Our Four Shadows, When They Mingle by AdmirableMonster  

Our Four Shadows, When They Mingle

“Finno…I ought to be getting home, I think.”  Maitimo glanced from side to side, trying to disguise his nerves.  Rarely if ever had he been to such a gathering, where the wine flowed like water, several times he had been offered a taste of Irmo’s leaf — declining each time — and a startlingly large portion of the participants seemed ready to re-enact some of the bawdier stories he had heard about Cuivienen.  He was now looking straight down at his feet, the tips of his ears burning, for fear of seeing anything else.

“Oh, must you?” Findekáno’s pleading voice went right through him from head to toe.

“W-Well, I…” Why had his cousin brought him here, Maitimo wondered.  He must know it was hardly the sort of place Fëanáro would want his eldest son to frequent, even if almost every person he had run into had seemed unaccountably happy—and not just the ones who had clearly had a taste of the leaf.  He ought to ask, but where Findekáno was concerned, he didn’t want to ask; he was happier just to be pulled along pell-mell from adventure to adventure.  If he was very lucky, he would be able to steal a glance of his cousin shirtless, for one reason or another, and that would sustain him for months at a time.  Although right now, he had significantly more thoughts in his head than just Findekáno’s shirtless torso, and he was terribly afraid Findekáno would be able to see the hot blush spreading over the too-translucent skin of his cheeks.

He sighed.  “Why am I here, Finno?  You know this isn’t really the kind of…” he trailed off, determinedly not looking at his cousin.

There was an unpleasantly long, waiting kind of silence.  “I suppose I was hoping you might enjoy yourself,” Findekáno said at last, a tinge of frustration entering his voice.  “That you might relax a little.”  One hand brushed along Maitimo’s shoulder, and the touch of it felt like when as a child he had run a hand over one of Fëanáro’s contained-lightning inventions.  For a moment, he was arrested in his tracks.  He did not think he had ever wanted anything so much in his life at that moment as to turn and tell Findekáno everything, everything he wanted and could not have, all the late-night dreams and the furtive touches to himself.  He shut his eyes.  He was Fëanáro’s eldest son.  Findekáno was Nolofinwë’s son, and his cousin, and a nér.  Three times impossible, even if he felt the same.

He didn’t.  He couldn’t.  How could he?

“Russandol,” Findekáno said, soft, coaxing, and abruptly Maitimo could not bear it.  He shook Findekáno’s hand from his shoulder and ran, stumbling around a table laden with food, navigating half by blind impulse around the couples sprawled on pillows on the floor, everything in him pushing him to go, to run, to escape.

He made it to a side door and stumbled out into the cool air.  Telperion’s silvery light suffused everything, limning the flowering bushes and the long, waving grass, the trellis with huge trumpet-like flowers opening to the sky.  It was cooler out here, a little, and here and there a bright golden light winked on and off, as the fireflies began to stir as Telperion waxed.  

It was beautiful, but anxiety and regret were already dancing a painful duet inside Maitimo’s gut.  Findekáno would never even want to speak to him again.  He’d just left, he’d just—

“Russo, wait!”  Findekáno was right there.  “Wait, please!”  To Maitimo’s mixed shame and sorrow, his cousin didn’t touch him this time, but only stood there, speaking rapid-fire.  “Russo, if you really want to leave, we can, I wanted you to have a good time, not a miserable one.  I’m sorry.  I just thought it might be nice for you to have a different kind of evening for once.”

Maitimo closed his eyes, feeling the tears pricking at them.  “I—it would be,” he said, in a low voice, suddenly.  “I want to.  I want to, Finno, don’t you see?  Everyone in there laughing and singing and happy and—it looks wonderful.  But—but I am Fëanáro’s son, how can I?”

“If it looks wonderful, then you cannot think it so terrible?” Findekáno asked, and Maitimo couldn’t read his voice.

“Well, no,” he confessed.  “I do not think it is.  My father would not approve, but I cannot see the harm in it myself.”  

“Then—”

“For anyone else,” Maitimo pushed out, miserably.  “For anyone who is not—” he was going to say Fëanáro’s son, but Findekáno interrupted him, “Anyone who isn’t you, Russandol?”

Maitimo opened his mouth to dispute it, then swallowed, because there was nothing to dispute.  He simply hadn’t put the feeling into words before.  He sighed and put his arms about his own shoulders.

“Can we talk about it?” Findekáno asked, sounding careful, sounding tender, sounding breathtakingly sincere.

“I’ll—try,” Maitimo replied thickly.  “Perhaps in the garden, where it’s quieter?”

Findekáno held out his hand questioningly; longingly, Maitimo stared at it, and then he took it, telling himself that holding one’s cousin’s hand was not so very far from the bounds of propriety, after all.  Fëanáro did not need to know.

They set off towards the edge of the garden, where there was a little topiary garden, the waxy leaves of the bushes reflecting Telperion’s light.  As they drew towards it, Maitimo heard the sounds of breathy gasps and moans, and he halted, feeling himself going hot again.  “Perhaps we should find another—”

“Ingo, Ingo, oh, please, like that—” a very familiar musical voice begged, and Maitimo halted, head whipping up incredulously.  

Somehow his feet drew him onwards, Findekáno trailing after him.  “Um, Russo, perhaps we should find another—oh.  Good evening, Makalaurë.  Findaráto.”

“What are you doing!” Maitimo heard his own voice demanding as they entered the grove.

Makalaurë—his waist length hair unbound and pooling around him like a shadowy blanket—lay on his back in the dewy grass, frozen with his hands on his cousin’s waist.  He was red in the face, but not, Maitimo thought shockily, with embarrassment so much as exertion.  Findaráto’s hair, too, cascaded freely over his pale shoulders.  The ground around them was littered with hair-pins and Makalaurë’s jeweled hair net, as well as the kerchief he often modestly wore during a performance.

They were not even naked, Maitimo thought, and somehow it scandalized him more than it would have if they had been fully disrobed.  There was something about the haste with which they must have—Valar, Makalaurë must be inside Findaráto, Ingo’s knees straddling Maitimo’s little brother, whose robes were parted to show a strip of flesh all the way from his collarbone to—Maitimo hastily looked away again.

“You couldn’t have done this inside on a bed?” Findekáno asked, sounding halfway between amused—amused!—and vaguely chiding.

Findaráto made a soft, breathy, desperate noise, and to Maitimo’s horror it went straight to his cock.  He almost staggered against Findekáno.  “Mmm, it’s beautiful out here,” Findaráto responded.  “Káno, that’s, mmm, you feel—”

“Why aren’t you stopping!” Maitimo practically wailed, his voice rising as his cock did the same. 

“Um,” said Makalaurë, sounding distracted and dazed—and his voice was doing things to Maitimo, Maitimo’s little brother’s voice, high and broken and half-begging—“Ingo doesn’t want to?”

Maitimo had no response to that.  His entire life was a long catalog of learning appropriate responses to various situations.  Some of those situations were the proper way to temper steel and some of them were the proper way to temper expectations.  None of his responses had ever come close to being able to handle something like this.

“I need to sit down,” he said to Findekáno.

Findekáno looked as if concern and amusement were warring inside him.  “Here?” he asked.

“It can’t get worse.”  Maitimo went to his knees, trying desperately to hide his far-too-eager erection.  Neither Makalaurë nor Findaráto helped, since Findaráto was now gasping, “Káno,” over and over again, while Makalaurë moaned sounds that weren’t even words as he thrust desperately into his cousin.  Maitimo wasn’t sure if they actually remembered that the other two were there.

“Russandol,” Findekáno murmured, his breath hot on Maitimo’s ear, and that sent another shiver through him, a worse one.  “It’s—we can go, if that’s what you want.”

“I don’t—” Maitimo, daringly, turned his head and buried his face in Findekáno’s shoulder.  “I don’t know what I want anymore,” he said, swallowing hard.  “I, Finno, I have wanted—for, for years, I’ve wanted to, to, to,” he almost couldn’t say it, but it seemed so ridiculous not to, when right beside him his little brother was buried to the hilt inside his favored cousin, “to kiss you.”  His heart thumped heavily, desperately, inside his chest.  “More than that.  Other things.  But I thought—”

“Ai, Russo—” Findekáno caught at his hands, pulling them to his mouth and kissing them.

“Are you not angry?” Maitimo whispered, face burning.  “That I said nothing?”

“Well, yes, a little,” Findekáno admitted frankly.  “But I know what your father is like, and in any case, I would rather spend my time kissing you now than quarreling, since you have eased my fears that I was ever to remain your annoying little cousin.”

“You may be little,” Maitimo said, recovering a little of the usual easy spark of friendship that lay between them, “but you have never been annoying.”  He glanced over to where the rhythmic slap of flesh on flesh had grown louder and Makalaurë was moaning Findaráto’s name at the top of his quite formidable lungs.  “Unlike certain little brothers I could name.”

Findekáno turned his face back, pressing a hand softly to his cheek and threading it up into his as-yet-tightly-braided hair, and tweaked loose a single hairpin, holding it up with a triumphant grin.  In a rush of courage Maitimo hadn’t known he possessed, he leaned forward and pressed his mouth to Finno’s, desperately needing to drink every drop of that sweet smile.

His cousin sighed into his mouth, hand going back into his hair and tightening.  Maitimo felt his chest tighten for an instant and then unspool as he deepened the kiss.  It was like nothing he had ever felt before.  It was like coming home.

Findekáno laughed into his mouth, pulling him closer.  “This isn’t so different from most things we’ve done together, you know, Russo,” he said, quietly.  “At least—” He went a little red.  “Well.  I don’t think it is.”

“You mean you haven’t—”

“I’ve read books!” Findekáno kissed along the line of his jaw, little feather-light kisses that made Maitimo feel warm and fuzzy and soft inside.  “You’re always complaining that I do not pay enough heed to my studies, dearest cousin, but I have read many books on the kinds of things I’d like to do to you.”

“Have you—” Maitimo managed, and then Findekáno’s mouth slid up his ear, and he jerked, cock twitching, breath freezing in his lungs.  The most embarrassing noise he’d ever heard anyone make—including Makalaurë, not five minutes ago—slid out of his mouth as he clutched desperately at Findekáno’s shoulders.  “Finno.”

Then, spilling out of his mouth before he could thinking about it and stammering a little, “Were they detailed?”

“What?” Findekáno mumbled, now kissing at the shell of his ear with such dedication that Maitimo thought he might faint.  The blood that should have been keeping him awake and alert was draining southwards with extraordinary rapidity.

“The, the books,” Maitimo gasped.  “Were they detailed, I—” He had his hands on Findekáno’s head, in his hair. 

“Do you want to hear what I want to do to you?” Findekáno’s voice was a little lower than his normal register and somewhere between nervous and eager.

“Um,” said Maitimo.  “Yes, I do, please tell me.”

“Really?” Findekáno’s hands were on his robes, pulling them open, and Maitimo copied him, because why should they be wearing robes, really?  He loved Findekáno’s broad shoulders.  Why shouldn’t he get to see them more often?  Oh, he needed to answer.  He nodded, distractedly, running his hand along the line of his cousin’s collarbone, and Findekáno gave a soft, shuddering whine.  “Russo, I want to see you naked,” Findekáno blurted.  “And I want to touch you—I want to kiss you—everywhere, I want, I want—” 

“Yes, please,” Maitimo said faintly.  “All of that.  Yes, please.”

Findekáno’s lips were on his, then, and then they were gone, and they were trailing down his throat, and then they were on his chest, and Maitimo gasped desperately as heat such as he had never felt before spiked through him as Findekáno’s mouth played across his nipples.  “Finno—” he gasped, his hands grabbing at his cousin’s coarse hair, sinking into it and twisting at it.

“Russo,” Findekáno gasped.  “Just like that, that feels—good—”  But he was speaking against Maitimo’s chest, and Maitimo whined desperately.  His cock twitched again.  Findekáno trailed a line of little kisses down his stomach, and he felt his muscles clench, contracting, as he panted desperately.  Then, before he could recover, Findekáno’s lips trailed further down, and Maitimo’s eyes squeezed shut as his cousin’s hot mouth closed over the head of his cock.

Maitimo made a noise that was halfway between a squawk and a moan, flailing one hand wildly at the soft grass beneath him, while the other he twisted frantically in Findekáno’s hair.  “F-Finno, Finno, Finno,” Maitimo chanted, desperately trying not to thrust too hard into his mouth.

Findekáno laughed—a joyful laugh rather than a mocking one—and the vibrations of it nearly made Maitimo black out.  “I, I need,” he said, rather incoherently, and he surged upright, and pushed Findekáno over onto his back on the grass, throwing a leg over so that he was straddling him.  Moaning, Maitimo rubbed himself over Findekáno’s cock, feeling silky hardness against the back of his thighs.

Findekáno’s hands fell on his hips, and Findekáno’s brilliant smile shone up at him.  “What do you need?” he asked, rolling his hips lightly against Maitimo’s.  

“You,” Maitimo said hoarsely.  His face felt like it was on fire.  Frankly, quite a lot of him felt as if it were on fire.  “But I don’t, I don’t know how to—”

“You’ll want—the oil, I imagine,” Findaráto’s voice said a little breathlessly.  Maitimo had half-forgotten he was there, and some little voice inside him suggested that this meant he and Findekáno shouldn’t be doing what they were doing, but he’d already decided to ignore all the little voices when he kissed Findekáno, so he went back to doing that, running his hands up and down Findekáno’s beautiful chest and nibbling at him, as he reached out with one hand to take the proffered oil.

“Can I?” Findekáno asked eagerly, putting out his hand, and then setting it gently, almost sedately, on Maitimo’s waist, just resting, just waiting, as if Maitimo knew from that what he was asking.  

“Tell me,” Maitimo gasped, rubbing his thighs along Findekáno’s hard cock, feeling it twitch, feeling the trail of wetness that it left.  “Tell me what you want, Finno, what you’re asking.”

Findekáno groaned again, going red, and he reached up with his other hand, caught at Maitimo’s, and pulled it down to nip at his fingers, sending sensation shivering through Maitimo’s spine.  He panted desperately.  “Please, Finno.”

“I want, I want to put my fingers inside you,” Findekáno managed after a moment.  “I want to hear you moan my name, and I want to find the sweet spot inside you that I’ve read about—oh, Russo—”

“Yes,” Maitimo gasped.  “I want that, too, everything you just said, right away, right—”

Findekáno’s hand clutched his waist, hard, and then he was fumbling with the oil, and then he was slipping one long slender finger—Maitimo gasped and shuddered at the sensation, groaned and ground down.

“Good?”

He nodded tightly.  “More.”

A second questing finger made him feel it burn and stretch a little, but then Findekáno crooked them about inside him, and something exploded behind Maitimo’s eyelids.  He thought he must have made a noise, perhaps a loud one, because Findekáno halted and said, “Russandol?” 

“Please don’t stop,” he moaned.  “Finno, please, I need you—”

“O-Oh.”  His cousin gave a little breathy gasp.  “Your face, Russo, it’s—nnn—”

He was rocking his hips back against Findekáno’s fingers with each motion, sobbing quietly as he ground what Findekáno had called his sweet spot against the press of those clever fingers.  He had never felt so free, and he had never felt so safe, and he thought his flesh might combust if he couldn’t have more.  “Fin-no—”

“Can I put—my—can I—”

His fingers withdrew, and his cock bumped clumsily against the place where they had been.

“Mmmm, need you, need you, yes—”

“All right, let me just—Russandol—stars—” The fingers were back for a moment, spreading Maitimo open, and then the head of his cock was there, and for a brief instant, it burned and stretched and hurt, and then Maitimo gasped again, eyes flying open, as he bore down and then found that his thighs were slotted against Findekáno’s, that Findekáno’s cock was inside him, feeling very much as if it had always been meant to be there.  Maitimo made a noise, something that sounded like a bitten-off groan to his ears.

“Russo,” gasped Findekáno.  “Ai, you feel, you feel, I don’t know how to describe it.”  He bit his lip and rolled his hips a little, and his cock shifted inside Maitimo, and he couldn’t even make a noise, because the feeling of it stole the breath from his lungs, left him trembling and desperate.

“More,” he croaked.

Findekáno made a soft, blissful noise and rocked his hips again and again and again—Maitimo’s eyes slid shut; all he could do was ride the waves of sensation, the fact that it was Findekáno making him feel like this.  He could hear someone moaning loudly, but it could not possibly be him—he didn’t sound like that.  He couldn’t sound like that—wild, uncontained, without regard for who might overhear.

“Stars, Russo—”  Finno’s hands tightened on his hips, and the voice wasn’t moaning anymore but whimpering.

“Finno—”  No, it was, it was him, somehow, beyond all thought of shame or propriety as he rode his cousin’s cock like it was something he had been always waiting to do.  “I’m yours,” he whispered helplessly.  “Yours, now and forever, ĕrĕmelda—until the world ends.”

“Oh—” Findekáno’s voice rose in pitched and then he was pulling Maitimo down hard onto his cock, his fingers digging in harshly, and Maitimo felt a sudden hot rush of warmth inside him.  He rocked his hips a few times dazedly, before Finno blinked up at him sheepishly and said, “I didn’t—mean for that to be over so quickly, Russo, I am sorry.”

“That was wonderful,” Maitimo murmured, peeling himself slowly off of Findekáno’s softening cock, heedless that his own was still hard and aching.  “That was—” 

“A lovely performance,” purred his brother’s voice, and Maitimo felt slow heat roll in waves across his face, across his ears, and down the back of his neck.

“I, I thought you were occupied,” he managed to get out somehow, through a throat that seemed rather constricted.

“You were very loud,” Makalaurë’s amused voice said.  Maitimo shut his eyes, wishing he could sink through the floor.

“Oh, stop teasing him.”  Findaráto’s golden voice might be defending him, but Maitimo thought it might even be worse to think about lovely Ingo watching him and Finno coupling, even if he and Makalaurë seemed to have had absolutely no scruples about the reverse.

“I wasn’t teasing when I said it was a lovely performance.”  Maitimo opened his eyes to see his little brother lying back onto the grass and grinning.

“Brat,” he got out, somehow, and Makalaurë blinked in surprise and wriggled, in a way that drew that Maitimo’s gaze to him in a way he was quite certain it oughtn’t.  His brother’s slim, lithe limbs were very beautiful.  Maitimo turned his face helplessly back to Findekáno, wishing he could burrow his face in his cousin’s neck.

“Well, it was,” Findaráto agreed, sounding light and meditative.  He leaned down to kiss Makalaurë’s ear.  “I should like to see a repeat of it.”  One hand was working lazily between his legs.  “Or—I wonder what the two of you would look like together?”

Underneath Maitimo, Findekáno gave a strangled noise, and his cock twitched against Maitimo’s inner thigh.

“Finno would like to see this as well, it seems,” Findaráto said, sounding wicked.

“We, no, what,” Maitimo said coherently, and Makalaurë wriggled again, in a way that he was quite sure was intended to be theatrical and unfortunately succeeded at drawing his eyes to his little brother’s slim, long cock, which was hardening again between his legs.  “He’s my little brother!” he protested.

“And I am your cousin,” Findaráto agreed.  “So is Finno.”

“Half-cousin,” Findekáno pointed out, but his voice sounded dazed.  Maitimo’s terror from the first half of the evening had quite vanished, replaced with a warm contentment and the imprint of Findekáno’s cock inside him.  He found, a little dazedly, that he cared far more for making Findekáno’s cock twitch and his voice sound like that—hoarse and wanting—than he did for any of the other concerns he’d had at the beginning of the evening.  And Káno was attractive.

Makalaurë’s eyes were fixed on him, round and big, the pupils blown wide and dark.  He seemed suddenly almost shy, one slim finger trailing down the center of his chest.  Then he grinned, scrunching his nose up in an oddly innocent way.  “Well, who shall do the taking?” he asked breathlessly.

“You have already had me,” Findaráto replied archly.  “While poor Maitimo has been left cruelly wanting by his chosen partner.”

“I have not!” Maitimo retorted, without thinking.  “Finno is perfect!”

“I am afraid I did leave you in a rather unfortunate position, Russandol,” Findekáno pointed out, sounding abashed.  “But you seemed to enjoy it a great deal, so perhaps you ought to let, to let...” His voice trailed off, and Maitimo looked over to see that he was still staring at the two of them, a frankly greedy expression on his lovely face.

“I am satisfied either way,” Makalaurë proclaimed.  “But please decide swiftly, for I want you very much, Nelyo.”

“K-Káno, how can you say such a thing!” Maitimo exclaimed, and Makalaurë rolled his hips and made a little moaning noise, and Maitimo’s breathing went rough and choked in his lungs.

“Do you not want me?” Makalaurë asked him, putting a finger in his mouth.

“No, Káno,” Maitimo said helplessly.  “I want you.  I want—I want you.”  He thought someone else must be using his voice to speak.

“Well then,” Makalaurë retorted, scrunching his face in a grin.  “How shall you have me, Nelyo?”

“I…” Maitimo found himself rolling onto his back without thinking, spreading his legs wide.  He was still hard.  

“Oh,” Makalaurë breathed.  “Oh, Nelyo.”  He got up and made his way across the grass, and then he was between Maitimo’s legs, looking down at him, one hand on Maitimo’s side trembling ever so slightly.

“Are they really going to—“ Findekáno said in a hushed voice.

“I certainly hope so,” Findaráto replied archly.

“Are we really going to?” Makalaurë asked, probably trying to sound light, but with a little too much of a shade of nervousness that Maitimo, if no one else, could detect in his voice.

“Go ahead,” Maitimo breathed, going red in his face, knowing that he should not, that this was well beyond anything that he had been concerned about before and yet, somehow, not quite caring.

“You’re—ready, are you not?” Makalaurë was panting a little, and he reached out to run his hands down Maitimo’s hips, dragging pleasure in their wake.

“Yes, yes, just—please, Káno, if—if Finno and Ingo want to see it—”

“I suppose Finno did leave you rather wanting,” Makalaurë said, with a sly grin; before Maitimo could protest at this unfair intimation, he had lined up his cock with Maitimo’s hole and pressed inside, slow but inexorable.  He was slimmer and longer than Findekáno had been, and the feeling of him made Maitimo bite at his lower lip and breathe raggedly.

“K-Káno,” he said, coherently, his hands grabbing for his little brother’s shoulders, wrapping his legs around Makalaurë’s waist.

“Mmmm,” Makalaurë moaned.  There was a flush dotting his cheeks and rising along his chest, and he rocked slowly, with a little less urgency than Findekáno had. He strained upward but was too short to reach Maitimo’s face and pouted.  “Nelyo, kiss me,” he begged, and Maitimo found himself leaning down to do just that, threading his large hands through Makalaurë’s unbound hair and cupping them about his cheeks, holding him safe as secure as their lips met, even as Káno’s thrusts became a little more urgent.

“Káno, oh, Káno,” Maitimo whispered; the slow rolling heat was harsher now, the fire in his blood that Findekáno had started stoked by Makalaurë’s deepening thrusts into an inferno that seemed to be melting him from the inside out.

“Stars,” Finno’s voice said, and he sounded awed and greedy at the same time.  “Stars, you are beautiful together, did you know that?”

“Of course,” Makalaurë retorted lightly, though Maitimo could hear the effort in his voice.

“No,” Maitimo whimpered.  “I mean—are we?”

“Oh, hush, Nelyo,” Makalaurë told him.  “You cannot think you are anything but the loveliest creature here—well, one of two,” as Findaráto gave an indignant exclamation, “so pray cease fishing for compli—complimennnnn—nnnn—”

“He’s not fishing, he’s just a fool.”  Findekáno’s hand landed in his hair, and Maitimo realized he was pulling out hairpins.  He gasped at the thought and clenched around Makalaurë, who moaned louder than he had yet.

“You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, Russandol,” he said quietly, and Maitimo shut his eyes as impossible pleasure twisted up his limbs, the world fading beneath an onslaught of white heat.

“—jealous of your tongue,” he heard when his hearing and vision cleared a little.  Makalaurë was lying across him, panting, his cock still inside Maitimo, though it was softening now, it seemed.  Their chests were sticky.  “I cannot believe you got him to come without a touch.”

“Finno’s tongue is as wonderful as the rest of him,” Maitimo said dreamily.  There was a hand caressing his hair gently, and he looked up and leaned into Findekáno’s touch.  

His cousin laughed, sounding a little dazed.  “I must confess, I was hoping this party would relax thee a little, Russandol, but I wasn’t expecting—”

Makalaurë made a delighted purring noise, and Maitimo blinked to see that Findaráto was combing delicately through his little brother’s hair.

“I—I shouldn’t, I suppose,” Maitimo murmured, and Makalaurë cuffed him, none too gently, on his ear.

“Don’t,” he said sharply.  “Finno will think you aren’t madly in love with him, and I for one would find that highly offensive.”

Maitimo considered this and decided to his chagrin that his little brother was correct.  Besides, whatever he ought to have done, this was what he had done, and it was very much what he had wanted to do, and he felt wild and quite wicked and queerly free.

“That would be…terrible,” he said, after a too-long moment, taking Findekáno’s hand.  “Because I am madly in love with him.”

“Ai, Russo,” whispered Findekáno.  “I am madly in love with thee as well.”

“Oh, now you’ve done it,” Findaráto put in as Makalaurë made a pleased-sounding noise.  “He will be insufferable for months now.”

“Who knew all I had to do to get you to finally confess your feelings for our beloved half-cousin was fucking you myself?” Makalaurë said cheerfully.

Maitimo sighed, interlacing his fingers with Findekáno’s.  With his free hand, he patted Makalaurë’s head.  “Well done, brat,” he said. “I suppose, though, we had better, um, clothe ourselves and…” He trailed off, not really knowing what they ought to do.

“Why don’t I go and get some of that Irmo’s leaf?” Findaráto suggested, just a shade more firmly than Maitimo expected.  “While all of you stay here.  There is no reason we cannot make a night of it, is there?”

You are Fëanáro’s son, whispered that terrible voice that was trying its best to carve out the center of Maitimo’s chest, even now, but it was much quieter than it had been.

After all, Makalaurë was Fëanáro’s son as well.  Maitimo flung his free arm over his little brother’s shoulders and drew him close, kissing his forehead lightly.  Makalaurë wriggled, looking up at him with shock.

“Yes,” Maitimo said, firmly, squeezing Findekáno’s hand, “I think that sounds quite delightful.”  Findekáno bent to kiss him, and Maitimo thought he had never been so happy in his life.