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i-did-not-mean-to · 6 months ago

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MAY-U - Russingon

This one has been written for @urwendii! It was such fun to write a Modern!AU Russingon, which is, as everybody knows, one of my all-time favourite things to do!

Characters: Maedhros x Fingon

Prompts: University - Elevator Engineer - I can think of worse company

Words: 2 200

Warnings: Stuck elevator, daring rescue mission, some body contact :D (they're still half-cousins in canon!)

“Oh shit!”

Fingon stared at the screen of his tablet in dismay—how could he have missed so flagrant an error?

Beneath him, there was a faint screeching, scraping sound, but he was too engrossed in his calculations to pay it any heed until it suddenly stopped.

Another wave of blind panic and self-recrimination washed over him, but he tried to counteract that utterly useless instinctive reaction by reminding himself that nobody even used this particular elevator. Everything was fine!

Sweat beaded along his spine—the presentation of his thesis was only weeks away, and the current setback did not exactly inspire much confidence in his eventual success.

He’d wanted to revolutionise the field of elevator engineering; a humble and rather dull aspiration one might well think, but Fingon had devoted himself to this task with as much boundless enthusiasm as he put in any of his numerous other projects and dreams.

Brow creased and lips pinched, he thus gave his meticulous computations another hard stare. Ah! Yes, if he just…

His stroke of genius that would save his academic career and the rotten, old elevator was rudely interrupted by a muted banging, followed by a voice calling out in so polite a tone and wording that Fingon was quite taken aback.

He’d not believed ghosts to be so extraordinarily courteous!

“Hello? Is someone there? The intercom seems to be out of order! Hello? The button is not working!”

Intercom? Button?

Oh Eru! Setting his tablet aside, Fingon groaned. This was just his luck! On the one instance all his efforts failed, there had to be a witness, enmeshed against their will in his entirely avoidable defeat.

Moreover, he couldn’t remember ever having heard a voice half as rich and enchanting as the one rising like a swirl of enticing mist at dawn from the dark abyss of mechanical malfunction.

“There’s a little problem with the elevator,” he called back, half-holding on to the ludicrous idea of merely being haunted by the phantom of inadequacy. “Hang on! Are you injured?”

“I thought as much,” came the deadpan reply from below. “Do you think it could be solved within…let’s say thirty minutes? I’ve got a lecture to attend, but I’m otherwise unharmed.”

“Students are not allowed in this part of the building,” Fingon said smugly, biting his lip when he realised that he, at least on the face of it, was a mere student too.

“I’m aware,” the other answered levelly. “I’m the lecturer, not an attendee. It’s my first one, though, and I’d hate to be a no-show. So, I repeat my question, can this hiccup be ironed out within the next half hour?”

His mind racing through a quick tabulation of what had to be done for the elevator to resume function at all, Fingon came to the inevitable conclusion that he’d have to disappoint the poor wretch.

He was about to say so when he saw movement in the elevator shaft. A moment later, the top hatch flew open and a silken mass of reddish hair, gleaming like burnished copper, appeared.

“Erm,” Fingon mumbled hesitantly, perched precariously on the edge of the control room entrance as he stared, mesmerised, at the stuck cabin just a few meters away. He remembered vaguely that he’d been about to say something, but the exact words had momentarily fled his mind.

The impressive mane shifted, and a pale, shapely face became visible, gleaming like marble in the unprepossessing brushed metal window.

“Ah! You’re still there,” the beauteous man with the magnetic voice smiled. And what a smile it was—Fingon relied on his excellent reflexes to avoid toppling to his death in his eagerness to lean towards that discreet siren call. “I take your silence as a negative, am I right? Maybe…I could climb out and try to pry open the elevator doors?”

Blinking, Fingon struggled to make sense of the sentence he’d just heard; his whole mind and soul were too thoroughly consumed by the near-transcendental charm of the mysterious apparition to focus on anything other than the way those pale lips twitched, and these light grey eyes twinkled with determination.

“Won’t work,” Fingon then croaked miserably. “The many outdated and outright perilous features of the elevator are exactly what I’m trying to amend and improve.”

“Do you have to use the elevator to get down from there?”

A long, slender arm—clad in perfectly ironed grey linen—was swung over the lip of the hatch, slamming a heavy leather bag against the roof of the cabin.

“I’m Maedhros, by the way,” the stranger, now halfway out of his metal cage, wheezed.

“Fingon. Yes. No,” Fingon took a shivering breath; he couldn’t fully grasp how so deplorably static a situation could be “too fast-paced” for his befuddled brain to follow. “I would have taken the elevator,” he tried anew, “but there’s an old door leading outside. I don’t think it has been used in years, and I’d have to walk all the way around and through the building to get back to my office, but theoretically, it could be done!”

“Nice to meet you, Fingon,” Maedhros said, his inflexion just ambiguous enough to make Fingon’s eyebrow quirk in suspicion. “If that is so, I shall come up and use that door if it’s all the same to you.”

His mouth opening to let out an incredulous guffaw, Fingon felt his breath hitch in his throat instead as the other lifted himself completely out of the blasted elevator.

He was huge—Fingon gasped like a schoolgirl, and then, he realised that he’d heard other faculty members discuss the very man, shading his eyes to look up at him hopefully.

The gossip and envious praise surrounding the new lecturer, pretty as a summer day and cold as a winter’s night, had hitherto been buried under far more pressing considerations, and Fingon had simply failed to connect the dots until now.

“Antique languages and societies, right?” he muttered distractedly.

At once, Maedhros’s face lit up. “That’s me—I see I’ve made quite an impression. I hope in a good way.”

A muscle twitched in his left cheek, and Fingon realised with a jolt of incredulity that this man—so self-possessed in the face of adversity and gorgeous enough to be eaten raw—was insecure about how people might perceive him.

“Whatever I’ve heard, it does not do you justice,” Fingon replied before getting a grip on his thoughts. “And words like ‘angelic’ and ‘mouth-watering’ have been used liberally.”

“Ah, sometimes I wish I was interested in women,” Maedhros replied sheepishly, tucking his narrow chin against his chest as if embarrassed. “They’re always so kind and generous to me.”

“I’ve never said a word about the fairer sex,” Fingon commented slyly.

That off-hand remark managed what a defective lift and a very athletic escape hadn’t achieved—Maedhros was positively speechless.

This, Fingon decided, was the worst possible moment to suggest physical contact, but if that masterpiece of human anatomy wanted to make it to his lecture in time, he would have to go along with Fingon’s half-baked plan.

“I can come down and push you up,” he said carefully. “There is a desk, nailed to the floor, in the corner, and you might just be tall enough to wedge in your feet to keep you steady. Or…you can just leave me here—I deserve that.”

“Nonsense!” Maedhros laughed, extending his arms and broadening his stance. “Come down, I’ll catch you.”

Feeling like the maiden heroine in an old-timey novel, Fingon twisted and turned until he could let his feet dangle into the void while holding on for dear life to the sharp-edged rim of the square door in the floor of the control room.

Strong arms were slung around his thighs.

“Let yourself slide down slowly—I’ve got you,” Maedhros promised.

“Take care, I’ve been told repeatedly that my ass is a danger to society!” Fingon warned, mortified at the thought that his new, exciting acquaintance would find himself smothered in the bulging flesh of his rotund behind.

“Consider me duly warned,” the victim-turned-saviour chuckled. “Now let go!”

Sending an arrow prayer to whatever Vala was available, Fingon slowly unclasped his aching fingers.

For a heartbeat, he was floating on a wave of fragrant warmth before the tight rope of living flesh slid up along his body, leaving a lingering sensation of flames licking at his sensitive skin that drove him half-insane with entirely improper want.

“Good day to you, Fingon. I’m sorry to admit that, according to my various brothers’ assessments, my behind is disgustingly bony. You might have been wise to bring gloves if you plan on pushing me up!” Maedhros chirped when Fingon turned around, at once lost in the wavering grey sea of the other’s luminous eyes.

“I thought I’d simply give you a boost,” the prospected engineer mumbled.

“I might need more than that,” Maedhros said with a wink.

Fingon remembered only too well how that man had hoisted himself out of the elevator cabin without any assistance, but he was smart enough to keep his thoughts to himself.

“I wouldn’t dream of wearing gloves then,” he said with a crooked grin accentuating his dimples in a way his mother qualified as “unfairly adorable”.

Without further ado, he gave Maedhros a leg up.

Twisting his head to flash a mischievous grin at his flushed helper, the tall redhead purred, “Push, my man, push!”

As his blood seemingly couldn’t decide what vital organ to provision, Fingon felt light-headed and deliciously dizzy, craning his neck to observe Maedhros’s less-than-graceful ascent which soon came to a suspicious halt, leaving the long, svelte legs swinging like the pendulum of an enchanted clock.

A man of action to his core, Fingon brazenly cupped the perky ass dangling before him and heaved.

He thought that his mind was deserting him for good—Maedhros, instead of using the momentum, seemed to grow heavier. Even though he’d managed to get a handhold on the doorframe above him, he throned on Fingon’s trembling hands like a king of yore.

“Ticktock!” Fingon reminded him half-heartedly.

“Shame, really,” Maedhros sighed and pulled himself through the hole in one powerful, fluid motion.

“If you could throw down my tablet…I shall spend the rest of the day trying to fix this mess,” Fingon called dejectedly. He was profoundly disgusted with how his first meeting with the most talked-about man on campus had gone down, and—despite his cheery, optimistic soul—he knew that he’d gnaw on this humiliating day for a long while.

“I think you’d be more comfortable here,” Maedhros objected. “Throw up my bag, and then I’ll pull you up, Mister Engineer. Trust your plan—it will work out!”

There was the clanging noise of furniture being shuffled around and the old desk creaking in protest, and then those long arms dropped back into Fingon’s field of vision, bracketing a beautifully flushed face.

“Come on!” Maedhros grinned in a heartening tone.

With a soft sigh, Fingon extended his own arms. Maedhros had rolled up his sleeves, and Fingon’s clasped his fingers around lean, freckled forearms firmly at the same time as he felt long, cool digits close against his own skin.

Again, he couldn’t deny how embarrassingly marvellous and precious it made him feel to be lifted as if he was but a dainty, little thing rather than a bulky young man.

Pushing himself off with as much vigour as he could muster to contribute as much as he could lest Maedhros throw out his back in this ludicrous sequence of daring rescues, he shot through the hole and landed flat on a surprisingly broad, well-muscled chest.

Much of an engineer he was, he thought hazily before the slowly blossoming smile of the much put-upon victim of his idiocy rendered the very act of forming coherent concepts patently impossible.

“You owe me a dinner,” Maedhros smirked. “At the very least.”

“Anything for a new colleague,” Fingon squeaked, afraid that if he thought too long on how his breath intermingled with Maedhros’s, he’d be tempted to kiss that rosy mouth until both their careers were irremediably damaged by their failure to show up where they were needed.

A moue of disappointment distorted Maedhros’s hitherto perfectly amiable visage.

“Ah! Maybe you could score one of those ladies that speak of me so nicely,” he said cautiously without making any attempt to shift Fingon’s crushing weight off his pinned body.

“May I remind you, I’ve still not brought up a single ‘lady’. Either way, you better run to your lecture. If, once the rush of adventure has worn off, you still want to spend time with the unluckiest bugger in a ten-mile-radius, you know where you’ll find me.”

Ostensibly pacified, Maedhros hummed in agreement. “When I return,” he chuckled, “I’ll have all the time in the world. I won’t even object to being trapped in the same elevator again. I can think of worse company!”

Even though he mumbled some expected polite verbiage, Fingon was deeply flattered and felt his motivation to solve the technical conundrum reawaken in his inexplicably tight, palpitating heart.

“Until later, brave saviour,” Maedhros grinned. “Don’t fall in…before I’m back.”

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