Of Elbereth's Bounty

Title: Of Elbereth’s Bounty – Part 2
(third in my unofficial series, after In Earendil’s Light and Under the Elen)
Author: Gloromeien
Email: swishbucklers@hotmail.com
Pairing: OMC/OMC, Legolas/Elrohir, references to Glorfindel/Elladan
Summary: A sojourn at the seaside evokes strange, long-dormant feelings in both our young elves.
Rating: R
Disclaimers: Characters belong to wil wily old wizard himself, Tolkien the Wise, the granddad of all 20th century fantasy lit. I serve at the pleasure of his estate and aim not for profit.
Author’s Note:It help to no end to have read both In Earendil’s Light and Under the Elen before this, as otherwise you might not recognize any of the characters. Hope you enjoy, and thanks for keeping to the path thus far!!
Feedback: Would be delightful.
Dedication: To the moderators of Library of Moria, Melethryn, Adult Fan Fiction.Net, and other sites of their ilk for all their wonderful, tireless work and for keeping us up to our ears in fic.

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Of Elbereth’s Bounty

Part Two

As the sterling sun white-washed the sky above, draping a gauzy veil of haze over the hallowed peaks of Taniquetil to the north, the ocean spread out before them like a sheet of rippled mercury. The shore beneath, with its bleached sands, rose and fell with dunes as unctuous as silk, ivy rips of seaweed embroidered into the fine-grained weave. A warm flush of wind, thick with spray, draped a becoming sheen of perspiration over Echoriath’s already heat-glazed skin, though, sobered by this first glimpse of the ocean, he paid the humidity little mind.

Far across the mirror-sleek surface of the sea lay the land that had born him, shaped his character as a hammer batters well-layered steel into sword. Though many times he yet felt formless, abstract, as fluid scd scorching as molten ore, he knew the more scarringectsects of his shyness had been cooled off by Valinor’s quenching grace and his potential polished by the pestle-grind of constant opportunity. He found he missed little about brute, melancholy Arda, excepting his mother’s shrewd care. As none among his current confidants were of another Elf-Lord’s House, his troubles festered as an untended wound; were it not for the grind of routine, his current affliction would soon turn gangrenous and beg amputation.

Yet Echoriath would sooner cut out his heart, than forsake the solace of Tathren’s hopelessly platonic regard.

In a coup worthy of an elfling Legolas, they had stolen him away. Duties aplenty awaited the young adventurer and his exploring party upon their return: an audience with the High Council, the needful attentions of their parents and siblings, not to mention the hundred ale-hall friends that tipsily awaited their glorious tales a-ringing. After a fortnight of placating by day and revelry by night, Tathren had looked fit to depart anew, so Cuthalion, and by default Echoriath, had spirited him away to the ocean shore, where in earlier years they’d often camped overnight, a brief respite from the at times encroaching forest hollows. Unlike their fathers, these three were secret mermen, covetous of an afternoon splashing through the surf, riding the wicked waves, and diving straight into the sea’s deeping swell.

As he tore his sallow eyes from the serenity of the view, Echoriath was confronted by a sight of equally heart-stirring splendor, though he fought to stifle the surge that resulted within him. Eager to swim, Tathren had already shed his roughshod raiment for the paltry concealment of his thigh-cut leggings, the ocean’s spite being too coarse for complete bareness, or so Echoriath both thanked and cursed the Valar. Though the golden elf had not further matured in his eight years away, his adventuring had sculpted him a limber, sinuous frame of such simmering forcefulness that Echoriath could not help but swallow hard. Unlike his own lithe body, where few traces of his faint mortal heritage remained, Tathren was fully blessed with a peredhil’s hardiness: his shoulders wide, his collar regal, his chest strewn as a cornsilk field, and his hips of a swagger that could swoon a harem of wantons. Echoriath prayed that he did not turn, for a mere glimpse of that en sen sheath of hair, of his sleek back and of his taut buttocks would instantly unman him, if not veritably cause him to flee in shame.

If he had resolved, in the hush of his alcove, to forget his desire and focus elsewhere, the vertiginous heat this vision roused in him soon boiled the last of this resolve off into the mist. He had long suffered the knowledge that even the barest hint cottoned by another of his forbidden attraction had consequences more dire than the singe of Mount Doom’s perilous flames: banishment from Tathren’s ever-constant regard, his brother’s abandonment, his fathers’ abasement, even the Valar’s unrelenting vengeance. On the nights he most loathed himself, he had begged them for a sign, a telling star, some notion of why they had so beset him with this wretched fever. Though it was, in truth, not mere lusting, but a regard so dear, so cutting in its blundering innocence that it daily stabbed him through. He would never dare reveal himself, but he could never truly forget this one, this only one, never truly quit his care for gallant, giving Tathren.

As if to further sink the smiting dagger in, the piercing inquisition of Tathren’s jewel-shard eyes suddenly shifted towards him.

“Are you well, Echo?” he inquired, ever concerned. He had learned, through ample years, that it took little to unmoor his bashful cousin’s balance, even in deceptively common instances.

The darkling elf tugged his own tunic over his head to conceal his cheeks’ incipient burn. Cuthalion’s sharp gasp greeted his emergence from the garment’s folds.

“*Ai-ya*,” his twin bleated, as if a curse. Soon two pairs of sapphire eyes assaulted him. “Gwanur, what has become of you?” Echoriath was confused, and no little disquieted, by his strange words. “You are thinned near to withering! Your frame is so… so meek, your pallor sickly... your ribs like…” Cuthalion, aghast, could say no more.

“Talion!!” Tathren snapped, but the damage was done.

Echoriath purpled with hurt at his catalogue, his head precipitously bowed, his startled gaze swiftly buried in the sand beneath him. He studiously avoided sight of his apparently twig-like ribs and his sickly-pale chest. He never had considered himself particularly fair, even doubting the veracity of others’ comparisons to the lush features of his Ada-Dan, but to be so confronted with his avowed mousiness before one as honeyed and hale as Tathren shamed him fiercely. He grappled once again into his tunic, desperate to hide, but was stilled mid-motion by a firm, yet staying, grip.

At Tathren’s careful urging, the tunic was soon disposed of; Echoriath found himself but inches from the blonde beauty. He crossed his arms over his chest, cowered as best he could.

“Methinks you have bedded too many heavy-bosomed Sindar maids, Cuthalion,” Tathren repliqued knowingly. With a gentilityt bet belied his boldness, he raised Echoriath’s chin up and met his moist eyes with a smile of luxurious fondness. The darkling elf trembled, but did not dare pull away. “While your sturdy frame steals readily from both elf and man, Echoriath’s slenderness merely favors elfkind. The Noldor are particularly sleek, as a rule, with skin of a pearlescent purity by starlight. The sun’s harsh shine may disservice him this day, but he is far from sickly.” Awed by his cousin’s tenderness, Echoriath easily allowed his arm to be snatched from its berth and bent over itself. “You see? Here is proof enough of his stealthy might. No elf tames such unruly gardens, nor keeps orchards of such splendor without merit of strong, unforgiving muscle.” To Echoriath’s own astonishment, the evidence was there displayed, a bulge so round and vehement even he was heartened. Without bother to comment, Tathren’s fingers then skipped up his packed abdomen, with nary a jutting rib in sight. “I, myself, favor lovers of such twilight grace. Under Ithil’s cool regard, he would be as immaculate the silmaril.”

Though his color was tamed to merely a hot crimson, Echoriath remained unsteady, equally light-headed and lead-bowelled under Tathren’s kind blue eyes.

“Forgive me, gwanur,” Cuthalion sighed, his face ashen. “I only thought-“

“With your spleen,” Tathren retorted, wrapping a protective arm around Echoriath’s bare shoulders. “Perhaps the tide will smite your ardor, gwador, so that we might later hunt with some stealth.” Cuthalion snorted, but well received the message. He would mend things with his brother among the waves. For the moment, he left the task of coercing the shy elf into his swim-hose to his gentler cousin and raced towards the sea.

Without another word, Tathren reached behind Echoriath’s woozy head and flicked open his hair-clasp, a mithril clip in the shape of a favored Mirkwood bloom his cousin had himself gifted him. Caught in the near-embrace of Tathren’s own meaty arms and a fugue of the adventurer’s raw, dizzying musk, Echoriath fought to keep himself from sinking into the golden down of his chest, into the balming heat of his generous spirit. Tathren continued his unbidden ministrations by unlacing his braids, soothing sword-calloused fingers through his raven hair and over his tense scalp. Echoriath bit back a groan; one glance at Tathren’s concentrated face telling of his obliviousness to the darkling elf’s plight. Yet Tathren was more than gold and glitter to Echoriath – his recent, quick-witted defense proof enough of this – he was shelter, giving, and graciousness personified.

Tathren’s friendship had often been his only true sanctuary; else he would not have missed him so.

As if to underline Echoriath’s unspoken appraisal, Tathren murmured: “Your think on your Naneth, Echo, do you not? She is remembered to you by the sea, if I recall.”

“Aye,” he hushly replied, though in truth his mind, awash with Tathren’s scent, had set his remembrances aside. “I wish… I wish I could…”

Tathren nodded almost imperceptibly. “I, too, often wish to take counsel with my Naneth. Though it must be more painful knowing that she… that she is but an ocean away.”

At this brazing revelation, and the memory of Neyanna’s sorrowful passing, Echoriath forgot his own needful preoccupations, indeed his own bashfulness entirely, and instinctively hugged Tathren close.

“She sails on the Foam-Flower above us, tathrelasse,” he whispered to him. Tathren, startled by this gesture, enclosed his softhearted cousin in his arms and chuckled softly. He struggled, nevertheless, to avoid too poignant thought of his mother. “She glows in the very light of the silmaril itself.”

“Ah, my dearest Echo,” Tathren sighed with affection. “You are of rare heart indeed, gwador.”

***

Later, as Cuthalion sharpened his hunting knife by the fire and Echoriath sketched on the faraway rock shelf, Tathren was again impressed by the ampleness of his timid cousin’s heart, when he surveyed their tidy camp. Sometime in the brief minutes between their arrival and their swim, the tent had been erected, the girders reinforced, their packs stowed safely away, the horses unburdened of their saddles, and the wood collected. Tathren did not even recall Cuthalion lighting the hearth before which he sat, nor either of them fetching the logs that surrounded. With typically unseen efficiency, Echoriath had readied them for the coming dusk, his doting care easily overlooked by the untrained eye.

His cousin was, he mused, an unheralded marvel.

“Talion,” he beckoned the silver elf, as he searched the area for his too-well-hidden pack. “Have you thought on what to gift Echoriath for your coming majority?” The young builder, being so skilled and so shy, wasoriooriously difficult to decently please.

“I have thought on little else since the presentation of our apartments!!” Cuthalion exclaimed, his befuddlement plain. “What could I possibly gift him to equal such… such craftsmanship, such artful efforts… I am nearly bereft at the thought of displeasing him, gwador.” To be fair, Cuthalion did not appear particularly bereft, though he was clearly troubled some.

“Aye, I am similarly besot,” Tathren agreed. “Though I thankfully do not bear the burden of matching those talans for splendor.”

“Lucky,” Cuthalion groused, then pondered the matter further. “I *had* harkened on a… a certain idea… but, as evidenced this very afternoon, I lack the delicacy of manner to successfully… but, then, I wonder if there *is* one of such delicacy…”

Bemused by his cousin’s meandering mind, he questioned: “What madness is this you speak of?”

Cuthalion smirked, then explained: “Perhaps it is madness indeed. My Adar are… they have become concerned that Echoriath will never find his heart’s mate, being so solitary. They have counseled him, encouraged him, to take rites upon our coming majority. I thought perhaps to aid in the accomplishment of this, but in all honesty, I know not how to begin. He is so… so lonely, Tathren. He has been so long alone, he does not even mark his own loneliness!!”

“He is solitary by nature,” Tathren remarked, almost redundantly. “He seeks out isolation tind and again, he fights our attempts to bring him out of his shell… He adores his work. He would not feel whole without his plants, his designs… This is the matter of which he is so preciously made. He would not be our Echoriath otherwise.”

“But life is not work,” Cuthalion countered. “I agree that his future mate need enjoy some of the tasks that obsess him to be well matched, but how is he to find such a one if he frequents the company of trees?” The silver-hewn elf harrumphed in frustration, whishing he was more eloquent. “You know his heart better than most, Tathren, even I his twin do not share such an affinity with him. I have, nor seek, no quarrel with this. But I *am* his brother and… you have been adventuring for some time. There is, of late, a darkness that shades his spirit. A longing… Think on it awhile, he would not be so adamant about this suggestion of our Adar if the matter did not strike him deeply. How could he not long for another’s touch? He will soon be of his second majority and has never known the pleasure of a bed-partner, the warmth of waking next to an admirer and the pleasure of loving with another being. He wakes every morning in the very spot where the night before he exhaustedly fell. His chores are so numerous that there is not a moment of the day that does not occupy him, not a sliver of space for his mind to wander in. He is beholden to a dozen others’ cares, but who cares for him above all others? He takes little nourishment, less sleep, and speaks to no one of any thing!! I was unmannered in my approach earlier… but I was not mistaken.” This last was whispered bitterly, as if to utter the words would give them a desperate credence.

Tathren absorbed these worrisome details with deceptive calm. His indigo eyes drifted over to the rocks, where Echoriath sat in rapt contemplation of some sea creature in the wading pool on the shelf, or so it seemed. He had not, however, failed to mark his cousin’s bashfulness when he had shed his raiment, nor his disease when he had undone his hair. Echoriath had never been so skittish in his presence, never so evasive. He could not deny the merit of Cuthalion’s observations. To never in all his years have known another’s touch… Tathren could not imagine how on Ech Echoriath’s self-effacing disposition might interpret this regretful circumstance, nor how deepmighmight burrow to avoid its confrontation. An An idea, like a bud in springtime, bloomed in his mind.

“I will remain here,” Tathren informed him, leaving no room for debate.

“We must act in secret,” Cuthalion insisted. “There’s no reasoning with him.”

“I seek not to *reason* with him, as you say,” Tathren retorted, but with benevolence. “Merely to become… reacquainted.”

With a roll of his eyes, Cuthalion sighed. “Very well. But do not cry to me when you are bitten.”

“Take care with the boars,” Tathren advised him, but would not say more. “They are wily, and run wild.”

“I might similarly advise you, gwador,” Cuthalion grumbled, before rising. “I will not tarry long.”

With a sober nod, he ambled off into the nearby woods. A cautious eye to the horizon, Tathren stood resolutely, then casually made his way over to the rock shelf.

***

Though Arien had long skirted away behind the mist-veiled mountain peaks, her amber hued aura still melded with the roseate tones of the setting sky. Violet-rimmed clouds streaked the horizon with the colors of descending twilight, but their vaporous bellies fumed orange and red as hearth embers. Though still as a crane over a fishing pool, Echoriath’s pencil scuttled over his page, anxious to note the last vital details of his subject in the sunset’s dimming light. The subject in question was a peach-pink anemone, flower of the sea, whose fleshy petals billowed even in the nantnant water of the rock pore. True to form, Echoriath had not drawn the flower itself, but studied the plant’s more becoming traits and designed a fountain in its image, perfect for the suspended garden of his future apartments.

When he spied the sketch for such a genial, gorgeous innovation, Tathren could not but shake his head in wonder. There was no cork nor dam, he esteemed, to ebb the flow of the young builder’s incredible imagination. He did not announce himself, but perched on the rocks close behind, better to observe his hush cousin. He did not doubt Echoriath had marked him; he simply would not allow even Tathren to interrupt his task before proper completion. Though his drawing seemed complete to the untrained eye, he was sure Echoriath would vehemently dispute this, pointing out a dozen of the anemone’s traits he had yet to decently capture.

In these moments, the darkling elf could naught but mesmerize him. If one bothered to inquire after a cherished subject, Echoriath was more than happy, in his own humble manner, to detail the more fascinating aspects of the enterprise, practice, or creature at hand, even the most innocuous or mundane facet was enlivened by the remarkable breadth of his knowledge. If he ever applied himself, he could become quite the storyteller; even his low-pitched voice could serve to further captivate his audience. In ear earlier years of their time in Arda, before the social world had truly scarred him, he seemed equally starved of and famished for information; a quick explanation was never enough to suit the relentless elfling, who would tug, pummel, and even bite if his quest for intellectual satisfaction was ignored (Cuthalion had not wrongly painted him so vicious, as he had more than once, in boredom, been the fodder for his brother’s unforgiving incisors). Gimli’s incontinent instruction had tempered him some and Erestor’s wisdom had enthralled him for hours, but Ithilien’s unruly frontier had cowered him. Unlike the for-a-time rejuvenated people of Imladris, there were no other elflings in Ada-Las’ colony to engage him, the Sindar only second to the grumpy subjects of Gondor in their dislike, if not outright reproach, for a strange, fraternal peredhil twin of noble descent yet dubious begetting.

Little wonder Echoriath might feel misunderstood, or, more poignantly, lonely.

Tathren had been foolish to so long abandon his cousin, and at such a tender age.

As the last shimmer of sunlight lit the sterling sea and reflected back to the shore, Tathren took an honest measure of the darkling elf’s countenance. He found there, to his slight shock, an immeasurable comeliness. When he looked on him as a suitor might, he could not help but be struck by the crystalline radiance of his white skin, the thick, sensuous sheathes of his ebony hair, his soft features and his voluptuous lips. How ripe was his plump pout, how sumptuoo suo suckle such a curve between his own…

Tathren jolted back to the present, shamed by his brazenness. Yet he could not deny that his body was stirred, that the first tingles of desire unsteadied him, that in this weird, breathless moment, he saw his cousin with new eyes…

…such eyes the darkling elf had, most often of burnished gold or mellow amber, but they could flame, effulgent with inspiration, or shine like a cave of dragon’s treasure, or flicker with a wolf’s unyielding will. They never blackened, as even Ada-Las’ glacial pools did on occasion, but merely glowed, silently yearning, when hurt, or weary, or sorrowed. They were unique to both Arda and Aman, their genesis unknown, though Tathren favored, as did their fathers, the idea that Elladan’s love for Glorfindel was of such a force in their begetting that his ardor turned their child’s eyes gold in tribute.

Tathren swallowed hard, his disquiet mounting as fitfully as his bubbling blood. Had he always thought Echoriath so fair, so…? He dared not even allow the notion to pass unfiltered through his lightened head, lest he do something rash. He was unaccustomed, in matters of such heat, to being denied the object of his interest, though in this case caution and temperance were the better side of valor. He had not indulged in the more giving arts for nearly a decade’s time, this distraction was no doubt his body’s way of informing him that satisfaction had waited a year or two too long. Besides, he had thought to position his cousin for an introduction to one of his explorer friends, a softhearted elf with whom he might come to pass a scarlet evening or two. Best to stay the course, and leave the examining of his own unchecked desires for a more private moment.

The evening light having grown too faint for even such unparalleled elf eyes, Echoriath set aside his sketch pad and stilled in the gloaming. Tathren, in turn, watched as the last streaks of orange were snuffed out by the blue twilight, until even Echoriath’s luminous skin turned silver in the darkness.

“You have grown restless this last week,” Echoriath confronted him, his voice clear and crisp in the cool night air. “Will you so soon forsake us for adventure?”

“Nay, gwador, fear not,” Tathren promised him. “I am sworn to Telperion for another half-decade, by my Adar’s charge. I would not dishearten them by such a brief stay home.” After some consideration, he added. “Do you feel I forsake you, when I go?”

“Twas a manner of speaking,” Echoriath apologized quickly. “I thoubut but to taunt you some.”

“It seems I was missed,” Tathren countered in jest, though he was suddenly assaulted by eyes of the anemone’s preternatural phosphorescence.

“So terribly missed,” the darkling elf confessed to him, then tore his glowing eyes away. Pricked by his candor, Tathren moved to his cousin’s side. Before he could settle, his hand was snatched away, soon tightly berthed in the calloused, though lissome, clasp of the young builder. “Though you might uncover a new member of your exploring party, ere you depart again.”

“You would join us?” Tathren started. There was truly no end of surprises in his cousin’s unpredictable nature. “But…”

“If I am to build the cities of my dreams,” Echoriath explained. “I must win the High Council’s favor. If only I can conquer certain… tendencies, in my nature, I know I might be chosen for a commission. The population of Valinor grows yearly, but there are not enough sanctuaries. I could… I could help…”

“The apartments are your overture,” Tathren guessed, resulting in a furious nod.

“They are an achievement, of sorts,” Echoriath agreed. “But they are here, where I have built before. I must prove to the Council I can journey at their will. I long to test my mind on… on unblemished land. A new site, with different reces,ces, the chance to plan great halls, courtyards, gardens, wells, bridges…” The darkling elf was so enamored of this vision, he veritably quaked with feeling.

“I will aid you in any way I might, gwador,” Tathren vowed, with lush fondness. “You must train yourself for such a journey. I would gladly play tutor, if you would have me.”

“Truly?” Echoriath blinked, blushing fiercely, as was his wont when another showed even the most tenuous regard.

“Most certainly,” Tathren insisted. “I’ve even your first lesson in mind.”

“Oh, aye,” Echoriath nodded eagerly, always one to cotton to discipline.

“A celebration is to be held in two eve’s time,” Tathren carefully told him. “In honor of the exploring party’s return. Every member of the company will be there, you’ll not find them merrier nor more generously minded than in the ale hall that night. You must come make their acquaintance.”

Echoriath gasped at the suggestion, his face turned ashen, his eyes so winsome, so horrified, that Tathren almost backed down. Almost. Knowing too acutely how he would be dishonored by refusing this first, vital lesson, especially under Tathren’s charge, Echoriath swallowed back his bleating and blinked away his budding tears.

“I-If you w-would accompany me, gwador,” his voice quavered even as he answered him. “I would be most… most honored t-to attend.” The resulting smile that alighted Tathren’s beaming features was enough to hearten his resolve.

“I would be most honored to accompany you, Echo,” Tathren replied, his voice similarly hushed. Before the young builder could take back his vow, the peredhil sprung to his feet. He offered his cousin his steadying arm for their return. “Come, my brave one. I can smell the roasting boar.”

As he folded the darkling elf against him, Tathren wondered at what had truly passed between them here.

**********************

Elrohir smoothed himself over the buttery skin of the archer prone before him with the ease of a churn through cream. Luminous Ithil beamed over their quiescent bedchamber through the skylight above, her chill gossamer rays bestowing even the lurking ombre with a preternatural sheen. Legolas was radiant in the moonlight, in his throes; his white-gold hair spread like a tulle girdle across the pillow, his sweat-slick skin sparkled as if dusted with diamonds, and his glass-cut eyes encased a fearsome phosphorescence.

He was ethereal, star-kissed and sultry all at once. Elrohir could do naught but sink further into him, shattering this porcelain midnight’s spell.

The golden elf’s deceptively limber thighs locked around him, holding him in the quick. He mated their wanting eyes and cupped his darkling husband’s face, whispering such troths of love that Elrohir was soon flaming as pyre, his head light and musty as smoke, his skin-pelt scorching, and his molten loins precipitously close to implosion. He took Legolas’ mouth to consume his hot words, drawing long and full of his lusciousness then laving the length of that tender tongue, nearly sucking him dry in his ardor. Elrohir could no longer bear the sharp bolts of pleasure singing his hips, up his clenched abdomen. The blunt of Legolas’ tigrougrought erection prodded against him as the archer thrashed and writhed beneath him, then, after a keening howl, suddenly erupted. He forced his own retreat from the now-boneless legs around him, then thrust hard, constant, desperate, though by this time Legolas was so seed-soaked and giving, there was naught but the most decadent, sensuous friction between them. He spent quickly, unctuously into his mate’s deepest core, as flare after flare of ecstasy engulfed him.

“O my one,” he rasped, as rapture besotted him. He quite readily collapsed into the fugue-headed aftermath, onto Legolas’ baking chest. “My beauteous one.”

Only when he recovered himself enough to grapple for another kiss did he mark Legolas’ weeping.

Elrohir breathed deep, steadied his foggy head, the air still ripe with the feral scent of their coupling. Too distracting, as was Legolas’ faint musk when he nuzzled his neck. The archer grunted, too proud for sympathy, but Elrohir wove his gentle, soothing way around his tense frame and into his graces. He was, however, rather concerned. Legolas had not so wept since the War, not since that telltale night at the Hornburg when first he was told of Tathren’s culling song. Elrohir could not imagine what so troubled his husband in these dulcet times that he would be so sorrowed.

Their day had passed as ever; Elrohir tending the sick in the Healing Halls and Legolas teaching his elfling charges of a bowsman’s agility. The evening meal had been ever mirthful, though quiet with the children gone; Legolas signaling his desire to be had by winks, smiles, and touches, as was his way. They had an easy stroll among the willows before retiring, the golden elf allowing himself to be wooed by his longtime husband, stoking their commingling soul flames with clutches, pinches, and outright gropes. By the time they had broached their bedchamber, Elrohir had teased off the lion’s share of the archer’s garments; Legolas, panting and suitably wilded, had been breathless with need.

For certes there was coercion, seduction involved, it was the manner in which they always lured one another to bed.

Legolas cleared his throat. He had calmed some during Elrohir’s speculative inner musings, though the elf-knight sensed he was glad enough of the warm arms that embraced him. Elrohir brushed his damp brow free of sticky gold tendrils of hair, met his muted cobalt eyes with unblemished regard. Legolas smirked, bemused even at his own overwhelming, and, to his husband’s continued surprise, blushed some.

“You powere fee fearsome, meleth,” he commented wryly. “Even after five hundred years, I am but a child in the thunder’s wake.”

“Ah, but your charms are equally meritorious, maltaren-nin,” Elrohir complimented. “Were I not so deftly embroiled, you would not have been so sundered. Though I hope you found some pleasure, still.”

“Too ample pleasure,” Legolas upbraided himself. “If such a thing can be said of your bed, melethron.”

“There is no shame in weeping, nin ind,” Elrohir murmured into his flaxen crown, as Legolas fell disquietingly silent.

A longly hour was passed so entwined, so soundless, as Elrohir coddled his brittle husband and Legolas gave in to his ever-constant tenderness. Sleep, however, eluded them. Legolas, tempered, snuck into a more symmetrical alignment with his beloved, better to meet his soft argent eyes while unburdening himself. Yet he kept his elf-knight gathered close, cocooned like to dormant butterflies amidst the satin sheets.

“When we were shooting, the other morn,” Legolas began. “Tathren asked of me a… a rather keen question.” Elrohir raised an eyebrow, wondering why a query of their son’s had so interrupted their bed-play. “He expressed… I was quite shocked, in truth, at his acuity.”

“He has not spoken of any trouble with me,” Elrohir mentioned.

“Nay, he is himself quite content,” Legolas dismissed. “He is concerned… for us.”

“For us?” Elrohir almost laughed, though touched by his son’s care. “What mischief is this, meleth?”

“He…” Legolas sighed.

He was no diplomat, nor orator of any skill. In times before, Elrohir had always guessed at the cause of his preoccupations and subsequently confronted him, but in days past he had made no mention of Legolas’ more frequent bouts of introspection, though they had been numerous and plaguing. He had wondered, that very afternoon, if Elrohir had indeed intuited the matter of his inner quarrels and had judged the subject too sensitive to intrude upon; though by the current, amused tenor of his noble countenance, he dismissed this supposition.

“Legolas,” Elrohir beckoned his attention, as he ghosted his knuckles down his cheek. “What could Tathren have asked to trouble you so?”

“He wondered why we had never…” he scowled, angered at his own reluctance, then pressed on. “Why we had never begot another child.” Elrohir’s eyes widened, though his lips remained pliant. “Though I well-know the rote of our reasons and have never truly missed this phantom other, I find myself, since his innocent query, unable to properly dismiss the notion. His opinion was quite… quite compelling. All week I have been caught by this too-enticing mirage, a little ellyth or ellon born and reared in peace, blessed with our care without the distractions of war, wardship, or elfkind’s passing on. A child grown in the full bloom of our love.”

Elrohir sighed, lowered his pensive eyes. The scene his lover painted before him was of luring sweetness; he had often, if he was honest, sketched himself a similarly rosy rendering. Yet the elf-knight well-knew Legolas had not forgotten the darker shades of this vision, the looming shadow of the manner of this potential child’s begetting. For this, on this night, Legolas had given himself to him, for this he had wept in his arms. His golden husband had not, in the hundred years passed and in the light of Elrohir’s immediate forgiveness, truly absolved himself of his accidental transgression. Even with his husband’s permission, the archer would never himself repent of this second action against him.

“Ah, my brave one,” Elrohir mused, but kissed him for his courage. “You are a rare jewel for so gallantly battling your own woes in the name of our purest joy. But you could not suffer another begetting, especially without some black conjuring, and nevertheless, I would not allow it.”

“Nay, I know it, meleth,” Legolas underlined, but this proved little assurance when he subsequently made himself too, too plain. “*I* could not beget another. But…”

Elrohir blanched. He fought the urge to pull away, as Legolas was already beset by their fractious debate, though his skin crawled with revulsion at the very voicing, or insinuation, of such a notion.

“*Legolas*,” he rasped, swallowing back the bile that braised his throat. “I have not lain with another since… since before your own begetting.”

Legolas gasped, gaped, but did not comment for some time. “But Elladan-”

“Nor am I of mettle so fierce and passionate as my fevered brother,” he countered before the argument was made.

“Nay,” Legolas retorted, but looked wounded. “You are of subtler grace and of different molding, but you are his match in valor and double his might in passion.”

“Even if I was myself resolved,” Elrohir pursued, undaunted by his seeming hurt. “Could you bear my… my infidelity, Legolas? Could you passightight gripped in the agony of knowing that I was taking another in the manner-“ The elf-knight broke off, struck by true, merciless understanding.

A test. This night, their smoldering coupling, his weeping in its wake… it had been a test, or sorts, for Legolas’ own resolve. A reminder of Elrohir’s amply generous bedding skills – since Legolas more oft than not did the taking between them – of just what manner of pleasure and loving he need sacrifice for their second child’s begetting. Though sorrow had riled him, it had not ravaged; he had born it as a warrior might, then dared press the burning question to his heart’s mate.

He was decided, then.

“Might I reflect awhile, on this?” Elrohir requested softly, rather awed by severity of Legolas’ measures. He had, if nothing else, thoroughly proved himself. “I would take counsel with Elladan, perhaps with Ada…”

“Well reasoned, melethron,” Legolas smiled faintly, tightening his hold to impress upon his husband his undaunted affection. “I, too, would privately speak with Glorfindel. His insight will be most keen.”

“Indeed,” Elrohir muttered, his thoughts too readily engaged by the notion of another child. A babe of his seed, of his siring, to which he would be bound as no other.

After some digestion, the idea was rather intriguing.

Legolas, for his part, was relieved. Let his hnd snd stew awhile, he chuckled to himself, as he burrowed his face into Elrohir’s clammy neck. He had thought to finally find welcome sleep, but his body soon betrayed him. His prickling skin was not, apparently, satisfied by the elf-knight’s vigorous ministrations, nor his quick-swelling shaft by the paltry friction of firm abdominals. Curious fingers found out the shaggy nipple of the peredhil hugged to him, their tips fluttery, teasing. Lolling his head back to allow his nape to be deliciously purpled, Elrohir seemed to have no objection to Legolas spreading himself over him, nor to the stirring of his own perilously needful engorgement.

He gladly indulged in what would be forever his alone, his Legolas’ peerless loving.

*******************

Perched on the bottom step of the mithril-hewn staircase, which slithered up the ageless trunk of the mallorn in which Elladan and Glorfindel’s family made their home, Tathren was composed as the most veteran consort. He tapped the heel of his boot to the cricket trills, certainly not in impatience. With excitement, and not a wit of anxiousness, did he twist an overlong lace of his breeches around his bow-stringing index. He whistled a sharp-noted tune in reverence of Ithil, floating like a glow-lamp over the quiescent forest, not at all to allay the swarm of feeflies that wrought a hive in his innards. When two shroud figures slid lively down the highest steps, he sprang to his feet, not out of anticipation, but to avoid distressing their descent.

No amount of barely-stayed poise could have prepared him, however, for the shock of Echoriath’s transformation.

At past formal gatherings, he had always been ably but soberly groomed. This night, he was garnished to luscious perfection; not garishly overdone, but throat-parching in his subtle grace. His usual selection of somber, monochromatic raiment had not been countermanded, but cut to enhance his sleek frame. His simple black shirt was open-collared, its material light as ebony gauze. His breeches were of form-fitting velour, enhancing every curve of his muscle-strung thighs and calves. His boots, black with silver fletches, were fleeter than the brown builder slabs he favored for work, but the most becoming piece was his knee-length, fitted jacket, of a gray-tinged lavender not unbecoming an ellon. Of a coarser cloth than the silk preferred by the ellyth of Telperion, under the moon’s gossamer rays the ethereal garment seemed to seamlessly blend in with Echoriath’s pearlescent skin, just as the velvet texture of hair was mirrored in his darker clothes. When their eyes locked in silent greeting, those amber pools cooled to liquid copper in the blue light, Tathren felt he but then firstly met this lush, ravishing elf.

“Is he not splendid?” Cuthalion heralded, from behind. “What you see before you is the work of a dozen elves, over two days of nagging and pleading. I verily had to wrestle him into the breeches, only Elbereth’s will kept them from being torn. If our grandmother had not fashioned the jacket herself as recompense for his orchid-vigil, he would be cloaked black was a wraith.”

“*Saes*, gwanur,” Echoriath sighed, but could not truly upbraid him.

Copper eyes sought sanctuary in the dewy grass, this comely vision instantly recognized by his telltale timidity. Tathren smirked, but held his heavied tongue lest he be too fallacious in his praise. Instead, he offered his arm, as promised. Echoriath clasped eager hold; his proud escort instantly perceiving the rigidity that wrecked his lithe frame. Despite the resplendent night and the mercurial company, this brittle tension did not abate during their walk to the ale hall, but mounted such that Tathren feared, as they breached the entranceway, that his cousin’s very bones might snap.

Indeed, but ten strides into the hall, Echoriath stopped cold, his pull like a lead shackle to the wrist. Cuthalion, in true form, had already blazed past them, hasty to make his presence known on the edge of the busy dancefloor. Tathren, with a hidden scowl, turned back to his now-trembling cousin; he quickly anchored an arm around him to stave off any notion of retreat. He didn’t doubt his arm was purpling under Echoriath’s crushing grip, though he would gladly bear even the most goring bruise to get the young builder to the nearby table of his comrades.

“A moment,” Echoriath rasped, his low voice shred raw and his golden eyes r as as the fatted moon. Tathren realized that, despite the severity of his reaction, his cousin had no intention of retreating. He merely wished to acclimate himself to such an unfamiliar environment, before beginning to explore its foreign landscape. “I-Is there mead? I would not care for ale.”

“There is ample mead,” Tathren assured him
“M
“Must I… am I required to…dance?” he inquired, his face sallow with dread.

“Nay, gwador,” Tathren instructed, moving to his side so as to allow him better view of the vivacious hall. “I, myself, am rarely lured away from my comrades, unless by a particularly worthy...” Something in his cousin’s eyes made him abandon his thought. “Be gracious, but firm in your refusals, so none will think you haughty.” Echoriath nodded almost imperceptibly and took an encouraging step forward. His eyes alighted on their designated table; his keen builder’s eyes taking measure of these potential comrades.

Among the five gred red explorers was Thorontir, a hearty elf of flaxen hair and Silvan heritage, who held court, as was his wont, boasting of their adventures to those that had lived them. Cirhith and Rohros, twins born of Lothlorien, were of stately chestnut hue and accompanied by their giddy sweethearts. Glinfalas, lean as a slit knife and of spiky disposition, loomed in the far corner, ever-silent. Having left his own seat, a kind-faced, ruddy elf of irreconcilable heritage sauntered towards them. His strawberry-blonde locks and piercing green eyes rendered him almost too pretty for words, if not for the feral timbre that underlay his every move.

Echoriath was visibly taken with his unusual, almost mannish looks, strongly reminiscent of the fair spearmen of Rohan, though only a familiar would have noted such by his skittish regard. Tathren did so, and felt a knot cinch within him. He swallowed, once, to clear his palate, then opened to his approaching friend.

“Well met, shieldbrother,” the spry elf greeted him, with a grin wide as the Hornburg gulch.

“Indeed, Elostrion,” Tathren seconded, as they embraced in the usual manner. “May I present my cousin Echoriath, Prince of Imladris and, if the Council would ever be decided, perhaps of Telperion wood itself.”

“Lord Elladan is your sire, is he not?” Elostrion inquired, with such gentility that Echoriath knew he had been forewarned of his shyness. “He was my swordmaster and mentor, long ago.”

“W-was he?” Echoriath murmured, finding some ease in the ellon’s light manner. “You must have been skillful, to have so caught my father’s eye.”

“It was I, rather, than begged his teaching,” Elostrion humbly dismissed the compliment, but Tathren would not let him be so daunted.

“Elostrion hails from both Lorien and Rohan,” Tathren explained. “He, too, is peredhil; his mother is Dorian. His father is rumored to have been one of Theoden’s own forebears, though he keeps his mysteries like his stealth.”

“And how is that I keep them?” Elostrion laughed.

“Why, hidden under a veil of beatific blondeness, meldir,” Tathren further taunted him, as they drifted over to the table.

BefEchoEchoriath could bother to object, they plunked him down on a stool, and followed suit, flanking him. Their bickering ceased as the ale began to flow. A cup of mead was soon foist into his unwitting grasp, while Tathren’s consoling touch repeatedly smoothed the length of his back. Indeed, the darkling elf had not time enough to shiver, when he was seized by the hawkish eyes of smug Thorontir.

“My brave ones, we are in rare company this eve,” he announced, to those who would bother listen. “The son of the mighty Balrog-slayer himself bequeaths us his company. What say you, Glorfindelion, of this fine gathering?” Tathren’s fingers gnarled around his cup, but Echoriath clamped a too-strong, though tempering, hand on his wrist.

The entire table glared, their rapt eyes ready on him.

“I am humbled in the presence of such accomplished elders,” Echoriath replied, so hushly that the others leaned forward to mark him. “Though I hope to one day match my Adar in valor, I am no warrior, but a simple tradesman and gardener.” This utterance so greatly impressed the company, that, to Echoriath’s horror, they waited on him further. “Forgive me… I… I am…”

“He is no mere gardener,” Elostrion stepped up to champion him. “Have none of you had occasion to stroll through Lord Elladan’s orchards? This modest elf here is their sower, breeder, and caretaker. He also keeps Lady Celebrian’s gardens, as well as her collection of rare blooms. He even built the hothouse that protects them.” Echoriath struggled to keep his jaw shut, unaware that he had a reputation in any way, shape, or form.

“Indeed, the High Council itself recently approved his most expert design to date,” Tathren added, relishing his chance to champion his cousin’s gifts. “Have you not seen the sketches displayed in the Hall of Fire? The apartments to be erected on the tall trees in the river glade?”

A murmur of awe rustled through the assembled explorers as wind over a leaf-strewn path. Though he cowered further onto his stool, he found the curious gazes collected on him were nothing if not avid. Echoriath had not known that his grandsire had displayed the designs in the Hall of Fire. He was, to be honest, somewhat abashed by this revelation, but also allowed himself a tinge of pleasure. They had seen them. By their look, they admired them.

From behind the coiled vise of the arms over his chest, withering Glinfalas himself asked: “How, pray tell, do you think you will bed a garden on a glass shelf in the high branches?”

With genuine interest, Echoriath well-considered his reply. His voice, when unleashed upon them, was low-toned, yet of full tenor. “It is, as in all things, a matter of balance…”

As the darkling elf went on to describe the finer points of his vision, Tathren’s swelling heart ripened as a midsummer peach. Though Echoriath was cly rly riled by the relentless attention paid him, his ability to ignore his still quaking hands and bashfully endear himself to the company gave Tathren great hope for his future. Inwardly, he likened the sight to witnessing the birth of a favored horse’s foal, though he doubted any horse-breeder around wanted said foal’s obsidian hair splayed across his lap, wanted to tangle his fingers in the satiny locks and be sucked between sultry pink lips…

He recoiled with a start from his too-heady imaginings. What madness was this that still perilously ensnared him?

Tathren realized that the talk around him had shifted. Thorontir again held the greater company captive, while merry-eyed Elostrion had his cousin’s ear. True to form, his friend charted the conversation’s route, with Echoriath mumbling quick asides and nodding intently. Indeed, the two had cottoned to each other with the swiftness of hound-hunted hares. As their conversation carried seemingly forever on, Elostrion’s sage green eyes sparked with bold emerald, taking in with great interest and even greater flattery the rapt regard of this twilight child. Tathren could only watch, his stomach boiling like a cauldron, as his sworn shieldbrother further entranced him: a squeeze to his to uto underline a mirthful tale, their meeting glances over a point of mutual understanding, a warm hand lain on his leg to further entice him. Echoriath was too innocent, too goodhearted to see the spell he wove; Tathren would once have encouraged their courtship, but his friend’s blatant flirtations left him teeming with revulsion.

Tathren did not know what had come over him. He ground his teeth into his tongue’s flesh until it bled down his throat, to stop the churlish growl that seethed behind. Elostrion had been his bunk-mate during their warrior trials, his ever-friend and near-brother, but at this moment Tathren could in a blind instant gouge out his eyes, lest their lecherous gaze linger another moment on the slender nape of Echoriath’s neck. He schooled himself for a time, taking a long draught of ale and averting his accusing eyes, but when Elostrion swept a stray lock of that sensuous raven hair behind the blushing elf’s peaked ear, his fists clenched such that he ripped a swatch from the tablecloth. He flamed with rage, with pure instinct, with he-knew-not-what-source’s fire, but was sentient enough to leap to his feet and stagger back from the bench, as if afflicted.

Which he undoubtedly was, with some fearsome devilry.

“I am poorly,” he excused himself, his cheeks bit they burned so. “I should retire…” Elostrion and Echoriath, needless to say, were instantly at his side.

“I will escort you,” Echoriath reassured him, clasping his arm and ghosting strokes over its trembling length.

“Nay, stay on, gwador,” Tathren urged him, though his stomach seized at the thought. “You cannot so casually leave your new friends.”

“You are flush with fever, tathrelasse,” he insisted, moving closer to support his unsteady weight. With a nod to Elostrion, the darkling elf bought them some privacy. “I will take you to your bed.” He dared not add that he would inform his fathers of this sickness, as any such pronouncement would do his cause no help at all.

Tathren did not want to contemplate what blasphemy might occur if Echoriath were to accompany him to bed. “Please, Echo, stay with your brother, with… the company. Be at ease. I will retire presently, and be whole and hale on the morrow.”

“My *brother*,” he snorted balefully. “Has already retired with some, as you once so shrewdly noted, heavy-bosomed Sindar maid. I am properly acquainted, as you proposed, with the exploring party. And you, gwador, are growing more peaked by the instant. Now, come along…”

Tathren would have been shocked by his willfulness, if he were not already besieged by some tempestuous tenor of… jealousy? *Could* he be jealous of Elostrion? There was little doubt, after his regretful behavior, that some unchecked desire for his sweet cousin had been allowed to fester within him for some time.

His mind suddenly coursed with wilded reasoning; his beleaguered soul demanding, and receiving, belated recognition. Was this incipient attraction so wrongheaded? Could he not, if Echoriath was willing, be his bed-teacher? He shuddered at the thought of Echo spread across the sheets beneath him, bliss-drunk and hopelessly wanting. *Your cousin*, he remembered in time to shut away the too-lovely image.

His mind raced on as fleetly as a wolf-stalked elk. Surely their fathers would not approve of such a choice, but who were their fathers to condemn them? If the purpose of their coupling was but majority rites, with Echoriath suitably introduced to the loving arts – this by the one he most trusted in Aman entire - and afterwards free to explore on his own, why need they involve *any* other in their decision? The delicacy was in securing Echoriath’s complicity, not to mention the subtle matter of the young builder’s desires perhaps not leaning in that direction… there were so many sides of the matter left to consider and his fuming head spun from its whirlwind deliberations.

Echoriath wove a solid arm around him, mooring him to the present. Tathren reeled from the swiftness with which he had jumped from some slight notion of jealousy to secretly claiming his cousin’s majority.

Yet even with fainfaintest glimmer of hope that his strange desire might be sated, Tathren found his temper at last. As Echoriath led him through the silver-washed mallorn trunks towards his talan, he lay a groggy head on the darkling elf’s shoulder and surreptitiously drank in the heather-laced scent of that luxurious hair.

If only the comely elf knew how his charms were coveted.


End of Part Two