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Fingon still eats with all his childhood exuberance, Maedhros thinks. And – heedless of his recent majority – with a bright, chaotic zest. Eagerly, lustily. Grinning. But what should be undignified only moves Maedhros to tenderness. Fingon is joyful, and so messily, blessedly fair.
Maedhros reaches absently to wipe a clinging patch of chocolate cream from the corner of Fingon’s mouth, musing on the golden light in Fingon’s hair, lost in the bright, sweet music of his voice. Unthinking, he slowly sucks his fingers clean.
Fingon stammers to stillness.
His eyes meet Maedhros’, curious and speculative. Some new idea sparkles deep within them, promising mischief. His dimples flash.
He holds Maedhros’ gaze and very deliberately bites deep into another pastry, smearing the creamy filling across his lips. His tongue darts out: pink and pointed. Teasing.
Fingon winks.
Maedhros cannot muster a single cousinly thought. He abandons all propriety, and reaches.
Fingon laughs, lightsome and eager. His lips part hungrily for Maedhros, and the crackling strangeness in their friendship settles into heat.
Fingon’s mouth is soft, his tongue is sweet and supple. He tastes of chocolate, and delight. Oh, yes, Maedhros thinks, as they melt into each other. How I have wanted this!
*****
What a strange sensation it is, falling out of innocence into this new, rich state that they have found. Touch, previously practical and matter-of-fact, becomes a live thing – electric, untameable. All their old familiarity with each other’s bodies means nothing: memories from a thousand swimming trips and shirtless harvests and afternoons in the forge are tumbled down and overlaid. Now each movement dances, each true touch shimmers. Each secret meeting offers new discoveries, as all the sweet imagined reaches of their bodies are revealed.
Maedhros burns with it. With every glance and brush of hands his whole self sings: Fingon!
*****
Maedhros’ gaze is greedy, and he knows it. But he cannot stop himself from staring at Fingon’s arms, at the smooth, proud line of his shoulders, the curve of his hips. Always he wishes to touch him, to shape the muscles that move so delightfully under Fingon’s clothes.
It is unjust that others also see Fingon in his beauty: dancing, riding, singing.
But only Maedhros knows how that fair form trembles when Fingon is kissed. How the skin of his throat flushes, and his breath hitches, and all his bright strength is given over - sighing, sinking - into Maedhros’ insatiable hands.
*****
For all their loving, both remain their fathers’ sturdy partisans. They know they cannot wed: their joy must not preclude the possibility of heirs.
But they are Noldor, masters of knowledge, with curious minds and hands. What is touch, if not another craft?
They become expert in drawing each other ever closer to the edge, to hover at the brink but not to leap. Maedhros’ tongue sets Fingon wailing as it strokes and probes and seeks. Fingon’s fingers pluck as true on Maedhros’ body as on his bowstrings: caressing, teasing him open, until he is writhing and begging for release.
*****
It grows harder to find the private time and space they crave. The long hunting trips and intimate parties of their earliest loving are constrained ever more by politics, by the watching eyes of the Noldor’s fractious factions.
They slip away from formal gatherings to intertwine in corners, sliding hands beneath each other’s robes in secret, sensuous dances.
Fingon presses behind Maedhros in the darkness of the concert hall, whispering fiery fantasies, breathing heat into Maedhros' ears until he shudders and succumbs.
Maedhros kneels in shadowy anterooms, feeling the edges of some doom approaching. Fingon’s weight quiets his anxious tongue.
*****
In desperation, Maedhros tries to argue.
He waits for Fingon in the royal gardens until the palace has emptied of scandalized courtiers. Three sentences in they come almost to blows, gripping each other’s clothes and snarling. Then Maedhros leans down and catches Fingon’s lip with his teeth, and they tangle together frantically for a long moment: two stags in rut, clashing.
Fingon shoves him away.
He is beautiful in his scorn, Maedhros thinks: more fair and fierce and princely than either of their sires.
“Follow your father to Formenos,” Fingon says, with icy certainty. “There is nothing for you here.”
*****
Maedhros leaps down from the deck of the stolen ship, seeking Fingon frantically amid the milling crowd. Father, brothers, the stinging blisters on his hands from scrubbing the sullied boards – none of that matters now.
The torches cast appalling shadows, but the gold in Fingon’s hair still glows with some semblance of beauty and of honor. Oh, how Maedhros loves him!
They have not spoken in years – all their old joy has long since canted over into bitterness – and yet there Fingon had been in the thick of it, hawk-eyed and enraged, for Maedhros’ sake: panting, beautiful, covered in blood.
He is still furious, seething in the frozen dark, when Maedhros kisses him.
“How dare you?!” Fingon gasps, eyes wide with the memory of the chaos on the docks – but he is already working at Maedhros’ laces. His hands shake, as do Maedhros’, but between them they manage it, starving for each other's warmth.
Maedhros lifts Fingon up against him, cupping the taut curves of him, pressing skin to skin. Fingon’s legs lock around his hips, solid and strong as they ever were, and then they are writhing, biting, moaning.
Maedhros’ head swims with it. It is freedom, and revenge.
*****
Fingon dreams of Maedhros, in the dark, under his layers of fur. Against his better judgment his hands seek his own flesh, mimicking the touches he so loved. It is too cold to gasp; he must keep his breathing slow and level. His hands are not large enough for what he wants: the grip and slide that he remembers. But he holds the sense of Maedhros in his mind, shivering and weeping as he spends.
On the high wall, Maedhros aches with a dream of Fingon, bare and brown and beautiful in Laurelin’s light. The stars wheel, contemptuously. He burns.
*****
The only thing that feels real is Fingon’s kiss: salty with tears and blood and awkwardly off-center because he cannot quite reach Maedhros’ mouth while also hacking at his wrist. Even the sudden pain, the drop, the stomach-heaving flight are dulled, but the familiar taste of Fingon’s mouth lingers, so Maedhros holds on.
Waking in Mithrim, the first thing he does is run his tongue across his battered lips, remembering.
When Fingon kisses him again, much later, Maedhros feels the sweet water of it spreading through his veins. It is true. They are still here, loving. Morgoth has not won.
*****
Fingon’s mouth on Maedhros’ skin is as eager as it ever was: tasting and teasing. Beneath it, the burnt and battered ends of Maedhros’ nerves begin to sing. He shudders under Fingon’s lips, the heat of his breath, the tickle of his braids as he dips his head and hums.
It is not enough. He needs Fingon’s wiry weight, needs to feel the solid anchor of his Ice-honed flesh and bone. “Come here!” he gasps, tugging, and Fingon slides up to kiss him. He presses Maedhros down, down, until their mouths and hands and bodies are indistinguishable, melded into one.
*****
Maedhros grows hale in the East; the fierce winds of the frontier suit him. He kindles with recovered fury, and the orc hosts flee shrieking from his flame.
At the Mereth Aderthad he is all diplomacy, carefully genteel. But the feasting feels insipid when he has reshaped himself to war. Fingon watches him, frowning. Maedhros dares not touch him, then.
But on Ard-galen’s battlefield Fingon burns with equal frenzy. Maedhros fights to reach him, drawn like iron to a magnet. Fingon hooks him by his gorget, wild-eyed and laughing. He thumbs Maedhros’ lips apart and thrusts his bloodied fingers in.
*****
Maedhros sinks, gasping and grimacing, and Fingon groans.
“Eru! Oh, Russo!”
Maedhros shakes his head, overwhelmed by the stretch, by the raw relief of finally yielding. He grits his teeth and forces himself to move slowly, to feel - fully, truly, as he so rarely has, after the mountain.
Fingon’s eyes are wide, fixed on the heated space between their bodies where they join.
“Eru...” he breathes again, flush-mouthed and trembling.
He moves, then: driving up into Maedhros. As ever, his aim is true.
“No prayers, Fingon,” Maedhros bites out - shuddering, sweating, riding the rising flames. “I worship none but you.”
*****
It is a merry Midwinter. Music fills Himring's halls; the great fires roar. Some tipsily daring Man in the garrison has crowned Maedhros with a tilted wreath of holly.
He can feel Fingon’s heated gaze as he works the crowd, free in the way he can only be here, on the edge of the world. "Look at you," Fingon laughs, between dances. "I cannot pretend you are not King of the East, in truth. Oh, you are beautiful!"
Fingon’s eyes are still bright with admiration when they stumble into Maedhros’ bedchamber. "Come here," Fingon says. "Let me look at you, at the fire of you, you bright and singing sword!" Maedhros shivers at the accolades that fall from Fingon’s lips.
He floats, trembling; lets Fingon coax him to stand bare before the looking-glass. Fingon whispers, rapturously, and takes Maedhros in his hand. "Oh, fierce and fair! Look, love, at what Beleriand has made of you...my white flame, my fell beauty." His eyes find Maedhros’ in the mirror, hot and honest in their loving. He sees me, Maedhros thinks, alight with Fingon’s praise.
Fingon’s lips trace Maedhros’ scars, reverent and tender. Maedhros shudders under Fingon’s touch, and spends.
*****
Fingon’s gifts are sent by confidential courier, stamped with his personal seal and inspected by none. They are works of his own hands, carved and smoothed with exquisite tenderness - seasoned with oils of his private make and wrapped in sumptuous silks.
Maedhros sends letters, to reciprocate. Detailed descriptions of sensations and imaginings, worded in language perfectly crafted to arouse and inflame.
I took your latest to a council meeting, he writes. Imagine my poise, to hide that I held that echo of you within me. Even now I can feel you. Ah, my dear lord - if only you were here.
*****
Sometimes, Fingon takes Maedhros in the baths, in Himring. Not in the steam room, warm and sweetly scented, but in the cold pool, in the darkness, bent over the tiled edge and shivering.
He is not gentle.
In candlelight or a fire’s glow he is often soft, slow and deliberate, soothing and seductive all at once. But now he rears and plunges, biting Maedhros’ shoulders and gasping.
Maedhros knows what Fingon is remembering: the long years on the Ice, his bitter grief and fear and loneliness. He braces under the battering and submits, that Fingon may at last be warm.
*****
The knots they once played with hold no more joy for Maedhros. Loving though it were, he cannot be bound. When Fingon waxes nostalgic, a contrary impulse overtakes him: let Fingon know, in some safe measure, what he endured.
His hand shakes as he binds Fingon, suspends him, confirms he is secure.
Fingon gasps as Maedhros bites and scratches. His hand flexes in the cuff with each stinging, smarting blow. He dangles, groaning, as Maedhros marks him: thighs, hips, belly, breast, throat. But when their lips meet, he is all hunger, and under Maedhros’ hand he is hard as stone.
*****
When Maedhros most needs solace, he takes Fingon in his mouth.
The warm weight silences his clamoring thoughts; the salt-sweet taste is cleansing. Emboldened by Fingon’s murmured approbation, he dives, until they are pressed so close together that his head swims with delight, and he sweats from the scalding heat where their bodies meld. He swallows, craving the choking flood of Fingon’s spend.
Another time, he will lie like this for hours: safe between Fingon’s thighs, breathing in his familiar scent, until his jaw and his racing mind go loose and soft. Drifting, with Fingon’s hand in his hair, and dreaming.
*****
Maedhros rides to Hithlum in a fiery streak, blazing across the blasted plain with such fury that no foe dares draw near him. Oh, the griefs of fathers and sons, he thinks, intimately familiar with Fingon’s misery.
They do not couple; Fingon’s usual ardor is dulled by mourning. Instead, Maedhros draws him into bed and holds him with all the accumulated tenderness of their long, long loving. He sings, as much as he can, with his fractured voice. He cradles Fingon as he weeps, unbraiding his golden ribbons and coaxing the tangles from the soft, dark fall of his hair.
*****
“We must ride, tomorrow,” Fingon sighs, regretfully, after a sweet hour spent kissing and kissing and kissing. “Curse Morgoth and his orcs!” Battle planned and allies waiting, they cannot tarry over tenderness.
Fingon draws his hand down Maedhros’ chest and stomach, palms him where he has grown firm and warm. “I need you, Russo. Please. Who knows when we will meet again?”
Maedhros shivers. “Hush, brave heart,” he mutters, tasting the salt of Fingon’s throat. “We will not fail, with you to lead us. Here, let me touch you. Come.”
They undress, slowly. Maedhros slides between Fingon’s oiled thighs with a sigh and a shiver, drawing Fingon back against him until there is no space at all between the warm expanse of Fingon’s shoulders and his own scarred chest. All that smooth skin undoes him: Fingon’s muscled back, the clench of Fingon’s legs as they move together, the tender vulnerability of his belly under Maedhros’ seeking hand.
Fingon in his grip is silky and slippery; everything is beautifully warm. Maedhros buries his face in the sweet cloud of Fingon’s hair, rocking, clinging. I love you, he mouths in silent adoration.
And he prays - secretly, desperately. My heart, my King, live on.