"To, what, the way you were under the spell?"

"Yes."

He sits up and starts to stretch, slowly, pulling his arms this way and that and rotating his shoulders and neck around, pressing his hands against his back, leaning forward to grab his toes and pull...

"I wasn't particularly filtering my reactions," he says. "If anything I was actually kind of filtering them less, you seemed a lot more—emotionally resilient—or something."

"That's accurate, yeah.  Uh, good to know."

He continues to stretch and waits for Jeremy to take his turn.

"I'm sorry about—the thing he said.  I won't say it anymore.  I wouldn't have said it if not for—obviously, I obviously would not have said it except that there was a truth spell."

"...he said quite a lot of things. If you mean the 'I love you's, they were kinda nice."

"—You didn't act like they were nice.  Or 'kinda' nice."

"I was not—the reasons I said I was having—conflicted feelings about them weren't deflections. It's nice for me to hear that. Selfishly. I just don't know how to—given that I don't reciprocate, it feels like it could be hurtful to you. And like I could be leading you on. If you say it a lot to me. I don't want to give you false impressions about, like, me, or—any possibility of—I mean, you know, like I said, you deserve someone who'll be good to you. Good for you."

He curls his knees up some, though keeps his head at the same height as usual.

"...I would definitely be more worried if you were reciprocating," is what he lands on.

He nods and—waits. Jeremy still hasn't actually answered his question.

Jeremy apparently thinks that was a complete answer.

Although the pressure of speech does get to him after a moment.  "I don't think all the things he suggested will in fact work.  I mean, obviously I did at the time, because, truth spell, but..."  He loses a few inches of height.  "Now I know that you would be doing it for me.  And—the whole point of the debt is to make things better for you, to make it worth it.  Not—actually—to make things worse for me."

"...is this a thing where people are just completely different, do you not feel happy—personally, selfishly, inside your own head happy—when you make someone you like happy?"

"I don't really know.  It's been so long.  And I—I don't think you're quite a normal example of me liking someone.  But.  It did not really seem like you wanted to..... to, uh.  ...Wow, it's really hard to say some things when you aren't being magically compelled to do so—it didn't very much seem like you wanted to sexually torture me?  Or hurt me in general?"

"I—guess I am sort of abnormal in some ways there—I've done a lot of things that are just not my thing at all because the person I was with was into it. Like, uh, at the more vanilla end, I've been with boys that are into feet, and I'm not into feet at all, but it's just so hot to see a boy get really turned on and that's in itself really good and—it's not just about sex. So doing something for you is also doing something for me. Not the same thing."

"But—if you want that then we should just—fuck."  He rubs at his eyes.  "Just do something I actually like.  Because you bafflingly like me and don't want to hurt me."

"You asked me not to explain why I like you so I will continue to trust you on that," he says, dubiously.

"I don't know that I trust me on that, but.  Yeah.  Kinda seems like there might not be anything that you could say on that which would make me feel better.  Or otherwise help.  —But that's beside the point; the point is that—even if, even if apparently I would get something out of having you beat me up, even if it would be healing if you wanted to do that and also then immediately wanted to switch to being nice to me, comforting to me—you don't want that.  So neither of us want it except if the other person does, which means that neither of us want it.  It's circular; we'd just be chasing each others tails; it doesn't stop anywhere."

"...or we could both want it. That's, like, a way it could go. We can just decide to want it. And if it'll make you feel like your supposed debt to me is diminished, I can want that really easily."

"No, no, that's not how it works.  I don't want to make you a worse person, or to have you do bad things that you don't one hundred percent selfishly want, just because—you can't give me more things I want because I did something really evil; that's not how it works.  —I'm not going to drag you down towards my level, is what it is.  It would be different if you were already around there."

"Oh my God Jeremy you're so incredibly ridiculous and if I didn't need to brush my teeth I'd kiss you right now. Also you really need a modern introduction to kink, wanting to hurt people consensually is not bad." It's not his kink, but it could be.

Jeremy uncurls.

"I am not being ridiculous."  He looks mad now, actually, more than distraught.  Maybe really mad.  "You're not listening to me."

"I'm listening to one of the best people I've ever met talking about dragging me of all people down to their level and that's extremely ridiculous!"

"Jesus fucking Christ."  He zooms outside through the ceilingwall.

But he's back a beat later.  "Sorry.  I'm sorry.  —You should go brush your teeth."