I Didn't Realize You Were Coming by Rocky41_7

I Didn't Realize You Were Coming

               Half of the musicians had carried on with their same level of vivacious enthusiasm, while the other half had screeched to a halt at the wild gesture of the king’s, which might have been a directive, or might have been merely panicked flailing. A stilling of the guests rippled out from the king, until all but the drunkest had ceased with their raucous merry-making (and from one intoxicated party-goer there was a cry of “Where did the music go?”)

               “Oh,” said Finrod breathlessly, fluttering his hands to urge the Elves surrounding him to a more respectable distance. “Maedhros! I…had not realized we were expecting you!” He tugged his sheer robes more firmly over his chest, as though this might compensate for the fact that they were entirely transparent, and brushed a hand over his chin to make sure he was not dripping wine. The Elf who had been holding the bowl up for him took so long to lower it to a less incriminating height Finrod almost slapped it out of her hands to get it out of Maedhros’ view.

               The eyes of Maedhros and his Elves swept around the hall, taking in the state of the guests, with their crooked flower crowns and wine-flushed cheeks, and lingering on what appeared to be a fountain of wine at one side of the room.

               “Clearly not,” Maedhros replied slowly, turning his gaze back on Finrod’s florid face, sweeping down over his heavy bejeweled adornment, earrings to anklets, then back up to his wide-eyed gaze. “I suppose my reply must have…been lost somewhere on the way…”

               “Ah, well…never mind that, cousin! Can I get you a drink?” Without waiting for a response, Finrod hurried down the length of the table, a barefoot dance he could have performed with ease while sober, but which in his current state, inevitably led to losing his balance as he tried to avoid stepping in a plate of mashed potatoes, and had to be grabbed by a nearby Elf and lowered to the floor.

               Those who had been pressed about him in the throes of dance carefully picked their own way off the table, and Finrod swept a goblet of wine off the tabletop and thrust it at Maedhros with a smile that would have been disarmingly guileless, if he were not having so much difficulty staying upright.

               “Welcome…to Nargothrond?”

               Maedhros stared his younger cousin down, as though Finrod had callously wrenched from his eyes some shades, and reached ponderously for the proffered goblet, which he suddenly felt he needed a great deal.

               “Those are new,” he said, and when Finrod realized Maedhros’ eyes were on the silver bars he had not-so-recently allowed some of his Dwarven friends to pierce through his nipples, the heat in his cheeks seared up to the tips of his ears and down to his sternum, and he folded his arms across his chest.

               “Aha, it’s, ah, a gesture of friendship from the Dwarves,” he babbled. “A sort of customary…friendship…gesture…you know. Politics. Keeping up alliances.” He coughed aggressively. “C-comity. You know. King things.” Finrod’s face looked dangerously close to setting his hair aflame.

               “I see.” Maedhros held his eyes as he lifted the goblet, and tried not to see in front of him the same little Elfling who had once followed him about the training pitch with starry-eyed awe and regular enthusiastic applause. The goblet went down in two swallows, and then he thrust the empty cup out at Finrod. “I am going to require another of those.” 

Chapter End Notes

Rats, now he can't count on Maedhros to always take his side because he's a Flawless Little Angel.