"Mmhm." Eat eat. "I got a job at the library."

"Why?"

"'Cause I don't have any money."

"Does your dom not buy you stuff?"

"She's not my dom yet, we've only been on two dates, but I mean, I can't have her buy me literally everything I want or need. And sometimes I might want to buy her stuff, like yesterday we went to this cute little cactus museum and there were cute little cacti in the gift shop and I wanted to give her one."

"Oh."

"What'd they say about that?"

"Didn't. The librarian barely looked at it, and I didn't want to draw any attention to it, I'm sure it'll be lots of fun Saturday morning when I come for training. I might have to demonstrate both things, won't it be nice."

"...what, are you going to bring in me and Isabella or something and act different at both of us to prove you can switch?"

He laughs. "I could just act differently at them. Honestly I have no idea what they'd take as enough evidence, there are subs that can act at least somewhat dominant and vice-versa. They might just go 'oh he's confused' or something, which is of course just typical."

"How sure are you you're not? I read somewhere that lots of people think they're switches before they're twenty and then realize they're not."

Shrug. "I'm sure I'm not confused now. Just because someone's a switch when they're a teen and then not a switch when they're older doesn't mean that they weren't a switch then, there's no reason why my role should be fixed forever. I know that right now I'm a switch, and what I'll be when I'm twenty is completely not the library's business, since I won't actually be here by then. And I'm already pretty sure I won't settle as boy or girl at any point, I've been both since I was little, so it'd be... in-character not to settle as one role or the other, either."

"But you couldn't shapeshift before you were a mage..."

"I still knew I was sometimes a girl and sometimes a boy, regardless of what my actual body looked like."

"Seems like a weird thing to pay that much attention to."

"Well, I think we've established that I'm a weird person," he laughs.

"Yeah."

"What's it like?"

Chew chew swallow. "Hmm? Being a switch? Uh, what's being a sub like?"

"...Do you not know? Like, some of the time?"

"Yeah but not what it's like being just a sub all the time? I basically just... feel like myself, neither way to be or act feels terribly different than the other. Relationship-wise, I want Isabella to dom me, and if she was a sub—okay that's impossible, um, if I were courting a sub instead, I'd want to dom them, and outside of that sometimes I feel like a dom and sometimes like a sub and all the time like me." Pause. "But all the time long hair is very bothersome."

"I just keep it in a braid," shrugs Jackson. "It's not a big deal. I can't really imagine wanting to dom somebody? It seems like it'd be really hard and - tiring, I guess? And nobody to look out for you and maybe somebody you have to look out for, so like being single only worse. But it's nice that there are doms." Pause. "It'd be nicer if any of them wanted me."

Nod. Pat pat Jackson's shoulder.