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silwritersguild2005-09-02 10:22 am
dawn_felagund) wrote in silwritersguild2005-09-02 10:22 am
Entry tags:
"The Imperfect Gift"--Happy Birthday, Jenni!
Title: The Imperfect Gift
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dawn_felagund
Rating: Adult
Warnings: Explicit marital Nerdanel/Feanor sex.
Genre: Romance
Summary: On Feanor's fiftieth begetting day, he ponders the gifts that he has received.
Author's Introduction: This piece was written for Jenni's (digdigil) birthday. Last week, I was accused by some of being teasing in my chapter of Another Man's Cage, where Feanor offers Nerdanel a "romp in the river" and...nothing happens. I hope this piece will remedy my evil of getting fangurls all worked up for nothing.
And, of course: Happy birthday, Jenni!
I will be cross-posting this story to the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
house_of_feanor community. Apologies to those who therefore receive it twice.
As always, I love comments--both good and bad--especially as I have not had much time to live with and revise this story. Enjoy! :)
The Imperfect Gift
The day started with a scream that hurtled Fëanaro son of Finwë from a most pleasant dream. He groaned and rubbed his head—still aching from too much wine at his begetting day eve supper last night—and willed the sound to go away and the dream to return. But the screaming got louder and Nerdanel—who was lying asleep next to him and just beginning to stir—did not resume putting her hands on his body in the most pleasant places, as she had in his dream, and so Fëanor sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed.
Nerdanel rolled over and mumbled, “I’ll go to him.”
“No, no, dear, it’s my turn,” he said, hastily pulling on yesterday’s trousers.
“But it’s your begetting day….”
Indeed, it was his begetting day: his fiftieth begetting day, the one that was supposed to be special and meaningful and signify his entry into adulthood. But Fëanaro—who was already both a husband and a father—hadn’t found much to enjoy about it so far. Last night, his father had hosted a supper in his honor, and he’d been forced into his stiffest, most uncomfortable robes to sit for hours across from his half-brother Nolofinwë, who had taken to listening with great tedium to anything Fëanaro said and looking immensely bored while doing it. And his other half-brother, Arafinwë—twenty years old and apt to act much younger—had upset a goblet of wine on Nerdanel’s best gown and laughed like he’d heard the finest joke ever told. Fëanaro, of course, was not amused.
Fëanaro had drunk large quantities of wine to compensate and had to be guided by his abashed wife back to their bedroom, while he attempted to kiss and grope her (at least, he hoped, in retrospect, that that was all he had tried to do), mindless of his father’s guests staring at him, as she attempted to fend him off in as dignified a manner as possible, with a red-purple stain down the front of her dress and her inebriated husband trying to “taste the sweetness of her fruit” beneath.
And then, while Nerdanel was undressing in the bathroom, he’d fallen asleep before even getting to claim his gift on the eve of his fiftieth begetting day.
And now Maitimo….
Maitimo was six years old, and though large and well spoken for his age, had taken to waking with nightmares at uncivilized hours in the morning. This morning proved to be no exception. Fëanaro entered Maitimo’s bedroom, hoping his wails would subside at the sight of his father, but they escalated until the child’s face was nearly the same color as his hair. Fëanaro cringed, feeling as though someone had lodged an axe into his head, trying to split it like a block of wood, and reached out to lift his son from his bed.
Feeling his father’s stiff reluctance, Maitimo screamed louder and squirmed until Fëanaro had no choice to set the child on the floor, where his pinioning little legs carried him from the room and into his parents’ bedroom, where he sought his mother’s comfort.
Too tired and sore to contemplate doing anything else, Fëanaro curled up in Maitimo’s small bed and went back to sleep.
~oOo~
The day couldn’t get any worse, but somehow it did.
It was a day of feasting, in honor of the High Prince of the Noldor reaching his majority. It was supposed to be a joyful celebration, but Fëanaro’s headache hadn’t completely left him and he wanted nothing more than to enjoy a late breakfast with his wife and son and to spend the afternoon watching Maitimo play in the garden while contemplating the Treelight on the first of the summer roses and his wife’s flawed and beautiful face.
Instead, he was led to a large chair by his father and told to sit while the lords bequeathed him with gifts, with smiles on their faces and loathing in their eyes. Of course, Arafinwë decided that he wanted to spend the day sitting on the floor beside Fëanaro, his arms latched around Fëanaro’s leg and his head on Fëanaro’s knee, and the child had really grown too big for such affection. (At least, that’s what Fëanaro wished to believe.) He was given trinkets and jewelry, all of it beautiful but none of it exceeding what Fëanaro himself could have done, and his critical eyes picked apart each gift and silently declared it shoddy in construction: necklaces that would break by the decades end, paperweights that would shatter too easily if grabbed and dropped by Maitimo’s hasty-yet-clumsy hands, and gemstones with slightly crooked facets that made uneven patterns of colored light on the walls.
Yet he smiled in what he hoped was a gracious manner and thanked them, to get it over with. By the end of it, he was ravenous with hunger (having been unable to contemplate breakfast, what with feeling like an iron ball had been planted inside his skull) and Maitimo was whining and hungry too, pulling his mother’s hair out of her carefully fastened braids and making the other wives of the court snicker at her from behind their hands.
Fëanaro gave them what he hoped to be a poisonous look, and they straightened and stopped, but the moment his back was turned, the noise began again, like the tiny, scratching feet of mice in a pile of paper.
The meal was grand but tedious, as they worked their way through an endless stream of courses, each seemingly more inane than the last. Maitimo, who was hungry for something of substance, whimpered louder with each disappointment set before him, until small crackers with spread with salmon were set out, and he shrieked, overturned the whole thing onto the floor, and began sobbing.
Nerdanel flushed red and hastened to comfort him, and Fëanaro rubbed his forehead while a maidservant stooped to pick up the ruined crackers. Seeing Fëanaro in such a state, her brow wrinkled, and she inquired, “My lord?”
“Please,” he snapped, “bring my son some bread, or something of substance,” and felt immediately regretful for his temper, for she hastened away with her head lowered, and an older woman returned in her place, with a plate of bread and jam for Maitimo and a stern look for Fëanaro.
When his eye caught his father’s, he saw barely concealed exasperation threatened to upset the carefully wrought, dignified expression on Finwë’s face.
There was music after the meal, but it never absorbed to the place where Fëanaro’s spirit lay—the place that was full of love and dancing—because it got hung up in his head on the way there and jangled against his brain and annoyed him for the whole three hours of it.
As soon as he could, he made his escape back to his bedroom.
He stripped off his good robes, caring not if he tore the fine fabric, and hurled them against the wall. A servant had left his boxes of gifts on the vanity table, and he scowled at them and flounced to the bed in his underwear, where he laid face down and pounded his fists into his pillows.
He wanted to cry. Like a child. Like someone who had not just celebrated his fiftieth begetting day. This was supposed to be one of the most joyful days of his life, but he could think of few worse. The only people who mattered to him he seemed to upset. He wanted to sleep, wanted the day to end.
Nerdanel was tucking Maitimo into bed. He could hear her singing him a lullaby. He wondered how Maitimo’s fiftieth begetting day would be. Better, he thought, if Maitimo didn’t invite Fëanaro at all: He seemed to draw disaster to occasions like a magnet would draw bits of iron to itself. Best to just invite Nerdanel, his mother.
At that thought, tears at last stung Fëanaro’s eyes, for his own mother hadn’t been in attendance today—she was long dead, watching him from the Halls of Mandos—and she was probably grateful, ashamed of the sight her son made, sprawled across the bed in his underwear, weeping like a small child.
Nerdanel’s voice fell silent, and he knew Maitimo was asleep and she would be returning to their bedroom soon. He wiped his eyes and hoped they were not red and turned over into a more normal posture for relaxing on one’s bed.
He waited to hear her footsteps in the hall, but they never came.
After many long minutes, he rose and quickly donned his robes again—forgoing the complicated laces and clasps—and padded barefoot down the hall to Maitimo’s room. Nerdanel sometimes lingered long, watching Maitimo sleep, as though staring at his youthful face would stop him aging beyond the innocence of childhood. Fëanaro looked into the room, but his son slept in the silver light of Telperion slanting through the drapes, and Nerdanel was nowhere to be found. He was pulling the door shut behind him when he saw the slip of paper tacked onto the door.
Husband,
I still owe you a gift. Will you follow?
N.
Puzzled, he looked down the hall and saw a trail of something dark against the floor. Stooping to examine it, he found a red rose petal, lush and velvety between his fingers, and he felt his heartbeat quicken. More of them following: down the stairs and across the courtyard, out the door, and into the street. The trail was not obvious enough to be followed by any other, and there were few people in the streets at this hour of the night, none of them in a state to wonder why the High Prince was following a trail of rose petals. He followed them to a tree at the city walls, a tree he knew well, for many times he scaled it on his way to the house of Mahtan in the night, mindful of being observed by the guards should he pass through the gate. Around the lowest branch of the tree, there was a rose tied and a slip of parchment speared onto the thorn.
Still you follow? You know the way from here, my love.
N.
He climbed the tree and scaled the wall, landing soundlessly on the other side. There was a thick grove of trees just past the wall—thick enough to grant concealment to young lovers meeting for a tryst in the night—and he hastened towards it, suddenly knowing where he would find his wife.
At the grove’s center was a pond. The trees formed a ring around it and thick beams of silver Treelight spun and danced upon the surface, in the rhythm of the swaying trees. Fëanaro ran forward eagerly and then, puzzled, stopped. He was alone.
He’d expected Nerdanel here, for it was here where he encountered her once, bathing after a hard day in the forge, and she had blushed and he had not turned his eyes. “Do you not know that it is impolite to look upon me in this state?” she had asked, and he had replied, “I cannot turn away from beauty. It is a flaw of mine.” And she had blushed but had not covered herself, and he had kissed her and knew in that moment that he would marry her one day.
Thinking on this, he did not hear the footfalls behind him, nor did he sense the presence of another until a strip of black silk had been slipped across his eyes.
He cried out in alarm, but a kiss quieted him, on his throat, over the pulse in his neck that beat in a frenzy. He felt deft fingers working the silk into a knot at the back of his head. “Hush,” said a whispered voice. “Do not alert others that we are here.”
He knew the touch of his wife’s hands by now, after eight years of marriage, and he felt himself growing aroused as she began to delicately remove his robes. His hands floundered in the dark, reaching to caress her breasts, cup her buttocks, draw her into him, but she skipped out of his reach, chiding him like she might their son: “No, Fëanaro! Do not touch me! It is I who shall decide the nature of your gift tonight.”
His robes were slipped from his body, and cool night air took their place. Nerdanel’s mouth moved over his body, and when she took his nipple between her lips, he couldn’t help but to cry out and fumble for her body, to return to touch that was so achingly pleasurable, but she leaped out of reach again. “Fëanaro, no, I said! Do not make me bind your hands, and I will, if you try to touch me again.”
“I am sorry, my love, so sorry,” he whispered, bereft and cold without her touch. “Please, don’t leave me; I will not do it again.”
Now, her fingers hooked into his underwear at the waist and slipped down this last barrier to his nakedness. He expected her to touch him, to take him in hand—this is what she usually did—but she kissed his chest and his belly and kept her hands on his buttocks, occasionally slipping lower to caress the muscular backs of his thighs. “Lie down, Fëanaro,” she said at last, and when he did not immediately obey, he felt his balance upset by a keen grasp to his ankle, and he was lying on a satiny blanket, through which he could feel the grass prickling his back.
For several long moments, nothing but the cool night air moved over his naked body, and he strained to hear her movements, to discern her location, pressing his hands flat against the ground to resist the urge to again reach for her. Crickets chirped and, somewhere, a nightingale sang, but he couldn’t even hear the pressure of a footfall. He waited, his body tense and his muscles like steel wires, ready, but he did not expect her touch where it came, nor in its manner of coming, when he felt her lips move over his erection and her tongue teasing most deliciously at the tip.
He cried out with the fury of one in pain, digging his fingers into the ground beside the blanket, dirt embedding itself beneath his nails. Pleasure coursed throughout his body, though his veins, like liquid fire, and his heart squeezed faster to accommodate the sudden rush of his blood trying to answer the calls of ecstasy in so many places of his body at once. His arms attempted to embrace her, but she clamped her hands around his wrists like manacles and held him down, and for a fearful moment, he thought that he was going to release like an inexperienced child, before even entering her, but her expertise was honed, and knowing his body well by now, she lightened her touch, teasing him with her lips until he was again subdued for a time.
He heard himself moaning her name, as though pleading, and her mouth moved all over his body, and he strained against her hands holding him down. At last, his superior strength overcame her, and he wriggled away, meaning to catch her in his arms as he did, but his grasping hands found nothing but the cool night air.
Crying out in frustration, he tore away the blindfold. He was alone on the blanket. He looked around frantically, searching for her, and it wasn’t until he turned towards the pond—behind him—that he saw her, standing in the water up to her knees, her gown floating around her on the surface of the water.
Her hand played with the neckline of her gown, slipped it down, revealing the top of her breast. It was only when Fëanaro saw her getting closer that he realized that he was moving toward the pond, nearly running, his desire for her almost painful. Feet, ankles, knees went into the water. He expected it to be cold, but it caressed him like warm silk. He was in to his thighs now. Gracelessly, he splashed across the pond, toward his wife, who was easing away from him, the top of her gown lowered nearly all the way, and he fell into her arms.
They fell, and water covered their heads and filled his ears with a roar. She was slippery beneath his hands, but his scrambling feet at last found the floor and pressed upward, lifting them both, gasping. His frantic hands swept the sides of her face, clearing her tangled hair, their lips cold and bereft and gasping with longing, kissed only by the cool night air.
At last, they kissed, mouths pressing each other hard enough to hurt, her teeth clamped on his lip, tongues tangling. Fëanaro’s eager hands pawed away the top of her gown, cupping her breasts that were heavier now after Maitimo’s birth. How she’d hidden her fuller body from him, in the days following her pregnancy, unable to understand how he’d desired her as one desires the sweetness of ripened fruit, how feminine she’d looked to him, with her full hips and breasts. She wriggled out of the gown and let it slide into the water, forgotten, while their hands struggled to touch as much of the other’s body as possible and naked flesh warmed naked flesh.
He carried her through the water until they reached the boulder that stood at one end of the pond, the boulder from which they’d leaped, squealing with glee, as children, into the water. Her legs clasped his waist, and for a moment, their gazes met and could not be broken: He could see their bond in her eyes, flickers of the fire that consumed him, that made him enter her with a single thrust, without assuring that she was ready—and knowing that she would be—while she dug her nails into the muscle of his shoulders, her head lolling back, her throat exposed, and cried his name into the night, “Fëanaro!” She was warmer, softer than the water, and he could barely withhold his pleasure, burying his face into the damp spill of copper-colored hair on her shoulder, as their bodies and their spirits united in love.
They moved in the rhythm of the trees, of the shifting light on the water, as though the whole of Arda around them was driven by the same rhythm, as a single beating heart.
When he feared becoming overwhelmed by the feel of her and drew away, she clasped her legs firmer about his waist and drew him harder into her. Her skin burned his mouth; she tasted of the water in the pond but, beneath that, was a flavor all her own, of Nerdanel, and he drank until he was made dizzy by her. Her eyes fluttered closed and she gasped and before he even felt the response of her body as she gave herself over to climax, he felt her spirit flash hotly against his and her nails dig into his shoulders, and he released deep inside of her, adding his voice to hers as their mouths met in a bruising kiss and cried the other’s name.
“Fëanaro,” she whispered, once the ecstasy had begun to subside, raising her hand from the water, where it had fallen, to stroke his hair. He let his face fall against her neck, let her hair cover him like a curtain, and held her so closely that he could feel her heart pattering quickly against his chest as well as he could feel his own, and he gladly lost track of which heartbeat belonged to whom. “I love you….”
~oOo~
Many more pleasures did the night bring, in the warm water or on the soft ground of the forest, beneath the witness of the stars, on the night that Fëanaro officially became a man.
They returned to the palace, hand in hand, bedraggled and exhausted, when Laurelin began to touch the morning with gold. It was too early for anyone to be awake in the palace, and even little Maitimo had slept through the night.
Fëanaro collapsed onto the bed, as he had done only hours before, when the night had not yet held promise, when he’d had a box of treasures and jewels and had not been happy. Nerdanel was attempting to tidy her sodden, tangled hair in the bathroom, and she came to him—having been somewhat successful—and took her place in the bed beside him. She laid her head on his shoulder and placed her hand on his chest, and his hand lifted to cover it, and he felt her lips move against the skin of his shoulder in a smile.
She spoke. “I will give you a gift, husband mine. It is just that nothing seems to do you justice—”
Startled, he felt himself jerk away from her, and her eyes met his with alarm.
“Was that not your gift?”
“Oh, that was only meant in jest, my love. To be romantic.” She laughed. “You deserve a perfect gift, more than I could ever be.”
He thought of the box of trinkets on the table, of the facets on gemstones that could be measured and the metals that could be appraised; numbers could be placed on their worth, and their giver’s regard for him extrapolated from there. He thought also of his lessons, long ago with Aulë, about the perfect woman’s form: the slender waist and delicate hips and bosom; the useless and graceful shoulders and arms; the endless sheets of silky hair and empty blue eyes that might have been marbles. He thought of his wife, with her full body and her strong arms and her hair that seemed to possess its own power of thought and sprang away from her head in rebellious clumps. Was she imperfect? The perfect woman was easy for him to create with a bit of charcoal and a sheet of parchment, or to carve from a chunk of stone or wood. They were just as easy to cast into the fire, to burn. In just eight years, Nerdanel had given him gifts that even his hands—the most skilled of the Noldor—could never hope to create and that his heart could never bear to see destroyed.
Incredulous, he said, “I want no possessions from you! Last night was enough.”
“Last night is past, my love. I want to give you something that will last as long as our marriage, until the ending of Arda.”
“Do not things—possessions—also end?” he asked. “Nothing lasts! Paintings fade, trinkets break, and even the strongest metal erodes but last night, my wife, shall live in my memory forever.”
And, with a kiss, he silenced any further argument.
Author:
dawn_felagundRating: Adult
Warnings: Explicit marital Nerdanel/Feanor sex.
Genre: Romance
Summary: On Feanor's fiftieth begetting day, he ponders the gifts that he has received.
Author's Introduction: This piece was written for Jenni's (
digdigil) birthday. Last week, I was accused by some of being teasing in my chapter of Another Man's Cage, where Feanor offers Nerdanel a "romp in the river" and...nothing happens. I hope this piece will remedy my evil of getting fangurls all worked up for nothing.And, of course: Happy birthday, Jenni!
I will be cross-posting this story to the
house_of_feanor community. Apologies to those who therefore receive it twice.As always, I love comments--both good and bad--especially as I have not had much time to live with and revise this story. Enjoy! :)
The day started with a scream that hurtled Fëanaro son of Finwë from a most pleasant dream. He groaned and rubbed his head—still aching from too much wine at his begetting day eve supper last night—and willed the sound to go away and the dream to return. But the screaming got louder and Nerdanel—who was lying asleep next to him and just beginning to stir—did not resume putting her hands on his body in the most pleasant places, as she had in his dream, and so Fëanor sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed.
Nerdanel rolled over and mumbled, “I’ll go to him.”
“No, no, dear, it’s my turn,” he said, hastily pulling on yesterday’s trousers.
“But it’s your begetting day….”
Indeed, it was his begetting day: his fiftieth begetting day, the one that was supposed to be special and meaningful and signify his entry into adulthood. But Fëanaro—who was already both a husband and a father—hadn’t found much to enjoy about it so far. Last night, his father had hosted a supper in his honor, and he’d been forced into his stiffest, most uncomfortable robes to sit for hours across from his half-brother Nolofinwë, who had taken to listening with great tedium to anything Fëanaro said and looking immensely bored while doing it. And his other half-brother, Arafinwë—twenty years old and apt to act much younger—had upset a goblet of wine on Nerdanel’s best gown and laughed like he’d heard the finest joke ever told. Fëanaro, of course, was not amused.
Fëanaro had drunk large quantities of wine to compensate and had to be guided by his abashed wife back to their bedroom, while he attempted to kiss and grope her (at least, he hoped, in retrospect, that that was all he had tried to do), mindless of his father’s guests staring at him, as she attempted to fend him off in as dignified a manner as possible, with a red-purple stain down the front of her dress and her inebriated husband trying to “taste the sweetness of her fruit” beneath.
And then, while Nerdanel was undressing in the bathroom, he’d fallen asleep before even getting to claim his gift on the eve of his fiftieth begetting day.
And now Maitimo….
Maitimo was six years old, and though large and well spoken for his age, had taken to waking with nightmares at uncivilized hours in the morning. This morning proved to be no exception. Fëanaro entered Maitimo’s bedroom, hoping his wails would subside at the sight of his father, but they escalated until the child’s face was nearly the same color as his hair. Fëanaro cringed, feeling as though someone had lodged an axe into his head, trying to split it like a block of wood, and reached out to lift his son from his bed.
Feeling his father’s stiff reluctance, Maitimo screamed louder and squirmed until Fëanaro had no choice to set the child on the floor, where his pinioning little legs carried him from the room and into his parents’ bedroom, where he sought his mother’s comfort.
Too tired and sore to contemplate doing anything else, Fëanaro curled up in Maitimo’s small bed and went back to sleep.
The day couldn’t get any worse, but somehow it did.
It was a day of feasting, in honor of the High Prince of the Noldor reaching his majority. It was supposed to be a joyful celebration, but Fëanaro’s headache hadn’t completely left him and he wanted nothing more than to enjoy a late breakfast with his wife and son and to spend the afternoon watching Maitimo play in the garden while contemplating the Treelight on the first of the summer roses and his wife’s flawed and beautiful face.
Instead, he was led to a large chair by his father and told to sit while the lords bequeathed him with gifts, with smiles on their faces and loathing in their eyes. Of course, Arafinwë decided that he wanted to spend the day sitting on the floor beside Fëanaro, his arms latched around Fëanaro’s leg and his head on Fëanaro’s knee, and the child had really grown too big for such affection. (At least, that’s what Fëanaro wished to believe.) He was given trinkets and jewelry, all of it beautiful but none of it exceeding what Fëanaro himself could have done, and his critical eyes picked apart each gift and silently declared it shoddy in construction: necklaces that would break by the decades end, paperweights that would shatter too easily if grabbed and dropped by Maitimo’s hasty-yet-clumsy hands, and gemstones with slightly crooked facets that made uneven patterns of colored light on the walls.
Yet he smiled in what he hoped was a gracious manner and thanked them, to get it over with. By the end of it, he was ravenous with hunger (having been unable to contemplate breakfast, what with feeling like an iron ball had been planted inside his skull) and Maitimo was whining and hungry too, pulling his mother’s hair out of her carefully fastened braids and making the other wives of the court snicker at her from behind their hands.
Fëanaro gave them what he hoped to be a poisonous look, and they straightened and stopped, but the moment his back was turned, the noise began again, like the tiny, scratching feet of mice in a pile of paper.
The meal was grand but tedious, as they worked their way through an endless stream of courses, each seemingly more inane than the last. Maitimo, who was hungry for something of substance, whimpered louder with each disappointment set before him, until small crackers with spread with salmon were set out, and he shrieked, overturned the whole thing onto the floor, and began sobbing.
Nerdanel flushed red and hastened to comfort him, and Fëanaro rubbed his forehead while a maidservant stooped to pick up the ruined crackers. Seeing Fëanaro in such a state, her brow wrinkled, and she inquired, “My lord?”
“Please,” he snapped, “bring my son some bread, or something of substance,” and felt immediately regretful for his temper, for she hastened away with her head lowered, and an older woman returned in her place, with a plate of bread and jam for Maitimo and a stern look for Fëanaro.
When his eye caught his father’s, he saw barely concealed exasperation threatened to upset the carefully wrought, dignified expression on Finwë’s face.
There was music after the meal, but it never absorbed to the place where Fëanaro’s spirit lay—the place that was full of love and dancing—because it got hung up in his head on the way there and jangled against his brain and annoyed him for the whole three hours of it.
As soon as he could, he made his escape back to his bedroom.
He stripped off his good robes, caring not if he tore the fine fabric, and hurled them against the wall. A servant had left his boxes of gifts on the vanity table, and he scowled at them and flounced to the bed in his underwear, where he laid face down and pounded his fists into his pillows.
He wanted to cry. Like a child. Like someone who had not just celebrated his fiftieth begetting day. This was supposed to be one of the most joyful days of his life, but he could think of few worse. The only people who mattered to him he seemed to upset. He wanted to sleep, wanted the day to end.
Nerdanel was tucking Maitimo into bed. He could hear her singing him a lullaby. He wondered how Maitimo’s fiftieth begetting day would be. Better, he thought, if Maitimo didn’t invite Fëanaro at all: He seemed to draw disaster to occasions like a magnet would draw bits of iron to itself. Best to just invite Nerdanel, his mother.
At that thought, tears at last stung Fëanaro’s eyes, for his own mother hadn’t been in attendance today—she was long dead, watching him from the Halls of Mandos—and she was probably grateful, ashamed of the sight her son made, sprawled across the bed in his underwear, weeping like a small child.
Nerdanel’s voice fell silent, and he knew Maitimo was asleep and she would be returning to their bedroom soon. He wiped his eyes and hoped they were not red and turned over into a more normal posture for relaxing on one’s bed.
He waited to hear her footsteps in the hall, but they never came.
After many long minutes, he rose and quickly donned his robes again—forgoing the complicated laces and clasps—and padded barefoot down the hall to Maitimo’s room. Nerdanel sometimes lingered long, watching Maitimo sleep, as though staring at his youthful face would stop him aging beyond the innocence of childhood. Fëanaro looked into the room, but his son slept in the silver light of Telperion slanting through the drapes, and Nerdanel was nowhere to be found. He was pulling the door shut behind him when he saw the slip of paper tacked onto the door.
Husband,
I still owe you a gift. Will you follow?
N.
Puzzled, he looked down the hall and saw a trail of something dark against the floor. Stooping to examine it, he found a red rose petal, lush and velvety between his fingers, and he felt his heartbeat quicken. More of them following: down the stairs and across the courtyard, out the door, and into the street. The trail was not obvious enough to be followed by any other, and there were few people in the streets at this hour of the night, none of them in a state to wonder why the High Prince was following a trail of rose petals. He followed them to a tree at the city walls, a tree he knew well, for many times he scaled it on his way to the house of Mahtan in the night, mindful of being observed by the guards should he pass through the gate. Around the lowest branch of the tree, there was a rose tied and a slip of parchment speared onto the thorn.
Still you follow? You know the way from here, my love.
N.
He climbed the tree and scaled the wall, landing soundlessly on the other side. There was a thick grove of trees just past the wall—thick enough to grant concealment to young lovers meeting for a tryst in the night—and he hastened towards it, suddenly knowing where he would find his wife.
At the grove’s center was a pond. The trees formed a ring around it and thick beams of silver Treelight spun and danced upon the surface, in the rhythm of the swaying trees. Fëanaro ran forward eagerly and then, puzzled, stopped. He was alone.
He’d expected Nerdanel here, for it was here where he encountered her once, bathing after a hard day in the forge, and she had blushed and he had not turned his eyes. “Do you not know that it is impolite to look upon me in this state?” she had asked, and he had replied, “I cannot turn away from beauty. It is a flaw of mine.” And she had blushed but had not covered herself, and he had kissed her and knew in that moment that he would marry her one day.
Thinking on this, he did not hear the footfalls behind him, nor did he sense the presence of another until a strip of black silk had been slipped across his eyes.
He cried out in alarm, but a kiss quieted him, on his throat, over the pulse in his neck that beat in a frenzy. He felt deft fingers working the silk into a knot at the back of his head. “Hush,” said a whispered voice. “Do not alert others that we are here.”
He knew the touch of his wife’s hands by now, after eight years of marriage, and he felt himself growing aroused as she began to delicately remove his robes. His hands floundered in the dark, reaching to caress her breasts, cup her buttocks, draw her into him, but she skipped out of his reach, chiding him like she might their son: “No, Fëanaro! Do not touch me! It is I who shall decide the nature of your gift tonight.”
His robes were slipped from his body, and cool night air took their place. Nerdanel’s mouth moved over his body, and when she took his nipple between her lips, he couldn’t help but to cry out and fumble for her body, to return to touch that was so achingly pleasurable, but she leaped out of reach again. “Fëanaro, no, I said! Do not make me bind your hands, and I will, if you try to touch me again.”
“I am sorry, my love, so sorry,” he whispered, bereft and cold without her touch. “Please, don’t leave me; I will not do it again.”
Now, her fingers hooked into his underwear at the waist and slipped down this last barrier to his nakedness. He expected her to touch him, to take him in hand—this is what she usually did—but she kissed his chest and his belly and kept her hands on his buttocks, occasionally slipping lower to caress the muscular backs of his thighs. “Lie down, Fëanaro,” she said at last, and when he did not immediately obey, he felt his balance upset by a keen grasp to his ankle, and he was lying on a satiny blanket, through which he could feel the grass prickling his back.
For several long moments, nothing but the cool night air moved over his naked body, and he strained to hear her movements, to discern her location, pressing his hands flat against the ground to resist the urge to again reach for her. Crickets chirped and, somewhere, a nightingale sang, but he couldn’t even hear the pressure of a footfall. He waited, his body tense and his muscles like steel wires, ready, but he did not expect her touch where it came, nor in its manner of coming, when he felt her lips move over his erection and her tongue teasing most deliciously at the tip.
He cried out with the fury of one in pain, digging his fingers into the ground beside the blanket, dirt embedding itself beneath his nails. Pleasure coursed throughout his body, though his veins, like liquid fire, and his heart squeezed faster to accommodate the sudden rush of his blood trying to answer the calls of ecstasy in so many places of his body at once. His arms attempted to embrace her, but she clamped her hands around his wrists like manacles and held him down, and for a fearful moment, he thought that he was going to release like an inexperienced child, before even entering her, but her expertise was honed, and knowing his body well by now, she lightened her touch, teasing him with her lips until he was again subdued for a time.
He heard himself moaning her name, as though pleading, and her mouth moved all over his body, and he strained against her hands holding him down. At last, his superior strength overcame her, and he wriggled away, meaning to catch her in his arms as he did, but his grasping hands found nothing but the cool night air.
Crying out in frustration, he tore away the blindfold. He was alone on the blanket. He looked around frantically, searching for her, and it wasn’t until he turned towards the pond—behind him—that he saw her, standing in the water up to her knees, her gown floating around her on the surface of the water.
Her hand played with the neckline of her gown, slipped it down, revealing the top of her breast. It was only when Fëanaro saw her getting closer that he realized that he was moving toward the pond, nearly running, his desire for her almost painful. Feet, ankles, knees went into the water. He expected it to be cold, but it caressed him like warm silk. He was in to his thighs now. Gracelessly, he splashed across the pond, toward his wife, who was easing away from him, the top of her gown lowered nearly all the way, and he fell into her arms.
They fell, and water covered their heads and filled his ears with a roar. She was slippery beneath his hands, but his scrambling feet at last found the floor and pressed upward, lifting them both, gasping. His frantic hands swept the sides of her face, clearing her tangled hair, their lips cold and bereft and gasping with longing, kissed only by the cool night air.
At last, they kissed, mouths pressing each other hard enough to hurt, her teeth clamped on his lip, tongues tangling. Fëanaro’s eager hands pawed away the top of her gown, cupping her breasts that were heavier now after Maitimo’s birth. How she’d hidden her fuller body from him, in the days following her pregnancy, unable to understand how he’d desired her as one desires the sweetness of ripened fruit, how feminine she’d looked to him, with her full hips and breasts. She wriggled out of the gown and let it slide into the water, forgotten, while their hands struggled to touch as much of the other’s body as possible and naked flesh warmed naked flesh.
He carried her through the water until they reached the boulder that stood at one end of the pond, the boulder from which they’d leaped, squealing with glee, as children, into the water. Her legs clasped his waist, and for a moment, their gazes met and could not be broken: He could see their bond in her eyes, flickers of the fire that consumed him, that made him enter her with a single thrust, without assuring that she was ready—and knowing that she would be—while she dug her nails into the muscle of his shoulders, her head lolling back, her throat exposed, and cried his name into the night, “Fëanaro!” She was warmer, softer than the water, and he could barely withhold his pleasure, burying his face into the damp spill of copper-colored hair on her shoulder, as their bodies and their spirits united in love.
They moved in the rhythm of the trees, of the shifting light on the water, as though the whole of Arda around them was driven by the same rhythm, as a single beating heart.
When he feared becoming overwhelmed by the feel of her and drew away, she clasped her legs firmer about his waist and drew him harder into her. Her skin burned his mouth; she tasted of the water in the pond but, beneath that, was a flavor all her own, of Nerdanel, and he drank until he was made dizzy by her. Her eyes fluttered closed and she gasped and before he even felt the response of her body as she gave herself over to climax, he felt her spirit flash hotly against his and her nails dig into his shoulders, and he released deep inside of her, adding his voice to hers as their mouths met in a bruising kiss and cried the other’s name.
“Fëanaro,” she whispered, once the ecstasy had begun to subside, raising her hand from the water, where it had fallen, to stroke his hair. He let his face fall against her neck, let her hair cover him like a curtain, and held her so closely that he could feel her heart pattering quickly against his chest as well as he could feel his own, and he gladly lost track of which heartbeat belonged to whom. “I love you….”
Many more pleasures did the night bring, in the warm water or on the soft ground of the forest, beneath the witness of the stars, on the night that Fëanaro officially became a man.
They returned to the palace, hand in hand, bedraggled and exhausted, when Laurelin began to touch the morning with gold. It was too early for anyone to be awake in the palace, and even little Maitimo had slept through the night.
Fëanaro collapsed onto the bed, as he had done only hours before, when the night had not yet held promise, when he’d had a box of treasures and jewels and had not been happy. Nerdanel was attempting to tidy her sodden, tangled hair in the bathroom, and she came to him—having been somewhat successful—and took her place in the bed beside him. She laid her head on his shoulder and placed her hand on his chest, and his hand lifted to cover it, and he felt her lips move against the skin of his shoulder in a smile.
She spoke. “I will give you a gift, husband mine. It is just that nothing seems to do you justice—”
Startled, he felt himself jerk away from her, and her eyes met his with alarm.
“Was that not your gift?”
“Oh, that was only meant in jest, my love. To be romantic.” She laughed. “You deserve a perfect gift, more than I could ever be.”
He thought of the box of trinkets on the table, of the facets on gemstones that could be measured and the metals that could be appraised; numbers could be placed on their worth, and their giver’s regard for him extrapolated from there. He thought also of his lessons, long ago with Aulë, about the perfect woman’s form: the slender waist and delicate hips and bosom; the useless and graceful shoulders and arms; the endless sheets of silky hair and empty blue eyes that might have been marbles. He thought of his wife, with her full body and her strong arms and her hair that seemed to possess its own power of thought and sprang away from her head in rebellious clumps. Was she imperfect? The perfect woman was easy for him to create with a bit of charcoal and a sheet of parchment, or to carve from a chunk of stone or wood. They were just as easy to cast into the fire, to burn. In just eight years, Nerdanel had given him gifts that even his hands—the most skilled of the Noldor—could never hope to create and that his heart could never bear to see destroyed.
Incredulous, he said, “I want no possessions from you! Last night was enough.”
“Last night is past, my love. I want to give you something that will last as long as our marriage, until the ending of Arda.”
“Do not things—possessions—also end?” he asked. “Nothing lasts! Paintings fade, trinkets break, and even the strongest metal erodes but last night, my wife, shall live in my memory forever.”
And, with a kiss, he silenced any further argument.
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In all, I was grouchy and disillusioned and in a thoroughly bad temper.
But this made it ALL BETTER!
It isn't my birthday present, but thank you so much for brightening my day!
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I know, what a sacrifice, right? Spending time alone in the office with Nekkid!Feanor, ruminating on *all* the naughty details....
I hope your days stays bright, though, and that ailing Precious recovers. I think Thangorodrim should be rebuilt for those who devise computer viruses.
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Allie has a bad day every day. Sometimes two and three times a day. So start writing.
;)
Arandil
(lover of good forge-smut)
THE IMPERFECT GIFT
Mmm...Nerdanel put her hands...in the most pleasant places...
LOL!...upset a goblet of wine on Nerdanel's best gown...
LOL!...attempted to kiss and grope her...
LOL!...taste the sweetness of her fruit!
LOL! Feanaro curled up in Maitimo's small bed!
LOL! He didn't like his gifts!
LOL! He pissed off the servants! And his dad!
*sobs in pity for Feanaro crying on his bed*
Mmm...in his underwear, though!
*gasps* How did you know my favourite place for *doing it* is outside among the trees? Really. I'm not kidding.
Ooohh...binds his hands?
Ooohh...in the water...
Oh, wow. The last part is so beautiful. Thank you, Dawn, for the most wonderful present! First it made me hot and then it made me cry. I don't have words enough to thank you, Dawn. I will cherish this forever.
Re: THE IMPERFECT GIFT
I'm glad you liked it. I had the idea weeks ago that I wanted to do Feanor's 50th b-day (of the Elvish variety ;D) for your birthday present, and make it naughty, of course, but further inspiration just did not want to visit me! Then everyone started griping about how Nerdanel flounced away from Feanor instead of taking him up on his offer for a romp in the river in Chapter Eleven, and I thought, "Water! It must happen in water!"
Lots of ideas roved through my head, but this is the one that came out when I actually sat down to write it.
*gasps* How did you know my favourite place for *doing it* is outside among the trees? Really. I'm not kidding.
Hehe. I obviously didn't have a way of knowing that (haven't been confabulating with Ed or anything!) so we'll just call it a lovely coincidence ;)
Plus, I am a natural kind of girl myself. One of the versions of the Finrod manual said that he likes to fool around in the woods. When I read it to my husband, he looked at me with the cutest innocent look and asked, "Is that true?"
I am so glad that you liked it :) My philosophy is that good friends deserve good stories.
Now we shall have to see what I can cook up for Arandil's birthday.... ::evil grin::
Re: THE IMPERFECT GIFT
SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
This was wonderful. So very hott. So very bad to read at work. Drool wreaks havoc on a keyboard.
Who said married people (elves) can't have hott sex?
Poor Feanor. We have the same impression though. I don't see him really fitting in with all the elves in Tirion. I don't see them particularly getting on with Nerdanel either.
Poor poor hungover Feanor.
One little thing - (I hate to nitpick such a great vignette). "The day Feanor became a man" seems iffy - since he really, technically doesn't become a "man" I mean, I know what you mean, but he's an elf, not a man and...
...shutting up...
GREAT STORY!!! WHEEE!!! TWO ON FRIDAY!!!! AND NOW VACA!!!!YAYYYYYYYYYYYYY!
Re: THE IMPERFECT GIFT
Yes, that bit about becoming a man bugged me too, but I simply did not know how to say it better and was out of time to play with it anymore.
So very bad to read at work. Drool wreaks havoc on a keyboard.
Hey now, I gave proper ratings this time. None of this "General" stuff that can cover anything from Disney innocence (sans little Disney "additions," of course ;P) to some light groping.
But, then again, I wrote it at work. Although I always waited until my boss left for the day and I was alone in the office...wait, I don't like how this sounds. Not for *that* reason but because it's a little awkward to have people walk in on you whilst writing smut, even if they don't know what you're doing.
Who said married people (elves) can't have hott sex?
If they couldn't, the fanfic world would not be such a nice place, with repressed Elves (and their writers) always moping about.... ;D
AND NOW VACA!!!!YAYYYYYYYYYYYYY!
Have fun! And be sure to put sunscreen on Feany if you take him outside for any extended periods of time, as vacation sun can wreak havoc on their lovely fair skin ;)