And he will sort his things by which are pretty and useful enough he still wants them, and fill one small bag, and then go find Telumë. 

I thought of one more thing I want! I want to import clothes from Arda. Human clothes are just not as good.

You are completely right! We have some amount of trade with Arda at this point, it's picked up a little since the Noldor started coming back, and we could definitely arrange additional shipments. 

Happy, optimistic, a little bit nervous. Want, which he suppresses but not quite as ferociously as he usually does when they talk.

Telumë raises a Gate to the permanent terminus right by the edge of the water (there are four Gate-termini throughout the city, including an enormous one for rapidly transporting large numbers of people or quantities of supplies, but this is his favourite. Even in late spring veering into summer, the waters off the northern coast are frigid and there are ice floes kind of everywhere, but the air inside the shimmering bubble-like barrier a few feet away is balmy.  

Oh, it's beautiful.

Maitimo should see the rest of the city! He's very proud of it. It's not quite as carefully-crafted as a Quendi city would be, the thing with humans is that sometimes one person wants to build a beautiful house that kind of clashes with the style of someone else's beautiful house next door, and you can't really tell people not to, it's their houses. But Telumë is pleased with it anyway. 

It it good. It is a human city and not a Quendi city but that's - good too, in some ways, because human worlds feel like they will have more of the sort of robustness that is now one of his aspirations, the robustness that might someday let even Sauron live somewhere. And Telumë is so happy and that's pretty wonderful. 

(Pride. Delight. Want.)

Everyone seems to know Telumë, almost to the extent that people in Tirion once knew Maitimo. It's less convenient because humans don't have osanwë and most aren't Mindspeakers, so they can't all talk to them at once and have to satisfy themselves with waving. 

There are lots of children. Some of them are jumping from one rooftop to another. It is not actually very dangerous here, Telumë explains. Unlucky things generally do not happen. Also it is very difficult to stop children from playing. 

It is.

I'm so happy for you.

I am very glad that we have been able to build this. I - feel a little as though I rebuilt myself along with this city. 

That does not surprise me at all. It - matters, a lot, about you as a person, that you were right that you could do this and that it really is good.

There were times in the middle where - I was much less sure of that. I suppose I fell back on knowing that my past self had been sure enough to begin, and that having Fëanáro's research teams assisting us would only improve the odds. 

How was he during the war? Fëanáro, I mean.

It was a long time ago and he wasn't exactly in a good place to pay attention to social things during that period, and also was mostly in Arda, but... He was very upset, obviously, about the Silmarils. He - seemed to hold together all right. I think Nerdanel helped a lot. You could talk to Vanyel or Stef, maybe, they saw much more of him. 

Maybe. I don't want to seem like I'm - prying into things that aren't my business - but I suppose Vanyel and Stef won't agree that it isn't.

I am not sure of Quendi, I suppose, but I think almost all humans here will agree that it is very much your business to hear some updates about your family during the war period. 

Quendi will be more uniformly aware that they're, uh, not my family anymore. And that Fëanáro would probably resent anyone passing along updates.

Your mother at least still wanted to hear how you were doing, so I cannot see that she would mind you hearing things in return now. 

Those must have been - difficult updates. He squeezes Telumë's hand. Thank you.

You are welcome. 

Telumë can point out some potential buildings Maitimo could decide to live in, at least temporarily if he wants to design his own house longer term, and then they can stop at a tea place, which is up in a vine-covered tower that directly overlooks the water. There are trees on either side. They've had almost a decade to grow plus magic to help. 

It's beautiful and he's so proud and this Telumë feels so different than the scared kid he has, like, three interactions he remembers with.

I will share all of those memories with you at some point, if you want them. It's going to be hard; he's really not proud of a lot of it, and also it includes a lot of moments when he was miserable and hurting. 

I do but it seems like not first-date content, really.

Definitely not! 

Telumë looks out at his city. Then back at Maitimo. He still feels kind of nervous, unsure of his footing, but - happy. Happier than he's been in a very long time. 

He finds a nice house to live in. Makes plans to build his own, eventually. Goes on dates with his husband. He spends the dates trying to get Telumë to feel relaxed and at ease and in love, because that feels like the first part. Once Telumë feels safe with him, safe wanting him, safe planning things with him, then - then that itself will probably help rebuild whatever still feels like it might be missing from Maitimo's head. 

He meets the people in the city. Telumë knows all of them, and he's very very jealous. 

Findekáno visits. They talk. Maitimo is determined not to marry him until he has fixed his first marriage and is very annoyed that this rules out sex, too, at least until they know more about how that works. The people Maitimo would have advised to experiment are mostly still dead. It's still really good, having him around. 

He talks to the god, sometimes. It would be rude to get to know everyone in the city but the god, after all. 

He has a balanced range of hobbies. He studies animal intelligence and keeps up to date on all of the efforts to scout for other worlds. Humans sometimes kill their babies in the womb if they didn't mean to have them in the first place; Foundation is fine with this if they do it before the baby gets a soul, about six weeks along, but Maitimo thinks it is approximately the most horrifying fact he's ever heard so he's working on making sure it is widely available to women who want it. He helps a historian who is working on an account of the war with Melkor in Arda.

He gets pretty tired of not having sex with his husband or his boyfriend. He doesn't bring this up with Telumë but he probably catches flickers of it. 

He hardly tortures himself at all.