"When was I supposed to tell you?" Gene asks sullenly. "When we started to become friends again - so I could give you an excuse to think I hadn't changed at all, that I was still rotten to the core? After you kissed me in the lab? When I asked you to take me out if I should prove to be a threat?"

He swallows, hard. "I admit - it was selfish to wait. But I wanted to be sure I could tell you and...and your first response wouldn't be to chase me out and call me a monster." Had it been so wrong to want to hold on to what little affection he could get for as long as he could? "I'd meant to tell you in the Dreaming," he says again. "But...it wasn't the right time. No. It was that I was too afraid of telling you there." Tony's rejection would have destroyed him. "I'm a coward. I never told you because I was afraid to."