...he sighs slightly. "I mean, yeah, finding things out without reading your mind directly is exactly the thing I was gonna try. And sure, I can let you know when I'm looking. You don't have to..." he sighs again, and shakes his head. "Oh, never mind. I'll see you later."

Well, now telling him that she plans to buy a phone so he won't be surprised and worried when he sees her on the internet on one in a coffeeshop will be awkward. She decides to text him when she gets a prepaid phone, so that he knows, and doesn't freak out. Damnit, though. She really doesn't seem to manage to convince him of things particularly well ever. 

"See you later," she tells him. "Hope your school things go alright." Alright, first things first. She needs to go through and organize her notes, think of questions for next time, think of experiments to run, and then hide some notes to herself around the apartment in case he goes and starts making her forget things. He probably won't. But just in case. 

He really feels like he could've handled that better but he's not sure how.

Oh well. Time to go do school stuff.

(As promised, he orders her a computer on the way.)

Carl is waiting for him when he arrives. As the teacher promised, the work isn't too hard -- doing some math based on their observations, and writing down some of their conclusions. The math probably isn't too hard to do as long as Sean has a calculator with him, and Carl can help him out as necessary. It won't take them more than an hour or so to finish up. 

He keeps having the urge to loom a little just to see Carl flinch. He only gives in once or twice. The rest of the time, as uncomfortable as it is to control himself, he reminds himself that it would be bad to get a reputation for being intimidating.

As soon as he's done, he checks in on Valerie.

Valerie is hanging out one of the sororities on campus, talking to one of the girls on the sorority board. In theory in order to get into the sorority she had to be doing some of rush all week, but it turns out, just like per usual, if you're pretty and sexy like Valerie is, and you have some friends to vouch for you (which Valerie does, of course she does), then that certainly helps. And being rich also seems to be helping quite a lot. The girl that she's currently talking to isn't that into Valerie's ideas for throwing parties (annoyingly, gah), but what she is into is her money. And the fact that she could donate plenty of money to help fix up the sorority building some, and fund some events. (Or, well, she could certainly get daddy to, at least.) Annoyingly she doesn't seem to be that into her (not every girl is, but still), which makes her harder to convince her to get her to... expedite the process. But she does seem to be with all the money. And she's sure that once she's a member of the sorority, she'll manage to convince some people to have some really fun parties. One she can surprise Sean with. 

She really did miss Sean last night. She wanted to text him to ask him where he was, but it wasn't her place to question him. Even when she went to bed horny and frustrated. She belonged to him (which was still so very very hot), and that meant he could come and go as he pleased, and didn't have to tell her anything. Which even if it was annoying to think about maybe it did make her a little bit, mmm, turned on. There was that cute girl back in the lobby that couldn't stop looking at her. She could always seduce her to after she managed to convince this silly girl that she should make it easier for her to be a part of the sorority. She looked like she might be fun for a quick bit of, well, fun. She shifted in her seat a little, continuing to smile friendlily, waiting for this girl to stop being so excited about the money her daddy would be donating, so she could go play with that pretty flower out in the lobby for an hour or three. 

All right, Valerie's fine. He turns his attention to Dani—tries to see her without reading her. It takes him a couple of tries, and the first thing that works is seeing through her eyes and hearing through her ears without feeling her thoughts.

Dani is currently looking at a person in a cell phone store, talking to him about different prepaid phones and their features and what they cost. He's clearly trying to upsell her as much as possible, but she's currently somewhat adamant about the one she's got in her hand. 

Okay, so that works.

He keeps watching her senses while he tries to think of what is the least invasive possible way to figure out if and how she's plotting against him. He got information out of Valerie by willing it; maybe he can do something similar here? Wish to know what, if any, plans she has for stopping him from hurting people?

Dani doesn't have a particularly strong plan to convince him at the moment, so his knowledge of her plans comes in kindof fuzzy too, in a way that implies that it's her plans that are fuzzy. She wants to talk to him and figure out how he works, and use whatever arguments she has to get him stop raping people (or stop wanting to), and to free Valerie (who she isn't sure if he's hurting or not, but regardless it's "plans to stop hurting people adjacent", so he still gets an impression of that as well). She isn't sure how to do that, so her plans are mostly just research and overservation at present. 

Yeah, that's fair.

He waits for her to be done talking to the phone salesperson and have a moment alone.

She eventually convinces the salesperson to not upsell her, buys the phone she wants, and heads off to a nearby coffeeshop to start getting it set up properly. 

He tries to figure out a few ways of letting her know he's watching, but the first couple of things he tries doesn't work, and she's almost at the coffeeshop, and he can think of one thing that he knows will work because he's tried it before—so, not entirely comfortably, he lets her read his mind.

She can tell what he's seeing, and what he thinks about it: the memory of starting to watch her a couple of minutes ago, of waiting until she had a free moment, of not being able to think of a different way to contact her. The unease and discomfort of being so open with someone he knows doesn't like or trust him, and the fact that he's doing it anyway because he said he'd tell her. The knowledge that he wished to find out her plans, and what he learned, and his completely unsurprised and accepting reaction.

That is a very interesting way for Dani to get a lot of context-filled information, and she stops short. It's also giving her a much better understanding of what's up with his desire to be honest, which will hopefully help her change his mind further, in the future -- or give her more of a handle on him, at least. It's also very disconcerting to know that he's watching her at the moment. Being in his thoughts and mind like this is overall beneficial, even if it is super creepy. 

She's a little bit sorry that he feels uneasy about sharing with her like this, but well, she has very very good reasons not to like or trust him. And even if he is keeping true to his word, which Dani does understand a little bit better why now, she's still not about to like or trust him anyways. 

And she can still read his mind as he's thinking through all this, and though it is pretty useful tactically, and is getting a rather weird double image of what he's seeing what she's seeing and it's honestly still a bit disconcerting to have it continue like this. She tries to think about closing her eyes to make the double image go away, but is worried about annoying him to the point where he reads her mind if she does that. Or she could write him a note in her notebook to tell him to stop. She starts to reach for her notebook.

It's pretty disconcerting for him too. He's used to being able to read people pretty well even without outright telepathy, but he can't see her expression or body language, and isn't mirroring her sense of touch or proprioception and can't get anything that way, so his window into her reactions is very limited. (It's still surprisingly accurate—he's picking up on some unease in how she's moving, just from what he can see in her field of view—but he doesn't really trust that impression and thinks it's just as likely to be him projecting.)

He thinks about the fact that he bought her a computer already, and what he remembers about when it's likely to show up (sometime in the coming week) and how mail pickup is supposed to work in that building (a subject of which he has only theoretical knowledge because he's visited it all of twice), and then tries to think of anything else he might need to tell her, can't bring anything to mind, and at this point she has her notebook in her hand and he suspects she is about to tell him something so he focuses on that.

Well she's glad he got her a laptop like he promised, and that she knows how to get it now, but obviously a week is a long time so she's pretty sure she's not going to go mad with having the phone. She should probably at some point ask him about how wifi works in the building, if he knows. The double vision thing is starting to get really disconcerting, even more so when he starts to concentrate on that specifically. 

"Double Vision", she writes, relatively large to make sure she's understood. 

—oh, yeah, that makes sense—he tries to figure out how to fix it, and the first thing he thinks of is dropping just the part of the transmission that contains the actual double information, and he tries that and waits to find out if it worked. (It did, and very neatly too.)

Dani breathes a small sigh of relief when that goes away. He's still feeding her all his thoughts, which is still creepy and weird and useful, so she can still tell he's seeing everything she is. As well as hearing. But the extra slightly-out-of-sync sensory information is gone. "Thanks for explaining", she writes, in more reasonably sized handwriting. "Interested to try this more later. For now, can text number shortly." 

Huh. It's still so hard to tell what she's thinking. And he could just look, but—he said he wouldn't, for reasons, good ones; he's not going back on that when he can get everything he actually needs in other ways. A simple direct wish will tell him if she's planning anything that threatens his safety or freedom; he can check in to make sure she's still safe anytime; and if she needs anything she can text him with her new phone.

Is she as weirded out by this as he is? It's looking more and more like yes. But if so, all the more reason—he drops the transmission as soon as he can tell she's done writing, and stops watching her at the same time.

There was quite a lot of information in those last couple seconds of thoughts. Dani enters the coffeeshop and pulls out her notebook so she can process it all before she loses it. 

The most important thing, which is what led to him thinking many of the other relevant thoughts, is the fact that while he didn't read her mind, he did wish to know what her plans were. Which is, well, ever so slightly dangerous. She really would have expected him to tell her that he'd done so. Well, in a way he had -- but much more roundabout than she would have expected. Even given that it's unlikely he's going to be reading her mind, given that he promised, and she can really tell he meant it, he's very likely to still find out if she's planning something untoward. Which makes things very difficult, if she ever does plan to do something about him. Which she expects she probably will eventually want to do. The things he seems to find untoward are that she's planning to hurt him or keep him from doing whatever he wants to do. Which Dani would like to, eventually, since however good Sean is being to her, and seems to think he's beholden to her (or well, responsible for her, at least), he is still a monster and needs to be stopped. She's really not sure how she's going to work around this, depending on how often he decides to check. The best way, she supposes, is to try and prioritize other things, for now. At the very least it doesn't seem like he minds that she'll be plotting against him; he almost expects it, so bad things won't happen if she does.

She's also relatively certain at this point that he's not going to try reading her mind arbitrarily at this point, his thoughts made that pretty clear. She understands what he means, much better than she did before, why the his version of truth and honor is so important to him, and why he doesn't want to lie and go back on his word. And, as his thoughts point out, he can get everything he needs and wants in other ways. Besides wanting to keep her from harming him or keeping him from doing what he wants to do, he also seems to need to make sure he can ever know that if she's in trouble, and needs her have a way to let him know that she needs something. Both of which he has magical and non-magical ways of getting, now that he can see through her eyes (still creepy) and, and now that she has a phone, and his number.

And the reason why he feels these sorts of things as needs, well. It's because, since she's his, he's decided that means he's responsible in some ways for her. He wants to protect himself and his interests, (which Dani understands, even though some of his interests are horrendous), but other than that he feels responsible to her. For her safety and well-being, since she is, in a very real sense, his. It wasn't intended as an argument, just an idle thought that he was transmitting along with the rest, and she's certainly not going to take it as such, but it is an interesting perspective. He wants to keep and care for that what belongs to him, and Dani is included in that. And at least so far, his sense of responsibility towards her is a good thing, not a bad one, even if it is leading to him repeatedly impinging on her personal space in unusual ways. At least he didn't tune in when she was hiding notes to herself, though those are probably not particularly necessary at this point. But they're still a reasonable safety precaution. Maybe she should ask him to do some kind of "knock" before he takes a look? Hopefully she can get him to not intrude on her like this without her knowing beforehand, somehow.

Is that everything? It's everything she can remember, at least. She still isn't fully sure what to make of all of this, but she does have a bunch better idea of where she stands right now. And what can possibly go wrong. She's a lot safer than she was worried about being, and she has a better understanding of how he thinks, and what's important to him, and why. But turning that into getting him to stop doing horrible things with his magic is going to be difficult. Especially since he doesn't want to be stopped. She takes out her cell phone and texts him her number, honestly not fully sure what else to say. She'll think of other things later. For now, she needs to buy something from this coffee shop, set up her phone, and get on the internet and see what she can figure out, for now.

Meanwhile, Sean goes for a drive.

He hates not having his own territory. It doesn't feel safe, having nowhere outside his car that belongs to him. Which is stupid because before he had magic powers there weren't any places that were magically his, but... then again, before he had magic powers he didn't know magic powers existed.

Also, school is hard and he doesn't like having to do it. He has good reasons and he doesn't intend to abandon it but dammit it's difficult.

And speaking of difficult and unrewarding things he has good reasons to do—

He said to Dani that if he doesn't want to lie to people he has to just not do anything they're not okay with in the first place.

This seems... basically true.

In theory he could take over the world somehow and have arbitrary power over everyone and everything and take anything he wants by force. But along the way he'd still have to hide his power a lot, and he'd still have to convince people to belong to him willingly if he wanted them, and damn few people are going to want to belong to him if he admits he plans to conquer the world eventually, and the people who do are probably mostly not going to be the same people that he meets and wants and tries to catch.

Helpful Sean has had a lot of success getting people to like him, vastly more than he's had with Dani once he told her everything. On the one hand, of course it's easier to get people to like him if he lies about what sort of person he is. On the other hand, is Helpful Sean really so intrinsically dishonest? He's not a lie, he's just... a different way of looking at the world. People like you when you're nice and helpful and trustworthy, and they don't like you when you're hostile and dangerous. This is a completely reasonable and predictable response and it would be not only unfair but also deeply stupid to try to demand that people stop doing it.

It—hurts, almost, it feels wrong on a very deep level, to think about deciding to stop hurting people. And that by itself is already viscerally sickening, but add in the fact that he'd be doing it to escape negative consequences and—it's horrible, stifling, degrading—what is he, a coward?

Well... yeah, in a sense, he is.

In a sense, every time he passes someone on the street and has a fleeting thought about smashing their head against a wall, and he doesn't do that because the momentary satisfaction wouldn't be worth running through the whole cycle again where his parents cover up his crimes and then yell at him for getting caught, he's choosing comfort over power. In a sense, all the work he's been doing to hide his crimes has been cowardice in action. If he was really committed to staying true to himself at any cost, if he was really the ruthless tyrant he dreams of one day growing into, then he'd have kept raping and torturing people until his parents gave up and let him go to prison for it. And even if he didn't dare do that, he could be pushing past his intense dislike of lying and just accepting all the dishonesty as the price of freedom. But he's not doing that.

So, fine. If he's a coward, he can just roll with that, can't he? Arrange his life so that he can have what he wants, even if that makes him feel small and weak and worthless. Decide that being able to own people without lying to them, and keep them without mind-controlling them, is more important than being able to rape and torture on a whim. He still has Valerie, and he's got her in a state that his desire for honesty finds acceptable; he can still rape or torture her if he wants, even if no one else ever wants to let him.

But.

But he's told Dani that he feels like he might just end up never doing anything to anyone that that person isn't okay with again, and she's still wary and hostile and dreaming of taking him down by force. And from her perspective that's perfectly reasonable! She doesn't have any good reasons to trust him! She's right to call him a monster, and she believes that monsters have to be stopped, and that's just how it is!

If that's how everyone is going to see him, though, if that's what he gets whenever he tells someone the truth—or even if it's just rare for someone to see the logic in his change of heart, rare for someone to trust him after he explains both what he used to do and why he stopped—then what exactly is the point in stopping? He might as well just keep raping people and then lying to them about it, and deal with the discomfort, and buy a house and collect slaves and hope to someday rule the world. If being nice to people doesn't actually gain him anything, he has no reason to do it.

He doesn't really know what the answer is. He wishes he could talk to someone about it, but Valerie is out on account of being Valerie and he's not sure Dani could engage with the question on its own terms instead of trying to twist all her answers toward whatever seemed likeliest to make him stop hurting people. He thinks wistfully of asking Irene, who really seemed like the sort of person who'd be able to have this kind of conversation, but he's not sure how to approach her again without scaring her off and even if he had a plan he's not sure he'd have time to try it, between the schoolwork and the dates and Dani.

It's probably at least worth holding off for a little while, seeing if he can talk a few more people into swearing to belong to him forever without secretly raping any of them first. If he leans heavily on the Helpful Sean persona he can probably get through most interactions without having a serious urge to harm anyone, and then he won't have to deny those urges and won't feel like a pathetic coward for letting himself show mercy, and he can just keep dodging the whole question for a little while longer.

Okay. That's... enough like a decision to be going on with.

Good thing, too, because it's about time for his date with Jenna.

Meanwhile, Jenna is also getting ready for her date. Her date! Her date!! She was a little annoyed to begin with when he said that they were just going to go to the cafeteria, even though she had told him it would be fine to go to the cafeteria, because even though she does just want to get to know him for this date (and she does, she does, no matter what else she might think)l, she can't help but keep dreaming about him sweeping her off her feet and driving her in his amazing car and taking her to fancy restaurants and being overwhelmed and going home with him and having an incredible time touching his hot body and feeling his muscles and letting him touch her and pulling her body close to his and... other things. But. Even if she does want that, and can't help but randomly daydreaming about it, remembering how good it felt to be dancing with him on the dance floor feeling his hands on her and how good it would feel when he did the same but in a slightly different position and anyways what was she thinking again? Even if she does want that, it's more important to savor it, to take her time and make things go well and not dive in so deep she can't swim back out. 

In any case. Jenna is getting ready for her date and deciding what to wear and is more than happy for it to be in the cafeteria which probably won't be too crowded on the weekends (she hopes!) though it is nice out and maybe they could go sit outside if it's too loud and crowded in there. And that would be really nice too. She more or less made this an informal dinner and just a get-together so she probably should dress too formally or over the top so that pretty much narrows down her options to a specific couple of things and she knows just the thing. Something simple and basic and not too dressy but still pretty and not over the top, a pretty blue and white sundress, with a lacy white top and a short (but not too short! Still past her knees!) deep blue pleated skirt. She takes a look at herself in the mirror and spins around in a circle and then maybe bounces up and down once or twice or a bunch of times. She's so pretty! She really hopes Sean likes it. 

She checks the time. She still has more than plenty of time which honestly isn't too surprising given how excited she is about this date, she's been thinking about getting ready and making sure she'd be ready for hours and hours. She's glad her roommate isn't in the room right now to make fun of her for getting ready with so much time to spare. She can probably get a little more reading done in the next hour as long as she's careful to not mess up the dress and then she can head over to the cafeteria early (but not too early!) and wait for him and then she will have a date!! With kissing and talking and getting to know him and very much not getting in his car to be taken back to his luxurious apartment to be touched and caressed and held and and... and other things. Even if it's difficult to stop thinking about. She can make out with him somewhere secluded and maybe do a little bit of what her parents keep calling heavy petting (which honestly dates them so much, but oh well) as long as they're somewhere secluded, like somewhere hidden on campus or in his amazing car but her goals are to get to know him and let him get to know her and make sure she's into him for more than just how strong his muscles look and how cute he is and his smile and his incredible car. This is important. Very important. 

A hour later, about fifteen minutes early for the date, Jenna is waiting semi-impatiently but not too impatiently at the entrance of the cafeteria, waiting for him to show up. He's certainly not late and she probably shouldn't text him yet saying she's here and waiting for him because she is really early and she doesn't want to look like she's a crazed clingy girlfriend when they're not even really dating yet even if this is a date (which it is!) but she'll do it in a little bit. At least she hg ad the foresight to put some of the reading she needs to be doing on her phone, hopefully that can distract her from thinking about Sean every once and a while and keep her from alternately bouncing up and down with excitement and being an anxious ball of worry that he isn't going to show up even though it's still seventeen minutes early and she has nothing to worry about. 

She looks around for somewhere to sit. The cafeteria isn't too crowded but it is somewhat more crowded than she would like and there's a severe lack of isolated dark corners for them to sit in later where they can sneakily make out without anyone else seeing like she keeps fantasizing about. Maybe they should go eat outside, she'll see how crowded it is when he does finally get here. She finds a chair near the entrance where she can be sure to see him when he comes in and he can see her if he decides to show up super early as well, pulls out her phone, and starts trying to do her reading, without very much success, reading the same words over and over again until she finally puts the phone down. Eleven minutes until the date starts. She can probably text him without seeming too crazy. 

got here a little early! Waiting in a chair by the entrance! Hope to see you soon!  She writes. And then she goes back and edits it a little to make sure she doesn't sound too overexcited, ending up with got here a little early, waiting in a chair by the entrance. Hope to see you soon! Much better. She sends that, and then waits for a reply and attempts to unsuccessfully go back to her reading and does her best to contain her excitement and worry and anxiety and everything. And does her best to tune out the more-than-occasional kissing fantasy. And other fantasies. 

About five minutes later, she gets a text that just says ♥, and a couple of seconds after that, Sean appears. He looks around, spots her, grins, and waves.

Jenna feels her phone buzz while she's trying to read and it's probably him and sure enough the notification says it's him but all he sent was a heart? She opens the message in case maybe the rest of it got cut off but it's still just the heart and she's pokes her head up confused for a moment and there he is and actually that was a really adorable thing to do and wow he's so cute when he smiles. She grins back at him and gets up out of the chair without accidentally knocking it over and heads over to him not too quickly like last time even if she keeps wanting to skip and runs up to him and gives him a big hug, looking up at him and his cute smiling face and feeling how strong and cute and big he is and how happy he is to see her and it feels so very nice and she wants to kiss him but maybe she shouldn't yet she'll let him take the initiative but they should probably eat and talk before they do any serious kissing. Yes, they definitely should. No matter what she keeps daydreaming about. But she doesn't need to daydream right now she has the real thing in front of her right now and she can hug him and grin see him and talk to him and kiss him later.