"I need to start carrying like a notepad or something with me to keep track of all the questions I want to ask," he comments lightly. "I don't particularly mind if you think of me as a boy more often than a girl or an enby, brain habits aren't horrible. And besides, I've kinda spent the past few months trying to be boy or enby more often than girl around you in hopes that my cute face might nudge you in the right direction."

"I noticed that, actually."

"Did it help?"

"Some."

"Yaaaaay!" He twirls in the air a bit, hugging his shoulderbot.

"Was it - I don't know, hard?"

"Hmm... Nnnnot exactly. When I was feeling particularly not-a-boy I went in costume. Except sometimes when I knew it wouldn't be too long, like just before the fundraiser, a few minutes as a boy when I'm not a boy doesn't hurt. When I was feeling not-an-anything or boy, though, boy I was."

"You did hang out here as a girl once or twice."

"Yeah, mostly to, you know, make it less glaringly obvious, and mostly at the start. I think I haven't been a girl when it was just you around in a while."

"Actually, once I noticed you were doing it I was surprised you were going to school as a boy. Although I suppose I don't know if it adds up at all, if having routine girl time when you weren't going to interact with me would compensate for routinely boy-ing around here."

"I mean, I had to pick a single gender to be at school. When I was at Winslow I was both but looked mostly like it was just makeup and such, but here it'd be pretty obvious that the genderfluid kid enrolling in Arcadia at the same time the nonbinary superhero appeared was in fact said superhero. And it's not really having routine girl time, it's not—it doesn't really add up. I just sometimes feel like a thing, sometimes like another thing, sometimes like nothing, sometimes like a mix, and like I said I was almost never a boy around you when I was feeling not-a-boy, but I am a boy at school sometimes when I'm feeling not-a-boy, and otherwise I would be a girl at school sometimes when I'm feeling not-a-girl. So, uh, what I'm saying is that the loss in wellbeing would be the same either way, so I chose the one that would have the best expected returns. If I hadn't been crushing on you I'd probably have tossed a coin or something." Pause. "Uh, maybe something that's not directly obvious is that being Glam is good no matter what I'm feeling like."

"Huh, I'd feel awkward about having a genderless costumed persona even though my costume's pretty ambiguous on its own."

"I can't claim to understand this particular part of myself, no matter how much I've poked at it. I guess it's partly because I don't really see Glam as genderless, just as this mess of gendery wendery ball of stuff? If someone used 'they' at me when I was very clearly a boy or a girl, I'd be perfectly fine with that, too."

"Gendery-wendery," snorts Lorica.

"You know, it's what gender would be if you tied it around itself many times in five-dimensional non-Euclidean geometry."

Giggle.

He repositions himself so that it's like he's on a bed, resting his head on his crossed arms with his legs kicking in the air. "So, tell me about your—family? Mom? House stuff?"

"I'm an only child, it's me and Dad and Mom, we live in town, she teaches kindergarten. We... have a house? What about it?"

"Found his spare helmet in the closet when I was little. Mom drives me to school and I come here through there weekdays, but I usually go home or come in on weekends with Dad; he's got a route that he can teleport through directly where if his suit's flight is turned off the safe landing spots in certain directions are predictable and he can land us in the living room. They're nice people, they think I'm responsible so they're not on my back all the time like some people's parents, Dad's quiet and Mom's bubbly."

"Awwwwww!"

"What?"

"I dunno, the whole image of it is kind of adorable."

"I've never thought of my family life that way before."

"I am very likely biased towards seeing anything related to you as adorable."