Word Count: 876
If asked, Noah would argue that the best goddamn day of Paul’s life was the day he was brought into it. Paul never seemed to argue the point, but never seemed to agree about it either.
However, if someone asked Noah what the best day of his life was, he’d give a different answer each time.
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Sometimes, Noah would tell them that it was the first day he could remember playing with Paul. The approximate three year age difference meant a lot when one was a baby while the other was a toddler getting ready to run off to preschool, but there wasn’t a single point in the redhead’s memory that wasn’t tinged with Paul.
“Paulie’s been a fixture since the beginning of time, that ain’t changing,” he’d say gruffly with a cigarette between his teeth.
They were a packaged deal, simple as that.
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Other times, if he were feeling particularly vulgar, Noah’d announce that it was the first time they ********.
Sure, it was awkward, messy, and ******** painful, but it was still perfect. Months, or was it years, of dodging the should we, should we not had built a faulty dam between them that kept the sexual tension present but at bay and it had all come crashing down like a tidal wave.
“Euphoric,” was how he liked to describe it, because no matter how many times they’d ******** since, nothing quite beat out that first time.
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In the right company, the answer was simple; the day he realized he loved the foul-mouthed a*****e.
The date is still hazy at best, because there’d been too many moments in his life that had been almost the moment, but it was sometime during college. Paul spent more time hanging around Noah’s college dorm than the s**t hole of an apartment he called home most days because after high school, after that first time, it’d been Noah and Paul.
Paul was doing his jack-of-all-trades thing and Noah was working towards his degree in criminal justice.
Noah always pretended to not remember details clearly, but remembered the events crystal clear.
A job went wrong, Paul texted him something concerning, one that alluded to him not making it out, and Noah had responded with a you better make it home you sonofabitch.
One detail the redhead never forgot was the time that Paul showed up at his door: 4:46 AM. He looked like hell, skin around his brow busted and blood trickled down over his eye and his hand cradled what turned out to be broken ribs. His shirt was stained with blood splatter and it was impossible to tell who it belong to until after he’d gotten Paul out of his clothes.
None of that mattered though, because Noah, for all of his abrasiveness towards the older man, was relieved to have Paul standing before him, haggard looking and exhausted, but alive.
“You don’t get to scare me like that a*****e.” Noah’d snarled, grabbing Paul by the face and dragging him up for a mean kiss.
“Heh,” Paul had responded, grasping Noah like he was the only thing keeping him upright. (He was, but stubbornness wouldn’t let him admit that.) “You told me I had to make it home, so I did kiddo.”
It wasn’t until later, when Noah had gotten Paul cleaned up and, in a rare soft moment of intimacy, was curled around the older man that it hit him. “You’re lucky I love you, you ******** a*****e.”
“Yeah,” Paul mumbled, clearly half asleep with his arm laying across Noah’s naked stomach, “It keeps me motivated.” The laugh that followed was sleepy, exhaustion settling over the man as Noah rolled his eyes at him. “Gotta make it home to you.”
“Say it.”
“Fine.” Paul whined, annoyed that Noah wouldn’t let him ******** sleep. “Love you too, d**k.”
☁
The truest answer is more complicated that, something that’s private and personal in a way that Noah is always hesitant admit.
It’s certainly the most complex, but also simplest in a weird and confusing manner because it was the day that he realized that he couldn’t have a life where Paul wasn’t a constant, integral part of it. They had always been a push and pull, destructive and wild sort of relationship.
Noah liked to compare them to a hurricane or wild storm when he got the chance. Together, they were virtually unstoppable; the kind of force that had to be ridden out and feared. When they clashed, they were destructive and angry, tearing up anything and everything that got in their way but even then, in the heart of it all was the eye of the storm; that calm and peaceful place they’d always make it back to.
When it all hit him, he’d cornered Paul in the shithole of a place they called their home before they left for D.C. “You know you’re not allowed to ever ******** leave me. Right?” For all the biting anger of the statement, Noah knew that Paul would hear the insecurity.
“As if I could ever leave you, kiddo.”
That, was easily the best day of his life, despite the prevalence of all the others, because there was something more to knowing that Paul was in as deep as he was.
