"I dunno," he says, still quiet, sort of half looking at Neil and half not. It's a little hard to look directly at him anymore. There's things he doesn't need to be feeling right now. "Maybe nothing. Maybe it's not even about being afraid." He smiles, sad and a little absent, and for a flash of a second he thinks about how different from Hobbes Neil had felt in his arms, and how that difference hadn't been pleasurable like he would expect it to be.

"Maybe I just don't know how anymore." Because sex has always been easier than talking.