BRAND NEW BEGINNING ☆ o, nightmare

[METEOR]

Quasar, staying quiet, allowed the conversation to play out without any interruption from him. Let Rhinestone forget he saw Quasar out at night for no good reason. Allow the tension between the two to manifest. He’d ping-ponged between adopted father and idolized brother figure enough to speculate, and Quasar guessed a version of the truth. It was easier for the boy to believe Vaas and Rhinestone cared about him because they couldn’t admit their feelings for each other, so they engaged in a subtle battle for influence over him instead.

He arrived at this conclusion, in no small part, due to his own parent’s rocky relationship. His mother’d named him Quasar, after a magnificent, poorly understood astronomical phenomena. Yet she’d named his littermate Tree, after the obvious. In Quasar’s world, adults played mindgames with other people’s lives, including their children’s. Including their spouse. Because everyone was selfish and wished to further their own gains, he had never felt guilty about playing this game for his own benefit.

The vaporwave mess followed Vaas to the cage—back to the place he’d walked away from only minutes ago, as he’d run away from don’t think about it. His blue gaze glanced from Vaas to Rhinestone. He lifted the basic facts of the current scene and extrapolated them with mental simulations. Would it be advantageous, for him, if Vaas and Rhinestone began dating? Would it be safe if his adopted father engaged in an adult relationship? In Quasar’s current relationships, what would change? With Rhinestone? With Vaas? With Tree?

Quasar sighed. He simply hadn’t observed enough to answer most of these questions. His gaze lowered, and he blinked down at his paws as he walked along.

“I trust Vaas’s medicine,” he said, after a pause. The pastel rainbow explosion looked up, glanced between the two of them, and yawned. It was fake. He wasn’t tired, though he knew he should be. He needed sleep, but he didn’t want to ask Vaas in front of Rhinestone just yet.

[sub][W]isker[/sub]