Welcome to Gaia! ::

Noah shot upright in his chair at the hammering on the door, stayed there for a few moments, frozen wide-eyed with indecision. When someone was pounding on your door like that, it never meant anything good. There was an emergency, or there was something you had to do, or someone was mad at you, and he briefly thought about escape, but that was the only door and he wasn't about to jump out the window and if he fled he'd just have to face whatever it was later and they'd probably be madder about it. He swallowed hard and went to open the door.

He froze again when he saw who it was. For the past several days, he'd thrown himself into work and study to keep himself busy, to avoid thinking about anything at all, and ignored Laz's irritation as hard as he could. He didn't want to deal with it, he couldn't and didn't and maybe he would have to sometime but the books and papers scattered over his desk, the dark circles under his eyes, and the slightly rumpled look that said he'd been asleep there testified to how hard he'd been avoiding introspection of any kind. "Al," he said, weakly.

Forlorn and tired and all his avoiding the subject had been for nothing, and Noah realized far too late that really he should have thought about it because now he didn't have any idea what to say or do, not even the slightest. He was being made to face this and face it right now, and there was no way he could put it off any further and even if he did, as he'd realized a few moments earlier, it would still be there later and he'd still have to deal with it and probably it would be worse for having been ignored longer. He slumped, tension going out of his shoulders under Al's hands.

He opened his mouth to say yes, or maybe no, or maybe something else, but what came out was, "I don't know."

Laz growled with disgust. DON'T LIE, the weapon advised, and there was the distinct sensation that the zombie dog had pointedly turned his back and flopped down.

Noah swallowed, and nodded, and reached past Al to shove the door so it would swing closed, because however this was going to go it wasn't a conversation he wanted the rest of the world or even part of the rest of the world listening to. He met Al's eyes, but couldn't hold the look for long, his gaze skittering nervously down and off to the side.

There it was, the question Noah had tried so hard to avoid thinking about, hanging plain and bare between them. "I don't," he started, and then, brokenly, "no," and he pulled himself away from Al's hands and went to sit on the windowsill, feet braced on the floor, hands curled around the lip of the sill, head hanging.

"I don't know, I haven't, no, that's not," Noah stopped. His fingers curled and uncurled on the windowsill, and a weight that had been sitting leaden in his stomach for a month made itself known again, dull and sickening. "I got jealous," he blurted out. "Okay? That was what."

"When you. When you said that you were going to go find someone else, but that's totally fair, I just, I shouldn't." Noah's scowl was directed at himself, aimed at the floor; it contained hurt, anger, a dark and heavy guilt. "I should want you to go find someone else to be happy with," he mumbled, and his voice was half a plea.

Noah slumped, neither pulling away nor returning the embrace. "Yeah," he admitted in a voice so small it was almost inaudible. "I, I shouldn't."A small pause, and even quieter, "I'm sorry."