Re: [Outside the Rec Center.]
Holly just didn't like pressure. Okay, he liked being scared, with the exception of, you know, now. He liked tension, especially during movies and haunted house and stuff like that, but he'd always kinda had performance anxiety, and Jenga was performance anxiety. He'd had a really hard time getting behind the camera at fifteen, and it was trial by fire and willpower, forcing himself to do it over and again, you know? That got him to the comfortable point he was now. He lived behind a lens, but he still didn't like Jenga.
He did like this. He liked this a lot. He liked how Noah looked when he, Holly, opened his eyes. Noah looked earnest. Noah always looked earnest. He had this open fondness to him, you know, when he looked, and it made Holly kinda ache to trust him. Like, he felt it in his bones and all the way to marrow, that want, it was so fucking hard to leaden his heart and bring himself back down to earth. But, okay, look, right now? He just didn't have it in him to pour that required lead, and he was like the girl in Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, where he kinda wanted to just float. So, right, he allowed himself the kiss of palm to palm, and his dark gaze slipped along Noah's hands. He looked. He looked greedily, the deadpan slipping to the autumn grass and kinda getting trampled by the forward movement of Holly's feet.
Because, yeah, he let Noah tug him. He offered no resistance, though he did look at Noah, you know, from the monumental inch of height he had on the guy. "One of these days, you're kinda going to have to just let me look," he protested, but there wasn't anything real behind it. He knew Noah wasn't really any good at staying still. Okay, yeah, he wanted to look, but he wasn't knocking the closeness, either. He wondered if they were far enough from the road not to be seen, if Noah would, like, notice if someone was approaching. He actually glanced that way, toward the road, thoughts scurrying underfoot, and then he looked back at Noah, close now and fingers still tangled.