That is both reassuring and somehow terrifying, but the latter is a quieter emotion and Leareth can tell it it's not being helpful until it subsides. 

The next day, when he's had some time to nudge his emotions into cooperating with this plan, he tries kissing Maitimo while Maitimo holds very still. The first couple of times it's impossible to tell if he likes it because the main thing he's experiencing is OVERWHELM, but that's pretty much what he was expecting and he can get non-overwhelming cuddles to calm down. 

Once he's gotten used to it a little and the novelty in itself is less terrifying - and he's gotten Melody to put in some redirects away from a couple of fake memories that are not that similar but still reminder-y - Leareth is of the opinion that he quite likes kissing Maitimo, actually, as long as he's starting out relaxed and actually in the mood for touch. 

He feels stressed all the time, though he can't pin down why. Everything's fine. Leareth is taking more actions intended to accomplish his goals, is making progress at them. It's probably really good for him. It is admittedly a lot more fun to kiss people who aren't suppressing a panic attack about it but that's so unfair, having this thing and only sitting around comparing it to some other thing that can't exist anymore. And it'll get better with time. It is getting better with time. 

He tries not to dwell on any of this around Leareth because the last thing he needs is to get some sense that he's being burdensome. He kisses him and tells him that he's wonderful and loved and that he doesn't mind the panic attacks, except for how they make him want to kill Melkor, which he has already done.

(Maitimo is successfully hiding any visible signs of stress, Leareth cannot tell at all.)

Leareth is, for the most part, very happy! It's really good to feel more in control of his own mind, capable of setting small goals and working toward them and knowing this is helping shape the world toward what he wants. He rarely thinks about the fact that, here, 'what he wants' is for Maitimo not to leave, thinking about it too explicitly is scary and bad-feeling and therefore unhelpful and so he avoids that mental motion. Also, nearly everything they've tried is pleasant and intrinsically rewarding once he's made it through the overwhelm of doing something new, and it's good to have more options for things in his life that are...nice. It's slower and more effortful than he'd hoped and he has to push through a lot of mental resistance before getting to the part where it's nice, but being frustrated about that is unhelpful, so he tries to recalibrate his expectations, and things are fine, he loves Maitimo so much and wants him to be happy and he's hopeful. 

He's sharing somewhat more thoughts with Maitimo, although still a lot less than before, but this could be partly because he less often loses the ability to communicate in words. 

...And at some point the obvious next thing that comes up, is for Maitimo's clothes to come off. The best way to do this and steer around all the worst associations is for Leareth to do all the undressing, stay completely in control of it. His mind is nonetheless producing an infuriating amount of internal resistance to the idea. He tries to be gentle with his emotions for a while, like Melody was advising, but at some point it seems like being gentle is not accomplishing any progress here. He feels very stuck. 

"I think that I may just need to get through it once and then it would be easier," he tells Maitimo, while they're cudding. "I think the difficulty is probably that - I have no pleasant associations with - this entire space of things - and if I had one more recent and salient memory of it being fine and nothing bad happening, I could actually make progress from there?"

"Mmmm. Okay. And maybe promise yourself that that's all, that nothing else will happen? I'm not - actually very sure how this ought to work -" I wish you had needed some other thing, some thing that didn't feel so much like hurting you - "but I think if you're pushing yourself like that you want to  - stop there, and know you will..."

"Yes, I agree. And - if I start and it is too overwhelming I will stop. And I think I will ask Melody if she can help at all. Maybe she can block the associations somewhat, just for now to make it less intensely scary." Sigh. "I realize it is a stupid thing to be scared of, now, and I wish telling myself that would change it, but - I am not actually expecting it to work that way, I understand why I have that feeling." 

"I don't think it's a stupid thing to be scared of. Talking to Melody sounds like a really good idea."

Melody is honestly kind of dubious about this plan! She makes a few, kind of halfhearted attempts to dissuade Leareth, but one of the facts about Leareth is that he is very goal-oriented and very stubborn and - mostly those are useful traits to have. She would very confidently expect this to be a disaster for anyone else, but she's less confident for Leareth in particular because he's quite unusual.

She can put in a temporary block for him; she warns him that this isn't a perfect fix and he needs to pay attention to what he's feeling, she's concerned that him ignoring his anxiety and pushing through anyway might actually backfire.

:I wish I could convince him to take it slower than this: she tells Maitimo, :but, well, he's Leareth. I think he already feels like he's going slowly, which I guess is true relative to his baseline of 'can just do the things he wants without any complication': 

Maybe I should be trying hard to convince him too. I've been figuring he knows what he wants and it feels hostile, trying to convince him he doesn't. But maybe he doesn't.

So he has a go at this. "Do you think maybe we can try it in a couple of months?"

"I am not sure why it would be any different now versus a few months from now." 

"Well, Melody thought that time might help."

“Is the mechanism supposed to be just that more time means I will have weaker priors of bad things happening in general? So far I think I have found that time passing does not change how I feel as much as - trying to do more things. Maybe years would help, but - well, I am already tired of being scared of so many things, and I would like to try to address that sooner than years.” 

"That makes sense." Hug. "I'm proud of you. And I think you're doing really well. If you want to try right away, we can."

Snuggle. "Tomorrow?"

For this obstacle in particular, Leareth is having more trouble chasing motivation by imagining the pleasant thing he'll be able to have if he can be less scared, maybe especially because he's promising himself that he will do this and nothing else; his mind is refusing to simulate anything in detail past that point, which is sort of reasonable because when he tried before he ended up stuck in very unpleasant memories, and that's why he asked Melody to do a block. 

Maitimo will be proud of him, though. He wants that, and all he has to do is some straightforward actions that are not going to result in anything bad happening. 

"Sure, tomorrow." And he sings to him, and holds him, and - there's a nice thing on the other end of this, he just has to be patient -

And so the next day, after a long walk to prepare himself, Leareth asks Maitimo to come over. Spends a while cuddling him and kissing a little, all the things he usually enjoys, to remind himself that there are more things like that, he just can't access them yet. He can't get himself to stop feeling on edge, but of course he's nervous, that's not new information and doesn't mean anything is wrong, it's just one of a billion false alarms his mind screams at him constantly. 

:I love you: he sends, and starts taking off Maitimo's shirt. 

- wow, the part of him that's busy being scared of everything, but usually pretty quietly, really doesn't want to be doing this. But that's also not new information; he knows why this is especially nervewracking, and he would like it to stop being that way and he has a plan. 

And this isn't an intractable amount of internal resistance, yet, so Leareth keeps executing his plan, Maitimo is holding still for it like he promised. It doesn't matter if his heart is racing and his mouth is dry and he feels dizzy and half out of his own body, he can keep all of that internal where it doesn't affect the world; all he needs to do is do it anyway and then observe, see, nothing bad happening as a consequence–

- panicking isn't going to help so he won't, that is not the thing happening here - 

He slips off Maitimo's shirt - success! ...probably enough success for today, this is hard, he feels like the ground is slipping out from under his feet - and he kisses Maitimo's forehead and then leans back to look at him - 

- Vanyel, naked, holding him down, speaking in Sauron's voice - 

And then Leareth's experience is entirely consumed by PANICPANICPANIC, with no room left for anything like 'tracking where he is', and he does the only thing that he can, goes limp and pulls back from having any opinions or wants or goals, tries not to have any thoughts at all...

- he has little panic attacks, sometimes, he says it's fine, but this seems significantly worse than that. He holds still, because probably it'll be even worse if he moves - reminds himself not to look stressed or concerned, to always look content and proud and happy and relaxed and a safe person -

It's okay, it's okay. You're safe.

It’s not quite as bad as after the attack on them at Cuivienen, when it took Leareth hours to really become aware of his surroundings again, but it’s still minutes before Leareth is capable of even semi-coherent thoughts, and he’s still very disoriented, curled up facing away from Maitimo on the bed with his eyes closed, if he doesn’t move then, then - then nothing, really, whatever was going to happen will happen to him anyway...

- no, that’s not right - what - he had a plan - 

Maitimo is still there - Maitimo is telling him he's safe - but he isn't, because he tried and he couldn't do the thing, he can't give Maitimo anything because he's too broken - he thought he could have the right feelings but his mind doesn't work and that's the worst part, how is anything ever going to be okay again if he can't ever carry out plans -

He's dizzy and terrified and he desperately wants - something, some sort of help, he doesn't know what - and he can't get enough of his mind working to manage Mindspeech in words, so he flailingly puts that thought in the open where Maitimo can see it. 

(And accidentally is putting all of his thoughts where Maitimo can see them–)

He's so sorry and ashamed and everything hurts - he was trying -

What - 

- and he looks back through several months of - 

- he opens his mouth to say something but he can't do that, he can't be angry, he agreed to do this utterly stupid utterly awful thing and he can't be angry, now, that apparently it was a lie - half a lie - a lie that Leareth was mostly telling himself - though he stopped sharing his thoughts - of course he stopped sharing his thoughts - which suggests at least some conscious awareness that there were things that had to be concealed, or Maitimo would never agree to this -

- anyway this is the kind of thing that under any other circumstance he would be very angry about, and he would stand up and storm out and - 

- and sing until he could think, he can't think right now, he can think around the edges of it but not about the core thing, but he doesn't need to be able to think to notice that he is not allowed to be angry, not allowed to leave, he gave up the right to have any feelings about this when he agreed to do it at all and now he can just stay here and hold his face gentle and - think of something to say, except he can't think, not being able to be angry makes it awfully difficult to be able to do anything at all apparently, if being angry is all of the next thirty items on his to-do list -

"You don't need to be sorry for anything," he says, once lying comes back online, which it does well in advance of thinking. "You don't need to figure this out. I don't need you to figure this out. Did - did you think that I needed you to figure this out -" why even ask it's only going to make it harder not to be angry and he can't -

:I - no - I...: 

Leareth is distantly aware that Maitimo seems - he seems not upset exactly, but something, something different from before even though his voice is still gentle - and he's creepingly aware, as well, that there's the layer of feelings that aren't the ones he wants to be having, and now Maitimo's seen that - and he loves Maitimo, so much, he's really really sure that he does but he doesn't know if that by itself is enough - he doesn't even know what 'enough' would mean, except that in this moment he's crushingly certain that he isn't, and that Maitimo is going to leave -

He keeps leaving all his thoughts open to Maitimo anyway, which is terrifying, but everything is terrifying and he isn't strong enough, right now, to pull together the pieces of himself from here - he has nothing even resembling a plan from here - it's the most frustrating thing in the world but he just can't. 

Gently - "I'm not going to leave." Even though he'd really really like to, because this is ridiculous, this is horrifying -

- this is some kind of game where the whole point is to make sure he doesn't have enough cards to do anything right - 

"I'm never going to leave when you're not ready." Which hurts, to say, because you probably shouldn't make promises to people you are very very angry at while pretending everything is fine - but he can't leave, so he might as well give himself more reasons he can't leave -

Leareth is slightly reassured. He's still too upset to think straight, mostly with himself for - he's not sure what, but this is not at all the position he wanted to end up so clearly something he did up to this was wrong, and he hates that he can't stay in control of anything, anymore, even when that thing is himself, he can't even keep his own thoughts and feelings straight–

As soon as the panic recedes even a little he's so exhausted, he feels like he used up all his mental resources dealing with the part where doing things is scary, and now there's none of him left to handle the fact that not doing things is also scary and it doesn't feel like he can chart a path from here to everything being okay. He mostly just wants this moment to stop happening - to stop being conscious for a while - and also Maitimo is never going to leave when he's not ready but it would be polite of him to be ready at some point...

:Can you - can you just - hold me and sing me to sleep: He doesn't say or think that he's sorry again, because Maitimo told him not to, but he's still kind of feeling it in the background. 

Of course.

He sings. 

It's still hard to relax enough that sleep is possible, but eventually the sheer exhaustion carries him there. 

- he wants to go outside and think but firstly he still can't, not where anyone might see him, and secondly he's worried that once he does it'll be very very hard to stop halfway through and come back and - 

- no. He can do this. He can arrive in fits and starts at whatever beliefs he actually wants to have, right now it's mostly just a roiling mess of not-allowed-to-be-anger, and in the meantime he can act entirely normal. He has been working on that skillset for a long time and just because it's hard to think right now doesn't mean he can't count on himself, there.

He leaves. He goes to his office and does some paperwork and thinks.

Leareth believes that Maitimo is a horrible person. This makes sense, since Maitimo has been proving it for the entire duration of their acquaintance. Leareth believes that Maitimo will - get bored, or something, decide to push the point or maybe just wander off - if Leareth isn't interested in sex. So he's spent the last several months trying to be. This was a horrible thing to do, but it makes sense, because if you believe you are in the custody of a horrible person then all of your options are horrible. Maitimo could absoutely have predicted this. If he had expanded his circle of advisors to include literally anyone who understood that Maitimo was evil and disgusting they would have thought of it first thing. He filtered the people he'd talk to, to exclude the utterly obvious viewpoint on the whole situation and then none of them could identify what was wrong with it even though they did have a vague sense that something was.

What's wrong here, he'd asked himself so many times, and the answer had been staring him in the face all along, the whole time. You are attracted to men, that's what's wrong here.  If not for that, everything would be fine, and as long as that was true nothing could possibly be fine. 

It makes a lot of sense. It makes him feel less angry. More of some other equally distracting emotions but 'not angry' seems like an improvement in his emotional state, on the whole. 

He should talk to someone but he can't. Even being able to identify 'not talking to someone' as the mistake before, he can't. He can vaguely distantly promise himself that he'll talk to someone before he actually goes to Lórien about it - he owes Findekáno that - but he's not going to be able to do that any time soon anyway, he'd be gone for weeks and he just promised Leareth that he wouldn't leave. And if he explains why Leareth will be upset, even though he'd be much happier with the end result. He will have to wait a couple of decades and come up with an explanation that runs along completely different lines and then Leareth won't have hurt feelings. In the meantime he can just say that he doesn't think they should try again - no, that's not going to be persuasive - he can get Leareth to admit what he did here and then say gently that he didn't want that and then hopefully it'll be over -

- he's doing a terrible job of the paperwork but that doesn't matter -