thisfaceismine | [2/15] morning after

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noah

[2/15] morning after

Though hardly a stranger to hangovers, this one it seems, is particularly heinous.

There's a ringing at his door, the sound piercing through the fog in his brain as he buries a groan into his pillow. His entire body aches, his muscles heavy and he closes his eyes tight against the bad dreams that have apparently decided to pervade his conscious thoughts.

"Fuck off," he grumbles when the bell sounds again, followed quickly by a firm, but polite knock.

Groaning loudly then, Freddie shoves his covers off his shoulders and swings his legs to the floor, frowning against the immediately intense pounding in his head. "I said fuck off," he growls though he's already padding his way through his flat, clad in the same pair of briefs and dress shirt from the night before. He'd gotten as far as unbuttoning, it seems, before he'd given up.

He doesn't bother checking the eyelet to see who's bothering him so early and his lips twist into a confused frown when he finds Noah on the other side, beaming up at him.

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Noah just looks at his hands, wanting to say that everything ends, eventually. That's why everything matters. But he doesn't want to get existentialist when Freddie has a hangover and he feels like his chest might break from how bad it hurts.

It's not what he wants, but it's what he has to do. If he can put up some boundaries maybe he'll stop wanting to be Freddie's boyfriend. That's all he can seem to do lately.

"Yeah," he says. He finds a smile somewhere. "I can still rub your head, help you get rid of your headache if you want."

It's still a strained smile, unnatural on Noah's sweet face and Freddie can't find it in himself to return it.

He takes another drink of his coffee before setting it down on the table and crashing back into the couch, shoulders slumped and stomach a mess. His head hurts slightly less than it had five minutes ago but the light in the room still feels too bright and he's still remembering way too much about the previous night.

"Christ, I hate Magnus Bane," he says, but it's not nearly the heart of it.

Freddie slumps back against the couch, but not toward him, and so he keeps his hands to himself. It's probably better that way anyhow. Noah plays with the hem of his sweatshirt sleeve, trying to think of something to fix this for Freddie, but he can't come up with anything good. He wonders how many other people are cursing Magnus this morning.

"I could haunt him if you want," he says finally, a joke more than anything, but he would.

Arching an eyebrow, Freddie glances over, studying Noah's face yet again.

"You serious?" he asks, though he has a feeling Noah's not. Still, just the idea is enough to make him smile if only just a bit. "What would you do?"

"Yeah," Noah says, returning Freddie's smile. It probably wouldn't, or won't work. Magnus most likely would sense his presence or something right away with his magic, or maybe he has anti-ward ghosts set up around his apartment. Magnus is the most powerful magic user he knows.

He can try, though.

"Well, there's this guy I don't like. He was basically responsible for my ex's death back in his world, so of course he showed up here. I would make myself invisible, knock stuff off his shelves, make the air super cold in his apartment, wake him up when he was trying to sleep." Noah smiles to himself, a far-off look on his face. "It was awesome."

Noah's face doesn't exactly light up, but his smile is certainly more genuine in that moment. Freddie listens, trying to picture sweet Noah terrorizing the guy who killed his ex and strangely finds it not all that difficult. He may be far kinder than most people Freddie's met in his life, but Freddie has the feeling that kindness doesn't extend to people he feels don't deserve it.

Which, of course, again makes Freddie wonder why he's bothered with Freddie this long.

"That's brilliant," he says with a laugh a moment later, grinning over at Noah. "Did you write on his bathroom mirror in blood? On his walls?"

Noah looks over at Freddie like he's grown a head. "What?" he asks with a laugh of disbelief. "Jesus, no. I'd have to get the blood from somewhere if I wanted to go all REDRUM on him, but even if I could that's really gross." His nose wrinkles at the thought - though, fuck, now that he's picturing it that might have been really funny to do with Bull if he could've found some fake Halloween blood or something.

"I don't mind a gentle haunting," he adds, "but I think if I got anything on Magnus' walls he'd kill me. For real. He's not one you actually want to piss off."

"Well, it wouldn't have to be real blood, obviously," Freddie replies, though he can see that Noah finds the idea amusing whatever the case. And maybe even tempting. Hopefully tempting. To be honest, Magnus has it coming.

"And Magnus would not kill you," he continues, giving Noah a look. "Me, yes. Pissed him off months ago and he's not let me forget it since. Not that I regret a minute of it, of course. D'you know he's my neighbour? Haunting him would be so, so easy, Noah. You know you want to."

"Wait-- first, what did you do to piss him off?" Noah asks, feeling a little lighter with the distraction of possible gossip. Freddie, even with his sharp tongue, is unfortunately no match for Magnus' powerful magic, and he wonders what Freddie could have done to piss him off.

"Secondly, stop trying to peer pressure me into haunting him. You aren't even my peer." He leans back in the chair, smirking at Freddie. "You're so old," he says, trying to hold the smirk and keep from laughing.

"Fuck off, I'm not!" he argues with a laugh, smacking the back of his hand against Noah's thigh before shifting forward to grab his coffee. "You died ages ago anyway, didn't you? If you'd kept on living, you'd be middle-aged by now, I reckon."

Still smirking, he sips his drink then before settling back into the couch, tucking his feet under his legs once more. "And I pissed off Magnus by flirting with his boyfriend," he continues, grinning full-out now as he recalls the memory. "And then fucking the alternate version of his boyfriend. Here, in this flat. Rather loudly."

Noah grins a little and kicks Freddie's leg. Nudges it, more like. "Um. I'd be twenty...six now, I think." Time might not be a loop anymore, but it's still been weird. Especially since coming here from July in his world, to September in this one.

"Loudly on purpose?" he asks, blushing a little at the mental images that surface, mostly. He leans back against the pillows, looking up at the ceiling. "Well it's your fault for goading a mage."

"Yes, on purpose," Freddie says with no hint of remorse. "It's not like it was actually him. Not my fault he's got no sense of humour."

He pauses then, still rather amused by the whole thing even if it had earned him some undue attention. There are worse things Magnus could have done by now so perhaps he's gotten over it. The wine, after all, had infected at least half the people in attendance; it hadn't been solely to fuck with him.

"You're older than me, you realize," he says. "Or, well." He pauses then, brow furrowing as he reconsiders. "I'm twenty-four, but it was twenty-fourteen in my world. And it's twenty-seventeen now so I s'pose I'll be twenty-seven in a few weeks." He scoffs then, shaking his head. "No, think not. I'm not skipping two years just because the calendar here is weird. You're still older."

"You know he's engaged now, right?" Noah asks, tilting his head so he can see Freddie again. Unless Magnus holds grudges he probably doesn't care very much anymore about what Freddie did.

"No, I never aged. I still don't age. But at least here in a way I do because I experience time like anyone else. Back home time was all happening at once, so it's...weird. It's hard to explain," he says, absently combing his fingers through his hair, squeezing it between his fingers until it ended and then doing it again. "And it was two thousand and thirteen for me."

Freddie hadn't known that, no, but somehow he's not surprised. He does wonder how it is Noah knows, though. If that means he's friend with Magnus.

He decides not to ask.

"D'you even celebrate your birthday then?" he asks, lips curled in a thoughtful frown. "Or would it be more appropriate to throw a death day party?"

Noah is friends with Magnus, but Freddie doesn't ask out loud so Noah decides not to answer. He doesn't want to be too overwhelming with how many thoughts he answers, he doesn't want people always thinking about and paranoid about how he can hear them.

He snorts softly. "Eh. I don't know. Last year I went out for gelato with my friends." Before that he never mentioned a birthday. It hadn't seemed relevant. He looks over at Freddie with a slow grin. "It's April sixth if you want to get me a present."

That seems like a very wholesome and very Noah sort of celebration, Freddie thinks. Freddie, on the other hand, had gone to a club with a some mates where he'd got blitzed and copped off with four boys at once on the back couch. He honestly can't say he remembers too much of the night in any great detail, which is likely both a blessing and a curse.

"Mine's March thirteenth," he says with a grin to match Noah's. "So you first, yeah? Though I still maintain you're older."

Noah rolls his eyes. "Okay, keep thinking so, but when you actually grow older, I'll always be able to look young. Think about that when you get wrinkles," he says with a laugh, reaching over to poke Freddie's cheek.

Of course, there isn't a good chance either of them will still be here by then, but Noah tries not to dwell on the capriciousness of this place since it's the only place he can even exist like this.

With a huff of a laugh, Freddie pulls away and swats at Noah's hand. There's still a dull pounding behind his eyes, but it's no longer unbearable and he finds Noah's presence in his flat oddly comforting.

Maybe he can do this, he thinks. This friends thing. There's no reason to be disappointed in that.

"Can you really make your body do whatever you want?" he asks because it's not the first time Noah's mentioned this age thing. "If you can make it so you never age, can you also, like... dunno. Make it so you look entirely different? Taller or whatever? Give yourself different colored eyes, that sorta thing."

Noah leans back against his side of the couch and makes a face, something between unsure and thoughtful. "I think I can," he says slowly, trying to recall all the things Dorian told him. Maybe he should have written it down just to be safe. "But I've never tried. I don't think I'd want to, I just like being me."

"The most I've really done is healing injuries, like skateboarding scrapes," he says, and then grins wickedly for a moment. "And the dick thing." He raises his index finger and laughs.

Freddie remembers well the dick thing and he certainly can't blame Noah for taking advantage. And tries not to be disappointed by the fact that he'll not get to benefit now.

"Think I'd give it a shot with breasts if I had the chance. Have you not?"

"No!" Noah groans, sprawling back on the couch in a position of long suffering. He kicks lightly at Freddie's legs. "Boobs on my body? That would look weird as hell. You're so weird," he laughs.

"Well, you wouldn't just pop 'em on like a Mr. Potato Head doll," Freddie laughs, making no move to defend himself against Noah's kick, but still grinning. "I mean, you'd obviously change some other things about yourself as well. You haven't wondered how it'd feel to have girl bits at all?"

Because Freddie definitely has. He's quite a bit fan of his dick and he can't say he'd likely choose being a girl for any significant amount of time, but maybe a couple days would be fun.

Noah laughs at the idea of being a Mr. Potato Head doll. He has to admit that before he'd dated Krem he hadn't given gender much thought, and since then he had wondered, but he keeps it to himself right now. "Not really. You know that can happen, though, right?" he says, sitting up a little, grinning. "It's happened to a couple people I know. They just wake up the opposite sex. It's like a Darrow curse or something."

"You're having me on," Freddie says after a moment spent just staring at Noah, expecting him to crack a smile or give Freddie's shoulder a playful shove.

But Noah does neither and Freddie thinks back to a couple weeks before when he'd chatted up the woman outside Magnus Bane's apartment, only to discover it'd been Magnus Bane himself. At the time, Freddie had thought it merely one of Magnus's magic tricks, but maybe if Noah's not joking then maybe it'd been something else entirely.

"It's not happened to you?" he asks, then wondering if it even could. If Noah can make his body manifest any way he'd like, surely he could change it back if something else messed with it.

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[2/15] morning after

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