"I remember tears streaming down your face when I said I'll never let you go, when all those shadows almost killed your light, I remember you said don't leave me here alone but all that's dead and gone and passed tonight."

The ancient art of nudes. Oh how I hate thee. Fuck my life.

Nudes these days seem to just be expected, every guy I text asks for nudes. Yet I've never sent a single guy them. Sure there are exceptions where I've had phone sex with guys, phone sex meaning me getting my tits out and him jacking off. But I've always refused to send nudes.

Because most of the guys I hook up with are ass holes, they'd probably save it and send it to all their friends. And their friends would send it out to the world and before you know it the Hawthorne name is tarnished. 

But Noah's special. I want to show him the vulnerable sides to me that I'd never show anyone else. So here I am, naked and standing in front of my bathroom mirror.

Naturally, having no experience in this category, I google it. I need a good lighting, which I guess I've got. I need a good angle, so I prop my phone up against my counter. I need to pick a pose.

"Just pose Spencer. You've got this." I mutter, trying at least a million poses that ultimately cause me to scream out in frustration.

"Spence, hurry the hell up." Jameson knocks on my door. I physically flinch, dropping my phone down the fucking toilet.

"Get out of my room Jameson!" I scream furiously, drying off my phone which is thankfully waterproof. I slip my clothes back on and open the bathroom door, finding Jameson at my bedside, digging around underneath laughing as he shows something to Avery.

I quickly walk over and find him laughing at all my old stuffed animals.

"Get out!" I whine like a child.

"Relax, I was just showing Ave that at one point you were human." He teases. 

"We came to hang out." He cuts to the chase. "No." I immediately decline.

"Oh come on please." He pleads.

"I'm busy.. but I need Avery." I realize.

"Avery? But not me?" Jameson whinges. "Yes not you baby, go away." I mock.

It takes some convincing but he finally leaves. The second he's gone I sigh in relief and waste no time.

"How do you take a nude?" I ask her. She chokes on the air she's breathing, stumbling over her words.

"I've been trying to take nudes for Noah and I can't do it." I groan impatiently.

"So you're asking for my help?" Avery laughs gently. "Look I know we're friends now but how friendly do we need to become before I ask you to take my nudes for me?" I blink flatly.

"You want.. Jesus Spencer!" Avery bursts out laughing.

"Every time I take one in the mirror my hand holds the phone weird or my eyes go to the wrong place. And then when I use the countdown I always blink or decide on a new position at the last second." I run my hands through my freshly curled hair.

"Spencer I am not nearly drunk enough for that." She laughs. That's when our laughter seises for just a moment and I smirk. Very soon I'm searching my hidden cabinet and taking out some liquor. 

Avery and I take it upon ourselves to get a little tipsy, then a lot tipsy, followed by intoxicated beyond belief. 

"Let's do this!" I squeal after we set up a backdrop. The plan was originally for her to take one photo of me, now we've staged a full on photo shoot for the both of us to mess around.

She calls Grayson, slurring drunkenly.

"Avery? Are you drunk?" His sharp cut voice echoes. 

"Little bit.. Listen I need to borrow your camera." She slurs. "What for?" He asks curiously, though I know he's so in love with her that he's likely already prepping the lens.

"I need to take some nudes.. It's gonna be fun." She says unbothered. I can hear the way my brother's breathing hitches.

"You can borrow my camera.. just download the photos to your phone then delete them on the camera so I can't see them." He sighs.

And soon enough we've started. We got a gold backdrop and I'm wearing emerald green underwear. 

Avery cheers me on supportively as I pose in every possible angle. The liquor making this so fun.

"Ima take my bra off but not my underwear cause he hasn't seen that yet." I smirk throwing my bra aside.

I try just about every pose before Avery steps away from the camera, coming in front of me.

She smiles sweetly as she fixes my hair, tossing it over to one side and framing it perfectly. Then she snaps some more. Thats when I pull my bra back on and pull her into the frame. I get her to strip down to her underwear too, the camera switching to a photo booth setting that takes a photo every 10 seconds.

Avery and I dance around drunkenly, hugging and kissing each other's cheeks.

Soon enough we collapse into drunken balls, laughing about jokes that aren't funny and talking about nothing yet everything.

We eventually upload the photos to my laptop then erase them from Grayson's camera. We riffle through all 260 of the photos taken and finally limit down to 3 photos. One of me with my bra still on, kneeling down and biting my lip a little. The next is me with my bra off but I'm facing the back so all he can see is my turned head, my bare back and my entire ass barely covered by a thong. And finally I pick one of me with my hair flipped over to one side, smiling genuinely.

"Oh my god.. do I just send it?" I panic.

Avery drumrolls on my bed eagerly as I select the images and get ready to hit send. "Spencer! That's Nash not Noah!" Avery screams very abruptly.

My hands shoot up in the air and I scream, grateful for Avery to stop me from sending nudes to my brother.

Avery cackles as she retypes it for me, both of us triple checking it's him before I finally hit send.

I scream and throw my phone to the ground. Taking a deep breath as if something'll happen immediately. 

"He's read it!" Avery commentates, passing me my phone from the ground.

Avery and I must've sat there for 20 minutes it silence waiting for a text to ping through. He had seen it but not replied. Either he was having a 20 minute jack off sesh, he was trying to take one equally as good, or he didn't like it.

"He probably just butt clicked it. I bet he hasn't even seen it." Avery assures me.

I nod agreeing, trying not to let her see me falter. 

"Wanna spend the night? Makeshift sleepover?" I smile, dropping my phone and pushing it out my mind.

Avery agrees and we stay up talking for hours, gossiping about her crush on my brothers. She fills me in on this 'mystery' they're solving. 

Our Grandfather used to give us these puzzles. One a week it must have been. Jameson and Grayson were the best, going head to head to see who was better. Nash was great, but he wasn't as competitive, he just wanted to win he didn't care about being quicker than anyone else. Xander was strategic, but he spent a lot of his time just sitting there talking to the old man. I however went off trail every single time, finding a clue nobody else found and making it into something it wasn't. The boys teased me for never winning, but the old man always claimed to admire that I thought outside the box and considered all the facts, never letting myself breeze over something that could be important. 

He told us all the time that Xander and Grayson got the academic intelligence, the high IQ, the brains everyone admires in the real world. They were the perfect idealistic view of smarts. They got perfect test results and were quick at solving the harder puzzles.

He said that Jameson and Nash were the ones who had street smarts. They had common sense, they were perfectly aware of how their surroundings and knew how to blend in or make themselves seen. They were confident and never weak. They trusted their own morality and established knowledge to know the answers to puzzles. They saw the patterns and didn't have to think, they just seemed to know. It was something in their gut that told them what to do.

I however, was told I had emotional intelligence. I wasn't traditionally smart with books or standard knowledge, but I had skills some would kill for. I had an excellent ability to read a room even when I had just walked inside. I always knew exactly what people were feeling even if they hid it well. I could see beneath the surface and determine the real issue. I was always able to pick up on little things nobody else could, I was perceptive enough to see all these little clues and know what them meant. It was never a particularly useful skill to have when these puzzles were mental challenges, but I was always good at tricking my brothers, manipulating them and stressing them out. The old man never seemed to mind that I lost the challenges, because he always told me my skills would someday save this family from breaking. Which is a pretty big thing to tell a nine year old girl who was busy using said 'skills' to determine who ate the last cookie.

"He's such an asshole!" Avery scoffs when she realizes I'm thinking about Noah. "If he doesn't have one hell of an excuse he's dead." I laugh despite the ache in my chest telling me he wasn't replying because I was ugly.

Avery and I started doing our own things on our phones a little before bed, she spends it texting some guy called Max, either a gay best friend or a boyfriend? Or based off the texts I'm sneaking glances at Max might be a girl.

I find myself staring at the photos I sent him, regretting not photoshopping them a little. The way I'm kneeling makes my thighs look huge in this one. And my stomach has a fold in this one. My smile is sort of annoying in this one. 

The longer I look the more things I can point out. That's when my phone starts buzzing. I practically drop it with fear.

Noah's name flashes across my screen. I squeal and show Avery, we both fumble to sit up and I answer, clicking speaker immediately.

"Hey baby." He says, sounding a little out of breath and maybe even dare I say nervous.

"Hi." I say dryly.

"You okay?" He asks with confusion.

"Fine." I mutter.

"You sure?" He asks with sadness.

"You know what no. I'm actually not okay. I send you the kind of photos I've never sent anyone before and you look at them, ignore them for like an hour and then call me pretending nothing happened." I ramble.

"Shit Spence.. don't be mad I can explain I swear." He sighs. "I'm listening." I challenge.

I glance to Avery who is listening intently. 

"I was hanging out with my Grandma. She had Maja and I baking all night for some bingo pot luck? I just taught her how to work phones and she thought my phone was hers and then she sort of saw the photos before I did.." He trails off, and I know without even seeing him that he's anxiously rubbing the back of his neck the way he does when he's stressed.

"Oh my god.. I'm so sorry Noah." I apologise frantically, Avery actually having to put her pillow over her mouth so her cackling can't be heard.

"It's fine.. she picked up the phone and said 'You're girlfriend's very pretty Archie' and I sort of assumed you just sent a selfie or something and then she said something about your 'lovely breasts'? I was knee deep in flour so I had to like grab my phone with my elbows.. If I wasn't so stressed it would've been hilarious." He comments.

Avery actually snorts at this, and whether Noah notices or not he doesn't mention it.

"Archie?" I repeat with a gentle smile. "My middle name. She's been calling me that since I was born.. she had some sort of fight with my Dad about my name so he let her pick my middle name. Noah's just a simply unacceptable name for a child but Archibald that'll do just fine." He jokes dryly.

"Was she mad at you.. or me?" I ask, not wanting to be on bad terms of the family before I even meet them.

"Nope.. not her." Noah rambles, still sounding out of breath.

"No are you okay, you sound really out of breath.. or nervous?" I frown seriously, taking him off speaker and stepping aside from Avery, she just watches me with concern.

"I'm.. I'm fine- Is Xan.. Is he home?"

Every second that passes Noah sounds more on edge and like he's struggling for breath.

"Xander? He's home, yeah." I say deadly serious, genuinely scared for the first time around Noah.

"I need- fuck." Noah whimpers.

"Noah what's wrong?" I ask sternly. 

He doesn't reply. That's when I start racing out of my room, up the staircase and straight for Xander's room. 

Avery runs after me.

"Noah?! No what's wrong?" I yell, hoping somehow talking louder'll help.

"Xan-" Is all he can manage before a loud groan of pain.

Any alcohol still in my system is gone now. I slam my fist against Xander's door, pushing it open when he doesn't answer quick enough.

He's not in here. So I run all the way back down the staircase in the direction of his lab. Thankfully the long journey is cut off when I find Xander, Jameson, Grayson and Nash all talking in the kitchen, some casual conversation about who took the last slice of pizza.

"Xander." I cry, tears streaming down my cheeks as I race towards him.

"It's Noah." I say, passing him my phone. The smile on his face drops in horror when I say Noah's name.

My other brothers watch me with confusion, Grayson comforting me with a hand on my shoulder as Xander talks to him.

"Noah? Speak to me. What's going on?" Xander says, firmer than I've ever heard him speak.

"It's happening again." Is all I can hear through my phone, it sounded like he was crying. No not even crying, it sounded like he was bawling.

"I'm coming to get you. Just breathe." Xander instructs. 

Then a sound makes all of us cringe, the sound of retching and what is assumably vomit tossing to the ground.

"You got your headphones?" Xander asks. Theres some sort of hiccup of a response. "Good just put them on, close your eyes and focus on the music." My baby brother instructs.

Then he hangs up and starts leaving as if nothing happened.

"What was that?!" I cry out, chasing after him along with everyone else.

"Nothing. He's fine." Xander dismisses. "He clearly wasn't! Why won't you tell me?" I demand.

"Because if he's not told you already he probably doesn't want you to know." Xander snaps.

"Where is he? Are we giving him a ride home?" I continue, walking behind Xander and refusing to leave him.

"We are not doing anything. You are going to sit here and wait until I bring him back and then you're gonna act like nothing happened and stop making this about you." Xander orders loudly. He's never shouted at me before. He's a respectful person, but right now it's clear he's as anxious as me.

"I'm coming with you. And i'm not making anything about me. My boyfriend is somewhere crying, throwing up, struggling to breathe, telling you somethings happening again as if this is somehow normal. I'm coming. Not for me. For him." I yell back, trying to remain calm as I follow him into the garage.

"Fine. But don't expect an explanation. Don't expect to understand everything the second we get there. It's complicated and he doesn't owe you anything." Xander says calmly, finally realizing I just want whats best.

"Drive." I say.

We both get into the car, him behind the wheel, despite my sobriety in mentality, I'm physically still intoxicated.

"Help me with directions." Xander says, passing me his phone. I notice it was 3 missed calls from Noah from before he called me. 

"You track him?" I blink with fear, hitting on my boyfriend's name on some app Xander made and waiting as it loads.

"I track everyone." He shrugs.

The location loads and I sync it to the car map so he gets directions from the robot voice. Noah's on some random roadside about 15 minutes from here.

The drive is quiet other than the ticking of Xander's blinker. The road is empty considering it's almost 11pm.

We pull over beside Noah's car. However I can't seem to locate Noah. "Stay in the car. He wouldn't want you seeing him like this." Xander tells me gently, stepping out the drivers seat and rounding the car.

He walks into the field beside the road, my eyes find him at the same time as Xander's.

Sitting in a little ball on the ground, wired headphones in his ears as he clutches his chest and hyperventilates. His chest rapidly rising and falling. Tears staining his adorable cheeks and continuing to flow. He looks like he's in agony. A pile of spew beside him a little further along.

Xander talks to him calmly, sitting down beside him and talking to him like nothings wrong.

And it hits me, Noah may be my boyfriend, but above all he's Xander's best friend. And that thought doesn't sting like it should, it makes me happy if I'm honest. Because it means two of the people I care most about have someone who'll drive to the middle of nowhere to sit with them in a field as they cry.

My heart is telling me to go out and check up on him, he's looking a little more calm now. My mind is reminding me of Xander's words.

I push the car door open and start to walk over. "You'll just sleep at our place and when you get back tomorrow he'll have calmed down." Is that last thing Xander says before they see me.

Noah scrambles to wipe away his tears as if somehow that'll change everything I've already seen.

Xander and Noah share a moment of eye contact, before Xander nods and walks back to the cars, leaving us alone.

I drop slowly onto my knees in front of him. "I forgot.. to tell you. Those photos. You were gorgeous- I mean you are gorgeous. I was gonna say that and then.." He trails off gesturing to himself with a scoff.

His breathing has slowed down, but he still seems anxious.

"Have you been crying?" He asks me with an immediate frown. I shake my head no, despite the fact I have, because he looks guilty like he's done something wrong.

"Thanks for getting Xander.. and for coming." He smiles, trying to avoid the topic i so desperately want to visit.

"No.." I frown, reaching a hand out to his wet cheek, his nickname rolling out of my mouth.

It's that one touch alone that makes his eyes well up again. "Noah." I whimper with sadness.

His eyes start to drip and I just sit here, unsure of what to do. "Can I hug you?" I whisper unsurely.

His legs that were once in a ball now spread open a little. The second he opens up I kneel between his legs, wrapping my arms around his shoulders where my hands rest on his neck and in his hair.

The second I'm close enough to him his head just drops onto my shoulder and his hands wrap around my stomach. He begins to just sob into my shoulder as the shadows wash over and try to steal the bright beaming light that he is.

I don't know what to do. I rub his back and stroke his hair. I gently hush him and whisper 'it's okay' every few minutes. "Please don't let go." He begs me in a sob.

"I'll never let you go baby." I promise.

I wish I knew how to fix this. But I don't know what needs to be fixed. I have no clue what happened tonight. And I have no clue what this kind and brave boy is sobbing into my arms about. 

Maybe my people skills only go so far. I mean i've always been able to tell if somethings bothering someone, but Noah's never made me think for just a second that there was something wrong. He appears sweet and positive, and it kills me he's got so much underneath that he's hiding so well. 

It feels like hours we sat there together. But soon enough we're driving home. Xander takes our car and I drive Noah's car, both of us heading back to Hawthorne House. I don't mention the fact I've been drinking because then Noah would have to drive, and realistically I'm in a better place to drive than he is. 

With Noah in the passenger seat I keep our hands intertwined.

"Spencer?" He speaks up, his voice hoarse. "Mhm." I reply.

"Remember that time you asked me why I kept a tooth brush in my school bag?" He reminds me. "Yeah, you said you throw up a lot.. Oh Noah." I repeat, frowning when I realize and feeling like crying all over again.

"That happens a lot then?" I ask him, not trying to press but realizing he brought it up so he must be somewhat okay with talking about it.

"It was a panic attack.. I have anxiety." Noah tells me calmly.

"We all get anxious sometimes No, it's completely normal-" I comfort.

"No Spence, I have an anxiety disorder. It causes me to have those panic attacks where I feel like I'm not in control of myself." He explains.

I blink in thought. "How long have you had it?" I ask him.

"Since I was 8. Back then it was just like all the other symptoms. I only had my first panic attack two years ago. Xander was there for my first one, he called an ambulance because we both thought I was having a heart attack. He's been there with me for every one since then." He tells me.

"A heart attack? Is that really what it feels like?" A ask, the pit in my stomach shrivelling up and flooding with guilt.

"I've personally never had a heart attack.. but yeah that's how it feels.. My heart speeds up, then my chest tightens and I struggle to breathe. And then I start sweating and my hands start shaking and then I get dizzy and I feel like I'm gonna throw up and then most of the time I do." He tells me.

"How often do you get them?" I keep asking him questions as long as he's answering them.

"Only once or twice a month. Sometimes it's a lot more.. depending on how things are with.. like other stuff." He mumbles the last part.

"What causes them?" I ask him. He shifts uncomfortably and I realize this is my last question before he stops answering. He tenses up and I quickly establish I won't be getting an answer.

"So you're coming back to our place before we take you home?" I change the topic, this just makes him even more tensed.

"I think Xan said something about me spending the night." He informs me.

"Right.. that's good. Wanna sleep in my room?" I offer, trying to pretend I'm not completely out of their loop.

"Uhh.. I think I'm just gonna stick in Xander's room. Just cause he invited me and all." 

I can't explain it, but there's something in his tone that sounds like a lie. Not that there's much he can lie about in that sentence, more so like he's leaving something out.

"Okay." I reply with a gentle smile, pulling into our driveway.

He gives me a hug, lasting longer and squeezing tighter than any normal hug. He kisses my forehead and follows Xander up to his wing.

I fall asleep at night thinking about him. He's had anxiety this whole time and never mentioned it? He doesn't want to talk about why he has panic attacks. Xander knows. But I don't?