Five Gold Rings by Lifetime by AdmirableMonster  

Mairon found that he had run out of profanity.  Really, that shouldn’t even be possible, he thought grimly, hefting his suitcase.  He was an eloquent man.  He should have a bottomless well of the stuff, but there just weren’t words left.  Melkor was going to go—not to put too fine a point on it—spare, and Mairon’s bruises ached at the thought.  No.  He didn’t need to think about that right now.

What he needed to think about was where he was going to go.  Snow was falling thick and fast outside Union Station, and it was quiet, far quieter than Mairon had ever seen it.  Outside, it was quickly becoming a true whiteout; he couldn’t even see the cab stand in front a few feet away.  Maybe, Mairon thought morosely, he could just sleep here.  He’d spent nights in airports before, and it wasn’t like there was anyone who was going to try to rob him in weather like this. His back ached at the thought, and he stared down at the iphone in his hand.  It remained dead.

“Hey, are you okay?”

Mairon looked up, blinking in surprise, to find a concerned-looking young man bending over him.  He looked vaguely familiar for some reason, but Mairon couldn’t place him.  Perhaps it was just that he had a set of sharp cheekbones, dark eyes, and sleek pulled-back black hair that gave him something of the androgynous look Mairon was used to from the modelling world.

“I’m—” Mairon opened his mouth to say he was fine, and then everything crashed back down on top of him and a sob slipped out before he could stop it.

“Oh, shit.”  The man sat down next to him.  “Stuck here?”

Mairon nodded, taking deep breaths as he tried to get himself back under control.  He hadn’t actually let out any tears, thank god, just another soft little gulping noise.  “My fucking phone is dead, too, and I forgot the charger,” he said, trying to turn the exhausted mess of feelings into simple anger.

“Oof.” There was a pause, and Mairon sniffed, because the attempt at anger wasn’t quite working.  “Handkerchief?” the stranger offered, holding one out, and that surprised a laugh out of him.

“Handkerchief?  Who carries around handkerchiefs?”

“Me.”  He got a friendly grin for that, and he found himself taking the handkerchief.  “It’s clean, don’t worry.”  Clean and freshly starched, with the initials ‘T.F.’ embroidered in one corner.  Mairon almost hated to use it, but the guy had offered, so he rubbed it vigorously across his face and then blew his nose.

“Thanks,” he said awkwardly, not sure if he should hand it back.

“You’re welcome.  So…”  For the first time, the stranger seemed a little nervous and awkward himself.  “You don’t even have a hotel?”

Mairon shook his head with a sigh.  “Flight was delayed for hours, then it was cancelled, so I stupidly tried to come down here and see if I could make the last train to somewhere that wasn’t going to be snowed under for the next three days, but then they cancelled that too.  And by that time, my phone was dead, and—” he nodded to the whirling white outside.  “Well.  I don’t know how I’d even get to a hotel.”

“Yeah, it’s not great out there.  Listen, I don’t usually do things like this, but would you like to come back to my place and crash there?  I’ve got a spare bed made up and everything.  My brother and his boyfriend were supposed to be visiting, but their train got cancelled too.  It’s within walking distance, so we should be okay to make it there.”

Mairon stared at him.  Part of him wanted to demand if the guy was crazy; part of him wondered vaguely if this was how he got murdered by a surprisingly enterprising serial killer.  But he was exhausted and the thought of a warm bed somewhere that wasn’t a train station currently sounded like the actual holy grail.  “Thank you,” he said.  “I—thank you very much.  I’d appreciate that.”

“Great.  Got any suitcases?”

“Just this one.  The other one seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle.”  A shiver ran down Mairon’s neck at the thought of how Melkor was going to react to that, but he’d figure it out later.  He always figured things out.  “So I won’t have to walk around naked,” he added with a slight grin, and was rewarded with a faint pink tinge on the other man’s cheeks.

“Um, uh.  Yes.  Good.”  He put out a hand.  “I’m Telperinquar Finwion, but my friends call me Tyelpe.  You?”

Mairon froze for half an instant.  Fuck.  No wonder he’d looked familiar.  He didn’t do any modelling these days, but of course his father had had him doing it a few years ago, and Mairon knew the faces of everyone who had ever modelled for the company owned by Melkor’s biggest rival.  Fëanor Finwion.  Otherwise known as his new friend’s father.

All of this flashed through Mairon’s head in an instant, and then he put out his hand as well, and it only trembled a little.  “I’m Annatar Aulendil,” he said, with a winning smile, drawing from a name he used to toy with using when he was still thinking of being a designer instead of just a model.  He’d like the way A.A. looked.  He’d liked the meaning behind it.  And he really, really did not need Tyelpe putting two and two together and recognizing him.  It was a little surprising that he hadn’t already, maybe, but he hadn’t been modeling in several years, and Mairon had dyed his red hair blond for the most recent runway show.

“Pleased to meet you, Annatar,” Tyelpe said.  “Come on, let’s go back to my place and order dinner.”

Mairon exhaled shakily.  “Thanks again,” he managed.  “It’s been a pretty rough day.”

“I can tell.”  Tyelpe got up and held out a sympathetic hand for Mairon to take, then pulled him to his feet.  The brush of his fingers was warm, almost shockingly so.  Not like Melkor—cool hands, cool touch.  Mairon bit the inside of his cheek.  Why was he comparing Tyelpe to Melkor, of all people?

Outside, the snow was swirling madly.  It was impossible to see more than a foot or two in front of your face.  “Are you sure we can get back through this?” Mairon asked doubtfully.

“I know what I’m doing,” Tyelpe told him.  “I’m an architect—I have a good brain for city layouts.  And it’s not far.  But maybe we should hold hands, just to be safe?”

“Not a bad idea.”  What was he doing?  Why did the thought of holding hands with someone he’d just met send such a surprising shock of warmth roiling through his belly?  Slut, Melkor called him.  It used to be affectionate.  Mairon wasn’t sure if it was anymore; his boyfriend had grown so cold in recent years.  Well—he was a slut.  Had been.  True.  But he’d never—

Tyelpe was waiting, smiling, hand outstretched.  For fuck’s sake, it was just a hand.  Reaching out, Mairon took it in a firm grip.  It felt like a hand, to his absurd relief. 

For a little while, they just walked together, keeping close to the buildings on their side so that they could avoid losing their way in the heavily-falling snow.  But Mairon had never been very good at staying quiet, and he didn’t see much point in trying now.  “Architecture, huh,” he said, after a few moments.

“Yeah.  I majored in civil engineering in college.  What about you?”

“Me?”  It seemed so long ago now, like a faded, phantom dream.  “I majored in physics and graphic design.”  It was true, because that was how you lied: tell just as much of the truth as possible.  There was no need to lie about most things to Tyelpe, though he’d need to stop short of telling him anything that might let him guess who Mairon was.

“Ooh, that’s an interesting choice.  I definitely got tired of how many engineers sneered at the humanities.”

“Mmmhmm,” Mairon agreed.  “There’s a lot you can do, bringing together art and science.”

“There is,” Tyelpe agreed excitedly.  “My family’s always been big on that.”  They came to a crosswalk, the other side invisible in the blinding white, but the curb noticeable at Mairon’s feet.  At his side, Tyelpe paused, his voice fading away.  

“Family’s complicated,” Mairon tried.

“Yeah.  I love my family, but—yeah.”

He looked to the left and to the right.  “I don’t think there are going to be any cars on the road to look out for,” Mairon teased him.  

The wind had already whipped Tyelpe’s face to a pink glow, but he ducked his head in a way that suggested he would have blushed if he could have.  “Shut up.  It’s just one more block away.”

They walked in silence for the rest of the way.  It turned out not to be much farther, and Mairon was too occupied with shivering in his definitely-not-sufficiently warm coat.  It was designer (Melkor’s), but what it wasn’t was practical.  He was very relieved when Tyelpe stopped and buzzed himself into a doorway with a passcode, motioning to Mairon to follow him.  They went up a narrow flight of muddy stairs underneath a buzzing electric light.  On the third floor, Tyelpe paused and pulled out a set of keys with a fuzzy eight-pointed-star keychain dangling from them.  “Well, here we are,” he said, then unlocked the door, opened it, and stepped aside for Mairon to enter.

He hadn’t really known what to expect, but the grunginess of the stairway and the fact they were in downtown Chicago hadn’t really lifted those expectations.  He stepped inside and almost gasped, because it was like walking across the threshold from mundanity into something magical.

The apartment was small—in downtown Chicago that was pretty much a given—but it didn’t feel small.  A brightly colored rug on the floor and a cozy-looking couch occupied one corner, with the light wood of a bookshelf fencing it off from the “bedroom.”  There was a flat-screen TV sitting on the bookshelf, further enforcing the room divide that was so hard to make work in a studio like this.  The bed was tucked against the opposing wall, underneath a striking painting done in stark greys and reds; the bed itself was more neutral tones but somehow managed to look very welcoming, with pillows that were somehow just artfully disarranged enough, and a coffee table book lying neatly across one of them.  The apartment was also bright, because the entire wall was a window looking out on a now-very-snowcovered balcony.

The kitchen and dining “rooms” occupied the other side, nearer the door, walled off again with bookcases.  A charming little wooden table with a bowl of flowers on it stood in the dining area, and the kitchen was a tight little ring of gleaming modernity, with another painting on the wall, this one a much friendly affair of soft pastel purples and blues.

“Wow,” Mairon said, when he could speak.  “This is…I thought you said you were an architect, not an interior designer.”

Tyelpe grinned at him.  “We just had a conversation about the fluidity of talent,” he pointed out.  “Anyway, come in.  I doubt anywhere’s delivering, but I can offer you frozen pizza for dinner.”

With a grateful sigh, Mairon followed him in, dumping his bag underneath the table and stripping off his coat, shivering violently.  “Frozen pizza sounds perfect.  Thank you.  Where should I put this?”

“No problem.”  Tyelpe glanced at the coat.  “Just over the chair back should be fine.”  Mairon did so, and then collapsed into the next chair over wearily.

“Would you mind if I took a shower before eating, actually?  I am disgusting.”

“Go for it.  It’ll take a little while to preheat the oven and cook the pizza anyway.  Bathroom’s through there.  Do you need shampoo and stuff?”

“Shampoo and soap, yes,” Mairon said, halting.  “Can I?”

“Yeah, use mine.  There’s both in the shower.  I’ll get you some spare towels.”

“Thanks,” Mairon said gratefully.

The bathroom was also tiny but well-designed, and he stripped off his shirt, jeans, and briefs, folded them carefully and put them on the toilet before hopping into the shower.  He groaned gratefully as the hot water rushed over sore muscles—Tyelpe had a very powerful shower, almost on the knife edge of painful as it pounded into his bruised back and ass, but he needed it, after the day he’d had.

Humming quietly to himself, he found the shampoo and began to work it through his hair.  It smelled faintly, but not overpoweringly, of sandalwood, and the soap wasn’t scented at all.  Nothing like the shampoos that Melkor favored, and Mairon realized with a slight pang he hadn’t bought his own shampoo in literal years.  This was nice, though.  Muscles he hadn’t even realized he had were relaxing under the pleasure of the water.  His scalp tingled pleasantly.  He scrubbed himself with soap absolutely everywhere, getting off the detritus of travel, which always felt like an unpleasant kind of shell of dirt over him.

He got out of the shower, pleased and suddenly sleepy and a little hungry.  Spare towels, Tyelpe had said, so he poked his nose out the door and found that they had been left there, so he snagged them and began to rub himself down, not without another wince when he had to dry off his lower back.  Then he realized he’d left his pajamas in his bag under the chair, so he tied the towel around his waist and headed out into the main room, where Tyelpe was sitting at the dining table, reading something on a laptop.  The kitchen was filled with the pleasant smell of baking pizza.

“Oh—” Tyelpe looked up and then ducked his head again.  “Ah—I.”

“Left my pajamas in my bag,” Mairon told him, amused at his reaction.  

“Right.  Yeah.”  Tyelpe laughed and bit his lip in a way Mairon thought was almost unfairly cute.  He pushed some of his wet hair out of his eyes and instinctively found himself posing, enjoying the way Tyelpe’s eyes went round and his jaw slackened just a bit.  Still got it.  Come to think of it, it had been a while since he’d received such…personal attention.  And Melkor probably wouldn’t like it.  But what was the harm in a little light flirtation?

He bent down to dig through his bag and heard Tyelpe give a shocked gasp.  “Annatar—your back.”

Fuck.  He hadn’t even thought of that.  The bruises didn’t go all the way up his back—that would have been a problem given that Melkor routinely had him model backless outfits—but they went far enough up to be visible beneath the low-hanging towel.  Mind racing for an excuse, he stood up.  “Hm?  Oh, yeah.”  He laughed, keeping the pounding of his heart out of his voice.  “Looks bad, doesn’t it?”

“It looks terrible.  What happened?”

He took a moment to think.  Better than stumbling around and making it obvious it was a lie.  “I accidentally got in between a truck and the wall in a parking garage.  Sitting down has been interesting lately.”

“I’ll bet.  Jeez.”

“Don’t worry,” Mairon smirked. “I like a little pain now and then.”

He looked up, caught Tyelpe’s gaze, and deliberately flicked his tongue across his bottom lip.  A small voice in the back of his head noted that this was probably stupid, but he didn’t care.  They were snowed in.  He was a stranger.  He didn’t have any role to fill or responsibilities to keep track of.  And it was just a harmless little flirtation anyway.

“Do you,” Tyelpe echoed, sounding slightly helpless.  “Oh, the pizza’s ready,” he said hurriedly, as the oven dinged.

Mairon took the distraction as an opportunity to grab his pajamas and escape to the bathroom before his heart pounded out of his chest.  What was wrong with him?  He shut the door of the bathroom and leaned against it, still breathing fast.  He pulled on the pajamas—silky and decadent and a little too big for him, with a pattern of red flowers against the cream of the background, took another few deep breaths, folded the towels, and headed back out to the main room.

“I hope you like pepperoni,” Tyelpe said cheerfully, having apparently recovered his breath.  Hopefully, Mairon had also recovered his.  He took his seat at the table, wincing slightly.

“Love it.”

And he hadn’t eaten anything all day.  Nor had he had much to eat the day before, and he honestly could not remember the last time he’d been able to devour a pizza.  Models were supposed to eat healthily, and Mairon did like to cultivate a certain waifish look.  Although he sometimes thought he could stand to gain maybe ten pounds.  Whatever.  It was a snow day, so it didn’t count.  He grabbed a slice of pizza and was already stuffing it into his mouth when he saw that Tyelpe was giving him an amused look.

“What?” he said around the mouthful.

“I just—you’re very beautiful, I guess,” Tyelpe said awkwardly.  “But I’ve never seen anyone manage to eat pizza that messily.”

Mairon felt his cheeks going hot, and he reached for a napkin.  “I—uh,” he said.

“You’re hungry, it’s understandable.  Sorry.  I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

Wrinkling his nose, Mairon folded the slice of pizza in half.  “It’s fine, I’m the one who walked out half-dressed without warning you.”

Tyelpe choked slightly on his drink.  “Um.”  He scratched his head.  “Were you doing that on purpose?” he asked lightly.  The question seemed to hang in the air.

“Would you like me to have been doing it on purpose?” Mairon asked in a low voice.  Snow day.  Doesn’t count.

“Honestly?”  Tyelpe swallowed and leaned across the table.  “Yes.  I would.”

“Then I was.”  He got a smile for that.  The other man’s entire face crumpled up into something winning and sweet and wholesome, so different from the expressions Mairon was used to seeing on the father’s face that it went straight to his heart and twisted it up.  “But before we do anything about that, I really want to finish this pizza.  I’m starving.”

The smile turned into a laugh.  “Of course.  I was going to pull out the trundle bed, but the main bed is more comfortable, so if you’d rather just sleep in that, I don’t mind.”  With me was very obviously implicit.

Mairon grinned at him, stuffing the rest of his pizza slice into his mouth.  Then he exaggeratedly licked off his fingers and sucked on one of them, watching in avid amusement as Tyelpe’s eyes followed the motion.  He swirled his tongue around it a few extra times for good measure, then wiped his hand on his napkin and reached for another slice of pizza.

He could probably have eaten the whole pizza, but at least half a pizza and some soda went a fair way to assuaging the knot of hunger in his stomach.  He was still warm and a little sleepy, but he had some more energy now.  Tyelpe reached for his plate as he finished up.

“I’ll do the dishes, my dishwasher’s a little finicky,” he said.  “And there’s not a lot of room in the kitchen.”

Mairon blinked at him.  “Oh.  Right.  Thanks.”  When was the last time he hadn’t been the one to do the dishes?  Well—snow day.  It was almost dreamy, how good he felt.  Maybe he was dreaming.  He got up and went over to flop onto the bed, which was just as comfortable as he’d expected it to be.  He whimpered slightly at the pain in his ass and flipped over onto his front.  There was a small bookshelf built into the back of the bed and with interest he pulled himself up on his elbows and began to inspect the titles.

“Ooh, lots of Conan.  I love Conan.”  He pulled out one of the books and flipped through it idly.  “These illustrations are gorgeous.”

“Do you like them?  My brother did those.”  Tyelpe finished putting plates into the dishwasher and came over to the bed.  “Curufin.  We’re a huge family of fantasy nerds and artists,” he grinned.  

“Are those his paintings on the bed and in the kitchen?”

“The one in the kitchen is.  The one above my bed is my eldest brother’s effort.  He doesn’t really—paint anymore now, but…” Tyelpe looked away, and Mairon remembered the oldest brother had been in a car accident a few years ago and had badly injured his hand.

“It’s fantastic,” he said quickly.  “Kind of eerie to have over the bed, what’s it of?”

“Supposedly it’s a volcano?  Once he said it was inspired by a dream, but he’s been a little cagey about it.”

“You sure are a talented bunch.  How many brothers do you have anyway?”

Tyelpe wrinkled his nose.  “Seven,” he sighed.  “I’m certain Dad wanted a girl, but he and Mom never managed it.”

Mairon whistled, although he already knew entirely too much about the Finwions.  “That is a lot of family.”

“What about you?  Do you have siblings?”

Mairon shook his head.  “There was just me and my dad.”  His stomach twisted at the thought that he had owed his father a phone call for about a year now, but he was always so busy.  And after their last argument—well.  It was complicated.  And it was a snow day, so he didn’t have to think about it now.  He smiled and leaned closer to Tyelpe, enjoying watching the other man’s pupils dilate slightly, enjoying feeling someone else’s warmth this close.  It was oddly easy.  “You’re not the only one who’s a fantasy nerd,” he said delightedly.  “In college, I did—a great deal of cosplay.  You should see my sexy Thulsa Doom.”

Tyelpe snickered.  “I suppose you’re the type to play wizards in tabletop, too.”

Mairon winked.  “You know it.”  He leaned forward a little.  “Let me guess,” he said in a low, inviting voice, “you always play virtuous barbarians.”

To his delight, Tyelpe blushed.  “Not always,” he said, sounding a little defensive.  “I usually play a smith, actually.” 

“You have my respect.  That’s not easy to pull off without being underpowered.”  When was the last time he’d played tabletop?  Uneasily, Mairon thought it might be back before he’d started dating Melkor.  Or…no, he had played since they’d started dating, just not—often.  He shoved the thought firmly down.  He didn’t need to be thinking about Melkor right now.

Tyelpe bumped his shoulder into Mairon’s.  “You’ve had a tough day, right?”

“Hm?  Yes.  Pretty much about as tough a day as you can get, I guess.”

“So, do you want to watch the original Conan movie?  Seeing as you’re such a fantasy nerd.”  His entire shoulder was warm along Mairon’s entire side. 

“You haven’t it watched it too many times yourself?”

“Nah.”  Tyelpe leaned back against the pillows of his bed, his eyes bright.  “Only about twelve.  I could definitely do a thirteenth.”

“A thirteenth, hm?” purred Mairon.  Everything felt easy, tonight.  Easier than it had in a long time.  “I’d love to.”

“Great.  Couch or bed?”

“Hmmm…” Mairon pretended to consider, then looked up at Tyelpe from beneath his eyelashes.  “Bed.”

Tyelpe took his hand suddenly and brought it to his lips.  “Your wish is my command.”  Then he went red and dropped it right away.  Mairon blinked at him in sheer astonishment, something about the juxtaposition drawing him onward to greater heights, and he flopped backward into Tyelpe’s lap, just slightly overdramatically exclaiming, “Please take me, lord barbarian.”

This time Tyelpe’s face flamed bright red.  “You—I need to get up to get the movie.”

Mairon bit his lip, smiled, and wriggled a little.  Then, figuring he’d made his point, he rolled back up.  “Of course.”

He found himself eying Tyelpe’s butt as the other man got off the bed to go over, turn the TV around on the book-case, and dig the DVD out from somewhere.

“Surely you don’t still have a DVD player?” Mairon needled lazily, mostly enjoying the view.

“I have an Xbox,” Tyelpe responded hotly.  “Shut up.”

“Mmm.”

The movie started playing as Tyelpe got back onto the bed.  Mairon smiled to himself and tucked himself firmly against Tyelpe’s side.  He had probably seen it as many times as the other man had, but it had definitely been a few years, and there was something very comforting about it.  Once again, he had a strange, floating sensation, as if he’d come unmoored, as if he were suddenly living in an alternate reality.

God, he’d forgotten how much the gladiator fights were a turn-on.  He’d forgotten how much of a turn-on this whole fucking movie was.  Mairon soon found himself squirming against Tyelpe.

“Hey,” Tyelpe laughed.  “I’m trying to watch the movie.”

“There was a suggestion of other activities, too,” Mairon pointed out, and Tyelpe laughed again.

“Fantasy gets you hot and bothered, I see.  No wonder you did a sexy Thulsa Doom cosplay.”  He turned sideways and brought soft fingers up to trace the shell of Mairon’s ear, lightly brushing his cartilage piercings, then the line of his jaw.  It suddenly became very difficult to breathe.  “God, you’re beautiful,” Tyelpe murmured.  “I promise I wasn’t trying to pick you up in that train station.”

“I know,” Mairon whispered back.  “You were just trying to help me out.”  Sudden tears pricked at the back of his eyes, and it occurred to him that Annatar could let them fall.  There was nothing stopping him, so he did.

“I didn’t mean to make you upset!”  Tyelpe sounded genuinely concerned; Mairon reached out to lace their fingers together.

“No, no, it’s just been a really long day,” he said.  On screen, Conan was running away from wild dogs.

“It sure sounded like it.  I’m really sorry you had to put with that.  Do you…just want to go to sleep?”

Mairon gave him a curious look.  “You’re just pure sugar with sugar on top, aren’t you?”

He got an exasperated look back.  “No.  I’m really not.  I just believe in kindness so I work to cultivate it, it’s not really a natural state.”

As Fëanor’s youngest child, no, it wouldn’t be, would it?  “That’s…impressive,” Mairon said slowly, because Annatar could be honest, if he wanted.  “Not something I suspect I’d ever be capable of.  I’m too impatient.”

Tyelpe snorted out a laugh.  “I’m not a saint, you clown.  Unlike you, I’ve been having a perfectly fine day, and now an incredibly attractive man has just dropped into my bed like a gift.”

“A gift, hm?”  Mairon leaned forward and nipped delicately at Tyelpe’s neck, getting a breathy exclamation and a wriggle.  Feeling daring, he slipped a hand up Tyelpe’s shirt, just to cup at his waist, and Tyelpe moaned softly.  

“Can I kiss you?” he asked, his eyes opening suddenly.  Mairon could feel him trembling, but the question surprised him.

“I have my hand up your shirt,” he said stupidly.

Tyelpe rolled his eyes.  “I don’t know you very well, and some people have unusual hangups.”

Another heartbeat.  “…yeah, you can kiss me,” Mairon managed, trying to figure out why his heart was thumping so absurdly loudly in his ears.

“Excellent.”  The next moment, Tyelpe’s mouth was hot on his, and their tongues were tangling together.  Any lingering concern Mairon had had that somehow all these questions meant that Tyelpe wasn’t interested were dispersed as the other man practically devoured his mouth.  Mairon moaned, his hand tightening on Tyelpe’s waist.  Tyelpe’s hands were in his hair, twisting and tugging, just on the very edge of pain, and that took Mairon from half-mast right to full hardness, his cock pressing through the thin silk of his pajamas up against Tyelpe’s jean-clad front.

After a moment Tyelpe pulled back, gasping.  “Can we get naked?”

“You don’t have to keep asking all these questions,” Mairon told him bluntly.  “I don’t have any weird hangups.”

Tyelpe paused and a surprisingly shrewd look flashed into his eyes.  “I don’t have to,” he agreed. “Do you want me to?”

Mairon opened his mouth and then shut it again.  “Does it matter?” he asked lightly and realized immediately after the words left it mouth that they had been the wrong thing to say.  He had simply been so overset by the idea of Tyelpe caring about what he wanted.  Foolish, foolish.

Tyelpe rolled up on one elbow.  “What the fuck?” he demanded.  “Yes, Annatar, it matters.  Of course it matters.”

Blowing out his breath shakily, Mairon looked away.  “I—I just meant, I’m pretty subby in bed,” he said, spitting out something true rapidly to cover his confusion.

“That’s all well and good, but I’m not going to have sex with someone I barely know if I can’t be sure we’re on the same page,” Tyelpe told him.  He sounded—angry.

“I’m sorry!”  God, he was too tired for this.  He just wanted to have one quiet day where he didn’t fuck everything up.

“Those bruises…” Tyelpe said quietly, and Mairon blinked in confusion and then sudden rising dread.  He could not let Tyelpe know where they’d come from.  Cheater.  He needed to get up and walk away from this mess right now.  Melkor was going to kill him, and if he did this, he’d deserve it.  But—just for this once.  Just for tonight.  Couldn’t he be Annatar Aulendil?  Annatar wasn’t a cheater, Mairon thought quickly—Annatar—perhaps Annatar was really the person that he strongly suspected Tyelpe thought he was.  Perhaps Annatar had a boyfriend who beat him when he didn’t want it.  It might not be enough to get Tyelpe back in bed, but it might be.  Mairon desperately wanted those gentle hands on himself again.

“I…” he said, letting hesitation rise to Annatar’s tongue.  

He saw Tyelpe’s eyes darken with concern.  “May I see them?” he asked gently.  “It’s—it’s—I totally understand if you don’t want me to—”

Annatar would go limp here, and it was so easy to be Annatar.  Mairon went limp, pressing his face into his arms.  Mutely, he hiked up the top of his pajama shirt and tugged down his pajama pants.  

Tyelpe looked down at him.  “Oh, God,” he said softly.  “Is that a handprint?  Annatar, is that—”

Annatar nodded jerkily.  “I didn’t want you to know,” he said thickly, pulling his pajamas back into place.  “I can’t be anything to you—I have to go back when the snow ends.”  Tell as much of the truth as you can.  It’ll make the lie more believable.

“Baby…” Tyelpe’s voice sounded heartbroken.  Wrecked.  “You don’t.  You don’t have to go back to someone who treats you like that.”

Biting his lip, Annatar turned over and forced a smile.  “It’s complicated,” he said.  “I don’t really want to talk about it?”

Tyelpe sighed, and Annatar wondered if this was when he got kicked out.  Or, if not that, at least banished to the trundle bed.  But Tyelpe leaned down and laced their fingers together again.  “This is probably the stupidest thing I have ever done,” he murmured.  “Let me make you feel good, baby, and we can—talk about it in the morning.”

Annatar groaned, then nodded.

“But—let me ask questions.  Let me know what you want.  Please?”

Taking a shuddering breath, Annatar nodded.  “I’ll try.”

“Okay.  Okay.  You still want this, right?”

That got a smile.  “Yeah.  I thought I’d fucked it up beyond repair.”

“Good.  I mean—good that you still want it, not that—”  Tyelpe coughed and cut himself off, then bent forward and brushed a light kiss at the top of Annatar’s hairline.  “Okay.  What do you like?”

What did Annatar like?  Not pain—you couldn’t like pain and be in Annatar’s situation.  Touching, though—hands all over him.  Mairon wanted that, too—Melkor didn’t really touch him tenderly anymore, and that was tiring—no.  Snow day.  You’re Annatar now.  “I like being touched,” he managed, pulling himself out of his brief reverie.  “Everywhere.  I like fingers in my hair.  I like things in my mouth.”

Tyelpe promptly put a hand in his hair and began to stroke through it.  “Like this?”  It was softer, gentler than anyone had petted him in a long, long time.  Annatar’s eyes fluttered shut, but his erection didn’t flag. 

“Just like that.”

“Do you just want touching?  Do you want more?”  A pause, and Annatar could hear Tyelpe’s grin in the next question.  “What exactly would you like in your mouth?”

Annatar hummed.  “Fingers, definitely,” he replied smoothly.  

Tyelpe chuckled.  “Just fingers?  I can work with that.”

“I didn’t say just fingers.”  He paused.  He wasn’t certain he could comfortably take penetration right now, and while he might get off on the pain, Annatar wouldn’t.  “I don’t think—I’m not sure what you were thinking, but I don’t think I can have anything inside me elsewhere.”

Nodding seriously, Tyelpe ran his fingers across the bottom of Annatar’s lips.  “We don’t have to have penetrative intercourse at all, if you don’t want to.  Or—” He bit his lip.  “I’ve been known to enjoy having a cock in me.”

  “Hgkh,” Annatar said, and his cock twitched.  “I—I’d like that.”

“Oh, would you?”  Tyelpe pushed two gentle fingers into his mouth, and Annatar moaned at the intrusive sensation, lathing his tongue around them.  “Yeah, just like that,” Tyelpe murmured, petting his head.  “And you said you’d be okay with oral?”

Annatar nodded eagerly, sucking Tyelpe’s fingers down and smiling up at him.  God, that face.  God, that crumpled-up crooked smile.  He thought he could drown in it.  Tyelpe moved his fingers a little, and petted Annatar’s hair.  “You’re really good at that, aren’t you?” he murmured breathlessly.

“Let me get your jeans off and I’ll show you?” Annatar replied hopefully.

“I—yes please.”  Tyelpe leaned back against the bed, letting his legs fall open invitingly.  Annatar knelt between them and slowly rubbed his hands up the inside of those thighs.  Tyelpe groaned softly, lifting his hips to let Annatar work off his jeans and boxers.  He was hard, his cock slim and a little smaller than Melkor’s, beautiful and perfect like everything about him.

“Mmmm…gorgeous,” Annatar told him, then leaned forward and took Tyelpe slowly into his mouth.  Tyelpe made another pleading noise, and his hand stroked through Annatar’s hair, slowly, though he didn’t tighten it.  He was so tender.  He wasn’t even moving, just hitching his hips slightly as he gasped softly.

Annatar swallowed him down as much as possible, his nose pressing into Tyelpe’s belly for an instant, and then he behind to move slowly up and down.  “Oh, fuck,” Tyelpe breathed.  “Damn.  Annatar, that’s so good—baby, that’s so good, oh fuck—“

He tasted of salt and sweat, and Annatar was surprised at how easy it was to take him like this, to spread him apart and open him up, as the snow fell softly outside.  “Hey,” Tyelpe said, gasping, “Hey, if you’re going to do that—why don’t we—there’s lube in the bedside table—”

Annatar’s cock twitched at the thought, and he pulled back for a moment, looking at Tyelpe’s beautiful face, the flush that was rising on his cheeks, the sweat beading across it.  Unlike Melkor’s now usually forbidding countenance, Tyelpe’s was open and pleading, desperate and excited.  It was obvious what he was feeling; Annatar didn’t have to guess.  “Yeah,” Annatar agreed breathlessly.  “Lube.  Yeah, right.  Right.”

He scrambled across the bed and dug through the bedside table, finding a large quantity of keys, jewelry, dice, and other little bits and bobs.  “You have—a lot of stuff in here.”

“The lube should be in the top layer, Annatar, please—”

“Someone needs to organize your drawers,” laughed Annatar, but he scooped up the lube—and a condom, for good measure—and flopped back on the bed between Tyelpe’s legs.  He coated two fingers with it and looked down.  “How many?” he asked, biting his lip.  “I—haven’t done this very often from this end, so tell me if I do something you don’t like?”

“Let’s start with two—I doubt I’ll need much preparation but it never hurts to be certain.”  There was a pause as Annatar reached out, and then Tyelpe tipped his chin up to look him in the eye.  “Thank you for asking,” he said quietly.

The intent was obvious—the manipulation almost clumsy.  But Annatar still felt heat rising in his cheeks and he blinked and realized that the tender yet intense quality of Tyelpe’s gaze was going right to his cock again.  “Mmmwelcome,” he managed and then he got Tyelpe to stop looking at him the only way he could think of, which was to push two fingers inside him and crook them so that Tyelpe’s eyes screwed up, and he gasped softly.

“Good?” Annatar asked, doing a fair approximation of what he usually did on himself.

“Mmmhmm.  Like that—oh—ah—yeah—”

Tyelpe’s eyes had fallen shut, and there was a lovely flush across the top of his cheekbones.  He was so beautiful like this, writhing on the sheets with Annatar knuckle-deep inside him.  How long had it been since someone else had willingly—given themselves into his hands like this?  Not—not that he wanted it, exactly, Mairon thought.  He was perfectly happy to be the one giving himself to someone else.  The snow, though, falling, outside—snow day.  Annatar.  Safe in an almost-stranger’s arms.  Or at least between an almost-stranger’s legs.  Even if he had seen that stranger’s face on the cover of a number of magazines before he stopped modelling.

Those long-lashed eyes flickered open and Tyelpe smiled lazily.  “I think I’m ready, baby.”  He reached out and traced a finger along Annatar’s jaw.

Annatar blinked at him.  “R-Ready?  Oh—oh.”  He pulled his fingers out of Tyelpe and paused to roll on the condom and line himself up.  He glanced up to see the snow swirling, and it encouraged him to press inside, slowly, because it was a slow night.  Tyelpe whined and pushed back against him, all tight slick heat clenching around him.

“Fuck,” Annatar gasped.  “Fuck, baby, you feel so good.”

Strangled noise.  “Right back at you, sweetheart.”

Tyelpe hooked his heels behind Mairon, and Mairon gasped and laughed at his insistence.  He let Tyelpe pull him down until they were pressed against one another chest to chest.  Tyelpe kissed him, and Mairon kissed him back, moving lazily inside him, barely even thrusting.  It still felt so good—his skin was warm and prickling all over, and Tyelpe was making soft, pleased little noises and moving his hips.

And then Tyelpe’s fingers rubbed across the back of Mairon’s neck—and it was warmth-safety-bliss-BLISS—Mairon moaned loudly into Tyelpe’s mouth and somehow managed not to come right then and there.  “Not fair,” he gasped.  “If I’m not fucking you hard enough, you can just say so—”

Tyelpe laughed delightedly and circled his hands lower down.  “Got a thing for your neck?”

“Gods,” Mairon moaned.  “Yes.”  He used to love it when Melkor held him down and choked him, but he had forgotten—or maybe had never realized—that a gentle touch to the back of his neck could elicit the same response.  “Mmm, baby,” he mumbled, “Tyelpe.”  He stroked his hands over Tyelpe’s lovely thighs, massaging at them, listening to those lovely, lovely little noises.  He didn’t want to fuck him hard or fast, didn’t want this to be over.

On a snow day, you could make love to somebody, couldn’t you?  

That wasn’t what this was.  That couldn’t be what this was.  But he wanted so badly to pretend.

“You feel really good, Annatar,” murmured Tyelpe, rocking his hips.  He kissed Mairon again, and Mairon could drown in those plush lips, in the hot slick feeling of Tyelpe clenching around him—drown happily, even.  Something inside him seemed to unspool, to crack, and his mind offered him a set of insane, impossible pictures—lying here, curled around this man—this stranger—this person he didn’t even know, except he was inside him right now—while Tyelpe petted his hair.  While they watched all the stupid Conan movies and the even stupider spin-offs.  While Mairon sketched designs and outfits with clever themes and physics-based magic tricks, with jewels and gems wherever he wanted them.  While Tyelpe leaned down and said something in that hushed, cheerful voice, something that sounded like he thought Mairon’s stupid designs were—were cool, beautiful, not tired and boring or too crazy to ever work.

It was a fantasy, and he knew it—even if somehow there was a way for him to break up—to leave—to be with Tyelpe, it wouldn’t be different.  Relationships started out exciting and then they became less exciting and took work.  That was how things worked.  Didn’t stop him from wanting, though.

“Please,” Tyelpe gasped, “Need you to touch me, Annatar, I need—”

“Right, yes, of course—”  He slipped a hand between them and onto Tyelpe’s hot, lovely cock, stroking him up and down softly as he kept up the pattern of lazy thrusts.

“Oh, like that, just like that,” Tyelpe groaned.  Then, “do you need anything from me?  Is this good?”

“So good,” Mairon whined.  “So good—I’m getting close—” Gods, he couldn’t help it, with Tyelpe squirming and clenching around his cock like that, no matter how much he wanted to make it last longer.

“Me too,” gulped Tyelpe. He rocked back more insistently, and now they were moving faster, harder, hard enough to make the bed creak, and it didn’t matter that there wasn’t any pain or any restraints or games—it was literally the best sex Mairon had had in years.  What the fuck?

Snow day.  It had to be.

“Ah—ahhhh—”  he cried out, and Tyelpe moaned in answer and then yelled, “Oh, Anna—tar—”, contracting around him as he came across Mairon’s hand.

White like snow swirled across Mairon’s vision, and heat pulsed through his body as he followed Tyelpe helplessly, then collapsed on top of him with a gasp and a final moan.

He lay like that, trying to get his breath back, while Tyelpe petted his head and murmured things into his ear that made Mairon want to cry for some reason.  Things like, “that was amazing,” and “you did so good” and worst of all “you’re amazing.”  The last one stung enough to get him to roll upright hurriedly.

“I—um, I should get rid of the condom,” he babbled.  “Should I throw it away in the bathroom?”

“Yeah, that’s fine,” Tyelpe said, sounding sleepy.  “Then come back here so I can cuddle you.  If you want to as well?”

Oh, gods.  He was so—good.  “Yes,” Mairon choked out, glancing outside at the snow swirling ever thicker at the window.  “Just a minute.”  He tied off the condom and chucked it in the trash, then washed his hands and snagged a damp washcloth for good measure out of the shower, returning to see Tyelpe yawning and look up at him with a red flush still plain on his handsome face and chest.

“I thought you might need cleaned up a bit,” Mairon offered, holding out the washcloth.

“Thoughtful of you—I am rather sticky.”  He lay back and let Mairon clean his stomach and chest, shivering a little as Mairon went to clean the oil off of his thighs as well.  As Mairon started to rise, Tyelpe made a sad little noise.  “Can I get a kiss?  I like your kisses.”

I like your kisses.  It was almost enough to make the dam break, to make Mairon go down on his knees and beg to just stay here, even after the snow day ended, no matter how stupid and irresponsible and a complete mess he looked.  The only thing that stopped him was thinking, miserably, of the pain he’d be putting Melkor through (not to mention the pain he’d be putting Tyelpe through if he actually agreed—which he probably wouldn’t because this was just a one night stand anyway).  So he stood, trembling, for a moment, then said in a low voice, “Yeah,” and bent down and kissed Tyelpe once on the lips and once on the forehead.

Tyelpe made a snuggly little noise, which was adorable.  Then he put out a hand, laid it on Mairon’s hip, and tugged.  “Hurry up and put that away.  Wanna cuddle.”

“Okay.”  Mairon had to blink really fast because he didn’t actually want to start crying now, if he could help it.  He went and put the washcloth back in the bathroom, then headed back into the main room, collected his pajamas from the floor and pulled them on.  Tyelpe made another small, insistent noise, and Mairon clambered back into the bed beside him, where the other man promptly curled up at his side, head on Mairon’s shoulder, arms around his torso.

It was a gesture full of implicit trust, and it made Mairon turn his head and kiss Tyelpe again, right at the top of his forehead at his hairline.  Tyelpe actually wriggled against him and kissed his cheek.  “Mmm, you’re soft,” he mumbled sleepily.  Post-coital bliss had apparently hit him very strongly, and Mairon was helpless to resist him in any way.  Daringly, he began to stroke Tyelpe’s hair, and Tyelpe yawned and mumbled something, sounding very pleased.

Snow day, Mairon thought, as he let himself drift off into that delicious warmth.  A perfect ending to a perfect snow day.  And nothing could take that away.

* * *

When he woke up, sunlight was shining directly into his eyes.  Mairon stared at it, his stomach twisting up into knots.  Tyelpe was asleep beside him still, his face still and very peaceful.  He didn’t look as conventionally attractive like this—softer and squishier and more real, somehow.  Certainly more real than the magazine covers Mairon remembered with his face on them.  His black hair lay tangled behind him on the pillow.

But it wasn’t a snow day anymore, and Mairon couldn’t stay.  He needed to get back to the train station and—he took a look outside, to see already that the city was moving again.  Taxis filled the streets, thronging behind snow plows.  Just down at the end two people were arguing over the inevitable fender-bender.  Everything was moving again.  He had to go back to Melkor.

He got up quietly, pausing only momentarily to drop a very light kiss onto the top of Tyelpe’s head, and went about the apartment gathering up his things.  He’d preferred to have taken his time, but he didn’t know what would happen if Tyelpe woke up.  He belonged to the snow day; he didn’t belong in Mairon’s life the rest of the time, and Mairon’s chest tightened with anxiety at the thought of having to face a conversation with him today.  He couldn’t.  His hands shook at the thought.

In a final fit of insanity, he scribbled down his cell phone number and slipped it behind the Conan DVD.  Tyelpe probably wouldn’t even find it.  And if he did, he probably wouldn’t realize what it was anyway.  It was just—one final nod to Snow Day.

That was all.

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He wasn’t in a good mood when he finally, exhaustedly, opened the door to the apartment he shared with Melkor.  And he certainly wasn’t in a good enough mood to deal with his boyfriend’s immediate scowl, when he said, “Hey, babe,” and tried to head for his room.

“Why the hell haven’t you been responding to any of my texts?” Melkor demanded, standing up so violently he nearly knocked the chair over.

“Have you been texting me?”  Mairon rubbed a hand through his hair.  “My phone ran out of charge and I forgot the charger.”

“Of course I’ve been texting you.” Melkor loomed over him.  “Where the hell have you been?”

“Melkor, I’m very tired, it’s been a hellish day—few days—” Fuck, what a slip of the tongue.

“And I’ve been worried sick.  You didn’t text, you didn’t call—”

“I told you, my phone was dead and I was stuck—what did you expect me to do, call from a pay phone in the fucking empty train station when I didn’t have any change?” The rejoinder came out too irritable.  Melkor had every right to be concerned, but Mairon just wanted to sleep, and he didn’t like the way Melkor was now backing him against the wall.

“You’ve got quite the tongue in your head,” his boyfriend told him darkly, but it didn’t spark the same roiling desire in him that it once had.  Not now, not when he was so tired and could still feel Tyelpe’s soft hands on him—

“Look.  Can we give it a rest?” he asked flatly.  “I’m too tired.  I’ll fuck you tomorrow, okay?”

Melkor’s powerful hand encircled his wrist.  “Don’t you think you owe me something for the worry you put me through?” he asked.

Owe you? echoed Annatar’s voice in Mairon’s head.  No, I don’t owe you, if it hadn’t been for Tyelpe I would’ve been sleeping in a train station all night!

“Babe,” he said exhaustedly, instead.  “Please.  I’m just exhausted, I need—”  Melkor’s grip actually tightened, and he gasped with pain.

“That’s what you like, isn’t it?” Melkor asked thickly.  “Come on, precious, we’ll both feel better afterwards.”

He—he’d never actually tried to deny Melkor like this, had he? “I don’t want to,” Mairon said, the words choking and strange in his throat.  “I—”

“Yes, you do,” Melkor told him firmly.  “Stop being difficult.  I know what you want, just let me give it to you.”

Better than I do?  “Aman,” Mairon blurted out suddenly, the safe word he’d never once used before rising to his lips before he thought. “Aman, Aman, Melkor—Jesus.”

Melkor dropped his wrist and stepped back.  “You think you need a safeword outside the bedroom?” he asked.  “What, you expected me to fucking rape you?  What the hell is wrong with you?”

He left and shut the door behind him.  Mairon slid slowly to the ground, breathing hard, tears pricking the inside of his eyes.  What the fuck was wrong with him?

He stayed on the floor in a heap for a few minutes, exhausted, thoughts buzzing, and then he got up mechanically, dug out the extra phone charger, and plugged in his phone.  There.  One disaster remedied, at least.  He stared at it as it turned on slowly.  He should probably check his messages.  Most of them would be from Melkor, but there might be one or two others he should respond to.

Sure enough, as soon as the phone finished booting up, a slew of notifications filled the screen.  Mairon frowned in frustration, sliding open his texts and not bothering to actually read the increasingly frantic texts from Melkor.  Not much point, since he was home now anyway, and it would just stress him out and make him feel guilty.

As he’d suspected, there weren’t many others—just one question about doing a shoot for Vogue and one green unread notification from a number he didn’t recognize.  Frowning, he opened the conversation and his lungs seemed to seize up.

hey this is Tyelpe I got your note.  did you get home okay?

He had half a response typed out before he remembered he couldn’t.  Because it wasn’t a snow day anymore.  Mairon pressed his face into his arms and wept, the phone clutched tightly in one hand.

* * *

He kept getting texts.  He hadn’t responded to any of them, so why did he keep getting them?  And yet none of them even really seemed to require a response.

>I love my family but Thanksgivings are too big

>haha look at this turkey

[Image attachment of Fëanor himself frowning down at a very large and very burned turkey.]

>we went out to eat.

A few days later…

>look I made a snowman!

[Image attachment of Tyelpe taking a selfie with a lumpy snowman dressed in a too-long blue scarf with white Stars of David on it, fluttering in the wind.]

>my dad talked me into modeling again :/

[Image attachment of Tyelpe in a tailored suit, wearing a tapered coat that turns into artful sheer ribbons near the bottom.]  

Mairon’s breath caught when he saw that, and to his horror, he had his hand halfway down his jeans before he caught himself.  He couldn’t do that.  Tyelpe hadn’t consented to it.  Also, he thought, his brain catching up, Melkor would kill him.

What he could do, though, was sketch.  He scrambled over to the desk, grabbed his sketchbook, and put pencil to paper.

It was effortless.  It shouldn’t be effortless.  He hadn’t been able to design things in years, and Melkor had told him it was a waste of time anyway.  Maybe it still was, but Mairon found he wanted to, wanted to come up with something that would suit Tyelpe, that would make him look as beautiful as he did in this photo.  No, Mairon thought, with a surge of wild pride, fuck Melkor, fuck Fëanor, he might not be a better fashion designer than either of them, but he could design for Tyelpe.

He sketched and sketched, page after page, and fell asleep with the sketchbook under his pillow.

>brother’s boyfriend proposed, brother #2 is begging to write their song for the wedding and it’s just a madhouse around here

That made Mairon think of Tyelpe in a wedding outfit, and oh, he knew that was dangerous as hell, but he couldn’t stop himself from drawing it.  He could have red hair again.  He could put himself in a dress that trailed on the floor on one side and came up to reveal high thigh on the other, something created from stiff fabric and wire, white but with the suggestion of flames from the shape of the low top of it, which he’d probably secure with a corset, sheathing himself inside.

Tyelpe could wear—Mairon smirked to himself and smudged in a line of fur along the daintier, more traditional lines of the dress he was giving Tyelpe.  He opened the bodice more and made it dip down to the line of his stomach.  A barbarian outfit for a virtuous barbarian, or the suggestion of one.

He thought Tyelpe would like it, and he nearly sent a picture—he did snap a casual photo of it, but at the last minute he just saved it to his photo roll and shoved the notebook under his pillow.

Somehow, he caught himself adding to the sketches whenever Tyelpe sent him a text.  A text about an office disagreement at the water cooler made him pen a suit like the picture that Tyelpe had sent of his latest modeling foray, but he made the colors dark reds and browns and then somehow it turned into a kind of autumn fey king inspired piece.  A text about the Conan RPG crossover with one of the most popular trading card games—apparently something that had Tyelpe very angry indeed for reasons Mairon couldn’t quite discern—led to an outfit inspired by one of the main characters of said trading card game.  Damn, Tyelpe would look good in a cloak.

And he sent it.  Without thinking, after all his previous care, after months of silence, months of taking pictures to the camera roll, staring longingly at the texts, and doing nothing—he simply took the picture and pressed send.  As if it were nothing.  As if it were easy.  As soon as he had, he wanted to delete it, wanted to call back the moment before.  His hands were shaking, and his vision was blurred.  He stared at the phone for ten minutes, the damning picture just sitting there, the first indication that Tyelpe hadn’t had an entirely wrong number.

He put his phone away.  Perhaps Tyelpe wouldn’t respond.

His heart started to calm after half an hour.  After an hour, the cold sweat was starting to die down.  He wouldn’t do something like that again, he told himself, exhaling shakily.  

The phone vibrated, and he nearly jumped out of his chair, pulling it out.  It was probably Melkor.  Or someone texting about a delivery.  Or—

>It’s beautiful.

>Are you a designer?

No.  There were tears welling up in Mairon’s eyes for some reason.  He wasn’t a designer, of course.  His designs were nowhere near good enough for that.  He knew very well that he shouldn’t respond.  Up till now, he could chalk this whole thing up to one day and maybe some temporary insanity.  But if he responded…

>No.  Not really.  I just doodle in my free time.

>You should be.  If you want to.

Fuck.  Fuck.  

>I’m not good enough.

A long, long pause.

>I don’t really think it’s about good enough, but if we want to use it as a metric, yes, you are, and I would know.

He would, Mairon thought, and he found that his fist was balled up and pressed to his mouth.  He couldn’t keep the conversation up.  He certainly couldn’t look like he was fishing for something.

>Well, thanks.

>I’d love to see more, if you feel comfortable showing me.  Please don’t feel pressured, though.

He shouldn’t respond, Mairon thought again, hopelessly, but there was no way he could have stopped himself from typing, I might have some more for you later <3

There was a brief pause and then, <3.

It didn’t mean anything, Mairon thought—it couldn’t.  And he told himself firmly he didn’t want it to, either.

* * *

It wouldn’t be polite to ghost Tyelpe again.  Particularly not after he hadn’t even said anything about the first time.  The time he hadn’t been supposed to find Mairon’s number (but then why had Mairon left it with him?) He was so damn persistent, but Mairon couldn’t keep himself from checking his texts, almost religiously.  A lot of them were still from Melkor.

Mairon hated the way his stomach tightened when he got a new text from Melkor.  He knew it was guilt, even though he wasn’t doing anything wrong, at least not anymore.  He’d made one mistake, taken one snow day away from everything.  But the texts he was exchanging with Tyelpe now—well, there were little hearts all of them, he admitted.  But that was just a thing you did with texts, you ended them in hearts.  Lots of people did it.  It was—it was flair.  Mairon used to end all his texts in hearts, before he started dating Melkor.

He and Tyelpe chatted about stupid, nerdy things.  A lot of Conan talk.  Tyelpe was apparently writing fanfiction, and he was embarrassed about it.  No, I won’t share unless it’s finished.  Mairon didn’t push.  It made warmth rise in his chest just to imagine a pink flush across Tyelpe’s gorgeous high cheekbones.

And Mairon couldn’t stop designing.  How had he ever stopped, he wondered.  So what if they were crap?  It filled him with an old, wild joy he’d nearly forgotten how to have.  Sketchbook on sketchbook piled up inside a shoebox in his closet, hidden underneath a pile of old photo albums.

Winter faded slowly.  He spent Christmas on vacation with Melkor in a fancy resort in the Caribbean.  It was bright and hot and sunny every day, and Mairon couldn’t stop the chill of guilt that went through him every time he woke and instinctively turned towards the window, wishing for snow.  Melkor paid for everything; Mairon spent his days modeling and looking pretty, his nights reading Conan fanfiction on his phone while Melkor slept beside him.  He was exhausted.  He told himself he wasn’t trying to find Tyelpe’s; he wouldn’t even know if any of it was Tyelpe’s.  But he was stalking the Thulsa Doom/Conan tag a little too thirstily, and he knew it.

If he was distant sometimes, Melkor didn’t seem to notice, and Mairon contented himself by deciding he was worrying over nothing.  He had just made a new friend, that was all.  It wasn’t as if he was swapping dick pics with the guy or anything.  And if he could still remember the way Tyelpe felt underneath him, melting into the bed, and if he maybe spent a little bit too much time there in his head when he was fucking Melkor, well—he was tired.

After Christmas, there was a whirlwind of different gigs.  Mairon always hated January.  It was grey and horrible, and this year it felt even greyer.  He felt like a zombie whenever he wasn’t on his phone.  Tyelpe sent him updates on his brother’s wedding; even he seemed kind of tired.

>They’re talking about eloping.  Dad is just impossible.

Mairon could imagine, and he smirked to himself at the thought of how Fëanor would lose his mind if his eldest son ran off with his boyfriend.  Mairon sighed.  He used, a little guiltily, to imagine getting married himself, but it wasn’t Melkor’s thing, not really.  And what would be the point?  None of his family would come.  Gay sluts like Mairon weren’t built for being married.

> I think Brother #2 might be seeing someone too

Mairon didn’t think before he responded.  > What about you?

He could have kicked himself.  There was a long pause.  > I’m not ready to date anyone right now.

Oh God.  Was he reading too much into that?  He almost certainly was.  It wasn’t like Tyelpe had said anyone else.

February spun away; March brought flowers and new growth.  Tyelpe’s brother’s wedding was set for August, which caused more drama.  Too close to the Big Four, Mairon supposed, though Tyelpe didn’t really say.  He knew he and Melkor would be going to the autumn one, probably to all four weeks, since they’d skipped the spring event entirely.

It just then occurred to him that Tyelpe would be there, too.  Or—no, no, he wouldn’t, would he?  He didn’t do the modeling thing for his dad much anymore.  Mairon couldn’t tell what was going on inside him.  He managed not to ghost Tyelpe again, but he spent the afternoon in the bedroom, curled up listlessly on the bed.  Why did it feel like his chest was about to crack open?  He didn’t want to see Tyelpe again.  He couldn’t see him again.

“Is everything all right?”

Melkor’s hand stroked across his hair, and he started upright.

“Just a bad day, I guess.  Sorry.”

His boyfriend sat down on the bed beside him.  “Can I get you something?  Do you want to go out to dinner?”

He didn’t want anything, but Melkor was trying so hard.  Mairon pressed his face into Melkor’s chest, his chest heaving a little as he tried not to cry.

“Hey.”  Melkor rubbed his back slowly, and Mairon’s stomach churned harder.  He felt like he’d forgotten how much Melkor cared about him somehow.  He felt like he was slowly drowning.

“Do you just want to lie here and watch a dumb romcom?”

Mairon nodded shakily, curling up next to him.

“I’ll put something on.”

They lay in bed, and Melkor put on that lesbian Christmas movie that Mairon remembered coming out sometime recently.  Mairon always approved of Kristen Stewart—he always got shy but straightforward vibes from her.  She reminded him a little of Tyelpe, and that made him shiver and cuddle closer to Melkor.

He was now remembering why he hadn’t watched this movie again.  He really wasn’t a fan of the relationship between the main characters, Harper and Abby.  Harper basically treated Abby like dirt, not even telling her that she wasn’t out to her family and then letting her family treat her like a damn chewtoy.

“She should have ended up with Riley,” Mairon said mulishly, leaning his head against Melkor’s collarbone.

“Riley?” Melkor snorted.  “It would have been a much worse movie.”

“They have actual chemistry!” Mairon protested.

“And we wouldn’t get to see a couple actually work through their problems.”

Mairon opened his mouth to argue again and then froze, his entire body going rigid.  Oh, God.  The room was suddenly too small, and he couldn’t breathe.

“Mairon?”

His heart was thundering in his ears so loudly he could barely hear Melkor.  He stared down at his hands, shaking.  At the covers.  His phone vibrated in his pocket.  Impeccable timing, of course.

Liar, someone said in his head.  Fucking liar.  

“I cheated on you,” Mairon blurted, squeezing his eyes shut against the pain in his throat.  “I’m sorry, I—I don’t know what I was thinking—I was so fucking tired, and I was—”

“What the fuck,” Melkor said blankly.

“I slept with someone else last winter.”

There was a long silence.  “When you got stuck overnight in Chicago and weren’t answering my texts,” Melkor said, finally.

Mairon nodded miserably.  “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“What the fuck, Mairon?” The bed creaked as Melkor got up.  “And you had the gall to get mad at me for—”

“I know,” Mairon choked out.  “I know.  I’m sorry.”

“Fuck,” Melkor said heavily.  Then, “I need a cigarette.”  He left Mairon sitting in the bed with the damn Christmas movie still playing.  Mairon wondered bleakly if Melkor was going to break up with him, if he was going to have gotten thrown out of his house for being gay and then end up on the street because his boyfriend had dumped him.

His last therapist had called that catastrophic thinking.  But he couldn’t find another way for things to go.  What was he going to do, turn up on Tyelpe’s doorstep with another sob story?  Like he deserved that.  He lay back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling.  He half-wished there was a spider or something so that he had something to watch, but the apartment was clean as always.  Mairon himself generally made sure of that.

A while later, the door opened again, and the smell of cigarette smoke wafted in.  Mairon coughed.

Melkor sighed, sitting down on the bed again.  “That’s pretty fucked up,” he said.

“I know,” Mairon told him.

“Is that why you’ve been so distant lately?”

Fuck.  He’d thought he’d been doing such a good job of pretending everything was fine.  “Yeah.”  Tell him you’ve been texting the guy.  No.  It wasn’t like that.  And Mairon found that he was afraid to tell Melkor that, which was stupid, because he was a liar, and he wasn’t afraid of Melkor, he was just—it would upset him over nothing, he rationalized.  He knew he was rationalizing, but he couldn’t get it out of his mouth.

Melkor didn’t even seem angry, just sad, and that, if nothing else, made Mairon turn onto his side and reach out to touch him.  “I’m really, really sorry,” he said.  “It was a stupid decision.  I was exhausted.  I just…”

He trailed off, because Melkor was just looking at him sadly.

“What?” he snapped, then was horrified at himself.  He covered his face with his hands.  “That’s an excuse, isn’t it,” he mumbled.

“It is,” Melkor agreed, his deep voice somber and sad.  “I love you, Mairon, but this is…a lot.”

“Yeah.”  Mairon felt small and ugly and awful.  On the TV, the damn movie was still playing.  It had reached the end credits and there was a cheerful, happy beat playing.  There were bells.  He sighed.  “You said…you said you liked it when couples worked through their problems,” he mumbled in a small voice.  “I know.  It isn’t the same.  But…could we try?”

And he couldn’t understand the sinking feeling in his stomach when Melkor put a hand over his and said, “If you’ll try, I will.”

* * *

“I’m sorry!”  Crack!  Mairon gasped and flinched.  “Melkor—” he choked out.  Crack!

“What did you call me?”

God, he’d slipped.  God, everything was falling apart.  He bit his lip.  “Master,” he gritted out.  “Master—you’re hitting me—”  Hard.  Too hard.  Harder than he’d ever hit Mairon before.  Hard enough that Mairon wasn’t, or maybe that was just the guilt that reverberated through him at every stroke.  He ought to be punished, he reminded himself.  They’d agreed on a punishment game for this.  Not a real punishment, but just—to bring them closer together.

After Melkor forgave him.

“A problem?” Melkor’s hot breath on his ear, and Mairon shuddered, then shook his head.  “You can be good for me, can’t you?”  Was he imagining the extra edge, Mairon wondered.  Would it be so strange if there were an extra edge?  The flogger cracked again, and he let out a pained gasp, unable to keep silent.  Hot liquid trickled down from his shoulder.  Sweat, surely.  Melkor wouldn’t hit him so hard he was bleeding.  That would be—it would be dangerous, when they hadn’t negotiated it in advance.  It would be—

He screamed as the whip came down again, then sobbed.  It didn’t feel like sex anymore, and somehow, he thought wildly, it had to be his fault.  For straying.  For fucking someone else.  He’d upset the balance between them, and Melkor was just trying to right it, wasn’t he?

“Shhh,” Melkor murmured.  “Can’t you be good for me?”

No, no, he couldn’t.  Somewhere in his mind he could picture Tyelpe’s shocked expression, and he didn’t know why.  He wasn’t Annatar.  He was Mairon.  He could take this.  If he couldn’t, he could safeword, and it would stop.  But he wasn’t going to safeword, because he couldn’t give up, couldn’t fail again, not after he’d already failed once.  

He shut his eyes and tried to count, tried to ride out the pain, and somehow he found himself slipping away, with the sight of whirling snowflakes out of a high balcony window his only companion.  It was peaceful here, and quiet.  Pain was muted.

Pain was—

But he was supposed to feel the pain, wasn’t he?  Wearily, Mairon pulled himself away from the vision and back to the present, back to where Melkor was patting his head and binding him to the bed, one arm on each of the posts, his agonizing back stretched and something hot and sticky trickling down it.

He was bleeding.  He should safeword, he knew, but he also knew quite well he wasn’t going to.  He couldn’t.  Melkor had given him back his trust, when he didn’t deserve it—couldn’t he just do this one thing for him?  Those big hands were pulling his thighs open, and for one moment his own hands tensed in their bindings, and he had to bite his lip to keep from making a noise.  Something like guilt or nausea swirled in his stomach.

I don’t want this.

Shut up, Annatar!  Fuck you!  You’re the one who got us into this!

He hadn’t used any lube, Mairon realized suddenly, eyes going wide, and now Melkor was running a hand along his quivering stomach, his erection poised, scraping along Mairon’s inner thigh.  He could hear his own harsh breaths in his ears.  This was nothing like any punishment game they’d played before.  This was—safeword, screamed Tyelpe’s voice in his head, safeword, safeword—

Melkor pinched the flesh at his thigh and said, “Hmmm,” in a tone of voice that Mairon couldn’t quite read, but which made him even more faintly panicked.  Everything was somehow wrong.  Everything was somehow off.  It felt like the floor was slowly tilting out from under him and he didn’t know how to get a grip.

He needed to relax, he told himself, but the more he tried, the less he could, and then Melkor was forcing himself inside and Mairon was making a noise, it was horrible to his ears but he couldn’t seem to stop it, and Melkor didn’t stop—

Of course he’s not going to stop, you idiot, you need to safeword if you want him to stop—

And then there was a hand over his mouth and Melkor’s voice, distant, faintly amused, in his ear, “Tight tonight, little flame.  Feels good.”

Feels good.  He shut his eyes.  He was doing well.  He’d make it up to Melkor.  He would.  He would.

But as Melkor started to move, with jagged lightning bolts of pain shooting up Mairon’s spine, he could not quite banish from his mind the image of concerned grey eyes, and a warm voice murmuring, it matters, Annatar, of course it matters.

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The lights were too hot, and Mairon’s head was aching, a sharp, spiking pain like a drill on one side of his head.  Incipient migraine, maybe.  But the show must go on.  Head up, shoulders back.  New York Fashion Week was important, after all.  It was probably the most important moment of the year, so this was a perfect opportunity for him to show Melkor how committed he was to the relationship.

And yet, his chest was still tight with misery.  Probably because he still hadn’t told Melkor about the texting, but he also hadn’t stopped.  He knew he should, but he couldn’t bear it.  They weren’t doing anything wrong, he thought fiercely.  They were just talking, and they were good friends, and he couldn’t stand the thought of losing one of the best friends he’d made in years.  He couldn’t give this up.  He couldn’t.

The only reason he had been able to sleep last night was that he’d spent an hour before bed texting ideas back and forth with Tyelpe over Tyelpe’s newest campaign idea.  Tyelpe seemed stressed as well, too bright, too sharp-edged, almost manic, but Mairon wasn’t going to push.  If talking about CRs and the Drowned CR errata was enough to calm them both down, why not?

The outfit he was wearing was gorgeous, he knew, and very striking.  It was a crimson robe or dress consisting of three long pieces of stiff, crenellated fabric falling symmetrically from a thick brown belt at his waist and trimmed with red-brown fur on the ends.  Underneath were soft red leggings rounded at the bottom like the stereotypical belly-dancer pants.  Underneath that, Mairon wore strappy black heels that made him seem even taller than he was.  The top half of the robe consisted of a piece of black brocade with a pattern of gold and dark red flames fastened with golden buttons right up to Mairon’s throat—unusually high for one of Melkor’s pieces, Mairon had noted, but it meant they could be less careful with the flogger, he supposed.  Two light floating pieces of cloth like wings were afixed to the shoulders, and about his neck was a spiky black collar.

“I want everyone to know you’re mine,” Melkor said, his rich voice throaty with an emotion Mairon couldn’t quite read.

“I thought we didn’t do the BDSM thing in public,” Mairon had pointed out.  

“Is it a problem?” Melkor asked, and Mairon, wondering if it was a test, shook his head.

“I just…didn’t think you liked that kind of thing,” he finished with a shrug, and Melkor smoothed his ash-blond hair back from his forehead and dropped a kiss on it.

“Well, maybe I changed my mind,” he said and pulled Mairon in for a deep kiss.

Usually, he quite enjoyed all the eyes on him, but today—or tonight, it was the last show of the day, and it was nearly nine P.M.—he was getting old, Mairon thought to himself, with some rueful self-deprecation.  And he had the oddest feeling he was being watched.  Which really made no sense, because of course he was being watched.  All eyes were on him, as he revolved slowly in the light and tried not to think of the changes he would make to this outfit—replace the sharp edges of the metal collar with a ruff of fur, add ruffs of fur along the sleeves as well as the skirt.  

Thulsa Doom, tamed by a barbarian.

Fuck.  No.

He pushed the thought away as he floated along the catwalk, trying instead to worry at what it meant to feel like he was being watched.  It was—he’d been at dinner earlier, hanging on Melkor’s arm.  He’d felt watched then, even when he was wearing something subdued, even when he was barely recognizable as Melkor’s exclusive.  Like someone kept stealing glances at him.    At one point he’d escaped to the restroom, all of the noise and tantalizing food smells too much, and he thought he’d passed someone in the hallway who turned to look at him, but he’d been too dazed to pay attention.  He never ate much during Fashion Week.

Finishing his final turn, he made his way gratefully towards the exit.  He went down the steps at the edge of the cat-walk, knees shaking.  He had a little time to himself, he thought.  If he remembered correctly, Melkor was having a quick press interview now, and he never liked Mairon talking with them too.  It used to annoy Mairon, but now he was just grateful for the thought of some time alone, maybe back in the hotel room.

As he floated wearily out from under the too-hot lights, he came face to face with the shadow that had dogged him all evening.  It was Tyelpe.

* * *

The water of the fountain cooled Mairon’s hot feet, and the lights of it glittered soothingly, like the stars that you couldn’t see in the middle of NYC.

“I just want to talk,” Tyelpe said quietly.  

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Mairon told him wearily.  He didn’t even know why he’d let Tyelpe pull him out here.  He knew it was a bad idea.  What if he slipped up again?  No, it was fine.  They were just friends; besides, he was too tired for his sex drive to be anything other than a flat zero right now anyway.  Besides, they probably wouldn’t be friends for much longer, anyway.

“Not even whether I should add a couple storm elementals to the encounter we planned last night?”

“Are you crazy?” Mairon looked up at him, shocked out of the slump.  “Do you want to kill your players?”

Tyelpe grinned at him, and he crossed his arms.  “Not fair,” he muttered.  Despite the exhaustion and the situation, he already felt better, just  from being near him.  And he shouldn’t.  That was dangerous.  Besides, he’d fucked up Tyelpe’s life enough.

“Tyelpe…”

Tyelpe sighed.  “Your name isn’t Annatar.  Yes, I’m not a complete idiot, Mairon.  I’ve known for months.”

Mairon, confession derailed, stared at him.  “You—what?”

“You do show up in fashion illustrations, you know,” Tyelpe pointed out.  “I was sort of attuned to it, after we—after the night you spent at my place.”

Mairon’s cheeks went warm.  “Then why did you keep texting me?” he whispered.

“I mean, I don’t really care, it’s not like it was a particularly meaningful lie.”  Tyelpe shrugged.  “And I suppose I didn’t want to scare you off after I finally got you talking to me again.  Maybe I should have told you?  And—” he sighed.  “You don’t have to talk to me,” he said, after a long minute.  “This is a mess.”

“I want to,” Mairon blurted.  “I love talking to you, Tyelpe, it’s—” He bit the inside of his cheek and cut himself off.  “You need to leave,” he said dully.

“No, I don’t.”

“Okay, then I’ll leave.  I shouldn’t be here.”

“Wait.  Please?”  Tyelpe cut himself off.  “No, look.  You can go if that’s what you want.  You don’t have to listen to anything I have to say, and I’m sorry that I’ve kind of been creeping on you today.  It’s probably sketchy of me that I didn’t tell you that I knew or that I was going to be here, but I really, really wanted to be able to talk to you face to face at least once more.  So when Dad said he had an open spot, I—I took it.”

“Tyelpe…” God, he felt sick.  He wanted so badly, and he knew he shouldn’t, and he knew…there were tears pricking at Mairon’s eyes.  “Tyelpe, sweetheart—” No, he hadn’t meant to say that, fuck—he reached out and grabbed Tyelpe’s hand before he could think.  “Listen.  It’s not just my name I lied to you about, okay? I’m,” he swallowed, “I’m not being abused, I just cheated on my boyfriend because you—you seemed like such a nice guy and I wanted to know what it would be like—it was stupid and awful and I’m sorry, but you really, really need to leave.  He can’t catch you here.”

I just want to be able to keep texting you.  He just didn’t want to lose Tyelpe, even though it was so fucking selfish of him.  There wouldn’t have been a problem if he’d just kept it in his pants.  Snow day, what a fucking lie.  Although…there was still the slight issue that he didn’t think Melkor would take kindly to him being friendly with Fëanor’s youngest son.

“Annatar—”

“My name is Mairon.  You said you’ve known that for months.”

“Mairon.”  Tyelpe’s lips thinned.  “You wanted to know what it would be like?”

“Yeah, I—”  Fuck, that had come out wrong, hadn’t it?  “I’ve been a sub for forever, okay?  I just.  Please go?  I finally fixed everything with Melkor.”

“Oh, did you?” Tyelpe’s voice sounded crisp and slightly bitter.  “You fixed things with the man who left a handprint—”

“Jesus, I’m a masochist, okay?  That’s all.  It’s not physical abuse if it arouses you!”  Tyelpe’s eyes went slightly wider.  Mairon’s breath was so shallow and tight in his lungs.  He knew it sounded bad, but he couldn’t figure out how to word it so it would sound right.  “It was a perfectly normal punishment game between two consenting adults.  I lied to you.  Now leave.”

That was it, he thought.  That was the end.  Tyelpe was never going to talk to him again, which was probably better for both of them.

Something squeezed his hand, and he looked down to realize neither of them had let go, even during all of that.  Mairon’s heart dropped into his shoes.  Tyelpe was looking at him with a question in his dark eyes. “I’m…glad you fixed things up with your boyfriend,” he said slowly.  “Did you talk it out?”

Mairon didn’t quite hold back his flinch, and he couldn’t understand why.  They’d just had sex.  They had talked it out.  But he could still feel Melkor’s hand heavy on his mouth.  His back twinged.  Tyelpe’s dark eyes went distant and very, very sad.

“It’s.  It’s not.  It’s not like—” Oh, God. “I was lying,” Mairon said blankly.  “I was lying to you.  Because I’m a…”

Why do you always have to lie about where you’ve been, Mairon?

Why can’t you ever tell the truth?

Do I have to back you into a corner to get you to tell me what’s really going on?

Not just Melkor who’d said that, but his father’s wife too.  He hadn’t thought—he hadn’t thought.  Static roared terribly in his ears.

“I, um,” he said faintly.  “I need a little time, I think.”  And maybe several therapists?  He wanted to laugh.  And cry.  And scream and throw things.  Shit.  Fuck.

“Of course.”  Tyelpe squeezed his hand again.  “I’m probably doing this all wrong, but…you know I want to be your friend, right?  I mean, I—yes, I like you like that.  But if you don’t like me back, or if you don’t know, or—whatever you need, is what I’m trying to say.  Whatever you need, I want to be there for you.”

Mairon nodded and took a deep breath.  “Thank you,” he said.  “It—means a lot.”  He looked down at their joined hands and managed a smile.  “I gotta go get some sleep,” he said.  “We’re heading back home to DC tomorrow.  I have some things I should get.”  And then what?  He didn’t know yet.  He needed to think.  Apparently, he had a lot to think about. “I’ll text you?” he said finally, uncertainly.

“Please text me.  Whatever you need,” Tyelpe repeated, and he gave him such a heartbreakingly tender smile that Mairon had to lean forward quickly and kiss his cheek, chaste and quick.

Then he pulled his feet out of the fountain, snagged his heels, and started to limp back to the hotel.  Time to get some sleep and then spend some time thinking.

* * *

Melkor had been quiet the whole trip, for which Mairon was grateful.  He didn’t want an argument right now.  He didn’t really want to interact with Melkor at all right now.  Vaguely, he considered the possibility that he was being overdramatic, that if he took a week’s vacation somewhere by himself, he’d want back in, but he snuck a glance at Melkor—still as gorgeous as he’d been when they first started going out—and felt nothing.

He’d googled around last night, and he didn’t like what he was finding.  Isolation.  Control.  Making you feel like everything was your fault.  Making you feel like you had to work harder.  Maybe he had screwed up when he’d fucked Tyelpe, but Melkor’s response—he’d nearly ignored their safeword.  So he wasn’t a monster, but Mairon was starting to think that it was time to stop mending a relationship that was obviously broken at this point anyway.

He was still debating with himself as to whether it really made sense to call it abuse—and whether he wanted to have a break-up conversation in person or just leave—when they got back to the apartment.  Mairon hauled his suitcases up the stairs and stepped inside, and Melkor entered after him, shutting the door and driving the bolt home.

“So,” he said in clipped, too-heavy tones.  “Telperinquar Finwion, Mairon?”

Something very cold seemed to freeze Mairon’s lungs.  He coughed reflexively; then, keeping his face blank, turned.  “What?”

“I saw you last night at the fountain.”

“The fountain?” Mairon shrugged and laughed.  All right, he was at least a good liar, still.  “I ran into a fan.”

“Don’t fucking lie to me,” Melkor snarled, and he grabbed Mairon’s shoulder.  Startled, Mairon found himself being steered towards the bedroom.  “I went through your phone.”

“You—what the fuck, Melkor?”

“You’re saying that to me?”  They were in the bedroom, and the door was slamming shut behind them.  Before he could even move, before he could even react, Melkor’s weight bore him down against the bed, and Mairon gasped—with alarm, not arousal, as he felt the erection pressing hard against his thigh.  “I thought you said you weren’t a rapist, asshole!” he snarled, anger he hadn’t known he still possessed suddenly flaring up from inside him.  Pure fucking anger, because he’d stayed and he tried to make this work—he’d pushed away someone who had let him—for fucking months—and here he was stuck with someone who wouldn’t and it wasn’t fucking fair—

“Shut up!” Melkor growled in frustration.  “You fucking slut, after you went and fucked your boytoy again—”

“I didn’t and I wish I had!” yelled Mairon, trying once again to heave Melkor off of him.  “He didn’t even try, because Fëanor’s kid understands the word ‘no’ better than you do!”  He writhed breathlessly as Melkor’s hands worked at his jeans and fly, yanking down the zipper so hard that Mairon heard cloth rending.

“Shut up, shut up, shut up, do you ever shut your fucking mouth?”

Mairon managed to get one hand free and promptly went for Melkor’s eyes, not even wincing as he felt his long nails dig in and tear open soft flesh.  Melkor howled and his knee hit Mairon hard somewhere in the midsection.  He choked, his lungs seizing up, dizzy with pain and not really capable of struggling anymore.

“You little fucking bitch,” Melkor growled in his ear.  “If you think he’ll want you when I’m through with you—”

The only retort that made it to Mairon’s lips came out as an incomprehensible pained mewling, and he just lay back limply, angry tears forcing their way to his eyes.  Whatever.  Let Melkor rape him.  He’d wait it out and leave afterwards.  It didn’t matter.  He heard the rattling scrape of metal on wood and opened his eyes again just in time to realize that Melkor had—fuck—a pair of scissors in hand and he wasn’t going for Mairon’s clothes, he was—

Mairon screamed as white-hot pain tore through his face.  He tried to struggle, but the attack had totally blindsided him, and Melkor was slashing wildly, one hand pinning Mairon’s chest to the bed, and it wasn’t enough, shit, shit, he was going to blind him, he was going to die—

As suddenly as it had started, the attack stopped.  Melkor’s weight rose from his chest, and Mairon gasped in a breath, the pain entirely gone beneath the buzzing terror filling every limb.  

“If you fucking move, I’m going to come back and kill you and then kill your fucking boyfriend—” growled Melkor, and then he was moving across the floor, and the door opened and shut.

Mairon registered the threat, considered lying still, and then decided he’d rather die trying to get away than keep doing what Melkor wanted.  Fuck it.

He rolled off the bed and scrambled over to the exterior balcony of their apartment.  Good thing the fire escape led away from the bedroom.  There were low voices on the other side of the door.  A distraction.  Mairon breathed a gasping thanks to whatever salesperson or girl scout was going door to door right now and tumbled out onto the iron grate.  He had to squint, vision obscured and dark for some reason, as if his hair had fallen into his face.  Swearing viciously, he started down the stairs to the landing below.

His foot slipped, and he hung on air for a moment.  There was rushing motion, and he flailed with his hand, then harsh, jarring pain, and a loud crash.  Mairon sobbed, curling into a fetal position as he desperately tried to find where his feet were so he could get back up.

He heard the noise of the sliding door.  No, no, no—

But it wasn’t Melkor’s voice that spoke.  It was a voice he didn’t know, quiet and deep and shocked.  “Shit.  Guys—not a false alarm.  Call 911.”  Gentle hands took his shoulders.  “Can you move?”

“I don’t—I don’t—”  Mairon gritted his teeth.  “Yeah.  Yeah, just.  Help me up, please, I don’t want him to find me—”

“I’ve got you.”  He was being helped upright and into—oh, he’d made it one landing down, this was the apartment underneath.  There were three people sitting around a table with dice and minis spread across the whole thing.  One of the players had gotten up and was on the phone, presumably talking with the 911 operator.  The DM’s screen had fallen over.

“I think we’d better get out of here,” said the guy who’d helped him into the apartment.  “Let’s go down the back stairs to the laundry room.  We’ll have to squeeze to fit in my car, but we can drive to the hospital that way.”

The hospital, Mairon thought dizzily.  Why the hospital, though?

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The hospital was for him, it turned out.  He needed stitches.  The doctor told him that he was lucky the blade hadn’t gone through his right eye, because he probably would have lost it.  Then she cleaned the injuries, stitched them, bandaged him up.  

Mairon was trying to order an Uber when the guy who had helped him out popped up out of nowhere—apparently, he’d been waiting for him, which was—it was way too nice, for someone he didn’t know, who had no reason to help.  It made Mairon want to cry again, but he couldn’t.  Poor guy—his name was Hal, apparently?—had already put up with more than enough on his account and didn’t need Mairon losing it on him.

The Uber thing didn’t work, because someone had put a freeze on his account.  Shared account with Melkor, which meant either Melkor had frozen it himself, or maybe the cops had arrested him and done something.  Mairon was kind of hazy on how that worked.

“Do you have somewhere to go?” Hal asked worriedly.  

“Um,” said Mairon.  He thought about texting Tyelpe.  But he couldn’t.  He couldn’t ask.  He knew that Tyelpe would want to help, but he was thousands of miles away, and they didn’t know each other that well, and it was a lot to dump in someone’s lap all at once, and Mairon just, he couldn’t.  He didn’t think he could.  And then, after all that had flashed through his head, he realized he didn’t have his phone, didn’t know how to get it, and didn’t have Tyelpe’s number memorized, and the bottom dropped out of his stomach so hard he thought he might throw up. “Not really?” he said, voice wobbling slightly.

“Oof.”  Hal shuffled.  “I mean I’m probably not going back to the apartment tonight either.  Do you want to crash at my boyfriend’s house for a few days?”

Oh, god, oh fuck.  If he hadn’t said boyfriend—if he hadn’t been so casually, randomly open about being queer—Mairon might have said no.  But he couldn’t.  He was too tired, and if he said anything but, “Thanks.  Yeah.  Thanks,” he was going to fucking lose it, so he just said that and then stood there with his mouth working kind of funny.

He followed Hal to the car without saying much and stood there a little vacantly as Hal pulled out his phone and had a short conversation with the boyfriend—“Max,” apparently.

“All good,” Hal said cheerfully

They were already on the freeway when it occurred to Mairon what he really should do.  He didn’t want to do it, but he sort of did at the same time.  Everything felt like a mess.  But that number he did know.  And—

“Can I borrow your phone?” he asked Hal.  “I—there’s someone I should call.”

“Sure.”  Hal passed it over to him.  “Oh, fuck, yours was back in the apartment, wasn’t it?”

“It was,” Mairon agreed, which was all he could say about that.  He pulled up Hal’s keypad, dialed the number, and put the phone to his ear.

The phone rang.  Mairon’s throat hurt.  Too tight.  Too impossible.  He shouldn’t be doing this, but what else was he going to do?

He picked up on the third ring.  “Aulë’s Forge and Crafts, how can I help you?”

“Dad,” Mairon choked out, and then he had to stop, because a sob fell out of his throat and couldn’t be stopped.  There was silence on the other end of the line, shocked and terrible.  “Dad, I’m so—I’m so sorry, but I, I—is, is there any chance you can, like, wire me some money or—I won’t ask for anything else, I’ll—”

“Mairon.  Kiddo.  Shut up.”

He shut up, biting down on his tongue till it bled.

“Are you safe?”

“Uh…”  Mairon looked across at Hal as the landscape sped by out of the window.  “Y-Yeah, I think so.  I think so.  For now.”

“Where are you?”

“Outside DC.  I’m gonna—I’m gonna stay at a friend’s house.  Well, a friend’s boyfriend’s house.”

“I’m going to book a plane ticket.  I’ll be there in twelve hours or less. Can you give me an address?”

It was like Mairon’s entire world rearranged itself.  He had to take the phone away from his ear to stare at it.  Hal raised an eyebrow at him.  He shook his head, the bandages shifted, and he made a soft little pained noise.

“Mairon?” said Aulë’s voice, sharpening with an edge of panic.  “Are you still there?”

He put the phone back to his ear.  “Y-Yeah.  Yeah.  Sorry.  Sorry.  Aren’t…aren’t you mad?”

“Furious,” his dad replied.  “God, I’ve been so worried about you.  But I love you, Mairon.  Don’t you know that?”  He paused briefly.  “You don’t have to answer.  It’s okay.  Just—if you’re all right with it, can I have an address?”

“Yeah,” Mairon whispered, looking back at Hal.  “What’s Max’s address?”

It turned out to be an address in a relatively nice suburban area.  Mairon relayed it.  “I—Dad,” he said.  “I’m—”

“Save it,” Aulë said, abrupt but kind.  “I love you, kid.  I’ll be there as soon as I can.  Call me if you need anything, all right?”

Mairon swallowed another sob.  “Okay,” he managed.  “Thanks, Dad.”

He put the phone down and wished he could curl up on the seat.  “Um, listen, thanks again,” he mumbled.

“It’s not a problem, man,” Hal said with impressive equanimity.  Mairon wanted to snarl that it was obviously, absolutely a problem and not to fucking lie about it, but he bit his tongue and slumped down instead.

Fortunately, since Mairon was getting to the point of wanting to pull off the bandages and look at his face—even though he knew that would be a bad idea—it didn’t take much longer before Hal pulled into the driveway of a nice-looking little suburban home set well back from the road.  Somewhere, a dog was barking loudly.

Mairon hovered as Hal got his bag out from the back seat, wondering what the fuck he was going to do for clothes.  Once the police apprehended Melkor, he supposed he could go back to the apartment to pick some shit up, but the thought made him physically ill to even contemplate.  Okay, he’d wait till his dad showed up and beg for a little more money to buy jeans and a t-shirt or something.

To his unending gratitude, Hal didn’t ask if he needed any more help.  Mairon thought he’d probably have fallen apart on the spot.  He trailed behind the other guy up the driveway to the house, where the door opened and a little streak of white came pelting out, barking and howling excitedly, wagging its entire body along with a stubby, kinked tail.

“Three missed you,” said an amused sounding voice that was oddly familiar, and Mairon looked up to see a pair of dark eyes that for half a moment—

It wasn’t Tyelpe, but god it looked like him.

“Shit,” he breathed, realization hitting him like a freight train, “You didn’t say Max.”

Maglor Finwion was probably the most high-profile of all eight brothers, with a successful career as modestly famous pop star in addition to his part-time work as a model for his father.  Mairon was used to seeing him decked out in both very well-tailored suits and some of his father’s most fantastic, outlandish creations.  Almost as much as Mairon himself, Maglor’s angular face, high cheekbones, and lovely dark eyes suggested something fey and otherworldly, and his stage presence did nothing to harm that impression.

Usually.

Mairon had never seen him in jeans and a flannel shirt, wearing a frilly, flour-covered apron that said, “I only work to support my accordion addiction,” on it.  He wasn’t wearing makeup, and his straight black hair was wet with water, pulled up in a messy manbun on top of his head.

“Well,” drawled Maglor, after the first moment of silence.  “Look what the cat dragged in.”

* * *

The kitchen was—nice.  Ordinary, kind of.  Not beautiful and gleaming from top to bottom, the way any kitchen Melkor set foot in was expected to be.  In fact, currently, it looked like a tornado had hit it, because Maglor was in the middle of baking a pineapple upside down cake, and apparently he wasn’t much for things like “cleaning up as you go” or “not getting flour absolutely everywhere including the ceiling.”  It was like a war zone.  It appalled Mairon.

But what really hit him was the way Hal sighed, laughed, shook his head, and said, “I should know better than to come back while you’re baking.”

Maglor grinned at him, with a smudge of flour on his nose, and said, “Nonsense.  I need you to help me clean up.”

Hal kissed his cheek and said, “Nope.  I’ve had a terrible day.  You’re on your own.”

Maglor’s eyes went from Hal over to Mairon, who didn’t know what kind of expression was on his face—it was probably partially hidden by the bandages anyway.  He stared down at the mug of hot cocoa that Maglor had made for him and wondered what he was doing here.

“Oh, um.  Can I borrow your phone again, Hal?” he said abruptly.  Then, swallowing hard, “Um.  Maglor.  Can I get your youngest brother’s number?”

Those shrewd dark eyes narrowed.  “How do you know Tyel—oh fuck.  No way.”

Mairon tried for an innocent expression.  “I met him during last year’s New York Fashion Week.”

“You did not,” Maglor told him forcefully.  “He picked you up in Chicago during that awful snowstorm, and he’s been mooning over you ever since.  Oh, fuck.  No wonder he’s been so weird about Dad’s—oh, shit.”  He passed a hand through his black hair, leaving it smeared with dusty white.

“It’s none of your business,” Mairon retorted coolly, staring down at his hands.

“Bullshit it isn’t,” Maglor sighed.  “I’ll get you his number.  Do you need anything?”

“What?”

“Water, snacks, peace and quiet, whatever.”

It was hard for him to process the question.  After a minute—after a minute that stretched far too long, he shook his head.  “No, just—phone.  Number.  Please.”  He paused.  “Maybe a glass of water,” he said faintly, after a minute.

“Sure.”

When Mairon was actually faced with the blank screen of the phone, he discovered he was in some difficulty.  What he wanted to type was, I love you, thank you for everything, I left him, can I date you?

What he wanted to do was throw himself into Tyelpe’s arms.  But—he couldn’t do that.  Not now.  Not yet.  He knew he needed time, time for quiet, time to sort shit out.  Time to figure out what getting subpoenaed to your ex-boyfriend’s trial for assault meant.  Because that was presumably going to happen.  Finally, he put together a message that said, Hey.  I’m safe.  I’m out.  I think I’m going to need some time to put my life back together (and get a new phone), so if I’m not very responsive for a while, that’s why.  (This isn’t my phone, but I’ll text you once I’ve got one.) — Mairon

The text he got back made the phone blur in front of his eyes with stupid, useless tears.

Whatever you need <3

After a moment, Mairon replied, <3, as well, because at the very least, he could do that much, couldn’t he?

* * *

He woke in the middle of the night to the noise of someone groaning too loudly, a horrible, painful sound that made him want to slap whoever was making it.

“Hey.  Hey, Mairon.”

Fuck, it was him.  Maglor’s voice brought him the rest of the way out of sleep, and he sat up to find himself on the couch beside the TV.  He’d sweated so much that his borrowed pajama shirt was soaked at the neck and armpits.  His face was stinging sharply, and he thought he might have been crying.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, too tired to even try to put on—god, what face did he even have left to use?  He was so used to waking up next to Melkor, to having to be quiet—occasionally, recently, reaching for his phone to text Tyelpe.  But now there was just him and his friend’s tired-looking second-oldest brother, hair braided down the back of his neck, holding a hot cup of something.

“Do you want this?  It’s hot milk with a little brandy.”

“You…um, I mean.”  Mairon didn’t know what to say to that.

“I’ll make another one for myself if you want it,” Maglor told him.  “Don’t worry, Hal always sleeps like a log, he won’t hear us.”

“Thanks,” Mairon said, stumbling awkwardly out of bed.  

“Come on,” Maglor told him.  “Walking off the nightmares helps, sometimes.  The kitchen’s bright, and you don’t exactly have anything you need to do tomorrow.”

Mairon trailed after him, still bemused and half-asleep, following Maglor into the bright, warmly-lit kitchen.  Three was stretched out on the rug in front of the island, asleep on her back, and making soft little huffing noises.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Maglor asked, sliding the mug over to Mairon as he clumsily sat down in one of the high-top chairs in front of the island.  “I’m no therapist, but I’ll listen if you need me to.”

Mairon stared at him, scrambling to find some kind of response, and finally said, dazedly, “What the fuck?”

“Hm?” Maglor was in front of the stove again, measuring milk into another mug.

“Why…are you being…like this?” Mairon asked.

“Like what?” Maglor drawled, turning on the stove and beginning to stir the milk.

“I, I don’t—nice,” Mairon finished finally. 

“I see you have gathered that my general state is unapologetic bastardy.”

“That’s not—I didn’t mean—” He was shivering violently, his hands clutched around the ceramic mug.  His eyes and throat were tight and hot.  

“No, it is, actually.”  Maglor flashed him a dizzyingly beautiful smile that reminded him awfully of Tyelpe, but sharp-edged and diamond-hard, the kind of smile Mairon might have given someone.  Then it softened slightly.  “Tyelpe really cares about you,” Maglor said quietly.  “He really cares about you, and oddly, I think you make him very happy.  And besides—” he sighed, running a hand through his hair.  “I figure I owe it to all the people who’ve spent their time dealing with all of my shit.  You’re not the only one who has nightmares, Mairon.”

Tyelpe really cares about you.  The words mixed with the gentleness in Maglor’s tone were too much, suddenly.  Mairon couldn’t find anyone to be other than himself, and himself was apparently crying now, no matter how much he tried to stop, his breath coming out in short, sharp sobs, the tears overflowing his burning eyes and leaking down over his cheeks, coursing across the healing cuts and sending little shocks of pain running through him.

“Been wondering how long it was going to take for that flood to happen,” Maglor said, but his tone was soft, almost teasing.  “Do you want to cuddle Three?”

“I want—” Mairon cut himself off, not sure what he did actually want, too sleepy and miserable to come to a proper conclusion.  “Sure,” he whispered. 

“Come here, you,” said Maglor, scooping the sleeping dog off the floor.  She gave a startled little growl and then relaxed as he deposited her in Mairon’s lap, yawning and wagging her tail.  “She’s very friendly, don’t worry.”

The deposition of a pile of wriggling fur did not serve to abate Mairon’s tears.  If anything, he cried harder.  Three looked at him with concerned dark eyes and tried to lick him, though the bandages appeared to confuse her.

“Ah, I’m afraid you can’t do that, girl.”  Maglor rubbed her head, and Mairon pulled her small body close and held it.

“You have a very good dog,” he said hoarsely, after a long minute.

“Yeah.”  Maglor smiled and rubbed her back.  “She gets me back to sleep most nights that Hal isn’t here.”

“What do you have nightmares about?” Mairon found himself asking, not quite sure he wanted to share what he had been dreaming of.  Maglor’s smile widened and turned crooked.

“You’re not my therapist either,” he said archly.  “No—it’s all right.”  He went back to the stove and poured milk and brandy into a second mug, bringing it back to the island to sit across from Mairon.  “The car accident, mostly,” he said after a moment.  “You know.”  He waved his right hand.

“I thought that was just your older brother.”

“Everyone forgets,” Maglor said, his mouth tugging to the side.  “Everyone forgets, because I got out without a scrape.”  He sighed.

It didn’t feel right to just listen to that and not respond, so Mairon hunched his shoulders, sipped the milk, and said the first thing that came to mind, which turned out to be, “He only beat me when we were fucking.”

“Stellar catch,” Maglor said dryly.  If he was shocked, he didn’t show it, for which Mairon was unutterably grateful. 

Mairon sniffed and sipped at the hot milk.  There was a lot of brandy in there, though personally he’d probably rather have had a Xanax.  That was back at the apartment too.  He shut his eyes, wishing he could force the tears to stop.  This was humiliating.  “I thought…if it was something that had been negotiated—” He hunched his shoulders again.  “I thought he would listen to a safeword.  But somehow I never—safeworded.”

He got a sympathetic look.  “If you think it’s all your own idea…”

“I know how to manipulate people,” Mairon said sharply, then paused.  Sighed.  “I know…how to manipulate myself.  Don’t I?”

“Ah,” said Maglor, raising his mug in an ironic salute.  “Probably both, let’s be honest, but I do think you’re genuine about Tyelpe, and that’s what matters to me.”  He gave Mairon another look, half-shrewd, half-sad.  “Just how drunk would you like to get tonight?”

Mairon put his mug down heavily.  “Honestly?  Very.”

* * *

The hangover the following day didn’t quite make him regret it.  It did make him stay on the couch, hidden under a blanket to combat the raging headache that was made worse by even a pinprick of light.  Maglor, with either the aplomb of a performer or possibly just significantly more experience, was appallingly cheerful and went around whistling to himself as he made breakfast.  He wasn’t supposed to be a morning person, Mairon thought bitterly.  Certainly not after how much he’d had to drink.

He heard Hal get up a little later, the two of them murmuring to one another in the kitchen, their voices too quiet for him to make out the words, but the tones were clear enough, and listening to them made him scrunch himself up further under the blankets.  If that was how Tyelpe’s brother talked to him, too, maybe his kindness wasn’t so surprising.  There were moments when he could hear something sharp-edged rise up—usually Maglor’s voice, lifted cuttingly—but Hal’s response was measured, quiet, amused, and then the two broke into laughter.  Mairon found himself caught between impossible jealousy and a kind of quiet happiness.

He was just lumping himself up under the blanket to get up, try to plaster a smile on his face, and plead for coffee, when the doorbell rang loudly, and he moaned and stuffed his fingers in his ears.  Three ran for the door, barking angrily at the top of her lungs, and then Mairon heard Maglor’s footsteps crossing out of the kitchen and through the living room.

The door opened, and Mairon heard a too-familiar voice saying, “Is Mairon here?”

Oh, god, he wasn’t ready.  He wasn’t ready at all.  How the hell was he supposed to face his father (estranged) in a pair of ratty boxers and a Conan t-shirt he’d borrowed from Maglor?  But what was he supposed to do, slip out the back door?

“He’s here.  He’s a little…” Maglor paused.  “A little under the weather, but he’s okay.”

Somehow, Mairon managed to sit up on the couch, wobble to his feet, and take a couple steps toward the door.  From here, he could just see the jut of Aulë’s gut, and his heavy beard as Maglor took a step back to let him in.  “Hey, Dad,” he croaked.  “I’m just hungover, it’s fine.”

His father stepped hesitantly into Maglor’s house and stared at him, eyes going up and down Mairon’s form.  Mairon shifted self-consciously, and as his father’s eyes widened, only then did he remember the bandages.  Only then did he remember what he looked like under the bandages, so it wasn’t as if he was going to be able to be super comforting.

Aulë took a step forward, then paused, just in the entryway.  “Mairon…how badly…ah, fuck.”

Mairon had heard his father say shit before; fuck—no.  Maybe once when he had dropped a hammer on his thumb.  Quickly bitten off, elided—not clear, not almost deliberate like that.

“They said it will probably scar.”  He heard his own voice from a long distance away, cool, almost clinical.  “It’s fine, though.”  

“Oh, god, Mairon,” Aulë said heavily.  “Was it your boyfriend?”

Mairon felt light, too light, as if he were floating—dizzy, detached, disconnected.  “Yes,” he said.  “Ex-boyfriend.”  He fought the craziest urge to laugh.  Had he imagined Aulë’s hesitation? “Arrested ex-boyfriend.”  And then, he didn’t quite know why, he said, “And how’s Mrs. Y?”

His father took another half-step toward him, halting again, and Mairon wished he’d make up his mind.  “Don’t really know,” he said, after a moment.  “Divorce was finalized six months ago.”

“Divorce,” Mairon repeated blankly.

“After you cut off contact…” Aulë shook his head.  

Maglor tiptoed awkwardly around him to shut the door, and then picked up Three, mumbled something, and quickly headed for the other room.

“Me?” Mairon repeated, blank and confused.  

“She said some—stuff.”  Aulë shuffled awkwardly, as if he wanted to move towards Mairon but couldn’t quite get himself to do so.  Mairon realized his arms were crossed, his body language entirely closed off.  His head was buzzing, with the hangover and the adrenaline, and he couldn’t make himself open up at all.  “About your lifestyle.  Specifics aren’t really—”  He shook his head.

“You divorced Mrs. Y because she was shit-talking me for being gay?” Mairon blurted.  “But she always—I thought you—”

“You…thought I what?”

“I thought that’s why you hated Melkor.”

Aulë’s face—changed.  It seemed almost as if it had lost definition, the lines of it sagging in a way Mairon did not like.  “Oh, Mairon,” Aulë breathed, and his hands twisted again and again, as if the knots that should have been in his face were there in his fingers.  “Oh, son, no.”

Mairon felt as if his world had shaken and upended.  “You…you don’t…” his voice threatened to crack open.  “You don’t hate me for it?  You were—”

“I was worried,” Aulë said, as if from a long distance away.

And hadn’t he had reason to be?  Mairon’s face stung, and he wondered if he was crying.

“Fuck, Mairon, I’m so sorry.  I never meant you to think—oh, son, no.”  He rubbed one big hand over his face.  “I’m so sorry,” he said again, helpless, ancient, weathered, and Mairon stared at the wreck and ruin of everything he had thought was true and watched it rearrange, as if he were watching a chessboard on which black had just revealed itself to be white.

“You were worried,” Mairon said, his voice shaking and distant.  “Oh.  That’s—” He swallowed, his mouth crooking up a little at the corner.  “Um.  I guess you were right, Dad.  I’m—”

“Don’t be sorry,” Aulë interrupted.  “Please.  Just, can I hug you?”

Mairon nodded shakily, and as he sank into his father’s arms, he reflected that honestly he’d take getting his face cut up again if he had to, for him to get this.  “Dad,” he whispered.  

“I love you, Mairon,” Aulë said, and he stroked his hair.  Mairon shut his eyes and let him.

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The next months were—difficult, but not exactly bad.  Mairon spent a few weeks in a hotel with his father.  There was some legal stuff to be taken care of.  He texted Tyelpe just a few things, here and there, just silly pictures of birds he saw outside, or dogs that people were walking.  He didn’t feel up to more.  He was afraid of even having a conversation, and he needed—time.

He found a therapist.  He dealt with setting up his own bank account.  He spent time with his dad.  He set up a new phone account and migrated his contacts—the ones he cared about.  Aulë, Tyelpe, a few others.  He sent Hal and Mags a thank you gift of some  particularly nice sake, hoping they would appreciate it, praying Maglor wouldn’t be offended. He got a terse ‘thanks’ from Mags and a slightly longer note from Hal.  He loves it and he’s embarrassed because he doesn’t think he did enough to be thanked for.

Autumn crept by; the leaves fell from the trees.  The temperature plummeted, and Mairon’s world—didn’t stabilize exactly, but the rocking grew less violent, for lack of a better metaphor.  Winter came again, and with it, the first flakes of snow whirling in with grey clouds and shortening days.  Christmas loomed on the horizon, and Mairon, staring down at his now-filled sketchbook, knew he couldn’t wait any longer to see him, anyway.

It might not go anywhere romantic.  He was pretty sure he was okay with that, if Tyelpe wanted to stick to the weird, off-beat friendship they’d developed.  And he knew it would be better to have a conversation over text or over the phone first, and it would definitely be better not to do anything highly dramatic over the holidays so he didn’t put pressure on the other man or anything.

Tyelpe sent him a family photo of Fëanor, his ex-wife, and all eight sons lined up in a row underneath the lights of Union Station. 

> Everyone’s in town for the holidays.  Looking forward to a tremendous number of arguments.

> Conan is always there if you need him as an escape.

“Fuck it,” said Mairon, and yielded to the impulse to book a plane ticket.

* * *

Christmas itself seemed like a bad idea, but Mairon forgot, as always, to account for the way the airlines liked to screw him over.  He landed in O’Hare on what was very technically Christmas morning, by about an hour.  He checked into a hotel near the airport and crashed for ten hours, then woke up at noon and tried to figure out what he should do.

He could just wait.  He was late for when he’d planned to be in town, and he could just let Tyelpe have his damn family Christmas and show up on Boxing Day or something.  That would be the smart thing to do, wouldn’t it?  He wrestled with himself.  Tyelpe’s last text had sounded kind of like a plea, hadn’t it?  But no matter how Much Fëanor and his entire family were…they were still family.  Mairon was a friend and, currently, nothing else.  He probably shouldn’t intrude.

At 3:45 PM, he decided he would at least try to intrude.  He grabbed an Uber, miraculously remembering Tyelpe’s address, and made his way over.  Nearly an hour later—ugh, Chicago traffic—he was outside, and getting no response from buzzing the bell.  It was Christmas, but Tyelpe’s apartment was tiny; what was he going to be doing in it?  Mairon covered his face with his hands.  Go back to the hotel, he told himself.

His phone vibrated.

> If you happen to be planning on doing something unbearably stupid and romantic, I don’t need to know about it, and I’m definitely not sending you the address where the Clan is eating dinner tonight.

Maglor.

Mairon stared down at it with a stupid grin on his face.  Then he pulled open the Uber app on his phone again. 

When he got to the restaurant, it was snowing again, fat white flakes swirling down out of a sky lit to rose-pink by the lights of the city reflecting off the clouds.  The restaurant was sleek and modern, a high-end Chinese place playing cheerful Christmas music, the doorway festooned with yellow-white fairy lights.  Mairon hovered near the entry-way, arrested and unsure, not quite able to get up the courage to go inside.

Instead, he peered in through the window, into a high-ceilinged room with gaudy gold sculptures along the tops of the walls—dimly lit with those sort of fancy electric candles.  Well lit enough for him to see the long table full of food and surrounded by—well, not all the faces were smiling, but they were familiar enough.

Mairon ignored most of them in favor of the one he wanted most to see, the dark head bent over his plate, sitting a little too straight, as if he wasn’t quite sure he wanted to be here.  He was wearing something made of grey silk, which was all Mairon could see from here, and Mairon couldn’t—quite—get himself to walk into the restaurant.

Finally, he managed to pull out his phone and send a text.

> I’m outside.

There was a chance Tyelpe wouldn’t be checking his phone at fancy dinner, but the atmosphere seemed just tense enough that—

> Outside what?

> The restaurant you’re eating in.  Sorry for being creepy?  And Merry Christmas.

There was another too-long pause, and then he got another response.

> Do you want to come in?

> Do you want me to come in?

> Yeah

Mairon swallowed, tightening the scarf about his face.  The scars were still an angry red, although the stitches were out now.  And Tyelpe wasn’t pushing.  He was asking.  He was asking.  

Tyelpe wouldn’t care what his face looked like, Mairon was eighty percent sure.  And maybe he kind of deserved the final twenty percent anyway.  And even if he didn’t, he definitely wasn’t going to get what he wanted if he stayed out here.  So—finally, finally—he pushed the door open and headed inside.

He felt like everyone was watching him, even though realistically he knew that almost no one had looked up.  Just Tyelpe, who had looked up from his phone and was turned towards the door.  Just Tyelpe, whose face lit up when he saw Mairon, and who half pushed his chair back, then paused, gentling his body language a little.  Maglor, across the table from him, looked up with a lazy grin.  

It felt like time had dilated to an impossible degree, as if each step he took were miles and years long, but at the end of it was Tyelpe.  And then, suddenly, the years were over and he was standing right by Tyelpe’s chair, with melting snow falling from his hair.  Without thinking, he undid the scarf and hat and pulled them off, and—Tyelpe’s face changed.  Of course it did.  He should have at least told him.  Maybe Tyelpe was going to tell him to leave now.  Or—or—

Tyelpe reached out tentatively, not quite touching him.  “Hey?” he said questioningly, softly.  All Mairon had to do was turn his hand over and lift it so that their fingers were brushing.  It was like a little electric shock went through him when he did.

The chatter at the table had died, and now everyone was swiveling to look at Mairon, who was still just standing there, touching Tyelpe’s hand. 

“You look good with red hair,” Tyelpe told him softly.  Then his hand squeezed, just a little bit.  “Also—” his face went firm and blank and angry in a way Mairon had never seen it, and Mairon couldn’t quite tell what was going on in his mind until he said, “can I violently eviscerate the guy who did this to you?”

Oh.  Ow.  Mairon’s jeans were painfully tight in the span of two seconds.  He swallowed, once, twice, three times.  “I’d like that,” he said, finally, haltingly.  “I didn’t think you were so…violent.”

“Virtuous barbarian, remember?” Tyelpe grinned.  “Seriously, are you okay?”

Mairon considered this.  “Not entirely,” he said, truthfully.  “But I’m okay enough that I—wanted to see you.”

He got a faint, hopeful smile; then Tyelpe pushed back his chair and stood up.  “You flew all the way out from DC on Christmas?” he said.  “Because you wanted to see me?”

Jerkily, Mairon nodded.  “I—if I overstepped, I’m—sorry,” he managed.  “I meant to get here yesterday, but—airlines.”

Tyelpe shook his head, a faint blush adorning his high cheekbones.  

“Oh my fucking god!” yelled Maglor.  “Will you two please kiss already!”  The next sound was Hal shushing him loudly.

Mairon wanted the floor to open and swallow him up, but Tyelpe looked up with that same faint, hopeful smile.  “Can I kiss you?” he asked, exactly the same gentle way he had back in his studio apartment a year ago and change.

“Fuck, please kiss me,” Mairon breathed, and Tyelpe was stepping forward, and he was stepping forward, and there were hands on his face, and he had a hand firmly on Tyelpe’s shoulder and one on his waist, and then Tyelpe’s tongue was in his mouth, and they were kissing, gentle and thorough.  Tyelpe was a solid weight against him, and Mairon never wanted to let him go.

They had to pause, flushed and gasping, to get their breath back, and Tyelpe said, “Let me get you a chair—have you eaten anything today?”

“No,” Mairon confessed, and Tyelpe smacked him, lightly, painlessly.

“You need to eat,” he said, and it made tears well up in Mairon’s eyes.

“Yeah, okay,” he muttered, and he let Tyelpe get him a chair and push him to sit down beside him.

“This is Mairon, Dad,” Tyelpe said, and Mairon froze, because oh God Fëanor—

He looked up hesitantly to catch a pair of snapping dark eyes that were even more intimidating in person.  Fëanor frowned, sighed, and inclined his head.  “Nice to meet you, I suppose,” he said, then looked away.  Something of a slight, maybe, but it was so much better than Mairon might have expected that he just went faintly limp.

“I think Dad’s tired of arguing,” Tyelpe whispered.  “He’s been fighting with Maedhros all summer, and then Maglor just showed up with his boyfriend—whom he’s apparently been dating for years—so I think we got lucky.”

“I’ll take it,” Mairon said with a sigh, paused to order the first thing off the menu he could think of, and then went back to looking at Tyelpe and wishing he were sitting in his lap right now.

“Hey, I, um,” said Tyelpe in a low voice.  “I’ve been working on something, and I, I think I’m ready to post it.”

“O-Oh?” Mairon tried to drag his mind out of the gutter and figure out why Tyelpe was talking about posting something.

Tyelpe pushed his phone sideways over to Mairon, who looked down to see an AO3 draft page pulled up on it.  The username was ConanLovesSocks, which made Mairon giggle and raise an eyebrow at Tyelpe.  “Conan love socks?”

Tyelpe’s ears went red.  “Long story, old campaign.  Not the point right now.”

Applying his attention back to the draft, Mairon stared at it and felt his own ears warming up. 

Rating: Explicit

Archive Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence

Category: M/M

Fandom: Conan the Barbarian and Related Fandoms

Relationship: Conan the Cimmerian/Thulsa Doom

Characters: Conan the Cimmerian, Thulsa Doom, Ascalante (Howard)

Additional tags: Redemption, Attempted Seduction, Torture, Hurt/Comfort, Nonlinear narrative, Sometimes you just need someone to take a chance on you, This is unashamed wish fulfilment, The author appreciates your indulgence, Alternate Universe

Mairon’s eyes skipped across the stats line and down one more.  

Five Gold Rings.  

ConanLovesSocks.

Summary: A beautiful sorceror appears inside the walled kingdom of Aquilonia and presents himself to its king, promising gifts and gold. Despite the warnings of his advisors and his own suspicions, King Conan is charmed by the lovely Kuthulos. But the secrets locked in Kuthulos's heart are far darker than Conan could ever have expected...

“I, uh, it might be kind of weird,” Tyelpe said quietly.  “So if you don’t want me to start posting, I won’t—”

“Uh,” said Mairon, and his voice came out as a squeak that he had to quickly modulate.  “Does Conan put a collar on Thulsa Doom?”

Tyelpe coughed and squirmed in his seat.  “Um, no, not yet, but he, he could, if that was something that, uh, that you wanted.”

“I think that would be lovely,” Mairon purred, reaching over to squeeze Tyelpe’s hand.  “Virtuous barbarians take collars off if they’re asked to, don’t they?”

A much more tender, slightly solemn look flitted across Tyelpe’s face.  “Yes, they do, Mairon,” he murmured.  Then he grinned.  “Whatever you need, remember?”

Mairon nodded, a little shakily.  “I remember,” he said, and he squeezed Tyelpe’s hand and sat back as his food arrived to have a very nice Christmas dinner.

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