Diamonds and Rust

Title: Diamonds and Rust
Author: Kellan Brodie
Fandom: JRR Tolkien
Beta: Alcie
Characters: Maedhros/Fingon
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, but they are fun to play with.
Author Note: AU since we know Maedhros and Fingon were never in New York. :) This was inspired by Joan Baez's "Diamonds and Rust", which is where the title of the story comes from, obviously. I hope you all enjoy it!

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Winter had come early in New York.

How many years had passed? Eru, how many more would? If he had known this is what life would have been like, he never would have come back. Even with endless Ages of experience, with life and death understood, he was still in a one bedroom, ninth floor walk-up whose radiator didn't work, and only managed a yellowish liquid that was supposed to pass for water out of his taps.

Sitting in his lone, worn chair, Fingon looked out of his dirty, frosted window, staring at the snow and the traffic. He sighed, rubbing the back of his neck as he tried to relax. Work had been long, and he'd found he wasn't a people person. He hated working at the diner, serving coffee and mopping up piss in the men's room. What had possessed him to abandon Aman for this?

He knew.

He knew what.

Didn't make it any easier to swallow when he had been alone for almost a century.

Had a hundred years actually flown by? Yes, but ten years ago he'd caught a glimpse of the copperhead, ducking into a cab in DC. On a night much like this one, with the snow falling and the moon pregnant in the sky...

Fingon was pulled from his reverie as the phone rang, sharp and shrill. It danced down his spine and made him shiver. He unfolded his aching joints and picked it up.

"Hello?"

"Hey, cousin."

His whole body froze as his heart lurched. "I didn't expect you to call."

The voice over the line was rough, perhaps a little tired, but it chuckled with true amusement. "Of course you didn't. Not sure why you would."

Fingon closed his eyes. Because I always hoped you would. "Where are you?"

"Near. How long's it been?"

"A decade, more or less."

"Ah, yes," he said fondly in return. "My begetting day. You bought me cufflinks, I think."

Fingon sat on his cold floor, unable to continue standing and the phone wouldn't reach his chair. "Yeah. Cufflinks."

"Didn't I get you something?" There was a long exhale. "You up for a visit, cousin?"

"When?"

"You busy now?"

"No."

"Meet me by the fountain in the Square? Half an hour?"

Fingon nodded, even if Maedhros couldn't see it. "Yes. Half an hour."

"See you then." And the line went dead.

He sat there, staring at the grimy wall while the phone beeped harshly in his lap. The Elf saw a much different time, when a rugged redhead had captured his heart and taken it with him. Led him from home and family to a world so far removed from what they remembered.

Looking back, it seemed almost a happy, haphazard circumstance, how he had come to love and hold his own cousin. It had also been a sad inevitability that he would never truly keep Maedhros' attentions for too many years at a time. Maedhros burned with wanderlust, but Fingon had only wanted to find home and happiness. More than what could be stolen in some seedy rest stop bathroom stall with hardly any lube or space.

Fingon had to give Maedhros credit, though. His cousin had tried. Spent several years in an apartment, holding down a job, and making love in a bed and having dinner parties with colleagues.

But it had ended, just as Fingon had known it would.

He pulled himself up, replacing the receiver on the cradle, and proceeded to dress. Fingon arrived at the fountain with ten minutes to spare, but he wasn't early. Standing a dozen feet away, brown leaves falling, his copper hair dusted with ice, was Maedhros. He was tall and proud still, unbent and well-dressed. Fingon felt a moment of shame for his own shabby attire, but it was his best.

A far cry from days when he wore silk and mithril, gold and emeralds, wore a sword at his side and rode a black charger into battle.

Maedhros held out his hand without saying a word, and he took it. In silence they walked from the Square and toward a nearby hotel. When Maedhros had said near, he hadn't been lying. It warmed Fingon to think that his cousin had come here for him, chosen a hotel so close to his apartment. Their breath came in great clouds of white as they paused to look at each other before entering the hotel lobby, mounting the stairs towards the second floor.

Fingon wasn't certain how it had happened. Clothes had been shed, bodies relearned, hands exploring spots once adored. He arched under the cascade of copper, gazed up into blue-grey orbs that were dark with desire. His body was worshipped, his cries and gasps captures and devoured. When the two moved as one, Fingon's eyes filled with sad longing as he gripped Maedhros' surging back, holding tight.

Too quickly the passion came to its end, and Fingon continued to hold onto Maedhros' hand, savouring the bitter duality of sated pleasure and aching muscles.

"You missed me, then?" he asked with a wistful smile.

"I don’t know what you're talking about," Maedhros replied, turning to press kisses to the long, pale column of Fingon's throat.

Fingon purred, tilting his head back. "Nostalgia?"

"I never get nostalgic, Fingon. You know that." Teeth nipped at tender flesh, caused new bruises to blossom.

The younger Elf's eyes focused on the ceiling, sorrow flooding ever fibre of his being. "If it wasn't because you missed me, and it wasn't nostalgia, then why are you here?"

"Because I want to be." Maedhros was always good with vagueness. Clever with words. And Fingon clung to that vague statement, took it to mean more than it probably did.

Because he needed to.

He needed to believe Maedhros had called, had come, because the copper-haired Elf loved him.

Swimming in his own memories, in all the vividness of their past and all nights such as this one, Fingon turned his face toward Maedhros'. He kissed him, teeth and tongue, pressing his body to Maedhros' again. Needy, hands gripping with more force, he tugged and panted, quietly begged.

He loved this legend, this glorious, fiery Elf so like his father, and Fingon was swept along the tide of memory and lust. If Maedhros was offering him anything, anything, Fingon knew he would snatch it. It didn't matter he'd already paid the greatest price, the loss of his beautiful home among the Valar, and if the ultimate price would be his very soul, then...

Fingon gasped as Maedhros entered him a second time that night, wrapped his legs tightly and gave himself up.

Price be damned.

End