When All Other Lights Go Out by sallysavestheday

Beacon

Maedhros and Fingon play a dangerous game in Tirion, sneaking into each other’s rooms to cling and grapple and love with a desperation that leaves them giddy after long nights without sleep. Wiser hearts would secret themselves away, but they tempt fate and their fathers, climbing balconies and sliding down drainpipes to tumble into one another’s waiting arms. Drunk on delight, they make mistakes that nearly expose them, again and again.

Fingon plunges over the windowsill only seconds after Fëanor has left Maedhros’ sitting room. Maedhros comes home in last night’s crumpled robes, smelling of Fingon, and risks passing Fëanor in the hall, trusting his father’s distraction to secure him from harm. They huddle in alcoves at formal gatherings, teasing each other to frustration, giggling breathlessly as their hidden hands touch and stroke and clasp, until a passing guest salutes them and draws them into conversation. The risks raise the stakes: they make the burning hotter, and the quenching even more sweet.

Maglor’s rooms are next to Maedhros’, and he is no fool. Rustling ivy on the balcony and the muffled noises of delight speak volumes; he glimpses Fingon’s golden ornaments shimmering in the softened light as he slips away afterwards, a shadow weaving through the garden’s trees.

Maglor knows his father’s opinions. His own friendship with Finrod has been tested and found safe, if unbecoming, as Fëanor holds Finarfin’s sons in careless contempt. But Fingolfin’s heir is another matter entirely, wound up in the barbed and bitter wires of succession and precedence and pain. Were it any other of his own children, Fëanor would scoff and lecture against the constraints of laws and customs, defying faith and public sentiment for pride and the pleasure of debate. But Nelyafinwë must be third, and sire a fourth. Fingon is as far from an appropriate match as it is possible to be, for the eldest son of the House of Fëanor.

Maglor loves his father, in the absolute yet distant way one loves a star, the sea, the flames. Fëanor was at his best when his sons were very young, bathing them in affection and attention that knit their hearts to his, inseparably. Once they grew old enough to have their own opinions and their own pastimes, the fierce heat of his interest in them cooled. He remains paternal, supportive, encouraging where their ways parallel his own, and they are still bound to him like moons to a planet as it turns. But it is Maedhros who has his finger on the pulse of the brothers’ lives – their small frustrations, their secrets, their private insecurities and pains. It is Maedhros who watches, who listens. Maedhros, who cares.

Maglor places the lamp Maedhros made for him long ago in his window. On nights when his father is away he sings it alight, watching the glow spring up and steady under his welcoming hands. He waits for Fingon in the garden on one such night, startling his cousin into a wary crouch, ready for a fight. Maglor only laughs and points out the beacon; he whispers its use, grinning in fond complicity. Fingon’s eyes shine with gratitude and he tugs Maglor into an exuberant embrace, then disappears up the trellis into Maedhros’ room.

Thanking Maglor awkwardly, afterwards, Maedhros offers to set the light in his own window, but Maglor just shrugs and laughs. It is his lamp; he may do with it as he likes. Better it sits in his rooms than in his brother’s, for appearances’ sake. Tirion is not the bright, fair city it was when they were children. Shadows cling and creep and words have edges; loyalties are settling into ruts; tempers steam with barely contained heat.

Maglor reads in the lamp’s tender glow, listening to the rustle as Fingon climbs to his brother’s balcony. Let them love while they may, he thinks, shivering. Soon enough, the opportunities will cease.