You Have Us
“Well,” said Jen, as they pulled out of Ezri’s driveway, because one of them had to say something.
“Well,” said Clara, equally uncomfortably. “She’s… fine?” The question mark was heavy. The fine unenthusiastic. The hesitation, the silence, saying something else.
The she in question was Diane, the s-type Ezri had met at a recent munch and quickly become infatuated with.
“She’s…” Jen trailed off.
“Well,” said Clara again.
It wasn’t that Diane had done anything wrong when introduced to them. But something about her made Clara ill at ease.
Perhaps it was just that she wanted too much of this girl who’d known Ezri for all of a week. She really, really wanted to like Diane. She did. The idea of not liking Ezri’s first partner after herself made her squirm. But she just… didn’t. She knew that she couldn’t shake this girl down and demand she commit to making Ezri happy for the rest of her life and somehow prove it, but God, she wanted to.
“The whole conversation was just… empty. She just seemed to keep… reflecting any chance for more straight back at us,” said Clara.
“I just worry the mirror’s hiding something. Y’know?”
“That she has no personality because she’s just trying to blend in? Not make us think about her too hard? Give us something not to like and bitch to Ezri about?”
“All that.”
“—Well, what do you think?” Ezri was eager and on speaker a few hours later.
“Well, it’s hard to get a strong impression from one meeting…” Jen started.
“Oh, come on.” Understandably disbelieving. It wasn’t like any of them usually shied away from opinions.
“She seems fine,” Clara said quickly, for once losing the heart to offer much that was negative.
“But?” Wanting more than that. Suspicious.
They looked at each other, and at the phone.
“We just worry about you,” said Clara. “You know that.”
“I don’t need you two to worry about me. Did you not like her?”
“It’s just hard to trust someone with you so fast, darling~” Jen said lightly.
“So you didn’t.”
Quiet.
“Why?”
“She didn’t do anything wrong,” Jen said. “I’m just not sure she did anything right, either.”
“What did you want her to do?”
“I don’t know.”
Quiet. “I’ll call you later. I love you both.”
“We love you, too,” Jen said.
Ezri hung up.
Neither of them managed to like Diane any better over the following weeks. In fact, their suspicions grew worse. One frustrating midnight phone call got accusatory. “Have you considered… maybe you’re jealous?” Ezri asked Clara.
“I wish it was that. I do.”
“Do you really feel nothing? As far as that goes?” Wounded.
“What do you want?” Clara asked, frustrated, but there was no real malice in it. “You want me to like Diane. You want me to be jealous. You don’t want me to worry, but you acted like you were still my safe call for months after I got married. Of course I fucking worry. Do I not get to? Do I not get to be protective? No, I’m not jealous. Do I feel something? Of course I fucking feel something. Just like you felt something. And I know you getting a slave would change… things. But it’s what you always wanted. I was ready for that. It was always going to be that way, in the end. I just… think this might not be it.”
“You get to worry,” Ezri relented. “And you’re entitled to your emotions. But I’ve never wanted you to be unhappy.”
“I don’t want you to be unhappy, either. Don’t you see that? I know you’re happy with her right now. And I’m happy, that you’re happy. But… I just worry it’ll be worse if it… doesn’t work out.”
“I think, you’re adding up a lot of little signs into something much bigger than the sum of them.”
“Maybe. I hope I am.”
Ezri’s next conversation with Jen didn’t end so calmly. Jen gave her all of the evidence again. That over the last few weeks with Diane, Ezri just kept relenting on a number of things that were important to her. That no matter how cute and submissive Diane looked kneeling on the floor and giggling shyly, she seemed to just keep getting her way.
At first it was the labels of their relationship. Diane preferred property over slave—a distinction that had always mattered to Ezri. That they had lightly debated and discussed again and again over the years. Ezri felt that slave indicated animation in the most basic sense, hard work, usefulness, service. Property had always felt too inanimate to her. To be property was a status, to be a slave was actionable. Property was acted upon helplessly. Property’s value was as intrinsic as an object’s. Slaves, to their Owner’s will, acted, value based on the service they provided, submitted. It wasn’t major, but it was jarring to hear that label used as the one they’d eventually go for, from Ezri. Jen, carefully, had always used a bit of both—but slave as the default. And Ezri didn’t have a problem with the word as a secondary, also technically true label, but it had never been the first one off her tongue, either. Diane seemed to have gotten in her head about it, emphasizing the political connotations it was easy to get in Ezri’s head with, and that it matched Owner slightly more neatly, Ezri’s preferred term just because it was gender neutral, lacking the high femme connotations of Mistress or the heavy Leather associations of the female Master. Diane didn’t seem interested in the hard work connotation, either, in Jen’s opinion.
(Later, in a relatively early conversation, Jen noted that Lalia had always liked slave better for many of the same reasons. And, her and Clara had taken to her instantly. Jen had advised they sign the Ownership contract as soon as possible, even before they’d ever signed their consideration one, though it was Ezri who especially insisted on due process this time.)
Then it was tiny protocol changes. Ezri’s preferred kneeling position for slaves—property—had always been sitting back on their heels, knees apart, back straight, hands palm up at their upper thighs. Diane had wheedled her way into having her hands clasped behind her back instead. She posited that hands empty, palm up on the thighs—usually a symbol of offering, service or obedience or submission or whatever the preferred word was, in the BDSM world—seemed more like asking for something than offering it, given that she had nothing physical to offer. Oh, it made sense for when she was offering something physical, she’d said with a smile, but when she wasn’t? Perhaps she could keep her hands behind her. Out of sight, out of mind, like property was supposed to be much of the time. Besides, Ezri’s normal position was associated with Goreans, which she wasn’t; wasn’t she tired of explaining that? (Jen had seen perhaps all of two people ask or assume over the years, and noted that Diane didn't keep her hands still behind her back, either. Besides, Ezri had also always seen value in the possibility that palms up was waiting to receive—command, instruction, training, and thought that hands behind the back seemed too military.)
What was funnier was that Jen actually agreed with Diane’s take on the empty, palm up position—as she didn't give much formal command or training—and had always preferred hands facing down, which admittedly looked a little casual on its own for when the position was in use, so she had added wrists crossed, a symbol of binding (though Ezri used it to mean requesting permission to speak). Still, she generally liked people’s hands where she could see them. What were they hiding, anyway? And her own favorite position had the legs together in a more traditional religious fashion. But Ezri had never seen it that way, preferring the vulnerability—and practical access—of legs open, and the offering of the palms up. For her to relent now, was strange. And so it had gone with a multitude of protocols, services, other things. (Later, neither of them ever heard of Lalia arguing any of these things, and she took on a lot more since Ezri had figured out she wanted the majordomo role too, by then.)
Diane had gotten it in Ezri’s head that while uniforms were a fine form of control, they limited her ability to provide the “service” of basically being arm candy, of getting creative with hair, makeup, clothes. Ezri still denied that it was much of a service, but had slowly been persuaded towards outfit approval, and occasionally picking them herself, rather than setting a uniform. Because Diane just wanted to reflect well on her. (Later, Lalia confessed to Clara that sometimes she wished Ezri would just choose her hairstyle for her more frequently, the one area Ezri usually allowed her leeway, though she did occasionally mandate something in particular.)
By the time this oh so gentle and submissive nudging and persuading and just looking out for Ezri’s interests and public standing as an Owner got around to financials, Jen’d had enough of trying to phrase it to Ezri any more gently. (Later, while she felt a little bad for Lalia’s obvious guilt complexes around money and the housewife factor, she thought that at least her heart was in the right place, and she had to get some credit for the trainees' sales and barely touching her allowance.)
The phone call devolved into a shouting match, one of their typical spats—more Jen shouting than Ezri, who didn’t talk to either of them for days. Which, for them, was a long time. Clara resented that she’d been included in this silent treatment, though she knew Ezri knew it was easy for Jen to grab her phone.
Ezri had yet to answer her own phone when she showed up on their doorstep. It was Jen who answered, observed the slightly defeated look and heard the, “You were right,” before Ezri burst into tears against her shoulder.
“Oh, sweetheart.” She embraced her tightly and tried to get the door closed behind her before a cat bolted. You were right had never been less satisfying a conclusion. Thinking sunlight might be good, she beckoned Ezri into the backyard and sat on the dusty bench swing with her and rocked them slightly while Ezri laid her head in her lap and cried, Jen’s fingers in her hair, saying, “I know. I know. Shh.”
Ezri confessed every doubt she’d had over the last several weeks, the ones she’d refused to voice once she knew Jen and Clara were suspicious, defensive and hopeful and deeply in denial. Apparently Diane had tried to wheedle her way out of a punishment last night—she’d evaded every one so far, presenting just the right kind of logic Ezri was vulnerable to—but hadn’t done as good a job of it, and went clearly on the defensive when verbally cornered, started to more outright refuse. And Ezri realized what had been behind every little change she’d made in the last weeks. Whatever it was Diane wanted. There was not a submissive bone in her body, just the act of one in the name of getting exactly the particular illusion of a dynamic she wanted.
Clara stepped onto the patio, door creaking. Jen shook her head at her sadly. Clara found a place on the edge of the swing in one of the angles left by the way Ezri had curled up, rubbed her back.
“I was so fucking stupid,” Ezri said into Jen’s lap.
“No, you were just well manipulated,” Jen told her. “Because there’s so much good in you, you try to see the good in other people. Even when it’s not there.”
“I fell for it. All of it. What the fuck am I doing, claiming I know anything about this. Who would want to be owned by someone who can’t tell the fucking difference between a slave and a con artist?”
“Hey,” Clara said, brushing a few strands of hair out of Ezri’s face, though she didn’t look up. “Someone’ll be so lucky to be owned by you one day. And maybe today’s not that day. But you’re not stupid. And besides, you have us.”
“To tell me when I am stupid?”
“You have us. Period.”
“End of story,” Jen added dryly.
“Well,” said Clara, “hopefully not quite.”