While Mac kept talking, Aoba kept eating slow bites and clearing his plate of what he’d been given. He felt…odd. Maybe some of it was in the fact that Desire was no longer looming at him quite so hard, and some of it was in things feeling weirdly…anticlimactic. But also stupid. And now his stupidity was out in the open, spilled to a total stranger instead of just kept to himself. Even Ren finally squirmed out of the satchel and into his lap, offering his fur up for comfort-petting, which Aoba’s free hand found and did indeed take advantage of.
It sure made for a déjà vu sort of moment when Mac hit on ‘fear is fear’, though. Honey anecdotes aside.
“So we’re both afraid of ourselves,” Aoba sighed, rolling a stray fish egg around his plate with the tip of a chopstick. Sounded like a real healthy basis for a relationship, that.
After a few moments more, Aoba gave his head a shake, making one last grasp at retreat. “There’s no reason for me to get his hopes up. He thinks I don’t like him that way now and I should just—leave it like that. That way if I never figure myself, he won’t….”
And then all he could do was trail off, conflicted. Wouldn’t what? Be left hanging? Be actually strung along? Things Aoba would never do to him, not willingly. And he and his other side were already getting along better, so it wasn’t as if Aoba had much basis to think that things wouldn’t continue to improve.
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It sure made for a déjà vu sort of moment when Mac hit on ‘fear is fear’, though. Honey anecdotes aside.
“So we’re both afraid of ourselves,” Aoba sighed, rolling a stray fish egg around his plate with the tip of a chopstick. Sounded like a real healthy basis for a relationship, that.
After a few moments more, Aoba gave his head a shake, making one last grasp at retreat. “There’s no reason for me to get his hopes up. He thinks I don’t like him that way now and I should just—leave it like that. That way if I never figure myself, he won’t….”
And then all he could do was trail off, conflicted. Wouldn’t what? Be left hanging? Be actually strung along? Things Aoba would never do to him, not willingly. And he and his other side were already getting along better, so it wasn’t as if Aoba had much basis to think that things wouldn’t continue to improve.
Fear was fear.