Requiescence

Title: Requiescence – Part Four
Author: Gloromeien
Email: swishbucklers@hotmail.com
Pairing: Legolas/Elrohir
Summary: No matter how our two lusty elves may play, no amount of rutting will keep Thranduil at bay.
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.

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Requiescence – Part Four

Greenwood, Year 872, Third Age

The dream had come to plague him anew, both more vivid in its explicit images and more vicious in its gutting cruelty than before. He has suffered its scrapes and taunts with such demeaning frequency that it has bled into his days, but he knew himself to be sleeping, now, from the sparkling gauze that fringed his periphery.

The plot developed as if by rote, yet he never tired of its familiar flirtations, and they never failed to rouse him to wretchedness.

At the break of dawn, he lies in a tousled bed. He becomes aware of another, worming down beneath the bundles of sheets, to where he is most vulnerable. His faint rigidity swells to purple potency at the first swipe of his tiger-tongue, so called for its rough texture. No elven male nor maid ever spoke with such a weathered implement, so he wonders, as ever, if tis a mannish trait. Yet he pities their ignorance of a peredhil lover, for he would not forgo this treat for all the mithril in a dwarven trove. The tongue makes a meal of his wrought loins, moistening his thighs with its slithery laps, tenderizing his bollocks with its flattering nips, revering his member as the most savory of meats. Before long, he is thrashing, thrusting, anything to be devoured by that decadent mouth, which heaves steamy breaths over his most sensitive skins. He grapples for hold of that silky head as if to master it to his inflamed will.

To his delight, the half-elf with the ebony tresses is only too eager to comply, expertly teasing the slick bulb of his towering erection before swallowing down the stretch of scarlet flesh until there’s not an inch for his hands to clamp hold of. Not for him, the pretty licks and squeamish lashes of maids bred to be dainty even when prostrate before a prince; this one knows the gorgeous fury of a hard suck, relishes the curses this crazed carnality wrings from a warrior renown for his silent stealth. Every chance at eruption is smote by a brute tug on his bollocks, until the pleasure is so incensing he fears he’ll sweat blood. Yet those menacing hands have ample opportunity to maul his quivering rump, until he swears he’s ripe for cleaving.

A quick smack cracks the damn, and he bursts like a geyser, flooded with such rich swells of ecstasy that he can do naught but ride out the wild roll, of wave upon wave that washes over him, drenches him, nearly drowns him in bliss.

When his eyelids had sufficient energy to lift awake, ever did he discover himself alone, the all too willing victim of an overly potent imagination.

Yet on this morn, a rustle warned him wary even in his sluggishness, then softly arms enclosed him. Chuckles tippled up a raw throat, before pillowy lips pressed into the crook of his neck. A veil of that black satin hair brushed over his face as his red-rimmed eyes fluttered open, to greet with sudden astonishment a vision so unexpected, that Elrohir could only laugh aloud at his clear surprise.

“I am well here, melethen,” the elf-knight smirked, one peaked brown in full, Elrondian effect. “I have not yet absconded for uncharted realms, nor fled into the hinterlands. Not, in the very least, until I can stride without loping about! You will be pleased to know, my sprightly wood-elf, that you have rode me quite red with merciless using!”

Taking a long moment to acclimate himself to the incredible circumstances of his waking, his mind still a delightfully heady fugue of the ghostly sensations between his legs, Legolas peered up at his beloved with a lopsided smile of deep, unequivocal satisfaction. As memories of their scarlet night seeped back, he could not help but grin rather rakishly, until his eyes crinkled at the corners.

After a borderline scandalous supper, with Elladan all too intuitive as to what had transpired between them and with his own retorts laced with such base insinuations that their verbal sparring had entirely overtaken the youths’ conversation, Elrohir had been only too glad to drag him back to their bedchamber at the earliest convenience. As the night was stormy, this was soon enough, since most in the woodland realm were unnerved by the thunder and hastily sought out a cuddle with loved ones of their own. He had discovered that his darkling dear had not heard a word of their ribald exchanges over dinner, such was his barely masked transfixion with his fair beloved. Legolas had attempted to rile him with jesting over this, but to no avail. Elrohir’s rapt focus was on one target alone, his most thorough and plentiful undoing.

Yet he had set a more languid pace than their earlier fury, embarking upon an extensive exploration of Legolas’ prone, shivering form. He had then offered himself up for similar perusal, insisting that he be plied with a few of the massage techniques the archer had learnt from his first lady lover. How they had managed to rouse the fever within them after such emulsifying sensualities, he could not fathom, but their passion had proved near insatiable. They had made up for their endless years of absence all in one red, red night, his recollections of which were so intense that he feared he would commence another round, if he did not damper his simmering desires some. For this morn, though he later intended to pounce, he had an altogether more delicate agenda. Their furious lovemaking had forged them into a hotly enamored couple, but if their molten ore was to cool solid, then he had questions that needed explication and troths that begged to be declared.

The sweetness of his smile conveyed this to his elf-knight, who endeavored to position them with comfortable, intimate conversation in mind. Elrohir wove their lax limbs into a lazy tangle, resting his head in the nest of pillows so that he might better admire his gilded love. Their faces were so close that their breaths mingled into a delicious scent, which portended a kiss that they were in no hurry to indulge in. Indeed, they were quite content to bask in the other’s comeliness, the messy, blushing, and radiant charms of their beloved one, the morn after their first bedding. Yet within the argent pools of his darkling one’s eyes was a quaver of inquiry that had yet to be stilled, while Legolas found that some questions of his own were tickling up his tongue.

Nevertheless, twas perhaps best to begin with light assurances, for he knew only too well how Elrohir had fretted in his absence, over these last days in the wilds.

“I dreamt of you, melethen, even as we slept entwined,” the archer endearingly told him. “So essential are you to my serenity that even upon the celestial path I cannot be without you, miren. *Inden*, as you so dearly named me yestereve.” His voice was soon so thick with emotion that it could barely sweep the words he would utter forth. “I sense that you must hear it spoke to know the feeling true, so I will hasten to reveal my heart. I love you, Elrohir. I want none but you, forevermore.”

“*Legolas*,” he bleat, but could not say more. He shut his eyes, as if to quell the tide of feeling that threatened to drench their day in melancholy.

As Legolas would not allow him to remain so maudlin, if touched by his troth, with a tender kiss he tempered him, then with giddy licks and culls teased him back to playfulness. He was soon laughing sheepishly at his earlier severity, such that he dared a few nips at the archer’s neck, if only to conceal his pert cheeks awhile. Yet they did not dally long, for on such a languid morn they truly preferred mutual reverence to frolicking about. The course of love between them was of such power that to move overmuch was to court a wicked bout of vertigo. Better to relax in cozy complicity awhile, heartened by the other’s constant presence.

“Melethron?” Legolas queried, once the mood had eased. “May I ask a confidence of you?”

“Ask whatsoever you may will, my beauty,” Elrohir assured him. “I keep no secrets from your ear.”

Despite this openness, Legolas demurred some before charging ahead.

“Tell me, if I may be so bold,” he gently inquired. “Why did you leave me to be plucked by Nenuial, all those years ago? Why did you not seduce me yourself, and claim my virginity for your own?”

By his stillness, Elrohir was startled by the question. Legolas implicitly sensed the caution in his answer; indeed, he had never known him to be so tremulous, even in diplomacy.

“You did not favor me then,” the elf-knight whispered, as if in fear of his return.

“I favored no one,” Legolas remarked. “I knew so little of my own mind that I marvel at how I managed to go about the world without succumbing to the most debauched fiends about.”

“You were vulnerable, as you say,” Elrohir built upon his reflections. “So green of the world. So tender, despite your adventurous streak. I was meant to be your guide, your counsel…”

“Aye, and an admirable counsel you were,” Legolas agreed. “Yet I would have been heartened if you had sought to guide me in that most vital and precarious of lessons, as I have been thrilled this past night to finally enjoy the pleasures I have so long sought to learn of. In truth, I never could puzzle out why you gave me over to another’s care. I trusted you above all others. How I would have flourished in your arms!” When Elrohir winced at this last pronouncement, he knew he would have to tread far more lightly.

“You forget how innocent you were, Legolas,” he insisted, clearly struggling to quiet his spiked nerves. “Before I spoke of Ithandir, you knew naught of loving between males. To say naught of my loyalty to him, as my lover. Of your avowed preference of maids.”

“If I thought to bed with maids,” Legolas softly countered. “Twas only because, to my fledgling mind, they were the only option. Yet for all my wretched innocence, I sensed the conflict within you, Elrohir. Though twas only in later years that I came to understand its true nature, I knew at the time that you did not regard me chastely. Even if I had denied you entirely, which I do not think would have been the case… the seed would have been sown. Twould perhaps not have come to such a bountiful bloom, which would have been a considerable regret, but I would have begun to flower much sooner, and beneath the bright sun of your care.”

“Yet you said naught of these… these leanings,” Elrohir stammered, overcome by the blighting impact of his suggestions. “Even whence in Lorien, you spoke only of exploration. Of a dalliance.”

“I could hardly insinuate that we couple before Elladan,” Legolas responded. “In truth, I was as confused as I was dismayed, daunted by the honor with which you ever respected our friendship and my confidence. When I say that I would have lain with you back in Imladris of old, I do not mean that I concealed a desire for you, Elrohir. Indeed, I could not even brand my feelings with the mark of desire until much later. If you would have presented me with the possibility of such a relation, then I feel I would have responded well to it. Otherwise, it took me a great number of years – indeed, centuries – before I first recognized this potential within myself, then resolved to act upon it. Even then… I was unsure of your own feelings on the matter. As such, I thought it best to gradually appraise you of my attentiveness to your person, then to see if you approached me. I held no certitude of you doing so. Indeed, the circumstances of our eventual assay proved so traumatic for you that you retreated anew. My only chance was to lure you with the promise of a softer emotion, which I then realized that I felt, and most intently at that.” Legolas let out an extended sigh, somewhat upset at himself for even proposing the subject, as Elrohir looked nothing less than deeply wounded. “I do not mean to condemn any of your most honorable, most kindly and gallant actions towards me, moren vain. I simply came, through our years apart, to wonder… at what might have been.”

“Do you reproach me for choosing thusly?” Elrohir murmured, unable to stifle the shake in his voice.

“Nay, certainly not!” Legolas underlined. “I know now that you could not have done ought than what you did. You would not be my most valiant, my most tender and most compassionate elf-knight if you had tempted me into a seduction. Tis merely… well, perhaps tis but a fantasy of mine, to think of you tasting my virgin flesh… to know your touch and no other’s through the endless span of my life.”

With a smirk that infinitely comforted the archer, Elrohir retorted: “I hardly think that would have been the case during our prolonged periods of distance, with you in the rabid prime of adolescence.”

“Indeed,” Legolas chuckled to himself, glad that their ease had returned. “Yet for all the wanton that I was, I could not shake the thought of you. With some of the more silly maids, the fervor I managed to conjure was entirely fuelled by my baser imaginings of our time together.”

By his clever-eyed countenance, Elrohir was mightily intrigued by this revelation.

“Verily?” he asked rhetorically, as Legolas had just confirmed the notion. “You thought of me when you coupled with maids?”

“Aye, from the first,” Legolas conceded, rather pleased with the pique this inspired in his lover. “Even as Nenuial plied my aching flesh with her mouth, I thought of your kindness in courting her for me. Indeed, this made me spend far too quickly! I became somewhat distraught, as I had nearly choked her with my spurt of seed, so she bade me think of a calming influence. I imagined your face, smiling with approval, then your arms enclosed around me. When finally I made to enter her, I conjured your hand clutched around my shaft, aiming me, aiding me to measure my thrusts. I remembered our adventures as I rode her, of the intensity I felt when we sparred.” The memories themselves made his loins flare, but he resolved to see the conversation through. “In later years, I thought of you more and more to effect my end, regardless of who I was currently bedding, until I could not finish myself without.”

With a groan of impassioned regret, Elrohir called on the gods to witness his frustration.

“Elbereth!” he exclaimed. “To think of how I ached over even the meekest insinuation, when there you were appealing to my imagination whence in your throes.”

“In thrall, aye,” Legolas amended. “Yet also when alone. Ever have I been quite bodily affected by the intensity of your presence, whether out of admiration, affection, or quickening desire. You even roused me once, upon one of your many visits, though unawares.”

“Tell me the tale,” Elrohir beckoned him, feeling rather amorous himself suddenly. “How did I rouse you?” He cinched his lithe archer all the closer, languishing decadently in the smooth of skin on skin.

“Do you recall our last Greenwood meeting before the contest in Lorien?” Legolas reminded him. “The afternoon just days before your departure, when Tonduil came back from patrol mortally injured? You quite wisely drew me away from his sickbed after a relentless vigil, down to the meadow and into the solace of your arms. I fell asleep with my head on your lap, and you were soon to follow. Yet I was not entirely peaceful. I woke on the cry of a dove in the trees, which I thought a bad omen. As I attempted to settle back into repose, I instead found your proximity quite… possessing. I stiffened to the point of pain, such that, after nearly an hour of praying that my engorgement would abate, I knew their was nothing to be done but bring myself forth. Yet I was far too proud to have you discover me pleasuring myself, so I toddled down to the riverside, but your spirit and your scent came with me. I spent moaning your name, wanting nothing more than to shake you from slumber and to beg you to use me. Twas then that I knew that I had to somehow convince you to lie with me, though twas some years yet before I thought on how.”

“Yet to our immeasurable benefit,” Elrohir grinned, with a telling wolfishness. “Your pursuit brought about an infinitely more valuable relation. Though how I wish I could have eased your ache that day in the meadow! Indeed, you are quite precocious to dangle such a treat before me, though I do suspect you of far more devious intentions. Such as your own imminent undoing.”

“Effective immediate, I do hope,” Legolas met his lurid grin with a smirk of his own. In truth, he was strung tight as breech laces on bog-scullers, his youthful exuberance far too sprightly to long bear through such bawdy tales.

“Perhaps,” the elf-knight dangled mysteriously before him, pricked by his own, oft-overlooked sense of mischief. “Though the sensual scenarios imagined by your unconscious mind do tempt even one so sage as myself to pose my own series of provocative questions.” To his slight dismay, Elrohir settled onto the pillows with such opulent repose as if to hear a grand tale recounted. “Would you not, lirimaer, care to regale me with the telling of one of your more scarlet dreams? I would be *most grateful* of any efforts you were to expend as a result. One might even say… devoted to your extended and explicit compensation.”

Under his ebony lover’s smoldering gaze, Legolas couldn’t quite time the measure of his breaths. He was suddenly aware of how brashly he had spoke, of a control and of a design to his sexual maturity that he little felt beneath those enrapturing eyes; to which he had laid claim, in impish innocence, when an elf of wealthy experience lay before him. Their molten mithril depths warned of a scorch he could not yet even fathom, of a fission so elemental, so erotic possible between them, that he would rue the morn he dared imply that ever he had wanted the elf-knight. That he had not even begun to want, to keen, to burn under the touch of his beloved one.

That an altogether more primal lesson was well underway, this dulcet morn in the Greenwood.

With a raw swallow, he rallied his courage, then gave of his most intimate self.

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

Two Months Later

With the wriest of smirks, Elladan deliberately focused his attentions on removing his boots, and especially not on the couple embracing by the bedside. Indeed, he counted himself fortunate that his brother had deigned to dress himself in a loose, diaphanous robe, for both we becoming particularly renown for their casual nudity when in private quarters. The Prince of Greenwood, however, felt no such obligations to propriety, so when Elrohir finally glided over to his lounge chair, temporarily sated of glutinous kisses, he continued to putter about their bedchamber as bare as on his birthing day.

Elladan found he could do naught but let out a snort of amusement, lest they note the flicker of envy in his eyes.

“By Elbereth, Elrohir, your wiles have fashioned him a wanton,” he taunted, to which Legolas responded with an indignant huff of his own.

“Is it so base for an elf to embrace his natural element?” he countered, shooting him an imperious glance through the mirror. “Whence in the presence of his lover, or other intimates.”

“Tis but a streak of vanity, I assure you,” Elrohir replied to his twin, but teased Legolas. “A wood-elf has his prides. Yet he is such a sultry creature, by the gods, I have no just complaints. Indeed, if he could thusly flounce about the day long, I would do naught but play herald to his forthcoming, singing his praises through the halls and the glades with the most eloquent song that could ere be intoned.”

“You sing it nightly, peredhil, in keens and moans,” Legolas grinned, at his wolfish best. “If they could bear my witness, every wall that encloses us would second me.”

“Yet walls in themselves cannot contain your ardor,” Elladan reminded them. “Already there are whispers among the servants, though they are far more discreet here than in Imladris. To say naught of the gardeners’ tales of naked elves streaking through the treetops.”

As if he had not gleaned even a tremor of forewarning in his brother’s tone, Elrohir brimmed with unquenchable excitement at the mention of their exploits in the world above ground.

“Tis wicked thrilling, I tell you,” he avidly related. “Legolas has been instructing me on how to move through the high branches, speedily and undetected, a skill I have long wished to acquire. You *must* climb up with us one afternoon, toren! At first, the gracious birches must bear through your trips and tumbles, but once you fall into rhythm with their rustles, billows, and sways, you fly from bough to bough with ease. To so befriend the kindly forest, to trust in the wood to which we elves are supposedly so attuned, is to experience such serenity…”

As his words drifted off, so did his eyes seek out his lover, who had paused his boot-polishing to lock their eyes in fervent complicity. Elladan ruefully shook his head at his incorrigible companions.

“Is the shedding of one’s raiment vital to the enjoyment of this unsurpassable experience?” he quipped, to which Legolas snickered and Elrohir had the decency to blush.

“Only in the dearest company,” the elf-knight smiled, mostly to himself, though he did force his twinkling eyes back upon his brother.

Elladan was rather struck by the peacefulness he found there, and so hastened to declare the news he had brought them.

“Yet I imagine even embroiled in a fever such as yours,” he casually remarked. “Twould be advisable to bare only the most necessary patches of skin, when frost comes. Else you may very well remain frozen there the winter long.”

Legolas was the first to glean on his implied meaning.

“You will stay the winter?!” he exclaimed, waging a loosing battle against all-too-evident relief, as well as the sudden impulse to launch himself into his lover’s arms and ravish him before his brother’s studious air of resignation.

Elrohir, for his part, let out a blustery breath, his eyes shut to stop tears from beading there. Yet Legolas was far too lively a spirit not to meander over to them, insistent upon some affection to mark the moment. With a twirl in celebration, he nimbly landed beside his lover, then proceeded to cloak him in the body he had so well praised earlier. With a repentant look at his twin, Elrohir begged his permission to indulge, which Elladan was only too glad to give. As silent audience, he marveled once again at the endearing effluence of the love that coursed between his brother and the Greenwood prince; a sacred, replenishing emotion that he could not in his darkest hour reproach them.

Though they were yet hopelessly tipsy with that first rush of intoxication, still blushing at each other across crowded halls and giddily besotted when in private quarters, he could already sense a maturity to their togetherness, a permanence inherent to those who had found the love of their forever mate. As a pair of gallants, they were unerringly honorable in their mutual respect, though rather potently enraptured by the swoon of an ageless romance. The fever they felt in intimate moments was balanced by a rather adorable bashfulness when in comfortable company, as both were yet somewhat daunted by the realities of social interaction as a confirmed couple. Yet this little deterred them from lavishing each other with extravagant affections, as Legolas was prone to impudence when he was denied something essential to him and Elrohir was far too giving a soul to possibly forgo spoiling his beloved wretched with his care.

To wit, his brother had been far more cautious with his tongue than was the norm. The few scraps of information he had about their sexual leisure came mostly from Legolas, who could not speak to any of his familiars of his relations with his elf-knight and so oft sought Elladan’s implicit understanding. Yet even these were framed by the strictures of first discovery, an innocent’s awe at his body’s strengths, skills, and endurance. He had also gleaned more than a few notions of the heat of their lovemaking from direct observance, accidental though these glimpses may have been. Indeed, that very morn Elrohir had summoned him to his chambers far too early, for he and Legolas, in the waiting interim, had most emphatically returned to their pleasures. Elladan had awaited their climactic moans before knocking at their door, but even from the corridor he was treated to an earful. When he did finally stride through the entranceway, he found them caressing flirtatiously as they cleaned themselves of their expenditures; hardly the casual greeting that was expected. Yet he had admired them, gilded as they were with afterglow, though it had required some stealthy corralling to draw his brother over to their lounge seats.

His duty as Erestor’s messenger, however, was not entirely amenable to their bounty of bliss. While Thranduil had been more than accommodating to the young couple in his ignorance of their relation, their exploits were becoming far too brazen to ensure their continued concealment from his at times all-seeing eyes. If their secrecy was to outlast the winter, they would have to rein in their ardor a considerable amount, especially since there would be no complicit woods in which to hide, nor a meadow’s resplendent green to gamble through. A stone palace was a stir of echoes beneath the damping blanket of snow, to say naught of Thranduil’s tendency to pace the halls, cursed with his own taciturn, impatient brand of his son’s noted exuberance.

The lovers had at last emerged, albeit with visible reluctance, from their embrace.

“I must bathe,” Legolas excused himself, but not before a last, lingering kiss. “My King has ordered my attendance to one of his anesthetic councils. As he has given me leave from duty until springtime, I must thusly appease him every so often. Such is bartering with a testy monarch.”

“Catch us up at the stables, if you’re released before evening,” Elladan told him. “We’ve promised to flatter our horses with an extensive manicuring.”

“Virgor and Istathel are fortunate, indeed,” Legolas answered cheekily. “To received the doting attentions of the twin princes of Imladris for an entire afternoon! Would that I were so blessed, this day.”

“Night will see you supple, I assure you,” Elrohir smirked, with a nip at his ear. “Best not keep your father waiting overlong.”

“Aye, you are rank with using,” Elladan snarked, to which Legolas replied with a crude gesture, before toddling off to the bathing chamber. His brother laughed quietly to himself, lost in appreciation of that sinuous backside. Once the impish prince was out of earshot, he veered his conversation towards more carnal inquiries. “Does he still resist you mounting him?”

Elrohir sighed, then struggled to respond diplomatically, as was ever his wont.

“We have advanced some, in our bed-play,” he explained. “He allows me to pleasure him with tongue and enter him with carefully slicked fingers… But, aye, he yet fears total penetration, though he would be loathe to admit this vulnerability. Indeed, I believe tis his pride that keeps him from succumbing entirely to his passion, though he does lust for taking in his dreams, so I know that he desires it. Yet he revels in every act we undertake, so he does not lack for enthusiasm.”

“Still, he would forgo the greatest of pleasures,” Elladan gently noted. “Out of arrogance, no less.”

“An arrogance bred in him from infancy,” Elrohir defended his lover. “A considerable stricture to overcome. The royals of Greenwood are renown for their plays of power, why should its youngest prince be any less convinced by the triumph he has witnessed since his earliest years? Even if he deplores his Adar’s manner, he cannot help but exhibit these tendencies in his own relations.” The elf-knight reconsidered his own words, then ventured a theory. “I do not believe that he will succumb to me here in Greenwood. He is too close to his brothers, to his guard, to his family’s vigilant watch over him. Even if they should know of our relations, he would be able to boast that he bests me into submission. Which, by troth, suits me well enough. Tis no secrecy that I enjoy a lover’s dominance, and Legolas’, tempered by our deep affection, is doubly sweet. I am wholly content in every aspect of our loving, Elladan, fear not.”

“Yet I do fret over your happiness, toren,” he insisted, with a soft look. “Not overmuch in the realm of satisfaction, but in that of safety. We are in a foreign land. You are romancing not only a beloved prince, but the youngest in the fold. Your secret relation cannot outlast the winter, Elrohir. You must declare yourselves to the King, before he discovers your intimacy through his own efforts.”

“He likes his delusions too well to discover us,” Elrohir countered.

“You are hardly slaves to discretion,” Elladan reminded him. “Only one advisor is required to spoil you to him. He is far more dedicated to maintaining appearances, even in his own house, than to gentling the blow his anger will strike upon you. Legolas may be bold of spirit, but I doubt he is prepared to weather banishment from his own realm at such an early stage of your relation. Do not be deceived, toren. That would be the price. If you love him as you say, you will do all in your power to protect him from such a sacrifice.”

This counsel struck hard upon the elf-knight, who was seized by a shudder of repulsion at the image this flared in his mind.

“I love him far more than I could ever say, even in the most vaulted praise,” Elrohir whispered, more as an evocation of his pledge to Legolas than as a reminder to his twin. “I take your advisement to heart, Elladan, and will discuss such measures this very eve with my spirited prince.” The oath of his sensible brother was proof enough, to the elf-warrior, of his willingness in this, as such he relaxed further into his spongy seat and took a draught of mead from his cup. Yet no force in Arda could have prepared him for the following challenge to his own inner tranquility, in the form of an inquiry so baldly stated that not even the most cunning retort could avert its acuity. “And what of your own suit, toren?”

“My *suit*?” Elladan asked in return, though he knew very well of his brother’s poorly camouflaged meaning.

“For the hand of our sage advisor and childhood tutor?” Elrohir persisted, ignoring the look of palpable consternation that had suddenly creased his twin’s brow. “Though I have been somewhat preoccupied of late, even from casual observance, I find your modest approach is most clever. Typical of such an expert tactician, this devising to enrich your friendship through prolonged nightly debates at the King’s table and colluding in his diplomatic feints by acting as his secretary throughout the treaty negotiations. To say naught of how you insist on his daily exercise, arranging for a stroll, a ride, or a swim to invigorate him each morn, while thereby stealing a chance to spend a private moment in casual complicity. But I am most impressed by your ambitions, Elladan. Convincing the King to hold celebrations for the winter solstice, merely to honor the feast day held most sacred by Erestor’s shipwright ancestors? A remarkable feat! One that emphasizes both your knowledge of obscure Beleriand lore and your respect for the traditions that move our dear friend.”

“Yet tis all for naught,” the elf-warrior glowered, though still rather stunned by how shrewdly his brother had been monitoring his progress. “For he has come to revere the wood-elves for their hardiness and efficiency. He is constantly commenting on how admirable their ordered society is, from their intimate relationship with the forest at large to the fluidity of their caste system, where even the princes are treated as regular, affable elves. How he gawks after the guards by the palace gates as we pass through, to say naught of his meticulous appreciation of the hindquarters of the chief forester. I’ve little doubt that, come the accursed solstice, they will dally together.”

“Then why do you not dally, in turn?” Elrohir considered. “Prove to him that you are a capable charmer, that perhaps he has missed someone genuinely priceless? I’ve no doubt that you can entice him, all the while wooing another – perhaps even one of the delectable morsels that he himself desires. Erestor is at his most unsettled when his mantle is challenged, whether in matters of intellect, diplomacy, or seduction. He would much rather trump one of mastery, than one who has been all too easily mastered.”

“I do not wish to best him, toren,” Elladan woefully responded. “I feel too softly towards him to have him choose me merely from spite.”

“Once he has so chosen,” Elrohir countered. “He will find he has no choice but to adore you. Once you are bedded, he will see his way to your eternity.”

“But what if he suffers no such revelation?” Elladan insisted, with such tremulous vulnerability that his brother was struck dumb. “What if I am doomed to an unrequited love?”

As if only to intensify his ache, Elrohir could fathom no realistic reply for him. Instead, he segued over to his twin’s side, then curled them up into a consoling bundle as ably as when they were elflings. With soft coos, he pet his brother’s head, then offered a pointed wisdom.

“If the Lady can divine a relation between an irrepressible wood-elf and a stoic peredhil,” he offered his desolate twin. “Then I cannot imagine she would deny a grandchild of the Mariner himself the love of a noble shipwright’s son.”

With this heartening truth in mind, Elladan gave himself over to his brother’s care.

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

The glare of the sun was unsparingly hot at such a vertiginous altitude, yet the vantage over the realm was unsurpassed. Legolas was sure that the construction of his Adar’s study was intended both to impose the breadth of his dominion upon the dizzy delegations that he invited onto his balcony and to distract them from the resolutions he would insist upon in their fraught negotiations, but he felt only awed anew by the breathtaking beauty of his homeland. While more accustomed to such daunting heights than those unfortunate foreigners, he was somewhat rattled by his father’s insistence that he, and not the latest bumbling clods from Lake Town, be the one to share a mug of the bitter bean-brew with his sire late that afternoon.

The day had been pearly fair for the withering end of autumn. A crystalline layer of frost had crusted the branches that morn, though Anor had dawned lustrous, remote. Only so far above ground did she rightly burn; otherwise, the lawn crunched and the paths cracked, as the wood-elves about donned their winter cloaks to protect from the prickly chill. As Legolas had spend his day in a musty council chamber, he had not remarked the newly frigid season, and so was rather grateful for the scalding heat emanating from his thick-hewn clay mug, though the brew was no more appetizing to him. He had a fondness for tart tastes, but bitterness he had no palette for, so with reluctance he sipped at the hot liquid in hopes that his shivery tongue would ignore the coffee’s sting. The vile, ochre-colored brew was his Adar’s only concession to Haradin cuisine, though where he had first sampled such a beverage Legolas could not rightly say. His father was not prone to even such incidental revelations about his past travels, much to the regret of his avidly interested sons.

Legolas did not dislike his sire so much as he felt no great affinity with him. He was as distant and as brilliant as the sun that afternoon; as such Legolas admired him, but did not much understand him – nor did he earnestly strive to. Intimacy with his children was anathema to Thranduil’s notions of his enjoyment of them. He viewed them as premium servants to the realm and to the people he loved so well. Better and more visibly, at times, than his own obedient brood. He was a generous, spirited monarch, a paternal figure to the elves he strived every waking moment to protect, to see endure. Yet with his sons, he was foremost a disciplinarian, molding their character through tempered praise and cutting reprimands. He fretted after their health, but only insofar as it serviced his ambitions for them, their viability as future leaders and their potential as captains of his army. His only weakness was his abundant and endearing love for his queen; indeed, twas through his sheepish displays in her hallowed presence that they had come to know some little of his heart.

Legolas had certainly not proved half as troublesome, in his growing, as Lasgaren his elder brother, but still he presently felt the most at odds with his sire, at pains to prove his loyalty to the realm, his allegiance to their people, and his valor as their champion. His sprightly and overcurious nature oft sat ill with one as suspicious of foreigners as Thranduil, who still struggled with the memory of his own Adar’s untimely demise on the Battle Plain of Dagorlad. While the King’s relationship with the Noldor, particularly Elrond, was of steely politeness, Legolas’ fondness for the sons of the Peredhel was accepted by his father with considerable reluctance; more to save himself from insulting his lady wife, who was cousin to Celebrian, rather than from any gross notion of his son’s intuition in such stately matters. The King, in turn, treated Legolas alternatively as an innocent, an upstart, or an afterthought, as if barely able to reconcile himself with his maturity, come so many centuries ago. He betrayed no hint of fondness for him, yet was occasionally prone to fits of overbearing, though he was later as likely to send him scouting in the most treacherous reaches of the forest as he was to force his shelter in a rainstorm. The young prince could not make heads or tails of such spotty treatment, and so resigned himself to compliance insofar as this suited him, for history proved that he was quite capable of evading his father’s reach, if needed be.

He had wondered, in light of recent developments in his personal relations, if his Adar would find him out. A slight part of him thrilled at the thought that he might very well do so, an even slighter part was dampened by the notion that he might not particularly care, if he did. While Legolas had had mind only to love, not to defy, when he had engaged Elrohir, he was not so foolish as to discount that the two came part and parcel with an inherently secret amour. As he had come to recognize that their assay in erotic attraction would eventually overcome every aspect of his being, that he was destined to devote himself to his peerless elf-knight for eternity long, he had felt all the more ensnared by his filial duty to the Silvan tribe, all the more stifled by his sire’s strictures on his innate sense of adventure. He was not some sparrow to be caged, until its roving proved useful as the bearer of a speedy message. He was an elf of pure blood, interested in all aspects of their culture and enchanted by every division of their kind. If such spirited embrace of their celebrated differences shunned him from the bosom of Greenwood, from the coddling of its King, then so be it.

Yet as brash as he might be in thought while waiting for his Adar’s overture, as he sucked back deeper and deeper gulps of the foul brew, his nerves were atwitter. Whether what followed would be yet another caution against too intent complicity with the Sons of Elrond or an outright forbidding of the continuance of his relations with Elrohir would remain to be too bluntly discovered. Regardless, his worth as a lover and his devotion as a mate would be earned in the coming hour, for he could not retain his honor as a suitor to his elf-knight if he did not presently effect a blatant defiance of his Adar’s wishes, by announcing their intimacy and by evidencing his blithe love for his darkling one.

“By the light on this fine day,” Thranduil began, interrupting his fraught reflections. “One might believe this an immortal autumn.”

“Tis indeed a day of uncommon fairness,” Legolas piously remarked. “Greenwood has never looked so jewel-like in luster, as if the boughs were fashioned from our mithril stores and the leaves gilded by the Lady herself.”

“A pity that such a glorious day saw us enclosed,” the King sighed, pensive. “But a monarch’s duty does not wait on woodland strolls.” This last fell not on deaf ears, but on a piqued prince, who sensed the direction their conversation veered towards and prepared to fight against the current. “I have seen little of you away from table, Legolas. Enjoying your respite, no doubt.”

“I have been, aye, Adar,” he truthfully replied, then added the necessary gratitude. “My thanks for your indulgence.”

“You’ve your Nana to thank for the leave,” Thranduil informed me. “Though even one so wily as she had no thought of the Half-Elf’s ultimate design to reunite you with his comely son. Tis my steward’s observance that you have taken quite a liking to him. A liking of unfortunate intensity, if his reports are of doubtless accuracy, as they are.” With a brute stare, he faced him straight. “You’ve tumbled into his bed like the tipsiest of maids. Though tis little wonder, as the Noldor are unsurpassed in cunning. In craft. He is renown as an able seducer, though even I was stunned to learn that you of all, Legolas, had succumbed, after your impressive toppling of every one of our serving maids, a record that nearly bests even your brother’s wildness. I had dared hope you were not so dually inclined as he. It appears that even I can be mistaken.”

“Indeed, you are quite wrongheaded in most of your assumptions,” Legolas retorted. “Though *I* hardly expected compassion.”

“Well, then, for you will receive none,” the King grunted, then appeared to compose himself into a state of simmering menace. “Yet I am not so dull as to command you to cease this abomination, for I know well how badly you take the leash, so I will allow you your bed-play if it will somehow tame this strident streak of yours. Rut yourself silly with the rogue, I care not. You will learn your lessons regardless of my intervention.”

“Yet you must somehow intervene,” Legolas countered, mirthless.

“Only to remind you of the shadow’s rise among us,” the King played his trump card. “Of the withering of your beloved wood and of the diminution of our forest sanctuary, to say naught of our people’s hope, which rests on you, ioneth. Tis the burden of your birthright, and no amount of ecstasy will scorch it from your skin. Follow the Prince of Imladris back to his brethren, abandon your homeland on a whim of lust, and you will be no son of mine. The spring will see this relation’s end, else you best not ever return here. Am I understood?”

“Most explicitly, sire,” Legolas nodded obediently, then shucked the remains of his mug over the railing. He smashed the cup on the balcony floor, its razor shards spilling over the ledge. His adamant eyes bore into his Adar’s imposing stare, though the King betrayed not a hint of surprise. “I trust you are similarly prepared to weather the curse of my banishment. For you will roar through the first few years with mighty bluster, the ruin of everyone you meet, but eventually you will be out of wind and then the grief will bite. I will dance with delight as it feasts upon you, for there is no sacrifice too great to keep me from my beloved’s arms, not kingdom, nor minions, nor wood that has succored me so well. I am a Prince of Greenwood, Ada, if not in principle than in practice. I do not barter over my emotions, nor do I traffic with malcontents. I am my own, first and forevermore.”

With a smirk at his last glower, he feigned a curtsey, which finally earned him his father’s ire. The King bellowed after him as he stormed through the study, but Legolas resolved to let him stew awhile. While he silently begged forgiveness of his naneth for so riling the mate she would no doubt have to smother some, he was not too apologetic, even by proxy. Certainly one as fiery as his Adar musts be a veritable inferno of passion, with his anger broiling hot.

They would both burn off the repression of their rage in the molten bed of their forever mate.

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

In the gilding glow of the lantern, he stalked across the hay-strewn planks of the loft, his lithe form casting the faintest of silhouettes on the fieldstone wall of the stable. The crunch-clop of hooves from the stalls below was echoed in the vigorous stomp of his formal boots as he paced, relentless, whilst recounting the trials of his afternoon. Nested in a downy pile of hay and lulled into an avid tranquility by its briny scent, Elrohir gave sage audience to his distempered beloved, who was striding into his third hour of after-dinner ranting with a cantankerous revision of his quarrel with his Adar-King.

Elrohir barely recognized the blaze of elf before him; the pristine countenance was the same but the inner fire was lit ferocious, with a passion and a self-possession he’d not known in his wood-elf before. One raising look could have immolated an entire realm, but even such an incendiary regard flared only against the insidious corruption inherent to his Adar’s rule, in hot vigilance over the flourishing bloom of their love. Twas as if a lily patch was guarded by the flaming logs of a sacred pyre, an incandescent conflagration of ancient transcendence. Such was the righteous burn of his beloved this night, the glorious effulgence of his purest heart.

Despite the all too evident rage within his sterling prince at what he darkly colored an outright betrayal, Elrohir implicitly understood that each growl, each curse was uttered as an unwitting troth, as a tribute to the enduring love that consumed his very soul. After this indefatigable display of devotion, the elf-knight would need no further proof that so many concerns he had harbored over these last weeks were frivolous, at best. He had won; exultantly and irrevocably conquered the thriving heart of Greenwood from beneath the scoffing nose of her imperious King. While he took some feeble pleasure in this interpersonal defeat of such a daunting foe, he was not fool enough to rest on his laurels.

Their future was far from assured. Elrohir was too shrewd a diplomat not to recognize the burden of such a weighty decision upon the sturdy, yet not adamantine shoulders of his still tender one. While Legolas had so far demonstrated remarkable resilience in the bearing of such an abject severance of his already fraying filial bond with his demanding father, the wound was not only bloody fresh, but the pain was dulled by the scorch of his ire. As a result of his spiritual emancipation, his prince had molted of his last layer of innocence, had shed his youthful skin to reveal the seasoned, mature hide of secret scars beneath. Despite its scoring, this could still be bruised, still be slit, especially by one who knew exactly where to strike. Elrohir held his Greenleaf’s impulsiveness too dear not to realize how this threatened the honor and the propriety of their own behavior, which must from now be as immaculate as a field of driven snow. Indeed, his smoldering advent into the stables late that afternoon, post battle, already warned the elf-knight as to how alluringly seductive his young love could be, as to how his own distraction could be so effectively undertaken if he was caught unawares by one who inspired every beat of his heart.

He had been nearly done with grooming the wet, mottled hairs of Virgor’s hide, when sinuous arms had encircled his bare chest from behind. After a delectably deviant snarl had purred against his ear, the pinch of teeth had gnawed and nibbled at the pointed tip until he had sagged back against the limber, muscled frame of his wood-elf, who clearly intended to devour him whole if he did not succumb to his roguish gropes. Yet he had been only too eager to give himself over to using, for the gouge of Legolas’ ripe bulge between his leather-clad buttocks made his blood course thick, unctuous as the molten pour of magma through his veins. Barely had he lolled his swoony head back on that hard shoulder, when his breeches were ripped open and his erection seized in an iron fist. He had then been pounded, with raw, relentless power, to a violent spending, a steaming mouth alternatively suckling and biting at the sensate skin of his neck.

This, however, was but the overture. When, still dripping seed, he’d whipped back to slam a kiss onto the suck-violet lips of his insurgent lover, the fever of his wanton culls were gorgeously enhanced by the grind of a wrought shaft into his sweat-drenched navel. By the mad plundering of his mouth, his wood-elf had wanted nothing less than to claim him, with fiercely art, against the horse itself if need be. Shoving him off with a wicked smirk, Elrohir had strut over to the stall’s divide, bared his backside in full, taut-skinned eclipse, then braced himself against the middling shelf. Before long, he was being cleaved so surely, so forcefully, his inner core mined in this most breathless of sports, that he could only bray with wolfish savagery the name of his possessor. Thrice did he spray the canvass of varnished planks with itinerant, ecstatic spurts before he himself was filled by a raucous spending, his lover so thrashed by the fury of their fusing that he summarily collapsed onto his back, not a supportive bone left him.

Elrohir had carried his woozy Legolas up to the loft, where he had whispered of his angry afternoon, every phrase simmering with contempt. The elf-knight had known that he would soon ignite anew, but he had expected it would be with renewed passion. Instead, Legolas had eventually sprung up to his feet, far too riled to do ought but pace as he spat out invectives, vulgarities, and condemnations.

The Son of Elrond, for his part, was content to observe him thus, as aroused by the crack of his wit as he was patiently awaiting the opportunity to soften him some with wisdom. Yet, even in the serenity of his languor, he could not help but admire the strapping figure before him, honeyed from their earlier carnalities and glistening with streams of sweat. His brute-cut torso was a thing of devastating elegance, yet every flex of skin over his meticulously defined muscles heralded his newfound virility. Just the snake of sinew down his arm as he balled a fist was enough to heavy his tongue, to say naught of the adamant spike between his legs, that speared further skywards with every fuming step. He strode ever forth with leonine majesty, his mane swishing like a gossamer mantle as he lashed back on his path. He was such a vibrant specimen that Elrohir could not keep himself from teasing his rigid, exposed shaft into a rosy swell, yet he was careful to tame his urgency so that he might effectively counter any argument foist upon him.

The irate archer instantly marked even this gentle motion, and came to a resounding halt.

“Have you not attended to a word of my discourse?!” he demanded, his cheeks as flush with desire as they were with upset.

“I could recite the livid spew by rote, melethen,” Elrohir assuaged him in a considered tone. He sat up in his hay patch, laying off his pleasure for the moment. “Whether screamed to the heavens or muttered in aggravation, the song remains patently the same, as does the fraught circumstance of our togetherness. Yet here we are, together, free to love as we would. Why not indulge ourselves, and let the winter unfold as it will?”

“The spring will see us parted, Elrohir!” Legolas exclaimed, with no little irritation at his lover’s complacence.

“Not a sprightly wood-elf, nor a learned peredhil,” Elrohir opined. “Is blessed enough to divine the will of the gods above. The winter’s thaw may see the melting of a certain icy heart in our favor, if we behave with dignity befitting the sacred love between us. That does not mean that we may not indulge in the occasional bout of mischief. I am also far from prepared to prove my heart’s worth to a king who seems to have mislaid his own. Yet you, miren; your regard and your devotion is worth every respect I can grant. If we act as a longtime couple, Legolas, then we will be believed as one. No force in Arda could separate us, in heart, in soul, if we are resolved to behave admirably.”

The woodland prince digested this will the first sign of his renown affability Elrohir had seen all day.

“We may be parted,” he weakly protested, yet twas clear that this point pricked him deep.

“We *will* be parted,” the elf-knight insisted. “If not come springtime, then intermittently through the long years of struggle to smite the Shadow. We are warriors, who must defend whichever realm to which we pledge allegiance. Even if you give your sword to Imladris, that is no guarantee that we need not subsist through perhaps decades of prolonged separation. Only the Lady herself can foresee what perils and challenges the final hour will summon forth. But fear not, melethron, for my love is set in you. I care not what calamity befalls us, I am yours alone. Yet I would take my pleasures whilst I may. Come to me, inden... I would burn with that fire within you. I would that our loves flame as one.”

With a devout nod, Legolas strode forth, until he stood, an opalescent colossus, above his darkling lover. He tangled lissome fingers through those sheathes of shimmering ebony hair, flicked his bottom lip with a playful thumb. Yet those iridescent eyes pined for the scorch of that plump mouth on his throbbing erection, which was loosed by the feral fray of his breeches. Soon, that tiger tongue was lapping him into fits, quakes, and keens of rapture, before he begged to be sunk down his throat. By the steady droplets pearling round his throat, Elrohir knew the soak was near, but still one of his wiles could not resist kneading those incomparable buttocks apart, then smoothing slicked fingertips down the crease. His prince began to exhale quick, guttural pants, soon followed by rumbling moans. To the elf-knight surprise, and great pleasure, writhed back against the fingers, hoping to force their intrusion. Yet there was no need to press for what was so willingly given. With every careful push within, Legolas bucked forward into that infernal, incensing mouth, until his loins could no longer stand the dual assault, until he burst forth in a torrent with a roaring curse.

Elrohir soon found himself with a lapful of shuddering, mewling wood-elf, wreaked with shivers like a kitten after a rainstorm and as needful of hot affections. Legolas sucked at his lips until they flamed with red, his rabid tongue scouring for every last taste of himself within that luscious mouth. When Elrohir made to pet his back, he snatched his wrist and splayed its hand around his bottom, whimpering in a sort of carnal torment with every raw swipe down his crease.

“Taste me there,” he pleaded, with a tenor of wild desperation his elf-knight had never heard before. “Wet me well and… and make me yours, a long last.”

“*Legolas*,” Elrohir protested, but was already married to the image conjured in his mind of their bodies rocking in primal unison. “I’ve no balm…”

“Break me!” he cried, plunging down onto the hay and dragging the darkling elf atop him. “I must know you, Elrohir, this night! This instant!”

What transpired following that bald supplication would be etched in his mind forevermore, like a sonnet engraved on a slab of mithril ore, as eloquent, as sacrosanct, as unimpeachable. He knelt before his beloved one and drank from the font of his very essence; the sweet flavor of his impishness, the musky melt of his sensuality, the savory rich of his honor and the sizzling gush of his peerless energy. As if this feast was not opulent enough, a squall of the most salacious appellations thundered down upon him, until he could do naught but crawl up the slippery body before him and ensnare them into a knotty twine.

He plied Legolas with the most besotting kisses imaginable, as he locked their hips together, as he worried the oozing head of his shaft around that wrinkled entrance and as he painstakingly sheathed himself in the tight, unctuous heat of his beloved. The prince’s eyes flew open in shock, then swam back into their sockets, as he was immersed in the most golden sensation he could every hope to experience. Legolas was reverent upon him for the first few penetrations, tensing as he was pierced then relaxing into the extraction, so as to best enhance his lover’s pleasure. Elrohir, however, was in no need of aid, as he found this embroilment to be the most incredible of his eternity, the unreasonably hot and tender yielding of his strident one. Indeed, he thought Legolas had never looked so beautiful as when the fever started to mount, when mild discomfort gave way to an intensely erotic awareness, kindled into a ravenous conflagration, then elevated to the preternatural commingling of two bliss-wrought soul flames.

Even as he thrashed and keened with animalistic fervor, his beloved prince kept his lush-featured visage in his sights, those shining eyes so worshipful, so mesmerized by his one that only as he quaked his end did he break their lustrous beam. The jolt of his own spending was such that he thought he had spurt lightning; he fell onto Legolas a boneless heap, as sparks of nearly painful pleasure raced through him. Yet twas he who was cradled in gentling arms, he whose crown was kissed dotingly and whose back was stroked of its last tingles.

He learnt, then, that though he may sporadically be the possessor in their coupling, that his brilliant young upstart would forever be his master; that regardless of how earnestly he accepted his confessions, how adoringly he offered him consolation, Legolas would always rule him, with provocative hand and with enamored heart.

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

Western Greenwood, Year 873, Third Age

With the oily, orange aura of a treacle dawn upon the grease-smear sky beyond the treetops, the company of elves silently struck their camp. A sulfurous orc smog had been clotted above the woods for days on, as the density of the forest kept the sprightly spring wind from dispersing the fumes from the dozens of bodies they had burnt. The tactic, an accidental tribute not usually reserved for the snot-skinned spawn, had been employed to warn other fiends, beasts, and befouled creatures from scuttling into their territory; in essence to all the better protect their crippled councilor on the slow road back to Imladris.

Though he had, of lately years, himself tramped through far sicklier climes to the south, Legolas still suffered the murky atmosphere some, to say naught of the bleak countenances that surrounded him. While the Imladrian guard was determined to see their doting Chief Advisor home as carefully and as comfortably as possible, yet with enough haste so as not to prolong his agony, this required an admirable fortitude, for which every soldier in the company struggled to rally himself. This lead them to curb their usual jesting and sarcasm for an altogether more sober attitude if only in deference to their captains, Elladan and Elrohir, who were so bleak of spirit in the wake of Erestor’s deafening, so somber of countenance that the warriors feared they might never recover from this scarring experience.

That Legolas himself had ample cause to fret over his lover was somewhat lost upon the company at large, as he and the elf-knight felt the burden of command far too keenly to admit their relations to their guard. While he certainly had not spared his beloved a drop of his compassion, neither had he glutted Elrohir with ought but the most ritual sympathies when in the presence of their respective troops. Indeed, he had so far only managed to draw him away for a few consoling hours each night, as they were posted on watch together. Yet neither had he neglected his darkling one, who communicated his heartfelt response to even the most polite of affections with even a slight glance or a fleeting clasp of hands. If ought, Elrohir was far too occupied himself in steadying his tragic twin, who behaved with all the bold mettle of a captain under the direst of constraints, yet who inwardly grieved, scathed, and berated himself for allowing the loremaster – his dearest love – to be so irrevocably maimed. Thus, the archer focused his considerable energies on serving the brethren as best he could, whether as a fellow commander, a succoring lover, or a dauntless friend.

Despite the well-ordered, emotional chaos about him, Legolas was not absolved of his own troubles by virtue of his dedication to what had now become more of a rescue mission than an escort to the edge of the forest. Indeed, the grimy day ahead would force him into an execrable decision, for he currently waited up the last hour before their departure worrying over the return of the messenger he had sent to his Adar-King. Already the sturdy stretcher which bore Erestor was being meticulously slid onto their litter by four able guards, with a maudlin Elladan overseeing the effort. Already the horses were packed heavy with spoils from the Silvan court, the fire extinguished, their quivers filled, their meager morning ration of lembas so long digested as to nourish these very exertions. Soon, Elladan would meet with his navigator to review the course they had set the previous eve, a league south to the Old Forest Road, from there out through the grasslands, to the river. They would strive, on this leg of the journey, to camp on the banks of the soothing Anduin, before a low tide crossing, then on to the tundra that lead to the towering Hithaeglir.

In essence, noontime would see them ride past the treeline, into the dewy springtime fields that meant banishment for the Prince of Greenwood, whose haughty King had forbidden him to step even an inch out of the bounds of his homeland forest. The choice that had loomed before him throughout the winter’s snug hibernation in the sultry bed of his beloved was no longer a distant specter, but a present, visceral haunting. As soon as Erestor’s health was assured and the captains had concurred over the proposed continuance of their journey to Imladris, Legolas had composed a meticulous and unsparing dispatch, which vividly depicted the most injurious event he had ever in his time witnessed. He had cleverly, and he felt eloquently, argued that it would be remiss of him not to see the company home, if only to secure future relations. He had quarreled with himself over whether to make mention of his relation with Elrohir at all, if only to argue that it had no bearing nor weight in his conclusions, but in the end chose the severe tone of a captain in full possession of his admirable capacities as a leader of power and of conviction.

That he felt neither, at present, was of little consequence to those about. He had even chosen to spare Elrohir any reminder of their imminent separation, as he had stolen down to a nearby pond for a few moments of cleansing respite. Legolas thought a chance at reflection to be of far greater value to his beloved, so he had left him the little peace he could allow. Yet neither could he remain wholly silent on the issue. Who could say when they might see each other again, if he indeed chose loyalty to his cranky King? He certainly could not see Elrohir off for centuries untold of desolation with the brief kiss they had shared while bathing.

The difficulty was, he was yet undecided on whether he should stay or go. That he loved Elrohir, that he had pledged him his eternity, was unquestioned. Indeed, twas the elf-knight himself who had encouraged him, once Legolas’ earlier fury was smote by his reason and his loving, to consider a trial period of fealty to Greenwood. If their intention was to eventually bind, he had insisted – which it most certainly was – then they would have to acclimate themselves to routine separations. A demonstration of their willingness to bear such distance in order to earn their forever was most advisable, as Legolas could not help but grudgingly agree. His Adar had not broached the subject prior to their departure; indeed, twas the King himself who had ordered Legolas to command the escort, if only to force a clearly discernable decision from him. The Prince had felt resigned, though somewhat confident, as they had rode out, glad to gift his beloved with a proper, private farewell, yet also pleased with his mature acceptance of the only decent resolution.

Yet in the aftermath of calamity, the time was out of joint. In his fraught estimation, both duties compelled him to Imladris, that to his lover and that to his people’s service, but would his unpredictable, begrudging Adar tolerate such a fortuitous turn of his son’s fortune. Would he intuit that perhaps the Valar themselves had some bearing in the grand design of such an overwhelming event, their aim to bring Erestor and Elladan closer together, and by proxy keep Legolas by Elrohir’s side? Would he ignore all thought of nobility, of portend, and of rationality in favor of his own stubborn need to rule his children’s every action? Only the blasted messenger would give him his answer!

There was, however, no certainty that he would arrive in time. Though Legolas had sent his swiftest lieutenant, his Adar-King was not above some wiles of his own. Perhaps his entire objection to their relation had ultimately been but a test of Legolas’ valor; if so, then he would be forced to choose no matter how explicitly he had noted the urgency of the matter. Yet if Thranduil only knew how he ached over the decision, how he wanted to make a choice that favored Greenwood as well as himself, then perhaps even one so imperious as his King would grant him even the briefest leave to visit Rivendell. Twas, in the end, far too much to hope for, an opportune imagining of depths of sincerity in his Ada that he had never seen evidence of. All the more reason, his far too potent heart argued, to be done with these ridiculous and inflammatory manipulations, even at the expense of the people he cherished so, of the realm he adored and would ever return to.

Indeed, the thought of banishment so tarnished his already sorrow-tainted heart that he felt suddenly ill. That he could react so gutturally to the notion of defection, yet still sense the golden flame of Elrohir’s love deep within him, made his mind. He must devote himself to the greater good, that of their eternal togetherness. If, in later years, he saw that his sacrifice was a fruitless one, he would not hesitate to amend his misjudgment. Imladris, after all, would be a safe-haven for centuries to come, while his Greenwood was already committed to a slow, unnatural decay.

In the distance, an all too familiar figure was treading the path up from the pond.

Rallying his courage, Legolas strode over to meet him, to stop his emergence into the thick of their camp. While he would most certainly accompany them to the very outskirts of his wood, their genuine farewell would necessarily be effected this very instance, when some modicum of privacy was still assured them. With both of them absconded awhile, Elladan would have no option but to delay, though he was sure the elf-warrior would come to forgive them once he learnt the cause. With a fortifying breath, Legolas broke from the clearing, only to meet eyes strangely enlivened by what appeared to be hot anticipation. Upon sight of him, Elrohir charged forth, then shoved a rather officious looking scroll at him.

Legolas stilled, stunned to gaping at the emerald seal.

“I met the messenger at the pond,” Elrohir related, with considerable agitation. “Elbereth, but he was rank! I assured him I would deliver his dispatch, if he would only take a moment to bathe. Yet in truth, I wanted to witness your reaction for myself. He seemed rather… enthusiastic. Set for adventure, one might say.”

“He has never before ventured beyond our borders,” Legolas brightened, clutching the elf-knight’s shoulder with such a grip that he actually winced. “Twould be his first assignment to a foreign realm.” The archer caught his racing breath, remembered himself. “If, indeed…”

“Read your parchment, melethen,” Elrohir insisted, buzzed by a particularly sensual tension for the first time in days. “I would have our answer. There is yet time for a… a hasty celebration.”

“If indeed there is cause for such revels,” Legolas mused, but, after snapping open the seal, drew him close. “Come, we will learn of our fate together.”

Before he had even finished perusing the scroll’s most relieving contents, his elf-knight had already begun suckling at the smirking tip of his lips. Though he bristled some at the typically abusive tone of his Adar’s orders, he was tempered by the tickle of tongue up the length of his ear, then a seductive swipe down its lobe. By the time he crumpled the parchment in a fist, twas from the surge of desire through him, as an instantly renewed, mightily impassioned Elrohir was supping quite scandalously on his neck whilst drawing him into the shade of a lush willow. Perhaps he had misjudged the level of his elf-knight’s obliviousness to this, the day of reckoning, for he found his lover so grateful for his continued presence that he immediately undertook the fevered task of his most thorough undoing. Legolas, still gasping for breath as much from the revelation of his liberty as from the rapture of their loving, was only too ready to oblige him.

The summer’s end would see his veritable return to Greenwood, as commanded by his disgruntled sovereign, but until then there was ample time for ravishment, intimate indulgence, and a decently transcendent farewell to his dearly beloved.

If, indeed, he chose to ever be parted from him.


End of Part Four