Re: [Outside the Rec Center.]
See, though, if Holly was so careful, who was to say he wasn't more of a 'catch feels' type dude than he assumed Noah was. Noah wasn't careful. It just didn't happen all the time. Maybe, if Holly didn't have the emotional baggage he had as a life preserver, he'd be head over heels all the time. Circumstantial behavior was circumstantial, and circumstances changed all the time. That was one way Noah could get hurt. He squinted at Holly, when Holly backpedaled on his backpedaling. "Okay," he said, a little skeptical, but he was happy to be there when Holly told his gaggle of dudes he, Noah, had fucked him. "Sounds good." He smiled, but it dampened, both at the mention of Jack and at what Jack had said. "How the hell would he know?" Lightbulb. "Oh, I get it. If you ask me, you can't trust my answer." But, he could trust Jack's.
Noah smiled. "I expected Holly. Other Holly. I didn't expect you." The smile remained, and Noah laughed a little. "Almost, huh? You did. You looked like—like you'd be really good to curl up with. Which is totally spot on, so." He shrugged in a tectonic movement for Holly. He might've gone so far as to wink, even in the close quarters, but he was distracted by Holly's disbelief of what he said about being hurt. His expression moved into earnestness. "Uh, easily." He cocked his head as it sat still on his palm. "I have to trust you too. I think I'm a more trusting person, but that doesn't mean I don't see, like, the pitfalls. I could absolutely end up on my ass. I still think I might. I'm just hoping I don't. But, you have an ex—or sort of. You have a lot of opportunity. And you might change your mind, about me, because you're scared."
Now it was Noah's turn to roll his eyes. "I don't talk to other guys. And I can know." He felt the rising bile of panic, right? But, he was trying to keep it chill, if frank. "You have to trust me at least a little. Which I know is the last thing you want to do." Noah was considering how to describe the difference between anonymous sex and flirting with feigned intimacy. "Even if the intimacy is fake, in what you do, it's intimacy. There's none of that, you know, with the cottaging. It's just... body parts." That was as far as he got. And if it was deliberate, to shut him up on Holly's part, he had no idea. But, it wasn't a bad call, if that's what he wanted. Noah's breathing went from lulled and slow, to picked up, and he practically crushed Holly to him with a drag of his hands. He was greedy about it, like it was kindling on a fire that had built to ravenous, only to be starved.
That made it really hard to grab onto that thought, but Noah did it. Holly pulled back, thank God, and Noah looked at Holly as he braced himself on Noah's shoulder. He shook his head, a break-up of curls. "No, I'm not." His hands settled against Holly's nape and he chewed his lip as he thought. "I'm—God. I'm not." Breathe. He urged his boner to chill a little. He tried not to rub against Holly, even accidentally, but he could still feel his cock throbbing. Talk, Noah. "I have all my shit too. I need things. I'm so far from, like, 'too good to be true.' Like, I did mean to come and make you get this wasn't just about ass for me." He let his head fall back against the door again. "I don't think I managed to get that across."