The Marriage of True Minds by sallysavestheday

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The Marriage of True Minds

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It begins as a game, in their Tree-lit, happy youth: Touch my mind, and draw what I am thinking. Is it an apple, or a pear?

What better way is there than this to strengthen skills in ósanwë? Maedhros takes his tutoring role seriously, as he does all else, and he knows the benefits of play. For Fingon, who loves a challenge but whose mind flits from thought to thought, butterfly quick and airy, this lighthearted discipline promises well. And they are Noldor, after all: where skills of hand can be linked with those of mind, so much the better. To catch a thought in lines and shades is to render it useful; to do so beautifully is an even nobler aspiration.

As for Fingon...if Maedhros asks a thing of him -- whatever it may be -- he will set his will to it, with energy and confidence and grace.

Still, it is play, mostly. Confuse the apple with the pear and suffer teasing; capture the shifting light on the fruit’s smooth skin for praise. They stumble, at first, with the giddiness of it. Each invents a repertoire of tricks and traps to distract the other’s unfocused mind, and ink and paper are used by the bucket, by the ream, until they find their balance.

Then they come to love the breathless act of mental touch, like a key turning in a lock, or one palm set against another, matching.

They carry pencils everywhere, tucked into pockets, hidden in sleeves. Their private exchange of thoughts and scribbles sweetens the flavor of public events; it lightens the duty of clerking in court. Maedhros’ notes and concert programs and drafts of legislation are edged in spare, crisp lines that capture Fingon’s memories of yesterday’s hunt (a baying hound; a hart, springing); his plans for a fine, jeweled collar; the smoothness of an autumn lake. Fingon sketches in the margins of his rough copies in the archives: Maedhros’ proposals for the evening meal; a new rose hybrid; a pattern of waves on the sea at Alqualondë. His drawings are softer, more detailed, more refined. He has a sweet hand for it – everything he catches from Maedhros’ mind is somehow gilded, rendered tenderly, as though his own inner eye has been beguiled.

The delight of shared exploration and creation is unending. Their subject matter spans the continent, maps the skies, delves deep into the secrets of the mind. Sketches spill from their eager fingers, page after page, accumulating the truths they have defined.  

But although their minds weave and dance together day in, day out, they never draw each other. Neither finds the moment, or the courage, to ask why.

*****

After Thangorodrim, Maedhros’ mind is alternately unresponsive and tempestuous. So many years spent walling off his thoughts leaves him floundering among a people who dip in and out of each other’s minds with casual intimacy. He has lost the knack, and, worse, learned fear.

Fingon finds him staring into the lake, grim and distant, mindlessly dragging a stick through the sand, over and over. Apple, or pear? Fingon asks, pretending casual disinterest. Maedhros startles, then narrows his eyes, remembering the game. Don’t tell me, Fingon says, before he can speak. He points at the branch clutched in Maedhros’ awkward left hand. Draw.

Fingon calls up the purest form of pear he can imagine: a sweet, yellow mouthful of delight, shared with Maedhros once at a table in a garden restaurant in Tirion, under Telperion’s light. He holds it in his mind, wraps it in tenderness, offers it to Maedhros for rendering with a gentle nudge. Maedhros gasps softly; he fumbles with the stick and carves a rough approximation into the damp sand at his feet. Perhaps he is weeping, but Fingon offers neither comment nor blame.

Pear, indeed. A fine beginning. Tomorrow, I shall find you a pen.

The old game strengthens Maedhros’ mind and hand together; it renders them both more supple and responsive. Soon, he and Fingon share thoughts and images as they ever have – flashes of insight and inspiration to be translated into form; details of strategy and planning; a sunset; a bird above the lake; cartoonishly humorous moments as they fumble to come to terms with Beleriand, pampered princes no more.

Carefully, cautiously, they also trade memories of the time when they were parted: the dark path through the Ice, the years on the mountain. Those drawings are anguished, tormented, raw.

Maedhros comes upon Fingon unaware as he is reworking a sketch from Maedhros’ memory: the sun, rising over the peaks, parting the clouds. There is such bitterness and regret in the lines he is copying that Maedhros cannot bear it. He stoops to catch Fingon’s pen, and then his thoughts.

And then, impulsively, his mouth, when Fingon looks up with tears in his eyes and a mind full of sorrow and longing.

A key in a lock. Two palms, matching.

They weave their vows from mind to mind, then draw them on each other’s bodies with their breath, and lips, and hands.

*****

Politics inevitably sunders them, but the distance from Barad Eithel to Himring is not so great, when a gentle touch can raise the other’s answering embrace.

Maedhros taps at Fingon’s mind. I miss you. Let me show you how much. Have you pen to hand? He knows it is late; hopes he is not interrupting. From afar, he feels the bustle of Fingon hurrying to his rooms, clearing his desk, finding paper and pencil. Holding his breath.

Maedhros sends Fingon the image of his own fine hands: on his bow, on his harp, clever and quick as he works at the jeweler's bench or in the forge. He thinks of Fingon’s strong arms, his supple waist, the rounded curve of his hip – climbing, dancing, riding. Of his eyes: wide and wondering, playful, prayerful, mischievous, cutting teasingly to the side, surely with more lashes than are practical but so bright, so clear, so fine. He feels Fingon’s joy to be thought so beautiful, to be so loved and remembered in such intimate detail. You flatter me, Fingon thinks, his fingers busy, sketching.

Maedhros laughs. Ah, love, but I have only begun.  His own blood warms as he sends the memory of the curve of Fingon’s throat in pleasure, that clean, smooth arch; as he calls up the softness of Fingon's gasping mouth. He thinks of Fingon’s lips stretched wet and eager around him; the limpid look from under those extravagant lashes as Fingon flicks his tongue and hums.

Maedhros shivers with the memory and mentally bemoans the leagues between them. He teases Fingon, even as he burns: I wish I could taste you. My crisp, bright apple. My sweet, soft pear.

Fingon's answering laugh is as breathless as a thought can be. And then? he asks, pencil pausing, with a heat that stokes Maedhros' own. Maedhros shares the details of his longing: Fingon firm and warm and silky in his hand; the dark cloud of his hair around his shoulders as he seats himself in Maedhros' lap; the spread stars of his fingers braced on Maedhros’ chest as he rises and falls, rises and falls. What a glorious configuration of angles and edges and curves he is, Maedhros thinks, when he is thus, astride!

Russo, stop! Fingon is laughing and yearning and warm in his mind. I have nearly filled a folio with sketches. Will you leave no fun for me?

Maedhros wants to flinch away – he is already familiar with every mark on his own skin, with every twisted joint and scar. But Fingon will not be denied: he teases his way into Maedhros’ mind, gentling. Take up your pencil, sweet. Let me show you how well-made you are.

Fingon coaxes Maedhros’ hand into tracing study after study of the back of his own neck, of the graceful join where his throat curves into his jaw, of the sharp elegance of his elbows and knees, of his left temple, where the fine hairs have always curled upward in what once seemed like his sole act of bodily rebellion against perfection. Maedhros laughs at the teasing thought, warm in Fingon’s mental embrace, succumbing to his tenderness.

Fingon sends the long line of Maedhros’ back; the spare, taut arc of the muscles of his thighs. Lean and keen as a blade, you are, he thinks, unsparing of his delight. Maedhros flushes as Fingon shares the eager memory of the scarred planes of his chest, the uneven span of his shoulders, his sharp collarbones and prominent ribs and the points of his hips. Mad as it may seem, Fingon seems to yearn for his brittle edges, for the places where he has been broken and remade. You have been tempered, love, Fingon chides, and made stronger. My bold white flame.

Maedhros struggles to control his pencil, sliding it haphazardly across the paper as Fingon continues to flood his mind with images of love. Fingon praises the curve of neck and shoulder into which his lips fit sweetly when Maedhros bears him down. He calls up the sleek line of Maedhros’ hair, falling onto Fingon's stomach as he bends to taste him; the crisp silhouette of his hips as he presses inside. He sends a memory of the play of light and shadow on Maedhros’ face as they move together; of the secret softness in his serious eyes.

Fingon’s own thoughts are stuttering, now, full of Maedhros’ sharp smile, the freckled sea of Maedhros' skin. And then the blunt end of his empty wrist -- that sweet gift of their complicated love -- holding a writhing Fingon down as Maedhros works him to completion with his lone, strong hand.

The pencil snaps, and none too soon. Neither has won this iteration of their game. Fingon is in his head, gasping; Maedhros is rising to the memory of him; they are beyond words, beyond images. Both swept away.

*****

They fill volumes, page after page, in those centuries of separation. Every so often, when politics and war permit, they meet for an exchange: of breath and touch and small, bound books holding drawings of each other’s beloved bodies, to be thumbed through and treasured until they wear out from handling and must be replaced.

Fingon’s sketchbooks are lost with Barad Eithel. Maedhros’ collection is reduced to one, after the Tears. He rides and sleeps and fights -- always -- with it tucked close to his heart beneath his cuirass.

The flames claim it, when they claim him.

*****

Maedhros wakes from his long dreaming to find himself on a cool lawn in Lorien, in the evening. He sits up, and tastes the perfumed air.

There is a sheet of paper on the grass beside him. A familiar hand moves carefully into his field of vision, offering a pencil.

Fingon's eyes are bright, his arms as strong as ever. The taste of his mouth is like rain after drought -- Maedhros will never get enough of it. He is weeping; he is laughing; he cannot master his new tongue to tell Fingon how much he loves him, what a wonder it is to hold him, after so much loss and despair. Words! Where are his words?!

Their minds touch and tangle. Fingon kisses him again and whispers: Apple? Or pear?