Harsh

♡ six ♡

The next morning, Troye was almost afraid to leave his room. His mother would almost instantly be on his case again, he was sure of it.. He put it off as much as he could, cleaning his room, packing some stuff that he wanted to take to Jacob's in boxes, and checking his computer frequently to see if Jacob had emailed him. He couldn't help but feel disappointment when he saw that the Dom had not.

So finally, at nearly noon, he reluctantly crept out of his room and headed for the living room. He didn't see his mother or father anywhere, so he breathed out a sigh of relief and sank down onto the couch. His stomach growled, he wanted to go into the kitchen to eat, or needed too rather since Jacob had insisted to him that healthy diets were key, but he knew that if his parents weren't in the living room then they most certainly were in the kitchen. As he expected, his mother came out of the kitchen and into the living room. When her gaze fell on Troye, she sighed heavily.

"I still just can't believe your carelessness," she shook her head in disbelief. "I thought we'd raised you to understand your duties as a sub. I understand mine completely, so why can't you just be a good sub?" "Mum..." Troye mumbled, averting his gaze. "Jacob didn't-" "And you called him by his name after he specifically told you not to? He's going to be requesting a new sub in no time," his mother scoffed. At that moment, much to Troye's relief, Shaun emerged from the kitchen and sharply stopped the nagging woman. "Laurelle," he snapped. "Go elsewhere and let me speak to Troye alone, please." His mother was forced to leave the room, yet she did so reluctantly. Troye's father Shaun sat down beside Troye, pursing his lips.

"I figure she as a sub has no right to scold you in such a way even if she is your mother. Don't let anyone else but your Dom and the people your Dom gives permission to, scold you like that." "Are you going to scold me?" Troye asked miserably. "For what I did on national television?" "No," Shaun assured. "We're going to talk about coloring." "But I know how coloring works, we don't need to-" "Run it by me, just for fun," Shaun hummed, sitting back further against the couch and looking at Troye expectantly.

Troye sighed, but sat nodded, clasping his hands together nervously on his lap, "We use coloring to communicate with one another. Us subs mainly use it since our Doms are the ones in charge. If things are good, you don't have to color. Things would be classified as green. Yellow, yellow is like a slow down. It's a warning that things could be escalating to a stop. So like you would at a red light, a Dom stops what he's doing. Doms are sensitive in a way to colors, and they have to stop until they're given an okay again, a green from their sub or a sub in general. You wouldn't run a red stoplight, just like Doms don't keep going when their sub says red. If a sub says red and colors out, the Dom stops what he's doing all together until the sub says green again and then they can take note that whatever happened to make the sub color out is in the red category."

Shaun nodded in approval, "Good. But do you know what you forgot to do today when you nearly colored out, when you left the stage in such a hurry?" "I forgot to say green," Troye whispered. "I left Jacob stuck frozen with the word yellow and Nick fricking Grimshaw had to give him a green so that he could come get me." "Which was a very inconsiderate and careless thing to do," his father pointed out. "You must always remember to take care of your Dom, Troye. As a Dom myself I can assure you that a negative color from our sub is a very petrifying thing. We stop because we care, we don't want to hurt you in a way that is permanent or in a way that you don't want. It's the whole point of the coloring system. So in return of us stopping, all we ask is that you bring us back from it and let us know that we're okay again and aren't going to harm you."

"I'm sorry, dad," Troye responded. "And I apologised to my Dom as well, I was punished for my mistakes. I'm trying, I really want to be a good sub because Jacob seems like a great Dom. It's all so new and I'm scared. I'm afraid that Jacob isn't going to want me and that he's going to file for a new sub and kick me back out." "That's something to take up with your Dom," Shaun told Troye. "If he's a Dom that wants you to speak to him and tell him how things are going for you then tell him. Don't be shy. You can't know that something is going to be wrong if Jacob hasn't told you it's wrong yet. So tell Jacob how you feel about the whole situation and see how things go from there." Troye nodded, but he didn't plan on telling Jacob. That would be far too embarrassing, that and he was fearful of Jacob's answer. He didn't want to be told that all of his suspicions about being a terrible sub were right. He was sure that if Jacob told him such a thing he would no longer be able to function, he'd shut down. Being told that he was terrible seemed pretty red on the color scale for him.