The Love of Small Things by janeways

---

Chapter 4

---

It was morning in Valinor, and the sun was shining. Well, the sun was almost always shining in Valinor, but right now it happened to be shining directly into Fingon’s eyes. He sat, resolute, at the little dining table in his breakfast nook. Fingon loved the breakfast nook for the way it caught the early morning light, but it was now closer to mid-day, and the angle was all wrong—alright, if Fingon was being honest, everything was all wrong. He sighed in frustration, tossing his quill onto the pile of parchment scattered across the table.

‘Whatever am I supposed to say?’ he thought to himself hopelessly. And yet, he felt he ought to say something. It would be awkward if he didn’t say something, wouldn’t it? He was the son of Fingolfin, after all; he had been raised to take duty to family very seriously. But what sort of duty does one have to the fully-grown, adopted son of one’s lover? He laughed aloud at the sheer absurdity of it all. ‘Only in the House of Finwë,’ he thought.

A squirrel clambered up on the tree branch near the window. Sniffing the air, it looked through the window and chirped at him. He smiled encouragingly, and it considered him for a moment before scampering away, fluffy tail bouncing.

‘Perhaps the best thing is to stop thinking over-much about it,’ Fingon thought, and, picking up his quill once more, he began to write.

To the High King Gil-galad Ereinion, from Findekáno Ñolofinwion

My good sir,

It is a pleasure to finally begin a formal correspondence—well, any correspondence!—with you. I felt given my close—

“Um,” said Fingon aloud. How much of Maedhros’s personal life was known to the lad? Maedhros was a private sort of man; Fingon would hate to speak out of turn to someone who was, for all intents and purposes, a perfect stranger. Amongst the Noldor, he and Maedhros were something of an open secret—well, considering they were currently building a house together, Fingon doubted they were even a secret anymore—but Fingon did not know how much First Age gossip had passed down to Gil-galad about the High Kings and their love lives. ‘Well,’ he thought, ‘Erestor can fill him in,’ and continued on:

—relationship with Nelyo—that is, Maedhros—it was only appropriate for me to make your acquaintance. I would not be so presumptuous as to write to you under the pretense of offering advice on king-ing—considering I was only High King for about five minutes, compared to you, it really ought to be the other way around! No, but what I can offer you is plenty of embarrassing stories about Maedhros when he was young and foolish. Well, compared to myself and my siblings, or even compared to most of his, really, he was never terribly foolish, but still, every young person has their folly.

I was, of course, hopelessly in love with him from the moment I saw him. Everyone was, but me especially. I was only a child; he was my tutor, and I loved him before I understood what that was. All I knew was I wanted so desperately to be around him, to make him proud, to see him smile. And what a smile! All the more beautiful for being rare, even in those days.

As I grew out of childhood, I began to realize my feelings for what they were, which, may I say, was an absolutely mortifying experience. I think I spent the entirety of my “in-between” years being tortuously self-aware of every ungraceful action or word—and at that age, there are so many. At the time, I thought Maedhros was merely being polite in not acknowledging what seemed to me a glaringly obvious crush, but the extraordinary thing is I think he really had no idea! Lucky for me.

By the time I reached the age of ascension, I had convinced myself we were nothing more than friends. By this point I had returned to my own household, and for many years saw Maedhros very rarely. Apparently, this had little effect; as soon as I felt mature enough to strike up a correspondence, we were often in each other’s company, now as companions and equals and no more as student and teacher. We were genuine friends, just two men enjoying each other’s’ company—that’s what I told myself. Enjoying each other’s’ company, indeed! Still, I thank myself—if I hadn’t so doggedly pursued a friendship with him, he never would have gotten to know me as a person—an individual, an equal, not only as a pupil, if you understand my meaning.

Fingon paused, his first break in a steady stream of consciousness. The memory of his old body was faint, but he still remembered in his muscles the ache in his chest of those years he spent apart from Maedhros. (Sometimes, in Beleriand, he had felt the echo of that ache, and for a long time, he had not understood it.) He had been happy, of course. He was Fingon; he was always happy, even when he wasn’t. He had been happy, but not fulfilled—not entirely.

He picked up his quill again.

I won’t bore you with all the details—this was done as much to spare Maedhros as Gil-galad—but suffice it to say that slowly, our relationship grew deeper and more intimate—

Abruptly, Fingon stopped short, and then snorted, before continuing—

—and before we knew it, we were, well, “together,” as they say. I was still a young man then, and for all that I was brash, and still tripping over my own feet, Maedhros was elegant, and considerate, and intelligent. And tall. Very tall. It utterly escaped me what this handsome, well-spoken, thoughtful man (the most sought-after bachelor in all of Aman!) saw in me. It still does! He called me “valiant” when all I ever felt in those days was foolhardy.

My very first memory of him is this: I arrived at my uncle Feanor’s household, scared out of my wits, homesick before my tutelage had even begun. And Maedhros had come out to greet us, and when he saw me, he smiled. He was perfect, and I have never loved another since.

*

Maedhros tapped the tip of his quill against the inkpot. He always did that when he was thinking; it helped him focus. He was writing Gil-galad to “introduce” him, as it were, to the family—not who they were, of course, that was in any history book, but a little of what they were like as people, their interests. His memories of them. The sort of thing one was unlikely to find in a history book.

Or so he hoped.

He had always been reserved, no less princely than his father, but more reticent to share the intimate parts of himself. Thus, emphasis on the intimate, his current dilemma. Maedhros had made it fairly easily through his immediate family, devoting much time to his mother and making it through a discussion of his father and brothers mostly without incident—which he considered a notable feat—before beginning the Ñolofinwean section. Uncle Fingolfin’s paragraph had gone smoothly: the two of them had always had a strong connection, being closer in age and disposition to brothers than uncle and nephew. (And closer in disposition than Maedhros ever was to Fëanor, whispered a voice in the back of his mind.)

And then, next in the neat little genealogical exercise Maedhros had laid out, was Fingon.

It wasn’t that Maedhros was concerned how Gil might view the relationship; Beleriand had been, in his experience, more liberal in both thought and practice than the Valinor of his youth when it came to intimate relationships, half-cousins or no. (‘Well,’ he considered, ‘maybe not in Turgon’s house.’ It was unlikely anything had been liberal there.) Even in Aman people more or less shrugged their shoulders and carried on when they encountered such things nowadays. It wasn’t fear of judgment, it was just—

He simply didn’t know how to do it.

Maedhros was not regarded as one of the more emotional members of his family—not, of course, that this was particularly difficult given some people he was related to—and in general felt a great discomfort when speaking of, dealing with, or indeed acknowledging emotions more complex than, say, hunger. Being a prince, he had learned to mask this discomfort with a heavy dose of Fëanorian Charm, but the truth was that Maedhros had never felt he was any good at talking about his feelings.

And so he hadn’t talked about his feelings to Gil, not really. He had written about what he knew of people, what he admired, what he remembered. Little stories and anecdotes he felt encapsulated the nature of that person, and of his relationship with them. But with Fingon, it felt impossible to share so many of those moments without first some explanation as to who Fingon really was to him. Perhaps if he related only the facts of their relationship—how they met, how they became what they were to each other—it would spare them both: Maedhros, the embarrassment of writing what he considered lurid and saccharine details, and Gil-galad, the embarrassment of reading them.

I first met my half-cousin Fingon when he was a boy, sent to study in our household. He spent many years with us, mostly under my tutelage, and by the time he left, he was a man in his own right, poised to assume the duties of a prince. I thought him particularly well-suited for the job: cheerful and polite, but intelligent and determined. He shortly began a correspondence, which pleased me, and thereafter we were rarely apart, for, having come into full manhood, I found him a pleasing companion and friend. It is gratifying for those of us who have been teachers to watch our students grow into adults, and to come to know and respect them as equals, as they have respected us.

Thus, a relationship of some intimacy developed. Pleased though I was at the attention Fingon bestowed upon me, especially in beginning our correspondence, I was also surprised—not only that he should seek the friendship of his former teacher, but that a gallant and popular young man would seek the attention of someone so reserved and bookish as myself. But I found he brought out the best in me, as I came to know him better—my humility, my humor, my kindness.

And so, when he first confessed his feelings to me, I realized I had quite accidentally fallen in love with him.

It was suggested that my uncle had sent my cousin to study in our household as a sort of peace offering, an appeal to my father—a way to bridge our two families. It certainly worked, although perhaps not in the manner intended. We had been friends—true friends—for so long I hardly remembered the boy I had known centuries before. He had grown into a person whom I cared for, yes, but more importantly, whom I respected as a prince and a leader. Someone I admired.

In all things he has been my partner, and it has been my great privilege to share my life with him.

Maedhros paused, feeling like he had caught his breath for the first time since he had started writing that passage. He purposefully untensed his muscles, picked up his quill again, and, setting it to the page once more, continued:

Turgon.

He sighed.

*

Gil-galad looked up from his letters at Elrond. They sat, as they often did, with Erestor and Maglor in a small, semi-private chamber Gil had begun calling his “family room.” (Amused, Maglor had informed him that Celegorm had often called such rooms “dens.”) A crackling fire illuminated Elrond’s face, reflecting in his eyes, which were now raised to meet Gil-galad’s.

“Did you know about Adar and King Fingon?” he asked quietly. Across the room, Erestor’s eyes widened, and Maglor’s face spread into a wicked grin.

“Everyone in wider Beleriand knew about my brother and Fingon,” interjected Maglor, with a laugh. “There were at least a dozen drinking songs about the two of them.”

“You ought to know,” sniffed Erestor, who was pointedly refusing to look up from his book. “You wrote half of them.” Maglor was positively beaming.

Elrond ignored them; having gotten up to stand behind Gil-galad’s chair, he was too engrossed in attempting to read over the king’s shoulder. Skimming the page, he said, “I knew a little, but this tells me nothing new, save that Fingon was the one who confessed to Adar.”

“I always knew it would be Fingon,” said Maglor. “Moryo was running bets—on who would confess first, and when—and I won the whole pool,” he finished proudly. Holding up a finger, he recalled, “‘Fingon, at sunset, by the beech tree, in summer.’ Oh, don’t look so aghast, Erestor; you bet, too, you’re just still upset you didn’t win.” Quirking his eyebrow, Elrond turned his gaze to Gil-galad. This is what you’re getting yourself into, his expression seemed to say. Are you sure you’re prepared?

Gil-galad just smiled.