"Elu?" He bent close to whisper the name, caressingly, into his lover's ear, and naturally, so close, smelling river water and salt and sex on the king's glorious sheen hair, he had to snuggle closer and suckle the ear-tip, sliding his chest against the flood of silken steel. Soft as fur, warm, and heavy as water it rubbed across his skin, sending tantalizing shivers down his spine.
"Mm?" Elu's voice was blurred with sleep, and his face in utter repose - all the lines of consious thought smoothed away. He was so... so heartbreakingly beautiful like this, Celeborn thought, so complete; combining all the innocence of a newborn child with all the glory and magnificence of manhood. At the sight he did not know which thrilled him more - desire or tenderness. Both seemed to fill his chest and stop his breath with joy.
Still only half awake, the king stirred, shifting closer to him. Smiling, he let himself be pulled down to lie side by side, Elu's left hand beneath his head, his right sweeping in a long firm caress down his back. Leaning in, Celeborn kissed the half open mouth, losing himself in the firmness, the warmth, the scent of Elu. Contentment vied with need as he felt his lover come to life beneath his hands. It took what seemed a supreme effort of will to tear himself away and murmur "good morning."
Elu smiled in return, pushing himself up to lean on one elbow above Celeborn, his hair falling warm and soft onto his lover's throat. "Mm," he said again, "yes it is."
"But you should go. The first callers of the day should find you in your tent."
"I don't want to go." Laying his hand against Celeborn's cheek, Elu bent down and took up the kiss where it had left off. Beneath such an onslaught of pleasure, duty seemed very far away, and it was not long before Celeborn had forgotten everything, opening his mouth to drink in sweetness, pressing hard everywhere against the unyielding heat of his lover's body. But when he began to whimper for more, to grind demandingly against that hardness, Elu gentled him down, drew away.
He lay, gasping, and looked up, stunned and open into Elu's bemused face. "No, you're right," said the king reluctantly, "I can't risk... I can't risk being found out. Losing you."
There was a new expression in those bright, treelit eyes - a kind of acceptance, a liberation which Celeborn had not seen before. Their lovemaking the night before had been violent, painful, perfect, and he guessed that Elu had expected to wake to rejection. He had not expected to let that monster out and have it welcomed.
I told you, Celeborn thought to himself, deeply touched by this understanding. It must be hard not to trust your own inner being, your deepest needs. I told you I was no delicate flower. That you never need fear hurting me. It had taken a certain amount of patience and guile to get his lover to stop treating him like a boy, like a child - fragile and delicate, but it was worth it to see the self-acceptance, the new confidence in Elu's gaze.
He reached up and lay his own hand along the planes and angles of Elu's face. "You should go then," he said, and meant I love you.
"Yes." Getting up, the king drew on his cold, dew soaked clothes slowly. His look of wonder faded in the chill, and at last Celeborn could no longer bear the glimpses of uncertainty which surfaced beneath it. Rising, he went to buckle on Elu's belt, and then - since his arms were already around Thingol's waist, he hugged him tight, tucked his head beneath Elu's chin and reverently kissed the pulse in his throat.
He didn't want to let go. Not now, not at this point where he was closer than he had ever been to believing his feelings returned. But nor did he want to nag, to cling, to frighten his lover away with demands that this mean more than Thingol was willing to give.
Elu's hand settled on his head, half blessing, half caress, the fingers sliding into his tangled hair. "You don't know..." said the king in a choked, uncertain voice, "Kyelpë."
His frame shuddered in Celeborn's arms. As Celeborn looked up, Elu shook his head, forced a laugh. "We will do that again," he said, "and soon. I have not forgotten what I promised. That we should - try it the other way. I want..." He looked away, embarrassed and exposed, eventually hazarded, awkwardly "I want your strength."
He was the king of the entire Nelyar people. By his will they moved, at his command they lived or died. he was - had to be - invulnerable, for them; untouchable, for them. The fact that he allowed Celeborn to see his uncertainty was poignant and trusting as a declaration of love. How could he meet such bravery with anything less than devotion? "Oh, my king," he said. "Oh, my lord and king."
"Well." Elu kissed him clumsily, then turned away, striding up the riverbank without a backward glance, dignity settling about his shoulders like a cloak of shadows.
Dressing, Celeborn waited for half an hour and then made his way down stream, so that he could come back into the encampment from a different direction and at a different spot than that where the king had emerged. Such deception had become second nature to him now, which was as well, for his mind was too full of unfocussed happiness to pay attention to subterfuge.
He picked his way between smouldering fires and slumbering couples, glowing, and looking forward to reaching the haven of his tent, where he could take off these damp clothes and slip into his sleeping furs. He could already imagine their sensuous slide against his skin, the warmth, and the dreams. If he could not at once have Elu pinned and pleading in bliss beneath him, no one would stop him from curling up in his furs and savouring it in imagination.
Reaching his tent, he threw open the flap and ducked inside. Distracted though he was, his hunter's instinct did not miss the stir of shadow, the faint gleam of open eyes in the dimmest corner. His hand went to his hip even as his mind brushed against a familiar presence, and his heart plummetted in sudden dread. What was she doing here?
There was a smell of hot wax and horn as she drew the cover from a dark lantern. In the brief instant before the light hit him, he thought of turning, plunging back into the trees and staying there until she had gone away. But had he not just been congratulating himself for no longer being a child? It would not have been a man's deed. So he stood firm. "Ammë?"
Light enveloped him, and his mother gasped. She rose, slowly, as though she had foreseen this but hoped still, despirately hoped to be mistaken. The beaded jacket she had been working on slipped from her knees to the floor. As he stood in the doorway, his tunic unlaced, he watched her notice the passion marks, the bites, one by one. The look in her eyes was more dreadful to face than Gorthaur's terror had ever been.
Coming close, she raised her hand, ghosted fingers over his split lip, the bruises whose faint throb he had intended to treasure for just a little while longer. "Orome!" she whispered. "Who did this to you?
He fought against shame. He was not; would not be ashamed. He had nothing at all to be ashamed of. "The one I love," he said, and was disgusted to hear his voice sound so cowed.
Nimwen was a small woman and dark - it was from Galadhon that Celeborn got both his height and colouring - but she had a raven's presence; sharp, sardonic, formidable. Reaching up, she pressed her thumb to the bite on his throat. He flinched away, disturbed and angry.
"No woman gave you this."
"What of it?" he said, fighting the long years of habit that insisted she was entitled to know, entitled to interfere. She was not. No one was.
"'What of it'?" she mocked, spun away in a little spiky dance of hurt. "My son knows not whether he is man nor maid! But oh, what of it!"
Over the past few weeks he had flirted with the idea of being caught. He had been less careful; more reckless in showing his love, half hoping that the truth might come out. Weary of deception, he had told himself it would be good to let the world know. As Elu had said, he had wanted to be able to kiss - no only to hold hands - in public, for everyone to see. But this was a bad beginning for so modest a desire. Hearing the scorn in his mother's voice he understood for the first time the depths of what he faced.
"I know what I am," he said, and took off his damp tunic, spreading his hands, inviting her to look at him, as he searched through his bedroll and meagre belongings for something clean and dry to put on. "It takes little cleverness to tell. I should have thought that you, with two children, would have worked it out by now."
"Do not mock your own mother!" shocked by his anger, Nimwen clenched her fists at her sides, her dark eyes sharp as needles.
"Then do not speak to me as though I were lower than some piece of horse-shit on your shoe." Hearing the words, he recoiled, his own fury disturbing even him. He had to stop, tell himself she was not the embodiment of everything that kept him from his love. She was not the fear of condemnation, the threat from which he spent his life running; she was not his enemy.
Except that she was.
It was so hard to see the disappointment and disbelief on her beloved face - a face he associated with comfort, approval. Hard to see eyes that had so often shone with pride now well with tears. But she still must not be allowed to know, because - through her - his father, Galadhon would know, and Galadhon would tear their whole family apart with his outrage.
"Mother," he said and reached out to take her hand, to make her feel better. "It's not so bad, truly. This is nothing - scratches, gone in the morning - and I am happy. Can't you be happy for me?"
She looked down at his hand - her fingers slight and delicate in comparison with his, and for a moment he thought she would pull away. But then she covered the mingled grip with her other hand and squeezed gently. "Could I be happy for you, knowing you will be barren, you will have no child to bring you joy... or sorrow? No wife to stand beside you, no heritage, no line to pass on. Could I be happy?"
Pressing his hand again, she looked up with a brave, grim smile. "Yes, I could. But I want one thing first."
"What?" anger fell from him like snow from a burdened branch, leaving him light and strong, regretting that he had not trusted enough in the goodness of his mother's heart. "Anything!"
"I want to know his name."
Oh Oromë! Of course. For a moment he had forgotten that - of all the elves in the Teleri host - he had fallen in love with the only one he could not afford to name. How had he forgotten such a thing? How had he entertained just for a moment the bright belief that everything was going to be well?
He drew his hands away, turned to watch the star shadows flow across the door, and wish himself far away from this suffocation, this over-bright prison. "I can't tell you."
"No, I didn't think so," she sat down again on the three legged stool, picking up the shield of her sewing. Her back was very straight and her face white. "'Scratches, gone in the morning'. You would have healed yourself overnight, come out on the morrow unmarked, and pretended to all of us that this never happened. I did not raise you to lie, my son."
Too heavy with dread to stand, he went down on his knees in front of her; a supplicant, begging for mercy. "I love him," he said. "That is my truth. But it isn't a truth I am permitted to speak. So please... please do not ask me any more."
As calm as a queen she looked, but in her fingers her bone needle bent, snapped; the sound like a whip crack in the profound and terrified silence. "Yet I think I know," she said at last, her voice shaking. "I saw you two at the feast - the way he touched you..." She shook her head, appalled. "Tell me... Tell me it is not your uncle. Tell me it is not Elu."