"I'll see what can be arranged. --Whatever you end up deciding with regards to sex with Jack, I think not for your first sexual partner who isn't me, he is quite intense."

He ducks his head. "Thank you, Chris." 

"I suppose you are in fact a free person for the next few weeks and can choose your own sexual partners."

He considers that for a moment, but sex with people who aren't Chris that Chris didn't order him to have just seems pointless when Chris is right there. "I suppose." 

"It's a strange thing to think about. I haven't been able to choose my own sexual partners since my eighteenth birthday, and I didn't have all that much choice before then either."

— that's alarming! He's alarmed! 

"You seem concerned."

"You just told me you didn't have much choice about the sex you were having before you were eighteen, of course I'm concerned." 

"My lack of choice was mostly due to slim pickings and not due to force, if that is reassuring."

"It helps, yes." 

"Not that many men will have sex with a homeless sixteen-year-old, particularly since I was not on hormones and looked much younger than I was, and the ones that will are often not the sort you'd choose to have sex with if you had better options."

Chris doesn't particularly seem like he would welcome sympathy; Marlo doesn't express it. 

"But Anderson took me as a slave when I turned eighteen and told me to stop having sex with strange men from the pier after I got the clap while I was still on antibiotics for my previous case of the clap."

How about he just doesn't comment on any aspect of that sentence. That seems likely to go better than the alternative. 

"What are you thinking?"

"That you should not have been homeless in the first place." 

"It was my choice. I had a nice upper-middle-class family, I just preferred dressing as a man and taking drugs and having anonymous sex and going to Coney Island with Rachel. --My poor brother. He must have been tearing out his hair with worry."

"…I'm sorry about your brother," he says, instead of trying to come up with any other response. 

"He's fine now! You should meet him. He has a husband and a bunch of foster kids who call me 'Uncle Chris' and whom I allow to believe I have a high school diploma."

"I'd love to meet him." The part about not having a high school diploma is completely unsurprising and Marlo can recognize bait when he sees it. 

"...That reminds me that I'm going to have to rework your schedule, since presumably we'd like to add things like recreational sex and you meeting my brother."

"I'd like to introduce you to my sister at some point but I think it'll take me more than a few weeks to find a way to do that." 

"My brother's aware of the Marketplace-- he used to be a spotter-- so it would be easier to explain to him if you were sold."

He nods. "I'd introduce you to my sister as my partner, probably, unless you'd prefer to use a different word — I could say something but it'd be that much harder to hide of all the everything."

"I'm aware of the importance of discretion."