The Ice Between by Nibeneth

---

Chapter 1

---

 

“Will you take me to bed?”

Fingon opened his mouth to respond and found that all of the responses he had ever thought up to that invitation were stuck in his throat. He blinked, closed his mouth, and looked up at Maedhros' face. There was fear there, but a hopeful kind of fear, the kind that made him look softer and younger and not quite as afraid as his usual guarded expression made him look. He was tense, but after another moment he smiled a little. He had said it, and it must have been a weight off his shoulders. Fingon wondered how long he had been working up the courage to ask.

“Right now?” was all that came out of Fingon's mouth, and instantly shame and horror flooded through him. “No! I mean, yes, I will, I just—” He withdrew his hands from Maedhros' waist and covered his eyes. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to say that. Yes, I do want to.”

His words, tone, and hesitation stuck in his mind and he swiftly convinced himself that Maedhros heard reluctance instead of nerves. That he found his courage met with callousness instead of equal enthusiasm.

But Maedhros, rather than being offended as Fingon feared, chuckled softly. He slid his fingers under Fingon's and pulled one hand away from his face. “The fault is mine. I should not have asked you right as I’m about to ride away.”

The sounds of jingling tack and distant voices underlined their conversation. It was, in Fingon's opinion, an ideal day to stay in bed, with Maedhros or without him. The ground was soggy and looming clouds threatened more rain, but the appointed day had come for Maedhros and his retinue to return to their people on the other side of the lake. It wasn't that far. Fingon could make the trip in a day with a fast horse, but he had his own duties as well. In these days of expansion he was designing so many new buildings that he saw pencils and compasses in his dreams, and he knew that if he left, he would return to find his designs-in-progress ruined by engineers with no imagination, specifically his brother.

“Yes,” Fingon said again. He squeezed Maedhros' hand. “Are... are you ready?”

“Yes.” Maedhros kissed him then, and his smile was charmingly crooked. “Are you?”

Fingon had not considered that. All the times he had thought about what would happen when or if they ever had made love again, he had focused all his concern toward Maedhros. He dearly wanted to bring him pleasure. He was afraid of hurting or frightening him. He loved him, whether or not they were having sex, and he wanted him to know it. Next to that, his own readiness had not seemed relevant.

He figured he would be just fine. After all, he was not the one who had been tortured so cruelly that an accidental brush could send him into hours of panic.

“I think so.” Still holding Maedhros' hand, he wound his other arm around his waist again. Logically he knew that it would be easier to let him go if he didn't cling to him until the last possible moment, but he also did not care. “Three weeks. That isn't long at all.”

“It isn't. I will still miss you every day.” Maedhros released Fingon's hand to run his fingers through his braids instead, and Fingon leaned into his touch.

“Spend less time missing me and more time making sure your brothers aren't staging a coup. That should make the days go by faster.” He stood on his toes and claimed another kiss, this one soft and lingering to hold them both over until the King's next council.

Finally, it was time for Maedhros to go. They walked back to the others, keeping a respectable distance between them. Maedhros accepted the reins of his horse from Eliadis, his chief bodyguard, who was very aware of why they felt it necessary to say goodbye privately, and lifted himself into the saddle. He moved a little stiffly—Fingon knew the damp weather made him ache. Still, he held his head high and looked every bit like a lord of the Noldor as he smiled down at Fingon. “Three weeks,” he said quietly.

Three weeks was nothing, especially not to Fingon, who was now old enough that centuries seemed more like decades and decades seemed like a season or two, but the next three weeks seemed to last for two hundred years of the Trees. He agonized the entire time over what would happen when Maedhros returned and they were alone once again, trying to continue what had been abandoned, seemingly forever, in Valinor.

He wasn't sure how to even start. In the four years since the rescue he had not dared to bring up the topic first and Maedhros had not said anything until his invitation. It had always been easy, one of them initiating with a look or a touch or a lingering kiss, but in this they were strangers. He decided to make it a romantic occasion, and it turned out to be as good an idea as any. On the day of Maedhros' arrival, he lit new candles and burned sweet herbs and fitted his bed with soft, fresh sheets. For the first time in decades he agonized over how to dress, and finally settled on “comfortable and flattering” over anything else. He acquired wine, chewed mint leaves for his breath, rubbed his hands with fragrant salve, and finally looked everything over. With it all in front of him, it looked like too much. Contrived.

Maedhros arrived with Maglor and Caranthir and a larger retinue, but from the moment he laid eyes on Fingon, he hardly looked at anyone else. Fingon barely managed to keep from either grabbing him in public or wringing his hands with nerves as they sat through interminable meetings and audiences and the world's most tedious dinner. The Noldor had plans, and the fact that they were discussing them around the kitchen table in High King Fingolfin's modest home seemed to make them all the more long-winded and bombastic about their intent to recreate Tirion in these outer lands. There would be a grand capital in Hithlum from which the king would keep the fires of war burning, and the sons and daughters of the house of Finwë would carry its light into the far corners of Beleriand. There would be gold and marble and fine silks and bright steel and every craft they had honed to perfection in Aman. Maedhros also had his plans to take his people East. The reminder that their parting drew closer every day brought another layer of desperation to the stew of anxiety that had started bubbling within Fingon ever since Maedhros kissed his cheek for the first time after the rescue.

What are we now? Fingon wanted and feared to ask. Where do we go from here? When you leave, is it the end for us? What can I say if you ask me to come with you?

Perhaps Maedhros feared those questions as well, and perhaps that was why he had chosen now to ask Fingon to bed and reaffirm the relationship they had carried on for so long before everything went bad. Or perhaps that was Fingon overthinking everything again, as he did. Either way, he wanted him so much that time seemed to move backwards and the polite distance between them was sheer agony.

Finally, when the day’s tedium ended, Maedhros and Fingon all but dragged each other away to Fingon's room. They barely made it inside before Maedhros started kissing Fingon, tasting and devouring him bit by bit, his lips and teeth and tongue roaming over his mouth and along his jaw.

“Those were the longest three weeks of my life,” he whispered. His breath was hot and fast against the top of Fingon's head when Fingon wound his fingers into his hair and gently pulled back, exposing the freckled column of his neck. He leaned in and just pressed his face under his chin, breathing him in and trying to convince himself that this was happening. His hair was soft against Fingon's cheek, his pulse was fast and strong and alive, and he was holding him like Fingon had never hoped to be held again. It was happening.

“We can always stop if you want to,” Fingon reminded him.

“I don't want to stop. Come here.”

Fingon's fears about overpreparing were unfounded. Maedhros appreciated the special effort; he'd always enjoyed such things. Kissing was easy, first standing, and then sitting on the side of the bed. Fingon's heart hammered in his chest and he had to remind himself to let Maedhros make all the first moves. They undressed each other, gentle and considerate, murmuring words of desire and encouragement. Fingon couldn't speak when Maedhros, grinning, leaned back against the pillows and pulled Fingon into his lap.

“Touch me,” he whispered. His mouth was red and supple from kissing. Fingon touched him. His face, his hair, his stomach, his cock, and Maedhros touched him back. Joyfully. Wonderingly.

“I love you,” Fingon whispered back, his voice cracking a little. He stroked him and kissed him and could not stop himself from falling headfirst into sheer ravenous want. It was all so perfect in that moment, and then—

“Stop! I can't. Please forgive me,” Maedhros said in a rush. He pushed Fingon away to arm's length, his eyes wild with fear and regret, and Fingon felt his heart break a little more. He drew his hands away from Maedhros' body and sat back on his heels.

“Did I hurt you?”

Maedhros' pause, though lasting only an eyeblink, seemed to span a year. Finally he shook his head, and Fingon breathed a quiet sigh of relief.

“I'm sorry,” Maedhros said again.

“Shh. You don't need to apologize.” Fingon reached out to touch his cheek, but he flinched away.

“I just—I need to not be touched right now.” His voice was small. Broken. He grabbed at the bedspread underneath him. “I need to not be naked. I... can't. I'm sorry.”

Fingon swiftly removed his weight from Maedhros and the bed and stood to one side, feeling a little helpless, as Maedhros rolled himself in the bedspread and curled into a ball. Just a tuft of his hair was visible out the top. He could think of nothing to say.

“I can... go, if you want me to,” he said, belatedly remembering that this was his room and abandoning Maedhros in it might be just as bad as sending him away. He reached for his discarded clothes.

But Maedhros uncurled a little and looked out of the blankets with an odd, vulnerable look on his face. “Please stay?” The hand that had pushed Fingon away now emerged and extended, uncertain, toward him. Fingon nodded and sat once again on the edge of the bed. He did not try to touch Maedhros again, though he wanted to take him in his arms and hold him and reassure him that the horror was over. The silence stretched between them for a long time until Maedhros spoke again.

“I feel so ugly,” he muttered.

“You are notugly. You are handsome and brave and loved, and nothingwill ever change that,” Fingon said. The force of his own words surprised him, and apparently surprised Maedhros as well, as a strange, clear spark entered his gray eyes and his lips parted a little as if he was about to say something. But he said nothing. Fingon looked down at a fold in the sheet under his leg. He rolled it gently between his thumb and forefinger, imagining that he was caressing Maedhros' ear instead. He always used to like that.

It used to be so easy.

Maedhros looked away again. “I didn't think I would react like that.”

“It's all right. We could always... try again later,” Fingon suggested when he was reasonably sure Maedhros would not react poorly. “If you wanted to.”

A small smile twitched at his lips. “I would like that very much.”