"Apparently not....was it a problem on Earth, too?"

"Yeah. I was born around the first inklings of serious shifts in mainstream opinion, died before gay people were allowed to get married in most parts of my country, my mom ran in really liberal circles and I knew she'd be fine but I was apprehensive about telling my dad..."

Hug. "Well, when we show up in Limbo with all kinds of goodies I somehow doubt he'll take issue."

Hug. "Oh, I mean, he knows, I told him when I was fourteen, but I was not sure in advance of the response I would get, called him from Renée's house and was prepared to cancel my trip to visit him if necessary and stuff, turned out he was fine."

Fourteen - right, mortals. "Oh, good."

"Yup."

"It's not really an important problem but I wonder if there's an efficient way to shake some sense into that Arda - my alt's not going to do it -"

"Never? I mean, I can understand not having prioritized it... although actually now that I think of it it's weird that you very much don't want to hide me in a belfry while you and him both were fine sneaking around with your respective Findekános..."

"I mean, he will presumably get to it when it's the lowest-hanging fruit for quality of life improvements. 

I was saving 'having a relationship I can acknowledge in public' for 'when I'm King', or planning to."

"Oh."

"Doesn't change any of the calculus we discussed last time, but - yeah. I'd told myself it wasn't permanent."

"Sorry."

"For what, not having spent the war positioning yourself for maximally clean hands when interdimensional help showed up? For being annoyingly difficult not to crush on?"

"Oh, for sprouting a tail, clearly that's the thing at fault here is the tail."

"Without the tail maybe I'd have been able to hold off on expressing interest until Evil Me showed up and thoroughly-if-probably-temporarily fucked up my sexuality."

"You're having fucked up sexuality problems?"

"Thought of being anything at all like him makes my skin crawl. It's not really rational."

"Well, that explains how downstairs we have been for the past few days."

"Was it bothering you? I can prioritize working through it."

"It's fine if you're not in the mood, I am not climbing the walls or anything, I just didn't know exactly why you hadn't been."

"My alt's going to come downstairs and I'm going to say to him 'I see the appeal, I don't see the endgame. From your perspective I only half-have my boyfriend because he won't kneel when I snap my fingers; from my perspective you only half-have yours, because you've got half his brain locked away where he can't use it. I get it! It must have been incredibly tempting! But now you've got a chance to put him back to normal and try something different, and incidentally stop making everyone from a more advanced world appalled at you, and with all the time in the world I'm not really sure what outcome you're afraid of.'

And I think with enough on those lines we will get there, but. It doesn't make it very appealing to actually."

Cam nods. "...If when you are in a better mood kneeling actually entertains you I'm not opposed in principle, just might roll my eyes at you."

"When I am in a better mood we can see if that defeats the whole purpose or is incredibly endearing."

Nod.

Cam refreshes the transcript.

They finish out the summoning book and debate whether it'll work in Arda.

"It's a shame, I wanted to meet one."

"Of course you did."

"We might need to go get some more people after a year, if the people from the technological realms still won't do more than seethe at me - you're very good company, but -"

"Sometimes you want a challenge."

"Not how I'd have phrased it."

"Sometimes you want someone with full access to his facilities?"

"I could just release you from the oaths."

"As you see fit."

"Speak freely."

"If you did that I could osanwë them the room number. I think I would, I'm not at all sure it'd be the right decision but I think I'd do it. They'd come up here and I'd be free and then - I don't know, subjective century around people who I don't know that I'd like if I had more options and who know more than I'd like about me - I want you to be constrained by the fear I'd walk away a lot more than I actually want to walk away but as discussed you don't have any company with full access to his own head and maybe I should be trying to reconstruct what I should be wanting -"

"I will stop teasing you by suggesting it."

"Thank you."

"A year's probably also longer than I can chastely sleep in the same bed as you."

"So better have your go at getting them to do more than seethe at you soon."

"A month, I think. A month to let them settle down, not long enough for them to get impatient -"

"Humans get impatient in a month, demons might."