A Song Amidst His Torment by Elrond's Library  

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10

Maitimo explores his changed body.

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All who dwelt in Aman were filled with wonder and delight at the work of Fëanor. And Varda hallowed the Silmarils, so that thereafter no mortal flesh, no hands unclean, nor anything of evil will might touch them, but it was scorched and withered. (Of the Silmarils and the Unrest of the Noldor)

 

“What do you think your wife will think of you, should you ever leave us?” Mairon asked, weeks later, over yet another game of arantyalmë and a glass of wine. “Your hröa matches hers closer than it did in the days of your youth.”

Maitimo blinked. Wife? What wife –

“I suppose I’ll figure that out if the opportunity makes itself available,” Maitimo shrugged, trying to cover his confusion with nonchalance.

Mairon hummed, pushing a foot soldier forward. “You don’t think she’ll be upset, with you unable to father children on her?”

Maitimo shook his head, still trying to remember when he had ever given Mairon the impression he was married, much less to a nís. “I’m the eldest of all my brothers, and older still than all but one of my father’s own siblings, and certainly all of their children and their children’s children. I’ve done my fair share of child-rearing. We had little desire for more.” His Seer took the foot soldier.

“Plenty of experience, sure, but … they say it’s different, raising one of your own.”

Maitimo raised an eyebrow. “Who says? I cared for each of my brothers and the veritable swarm of cousins, uncles, aunts, and all their children when they came as diligently and with as much love as their own parents ever did.”

Mairon pushed a castle forward with a shrug. “You Incarnates are bound closely to your flesh. It follows that progeny, children of your own flesh and spirit, would be closer than that of siblings or other … sundry relations.” He paused, taking a sip of wine. The light of his hair and the candles above sank into the liquid, the deep red almost black. “Do you think your wife will mind, then, the children you’ll have here?”

What fucking wife? 

“A problem for the future,” Maitimo shook his head. “That I will handle, if the opportunity becomes available.”

Oh, right. Memory snapped into place. Mairon had asked, so many years ago, if he was married, and he had lied as he always did because he had to, and been punished for it. And Mairon had just assumed, and Maitimo had done nothing to disabuse him of the notion.

He wished he could still feel Findekáno through the bond their marriage had made between them, one once full of laughter and song and bright, golden happiness. But the situation had become unmanageable, disastrous even before he had joined his family in Formenos. And even seeing him on the beach, covered in the lifeblood of the Teleri, fighting with him back-to-back, even that had not opened that bond for long.

Embers now, where a gleeful, inviting hearth had been. The faintest spark. He dared not breathe on it, lest it go out entirely.

Maitimo avoided thinking of him, of his love in this place, refusing to sully his memories of his happiness with the present, refusing to let Mairon use the name of his husband to his own ends.

But Mairon had poked, and memory was a balm. Of course he had thought about what Findekáno might say about this, about taking Línemírë’s womb into himself and using it to further his own survival. He would carry her with him for the rest of his days – however long that may be – and his love would, if they ever did meet again, much less reconcile, have to accept that this had been the price of his survival.

Maitimo hoped he would understand.

He dared to hope for forgiveness.

He dared to wish.

The game of kings and soldiers proceeded apace, Mairon and Maitimo pushing pieces across the black and white board in contemplative silence. The fire crackled in the hearth, cheery and content.

“May I ask a question, my Lord?”

“You just did,” Mairon said with half a laugh. “But yes, little Ñoldóran.”

Maitimo sighed; how long had it been since he had done the same to Artanis, or little Itarillë? “Your hands. When I was brought here, they were blackened. Never have I seen coloration like it on any Maia or Quendi, and though they seem perhaps less so, it hasn’t changed.”

Mairon did not look at his own hands, just pushed his King out of check. “I did not hear a question.”

Maitimo fought the instinct to roll his eyes and put Mairon’s King back in check. “What happened?”

A foot soldier was placed between the King and Maitimo’s Seer, blocking him. When it came, Mairon’s voice was monotone, no emotion nor opinion colored his words. “My Lord-husband took the Silmarilli, as you know, and brought them here. I was the one to make his crown, and set the gems.”

And so, he thought to himself, Mairon had crowned Melkor. Finwë had been crowned by Ingwë, who in turn had been crowned by Manwë, and so the power flowed from the King of the Airs unbroken all the way to himself, captive though he was. He wondered idly at the ambition of the Maia. The trap he had lain, the scheme he had maneuvered Maitimo into with little sight of the whole.

Maitimo put Mairon back in check. “Varda hallowed them, after they were made.”

“Oh, was it Varda-mother’s blessings?” Mairon snorted. “I should have known. The bitch always did love her silly lights.”

Maitimo blinked at the casual blasphemy, though of course Mairon would have a poor opinion of the Powers of the West. “They haven’t healed then, these past years?”

Mairon rubbed his thumb against the skin of his blackened fingers absently. “It’s less bothersome than it looks. The pain is … exquisitely unique.”

“Check mate,” Maitimo murmured, pushing the last piece into place to corner Mairon’s King.

Mairon chuckled, conceding defeat as he always did – with a smirk, and a sip of wine, every line of his fana screaming vengeance and demanding satisfaction.

“Why, does the condition of my fana concern you, dearest Nelyafinwë?” Mairon drawled, saccharine sweet and sarcastic. “You’re very kind to care.”

That was new. Dearest. Maitimo hid his disgust at the endearment behind a bland smile. “I don’t. Call it academic interest.”

Mairon laughed, seemingly delighted. “I think, instead, I should be the one asking about the condition of your hröa, don’t you?”

Maitimo shrugged as he leaned forward, resetting the board. “If you insist.”

“Have you touched yourself?”

What.

“Pardon me?” Maitimo gave his captor an incredulous look.

“Don’t make me repeat myself, Nelyafinwë. I’m willing, this once, to give you the option between … well, a self-assessment and trusting you to tell me if there’s a problem. Or you can strip here and now and I’ll do it myself.”

How the fuck was he supposed to know if there was a problem with his new configuration? It’s not like he’d ever actually touched a nís to know what was normal, and what was not. “Thank you,” he murmured. “I will do it myself.” He glanced up to find Mairon’s eyebrows raised, looking expectant. Like he wanted Maitimo to do so now. “Later.”

Mairon rolled his eyes. “Melkor did say you Noldor were a bunch of repressed prudes. The intricate rituals to touch anyone’s flesh, especially another man’s … Elu Thingol’s people have the right idea of it, honestly.” Maitimo held his tongue as Mairon got up, shaking his head, pale but burnt hands fluttering as he settled his skirts around him. “I’m being summoned,” he said with a wan smile. He paused at Maitimo’s side, bent over, caressed his cheek and gently tilted Maitimo’s face up. He still smelled of hot metal, forge-bright. “Be good, darling,” Mairon smirked, laid a possessive kiss to Maitimo’s forehead, and left.

Maitimo sagged, his spine loosening into the comfort of leaning against the couch seat. Despite having plush couches, Mairon spent most of his time with Maitimo kneeling or sitting on the floor in front of the couches, at the low table that occupied the center of the main room, the lower curve the apartments bent around. And so Maitimo also spent a lot of time on the floor.

It was not unfamiliar. If anything, it was too familiar, with the brood of growing children and the ritual of court that established itself on the Great Journey, long before he as a grandson had even been a possibility Finwë imagined. Even before Finwë had joined them in Formenos, there had been few, if any, chairs in the public parts of the palace. Finwë had, in the earliest days of his kingship, held court in his tent, on the ground, Míriel Þerindë ever by his side. That had not changed as they organized the building of Tirion together.

He watched the fire in the grate for a while, missing Finwë. Tirion. Findekáno.

There was nothing for it. Maitimo knew Mairon would come back, maybe in a few hours, maybe in a few cycles, and expect Maitimo to be able to say something useful about his hröa. He sighed, picked his way over to his room, and started undressing.

He hung these red robes next to the blue ones he had been given that first day. He had three, now, that he wore in rotation. When he awoke next, he would wear the black. The linen shirt, one of five, went into the wardrobe as well. It wasn’t soiled enough to need to be washed.

He wished he had a distraction. He tried humming to himself, a silly, soothing tune with a repeating progression and nonsense phrases about ducks on a lake.

Maitimo unbraided his hair, uncaring if he pulled at his scalp, heedless of the strands caught in the knots of the ribbons that bound them. He wouldn’t be able to keep his hair long anyway, he knew better by now. It wasn’t worth it, to be careful. The ragged ends of copper brushed the tops his shoulders, now, unbound. The slight curl was returning, now that he could care for it at all.

The pants finally fell next and Maitimo left them on the floor. Sloppy, messy, completely out of the ordinary.

He eased himself, naked, onto the bed. Reached for the bed hangings to close them, to leave him in complete darkness. Noticed his hand was shaking. Took a deep breath. Tried to steady his hands and the roiling nerves in his gut.

He had chosen this path, so why was it so difficult to face the results of that choice?

Maitimo, engulfed in pure blackness, tried to relax.

When was the last time his love had touched him tenderly? The last time he had touched him at all?

The darkness hid them from all eyes except Varda’s stars as Findekáno led Maitimo through their marriage bond to where he was, into a copse of hardy trees, windswept from being so close to the coast, dormant from the lack of Treelight. Maitimo stared, drinking in the way the gold threaded through his beloved’s braids reflected the light of the torch. There was still blood on Findekáno’s cheek. 

They said nothing, standing there under that tree. 

Findekáno took what he needed from Maitimo’s body, rushing, rough, teeth biting and nails raising welts on his skin. And Maitimo had let him, mostly, understanding and willing to accept this as his penance and punishment. And in the space between their minds, an unfathomably deep pool of anger-frustration-regret-heartbreak barely displaced by the desperation-desire-love-forgiveness that flowed between them. 

“I hate you,” Findekáno murmured into his neck as they lay, panting, the tree’s limbs breaking up the stars in fractal patterns. 

“I know.”

“You knew I’d rush in after you.”

And then Maitimo had left him behind, with every intention of coming back, of convincing his atar of the reasonable, strategic path. Guilt pricked.

He picked a different memory, a better memory.

The townhouse Maitimo maintained was large, larger than he needed for one bachelor, but he paid his household staff well to maintain it. Ostensibly the extra rooms were for his brothers, and Makalaurë was often in residence. But tonight the guest room was occupied by a cousin. 

Or rather, should have been. Said cousin, who, despite having been rejected twice, was still doggedly arguing in favor of a scheme that would undoubtedly go poorly for them both late into the Mingling.

It hadn’t. None of their various meddlesome relations had ever had a clue. They had been exceedingly careful.

He was tired of denying himself, and Findekáno, having learned not an insignificant amount of rhetoric from watching Maitimo himself at court, was slowly destroying each and every one to the older ellon’s arguments. Giving in was reckless, would complicate his life so much more than it already was, but … he wanted. He wanted, in a way unfamiliar and yet it was the most natural thing in the world, slow to wake as it was.

And so he took. And he took and took and took everything that was offered to him, the starving man at a feast he was. Maitimo drank down moans, gulped on desperation, devoured soft skin, consumed every part of Findekáno. His Findekáno. 

That kiss changed everything, and nothing. 

That was a good memory. Happy. A simpler time. Maitimo let his hand fall to his half-hard cock, palming it the way a lover might, teasing, feather light, soft. He let himself feel his body, riding sensation with the lack of any visual stimuli. His heart, strong and galloping. His stomach, full of food and satisfied. He traced scars, tiny bumps and ridges that hadn’t been there the last time he touched himself but were, nevertheless, part of him.

Void, the last time had been at Formenos.

Maitimo let himself imagine his hand wasn’t his own, the distance a balm, a gift. And so Findekáno’s hand drifted low, rubbing gently at the scar that had been his testes. Findekáno would kiss him there, maybe.

His husband’s touch drifted lower still, until touch ceased to mean anything.

Fingers slipped into a cavity, warm and wet and solid. But there was no sensation other than what the hand that both was and wasn’t Findekáno’s could feel. Just dull numbness, a foreign otherness. Findekáno’s hand scissored him open – that he could feel – the pressure and the strangeness of muscles moving in ways they never had had reason to before. He clenched down on Findekáno’s fingers, the way his husband liked, but it just wasn’t the same.

Some part of him was relieved. Now he knew. It didn’t hurt – it didn’t feel like anything. The stretch was strange. But this was still his body, his cock might still please his Findekáno once more, if. If. If …

Findekáno’s hand drifted back to Maitimo’s cock, the slickness on his fingers barely acting as a lubricant but better than nothing. He got lost in the sensation, Findekáno tightening and rubbing exactly the way he wanted, needed …

His climax rolled over him, a slow thunder through his chest.

Maitimo let out a shuddering breath, half a sob and half a laugh. And then another, and another, and then he was truly crying.

Findekáno would never forgive him.