Title & Chapter Number: Misfits 13/30
Author(s): - Author's Index
Fandom: Middle Earth
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: I do not own these settings or characters, and am making no profit from the writing and sharing of this story.
Warnings: Haldir's in it. Need I say more? /snicker
Betas: Circe
Cast: Haldir/Melpomaen
Timeline: TA AU
Spoilers: None
Summary: Haldir and Melpomaen talk; Haldir and Melpomaen argue; sexual acts ensue.
Notes: Thanks to everyone who has offered commentary, feedback, and support. I apologize for the length of time it's taking me to write this, and I hope things will move along a bit more quickly in chapters ahead. I also apologize to all of you whom I haven't had a chance to e-mail replies to yet; I will get to it eventually.
Melpomaen allowed himself to be led into Haldir's bedchamber in spite of his misgivings. Neither of them had spoken a word since leaving the main family area, and Melpomaen silently cursed himself for his easy capitulation. There had been more to what had just happened than poor timing; Haldir had consciously pulled him back down before the door had opened. He had wanted Orophin to see. He had not been overtly crude about it, but it was clear that Haldir had wanted to present a picture too plain for even Orophin to misinterpret.
The bed was unmade, something which Melpomaen had never seen before upon entering this room. The sheets were rumpled, and the plain beige coverlet had been carelessly thrown back. Haldir's clothing from the previous night lay in a pile on the floor instead of in the wicker basket by his bureau, and the older elf stepped swiftly passed Melpomaen to scoop them up and deposit them in their proper place. Despite his irritation, Melpomaen could not help but suppress a smile; he himself would have been more likely to kick them under the bed.
"I'm sorry about the mess." There was a hint of embarrassment in Haldir's voice, but Melpomaen said nothing. Aside from the unmade bed and dropped clothing, the room was as stringently neat as it always was. Not so much as a speck of dust marred the surface of Haldir's bureau and shelves, or the top of his small desk. A carefully evened stack of papers rested at one corner of the desk, and a single page lay in the center. Melpomaen drifted over to it, curious, and found himself gazing at his own image.
"Do you like it?"
"You flatter me," Melpomaen said softly. Haldir came up behind him, winding an arm around his waist.
"I don't. That is you."
"Hmm," Melpomaen said musingly. The picture was not an erotic one; in it he was depicted sitting on the edge of Haldir's kitchen table dressed in the black robe and blue leggings he'd worn the day after Haldir's first visit. He looked comfortable and relaxed, though Melpomaen could not imagine himself behaving in such a nonchalant manner. Haldir's eye had been true to the delicacy of his features and slender build, but there was a straightforward glint in the eyes that took Melpomaen aback. The expression Haldir had given him was one of challenge.
He let the drawing fall to the desk and reached to page through the stack set to the side. Haldir shifted uncomfortably but did not stop him, and Melpomaen swiftly fanned them out over the previously clear desktop. Here was Rumil in braids and an extravagantly flounced shirt, Arwen with her bow, a group of unfamiliar elves playing cards at the living room table. And, finally, there were two more in which he saw his own image. In both he was held in Haldir's embrace, and in both Haldir's back was to the viewer.
Melpomaen frowned as his gaze moved between the two drawings. In one Melpomaen was almost lost in the arms of what looked to be a blond man inexplicably dressed in a Galadhrim uniform. The second was kinder, though no more accurate; in it Haldir was more slender and the variance in their heights was not so great. It was clearly an idealization, but any relation to reality had been lost in the dreaming process. It could have been any blond elf holding Melpomaen in this picture, any elf at all.
Melpomaen's thoughts shifted to Haldir's behavior earlier as they'd worked on Orophin's doghouse, to the too-tightly reined control he'd shown up until then. He thought of Orophin's happy chattering, his own perusal of Orophin's bare torso, and of a canteen tossed rather than handed to the young Galadhrim. His gaze moved back and forth between the drawings, between images of himself held by either a man or an anonymous archer, and at last he turned to look into Haldir's eyes.
"Do you trust me, Haldir?" Melpomaen asked abruptly. He dropped the pictures on the desk.
"Of course." Haldir blinked. There was honesty in his voice, but there was something else, too - something murkier and less easy to identify.
"And do you know that I come here to see you, to be with you?"
"Yes." Now Haldir's tone had become impatient. "What does this have to do with anything?"
"A lot, I would think, since you've made such a point of ownership." Color stained Haldir's cheeks. Embarrassment did not set well with the blond archer; Melpomaen could see the quick shift to anger already beginning, and he raised his hands to gently rest upon Haldir's shoulders, meeting his eyes squarely. "You are the only one for me, Haldir."
"You are not the one whom I am worried about," Haldir said through clenched teeth.
Melpomaen took a deep breath. "I see. So, it is the attentions of others that concern you, and you feel that I am so fickle that I would, of course, be easily swayed."
"No." Haldir glared, pushing Melpomaen back and away from him. "That is not what I meant, and you know it."
"I do? What do you mean, Haldir?" He did not raise his voice, but his tone had sharpened. "Do you believe that you have so little to offer that perhaps I'd find another's attentions welcome?"
"I don't have to listen to this." Haldir drew himself up to his full height, and the look he bestowed upon Melpomaen could have frozen molten steel. "If that is what you think of me, then you have no reason to be here."
"It's not what I think of you, dammit!" Melpomaen stepped forward, completely undaunted by Haldir's proud, menacing glare. "I'm trying to understand what you think, what is going through your head when you're standing between me and your brother the way his dog would guard a bone. Or when you're drawing this… " He turned and snatched up the drawings still lying on the desktop.
"Give me those!" Haldir reached for the pages, but Melpomaen stepped back, waving them just out of his reach.
"Who is this in these pictures with me, Haldir? Of a certainty it isn't you."
The last of Haldir's control slipped. Cursing under his breath, he moved forward and grabbed the sheets of paper in Melpomaen's grip. "You will give those back to me now, Melpomaen," he said warningly.
"No, I won't." The smaller elf scowled. "I'm not one of your brothers, and I'm not one of your soldiers. What are you going to do about it?"
The sound of tearing paper was incredibly loud in the momentary, charged silence between them. Melpomaen's stunned gaze dropped to the piece he still held, wrinkled and now torn, in his clenched fist. The remaining half vanished between Haldir's hands, and he swallowed hard as the older elf crushed it into a ball, flinging it across the room.
"There. Is that better? Are you satisfied?" The cool evenness of Haldir's voice did not deceive Melpomaen, but, as before, he did not back down.
"No, I'm not satisfied. You need to figure this out, Haldir."
Melpomaen tried to push past him, but was brought up short when Haldir grabbed his arm. He jerked back, but had no hope of breaking free of Haldir's grip, and, instead of fighting it, he stood still, glaring back at the taller elf with eyes that spat fire.
"I don't need to figure anything out, but perhaps you could explain why you object so strenuously to being seen with me."
"I do not object to being seen with you." He tugged ineffectually at Haldir's grip. "What I object to is being displayed like something you won at an archery competition!"
"I was not `displaying' you, as you put it. Is it so wrong for me to want people to know…" Haldir's words trailed off, and Melpomaen stared up at him, waiting in both angry frustration and curious anticipation.
"To know what?" he snapped. Haldir scowled.
"To know I love you."
"That you love me," Melpomaen echoed softly. Haldir said nothing; his face was as coldly set as it had been on their first meeting. The hand gripping Melpomaen's arm relaxed but did not fall away, and the younger elf understood that Haldir would say no more on the subject. "Want others to know you love me, or want others to know I'm yours?"
Still, no response; only those hazel eyes gazing down into his, projecting anger, humiliation and fright in fractured waves of blue and green. Melpomaen knew that Haldir would not ask him to stay again; the choice was his as to whether to pull loose from the archer's now lax grip, or step forward to hide from that gaze in his arms. Melpomaen could not quite bring himself to do either.
"You have to believe in me, Haldir." He lifted his hands to touch Haldir's cheeks, feeling the instinctive flinch that always came when his hands strayed to Haldir's face. "You have to trust me."
"Be mine, then."
"Aren't I?"
"No." Haldir did not look away. "That is not what I mean. Be mine the way I'm yours. Let me…" He continued to suffer the light touch on his cheeks, moving both of his hands to rest just above Melpomaen's elbows. It was a gentle touch that intimated something less gentle; the hardness of muscle and calluses could not be disguised by lightness of contact. The hands that grasped Melpomaen's arms reflected Haldir perfectly, and Melpomaen could not help but feel giddiness in his stomach that was not entirely arousal. Those hands swept down the length of his arms, settling heavily on his shoulders, and Melpomaen found himself as unable to answer Haldir's request as Haldir had been unable to answer his own queries.
"I've never…" he said feebly, and Haldir smiled, razor sharp rather than sensual.
"Neither had I. But I did." His lips curled further, turning into something more like a sneer. "For you. You have to believe in me, Melpomaen."
For one moment of crystalline clarity Melpomaen knew that he should free himself from that deceptively light grip, walk past the March Warden and never return. This was too much, more than he wanted to deal with in what he'd thought would be a simple affair. He didn't want to look up into predatory eyes, nor deal with the emotional depths that lay beneath that simmering surface of ready anger. He didn't want to be Haldir's, not in the way that Haldir clearly meant, not by an act premeditated in fear and jealousy. Still, there was the matter of his own words being thrown back in his face, words meant to calm that had obviously achieved the opposite affect, and had pushed Haldir to call his bluff. Yes, there were his words, and there was also Haldir's heat, and heavy hands that could be gentle in spite of the hardness of muscle and roughness of calluses.
Instead of walking away he tilted his head back when Haldir bent to kiss him, opened to him, allowing the slow domination of heat and wetness. He stood like a doll, not returning the embrace that Haldir now folded him in, but softly conforming to it nevertheless. Haldir tasted him, tasted his lips and continued from there, kissing the high planes of his cheeks, the sensitive curve of his ear. Rage had fled; now Haldir touched him as if he were made of glass, handled him as if he were an exquisite gift, something precious. --Perhaps that's what he thinks I am-- Melpomaen thought dizzily as he was lifted off of his feet and carried to the bed.
It was the first time Haldir had ever touched him so familiarly, so surely, since the day that he'd accompanied Melpomaen and Arwen to archery practice. Haldir's uncertainty and Melpomaen's dignity had not previously allowed it, but Haldir's interpretation of Melpomaen's silence had made it possible, and now Melpomaen felt weightless in his arms, felt deliciously, terrifyingly lost. He had never considered this, never stopped to think of the course his words and actions were leading him upon, and, though he knew this was not the final destination, he understood that it was a crucial crossroads -not a point of no return, but one from which a return would be difficult at best.
There was urgency in Haldir's touch, but not the swift, desperate heat he'd been expecting. Melpomaen cooperated only minimally with the removal of his clothing, lifted limbs and raised his hips as needed, allowing Haldir to do the work. The older elf might have mistaken his still submission for lack of interest had it not been for the pulsing heat that lay at the apex of Melpomaen's body, or the strained gasps and low moans evoked by Haldir's hands and lips. Inaudible murmurs met Melpomaen's ears, words muffled by flesh and thickened by passion, words that Melpomaen was unsure that he wanted to hear anyway. The tone was enough; soft and sweet, reassuring, and laced with gratitude in a way that made Melpomaen tremble with shame as much as with desire.
He opened himself to Haldir's questing hands and throbbing desire even as he held onto his internal refusal, hearing Haldir's placating words as if from a distance when heat, hardness and roughness touched the soft swell of his buttocks. He consciously willed thought away at the touch of oiled slickness and forced himself to relax, to give as Haldir had given to him. There was pain, but not as much as he had expected, a discomfort and burning as fingers carefully invaded. Closing his eyes, he imagined Haldir's face twisted in passion rather than opening them to see the reality, imagined himself astride Haldir's utterly willing body. Then he lost track of even that as something more insistent than cautiously probing fingers pressed against and into him.
Haldir's hand locked around Melpomaen's length, teased him into complete arousal even as he essayed that first, slow inward glide. This time there was pain, more so than there should have been from the tension that Melpomaen could not quite release. The rhythm of Haldir's hand on his cock sang out discordantly against the pain of opening and stretching, the two screaming separate imperatives in a confusion of hot necessity. Melpomaen's hands darted upward, clamped onto Haldir's shoulders as the elf lowered over him, fingers biting into collarbones.
"Stop. Haldir, please," he hissed through clenched teeth, and immediately Haldir froze, hand paused in mid stroke.
"I'm sorry, Melpomaen, love, I didn't mean…" Melpomaen had never heard panic in Haldir's voice before, but he heard it now, and with a supreme effort of will he opened his eyes. Haldir's eyes were dilated with lust, but the expression he wore was one of guilty horror. "We won't do this if I'm hurting you."
"No. Just… give me a moment, Haldir." He shifted his grip to hold Haldir in place as his lover attempted to pull back. It was not what he'd meant when he'd asked him to stop, but Melpomaen could hear other words, words he himself had spoken when Haldir had first come to his bed. He remembered his own need, his own urgency, and his own lack of control as far as the blond warrior was concerned. And he remembered Haldir's acceptance.
It seemed an eternity that they remained frozen, Haldir sheathed within Melpomaen's body, before the younger elf felt a lessening of both pain and pressure, relaxing enough to make movement possible. Again, soft words fell upon his ears, and when the smooth rhythm of Haldir's hand resumed he found himself moving with it, arching carefully, disorientingly caught between building excitement and apprehension.
And then, at last, he felt Haldir's thickness brushing against something that sparked quicksilver ecstasy, something that made him forget everything except want and need. Melpomaen twisted back against the sheets, raising his hips in complete willingness as he was filled again and again, rocked, propelled beyond concerns that had suddenly been rendered meaningless. There was only heat within and without, and then he was beyond even that, crying out rapturously as he fell into the oblivion of ecstatic release. Then Haldir, too, was falling, driving into him in one last forceful thrust before sinking down into his arms.
The sound of a solid object striking a wall jolted them from their daze. Haldir raised his head from Melpomaen's shoulder and grinned down at his tousled lover.
"We're keeping Rumil awake, love."
Melpomaen closed his eyes tighter. Thought was beginning to seep back through the post-orgasmic daze; along with it came a sense of discomfort that went beyond the steady ache in his lower body. Haldir frowned.
"Are you alright?"
"Yes, fine." He cracked an eyelid, peering up into Haldir's shadowed face. "And I'm sure Rumil has kept you awake a time or two before."
"No," Haldir said absently. "I don't usually allow overnight guests when I'm returning to duty."
Melpomaen stared. "And you don't think he'll be upset?"
"Oh, I'm sure he will, but he'll complain about it to someone else. I make the schedule, you know."
Melpomaen let his eyes drift shut once more, feeling tension and frustration return in the wake of Haldir's comment. Of course, Rumil would talk about this even if Orophin did not. It seemed that Haldir had succeeded in killing two birds with one stone. Melpomaen considered giving voice to this scathing thought, but abruptly closed his mouth before the words could leave his lips. Haldir had asked him to be his, after all.
And he had not refused.
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