"Yeah, it was fun! And it's good to keep in shape and stuff."

"Yeah! I like it."

He beams.

"So, why do you live alone?"

"'Cause my mom travels a lot for work?"

"Oh. What does she do?"

"Oh, she's an exec in her company! Usually she's away doing various administrative things kinda close-up. … Uh, I don't actually know in that much detail what she actually does? She seems to do it quite well, though." Shrug.

"Huh. Cool." He won't ask about his dad because Theo didn't mention a dad and must have a reason for it.

Pasta! Fortunately, pasta does not actually take too long to cook, nor does bacon, so they'll have pasta and bacon ready relatively soon.

Whee pasta!

Nom! It is in fact relatively tasty, but then again, it's kinda hard to cook just 'pasta and bacon' badly.

"So, what's your thing?" he asks one of his favorite questions.

"That's a bit vague? And I'm not sure what you mean by 'thing'?"

"Well, you know, if you had to describe yourself with three words what would you say, what's important to know about Theo, this kind of stuff."

"Three words, um. I'd hope people would describe me something like 'charming, knowledgeable and fun'? I'm not sure how accurate those are, though, not being another person who could judge my charmingness unbiasedly."

"Well, I find you quite charming."

"Thanks," he says, smiling.

"But I'm more interested in the knowledgeable part, what are you knowledgeable about?"

"I like languages and math, mainly? Science, too – like, if I find something interesting then I might go research it on Wikipedia or something, sometimes I read magazines and stuff like that about new discoveries? Sort of vaguely knowledgeable about science, that is."

"I tend to like not being vague when I can, but that's not always and not about everything. I think I mentioned I'm terrible at languages?"

"I think you did, yeah?" He shrugs. "I'm pretty good at them. Well, at French and I did a bit of German and I've had a look at Japanese but it seems– kinda complicated."

"'Kinda complicated.' Wow."

"It's not actually as bad as you might think because, like, they have a few consistent characters that get used in a lot of places that are pronunciation-based, like letters in English, but then there are a few thousand meaning thingies – kanji, the Chinese characters – and they're, um. Yeah, they're kinda difficult." Shrug. "Not as bad as Chinese, though – that has tones. Well, so does Japanese, sorta, but like, not as much."

"Yeah, I can buy that. But then again, with my current knowledge of Japanese I'd buy pretty much whatever you said."

Snort. "It's kinda neat how different it is, though. Anyway, what about you? What are your three words? I don't think I've heard them yet."

"Yes you have! Genderfluid shapeshifting nerd! They're more uniquely identifying than yours, too."