"...Yeah," he says. "So which parts of that do you want? 'Cause right off, I can tell you exclusivity with the sex is not happening. I love having sex with you, but I'm not gonna give up having sex with everybody else for it. But on the other hand, you're already my favourite person and I already love you, and those aren't gonna stop if we don't fuck again."

"Okay," shrugs Brilliance. "...Are snuggles a separate thing from sex, here? Because snuggling you is awesome and I wanna do more of it."

"Separate thing, but would also need thinking about. Hugs are categorized differently, and random casual touching differently still, those can both happen."

He nods, and smiles, and hugs her.

Hugs. "Everything on the list up for grabs?" she queries.

"I'm not sure," he says. "A lot of it's still human-context stuff - like, I don't know what you mean by 'general courtship trajectory' but I'm betting having sex and falling in love and then calling myself your boyfriend ain't it, and it's not like I'm ever going to be in a situation where I need a date for something, and you're gonna have a hard time explaining me to anybody who doesn't know about magic... and I'm not sure what some of them mean, like 'life-event-support stuff', what's that? But sexual exclusivity's the only automatic no."

"The trajectory thing is more about a steady increase of seriousness, like, there's whatever you're doing, and then time passes and you're doing more of it. We're already cohabiting and stuff, so there's some constraints on how much trajectory there is to be had in any standard sense, but it's not nonexistent. And I might be in a situation where I want a date for something, I might get invited to a wedding, hell, with my droplet I can probably learn to dance and show up at school dances, I don't have to explain you, you can just be mysteriously sourced. Life-event-support is, like, if Lexi were in the hospital and for some reason I couldn't just magically fix this problem, would it be appropriate for me to cry on you. Or would you show up to my graduation ceremony and clap at the correct times."

"You can cry on me all you want," he says, hugging her again. "And if you really, really want me to show up to your graduation ceremony and clap, I can probably do that too."

"That was just an example, I'm not ruling out the possibility that I drop out of high school completely and just do magic instead," laughs Bella, hugging him back. "Okay, well, I'll think about it. - It might help if I knew why exclusivity was off the table?"

"...Uh," he says, "I like sex. I mean I really like sex. I like sex like I like food. I fucking love ice cream, but I wouldn't eat nothing but ice cream for a year. I love fucking you, but I wouldn't fuck you and nobody else for a year. I mean, I've never even had sex with anybody else except that one guy I gave a blowjob to - I wanna find out what it's like with different people, you know?"

"Both metaphorically and literally, you didn't eat anything for four hundred years," Bella points out. "Now it's an impossible tradeoff when presented with your ostensible favorite person versus assorted random strangers?" She keeps her voice very even. She has no grounds for jealousy at this time; it will therefore be viciously killed if it should happen to intrude.

"Um... yes?" he says. "Why do I feel like that's the wrong answer? You're my favourite person but you're not the only person who exists and I feel kind of weird about being expected to pretend you are?"

"I don't expect anything," she reminds him. "There's a reason I didn't ask about any of this ahead of time. It didn't matter for just," she gestures at the picnic blanket, "once. It might turn out to matter - although then again I'm not sure till I've given it some serious thought - for anything beyond once. And pretending other people don't exist isn't the idea, anyway."

"I just... you were sad when I said you were my favourite person, you were sorry because you want me to know more people I can like. But if I want to like them with my body, suddenly you're my 'ostensible' favourite person, like you're not sure it's true anymore?"

"The reasons I'm your favorite person are sad, like, I'd be your favorite person by default because you have kind of a person-impoverished history, but that's not an inherent property of favorite person hood. I'm Lexi's favorite person, but she's had plenty of chances to find alternatives, if we didn't get along she'd have some friend who'd be her favorite person or maybe it'd be Charlie or Renée. Presumably at some point she will find a boy and they will fall in love and I won't be her favorite person anymore. Lexi's my favorite person. Presumably at some point I'll find a boy and fall in love and - she won't be anymore - and making that trade-in for anything less than the most special, most unique relationship seems - bad."

Bella hugs him back and sighs.

Hug hug hug.

"So, yeah, that's where I am on that."

She hugs him and pats his back and waits for the crying to abate.

After a minute or two he's down to sniffling. Cuddly sniffling.

"You can do all that stuff," she says. "All of it. I just have to think about whether it's compatible with us. ...Do you want to fall in love with random people, or just screw them? Might matter."

"I have no idea," he says. "I don't think falling in love is the kind of thing you decide to do, anyway, is it? I didn't decide to fall in love with you, I just - did. Because you're awesome. So maybe I'll fall in love with anybody else I meet that's awesome. Or maybe I'll never fall in love with anybody else again. I can't really tell."