be discreet

[msmage]

It's not much later, in Isabella's room, that she asks:

"So... is Alex really a dom?"

Comments

[alicornucopia]

"No I fucking won't," mutters Jackson. "This is what I can get."

[msmage]

"Why do you believe that without at least trying? Why can't you do the therapy thing and stay with him, then, if you want that so much? Then you can see for yourself. Because Jackson, this isn't you happy, that's not what happy looks like!"

[alicornucopia]

"So maybe I don't get to be happy for more than half an hour in a row, maybe that's just my life. Not everybody can just show up and be the new kid in school and land the hottest dom in school and get hand-fed breakfast and called 'pet'. I'm lucky anybody would look at me twice let alone collar me."

[msmage]

"You keep saying that, but you can't know that's true, not when that's exactly the kind of thing having clinical depression would look like. The simplest explanation that fits the fact is the most likely to be true."

[alicornucopia]

"That sounds really logical but you want me to take a lot on faith," Jackson mutters.

[msmage]

"I can throw books at you, if you like, talking about how depression works. I don't need you to take it on faith, like I said, you could go to therapy and stay with him so that if one thing fails you still have the other. It doesn't have to be either-or, and you could collect the evidence yourself."

[alicornucopia]

"Therapists can break confidentiality if they think they have a good reason."

[msmage]

"If they think you're likely to present a danger to yourself or others."

[alicornucopia]

"I think they'd freak out about Master too."

[msmage]

"Well... Don't you think that means something, then? That you believe professionals trained to take care of your mental health would object to your being with him?"

[alicornucopia]

"They don't have to be right about everything. They just have to sort of pretend to try if my problem is I'm depressed but if my problem is my dom uses a toy I don't like they get to go ruin everything right now this is an emergency."

[msmage]

"Jackson, therapy actually works. If they were just sort of pretending to try they wouldn't actually succeed at treating it."

[alicornucopia]

"I just," says Jackson, and his voice is trembly, "I just want to belong to somebody, and - and now I do -" He touches the collar at his throat.

[msmage]

"But you don't. Not really. Or, maybe you belong to him, but he doesn't really... own you. And... even thinking long term, I don't know if he'd even keep you. He doesn't act like he's concerned about the long term, about keeping this relationship alive and nurturing it and keeping you."

[alicornucopia]

"What do you mean he doesn't own me?" blinks Jackson, forlorn.

[msmage]

"I mean he doesn't really care about you. What I just said. It's a type, this thing you're going through, and I expect either he'll get tired of you eventually and move on, or he won't but he'll keep doing enough of, of this, that you won't really even be you anymore in the end, the half hours of happiness will become fifteen minutes, then five, then they'll disappear completely."

[alicornucopia]

"How do you know."

[msmage]

"Because it's a type," she insists. "It's the sort of thing they warn about on sex ed classes, or books, or pamphlets. Just like the way you describe yourself is basically textbook clinical depression, the way you describe your relationship and the way you look sometimes is textbook abuse."

[alicornucopia]

"It is not," objects Jackson. "He, like, lets me have friends and stuff, and - stuff."

[msmage]

She sighs. "There's more than one textbook on abuse."

[alicornucopia]

Jackson frowns into his lukewarm chocolate.

[msmage]

"The choice really is yours, in the end, Jackson. I can't save you from yourself. I want you to be happy - actually happy, for real. And I don't think you should give up on that, not this early."

[alicornucopia]

"I don't want to be - be thirty with a dozen cats."

[msmage]

"That's more than ten years away, you have a lot of time before starting to worry about that, and besides I am planning on figuring out how to make everyone immortal and perpetually young and healthy so your prime will never end if it's up to me."

[alicornucopia]

"I don't want to be thirty and look eighteen and have a dozen cats," clarifies Jackson, "either."