"You can do that."

Venn shifts to a sliiightly academic tone. "So... some ways someone in your position might feel would be..." she starts counting off on her fingers.

"...still confused in some way about how my friendship with Tural worked and not sure if it's acceptable to ask follow-up questions." 

"...unsure and worried about what my past with Tural suggests about my current feelings for him, or about his for me."

"...finding it unpleasant to think about sex in general, for any number of reasons." 

"...finding it unpleasant to think about or interact with a specific person who I've had sex with." 

And she watches his reactions to each of these very carefully. 

It's not unheard of in Cheliax for people to be something you'd round to 'friends' and also having sex. If he just sort of smashes together his understandings of what the most... for some reason the term he's got is "low-investment", where if an arrangement were instead "high-investment" they'd instead be putting lots of effort into getting the upper hand and the thing he's describing is that they're instead both just showing up?... the most low-investment regular hookup arrangements he knows of between gay people, who do not have the prospect of marriage or the possibility of pregnancy automatically forming a built-in upper hand they have to counteract or lean into... with the fact that Venn knows Alter Self and Tural is a man... then that all comes to a picture about as comprehensibly as anything foreign does. He is definitely unsure if it's all right to ask follow-up questions what with how this entire thing is traditionally private. With lots of exceptions, people will laugh and tell sex stories in various contexts, but since Blai has never wanted to do that he has not studied exactly which contexts, let alone whether any of this gossip was Evil.

That's when they're still both showing up, though, it gets - ugly - when somebody stops showing up, how did that work - huggily, apparently, in this case, but like how. What sort of graceful conduct will be expected of Blai when she leaves he does not need this information because they're not even kissing really, obviously what will be expected of him is that he simply not have an outsized response to the completely normal state of No Longer Routinely Hugging A Visiting Bard, a state he spent almost his entire life in.

He kind of does not want her to ask about that one time in seminary but it does get more conspicuous every time she could and doesn't that she could and hasn't. The less things are like that one time in seminary the less unpleasant they are to think about but it is not untrue that the category "sex" includes exclusively things that are at least a little bit like it.

...it's not that it is necessarily inherently unpleasant for Tural to, like, exist. She did already mention that she has had sex with people before and, like, sure, there's one of them, any group of people implies some individual people existing, the implications would be way weirder and worse if somehow everyone she'd ever slept with was instead dead so it's not outrageous for one to pop up alive. He just does not have a model of how he should relate to Tural besides, like. Treaty obligations. He doesn't know what Tural knows. He doesn't know what there even is for Tural to know, sort of, he can rehearse the events but doesn't know what they add up to besides "not that, you lunatic".

Hmmm.

From his small head and facial movements, she's getting the impression that he thinks he has a decent model of casual sex as it applies here, but definitely isn't sure if asking questions is okay, which is straightforward to address.

He - was thinking something and then ran into a mental wall, based on the way he stopped, only for a tiny amount but all at once. (Blai doesn't really have social mannerisms of an anxious person, but his body language and the quinzee conversion about his thoughts suggests to her that he just keeps a good lid on it. Outside of chess, it's rare for him to be totally still.) This doesn't actually help her figure out where he got stuck, but it's info to file away. 

The way he averts his eyes for a fraction of a moment and clenches his jaw very slightly - is identical, actually, to how he reacted when he mentioned one time in seminary, which, she has had the time to think about and draw the unfortunately-likely conclusion. The way he looks at her after makes it clear that he isn't sure why she hasn't asked - she should probably clear that up. 

From the mildly furrowed brow and his hand and arm movements the main thing she's getting about how he feels about Tural is a lot of uncertainty (which for him is somewhat unpleasant).

"...I'm not going to ask about what happened in seminary," she says softly. "I think you'll find it helpful to talk about, at some point, but it's up to you to decide if and when you want that." 

...he hates deciding things, but okay.

Venn catches that. She does not sigh. (It - makes sense, right, it's part and parcel with the things about Blai that had him going from Chosen to Select in ten days, the law and the law puzzles, how much he'd wanted the Acts and Lastwall's handbook - it's much easier for him when he has rules, tools, a framework for making decisions.)

And he doesn't have a framework for "when is it Correct to talk to someone about my trauma", and she doesn't know how to give him one, because her brain doesn't work like that. 

But... she can give him something, at least. "If you don't want to make that decision, I can just - pay attention, and if I'm ever pretty sure it'd be good for you, ask you then?" She pauses. "...I will at least need you to indicate to me in some way that you'd prefer that to deciding for yourself, even if it's just a slight nod of your head."

"- that seems fine?" he offers.

She smiles warmly at him. "Thank you." What next... probably the casual sex stuff.

"You can ask me any question you'd like about casual sex, including my personal experiences, even stuff you wouldn't normally ask someone because it'd be rude or inappropriate." she says lightly. "There's some stuff I won't tell you because it's not mine to tell, or because I might not be comfortable talking about it right now, but I don't expect that last one to come up very much, and I won't be bothered that you asked. ...It's useful for me, even if I can't necessarily give you answers, to know what you're wondering about."

"...you don't think that any of the other people who might consider this information proprietary would mind?"

"Some definitely would, and that's what I meant about questions I might not answer because the answers aren't mine to tell! But I can answer a lot of questions based on commonalities of my experiences with getting into any specific instance, and there are some people I have had sex with I know well enough to be confident about what things they'd be fine with me sharing, in this context." 

"You're not still - going out of your way to see -" she did literally just see Tural yesterday, if only because he appeared in her field of vision "any of these people."

She nods. "Yeah. In a lot of cases - including Tural - we both knew that we wanted different things out of our lives and neither of us felt like the thing we had together was more valuable than what we'd want out of our future, so sooner or later our paths would diverge and that would be okay. That is a type of conversation I think it is wise to have before having sex with someone, so that everyone is on the same page." The fact that Venn has not, historically, been perfectly wise can come up if he asks, or much much later, if they get to the point of it being good for them both to talk about her vulnerable feelings. 

She tilts her head a bit. "It's - similar in shape to my sleeping alone thing, really. My life is better in measurable ways when I have someone to share a bed with. It's also better when I'm having sex regularly. But there are things that are more important to me than either of those, and that's why I left Almas to go to Isarn and ended up here, instead of staying in Tural's party and bed."

...okay, so when she leaves it won't be anything personal and just the thing where he lives at a Worldwound fort?

She looks at him in concern. "...I don't know what you're thinking, but - an example of the kind of thing I mean when I say we want different things about our lives is that an important feature of the situation with Tural is that he doesn't want to settle down with someone in this lifetime unless they both like each other that they feel like it's mutually obvious they'll stay together in Elysium. And we did not feel anything nearly like that about each other, and even if we had, I'm not Chaotic." 

She pauses, studying his reaction to that, and... oh...

"...Blai, I wouldn't have told you I was romantically interested in you if I didn't - feel strongly enough about you to want to see if the kinds of things we want out of our lives could agree with each other. I don't think right now is the best time for that conversation, because we're still getting to know each other in a lot of ways, but - I'm not blind, I've known for a while that you wouldn't want something casual, and I wouldn't ask you for that."

How does she know these things and then also say with a straight face that she doesn't know what he's thinking!!!

They never did unhug so he can squeeze her a little bit. Gently. Squishy arcane caster.

She squeezes back. "I" love you "want good things for you."

What is the - okay she's not literally telepathic, he probably has to formulate SOME words that have sounds in them - "What is the thing you want out of your life?"

"My deepest desire is that - I don't want to stay in the same place forever. There are a lots of different ways this could work, in a life I'm sharing with someone - we could travel together, we could live in one place together for some of the time and I could spend a mutually-agreed-upon amount of time travelling, but - I need to go to new places, meet new people, learn new things, trade songs and stories and laughter. I wouldn't be me, if I wasn't doing that with my life." 

She takes a deep breath. "If I can find someone who is okay with that - I want to have a lifelong committed relationship with someone who I love and respect and look up to for their virtues and who feels similarly about me, even if we're very different people - and ideally we would be, even though I could be happy with a lot of people similar to myself, because I feel like some of the strongest and most beautiful partnerships I've seen were between very different people who complement each other well. Obviously the traditional form of that kind of relationship is marriage, but I don't think it matters to me if it's specifically that or not. ...I'm not strongly committed in either direction to children, I could see it being really good with the right person and setup but if it's not feasible I would be okay with that and it would certainly not be my default assumption."

(Venn is struggling to maintain eye contact, here, eyes watering up a bit. She's being pretty open with her body language, usually very tightly measured - this is important to her, and she's had this kind of conversation before, and the best way it's ever ended is with a supportive and gentle rejection.)

WHY IS SHE SCARED DID HE DO SOMETHING SCARY

She sees him tense up and hurriedly interrupts - "Sorry, sorry, you haven't done anything wrong!" (She tightens up her body language a little bit.)

"It's just - inherently a scary conversation, for me, even when it's obviously worth having, like right now."

"Why?" He's scared of everything all the time for no reason but she doesn't usually seem to have this affliction.

"...well, because each time I've gotten into a position to have it, the person I was having it with told me that they couldn't accept the travel thing, and half of them told me it was unreasonable to want." she says, quietly.

"You told multiple different people that they could keep you around most of the time and they decided they would prefer that you leave forever?"