He was very still standing there in the middle of the vestibule, facing the fountain. The large and thickly cushioned benches bore no trace of his misery though they were tumbled in disarray, a wayward blanket collapsed against a pillow. The ease of the scene angered him. He tried to set the fabric alight with his gaze to no avail.
"Who is he?" Ešl asked, as Annatar enfolded the trembling form within his arms.
"How long have you waited?" He asked softly, for the elf was very cold. And through the rent clothing, ugly purple bruises grew above reddened skin.
"It does not matter. What is Feanaro?
Sauron stiffened.
"Feanor." He answered when it was not an answer at all. Truthful enough, however. Then again: "No one knows.
"You do," The elf said, and turned around within Annatar's arms and he realized he could not see Feanor in Ešl's features anymore, "But you would not tell me.
Growling slightly at the narrowed eyes and the daringly accusatory turn of the mouth, Annatar opened his mouth then decided otherwise. The anger toward Gothmog lingered, and so did a thought from that. Smirking now, his arms tightened around Ešl until the elf started to squirm within the embrace, features slightly contorted in pain and surprise. Sauron walked forward and trapped Ešl between him and the wall, his knee between the other's legs.
"I would not." He was closer and caught Ešl's mouth and tongue.
A whimper escaped as the fear dissipated from the elf's body into the comfort of subtle and swift movements of light hands and delicate lips. He curved forward as hands ran down his sides and parted his legs while the kiss pulled away lingeringly.
Annatar treated him as he would a statue, a work of art: the careful touches down the curves of his legs, up the rise of his chest and curling around his face- for a little while, when he saw his own discolored skin, Ešl was afraid that he would be found wanting. But statues, he knew, for he worked with them now would never feel as he did; statues do not arch up when touched nor groan and plead when they were not. Twisting gracefully out of stone or wood, the dearest face could not speak; the most delicate fingertips were always cold after the flush of their birth.
Warm fingers teased his ripped clothing open. The first brush of supple lips against his cheek, a warm breath against his neck, the wet heat of a tongue against his neck, and he found that he could not stand. Hands and fingers inserted themselves easily beneath the loose folds, smoothing over his chest. Ešl closed his eyes and felt his body taut with the rapid starts and stops of passion, the only passion he had ever known, full of caresses and soft kisses, when even the hard edges of teeth were but a gentle pressure upon his skin. The wall behind his behind his back disappeared.
There was a rush of wind, and he felt himself lowered onto the bed. Ešl was like food, being slowly appraised, tasted, and devoured as Annatar eased his shirt off, eyes burning. A heat followed the hands that ran down from his neck to navel, gathered at the center of his body and expanded outwards. Annatar straddled Ešl, and the fire grew in concentric circles.
Buttons, laces, and clasps lay tangled with fallen tunic and breeches. The final drape of clothing falling across the bed hailed a delightful franticness in Ešl's movements, writhing under Annatar's own naked skin that could ignore clenching fingers that had grown stronger through the years. His own skin was too tender, Annatar told him once with a wistful look in his face, ignoring the ragged breathing as he traced fluttery lines down Ešl's body, that even Arafinwe's son while in Valinor could not even compare. Ešl did not know who Arafinwe's son was, but he knew that he bruised when he asked for firmer kiss upon his flesh from a reluctant Annatar; he did not even care, in those moments, that he asked, because the touch comforted him.
Dancing fingertip played, teased and moved on, only the barest roughness on the palms belying the fact breezes did not his flush skin and render him like wax, his body helpless beneath the shifting weight. It pressed upon him, it's firmness a pleasure, a reassurance of muscle and bone molding against his own in all the familiar places.
Annatar gave him silver one day, and out of a certain perverse, desperate curiosity, Ešl made a mirror of it and saw his face for a moment, startled and oddly old, though not fully so yet. Taken away, Ešl did not remember what he saw, and could not trust that that face that haunted him was his. Mounted above the bed he did not sleep in, now he saw their tangled bodies shining sleekly upon the metal in the darkest nights, and time slowed as he followed the teasing passage of a hand upon their reflection, trailing his hands from under his arm to the slope of a hip while his neck tilted exposed to a suckling mouth.
Tangling sinuously within the embrace, there was a savage sort of tranquility in a mouth pressed upon the inside of an arm or high on the inside of a thigh. Sometimes, he could see the light through the windows, refracting and spreading around the room sending the colors of their skins to an insubstantial pastel, as if painted and powdered upon matter other than flesh. The faintest breath upon the center of his body sent a tingling, almost ticklish feeling chasing through his palms. The slightest touch of a fingertip, he cried out words, or sounds he never remembered afterwards.
Annatar paused briefly midway down Ešl's rapidly rising and falling chest, smiled, and then his hands were sweeping down where they could as he licked across the muscled plane, curving lines, hearing the hammer of the elf's heart against his ear, and the mess of contrary words sailing forth wild in the room. Breathless himself, the maia moved down to the flawless chest. The moans from the elf began to tumble over each other amongst the raw, mindless response of his body.
A curious longing, wrought more fantastical then all the designs upon the headboard, could overwhelm Annatar's senses and catch him as the unnatural glimmer in Ešl's eyes faded beneath hooded lids. He knew scent of Ešl's skin- a compound of the traces of mint and smoke- could intoxicate; reduce him to no more wit than that of his body if he had been other than he was, and the body more that is. The elf was hot beneath him, his skin flushed and body arching desperately against the heat of his body's desire.
Annatar's splayed fingers fell across his chest and drifted down, and so hotly Ešl burned they felt cold against the skin. A thumb brushed against a curious place, and lingered there for a moment before the indulgent hand was moving between their bodies, wrenching waves of pleasure to crash against his body. Slowly, deliberately, Annatar slid with tender and terrible control along the length of the fair form and committed to memory the short, soft rounded bursts of sound as Ešl writhed helpless beneath the wet heat of his mouth pressed against the rimmed muscles of the abdomen.
The confusion drove him to a maddened state. When Ešl opened his eyes, he saw himself beneath the other, their limbs tangled in the sheets upon the reflection on the mirror surface. He shut his eyes so tightly the stars he saw matched those he felt, a million pinpoints that enticed and teased upon his skin. Then he was sprawled on top of Annatar, eaten by an open mouthed kiss as the hands roving upon his back and buttocks until the rested somewhat precariously on the small of his back, a finger dipping slightly into the gentle furrow at the end of the spine. Shocking gray looked into his own as Ešl felt himself caressed by a wandering hand that made soft its rhythm and calmed the seas continuously ebbing inside him as a liquid fire. His muscles tightened and grew taut with crises denied twice until he cried out to no avail. The ache subsided gradually, but he did not know how.
Tired, he curled against Annatar, with the sight of golden strands in his eyes before he was soon borne afloat by another open path in the twilight. Ešl imagined himself very old suddenly, and all was an end. The wind had passed him by and there was rest only a little further along the way.
"My dearest elf," Annatar whispered, and the words were very old indeed. He sprinkled kisses upon the tousled dark hair.
"Teach me the language." Ešl said, the sound not quite muffled in the embrace, growing calm, "PleaseÉ"
The maia's movements paused.
"Why?
"So I may answer next time.
And what would you answer, knowing what he is? Annaar thought, what you are to them? What I have made you to be? He thought of Gothmog and felt uneasy, almost guilty despite knowing that he was not.
"So I may askÉ" What am I, Ešl heard himself say, but the words were drowned in the dreams that took him.
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