Ned can see the delicate balance Ginsberg is trying to strike between implying willingness to listen and implying any kind of pressure to spill his story. All the same, Ned knows what the story is, thinks that he's more qualified to make the call of whether or not Ginsberg wants to hear it. All he can imagine talking about it would do is bring things to an even lower emotional pitch.

(The way he talks about someone panicking and being told to just calm down has the sound of personal experience; Ned's been in that situation, himself, is struck by just how much he and Ginsberg have in common. Then, it occurs to him, retrospectively, how little he'd had in common with the majority of people he'd known in his life).

"Something like that," he agrees. He sighs, and it is half frustration at himself for not being past this, even though it was so many years ago.

If he can at least give Ginsberg an outline, he thinks it will make his own peculiar behavior make more sense. Not enough information to make himself really vulnerable, of course. Just the category of distress. "Let's just say that... certain things from my past that I spend most of my time trying not to think about are harder to not-think-about today, and all that stuff - the candy and costumes and pumpkins and the rest of it, that makes everyone else so happy - just makes it worse."

Ned isn't usually the one who initiates physical contact. He doesn't avoid it, from Ginsberg, but he doesn't often ask for it. But right now, he can't stand just sitting there with the space between them and Ginsberg looking at him with his undisguised compassion. So Ned leans forward, carefully buries his face against the other man's shoulder.

"Usually just stay in and try to sleep through it," he admits.