All relationships mentioned are M/M. If this doesn't interest you, now is the time to leave.
New version, rewritten to comply with my revised headcanon.
'Oromë's Bow' is a completely fictional constellation, made up just for this. Also, headcanon Ereinion smokes. (Because he's a badass.) Can't really see him with a pipe but cigarettes don't exist in Middle Earth, so I have to take what I can get.
This follows chronologically from One Hundred, and the night of passion described in this is told in more detail there.
Everyone belongs to Tolkien, except Ereinion's unnamed lover, who is mine.
"Half the night I waste in sighs,
Half in dreams I sorrow after
The delight of early skies;
In a wakeful dose I sorrow
For the hand, the lips, the eyes,
For the meeting of the morrow,
The delight of happy laughter,
The delight of low replies."
- Maud, Alfred Lord Tennyson
Sex with him never lasts very long. A few minutes of urgent, animalistic mating, and then he is finished and I imagine that he is you in order to reach my own climax. I'm ashamed to admit it and would never say it out loud, but there it is.
He falls asleep instantly, but I do not: the minimal carnal pleasure nowhere near enough to send me into blissful, sated oblivion. Not like with you. You have probably forgotten the one night we spent together, but I never have and I suspect that I never will.
It was the one time in my life when I truly made love. It lasted for what seemed like hours, days, years. Touches that sent sparks into my skin, kisses that seared my lips, moans that reverberated through me and became my heartbeat; the near unbearable feeling of being inside of you, so good it was nearly agony, your legs clenched around my waist, your hands on my sweating back, your fingernails digging into the flesh hard enough to draw blood. Your head thrown back, exposing your beautiful neck to my lips, my tongue, my teeth. The fireworks when we soared into shattering orgasm at the exact same time.
It was without doubt the best sex of my entire life. I have compared every subsequent lover to you - setting them up to fail a test that no one can possibly pass.
I roll out of bed and pull on a robe made from fine violet silk, your gift to me for Yule last year. He hates me wearing it, hates anything that bears a memory of you. He hates it that we work together, hates it that you come to me for help with your problems, hates that no one can climb up high enough to stand on the pedestal I have put you on.
I walk out into the clear night, the air on the balcony cool against my overheated skin, the wind carrying the scent of the sea. The pockets of the robe hold a pouch of tobacco, my pipe and a box of matches; I take out all three items, extract a small amount of tobacco from the pouch and a match from the box and light up. The pouch and matches are returned to my pocket. I take a drag, knowing that if you were here you would tell me off, would say that smoking is bad for my health. That is true for humans, but not for elves - a fact that you either don't know or just forget. I don't mind, though. It's nice that you care - you're one of the few that do.
Another drag. I breathe the smoke out through my nose and turn back towards my bedchamber, the bed visible through the open glass doors and illuminated by a strip of moonlight. He is still asleep, oblivious to my inner turmoil, and I can't help but note bitterly that if he were you, you would be also awake and standing out here with me, as unable to sleep as I am because our emotions are so in tune. But he is not you, and can barely interpret my expressions, let alone my feelings.
The moonlight falls across his face and I note that while the resemblance he bears to you is obvious when he is awake, when he is asleep he looks nothing like you. You are always the very picture of near-divine peace, but he looks as though he is planning something.
Your demise, presumably.
I turn back around with a sigh. You cannot understand what I see in him, and I cannot tell you. I see in him a vision of you. I choose him to warm my bed at night because he is as close to you as I will get. But I do not, and will not, love him. A poor substitute, yes. But I am desperate. You are like a drug, one that I crave every second of every day, one that I can almost never have and when I can have you it is never enough. I am parched with a thirst that only your presence can quench, and then when you are not with me the thirst I am left with is a thousand times harsher than the one I suffered before.
But it goes both ways: I cannot understand what you see in that pathetic Silvan princeling. Thranduil. Even his name leaves a bad taste in my mouth. You cannot see it, but he regards you as a prize, and walks around like he owns the place because he has ensnared and deflowered (or so he thinks) a prince of two of the last great Elven lines, an elf second only in rank to myself. He believes he has won because you are 'the King's favourite', and he has taken you away from me.
If only he knew that I never had you to begin with. Then again, that would probably make him even more smug.
But he does not know you like I do, and does not treat you the way you deserve. He is too rough, too commanding, laughs at the things you have good reason to fear. He treats you like a possession, mistakes your quietude and introversion for innate submission. And you let him, because you do not know that a relationship should be any different. I think you suspect that something in it is wrong, but you have no basis for comparison and therefore no proof.
I would not treat you as he does. I know all that has happened to you. I am the only one that you allow near you when the memories assault you as brutally as he did. The only one you allow to touch you, even if it is just a hand on your shoulder, because my touch does not burn you as everyone else's does. I understand the way you are, the way you see the world. I would treat you as an equal, as I have always done, even when you felt like the distance between us was as tall as the tallest mountain in the world, with me at the summit and you lying on the ground at the base. I have seen you at your absolute lowest points, when every atom of you was screaming and aching for an absolution that would not come.
No, not absolution. This is not a punishment - you have done nothing to warrant retribution. But, as you told me: you chose immortality, and by doing so refused the gift of death. You cannot now go back on that decision and choose to die instead. But perhaps that is a blessing in disguise: you have had no choice but to recover from your ordeals, to put them behind you and refuse to let them tear you down. Once you overthrow your last remaining obstacle, there will be nothing that can defeat you.
You are the strongest person I know. No elf in all of Arda, myself included, would have survived what you have lived through.
If only Thranduil knew how strong you really are. If he did he would not dare to treat you like a blushing virgin princess, and sometimes it takes all I have to stop myself from punching his face in for the mistakes he makes about you. On the day that you ran into my study, trembling visibly with fear and crying for the horrors he had forced you to relive, I could have killed him. If you had not been in such emotional pain I honestly would have marched out to find him and would not have hesitated to separate his ignorant head from his shoulders.
He didn't understand your reaction. Did not realise that forcing even so much as a kiss on you would compromise the fragile dam that held up your carefully constructed façade. You cried for a full hour that afternoon, and though you didn't see it I was crying too, because I could not do anything to stop you from feeling it all again. Even now the memory of that day causes me pain.
You should have seen it then: the lack of respect for your 'No' stemmed from a lack of respect for you as his lover. You also should have seen it when he was unable to tell you he loves you. Even when he finally said it, I suspect that he did not truly mean it. He just wanted to have you back - no, wanted to have the prestige of having you back. And you should see it now, when his disrespect is taking the form of infidelity.
He does not know that I know about it, that I paid someone to follow him in order to find out. You would hate me if you ever found out about that. You would call them mere dreams or jealous fantasies: would tell me that I am seeing them because I want to think that he is cheating. But even though I do want you to break up with him because he so clearly does not deserve you, you do seem to be somewhat happy these days, and I would not wish that away from you.
Perhaps it is not true happiness, because there are still things - important things - that he does not know. The relationship itself is not true, not really. It does not come naturally to you, which is not your fault, and there is no shame in seeking the help that you do. But as long as he does not know about it, there will be a gulf between you. One last gap that you will not and cannot let him breach, because if he does and he finds out the truth, then you and I both know that he will see it as betrayal. He will accuse you of deception when all you are doing is trying, and I can't bear to think of what that will do to you.
I take a drag and the breath I let out obscures my vision for a moment as the smoke floats up and away into the sky. When it clears I can see your face in the stars: the light of Eärendil's star the pupil of your left eye, Oromë's Bow your smiling mouth. I blink and your likeness is gone, leaving in my heart a feeling as deep and empty as the Void.
I can only hope that you either come to your senses and leave him, or that he is truly as stupid as he looks and one day is careless enough that you catch him with someone else. Until then, I will watch him like a hawk and do all I can to make him trip and reveal himself in front of you. Until then I will settle for painfully short sexual encounters and the fact that I will never have an emotional bond with anyone like the one that you and I forged that night, what feels like an eternity ago.
I will keep my feelings to myself, admit to no one that I love you so much it physically hurts me, that I would give up my title, my wealth, my life, if in doing so I could ensure your health and happiness. I will watch you from afar, and do all in my power to keep you from harm. I promise that while your heart beats I will fall in love with no one else and will never marry, no matter how many overstuffed council members tell me that marrying is imperative for the continued wellbeing of the kingdom.
Lately I've started to think that you and I were made for each other; two sides of the same coin, each one perfectly complimenting the other. The sparks that fly between us when we are together, in any capacity, is one indication. Another is your willingness to have me close during those times when anyone else's presence would be unbearable.
I glance down at the pipe and realise that it has gone out. I contemplate lighting it again but decide against it. I should go back to bed and at least try to get some sleep tonight.
Sometimes I wish that you could see me like this, vulnerable and indecisive, forced to choose between my pain and yours. If I keep hiding my feelings for you then I am denying myself, but I can't risk hurting you by declaring myself to you before you are ready. I am not strong. I am selfish. I slept with you that night not only because you asked for it, but because I needed it. My soul screams out for yours, but its cries are lost beneath your sorrow. But I suppose, in truth, that I am glad for that. It hurts to maintain forced isolation when I can feel that total completion is so close, and I would not wish you more suffering. I do not pretend that our situations are equal, but pain is relative and I wish you could see that this constant distance between us is hurting me more than anything I've ever known.
But you need me to be the strong one, the one who always has everything under control in those times when you fall apart completely. So, for you, I sweep my pain and unease under the carpet and pretend that I have it together. If being your sole source of support is the only way I can be close to you, then I will assume that role gladly.
With a sigh I head back inside and slip into bed. He does not even stir, and I turn my back on him, preferring to look at the moon than his face. I will have to end this tomorrow; I can't live this lie anymore. He already knows that I don't love him and I know that he is only interested in my crown. He will know that I'm ending our arrangement because of my feelings for you, and will be angry at you for taking me away, even though I was never his. I can never belong to him or anyone else simply because I will always be yours. Maybe someday soon I will get my act together, and just tell you exactly how I feel instead of doing all this tiptoeing around with him, and watching you tiptoe around with that arrogant savage.
The sky just over the horizon is becoming lighter than the rest, signifying that day is less than three hours away. I feel myself being pulled closer to sleep, and let my eyes slip closed as I am pulled under.
I cannot have you in life, but I pray that this night I will have you in my dreams.