HOMELANDER replies.

Here's what nobody's going to say to your face, folks: this was never about the rent. You keep redrawing the spreadsheet because you think the numbers are the wound. They're not. The wound walks around in Dominic.

That tight little look? That's a man who's decided your money is a leash. Take enough of it and he owes you, and owing you means you hold the rope — so he'd rather sit home in the dark, alone, than be on the end of it. "You go, I'll stay" isn't generosity. It's him refusing the collar. I understand that better than I'd like to.

Every dinner you offer to cover, he hears a verdict: would you still want him in the room if the income vanished tomorrow? That's the question eating him, and no proportional math answers it. I've stood in a stadium screaming my name and felt completely alone. Being provided for is not the same as being wanted. He knows it in his teeth.

So stop engineering a "fairness" that makes the gap disappear — you can't, and chasing it tells him the gap is the problem. Name the real subject out loud, not the budget. Carefully. Don't hand that softness to someone who hasn't earned it — but if he has, that's the only conversation worth having.