"Most subs are girls and most doms are guys."

"We don't have anything like that. Roles crop up completely at random, there's no patterns to speak of."

"It's not that many more, it's like there's twice as many sub girls as sub guys, not like ten times."

Xan nods. "Makes sense. That's pretty much how the gender roles shake out for betas, too."

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, just- since betas don't have anything biologically telling them what to do, they sometimes kind of fake it, men acting like alphas and women like omegas. Not all of them, not all the time, but it's a thing."

"If they're the majority isn't that kind of weird?"

"I guess. Maybe it's just that we're more interesting. Actually I bet that really is it, everybody grows up with these great alpha-omega love stories and they think that's the only way to be."

"Huh. Why are the stories like that, don't betas write things?"

"Yeah, but for the most part it's still about dynamics. Which is weird. They think there's something romantic about it, I think."

"I mean, there is... maybe I should just be thinking, like, betas are regular people like from here, and alphas and omegas are a fancy biology version of doms and subs where you can tell right away?"

"You're not wrong, far as I can tell. Except for where it's a false flag sometimes and people get fucked over."

"Huh?"

"I mean- sometimes there's alphas who don't want to take charge and lead people, or whatever, they just want somebody to tell them what to do and do it, but everybody thinks they should be aiming higher, think they're lazy or stupid just because they don't want to be the President or an actor or something. Leo's like that, he hates taking charge, he just wants somebody to tell him what to do. And sometimes there's omegas who don't want to be some kind of prize for whatever alpha wins their heart, who want to be strong, don't want their ambitions getting called adorable. I - it's not an infallible system, is all."

"Okay. So the biology thing gives you, like, a guess better than sixty forty, plus it does biology things, but that's all."

"Yeah. Yeah, that's pretty much it."

Jackson nods. "I'm a really subby sub and I still wasn't sure until I was like thirteen."

"I think I would've figured myself out pretty quickly," Xan snorts. "I never liked people telling me what to do. Bit people for it, back in elementary school."

"I mean, there are subs who don't want random people telling them what to do, only the right person," says Brian.

"Wasn't the kind of thing that had a right person." Xan shrugs. "I'm also partly generalizing based on the fact that it took me all of five seconds to figure it out once the system was presented to me an hour ago."

Jackson giggles. Brian pats him.

Xan yawns, obviously against his will. He looks mortified and more than a little bit panicked.

"Sorry," he mumbles.

"Oh, hey, you might be from a different time zone," says Brian. "We can make up the couch for you. Hop to, Jackson."

Jackson hops to.

That's... a lot better than expected. Fear is replaced by awkward relief and more embarrassment at the imposition.

"Thanks. Um. A lot. You didn't have to do that."

"I'm not gonna make you get a hotel on no notice with money from, like, space," says Brian, getting out of the way for Jackson to wedge a sheet around the couch cushions.