Melody gives him a mild look back. :I'm not actually convinced that the many, many problems with this included Leareth not having the trait of being attracted to men, or at least to you specifically. It's hard for me as well to guess what he'd feel if there were less trauma in the way, but - well, I assume most men who are not attracted to other men would be uninterested or actively averse to kissing them, and he's not lying about enjoying that - he's not wanting it loudly at you, but I don't think he would either way, most of his baseline non-trauma-related emotions are pretty muted: 

He looks baffled about this, but only briefly. 

- it seems hard, and maybe unfair to Leareth, to argue about which of his feelings are real. But - a piece of information I thought I had yesterday was that you had wanted this, as opposed to just - wanting me to not leave. And that would change a lot, if it were true. Not - not enough to make it a good idea, necessarily, but it'd be different.

Leareth is both less and more confused now - less because of course someone would feel very hurt and betrayed if they found out he was having a relationship with them that he wasn't even enjoying and was just pretending to for instrumental benefits, he would have been able to predict that in advance. And more because - well, that was very obviously not the thing Maitimo wanted? And so Leareth doing it wouldn't have achieved anyone's goals? So Leareth is pretty sure this in particular wouldn't have seemed like a workable plan if he didn't want it and was faking that the whole time. (Also he's not nearly a good enough actor to fool Maitimo, so it would be stupid from that angle too.)

He - it's hard because he has the usual amount of imperfect recall for past thoughts and emotions he didn't write down - but what he remembers is that he found out Maitimo's feelings, and then introspected on his own feelings, and concluded that he already loved Maitimo anyway and had the necessary wanting-a-romantic-relationship components. Which required some assembling, but that's because he's never done this and so had to do a lot of guessing about what it would even be like.

And obviously that should have been a collaborative thing with Maitimo, rather than something he thought about on his own in secret. And he was also - downplaying the panic and overwhelm, but that's to an extent because he feels like Maitimo treats him more delicately than he endorses treating himself, and in fact the thing that works for him is to ignore the overwhelm or do various other mental motions to make it easier until the scary-novelty part is past and then it's fine and a lot faster than just waiting years. 

...He supposes he's not sure he would want sex even without all the stuff in the way, if it doesn't correlate with wanting to kiss someone or be held by them - he had expected it would, he doesn't have data on this - and also lots of people succeed at enjoying sex and wanting it a lot so it can't be that hard in the abstract. 

He shares all of that, hiding things from Maitimo now just seems like a bad bad plan. And probably should have from the beginning. 

It's not - I didn't think your plan was to fake it, I thought it might not occur to you that you can't change it to work however's convenient. Well, Quendi can't, not without Lórien. I guess maybe humans can.

Leareth thinks that– Leareth stops and actually thinks about it.

He...does expect he's better than most humans at, just, deciding to be a certain shape, having his mind do the motions he wants it to do and not the ones he doesn't - he suspects he's done that before but in the direction of not wanting sex, back in Velgarth where the thing he might actually want, a close relationship with a trusted ally who would still be there a thousand years later, wasn't something he could have even in theory.

He's pretty sure he couldn't change it arbitrarily even if it were convenient - probably if Maitimo belonged to a species that looked very ugly to human sensibilities, instead of very aesthetically beautiful the way most Quendi do, he wouldn't have had anything to lean into there. Or - if he were starting from zero, instead of starting from a base of more closeness and intimacy and fondness than he's had with anyone in the last five hundred years, where he already felt safer than anywhere else in Maitimo's arms - he feels like that already is the core thing that would underly him wanting sex with someone too. 

He's done some amount of nudging emotions, though a lot of it was just bothering to notice that 'wanting to touch Maitimo's hair', say, was even a possibility, rather than trying to turn 'not wanting' into 'wanting', he can't generally make that work as a primitive motion. Leaning into an angle he already has usually just works, though, and he's never considered it a problem or a bad thing to do? His mind is frustratingly full of obstacles and traps and pitfalls right now, which - okay, he can see why Melody thought this was a dubious plan and he would just hurt himself, he's probably miscalibrated about what he can and can't do right now. 

He's not sure what the conclusion is here - whether the actual thought process he had is one Maitimo would consider 'wanting it' or 'not wanting it'. So he leaves it hanging between them, for Maitimo to decide for himself. 

 I think - I don't want to try to navigate that now. But not never, necessarily. ...maybe we can revisit it in a century or something.

:...All right:

Leareth puts his head down on his knees. He's thoroughly exhausted again, shaken, he just wants something metaphorically solid to hold onto. 

:Can you stay for a bit longer today: 

Of course.

Leareth really wishes he could ask Maitimo to hold him, but he shouldn't push that, not for a long time at least. He is very, very glad and relieved about just sharing all of his thoughts again.

:Can - you tell me some of what you are thinking? I know I - do not have a right to all of it, just - it would help. To make sure I - actually understand, now: 

It might? Or it might make things worse. I'm really not sure. I don't want to scare you again. Glance at Melody.

:I think it would be a good idea to go off and have a break, after this, and you can take some time to lay out properly what you would want to tell Leareth, and I can judge then if it's just going to cause a lot of damage for no reason. ...I think it's fine if it scares him a little, he'll calm down - he's fine with scaring himself and in most cases I think he's right to be, and I think we shouldn't, actually, be treating him way more gently than he treats himself. I've already told him that there is just about no possible scenario where you actually just abandon him - he could probably upset you enough that you storm off for a few days or weeks to cool down, but I think that's the worst case scenario, am I right? And he knows he can weather that even if it's very miserable, especially since he's substantially less jumpy around Vanyel now. Anyway, I think that limits how much words you say can upset him: 

Leareth nods in agreement. :I do not mind waiting until later. That - is probably better anyway, so I can - be less upset starting out. I am trying to be less upset now but it takes a long time: 

I'm not going to leave him while he still wants me. But - some time to think seems good.

And he heads out to go pace the island. He does not feel like singing.

Leareth asks Melody to see if Vanyel can come back for a while. He feels better, which is not at all what he expected as the outcome of that conversation, but he still doesn't especially want to be alone.

Vanyel can come back, and continue not asking what's going on while he reads and sings to Leareth. 

Possibly they should...tell him? At some point? Leareth is going to consult Maitimo on that, though. Later.  

Eventually he comes back. Sends to Melody -

- he's upset because it was very very bad for him, trying to read what Leareth wanted with such bad information, it was like feeling blind and stupid and stressed all the time. He didn't want to hold traumatized body language against Leareth but actually - he thinks he should just not try to do anything that relies on reading people when those people are impossible to read, even if it's not their fault, and also he still suspects that some of why he was having trouble reading it was because Leareth was actually not aroused by anything because Leareth was misinterpreting how sexuality works but that doesn't seem worth arguing about. He's upset because he feels like something awful happened specifically because he was attracted to men even though he was trying to be extremely careful, and exactly one ideology he's encountered predicts that and has an explanation of it, and it's 'being attracted to men will lead you to endless unhealthy parodies of a relationship where you're more interested in sex as a means to an end than in genuinely doing the right thing' and it seems basically true and if everyone he's talked to his whole life is actually right, which doesn't seem like it should be surprising, then he's sad about that. Also and he recognizes this almost contradicts the last thing he's upset that Leareth didn't just wait a decade until maybe this wouldn't have been horrible. 

- and all of that's irrelevant because he is Leareth's, actually, for whatever he wants, including if Leareth still wants to touch him though he expects he won't under these conditions, Leareth was tortured for years trying to save their world and nothing else matters next to that and it hurts that Leareth does not seem capable of understanding that or valuing it but it's still true. 

And he loves him. Still. Though if it were up to him (which it's not, because Leareth was tortured for years trying to save their world) he would in fact not be the slightest bit tempted to do anything with this in the next hundred years. 

:I think all of that seems quite reasonable to tell him; I think it’ll upset him but - in a way he endorses, because he did a stupid thing and it hurt you. Should I be there or nearby in case he needs help calming down that, er, isn’t from you?:

I think that's a good idea.

Melody comes with him and hovers nearby. They evict Vanyel again. 

She glances over at Maitimo.

He shares all of these thoughts. 

Leareth absorbs all of that, still and silent. And then starts crying. 

He hadn't realized. This is the opposite of what he wanted. If he had guessed that this entire thing would be very bad for Maitimo - he just wanted him to be happy, for both of them to be happy. It's really upsetting that this is reinforcing the deeply frustrating Quendi ideology about sexuality, and obviously now there is no productive way for him to argue with that. Actually it seems like he should not be having goals or trying to shape the world toward what he wants, still, because all he's managed to accomplish is breaking things and making them worse. And it feels like he should have been able to see this coming and - not do the stupid thing - but he didn't, did he.

He's glad to know all of Maitimo's thoughts, even though it hurts; it was worse not being able to even see how much damage he's caused. 

It's still kind of bouncing off, the part where Maitimo has for some reason - for reasons that in fact make sense - decided to unconditionally offer his help as long as Leareth needs it. But he suspects that's his fault, some sort of distortion in his thoughts that he can't manage to see around. 

And - he loves Maitimo and wants him to be happy and it seems like he should actually stop acting toward that goal, because he is not yet capable of making plans that work, but - he still feels it.

You could just stick to plans that don't involve keeping lots of things secret! There are lots of plans that are much more - possible to correct if they have concerning elements - than this one!

Sure, he can try doing that. (Right now he feels dubious that anything he proposes is going to ever be a good idea, but he supposes he can eventually make his way to plans that work by coming up with ones that don't and having other people point out the problems.)

"Do you want a hug."