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The Sun beat down glorious and gold and hideously bright on the morning after the Mereth Aderthad. Fingon put his forearms over his face and groaned. He had drunk so much.
"Be quieter," Maedhros said. "I'm very hungover and I might die."
"You be quieter," said Fingon. He rolled over and put his face in Maedhros's hair. It smelled of being drunk. "Why are you in my tent?"
"Why are you naked?" Maedhros said.
"Why are we naked—"
They stared into each other's eyes. Maedhros's eyes glowed silver. His hair hung loose about his bare shoulders. His lips were all kiss-dark. "We can't be, though," Fingon said. "We can't—"
He was already reaching out.
"All right," Maedhros said a little while later, "so now we're definitely married."
"When my father said we should have a feast to bring us all closer together," Fingon said, "I don't think this was what he had in mind."
"We absolutely cannot tell your father this happened," Maedhros said. "He scares me too much."
"We can't keep it secret," Fingon said. "Anyone who looks either of us in the eye will be able to tell we've married someone."
"That's fine," said Maedhros. "No one ever looks me in the eye."
"All right for you!" Fingon said. "Not all of us are terrifying spirits returned almost from the dead! What am I going to do?"
"Well," said Maedhros, "there were a lot of people at the party. No one is going to assume you married me. You can just say you met someone—a nice Grey-elf girl—you were both drunk, you fell into bed together, it's not exactly dignified, but it happens."
"And when someone asks me to produce my nice Grey-elf wife?" Fingon demanded.
"She left?"
"Oh, thanks," Fingon said. "So my new wife doesn't even like me enough to stick around for one day and meet my family. There's undignified and then there's pathetic."
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, let me make it up to you—"
"All right," Maedhros said a bit later. There was a new set of love bites blooming across his collarbones. "Let's think. What if she's pregnant?"
"Pregnant."
"If you're married then she ought to be pregnant," Maedhros said. "So you knocked her up last night and—pass me that pen," Fingon handed over the quill pen from the folding bedside table, "give me your arm. We need to think in terms of Sun-years—"
Fingon held still while Maedhros did calculations on the inside of his forearm. The pen-nib tickled. Maedhros had his bottom lip caught between his teeth. Fingon stared at it. He stared at the love bites. He thought about Maedhros's white thighs. "All right," Maedhros said at last. "So she's pregnant for the next… one hundred and eight years of the Sun. Let's say she returns to her kin in—somewhere—she wants her mother, or something, anyway, then a hundred and eight years from now she has the baby, you go to see her of course, but alas, the baby absorbed all her vital spirits and she died."
"Died," Fingon said. "No! That's too sad."
"It gets rid of her," Maedhros said. "And the baby died too."
Fingon felt very defensive about his non-existent wife. "She shouldn't die. Maybe she's just… very depressed. Aren't ladies often depressed after they have a baby?"
"All right," Maedhros said. "The period of withdrawal—yes, all right, she didn't die, she just feels very tired and sad, so she's still staying with her mother, along with the baby. That gives you another thirty-six years or so, which brings us up to a full Valian Year before you have to actually explain anything to anyone."
"And the baby's not going to die! Babies shouldn't ever die!"
Maedhros explained, very patiently, "If the baby doesn't die, then at some point your father is going to want to meet his grandson."
"We'll deal with that when we get there. First he's going to want to meet his daughter-in-law," Fingon said. "Who do we think we're fooling? We'll never get away with it."
"I should love to meet your lady, my son," said Fingolfin.
"Oh, I wish you could meet my wife," said Fingon with a look of great sincerity. "But you can't, because she lives in Doriath."
"Is she fair or dark?" Turgon asked.
"Red-haired," Fingon said without thinking, and then corrected hastily, "Strawberry blonde."
"I wish you'd bring her north," said Aredhel. "There are not enough women in our family."
"That's just what she said," Fingon invented, "which is why she would rather stay with her sisters."
"She has sisters?"
"Six," no, wait, that was too many to be plausible for anyone who wasn't related to Fëanor, "I mean, four."
"Well, which is it? Six or four?"
"I think some of them are cousins," Fingon said. "Aren't family trees confusing?"
"Welcome home! And how is the Princess's delicate condition?"
"She's doing very well," Fingon said, and then remembered that his wife was supposed to be fifty Sun-years into a draining pregnancy that would leave her too depressed to ever come to Hithlum, "I mean, very badly."
Fingolfin looked concerned. "I think I should write to King Thingol," he said, "not as a fellow monarch, but from the position of a worried father-in-law, to see if there's anything I can offer—"
"Oh no, no, that's quite all right," Fingon said, "her sisters are taking her to seek the care of Melian the Maia, there's certainly nothing we can do—"
"I really need to name her," Fingon said. "It's getting very awkward that I haven't named her."
"Star-flower," Maedhros suggested, sprawled naked among the furs on the great bed in the master-chamber of Himring. "What would that come out to in Sindarin—Elloth? Ellos? Turn it around into Lossiel, maybe, that's prettier."
Lossiel was Snow-daughter, not Star-flower. There was snow flying past the arrow-slit windows. "It doesn't suit her," Fingon said.
"She doesn't exist, Fingon," said Maedhros.
"It's the principle of the thing!"
"It is so good of you to come and visit, Lady Galadriel," said Fingolfin. "I know Fingon must be longing for news of his wife—and her lovely sisters—"
"Oh, she doesn't live in Doriath anymore," Fingon said quickly. "I asked her to move to Gondolin with her sisters—I thought it would be safer. It's just a shame we don't get letters from Gondolin—"
Galadriel looked between Fingon and his father with narrowed eyes. "Oh, of course, Fingon's wife," she said. "Yes, everyone in Doriath knows the wife of Prince Fingon. I'm afraid I don't know her very well, because I have spent the last seventy years making fantastically slow eye contact with my lord Celeborn in a forest clearing—"
Fingon cleared his throat.
Next time Fingolfin looked away, Galadriel mouthed you owe me.
"You know," Maedhros said, "the desire for sexual congress is supposed to pass away once you finish exercising the powers of generation. My father had sex on six separate occasions in his entire life and everyone thought he was shockingly randy."
"How many are we up to now?"
"I lost count about thirty years in," Maedhros said. "Unless you know."
Fingon had no idea. It was definitely a lot more than six. "Is this not going to stop until I get you pregnant?"
"You never know," said Maedhros. "I might get you pregnant."
"Where are you going, Fingon?"
"To see my wife in Himlad," said Fingon.
Fingolfin frowned. "I thought she lived in Doriath?"
"I mean—you know how it is! The Noldor aren't welcome in Doriath. So we're going on a romantic getaway," Fingon said. "Together. In Himlad."
"It's a little cold for it, isn't it? But if you see Maedhros while you're there," said Fingolfin, "do thank him for the excellent and detailed tax records. I wish all my vassals were half as conscientious."
"I might see him," Fingon said. "Or I might not. Obviously, my attention will be focused on my pregnant wife."
Fingolfin said, "You do know you can trust me with anything, don't you, my son?"
"Goodbye, see you in six months, I promise to give your best to my wife!" Fingon said.
"Wait," Fingon said, in tones of doom, around the one-hundred-and-forty-years mark. "What about the baby."
"What baby? Oh, right. I still really think it would be a lot more convenient if it died," Maedhros said. "Or got kidnapped by Orcs or something."
"Babies shouldn't die!" said Fingon. "And if my baby got kidnapped by Orcs I would go and kidnap it back!"
"I worry about you sometimes," Maedhros said. "All right, I will think of a solution to the baby problem."
"Where did you get this," Fingon said a year or so later.
"I definitely did not steal it, because that would be wrong," said Maedhros. "But, for the record, I think it would probably be quite easy to steal a baby."
Fingon held the baby. The baby gurgled happily and reached for the shiny gold beads at the end of his braids.
"Our son," Fingon said. "The child of two royal houses. The scion of kings—"
"I really do worry about you," Maedhros said.
"There's actually a baby?" said Fingolfin.
"His name is Ereinion," said Fingon.
Fingolfin looked down at the child in his arms. Ereinion was adorable. His new grandfather was clearly smitten. Fingon felt quite smitten too. Our son.
"How exactly," Fingolfin said, and then, "never mind. I don't want to know."
"—so we're sending him to be fostered in the Havens," Fingon said, "for a well-rounded education and a deeper understanding of the culture of the Sindar."
"Good?" Maedhros said. "You have spent a lot of time talking about this baby. Can we have sex yet?"
"Do you ever feel guilty?" Fingon said.
"Literally never," said Maedhros. "It's a waste of time."
Fingon wasn't listening. "About all the lying," he said, "the deceptions and half-truths—do you ever think how much easier things could be if we were just honest, with the world, with each other—"
"If I was going to feel guilty I would start with that time we murdered all those Teleri," Maedhros said. "And if we started being honest, we would then have to explain where we got the baby."
"Maybe," Fingon proposed, "while you were a prisoner of the Shadow, dark tortures were worked on you, even on the fundamental nature of your flesh, which made you capable of—"
"I did not give birth to the baby, Fingon," said Maedhros. "Why would Morgoth use his dark powers to make me able to get pregnant?"
"It was just an idea," said Fingon. "I do think you're being quite unreasonable."
"Are you really sure that true love conquers all evil," Fingon said.
Maedhros's eyes glowed with the silver light that was either being very married or very mad. "It worked for Beren and Lúthien," he said. "Why wouldn't it work for us?"
"But if we both die," Fingon said, "what happens to our baby?"
"Fingon, I promise you," Maedhros said, "if you die, I will take personal responsibility for your baby."
It was a golden afternoon in Valinor, late in the ages of the world. "Never met him in my life," said Gil-galad.
"You definitely did," Fingon said. "He handed you to me himself. You were the most adorable baby I'd ever seen. And then, before I died, your other father promised me he would take care of you."
"Sounds like he was lying," Gil-galad said. "And, do you know, I feel absolutely certain that neither of you was ever my father."