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."

Author: 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."
Author: pythbox	"Happy birthday to you!" agrees Sue. "Should I sing a song? I can sing a song!"
Author: autokinetic	"Nobody's sung me Happy Birthday since I was five, I barely even remember the tune," laughs Aegis.
Author: pythbox	"Happy birthday to yoooou," he croons tunelessly.
Author: autokinetic	She giggles, then sobers. "How have you been doing lately? You're - you're gone a lot, I live in your room and I don't have a good sense of whether you're doing - okay."
Author: pythbox	He blinks, caught off-guard. "Um..." he says, and doesn't seem to know where to go from there.
Author: autokinetic	"And you're screwing everyone who indicates that they'd rather do that than stare at a wall for the equivalent amount of time and if I don't know if you're okay, I don't know whether to worry, whether that's healthy Sue behavior," Aegis says.
Author: pythbox	"I don't know either," Sue admits, after a silence.
Author: autokinetic	Aegis pulls her knees up to her chin and hugs her legs. "How come you do it?"
Author: pythbox	"Because... I feel like it?" he says hesitantly. "But sometimes I don't, and I do it anyway."
Author: autokinetic	"When you don't feel like it why do you do it?"
Author: pythbox	"Habit," he guesses. "I don't really know. I just don't know how not to."
Author: autokinetic	"I don't understand."
Author: pythbox	"Me neither," sighs Sue.
Author: autokinetic	"I haven't sprouted a sex drive yet," says Aegis, unfolding and stretching and leaning over the back of her chair. "So I don't have one to take apart and see what its moving parts are and try to figure out if it looks like everyone else's, and I don't know if that would be a good standard anyway, but if you're doing stuff you don't want to do - well. That doesn't sound very Sueish if we assume this isn't somehow its own thing. You do what you want to do."
Author: pythbox	He giggles. "I'm imagining a little flower growing out of the top of your head," he informs her.
Author: autokinetic	"Everything'll be coming up roses," she returns. "But I mean - you never do things you don't want to do. You've been cutting classes for the last seven years, for crying out loud."
Author: pythbox	"Yeah." He sighs again. "Fuck, I don't know. It's not like I decide to do it even though I don't want to. I just... don't decide not to."
Author: autokinetic	"Like... breathing, when you're not paying attention to holding your breath?" she suggests after a moment.
Author: pythbox	He considers this analogy for a moment. "Kinda, yeah."
Author: autokinetic	"And you're just sort of inhaling everybody who comes along and is remotely interested. And we don't know if this is healthy Sue behavior," she summarizes.
Author: pythbox	"Yeah," he agrees. "But... I think maybe it's not."
Author: 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?"
Author: pythbox	"...Maybe?" he says cautiously.
Author: autokinetic	"Maybe not, though?"
Author: pythbox	"I think... I want to do it less," he says. "But I'm afraid."
Author: autokinetic	"What of?"
Author: pythbox	He shrugs helplessly.
Author: 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
Author: pythbox	yeah?
Author: 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...
Author: pythbox	He exposes his vague anxieties and general apathy about his body to the link.
Author: autokinetic	Aegis reads it all, and she opens a blank text file on her desk and starts typing representative gibberish, frowning.
Author: pythbox	Sue waits.
Author: 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.
Author: pythbox	He closes his eyes. There are now tears in them. Yeah, he sends. Yeah, that's it.
Author: autokinetic	She closes her desk and goes to hug him.
Author: pythbox	Sue hugs her back, crying softly. It doesn't even work, he says, it just makes me feel like shit all the time.
Author: 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.
Author: pythbox	I don't know how, he says helplessly.
Author: autokinetic	I can process more for you, since that works, we just have to figure out what you need to show me to process.
Author: 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.
Author: 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.
Author: pythbox	That... sounds about right, he says, and sighs. Fuck, I hate that guy.
Author: 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.
Author: 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.
Author: autokinetic	Yeah. Well, I've been helpful so far, let's - She sighs a small sigh, and turns back to her desk. Let's have a helping of gross to dissect.
Author: pythbox	She can have a helping of gross, all right. He's got plenty to spare.
Author: autokinetic	She shudders with borrowed unpleasantness, loses her handle on the birding for a moment, but she has enough to work with. Typetypetype stare draw type draw stare stare draw type. You think your - your wanting is broken, that you must want things incorrectly if you could be at all ambivalent about what happened, she concludes. You've been ignoring what you want because you think your wanting is - fucking with you.
Author: pythbox	That's on backwards, he says. I know what's fucking with me, and it's not that. He sighs. But you're right, that's what it feels like.
Author: autokinetic	She reaches out and touches his shoulder, runs her hand down to his elbow. Did he catch you at exactly the worst possible time, or do you have memories of wanting the same stuff and not feeling like it was fucking with you?
Author: pythbox	...well, he says.
Author: autokinetic	Mm?
Author: pythbox	The first time she kicked his ass, it was... kind of like that. Kind of a lot like that. Definitely without feeling like it was fucking with him.
Author: autokinetic	Aegis goes rather still. She's so constantly in motion that this is noticeable at once. ...okay, she says. Well, um, so, you know he didn't... cause it or anything.
Author: pythbox	Yeah, he says. Hey, I'm sorry, I know you're not—you don't like it when I flirt with you, I'm sorry.
Author: autokinetic	It's okay, she says after a silence. ...If you knew I didn't like it why did you - I mean, you usually backed off after a little bit, but you still started up again. I'm younger than you, you know.
Author: pythbox	I usually don't think about it until I've already said something, he says. I flirt with everybody these days, it's hard to remember to turn it off.
Author: autokinetic	She's loosened up again, she's swaying with the timing of her passing thoughts again. Mm. Well, it's okay. I'm fine and everything. And you know that mister creeper didn't - I dunno, psychically implant being all kinky into you. He just said shitty things about it. He said shitty things about me too and you don't feel weird about being my bird, do you?
Author: pythbox	No, he says. I like being your bird.
Author: autokinetic	Good, 'cause you are. She looks at the symbols on her desk. Is there anything else I should decipher for you? Did it even help or did it just - reopen the wounds?
Author: pythbox	No, it's better to know what's going on, he says after a moment.
Author: autokinetic	She hugs him again. Good. Let me know if there's anything else you want me to look at. Or anything else I can do. I want my bird to be okay.
Author: pythbox	He hugs back, silently, because he doesn't have the words to express how much this means to him. That's what links are for, though, isn't it?
Author: autokinetic	At least in that direction, yes. Hugs hugs hugs.
Author: pythbox	Hugs hugs huuuugs. Aegis is such a good friend. She is the best.