Chapter Text
"No."
"Just consider it."
"It goes against everything I stand for."
"Please help me. If you were like me, you'd understand."
"I am like you." Arthr's left hand raised, palm up. "We're both Left."
Domin's head shook. "I mean if you were really like me."
Arthr growled in rage at Domin's insulting insinuation. "You have no fucking idea what you're talking about."
Domin, merciless, worked the new rhetorical angle. "I've always suspected, but this proves it. You can't understand."
"You don't mean that. Of course I can understand. We're packmates."
"We are not packmates. Nobody on this Quest-forsakin' moon is truly in a pack. All of you are less than half. You're nothing."
Arthr shook lis head in disbelief and crossed lis arms. "That's planetary propaganda talking, not you. You'd never have chosen to live here at all if you really believed that."
Domin puffed up lis chest and jabbed a finger toward where Arthr stood across the room. "Don't you ever fucking dare tell me what I believe." Arthr was naive to pretend that an adult couldn't ever reevaluate a decision they made three lustrums ago, just because Arthr was too myopic to reevaluate lis own such decision of two lustrums ago.
"If we're not packmates," Arthr asked with bitter sarcasm, "then what the fuck are you doing in this pack's den?"
"Leaving." Domin turned around and stormed out the front door of their shared living space.
Arthr howled, "That's right, run! You excel at that!"
Domin slammed the door shut behind lim. The front window rattled in its frame.
Breathing hard, Arthr forced limself to calm down. Domin hadn't meant what li had implied. Always suspected. How cruel. No, li'd just been caught up in the argument. They'd known each other for too long to want to hurt each other that deeply. But they weren't so close as to share one will, one heart. It was impossible to reconcile Domin's request with Arthr's reality.
Arthr looked around the living room of what was supposed to be a home. It had been built the same size as every other den on the moon: 100 handspans long, 100 handspans wide. It was made of metal, moonstone, and plantmatter, with square glass windows. Three fixed-position load-bearing rooms took up half of the den: a living room with couches and tables, kitchen with food and water, and bathroom with sinks and urinals. The pack's private quarters took up the other half of the den with modular walls. One hallway separated the halves. Their pack had decided to configure the walls in keeping with their sphere's default: four equal-sized bedrooms with a double bed in each one.
The living room that Arthr stood in was meant to be a place of community, of harmony, the soul of the den, auspiciously to the left of the front door. It had no business being the setting of such strife. Domin had poisoned their den with lis terrible idea.
Arthr turned around and walked past the first bedroom, Domin's, to enter the bedroom to its left, the one Arthr shared with Ariad.