"That's good! And that means we're probably not a comic book, then." 

"I wouldn't be very good at dealing with comic book villains. I guess I could do some things that I haven't ever had reason to do? Like, I could - spy on people? Not if they were actually hard to get to but if they were relying on noticing and tracking down a spy."

She smiles at him. "If we ever do run into a comic book villain, you can handle the espionage, and I'll do the flashy stuff?"

He grimaces. "I guess, if they're that bad. I used to shoplift a lot when I was a kid and getting caught still wasn't fun even if all I had to do was convince them I had to pee to walk out."

...Oh. Right, yeah, of course he did. "...gosh. Yeah, that sounds... not fun at all. I'm sorry." Squeeze.

"I don't do it any more," he assures her, as though she'd said anything which required this reassurance.

Awwww. "I'm guessing you had to, before you got a job?"

"Once I was too tall to wear my brothers' most generic old clothes, yeah. - is it weird to call them that. I usually do but only because nobody's ever following up on that."

She thinks about it. "I don't think it's weird? They were a big part of your life, right?"

"Yeah. It's just, you know. Usually a reciprocal thing."

"Yeah, but..." hughugs. "I dunno. It wasn't up to you, right?"

"...I could've moved between houses more, if I'd wanted? I had to sometimes if they really didn't want guests, like if somebody was sick or they all went on vacation."

"...I mean, you could have? But..." she shivers. "I dunno. I wouldn't ask that of any kid. It seems like it'd be really hard."

"Yeah. Still. I don't remember how I wound up there in the first place but I did decide to keep going back."

"And now you're here!" Smile. (Eyeglow.)

"Yeah. Followed Annika out. By the time she graduated it was getting pretty weird to be there, I kind of had to avoid Sly because that was always everyone's guess about who'd invited me once Gil was gone - they were pretty high on the assumptions that people have friends their own gender? - and if he was in the room he'd deny it, so."

"Huh." She frowns, thinking about it. "...seems like a lot to juggle."

"Sometimes I think that regular people have the same amount of stuff to juggle? Like, there are lots of things I don't have to do. Mostly it's stuff I'm missing out on but it's still not getting juggled. I don't get invited to things. I don't get asked for favors that take longer than, like, holding a ladder or grabbing somebody a napkin while I'm up."

She nods. " I guess it just could just sound like a lot to me because it's all stuff I'm not used to thinking about." 

Yawn. It's getting late.

"I should probably let you sleep?"

She nods. But... he doesn't have a room... "...Wait, do you just... sleep on the couch?"

"...yeah. Sometimes if there's a girl who brings home a lot of hookups I will try sneaking in on a night she doesn't have one in case she rationalizes that in the morning but the last person this worked with moved out before you got here."

Man... (Her eyes flash for a bit longer than usual.) "Um. Do you want to leave the room and come back? As a test?"

"...that'd make sense." He gets up, kind of slowly.

"...wait, real quick." She grabs a sheet of paper, writes "THIS IS SKIP HE'S A FRIEND CHECK YOUR NOTES HE'S GOT A WEIRD THING GOING ON IT'S NOT HIS FAULT" in barely-legible handwriting and scrawls an odd symbol on the bottom, then hands it to him. "...just in case."