It's perfect.

When he wakes up in the morning, he spends a long while just holding her, listening to her dreams.

Valerie's dreams are chaotic, filled with lust and power, a whirl of faces, a sea of control and dominance, a mish-mash of ideas from past and present and future. Dragging someone to Sean to watch him take them, delighting in his power as he does so. Having others at her beck and call. Serving Sean, as she should, as he deserves. Him perfected as she imagines, wistful, taking what he wants and letting her serve as his queen, everyone belonging to her as well, a tangle of flesh and kneeling and service. The feelings she gets when she crushes someone worse than her and makes them sob in a despairing ball. The delight of twisting someone and making them serve her for a reward she has no intention of giving. The soft warm happy feelings she gets when Sean holds her, relaxing her in a way she doesn't understand. The joy of being dominated by someone so strong that nothing she does works, having finally met her match, falling, and being so wet about it, the intoxicating sensation of dominance she's never felt before, and how devoted she is to him now. Random thoughts and pictures melding together into something that sometimes almost fits a narrative, but usually doesn't. Nothing makes a ton of sense for long, but the ideas that keep coming through should be obvious.

Wow, Valerie sure is the way that she is.

Still. She's his Valerie. So he keeps snuggling her, and when she wakes up, he hugs her closer and kisses her forehead gently.

Valerie wakes pretty much the way she's usually been waking, lately. Wrapped up in Sean's arms, feeling slightly horny, and feeling good and sweet about being in his arms. The kiss is nice too, even if she doesn't understand it. Still. But it seems to work for him. She smiles gently at him, and lets herself be held, waiting to see how he wants to use her, if he wants to. (And she does want to be used, even if it isn't her choice. Which is still so fucking hot.)

Mm.

Maybe this morning he will just snuggle her. He doesn't seem to be super in the mood for anything else.

Valerie is a little deflated when he makes no move to do anything with her but hold her, and it dawns on her that's all he wants to do. Valerie would rather feel his strength and power again, feel him use her like he usually does. But still, it's what Sean wants that matters. And so she rests, relaxed in his arms, still enjoying his soft touches, weakly hoping for more but knowing that it's not her place to ask for more. And even if she wants something else, this is still nice. It's always been nice.

He holds her and pets her and cuddles her and enjoys the warmth and comfort of ownership. Even though she is, to be honest, kind of a shitty slave in a lot of ways, she's still his and he's still glad he has her and he still wants to hold her and protect her and keep her safe and happy.

Valerie still doesn't really fully understand his calm and gentle touches and what he seems to want from her. She's important to him, clearly, and that does make sense because she's obviously the best, besides him. But the way he seems to touch and care for her implies that he wants her for more than that, more than just fucking and dominance and control and an shining example to the rest of his pets, whenever he manages to go about getting them. He seems to want to care for her in a way she doesn't understand, and no matter how nice it feels it still feels strange and peculiar. But it's not her place to argue with what he wants, she supposes. She's done that many times and he never seems to like it. Maybe, just maybe, once she brings Lidia to him, things might start to change for the better in his approach. But that's not her place to say, as has been made rather clear. Until then -- well, relaxing in his arms like this is very soft and nice. And it feels oddly sweet and comforting. A tear leaks down her cheek a little at the sensation, and she's not sure why. She's not been sure of the why of a lot of things, lately.

Aww. He smiles and kisses the tear from her face and cuddles her some more. Yeah, cuddling Valerie is clearly an excellent plan. If he does enough of it maybe someday she'll figure out what caring about people is like and why it's so good.

Well, she's unlikely to figure it out this morning.

Valerie stays in his hold, feeling strange, gently enjoying his touches, resting and waiting for whatever he wants to do next.

And after a little while longer, he sighs contentedly and kisses her.

"Mmm. I better get to class." Another kiss. "See you later."

Valerie smiles at him faintly, ignoring the water in her eyes. She should probably figure out what she's going to do today too. Normally she might find some dumb boy to fuck to take her mind off things, but she isn't really feeling in the mood, for some reason. She isn't sure what she's in the mood for. Well, she has plenty of time to figure it out.

She kisses him back, still gently smiling. "See you later, sir," she tells him.

When he sees her tearing up he smiles and kisses her forehead, then hauls himself out of bed to go grab his phone and his clothes and make sure he gets to class on time.

Valerie smiles back at him and does her best to regain her composure, feeling oddly off-kilter. But a couple of breaths recenters her. She has a class in a while that she doesn't have to go to, of course. She grins softly to herself remembering just easily she wrapped that lovesick boy around her finger. What a hapless fool. Still, she enjoys the entrances she makes, and she doesn't have anything better to do, since rush events aren't until tonight, and she isn't likely to run into Lydia by accident. Sadly. Maybe enjoying the way the boys (and some of the girls) look at her will make her feel like more of herself. It's always nice to turn all the heads in a room, after all. It was such fun to see how much they wanted such a hot and sexy girl like her. And maybe afterwards she'd blow off her next class and find someone to fuck her properly. If that's something she wants at the time.

Sean's phone doesn't contain anything interesting besides various school emails when he goes to check it.

Cool. Then he is going to... go to class, and pay attention in class, and be surprised by how well he is succeeding at not completely sucking in class. Yep. That's gonna be his day.

To start with, his day consists of his science lab class. The professor has them hand in their workbooks, and then she goes into detail about what exactly the experiments were about. She explains the material science of what they've been doing in detail, and what it might mean when using these materials to do different kinds of things. She relates the stress-testing they were doing on them to the different kinds of stress-testing they might be applied to, complete with diagrams. How these materials might act in a bridge, a building, a sculpture, or various other applications. She explains the equations for the different kinds of forces that might be applying to things, and gives examples with the materials they've been testing. One suited to the job they're being used for in her examples, and one... not so suited. A good overview, essentially, of why the different kinds of material properties matter when creating things with them. 

Eventually, when there's about 30 minutes of class left, she finishes up. "We'll be having another lab this Thursday," she tells the class. "Feel free to pick a partner when you come in then, though if you're not sure who to pick I'll be happy to find someone at random for you! That's all I have for today, so feel free to have a little extra time before your next class." She'll wait up in front of the room if anyone has any questions, and a couple seem to, but most of the students start talking to each other, and filing out. 

This is, like, legitimately directly useful information if you have magical powers and can make arbitrary things! That's kind of cool.

He super does not stick around to ask questions though. That would be a little too much extra school for him.

On to... driving around for a while... and then writing class!

Karen gives him a smile and a wave when she sees him enter the room. He's looking a lot better than he was this weekend, though still quite a bit haggard. Karen really wishes she could have a little bit more detail about what had been going wrong with him when he broke down crying on her, but, well. It isn't her place to pry. Even as curious as she is. Still, she feels responsible for his well-being -- but maybe she shouldn't start out asking with quite so difficult questions. Hopefully, the easier ones first. 

"Hey, you're looking better," she tells him. "Did the test go well?" 

"Yeah, I totally didn't suck! Thanks so much! How've you been?"

Karen grins. She's glad she's managing to help him! Honestly, she really wishes that calc teacher would do a little bit of a better job here. Sean's got a perfect opportunity to change things and... well, she'd been over that before. Regardless, she's managing to do what the math teacher seems incapable of for some reason. And she feels pretty great about that, even if it is a little bit more pride than she really should be feeling. "I'm glad!" she tells him. "I've been alright. Mostly been doing a lot of math. But the fun kind!" she quickly finishes, to make sure he doesn't get the wrong idea. "How about you?" she continues, smile softening a little with compassion "How's everything been going since, well, this weekend?" 

"...better. I'm—yeah. Better. Thanks so much, again."

Karen's bottom lip twitches a little. She wants to know more, but he was rather clear about not wanting to share more details, and for good reasons. There isn't anything else she can do. Even if she really wants to. Well, time to talk about something else then. "I'm glad," she tells him. "Let me know if you need something else like that again, alright? I'll be happy to help you out." She pauses for a moment. "Speaking of which, we're still on for tutoring tomorrow, yes? The extra pocket money's been rather nice, you know." She gives him a humorous joking grin. 

"We super are! And this time I will hopefully not be too exhausted to pay you!"

Karen grins and giggles. "Hopefully not!" she replies. "I'm sure we'll manage to work things out regardless." She takes a moment to suppress a few more giggles, feeling mildly pleased that she's managed to cheer him up a little more. "Same time, same place, then." 

More students are starting to trickle into the room -- it looks like class is going to start pretty soon. 

Okay. Cool. He can totally pay attention to class. Look at him, paying attention to class. His parents are going to be fucking floored. Maybe he can get them to buy him a house.