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It was too much.
Maedhros hurled the blunted blade with what little strength he could muster and turned on his heel, seething and ashamed. Weak and clumsy! Feeble! Incompetent! That he could not wield a blade with any skill or accuracy was only the most recent affront to his sense of self, but in the moment, it was the one he most resented.
For all his self-berating, he still imagined stalking away from his failure with wounded dignity, mustering some grim and noble look of despair. But his twisted knee betrayed him after four short strides: he staggered, and, as so often, now, began to fall.
And as ever, Fingon was there beside him, hands warm and firm, shoulder bracing under Maedhros’, all his wild energy trained to balance and stability and calm.
Maedhros shivered at the confidence of his touch. It was not proprietary -- it did not claim, or assert, or bind. But Fingon’s hands were certain.
In another time, politics and decorum would have carved a space between them, but it seemed Fingon had abandoned that posturing with the trappings of Tirion. He walked the paths of Mithrim with unshakeable conviction, with Maedhros’ arm drawn through the angle of his elbow, or their fingers braided, palm to palm.
It was a new thing, after the mountain, but perhaps not so strange. With the sting of his blade at Maedhros’ wrist, everything had changed.
When Fingon was a child, they had touched with abandon: wrestling and romping, falling sleepily together into a pile in the long, sweet grass. Fingon would curl into Maedhros’ lap when he wished to be consoled, or braid his hair with blossoms from Finwë’s gardens, his small hands winding and tangling in the copper strands.
But as he had grown, the air in Tirion had changed, and what had once been natural felt dangerous and strained. Maedhros’ own father’s black scowls forbade embraces for his cousins; Fingolfin’s warning glances said the same.
Maedhros mourned the absence of touch, the tenderness that had been so simple. He resented the creeping bitterness, found ways within the formal turn and glide of courtly etiquette to claim a moment’s brush of hands, an arm around the shoulder or the waist. Steadfast under the shadow of their elders’ rancor, he was determined to forge bonds across their houses that remained.
Then, dancing with Fingon at the last of Finwë’s summer balls – the end of those desperate efforts to pretend they were a happy family – all his delicate weaving came undone. His cousin blinked up at him from under velvety eyelashes and smiled with secret pleasure, and suddenly all Maedhros knew was Fingon’s warm weight against his chest, Fingon’s soft lips curving upward, the scent of Fingon’s hair. The world shimmered with delight; it sent him fleeing to his rooms, hands seeking his own skin as he gasped in revelation and despair.
There was no hope for it, of course. Not one step down that path would he take, into the teeth of their fathers’ rage.
What Maedhros could not have, he would not seek. But who but Fingon knew the turn of his thoughts, the shape of his mind? The quiet helplessness of his heart as the false front of their family collapsed and all fell to ill around them? Who but Fingon could tease and cozen and pry him from his weary wretchedness? He had no other friend like Fingon, and wanted none. Why try to fill a space that was not there?
Though touch had faltered, room remained for tenderness. Maedhros settled mindfully into friendship, easing them physically apart: a hand’s breadth or more, even as they worked or read companionably together or lazed before the fire. He would not let the giddiness of festivals or fireworks close that gap: indeed, the rowdier the atmosphere, the more the invisible barrier must hold.
If Fingon grieved the lost caresses, he never told.
Banishment to Formenos should have been the end. But Fingon wrote -- in letters slashed, at first, with a fiery hand, full of outrage and disdain, then gentling to remembered tenderness and regret. Maedhros imagined Fingon's fine fingers curved around the pen, calling friendship back from the bleak edges of their fathers' pain. He traced the fierce ascenders of Fingon's tengwar with his own fingers, over and over: wondering, grateful, ashamed.
Then: Darkness. Madness.
All hearts in fear cry out for touch. Fingon wiped the blood from Maedhros’ face in Alqualondë; pushed through the host to grip his hand as Mandos spoke their Doom; wrapped his arms around Maedhros’ waist and laid his head against his chest as they shivered at the edge of the roiling sea, watching the stolen ships heave and pitch at anchor. His breath against Maedhros’ throat was warm and sweet, comforting in the pearling mists.
Maedhros clung to the tenderness of that last remembered touch through flight and flames, as the Enemy’s iron closed cold around his wrists. Let him live, please; let that one good thing remain, he begged, silently, in the dark, in the pits, under the burning, bitter rain.
The hovering Eagle had Fingon’s eyes, or Fingon had the Eagle’s – Maedhros wasn’t sure, through the wind and the flurry of the feathers. Like so many of his dreams, there was an edge of sweetness to the vision, a promise of release. And there were Fingon’s hands, reaching for him, tugging, pulling. Maedhros wanted to lean, to fall, to slide into that warm and capable grip. Then, as ever, the dreaming shifted, ending in the bite of pain.
But Fingon’s hands were still there, at his waking. Steady with the bandages and medicines, soothing as remembered terror rocked him. He drifted, anchored only by Fingon’s assured and reassuring touch.
And as he healed, he found he craved it even more: Fingon’s hand at his elbow, the soft brush of Fingon’s fingers through his hair. Fingon’s arm around his waist, lifting and easing. All his carefully-crafted distance had been foregone, under the guise of recovery and rehabilitation. He scrabbled for it, trying to reclaim his careful balance – pushed himself to walk, to fight, to run.
But his body betrayed him again and again: shivering, shaking, falling. And always Fingon was there to catch him, with those tender, committed hands.
Maedhros could not bear it: the weakness, the wanting.
He hurled his blade in rage at the injustice of his frailty, the misery of his frustrated longing. He deserved nothing from Fingon, he told himself, as he turned to stalk away.
His traitorous knee was the last straw. Against his will and all his forced control he found himself weeping, fallen into Fingon’s arms. He had wept before, on the mountain, and in the long weariness of his sickbed, but never like this, with such fragility of heart. What a pitiful creature! Why was Fingon not repulsed?
Fingon clasped him close, and held him. He wiped the tears from Maedhros’ cheeks and cupped his jaw with careful tenderness. Very deliberately, Fingon leaned and kissed his lips, gossamer-light and soft. An answer and a question, all at once.
When he made to draw away, Maedhros gripped him tight -- his own hand sure of this, at least. At last.
Then Fingon’s mouth was on his again, no longer questioning. Maedhros felt his own lips part in eager pleading. Felt the quick, soft lash of Fingon’s tongue, the bright spark of their common flame.
Everything he was slipped sideways, finally and fully, into Fingon’s strong, warm, patient, welcoming hands.