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Maedhros

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They look like their mother, Maglor’s little foals.

Of course, Maedhros never saw Elwing save from a distance: a smudge at the centre of the light she wore around her neck like a noose. But from the palette of fair Dior he has painted an image of Elwing for his torment. As beautiful, remote, and unyielding as a Vala. So too are Elwing’s sons to Maedhros, when their twin eyes throw back the reflection of his compulsive anger at their forebears. It is a habit lodged so deep it has fused to his heart.

Foals no longer, Maedhros has to acknowledge on one of the rare occasions he joins them at the table. Proud and noble stallions now, but still, he insists, so like their mother. But the foundations on which Maedhros has built the wall between them tilt when Elrond carefully spreads the butter to the very edges of his bread, the way Maglor does. The action, so simple, scrapes some raw and wounded part of him.

Something ignites in him later that evening when he overhears them both in heated conversation, hears Elrond say, “I am only trying to help you, brother,” because Maglor’s voice had that same enspelling cadence when he rekindled the flame in the husk of a body Fingon salvaged from Thangorodrim.

In the man Maglor has raised, Maedhros sees and hears (longs to smell and touch and taste) the memory of his brother as he was, when Maedhros loved him freely, hungrily, heedlessly, because his marred spirit wanted and Maglor offered and Maedhros could not say no.

Maglor, in the end, refused him, after the fire ate up his lands and the enemy drove him behind the safety of Himring’s walls. At least there was this, Maedhros had thought greedily, as the North went up in smoke: Maglor, ever his haven, would be now his hearthfire also. Maglor had shut him out.

It had seemed sudden, then, for had it not been less than a month before that they had chased off the chill of winter with the friction of their bodies joined? Since then, Maedhros has plotted the narrative of centuries building towards that boundary drawn. The tale of a liege devoted beyond reason to his lord, giving and giving until his spirit was as scorched as the lands he lost.

They do not touch anymore, not even in violence. Maglor has no need of him. It is his foals, grazing upon his barren spirit, who have brought him back to life.

It is a violation of his brother’s care, to want Elrond’s deft hands working the laces of his breeches, to wonder if his cock flushes as red as his lips, or if his groans would rattle in Maedhros’ chest when they kissed, as Maglor’s once did.

For this reason Maedhros, his defences all but breached, lengthens the distance between himself and Elwing’s sons. Maglor’s sons.

Elrond shortens it. Elrond finds him in the dust and disorder of his study and confidently recites the knowledge Maglor has fed him. Maedhros cannot resist emending it, which makes Elrond laugh. Elrond finds him sharpening blades in the armoury and begs to spar with him. He demands to join him hunting orc, and it is not suspicion that causes Maglor’s fingers to twitch anxiously. It is the orcs he fears; he smiles to see his fosterling taking a liking to his brother, and urges him on. He trusts Maedhros.

He should never have trusted Maedhros, not then, and certainly not now, because when Elrond brushes up against him under the cover of a dense stand of trees, so close Maedhros can feel his breath through his threadbare tunic, Maedhros does not even try to stop himself. He spins and seizes the taut muscle of Elrond’s arm and oh! he tastes sweeter than Maglor ever did, and yes, Maedhros shudders when he swallows Elrond’s groan, and he cannot say no.

Elrond

Chapter contains graphic sexual content. The sex is consensual, but power dynamics between characters are blurry. 

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Did Elrond want this? Yes.

Does he want it now, with the pulse of Maedhros’ arousal evident through his breeches, thickening in the crease of Elrond’s hipbone?

Elrond shudders. He is being dragged under by a tide of sensations. It is nothing like the simple pleasure he coaxes from himself with a hand. It is enormous, looming as the press of Maedhros’ larger body against his. The lust is rooted between his thighs, hard and heavy, but it rages through his limbs, clamps around his lungs, blurs the boundaries of flesh and spirit.

Is it always so when coupling with another? Elrond has no experience with such things — not like Elros, who brings back giddy tales from the secret places to which he disappears, arm snugged around the waist of some leaderless Green-elf or unmoored Noldo widow.

There is nothing stopping Elrond from engaging in such trysts: indeed, Maglor believes he does, and Elrond and Elros both smile and do not correct him. But since Elrond’s body first stirred in yearning, it is Maedhros he has wanted. His brother knows, for he can hide little from his twin, but the secret is one of those sores their love skirts around. Maglor certainly does not know.

Maedhros releases his lips, and Elrond gulps for air. He cannot keep from keening when a hand pushes up under his tunic. It is large enough to cover most of his chest, and his own skin feels too thin, too smooth, beneath the rough pads of palm and fingers. Maedhros’ other arm is hooked around the curve of Elrond’s back, yanking him flush against him.

With animal instinct, Elrond’s hips buck and chafe against Maedhros’ leg. Sliding the arm over his ass and under his thighs, Maedhros hoists him up, supporting his back against an obliging tree. Then the hardness of Elrond’s shaft is pressed against Maedhros’ own and Elrond is unable to stop himself, cannot keep the whimpers pouring from his throat, though he is afraid with every jerk of his hips that he will spill too soon, that the moment he has ached for all these years will slip away, never to be offered again.

Elrond’s feet hit the ground, scrambling for purchase on the uneven tree roots. Maedhros holds him steady, hand to hip; hand sliding down, pausing over the bulge of Elrond’s cock.

Then Elrond gasps: not in pleasure, but because Maedhros drops to his knees on the wet brown leaves. Drops to his knees, like a mountain falling, and Elrond’s pulse thunders, untethered by the sight. It was always himself Elrond imagined on the ground, choking on Maedhros’ spend, for he was certain that was what Maedhros wanted, and Elrond’s pleasure would be in fulfilling. In healing.

He had never considered that Maedhros, towering and terrible, might need the same of him.

Maedhros tips his chin back to look at him. Eyes like burnished silver lance Elrond’s heart. Maedhros sees him, sees into him, and Elrond is stripped, his idolatry laid bare. But Maedhros does not seize on this vulnerability as Elrond fears. Instead, his lips part, the hard lines at the corners of his mouth fade. His fingers hook on the fastenings of Elrond’s breeches, and he reaches up with his blunted wrist. He rests it over the skin at the base of Elrond's throat. Claiming, but reverentially, gratefully.

Concern glazes Maedhros’ eyes, as if he is for the first time aware that Elrond’s wishes might not align with his own. Elrond reaches to cup his chin. He nods, silently: Yes. Maedhros swallows, nods also, then buries his face between Elrond’s thighs, breathing the scent of him, hand and wrist caressing the lines and curves of his hips, his legs, his back.

Then with abrupt and hurried motions he releases the hooks securing Elrond’s breeches, yanks them down around his knees. Elrond whines and clutches the tree bark when his erection is suddenly freed, exposed to the cool air, but Maedhros does not leave him there for long. He swallows him to the root, and gags, but does not pull away. His eyes are pinched shut, tears seeping from their corners. It seems to hurt him, and Elrond wonders if he has ever given pleasure in this way, or if it has been so long his body has forgotten, or if there is always an element of endurance to giving—but Maedhros sucks him deeper, until his fine cheekbones glisten with tears.

Elrond cannot contain the onslaught of pleasure when his shaft hits the back of Maedhros’ throat, and he throws his head back, fisting his hands in Maedhros’ hair with a strangled cry. He shivers when Maedhros pops his mouth off, kisses the raw tip of his cock and licks up the last of his spend.

Elrond sinks to the ground. The forest floor is cold and rough on his bare skin. He clutches his knees to his chest, waiting out the confusion clotting his thoughts. Maedhros rises and not even as a child cocooned between Maglor’s chest and his horse did Elrond feel so small.

Elrond comes to his knees, pulls up and fastens his breeches. He is eye-level with Maedhros’ waist. Nothing remains of the arousal that had been so prominent when their hips were pressed together. He bites his lip, furtively looking for a damp spot, a sign that Maedhros had found fulfilment also.

“Did you—?” Elrond mutters, when Maedhros looks his way.

A smirk flickers at one corner of Maedhros’ mouth. No, Elrond realises, he did not. His need for Elrond fled as quickly as it came. The loss rips through the cavities of Elrond’s heart like an icy squall.

Maedhros offers his hand. “Come, young prince, let us hunt some orc.”

Elrond staggers to his feet without Maedhros’ help, brushes past him and shoulders his quiver with a dark backward glance.

Elros

Chapter contains a reference to an underage character (12) experiencing sexual bodily reactions. Puberty-typical stuff, but potentially uncomfortable to some readers.  

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There is so much they do not know about Maglor and his brother — about the long and murky river that stretches behind them, back, back, back to some clear and luminous wellspring to which they can never return.

“It is better not to know,” Elros has always told his brother, when Elrond’s eyes light up with reckless wonder.

Elros has never been able to reconcile the grim bastion of Maedhros, the one who stalks the ramparts of Amon Ereb or passes them by in the corridors as one would dodge a cat scrounging for scraps, with the warrior, the hero of Maglor’s tales: the one who stood aside, the one who returned from the dead, the one who lifted up his heart.

Elrond did. Elrond drank up like sweet milk the paeans rolling off Maglor’s lips. Though they had never known a time of plenty, or perhaps because of this, his brother had a hunger for sweet things. Elrond would push his way through thickets of thorns to get at a single plump berry.

---

Cruelties coil on the tip of Elros’ tongue when he draws the confession from Elrond (it is not difficult to do, once he gathers the strength to confront him; they know each other too well). Cruelties he should perhaps have unleashed long ago, before Elrond’s infatuation toppled him into Maedhros’ crueller arms.

Still, he must hold them back until he has pried open the whole of Elrond’s story.

“How many times?” Elros asks.

Elrond is perched on the edge of the bed, head slumped towards his chest. His fingers curl around the sheets. “Four. Only four.”

Too many. Elros closes his eyes, a curtain over the fury his brother will surely see burning there. “And has he—” Elros swallows. It is one thing to think of Maedhros’ lips claiming Elrond’s, it is another to imagine his brother splayed open like some sordid offering to an indifferent god.

“Yes,” Elrond says. “Once. But, brother, he was careful. He did not hurt me.”

Elros’ throat clenches around the bolt of anger that rises from his chest. The feeling jumps to the backs of his eyes instead and he wishes not for the first time that it was not so hard to cry.

Love wins out; love propels him to sit beside his brother, to clutch both of Elrond’s hands in his (they are the same shape and size, but at this moment they feel so thin). He holds them as a man holds the lifeline towing his crewman from the unforgiving ocean.

Only when he feels Elrond’s spirit wince in pain does he loosen his grip. “I am relieved to hear it,” he says, and hopes his brother knows he means it. He brushes a strand of hair from Elrond’s forehead: a touch to be sure. “But you know there are other ways you might be hurt.”

“There are,” he agrees, and takes a shivering breath. Elros waits, and several times Elrond’s mouth opens and shuts as if to say more, but no confession follows. Finally Elrond collapses against his chest. “Would you stay with me tonight?” he asks.

Of course Elros does.

---

Elros blinks awake before the sun has turned the smoke-thick sky from ash to umber. Elrond is still asleep on the bed beside him. Watching his brother, a memory bunches in his gut, a disgusting knot of shame that is not his own.

— Lying sleepless, cold, on the hard ground, before Morgoth’s hordes emptied the stronghold of Amon Ereb to fight a more formidable foe. His back to Maedhros, asleep, or so he thought. But then the rustling of clothing, the whisper of a groan. Elros was twelve and as yet had little understanding of why his body so often ached for touch. He wept the first time he had woken to soiled sheets, grieving for the gaping space in his heart where his mother, his father ought to be. Perhaps, he had thought, it was some incongruity of his Mannish blood. If it were some human imperfection, he knew then by animal instinct that it was one he shared with Maedhros.

He deliberately slowed his breath in mimicry of sleep, held himself entirely still, and waited as Maedhros, that unknowable ghost, gave himself over to a base desire. —

Not until now had he dared touch the suspicion that had long groped at the edges of his thought: that the object of Maedhros’ unseemly lust lay prone on the ground beside him, as Elrond had lain before Elros then; as he does now. That Maedhros, twisted by torment, lusted for his own kin. His own brother.

Elros scrambles from the bed.

He cannot even name the true weight of this entanglement before the taut string of his anger is loosed. It has found its rightful mark.

Not Maedhros: Maedhros is naught but the fractured likeness of a man, and though he hates him, Elros cannot find it in himself to direct blame at so broken a thing.

Maglor is to blame. Maglor who failed to guard them from the monster Maedhros became; who gilded his brother with praise and fond looks and gentle words. Even his anger, when it rose, was sinuous and soft.

Elros turns on his heel, sharp and resolute, and with hands bunched tight at his sides he seeks the one who by long familiarity has eroded his resistance to naming father.

Maglor

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Sweat beads on Maglor’s upper lip. He lowers the axe to free one hand, drags his wrist across his mouth. His sigh gathers in the air before him, bleeding white tendrils into the surrounding cold. Before it vanishes he has set another log on the chopping block. His muscles bunch and jump under the strain of lifting the axe. He ignores their protest, brings the axe down. It is a pleasing sound, the crack of the wood splitting. He sets the thicker half back on the block, strikes again. Neatly stacks the pieces, sets another log. Strikes.

He thinks of King Finarfin’s banners unfurling on the ramparts of Himring, unseemly white-gold starbursts against those siege-scarred walls. The lands of Fëanor’s sons have been reclaimed but not by them. It won’t be long before word reaches the host of the West that Eärendil’s sons live.

Maglor never meant to keep them so long. Maglor never thought they would grow so swiftly to manhood — a lapse of reason, for their mother had, and her father before her. If there is truth in the wayward scraps of history that Maglor collects (a force of habit), it was at their age that their parents wed.

They are not children, have not been for years. The path of a greater fate widens before them, the force of their mighty lineage guiding their steps. When their more virtuous kin come beckoning with outstretched arms, there will be no question of their following, and the troubled years of their childhood will fade to obscurity.

Unless with one arm extended forward they hold the other out behind, unless Maglor’s care has been enough that they might plead on their behalf, might plead for— no, Maglor does not indulge that vain hope. They will leave, and Maglor will be swept up again in the inevitable drift towards doom, snarled in the wrack with the only brother who remains to him.

A shadow lengthens over the floor before him. Elros stands in the doorframe.

Maglor lowers the axe. For a long moment they only look at one another, Maglor shocked to stillness by the anger rippling along the line of Elros’ jaw.

Maglor’s animal impulse is to hold the axe over his heart. To guard his retreat before Elros’ ire boils over, before Elros reaches for some blunt but heavy implement to hurl at him (it would not be the first time).

But worse, he fears the damning words his foster child holds behind his teeth.

Elros cannot know that he is afraid, so Maglor leans the axe against the chopping block and performs parental gentleness (he has as yet learnt no other way of relating to this grown man before him).

“Elros,” he says, deploying his right name to silence the crowd of affectionate epithets he wishes he could speak instead. “What is the matter?”

Elros snarls. “I knew I would find you here.”

“What do you mean?”

“Is this not where you come when there is some ugly truth you do not wish to confront? To swing the axe down upon your thoughts, split them off like you split that wood?”

“We need wood—” Maglor says.

Elros knows it for a weak rebuttal. He cuts him off with a scoff and scans the cords of wood lining the walls. Enough for weeks. “Tell me," he says, "how long have you known? How long have you been content to sacrifice Elrond for your dear brother’s amusement?”

“I do not know what you are talking about.” The accusation chafes and Maglor feels the defensive strain building in his voice. He is all too aware of his own brittleness.

Elros glares; Maglor’s walls rise. He tells the truth. If he had for a moment suspected that Elrond’s growing closeness to Maedhros might harm him, he would have ended it at once. Even if it meant standing against his own brother. He waits.

Elros relents, releases the tightness of his shoulders, but the delicate skin of his neck is still flush with emotion. “Maedhros is fucking him.”

The words are spoken softly, but they pelt Maglor’s heart like hailstones.

“What?” he says, a breathless syllable “No. It isn’t true. He would not." Stricken, he has no power to hold back the anger cresting in opposition. "Have I taught you so little of compassion that you would twist a spark of hope into something so vile?” Even as Maglor speaks, excuses are slipping through his fingers. “Elrond would never…”

“He did!” Elros screams. “He did! He told me. And who can blame him, when you filled his head with idolatrous fantasies of someone you have imagined. I doubt that Maedhros ever was the hero you paint him to be—”

“Enough!” Maglor snaps.

Elros kicks over a crate and groans. “How could you not have seen? He has adored him. For years! He has hung on every glance he deigns to grant him, every terse word he locks up in his heart, turns over in his mind like some precious stone.”

Maglor’s gut bunches tight. Before he can name his shame for what it is, it loses itself at Elros. “Why did you say nothing of this until now? Why did you not stop him?”

This time the crate flies across the floor and cracks against a support post. Elros shouts, incoherent in his rage. “You are vile,” he spits. “Do not dare tell me I ought to have kept him from your brother’s depraved lusts. Surely, surely that you knew. Do you deny it? Do you deny that you excuse your own brother’s desire for you?” He pauses only to wince in disgust. “Nay, you cultivate it, ever teasing and soft. As if you want his attention, as if you thrive on it. Do you? Does it please you to be the object of his desire?”

Elros waits, heaves several breaths. He lets a space yawn open between them, one that Maglor might fill with denials, apologies. But he cannot. He is choked with too many memories, too much regret.

Elros takes several steps backwards. He shakes his head, works his jaw, eyes widening. He cannot even speak, so horrifying is Maglor’s continued silence.

The beginning of a confession stumbles from Maglor’s mouth: “There was— Maedhros and I, we had…”

“No.” Elros shields his face with a hand, palm turned out. “Do not tell me. I do not want to know. Just know that whatever it was you had, whatever it was you did, he has found another. One who will bend more easily before him. And you drove them to it. Both of them.”

Maglor is aware, suddenly, of tears wetting his cheeks. “I am sorry, Elincë,” he says. “I will talk to him.”

Elros is already gone.

---

There was little left of Maglor’s heart but ash, after the Bragollach. With wounds still smarting, Maedhros climbed into his bed, eager; for had not Himring triumphed? Thus he spoke into the curve of Maglor’s neck, tugging the hem of his tunic up to his waist, familiar fingers pressing into his ribs, saying, “Not all is lost, so long as Himring stands there is hope.”

But with the heat of Maedhros’ body over him, his breath in his ear, all Maglor could think of was the roar of flames. “No,” he said, and, “No,” again. “I am used up, brother. I am empty.”

Maedhros was no monster. He peeled himself back from the bed, though the movement seemed to pain him. “As you wish,” he said. “I love you, brother.”

It was never meant to be so final. Maglor had trusted in the passage of time. He had waited for old yearnings to return. They never did. And while Maglor became accustomed to dullness, Maedhros brightened. His hope burgeoned, and Maglor asked himself if it had not been he who, through overfondness, had held his brother back from greatness all these years.

Then Himring fell, and Maedhros, and all the world with them. The ache when he imagined shadows of Maedhros as he had been was not for him, not as he had become. There was no returning.

All the same, he cannot but ask himself if he should go to Maedhros now. Should he offer himself in place of his foster child? Would Maedhros accept him? Would Elrond forgive him? Ever has he been plagued by uncertainty. He does not sleep, but he does not rise either.

He waits until morning, gets as far as Maedhros’ door, but finds him gone. He makes his rounds of the stables, soothes the horses with melodic endearments, soothes himself with combing of fingers through their manes.

Then he goes to Elrond.

The door is open, but he raps his knuckles against the frame. “Elincë,” he says.

Elrond is seated at his desk, tracing the shapes of pressed flowers onto parchment. “Come in,” he says without looking.

Maglor crosses the room to stand behind him, takes the edge of a sheet he has set aside. “They are beautiful,” he says. “What are they for?”

“I know Elros told you.” Elrond sets his pencil down. The chair legs clatter, the old wood groans as he turns to face Maglor. “Are you going to stop it?”

There is a soft-edged mingling of hope and defiance in Elrond’s expression. “You are a man grown,” Maglor says, “I cannot direct your choices.” He smiles. “Does he care for you?”

Elrond nods, does not break his gaze. “I believe he does.”

It is impossible for Maglor to resist the lure of relief to hear him say so; impossible to consider he may be wrong. “And do you care for him?”

Now Elrond’s eyes fall to his hands, open on his lap. Maglor fights the impulse to reach out, tilt his chin up.

“I do,” Elrond says. “But…” He sighs and lifts his face back up. “There is so much I do not know.”

Maglor clears a space on the edge of the desk and perches on it, hands gripping the contours of the wood. You are better not knowing, he should say. You are better loving someone else.

“What is it you want to know?” he says instead, and the wincing of his conscience is so slight he barely feels it.

At the glimmer in Elrond’s eyes, his sudden reanimation, it is altogether forgotten.

Elrond says, “You will not stop it?”

“Not unless you wish me to,” answers Maglor.

---

Chapter End Notes

Elincë = Little Star in Quenya

Elrond, Again

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An envoy comes, garbed in gold and green, a silver snake coiled around her helm. She speaks the old tongue in syllables sharp as crystal: “Finwë Arafinwë, High King of the Noldor, orders that the outlaws Maedhros and Maglor release his kinsmen, the sons of Eärendil Ardamírë.”

She comes with a Vanyarin guard, soldiers whose eyes shine so bright they hurt to look upon. These tall elves with their tall spears will escort them to the safety of Balar, they are informed.

Maedhros is not there to receive them, but Maglor stands silent and defers to his wards.

“We have sworn fealty to no king,” says Elros, “and we are not children to command. If you will grant my brother and me time to consider our kinsman’s offer, we will give you our answer in good time.”

The envoy looks between them. They have both grown used to the way strangers puzzle over their peculiarity. She assents to the request.

Elrond does not confer with Elros at once, but goes to Maedhros.

“Was that goodbye then?” Maedhros asks him, afterwards. Even with Elrond on his lap, hips pinning him to the chair, he is not quite forced to look up to meet his eyes. Almost.

His cock is still full in Elrond’s hole, and though Elrond can feel the sticky trickle of his spend escaping, you would not know to look at him, or to hear the steady timbre of his voice, that Maedhros has just come undone to the rocking of Elrond’s hips, Elrond’s teeth scraping at his neck, nails at his back, as Elrond has learned he likes.

Elrond tightens his thighs, still trembling from his release, around Maedhros’ waist. “Should it be?” He speaks low, seductive, hoping to mask his uncertainty.

Maedhros hums. His skin bunches around his eyes until nothing but a slice of silver remains for Elrond’s gaze to meet. He is so beautiful, Elrond thinks. It is a compulsive thought, one he is not sure he will ever be free of. Maedhros trails fingertips down the side of his face — but just as Elrond feels the pull to lean into the touch his heart clenches, shivers.

There was a grotto on the exposed side of Cape Balar, where the cliffs were open to the great expanse of Belegaer. On days the wind blew from the west, the waves rolled in huge and heavy, pouring into the mouth of the cave with a great roar. For many years Elrond had nightmares about that cave, imagining himself caught up in the ocean’s rush and hurled against the rocks.

That memory comes to him now, too vivid to be ignored. He shuffles off of Maedhros’ lap and tugs his tunic down to his thighs, ties a sash around his waist. His other clothes he gathers from the floor and bundles to his chest.

“Goodbye, Maedhros,” he says, and pads out the door, feet already cold on the bare stone.

---

Elros holds him for long minutes, hands clutching at his back, cupping the bowl of his skull, when Elrond tells him he is coming.

A wet and laboured breath in one ear, and Elrond cannot recall the last time his brother cried.

“I am glad,” says Elros. His tears drip into Elrond’s hair. “I am glad you have returned to me, brother.”

They go together to inform the envoy of their decision. This time Maedhros is there. He looks ragged but perilous, more guard than lord beside his smaller brother.

“We accept the King’s order to leave this place,” Elros says, “but we will not retreat back to the sea. You will take us to the King to fight alongside our people.”

Maglor flinches, the movement too small to be of note to any but Elrond, who has been watching him intently.

“On condition,” Elrond adds, “that no judgement be brought on Maedhros and Maglor Fëanorion until they have been given fair trial.”

Behind Maglor’s back, Maedhros’ hand rises and lands, gentle but assured, on Maglor's shoulder blade.