"I'm not fighting it, necessarily," Simon countered with a shrug. "It's taken years, but I feel like I'm finally accepting it. I never would have agreed to help out in Lambeth even a few months ago. I'm more interested in understanding it than anything else. That's why I spend so much time in the lab. I want to know why I am what I am. It's why I've spent so much time looking for my birth parents." And now that he'd made a deal that exchanged help with finding them for Simon's dignity, maybe he'd finally start having luck.

He reached into the clothes bin for a pair of jeans and a shirt, and after donning them he joined Matt on the futon. This seemed to really be affecting Matt, much more than Simon thought it would. "Normal was safer for me, for a time. Now it's gone completely out the window."

Maybe it was time to change the topic.

"Drinks?"