Coventina bites her lip, nodding like this is reasonable and unsurprising.

"I may have leaned into that a little. And I am sorry about that. But I really, really hated my job and you, well, here I am. So, again, thank you. It was completely reasonable of you to be terrified of a stranger with that much power over you, but I hope getting to know me has been reassuring that you were never in danger. If you'd outright refused me I still would've made sure you got as much of whatever you wanted as it was in my power to grant, because doing anything less would be stupid and wasteful. And since you did pick me, well, like I've been saying. I'm trying to take being your cheat item seriously."

He nods slowly.

"...that's... well, understandable, given the situation you were in. I'm... still trying to loosen the instinctive reaction that whenever you seem to expect me to do something without asking further questions I should do it and not ask any further questions. That's partly a lingering effect from being so afraid of you at first and partly just... how I am all of the time with everyone, I think. I... feel very out of my depth, in this world. I don't like feeling out of my depth. I don't like... feeling like the person I'm supposed to be would already know all the things I'm trying so hard to figure out, but I can't ask or I'll disappoint people by revealing I'm not who they thought I was."

She pats his thigh.

"I know it's not as easy as saying that you won't disappoint me by asking questions, that you can and should ask questions, that Eelesia is turned on by your questions," smirk, "but, well, I'm definitely saying it."

"Okay," he says.

"...when you were telling me I'd made a mistake with you and Sky—you used the word 'aftercare', and it was like—like hearing the phrase 'theoretical physics' for the first time, and—trying to say 'wait, hang on, please back up to the part of the conversation where it's established that that's a field of study, this opens up possibilities I didn't know existed,' but the person you're talking to doesn't understand how utterly ignorant of all related phenomena you are, so you can't get them to explain—sorry, that analogy got away from me a little. Um. It's... it sounds, from the way you were talking, like there is, maybe not a field of study about this, but a vocabulary. A... store of common knowledge. I have no idea what is in that store of common knowledge but I think a lot of it is probably important."

That conversation kind of was left hanging wasn't it. She really just wanted to go to sleep but she should've brought it up again in the morning but also has he really never...

"Laurent, the world you're from. Did it not have BDSM?"

"I might have heard that acronym before as many as a handful of times. I have a vague idea of what it means. I don't think I could tell you what it stands for."

Coventina takes a breath. That's not as bad as it could be. For a moment there she thought he'd been misfiled or something.

"The basic idea is that some sexual desires are dangerous to fulfill 'in the wild' so to speak. You've heard the way Sky talks. She almost certainly fantasizes about being raped and enslaved. And I think you already grok the difference between actually raping and enslaving her, and being her friend in a way that sort of looks like raping and enslaving her but only because her desires put making-her-happy and giving-her-pleasure into that shape? BDSM stands for four specific things-like-that, but the point of it is to be a codified set of guidelines and," she gives him a nod, "a set of vocabulary to enable that sort of relationship, which is more or less standardized in your sort of world of origin, which is why I assumed it would sound like plain language to you and not jargon. Sorry."

"...yes, all right, I think I see what you mean. I want... well. I want to know how to be her friend. And your friend, and Eelesia's friend, although I think in both those cases there's less—" He waves a hand vaguely, scattering droplets of water across the surface of the bath. "Less of the sort of thing where I feel terrifyingly, dangerously out of my depth."

"I do want to do what I can to make you feel safe with me. And I can teach you all the BDSM vocabulary if you think that would be helpful. I want to be helpful to you in general."

"I don't think the vocabulary is exactly what I need, so much as the... concepts behind it? When there's a word for something why is there a word for it, what is its... place in the world? But the vocabulary is a pretty reasonable way to get at the concepts."

"Right," Coventina agrees.

"Well, we can start with aftercare. The basic concept is that, often, after going through an intense experience, one needs a hug. This is often true even if the intense experience was a positive one, and compoundedly true if the intense experience was intensely positive sexually but rode on top of enough adrenaline that there's a crash afterward. Cuddling and similar activities for the express purpose of treating adrenaline crash and or comforting the parts of you that were scared so they don't get in the way of the parts of you that had a great fucking time, is aftercare. The care that comes after a scene. A scene being the actual dangerous-desire-fulfilling-sex part."

"Oh! Yes, I think I see how it fits together now. Thank you."

Oh good!

"Does that mean that your curiosity is satisfied for now or does that mean I should give you the whole lecture?"

"I would like to hear the whole lecture!"

Coventina begins with the basic concepts, from the often unintuitive symmetry in even the most extreme or weirdest desires, between giving and receiving, a reciprocity that cannot be forced or faked, to the minutia of negotiation and safewords and best practices as understood by typical earths, and Coventina's own opinions on where those fall short or go too far.

She does her best to go breadth-first and not drill down into anything specific, lest they spent all night in the bath, and focus on the why rather than on the what. This is about giving Laurent the context to understand Coventina's cultural references, not teaching him to blend in at an earthly BDSM dungeon, and she holds to that firmly as she formulates her explanations.

She uses Sky in several hypothetical and not-so-hypothetical examples. "She doesn't want to put on a collar and be our cherished sex slave for a few hours and then take it off to go back to being just our valued party member the rest of the time, my read on her is that she wants to be our valued party-member-but-with-sex-slave-ish-boundaries all the time, and so the whole 'scene' concept doesn't really apply in her case and a lot of the," vague hand gesture, "narrative paraphernalia that can go into scenes doesn't work."

Coventina is pretty sure she isn't leaving anything out, but its a lot to condense, and also to condense in such a specific, tailored way. If she's doing it right, Laurent won't know a lot in concrete terms but he'll have a vastly better idea of what he doesn't know.

"Thank you," he says, eventually. "I feel much better equipped to understand where you're coming from."

"If I ever say anything else that it seems like I expect you to understand, and you don't, you can always make me explain that too," Coventina asserts.

"I will do my best to remember that. My best may not be very good, but I'll do it."

"Do you want a hug or am I still too scary? Speak now, for you are starting to prune and our time to fulfill that ecchi trope in particular grows short this night," she says in faux-portentous teasing tones.

He giggles behind his hand, and hugs her.

Yaaaaay skinship grope.

She, at least, is immune to pruning. (There isn't a particular mechanism for that but she's not going to question water-goddess fiat when it is on her side.)

Snug!

"All right, off to bed with us. Well, off to bed with me, I won't presume to tell you where to sleep." He gets out of the bath and starts drying off.

"I'm hardly going to do anything that discourages sleeping in an entire-team naked cuddlepile every night."

Eelesia and Sky are on the bed, half under the covers, making out languidly, though Eelesia has both of Sky's hands pinned over her head.

"Oh you're done. I was wondering if you'd fallen asleep or were having sex too or something, you were in there a while. We're all sharing the bed, right? It sounded like that's what we'd do and I think it would be nice."

"I also think that would be nice!"

Although it is not quite going to be a naked cuddlepile because he does, in fact, put on underwear before going to bed.