"Er, there are a lot of reasons it might be a bad idea to actually have a relationship, there's the part where you're sort of his prisoner, and what it'd look like..." Shrug. "Although, honestly, if you want it, I don't see what's wrong with that and I'd be pretty happy about you getting more of the things you want, right now." 

Leareth absorbs that for a moment. "That is helpful. Thank you." 

In any other circumstances, he would be telling Vanyel that he isn't sure if he's having the shape of feelings that mean he wants a romantic relationship, as opposed to just...whatever it already is, now. But, well, Leareth has already decided the bottom line of what he wants, here, and he's pretty sure that he's mostly having all the appropriate feelings for it, and can nudge any remaining ones into line. 

"Leareth..." Vanyel hesitates, he doesn't want to be condescending by mistake, but he forges on. "I'm proud of you, that you're thinking about what you want here. I know that must be hard, and - it's good, is all." 

So Leareth goes out for a walk to think. Thinks in circles for a while. Eventually decides that there's no possible way he is going to come up with a polished thing to say, it's going to come out as a mess no matter what, and he might as well just go do the talking about it part. 

(He is kind of terrified about this, but it seems likely to be for stupid reasons.) 

:Maitimo, can we talk at some point?: 

Sure. Are you in your room?

:On a walk but I will be back there in a couple of minutes: 

I can head over now.

Leareth is hovering by his bed when Maitimo arrives. He's more fidgety than usual. 

" - hey. What's up?"

"I...should tell you something..." This is the stupidest thing in the entire world to be scared about. "Can you hold me?" 

"Of course." And he sits down next to him and wraps his arms around him carefully in one of the known ways that isn't scary.

His hindbrain is screaming that Maitimo is going to be angry, but that's based on some very faulty priors from events that weren't even real, actual Maitimo is not going to be angry, if he wasn't angry about any of the other awful things then he won't be about this.

"Two things. I - read some of your thoughts. When the amulet was broken. I would have told you right away, but - I picked up that you - wanted me. And then I needed time to think. I feel–" why is this so unreasonably hard to talk about, "–I think I love you, and - if you want to, if you think it is a good idea - I think having a relationship would make me happy." 

There, now he's said all of the things, all of them are true things (if somewhat complicatedly true around the edges), now what. 

"Oh. I didn't mean for you to - I'm not angry. But I didn't mean to - I figured you would catch on eventually but I wanted it to be - once you were okay - I was worried it'd - scare you - or distract you -"

"No, it is all right." ...Leareth probably shouldn't literally lie to Maitimo about his feelings. "I was a little scared. But for - stupid reasons - like when I was stressed by Vanyel. And - not very much, really." Shrug. "I guess it is distracting." 

"I guess 'not distracting' is probably a lot to hope for. Or not even hope for -" He stops himself. Bites his lip. "I am very surprised, sorry. I'm not quite -

- I love you."

It feels good to hear it said out loud. Mostly-good, it has some of the ground-sliding-under-him feel. "I gathered," he says, half-laughing, his voice shaky. "I - I am not sure what my feelings are, I am not - used to this - I care about you and I want to be close to you and..." He trails off. "I ought probably give you some time to think, sorry." 

"I should definitely think. But - I love you, and - 

- what specifically would you like to be different from the way things are now -"

Aaaaaah this feels suddenly very fraught, like there are a thousand different ways to say the wrong thing. It takes a lot of effort and control, but Leareth manages not to tense up. He has spent some time thinking about this. "I am not sure exactly - I have not - been close to people in that way, in a long time. ...I think I would like it if we had sex. It would probably be - hard and scary, at first, because of - Melkor things - but I do not actually endorse never doing things that are hard because of Angband." 

"That makes sense." He reaches up to run his hand through Leareth's hair, very gently. "All right. I want to ask Vanyel if I am being very stupid and ask Findekáno if I am being very stupid. That would mean telling them, though, and it would be very reasonable to prefer it be more secret than that."

Leareth shivers, closes his eyes. "No, that makes sense - you should do that... I trust Vanyel, I do not know Findekáno as well as you do but if you trust him..." 

"I do. He doesn't have a way to block mindreaders but I don't think the Valdemarans would do that."

"No, I doubt it."

Leareth is focusing on the fact that he is comfortable and safe, nothing about that part is different, and repeatedly dissolving and setting aside his mind's attempts to make him very stressed because this is novel territory. 

Maitimo stops petting Leareth's hair, puts his hand back on Leareth's back. "I wanted you from almost the day we met. Mostly managed to think about other things because there were so terribly many other things to think about."

"You were rather good at not thinking about it; I do not think that you ever did while I was reading your thoughts." 

"You might not have noticed, it was very tangled up in -" And he sends some memories, drawing out what was background at the time - watching Leareth do magic, realizing that the question that felt so urgent, about how far to trust Leareth, was in a sense almost irrelevant because actually, they were almost entirely at his mercy - and that should be frightening and it was mostly frightening but there was something else there, too - occasionally he'd wish Leareth was less astoundingly virtuous -