here we go again by lonelyvisitor  

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just one look

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The inn grounds did not have a large geographic footprint. Orodreth nonetheless swiftly lost track of his son.

He was first waylaid by the cook, who had many arcane questions about the provenance of the evening’s lembas-corn better suited to Galadriel or Elwing, and subsequently by tripping over a lobster trap. Bruised but still determined, he found Gil-galad’s mule outside the granary, and his voice echoing inside. Orodreth tried the doors, yet it seemed they were jammed from within.

It also seemed that Gil-galad was not alone.

Possessed as he was of Elvish hearing Orodreth might have immediately identified these mysterious persons. But it couldn’t be, it shouldn’t be, not the day of the wedding. Not when so much had already gone wrong.

Part of Orodreth wanted to deny the possibility. Yet the greater part was morbid curiosity, and it sent him creeping around the corner of the granary to seek the window, just missing Gil- galad as he made his exit through the front.

Out of his son’s sight, Orodreth peered through the cracked and dusty panes.
His heart, already making a slow progression down his spine, sank straight into his toes. There indeed among the farming implements stood Finrod.

History had been quick to name Orodreth a pale imitation of his uncle, and every time he saw him Orodreth felt paler still. Even in casual Telerin sailing costume — his flaxen hair windswept in a ribbon, his blouse sloughing down his shoulder, his breeches cut very high above the knee — Finrod seemed radiant and royal as he had been when he presided over the court of Nargothrond. Before they had turned on him, and even then his noble stature had persisted through his downfall, becoming the sort of thing people sang lays about. Whereas burdened with the crown Orodreth had only made a further shambles of the mess Finrod left behind; it was not all his fault, surely, but entrusting much of his policymaking to a mortal scarcely clear of his majority had been a poor decision, no matter how comely the young man had been.

In short, Finrod’s mere presence made Orodreth feel dreadful about who he was. He’d comped his uncle enough nights in the inn — such guilt one harbors, for letting someone’s kingdom fall to ruin — and he had not wanted him at the wedding. Certainly not when he’d told Angrod and Eldalótë not to bother.

(This too in order to spare himself from his parents’ commentary on the softness of the beds and the dangerous conditions for their elderly sighthounds, who had weak ankles and startled easily at goats.)

Yet the Elf that Finrod stood beside filled Orodreth with a further dread.

Fingon the Valiant was unmistakable: the gold threaded in his dark braids, the ardent glint in his grey-blue eyes. Orodreth thought his father’s cousin had perhaps spoken ten words to him in all the years they had first been alive. He and Angrod were once good friends, and in the days of the Trees Fingon had likely scruffed Orodreth’s head in the midst of some hunting- trip before riding off to theatrically spear a boar. On the Ice he’d remained at the vanguard, wrestling bears and whatnot while Orodreth got frostbite and blisters from his crampons.

Then all those storied battles, including the one where Fingon died in storied fashion—but it was since his death that he'd caused the most trouble.

It didn’t matter what was recorded in the official genealogies, those riverine tapestries draped about the courtyard of the Finwëan palace. Everyone thought Fingon, not Orodreth, was Gil- galad’s father.

This often included Orodreth himself.

But then Orodreth remembered, with righteous nerve, the boy’s tender years in Nargothrond. Who had endured those nights that infant wails had echoed through the caves, taught him his Tengwar, watched him grow into a man? Well, Círdan, for the latter. But it was Orodreth Gil- galad called his father, in spite of the convenient narrative of the High Kingship passing in an unbroken line down from Fingolfin.

Besides, Fingon had only ever been known to have one partner, and neither of them had been in seeming possession of a womb—no matter what people said regarding the provenance of Gil-galad’s occasionally-reddish hair.

But in his agitation over Fingon and Finrod, Orodreth had managed so far to avoid a second glance upon the third Elf in their company, whose presence truly disturbed him most.

Now he beheld Celebrimbor, with hands pistoning a mechanical olive-picker—with shapely forearms bulging—a look of determined, lusty concentration on his face that Orodreth remembered well—

—from the times he had seen Tyelpe at work in the forge. How happy had been his cousin’s coming to Nargothrond, in spite of the sorrow that preceded it, the strife that came after! The Bragollach had left both his parents dead, and Minas Tirith in the Enemy's hand; it had brought Celegorm and Curufin to sow dissent within the caves. And yet Orodreth had so needed a friend. It was lonely raising Finduilas on his own—her mother, an Avar of Nan Tathren, had laughed at the terms of Noldorin monogamy, and after their daughter’s early years visited sporadically when the willow bark trade brought her up the Narog.

Tyelpe had arrived a distant kinsman, for in Aman he came up cloistered in Formenos while the Arafinwëans spent endless summer in Alqualondë. And yet he had become so dear, over commiseration about their mutual marginalization in tedious, erotically charged council meetings; over not a few bottles of miruvor deep into the evening.

How many chances had there been? How many lingering glances beneath those long and ruddy lashes?

Orodreth had never taken his cue. He was a father, a husband (so he still assumed), a pawn in a political tinderbox. Even when Celebrimbor stood at his side as Orodreth cast out his kin— breaking from his own father and uncle for love of the line of Arafinwë—even then there had been no overture.

Then the Mormegil had come to Nargothrond. Tyelpe was among the smiths when Anglachel was cast anew to Gurthang; he’d counseled Orodreth of the fell doom he sensed was bound into the blade. Orodreth had not heeded him, but let Túrin build a bridge.

Thus had Glaurung come, and the city fallen, and Finduilas been taken and slain terribly. Orodreth spent the next millennium in Mandos kicking himself—while Celebrimbor got involved with someone far more glamorous and interesting, even if that person happened to be the former Lieutenant of Angband in radiant disguise.

Yes, Orodreth had so very many regrets when it came to Celebrimbor.

How long had he harbored his fantasies: of carding his hands through hair dark-red as heartsblood, of being crushed between broad shoulders thickened by hammerstrikes? Still, when word came that Tyelpe had returned from the Halls, he’d sent no heartfelt letter, no basket of Ellairë’s finest goat cheese and figs. Orodreth only hoped his cousin assumed he was still dead, for he was certain if he ever saw Celebrimbor returned to life he would die again, only of embarrassment.

And yet having somehow survived this moment, Orodreth now found himself climbing the trellis that went up the outer wall of the granary.

He found he couldn’t help himself, that several thousand years of mortification had dissolved the instant he caught sight of those amber eyes, warmed from within not only by Treelight but the spirit of a true smith, who forges his great works for friendship, and for love.

There was a trapdoor on the roof, if he could not go in by the front.

Propelled by self-loathing, by anger, and most of all by lust, Orodreth scrabbled with the latch and lifted up the handle. Strategic positioning never having been his strong suit, he then tumbled into the granary from above.

He landed in a rather unflattering position, ankles raised, a quantity of hay breaking his fall and draining him at once of erotic impulse. Three chivalrous hands automatically extended

themselves, smelling of fish; Orodreth shirked from them all, shimmying backward toward a barn-beam.

“You!” He cried in collective address, looking from man to man. “What in all the Themes are you doing on my island?”

“Snorkeling trip,” said Fingon, with absolute assurance. Celebrimbor took a longer beat. “Shipwrecked, wasn’t it?”

Finrod crossed his arms. “Artaresto, I demand a prompt explanation as to why I was not invited to this wedding in the first place.”

“No one was invited but family.” Orodreth staggered up, shedding hay. “Immediate family.” He attempted a threatening glare. “And there are enough of them. I don’t have room for you, go home.”

“The ferry’s not for a week.” Fingon’s resolve fell easily to a pout.

Celebrimbor pointed to Finrod, seeming eager for a second impression at speaking. “He’s got a boat.”

“You’ve got wings,” snapped Fingon. 

Finrod laughed. “Well, I’m not leaving.” 

“Oh, go step on a sea urchin, Findaráto.”

Roused and terrified by his own discourtesy, Orodreth kicked at the granary door. This caused a plank to topple outward; while he had certainly not planned so well-choreographed an exit, shimmying through this aperture he was able to remove the crowbar that latched the outside.

“I do not wish to see you again. Any of you.”

With a clang and fleeting glance past his shoulder — at Celebrimbor standing with his olive-picker, an unreadable expression on his beautiful face — Orodreth stormed away.

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