Title: Sea Lullaby

Author: Talullah (talullahred@gmail.com)
Author's website: http://talullah.secretstigma.net

Pairings: Círdan/Gil-galad.
Summary: A sleepless night.
Rating: R.

Feedback: I would love to learn your opinion on this.
Archive: My website, Secret Stigma; AFF. Others are welcomed, but please tell me
where it is.
Disclaimer: The characters are not mine. They belong to the estate of J.R.R. Tolkien
and God knows who else. No disrespect intended.  No profit made.

Author’s Notes: Written for a Contrelamontre challenge which was sleep. "Observing
one sleep, having a dream, preparing for sleep... any way you'd like to work in
sleep is a-ok with me. You have 1 hour." 

Also, I'm fitting this in Fanfic100 in Prompt 31: Sunrise. Opening line from a Quill
and Ink challenge.

Thanks to Patricia Pleasant for the very quick beta job. :)

~~~~~~

Nightmares plagued my sleep for weeks at a time. The past was laden with heavy
imagery of loss and destruction that haunted me in my days and kept me between
alertness and fitful sleep during the nights. I was tired of running only to find
out that I had not been there in time enough to help in any way. Cities falling,
beauty obscured, failure all around and those two children that never left my mind,
those children that now slept with the murderers.

I pushed the blankets back and lay in the pale starlight that seeped through the
window trying to find the will to rise from the bed and shake the images from my
head. Lately I had been dreaming often of my own demise, many times at the enemy’s
blade, an enemy who these days was, ever more often, hard to identify. Had we not
stooped so low as to kill our own kin? In the dead hours of the night, it was hard
to remember why Arda should be a good place to dwell upon and desperation came from
knowing the eternal binding that tied us to her. No escape, not even in Mandos. Not
for the first time I envied Men.

The lack of rest was starting to weight heavily upon me. I stood, weary,
relinquishing the bed that would not offer me comfort, rest or warmth and went out
into the hall, still in my night clothes. What a sight, the lord of the Falas
ambling like a lost child, but I suppose, these days, no one was so keen in keeping
propriety as before.

I roamed through the empty halls trying to find something that I could do to keep
the darkness at bay until the sunrise brought life into the house again and a myriad
of small problems for me to handle. At length, I found myself in the kitchens. When
had it been, the last time I was there? I cared little for domestic affairs, but
once in a while it was good to see if every thing was still in place, especially in
these times of change. And it was. There is something about a sleeping kitchen that
is comforting, a promise of permanence in a sea of change. In the morrow the cooks
might even prepare me a dish never seen, but it would still be food and we would
still eat it and take comfort and nourishment from it, who knows, maybe even some
pleasure.

The kitchen was clean and tidy and warmer than the rest of the house, despite the
fact that the fires had been put out for the night. I ventured forth and its
particular scents, though faded by the night, roused an appetite I had not had in
many days. I looked around, trying to locate a pantry from where I could take
something to appease my stomach, but then I remembered that, in this house, the
kitchen was too small and so it had been decided that storage and baking should be
held somewhere else. What a fine Lord was I that I could not find my bakers working
in the night. I sighed, resigned to the thought of a few more hours of hunger and
left through the back door. Behind the small yard that stretched outside the
kitchens there was a small herbal garden that supplied both the healers and the
cooks. I liked it there, though I had seldom set foot on it.

Ruling had become an all absorbing task and I had forgotten to take the time for
simple pleasures. With a start, I realised I had not been to sea in over two months.
I left the garden and headed to the port through a steep, sandy path. My eyes were
trained on the ground, trying to avoid a very undignified fall and so I heard him
before I saw him. His warm voice called out as I reached the end of the path and
instead of continuing to the port, as it had been my intention, I followed it to the
beach on the other side.

"Sleepless too, eh?" Ereinion asked when I sat in the sand by his side. There were
traces of amusement in his voice and I realised I was still in my night trousers, as
was he.

I shrugged, avoiding a more revealing answer, but Ereinion was no longer a child and
ruling had taught him much of what keeps one awake at night.

He draped an arm over my bare shoulder. In the coolness of the darkest hours, it
felt blazing hot and comforting. This was another thing that was wrong – I was meant
to be his foster father, but after those early years when he approached me with
equal amounts of devotion and fear, he had started treating me as a friend, a
companion, not a fatherly figure. Maybe I should have kept him closer to me when he
was little, but that could not be remedied now that he was all grown and twice
fatherless. He never seemed to resent my ineptitude as a surrogate father, though.
In fact I think that he preferred it this way.

His arm dropped from my shoulder to my waist and it rested there while we sat in
silence. After the age for comforting hugs had passed, Ereinion had often touched me
like grown men do in affection: a shoulder squeeze, a back pat, but this kind of
prolonged physical intimacy was not usual between us and I found it unsettling.

At length, he dropped his head to my shoulder and his lips grazed my skin. I tensed.
An affectionate gesture, I forced myself to think. He feels lonely and burdened and
I am the closest thing he has to a father, good or bad. He rubbed his forehead
slightly on my shoulder and spoke, once again, that note of amusement in his voice
that I could never quite identify as a shared joke.

"You should take a lover to keep you in bed," he said. 

I grew impossibly tense. I knew he could feel my heart racing. I knew now that he
knew. He knew I could not see him as a child, not anymore. "I am your father, of
sorts," I said weakly.

He laughed. "Dear Círdan, no you are not and you never were."

I bowed my head in shame for my failure, but he rubbed my shoulder. "I never needed
that from you. I had a father. The free friendship you gave me instead of mentoring
prepared me for now. Made me the man I am."

His hand squeezed my arm, even as he brushed his lips to my cheek and he murmured,
"There is no one in this Arda or beyond for whom I could care more."

All of a sudden we were lying in the cool sand, his hard body above mine, the heat
of his skin thawing the dawn chill from mine. I pulled his hips hard against mine.
It had been so long. I shuddered and in response heard his faint laughter. He moved
with strength, that is the only way I can describe it. He was deliberate, neither
slow, nor fast, rather perfect as he laid his weight on me, keeping me in place. He
had grown taller and more muscular than me, I realized. His hips moved over mine in
circles, harder as his kisses grew deeper. My legs, imbued of a will of their own,
wrapped around him but the friction was far from enough. He knelt back and cupped my
face in his hand, making me feel like I was the boy. His thumb ran over my lips and
he leaned in for another smouldering kiss, even as his other hand roamed below,
under my clothing. He pulled my laces roughly and grabbed my cock so tightly it
hurt, but that was exactly what I needed. I could not stop watching him there,
kneeling between my open legs, his hand moving, dragging tiny grains of sand that
scratched my skin, but there was something unreal about the moment until a gull
cried and then it crystallized. The strong scent of the algae, the rhythmic murmur
of the sea, the taste of salt in the air, the traces of sand in our bodies… it was
as if a veil had been lifted and everything shone anew. I pulled him down to me and
we lay side by side, legs entwined, voracious mouths upon the other. His hand never
left my groin, and mine reached for his. We were racing against the other, an
intense mix of pleasure and pain rolling like the waves through us, until the final
crash into the shore.

We lay heaving in the sand, my fingers tracing the pearly seed on his skin, the
bodies close for warmth and love as the sky grew clearer.

"I want more and I will have it one of these days," he said to my chest. I closed my
eyes in silent agreement. I wanted more too, much more. "But not in the sand," he
added, his smirk patent in his voice, bringing one of my own forth. 

We listened to the sea and our hearts as the sun slowly tinged the horizon with
faded reds. I felt my eyes heavy and peace pervading me. There was only one thing
sweeter than that early morning slumbering, and that was Ereinion's breath on my
neck.

Finis
November 2005

Time: 1:11.