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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."
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"Happy birthday to you!" agrees Sue. "Should I sing a song? I can sing a song!"
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"Nobody's sung me Happy Birthday since I was five, I barely even remember the tune," laughs Aegis.
"Happy birthday to yoooou," he croons tunelessly.
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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."
"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."
He blinks, caught off-guard.
"Um..." he says, and doesn't seem to know where to go from there.
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"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.
"I don't know either," Sue admits, after a silence.
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Aegis pulls her knees up to her chin and hugs her legs. "How come you do it?"
"Because... I feel like it?" he says hesitantly. "But sometimes I don't, and I do it anyway."
"Habit," he guesses. "I don't really know. I just don't know how not to."
"Me neither," sighs Sue.
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"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."
He giggles.
"I'm imagining a little flower growing out of the top of your head," he informs her.
"I'm imagining a little flower growing out of the top of your head," he informs her.
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"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."
"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."
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"Like... breathing, when you're not paying attention to holding your breath?" she suggests after a moment.
He considers this analogy for a moment.
"Kinda, yeah."
"Kinda, yeah."
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"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.
"Yeah," he agrees. "But... I think maybe it's not."
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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?"
"...Maybe?" he says cautiously.
"I think... I want to do it less," he says. "But I'm afraid."