Well, Taliar doesn't have lots to do, because he was told to take the day off, which up until five seconds ago it seemed like Maitimo was also doing.

And he can't for the life of him figure out what he did wrong, or even whether he should be trying to figure that out or just - going and doing something else - something such as what, he's too off-balance to think of anything -

What do you ordinarily do on days off?

I haven't taken one since I got here, the closest thing was that disastrous afternoon walk - I wasn't much for them before that either - I'm sure I could figure something out but, uh, I'm not sure that would be a good idea right now—

—because despite his mind's attempts to dodge the subject for the sake of self-preservation, it's seeming more and more like the thing he did wrong was be too in love and if that annoys Maitimo, now, after Maitimo decided to keep him, then what the fuck is he even for - it would mean he's a failure on a level too deep to fix, because trying to be less in love would destroy him and it's clear that's not what Maitimo wants either - and with that going on in the back of his head, anything he tries to do with his day off will end in one of two places: either pouring all his energy into some project approximately as demanding as bringing Nuime the Internet, or lying in bed for the next week consumed by self-loathing.

He turns around. He walks back over. He slaps him, hard. "Maybe the catch is that you're absurdly high-maintenance."

The first thought that flashes through his head on hearing that is that if he's too high-maintenance for Maitimo's tastes he can just go - take his soul and bounce out to one of the nameless worlds in the surrounding cluster and drop himself in a randomly selected star, after which he will require no maintenance at all -

But of course he can't do that. He made a commitment. He is not leaving until Maitimo explicitly wants him gone.

He takes hold of the crisis building in the back of his head and he drags it to a screeching halt and locks it away by force of will. His soul flares brilliantly silver. In the sudden calm, his mind feels... quiet. It's a somewhat unfamiliar feeling.

"If you don't want anything further with me right now I think I'll go find a book to read," he says softly.

"I want to be done hurting people."

"I love you very much for that," he says, although the feeling is also caught in the unaccustomed quiet, muted compared to its usual depth and colour. This is a weird way for his head to be but - it's sustainable in the short term, it's not doing him any harm.

He shakes his head. He leaves.

He goes and finds a book to read.

He stops reading his mind. It takes some effort but - it's not improving his concentration any, he can start again when he's curious -

Then he will miss out on a few hours of Sun-dark Taliar quietly and comfortably enjoying a book about linguistics.

And then he finishes the book and conscientiously puts it away and goes back to his room and - what matters is whether things harm him, right, okay - he pokes gently around the edges of his locked-away emotional crisis until he's sure that it's safe to let out, and then he curls up in bed and cries very intensely for an hour, and then he gets up and washes his face and has a late lunch and goes back to his room again.

He needs to not be harmed by his doubts, and he needs to do it without any help. Okay. You've got a clear goal, Taliar, now solve the problem.

He checks in on him. He -

 - oh, for fuck's sake -

 - he goes to his room and walks in without asking.

It would be very painful if Maitimo made a habit of dropping him and walking away every time he felt love too deeply, but so far it hasn't been a habit, so far it's just been a single instance. It would absolutely wreck his head if he tried to hold back from being so in love, but that just means that he shouldn't do that—

—he looks up when Maitimo comes in. "Hi."

"We need to talk but first you're going to suck me off, I'm not in a mood to have a discussion about our feelings right now and I will be afterwards."

"Okay," he says agreeably. This is a good plan and he is happy to follow it.

Good. 

He does that. He enjoys doing that. Maitimo is lovely and Taliar loves him.

And now they were going to talk about their feelings...?

"It occurs to me that you know nearly nothing about me and that might be part of the problem. I am for all the rest of time in love with someone who I hurt very badly, and he is very resilient so he is okay, and he asked for promises I wouldn't hurt him and I gave them and then we were happy, and he obeyed me as - an indulgence, almost, and it hurt so badly but I knew I could fix it someday. And now he's gone. And now you're here, and I can have everything with you, uncomplicatedly, except if I just evaluate you as worthy of happiness and then give it to you it'll all be a play, because I still have no idea what I want and I didn't win it, and so it feels like a cruel game and knowing it isn't one doesn't lessen that it feels like one, and feels like one so overwhelmingly it can't feel anything else. It's not about not knowing you well enough. It's about knowing how to get exactly what-I-want-from-you and being terrified of wanting anything from you because the last time I was in love it would have been unequivocally better for everyone if I hadn't been."

...Taliar hugs him.

It - makes it make so much more sense, and makes all the turmoil in his head so much smaller, to know that Maitimo hurt him by accident - there's a sort of reflection, a thread, a signature, that traces the shape of what Maitimo wants from hurting him in how he feels when it happens, and the signature this time was muddled and incoherent, like someone knocked over the inkwell.

"...does this mean I should be more difficult?" he wonders. If 'didn't win it' means 'didn't expend effort', then, well... it would seem like too simple a solution for such a complicated problem, but sometimes those work.

"Maybe. There are ways of being difficult that'd help, but -

- you could stop the - habit of thought - that says I can do no wrong to you or in general and so if anything's wrong it's you."

"Okay," he says, snuggling him. "I can do that, sure."

(His soul shines faintly blue. This is a blue sort of problem.)

"Anything else you can think of that I could do to help?"

"Stop interpreting my leaving or not reacting as evidence of some failure on your part? I - am going to be ambivalent. For a lot of reasons. Your appeal isn't one of them. It'd be nice to have a way to convey 'I like you and want you to remain here' that isn't sleeping with you because if that's the only one I have I'll use it and then feel vaguely coerced."

He definitely does not want Maitimo to ever have to feel coerced about anything.

"Telling me to solve difficult problems and then observably noticing how brilliant I am at it," he suggests. "This Internet thing was amazing for that. And - I don't know if holding my soul is sufficiently unlike sex for your purposes - but it definitely leaves me feeling like I belong here."

(Is there a good way to tell the difference between kinds of being difficult that will help and kinds that fall on the wrong side of that trailing 'but', he wonders...)

"Challenging me on policy choices or magic priorities or how to handle multiverse stuff is good difficult. Refusing me occasionally when you don't expect me to back down is good difficult. Don't threaten me, don't tempt me to actually hurt you -"

"...I'm not sure what tempting you to actually hurt me looks like," he says.