Work Text:
“I’ve missed you,” Fingon breathed against his mouth as they stumbled back into his rooms.
Maedhros pushed him further inside before slamming the door closed and bolting it. “A little louder, please, for the guards and the courtiers lingering in the halls,” he said, and Fingon laughed.
His apartments were grander than those he had kept in Dor-lómin, though there he had been lord, and in Barad Eithel he was but Fingolfin’s heir and right hand. There was blue everywhere. Blue silk hangings, tapestries that seemed to depict the sea views from Nevrast, blue Fëanorian lights set in gilded cups on the walls. The stone flags of the floors were covered in woven carpets, not rushes and herbs, but the rooms still smelled sweet, of lavender oil and pine. There were boughs stacked neatly in every hearth, waiting to be burnt. And there were the touches that made Maedhros think ah, there you are: the desk half-covered in scrolls and parchment, in no discernible order and a pen thrown down in clear disgust on top of them, leaving an inky splutter on a creamy page of figures. The long table where a messy selection of arms and armour had been laid out, in Fingon’s own space rather than exiled to somewhere in the armoury, or to the keeping of one of his men; a collection of oils and polishing cloths; yes, that was Fingon! So was the fletching-knife, still wickedly sharp. He didn’t like to be idle.
He took note of little else: Fingon’s hands and mouth were hot on him, sliding under his tunic to untie his points. Who could think, with Fingon kissing them?
The bedroom was heavily blue, too: a dream of water, or perhaps sky. The bed was big and solid-framed. There were masses of gathered blue larkspur that he wondered at, but it seemed a poor moment to ask.
Not while Fingon was divesting himself of his clothes. Not while Fingon was lying back on top of his heaped furs and quilted velvet in a sprawl of tawny skin, offering himself to be devoured, holding himself out to Maedhros like a mead-cup to a man dying of thirst.
“I’ve had so many ideas for what I would do when I saw you next—”
“Later,” Maedhros said, and rid himself of his tunic. His hose were already gone, and his braies followed swiftly. “I have a very particular thirst, and I mean to quench it. You are going to stay just as you are, and I am going to ride you until I come.”
Fingon blinked; grinned. “Well, don’t let me hinder you in your errand!”
It was easy after that. Fingon knew him, and he knew Fingon, and their bodies spoke the same language and sang the same song, even now, even after so long. Everything was easy between them, always. It was easy as Maedhros slicked himself with a bottle of the oil he’d snagged from Fingon’s armour-table, workmanlike, he didn’t care whether or not it was enough stretch as long as he could get Fingon in him the sooner; easy as Fingon held him by the shoulders and kissed him; and easy even when until Maedhros drove himself home on his cock just as he’d promised, panting, gripping the wooden bed-frame behind Fingon’s head for balance.
It burned; it was precisely what he’d needed—
Fingon breathed under him, holding still. He liked everything to be irrevocable before he was disobedient, so it was only once Maedhros was settled in his lap that Fimgon put his hands on his hips to hold Maedhros in place when he tried to shift and start moving. “Wait,” he said. “Let me be sweet to you.”
The scent of larkspur was overwhelming, and so was Fingon’s hand rubbing at his hip, soothing up over his belly like he was seeking out his own shape inside him. “I don’t want sweet—”
Fingon hummed—yes, I hear you, but I’m not listening—and kissed him, rolling his hips and seeking out the singing-spot inside him in slow, sure waves. It was sweet. It was good, too much so. Maedhros’ gut tightened with desire, but he pulled back from Fingon’s mouth and took back the lead, setting the harder, harsher pace he wanted.
This was fucking, it wasn’t going to be more. He had told himself he could have this, if he was careful: have it, and then put it away again into its box, reinforced with iron and several heavy locks.
Fingon laughed, lying back to let him do as he wished. His hair fanned out in blue-black ripples across his blue-silk cushions, and he laced his hands behind his head, his chest and belly and the underside of his sculpted arms all asking to be bitten. A show of complaisance, no, he wasn’t going to touch Maedhros if Maedhros didn’t want sweetness – not at all, and certainly not where Maedhros might want his hands, where his cock was hard between them—
Maedhros ignored the provocation and fucked down ruthlessly, bracing himself against the bedframe. Again, and again, and again; fucked himself home until the smirk left Fingon’s face and he reached for him, groping fumblingly at his knees, his thighs, his waist.
“Oh,” he breathed, clutching at Maedhros’s haunches, gripping his buttocks like he was trying to gather him closer. “Oh – oh, why has it been so long –”
“Not worth it,” Maedhros breathed.
Fingon squeezed hard enough to bruise. “Not worth what?”
“Everything—”
Fingon caught at his right wrist—the empty one—and pulled him down to kiss him. It wasn’t their best work. They were both too focused on Fingon’s cock inside him. Maedhros was too close. He needed a hand to get there—but he couldn’t use his own, he needed it for balance—
“Ready to roll over and let me do some of the work?”
The muscle in his thighs was burning with exertion, but he shook his head.
“Stubborn,” Fingon said, clicking his tongue. His other hand left Maedhros’s hip, slipping between them.
Maedhros groaned at the touch, almost falling against him. He was aching.
“There you are,” said Fingon, and there indeed he was: caught between Fingon’s working fist and perfect cock, surrounded, a fort about to yield. He breathed in hard: closed his eyes, watched as the stars behind them begin to explode in bursts of silver and blue and gold. Let out a deep, feeling groan and came all over Fingon’s hand and his stomach and chest.
Fingon fucked him through the aftershocks. Maedhros shivered, hissed, lost his grip on the bed-frame. He fell forward onto Fingon’s chest and buried his face in the sweaty crease of his neck, still trying to catch his breath—hopelessly overstimulated, singing inside at every thrust, and Fingon wrapped an arm around him and held him while he sought his own ending.
After Fingon came, they lay like that for a little longer. Finally, Maedhros pushed himself up, biting back a wince as he pulled off and away.
Fingon always looked particularly beautiful after coming, gleaming-gold with sweat and pleasure. He was incandescent now. His dark hair was no longer spread in rippling, artistic waves across the pillows. Damp and tangled, it stuck in clumps to his neck, his cheeks, his forehead. Maedhros, for his part, was slick with oil and seed, fucked open. His thighs hurt. He felt glorious, like light was leaking out of his every pore.
“Come back to bed.”
“You’re a mess,” Maedhros said. “So am I.”
Fingon lifted his hand a bare inch from the bed to gesture vaguely. “There’s water through that arch there.”
There was a whole bathing chamber, in fact; a great bath, carved out of marble, and— oh —water, springing up obediently when he touched the geyser. He hadn’t seen anything so civilised since Tirion. It was cold, but one couldn’t have everything; there was clearly a cavity beneath the bath where hot coals from the hearth were supposed to be shovelled when hot water was wanted, but they hadn’t planned on fucking, so no attendant had done it.
“I’m in love with your bath,” Maedhros called out. “I’m taking your father’s engineer back to Himring with me.”
“Do you want to drive the Noldor to war again?”
There was bathing-oil and a set of strigils—very civilised— but Maedhros didn’t have time for them. Water and a cloth would have to do. He began to scrub himself clean. His skin was too sensitive, and it registered every insult; there were red marks blooming on his hips and thighs where Fingon had gripped him, and the attention of the cloth left angry pink patches behind.
Fingon was lying exactly where he’d left him. Maedhros really should have made him come before he rode him, rendered him biddable and compliant first, but he hadn’t had the patience.
“Don’t drag poor Gilbarad to Himring,” Fingon said, and stretched like a large, satisfied cat in a beam of sunlight. “Drag me, instead.”
They weren’t having this conversation now. Maedhros was too raw. He needed to go somewhere small and dark and wrap everything up again and put it in its box and away.
He could live off this for years, moment by moment. He meant to.
“Fingon.”
“I wish you would.”
“There’s no point in wishing for impossible things,” Maedhros said. He was dressing; undershirt, braies, hose. Fumbling with the laces one-handed. He was always clumsy, and being watched made him clumsier. He didn’t like other people to see his weakness displayed so starkly.
“You don’t have to leave,” Fingon said. He rolled over, wiping at the come on his belly with the edge of one of his velvet coverlets. “It’s late. No one will notice – or we can say we were catching up all night, taking private counsel. Would that be so strange? We have little enough time this visit.”
“I can’t.” He thought about going over to the bed to kiss Fingon good-bye, but he knew already how that would go. Fingon’s hands in his hair and his arms around his neck, pulling him back down into starry oblivion among the furs.
In the morning, he still felt sore. Satisfied. It was a better ache than after sword-drill, or battle. Something had worked itself out of him, some great knot that had been tangling and coiling since the last time he had Fingon, or Fingon had had him, too many years ago. There were stark bruises on his hips and thighs.
His bodyman hadn’t said anything when Maedhros found his way back to his guest chambers; merely helped him undress, then gone off to his own bed. There were only a trusted few from Himring that Maedhros would let wait on him that way, see him scarred and half-clad, the full ruin of his empty wrist. Only Fingon had seen him wholly naked since Thangorodrim.
He didn’t relish the silent question in his man’s eyes when he helped Maedhros with his hair in front of the mirror in the morning. There were marks on his throat, red and purple. “I’ll wear it down today,” he said. “And—the grey coat, Aramath. The one that comes up to my chin.”
He sat in council with Fingolfin most of the week. Parts of it were largely for show – look at the unity among the Noldor. How well their lords agree! What shadow lies now between Fingolfin and his kin?
Turgon had disappeared, and Aredhel and Idril with him, leaving Nevrast lordless. A third of the Noldor loyal to Fingolfin had disappeared with them. That was a weakness; so was the fact that Fingolfin had gone from having a spread of heirs to Fingon alone. That was a very real vulnerability, this side of the sea.
So Maedhros sat patiently at the place of honor at Fingolfin’s right, and Fingon sat on his father’s left, and together they watched Fingolfin hold court and the great gears of the Hithlum high court grind, occasionally offering or being asked to offer counsel.
He could still feel Fingon’s cock inside him, a bright shadow whenever he shifted. He could feel Fingon’s eyes on him, too, as often as Fingon dared. And Fingon dared quite often.
The Grey-elves of Hithlum were at least half the intended audience of all this theatre. The Noldor who had come from Aman knew the politics more intimately. They knew that Maedhros was capable of showing every mark of allegiance and vassalage required of him, while keeping his thoughts to himself, and they thought that made him dangerous—that he had better control of himself than his father had had could be no good thing. They knew, too, that his hand held in it the overlordship of the East, the only leashes his brothers would bear.
They knew also that there was a reason none of the Sons of Fëanor had come to Barad Eithel’s court more than once since they had gone East, save Maglor and Maedhros. Caranthir had come, once, but that had ended in hot words that could never be called back, with another dagger driven between them and the children of Finarfin. It had been an unforced error. Aegnor and Angrod were the nearest and most important non-Fëanorian allies to Himring and the Gap.
The Grey-elves of Hithlum might call Fingolfin lord, but they were Thingol’s eyes and hands in the world beyond the Girdle. It was important to show indivisible amity among the house of Finwë.
They dined in state, under cloth of gold covered in Fingolfin’s sigil, repeated and refracted into embroidered infinity. His father would have died of rage if he’d lived to see it. Curufin and Celegorm might yet. There were many reasons for making sure they never came to Barad Eithel, even if it meant that it fell to Maedhros to come himself.
“Uncle,” he said. “I do need to speak to you in private, soon.”
“Later,” Fingolfin said, a little too eagerly. “Not tonight. You haven’t been here two days yet, Nelyo; I know they can’t spare you from Himring long, but I hope you mean to stay at least long enough to let your horses and your men recover? There’s time enough for us to talk. Tonight, take a little time from your long watch to make merry. Allow yourself some respite. Even the stars burn out.”
Fingon was waiting outside Maedhros’s borrowed quarters when he came upstairs a few days later. It had been a long evening of toasting and important buttonholed conversations with Fingolfin’s lords, in ones and twos and threes, under his uncle’s eagle eye. He had had to smile through it, to make it look like he was enjoying himself; if Fingolfin thought he was working, he’d divert him to dancing, or something similarly purposeless.
He’d liked dancing once, in Tirion. Hadn’t he?
“At last,” Fingon said. His arms were crossed, and his eyebrows raised. The corridor was quiet, and the guards Maedhros was used to seeing ten paces from his door were gone. When Fingon set up an amiable ambush, it was as well planned as a martial one.
“How kind of you to take such pains to wish me goodnight.”
“I couldn’t otherwise get you alone. You’ve been keeping very busy, haven’t you?”
It was cold in Barad Eithel—not as cold as in Himring, but once the sun set all the gathered warmth seemed to leach out of the stone, unless you stood directly in front of one of the great open hearths. There were no fires in the corridors, only unflickering blue Fëanorian light—how angry his father would have been! —but Maedhros felt warm. The air was thickening, heat kindling in his belly.
Fingon said, “How do you do it? Look so cold and severe, like no one’s ever made you laugh your whole life? I’ve been wanting to make you laugh all day; I’ve been longing to pin you into a corner you couldn’t squirm out of and take you apart! I want to make you moan.”
He wasn’t going to weaken. He’d given himself as much respite already as he could take, this visit. Too much—
He gripped the front of Fingon’s tunic and hauled him close.
Fingon cupped the back of his neck and kissed him back, his mouth opening like a flower. He tasted of light and laughter, and rather a lot like wine. He was respite itself. How did he do this to Maedhros, so easily?
In his borrowed room—grand enough, but no blue bower—Maedhros said, warningly, “This is the last time.” The claim was undermined by the hasty way he was fumbling at the throat of the grey coat. It was too tight in the neck, choking him.
Fingon hummed — yes, I hear you, but I’m not listening — and knelt at Maedhros’s feet to remove his boots, then rose to deal with the points of his hose. Helped him peel himself out of the tight-fitting, too-elegant grey coat. Once he’d left Maedhros standing only in his undershirt, he stripped, quickly, with no teasing at all.
“And I’m riding you, and you’re not staying in my bed after.”
“Certainly - but I’m taking you apart with my tongue first.”
Maedhros couldn’t allow that.
Couldn’t allow himself that.
“—all right.”
“I’m getting better at diplomacy, don’t you think?” Fingon asked, his dimpled grin suggesting that he was only kept around to look good, to fight dragons, to go leaping before he looked into disaster. That was the portrait of Fingon certain of Maedhros’s brothers would like to believe in, but it was an incomplete one. It ignored the loyalty that his courage and high heart kindled in his followers, and the keen tactical mind, and the fact that he had been almost solely responsible for the great rapprochement between the people of Fingolfin and the people of Fëanor. That he was still part of the crucial buffer that kept things oiled between the Finarfinians and the Fëanorians.
And when he wanted his way, he usually got it. Before him, Maedhros’s defences crumpled like wet paper, even though he’d flattered himself they were made of iron. Fingon got Maedhros precisely where he wanted him, on his hands and knees in his bed, and took him apart thoroughly with his mouth, coaxing from him as many moans as his heart desired.
After, it was almost as much as Maedhros could do to seat himself in Fingon’s lap and hold onto his shoulders. Trying for some control, he said, “I’m serious, Fingon—last time.”
Fingon’s mouth was wet and shiny from the eternity he’d spent turning Maedhros’s insides to butter, and he was still kissing Maedhros’s shoulder like he hadn’t had enough of him. He made a vague noise of agreement and thrust experimentally upwards, enough to coax more music out of Maedhros, and Maedhros—
Let himself have this, let himself take this little fraction of time from his long watch to make merry.
It was harder to get Fingon out of his bed that it had been to leave Fingon’s. He knew the way Fingon got, after sex: dreamy-eyed, languid, his body infinitely pliable warm wax. Maedhros had no heart for the methods he’d need to roust him.
He washed up. There was no large carven bath in his quarters: only a metal tub that might be filled by a dedicated swarm of attendants he hadn’t sent for. But there was washing-water in a silver bowl, and a great bronze mirror that let him stare at himself in judgment.
All right, he told himself. He’d weakened. Twice.
It wasn’t unexpected, for all he’d told himself that this time would be different: that he’d ride into Hithlum as a visiting lord, as the lord of the East, and he’d stay in that role as long as he was at Fingolfin’s court. He’d do what he must, and what he was asked, and extract the concessions he needed; and he’d treat Fingon as his dear cousin, with gentle warmth and distant fondness, and take care never to be caught alone with him. That resolve had lasted less than three hours after his arrival, and died sooner still in his head. He’d been ready to toss it aside from the moment he’d seen Fingon in the great hall of Barad Eithel, moving through the crowd like the prow of a ship parting the water before itself to greet him, his face lit like a sunrise.
It didn’t have to ruin anything. They’d fucked many times before this visit. So they’d fucked again. It didn't matter. You couldn’t unfuck someone. You could only admit to yourself that it was good, better even than you’d remembered, and then resolve that it was the last time.
Maedhros-in-the-mirror looked back at him sadly, a white wraith with starry eyes.
Behind him, Fingon was drowsing, mouth half-open, upon the best feather-tick Barad Eithel had to offer its visiting princes. Finrod probably slept in it regularly, and Angrod or Aegnor, when they came in turns; Orodreth. Not Artanis, at least—she had vanished into the Girdle and showed no signs of ever coming forth again. He should probably arrange for the mattress to suffer a horrible accident.
He was tending to the dying fire when Fingon stirred again, rubbing at his eyes with the back of his hand. “Nelyo?”
“Yes,” Maedhros said.
“Come to bed. It’s late.”
“I can’t.”
“Never again, I know,” Fingon said. “Come to bed anyway.”
That was more perilous than letting Fingon make love to him again would be. But Maedhros went anyway, and Fingon shifted to give him space in the warm spot he’d been lying in. He was already drifting back to sleep, making little snuffling noises as he rubbed his face against Maedhros’s shoulder. The bed smelled rich, like the two of them, and sex. The scented oil Fingon used in his hair and in his bath, and the different, sharper smell of the oil they’d used to fuck.
He closed his eyes in the dark and took in lungfuls of it.
Fingon threw an arm over his waist, his breathing slowing again. His body felt alight everywhere Fingon was touching him. Sunshine was leaking unasked-for from Fingon’s body into his own, making a living house again of what had been cold and shut-up, all but extinguished; it was turning on the lights, returning fire to the hearths, setting food out on the tables.
But while his denial of long years was being undone, Maedhros's mind returned to the tangles he’d been thinking through for months. Marriages, and successions, the fragile alliances strung like star-lights across the vast darkness of Beleriand. Supply problems in the East. The unravelling of their links with the Green-elves. The whispers about Aredhel’s fate that he dreaded sharing with her father and brother. What his own father would think, if he was alive to see this: Maedhros a guest in the house of Fingolfin the king, lying down under Fingolfin’s eldest.
At some point, he slept.
There was a conversation he was half-awake for, a pendant moment lit by firelight in the night:
“I miss you,” Fingon said, stroking his hair. “Not only in my bed. I miss talking to you. Letters are no substitute. Why do you have to make things so difficult? I wouldn’t mind, if it was only me: but you’re causing yourself pain, too, whatever you say, and I can’t forgive you that.”
“All right,” Fingolfin said. “What is it that is for my ears only, Nelyo?”
There was no point being unduly obeisant where there was no one to watch them. Maedhros and his uncle understood each other. They had both been Kings of the Noldor. They had both stood in Fëanor’s shadow. They both hated the Dark Enemy. It was enough.
“You need an heir,” he said.
“I have one.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do,” Fingolfin said. “And if you think I have any chance of getting more, of course I’m interested—but I believe that door is barred. Is it not?”
“It might—open,” Maedhros said. He’d said as much in letters already: to Fingon, to his brothers, to Finrod in his hidden kingdom. Caranthir had scrawled back what was the point of fucking him in the first place if not to stop Fingolfin’s line increasing? I thought it was a strategy!
Finrod was long-winded about it, but his letter had added up to an uninspiring we may have little time enough to live; is the gain worth the loss? Or vice versa?
“Especially given—the other matter.”
“She may be safe with Turgon, wherever he is,” Fingolfin said, like he’d been expecting it. They’d had this discussion many times since Aredhel’s second vanishing, in letters winging back and forth between Barad Eithel and Himring. “They both could be.”
His daughter, and the grandchild whose name he did not know.
“I think it unlikely she lives,” Maedhros said. He was as gentle about saying it as he could be. It was hard to remember what it had been like to be gentle. “To Curufin he named himself Eöl of Nan Elmoth, as kin to Thingol. It’s taken time to confirm, but one of my people was finally able to find a Green-elf guide who knew where Nan Elmoth was, and how to find it, and would agree to take her there. It was deserted, uncle. No one has lived in there in many years. Its lord and lady are gone, and they have not returned. And the word among the Sindar is that Eöl was proud, and feared, and broodingly jealous of his things. She had left him. He was following.”
He did not look at Fingolfin. He would give him that much privacy. He heard his uncle breathe in small, painful pinches, and finally master it.
“Not conclusive, but—revealing.”
“It brings me no joy to give you such tidings.”
“I know it doesn’t,” his uncle said. He rubbed at the bridge of his nose, then at his temples, where the weight of the crown pressed hardest. “You came yourself to tell me this?”
“It seemed unkind to put it in a letter.”
“Always the courtier among your brothers!” Fingolfin said. There was a bitterness to it.
“They grieve,” said Maedhros. “Curufin would have killed Eöl himself, if he’d been allowed.”
“And who stayed him?”
“I told them all, after Thingol’s ban, that there was to be no further insult offered to the Iathrim—no provocation returned, under threat of having their fiefdoms stripped from them.”
Fingolfin's hand covered his eyes, briefly.
“How the things we mean well end in evil.”
“They did not lie.”
“No.”
What else was there to say, after that? The rest was strategy, supply lines, administrative concerns. Things that mattered very much to the defence of the East, to Maedhros in Himring and Maglor in the Gap.
Life was less precarious in Thargelion and in Himlad, but that did not mean that they could take for granted that those fiefs would always have enough to spare to supply the easternmost. That had been Amras and Amrod’s task: to be veins sinking deep into the green flesh of Beleriand, embedded among the Green-elves, learning all from them ways to make the strange land sing and give up its secrets. The movement of its wild beasts and its tame, the patterns of its seasons, the edible things deep in its forests that the Noldor did not know.
Thingol’s ban had been a blow to that plan. Some Nandor allies they still had, but vastly fewer. The goodwill that had flowed like water for the Sons of Fëanor after the Battle-Under-Stars had been spent.
These were matters that concerned Maedhros nearly, for the success of the Siege and the well-being of his people: but when he measured them against Fingolfin’s vanished or dead children and grandchildren, his weakened host, it seemed chicken-feed.
Another night’s work.
“The heir concern,” said his uncle at last, putting aside his grief with an effort. “You must know that you are far from the only one to have raised it, nor anything like the first--”
It was its own kind of dance. Parry and parry and parry again: be seen to laugh with Fingon, bend his head to him at table to let him whisper in his ear. Be seen to hunt with him, in a group of Fingon’s dare-devil dragon-fighting friends. Agree to ride out in similar company to examine the defences at Annon-in-Gelydh, and the passes of the Ered Wethrim.
Deflect smilingly, again and again, every attempt Fingon made to speak to him in private. Make Aramath doss on a pallet at the foot of his bed rather than his billet, to prevent Maedhros from losing his mind one day and carrying Fingon bodily through his father’s halls up to his rooms to despoil him. It was an urge he throttled constantly in Barad Eithel as he worked to shore up the strained links between his lands and his uncle’s, between the Fëanorions and the Fingolfinions. He wanted to do it, and Fingon wanted him to do it, and what was the greater good, compared to that?
Fingon, for his part, wore blue blooms of larkspur in his hair, or pinned to his tunic, or threaded through the open-work of his cloak-clasp. Every time Maedhros saw them, he swam back in memory into the blue waters of Fingon’s bedchamber, full of meadow flowers.
“Oh, that?” said the Fingolfinian lord he was speaking to. “The prince has been sporting them for years. Sometimes they’re white or purple; more often blue. Wearing the green willow, we say, when we honor the dead thus; but what he means by it, I don’t know. A device of his own, probably, to match his father’s colours.”
Was Maedhros going mad, to read long habit as an arrow aimed at his heart?
He slept with his sword naked in his bed to remind himself.
Hithlum was full of memories, though he had spent the least time there, in the end, of any of his brothers or his cousins. But he had walked there in memory, as he hung on Thangorodrim—and he had walked there in fact, after his rescue, after the great eagle had brought him safely home to the land beside the lake. Fingon had been holding him in his arms. Fingon had been weeping.
Maedhros had kissed him beside Lake Mithrim, a little later. He hadn’t been thinking in terms of the long game yet. He’d been thinking only that he was alive, when he wasn’t meant to be; and that Fingon was here in this strange land to be kissed, when he hadn’t been meant to be; and that he wasn’t king any longer, and that his father was dead. Perhaps there was room for a little selfishness?
Could you drink only a little water when you had been parched for years? Even if it made you sick later, you still drained the cup. They’d fucked everywhere they could in the little encampment by the lake, which had been reclaimed by the Mithrimlim in the centuries since Fingolfin had moved his base to Eithel Sirion. They’d stolen away to fuck in the green grass whenever they could, as the birds sang and the sun shone, and even when the mists came down. Fingon had been terribly sweet during Maedhros’s long recovery, his hands gentle, his mouth a blessing, and Maedhros had let him.
They’d fucked differently, later, when they could laugh and wrestle and spar again without holding back. When Maedhros could finally give a good account of himself with his sword, and with his cock, too. In Himring, in Dor-lómin, on flying visits, he had put Fingon on his back, or let Fingon bear him down. They had stuffed snow down each other’s tunics, and Fingon had lettered do not disturb on his bedroom door in very precise Tengwar. Even at the Mereth Aderthad, when they had been watched by more lords and knights of the Noldor than their very own—by Sindar spies, by Cirdan and his folk, by innumerable Mithrim Elves who had sworn themselves to the Noldor but still belonged in part to Thingol—they had traded wine-flavoured kisses in the darkness, Fingon’s wreath of flowers slipping sideways and then falling to the ground in the night.
They had been younger then. The shadow of murders committed on a far shore hadn’t yet caught up with them. Thingol hadn’t banned the very language they thought in, spoke in, sung in, traded love-talk in. Fingolfin hadn’t yet lost a third of his people. Artanis still came north to visit. Maedhros had spent fewer years staring at the distant black mountains, fewer years fighting the Shadow, its servants, his own people when the Shadow moved in them.
He hadn’t yet made himself face certain hard facts in the mirror.
Do not disturb was still painted on his door in Himring, and his people obeyed it. But their reasons were different now.
“Do you remember?” Fingon asked, when they stopped on the third day to let the horses drink at Lake Mithrim.
“Of course.”
“Good.” The intimacy of his smile was like a kiss.
Eyefucking, Maglor had called it, when they were last all together. Just take him upstairs, the way you clearly wish to! You’re making us all uncomfortable!
There were memories waiting for Maedhros in the Annon-in-Gelydh too. They hadn’t stopped to ask what they were called back then—his father had never stopped for anything when his fire was hot in him. Everything had been on fire back then. They had been able to see and smell the burning pyre of the Swan-ships as they made their way up the Firth of Drengist towards the East, coming from darkness only to plunge into ever-deeper shadow, moving from one fire to another.
He hadn’t realised yet then that that was all the future would ever hold for him.
Cirith Ninniach was the key to the North, the narrow pass through the Ered Lómin which had let the Fëanorian host pierce their way into the Grey lands with their great lake which were now Fingolfin’s. Maedhros barely remembered that journey.
He certainly didn’t remember it looking like this. The narrow twists and turns carved through the ancient rock by insistent water were hidden now by a great edifice of dressed white stone and iron which blocked all egress, unless you knew the secret of it.
“Turgon’s work,” Fingon said. His knightly entourage had hung back, letting the princes of the Noldor go forth first into the caves beneath the cliffs. “He did like a good gate.”
The river ran low under the mountain, subterranean and secret, black and quiet. It came up to their knees, and then to their thighs, and then lowered itself to their knees again. The caves themselves smelled like damp earth, like the air after the rain, like all the water in the world had sunk into the stone and stayed.
They left hose and boots and overclothes behind when they’d started following the dark ribbon of river, and the caves narrowed—a gate—then narrowed again—another—and then narrowed again. It had been awful having Fingon help him with his buckles and points. The dumb animal of his body sang Fingon, Fingon and wanted to lean into his touch.
But Fingon’s hands were precise things, and they didn’t stroke, or brush, or intimate when he wasn’t making a wanted overture to bed. He might make a good bodyservant if he ever gave up princing and dragon-slaying.
His thighs were the colour of clover honey, gleaming wet and bare, his undertunic girded around his hips. His eyes gleamed like opals in the blue light of the lamp he was carrying, as though they were having quite an adventure.
“There are no dragons here,” Maedhros said, quashingly. “Only damp, and the less attractive sides of Turgon’s infrastructure. He seems to have built all these gates to look best from the West.”
The seventh gate of the Annon-in-Gelydh opened onto the world again, to blue sky and blue water and masses of meadow-flowers set in the cupped bowl of the mountains. You could see the sea from here, the sea they had come from. To the left was the way into Nevrast, and to the right—Losgar.
The underground stream came out high in the cliff, and water rushed past their bare ankles in eagerness towards the edge. They were at the top of the waterfall the pass was named for, and the long white veil that fell to earth just a little distance from their feet glinted pink, yellow, blue, green wherever the light caught stray strands of it.
They were quite alone. None of the others had followed them past the last gate.
“Fingon,” Maedhros said. It was almost a sigh, but Fingon wasn’t looking at him.
He was staring out at Nevrast.
“He didn’t disappear until the last of the Annon were built. As though he’d done his duty and provided his own replacement and was now quite free to go! Why would we need anyone to hold Nevrast, when he’d sealed the North up behind him like the stopper on a bottle?” He sounded angry. He hadn’t sounded angry all visit, even when Maedhros left his bed without kissing him, or ducked his hand like it meant to hurt him, or surrounded himself with Noldor lords like a shieldwall.
“Fingon—”
“Don’t,” Fingon said, and then he was walking towards the edge, and then he was gone.
Maedhros jumped after him. It seemed fair. It was usually the other way around, after all.
The water of the Firth below was warmer than the underground stream they’d waded through. It was like falling into sunshine. He surfaced, body still singing from the shock of hitting the surface; alive, and furious about it. “Fingon!”
“Beloved!” Fingon called back, laughing. He was treading water a little way away, his shoulders pale islands in the green water. His dark hair was plastered to his skull, the gold twined in it looking limp among his braids. “Invigorating, isn’t it? I’d jump into Eithel Sirion every morning, just so, but Father has this thing about our drinking supply.”
“Peculiar of him!”
“Well, there’s no need to worry about the Ninniath. There’s no one left in Nevrast to drink it now.”
Maedhros wanted to kiss the place where Fingon’s angry brows almost met at the top of his nose. He wanted to throttle him, for the clever planning that had drawn them both here, alone, within sight of Losgar and all that meant. He settled for splashing water in his direction.
Fingon spluttered, drops of it clustering in his long eyelashes.
Then light kindled in his eyes, and the Fingon of a thousand snow-fights on the Eastern Marches took water for his weapon, and battle was fairly joined. When they were tired of splashing at last, and of paddling, and of dunking each other underwater, they made for the far bank.
“A good, healthy outlet for excess energy,” said Maedhros, mimicking Maglor’s voice from centuries back. He used to banish them from the keep to fight in the snow or the tiltyard when he couldn’t bear them staring at each other any longer, and they had no good excuses to sneak upstairs.
They hadn’t been able to fuck outside in Himring the way they had at Lake Mithrim. It was too cold, and the land was bare and barren even when there wasn’t snow on the ground—and there usually was. There were no stands of softening, camouflaging woods or brush for miles around. What few surviving trees there had been, Maedhros had ordered cut down himself. You needed clear lines of sight as far as you could get when you guarded the east.
“Less pleasant than the other, though,” Fingon said, hauling himself up. His underlinen clung to him. He bent down to help Maedhros out, and didn’t let go of his hand once they were both on the riverbank. “Come on.”
Invisible behind the fall of water, there was another cave. It was dry, further back from the waterfall, and thick with bracken. It was full of flickering rainbow light, the faceted sunshine coming through a wall of water.
“You think of everything,” Maedhros said.
“Don’t you think you should get out of your damp clothes and let them dry?” asked Fingon, almost straight-faced but for the dimple quivering in his cheek. “I ought to be able to get a fire started...”
“Are your men likely to follow?”
“If we take too long about it, one or two of the bolder ones might. I doubt they’ll come down.”
“So we’ll have to be quick?”
“Not quite what I had in mind,” said Fingon, and kissed him.
Maedhros kissed him back. Cupped his face in his hands and kissed his brow, each eyelid, his beautiful mouth; along the line of his jaw, at his perfect ear. “What is it about water features you find so arousing?”
“The company,” Fingon laughed.
They had to untangle themselves in order to get the fire started at the cave mouth, and laid their clothes out to warm by it. Then they made a bed out of bracken, and Maedhros let Fingon lay him down and make love to him there. He was tired of fighting. It was so good to feel the weight of another body on top of his again; to close his eyes and give himself up to the pleasure of it and let it burn cleanly through him.
“No oil,” he said, remembering, a little later.
Fingon said, “Well—” and went for where he’d left his belt, with the lamp hooked onto it, and his short-sword. At Maedhros’s raised eyebrow, he said, “I wanted to make sure my sword was well-kept?”
“Did you really think it was likely to see any action?”
“You never know when orcs will appear.”
Disgusting. “Fingon!”
But he parted his legs and took Fingon back between them, and let Fingon’s clever hands move up his thighs. Let Fingon be the one this time to warm him, to slick and to stretch, to prepare his way as thoroughly as he wished to — until Maedhros was nothing but melted honey pooling underneath him, a hollow that yearned to be filled. A ring of defences that had been thoroughly undermined and taken from within.
When Fingon kissed him, the angle of it was different with him on top and Maedhros straining up for his mouth; the angle of his cock inside him was different too, and different again when he tilted his hips up and dug his heels sharply into the sleek flesh of Fingon’s back.
His body was a field of stars, a heaven already known and mapped and named. He didn’t have to do anything; only gasp, and shudder, and groan the way Fingon liked him best: when he wasn’t biting back his pleasure or trying to deny it. Fingon knew what he liked. Fingon knew what he needed. Fingon knew what made his body sing, what made it shake, what would make him come—
He bit Fingon’s shoulder when he came the first time, sinking his teeth deep into the meat of it. “Keep going,” he rasped. He knew this would all have to go into the iron box again in the end, but the knowledge felt as graspable as mist when everything else was solid and sweet. He felt whole. Like he was warm again, at last, after so many cold and separate centuries.
He tried to breathe, but his body was trembling. “Don’t stop,” Maedhros said. “Don’t, don’t ever—”
“Not as long as you want me,” Fingon said.
But they were only words, and there had to be an end. Fingon’s elbows settled on either side of his head, and they stared at each other. Sweat was rolling down the side of Maedhros's face. He couldn't seem to draw a full breath. Fingon fucked into him again, and he groaned, his mouth falling open as his body was made to sing, sing, and sing again—
He came a second time, arching up under Fingon, grinding his cock up against the hard silk of his belly. He felt Fingon slide his hands down to unhook Maedhros’s knees from around his hips, let Fingon push them further apart, flat back against the bracken, let Fingon fuck him through it—kissed him through it, as the stars fell and bloomed and fell again.
They bathed again in the waters beneath Cirith Ninniath, to the music of the waterfall and the song of birds. There was larkspur growing not far from the riverbank: purple and pink, blue and white.
Fingon washed his back for him, and his hair. If any of his knights came looking and peered over the top of the falls, they’d find them both naked, and the marks of Maedhros’s teeth on their prince, princely fingerprints on his own hips. When Fingon had finished combing Maedhros’s wet hair out for him with his fingers, he kissed the back of his neck, slipping his arms around Maedhros’s waist.
Then:
“Take me back to Himring with you.”
“Do you think for a moment your father would countenance it?”
“I rather thought to ask for forgiveness, not permission.”
“I thought you didn’t want me to start another war among the Noldor.”
“He’d forgive me.”
“He might,” Maedhros said. “As your father. As your king—what would he do without you? What would your loss do to him? Who would take his place in Hithlum if anything happened? I don’t wish ill upon him, but I have to plan for it. We have to plan for it.”
“He could make Finrod his heir. Thingol would like that! Haul him out of his burrow and bid him rule wisely and well. Make the whole thing the Finarfinians’ problem, and you end up with a whole clutch of clean-handed heirs with shiny golden heads.”
“You don’t really mean that.”
“I do,” Fingon said. “Or—part of me does.”
“Do you think my brothers would bend the knee to Finrod? Fingolfin, at least, is our uncle; and they have quite complicated feelings about you. I think they’d have Finrod off the High King’s throne in weeks.”
“I’d be in the East to help you corral them.”
“Fingon,” Maedhros said. He turned in Fingon’s arms until they were face to face again, standing in the shallows, and saw the pugnacious set of his jaw.
He wanted to kiss it. He didn’t. He would say this as a cousin, not a cozening lover; as a counsellor, not a friend.
“Eithel Sirion is as crucial to our defences as the Marches, shielded by mountains or not. Hithlum is the first and oldest kingdom of the Noldor on these shores. You know what things have happened here, what this land has seen! Land of mists, the Grey-elves call it, and Land of echoes, Dor-lómin—but it seems to me that the strongest echoes are here.”
“They were speaking literally. The moisture in the air—”
“Think of what it would mean to lose Hithlum—strategically, emotionally, and symbolically. Would you leave your father alone to hold it, and risk it should he fall? It’s too important to leave heirless, and you know that very well. The Sirion is the great silver artery of Noldor Beleriand, and Hithlum is its heart. As are you. They won’t survive either loss.”
“You say such nice things about me when you’re telling me to go away,” Fingon said. His eyes were the colour of rainwater.
“I love you,” Maedhros said. “You know that.”
“I do.”
“You’ll never leave Barad Eithel, not after what Turgon’s disappearance did to your father. You know that too.”
Fingon drew in a ragged breath. “I’m so angry at him.”
“I know.”
“Stop knowing things. It’s awful.”
“I’m sorry,” Maedhros said, tightening his arms around him. “About Aredhel and her son. And Turgon and Idril. I’m so sorry.”
Fingon pressed their foreheads together. “Don’t condole with me. I can’t bear it. I don’t think they’re dead at all. I will see them again, and when I do, I’m going to shake Turgon until his teeth rattle.”
“We can take turns shaking him.”
“As soon as I have sister, brother, niece and nephew to fill my place—the day I can be selfish again—I will be! The day they come forth from wherever they’ve been hiding, I’ll come to you.”
This was the terrible thing that letting Fingon in did to Maedhros—holding him close, letting his furious courage warm him, pulling light and hope from his bright star. It weakened Maedhros, softened him from brittle to sugar-syrup. It made a mockery of his numbing of himself, of his long preparation for pain, for loss, for darkness. When it was just Maedhros, alone in the East, he didn’t see any light on the horizon: he didn’t see how they could win their long war.
When he was with Fingon, he could almost see a future that wasn’t fire and shadow.
“The day they come forth,” Maedhros said, and it was almost a promise, though he had sworn himself away already well before they ever left Aman. “The day they come forth, then—but you must make me a promise in turn, even if you hate me for it.”
“Yes?”
“If anything happens—if, one day, you must step up to take your father’s place, and they never return—if they never come forth at all, and you are yourself alone, the house of Fingolfin in your single person, quite heirless—”
“You want me to marry,” Fingon said. His eyes went hard. He’d read the letters. He knew Maedhros’s thoughts on this. “I hoped you’d given that up.”
“Want you to? No. But if that day comes, you’ll need an heir all the Noldor will accept.”
“I have to ask: did my father’s lords think they were working on you, these past few weeks, or did you think you were working on them? Did you fall into conversation together and find yourselves in unexpected agreement? They dislike you cordially, but they’ve been beating the same drum, since Turgon abandoned Nevrast. For centuries! I’ve told them all no, never. I won’t do it. Why should I tell you anything different?”
“Because,” Maedhros said. “Because you know how things stand in the war against the Dark Enemy. You’ve seen his creatures as they issue forth from Thangorodrim, fanged and clawed. You know he’s testing us every time, with every sortie, and you know the Siege can’t last forever, whether he breaks it or we do. You know we must stop up every weakness in our defences, if we are to have any chance at all.”
“Is love such a weakness?”
“Isn’t it?”
“You make me sad,” Fingon said. “You’d make me angry, if I knew you less well, or I thought such a day would ever come. Always you plan for the worst!”
“Always you hope for the best!”
“I won’t apologise for it.”
“Will you promise?”
“If it gives you peace, I’ll swear. Should such a day come, should my father fall, should I be left alone in Hithlum—I can’t believe it’ll ever happen, but I’ll swear it to you. Promise me, in turn: that the day Turgon returns, I can come to Himring for good—and the day Morgoth falls, when you’re finally free—”
“Then,” Maedhros said, and took Fingon’s hand in his own and kissed each of his knuckles, then turned it over to kiss the palm. That was as much as he could say, past the Oath in his throat.
“Diplomacy,” said Fingon, smiling like he’d won something.
“What do they mean?” Maedhros had asked Aramath one morning, a few days before he rode out with Fingon to view Hithlum’s western borders. “Find out for me, will you?”
Aramath asked among the Grey-elves of Barad Eithel, and he reported back that evening. “Different things, different flowers,” he said, “though the willow seems to be the one all the Noldor know. Some of them have learned more than that, and declare themselves and their politics through them. It’s a Grey-elf thing, and it’s a code at Fingolfin’s court, for those who care to learn it. As for the larkspur the prince favours, it depends on its colour: white means joy, lightness, or a desire for laughter; blue strong attachment, and loyalty; purple first love, pink fickleness. Or so they say.”
They lay down among the flowers and took them for their bed. “This is the last time, Fingon,” Maedhros warned, “until— unless—"
“Yes, yes,” Fingon said (I hear you, but I’m not listening), his bright eyes fixed on the future.