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You do manage to get Nighty to open up to you. At least, he’s willing to rest his head on your lap and vent, and he barely stops once the floodgates have opened.
“I just… hate it when they say such awful, gross things about us. You’re my brother.”
“Yeah,” you say. You don’t tell him how your soul twists inside your chest at his words. You know he doesn’t mean them. Or rather, you know he doesn’t mean anything against you, and it’s the awful, awful kids who are deliberately trying to drive a wedge between you two that his ire is truly directed towards. It still hurts.
So say something! If you say something, he won’t say these things anymore. He won’t know it hurts until you tell him!
You tell the gold apple to keep quiet. It doesn’t matter anyway. You know nothing can come of such a relationship, so you’re better off not bothering him like this.
Ughhhh, Dreamy. I know you know I know you’re smarter than this and know what I meant.
Thankfully, you can follow along with the emotional thread of the gold apple’s conversation and don’t have the do math to work it out. And you do have an idea how you can, well, test the waters. I don’t want to bother Nighty. He needs space to vent.
Everything will work out! I promise!
Damn the golden apple. As soon as the idea began to take form, it assumed you were going to go ahead with it, and you don’t even have the satisfaction of proving it wrong. The golden apple had been encouraging you to take more chances, and with its empathetic powers, you have that much more of a gauge to finesse your social gambits.
Before you can allow yourself to think better of it, you say, “It’s not even that bad.”
Nighty tilts his head to look up at you. With the golden apple’s encouragement, you continue: “It’s not like anyone’s getting hurt. And it’s not like I’d love you any less if you did have a crush on me. They’re just saying that stuff because they think it’s bad, and therefore we should think it’s bad.”
“I suppose.” Nighty sounds a bit taken aback, and you take it down a notch.
“Ugh, I just- At this point it’d serve them right. Like, what do they expect will happen if they keep passing around these rumors? Honestly, I feel like making out with you just to shut them all up!”
You wonder if you’ve gone too far, but Nighty laughs.
“Yeah,” he says to fill the silence, trailing off as he returns to his thoughts.
You are acutely aware that the conversation is shifting, and you’ll never have a better chance to come clean. If the golden apple speaks the truth, and you will feel better once you confess, you need to grasp this moment before it slips away.
“Nighty?” you say. “I mean it. When I say that I’ll love you no matter what. Even if you confess you have a crush on me, or that you ate one of the magic apples, or if you’ve killed someone, nothing will make me love you less, okay?”
He laughs again, a brief chuckle that’s barely more than an inhale, but it’s the most wonderful sound you can hear.
“And I’m betting it’s the same vice versa.” You wait for Nighty to agree, but he seems to be letting his silence act as the affirmative. That’s not good enough. You take a risk and prompt further, “And you? Would you love me any less if I had a crush on you, or ate a magic apple, or killed someone?”
Nighty hums as he takes a moment to think it over. “Depends why you killed them… Actually, if you killed someone, either they deserved it or it was an accident. Yeah, of course I’d love you as much as before.”
“Good,” you say, and riding on your recklessness, you add, “Because two out of those three are true.”
Nighty stills on your lap. You are holding your breath as you wait for the blow to come. It doesn’t make sense to panic - what’s done is done - and so you’re desperately trying not to think about all the possible horrible outcomes.
Nighty abruptly shifts onto his palms. “Who’s dead?” he asks warily.
“…That was the third one,” you say.