50 Prompts: AU Silmarillion by Urloth

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Prompt: Mess (Feanor. Fingolfin.)

I believe someone once, a long time ago, prompted me a Modern Feanor and Fingolfin with pizza but I lost the prompt and this took a life of its own so it falls in the AU Drabbles.

Summary: It’s an overwhelming life but they’ve made it this far.

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The creativity of the punishments of fate was amazing.Nolofinwë’s head was throbbing from the drone of the lecturer’s voice, despite hislectures being an hour on the bus behind him (including a stop at the shops to get the eclectic shopping list texted to his phone.)

The smell of tomato and oregano hit his nose the moment he walked in the house, with an underlying touch of bread. The dulcet tones of an American singer filled the living room and he poked his head into it to see Findekáno curled up next to Tyelkormo, both toddlers still dressed in their kindy uniforms. The credits were rolling, while frogs jumped down the sides of the artistically rendered swampland on either side of the words.

“Ah!” Tyelkormo saw him and his chubby small face broke into a grin. “More.”

The toddler held up a bright coloured DVD.

“Atto? Atto! Welcome home! Welcome home!” Findekáno scrambled off the couch to wrap around Nolofinwë’s legs

“Nolofinwë is that you?” a voice asked from the kitchen, Fëanáro stuck his head through the cut through, “could you put the next DVD on, I promised them one each because it’s end of term.”

Then his head disappeared again.

Nolofinwë eyed the kitchen with a feeling ominous dread but changed the DVD and set it up to play.

“read the charges”

“Dr Jumba Jokiba lead scientist-”

He headed into the kitchen to face down his brother.

The kitchen was… he couldn’t really describe it. The kitchen looked like it had been the target of prolonged warfare involving flour and tomatoes.

Fëanáro looked up. There were perfectly round and flattened disks of thin dough covered in a red sauce, probably the tomatoes, sitting on wooden things he could only describe as…. Thick paddles, and in the oven he espied two more of the round flattened disks, with what looked like sausages and nameless green things on them

Fëanáro gave him a defiant look as Nolofinwë looked down at the assorted toppings sitting in bowls that his brother was assembling pizzas (that is what Nolofinwë vaguely remembered them being called. Or vaguely remembered the cheesy monstrosities he had eaten in the early days of their life here being called.)

“I thought we gave up pizza after we discovered what they meant by a double stuffed crust,” Nolofinwë edged his way around the counters to peer properly into the oven.

“I saw it on the TV today,” Fëanáro shrugged a shoulder.

“Those two portly women you enjoy watching?”

“No, a program involving a loud woman with an accent.”

That summarised the majority of the cooking programmes that Fëanáro watched throughout the day. When he was not watching documentaries about all the strange and unique places that this… he did not know it was arda but it certainly was the world.

His brother’s lifestyle meant that he was the one usually in charge of cooking meals and taking care of their young sons reborn… and also earning their sole income.

Nolofinwë wasn’t quite sure what it was Fëanáro was doing when he locked himself away in his room for hours on end with his computer, Fëanáro had said he was “playing the markets” and had gone into a long spiel about currency exchange but had swiftly lost Nolofinwë by talking too fast.

There was also the many, many patents; their monthly visit to the patent office, since apparently Fëanáro could make a living on the internet but didn’t trust an online submission system, was the highlight of at least Matimo’s month since they also went to the national museum.

Every-time.

Either way their living was good, and if Ñolofinwë’s pride was being stung again and again by being provided for by Fëanáro, well the sting was less and less each time.    

He managed their accounts anyway and had a better head for dealing with taxes when taxes came around. He was working his way through an accounting degree (that Fëanáro had taken one longing look at the university website then written the check for without anything else said.)

They gave generously to several shelters and help lines

Because in stinking, urine drenched hallways was where they had found one another again, hollow eyed and desperate. His brother’s hair had been a half hacked off mess, Ñolofinwë’s eyes had both been bruised from a fight on the streets for a safe place to sleep. The shelter had given them a room for a night, and a bowl of beans, and two pieces of toast.

A bathroom where they didn’t have to worry as much about being attacked though the danger was still there.

It had been more than enough, though back onto the streets they’d gone the next day. And when Fëanáro had gone own the dark rabbit hole of his mind as they had walked though the barren stinking wasteland that made up the Edain ideas of a City Scape, it had been a warm voice on the end of a phone number glowing from a bright tattered sticker on a public telephone. Call collect. Ñolofinwë’s terror tumbling down the line as Fëanáro burned to death inside his head again and again.

They had a nice lawyer who insisted they call her Rachel (they settled for a Ms in front of it. Fëanáro was too stuck in his ways to address someone with such academic pedigree without a title) who handled a lot of the law to do with the patents they had. There had been a few copyright infringements, a few out and out thefts that had led to more money than Ñolofinwë felt was sensible but it had paid for the house, moving them from a dingy flat above a chip shop, and it had paid for the children as they had come along, and it paid also for Ms Rachel who had first taken them on when her older associates had pushed the case onto her.

They liked her; Ms Rachel. She had dinner with them with her husband once a month, and didn’t remark on their small shrine in the corner of the living room, where they tried to pray to Eru but usually failed. (It was Nolofinwë who had insisted they make it and he regretted it sometimes… most of the times.)

Ms Rachel once tried to bring up the lawsuits being launched by those who had been grossly mistreated by the ‘Church’. But once he had gently but firmly denied that idea she had let it be, though she had mentioned that seeing one’s abusers bought to some kind of justice could be the only healing some people would accept

Nolofinwë knew what she was getting at but Fëanáro’s (and his when he cared to admit it) abusers were so far out of reach it was laughable.

Once he had come home with a book entitled the ‘Black Dog’ which Tyelkormo had insisted be read to him despite how it was not actually a child’s book. Fëanor’s third son had refused to take no for an answer, especially since it concerned dogs.

They were piecing themselves a life, a strangely harmonious life. They had talked about what happened, when they were hungry on the streets and their eyes shone brighter than the tepid streetlights above them.

They’d fought about it.

Broken a few bones about it.

Screamed themselves hoarse about it.

Had the police called on them about it.

The children they found in the strangest places. Matimo fell off a roof into Fëanáro’s arms, and Findekáno turned up on their doorstep in a basket. Makalaurë was found in their recycling bin, a chubby, gleeful toddler, and Tyelkormo had been living at the bottom of their garden when they finally noticed their fledgling vegetable garden stripped bare. He had been chewing on a rabbit carcass when they had first spotted him, and had growled like a dog when they tried to coax him out of the warren he’d made under the garden shed.

The strangest one had been Carnistir when one week ago Fëanáro had cut open a cabbage and the baby had just fallen out, neat as could be.

Ñolofinwë wasn’t upset by the imbalance of children yet. His children had more reason, perhaps more chance, of rebirth in the West after all.

Fëanáro confessed he did not think the twins would ever show up. It had been over vast quantities of German beer at a pub down the street while their neighbour had been kind enough to babysit.

For all of the children Ms Rachel was the most obliging and discrete lawyer to exist in the whole world, though they were sure there were times she wavered, wondering if she should discus it with another authority. In fact she probably thought that about them often.

In fact she probably should have but the Child Services people have hovered on the edges but never quite intruded into their lives.

However DNA tests are magical things and they’re both willing to put up with a reputation of being slightly stupid and incredibly selfish idiots known for impregnating women who then abandon their children on them later.

Their neighbour thought they had a surrogate.

Whatever that meant.

“Do we need all of these done right now?” Ñolofinwë decided to ask

“No but it means when the other boys get home we can just shove them in the oven and get them done by the time they’ve unpacked their bags,” Fëanáro suddenly looked up, that extra sense of his alerting him just in time for Tyelkormo’s soft wail to suddenly reach the kitchen.

Nolofinwë followed to see what was causing the distress in the child.

There was an animated animal shelter on the screen. Tyelkormo was crying, rubbing at his eyes and reaching at the screen while Findekáno watched with large eyes.

“What’s wrong Turko?” Fëanáro swung his son up into his arms.

“Huan,” Tyelkormo hiccupped wetly, “Huaaaan.”

There was a sigh and Fëanáro kissed between Tyelkormo’s eyes, mumbling to him in Quenya.

“Can you handle the boys when they get home?” Fëanáro asked him as his son settled in to wail good and proper against his shoulder. Ñolofinwë nodded and withdrew, giving them awkward privacy. He rolled up his sleeves and decided to clean the kitchen as much as he could.