Archive of Our Own ^beta

Finn didn't feel the hours pass.

Not that he ever did, consciously, but amidst blaring white lights and his publicist’s steel cold ‘i am so over this’ gaze and those same words he has been drilling into his head for over a year now, he really managed to properly blank out. The last thing he remembers was a sort of PowerPoint compilation of fingers sliding over one another, shared looks, a hand on a thigh encircled.

An avalanche.

His mind zones back in New York, his legs stiff from the aircon it's too late to ask to turn down. His phone sits seemingly forgotten in his hand, lockscreen full of messages he hadn't wanted to reply to but had been content reading and rereading again and again. Just because of who it was from.

Noah: oi

Noah: oiiiii

Noah: whats ur passcode again

Noah: oh shit

Noah: wait

Noah: i remembered

Noah: mb

Noah sent a sticker

He glanced at it again as they took the turn for his hotel, and slipped his coat and glasses on. Of all his PR lessons, the one he remembers and abides by like religion is this: all anonymity is good anonymity. Especially when even the wind has heard your name. “It’s all clear, sir.” The driver meets his eyes with a cheeky little grin in the rear-view mirror.

Finn takes embarrassingly long to process it. “Yeah. thanks. Cheers, yeah?” he smiles, and he knows how to smile, he thinks, because the driver returns it and zooms off into the lively night.

Finn doesn't think he’ll ever get used to the kaleidoscope of NYC after-hours, even if he spent a lifetime here. He crosses the empty 2a.m. street to his hotel as his bodyguard and assistant fall in step behind him. He tries not to rush past the reception, ignoring his assistant calling his name. Tries not to jam the metallic ‘37’ on the elevator panel again and again. He knows it won't make the damned thing go any faster. But god if his hands aren't shaking. God damn him if he’s as impatient as they come.

He has to remind himself how to breathe by the time he’s in front of his door. He hears the TV inside, the lights bleeding out from under the door - ombre, the way only one person he knows prefers it. He gives up trying and after gathering himself, flings the door open.

The thing about having the reputation of an ‘indie darling’ was that Finn often had to pretend to be fluent in culture he understood and appreciated, but didn’t often relate to. He hadn’t had the chances for black and white stills of French films, analog horror as poetry, or a teenage love at first sight. Anything remotely close in his teenage years had, well, burned off from its own heat.

The only thing he could speak on from the heart, was love at some thousandth sight. love that accumulated over the bedrock of the hundredth shared joke. The fiftieth secret. The first time he saw tears fall from hazel eyes and thought instead of offering pity, to dismantle every and anything that had made them that way.

Not something he fell in, but ran headfirst into knowing what it was.

And it was-

The thing about walking into his now-warmed hotel room is that it hits Finn in layers.

First, the scent. Noah. Not cologne, just him. Warm skin and laundry.

Then, the evidence: Noah’s shoes kicked off by the door. His jeans in a puddle on the floor. A used coffee mug with sugar-crusted dregs beside the armchair.

Finally, the skyline, bleeding in through the window and outlining the boy in the chair. Feet propped on a complimentary cushion, one hand buried in Poppy’s fur, the other holding Finn’s own press-day shirt closed over his chest, draped almost demurely over his thighs. His hair is a tousled mess. He’s wearing nothing else.

It makes Finn dizzy. The embarrassing thing is, Noah is already looking up at him, lips curved into a pout, his eyes gone green, green, green from the overheard light.

It makes Finn weak in the knees.

“You’re late.” he announces, faux annoyance. 

“Yeah,” Finn replies, shedding his jacket to the floor in one motion, already crossing the room. “I’m sorry.”

He leans directly over Noah’s face. His nose crinkles as he goes hmpf, two hands rise to meet him. Finn tries to act normal, tries not to feel his heart attempting backflips down his ribcage whenever he sees those moles-on his feet, his hands, the secret places Finn knows he is the only one to touch with a sick, sweet possession. And the most kissed one, just above his lips.

Thirty-four moles.
Finn is so fucking doomed.

A ghost of a voice curls through his memory, cold and bright as a fluorescent light: “And, for God’s sake. Don’t go sneaking into each other’s rooms. It’s a safety hazard, the staff might talk, and-”

Noah scoots over. Finn sinks into the space he’s made, wraps his arms around him, and the voice dissolves.

“...Finn?” Noah whispers, the sound muffled against his neck. Shit. Finn hadn’t even noticed he’d buried his face there, sinking into the hazelnut-and-salt scent of him, trying to drown out the afterimage of that mind-numbing PR meeting.

He hasn’t noticed, because he has wanted it so bad. All day, every step in polished halls and every car ride and every interview, from the first light of day-
And yeah. He might actually be doomed.

“Mhm?” He picks his head up to look at him, and because he doesn’t know how else to be, kisses the little mole above his lips. Poppy mews, judging whatever was on the TV.

“I said, what did they tell you?” Noah’s voice was syrup-sweet. His face warmed from lying around, and he let out a little yawn. Finn is a degenerate. So he kisses him square on the lips.

Noah sighs into it, and Finn feels it everywhere. He slips a hand under the wide-open shirt-

Noah shakes away. Finn pauses. They stare at each other, a breath’s length apart, inhaling and exhaling the same air.

“Answer the question.”

“Tch,” Finn couldn’t help it. He leans his head into Noah’s shoulder. He might be tripping, but Noah’s cheeks really did get that much darker. “The same old.” A beat. And he feels familiar fingertips on his scalp. It was much better earlier in the year, when his hair was shorter. But lying back and letting Noah work his fingers through his hair had always been Finn’s idea of luxury.

“Don’t sit too close, don’t act too attached.”

“Don’t make out in each other’s rooms?”

Finn looked up. Noah’s eyes were twinkling.

“Why? You gonna do it just ’cause you don’t like Deborah?”

“What? No! Deborah’s great. Amazing, even.”

“Yeah. Right.” He does manage to slip his fingers under this time. Noah shivers. Finn presses his palms flat against his navel. He knows there were three moles there, scattered in a lopsided triangle. Finn knows, alright. 

“She actually said, ‘Don’t fuck Noah senseless while he’s lounging half-naked in your hotel room.’ Now that you ask.”

“Reeeally?”

Finn grins like an idiot - partly because he is one, and partly because there is a little piece of heaven giggling right under his nose, so close he can taste the sound.

Then Noah’s smile softens into something else. Not a tease. Something quieter, truer. His eyes drop to Finn’s mouth, and for a fraction of a second, he looks utterly, devastatingly open. 

It was the same look he’s offered Finn hundreds of times before, one that made him feel like he was seeing a secret the world wasn't allowed to have.

Which was why Finn kisses him. Again. And again. Like he’s never had the chance to do it quite right. Noah is clingy too, as always, never shying away, offering himself up again and again - his perfect face and swollen lips and carved nose and gleaming eyes and -

Finn is so greedy. He is so, so, so demented for wanting it as much as he does. 

So selfish.

“It’s the damn season for it, isn't it?”

Noah was lying beside him in his trailer. Finn remembers that day clear as running water. The last few weeks leading up to wrap. The mind-numbing takes, the crying, the action. And, of course, the kiss.

Not their very first, but no one had to know that.

“Huh?” Finn had asked. They were waiting for a cab to head to their apartments. Separate apartments. All the while, Noah had drops of water glistening on his face from when he’d last washed it, sparkling like stars. Finn swore he could feel the slide of his own lungs as they supplied air to him. Was that sick?

“Like… like. I dunno.” Noah fiddled with his fingers on his stomach. Finn remembered the sensation of sliding his hands through them. In front of the cameras, of course. But did it get any different outside the viewfinder? Any better?

“It just feels like December’s forever. And the good seasons just… abandon us.”

Noah turned towards him now. They were so close Finn knew immediately that once their stupid cab arrived and they had to go, he’d miss this. Noah’s face an inch from his. The shared breath. The warmth.

“I don’t think you’re insane for being a little selfish at all.”

He turned properly then, relaxed and lying free. Like he was almost relieved he’d been allowed to know Finn that way. 

The thing about Finn is that he really does pride himself on knowing Noah so well. Knowing where to touch him, where to slide a finger or press his lips to get the sweetest, whiniest, neediest Finn at any given moment. He is decidedly terrible at hiding it, which is why the PR team came down on them like a hawk come promo season. But that’s been his whole day, and he’s sick of it.

Right now there is Noah, scrambling to turn off the movie, and Finn’s deft fingers are undoing the shirt to reveal - god, yes. He kisses the mole on his chest, spit and all, and Noah flinches from his koala-like hold on him like that simple action is unspooling him.

“Finn…”

“You know,” he starts, pinning Noah’s now-freed hands above his head to reveal more columns or tiny moles. “I wanna piss them off too. With all these public distractions, manufactured scandals, silence and anticipation. I mean, fuck that.” He leans closer, his mouth a breath from Noah’s. “Fuck that, and fuck you.”

Noah shudders, looking hunted. One of the very best looks on him.

As has been said before, Finn prides himself on knowing which buttons to press.

“Can I-”

“Yeah,” Noah breathes. His face is flushed a deep, honest red all the way to his chest, and his nipples perk up and harden even in the warm air. “Yeah, fuck me, Finn.”

Finn has always been good at following simple commands.

“Woah.”

The word had fallen like a stone in the easy noise of the room. Caleb and Gaten turned from the food they were digging into on the floor, following Finn’s gaze to the large mirror leaning against his bedroom wall.

“The mirror directly faces your bed?”

Gaten barked a laugh. “He’s never seen one before, huh?”

Caleb laughed the Caleb laugh - the one that usually meant everyone would dissolve into peals of laughter. The sound swelled around them, a wave of easy camaraderie.

But Finn was already underwater. Sounds distorted. Light bent.

Because he had caught Noah’s eyes across the room. And Noah wasn’t laughing. He was wearing that little, peeking smile - the one that didn’t touch his lips but lit up his eyes with a secret, knowing heat. A smile that said, I see what you see. I know what you’re thinking.

And fuck. Noah can get so damn greedy too.

Fuck.

“So pretty,” Finn breathes down a beautifully outstretched column of throat, feeling it vibrate under his throat as the prettiest sounds fill the air. He suckles, leaving open-mouthed kisses as he continues moving inside Noah, and revels as Noah whines. 

The euphoric thing about them is that they have very specific needs. 

Especially Noah, when he’s arched so beautifully, tears streaming down his face, face held up by the crook of Finn's elbow, a less than impressive bicep stifling him but Finn knows how much he likes it. How small it makes him feel.

Finn needs one specific thing. So he turns that perfect face towards the mirror and baby talks to him until Noah breaks. Once the last all mine and perfect slut make it past his mouth, Noah is arched beyond comprehension and eyes rolled so far back there’s only white, words unintelligible garble, if there were any words to begin with. 

He folds but Finn wraps his other hand around that pretty waist and speeds up because he is too desperate to pretend he is better than what he wants. His mouth finds every spare inch of Noah's throat. 

Noah’s noises are wanton as he climaxes. It makes Finn go a little insane. He is always like this, when they’re naked and alone. Always folds in minute one and is happy to follow along. Rarely ever wants to switch, and doesn't like to, so Finn doesn't care to either. Not when he’s holding a boneless puddle of flesh and musk and Noah and his Noah in his arms whom he is now free to use “as a toy” in his own words.

“Make me your toy,” Noah had cried, deep in something he searched up later to be ‘sub-space’, or close to it. Noah wasn’t thinking anymore. Just babbling, just a bundle of want and need. 

Finn paused. The room was wrapped in gauzy static. Noah the insulation ripped apart and Finn, the overloading wire ready to set the house ablaze.

“Finnnn-

“Finnnnnn, please” Noah cries. His voice is at least an octave higher, breaking. 

“I’ve got you, baby. Shh, I'm right here,”

Finn maintains that Noah should always be like this, with Finn balls deep inside him, split apart and being taken care of. Finn often feels like he needs to bend him over and rail him on the nearest flat surface. Fucked thorough, with that dopey fucked-out smile, his favorite prostrate abused and perfect body ravaged. That slender waist grabbed and thighs parted. Those pretty lips kissed stupid. He is no better than anyone else. He wants Noah all for himself, wrapped up in bubble wrap and kept in his pocket like a waddle bunny. 

It doesn’t fucking help when Noah whines “flip me, flip me, wanna see you, please” while Finn is trying his best not to snap a bone from how hard he just went at him, doesn’t help that when Finn does hold his face and brings them close, Noah stares at him like he hung the moon. Doesn’t help that Noah likes their kisses sloppy when they’re like this, likes their beings impossibly close. 

His pretty thighs are parted and the desperation on his face is evident as he requests, always so polite. 

“Stay inside, please?”

And fuck. Finn was just a man. 

The thing about carefully examining the presence that had burrowed into his skin over years, contemplating the one person’s silence he'd rather sit in than all the most eloquently spoken words in the world is that, it leaves Finn with the very same realisation as when he was ignoring it all. 

“I’m cooked, dude,” Noah starts. No one reacts, presumably because he has said this same godforsaken phrase five times in a minute now. “I’m generationally screwed.”

Finn, by principle, didn’t hate their cast hangouts during the lulls between seasons. Especially not now, when it was an excuse for everyone to get together before the final run. Usually there was Joe and Caleb and Gaten, people he could be friendly with and not have to deal with the fact that Noah, wearing a sheer blouse as a shirt, his collarbones and thighs sprawled, buzzed out across the table from him, was an issue. That whenever someone cracked a joke he looked at him like I know you heard that too wasn’t a massive problem waiting to happen.

But today Joe wasn’t there, and Caleb and Gaten were goofing off with the kids. Hell, even Millie couldn’t make it. It was just them, and Natalia and Charlie, who were possibly making out at the far end of the couch.

“Someone better get this guy home, man,” Caleb finally declared, eyes widening at the correct beats to elicit laughter from all. “You’re gonna get us all in jail.”

And yeah - shit. Noah’s not even a legal drinker yet. Finn totally wasn’t weirdly aware of that fact the whole time.

And Caleb looked at Finn.

And Finn looked at Caleb.

He did not look at Noah’s flushed face or easy drunk smile or the brightness of his eyes.
He did not.

One thing led to the other and he had Noah by the shoulder, guiding him to the car. Finn didn’t know why he’d drunk so much, but with Noah’s hot breath on his shoulder and his waist in his hands, he thought he needed at least three shots of vodka and cognac. And then hot sauce.

Noah had jumped from topics of ducks to Wes Anderson to his irrational hatred of garlic in food with the precision of a concussed slug. Now, he started, “Finnie, finnie, oh my god, you’re such a great actor,”

Finn grimaced. Noah sounded genuine about it, though, so he said, “Thanks, man. Aren’t you so nice,”

“Yeah, dude, shit, you’re so great, you act so well, you’re like, like,”

Finn mentally counted the steps to the car.

“Like a pretender, man. Always pretending. Mm.”

“Right.”

“The theatre’s empty now, though.”

Finn stared. Noah was looking right at him, face flushed and dazed but right at him, not stumbling anymore.

“The audience is gone.” Noah’s voice was low, clear. “But you’re still dedicated to the script.”

The stars shone above them, momentarily overshadowing the bright buzz of artificial lighting. A cicada chirped, and maybe Finn was hallucinating audibly, but he heard it all.

I’ve seen you stealing glances at me.
I’ve seen you mapping every expanse of my exposed skin like a shark.

You thought you were slick?

And then Noah slumped again and the moment was over, and he was belching like he might throw up. Which he did, but later that night, when he was home.

The only other thing Finn remembered was dragging him to the car, heart pounding, putting the goddamned Tesla on autodrive, and looking ahead at the lights blinking like angels mocking him and his own cowardice.

He remembered half feeling like he ought to bend Noah over and pound him senseless right then and there, but filed that thought away - or rather, chucked it into his bin of regrets - because he was drunk, damn it. Drunk.

He didn’t mean it.
He didn’t.
He couldn’t.

Not possibly. 

It’s a haze. A dense, warm layer of fog that surrounds them both, holding them intact. The world hasn't seeped back in yet. The only sound is their breathing, syncing into something slow and tidal.

Noah tucks his head into the hollow of Finn’s neck, as he always does, a creature returning to its burrow. He doesn’t speak, doesn’t move much. Finn reckons he isn’t even thinking - his mind blissfully, finally silent. Finn himself is always dizzy on the comedown, his thoughts slippery and slow. He can’t imagine what it must be like for the boy in his arms, feeling everything ten times sharper as far back as Finn can remember.

So, like anyone in his position would, he indulges. 

He threads his fingers through Noah’s slack ones, lifts the heavy, boneless hand. He starts at the knuckles, pressing his chapped lips to each prominent ridge. He maps the topography of Noah’s hand - the faint scar from a childhood bike accident on the thumb, a single white spot on his middle nail, and the moles, for god’s sake. 

Then he drags his mouth along the smooth, sweaty expanse of Noah’s inner arm. He tastes salt and heat and them. He pulls the arm gently, like moving a ragdoll, to get to the crook of the elbow, to the cluster of faint freckles there he knows like a constellation.

Noah doesn’t move, but Finn can feel the pair of eyes on his neck. Not a stare, but a presence. A beautiful, clinging vine. He knows he isn’t asleep yet.

Noah shifts, a tiny, unconscious shudder, and a sliver of cold air hits the sweat on Finn’s back. Instinctively, Finn hooks a foot under the rumpled duvet and pulls it up over them. He lets himself yawn, the day’s exhaustion setting in, but not before he tucks it around Noah’s shoulders, a cocoon. It conceals the fact that they are still joined in a way that leaves no space for light, for air, for anything that isn’t the other.

It is just for themselves, the fact that they can’t possibly get any closer. They are as proximate as two human beings can be, in this mortal life.

Finn's eyes drop as his lips find Noah's cheekbones, their faces pressing close. He is high in the feeling of Noah's exhales over his face.

As close as possible. 

“Finn,” Noah says. Bewitches. Finn looks up.

They are in a valley, standing, swaying with the wind. The flora and fauna surround them, in the distance is a stream. Finn is how he always is, barely there, a dark wisp of anxiety and anticipation. All around him is endless calm. Phenomena he has always thought of longingly. But the ultimate craving of his life stands far ahead.

Noah shakes like a leaf. The column of his throat reflects light, his moles like stars on an inverted night. He looks at him, and it's unbelievable. Finn is addicted to the idea of him, drunk on the feeling he gets when he looks at him. What is it like to grow up that way? His hair falling into place like dominoes, lips plump under the sun’s glow, not just lusted for, but beautiful? Finn doesn't know.

“Come?” his youthful voice, like honey sprayed across vocal chords, reaches on to caress his face. His eyes are both brown and green, like the forest. Like the colours of the world he loves so much.

Is there any way for Finn to not see Noah in everything? 

Finn returns to the grey and texture of the ceiling, not even knowing when he’d slipped under. The weight in his arms comes back like a tide, real, warm, half-asleep. Finn suddenly feels pathetic for yearning as much as he did for the boy in his arms right now, all his to keep. The frustration at any supposed distance left between them.

But then he looks at Noah's profile against his chest, the curve of his nose and lips and eyelashes so long against the backdrop of glistening skin, and suddenly it's not such a far-fetched idea, the frustration. 

His lips find the pulse point on Noah’s wrist, beating a slow, contented rhythm against his tongue. He noses along the delicate tendons, kisses the inside of his forearm where the skin is so thin and blue-veined it looks like tracing paper. He catalogues the textures: the fine hair, the slick sweat now cooling, the sheer, overwhelming realness of him.

His free hand drifts to Noah’s back, skimming over the familiar landscape. He doesn’t need to look. He knows the dip of his spine, vertebra by vertebra. He knows the two beauty marks just above his hip bones, the little patch of skin that’s always slightly warmer. He traces them now, committing the feeling to a memory he’s already visited a thousand times.

Finn is greedy. He is a man possessed by the need to memorise. 

And Noah is… awake?

“When’d you get buff?” A scratchy voice near his throat. Finn feels a hand - just a finger - tracing a barely-there muscle on his bicep. The touch is light, but the fingertip tremors against his skin. The same ones he’d used to hold Noah’s face up not even an hour ago.

He huffs a laugh, and not joylessly.
“You can hardly call it buff.”

“Yeah, but,” Noah exhales, a deep shudder that doesn’t seem to end, hitching slightly at the bottom. Finn doesn’t notice the signs. He doesn’t because Noah seems transfixed, and Finn was already in the middle of tapping the pad of his fingers on every stray peppered mole he could see in his line of vision.

“But?” he hums.

“I thought you hated the gym?” Noah’s voice is thicker now, a little raw.

Finn tilts his head. “I do.”

Noah just looks up. His eyes are too bright, glassy in the low light, and he blinks rapidly, looking away almost instantly. Finn hopes he knows why he keeps dragging his elf-ass to one of the worst inventions of corporate health-centered ventures three days a week, even if it feels like being euthanized. He hopes he doesn’t have to spell it out for him. Not that he’d hesitate.

“That guy could probably open, like, open jars for a living.” Noah had said once, staring at Jonathan Bailey as ‘Man of the Year’ on the contemporary magazine rack of their brunch spot, and they’d all laughed, half-agreed. Caleb rubbed his back with a ‘you’re so adorable, man’ and Gaten guffawed heartily.
Finn took notes.

He supposes Noah does know. He attributes the shine in his eyes to the light, the small, convulsive gulps to dehydration.

He does the responsible thing and lifts Noah, finally sliding out of him. They’re both sore and raw. Noah flinches almost imperceptibly at the separation and turns his face sharply into the pillow. Finn supposes he’s embarrassed, even after all these times.

He has more to do - clean up, get water - but Noah is like a weighted blanket. A fine, constant tremor runs through the body pressed against his. He holds him and collapses properly onto the bed, descending into the glow of the after.

“Open your mouth,” Noah did, sweet, obedient, eyes hazy and teary, shaking as he was on his knees in front of Finn.

One. There's one on his face.

Finn spits into his mouth. Noah swallows without being asked to.

Finn grips his face with his hand. “What do you say?”

“Thank you, daddy,” Noah moans. 

Three. There’s three on his neck, there used to be more. Finn grips harder and Noah mewls, always so expressive, so loud, and Finn tries not to let the ego rush get to his head. But Noah had come into his room looking shy and expectant and said he needed a ‘pacifier’ to calm his worries about finals season and Finn knew, he knew he would be driven insane by the time that word came out of his mouth.

He unzipped his pants. Noah’s eyes lit up and dilated as he was presented with his prize for asking what he wanted politely. Finn feels like he’s delusional or Noah's mouth actually watered. He grips his hair and brings him up.

“Like it?”

“Yeah,” Noah was breathless already, like just looking at Finn from that angle drove him nuts, “So big,”

“Like it big, huh?” he slapped Noah's face with it, and the hardness made every bit of contact buzz and burn, and at this angle, Noah's eyes twinkled just from being played around with like a toy.

“Yeah, mm, love it,” he had said, unable to keep his tongue in his mouth. But he’s a good boy, Noah is, and he knows not to touch unless asked to.

“Whore.”

Noah whines and it really did drive Finn over the edge.

“Open your mouth,”

He hasn't seen a jaw drop that fast.

-  

It had been a long night.

At the end of it Noah couldn’t speak, not really, his throat raw and useless, his body slack with exhaustion. Finn felt it too, the ache in his hips, the dull soreness that lingered when he shifted. They lay at opposite ends of the bed, not because they wanted distance, but because neither of them had quite figured out how to move again.

Noah reached out first, fingers brushing blindly until they found Finn’s hand. A quiet insistence. You’re too far away.

Finn didn't hesitate. He held Noah by the hips and dragged him back with little effort, until Noah was almost entirely on his chest. Noah settled there immediately, like a fledgling, boneless and trusting. Finn ran his fingers through his hair, slow and careful. Then down his back, counting under his breath.

Six. Seven. Eight. Nine.

Then the smaller ones. Ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen.

“Huh?” Noah managed. His voice was rough, barely there, but Finn understood it nonetheless. What are you doing?

“Counting.”

Noah looked at him, confused and unbearably cute. Finn just stared. He had wished, stupidly, that it were just the two of them in the world. This room. This moment. Something that could last.

The clock kept ticking. Reality crept back in.

Finn kept counting.

Thirty-two. So many across Noah’s thighs. His hands cupped the perfect round of Noah’s ass without thinking. but he’s gripped too hard, and Noah winced.

“Sorry,” Finn whispered. “Should’ve been gentler on you, sweet baby.”

Noah shook his head, pressed his face sideways into Finn’s chest instead. Finn had  short-circuited at the sight of him like this.

“You are so hot,” Finn said softly. “Have I ever told you that?”

Finn remembered the rest scattered over Noah’s body, the few near his ankles he’d counted earlier, when everything had been hazy and slow. He added the numbers together in his head.

Noah lifted his head a little.

“Tell you what,” Finn starts. “I think you’re overdue for at least thirty more kisses.”

Noah barely had time to look confused before Finn leaned down, slower this time, softer, but just as enthusiastic, pecking away, audibly going ‘muah’ with every touch of his lips. Noah’s laugh, breathless and warm, and the quiet way he said Finn’s name wrapped around them like memory foam.

Finn often wonders how much better they could love if there weren’t these annoying layers of skin between them, keeping them apart. He also wonders if things would be different if they didn’t have to place their lives in front of a camera, hungry hyenas watching their every move just to make art. In some of his dreams, they meet, on a seaport at sunset or bumping whilst trying to watch the news in the square, trying to get the same book and touching hands. There's a rom-com style compilation of them falling and falling and then they’re just two guys renting a matchbox-size apartment, window shopping, eating greasy pizza, talking about movies or music or whatever, like they know it all.

They keep running on a beautiful street on a sunny day, and there are no rules. They haven’t learnt them enough to break them, and they aren’t confining themselves to only known places. Behind a too-busy bar. A niche apartment tucked into Vancouver. Arguing over mayonnaise at Target. the annual Christmas family game. or a little sunny farm in Dublin. Finn doesn’t think even nine lives with Noah would be enough for him.

But in this life, all they have is a high-rise hotel room, surrounded by cold.

It’s quiet now. Finn lies on top of Noah. Noah lifts a weak hand, fingers brushing at Finn’s side, and they stay like that, entirely spent. New York hums outside the window, the snow a living thing. Tomorrow Noah will have to sneak out as soon as the sun rises, waltzing off and peppering Finn with longing glances from a distance, like Finn’s heart isn’t ripped out of his chest and torn apart like lotus petals every time they say goodbye, hiding under the guise of platonic friendship. Tomorrow there will be nothing more than a few hundred kisses stolen from every movement before they open that door. No more addictive hint of skin on skin. No Noah’s perfect face in Finn’s hands, sculpted to fit his palms.

But tonight there is Noah. Mumbling. Offering himself, vulnerable and to keep - though his breaths are shallow, measured, like he’s counting them to stay steady. Finn wipes at his face, reaches for the warm towels at the bedside, much to Noah’s dismay. He shushes him anyway, wipes away the sweat, the grime, the weight of the day from Noah’s face, his thumb catching against Noah’s cheek where the skin is tight and trembling.

Later, when Finn finally pulls on a shirt, after they’ve washed themselves and used the shower and tried very hard not to turn it into something else because god, they’re better than that, Noah doesn't wait. He moves with a quiet, urgent clumsiness, lifting the hem of Finn’s shirt and burrowing underneath before it’s fully settled. He presses himself in, tucking his face hard against Finn’s sternum, as if trying to physically seal himself there. He settles, ear to Finn’s chest, his body rigid for a long moment before a full-body shudder runs through him, and then he goes utterly still.

Finn tries not to cry when Noah finally sags against him, the tension leaching out in one long, silent exhale. He relaxes at the sound of Finn’s heartbeat, his own breathing evening into something fragile but even, like he was waiting for it, waiting for Finn to be there. Like all he needs is to bask in him, unguarded.

“I wanna see the real you.” 

Noah turns. The ombre lights he had begged for in Finn's Vancouver kitchen frame his face in a haloed glow. It’s Finn's own personal renaissance, he captured the image, those upturned eyes and that mole and how his nose frames the backdrop of the rainy Canadian evening, and tucks it into the folder of his heart titled “if it ends”.

“What?”

“You said I wasn't insane once, remember?” Finn lifts the needle of his record player. ‘Like Real People Do’ stills in the air like a dancing puppet with its strings cut off.

“Of course I do.”

"Do you still believe that?”

Noah drops his spatula in his brownie batter, walks towards Finn. Lifts his hand to Finn's face, stops himself, but Finn leans his cheek to fit right in. That warm, soft palm. He swears there’s a halo over Noah's head.

“I do. Truly.”

Finn stares, their foreheads press together. 

“Then let me mean it too. I wanna know you, Noah.”

Finn knows if their devils can't dance, then neither can they. That just putting on some Hozier and dancing around the kitchen like they’re dancing around their problems won’t help.

He has had his fair share of being scared of the end even before it begins.

“You do, though. Better than most people.”

“I wanna know better than everyone. Everyone.”

Finn grabs Noah's hand, presses that syrupy warmth closer. Noah's eyebrows are furrowed and Finn wants to kiss it away, but he’ll be patient just this once. 

“You're so guarded around me. And I know, you’re less guarded around me than most people, and just because you’re guarded doesn’t mean you’re not close to people, and all that, but,” He turns his face and plants a kiss on soft skin. Maybe he is impatient. Damn Noah for smelling like Finn and cocoa powder and pomegranates they just bought from the farmer’s markets, making things infinitely harder. 

“I have shown you everything. I've given you all of me, so…”

Noah's eyes are tearing up. He's always been such a crier. Ever since they were little kids and Noah's hands were barely the same size as Finn’s, and they were just playing and goofing around. Although Finn had always secretly paid attention, silently but surely loved, he’d never imagined then they’d end up like this. In their shared kitchen in his hometown and Noah telling him what he says next.

“I love you.” 

"Finn," Noah whispered, the word damp and muffled against Finn's shirt.

"I know, baby," Finn murmured, hand cupping the back of his head. "I'm here."

A sharp, wet inhale. 

Then, the dam shattered.

“I love you."

It wasn't a whisper. It was a sob, wrenched from somewhere deep and bruised. The first one tore out of him, a raw, ugly sound, and then he was gone, body racking with the force of it, clinging to Finn like he was drowning.

Finn held him tight. His mind, lightning-fast and catastrophizing, scrolled through a hellish feed. Did I hurt him? Did someone say something? Did a fan get too close? A journalist? Oh god, did I-

"P-publicist," Noah choked out between heaving breaths, his voice thick and childlike in its devastation. "Mine. She said—" A shuddering gasp. Finn's blood went cold. "She said the metrics are fucked. That the 'Foah' thing isn't cute anymore. It's a... a…” his sobs made it hard to decipher what he said next, but the last part came out clear as lightning. 

“We're becoming... liabilities. To each other.” He sucked in a ragged breath that sounded like it cut him. "She said we need a strategy for... for a public de-escalation."

The professional jargon in Noah's broken voice was the worst thing Finn had ever heard. De-escalation. A sterile, boardroom word for the systematic murder of everything they were.

They wouldn't say break up. They'd just build a coffin out of analytics and gently ask them to lie down in it. And Noah, clever, anxious Noah, had heard the verdict perfectly.

A cold, brutal floodlight switched on in their most vulnerable moment. The future had been dissected in some office and declared non-viable, and now the corpse of it was lying between them, wept over by the boy who saw the end coming before Finn even let himself look.

A cold, murderous rage flashed through Finn, white-hot and blinding, aimed at faceless suits with their charts and their metrics. But it was immediately drowned by a wave of such profound, annihilating helplessness he thought his ribs might crack. Because Noah wasn't raging. He was grieving . He was crying like his soul was being peeled away, accepting a death sentence Finn was still trying to deny.

Finn, who prided himself on knowing what to do, could only rock him, pressing desperate kisses to his sweat-damp hair, his own eyes burning with a terror that felt like dying.

He held on tighter. "Shhh," he breathed against Noah's temple, the word a fragile vow against the storm. "They don't get to decide that. Fuck them and their metrics. They can all go to hell."

He didn't know how to win against a spreadsheet. But in that moment, with Noah's tears seeping through his shirt and the future collapsing into data points, defiance was the only option he had left.

The thing about Noah saying he wants to break up is that Finn is so madly in love with him he didn’t know how else to be.

It came on the balcony of Noah's house, Scarsdale's skies breaking around them. The summer is beautiful, even through the rain. That made it worse. Finn had felt the accumulated rainwater soaking his socks, but he didn’t really care.

Noah was crying. sobs racking their way out of his throat as he stood in front of Finn in his too large jumper, the moon’s ticking its clock-hand beams over his face. Finn wanted to raise his hand and wipe them off with his thumb, but it didn't feel like the right time. 

“I’m sorry,” he had said. “I can't risk your, well, you know what they say about me. I just can’t,”

And Finn almost felt like he was there again. that last hug. That last text. and this - a final goodbye slingshotted to his heart like a cannonball of petrichor. A statue standing in its own ruin.

“Okay,” he had heard himself say, “alright,” intelligently. Noah's tears hadn’t stopped.

Why do people even do things? Why did they bother with it at all, unraveling parts of themselves to meet each other in the middle, if it was gonna be like this?

After a while, Noah shivered and looked to the ground. Finn was gonna ask him to come inside, chastise about a cold. It's like a muscle deep beneath his skin, and when insects will try and ravage his body when he’s finally in the cold dark earth, they will see visions of just one thing. The bones which could be dug up by archeologists years later and found engraved with the same name. 

He hoped he could just stand there and drown instead.

—

He finishes the vacation with minimal casualties, so to speak.

He decidedly changes rooms. doesn't look at Noah at the dinner table. Tries to teach himself not to try and burn the world down when he notices those ever-puffy eyes, such raw sadness whenever Finn looks at him. But that’s just too much to ask of him.

Finn might have lost once again, but he’ll take this love with him everywhere he goes, even if it kills him. It was the only thing left that was his, after all. 

Noah didn’t come to the airport to say goodbye. Chloe and his dad did, though. which was like a real final nail to the coffin.

He cried the whole flight home.

__

By virtue of his profession, he was back in the States not even two weeks later. Thankfully, on the opposite coast to all the tragedy.

After two weeks of ‘some things are better after they end’ and ‘it is what it is’ from anyone he made the grave mistake of telling anything, Finn was looking forward to just the one guy he’s confided in all his life.

“Shit, dude,” Joe Keery kept his drink down and looked at him once he broke the news. “Seriously?” The sophisticated LA bar suddenly seemed like a not-so-great place for this conversation, but how can one determine proper places for conversations? His parents’s porch, DMs, a rainy balcony?

Finn almost felt bad for him. Two minutes ago he was teasing the ‘lovebirds’ for making it out of the situationship Finn had yapped his ears off about. 

They sat in the silence, thick enough to cut with a knife. Finn still wasn't sure what face to make. Some sort of sadness, sure, disappointment, maybe, but mostly grief. What does he do with all this love?

“Well,” Joe resumed, cautious,“Did you ask him why?” 

“Told you,” Finn fiddles with the glass on his table, empty already, “PR pressures, and reputations, and…”

“And bullshit,” 

Finn looked at him. Joe looked like he was stating the obvious. When Finn didn't catch his drift, he huffed.

Leaning closer, he offered, and not unkindly, “Don’t you know the guy better than that, to take that and run? I know you do.”

Those words haunted him every night until December.

__

December was table reads. Final season, sentimentality. Noah and him sitting with the Duffers, discussing a kiss. 

Noah was so professional. Smiled when needed, didn't linger. Finn absently wondered if he’d fumbled his grace period, if the window was closed. If Noah had someone else to return home to.

Not that he’d think twice of following this boy to the inferno even if he ought to stay away. So maybe risking eternal vulnerable emabarrassment by asking why the same boy decided to end things between them was a better hell to live with. 

The pre-shooting party was at some rented house with a pool nobody used. Too cold. Finn was by the fridge, staring at a bowl of melting ice, when he felt a gaze on his neck like a physical touch. He turned. Noah was across the crowded kitchen, already looking away.

The tell-tale signs of a long evening.

An hour later, Finn slipped out the side door into the brittle night air for a minute of quiet. The door clicked open again thirty seconds later.

Noah stood there, holding two empty beers. He took a final swig and passed both over without a word. Finn tossed them in the trash. The glass didn’t shatter. 

They stood in silence. The noise from inside was muffled, a dull throb. Or Finn was tipsy. Or both. 

“Hot inside, huh?” Finn knew it wasn’t. It was damn freaking cold. The heating was exceptionally useless that evening.

“Mhm,” Noah said, wrapped his arms around himself, and Finn knew it was more of a ‘I don't know what to say to this’ than a ‘I agree’ because he knew Noah, and Noah knew better than to feed into his bluff.

“You’re staring,” Noah said after a beat too long, not looking at him.

“You’re hard to look away from,” Finn said. An old, automatic truth.

Noah's cheeks filled with colour, Finn could tell, especially in the dark, and he looked towards the sound. “We shouldn’t be out here alone. People talk.”

Yeah, right.

“Since when do you care what people think?” it comes out harsher than he’d intended it to. Maybe all his next words will. Finn can’t think straight.

Not when Noah looks up at him with those kicked dog eyes, not when he gulps and looks the ground and says, finally:

“Since it started hurting you.”

The words landed like a stone in Finn’s gut. He heard Joe’s voice in his head: Did you ask him why?

He made his voice casual, a flatline. “So what was it, then?” He turned to Noah properly now, Noah caged by his shadow from the light of the moon. “You just wanted it to be casual? You didn’t want anything to do with me at all?”

Noah's breath hitched, “Finn,” he started, like the one word alone would tell Finn everything he needed to know. Maybe, but Finn needed more. “You know that's not true,”

“Yeah? Because when you knelt down to suck my dick like it was breathing a day before you said PR is the reason why you can’t be with me, well, makes it seem like you just wanna use a man for his body, but you won’t do that to me.”

Noah went very still. When he spoke, his voice was low and frayed. “God, Finn. No." He shook his head. Beads of water formed in his eyes. “No, you know it was never that.”

“Do I?” Finn’s voice finally grated. Noah’s profile was sharp against the yellow light from the streetlamp, on with the influx of the night. “Then explain it. Because from where I’m standing, you keep looking at me like I’m breaking your heart every time I glance your way. And I can’t figure out what I’m doing wrong.”

Noah paused, like the words slapped him. and then he let out a wet, shaky huff of a laugh. He wiped at his nose with the back of his hand. “You’re such an overthinker.”

“I know I am,” Finn said, voice dropping. “So help me stop. Tell me.”

The fight seemed to drain out of Noah. He stared down at his shoes. His voice, when it came, was so quiet Finn had to lean in to hear. “You’re too good. For me, I mean.”

He finally looked up, his eyes glassy in the half-light. “You’re not some shitty frat guy from a party. You’re not some Grindr hookup who made me feel like I was nothing the second it was over. You’re, well, you’re…” the fondness in his voice, his smile framed by his tears. Finn felt something akin to a washing machine tumble down his chest. 

You’re the boy I grew up with. 

“It had to be all or nothing. And I chose nothing because…” He sucked in a sharp breath. “Because you don’t deserve a half-life. You deserve someone who can give you everything. Out in the open. Whose love you can accept without worrying about the consequences. And you can’t. Not with me. The fact that you’re standing here, feeling guilty for breaking my heart, when I’m the one who did the breaking… that’s proof, isn’t it? I can’t love you the way you deserve.”

There it was. 

The flawed bedrock.

Finn moved without thinking. He closed the space between them, his hands coming up to cradle Noah’s face. His thumbs brushed over the tear tracks. Noah didn’t pull away. He shuddered, eyes squeezing shut.

“You listen to me,” Finn said, the words rough, carved out of his chest. “You don’t get to decide what I deserve. I decide that. And I decided. A long time ago. I deserve you. The secret. The mess. All of it.”

He leaned his forehead against Noah’s. “You can’t show me what it’s like to stand under your love and then take it away from me. You don’t get to do that.”

Noah was crying properly now, silent tears. “And if I do it wrong?” he whispered, a broken thing. “If I break us trying?”

“Then we break,” Finn said, and meant it. “And we put it back together. Together. Not you deciding for both of us from some fucking martyr podium. So.” He brushed his lips against Noah’s forehead. “We should go home.”

Noah’s breath hitched. “Home?”

“Yeah. Home.”

For a long moment, there was only the sound of their breathing in the cold air. Then Noah’s hands came up, fisting in the front of Finn’s shirt. He nodded, a small, desperate movement.

“Okay,” he breathed into the space between them. “Okay.”

__

The best thing about their break-up was that it didn't last the season.

And Finn hoped, doused in Noah in the dark of their room, their home, that they were doing it right this time.

A year from that, Finn shushed Noah, soft nonsense mumbled into his hair. Held him until the sobs fractured into hiccups, into wet, shaky breaths. He kissed his temple, his cheek, the salt-damp corner of his eye. “I’ve got you. I’m right here.”

Noah finally went still, a heavy, spent weight against him, breathing evening out into something fragile but even.

And in the quiet, with the warmth of Noah’s back against his chest and the scent of tears and his own soap in the air, Finn was hit with a sudden, vertiginous sense of déjà vu. He’d done this before. Not any particular act of comforting, but the specific, solemn feeling of being comforted. The sacred duty of holding a breaking world together, and the one who did it with just his bare hands.

He closed his eyes, trying to place it. It came to him as a sensation: steam, and the smell of cheap lavender bath salts.

The quiet slosh of water.

Finn felt like he was dangling dangerously close to a ravine’s edge.

He’d been out all day, trapped in a cycle of looping takes and bad coffee and a director whose notes felt less like direction and more like personal critique. His head throbbed. His jaw ached from clenching. The ghost of all his past failures seemed to walk with him out of the studio and into the September drizzle. His ever-present anxiety threatened to soar.

He wanted quiet. He wanted the lights off. And only one more thing.

He pushed open the door to his apartment and the quiet was already there. But it was a soft quiet. A lived-in quiet.

The TV was on, muted, casting blue light over the couch where Noah was sprawled. Not asleep, but utterly spent, eyes half-lidded, thumb swiping listlessly at his phone screen. A game. Some stupid, colourful puzzle thing. Finn recognized the telltale plink-plink-bloop from the tiny speakers. The remains of what looked like a truly sincere attempt at dinner - cold mac and cheese and take-out orange chicken - sat on the coffee table.

Noah didn’t look up. “Screw this,” he mumbled to the phone. His voice was scratchy, thin. He didn't look particularly angry.

Finn just stood there, coat hanging to the floor from his hand. The sight of him here, in the wreckage of a bad day that wasn’t even his, did something dangerous to Finn’s chest. It didn’t fix his headache. It just made the ravine feel wider, because now he had something precious to lose over the side.

“Bad day?” Noah asked, finally glancing over. His eyes were puffy. He looked younger.

“The worst,” Finn said, the words grating out.

Noah nodded like he understood. He probably did. He dropped his phone on his chest. “Mine too. Failed a quiz. Professor’s an ass. Macbook froze mid-class.” He said it all flatly, like a report of the weather he was ready to close the windows to. 

A flash of something ugly and hot spiked in Finn’s gut. Jealousy. Not of the quiz or the professor, but of the fact that Noah had a whole other life, full of other people who got to see him frustrated, tired, human. People who weren’t Finn. He hated himself for the thought immediately, chucked it into his mental bin.

“Come?,” Noah said, not moving. An invitation to cross the room.

Finn did. He sank onto the couch, the cushions sighing. Noah shifted, dumping his phone aside and wedging his cold feet under Finn’s thigh without ceremony. His head found Finn’s lap.

For a while, they just existed in the blue glow. Finn’s hand found Noah’s hair, carding through the curls. He could feel the tension in his own shoulders, a hard knot of the day’s fuckass misery. He felt like a pile of self-pity, wanted to wedge himself into the gaps in the wall, but Noah just lay there, taking and giving weight.

“We stink,” Noah said eventually, nose scrunching. Rubbed against Finn’s dress-shirt anyway.

Finn huffed a laugh. “Yeah.”

“Bath?”

“Yeah.”

The bathroom steamed up, warm and close. They didn’t speak much. Finn sank into the water first, hissing as heat met sore muscles. Noah climbed in after, slotting himself between Finn’s legs, his back to Finn’s chest. The world narrowed to the scent of soap, the lap of water, the press of skin.

Finn rested his chin on Noah’s damp shoulder. He pressed a kiss there, then another to the side of his neck. Noah hummed, a low, contented sound. Their mirror fogged up from the steam and made it feel like the world ended at the bathroom door. Just their twin towels, two toothbrushes in a mug, a tube of paste on its last leg, both of them too lazy to replace it. Shared body wash so he could carry Noah with him when he did inevitably have to leave again. A fucking charcoal face-wash.

Finn wished it did end right there.

He turned his head, seeking Noah’s mouth. The kiss was slow, water-slick, and lazy. Their teeth clicked, a clumsy, unsexy sound.

Noah pulled back, a startled puff of air against Finn’s lips. And then he laughed. A real, bright, surprised laugh that shook his shoulders and sent tiny waves across the bathwater. It was the stupidest, sweetest sound Finn had ever heard.

And just like that, Finn wasn’t dangling over a ravine anymore. He was just… in a bath. With a boy who laughed when their teeth clacked together. The boy whose collarbone still had faint marks Finn had himself given. The boy who rubbed specks of cheese dust from his hands and reached for the shampoo to work through Finn's own dirty mats. The bad day was just water, going down the drain.

And as Noah's fingers did find his scalp, as they often did, the revelation was just about violent. 

He didn’t just not want it to end. He doesn't know what he’d be in the after, if it somehow still did. If the skeletons in his closet caught up to him.

He realized, with a final, quiet thud in his soul, that he was already ruined for any other version of his life. This was it. The sweetest, most life-changing thing was this: unhealthy dinners, a lost mobile game, shared silence, and laughter in a tub.

He tightened his arms around Noah, burying his face in the wet curve of his neck, hiding the sudden, overwhelming certainty of his own doom. He forgot himself in the tousled head of auburn curls, lips finding his ear.

He would never be able to let this go.

Like from most of his reveries, he gladly returns to Noah. And Noah clings. He is always needy. Well, not with everyone.

Just in private moments, when he was expressing with his whole body what a particular scene in some film meant to him, what he did at school, or just watching Finn talk with such adoration in his eyes it bordered on tears. And Finn felt so lucky to be on the receiving end of that devotion. So possessive when Noah asked him about his day or fixed them dinner, knowing it was and had always only ever been for him.

As he watched Noah shuffle uncomfortably over the unfamiliar sheets (he liked to run their feet together over the woollen ones in his NYC apartment, or the fuzzy comforter in Vancouver), Finn couldn’t bear to imagine an end. He had seen a glimpse of it once and it had made him want to shoot himself. Throw everything away and run, because he didn’t look forward to much else but this. Yes, his art, he cherished, but everything was second best after the meteor strike that he was cradling in his arms right now, warm and bright but intense, a natural phenomenon meant just for his nights.

Noah seemed to mirror his thoughts. He snuffled, even though Finn knew the tears had long dried, and pouted and made a little hmpf that made Finn want to howl and scream and hold Noah close and rip his skin away so he could properly cradle his heart, like a monster. Or worse.

A lover.

A selfish, selfish lover.

“Finnnn,” Noah crooned.

“Yes, baby?” Finn whispered, instinct, even if he didn't know what he was answering. God. If only they weren’t different bodies. If only they could melt into one another until no one could tell where Finn ended and where Noah began. Between them was Noah’s ethereal face and this godless world. But he was so glad he got him. He was so glad and he wouldn’t complain. 

How much better they could love.

“Sometimes, I feel like I like you more than you like me.” The tears streamed down Noah’s face in gentle waterfalls. Finn’s thumb twitched. “But I love you. I love you. I’ll take anything you give me.” 

Scarsdale. 

Noah, drunk in his bed.

“You don’t need to worry so much,” Noah flipped through his scripts the day before, the Atlanta sun making his eyelashes glow golden in the open field. How many more times would they ask for another take? Until Noah’s slight playful nudge was burned into his chest, he hoped. “It’s you. You can make it.” Noah’s upturned look meant Matt was definitely staring, and Finn was too.

At Noah, haloed by the sun.

“Finn. Finn. Finn.” In Finn’s deepest fantasies, Noah reciprocated not just his love (he was still afraid of taking it for granted) but his obsession. This tantalising feeling that sometimes felt so impure, the jealousy that made him sick to his stomach. And in the valley of his dreams, Noah, in his perfect, cherished form, held Finn’s face and there were cracks in Finn. Always had been. And they were filled. And much to Finn’s surprise, Noah smiled brighter still, like something in Finn fulfilled him too. Like they could just find each other in any world.

And then he woke up. But his fingers could still taste it.

Noah in the valley.

Noah crying for him in bed. Noah waving goodbye at the airport for the nth time. Noah stepping a foot on his under a busy dinner table and stealing a sip of his drink. Noah sitting farthest away as cameras and lights and people’s eyes bared at them, a single shared look. Noah’s hand in his at yet another PR meeting. Noah’s frustration through the phone after another unsuccessful conversation with the Duffers. Noah begging him to shower. Noah and him just doing laundry and taxes. Noah picking and fussing over groceries. Noah’s waist in his arms. Noah’s ankles under his lips because he wanted to kiss the moles there. Noah’s deep, honest flush. The crown of his head. His curls as he nervously shifts in his seat. His ill‑fitting shoes. His coat sleeve that always found Finn’s pockets. Noah Noah Noah Noah.

“Finn,” he laughed, a soft puff of air against Finn’s collarbone. “Shut up.”

Noah under the kitchen lights.

Noah’s cheeks are rosy now. The night is dawning in on them and he was hungry and tired. And sad. It feels like daggers in Finn's chest. 

Noah when if it ends.

He couldn’t imagine it. He’d done it too many times and wanted to stab himself just as many. It would hurt less. He kissed the sweet crown of Noah’s head where his curls met soft skin. He resisted the urge to audibly sob every time he did.

Noah looked up. His green eyes sparkled. Finn wanted to die. He hated it when he looked at him like that. Like they had nothing left to do. Nothing to salvage. That they’d lose it all under public scrutiny and industry image. That even this, this emotional hurricane of touch and feeling they called a secret relationship, was as mortal as them.

Was it?

“Do you think we are supposed to meet the wrong people?” Noah's look unwavering on him, the snow.

It is. Finn knows it is.

Noah pretending to land a plane on Finn's chest as they are tangled limbs in the wisps of the first daylight, making engine sounds for dramatic effect. Mischief in his eyes. The sun.

The thought is a cold stone in his gut. Then, a spark. A stupid, reckless, necessary spark.

Without a word, Finn reaches for his phone on the nightstand. He feels Noah’s curious gaze on him but doesn’t meet it. His thumbs move with a certainty his heart doesn’t feel, navigating to an airline app. Three taps. A confirmation email hits his inbox.

He throws the phone back onto the duvet and picks up the TV remote, clicking it on, pretending he didn’t just do that.

Noah’s whining about some new album now, moved on from movies, a familiar, comforting rant, and it doesn’t stop unless he’s hushed (and kissed).

“We’ll just play it,” Finn murmurs, pressing his lips to Noah’s temple. “Background noise.”

“You won’t even pay attention,” Noah whispers, the tease hanging in the dim, ombre light, “not until it’s about to end,” 

Finn looks around the room. Their clothes and Finn's suitcase and Poppy, asleep on the couch.

He looks at him. At the boy haloed by the glow of the screen, at the love he’s mapped across thirty-four moles, at the secret they’ve built in the dark. He sees the ravine’s edge. He sees the fall. And he makes his choice. 

The remote doesn’t feel like deadweight in his hands anymore. He turns to the screen. He makes it sound simple, though it might be the single hardest, most worth-it thing he’s done.

“Then we’ll play it all over again.”

The email came through at 7:14 AM, the subject line a single, screaming word: URGENT.

Deborah, halfway through her first espresso, feels her stomach drop through the floor of her high-rise office. She knows that tone. It is the tone that preceded cancelled contracts, scathing PR statements, and the particular, soul-siphoning brand of damage control reserved for reckless celebs who forgot the rules.

She opened the attachment. And there they were.

A grainy, rain-spattered shot, taken from a distance on a New York street in the bruised light of a January dawn. But the grain couldn't hide it. Finn's collar turned up against the cold, his hand cradling the back of Noah’s head in a way that was hardly anything but precious. Noah, leaning into him, face tilted up, eyes closed. Their lips met in the middle, a stark, undeniable line of connection.

It wasn’t a friendly peck. It wasn’t a blurry, deniable maybe. It was a kiss. 

A fucking kiss.

The headlines are already running through her head. 

FROM HAWKINS WITH LOVE! Stranger Things Stars' Secret Big Apple Romance Exposed

Co-stars Finn Wolfhard, 23, and Noah Schnapp, 21, caught in a passionate kiss during NYC getaway - and fans are saying they 'called it years ago.'

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A source close to the pair tells us their connection was 'an open secret' on set

Before she can decide where to cry or throw herself out the window, her phone starts buzzing on the desk - seven different gossip tabloids, that one annoying junior intern who claims he ‘clocked it’ from a mile away, Finn's own publicist, perhaps more confused than anyone at such a stunt when a heartfelt I wanna come out on my own terms came from the actor a few mere months ago.

Deborah didn’t pick up. She just stared at the photo.

A strange, sharp pressure built behind her eyes. Not rage, though there was plenty of that simmering beneath the surface. Not even fear, though the next seventy-two hours of her life just evaporated into a hellscape of spin and containment.

It was something closer to… awe. A terrible, reluctant awe.

They’d done it. After all the warnings, the carefully crafted distance, the separate hotels, the coached interviews about “brotherhood” and “professional respect” - they’d just… stepped off the edge. In the middle of Manhattan. In the rain.

She thought of Finn’s carefully blank face in her office, nodding along to her directives. She thought of Noah’s anxious, flickering glances during joint appearances, always seeking Finn in the room.

“Don’t go sneaking into each other’s rooms. It’s a safety hazard.”

A wet, half-hysterical sound escaped her. A laugh or a sob, she couldn’t tell. She pressed her fingers to her eyes, the ghost of the image burned onto her lids.

They hadn’t sneaked. They’d walked right out the front door and kissed on the goddamned sidewalk.

It was the worst PR disaster of her month. It was a logistical nightmare. It was a breach of every professional boundary.

And for one dizzying, unprofessional second, Deborah - who had built her life on contingency plans and controlled narratives - wasn't thinking about the statement she needed to draft.

She was thinking, with a clarity that felt like a shard of glass in her chest: They must really love each other. Good for them.

The phone buzzed again, violently. The real world rushed back in, cold and demanding.

She took a deep breath, wiped hastily at her eyes, and reached for the receiver. The crisis had begun.

But the image on her screen, the two figures blurred by rain and defiance, remained. A secret, she realized, that had never been a secret at all. Just a truth, waiting for its moment to step into the light.

Somewhere in the city, in a warm room high above the chaos, a film played as two figures, wrapped in each other, tried soaking it in. Their buzzing phones, silenced calls, kept far away were still quite distracting.  But it was alright, even if they were a little lost in it all, in each other. 

Because if the movie ended, well, they knew to just play it all over again.