studio Ghibli movies on the television and giggling the night away. Even when the band had split the first time it was as though nothing had changed nearly two years afterward when they all came back, even if you’d both matured quite a bit in both mind and body. But this time something had happened when he disappeared; no one is still really sure what. When asked he just shivers and mumbles hell and that’s all you’re able to get out of him so you quit asking. So either Hell itself or somewhere Hell-like. Either way it leaves him wracked with nightmares and mental scars and severe PTSD that the doctor said he may never fully recover from. This is only the fourth episode this month though. He’s getting better. You guess all this junk piled on the bed -- it invokes a sense of security, apparently -- and your presence at night have helped. The last time he’d had an episode without you nearby he’d nearly set his room on fire by knocking over the lamp in his sleep. Even if he does hug you tightly enough to bruise, it’s worth it if it helps him recover.
Noodle finally settles down again after several moments, easing back into a kinder sleep, and you tuck him back up underneath Pikachu and Godzilla and his hockey stick and skateboard and switch the lamp back off. He’s never told you what the nightmares are about, but you can guess: most likely memories of whatever had happened in the four years he’d been gone instead of typical nightmares, his worst fears realized. Probably demons wearing your face and the faces of his bandmates dying. Him probably the one doing the slaying. Him probably pleading forgiveness over and over again as he’s forced to kill creatures that look and act like his friends and family but really aren’t.
You really don’t like to think about that possibility.
He tucks back up against you, slips his arms around you in a loose hug, buries his head against your neck. You take a corner of the blanket and gently dab at the tears streaking his face, wincing yourself at his wincing when you brush against the enormous bruise still bright and clear underneath his eye. His eyelids flutter and blink open and you curse internally. Dangit, can no one get a decent night’s sleep around here anymore, even the one who probably needs it most?
Noodle breathes a slow, heavy sigh and pushes himself into a sort of sitting position, leaning back on his elbows. He’s gnawing at his lip, a bit of a tic he picked up from Tina. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?” Pretty much all trace of his Japanese accent is gone save for a bit of pronunciation, it’s smoother and far more British and damn, it suits him.
“Not this time.”
“Okay.” He breathes hard through his nose in relief. “Okay. Thank God.”
“Stop yer damn swearing!”
“For th’love of-- Dammit, Marcie, can’ you give ‘im a break? Poor kid’s been frough ‘Ell an’ back again!”
“Both of you shut the hell up!”
Noodle sighs. “How long have they been at this?”
“Not long. Want some tea?”
“Yes please.”
It’s a bit of a struggle finding your way down the staircase in the dark -- and Noodle winds up tripping over Marcie’s stair machine making the journey that much worse, but eventually you’re both in the admittedly dirty kitchen nook in one piece and there’s a kettle brewing on the stove. In the dim electric light Noodle looks pale and exhausted and his bruises pop far too brightly to make you comfortable.
“Do you want to talk about it?” He never does, but you feel you should ask anyway. Besides, the doctor said it would help somehow, some sort of psychology that would help him heal as long as he knew someone cared enough to inquire, even if he never wanted to talk about it.
“No. Thank you though.” He’s staring down at the table, picking at something stuck on it with a fingernail until he learns it’s probably never coming off and he quits trying. “Kind of funny, isn’t it? The only guy in this place is probably cleaner than the women that live here. You aside, of course.”
True. He’s not exactly clean himself, but compared to his bandmates he may as well be Cinderella, poofy white dress and glass slippers and all. Pretty amusing mental image, that.
He’s changed a lot, in some ways you don’t necessarily like. He’s too quiet now. Sure, he’d always been rather quiet, rather thoughtful, but when he’d come back from Japan and he’d realized he could finally communicate with you and the others properly it seemed like he never stopped talking. Now he hardly speaks at all, and most of it is sharp comments directed at Marcie for leaving him for dead. He doesn’t seem to buy her tall tales of having searched half the world over for him, which she herself doesn’t even seem to believe, considering she may have been drunk or on acid at the time, or for replacing him with a cyborg -- you think if she’d bothered making it anatomically correct he would have shot her point-blank, no questions asked. You don’t know necessarily where he would have shot her, you don’t think he could ever bring himself to kill her, but he probably may have blown a leg off, or an arm, or an ear, just something that wouldn’t kill her immediately if it did happen to kill her. That was another. He had become far too violent. Thankfully he hasn’t whipped out the tommy gun he’d carried when he’d showed up at the Beach along with Rosie since then, but he’ll shout at Marcie if and when they ever get into arguments where he’d once handled her in a level-headed manner and you’ve caught him punching walls and tables before. His knuckles are scarred over from being busted open so many times. You wonder how much is him and how much is the side effects of various medications.
The kettle’s starting to whistle, so you remove it from the stove eye and get out the lemon juice from the fridge. Ginseng, plenty of lemon, the way he likes it. He thanks you when you present the cup to him but he doesn’t drink it immediately, just sits there with it cupped in his hands. He makes a soft noise when you run your fingers through his dark hair but he doesn’t pull away like he used to not long after you’d all moved in.
“I will say this,” he finally mumbles after a stretched-out moment. “Bill and Ted were right and all our album covers lied to us.”
It takes a moment before you finally process what he’s just said and you realize it’s from some stupid ‘90s movie he admittedly loves where the two main characters wind up in Hell and they casually comment that it’s nothing like their album covers depict it to be.
Is he lowkey admitting he’d actually been in Hell for nearly four years?
Or maybe he’s just trying to lighten the mood, you’re not really sure.
He does finally drink his tea after a few minutes, asks if you’d like to go for a walk with him. Nothing out of the ordinary, late-night walks were one of your favorite pastimes when you two were younger. Rosie waves goodbye from the roof as you step out into the spring air. It’s a bit chilled and you wish you’d brought a jacket. Noodle doesn’t seem to mind the cold. Before you know it you’ve reached the Thames; it’s still covered by a thin sheet of ice but you can see where the water swirls and tumbles along beneath the surface. Noodle stands there on the bridge, looking down into the water below. The lamplight shimmers off his iridescent blue plugs; they’re small ones, but you swear Rosie had been ready to disown him when he suddenly came home one day not long after you’d all moved into the flat with those four millimeter plugs in his earlobes. You still remember the deadpan look he’d given her, and the way he’d said “Rosalinda, I am a grown man” as his only rebuttal to her argument that he wasn’t allowed to get plugs still makes you laugh sometimes. To her he’s still her baby child, this little boy who couldn’t speak a lick of English eleven years ago. Seeing him grown up when she wasn’t even there for almost half of it must be a hard pill to swallow.
“Remember that little creek near Kong where we used to go on walks like this?” he asks, tracing a line in the thin frost on the bridge rail with his finger. “Skip stones, talk about the future? Where we’d unofficially proposed to each other?”
You do remember. You still have the little plastic ring he’d gotten from a gacha machine at the market when you were still kids.
“I was thinking about going back there for the day, for old times’ sake, once it’s warm enough I mean. If you’ll come with me.”
Nothing needs to be said. You tuck up next to him and he loops an arm around your shoulders, presses a kiss to the top of your head.
A month passes and you wake next to him again. He managed to sleep relatively peacefully through the night, as far as his sleeping patterns go. You try to make things lighthearted, deciding to break out that old picnic basket and fill it with a couple of homemade ‘bento’ lunches. They aren't so much the traditional lunch contents as they are Tupperware containing Noodle’s favorite things.
You take the Geep, wondering how the dune buggy hung on through the years especially after Marcie’s hellacious driving. You offer to drive; Noodle isn't totally awake and he'd taken some of Tina's migraine medicine, the effects not quite worn off yet. Rosie bids you farewell from the top of the roof. You could swear that she had a tear in her white eyes as you drove off.
You arrive at the creek just a bit off from Kong. You see the dilapidated studio on the hill, looking eerie and haunted, even in the sunlight of spring. Noodle follows behind you, carrying the basket and following the creek, that unsettling quiet lingering over your heads.
“How about here?” you ask him, there was a nice shady spot under a shady tree just at the bank of the creek. You set up your picnic and Noodle smiles at you. “What?”
“You don't remember?” he asks. He rounds the tree trunk and you follow, giggling at the cuts in the tree that marked the memory of your ‘proposal’. Your name and Noodle’s were still etched on that tree, the feeling of nostalgia rushes through the your brain, remembering those simpler times.
You feel him reach down and take your hand, squeezing it tightly. There has never been a time that you didn’t love the feel of his hands; those fingers that are a little like Tina’s: long and thin, but something about those guitar-playing calluses makes you just melt into him. They’re tough, sure, but the way he strokes your face or thumbs the back of your hand as he holds it...there’s just something about them…
“Noodle? What’s wrong?”
You look up at him and there are tears in his vibrant green eyes. He wipes them away, a watery smile still on his lips. “Just...thinking is all.”
“About what?”
Noodle gnaws on his lip again, that odd tic thing that you aren’t sure if you want to break him from it or not. He reaches under his jacket and shirt and pulls at the woven necklace underneath. On the end is your little blue plastic ring. You wonder when and how he got it and how you never noticed it missing. “I’m going to give you a real one of these one day,” he says. “Right here. I want it to be like when we were kids; when...I wasn’t so fucked up.”
“But you aren’t--” you begin, but he shakes his head at you.
“I am. I’m too fucked in the head and you deserve to be happy without shouldering my burdens.” A stray tear slips off Noodle’s rosy cheek and onto your hand still closed in his. “I don’t want that for you.”
You wipe away another tear, trying not to cry yourself. You take his chin in your fingers, lifting his face to yours and pressing your lips to his. When was the last time you truly kissed? Noodle inhales sharply at the surprise, staring at you as you back away. “‘For better or worse.’ Isn’t that how it goes?” you sniffle with a smile. You wrap your arms around his neck.
“But--” he whispers.
“Hey, everyone’s messed up, Noods. It’s ok. I’m here, ok?”
Noodle’s eyes dart around your face, frowning at your tears. He kisses them away, then your lips, pulling you tightly to his body. He backs you into the tree, his thumbs stroking sweetly at your waist. He’s intoxicating your senses, making you crave him. You brush your tongue along his lips, wanting to feel his tongue wrestle with yours. It’s been awhile since you were this close, so when he finally does let you in, it detonates all of your nerves at once.
You can feel Noodle’s arousal as he presses into your hips. You run your hands through his hair, hearing him hiss softly. You tug the zipper of his jacket, but you hesitate to go on. “What?” he asks.
“Um, is it alright...if we…?” You feel your face warm with embarrassment. “I mean we don’t have to if you don’t--” Noodle puts his thin finger to your lips.
“Shh…” He gives you a half smile and shoves off his jacket. He leans into you again, lifting you and pinning you against the tree. “It’s been too long,” he whispers to you. “I...I miss this. I want this.”
You smile at him, feeling him press a bit more into you and push your skirt up a bit more. Noodle’s body shivers when you touch him, even the little brush of your fingers as you undo his jeans draws a little growl from him; a sweet little moan escapes him when you take him in your cold hand.
“I-I don’t have any protection,” he tells you blushingly.
“Don’t worry,” you tell him. Before you left, you ‘borrowed’ Tina’s jacket and, for whatever reason, a black foil package was in the pocket. You show this to Noodle, a genuine smirk stretching across his face. He takes the condom and slips it on, pushing aside your panties and easing into you. Both of your faces screw up as waves of nearly forgotten pleasure rock through you, keeping a slow but sweet pace.
God, you missed this. You couldn’t stand the sexual tension between you two. For a while you couldn’t so much as touch him for weeks, though you hadn’t done it but once or twice before. Even so, that kind and loving touch Noodle has… you swear no one has ever touched you in such a way.
Noodle’s breathing picks up, little puffs of steam push out of his mouth as his head bows to nip at your neck. You love his kisses, how he nibbles adorably at the skin there and ruts against you softly. You miss his...well, manhood. Noodle shattered all possible stereotypes as far as you were concerned. He fills you completely, never going to fast or too slow, too hard or too soft. He groans into you, gripping your hips and murmuring the sweet nothings you like.
“Ngh…” he moans into your neck. You can feel his legs shaking as he holds you there. You take pity on him and push him away, Noodle putting your legs down softly. You take him by the hand and guide him to the picnic blanket, patting it for him to lay there. He does and you straddle over him. Noodle’s kind enough to line himself up for you come down on. “Oh…” he mewls as you slide down his length.
You ride him slowly, locking your eyes with his. Noodle watches you intently, those gorgeous green eyes… He touches you under your shirt, cupping you gently and picking up the pace a little. You can feel your body tightening around him. Noodle’s body tenses up and he comes with a whimper, his hips rising up into yours, then falling back onto the blanket. You look down at him, thumbing his lips as he brushes your hair from your face. You smile at each other. “We’ll be fine, Noodle,” you say to him, “For better or worse, ok?”