"How would he put it?"

"I wouldn't want to force him and he wouldn't want to do anything I don't want so therefore it wouldn't come up."

"Okay, did you try asking him what would happen if instead you were horrible?"

"It is rumored that people can in fact be so so terrible that a redmage doesn't fall in love with them but merely being a rapist definitely wouldn't do it and once they're in love with you they want to give you what you want."

"Sure, but the question you want answered isn't 'would you still love me if I was a rapist', it's 'would you be capable of shooing me if I wanted sex and you didn't', it just happens to be the case that you are the sort of person who comes pre-shooed in those cases as opposed to the sort of person who might go for it unless they actually heard a refusal."

"The question I want answered is 'how do I do right by him'. But - yeah, okay, fair point. I'll ask. I would just, like, not deal with it for a couple Years but he indicated that the current situation was - not indefinitely satisfactory and for humans a couple Years is kind of the same as indefinitely."

"It kind of is. Pity we don't know how to control the time dilation."

"I could shoo him through his door and close the portal."

"You could, yeah."

"Or if necklaces patch it maybe I can just send him off to university in Tirion."

"He doesn't speak the language."

"Once he's picked it up."

"Fun facts about humans," he says, coming out in a towel, "We don't just pick languages up. Demon, will you clothe me -"

"I ought to put you in pink bunny slippers," says Cam, but Timothy is now in robes. "It is true! Humans do not just pick languages up! It takes years! Of intensive study that a lot of people actually hate!"

He sighs. "I really hate humans. You really shouldn't exist."

"Well, the singing gets obnoxious occasionally too. What'd humans do to you -"

"He didn't do anything, he's a good kid, I don't blame him at all, I just don't appreciate being the only safe form of physical contact for a teenager who is magically in love with me and the system that was going to fuck him up is objectively pretty terrible."

"You could send him back to his family if you can't deal."

"I asked him what he'd rather and he said he'd come. Given that getting preferences from him is like getting music from a moss..."

"You, uh, don't actually have to keep him just because he asked you to."

"The whole source of my distress here is that I am uncertain how to do right by him."

"He wants him," he translates for Cam, sighing, "at least once he's older. And he's perfectly aware that 'keep an adoring redmage boyfriend/slash/whatever-I-think-he's-unwilling-to-commit-to-a-relationship-until-more-personality-is-displayed - magic unconditional devotion is fun but not really the stuff eternal Elf marriages are built on' - anyway, he's pretty sure that this is a satisfactory outcome for the redmage who is in love with him and he'd find it personally satisfying if and only if it happens to be the actual best thing he can do for the redmage, and horrible otherwise. Also he is very deeply viscerally upset about all of the people in the human world assuming he -"

"'Came to their planet to trade them food and medicine for teenagers who won't say no', is I think how I phrased it. And I don't know if I want him, I was planning to be responsible and wait for marriage and I have no idea what - else -"

" - this is off topic but 'be responsible and wait for marriage' is a thing among humans because babies, and diseases, why is it even a thing among Elves."

" - well. Because Eru said so but by the time we learned Eru was an evil overeager stage director it'd accumulated social cruft? Anyway I think it's reasonable to care about not being perceived as taking advantage of a child quite separately from it being important to figure out how to not take advantage of the child."