#anon i am not going to lie i drafted 2.5 paragraphs and left off on a transition phrase

[kijosakka]

Assistant Noah AU: How Alejandro would react to Assistant Noah trying to warn Owen about the Spanish Charmer, by calling the Charmer an 'eel dipped in grease'?... Would Alejandro be salty that he can't vote Assistant Noah off, since Noah isn't a contestant?... Would Alejandro charm + flirt harder with Assistant Noah? 😘

noah being an assistant here implies something very specific — being, he’d definitely know alejandro knows. this would mean more, except that noah is not here for the competition, he’s here for The Paycheck.

on noahs end at least i don’t think he would care much, but i do hesitate to say what alejandro specifically would think of the situation — because despite him being badmouthed (which. i will get to), it does imply favoritism that noah is telling owen, which he may assume to extend further to their team and potentially be an advantage point.

he is. wrong. noahs ‘favoritism’ extends to owen and not so much in challenges, but im sure there’s potential there for alejandro to try and make nice with owen to reap this favoritism (or at least cut down how much owen receives by being close, since noah doesn’t seem to like alejandro much) < but the turning point comes with that because noah just Does Not Care.

i’d imagine he’d be juuust as flagrant about his favoritism without it technically infringing on any rules, explicit or implicit (and the rest of the cast, sans maybe those like heather or courtney, would be aware that owen would never do anything underhanded or wildly unfair with those privileges so it’s not so major in that regard either)

anyway, alejandro sees what happens and tries to intercept on owen to reap some benefit or control over the situation, and it doesn’t work. where does he go from there? flirting!!

^ this has more to it than narrative, being mostly alejandro’s character and it’s existence, really. while in canon his charming is more consistently his ‘first option’ for his scheming, you can see it through his relationship through heather how it can be a failsafe instead — where he can’t explicitly scheme her away from the game like he could with team victory, he flirts with her to make her emotionally volatile.

(also something to be said about how it is, in a way, a manner of forcing himself control over at least a small part of it)

all my rambling to mean that since alejandro can do nothing about noah, he goes to reap control and petty enjoyment through trying to fluster him (and, back to what i said earlier, probably some vindication for being badmouthed). spoiler alert: it doesn’t work.

finally getting over to the being badmouthed thing, i would want it to mean something more exciting, but the kinda boring, semantical answer i can give is just that. noah would probably know because he has access to stuff like confessional footage.

don’t get me wrong there’s definitely potential for a misunderstanding-type situation where alejandro writes off his own intrigue in noah as ‘wanting to figure out how he knew’, and introduces the conflict when someone (likely noah himself) tells him that no, he just knows because he has footage access. that’s it.

^ it would theoretically kill alejandro’s interest, but retconned with that alejandro may reason (in a way to ignore his feelings. stupid man in Denial) that it would bother noah if he continues to flirt despite knowing this.

(and of course that like heather is the only person alejandro could drop pretenses around in canon, noah would be that to him here — because he could. noah knows, he knows noah knows, and there’s no explicit or immediate threat to his game by doing so < which might amp up post-owen elimination, after noah is soothed from his inevitable spite.)

which he would be kind of right about? i do mostly see noah as more pissed that it’s taking away from his job (probably more at chris’ insistence, as the viewers are eating it up) and there being a more definite pivotal point once owen is eventually eliminated.

(going more definitely two-sided, i’d imagine noahs own feelings developing as he needles for information through alejandro’s constant attempts at flirting and does genuinely appreciate the more genuine parts of himself.)

for an actual relationship between them though i do imagine it would have to come post-season — either route you take it, drama-bot or not.