i'm just as i was before

[autokinetic]

Aegis is puttering around in an anonymous patch of vacuum. Jane is eating up the news that has passed in their absence and feeding Aegis a steady stream of it by brainphone so she can catch up, while she waits for Sue to get back from teaching the other Jokers to freecast. (Or "teaching them to freecast", whatever.)

She still hasn't gotten any welcome-back kisses. Hugs, yes, but not kisses. Probably this is going to require a conversation.

Comments

[pythbox]

Nope.

And there he is.

Snuggles!

[autokinetic]

Snuggles.

You thought any more about the age difference thing?

[pythbox]

A little, he says, hugging her some more. It's silly and shallow to care that you look fifteen; I'm not sure it's that silly and shallow to care that you are fifteen. You know? I grew up a lot while you were gone. You didn't. I still love you, but... I don't know. It's complicated.

[autokinetic]

When does it stop mattering?

[pythbox]

That's the tough part. A year? A few years? I don't know. I was fucking my way through the deck when I was sixteen, but I'm me. You're not.

[autokinetic]

I don't want to fuck the deck. I can do without fucking anybody for a while. I want to kiss you, though.

[pythbox]

...Maybe. I don't know.

[autokinetic]

There's no meaningful sense in which you'd be taking advantage of me. I don't really get it.

[pythbox]

Well, there's an obvious solution to that.

He pushes:

He kind of wants to kiss her, but - what wants to is mostly the memory of being sixteen; he has aged out of finding fifteen-year-old Aegis physically compelling the way he used to. He still loves her - he loves her a lot - but there's that distance there now, one-fifth of his life spent without her, a quarter of his life in the space between them. It matters. Maybe it would be better for both of them if it didn't, but it does. He loves her, but he needs... time. Time where she is around, growing up with him.

[autokinetic]

She doesn't sigh. She's floating in a vacuum, not breathing, weightless, floaty, clinging to her bird; she doesn't sigh.

She burrows her face into his shoulder.

Okay.

[pythbox]

Sue loves her some more. It seems like the thing to do.

[autokinetic]

She loves him too.

There's an empty-achey-missingness to it - she barely had time to get used to wanting to kiss him before he grew right past her and now she has to wait and she's never been patient and it makes her feel small and patronized and frustrated - but he's still her bird. He's always been her bird.

[pythbox]

I'm sorry, he says, snuggling her. Snuggles and love. Lots of those things.

[autokinetic]

Snuggles and love and stars.

I'll be subjective-sixteen in less than a month.

[pythbox]

Yeah, he says. Maybe that'll change things some. I don't know. It's not exactly about the numbers, they're just - something to point to.

[autokinetic]

Yeah. Meanwhile, I guess if we're presenting me as dead and resurrected I have to look it, which, since there aren't any awake Peaceful dead people except the soldiers I fetched, means going on looking fifteen and smoothing out to mid-twenties if I torch, unless we fess up about magic too in which case I can look however I want.

[pythbox]

That's about the size of it.

Snuggle.

[autokinetic]

Speaking of torching, you ever find out who Little Doctored us?

[pythbox]

Yeah. I check up on them once in a while to see if they've cooked up anything similarly stupid - I should hand that off to Jane...

And off they go into the practicalities.

Sue has gotten very good at the practicalities.

[autokinetic]

Mmm. Practicalities. Delicious Bellish practicalities.