Okay. Yeah. He won't get away with not saying it if Arthur's curiosity latches onto it, and he does--
--he doesn't want to say it, but he didn't want to talk about his past in New York either. There's a possible and almost desirable future where they go forward and he knows this about Arthur, and Arthur doesn't know this about him, and he counts cans and goes quietly out of his mind about food waste in the safety of plausible deniability -- only it doesn't feel like safety, not the way most lies do. He's never told anybody and yet he dreams about them all the time.
"Listen, kid, I..."
Fuck. He talks towards his clasped hands.
"I've told you I... spent time in the prison pits."
Re: CW: cannibalism
--he doesn't want to say it, but he didn't want to talk about his past in New York either. There's a possible and almost desirable future where they go forward and he knows this about Arthur, and Arthur doesn't know this about him, and he counts cans and goes quietly out of his mind about food waste in the safety of plausible deniability -- only it doesn't feel like safety, not the way most lies do. He's never told anybody and yet he dreams about them all the time.
"Listen, kid, I..."
Fuck. He talks towards his clasped hands.
"I've told you I... spent time in the prison pits."
Just. Jogging Arthur's memory. If he needs it.