Special Episode: Ask
This episode is part of a larger story, Soft Touch. If you haven’t yet, you can go back and read it from the beginning right here.
“How did you know?” Noah asked Raj, once. “How I feel about you? How I feel about her?”
He thought he’d been doing a good job hiding it, before it all came out into the open. But Raj knew. The whole time, he knew.
Raj had shrugged his shoulders. “Lots of ways.”
He smiled at Noah, his own feelings clear in his eyes.
This is something that Noah loves deeply about Raj. Everything is always visible, right there on the surface. Not that he’s a man without depth. He’s like the ocean last night: clear all the way down to the farthest reaches. Filled with beautiful, radiant things, the likes of which Noah has never seen before.
Even something about the sharply angular cut to Raj’s features makes it impossible to conceal his expression, his thoughts, his feelings. No hiding anything.
That face suits his soul perfectly. Honest. Open. And sincere, always so sincere.
Noah rephrased the question, got at what he really meant. “But how were you so sure?”
Raj had thought about it, looking at Noah for a long moment.
“Your eyes,” he finally said. “They change color. Sometimes they turn this really light, shiny silver… and there’s an inner ring, right around the center, that gets almost - it’s like white opal, or something. Moondust. Your eyes, they - they just shine. But they don’t get that way with anyone else. Just with me and Mel.”
He gently touched two knuckles to Noah’s cheek, then his thumb, and placed a lingering kiss on Noah’s forehead. Then he drew back, looked at Noah, and smiled.
“Just like that,” he said softly, peering into Noah’s eyes.
Noah had looked into his own eyes in the mirror that night, searching for what Raj was talking about. He didn’t see it, and he’s never been aware of it. No one else had ever pointed it out to him before.
Maybe because no one else has ever brought that out of him, before.
He and Noelle both have their dad’s eyes. Blue when they were babies, gradually lightening to a pale grey as they grew up. But Noah hadn’t realized that they did any changing after that, and definitely not on a moment-by-moment basis.
After Raj told him about it, Noah started picking up on moments when Raj or Mel would be looking into his eyes, and they’d blink a few times, staring deeply. They’d exchange a private little smile with each other, and he’d wonder if it was happening. If he was so happy that, just like Raj, he couldn’t hide the truth.
He knows without checking that it’s happening right now.
He lays stretched out on his back in the massive bed at the tiny beach house, lost in thought. Mel curled up on one side of him, Raj sprawled out on the other.
Noah’s muscles are pleasantly, satisfyingly sore from a full day spent out on the waves. The light rain that showered down on them as they lay on their boards last night became stronger when it got late, and the air drifting in through the open window feels swept clean, flavored with salt and the greenery framing the house. Carrying with it the sound of the peaceful, early waves. Leaf-heavy branches and flowers sway in the breeze beyond the window, brushing against the glass.
The bed is perfectly soft, with cream-colored sheets. It’s a cool, windswept early morning, but the warmth of the bodies on either side of Noah keeps him cozy enough to lay on top of the bedding.
A glittering sweep of sunlight spills down over Raj, whose skin has caught and retained a sunglow from yesterday, turned a deeper shade of brown. And on Melanie, illuminating her eyelashes, the soft blush that always stays in her cheeks.
Noah loves them both so desperately, so completely, so fully. He doesn’t know which one of them to look at. He wishes he’d slept on the outside, so he could see them both at once.
His sides are a little sore. They all three fell asleep laughing.
There are still moments - all the time, every day - when Noah can’t believe he stumbled into happiness like this. He didn’t know it was even possible, to be this happy. To climb to heights like this. The fear left behind by everything he went through before - it can’t even reach him, up here.
Some part of him, some nervous part, can’t help but worry that it’ll all be taken out of his hands suddenly. He tries not to clutch at Mel and Raj too tightly, but it’s hard to loosen your grip when there are such rare, precious treasures in your hands.
Melanie stirs against the bedding, and he knows that she’s half-awake. She always wakes up slowly, by degrees.
Her fingers reach out and slide across Noah’s bare stomach, stop at the center. They begin slowly tracing the ink he has there, following the lines of his tattoos. She knows where they all are now, without having to open her eyes.
Noah finds himself holding his breath. He doesn’t want to do the slightest thing to stop Mel, even by accident.
She senses that he’s doing that, and her eyes slowly blink open, find his. She smiles, lets out a contented sigh. She stretches, her head tipping back into the pillows, the graceful curve of her throat exposed.
Noah can’t help but lean towards her and place a lingering kiss on her neck. His lip piercing brushes against her, and she giggles softly, tickled by it. But she leaves her head thrown back on the pillow, like she doesn’t want him to stop. So he slowly makes his way up her neck, painting her with kisses. Then he pulls back very slightly and blows gently on her skin, a cool little rush of air that makes her shiver.
Melanie takes a long, full, deep breath, her feet flexing at the end of the bed. Noah watches the goosebumps spread down her arms.
She wore a soft, white cotton top to sleep, and Noah teasingly slides his hand up beneath it, traces his fingers over her stomach the way she was doing to him. She giggles again and pushes his hand away, turns her head to look at him as he draws back.
They look into each other’s eyes, and Noah wonders again what kind of careless god would let this beautiful angel come down from the stars, out of their grasp, and into his and Raj’s bed. Whoever it was, they fucked up. They fucked up royal.
Noah blinks at Mel, his eyes narrowing. He could swear she’s looking at him with something complicated in her eyes, something hidden. Is she - nervous about something, or-?
Before Noah can look deep enough to figure it out, Mel bites her lip, then surprises him by tucking one thigh over him. She props herself up on an elbow, spreads a hand on his chest, and kisses him deeply into the pillow.
The way Melanie lights this fire in him. White lava in his veins, superheated, molten. His very blood is singing, every time they end up this way together. He’d wondered, in the beginning, if this came from the fact that he wasn’t fucked up all the time. No longer insomniatic and foggy, sleepwalking even when sober, always feeling two steps back from real life. If that’s what caused the clearness, the immense intensity of the fire he feels for her. What made it so powerful that it felt like absolute hell, pure agony to suppress it, when he still had to.
But that wasn’t it. Not completely, anyways. It’s just - her.
Noah takes in a sharp, ragged breath as Mel moves to sit astride his body. He slides a hand up the back of her neck, into her soft, shiny hair. He winds it around his fingers, gives it a tug to pull her head back, and leans up to place light, teasing, mothwing kisses all over her throat. Then he falls back, drops his hands, slides them beneath her shirt again. Glides his palms in slow circles over the soft skin of her abdomen, then higher.
She sits back and closes her eyes to enjoy it, sinking her weight into Noah’s lap, and the heat in his body kicks up to a new peak. He’s panting just looking at her, right now.
She tips forward to kiss him again, taking his face in her hands. Noah’s brain goes blank with the way she nibbles and bites his parted lips, with how she teasingly drags her tongue over them, then slips it through them to touch his. Rocking her body slowly against his, sinking pressure in with every movement. Purring softly into Noah’s mouth when she feels the answering response from his body.
He loses all sense of everything else, and so does she, and they go rolling directly into Raj.
Raj startles awake as Melanie falls against him. His arms move automatically to lock around her, even before he fully gets his eyes open.
He sits up on one elbow, blinking hard, bewildered. Noah freezes, one hand still up Melanie’s shirt, her fingers still gripping a fistful of his hair. Both of them are red-cheeked, out of breath.
Raj manages to get his eyes to focus. He stares at Noah, then at Mel, who is looking up at him from within his arms. She has a tiny print just beneath her mouth, left there by Noah’s lip piercing.
There’s a silence, and then Raj starts to laugh.
“Oh, man,” he says, his voice bright with his laughter. “You two are so busted.”
He leans over Mel to kiss Noah’s shoulder, then draws back to give Mel a much longer kiss on her mouth. She smiles up at him, stretches out comfortably in his embrace.
Raj looks up at Noah again, and sees that he still hasn’t moved an inch.
Noah’s heart was already racing, but now it’s thundering in his ears. He’s so afraid of fucking everything up, of making a death-dealing mistake. He and Mel have never exactly woken Raj up like this before, and there’s a fear in him that he’s overstepped.
Raj can clearly see that. He has this strange kind of psychic ability about the people he loves. When Noah found out that his romantic feelings towards Raj weren’t one-sided, he had been afraid that maybe Raj wanted a physical relationship, too, wanted things that Noah couldn’t give him. But Raj had already figured out exactly where Noah was loving him from. While Noah was fumbling around in the dark, trying to understand the shape of his feelings - Raj was already waiting to meet him there.
He understood, like he always does. Even when Noah is doing a shit-tier job of expressing himself.
“I’m - drowning,” he’d gasped at Raj once, during one of the Ralph-scares after he escaped.
It was such an imperfect way of expressing how he was feeling, but Raj looked at him like he knew exactly what he meant. He didn’t ask him to explain. He just put his arms around Noah, and Noah felt his breathing, and - eventually, Noah’s own breath synced up to his, came back to a pace that let him get air into his lungs.
Raj can sense even the slightest tremor of anxiety behind Noah’s movements and words. He sees it there now.
He reaches over Melanie, traces his fingers down the side of Noah’s face, and tucks a strand of his hair behind his ear. Speaking to him with his eyes.
Noah lets out the breath he didn’t realize he was holding. Warmth pools up in him, and he tips forward to put his forehead to Raj’s forehead.
Something he never would have been comfortable doing with another guy, before Raj. But with him, Noah has been slowly finding his way back to his real self. To everything that he gave up, living with Ralph. Thinking, really thinking about who he is, what he needs. And more than that, what he wants.
He knows exactly what he wants, now.
Raj, who breathed life back into him after what he went through, who helped him find his way out of a dark place he thought he was too lost in, too broken to ever come back from. When Noah felt like the biggest fucking loser on the face of this earth, when he had nothing and felt like he was nothing, Raj looked at him like he was something special.
And Mel. Beautiful, sweet, patient, whip-smart. Mel, who gave Noah a second chance when he knew he didn’t deserve it. Who quite literally put a little life into his hands. Trusted him with her baby, with something so fragile, so precious and irreplaceable.
She yawns deeply in Raj’s arms, stirring in the sunlight, which is honeycombed through the patterns of the windows. It dapples across her face, against Raj’s shoulders.
Noah thinks to himself that it makes perfect sense that his eyes would shift colors around them. Because the color of his life has changed. Or maybe it was just - colorless, before. Unless his brain was neon and floating somewhere outside of his skull, riding a wave of psychedelics.
The colors now are real, rich, vivid. Heartstopping. They steal Noah’s breath away. The specific shade of the sunlight where it touches Raj’s skin, and Melanie’s.
He looks at them, and he just wants to give them things. Whatever they need. Whatever they want.
“Do you want some coffee, Mel?” Noah murmurs, curling his fingers beneath her chin.
She smiles up at him. “That would be nice.”
Noah climbs up out of the bed and reaches for his sweatpants. “Raj? You too?”
“Yeah, man. Thanks.”
When Noah gets downstairs, he remembers that they’re not at their house. There are three bags of coffee beans on the counter, but not the flavors they usually go for. He heads back upstairs to ask Raj and Mel which one they want.
He stops in the doorway, staring at them.
They’re both sitting up in the bed, talking very quietly. Looking into each other’s eyes, their heads tipped together. Raj has Mel’s foot in his hands, massaging it as he speaks, gently pulling her toes.
It used to make Noah so jealous, the ease and depth of their intimacy. But it was a strange kind of jealousy, without bitterness or anger or resentment. It just made him sad, confused. Lonely.
Now, when he sees them looking at each other like this, sees the connection they have - all he thinks is that it’s beautiful.
They realize he’s there and abruptly cut short whatever they were saying to each other.
“Hey,” Raj says. “I thought you went to go get coffee?”
“Fuck the coffee,” Noah answers, and crosses the room to throw himself down on both of them.
Raj and Mel burst out laughing, caught by surprise. They all land in a tangled pile, their laughter rising up to the ceiling, bouncing off of the walls.
When Noah passed by Jamie and Aiden’s room last night, Jamie was in the shower, but Aiden was sitting up in bed with a book. Noah had paused outside of the door, recognizing the cover.
Aiden saw him looking.
“Jamie gave it to me for Christmas,” he explained, his eyes lingering on the pages.
“I know. I went with him to pick it out.”
“Did you?” Aiden laughed. “Shit, dude. You and Jamie browsing the poetry section of a bookstore together is something I never thought I’d hear about.”
“You and me both, bro,” Noah had said, and Aiden laughed again. “Looks like we made a good choice, though.”
“Mhm.” Aiden ran a thumb over the page. “I’ve already read it a few times.”
“And you’re reading it again?”
“Yeah.” Aiden turned the book around, showed him the page. “This is one of my favorites.”
It was a poem called Miracle Fair.
Noah didn’t read it - the page was full of little notes from Jamie, and he didn’t want to pry - but he liked the phrase. Miracle fair.
Melanie waking Noah up with kisses when she spends the night in his room. Niki babbling at him, trying to answer something he said to her, trying to grab his nose. Raj falling asleep in his bed after they spent all night talking. Mel bringing him back flowers from every event she works.
Raj, after they set their boundaries - after Noah explained that he just didn’t want Raj to kiss his mouth, but other places were fine - kissing Noah everywhere all over his face except his mouth, until Noah had to laughingly shove him away. Mel in a fit of hysterical laughter over some stupid thing Noah said. Raj speaking to Niki in Shakespeare, Niki listening with very wide, round eyes.
The way that Noah, Raj, and Mel all love each other in different ways, for different reasons, but so completely.
The three of them, tangled up together in this bed, sun-warmed, sleep-tousled. Their laughter and the ocean in his ears.
Noah is living in the miracle fair.
~~~~
A perfect day, just like yesterday.
Wandering through the sandy streets of the beach town in the morning. Sunlit breakfast at a café, coffee and toast. Swimming in the ocean all day, messing around in the waves. Melanie joining Noah in the shower, slowly and meticulously working the sand and saltwater off of his body with her fingers. A sun-tired, knockout nap on cool sheets in the afternoon, Raj curled up against his side.
Dinner at the beach house, with the doors left open to the sand, the water. Aiden cooked. Turns out he’s really good at it. Raj and Mel went to town to pick up some fresh bread to eat with dinner, so Noah and Jamie sat out on the sand, having a cold beer together. When they came back inside, the delicious smell of what Aiden had made took them by surprise.
Somehow he’d used the rickety, wood-burning stove and the old copper pans to make heavenly food. And the bread that Raj and Mel brought back was still steaming in the paper it came wrapped in. It formed a small, warm mountain on the plate after Aiden cut it up. Crunched softly when Noah bit into it.
Now they’re all sitting on an oversized blanket on the sand, blissfully tired, quiet. The sun is setting, and they’ve been watching it for a while.
Noah is so happy that he’s starting to wonder what’s going on. A quiet worry has slipped under his skin, gnawing at him.
It’s weird, because, like - every time he says something, people are all over it. He mentioned that he wished Ripley could have come with them, and about two minutes later, Jamie came in with Ripley on FaceTime, so they could say hi and show him the beach.
Stuff like that has been happening all day. The whole length of the trip so far, actually. As soon as Noah wants something, someone puts it in his hands.
Noah has to wonder… is this whole trip to make him feel better about the wedding?
Did Raj and Mel - officially set a date, or something?
Is this all their way of trying to soften the blow before they tell him, like wrapping your fist in fabric before you punch it through glass? Is that why they’ve both seemed nervous, the last few days?
Noah has been trying very hard not to think about the wedding. As hard as he can. But it’s not easy. Every time he touches the thought, it hurts, and he spirals into it. He starts thinking all kinds of stupid shit. Stuff he could do, even if he can’t be part of the wedding itself.
Let me take you on a honeymoon, he wants to tell Mel and Raj. When we have enough money, let me take you to Paris. I’ll take you to the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, the Tour Eiffel, anything and everything you want to see. Or we can go to the countryside, and you can meet my dad. We haven’t spoken for a really long time, and that’s my fault, but - I know that he’d love you. I’ll take you to the lavender fields, to all my favorite places… just let me take you there. Let me do that, at least.
Noah gives himself a shake, wondering how he sank into thinking about this so quickly. He keeps telling himself that it won’t break his spirit to see them married without him. That it’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fucking fine. Mel and Raj have already given him so much. Made him happier than anyone who came before, the happiest he’s ever been in his life. He doesn’t need more.
He takes a long breath, gazing around at the beach, grounding himself in the present.
It’s so damn beautiful here. That helps.
The wind combs through the leaves of the trees behind them, through the flowers, stirring gentle waves on the surface of the peaceful ocean. The sky is filled with soft, cotton-ball clouds, all of them glowing radiantly with the light of the setting sun. Coral pink, indigo, sherbert orange. That same light spills down onto the beach, sets the sand to sparkling.
Mel and Raj are softly lit by it. Raj’s eyes are honey-colored in it, his skin glowing with it. Mel got all dressed up, even though they didn’t go out for dinner. Her hair in a high braid, her crimson lipstick matching her short, loose, velvet dress. One strand of her hair has escaped, caught in the breeze, picking up the rosy sunlight.
Noah looks at the two of them, full of love. Grateful, just so fucking grateful.
On the other side of Melanie, Aiden stretches his arms over his head, then gets to his feet.
“You wanna go for a walk, Jamie?” he asks, already reaching down to give Jamie a hand up.
“What, I’m not invited?” Noah asks, lounging back on his elbows.
“Nope. Not unless you want to watch me and Jamie make out on the sand. In which case, what’s wrong with you, you weird fucking-”
“Pass,” Noah says firmly, and Jamie laughs.
Aiden wraps an arm around Jamie, and they set off together. Noah watches them leave, then closes his eyes again. Leans his head on Raj’s shoulder.
He really does feel so peaceful right now. In the old days he’d be restless, wandering off, looking for trouble to get into. Being with Raj and Mel, he’s learned to appreciate these moments of complete calm. All of his happiness is right here with him, on this blanket, on this sand. Why would he go anywhere?
He listens to the rush of the waves for a minute.
When he opens his eyes, Raj is looking at him. Mel, too. There’s something strange and bright shining through their gazes.
“What?” Noah asks, unable to keep from smiling with their eyes on him like this.
“We - we want to talk to you about something,” Raj says.
Noah blinks, then sits up slowly, uncertainly. “Okay?”
Mel reaches out and takes one of his hands. Raj takes the other. Noah stares at them, starting to get worried.
“We want to talk to you about the wedding,” Melanie says.
Noah’s heart plummets, sinking all the way down. The warmth he’d been feeling drops away, turns cold. He tries not to let it show on his face. “Okay…”
Raj squeezes his fingers, looking into his eyes. “Do you know how much we love you, Noah?”
Noah doesn’t answer, so Mel speaks instead.
“We can’t imagine being without you. You mean so much to us.” She looks like she’s about to cry, for some reason. Her words are nervous, stumbling. “You’re so, so important to us, Noah. We couldn’t even think of a good enough way to tell you that. Nothing is - big enough.”
Noah is having trouble looking at either of them. But Raj squeezes his fingers again, and Noah manages to lift his gaze to him.
“We know that you’ve changed a lot, since we first met.” His voice is soft, earnest, intimate. “But you’ve changed things for us, too, Noah. So much. I don’t think you realize how much.”
Noah tries to break his gaze away, but Raj takes his free hand and tucks it beneath Noah’s chin, makes Noah look at him.
“You have no idea how fucking grateful I am that you’re the one who answered when I knocked on the door at Aiden’s place, Nohea.” Raj breaks off, has to stop and take a breath. “You have no idea. I’m grateful for that moment every single day of my life.”
Noah is a strange mixture of radiant happiness and heartrending misery, all tangled up together. He knows what this is building to, that they’re just trying to make him feel better first. But the sweetness of the words he’s hearing punches right through that, and he doesn’t know what to do or say. Everything he’s feeling, it’s all pushing out against his ribs, making it difficult for him to breathe.
“When I think back to all of the memories we have together,” Raj says, “I just laugh, and smile, and I - I realize how precious every moment I’ve spent with you has been. Even the hard moments. And Mel feels the same way.”
Melanie nods, her eyes all filled with tears. “We feel like you’re meant to be with us. And we can see how much Nik loves you, too.”
“Yeah, and she basically can’t even think yet,” Raj adds, to a watery laugh from Mel. “She just knows. Like we do.”
The two of them share a look with each other, and Melanie nods at Raj. He turns back to Noah, who just stares at them both blankly, at a complete loss for words.
Raj takes a deep breath, looking into Noah’s eyes. “So - we wanted to ask you…”
Noah tries to brace himself. This is it. They’re about to ask him if he’d be okay if they set a date for their wedding. And he’s going to be shattered, but he has to act like he isn’t, because he doesn’t want them to feel bad or guilty about anything on their wedding day, he only wants them to be happy, that’s all he’s ever wanted -
“Will you marry me?” Raj asks.
“And me, too?” Mel says.
Noah blinks at them, his expression blank.
Did he mishear them?
No, he - he knows what he heard.
For an endless moment, he just looks at Raj and Mel, frozen, struggling to pull words into his mouth. Then he wrenches his shaking hands out of theirs.
“That-” He tries as hard as possible not to let it show in his voice just how crushed and hurt and confused he is. But it all comes out, anyways. “That’s not funny, that’s...” Merciless.
Raj takes something from his pocket, pushes it into Noah’s fingers.
“We’re not joking,” he says.
Noah stares at him, then looks down at what he has in his hands. A small black box. Noah’s fingers move to open it. An involuntary, automatic reaction.
There’s a ring inside. A perfect match to the one on Raj’s finger.
For a long, silent moment, Noah does not react at all.
He sinks into complete numbness, shock. All of his strings have been cut. He can’t speak, can’t think, can’t move, can’t breathe.
He has no idea how long this goes on for. No idea how long he’s been staring at this ring. As far as Noah is concerned, time has stopped.
He finally manages to look up at Raj and Mel, fighting to get some air into his lungs. To make sense of this. There’s an electrical storm of gale-force proportions happening in his chest, in his entire body.
He realizes that Mel is saying something. Whatever it is, he doesn’t hear it. The entire beach has gone silent. Voices, the wind, the waves, the birds - Noah’s ears aren’t picking any of it up.
He sinks a huge heap of effort into listening, and manages to catch the end of what Mel is saying.
“-know this means that we can’t make it legal, but we don’t care about that as much as we care about you. We’d rather it be all three of us.”
Another silence, filled only by the sound of Noah struggling to breathe.
“Dis-moi...” He’s managing to stammer some words out, if in the wrong language. He just needs to figure out what’s really going on, right now. “Dis-moi la vérité…”
Raj has learned enough by now to understand.
“This is the truth, Noah.” He touches a fingertip to the box in Noah’s hand. “We want to marry you. We want you to marry us.”
Melanie reaches out, traces her fingers down the side of Noah’s face.
“Will you?” she asks, very softly.
Noah had told Jamie about his idea of getting a ring tattooed like it was a fleeting thought he’d immediately realized was stupid.
Fact is, he’d actually given it a lot of thought before he realized it was stupid. He’d gone so far as to think of what he might say to Raj and Mel about it. It was something like -
I would go to the ends of the earth for either of you. For both of you.
The love I’ve found with you has made up for everything else, all that shit I went through before. Now I feel like all of that was because I was on my way to you. I spent so long crushed in the gears of other people’s lives. You saved me from that.
You see my weaknesses, but you never use them against me. You try to help me with them, to make me stronger. You’ve helped me build things that I can actually be proud of. I’ve never felt more like myself than I do when I’m with you two. And there were times when the fact that you understood me and cared about me was all that I had.
I didn’t trust myself at all after what I went through. Thought my judgment must be too fucked up to rely on. But I love you both so much that I’ve never doubted for a second that it’s the right thing to do. I know that this thing between us is real, that it’s right. You have no idea how fucking hard that is for me, but you - you make it easy.
Everything else that I used to put first, I would give it all up for you. I would burn it all to the fucking ground for you. I would do it in a heartbeat. None of it means anything to me, if I can’t have you.
Raj, Mel - I know that I don’t have much to offer you. Only my love and my loyalty. But I promise that they’ll never run out.
No matter what happens, they’ll never run out.
None of it sounded good enough to Noah. Raj is much better with words. Noah is a man of action, and he had no idea how to communicate how he truly feels, what this relationship means to him.
Raj and Mel, as they so often do, have made something impossible into something effortless. All Noah has to do is say one word, and they’ll understand.
In the end, though, he doesn’t even manage that. He can’t get even that one word out.
He can only nod.
Raj takes in a sharp, stuttering breath, and Melanie’s hands fly up over her mouth.
“Yes?” she asks, her voice muffled by her fingers.
Noah nods again. And then he feels his expression collapse, his composure completely blown. He tips forward into Raj and Mel’s waiting arms. He can’t hold himself up.
They catch him, hold him tightly, and by the sound of their laughter, he suspects he’s not the only one crying. That’s a relief, because Raj pushes him back so that they can look at him, and then Melanie is kissing the tears off of Noah’s face, and Raj is trying to take the box out of Noah’s hand. Noah’s fingers tighten around it protectively, but Raj only takes the ring out and slips it onto Noah’s finger.
It fits him just right.
Noah sits back and swipes the back of his hand over his eyes, so he can see the ring clearly. It’s picking up the radiant crimson light of the sunset, almost glowing with it. The view at Noah’s back must be gorgeous, heartstopping.
But he only looks at the ring, and then at Raj and Mel.
Nothing else matters, now.
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