Page 79 of Collin: Episodes 1-3
“But I liked everything that he did and what Mr. Reevesworth did too, so why was I…off?
“Yes. You did. You can like everything and want everything, and the time can still be out of place. You were starting to look like a lost lamb without voice or will. Beautiful. I look forward to all the places Richard can take you, but that’s not a state he’s going to place you in with Damian there and pushing, not before he knows you more. Not when he’s responsible for both you and Damian at the same time.”
“So, Damian gets the playroom and I get profiteroles?” Collin half smiled and rubbed a bead of water from the side of his glass.
“Now I believe I should be offended.” Mr. Moreau chuckled. “I forgive you only because you have not yet tasted them.”
Collin smiled. “No, I think Mr. Reevesworth was right. Damian was right there, and you were watching, and I just felt like I was trapped, alone, in the middle, naked. And I wanted to be there, but I didn’t know how to be there, and that made me…I think I started to go away.”
“The clinical term is dissociation. Something you have done frequently since you came here.”
“I do it less than I used to. In high school, I think I went away for weeks at a time.”
“It’s useful when we have no other option. Richard will teach you how stay even in the maelstrom. I saw you do it yesterday. I know you have the ability. You were exquisite.”
“That was…not going away, and I still went somewhere, but it was still very there? I don’t have the proper words.”
“That ‘there’ is referred to as subspace in English. Can you think of the differences?”
“I was…in my body. Like everything was very present even though other things, like anything not on the bed, were very far away. Thinking was far away, but feeling was…everything.”
Mr. Moreau nodded. “Precisely.”
They pulled the profiteroles from the oven and set them up to cool. Then Mr. Moreau collected his glass and nodded for Collin to follow. They wandered down the hall, past the bedroom and a few more closed doors, and into an open room at the end of the hall that was set up as another living space. There were windows on two sides, giving the space an expansive feel. It was obvious the room was the full width of the apartment and likely half the width of the entire building.
Collin stepped up to the glass. “It feels so high.”
“Yes.”
They sipped their drinks in silence for a while.
Collin sighed finally. It was easier to talk staring out the window with the whole openness of the twinkling half-asleep city spread out beyond. “I don’t understand who I am to you, though. I don’t know where the boundaries are.”
“I’m an elder and leader in the house and your dominant’s trusted confidant and partner. He is an extension of me, and I am an extension of him, to the extent that you continue to give consent. Your contract is with him. If you ever revoke consent in the contract for him to use me as an instrument to care for and interact with you, then I would no longer do so, but since I am in the contract, that is my role.”
“Does that mean I should go to you the way I should him?”
“If he’s not available and you have a need, yes.”
“Then I think…no, I know that I desperately need the bathroom again. Uh, it’s embarrassing but…” Collin lifted the glass in his hand as an explanation.
“There’s a bathroom behind that door there.” Mr. Moreau pointed to a wood door behind them to the right. “And I still have the key.”
Once finished and back in the room full of windows. Collin dithered. “Can I ask something else?”
“What would you like to ask?”
“Can we sit on the couch? Not alone but together?”
Mr. Moreau nodded. He moved his glass from the side table to a coaster on the coffee table in front of the nearest couch and set a second coaster out for Collin. Then he sat on the couch, one leg stretched along the length of the back and one leg bent with his food on the ground. He patted the cushion between his thighs. “Here.”
Collin crawled up the couch and lay down against Mr. Moreau’s leg, head on the man’s thigh.
Mr. Moreau’s hand came down and went into Collin’s hair. “You really are a kitten, aren’t you?”
Collin made a sound in the back of his throat and curled even deeper into the couch.
He didn’t realize he’d drifted off or that Mr. Moreau had covered him with a blanket until he heard voices. He stirred to find Mr. Reevesworth sitting on the coffee table. “Thank you for taking care of the kitten, Émeric.”
