no act of providence by queerofthedagger

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no act of providence

A Tumblr Prompt Fill for 'Maemag + "nervous embarrassment around them (blushing, fidgeting etc)"

If Makalaurë is honest, it mostly starts as a joke.

They share a bottle of wine one night, stolen from their grandfather’s cellar, on the roof of their Tirion residence.

Beneath them, the city is silent, Telperion’s silver leaving the streets soft-edged. It is the first time in a while that Makalaurë has his brother to himself, and if he did not know better, he would think that Maitimo is avoiding him.

He does not ask, of course. It would earn him nothing but excuses, and regardless of those, it is far more interesting to observe Maitimo, to catalogue the careful way he holds himself, keeps space between them.

If Makalaurë did not know better—

Their fingers brush as he takes the bottle. He watches as Maitimo twitches, and still does not say anything.

He has been catching it increasingly often—averted eyes, snatched-backed hands, the way Maitimo would avoid touching him, where once, it had come as easily as breathing.

If Makalaurë did not know better—

But he does. And so, because it is absurd to think that it has anything to do with him, with anything other than Maitimo’s odd bursts of strangeness, Makalaurë decides to make a game out of it. The touching, the leaning into his brother’s side, the observation of his expression as Makalaurë drapes himself all over him.

Maitimo endures it, but his fingers go white-knuckled around the bottle, and there is a flush high in his cheeks that refuses to abate.

Beautiful, Makalaurë thinks as he pries Maitimo’s fingers loose from the neck of the bottle.

As easily as that, it stops being a joke.

A challenge, then.

Makalaurë knows about the depravity of his thoughts. Knows that one does not look at their brother in the silver light, the high-strung tension in his body, and thinks of how to make him come apart.

There is shame in it, scathing-hot and heavy. If Makalaurë is honest, that only makes it more of a delight.

Everything in Tirion is holy perfection, white-pure and immaculate. This is just the latest desire to break something open, to get to watch how it bleeds over untainted marble.

Maitimo would scold him if he knew. Which makes it convenient that of this latest venture, Makalaurë has no interest in telling him.

He finds Maitimo alone instead, whenever he gets the chance. Watches in fascination as his closeness continues to make his usually so solid brother fidget in place, his chin tilted up as if in defiance of his own discomfort, his shoulders stiff.

Of course, below the attempt to cure his boredom, Makalaurë wonders what has brought this on. They have always been close, Fëanáro’s two eldest, with little that could come between them. This sudden withdrawal, the time spent away from their house, away from Makalaurë’s lessons, in his room with the door locked, is unlike Maitimo.

Of course, this, too, Makalaurë does not ask about. At best the secrecy is about a gift for his hundredth begetting day; at worst, it is something Makalaurë would rather not hear about.

In spite of himself, it becomes a riddle. A testing of boundaries, of pushing, of noting how a touch to Maitimo’s wrist makes him flinch, how Makalaurë leaning into him makes him shudder. How breathing over his ear as Makalaurë whispers something to him at one of their grandfather’s dinners makes Maitimo push back from the table and disappear for the entirety of the main course.

Makalaurë has all the pieces to a conclusion. And yet when Maitimo catches him at the end of the night before they part for their rooms, one warm hand closing around Makalaurë’s wrist—

And yet when Maitimo looks at him, eyes dark in the dim light—

When he pulls Makalaurë close, brushes his lips across Makalaurë’s cheek, one brief, chaste kiss that races down Makalaurë’s spine—

When he watches Maitimo disappear into his room and hears the lock click, he is still not any closer to the answer than he had been at the start of this.

Inevitably, it turns into a question, after all.

Makalaurë turns it over for a few days and sleepless nights, too many of those spent too hot in his skin, shame and want warring within him.

On the third night, he gives in, touches himself; thinks of Maitimo, the way the flush would go all the way down his chest. How he would feel pressed against Makalaurë, not in that familiar way that they know, but different, more thrilling.

It has stopped, Makalaurë realises, being entirely about the forbidden. It complicates matters, not least because between the want and Maitimo’s continued avoidance, Makalaurë misses his brother.

A week—enough days after coming into his hand that he does not blush at the mere memory anymore—until he finally decides to do something about it.

He has no hope of a return of his own desires, of course. But all the games and pushing aside, Maitimo has still been avoiding him. Makalaurë’s begetting day had come and gone, and his gift had been grand, but it explained none of the secrecy.

If Makalaurë did not know better—

But he does. And so he finds Maitimo on safe ground, one golden morning in their grandfather’s library where he knows Maitimo is busy with a translation of some old legend into their father’s Tengwar.

He keeps a distance between them this time, an entire table, and folds himself onto the wooden chair across from Maitimo.

“Nelyo,” he says, and pretends not to see the way his brother tenses, once he notices Makalaurë’s presence.

“Káno,” he says, and the smile, at least, is genuine. He still does not meet Makalaurë’s eyes, his gaze landing somewhere to the right of him. “What are you doing here? I distinctly remember your dislike for the stuffy dustiness of books and their keeping.”

“Is that why you have been hiding out here for the last few weeks?”

Maitimo freezes—it is the barest moment, barely notable, but Makalaurë is watching.

These days, it seems, he is rarely doing anything other than watching.

“I have no idea what you are talking about.”

“Maitimo,” he says, and he does reach out, then, leaning across the table until he can catch Maitimo’s hand. “Do not lie to me.”

They hover there, an impasse. For the first time in ages, Maitimo is looking at him; for the first time in ages, Makalaurë thinks he cannot even read the surface of him.

He wants to prod further, to plead, to take all the hurt that is festering at the core of him and make a display out of it. Force his brother to explain himself, to soothe, to make up for the real rejection, as well as for the perpetually unfulfilled longing that Makalaurë only has himself to blame for.

Alas, he may be an actor, but before that, he has his pride. If Maitimo does not want to explain himself he will not, no matter the theatrics Makalaurë may put on.

Maitimo’s fingers flex around his hand, and then he pulls back. He straightens, and his smile becomes fixed. “I do not lie, Makalaurë. I have to finish this rewriting; you know father expects it soon. Do not worry—I am sure I will find you outside of a boring library soon enough.”

It is a dismissal if Makalaurë has ever heard one. He gets up and leaves, if only to make sure that Maitimo will not see the angry tears that, despite all his best intentions, have sprung to his eyes.

In the absence of a better explanation, the simplest or most obvious one is usually the right one, their father has taught them for as long as Makalaurë can remember.

And so, ultimately, it becomes a certainty.

His pride demands Makalaurë let Maitimo come to him, but between his pride and Maitimo’s stubbornness, he knows what will win out. Makalaurë may be prideful, but he knows how to pick his battles—this, at least, he has learnt from his mother.

It has been a few days since the library, and in a novel development of their relationship, they seem to have both avoided each other.

Makalaurë resents it. The fact of it is what gives him the courage to slip into Maitimo’s room late that evening, a bottle of wine in his hand, hair unbound, and wearing a silken robe that leaves little to the imagination.

If all goes wrong, he will always be able to play it off; they have seen each other in stranger states. That is at least what he tells himself as he takes one last, deep breath before he finds Maitimo sitting at his desk, head bowed, and a quill dropping ink over his fine script.

“Maitimo,” he says, and if he had any doubt about this, it vanishes at the way Maitimo’s eyes go wide at the sight of him, colour flushing his cheeks. “Will you drink with me?”

“Káno—“ Maitimo starts, then clicks his mouth shut. His quill snaps.

Inside Makalaurë’s chest, his heart is a violent thing, but he still walks across the room and drops himself into his brother’s lap.

Beneath him, Maitimo jerks, hands coming up to Makalaurë’s hips. A noise escapes his throat that is anything but the self-restrained, controlled Elf he has been pretending to be, these last few months.

Makalaurë takes a long drag from the bottle and smiles up at him sweetly. “I have missed you,” he says, too truthful. Then, “Will you not indulge me?”

From there, the delicate certainty turns into something more solid, something unshakeable—an epiphany of the kind their father uses to create brilliant things.

Maitimo wraps one arm around him and lifts him, until Makalaurë is back on his feet and being crowded back against the desk, Maitimo looming over him, one arm still around his hips, the other hand in Makalaurë’s hair, pulling his head back.

“Why must you tempt me so, Káno?” Maitimo breathes, and he sounds wrecked with it, his eyes too bright. “For weeks now you have been tormenting me; do not tell me that you do not know what you are doing to me.”

Makalaurë swallows, and tangles a hand into the front of Maitimo’s tunic, holding him close. “Do you think I would do so if I did not want to?”

“You do not know what you are saying—“

“Oh, but I do. A hundred years, Nelyo; do not think that I do not recognise it in me. Or in you.”

He does not say how long it took him to recognise it as such; to believe that this is what is true.

He lifts the bottle of wine he held onto, and takes another long sip, then presses it to Maitimo’s mouth. “Come on, brother; drink.”

Maitimo does. Once he is done, Makalaurë puts the bottle on the desk beside him and meets Maitimo’s eyes once more. The hesitation is still clear in the grey of them, but his gaze keeps dropping to Makalaurë’s mouth, his lips that he knows must be stained red with wine.

A part of him is still not sure that this will not end in ruin. He tips his face up, all the same. “Kiss me,” he demands, except that it comes out as a plea.

Maitimo exhales, his fingers flexing against Makalaurë’s hip, tugging at his hair. Then, finally, finally, his resolve visibly crumbles. He leans in closer and brushes their mouths together. It is light at first, almost unbearably gentle—clearly, he has it in his head to be careful about this, proper.

But there is nothing proper about this; Makalaurë does not want there to be. He slots a thigh between Maitimo’s legs, presses in closer; licks into his mouth, insistent and with a whine in the back of his throat, and then he is falling, falling, falling as Maitimo abandons whatever self-restraint he had clung onto and kisses him properly, Makalaurë face between his hands and his tongue hot and insistent.

They wrap themselves around each other until it is no longer enough. Makalaurë pushes against him, walks him over to his bed until Maitimo collapses and Makalaurë can crawl over him, hands finding skin under the loose tunic, watching the dark-red hair spill over white sheets.

His own silken robe has come loose and falls open as he hovers above his brother. Stillness settles between them, Maitimo’s eyes roaming over him. Makalaurë letting him.

After moments or an eternity, Maitimo drags him down into another kiss, messier than the last and until both their breathing is ragged.

“Are you sure about this, Káno?” Maitimo asks him, all of a sudden—as if they have not crossed this point weeks ago.

He can see, though, that Maitimo means it; that despite the dark want in his eyes, it would only take a word to make him stop.

Makalaurë almost wishes it were not so. He ducks his head, licks a long stripe along the shell of Maitimo’s ear, and laughs in breathless delight when it makes Maitimo buck against him, a moan punched out of him that goes straight to Makalaurë’s cock.

“Yes,” he says, grinding his hips down. “Yes, how can you still doubt—“

Maitimo rolls them over, and there is something wild and fey on his face when he looks down at Makalaurë then, a fire bright enough to burn.

Makalaurë’s robe has become useless, his own arousal on full display. Maitimo’s eyes track over him, linger there, and it is not enough, still not enough. One of his hands is being pressed into the sheets by Maitimo, but he uses the other to push into Maitimo’s breeches, find his hard cock and stroke it a few times before Maitimo gets the idea.

It is a graceless scramble, to get out of their remaining clothes. At the end of it, they are gloriously naked though, rutting against each other with enough desperation that it makes up for the fact that neither of them knows very well what they are doing.

Neither of them lasts long, breathing each other’s air, hands touching every part of skin they can reach, Maitimo’s hand wrapped around them both.

Makalaurë bites his shout into Maitimo’s mouth as he tips over the edge, shuddering as the tension finally snaps and releases. Maitimo is not far behind, going rigid above him.

They look at each other once their high fades, a strange mixture of incredulity and sparkling delight. Then Maitimo kisses his forehead, his cheeks, his mouth; lingers there, carding his fingers through Makalaurë’s hair—gentler, now, but possessive; no longer possible to be mistaken for something so innocent as a brotherly gesture.

Makalaurë kisses his fingertips and pulls him close until Maitimo allows himself to collapse on top of him, pressing his forehead to Makalaurë’s collarbone.

They could fall asleep like this, and Makalaurë is close to it, the sated languidness, the warm weight—all he wanted right in the palm of his hands.

Except.

“You bring me low, Makalaurë,” Maitimo says, confession right to the cage that holds Makalaurë’s heart.

Makalaurë shudders and wraps his arms around Maitimo, holds him close. Tells himself that it is not the future stretching its shadows towards them that makes him shiver so, but merely the cooling air of the room.

If Makalaurë did not know better, he may think that it is nothing but a passing chill, lingering shame that is ultimately insignificant.

But he does. After all, he had known better from the start.

Chapter End Notes

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