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[Lightning Returns] Second Impressions (9626words)
Title: Second Impressions
Fandom: Lightning Returns
Character/Pairing(s): Noel/Hope (still all the cute and fluff), Lightning in the background
Rating: G
Warning: Babies. No, not MPREG, just babysitting.
Summary: First Impressions sequel. Ten years later, and Hope is called to babysit again. (Happy belated birthday, Bekas!)
Hope wouldn’t realize the coincidence, but his problems would once again start on a Thursday, once again thanks to a call from the Farron household.
“Uh-huh,” Hope agreed absent-mindedly as he wrote his observations down in the notepad beside him, frowning into the microscope even as Lightning stopped in her descriptions. Thanks to a power outage earlier in the day due to some blown fuses (and that was thanks to the crazy alternative fuel research department one floor above his), a good portion of data had been lost since no one had the time to save their findings before the computers all went kaput. With emergency generators up and running to keep the lab cool enough for live samples to remain viable, it meant that all non-essential equipment were to be unplugged and both observations and reports written by hand until the blown fuses could be replaced. “So Serah just… ran out?”
“Hope.” And here, Lightning's voice was strained. “She left me with her children.”
Hope made a sympathetic noise, hearing the crying the background grow even louder. He wasn’t too surprised, especially since Serah had been complaining to him recently about how her sister always disappeared when she asked for a babysitter. Little Lana was Snow and Serah’s third child, and unlike the previous two, was extremely loud, extremely fussy, and refused to stop crying if she didn’t get her way. Even her two older siblings wanted nothing to do with her, often retreating to another room to play. The times they didn't were even worse, since they would deliberately antagonize their baby sister until she was unbearable to all the adults.
“Maybe it was important.” Hope offered weakly. Goodness knows he was thankful he lived in another city now, despite the pain it was to drive two hours to see old friends. It meant he was out of the question as an everyday babysitter. Not to mention, work had kept him busy ever since Lana was born, having only settled down the past week.
“That doesn’t matter.” Lightning told him, sounding clipped. “Hope. I need your help here.”
“Uh…”
“Three against one is not a fair fight.” And who would have known it, it sounded like Colonel Lightning Farron was actually complaining. About children, no less. “I can take the other two, but I need you to take Lana until Serah and Snow,” and there was still that lingering distaste Hope could hear in Lightning’s enunciation of his name, “get back from that impromptu third honeymoon of theirs.”
Hope wavered. He had never been very good at refusing requests from Lightning, not like how he learned not to get roped into Serah’s schemes any more as he grew up. He looked up from his station, noting the tired characteristics of scientists around him, and how most were just about ready to call it a night. On the one hand, he could honestly claim that he was needed at work and have a legitimate excuse to not babysit the hell-spawn.
On the other, that would mean leaving Lightning on her own in enemy territory with no backup and no real defense for an extended period of time. She had told him, when they first met over ten years ago, that they were partners and he wouldn't have to worry about anything because she'd watch his back.
He wilted, and twisted his wrist to glance down at his watch resting on his pulse point. It had been several months since he last returned to his childhood town, and his excuses ran out the past week since his latest deadlines had been met. “...I guess I can take her. Mom and dad won’t be back from their cruise until next week, anyway. Just her, though.”
There was no way he was going to leave the hellspawn with the other two children. They seemed to get exponentially worse when exposed to each other, so it really was the best idea for Lightning to take the eldest two and for Hope to take Lana to a separate house.
“If you really need, I can be there in… four and a half hours.”
“Make it three and I’ll let you have the first go at Snow when they come back.” Lightning told him, and hung up.
.
.
Three and a half hours later, and Hope could feel an oncoming migrane as he frantically tried to bounce and shush six month old Lana. Lightning had been waiting for him in the driveway of his parents’ house when he pulled up, the two eldest strapped in the back seats of her car as she handed off a wailing bassinet to him along with a large bag filled with diapers, formula, bottles, blankets, and toys. She gave him a rare and heartfelt thanks before leaving him at it, driving off with the increasingly rowdy children in her car.
It had been half an hour since Lightning’s departure, and Hope had yet to stop the wailing.
“Would you please,” Hope told the baby desperately, walking back and forth in his living room, holding the baby up to speak to her, “please give me some way to think. To breathe. Anything! What’s wrong? It’s not your diaper. Lightning said she just fed you. You’ve been burped! Lana, what’s wrong with you?”
If anything, the baby wailed louder as Hope's voice broke at the end, her little face scrunched up and red from effort as she flailed her fists above her head in Hope’s arms.
Distantly, Hope could hear the sound of a doorbell go off.
He looked up, and walked toward the entrance-way with the baby, hoping it was Lightning back with some secret technique to calming infants. Or a paediatrician who knew what was wrong with Lana. Or an exorcist.
Instead, he opened to door carefully to find (baby still wailing loudly in his arms) a young man standing on the welcome mat, tall and blue-eyed with brown hair that looked desperately ready for a trim and wearing a shirt Hope was fairly certain had to be made out of spandex.
“Uh,” Hope felt his mouth go dry, arms tightening just slightly around the baby. This wasn’t what he was expecting at all.
The young man looked just as surprised, jaw slack in shock (or perhaps he was just reeling at the sheer noise that Lana was generating) and eyes widening before he suddenly braced his hands against the door-frame and leaned forward into Hope’s space, asking over the noise, “Will you marry me?”
Hope didn’t think he had ever shut a door so fast in his life.
.
.
“Lightning,” Hope hissed into his bluetooth, his back against the thick wood of his front door. It might have said something about him that he called her immediately rather than, say, the police. “Light, I think my mom’s cheating on my dad!”
It was a near impossible thought, but the only explanation that made any sort of sense. Why else would a random stranger just show up at the front door of his childhood house (still his parents’ place), looking — well, like that, and then immediately proposition him?
Lana wailed in his arms all the meanwhile, barely stopping to take a breath at all.
“What are you saying?” Lightning asked on the other side of the phone, much more calm and composed now that the crying noises weren’t on her end of the phone. “Hope, I can barely hear you over the racket.”
Hope slid down against the wooden door, feeling like a ball of misery. Was this the feeling that came before parents divorced? Sure, his mom and dad had their ups and downs, and there had been a handful of years during his early teens when he actually thought it might happen, but they got over it, didn’t they?
...Or perhaps all the wailing was making the edges of his brain fray.
“There’s a weird man standing outside my door,” Hope elaborated, easily ignoring the tentative knocking and whatever said stranger could be saying outside thanks to the fact that he could barely hear anything over Lana. It was hard enough to hear Lightning, and her voice was coming to him inside his ear. “He — Light, what if he’s seeing my mom?”
(He didn’t know what was worse, if his mom was cheating on his dad, or if his dad completely knew about it and didn’t disapprove — or even —)
“Weird?” Lightning’s tone was sharp. “What does he look like? I sent Noel over, I’ll make sure he deals with it.”
“Noel?” Hope echoed, vaguely remembering the boy. The last time they had been together, Noel had been twelve and just as energetic as ever, tall for his age and gangly from the growth spurts. The boy had his hair cropped short and tended to flail his arms about enthusiastically to catch Hope’s attention whenever he was excited, which was all of the time.
That had been before he had been claimed by a distant relative (Caius, if he remembered correctly) to attend school far away, and before Hope left on his internship and eventual job. While the boy was on Hope’s list of scheduled e-cards for birthdays and holidays, they rarely spoke online, and phone calls all but faded away.
“Wait, deal with it, what do you mean you’re going to send him to deal with it?” Hope asked, feeling aghast. The stranger outside looked — well, strong could be one descriptor. Tall, dark, and, uh, strong. Yes. “Light, he’s just a kid, I’m not going to make him deal with it!”
There was a sudden silence from the other end of the line before Lightning said slowly, “Hope. He’s eighteen now. You do know that, right?”
That, Hope would have easily argued, was definitely still a kid. Still a teenager, at the very least. Of course he knew how old Noel was, it wasn’t as if his brain couldn’t add twelve and the six years he immersed himself in the scientific community. The numbers were clear in his head — he just couldn’t shake the image of the energetic pre-teen boy trailing after him and happily babbling all sorts of random things.
“I’ll give him a call.” Lightning told him, and then hung up on him once again.
Hope wondered if it really would have been a better idea to call the police, but then couldn't help but give a thought to the stranger outside the door and how unfortunate it would be for him to suddenly get busted by someone who would essentially be the stranger in the situation, especially if he was so used to coming here often, because Hope had been absent the past several months, and even the past several years had him spending the majority of his time with his parents catching up on much-needed sleep.
And then after that thought, more than the stranger, he worried about Noel coming across this person and getting into a fight.
The knocking continued, just as Lana’s crying did, and Hope wondered what kind of precarious position he put himself in by accepting to help Lightning babysit.
“Hopeeeeeeee…” came an all too familiar tone over the noise, and Hope startled. “C’mon, let me in!”
‘Noel?’ Hope mouthed, before standing up again, Lana finally calming her crying down to more manageable levels as she squirmed about. With any luck, the baby was starting to tire herself out. He tried to look through the peekhole in the door, but there was something blocking his vision. Carefully, Hope undid the lock but kept the chain on, and opened the door cautiously.
“You don’t recognize me.” The same familiar whine was connected to the stranger, now more familiar with that — with that dejected pout and bright blue eyes. The height was unfamiliar. The — everything else felt unfamiliar, actually. The person, Noel, actually looked like an adult. Gone were the chubby baby cheeks that always gave him a slight chipmunk look, the gangly limbs, the almost crew cut, and the worn down baggy hoodies that covered half his hands as the sleeves draped down. Instead, the young man before him was... different.
The transformation was… uh.
“Do I really look that different?” Noel lamented, hands raised to press against his cheeks and tug on his own hair as if doubting his own appearance.
“What?” Hope asked dumbly, still taking in Noel’s new appearance. He doubled back, shaking his head quickly and hoping his cheeks weren't pink from the embarrassment of being caught staring. “No! Well, I... yes, I guess. I mean — I just didn’t recognize you. You… you grew up.”
It was true on all accounts. Looking closer now, Hope wondered just how he hadn’t recognized those same bright blue eyes. They should have been an unforgettable shade of blue that should have cued him into who the supposed stranger was, despite Noel looked like he could have stepped right off a teen idol magazine, all sun-kissed skin and strikingly eyes with corded muscles and —
And suddenly, taking in Noel’s appearance, Hope felt glaringly aware of his own unkempt appearance, all pale pallor and dark smears under his eyes from pulling extra hours at the lab the past several weeks, his hair mussed and possibly frazzled from Lana's constant tugging on it the past half hour. It had been years since his promotion to department head, but Hope pulled regular shifts with the rest of his team, taking on the managerial work that came with his position as well, and that meant while he kept a professional dress sense, at the end of the day he tended to look a tired mess.
He had never much cared, but now he couldn't stop berating himself for the plain slacks and dress shirt for some reason.
“Of course I did,” Noel said, his pout gone the next second as he regained his good cheer as he peered through the narrow opening of the door. “And hey, I knew I’d be taller than you—”
He was interrupted by a sudden onslaught of music, and the both of them startled for a moment, Lana starting to wail louder as Noel scrambled to dig through his pockets (at least he still wore the same type of baggy pants he used to) for his phone.
Hope tried to shush the baby, gently bouncing her in his arms as he carefully undid the chain lock now that he knew who was on the other side of the door and Noel plugged one ear with a hand and held his phone up to the other. “Hello? Lightning?”
There was a moment before Noel looked a little panicked, “What? No! What stranger? No, I can take care of it. Yeah, I’m with Hope and Lana now, how can you tell?”
Hope rolled his eyes as he waited patiently with the door now fully open. Of course Lightning would be able to tell, especially with how loud Lana was being.
Then he froze. Right. The stranger that he told Lightning about…
“Don’t worry about it.” Noel stated cockily, standing up straighter. “You don’t have to come out yourself. I'll handle it. No, no intervention needed.”
Hope couldn’t hear Lightning’s response, but his curiosity was piqued when Noel stammered and waved his free arm about like he had as a child, looking somewhat panicked and agitated. “No! It’s fine, really! I didn’t really—” Noel snuck a peek in Hope’s direction, and then turned his attention away suspiciously fast when he saw Hope looking back curiously. “I don't need help.”
He hung up quickly after that, looking embarrassed as he turned to Hope. “Lightning says there’s a strange person around here — I’ll go check out the perimeter.”
“There’s no person.” Hope murmured, face flushing. Noel only blinked, likely not having heard the exact words over Lana. Hope shook his head instead, and then nudged the door wider with a foot to indicate that the other should enter the house instead, especially before the neighbors started to complain about the noise. He asked louder, “I'll tell you if I see someone strange, okay? Right now I need your help with getting Lana to calm down.”
Noel stepped into the house and held out his arms expectantly, and Hope gratefully transferred the crying baby over. “Has she been crying this whole time?”
Hope nodded, darting glances over at Noel from where he was focused on Lana even as he closed the door so the crying would at least be muffled to the outside world. “Since before I got her. Light couldn’t get her to stop, either.” He had asked if there was something wrong with the child since he was doubtful babies were supposed to cry for that long without a good reason, but Light just look pained before telling him that Lana had gone through every test available soon after she was born because she was so easily irritated, and the doctors gave her an entirely clean bill of health. It would seem she just found everything in this world frustrating and dislikeable.
("Babies cry," had been Lightning exact words, tense and irritated as she handed Lana over. "They do that. Some more than others."
Hope, on the other hand, couldn’t stop the insistent worry that all that crying might damage the baby’s throat or lungs somehow.)
He watched Noel handle her carefully, and asked, “Why didn’t she just ask for your help to look after Lana, instead?” Because Hope had traveled two hours to get back here, and had already scheduled himself a day off for the next day just to help, and that was strange if Noel was here and knew all about how to handle Lana.
“Because,” Noel responded cheerfully, completely undeterred by Lana’s wiggling and wailing, “I might like her a lot, but she doesn’t seem to like me very much.”
As if on cue, the wailing intensified, and Hope took the baby back in a panic for his eardrums, feeling his dream for a quiet evening with Noel’s help burst like a pin to a balloon.
.
.
It took another forty minutes before Lana did tire herself out into an exhausted sleep, the baby clutching at her stuffed moogle and sucking wearily on her pacifier with troubled brows.
“What kid doesn’t like being held?” Hope murmured into his arms, collapsed into an exhausted heap at the dining table. “That’s just counter-intuitive.”
It had taken a great deal of time and checking diapers, offering food, verbal blackmailing that the baby definitely wouldn’t understand (but had Noel laughing several feet away), and even attempting to brush some honey on her pacifier to quiet her before Hope just gave up and set her down quickly in a shallow laundry basket so that he could use both hands to look through the bag Lightning had handed him along with the baby.
(Handing the baby to Noel was entirely counter-productive, since the younger man didn’t seem the mind the noise at all and Lana just managed to get louder when he handed her off.)
For a brief second after she was set down, Lana hiccuped pathetically, little fists at her eyes, until her crying finally came down to a more… manageable level, more regular crying than the top of her lungs wailing she had been doing the past half hour.
Both men froze where they were before Hope took advantage of that moment to test a theory, unmoving as he asked Noel in a whisper, “Did my mom used to babysit her?”
“Yeah,” the younger man responded, just as quietly. “Mrs. Estheim was the only one Lana actually behaved for. I'm guessing that's why Lightning wanted to hand her off to you, since she might behave for you, too.”
It made a strange sort of sense. Lately Nora Estheim gave no small hints in her daily phone calls to her son that she wanted grandchildren as soon as possible. They still spent the weekends together every other week, Bartholomew Estheim joining them whenever possible (which wasn’t very often) as Nora regaled Hope on just how cute he had been as a baby, loudly and publicly whenever she could.
Hope wasn’t sure how actions like that were supposed to incite him into entering a relationship, especially since he was never able to face anyone who heard his mother after that.
Now Hope also wondered if Noel had been so familiar with his house because he used to come help his mother babysit Lana as well.
Which brought him to the first thing Noel said to him that day, but -- did Noel actually have a crush on his mother? Hope wasn't sure what to think.
“I have an idea.” He told Noel instead, and asked him to fetch a few of his mother’s coats while he went to find the ropes in the garage.
Several minutes later, they managed to stuff several of Nora Estheim's coats (still smelling vaguely of her) around Lana and jerry-rig the laundry basket to hang under the dining table with the rope to create a make-shift cradle which Hope would nudge with his foot every few seconds to help it sway side to side gently.
“I can’t believe that actually worked.” Noel stated, voice filled with wonder. “She usually just cries all through the night!”
“That’s actually normal?” Hope asked, his voice cracking at the mere thought of having to deal with that for an entire night.
“Well, yeah.” Noel confirmed with a casual shrug, sitting next to Hope at the table. “For some reason, she’s alright with Snow, but even Serah can’t get her to stop crying for very long. The only one she really stops for is Mrs. Estheim.”
“How?”
“No idea. Serah said she's a miracle worker, but Mrs. Estheim actually said it’s because Lana reminded her a lot of you as a baby.” Noel answered. “And then told Snow and Serah not to worry because babies grow out of things like that pretty fast.”
Hope just buried his face deeper into his arms, determined to not imagine his mother gushing all about him as a baby, and even comparing him with Lana. He couldn’t have been that bad, could he?
He was then hit by a random thought, and raised his head from his arms to stare at his companion, who once again looked away suspiciously fast.
“Noel, do you actually have the Pokemon theme song as your ringtone?”
.
.
After a few minutes, in which Hope took a quick power nap, he started to become aware of an awkward silence.
“I was the stranger, wasn’t I?” Noel asked slowly after several minutes, and Hope couldn't help his cringe as the younger man connected the dots. “When Lightning called, I mean. I didn’t get it at first, but…”
“I’m sorry,” Hope blurted out, feeling like a complete heel as he sat up from where he had previously been half sprawled across the dining table. “You’re right, I didn’t recognize you, and I thought some stranger was coming here to—” He flushed, and then abandoned that train of thought as he half gestured to Noel's height. “You got really tall. And—”
He choked before he could finish that observation, ducking his head to stare at his arms and willing the darkening flush to go away. What was wrong with him? Sure, Noel had been a really cute kid. He really should have expected the child he used to babysit to grow up into a very handsome young man.
“—And you asked me to marry you out of the blue!” He finished lamely.
“It wasn’t out of the blue.” Noel denied, turned in his seat to face him. “You said I could!”
“Is that why?” Hope asked. “Because I said you could — ten years ago?”
He shook his head, feeling the familiar exasperation. It was a solid mixture of fondness and a large dash of… disappointment, he found out years before. Noel had been a cute and impulsive kid. After he had gotten over all the embarrassment, Hope had been… flattered. Not by the marriage proposals, but by the attention and utter adoration from the little boy every time they were in the same room. It was an infectious happiness, but one that crashed in the middle of the night when he was away long enough to realize that all Noel really needed was someone to pay attention to him, and that the adoration was given equally to everyone he came across.
Noel would have obtained that level of attachment to anyone who looked after him at that age. It was just Hope who managed to be there in the right place at the right time, and that was only because Serah already denied a portion of Noel’s affections, no matter how fond she was of him.
It probably didn’t help that after barely half a year knowing each other, Hope had been scouted by Oxford before the end of summer, and left for three years to obtain his degree, doubling in engineering and bio-chemistry. And by the time he came back, everything was… different.
Just like now, he thought.
“No,” Noel emphasized, and then huffed, looking just as frustrated as Hope felt with this subject. “It’s just…” He gestured for a moment with his hands, movement that was somehow both fluid and ungainly, but couldn’t seem to carry the meaning across. The brunet let out a sigh, deflating. “You know, I've been wondering about how I was going to say this for years, but I never managed to find a good way to... phrase it.”
For the year after Hope came back to put together his thesis at home, nearly eighteen and with high aspirations, Noel had once again wheedled his way into Hope’s life, going so far as to throw pebbles at Hope’s window when the older boy was caught up in his research and just didn’t pay enough attention to him. Taller, lankier, and bursting with far more energy, Noel as a pre-teen had been exhausting to keep up with, with a penchant for ridiculous stunts that had Hope laughing until tears came to his eyes.
With all his former friends busy with other things and mostly strangers after the three year separation, Hope found a best friend in a kid six years younger than him who absolutely wouldn’t leave him alone for longer than a day at a time and taught him how to play Pokemon cards and balance on a skateboard in exchange for help with homework and stories from a school far away.
He had more fun that year than all the years he left for post-secondary combined.
It all ended weeks before his internship with the research department at the Academy when Noel’s distant relative Caius took the boy for schooling far away. After that, Hope left as well, and despite his frequent visits back to see his parents as well as Lightning, Serah, and Snow, he hadn’t seen Noel around again.
“I didn’t think I’d see you here.” Hope admitted, after Noel seemed to have lost steam.
“Yeah, well, I wasn’t sure I’d see you, either.” Noel said, and rubbed his face, looking flustered. “I came back for nana last month. Summer break, you know? I, um, I wanted to talk to you, but Lightning said you were busy with this big project of yours, so I waited.”
Hope didn’t know what to feel about that. He hadn’t known that Noel had been back, would have wanted to know; had the others really seen him as too busy for details like that? Sure, he had been busy, but…
“I’m good at waiting.” Noel informed him casually, now leaning his head into a hand he propped up on the table, entire body turned to face Hope. He didn’t look hurt by the idea that Hope had been busy, or that he had to wait so long just to speak with him. “I didn’t know I’d see you today, but I’m glad I did.”
Hope felt his face flush again, just like when they were both so much younger and Noel would sprout compliments non-stop without an ounce of hesitation or embarrassment.
“So I guess... that was the first thing which popped into my head when I saw you again.” Noel continued to explain, scratching at his cheek with a finger and once again looking away suspiciously. “Since we just keep missing each other all these years. I wanted to ask before you disappeared again.”
“Noel…”
"So it's not about — ten years ago. Even if it kind of is, but it isn't! I didn't ask because of ten years ago, but I did even if it's not what you're thinking." Noel stopped, and then visibly flushed, looking a cross between embarrassed and frustrated. "I'm not making any sense, I know."
Hope stayed quiet, allowing the younger man to gather his thoughts.
"It's just—" And suddenly Noel was very close, their noses mere centimetres apart and Hope found himself frozen in place, unable to react properly as blue eyes, mesmerizing and earnest, caught his gaze completely. Any closer and their foreheads would be touching. He could feel the brush of Noel's breath against his skin, warm on his face as the other spoke, barely above a whisper but heard crystal clear due to proximity. "I'm doing this backward again, aren't I? But the past few years, Hope, I—"
The both of them froze when they heard a gurgling sound from beneath the table. Luckily, that sound smoothed itself out and didn’t prompt any crying.
Noel let out a shaky breath, and whispered, “Maybe we should leave her alone for a bit.”
Hope nodded quickly, feeling his heart in his throat even as he backed up from he had somehow been leaning forward previously, the both of them getting up to retreat into the living room as to not disturb the sleeping infant.
.
.
“I refuse to believe you’re not working on top secret government death ray projects.” Noel told him rather cheerfully as he pulled a card from the deck. “If you say you’re not, I’m going to assume that you’ve got dinosaur embryos in your lab and you’re cracking the fountain of youth. Or hey, I just watched a movie about people putting human minds into computers. Are you experimenting with that?”
“You’ve got an over-active imagination.” Hope said, studying his cards carefully. “Sixes?”
“Go fish.” Noel waited until Hope drew his card. “That wasn’t a no, so I’ll take that as a yes to everything I said.”
“Yes, you are really good hearing only what you want.” It just reminded Hope how he had to very solidly say no if he wanted any leeway with things at all. Noel was very good at wheedling his way into everything otherwise (or perhaps in spite of). “Despite what you might think, I’m not exactly pioneering next-gen projects that appear only in science fiction.”
“Artificial intelligence and giant robots.” Noel continued to guess. “Or maybe you’re building an AI to create a better giant robots than people can do. Am I getting warmer? Queen.”
Hope handed over his recently acquired queen of spades and Noel grinned unrepentantly at him. “Not even close.”
“Okay, back to the secret of immortality. Maybe you’re cracking the genetic code of life and playing god. Or creating chimeras. Or making a program to predict the future!”
It seemed that the infectious energy hadn’t been lost through the years. Hope felt himself smile, which he tried to hide behind the cards. “No dice. Aces?”
“You’re always my ace. No need to ask.” Noel responded cheekily, which only made Hope bring the cards up higher to cover his face with a groan. Noel held up one of his cards and waved it to get Hope’s attention, before just sliding it casually right into Hope’s hand.
“Shameless.” Hope accused, but couldn’t help smiling as he gathered the pair of aces in his deck and set it down.
“If I offer to make the call for take-out on this amazing babysitting date, will you tell me what you’ve been up to?”
Hope wondered if he should dispute the date part, but left it alone. “So long as it’s not pizza. And it’s not as exciting as you might think.”
“Try me!”
The scientist put down the pair of aces on the coffee table face down, and pulled his legs in under himself, wondering for a moment whether it was worth it or not. Hope never liked having to speak to strangers on the phone, which often meant ordering take-out fell to anyone else to do. But he was an adult now, and it would be healthier to just make something at home.
On the other hand, he wasn't exactly sure what his parents had in the fridge, and it wasn't exactly a chore to talk about work when he was actually avidly interested in the direction his research went.
“Did you know that roses are man-made? Fruits consumed by people are both seedless and far sweeter than counterparts that might be found hundreds of years ago. Cross-breeding flora is just as common as, say, cross-breeding species of dogs. The original roses were beautiful, but repugnant, so people decided it would be a good idea to splice flowers that smelled nicer to create a whole new product.”
“Just interrupting you here to ask a quick question.” Noel informed him quickly, hands held up for ‘stop’. His blue eyes were bright, and Hope couldn't read the expression on the younger man's face. His tone, however, was beyond fond. “Because that is actually really cool and a lot like the chimeras I suggested except with plants, which I hadn’t even thought of. Are you sure you won’t marry me? Fives.”
Hope sighed and glanced at Noel’s grin. He should have expected that coming, actually. “No. Go fish.”
“Right, I’ll take that as ‘no, I’m not sure’ so I’ll make sure to keep asking.” Noel also raised his cards to peer over them at Hope as he pulled another card from the deck, but his wide grin was unmistakable. “Sorry. Interruption over. Go on, what you’re saying sounds amazing.”
“Why don’t you tell me about what you’ve been doing the past few years?” Hope asked instead, feeling another wave of that familiar exasperation.
“I will.” Noel promised. “After you share about what you do. I want to know, I really do.”
“I review plants… and things like that.” Hope said flatly. “It’s really not as exciting as you make it out to be.”
Neither was he, really. He wasn’t as exciting as Noel thought he was, or perhaps deserving of the amount of attention the other seemed to lavish. It felt clear to Hope that Noel was likely clinging to a childhood fantasy of his, and he wanted to know why. Why him? While he was glad that they were friends, that Noel hadn’t forgotten him, Hope's too avid imagination could hypothesize a scenario where Noel imprinted on someone else as a child instead, and he didn’t know how to feel about that particular thought. He didn’t like the idea of Noel following someone else around and grinning at them just like that, constantly spouting his marriage proposals.
He just didn't like... thinking about it, that was all.
“You said 'man-made' and 'cross-breeding'.” Noel countered. “Don’t try to hide how great it must be unless it’s some top secret government conspiracy. Actually, I want to hear about it even more if it is some big government secret. Spill.”
“It’s mostly review.” Hope conceded, watching as the young man threw down a pair he managed to make from the newly drawn card. “A prior department managed to create a new species of flora which grows extremely fast and filters more carbon dioxide and provides more nutrients to the edible roots.”
“Sounds like something that would change the world.” Noel commented, looking a bit awed. “How is that not cool?”
“The strain has proven to be far too aggressive.” Hope disagreed, staring down at his cards intently. “Plant it in a field and it’ll drain all the nutrients and water to starve out the other flora. Plant it near a tree and it will grow as a vine and strangle the tree. It was originally created to grow just about anywhere, and now it can’t be released because it’ll grow just about anywhere.”
Hope stopped. This was usually where people started to get bored, since he liked getting into the technical terminology. Other than his co-workers (who often preferred to leave work at work), there weren’t many people who could even pretend to be interested once Hope started talking about cell mutation and the effects of hormone therapy in gene replacement. He learned several years ago (after an absolutely disastrous blind date his co-worker Alyssa Zaidelle arranged for him) that the things he was interested in very rarely kept the attention of others, more often than not irritating the other party as he went on.
“...And that’s it.” He concluded. “We’re working on correcting that mistake and creating something that will grow in harmony with other plants.”
At least, that was the only project he was allowed to talk about.
“That’s at the Academy, right?” Noel asked, suddenly looking away suspiciously once more. Hope thinned his lips, wondering just what was up with the other man. He was just about to ask when they heard Lana starting to cry again in the dining room, quiet for her, but quickly gaining in volume.
The both of them set down their cards in a hurry as they scrambled to get to her before she managed to wake the entire neighborhood.
.
.
“I have an idea.” Hope told Noel before he disappeared briefly, leaving the young man to crawl underneath the table and scoop Lana up from the laundry basket. The baby got louder in her distress the moment Noel reached to lift her, but he didn’t mind.
“Hey, there.” Noel said softly, careful to maintain the cheer in his voice even as he leaned back on his knees, pressed his face closer to Lana’s and nosed the soft fluff of her hair. “Did you have a good nap? Are you ready to behave now? Are you going to be the cutest baby I know you can be?”
She hiccupped in her crying, grabbing fistfuls of his hair and tugging hard as she could. Thankfully, baby strength meant that she didn’t tear any out.
“That’s a good girl!” Noel told her, as if she really had calmed down and behaved for him. His voice softened and slurred for her, smiling against her forehead. “Who’s a good girl, huh? That's right, Lana is!”
There was a snort behind him as he crawled out from underneath the table, and Noel got up again properly to face Hope, who looked a cross between pained at the noise and amused at Noel’s actions.
“Here.” He reached for the baby after placing a round and white container on the table. “Let me give it another try.”
“What is that?” Noel asked, handing the baby over carefully. Despite knowing that Lana was quieter with other people (even if it wasn't quiet by any means), he wasn’t sure if handing her off was the best idea since other people were more bothered by Lana’s crying than he was. He didn't mind her crying in the least bit, able to filter most of it out as white noise.
“A hunch.” Hope told him.
As if on cue, Lana’s hiccuping crying started to slow and quiet down, until she was sniffling quietly and mouthing gummily at her pacifier rather than spitting it outright to wail more.
Noel felt his jaw go slack. “Wait… how…?”
Hope tilted his head toward the container on the table, barely daring to move as Lana quieted down. His voice softened down to a near whisper. “Like I said: a hunch. My dad always gets mom the same lotion, and her clothes usually end up smelling like it, too. If Lana calms down with my mom’s coats…”
Nothing else needed to be said as Noel snatched at the container on the table, both Hope and Lana watching his movements. He was never the type for lotions, but Yeul would usually dab some on his elbows and then his cheeks after he started shaving. It wasn’t an entirely unfamiliar concept.
“You really like her, don’t you?” Hope’s tone was quiet, and Noel couldn’t make out the emotion underneath. “You said that she cries louder with you, but you like holding her, anyway.”
“I don’t always do it.” Noel admitted, twisting off the top of the container and twitching his nose at the sweet scent of lavender and plums. “I like looking after her, though. And I don’t mind how loud she gets. Most people can’t stand it after a while.”
He could, and since Lana tended to tire herself out quicker with him due to her extra volume, Serah once told him that made him the ideal babysitter after Mrs. Estheim.
He reached out with his arms after rubbing the lotion into his skin past his elbows, and Hope gently, very gently, deposited the baby back into his arms.
Lana fussed, and scrunched up her face, kicking out with her socked feet and smacked her lips loudly several times in disapproval, finally letting out some annoyed whines. While she continued to wiggle, there was no crying or wailing.
“That is the first time,” Noel breathed out after a moment of letting the infant adjust, watching the baby girl move around. “that I managed to hold her without her crying. Lightning’s never managed it. None of Team NORA’s managed it. Hope... you really are a miracle worker. Just like your mom.”
“It’s not a miracle.” Hope told him, smiling fondly. “She probably woke up because it’s time to feed her. Would you like to do the honors…?”
“Yes!”
.
.
“You do know that you can’t just make someone love you, right?” Hope asked as he cleaned up the take-out containers which arrived after they fed Lana. It was nearing midnight, and Noel was settled on the couch, still holding the baby in his arms and still looking awed at the fact that he was holding the baby and she wasn’t screaming her lungs out.
“I’m very persistent.” Noel told him, sounding sleepy, and then turned his attention back to Lana, tapping her nose gently and cooing, “You’re gunna love me more than you love Snow, right? Riiiiiight.”
Hope laughed, recalling the plastic carnival prize ring he received from Noel when the boy had been twelve. And the chocolate bar gifts which gradually improved from half eaten to shared kit-kats. “Persistent is one thing, but Snow is her father —- what if he comes home to find Lana calling you papa instead?”
“Then he can share.” Noel told him, brightening at the thought. “He’s already got two other kids. Why can’t I have the cutest one?”
Lana gave a gurgling coo at the compliment, even if she still continued to wiggle in his arms.
Hope rolled his eyes. Of course that’s how Noel would think, but… he wondered how to express the point to the younger man, and ended up leaning over the arm of the couch to ask him very seriously, “What if we had kids and Snow got our daughter to call him papa first?”
“That will never happen.” Noel informed him, just as serious. “I would never let him get his hands on our kids.”
Hope sighed at Noel’s somber expression. “That was just an example.”
“It’s the truth.” Noel insisted. He pointed down at Lana. “But hey, can we keep this one, too? I think she’s finally starting to like me.”
In response, Lana spat her pacifier right at Noel’s chin.
.
.
“Yeul found my list two years ago.”
The two of them were speaking quietly after they gave Lightning a call and Lana once again fell into a quiet slumber. They didn’t leave her under the table this time, since Noel untied the ropes for the makeshift cradle and decided that he would rather hold her while she slept instead of putting her in the laundry basket again. They sat in the spacious living area of the Estheim house, Hope having pulled out a laptop to work on while Noel turned on the television, the volume low enough that it wouldn’t distract either Lana or Hope.
“What list?” Hope murmured, half paying attention to his surroundings while he glanced over his work email. Taking a day off led to a lot more work than he expected…
“You know… the list of life goals I had.” Noel was sprawled across the couch with Lana resting on his chest and clutching his shirt, one arm under his neck and the remote in his other hand as he channel surfed. He beamed at Hope, who was sitting cross-legged on the carpet in front of the coffee table and immersed in his work. “Said it was best list of goals she’d ever seen, and then she made one of her own, too! Can you believe she never got that assignment? That’s the bad thing about Caius taking her around school to school all her life. It’s a good thing she’s got him wrapped around her fingers, though. She gets to go anywhere in the world she wants.”
“Uh-huh.” Hope agreed, still scanning through the lists he had been given. With the current setback, he wasn’t sure if they would manage to make their next deadline without overtime.
“I mean, we went to Australia last summer just because she told Caius she wanted to meet some koalas. What she didn’t tell him was how that wasn’t the real reason she wanted to go.” Noel didn’t seem to mind that Hope was barely paying any attention to him. “She’s helping me complete my list, and I’m going to help her complete hers. We spent a year buying Pokemon cards and then battling each other in the car whenever we went anywhere. She’s been taking singing lessons on the go as well, and my bet is that she’s going to be a huge hit before she’s seventeen.”
Noel thought for a moment, staring up at the cream colored ceiling with it’s delicate glass chandelier. “I caught one, you know. The golden stag beetle I told you about. Yeul got me a special case for it before we even went, and I caught one in Australia. Isn’t she the best? It’s like she always knows.”
He draped an arm gently over the sleeping baby. “In retrospect, the list was really silly, wasn’t it? I mean… being a Pokemon master, solving world hunger, outlawing homework… I really was a little kid back then. But you know, being king of the world might be impossible, but I know I’d feel like I accomplished it if you agree to marry me.”
Hope made another acknowledging noise, far quieter than the last.
Noel exhaled, feeling better after that declaration, even if he was sure that Hope hadn’t been listening. All these years, and he still couldn't seem to put to words the sense of relief, the feeling of being lighter than air and being able to accomplish anything he could ever want so long as Hope kept looking in his direction. He didn't know how to convey the — the tightness in his chest whenever he thought of the other's expression when he started speaking about something he liked. More than anything, Noel wanted to be the subject of such interest, to be the cause of that little lingering smile. He wanted to see that interested, happy expression whenever Hope spoke about him.
It was a feeling that never went away, a want that led him to add that to his list of life goals; an addition to the very last goal.
He took a moment to collect his thoughts, and then reached out with the remote to poke at the other’s side, unable to reach far enough with his own arms with Lana on his chest. “Hey, so I wanted to tell you: I got into the Academy.”
The contact seemed to snap Hope out of his work, and he leaned back against the foot of the couch and turned to smile at Noel. “That’s great! Congratulations. You didn’t tell me that’s where you chose to go! It’s a great school.”
“I know — you’re there, after all.” Noel responded cheekily, grinning at the pink in Hope’s cheeks as the man glared back at the words. “I was offered a partial athletic scholarship there, and it’s close enough that I can come back in the weekends to visit nana.”
Not to mention, it had been his first choice in schools despite being scouted by multiple other post-secondaries and offered full scholarships. Noel knew what he was good at, but the Academy really was the closest to where he wanted to be, not only because of the short distance from his hometown but also because Hope had chosen to work there. It was one of the most prestigious schools in the world, and Noel had fought tooth and nail the past several years to get grades just good enough to be considered.
Even then, he was fairly certain that the school board had probably been more impressed with his travel credentials and worldly stories than with his academic prowess. He had Caius to thank for that one.
But that also meant working for the rest of his tuition and saving and skimping as much as he could, since he didn’t plan on making anyone else in his family foot the bill. (Except maybe Caius. Except, no, he couldn't make Caius do it either because the man would be smug about Noel owing him the rest of his life.)
“I’m a good cook, I clean up after myself, and I know all of nana’s baking recipes.” Noel offered, thinking quick. He had been attempting to work out this conversation for ages, but never managed to get the wording correct in his head. He never seemed to be able to find the right words when Hope was involved. Better to just plough through, then, rather than dwell on it. “I promise I’m not a drug addict, either. Or dealer. Either.”
He winced. It felt like the words were just tangled up on his tongue.
“What?” Hope looked baffled.
“Serah said you had a spare guestroom.” Noel blurted, feeling his confidence drain away from him as words just continued to spill out. “Since your mom used to stay over a lot. In your apartment, I mean. And the dorm rooms are way overpriced — are the walls made out of gold or something? Not to mention, most of the apartments there require a written recommendation from a previous landlord and, um, I haven’t exactly lived by myself before.”
Hope looked confused for a moment before his expression smoothed over and he held up a hand. “Noel. It’s fine. You can stay with me. I’m usually not at home, and education is important. I think all post-secondaries are far too expensive nowadays. Just don’t flunk out, and I'd be happy to help out in any way I can.”
Noel slumped back onto the couch, somehow exhausted from the emotional overtures. That was so much easier than he imagined. “I can’t chip in all that much for rent yet, but—”
“You said you can cook.” Hope told him. “Right? I usually get home really late, so if you could just put leftovers in the fridge, then it would save me a world of trouble. You'd be watching the place for me as well since you're right and I do have that spare guest room and I'm not doing anything with it... and we're friends, it's not as if you're going to be inconveniencing me just by breathing the same air.”
There was a dull ring from the grandfather clock in the foyer, and Hope glanced at his laptop. Midnight. It was Friday now.
“Leftovers?” Noel echoed, and then cast a wary eye at the scientist as he shifted. “Hope, have you been eating right by yourself?”
“Don’t start.” Hope sighed. “That’s what my mom asks every time.”
Noel snorted, but then stilled as Lana stirred on his chest.
“Hey,” Hope said, quiet as he watched the two of them. There was something mesmerizing about the way Noel handled Lana, about his well of patience and the sheer fondness the younger man had for the people around him. “Do you remember? It was a Friday when we first met, too.”
“Course I remember.” Noel responded, quirking a smile as he lightly carded fingers through the infant's hair. The first time he met that short and pale teenage boy whose quiet enthusiasm for schoolwork actually made him look twice at subjects his teachers assigned and made his breath catch whenever the silver-haired boy would smile shyly and rant about all sort of things that went far beyond Noel's head. He had been used to the boisterous nature of his classmates, all of them loud and aggressive with their time and attention. Noel had been that way, too, until he met Hope.
Somehow, the other’s attention made everything right in the world — a notion which he only grasped after Hope first went away.
Had it really been ten years? It didn’t feel like it. Noel still felt as flustered as ever around Hope, coupled with a tendency to run at his mouth whenever they were in close proximity, which resulted in a marriage proposal being the first thing he could think of to say to a now completely grown up Hope.
He closed his eyes, drowsy and content with Lana’s warmth atop him and the sound of pen on paper as Hope went back to work, taking notes manually.
Noel had completely forgotten that Mr. and Mrs. Estheim were away when Lightning called him up earlier that day, asking him to head over to the familiar address to help with babysitting Lana. In truth, he had been expecting just another summer day, but... when the door opened, when he met those familiar yet entirely unique pale green eyes, Noel had floundered. That hadn't been Mrs. Estheim. That had been someone else entirely, someone else he had, for the past few months, been mentally preparing himself to meet again.
Except when the moment came, he was caught completely off-guard.
Hope at eighteen had still looked like a child, had still been growing and often mistaken for years younger than he was. Noel had numerous photos of the two of them on various misadventures that year, many of which were pinned into scrapbooks Yeul had lovingly put together for him.
Hope now, however...
He snuck another glance at the man from under his lashes, taking in every detail he could: strands of silver-white hair slipping out from behind Hope's ear to brush against his temple and the side of his face, the curve of his jaw, the pale skin of his throat, the arch of his neck. Even the rumpled and untucked white dress shirt over loose black slacks and dark socks, the clothes stretched tight in some areas as Hope shifted where he sat.
Noel found himself snapping his attention away quickly, staring back up at the ceiling and going through a random mantra of ordinary, everyday subjects in his head.
Noe had been caught off guard, entirely unprepared, when Hope first opened the door earlier in the day.
Eventually, as the minutes passed by, he closed his eyes again, warm and unable to fight off a lingering smile as thoughts continued to hover over the good things.
He got into the post-secondary of his choice, met up again with Hope and it wasn’t too awkward, and now he would be moving in with the guy he had been planning to marry for the past decade. Moving in together was a good step. And Noel was very patient about these things.
“Do I get a break from the propositioning for letting you move in?”
“Nope.” Noel answered the unexpected question, and exhaled, relaxing into the couch. He kept his eyes closed, and dared to imagine another ten years from now, hopefully with the same scene: Hope next to him, and a child in his arms. “Not a chance. You agreed to this ten years ago.”
“Fine.” Hope sounded amused. “So long as you keep your beetle collection to your room. Golden stag beetle or not.”
“Sure thing,” Noel slurred, and let the warmth of the night lull him to sleep.
.
.
Hope paused from his work as he noticed the silence, and looked back to see both Noel and Lana asleep on the couch. He got up quietly, and slipped the remote from Noel’s grasp, turning off the television and then crouching down before the two with a smile, for a moment just watching them breathe and committing the image to memory.
I hope all your goals come true, he thought. He couldn’t say it aloud, not yet, but he could think it. As gently as he could, Hope tugged the afghan from the back of the couch to cover both Noel and Lana, pulling it up to the baby's chin and the younger man's chest.
A hand lingered for just a moment over the soft yarn and hovered near where Noel's hand rested on Lana's hair. He didn't know what the feeling blocking his throat was, not yet, but Hope somehow felt... perhaps not gratified, but relieved to know that he would be seeing more of Noel from here on. He hadn't known how much he missed the other, not really, not until today.
“Sweet dreams.” He whispered, and then settled himself back to work.
Fandom: Lightning Returns
Character/Pairing(s): Noel/Hope (still all the cute and fluff), Lightning in the background
Rating: G
Warning: Babies. No, not MPREG, just babysitting.
Summary: First Impressions sequel. Ten years later, and Hope is called to babysit again. (Happy belated birthday, Bekas!)
Hope wouldn’t realize the coincidence, but his problems would once again start on a Thursday, once again thanks to a call from the Farron household.
“Uh-huh,” Hope agreed absent-mindedly as he wrote his observations down in the notepad beside him, frowning into the microscope even as Lightning stopped in her descriptions. Thanks to a power outage earlier in the day due to some blown fuses (and that was thanks to the crazy alternative fuel research department one floor above his), a good portion of data had been lost since no one had the time to save their findings before the computers all went kaput. With emergency generators up and running to keep the lab cool enough for live samples to remain viable, it meant that all non-essential equipment were to be unplugged and both observations and reports written by hand until the blown fuses could be replaced. “So Serah just… ran out?”
“Hope.” And here, Lightning's voice was strained. “She left me with her children.”
Hope made a sympathetic noise, hearing the crying the background grow even louder. He wasn’t too surprised, especially since Serah had been complaining to him recently about how her sister always disappeared when she asked for a babysitter. Little Lana was Snow and Serah’s third child, and unlike the previous two, was extremely loud, extremely fussy, and refused to stop crying if she didn’t get her way. Even her two older siblings wanted nothing to do with her, often retreating to another room to play. The times they didn't were even worse, since they would deliberately antagonize their baby sister until she was unbearable to all the adults.
“Maybe it was important.” Hope offered weakly. Goodness knows he was thankful he lived in another city now, despite the pain it was to drive two hours to see old friends. It meant he was out of the question as an everyday babysitter. Not to mention, work had kept him busy ever since Lana was born, having only settled down the past week.
“That doesn’t matter.” Lightning told him, sounding clipped. “Hope. I need your help here.”
“Uh…”
“Three against one is not a fair fight.” And who would have known it, it sounded like Colonel Lightning Farron was actually complaining. About children, no less. “I can take the other two, but I need you to take Lana until Serah and Snow,” and there was still that lingering distaste Hope could hear in Lightning’s enunciation of his name, “get back from that impromptu third honeymoon of theirs.”
Hope wavered. He had never been very good at refusing requests from Lightning, not like how he learned not to get roped into Serah’s schemes any more as he grew up. He looked up from his station, noting the tired characteristics of scientists around him, and how most were just about ready to call it a night. On the one hand, he could honestly claim that he was needed at work and have a legitimate excuse to not babysit the hell-spawn.
On the other, that would mean leaving Lightning on her own in enemy territory with no backup and no real defense for an extended period of time. She had told him, when they first met over ten years ago, that they were partners and he wouldn't have to worry about anything because she'd watch his back.
He wilted, and twisted his wrist to glance down at his watch resting on his pulse point. It had been several months since he last returned to his childhood town, and his excuses ran out the past week since his latest deadlines had been met. “...I guess I can take her. Mom and dad won’t be back from their cruise until next week, anyway. Just her, though.”
There was no way he was going to leave the hellspawn with the other two children. They seemed to get exponentially worse when exposed to each other, so it really was the best idea for Lightning to take the eldest two and for Hope to take Lana to a separate house.
“If you really need, I can be there in… four and a half hours.”
“Make it three and I’ll let you have the first go at Snow when they come back.” Lightning told him, and hung up.
.
.
Three and a half hours later, and Hope could feel an oncoming migrane as he frantically tried to bounce and shush six month old Lana. Lightning had been waiting for him in the driveway of his parents’ house when he pulled up, the two eldest strapped in the back seats of her car as she handed off a wailing bassinet to him along with a large bag filled with diapers, formula, bottles, blankets, and toys. She gave him a rare and heartfelt thanks before leaving him at it, driving off with the increasingly rowdy children in her car.
It had been half an hour since Lightning’s departure, and Hope had yet to stop the wailing.
“Would you please,” Hope told the baby desperately, walking back and forth in his living room, holding the baby up to speak to her, “please give me some way to think. To breathe. Anything! What’s wrong? It’s not your diaper. Lightning said she just fed you. You’ve been burped! Lana, what’s wrong with you?”
If anything, the baby wailed louder as Hope's voice broke at the end, her little face scrunched up and red from effort as she flailed her fists above her head in Hope’s arms.
Distantly, Hope could hear the sound of a doorbell go off.
He looked up, and walked toward the entrance-way with the baby, hoping it was Lightning back with some secret technique to calming infants. Or a paediatrician who knew what was wrong with Lana. Or an exorcist.
Instead, he opened to door carefully to find (baby still wailing loudly in his arms) a young man standing on the welcome mat, tall and blue-eyed with brown hair that looked desperately ready for a trim and wearing a shirt Hope was fairly certain had to be made out of spandex.
“Uh,” Hope felt his mouth go dry, arms tightening just slightly around the baby. This wasn’t what he was expecting at all.
The young man looked just as surprised, jaw slack in shock (or perhaps he was just reeling at the sheer noise that Lana was generating) and eyes widening before he suddenly braced his hands against the door-frame and leaned forward into Hope’s space, asking over the noise, “Will you marry me?”
Hope didn’t think he had ever shut a door so fast in his life.
.
.
“Lightning,” Hope hissed into his bluetooth, his back against the thick wood of his front door. It might have said something about him that he called her immediately rather than, say, the police. “Light, I think my mom’s cheating on my dad!”
It was a near impossible thought, but the only explanation that made any sort of sense. Why else would a random stranger just show up at the front door of his childhood house (still his parents’ place), looking — well, like that, and then immediately proposition him?
Lana wailed in his arms all the meanwhile, barely stopping to take a breath at all.
“What are you saying?” Lightning asked on the other side of the phone, much more calm and composed now that the crying noises weren’t on her end of the phone. “Hope, I can barely hear you over the racket.”
Hope slid down against the wooden door, feeling like a ball of misery. Was this the feeling that came before parents divorced? Sure, his mom and dad had their ups and downs, and there had been a handful of years during his early teens when he actually thought it might happen, but they got over it, didn’t they?
...Or perhaps all the wailing was making the edges of his brain fray.
“There’s a weird man standing outside my door,” Hope elaborated, easily ignoring the tentative knocking and whatever said stranger could be saying outside thanks to the fact that he could barely hear anything over Lana. It was hard enough to hear Lightning, and her voice was coming to him inside his ear. “He — Light, what if he’s seeing my mom?”
(He didn’t know what was worse, if his mom was cheating on his dad, or if his dad completely knew about it and didn’t disapprove — or even —)
“Weird?” Lightning’s tone was sharp. “What does he look like? I sent Noel over, I’ll make sure he deals with it.”
“Noel?” Hope echoed, vaguely remembering the boy. The last time they had been together, Noel had been twelve and just as energetic as ever, tall for his age and gangly from the growth spurts. The boy had his hair cropped short and tended to flail his arms about enthusiastically to catch Hope’s attention whenever he was excited, which was all of the time.
That had been before he had been claimed by a distant relative (Caius, if he remembered correctly) to attend school far away, and before Hope left on his internship and eventual job. While the boy was on Hope’s list of scheduled e-cards for birthdays and holidays, they rarely spoke online, and phone calls all but faded away.
“Wait, deal with it, what do you mean you’re going to send him to deal with it?” Hope asked, feeling aghast. The stranger outside looked — well, strong could be one descriptor. Tall, dark, and, uh, strong. Yes. “Light, he’s just a kid, I’m not going to make him deal with it!”
There was a sudden silence from the other end of the line before Lightning said slowly, “Hope. He’s eighteen now. You do know that, right?”
That, Hope would have easily argued, was definitely still a kid. Still a teenager, at the very least. Of course he knew how old Noel was, it wasn’t as if his brain couldn’t add twelve and the six years he immersed himself in the scientific community. The numbers were clear in his head — he just couldn’t shake the image of the energetic pre-teen boy trailing after him and happily babbling all sorts of random things.
“I’ll give him a call.” Lightning told him, and then hung up on him once again.
Hope wondered if it really would have been a better idea to call the police, but then couldn't help but give a thought to the stranger outside the door and how unfortunate it would be for him to suddenly get busted by someone who would essentially be the stranger in the situation, especially if he was so used to coming here often, because Hope had been absent the past several months, and even the past several years had him spending the majority of his time with his parents catching up on much-needed sleep.
And then after that thought, more than the stranger, he worried about Noel coming across this person and getting into a fight.
The knocking continued, just as Lana’s crying did, and Hope wondered what kind of precarious position he put himself in by accepting to help Lightning babysit.
“Hopeeeeeeee…” came an all too familiar tone over the noise, and Hope startled. “C’mon, let me in!”
‘Noel?’ Hope mouthed, before standing up again, Lana finally calming her crying down to more manageable levels as she squirmed about. With any luck, the baby was starting to tire herself out. He tried to look through the peekhole in the door, but there was something blocking his vision. Carefully, Hope undid the lock but kept the chain on, and opened the door cautiously.
“You don’t recognize me.” The same familiar whine was connected to the stranger, now more familiar with that — with that dejected pout and bright blue eyes. The height was unfamiliar. The — everything else felt unfamiliar, actually. The person, Noel, actually looked like an adult. Gone were the chubby baby cheeks that always gave him a slight chipmunk look, the gangly limbs, the almost crew cut, and the worn down baggy hoodies that covered half his hands as the sleeves draped down. Instead, the young man before him was... different.
The transformation was… uh.
“Do I really look that different?” Noel lamented, hands raised to press against his cheeks and tug on his own hair as if doubting his own appearance.
“What?” Hope asked dumbly, still taking in Noel’s new appearance. He doubled back, shaking his head quickly and hoping his cheeks weren't pink from the embarrassment of being caught staring. “No! Well, I... yes, I guess. I mean — I just didn’t recognize you. You… you grew up.”
It was true on all accounts. Looking closer now, Hope wondered just how he hadn’t recognized those same bright blue eyes. They should have been an unforgettable shade of blue that should have cued him into who the supposed stranger was, despite Noel looked like he could have stepped right off a teen idol magazine, all sun-kissed skin and strikingly eyes with corded muscles and —
And suddenly, taking in Noel’s appearance, Hope felt glaringly aware of his own unkempt appearance, all pale pallor and dark smears under his eyes from pulling extra hours at the lab the past several weeks, his hair mussed and possibly frazzled from Lana's constant tugging on it the past half hour. It had been years since his promotion to department head, but Hope pulled regular shifts with the rest of his team, taking on the managerial work that came with his position as well, and that meant while he kept a professional dress sense, at the end of the day he tended to look a tired mess.
He had never much cared, but now he couldn't stop berating himself for the plain slacks and dress shirt for some reason.
“Of course I did,” Noel said, his pout gone the next second as he regained his good cheer as he peered through the narrow opening of the door. “And hey, I knew I’d be taller than you—”
He was interrupted by a sudden onslaught of music, and the both of them startled for a moment, Lana starting to wail louder as Noel scrambled to dig through his pockets (at least he still wore the same type of baggy pants he used to) for his phone.
Hope tried to shush the baby, gently bouncing her in his arms as he carefully undid the chain lock now that he knew who was on the other side of the door and Noel plugged one ear with a hand and held his phone up to the other. “Hello? Lightning?”
There was a moment before Noel looked a little panicked, “What? No! What stranger? No, I can take care of it. Yeah, I’m with Hope and Lana now, how can you tell?”
Hope rolled his eyes as he waited patiently with the door now fully open. Of course Lightning would be able to tell, especially with how loud Lana was being.
Then he froze. Right. The stranger that he told Lightning about…
“Don’t worry about it.” Noel stated cockily, standing up straighter. “You don’t have to come out yourself. I'll handle it. No, no intervention needed.”
Hope couldn’t hear Lightning’s response, but his curiosity was piqued when Noel stammered and waved his free arm about like he had as a child, looking somewhat panicked and agitated. “No! It’s fine, really! I didn’t really—” Noel snuck a peek in Hope’s direction, and then turned his attention away suspiciously fast when he saw Hope looking back curiously. “I don't need help.”
He hung up quickly after that, looking embarrassed as he turned to Hope. “Lightning says there’s a strange person around here — I’ll go check out the perimeter.”
“There’s no person.” Hope murmured, face flushing. Noel only blinked, likely not having heard the exact words over Lana. Hope shook his head instead, and then nudged the door wider with a foot to indicate that the other should enter the house instead, especially before the neighbors started to complain about the noise. He asked louder, “I'll tell you if I see someone strange, okay? Right now I need your help with getting Lana to calm down.”
Noel stepped into the house and held out his arms expectantly, and Hope gratefully transferred the crying baby over. “Has she been crying this whole time?”
Hope nodded, darting glances over at Noel from where he was focused on Lana even as he closed the door so the crying would at least be muffled to the outside world. “Since before I got her. Light couldn’t get her to stop, either.” He had asked if there was something wrong with the child since he was doubtful babies were supposed to cry for that long without a good reason, but Light just look pained before telling him that Lana had gone through every test available soon after she was born because she was so easily irritated, and the doctors gave her an entirely clean bill of health. It would seem she just found everything in this world frustrating and dislikeable.
("Babies cry," had been Lightning exact words, tense and irritated as she handed Lana over. "They do that. Some more than others."
Hope, on the other hand, couldn’t stop the insistent worry that all that crying might damage the baby’s throat or lungs somehow.)
He watched Noel handle her carefully, and asked, “Why didn’t she just ask for your help to look after Lana, instead?” Because Hope had traveled two hours to get back here, and had already scheduled himself a day off for the next day just to help, and that was strange if Noel was here and knew all about how to handle Lana.
“Because,” Noel responded cheerfully, completely undeterred by Lana’s wiggling and wailing, “I might like her a lot, but she doesn’t seem to like me very much.”
As if on cue, the wailing intensified, and Hope took the baby back in a panic for his eardrums, feeling his dream for a quiet evening with Noel’s help burst like a pin to a balloon.
.
.
It took another forty minutes before Lana did tire herself out into an exhausted sleep, the baby clutching at her stuffed moogle and sucking wearily on her pacifier with troubled brows.
“What kid doesn’t like being held?” Hope murmured into his arms, collapsed into an exhausted heap at the dining table. “That’s just counter-intuitive.”
It had taken a great deal of time and checking diapers, offering food, verbal blackmailing that the baby definitely wouldn’t understand (but had Noel laughing several feet away), and even attempting to brush some honey on her pacifier to quiet her before Hope just gave up and set her down quickly in a shallow laundry basket so that he could use both hands to look through the bag Lightning had handed him along with the baby.
(Handing the baby to Noel was entirely counter-productive, since the younger man didn’t seem the mind the noise at all and Lana just managed to get louder when he handed her off.)
For a brief second after she was set down, Lana hiccuped pathetically, little fists at her eyes, until her crying finally came down to a more… manageable level, more regular crying than the top of her lungs wailing she had been doing the past half hour.
Both men froze where they were before Hope took advantage of that moment to test a theory, unmoving as he asked Noel in a whisper, “Did my mom used to babysit her?”
“Yeah,” the younger man responded, just as quietly. “Mrs. Estheim was the only one Lana actually behaved for. I'm guessing that's why Lightning wanted to hand her off to you, since she might behave for you, too.”
It made a strange sort of sense. Lately Nora Estheim gave no small hints in her daily phone calls to her son that she wanted grandchildren as soon as possible. They still spent the weekends together every other week, Bartholomew Estheim joining them whenever possible (which wasn’t very often) as Nora regaled Hope on just how cute he had been as a baby, loudly and publicly whenever she could.
Hope wasn’t sure how actions like that were supposed to incite him into entering a relationship, especially since he was never able to face anyone who heard his mother after that.
Now Hope also wondered if Noel had been so familiar with his house because he used to come help his mother babysit Lana as well.
Which brought him to the first thing Noel said to him that day, but -- did Noel actually have a crush on his mother? Hope wasn't sure what to think.
“I have an idea.” He told Noel instead, and asked him to fetch a few of his mother’s coats while he went to find the ropes in the garage.
Several minutes later, they managed to stuff several of Nora Estheim's coats (still smelling vaguely of her) around Lana and jerry-rig the laundry basket to hang under the dining table with the rope to create a make-shift cradle which Hope would nudge with his foot every few seconds to help it sway side to side gently.
“I can’t believe that actually worked.” Noel stated, voice filled with wonder. “She usually just cries all through the night!”
“That’s actually normal?” Hope asked, his voice cracking at the mere thought of having to deal with that for an entire night.
“Well, yeah.” Noel confirmed with a casual shrug, sitting next to Hope at the table. “For some reason, she’s alright with Snow, but even Serah can’t get her to stop crying for very long. The only one she really stops for is Mrs. Estheim.”
“How?”
“No idea. Serah said she's a miracle worker, but Mrs. Estheim actually said it’s because Lana reminded her a lot of you as a baby.” Noel answered. “And then told Snow and Serah not to worry because babies grow out of things like that pretty fast.”
Hope just buried his face deeper into his arms, determined to not imagine his mother gushing all about him as a baby, and even comparing him with Lana. He couldn’t have been that bad, could he?
He was then hit by a random thought, and raised his head from his arms to stare at his companion, who once again looked away suspiciously fast.
“Noel, do you actually have the Pokemon theme song as your ringtone?”
.
.
After a few minutes, in which Hope took a quick power nap, he started to become aware of an awkward silence.
“I was the stranger, wasn’t I?” Noel asked slowly after several minutes, and Hope couldn't help his cringe as the younger man connected the dots. “When Lightning called, I mean. I didn’t get it at first, but…”
“I’m sorry,” Hope blurted out, feeling like a complete heel as he sat up from where he had previously been half sprawled across the dining table. “You’re right, I didn’t recognize you, and I thought some stranger was coming here to—” He flushed, and then abandoned that train of thought as he half gestured to Noel's height. “You got really tall. And—”
He choked before he could finish that observation, ducking his head to stare at his arms and willing the darkening flush to go away. What was wrong with him? Sure, Noel had been a really cute kid. He really should have expected the child he used to babysit to grow up into a very handsome young man.
“—And you asked me to marry you out of the blue!” He finished lamely.
“It wasn’t out of the blue.” Noel denied, turned in his seat to face him. “You said I could!”
“Is that why?” Hope asked. “Because I said you could — ten years ago?”
He shook his head, feeling the familiar exasperation. It was a solid mixture of fondness and a large dash of… disappointment, he found out years before. Noel had been a cute and impulsive kid. After he had gotten over all the embarrassment, Hope had been… flattered. Not by the marriage proposals, but by the attention and utter adoration from the little boy every time they were in the same room. It was an infectious happiness, but one that crashed in the middle of the night when he was away long enough to realize that all Noel really needed was someone to pay attention to him, and that the adoration was given equally to everyone he came across.
Noel would have obtained that level of attachment to anyone who looked after him at that age. It was just Hope who managed to be there in the right place at the right time, and that was only because Serah already denied a portion of Noel’s affections, no matter how fond she was of him.
It probably didn’t help that after barely half a year knowing each other, Hope had been scouted by Oxford before the end of summer, and left for three years to obtain his degree, doubling in engineering and bio-chemistry. And by the time he came back, everything was… different.
Just like now, he thought.
“No,” Noel emphasized, and then huffed, looking just as frustrated as Hope felt with this subject. “It’s just…” He gestured for a moment with his hands, movement that was somehow both fluid and ungainly, but couldn’t seem to carry the meaning across. The brunet let out a sigh, deflating. “You know, I've been wondering about how I was going to say this for years, but I never managed to find a good way to... phrase it.”
For the year after Hope came back to put together his thesis at home, nearly eighteen and with high aspirations, Noel had once again wheedled his way into Hope’s life, going so far as to throw pebbles at Hope’s window when the older boy was caught up in his research and just didn’t pay enough attention to him. Taller, lankier, and bursting with far more energy, Noel as a pre-teen had been exhausting to keep up with, with a penchant for ridiculous stunts that had Hope laughing until tears came to his eyes.
With all his former friends busy with other things and mostly strangers after the three year separation, Hope found a best friend in a kid six years younger than him who absolutely wouldn’t leave him alone for longer than a day at a time and taught him how to play Pokemon cards and balance on a skateboard in exchange for help with homework and stories from a school far away.
He had more fun that year than all the years he left for post-secondary combined.
It all ended weeks before his internship with the research department at the Academy when Noel’s distant relative Caius took the boy for schooling far away. After that, Hope left as well, and despite his frequent visits back to see his parents as well as Lightning, Serah, and Snow, he hadn’t seen Noel around again.
“I didn’t think I’d see you here.” Hope admitted, after Noel seemed to have lost steam.
“Yeah, well, I wasn’t sure I’d see you, either.” Noel said, and rubbed his face, looking flustered. “I came back for nana last month. Summer break, you know? I, um, I wanted to talk to you, but Lightning said you were busy with this big project of yours, so I waited.”
Hope didn’t know what to feel about that. He hadn’t known that Noel had been back, would have wanted to know; had the others really seen him as too busy for details like that? Sure, he had been busy, but…
“I’m good at waiting.” Noel informed him casually, now leaning his head into a hand he propped up on the table, entire body turned to face Hope. He didn’t look hurt by the idea that Hope had been busy, or that he had to wait so long just to speak with him. “I didn’t know I’d see you today, but I’m glad I did.”
Hope felt his face flush again, just like when they were both so much younger and Noel would sprout compliments non-stop without an ounce of hesitation or embarrassment.
“So I guess... that was the first thing which popped into my head when I saw you again.” Noel continued to explain, scratching at his cheek with a finger and once again looking away suspiciously. “Since we just keep missing each other all these years. I wanted to ask before you disappeared again.”
“Noel…”
"So it's not about — ten years ago. Even if it kind of is, but it isn't! I didn't ask because of ten years ago, but I did even if it's not what you're thinking." Noel stopped, and then visibly flushed, looking a cross between embarrassed and frustrated. "I'm not making any sense, I know."
Hope stayed quiet, allowing the younger man to gather his thoughts.
"It's just—" And suddenly Noel was very close, their noses mere centimetres apart and Hope found himself frozen in place, unable to react properly as blue eyes, mesmerizing and earnest, caught his gaze completely. Any closer and their foreheads would be touching. He could feel the brush of Noel's breath against his skin, warm on his face as the other spoke, barely above a whisper but heard crystal clear due to proximity. "I'm doing this backward again, aren't I? But the past few years, Hope, I—"
The both of them froze when they heard a gurgling sound from beneath the table. Luckily, that sound smoothed itself out and didn’t prompt any crying.
Noel let out a shaky breath, and whispered, “Maybe we should leave her alone for a bit.”
Hope nodded quickly, feeling his heart in his throat even as he backed up from he had somehow been leaning forward previously, the both of them getting up to retreat into the living room as to not disturb the sleeping infant.
.
.
“I refuse to believe you’re not working on top secret government death ray projects.” Noel told him rather cheerfully as he pulled a card from the deck. “If you say you’re not, I’m going to assume that you’ve got dinosaur embryos in your lab and you’re cracking the fountain of youth. Or hey, I just watched a movie about people putting human minds into computers. Are you experimenting with that?”
“You’ve got an over-active imagination.” Hope said, studying his cards carefully. “Sixes?”
“Go fish.” Noel waited until Hope drew his card. “That wasn’t a no, so I’ll take that as a yes to everything I said.”
“Yes, you are really good hearing only what you want.” It just reminded Hope how he had to very solidly say no if he wanted any leeway with things at all. Noel was very good at wheedling his way into everything otherwise (or perhaps in spite of). “Despite what you might think, I’m not exactly pioneering next-gen projects that appear only in science fiction.”
“Artificial intelligence and giant robots.” Noel continued to guess. “Or maybe you’re building an AI to create a better giant robots than people can do. Am I getting warmer? Queen.”
Hope handed over his recently acquired queen of spades and Noel grinned unrepentantly at him. “Not even close.”
“Okay, back to the secret of immortality. Maybe you’re cracking the genetic code of life and playing god. Or creating chimeras. Or making a program to predict the future!”
It seemed that the infectious energy hadn’t been lost through the years. Hope felt himself smile, which he tried to hide behind the cards. “No dice. Aces?”
“You’re always my ace. No need to ask.” Noel responded cheekily, which only made Hope bring the cards up higher to cover his face with a groan. Noel held up one of his cards and waved it to get Hope’s attention, before just sliding it casually right into Hope’s hand.
“Shameless.” Hope accused, but couldn’t help smiling as he gathered the pair of aces in his deck and set it down.
“If I offer to make the call for take-out on this amazing babysitting date, will you tell me what you’ve been up to?”
Hope wondered if he should dispute the date part, but left it alone. “So long as it’s not pizza. And it’s not as exciting as you might think.”
“Try me!”
The scientist put down the pair of aces on the coffee table face down, and pulled his legs in under himself, wondering for a moment whether it was worth it or not. Hope never liked having to speak to strangers on the phone, which often meant ordering take-out fell to anyone else to do. But he was an adult now, and it would be healthier to just make something at home.
On the other hand, he wasn't exactly sure what his parents had in the fridge, and it wasn't exactly a chore to talk about work when he was actually avidly interested in the direction his research went.
“Did you know that roses are man-made? Fruits consumed by people are both seedless and far sweeter than counterparts that might be found hundreds of years ago. Cross-breeding flora is just as common as, say, cross-breeding species of dogs. The original roses were beautiful, but repugnant, so people decided it would be a good idea to splice flowers that smelled nicer to create a whole new product.”
“Just interrupting you here to ask a quick question.” Noel informed him quickly, hands held up for ‘stop’. His blue eyes were bright, and Hope couldn't read the expression on the younger man's face. His tone, however, was beyond fond. “Because that is actually really cool and a lot like the chimeras I suggested except with plants, which I hadn’t even thought of. Are you sure you won’t marry me? Fives.”
Hope sighed and glanced at Noel’s grin. He should have expected that coming, actually. “No. Go fish.”
“Right, I’ll take that as ‘no, I’m not sure’ so I’ll make sure to keep asking.” Noel also raised his cards to peer over them at Hope as he pulled another card from the deck, but his wide grin was unmistakable. “Sorry. Interruption over. Go on, what you’re saying sounds amazing.”
“Why don’t you tell me about what you’ve been doing the past few years?” Hope asked instead, feeling another wave of that familiar exasperation.
“I will.” Noel promised. “After you share about what you do. I want to know, I really do.”
“I review plants… and things like that.” Hope said flatly. “It’s really not as exciting as you make it out to be.”
Neither was he, really. He wasn’t as exciting as Noel thought he was, or perhaps deserving of the amount of attention the other seemed to lavish. It felt clear to Hope that Noel was likely clinging to a childhood fantasy of his, and he wanted to know why. Why him? While he was glad that they were friends, that Noel hadn’t forgotten him, Hope's too avid imagination could hypothesize a scenario where Noel imprinted on someone else as a child instead, and he didn’t know how to feel about that particular thought. He didn’t like the idea of Noel following someone else around and grinning at them just like that, constantly spouting his marriage proposals.
He just didn't like... thinking about it, that was all.
“You said 'man-made' and 'cross-breeding'.” Noel countered. “Don’t try to hide how great it must be unless it’s some top secret government conspiracy. Actually, I want to hear about it even more if it is some big government secret. Spill.”
“It’s mostly review.” Hope conceded, watching as the young man threw down a pair he managed to make from the newly drawn card. “A prior department managed to create a new species of flora which grows extremely fast and filters more carbon dioxide and provides more nutrients to the edible roots.”
“Sounds like something that would change the world.” Noel commented, looking a bit awed. “How is that not cool?”
“The strain has proven to be far too aggressive.” Hope disagreed, staring down at his cards intently. “Plant it in a field and it’ll drain all the nutrients and water to starve out the other flora. Plant it near a tree and it will grow as a vine and strangle the tree. It was originally created to grow just about anywhere, and now it can’t be released because it’ll grow just about anywhere.”
Hope stopped. This was usually where people started to get bored, since he liked getting into the technical terminology. Other than his co-workers (who often preferred to leave work at work), there weren’t many people who could even pretend to be interested once Hope started talking about cell mutation and the effects of hormone therapy in gene replacement. He learned several years ago (after an absolutely disastrous blind date his co-worker Alyssa Zaidelle arranged for him) that the things he was interested in very rarely kept the attention of others, more often than not irritating the other party as he went on.
“...And that’s it.” He concluded. “We’re working on correcting that mistake and creating something that will grow in harmony with other plants.”
At least, that was the only project he was allowed to talk about.
“That’s at the Academy, right?” Noel asked, suddenly looking away suspiciously once more. Hope thinned his lips, wondering just what was up with the other man. He was just about to ask when they heard Lana starting to cry again in the dining room, quiet for her, but quickly gaining in volume.
The both of them set down their cards in a hurry as they scrambled to get to her before she managed to wake the entire neighborhood.
.
.
“I have an idea.” Hope told Noel before he disappeared briefly, leaving the young man to crawl underneath the table and scoop Lana up from the laundry basket. The baby got louder in her distress the moment Noel reached to lift her, but he didn’t mind.
“Hey, there.” Noel said softly, careful to maintain the cheer in his voice even as he leaned back on his knees, pressed his face closer to Lana’s and nosed the soft fluff of her hair. “Did you have a good nap? Are you ready to behave now? Are you going to be the cutest baby I know you can be?”
She hiccupped in her crying, grabbing fistfuls of his hair and tugging hard as she could. Thankfully, baby strength meant that she didn’t tear any out.
“That’s a good girl!” Noel told her, as if she really had calmed down and behaved for him. His voice softened and slurred for her, smiling against her forehead. “Who’s a good girl, huh? That's right, Lana is!”
There was a snort behind him as he crawled out from underneath the table, and Noel got up again properly to face Hope, who looked a cross between pained at the noise and amused at Noel’s actions.
“Here.” He reached for the baby after placing a round and white container on the table. “Let me give it another try.”
“What is that?” Noel asked, handing the baby over carefully. Despite knowing that Lana was quieter with other people (even if it wasn't quiet by any means), he wasn’t sure if handing her off was the best idea since other people were more bothered by Lana’s crying than he was. He didn't mind her crying in the least bit, able to filter most of it out as white noise.
“A hunch.” Hope told him.
As if on cue, Lana’s hiccuping crying started to slow and quiet down, until she was sniffling quietly and mouthing gummily at her pacifier rather than spitting it outright to wail more.
Noel felt his jaw go slack. “Wait… how…?”
Hope tilted his head toward the container on the table, barely daring to move as Lana quieted down. His voice softened down to a near whisper. “Like I said: a hunch. My dad always gets mom the same lotion, and her clothes usually end up smelling like it, too. If Lana calms down with my mom’s coats…”
Nothing else needed to be said as Noel snatched at the container on the table, both Hope and Lana watching his movements. He was never the type for lotions, but Yeul would usually dab some on his elbows and then his cheeks after he started shaving. It wasn’t an entirely unfamiliar concept.
“You really like her, don’t you?” Hope’s tone was quiet, and Noel couldn’t make out the emotion underneath. “You said that she cries louder with you, but you like holding her, anyway.”
“I don’t always do it.” Noel admitted, twisting off the top of the container and twitching his nose at the sweet scent of lavender and plums. “I like looking after her, though. And I don’t mind how loud she gets. Most people can’t stand it after a while.”
He could, and since Lana tended to tire herself out quicker with him due to her extra volume, Serah once told him that made him the ideal babysitter after Mrs. Estheim.
He reached out with his arms after rubbing the lotion into his skin past his elbows, and Hope gently, very gently, deposited the baby back into his arms.
Lana fussed, and scrunched up her face, kicking out with her socked feet and smacked her lips loudly several times in disapproval, finally letting out some annoyed whines. While she continued to wiggle, there was no crying or wailing.
“That is the first time,” Noel breathed out after a moment of letting the infant adjust, watching the baby girl move around. “that I managed to hold her without her crying. Lightning’s never managed it. None of Team NORA’s managed it. Hope... you really are a miracle worker. Just like your mom.”
“It’s not a miracle.” Hope told him, smiling fondly. “She probably woke up because it’s time to feed her. Would you like to do the honors…?”
“Yes!”
.
.
“You do know that you can’t just make someone love you, right?” Hope asked as he cleaned up the take-out containers which arrived after they fed Lana. It was nearing midnight, and Noel was settled on the couch, still holding the baby in his arms and still looking awed at the fact that he was holding the baby and she wasn’t screaming her lungs out.
“I’m very persistent.” Noel told him, sounding sleepy, and then turned his attention back to Lana, tapping her nose gently and cooing, “You’re gunna love me more than you love Snow, right? Riiiiiight.”
Hope laughed, recalling the plastic carnival prize ring he received from Noel when the boy had been twelve. And the chocolate bar gifts which gradually improved from half eaten to shared kit-kats. “Persistent is one thing, but Snow is her father —- what if he comes home to find Lana calling you papa instead?”
“Then he can share.” Noel told him, brightening at the thought. “He’s already got two other kids. Why can’t I have the cutest one?”
Lana gave a gurgling coo at the compliment, even if she still continued to wiggle in his arms.
Hope rolled his eyes. Of course that’s how Noel would think, but… he wondered how to express the point to the younger man, and ended up leaning over the arm of the couch to ask him very seriously, “What if we had kids and Snow got our daughter to call him papa first?”
“That will never happen.” Noel informed him, just as serious. “I would never let him get his hands on our kids.”
Hope sighed at Noel’s somber expression. “That was just an example.”
“It’s the truth.” Noel insisted. He pointed down at Lana. “But hey, can we keep this one, too? I think she’s finally starting to like me.”
In response, Lana spat her pacifier right at Noel’s chin.
.
.
“Yeul found my list two years ago.”
The two of them were speaking quietly after they gave Lightning a call and Lana once again fell into a quiet slumber. They didn’t leave her under the table this time, since Noel untied the ropes for the makeshift cradle and decided that he would rather hold her while she slept instead of putting her in the laundry basket again. They sat in the spacious living area of the Estheim house, Hope having pulled out a laptop to work on while Noel turned on the television, the volume low enough that it wouldn’t distract either Lana or Hope.
“What list?” Hope murmured, half paying attention to his surroundings while he glanced over his work email. Taking a day off led to a lot more work than he expected…
“You know… the list of life goals I had.” Noel was sprawled across the couch with Lana resting on his chest and clutching his shirt, one arm under his neck and the remote in his other hand as he channel surfed. He beamed at Hope, who was sitting cross-legged on the carpet in front of the coffee table and immersed in his work. “Said it was best list of goals she’d ever seen, and then she made one of her own, too! Can you believe she never got that assignment? That’s the bad thing about Caius taking her around school to school all her life. It’s a good thing she’s got him wrapped around her fingers, though. She gets to go anywhere in the world she wants.”
“Uh-huh.” Hope agreed, still scanning through the lists he had been given. With the current setback, he wasn’t sure if they would manage to make their next deadline without overtime.
“I mean, we went to Australia last summer just because she told Caius she wanted to meet some koalas. What she didn’t tell him was how that wasn’t the real reason she wanted to go.” Noel didn’t seem to mind that Hope was barely paying any attention to him. “She’s helping me complete my list, and I’m going to help her complete hers. We spent a year buying Pokemon cards and then battling each other in the car whenever we went anywhere. She’s been taking singing lessons on the go as well, and my bet is that she’s going to be a huge hit before she’s seventeen.”
Noel thought for a moment, staring up at the cream colored ceiling with it’s delicate glass chandelier. “I caught one, you know. The golden stag beetle I told you about. Yeul got me a special case for it before we even went, and I caught one in Australia. Isn’t she the best? It’s like she always knows.”
He draped an arm gently over the sleeping baby. “In retrospect, the list was really silly, wasn’t it? I mean… being a Pokemon master, solving world hunger, outlawing homework… I really was a little kid back then. But you know, being king of the world might be impossible, but I know I’d feel like I accomplished it if you agree to marry me.”
Hope made another acknowledging noise, far quieter than the last.
Noel exhaled, feeling better after that declaration, even if he was sure that Hope hadn’t been listening. All these years, and he still couldn't seem to put to words the sense of relief, the feeling of being lighter than air and being able to accomplish anything he could ever want so long as Hope kept looking in his direction. He didn't know how to convey the — the tightness in his chest whenever he thought of the other's expression when he started speaking about something he liked. More than anything, Noel wanted to be the subject of such interest, to be the cause of that little lingering smile. He wanted to see that interested, happy expression whenever Hope spoke about him.
It was a feeling that never went away, a want that led him to add that to his list of life goals; an addition to the very last goal.
He took a moment to collect his thoughts, and then reached out with the remote to poke at the other’s side, unable to reach far enough with his own arms with Lana on his chest. “Hey, so I wanted to tell you: I got into the Academy.”
The contact seemed to snap Hope out of his work, and he leaned back against the foot of the couch and turned to smile at Noel. “That’s great! Congratulations. You didn’t tell me that’s where you chose to go! It’s a great school.”
“I know — you’re there, after all.” Noel responded cheekily, grinning at the pink in Hope’s cheeks as the man glared back at the words. “I was offered a partial athletic scholarship there, and it’s close enough that I can come back in the weekends to visit nana.”
Not to mention, it had been his first choice in schools despite being scouted by multiple other post-secondaries and offered full scholarships. Noel knew what he was good at, but the Academy really was the closest to where he wanted to be, not only because of the short distance from his hometown but also because Hope had chosen to work there. It was one of the most prestigious schools in the world, and Noel had fought tooth and nail the past several years to get grades just good enough to be considered.
Even then, he was fairly certain that the school board had probably been more impressed with his travel credentials and worldly stories than with his academic prowess. He had Caius to thank for that one.
But that also meant working for the rest of his tuition and saving and skimping as much as he could, since he didn’t plan on making anyone else in his family foot the bill. (Except maybe Caius. Except, no, he couldn't make Caius do it either because the man would be smug about Noel owing him the rest of his life.)
“I’m a good cook, I clean up after myself, and I know all of nana’s baking recipes.” Noel offered, thinking quick. He had been attempting to work out this conversation for ages, but never managed to get the wording correct in his head. He never seemed to be able to find the right words when Hope was involved. Better to just plough through, then, rather than dwell on it. “I promise I’m not a drug addict, either. Or dealer. Either.”
He winced. It felt like the words were just tangled up on his tongue.
“What?” Hope looked baffled.
“Serah said you had a spare guestroom.” Noel blurted, feeling his confidence drain away from him as words just continued to spill out. “Since your mom used to stay over a lot. In your apartment, I mean. And the dorm rooms are way overpriced — are the walls made out of gold or something? Not to mention, most of the apartments there require a written recommendation from a previous landlord and, um, I haven’t exactly lived by myself before.”
Hope looked confused for a moment before his expression smoothed over and he held up a hand. “Noel. It’s fine. You can stay with me. I’m usually not at home, and education is important. I think all post-secondaries are far too expensive nowadays. Just don’t flunk out, and I'd be happy to help out in any way I can.”
Noel slumped back onto the couch, somehow exhausted from the emotional overtures. That was so much easier than he imagined. “I can’t chip in all that much for rent yet, but—”
“You said you can cook.” Hope told him. “Right? I usually get home really late, so if you could just put leftovers in the fridge, then it would save me a world of trouble. You'd be watching the place for me as well since you're right and I do have that spare guest room and I'm not doing anything with it... and we're friends, it's not as if you're going to be inconveniencing me just by breathing the same air.”
There was a dull ring from the grandfather clock in the foyer, and Hope glanced at his laptop. Midnight. It was Friday now.
“Leftovers?” Noel echoed, and then cast a wary eye at the scientist as he shifted. “Hope, have you been eating right by yourself?”
“Don’t start.” Hope sighed. “That’s what my mom asks every time.”
Noel snorted, but then stilled as Lana stirred on his chest.
“Hey,” Hope said, quiet as he watched the two of them. There was something mesmerizing about the way Noel handled Lana, about his well of patience and the sheer fondness the younger man had for the people around him. “Do you remember? It was a Friday when we first met, too.”
“Course I remember.” Noel responded, quirking a smile as he lightly carded fingers through the infant's hair. The first time he met that short and pale teenage boy whose quiet enthusiasm for schoolwork actually made him look twice at subjects his teachers assigned and made his breath catch whenever the silver-haired boy would smile shyly and rant about all sort of things that went far beyond Noel's head. He had been used to the boisterous nature of his classmates, all of them loud and aggressive with their time and attention. Noel had been that way, too, until he met Hope.
Somehow, the other’s attention made everything right in the world — a notion which he only grasped after Hope first went away.
Had it really been ten years? It didn’t feel like it. Noel still felt as flustered as ever around Hope, coupled with a tendency to run at his mouth whenever they were in close proximity, which resulted in a marriage proposal being the first thing he could think of to say to a now completely grown up Hope.
He closed his eyes, drowsy and content with Lana’s warmth atop him and the sound of pen on paper as Hope went back to work, taking notes manually.
Noel had completely forgotten that Mr. and Mrs. Estheim were away when Lightning called him up earlier that day, asking him to head over to the familiar address to help with babysitting Lana. In truth, he had been expecting just another summer day, but... when the door opened, when he met those familiar yet entirely unique pale green eyes, Noel had floundered. That hadn't been Mrs. Estheim. That had been someone else entirely, someone else he had, for the past few months, been mentally preparing himself to meet again.
Except when the moment came, he was caught completely off-guard.
Hope at eighteen had still looked like a child, had still been growing and often mistaken for years younger than he was. Noel had numerous photos of the two of them on various misadventures that year, many of which were pinned into scrapbooks Yeul had lovingly put together for him.
Hope now, however...
He snuck another glance at the man from under his lashes, taking in every detail he could: strands of silver-white hair slipping out from behind Hope's ear to brush against his temple and the side of his face, the curve of his jaw, the pale skin of his throat, the arch of his neck. Even the rumpled and untucked white dress shirt over loose black slacks and dark socks, the clothes stretched tight in some areas as Hope shifted where he sat.
Noel found himself snapping his attention away quickly, staring back up at the ceiling and going through a random mantra of ordinary, everyday subjects in his head.
Noe had been caught off guard, entirely unprepared, when Hope first opened the door earlier in the day.
Eventually, as the minutes passed by, he closed his eyes again, warm and unable to fight off a lingering smile as thoughts continued to hover over the good things.
He got into the post-secondary of his choice, met up again with Hope and it wasn’t too awkward, and now he would be moving in with the guy he had been planning to marry for the past decade. Moving in together was a good step. And Noel was very patient about these things.
“Do I get a break from the propositioning for letting you move in?”
“Nope.” Noel answered the unexpected question, and exhaled, relaxing into the couch. He kept his eyes closed, and dared to imagine another ten years from now, hopefully with the same scene: Hope next to him, and a child in his arms. “Not a chance. You agreed to this ten years ago.”
“Fine.” Hope sounded amused. “So long as you keep your beetle collection to your room. Golden stag beetle or not.”
“Sure thing,” Noel slurred, and let the warmth of the night lull him to sleep.
.
.
Hope paused from his work as he noticed the silence, and looked back to see both Noel and Lana asleep on the couch. He got up quietly, and slipped the remote from Noel’s grasp, turning off the television and then crouching down before the two with a smile, for a moment just watching them breathe and committing the image to memory.
I hope all your goals come true, he thought. He couldn’t say it aloud, not yet, but he could think it. As gently as he could, Hope tugged the afghan from the back of the couch to cover both Noel and Lana, pulling it up to the baby's chin and the younger man's chest.
A hand lingered for just a moment over the soft yarn and hovered near where Noel's hand rested on Lana's hair. He didn't know what the feeling blocking his throat was, not yet, but Hope somehow felt... perhaps not gratified, but relieved to know that he would be seeing more of Noel from here on. He hadn't known how much he missed the other, not really, not until today.
“Sweet dreams.” He whispered, and then settled himself back to work.