Chapter Text
From aina- (v., “to hallow, bless, treat as holy”) to caila (adj.,"lying in bed, bedridden, sickness")
You don’t see him enter, at first. You rarely do.
“What are you doing, my pet?” His right arm winds around your waist and his left arm sneaks beneath yours, his hand hooking the corner of a page and flipping it idly. “What is this?”
Carefully, carefully, you pull the book away from his reach, placing it gently back upon the shelf where you’d found it. You leave it open. He lets you.
“Nothing, now that you are here.” You turn to face him, moving little so as not to dislodge his arms, and oh, the smile that you find waiting for you upon the turn! Your dear friend always looks upon you as though you are the most precious thing that he possesses.
“Why, you flattering little minx.” You’ve never heard anything quite so wonderful of said creature to explain this epithet, but given how often Annatar uses it, you imagine that the humble minx must actually be quite valuable. “I was simply curious why you were thumbing through a lexical reader, of all things.”
Actually, there is no reason why you had picked up that particular book, out of the many beautiful but dusty volumes that grace the shelves here - nothing beyond curiosity, that is, as you’d wondered, idly, whether you were able to read. You were, as it turned out, and you’d spent a wonderful afternoon learning odd and wonderful words - some you'd thought you half-remembered, others you had certainly never encountered before - with increasing fascination for the way that so many combinations of random sound had such complicated meaning!
But this is difficult to explain, so you simply shrug, and hum with pleasure as your friend leans his head forward to lay it upon your shoulder. You lower your head to rest atop his, and your arms come up to encircle him in turn. You embrace.
It is perfect.
“I did not know what it was,” you admit, already half forgetting that he was asking about the book – this ‘lexicon.’ “But I grew bored, waiting for you, and I thought to explore the chambers you have given me.”
“Mmmm.” He hums in contentment, and you can feel the vibration, slight but steady, rumble through his head and hair soft beneath your cheek. “And are they to your liking, your rooms?”
“Very much,” you tell him, though this poor phrase falls utterly short of describing the chambers’ actual opulence – Annatar has given you what feels like half a wing of what seems to be a palace. There are three entire rooms dedicated to your convenience: one for sleeping, one for talking, and one simply for standing by your door and greeting visitors. “I love the hearth, and it is cozy, here.” The fireplace, which is in your main chamber, is roomy enough to fit two elves lying side by side, and the walls throughout the suite are solid stone beneath vivid tapestries. You even have three whole windows: two in your sleeping chambers, one facing north and one facing east, and another in your main chamber, facing south.
There is no window facing west.
“The view, though. . .” You trail off there, not wishing to seem ungrateful, but Annatar sidesteps the impending awkwardness gracefully, picking up the conversation with no indication that he is offended by your unappreciative dismissal. How you appreciate his thoughtfulness of you!
“And the view leaves something to be desired, I realize. I apologize, pet.” With a quick kiss to your collarbone, he raises his head and slips from your arms; you cannot stifle a wounded noise as he leaves you to go and stand by the window, silhouetted against the dying daylight. “In time, though, we will be able to leave this place, and all will be well. I will build for you better rooms, create for you a better view, and you shall never want for anything again.”
It sounds like a dream, but –
“Leave? Why would you leave?” You follow him to the window – the one facing south, this is, not east into the smoke or north into the ruins of some fair city, and certainly not west, like the window you have only glimpsed out in the hall when Annatar comes in to you – a window that must, you imagine, look out toward a horizon where the sun sets each evening in a blaze of blood-crimson-gold.
Not that you have ever witnessed such a marvel. Though you imagine it must be glorious.
“My work here is done,” Annatar tells you patiently, turning so that the beautiful long fingers of his tender right hand can slide with ease beneath your chin. Although his tone is patient, you wince at the gentle notice that your head injury has apparently caused you to forget something important again. This is not the first time you have had this conversation, then.
“And I want to take you home with me, this time,” he adds, and your left hand, the slightly-more-healed one, flies to the sill to clutch at the hard stone for support. This is new information. You are certain you would remember this, if you had been told it before.
Head injury or no head injury.
“Annatar?”
“Mmmm?”
He looks tired, gazing out into the south again, and you feel a rush of gratitude that he still takes the time to come and visit you, night after night, even after all the work he is doing, trying to rebuild the ruined city you can see through the haze when you peer from your northernmost window.
“You – you will not leave me here?” you ask, and you hate how uncertain you sound, but – you are uncertain. That is one conversation you will never lose – how Annatar had told you that you were the one, in your stubbornness and your pride, to level the city that even now he is trying so hard to rebuild. Given your apparent propensity for destruction – and the amount of aggravation it has likely caused your dearest friend, who has stopped to care for you despite greater objectives – you find it unfathomable that he would even consider moving you anywhere else.
That he would even consider taking you with him.
But when he turns to look at you, his beautiful face momentarily twisted with disgust, you are surprised - and warmed - to learn that this disgust is not really for you, but for your question.
“Of course I would not leave you here, my sweet!” He draws you into another embrace, tight and fierce, and you cling to him, embarrassed at your own insecurity but delighted by his vehemence. “No matter how many difficulties you cause me, I – I care for you, Tyelpe.”
It is a welcome reminder, though no longer much needed. You know that he cares for you; this much you do remember, and always can, and always will. When you were finally able to open your eyes again, Annatar had been there. Waiting. Wringing his hands at your bedside, he had been the one to tell you, his voice cracking, of your fall from a wet step, and how the impact to your head had left you gravely injured.
The extent of your injuries had certainly borne out the depth and severity of that fall. Although Annatar had spoken to you softly, had had his men shutter the sickrooms to blot out all searing light and noise, your head had hurt so treacherously that you could barely distinguish light from dark. Your chest had rattled with every breath; you had coughed and coughed at the slightest provocation, your lungs heaving against the constriction of your ribs; you could not move from your back for several days. And perhaps worst of all, your hands were sadly mangled, from where Annatar said you had thrown them up to protect your skull during your fall. The stone of the step had crushed them badly, even breaking several bones – which, when you had woken, had been poking through your skin like ribs from a corpse.
An odd image, and one of which you’re not entirely certain the source, but all the same: fitting. And although they have improved, your hands still are not completely healed. Even turning a page pains you, sometimes.
And Annatar must be remembering something of those terrible first few days again too, for his embrace tightens further and you can feel his breath, hot and sweet, at the base of your throat. “Never again, Tyelpe – never again, ever. I came too close to losing you once.”
You sigh. It is a noise of contentment, but your friend chuckles from his place against your chest, still maintaining your embrace. Still holding you close, and safe, and tight.
“Am I keeping you from something, sweetness?”
“No,” you say, and it is true. Your reading was not truly that important – your own curiosity at the meaning of words can wait out whatever Annatar needs from you, to assure him that you are alive, that you survived your terrible fall.
But eventually he releases you, and after rising briefly to his toes to give you a brief peck of affection to the forehead, he steps back out into the greeting room and then the hall, calling for someone as he goes.
With nothing better to do, you return to your book. The lexicon. It is still open to the page where you had stopped when Annatar first came in; you are able to find your previous place with little effort. You trace your fingers down the list of symbols, marveling at the way these elegant lines resolve themselves into connotations, denotations, meanings, song.
Annatar seems slightly less amused when he finds you seated at the window sill, reading again, upon his return. “Still indulging in lexical curiosity, pet?”
“Mmm?” You look up, blinking slowly as your mind readjusts from the implied richness of the tattered page to the textural depth of the world beyond it, but even then, you cannot miss that he is frowning.
Not at you, of course. At your book.
“Is the long-banned tongue of the blasphemous Noldor so curious to you that I no longer merit a greeting?” he asks. He smiles as he says it, though, and you realize that this must be one of his ever-present jests, a favored spice of conversation. He has not been gone long, after all, had barely even left your chambers, so this cannot be a serious complaint. Maybe the play is in the word "Noldor" - not a term you recognize - or in the insinuation of blasphemy, for what is so harmful about reading?
So although you do not see the humor in his words, you smile up at him all the same. For one should overlook his friend’s missteps, yes? Especially if it is one’s own fault for not understanding, for creating the disharmony in the first place, yes?
But Annatar does not return your smile. Instead he shakes his head, and a slender hand comes to lie across the top of your book.
“Oh, my Tyelpe. Always sticking your pretty nose into something a little too far beyond you.”
There, that is definitely a jest! Though, sadly, still not one that you quite understand. Your grin only grows wider at Annatar’s teasing.
But his frown only deepens.
“Are you cold, pet?” Concern colors his voice.
“No?” By contrast with the dismal, smoky world you can see from both your east window and your north, it is always pleasantly warm in your chambers.
“Then why are you wearing this?” Annatar presses, plucking somewhat fretfully at the sheet that you have arranged across yourself, falling down one shoulder and across your chest and lap to cover most of your body.
“I – have found no clothes?” you tell him, baffled enough that you phrase this statement as a question. “I am well enough to leave my bed, Annatar, yes? So I thought I had best get in the habit of making myself modest again!”
But this line, with its intent as the next salvo in your ongoing banter, falls flat when Annatar only frowns more deeply still.
“Sweetness, your modesty is nothing compared to your recovery and wellbeing.” His voice resonates with his quiet concern. “Stand, stand.”
He pulls you to your feet when you do not respond right away. “There –“ the sheet slides from your shoulder, and he pulls it away from your torso with some impatience “ – turn for me –“ the movement loosens the hasty knot you’d tied at your waist, and his slender fingers make quick work of the rest of it “ – and there. Much better.” You are naked again, the sheet pooled at your feet where you stand and the dim light of the dying day warming your back from the window facing south.
You are besieged by a sudden urge to hold your book before your body. To shield yourself, though from whom or what you could not explain, not even if your life depended on it.
Annatar, if he notices this odd little twitch, is gracious enough not to mention it. “Is there some reason why my recommendations for your health so displease you, all of a sudden?” He pries your book from your hands – gently, so gently – and lays it atop the sill where you had been seated upon his arrival only moments before. There is nothing between your body and him, now, save his robes.
In all the days since you had awoken again, this has never registered with you as it does now.
“Tyelpe?” Annatar asks quietly, and oh, how his love for you shines in his mouth’s formation of your name! Diminutive made pledge and splendor of the giver, these three newest and softest, most tender of syllables. In gratitude, you lower your mouth to his and kiss him.
This you have surely done before. This you must remember, this you could never forget! The taste of him is sweet, and the scent of him sweeter yet; the feel of him beneath your lips is soft, and warm, and when you pull your mouth from his, the sound that he releases is just as soft, but warmer still. And when you open your eyes and look down upon him, his eyes are closed, though slowly his mouth stretches, the smallest glimpse of flashing white teeth glinting as he smiles.
“My precious,” he whispers. His eyes do not open. “How I love you. How I have always loved you!”
He does not push you, though; he does not move. He leaves it up to you to back him away from the window, away from the sun – out of your main chambers, into your sleeping room. His eyes do not open; he trusts you to direct him, to guide him. The smile leaves his mouth, but only so that he can shape words with it instead; you can see that the smile is still there, echoed in every plane of his face, as he whispers again and again how he loves you. You are cheered, and warmed, and yes, emboldened by such tokens; you stoop again and again to his mouth, stopping his words with your kisses. And still his eyes do not open; still he gasps his endearments, whenever in your ravenousness you leave his mouth free.
And when finally the backs of his knees impact with your bed, when finally his eyes do open again and they fall upon you, you find that you are pinned by his gaze, for all that you are ever so slightly the taller. Hot and heavy his eyes shine, with devotion and wonder and admiration and lust, and these things are for you.
These things are all for you.
“What have I done to deserve you?” you wonder, no longer surprised that the words fall from your mouth whether you will them or not.
“Nothing,” he says, and the weight of his gaze never falters, though your eyes are drawn away to watch his fine hands, which have risen to the neck of his robes, have begun twisting at the buttons of the lower layer that rises up to his throat from the collar low upon his breast. “Nothing, my precious, and yet, here I am.”
You cannot look away. Your eyes follow his fingers as they unhook one button and then the next, then the next. You forget even to kiss him. You have done nothing to deserve this. “Annatar!” There is nothing you can do, can have ever done, to deserve this.
“Tyelpe.” His fingers never falter. You imagine that he is still looking at you, at your face; you cannot even look up to see. “My sweet one, my precious. My all.” The buttons are undone. He has reached the collar of his overrobe, a single piece worn over his shoulders and pulled tight about the front; there remains only a sash at his waist to part upper layer from lower. He hesitates there, as if uncertain this is what you want.
You place your hand atop his and tug. Petulantly. You want, yes, you want – oh how you want!
There is a small inelegant snort from somewhere above you – for still your eyes follow his hands, and you have not looked up – but obligingly, he pulls his sash apart. You grunt, impatient, and he laughs, raising your hands to his shoulders and placing them upon the folds of soft, white cloth.
“Pull, Tyelpe,” he prompts you; “pull it from me.” There is still a shadow of laughter in his beautiful voice, and for this more than anything else you finally look back up to his eyes – where you find that the weight of them is diminished, though not the care, nor the fire. Somehow you find the courage to push his overrobes from his shoulders.
Ever the giver he is, your friend – nay, your lover!
Annatar’s robes slide to the floor; they pool at his feet. Far more gracefully than your sheet had fallen about yours.
He slips from his underrobes; there is a shirt, and a pair of braies – endearingly practical – and then he is as bare as you, save the glimmer of red stones in his hair and the gleam of gold on his first finger.
“Well, love?” Annatar asks, amused, and you realize that you have not moved again save to stare. “Am I so repulsive to you that you will do nothing more?”
Your wonder at the gift that you are being offered has left you without any of the new words that your book may have taught you earlier this day. Instead you breathe his name, and only his name, as you descend to kiss him once more.