What he wants?

For a moment he struggles to organize his thoughts into words, to answer the question out loud, but he can't seem to make it happen, and she's reading his mind anyway, so he doesn't have to.

He wants...

He wants to not have hurt her. Well, he can't have that. He wants her to be okay—he wants to figure out what she needs, and give her that, whatever it is—he wants her to get to be happy again—he wants to see her be happy again, he wants to get to make her happy again—but he is very clear, in his priority ordering, that he would rather she be happy without him if her life would be worse with him in it.

He thinks for a moment of—if the thing she wants is to forget that he hurt her but not still be into him, maybe he could patch that with mind control—but of course it would stop working as soon as she left his car, so that doesn't work. And—fuck. It's actually hard to think in terms of what he wants for himself, because making things convenient for him is so obviously not a solution to the problem, the problem is that he raped her, and he can't undo it and he can't make it better because—the only real solution is to find what she's okay with, and if she's not okay with anything then he isn't either.

He's so fucking regretful. Like actually regretful. It's great that he's growing as a person. If only he could have grown a week ago and then everything would have been fine. 

She can see a world where she would have forgiven him for everything, over time, after getting used to it, disgusted by what he'd done to other people but glad to know he was learning, attracted and enticed and drawn in by the prospect of magic enough to ignore or forgive some things, if only it had been shown to her gently. If only it hadn't been done to her, if only he hadn't taken away her choices and her adventure and made it his instead, making everything they'd done together into a horrible mockery. A farce. It wasn't in some ways, everything had happened had been real, between the both of them, he just hadn't realized that it was wrong to rape someone and wipe their minds and then try to date them as though nothing had happened. She wanted the promise of everything, she can remember just how enticed she was once she got over the shock of the muffin and how pretty and interesting and new the future seemed until she screamed and curled up and cried in the corner. Maybe in a little while she'll get that back. But right now there's no way for her to heal, not without keeping her memories and having time to process and look into the weird and interesting future of sex-based magic powers that she would be so interested in if not for her horrifying introduction. 

"I don't know," she says, slowly, "if any of the outcomes are really ok. Anything that's ok for me wouldn't be for you, or at least wouldn't be something you could keep up at this point." She smiles grimly. "I want to know what I would do if I wasn't horrified and burned out right now, and I don't know how to do that given that as soon as I leave this car you're going to take all my memory away. I don't have time to process any of it. I want to know what I want when I'm, when I'm happy. When I'm me, when I'm who I was an hour ago. And right now that me is so far away I don't know what she wants. She might want to go on an adventure again, even if it hurts. I don't fucking know anymore." She lets the tears flow down her cheeks again. "I want to punish you and I want to forget everything and I want our old relationship back and I want to learn about magic and I want to never know any of this happened and I don't want you to, to touch me ever again because you don't deserve my niceness after what you've done to me. And I can't have all of that, it doesn't work. I want to be me again, and I don't know how we can do that without letting you put your slimy hands all over me again. The best outcome would be to call it quits, but then I would never get to have an adventure like this one. And leaving me unknowing and smiling is, is..." she sobs again and curls up. "You hurt me, you hurt me you hurt me so badly, you just did what you wanted and you thought it was okay, and I can't make it go away. You took away my choices and you made me feel such pain and then you have the gall to date me afterwards and I'm still just going in circles again. You made me like you. I still like you. But also I hate you. Asshole."

She sobs for a little while longer. "I need a better way to think," she says finally. "Is there some way, any way to make this better. Easier. Any way I can get over this crying faster and get to the point, or have time to do it. Or see what I'd think if, if, if I'd had more time. Because it's so hard to think right now, and I don't feel like myself at all anymore." 

—well, yeah, that sounds like a thing that can straightforwardly be accomplished with mind control—he'd have to think for a second to get an exact goal he's sure of—he could just will her to be comforted, to be more okay, or he could try willing her to actually think faster but he's never done that before and he's not sure how possible it is or how much extra time she'd need—

She laughs despite herself. "I have no idea how much extra time I'd need either." She pauses, trying to figure out what she actually wants here. The idea of him doing any actual mind control on her like that is abhorrent, but maybe there's something simpler they can do. She wants to be able to think clearly. She wants to be her old self. Her old self isn't exactly compatible with her current memories, but maybe if she has a nice nap she'll feel a lot better about things and be able to be that person again. Or maybe she won't. But maybe... 

"Let's start with something simple," she says, carefully. "I think I want a nap. A nice long one. I really just want to sleep right now, and I honestly, honestly think that will help. Is there some way you can make me feel like I just had all that sleep, all at once?" She laughs again. "I have no idea what you can do. I almost feel curious enough to ask. Maybe I will after I get some sleep. Or feel like it."

"...yeah. I can do that."

His eyes flash gold, and she sleeps.

He wants her to have pleasant, comforting dreams, that she won't regret having when she wakes up. He wants them to be as—dense—as possible, to give her as much unconscious processing time as her mind can safely pack into the space of a few minutes. He wants them to be... whatever dreams are the best ones for her to have right now, according to her own needs and desires and opinions.

He lets her sleep that way for five minutes, watching the clock. Five minutes seems like a reasonable amount of time for a first try.

Five minutes, from his current perspective, feel an awful lot like forever.

He thinks about reading her mind, and doesn't do it, because she wouldn't want him to. He thinks about the fact that he could use mind control to make her be okay with him, fiddle with her memories and attitudes until she smiled at him again, and that one he doesn't even consider as a serious possibility for the brief instant it would take him to reject it; he knows damn well that he just isn't okay with doing that on any level. He thinks about how much he regrets his choices. He thinks about how much he already misses the awkward car cuddles, how much he would've loved to snuggle her cozily in a proper bed. He keeps track of the time. He notices he's started crying, and wills himself to stop.

When five entire minutes have passed, he wakes her up.

Jenna wakes and stretches and smiles, thank goodness that was just a... no. No it wasn't. She freezes, and frowns. She's still in his car, and she slept because she asked him to. And she's still reading his mind. She frowns again. Still, as horrible as this situation is, she feels better. Much better. Before she just wanted to sleep and now she's wondering how he got this power and where it came from and what its limits are and what he can do with it and... and yeah ok that feels a lot better. He's still horrible. He's still an asshole. He still hurt her and hurt her and hurt her and... and the dating afterwards hurts, it still burns and makes her ache and still feels like a mockery. But it was honest and real, and she knows he feels that way, and she knows he regrets everything. And if they could do it over from scratch, well. It could work.

There's no way to do it over from scratch, but it isn't fair that the only thing standing between them, between her and finding out more about magic from a boy whose whimsy gives her muffins and makes her feel incredible and loves the way she thinks (shudder) and the way she acts and the way she is and, and, well, it could have worked, at least for a while. But it doesn't have to work. He hurt her and that's never going to go away. And there's no way right now that she'd agree to do what it would take to become his, not if it requires that. But she's more open to more right now, to seeing what it would it would be like to continue to date him as long as he was careful and things didn't go too awry and... something. She still doesn't quite feel like herself. She's still not sure what to do. But she feels like she can make a much better choice now and stick by it and have things no go horribly if she does."That... helped a lot," she says finally, smiling at him softly. "Thank you." He really is sweet, in some ways. Even if he is an asshole in others. And if all he wants to do is make her happy well then there are ways she could be made happy, ways that she could be happy and be with him and maybe with enough time the informed version of herself could learn to forgive him and realize that once upon a time he made a mistake and really she knows his upbringing wasn't the greatest and maybe just maybe everything could work out. This is a bit more investment than a college fling which is probably what this would have been to begin with really deserves but there's magic involved and how's that going to even work anyways if she only knows about it when she's in the car there's going to be three levels of herself which is kindof strange to balance at least until she's going to be like that until she can get up the courage to forgive him or find out that they shouldn't be together or something. 

"Alright," she says after a moment. "I think I have a bit of an inkling of what I want. I think I want, I want to keep trying this, because I want to know more about magic even though I am pretty annoyed and angry and hateful at you still, and because I liked what we were doing even if some of it was rotten some of it was real. And, and I was having fun. And I want to go back to having fun. And part of me wishes that it wasn't with you but part of me wants to know where things would go and go back to how easy and wonderful things were before. But I still want to learn about magic. And I still want to be consulted on things, at least until I figure out if I can learn to forgive you. Which I don't know if I can ever do. But I want to see if I can." 

—he wouldn't have expected it to hurt when she smiles at him, but it does, it really really does, because—she still likes him—and he likes her too—and he has fucked this up so very badly—but it's good, too, that she's okay enough to smile, that she does still like him—

"—yeah," he says softly. "Yeah. I can, I can do that."

And if—if she wants him to hold off on certain things for now with whatever other version or versions of her they end up creating, like not having sex with them, or something, or if there's one in between this one and the one outside the car who learns about magic and about him hurting people—there really isn't a feasible way to learn about magic and not about him hurting people—maybe not letting her become his even if she wants to, or not reading her mind even if she says it's okay—he can try to figure out what excuses to make.

She takes a breath. She does still like him. The sleep helped. He has been sweet and good and kind and wonderful to her, and sexy and hot and fun and the kisses have been great... and none of that was him cheating or using magic. She so very much wants everything they had to be real and it was but he hurt her, so horribly, and she doesn't know if she'll ever be able to forgive him. But it's not fair to herself to do that to her usual self, and, and she wants this adventure. And some part of her is making an analogy to the usual trope of fantasy romance novels with the tortured male love interest and she hates herself a little bit for making the comparison because the girls in those stories always seem so foolish but they always do redeem the boy and this boy does seem pretty redeemable. As long as she can keep an eye on him. 

As for answers to his unspoken question, and honesty she can see why he likes reading her mind so much even if it's not just her mind that he likes it really does come in handy quite a bit to know what he's thinking and how he's feeling and how to shape what she says or does based on unspoken thoughts and ideas, but to answer his questions, she says, "I think we might need some excuses to make, yes." She misses kissing him and things and some part of her stomach turns at the idea of being into him and not knowing it but she tells herself again that he regrets it and that she'd forgive him if it were anyone else. Just like what happens in the romance novels with the foolish female characters. But she wants the adventure, she really does. "I think we need to figure out how to get our stories straight and figure out what everyone knows and figure out how to make sure you don't read my mind unless I let you, and very much not go any further with sex at the moment, for now. I realize you will do whatever I want, at least at the moment," she grins at him, "but honestly it's easier to figure things out if you think through them. What exactly do you want this to look like, if we want to make sure I get woken up often enough to get consulted on what's going on here." It's really odd that in some senses she has all the power here even though he's the one with all the magic, that all her power is just an illusion, but it's not an illusion she's going to break and honestly she has all the power because he's so regretful, and he's going to bend over backwards to try and make it up to her. Actually...

"Just to be sure, you're sure you're not going to make any exception for me keeping my memories outside the car? Because that would make things much, much easier and less convoluted." She supposes she understands why he wouldn't, but she wants to be sure, and he's very much convincible of a lot of things at the moment. And things would be so much simpler that way. 

(Oh her smile. Ow. Good ow, maybe, but ow.)

He tries to sort through what the different levels would look like, but then she asks another question. He shakes his head immediately. "Nobody outside my power gets to know I have it." That's—important, especially given the implications of Dani, the dangers that must be out there. He has to be able to protect himself and his people. And if she ever remembers something outside his car, then she'll always remember that thing outside his car, unless he owns her, which she has made pretty clear she doesn't want; so if he lets her leave the car with the wrong level of information once, that puts an end to all the clever schemes they might have that involve manipulating her memory; unless, again, he owns her. And, again, given all of the everything he's hardly about to push for that.

It's so interesting, the way her smile hurts him. He clearly cares about her deeply, partly because he hurt her so so horribly, but partly because he likes her, likes her a lot, and really that hasn't ever changed. Some part of herself is worried that she's deluding herself about this whole thing, that she's getting into a relationship with someone horrible just because it made her happy and because of the promise of magic and because it's comfortable and because she doesn't want to lose what she had even though there is something terrible here. But she wants to forgive him, she does, she wants to wake up one day in his car with her full memories intact and find that she forgives him for everything that he did and even though it hurts her so very much it's ok to do even more fun things with him and let him read her mind again and watch him smile at her and know that she did that. Or at least find out if she ever can. But right now it all just hurts too much. 

It was worth a shot. She understands, she supposes, the idea that he has about keeping himself safe, she might do the same in his position. Well no she wouldn't he's far more careful then she would ever be she would totally show off with it and tell all her friends and she wonders what owning someone as a girl would be like and maybe she shouldn't think about that right now yuck but regardless she would probably be a lot less safe than he is being right now and she understands why he's doing it and it's probably better for her sake that he does it too even if it would make things so much simpler and help her get over all of this faster and would be so much simpler but. They'll have to do this a harder way. And that's ok. 

"Alright," she says. "I understand. Maybe at some point I'll be able to, to become, yours," though that really is way more of a commitment than she was supposed to be making wasn't this supposed to be a college fling in the first place whatever it's fine she's not doing it yet, "and that will make things go faster. But it might be a long long long while. Regardless, then, let's go back to getting our stories straight, shall we?" She gives him a still slightly strained, but warmer smile, encouraging him again. 

He nods.

So—

The version on the outside is easiest, she just won't remember anything about magic, that's perfectly straightforward. It gets more complicated if there are layers in between. Like, for a version that knows about magic and about him hurting people but not about him hurting her—well, unless she's got a better suggestion, he can just rewind her right to the moment before he showed her, and instead of doing that he can—show her a version of his thoughts where it never happened. He'll probably need to cheat at that with magic but he's pretty sure he can do it.

And then, well, if she likes, every time they're in the car together and have a few minutes to spare, he can bring out this version of her and talk to her a bit. And—if there's a version in between and she decides to belong to him, he can—maybe bring this version out first to check if it's okay with her too? And if this version doesn't want to, he can... hmm...

He tries to think of a good reason why he might not want to own Jenna. A good reason besides the truth. And when he tries to—fit his thoughts into the right shape—the answer he arrives at is: he didn't hurt her but he thought about it, and he's hurt so many other people, and he doesn't want her to belong to him until he's sure that he won't. Because if he hadn't had this conversation, he wouldn't be sure.

Something like that works pretty well for a reason not to want to go farther with the base version, too. They got kind of carried away, making out in the car; it was, in fact, a lot harder than he thought to remember where the line was, or that there even was a line. The hypothetical version of himself who isn't already a rapist is concerned as hell about that, and wants to take it way slower in future so he can pick up the skill of not getting carried away.

"The problem with the version outside of the car," says Jenna with a sigh, "Is that we still need to figure out how to keep you from going too far with her." Even though it would in some senses make sense and be preferable to get her usual self to stop kissing him and being happy around him and making out with him she'd have no reason to keep dating him and would be rather cross and they'd have to break up and then she'd never learn about magic and never figure out if she could ever forgive him. Which, she still wants to figure out how to do. "I don't think I want you to... I really like kissing you and even if I'm disgusted by it I won't understand without these memories." A tear shows up in Jenna's eye. "I just want her to be innocent and happy just like I was, just like I want to be, and that means you need to treat her the same." 

She pauses, and takes a breath. "And I'm not sure if I even want a version of me that knows about magic, and if that version of me knows you hurt people. Once. Badly. So incredibly badly." She shudders, and frowns a little more. "It'll certainly help me learn to forgive you, if that ends up being possible, if I'm processing it somewhat as her. And the, the bit where you gave me that dessert was cute." It really really was. "And I want a version of me, that, that gets to have that joy and wonder and discovery without being weighted down by pain and suffering of you being an asshole. But it also seems unfair to her to, to lie so much." Jenna hangs her head. This is so so hard to figure out. Some part of her just wants to give up on this and leave and have none of this have ever happened and go back to her fling but that will lead to... well, would it be so bad? Yes, yes it would. He doesn't deserve her. He has to earn her properly after what he's done. 

"And yes, regardless of what we choose," Jenna tells him, her face hardening a little, "I expect to be consulted. Excuses like "I'm worried about going too far" make sense, but I expect to be consulted with full knowledge before you get your joy from seeing my thoughts, because it's sick that you can hurt me and then take it away and keep me like a pretty... a pretty toy or something like that. But hopefully, I'll..." she wants the joy back the simple pleasure and it'll never be simple again but at least she can get back the joy and elation and things if she learns to forgive. And she'll get to learn about magic. Even if the magic is being used by someone evil or who was evil and her mother would tell her that this was a bad idea to go down this path it's still totally a Christian thing to try and redeem someone and also he's still really sweet and hot and attractive and there's nothing wrong with that. 

"I think," she says with a sigh, "I think we'll need to smooth off a lot of rough edges as we do this. But I think I can be ok with learning that you have hurt people and thought about hurting me, but didn't." It'll certainly make her feel special, and that will help. And, Jenna supposes, she is special in a way -- he thought about her and liked her and wanted to keep her and he wants her forgiveness, which well, makes her special and important. "We should probably try, and, and see what happens with that, and see how we both handle it, as soon as we're sure." Jenna gives him a soft, wan smile. She really hopes this works. 

He's going to miss reading her mind, he really is. But he's not even slightly tempted to cheat and do it without asking. It's probably within his power in a technical sense to do that and hide it from her, but, as this entire conversation has proved, he is not willing to have a close relationship with someone where he's concealing something from them that would change their opinion of him for the worse if they knew it. He can handle doing that if there is a version of the person who knows what's up and is on board; he did something sort of like that with Valerie. But if he's just plain lying to them with no extra layers—no. No matter how painful it is to tell them, or how much he stands to lose.

She could just walk away from him. She could say she wanted to break up, and he'd do it. That she's not doing that is... better than he could reasonably have expected. When he thinks about that, and about the many-layered deception they're planning, he feels... determined to make it worthwhile. He really, really doesn't want to fuck this up. Not just because he wants what they had back—he does, he wants that a lot, but even more than that he wants—to make this turn out well enough that after a few months or a year she'll look back on it and be glad she decided to stay. He wants to live up to the implicit expectation that letting her other selves date him will be a better deal from her perspective than never speaking to him again.

He takes a deep breath and tries to smile back. He's pretty sure it doesn't work.

"Okay," he says. "Yeah. Okay. Do you—want to try it now? Is there," words, how do words work—is there more stuff she wants to think through first?

Jenna nods and gives him a wan smile. She knows she's in much less control than it looks like, he can do whatever he wants to her and just simply not tell her and live a lie the entire rest of his life, she knows she's taking advantage of the fact that it feels bad for him. But the fact that it feels bad for him and that he wants forgiveness and wants to make everything right and wants to be good and not do anything like this anymore means that he's somehow managing to grow as a person and it wouldn't be fair to just punish his growth. Even if he deserves it. Plus the fact that he's sweet and hot and very fun to kiss and extra fun to do other things with which maybe she'll do one day and maybe she'll become his they should probably experiment if there are easier ways when she's a little more stable and feeling better about this whole setup. But for now she knows he wants to make it right, and there would be very little to stop him going back on his word if he wanted to anyways, and she also wants to look back on this in a few months or so to find out that it really had been worth it. She wants it to be worth it, and she expects that it very well might be. 

"You're really going to have to do a better job of pretending with me when I don't know why you're feeling so bad," she tells him. Then she takes a breath and steels herself. This isn't her last chance to back out, not by a longshot, not even a little bit, but it feels like it and she makes sure. "Alright," she tells him. "Let's pick up where we left off, and see how it goes. Ready whenever you are." 

"Okay."

He closes his eyes, and summons his will, and—

Rewind.

He'll need two layers of himself for this, but hey, his mind is his, isn't it? So he just does that. He puts Jenna back in the exact mental and physical state she was in when he restored her memories, temporarily paused while he sorts everything out, and puts his outer layer back in the exact mental and physical state he was in, except that the outer Sean remembers certain things a little differently—if he runs that layer too long, his outer self will probably figure out that something's up, because the altered memories are a little out of character, but he can steer things from behind the scenes and hopefully it'll work out. And if not he can talk it over with the Jenna who knows things and try again. So.

Unpause.

His eyes flash gold.

And Jenna remembers—a sudden headache that left as abruptly as it began, and the space in the car warping as he stared at her hungrily with glowing golden eyes—and Sean remembers (falsely) how he was nervous because it was the first time he'd ever done this, and he wasn't sure how long he could keep her without her getting suspicious even with memory modification to cover his tracks, and he couldn't be completely sure that her memories would stay gone after she left the car, so he stopped, at the last second, and didn't touch her at all.

The next person he met on that hunt wasn't so lucky, though.

And then—well, then Valerie, but more importantly, then Dani—it was such a relief to be able to tell someone, even though she ended up thinking he's a monster—and he realized that he can't, actually, keep hiding things from people the way he has been.

He stops reading her mind in the wake of that flash of memory and insight. (Because the other Jenna wanted him to.) Because if she wants privacy while she deals with all that, she should have it. He doesn't—he doesn't want to do things to her that she doesn't want him to, and it scares him how close he came to exactly that.

Jenna wants to know what he means by being a bad person and then she does know, and she backs away a little bit and shudders at the sudden revelation of his sadistic tendencies, the desire to hurt and make them feel things and she understands where he's coming from and why he's trying to explain it and explain that he's trying something else now because he can still get a similar sort of thing a different way, a better sort of thing, according to him, and he's taken other people and she only get little flickers of who they are and she's just a little bit jealous and worried and confused but she's still listening or whatever you'd call this it's not really listening but it certainly is a listening sort of thing and that doesn't really matter anyways she should go back to listening or whatever this should be called.

And then with a dawning realization and a little bit of fear she starts to get a sinking feeling in her stomach when she realizes what he might have meant about wanting people to know about it, about what he meant with hiding before, how he doesn't want to hide and this is him not hiding and how he doesn't want to trick her and he wants her to know exactly everything and even though he's promising in a sense not to hurt her but there's a small sense of anymore attached to that that she's suddenly dreading when she realizes what it might mean...

And then after a moment of disorientation as the memories flood back into her mind she breathes a sigh of relief as it's no longer nearly as bad as she thought but he hurt people and she shrinks back further anyways. He really truly and utterly hurt people in horrible bad ways and wiped their memories and sent them off none the wiser and he'd almost done the same thing to her and the only thing that would have saved her is his caution and worry, she remembers her terror and worry and fear as his eyes glowed like a demon and the world shook around her she remembers the splitting headache and also it's kindof scary and horrifying that the first thing he tried was pain he likes pain he enjoys it and that's so very scary but he doesn't want to hurt her anymore he wants to keep her and be sweet to her and enjoy her and tell her the truth and that's so very sweet but also terrifying and her mind flickers back to all those teenage romance books that she may have snuck at the library when she was 15 before the librarian told her parents where the good girl hangs out with the bad boy and occasionally the magic bad boy vampire who has hurt people and has to be redeemed by the nice girl and it was a delightful fantasy even if some part of her was shouting at the girl that such a thing was dangerous and she should be shouting at herself but he's still such a nice and cute and hot boy and she can still read his mind even if he's giving her space and he truly wants to be good to her and maybe she can make sure he's good to other people and wow he does have other people (her mind balks somewhat at Valerie and the fact that he never told her and wow that's a problem but one step at a time) but maybe she can convince him to be better (and monogamous, he's cute and the prototypical badboy but he's also having sex with other people and he thinks that's ok and that's a problem for a little later let's deal with the bigger problem first here). She's a little miffed at the universe for putting her in this position as the girl-who-redeems from her books which she knows even if they were fun fantasies were simply just fantasies and this is a lot more than just schoolwork that she's going to have to do but maybe there's some magic she can get magic too and that would be amazing and fun and wonderful even if the only instances of magic she's seen so far have been horrible well except for all the wonderful things Sean did for her he's clearly into her that's so wonderful but now this is something to deal with.

She takes a breath, still rather wary and scared but knowing what he's thinking and feeling and knowing he doesn't want to hurt her. "Ok this is really a lot," she says, not quite smiling, but not quite frowning either. "This is really really a lot. Thank you, thank you for not hurting me before, I know it was luck and not anything else but thank you anyways." She takes another breath. "And... and if we're going to do this at all you're going to need to keep being honest with me like this, and not hurt me, and, and, maybe not hurt anyone else anymore?" And probably not have sex with anyone else but they'll get to that one step at a time. Gosh what is she doing she has schoolwork why is she considering being a romance novel character to redeem a bad boy why is she doing this he's just so hot and fun and cute and this will be an adventure and even if it's a lot she wants to because it's new and interesting. And he's really cute and what he did to her was amazing even if it did involve mindreading which is a little scary now that she knows what he's done but also kindof hot if she thinks about it. "But I don't think it is quite bad enough that I want to run from you, the way you seem to be worried about." It should be, it really really should be, but it isn't, oh gosh what is she doing she's crazy how can she be considering this. She tentatively reaches out a comforting hand and places it on his shoulder, looking up at him with a very small smile. "Okay?"

He's nervous that she's going to tell him she wants nothing to do with him, because that would be super reasonable, it would be fair for her to decide that she doesn't feel safe with him, it would be fair for her to decide that she doesn't like him, the thing about being honest and letting people decide what they think of you with full information is that sometimes they don't like what they see—

And yes, of course, he doesn't want to hurt her now (although his feelings on not hurting other people are more complicated), he wants to kiss her and cuddle her and make her happy and—and keep her—except he's a little afraid to keep her, because he's hurt so many people and—he doesn't know how good he is at not hurting someone when he wants to—it was harder than he thought, to remember not to go too far, and he kind of did do more to her than she agreed to, and even though it turned out well this time what if next time they're not so lucky? He likes her so much and—he wants the things they had today, the cuddles and kisses and sweetness, he wants so much more of that, and if he's going to have it without lying to her he has to only ever treat her in ways she is okay with, and what if he fails at that, that would be the worst thing—

But. Then she smiles at him.

He smiles back, a small tentative relieved smile.

"Okay," he says softly.

She's very worried about what she sees, but she doesn't not like it, she likes him a lot or at least finds him hot and sexy and cute and sweet and she likes everything they've done and everything he's done to her, with her, that they've done together, minus one small moment of terror and one bit of pain which she's not very happy about but he does regret and want to make up for, at least. And he wants to do such sweet things with her, things that make her blush a little, especially with all the feelings he has tied up in "keep", she's not so sure if she wants that she wants to have some amount of freedom to leave things if she wants and also he's keeping other people at the moment which is still something they need to talk about.

"It... was a little bit more than we agreed to, yes, but it... it wasn't too far and it was sweet and you didn't take advantage of me. It was a start" and also it was really hot and she is just a little bit dreaming of being overwhelmed like she was before and then taken advantage of because she's so into it no matter what she'd said before and it's really good that he's not reading her mind anymore because she'd be blushing so much more than she is right now just thinking about it she wants to be made to feel like that and keep asking for more and carried off to his apartment and... and... no she should really stop thinking about this right now now is not a good time. And she's blushing a lot. Jenna swallows and shakes her head a little to recover. "But... but if you're worried about controlling yourself you... people don't like being hurt like that, and making them forget about it doesn't mean you didn't hurt them. It would have been horrible if you'd done that to me. If, if you want to be sure you can be good you have to put yourself in situations where you might not be and then do good anyways. I think. And I'll think you're good too. And I believe you can, you could have done whatever you wanted to me in the car just now, and I would have agreed in the moment to it. And then we both would have regretted it." And this is so very true, she wanted so much in that moment, even if he was using magic to help, it was so hot and sexy and needy and wonderful she would have agreed to quite a bit and she's very glad that he controlled himself like that. Wow, she's really glad. Also she wants to do it again. Later. When she's had a bunch of time to process this.

—well okay now he has to take a moment to contemplate how hot it would've been to do whatever he wanted to her, to make her want it, to see her wanting and then give her everything she dreamed of—

Okay, yep, really hot, moving on now.

He... wants to think he'd be good at controlling himself. It would be nice if he could just—not worry about it, and let the fact that he knows he doesn't really want to hurt her carry him through. But it's so important to get this right, it's incredibly important, even if she's okay taking risks, he isn't, not with something as important as this. Especially since he is literally magic and there's a lot of things he could do on a momentary impulse that would have lasting consequences even if he regretted them in the very next instant. He wants to be careful. He likes her so so much and he wants to do so many things with her and... the most important thing is still making sure she's okay and that he doesn't do anything he'll regret. So. Holding off on the magic mindreading makeouts for now seems like... a good plan.

Oh yup she's blushing now yup she's super blushing she really wants that or at least she finds it hot wanting is kindof complicated and he wants it and it would be such fun and she knows he can see her blush and knows why she's blushing and that just makes her blush more and she's really bright red and her ears are burning and whoops well she probably has something to think about when she gets home tonight doesn't she yup yup yup. She should probably also think about this later and not right this second when there are more important things to be talking about and thinking about now matter how what he's thinking about makes her feel and want just from remembering and ok that's enough seriously.

"Holding off on the magical makeouts is... probably for the best, for now," she agrees (even if she doesn't want to agree he's being so sensible which is good and it's good that he's being sensible because he's strong and hot and magical and wants to do awful things and she'd have no way of stopping him and unlike the other things these aren't awful things she wants him to do the little flickers she got from what he did to other people are more than enough to turn her stomach and want to shrink and run away far away because that would be so awful and horrible). "But we shouldn't do nothing, if all you do is shut yourself off from everything because you're worried about things then you won't ever do anything. If you're scared, you should try things anyways, that's what I generally do!" She beams at him, then frowns a little. "Maybe that's not the best advice in your case but really the best way to become less scared of doing things is to do things! Smaller things at first if you have to! Otherwise you'll just stay in here scared of everything and then you'll never do anything again and that would be awful." And plus she wants to do things with him and that would be boring and silly if she couldn't. "The more we do together, the more you can figure out what your limits are and how to control them better." and wow is she still being a romance character, why is this happening, this is so unfair. Fun and amazing and full of magic but so unfair. "You can learn to trust yourself more and more that way, and, and I'll trust you more too."

...he smiles, hesitantly. "Okay."

The thought of her trusting him—of earning her trust— is good. It's bad to be wrongly mistrusted, but it's bad to be wrongly trusted, too—or he wouldn't be here showing her all this. The best thing is when someone trusts you and they're right to.

—and that's kind of the heart of the issue, isn't it? Before this week he never really... seriously considered the idea of becoming trustworthy. He's still not really sure he can do it. It's hard and he's not used to it and he can't count on everyone being as nice about it as Jenna—Dani wasn't—it's fair to call him a monster, knowing what they know about him. He can't reasonably expect better.

But it's nice, to be... accepted. Encouraged. It's nice to see her smile at him like that. It's nice to see her blush when he thinks about fucking her.

...he kind of wants to kiss her, but he hesitates, because he isn't sure if now is the time—

Jenna totally expects that he will in fact be rightly trusted. He... well he hasn't had the greatest track record before, she supposes. But she can read his mind right now (which is still so very cool and she should probably ask a whole lot more about that soon because she wants to see everything he can do and if there's ways other than the car and... everything! There's so much to explore! But there are still other things to do first) and because she can read it she can tell how sincere he's trying to be and what he wants and she does in fact expect him to get it. He's just unnecessarily scared but if he tries it it should be easy. And yeah it's... reasonable why Dani thinks he's a monster because he kindof has been but if he's going to stop then he'll stop being a monster and then the plot of a romance novel will happen and then things will be fine. Admittedly this is a lot to commit to because she's not sure if she'll stay with him forever like happens in books but she expects that as long as all of his desire to be good isn't solely because of her it will be fine. Probably.

And then he wants to kiss her and Jenna blushes a little and it's almost cute how he's being unsure about it it's almost sweet because a kiss would certainly be good. Though maybe not a big one. Even though his kisses are great even when he's not reading her mind and she enjoys being close to him and feeling him touch her and his lips on hers and... and everything. But she does enjoy doing things and he should also enjoy doing things and she blushes a little at how forward she's being even though at this point with everything that's going on that's a little bit silly and pushes herself upwards to give him a quick kiss on the lips that might not be so quick but she'd try. Because it's important to show him that it's ok to take little risks like this. And it won't be bad if he does even if he does turn out to be wrong this isn't something she's going to hate him for and she should maybe tell him that in words since he's not actually reading her mind right now. After the kiss.

!!

Oh she's so good! She's so pretty and sweet and kissable and beautiful and good!

Nearly every other thought in his head disappears as soon as she leans in to kiss him. He's not reading her mind, but he's reading her body language, keeping close track of how she seems to be feeling, interpreting her movements on an instinctive level that feels to him like just knowing what everything means. And he's so thrilled that she wants to kiss him, that she likes kissing him, that he can still make her feel good—and it's so good to make her feel good, he loves it, even when he can only see the results reflected in how she moves and not read them right out of her thoughts, it's still amazing, it's—

But then he pauses just a little, and refocuses his attention, this time specifically checking whether she seems to still want to be kissing him or whether she's conflicted about it. Because that's important, and when he's lost in the joy of kissing her he doesn't really think about it, and he needs to start getting in the habit of tracking that. It matters what she wants to be doing, not just how she feels about doing it.

It's so cute how he feels like that! It feels really really good to be enjoyed like that, no wonder he liked reading her mind, kissing feels so wonderful when you can see just how the other person feels and how happy you're making them and what they're liking and he feels so wonderful and she just wants to keep kissing, feeling him trying to move and read her and kiss her better and the kiss is wonderful and he's so happy about it, so relieved and happy and it's so easy to keep leaning into the kiss and kissing him and enjoying him and—

Jenna giggles at the thought, and does in fact slowly pull away when he thinks it, because he is totally right and she didn't quite intend to keep kissing that long and now she's blushing a little again but also this totally demonstrates restraint and responsibility and that's good and she should tell him that and wasn't she going to tell something else about the kiss when they kissed? She's a little flustered she can't quite remember what it was but she might remember if she tells him about the other thing at least and also he's really cute and fun to kiss and she's really glad she gets to do it more.

"See," she tell him after a moment, smiling, "that's a good example of restraint, and being trustworthy. And" oh right that's what it was "even if it hadn't gone perfectly, even if I hadn't wanted you to kiss me, it's not something that I would have gotten angry about. You can make mistakes it's more than okay, especially little ones." Also, his kisses are really really nice and she would very much like to have more of them even if... oh right. They should probably talk about that. Her face falls a little.

"So, um, there's one one other thing we should probably talk about and then I can go back to my dorm and think about this some" and hopefully not think about it too much because she did in theory have schoolwork and other friends and there's magic and she wants to learn all about it but they can do this again soon later and it's also a lot later than she expected it to be and she feels a lot less tired than she should be sleeping is good and it's probably a lot to think about "and that's, well... I realize the circumstances are weird but I'm a little uncomfortable with the fact that you seem to be dating at least one other person, if not more, I'm not entirely sure."  She blurts it out and then blushes a little more. Honestly she gets why he might not have said anything and his history is weird and she kindof wants to ignore it but it's been bothering her the whole time and she really should say something. "More than a little uncomfortable, maybe." She frowns a little.

He's happy that she liked it and happy that she's smiling and happy that she thinks he did good, and then—

—totally caught off-guard by the follow-up.

At first he tries to think of who else he might be dating and comes up empty, and then he realizes that of course she's talking about Valerie, and in retrospect it should've been obvious that that's the sort of thing you mention to someone who's considering calling you her boyfriend, although he's still sort of unclear on why, because when he tries to imagine Jenna with a girlfriend or boyfriend or magically bound slave of her own, his instinctive response is to get excited about her being happy with them and about how maybe he could be their friend and bond over their shared interest in this excellent Jenna. He does realize that not everyone feels like this. Maybe if he imagines her belonging to someone else—? Yeah that feels bad, but partly because he doesn't trust a stranger to take as good care of her as he wants to—which is a little unfair of him because he doesn't entirely trust himself with that either—and partly because he doesn't expect to be able to share her, magically speaking, and he wanted to own her too...

Anyway, even if he doesn't understand her feelings, she still gets to have them. He's just not... sure... what to do about them. It's not like he could stop owning Valerie even if he wanted to, and he doesn't. Man, is Jenna gonna get this far and then end up dumping him over exclusivity? That's sort of upsettingly hilarious. Valid, though. If what she's looking for is a guy who's not involved sexually with anyone else, he... isn't one.