Disclaimer: I do not own Lord of the Rings or any characters and/or places thereof
Author's note: This started out as humor and ended as tender fluff; go figure. An Elf lass of forty years would be a human girl of about sixteen years.
*****
Queen Arwen Evenstar sat upright in bed, her eyes roaming carefully over the crisp pages of her book, read by lantern light now that the sun had gone down. She was quite enjoying her reading, her mind roving slightly, but very little after a tiring day. Strands of raven hair slipped over her shoulder, and with a perfected grace she pushed them back behind her ears, her clear blue eyes' focus unwavering. Mid-sentence, she heard her name spoken quite softly from beside her. "Arwen." A smile graced her beautiful features, for she knew that tone, and turning with a youthful smile to her husband, she fell into his embrace and passionate kiss.
Arwen was content to know that her night would follow in much this manner, for while she and Elessar had bound themselves to each other many years ago, and the season had fully rotated more than once since they were wed, their bodies had not yet stopped craving each other. She returned him, move for move, and thus raised her hands to touch the body she so coveted, when her fingertips encountered his hair--"Elessar!" Arwen exclaimed, shoving him away from her.
Elessar looked at his wife with puppy-dog eyes, abashed. "What is it, Arwen?" he asked.
"You know full well, my King," she practically spat the word. "Be that as it may, I will not bed you, nor share this bed with you, until you have a bath; you are disgusting."
"Arwen--" Elessar began to protest, but one look from her eyes cut him off. "Very well, I shall bathe on the morrow, does this please you?"
"Much," replied the Lady with a nod. "Now get out of my bed," she commanded. Elessar gaped at her in a pleading sort of way, and she arched one eyebrow firmly. "You may sleep in your study," she told him, "or take a pillow and sleep on the floor. Or," she continued as he began to speak, "you may go and draw the water yourself and have a bath right now."
Grumbling, Elessar pushed away the warm covers and threw a cloak over his sleeping-clothes. "This is treason, woman," he muttered under his breath, knowing full well that her Elven hearing caught that comment, as he went to the draw water for a bath. Arwen smiled to herself as she watched out of the corner of her eye her husband carry numerous buckets to the chamber adjoined to their bedroom, speaking rude and naughty things in all languages when he thought she was not listening. For her part, the Elf did not allow her husband to see her smile, mocking him, though she suspected he had seen, from the corner of his own eye.
Then Elessar left the bedroom with a bucket in his hands and kicked the door closed. For a time Arwen laughed to herself, was pleased, and continued her reading. But when, after twenty minutes, Elessar had not returned and she had heard precious little splashing, Arwen stood and walked over to the chamber herself. Knocking softly, she called, "Elessar? May I come in?"
"Of course not, I'm having a bath!" he called back in a mild, amused sort of angry tone.
"Oh, that is silly, I have seen you before," she replied, opening the door. The sight that greeted her caused her to bite back giggles. Elessar had emptied only one bucket of water into the tub, and was sitting on the overturned bucket amidst a number of full ones, splashing the water with his toes so as to create the sounds of a man having a proper bath. "Elessar!" said his wife shrilly. "If you cannot do this on your own," she chided in a condescending tone, and proceeded to empty the rest of the water buckets save two into the tub. "Now get in," she told him.
"I can't, not with you watching me," he replied.
"Elessar!" an exasperated woman exclaimed, and began to tug his tunic over his head.
"All right, all right!" he acquiesced and turned away from her, doffing his clothes before Arwen tried to force him to and hurrying into the rather cold water. "Now may I have some privacy? I refuse to wash with you in here!" With a naughty look Arwen left him in peace.
Another twenty minutes passed, and Arwen reentered. "Hey!" Elessar shouted quietly, drawing his knees up to his chin. "What did I tell you? I am not going to wash with you in here!"
"Stop being silly, you are worse than Eldarion," she said.
"Eldarion can't speak."
Ignoring this, Arwen knelt beside the tub and ran a hand through Elessar's hair. He shuddered as her fingers grazed his scalp. "Elessar, you have not even washed your hair yet."
"I have so!"
Arwen sighed. "Scoot forward," she instructed, pulling her skirt up around her calves.
"I though Elves were proper about being seen in the nude?"
"It is one thing for a forty-year-old Elf lass to show her ankles to a stranger, it is quite another for a grown woman to show her ankles to her husband," Arwen retorted, "now scoot!" Elessar did, and she climbed behind him, sitting on the edge of the tub.
"This is undignified," Elessar complained as Arwen took the bath-cloth from him and poured soap over it, washing his back. "I'm a grown man, Arwen, I can bathe myself--"
"But obviously not very well," she replied, silencing him for a moment. "Beside, doesn't it feel nice to have someone you love washing your back? And don't you tell me you are too old; when I stayed in Lothlorien Grandmother used to do this for me, and I was as grown then as I am now."
"Perhaps it is just the sort of person you are," Elessar reflected thoughtfully, relaxing a little. "I have never allowed any one to bathe me."
"Ada used to, and the twins have bathed you before," Arwen pointed out.
"When I was a boy, yes," he submitted. Arwen dunked the cloth in the water and rinsed the soap from his back, then spilled more on her hands and ran them through his hair. "But only until I was about nine years old."
"You lie," she teased. "My brothers have told me such stories of you; of when Estel ran stark naked through all of Imladris, and was coaxed out of a tree the next morning by a rather harassed Glorfindel, who had stumbled upon him in the night and been quite startled!"
"You love to embarrass me," he said, tilting his head backwards to meet her eyes. But he could not help but hear an echo of his own voice in his head, when he was six years old, 'Are you scared I will drown, Ada? I can swim real good--' here the memory switched from his voice to Elrond's gently telling him that he could swim very well. 'I know, I just said that, Ada! And I can hold my breath, too, look!' This point he proved by pinching his nose and ducking beneath the water, only to be pulled up moments later and wrapped up in a warm towel. 'I trust you, Estel; I am sure you can hold your breath for many minutes longer than Elladan and Elrohir.'
'Maybe not that long…" Estel admitted.
Arwen leaned down and kissed his lips, then tilted his head forward again. "Close your eyes and mouth, Estel," she said.
"Why--" he began to ask, when a cascade of water fell over his face, answering the question for him. Spluttering, he said, "Oh. That's why. Am I clean now, Mama?" he teased.
"Not in the least," she said, soaping up his hair once more and pouring another waterfall over his head. It took two more washes and rinses before she was pleased with his condition, and at last climbed out of the tub. As if by second nature she held out a towel to Elessar and wrapped it around him as he climbed out of the tub.
"Bit high there, Arwen," he commented, lowering the towel to his waist.
"Oh!" she laughed at her mistake. "Well, you are clean now," she said, heading back to the bedroom. To her surprise, Elessar did not follow her.
"Arwen," he said softly.
"Yes, Elessar?"
"You said that Lady Galadriel--ai, I think of her as Grandmother, also!--used to bathe you in Lothlorien," he stated.
"Yes, and what of it?" she asked, turning to face him.
"The Lady…left for the Havens, not long ago. And you had not stayed in her Wood, but in Ada--Lord Elrond's realm for nearly six tens of years before that," he commented.
"Aye…and what of it?" she asked.
"Well…" Unsure of how to phrase his meaning, Elessar motioned towards the bath. "It's here, you know, full and everything…and I thought, perhaps, although I might be quite clumsy at it…"
"Oh, Elessar!" Arwen kissed her husband once before raising her slip over her head and slipping into the bath. Elessar donned his tunic and trousers, rolled up his trousers to his knees, and climbed onto the edge of the bath behind Arwen. She had left the cloth there, on the edge of the tub, and he gathered it up and drenched it with soap. Uncertain, he rubbed the cloth in small circles on Arwen's back. He had never seen her back before, at least, not in such an instance as this, and his motions became mechanical and absent-minded as he noticed the graceful curve of her shoulder blades, the way her shoulders turned into her neck, her head bent and her hair gathered over one shoulder.
It occurred to Elessar that he was seeing his wife as her mother had seen her and that he would, in time, come to see his son this way. She was a thing of exquisite beauty, something to love and to cherish always. For the first time, Elessar truly meant the vows he had taken on his wedding day. And the King of Gondor, Chieftain of the Dunedain, and veteran soldier of the War of the Ring, felt himself growing up.
"Elessar," said Arwen, turning to him and taking the cloth from his hands. She raised herself just a little to kiss him. "Are you ready to go to bed?"
A part of him wanted to reply that yes, he was, and wanted to have what he had washed himself for, but he did not say so. Arwen was not a prize, not some thing to be won or traded. The love he had felt for her, that had fled the day they were wed, had returned, along with a paternal instinct he had not felt before. "Don't be silly, Arwen. I have not even washed your hair yet."