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[iwasmore]

After the spell, when Noah began sleeping and eating meals and feeling like a real human, he'd gotten a calendar. He used to cross off days with a delight most normal people wouldn't take in something so mundane. He'd left the calendar at Krem's when they broke up, though, and ever since then he just hasn't paid much attention to what day it is. But he has to, now, to keep track of when he needs to be at Un Chat Gris in Blue's stead. He was gone for nearly two weeks, he owes it to her. No, he would have done it either way. She needs a break, and she needs time to process Gansey leaving.

So when his birthday rolls around, he knows. He doesn't feel like a party. He doesn't feel like anything, he just knows he doesn't want to be alone. Blue isn't at Hywel and he doesn't want to bother her with something trivial, so Noah respects her desire for privacy and decides to disrespect Ronan and Adam's instead. He appears where they are, in bed, and sighs up at the ceiling.

"Hi."

Comments

[iwasmore]

"I'm not even sure what fracking is, actually," Noah admits, only knows that he remembers Blue ranting about it once. Something about it hurting the environment. Digging, or drilling in the water maybe. He likes it when Ronan says what the fuck.

When Adam puts his arm around him, Noah smiles in surprise and leans right in, a feeling of warmth blooming in his chest.

"You guys are so much better than the friends I had when I was alive," he says with a contented sigh.

[thedreamthief]

Adam's fingers thread easily with Ronan's and he feels it all the way up his arm, a slow, spreading heat. It makes his skin burn, makes him hold on tighter with a glance over to Noah busy curling under Adam's arm.

"Were they all like that fuckbucket, Whelk?" Ronan asks with no small snarl.

Even saying the name makes Ronan's blood curdle. It shouldn't matter, he knows. Whelk's dead, his corpse buried in an entirely different dimension and Noah is safe with them here.

But he knows better than to trust anything about this place, too. There's no reason to believe anything here will last.

[incognoscibilis]

Almost in the same breath that Ronan says it, Adam also points out, "It's really not that hard to do better if that's your basis for comparison." There are many people for whom Adam Parrish has many unkind thoughts and Barrington Whelk had been one of them. He'd also been a shit Latin teacher as if he wanted to add insult to the injury of being a murderer.

"Come on," he says, squeezing Ronan's hand. "Gelato."

[iwasmore]

"Well they didn't try to murder me," Noah says dryly, reaching around Adam's back to lightly shove Ronan's shoulder.

"I had other friends, I swear. I wasn't comparing you guys to...him." There is no comparison when it comes to Whelk. But Noah had friends on the swim team, and skateboarding friends, and stoner friends. He did okay at Aglionby. He'd been closest with Whelk, but not nearly as much as he is with Ronan, Adam, Blue, and Gansey.

The gelato parlor is right up ahead of them, and Noah quickens his steps, dragging Adam with his arm still around him.

[incognoscibilis]

Adam doesn't bother saying that Noah's other friends in life can't really overshadow the low, low bar that Barrington Whelk had set. It's not his place to say that, for all Ronan feels free in that. It's like saying his father had set a low bar for Adam's other family members.

"Come on, let's get something to eat, huh?"