Chapter 34
NOAH
The fallout of the fan-signing footage was so ridiculous I couldn’t do anything but laugh about it. Skye and I had stayed up way too damn late scrolling ClikByte and a few other social media sites to read comments and get a general feel for how the Olympus fans were responding to our new dynamic.
Clik Games were still stalling on announcing the second challenge, using the ongoing murder investigation as their reasoning. It made sense, and I was kind of glad for it, but at the same time that meant there was a lot of focus on our other content.
Leight hadn’t been exaggerating about how much fans were going feral for Novier, unfortunately. Stupidly, we hadn’t realized the tablecloths at the fan signing were not completely floor length, so there were images all over the damn internet of Xavier and I “playing footsies” during the event.
Best of all, though, were the reactions and edits of Ace saving us from the falling wall. Skye and I had laughed so hard we were crying before calling it a night, but judging by the raised voices that woke me the next morning, Xavier wasn’t pleased.
“Noah,” Ace sighed when I sleepily wandered into the kitchen in search of coffee and gossip. “Did you seriously heart react to an edit of Xavier last night?”
I froze, my hand on the cupboard door. Crap. “Technically, no. Skye did. But it was an accident, and he unclicked it really fast.”
“Not fast enough!” Xavier barked like he was ready to break another coffeepot. Just in case, I moved over to the brand-new appliance and put my body between it and Godzilla. “And why that one? Did you not hear anything we said about implying, not confirming, and—”
“I said it was an accident!” I yelled back, too sleepy to tolerate his temper. “And it wasn’t even me!”
He rolled his eyes dramatically, like I was lying. “It was your account, and it got screenshot within a split second of it happening, so no, you didn’t unclick it fast enough.”
I threw up my hands, shrugging. “Okay? What exactly do you want me to do about it now?”
“Sorry, bro,” Skye offered, joining us with a yawn and cheeky grin. “That was my bad.”
“Okay, everyone needs to take a breath,” Ace urged in a calming, reasonable tone. “Noah’s right, there’s nothing he can do about it now. Skye, come on, you know better.”
My roomie just shrugged. “Sorry, Boss. We were laughing really hard and my thumb slipped.”
Shockingly, Xavier didn’t appreciate that extra information. His left eye narrowed into a twitch and his face darkened with fury while Ace gave a long-suffering sigh.
“Thank you for adding that information, Skye. Really helping to diffuse the situation, aren’t you?” Ace shot Skye a frustrated glance, but my roomie just nudged me out of the way to make a fresh pot of coffee, seemingly oblivious to the enraged monster behind him.
“Why that edit?” Xavier asked again with an edge of a whine. It made me give him a closer look, and I frowned my confusion.
“Uh, I honestly don’t remember which one it was,” I admitted with a shrug. “I mean…none of the ones we found funny were particularly flattering, in all fairness, but I thought it was one of Ace that Skye heart-reacted.”
Ace shook his head, looking severely unimpressed. He pulled up the clip in question and turned his phone my way, jogging my memory.
“Oh.” I said, fighting my grin as I watched the edit again. “That one. Yeah, that checks out. Um, sorry?”
Xavier threw his hands in the air, like he was fighting the urge to throw punches. Crap, I really should be careful of that, since boys were not adverse to roughhousing, and they all thought I was one of them.
Skye glanced at the clip and snickered. “Oh yeah, I remember now. It’s a great edit. Very creative.”
“The caption is literally ‘Noah’s Babygirl’,” Xavier growled in a voice like thunder. “They’re making it seem like I’m some sort of…” He flapped his hands around, apparently at a loss for words. Rarified air, indeed.
“Babygirl?” Skye finished when he trailed off, enjoying himself way too much.
We’d laughed a whole lot about this turn of events, seeing as I—as an actual girl—apparently gave off bigger dick energy than Xavier Stone himself.
In fairness, the edit had compiled a bunch of out-of-context clips that really painted him as submissive and breedable—the fans’ words, not mine—which wasn’t helped by his milkmaid costume or the image of him on his hands and knees at my feet.
Xavier glowered absolute death at my best friend. “I swear to fuck, Skye, if you—”
“Hey, don’t threaten him!” I interjected. “It’s not his fault you give off bottom energy. I don’t see Ace flipping out about his edits this morning.” Then again, the rumors of Ace being a Daddy were a whole lot more complimentary and, frankly, accurate.
“Okay, come on, that’s enough.” Ace clapped his hand down on his roommate’s shoulder with clear warning to cut it the fuck out.
“Xavi, you can’t be mad about fan edits, and you can’t blame Noah for the way it’s playing out.
You know how this shit works; this isn’t new to you. Skye…stop antagonizing him. Noah—”
“I didn’t do anything!” I protested, desperately not wanting to be scolded by Ace before coffee.
Ace gave me a deadpan stare right back, not buying my innocent act. Damn it. “Noah, for fuck’s sake, use a burner account when you’re doom scrolling, so accidents like this don’t happen again. As it is, the Acolytes are in a frenzy, thinking your reaction is confirmation that Xavier is…you know…”
“Noah’s babygirl,” Skye helpfully clarified with eyes that burned with mirth.
“Don’t stress about it, Xavi, it’s not your fault.
Some people just don’t have masculine energy online and that’s okay.
In this case, Noah just vibes a bigger dick than you.
It’s nothing to be ashamed of. And Ace is obviously a Daddy, but we already knew that. ”
“I’m not,” Ace grumbled, folding his arms. “I’m barely six months older than Xavi.”
Skye shrugged. “Daddy is a state of mind, Ace.”
I snorted then coughed in a lame attempt to cover my laughter as I turned away from Ace.
If I made eye contact with him now, I’d turn bright red.
Because after the unhinged thirst comments some fans had made about him saving me from that falling wall, he’d definitely appeared in my dreams last night.
“You know what? I need a change of scenery,” I announced in a somewhat strangled voice, slipping past Ace and Xavier to head for the front door. “I’m going to Boba-Kitty instead.”
Not waiting for their response, I stuffed my feet into my sneakers in the foyer and made it all the way out onto the porch before remembering that I needed to actually call for one of the drivers to pick me up. Damn it again.
“I’ll drive,” Ace said, exiting the house behind me, keys in hand. “So long as you refrain from calling me Daddy.”
I pursed my lips, fighting a laugh. “I dunno… That’s a tall order. I could just call for a car.” At his loaded glare, I grinned wide. “Okay, fine. Deal. Can we get pastries from the café across from Boba-Kitty, too?”
“That’s basically the only reason I offered, Eight,” he said with a smirk. Ace, I was coming to realize, had a wicked sweet tooth. He unlocked his BMW sitting in the driveway, and I slid into the passenger seat, a little surprised that Skye hadn’t tagged along.
For several minutes, we drove in silence, and I started panicking that I was actually in trouble.
Was Ace pissed about the accidental react on that post?
Or annoyed that I couldn’t seem to get along with Xavier despite his request that we be civil?
Or…shit, did he know about Minho? Or me? Did he know about me? Crap.
“What’s on your mind, Eight?” he asked right in the middle of a panic spiral, and I nearly jumped out of my seat. “You look like your thoughts are going a million miles an hour over there.”
I wet my lips and wiped my palms on my jeans. “Um…are you mad?” Keep it vague. Let Ace direct the topic of conversation.
He glanced over at me, his ice-blue eyes oddly warm and concerned. “No. Should I be?”
“No?” I replied with uncertainty. “I just thought that after… uh…I know you asked me and Xavier to try harder, and that’s, um, not quite what we’ve done…”
Ace let out a long sigh, his focus on the road ahead while his thumb tapped the steering wheel thoughtfully.
“You have for public appearances, and that’s all I would ever ask of you.
I’m not going to force you two to play nice when the cameras are off, because what happens behind the scenes is nobody’s business. ”
I nodded slowly. “Oh. Okay.”
“But I saw you trip him yesterday at the fan meet. You’re lucky that didn’t get captured by any of the fan footage or the narrative today would be very different.” He cast me a warning glance, and I squirmed in my seat.
“Noted,” I murmured, suitably chastised. It had been a stupid thing to do, with all those cameras around, but sometimes Xavier pushed me to do stupid things.
Ace pulled into a parking spot right outside Boba-Kitty, then frowned at me thoughtfully. “You didn’t bring a hat or anything, did you?”
I shook my head. “No. Should I have?”
His lips curled in the kind of smile that said I was being cute.
What the shit, why did that smile make my insides go all weak and fluttery?
“Yeah, Eight, you should have. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you’re very recognizable.
Here, use these.” He pulled out a pair of Deity sunglasses from his car’s holder and handed them over.
“What about you?” I asked as I put the sunglasses on and glanced in the mirror. I’d already stolen one pair from him, but I kind of liked this shape better.
Ace just shrugged. “I’m used to it. Besides, they’ll still know it’s you, but at least you can hide your expressive reactions a little more. I don’t know that the internet needs any more content to edit out of context today.”
Ah. Very good point. I hopped out of the car and flipped up my hoodie’s hood to hide my hair as we entered the bubble tea shop.
We’d been there a handful of times already, so I knew what my safe order was—brown sugar fresh milk with brown sugar pearls and brown sugar milk foam.
There was no actual tea involved in that, but it was absolutely delicious.
Ace ordered a grapefruit green tea with mango popping pearls and made relaxed small talk with the staff while we waited. One of the girls working behind the counter nervously asked him for his autograph, and he even offered to take a selfie with her after signing her metal water bottle.
“Would you mind?” the girl then asked, extending her cup and sharpie my way.
Startled, I took it and scribbled my awfully childish tag beside Ace’s elegant signature.
“Girls, could you do us a favor and wait ten minutes before posting those photos?” Ace asked in his seductively charming voice. “Noah and I want to grab some pastries from across the street before anyone knows we’re here.”
The girls gushed their promises to hold off on posting, and Ace handed me my brown sugary goodness. I tipped it up and down to mix the syrup while we crossed the road to the bakery and let Ace choose a huge array of pastries to take home.
“Damn it,” I grumbled when I messed up the straw pierce of my bubble tea and the stupid paper straw folded. “Now it’s going to go soggy faster.”
Ace shot me a puzzled look, like he wasn’t following my train of thought, so I gestured with the bent straw. “I get it, save the turtles. But soggy straws are a fucking crime, Ace, and you know I’m right.”
“And it goes soggy faster because you bent it?” He shook his head and swapped straws with me, popping his through the seal of my drink with one smooth motion. “There. Problem solved.”
Not really, but at the same time I wasn’t complaining. He’d already used his, so it tasted vaguely of grapefruit on that first sip…which I didn’t hate.
“How are you feeling about everything at the moment, Noah?” he asked once we were back in the privacy of his car, pastries safe on my lap. “I know this level of fan scrutiny is new to you. You never really had such personal interactions on your platform before, right?”
I gave a vague hum in response because that wasn’t strictly true. As NoFear, sure. I was totally anonymous, and although there were a lot of unhinged comments, none of it was personal. Because they had no idea who I was, what I looked like, how I behaved…so yeah, it was different now.
But I wasn’t exactly a stranger to it, since I’d had my fair share of comments as Norah Sparkle. The difference now was that boy Noah had a majority female fan base, and while they were wild, they were also largely fucking funny. Like Noah’s Babygirl content—funny as hell.
“I’m fine,” I finally responded after several sips of my drink. “Itching to get into the next challenge, though. Do you know when they’re going to announce it?”
“No clue,” he said with a frustrated sigh. “It was supposed to be at the same time as the reveal of challenge one results, but with Cat Kay’s murder…”
“Have they found the guy who did that?” I asked, hopeful.
Because although we’d been assured multiple times that it was a targeted attack on her specifically, the worry was always in the back of my mind that any of us could be targets.
Maybe not by the same guy, but there were lots of disturbed people on the internet just waiting for a push to cross the line.
Ace shook his head. “No, not yet. I’m heading into Olympus’s office later today, though. I’ll ask for more information. But back to you—are you really okay with the Xavier crap? I know you were a lot more comfortable feeding rumors about Minho, but—”
“I’m fine.” I quickly cut him off before he could think any deeper on the authenticity of me and Minho. “Xavier just seems to be struggling with the idea that the world doesn’t revolve around his inflated ego.”
Ace chuckled, nodding. “True. Xavi and I have been friends for a really long time, but I’m not ignorant to his flaws. If he ever takes things too far or you become uncomfortable with what producers are asking, you tell me. Got it?”
I smiled, my insides all warm and fuzzy by the level of support he was offering. I’d never had someone like him to lean on in this crazy career, and it felt nice.
“Thanks, Daddy,” I teased, and snickered at his sharp glare.
“Shut the fuck up, Eight, or I’ll swap around room assignments to put you with Xavier.”
I made my eyes wide and pantomimed locking my lips shut and throwing away the key. That was a threat I took seriously.