Requiescence

Title: Requiescence – Part Three
Author: Gloromeien
Email: swishbucklers@hotmail.com
Pairing: Legolas/Elrohir
Summary: The would-be lovers are reunited, but can their nascent emotions overcome duty, lineage, and the encroaching shadow?
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimers: Characters belong to that 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.
Feedback: Would be delightful.
Dedication: To Eresse, dearest friend, blessed writer, and shrewdest critic. Happy Christmas, indeed.

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Requiescence – Part Three

Haven of the Greenwood Elves, Year 872, Third Age

By the seventeenth scroll of the interminable list of items bent on keeping him shackled to his Ada-King’s side, even the taciturn regent came to pitifully regard the waning attentions of his youngest son.

Legolas had returned only days before from a prolonged, arduous, and oftentimes punishing survey of the southern reaches of the great Greenwood, which were decaying at an alarming rate. With only a slight patrol of scouts under his charge, they had crept through bogs of sludge, succored decrepit trees, battled hissing spiders, and generally ascertained, through three months of soul-blighting strife, that a dark veil of Shadow was rotting their once gloried wood putrid. No sooner had he rode through the palace battlements than Legolas had been required to report directly and acutely to a furiously assembled council of elders, which had rambled on through five endless days of quibbling over the minutest details. While he did not counter the argument that any defensive action must be well considered, that any offensive charge must be meticulously examined for its flaws and its vulnerabilities before any thought of execution could be proposed, he felt that his own contribution as guard-captain, or even as prince, would be sorely lacking if he did not enjoy even the briefest period of rest.

After observing Legolas’ focus fog over the course of his fifth, and most spectral, day of attendance, the King came to a similar resolution, for, in an unprecedented move, he chastened his chief advisor for his grueling interrogation of his quite evidently blameless son and summarily banished said listless youth from the court for the better part of a fortnight’s recuperation. Legolas, gracious as ever, made a polite show of objection, but was not yet so dull of wit as to quarrel with his father’s insistence. Upon his leave-taking, he was so bony-weary that he could barely shove the two imposing oak doors apart; thankfully, a fleet-footed steward appeared out of the vacant air to usher him out.

Despite the weight of his fatigue upon him, Legolas had no intention of crawling back to his bedchambers when woods untainted by murk, dank, or spindly webbing beckoned him into the green. He would heed to the siren song of the forest for replenishment, not the draught of sleep.

Even as he ambled through the gate, nodding to the guards only too grateful for some respite for the princely captain they held so fondly, he sucked in gulp after cleansing gulp of fresh, unpolluted air, until he was nearly dizzy from the rich scent of fecundity about. Twas the latter days of a golden summer, when the wild-grown gardens flourished and the majestic woods mellowed into autumn. The landscape of the royal compound and the habitations about were yet pristine, the harmonious residence of the elves in this natural sanctuary the best possible front against the shadow’s desiccating cast.

As he meandered down the winding path of stately birches and of placid elms, he felt the tension waft out of him like plumes of smoke from a chimney spout. The ancient trees welcomed their youngling home to his familiar meadow, a verdant slope of grass encircled by a lush thicket of bracken and framed by drooping beech boughs. Twas upon this emerald, near enchanted lawn that he had gambled as an elfling renown for his sprightliness, when no thistle was left unmolested and no patch of clover was spared a thorough trampling. Yet the wilds forgave the child-prince they had adopted as their own, the chosen one in his line of brothers to inherit their father’s innate connection to the Greenwood’s ageless song.

In later years, he’d fled to his meadow for solace, for compassion, or for rejuvenation. The trees he had befriended were his confidants and his consolation; their shelter tantamount to a mother’s doting embrace. Indeed, twas Queen Laurelith herself who had first guided her wobbly babe down that familiar trail upon his first true summer’s day. Though she now rarely visited the meadow when Legolas was at home, he knew her sense of him was strongest in this sacred place and that she took her evening strolls here when he was away. Yet that had not kept him from inviting various consorts to pass a sultry afternoon lounging beneath a canopy of willow boughs. In his maidenly era, many a skirt had been wooed up by the tranquil climes of his private glade. In the more recent years of his romantic vigil, awaiting the exulted day when he could lure his cherished elf-knight beneath the beeches, some of the more flagrant ladies had been known to skip along the outskirts of the meadow when he was resting there, hoping to be invited in for a roll on the green.

Legolas had found that little dissuaded them except a discreet, anonymous note to their parents, which he was only too glad to compose, as the sanctity of his glade was far too precious to him to allow such liberties to continue.

Indeed, as he strode out into the radiant sunlight of his splendorous oasis, he was so overwhelmed by the surge of feeling within that he could not help but chime his eloquent voice into the emotive chorus that soared around him. After the skin-flaying shrieks of the southern crop, the ebullience of these ancient ones thrilled him such that he swirled around to greet them all with a note of pure, personal significance. Yet amidst this primal symphony, a pang of discord was distinct enough to pinch at him. A ripple of considerable relief quavered through each distinct voice about. Their delicacy as they lulled him into his favorite seat, a throne-like recline in the shade of a dulcet oak, spoke volumes of their instinctual fears; they knew that their brothers to the south were wretched with disease as well as they understood that this bedeviling would one day sicken them vile. They would do their best to preserve their youngling whilst they could, if only so that he might brave the darkness in their stead.

Sprawled out over his luxurious seat with the languor of one entirely spent of his considerable reserve of energies, Legolas did his best to soothe the fretful trees. He sung to them of his hopes for the future, of his dreamy imaginings, of the promise seared upon his very soul by a single, softly kiss under the mallorns of Lorien.

Neither he nor Elrohir had had cause to venture into the other’s realm for nearly a hundred and fifty years. While their muted, deliberately anecdotal correspondence had kept the constant fire of friendship of ample warmth between them, Legolas had not the slightest notion of the reception of his bold overture, of their potential for a romantic relation. The countless years of absence had not been kind to the reservations he had not even conceived of in the moment itself; if ought, future generations of regret were born on nearly a daily basis. He could only pray that their reunion would bring about the preferred conclusion: elucidation, then confession, then fervent embrace. If in lazy reverie he had occasionally lingered over the aftermath of such a fevered compact, he could hardly be blamed a wanton, for the dusky beauty of his elf-knight’s noble features was the only image that could truly rouse his desire. His days of dallying beneath the willow as the sprig up the bud of a rosy maid were long past him. His circadian rhythms moved only to one starlit moon, only at the thought of the celestial countenance of the gallant Prince of Imladris.

Indeed, twas within the cushy berth of his guardian wood that he felt most besotted with his darkling one, that he was most centered and confident in the gentling love he bore him. Only there, with the titter of leaves cooing him peaceful, with the heady course of sap rushing up the roots as vertiginously as the giddying emotion that sped up his spine, with the thriving heart of the forest pulsing in time with his own blood muscle, could he relinquish his hold on princely propriety and allow himself to experience the thrall of a newly love; for no compact had been earnestly forged between them prior to his departure from Lorien.

There, in his benevolent forest, he could crave, weep, or ache. There he could be the innocent that he was, exposing his innermost reservations about the bedding of males. There he could be weak, crushed by the relentless silence between, despairing over the insurmountable challenges that must be considered if any relation was to be honestly embarked upon. There he could express the need that nightly thrummed within him, that tempted him to ignore his vow of abstinence in tribute to what he had begun in favor of the scorch of writhing bodies, unctuous thrusts into a too-willing maid that would exorcise him of wanting.

Twas as if Elrohir’s balming spirit somehow nourished every leaf, branch, blade, and trunk about him, as if his soul had impregnated this sanctuary with his blitheness in order to conserve his woodland prince through their lengthy separation.

As ever in the midst of such romantic musings, Legolas swelled into a wrought tumescence. The forest whispered its complicity like a tipsy lover intent on a raucous tumble, the mist of their voices through his mind enough to strain his breeches with girth. In truth, he had longed for nothing more than a thorough vetting since his return from the south, as scouting patrols never lent themselves well to stolen moments of self-abuse. Better yet, his body needed the worshipful touch his first lover had taught him to flatter himself with, as remedy to the trials of command, to the burdens of his princely duty, to the hardship of traveling for months away from home. The accomplished release of sexual tension, she had so indispensably instructed him, was the most beneficial act a warrior could perform for himself. Not only did it attune him to the cares of his spirit within the confines of his physical form, but created an intimacy between these two aspects of self, a fluency of urge and of emotion.

When he first admitted to the love he bore Elrohir, the confluence of these dual aspects became even more intense for Legolas. He had struggled to control the wilding pleasure that he could suddenly provoke in himself, to patiently increase its power within him until he was utterly sundered by orgasm. While he could not predict how irrevocably a shared encounter with Elrohir might consume him, he was both eager and anxious over the notion, though he expended much of himself in imagining such a scarlet scenario. Indeed, as he loosed the laces of his breeches and gratefully shoved away their constriction, he veered his thoughts towards a vivid conjuring of their one, impassioned act.

Through the haze of memory made even more obscure by his inebriation that eve, he gripped his ready shaft as he had palmed the peredhil’s own fired flesh, thinking of the growl this had rumbled up from the deep of that sinuous chest. He set a daunting rhythm of strokes as he recalled being pounced upon, his erection fiendishly fondled before that tyrant tongue set about his undoing. Caught up in the throes of his escalating pleasure, the trees murmured, then chanted, then bayed in unison with their favored son. The raving woods about elevated him to further heights, as they poured him full of their primitive emotion, of their elemental song, of the pure rapture of the natural world. With a subtle arch to his back, he crested, then nearly drowned in the flood of his own honeyed ecstasy.

He smoothed a flirtatious touch over his thighs, up his navel, and over his pinched nipples, relishing these last moments of tingling sensuality. Yet his still smoldering desire was not as thoroughly extinguished as he had expected. He could not quite pry himself from thoughts of his elf-knight, though these were more tender than before. A stolen glance of complicity across a banquet table. A clacked tongue of approval at a shot well hit. The clench of enclosing arms around him through a troubled sleep. A smile so replete with fondness, with goodwill, that he could not help but bask in this blatant expression of favor. Still, they roused him enough that he felt the first stirrings of an eventual engorgement, enough to keep him from staggering over to the river for a quick swim.

By the time he was quite magnificently recovered, the recollections came furiously forth. Images invaded his mind at breakneck pace, such that he could barely savor one before another usurped that hallowed remembrance, until his heart was so sodden with love that it nearly pounded out of his chest. Before long, he was a towering spire, yet he dared not stroke this rabid hardness, for he thought himself possessed by some crazed spell. Only when illumination pierced through the din did let his desire bloom, but this by the seed of knowledge his guardian wood had finally implanted in his conscious mind.

The western borders of the woodland realm had been breached by a company of elves, among them one so dear to him that he nearly sobbed for joy. His heart would finally be resolved, would finally be coddled or cleaved by the one it had quietly revered for a century on.

His Elrohir was journeying through his beloved Greenwood, and the forest itself ushered him into his arms.

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Northeastern Greenwood, Year 872, Third Age

With a wry snort that was worthy of his estimable Adar, Elrohir stifled the smirk that would follow it and calmly surveyed the area.

He hoped that his one, cool head might somehow prevail against the daunting circumstances that challenged his temperamental and distracted twin while in the oppressive presence of the one he sought to most impress, the Chief Advisor of their Lord Adar’s court, one Erestor Cirdanion. That Elladan had blundered so exponentially in their navigation, thus potentially delaying their progress through this curdling portion of the Greenwood for an entire day, would have been of little consequence had they not been escorting the Loremaster, five chests of Sindar documentation their father was returning into his care, and a vast store of precious stones to be presented as a peace offering to King Thranduil.

That he had privately quarreled with Elladan over their choice of route was a paltry matter when faced with their current obstruction, a bridge-less ravine that an ambitious elf or two might swing across, but which no caravan could rightly conquer without considerable damage to their carts. While their time was hardly of vital essence, a detour of two days would dishearten their company, as well as intensify the myriad pressures already crushing down on the limber yet lithe shoulders of his brother in this, his first venture as guide and guard captain. That this cruelly simplistic error had occurred to Elladan, renown for his strategic skills, before the one he secretly held dear was a double blow, to his pride as a warrior and to his prowess as a leader. As such, Elrohir swallowed back a sprightly brother’s amusement until its upsurge could best be employed in the taming of his twin’s self-beratement, then focused himself on the trouble before them.

Thankfully, Erestor himself appeared most sympathetic to his former charge’s misjudgment, allowing the twin captains a rather overgenerous amount of time to plan an alternative maneuver; or perhaps he merely sensed the emulsifying of Elladan’s innards and did not want him to be further hindered by an imminent purging. Yet the Loremaster had even been compassionate to even the violent moods of the princelings he had helped grow, though he somehow cultivated a rather all-shading blind-spot when it came to the elf-warrior’s plentiful affections for him. This ignorance, whether studied or instinctive, hurt Elladan more than he could properly express to even his constant twin, though Elrohir was all too aware of the ache within his brother, as it echoed his own at the distance between himself and the one he sought to cherish.

As their company lunched in companionable silence around a makeshift camp, Elrohir had drawn his tempestuous brother over to the cliffside, so as to keep his aggravation well away from their guard. While Elladan, through his relentless pacing, nearly dug such a trench into the ground that the edge might very well break free and crumble into the gulch below, the elf-knight considered how best to encourage his grumpy twin into one of his sudden fits of brilliance. Twas a well-trod characteristic of his valiant brother’s than the direst circumstances often wrought the most winning notions from him, yet Elrohir did not know enough of how these inspirational flashes came about in order to provoke one. If ought, their present predicament may have so tarnished Elladan’s confidence that the situation was completely unsalvageable.

To say naught of his own mounting concerns, from which this detour into navigational issues was a grateful respite. Indeed, the delay itself was mightily fortuitous, as he was entirely unresolved as to the tact he should forward in regards to his own encumbering emotion for the youngest Prince of Greenwood.

After the surge of addictive affection that had overcome him in the aftermath of their first, intoxicating kiss in Lorien had evaporated into the ether through his self-exfoliating pores, Elrohir had broiled with dumbfounding confusion over what, exactly, had just been so hotly related to him. A declaration of love? A desire to be bedded upon their reunion? An overture towards a scorching, duty-snubbing affair? Legolas had been as cryptic as he had been bold. Predictably, his correspondence had shied away from ought but the most mundane of troths to fraternity; while the guardian in him was still amply satisfied by the progress of his young devout, the unexpected lover banished deep within him repeatedly cursed himself for not defining their relation, before it was required to bridge over a century and a second’s halfway mark. He found himself by turns thrilled at the prospect of delving further into the bawdy climes of emotion between them and terrified at the thought of serving up his sweetest meats to one who might just nibble at his plate, then, his appetite whet by this first true taste of virility, abandon him for a more savory dish, upon which he would gorge himself for eternity.

Both he and his more strident twin were unused to such vulnerability, such emotional exposure; they were hunters by keenest nature, yet, trapped by their own heart’s softness, they opened themselves as unwittingly as the dullest of prey not merely to capture, but to the skinning of their souls’ rawhide. The madness of it was that they were both well aware of their weakness, their fumbling about the hinterlands waiting for the kill stroke, but were still helpless to deny themselves even the slightest chance of love. As such, Elladan could do naught but clever his way out of the snare he’d trapped them in, while Elrohir inevitably followed his no doubt meandering trail to Greenwood, to Legolas, to some solidified notion of his purpose in the young prince’s designs upon him.

The singular stream of a vine-laced arrow into the prim trees above them roused them both from their maudlin musings.

Awestruck, yet instantly on guard, they traced the line into the dense forest across the ravine, their bows at the ready and their soldiers falling about them. Yet none could have predicted how some nimble creature would streak down the vine, then drop to his feet before them, by his colors an elf of the Greenwood patrol. By the time the twins recognized this fleet one as Tonduil, one of the young prince’s tight circle, the rest of his fellows had landed around him: Annael, Mirmil, and the captain himself, keen Legolas.

Elrohir felt as if he’d been struck by one of the thunderbolts that lit a storming sky. Though his face remained dutifully impassive, a prickly flush crept up his neck, fringed his peaked ears, and burned his supple skin such that he feared it might very well steam off, such was the effect of this first sight of Legolas upon him. Yet he could not keep his gaze from being drawn into those blazing eyes, though even their fiery cast sparked round the rim with a rabid insecurity, as well as contrition over that which must remain unspoken for endless days ahead. Indeed, he had so blighted out any sense of the others about him that it was a shock when Erestor laid a steady hand on his shoulder, effectively startling him back into the moment.

Thankfully, they could not embrace with the fondness of longtime friends before their respective companies. Yet he could not think, when Elladan moved to do so, how he was about to even clasp Legolas’ hand without tugging him into his arms for the kiss his lips quivered for. Fortunately, the soldiers around them had fallen out of rank and were greeting their Sindar counterparts, so any infringement might not garner too much notice, if they were discreet.

As he moved into position just aloft of his brother, he had the rare chance to examine Legolas some before being forced to bear the full assault of those iridescent eyes, though the archer visibly struggled to give his full attention to the elf-warrior and not to the interloping elf-knight. Indeed, by the end of their teasing interaction, his cheeks were quite pert with rose, hardly of the staid countenance appropriate to a captain of the guard. Elrohir beamed inwardly at his evident upset, the soundless creak of his tense shoulders and fidgety manner in which he shifted his weight from foot to foot, anxious, perhaps, for the others to toddle off to camp. He rejoiced as Legolas stole glance after glance in his direction, ever desperate to be done with politeness and to defy the solemnity of the circumstance.

The years, the distance had allowed him to convince himself, by turns, that his care for the Prince of Greenwood had been either a fit of madness brought on by his vow of abstinence or a fancy he’d indulged in during a dry spell in his pursuit of amenable lovers. Perhaps he had needed such blatant, fantastical fallacies in order to survive their unreasonably long separation, as well as the irresolution inherent to their manner of parting, for confronted anew by the ethereal beauty of the woodland prince, he could not fathom how he had ever done ought but love him. Legolas, nearly two decades past his five-hundredth year, was a pearl not freshly harvested from its oyster, but set as the center stone of a magnificent piece of jewelry, its opalescent luster enhancing all the lesser orbs with its unique radiance. Yet even as he admired his graces, he was intimately aware of the primordial force of stealth and of acuity the once coltish youth had become. The very air about him as he moved sung in tribute to his bow-talents, of his sensitivity to the wilds he roamed and of the abject reverence of the forest about for their dearly protector. He had matured into an elf in full, resplendent possession of his limitless capacities for goodness, be this displayed in service to his wood, his companions, or his homeland realm.

Yet when Elladan at last ceded the green to their reaffirmation, he found himself cowed by a disgraceful bashfulness. Legolas was similarly timid, which only relieved him some; together they were barely able to stutter out the briefest formalities, the clasp of their hands so electric with unconscionable potential that they nearly recoiled from the touch. Fortunately, Erestor quickly ascertained the moment’s inherent tensions for the star-struck pair, and so swooped in to bid the by now overtly blushing prince a most hardy welcome. Leaving Elrohir to tend to the feeding of the Greenwood guard, both he and Elladan soon drew Legolas over to their carts in order to detail their troublesome situation, but not before the elder twin clapped a strong hand in the small of his back and gave him a look so pregnant with command that he knew his brother’s will would not falter for the rest of their journey.

The unexpected reunion with their Greenwood friend had given Elladan a new leash on his more riotous and confounding emotions.

Elrohir, for his part, felt nothing less than dangerously unbound, for before him lay a most treacherous path, of either honorable forbearance or disgraceful indulgence. Both lead, with disastrous temptation, to Legolas’ most felicitous form.

***

Three days on from that initial, incensing encounter, Elrohir had no choice but to escape the stultifying atmosphere of their nightly camp least it choke the very breath from his lungs.

After muttering the flimsiest of excuses – he did not even recall what cause he had given for his flight, he had retreated into the gloaming woods about, their dusky mist the perfect concealment. While many bustling about the fire would not even have noted his departure, he was unsure whether Elladan and Erestor would let such a telltale misstep pass without some reprimand, though they would not be wrong to chasten him, for he was hardly alert to even the creeps that scuttled through the forest about him. This northerly league of the Greenwood was relatively safe, though no warrior of salt went tramping about Arda unescorted, even in the dulcet wilds about Imladris. Yet if he had remained at the fuming hearth for another moment of convivial conversation between the guards he may very well have set himself aflame. A small gratitude was his faint certainty that Legolas was at the river and, as such, unaware of his sudden distemper.

If the woodland prince were to somehow cross the furious path he currently trod without direction or intended destination, he could not be held responsible for what might transpire between them.

He had kept counseled for three excruciating, exhausting days of feint, persevered through casual conversation and incidental contact, until he thought his eyes might spontaneously scarlet from the mere sight of his gilded beauty. They had not even whispered a quick word of reassurance, not even muttered a pledge to enduring friendship, least they be overheard. Whenever alone, they had hastened to find themselves some company, unless there was some task that required their double-force of strength, which was accomplished in pristine silence. When by the hearth round, they took solace in jovial anecdotes to their fellows, in the merriment of others, in the easy feeling of fraternity about, but never dared yield their vigilant guard over their own person by engaging the other in public conversation, though they could not rightly school themselves away from the occasional stolen glance. Yet the glow of the firelight upon their comely one was far too becoming to be ignored completely, so they contented themselves with stealthy admiration. Indeed, they had both behaved with propriety so sterling that the Valar might very well enshrined them in the Halls of Taniquetil as examples of gallantry and grace.

Twas madness to him, pure and bluntly pummeling, these tormenting strictures for duty’s sake. Twas soul-murder itself to be deprived of sharing even the most familiar discussion with one who was, before all else, his greatest friend; as despairing as being unable to communicate with Elladan for even the briefest spell. To ride but paces behind him, barely able to tare his eyes away from that sunlight spill of mane or that strapping, sinuous back. To busy himself with the dressing or the striking of camp to dissuade himself from starting a conversation that would only make him ache more for the company of a friend who was so unreachably present or, worse, would entangle him in an emotional intimacy that could not be sated through the appropriate formalities of speech. To lie awake, beseeching the flirtatious moon for consolation as she swam behind the lush boughs above him, as tortured by the body’s pangs for sensual contact as by his craving for knowledge of his one; news as simple as how Legolas fared on his southern patrol to more personal revelations of his perspective on the state of their own, amorphous relation. Yet the most gutting thing of all was to catch a fleeting glance from his prince – as they cantered through a glade, across the crackling pyre, or before they sank down onto their bedrolls for another pious night of wakefulness – a meaningful look or a pained stare that told him he was not alone in his pining, that Legolas suffered their separation as viciously as he.

He had never thought he would long to be hidden away in the caves near the Greenwood compound, but he found himself yearning for just that moment, when at last they would be, in their boulder-fortified concealment, at liberty to speak as their true selves.

As he trudged through a thicket overgrown with serpentine ivy, he could barely contain the fierce pound of his heart within his chest. Yet even as he gouged his way into a soundless hollow, he shook as if beset by some crippling illness. He began to circle the enclosed space in unending revolutions, perhaps intending to circuit himself into collapse. His creaky body was certainly in dire need of sleep; not only was their extended journey wearying through unexpected challenges, but the strain of couching his most vivid emotions was both brittling his temper and sapping his last reserves of energy. Yet Legolas’ fecund scent, just across the fire, was not at all conducive to slumber, nor was the unspent desire simmering through his every restless stretch. Three more days of this deficiency, of this absence, would see him raving like a lunatic fiend; there had been no alternative but to flee for a short while, little matter the tarnishing of his dignity or the diminishing of his position before the guard.

Suddenly, he sensed another’s advent, but too late realized that the intruder was not Elladan come to assuage him, nor Erestor come to counsel him. As he whipped around to dress them down for their insurgence, he was smacked dumb by the sight of Legolas slipping through a curtain of vines, his face soft with concern.

“Twas indeed your huffing that I heard through the wilds,” the archer smirked, but dared not yet approach him. “I should have known a Son of Elrond from a wily boar, though I nearly failed to mark the distinction.” At Elrohir’s snort, his smile broadened mischievously. “I see you have broke, at last. Elladan had odds on the morrow, but I am proud to see that I know you slightly better. Yet I would know you better still, melethen. Will you not come forth? How I have been longing for you these last days…”

With a subtle movement, he opened his arms to the elf-knight, yet not so wide as to further overwhelm him. Elrohir, however, resisted him, his face red not with blush, but with fury.

“One hundred and fifty years we have been parted,” Elrohir fumed. “Without my knowing the truth of your intentions or even the surety of your care! I pined away on the promise of a kiss, yet upon our reunion you do not address me forthwith, but collude with my brother to wager upon the length of my forbearance!”

The elf-knight found that he could not quite still his heaving breaths, so wrought was he with the moment’s tensions. He knew he had been too sharp by far, but felt himself on the brink of a fit of wildness he might very well come to regret once his senses were at all regained.

“Nay, my brave one, twas never my intention to make light of our temperance,” Legolas assured him in his gentlest tones, cautiously stepping ever near. “Tis both a necessary ache and a confining one. Indeed, I find I cannot bear another second of constraint. Saes, Elrohir, let us not waste this moment away in quarrelling. I have witnessed your suffering these last days, I have quaked through my own. Come to me, moren vain. How I have craved the shelter of your arms through these endless nights! I would know them now, even if it only heightens my hurt thereafter.”

Legolas had indeed begun to subtly tremble, his stormy eyes fluid with raw emotion. Though Elrohir would gaze upon that endearing image for hours, he nevertheless beckoned him forth, until the archer nearly squeezed the bones out of him so violent was the force of his embrace. The elf-knight had thought their reunion would be effortlessly rousing, but found that, instead, he was drenched wretched with dampering feeling, which smote his earlier temper such that he was soon thoroughly sodden with the need to comfort, to coddle his beloved some. Legolas was similarly bent on wringing all the sweetness from him, perhaps not as sure in loving as he oft presented himself.

Yet the love itself that possessed him was a surety, and his woodland prince appeared rather resolutely inclined to glut him with that golden emotion.

“Forgive me my pique, lass dithen,” he murmured against his temple. “For tis only an emblem of how dearly I have wanted for you these long years apart. I had warned myself to be counseled through the few hours in your father’s house before we might steal away. Little did I know you would come searching through the wilds to escort us to the palace grounds. I was poorly prepared for… for the glorious sight of you.” The elf-knight dropped a spatter of kisses upon his haloed crown. “Will it ruin you if I remark on how your beauty has only become more opulent, more incomparable in its gild of ivory, even through the weathering of years?” The flame of the prince’s cheeks was such that Elrohir could feel its burn on his neck.

With palpable reluctance, Legolas loosened their embrace so that he might gaze upon him, those bejeweled eyes suddenly so demure with modesty that Elrohir could not help but assay a rather bemused smirk. Yet their adoring luster was plain enough, such that the elf-knight nearly winced beneath their formidable cast.

“You might be said, then, to think softly on me?” the archer queried, the picture of bashful innocence. “For I… I find that I cannot think of ought but you, Elrohir. In my waking hours. In dreams. Through even the most arduous of days. If ever I am overburdened… tis certainly more than friendship, more than mere desire, to think on one so incessantly? To feel… to feel so unsteady before you, and yet as if we must never again be apart?”

Twas then that the elf-knight recalled just how new his heart was, how the seeds of their budding relation were the first to be sown in its rich, bountiful soil. While Elrohir had flirted with love before, though none so forceful nor so consuming as this, twas a veritable wonder that Legolas could give so ardently, yet blindly, of himself, especially at such considerable stake to his realm and its people. The incredible care with which he must treat his treasured one was impressed upon him anew, the delicacy he must employ in the development of their relation and the patience with which he must guide Legolas through the deepening of emotions between them.

Anathema to this was the rage of love within him, which ever urged him to seize, to sunder. Yet one glance into those shining eyes told him of the vast reserves of courage within the soul before him; that though timid of manner and hesitant to demand too much of him, the young prince had been simmering along through the years, and soon would be raring to sample some of the more involved of the fleshly pursuits, as Elrohir himself was. These, however, would be a scalding meld of love, lust, and devotion, which could be forged solid only after considerable mining of the most precious soul-ore. For this, he could not merely pounce upon him, though by Elbereth he longed to do so.

“One might even argue that we are blessed by a burgeoning love,” Elrohir responded, with a slip of a smile meant to lure the prince in for a soft kiss.

“Aye, a *love*,” Legolas whispered, before leaning in to meet his pursed, waiting mouth.

Though their kiss was hardly more than a tender suckling of lips, the archer reeled when they broke off, so unsteady that Elrohir had to tighten his hold around him. Both were shivering rather deliciously from the tingles that sparked through them, suddenly transfixed by their admirer’s giving, glowing eyes.

“I fear we cannot linger long,” Elrohir advised, his own frustration all too evident. “Nor may we dally again, until our advent in your Adar’s palace. Yet it heartens me to know that… that we are of one mind, in this.”

“Of one heart,” Legolas insisted, then sealed his troth with a sweetly kiss. “One vibrant, ferocious heart, melethen.” He smeared another blistering caress across his mouth, greedy for further, physical proof of their so recently confessed affections. “Twill be agony itself to keep away from you these next days.”

“Think on it, my young valiant, as a test of endurance,” Elrohir counseled him. “The more serene you are in suffrage, the more rapturous will be your reward.”

“Brave words from one I discovered just moments ago,” Legolas wryly reminded him. “So wrought with passion that he looked fit to rape the trees.”

“Yet by whose luminous graces was such a passion roused?” Elrohir exhaled in a haze over his mouth, then dared a last, luscious suck. “Muse on my fever awhile when you are wanting, my Legolas. On how expertly and explicitly I will ply you, on the ecstatic pains I will expend to brand you mine alone.”

Even as he slunk out of that sensual embrace, Elrohir shuddered with the thought of what was surely to later pass between them. Legolas appeared as apprehensive as he was eager; as such, twas perhaps for the best that they abstain a while longer. While the elf-knight did not doubt the younger prince’s conviction, nor the honesty of his declarations, he knew his first experience of male on male loving would upturn his entire worldview, which would only enhance his vulnerability. Yet the balm of their love would succor him, even when Elrohir was not himself present to do so, and in the meantime this heady feeling would prime him for the force of what was to come.

For even without the gift of foresight, the elf-knight desperately hoped that neither would ever recover from the thrall of love that slowly infected them with an incandescent sickness.

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

Beneath the spotty cast of an anemic moon, Elladan let his introspective eyes drift through the glowering black to the fireside, where his band of warriors were sprawled slumbering over their bedrolls as laxly as elflings before the family hearth. In the dense, humid night after an arduous day of portage, not a one could conquer their exhaustion long enough to see minutes past a sip of miruvor from the company skin. Yet their captain was pleased to see them so drunk with sleep, for they would be all the more primed for adventuring come the morrow.

He himself would have been lost to the dream path long ago, were it not for the wretched heat. Even a brisk swim in the river had not refreshed him sufficiently, nor had an unusually fine stew, expertly spiced by one of the Greenwood elves, nourished him into lethargy. He could not even blame the mildly unnerving presence of Erestor, who in his youth had been a far more soothing element, but was now both a boon and a charge to him. The wilds of Rhovanion simply gave him no rest, from the hoots of the haughty owl in the forest beyond their camp to the simmer of shadow he sensed in the distance. He longed for the shimmer of cascades through the blackness, for the constant crash of their spill over the mountain side. For the lonely song of the nightingale to lull him into a swoon as he stood upon his balcony high, in silent vigil over his valley in a wash of crystalline moonlight. There was an ideal of Imladris that he kept in the confines of his silent heart, that was so entangled with his image of Erestor as its purest essence that they were indistinguishable to him. To think softly on the chief advisor was to admire his greatest work; as such, twas little wonder that he missed his valley so.

If he was honest, he was this night possessed of a rather dishonorable envy of his brother. Their advent in the haven of the Greenwood elves would see his twin fulfilled in a love that had scorched him for centuries on. Though he and the woodland prince had barely exchanged a word since their sudden reunion in the thick of both their guards, even one of a paltry reserve of intuition could discern the invisible currents of emotion coursing between them. While the caring brother in Elladan was certainly cheered by the inevitability of their coming together - once privacy was assured - no small part of him quietly mourned the fact that he would never rightly know such fulfillment, even if for a brief time, from the one he pined for. As he held little appreciation for those who wallowed in their troubles, he currently focused his attentions on the far more amusing aspects of the fumbling, unacknowledged, yet irrepressible flirtation between his painfully gallant twin and the deceptively impish Prince of Greenwood.

This shift of view proved far less difficult than he’d first suspected, for at present Elrohir, who had risen to stoke the waning fire, was being quite blatantly ogled by a gobsmacked Legolas; who could not quite manage to pry his eyes from the taut stretch of breech-leather over the elf-knight’s superiorly toned buttocks as he bent to poke about in the flames. Elladan perceived the valiant struggle within the woodland prince to aim his stare at a far less revelatory object, to keep his cheeks from burgeoning with color, to recline in a pose that draped his tunic across his lap as loosely as possible. By the time Elrohir had turned back from the fire, vision doubtlessly hazed by the momentarily blinding glare, Legolas had nearly mastered himself; only the rise of red up the column of his neck defied his considerable will. If his twin had noted this scarlet flare, he gave no outward indication, as he was ever the finest example of diplomacy ever born to elfkind. They resumed their meticulously casual conversation with far too much solemnity for one of his considerable skills of observation to truly believe them resolved to perpetual abstinence.

Indeed, he had been quite surprised by the restraint they had shown thus far, nearly to the point of concern for their budding relation. For the first three days of their journeying, they had barely exchanged a glance across the fire, so dedicated were they both to the protection and the preservation of their nascent love. A love which, mind, was yet undeclared, so perhaps they had both erred on the side of caution in awaiting their palace sanctuary for their oaths. Yet Elladan had been stunned that warriors of such hardy stuff could not school themselves sufficiently to even endure the subtle trial of resuming their incredible friendship; if anything had nearly given them away, it was their abject refusal to even feign companionship. Tonduil and Annael were far too devoted to Legolas not to wonder at his avoidance of the elf-knight, while few among his own close-knit guard were not inclined to speculate over a rift between their sometime captain and the youth he’d mentored since adolescence. By the time Elrohir had stormed away from camp one night, in such a fit of barely repressed temper that Elladan had nearly shot after him, there had been a palpable sense of relief among the soldiers, that finally one of the pair had broken wild of his reins. In the aftermath of whatever had transpired between them in the forest dark, they played at slow-mending fellowship, as if there was but a temporary balm over some severe wound. Elladan was too shrewd not to see through even such accomplished theatrics; he knew they were simply biding through the last days of their travels until their hasty promises could be writ bold by writhing flesh.

A consummation most devoutly to be wished, indeed.

At present, they were the picture of leisurely repose, which belay the fact that neither had slept in night on a week, as both were far too wrought by nightly yearnings, far too riled by the other’s sheer existence across the way to dare immerse themselves in the murk of sultry dreams. Before, they would collapse themselves upon their bedroll to silently ache through the night. Since the watch that Elladan had purposely assigned them together, in hopes that they would reconcile further, they instead engaged in warm, whispered conversation, attempting to endure through both companionship and solidarity. The elf-warrior was only too glad of this, for even the most transcendent of love relations would not survive if uprooted from the solid, yet fertile foundation of friendship.

To speak of the cultivation of an amicable relationship, the very object of his own confused and confounding aspirations suddenly fluttered down onto the patch of grass beside him, his icicle eyes twinkling mercurially. Twas a rare occasion when Erestor resorted to gossiping, for he held dear the many hearts who relieved themselves of crushing burdens through his confidence, but by the glint in that blue diamond gaze, the esteemed loremaster was raring to impart a sprightly tale or two. Who could resist such a cunning invitation to intimacy? Surely not one who was as enamored of him as Elladan.

Yet, to his slight consternation, the elder began to stroke a softing touch across his cranky shoulders, over the sweep of his knotty hair, and down the length of his tense back, as if tending to the elfling of old. Elladan was even more disturbed by how soothing this proved, as well as how deeply he craved such tender affections from his former tutor. Indeed, he was so moved by this quiet display of care that he unconsciously pressed into his roving hand; soon he felt as purring, as supple as a cat in the sun.

“I had long predicted to Elrond that you would inherit his gift of foresight,” Erestor bemusedly remarked. “But never did I consider that your powers of insight would divine such celestial marvels as the weather patterns to which we, as travelers, are indentured.” At Elladan’s curious peak of brow, he laughed outright. “I merely mean to say that you are typically unsettled, before the coming storm. In such tempestuous predictions you are, unerringly, right as rain, pen-neth.”

The elf-warrior started, struck by the acuity of his observations.

“Ever have I been unsettled the night before a storm,” Elladan noted, mostly for the benefit of his own blunt realization.

“Have you never made the necessary connection?” Erestor queried, petting his head quite woozy with languor. “That prior to unseasonable weather you are restless and out of sorts? Yet you have been so touched since elflinghood. Just as I could predict that, upon a blustery midnight, my bed would soon be baked by two tittering bundles, squealing when the thunder struck.”

“Tis some years since we were so needful,” Elladan answered sourly, though he was not so proud as to forgo the continued attentions of the gentle Loremaster.

“Yet still I hear you pacing the halls,” Erestor teased him. “One may have grown too proud to request some comforting company, but that does not suggest one is any less affected by the blackening night. As evidenced, one might follow, by the steely coil of your back, at present.”

“Tis merely the burden of command,” Elladan mumbled, but mildly so.

“Indeed,” Erestor demurred, a smile tickling his lips.

The elf-warrior shot him a reproachful glance, but could not help but eventually return the smile of one who gazed so fondly upon him. They may not be as enraptured as Elrohir and Legolas, but there was enough sweetness between to appease his ache every once in a while.

“Yet surely you did not meander over to this greenly patch,” Elladan cleverly inquired. “For confirmation of the storm’s approach. Any elf of sorts can smell the sizzle in the air. Surely you have a more… delectable bit of insight to impart?”

Erestor cackled, in that wonderfully mock-sinister way of his, then winked conspiratorially.

“By the gods, your perspicacity knows no bounds,” Erestor answered, feigning piety. “To woo one so respected as I into such base insinuations…”

“I would have more reservations, if you were not so sprightly with the news,” Elladan pointedly repliqued. “Tell me your wares.”

With a genial smirk, Erestor began: “Yestereve, I was myself beset by restlessness, which I sought to relieve through a stroll about the outskirts of camp. Twas around the early bells, when the night watch was on. As you may recall, this had been assigned to two currently tucked quite endearingly up by yonder fireside. Seeking some company, I discovered them sat upon a log not twenty paces from camp, yet with a clear view of the slope behind which we were hid. At first glance from my cautious approach, I thought that one had been injured, since one was reclined quite grandiosely across the other’s lap. Yet as I observed the scene from afar, ready to steal back to camp and to sound the alarm, I was witness to far more bizarre and confounding behavior from them.”

Frowning at the fact that Elrohir had reported no such wounding whilst on patrol, he begged further information from the Loremaster.

“Such as?” he questioned, with the straight severity of a captain deceived.

“They were performing a rather archaic ritual with their mouths,” Erestor elaborated. “One so rarely evidenced among the younglings of this age that I feared such chivalries were of a bygone era.”

Elladan worked hard to suppress the raucous laughter that spurt up his throat, to stifle his mirth so as to maintain the air of forced sobriety.

“But what rite is this?” he gaped, with played innocence. “Surely nothing untowards transpired between two such hallowed warriors as they?”

“I am uncertain,” Erestor underlined, barely swallowing back his own merriment. “For I have not seen such a fervent display for some years now. They pressed their lips together, in a way not unfamiliar to one of my age and wealth of consorts. Indeed, though I may have been painfully misled by the streaks of shadow, it quite astonishingly appeared as if they had shared… a kiss.” He paused to allow Elladan to digest this news, though he doubted the elf-warrior was at all stunned by its revelation. “A rather urgent one, at that.”

“Did you have cause to observe any other… curious behavior?” Elladan inquired, acting more the captain now. Twas hardly meet for them to be found coupling in the woods when they were meant to be on watch, even if kindly Erestor was the one who discovered them.

“Nay, I thought it best to take my leave,” Erestor reasoned. “One would not want to be accused of interloping upon something so innocent as a patrol watch, would one? Yet I do find it rather peculiar that two so seemingly at odds with one another, given their manner since our escort was undertook, would be paired together for the midnight watch. Do you not find this a strange occurrence, Captain? One might very well be led to believe that a family relation – perchance a sibling of some sort – feared for the vitality of their great friendship, and so forced them to reconcile themselves upon a darkling night. If such was the case, then certainly he had not expected that not only would they have quite wholly reconciled what divided them prior to their watch, but that the accomplishment of this reconciliation would have been so fruitful, that it would ripened the emotion between them into something altogether bountiful. Yet for all its plenty, a captain would surely find such dallying in the dead of night regrettably worth a word or two in reprimand.”

Elladan took a moment to digest the whole of his message; thoughtfully so.

“He might indeed,” he finally responded. “If he came about the knowledge of their dalliance honestly.” He considered the matter further, adding a caveat. “If they had shared more than a kiss in the night, which in itself is no grave dereliction of duty. Certainly they are not the first two warriors to reconcile themselves whilst on watch over a slumbering camp.”

Erestor accepted his reasoning, but the elf-warrior could clearly see him measuring out his objection.

“Would you truly be so accommodating,” he countered. “If one of the warriors were not your brother?”

The Loremaster should perhaps have taken yet another moment to reflect upon whom he was addressing, for he pricked his aggression.

“Most adamantly,” Elladan retorted, irate. “We are a band of *elven* warriors, with the keenest senses in all the land. Even embroiled in a hot flirtation, any danger would seize us like an orc’s grip upon our shoulder. You yourself just now remarked upon how the storm rattles me, yet it will not strike for hours on!” His nerves bristled like burrs under his skin, even as he fought to temper himself. “If we surrender our loves and graces to the shadow over a dulcet night’s vigilance, then we are wretched as they. If Elrohir, or any other in my guard, has found one true, far be it from me to so constrict them that they cannot spare a fleeting moment to indulgence.”

With a faint sigh, Erestor understood that he tread too far into quite personal bounds. While he accepted that this concern of his would not be justified, nor excused, this night, that did not keep one so wise as he from noticing a far more salient point.

“You envy him,” he put bluntly to his former charge, who went ghostly white before him. When Elladan did not answer, he set his sage mind to a rambling speculation. “Is there one, then, that you care for? One you have been denied? You must speak of such things, pen-neth, to those who cherish you, else they will fester within-”

“I have spoke with Elrohir,” Elladan tersely cut him off, his face a sallow specter of the gamely youth of but moments before.

“Yet he may see his dream come live,” Erestor soothed. “While you deny yourself consolation. I can see the wound is fresh. Will you not share your burdens with one who has ever sought to succor you?”

“I cannot speak my heart,” Elladan rasped back, which was no lie. “Tis my curse.” He exhaled longly, grit his teeth. “Perhaps I should seek to bind with one who has no ear to bid me confess myself, no serpent’s tongue to lash me with his ever gracious refusal.” He growled deep in his throat, berating himself for revealing even that small sliver of information. “Regardless, I am done. Let me sleep, Erestor. Leave me some peace.”

“As you wish,” Erestor conceded, leaning over nevertheless to drop a kiss to his crown of raven hair. “But know that in all my vast journeying, I have never known a worthier heart. If indeed you deign to share it, one blessed day, then I cannot imagine the elf you might bequeath its treasures to doing ought but reveling in his good fortune.” With that, he slid away, into the velvety veils of darkness.

Elladan swallowed back a surge of bile, then grappled to his feet. He strode over to the fire, so as to covet the warmth of the dearly company there. He may very well trudge, insurgent, into the lively flow of flirtation between his brother and his friend, but he would rather be drenched in their fondness than suffer another second of the toxic ache that currently threatened to corrode his innards unsalvageable.

He had, after all, a company to command through the coming tempest.

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

A clap of thunder heralded the gush of wind that so suddenly whipped through his bathing chamber, rattling the window pane and dispersing the billows of steam from his extended soak in the tub. The over-misted mirror was once again pristine, in which he continued to fret over his appearance, as never before. Indeed, Elrohir felt as fluttery as a maid on the eve of her majority rites, though the blooms that pinked his cheeks were mostly from the dank humidity. Summer storms were known for their violence; by the brewing weather beyond the palace walls, the Greenwood guard best prepare themselves for a blustery night.

Both he and his twin were versed and well-valued the elven proclivity for near obsessive cleanliness, as well as understood the power inherent to a becomingly attired royal at court, council, feast, or banquet hall. They were not so humble as to fail to take a modicum of pride in their own comeliness, nor to forget to deploy such enticements in the bedding of nubile lovers. Yet as warriors habituated to murky swamps and to mucky battlefields, they had been roughed into a decent modesty about their own beauty, such that they rarely expended much effort towards grooming besides the bare essentials: a proper scrub, fine combed hair in sober braids, and a well-tended raiment. Their gracious manner, to say naught of the sheer force of their physical magnificence, polished their bearing to the point of devastation, though this was through no design, nor will of their own. They could not be said to be careless of their appearance, but they certainly did not scrutinize themselves, even before dallying with a lover.

As such, Elrohir felt doubly foolish for the pains he was currently undertaking to prepare himself for the glare of Legolas’ iridescent gaze. Yet he also recalled his sister’s timely advisements on the matter, when he had, in a weak moment, confessed his fears to her. His wood-elf was used to lying with the lissome, heavenly bodies of Silvan ellyth, with only a sparse nest of golden down between their legs to contend with. Never before had he felt nervous over the more virile aspects of his generously mannish make, but he had also never before exposed himself to such a dear, innocent love. When they had dabbled about in Lorien, their groping had been undertaken through a crimson haze of wine and of lust, not the blunt confrontation of two bare, barrier-less forms that would come about that night, after surreptitious flirtations across the Greenwood King’s banquet table. Thus, every cleft and slope of his sculpted form must be groomed to perfection, so that his greenly love could do naught but desire him more.

To this end, he had snipped away with the sharp blade of his paring knife, then tenderized his weathered frame with an aloe salve Arwen had gifted him. Where his underarms were once a thicket of overgrown bracken, they were now no more than a dense patch of bristly hairs. His hirsute chest had been similarly tamed down to a fine layer of feline-textured silk, while a strip of ebony sprigs lead down to a sultrier, yet well-weeded, grove around his groin. He varnished himself a starry, opalescent tone with a glutinous cream, which his sister had promised would both supple the taut stretch of his skin and underscore his meaty strips of muscle. He told himself that the embarrassment he suffered while combing his hair with the tenacious teeth of her tortoise-shell brush justified its all-too-awkward employment to straighten out his sheathes into a glistening cascade behind him. When he finally gazed into the looking glass to appraise himself, he realized no amount of ablutions would balm over his spiking nerves.

Thank Elbereth there was yet a banquet to doze through, for he had not felt so out of sorts before a romantic encounter in all his seven-hundred-some years.

He could not rightly explain what riled him so, for this night could potentially see his heart fulfilled; for this he should be prostrate with gratitude before the most bountiful bequeathing of the Valar above. While he indeed intended to bow to Legolas, to bestow upon him his most opulent care, there was yet a remote part of his inner landscape that feared the young prince’s attraction to him was but a mirage, an illusion conjured up by his imaginative spirit to counter the dulling effects of his confinement to his realm, of his duties as a royal, of the routine rut of maids who either clung about him in dewy-eyed worship or too-easily spread their legs before him. A drunken grope and a few tipsy kisses hardly proved him a lover of males; while Elrohir did not doubt his purity of heart – for they were timeless friends – their first bedding would shake the woodland prince either with life-altering perspective or out of his delusional ambition to brand them a true couple. While he had prayed these long years for the former, the brute possibility of the latter haunted both his nightmares and his waking dreams, currently rattling him into a considerable pique over something so girlishly trite, so execrable and so uncontrollable as his appearance. As if the length of the hairs beneath his arms would somehow spur Legolas towards eternal devotion, if he were not already so inclined!

Berating himself for his ridiculous behavior, he wrapped himself in a comfy robe, as some servant was still puttering about his bedchamber, though what there was left to primp or to unpack in the meticulously prepared suite he could not fathom. Upon their arrival early that afternoon, a steward had informed them of the King’s regrets, that their monthly barter with the men of Esgaroth would have to delay them an audience with him until the evening meal, but that surely the Prince’s accompaniment these last days was tribute enough to his respect for them. The chance for some repose before meeting the ever-challenging glower of Thranduil was welcome to them all, but most especially to he and Legolas, for both had had mind to a considerable rest before the most sacred revels that they would enjoy that night. By hastily whispered conference after striking camp that morn, they had resolved themselves to this plan of stealth; so twas with a wink of complicity and a clench of solidarity that they had parted at the stables.

Indeed, their relation had been of incredible ease ever since their secret reunion on the third night of their journey to the Greenwood compound. Just that brief consultation, of minds and of mouths, had liberated them to exhibit once more all the outward signs of their great friendship among their fellows. They had felt free to converse whilst on horseback, to shrewdly bicker whilst tending to their chores, and to command the other’s attention by the campfire. Though they were ever cautious to school the manner in which they regarded one another, as they both knew naught would come of such salacious looks before their advent at the palace, chastening themselves was no longer such a strain. The only slight aberrance had been on the night that Elladan had, oddly and somewhat deviously, put them on night watch together. Though his twin’s reasoning, when examined, had been that they should be so paired since neither felt the great need for sleep, Elrohir had been too glad of the chance to consult Legolas in private to further object to what was, to any trained eye, folly of the highest incredulity.

To their inestimable credit, in Elrohir’s hopelessly biased view, they had managed to deprive themselves for nearly three hours before succumbing to baser instincts. Indeed, they had almost survived the entire ordeal wholly and chastely apart, when their sincere talk had veered perilously towards the subject of loneliness. In all fairness, Legolas had been so distraught by his desolate recollections that they had subsisted quite a time on softly comfort, pets and strokes any caregiver would easily dole out to a charge. Yet these inevitably lead, when words failed his miserable prince, to succoring kisses, such that the archer had soon been curled into his lap, that kittenish mouth culling coyly at his own. Twas then that the elf-knight came to comprehend that his early-years forbearance was a boon to their current relation, for where else could Legolas have mastered such a sensual mating of lips than in plying those of a skittish maid into submission. Yet they had not lingered so too longly, as dawn would have discovered them soon enough, though it had been with considerable reluctance that they had parted. Their genuine camaraderie had continued on apace through those final days, the memory of that heady night enough to buoy them friendly.

At present, Elrohir almost longed for the restrictions of their arduous forest journey, for then little had been required of him but vigilance and valor. Yet even as he bristled with another twitch of trepidation, he inwardly chided himself. Any elf of sense would be awestruck at having earned the heart of the stunning Prince of Greenwood. Elrohir should count himself fortunate for being so soaked with love that a late refusal from Legolas might smite his soul, not blatantly anticipating such a end to himself. He had, as ever where his archer was concerned, to go with earnest heart; to drench him in peerless affection and to glut him in sensual delights. If the woodland prince was so gross as to refute him then, perhaps Elrohir was better off forlorn.

With a last, resolute stare at his reflection, he went to clothe himself.

As the patter of the servants had long ceased, he was in no way prepared for the patently shocking sight of a lithe and slender wood-elf perched upon the edge of his bed, regarding him with equal parts eagerness and anxiety. Upon his entrance, Legolas leapt up to his feet, dangerously loosening the thin sarong rather precariously twisted around his waist. The flaxen wash of his still damp hair poured unbound over his shoulders, his pearly skin scrubbed immaculate previous to their encounter. He smelt of lavender, of woodland haunts, and of something barely discernable, which Elrohir thought may very well be the first beads of arousal bud on his skin. To come upon him so suddenly, bare as a babe and radiantly beauteous, nearly incensed Elrohir, such that a thousand pricks of aftershock flared beneath his skin. He raked the length of him so roguishly that Legolas began to shift his weight from one leg to the other, whatever boldness that had brought him forth forgotten before those smoldering silver eyes. Yet the archer’s scintillating gaze was similarly drawn to the brawny frame before him, no drape of robe able to conceal the sinuous form beneath. Despite the shivers that still slithered over him, he licked his lips, barely able to conceal his desperate curiosity over how such a majestic creature might taste, might feel pressing down upon him.

“You’ve come early,” Elrohir remarked, with a casualness he little felt before such a gilded sprite as was his one. “I thought we had resolved to rest ourselves.”

“I could not rest,” Legolas insisted, shuddering with sufferance of his need. “I could not longer wait, when my every thought, wake or dreamed, was of you, Elrohir.”

There was such riled energy in his stance he looked about to pounce. His breaths came in quick, quavering gasps, the scalding stare of those flinty eyes enough to cinder the very robe rung from his shoulders. Remembering both his pledge to guide his fledgling love through this first, fearsome encounter and his overt control over the situation, he dropped the garment to the floor with a pluck at its clasp. If Legolas was gawking before, he was agape at the revelation of his resplendent peredhil form. His blue eyes shone with pure reverence, with such poignant emotion that Elrohir could not believe he had ever doubted the truth of the archer’s love for him.

As if beckoned forth by that adoring gaze, the elf-knight went to him. A soft hand was laid in the center of his chest, which then snaked down to gingerly tug off that regretful sarong. Yet their proximity proved too luring for the young prince, who did not spare him a moment to worship that nimble form. The gorgeous melt of skin on exquisitely bare skin made up for this egregious oversight such that they were both soon groaning in incredulity at the molten sensations this sudden embrace wrought within them, such that they could not long keep from heightening the experience by mating their hot mouths. Soon they were smearing, suckling, fondling with such abandon that one could be forgiven for mistaking them for longtime lovers, so attuned were they to their partner’s insinuations and impulses.

They sunk to the floor as if immersing themselves in a frothy tub. Staggering their legs so that Legolas sat upon his lap when he knelt, even as he plundered the far too luscious depths of his lover’s mouth Elrohir expertly maneuvered them into position for a slow, carnal grind. Wrapping his arms around his flush prince’s mid-section, his swiped the tip of his tongue over those pink petal lips to stop their kiss, then locked his wavering attention in with a commanding glint to his argent eyes. Once adamantly held, he did not allow even the fleetest glance about while he demonstrated how, with a gentle flex upwards, their hips would come together, thereby stroking their fiercely primed shafts into a raucous friction. Legolas bleat such at the first assay that he thought he might spend outright, but no sooner had he recovered than he seized Elrohir by the buttocks and wrenched them up again, then repeated the gesture until they were bucking up in furious concordance. His wood-elf upped the ante by searing kiss after breathtaking kiss to his mouth, until such a cry blast against his lips that he was nearly deafened by its ragged howl. His own climax was like a blaze through his loins, such that he would not have been shocked to discover he had spurt lava instead of cream.

In the aftermath, Legolas was sweetly as a drowsy child, snuggling his baking body tight into his arms and nuzzling his face into his clammy neck. He was giddied by the course of ecstasy through his lazy limbs; his skin glowing with a gauzy luminescence, as if lit from within by a star. He chuckled softly to himself as he fluttered kisses up his ear, across his jaw, his fingers already sneaking into the more scandalous areas of the elf-knight’s most languid person. Yet they were still slumped against the side of the bed, upon which he soon grappled them up. His eager one wasted no time in rolling atop him, so as better to peer down into his placid face with an impishness that became him too terribly well.

The archer lapped his lips apart, then tickled their tongues into a lively duel, as if not a chance at sensuality should be wasted. Soon, they were savoring each other anew, their fervor enhanced by the slick-slide of their sweaty bodies.

Twas here that Legolas’ experience in the love-arts took full possession, as he patiently and confidently sought to effect Elrohir’s most thorough undoing.

***

Slinking down from kiss-purpled neck to paw and nip at his peaked nipples, he marveled at the firmness of the elf-knight’s pectorals; how they resisted the pliancy of his tongue and how the graze of his teeth puckered the aureole, a roughness no maid would have endured. Yet Elrohir had no qualms about panting out his preference to aid Legolas in his rousing quest, as when he instructed the salivating archer to sip from his navel. The wood-elf had sought out a more elemental taste of his love, which he found when he licked the streaks of seed from his stomach, but the true test of him was yet to come.

He had sensed the heat simmering from Elrohir’s brutal erection as he had descended his body. Like a towering idol before which he would worship, he felt all the more impacted by the import of the moment as he fondled his elf-knight into an admirable tension, until he could not deny his lover the excruciating pleasure of this first suck. Legolas hoped beyond hope that the pleasure would indeed be comparable to excoriation of a carnal variety, not merely a torment he must bear through until his fledgling love mastered the nuances of technique. The swarthy shaft was certainly everything he remembered, imagined, had dreamed of countless times as he pummeled his own. He licked the oozing tip, the tart taste so delectable that he took the head between his lips and worried its fleshy slit with his tongue. He felt mesmerized mithril eyes bore into him, which he looked up to meet. A strange, eloquent fascination had come over his elf-knight, who encouraged him on with no more than a blink.

He measured his lover’s response by the force of his whimpering exhalations, until they were entirely overtaken by throaty, rambling moans. Some brief instructions were interspersed with a quick succession of huffs, twas upon their accomplishment that he began to writhe.

Even in his previous efforts, Legolas had never experienced such potent thrall as he did in pleasing his elf-knight. To lightly squeeze the very sacs from which his essence was sown, to take between his incisive teeth his tender, if swelled imposing, maleness, to drink in his musk in its purest form, to down a quart of the milk that could conceive another in his ethereal image… the archer found he could not quite reconcile himself to the profound emotion that razed up from his inner core when he provoked Elrohir’s blistering orgasm. The feeling was the ultimate in intoxication, more addictive than any herb about the wilds or any wine brewed from local vines. He wanted to break into a sprint and crow his achievement about the halls. If he were not so silly with pride, he may very well have done so. Indeed, twas well that Elrohir somehow regained his senses long enough to drag him up for a perversely beautiful kiss, for otherwise he may very well have said something stupefying in its arrogance.

By the gods, he loved the feel of him. The pull of him on his arms, the weight of him, his exotic scent and his velvety hair and his satiny, incandescent skin… just the thought of it was enough to make him spend!

Twas then that he became all too frantically aware of the throb of his own, fiendishly erect phallus, gouging into the soft of Elrohir’s thigh. The elf-knight noticed the intrusion, as well, for he grazed his fingertips up the underside, a smirk of appreciation quirking the ends of his lips. A wicked tongue traced the leaf-shaped rim of his pointy ear, nibbling the tip awhile, before the sultry voice of temptation itself urged him on to even coarser physicality.

“Will you have me, melethen?” Elrohir rasped hot against his cheek. “Will you take ownership now of what has ever been yours to possess? To move to your will alone? To love as your very own?”

With a soft brush over his lips and a quick pinch to his thigh, Elrohir slid off the bed. As he prowled about the shadowy room in search of some unknown prop, the strapping length of his feral form was caught in a lightening flare, his brilliant skin like a pyre of pure white flame. He snatched a vial from his pack, then stalked back over to the bed, each movement measured to achieve the maximum magma effect upon Legolas’ broiling loins. The generous spill of the honeyed oil over his lap was akin to basting a burn in butter; Elrohir’s sure, slicking strokes melded the salve with the thick streams of his seed drooling down his shaft.

Legolas thought that all the moisture in him had seeped down to his groin, when Elrohir lay his decadent self across the coverlet and instructed him to begin his preparation. Trembling as much at the thrill of it as the hesitation he too acutely felt, the archer smoothed his string-scarred fingers over those muscled flanks, over the meaty buttocks he’d so long admired. He could barely watch himself perform an act he’d imagined a thousand times, but never so tenderly as this. Indeed, the intimacy of the moment nearly daunted him, such that he began to quake in earnest, until Elrohir caught up his hands. He was wrapped in an embrace of undeniable power, then kissed calm with utmost gentility.

Twas then that he knew beyond certainty that he would do anything and everything to spoil this gallant creature of dark, sensual magnificence with every shade of his love.

“Perhaps we should enjoy something more playful, hm?” the elf-knight considered, pressing their faces close. “Our ambitions have surpassed our ardor.”

“Nay,” Legolas protested, easing him down onto his back. “I must have you soonest. I must know you, moren vain, before I go mad with wanting for you.”

Lost to the bedazzling smile that beckoned him forth, the most heartfelt, if silent, agreement he had ever seen, Legolas crawled over his elf-knight; who, to his enraptured eyes, had never looked so lovely than in this sensuous submission. Meeting this gaze with one of feeling, of fire, he clasped hold of his hips, then painstakingly sheathed himself in that giving, unctuous heat. He felt each one of his crude his senses align in an ancient synchronicity. His soul flame roared into an incendiary effulgence, sizzling through every cell of his body. As primordial as his need to scourge the land of the sickly shadowspawn was his passion for this brave spirit, was his innate and unbreakable vow to one day bind them in eternal love.

“By Elbereth!” he exclaimed, for he was yet too innocent of tongue to truly declare himself. “Tis as if we were made to fit one another.”

“Go gently, sweet one,” Elrohir whispered, his lush features mired in aching vulnerability. “Miren, Legolas. *Inden*.”

His breaths quickened as those endless legs looped around his waist, as arms twined with his own to hold him as he thrust. With every incensing penetration, he knew himself enflamed, conquered, glorious and golden; a lover of hallowed worth and a elf beloved.

He came to a shattering end, then collapsed into the doting arms of his immaculate elf-knight. Yet even after the coos and caresses, even after the shuddery sighs of blithe contentment, after the wreak of fever left him amusingly sluggish and Elrohir flirting with a luring catnap, there was but one, simple thought that captivated his bliss-drunk mind.

“More,” he insisted, then crept up to steal another dizzying kiss.

End of Part Three