So you talked things through, he says, amused.

He ducks his head. :We did, yes. After I spent a while being indecisive about it: 

How are you doing?

That is a surprisingly hard question to answer. :Mostly very happy. Also confused. I - know how to do most things, right? I am not used to - feeling unprepared. And I feel very unprepared for this: He smiles a little. :Maitimo thought you might have useful advice: 

I don't think anyone ever really knows what they're doing, when it comes to relationships, it being one of those things you're supposed to only do once in your life. I guess I know some things about Maitimo. He sounds fond but maybe also slightly exasperated.

:That is fair enough. I think the most difficult is figuring out what I am feeling and what I want, but it is especially complicated because - it is entangled with what Maitimo feels and wants, in a way I am not used to working with? Also I think some of his reasoning on this is suspect, because he...thinks he is doing something immoral, and I am not entirely sure how to interact with that: 

He's very hard to talk out of that. I think the least stupid version of it is - everyone trusts him? Everyone believes that he is a certain kind of person, and so they build their houses, start their novels, have their children in a country that he runs, and - you don't want to play lightly with that.

But also, you know, they're all being kind of dense and many would probably change their minds if they bothered to actually think about it.

The main way it is bad for Maitimo to think that way is that he mostly gets past it by thinking about his personal life as a domain in which ethics do not apply and this is - importantly still incorrect? If anything actually seems bad for either of you then, you know, it is probably bad.

:No, I agree, there are strategic considerations there and it is not obvious. And...yes. I think he would not want to do anything that would be actually bad for me? Leaving ethics aside, just for selfish reasons. But it does make it feel - I am not sure, more tangled? And I am more confused about what would be good for him, as a result: 

He was very, very determined to keep it from you when he thought it'd be bad for you. I think he's a good person even when he's confused, or I'd have said something sooner. But - yeah. Makes it more complicated. 

This is maybe too optimistic but I think it is good for him to be happy and make people happy and have fun and have it go on not ending the world, I mostly don't think you can go wrong there.

:That makes sense: Leareth feels like he probably still has about a thousand more questions but he doesn't know what they are, yet. 

...oh, right, that one. :Yesterday he was feeling that he still needed to - use lots of restraint not to hurt me, even though he was not keeping his feelings a secret, because I needed time to get used to this. And I think this is true! I do not think he even minds, exactly, just - I was wishing it were not the case because it seemed unfair to him, and - I would not normally worry at all about feeling pressure to have certain feelings instead of others, that is not something I am very vulnerable to, but it seems as though this could be different: 

Is it helpful, do you think, to be sharing thoughts all the time?

:In some ways? Possibly unhelpful in others, I am not sure: 

It just seems complicating because, like - ordinarily it would be bad manners, if you are disappointed that someone is not in the mood, to send them all your feelings about it. But if you are sharing everything it happens by default.

:I suppose. I think I dislike not knowing things more than most people. Maybe I am being very unreasonable but I - am not sure it would actually be reassuring not to know, even in that case: 

I don't think you're being very unreasonable, just - inviting the complication you already noticed. I don't particularly know what to do about it? Presumably if Maitimo is unhappy he can leave and presumably if he specifically wants to have sex he can come here. That is substantially more options than most people have.

:That makes sense. I am glad that he has substantially more options than most people, I think that helps: 

It seems like it would? And probably it also introduces some complications, or everyone would be doing it, but - don't put it on yourself to be what Maitimo wants. Maitimo can get what he wants.

Leareth nods without saying anything. That seems true– well, it seems true that Maitimo can accomplish his goals, and to the extent that those align with what he wants, it should work out.

He's very good at it. Fondly. 

:He is very good at a number of things, really: In Velgarth there's basically no one who can keep up with Leareth; how could they, when humans are lucky to live a century? Here, that isn't true, and Maitimo is particularly competent even for Quendi. Leareth can admit that this matters quite significantly to him, feeling that someone is solidly his equal. 

Just the one thing, in some ways, but he gets a lot of mileage out of it. 

:The - people thing? It does seem as though he can, well, absorb pieces of many useful skills incidentally, that way: He knows Maitimo walks around with part of him thinking like a Leareth when they're together, and suddenly he's curious if Maitimo ever does that around other people, but he isn't sure how to frame that question to Findekáno or whether it's appropriate to be asking him in the first place, so he leaves it alone. 

Yeah. They're all like that - all the house of Fëanor, I mean - they pick one thing and then they count on everyone else to fill in for its weak points. Maitimo is brilliant and good and gifted and charming and an absolute idiot at anything you can't do through making people happy. 

:It is kind of a vulnerability, really: 

It is. Shrug. It never really scared me except during the leadup to the war. I guess vulnerabilities that take an evil god to exploit aren't much of a liability most of the time.