"I told you to bring yourself home in good condition and I am not satisfied that this is good condition. Come on, pet, be the rest of you."

She nods, inhales, and—

—exhales, shuddering. He rubs his head against her legs, and reaches with his arms to hug them, and shudders once more.

"I had—managed to forget- what a terrible human being he is."

Isabella rubs his back. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"I don't—yeah but—not here. And I want—could you—tell me? What your summer break was. I want to hear something normal."

"Okay." Pet pet pet. "Went to Six Flags with Alex and a couple of his friends. Made the mistake of wearing jeans on the log flume, it chafed all day, they don't sell pants at the souvenir stands. Alex started camp counselor training towards the end of the break, he's going to teach little kids to make gimp bracelets and sing cheesy songs and toast marshmallows, he's excited about it. Renée taught us to make lemon meringue pie, which I'm sure will come up routinely in my life - it was delicious though. I tagged along to a meeting of her book club because I'd read the book but it was really boring and I wound up not saying anything and thinking about magic the entire time."

"Why was it boring? You usually have lots of opinions to share about books."

"Yes, but within three sentences it was clear that the book club people enjoyed books on a very different level from me and would be at best confused by my opinions."

"Why?"

"Well, the book was 'Ender's Game' and they were cooing over the poor children - and not in a serious ethical considerations way, just in a 'yes, we are all very concerned about the plight of poor fictional white child soldiers' way."

"...seriously? Did they, ah, even actually read the book?"

"They did refer to the plot on several occasions, just - not my kinda book club."

"Me too. I missed you so much. I missed you all the time. I kept—I never stopped thinking about you. Not for a minute."

"- I'm all out of synonyms for 'you poor thing'." Pet, pet. "Seriously, would you rather go out for dinner and be fed four kinds of dessert or go have a night in and go to bed early, help me help you."

"I—" Pause. "Am having a hard time expressing desires." Another pause. "Dinner. I want—I don't want to sleep. I want to be with you and aware of you."

"Dinner it is. There's a nice place with a very tempting dessert menu and I am getting you steak and four desserts and packing up whatever you don't finish so you can eat it for breakfast in the morning. My lovely, it must have been so hard."

"It wasn't," he says automatically and then stops and corrects himself: "Yes, it was. I can't even—I hope it takes less than two weeks to get—used to talking."

She leans down and kisses his head. "Did you not talk or just - talk strangely?"

"I—barely talked. Tobias has this thing, only speak when you're spoken to. I'm submissive, don't you see, that means I'm not allowed to have a personality or opinions."

"Well, I and my personality and opinions think he's full of shit. My pet needs rights because I said so." Head kiss again.

He giggles a bit. "And of course you're right. But he has this—thing. I'd almost say he's a psion if I didn't know better. You spend enough time around him and you can almost believe what he says."