"I know. I am not going to sleep with you if you're not very sure that's what you want. If it'd make you feel better we could also have other people in the house."

"I trust you. I just - it occurred to we that we'd talked mostly about - the women's side of things - and I wouldn't want there to be confusion about -"

"Hm?"

"We talked about how it'd be very silly for an Osirian girl to have sex outside marriage and I just wouldn't have wanted you to think that that was the only thing and not a problem if you didn't care."

Nodnod. "Yeah. Okay."

"I'm sorry."

" - for what?"

"- being difficult and inconvenient?"

"I don't really think not wanting to have sex until you're ready is an example of you being difficult and inconvenient."

"- okay. Well, if you ever do feel like that, you have your apology all stored up."

"Really doubt I'll have much cause to remember it, but okay."

Snuggle. "I don't think we should have my friends live in the house because they'll be beside themselves trying to figure out how much interfering they're obliged to do."

"Valid. Valentine would probably content herself with glaring sternly if she thought we were being irresponsible. But I don't know where she wants to live."

"Sure, we can have Valentine. If she wanted to live in our house."

"I can ask her, then."

"Sounds good."

"Well. Still too much time to kill before bedtime. But I don't know what else to do."

"Tell me more about your life?"

"Mostly very boring. But I guess I can tell you all the little boring pieces, if you want."

She can tell him about her nephew, and her sister, and her brother-in-law, who they really ought to raise at some point, and a little bit about her parents. She can tell him about the nursery, and about the local library where she used to spend too much time, and about the way she celebrated the festivals with her niece and nephew, back when they were all together.

Well, he does not think this is very boring, even if she does.

"Much more normal first or second date conversation, in any case."

"Is that ...something we should be going for?"

"I mean not necessarily, just - I think my brain is extremely confused about where we are in the progression of this relationship. Probably because neither of us are following our rules."

"We're really not."

"It's narrowed things down to somewhere between 'friends who snuggle but don't have a romantic relationship at all' and 'engaged'. Which is... not really a reassuring level of specificity."