Hold me in your arms by firstamazon

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Hold me in your arms

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Celegorm looked through pink and green leaves at the blue sky, painted with soft golden fingers. The breeze stirred the trees and they whispered and laughed; he felt their joy mix with his own, pure and natural as the blood that coursed hot through his veins. He closed his eyes and inhaled the fresh, sweet scent of peaches that hung above their heads.

Another scent – of leather and sweat and strawberries – mixed with another laughter, clear as crystalline water, made him open his eyes and look at his cousin, spread on the grass mirroring his position: arms bent beneath her head, loose dark hair tangling in her naked arms and shoulders. Her eyes, which he knew to be as gray as his father’s, were narrowed to some place in the distant sky above, and a smile played at her lips.

Celegorm swallowed a lump of the same complicated feelings he had begun to harbor for his cousin – or, rather, that he had finally begun to understand – and wished he could look away before she caught him staring. Aredhel wouldn’t like to know she was being observed to this degree, as he had often heard her complain when Curufin’s intense scrutiny fell upon her.

“What are you laughing at?” he asked instead, going for the levity he knew she adored in him.

“That cloud looks like two tits and a cock stuffed in the middle,” she said with a giggle.

Celegorm looked up, intrigued and aroused anew by the simple, crude words coming out of her mouth, and he soon found the figure of which she spoke. He chuckled low and shuffled closer to her, their heads pressing together.

“It could be two cheeks of a butt,” he supplied with a sudden hoarse voice, for the idea of burying himself in her again re-sparkled the desire that had never truly left him.

Aredhel turned to stare at him fully, no doubt perceiving the paths of his thoughts, but the gleam in her eyes spoke of some new awareness – and Celegorm prayed Ilúvatar she hadn’t dug deeper into his mind and discovered the feelings he had, perhaps poorly, been trying to conceal.

“Again, Turko? Do you ever tire?” she raised one mocking eyebrow. Celegorm laughed again, relieved at her seemingly clueless response, and moved to come atop her.

“I never tire of you.” He whispered in her ear, trying to take off the weight of his words by rolling his hips into her leg. 

Celegorm left a wet spot on her skin, and she pulled his hair hard, dragging him into a rough kiss. They moaned together and rolled their bodies in a frantic, hard coupling – it was not lovemaking, not with her. Aredhel never allowed for tender touches or caresses to be exchanged afterwards. 

Despite the knowledge of what their relationship meant to her – if it could be called a relationship at all – Celegorm’s climax brought forth words that should have remained hidden deep inside him; but they spilled from his mind as the breaking of a dam, unbidden and unstoppable.

Írissë! Meldanya!

He came back to himself with a quick kiss on his brow. The maddening gallop of his heart settled against hers – as always, she brought unexpected temperance into his life, even though her spirit flew free as a bird.

“You really need to stop that train of thought, cousin,” she remarked casually a moment later.

Celegorm jerked up and looked at her. Despite her words, Aredhel smiled, all mischief and wilderness.

“What train-”

“You can pretend to be dimwitted to your brothers. Not me.” Her tone changed, and he slipped out of her body, trying to maintain the cool, innocent façade.

“I am not playing dumb, Írissë. I know not of what you speak.”

She huffed impatiently. “Fine. Pretend what you will.” With that, she stood up in haste and began dressing. 

Celegorm smothered the knot in his chest with an iron fist and sat with his back to her, pretending, indeed, that he was unfazed by the exchange, that the words didn’t sting as a thorn into his heart. He knew her, had always known it would come to this if she discovered about the gaping yearning he was still learning how to handle.

He didn’t hear her approaching, as he wouldn’t – for she was as well-learned in the arts of the forest as he – but was surprised when she knelt behind him and wound her slender arms around his waist, and rested her pointy chin on his shoulder.

“Don’t be mad at me, dear Tyelko. I cannot endure the thought of losing your friendship.”

The earnestness in her tone made him squeeze her small hands between his larger ones. “You would never lose it. Rest assured.”

He turned his head as much as he could, and his nose tickled her cheek.

“I am afraid these things you feel might one day drive us apart. I beg you to forsake them.” Her voice was quieter now, and Celegorm frowned.

“I wish I could,” he admitted at last with a sigh. “But you hold my heart in your hands, and I do not know how to wrench it back.”

“Here.” She put a warm hand on his chest, above his pulsing beat. “Have a piece back. It’s yours, and I return it of my own free will.”

“Cruel!” he teased, shoving her lightly with a shoulder. “You would deny it of me?”

“I am selfish, you know that. And I won’t give it all back lest you stop loving me altogether. And we can’t have that, can we?”

It was Celegorm’s turn to laugh. “Keep it, then. But keep it close, for I fear that you might lose it if you don’t.”

She punched him hard in the shoulder, for she was known for losing borrowed things – Galadriel’s silk skirt when they went diving once, one of Fingon’s favorite flutes, a collection of hair ribbons… anything in Aredhel’s hands was in danger. 

Celegorm knew that better than most.