#could just be some kind of taunt to mock Nana while she tears up over en

[kingsramsay-blog]

↠ ᴛᴡᴏ ғᴀᴄᴇᴅ ʙᴜᴛ ᴛᴏᴏ ɴᴜᴍʙ ᴛᴏ ᴋɴᴏᴡ ɪᴛ, ᴛᴇʟʟɪɴɢ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴘʀᴇᴛᴛʏ ʟɪᴇs.

ᴄʜᴀʀᴀᴄᴛᴇʀs: noah ramsay, wayne ramsay, richard ramsay, fionn cullen, rue lambert.  ᴛʀɪɢɢᴇʀ ᴡᴀʀɴɪɴɢs: drug use, death. 

For as long as Noah could remember, the words I’m fine had had been his pen and paintbrush, used to scribble out and gloss over every emotionally charged circumstance he didn’t want to face head on. He could first recall saying it at seven years old. Small and shaking, he had tumbled off his bright red bike with the steering wheels just removed because his ten year old brother had let go of him too soon, sneering all the while as he looked up at him from the dirt and bit his quivering lip, refusing to let the tears fall. Both Wayne and his oldest brother Richard -- Dick by nickname, dick by nature -- gained gleeful amusement at how easy it was to upset Noah, their mocking countdowns the background music to how long it took him to cling onto his disinterested mother’s leg and tell her thigh what they had done this time to get him into a state.

“You going to cry again, stupid?” Wayne asked as he towered over him, lifting the bike off but that was where his assistance cut short.

“No…” Noah answered meekly, dusting off the little bits of gravel stuck in a fresh cut on his knee, the bits on his palm falling away too. “I’m fine.”

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“I’m fine nana, really.” Noah reassured from behind a locked door. For the entirety of his third term at Cambridge he had been wishing for Christmas break, not that he was a particular fan of the holiday itself, but it meant two weeks off. Two weeks away from assignments, deadlines, continuous assessments and meetings with his tutor who he called his tut because that was the sound she made every time she looked at his average grade thus far.

By early November of his he felt himself cracking, like something would have to give or he would just pack it all in and return home the failure he was always on track to be. The kind voice from the hallway that said okay love, I’ll put a cuppa on for you had been the only one he was still trying for. She had burdened him with a wish to see him graduate, joking that he would be the last of her grandchildren to do so. Though she by no way intended to, her words were like a noose around his neck and every time she fell ill with another bad bought of the flu it was like an unsteady bucket threatening to give out from beneath him.

He had to see it through for her. He had to graduate.

That determination had played devil’s advocate the first time his roommate Liam had produced a bag of white powder and offered him some on a one pound coin. He promised him it would keep him alert, keep him wide eyed all night and let him finish the essay on Socrates he had been dragging his heels about writing.

Noah’s crush on him had been the final push he needed, blue eyes locked on green eyes while he held his wrist with his left hand and pressed his right index finger to his right nostril with the other. The rush of it had been like nothing he ever knew, every thought he had more vivid, every sequence in his mind faster and more expansive than the last. He finished his essay that night and got a jump start on an online assignment that wasn’t due for another fortnight.

Sat then on the off colour white stool of his grandmother’s old vanity table, he divided that same white powder that had gotten him through the first half of his second year of university with the student card that bore it’s crest and his face. He rolled up the ten pound note his grandmother had given him to go for a pint round the pub with his brother’s later that evening, leaning down and snorting a line with more ease than he was willing to read into.

He dared not look at his own reflection in the mirror, sure that without the surrounding of a small dorm room and his taunting textbooks, he would only see his dilated pupils and the face of a boy who had broken his grandmother’s heart under the excuse of trying to fulfil one of her most sincere wishes.

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“You’re fine, you’re fine. You’re going to wake up, and this is all going to be fine.” Noah’s voice cracked as he rocked back and forth, trying to reassure himself. Both hands gripped his messy hair, the crisp white shirt he had word under his suit the night before now stained brown with whiskey and rum and hanging half undone off his body. His tie decorated the headstand, while his pants were on the floor. Next to him lay the man he had been seeing, Fionn had liked to party as much as he did. They had met at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting, both of their sobrieties flippant at best.

Noah had categorised him as fun but not someone he could see himself with long term, a thought that made him want to vomit as he reached across and checked his cold body for a pulse for the third time since he had opened his eyes. He had none.

“Oh god, oh god.. No, no, no. This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening.”

He was only drawn back to reality by a pair of hands around his wrists, the pressure a comforting squeeze, as though trying to calm him down. All he could think was it wouldn’t be long before a pair of handcuffs replaced them.

“You’re okay, I promise. This is going to be okay. You just need to listen to me, alright?” The voice wasn’t one that was familiar to him, but there was unbearable softness to it that made him want to cry, something he refused to do. He lifted his head then, his fearful blue eyes locking onto her warm brown ones.

It wouldn’t be until later that he would learn her name. Rue Lambert. She had been right in what she had said, it was going to be okay. He held onto that when he was sentenced to a three year stretch in prison, those same brown eyes watching him from the viewing gallery of the courtroom. He would atone for all the wrong he had done under the guise of guilt for a crime they both knew he hadn’t meant to commit, and when he was done he would be a free man again and a better one. One deserving of the kindness she had offered a wayward stranger, one that would rise above the shackles of fine and start anew.