Re: [Outside the Rec Center.]
"How long have you stayed interested in the same person, baby?" he asked. Maybe it was an unfair question, one made more unfair by the attachment of the pet name, but Holly still posed it. "I don't know what rules. A contract or something, where you tell me what you're doing with other people." Beat. "Or something." He wasn't at his most articulate. "Look, if you let me DM or send an email later, I'll be a lot more articulate," he promised. Because, right, he was still going on no sleep, and Noah was still going on no sleep, and he was pretty sure the nastiness of his hangover carried across whatever the thing Noah had going on was. "How do you know you're not wrong? You could be with a guy for a while, and you could miss being with a girl. It's different, right? I mean, for you. You feel different about girls than guys?"
He rolled his eyes. "I'll make sure to mentally project how I don't have a boner for Jamie," he assured him. "I take Viagra to get it up for shows, Noah," which Noah knew, because they'd discussed it. Okay, so the first time in the night he could get it up by thinking about other stuff, but, yeah. And he must've been getting used to Noah scooping things out of his head, because the fact that he hadn't actually said the thing about it being freaky? Went unnoticed. "Of course it sounds freaky."
It sounded freaky, and maybe that contributed to the rising panic, right? He kinda bounced a little with the movement of Noah's jiggling foot, but it was good. The movement was good. He didn't want to be still, and Noah's hands were fidget and fuss, and Holly didn't have an answer for him. He touched Noah's neck, poking two fingers against the bruise he'd just sucked there. "I guess maybe the no was lost in me being nervous, or wanting to like it because you liked it," he admitted. He'd wanted to like it. "God, I mean, it would've been so much easier if I did like it, right?" And maybe he could get there. Like the cam work, which he'd thought he couldn't keep doing at the beginning, and, yeah, more therapist fodder for years. "You're not going to fuck off," he said, and he even managed to pair an eyeroll, the universal duh tone of youth carrying in his voice. But it wasn't that easy, right? It wasn't like he thought Noah was going to fuck off, but more like he wanted Noah to like it, like him. "Look, I'm kinda a fraud, right? I tried to tell you that way back."