Re: [Outside the Rec Center.]
Noah wasn't an aberration in general, right? It was just an aberration for Holly to fall for anyone. He was super careful about not catching feels, and, yet, here he was, having caught so many feels that he was freaking himself out about it. Fluke was, like, minimizing, because it was Holly's default to negate the importance of everything, right? And then he took it back whenever Noah frowned, which probably made for a way confusing experience. Noah was over there talking about lies, about knowing if Holly was lying, and then there was rewinding, which made Noah rewind, which made Holly attempt to unrewind. "I said I don't know, and we should try it," he repeated. "I think maybe it just depends what we do, you know?" In front of people. Together. "But you can definitely hang around next time I tell them about you fucking me." And, yeah, sure, Noah was right to anticipate Holly's concern. "I asked Jack if roleplaying stuff would still make things unboring, but I'm pretty sure his convoluted response amounted to no."
He rolled his eyes when Noah admitted that his poem was about love, but there was a hint of fond accompanying the eyeroll, because, of course it had been a love poem. He didn't give Noah shit about it, though. Instead, he listened as Noah talked about why. "I think I should ask what you expected," he said, and he didn't need to be Noah-powered to know Noah was going to volley the question back at him. "You said I looked soft and warm. Okay, so that's a weird thing, right?" He didn't, like, try to take it back or anything. "It was nice. Almost like it wasn't a sex thing."
But, yeah, right. "How could you possibly get hurt?" he asked. "And you can't know if you're going to miss the anonymous thing, or if you're going to miss talking to other guys," he said practically. He did manage to keep his voice super casual, even though he absolutely did not feel any iteration of casual inside himself. God, no, just the opposite, right? He was spinning, like, in his head, panic whirring him in a circle. Honesty was always super scary for Holly, especially when it wasn't hiding in sarcasm. "How is it different?" he asked, but he didn't actually let Noah reply. His mouth was on Noah's throat like that, and Noah was tipping his head back and running a rough hand over shirt and windbreaker.
He heard Noah find that thread and catch it between his teeth, only to spit out a quiet-close comment about his lack of perfection, and Holly pulled back with bowed lips shining with his own spit. He braced one hand on Noah's shoulder for the distance, but it was absolutely only physical distance, because his dark gaze was turbulence and fixed, and there came a point where he couldn't hold onto deadpan anymore. "You're so full of shit, Noah."