2025-02-17 - Nothing But

[TXT to Ari] Noah: brooooooooooooooooooooo what u doing? i'm at the game room in the basement of silver brook

[TXT to Noah] Ari: i'm reading [image: a big coffee table-style book spread out on... a coffee table, showing a detailed photo of the Hagia Sophia spread across both pages]

[TXT to Noah] Ari: okay sure there's no text

[TXT to Ari] Noah: you wanna come hang out? i'll let you beat me in foozeball. 😉

[TXT to Noah] Ari: sure! this is kinda dry tbqh... even if the pictures are pretty. be there soon

[TXT to Ari] Noah: what do u like to drink? i'll get you something from the vending machine

[TXT to Noah] Ari: orange soda plz plz plzzzzz

[TXT to Noah] Ari: sry was in the elevator and it's totally deadzone in there

Noah grins, stuffing the phone in his pocket. Today he's wearing dark-blue corduroy pants, hiking boots, and a simple white T-shirt with no insignia. Tossed over a chair is his black leather jacket. He puts some money into the vending machine and get Ari an orange soda and gets himself a cream soda. Then he flops down in a chair and puts both drink on the table. He watches a guy and a girl playing air hockey, but from the vibe they are giving off this game is probably just foreplay for them. The are doing more laughing and eyeing each other than they are playing the game.

A small grin hits Noah's face. He knows what they're off to do next.

It takes a little while for Ari to arrive, for no particular reason other than he didn't want to seem overly eager by jogging over or something, but when the elevator dings and Ari steps out, he can't help but be excited. And that shows on his face, a big smile as he shucks off his jacket.

He's in his usual jeans and work boots, his t-shirt advertising a production on the front with big letters reading Staff on the back. If he's not in his Spellbound coveralls, he's almost always in some variation of that outfit.

"Heee-eeeey," he calls out, the first part louder than he would've said if he'd realized there were other folks around, so the second half kind of peters out. The two playing air hockey get a wan smile before Noah is shuffled over to, Ari sliding quickly into the chair opposite him. "Sup," he says at a much more normal (for him) volume, which is to say: quiet.

When Ari starts off loud, Noah bites his lower lip and his face is dominated by a surprise, wide-eyed, pleased expression. He likes when people are enthusiastic. He glances over at the air hockey players, but they only have eyes for each other. A gunfight could erupt in this room and they might not notice.

Noah pushes the orange soda toward Ari, then raises his cream soda and holds it out. "Salud!" he proposes.

Squeaking by without much notice from the other occupants of the room is a balm on Ari's weary soul, that much is true. He goes for his orange soda but then Noah's lifting his own in the air, and obligingly Ari raises his in reply. "Salud!" he repeats, laughter in his voice.

After that first drink, he sits back with a sigh and stretches his legs a little bit. "I smuggled Mich some ham yesterday and then today I showed up with none and he was angry. See he scratched me," and he shows a mark low on his hand, near the bottom of where his thumb meets his palm. It's the tiniest little scratch, but Ari frowns. "I gotta get him some of those caps for his claws."

Noah's mouth and eyes open wide as he smiles an open-mouth smile, staring at the cat wound. "Yeah. Or train him not to be a dick!" Noah exclaims, laughing as he talks. He tosses back a goodly amount of soda in a long pull.

"So I got home last night, fed my little rabbit thing...I really should name it...and got into bed and guess what?" Noah says, leaning forward closer to Ari. His cheeks are pink, his hazel eyes are glittering merrily, and he's utterly unable to suppress a grin. "I started craving pie! Can you believe it? I ate like twenty pounds of pancakes, got home, and all I could think about was pie." He sits back again and takes a brief sip of his soda with his eyes closed. "I blame you."

Ari considers this, but then offers up: "Unfortunately I think being a dick is just kind of a cat's modus operandi, y'know?" He laughs along with Noah anyway, and sets his soda back down so that he can run his fingers over the, again, teeny tiniest little scratch.

He listens, rapt, eyes focused on Noah as he goes on about his previous night, and the pie revelation has Ari snorting. "That's totally not my bad!" he proclaims. "In fact I distinctly remember you saying you shouldn't do it because you'd get sick, man! Even if it were my fault, I would've just been saving you from a stomach ache." Mirroring Noah's posture, he sits back in his chair, hand still around his soda, fiddling with it in an idle, distracted way. "Besides, we can always go get pie later. They're open twenty-four-seven after all."

Holding up an index finger definitively, Noah employs a tone of voice that suggests he is speaking Wisdom of the Ages, "We must eat all of the pies."

Noah's gaze roams over Ari, not leeringly or anything creepy. He's just...fucking happy to see his new friend. It's easy to see that he hasn't had much more than casual relations with people here at the park, and that he feels a warm connection with Ari.

"Aaaaaanyway," he says just before taking another hit of cream soda, "I don't have any agenda. I was texting you to pull you into my own personal hell of boredom." His smiles broadens and he lets out a small laugh. "You play foozeball? It's like my favorite." He nods in the direction of the foozeball table, which causes his hair to slide all over the damned place.

"Doesn't the diner have a billion different kinds of pie? Including seasonal ones?" Ari asks, mostly to the aether and not Noah specifically. But he looks off to the side, like he's considering something. "If we were to eat all the pies... we could rank them."

This sounds exciting to him, and when Noah mentions being bored, Ari's head falls back so he can stare at the ceiling. "Yeah, I get you. I'm talking about starting a pie ranking just to fill the time," he says and he sounds almost disbelieving of himself, a mix of amusement and something not too far off from annoyance in his voice. "And the thing is, I know there's stuff to do on the islands. But sometimes playing tourist just ain't it."

Looking towards the foozeball table, he shrugs. "I mean, I've played but I wouldn't call myself any good. But if you wanna beat me a few times, we could definitely play." This he grins at.

Noah kinda shrugs nonchalantly as Ari vibes not being super into it. He studies Ari for a few moments before asking, out of the blue, "How old're you, bro?" He shakes his head a little. "No reason, I'm just curious. Like part of you gives off this wise-man vibe, and part of you gives off this little-bro, protect-at-all-costs vibe." He laughs a bit, partly because he's amused and partly because he's embarrassed by his lack of eloquence. Then he adds a shrug. "It's kinda nice."

Ari's answer to the question is a succinct, "Twenty-three." But then he has to ruin it by following up with a, "I turn twenty-four at the end of the summer, though," which does give little-bro vibes, doesn't it? He rubs the scratch once more before forcing himself to knock it off, one hand pulling back to his lap while the other locks around his soda.

"If I had to guess, you're probably a year or two older than me, yeah? I'm only saying that because there's already been too many coincidences, we can't be the same age or anything."

"Basically," Noah confirms. "I'm 26." Then, with glittering eyes, he teases Ari. "Well, Twenty six and a half." He rocks forward as he laughs and playfully pushes Ari's shoulder.

Noah glances over toward the door and the guy and the girl leave, holding hands, and giving each other The Eye. Noah cracks a lopsided grin on one side of his face.

"Yeah there are a lot of coincidences. I was talkin to my sis on Facetime this morning and I told her about all of the bizarre parallels." He shrugs again. "But teenage girls have one-track minds. Her only question was 'Is he hot?'" Noah blurts out a laugh.

Well then, his guess wasn't too far off, and Ari's smile is pleased because of it. He snorts at the addition because yeah, in hindsight he gets it, so he just rocks with the push and rolls his eyes, amused.

After, he follows Noah's line of sight and once they're in the clear, Ari immediately rounds on him. "I'm surprised they didn't start making out on the air hockey table." He pauses. "Which would be cold, on account of the air part."

The mention of their backstory parallels has Ari nodding along, until Noah relates what his sister had asked, and Ari covers his face with both hands. "Oh my god," he breathes out, first too shocked to laugh, and then he's just wheezing out a breath. "I'm so sorry?" He's not sure why he's apologizing!

Noah waves off the apology. "No need to be sorry. You're not responsible for my teenaged sister's rampaging hormones." He grins and nods to Ari. "Besides, I told her that you are."

Then Noah tips back the cream soda and drains the last third of the can and then tosses it overhand. The can arcs across the room and lands right in the recycle bin. He grins, pleased with himself. "Nothin' but neeeee...." But as he starts saying 'net' an involuntary belch rolls out of him. His faces goes super red and he rests his forehead on the table, laughing.

"Okay I wasn't going to ask but thank you, yes, I am totally hot," Ari says, slapping his hand on the tabletop once to emphasize his point. And then he's watching the soda can sail through the air.

See, he was about to compliment the throw. Because he's nice like that! But then halfway through bragging Noah burps, and Ari's gone, devolving into hysterical laughter as he scrunches his whole body up, just completely defenseless against it.

Likewise, Noah's body just shakes with laughter as he keeps his forehead on the table. "Why do I keep embarrassing myself in front of you? Why am I like this?" He finally sits back up. His cheeks and ears and neck are flushed red, his lips are moist, his eyes glitter, and his hair is wild. He looks like he really needed that laugh actually. And he sits up in time to enjoy the sight of Ari cracking up, which just makes him smile wider.

"Alright, new rule," Noah intones. "Every day I get one mulligan for the next two weeks until I can stop embarrassing myself around you."

It takes a solid couple of moments before Ari can get his feet flat on the floor again, and he can unclench his arms from his midsection where it felt like he was holding his whole body together against his laughter. He wipes his eyes, and then at the announcement of the new rule, he can only nod. He really doesn't trust himself to talk.

So Noah gets flashed a thumbs up, and Ari breathes in through his nose as he tries to remember what it feels like to have enough air in his lungs to breathe properly.

Is there anything better than watching someone genuinely and honestly caught up in laughter. Noah gives Ari all the time he needs to wind down.

But he's getting snacky. He stands up an walks over to one of those refrigerated vending machines where you press the button and a carousel spins around. He clicks the button. The carousel spins. "No," he says. He clicks it again. It spins. "No." Another clicks. Spin. "No." Click. Spin. "No." Click. Spin. "Oh my god who would ever eat that thing?" Big sigh. He steps sidewise to the regular vending machine and stares at all of the choices. He draws in a long breath and lets it out.

Once he's back to normal, Ari follows Noah over to the vending machine and watches the indecision happening live. He finishes his own can of soda and resolutely does not throw it, because he will not make it in, and instead he just slaps Noah lightly on the shoulder.

"C'mon, man. Let's go get pie!"

He turns to look at Ari, who has gotten closer than he anticipated while he was foraging unsuccessfully through the vending machine. He turns a bit too quickly, surprised. He peers at Ari and licks his lips and seem...a little uncomfortable all of a sudden. "I...um..." He summons a smile to his lips and nods his head. "Yeah. Pie." And he quickly starts walking for the door. As he passes the table he was sitting at, Noah grabs his black leather jacket and slips it on. It's not too bad out tonight so he doesn't zip it up.

Whatever happens that makes Noah uncomfortable, Ari decides not to inquire. It's probably something to do with him, anyway, and he quickly looks away.

He tosses his can into the recycling bin at a very, very modest distance, and then he gets his own jacket, ready then to face the mild chill of the air. "As long as my brothers don't hear that I went to get pie without them, we're good," he says, almost to himself, as he follows Noah up and out of the game room. "Though maybe I should bring home a couple of slices as a peace offering... yeah, probably a good idea."