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[The kink list actually gives him pause, because for all that he's been talking about those things with Max and is trying to get his not!ghoul to figure out his comfort zones, and for all that he's talked about it with Rowan before, a list of this kind is not something that he has.

Not something he ever had, really. It was always more tailored talks ahead of time and strategic use of safewords or similar methods.

Not that this is necessarily a bad idea. It's just not a thing he's made for himself before.

A few days later, though - and this happens to be after Rowan and Max have had their conversation - he'll call the Brit:]

Hey, I've been thinking about your list. Are you up to meeting sometime and talking it over?

Oh, hey! Yeah, course. I said, anytime.

I got a couple of hours before I need to go out to work, are you free to drop over now?

Sure, I've got nothing else going on at the moment. Your room?

Yeah, sounds good! You know where I am, right? Spring Wing, look for my name. The door's open, so come straight in.

I'll find it.

[And sure enough, not much later, Jackie is going to wander into Rowan's room and close the door behind him. He has the list in one hand, along with some paper and a pen, but otherwise isn't carrying anything.]

Hey.

[Rowan's room isn't as disorganised as Jackie's, but only because it seems fairly sparse. There's nothing on the floor aside from a basket slid under the bed and a towel dumped in the recessed area of a shower set into one wall, but the bed is unmade, a book tossed carelessly onto the bedside table. However, the walls tell a very different story, and they're covered in pinned up sketches of Rowan's pack and family. They might not be to Jackie's skill level, but there's a level of detail that makes them decent; faces recognisable from picture to picture.]

Hey! Make yourself at home!

[Rowan seems cheerful as ever, although there's a touch of tiredness to the corner of their eyes. They don't bother to rise, though, sitting cross legged on the bed as they indicate the chair, only recently relieved of a stack of clothes which are now hidden in the wardrobe.]

How've you been?

No different from normal, [he answers, though not fully there - he doesn't hide that his eyes are first drawn to the shower, and then to the sketches on the walls.

...which is why he comes over to the chair, but then lingers, looking back towards the sketches.] Can I look? [He is, for once, simply plain curious, without any second thoughts and considerations to the request.]

Yeah, 'course. [Rowan smiles, welcomingly.]

It's my friends and family. I don't have any pictures of them, so when I ain't got nothing else to do... [They shrug lightly.]

[He puts down what he was carrying and wanders over to look at the pictures. He eyes everything with interest.

Mothers, he figures, or similar figures. Siblings, probably, going by faint resemblances with the older women.

Then there's one child that looks different from the teenagers but resembles a woman that's a bit older than Rowan, and he stops in front of her for a while. She reminds him of Elle, and he never thought he would miss the young-old girl who shares his siring heritage. But now, suddenly, he thinks that so much here would be easier if she was around. Not that she would be, he doesn't think - her apparent age would lock her out of here, he's pretty sure of that. Still, she was a hack at manipulation and moulding her surroundings according to her wishes.

His eyes come to rest on the young woman who resembles her and thinks, she could do a clothing trade with Charley and nobody would notice - but they don't really look alike - and then his eyes travel on to a young woman who reminds him of Olivia. Maybe Leila looked like that when she was physically younger, too.

And he stops himself at that thought, because it's getting ridiculous. It's like when he saw Annika in Ren. He's just looking for reminders where there's nothing proper to see. ...Except for the kid. She really does remind him of Elle. His eyes are drawn back to her.]

[As Jackie gets drawn into the sketches, Rowan does actually rise, unfolding their slim legs and coming up along side him.]

That's Revvie, Ami's daughter. [They indicate another picture above the desk that shows the pair of them together.] She's cute, right? [But Jackie said that he was an only sibling.]

She is. [He doesn't sound entirely convinced, but that's because he's still thinking of Elle - and then shakes his head, trying to dislodge that association and not bring his feelings about Elle into this conversation.]

She reminds me of Elle, [he explains his tone, hoping that that will stop a misunderstanding] who was... well, is. Back where I'm from. [He extends a hand in a one-armed shrugging gesture.] She's a part of my friends group back home, little sister of one of the others who just dropped in with us and really is calling the shots half the time. Prodigy student of a teacher who rejected me when I tried to pick up the violin back in the day, something about me not having enough talent. I never picked up any instrument after that, so that's... a point of contention for me that's really not her fault. Always makes it weird, though.

I don't know what kind of kid Revvie is, but Elle sure knows how cute she is and uses it for evil. [He grins, indicating that he's joking, even though - well, a lot of things that Elle uses her ten-year-old looks for, many people would call evil.]

[Ah, that explains it. Rowan smiles and nods, taking in the additional information about Jackie's life back home.]

Nah, Revvie's just a sweetheart. The worst she does is get under your feet sometimes, and maybe a tantrum every now and again. [And that's understandable, since for so many years she was more or less cooped up inside. Their tone is a little drawn, though, buried under fondness. They miss her.]

[His eyes still are on the girl, but then wander back to the whole wall.] ...I should see if I can get some pictures of my friends.

[Not Elle, he doesn't so much care about his current pack past the obvious ways in which he does care. Vinculum bond and all. But his old pack... He did have pictures of them on him no matter how small his luggage, they just didn't make their way here.]

...but that's not why I came here. [He turns to Rowan.] You made me a list?

[Rowan nods in agreement. They're hoping that they'll be able to get their phone back from their patron soon, they're starting to get desperate for it. Thus the sketches.]

Right. It wasn't too much, was it? I was writing one out for Max and Lucas so I figured it didn't take much to do another copy for you too. I know I was kind of vague the other day, 'cos as much as I know the rules and stuff, I've not thought about the options a lot.

It wasn't too much at all. I just don't have one that I can return to you, and since I'm ...limited in many ways anyway, I figured the easiest way to go about this would be to just take yours and talk about that, add what I gotta say about myself while we're at it.

If you wrote ones for Max and Lucas, I guess that's where the options that... wouldn't work for me keeping on all my clothes come from. [So that is cleared up.]

For your hard nos, that's pretty much my list too for what I would want to do to someone - and then add, of course, that I would not want to have you touch me anywhere where there's normally clothes.

What do you mean by anything with teeth that's not biting?

Okay, that's good, I didn't know if I was getting ahead of myself.

[Rowan crosses back over to the bed and sits down there. They hesitate for a moment, before offering Jackie a smile.]

Actually, before we talk about all of that, can we talk about Max? [Better to get this over and done with, before they get any hopes up about what they might get a chance to play out with Jackie.] He told me about the journal you want him to write. I know what you meant by it, but you realise the people he sleeps with really can't consent to that?

[...that's not a conversation he expected. He falls quiet for a moment, cocking his head, and then puts the list down on the floor, pulls his knees up to his chest, and bobs forward on his feet until he's crouching on the front of the chair.]

What do you think I meant by it?

You're trying to get him to actually work through stuff, right? He told me about his old master and what he did to him. And I know that stuff's messed him up, that he - Erik, the master - used a collar against him.

[Rowan pauses for a moment, and then reaches over to the beside table, pulling out a card from the drawer and holding it up. It's one of the ones that Jackie made for Max.] The fact that you thought these were necessary makes me assume you thought the same I did, that he's been trained to not think of himself and to say yes blindly to anything.

And I get that going over stuff helps, but the thing is, even if this helps Max now, in the long run if people here found out what happened and are angry, that could be just as bad. For both of you, to be honest. I mean, I don't like the idea, and it's I've not bared all for you to see before. But what happens between me and Max is private, you know?

[He nods at say yes blindly to anything, but otherwise just listens.]

Good point. [What's the chances that people truly won't find out? Considering Max told Rowan, whom else is he going to tell or has already told? He needs to call Max back in on that. Stat.

For hell's sake. This is what you get for trying and helping a Kine out, apparently.] ...I'm not interested in knowing what he's up to with whom, don't get me wrong there. I honestly hope that we won't have to go about anything in detail. The point is that he needs to really write down what he did, how he felt when he did it, and if he wants to do it again - I doubt that he will manage to really pin those thoughts down otherwise, if he doesn't see them written out again and again. I hope that after the two months he'll have gathered enough information to work with it, and perhaps acquired some skill at recognising those things afterwards without having to write them down.

I doubt he'll ever be able to do it in the moment. Erik, no matter what else I think about him, knew what he was doing. [He taps his fingers against the front of the chair.] He's got a thousand years of skill at manipulation on both of us combined. I doubt we'll be able to undo what he did. So in my opinion, there's no point in trying. It will be much more helpful for Max if he - with my, with your help - learns to analyse situations after the fact and put down rules before the next sexual situation so they will be there.

You weren't there when I made him give me the yes and no's that are on the card. It was ...not like pulling teeth. Worse. Even in the perfectly non-sexual situation that we were in at that time it took work for him to come up with even that.

I figured you weren't interested for your own sake. In the tent you said you weren't interested in names when you was teasing me, so I thought either Max missed that part or you were too caught up with him to put it in place, and either is fair enough with all of this. [They wave a hand vaguely, as though to indicate the situation as a whole.]

But he can't even say no to this right now. That's why I said I'd talk to you about it, 'cos he's really freaking out about it, you know? He looked like I was going to bite his head off when he told me. [A shadow of pain crosses Rowan's face, remembering Max's breakdown. They need to make sure that doesn't happen again.]

What I suggested was that he write down what happens between us, me and him, and we talk about it together afterwards. Lucas might be able to help with the same, and you? 'Cos you're right, he needs to learn his boundaries, and it's a good way to do it, but involving everyone else unwillingly is a bit much, right? And as much as I wish we could ask everyone to help, this is Max's history to tell, and that's up to him and who he trusts with it.

I think it's necessary that he writes down every encounter in the same way. Because it might be very different to do the same way with his significant others, whom he blindly trusts, - or me - and other people.

I'm fine with not seeing them. But I want him to do the writing things down. That way it would be private still - and if both you and Lucas, and me, talk about what notes he took on sexual activity with us, I'm sure that would be helpful and guide him into thinking about the rest himself. [He frowns, and bounces slightly on his feet, forth and back.] I didn't think he would freak out that much.

I think everything's been a bit much, to be honest. Lucas said he really broke down on him - honestly, what the pair of them described sounded like PTSD, and that wouldn't surprise me neither. [And that had told Rowan a lot about how bad things were. They sigh deeply.]

Will you tell him that, or do you want me to? I'm sure you're right about the writing things down thing, and people can't really complain if it's kept private. And we ain't dating, by the way. Good friends, yeah, but I'm trying to get him to hook up with Lucas. They'll be good for one another.

I'll talk to him.

[If he had a breakdown like that not long before or after his conversation with Jackie... well, that sure wouldn't have helped how he's taking it now. He might address that, too. Or not. He'll see.

But that is by the by. He pauses, and gives Rowan a very, very long, studying look. And then tilts his had and points out in a perfectly conversational tone:] He talks about you and Lucas in one breath, and describes his relationship with you exactly the same way in which he describes his relationship with Lucas. Or the way he thinks about you and him.

Why do you think you wouldn't be good for him?

[Nopeity nope nope nope. Time to shut this down.] Ain't nothing about me, or him, I just don't do relationships. [Their tone is perfectly casual, as they wave a hand vaguely again. Anyway, it's true. They don't. They decided a long time ago they were fine with things this way, and that it's better for everyone involved.]

Anyway, you wanted to talk about that list, right?

...you should tell him that.

[But he's not going to push and drop the topic as well. He gets not doing relationships. And also: This might be useful information later. And then he's said it. Anyway.]

Right.

So one of the maybes that have me intrigued... how far would you want to go with a collar. Would you, say, be open to taking it out of the bedroom? With all the stipulations about no clothes removal in public and such firmly in place, of course.

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