“Sure,” he says easily. “But now it feels like a choice instead of your default setting.”
That sinks in.
I don’t answer straight away. Instead, I look out across the stretch of land in front of us. We’re tucked into one of the quieter outer edges of Dathanor, where the structures thin out and the strange, glowing flora gives way to something that almost looks like scrubland. Almost Earthlike, if you squint and ignore the sky.
The air’s warm, and it’s peaceful in a way that doesn’t feel fake.
“I used to be like this,” I say eventually.
Sonny goes quiet beside me.
“Before everything,” I add.
“Back home?” he asks.
“Yeah.” I shift my weight, leaning back on my hands, letting my legs stretch out in front of me. “Growing up in Melbourne, I was… loud. A smartarse. Always had something to say.”
Sonny snorts. “Shocking.”
“Yeah, I know. Hard to believe.”
A small smile pulls at my mouth, but it fades a little as I keep going.
“Even when I moved to WA, it didn’t change straight away. Different place, sure, but I was still me. Still… open, I guess.” I pick at a loose thread on my pants, more for something to do than anything else. “Then I started working in the mines.”
Sonny doesn’t interrupt.
“You hear shit every day,” I continue. “Racist crap. Homophobic crap. Said like it’s normal. Like it’s just part of the air out there.” I huff a breath. “And maybe it is.”
He flexes his jaw, but he stays quiet.
“You learn pretty quick what’s safe to say and what’s not,” I go on. “What parts of you are acceptable. What parts you bury so you don’t become the next target.” I shrug one shoulder. “So I buried them.”
There’s no drama in the words. No exaggeration.
Just fact.
“Didn’t even feel like a big decision at the time. Just… survival.”
Sonny nods once. “Yeah.”
“Then I met Thomas.”
The name sits there. Heavy, but not as pained as it used to be.
“He was the same,” I say. “Closeted. Careful. We got each other in a way no one else did.”
“That must’ve been….” Sonny trails off.
“Good,” I finish for him. “It was good.”
And it was… for a while.
“That’s the part that makes it messy,” I add quietly. “It wasn’t always bad.”
Sonny glances at me, his expression steady. “It usually isn’t.”
I nod once. “Yeah.” The silence stretches for a moment before I admit, “It stopped being good,” I say.
