Re: The Capital: Holly W & Noah N
Life would be way easier of Holly could feel what Noah felt. Without it, it was hard, right? Holly kinda ran on self-preservation. He was scared of anything emotionally threatening, and being this into someone? Was, like, the definition of emotionally threatening. And this came hot on the heels of Halloween, and, okay, the facility thing with Adrian had massively freaked him out, right? And the jealousy thing there was still way bright, and then Dietre happened, and it was a lot. It wasn't fair to Noah, who hadn't actually done anything, but Holly needed to calm down before he could see through the fear clearly. He kinda needed to stop doing that thing where he forced himself to not react in an effort to not overwhelm Noah, but he still kinda saw that as a solution. Unfortunately, bottling? Just made shit worse.
What didn't make shit worse? Was Noah's shake of head and that slight laugh, because Holly always thought Noah was adorable when he was a dork. Did he notice that Noah walked close? Yeah, but all it did was make his breath catch. He didn't add space between them or try to move faster or anything. He did look over as Noah talked, you know, surreptitiously. His belly was doing somersaults worthy of, like, Cirque, and his dark attention fell to Noah's cuffs and how they were tugged down over those hands Holly was kinda obsessed with.
He didn't say anything until they were inside the booth, and even then he busied himself with opening the cassette and playing the first song, which was the one everyone kinda knew, right? And maybe not such a good choice, since it was way sappy. But Seger's voice filled the space quietly, and Holly glanced at the bench that lined the wall opposite the record/cassette players. He sat, knees a little spread, hands between them, and not a lot of space left beside him. He tipped his head up and quietly regarded Noah for, like, 15 seconds. "You're an idiot if you think I could really never see you again," was what he opted for, you know, casually.