August, Honey by Perching  

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Two

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In the grasslands of East Beleriand, Maglor made for a poor companion. He, Fingon, and Maedhros traveled with Amras, which helped when he needed a buffer or someone to whom he could flee but which couldn’t make his mood bright. He spent a lot of time wandering far afield, either on Celebraen during the day or on foot in the evening and at night, and sometimes he found a spot in the long grass to sit still and quiet and sink into his thoughts for a while.

It was in such a spot that Fingon found him in the middle of the night two weeks after they left Himring. “Macalaurë,” he sang softly, and Maglor started. Fingon eyed him. “You should be more alert, sitting out here alone.”

“Are you saying my brother can’t keep his lands safe?” Maglor said. Fingon rolled his eyes and stepped close enough to touch, and Maglor met him with a knife at his waist. Fingon froze. “In my hand,” Maglor explained. “If you had touched me…”

Fingon grabbed Maglor’s wrist and twisted it away from himself. “So you’re not as defenseless as you might’ve been. Still.”

“What are you doing here?” Maglor said.

Fingon sat down in Maglor’s space, jostling Maglor’s shoulder with his own. “I might ask the same of you. I’ve never seen you like this. I thought you’d be composing tragic love ballads by now, but you haven’t been composing anything.”

“I am sorry,” Maglor said, “to disappoint.”

“That’s how I dealt with it, you know. Composing these grand tragedies. I’d long given up on composing, or I thought I had, but it turned out I had a little more in me, just for that. It helped.” Fingon shrugged. “It’s unnatural to see you but not hear you. That’s all.”

Maybe Maglor would’ve been offended if he’d listened to any of Fingon’s words past the first few. As it was, he said, “You’ve dealt with it?”

“Yes! Or something like it. I have courted people before! And the time I started composing again, there was no courting, but I wished for it. I just realized it too late.” Fingon frowned and glanced away. When he looked back, there was something off about his expression. He was feeling awkward, Maglor surmised. It was strangely endearing that Fingon felt awkward talking about his love life. “It wouldn’t have worked out anyway.”

“Who would dare reject valiant Findecáno?” Maglor wondered.

“Don’t mock me,” Fingon said. Maglor waited. Fingon swallowed and said, “He was one of Fëanáro’s.”

All at once Maglor remembered it. Though Fëanor’s father and his sons and many of his followers had held themselves to be banished from Tirion so long as Fëanor was, others had traveled freely between the city and Formenos. For Maglor’s sake they kept tabs on Fingon and Finrod’s appearances on the performance circuit. Maglor cared little about Finrod, but he received each scrap of news about Fingon with an eagerness that ought to have been a clue. Those scraps told him that Fingon was performing his own compositions again and that most of Tirion was eating it up, but also that anyone who wasn’t interested in sucking up to the usurper’s son judged his work to be what it was in truth: a total waste of time and space. That last opinion had woken within Maglor a vicious glee.

But he hadn’t thought long about why Fingon had started composing, putting it down almost at once to arrogance and to malice, an attempt to usurp Maglor’s place as Fingolfin wanted to usurp Fëanor’s. To vengeance, maybe, against Maglor who had arrived on Tirion’s music scene and immediately shown Fingon up. For a while Fingon had hated Maglor for that, and though afterwards their rivalry had turned friendly, perhaps he’d spent all those years holding on to the resentment. It had been, after all, Maedhros who’d first urged them to get along, and back then Fingon couldn’t stand to displease Maedhros. Perhaps he’d never really liked Maglor at all.

In his better moments, Maglor knew that was paranoid and ridiculous. For a little while at least he’d genuinely had Fingon’s affections. Still he’d put down Fingon’s spurt of composition to some desire to get back at him. It was a cruel irony to learn that it hadn’t had anything to do with him.

“Did I know him?” Maglor said.

Fingon went shifty-eyed. “No.”

Interesting, Maglor thought. “Don’t lie.”

“I’m not!” When Maglor fixed him with an unimpressed look, Fingon sighed and said, “Maybe you did. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You brought it up.”

“I didn’t bring him up. I brought up my coping mechanisms,” Fingon said primly, and then he turned to glare at Maglor. “You deflected. I was trying to have our overdue heart to heart, and you deflected.”

Maglor hadn’t actually meant to deflect, but he shrugged and let Fingon think what he wanted. Fingon knocked their shoulders together. “So you’re not composing tragic love ballads. You’re not composing anything at all. Why not?”

It would be easy to answer Fingon with a lie of his own. Maglor might simply say that wasn’t how he coped, thank you very much. Fingon would surely think of the times in Tirion when Maglor’s music had turned unrelentingly tragic for a season. But he wasn’t cruel. He would only press the point a little.

Maglor said, “Tingil thinks I don’t love him.”

“Do you?” Fingon said.

Maglor almost laughed. Always together, Fingon and Maedhros! “He thinks there’s someone else. He said he feels like I don’t see him when I look at him. That I see that someone else.” He shook his head. “For two weeks I’ve been thinking, and—he was right. That’s why I haven’t been composing. I don’t know who I’d end up writing about.”

After a moment, Fingon said, “It could be interesting. Artistically, I mean. A piece that says it’s about one person but is actually about two.”

Maglor laughed and shook his head again. He hid his face behind his hand. “I don’t want to write about either of them.”

Fingon said nothing. When Maglor lowered his hand, he met Fingon’s eyes. Starlight shone in them, and Maglor’s chest ached. This was foolish. He’d always felt his emotions strongly and had never been ashamed of that, had thought of himself as the sensitive artist whose art was better for it. But he’d also, usually, known when and how to let go.

“With the someone else,” Fingon said. “Is there a chance of…?”

“No,” Maglor said as much to himself as to Fingon. “He’s happy with his own someone else. And. And.” Fingon waited. Maglor said, “He was one of Nolofinwë’s.”

Fingon’s eyes darkened with something terribly like pity. “Macalaurë.”

“We have talked. But I don’t know that he’s ever truly forgiven me.”

“Surely he has. Our peoples have been reconciled for hundreds of years. And we’ve learned—or so I hope—that the strife between us was ever the Enemy’s poison.”

Maglor breathed out. “Have you forgiven me?”

“I wouldn’t be sitting here if I hadn’t.”

Maglor looked away, unable to stand Fingon’s gaze on him. It wasn’t a kindness to hear it said like it should’ve been obvious. Fingon said, “Did I never say? I thought I’d said. For years I did hate you. I won’t deny it. But at the Mereth Aderthad, I decided I must be done with anger. So I forgave you.”

Maglor would never forget the Mereth Aderthad. That first night after he and Maedhros and what few of their people they’d brought with them arrived, there was singing and dancing late into the night by the Pools of Ivrin. Fingon sat on a rock with his harp on his lap, drawing much of the attention, but Maglor did his best to ignore him. The last time they’d seen each other, Maglor had taken Fingon’s arms in his hands and thanked him. Fingon had glanced at Maedhros standing just out of earshot and then back at Maglor, and the chill of the Ice had come into his eyes. “Don’t thank me,” he’d said. “I didn’t do it for you.”

It became hard to ignore him when he said, loud and clear as a bell, “Macalaurë! Is that you over there?” Maedhros, who stood near Fingon, leaned in to speak into his ear. Fingon laughed. “Some of you haven’t had the pleasure of hearing my cousin’s song,” he said to the crowd in the tongue of Middle-earth. “You’re in for a treat!”

So Maglor was bullied into a duet. Afterwards, some adoring fan handed Fingon a glass of wine. He gave it to Maglor and reached his hand out again, and another glass appeared in it. Maglor and Maedhros exchanged a glance over his head as he sipped the wine and praised it to whoever had given it to him as if they themself were the vintner. Perhaps they were. Or perhaps Fingon was drunk.

“He had some this afternoon while we were in the hills,” Maedhros said, “and since then he’s had more. They really like his music.”

“Surprising as it may be, I can hear you,” Fingon said.

“You take him. I’ll entertain for a while,” Maglor said. It wasn’t a selfless plan. Already he felt the anticipatory buzz of having a new audience’s attention on himself alone.

But Fingon reached for Maglor. “Steal my audience if you must, but don’t steal Macalaurë! I want to talk to him.”

“Give me your harp,” Maedhros said. Fingon did, and that was it: Maglor was stuck with him.

At Fingon’s behest, they sat on the slopes of a hill far from the party, so far the torchlight didn’t quite reach them and they were left in shadow. Fingon leaned against Maglor. “I’m not that drunk,” he said, “but luckily for you, I won’t complain. I’ve been wanting to talk to you! And you’ve been avoiding me.”

Maglor drained his glass and stole Fingon’s, who instead of protesting tipped his head onto Maglor’s shoulder. “I’ve been here for less than a day,” Maglor said.

“So has Russandol, and I’ve seen him plenty. But not you. No, you were tired and wanted a nap—”

“That was true.”

“—and apparently that nap was more important than greeting your kin—”

“I spoke to Nolofinwë.”

“—and then at the party, greeting your Sindar friends was still more important than—”

“I didn’t think you’d want me to greet you!”

Fingon fell silent.

“Don’t scold me for avoiding you when you’ve made it clear you want nothing to do with me. At least the Thindar like me!”

In a small voice, Fingon said, “I like you.”

“Do you?”

“I do. That’s the problem.”

“I don’t care what the problem is. I need to know what you want from me. Figure it out, and I’ll give it to you.”

“That’s a dangerous promise to make.”

“I’m making it.”

Maglor didn’t know how Fingon took the words, because Fingon didn’t reply. Maglor wished he could see Fingon’s face. He bumped his head against Fingon’s and breathed out, relieved, when Fingon’s only response was to lean more of his weight into him. They’d sat like this sometimes on the slopes of Túna while their horses grazed. Then Maglor hadn’t understood what he felt. Now he didn’t want to assume what Fingon did.

Eventually Fingon slept. Maglor let him, slowly finishing off the second glass of wine. When Fingon’s head fell forward, Maglor set the glass aside and lay down so that Fingon could lie pillowed by his chest. Fingon began to snore as he always did when he’d been drinking, and Maglor stared into the sky and felt that he held something fragile and precious in his arms.

His mouth opened in a silent plea. He closed it. When he opened it again, he said, “Findecáno.”

Fingon stirred. “Macalaurë?” he mumbled.

“No,” Maglor said. “No. I didn’t mean to wake you. Go back to sleep.”

Maedhros was walking up the slope. Fingon sat up and rubbed at his eyes. He looked at Maglor and said, “Stars. Did I fall asleep on you? I’m sorry.”

“No,” Maglor said.

Fingon frowned, but his gaze was drawn away. “Russandol.”

“Is everything all right?” Maedhros said. “You’ve been up here for a while.”

“I fell asleep.” Fingon frowned harder. He glanced between Maedhros and Maglor. Then his face began to drain of blood.

“Findecáno?” Maedhros said.

“I think, uh. I feel a bit sick.”

“I should’ve brought water. Do you want to stay here while I fetch some?”

“That’s all right. Actually I’m going to take a walk.” Fingon stood and, after an awkward beat, nodded at Maedhros. “Alone.” He turned and trudged towards the top of the hill, and Maglor watched Maedhros watch him go.

“What happened?” Maedhros said like it was Maglor’s fault.

Maglor didn’t answer. He should’ve jumped up and followed Fingon into the hills, but he felt fixed to the spot where he lay. He said, “Someone should go after him,” around a mouth of wool, and a moment later, Maedhros did.

Back under the torchlight, Fingon’s rock had been claimed by the flautist from Doriath whom Fingolfin had pointed out to Maglor earlier that day. Maglor didn’t mean to listen to him, but the judgment of any and all music was his second nature, so he judged Daeron, begrudgingly and only to himself, as competent. Finrod judged him as the best flautist he’d ever heard, which Maglor knew because Finrod appeared next to him gushing about it. Maglor replied tersely until Finrod twigged his mood and left him alone.

But Aredhel had business with Maglor, too. At least Maglor saw her coming. Her white gown helped with that, as did the white flame in her eyes. “Where’s Findecáno?” she demanded.

“How should I know?” Maglor said.

“I saw you run off with him.”

“So I did. Then he ran off with Russandol.”

Aredhel sighed. “I should’ve known.”

Maglor raised his eyebrows.

“I know he hasn’t seen Maitimo for fifteen years, but he had plenty of time for their reunion this afternoon! Meanwhile I also haven’t seen him for a while, but has he talked to me at all? No. Running off with his boyfriend for the—”

“His—”

Aredhel and Maglor stared at each other. “His boyfriend?” Aredhel said. “Oh. You didn’t know.” She paused. “Don’t quote me. I’ve never seen them, and Findecáno won’t admit it. But it’s pretty obvious. Findecáno’s always talking and wondering and talking some more about what’s going on in the East. He spent more time on your side of the lake than ours after he rescued Maitimo. He rescued Maitimo. And”—she rolled her wrist in the direction of the hills—“they sneak off for private chats every chance they get.”

Maglor wanted another glass of wine, but maybe it was for the best that his hands were empty. Wine wouldn’t help with his sudden lightheadedness.

“Findecáno’s lucky he’s a man. If he were a woman, everyone would be talking about it. He’s outright said that he loves Maitimo! Can you imagine if I’d ever said that about Tyelcormo? I’d never have heard—Macalaurë? Are you well?”

“I’ll find Findecáno for you,” Maglor said, and he turned on his heel and left.

It didn’t take long to track them down. They sat on the other side of the same hill Maglor and Fingon had maybe half an hour ago, their backs to Maglor and their shoulders brushing. Maglor paused well above them, his half-formed confrontation dying on his lips. They weren’t sitting happily. Though they touched, Fingon’s body seemed to twist away from Maedhros’s. He stared at the ground, and his hands clutched his knee.

Maedhros’s stump settled on the small of Fingon’s back. Fingon shuddered. “I hate—” His voice broke. “I look at him, and I wish— I—”

As Maedhros shifted his arm to Fingon’s hip and pulled him in, as Fingon turned towards Maedhros and buried his face in Maedhros’s shoulder, Maglor burned. “I know, Findo,” Maedhros said. “I know.”

Maglor didn’t know, but he could guess. So he fled.

Hundreds of years later, under the star-strewn sky of East Beleriand, Fingon looked at Maglor with wide eyes. “I really thought I’d said.”

“Would you have been telling the truth?” Maglor said. “You decided you were done with anger. Fine. That’s not the same as forgiveness.”

“Isn’t it?”

“You wouldn’t say so if you’d seen yourself at the Mereth Aderthad! I believe that you wanted to forgive me. I also believe that you struggled with it. I never knew how you would speak to me moment to moment. At least on the lake you were always cold.”

Fingon opened his mouth and closed it. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t. Please don’t. You ought to have struggled with it. You ought to still be struggling with it. Do you think I’ve changed?”

“I don’t know, but. Your father’s dead.”

His father. Maglor had loved him. Not as Maedhros had, with stress creasing his eyes whenever he spoke of him, with the conviction that Fëanor was unwell and needed the steadfast aid of his family to heal. Maglor had loved Fëanor blindingly, all-consumingly, as convinced of Fëanor’s righteousness as Fëanor was. Until Amrod. Even then, while Maedhros had tended to Amras and Caranthir had sat with Maglor as he shook apart, Maglor had said, the worst of his sins, “It was Ambarto’s fault. Not ours. Not—not—”

Maglor dropped the knife and shoved Fingon.

“I’m sorry!” Fingon said. “But it’s true. I could never have trusted Fëanáro. I trust Russandol.”

Maglor shoved Fingon again. “Don’t speak of me as if I were a puppet. Don’t speak at all! How can you understand it? Valiant Findecáno, who, being perfect, has always thought—”

Fingon laughed, loud and long.

“What,” Maglor said, “is your problem?”

“Is that what you think of me? Is that what you think I think of myself?” Maglor’s silence was apparently answer enough, because Fingon lifted his hands palms up and said, “You’ve done me more wrong than I have you. That is true. But I’ve done wrong. Have you forgotten that these hands are stained the same as yours, that I stained them for love of my kin? If I can’t forgive you, then how can I hope for forgiveness for myself?”

Maglor lifted his own hands, took Fingon’s in them, and guided them down to his knees. For a long time they sat like that. Then Maglor said, “So you’re actually being selfish,” which earned him a wan smile from Fingon, and, “I am sorry. Did I ever say that?” To Amrod most of all, and to Maedhros who would’ve welcomed Fingolfin differently, but Fingon who had met Maglor in Middle-earth with eyes chill as ice was not forgotten.

“You said so at the lake,” Fingon said.

“You weren’t ready to hear it. Let me say it to you again.”

Fingon shook his head. “You’re too late now! I’m done with apologies. Keep them to yourself.” He paused. “Except for one.”

“Oh?”

“Well.” Fingon squeezed Maglor’s hands and let him go. “I hope I’m not overstepping in saying you owe an apology to Tingil. You don’t see him when you look at him? Really, Macalaurë.”

They looked at each other. “I proposed to him!” Maglor said in tones of horror.

“You did! Does Russandol ever tell you he despairs of you?”

“Not in so many words.”

“Sometimes I do. And that portrait! I’d think the other person was Turucáno if I didn’t know you find him dreadfully boring.”

Maglor winced. Fingon came closer to the truth than he knew, so close Maglor felt the need for a witty rejoinder to distract him but failed utterly to think of one. At least his distress seemed to prompt not realization but sympathy. Fingon swayed forward and said, “Forget him. If your someone else has someone else, then forgiveness or no, he’s out of your reach. But I’m here. We can be unlucky in love together.”

Maglor made a sound of disgust in the back of his throat. “I know about you and Russandol.”

Fingon’s expression was total blankness. Maglor waited for him to comprehend, wondering if he’d admit it at once or deny it as Maedhros had. It hardly mattered. Fingon was much worse a liar than Maedhros was. Maglor would see the truth of it.

“What about us?” Fingon said.

“Don’t give me that.”

“It’s all I have to give. We’re not secretly—” The realization dawned on Fingon’s face, and he exclaimed, “Macalaurë! We are not secretly fucking!”

Maglor snorted. “That’s not how I would’ve put it, but.”

“Where did you even get that idea? Was it Írissë? I don’t care that I don’t know where she is. I’m going to find her and I’m going to—”

Maglor turned to look across the plain. Once Fingon’s rant was over, they could get to the part where he caved and admitted it. In the meantime, Maglor didn’t care to listen.

It was an odd reaction, though. There seemed to be no nerves, only frustration. Maglor frowned, picked up his knife, and slid it into the sheath on his hip. When he glanced over, Fingon lay on his back with his hands over his face. “—spreading it around!” he was saying. “And she doesn’t even understand how blind she is!”

“You’re not lying,” Maglor realized aloud.

Fingon threw his hands into the air. “No!”

The ground shifted under Maglor. In the space of a moment, Fingon and Maedhros, secret lovers, Maglor’s truth for over two hundred years, became Fingon and Maedhros—what? Friends? Maglor thought of Maedhros pulling Fingon close on that hill, of the shine in their eyes when they looked at each other. He thought of Fingon saying, He was one of Fëanáro’s.

Maglor grabbed Fingon’s wrist and hauled him up. “Let’s go,” he said over Fingon’s yelp. “I have a bone to pick with my brother.”

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Their camp consisted of two tents, one for Maglor and Amras and the other for Fingon and Maedhros, an arrangement that had come about at Maglor’s blind behest. Maedhros and Amras had started a fire between them. Maedhros sat next to it, singing and slapping his knee, and Amras danced. When Maglor and Fingon neared, Maedhros broke off and said, “Join us! Some dancing will do you good, Cáno.”

“You fool!” Maglor cried. “How can you so thoroughly miss what’s right in front of you?”

Amras stuttered to a halt. Fingon and Maedhros said together, “What?”

Maglor shoved Fingon forward. “Findecáno’s been pining after you since the days of the Trees, and you’ve done nothing about it! Instead you’ve taken him for granted and strung him along, and I will not stand for it!”

He could’ve used some lightning and thunder behind his words then, but the sky was clear and the night still. As his companions stared at him, the only sound was the crickets crooning to each other.

“Findecáno,” Maedhros said.

Fingon went to him. They stood close and whispered, and Maglor’s attempt to eavesdrop was stymied by Amras appearing in front of him. “Have you gone mad?” Amras hissed.

“Just you wait,” Maglor hissed back. “They’re going to start making out any moment now.”

The thought made him sick to his stomach, but he’d long ago accepted that he’d lost any chance at Fingon’s favor, and he refused to stand in the way of true love. If he steeled himself, he might even manage to congratulate them on figuring it out at last before he retreated to his tent to scream into his blankets.

Amras, oblivious to Maglor’s noble sacrifice, eyed him with skepticism.

Maedhros laughed. Maglor leaned around Amras to look at him and Fingon, but they weren’t locked in a passionate embrace or even touching. Fingon was grimacing. Maedhros said, “So was it Írissë?”

“You’re really going to deny it,” Maglor said.

“I really am. Shocking as this may be, I don’t have feelings for my cousin!”

Fingon grimaced harder. Maglor’s heart twisted. “You talk about him all the time. You spend every moment you can with him,” he said. “You have a special private nickname for him!”

“Findo?” Maedhros laughed again. “Do you know why I call him that?”

Maglor didn’t.

“I made friends with him in Tirion while you were still being dragged to every corner of Aman by our parents. You remember that, surely? He was only a teenager, and what a teenager he was! He hated his parents. He felt stifled, and he thought us free as birds. He said he wished we were brothers, because I was a better kinsman to him than any of his closer kin. I didn’t object! It stroked my ego, after all. And when I called you Cáno, I saw his jealousy. So I started calling him Findo.”

Maglor looked to Fingon. Though he wouldn’t meet Maglor’s eyes, he nodded.

“I love him,” Maedhros said, “as I love you.”

“Findecáno,” Maglor said.

Fingon still refused to look at him. Was his embarrassment because Maglor, so sure he saw what Fingon and Maedhros did not, had accidentally brought to light a long unrequited love? Or—

Amras coughed. “Now that that’s cleared—”

“The one of my father’s,” Maglor said.

“He wasn’t Russandol,” Fingon said. “Beyond that I will not say.”

Yet he was still practically cringing. The ground shifted under Maglor for the second time. Ambarto, he thought and almost laughed. Myself, he thought and almost laughed again for a different reason entirely. He’d never allowed himself to so much as wish it true, but now, lodged in his chest, there was not only a wish but a hope, a hope that ached.

And he had embarrassed Fingon enough. If he was wrong, he could at least join him in solidarity.

“I can’t believe you’re making me do this, you craven in nothing but love,” Maglor said and, before he could choke on it, “I will say about the one of Nolofinwë’s. I’ve known him since we were both children, and for a long time I thought he was an utter brat. His grandmother cooed over his mediocre compositions. He didn’t appreciate my critique. When I debuted on the Tirion music scene, he hated me for daring to be better than him. One day, he showed up at my door with the most stilted and inadequate apology I’ve ever heard on his lips—”

“Macalaurë,” Fingon said.

“—and he took me to his favorite spot outside of Tirion, and we spent an afternoon together eating honey and picking flowers. I’ll never forget it: his spirit, his laugh, his hair sparking with gold under the light of Laurelin.”

Fingon met Maglor’s eyes. Maglor breathed in and said, “I didn’t realize it, but I was gone for him that very afternoon. Maybe I would’ve had a chance then, before either of us knew what was coming. Afterwards, I thought I’d lost him forever because of it. I thought—I never thought—”

“Macalaurë,” Fingon said again, and he took two strides, grabbed Maglor’s arms, and—

“Ow!” Fingon’s hand flew to his lips. “You bit me!”

“You attacked me!” Maglor cried. He pulled Fingon in and leaned on him, dizzied by his heart trying to beat itself out of his chest, and then over Fingon’s shoulder he spotted Amras with a hand covering his eyes. Over Fingon’s other shoulder was Maedhros, gaping. Maglor swore.

Maedhros closed his mouth. “Your tent. Macalaurë’s tent, I mean. We won’t—disturb you.”

“Stars above. You’d better not,” Fingon said, and with a sharp tug on Maglor’s sleeves, he dragged Maglor away.

They’d barely ducked through the flap of the tent before his hand was on the ties running down the side of Maglor’s tunic. “No,” Maglor said. “Do it properly. Kiss me first.”

Fingon’s hand fisted in the fabric at Maglor’s waist. He met Maglor’s eyes with his own shadowed by the dark of the tent, and he cupped the base of Maglor’s skull and slid his fingers into Maglor’s hair.

He said, “Like this?”

The kiss was slow, gentle, almost teasing. For a moment Maglor let himself do nothing but take what Fingon gave him. But every line of Fingon’s body against Maglor’s was tense, the effort required to restrain himself made manifest, and that was invitation enough for Maglor to grab hold of him and deepen the kiss, to give him what he so obviously wanted.

So obviously, now! “I cannot believe,” Maglor said as he broke away, “we could’ve been doing this in some broom closet in Tirion.”

“Could we have?” Fingon said, eyes glinting. “You liked me, but did I like you?”

“You know, you never told me about the one of Fëanáro’s.”

“You want me to talk about someone else in the middle of kissing you? Well. If you insist.” Fingon kissed Maglor again, then pulled away the bare inch necessary to speak. “He was the most irritating, condescending jerk I’d ever met. I heard”—a kiss—“all about him all the time from my eldest and dearest cousin, who sung his praises to the dome of the stars and told me that when he insulted my performances he only meant to be helpful”—another kiss—“really, Findecáno. That’s how his father shows love. And then”—and another—“all of Tirion fell in love with him, and I hated him even more and never mind that he wore his hair with flowers in it like stars in the blackest of skies and that his voice made me want to weep and that with some perspective I could see that he did mean to be helpful, he was just awful at it, and—”

Fingon buried his face in Maglor’s hair. “And then there was this afternoon we spent eating honey and picking flowers.”

“Never mind broom closets!” Maglor said. “We could’ve been—with honey on our lips—”

“It would’ve been lovely and adorable, I’m sure. Now.” Fingon’s hand returned to Maglor’s ties.

Maglor shook his head. Fingon pulled back, and his hand fell away, but Maglor grabbed it and lifted it up again. His chest ached for the boys they’d been that afternoon outside of Tirion, the boys who’d died long ago. But the men those boys had become were here now, in a tent staked in the wilderness of Middle-earth, standing in each other’s arms.

Fingon said, “If you don’t want—”

“Elentári,” Maglor said. “I needed half a moment to think first. But if you don’t get on with it right now—”

Fingon, laughing, worked free a tie, and then another, and as he worked free the third he kissed Maglor, and kissed him, and kissed him.