"And if we lived where you're from we'd still be subs but not as subby, what's the deal."

"It's nice! I mean, when things in general are nice, anyway, I didn't like it when I was supposed to give up Catherine to go live in a convent and submit to God, I'm just not that, uh, successful at Catholic. But now it's lovely, he's so good to me."

"Awwwww. That's kinda not helping me imagine it though."

"...you can do the mindreading thing too, right?"

"Yeah."

"I can ask if he'll share!" Sir is it okay if Beka reads my mind too?

- yes.

"He says it's all right." And she attempts to helpfully meditate on the belonging feeling that her mind orbits.

"- awwwwwwww."

"I might like try to explain it since apparently he can't, like, parse it when he sees it and he's being all awkward about it."

"He is?"

"Yeah he's being all hidey about it at you 'case he figures it's not dommy or something."

"...doms are allowed to have feelings too. It's not like he's only supposed to use me for sex and has to go somewhere else if he has feelings."

"Well now I guess he knows that."

"Thanks for clearing that up I guess!"

"You're welcome!" And they chat about their Catherines and their pink alt and their sex lives and their pretty Elfy surroundings and about the peculiar parent match thing and about music and then Beka goes home.

"That was nice of her to stop by."

"It was!"

"C'mere."

There she goes!

"I am enjoying this tremendously, but it - matches closely - with lots of things that in my culture are just abusive behavior. I don't think it'd improve either of our lives to do much hand-wringing over that, but if we'd found a me from a world with a closer match in expectations we would probably have suggested you to that one."

She nods and snuggles up. "Is there something else I should do to help make it less matchy?"

' - not especially? It'd help if you had the concept of abusive behavior and wouldn't put up with it but that seems like asking a lot of you."

"...there's people whose - well, I suppose everyone I knew is presently dead, but there were people whose husbands just scared them, who did what they were told out of fear instead of because they loved them and wanted to be theirs -"