Once, there was an island.... // MPHFPC one shots, imagines, and misc !

You & Your Damn Money { older! Jacob & Noor}

ah yes. rushed relationships. those never end well
Noors POV, around 2017, since I always thought the books were based in 2011 ( present, for Noor & Jacob)
strong language warning, for anyone who might be uncomfortable w/ it!! Also mild mentions of alcohol!! //

Somewhere along the line, Noor had made a big mistake.

Maybe it was when she was 15. Agreeing to go with the floridian boy and his gang of semi-immortal friends. Maybe it was when she was 17, when she ditched the loop in Cairnholm and went to find Lilly again. When she found Lilly, in the worst place she could be, 6 feet out of Noors reach. Maybe it was when she was 19, when her foster father recognized her on the street and lost his fucking mind.

Maybe it was when she was 20, or on her 22nd birthday, or maybe it was tonight, when she was right on the cusp of 23. 

The beach had always been her favorite place. When Noor was a kid, before she knew about the building she adored so much, she would escape to the shore. She was maybe seven when she started to realize how gross Brooklyn was, how crowded, and something in her told her she wasn't safe around those people. Men with briefcases and women with big sunhats, teenagers with half dead cigarettes and old men with their judgmental gazes. She had always been different.

Because she looked like her mother, and to some pigs, her mother looked like the enemy. Her mother, who she didn't remember, but who would be so terribly disappointed if she found her only daughter laying on the beach in some white boys jacket and a spaced out expression plastered on her face. 

God, if V could see her now.

Noor sat up, shaking sand out of her hair. She had cut it short a couple years ago, and it still hadn't reached her midback yet. She had dyed it, layered it, bleached it beyond recognition and then darkened it again, and somehow the resilient mop on her head always looked the same. Maybe it was a family thing.

Bags of bones do tend to look the same, don't they?

She shook the thought out of her head. Gruesome as ever, her bastard mind was.

" Noor?"

She looked up.

A few feet away stood a man, with grown out brown hair and dark eyes, his face etched with worry. Oh, jesus fucking christ. Jacob Portman watched her with those stupid kind eyes, concern swimming in them as if they hadn't dragged her into this mess in the first place. 

" What are you doing here?" His voice was soft, even gentle. Noor hated when it did that. It meant he felt bad for someone, and she hated when people had the audacity to pity her. 

" What do you think?"

" Are you.... drunk?"

No. No, she wasn't.

Maybe just a little bit, but it was to get rid of the bitchass migraine that hadn't left her alone all day. But Noor didn't think Jacob needed to know that, so she flipped him the bird and turned her attention back to the murky water. 

" It's going to get cold out soon." Jacob mumbled, still standing. His hands were buried in his pockets.

" It's August. I'll live."

" And when it's winter?"

" I'll manage. Go away, Portman." 

" Let me get you a room or something." 

" Don't bother."

" Noor..." He went quiet, hesitating. His fingers were knit together. All these years and he still had that nervous habit. " Noor, come back to Cairnholm already. You don't belong here."

She scoffed. " I'm good. Thanks."

" Please."

" No."

God, did it feel good to say no like that. Jacob had his life handed to him on a silver fucking platter, and though he was mildly self aware about it, it had always pissed her off. She wanted that life, and Jake had abandoned it at the drop of a dime. He barely even said goodbye to his fucking parents.

Noor harbored that mild jealousy for a long, long time. She knew it was wrong, but it was endless. A nagging voice in the back of her mind, saying over and over that she deserved what he had given up. It should have been hers.

Once, she even found herself regretting throwing up all the souls Caul had eaten. The power she could have had if she didn't have a moral compass.

Yeah, that thought made her feel sick for weeks. 

Jacob sat in the sand a bit away from her, his hands folded in his lap and his profile blue in the dying light of the city. " Let me get you something. I can't just leave you here."

" Keep your damn money, Jake. I don't want your pity, or your damn credit card."

" I only pay cash."

" Oh, fuck off!" She threw her arms wide, irritation hitting her like a tidal wave. " I don't care if you pay with cash or card or for fucks sake, your damned hair! You always try to fix shit with fucking money! Fuck you and your money! I'm tired of your money, Jacob! I'm fucking sick of it!"

He startled, pulling back as if she had set off a flashbomb in his face.

" ... What?"

" Get the fuck out of here. Get away from me, I don't care where you go or who you go with, just get the fuck away from me!" Noor could feel that familiar lump forming in her throat, the one that screamed that tears were coming if she didn't stop. But she didn't stop. " I don't give a shit who you waste your damn money on, it's not going to be me."

Then he stood, and for a second regret pooled in her chest.

She would drown in it if he looked at her like that ever again.

And he just... walked away. 

Noor sat there for a while. She couldn't seem to figure out what she had just done. Her breathing was staggered, and she couldn't seem to get her lungs to fill. She watched Jacob walk away, watched him disappear into the blue and violet haze of the city, and she didn't even move. 

Then the lump in her throat bloomed, and violent sobs tore out of her. Sobs she didn't even know she could manage, ones she had been avoiding for the longest time.

Noor found herself curled over her legs, her hands over her ears, locked in the fetal position and caked in sand. And she just. Couldn't. Stop.

And as she sobbed, the screams came. Soon, she wasn't just crying anymore. Her voice echoed through her like rain in the attic, suffocating and insufferably loud. Sand was in her mouth, on her lips, her cheeks. She couldn't stop.

The end didn't come till dawn, when her voice was hoarse and she felt like death. Noor kept blaming him.

Him and his damn money.