John grins at her. (She's so cute when she's happy. He's still not sure what he did to deserve this, but he's so glad to enjoy it.) "I am... looking forward to more such wonderful meals," he says, avoiding the earlier conversation about whether or not he'd be eating too much. "I'm looking forward to spending more time here in general." He grins a little wider. "I'm looking forward to the rest of this weekend," he adds. 

"Me toooooo."

And John grins a little wider (thinking about all the fun they're going to get up to) (she's going to be his and then he's going to make her kneel and she's going to be so delighted about it and then...) and gets a liiiitle bit turned on and shifts in his seat and watches her finish the rest of her dessert (thankfully, there's not much more left). 

There she goes with the last bite!

"That was astonishingly good," she says as the cart comes to clear their dishes. "Okay, I should talk to the house about our sex life. Do you want to be a part of that conversation, or no? What concerns do you want to see raised?"

"I'm not sure how I can be part of that conversation," John says, blushing a little when she says 'sex life'. "I can be like, around for it? If you want? And mostly I don't want it to um, blanket burrito me" he grins and giggles a little "when I like, hurt you, or give you orders, or things. Like, if it's loyal to you, I don't want it to think I'm doing bad things to you." Also man, are they sure it's not going to worry about them having sex? He doesn't want the house to watch them and think he's doing bad things. He's not! (Well, mostly. Probably. Rosy wants them! It's okay!) 

"I'm mostly wondering if you are going to be extremely flustered when I try to explain the concepts involved."

John bushes some more. "Probably," he admits. And then "I, is that a problem? I can go elsewhere if that helps." He wants to listen in so he knows what to worry about but he can go find somewhere else to be if necessary, he doesn't want to make this any harder for Rosy to do. 

"I mean, I'm not sure I'd call it a problem exactly, but although I do love flustering you, I don't want to make you uncomfortable unnecessarily?"

Well if she doesn't have a problem with it "I don't think it's unnecessary," he says. "I should be fine." If she doesn't have a problem with it then there's no reason for him not to endure it. And listening in might be important. (Even if he can't do anything about it if the house gets the wrong impression of him. Maybe he can get Rosy to say things if so? He hopes so.)

"Okay. Then... I think we should figure out... what our sex life is going to look like, so we know what to warn the house about. Like—it occurred to me that a lot of our planned activities can kind of be analogized to... rituals? In the sense of, there's a specific time and place and plan where you're doing things differently from normal in a carefully considered way to get the results you want. But then it occurred to me that we haven't really been giving our sex life the kind of very well-defined starting and ending points that a ritual is supposed to have, and I'm not sure whether we want to. But the analogy might still be useful. But either way, I need to know what I'm trying to explain before I can figure out how best to explain it."

"I'm not sure I'd think of them as rituals," John says, a little too fast (he should think about what she's saying first here before just reacting damnit). "I guess some of the things we're planning to do are um, well, might be more considered beforehand and stuff? Like with the um, outfits and stuff?" Now is probably not the best time to be turned on thinking about that damnit! "But um, regardless, I... do we need to go into that much detail? I thought you could just, um, tell it that I'm going to give you orders or hurt you sometimes and that it shouldn't worry about that? But maybe that's not at all how it works." Fuck, he feels really silly for having assumed anything here. "How does it work, then, exactly?" 

"I can just say that, but... I would really rather offer it a deeper understanding than that? And explaining things to the house is much less straightforward than explaining things to a person, because it works so differently. Like, the rituals analogy makes sense of things that are otherwise hard to make sense of, if I'm trying to explain things to the house—and yes, I was talking about the stuff with the outfits, and specifically like, anything where we're coming up with a whole backstory and doing costume changes and scenery and setup? It's obviously not literally the same thing as a ritual, but there are similar elements of... there are specific reasons why we're doing things that wouldn't normally make sense, and there's a clear context for when we're doing those things that separates them from our normal life. Except then, like I said, I realized that in fact not all of our sex life works like that."

(He really does like it when they do the stuff with the backstory. Those are fun. He's looking forward to more of those. And the costume changes. And all of it. Now is really not the best time to be getting turned on though!) "Okay, if it's not that easy to explain to the house by just saying 'don't worry about it', since we don't have specified start and end points..." and should they have those? Possibly that might be a good idea and keep him from doing something bad even if he likes the idea of ordering Rosy onto her knees whenever he wants but also maybe it would be safer that way, and make the house happy? But now might not be the best time to bright that up. Or maybe "...well, maybe we could have something to like, say, to tell the house we're not doing anything wrong? Or, no better, something to tell the house that it should worry! Like... a hand sign or a word or something you could do or say say and then the house would help you and also I would know I was doing something bad and could stop." This is a very good idea actually. That way Rosy can tell him he's doing bad things and stop, whether or not the house is there to help or not. This is... this is a safeword, isn't it. Those are supposed to be important, why hasn't he thought of this before? Damnit, that should have been the first thing they did. "We should... probably establish a safeword anyways, shouldn't we..." he says, slightly dejected. 

"You sound like you maybe don't want us to establish a safeword?"

What? "No! No I totally do! I just... I just feel really silly for not having thought of it in the first place." He winces at his own foolishness. 

"...that makes sense. If it helps, I hadn't thought of it either."

Well, maybe a little, but it's his job to have thought of it. "I still should have realized," he says. "We should, probably come up with one now?" And maybe also he could ask about the start and end thing since they seem to be getting off topic of the house but maybe it would be a good idea to establish a safeword first before he forgets since he's been messing that up already. "What... what would make a good safe word, for you?" he asks. 

"...that's a good question. 'What circumstances should I use it under' is also a good question—I guess the simplest answer to that is, if I expect that if you had full information you would want to stop—"

"I mean sure but also if you want me to stop you should be saying that!" he says, half-interrupting (though she was paused, it's probably fine, right? It's probably fine). "That's when you should use safewords, right?" He's going off of half-remembered readings now. "When you want me to stop doing something." Technically if he knew that she wanted him to stop he'd stop and that counts as full information but "I guess that's still kinda the full information thing in a sense but you shouldn't have to think so hard about it! Just... say the word when you want me to stop. And stuff. Right?" That might have been a bit too emphatic, is she ok? 

"Well. Yes. But... I won't necessarily be able to truthfully say I want you to stop, if I frame it like that, after the vassalage ritual. Because I'll want you to have what you want, and if I feel like what you want is the things you're doing, then I'll want you to have that. But if I establish the concept of a safeword as being about... like an error signal or a warning light, to let you know that you've entered territory you might want to leave, then that works both for the me that I am now and the person I'll be when I'm bound to serve you."

Oh. "I... guess? I see what you're saying." He doesn't really like the idea that she'll just want to give him what he wants even if... no that's a lie. He really, really likes the idea that she'll just give him what he wants even if she previously didn't want to. He just also doesn't think it's a very good idea. He doesn't want to be the kind of person who changes her and then keeps her forever. (Even if parts of him really like the idea, he's better than that, Rosy deserves better than that.) "Okay, if it works better as a warning to me... well, please make sure to do it even if you're not sure, I guess? I don't want to do things to you that you feel you have to give me but wouldn't otherwise. If you know what I mean." Again, not really true (and he might be getting turned on about it...) but that's just going to make things messy and he shouldn't talk about it right now. Probably. 

...she squints slightly. "I almost want to say 'turmoil, my love?' but I might be sensing something other than turmoil."

He squirms a little in his seat. "I don't think it's really, um, turmoil, per-se," right? No, he's very certain about what he wants here "but it might, um, be me, um, getting turned on? A little bit? Not that I am going to do anything like that! I wouldn't! I won't! But um, it... might..." John blushes and doesn't finish the sentence (and squirms in his chair again, thinking about Rosy doing something she didn't want to do before (what would that even be?) but does now, because she has to...).

"...you're so cute when you're flustered."

More blushing. John is not entirely sure what to say to that, so he's just going to blush more. 

"Anyways, um, safeword?" he tries, his face half into his own shoulder, trying to get things on a less flusterey track. "You should come up with one, probably."