John is more than perfectly content to relax there for a little while, getting his breath back with his arm wrapped around his loving girlfriend, his mind absently reflecting on everything that's happened in the past week. 

With occasional little nuzzles? Occasional little nuzzles are being provided.

Oh, the occasional little nuzzles are encouraged! He may be returning the favor with soft top-of-head kisses, in fact. 

How delightfully cozy of him!

He rather thinks so! 

After he does get his breath back, after a few minutes, he says (after kissing the top of her head once more), "Should we check out the rest of the tower, then?" 

"Let's!" Happy wiggle. Extracting herself from the turret to lead him down the next turn of the stairs.

(She's so adorable!) He gets up, feeling mostly better from the climb (legs still slightly sore), and follows to see what the next floor has in store. 

Fourth floor: cozy office! Cozy fireplace on the chimneyed wall! Little balconies on the other three walls, each barely wider than their charming double doors, with barely enough room to stand on, but they're very pretty and let you lean out into the breeze if that's your thing!

It does look cozy and fun to lean, but John's not in much of a leaning mood at the moment. And besides, compared to the view from higher up, this is nothing. Not bad, but he's happy to move on. 

Third floor! The lumps of shrouded furniture look mostly armchair-like, though there's also a solidly rectangular desk, and the walls are lined with glass-doored bookshelves, and there are two bitsy balconies like on the floor above, and the one remaining door leads into the rest of the third floor, which seems to mostly consist of a long room with a lot of windows. Halfway down it, partly set into the wall, there's yet another spiral stair headed upward into an isolated fourth-floor room.

This room looks nice! The cloth covers don't help, but the bookshelves look like they'd take care of books nicely, and the chairs look like they might be comfy (at least as far as he can tell). What interests him most, however, is the weird extra staircase that he can see from looking down the hallway. "What's up there?" he asks, pointing. 

"The fourth floor. Besides what we just saw in the tower, there's one room of fourth floor and it's that. We can go up if you like but I don't know that there's much to see besides yet another angle on the forest."

Ah, okay. "If there's nothing interesting to see, then there's nothing interesting to see," he says, regretfully. "Where to next, then?" 

"Well, we've finished seeing all the floors of the tower, so I think it's time for me to ask if you want to skip straight to the theatre!"

It turns out he was secretly hoping she'd forgotten she'd said she was going to ask that. He wants to do what Rosy wants to do... but he also doesn't want to see the whole place in one fell swoop if it's going to involve so much climbing (though the climbing may very well be done, possibly), and he does want to skip ahead to the stripper pole bit. "What do you want to do?" he asks, to test the waters. 

"I... want... to ask you what you want to do??" she says, baffled.

Unfortunately, asking her the question hadn't revealed any preference on her part, just confusion. And so John doesn't know what the right thing to do is. "I... I want to do what you want to do?" he tries. (Shit. He can immediately tell that was probably the wrong thing to say.)

"...why?"

"I..." he doesn't know how to explain it! He should have just said he wanted to explore, that's probably what she wants. "Because it's the right thing to do?" he tries. 

"Is this the thing again where you're trying to do the 'right' things even though the 'right' things aren't what either of us wants?"

"...maybe?" But the right thing to do is what she wants to do, right? "No, I mean, I want to do what you want to do, so..." he sighs and hangs his head. "Nevermind." 

She hugs him.

"All right. Let me try to explain," she says. "Please don't interrupt by deciding you've figured out what I wanted so we're doing it whether I like it or not. Okay?" She waits for confirmation before proceeding.

He hugs back. "Okay," he says voice slightly muffled from being in her shoulder. She doesn't seem to be angry at him, at least? That, and the hug helps. He still feels like he made a big mistake, again. 

Pat pat.

"Okay. So. If I was here by myself, I'd zoom around the house meticulously documenting everything I see, leaving no door unopened and no stone unturned, double-checking my route to be sure I cover it all, because that's how I naturally do things, when I'm by myself. But I am not by myself! An important component of this experience is that you are also here! And you traverse fewer stairs in your daily life than I do, and are less enthusiastic about meticulously documenting things! So I want to explore the house with you, in a way that you also enjoy, which means that I need to have some idea of what kind of time you're having and what things would make it a better or worse one. If I just do all the same things I would've done without you, while towing you along behind me like a very unhappy waterskier, then you're not happy because you're having a terrible time, and I'm not happy because I'm giving you a terrible time. Whereas if we figure out a way to explore that works for both of us, then we both get to have fun. Do you see what I mean?"

But... if those are the things she wants to do he should do them with her, right? Right?? But she doesn't seem to think so? But if he takes advantage of her (and her love) and just does what he wants, or tells her what he wants, or something like that... then that's cutting corners and doing it wrong. And he doesn't want to do it wrong! "But I don't want to keep you from doing the things you want to do," he tries. "I see what you mean but like, this is your house? And it's important that you get to do all those things and I don't want to prevent you from doing them." And he really doesn't want to just take advantage of the easy way out, that would be extra wrong.