Re: [Outside the Rec Center.]
Holly didn't hate Noah. He considered that part of the problem, right? That he didn't hate Noah at all. It would all be so much easier if Holly could hate Noah, but that just wasn't happening. In fact, it was a process that, if anything, was moving in reverse. Like, if hatred was full-speed ahead? Holly was going slowly in the opposite direction. He hadn't actually allowed himself to think about the fact that he wouldn't have Noah at all without the falsehoods, because that would make holding onto any self-preservation more difficult, and his grip was already way slippery.
He didn't actively hear the repeated and soothing word-sounds Noah was thoughtlessly making. Like, not, actively, but the sounds made him calm a little in his head. He didn't try to keep pacing, anyway, which was something. But, yeah, it was like that robot in Lost in Space, and he was definitely overheating. He didn't even tell Noah to let go of his hand, and he didn't pay much attention to Noah collecting his phone and bag.
So, right, he just held onto Noah's hand as they rounded the corner of the Rec Center. It wasn't that he was a vegetable walking or anything like that, but he was definitely currently caught in his head. Like, how could all this shit possibly be true? And he found himself wondering, as he got into the Jeep, if everything was a dream. Which, you know was the first thing he brought up when Noah climbed into the Jeep and started the engine. "Travis says he was asleep here, in a coma, whatever, but I saw him. I saw him, and he remembers what I remember, so we were in the same place, and what if I'm really asleep somewhere right now?" he asked, because clearly it was all just bubbling now. Like blisters popping or something, words spilling. "Gramps back home was young too, but he had a cult in the woods, like in this old mansion, and my dad never said he was a vampire. I would've thought he was just drunk and not making sense," he admitted. "Dad never made sense. His head was always somewhere else, right? Like, he forgot who I was every fucking night." No segue, and his knee bounced, and he tapped the dash with his fingers. "Werewolves? Seriously. Werewolves. Werewolves, and I need to go see mom. How messed up is she? Does she need, like, care? And then there's Bea." He looked out the window, at the passing scene of this town that was similar and not, and he laughed a brittle-crack laugh, kinda like a few from that night in the motel room. "Shit." Beat. "At that military base, they kept asking questions, you know? Over and over, the same questions about where I came from and who I was, and then there was nothing." That came with a flash of hours and hours and hours of interrogation, and Holly barely able to hold his head up by the end. Then a prick of pain behind his arm, up in the fleshy part, and blackness.