Special Episode: Night Rescue (Part I)
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.
Luca lets out a soft, exhausted sigh when his phone starts buzzing in his pocket. He knows it’s not Roger, so he’s desperately hoping it’s not the hospital calling to ask if he can come back in. He was in the ambulance all afternoon and into the night, and he’s worn out. He was gonna get a coffee just to make sure that he’s still awake when Roger gets home. He’s been dying to take off his uniform, then take off Roger’s, too.
He’s at the diner so late that there are only two other people here. The manager, busy assembling Luca’s to-go coffee, and someone Luca thinks must be an electrician, even though he isn’t in a uniform. He’s knelt down on the floor behind the counter, using a flashlight to look at a tangle of wires.
“Who installed this?” he’s asking the manager, half-laughing. “The fuck is it doing down here beneath the counter?”
“Ah… my dad seemed to think he could put it in himself. Despite never attempting anything like that before.”
“Well, that explains it.” The electrician straightens up as Luca tiredly slips his phone from his pocket. “No shade to your dad, but you guys got coffee ‘n water and all that sprinkling down on your system all day. If you want me to fix it, I need to come back and-”
Luca stops following the conversation, instantly waking all the way up when he sees who’s calling him.
He glances at the electrician and the manager. Still talking, not listening.
He turns away and answers the call, his heartbeat picking up.
“Oh, he answered, thank god!” comes Jamie’s voice immediately, talking to someone else. And then - “Luca, where are you?”
This isn’t a social call. Luca knows it right away. Jamie’s stressed-out voice is full of urgency, coming out in a breathless rush.
“Where should I meet you?” Luca asks softly, working to keep his voice calm.
“No, that’s the thing, it’s not a normal rescue,” Jamie answers hastily. “No one’s in life-threatening danger, we don’t think… not yet, at least.”
Luca pauses, his heartbeat beginning to slow down. “Oh, okay.”
“But Aiden can hear somebody struggling badly, and the thing is, we’re not there. We’re almost to Port Sitka. We turned around, we’re on our way back, but we’re so far - we had to drive here for some ghost hunting stuff.”
“Ghost hunting stuff?” Luca sputters softly, then glances quickly at the others in the diner.
He thought he just saw the electrician’s eyes snap to him. But by the time he turns his head, no one is looking. The electrician is quietly putting back the wires he pulled out, his long hair hiding his face.
“Okay, we can talk about that later,” Aiden cuts in firmly, telling Luca that he’s now on speakerphone.
“The fuck we can!” Luca whispers, filled with alarm. “I work in a hospital, I need to know if ghosts are a real thing!”
“That’s true,” Jamie murmurs to Aiden. “Hospitals are historically popular ghost hang-out spots.”
“There are only two ghosts in Ketterbridge, dude, and we know where they live. It’s not in the hospital. You’re fine, Luca.”
“Okay, am I? Because you guys keep talking about this like it’s real, so-”
“Somebody needs help,” Aiden reminds Luca, instantly silencing the rest of the protests he had lined up.
With a huge heave of effort, Luca pulls his concentration back to the task at hand. He glances longingly at his unfinished coffee sitting on the counter, then turns and rushes out into the deepening night, where no one can listen in.
“How am I supposed to help if you’re not here to track them down, Aiden? Can you do it from afar?”
“That’s the thing, man, I’ve never tried. We have no idea how it would work, but Jamie and I have a theory. This would be a good opportunity to test it out, since we probably won’t get there in time, and the person isn’t in life-threatening danger. Yet, anyways.”
“You mind taking part in a magic experiment?” Jamie asks.
Luca tilts his head back and leans it against the wall of the diner for a moment. He still can’t believe the ways his life has changed, sometimes. Ketterbridge was keeping a lot of secrets. And loving Roger has brought him so much more than he ever realized it would.
It brought him to literal magic.
To this day Luca isn’t sure how exactly it is that he ended up part of something like this. It’s fucking wild, but - he’s not complaining.
“Okay, sure, I’ll do your magic experiment,” he answers, shaking his head in disbelief. “Cool. No big deal. What do I have to do? Roger is working, and out on a call. You’ve just got me.”
“That’s okay,” Jamie murmurs quietly to Aiden, only just loud enough that Luca can pick it up. “We’re in good hands.”
Luca pauses and breaks into a touched smile, glancing down at his phone.
“Alright, so - you know how I have my special hearing, Luca?”
“Yeah?”
“Well, I hear everyone at once, which makes it real fuckin’ difficult to pick out one single note from the rest. But people’s emotions affect the sound of their note, especially when they’re feeling something powerfully. Right now I can pick out the one in trouble, because it’s in some pretty extreme distress.”
Luca listens in rapt attention, fascinated. “Okay?”
“Jamie’s idea is that if I could pick out your note from the rest, too, I might be able to guide your note closer to the one that needs you. But for us to try that, I need to be able to pick you out.”
“Okay,” Luca says slowly, thinking that through. “So you need me to get into an emotional state intense enough for you to hear me?”
“Yeah. I hear spikes in people’s emotions all the time, but if I’m specifically listening and waiting for yours, I might be able to pick it out.”
“And since we obviously don’t want it to be some intensely awful emotion,” Jamie continues, “We were wondering if there’s anything you could do to make yourself super happy?”
“Shit, this would be a good time to have Roger here,” Luca answers, without thinking.
There’s a pause from the other end of the line, and then some soft laughter from both Jamie and Aiden.
“Aw,” Jamie says, and Luca makes a face, even though he can’t see it.
“Okay, just - give me a second, I’ll think of something.”
Aiden and Jamie fall silent, waiting.
Luca shuts his eyes tightly and casts his mind around for the memories that fill him up with the brightest light. Something bright enough to signal to Aiden.
Luca’s mind goes to that first night at Roger’s house, as the soft rain fell outside. He remembers the first time with Roger, how urgently they tore each other’s uniforms off. Remembers what it felt like to listen as Roger’s breath started to come in sharp fits and gasps. To watch his hard-breathing body arch in the sheets, the rippling of his muscle, oasis eyes glittering with heat as they looked into Luca’s before they closed and he threw his head back…
“Oh, I’ve got you, Luca,” Aiden says suddenly. “I’ve got you. Gimme one second.”
“Okay, I’m waiting!”
Luca opens his eyes, then does a double-take when he realizes that the tatted-up electrician has come out of the diner. He’s leaning back against the wall on the other side of the door from Luca. Lighting a cigarette, apparently not listening.
But for some reason Luca definitely feels like he has the guy’s attention.
Luca can’t make him out too clearly in the dim light from the diner windows. Only the glitter of a lot of piercings, and a sea of tattooed claws, fangs, snapping jaws.
A lot happens in the ICU, and Luca deals with all sorts of different people all day and night. But that’s not the same thing as being alone in a dark parking lot with an unknown pair of eyes on him. He’s not exactly afraid, but he’s not totally at ease, either. The stranger is intimidating, even though it doesn’t seem like he’s trying to be.
Luca shifts nervously, pressing the phone harder to his ear. “Hurry, Aiden.”
The electrician’s eyes instantly dart over to Luca, then quickly drop back to his tan work boots. He takes a silent, slow drag on his cigarette.
“Okay, I think you want to go north,” Aiden says uncertainly, his deep voice increasingly strained and anxious. “I don’t know, I’ve never done this before, but I think so.”
“But what am I supposed to do, how am I even supposed to get there?” Luca asks urgently, glancing at the bus stop. “Take a bus just like - roughly north? I don’t have Roger’s car, there’s no way I’ll get there in time to-”
He turns around with a start, taking an instinctive step back as someone taps his shoulder.
The electrician spreads his hands, as if to show Luca that he’s not dangerous.
“Hey, doc,” he says, keeping his hands held up, the cigarette between his inky fingers letting up a soft twist of smoke. “Sorry, I just couldn’t help overhearing your conversation. You a friend of Aiden’s?”
Luca stares at him, wide-eyed and bewildered, his heart hammering.
“Hey, if you’re a friend of Aiden’s, and you’re in some kind of trouble,” the guy says, in a surprisingly earnest voice, “Then let me help.”
Luca doesn’t answer, his heart knotted in uncertainty.
“Aiden Callahan?” the stranger tries. “Big guy built like a beast, looks like he could break a table by leaning on it? Dates a sweet lil’ redhead with puppy dog eyes who looks like he’ll end up in tears if you even suggest doing something mean?”
Luca pauses, more than a little startled. He holds up a please-wait finger at the electrician, turns his back to him, drops his voice to a whisper.
“There’s someone here trying to talk to me who definitely knows you guys. Says he wants to help.”
“Who?” Jamie asks, caught by surprise.
“He didn’t say his name.” Luca glances back at the man behind him, taking him in more carefully. “He’s a guy who looks about our age, covered in tattoos and piercings. Cute, in like a - scary kind of way?”
There’s a brief silence from the other end of the line. When Aiden and Jamie speak again, their voices have dropped to a confidential volume.
“Noah’s there,” Jamie whispers to Aiden.
“Tell him it’s Noah,” the guy says from behind Luca, right at the same time.
“-on our inner circle list,” Jamie is whispering, when Luca can hear him again. “We did talk about easing them all into it-”
“And sending Noah on a fucking rescue with Luca is the way to ease him into it?”
“Maybe? Who thrives on adrenaline like Noah? Besides, should we really send Luca into a possibly dangerous situation by himself? Roger’s gonna kill us, for one th-”
There’s a sharp silence all of a sudden, and then Jamie’s voice comes back with mounting urgency.
“Luca, I think the person might really be in some life-threatening danger now, you - you need to get there! Every second counts, and Noah - he can get you there on time.”
Luca glances over his shoulder at Noah, who watches him with curious, searching eyes.
“We’ll text you updates if you guys are going the wrong way,” Jamie forges on. “Just don’t talk to Noah about Aiden’s abilities, okay? He doesn’t know yet! He’ll help without knowing, though, that’s just the kind of guy he is - and you can trust him, I promise!”
Luca hesitates, lets out a nervous breath, then nods. “We’ll go right now!”
“Okay, Aiden and I are on our way back, we’ll be there as soon as we can! Just go, go!”
Luca ends the call and spins around to face Noah.
“I - I need to get somewhere,” he says, then winces, hearing how shady and vague that sounded.
But Noah lowers his hands and nods, then turns swiftly on his heel and sets off across the parking lot. “C’mon, my ride’s over there.”
Luca follows him to the car, then pulls up to a sharp stop, nearly startled out of his body.
There’s a man sitting on the hood of the car that Noah led him to. The guy had melted into the shadows so completely that Luca didn’t even see him. Not until he turned his head, and the glow of the streetlights fell in a slant across a pair of narrowed, dark green eyes.
“It’s all good, man,” Noah tells Luca, slapping his back. “That’s just my brother.”
Noah’s brother addresses Noah, but keeps his eyes on Luca. “Who’s this?”
“Friend of Aiden’s.” Noah flicks his cigarette away. “Says he needs some help. Needs to get somewhere.”
The man on the hood pauses, then instantly slides down and strides around to the far side of the car. “Where are we going?”
Luca flounders for a second. He expected there to be a lot more questions than this.
“North,” he answers, not sure what else to say.
“How much time do we have?” Noah’s brother asks, apparently unfazed, swiftly opening the passenger’s side door.
“Could only be a few minutes,” Luca admits, rushing for the back door of the car. “Maybe a little bit more, if we’re lucky!”
To his surprise, both of the guys laugh softly. The man on the far side of the car tosses the keys to Noah, who flashes Luca a grin.
“Plenty of time,” he says.
~~~~
Luca doesn’t understand that comment until the car is on the road, and he sees how Noah drives.
“Jesus Christ!” Luca sputters, holding onto the inside of the car door like his life depends on it. “This is maybe the fastest I’ve ever gone in a car, and I drive around in an ambulance all day. We have sirens.”
Noah and his brother both laugh again. Noah flashes Luca a grin, as if that was a very nice compliment he just gave him.
“You alright back there, doc?” he asks, reaching back to swat Luca’s knee.
Luca doesn’t answer right away. He doesn’t know what to make of this anymore. Everything about this night has already been so strange that he barely knew how to explain it to Roger in the text he hastily sent him.
Even the stuff in this car is completely bewildering. None of it seems to go together.
There’s a sparkly little board book on the backseat, the kind they make so that babies can try to turn the pages themselves. There’s a cute little illustration of two bunnies hugging each other on the cover. It must belong to Noah, if this is his car.
On the other hand, so does the joint resting in the cupholder. It looks like it was rolled out of some thin paper flyer somebody must have handed Noah, which he must have promptly torn up into rolling-paper sizes. Some of the flyer’s text is still clearly visible.
REPENT OF THY SINS OR BE DAMNED, it says, right up the side of the joint. The ink of the last word ends just at the tip of the joint, exactly where you’d light up. It looks like something the big bad villain of a movie would take a long drag off of, right after stepping into a saloon through the batwing doors.
Luca looks at the joint, then at the adorable little baby book, then bites back a helpless, near-hysterical laugh. Clutching tightly to the car door, which he can’t make himself let go of, not even for a second. Not at the speed Noah has this car going.
The streetlights are racing past so quickly that the flashes of their orange glow melt into one continuous stream of light to Luca’s eyes. When Jamie sent a text saying they needed to head west, Noah slid the car across two lanes of traffic and took the offramp without slowing down.
Luca is wide awake, now. His pulse is racing, adrenaline rushing through his veins. And not only from participating in this kind of driving.
Luca has never broken a law in his life, he doesn’t think. But something is telling him that he’s currently with two people approximately on the opposite end of that scale. Just being in the car with them feels like doing something illegal.
Luca is a little excited about it, in spite of himself. He’s never done anything like this, even though all they’ve really done is display a blistering disregard for the speed limit.
“Yeah, I’m all good!” he finally answers, leaning forward to talk to Noah. “I’m not a doctor, though.”
“Sure you are, man.” A faintly puzzled look comes over Noah’s face as he glances at Luca in the rearview. “Check your uniform.”
Luca fights down another helpless laugh, startled by the total confidence in Noah’s voice. Like Luca is obviously the one confused about this.
Luca is surprised to find himself warming to Noah so fast. The guy seemed so scary in the parking lot, but - well, no, Luca still thinks he looks pretty scary, now that he’s gotten a better look at him.
Luca can make out lean, dangerous muscle beneath the tattoos. Long, dark, pitch-black hair that falls down around his shoulders. Unusual grey eyes, the brightest thing about his face, even when you count all of the piercings. They catch the moonlight, pick up some of its pale, opalescent color.
And Noah hums with a strange sort of wild, restless energy. Like he’s got lightning bottled somewhere in him, just waiting to get out. All of his clothes have rips and tears, ones that don’t look intentional. More like they came to be there as a natural part of being worn by Noah.
But there’s something very sweet about Noah’s eyes and his voice. Something deeply warm, despite his overall ferocious appearance. He vaguely reminds Luca of a sweet-hearted pit bull.
The man in the passenger’s seat, Luca has no read on yet. He hasn’t even managed to get a clear look at his face, somehow. The shadows seem to melt towards the guy and wrap around him, almost affectionately. Keeping him hidden.
All Luca has been able to make out is the occasional flash of the streetlights on the guy’s faded old Levi’s, his heavy black combat boots, and the soft tumble of blonde hair falling towards his face.
The guy has said very little, almost nothing. He’s lit a cigarette, and its tangerine glow - throwing off swirls of incandescent sparks into the night air when he holds it out through the barely-open window to ash it - is the most that Luca can consistently make out clearly. That, and the woven leather bands around his wrist.
“I don’t think I caught your name, man,” Luca tries, in his friendliest voice.
The man in the shadows turns his head slightly. Intense, dark green eyes search Luca’s face, half-obscured by the slow stream of smoke the man is breathing out.
“Don’t believe we caught yours, either,” his quiet voice murmurs.
“Oh, yeah, sorry! I’m Luca.”
The man pauses thoughtfully, tilting his head to the side. “Name sounds familiar.”
“Yeah, I’m a friend of Aiden and Jamie’s.” Luca catches hold of his EMT bag as it nearly slides off of the seat on the car’s momentum. “They might have mentioned me? I date Jamie’s ex-boyfriend, Roger. We’re all friends now.”
Noah’s brother looks at Luca expectantly, like he’s waiting for more.
“Um - we’re thinking of getting Jamie a new fire extinguisher for his birthday?” Luca tries. “Roger already gave him one when he and Aiden moved in together, but apparently they had to hide it from one of their friends, and now they can’t find it.”
There’s a sudden silence in the car.
Noah lets out a snicker of sheepish laughter, dropping his head. The blonde guy looks over at him in exasperated affection, then turns back to Luca. He leans slightly forward into the moonlight, finally letting Luca see his face.
It turns out he has deep, grey-green eyes. Rough-cut, rugged bone structure with a steel-sharp jawline. A little bump in the bridge of his nose that means it’s definitely seen a bad break.
He holds out a hand, gives Luca a nod. “Ralph.”
Luca slaps his hand, looking at him curiously. He’s handsome, too, but Luca sees almost no resemblance between him and Noah. They introduced themselves as brothers, didn’t they? What did they mean, like - war-brothers? Ex-military, maybe? Ralph and Noah do both have kind of a combat vet feel to them, like they’ve been through some serious shit.
Luca can’t see either of these two taking orders, though.
Ralph turns back to face the windshield, stretching out his legs. “You mind telling us what we’re headed towards right now, Luca?”
“Think it’s obvious,” Noah cuts in, before Luca can answer. “Time for a brawl! Good ol’ fashioned fight to the finish, right?”
“Oh, I don’t think we’re going to fight anybody!” Luca says hastily, his eyes widening in alarm.
Noah arches a pierced eyebrow. “No? Then what are we walking into?”
“Sounds like he doesn’t know, either,” Ralph murmurs, his dark green eyes flitting to look at Luca in the rearview. “You don’t, do you? Aiden didn’t tell you, when you talked to him.”
“Not - exactly,” Luca admits, not sure what else to say.
Ralph narrows his eyes at Luca. He and Noah glance over at each other, exchanging a meaningful look.
“Hm,” Ralph says softly, as Noah gets his eyes back on the road.
“It’s a long story,” Luca adds, wincing over how sketchy this all sounds.
“Yeah, we know.” Ralph turns his gaze out through the window, watching the dark trees whip by. “Me and Noah have been around pretty much since the start of it.”
Luca doesn’t know what that means, so he decides not to answer.
“Well, thank you for helping me,” he says instead. “I really appreciate it.”
“S’all good, doc,” Noah answers breezily, resting his wrist on the wheel. “Only downside is that I’ll get to see my wife a little later than I thought I would.”
He says this last part with a dramatic, groaning sort of sob in his voice, but it sounds - sincere, not mocking.
“Aw,” Luca says, smiling at Noah. “You really are sad about it, aren’t you? You must love her a lot.”
“Fuck yeah I do, dude.” Noah flashes a happy grin back at Luca, thumps his fist against his own chest. “Kinda girl you love in your heart and guts and soul and everywhere else. Ask my husband, he’ll tell you the same thing. And he’s the same way, too.”
Luca sits back, startled, then breaks into a slow smile, a warm sense of instant kinship towards Noah rising in his chest. “Are you bi, dude?”
“No, not that one, I’m, um…” Noah screws up his face in concentration, struggling. “What’s the…? Pa… mm… omnivorous? Is that the…?”
Ralph lets out a sharp, startled laugh, then groans and swats Noah’s shoulder. “Jesus Christ, Noosh! You’re panromantic, you fucking dope!”
“Omnivorous!” Luca sputters, pressing his hands over his mouth, trying and failing to smother a laugh.
Ralph is pinching the bridge of his nose, trying not to start laughing again. “How can you still not know the word, Noah? Seriously, I’m asking.”
“Alright, fuck off,” Noah groans, laughing as Luca gives up and starts laughing, too. “I wrote it down somewhere, I keep losing the fuckin’ piece of paper!”
Luca takes a few seconds to regain some semblance of composure. For a second he almost forgot what they were doing.
“Your husband and wife, they won’t be mad?” he asks anxiously, catching Noah’s eye in the rearview. “That you had to sneak off on some covert mission in the middle of the night, and not tell them anything about it?”
“Nah, man. They’ll understand. They don’t only love me for the good stuff.” Noah softly punches Ralph’s shoulder, breaking into a grin. “As for Ralph’s girl, she’d probably count this type of shit as part of the good stuff.”
Ralph matches Noah’s grin, like that’s definitely true.
“They’ll all understand,” Noah tells Luca. “Especially if something serious came up.”
“It is serious,” Luca says desperately, struggling to find pathways around the full truth. “It’s an emergency. A serious emergency.”
Ralph and Noah both glance very fast at him.
“Is Aiden in trouble?” Ralph asks, his voice suddenly sharp and urgent. “Jamie?”
“No,” Luca says breathlessly, his knee bouncing. “But somebody is.”
“Shit, man, why didn’t you say something?” Noah turns to get his eyes back on the road, taking the wheel in both hands again. “If I knew that, I’d be going fast.”
Luca blinks hard at him, then drops his eyes to the already terrifying number on the speedometer. “What, um-?”
Ralph leans forward in his seat, his gaze sweeping across the road, then the rearview. “No black and whites in my scope, Noosh.”
Noah cracks a grin and starts shifting up through the gears, the lightning flashing in his eyes. “Brace yourself for the G’s, doc.”
~~~~
Luca is so focused on holding onto the car door as tightly as possible that he almost misses the next text from Jamie.
STOP YOU’RE NEARLY THERE
“Stop!” Luca gasps, reaching up to tug on Noah’s sleeve. “Stop!”
He expected Noah to draw the car to a stop, but he realizes instantly that he should have known better by now. Noah locks the brakes and pulls up so sharply that the back tires spin out to the side with a loud squeal of burning rubber, swerving the car to a near-instant standstill on the empty road.
Luca sits up shakily, gasping for breath. Half expecting to find himself flattened against the windshield, or past it, on the guardrail.
But he’s okay, and so are the others. Noah and Ralph are both already looking around, eyes scanning the dark road.
“What - here?” Noah asks, leaning forward to stare through the windshield.
It doesn’t make sense to Luca, either. They’ve been driving out on country roads for some time, doubled back when they got a text from Jamie telling them they’d gone too far - and now they’re on a stretch of blacktop road that winds deep into the forest. Moonlit trees sway softly in the wind on either side of them. Black night before them and behind them.
There’s nothing to suggest that anything is around for miles, and not a soul in sight.
Luca looks down as his phone buzzes again, lighting up with a text from Jamie.
This is as close as Aiden thinks he can get you, but you might have to do some looking around. I’m sorry, he’s trying. We’re trying. But please get looking, I think we’re running out of time.
“We’re close,” Luca tells the others urgently, then wrenches the door open, shouldering his EMT bag.
He starts striding down the blacktop, his eyes roving everywhere for someone in trouble. Then he comes to a sharp, startled stop as a hand closes on his arm and spins him around.
Ralph is behind him, holding him back. Jesus, the guy can move quietly. Luca didn’t even hear him get out of the car or come up behind him.
His dark green eyes are staring at something over Luca’s shoulder.
“Easy,” he murmurs softly, then nods very slightly in the direction he’s looking. “We might have company.”
Luca turns and follows his eyes to - a black car, parked on the curve of the shoulder. Half-hidden in the trees, so well that Luca didn’t even spot it.
“Listen, we don’t have much time,” Luca whispers quickly to Ralph, as Noah comes up to join them. “I’m a paramedic, and there could be someone in that car who needs medical attention!”
Ralph and Noah look at each other, speaking silently, then glance back at the dark, silent car parked just off of the road.
Noah slaps Luca’s shoulder, knots his black hair into a bun, and sets off towards the dark car. “Better let us make sure that’s the situation, first.”
Ralph silently points a finger at Luca’s chest, then at the ground where he’s standing, like - stay. Then he sets off after Noah, pulling his hood up over his blonde hair.
The two of them sneak quietly up the dark road, weaving around the spots of moonlight, keeping close to each other with practiced ease. At an angle where they can roughly keep their backs to each other, like a two-man phalanx.
Luca watches with his heart in his throat, inexplicably afraid that something or someone might burst out of the car without warning. He bites his lip anxiously as Noah very slowly straightens up on one side of the car, and Ralph at the same time on the other.
There’s a tense silence as they stare into the windows. Then both of them look across the car at each other.
“Empty,” Noah calls softly to Luca, pointing down at the car.
Luca rushes to join him and Ralph, realizing he feels much safer when they’re closeby.
The three of them stand there and gaze around at the trees for a moment. The dark forest, spreading on all sides. Whoever they’re looking for must be out there, somewhere.
“Fuck,” Noah says suddenly, his shoulders sinking, his grey eyes growing dark and unhappy as they linger on the moonlit trees.
All of a sudden he’s standing so stiffly, like it’s all he can do not to take a sharp step back from the darkness of the woods. The muscle in his jaw is flexed, tensed all the way up.
Ralph and Luca both turn to look at him, but with different expressions. Luca is surprised, more than a little confused. Ralph looks… it’s hard for Luca to tell. Unsurprised, definitely. Almost - guilty?
Ralph hesitates, twisting his fingers through his leather wristbands, then gently cuffs Noah’s shoulder.
“Won’t be like last time, Noosh,” he murmurs, so softly that Luca can barely make him out. “You’re not fucked up, for one thing, and - I’ll be there, this time. Nobody’s gonna leave you in there. Especially not alone. Promise.”
Noah slowly turns his head, looks at Ralph with searching, anxious eyes for a silent moment.
Then he lets out a heavy sigh and slowly tips his head back, giving it a slow shake.
“Ugh, fuck!” His head snaps upright, grey eyes blazing. He swings a swift, sharp punch at the empty air. “Fuck everything, fuck this forest, and fuck you guys, too!”
Luca draws back in alarm, but Ralph instantly looks relieved.
“There he is,” he snickers, affectionately shoving Noah’s head to the side. He turns to Luca as Noah starts bouncing on his feet, psyching himself up. “Got a bearing for us, Luca?”
“Shouldn’t we split up, though?” Luca asks nervously, thinking of the sheer scope of the territory they’ve got to cover. “We could search farther-”
“That’s a negative,” Ralph says firmly. “Tell us which way to go, and we’ll all go together.”
Luca swallows hard, turning to face the dark woods again, wishing desperately that Roger was here. “Okay, then I think…”
He trails off uneasily. He has no idea which direction to go in. He’s painfully aware that leading the group the wrong way could mean they lose the person they’re here to save. And he has no idea which way is the right way. There are no visible tracks in the grass on the side of the road, which is too strong from all of the spring rain to stay crushed down for long. No light from the forest, and no voices, either.
Luca is pretty sure he literally just has to pick a direction, and hope that fate is on his side.
A pretty blue butterfly flutters past him, winging its way towards the dark woods. Strange, to see one out and about in the middle of the night.
Luca watches it for a moment, tracking its direction with his eyes, rocking uncertainly on his feet. Trying to think of a better idea, one at least based on something besides pure luck. But he can’t. And he has to make a decision.
He looks over his shoulder at Ralph and Noah, who are watching him expectantly.
“This way,” he says, just barely managing to keep his voice from wavering.
Then he sets off for the woods. The butterfly ahead of him, Ralph and Noah at his back.
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