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Guess I’m on my own again tonight…
Cub wasn’t surprised. It was like two in the morning, so obviously Zed wasn’t here…the warden mutant had a sneaking suspicion he might be below bedrock. Scar was off duty for a few hours to get some rest, and Cub knew he’d had Grian over for dinner, and he wouldn’t be surprised if the two of them became so absorbed in each others company that they just stayed up carrying along all night.
He removed his noise-cancelling headset as he settled into his office chair. The door was shut and locked behind him, even if it didn’t really matter.
No one was here. Cub was alone.
But he was more than used to that.
He had to remind himself, even if it was hard to parse through at times. Scar had been a mess in their college years…his years of ‘self-discovery’ as Cub teasingly called them, and of course kept well remembered in a labeled album of blackmail photos in his phone.
Well remembered times with Zed? He could think of those too. Sneaking into the university biotech lab at 3 AM with little more than a case of energy drinks and a terrible idea.
Cub remembered.
And he knew, deep down, and they remembered him, too. That this momentary abandonment didn’t deserve such a cruel moniker, that he ought not consider it in such bleak terms.
He was happy for Scar.
He was happy for Zed.
That blaze-born seemed well-to-do…and Scar clearly cares so much for Grian…
And that was the funny thing, wasn’t it?
Under-city folk.
Cub leaned back in his office chair with a weary sigh that rattled deep into his ribcage.
…they’re both dating under-city folk. Zed has to know…Scar, I’m not sure yet. I don’t think he knows. It didn’t seem like it.
Yet it had been so hard to tell.
The problem beyond all of that was that Cub had to ask himself a tougher question.
Even if he did know…would I tell him my secret?
Could he bear it?
The answer was immediate on his lips, but warring in his mind.
“I couldn’t.” He murmured aloud, even as the considerations spiraled off with him at this stars forsaken hour. Alone in the lab. Unable to reach out. His call to Zed would probably be ignored, Zed seemed to completely forget he even had a phone whenever he was ‘with his boyfriend’ which Cub took to mean he was in the under-city.
But I can’t tell him.
Scar deserved the rest, and the time with Grian.
I can’t tell him, either.
Why not?
It wasn’t even necessarily to do with the secret, not anymore. It was the fear of what reaction he’d see. From Zed…especially from Scar.
I’ve known his biggest secret for so long…yet all this time I still kept mine.
Scar had never forgotten him. Not into their masters, Ph.D’s, lives in the city even after they’d stopped being roomies, Scar had always been his number one person. Cub had always been Scar’s number one person.
And it wasn’t as thought Cub particularly feared losing that spot, not to Grian.
But if I admit that I’ve been lying to him all this time?
He might find his spot not taken, but instead crossed out, barred away…and who could he blame aside from his own paranoia?
He opened his eyes, and they shone with teal blue in whites that were black. Skulk markings travelled from beneath an eye, crept down his neck and beneath the collar of his shirt. The shifting wavy tendrils emerged like a half-crown along the back of his head from raven black hair that gleamed with traces of bioluminescence.
Alone, he could let himself be…and it was becoming harder and harder to see that alone didn’t need to mean forgotten.