Nochelle - Our Stories

I N J U R Y

~Season 5/6 off-season~

It's the steady beep that brings her back to herself but it's the white-knuckled grip on her hand that keeps her there.

Noah can sense that she's awake now, even though her eyes haven't opened, even though she hasn't moved. The pause in her breathing, the twitch under her eyelids, and soft tensing of her fingers, that's how he knew.

"Richelle?" he breathes, and his heart is fluttering around his chest and he can't hope, he can't let himself, but he can still feel his heart quickening because she's awake, she's okay, she's fine.

Richelle hums softly, hoarse and exhausted, her throat dry. "Noah..." she manages to rasp out, eyes fluttering open. She looks so, so tired; pale and torn apart. They hadn't cleaned the tear stains off her face, just left them to dry out on their own.

Noah can feel himself beaming as tears come to his own eyes, but he can't let them fall, not yet. He presses his lips to her knuckles and ducks his head against her hand and tries to listen to her far-away breathing, holds the pulse in her wrist against his fingertips.

"How do you feel?" he manages to choke out after a while, lifting his head just enough for her to see tear-shimmering emerald eyes.

She almost laughs, shaking her head a little. "Not too bad."

"Rich."

"Okay, I feel like I snapped my hip open and was put unconscious so they could fix it." And maybe she's trying to downplay it like a joke, but it's just a little too desperate, and the words strangle themselves on their way out. Richelle can feel him flinching and trying to hide it.

When she meets Noah's eyes again, there's a shadow in them that she's never seen before, dark and angry and deeply, profoundly sad.

"You're squeezing my hand too hard." she tells him quietly, and he exhales, long and hard, and pulls back into himself, putting his hands over his face.

Instead of answering or even acknowledging it, he just says, "Thank God you're okay." and that's the end of the discussion, because then the Michelle and the rest of A-Troupe are pouring in through the doors, and Emily can't look her in the eyes, and Piper looks like she's going to throw up, and Lola is openly crying, and Amy is afraid and pale and has her hands jammed into her pockets like she might punch something otherwise. The same look is echoed in her sister's eyes. Ozzy skitters in a few minutes later, looking jumpy and scared, like any loud noise would be enough to send him running.

"I'm okay." she says, over and over and over, even to Emily, who finally gazes at her, but it's almost worse than when she was looking away, because there's nothing but guilt and concern there.

"I'm sorry, Richie." She murmurs, lightly touching her shoulder, but Richelle shakes her off, looking away.

"I just need to rest." she says, over and over and over, until finally Michelle gets the hint and ushers everyone out, leaving her with Noah alone in a too-clean hospital room, the steady beeping and whirring of the machines seemingly more alive than she feels.

He stands by the door, looking painfully alone and so damn scared– for her, of her, she can't tell anymore, but everyone is so, so scared.

"I love you." Noah says, quietly, hesitantly, finally. It falls into a room that is too silent and too loud at the same time and hangs there in the air, waiting.

A nod from her, slow. Eyes flickering shut. She doesn't ask him.

"I love you too."

The discussion ends there.

~~~

Eventually, though, Richelle does ask, because she has to. Watching a movie one night, his hand curled carefully around her waist and her arms thrown over his chest and wrapped across his shoulders. It should be peaceful. And yet.

Muffled into his soft gray t-shirt: "Are you mad at me?" A pause. "For getting injured?"

It takes him a moment to react, but when he does, it's with a jolt, heart in his throat. "Am I–" He pushes himself up onto an elbow, jostling her more harshly than intended. Richelle lets out a quiet whimper of pain that she didn't mean for him to hear, and he exhales against her hair, rubs her arm, and apologizes with a soft kiss to her forehead.

"Are you?" she whispers again, and she can't breathe; it's like being shot all over again.

Noah shakes his head and laughs in a way that isn't funny, not at all. "Richelle. God, I- of course I'm not mad at you for getting injured. I just..." He trails off, like maybe he's not going to finish, and she touches her hand to his cheek, tilting her head so he'll look her in the eyes.

"Tell me." Richelle murmurs, and he looks away. It's poetic and devastating in a way that she feels down to her bones, and she knows she will hold this guilt inside herself for a long time.

He dropped his head again, sighing, but he still couldn't look at her. "I wish you'd told me. God, Richelle, I wish you'd never got injured, but I just wish you'd told me." There's a silence in which no breath can survive, so they just sit, air trapped in their lungs. "I wish I knew what you were going through." That raw, scraped-apart laugh again.

She can feel tears slipping down her face against her will, and he's making a sad, soft sound, reaching up to brush them off her face with his thumb. "It just would've made it harder." Richelle whispers, and Noah's finger pauses, resting against her cheek.

At first, she thinks he might argue with her, might say another heartbreaking thing that she can't reconcile with the bright, gentle boy she'd kissed for the first time a few months ago, not all the way.

Instead, he kisses her, light as air, so soft that she almost thinks she's imagined it, except there's a salty taste on her lips after he pulls away, this time from his tears, not hers.

In silent agreement, Noah lets himself relax back down into the couch again, and Richelle follows, curling herself tighter around him, twining their fingers together. She lies her head just over his heartbeat, feels it beating louder and stronger than hers.

"We're going to be okay, right?" she murmurs, eyes closed, and for half a second, she feels his fingers brush over the incision in her side, covered by a bandage, just barely scabbed over.

She can feel him breathing. In and out. Solid. Certain. Real.

Eventually, his hand settles just over her heart and rests there. "Of course we will." For the first time in maybe weeks, she breathes, too.

~~~
The guy who should've been there for her in the hospital 🥺