#ship: noah x mc (harley blanco) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

livesbeneath · 5 years

Text

six feet between.

pairing: noah x female mc (harley blanco)

summary: to be caught trespassing in a cemetery is bad enough without a preceding criminal record. he knows visiting westchester is risky, and that being out in the open isn’t the smartest idea, but he finds it somewhat therapeutic, maybe in a sickening way, to occasionally come full circle after his stops at the ruins.

word count: 1.9k.

author’s note: after around a two(?) month hiatus of sorts?? i have written something i don’t actually HATE??? i had this idea last night at three am after playing a chapter of ilitw, and wrote a large portion of it then, so i apologize if it’s a little hard to follow! i’m proud of how it turned out, especially when considering the way the noah / mc relationship ends as in ilb. all forms of feedback are appreciated! please try to leave a comment if you can!

disclaimer: i do not own these characters (except harley). creative liberty has been taken to make this story unique, and i do not intend to use it for profit in any way.

The oldest headstone in the Westchester Peace Cemetery dates back to the 1700s, specifically 1768. It honors a woman named Eliza Rosemund, who was thirty eight at the time of her death. The quote etched on her tomb is worn, but reads something like: “beloved mother and daughter, go gently.”. There is a noticeably large chunk missing from the top of the grave.

Noah Marshall has been by this plot so many times that he can rattle all this information with ease. A run of the mill bystander would think it was Ms. Rosemund he was visiting so often, but anyone who knows him would know that this isn’t the case.

That is, if they had mind that he was there at all.

As he makes his way over the fence, something he’s mastered by now, Noah takes note of the way fog seems confined only to the burial grounds. He shakes his head and plants his feet firm on the dirt below, then crouching down behind a headstone. Precautions are always taken to make sure he’s alone at times like this. Carefully, he turns back to inspect the way he came, relieved to see only the woods that normally guard him from the public eye staring back. To be caught trespassing in a cemetery is bad enough without a preceding criminal record. He knows visiting Westchester is risky, and that being out in the open isn’t the smartest idea, but he finds it somewhat therapeutic, maybe in a sickening way, to occasionally come full circle after his stops at the ruins.

Beyond Eliza Rosemund’s grave, still along the same path, but in the more modern part of the cemetery - sits the headstone of Harley Blanco.

Once he’s sure he’s alone, Noah hoists himself up, allowing himself to drift into the fog. Maybe at a young age, he would be afraid of trudging through a sea of tombs in the middle of the night. While the thought of countless dead, dusty, decomposed or decomposing bodies below his feet is still slightly unnerving, he is aware that he is currently the most terrible thing on the premises. Guilt is the reason he’s here at all. Guilt, and longing, one could say.

With Harley’s very being split in two, her body in one place, her soul in another - he thinks it only fair to honor all of her instead of a mere part of her. He knows nothing will ever make up for missing her funeral, but he figures he’s carried anguish similar to those who attended. If not similar, the fact that what he’s done eats him alive and spits him back out every night is enough to warrant a visit.

“Shoot!” he whispers briskly as he nearly trips over a twig, grip on the homemade present he’s brought nearly slipping out of his grasp.

While in the woods earlier, he stalled leaving the spiritual Harley behind by peeling moss patches off of logs. Now, along with a bundle of dandelions he picked from outside the gate, he’s used them to make a makeshift bouquet. The fact that they’re just weeds makes the weight of the offering even heavier in his fist. He knows she deserves something nicer, especially from him. There’s no doubt in her mind that her grave is pre-decorated, though. He’s deduced that her parents must visit often, because there’s always a replenished gaggle of gifts waiting at the base of the headstone whenever he arrives.

Her parents, he thinks. God, they must fucking hate him.

His footfalls grow slower, heavier as he approaches some of the newer plots. The more recent dates that decorate the slabs crowded around the area remind him that it hasn’t been that long since that fateful night in the grotto. Being on the run makes each day blur together, which means by the time he’s stepped back to give himself a reality check, months have passed. It’s been a year and a half, but Noah swears she’s been gone for an eternity.

He’s no stranger to this feeling, of course, as he’s been professionally trained in mind-numbing grief since Jane’s demise a decade or so prior. Still, he realizes now that there was some hope back then. Compared to how things are now, his sitting alone every day at school seems overwhelmingly trivial. Still, being acquainted with grief does not make the moment he sits down before her grave any easier. Each time he does so, the slap in the face that is the fact that she’s actually dead leaves a searing mark. He isn’t an openly affectionate person, but not having her strong arm to lean on, both physically and metaphorically, is something he’ll never get used to.

Harley Blanco’s headstone in the Westchester Peace Cemetery commemorates her death back in 2017, specifically October of that year. She was eighteen at the time of her death. The quote etched on her tomb is intricately done, and clearly reads: “beloved daughter and friend, we are together always, even in death.”. His offering of a bundle of dandelions pales in comparison to the fresh roses left by her parents.

As much as he wants a cigarette in that moment, Noah knows lighting one is a surefire way to be caught. The air around him has grown colder since planting himself six feet above Harley’s coffin. The feeling that he’s being watched from somewhere, by someone, gnaws at his stomach, and he peers around his peripheral vision, careful not to move his head. With the newly plunged temperature, everything around him seems to freeze. All until-

“Noah…?”

He jumps, whirling around so fast he almost cracks an elbow on the headstone near him. Noah doesn’t know what he expects to see, exactly. Maybe it’s his mother, and she’s known of his escapades back and forth to Westchester for some time now. Maybe it’s Stacy Green, and she’s finally tracked him down, hell-bent on making him pay. While his mind could create hypotheticals until sunrise, what he actually sees surprises him much more.

There, flanked by ornate gravestones, half fog and half shadow, is a pair of glowing blue eyes.

“Harley?” he breathes, splayed out like a spider before her. “Wh-What are you doing here? Did you follow me?”

As if playing a game, Harley moves with the mist hanging heavy in the air, curling around him and cheering “Found you! I win!”

Noah sits in her visceral grasp for a moment, glancing in disbelief between what’s left of Harley, and the slab of stone that marks her supposed final resting place. The feeling that she’s been beside him all along, traveling in his shadow to this spot, sinks in. Finally, he sighs.

“Harley, you can’t do this anymore. I’m gonna take you back to the ruins, okay?”

“Nooooooo…” she drawls, a tinge of orange in her eyes. “Stay with Noah!”

Slight dread pools in his stomach as he finds himself unable to stand, her lock on him too tight. The hardest part of every visit with Harley is leaving her at the end of the night. Noah is all too familiar with the fiery pain that sits in the embers of what are now her eyes. She’s gotten articulate enough over their course of their lessons to voice that she’s afraid that when he leaves, he won’t come back for her. While he’s thrilled she’s learning to feel again, he wishes he hadn’t taught her such distress.

He narrows his eyes, frowning. “Let me stand, Harley. You win.”

“I win!” the spectre cheers, twirling into the air, tail of shadow whipping past his face. Noah stands. As he dusts himself off, he takes a deep breath, attempting to look through the thick fog for unwelcome guests.

“Ssssshhh!” he hisses, finger to his lips. “You can’t be loud here!”

“Ssssshhh!” she parrots, mimicking his movements until they’re eye to eye. He notices hers are burning blue again.

A sigh. “That’s right, Harles. Nice and quiet. It’s time to get you home.”

The monster lowers her clawed hand, eyes wide, boring into his. For a moment, his blood runs cold. Noah watches as she slowly gazes away from him, off into the distance. Gradually, she floats away from him, higher than he can reach, staring out towards the exit of the cemetery. Not towards the woods, but towards town.

“Home…” she whispers. Wind carries her words to him, but the trees don’t move.

“Harley…” he realizes his mistake.

She turns to him again, eyes orange, wide as saucers. “Go home.” she states.

“No, not - not there. I meant back to the ruins. That’s your home now.”

“Nooooooo… not home! Not home! Not home!”

The wind begins to pick up, but it seems to touch him and nothing else. His jacket isn’t enough to shield him from the way the temperature drops. Harley’s eyes blaze as she grows more frantic, zipping from tombstone to tombstone, moaning the same two words over and over again. Noah holds a hand out to her, but finds himself using it to steady himself when the vortex she’s created amidst her panic threatens to knock him to the ground.

He watches in horror as the frantic ghoul grabs a headstone and pulls it from the ground, tossing it like a softball to the side. It hits the stone walkway with a sickening crunch. She makes her way to the next slab in line, repeating the process with ease.

“Harley! Harley, stop!” he shouts, holding his beanie to his head.

“Home!” she cries in return. “Want to go home!”

“We have to get out of here! Stop that! Stop it!”

Noah hits the ground as she prepares to swing again, scrambling up against the headstone dedicated to her. Harley rounds on him, desperate, but stops short when she sees his hand held out. He presses himself up against the headstone, breathing heavily. She stares, seemingly past him, back in the same trance from before.

“You’re okay, girl.” he assures her. “You’re okay.”

When she doesn’t respond, he moves to the side slightly, and she glides closer to the headstone. Noah lets out a deep breath, watching her eyes move as she scans the inscriptions on the stone. Carefully, as if touching it will burn her, Harley holds out a clawed hand to the marker.

“Harley…” she breathes.

Noah stays silent, head hung in remorse.

The monster coils back slightly, the hand that touched the stone now held over where her heart should be.

“I… Harley.” she looks to Noah and cocks her head to the side. “I Harley?”

“Yeah.” he mutters in response. “You are.”

Silence hangs between them. For a moment, he lets his reservations about being caught fade away. Harley sinks to the floor, sitting beside him as if she has legs to cross. The fact that her two forms, corporeal and spiritual, are only six feet between each other is not lost on him. It makes him nauseous to see. They were so close.

She mirrors him once again, this time looking desperately sad as she gazes from him, to the headstone. Noah watches as she reaches out to the flowers littering the base of the grave, and expects her to pick up the roses.

In a clawed hand, she presents him the dandelions.

“For me?”

He stares. The weeds look so small in her monstrous hand.

“Yeah.”

Harley looks down at the offering once more. Her eyes burn a subtle blue.

“For my cave.” she tells him.

Noah looks up at her, confused. “What?”

“For my cave.” she replies. Her free hand reaches out to him and hovers over his chest. “To… feel like home.”

He presses her claw to where his heart is.

“Let’s get out of here, yeah?”

#it lives in the woods #it lives beneath #noah x mc #playchoices #noah marshall #ofc the more i read anything i write the more i dont LIKE IT bt .#here it is .... my non proofread garbage #the ending is rushed but . lets say its Poetic #fics #ship: noah x mc (harley blanco)

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livesbeneath · 5 years

Text

like happiness.

pairing: noah x female mc (harley blanco)

summary: she assumes that’s what he’s practicing now; recipes he’s perfected a hundred times over. in this respect, good enough will never be good enough for him. he has more drive than most give him credit for, and without that drive, baby jane’s would be nothing more than a thought scribbled down on a notepad.

word count: 1.5k.

author’s note: sometimes you decide that since you’ve written TWO angsty things, you should probably try and write something a tad bit fluffier. i wrote this fic on the bus this morning after being stuck at a red light by a diner, not gonna sugarcoat that at all, but i hope you all enjoy! i apologize for any grammar / sentence structure issues, as i tried to proofread the best i could, and thank anyone who takes the time to read! feedback in any form is deeply appreciated!

disclaimer: i do not own these characters (except harley). creative liberty has been taken to make this story unique, and i do not intend to use it for profit in any way.

She’s seated at a small two-top table by the window, her hair done up in a messy bun that practically screamed “hey, pal, take a number”. Her uniform consists of a pair of jeans, an old Pink Floyd t-shirt, and a black waist apron that will no doubt one day contain a whole gaggle of quirky pins to accompany her name tag.

“Harley Blanco, Assistant Manager”, soon to read “Harley Marshall, Assistant Manager”. That is, of course, if you ask about the ring on her finger. That’s what she assumes many of her customers will be doing mid-order. Despite the established grandeur of her title - she’s much more excited to wait tables than she is to do actual managerial duties.

Normally, she would be more than happy to talk about her engagement, but with the diner slated to open in only a week, all last minute paperwork was her first priority. The same went for her fiancé, who was no doubt elbow deep in some greasy vat in the back of the restaurant. Harley had half a mind to call on Dan for help, but Noah had insisted that this was a job for them, so she let him be. What they have to do is overwhelming, but both agree that the business-culinary school tag team system they’d developed was their smartest idea ever.

That, and the soon-to-be-implemented $5.00 burger night.

Harley chews absentmindedly at the cap on her pen, flipping through document after document, scribbling down a reminder to order an extra shipment of kids menus. Every time she sets aside a paper for Noah to sign, the impending grand opening seems realer. After everything she’s been through, it makes her head spin. She arches her back and flops back down on the table, using the mound of folders as a headrest. The lazy sunlight coaxes her into a nap.

“Shoot!” exclaims a voice amidst a clatter from the kitchen. Harley turns her head, opening a heavy eye to the direction of the noise.

“Noah?!” she calls. “What did you do?”

She waits and listens for a response. As silence hangs in the air, she shrugs and stares back down at yet another order form.

It’s the second she turns away that Noah then pokes his head out of the kitchen door, his long hair suspended by a hairnet. As usual, he speaks with the kind of suspense that only a young man of few words can. “American or cheddar?”

“What?” Harley squints in his direction.

“American or cheddar? Y’know, like the cheeses?”

“You’re asking me?”

“Which one you like more, yeah.”

Harley clicks the pen in thought. “Provolone.”

“You’re impossible.” Noah huffs, shaking his head and disappearing back behind the door. The sound of the slightly stunted open and close of a refrigerator door follows.

She can’t help but laugh at the way they are now. It’s as if they’ve been painting a picture for years and have finally discovered a revolutionary new color that has made their lives significantly more vibrant. Either that, or they’ve finally mastered the art of communication. The steady hand of telling the person you’ve loved since you were children that maybe, just maybe, they make your heart beat a little faster than it should. It makes her feel full inside.

Baby Jane’s is slated to become some sort of semi-touristy spot. Nestled in the heartseed of spooky Oregon is the workplace of the “once dead girl”, a place that just happens to be owned by the once-supposed accessory to her murder, now more affectionately known as her lover. She has cue cards ready for possible questions curious customers will ask her.

Harley can tell that Noah hates it. The situation is behind them, the world finally spinning on its axis again, and yet people still find a way to remind them.

“I don’t want this place to be famous for who we are!” he once told her. It was a particularly hard day, and Harley can remember him nearly ripping a recipe card in half at the diner counter. “I want it to be known for the stuff we serve. The things we do now!”

Her response was simple. An affectionate kiss to the cheek, a calm “Then you cook so good that they’ll have no choice but to talk about anything but what they ate.”

She assumes that’s what he’s practicing now; recipes he’s perfected a hundred times over. In this respect, good enough will never be good enough for him. He has more drive than most give him credit for, and without that drive, Baby Jane’s would be nothing more than a thought scribbled down on a notepad.

Her mind wanders to the beginning of this chapter of their adventure. It hadn’t started when she had finally convinced herself to go to business school (she had never been sure of what she wanted to do after high school), but rather back at Britney’s party when he unexpectedly pitched the idea of the diner to her. He’s the same boy, but with higher hopes and a nicer, state-of-the-art grill to mull over.

It’s all for Jane, she reminds herself as she reopens a folder for evaluation. A smile worms its way onto her face when she remembers the story Noah had told her about Jane’s first grilled cheese - the thing that made him want to cook. Despite not being there, Harley can picture the scene perfectly, right down to the kitchen she had spent so much time in as a child. She can see Noah using a chair as a stool to reach the lower left burner. She can see the heel of a loaf of bread discarded, resting off to the side with an overturned pepper shaker. She can see Jane’s cheesy smile, both literally and figuratively, as she exclaims what the gourmet sandwich tastes like. She can hear her voice as she says it.

Like happiness.

A warmth spreads through her as the sunset peeks through the large windows of the near-vacant diner, and Harley sighs as it hugs her tight. Since beginning again, she has a new appreciation for her own happiness. Being alive makes her feel as if she’s swallowed a ray of sunlight. Being in these moments make her feel like the light itself.

So lost in her own mind, Harley doesn’t even notice the hairnet-clad figure approaching her from across the room until he sets down a plate before her. The clink! of the dish against the counter garners her attention, and she turns to see Noah sitting tiredly in the chair beside her, eyeing her instead of Main Street Westchester at sundown. He gracelessly pulls the hairnet from his head, scratching behind his ear as he does so. There’s a grilled cheese and nothing else before her.

“Is this for me?” she asks sleepily, giving him a small smile as she goes to grab the sandwich.

“Maybe.” he teases.

Her eyebrows quirk up. “Provolone?”

“American and cheddar.”

“Ahhh, innovative.” she giggles as she goes to take a bite.

For a moment, the two sit in silence, Noah taking a moment to glance out the window as she eats. Mid-bite, she admires the shine of the sun on his engagement ring. After finishing one half, she looks to him brightly, licking her fingers of excess cheese. His eyes flick over in her direction for a moment.

“How is it?”

“Do you even have to ask? It took me forty-five seconds to eat one half!”

He rolls his eyes at her, a smile on his face as he leans forward, one elbow resting on the table. “You gotta go slower than that, Harley. How else are you gonna really-”

“-take the time to appreciate it.” they finish in unison.

“Yeah, that.” Noah finishes.

To appease him, Harley smiles cheekily, taking an exaggeratedly slow bite of the remaining half. He rolls his eyes again, looking back out at those lingering on the street. She takes note of the way he studies them, his face near unreadable. Even after so long, there are still moments where she can’t quite tell what he’s thinking. It’s rare that he ever gets deep first.

“Maybe some of them will be in here soon.” he muses, eyes following a woman and her two children as they walk into a cafe across the road.

“Maybe!” she chirps. “God knows we’ve done enough advertising. Maybe Andy can get us some airtime on SportsCenter.”

He snorts slightly, giving a small shrug. “I just can’t believe it’s actually happening, y’know? After… everything.”

She knows he that by “everything”, he doesn’t just mean schooling and advertisements. Harley bites the inside of her cheek and reaches over, putting a hand over his as her half-finished grilled cheese slice sits firmly in her other fist. They don’t have to speak to know that the other hopes the worst of their trials are over. She thinks that by now, they deserve some peace. They deserve some…

“How does it feel?” she asks.

He turns to her, offering her a smile. She feels him grip her hand a little tighter with his response.

“Like happiness.”

#it lives in the woods #noah x mc #ilitw #playchoices #noah marshall #ive never written a fic in a day before what . possessed me #this is so BAD im gonna YEET #me when i try to be symbolic and poetic: Just Repeat That Shit #anyway . gbye #fics #ship: noah x mc (harley blanco)

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