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“Oh, Maitimo,” the Maia cooed. The false innocence in his voice was stinging, and miserably Maedhros stilled upon his lap.
It was a game that the Maia so liked to play.
His erect length was sheathed up inside of Maedhros’ naked body; the elf splayed himself like some obscene rag-doll atop him, his skinny thighs spread and straddling the Maia’s still-clothed waist, the hard back of the chair upon which they reclined digging into the insides of his knees.
“Don’t squirm,” the Maia chided him, and as best as he could with his hands chained wrist to opposite elbow across his upper back, Maedhros held himself still. A leash dangled humiliatingly down his front, clipped to the thick iron collar about his neck, and the Maia only now relinquished his grip upon it.
The Maia’s length ached up inside of him. None too gently had Maedhros been forced to sit, forced him to open himself, but meekly he had complied as much as he was able. He didn’t want his lord to be angry with him.
The lieutenant didn’t play nicely when he was angry.
“Are you hungry, pet?” the Maia asked, his silvery eyes skating over the too-prominent jut of his toy’s hips, over the shadows that clotted in the bruised hollows of his ribs.
“Y-yes, my lord,” Maedhros croaked, his eyes squeezing shut to stop the desperate, pleading tears from shining in them. They hadn’t fed him for a week, not since he had said something stupid to one of them. He had said something stupid, like he always did, and then they took something away from him. He was thankful that this time it was only food.
“Oh,” the Maia breathed, in one slow movement he oscillated his hips, driving his length just a bit deeper into Maedhros’ body, and as the elf gasped in pain oh how softly he stroked him over the hips, his fingers wandering over the planes of the elf’s skinny pelvis, up the bluish veins of his hardening length. “There, now,” he murmured, “it’s all right. We’ll get you something to eat soon enough, now won’t we?”
Maedhros whimpered as the Maia’s clever fingers stroked over his glistening tip, and the Maia’s face lit up with such vindictive delight as his pet’s legs parted just a little bit wider.
“Good boy, Maitimo,” the Maia crooned, his hands slowly running upwards to scrape the filthy copper strands of hair from Maedhros’ face, to tuck them neatly behind his ears. “Don’t you look so pretty now, so proper? All full and warm just like you should be.”
Maedhros’ chin crinkled, silent tears of humiliation trickled down his cheeks as his shoulders slumped, and the collapse of his upper body only thrust himself further down upon the Maia’s length. A moan of anguish caught in his throat, but around it he whispered, “Yes, my lord. Th-thank you, my lord.”
“Gratitude indeed, pet,” the Maia purred, and slowly his hands slipped to Maedhros’ waist, he began to rock him in his lap as he spoke. “For I am so generous to you, am I not? Not like the others, not like those who just want to abuse those lips, to fuck that pretty arse of yours, all rough and nasty and uncaring. For when ever have I treated you with such cruelty?”
“N-never, my lord,” Maedhros keened, the words soft and hollow in his throat. “You are very k-kind to me...”
“Shh, Maitimo, shh,” the Maia murmured. “Don’t cry now. Don’t cry.” With his left hand still the Maia moved Maedhros’ hips in a slow, agonising grind, but with his right he reached up, he wiped the tears from his pet’s flushed cheeks.
“S-sorry, my lord,” Maedhros gulped.
He tried to be quiet then, truly he did. He tried to make his lord pleased with him.
He bit back a whimper of dismay as the Maia’s hands wandered over his buttocks, over his waist, as his fingers danced and plucked and prodded over the fresh series of cuts that glistened still half-raw upon his stomach. He stifled a yelp of pain as languidly, callously, the lieutenant’s nails scratched at a whip-wheal upon his back, his fingertips digging into the cracking scab that capped it. He squeezed his eyes shut to avoid the unearthly smile that curved over the Maia’s face as slowly, sadistically, his lord peeled the scab from him, savouring in every minute rip of skin, every snap and dissolution of dark, flaking blood. Flesh tore from him in a long, thin ribbon of pain; it wept pus and blood and fluid plasma in one sticky emulsion to drip slowly down his back.
The Maia’s fingers swirled through the mess, a gluttonous smile curved over his lips as he raked his nails over Maedhros’ hips, smearing gore over his skin, up his length. The lieutenant’s newly slicked fingers teased their way up the engorged veins that ridged him, and Maedhros gulped back a cry of dismay. Every stir of the Maia’s length up inside of him was laced only with hurt, with humiliation, but oh what gleeful light erupted in the Maia’s eyes as he ran his fingers over the pre-come that he forced from Maedhros’ length.
“You’re so wet for me, little whore,” he sneered, he grinned, he lauded. “Whatever would ammë think?”
A wordless moan of agony swelled in Maedhros’ throat as the Maia rocked him forwards, as he cradled him close, as he kissed him so tenderly, so awfully upon the lips, and at the sheer crush of him Maedhros wriggled his hips.
“Oh, come… are we having naughty thoughts now, Maitimo?” Every tiny press, every aching twitch of the Maia inside of him was excruciating, was abhorrent, and at that fresh twist of degradation, a bubbling sob racked through Maedhros’ lungs.
“N-no, my lord,” he whispered, but the truths turned to flatteries upon his tongue as he heard the sharpness in his captor’s voice, and he quailed at what might come after. “I didn’t…” he choked, “I didn’t mean to... I th-thought it would make you happy, my lord. I thought…”
“Hush,” the Maia crooned, holding Maedhros’ cheeks in such a gutting mockery of a lover’s caress, stroking him so kindly as the frightened, quaking tears shook through him. “Hush, now. We don’t need these tears. Such guilty, naughty tears… We don’t need such difficult thoughts to bring them. We don’t need you thinking such silly things, now do we?”
“No, my lord,” Maedhros bleated, the words shivering from his lips. “I’m s-sorry, my lord. I – “
“We just need you to obey.”
Maedhros nodded, slowly at first but them more frantically as he felt the Maia push his legs further apart. The lieutenant’s fingernails raked over Maedhros’ inner thigh, over the livid bruises that clustered there already, over half-healed wheals of tortured, weeping skin, and Maedhros shuddered as the grip upon him tightened.
“Please, my lord,” he whimpered, “please, please don’t… I do obey you, I do. I just th-thought... no, no please, please…”
But coldly the lieutenant ignored him, with fingers like talons he pinched into Maedhros’ leg; he gripped into a chunk of skin there and he twisted, he ripped, and a bloodied hunk of flesh then he tore from Maedhros’ thigh. A howl scored out of the elf’s throat, his back arced as that agony raced through him, it pressed him only harder onto the Maia’s throbbing length and those twinned sensations crashed their horror thought him.
Harsh, racking sobs shuddered up through Maedhros’ chest, and with fey eyes the Maia watched him, stroked him, all the while appraising the ragged gobbet of flesh still pinched between his fingers.
“Will you obey me now?” The Maia’s voice was almost sorrowful, and all the more horrible for it.
“Y-yes, my lord. I’m s-sorry, my lord…” Maedhros bubbled, and with a smile that curdled the breath in his lungs the Maia reached up, he smeared a red, salty blister of blood over the elf’s trembling mouth.
“So tell me then, pet,” he grinned, he crushed the mass of flesh between his fingers, he thrust his hips up into the elf and as his prisoner gasped, he raised the messy, shredded remains of skin to Maedhros’ parted lips. “Are you still hungry?”
A horrific whimper bled from Maedhros’ throat as Caranthir entered the healing tent, a platter containing their dinner balanced carefully in his hands. And for a moment everything was still, everything was static; Caranthir came to a dead halt upon the rug as he sighted his brother: the sleeveless nightshirt rucked up about his waist, the clench of skinny muscles in his left arm as he bent forwards, inwards, towards his leg splayed awkwardly out before him.
“I’m sorry...”
The scalpel slipped from Maedhros’ hand. Its blade beaded crimson as it bounced upon the carpet, as crimson as the blood that welled from beneath Maedhros’ fingers, clamped down hard over his thigh. And with that tiny motion it was as if the world had come unlocked: shock slammed through Caranthir’s heart, it nearly rent him in two with its force, and it was all that he could do not to drop the tray in his hands, not to shatter it into a thousand screaming pieces upon the floor.
“Oh, Nelyo…”
“I’m s-sorry,” Maedhros squeaked, his voice crumpling awfully as Caranthir for a moment just stared at him in such engulfing, unutterable dismay. “I th-thought…”
Anger roared through Caranthir’s chest, his face twisted in fathomless horror as hurriedly he thrust the tray aside, and the look of distress that then broke over his brother’s face nearly set him ablaze to see it.
“I th-thought that I could make it better…” Maedhros whimpered, and a sheen far beyond the tender veils of sanity danced in his eyes. “I thought that I could make it go away…”
Blood was soaking through the sheets; it was glistening through Maedhros’ bony fingers.
“I thought that I could cut them out…”
For a moment Caranthir’s vision whitened, it steamed over in boiling, writhing mist. Yet still his eyes dropped to his brother’s thigh, to the scars that puckered it, the twists and whorls of silvery, purpled, mutilated flesh, to the bloodless clutch of Maedhros’ fingers atop them; so pale among all of that fresh crimson, so fragile among all of that senseless hurt. And slowly he felt his anger stoke, it brimmed over into an unearthly plateau of calm that seemed to shimmer within his skull.
He did not have to ask. He did not need to ask. Numbly he walked to the chest of drawers; almost unfeelingly he reached for Nyériel’s stock of bandages, for Celegorm’s soothing salve of athelas and arnica. It took all of his willpower to step forward as Maedhros scrabbled backwards from him, as such blind, animal panic lit up in his eyes, as a fresh spurt of blood sluiced through his fingers.
“Nelyo…” he breathed, as delicately as he could he sat upon the bedside, he took Maedhros’ gore-stained hand in his own and he pried it from his leg. It felt as though someone had kicked him in the stomach as he beheld the clumsy, ugly gashes that clove down his brother’s inner thigh; hurt and sorrow and such crude fury cramped through his innards as Maedhros simply keened below him.
“I c-couldn’t have them on me,” Maedhros whimpered; he flinched as Caranthir pressed a thick compress of bandages firmly into his leg. He clutched to Caranthir’s hands with startling force, slaking them in gore. “I c-couldn’t…”
“I know,” Caranthir murmured, and those simple words over his lips felt like they might cleave through his chest with their passage. “I know…”
“I’m s-sorry.” Maedhros’ voice was slurred with tears. “I th-thought…” He trailed off with a tearful snuffle of exhaustion, and Caranthir gently laid him back against the pillows.
“Lie still,” Caranthir murmured. It took every ounce of his concentration to stem the shake in his voice. “I’m going to… to make it better, all right? I’m going to make it stop hurting.” Caranthir’s voice cracked as he removed the compress, as Maedhros tensed in pain. Quickly then he smoothed a generous measure of Celegorm’s salve over the cuts before staunching them firmly as they began to drool blood anew. Numbly he reached for the length of muslin bandages, and wrapped them securely about his brother’s skinny thigh.
And if his fingers shook as he fumbled with the final knots then viciously he ignored them, if angry, bitter tears glossed over his eyes as Maedhros cringed beneath him then savagely he blinked them aside. Slowly he wiped the gore from his hands; he took Maedhros’ bloodied fingers within his own and began to clean them.
“I didn’t mean it.” Maedhros’ voice was scarcely a miserable wraith upon his lips; his eyes fluttered to a close amid sockets the colour of bruises. “I didn’t mean it…”
“It’s all right,” Caranthir breathed, and only then did he notice how much Maedhros was truly shivering, even in the warmth of the tent. Delicately he arose, he stripped the bloodstained sheets as unobtrusively as he could and he shrouded his brother instead in a spare blanket before slipping in to sit by Maedhros’ left. His fur-trimmed cloak he unclasped and draped around Maedhros’ shaking shoulders, painstakingly positioning it to not catch upon the brace and sling that held his right arm, and as Caranthir settled himself against the pillows Maedhros curled into him.
“It’s all right, Nelyo, I am not angry with you,” Caranthir murmured, pulling his cloak all the tighter about them, and yet still an incandescent glow of rage simmered in his stomach. “Nobody is angry with you. Nothing about… about this is your fault. Nothing. Simply… simply I am angry for you.”
“I couldn’t have them on me…” Maedhros whispered, his voice bleached, hollow and haunted. “Those marks… those touches, like… like I was just a thing. A – a sex thing, I… I don’t want them. I don’t want them…”
“I know,” Caranthir sighed. He simply held his brother’s hand for all that he was worth, and he desperately clung to calmness as the blare of hysteria in Maedhros’ voice scraped through him. “I know you don’t, Nelyo, and that’s all right. You don’t ever have to have them. You don’t ever have to let anyone touch you like that, not ever again. Not if you don’t want them to, not if you don’t give them permission to, do you hear me? Do you hear me, Nelyo?”
Dimly Maedhros nodded, but slowly he pressed his face into the side of Caranthir’s chest, and the hot fall of tears tracked down his cheeks. “B-but…” he gulped, “but what… what if Finno…” His voice cut off into a choking clench, but a few moments later he croaked into Caranthir’s shirt, “What do I do then?”
A long pause rocked through the tent then, for here Caranthir hesitated. It was hardly his jurisdiction, long had he kept himself aloof of his brother’s romantic affairs, but at the naked distress that quavered through Maedhros’ shoulders, a great swell of biting, strangling emotion rose in his chest.
“Finno loves you, Nelyo,” he said, and he said his words truly. “He loves you without veils, without conditions. What under this sun would he not now do for you? If you do not want his touch in this way then he will not force it upon you, this I know in my heart.”
“But I still love him… I still want him, just… just not – “
“Finno would tear down the very foundations of Oiolossë just to bring the ghost of a smile to your lips. What you ask of him now, it is not so difficult.”
A hitching, hurting series of sobs racked through Maedhros’ chest, and for a while Caranthir was silent. He simply held his brother’s hand, and he let him cry, and he prayed that somehow in those tears Maedhros might find some measure of catharsis.
Finally Maedhros’ sobs began to ebb, though still he shivered into Caranthir’s chest he began to calm, and at last the words unhooked from Caranthir’s throat.
“You are not broken, Nelyo,” he whispered. “These… these atrocities that have been inflicted upon you, these feelings that result, they… they do not cheapen you. They do not diminish you. They do not make you anything less than who you were, than who you are. And I cannot bear to see you hurting, Nelyo. I cannot bear to see you harm yourself because of them.“
A rattling breath hissed in over Maedhros’ lips, he pressed his face into Caranthir’s side. “I’m s-sorry…”
“Don’t apologise,” Caranthir rumbled. “Don’t. You have nothing in this world to apologise for, Nelyo. I know that it is hard. I know that… that you’re suffering, still, but… But you will come through this, I promise. I promise you, Nelyo. You will come through this, and you will be however you feel that you need to be, and we will love you. We can do so little, but this much we can manage. We all love you, Nelyo, so, so much, and we will always love you, no matter how many scars you bear, no matter how you choose to be.”
“Really?” Maedhros whimpered.
“Yes,” Caranthir breathed, he crumpled up all of that anger inside of him and he rammed it into tenderness, into care.
He simply snuggled Maedhros closer into him, as his brother’s tearful breathing took on the rhythms of exhausted sleep he pulled the cloak tighter about his scarred shoulders. And as he sat so protectively by, still clutching to Maedhros’ hand, he simply prayed that somewhere in the fickle realm of dreams his brother might yet be allowed to find solace within himself, that somehow he could reconcile to himself what had been done and what unfair burdens now must be borne. Else, Caranthir feared, even unto the healing of all physical hurts, still Maedhros would be lost.
Ahem, yeah, hope you survived that! And if you'd like to inflict a bit more pain on yourself, check out the amazing piece of art done for this fic by the lovely damegorthaur on Tumblr!