"That it's really inconvenient and not conducive to the health of the relationship that your magic powers are contingent on certain conduct from me - must've been worse for Tivarante, they still had a Melkor -"

"Yeah."

Snuggle.

"Sorry about that."

"Not your fault. If it were that'd be a whole different problem."

"If it were my fault that would imply I could do something about it, and I would."

"I know." Squeeze.

Hug.

"I love you."

"Love you too. Do you regret trusting me?"

"Not at all."

"You going to regret trusting me if I want you, right now-"

He grins.

"Not at all."

That's convenient, then.

Far from being regretful, he is in fact utterly delighted and adoring.

He can definitely see himself getting used to that. 

And then he is comfortable and cuddly and adoring. It's so lovely to feel so safe in Maitimo's arms. It's so lovely to feel so welcome in Maitimo's arms.

He is approximately as relaxed as he can get until his people are returned to life.

His thoughts drift lazily; he remembers the feeling of an imaginary stranger touching his soul, and - it was awful but he can definitely see the appeal; it would've been so satisfying to come back from that, if he hadn't been knocked straight out of it by an incoming emergency...

...hm.

He's thought before about how there's a signature to it, when Maitimo hurts him. He doesn't have a lot of practice at reading them yet, but he can tell they're there, he has a sense of them. And the signature of that incident, when he looks at it—to be hurt in that way, in that moment, after what he'd been doing beforehand, after what had happened the previous day—it reads as a pretty clear stop that.

Maitimo said he was trying to stop leaning on torturing people into more convenient configurations. Apparently he hasn't been completely successful.

Taliar isn't sure what to do with this realization. It doesn't make him angry or afraid, just... thoughtful.

Hug.

Snuggle.

"...it really would destroy me to stop doing that," he says after a moment. "But if that was something you needed - we could try to figure something out..."

"What I needed was - this - today - to see you being you at a problem other than me -"

"Oh," he says.

He reflects on the events of yesterday.

"...you sure got that."

"Wasn't the circumstances I'd have wished for, but -yes."

"Yeah, me neither."

Snuggle.

"Seems to keep happening," he says, thinking back to the twenty-four-hour flashback incident. "We get the things we need, but not in the ways we would've liked."

"I'm - not used to coming out of horrible things stronger. That's not how it worked before."

"Coming out of horrible things stronger seems to be the essential trajectory of being a Taliar."

"That's good."