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doomhands-jr · 26 days ago

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Pairing: Delinquent!Noah Sebastian X Pastor's Daughter!Reader

Summary: Noah is a delinquent with a lot of anger at the church. You're a pastor's daughter plagued by moral perfectionism, charged with overseeing the community service he's been sentenced to complete. You've never encountered true temptation before. How will you fare up against Noah, who not only isn't bound by the same rules of purity as you, but actively scoffs at them?

Rating: 18+ Minors DNI

Warnings: Needles, underage drinking, explicit language. This is the last filler chapter before shit starts picking up again.

Masterlist

Thanks to @flowerynerds for the banner!

Thanks to @throughwoodsanddirt for the beta!

______________

The late morning streamed into your room, flooding the ornamental rug in dappled sun. A light snow had begun collecting at the bottom of your window, but the cloud cover wasn’t yet dense enough to obscure the light.

You’d woken up several hours ago but hadn’t worked up the wherewithal to drag yourself out of bed. Instead, you’d spent the time scrolling through various social media apps, keeping up to date with how your friends were spending their winter break.

Your mom had Facetimed you that morning to check in. She’d updated you all about the trip she and your father were on. Several prominent members from a network of churches in the region had flown to some obscure part of Africa and were currently building a school and a church. They were planning to open it on Christmas Eve and have a dedication ceremony. They’d also purchased toys for the kids to open on Christmas morning. Her excitement poured through on her face and in her voice, and despite your reservations about missions trips, you smiled.

As much as you wished middle-class families could participate in philanthropy and still respect the cultural belief systems of the people they were visiting, a school was a school, and you hoped it would be a net positive to the village.

Once you got off the phone with her, your stomach began to rumble, so you rolled over and dug through a drawer in your nightstand you’d designated as your snack drawer until you pulled out a pack of cinnamon pop-tarts. Probably not the healthiest breakfast you could have chosen, but whatever—you ate them without tasting, continuing to scroll while your thoughts drifted to yesterday.

You heaved a sigh, unsure how to proceed with Noah. He seemed like he was the real deal, but then again, he had seemed like that before and ended up hurting you anyway. Now, he was weaseling his way back into your heart, burrowing under your skin and making himself comfortable as an uninvited guest. Worse still, you found yourself growing soft for him, which was a problem for you.

It was possible that you were blinded by your attraction to him, giving him the benefit of the doubt because you were naïve and wanted him to be better than he was.

But yesterday, he’d treated you with more respect than you’d ever received from a man. It didn’t feel performative, either… Your intuition told you he was being honest, but even if he wanted to do better—was he capable? Could he turn his behavior around that easily? Was it all an act just to get back into your good graces?

You came upon a video that broke you out of your thoughts. Ava had posted herself and her little cousins playing some card game you didn’t recognize. You smiled, noticing how old they were getting. You’ve been close with Ava’s family since middle school and remember when her cousins were first born. As much as Ava fought with her parents, her cousins were always a soft spot for her.

You replayed the video, brushing the crumbs off your shirt when you heard a knock at your door.

Speak of the devil…

Cautiously, you slid off your bed and padded over to the doorway, opening it to find a very out-of-breath and sweaty Noah in a black tracksuit and puffer jacket. Impressive, in light of the cold.

“Hi?” you said, the question likely as evident on your face as it was in your voice.

“Hey,” he said, watching you observe the sweat that clung to his forehead. “I jogged here.”

“I can see that,” you replied, fighting a smile. “What’s up?”

“Do you wanna come work out?” he asked.

Your face contorted with confusion. “Work out? Right now?” you asked, leaning back into your room and checking the weather on the other side of the window. “It’s snowing.”

“Well, yeah,” he said. “The gym isn’t that far away. I was on my way and thought I’d stop by and see if you wanted to join.”

You pouted. “Gross.”

Noah’s face scrunched up as he snickered at you. “Come on,” he pressed. “It won’t be that bad.”

You wrinkled your nose. “It sounds hard.”

Noah rolled his eyes. “Go get changed. We’re going to the gym.”

____________

“Ten,” Noah breathed. “Alright, you can do it. Give me two more and then you’re done.”

You tensed your whole body, squeezing your core as he’d instructed, the iron bar heavy across your shoulders, knurling cutting into your skin and bruising the back of your neck.

“I don’t understand why you want to see me suffer so badly,” you panted, struggling under the weight.

Noah laughed. “Call it a kink. Come on, you can do it.”

You flushed at his remark, diverting your gaze from his for a moment to collect yourself, and when you locked eyes with him once again in the mirror in front of you, his expression told you he knew exactly where your mind had gone.

He stood behind you, arms outstretched and ready to catch the bar should you fail. You dipped down into a squat, legs straining to keep you balanced and steady, and then with monumental effort, you brought yourself back up to standing.

“One more,” he said, voice coming out low and soft to soothe against the burn you felt in your thighs. “I’ve got you.”

You didn’t think you could do it, every muscle protesting against you, but you’d come this far. You dipped down once more, feeling your legs start to give out. When you got to the lowest point of the squat, you got stuck, legs beginning to give out under the weight of the iron.

“Come on, get it up,” Noah said, voice gaining in volume. You squeezed your eyes shut, gritting your teeth as you concentrated on standing. A few more moments of strain, and then Noah’s hands grasped you around your middle, warm and firm on either side, holding you steady. He added just enough leverage that slowly, inch by inch, you moved the bar until you were back to standing.

As soon as you re-racked the bar, you collapsed onto the black rubber mat of the gym floor. Sprawled out, chest heaving to catch your breath, you looked over to Noah, who fought to hide a smile behind a hand that pretended to scratch at his lip.

“And you willingly subject yourself to this kind of torture?” you said, legs somewhere between numb and burning. You kneaded the soft flesh, trying to bring back sensation into the limbs, now draped uselessly in front of you.

“Give it a few tries. You’ll get addicted to it,” he said, taking a seat next to you and removing the cap from his water bottle.

The gym he’d taken you to was in an old warehouse that had used to store lumber, Noah had mentioned on the snowy walk there. Inside, an array of rusted equipment littered the room with no real rhyme or reason. You had no idea what most of it was even used for.

The gym was mostly empty on a Thursday morning. Across the room, a middle-aged man performed set after set of bicep curls in front of the mirror. In the corner, a thirty-something woman jogged on a treadmill, and two teenage boys took turns bench pressing, which you only knew because Noah had given you a run-down of the most basic strength training exercises, as well as lectured you on why they were so important.

“You can either choose to suffer in ways you can control now or be forced to suffer in ways you can’t control later,” he said.

You rolled your head across your shoulders to look at him. “What are you even talking about?”

He rested his weight behind him on his palms and looked down at you with a patient sort of condescension.

“You’re young and fit now,” he said, “but that goes away more and more every year. Pretty soon, you’ll wake up with back pain and hip pain and all that other stuff. The longer you let it go, the worse it gets, and the longer it takes to fix. If you build a good foundation now, it’s a lot easier to maintain.”

“Ugh,” you scoffed, leaning back onto the floor and staring at the metal roof above. He had a point, but you hated when he got all preachy—you’d had enough of that in your life. “What got you into working out?”

“My job,” he said. “It’s really hard on the body—too much repetitive motion.” As if to hammer his previous point home, he hoisted himself up by the side of the squat rack and began loading heavy iron plates onto either end of the bar. “My body is my instrument.” He stepped under the bar, situating himself in the center to evenly distribute the load across his shoulders before he heaved the bar off the rack. “I have to take care of it.”

You allowed yourself to watch unapologetically, taking in the corded ropes of his hamstrings, the broad expanse of his shoulders, the sweat that dripped down from his forehead, off the end of his nose, and down his chest, pooling in the space above his collarbones. The hard set of his jaw as he focused on his form. He bottomed out in his squat, pausing for a moment before exhaling a heavy breath, then ascended, every muscle in his legs straining against his skin until he stood tall and proud.

And then he repeated it.

_________

“Jesus?”

“Yeah…and?”

Noah winced, hissing through his teeth. Every time he booked a tattoo session, he was confident that he was familiar enough with the sting of a tattoo needle that it wouldn’t faze him, and every time, he was proven wrong.

“Nothing, I just…I thought it would have come up before now.”

Noah couldn’t see your reaction from where he sat in the chair, but he could tell you were mulling over the large portrait of Jesus Christ done in American traditional style on his back.

“I didn’t want you to read too much into it,” he said, sucking in a breath and holding it while Winston, his tattoo artist, colored in a particularly sensitive spot right over his spine.

He could tell that was exactly what you were doing by how quiet you were. The Jesus tattoo had started out as a joke—something that allowed him to reclaim a bit of religious iconography in an almost tongue-in-cheek way. As he absorbed more pain from the needle over multiple sessions, however, it morphed into something else.

In his mind, the figurehead represented a belief that suffering was ultimately the path to righteousness. Not suffering in an unnecessary or gratuitous way, but suffering as in self-sacrifice. And not righteousness in the way Christianity frames it, but from a mental health perspective.

Noah’s mental health had always been a delicate instrument with which he’d had to tinker. Lately, he’d been learning more and more about what improves it and what causes it to tank. Humble work through low-level suffering has been the best way for him to take control of his psyche. Engaging in pleasures of the flesh was fine every once in a while, but ultimately left him feeling empty.

It was something he supposed Jesus probably knew all along. Perhaps that what was Christianity should have been about.

“So why Jesus?” Your curious voice broke him out of his thought pattern.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I saw it in a flash book one time and I just liked it. It doesn’t have any meaning.”

It did, actually, but he wasn’t ready to unpack all of that yet, let alone admit it. Maybe with time.

“I’m thinking of getting one,” you said. Noah tried to turn his head to look at you, but his artist tutted and directed him to keep still.

“Like what?” Rather than look at you, Noah instead focused on the wall of framed artwork in front of him. Hundreds of tattoo designs hung on the wall ahead—sometimes several to one page. Noah had two of the designs on him: one a floral symbol on his hand, the other was a heart with a burning cross on top of it that he’d chosen to incorporate into his back piece.

“I liked this little rose I saw in one of the flash books,” you said.

“I could fit in a palm-sized flash tattoo after I’m done with him. My last appointment cancelled. Damn snow,” said Winston.

“How much?” you asked.

“Depends on what you want.”

He heard your footsteps behind him as you walked away and came back a few minutes later. Noah held his breath—Winston was working on filling something in right below his armpit and it took everything in him to keep still. He wished you would hurry up—the conversation with you was a good distraction for him.

“This one,” you said. You must have been holding the flash book up for the artist. Noah wished he could see which one you were referring to.

“Black and white or color?” Winston asked.

“Color.”

“Same size as the picture?” he asked.

“Can you do smaller? Like half the size?”

“Sure thing. That’ll probably run you about one-twenty.”

“What about for black and white?”

“If you just want linework, we can do eighty. If you want shading, it’ll be a hundred.”

“Is there an ATM nearby?”

“Right across the street,” said Winston. “But we take card.”

Noah gritted his teeth as the needle ran across a nerve, but he was finally starting to adjust to the feeling. It always took him a few minutes before he got in the zone.

“I don’t want the charge to show up.”

Winston huffed out a laugh as a response. He wasn’t overly-talkative, which Noah liked. He’d been going to Winston on and off for the last two years for his back piece, which was so large it took several sessions. He could have done it faster, but tattoos weren’t cheap, and piece work didn’t exactly pay a fortune. It took several months to save up for a session, and then he’d usually drop six hundred at once and sit for hours at a time.

Today, however, was just a short session. He’d received a small Christmas bonus and had some spare time, so he’d called up Winston that morning to see if he could get squeezed in. Since half the town had gone home for the holidays, the artist’s schedule was open. The last thing he’d expected was for you to want to tag along.

The bell for the shop chimed and Noah heard you walk back in.

“Did you decide on color?” asked Winston.

“Yep! I’m still deciding on where to get it though. I don’t want my parents to see it.”

“You could always get an ass tattoo,” said Noah. He’d meant it as a teasing remark, but the way you paused to consider it had his gut turning even more noticeably than the needle currently stabbing ink into his spine.

________

“You’re being ridiculous, you know.”

Noah didn’t think he was being ridiculous. If anyone was being ridiculous, it was you.

“It’s called having manners,” he defended. He stared straight ahead at a blank corner of the shop, fists clenched, trying to determine whether the paint on the wall was a true red or if it had a slight orange tint to it.

“It’s called being uptight,” you said.

He didn’t blink, set on winning the staring contest he was holding with the wall. “You’re one to talk.”

“I’m not the one hiding my nose in a corner because I can’t look at a girl’s hip.”

Noah rolled his eyes, turning around to face the bench and finding you sprawled across it, face down with the waistband of your pants pulled low on the right side. He swallowed, steeling himself against the sight lest his face betray his thoughts.

“Is mocking me distracting you from the pain?” he asked.

“Little bit.”

He relaxed at the same time you hissed and buried your face in your arms. Hesitantly, he allowed his eyes to run over the curve that stretched from the small of your back to the height of your ass cheek and back down to the top of your thigh.

The tattoo artist ran his needle over the stencil, outlining the small rose nestled right where your ass and hip met, just below where the waistband of your underwear would sit—he could tell from the vague hint of a tan line still left over from the summer you’d spent at the camp you told him about.

He could picture you there, getting out of the pool with a wet T-shirt draped over your body because the church camp had rules about modesty when it came to swimwear. Despite your best intentions, the shirt still clung to your curves, the hem riding up to reveal the swell of your ass, bikini bottoms suctioned against the skin, water dripping down your thighs, and…

“Like what you see?”

Noah’s eyes snapped up to meet yours. You peeked at him over your shoulder with a knowing smile playing on your face.

“Shut the fuck up,” he spat, but it came out whinier than he’d intended.

You burst into a fit of barely-suppressed giggles.

“Hold still,” commanded Winston.

You whispered an apology and tucked your lips between your teeth to keep from laughing until karma intervened and you winced at a sore spot.

________

“What do wanna do next?” you asked, practically skipping out of the shop in your post-tattoo high.

“Nothing,” said Noah from behind you.

You stopped in your tracks and looked up to find him staring back down on you without any expression you could read. “What?”

“Look around you,” he said gesturing to the snow. You did, recognizing the wind and snow could put a damper on the evening if you let them, but they didn’t have to.

“Okay, and?” you asked.

“It’s a fucking blizzard out. Come on,” he said curtly, grabbing your hand and pulling you in the direction of your dorm. “I’m getting you home.”

Perhaps it was your temper, or perhaps you were still buzzing from the thrill of getting your first tattoo but you ripped your hand out of his. “No.”

Noah spun back around to face you. The wind whipped his hair in front of his face. “What do you mean no? I’m taking you home.”

“I’m not ready to go home. I want to do something else.”

Noah sighed, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose. “Like what?”

“I want to get a drink,” you said, scanning the streets for any nearby bars.

Noah crossed his arms, tongue prodding at the inside of his cheek. “Are you even old enough to get into a bar?”

“No, but Folio said he got into bars all the time when he was underage.” You didn’t always listen to Nick when he monologued instead of completing his community service, but that story clung to your mind.

Noah sighed again. “I told you, I don’t want to overstay my welcome. We’ve already been hanging out most of the day. I don’t want to get in too deep.”

“You’re not,” you protested. “Besides, you may not deserve it, but I do.”

At that, he stilled, and you continued. “I’ve spent my entire life trying to be the perfect Christian daughter, okay? I’m so tired of playing it safe. I want a taste of freedom. I’ve earned it. And to be honest, you sort of owe me after the way you treated me.”

He pursed his lips, considering it, but you already knew you had him backed into a corner with that last remark. A moment later, his shoulders dropped in resignation. “One drink, and then we’re going home.”

You let out a sound of delight, skipping again to catch up to Noah and then grabbing onto his sleeve when the snow caused your boot to nearly slide out from under you.

________

“Try not to die on the way there,” he muttered.

Noah studied the stained glass of the lamp that hung above the pool table, trying to decide whether the red spots were leaves or flower petals. Or were they feathers?

He wouldn’t let his eyes drift lower, because if he did, he’d have seen your exposed lower back, arching as you bent over the pool table to line up your shot.

Inside the bar was sweltering. The bartender had mentioned the temperature control on the furnace was on the fritz, and the only options were either letting it run continuously or shutting it off and letting the patrons freeze.

Sweat beaded at Noah’s temples and at the back of his neck, causing his hair to stick uncomfortably to the skin. Taking an elastic from around his wrist, he gathered his hair and tied it in a knot on top of his head. Even the thin short-sleeved shirt he wore began collecting sweat on the back.

When the two of you had arrived at his favorite dive bar, the Empty Keg was nearly just that—empty. Nobody had carded you, so Noah had led you to a small table near the back of the place behind the pool tables and told you to sit tight while he ordered drinks from Steve, the familiar bartender Noah had already established a rapport with.

Guessing at what would be tolerable for you, he ordered you a rum and coke, asking Steve to give you a light pour. He got a whiskey neat for himself and then went ahead and ordered some wings for the two of you to share, since you’d been complaining that you hadn’t eaten much.

It was torture enough watching you lick wing sauce off the tips of your fingers. Torture again when you peeled your sweater off your body to reveal a practically transparent camisole underneath. Torture a third time when, after your first drink, you asked him to teach you how to play pool.

He’d tried to remain as respectful, showing you how to hold the cue with verbal direction, rather than being obvious by lining himself up behind you to position you with his hands. A slight hitch in your smile let him know you were frustrated with this, but he insisted.

You made a show of bending over the pool table to line up your shot, cleavage on display, and Noah had to leave, making the excuse that he was going to buy another round.

At the bar, he wiped the sweat off his forehead with the hem of his shirt and slumped into a stool. The bartender immediately greeted him and asked if he wanted another round.

“Yes,” he answered, without looking up from where his face was planted in his palms.

“Girl troubles?” asked Steve as he began pouring the rum.

“I don’t know,” Noah answered, honestly. It wasn’t something he wanted to get into, and sensing that, Steve shrugged and finished making the drinks, setting the glasses in front of Noah with a clatter.

Noah knew you were flirting and he wasn’t sure if he was ready to be tested so directly. You made him weak, transforming his resolve from sturdy to feeble with a simple glance and he felt like he was going to die.

He was in deep. It took every ounce of his resolve to continue treating you like a normal person and not use every single trick he’d acquired in his long history of fuckboyery to get you naked and in his bed.

It would be so easy, too. You were already doing your best to tempt him. He knew all he had to do was say the word and you’d be all over him in a second. In the humid, whiskey-soaked haze of the bar, it was growing harder and harder to think of a reason why he shouldn’t just give in.

Except that he wasn’t ready. He knew it. If he gave in too soon, he risked throwing himself back into his normal fight-or-flight response. He’d overthink it and find some reason to pull away in order to protect himself, like he always did.

No, this time he had to go about it the right way, and you weren’t making it easy on him.

Without a good reason to delay any longer, he carried the drinks back over, only to be greeted with the sight of you bent over the pool table, tank top riding up and exposing your lower back and the curve of your hips and the beads of sweat that had appeared along your spine and god, if Noah didn’t want to just collect them all with his tongue.

Jesus fucking Christ.

He inhaled and exhaled sharply through his nose, saying a silent prayer to excuse his language. Tensing at his jaw and in his fingers around the glasses, he set yours next to you forcefully before taking his place on the opposite end of the pool table so there was at least something sturdier than his resolve separating the two of you. You took your shot and sunk it into the corner pocket. You were obviously hustling him on top of everything else.

“Thanks,” you said casually, picking up your glass and sipping from it. “I think it’s your turn.”

“Right,” said Noah. He set his own glass down and searched for his next ball, glad to have something else to focus on.

He could tell you were unsatisfied with being ignored. You rounded the table and perched yourself on the edge of it next to him, crossing one knee over the other and swinging your legs casually. You leaned up against the pool cue, letting the strap of your tank top fall off your shoulder as you looked at him knowingly and it took all of Noah’s focus not to look back at you.

“Noah,” you said, voice low and breathy and full of everything Noah had been trying to avoid, and as soon as his name left your lips, Noah scratched, sending the cue ball shooting off the edge of the table.

“I got it,” he said at the same time that you huffed and jumped down from your perch. He rushed across the bar, chasing after the white ball and when he came back, you stood next to the table with your arms crossed, impatiently tapping your foot and staring him down.

You were going to have to work harder than that to break him, though. Noah was dead-set on getting out of this interaction without any incident and it was just a matter of who was more stubborn at that point.

Without making eye contact, Noah set the ball on the table.

“You’re up,” he muttered, grabbing his drink and letting his eyes nestle deep within the glass of amber liquid.

He could feel you boring into his face, but he wasn’t going to crack. As soon as you realized that, you slumped over the table and resumed the game. Noah hid his smile in his glass of whiskey and pretended not to notice the exaggerated arch in your back as you bent once more over the table.

________

Stepping outside the bar, a punishing rush of wind slammed into Noah, causing him to stumble a bit. The conditions had grown even more severe, and Noah knew there was no way they were going to make it all the way to your dorm.

You must have come to the same conclusion when Noah did, because you tugged on his jacket to get his attention.

“My dorm’s too far,” you shouted over the wind. “Can I crash at your place?”

The obvious answer was yes. Both of you knew it, but Noah was still reluctant to answer. This is exactly why he wanted to get you home earlier.

He trusted himself at the gym. He trusted himself at the tattoo shop. He even trusted himself (barely) at the bar. But in his home? Overnight? With alcohol making his head all fuzzy and softening the lines between your skin and the cloud of lust around you?

Noah was cooked.

“Come on, then,” he said, turning and beginning to trudge down the few blocks it took to get to his house.

You seemed to understand that it was important for you to be on your best behavior or else he might change his mind about letting you stay, so you silently followed, stepping in the footprints he’d left behind.

________

“Do you need anything to sleep in?” he asked as soon as the two of you reached the entryway of his dilapidated rental. He rubbed his hands together to warm them up—they’d started aching with the cold.

“I should be okay,” you said, still shivering despite the warmth of his home.

“Are you sure?” he asked. He scanned you up and down. Your pants were soaked up to the knees from melting snow.

“Maybe some sweatpants, then” you said, following where his eyes had gone.

Noah chuckled on his way back to his room, reemerging later with the same set of clothes he’d let you borrow last time. You thanked him, expression a bit bashful as you grabbed the pile from his hands and rushed to the bathroom to change.

When you came back, your hair was down, spilling pleasantly over your shoulders and Noah watched the way it reflected the low lamplight in waves as you moved. He’d seen you in his clothes before, but in a much different context.

Now you were here, making yourself at home on the couch while his sweatpants and hoodie swallowed you in comfort. You rubbed your tube-sock-cladded feet together like a goddamn cricket and wrapped your arms around yourself, still apparently trying to get warm.

“Hey, do you have a blanket or something?” you asked, scanning over the living room.

“I was, uh,” he began, rubbing a palm over his chin. “I was thinking you could take my bed. I’d crash on the couch.”

“What?” you said, face twisting with confusion. “Noah, that’s ridiculous. You sleep in your bed. I’m the one burdening you. I’ll sleep on the couch.”

“I’d feel more comfortable if you took my room,” he said. As much as he hated his hometown, some things about it still stuck with him, and southern hospitality was one of them.

“But you’re like, a million feet tall,” you countered. “Would you even fit on the couch?”

“Can you just humor me?” he said. “I’ve been needing to put fresh sheets on my bed anyway. This will be a good excuse.”

You sighed and rolled your eyes as you always did—an expression Noah was growing increasingly fond of, and gestured to his room. “Be my guest, I guess.”

He bowed his head an inch or so and returned to his room, rifling through his closet for the only other set of sheets he owned.

It was silly, and he knew that. Part of him just enjoyed the thought of you sleeping in his bed. He liked the idea that he’d have that shared experience with you. Both of you would know what it was like to be in his room. Perhaps tomorrow, once you were back in your dorm and he was done with his shift at the factory, he’d lay his head down and his pillows would smell like you.

Jesus, he needed to get ahold of himself.

He ripped the old sheets off, piling them in the corner of his room and began the arduous process of figuring out which end of the fitted sheet went where.

When he came back to the living room, you were sprawled out on the couch and with your eyes closed.

“You asleep?” he asked softly.

“Mmm, no,” you said without bothering to open your eyes and Noah took a second to taken in your relaxed features and how your skin glowed softly in the low lighting.

“Bed’s all made up.”

Your lower lip jutted out in a soft pout and Noah’s stomach did a somersault.

“Come on,” he said, nudging you with his knee. “Get up.”

You whined in protest, curling further into the sofa.

He sighed. It was cute, but not cute enough. “Get up or I’ll call the police and turn you in for trespassing.”

At that you opened your eyes, shooting him a look that perfectly communicated your annoyance. He nodded towards the room. “Let me know if you need anything else. I’ll be out here.”

You huffed, finally heaving your body off the couch and stood in front of him. “Thanks for letting me stay,” you said in a rare moment of genuine gratitude.

“Any time.”

He watched you slump lazily towards his room and listened to hear the click of the door before making up the couch to suit himself. He had to grab a spare blanket from Ruffilo’s room, making a deal with himself to wash it and return it before his friend got back from visiting his family, and then spread himself out on the lumpy sofa, hoping to get a few hours of sleep.

Sleep, however, did not come. Instead, his mind wandered over to his bedroom, picturing how you looked curled up in his bed and wondering whether you were also having trouble sleeping.

His dick twitched.

He squeezed his eyes shut, willing it away.

It was one night. One night with an attractive woman in his bedroom. He wasn’t even in the same room. You were on the other side of the house. He could get through this.

Rolling on his back, he stared at the ceiling and began running through all the steps needed to make a tapping block on his machine.

Set X to 1.5 inches. Set Y to 2.5. Run program. Remove block. Deburr. Place block back into clamp. Select tool #5. ¾ in. drill. Set Z axis to 1 inch. Run program.

Fuck. He forgot the next step.

He tried to get his mind back on the machine, but it was too late. An image of you writhing underneath him flashed in his mind like a lightning strike.

He dug his fingernails into his thigh, swallowed hard, and went back to the tapping block, already knowing it wasn’t going to work.

Sighing, he felt around for the remote on the coffee table. Maybe he could put on a documentary or something to distract himself until he fell asleep.

His hand clasped around the black plastic and he thumbed the power button. The TV flashed, momentarily hurting his eyes until they adjusted.

Choosing the first streaming service he could find, he searched the documentaries and came up with one about how the Himalayas were formed, and that couldn’t possibly be sexy, so he selected it and waited for his mind to switch off.

Two minutes into learning about why scientists have found fossils of cephalopods he heard the squeak of a door opening, followed by soft footsteps.

Of course.

“What’s up?” he asked softly, without taking his eyes off the screen.

“I can’t sleep.”

Your voice came across quiet and drowsy. He looked at the clock and it had already been an hour since you’d gone to bed.

Sighing and, with great effort, sitting up, he scooted his body to one end of the couch and gestured for you to have a seat at the other.

“Learning about the Himalayas,” he said.

“Is this the PBS one?” you asked.

Noah shrugged, turning his attention back to the TV and trying to ignore the way his body buzzed in your presence.

“Hard to believe they’re younger than the Appalachians,” you said. The documentary hadn’t mentioned it. This was information you’d apparently gathered elsewhere.

“I didn’t know that,” said Noah.

“Yeah,” you continued, resting your toes on the edge of the coffee table. You started doing that thing again where you rubbed your feet together like a cricket—not that Noah was paying attention. His eyes were trained on the screen. “The Appalachia date back to Pangea, and actually part of the range continues on into Europe.”

“Nerd,” he said.

“You’re the one watching a documentary about it.”

Noah said nothing, but his heart thrummed in his chest.

You kept quiet after that, the two of you watching side-by-side as the narrator talked about the four thousand species of flowering plants native to the zone, and the diversity of fauna, and how the landscapes and ecosystems around the range changed dramatically after the formation.

Eventually, Noah looked over to see you dozing quietly on your side of the couch. He smiled to himself, knowing that it would probably be better if he moved back into his own room.

Perhaps in a little bit, he would. It was a really good documentary.

________

Taglist:

Please let me know if I missed anyone or if I tagged someone who no longer wants to be tagged.

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#the devil's advocate #noah sebastian x reader #bad omens fanfiction #noah sebastian fic #noah sebastian smut #noah sebastian #bad omens #bad omens fic #fanfiction

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