"...also perverted and really bad to get carried away fantasizing about how hot it would be to date you and be in love with you and tell you I love you."

Bruce is pink and blushing and really needs to respond to that but words are hard! "I--but--no--you are excessively cute! And not bad! The opposite of that." Why does his Broca's area glitch out when he has important stuff to communicate dammit.

"...I feel like I'm really failing to communicate something here."

"I got that you have adorably sweet and romantic sexual fantasies and also possibly that you want to date me. Was there something else in there?"

"I mean obviously I want to date you I just can't."

"What's stopping you? Like, if I were to ask you to dinner and a movie, what step between there and us actually getting dinner and seeing a movie do you expect to not work?"

"I mean that would work fine it's just-- I can't really date you because I don't like guys I just like thinking of myself as a girl."

So Aarons fantasized about dating him but doesn't like him in a romantic way? That's bad news and it sounds confusing for Aarons and it doesn't make any sense to Bruce either. Also does "that would work fine" mean Aarons is down to go out with him, or does the conditional phrasing mean he isn't?

Bugger, he's staring into space mid-conversation again.

"I'm sorry. I'm not nearly socially adept enough to model your preferences accurately. Would you mind explaining, without using the words "romance" or "dating" or "sexual orientation", what your feelings towards me are and what sort of things you would like to do together?" Possibly, Bruce thinks, he is not ready to date anyone if he is this clueless, but he wants to date Aarons anyway.

"I want to kiss you and suck your dick and cuddle you and figure out how this absolutely ridiculous sex game works with you and watch movies with you and pet your hair and argue about neuroscience and bring you soup when you're sick and hug you when you're sad and have stupid injokes and make you happy. You are one of the best things that has ever happened to me and since the game started I have not been lonely and I was lonely for a really really long time before and you're brilliant and funny and-- deserve better. Than me."

"I want all of those things too. I want to spend time with you and make you happy and figure out this game together and change the world together and take care of each other and have lots of increasingly unrealistic sex. You're the best person I could have told about the game, if it weren't for you I would have completely freaked out by now. You're smart and brave and level-headed and when I'm with you I can just say what I'm thinking and know you'll understand and not laugh. I don't know anything about deserving but you're the one I want."

"I can be your best friend with sex but I think a lot of people would want. Something other than that. In someone they're dating."

"Oh, you're in luck there, I don't actually understand the difference between romance and really good friends who also have sex and cuddle. Especially if it's not sexually exclusive, which normally I would have been fine with but I suspect if we tried to do it now there's be weirdness."

...tiny hopeful smile.

"Love you?"

"That sure does seem like the simplest hypothesis consistent with the evidence. And I love you too."

"...I still have to either be naked or wear a skirt."

"Well, I'll think you look awesome either way. I guess you could get the skirt and then take it off if you decide you'd rather be naked?"

"...coming is kind of bad because if I haven't just come I can make all my decisions in a haze of horniness. And then after I come I'm like 'oh god oh god what did I just do.'"

+1 SED for convincing ??? Aarons he loves you.

Quest available: The Virtue of Chastity

You don't have to let ??? Aarons come. Investigate your options and choose one. It's not like his dick is doing much of anything to begin with.

Success: +5,000 XP, Edgelord skill
Failure: 'All Fucked Out' status effect

"Well, I just got a quest to have sex with you and . . . looks like 'almost make you come but not actually'. I guess the game thinks horny you makes better decisions. I'm soooo surprised that this is its opinion."

"Well. It wants me to be a girl, and not be paralyzed with shame about how much I want to be a girl." He makes a very unhappy face and strips off his clothes.

"To be fair, I don't want you to be paralyzed with shame either." Though he would prefer to have a lot of "Aarons being brilliant and clear-thinking" in addition to "Aarons being distracted from his own thought process by horniness".

"Have you got a quest for that yet?"

"Nope."

"...well we should probably go walk outside naked and see what happens."

"Yup. Probably nothing. Maybe catcalls." Bruce goes first, clothes under arm.