“...furthermore, I expect that when Thranduil arrives we shall have need to...”
Elladan dodged around a corner, hiding himself behind a door and holding his breath as he father and a group of advisers passed by. Once the tail end of the final heavy robe trailed behind the council as they strolled down the hallway, Elladan rushed around the door, only to run right into Melpomaen, butting him in the chest. The youngest of the advisory staff stumbled a step back in surprise while Elladan cringed.
Looking over his shoulder, Elladan saw that the rest of the group was nearly at the end of the hallway. When they entered through the council room doors he would be safe, but he feared one had heard the commotion or would be alerted by Melpomaen. By now, the entire valley knew of Elladan’s mishap in the library and what he was supposed to be doing.
Melpomaen, however, was a kindly ellon, and placing a finger to his lips, waved Elladan around him. Mouthing his silent thanks, Elladan went swiftly past, only to hear his father a few moments later calling to the straggling scribe that he should hurry up and join the rest of the council, for this was not an optional meeting.
Checking the apples for bruises as he wandered down the hall to find Lord Glorfindel’s door, Elladan managed to almost plow into another elf along the way. “I thought you were supposed to be in the library,” accused the youngling once he was safely out of the way.
“What? Oh, Elrohir, yes, I am. I was just going there now,” Elladan explained.
“The library,” said Elrohir in a very informative voice, “is that way.”
“Good. Nice to know it hasn’t moved since I was last there,” shot back his twin.
Elrohir frowned. “Stop getting snippy with me. I was not the one who tried to destroy it.”
“I was NOT trying to destroy it,” growled Elladan. “I just wanted a book from the upper shelf.”
“We are not supposed to be reading things on the restricted shelves,” Elrohir reminded his brother calmly.
“Fuck you.” Elladan seemed just as surprised as his brother at his outburst. “I mean...”
“I am letting someone know that you have lost your way to the library,” said Elrohir as he began to walk away. “And,” he added over his shoulder, “I am telling Nana what you just said to me.”
“Fine! I learned it! From! Her!” Elladan pulled an apple from his pocket and threw it at Elrohir, pegging him in the shoulder. The barely younger elf turned around and looked about ready to cry. “Elrohir, I am sorry. Wait!” Elladan sighed as his brother went running down the hallway, no doubt planning to make good on his threat.
Elladan took a number of heavy steps down the hall, watching over his shoulder most of the time, before coming up with an idea. If he was in Glorfindel’s room, maybe he could make his mother believe he had been there the entire time.
** -- ** -- **
With a lazy smile on his face, Glorfindel studied every detail of Erestor’s face, which was so close he had to blink now and then to keep his eyes from crossing. After convincing Erestor to join him in bed, it was Erestor who eventually edged himself beside Glorfindel and snuggled against him. Glorfindel held Erestor in his arms until they had both fallen asleep, and when he woke, Glorfindel had kept Erestor close.
So far, Glorfindel had watched Erestor take several hundred quiet breaths through slightly parted pink lips, and counted eighty-six light caramel-colored freckles scattered across the bridge of his nose and over his cheeks. He was less pale now than when he had arrived, just yesterday.
“What a difference a day makes,” whispered Glorfindel as he watched errant strands of dark hair that had escaped from their braids wave back and forth as he breathed. “I could do this forever.”
Before he had the chance to attempt such a feat, Glorfindel was jarred from his post-reverie musings by someone slamming the door open. Sitting up abruptly, Glorfindel saw Elladan standing in the doorway, and that the door had been opened with such force that it had smashed into a table and vase behind the door. The table was just knocked a little ways back; the vase did not fair so well.
“Oops,” said Elladan as he heard the crash of the piece of pottery. “Uhmm... good day, Lord Glorfindel, I, ahm, I brought some apples.” Emptying his pockets onto the floor, Elladan tried to smile, but it came through as a look of distress.
Thankful that the noise had not woken Erestor, Glorfindel climbed out of bed and went to the door, closing it. “Elladan, what are you doing here? I thought you were assigned to the library.”
“I came to apologize to Erestor for yesterday,” explained the youth.
The table behind the door decided it was too quiet, and after dropping a leg, teetered to the ground with a thud.
“Oh, fuck,” muttered Elladan.
“What was that?” questioned Glorfindel in a warning tone.
“Nothing!” Elladan panicked, backing against the door. “Please... do not tell my parents!”
“Then I never want to hear you say that word again,” Glorfindel said sternly. Elladan nodded instantly. “Alright. Come in here and help me with this mess.”
Elladan took a step into the room, and immediately stepped down on one of the apples. It was a very ripe one, and squished into a pile, except for the part that spurted across the room onto the wall.
Glorfindel regarded the wall, and looked up at Elladan. The youngling cringed. It started as a smirk, but soon Glorfindel was laughing. “You are just a walking accident waiting to happen,” he said in a rather jolly tone as he started to gather the light blue shards of pottery. Elladan sunk down to the ground to help with a pout. “Elladan, I did not mean that in a cruel way. What I meant was that at this age, you are no longer an elfling, and you have yet to grow into your adult form. It is an awkward time.”
“Elrohir seems to have no trouble with it,” said Elladan.
“He probably has his own troubles that he just manages to hide better,” suggested Glorfindel, taking a napkin from the tray that had come with breakfast and had been left forgotten. With it, he did the best he could to clean up the chunky pile of applesauce. “Maybe he is more graceful with his body when he moves, but perhaps there are other items he struggles with.”
“His voice cracks and jumps three octaves when he tries to talk to girls,” noted Elladan. “He squeaks.”
“There you go,” Glorfindel nodded. When the table had been set upright and the leg wedged in place, Glorfindel looked to the bed with a frown. None of the talking or commotion has awoken Erestor, and though he was apparently just a sound sleeper, Glorfindel still had another nagging idea in the back of his mind.
“Elladan, would you do me a favor?” asked the elf-lord.
Eagerly, Elladan agreed. “What must I do?”
“I am going to wake up Erestor. He and I will be sitting right there,” said Glorfindel, pointing to the table. “I want you to wait just a few minutes, and then run over to the door, and try to surprise him.”
“How?” asked Elladan with a bit of worry.
“Just... scream, yell, shout, make a lot of noise. Can you do that?”
“Absolutely!” Elladan headed out of the room and waited just a few doors away.
Standing up, Glorfindel moved the apples that were left onto the table, then walked to the bed and sat down. Erestor’s back was to him, so he gently placed a hand on his companion’s shoulder and gave it a little shake. Almost right away, Erestor woke and looked up. “It is afternoon, and I thought you might be hungry,” said Glorfindel. Erestor pondered this a moment and nodded. “There are apples on the table, and I thought we might take a look at the tiles before we go to lunch.” Another nod was given, and as Erestor rose from bed, stretched, and yawned, Glorfindel quickly went to the table and moved the chairs to the other side so that they would be facing away from the open door.
“I put the most common word on the back, but there may be others. We can worry about those later. After lunch, we can pick up some paper somewhere, and then I will teach you to write some of these words.” Glorfindel found Erestor’s smiles were contagious, and found himself smiling back. “This is going to be fun.”
Erestor nodded, and started looking over the tiles, flipping them over to find out which words went with which pictures. A few times, Glorfindel watched as Erestor moved his lips, as if he had heard some of the words before, but the temporary hope Glorfindel had that someday he would hear Erestor speak was shattered by the arrival of Elladan at the door.
“Bllllllaaaaaghghhh! Rrraaaaaarrrr! Aaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiyaaaaaaaaaa-aaaaaaaaaa-aaaaaaaaaa!”
“Aahh!” Quite unexpectedly, Glorfindel fell from his seat upon hearing the outburst in the hallway.
Erestor belatedly looked down at the floor, giving Glorfindel a puzzled look.
The blond warrior put his hand to his chest as he closed his eyes. Part of him had been caught off-guard from Elladan’s show in the hallway, while another part of him felt a deep pain upon realizing with certainty what Erestor’s plight was.
In yet another part of the house, someone who was not invited to the council meeting wandered into it.
“Elrohir, I do hope you have a good reason for interrupting,” Elrond said, glaring across the room at his younger son.
“I am so sorry for entering without leave to do so, Ada,” said Elrohir humbly, “but I was looking for mother and could not find her.”
“She is at the river with friends of hers; she will return this eve. Can it not wait?” asked Elrond, giving apologetic looks to the members of the council, who were all waving it off, many of them with children of their own who had done similar things in the past.
Elrohir bowed his head. “I will wait for her. It is nothing of great importance; Elladan has enough to deal with.” The youth turned to leave.
“Excuse me for a moment,” said Elrond. He left his chair at the head of the table, joining Elrohir at the door. Quietly he asked, “What did your brother do?”
Producing the apple, Elrohir said, “He threw it at me.”
“Did it hit you?”
“Yes.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“What did you do to provoke him?”
“I just told him he should be in the library, not wandering the halls,” whispered Elrohir.
Elrond folded his arms over his chest, sighing. “When did this occur.”
“A few minutes ago, in the hallway. Right after he told me ‘fuck you’,” added the peredhel.
Blinking rapidly to a blank, unreadable expression, Elrond rhetorically asked, “He said what?”
“He said-“ But Elrohir did not have time to finish.
“El-ladan!” bellowed the lord of the house.
