Noah had pictured dating Kat a lot of ways, but he’d been pretty wrong about all of them.
When he’d first met her, looking freaked-out and desperate in Cajun Jim’s, approaching him because she could see something nobody else could- well, she was cute! Obviously he wasn’t going to take advantage of her awful situation. She needed information and support and a place to stay, and he hadn’t been planning on getting into her pants that night. But he’d thought maybe, once she was more secure and comfortable, maybe he could ask her out for ice cream or something. Again: she was very cute. Shea had put the kibosh on that pretty firmly, though. No dating people who are crashing on your couch and are to some degree depending on you for housing. He wasn’t gonna argue with Shea.
He did disagree on one important point: Kat was paying rent just as much as any of the rest of them, and as such was not depending on them as much as she was depending on the landlord. Which, he could have gotten into a whole debate over that, and about how if he was her landlord of course it’d be unethical but she was just a roommate, but he wasn’t going to do that with Shea. Shea won most of their arguments by virtue of being right about most things. And maybe Shea was such a paragon of ethics that she could mentally put Kat into the “do not date” category immediately after meeting her and offering her a place to stay. Noah was not! He was only a mortal man. A mortal man who apparently had a weakness for girls who wear Soffee shorts to sleep in and kick their feet when they’re happy.
So he didn’t ask Kat out, he didn’t do anything to make her feel uncomfortable, he was very careful to respect all boundaries and be a good friend. And he wasn’t being a dick about it, trying to save up goodwill so she’d fuck him later. He did genuinely like being friends with her! She was a very cool person who would let him talk about whatever his Interest Of The Week was for hours. So maybe every so often he’d think about what if either one of them moved out of the house, what if he asked her out, what if they held hands in the park and made goo-goo eyes at each other. So sue him. It was just imagining.
He tried to put all that away when Sunny came into the picture. He was pretty suspicious of her at first, because she came out of nowhere and immediately started dating Kat and being pals with people who usually took way longer to come out of their shells. In retrospect, those suspicions were incredibly reasonable, just not for the reasons he’d had them. But anyway! He saw how happy Sunny made Kat, and anybody who could make Kat that happy was fine with him. So he decided to be friends with her and move his affections along. All good. No more imagining.
Then, well, the whole thing happened. He- and the rest of her friends, it wasn’t like Kat had singled him out- spent a lot of time comforting Kat and keeping her from freaking the fuck out while Sunny was gone. He’d remembered thinking that this was the worst thing Sunny could have done to Kat. Boy oh boy did she manage to prove him wrong at the trial! Blah blah, truth comes out, reunion, making up, everyone gets one free therapy voucher and rides off into the sunset.
And then, weeks later, the weirdest conversation of his life happened. Sunny- she of the flaxen hair, perfectly flat stomach, and supernatural baking skills- insisted that she wasn’t able to give Kat what she deserved in a partner and so Noah had to pick up the slack. Not that she was breaking up with Kat, because those two were too deeply intertwined at this point. Real red thread of fate situation. Just that she wanted him to also date Kat. And oh by the way she hadn’t told Kat about this plan. Okay! Sure!
Romantic comedy ensued, with Kat thinking it was Just Hanging Out As Pals and Noah unable to break the news to her because of the twin forces of “semifunctional social awkwardness” and “maybe Sunny would kill him.” And then things got resolved, and Noah settled in pretty comfortably as Kat’s side piece.
It wasn’t like Kat had ever told him that he was the side piece. She just wasn’t that kind of lady! But like, he had eyes. She and Sunny were deep in love. Definitely soulmates, but in the really dramatic movie romance way where they’d stand on top of a mountain and declare their love for each other while battling aliens. Two halves of the same heart. Pining after each other while actually dating, which was ridiculous, but also the kind of fanfic shit that just made sense for them. They were why storms were named after people. That kind of thing.
His relationship with Kat wasn’t like that. They went out for ice cream a bunch. They talked about their childhoods. They sat on a park bench and rated the dogs that went by. It was very chill. Very normal. Very much not how their lives were. For G-d’s sake, he was a skeleton man and she was made of clay and both of them had left parts of their souls on the thorns of an arcane dimension beyond their understanding and here they were doing karaoke. He wasn’t complaining! He was having a lot of fun! He was just genre-savvy. Sunny was the one who confessed her love under a truth spell placed on her by a centuries-old vampire wizard in front of the entire community. Noah had asked her if she wanted to try karaoke night because there were also half-price margaritas. You look at your life, you look at your choices, you look at your girlfriend’s other partner and you run the numbers.
Again, he wasn’t complaining. This was honestly fine! He’d just have fun with Kat as long as it still worked, and then eventually they’d move on to being just pals once Sunny got over her weird masochism thing that definitely wasn’t a cuckolding thing. He just had to make sure he didn’t get too deep in his feelings in the meantime. Karaoke night at Cajun Jim’s was basically designed to make sure of that. It was packed full of underage drinkers, the music was too loud to hear anything unless you were right up against the stage, and the floor had never been stickier. He was pretty sure his soles were about to get ripped out of his shoes by the mystery concoction down there. The perfect date. Kat didn’t seem to mind it, but Kat never minded much of anything. They picked out their karaoke tracks, got a big nasty pitcher of radioactive green margarita slush, and elbowed some teens out of the way to get a table near the wall while they waited.
It didn’t take too long for Kat’s name to get called. They’d gotten there early enough that most of the sorority gaggles weren’t drunk enough to queue up for every Shania Twain song under the sun but late enough the old folks singing Johnny Cash with embarassing earnestness had already gone to bed. She’d kept her hand over her selection when Noah signed up underneath her, so he had no idea what she had planned when she slipped through the crowd to the stage.
He took a sip of his margarita as she took the microphone from the emcee. Noah had an entire Grand Unified Theory of Karaoke developed, and he was interested to see what Kat would pick. Would it be Crowd-Pleasing-Singalong? Would it be Former-Theater-Kid-Hits-The-Big-Notes? Would it be the secular equivalent of when someone who “totally would have tried out for American Idol but never got around to it” decides that they’re going to do every single vocal flourish in Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas Is You? His big money was on Popular-Eighties-Hit. Kat seemed like the type.
The music kicked in. Noah had to struggle to hear it over the chatter of the crowd. It was something low-key and acoustic. Not what he would have guessed for her, she didn’t seem like the Sing-A-Ballad-To-Show-Off-Vocal-Chops type. She let the intro finish, raised her eyes to the teleprompter, and began.
“This is the first day of my life,” she sang. Oh. Oh noooooooo. “Swear I was born right in the doorway.” Oh no, oh fuck, oh god, he had to find an exit now. “I went out in the rain, suddenly everything changed-” she somehow managed to make that indie-guy random high note in the middle of a phrase sound good, what the fuck- “-they’re spreading blankets on the beach!”
She couldn’t do this to him. Fuckin 2005-ass, indie rock-ass, she was singing this in the bar where they’d met, he was literally- “Yours is the first face that I saw-” YEAH there it was, he was the first Changeling face she’d ever seen, how could she DO THIS TO HIM- “-I think I was blind before I met you-” this was his personal hell- “I don’t know where I am, I don’t know where I’ve been, but I know, where I want to go.”
This was the song that had been the score to literally every crush he’d had since he’d discovered it on Pandora at the tender age of twelve. This was him, headphones in, sitting on a vinyl bus seat and resting his head against the window and pretending like he was in a music video because Kenneth from pre-calc had handed him a spare pencil. This was him sitting in a coffee shop and sighing because the girl he’d been texting was starting to respond less enthusiastically. And yes, this was him six months ago, helping Kat put the finishing touches on a new sign for her stall at the Goblin Market and feeling some kind of way about when their hands would brush when they both reached for the same marker. This was the most fundamental betrayal of trust he had ever experienced.
His freakout was happening in some sort of awful internal bullet time which gave him plenty of time to process it when Kat looked shyly up at him for the next verse. “And so I thought I’d let you know-” how could she be making direct eye contact with him across the room, there were like a thousand drunk infants in here- “-that these things take forever, I especially am slow-” her voice was soft but it somehow carried exactly as much as it needed to- “-but I realize that I need you, and I wondered if I could come home.”
Noah was going to die here. This was it for him! It had been a pretty good run, he’d accomplished a lot of stuff, he should probably just write his will on a napkin with a sunglasses-wearing alligator logo on it and shuffle quietly off this mortal coil. He didn’t even know what emotion he was experiencing, but it probably wasn’t good for him. The most beautiful woman he had ever seen was smiling softly at him across a room as she sang Bright Eyes’ breakout 2005 indie rock hit “First Day Of My Life” (#37 on the UK Singles Chart, #266 on Pitchfork’s Top 500 Tracks of the 2000s) and he was going to just absolutely keel over and die to death. She was singing it at him. This wasn’t just a betrayal. This was an assassination.
She turned back to the teleprompter, blushing bright enough to be seen in the low lights of the bar, for the next two verses. This was a small mercy, because those next two verses were about how much the object of the song (presumably HIM??) liked the singer of the song (presumably HER!!!) and he really didn’t think that he could have survived sustained eye contact with her for that. But it wasn’t enough for him to forgive her. She was going to sing Conor Oberst’s seminal new relationship ballad AT HIM???? In front of HIS SALAD???
“So if you want to be with me,” Kat sang, and thank fuck, it was the last verse, he just had six lines to survive, maybe he could get through this- “with these things there’s no telling, we just have to wait and see,” no no no she was looking at him again, “but I’d rather be working for a paycheck than waiting to win the lottery,” fuck off fuck right off here it comes, why would she do this, looking through her eyelashes at him like it was something to do, “besides maybe this time is different,” AUUUUUGHHHHHH HERE IT COMES, “I mean, I really think you like me...”
Noah’s soul fully left his body. Kat got flustered as the music continued to play with no more lyrics forthcoming, so she handed the mic to the emcee and walked off the stage as Bright Eyes continued to gently jangle their guitars. Noah noted this with the same detached perspective as someone who has recently died notices their body decomposing. Which he knows about, because he talks to dead people on the regular. Somehow talking to dead people for his fake-real ghost tour has been a less completely surreal experience than a cute girl singing at him. What the fuck.
Kat sat down at the table across from him, tapping him lightly on the arm. “I think you’re up next!” she chirped at him, seemingly oblivious to his current out-of-body state. Or she was very conscious of it, and she was fucking with him. He nodded, mouth probably still hanging open, and walked up to the stage. What song did he even pick? What was he even going to follow that up with? He took the mic and stood dumbly in front of the teleprompter. The music kicked in, hard to hear over the crowd- oh fuck. G-d fucking damn it. The intro wrapped up, he leaned into the mic, and he tried to summon all the middleschool energy he could muster for his performance.
“I liked your song!” Kat beamed at him as he sat back down. “Those guys over in the corner got really into singing along with you.”
Noah smiled back at her. He couldn’t help it, she was cute. But he could get fake-mad at her still. “Kat, I cannot believe you saw me put Mama by My Chemical Fucking Romance down on the karaoke sheet and you let me do that knowing I would have to sing it right after you did that to me.”
“Did what to you?” Kat’s eyes went wide and her mouth formed a perfect o of surprise. Too perfect.
“You know what you did!!!” Noah waved his hands around, agitated. “Singing- fucking First Day Of My Life, you know what you did.”
Kat’s brows creased, just a little. “Did you not like it?”
“Like it?????” That was so far from being the question. “Of course I liked it, you were incredible, you’re an amazing singer and it’s a beautiful song! It was targeted harassment is what it was.” He jabbed his finger in the air for emphasis.
Kat was fighting back a smile. “Well three people before me had already done Don’t Stop Believing, so-”
“So you just decided to do one of the most beautiful and romantic songs in indie rock history, and you decided to do it at me? Because Journey was already taken??”
“Well…” Kat looked away, twirling one lock of hair around her finger. She was smiling, but not a shit-eating “oh you just got pranked” grin. “We’ve been dating for a while, and. Um. I didn’t, uh.”
Noah gently pushed her margarita towards her and she took a grateful sip. Thus fortified, she continued. “I wanted to show you, um. How I felt. Romantically.”
Noah’s eyes about bugged out of his skull. “How you felt?” His voice raised in a squeak that even a decade of T shots couldn’t iron out.
“Yeah, um.” Kat took a deep breath and looked back up at him. There was a determination behind her eyes, like she was dedicated to not fucking this up. “I love you, Noah.”
The table tipped and rose up very suddenly as Noah lost his balance and fell out of his chair. This was good, actually. Being on the floor was good. The floor was now his surest companion. It was real and very solid in a way that absolutely nothing else was, because hey what the fuck. Kat made an indistinct noise of concern and crouched down to help him back up. “Oh my god, are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine, oh my god, I love you too?” Noah was standing, Kat’s hands on his arm to steady him, his face doing something that he had absolutely no awareness of but it was probably embarrassing. Oh, fuck, whoops. This was not especially romantic. He cleared his throat. “That’s- sorry, that’s not a question. I love you too, Kat.”
Kat’s eyes welled up with tears and she gave him the biggest face-splitting grin he’d ever seen on her. “I love you too! I mean, oh, I already said-”
This was ridiculous. They were just going to be stupid at each other if he didn’t do something. Well, they were gonna be stupid at each other regardless, but. Noah put a hand on the side of her face, tilted his head, and went in for the kiss. Kat wrapped her arms around him and he could feel her smiling against his lips. Alright. So maybe it actually was the perfect date.
Author's Notes:
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