Numb by Luxa

---

Chapter 1

---

"You're beautiful."

"Don't lie to me."

Maitimo feels rather than hears Findekáno's sigh. He has trouble hearing most things these days, although he will never admit it. As far as his family knows, the only problems with his cut ears are aesthetic ones.

Findekáno's fingers, rough and calloused (but never as rough as his skin, never as worn and tan as five years of hanging on a mountain make you), trace his bare arm. He knows this because he can see him doing it. He cannot feel it.

"I mean it, Maitimo."

"Don't call me that."

"I mean it, Russandol."

"What," he says, his voice calm but firm. "Is beautiful about this?"

Maitimo lifts his left hand and gestures over his body, trying to articulate without words how ugly he is, how thick with scars and mutilated his flesh is. Then again, he can see how it hard for Findekáno to get the full picture, seeing as he keeps his body covered by the blankets at all times, even when they make love.

"You are strong," murmurs Findekáno. "Please, let me..."

"Let you what?" he says, hating the edge of desperation in his voice.

"Let me see them. Let me touch them. Let me show you that I do not hate them. Or, for that matter, you."

He meets Findekáno's eyes and whispers, "This means a lot to you, doesn't it?"

"Yes," replies Findekáno honestly. "But if you can't...if it hurts too much...I don't have to. But please, if you can..."

"Okay," he finds himself saying. "Okay. You can look. You can even touch. But don't expect me to enjoy it, or even...even react. I cannot feel much of it."

He closes his eyes then as Findekáno kisses him. Maitimo is glad he can not see the look on his love's face.

He releases his grip on the covers and lets Findekáno inch them down so his chest is revealed. His is grateful that Findekáno does not ask to see his back, because his back, from what he can tell from mirrors and his limited ability to twist, is horrific. It is appalling. It is a gory mass of tissue, the faithful map of thousands upons thousands of whip marks, of burns, of acid. Of pain. It is beyond description.

Findekáno begins his trek down his chest with the scar that wraps around his neck, the one that makes his voice strange and deep. He kisses it and lets his fingers trail down it, until he finds another scar to touch. He was right. He cannot feel them.

"What made this one?" Findekáno asks. Maitimo cranes his neck, groaning at its stiffness.

"Probably a knife."

"You do not remember?" Findekáno asks curiously.

"It all becomes a blur after a while," he admits. A haze of pain and cries and laughter, although the laughter is never his. He does not even remember who the laughter belongs to.

Findekáno's fingers resume their search (although what they are looking for Maitimo does not know) down his chest, asking about all the ones he feels. Maitimo wonders if he realizes that they are not the scars that first pierced his chest, that those are hidden deep down, that there is layer upon layer of skin covering them. Even Findekáno cannot touch those scars.

"What is this one?" asks Findekáno.

His voice is strange. Maitimo does not understand it.

"What?" he asks, craning his neck down again.

Findekáno's hand is splayed across his chest, over a ragged scar Maitimo vaguely recognizes.

"Russandol," he says quietly. "Do you realize what this is?"

He looks at it. "Of course," he says, confused. "It's the my father's crest."

"They...they carved it into your chest?" Findekáno asks.

His voice is strange again. Maitimo thinks he might be close to tears, and that frightens him.

"I remember now," he replies. He does; blurry memories have focused into images. "They did it right in the beginning. They were mocking me."

"Oh, Russandol."

"Do not worry yourself about that," he says, unsure of how much he can tell him. "They were always mocking me."

"They did it in the beginning?" he asks. Findekáno doesn't want to think about what he has said, so he is focusing on something else. Maitimo can tell.

"Yes," he finds himself saying, although he wishes he would stop. He can't bring himself to, though. He needs to tell someone, even if he doesn't want to hear it. "But they recarved it everytime new scars began to cover it. It was important to them that it was visible."

"Because of the Silmaril," whispers Findekáno. "Because it's in the crest."

Maitimo finds it surprisingly easy to meet his love's eyes. "Yes."

Findekáno kisses him, and Maitimo can feel tears on his eyelashes.

There are many things he cannot feel, but this is not one of them.

---

---

Chapter End Notes

I hope you liked it! :)