Taliar has a really good day. He solves a couple of minor engineering problems - nothing like the indestructibility improvement, but real advances that will have real benefits, however small. The engineer friends he's working with are thrilled.

And his boyfriend will shower him with compliments.

Eeeeeeeeeee. He is so happy! It's so good when his boyfriend does that!

His soul is pretty happy with him, too - the spark at its heart is pretty definitively out of the realm of being a spark, now, it's the size of a seed pearl and glows a bright sunny gold. Engineering advances are good for it.

Taliar's soul is very pretty and in the evening if he pleases he can hold it, and Irissë shoots him dark glares, and they restructure around the expectation they'll have the city-spanning healing aura even though right now they don't have the healing aura after all. He gets Taliar an instruction set for a ring for nightmares.

When he gets the instruction set, he learns it and makes the ring that very same day - a handful of them actually, because why not. He carries one in his pocket when he goes to dinner with Maitimo that evening, and puts it on right after he sits down so he won't forget before he goes to sleep—

—and his soul flares with hard silver light and he says "oh, come on" and takes it off again, because the impression his soul is giving him translates approximately as 'nice idea, but if you start wearing one of these I'm going to block the effect and pick it up as a permanent power'.

He sighs.

"Not worth it, I'll just deal with the nightmares," he says, putting the ring down.

"What's your soul's objection?"

"According to my soul it's... the closest phrase I can think of is 'not right'... for me to be affected by any long-term mental alteration from an outside source, apparently, even if it's just 'while wearing this ring, I don't have nightmares'. But it's also not right for my soul to just plain stop me from getting such an unambiguously positive thing. And my soul isn't enough of a conscious agent to go down to the next level and acknowledge strategic concerns about picking up new permanent powers."

"Frustrating. And - probably not worth it, yeah. Though if you can support this many powers - resurrection, mind-control protection, writing to magical objects, osanwë, healing, lie-detection - on a spark that small I might be overestimating how much powers need..."

He tries to organize the hierarchy in his thoughts so it'll make more sense - it makes perfect instinctive sense to him but that's because it's his own soul.

There are three main branches of active power in his soul right now:

Lie detection is tiny, it'd still work on almost nothing, and it doesn't have any other powers attached.

Osanwë is smallish by itself, but it has speed-writing to magical objects and protection from mind control branching off it, each of the three a little bigger than the last.

His healing aura just sort of takes up whatever amount of space he happens to have free at the moment. It used to have no branches at all, but now it has the immortality power coming off it. The two of them together take up most of his soul's available power; the healing aura has about half of it right now, and the immortality power has about a third, leaving the remaining sixth for all the rest of his current powers put together.

It's true that if he let his soul pick up this specific new power, there's no way it would significantly delay the defeat of the Enemy all by itself. But it's such a comparatively trivial benefit - he can handle the nightmares, there's no question of that, and they're not even that frequent - that if he let himself get in the habit of picking up powers for things like this, it could delay the timeline by months. Better to take a firm stance on it from the start. Immortality and protection from mind control were important enough to merit exceptions; this isn't.

"Makes sense. Okay. I'll wake you up if it happens again." He hesitates.

He sends the thought - he likes knowing that Taliar will still obey him when rattled and vulnerable, will still obey him when it's not effortlessly floating along in love.

"Love you forever," he says.

His feelings on this thought are—complicated.

On the one hand, he's glad to have been able to prove that. He knows it's true, he knew all along, but it's one thing to know it and another thing to be able to communicate it successfully at the appropriate level of certainty. And it feels good and affirming to hear that Maitimo appreciates it.

On the other hand, he didn't exactly enjoy what happened a few days ago. It was scary and difficult and unpleasant and he expects it will probably be just as scary and difficult and unpleasant the next time. He felt good about it afterward, and even to some extent during, because successfully doing scary difficult things is rewarding and because he liked being able to prove the depth of his commitment and because the way Maitimo thinks about him is utterly glorious; but the experience is still not something he'd ever seek out for its own sake, it's terrifying.

Except—on some sort of anatomically improbable third hand—he remembers when they were cuddling afterward and Maitimo said that he's sometimes tempted to hurt Taliar to reassure himself that Taliar will stay, and he remembers that just for a brief instant he almost felt like taking it as a challenge, and now he almost feels like that again and it's a closer kind of almost.

I am interested. Probably better to discuss while you're not terrified...

Well, I'm not terrified right now, he says, smiling affectionately up at Maitimo. Love you.

He's definitely a little nervous but he's okay, it's okay to have the conversation.

It's actually really interesting, the sensation of a try-me moment on the verge of happening but not quite all the way there yet. He can inspect its parameters without beginning to feel challenged in an immediate sense, if he's careful to think about it the right way.

So: if he starts down this mental path, he'll end up giving Maitimo explicit advance permission to be nasty to him about it, to take no care at all for how easy it is on him or even deliberately make it worse, next time he has a Nahira dream. Maitimo could already do that if he liked, of course, but the nice thing about explicit advance permission is that it's a big help in letting Taliar continue to feel safe afterward. And most or nearly all of the informational value would still be present, he'd still be having an awful time of it in the moment and needing to work through that, but once it was over he wouldn't have a lingering background fear of it happening again.

He does not currently feel challenged and so his main reaction when he thinks about the prospect is nervousness, fear, he doesn't want it to happen, it would be terrifying - but Maitimo could easily push him into crowding those feelings out with stubborn commitment and determination-to-love, Maitimo can have this practically for the asking, and Taliar is entirely okay with being given that push.

Tell me you want this, tell me you want to see me prove I can handle it - show me, if you're in the mood to be generous that way, I'd love to see exactly how you feel about it - and I'll say yes and be glad to, he says.

Oh, Taliar -

He walks across the room and sweeps him up into a hug and kisses his jaw, kisses his neck - you are such a miracle, do you realize - I want this, I love seeing you prove yourself, I love understanding you like that, I want you and I want this, so badly - and he sends it, in as much detail as he possibly can -

I love you, says Taliar. So much.

He hugs Maitimo, leans into him, feels nervous and giddy and scared and safe and intensely determined and deeply in love. Maitimo's thoughts are so beautiful, so fascinating and frightening and affirming, and Taliar loves them and loves him, Taliar wants to give him this, to show him the strength of his commitment, the depth of his unshakeable resolve, what it really means when he says he will love Maitimo forever.

The way you think about me - it's amazing - I love being your miracle, I'm so happy, I love it so so much when you show me how you feel...

They should be really clear about the parameters, it's important - but not necessarily right now, right now he is much more interested in being swept off his feet and kissed and held and wanted and loved.

He is all of those things, he is so very intensely all of those things. 

That is just as it should be.

Love you forever, Maitimo. Undeterrably and irrevocably.

My Taliar. My delightful Taliar. 

And much later, you wanted to talk about parameters.

Yeah.

Snuggle.

So - the way I'm thinking of this happening - the next time I have a Nahira dream, from when I wake up until you tell me you're done hurting me for the day, you can do whatever you want to me, and once I get my head straightened out afterward I won't be afraid of it happening again. Depending how bad it gets, I might not be able to actively cooperate, but I won't try to stop you and I won't try to get away and I will still love you. I... still really want you to touch my soul if I start thinking about Nahira and can't stop... but even if you go that far, even if you let me hear her voice in my head when you touch me, I'll still forgive you. It might take me a lot longer to stop being afraid afterward, though, if you do that.

Oh, Taliar. Love and fascination and delight and hunger and - I don't want you stuck thinking about that woman. I won't let that happen. 

He closes his eyes and hugs Maitimo tightly, feeling intense relief and affection and gratitude. Thank you. I love you so much.

Anything you like, tonight. I am in a very indulgent mood.

Taliar smiles.

I want trust songs, and I want you to show me what you see and how you feel. And before that, he picks up his soul and puts it in Maitimo's hand.

A complex storm of emotion fills his mind. A little afraid, a little uneasy - 'a little' on soul-touching scales, still enormous compared to any ordinary emotion - and past that, through that, above and beyond that, he is absolutely drowning in love and certainty and resolve and joy and gratitude and an intense desire to communicate his feelings as clearly as possible. He loves Maitimo so much and he is so incredibly glad he stayed, he has no regrets at all about that choice, he wants Maitimo to know that, he handed Maitimo his soul and made these feelings bigger than his mind can contain because he needed to express them as clearly as possible. The unbearably intense intimacy of soul-touching feels perfect and beautiful and good, it's exactly what he wanted - it's usually at least a little uncomfortable even on the best days, even when it is deeply worth it as it so often is, but right now it doesn't hurt at all.

And Maitimo rests his head against him and soaks it in and feels it and believes it and shakes his head and blinks a few times and holds his soul quite tightly and carries him off to bed.

And for as long as Maitimo keeps hold of his soul, he drowns ecstatically in glorious love.

This turns out to be one of the times when Taliar on trust songs cannot keep his hands off Maitimo. He feels like he's having an extended revelation, although he keeps being distracted from the details. It goes something like: this, getting high on trust songs, it's not just gloriously beautiful and addictively transcendent - it's useful, it's a way of... practicing the skill of trust. It gives him a reference point. When he needs it, he can remember how this feels, and reclaim the feeling from the memory. He is so glad to have that. He is so glad Maitimo can do this to him. He adores it beyond the capacity of words to express. Luckily, Maitimo can also read his mind.