In His Absence by Elleth

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Chapter 1

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Alphangil snuffed out the candles in the room before disrobing and approaching the bed.

Maedhros lay on his side with his back to her, unsleeping, tense, lean and unyielding, his body barely moving at all apart from the falling of his chest when he breathed out. His hair, worn long and loose to bed, was still damp from a bath. Alphangil inhaled deeply of the scent of the mineral springs of Amon Ereb, then slid beneath the covers, her skin against his.

It had been long since she had shared such closeness, and never quite this way with Maedhros alone. That she preferred it to be dark made her nearly sick with guilt, looking back to darknesses they had shared before. It was not the comfortable dark of intimacy and a means, like a shawl pulled over her eyes, to intensify sensation and pleasure - but a barrier to his grief-stricken, emaciated face and the gaze would stare through her into some immeasurable distance, perhaps even into Mandos’ Halls themselves. She had seen it in many survivors of the war, but Maedhros had had spells of it before that, and she was not sure if she could bear it now, knowing there were yet more reasons.

And whether she wanted it to or not, the darkness heightened her senses nonetheless, revealed the pale angle of his right shoulder in a thread-thin glint of light under the door. He had, even at the gates at her arrival, foregone his greetings to her, advised a grim-looking lieutenant to see to the High Queen’s comfort, and gone. That he should not acknowledge her even now that she had intruded into his quarters after came as no surprise, but that he should turn around to lie facing her in the dark she had not expected.

Neither had she anticipated his first question. “Ereinion?”

He had doted on the boy when he had had a chance, the few times they had met, but had always been somewhat reluctant to admit it. This was as close as he had ever come to it in her presence, a remnant of the time when she had indeed been little more than an intruder and a thief to his mind, assuming her place at Fingon’s side and carrying his child soon after that, a sentiment she had sometimes doubted to have gone away at all.

The dark, too, revealed all too clearly the hollow ring to his voice. Alphangil swallowed her reservation.

“On Balar, with Círdan and Queen Meril. He likes her well enough and it is not foolish for him to learn about Nargothrond, and forge ties - between him and Finduilas - if they both consent when they are older. But that is for the future. For now Balar is the safest place for him, certainly safer than a six-day journey through a land that has grown perilous with only his mother as his guard, even though I stayed as far south of Andram as the roads allowed.”

A hand, rough with the scar tissue of a deep gash over the palm came to rest on her cheek. The fingers were cool against her skin, the fingertips icy, and almost Alphangil wished they would move again, or that he would stop touching her entirely, and remove, also, the arm slipping around her hips tight enough to serve as a lifeline.

Her own lips did not move again, even when his, bitten bloody upon her unexpected coming and now scabbed, chafed against the outer edge of her ear. Not long ago, less than two years, the same touch would have been gentle, loving in a way she had not believed possible, at least not from Maedhros for her. Now she wanted that to end, too, and almost jerked from the pillows, away into the dark of the bedchamber. Only an effort of will kept her in place.

The thrum through her body had not gone unnoticed; his hold tightened ever so slightly. She had heard, from one of the healers, that Maedhros had grown highly skilled at reading others, made easier by an empathetic talent that he thought had come to him from his mother - and that he had had to refine it in Angband for the sake of his survival. Alphangil believed that rulership benefited from such talents, too. But attentive and reactive as he had been when they had shared a bed before, then with Fingon between them, she had not expected his skill to be as obviously innate and intimate as this.

Despite her revulsion, she leaned into the touch of his hand, and felt his fingers twitch in what seemed to be surprise.

“Why are you doing this? Alphangil...”

The first time he said her name since her arrival, and the way it was spoken did not fail to jolt her yet again. There was wonder there suddenly, and longing where she had expected reluctant tolerance of someone alive and therefore unwanted, or at the very least less fervently wished-for. It had always been Fingon Maedhros had loved most of all, and her only by virtue of Fingon. At least that was what she had believed.

What he was saying now with every movement of his body against her and and all but words, You must despise me, was not wrong, or she had thought it was not wrong, until this moment. I am glad you survived the Falas, although you would surely be happier dead, was there also.

She had planned not to mince her words, releasing her own grief at him. Instead he made it easy to slide closer against him and down; with the top of her head resting against his collarbone she fit almost wholly against him, her outstretched feet even reaching his ankles.

“So you do not needlessly martyr yourself. The plan was yours as much as his. Fingon consented, and I consented, knowing it might cost us all. Such is war, Maedhros. The fault is not yours, nor his.”

The quickening of his breath and heartbeat was immediate, some of the tension went out of him and the vice-like hold of his arm relaxed to a blunt pressure where his stump rested against her belly. She had not meant her words as an absolution. Maedhros had either caught her lie - or he believed her, and if he did, then because he wanted to believe her, because it sounded like common sense, and most of it was. It made her presence tolerable.

Against the dark Alphangil squeezed her eyes shut, keeping still and close to him. Maedhros’ hand raked over her head, short fingernails against her scalp. It was not quite a gesture of comfort. It might have served equally well to push her away.

“You cut your hair,” he said after a pause. The hand came to rest on the back of her neck where her long braid had begun, and now only short-shorn hair remained. His fingers ran over it, stopping when they touched skin and curling there. “Eighteen years ago, when he came to Himring out of the Sudden Flame, Makalaurë did the same in honour of Lasbaneth, but he has grown it again since.”

“Yes,” she said. “And I did after the news of your defeat had come. Most of us - the Mithrim tribes, not just the Swan’s House - show our grief that way, at the passing of a loved one; Maglor must have learned it from her. I could cut yours, also.”

There was a strand of hair that brushed against her hands, which she held loosely between their bodies, and she followed it upward to Maedhros’ ribs, strung out like a ladder of bones under her touch. There, too, his skin was cool, sometimes rising unexpectedly into the beginnings of lashing scars where a whip-blow from his captivity had struck amiss and torn his side.

The fingers on her neck uncurled, flexed. Maedhros’ hand was large, and his arm, unlike the damaged one, muscular and strong. He could have snapped her neck with ease, but only pressed her closer against him so that her lips came against the skin of his throat, above the pulse point. Had he threatened her, she could have bitten down.

“Fingon was not my spouse, you know that. We swore nothing except fealty; it would raise questions. Many suspect, but I would not give them any more confirmation than I must. Leave my hair long.”

She nodded, pressed a lingering kiss to the same spot, feeling the compulsive swallow in response, the legs parting instinctively to a tentative nudge of her knee. To not stop in her surprise at the prompt reaction took all her presence of mind.

Already Maedhros’ member was growing firm against her thigh, and to halt then, to shift away from his touch and deny her own urge to continue, took an act of will that she had not expected. She had known no other touch than that of Fingon, and later that of Maedhros, but since her departure to the Havens all that had grown rare, and strangely enough she had counted herself content nonetheless, but for the lack of a body beside her. More than desire itself it had been loneliness building after the escape from Eglarest, and over the gloom of the dim winter months that had finally evoked the thought to ride all the way to Amon Ereb and seek Maedhros. That she found herself wanting him was as unexpected as the fact that he had not sent her away - indeed seemed to will her to stay.

“I am… I am not Fingon,” she said, with difficulty. It hurt like a jolt through her to remind him, even though his body at least remained impassive against her; his face in the dark she could not see. The light under the door had gone out. A breath puffed over her hair.

“I know,” he said, and his hand moved to cup her breast, rubbing his thumb in circles over her nipple until it hardened at the cool, nearly perfunctory, touch. “There could be no mistaking you for him. Not merely physically. I know who you are.” He continued his caress until Alphangil’s reservations began to abate, and warmth came to simmer within her.

“Good,” she said, and her voice sounded thin to her own ears, half breathy with desire and half weak with tears that wanted out. “For I would not have you labour under some misapprehension. Fingon is dead. I am not him.” She strained to catch a glimpse of his face in the dark, but could make out nothing, not even the light of his eyes.

“Neither am I,” Maedhros added in a low, hoarse voice, pausing the circular movement of his finger. She swallowed a noise. What it had meant to be she could not say, a whimper or a sob, either was better left unvoiced.

She pressed against his hand once more, and when no reaction came, twisted her fingers through his, pulling their joint hands down between them. “Please,” she said. “Please. I came here because I need this. I trust you to at least remember.”

Maedhros nodded, his chin brushing against the top of her head. He began to stroke her in wide, generous motions, across her hips and belly back to her inner thighs where his hand lingered, and only moved on to her center when she pushed herself against the heel of his hand. He had touched her before sometimes, and had watched her and Fingon engage in love-making before joining in himself. It seemed the memory of a certain sun-flooded afternoon at Barad Eithel served him well, the slow rhythm that she loved to build her need, that her husband had excelled at repeated now, until, grinning all the way, Fingon had kissed a sloppy way down and then done something ludicrous with his tongue that made her buck against his mouth until she came.

It was easy to tell that Maedhros was not grinning, not even smiling. He flung the sheets aside, exposing her to the cold air of the room, and began the same downward trawl. It was comforting that he seemed to remember the same instance, but his lips were tightly puckered and pecked against her skin in a thread of dry touches, while his right arm shifted her onto her back and held her steady there with the pressure of his forearm.

She touched the back of his head with her fingers, and he stopped at once, his breath coming against her stomach, then the tickle of hair and the weight when he laid his head there. She continued stroking his hair.

“Maitimo,” she said, deliberately choosing the name that Fingon had always used for him the most, even though Quenya seemed unwieldy from her own lips, never her mother-tongue. He shifted, as though to look up at her, and she wondered if his over-bright eyes could see through the dark where she could not. “If you would rather we did not do this, then we do not have to. Do not make yourself more unhappy yet.”

Maedhros shifted off her, and the mattress dipped next to her; he sat up against the headboard, and with his left around her shoulders drew her close, then pulled the covers up. Feeling for her way underneath the sheets, she knelt across his thighs, straddling him and brushing against his member. His desire, what little there had been, had abated.

She leaned in and found his lips. “Would you do this? I will hold nothing against you if you refuse. You are not beholden to me, and I know that it was Fingon who had your love more than I did - or do.”

A pause, then, low from the darkness, he said, “You alone are what remains of him for me to hold. That already binds us. I would honour you for that alone, but... if that were all, you would not now be here. I understand why he grew to love you. I grew to love you, first against my will, years ago. I did not at first think I could desire you, but I have never been impartial about you, for better or worse.”

There was no answer Alphangil could give, other than to kiss Maedhros. He yielded easily and with a soft noise against her mouth that convinced her, finally, that she was welcome, even that she was indeed wanted. The kiss went on, his lips warming against hers, until they pulled apart to breathe, and she could feel his rising chest brushing against hers, neither of them reluctant to allow for more distance.

The darkness had at last grown comfortable. She kissed him again, and then shifted downward, opening her legs against the evidence of his renewing arousal, and slid her lips along his jawline to his ear, murmuring, “May I?”

Maedhros nodded his assent, and when she took him into her muffled a burst of sound against her shoulder that made her shudder. They moved together slowly and languidly after that, tentative in a way she and Fingon had never been, pausing to kiss deeply, and Maedhros lowered his head to nip from her collarbone to shoulder, lingering there. “I remember - you have freckles here. Before the two of you brought me in, he -- he would go on about them, and on, until I kissed him silent.”

He laughed, breathless and a little strangled. Alphangil wound a hand into the soft mass of his hair that had slipped over his shoulder, and hoisting herself up touched their foreheads together, already finding his skin beaded with sweat.

“And me he kept telling about your hair, since I admired it at our wedding feast. It was insufferable, to have you there in spirit when - ah,” she gasped when Maedhros thrust into her, and swallowed a moan when he kissed her.

“ - you will not kiss me silent -- when I was already so jealous of what you shared, and the time you’d had,” she continued once she had caught her breath, rocking down and reclaiming her part of the pace. “I wonder what he would say if he saw us now.”

“Relief,” he answered. “That we did not fall apart. He wanted us both happy.”

“He would want to be with us here if he had the choice. He could not sit idly by if his lovers were together, not for desire alone, but to come full circle with us both...”

“In spirit - or memory, he is,” Maedhros softly said. “It is not a true absence.”

All that needed saying had been said, she thought, and did not answer, not wanting to disagree.

Instead she kissed Maedhros again, slowly. They abandoned speech after that and let the dark encroach again, giving themselves over to touch and sensation, and as they continued, Maedhros’ rhythm slowly became more and more stuttery and erratic, his left hand on the small of her back imperfectly holding her down with the hard crescents of his fingernails digging into her skin, running up over the arc of her spine to push her close against him, his head fell forward and he stifled a warm noise against the skin of her shoulder as he came.

She took the opportunity of Maedhros stilling to take her own pleasure, already close to her own climax tightening within her, twisting her fingers with Maedhros’ again, and bringing herself to completion with a few fumbling touches, then breathless, boneless relief.

They did not move again for a while, and with her ear on his chest she listened to the quieting of his heartbeat as they rested, the reassuring calming of his breath. Fingon, she thought inevitably, would not lie still so long, in his relentless energy he might be braiding her hair or rubbing her shoulders, singing under his breath or kissing patterns onto her skin until she swatted him with a pillow. His absence was palpable, and she shifted herself off Maedhros finally, out of his arms wound loosely around her.

It was only now that she noticed the crack of between the shutters, showing first pale pre-dawn in the sky above Maedhros’ tower. Amon Ereb would be waking soon, and she rose, shivering when her bare feet met the cool flagstones.

“Are you coming to bathe?” she asked, and Maedhros, who had not yet moved from the bed, watching the breaking light instead, made to follow her. “We have much more to speak about.”

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Chapter End Notes

Many thanks to the remarkable LiveOak and Zeen for test-reading this, and the wonderful Swampdiamonds for her fantastic beta. Thank you all!