Leareth sleeps fitfully, manages not to wake up all the way each time he gets close, in his half-asleep state he can't remember why he doesn't want to be awake but he knows there's some reason. 

He wakes up, and considers Mindspeaking Maitimo like usual, and...doesn't. It feels like there's a very big pileup of - things wrong - and he can actually finish thoughts now that he's calmer but he still can't unpack the layers of where and what he screwed up. He can predict, vaguely, that Maitimo is going to be upset about at least one of those layers, but he goes in circles when he tries to figure out how to apologize, how to repair it - if it's possible to repair it... It might not be totally irrecoverable, Maitimo said he wasn't going to leave, but - well, the ultimate issue is that Leareth doesn't know how to put weight on - promises that he doesn't fully understand.

...He is so incredibly not going to be able to resolve this on his own. Which means that it's the sort of thing where he would normally ask Maitimo for help thinking it through, but that just feels like tangling and muddying things even more. He considers asking Vanyel - gods, at least he's finally somewhat less scared of being in the same room as Vanyel - but he doesn't, actually, think this is something Vanyel is well placed to give advice on. He imagines trying to explain it and just getting a startled-rabbit look and confusion. 

Deep breaths. :Melody?: 

A while later, Melody crosses the island, not rushed exactly but moving briskly, and lets herself into Leareth's room. She looks a little worried but mostly her expression is level. 

"Something's wrong?" 

Leareth gets about three words into mentally formulating an explanation, and then gives up and drops his shields against Thoughtsensing; the room itself is shielded so it's fine, it won't go any further than that. :Can you - just look - I feel very confused...: 

He is pretty scared to let her look, for unclear reasons, partly because he expects she's going to - try to stop him from doing things in the future, maybe, try to constrain his option even more, but he can't unpack that thread all the way and besides, it's not like he has better options anyway. 

A while later, a somewhat shaken Melody promises Leareth she isn't going far and will be right back, and sticks her head out the door so she can Mindspeak Maitimo. 

:It's me. Leareth asked me to come over. I - figure you're aware that–: He's aware of the whole mess and so she doesn't have to try to condense that size of mess into a sentence. :Um. I made a really bad mistake here and I'm incredibly sorry: 

I'm not angry, he says reflexively, his tone about the same as it'd be if she'd dropped a teacup and it'd broken. I can come over if you think it'd be helpful, or if he asked. I told him I would come over if he asked.

:He hasn't asked yet. All he's done is ask me to read his mind, I think he's having a lot of that problem he gets where he's too overwhelmed to communicate otherwise. I - hmm. Obviously both of you need to talk about this, and - I think he owes you at least something of an apology, I imagine this was extremely upsetting for you to stumble into, but right now he's very tangled up in about five different layers of what he thinks he's apologizing for, and most of them are wrong, so. Probably not productive to have that conversation just yet. And - he's wanting to know what you're thinking and feeling now, and probably he should eventually, but I also think that won't be productive and is unfair to both of you to address when you haven't had a chance to process it not at him. So. What I'm inclined to do is talk with him a little more, get him settled, maybe ask Vanyel to keep him company for a while, and then we can talk in private, if you're up for that: 

Sure, that works. I think he should at no point know what I'm thinking, really, but maybe we can arrange something else that will help him feel more oriented.

Melody doesn't respond for a moment because she's busy making a face. :Of course. I'll Mindspeak you when I'm done here: 

He still can't really think and doesn't like it but he continues to appear to be doing something until she calls for him.

Vanyel is summoned to sit with Leareth for the next few hours and keep him distracted by reading or singing to him. Nobody enlightens him as to why and he doesn't ask. 

Melody Mindspeaks Maitimo again and asks where would be a good private place to talk. 

She can come to his office if she would like.

She will do that. She sits down and looks sheepish but does not immediately bury her face in both hands like she wants to. "Do you have that privacy mage-thingy still?" 

"Yes." He activates it. 

Sigh. "If I were in your shoes, right now, I think I'd be feeling pretty upset and angry and wronged by him, and also like I had no right to feel any of those things at him given, well, everything. I'm not you, of course, so I don't know, but - well, I think it'd help you a lot, and thus help Leareth a lot, if you were able to voice all of it to me and unpack things here, even if you're not ever going to say those things to him. Neither am I, obviously. I keep a lot of people's secrets. So?" 

"I'm not angry with him. I wish he had had different expectations about me but I have for a long time had available the option of - getting it fixed, being someone he could have had better expectations about, and - not taken it - and so it is not very fair to be angry that he concluded what he apparently concluded. He was wrong, but - I might have done the same thing, if I felt like I needed to, so the problem is that he felt like he needed to."

Melody blinks, tugs her sleeve straight. "Hmm - I'm sorry, I think there's some assumption in there that's not specified all the way, because I'm not following," she says mildly. 

Sigh. "If I had been following Quendi sexual ethics at all this would not have happened. I decided they were stupid. Actually, they were not stupid. They were meant to prevent things like this from happening. This was a valuable thing to learn and I wish it had not involved Leareth hurting himself though I think I was being too thickheaded to learn it without someone being hurt because my whole assumption was that maybe it could exist without hurting people."

Melody still looks kind of confused. "Ethics about - not having a romantic relationship with someone who's sort of your prisoner? I feel like we tried pretty hard to weigh that, and either of us may have made a mistake given what we knew at the time but I don't think it's an obvious one, actually." 

"No, broader than that, outside of marriage. It was obviously not an appropriate situation for marriage and so it was not an appropriate situation for anything. I know that humans do not even have our concept of marriage and I am not speculating particularly on what humans ought to do with each other."

Melody looks very nonplussed. "I - um - maybe? There may be something there that's a decent heuristic, but - I don't actually feel like the details of this are necessarily contingent on your species?" Frown. "Or that you're both men, if it's about that. I - it seems in the hypothetical like the exact same thing might've happened with Vanyel instead, though not in this exact situation given the specifics. Or, hmm, also the hypothetical where you happened to be a woman still feels coherent, if we're looking at - just the general shape of misunderstanding that can happen between people. I do suppose that miscommunications happen more easily between cultures but that's hardly your fault. This is mostly - well, I think my mistake here was not remembering that Leareth specifically finds people caring about him unconditionally to be confusing and hard to handle, because even before Angband his priors were that - that didn't happen, at least not for him. I kept noticing I felt confused and worried but couldn't name a specific thing, and I didn't..." Shrug. 

"So he concluded that I wanted something, and the reason he concluded that I wanted sex instead of that I wanted - magical artifacts made after he recovered, or to be well known to be associated with him, or something that wouldn't have blown up like this - is that there's something wrong with me where I do, in contexts where I shouldn't, and he read my mind and found out. And had he read anyone else's mind it wouldn't have gone as badly because they do not have that specific thing wrong with them."

"Finding him attractive? Hellfires, I find him attractive. I've never asked Vanyel if he does because why would I but I wouldn't be that surprised. I'm not additionally in love with him, but nineteen-year-old me would absolutely fancy him in secret, I really do not feel like this is a you-specific problem." 

"What do you think he needs from me right now."

"Right now I think he needs you to - talk to him at all, and be calm and predictable. And clearly explain that you don't want a romantic relationship with him under these particular conditions, and also that you aren't going to leave - er, I assume that's still true? I think it would be helpful if you could tell him what you wish he had done instead, and maybe why you find what he did do hurtful, although I think you should not currently tell him that you're angry about it too. I don't think it will help for you to explain that the problem was you being attracted to men, because he's just going to argue that it's not."