Re: [(early) kinda sorta mental: holly/noah.]
[Exhale. Like, breathing, and he's doing it more easily. It isn't that things were better, it wasn't that at all. Around him, the chaos was still bright and vivid, like red spattered on white canvas. It wasn't anything about his surroundings. It was absolutely about the presence that he could feel. I mean, he could feel it, and he'd lost enough blood to just let himself believe it. It wasn't the kind of bloodloss that was going to kill him, even if he thought he was going to die, but it was enough to make the kaleidoscope of Hell around him slow down, if only in his own perception. Someone was shooting someone's kneecap out to the left of him, a couple were angrily kissing against a nearby wall, blood was spraying from a broken nose cracking nearby, and someone was screaming at everyone to get up, to the higher levels, UP, but Holly didn't move. Not up. Here. Stay, and so he stayed. And Noah was agreeing with his, Holly's, selfishness, which registered too, and he tried to think of other commands, other edicts:] No moving back... [With Noah's mom, though he didn't finish the thought.] No Billy. Job. Capital. Kids... not pizza, kids not pizza. Too smart for pizza. [A jagged-ragged breath.] Wish you could get money... [Instead of Bea, but it's just another unfinished thought. A beat. A beat. A beat, and then just one word:] Scared.