It would honestly be kind of upsetting right now if she hit him because it'd be pretty out of nowhere but it wouldn't give him brain problems any more than it did when she said something mean once, and a whole lot less than school. Now, school giving people brain problems would make a lot of sense, because they're forced to spend all of their time there? ...it does actually make sense that being kidnapped by fairies would be horrible the way school is horrible?

It is theoretically possible that school is traumatizing everyone a little and they don't have data on it because it's literally everyone, but, like, being made to have sex with people is just universally considered way way way way worse and way way way way more harmful than being made to go to school. 

- does school work as an analogy. Would it be similarly horrible for him to, like, of his own free will hear someone giving a talk about something interesting and then listen for half an hour? Actually she literally knows this cannot be horrible for him because she reads books to him all the time and talks about them and he thinks this is great. Maybe... consensual sex and rape are like... the difference between her reading stories to him at night and him being forced to read stories in English class? Except probably rape is way worse than that second thing, but like, maybe that is a somewhat workable analogy?

- yeah that makes sense. Her telling him stories isn't horrible because if he doesn't understand the story he can ask and if he doesn't like the story they can read something different. And he likes her. And probably sex with someone who you didn't like who didn't care if you understood what was going on and wouldn't do something different if you wanted is probably like English class, and English class is awful. 

If she, like, really wanted to read him a particular story even though it was confusing and frustrating to him that'd be legit though. Like if that was the only thing she ever did he'd stop enjoying stories and that'd be kind of sad but he wouldn't be upset if she did it occasionally.

- okay yeah maybe. But, like, in the context of their generally mutually beneficial story-reading system? Like, probably if you are married to someone and they really really really like one thing and you dislike it a little then it is perfectly okay to occasionally do the thing you dislike a little to make your partner really really really happy? This assessment might be coming from the part of her that was tempted to take Afire, but it seems like it could be right? But that's, like, really really extremely different from having to do something like that with someone who you don't trust or feel like you're on a team with, and also really really different from, like -

- does it help to say that for humans, if you have a lot of sex in a longstanding relationship that you really don't like in order to make your partner happy, that is you being the sort of person who not only gets but takes and uses Afire a lot and thinks this is pretty much fine? And - maybe it won't always give you dramatic trauma or anything but it is still actually pretty bad, probably?

That does seem very bad. 

He is not sure how often slavery ends up being like that, let alone marriages which he hasn't even got a guess about, but it does seem very bad.

It seems like if you didn't have any checks on it and you felt like the - slave owner person - got to do anything they wanted and the slave couldn't object, then it would just sort of end up like that by default? But - she would not like them to be like that. Ever. At all. Because he's really important to her, and - she knows it's probably just way less of a big deal to him, and maybe fairies just can't be hurt by sex the same way, or something, but it's - really really really important to her that kissing specifically isn't ever something he's just tolerating? Or something she's wronging him with? It should - if it isn't good for him it shouldn't be happening. Or if it isn't good for her. And some things are not that, some things are dishes or taking out the trash and they have to be done by someone even if nobody wants to do them, but - kissing should be good. And maybe she was being kind of overdramatic and excessively anxious before, but maybe it makes a tiny bit more sense now why that would be important?

Kissing is good. It's only not good to be reading her mind while she's thinking about it like he thinks about extracting himself from a game with Zana without any tantrum resulting.

Hug.

Sorry. She doesn't feel that way about it. Really. She likes it, a lot, and wants to get to keep doing it. She just - like - it's really hard to actually believe that the things she can offer him are actually enough for him.

Do humans, like, wilt if they don't have sex often enough, or something?

........no but some people have led her to believe that if you are a man and you are in a relationship it slowly drives you insane or something? This might be very incorrect, she does not actually know a lot about this topic.

Humans are really concerning? 

...is it possible for them to get off without having sex, it seems like it should be but he doesn't want to assume things and if it weren't then - like, it'd still be incorrect but it'd be a bit more complicatedly incorrect. In that, like, they had that conversation once about how she could tell him not to, if she wanted to, and the reason that this is popular is that it does kind of result in wanting-sex hitting you over the head all the time and being vaguely hard to regulate and so on. Or so he's been told, he hasn't tried it. 

Uhhhhh yeah that's definitely possible because Catholics have rules about how you're not allowed to do that? She does not, uh, have any personal experience with this, so she's doesn't really know a lot else. And Evangelicals don't ever really acknowledge this possibility so she is not really sure what they think about this either. Unfortunately like a hundred percent of her sex knowledge is from Catholics or Evangelicals or from random probably lying high schoolers or unreliable narrators in books and she is not sure any of these groups are remotely trustworthy. Maybe she should have asked Azalea about this stuff at some point.

- well that tentatively explains it a little bit? Anyway he's not going to go even a little bit insane, so.

That's good! Connor not going insane is good. She is sorry for being sort of generally a mess and extra a mess about this.

She can be however she wants. He thinks she's great.

Awwwww.

...can she kiss him again or did she make enough of a mess of that before that he doesn't super wanna do that again.

Yes definitely.

Oh good. He's very very good and she would like to kiss him. Maybe slightly less enthusiastically because last time was extremely enthusiastic and then it blew up a little, but this is still very nice. She really enjoys the abusing her flight powers thing.

It's really really great. 

Eeee. He's really good. She will - maybe just try to focus on how good he is and how much she likes kissing him for a bit. And then at some point she will stop kissing him and telepathying at him mostly without angsting about this decision first.

"...so you, like, still wanna share a bed and stuff?"

"Yeah, of course! It sounds nice."

"Okay. I would like that. And - I am still kind of hoping that if we do the telepathy thing enough it'll mostly stop being super intense all the time but maybe that is kind of overly optimistic?"

"I'm really sorry about earlier. I really don't mind the telepathy. I just forgot for a second that I shouldn't - that it'd mean something I didn't mean if I stopped you."

"Oh, I really don't, like, care about the system thinking that was wrong of you? Uh, if you want I can try to undo it and put you back where you were before? It's like - like when you took the spellbook, that gave you a bunch of debt, but it was right of you, and I'm really glad you did it? I just, uh, I'm sorry for - being bad at thinking about stuff sometimes."

"I'm not mad at you. I guess I'm kind of mad at the people who told you that stuff but maybe they thought it was true? And maybe it was kind of true within what they thought was allowed? So maybe I can't even be mad at them?"