i'm a good friend

[autokinetic]

Things go back to normal. Pretty much.

Aegis's thirteenth birthday approaches. She is slowly acquiring the promised features of adulthood, little by little; she's issued a new set of uniforms after she grows two inches. Boys begin leering at her, although she has not yet been outright propositioned. There just aren't enough girls to go around. Even a barely-pubescent one who has demonstrated no indication that she even knows what her sexual orientation is going to be when she grows up gets attention.

Meanwhile, Sue -

Her bird is kind enough to bring boys (both regular- and space-gay-or-bi) home only while she's in classes, but she can tell when they've been there - they leave things, there are hairs in colors that don't match her or Sue on his pillow, xenobio let out early once and she saw one leaving. Sometimes he's gone a long time and doesn't react when she bird-bird-birds at him and comes back walking funny or refusing to make eye contact.

He flirts with everyone.

He flirts with her, and she hasn't the slightest idea what to do with that, and he always backs off after a little while, but he doesn't seem quite - happy. He isn't fully unbroken, and she doesn't know how to help.

On the day she turns thirteen, she says, "Happy birthday to me."

Comments

[pythbox]

"Yeah," he agrees. "But... I think maybe it's not."

[autokinetic]

She spins her chair around and twists in the seat to look at him over the back. "Do you want to stop? Or tone it down or whatever?"

[pythbox]

"...Maybe?" he says cautiously.

[autokinetic]

"Maybe not, though?"

[pythbox]

"I think... I want to do it less," he says. "But I'm afraid."

[autokinetic]

"What of?"

[pythbox]

He shrugs helplessly.

[autokinetic]

"I read all their notes, but that doesn't make me a psychologist, I only know how to read my mind," says Aegis.

Pause.

bird

[pythbox]

yeah?

[autokinetic]

well, if you push at me, then whatever it is will be in my mind and maybe I can decode it like I do my own stuff? I dunno if it'll work, but if it's important and you can't do it and I might be able to help...

[pythbox]

He exposes his vague anxieties and general apathy about his body to the link.

[autokinetic]

Aegis reads it all, and she opens a blank text file on her desk and starts typing representative gibberish, frowning.

[pythbox]

Sue waits.

[autokinetic]

Type. Type type stare. She lifts one hand from the keyboard, draws lines between this dollar sign and that capital M and a circle around the cluster of parentheses.

Type type type stare type draw draw type.

It's like you don't live in your body - or you're trying not to - if it's yours, if it matters, then it matters if people take it, but if it's nothing, if you give it out like Halloween candy and it doesn't matter, then - they can't hurt you? she says, obviously not confident in her conclusions.

[pythbox]

He closes his eyes. There are now tears in them.

Yeah, he sends. Yeah, that's it.

[autokinetic]

She closes her desk and goes to hug him.

[pythbox]

Sue hugs her back, crying softly.

It doesn't even work, he says, it just makes me feel like shit all the time.

[autokinetic]

Hugs hugs hugs hugs. You shouldn't have to feel like shit all the time, there's got to be some better way to fix up how you're thinking about it, she soothes.

[pythbox]

I don't know how, he says helplessly.

[autokinetic]

I can process more for you, since that works, we just have to figure out what you need to show me to process.

[pythbox]

He tries to line it all up in some kind of order—what it feels like to be into it, what it feels like to just not care, what it feels like afterward in either case.

There's a relic of someone they both know lurking under the surface there, but not very far: wanting sex carries residual shame in a way that apathy doesn't.

[autokinetic]

Aegis pulls out her desk again. Type draw type type draw stare, stare, stare. Draw. Squint. Type.

If you quit having sex you're not into all that'll be left is the kind you feel ashamed of, she sends, looking at her incomprehensible symbols and lines and flicking her eyes between them. And because that creep found out that you had mixed feelings and was insofar as that's possible even assholier about that, those are the only categories you're seeing, and going without is intolerable, so you're - saturating, fixing the ratio as best you can without zeroing everything out, but the basic problem is it feels gross to want it? she concludes.

[pythbox]

That... sounds about right, he says, and sighs. Fuck, I hate that guy.

[autokinetic]

She hugs him again. I do too.

Think, think.

I don't know what to do with it feeling gross to want something. I just figure out what I want and then I figure out how to get it with what I have.

[pythbox]

It feels gross to want it, he says, but - I still want it, and I don't want to stop. I just want it to stop feeling gross.