Three hours later, the guards had been summoned, the House and all its outlying areas searched, Glorfindel lectured by Elrond, Elrond shouted at by Glorfindel, and Erestor yet to be found.
Dinendal, Glorfindel's friend and lieutenant, sat in the chair beside the bed, looking with an evaluating eye at his Captain. "Glorfindel."
No reaction.
Dinendal continued, "Why do you have half the guard and all the staff in Imladris searching for Erestor?"
"Because he's hiding from me."
"Why is he hiding from you?"
"Not sure. Exactly." Glorfindel laced his fingers together and looked to his lap.
Dinendal raised a brow. "Not sure? Exactly?"
The blonde shook his head. "Call off the search, Dinendal. It's useless, hunting Erestor in his own territory. He knows this House better than anyone."
"I wouldn't say that," said a new voice.
Glorfindel and Dinendal turned to see Elrond in the doorway, arms crossed, eyes dark.
"You know where he is?" Glorfindel asked with a touch of fatigued hope.
"Yes."
They waited.
"You won't tell me, will you?"
Elrond stepped into the room, glared at Dinendal, and nodded toward the hall.
Dinendal left without a word, closing the door behind him.
Elrond stood at the bedside, glared down at Glorfindel, and raised a brow.
Glorfindel said, "After centuries of stagnant, mystifying daydreams, things are moving very quickly all of a sudden."
"About time," Elrond smiled at him. "But I want to know why the House is crawling with armed guards and you've my staff in an uproar."
Gesturing to the bed, Glorfindel pointed out, "I would chase him down myself, you know. As you can see, he's purposely left me in the lurch and I don't appreciate it."
"You don't sound angry. And you're smiling."
"I think I've been smiling for the past three hours without stopping." Glorfindel shook his head. He picked up the carving from his bedside. "Elrond, if he won't come to me, will you take this to him?"
Elrond took the pine statue in careful hands. His voice was suddenly soft with empathic love, "Aye. I can do that. Do you send a message with it?"
"No. --Yes! Tell him, "The first trinket.'"
He nodded and walked to the door. Before he left, he turned back and told him, "But I'll give him the eyebrow and tell him to come. He is a bit of a coward, you know."
Elrond shut the door on Glorfindel's laughing, "So am I!"
With little else to do, Glorfindel pretended to content himself watching the changing sky out the window. Bright afternoon blue was rolled over by heavy dark clouds high above the valley, threatening rain. Little droplets spit in a short fit against the window and ceased not long after, running down the uneven, leaded glass in bursting rivulets until the sun shone again. The fiery brilliance of Anor burned away the moisture and Glorfindel watched the drops grow smaller and smaller against the bright light, awed at the changing, pointillist landscape revealed there on his window, as though he'd never seen such a sight before.
Eventually, though, the sun disappeared over distant hills and the sky performed another astonishing display of color mutation, bright blue quickly failing, overtaken by something paler, duller, less intense. This evening, the west blared violet with a hint of pink lining the last of distant gray clouds before the colors muted altogether and swam into a moment of dull void.
Glorfindel watched all this, and smiled when the first curious stars blinked into existence, hanging in their accustomed alignment on the dark net of the eternal sky.
Then, without warning, the door opened. "Sorry I neglected to knock," Elrond huffed, slightly brusque, slightly annoyed, slightly amused. "But I walked by and found this one loitering about."
It appeared, however, that Elrond was alone.
The expression on his face when he turned to look behind him was priceless, had anyone been there to see it. "Get in here!"
Erestor shuffled in.
"Good."
Then Elrond left, shutting the door firmly behind him.
Glorfindel smiled but said nothing, observing the Elf suddenly trapped in his rooms.
Erestor was quiet by nature, intelligent by chance, cynical by choice, and altogether a gentleman, with a lordly manner defined by fine values rooted in what could only be the most native sort of hope.
But for the first time, he didn't appear to be.
Erestor cowered. That was the word for it. He stood, shoulders curled in, head bowed, dark hair spilling over to cover as much of a pale face as possible. His hands -- delicate, long-fingered, with clear glassy nails --shook with some breed of fear. Maybe anxiety, or apprehension. And those hands were tightly clutching the little pine statue of seashell and flowers. He said nothing.
Despite running away, despite leaving Glorfindel alone to stew (frustrated and scheming), despite these things, Glorfindel found it in no way possible to berate, criticize, or rebuke this Elf, this being, this creature who was all too different from himself and yet had managed to wind his way to the center of Glorfindel's continually growing world. Erestor.
"Erestor," Glorfindel told him, "I am very glad you came back." Honesty was best, Glorfindel thought, and in this case, the only possibility existent to him.
A small glance, flash of dark, and Erestor rolled his eyes at his own cowardice. He lifted the carving so that it was cradled to his breast and then tried a small smile.
"Please," Glorfindel offered, sitting up even straighter than he had upon Erestor's arrival, "sit." He gestured to the now familiar chair. "Please don't be so nervous," Glorfindel begged, still smiling. "I love you too." His voice was suddenly softer than it ever had been, delicate. Fragile. If only such confessions demanded less of the confessors, perhaps we would speak more often and truthfully of love.
"It's strange, isn't it?" Erestor asked, and then covered his mouth, as would a child who had just remembered he wasn't supposed to speak. But after a moment, Erestor recovered. He dropped his hand and slinked with shuffling steps closer to the chair, and therefore closer to Glorfindel.
Encouraging nods from Glorfindel spurred the dark Elf on until Erestor was sitting primly on the edge of the chair, as a bird on a branch prepared to flee any moment.
"Settle in," Glorfindel told him with a laugh. "You're more than welcome here.
Erestor would not look at him. He studied instead the fine craftsmanship of the trinket fondled in careful hands.
"Your letter," Glorfindel started. "That little carving," he tried again. He sighed. He never stopped smiling. "I think we love each other quite a lot. Can we not dispense with this cowardice of the heart?"
Energetically, Erestor shook his head. He still did not raise those fine, dark eyes.
"All right then. It looks like we'll be here for a while, and I'll just keep talking, like I am, until you weary of it, and finally break the monotony with one of your well-timed insinuations, how does that sound?"
"Perfect."
Glorfindel laughed. "Why so shy, Erestor?"
Shrug.
"Ah well," Glorfindel ran a hand over his head, upsetting fine blond hair, and pulling a few strands loose from the braid. And then he said no more. Waiting.
Finally, Erestor moved. He tucked away the forever disobedient tangle of hair from before his eyes and raised his head to meet Glorfindel's expression.
Glorfindel's smile was charmingly disarming. "You want to see some REALLY bad poetry?"
A shy smile touched Erestor's lips. He nodded.
Glorfindel gestured downward. "You're not the only one who thinks the shadowy depths beneath the bed are a perfect place to hide things. It's a wooden box, carved with vines. You can't miss it."
Erestor knelt, with such humility and grace, at the side of Glorfindel's bed, meeting his eyes the entire time. Then he ducked down, black hair falling silently over a black shoulder. Pale hands reached under the bed skirt and a swift search resulted in a smallish sort of box, carved from oak, beautifully detailed with fantastical creatures like dragons and winged horses on the lid, and ivy vines all round the side.
His throat suddenly dry, Glorfindel gestured wordlessly at the chair, and Erestor nimbly perched upon it again, setting the flat box on his lap. He reluctantly set the seashell carving on the bedside table. "Open it," Glorfindel whispered.
Erestor opened the box. It was filled with papers. He leafed through them with the careful hands of any respectful librarian. He found a receipt that he had signed at the delivery of iron from the Lonely Mountains and raised an eyebrow at Glorfindel.
"It had your signature," he explained softly, though with the toned implication that this should be the most obvious thing in the world.
He watched as Erestor moved through the papers, glancing at them. "That one!" Glorfindel nearly shouted, pointing, "with the spirals doodled all along the side. Read that one."
Erestor seemed mute; he handed the paper over to Glorfindel.
Glorfindel took it, but with a sardonic little grin. He noticed the tears beading in Erestor's eyes, but said nothing of it. "You want me to read it. All right." He held the thin parchment in careful fingers and shook his head. "This was the first one," he said with a laugh. He cleared his throat nervously:
"Find me a love to make me whole Find me a heart to keep safe my love I seek a mate to match my soul I seek a star from above.
"A silent shadow haunts my steps A shadowed beauty fills my dreams Coal-black eyes mine soul traps My songs of love: repeating themes.
"His eyes are night, filled with stars His ebony locks are raven's wings His shrouded heart mine heart scars His vacant spirit my heart stings.
"This ode betrays my silent mind These words reveal my hidden heart A silent vow would our hearts bind Declared, this secret would break us apart."
Glorfindel coughed, "That was ... yeah. At my most depressive. I got over it."
"So I can see."
"I don't think I shall ever stop smiling now."
Erestor again met his eyes. "Good." He looked then to the box and idly moved a few papers around. "I liked the poem."
"Thank you." He chuckled a little. "I'm sure yours are better."
"I assure you, they are not." Erestor sighed. "Glorfindel," he began.
But said nothing more.
"Yes," Glorfindel eagerly responded. "Please tell me anything; I'll listen."
Erestor laughed. Just a little. "This is silly and intense at the same time."
"Yes."
"How is your leg?"
"Oh. Better. Barely more than a superficial wound anyway."
"Liar," Erestor called him. "Elrond told me it nearly struck bone."
Glorfindel shrugged. "But it's getting better."
"Good."
Erestor stood. He set the box down on the chair. Then, he gathered his robes and climbed daintily upon the bed to sit just beside Glorfindel, their legs stretched out before them, backs supported by the mound of pillows.
Erestor took Glorfindel's hand, and rested -- with swanlike grace -- his head upon Glorfindel's shirt-clad shoulder. "Glorfindel," he said matter-of-factly, the last of his cowardice shooed away for the time being. "We have shared an office for thousands of years without much in the way of disagreement. Therefore, hope stands to reason that shared lives would lead us no more astray. But, we never see quite eye-to-eye at Council. Therefore, logic decrees that home living bodes us ill. We have both of us always been open-minded and accepting of others' differences. Therefore, we should in theory be as accepting of each other. But, you have no sense of order and I rely on it. Therefore, equal footing will be hard to find, if found at all--"
And Erestor would, in all likelihood, have continued well into the night, if not for Glorfindel's tactful interruption. The golden-haired Elf turned his head and caught the debating lips in a kiss, quick and deep and just right.
When he pulled back, only the very corners of his mouth kept the fond smile, but all Erestor saw were the deep, loving blue eyes. "I think," Glorfindel told him, voice a little rough and low, "we'll make it all work somehow."
"You're overly optimistic," Erestor whispered.
"Yes," Glorfindel off-handedly agreed. "And you're a perspicacious scholar whose curse is eternal cynicism and whose heart will never fail."
"Do I have to return that excessively maudlin sentiment?"
"Tomorrow," Glorfindel told him. "Gives you time to think up a really good one."
Erestor said nothing, only gripped Glorfindel's hand all the tighter and turned to bury his face in the crook of Glorfindel's neck, breathing deep.
Safe, content, loved, they slept.
But not before Erestor whispered, "A trinket. A poem. You still owe me a dance." And he smiled. "Perspicacious ..."
The End.
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