Scorched by polutropos

Maedhros

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.