post breakup sex (that helps you forget your ex)
ao3 link Caranthir/Caranthir's Wife, e rated, no warnings. for @silmsmutweek, for the day 5 prompt "complicated relationships". In Fourth Age Tirion, Caranthir comes face to face with the woman he abandoned for Beleriand.
Caranthir had known that attending his aunt and uncle’s party was a terrible idea. When his mother had first raised the subject, his first thought - well, his first thought after fuck no - was that she could go and enjoy herself, and he’d stay late in the shipyard doing more of the menial but not unbearable grunt work that was part of the conditions of his release from Mandos. But then his mother had told him that she actually wanted him to come, and she proved impossible to sway. Even his argument that nobody had enjoyed his presence at parties even before he was a double mass-murderer was deemed not good enough.
Well, almost nobody. One person had stayed by his side all night at every gathering or dance; told him that there was nobody she would rather be beside and maybe even meant it. But she was gone – he had thrown her aside for his father’s oath on the shores of the Swanhaven, and for that crime there would be no forgiveness.
In the time before, Tindawen had made social events under the light of the Trees not only bearable, but even fun. They would dress up, him in red and her in pink, and draw hundreds of pairs of eyes when they stepped out arm in arm. But they would scarcely dance – they would find some secluded corner where Caranthir would make more and more scathing comments on the other guests – their outfits or their hair or their dance steps; while Tindawen would snort her ridiculous, lovely laugh – “Moryo, stop it! You can’t just say that! Oh Moryo, I can’t take you anywhere!” Then they would leave together, kissing in the carriage, and fall into bed the moment they reached their shared home, laughing all the time.
But there was no point dwelling on it. Those days were over. But there was one person who had taken him back, and there was a part of him that was loathe to deny Nerdanel anything these days - not only had he let her down in just about every way that a son could; he was also, for some inconceivable reason, the only son who had been granted permission to return to her. So it was that he found himself donning a passable set of robes, and taking a carriage with his mother to Finarfin and Eärwen's palace in Tirion.
Caranthir drank from Finarfin’s wine, and spoke to no one. He found a suitable corner to retreat to, and watched the other guests. He conceded that it was at least a nice view. The royal family’s nearest and dearest looked like a flock of the jewel-coloured birds that graced the slopes of Taniquetil and the gardens of Yavanna, dressed in a whole spectrum of colour and gems. From his vantage point, Caranthir could see oranges, yellows, blues, greens…
Pink.
It wasn’t her. It couldn’t be.
He looked again.
Elaborately embroidered pink silk. A flash of sealight-shining pearls. Warm brown skin, and ornately pinned dark curls.
Eru. Eru Ilúvatar.
Was it possible that he had been granted reembodiment only for the purpose of further punishment?
There was only one thing for it. Caranthir set his drink down and made for the door.
If he tried to speak to Tindawen, he did not know what he might do. Perhaps he would fall to his knees and clutch at her skirts, perhaps he would shout, perhaps he would cry.
He had approached her once before, in this second life. Stumbling on newborn-colt legs towards the little house in Tirion that the Maia of Námo had told him was her home, he had come to her door with no expectation or plan – save to tell her, I am sorry, I am sorry. But when she had opened the door, neither of them had managed words. She had screamed at him; pained, wordless, and slammed the door in his face.
No, he needed to leave before she saw him again. Blindly, he made his way down corridors, head down, though he saw no-one. He would take a carriage home, he decided, and try to explain himself to his mother the next morning. It was not as though he was unused to disappointing her; nor she to finding herself disappointed with him.
He was almost to the main door, could hear the murmured conversation of the footmen and feel the cool breeze of the night air against his cheek, when he felt a hand close around his wrist.
Tindawen’s voice was jackknife- sharp. “And where do you think you’re going?”
Caranthir opened his mouth to speak, but only managed a “wha-” before he was shoved, one-handedly, backwards through an unobtrusive side door. Caught off-guard in more ways than one, he staggered backwards ungainly, and fell down, hard, onto his ass. Something brushed against his head, and looking upwards, he realised where he had landed. The heavy coats and stoles of Tirion’s finest hung around him, like a bizarre, many-coloured forest. And he was not alone in the coat closet – Tindawen stood; furious, beautiful, in front of the door.
“Unbelievable. You really thought to run away from me? Big fucking man, scurrying away with his tail between his legs from his own wife.”
To hear her name herself his wife was jarring, even more so than falling backwards into the coat closet had been. It was true that there had been no formal dissolution of the marriage, like the one that he heard his cousin Aredhel had recently acquired, but he hardly thought such a thing was needed –- he had butchered her people.
“Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?”
His mouth opened and closed. He scrambled, hopelessly, for the words that would somehow fix his crimes, fix their marriage. “I - I’m sorry -”
“Oh!” Tindawen laughed, and there was not a bit of mirth in it. “Oh, you’re sorry! Well, that’s alright, then. You’re sorry. I know you’re sorry, Caranthir – you have said it to me, you have said it to Olwë, presumably you have said it to your mother. But what exactly does a sorry fix?”
He sat up. “I – I don’t –”
“Nothing, Caranthir!”
She was almost shouting, tree-lit eyes flashing with fury. Then all of a sudden, she stopped. She took a deep breath. And very calmly, she emptied the contents of her wine goblet, that he had not even realised she was still holding, over his chest.
Stunned, he staggered to his feet, feeling the telltale heat as his face turned as red as his tunic. “Tindawen, what–?”
But she was continuing, though her voice was cracking like ice. “Do you have any idea of how much you’ve hurt me?” She sniffed, and her eyes were welling up with jewel-bright tears, and suddenly he ached to throw his arms around her and soothe this most ancient ache that he had caused. “You turned your weapons on my friends. I let you into my home. I shared my body with you. And that’s how you repaid me? Do you know how many people blamed me for your sins? Kinslayer’s whore, they called me! If Arfin your king had not been kind enough to speak for me in front of mine, they might call me that name still. You treated me like nothing. You humiliated me. You left me. And now you think you can just come back and…and…” She broke off, sobs finally bubbling up and breaking.
He could not bear it. Perhaps she would hate him all the more for it, but to leave her in her pain felt all the more wrong. He reached for her, and wrapped both arms around her as she cried. Something was breaking inside his own chest. “I’m sorry,” he said, uselessly, and then, “I love you,” which was less than useless.
She kissed him then, her tears still flowing, and he tasted the salt of the sea that had sundered them for so long. “I love you,” he said again when they parted, “and I’m sorry. Let me prove it.” Perhaps he could not find the words – he never could, not in either life – but he could show her with his body; and it would be the last time, and he would never have her again, but she would know.
“Yes,” she breathed, “yes, go on then, do it.”
He stripped himself first. Shrugged off his outer cloak, and peeled off his shirt, soaked through with wine. Red rivulets ran down his bare chest, and even he, who long-lost Maglor had always mocked for his lack of artistry, could see the symbolism there. Rings and hairpins were next to go, clattering to the ground, uncaring of where they fell, and then he shrugged off his slippers and stepped out of his skirts; and sunk to his knees bare before her as though he had just crawled out of the barrow of Mandos.
The dark quiet of the closet was punctuated only with their breathing, until Tindawen reached for her own hairnet, a fragile thing made from saltwater pearls, and tugged it loose with enough strength to break it. Her curls tumbled free, and the pearls cascaded down, down, down to the floor, where they shone in the darkness like Varda’s stars.
She did not let him strip her. Instead, she only kicked off her own shoes, and lifted her layers of silk chiffon skirts around her waist. It was a clear invitation, and Caranthir, so renowned for his pride, crawled towards his wife and took her pearl garter into his mouth, pulling it down to the ground between his teeth. His teeth he used, too, to slide her silken underwear away to join it.
He was pleased, he realised, to find that Tindawen still wore soft, beautiful things; that her body was still unscarred. She was never made for violence – the closest thing to a weapon he had ever seen her bear was the small knife she used for pearl-diving. How had he ever thought himself worthy of her?
He turned his face towards her sex, and breathed in the heady scent of her, knowing that he would get no other chances. When he pushed the thick muscle of his tongue inside of her, she tightened her thighs around his head, and he felt the clenching of her inner muscles around his tongue as he licked. She pulled at his hair, moving his head as she wanted, and he heard her say again: “Yeah, big fucking man. All that for your stupid fucking pride.”
It was true, he knew it was true, and he buried his face in the hot centre of her as though he could somehow absolve himself through this. “It wasn’t worth it, none of it was fucking worth it, was it,” she was saying, and he wanted to tell her what he could still barely tell himself – no, no, it wasn’t – but his mouth was occupied.
She came grinding against his nose as he circled his tongue inside of her, and he drank from her hungrily, willing himself to remember the taste of her pleasure and how it felt when her thighs shook as she came. When she pulled him to his feet, he half- expected her to put her shoes back on and leave, or perhaps to throw him out of the closet naked and wet-faced.
She did neither. Grabbing his hair and pressing their lips together, they shared the taste of her between them, the sticky wine on his chest dirtying her dress.
“Go on, then,” she said, “have what you want.”
The closet was not small – they had to push their way through the forest of fabrics to find the wall. Sex with Tindawen had always been something revelatory, and here, now, was no exception. Her legs wrapped around his waist were an anchor as he drove himself into her, and the warmth and softness of her had him burying his face into her neck, lest he begin to sob.
His thrusts became erratic before long. Determined not to fail her in at least one small way, he shoved two fingers into his own mouth to wet them, and rubbed desperate, insistent circles around her clit. The clench of her cunt tightening around him as she came was almost too much – he fumbled to pull out before he spent himself inside of her, coming instead into his own hand.
They stood apart, breathing heavily, for a long moment.
Outside, Caranthir could hear the faint sounds of revellers, as the party began to spread from the ballroom throughout the palace. They would have to leave their makeshift hideaway soon, before some unfortunate partygoer came seeking their jacket and found much more than they had bargained for.
He did not want to go. To leave her now felt almost worse than it had that terrible day back in Alqualondë, so long ago. But he had made his choices, and these were the consequences. That was what it was all about, he vaguely remembered some servant of Nienna telling him, back when he was still dead. Consequences. He turned to find his clothes.
“Wait.”
Her voice was quiet. He almost did not hear.
“I’m not saying everything’s alright now. But if you wanted to spend tonight at my house – you could.”
Nothing was fixed, and he had no idea where they could possibly go next. Still, his answer was the easiest “yes” that he could remember giving.