Life, Like a Face Between Your Palms by gaydhros  

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Chapter 3

Fingon breaks, with Maedhros there to catch him.

Content warnings for this chapter: Explicit sexual content, dubious consent

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Fingon was barely aware of the movement of his own feet as he followed Maedhros up the staircase and through Barad Eithel’s network of corridors. His insides were a roiling mess of emotions, each one uglier than the last. His eyes burned with tears unshed. He did not notice they had reached a fork in the corridors until Maedhros’ voice cut through the fog.

“Which way?”

Of course Maedhros would not know the way. What need had he before to visit the apartments of the High King? Silently, Fingon turned left, and Maedhros fell in beside him.

The apartments were blessedly empty when at last they arrived— Gwánthon’s doing, surely, a foresight and a kindness that Fingon would later have to thank him for. Fingon let Maedhros inside and then turned to push the heavy door shut. He slid the latch into place.

He could not find it in himself to turn back around.

Everything was falling apart. It was as though Maedhros’ presence alone had thrown him entirely off-kilter; one look of keen, blue eyes and Maedhros had torn down the dam that had kept back this awful, writhing mess of feeling, and now there was no strength of will that could hold back the flood.

Fingon’s grip on the door handle trembled. He braced his other hand against the wood and tried to gather his strength, but there was a crushing weight sitting right on the centre of his chest, and he could not breathe around it. Fingon shut his eyes, and at last— at last— hot tears spilled down his cheeks. His breathing hitched wretchedly in his throat.

The quiet surety of footsteps, and then Maedhros set a gentle hand on his shoulder. The touch shook loose the very last vestiges of Fingon’s control.

An awful sob wracked his frame. He reached back, intending to push Maedhros away, but somehow what happened instead was he took Maedhros’ hand in his own and gripped it fiercely. And then Maedhros was there, pressing the length of his body against Fingon’s back and tucking his face into his dripping curls, as silent and steady as the foundations of a mountain.

Fingon folded inwards and collapsed in on himself like wet clay.

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He did not know how long he cried for. Everything that he had kept buried for weeks, months, this entire unending year rushed to the surface, and once the flood started he could not hope to stop it any more than he could dam the wild rushing waters of Sirion. All the while, Maedhros held him fast and did not let him go. Not when Fingon was so wracked with great, heaving sobs it was all he could do to gasp for air between them, not when he dissolved into shallow, mortifying weeping, not even when he trembled and shivered so violently that collapse seemed inevitable. When that happened, Maedhros only turned him around and gathered him into himself, cradling Fingon to his chest as he would a terrified child. Fingon could only cling to him, his tears soaking Maedhros’ already-soiled cloak.

After a time, Maedhros managed to coax him onto the couch. There he held him, guiding Fingon to bury his face in the crook of his neck, stroking his hair and waiting for him to cry himself out. Eventually, of course, Fingon did; sobs tapered off into weeping, and from weeping into ragged, hiccuping breaths. Maedhros was solid and warm against him, his hand rubbing slow, even circles between Fingon’s shoulder blades. Fingon fought to match his breathing to Maedhros’: in, out, in again.

He felt like he had been picked up and wrung out like a wet washcloth. His headache had grown from throbbing to splitting. After a long time, Fingon gathered the strength to wipe his eyes and nose with his sleeve and tried to look less miserable than he felt when he pulled back to at last look Maedhros in the eye.

He should not have been so surprised to find Maedhros also tear-stained. Had Fingon not wept for the loss of Fëanáro? Had he never wept for Maedhros’ anguish as though it were his own? Fingon’s chin trembled anew at the thought, and he clenched his jaw to make it stop.

“Beloved,” Maedhros murmured, and wiped a tear from just below Fingon’s jaw. “I am sorry.”

Fingon could not bear the weight of pity. Not tonight, not from him.

“What are you sorry for?” he muttered. “You aren’t the one who took him from me, he did that himself. Don’t apologize to me.”

It came out so much sharper than he had intended. Fingon’s cheeks warmed with shame.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” said Maedhros.

“It isn’t!” This time Fingon was shouting, and he broke off with a curse and looked away, shaking his head. After a deep, fortifying breath, he said, “It isn’t. I should not have been sharp with you.”

“No,” agreed Maedhros after a beat, in that tone that made it clear that what he was saying was entirely for Fingon’s benefit, “you should not have been. Yet I do not blame you for it, and I take no offense.”

Fingon pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes and waited for the urge to snap at him to recede. Finally, he looked back at Maedhros and said, “I am glad that you are here.”

This, at least, was the truth. He was glad beyond measure to have Maedhros here with him, even if his gladness was marred by a sudden anger and hurt that he could not hope to understand.

“As am I,” said Maedhros softly. In the dim lamplight of the sitting room, his features appeared shadowed and drawn. The circles beneath his eyes were worryingly dark. Fingon wondered distractedly if he had lost weight, if he was eating enough. “I am only sorry I could not be here sooner. I loathe the thought of you alone for so long in your grief.”

Fingon did not want to talk about his grief. His grief was perhaps the last thing he wanted to talk about, on a very long list of things he did not want to talk about.

“I’ve been handling it well,” he said, falling back on humour, though the laugh he forced came out sounding so wretched and pathetic he instantly wished he hadn’t even tried. “Valar, I can’t remember the last time I cried like that.”

Maedhros, unsmiling, said, “I do.”

“What?” Fingon pulled back to fully meet his eyes. When the motion dislodged Maedhros’ hand from his back Maedhros simply moved it to rest on Fingon’s forearm instead, his thumb stroking slowly back and forth. “When?”

“In the sick tent. On the lakeshore, soon after you brought me back.”

Fingon remembered instantly. He swallowed around another rising swell of emotion.

“I think…” Maedhros was struggling to find the words. “You must have thought me unconscious. And I was, but there were times when I was aware of what was going on around me. Just glimpses, mostly— flashes of light, or snatches of conversation. And you…” Maedhros swallowed. His hand was tightening around Fingon’s forearm, and Fingon slid their fingers together. “You and your father were at my bedside. I know not why. You were crying, and— Eru, Finno. Never in my life had I heard someone cry like that. Not even Curvo in the wake of our father’s death.”

Indeed Fingon remembered that day well; how he had clung to his father’s shoulders and sobbed like a child scarcely weaned, frightened and exhausted, grief-stricken for all that Maedhros lay alive in the sickbed across from him, stubborn heart still beating weakly in his chest.

“I was terrified,” Fingon confessed. “I thought I was going to lose you again, when I had only just gotten you back.”

“I know.” Maedhros lifted Fingon’s hand and kissed his knuckles. “For a time I thought I had dreamt that, or hallucinated. But when your father—”

“My father?” Fingon interrupted him with a frown. “He told you?”

“No, no. Of course not. He would never speak to me of something so private. But he did come to see me, just before I was to head east.”

“Why haven’t you ever told me of this? What did he say?”

“Nothing outright,” said Maedhros hastily, as if to assuage Fingon’s fears of being caught; as if the prospect of their love being found out by his father mattered at all now. “He only told me that I had to take care of myself, not for my own sake, but for yours. He said to me, ‘If something happens to you, I know not what Findekáno will do. Do not let it come to that.’”

An errant tear slipped down Fingon’s salt-stained cheek. He and his father had never spoken aloud of what he had with Maedhros, but Fingolfin was clever, and more observant than most. Of course he had known. He had probably always known, ever since their love was a young and thrilling thing full of kisses stolen in empty corridors in Tirion’s court and hesitant touches beneath the hallowed light of the Trees. All these centuries, and he had never said anything of it to Fingon. Then again, Fingolfin had always had many ways of showing his love besides the obvious.

“He was right.” Fingon tried on a wry smile, but the stretch of it felt wrong on his face. “If I lose you as well, I will surely do something terribly drastic, so don’t even try it.”

If he was aiming for lighthearted he missed it quite catastrophically, for immediately his thoughts turned to the fundamental, inescapable truth that he could lose Maedhros, at any moment he was out of his sight.

Maedhros was not an easy man to kill. His fëa burned hot as an avenging fire, and his will was obstinate and fierce, and he was wont to cling to life like a weed pushing up through cobblestone. Yet suddenly the possibility of losing him felt nearer than it had since those horrible first days of agonizing uncertainty upon the shores of Lake Mithrim; like the icy fingers of death were lurking just outside the apartment door, waiting to steal him away. Maedhros would be gone. Just like his father, just like Argon, just like Aredhel and Turgon, hidden so well there was no hope of ever finding them.^[1] Maedhros would die, and Fingon would be left alone. It was an absurd, irrational thought after all that Maedhros had survived, but in his despair, Fingon believed it.

He brushed fresh tears hurriedly from his face, but Maedhros saw. His expression turned unbearably gentle.

“Findekáno…” he said softly. His palm cupped Fingon’s cheek.

If Fingon let Maedhros speak to him with such tenderness now the tears would never stop. To silence him, he leaned in and pushed their mouths together. It was an awful kiss; salty and damp, too hard, teeth digging in painfully. Maedhros’ lips under his were still.

Fingon furrowed his brow. He kissed him again in desperation, and then again. He twisted his fingers in his cloak.

“Please,” he whispered, his eyes shut, cheeks wet with tears. “Please.”

Maedhros’ thumb traced the ridge of his cheekbone. Fingon leaned into the touch, trying to push his thoughts into Maedhros’ head, a frantic chorus of please and I need it and I need you, but they bounced as ever off the wall up between them.

Still, Maedhros knew him without ever needing to try. His nose bumped Fingon’s. The warmth of his unsteady exhale brushed the corner of Fingon’s mouth. And then he gave in, fitting his mouth to Fingon’s.

It was a true kiss this time. Maedhros kissed him in the way he needed to be kissed: with a strength of will and an insistence of being that overwhelmed. He took in all of Fingon’s desperate ferocity and gave it back in equal measure, sliding his hand round to cradle the base of Fingon’s skull, nipping with sharp teeth at his lip until Fingon’s mouth parted around a gasp.

There was naught to do then but let Maedhros take as he would. His mouth was hot and searching, tongue sliding against Fingon’s, coaxing forth a hoarse sound from somewhere deep in Fingon’s chest and swallowing it greedily. In every kiss Fingon tasted Maedhros’ own urgency bleeding through, his lingering terror, his relief that Fingon was alive and in his arms.

Fingon needed to be so much closer.

Heedless of how it made his knee dig awkwardly into the arm of the couch, he slid into Maedhros’ lap. Maedhros, warm and so perfectly familiar underneath him, moved on centuries-old instinct and slid his right arm around Fingon’s lower back to steady him. Something in the quiet intimacy of the gesture soothed the flayed-raw mess in Fingon’s chest.

For almost as long as he could remember, he had been kissing Maedhros like this. Tangling together beneath a gilded sky when they both were young and full of innocence and still learning how delightful kissing could truly be; pulling him into a shadowed alcove just outside their grandfather’s court to kiss him stupid while courtiers argued loudly only metres away; stealing him between one council and the next during a diplomatic visit to Barad Eithel just to crowd him up against the door of a cramped closet and kiss him until they were both breathless, tease him until he was hard under his robes purely for the pleasure of watching him sit through their next meeting with his hand resting awkwardly over his lap and a lovely flush colouring his cheeks.

When they kissed like this, Maedhros was Maedhros and Fingon was Fingon, and together, they were still them. If they were still them, if they still fit together like this, that meant Fingon had not been torn asunder so completely as to be utterly unmade.

Fingon knelt up and slid his fingers through Maedhros’ rain-tangled hair. Warmth ignited in his belly when an incidental tug made Maedhros’ breath catch. Fingon pulled again, on purpose now, and Maedhros rewarded him with a half-choked groan.

Yes, thought Fingon, reaching blindly for the clasp of Maedhros’ cloak. Yes, this. This is what I need; this is proof that not everything has changed.

Maedhros stayed him with a gentle hand.

“Finno…” he murmured. “It isn’t a good idea.”

Instantly, the lump in Fingon’s throat was back. “Please,” he breathed. He pressed another kiss to Maedhros’ closed lips, and Maedhros returned it reluctantly. “I need…”

What? What did he need? To feel like himself again? To take, to be taken? To feel Maedhros everywhere, to be touched not as someone’s king but as himself; to be wanted and claimed like he was everything, like he was worth dropping everything and crossing half a continent for, like he was worth staying for?

“I just need it.” There was a pathetic quaver in his voice. “Please, Russo.”

Somberly, Maedhros searched his face. He stroked Fingon’s cheek, pushing back his hair. Fingon pressed into the touch like a cat seeking the warmth of a sunspot. He was certain he looked as wretched as he felt, but he made no effort to pull himself together. If Maedhros felt bad enough for him, his pity might outweigh his better judgment.

“All right, Finno,” Maedhros said at last. “Yes, all right.”

Fingon was already reaching for his clasp.

For a time, then, Maedhros let him do as he would. Fingon pushed his cloak off over his shoulders and got to work immediately on the ties of his gambeson. He was half-distracted all the while by Maedhros’ idle fingers stroking his thigh, the quiet kisses Maedhros was pressing to the side of his throat. Finally, bared of everything but his trousers, Maedhros kissed him hard and told Fingon to take him to bed.

Fingon had to try very hard not to think about this being his father’s bedchamber as he led Maedhros into the darkened room and locked the door. He let himself be backed against the sturdy bedpost, and tipped his face up for a kiss. A fire had been tended some hours ago, before Fingon returned from court, but in the time since it had burned very low. The air was chill, and in the dark there existed only the sound of their stolen kisses and the rustling of fabric as Fingon fought blindly with the clasps of his own robes.

“Damn it,” he muttered when his hands proved too shaky, breaking away to look down at what he was doing. In the dark he could see very little.

Maedhros hummed and covered Fingon’s hand with his. He ducked and set his mouth to his skin, trailing hot kisses down his neck, both soothing and distracting. Fingon bared his throat and let his head fall back against the bedpost. His hand flew to grasp Maedhros’ shoulder, and Maedhros winced. Recalling his pain of earlier, Fingon eased his grip.

“Sorry,” he murmured, and Maedhros accepted the apology with another quiet kiss.

With Fingon sufficiently distracted, Maedhros began to work at getting him out of his clothing. It was not a lie to say that Maedhros had become even more skilled and dexterous with his left hand than he had been with his right; he felt along the seams of Fingon’s robes blindly, opening clasps and uncinching laces as he went. At last the robes were loose enough to pull over Fingon’s head, and they were followed by his linen undershirt, his hose, his braies.

“You’re cold,” Maedhros frowned once Fingon was bare, and only then did Fingon realize he was shivering.

“Yes,” he admitted. His flesh prickled with goosebumps, the fine hairs on his arms standing on end.

“Get in bed, I will tend the fire.”

As Fingon settled back upon the soft bedlinens there was a crackle of firewood, and then the flickering orange glow strengthened and grew, chasing away the worst of the chill. Maedhros stripped himself of the rest of his clothing. When he joined Fingon on the bed he was perfectly naked, still hot from his proximity to the flame. He sat astride Fingon and dipped down to kiss him.

And oh, to feel Maedhros bare against him. Fingon touched him everywhere. Every inch of skin, every scar of his torment, each one as familiar to Fingon as the back of his own hand. After a moment, when it became clear that Maedhros intended to be gentle with him, Fingon gathered his strength and flipped them, using his weight to force Maedhros down into the sheets.

The point of this was to feel alive, and to feel Maedhros alive. The point was to not have to think. Tenderness tonight he would not have.

Fingon fisted a loose hand in Maedhros’ hair and pulled back to bare his throat. Maedhros’ red lips parted around a gasp. Fingon dragged his teeth over Maedhros’ fluttering pulse, feeling his hips buck mindlessly in search of friction, and in the next fumbling press of Fingon’s mouth to his Maedhros met him in his urgency.

It was not long until Maedhros was hard and leaking, dragging the evidence of his arousal across the planes of Fingon’s abdomen with every roll of his hips. Desire was trying valiantly to pool low in Fingon's stomach, and he tried to chase it, but he could not seem to get there.

Fingon swore and took himself in hand. Maedhros, now flushed and dark-eyed underneath him, slid his fingers between Fingon’s and took over, trying to work him to hardness. Fingon closed his eyes and focused on the sensation: the sure squeeze of Maedhros’ fingers, the drag of his palm, the sharpness of the pleasure that seared through him when Maedhros glided his thumb over his slit. Yet so drained was Fingon, and so distracted was his mind with the task of not thinking about every terrible thing that was pressing in at the edges of his consciousness, he could not manage to get himself more than halfway there.

Eventually he shook his head, his face burning, and said, “You will have to take me.”

The corner of Maedhros’ mouth turned up. “That is no great burden.”

Fingon managed a small laugh. He was pleased to hear that this time it did not sound as though it had been filtered through layers of broken glass. He was left alone as Maedhros went to dig out a pot of oil from a trunk across the room.

Not becoming consumed by his thoughts the moment Maedhros stepped away proved a formidable task. Fingon’s mind was a strange and tumultuous space; he had successfully cordoned off the worst of the grotesque, throbbing mass of pain, yet ever it grew and reached out its tendrils, threatening to contaminate the rest of his thoughts at any moment. Fingon dug his fingernails into his thighs and focused on the sensation of the sting. He breathed in and out, felt his lungs swell and deflate.

He startled to feel Maedhros give his knee a gentle squeeze.

“Good?” asked Maedhros, sitting back on the bed between Fingon’s legs as they parted for him instinctually.

Fingon nodded. He watched Maedhros warm the oil between his fingers at the same time as he pressed his stump to Fingon’s inner thigh, pushing gently to spread him a little wider. For all that he had been expecting it Fingon still choked on a gasp at the first caress of fingers over his entrance. Instinct moved him to rock down into the touch, the body taking over in the absence of the coherent mind. As the first finger sank slowly inside down to the first knuckle— careful, careful— Fingon suddenly remembered why he had so badly wanted to be the one to take Maedhros.

There was so much time to think like this. Laying back in the silence with naught to listen to but the crackle of the fire, the slick sounds of Maedhros’ finger working into him, shallow thrusts that brought him a little deeper each time. Fingon’s mind was slipping, careening towards the place he was trying so desperately to avoid. He swallowed hard.

“Stop treating me like I’m delicate.” He kept his eyes fixed on the canopy above. “I can take more.”

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Maedhros glance at him. Fingon could not bear to look back; he knew beyond certainty that if he did he would not be able to keep himself from weeping. After a moment’s hesitation Maedhros acquiesced, soon giving him a second finger.

The stretch was good. Maedhros brushed over that spot that made Fingon’s toes curl, and tendrils of pleasure at last awakened in Fingon’s belly. Somehow it was still wrong, tainted by something Fingon could not name, but he tried to ignore that. He slid a loose fist around his cock, thinking that he might finally be able to get hard.

“Yes,” he breathed, bearing down into the stretch. “Yes, yes, more.”

Maedhros did as he was asked. Slowly, desire began to burn hotter in Fingon’s blood. Soon his skin was heated, slick with sweat.

“Come here,” he pleaded, and reached out, urging Maedhros down over him for a kiss. Fingon tilted up his hips and hooked a leg over Maedhros to allow his fingers to keep working, and yes, this— this Fingon knew. This Fingon had been doing since he had scarcely come of age; this made Fingon feel like Fingon, and nothing less or more than that.

“Inside me now,” he breathed, hot against Maedhros’ mouth.

Maedhros, who had always been too delicate with him at the times it least mattered, started to say something Fingon was sure he would find immensely irritating.

“Just do it,” he snapped.

When still Maedhros hesitated, Fingon took him in hand and stroked him roughly. He thumbed ungently over his slit and watched him shudder, a choked curse falling from his lips. He gave in.

It had been so very long. As Maedhros lined himself up and began, slowly, to sink inside, the stretch was utterly overwhelming. There existed only the fullness, the weight of Maedhros’ body over his. Maedhros was only halfway inside when Fingon, impatient and needing more, dug his heel into his backside and forced him in deep all at once.

They both gasped out in tandem. Fingon tossed an arm over his eyes and tried to breathe. The second the burn of it began to give way to something resembling pleasure, he gritted out, “Move.”

Maedhros did.

It was gentle; too gentle. The rhythm Maedhros found was slow and tender, fucking into Fingon steadily, groaning into the curve of his neck. Tears stung Fingon’s eyes. A reflex triggered by the stretch, to be certain, but tears were tears, and once they started they were wont to keep falling. Moisture rolled down Fingon’s temple and soaked into his hairline. The flayed-raw thing in his chest dug in its claws.

Fingon could not hide the hitch in his breathing. The rhythm of Maedhros’ thrusts faltered.

“I’m fine,” Fingon managed to force out. “I’m fine, keep going.”

“Finno—”

“I’m fine, just— I need it, please give it to me—” Fingon reached and pulled him down into a fumbling kiss. It was sloppy, uncertain, but after a beat Maedhros again began to move.

For a few blissful moments, all was well. Maedhros’ mouth was soft and familiar, and so was the ticklish brush of his hair, the panting heat of his breath. The world was right. This was exactly what Fingon had needed.

So why on earth was he still crying?

His breath caught around something like a sob. He covered his face with his hands. Maedhros stopped moving.

“Findekáno…”

“Stars above, Maedhros, I’m not going to break,” Fingon snapped, but his voice cracked in the middle of the sentence, and hot tears spilled forth in earnest.

“No, Finno.” Maedhros pulled out of him and knelt between his legs. “That’s enough.”

Shame burned Fingon’s cheeks. Hurt, furious, he pushed himself up with a curse and clambered off the bed. Maedhros was looking at him with an infuriating combination of helplessness and concern as Fingon stalked past him and into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him.

Inside his father’s bathroom, alone once again, Fingon’s legs gave out and he slid to the floor with his back to the wood. He could do nothing but tuck his knees to his chest, bury his face in his hands, and let the tears come as they would.

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Chapter End Notes

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^[1] At this point Aredhel has been dead for ~56 years, but given the complete lack of communication from Gondolin I don't believe Fingon would know that yet.