And he falls asleep and wakes up and has a great day, and that evening he comes to dinner like normal and sits in Maitimo's lap like normal and is scooped up and swept away to bed like normal, and in the middle of giggling and kissing his lovely boyfriend he remembers to check his hypothetical consent.

Rearranging his head briefly into a configuration where refusal is hypothetically possible feels so weird. He does it, he checks, he finds unsurprisingly that he is fully in favour of everything that's happening right now, he wipes refusal back off the map of possibilities and kisses his lovely boyfriend some more.

This is a version of consent he can get behind.

Yes, no doubt it is.

Taliar is in fact a little bit smug about this knowledge. He loves Maitimo and he wants Maitimo and neither of these things is because he has no other choice, they both stay true when he pretends to have more options. It's a nice feeling.

It is!

Over the next several days, the pattern holds. Taliar continues to check his hypothetical consent, find a yes, be delighted about it, and then cheerfully go back to not having the option.

The season turns; winter fades into spring, and flowers begin to bloom.

Taliar decides to walk through one of the palace gardens on his way back to the workshop after lunch one day. This proves to be a mistake.

It's a perfectly lovely flower with a perfectly lovely smell and the moment it hits him, he freezes in place, heart racing with sick terror. For a second he can't see the garden, can't feel the warm afternoon sun - there are stone walls closing in on him and a cruel laugh in his ear -

Is this a human thing or something - or maybe how young he is - Angband does this to people, but -

- daffodils objectionable?

He blinks a few times, holds his breath, makes himself leave the garden at a normal walking pace instead of bolting.

I didn't actually know what kind they were, I don't spend that much time around flowers.

I can get them removed.

I would be very grateful. I can also just avoid the gardens, but I don't know how far the scent will carry...

He thinks he's far enough away now. He breathes again. The smell is present but faint, fading; he doesn't hear Nahira's voice or see her eyes. He decides on an alternate route to the workshop and heads that way.

He has the gardens cleared of daffodils; the human is allergic.

And Taliar spends the rest of the afternoon working busily on engineering and manages to almost completely conceal how fragile and frightened he feels. It's not like after a nightmare; nightmares tend to give him a background level of fear that jumps sharply into conscious awareness when something provokes it, and this is more of a constant feeling of dread and unease that he can never quite completely ignore.

On his way to dinner, it occurs to him to wonder what his hypothetical consent is going to be tonight. The thought brings on a flash of deep fear. He keeps right on walking without any outward reaction at all.

And they have dinner.

There are better and worse flavours of fear, he is beginning to discover; this is one of the worst ones yet. He feels a little like he might throw up, not enough to worry him that it's actually going to happen, just enough to make him that much more uncomfortable. He is quiet and withdrawn and picks at his delicious food until the nausea gets worse and he has to stop eating entirely.

He is intensely annoyed he didn't get to murder Nahira.

"Do you want—" he says, and he can't quite finish the sentence - does Maitimo want him, does Maitimo want him to check his hypothetical consent first...

Today'd be a no, right? That's why you're so scared -

I don't actually know for sure until I check - it's not going to be the kind of unqualified yes it's been since I started checking, but there's always a chance I'll surprise myself by being more okay with it than I thought...

Check.

Okay.

He hesitates. He takes a deep breath. He makes himself go through the mental reconfiguration, open up the possibility of refusal and find out how much he wants to take it.

It's not, actually, a completely unqualified no. There's a part of him that really does want to let Maitimo have this of his own free will, as a gift, out of affection, to see if he can, to spite his fear - but it's drowned out by no no no I can't I can't, not now, not this time, no— and he closes off the option again and sits there shaking with his face in his hands.

And he picks him up and holds him and kisses him, gently.

You want to give me this, but you can't right now, it's too scary?

Yeah, he says, leaning on him, clinging to the feeling of warmth and safety he still finds in Maitimo's arms. Or maybe 'I want to give you this, but not enough to make it worth how awful it's going to be'. That's - that's what my answer would have been. If I had the option of refusing you.

Thank you for checking. I could see how much effort it took.

He smiles slightly. It's good to be appreciated for his accomplishments, it feels nice, a warm glow of pride to offset the sick dread. I love you.

Do you regret staying, when I asked if you wanted to go?

He thinks about it.

If - if Maitimo has him tonight, it's going to be very, very bad. But bad enough to negate all the good he's experienced so far, and all the good he will experience eventually afterward when he is okay again? ...No. He stands by his choices. No regrets.