Likest to Thee in Shape and Countenance Bright

FEANARO

--

It was under the two trees that Findekano received what was, until that point, the worst thrill of his life.

His uncle, the crown prince, brilliant Feanaro, had his wrist in a grip like forge-tongs, and he had yanked him bodily to barely an inch from his chest. He was tall, he was strong, his handsome face looked like some fanged creature the likes of which Findekano had never seen before when snarled into anger, and his eyes were just like his beloved Maitimo’s, for whom ( with whom) he regularly stripped naked, burning with the same piercing light.

Findekano was not yet the warrior he would become, though he fancied himself a skilled sword-dancer (and he was). Faced with the sort of hatred he had not yet seen in his young life in the blessed realm, his heart quivered.

“You can mind your business, son of Nolofinwe,” Feanaro snarled, his breath smelling of tea, peppermint, lemongrass, disorientingly sweet and light. “And I think it would behoove you to stop minding mine, and that of my family.”

Your family? Findekano thought but did not dare say.

Uncle Feanaro’s eyes—no, he imagined it. His memory made too much of it, in later days. Feanaro sneered down at him, for a moment. It felt—it felt like he looked him down, all the way down, his neck, his chest, his legs, just like Maitimo did.

And Findekano had the worst thrill of his young life, and certainly the wickedest. His heart hammered like it was on the anvil and he trembled in Feanaro’s grip.

Findekano had somehow found the gall to interrupt his uncle on his walk to address the issue of rising tensions in their family with him. He had been impatient enough to do so because an incident that morning had caused a spur of the moment gathering of his mother and his aunts, all anxious; he had been angry enough to dare because it had made Maitimo nervous and upset.

Findekano did not know what his body just did. He had not felt it before. He felt full of the need to run, and full of the need to lash out. The only thing he had to compare it to is the first time he laid his lips on Maitimo’s, and had been trembling-afraid of what would happen if his beloved cousin refused him.

In that moment of—fear, this was fear—Maitimo had responded with a moan, a new sound, a sound that Findekano hunted for, plied and mapped his body for. In this moment, he heard himself gasp, a shaking, startled gasp like a deer that had just been shot. ( This is what the deer felt! he realized with new horror.) And that sound pleased his uncle, who smiled almost invisibly as he released his nephew’s wrist with a force that sent him back. That smile, too, was a new thing to Findekano.

“Go! Complain to your father I’ve mishandled you, if you want. Maybe it’ll occur to him to keep a better eye on his mismanaged boys.”

Anger was a feeling that Findekano did know, though it was rarely so large or so hot. As his uncle walked away, Findekano snapped, “I will not, ” as he was not a petulant child who went complaining to his father. (He was already planning to whine to Maitimo all night long. ) He searched in vain for something to follow up that lack-luster rebuttal, and found nothing. He was left shaking as his uncle briefly, quietly, almost deniably, threw a mean, quick laugh at him, cast behind him like refuse.

—

Maitimo was just mortified. “I can’t believe he said that,” he gasped, lying on his back. “I can’t believe he said that to you.”

One reason he was breathless was because the two of them just finished with each other. It was charming, though, that he was still upset about how his father had acted, while the two of them were pressed together naked and spent, when Findekano had happily left it behind him, full instead of the bliss of being with his lover. Of course, Maitimo made an art of worrying.

Findekano laughed. “You can’t believe it?”

Maitimo sighed. “No. I can. He’s been getting… he’s been getting even more jumpy. He snapped at Moryo for no reason yesterday.”

Findekano frowned. No wonder Maitimo was on edge himself. Uncle Feanaro was… he had always been easy to anger, but Maitimo sounded… anxious about it, now.

“Tell me what happened,” Findekano whispered.

—

It didn't happen that time, right after the event. Many golden and silver hours, many meetings with Maitimo passed with it mostly out of his mind. What happened next didn’t happen until the fear that Feanaro had put in him transformed into another feeling he did not know yet, something smaller, quieter, but which he liked even less. It felt like the intensity of the moment had boiled away, leaving a thick, heavy streak of something stuck to the bottom of his spirit, which tasted salty and bitter on his tongue when he saw or heard of his uncle.

It was then that something very unexpected and very frightening happened to Findekano, lying beneath his lover on a sighing riverbank, taking him inside himself. (They would trade off who does what, as they both agreed that doing it is good and having it done to them is good also.) Having joined with Maitimo so many times already, there were times that he was both with his lover and away, wandering in his mind. The sweetness of the act had not diminished, but sometimes, it was soft instead of sharp, and slow, and his mind could muse on what he loved about Maitimo, what he loved about being beneath him, his breath on his throat, the sweat sticking their stomachs together, the fullness of his sex inside him, how it lit a fire in him. It built slowly in him, like a warming oven, and he was covered in sweat and weak by the time he edged near completion.

And one of Maitimo’s hands was traveling up his arm, and then it curled around his wrist, clutching; Maitimo was close to the edge, too, and was using his hands to brace himself above Findekano more than holding him down. But his hand curled around Findekano’s wrist, and suddenly he felt Feanaro’s grip, he saw Feanaro’s face, Feanaro’s searing hot eyes, he saw the hard teeth glittering just under his fierce sneer.

Findekano gasped. He saw him again with the next thrust, looming, just as much above him as beloved Maitimo was; the muscles under his sex spasmed and his skin flushed hot. He—he felt so hot. There was a sickly lurch in his stomach, the urge to stop Maitimo, stop him from finishing while he could see Feanaro, dominating him, over his open thighs. But he was so close, he's so close and his resolve dissipated in an instant. He opened his lips to speak up, but Maitimo thrusted into him and his head fell back, mouth open, soundless.

Maitimo squeezed his wrist when he finished inside him, mouthing an open, wet, hot kiss into Findekano’s shoulder. Findekano tried to writhe away, but with the feeling of Maitimo’s cock jumping with his spasms he was overcome; he only managed to moan “no” before Maitimo’s skin rubbing against his sex caused his stomach to clench and his seed to spill.

He was gasping on the ground, hot, sweet pulses spreading through his stomach and sex with every heartbeat. The soft, damp ground of the riverbank behind his back had become warm and pliable with the heat of his body. His vision was blurry, his fingers were numb, and his thighs and his stomach and his hole felt soft and sweet and wonderful.

Maitimo was backing away from him, quickly.

Findekano could suddenly feel his hips ache, his arms shaking. He felt how cold he was without Maitimo over him. He blinked, he struggled to sit up.

His stomach hollowed out immediately when he saw how Maitimo looked, still panting, still red-faced, his hair tossed where Findekano’s hands had twirled and pulled it, one arm anxiously in front of him, and a terrible look of unhappiness spreading across his face. “Did I—are you hurt?”

Findekano had to think back and realize what he’s reacting to—”no”, his lover groaning “no” underneath him right as he finished inside him.

Findekano got onto his knees, shaky as a newborn colt, and leaned forward so he could take both sides of Maitimo’s face into his dirty palms. “Maitimo,” he said, and, shaken, Maitimo leaned into it.

Findekano kissed his lips, which were soft and raw with how long they were making love. They breathed against each other, bodies both still pulsing and shaking.

“What happened?” Maitimo whispered after a minute. He was frightened.

So was Findekano. Another thing that had never happened to him before, and he didn’t like this one either. They’ve made love together when anxious to be discovered or when one of them needed cheering up, but that was quite different from upsetting each other in the process.

“I—did something—” Findekano said, and then hesitated.

How did he say this? How could he? But Maitimo was watching him as rapt as if Findekano was the budding of Laurelin. He had to explain.

He grabbed Maitimo’s hand, and then he laid back down. Maitimo, always the clever one, understood he was supposed to lay down beside him. Findekano gripped his hand. After a second Maitimo’s fingers moved around his, fastening them together.

Findekano looked sideways at Maitimo’s bare body, at his chest rising and falling, at his pale throat and freckled shoulders, at his softening sex between his legs. Maitimo. Maitimo. Maitimo.

“I just did something weird, but I didn’t mean to,” Findekano started. He looked up at the sky.

As far as he knew, Maitimo did too. “What did you do?”

“Have you ever thought about someone else?” Findekano asked.

“Oh,” Maitimo said.

Findekano squeezed his hand. “I didn’t mean to at all. I don’t know why it happened. I saw… I saw another person, right as I was about to finish. I said ‘no’ because I didn’t want to be seeing him when it was you with me.”

“Him,” Maitimo repeated.

Findekano looked at him. “You were afraid it was a woman?”

“I’m always afraid,” Maitimo said, “that you’re going to realize what you could have, and how strange this is, and go find the beautiful woman you deserve.”

“Maitimo…”

“She could be walking down the river,” Maitimo said, quiet, and only slightly forlorn, “Just around the bend, about to lock eyes with you. She could be at court tomorrow, come to petition the King, or pass by on a swan-boat when we wander the seashore.”

“Maitimo,” Findekano sighed, and leaned over him. He kissed his cheek, then his mouth. Maitimo leaned into it, closing his eyes, turning his face so he could hide more in Findekano’s shadow. “No. Never. I already know.”

Maitimo kissed him again. Slowly, and with what he could only describe as a burn, low but palpable, a nascent, innocent possessiveness, mollified by Findekano’s promises. Even that slightest burn bit at Findekano.

He… liked it. It didn’t make any sense, but he liked it, Maitimo’s anxiety, soothing it, how soft and affectionate he became once he was comforted. Maitimo made a pleasant noise in his throat.

“Who did you see?” he asked.

Now that his pleasure was long enough past, anxiety was able to bloom into full shape in Findekano’s stomach. “First, answer my question.”

“What was your question?”

“Has it ever happened to you?”

It felt a little unfair, but he needed the reassurance. Maitimo lowered his gaze. “It has.”

“Hm.” Findekano smiled, a little less nervous. “Can’t you tell me who you’ve thought about first?”

Maitimo flushed slightly. “There are a lot of fine-featured men in our grandfather’s court,” he grumbled, and reluctantly named a few, most far older than he was. “The men I would watch when I was a child, and try to emulate. I’m still… embarrassed, that somehow, childish admiration became…”

“Oh,” said Findekano. Possibly there was no other answer that assured him more about admitting the truth. And while he was still afraid, he could not refuse to answer Maitimo so honestly when he had just been so honest himself. “Oh no. Oh. I saw your father.”

“...What?”

“I saw the face of your father,” Findekano said again, even more quietly, “just as he looked down on me when I confronted him under the trees, and he had my wrist in his hand, and he looked at me with such... Such…” He had no word for it. “I cannot explain! I truly don’t know! I only know that for a moment, he looked so much like you, but with such—” he shuddered, that dark feeling which Feanaro birthed in him wriggling inside.

They were both quiet for a minute. Findekano could not resist sneaking a glance at Maitimo; he was still looking up at the sky.

“...I do not think we look that alike,” he said.

Findekano almost laughed. Of all things to point out! But of course he would. “No, Russo,” he said, “Except your eyes, which are just the same.”

Maitimo couldn’t say anything about that, because it was true. “But what would this mean?” he asked the sky, and Findekano was cautiously soothed by the calm tenor of his voice. “I don’t understand why such an image would be sent to you. Unless…”

“What is it?”

“Unless it was a sign that the patience the Ainur have shown us is waning,” Maitimo whispered.

Maitimo was convinced that what they had would be stopped if anyone knew about it. Findekano was not convinced… but he was still concerned. “It cannot be that,” he said, and admitted something awful, “because if so, that image of disapproval would have cooled my lust, instead of inflaming it.”

Inflaming! Why had he used that word? His face prickled. He swallowed. “I don’t know what to say,” he whispered.

Maitimo rolled onto his side, so he was looking down at Findekano. Findekano dared to meet his eyes; he saw concern, compassion, and simmering love. “I don’t know why it is,” he said softly. “We will have to wait and see.”

Findekano leaned up at him, leaned into the implicit promise that this didn’t change anything, that they were still as they were before. “I will not wander,” he said.

“I know you would not,” said Maitimo, and his eyes said, not out of faithlessness, not out of spite; he still believed that fate may come for his lover one day, and usher him to his intended bride, as it would him as well. He did not see how he could possibly want it, what person could possibly make him content with forgetting Findekano, but there would be many things, he assumed, that he would find a way to accept once he was compelled to do so.

—

That might have been that, if all that had happened was Findekano being bothered by the face of some beautiful man. But it was not some beautiful man, it was Prince Feanaro, the brilliant, the burning, the reckless. Eventually, Prince Feanaro utterly ruined a social evening again with his sharp-edged comments and his snarls. Findekano’s father left that engagement silently, and put a hand on Findekano’s back to walk him out with him.

Findekano threw a parting glance over his shoulder, meaning to find Maitimo, to lock eyes with him. Everyone knew they were friends despite the growing animosity between their fathers, and no one would think twice about…

But he missed Maitimo’s eyes, and found his uncle’s, glowing like coals. The dark feeling in Findekano whipped in him, heated him; he turned quickly back around and, not meaning to, walked more closely to his father.

After a minute, Nolofinwe whispered, “Do not let him intimidate you.”

Findekano balked.

“I know he… he has a power to disorient. But if you simply master your will and set yourself above it, you see it for the shining and smoke that it is. Do not let him intimidate you. Keep your dignity.”

That cut deeper than Nolofinwe had intended. He felt it, too. When his son fell silent, he wrapped his arm around his back, over his cloak, to pull him to his side, for just a moment. They hurried home, where Turukano was ready with an adolescent, but promising, attempt at dinner, and Anaire was ready with masterwork I-Told-You-Sos, to be delivered with a gravitas that the Valar could be jealous of.

—

That vision came back again, the flushed face of Feanaro, the arms and the body of Feanaro looming over him, and Findekano admitted to it. Maitimo, in return, admitted to a stirring he had felt, which he didn’t understand, to have his eyes covered while Findekano was on top of him. They tried that, and it was very pleasant for him, so the matter of father and uncle was forgotten again. But it came up again, when Maitimo was recounting a story of some slight Feanaro had done and the hot feeling of frustration in Findekano’s stomach rekindled the bitter, dark, hungry feeling of—of—

Oh, he didn’t know. He pulled Maitimo into a kiss, a hot, deep, jealous kiss, one where his whole tongue pushed and scrapped against the inside of Maitimo’s mouth and left him panting and trying to climb onto Findekano without looking too desperate. Findekano asked him if he wanted to be above him or below him, and Maitimo moaned that he wanted to be rolling all over with him, and so Findekano pushed him to the ground and climbed on him, and they pulled each other’s clothes off, and tossed on the grass and wildflowers against each other, slipping their thighs between each other’s legs, turning around and around, their braids disheveled and clinging to their clutching fingers. 

Maitimo was halfway on top of him, rubbing their sexes together, kissing him, when he broke away to say, with a voice deep in his throat, “You can—you can think about him if you want.”

“Oh—”

“I don’t care. You’re with me. I. I like it when you.” Maitimo got embarrassed enough that he kissed him again, and better mounted him so he could rub them together. He was rutting him when he said, “You’re strange. I like it. I like it when you want strange things. It’s so good.”

Findekano was flushed with heat. He curled his fingers into the back of Maitimo’s head, pulled their mouths together, and bit his tongue. Maitimo groaned.

Findekano didn’t do it that time, because he was so heated by the offer that their joining finished soon after (or, his part did, and Maitimo’s ended a few minutes later inside his mouth). Nor did he for a while, because he felt like being purposeful about showing that his devotion to Maitimo was genuine, no matter what strange impulses he felt.

But he did, eventually, on a day when he was curled up beneath Maitimo and letting him inside him. He closed his eyes and imagined his face, his burning eyes, his look of condescension, his strong, clutching fingers. He shut his eyes and rubbed his calves on Maitimo’s back, then asked him to turn him around and take him from behind (which they had really only tried once before deciding it wasn’t that good), and then he gasped his uncle’s name as Maitimo pushed into him.

He had still believed (as he still generally believed that all things made sense once you understood them, and that people were generally good, and other things like that) that uttering his name would freeze their lovemaking to a cold halt. But Maitimo gasped and struck inside him; Findekano parted his thighs and panted. They finished quick, and hard, shocked by the indecency of what had just happened, burning to reclaim each other. Findekano gasped “Feanaro” again, and then “Maitimo, Maitimo” when his lover clutched his body and rolled into him. Findekano grabbed Maitimo’s hand and placed it low on his stomach; Maitimo was both intelligent and practiced enough to know what to do next. Findekano finished silently, mouth open, with Maitimo still pushing inside him.

When he finished inside him, he weakly groaned, “yes.”

—

“I still don’t get it,” Findekano grumbled, frustrated.

“Hold on,” Maitimo said, flushing a little, which he always did when he cleaned Findekano out.

“It doesn’t—” 

“Please wait until I am not doing this,” Maitimo begged, and did something with his fingers that almost made Findekano hot again. It might have, if he wasn’t so annoyed.

Findekano grumpily waited until he was done, then plopped back onto the smooth earthenware side of the private bath in Mahtan’s family house.

It was a beautiful house (not a palace, which Findekano appreciated), white, brown, and red, curved like a great sea-shell, built of clean, intricately carved stone and soft, gentle, lacquered clay, spangled with mosaics and earthenware pots with fruit-trees and ferns, draped with cushions and quilts in the family rooms. The bath—or the baths, really—were a series of loosely connected private rooms, separated by screens, through which an ecosystem of heated water gently flowed. Maitimo’s family was spending some time there, while uncle Feanaro…

…Maitimo claimed that Feanaro had admitted himself he was getting overwhelmed and needed some time away from the court in Tirion. Maitimo loved his father, genuinely, and believed very many positive things about him that (he claimed) Findekano simply hadn’t seen, because he “just isn’t normal about your family, Finno. I mean, I’m sorry. And even he knows that, but he can’t get away from it.”

Findekano grouchily watched the soft steam curl into the air and mingle with the smoke from resin burning in a brazier, and listened to the lapping water flowing through brazen grates turning slowly green, and felt Maitimo’s warm and lovely hand smooth across his back to grasp his shoulder. Yet he refused to relax. 

”Finno,” Maitimo murmured. His still-snarled hair was pinned loosely onto his head with a lacquered ornament his mother had made him; his red eyelashes clung to his cheeks when he blinked. This was Maitimo the son of Nerdanel, the grandson of Mahtan, well-formed, well-spoken and amiable and adored by all and quick with a slight smile, and Finekano was so soft to him they would have to put him in a kiln if this kept up.

“I don’t get it,”  he complained, as Maitimo’s thumb rubbed a messy circle on his shoulder. “It doesn’t make sense. I don’t know why I want things that I don’t want.”

“I think I understand it,” Maitimo said, settling back so that he was comfortable at Findekano’s side. “It’s no different from wanting anything that you know isn’t really good for you. I sometimes, very badly, want to bury Curvo underground for a night, but I also know I don’t really want him to suffocate under the garden.”

“Oh!” said Findekano, because he did occasionally feel frustrated with his brother, but he doubted he would even think about doing that.

Well, Turukano wasn’t the annoying brother; he was himself. Maybe Turukano fantasized about putting him underground for a while.

“I want to solve the problem permanently, but that’s an overreaction to the actual problem. It doesn’t need a permanent solution, it needs a moment of quiet, a bit of thought, and a solution for now. He’ll grow so fast that I’ll probably need a different solution tomorrow. They change with time, Finno, sometimes so fast…”

“It’s not really the same as what I’m dealing with here,” Findekano continued, aggravated. “I cannot emphasize how much I do not, in reality, want to f—”

“Please please please do not, or not nearly so loudly, because he is here somewhere,” Maitimo said in a rush, “and yes, he will probably spend the next three days catching up with his old friends in grandfather’s workshop, not sleeping, crafting some new masterwork without breaks, but there is still not no chance that he could suddenly show up here, and if he does, I don’t think that’s what you want to be saying.”

“I don’t,” Findekano said, much more quietly. “I don’t, really, actually, want to do… that.”

“I know you don’t.”

The thought of… he didn’t dare truly approach it.

…No. No, it was his mind, and Findekano could think what he wanted in his own mind. The thought of touching his uncle, the actual man, knowing him, not just calling out his name to Maitimo’s hand, was a thought that burned. He was almost certain it repulsed him. That was why it was so very perplexing that the thought of pretending Maitimo was him while they touched each other kept him awake in bed.

Or, oh, like the thought of Feanaro, having just walked into the bath to wash off the sweat of work, overhearing this terrible confession, descending into the water with his beautiful son and his beautiful, filthy nephew, cornering them, his fists and his neck tight with wrath…

Ohh. Findekano leaned his head back against the cool wall and slowly, purposefully breathed out. There wasn’t even anything sex-like in that thought! It made no sense that it made him uncomfortably shift his tired hips. “What am I?” he groaned.

He could almost hear Maitimo rolling his eyes at him. He scratched at the place where the back of his neck met his hairline and, somehow, he did it in a pityingly way. “Strange,” he said.

Findekano couldn’t help but smile slightly when he was reminded of Maitimo’s uncharacteristically halting confession from earlier. He liked it when Findekano was strange, when he thought up some new way for them to touch each other, some new thing to do, some new thing to bring into bed. The fact that he even liked Findekano bringing someone else’s name in was… humbling. Entrancing. Beautiful.

“It’s very convenient to you that I am so incredibly strange,” Findekano commented.

“Oh?”

“Yes. You don’t have to admit that you are yourself.”

Maitimo hummed. That meant he conceded the point; Maitimo always refused to answer verbally if it was going to be embarrassing to agree. But he didn’t have a counter-argument, because just before they had snuck into the bathhouse through a side entrance, Maitimo had climaxed almost violently to the sound of his lover moaning his father’s name.

Findekano looked at Maitimo once more, eyes lowered, somewhat misty, considering something he had decided against saying out loud. He thought, yes, Maitimo usually enjoyed trying it when he had a new idea, a new position, a thought for something they might use, but this is a bit more than that. Maitimo humoring it, or enjoying it just because he loved Findekano so much, would be humbling, entrancing, beautiful. Maitimo panting, moaning, and climaxing about it… was…

No, Findekano decided; no, I will not make him say anything.

That this, whatever this was, this tip-toe dancer’s balance, was still standing strong was worth admiring for a while, instead of him trying to topple immediately. How was Maitimo handling this? Why did he seem so content with it? What was it that he wasn’t saying? How could he pull this terrible feeling out of Findekano’s stomach and twirl it round his arm like a snake, pet its head, name it a pet, a pleasure? Findekano would do something that was not typically easy for him, which was appreciate it for a while before he tried to dismantle it for observation, play, and eventually consumption.

And if… perhaps, someday, Maitimo whispered such a terrible secret himself, without any prompting from Findekano at all, that would be gorgeous.

Maitimo caught Findekano staring at him. “Yes?”

Finekano, his head still tilted back, looking down at Maitimo through his eyelashes, smiled.

Maitimo’s eyes flickered down his face, to his lips, dropped for a second to his chest, to his naked body under the wavering water.

Their lidded eyes both opened in fright and shock when they heard the unmistakable sound of the door to the bath-house opening and then swiftly being shut. Feet padded on the ground toward them; a low sigh.

It’s happening, Findekano thought, shocked still. Oh stars, oh peaks. It’s happening.

And heaven help them if it had been him! But through a sliding copper gate, pulled aside by nimble fingers, came Kanafinwe Makalaure, dressed only in a thin robe he pinched shut at his chest, humming a song in fragments, a work in progress, his eyes soft, looking to an invisible distance, his lovely, pale face flushed pink.

He caught sight of his brother and cousin, unapologetically close to each other, arms around each other, the heat of the bathwater darkening the big, round bruises on their necks and shoulders like plums.

Makalaure smiled such a wide, lovely smile that his eyes crinkled. With a voice like he was whispering the end of a heart-breaking ballad, he said, “ Disgusting!” and threw his silken, shimmering hair over his shoulder.

In an instant, Maitimo the son of Nerdanel became Nelyafinwe, Feanaro’s heir, and this prick’s older brother. “Kano,” he said.

“My dear brother! And you,” said Makalaure, the only person that both of them knew for sure was aware of what the two of them were doing and was willing to acknowledge it to their faces. Makalaure removed his robe, folded it nicely, and placed it neatly on a shelf.

(He was naked beneath as well; in Aman, everyone was comfortable being naked with each other. Well, back then, they were.)

“Are you well, dear cousin?” Findekano asked, not quite matching Makalaure tone for tone (as he had not the sensitivity or skill to display the same level of delicate disdain that his cousin could).

“Well! Enjoying the quiet of our dear grandfather’s house,” he smiled, and pulled his hair into one hand so he could bind it into a knot on the back of his head. His fingers seemed to curl it into place with clever twists Findekano could hardly follow. “Where we have come, Nelyo, because father needed a break from the stress and aggravation of court.”

“Findekano isn’t court,” Nelyafinwe replied, naturally unaffected by his brother’s grace or his turns of phrase.

“But Findekano is courting!” Makalaure replied with a twitch of his smile (likely just unable to resist the wordplay). He began to descend the steps into the water. “I shall explain it, as it seems like no one has bothered; perhaps they were relying on your collective native intelligence, which was a kindly-intentioned mistake. You are cousins.”

 “Stars!” Findekano said, raising his eyebrows; that was unnecessary, though, as Nelyafinwe leaned toward his brother with a little, fond smile, and said, “You will understand someday, dear little one!”

He used a term of endearment one would use for a child, and surely one he had been using for Makalaure’s entire life. The younger brother groaned and rolled his eyes at him as he settled into a comfortable place in the bath. “I’m not making excuses for you if someone sees you, or asks questions!”

“What questions? Everyone knows we’re friends,” Nelyafinwe said, still smiling.

“You’ll need to cover up your neck,” Makalaure huffed, which was apparent enough of a surprise to Nelyo that he gave Findekano a look.

“Thought you noticed,” Findekano replied cheerfully.

—

Several days later, once alone in his house—in the house that his father had insisted on building for him, in the grounds of his own estate, which Findekano had protested as unnecessary but hadn’t refused either—Findekano locked his door, with his heart beating in his throat.

The lock was one of the only things he had himself put into those quiet, private chambers, which he slept in less than his old room in Nolofinwe’s house, than any of the the rooms that Maitimo called his own in various houses, than the soft ground of Aman, even than his guest room in grandfather’s palace. He had placed a few things through the room, a spare coat on the back of a chair, an earthenware mug made by Nerdanel, vases of dried flowers picked by Irisse, but he used it so rarely that it didn’t quite smell right.

It was, however, more likely to be private than any of those other places he frequented (and preferred), and that was why he was here today.

As he stood with both open palms on the door, and felt his heart beating, he reflected on what he had begun to suspect about himself. He looked at the back of his hands; he thought about that thing inside him, that ink-black snake of ill feeling that he blamed his uncle for.

He had begun to suspect that was small-minded. It was in him, wasn’t it? That feeling of envy.

He wasn’t sure he had ever felt it before, which was why he had had such a hard time naming it. ‘Hatred’ was close, but it wasn’t enough; he did hate Feanaro for everything he had done to his—their—family, but he didn’t fully hate him, nor was the feeling so clean or pure. ‘Jealousy’ had felt nearly right, but it shifted the blame. Yes, he could be jealous that Maitimo had such loyalty to his father, though he tried to suppress that. But the truth was that Findekano was not jealous of what he had, he was envious of what he didn’t have.

Feanaro had something Findekano didn’t have, and it was something that Findekano couldn’t even define, didn’t even know. Feanaro possessed a solidity and sharpness of person; he was mean and harsh and unpredictable and hot in ways Findekano had never seen before, he was a dozen things he had never seen before per minute. It made Findekano feel like a child, it made him feel like he was powerless, and it made him very envious. He was greater in spirit than anyone else he knew. Feanaro could command his sons like machines, even when they were upset with him or disagreed with him! He inspired absolute adoration in his people and dominated even those who disliked him for as long as he was in the room. No one would ever fully have a son of Feanaro for as long as Feanaro was there.

Findekano wanted that compulsively. All of that. He wanted a presence that made people freeze like deer caught in the light. He wanted the command and the lack of consequences that seemed to come with it. It bit him that he wasn’t competition to Feanaro, not really.

Nor is father, he admitted moodily. He can stake his own territory away from him, but when they come head to head, father bows to Feanaro every time.

Still holding the door shut, as if barring someone entry, Findekano wondered what it would be like to do it himself. To have the presence, the prestige, the power to yank something away from Feanaro and make him respect it, since his father couldn’t. Well, he knew exactly what (who) he would wrest from him, but…

Findekano worried at himself. Did he like this? What he was imagining was a kind of violence; not physical, but violence all the same. He wanted to best him, he wanted subordination. That couldn’t possibly be good. He had been taught that all things existed in a chain of command; that disrupting that command was what caused discord, evil.

But ‘did he like this’ was the question, and that was why he was here tonight, alone, locked in. All the strange feelings which Feanaro inspired in him refused to distinguish themselves as pleasant or unpleasant; they pressed directly on the nerve and rushed from tendon to muscle too quickly for reasoned thought. Did he like it when his eyes met Feanaro’s; was it exhilarating or uncomfortable? Did he enjoy the thought of struggling with him, or was that quickened heartbeat fear? When he tried that thought of touching him again, testing it again and again like testing the sharp edge of a knife, was he unable to leave it alone because it disturbed him or because he liked it?

He backed away from the door, which shuddered a little when he finally let the pressure of his hands off of it. He swallowed, and backed himself right into his bed, soft, cold from being unused.

“Just do it,” he said, heart hammering, laying himself back as though Maitimo stood over him, crooking one leg. “Wondering is always worse than knowing. Stop stressing about it and just do it.”

He still wasn’t very comfortable with touching himself. Touching himself meant he was alone, a state he avoided; it meant he had become too aroused by nothing, without his lover there, which made him feel… it made him feel like an animal. Like a beast. It meant that his mind might wander, since Maitimo wasn’t there to keep him focused. It meant he would have to clean himself up when he was done—Maitimo actually liked seed, a fact he found baffling and astonishingly sexy, and he usually handled it.

Touching Maitimo felt natural. Beautiful. Touching himself…

Was ideal for the act he was about to attempt, which was a resolution of his fears. Did he, or did he not like…

Damn it again, it was his mind, and he could think it. It wasn’t a Vala’s mind, or his father’s, or anyone’s but his own. Did he or did he not desire Feanaro? If he just knew for certain, he would feel so much better.

He opened his belt and thumbed the clasp of his trousers underneath. Riding-gear. He had been trying not to think about it, but he had purposefully done something invigorating with the day. He opened them, and slid the tips of his fingers underneath.

His heart thudded in his throat and he nearly abandoned the attempt. Might have, if the thought of doing so didn’t make him feel like a coward.

But what was he supposed to do? He only did this when he thought he had to, and he wasn’t even heated right now.

He squeezed his eyes shut and took the plunge on purpose; he went straight to the source, the moment that Feanaro seized his wrist and gripped at it. Looked down on him with eyes of burning coal, called him a boy and told him to run to his father. He moved the palm of his hand over his sex, felt how it seemed almost to stir in sleep, uncertain of this new dream.

He thought about his fingers pressing into his wrist. That wrist, the one above the hand that was inside of his clothing, parting the warm layers of fabric.

Blood pounding in his veins, stomach twisting, he thought about what he wanted to do to ambitious, arrogant Feanaro. He wanted to snatch Maitimo right away from him, he wanted to say something so devastating to him that his loyal followers stood stilled in shock, suddenly saw the cracks in him. His dear cousins, his kind aunt, suddenly discovering a way to distance themselves from him, to not be so hopelessly enamored with him.

He didn’t quite have the nerve to touch his bare skin yet, but he touched himself over his underclothes, trying to think of it as just warmth, just skin. He imagined gripping Feanaro, grabbing him by the wrist, shoving him back. He wouldn’t freeze or balk, he’d stand his ground. He might fight. Findekano would have to hold him in a grasp of iron, wrench his arm down, hold him fast. He would have to back him to a wall, use the strength of solid stone to keep him there. He’d glower like an owl; he’d sneer like a fox. He would snap something biting at him and Findekano would have to think fast to respond. He imagined that he would, and well; he imagined that he was able to pull Maitimo away from him, unresisting, to walk away with him, with his eyes only on him, ignoring his father’s pleas.

Findekano paused, hand cupped around himself, unheated, but shaking. That hadn’t aroused him. He wanted to let that prove it, that he had some complicated feelings for his overwhelming uncle, but not lust.

Yet the second he thought that he was dissatisfied, he was disappointed, he felt like a coward. That hadn’t been a real test. He hadn’t really been thinking about Feanaro, he had been thinking about Maitimo. Beloved Maitimo, clinging shamelessly to him as they strode away from the court together, enraptured with him, not even caring that everyone was staring at the two of them with their arms entwined.

His cock jumped. Yes, he certainly was attracted to Maitimo; that was known. His careful hands that lighted nervously on him when they were trying something new, his throat that pulsed when he gasped or panted, how he would grip him when an unexpected pleasure undid him. And damn him, but Findekano wouldn’t be so in love with him if he wasn’t such a dutiful son and loving brother, ready at any time to cradle or nurture, fix the problem, kiss the wound.

Findekano pulled his hand away from his hardening sex, embarrassed but comforted. He would never have to doubt his love for Maitimo, no, but that wasn’t the question he was trying to answer. Telling himself, once more, to not be a coward, he pulled his trousers and his underclothes down his legs without looking at himself, until his sex was free. He held it; partially hard, it pulsed for more, but he could still have stopped and forgotten the test. 

He could have. He pulled his palm up and down himself and imagined eyes identical to Maitimo’s, but burning, full of an unquenchable fury. Misery, he thought, because of how well it resembled Maitimo’s sadness. He tried to imagine pushing him against the wall again, emptied the room of people, shrunk it, made it intimate to just himself and the hot-headed prince. He tried to imagine telling Feanaro that he thought he had no true rivals, but he couldn’t imagine what Findekano could—

And then suddenly was imagining being against the wall himself, his back with only a thin shirt on against the cool, stone wall, and in front of him burning flesh, hands on his wrists, nearly chest-to-chest, sharp hips between his legs. He imagined the feeling of Feanaro shoving him to the wall and smacking his wrists against it again while he struggled and he squeezed his cock. He could hear Feanaro telling him that he had gone too far, that he could no longer ignore his accusations, that he could no longer ignore him. He imagined being pushed, again, and again. He imagined fighting back and learning just how strong his notoriously abrasive uncle was, with muscles hardened from forge-work, with a spirit like fire. He would fight and he would be shoved until his head clattered back on the wall and his knees weakened; he would feel one leg being pulled up, the heat of Feanaro’s body shoved between his thighs, against his chest, pushing him backwards, delicately, all of a sudden, as the moment of Findekano’s dizzy disorientation invited a curl of smoky fear in Feanaro, made him wonder if he could really do this…

Findekano gasped and took his hand off of himself. He felt as though he had not summoned those thoughts, like those images had formed themselves, of his thighs being opened by Feanaro’s hot hands, his body being abused until weak, so that he had no choice but to lie under him—

He returned his hand to himself and rubbed his hardening tip to dull the sudden edge of lust. He recalled how it sometimes felt compellingly dangerous to have Maitimo on top of him, preparing to open him, to see how big he was. Feanaro was tough, well-dressed but visibly hardened underneath the fine fabric. If he were determined to have someone, it would be hard to fight him off. Findekano and Maitimo play-fought sometimes, pretending they were vying to top each other, even sometimes pretending to be upset about the outcome, and that play-acting made Findekano very, very hot. Maitimo had to tease him about it not being a contest a few times so he would cool down. One time, Maitimo had been underneath him, and, playing a sore loser, moaned and said, ‘No, spare me…’

‘Spare me,’ Findekano moaned in his head, wriggling underneath Feanaro, his hot hands parting the layers of his clothes, finding in moments and inches the skin underneath. He was exhausted, he couldn’t get away.

‘Spare me your whining,’ Feanaro snapped in return (and Findekano in his bed had a fantastic idea that the next thing he would say would be) ‘You little liar, I hear you writhing beneath my son, I know what you like.’

Findekano swore out loud, remembering his moment of excitement when he had ‘feared’ that Feanaro would walk in on him and Maitimo in the bath together, and see them twined around each other, and approach them with rage. He imagined Feanaro tearing him away from his son, Maitimo crying out; he imagined being shoved under him, disappearing under the hot water for a moment, and resurfacing to hear him say, ‘I knew you were too close with him, you dirty fucking abomination.’

He imagined he would fight back, but he wouldn’t win; he had to fight back, of course, but he would be completely undone, naked, dripping, open beneath him. And Feanaro would put his hands on his arms and push him down and say ‘I’ll show you what happens to someone who defiles my son, you perversion.’ And what would be best, what made Findekano lick his palm so he could grip himself harder, would be that Feanaro would be fucking lying himself, wouldn’t he, because he would be aroused by it, too, putting his palms on Findekano’s thighs to push them open, thrusting his body between those soft thighs, keeping Findekano held down as he drew closer, and closer, to the hole between his legs. (Maybe Maitimo was still there, watching powerlessly—)

Findekano imagined him sliding one of those hot, powerful hands down his body, down the swells of his ribs in his heaving side, over the jut of his hipbone, across his soft, secret skin, finding his entrance, pushing inside, as he whined and twisted and begged him to please, please—

He muffled a shout in his hand and then the names of several Vala, taken in vain, as he filled his hand with seed. He came so fast half of his body wasn’t aware of it; his stomach pulsed a few times, still twisting with anxiety, mixing the feelings together in an unhealthy brew. His legs twitched and his back was covered in sweat. He was gasping. He had bit his own hand.

He fell back against the bed. Still running through his mind, as if he were the one staring in horror at his lover being manipulated, Findekano watched how his begging Feanaro to please stop would turn into him begging Feanaro to please, please, please take him once his hard sex filled him all the way up, hot, thick, powerful, petting him on the inside; the animal always waiting to be fed.

He would repent of it later, but for just one minute, as his beating heart slowly cooled and his skin ceased tingling, Findekano was plotting exactly what he had to do to make it happen.

“Feanaro,” he whispered to the dark room; a minute later, “Maitimo.”

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NOLOFINWE

Maglor groaned at the arrival of the light of the dawn through a slim gap in the curtains he had lazily thrown over the frosted window a few hours ago. He rolled around to bury his face in the feather pillow, but it was already too late. A hangover-headache stirred in his temples the second he was awake, and he knew it would only grow stronger.

Maedhros’ thrice-accursed, disgusting dwarven liquor. Maglor always refused it at the beginning of the night and somehow always found himself clutching it by the end. The fierce heat of that liquor made his body feel warm, and Himring was so. Fucking. Cold.

Maglor rose and dressed himself spitefully and beautifully. The only thing good about the icy air that breathed through all the halls of Himring was that he had the opportunity to show off several robes and coats at once. Himring’s summer was brief but unreasonably beautiful—but they were a month past midwinter, and a thick layer of undisturbed snow laid on absolutely everything except the paths that riders used to go to and from the fortress and wage war in the north.

He opened the door of his private room to one of the highest halls of Himring, the upper levels where Maedhros kept his home, such as it was. It was usually only his brother and the people who had stayed with him, captains and friends. Maedhros considered those followers his second family. Maglor considered those his family also; blood family proved eager over and over to spill blood, but the devoted men who had loved his grandfather, and his father, and him were ever welcome by the fire, or at the breakfast table.

Apparently, blood family was also still welcome at Maedhros’ breakfast table, because when Maglor morosely drifted into the long hall that served as the Lord’s breakfast table, he found King— King —he cannot emphasize this enough, HIGH KING Fingon seated back in one of Maedhros’ nicest chairs, legs crossed, slicing with a dagger through a wheel of cheese to get a slice for his barley-bread. He looked up at Maglor and smiled.

“Disgusting,” Maglor bemoaned, and collapsed gracefully into a chair across the table.

“Hail, cousin!” Fingon responded, because he really had gotten that way, hadn’t he. Everyone else had starved and diminished and sinned their way into the worst versions of themselves in fallen Beleriand, and Fingon alone was absolutely thriving, shining with the light of his goodness and tenacity and boldness, only made brighter and sharper by adversity.

Maglor, Beleriand’s saddest, wettest widower, rolled forward onto the table, his head thumping down into his curled hand. “Well, if you’re here, that at least means you’re not busy shoving your tongue into Russo’s throat somewhere.”

“And other things in other places besides!” Fingon replied, cheerfully undaunted. Maglor, predictably, groaned and shut his eyes.

“I have such a headache,” he complained. “If you insist in putting such images in my head, I shall collapse under the strain, and die upon this table.”

“‘My most beloved Maedhros: you will not believe this, but have we managed to fuck another man to death, who was not even present,’” Fingon proclaimed, as if he were announcing it in one of his (filthy) letters.

“He will lightly scold you, mark my words.”

“‘The fact that the man in question was reported as being ‘drunker than any man has ever been’ may have been a factor,’” Fingon continued.

“Do we have tea brewed?” Maglor complained. One of Maedhros’ nicer guards moved to go fetch him some, but Fingon, who was the High Fucking King, paused him with a show of his palm.

“What is your fucking reason for not getting me tea?” Maglor asked, politely, into his hand.

“Maedhros is already getting some. You can wait two minutes for him.”

Maglor sighed. He could wait two minutes for his brother, but he was not going to be happy about it. “I will never recognize or respect you,” he threatened.

“My cousin! Yes you do, you’re just surly in the morning.”

“I always thought it was a mistake to pass on the Kingship. You’re an abomination, and a blight. We would have taken Angband if Maedhros were King. I want you dead.”

“You kissed both of my feet at my coronation, and I only asked for the back of my hand.”

“I can’t answer for what evening Maglor does, he is insane,” Maglor sighed. He had gone over this so many times already. Evening Maglor liked people, morning Maglor wanted them dead. This was simple to understand.

“Let evening Maglor know the next time you see him that I request ‘Telpirion’s Silver Blades,’ I haven’t heard a good rendition of it in years, and no one can sing it like he does.”

“Whore. I’m going to tell my brother you complimented my singing voice.”

“I really can’t do anything around you,” Fingon continued happily. “I apologize that, apparently, all of my compliments, and also insults, sound like flirting to you. It must be because it is well-known that I have certain predilections, and not have anything to do with you, as you have no unresolved issues or certain uncomfortable feelings you will never address. It wouldn’t help you in the long run to address them, of course—”

“NELYO,” Maglor screamed, picking a direction and putting every inch of his ‘strong-voiced Finwe is my father-name’ power into it. “HE’S TRYING TO HELP ME AGAIN.”

Maedhros appeared in the doorway behind Fingon like a summoned hound, fur cloak drawn tight around his neck and shoulders, three cups in his gloved left hand and a full pot of tea in the crook of his right. “Beloved,” he greeted Fingon, his scratched voice rumbling low in his throat.

“My beloved, and a beautiful morning comes with him,” Fingon returned, turning so he could extend a hand in Maedhros’ direction.

“Maglor, how have you been offended,” asked Maedhros gravely.

“Your pretty little man is trying to get me to think about my feelings and accept myself again. He’s trying to seduce me,” Maglor whined, deciding as he went that he was just going to hurl accusations at the wall. “He wants me to love and be loved. He’s going to molest me.”

Maedhros approached the table. Even in here, even with him taking delicate steps, Maglor could hear the muffled clunk that meant he was already in riding boots.

He always was. Wearing boots, under a cloak, with gloves, strapped in leather armor pulled tight. He leaned down to set the cups on the table, and Fingon took the teapot from his arm. “Finno,” Maedhros said sternly, with paternal disapproval, “If Maglor ever expresses a desire for your affections, or consents to intercourse, we can discuss how we want to arrange that. But you can’t just molest him.”

Maglor fully buried his face into his hand and quietly screamed.

“He’s morning-Maglor right now,” Fingon noted in his defense.

“I see that,” Maedhros replied, and retrieved the teapot from Fingon so he could start pouring tea. “While Maglor may be desperate for approval and attention, and you may find yourself charmed by how badly he fumbles when trying to express that, you have to consider that his history with you is somewhat fraught, in part because you are his law-brother, and cousin, and that you may not be the person to help him rise above his reservations.”

“But he’s so pathetic,” Fingon complained.

“Nonetheless.”

“I rose above my reservations plenty, with my now dead wife,” Maglor whined into his hands. “Are you going to give me some tea, or do I have to commit an act of incest to get anything in this house?”

“Fingon, could you bring my brother some tea?” Maedhros asked, unbothered.

Fingon smiled and stood. He grabbed the first cup Maedhros filled, pinched it between two fingers (so his jealous law-brother could not accuse him of touching it too much), and leaned over to kiss Maedhros on the cheek. “Yes, Atya,” he whispered.

Maglor heard it anyway. He collapsed forward onto the table like a cut line of laundry and screamed. Again.

—

They had started doing that—that ‘Atya’ business—a little while after Fingon had brought Maedhros back from Angband. One year they were calling each other ‘beloved’ and ‘dearest friend’ and everything was normal, and the next, they were calling each other ‘father.’ Maglor had no idea what depth of depravity that linguistic shift represented and he was so uninterested in learning more.

They at least had had the self-respect to look embarrassed if overheard, at first.

—

“Finno,” Maitimo shouted, panicked, harried, “I understand it. I understand it.”

Findekano jumped nearly to the roof. Turukano, who had been taking a sip of grape-wine while slowly and meticulously reading over the documents of Beleriand Eldarin language they had been studying together, froze in his place. A look like a storm gathered over his face.

“Fin,” he said.

“Yes, yes,” Findekano said, rushing over to Maitimo. “What are you doing up?? What if we left!! Are you bleeding??”

“I’m not—I’m fine—” Maitimo protested with understandable annoyance as Findekano rushed him back outside.

Findekano hated to do it, but his younger brother had declared an absolute, inarguable rule: he was making his peace with exactly one son of Feanaro at a time. Carnistir had been first, and that had gone fine (as odd as the choice was, but Turukano and Carnistir had a certain something in common); now he was working on Ambarussa, and Maitimo was not scheduled until he had reconciled with the rest of them (excepting only Tyelkormo, who was dead last).

Findekano did not begrudge Turukano his eccentric approach to the situation and in fact appreciated his firmness in enforcing it. The fact remained that both Turukano’s relationship with his cousins and Turukano’s precarious mental state were both in tenuous balance, which was disrupted by the fact that Findekano was simply going to have Maitimo around no matter what, which was aggravating to Turukano because again, Maitimo was not on his schedule right now.

That was… understandable. Maitimo was a lot to deal with.

It was like Maitimo was in several pieces inside, each piece a different man. One or two of them were… unpleasant, and Findekano was never sure which one he was going to hear from next.

As long as it wasn’t the one who kept begging to die, he could handle it.

Maitimo said various things, none of which made total sense, as Findekano steered him to the outlying house behind his father’s which he was using as his own.

The ‘houses’ of his father’s camp, built over the last few years, were largely of wood, in the style of the elves of Beleriand, and intended to be temporary—iron plans for iron fortresses further into the land were well in the works. Until then, though, Findekano had a small enough, temporary enough house that he was able to shoo away everyone inside (and it was very easy to convince them to go when one hand was shoving them off and the other was full of a nearly babbling infamous mad-elf) and pull Maitimo into a chair in the sitting room without too much trouble.

“Do you want tea, or wine?” he asked, turning to head into the kitchen, feeling flushed and disoriented (he could not predict how Maitimo would be next, whether he would be viciously miserable, or desperate for affection, or silent as stone—)

“Nothing, I don’t want anything,” Maitimo said, and ran his hand roughly through his hair. His so-short hair, the length of a little finger, only barely growing back from being cruelly shorn. 

Findekano returned to his side, clasped his own hand around Maitimo’s, and pulled it from his abused hair to the arm of the chair. “What happened?”

Maitimo looked up at the ceiling. “I understand it now completely,” he said, “and am happy, as I am always happy, that I indulged you.”

“Fantastic!” said Findekano, because this sounded nice, for once.

“I didn’t tell you something,” he said, “About your father.”

“Oh?”

“The day I offered the crown to your father,” Maitimo tried again. “I needed him to take it. I needed it. I needed to know it would be going to you, and not me, and not to my brothers, who shouldn’t have it.”

“Yes, we have talked about that, and about how you should talk about it more quietly in the future.”

“I was so desperate for him to take it. I needed to know it would go to you. I made… plans. My mind was running. I came up with anything I could do to convince him.”

Findekano became concerned. 

He had been told—by both of them—that there had been a private meeting the night before Maitimo publicly gave the Kingship away to his uncle. Both stories matched, but both stories were very… spare. In a private room, Maitimo had offered the Kingship, Fingolfin had initially refused, and a debate had taken place. After about an hour, Fingolfin yielded, and a plan was made for Maitimo to make a public offer the next day. The private discussion was not to be mentioned. Findekano doubted that anyone but the two of them—and him—knew about that private meeting at all.

“...Yes?” Findekano said.

“I—I knew I couldn’t threaten him, and I really had nothing to entice him with, and if I had been thinking clearly I would have just expounded on why he doesn’t really want my brothers to be in line for the crown, but before I even said anything to him at all I had shot down every single one of my own arguments myself and was certain nothing would work.”

Findekano went into the pantry to pour him a glass of wine anyway. Maitimo continued speaking behind him.

“And then, like someone else put it in my head, I thought up a plan to seduce him and then humiliate him into doing what I wanted. I had every step planned in five seconds. I was aware that his wife had refused to come with him and he had lost many people on the road. I was aware he thought Laure and I weren’t real Kings anyway. I thought I could convince him it should be him with flattery; bind him in the choice by convincing him to do something he would normally find deplorable. If he was too hesitant, I was going to tell him that my father had had his son already. Which is a lie, but I have everything I need to make it sound convincing. I know exactly how you talked about him. I would tell him my father found us together, that he punished us. You. That he opened your thighs. That you moaned. I know what you sound like. I know what you would have said to him. I was almost certain I could do it, and then he would not be able to refuse the crown, because he would be obligated to do what he could to make it up to me after violating me.

“Then I realized I was thinking like a torturer,” he said, and his speech, which had been flowing like a river, simply stopped.

Findekano sat down beside him. He handed Maitimo the glass, and pressed it into his hand when he didn’t react at first. Maitimo took it and raised it to his lips. His eyes were shut; his face, now rich with scars, was shut tight.

Findekano waited through him taking a long drink. Then, quietly, “I have to know if you did it.”

“No,” said Maitimo. Findekano already knew that, in his heart. He genuinely did not think his father would do that, no matter what Maitimo did to convince him. And, if he had, he would have been shattered after. Findekano would have known the second he saw his face. “No. No. I was… I…”

Maitimo shook his head. When he spoke again, it was clear he had abandoned that dark moment when he planned Fingolfin’s torture; if it was to be addressed again, it would be some unexpected moment, in the dark future. “I had managed to put it out of my mind. I… it’s.. It happens all the time, now, I just think things, awful things…”

“Maitimo.”

“I can’t predict what will come out of me next. Refuse. Obscenity. Lies. Things I don’t even believe, or truly think.”

It was true that one of the most startling things that had changed about Maitimo was his newly fouled mouth (and the way it had to grind out of his badly damaged throat). Findekano himself had witnessed him, in one of the first, terrifying days of his return, yell “suck my fucking dick, Turko” in the company of every one of his brothers. It was the first time Findekano ever had and, he predicted, the only time he would see Tyelkormo cry.

“They happen too fast. One awful thought, then another. I can’t credit them all, I can’t even focus on them all. I wasn’t thinking about it. I had put it out of my head. And then I was watching your father work out land agreements with his people and our people, some of the… the… you know, when they get together and talk it all out.”

“You were there today?”

“Yes, just now.”

“They let you in?” 

“They have to let someone in to talk over who will defend what, and they’d rather talk to me than anyone else,” he explained. It made sense; Maitimo was insane, but generally agreeable. Laure or Tyelko would argue every point. “I—I—had been behaving a little badly. I was arguing, a little. He put his hand on my back—your father, he put his hand on my back—and told his men to cease their tongues; I was yet his brother-son and he wouldn't listen to disrespect of my person. Besides, I was right—he said that besides, I was right, and he turned to me and smiled at me.

“I wanted to climb onto his throne, onto his lap. I wanted to lick his mouth. I wanted to call him Atya. I was completely overwhelmed and then I was shaking. I had to leave. I do not know what to do. It does not leave me alone. I don’t even know where this came from. I felt comfort like a warm bed from the touch of his hand, I wanted to cry. I want to run my hands through his hair. What I meant to say is that I now fully understand why you had such a fascination with my father, and that I am so thankful we both enjoyed that, or else I would just have to let this stay in my head forever, where it would surely turn into something horrible,” he finished.

“Hm,” said Findekano, and gently took the wine from Maitimo’s hand so he could drink the rest of the glass himself. “Hold on,” he said. He walked into the pantry again, poured himself another one, and drank it quickly. He stood, eyes closed, feeling the warmth of the wine sweep through him.

He set both the bottle and the glass down and walked back out, to where Maitimo sat, wide-eyed, watching him; his bad shoulder rested awkwardly on the chair in a way he likely couldn’t feel, his dimmed eye twitched in a way he couldn’t control. The wrist which Findekano had cut through was just in front of his chest, a slight, subconscious barrier.

Findekano smoothed back his hair, took off his circlet as he did so. “I’m always told I look very much like him,” he said.

Maitimo looked him down, with wider eyes that he used to, like he needed to see more now. “You have your mother’s dark colors,” he said, which was certainly true, “but you certainly inherited his structure. Which is just like my father’s was, by the way, as much as they both denied it.”

Was! It still didn’t feel real. They all swore Feanaro burnt like a pile of wood-shavings, that there was no body because he disdained to leave one. (Where could Findekano bury his feelings about him now? Could he do anything at all but leave them and hope they faded? He could not burn those.) “Do you think—oh!” Findekano said, realizing he could just use the sash around his waist, which didn’t have excessive ornamentation, and would be soft enough. He began to untie it. “Do you think I sound like him?”

“Not really,” Maitimo admitted, watching his hands owlishly. Nervously. “Your voices would be similar, perhaps, if King Fingolfin were less dour, and you less bright.”

“I will have to put it on a bit, then,” said Findekano, approaching his lover with confident steps (but a rapidly beating heart). He put his hands on both sides of Maitimo’s face; Maitimo, who acted unpredictably, but as strongly as he ever had, smiled when he felt the gesture which had always been an act of comfort, love, and reassurance between them.

Maitimo lifted up his hand to place it on one of his.

“Can I put this on you?” Findekano asked. They had experimented with restraining him once or twice. That was certainly never happening again, but he hadn’t seen a blindfold on him on cruel Angband. Still, he didn’t know everything of what happened…

“Yes,” said Maitimo, lovingly, unflinching.

Findekano nodded; he huffed a breath that betrayed the anxiety he actually felt. He pulled the sash carefully, carefully around Maitimo’s head to cover his eyes, smoothing down his poor, fray-edged hair as he went. He tested the knot making sure it was firm but gentle. Beneath it, Maitimo smiled.

He was in a rather large, comfortable chair, so this was likely to work. Findekano climbed onto it carefully, making sure Maitimo could feel his hand sliding up his arm, his knee lowering between his legs. He grabbed both of his wrists, the whole one and the broken one, and placed them on his back, just under his shoulders. He lowered then his own hands to either side of Maitimo’s dangerously thin waist—they had been feeding him the past few weeks, but the damage would take time to mend—and leaned in close to him.

“Maitimo,” he said.

Maitimo sighed, and his left hand clutched shakily at Findekano’s shoulder.

“Call me Atya,” Findekano whispered.

Those fingers dug in.

“What?”

“Yes. Yes, I can do better than that.” Findekano cleared his throat, and focused on sounding as much like his father as he could; a little lower, more serious, with a bit of a soft hiss on his fricatives that he could imitate with some focus. “You can call me Atya, Maitimo.”

Maitimo shuddered under him. His voice broken up, a vein of tension running through it, he said, “I’m certain he would call me Nelyafinwe.”

But when Findekano took a breath, Maitimo quickly covered his mouth. “Don’t,” he said.

Findekano winced.

“...Yet,” Maitimo whispered.

Oh. “It is a little awkward to start that way,” Findekano admitted, and then kissed the palm of Maitimo’s hand.

“S a little awkward…” Maitimo began, and trailed off his sentence in an embarrassed and somewhat annoyed mumble. Finekano smiled against his hand.

He was well aware that Maitimo’s embarrassment was temporary. He twined his fingers around his hand as he pulled it away from his face, then leaned in to kiss him on the lips.

It was the most basic of loving actions and still, after everything, it sent a thrill through him, a needle-prick of pleasure and daring and willful defiance that clattered down from his throat to his stomach. Maitimo hummed, and turned his face to lock their lips together. Findekano held still, just a moment. Then he parted his mouth, gently, mock-shyly, and pulled back just an inch to encourage Maitimo to come forward.

He had been absolutely prepared for Maitimo to not want sex. Not any time soon, perhaps not ever again, not if half of what he shouted or mumbled about in his sleep was true. Findekano had been ready to spend many quiet nights, beside him, close, not touching, waiting not for a warm hand on his thigh but to soothe the shudders of a nightmare. The fact that Maitimo absolutely did want sex with him (after those first and very rough days) had been a mostly pleasant surprise. Mostly, because whether he wanted sex or not was entirely unpredictable, and the situation could change rapidly. There had been times when Maitimo had been with him, and then suddenly desperate to get away from him; there had been times that Maitimo had been so upset that Findekano would have never expected he would suddenly proposition him, with tears still on his face. Findekano had had to make some quick decisions, and he wouldn’t claim all his decisions had been perfect.

So far, this was normal. Maitimo did follow him, and took his mouth with more pressure than Findekano had just taken his, his inhibitions slightly lowered by having his sight covered. He could feel Maitimo sigh, he could feel his teeth open and close, caught between tension and relief.

He kissed him for a while, moving his hands gently, above his clothes, almost chastely, over his arms, his shoulders, his back. He waited, listened, feeling him relax, feeling his thin muscles grow slowly looser, warmer under his hands, feeling how his stomach went soft and his back sank slowly into the chair. Words could not convince Maitimo to relax; he had always been able to twist them too skillfully, to unfold and unwrap them and find harm within where none was meant, or had been hidden even from the speaker. But if he thought less, if he could be convinced to dissipate his brilliant focus, to let it drift over his skin, to many duller points of perception, he could be tricked into it, eased into relaxation like he had been picked from the pockets of vigilance.

Maitimo’s hand began to cling to Findekano’s back, his fingers dug into the fabric of his dress so he could bunch it in his palm. That was one of his regular, silent signals that he was beginning to feel a little too hot for just kissing. Findekano spent extra effort unpinning his dress from his neck and waist silently and stealthily so that Maitimo was surprised when he felt the warm skin suddenly on the tips of his fingers, when he realized the dress he was gripping was coming apart in his grasp. His breath sped up quickly on Findekano’s back.

“Just sit back,” Findekano murmured, low, slightly lisping.

“Oh,” Maitimo breathed.

“Sit down and let me take care of you.”

Maitimo clenched his jaw and, at the same time, his hips pushed up to grind at Findekano’s thigh. He couldn’t see Findekano grip one arm of the chair to steady himself, he couldn’t see him obviously, visibly telling himself to not rush this as the hard heat in Maitimo’s pants brushed against him.

(He had been privately dealing with the fact that among his many other feelings for Maitimo he had been very angry with him for thirty years, and one of the ways that manifested was wanting to push him down and rub his body on him really hard. His emotions may have been at odds with each other, but they all agreed about the pleasure of watching Maitimo gasp and writhe on the floor.)

Instead he gently convinced Maitimo to lie back again with his other hand on his shoulder, and then reached down to begin undressing him. Like a cat being pet, Maitimo bent up into his hand everywhere he touched, his shoulder, his chest, his waist, loosening the ties on his sides. His hips shifted whenever his hand drifted below his pectorals, because he couldn’t truly predict the next brush of Findekano’s fingers on his hot skin. He whined as Finekano brushed his now-bare chest; Findekano shushed him in a low voice.

“I’m going to…” Findekano started, but finished his sentence by dipping a few fingers of both hands just below the waist of Maitimo’s breeches on both hips. Maitimo took a breath,

And said, “yes, Atya.”

Findekano’s stomach flipped inside-out. His heart stopped and started again. He felt like a wave of ice on the Helcaraxe had washed over him, a deadly rush, and left him burning in its icy wake. The feeling was not distinguishable as pleasure, or fear, or disgust, or excitement; it was a sense of urgency above emotion, more pure than emotion. He heard his own breathing grow rougher.

He started pulling down Maitimo’s breeches, then then paused and moved one hand to the center, to untie the stay, when his hips resisted. He could see his hardened sex beneath them, incredibly close to his fingers as he started untying them through a slight tremble. “You know, I’m—I’m not your Atar—” do it, he thought— “Nelyafinwe.”

Maitimo lifted his hips so that Findekano had easier access to his pants, his groin, his sex, whatever he wanted. “No,” he said, his voice breathy, “No, he—wouldn’t do this for me.”

“I hope not!” Findekano couldn’t help saying. Then again, he felt his father would say the same thing. When the tie on Maitimo’s breeches came undone, his sex shifted higher, so Findekano could better see the outline of it. Oh. Yes. Yes. Keep it together, Findekano. “And I hope—you didn’t ask him?”

The worry that Maitimo had, once, even in some slight way, shared his own fascination with Feanaro was slight, but persistent. Findekano would have no idea how to handle that.

But Maitimo whispered, “No,” and, “He wouldn’t, either,” and, “there were… plenty of things I couldn’t ask him for.”

The sting in Findekano’s heart contrasted strangely with the eager shaking in his fingers as he returned them to Maitimo’s hips and began to ease his breeches off. To ask ‘like what’ could inspire some dark topics of conversation; instead, putting depth into his voice, he asked, “Can I… help you, with that,” he said, and pulled his pants low enough that his cock came out of them, reddened and stiff.

Maitimo jumped, slightly. His arms tensed, and he said, with a hoarser voice, “yes, Atya.”

Findekano’s heart seemed to beat in all his chest, his stomach, his lungs, his bowels. His voice jumped high again and was distinctly his own when he said, “Oh, oh fuck.”

The feeling that lanced him this time, which had been indistinguishable last time, was certainly pleasure now, a pleasure intense enough that it was followed by a prickling fear. But that fear, too, was excitement after another heartbeat, the excitement he always felt when he discovered something new.

Maitimo smiled a little (as one does, typically, when the sight of one’s sexual organs undoes someone else). “Don’t be ashamed,” he said, an intoxicating combination of soothing and hoarse. “It’s fine. Your son and I—you know, we already…”

“I know,” Findekano said, dropping Maitimo’s breeches and underwear on the floor, then using both warm palms to push Maitimo’s thighs back down onto the chair.

“You know?” he asked, subtly, slightly spreading his thighs against the resistance from Findekano’s hands.

“I heard you,” he whispered, “I heard you, in his bedroom. Your cries. He tried to stifle them, I heard his hand grip your mouth.”

“Oh.”

Findekano kept one hand heavy on Maitimo’s thigh, but began to inch the other one higher, lower, drifting toward the soft skin of the inside (still soft, though lined with hair-thin scars). That leg tensed, rose slightly, subtly, to encourage the intrusion. Findekano’s heart was beating so hard, so thickly, that he was reminded almost of being very young and both compelled and repelled by his new feelings of lust, too anxious yet to touch himself. “I couldn’t help… I tried to put it out of my mind, but it kept coming back. I kept thinking about it.”

“About…”

“About the sounds you made, underneath him…”

Maitimo tensed tightly when Findekano’s hand slid to just below his sex, nearly touching, not quite, the sensitive skin of his thigh shivering. “Atya,” he said.

Findekano had been trying so hard to keep himself steady, and had been keeping his voice so tightly under control, that when he accidentally made a noise, a gasp, it was squeezed through that tenseness and came out as some animal rattle, a growl. Maitimo jumped, a movement halfway between startling and thrusting; his mouth fell open. Findekano’s hand slid up and rubbed over the base of his sex and Maitimo panted.

“Atya,” he whined, flexing his thighs. Findekano stoked from the base of Maitimo’s cock to the tip and rolled the thick of his palm over it, and Maitimo’s breaths came quick and hard.

“Nelyafinwe,” Findekano gasped, his control unraveling, “I can’t—”

Maitimo reached up to grab Findekano’s back, accidentally grabbing a fist-full of his hair; He pushed himself up and pulled Findekano down so that they were messily, badly wrapped up with each other, one of Maitimo’s thighs outside Findekano’s legs, but not quite, their sexes close, not perfectly touching; “You can, yes, you can,” Maitimo gasped, and rubbed him.

If Findekano had not been seduced by him centuries ago—in fact, he was worried that even his stoic, respectable father would have been, afraid anew of what his beloved, charismatic, darling, and desperate could do, and the words ‘thinking like a torturer’ echoed like a clattering sword in his head for a moment. He gasped on Maitimo’s neck; Maitimo rubbed their bodies together, and said, “I want you to, I want it—”

Findekano reacted before he could even think to the snake of pleasure and shock winding inside him and shoved Maitimo, hard, back into the chair. Maitimo gasped, and Findekano felt a jolt of fear at his violence. But Mitimo twisted and moaned, and he could see his sex twitch. He called him “Atya” again; Findekano held him down with one hand as he hastened to untie his own breeches with another.

“Stay back,” he panted, his voice vacillating between his own and his imitation of his father; hypocritically, his hand brushing against his own hard cock as he spoke, he said, “Stay back, I don’t know what I’ll do—”

“I want you to,” Maitimo begged. “Wrap me around you—I’ll make those noises you want to hear, for you—I’ll show you what I do for him—your son says I’m good—I’ll show you—”

Findekano made himself naked and then put a hand on Maitimo’s chest to hold him back; he grabbed one of his thighs and pulled it to the side so he could entwine them, legs around each other. Maitimo almost screamed, and Findekano covered his mouth with a kiss so messy it barely lasted a few seconds.

“Hold your— ahh,” he gasped, losing his train of thought when his first thrust brough their sexes flush against each other. Maitimo pushed up against him; Findekano’s breath rushed out. They rubbed against each other, wordless, lost with the relief of being touched. Findekano’s core heated fast with Maitimo’s bare, sweating body bumping against him, sticking on his thighs and his chest, rubbing on his sex.

“Atya,” Maitimo said, when the sudden sharpness of pleasure had swooped down into a rhythm.

Findekano tried to reply once, and ground their bodies together, cognizant of his desperation, not capable of caring about it. Maitimo lifted his hips so their sexes were right on each other again, a slight spark of pain in the intensity. After a shudder, Findekano said, “Shh—show me what—he likes so much, beautiful—”

Maitimo nearly laughed at him, or, perhaps he tried to laugh through his gasping. He reached behind him, with both arms, and gripped him so tight that their bodies were forced together, bent around each other, so that the nearness of their thrusting was oppressive, suffocating. Findekano’s heart pounded in his throat. Maitimo opened his thighs, twisted so that Findekano could bear down on him, so that his hands on Maitimo’s hips controlled how fast they moved against each other.

“Like that,” Maitimo gasped, “Like that—don’t tell him, but he— loves —having me beneath him—”

Findekano gripped his hips and failed to keep his control. He thrusted against Maitimo, hard, and again, and again, unable to think beyond the feeling of heat, how hot his sex was, how Maitimo’s warm skin slipped and tugged against it. He gripped his hair, he barely managed to say, “You—are—”

“Just like that,” Maitimo gasped, “He does it just like that—and I love—I love—” Then Findekano’s grip around his hair went rough and tight like he was holding his sword, and Maitmo broke off to shout, “Atya!”

Findekano rutted fast and hot against him and he knew he was going to finish, very fast, so fast that he was still able to be shocked about it despite his disorientation. “So good— want you—I’m going to keep you, he can’t have—”

Maitimo’s thighs squeezed around him. His sex was digging into Findekano’s stomach, his leg; he gasped, “Nolo—fin—” and then interrupted himself to whine, “Findekano.”

Findekano gasped out loud, on his neck. His hand curled into a claw on Maitimo’s skull, and then he spent his seed on Maitimo’s stomach. He felt it running hot and fast as he thrust against him, shaking with pleasure. Maitimo said his name again and he spasmed again.

He rolled all of his body onto Maitimo, feeling the beginning of ache, of exhaustion, mingled with prickles of pain, and moaned his name, “Maitimo.”

Maitimo gasped, and opened his thighs. He pushed against him and said, “Don’t stop.” Findekano tried, once more, but it became clear that he was going to stop, so Maitimo called him a damned fucking bastard.

Findekano nearly laughed, but he couldn’t catch his breath. It was all he could do to hold himself up on shaking arms and Maitimo tried to thrust against him.

“Hold on—” Findekano panted, “Just a moment—”

“You evil fucking bastard—”

“I’ll take care of—”

“I fucking hate you.”

“I just need a minute!”

Maitimo collapsed back down into the chair, surly and incredibly hard. “I cannot stand you.”

“It’s not like you never finish first!” Findekano laughed. Then again, he often acted the same way when in Maitimo’s position.

Maitimo huffed.

Findekano had just barely recovered when he softened his grip on Maitimo enough so that he could carefully sink down onto him. He felt Maitimo’s stiff sex on his wet, weak thigh; he felt Maitimo’s whole, tight body tense.

“‘Let me take care of you,’ he says,” Maitimo grumbled mockingly.

“I will,” Findekano laughed. “I thought you were the wicked seducer trying to corrupt my father? I’m sure he would finish first in that scenario.”

“That’s right, you get like this after you’re done,” Maitimo said, a shade of embarrassment in his voice.

Findekano did tend to discover where he had dropped his inhibitions after he got his pants back on. He felt as warm and as soft as a sandy beach and his heartbeat lapped at his extremities. He reached slowly between Maitimo’s legs, bending and twisting to slide his hand on his thigh. “You’re embarrassed because you like it.”

Maitimo hummed in response when Findekano’s hand curled around him.

“Yes you do.” Findekano rubbed up and down his cock, all the way around, feeling it stiffen back up immediately.

Maitimo sighed.

“Don’t you, Atya?” Findekano teased.

Maitimo swore, and then finished in his hand.

—

The chair was fit for some purposes, but not good for Maitimo’s back in the long term. Somehow, they had come to be on the floor, lying with each other, whispering. Maitimo was supine on the ground, his eyes closed; Findekano was half upon him, hand to his side, running his fingers through his hair, softening the snarls he had made.

“I don’t think that at all,” Findekano said.

“I know you don’t. But it is true. It’s in me,” Maitimo said, at a peace that was at odds with his words. “I am ready to hurt anyone now. You, anyone. It’s in me, now, and it cannot be taken back away.”

“To want to do something and to truly want to do something are different,” Findekano continued resolutely. “You and I both know that well. I’m not blind to the fact that your impulses are bigger, now, and harder to control. I don’t mean to say that I don’t see the hate inside you. But I don’t think it’s different in theory from the little hates, the little angers, and the little urges we have dealt with and to each other all this time. It has its chest puffed up. It’s bigger than the other hatreds. So what?”

Maitimo opened his eyes, he looked at the ceiling. His gaze was both concentrated and diluted, focused on a thing which was not there to be seen. “And yet that matters,” he said. “A mountain is in essence a pebble, and yet I assure you the size of the thing matters when it is on your chest.”

Findekano pondered this.

Irisse threw the door open, her arms aloft, clad in the new, Beleriandish leather armor she was so proud of, slime and water-weeds dripping down her arms, clutching something wriggling in her upraised hands. With all her huntress’ pride, she bellowed, “ELDEST BROTHER!! I HAVE CAUGHT THE FROG!!”

The door slammed shut behind her. She stood, staring down at the men on the floor. Findekano had jumped to his elbows, Maitimo lay flat on his back and owl-eyed; there was absolutely nothing they could do about the fact that they were naked, loose-haired, and soaked.

The creature in Irisse’s hands wriggled and croaked forlornly.

“Oh,” said Findekano, “the frog!”

Irisse had become obsessed with some of Beleriand’s native creatures immediately, and more than anything else the elusive half-fish, half-beast creatures that made low, enchanting songs in the evening. She had been trying to catch one for a month but hadn’t learned their strange jumping rhythms yet.

Irisse looked at Maitimo.

“Frogs are good creatures,” he said, frozen stiff. “They can’t be warped, actually. They’re one of those. You know. Sacred to Osse. Enemy can’t get to them.”

Irisse looked at Findekano.

“Good job,” he said, proud of his sister.

Irisse lowered her arms so that her slimy captive was close to her chest. “I am sure it’s because of you that he’s upright and coherent at all,” she said, blank-faced, bright-eyed, “when he is upright and coherent. It’s still really weird, though. As in, how you do it is very weird. It’s still very weird.”

Neither of them brought up the fact that she could have knocked. She was completely right that Findekano’s therapeutic actions were nonetheless weird. She didn’t even know the half of it, and it was good that she didn’t.

“I suppose you could give us both a minute to get dressed?” Findekano said.

“Sure!” said Irisse, and left, the sounds of her new frog drifting pathetically behind her.

The door closed; silence sank. Findekano shuffled on his elbows and Maitimo cleared his throat.

“I love her so much,” Findekano said, looking at the closed door.

“I will eventually make an enemy of all your family,” Maitimo said.

“There you go again!” Findekano sighed, sadly and fondly. With effort and through twinges in his tired muscles, he stood to his feet. “You won’t, and I’ve just decided I’m going to be a problem about making sure you know it’s our family. Maybe a little uncomfortable when it’s the two of us like this, but I think I’ve officially had it with people pretending we’re two separate families. If everyone had just accepted we were one family from the start, if we had just treated each other like family…”

He trailed off. It was too hard; he meant it, he really meant it, but he was also here, covered in the leavings of lust, with his cousin, where the two of them had wrapped each other in indecent thoughts about the men he insisted were family.

“I miss him,” Maitimo whispered.

Findekano squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. He leaned down to offer Maitimo an arm. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I do too.”

“Do you?”

Had he ever done anything but? There was a place in his heart called ‘Uncle Feanaro;’ there was no one there and there never had been anyone there. There had been a man, once, who disdained that place and refused to enter it, leaving it dark and lonely. “Take the damn arm, Maitmo,” Findekano said.

Maitimo did, and Findekano helped him stand. He held him around his shoulders, then turned around to start grabbing robes and breeches. “Yes. All my life I was waiting for the day that my fathers and uncles figured it out and we were finally one family together. No matter what I felt about him, I wanted that too. I wouldn’t have risked that, being a real family, if we had it.

“It hurts to finally admit that I was the only person who believed that would happen. But I have decided that that means I am in the prime position to be the person who convinces everyone else.”

When Findekano offered him clothing, Maitimo took it. He was looking at his lover with an inset sadness, carved into the cratered scars of his face. “No you weren’t,” he whispered.

“What?”

“You weren’t the only one who believed,” he said.

Findekano looked into the white fire in his eyes and he got it. Maitimo, all his life. Feanor’s first son, just a little boy, wanting to see his uncles and his grandmother. Hearing about the birth of his first cousin, wanting to be there. Sending birthday gifts to his cousins without notes so his words couldn’t be scrutinized. Asking questions about Turukano and Elenwe’s wedding, which he couldn’t attend, for hours. Quietly arranging times for Irisse to meet with Tyelkormo, finding ways to sneak his brothers out to a trip with Finarfin’s sons. Responding personally to the threats and ultimatums sent to Formenos with bloodless apologies when Feanaro himself wouldn’t write. Watching the ships burn. Standing back in the treeline holding a torch and watching the ships burn. Festering in the prison where every single one of them had left him.

Except for Finno, Findekano saw in his feverishly burning eyes.

Findekano leaned forward, above their hands entwined in fabric, and kissed him. “Even better,” he said, “I have a conspirator.” He could feel Maitimo smile under his lips.

—

Those conspirators carefully washed and dressed in private, and Findekano was just ferrying Maitimo out to a place where he could slip into a forested path and walk unnoticed to the other side of the lake when exactly the wrong thing happened. On the edge of camp, they nearly literally ran into Nolofinwe, exchanging information with a troop of Sindar scouts.

Everyone mutually froze to stare at each other, Nolofinwe at his son stealthily appearing with his most problematic nephew, Maitimo at his uncle in Beleriand-made leather armor and only scanty pieces of metal plate (still rare, on this side of the lake) and a shining silver crown on his forehead, the Sindar at what appeared to be yet another extremely specific and frustratingly opaque Noldorin social faux pas.

“Nelyafinwe,” said Nolofinwe, and visibly repossessed his dignity after being startled. He put one ring-bedecked hand on his chest and straightened his shoulders. “It’s good to see you. I was worried after you left so abruptly.”

It was a good thing that the first (and, in some cases, only) thing that everyone knew about the red-headed and well-tenderized Noldo was that he was insane, because what Maitimo said in response was “Fuck. No. Fine. Right. Sorry. I don’t want to talk about it.”

Findekano covered his face with his hand. He did not sigh or groan, because he didn’t want to embarrass Maitimo. Through his fingers, he looked intently at his father, and with his thoughts loosely conveyed You know he’s trying, right? Please tell me you know he’s trying.

Nolofinwe looked at his son a mere second and communicated that he was aware that Maitimo was trying, and his thoughts were woven intricately with a pattern of affection, pity, sadness, fondness; his thoughts about Maitimo were soaked with loss, currents in an ocean of loss. In just a moment of touching his mind Findekano knew that his father saw his nephew in terms of loss and always had and always would, a person that represented lost opportunities, a man defined by the things missing.

Findekano felt complicated about that. He agreed only in part. He thought that Maitimo certainly wouldn’t like it. He would want to be seen as more than that. “I was seeing him off to go back,” Findekano said.

Nolofinwe thought, and then nodded. “You are both walking a fine line,” he mused. There was no judgment in his tone; he clearly had already noticed and had been working out the delicacies of bringing Maitimo back and forth across the line in his own mind. “Perhaps before long we can do something a little more… official, instead of sneaking him to and fro.”

Findekano found himself very nervous. He hadn’t talked to his father about any of this and he hadn’t planned to. “Well, with…”

“No, they’ll kill you both,” Maitimo interrupted confidently.

Even Findekano wasn’t sure if it was truly that dangerous or if Maitimo now had his sense of danger too skewed by what he had been through. “Would they?” Nolofinwe asked softly.

Maitimo looked upwards, and seemed to be genuinely pondering the question. The light of the setting sun caught his eyes and made them red, shimmering, and backlit like a cat’s. “Yes.”

Nolofinwe looked at him evenly for a moment, and then a wave of sadness lapped over his face, drenched it for a moment, and ebbed away. “I’m sure it must be a delicate situation over there,” he half-agreed.

He had only been ‘over there’ once. Findekano had been a few times. He vividly recalled Maitimo actually losing his shit at Tyelkormo and then said, “I’m not sure the time is right yet.”

Nolofinwe sighed. He touched the shoulder of his Sindar contact to apologize for his attention being divided, then took a few quiet steps toward his son and nephew. Findekano could feel Maitimo freeze next to him. He deliberately did not look at him.

Nolofinwe lifted his arms and, at once, touched both of them on the cheek; Findekano with his right hand, Maitimo with his left. And then he didn’t say anything, not a thing. He stood there for a few moments, holding them both, and then dropped his palms.

Findekano slowly realized what had happened. What had happened was that Nolofinwe had not rebuked them, he had not dissuaded them. He had not insulted or belittled or judged them. He had not punished his son, he had not driven off his nephew.

He couldn’t approve. That was impossible. But with the silence and solemnity so native to him, he could refuse to disapprove.

Findekano stood there, overwhelmed. He felt like crying, and he needed to stay still, stay steady, to keep it back. He hadn’t properly cried since his first year on the Helcaraxe, instead he had been handling things, and handing things, and against all odds finding something else to handle…

But while Findekano was lost, in a moment of impulse Maitimo leaned forward. He put his hand on his uncle’s cheek, he leaned forward, and down, as all were reminded only when Maitimo was inches from Nolofinwe’s face that he was the larger of the two. Nolofinwe was not threatened, but he was confused, standing still and only slightly turned toward him as Maitimo leaned in to him—

For a moment, Findekano, frozen in his place, rapidly calculated how he was going to manage the damage of Maitimo kissing Nolofinwe. He knew he could make something up about Noldorin customs the Sindar here would believe, that wouldn't be too hard. Surely he could convince his father to keep knowledge of this moment to this place. He could plead Maitimo’s insanity, and after the last thirty years, they both knew what desperation for affection could be bred in someone who had lost too much too suddenly. Maitimo, though, would be very hard to manage after this.

And he surprised himself by feeling suddenly, sharply jealous, creating something unwieldy to manage in himself.

But Maitimo turned his head—as surely he had always intended to—and kissed his uncle on the cheek, a gesture everyone accepted as familial, though laying his hand on his other cheek to hold him fast, though lingering on his soft skin for two second, three, certainly demonstrated how effusive his emotion was.

Nolofinwe’s face clouded with sadness. He pulled back from Maitimo, only to return the kiss on his cheek. Maitimo closed his eyes. Nolofinwe said, “You’re welcome back, kinsman! Only take care as you go.”

Maitimo said, “Thank you,” and then he hesitated.

Findekano was startled again, and worse, by a feeling of jealousy throbbing behind his teeth. Don’t you call him Atya, he thought to himself, you called me Atya. That didn’t make any sense at all, but then again, didn’t it? It had been Findekano that Maitimo had called Atya, it had been his hands on his body, it was his arms that had held and comforted him through the long nights, it had been his blade that cut him free. He had convinced Maitimo to say ‘father’, but to him.

Nolofinwe was still focused on Maitimo; he saw his nephew’s hesitation and handled it with grace. He pulled back a half-step, and took Maitimo’s hand, lowering it from his face and slowly down. “Don’t thank me now! None of us have done right by you yet, or given you your due. And here am I with nothing to give, except protection, if I can manage it. Lords,” he said, to the Sindar, over-polite; “I thank you again for our tolerance with us; let us resume our talk in my camp, if you will.”

Nolofinwe held Maitimo’s hand tight for a moment, and then he walked to his son, and moved to kiss him on the cheek as well. Findekano allowed it, and his heart throbbed both when he had his father close enough to smell, to feel his warmth, and to see Maitimo’s wide-eyed, longing face, as he beheld their embrace. As if in defiance of his own jealous thought from a moment before, as if to be purposefully contrary, Findekano surprised himself again with a new thought: Can’t you stay? Can’t you be a father to us? Don’t you know he doesn’t have one anymore?

But Nolofinwe pulled away, after a touch to his shoulder, and he left, and Findekano thought, to his back, No, stupid, hot-headed Findekano; if you wanted him as a father, either of you, you wouldn’t have consented to make him a King.

He went, King Nolofinwe, to be King Nolofinwe for the rest of his life. Findekano and Maitimo both watched him go, sick with desire, unhappy with desire. Findekano reached out to grasp Maitimo’s hand, and Maitimo wove his fingers together with him, testing one way, and then the other way, brushing the tips of his blunt-nailed fingers over the soft places on Findekano’s palm.

There would have been better ways to handle the moment, smarter ways. Findekano looked at Maitimo until he caught his eyes, until his eyes finally stopped piercing the place in the trees through which Nolofinwe had departed. Though he had been strictly avoiding entering Maitimo’s mind, since it had only served to hurt him so far, Findekano opened the door, pushing it open, pressing Maitimo’s shoulders back without physical touch. He let himself inside, through the trembling he felt on the edge of Maitimo’s mind, and poured into him how badly he wanted him, in a wordless, intense, physical shove, how badly he wanted him, how his anger, jealousy, longing, adoration, and love all were shoved into desire as if they were the same, even when they balked or struggled against it; how it all turned to Maitimo like a weathervane, and as relentlessly as the wind.

Maitimo, wordlessly, expressionlessly, let that wind rush run along the valleys that torture had carved inside him. He let Findekano into the same places that the vile ones had been, he let him fill the same holes, and was so inured to it he looked as though nothing was happening. Findekano, too, did not react at all for a few long moments; he had wanted in, and he was in, and it had happened so quickly and so smoothly that he had not known he was inside the torturer’s chamber until he was there.

Maitimo in his head called him a word that Findekano did not even know before that point. It was not ‘Cousin,’ it was not ‘Atya’, it was something deeper. Findekano did not know how to pronounce it with his mouth.

Nor was he ready for it. Findekano pulled out; Maitimo shuddered. After a moment of stillness, his heart was hammering like a drum; he had just touched the sword-cuts in Maitimo’s soul. He felt faint and noticed he was aroused. He swallowed and then nearly vomited. He mastered the nausea; Maitimo was still looking at him, unchanged.

He grabbed both his hands, and pulled close. For a moment, Findekano was uncertain. He then chose, with no small sense of stubbornness, to consent to it, and they pulled tightly together.

He took Maitimo in the leaves on the ground; Maitimo wove himself around him and gasped and keened, but neither of them spoke.

When Maitimo finally had to walk back to ‘his’ side of the lake, to the other half of his family, it was full dark, but he was not afraid; he now saw in the dark like in the daylight, and often had to hide the shining of his eyes in the dread of darkness so his quarry could not see him approach.

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KING AND FATHER

Maedhros tried to keep “my husband” in his heart. 

He had said it, once, but Fingon hadn’t recognized it. Instead he says ‘beloved,’ ‘my love,’ ‘my dove.’ ‘Cousin,’ ‘brother of my soul.’ They called each other nearly everything they could be to each other. ‘Dearest friend,’ ‘my father,’ ‘my heart.’ The completion of all things would be ‘husband,’ but Maedhros did not dare say it again. He kept it bowered in his heart.

Then King Fingolfin died.

There was a year of mourning, silent mourning, a kind no one had known before. Then Fingon consented to be coronated. But because they were all there in fallen Beleriand, because they needed to make a show of things instead of simply having them, constant shows of loyalty and support and friendliness, the coronation had to be a show, not a simple gift of crown from kindred to kindred. Everyone would be in attendance, and Fingon on stage.

If anyone understood a show, it was Maglor. And if anyone was determined to make it their show, it was certainly the sons of Feanor. Before the coronation, they came to Maedhros’ room with a plan.

Maedhros didn’t ask them to do what they did. He would have never asked them. And when he asked them, “What are you all doing here? There’s hours before it begins,” instead of responding, they convened on him silently.

Amras sat beside him, where Maedhros sat unmoving on his bed. Amras had with him a set of face-paints, and he painted thin lines around Maedhros’ eyes and his lips, and painted all of his scars with gold, until they shone like veins of ore in gray stone.

Caranthir produced jewelry which he had had freshly forged for him. A necklace that covered his whole neck, up to his chin, and bore a banded agate cut in the shape of Feanor’s star; matching bracelets for his wrists, star-studded; pins and a comb for his hair, all gold.

Curufin belted a ceremonial sword on his side, golden-hilted, useless for battle, signed discreetly with his own name. On the belt glittered golden stars, in the pattern of the ecliptic, a band which arced from Barad Eithel to Himring on a fair summer night.

Celegorm clasped a cape of gold around his shoulders, thin, gossamer, like spider's-thread, like a veil.

Maglor sat behind Maedhros for an hour, on his thighs, and braided his hair in bride’s-braids. He hummed to himself, he picked up Caranthir’s golden pins one by one, and twirled and clipped Maedhros’ hair into the fashion of a maiden bride before cinching it all together with the golden comb, gilt with Feanor’s star, intended for his new husband to take away.

They didn’t say anything. They didn’t make a joke out of it. They didn’t insult him.

Maedhros wanted to apologize. He wanted to say, ‘I know you didn’t want this.’ He knew they didn’t. They worked silently, without cheer, as if prettying up a frightened captive bride.

To them, he figured, it was still a show of force. Making a spectacle out of Maedhros’ subordination was still a show of his relevance and power over the new King, of their power over the new King. They wanted everyone to know that if they wanted King Fingon, they were getting Queen Maedhros, and each of his brothers.

And yet Maglor does take an hour to carefully, artfully plait his hair, and his brothers had made these things for him, and they still dressed him with them gently. Amras held his face once it was painted, Celegorm wrapped his arms around his shoulders. Caranthir showed him how he looked in a mirror: a bride in stunning gold, bridled from his crown to his ankles in golden ropes; a corpse still wearing its finery, limbs shriveled and dried inside of golden wedding gifts. An orc which had thrown on the jewels of its victims, peering at the glimmer, pondering some completely unknowable, murky thought, understanding the purity of its light in a way that an Elda could not imagine.

“It matters not what I think,” grumbled Maedhros. He figured it didn’t.

Maglor appeared behind him in the mirror. He was dressed like a streak of lightning himself, shimmering platinum, too bright for the eye. He looked miserable. He took Maedhros’ face in his hand for a moment, peered derisively (and fondly) at him, and said, “You look fantastic. The little pervert will love it.”

Maedhros did not believe that appraisal until the moment came that Fingon did see him. The sons of Feanor were announced to the growing crowd in the throne room, reserved for last out of respect for their status (and because both Turgon and Finrod were both too absent to argue). First walked Amras, chin high; Curufin, looking straight ahead, Caranthir, not meeting anyone’s eyes. Celegorm, his boots with their nail-studded heels clattering, Maglor with his knife-smile, cut in his face. All were still dressed in armor, as if they had come to plan an attack. With each heralded appearance Fingon stood straighter, more statuesque in front of his father’s throne, in which he had not yet sat, a golden crown on his brow and evening-blue robes on his body, belted and clipped by bracers of bronze.

His cousins all looked upon him with a look he did not like, and after Maglor, there was a terribly long pause.

Then came Maedhros, in bridal gown.

That was so unmistakably what he was wearing that all speech stopped, all turned to look at him. They stood in bafflement, because there was no way to understand this. This was not the place for a bride, this was not the person to be one. Here he was anyway, without precedent.

Maedhros stopped only a few steps into the room and lifted his eyes to Fingon. His eyes were dark, because no light had survived his time in Angband, except the pale fire that burned within.

All the people gathered there could see was that a minute passed in transfixed silence, with none daring to break it. In the mind of Fingon, the King, there arose something which repeated. It was first a little sound, like tapping at a window, tree branches tapping at a window. And then he began to feel it, fingertip taps on the back of him, starting low, and growing more insistent. Then he could see it, a fire rising, a glow stirring strong in dark embers, and all these sensations rose stronger, repeating with every heartbeat; a sound which echoed, a hand between his shoulders, hard heat. And he beheld it as it rose, until its form clarified, and he could comprehend it: it was a word.

My husband, Maedhros repeated. Husband.

For a moment, he could only see the word; then the man, shining red and gold. Then they were one, his husband standing across the firelit hall, the fingers of his hand curled near his chest, a smile, though slight, on his painted lips.

Fingon crossed the floor and took his hand. He led him away, out of the room, through the halls of the Barad Eithel, and to his chambers, without a word. 

Back in the throne room, all were forced to wait until the King-apparent returned. Maedhros’ brothers, confident that their gift had been well-received and absolutely certain they had ruined everyone else's evening, turned their attention to being the five most insufferable people at the party.

–-

“My husband,” sighed Fingon, kissing Maedhros on the cheek. Then, “my wife,” as he kissed the other side.

Maedhros smiled, an effort that came in twitches and failed starts anymore. “My husband,” he said, gravely, and kissed him on the lips, slow, still, and lingering. When he finally pulled away, he whispered, “my wife.”

His head was laid, tilted, back on the bed, his red hair still half in its braids, strands stuck to the shimmering necklace that clenched around his neck. Beneath that, he was bare; Fingon kissed his collarbone next. “Atya!”

Maedhros groaned sleepily. His exhausted body tried to curl in on Fingon, and only accomplished lifting one hand to card through his mussed back hair. (The golden crown was somewhere on the floor, under layers of garments.) “My brother,” he whispered.

Fingon kissed his chest, which was still flushed red around his scars. “Is there anything you cannot be?”

Maedhros tugged on his hair. “I haven’t been sane in four centuries,” he murmured.

“Oh, dear,” Fingon sighed, and draped himself across Maedhros, feeling the slick between their bodies when his thigh slid between Maedhros’ legs. “Speaking of which, you are no mastermind, either. Whose idea was that? Curvo’s? Moryo’s?”

“That plot was written by all five of your law-brothers,” Maedhros grumbled into his hair, “And I’m certain they’re quite pleased with themselves now.”

“Law-brothers! Ah,” Fingon sighed. “No worse than having them as cousins. Or nephews,” he added with a smile.

Maedhros huffed about that, pretending to be annoyed. “Should you not get back to your scheming nephews, Atya, and make sure they haven’t started taking the very pillars out of your fortress to bring home with them?”

“Oh, the coronation,” Fingon remembered, shifting himself on Maedhros so that they were looking eye to eye. (His thigh, stuck between Maedhros’ legs, shifted on his tired sex in a distinctly provocative manner.) “My understanding is that it was yet another show of solidarity, among the host of shows of solidarity we are using to prop this Kingdom up. If our various relatives are any kind of intelligent, love,” he whispered, leaning into Maedhros’ face, “they’ll be taking the time to put on similar shows themselves.”

“Mm, careful,” Maedhros hummed, though he looked at Fingon’s swollen lips as he spoke. “They used to uniformly repudiate my perversion. Now, half of them have been widowed or separated from their wives for… quite some time. I hear whispers they may not all be pillars of virtue anymore, not that I’d hear it from any of them.”

Fingon tried, but he couldn't hold back a sharp laugh. “Come on, gentlemen, I want to gossip! You’ll slaughter a horde but you won’t throw a ‘look at the legs on that one’ my way? I can’t believe they’re still so uptight about it,” he cackled.

“It’s a little embarrassing,” Maedhros agreed. “It was one thing when they were young and awkward, but watching them pretend to be too good for it now…”

“Well, except Tyelko.”

“Goes without saying. Ugh,” Maedhros said, with a little wince to the side.

“I think that’s enough about family right now, anyway,” Fingon said, experimentally rubbing his thigh between Maedhros’ legs. He didn’t wake right back up immediately but, then again, he had finished rather hard.

“That’s a new opinion,” Maedhros grumbled.

“Fair enough,” Fingon admitted, reaching forward with one hand to begin to pick strands of hair out of Maedhros’ necklace. “Lovely, but did it have to have so many little bits of filigree that things can get stuck in?...”

“It’s Caranthir. Fingon, do you think we should stop?”

“What. No. Absolutely not. Stop what?”

“Well. The ‘atya’ thing. Both of our fathers are dead, now.”

Fingon laid his head down on Maedhros’ chest. “We’re keeping their memory alive, my love.”

“I believe that usually indicates that you're doing something the deceased loved one would be proud of.”

“You think that they would disapprove of some aspect of what we do?” Fingon asked, gently pushing his thigh between Maedhros’ legs again.

“While I think there may have been a time or two that my father considered popping your jaw, I think he would have done it with a slap, not his organ, which I am almost certain never touched anyone but my mother… and he’d throw a tantrum if you suggested that.”

“And yet he can do nothing about me imagining his flashing eyes when I mount your face!”

“Being dead opens one up to many such indignities.”

“Darling! No, of course, it was always selfish; in fact, his memory recedes.” (Maedhros’ hand tightened on Fingon’s back. Eventually, he realized, both his father and Fingolfin would be dead long enough that time would wear on their faces and Maedhros would just feel normal about them. Wouldn’t he?) “It was always about indulging a personal fantasy, I never had the impression that I could get anywhere with him. Not if I were being honest.”

“I’m certain I would have made your father cry,” Maedhros said solemnly to the ceiling.

“You managed a few times even without touching him.”

“There are men in the world for whom just one mention of choking someone for fun would cause them to dissolve into dust and drift away.”

“No, it was always about you; you know that, love?” Fingon whispered.

“Hm?” Maedhros responded quietly.

“You may have noticed that I have wandering eyes.”

“Oh! Where have they gone?”

“Ha! Across the world,” Fingon admitted. “I may have left them with other men, from time to time. You might have noticed from my detailed discussion of their bodies. But I was looking, and not touching.”

“I know.”

“Yes. But what I liked was coming back to you and saying, ‘I couldn’t get this golden-haired boy out of my mind,’ or, ‘I can’t stop thinking about this thick-thighed Edain; can’t you wrap your jealous arms around me and remind me whose I am?’ Because I was always thinking most about you, love.”

“I know,” Maedhros said again, holding the back of his head, petting his shoulder. “You would start out saying his name, but always go back to mine.”

“Well, I wanted you. It feels like I want everyone, some days, but I want you.”

“I wouldn’t know why you would want me jealous, though.”

“Attention? Pettiness? Because you react so well to it, Maedhros. Making you jealous is like singing a magic charm that makes you hot. You begged me to call you Feanaro.”

“The man who could have whatever he wanted! And what I wanted was to have you on the street, since I was forced to hide you behind locked doors or take you miles outside of the city just to kiss you.”

“Oh, Stars, I wanted to have you on my arm like a tame bird. I wanted everyone to have to see us together.”

“Well, several thousand people are now forced to stand awkwardly with the knowledge that we are having sex in another room, so we can consider that accomplished.”

“That reminds me; I would have them wait a little longer,” said Fingon, and kissed Maedhros’ neck.

“Logistically, that’s difficult.”

“Ugh.”

“I’ll need to be able to dress myself and stand again sometimes this evening.”

“Technically, I’m the only one of us that’s necessary,” Fingon murmured into the soft skin under his chin. “You could stay here, and everyone could know that you were too exhausted from making love with me to even make an appearance again.”

Maedhros hummed. Fingon kissed the same spot again, more firmly.

Then Maedhros, who had been trying to ignore the turn in his stomach since Fingon had brought up his father, said, “I miss them both terribly.”

Fingon kissed him under his ear, slow. “I know.”

“The memory recedes. The pain doesn’t.”

“I know, darling,” said Fingon, and kissed his ear.

“It was always about you,” Maedhros said into the darkness.

“Hm?”

“It was always about you, too. My feelings for him were genuine. But I was thinking about you when I told you about it. I would have kept it to myself if it was about him. I gave it to you as a gift. I wanted you to have my feelings for him too.”

“Russo,” Fingon said into his hair.

Maedhros, with unsteadiness in his voice, repeated one more time, “It was always about you.”

Fingon caught the uncanny glow of his eyes in the dark. The glow that only appeared in the dark, like the wings of a moth, like the sickly-white face of the moon-flower.

It was a very rare thing to be the person that someone had thought and dreamed about while enduring torture in the pits of the Enemy, in the prison from which (nearly) none escaped. Fingon hoped he didn’t have much company in that. What would they be like now, if Maedhros had not spent thirty years clenching the memory of Fingon between his teeth when he needed to keep from screaming?

Well, he would be King. And perhaps Fingon would be Queen Fingon, and perhaps that would have been better, or perhaps everything would have been much worse. There were so many paths they could have walked, and when Fingon thought of them, he could only think about which ones might have kept everyone alive.

Fingon pulled himself onto his elbows so he could kiss him on the lips. Maedhros went still, and then bent his head and brought them together.

“They will remember me as a flower, who wilted in a man’s bed!” Fingon whispered on his lips.

“They will remember you as a valiant warrior, or I will have their ears,” Maedhros rumbled back.

“Let me have you once more, husband,” Fingon said, his lips drifting down Maedhros’ jaw.

“I don’t believe I can do it again yet,” Maedhros admitted.

‘I don’t need that,” Fingon said, now on the other side of Maedhros’ face, his nose on his cheek, soft, scarred, soft again. “I just want a little more of you. Like I always have.”

Maedhros pulled his hand up Fingon’s back and clutched him. “Are you close to the point where you have enough, do you think?” he asked, and Fingon could hear past the self-deprecation and into the fear.

“Never. I’ll find a way to have you in another way. And if I run out of ways, we’ll just have to sit with each other, I suppose.”

Maedhros leaned in; Fingon tilted his head up so he could kiss his neck. Pleasure itched under Fingon’s skin, he sighed. They would call him some kind of animal for this, for abandoning the ceremony for pleasure, and for having done things like that all his life, and he would not be able to explain. He never had been able to explain, because absolutely no one saw Maedhros like he did, or else they would all be acting like this.

He hoped something made the lot of them feel like this, as warm and as safe. Or maybe nothing did, and that was why so many of them acted like bastards.

“I think when I go back,” Fingon murmured, “I’ll say something about how ‘not everyone has to view their King as a father, you know.’”

Maedhros choked with a sudden laugh on his neck.

“And something about warmth and safety being the concept for this Kingship. As we’re all barred in our fortresses anyway. I can make it work. A world where no one fears to lie down, where the warmth of the hearth is in each home; a place where the Enemy is driven out and no man is afraid in his house, something about the arms of his fellow man, I’m going to say ‘kinship’ a lot and make sure to describe everything as ‘familial’ and ‘familiar’, work an instance of ‘brotherly love’ in there, it’s going to be so uncomfortable.”

Maedhros laughed. Fingon curled an arm around the back of his head so he could hold that beloved smile close to his skin, absorb the quivers and shakes. “If you can, please show up half-way through, still fixing your cape. Oh, I’ll tear it, so you can realize it’s wrecked part of the way through.”

“I can’t!”

“Yes you can, darling! Oh, don’t you realize, you can!”

Fingon started to laugh too. They held on to each other, and were even later than they planned, because every minute they began to laugh again, coming up with another idea, snickering, making an increasingly elaborate plan to ruin the entire night with repeated ‘accidental’ slips.

Of course, they didn’t follow through on it, but they night was made dreadfully uncomfortable anyway by their repeatedly catching each other’s eyes and smiling. Fingon managed to make a very excellent speech without saying any of that awful nonsense, in fact all he did after being coronated was stand before the throne and say, “I can’t be him, but I love each of you sincerely. And I can damn well slaughter any creature of Morgoth you put in front of me,” and after a moment of silence everyone began to cheer and shout; the Eldar of fallen Beleriand were quite accustomed now to killers and were perhaps not completely offended by the idea of following the best of them. They drank and sang and danced into the night; Maglor became so drunk and overwhelmed he kissed Fingon’s feet, Celegorm snuck off with a girl thinking that no one saw him, Fingon set up an archery tournament inside, several chandeliers were broken, and Maedhros laughed out loud, in front of everyone.

Who could have known how little time they had? No one was afraid that night; the fires were very warm, and the year of mourning was over, and when King Fingon and his husband retired to bed again, the traditions of their fathers were all broken when the company raised their glasses and toasted them and were happy for them, without reservation, without propriety, completely happy for them.

--

I wanna be your brother, wanna be your father too/never make you run for cover even if they want us to
I wanna be your sister, wanna be your mother too/I wanna be whatever else that touches you

Touches You, Mika

Title from Paradise Lost, Book II. A good quarter of the second book is devoted to describing the incestual relationship(s) between Satan, Sin, and Death with a level of detail I wholeheartedly appreciate.

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