Author's Note: Some of the background for this chapter appears in 'There Came a Time of Winter', a one-shot that takes place at Nargothrond.
Disclaimer: All characters belong to Tolkien.
Iavas, SA 40
He has laboured many hours in the forge and tolerates heat better than most, but he feels that an ice-bath could not cool him this morning. His discomfort rouses him from bed and he shutters the windows against the light, only to find that the moist air lingers like a wet blanket on his skin. The stillness is suffocating.
Unconscionable.
The boy is a grown elf now, not the child he remembers. Gil-galad's thoughts are closed to him; his grief is private, his face betrays no feeling. Yet Celebrimbor can sense the warring emotions beneath such composure: the anger of an abandoned child, the guilt of an adult keening silently for his family. Celebrimbor's heart contracts as if it, too, is wounded - a symbiosis of feeling that is not the mîl of friends and kin, but the anírad of lovers. (1,2)
He has been as a brother to Gil-galad: to an elf-child bewildered by war and death; to a young adult labouring under responsibilities beyond his years. Though their blood is more distant, his desire feels incestuous, violatory.
He hides the truth in a secret place, outwardly playing the role of kinsman and mentor. Since Midsummer Night, he has felt raw and fragile. He cannot put his heart into its box again; it no longer fits. At odd moments, he watches Gil-galad, and he is aware that he watches with the eyes of a predator. Yet, it seems to him that the other elf is near to him more than he ought to be - that the prey tracks the predator.
Unconscionable.
His dreamscapes fill him with longing and revulsion. Lingering visions of tangled sheets, damp with sweat and sex, set him afire even as he burns with the shame of a thief.
He works at night, retiring as the first light glows on the horizon. In an Age now past, the night became a refuge from kin so changed he hardly knew them. Now, the night brings relief from his own ill-fated obsession.
He takes the crucible from the fire and pours it into a mould. As he waits for the silver to cool, it occurs to him that this necklace, intended for the daughter of Duilin, might be more than the customary begetting day gift of a king to a courtier. He takes a deep breath, his finger tracing the sapphires of the necklace absently. It would be a good match for the King. The Gondolindrim have resented Gil-galad's charity toward the Fëanorians - a marriage to the daughter of a fallen hero could be useful. Moreover, she is near in age to Gil-galad and quite lovely.
"It is a poor night for sleeping. I do not disturb you, I hope?"
Celebrimbor starts at the interruption. He lets Gil-galad's question hang unanswered. He would ask about the necklace, but fears he will betray himself.
Gil-galad sits at the worktable, his chin resting in his hand and his legs folded under him. He is an early riser but does not sleep well; Celebrimbor can recall many nights when a small elf watched him at work, curled into much the same position. The image of the child fades into the long limbs and lean face of the adult and his groin throbs even as the coppery taste of shame floods his mouth.
He returns to his work but the necklace blurs before his eyes. With tangled locks loose around his face, Gil-galad is at once innocent and desirable - as unguarded now as he is distant in his robes of state, with his hair tightly braided and his eyes hooded with wariness. Gil-galad has dropped this defence here, in Celebrimbor's presence.
He examines the work he has just done and knows he will have to melt it down and start again. He reaches for the tongs and yanks his hand back in shock - he has forgotten to put on a glove. With a hiss, he plunges his hand into a barrel of water kept in case of fire. When the pain subsides, he turns away from the barrel and nearly steps on the other elf.
Gil-galad reaches for the injured hand. "It is not too bad - it is already starting to heal."
Celebrimbor stares dumbly at the rough, caloused hands, hands that hold his own hand a fraction longer than necessary.
Gil-galad retreats, his eyes evasive. "Perhaps I disturb you after all. I should go."
Celebrimbor cannot tell if the colour in Gil-galad's cheeks is a trick of the firelight or something more. When the other elf has gone, he turns back to the fire and takes up the tongs again, and this time he does not drop them when the hot metal burns his flesh.
(1) mîl
love
(2) anírad
desire (lit. 'desiring', the gerund of aníro, 'to desire'). It was the best I could do to render the difference between agapé and eran.