Chapter Text
The house was empty and silent but for the tick of the slow kitchen clock and the tap of Maedhros’s pen against his notebook. It was unusual for the place not to be bustling with brothers and roommates and he kept glancing at the clock, for all the good it did him, counting the minutes until Fingon’s last class of the day was over and he arrived for their usual Thursday afternoon homework date.
At ten after three by the kitchen clock – and twenty-five after for real – Fingon was knocking at the front door and then breezing in without waiting for a response. Maedhros had just gotten into a groove on his essay, and looked up only briefly to smile as Fingon came in.
“I’ll be right with you, let me just finish this thought.”
Fingon dropped his bag on the floor and crossed to the table. “Hey. Finish soon, I got something new.”
“Oh?” Maedhros was absorbed in the last paragraph of his assignment, trying to articulate dominant visual mores as expressed in the fashion of the late 18th century without betraying the fact that he didn’t fully understand the concept. He sucked the end of his pen and tried to remember how to spell ‘ocularcentrism’. “What kind of new something?”
“A new piercing.”
Maedhros blinked and took his pen out of his mouth. Fingon had turned up with new piercings twice before, and Maedhros had always reacted with a mixture of trepidation and interest. On the one hand, Fingon’s beauty hardly needed enhancing – much less enhancements that involved putting holes in him - so it always felt unnecessary, even blasphemous. On the other, he could not actually admit that any of these additions had detracted from Fingon’s looks. One had been another earring, high up on the cartilage of his very sensitive, very appealing ear, and the other had been a hoop through his eyebrow that was not Maedhros’s style at all, but that gave Fingon such an arresting, roguish look that Maedhros couldn’t stop staring.
Not that this was anything new.
He studied his friend now and could see nothing that was obviously freshly punctured. Fingon was wearing a snug black tee shirt and dark jeans, his sunglasses pushed up on his forehead. It was a good look, and Maedhros returned to his writing so as not to be caught staring.
“What is it, then?” he asked, his voice coming out bored in his attempts not to sound too eager.
“Well…” Fingon stepped closer, and Maedhros shifted in his seat at the warmth of his presence and his irresistible smell. He’d once spent some time hunting for the cologne that Fingon used, but Fingon had just laughed and told him, “Arm & Hammer deodorant and sweat, man.”
“Well, what?” Maedhros began, and then looked up.
This close, it was clear that Fingon’s shirt was very tight indeed and revealed every…contour. Every new, slightly accentuated contour. In case Maedhros didn’t get the point right away, Fingon reached up and tweaked one.
“Fin.” Maedhros swallowed hard. “You pierced your…”
“Nipples? Yeah. What do you think?” Fingon casually tugged his shirt up and Maedhros’s eyes were drawn magnetically to the gold glinting on his chest. Two small barbells, drawn through taut skin.
Maedhros gaped; the visual had elicited a tingling urgency and anticipation in him that was not at all expected. He closed his mouth with a snap and said tersely, "What were you thinking?”
Fingon put his head to the side. “Clearly not the same things you’re thinking.”
“Have you thought about what people will think every time you go to the beach? Don't you worry people will judge you? What if they get stuck on things? What if they get infected? What happens when you go through a metal detector? You’re only 18, how long are you going to keep these, are they permanent? What -"
“Mae,” said Fingon kindly. “My eyes are up here.”
So they were.
Maedhros met them, and he must have been glaring because Fingon looked uncertain and dropped his shirt again. "I thought you would li- "
“When did you get them?”
“Couple days ago.”
“And you didn’t tell me beforehand?” Maedhros felt hurt; they spoke or messaged every day, even when they didn’t see each other, and Fingon was always quick to fill him in on the details of his day. Except for these details, apparently.
“I thought you might be weird about it. Silly me.”
“I’m not being weird, I’m just asking questions! Like why? Why did you get them? What are they for?”
Fingon grinned. “What are nipples for?”
Maedhros tried to think back to his lone freshman bio class. “Well, in embryonic development – ”
“They’re sexy, Mae.” Fingon shrugged. “I got them because they’re sexy.”
Maedhros’s mouth was dry again, his gaze drawn back to the front of Fingon’s shirt. "I never even thought about that part of you as sexual," he said, as sincerely as he could manage.
“Liar," said Fingon, with far more genuine sincerity and a glint in his eye.
“Well,” said Maedhros, and crossed his arms. “I assume you have to take care of the – the wounds? Clean them, and so on?”
“Uh, yeah,” said Fingon, who looked like the conversational rug kept being twitched out from under him.
“And have you?”
“I mean, sure, I’m not going to let them rot and drop off or anythi - ”
Maedhros’s heart stopped. “Could that happen?”
“Mae,” said Fingon in exasperation. “Just tell me if you like them or not.”
“Get on the couch,” said Maedhros, and strode away.
When he returned, Fingon was in the living room sitting on the edge of the couch, his expression both curious and apprehensive.
“Take off your shirt,” said Maedhros and Fingon looked up at him from under his lashes, a slow grin beginning at the corners of his mouth.
But when Fingon slipped the black tee shirt over his head and Maedhros produced a large bottle of rubbing alcohol, a cloth, and a businesslike expression, Fingon’s smile dropped.
“Mae, are you serious?”
“No bits of you are going to rot and drop off on my watch,” said Maedhros, and knelt before Fingon.
He dampened his cloth with the alcohol and leaned forward to dab gently at the area around the piercing. It was slightly reddened and a bit puffier than usual, but it didn’t look as bad as he feared. Fingon made a small noise and a repressed movement as the cloth touched his skin, and Maedhros looked up at once, letting out a sharp breath.
Fingon made another noise.
“Does it hurt?”
“A little,” said Fingon, in an unusually quiet voice.
“I’ll be gentle,” said Maedhros softly, and bent back over Fingon’s breast. With cotton and alcohol he delicately cleaned the area, fingers brushing lightly over the polished gold and sometimes over the peak of Fingon’s nipple itself. Both nipples appeared harder than usual, pulled tight against Fingon’s smooth skin, and Maedhros wondered if it was the cool air or the piercing itself that did it. He was finding himself breathing quicker each time Fingon made a stifled sound at the sting of alcohol, and he shifted on his knees, rising up higher. His head bumped Fingon’s shoulder as he bent to his task, and Fingon grabbed his upper arm, another muted whimper escaping him.
“Too much?” whispered Maedhros, his breath huffing over Fingon’s damp skin, and Fingon shook his head, his lips clamped shut like he might be suppressing further sounds of pain. To his shame, Maedhros found himself uncomfortably aroused by each shallow breath, each stilled, frantic movement Fingon made under his hands. Was he excited by his cousin’s discomfort? It couldn’t be, he wanted Fingon to be safe and cared for and pain free forever, he lo – he loathed the idea of Fingon’s pain. But he couldn’t deny the increasing constriction of his jeans, nor the way he was biting his own lip to keep his breathing under control.
His thumb brushed over Fingon’s other nipple, and Fingon’s hips jerked, the fingers of his right hand digging painfully into Maedhros’s shoulder.
“Shh, it’s okay,” murmured Maedhros, barely conscious of what he was saying. He shifted forward, his torso coming to rest between Fingon’s legs, pressing against the stiff fabric of Fingon’s jeans. He laid a kiss below Fingon’s collarbone because he could, and Fingon moaned, his hips rising again. Maedhros’s mouth was inches from Fingon’s breast, he could – he could so easily take the delicate gold bar in his mouth, close his lips around it and press his tongue to the tip –
“Maedhros, Maitimo, Maitimo, god,” cried Fingon, and shook all over.
After a while, Maedhros got to his feet, the bottle and cloth still clutched in his sweaty hands. Fingon was sprawled on the couch, boneless and bare-chested and dazed, and Maedhros took one look at him and knew he had to escape.
“Gonna go put these away,” he muttered, and fled.
In the bathroom he dropped the cleaning materials and fell back against the wall, fumbling blindly for the fly of his pants. He had just discovered he was some sort of sadist, getting off on his cousin’s cries of pain, and even now he was powerless against imagining them again, thinking about what sounds he might have elicited had he tugged gently at the barbells with his teeth, pressing himself between Fingon’s spread legs and tonguing his taut nipples –
It was only about a minute before he was biting the back of his hand and spilling himself into the bathroom sink.
Maedhros ran the water for a while, washing his hands over and over and waiting for the furious blush to subside from his cheeks and ears.
By the time he returned to the living room, Fingon was composed once more, wearing his shirt and looking at him with a faint sparkle in his eyes.
“You never answered my question,” he said finally as Maedhros hung in the doorway, unable to figure out how to segue back into a normal conversation.
“What question?”
“Do you like them?”
Maedhros hesitated for a moment then walked quickly across the room and dropped onto the couch beside Fingon.
“Yes,” he said, his ears flaming again, and he hid his face against Fingon’s neck.