#but turgon has contracted with rog to help build nevrast

[arofili]

Dialogue meme: “You’re trembling.” For RogxMaedhros cause I am getting so deep into that Ship I need a lifejacket💚

(This got longer than anticipated! I wanted to figure out my feelings on how they came together, and how Fingon fit into the picture, and then they were talking about names and it turned into this. I’ll probably post this as its own work on AO3, not part of the drabble comp, because I like it a lot! But that won’t be til I’m done with all of these, lol. Anyway - enjoy!)

~

24. “You’re trembling.”

Maitimo froze. Behind him, Rôg sighed. “I did not mean to startle you. Forgive me, my lord.”

“No—please don’t call me that,” he rasped. “Just...” And again he found himself unable to say it, the name he’d always called himself. Maitimo he was no longer, but Russandol was Finno’s name for him and it felt wrong to give it away even if he could no longer look Finno in the eye, and Nelyafinwë would not do at all, not for a follower of of Nolofinwë...

And there he was, shaking again. Rôg crouched in front of him, his dark eyes steady. “Can I hold your hand?” he asked.

“I...what?” Maitimo said.

“Your hand.” Rôg extended his own: rough, callused, scarred. He was missing half his ring finger past the knuckle. “I find it helps, sometimes, if someone is there to ground you.”

No one had held his hand since... He shuddered, trying not to remember, and extended his palm. Rôg’s grip was firm, and despite himself Maitimo relaxed.

“Thank you,” he whispered, glancing back up into Rôg’s eyes. This was the one nér he had managed to look in the eye for longer than a moment since he had been freed—the one nér who looked at him with understanding, not pity or fear or hate.

Rôg looked nothing like him: he was broad-shouldered, not too tall, dark of skin and hair, and his scars were from hard labor in the mines, not the torture Maitimo had been forced to endure. He was an Avar who swore himself into Nolofinwë’s service; his loyalties were not to Maitimo. But he had been to Angamando and made his way out, and he knew, he knew what the others could not, and he knew how to help.

“You...your name,” he found himself saying. He wasn’t trembling anymore; Rôg seemed to absorb his excess energy into that firm and solid body. “Is it...Avarin?”

Rôg laughed, a low rumble that woke something in Maitimo he didn’t know he still could feel. “My first name was Rōka,” he said. “Strength, in the Hwendi tongue. But when I was taken, I fought like a demon, they said, and when they broke me they named me Rôg. A bastardized name, some said. A name to make me less elvish, more like them, others said. When I escaped I kept the name. I am a demon—but I am a demon to them. They will fear me and know me by the name they gave me, know who it is that will destroy them.”

This time, Maitimo shudder was of a different kind: not of fear but of admiration. Yes, this is what he wanted to be: vengeful, strong. Like the Valcaraucar—Balrogs, in the Þindarin tongue. Fire demons. Rōka was their demon; he could be, perhaps, their fire.

“I...admire that,” he said at last. “Very much.”

“You said not to call you ‘lord.’” Rôg tilted his head. “But you did not give me a name by which to call you.”

“None of my old names fit,” he admitted. Rôg rubbed circles on his hand with his thumb, and the tension slowly eased out of him as he continued. “But Moringotto...he did not give me a new name. I do not know what to call myself anymore.”

Rôg thought for a moment. “I am not one of your loremasters in the speech of these lands, or in the ones you came from,” he said. “But perhaps you could find what you like of the names you were given, and craft them into something new. Something you choose. I hear that the other lords are changing their names, to speak better with the Sindar. You may have to change it anyway.”

“Hm,” Maitimo said. “That is a thought.” He liked the idea; perhaps he would take the Mait from his amilessë, for he liked the sound. And Russ from the name Finno gave him, because despite all else he endured his hair still blazed like russet fire. Certainly Nelya would not do, not if he went through with his plan to cede the crown to Nolofinwë; Finwë would be pointless after removing himself and his brothers from the line of succession...

He lost himself in his thoughts, happily still for the first time in days. At last, Rôg rose, and to his surprise Maitimo found himself clutching his hand, not wanting him to leave.

“Oh?” Rôg said, a sharp-toothed smile glinting at him. “Do you wish me to stay, friend?”

Friend. Yes, that was something he was happy to be called—someone’s friend, someone’s equal. Not the poor thing Findekáno dragged home from the cliffside, not the fallen prince or Kinslayer waiting to bite the hand that fed him. A friend, a companion.

“If...you would,” Maitimo (Mait-russ?) admitted. “I...you are better company than any other. And—you bring me peace. I want you here.”

It felt strange, to say those words, when he thought he never would again, and with someone who was not Finno... But Finno treated him different now, no less loving, no less kind; in fact, even more, and that was what stifled him. It was too much; perhaps later, they could rekindle what they had, but now, he needed a nér who was solid, who was strong, who was real. A nér like Rôg.

“I want you,” he whispered as Rôg knelt back down, drawing his new friend closer. “I did not think I would want again, but I do, and you are...”

“Do you want me to kiss you, my friend?” Rôg rumbled, and Maitruss (no, Maedhros, with the Þindarin words, he would soon decide) blushed. “I know how it feels to miss touch, intimacy, and yet fear it. We need not do anything else.”

We, he said, and the word was sweet on his tongue. Maedhros clung tighter to his hand and Rôg cupped his face with the other that he could not hold, and then kissed him, and oh—his lips were even sweeter.