all our fault lines by queerofthedagger

all our fault lines

Written for a tumblr prompt: Russingon + 'a kiss because time has run out.'

Tirion’s streets are buzzing with nervous energy despite the late hour, everything washed silver in Telperion’s light, the shadows long.

Findekáno keeps his hood pulled into his face and takes well-trod backstreets and narrow alleys until he is out of the main parts of the city, walking through quieter neighbourhoods.

They, too, eventually give way, and he climbs the mountain beyond the city borders. It is the last stretch of his journey, and a familiar one.

Once, it was beloved, every step taken with delighted anticipation. Today, as too often in recent memory, it is more dread walking beside him than it is excitement.

No, he thinks, that is not exactly true. At least before today, there still had been some semblance of hope; today, though—today, Findekáno is all livid trepidation.

Maitimo is already there when Findekáno reaches the cottage where it is nestled into the mountainside. He carries no sword, Findekáno notes, but he wears leathers that might as well be armour, and his face is sharp in the silver light.

They stare at each other across a few feet of distance that might as well be the Outer Sea.

Findekáno knows not what to say. He had prepared endless lectures, of course, heartfelt pleas, bristling rage and, beneath it all, some misguided idea that perhaps they might be able to continue as they had; stealing away from the city, hours or days holed up in their cottage, always talking carefully around the ever-growing matter of their families.

A ludicrous delusion, as it had been, truly, from the start. As if they could ever escape their legacy, and so here Findekáno stands, his throat refusing to work around the words he wants to say, as well as the ones he should.

Perhaps the worst part is that he knows Maitimo well enough to see him go through the same struggle. To see his fingers twitch at his side, his jaw work; the way his eyes never leave Findekáno’s face, and how Findekáno can almost hear the apologies crowding against the back of Maitimo’s teeth. How he refuses to let them fall.

Eventually, Findekáno straightens, forces himself to speak. “You will go with him, I take it.”

The Valar’s judgement had been clear, after all. The result of it already is, too, Finwë currently in the process of packing up his household to move to Formenos with his recalcitrant son.

When Findekáno closes his eyes, he can still see the blade resting upon his father’s chest, Laurelin’s gold spilling across its edges like flame.

Maitimo tilts his chin up. “Of course; where else would I go?”

Findekáno nods. He had expected as much and cannot muster the energy to pretend that it had not always been a foregone conclusion.

It seems to be this—his lack of protest, his unmoving acceptance—that cracks something within Maitimo’s cold exterior. He frowns, licks his lips; casts his eyes through the forest and lets them linger on the cottage.

Their cottage. Valinor holds many hunting lodges, of course, and none of them are truly owned by anyone. This, though, has always been theirs, since they found it well over a century ago on that first hunting trip out of Tirion where they finally could no longer keep their hands off each other.

Everything had been easier back then, Findekáno thinks, tracing Maitimo’s features as he seems to lose himself in memory. Their fathers had for the most part ignored each other, and they had thought—

Well, they had thought a lot of things, most of them naive. When Maitimo looks back at him, Findekáno finds his own regret mirrored on his face, a hundred stolen hours culminating in all their fault lines finally cracking open.

It was always going to end this way, Findekáno wants to say. His throat still will not work.

Maitimo grimaces as if he can hear him. Pain shines bright and devastating in his eyes, if only for a moment.

“It is not for ever,” he finally says, and his voice sounds rough. He visibly fights with himself before crossing the distance between them, coming to stand in front of Findekáno, close enough to touch. “This does not—we do not have to—“

He does not finish, even as they both know what he was about to say. They have danced this dance a hundred times, have tried and tried and tried to keep their families out of the rooms they shut themselves away in.

Findekáno is so, so tired. Still, and yet, still, when Maitimo raises a hand to his face, Findekáno leans into the touch, closing his eyes.

It is hopeless, he wants to say. Wants to scream and shout, lay out all that Fëanáro has done and ask how Maitimo cannot see; how he cannot take the one step that could save them.

It is too much to ask, Findekáno knows. If there is one thing he understands it is loyalty, the way it sits on your shoulders, the crushing weight and comforting form of it. Maitimo can no more turn his back on his family than Findekáno can, and that, more than anything, has always been their most wretched similarity.

And so he does not say anything; does not rage, or plead, or tell Maitimo that they are doomed. That they have been from the start.

Instead, he turns his face, presses a kiss to the palm of Maitimo’s hand; pulls him close, one hand to the unguarded side of him, and leans their heads together, breathing, breathing, breathing as if that will help against the debilitating pain of it.

Maitimo tries no more to convince him of a future, of hope being left for them. After a while, he cups Findekáno’s jaw, makes him look up, the silver of his eyes still, still, still more beautiful than Telperion itself.

Findekáno is not one of those graced with foresight, but when Maitimo kisses him, hard and desperate and without apology, he knows that for all his choices, all his loyalty, all the reasons that have brought them here, there will be no coming back from this. That there is no day in his future where a part of him will not always mourn this.

He knows, too, when Maitimo says, moments or hours later, “I will write to you; I promise,” that it is a concession.

Above all else, he knows that he will not answer. That time has finally caught up with them, and that this—this is the last time.

That it has to be, lest Findekáno do something he will regret.