Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/3615762.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Choose_Not_To_Use_Archive_Warnings, Underage
  Category:
      Multi
  Fandom:
      TOLKIEN_J._R._R._-_Works
  Relationship:
      Thranduil/Original_Female_Character(s)
  Character:
      Thranduil, Arafel_(Thranduil's_sister/wife_OFC), Kate_(human_OFC),
      Legolas_(mention), Oropher_(mention), procession_of_insignificant_males_&
      females_(human_minor_characters_OFC/OMC)
  Additional Tags:
      Alternate_Universe_-_Modern_Setting, Alternate_Universe_-_Fusion,
      Alternate_Universe_-_Canon_Divergence, Explicit_Drug_Use, graphic_F/
      F_sex, Graphic_M/M_Sex, graphic_F/F/M_threesome, mild_violence, Implied/
      Referenced_Suicide, Sibling_Incest, destiny_of_souls, Philosophy,
      Psychology, referenced/implied_serious_violence, Alcohol_Abuse/
      Alcoholism, S&M, Cutting, Consensual_Violence, Blood, Past_Child_Abuse
  Stats:
      Published: 2015-03-26 Updated: 2016-07-21 Chapters: 7/? Words: 35285
****** In that twilight, our choices sealed our fate ******
by silver_pixie
Summary
     Thranduil had a sister, Arafel.
     Oropher would not suffer an outsider near the throne of Greenwood. As
     the family prepared to take over the rule of Greenwood, he devised a
     plan in which Thranduil and Arafel would be presented as the Prince
     and his soon to be wife. Brother and sister were happy to oblige.
     They didn’t cling to each other for dear life then, that came later,
     but they were close. Come what may, they were sure they could endure
     it together.
     And endure they did, in a way, through the millennia, and into the
     present day.
     This is their story. Much of it is set in the present day.
     Interspersed are tracts which represent their memories, which do not
     contradict the story set by J.R.R. Tolkien only offer an alternative.
     Also meandering throughout the story are some rather philosophical
     lines to do with souls, purpose, destiny, what makes us what we are,
     the nature of rights, and wrongs, perspective, division lines, etc.
     In case of allergy, let this serve as a warning.
Notes
     A couple of warnings. Thranduil and Arafel are not one-dimensional.
     To understand them takes some imagination, or a like mind. But they
     do have a co-dependent, incestuous relationship. They use drugs
     openly and unapologetically. They use people too. If you don't want
     to read that, stop here.
***** Lines *****
“Fuck”, Arafel groans quickly bending over the bathroom sink, reaching for the
paper towels with her right hand, blood coating her fingers, for the water tap
with her left. Blood mixing with the water. Through centuries… through
millennia… time slipping… She blinks the past away.
She never gets nosebleeds. Never except now. Now that she has exactly four
minutes to get this under control before she must be back in the courtroom.
Fuck this day.
Paper towels shoved up her nose, head tilted back, she takes deep, slow
breaths, willing the bleed to stop. Most of the time, she can subdue such minor
rebellions of her physical body under the will of her mind.
Then the door opens and Kate, her chief opponent this day, and many others,
walks in, two minutes before show-time, into the restroom so far away from the
beaten path that everyone’s forgotten it existed, which is why she uses it.
Seriously, fuck this day. As if reading her thoughts, Kate begins, “I followed
you. I wanted to talk in private.”
Fuck this day straight to hell. Arafel pulls the blood-soaked paper towel off
her face hoping the flow has stopped permanently, “Well then stop staring and
start talking.”
“Are you well enough to listen?”, the question holds zero concern but plenty of
malice. Kate wears a victorious leer gesturing to the paper towel Arafel still
holds in her hand, “I mean, did you manage to get your medicine up your nose
before that happened?”.
“Never better, thank you for asking. You had a point, I presume…”, Arafel
ignores the insinuation, keeping her voice even and her frame still, although
she’d love to wipe that grin off Kate’s face with one swift movement of her
hand.
“I did. I would like to propose a settlement. 50 million in 4 payments over 4
years and my client walks away. You will not get better terms than that.”
Now Arafel is laughing. “This is what you stalked me in here for? You’d be
hilarious if you weren’t pathetic.” She turns away from Kate, seemingly to
throw away the paper towel, but they both know the gesture’s real intent. Kate
has been dismissed.
And she’s livid. She is trying to control her voice, but doesn’t quite manage
as she all but shouts at the lead prosecuting attorney, “Don’t you think you
should discuss this with your clients before you throw their lives away?”
Arafel is perfectly calm, her expression unreadable, her voice hard, “I don’t
need to do anything of the sort. The answer is no. Now let's go. Your handlers
will not be pleased if you are late.”
Kate steps into the exit way and sneers into Arafel’s face, “Drugs have clearly
muddled your brain.”
Compared to Arafel’s, Kate’s physique is imposing. She is 5’10” with broad
shoulders and a muscular body chiseled by hours of strenuous workouts. Arafel
is almost as tall, but slender, willowy. She looks tiny in comparison. Kate’s
stance is clearly intended to intimidate just as the comment was meant to
inflame. Arafel, however, is unphased by either. She fixes Kate with a stare
that perforates directly into her core and simply grins showing a perfect row
of teeth, then walks through the powerful woman like she wasn’t even there,
practically spinning her on her axis.
Kate, having expected a verbal onslaught in response, is so shocked she just
lets her go without a word. What Kate does not know, cannot know, is that
Arafel has faced women and men, warriors, much more intimidating than this. To
Arafel, Kate posturing in a courtroom restroom is a toy to scare little
children with and not a legitimate threat. There’s a chasm between what Arafel
perceives as important, or even remarkable, and what other people do. As for
inflammatory remarks, people don’t begin to imagine the vast grey seas of her
indifference. Threaten her? She might care when you actually dare go after her,
with a real knife, one made of iron. Might.
The case continues for another three hours, with prosecution, that is Arafel,
taking the first hour and the defense, Kate and her partners, taking the next
two. It would have been longer, but it’s Friday, and the judge is tired and
annoyed. Amidst fake witnesses, paid off state officials, and falsified EPA
reports, Arafel’s team, against all odds, manages to convince the judge that
Kate’s client, a multi-billion dollar international industrial development
conglomerate, willingly and knowingly turned thousands of acres of forest into
wasteland, and that this has and will impact the survival of multiple species
of plants and animals and the health and well-being of humans. The case will go
to full trial. They almost never do and are settled, for meager money, outside
of court. It’s some kind of victory.
The defense is irate. Prosecution is elated. Arafel is momentarily happy, but
anger and sadness, as always, boil just under the surface of her skin. Wrath of
a witness, casualty and adversary to the slow murder of the Earth. She shows
none of it. It’s of no consequence. This parasitic, short-sighted species
cannot comprehend the damage they do, and does not care. Reason is wasted on
them, the only thing they understand is force. Their father was always right
about that.
“How do you sleep at night…” Arafel’s eyes bore through the defense attorney as
she finishes putting her papers into her briefcase and turns to leave the now
empty courtroom. It’s not a question. Arafel’s expression is half disgust, half
wonder, but there is also a touch of something else in the prosecutor’s cold,
and derisive countenance, something like sadness. Kate wonders if it’s real.
Because the Arafel she expects, the Arafel everybody knows is heartless. People
rarely come to know that Arafel is far from heartless, very few find out what
her heart beats for, fewer still understand why.
Those eyes are unnerving. Green-yellow eyes. Arafel looks like a she-wolf
stalking prey. Kate feels the skin on the back of her neck stand up. And hates
the feeling. So she opts for: “Much like yourself I imagine, except her name is
Stolichnaya. She’s easier on the nose, and the heart.” It’s not an answer. It’s
another veiled threat, and she expects a knife out of Arafel’s well-stalked
cabinet to come flying back.
Instead Arafel smiles one of her smiles, the kind that never reach her eyes,
takes out a piece of paper, writes down an address and hands it to the defense
attorney. “It’s a club. The music’s outstanding. I’ll be there around one.”
With that she leaves.
Kate is left standing frozen in the empty courtroom, note in hand. What. The.
Fuck. Was. That? Did she just get invited to a date, or her own murder party?
Did she get invited at all? It’s Arafel’s idea of a joke, she thinks, starting
to rip the note in half. But she doesn’t finish. Instead, she puts it in her
pocket.
Five hours later, sitting at her favorite bar, some beers in, relaxed and as
close to happy as it gets sharing in the typical Friday night banter amongst
the regulars she can’t quite remember the day she officially became a member
of, Kate has forgotten about the unnerving prosecutor, the note and the entire
godforsaken week, that is until she reaching into her pocket for her wallet,
she fishes out the forgotten note. It’s 11 pm and …
“Girl, what’s that? You got a date?”, Dave, her work-out buddy and if she had
to use a descriptor, a friend, snatches a note from her hand.
“Or a suicide…”, Kate mumbles.
Dave is on his feet on top of the bar, yelling at the top of his lungs,
“Everybody, our Kate has a date and she needs some encouragement!”
A chant of “Kate. Date.” thunders through the bar, accompanied by several shots
lining up in front of Kate, “From the crew, for courage”, explains the
bartender. And somewhere between all the noise, the quick infusion of alcohol
and Dave’s repeated, “What do you have to lose?”, Kate makes up her mind,
rationalizing that it’s not a date anyway.
She takes a cab home, takes a shower, throws on a pair of black slacks and a
soft black leather halter top, which shows of her toned arms, steps into black
motorcycle boots, grabs her leather jacket and is out the door. No make-up, no
jewelry, those are pretenses left for court and law offices. Ear-length curly
hair left wet to dry on its own and do what it will.
She gets to the club at five minutes after one, valets her car and walks
inside, a tingle of dread returning, feeling like an antelope walking into a
lion’s den. It’s not a feeling she relishes.
The place is large. It’s close to pitch black with only a limited number of
imitation candles providing flickering lighting. And it’s packed. If Arafel is
there, she doesn’t stand a chance of finding her, so she heads for one of the
several bars, which are somewhat better lighted with additional real candles
dripping wax over all available surfaces and the floor nearby. She needs a
drink anyway.
Arafel watches Kate from the dark. Enjoys it. Enjoys every second of her
trepidation, can’t help but grin when Kate inevitably goes directly to a bar.
“There you go, honey… saved”, she whispers to herself. She will make her wait.
“Is that her?”, drawls a silky voice next to her.
Arafel nods. “Mhm. Do you approve?”
“I never approve.” He puts his chin on her shoulder, over-emphasizing every
word, dramatically. She tangles her hand into his long hair, then finger combs
it back out to silky perfection. He puts a small plastic bag into her other
hand then wraps his arms around her shoulders. She turns her head to meet his
lips for a quick kiss.
“Call if you need me.” With that, he melts into the crowd.
Arafel makes her way towards Kate. She approaches her so that Kate does not see
her until she is standing immediately behind her and the bartender is handing
her a glass of wine, white. Kate mumbles a clumsy but honest, “When did you get
here? I didn’t see you…” and Arafel almost smiles. But Kate instantly switches
into the customary and biting, “Punctuality is your best feature then?” Arafel
darkens in response, “They say my legs are”.
They glare at each other for long minutes and Kate thinks it was a mistake
coming at all. Arafel, on the other hand, sensing the internal struggle within
Kate, is amused. Finally, Kate relents, “Look, I did not come here to fight.”
“You look nice” rolls off Arafel’s tongue like diamonds as she takes a strand
of Kate’s hair to twirl it around her finger. Kate is bedazzled. Apparently
grace rolls off this one just as easily as venom. She tries to remember that
it’s likely that every time Arafel breathes she speaks a lie, but under the
probing gaze of those non-human eyes, it’s difficult.
“Why did you invite me here?”, Kate can’t help being Kate, wanting to know the
rules of engagement.
Arafel doesn’t do rules. “Every time I breathe I speak a lie”, she repeats
Kate’s very thoughts freezing her in her seat. She is still playing with her
hair and smiling at her, but now Kate could swear that there is infinite
sadness in that smile, older than time. She wonders, not for the first time, if
there is more to this woman than one can see, and she waits for her to
continue, but Arafel snaps out of her thoughts and picks up her purse.
“I’m going to go powder my nose. Be right back.”
“You mean powder up your nose”, Kate’s words are mocking, meant to insult, a
gut reaction to being shut out.
But if the words hit their intended mark, Arafel doesn’t show it. She laughs a
lighthearted laugh, “To each their poison, darling”, clicks her wine glass,
barely touched, against Kate’s vodka, almost finished, “You need a refill”, and
sashays in the direction of the bathroom like a runway model, like she was born
to walk in six inch heels, skin-tight black lace mini dress, long sleeves and
high collar but back open the entire length of her spine, and black sheer
stockings with the obligatory stripe running down the center of the back of her
legs accentuating their length. Kate watches other eyes trailing her, no
undressing her, eye-fucking her, stray hands on her hips, legs, ass as she
passes through the crowd. Watches Arafel loving every second of it. “God, what
a junkie slut”, Kate mutters under her breath, drains her glass and orders a
refill.
When she’s some three quarters through the next one, alcohol humming pleasantly
through her limbs, her blue eyes become less hard, her mouth relaxing into a
semblance of a smile. She decides the place is not half bad, the music, a
strange mix of 80’s punk, goth, psychedelic trance, futuristic beats, death
metal, straight up metal, touches of rock’n’roll and stuff too eccentric to be
categorized, she begins to even like it. When the bartender Arafel seemed to
know comes close again, she asks if Arafel came here a lot. He gives a vague
“some” for an answer. When she follows this up by asking whether she comes
alone, he becomes even cagier, says that she sometimes comes alone, sometimes
with friends and sometimes with her brother. Brother? She had no idea Arafel
had a brother. Or friends. She wonders at the nature of these friendships, but
knows she will not learn of them from the barkeep.
By the time Arafel returns Kate is half way through her fourth drink and
tapping her fingers to “Personal Jesus”. Arafel laughs, “Having fun?” She grabs
Kate’s glass in one hand, Kate’s hand in the other and tosses over her
shoulder, “Come dance with me”, as she’s dragging her to the crowded dance
floor.
Kate is not nearly drunk enough for this. When Arafel hands her her drink, she
gulps it down and is still standing stiffly amidst the crowd vibrating all
around her. Arafel on the other hand is one with the pulsing heartbeat of the
bodies, but her eyes are fixed on Kate.
Then as if by magic four shots are handed to Arafel. She gives the heavily made
up girl who brought them a kiss on the cheek and hands two to Kate. “Cheers,
darling!” Kate downs what turns out to be straight Stoli gratefully.
Kate points at the empty glasses with a question mark. Arafel shrugs, mouths,
“I have friends” and hands her the last of the four shots, which Kate
contemplates refusing for the sake of politeness, and pretense, then forgets
propriety and does what she wants instead draining it. Arafel takes the glasses
from her hands and hands them off to somebody in the crowd. Then, closing her
eyes, she puts on a show, for Kate and anyone watching, making love to the
music, her movements sensual without being vulgar, tantalizing, seductive, she
is everyone’s wet dream but she’s untouchable. Kate is hypnotized, her hips now
swaying in rhythm. She just watches Arafel for the span of nearly five songs
increasingly aware of wanting her, wanting to possess her, ravage her body,
before she runs her hands up and down over her ribs, over her hips. At first
Arafel doesn’t react… then she places her hands over Kate’s and presses down
making the strokes firmer and guiding their joined hands over her breasts and
abdomen. Kate needs no further encouragement as she slips her hands between
Arafel’s thighs. Arafel lets Kate’s hands roam keeping her eyes closed.
Then she feels a different and familiar set of hands settle on her hips, run up
her sides and outstretched arms before his familiar form presses against her
back. She doesn’t have to see him, she knows who it is. He brings her arms down
by her wrists, and slides her palms over her own hips then onto his. She grabs
onto his hipbones pulling him closer, tilts her head back leaning fully into
him, her head on his shoulder. Kate’s hands are needy, pulling her towards her,
but Kate will wait. Arafel will never deny this mouth now claiming hers in a
deep possessive kiss, his hand on her neck, his long white/silver hair forming
a curtain around them. When their lips part, they are both smiling, looking
into each other’s eyes, both sets of pupils huge and black as night, enclosed
in the privacy of his hair.
They grind against each other to the rhythm of the music, his lips brushing
against her ear, “I could fuck you right now, spoil you for her…” he hisses in
her ear, the evidence that it’s not an empty threat palpable against her. Then
he sinks his teeth low into her neck, right above the collar bone, drawing
blood and bruising her, marking her as his. Arafel digs her nails into the
flesh immediately above his hipbones piercing skin. He bites deeper, swallows
blood; it will be a savage bruise. Arafel clenches her teeth to keep from
making a sound. “… But this will do, for now. Have fun, I’ll see you in the
morning”, he says licking his lips. Arafel mouths, “Yes”, as she runs her hands
between them and over his groin. He catches her hands in his, presses them more
firmly against his arousal then removes them crushing her fingers painfully
before they let go of each other.
Kate looks more confused than anything. For all its passion, what she saw was a
brief kiss, if it was a kiss at all, and a short conversation, which she could
not hear, with a random intoxicated stranger. The curtain of hair and their
bodies covered everything else. But now she spots the angry bruise on Arafel’s
neck, tiny beads of blood drying on the surface. When she goes to reach for it,
face aghast, Arafel slaps her hand away, grabs her by the lapels of her jacket
and pushes her backwards through the crowd, which parts for them like the
proverbial sea until Kate is pinned back against the nearest wall. Kate is
vaguely surprised by Arafel’s strength. They stare into each others eyes for
long minutes both trying to ascertain what the other’s intentions are.
After all, there’s no love lost between them. Their relationship is one with a
long history of intense dislike. Kate considers Arafel an excellent attorney
but heartless and opportunistic, and also a cokehead and a slut. That’s what
all the stories say. The coke part she now knows to be true, and the rest
appears likely. Arafel, in return, thinks that Kate is a brainless corporate
kiss-ass and therefore by definition a waste of air. Arafel’s judgment is
swift, merciless, and final, but also, for the purposes of this encounter,
inconsequential.
“Do you want me?”, Arafel snarls, her body pressed against Kate’s, not having
let go of her jacket. To her, this means nothing. The game is simple and devoid
of agendas. It’s devoid of emotion also. Well aware of what Kate thinks of her,
she doesn’t care. Call her a heartless junkie slut, she couldn’t cares less.
One is true, the rest is not so simple. None will be a point of discussion with
the likes of Kate, whose opinion is therefore irrelevant. And there is no
reason Kate would be capable of understanding, or even imagining, or that
should matter to her.
“Yes…”, breathes Kate, grabbing the back of Arafel’s head and trying to pull
her into a kiss. For all that you think I am, what does that make you, Arafel
is silently amused. It’s a little more complicated for Kate. She has hated,
despised and admired Arafel for over a decade, and the line between what she
admires and what she abhors is a lot more blurry than Kate likes her lines. In
this moment, she wants to both possess her and destroy her.
Arafel knows this also, but this is exactly the line Arafel is comfortable
walking. So close to the promise of annihilation that she can feel its icy
touch, it feels like home. She resists the kiss, and smiles, speaking into
Kate’s ear as she runs her tongue along the ridge, “Where is your car?”
“Valet”, Kate barks at her.
“Let’s go”. And the two of them walk out, Kate following Arafel. When they come
outside, Kate’s car is already waiting. Kate is incredulous, “How often do you
do this?” Arafel laughs and doesn’t answer the question.
Kate moves to get into the driver’s seat, but Arafel stops her by simply
extending her hand across her abdomen in a universal gesture that means, “Your
keys, please”.
Kate bristles, and snarls at her, “Do you think I can’t drive?” Arafel’s replay
is completely calm, and she appeases Kate with a broad smile, “I am certain
you’re a professional, darling; however, I know all of the traffic cops on the
way to my house.” The smile vanishes as quickly as it appeared, “Keys. Please.”
Kate drops the keys into her waiting hand, reluctantly and mumbling something
under her breath, but she walks to the passenger door and gets in.
***** I'll see you in the morning *****
Neither talks on the 20 minute drive. Kate has plenty to say. Arafel, however,
blasts music at full volume. Because Arafel has no interest in anything Kate
might say and no use for talking at the moment in general. In the elevator on
the way up to the top floor, Kate tries again, but Arafel ignores her. She
keeps ignoring her even when they are inside the apartment.
Being treated like an annoying child lights a match to Kate’s alcohol-riddled
blood. Arafel’s back is turned to her while she fumbles with something on the
kitchen counter. Kate grabs her by the upper arm spinning her around to face
her, “If you won’t talk to me, you will look at me!”
Arafel turns around and looks up through lowered eyelashes directly into Kate’s
eyes. In her hands, she holds Kate’s keys and the half-empty bag of coke from
earlier. Without taking her eyes off Kate, she slowly opens the bag, uses
Kate’s keys to scoop out a generous amount and just as slowly brings it to her
nostril. Then, shutting the airflow to the other side off with one finger,
inhales.
Kate watches her, speechless.
Arafel repeats the sequence five more times staring Kate down the entire time.
If defiance had a name… Kate wants to look away, or slap the shit out of
Arafel’s hands, but finds herself transfixed. More disturbingly, she is getting
wet, images of Arafel on her knees rushing through her mind.
“You’re a fucking waste.”
“Am I?” Arafel’s lips twist in a wolfish half-grin. “What are you still doing
here then?” She licks the key clean.
Kate grabs her by the neck with one hand, “Shut up, just shut up”, her mouth
millimeters from Arafel’s.
Arafel bites her lip, hard, drawing blood.
“Bitch!”, Kate snarls, backhanding Arafel across the mouth. But she lets go of
her, snapping out of it, thinking she’d gone too far.
Arafel, however, only licks her lip and laughs. “If you’re going to hit me, at
least take me to bed first.” And she walks in the direction of the bedroom.
Kate, after a two second pause, follows.
She finds Arafel standing at the foot of a wrought iron canopied bed, the
canopy strung with tiny fairy lights. Sheer black and silver curtains hang from
the canopy railing and are gently blowing in the breeze coming from the open
window. Black silk sheets. The bedroom is spacious, but other than a standing
full-length mirror, there is no other furniture. Instead, there are plants of
all sizes and shapes, everywhere. Arafel is facing the bed, her back to Kate,
not looking at her.
Kate is momentarily disoriented. The lights seem to twinkle like real stars and
reflect of the waxy leaves casting strange and moving shadows. Arafel herself
seems to move yet stand still. Kate feels lightheaded. Then Arafel’s voice cuts
through, as if coming from a great distance, in echoes at first, then returning
to normal, “Are you going to stand there all night?” The room becomes just a
room, albeit a strange one, again and Kate’s head stops spinning. But she is
left with a strange and irrational taste in the back of her throat of just
having been the victim of a deliberate and malicious illusion, meant to
intimidate and warn. When Arafel looks at her sideways under lowered eyelashes,
she is certain. Tomorrow, she won’t be certain of anything. But right now she
is furious.
She crosses the space between herself and Arafel in three long, determined
strides, grabs Arafel by the wrists, places her hands on the bed posts, which
Arafel grabs onto to keep standing since Kate is also spreading her legs using
her foot. Then she tears her dress completely off in a single motion. Arafel
momentarily mourns the dress; that one she liked very much, but is otherwise
pleased by Kate’s reaction.
Arafel is left standing in stockings and heels, her body forming a star. Kate
takes a step back and a moment to admire the site before her, which gives her
the opportunity to notice scars, shimmering paler on pale, crossing Arafel’s
back. Not many, but enough to scream a story. She approaches and runs her
finger along them, realization dawning. “Dear god, you are going to be my worst
mistake” is the last truly coherent thought passing through Kate’s mind that
night.
She slides her palms over Arafel’s back, then onto her hips, then over her
pelvic bone. Arafel is quiet but she’s breathing harder. Kate slides her hands
between her legs, Arafel responds by spreading her legs a little further and
presses herself against Kate’s hands. Feeling how wet Arafel is makes Kate more
so, but she takes her hands away and stands some distance behind Arafel again.
Arafel shivers, but doesn’t make a sound.
“If you do not want me to hurt you tonight, you better tell me to leave now”,
Kate’s voice is a tortured whisper.
Kate can’t see Arafel’s wicked grin, as she replays, “I will only tell you that
you might find the nightstand to the right interesting”.
Kate is no longer surprised by anything, although the contents of the
nightstand to the right are impressive even to somebody with years of
experience. But Kate selects a cat o’ nine tails and closes the door. Simple is
what she will need tonight.
She takes her jacket off but leaves the rest of her clothing on, then returns
to Arafel who hasn’t moved from her position although she followed Kate’s every
movement. Kate runs the leather tails over Arafel’s breasts, bites her ear then
asks “Do you need to be tied down? Or will you be still?”
“No.”
“No what?”
“I don’t need to be tied down.”
“Mistress”, Kate pushes, and enters her suddenly with three fingers as deeply
as can.
Arafel stiffens in surprise, but the word “Mistress” does not cross her mouth.
Nor will it. Ever. Kate can keep dreaming. Others have tried. Kate doesn’t
appreciate the snub and withdraws her fingers. Arafel wonders if the emptiness
feels better or worse when her thoughts are interrupted by the lash of the cat
o’ nine across her back. And it’s savage. Arafel’s impressed. Not many men have
the strength for such a blow.
And Kate shows no intention of stopping. Arafel focuses on the delicate balance
between retaining control to remain still and giving herself over to pleasure.
Because, yes, for her pain is pleasure and pleasure is pain. When she feels the
leather cut through skin, her body is screaming for more.
But blood running down Arafel’s back stops Kate. “Have you had enough?”, her
voice is all honey in Arafel’s ear, but her fingers speak a different language
as she penetrates Arafel again.
“No”, Arafel is honest. Kate fucks her harder, pressing her body back against
her own. When Arafel gets the idea and has to lean back against Kate anyway to
remain standing, Kate re-employs the cat o’ nine again, this time to strike
Arafel’s breasts and abdomen. The lashes are much lighter, but Arafel’s every
nerve is on edge, and the desired effect is there. She has to grit her teeth to
keep from crying out when she reaches orgasm contracting around Kate’s fingers.
Kate is pleased to see the Ice Queen show some indication of feeling anything
at all, although it’s far less than she would prefer. But she has other things
on her mind and she can’t wait. She pushes Arafel forward off of her, and is
frankly amazed that the girl stands without faltering.
“Turn around”, she orders. Arafel obeys. “Get on your knees.” Arafel does. Kate
approaches her, cat o’ nine still in her hand, “I assume you know what to do.
And if I am not satisfied…”, her eyes fall on the cat o’ nine.
Arafel knows what to do, although she’s none to pleased about it. This is the
part she dislikes, but now and then she makes concessions. She is not afraid of
further pain, quite the contrary. But she is more interested in another kind of
victory. So she gets to work unzipping Kate’s trousers, sliding them off her
hips, letting them fall to her feet, smiles to herself at the boxer briefs
underneath, “Seriously, how typical”. But the woman’s physique is impressive,
that stands.
Arafel begins by licking the outside of Kate’s lips, long and slow using the
full surface of her tongue, swallowing everything, her eyes watching Kate who
is staring back at her mesmerized. Arafel has never looked more like a panther,
and the cat is very good at this. When she slips her tongue inside her, Kate
moans. And continues moaning as that tongue continues alternating between
fucking her and exerting firm pressure against her clitoris. She grabs onto
Arafel’s head for balance. Arafel grips the back of her legs when she knows the
counselor is approaching climax. It could come faster, but she knows better
than to use her fingers with women like Kate. Finally, she simply keeps her
tongue stiff and lets Kate guide her head in rhythm with her hips until Kate’s
groan and firm pressure of her hands on her head tell her the obvious.
When the shudders stop, Kate shoves her away from her. Arafel’s back hits the
bed frame and it hurts like hell, but she is smiling, wiping her mouth with a
sheet corner. Thoroughly entertained.
Kate glares at her.
“Oh, but you look so good with pants around your knees”, Arafel says feigning
apology.
“It makes sense that your sheets are black”, Kate’s tone is threatening, “You
are easy to beat.” She is pulling her trousers back up and zipping them up,
advancing on Arafel, and looms over her, her hand raised.
Arafel, still on the floor, looks up at her, “Really? Was I that bad?” There is
no fear in her words. There is no discernable emotion at all. Only sarcasm.
“No”, says Kate, “You look good on your knees.”
Kate expects a smart-ass counter-remark. But Arafel, sick of pointless banter,
vaguely unsatisfied, as always, but also honestly tired, just smiles,
stretches, gets up, and without further ado announces that she is going to
sleep. With that she kicks off her shoes, slides off her stockings and crawls
under the sheets, adding, “You can let yourself out”. Kate is left standing in
the middle of the room, dismissed once again, and thinking “And you can go fuck
yourself”. Her head has cleared some and she is not driving home points over
the legal limit in the middle of the night. But Arafel seems to be already
asleep. So Kate gets on top of the covers on the other side of the bed and is
asleep almost instantly.
Arafel wakes up at 10:00 am, hours too early. Today is the one day in the week
she could sleep or at least lounge in bed between sleep and waking till evening
and she always does. She hates it when people don’t have the good manners to
vanish into thin air, or at least out of her apartment before she notices they
are there. It’s beyond irritating. She’s not used to sharing her bed except
with one other and that’s entirely different. The heat and occasional touch of
Kate’s body, the very knowing that she’s there brings her out of sleep hour
upon the hour until she is finally and definitively awake. And then there’s the
aftermath to contend with. Is she sorry? She’s never sorry. Kate’s a part of
the procession of irrelevance which moves through these sheets, their faces
soon forgotten, their names rarely known. She just doesn’t want to deal with
anyone in the morning. What will this one want? A fucking cup of coffee? A
conversation? There’s not enough drugs in the world to endure that. She
slitters out of bed soundlessly, mind bent on plan B – avoidance, for as long
as possible.
She’s in the bathroom, wrapped in her robe, contemplating her reflection
through white lines on the mirror, trying to distinguish want from pure
opportunity, settles on opportunity and puts the last of the coke away for
later, when she hears a key turn in the lock and the front door open. Bitch,
you really should have left when I told you to, she thinks. Not that she’s
particularly concerned. It won’t be her world going topsy-turvy.
She proceeds towards the living room. Her brother is sitting on the sofa, his
back to her. His long hair, so pale that it’s almost white, the same as her
own, hanging down his back and over his shoulders as he is bending over the
coffee table. He hears her of course, pipes an overly cheery, “Good morning
sis, didn’t think you’d be up”, not turning from whatever he’s doing, which, on
any given morning, is more likely one thing than any other.
“There’s nothing good about this morning”, Arafel observes, falling onto the
sofa next to him. She gathers his hair and ties it into a lose knot at the nape
of his neck then leans her head on his shoulder. She’s the only one he allows
to touch his hair like this, especially when he’s fucked-up like he obviously
still is now, she can tell by the tone of his voice.
“Was she that tragic?” He doesn’t wait for an answer as a line of white powder
disappears up each nostril in rapid succession. “Here, to fix being awake on a
Saturday morning.” He hands her the straw. “She has a firm hand, and anger
enough to use it. You’ll like her. The tragic part is that she’s still here”,
Arafel replies, then turns her attention to the matter at hand.
“K?” He nods. She smiles, “You’re a savior”. There are four lines left on his
mirror. She does two. He finishes the rest.
She leans her head on the back of the couch, a smile playing on her lips,
waiting for oblivion. Her brother laughs looking at her. He licks his
fingertips, dips them into the powder dust left on the mirror, licks one clean
and places the other against her lips. Arafel licks then sucks the fingertip
into her mouth. He pulls it out. “More”, she purrs. He gathers up the remaining
dust and divides it between them in the same way. This time, when she sucks on
his finger, he adds a second and does not pull them out. Their eyes lock, and
then he’s on top of her, straddling her lap. Only then do his fingers leave her
mouth. Their lips find each other’s in an instant, and they kiss slow and hard,
their tongues deep within each other, biting each other’s tongues, lips,
drawing blood and relishing the taste, leaving bruises, not breathing, their
hands in each other’s hair and stroking the sharp angular outlines of each
other’s faces. It’s the drugs still coursing through them from last night and
it isn’t. They are each other’s strongest addiction.
When they break apart, they are looking into each other’s eyes, forehead
pressed to forehead, their hands clutching each other’s jaw line so hard their
knuckles are turning white, their breathing slowing now, heartbeats turning
shallow and uneven. They are aware that they are not alone and they don’t care.
This moment is theirs and theirs alone. The world can wait.
Kate woke to the sound of laughter, and finding the bed empty made her way to
the living room. And stood there, appalled, but unable to turn away, watching
the woman she shared something, in her opinion, quite intense with only several
hours ago kissing this guy, whom she now recognizes from the club, like it’s
the last day on Earth.
Brother and sister share another brief touch of lips breaking the contact
simultaneously. They stand up slowly, hand in hand, through the blissful
ketamine-induced haze descending upon them. They walk to the large empty space
between the open living room and the kitchen and face Kate.
Arafel speaks in monotone, like she’s saying Good Morning to the security guard
downstairs, or ordering coffee, “This is my brother Thranduil”.
Thranduil. The brother. The brother whom she allows to claim her mouth like she
most certainly did not allow her. The brother who is holding her to him as only
a lover would, inclining his head ever so slightly in an inquisitive gesture as
his unfocused eyes scan over Kate, his question directed to his sister and
laced with so much arrogant disinterest that it obliterates its purpose, as it
obliterates Kate’s very being, “And this is?” He asks as if he has no idea, as
if Arafel had never mentioned the woman, not in all the years of standing
against her in various courtrooms, and not last night. Arafel is almost amazed
at the perfection of the act, almost, but she knows him too well. Even half
asleep, Thranduil is always the most dangerous snake in the room.
“Someone who doesn’t know when to leave”, she leans against her brother’s chest
as he wraps his arms tighter around her shoulders, feeling her begin to shiver
as her body temperature drops, and kisses her neck. Two pairs of wolf-like
green-yellow eyes holding Kate’s infuriated gaze, daring her to challenge them,
daring her to put words to anything she’s thinking or feeling and speak them
out loud.
Kate feels hate. And hurt. And disgust. But she can’t help but look at them
like this for a minute longer. Individually, they are striking. Together, they
are impossible to ignore. They are near copies of each other, but not
identical, and the differences accentuate each other’s features. She is smaller
then he is, a little more delicate, although both exude an aura of androgyny,
and, Kate is surprised, even now, of dignity. Both have long, narrow,
triangular faces with prominent cheekbones. Both are willowy, tall and almost
painfully thin, all collarbones, ribs and hipbones. Yet, they exude power, not
fragility. When they move, they move like cats. He is older than her, but not
by much. She realizes she has no idea how old Arafel actually is. She must be
at least 40, but she looks 25. Similarly, she can’t guess Thranduil’s age. They
are fair of complexion, with flawless skin. How they manage that, considering
their lifestyle, Kate has no idea. Their hair is almost white and shimmers
silver. While his is long, below his shoulders, she keeps hers super short. She
doesn’t wear any make up; he is apparently a fan of heavily made up eyes. There
is something strangely attractive in the inversion. And then there are those
yellow-green, non-human eyes, to pull you in and trap you like a mouse. In that
they are identical. Kate breaks out of her reverie. Cold, calculated, arrogant
assholes. In that they are also the same. And crazy, with every passing hour
she learns just how much. The lawyer in her screams to get out of there.
They’re falling asleep standing up, their eyes unfocused, pupils huge, an OD
waiting to happen. The woman in her needs to not see them kiss, or touch, or
be…. Because it’s like nothing she’s shared in years and may never know again,
because it looks like love. Sick fucks.
So she rattles of a hurried, “Pleased to meet you”, which they both know she
does not mean, grabs her wallet, her keys and lets herself out the door. Her
throat is so dry she barely croaks the words, and her head is pounding. She’d
kill for a glass of water, to down some painkillers and quench the thirst, but
that would require three more minutes in the kitchen, three more minutes in the
presence of that. What the fuck is that? She wonders for the second time in 24
hours. How deep does the rabbit hole that is Arafel go?
There’s fucked up, then there’s Fucked Up. And to not even try to deny it? Like
all attorneys, like herself, even high as a kite Arafel can produce a perfectly
believable lie within the space of a second. She could have said anything. A
friend. A lover. Anything. Anyone. Was she trying to shock her? Did they stage
the whole thing? But no. That was no act. She simply told her the truth, and
refused to apologize for its existence. And Kate, to her horror, realizes that
she is furious because she is jealous. Which makes her angrier. Who the fuck
does Arafel think she is that she can do whatever the fuck she wants whenever
the fuck she wants with whomever the fuck she wants?
When Kate leaves, Thranduil kisses his sister’s forehead, “Ok?”
“Mhm”, Arafel unwraps herself from his arms and takes his hand, “Come on, lets
go to bed.” Thranduil, tired to the bone, follows her gratefully.
Once in the bedroom, Arafel goes to close the heavy curtains against the
daylight. When she turns around Thranduil is already under the sheets, his
clothing discarded by the side of the bed. She quickly joins him, dropping her
robe on the floor.
“Let me see”, he has already discerned that: 1) no sex had been had in the
actual bed, and 2) the sheets are covered in Arafel’s blood, now all over his
skin, not that he minds. Arafel turns around to let him see her back.
“A heavy hand, indeed…”, Thranduil mutters mostly to himself, pulling her into
his arms, pressing the entire length of her body against his. Arafel melts into
him, completely relaxed, her eyes closing. The one person she can sleep near is
her brother. “I don’t want you to see her again without me. I don’t want any
more scars on you.” His voice is a whisper and he is caressing her cheek as he
speaks, but the words are both a demand and a desperate plea. She turns around
to face him, kisses his throat, she will not go against it.
“Tell me what you did last night”, Arafel draws out her words, her voice
drugged, sleepy.
“What I always do.”
“Does he have a name?”
“I imagine he does. I didn’t ask.” He drapes one leg over her hip and pulls her
closer to him, until their hips touch. She can feel that he is beginning to get
hard. It makes her body respond even through the encroaching oblivion. “He left
me unsatisfied.”
Of course he did, Arafel thinks. They all do. It’s the same for her.
His hands are on the small of her back. Hers, bent at the elbows, on his
shoulder blades, their hips joined together and rocking lazily against each
other. Arafel’s face is buried in his collarbone, his chin on top of her head.
And they talk. They talk about random things they forgot to tell each other
during the past several days, important, unimportant, nonsense. Between words,
they rain short, soft kisses upon each other’s clammy skin, where they can
reach it, neck, shoulders, collarbones. She shifts just enough for her
increasingly wet slit to slide against his growing arousal. Sometimes they stay
like this for hours. Sometimes it is enough.
Today it isn't. Thranduil flips them so that Arafel is on her back and enters
her in one fluid movement, letting out a long sigh. She moans. No one else gets
to hear them like this, uncensored. Or see them totally unhinged and
uninhibited. His arms are under her back holding her up towards him, his body
covering hers fully. She wraps her legs around his. The only visible movement
of the two intertwined bodies is that of their hips thrusting against each
other in unison, the movements slow but deep. It’s not a quick or intense
climax for either of them; their bodies are much too wrecked for that. And when
Thranduil eventually spills inside her, they are half there and half gone into
another world, drifting off into oblivion with the descending edge of the
climax, but still joined, and holding onto each other like to the last
remaining light.
***** Scars (Talk is cheep) *****
Thranduil wakes tangled up with his sister, both of them laying on their sides
facing each other, torsos and hips touching, legs intertwined, arms around each
other, heads stacked on top of each other.
He is grateful for dreamless sleep and breathes in deeply, relieved. Then the
smell of blood hits him, and with it panic. In the half-light of the early
twilight barely illuminating the room through the heavy curtains, he sees the
thin coating of dried blood all over Arafel, all over him, he looks at his
hands and sees that they are completely covered in blood. Millennia of blood
fuse into a single horror. He doesn’t know where or when they are. Terror
threatens to swallow him. He untangles himself from still sleeping Arafel,
sitting up against the headboard. As he moves her to lay her in his lap, to
check how hurt she is, he sees her back, and his mind, now shaking of the veil
of sleep, begins to center into the present reality. He remembers where the
blood on the sheets came from. He also realizes that he must have dug his
fingers into the fresh cuts on her back this morning, thus all the blood on his
hands. It must have hurt. She didn’t say a word. Of course not. Neither of them
ever would. And realizing there’s no actual danger, Thranduil calms down, his
racing heart returning to normal, but he can’t help his thoughts drifting into
the far, far away past. He pulls Arafel closer to him.
Once upon a time, there was an elven Prince and Princess. Their names were
Thranduil and Arafel. Oropher, King of the Greenwood, was their father. By the
time they became the royal family of the Woodland Realm, they had lived through
thousands of years of slaughter of the immortal race of elves in numbers
uncounted. They witnessed slaughter by enemy, by betrayal, by greed, by powers
of forces dark and darker. Oropher became paranoid and distrustful, and as a
result cold, secretive, cunning and above all dangerously unpredictable. His
two children, especially after their mother’s death and Thranduil’s near death
by dragon fire, the scars of which he bore for the remainder of his life,
became much the same, if not more so.
Oropher was obsessed with securing the succession line for his newly forged
kingdom, but would not suffer an outsider near the throne of Greenwood. So, as
the family prepared to take over the rule of Greenwood, he devised a plan in
which Thranduil and Arafel would be presented as the Prince and his soon to be
wife. Brother and sister were happy to oblige. They didn’t cling to each other
for dear life then, that came later, but they did dread the day Oropher would
marry them off to strangers in order to strengthen the kingdom’s position and
power. They knew it would come and soon. It was the inevitable fate of every
ruler’s child. It would seal them in misery for eternity. This unexpected
arrangement delighted them both for various reasons. First, they were close and
very much alike. Come what may, they were sure they could endure it together.
Second, although they had already shared a bed on several occasions and enjoyed
it, both had other interests, which ran contrary to production of hairs to the
throne. Neither would interfere with the other’s pursuit of these interests.
Their relationship was unusual, but it suited them perfectly. Perhaps their
father, despite his lack of show of affection for his children, even knew. What
talk spread of their being brother and sister over the subsequent centuries
were never denied, but was never confirmed either. As such, it quickly died,
especially with Greenwood’s isolation and with the birth of their son, Legolas,
the pride and promise of the young kingdom after the heavy losses, including
that of Oropher himself, it suffered during the War of the Last Alliance.
Beside, in time, such things became common practice among elf and men alike,
intent on preserving the purity of certain bloodlines, before Christian
morality declared it taboo, in no small part in its relentless and bloody
persecution of those bloodlines.
Thranduil and his Queen were considered eccentric and quick to anger at best,
merciless and cruel at worst by outsiders, but under their rule, the kingdom
more than endured, it prospered even under the ever-present shadow from the
South and the East and without a Ring of Power to stay the decay of time. Their
people loved them and trusted them, even as they knew the King’s wrath was the
price of making mistakes. But a kingdom like theirs could not afford mistakes.
Neither Thranduil nor Arafel are certain that they understand the feeling of
happiness, but they think they might have known something akin to it then.
As the Darkness spread, fewer and fewer outsiders came to the Greenwood and
people began referring to it as Mirkwood, in whispers, out of the King’s
earshot at first, then openly. Gandalf, the Wandering Wizard, still came.
Mostly he came badgering Thranduil about the necessity of destroying the
Necromancer. Thranduil agreed in principle. In actuality, he didn’t relish the
idea of sending his people to certain death. But Arafel had had enough of it.
Enough of the Wizard, enough of the poison seeping from Dol Guldur, enough of
dead elves, enough of Thranduil’s sleepless nights and increasingly bad moods.
She had inherited some of their mother’s magic. She told Thranduil that she
would lead a group of elves similarly skilled and some of their best warriors,
take down the Necromancer and be done with it. He said, no. She would not
disobey a direct order of the King, she would never undermine his authority
publicly, but in the privacy of their chambers, they fought viciously for
weeks. Their people didn’t see them much during those weeks. His handprint
around her neck and his black eye were concealed by glamor and illusion for a
formal dinner. He locked her up in a cell in the dungeons for a month causing
even his closest advisors to wonder at his sanity. Finally, after a large party
of their warriors was killed, and their son nearly so, he let her out. And he
agreed that Dol Guldur had to be dealt with. He would go himself. Neither she
nor his advisors would hear of it. He was the King. This was a suicide mission
and everybody knew it, the King’s life could not be forfeit. Arafel was the
Captain of the Guard. He let her go. He never forgave himself. She never
forgave herself for making him.
As far as anyobody knew, Thranduil lost his wife that day. There is no grave,
no memory. But, Thranduil knows a different story.
When Arafel failed to return for a day, then two, then three, when search
parties he sent out came back with nothing, Thranduil went searching himself.
He left in disguise in the middle of the night without telling a soul, knowing
perfectly well that he would find them all dead. And so he did, elven bodies
scattered at the bottom of that accursed hill, vacant, their souls long passed
from this world.
When he found Arafel, he picked her up and with singular purpose climbed the
stairs to the crumbling fortress. He remembers it like it was last night. He
will feel the supernatural cold in his bones like he feels the dragon fire on
his face, arm and shoulder, forever. Some scars run too deep.
He remembers the raspy echo of a voice, “Elvenking, you have no dominion here.”
He remembers saying, “Give her back to me”, and the Necromancer laughing, his
laughter emptying Thranduil of the very will to live.
“Elvenking, you do not know what you ask for.”
He said that he didn’t care, that he would do anything. The laughter came
again. Images then, of all the things he had already lost, and of all the
things he would yet lose. He fell to his knees, Arafel still in his arms. Then
a newborn baby boy, a living breathing elfling. Tears ran down his face and
froze on his cheeks.
“It’s your son, Elvenking. She hadn’t told you yet. You can take him home. I
can give you that. Unlike your other son, he will not learn to hate you. Or… “
Or…
“Or… You will swear not to come after me ever again. And you will forfeit the
child. You can have your sister back under those conditions. But she will not
be the same. Those who are once dead do not belong with the living. It will go
ill for you, Elvenking.”
He remembers every word. How Arafel had cursed him for it, cursed herself trice
over. How he would do it all again, a thousand times again. “I swear. Give her
back to me. I do not care.”
“You are a fool, Elvenking.”
The echoing laughter. The child dissolving into the frozen air. The wind that
seemed to howl for days, but it must have been only minutes. He fought against
the hollow blackness entering him. He lost consciousness. When he came to,
Arafel was kneeling next to him stroking his frozen face with an equally cold
hand.
And she was not the same. In her mind, in her manners, she was fully Arafel.
But all passion was gone from her. Neither of them was ever overly emotional,
but now Arafel felt nothing. She did not only lose the ability to feel, she did
not even understand feeling or the point of it. Anger, hate, love, joy, sorrow…
none of it registered. Death also marked her with a physical imprint so that
half of her face appeared as something like her own skeletal skull. This would
have been easy enough to conceal through illusion, and she did so in the
beginning, but as centuries passed, she stopped caring and came to like the
honesty of it. Also, even the little bit of light that reached the forest floor
during daylight hours bothered her; she was confined to shadow. Being a capable
hunter and a trained warrior in combination with lack of emotions gave her a
unique advantage. She could not and would not go home, but she could live in
the vast forest and she became more lethal than ever to her enemies.
As for Thranduil, all he wanted was to leave his crown behind and join her.
After the initial shock, he found it so easy to let the ice cover over his
heart and simply be. He found freedom. But he couldn’t let go. He had
responsibilities. He had a still young and fragile kingdom to rule; it depended
on him for its wellbeing. And he had a son, a son who would grow up to hate
him, he believed that, but a son whom he nevertheless loved.
So, after some weeks, Thranduil came back home, and he said he found the dead
party but not his wife, and for the next two thousand years, strapped and
stretched on his Catherine wheel until his bones broke and beyond, he kept his
mouth shut, swallowed bile, and he tried to be a King, a father, and a brother.
They said there was no love in him. They said he didn’t care. They said he was
a terrible father. They said he loved his wife too much. They said he killed
her. They said he held the lives of his people in too high a regard. They said
he sold them for cheep gold.
Arafel whispers, “Talk is cheep”. Thranduil is startled out of his thoughts,
wondering if she is awake, but when he looks, she is still deep in sleep. He
smiles, squeezes her hand, which he just now realizes he’s been holding the
entire time. She might be in his head, swimming through the labyrinth of his
mind subconsciously, which she has always done easily. Let her, he thinks, as
his mind drifts back. Let her… Thranduil sings barely audibly…
Kneeling to the Northern Lights
Kneeling to the frozen lights
And I cried but no one could hear
I cried 'cause you were doomed
And I’ll wait for you
It’s cold in here
There's no one left
And I’ll wait for you
And I’ll wait staring at the Northern Star
I’m afraid it won’t lead me anywhere
Our misery runs wild and free
And nothing stops it from happening
Feel our hearts, they’re cold as ice
His version of words to a song he once heard. It reminded him of them.
Arafel became one of the Shadow Elfs, loners who roamed the world, although she
did spend most of her time in Mirkwood helping Thranduil where she could while
carefully avoiding his soldiers, including their son, but never the King
himself.
During this time, brother and sister developed a new kind of bond, which,
because it was independent of whims of emotion turned out to be utterly
unbreakable. Arafel’s lack of emotion crawled under Thranduil’s skin and
settled there like the thing that was made for him. For the first time, they
were not afraid of hurting each other. Consequently, they were able to be
completely honest with each other. They dropped all layers of pretense, last
remnants of propriety and expectations, and conventional ideas of their people.
They stood before each other naked, with every scar and raw nerve exposed.
Thranduil stopped hiding his left side, mangled long ago by the dragon, in
front of her. She ran her fingers over the scars, kissed him, told him he was
beautiful, and meant every word. When she showed him her true face, he put his
right, whole cheek to her right skeletal one, so he could feel the texture. He
felt bone, sharp and cold against his soft and warm skin and loved it. Nothing
had ever felt more real. He rubbed his cheek against hers with increasing
pressure, as if in a trance. As she brought her hands into his hair, he put his
hand to the other side of her face, the whole side, held her jawline, lowered
his head and bit into her neck so hard he drew blood. It was the first time.
She gasped, but only pressed his head to her neck. He bit deeper, drank,
completely lost. They tore off each other’s clothing. He took her savagely
against the forest floor slamming into her with wild abandon, knowing he was
hurting her, knowing she welcomed it. She dug her nails into his back leaving
gashes and felt his gratitude. When they climaxed, they were both screaming
into the night and shaking entangled long after he had filled her. It was
during that time that their lovemaking took on these frantic and often violent
edges, the echoes of which it would retain through the coming millennia. The
things love stopped them from doing to each other, this lack of acute emotion
allowed. And nothing else would ever suffice.
They ripped through each other’s minds like they tore into each other’s bodies.
And they grabbed onto each other like a drowning man does onto a lifeboat. They
were too much alike. They were each other’s reflection. In the essence of each
other, they found the same courage, the same stubbornness, and power, and
loyalty, but also the same shards of cold, calculated ruthlessness and
indifference. They were each other’s salvation and each other’s ruin. They
would never let go. They would never let anyone in either. Thranduil also used
Arafel as an impartial and merciless judge to his decisions as the King of
Mirkwood. More than anybody could know, Thranduil was acutely aware of
motivation, the right and the wrong behind all of his actions.
Arafel saves Thranduil from flipping through that loaded roller deck by
trashing and screaming his name. He instantly snaps out of the past, wraps his
arms around her shoulders and pulls her up against his chest. Bringing his lips
next to her ear, he starts talking to her, “Shhh…. I am right here… Just a
dream… I am right here…”
Arafel calms within seconds, awake, brings her hands to her face, rubbing her
eyes, her temples, holds her head in her hands, trying to shake the dream off,
“I hate that fucking dream.” She hates waking up screaming like a little girl;
she hates that it never ends.
“Dragon.” Thranduil doesn’t have to ask. She’s dreamt the same nightmare, on
repeat, for thousands of years, ever since the dragon came directly at
Thranduil. They were so young then. And old already. Those were bloody
centuries, elves grew up quickly. They were both on the battlefield that day.
Arafel had seen the beast coming for him, and screamed his name while running
towards him. Thranduil had his back turned; that scream was all the warning he
got and all that saved his life. Arafel pulled him out of the way before the
dragon could burn him to cinder with the second gust of fire. She let the one
and only person she had ever loved, apart from her brother, burn, and never
talked about it. Countless deaths later, Thranduil still shivers when he thinks
about it.
This is what Arafel dreams. Although sometimes there are variations. Sometimes
she dreams of what came after, her brother waking screaming in intolerable pain
before being drugged back into thin sleep, her brother realizing he was
permanently blind in one eye. Alternative dreams are of other deaths.
Thranduil’s are the same. All their dreams are nightmares.
“Dragon”, she confirms dejectedly, and adds, “I am sorry for waking you”. The
nightmares are a simple fact of their lives. If they sleep longer than the
ketamine lasts, they will dream.
“You didn’t. I’ve been awake.” He shows her his bloody hands. “Your back is
worse than you know”.
She stretches and turns around to face him, pulling him down so she can lay on
top of him, gives him a quick kiss on the lips, and gets a smile in return. “I
am fine. This mess we need to deal with, however, unless you want to sleep in
it again”, she is gesturing at the sheets.
“We need a maid.”
“They seem to have an irrational aversion to blood, remember?” Arafel replies.
A maid would be excellent, they just can’t find one that doesn’t quit in a
week.
Realizing how late it is, she changes the subject, “What are you doing
tonight?”
“You”, his voice drops an octave. His eyes narrow. His smile is playful and
cruel. Hers quickly mirrors it.
“When does Skip get here?”
“Now, I hope. Do you have anything left?”
“Two lines.”
Thranduil groans. “That’ll just make us painfully conscious.”
Arafel laughs. Although it’s true and probably objectively not funny. But, they
don’t live objectively.
“Ok, I’m going to run us a bath”, Arafel is getting up, adding, “Change the
sheets”, as she leaves the room. She needs to get rid of the after-effects of
that accursed dream. Her brother understands. It’s like jumping universes, it
takes a minute to absorb the shock of the landing.
Thranduil closes his eyes. He feels lifeless. His head is pounding. He’s
nauseous. He feels like his limbs are made of stone. He feels 10,000 years old.
He doesn’t feel like changing the sheets. He wonders where Arafel still finds
the will to get up every day. He needs to find out, soon. Maybe now. The
doorbell interrupts him. Skip, finally. And Thranduil is saved, or doomed, by
the proverbial bell.
“You know I don’t like waiting”, his stone cold gaze drills through Skip when
he opens the door.
“Yea man, apparently I’m early, Jesus, what the fuck, why can’t you put some
clothes on? Shit.” The silver haired bastard’s pretty and all, thinks Skip, if
you go that way, which fuck, who wouldn’t with this guy, but god damn, this is
a business transaction.
Thranduil, on the other hand, is instantly amused, even though he’s barely
keeping himself from shaking and his vision blurs dangerously at the edges.
“Why? Do you find me displeasing to look at?” He circles around Skip as he lets
him in.
“Oh Jesus Christ, here’s your shit. Pay me and call me when you need more.”
Thranduil curls one side of his mouth in a wolf-like grin, narrows his eyes,
“As much as I pay you, I should make you spend some time with me”. Skip visibly
stiffens. “But I won’t”, Thranduil tosses his hair over his shoulder, turns
around, digs in the pockets of his jacket, discarded over the back of a chair,
and hands the money over. Skip notices his still bloody hands. There’s blood
all over him, now that he’s looking, oh, god, he’s looking, no he’s not
looking. Thranduil sees the half-horror in the other’s eyes. He had forgotten
about the blood, but quickly recovers, “Don’t worry, it’s Arafel’s, and
consensual.” The discomfort written all over Skip’s face almost makes him burst
out in wild laughter, but he restrains himself and lets the dealer out the door
almost politely. There’s no use in cutting the hand that feeds you.
Arafel is standing at the door to the bathroom shaking her head, “You are
insufferable, you know, one day he won’t come back.”
“Oh please, if I invited him to our bed, he would have accepted.”
“Don’t.”
“He’s not my type either. This, however…”, he shakes one of the newly acquired
bags in front of her face as he makes his way into the bathroom, “… he is good
for.” He pulls her along with him by wrapping an arm around her waist.
They sit on the edge of the nearly full bathtub, which is made or pure white
marble, as is the rest of the bathroom, including the floor. It is large,
rectangular, and surrounded by a wooden bench. Like the bedroom, the bathroom
is full of all manner of plants, in clusters, standing singular, hanging, some
even on the bench itself their tendrils reaching into the water. Arafel is
sitting in Thranduils lap. He is spreading the contents of the bag into neat
lines on a mirror using a razorblade, quickly, efficiently, even though his
hands are shaking. Half of it is gone in an instant up Thranduil’s nose. When
Arafel raises an eyebrow in a question mark, he gestures towards the remaining
lines, “Finish it. I am going to sow up your back. One of those cuts is very
deep, it will scar.”
“Right. And you don’t want any scars on me, except the ones you put there”,
thinks Arafel trying not to laugh as she inhales the rest of the coke and puts
the mirror, straw and empty bag away.
They slip into the bathtub. Arafel tries not to wince as the hot water hits her
back. Moments later, as Thranduil carefully sponges the dried blood off, the
pain is already lessening. When he drops the sponge and uses his hands instead,
Arafel rests her head on her arms, which are crossed over her bent knees and
gives herself over to the pleasure of her brothers hands on her back, her
shoulders, her hips… Thranduil began washing his sister’s back in an honest
effort to clean the blood away. Now that his hands have meandered from her
shoulders to her hips all he wants to do is grab onto those hips and take her
on her hands and knees. He is completely erect as the image dances in his mind.
He lets go of her. Later. He busies himself scrubbing blood off of him instead.
Arafel, her entire body aching for his touch, does the same.
When they are done, the water is crimson. Thranduil puts on his robe. Arafel’s
is a bloody mess, so she uses a towel. Then she’s ordered to sit while he
retrieves his surgical equipment. Both of them are quiet as he works. Thranduil
is swallowing both anger he knows he has no right to and desire, which will
have to wait. Arafel knows that saying anything right now could unleash wrath
which would leave them at each other’s throats all night, then regretting every
hour of it in the morning, so she says nothing. Also, he is not being kind,
each stab of the needle uses more force than necessary, each pull of the suture
is over-kill, revealing his frustrated desire. And with each stab and each
pull, she is more and more aroused.
When he is done and has poured clorohexadine all over her back, he walks away
without a word. She could laugh, he is that predictable. Instead, she quickly
fixes her hair, doesn’t even look at her back, and walks into the living room
where she finds him finishing off another several lines. And he looks like
murder. Irresistible. Arafel narrows her eyes to slits, walks straight up to
him, grabs the back of his neck with one hand and brings his mouth to hers.
Thranduil crushes his lips against hers, and pushes his tongue through her
yielding lips deep into her mouth. When she bites his tongue, he grabs her
other arm bending it painfully behind her back, but does not withdraw his
tongue. The taste of his blood drives Arafel to near madness. When they pull
apart to breathe, they stare into each other’s eyes, the air between them thick
with need for each other.
“Go get dressed, we’re going out”, Thranduil hisses between clenched teeth.
Arafel looks at his groin noting the full erection there, then back into his
eyes, “Yes, Sir.” She turns to go. As he lets go of her arm, he adds, “Wear the
silver dress. And nothing else”.
Arafel grins and sashays down the hallway giving him something to look at. She
knows the nature of this game. Thranduil is high early, very early, and with no
intention of coming down. He will be demanding, uncompromising, possessive,
unlikely to care about even the minimum of social decorum, needy, aggressive,
vicious and unpredictable. Not that she objects.
She stops by the bathroom, collects the previously forgotten two lines and
inhales them one after another on the way to her closet. It’s that kind of
night. When high Arafel becomes even colder and more indifferent, with a devil-
may-care attitude and an edge of cruelty. Together, brother and sister are
dangerous, to themselves and to others. She takes time dressing, even though
it’s unnecessary, she knows he’s doing the same. Thranduil, when it comes to
perfecting his appearance, will not be rushed.
When they meet back in the living room, Arafel is in the skin-tight silver mini
dress. The cut is simple. Sleeveless, it covers her back completely and closes
close around her neck, but the material is exquisite, tiny chainmail, which
sparkles silver. She wears black platform ankle booties, six inch heels and no
jewelry. Thranduil has dried his hair and let it fall lose down his back, as
usual. No make-up tonight. His shirt, if it could be called that, is made of
identical material as Arafel’s dress but the links are larger and wider apart,
his skin is clearly visible underneath. The cut is odd, tight, ¾ sleeves, deep
V-neck and it reaches over his hips, but it fits him like second skin. He wears
this over skin-tight leather trousers and black platform boots. His trousers
are unzipped.
Arafel notes this last detail. No underclothes. Interesting. Now what. Her
entire body is buzzing. He’s on her within a second. In another, he has her
bent over the end of the kitchen counter, her dress raised above her hips, his
erection rubbing between her spread legs. He is talking near her ear, “I am not
going to let you clean up before we go.” A shiver passes through Arafel’s body.
She is already wet.
He continues, “You’re going to go out with my seed running down your legs.
Because you belong to me”. Arafel shivers again. She does. She always has.
Still, rarely is he this obviously possessive. She loves it. She tries to turn
her head towards him, but he stops her by biting into her neck and penetrates
her at the same time, entering her all the way in one hard thrust. She can only
gasp. Thranduil bites deeper so he doesn’t howl, relishing the familiar taste
of his sister’s blood as he finally feels her closing around his painfully
throbbing erection. He had waited as long as he could, subduing anger and want
and even the pull of the drug, until they all came crashing into unbearable and
fantastic need to be inside her. Now he doesn’t want to take it slowly. He
can’t take it slowly. He needs to fuck her like an animal. Arafel, sensing
this, places her hands on his hips and pulls him into her with every one of his
own deep and hard thrusts, and Thranduil lets go of restraint completely. He
takes her hands and places his over hers on the counter and not letting go of
her neck, which he still holds in his teeth, pounds into her violently.
Arafel’s hips slam into the counter, bruises flowering. She doesn’t care. She
is raw nerves. She is consumed by his hunger. She is suspended within the
sensation and the knowledge that Thranduil needs this as much as she does. Then
Thranduil lets go of her throat and is screaming, filling her with his seed, as
promised, in last deep shuddering thrusts. Feeling him stiffen and his semen
flood her insides, brings Arafel to a shivering orgasm of her own. Thranduil
feels her muscles contract around him, squeezing the last bit of him into
herself. Still buried inside her, he lies on top of her, both of them shaking.
When their heartbeats slow, he gets off her. Arafel, still bent over,
unclenches her vaginal muscles and some semen runs down her thighs, then her
calves to disappear into her boots. She is looking at him over her shoulder,
under half-raised lashes. “Is this what you had in mind?”, her voice is all
sex.
“Mhm”, Thranduil stares, as if spellbound.
She straightens up, her back turned to him, straightening her dress, her legs
spread. More of his semen runs down the inside and the back of each of her legs
leaving trails which will dry silvery-white. Thranduil is half hard all over
again. Arafel brings her legs together, turns on her tiptoes to face him, then
brings her fingers to her bleeding neck, wipes at the blood, takes a step
towards him and presses the fingers to his mouth. Thranduil sucks. She licks
his bloody lips.
“Do you want to be fucked again?”, he grabs her by the elbow.
“Yes”, she stares him down, “But later. You’re violent.”
“Oh”, he is mocking, “And you hate it”.
She smiles. “May I clean this?”, Arafel points to the actual wound on her neck.
Rarely has he ever done this much damage. It hurts even through the curtain of
cocaine. It must look like a dog attacked her.
Thranduil smiles sweetly, “No.”
Arafel returns the smile. Then slowly picks up his right arm, takes a razor out
of her purse and equally slowly starts cutting the inside of his forearm from
the wrist halfway up to the elbow, looking into his eyes the entire time. Blood
flows from the cut. Thranduil doesn’t try to stop her or withdraw his arm. She
knows how deep to cut, deep enough to make him bleed, probably to scar him, but
not deep enough to cut through any major blood vessels. Deep enough to make him
shiver imperceptibly as he feels the razor break his skin. When Arafel brings
his arm to her lips just before blood begins to drip on the floor and licks at
it slowly, he is breathing faster. Like a cat cleaning her mate, she licks his
entire arm clean, sucks on the cut until blood stops flowing. Thranduil is
quiet, watching her hypnotized. When she finally raises her head, he grabs her
and kisses her, forcing himself to push her away. Blood holds power over both
of them.
Without another word, he picks up his car keys and several more bags of coke
which he sticks in his pockets, takes Arafel, who is wiping the blood of her
lips with her fingers still grinning, by her hand and leads them out of the
apartment. Arafel grabs her purse and follows without protest.
***** We were born to die *****
Thranduil drives like a demon, taking sharp curves which hang over drops to
which one cannot see the bottom at 120 mph, passing cars around blind corners,
zipping past six and seven cars in a row at once, Lana del Ray’s “Summertime
Sadness” blasting on the radio. Both brother and sister sing along…
“Cruising down the coast going ‘about 99
Got my bad baby by my side
If I go, I’ll die happy tonight
Oh, my God, I feel it in the air
Telephone wires above are sizzling like a snare
Honey, I'm on fire, I feel it everywhere
Nothing scares me anymore”
“Baby, we were born to die”, Thranduil says laughing, as he pulls Arafel into a
kiss. She bursts out laughing. The irony and weight those words carry for them
are simply too complicated for an alternate response.
At the beginning of the Fourth Age of the World as the age of elves was slowly
replaced by the age of men, three choices became available to the race of the
Eldar still lingering in Middle Earth: 1) to go to the Undaying Lands, a
parallel World not then far removed from this one, to the Eldar known as
Valinor, to the race of man in the present time known as Fairy, or the
Otherworld, a place which would in time drift away from Middle Earth and in it
slip from history first into myth and then fairytale, 2) to remain in Middle
Earth, in the world of men, and slowly fade becoming disembodied spirits,
eventually losing memory and individual consciousness and becoming an integral
part of the Natural World, or 3) to die in Middle Earth. However, since unlike
the souls of men, which are transient visitors to Earth and depart it after
death, the souls of Elves are bound to the Earth for eternity, they would
undergo endless cycles of reincarnation until the end of the World. When the
Earth itself finally ended, they would too. Furthermore, death would not take
their memories away; they would remember everything. Finally, in order to avoid
a different fate, they had to die violent deaths before the fading began.
Thranduil and Arafel, to whom Valinor was only a legend, a place none of their
people had ever seen, just a story shrouded in uncertainty and tainted with
suffering and distrust, and who despite all the horrors they had seen in Middle
Earth still loved it and believed it to be the Eldar’s true home, and who could
above all not fathom abandoning their people, Sindar and Silvan elves, most of
whom chose not to sail to Valinor sharing their convictions, chose this third
way, despite its harsh and unpredictable conditions. And so they have died and
been reborn many times through all the ages of human history. Many times they
have laughed at how naïve they had all been. They had understood that their
dominion over Middle Earth was over, that the once proud and immortal race of
Elves would become irrelevant, that consequently, the World would inevitably
change. But not even the longest and darkest vision of the elves could have
imagined then what the race of men would turn the World into over the coming
ages. And not even the most cynical of elves stopped to consider that gods
often spoke in riddles and left many things unsaid.
Their first death was the worst. As immortal beings they had no blueprint for
death, no point of reference.
Thranduil had said goodbye to Celebron and to Galadriel, who sailed with great
apprehension for the curse of the Valar upon the house of Finwe had never been
officially revoked, yet both remembered Valinor as their only true home and
could not endure the thought of a permanent severing from it. And he said
goodbye to Elrond, who raged at him in one last desperate attempt to change his
mind. The two did not meet often in all the time they walked the same earth,
but at certain critical junctions in their lives they had been there for each
other in a multitude of ways. The concept of an everlasting separation, one
equivalent to a mortal death, was painful beyond comprehension to the Eldar,
who previous to this sundering did not encounter it. Finally, Elrond had given
up a futile battle and they had spent their last night together. Thranduil
asked him to look after his son, Elrond asked him to destroy Imladris when the
time came for he had not had it in him to do it himself. For the next several
hundred years, while Arafel continued existing in the shadows, Thranduil
presided over the dying of not only his own kingdom but also of Lothlorien and
Imladris as elves faded, faster in the two realms where their life force had
for centuries been tied to the Rings of Power which were now gone, slower but
nevertheless relentlessly in the Greenwood.
He also saw the race of men falter, then fail. It would never rise again. The
Kingdom of Gondor had lasted a mare 400 years after the return of its
Numenorian kings. Arwen’s and Aragorn’s son was its last king. Soon after his
death, Gondor fell into the hands of the Easterlings, the wild bands of humans
formerly loyal to Sauron, who in short orders extinguished all civilization and
knowledge. The human race blundered in darkness for long centuries after that,
pierced only here and there by feeble and too short-lived sparks of light, but
none would ever reach the learning or the splendor of those human cities which
existed while the elves and the Maia still shared their world. Thranduil and
Arafel recognized these cities they knew later, much later, in books, then
films, under the names of Atlantis and Avalon. They were just stories to
people, mythical places which few believed existed, enchanting and enticing,
but ultimately as unreal as they themselves had become. Fairytales.
Thranduil became disgusted by humans during these times. While he never had
much use for humans past practical necessity in the past, he could certainly be
civil to them, some he even respected. These men were different. Consumed by
ghastly wars, which far superseded even the worst of the elven wars Thranduil
knew and despised as a youth in their horrible brutality and senselessness,
they were. And hell bent on destruction, smashing through everything which came
before them without a single thought to or a vision for a future. And how
brutally they ransacked the natural world, always fighting it, always aiming to
subdue it, to rule it. He was powerfully repulsed. Savages. In future centuries
this revulsion would only intensify. Both he and Arafel would come to resent,
then despise, then hate the race of man. They were no better than Orcs. Their
leaders no different than Sauron.
When the total elven population dropped to only several hundred, after 5,000
years on the throne, Thranduil had had enough of being King. He was weary
beyond endurance. And honestly heartsick. His last order as the Elvenking was
to obliterate all traces of elven presence in Middle Earth. Dismantle all
settlements. Destroy everything that one did not carry on one’s back. He closed
the doors to his halls himself and buried them under a pile of rocks, never to
be opened again. In front of what used to be his home, he wished the remaining
of his kind well, laid his crown on the forest floor and for the first and last
time in his life asked to be forgiven. Instead of accusing him of abandoning
them, the elves, most of them born long after Thranduil was already old even by
elven reckoning, came up to him one by one, kissed him, on his hands, on his
cheeks, his forehead, his mouth, as each dared, silently thanking him for all
that he had done, telling him everything they couldn’t verbalize, then vanished
into the forest in complete silence. Thranduil stood rooted to the spot until
day faded into night, centuries stacking upon centuries in rapid succession in
his mind. Then he walked into the forest, he found Arafel, and he told her that
he was done.
“Done being King?”, she had asked him.
“Done. Period”, he told her.
She looked deep into his eyes, and she understood. Her brother was no longer
angry, he was no longer sad, as he had often been over the last centuries. He
was tired past explanation. To ask him to go on would have been cruel. This was
it. So she simply nodded.
They made love that night more gently than had become usual for them. Then,
stretched on their backs under the stars in the hours before dawn, they talked
about how exactly they were going to kill themselves, thus fulfilling the
condition of violent death, calmly, as if discussing battle strategy. They
didn’t know anything, when or where or even if they would exist again, what the
world would look like, and most terrifyingly, if they would ever find each
other again. They were afraid. An immortal being cannot walk into Death on
blind faith of a rebirth unflinching, it’s not in its genes, it’s contrary to
its every instinct. But as the Sun broke over the horizon, brother and sister
slid daggers between each other’s ribs and through each other’s hearts.
Quickly, efficiently, looking into each other’s eyes with bitter smiles on
their lips but without tears. They were born immortal, but in this new world,
even immortality had become relative. It was 1,042 B.C.
Centuries later, through stories told by their kin, those who were torn apart
and those who were still together, they pieced together that how they died
ensured that they remained always together. Souls of killers and their victims
become linked and traveled together through time. The gods had not shared this
with the Eldar. Thranduil and Arafel, along with many others had even less love
for the Valar after they came to understand this. So many more of their own,
separated from their mates, chose to fade. In the early cycles of
reincarnation, one could still find an elf or two almost anywhere on Earth, but
soon finding another became exquisitely rare. Humans called them fairies, with
more specific names in different regions of the world. Some married into human
families, elven/fairy blood passed into the human gene pool.
Other facts the Valar had omitted. For example, that upon rebirth, their memory
would return gradually, in confusing, often nonsensical fragments, and hit them
full-force at any point between the transition from child to adult to years,
even decades later. That meeting another of their kind triggered re-awakening
of memory at any age. That as Valinor drifted further and further from the
world of men, elven magic would grow thin in this world, and while some of them
retained some of their inborn magic, which is as natural and integral to an elf
as breathing, it would grow weaker and weaker with every cycle of death and
rebirth and some of them would lose it all together. Many could not adjust. It
was like losing eyesight or use of limbs to a human. Worse still, while in the
beginning, they could live an average of five and six hundred years, life spans
terribly short for a people once immortal but what seemed to them sufficient
nevertheless, subsequent incarnations brought increasingly shorter life spans.
Industrial revolution and resultant pollution, which seeped into every crack of
the Earth, reduced their years to first equal then, gradually over the next
three centuries, become shorter than those of man. As the Earth is being slowly
poisoned so too are the creatures whose life-force cannot be separated from it.
Thranduil and Arafel have both retained considerable magic, perhaps by being in
proximity of each other. But they feel the trees dying like they once felt the
blackness spreading over Greenwood, and it leeches life out of them. They feel
the sickness in the air and it hurts to breathe. They will stay forever young,
but they will not live to be old, not even by human standards. They will, of
course, finish it themselves, becoming insensible clouds of electrons is a
worse fate. And they’ve designed a thousand ways to die. Their own impending
death, this one, and the thousands yet to come, they now take with a sense of
humor, acquired by repetition and inevitability. But they find no humor in what
has happened to their people in Middle Earth or in the death throws of the
Earth itself. If they didn’t have each other, they are positive they’d have
gone insane centuries ago. Still, they have wrath and sadness enough to
separate countless heads from their respective bodies. It’s always there, at
their fingertips. So close.
Thranduil parks the car right in front of the club, brother and sister look at
each other, and smile but half-heartedly. They grew quiet while immersed in the
film rewinding in their heads, one and the same. Arafel says, “Good thing that
we were heartless bastards then”. Thranduil laughs, “We’re still heartless
bastards, dear sister.” He bites her lip. She grabs the back of his head before
he can escape and pulls him into a deeper kiss. He is right, of course. Arafel
wonders for a brief second if this is how Death marks those who walk through
its Valley with memory fully intact over and over again or if its just who they
always were.
She’s snapped out of further thinking by a happy, drunken, “Ooo…. Girl… Come
over here, you are beautiful!” followed by a hand on her upper arm pulling her
out the car. By the time she looks up to see who her admirer is, Thranduil has
him by the neck hissing an inch from his face, “Give my a reason not to break
your neck”. The man is stunned into silence. Arafel is out of the car within a
split second eyeing the club’s bouncers, on approach. If they get their hands
on Thranduil, he’ll kill every man standing within proximity. Arafel steps into
the bouncers’ path, signs for them to stop, give them a second. Knowing both
her and Thranduil well, they acquiesce, although reluctantly. She approaches
Thranduil like one approaches a cobra coiled and ready to strike, sliding her
hand carefully into the hand he is not using to choke the breath out of the
unfortunate guy, “T, come, let him go. It’s just a drunken human. Harmless.”
Thranduil doesn’t budge. Arafel punctures the skin of his palm with her nails.
Thranduil turns to glare at her. She glares back at him, repeats “Come”. And
Thranduil lets the human go turning his attention to his sister. Arafel sees
the flicker in his eyes, he is going to strike her. Which in itself would be
nothing. She can feel blood pooling between their palms, she dug her nails
deep. Violence between them is irrelevant. And he’s not an asshole, PTSD and
drugs are a hell of a combination. But if he hits her here, it will cause
serious chaos. She mouths, “Not here”. Out of the corner of her eye, she
catches the bouncers take a step towards them. She waves them off with a quick
flick of her wrist. They back off. Brother and sister stare at each other.
Then, just like that, it’s over. Thranduil wraps his arms around her and they
kiss long and hard. The bouncers try not to stare, some from fear of
Thranduil’s unpredictable temper, some from shear discomfort, incest is incest
even if they’ve seen it many times and like both brother and sister. But they
stare anyway, like one can’t stop staring at wild fire.
Once inside, under the cover of darkness, Arafel takes Thranduil’s bloody hand
and licks the blood off. She doesn’t ask if it hurts. It does.
“Do you want more?”, he grabs her by the back of the neck and brings her mouth
to his neck, speaking into her ear, “If you want more, it’s right here”, his
voice is deeper than usual, almost a growl.
“No”, Arafel tries to lift her head. He doesn’t let her, “Too late, sister.
Bite. That’s an order.” He pins her body to his with his free arm.
Arafel’s blood boils. “Yes, my King.” She’s not mocking him. Although he is
never serious, in a way, he will always be King to her. She puts her hands on
his head to extend his neck and sinks her teeth deep, breaking skin
immediately. Thranduil moans, holds onto her tighter. Her hands tangle into his
hair, and she pushes him back into the nearby wall, biting deeper and deeper,
blood flowing freely into her mouth, down her throat. Thranduil lets his head
fall back against the wall, eyes closed, moaning loudly, not caring who hears
him. And people stare, some with mouths wide open, others trying and failing to
avert their eyes, yet others clutching their fists trying to control their
lust, some quietly gasping. Thranduil is always beautiful, but like this, he is
irresistible.
Only when Arafel lets him go and turns around to face the gathered crowd, do
people, seeing the blood staining her mouth, dangerously narrowed eyes and the
extent of damage to Thranduil’s throat, gasp in horror, cover their mouths and
stagger hurriedly away. Brother and sister laugh. They shouldn’t be here.
They’re too much for human consumption. Their handling of each other when
they’re like this is too cruel, too intense for people to abide, and it does
defy explanation. Of this they are aware. They do not intend to shock, but they
certainly don’t care about any discomfort they cause. Considering theirs at
best tenuous relationship with humanity, more accurately described as outright
disdain bordering on hate, if a couple of humans are inconvenienced by their
behavior, so what.
“Come. Bathroom. Then dancing”, Thranduil is pulling Arafel along through the
crowd as she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.
On the way to the bathroom, Arafel spots Kate sitting at the bar, throwing back
a shot, piercing them with a look like one of their son’s arrows. She squeezes
Thranduil’s hand. He’s already seen her, “I know, I might lose more blood
tonight”, he’s laughing.
Once in the co-ed bathroom, Arafel rubs her eyes sighing, “Get me high, now.”
Thranduil rises an eyebrow, “And you are not?”
“Higher. A lot higher.”
He holds a key loaded with white to her nose, hands steady. She inhales it. The
next one goes up his nose. And so on, back and forth, they go through a bag and
a half within minutes. A lot, even for them. Once upon a time, their
thundering, much too fast heartbeats, which they can feel as they press against
each other might have scared them. Now they give into the head rush, and the
brief tingling dizziness that follows as their lungs struggle to supply
sufficient oxygen, and how reality frame-shifts into something just a little
more vivid, just a little more alive, and the feel of each other’s skin, how
every touch sears.
Arafel is running her tongue over the bite she put in Thranduil’s neck earlier
causing him to throw his head backwards and grind his hips against her, when a
feather light touch on Arafels wrist makes her turn her head in its direction.
Thranduil is immediately alert and irritated.
“A, do you have anything I can borrow?” It’s a man Thranduil occasionally
shares a bed with, his forehead lined with beads of sweat, his hands cold and
shaking.
“You don’t borrow, you take”, Thranduil is venomous, annoyed at the
interruption.
Arafel skewers him with a look and a silent warning, “Don’t be heartless”.
She’s always strangely kind in these types of situations.
“What? I give him all of my heart every time I let him fuck me”, Thranduil’s
replay is also unheard by anyone other than his sister, who rolls her eyes at
him “Heart? Really?”. Thranduil rolls his eyes, “Details, baby, details. The
point is charity”, but he tosses the remaining half bag to the man adding, “Do
try not to die while in possession of that, my fingerprints are on it”.
The man has the sense to disappear immediately muttering a thank you. Thranduil
turns his attention back to his sister picking her up and sitting her on the
edge of a sink, her legs wrapped around his hips. They graze each other’s necks
with teeth, causing shudders to run up their spines. He grinds himself into
her, the only thing separating his bulging erection from her the leather of his
trousers, which is being liberally soaked by the wetness between her legs. They
don’t talk and they have their eyes closed, consumed by sensation.
When a hand that is not Arafel’s tangles into Thranduil’s hair and pulls his
head roughly back, Thranduil opens his eyes, but he does so lazily, as if
bored, and does not let go of Arafel, nor stop doing what he is doing. If
somebody wants to play with him like this, they will learn what taunting a
panther feels like.
Arafel wears the same expression. And her voice reflects it, “Really Kate, you
might want to check into rehab. Stalking people into bathrooms seems to be a
habit with you.”
Thranduil rolls his eyes as he leans his head further back to look at Kate
properly and adds, “Now what?”
“Are you going to fuck her right here?”, Kate can barely get the words out.
Thranduil looks bored to tears, “Why? Do you want to watch?”
Kate twists his hair to make it hurt, but gets no reaction. “You’re seriously
deranged.” With that she throws Thranduil’s head forward hard enough that his
forehead collides with Arafel’s shoulder, and strides out of the bathroom.
Thranduil laughs. Arafel rolls her eyes, pushes him off of her and hops off the
sink, “Let’s go dance”. Thranduil moves to the mirror to straighten out his
hair. He watches his mangled neck as he works his fingers through the strands.
“You’re an animal”, the words are obviously directed at Arafel, who steps
behind him, wraps her hands around his waist, then slides them lower, over his
groin and to his still obviously swollen cock, and standing on her toes
whispers against his ear, “I learned from you”.
When they dance, they lose themselves to the music and to each other. There is
no world outside the beat and each other’s needy hands and bodies. But the
world, of course, is watching. Kate is watching too, downing shot after shot of
Stoli, getting angrier and more aroused as song follows song and brother and
sister continue sliding over each other with the grace and pent-up lethality of
dancing snakes. Several times, the well-intended bartender has tried to speak
to her, tried to tell her to stay away from those two, that everyone who has
tried to get close has gotten annihilated in one way or another. But Kate can’t
listen. The bartender lets it go, they never can.
“She’s been staring at us all night”, Thranduil is telling Arafel pressed
against her back, both of them close to the floor, legs spread wide, his hands
on her groin both concealing her nudity and stimulating her.
“I know”, she replies through hitched breaths, “And?”
“Do you want an audience tonight?”
“She’ll want to kill us”, they are standing again and Arafel turns to face him,
“the question is how far are you willing to let her go?”
His expression tells her everything. Far. As far as it takes to unhinge this
human. Thranduil knows that Arafel can easily endure a lot more physical abuse
than the previous night. She knows that he plans to take the majority of it
anyway. Both of them will enjoy it, at least most of it. Arafel grins. “I’ll
leave it to you then, Sir. Please, lead.”
They walk towards the bar where Kate has been sitting all night, arms around
each other’s waists. They stop in front of her, all smiles.
Kate throws a full shot into Arafel’s face accompanied by a snarled, “I hate
you.” She’s slurring the words slightly.
For a moment, nobody in the vicinity of the bar moves. Everybody expects either
Arafel herself, or failing that, her brother, to slam Kate’s head into the bar
and leave her unconscious on the floor. Most everybody has seen this exact
scenario play out before. But tonight, brother and sister have crueler plans.
Thranduil stands still, his face expressionless. Arafel simply takes a napkin
from the bar, wipes her face and regards Kate for a long moment.
Then Arafel smiles, “I know, darling”, and kisses Kate on the cheek. Kate moves
to strike her, then remembers where she is and stops herself. Arafel smirks.
Thranduil moves behind Kate's chair, takes her jacket of the back and holds it
for her, “Come on, let’s go, love.”
Kate turns around and looks at him with such disdain that even Thranduil is
impressed, “Go? I am not going anywhere with you.”
Thranduil smiles, bends down until his face is at level with Kate's and mare
inches away, and lowers his voice to a cadence he knows no man or woman, no
matter their inclination can resist, “No? And what if I told you that I would
let you have your way with me tonight?”
Kate is silent, clearly paying attention. Thranduil begins stroking her forearm
with one finger and she offers no protest.
The bartender watches in the background, closes his eyes and shakes his head.
He doesn’t hate brother and sister, he doesn’t even dislike them and couldn’t
care less about their unconventional preferences, but he knows they leave train
wrecks behind them. And, perceptive, as bartenders want to be, he senses
something otherworldly about them, something too old and too tangled up with
Death. It makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up.
Thranduil continues, “You could make me bleed… any way you wished. You could
fuck me… You could hurt me as much as you wanted to…”, his voice is pure silk.
“And Arafel too. You can show us both how much you hate us. No rules but
yours.”
Kate swallows hard. “No rules?”, she looks to Arafel, who only nods confirming
her brother’s words.
Thranduil stands up to full height, offers Kate her coat again. Kate turns to
the bar, and orders two more shots. Arafel and Thranduil smile like wolves who
have just chased their pray into a corner. The bartender sighs and brings Kate
her shots, making each a double, drawing the sign of the cross over them. “Take
Me to Church” comes on. Arafel bursts out laughing. She mouths the words to the
bartender, “We were born sick, you heard her say it… But we love it… Take me to
church, I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies, I’ll tell you my
sins and you can sharpen your knife”. The bartender is speechless. Thranduil
can barely contain laughter. Kate drains the shots, oblivious, then gets up and
puts on the offered jacket. She only asks that they take her car so she has the
means to leave. Arafel and Thranduil easily agree, leaving theirs.
This time, Kate hands the keys over to Arafel without anybody asking. Thranduil
gets in the back seat, but is quickly climbing into the front to play with the
radio, then proceeds to help himself to some more coke and serves some to
Arafel. When he also offers some to Kate, simply because she’s there, and she
accepts, both brother and sister are completely surprised but neither comment.
Thranduil takes another hit thinking half-seriously, “This might hurt more than
I thought”. Arafel adds, across her shoulder, “Mhm, it might”.
“Might what?”, asks Kate.
“Nothing, darling”, Arafel briefly looks in her direction, then starts tracing
her inner thigh with a finger. Kate crushes her hand and puts it back on the
gearshift, “Did I tell you that you could touch me?”
Arafel stars straight at the road her expression stone, “Your rules, my
apologies, I forgot.” Inwardly she smiles understanding the apparent mood, and
is relieved. If Kate doesn’t want her to touch her, all the better.
Once they are in the apartment, it’s clear that Kate means to hold Thranduil to
his promise. No sooner does he close the door than she has her hands around the
back of both of their necks digging her fingers into the sides where they are
sure to leave bruises and is marching them into the bedroom. Brother and sister
drop everything they hold in their hands and let her.
“Don’t fuck with me this time”, Kate growls into Arafel’s ear, referring to the
illusion she created to disorient her last night, now, entering the same space,
fully convinced of its authenticity again. Arafel raises her hands signaling
surrender. Thranduil bites his lip to suppress laughter. Kate yanks him by his
hair. Thranduil hates nothing more than being dragged around by his hair. His
expression flips from amused to furious in an instant, but he takes a deep
breath and retains composure. He did say anything would go.
“Strip”, Kate orders and sits on the bed, taking off her jacket.
Thranduil tosses his hair over his shoulders and slowly, like he is stretching,
takes his shirt of as he leans into a deep back bend, his hair sweeping the
floor, letting the shirt fall onto the floor behind him. He comes back up to
standing in an equally fluid motion, then turns towards Arafel who is watching
him approvingly. He puts his hands on her shoulders and turns her back to him
looking at Kate the entire time. Slowly, he begins unzipping her dress. When
Kate doesn’t object, he pulls the zipper all the way down, than bends her over
so that her body forms an “L”. They both continue looking at Kate as he starts
slowly grinding against her. Kate doesn’t say anything. Arafel bends all the
way over and unbuckles both Thranduil’s boots and her own. They straighten up,
her back fully pressed against him and step out of the footware. Arafel turns
around and starts unbuttoning his trousers. When she has the buttons undone and
enough room to slide her hands inside, Kate interrupts, “Take them off”.
Arafel slides the leather over Thranduil’s hips, down his thighs and around his
ankles, kneeling in front of him as she does so. He steps out of the heap and
she tosses them to the side.
“Take her dress off”, Kate orders. Arafel lifts her arms above her head and
Thranduil pulls the dress over her head tossing it to the side as well. Brother
and sister are in profile to Kate, Arafel on her knees, mouth in line and
inches away from his fully erect cock. They would like nothing more than to
finally and completely tare into each other after a long night of restrained
and teasing touches, but they both keep their hands behind their backs and are
looking not at each other but at Kate. It’s Kate’s rules. And Kate makes them
wait.
“Did you force her the first time?”, Kate directs her question at Thranduil.
Arafel answers, “No.”
Kate moves faster than anticipated and strikes Arafel hard across the face, “I
didn’t ask you. I asked him.” Arafel stays as still as a statue. Thranduil’s
fists clench and unclench.
Kate rephrases her question, “Did you ever force her?”
“Once.”
“Why?”
“Because it was necessary.”
“Explain.”
“No.”
Kate repeats her request. Thranduil refuses again. When asked Arafel only
repeats his words and likewise refuses to elaborate. Kate is standing on the
ledge without knowing it. Arafel wants to kill her. This line of questioning is
crossing the line she will tolerate for very long. One lifetime of having her
brother accused of hurting her was enough for eternity. Thranduil knows. His
fingers are twitching imperceptibly. If Arafel snaps, he has no intention of
stopping her, but he will be ready to help her.
Kate, whether by sensing the sudden tension as prey animals often do or by
stroke of luck, saves herself. “Ok, you don’t have to talk, but you will use
your pretty whore mouth for something.” She grabs Arafel by the ears and shoves
her head forward so that she is forced to take all of Thranduil’s cock into her
mouth. Kate holds her head down when her lips reach the base. Arafel can’t
breathe, but after the first few seconds she manages to relax her throat enough
for him to slip down her throat and stop gagging. She doesn’t fight Kate. She
doesn’t mind at all. Thranduil himself has done this to her. She loves it. She
would only prefer his hands on her head. Kate touching her has turned
repulsive.
When his cock slips into his sister’s throat, Thranduil lets out a moan, rakes
his fingers through her hair. Kate lets go of Arafel’s head. After she takes a
quick breath, she immediately sinks down on her brother again, taking him into
her mouth completely. It’s his hands that hold her head in place this time.
“Oh, you little bitch, you love this.” Kate is half-disgusted, half-amazed as
she finds Arafel dripping wet. Choking on her brother’s cock was supposed to be
punishment, or at least uncomfortable for both of them, but apparently they
love it.
Standing over Arafel, she traces the newly sawn up gash on her back with her
index finger. “Which one of you didn’t want this to scar?”, she asks Thranduil.
“Me.”
“Who put the rest of the scars on her?”
“I did.”
Kate shakes her head, “Unbelievable”, then circles around to stand behind him
and studies a much more intricate mesh of scars covering him. Shallower,
shorter cuts, irregular, but many in number. Nails? Razors? Kate decides she
doesn’t want to know. Thranduil has stopped paying attention to her and is
completely focused on Arafel. He let go off her head and is letting her suck
him at her own pace. She is focusing only on the head as she inserts two
fingers into her wet cunt before sliding her hand between his legs to induce
him to spread them. When she slides her fingers one after another slowly but
with practiced certainty inside him, she takes his entire length into his mouth
again.
Thranduil closes his eyes and lets out a satisfied gasp when he is breached by
his sister’s familiar fingers. He grabs onto her shoulders for support, unsure
how much longer he’ll be able to keep standing.
Kate’s fingers, shielded from Arafel’s view by his body, find her clitoris. She
is watching them intently. “Use your teeth on him”, she orders Arafel, her
breath catching.
Arafel glances up at her brother who opens his eyes only to acknowledge that he
had heard and inclines his head to allow it, too subtly for Kate to notice.
Arafel rakes her teeth along the underside of his cock, lightly at first,
experimentally. Thranduil shivers in response. She uses teeth on top and bottom
on the next pass watching his face the entire time. Thranduil gasps. She does
it again. “Harder”, he breathes. Arafel licks her lips, goes down all the way
using her lips only, then back up to the tip using her teeth. This time she
draws blood. Thranduil’s breath hitches, and she can feel his anal muscles
contract around her fingers. She lets go of his cock and withdraws her fingers.
He moans, annoyed. She puts her fingers inside herself only to lubricate them
again adding a third, then enters him again with all three fingers. Thranduil
can’t stand any more and kneels, legs apart. Arafel, lowers herself to lay on
the floor in front of him holding herself up on one elbow, takes his cock into
her mouth sucking the blood. When she looks at him, he holds her gaze, “Again”.
She doesn’t hesitate. Teeth rip new paths on the way down. She sucks the blood
on the way up. Thranduil grabs her wrist behind him and shoves her fingers
deeper into himself arching his back.
While brother and sister were consumed with each other, Kate had visited the
infamous nightstand and is now standing behind Thranduil with a strap-on and
not a lot of patience.
She grabs Thranduil by the hair again, her voice dripping with hate, “Are you
ready, pretty boy?”, and drags him away from Arafel, pushing him onto the floor
on his knees and elbows.
“Do you always ask irrelevant questions?” Thranduil saw her selection out of
the corner of his eye and knows he is not ready. He also knows how much Kate
doesn’t care.
He has just enough time to move his head before the whip hits him diagonally
from hipbone to shoulder, the end wrapping around the shoulder onto his chest.
His skin splits like cream. This is one of their special ones, made to order.
The leather is hard and thin, the edges sharp. It’s made for drawing blood fast
and its sting is severe. The damage inflicted, especially by someone who
doesn’t know how to use it, is also severe. Thranduil understands she’s going
to trash him to the brink of unconsciousness and the scars will be permanent.
Fine. He will find a way to enjoy it. But she will break into a thousand
uncollectable pieces. They all think revenge is simple, they all find out
differently. He laughs like a lunatic.
“You like this?”, Kate hisses.
He doesn’t replay. He is done talking. Let her figure it out. She delivers two
more savage blows similar to the first, one in the opposite diagonal, one down
the middle of his back. Thranduil closes his eyes with each one, but his
breathing is steady and he doesn’t move. Between the blows, his eyes are locked
with Arafel’s. Kate lashes her across the back, ass and upper thigh. A single
strike and surprisingly careful to miss the sutures, but opening her skin
nevertheless, and warns her not to come closer as she circles Thranduil from
the back, delivers another blow across his lower back and ass, then grabs onto
his hips and enters him. This time, he clenches his teeth and bites his tongue
to keep quiet. Arafel can tell by how hard his jaw is set. By how his fingers
dig into his elbows. Kate is hurting him as much as possible, pulling out and
thrusting in all the way. The phallus is hard and unyielding, and very large.
All of Arafel’s lubrication is gone by now, and Thranduil is being torn, a fact
which Kate, seeing blood on the dildo, relishes.
But Thranduil, like his sister, is addicted to pain. Within minutes, to Kate’s
utter disbelief, he is breathing hard and thrusting back against her. “Like
sister, like brother”, thinks Kate. His eyes are still locked with Arafel’s,
who is still laying on her stomach on the floor and rubbing herself against it.
What’s more, Thranduil’s returned thrusts and the friction they create are
bringing Kate closer and closer to climax. She lashes him across the shoulders,
blood long having spilled on the floor, and fucks him hard, like they both
demand it.
When she cums with shivers running up her spine, she pulls out of him, pushing
him to the floor. He is clearly irritated, frustrated, completely unsatisfied,
his cock begging for release, and Kate is momentarily too exhausted and too
wrapped up in herself to fight him. She manages, panting still, “Go ahead, fuck
her”.
They don’t need to be told again. Arafel picks her pelvis up of the floor, and
he is on top of her in an instant pressing her shoulders to the floor with his
forearm, pulling her hips towards his using his other arm and entering her
fully. As he does, he emits a low growl as the unexpected pain hits him. He had
forgotten the work Arafel’s teeth did on his cock. But he’s a long way past
pain, and he needs release. Arafel puts her hands under her head to stop it
from hitting the floor, he is pounding into her that hard, that urgently, and
pants, “Don’t hold back”. It only takes Thranduil several hard thrusts to spill
his seed deep inside her, but it’s a savage coupling. When he is emptied, still
inside her, he collapses on top of her, then holds her as she shivers through
her own orgasm. When he pulls out, his cock and her thighs are stained pink, a
mixture of his seed and blood. Most of the blood is his, some of it is hers.
Kate lets them rest for a couple of minutes. Not because she feels sympathy, on
the contrary she’s not yet done with them, but it maddens her how they can be
so incredibly violent with each other, yet so clearly protective of each other.
No such equation exists in her mind’s calculator. No such recipe for love. Yet
here it is. Whatever this is. She watches them curled up against each other
half asleep as if watching will make her understand. It only keeps her angry.
Thranduil and Arafel are woken up by a lash of the whip over their exposed
hips. It wraps over Thranduil’s lower back, Arafel instinctively grabs the tail
end snatching it into her hand, then awake, realizing where she is, lets it go.
She doesn’t feel like being beaten any more tonight, but they have never lost
this kind of war, and tonight will not be different.
“Clean each other up. You are both disgusting” is Kate’s next order. They get
to work, licking blood and semen off of each other’s genitals. Normally, this
would get them aroused all over again, but they are spent and it only feels
soothing. They don’t bother with the rest, there is blood all over them, that
will take a bath to clean. Kate watches in silence, rage building with every
passing minute. If anyone asked her to specify the reason, she would be
incapable of verbalizing it, but it’s visceral and untamable. When Arafel and
Thranduil deem themselves as clean as they will be, they kneel next to each
other sitting back on their heels, several feet in front of Kate, hoping that
she has been sufficiently amused, realizing instantly that she hasn’t.
She hasn’t. She starts interrogating them again, courtroom style. Who
approached whom first? Did their parents know? How old were they? Was there
ever anybody else for either of them? Are they not ashamed?
Each refusal to answer a question gets each of them a skin-splitting blow. They
alternate, across their backs, fronts, flanks, high, low, anywhere she can
reach them. Thranduil and Arafel have morphed into frozen replicas of
themselves. Not a single muscle moves. Their faces are frozen. They do not
answer a single question. Kate can beat them into unconsciousness for all they
care. This idiotic game, they will not play.
Kate persists for some half an hour, brother and sister remain perfectly still.
Blood flows staining their floor. Finally, when a careless blow wraps the whip
around both Arafel and Thranduil’s necks, the resulting cuts that look too much
like murder snap Kate out of her trance. If Thranduil wasn’t worlds away, he
would be laughing. Kate’s face is a mask of perfect horror. She drops the whip.
She can suddenly not breathe, feels like the very walls are closing in on her.
She stumbles through the door and runs out of the apartment like the hounds of
hell are chasing her leaving her jacket behind. Her hands are shaking so hard
that she barely gets the keys into the ignition. She is talking to herself, the
only recognizable words, “I am a monster… I am a monster… I am a monster…” all
the way home, where she jumps into the shower and scrubs her skin until it
hurts and the water runs cold. But she can’t wash the blood away.
***** Anatomy of the trivial *****
Thranduil and Arafel drift back into this world slowly, indecisively, somewhere
in the late afternoon. Sober and cold. Nausea, dizziness and mind-splitting
headaches obliterating pain they have yet to feel. Curled up on the floor in
fetal positions facing each other, brother and sister are looking into each
others eyes, each thinking the same three things in succession: this is why
this shit should end… but not today… so one of us will have to crawl off this
bloody floor. But neither speaks and neither moves as much as to lift their
head until Thranduil is covered in a thin film of sweat and shivering.
Then Arafel does, crawl, fights off a wave of nausea that has her nearly
retching over the toilet, because if she starts she won’t stop, grabs one of
the several coke bags left in the drawer of the vanity, can’t instantly locate
straws or a mirror, is too sick to care, sees a pair of scissors and uses the
tips for a scoop instead. Between her shaking hands and the small surface, it
takes several tries, but by the time she’s sitting on the floor next to her
brother, picking his head up to rest it on her thigh, she is beginning to feel
like she might not throw up. And when she holds the loaded scissors to
Thranduil’s nose, her hands have almost stopped shaking. Thranduil closes his
eyes as he inhales, his face visibly relaxing after several more hits. And by
the time they finish the bag between them and are laying on their backs on the
floor, their bodies touching, they are still cold but they no longer feel like
dying is a simpler option and their heads are clearing.
Staring at the ceiling in the dark, another day gone, they haven’t spoken a
word yet. Nor does either of them feel the need to. There’s nothing to talk
about, nothing that relates to last night at least. Thranduil simply reaches
for his sister’s hand, intertwining his fingers with hers; Arafel squeezes his
fingers in acknowledgement, leans her head onto his shoulder, and they’ve told
each other all they needed to know. They’re fine.
Minutes pass in the dark, in the silence, before Arafel finally speaks, “I have
a ton of work to do. I imagine you do to.”
“All week.”
That washing themselves and the floor is first necessary and that they will
both require help is self-evident. And it hurts enough for even Thranduil to
clench his teeth when the hot water hits him. It hurts enough to think about
getting properly fucked up all over again, an impulse they keep each other from
following, even when it takes the force of Arafel’s nails slicing through her
brother’s wrist, turning the water a more alarming red. She does it for herself
as much as for him. Knowledge of the shit existing 5 feet away in a drawer
where she can’t see it is a thing she can resist, having it right under her
nose, she knows she can’t.
They scrub each other clean, making the deeper gashes open all over again. But
it’s fine, they’ve long learned how to be comfortable being uncomfortable.
However, when Thranduil reaches for his sowing kit, Arafel’s had enough, “Who
is this for, T? Me? You? When did we become repulsed by scars? Or does it
bother you that these, we chose to put there?” She’s not angry, her voice holds
no argument; she just genuinely finds it absurd. She expects a raging storm in
return. Thranduil has been insistent with minimizing the fucking scars, on her
that is; he doesn’t care about the ones on himself whatsoever. But Thranduil
simply puts the pouch away, smiles, gently passes his thumb over the deep cut
on her neck, licks the blood away, and says, “They don’t bother me at all”.
Just like that. And the smile is real. Arafel kisses his cheek.
So it’s simple disinfectant and some healing ointment. The new scars left to
form as they will. Black T-shirts, black cotton leggings, because there still
is and will be more blood, new sheets on the bed, also black, surgical cleaner
for the floor (it gets the blood off), an opened bottle of white wine, all
within 15 minutes (efficiency is their modus operandi), and they settle on the
the living room floor to work.
Several hours later, in the dead, silent part of the night, the living room is
fully canvased in court files overlapping science papers overlapping records of
old trials overlapping grants and old grant reviews, environmental science
books overlapping medical textbooks. Somehow, amidst this apparent chaos, the
two individuals stretched on their stomachs in T-formation with respect to each
other and typing furiously on their laptops, are fully aware of the exact
location of each required piece of information at any given moment. They have
always worked together like this. When they were just ordinary young elves, all
those thousands of years ago, their father used to love watching them study. He
said it looked like an elaborately choreographed dance, how they reached around
each other without as much as having to look where the other’s hands moved. So
close they were practically on top of each other, they never interfered with
each other’s work.
In truth, they work better like this, in close physical proximity. It gives
them focus, and stamina. Over time, it has become obvious even to them that
they were increasingly dependent on each other in every way. In the beginning
they could communicate without words and they sensed each other’s presence and
mood, but that was nothing unusual for the Eldar. Later, at some point, they
figured out that they could not only enter each other’s thoughts but also use
them to focus and direct their own as well as alter those of others’ and even
external events to a degree. Now, when they are together, they are more than
each is separately, but if they are apart for longer than a couple of days,
they grow weaker, physically, mentally, even emotionally. Apart, they are
breakable. Psychologists have a word for it in this time - codependence,
dangerous and unhealthy, ten fold more so between siblings. Thranduil and
Arafel don’t give a fuck what it’s called or with what kind of health warning
it comes. They know perfectly well what self-destruction is and how enabling it
works, they learned about that in medical school classes (when they thought
becoming doctors would be a good idea; it wasn’t), with the psychologists, and
the psychiatrists. They don’t give a fuck about that either. They don’t think
about life like that. They think about purpose, their assigned roles in the
fabric of life, what it’s all for, and how it ends. Their world and their
concept of time does not allow for individualism to be paramount, and
psychology is centered upon the individual. Consequently, to them, such
concerns are trivial. Although, when Arafel discovered the later works of C. G.
Jung, the thoughts he recorded late in his life about collective consciousness
and synchronicity and inter-world travel, widely disregarded as mad ramblings
and not a part of any curriculum, brother and sister were fascinated. This they
understood, this made sense. But self-destruction, self-love, self-respect,
self-renewal, self-empowerment, self-improvement, self-preservation, this human
obsession with the self and all the acrobatics humans did to aggrandize the
self, this cult of the self, this collective ego trip, this they couldn’t
understand. What possible importance all this could have in the grand scheme of
Life, other than to distract and divert from what was important – identifying
an individual’s purpose in the great fabric of Life and fulfilling it – would
never make any sense to them.
They often worked late into the night, sometimes all night. Some who professed
to know them said that this was how the drugs started. That brother and sister
never sleep and use drugs to stay awake. It’s not how it started, or why it
continues. It started how it always starts, in every lifetime. It started to
put up a wall between them and the noise of human voices and their death and
their destruction. Then they figured out that the drugs could also take the
nightmares away. And if the physical consequences that came along with it were
the price, they were perfectly willing to pay. And this, this now, this is
nothing. In other lives, it had been much worse. When they first discovered
opiates, in the form of opium, they sought, and found, total and constant
annihilation. Over the centuries, they figured out how to walk the wire between
stark reality and complete oblivion with the skill of tightrope walkers.
In the present reality, they both work towards the same essential goal, Arafel
as an attorney, Thranduil as a scientist (doctoring abandoned within a few
short years). They are trying to save what is left of the natural Earth.
Fighting the same loosing battle that began when this world was called Middle
Earth and its enemy Sauron. Stubbornly. Still. And so it goes - their lives,
the drugs, and the War. How Arafel and Thranduil see the drugs, including on
days like this, when it’s entirely obvious who’s whose bitch, as neither
remarkable nor tragic and most irrelevant in the grand analysis, is unlikely to
be understood by most in this world. They don’t try explaining. They just hang
around people with habits more questionable than their own. And are who they’ve
always been, whoever you most desire them to be or your most terrifying dream.
And who they have become. A glimpse in a rearview mirror, an impression, a
question much more so than an answer, a moment, a trick of the light, a shade.
Sometimes they’re cruel; sometimes they’re kind. Thranduil read in a book that
it’s apparently in their nature to be unpredictable and fickle. Arafel didn’t
stop laughing for days, wrote “Feary Dust” on all the cocaine bags. And they
put their minds into their work, where they unfailingly deliver. And let the
world think what it wants, and above all what it needs to keep its thin veneer
of sanity intact.
At 6 am, the laptops and most of the papers are neatly packed into a leather
briefcase, Arafel’s, and a leather messenger bag, Thranduil’s. Thranduil’s
cutting up a grapefruit in the kitchen, while Arafel’s getting dressed. When
she emerges, there’s grapefruit in a bowel, orange juice in two glasses and six
neat white lines on a silver mirror, straws included, on the kitchen counter.
There’s some kind of fruit every morning, although most often nobody touches
it. Thranduil still insists it should be available. Sometimes he makes eggs.
Sometimes one of them will eat a single bite. They do drink the orange juice.
Every morning. Followed by the cocaine.
The rest depends. Today it’s Thranduil leaning over the counter, looking up at
Arafel after she’s kissed him and told him she had to go, eyebrows arched.
“What?”
“What do you intend to say about this?”, he drags his index finger along the
exposed and still angry cut on her neck.
Arafel smirks, “Riding accident. If anyone asks, which no one will.”
Thranduil laughs, “Clever. Ever heard of scarfs?”
“No.” He knows she hates scarfs; they feel too much like nooses. “I will see
you tonight.”
“I’ll have dinner ready”, Thranduil grins. She laughs, walking out the door.
She can’t remember the last time either of them ate a meal.
Arafel’s day is meetings with clients until 2 pm, then a deposition at 3. It’s
another environmental hazard case, the only kind she takes. And it’s like all
others, bullshit through the roof. She’s used to it, and ready, as always. It
goes as well as can be hoped for. As she’s leaving the courtroom, she sees Kate
with her team of handlers, as Arafel likes to call the senior partners in
Kate’s firm. She intends to just walk away, but then she catches Kate looking
at her and quickly dropping her eyes to the floor. And she can’t resist.
Because she heard what Kate muttered to herself fleeing the scene of the
“crime”.
So, Arafel, to Kate’s horror, changes direction. She’ll be standing next to her
in under 20 seconds. All sorts of horrors flicker through Kate’s mind, of what
Arafel will do, of what she could do. By the time Arafel arrives, Kate is
visibly shaking. But Arafel only slows down, smiles, says “Nice to see you,
counselor”, and walks away. However, she made sure that Kate saw the gash on
her neck, and that when Kate turned to look after her, she saw her jacket
hanging over Arafel’s briefcase, the jacket she had left behind when she ran
away.
The last thing Arafel hears as she’s exiting the courthouse is Kate, voice
cracking, making hasty excuses to separate herself from her co-workers, and
grins, “Mission accomplished, bitch”.
Thranduil arrives to his lab around 10:30, early for him. Early for his lab
personnel as well judging by half of them not being there. He doesn’t care,
which was a point of contention with the University’s powers that be some years
ago, before Thranduil explained that since he was the one paying their
salaries, he will be the one dictating their hours and if anybody had a problem
with that, they can call him and his lab a moving truck and kiss his ass as
he’s walking out the door. Since Thranduil’s ass was worth a lot of money to
the University, nobody mentioned his lab’s working hours ever again. In fact,
since that day, nobody said much of anything regarding any of the lab’s
eccentricities again.
But Thranduil knew that if he ever lost the money or if he pushed too far, all
of his people’s necks would be on the chopping block. So no matter how much he
hated the ever-increasing amounts of bullshit that came with his job, he put up
with it. The many times he wanted to quit, wondering if he could do more useful
things elsewhere, he didn’t. When he wanted to say “No”, many times he said,
“Yes”. When he wanted to separate moronic heads from their idiot bodies, he
went out instead, picked up the most brutal asshole he could find and let him
(occasionally her) turn his body into a punching bag, fuck him into oblivion,
until he couldn’t think about killing, until he couldn’t think about anything
any more. And he wrote grant application after grant application, and he got
them funded when very few others did.
The people who worked for him didn’t know what he did for them, but they
suspected, or sensed it. And, without exactly understanding, they returned the
favor. They were dedicated to the work they were doing and devoted to
Thranduil; the lab was productive. To everyone who didn’t know him, to everyone
who didn’t ask him what he thought, what he felt, Thranduil just seemed easily,
effortlessly on top of the world. Nobody asked him. Not that he would have
actually spoken the truth if somebody had. When it comes to what he’s thinking
and especially what he’s feeling, Thranduil has been telling only lies to
practically everyone, all the time, for 8,000 years.
To everyone but his sister, Thranduil is a persona. To some an unpredictable,
possibly quite dangerous, asshole. If you asked why exactly he was dangerous,
or an asshole, most couldn’t answer, and those who could wouldn’t. To others
he’s a competent scientist but otherwise a complete enigma. To yet others, he’s
an airhead, flighty and impulsive. To some, he’s a combination of all of that.
To everyone, he is cold, heartless, entirely devoid of human emotion, although
rare few will swear that he can be uncharacteristically kind. Everything he
does looks easy. And so he appears always perfectly fine, content, bothered by
nothing. A king sitting prettily on his throne. If anyone asked him, Thranduil
would tell them that it was a kingdom of dirt. But a kingdom is better than no
kingdom.
And all kingdoms are better with guards at the gates. So, today, he was warned
by one of his technicians that some girl named Melissa was looking for him.
“She says she’s your little sister?”, the tech added helpfully when Thranduil
only stared at him, then proceeded with, “Do you want me to tell her you’re not
here?” when Thranduil still offered no response.
“No, no… show my darling sister in”, and bring me a razorblade, thinks
Thranduil, not even trying to conceal the acid in his voice.
When Melissa is shown into his office, all smiles, arms extended as if she is
going to embrace him, he doesn’t get out of his chair. He deflates her with a
simple, “Hello, Melissa”, which he has managed to leach the acid out of but not
the polar winter night. It freezes her straight into the chair across his desk
which she backs four feet further into the wall behind her.
Still she manages a chirpy, “Hi! It’s good to see you!”
“What do you want?” Thranduil hasn’t changed his tone. Nor will he.
Melissa’s smile drops, turns into a pout, as theatrical and as fake as the
smile, “Why can’t I just come to see you? See how you are? Say hi? I haven’t
seen you in 4 years!”
“Cut the performance, Melissa. I’m busy.”
“Fine”, she drops all further attempts at pleasantries, “I would like you and
Arafel to come to dinner with me and my fiancé tonight”.
Thranduil bursts out laughing. He’s about to say something to the effect of
being impressed by her newly developed humor, but realizes that she’s not only
serious but on the verge of tears. Her expression does not betray it, she
wouldn’t have survived this family if she let tears fall so easily, but he
knows, and stops laughing.
“Did you talk to Arafel?”
“I tried, she was at court.”
“So you came here.”
“If I had called, you wouldn’t have picked up.”
Thranduil nods. Fair enough. Last time they saw each other, he kicked Melissa
and her parents, his and Arafel’s adoptive family out of their apartment.
Melissa talked to Arafel once since, when she was desperate, but never to
Thranduil.
“Just a dinner? For fun?”
Melissa stiffens, as always it is as if he is staring right through her,
extracting every thought, every secret she has ever kept from the world right
out of her soul. Normally, she’s a slick liar, another acquired survival skill,
but she’s never been able to lie to either Thranduil or Arafel, and she’s
fidgeting.
Thranduil, having gathered what he needed lets her off the hook, “Alright. I’ll
talk to Arafel. She’ll let you know.”
Melissa barely manages a smile and a thank you before running out of the office
as quickly as she deems unsuspicious. Thranduil is exceedingly suspicious. And
thoroughly distracted. It’s not even 4 pm and his evening’s likely screwed,
most probably the night as well, but he can’t focus on work any more. He’ll
work on the fucking weekend if he has to, it might be good for him for a
change, he thinks biting down hard as the strap of his bag cuts into his
shoulder, chest and back.
As he’s leaving the lab, one of his students stops him to discuss some results
and future experiments. Thranduil leans his head on his shoulder as he often
does when thinking, which fully exposes the nasty whip mark superimposed over
the large purple bruise on his neck barely hidden by the collar of his shirt.
It does not go unnoticed.
“Uh, man, who did that to you?”
“Not who. What. Horse riding accident. A branch”, slides off his tongue before
he’s thought about it. He doesn’t even know why he lied. The people in his lab
are neither stupid nor oblivious. And even though he tries to keep the cuts and
bruises under the neckline and above his wrists, there have been enough
exceptions to become the norm. The kids are not intrusive, they only ask when
they are actually worried. So he adds, “It’s fine, looks worse than it is.”
“Yea, ok. Take care of yourself.” A branch that cuts an inch deep and bites.
Fuck, one day somebody’ll kill him. Not that Ian will ever say any of that.
They all just wish that Thranduil would be careful with… well, whatever it is
that he does.
Thranduil rolls his eyes, laughs, “See you tomorrow Ian.”
Not until he’s in his car, two quick lines making their way to his brain, does
he begin digging through the images he picked up from Melissa’s thoughts. But
among the jumble of inconsequential and not so inconsequential shit Melissa
wants, he can’t extract the thing she presently wants from them.
He arrives to the empty apartment, throws his bag into an armchair, takes off
his blazer, gets a drink of water then, taking his hair out of its ponytail and
letting it fall over the armrest, stretches on the sofa remote control in hand.
He flips the television on, doesn’t bother flipping the channels. They watch
two, National Geographic and HBO, exceptionally Showtime, and there’s nothing
on HBO or Showtime at 4:30 in the afternoon. But there are Aurora lights on
National Geographic. Almost better than drugs. He doesn’t feel like killing
shit any more.
Arafel comes home also early, near 6, to find the television on, Aurora
replaced by lions, and Thranduil asleep. She smiles to herself, wildlife, of
course. Thranduil will watch these shows on repeat for hours. She prefers the
“creatures”, as humans like to call them, vampires, aliens, their own kind,
even witches, wizards, especially on the rare occasion that they’re winning or
at least not getting slaughtered.
She takes her suit jacket off, leaves it on the hanger by the door, drops her
bag and shoes off by the door as well and moves to walk past the sofa into the
kitchen. Thranduil grabs her by the wrist.
“Good morning, sunshine”, Arafel turns to stand over him. He takes her other
wrist and pulls her down until she is laying on top of him.
“T, I’m thirsty, let me go.”
“Not until you hear this. You’ll want something other than water.”
Arafel rises her eyebrows.
“Melissa showed up in my office.”
Arafel puts a finger to his lips, “Stop.” Thranduil laughs, releasing his grip
on her to let her get up. She disappears into the back of the apartment,
returns momentarily, out of her suit and in a pair of leggings and a tank top,
then walks to the kitchen. She returns with a bottle of wine, two glasses and a
bag of coke with requisite paraphernalia. Then she settles back on top of her
brother, putting the small silver mirror on his chest and proceeding to spread
thin lines on the surface. Thranduil is following her every movement with eyes
part amusement, part hunger.
Arafel inhales a line, looks at her brother, “You were saying…”
Thranduil takes the straw out of her hand, clears the next line, “She wants to
meet us for dinner…”, Arafel reaches for the straw, he yanks it out of her
reach and inhales another line, “… with her fiancé”. He hands her the straw.
Arafel is so stunned that she ignores the remaining line for a full ten
seconds.
“What did you say?” She is putting the mirror on the floor, and uncorking the
wine bottle.
“That I would talk to you.”
“Glass?”
“Not unless you insist on being civilized, and we hire a maid to do the
dishes”. Arafel hands him the bottle, glasses forsaken. Thranduil hadn’t
realized that he was thirsty until he starts drinking, and then he can’t stop.
He goes through nearly half the bottle before he hands it to Arafel, who really
is thirsty and almost finishes it.
“Well…” Arafel is looking at the just about empty bottle, “Are we going? What
does she want?”
“What does she not want. I don’t know. It’s a mess in her head.”
“Where? When?”
“I said you’d call her.”
Arafel gives him the middle finger. He grabs her by the hips and slides her
pelvis firmly against his, then lifts her off of him and sits her next to him
as he is himself sitting up, finishing the wine and reaching for the coke bag.
When he speaks, his voice is darker. “Call the little bitch and be quick, I
need you before we go.”
8,000 years and it’s still the same between them. Throw a spark, start a
wildfire, and in it they will burn.
Arafel dials Melissa’s number and gets an answer on the first ring. Melissa’s
voice is shaking. Arafelt cuts through the pleasantries and tells her 9 o’clock
and the place, not leaving this entirely out of their control. Thranduil hears
Melissa excited squeak from where he’s sitting, Arafel flinches holding the
phone away from her ear. “See you at 9”, she hangs up with Melissa still
chattering. Roll her eyes, throws the phone into the armchair opposite and
turns her attention to her brother. Thranduil doesn’t give her a chance to
wonder what he’s thinking. He brings another line to her nose then feeds her
some lose powder off his fingers. Then he pushes two fingers down her throat,
his other hand on the back of her neck, forcing her to her knees in front of
him.
She loves this about him. He doesn’t ask for permission. He takes what he
wants, risking rejection, risking a fight, risking everything. Every time.
Because Arafel is unpredictable too. Most often she’ll let him have his way
with her, without being exactly coy but without resisting, but sometimes she’ll
fight him. If she fights him, he won’t stop, he’ll hurt her, and she’ll push
him further. Hell if she knows why. Because she likes it? Because he does?
Because they can?
She runs her hands along his inner thighs, looking up into his eyes. Thranduil
is staring back at her, a half-smile playing upon his lips. He is no longer
forcing his fingers down her throat, she is. He uses his other hand to unbutton
his jeans; he doesn’t wear anything underneath, as usual. His cock rests
against his lower abdomen, heavy, almost fully erect, veins popping. And half-
healed lash marks clearly visible.
Arafel removes his fingers out of her mouth, bends lower and without breaking
eye contact with him, licks the underside of his cock, along the entire length,
from the base to the tip using the entire surface of her tongue but gently,
experimentally. She has no idea how much this will hurt, or how much he wants
it to. Thranduil opens his mouth in a soundless sigh but doesn’t otherwise
react. Arafel, repeats the motion, this time more firmly, and gets a similar
reaction. So she closes her lips over him and takes his entire length into her
mouth, tip to base, and back up, her eyes never leaving his. This is what he
likes, his cock all the way down her throat. He is completely hard now. She
moves slowly and doesn’t suck hard at first, and his face is calm although the
smile is gone, replaced by clenched teeth and something like resolution in his
eyes. When she increases pressure, he yanks her by the hair and hisses, but
only for a moment, then releases her. She pauses nevertheless. He tells her to
continue. When she does, he stiffens, but he does not yank her head again,
within moments she tastes his silvery pre-cum. She can visualize it perfectly,
leaking from the tip coating her mouth, feels it sliding down her throat.
She puts her hands on his hips, and readjusts on the floor, her underwear
sticky, wet. “Harder”, he breathes. She complies. The half-formed scar tears
somewhere; she tastes blood. It paints her lips red. It makes her breathe
faster. He watches, puts his hands on the sides of her head and tells her to
continue. Arafel digs her nails into his hips to stop her teeth from ripping
into him. He thrusts his hips upwards forcing his cock deeper into her throat;
his hands keep her head in place. And he’s not trying to contain the mix of
curses and moans flying from his lips as he fucks her mouth, fucks her throat,
ripping himself open anew. Thranduil is split in two by pain and pleasure and
made whole again by it. Arafel lets go of his hips, holds her head and neck as
still as she can, keeps her throat open for him, her mouth the shape that he
likes. He might love the way she looks between his thighs, but she loves the
way he feels filling her throat.
Thranduil throws his head back and buries hers at the base of his cock as he
explodes against the back of her throat. Her brother’s releases are voluminous,
she feels the familiar warmth spreading down her esophagus all the way to her
stomach. She feels the rhythmic spasms of his cock, delivering subsequent
smaller bursts. She’s swallows all of it, sucks him dry, licks him clean of his
semen and of the blood. And wants to crawl out of her skin. Her body is tight
as a strung bow.
Still out of it but at least coherent, Thranduil, lifts her up by her arms,
brings her up into his lap facing him, one hand on the back of her neck, the
other on her waist, fingertips digging into the flesh. He licks her blood-
stained lips, parts them using his tongue. He is not gentle, but neither is
she. The kiss is all teeth and bruises. When it breaks, he forces her head over
his shoulder and uses both hands to rip both her leggings and underwear down
the middle in the back. When she turns to protest, he grabs her by the neck
again, digging his fingers into her skin and the cut. She would cuss him out
but she can’t get the words out because he has her trachea pressed against his
collarbone making it difficult to breathe and impossible to talk. It’s probably
not accidental. He slips his fingers into her. Three at once, deep, hitting her
G-spot instantly. And he doesn’t wait. He holds her still and fucks her hard
and fast. When she manages to turn her head a fraction, she bites into his
neck. He hisses but doesn’t pull away. Instead he releases her neck, pulls his
fingers out of her, picks her up and, hands on the bones of her hips, slams her
all the way down on his newly erect and ready cock. Arafel lets go of his neck,
arches her back, mouth glistening with blood and wide open in a silent scream.
He doesn’t need to ask if he’s hurting her. There are bruises in the shape of
his fingers and bones starting to form on her neck and there’s blood on his
hands.
It takes no more than five hard, deep thrusts of his hips, which Arafel,
gripping tightly onto his wrists, meets with her own, for him to feel her
muscles contract around him, her fingers locking him in a death grip. He
stills, letting her ride him to completion at her own pace. His sister’s bone-
breaking, silent orgasms, like this one, when she grinds against him so close
that she bruises both their pelvic bones, unhinge Thranduil. His body is
screaming for a violent release only Arafel can give him, but his mind wants to
hold her close and never let anyone hurt her.
He holds her against his chest, not a breath of air between them, whispering
sweet nonsense to her as she trembles through the last of her orgasm, as she
relaxes against him, as she tells him not to stop. He tells her he loves her as
he fucks her so hard their bones collide, as he feels her clench her teeth,
hold her breath, each trust part pleasure part agony. He repeats it through
tears as he’s spilling his seed deep inside her.
“I love you too”, Arafel whispers against his chest, holding onto him for dear
life.
***** The Fallen *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
Some thirty minutes later, Thranduil, carrying Arafel in his arms, her legs and
arms wrapped around him and his cock still hard inside her, gets up to retrieve
another bottle of wine, answering her quizzical look with, “I am not going to
this fucking dinner anywhere close to sober”. The rest, that if he goes flying
on faery dust alone, there’ll be trouble, is unsaid but implied.
Arafel laughs. It’s true, especially when they’re together. Although sober,
they’re probably worse, having no tolerance whatsoever for anyone but each
other. Alcohol and opiates dull their edges, and it goes easier for everybody.
So they swallow a few oxycodones each and spend the next hour slowly drinking,
lazily grinding against each other, Arafel still in his lap, Thranduil still
inside her, his cock leaking, both of them feeling it but neither reaching full
orgasm. They can spend hours like this, virtually silent, buried deep into each
other’s bodies and thoughts as they slip into the distance, the world becoming
vaguer, less solid, less jarring.
At half past eight, they finally move to get dressed. Skinny jeans, skin tight,
the lightest of grey, loose and long white long sleeve T-shirts, white leather
jackets the warn-out, rough cut in stark contrast with the innocence of the
color and chunky black platform ankle boots, Thranduil’s heels only slightly
shorter than Arafels. He also puts on black eyeliner, not as dramatic as he
often does, but not subtle either, and the obligatory mascara. Arafel, standing
behind him fixing her hair in the mirror, kisses his cheek. “Hair up or down?”,
he asks running his fingers through it in substitute for a comb.
“Up.”
He gathers his hair up in a high ponytail, and brother and sister lean in,
their faces touching cheek to cheek. Looking into the mirror, for a second,
they are serious, their faces almost identical like this, their perfect pale
faces… trailing off into the chaos of purples, blues, yellows and razorblade
red that are their necks. Then they laugh like two hyenas, at the image in the
mirror and all the images carried in their memories, “Fuck T, we’re drunk.”
“Sufficiently. For now. Let’s go.” They’re actually happy, if not happy amused.
The taxi drops them off in front of the restaurant at exactly 9:05. Arafel
spots Melissa and the fiancé as she’s exiting the vehicle and intertwines her
arm with her brother’s as they approach. Formal greetings, introductions and
pleasantries are exchanged and the four of them are quickly seated at the
reserved table in the darker, quieter part of the place, per Arafel’s request.
Halting conversation drags on throughout dinner. Mostly it’s Melissa and her
fiancé talking, telling stories of their joined adventures which they either
consider entertaining or think Thranduil and Arafel might. Mostly they are the
only ones laughing. If asked, Thranduil and Arafel couldn’t recall as much as
the punch line of a single anecdote, their minds traveling through some other
tales. But they nod and grin often and politely enough. Of course they don’t
touch the food. Of course they empty a bottle of wine and order another within
the first half hour. Isaac, the fiancé, pretends not to notice. Melissa, on the
other hand does and can’t hide her disapproval. She’s one part furious that
they’d show up high, or drunk, and that they’d not even try to pretend to be
normal, one part grateful that they showed up at all, and above all fuming that
she can’t say what she thinks because, as usual, she needs them. Still, while
either blatantly rude and not paying attention or genuinely out of it or both,
they are generally extraordinarily pleasant, worryingly so.
So she tries direct conversation, but the question comes out all wrong, comes
out as what it is, barely veiled judgment. “So where are you living now?”
“Still the same place,” Thranduil takes the bait, a note of amusement, which
Melissa misses, in his voice.
“The one bedroom.” Melissa emphasizes the one bedroom, regretting the words the
moment they leave her mouth.
Because Thranduil is never that drunk, “Yes, sister dearest, with the one bed.”
Neither is Arafel, who has until now been sitting back in her chair basically
completely disinterested in the dining experience but is now sitting straight
backed, intertwining her fingers with her brother’s on the table, and her smile
is all teeth, “Does that answer the question that’s really burning your tongue,
sister?”
Melissa blanches, fumbles with her napkin, “I have to go use the restroom.
Excuse me”, and practically runs away from the table.
“Of course, honey”, Isaac is stunned but retains gentlemanly composure.
Thranduil and Arafel roll their eyes.
But when Mellissa is out of the room, he turns to Thranduil and Arafel and
asks, politely but firmly, “Ok… would either of you explain to me what’s going
on here?”
Thranduil grins arching an eyebrow, then leans into the table, “It’s like
this…” “Isaac”, Arafel supplies. The last time Thranduil bothered to register
someone’s name, he was a king.
“Isaac”, he continues, “our dear sister is embarrassed by the way we live our
lives. We are here tonight because you two need something from us. Maybe it’s
money, maybe Melissa needs a bridesmaid, or maybe our parents hate you but she
calculates that they hate us more and perhaps we could remind them of it.
Whatever the fuck it is”, he pauses, deliberately, his mouth smiling but his
eyes burning through the man, waiting for color to drain completely from
Isaac’s face, which it does, “I wish you would spit it out, so we can write the
check, play Devils, or dress up in satin and lace, whichever you need, and be
done with it.”
As Isaac, ghost white, but regaining his capacity to speak impressively
quickly, which Thranduil admires, begins to form a replay, Melissa returns.
Seeing her fiance’s face, she hisses at Thranduil before she’s even properly
seated, “What did you do to him?” Then turns to Arafel and glares at her.
Thranduil and Arafel just lean back in their chairs, bring their wine glasses
to their lips in one graceful coordinated movement, which looks more
choreographed than real, and drink, saying nothing. Isaac recovers, turns to
Melissa and bewildered, surprised, in a voice half whisper states, “They’ll do
it, hun, he said they’ll do it.”
“You ASKED them?”, this time Melissa does shout, then turns around nervously
clamping her hands over her mouth, wondering who has heard her.
“No, no, I didn’t get the chance…”, Isaac hastens to explain. “I was going to
wait for you of course, I would never presume. They are your family…” he trails
off, not knowing what more to say. Arafel and Thranduil roll their eyes, call
the waiter over to bring another bottle of wine, clearly bored. Minutes pass…
lost to groveling, endless, inconsequential apologies running around in
circles. They seem like hours, seems like years to Thranduil and Arafel. Seem
like slow dying.
Finally, irritated, Arafel interrupts, “You’re easier to read than a book,
Melissa. We guessed, although not the details. So out with it. What exactly do
you want?”
Melissa’s voice trembles, she can’t look at Arafel when she replies, “Well, you
know my apartment, it’s so old, and Isaac would be moving in after the wedding
of course, so we would like to renovate it a little…”
“Melissa, I am not a priest. This is not a confession. I am asking you what you
want from us not to tell me your life story,” Arafel is out of patience.
Thranduil pours a full glass of whine, hands it to Melissa and point blank
orders her to drink. Melissa’s too scared to refuse. When she’s finished, he
pours her another, and hands it to her again, “Now, please start talking”.
“36,000 dollars for…”
Arafel pulls out a checkbook, “I don’t care what it’s for”, and doesn’t care
about the hurt written all over Melissa’s face either as she hands her the
check. “Next?”
Melissa manages to keep the tears at bay, “Mom and dad hate Isaac.”
Thranduil raises his eyebrows, “Why?”
“Because he’s a high school teacher, not a medical school professor, or a
lawyer, like you”.
Thranduil and Arafel roar with laughter, and can’t stop. Isaac can’t decide
whether to be offended or not, but then starts laughing as well. When he can
catch his breath, Thranduil starts, “Also not… what was it… deranged freaks,
whore, sister-fucker, junkie wastes of air…”, all epitaphs their parents had
hurled at them, among others, since they were 16, when they threw them out of
the house while hanging their diplomas on the walls and parading holograms of
them in front of their acquaintances. They were trophy children. They filled
that house like ghosts. Melissa knew that well. She’d lived with the perfect
effigies of her older siblings, their photographs enshrined next to their
achievements like holy icons, because the flesh and blood Arafel and Thranduil
were never spoken off without a curse and never again seen within those walls.
Isaac doesn’t understand anything, but he’s stopped laughing.
“Don’t worry, Isaac, give us fifteen minutes with mom and dad, and they will
adore you”, Thranduil can barely speak still laughing.
“You will see them then?”, Melissa chances, gulping the rest of her wine.
Arafel finishes her own, “Sure”.
Melissa pours them both another, motions the waiter to keep bringing more,
“They’re coming to town tomorrow.”
Thranduil looks at Arafel, both of them instantly serious, both of them
thinking, “You have to be fucking kidding me”. Out loud Arafel’s only
commentary is a too calm, “Call Skip tonight”, directed at her brother.
Upon Melissa’s inquiry into who Skip might be, Thranduil and Arafel answer in
unison, “Our candy dealer”. Melissa, to her credit, or the wine’s, nods, for
the first time withholding judgment.
“Anything else?”, Thranduil thinks he’s ready for anything.
“One last thing…”, Melissa bites her lip before looking at him, “Come to the
wedding.”
“What?”, Thranduil is not ready.
“Why would you want us at your wedding?”, Arafel is incredulous.
“I don’t.” In vino veritas. Melissa doesn’t even try evoking some familial
connection or dormant emotions which they all know are not there. “But it will
be too odd if you’re not there. Isaac’s family is very traditional. They would
not understand if you were not there.”
“So? Tell them you’re an only child. For fuck’s sake, Melissa! Who will
contradict you? Our parents?!”, Thranduil doesn’t think he’s ever heard
stupider reasoning. “Isaac??”
“We’ve already told my family about you”, Isaac informs them.
“Oh, you have to be fucking joking, Melissa”, Thranduil sits back, defeated,
wine glass in his hand. Arafel’s already sitting back, her arms crossed over
her chest shaking her head, the absurdity of the request and the situation
requiring no commentary.
“Again, you must pardon me, but what is the big deal? I don’t understand”,
Isaac, who despite Melissa’s prep talk is coming to like her siblings,
eccentric as they may be, is clearly uncomfortable with the unexpected issue
this, in his mind, the least problematic, of their requests is creating.
“No, Isaac, you don’t understand”, Thranduil looks at him, and the look is full
of something Isaac can’t read, but it looks remarkably like sadness. Isaac has
an urge to hold this man, this beautiful man’s hands in his, to run his hands
over his sharp cheekbones, to take the melancholy away. He doesn’t move.
“Ok, whatever, we’ll be there”, Arafel announces cutting through the tense
silence.
Thranduil turns, stares her in the eyes, grabs her by the wrist, and pulls her
away from the table after him in less time than it takes Melissa and Isaac to
process what Arafel had actually said, tossing over his houlder, “We’ll be back
in a sec”. Arafel follows him into the women’s restroom where he locks them
into a stall, and pins her against the door. “Are you sure about this?” “Yes.”
With their bodies pressed firmly against each other, it seems possible to
survive anything. Thranduil licks his sister’s lips, dips his fingertip into a
bag of coke he brought with him, then smears the powder along her lips. She
sucks the leftover from his fingertip. When she tries to lick her lips, he
bites her bottom lip, hard, draws blood, then licks her lips clean, slips his
tongue into her mouth, cocaine, blood and each other’s saliva mixing in their
mouths, instantly intoxicating, making them both high. They kiss deep, long,
their tongues everywhere, their teeth grazing lips and tongues, puncturing
flesh. Thranduil occasionally spreads more coke onto their lips and tongues,
the drug quickly absorbing through the porous membranes of their mouths,
hitting their brains hard and fast. Between all the wine, oxys, coke and blood,
it’s a chemical storm in their brains. Time stretches and contracts, the world
is far away and too close, in living color.
The last of it goes up their noses before they separate, forcefully, holding
each other at arms length despite their bodies screaming to be close, to be
one, their skin burning for touch, their groins aching.
Fifteen minutes passes before they’re back at the table, now thoroughly fucked
up, finding their dinner partners properly, delightfully drunk. Thranduil
smiles thinking that the night might not be a total waste yet.
Melissa, very much emboldened by the wine starts with, “Oh god, you are totally
wasted.” She’s slurring the words slightly.
“Cheers then”, Thranduil takes a wine glass knocks it against Melissa’s and
both of them drain the contents. Arafel ignores the comment, but seizes on the
train of thought, “Speaking of, do not expect us to be any less fucked up at
this wedding.” Her brother concurs by nodding, “In fact, expect us to be
annihilated within an inch of remembering our names.”
“Ok, deal. Just… can you…”, still she cannot bring herself to say the words, so
Arafel finishes the question for her, “behave like normal people in polite
society?” Thranduil answers, “Yes, sister, we can.” He pauses, considers
leaving it at that, but then he continues, his features turning to stone,
statue-like, the frozen king only Arafel remembers, “But I wish that one day
you, not for me or for Arafel, but only for yourself, are able to think of us
without shame. It would free you.” He’s neither angry, nor hurt. There is
neither emotion nor malice underneath his words. And he’s much too used to
being used as a prop in human dramas to care. He just occasionally, very
occasionally, comes to feel sad for people who live within the iron walls of
secrets. If he lets it, he can still feel his close around him.
Melissa doesn’t say anything. She’s turned a shade of red, but she doesn’t
begin to comprehend what he’s just told her. Isaac has had just enough wine to
think about asking questions again. But before the question, which he takes the
time to carefully formulate, crosses his lips, Thranduil spares him the agony.
He looks at Melissa and asks, “May I tell him now?”
Melissa just nods, continuing to stare at the table. Arafel closes her eyes,
her hand in her brother’s.
“The big family secret, Isaac, is that Arafel and I sleep together.”
At first Isaac doesn’t translate the meaning of “sleep together”. Then his
expression begins to change as the revelation hits, his eyes widen, mouth
slackens, “Oh… shit… you two…oh fuck…”
“That’s right, we fuck”, Thranduil supplies, helpfully. Arafel leans back, head
cocked slightly to the side, observing the proceedings with vague interest. And
equal disinterest. She couldn’t care less what Isaac, Melissa or anyone else
other than her brother think about her and her brother. For the sake of each
other, they once lied to their only son, then they let him go. These fucking
people, all of these fucking people were nobody and nothing in comparison.
In the pause, in the still, Thranduil also leans back in his chair, still
holding onto his sister’s hand. Arafel puts her head onto his shoulder, her
free hand onto his thigh.
“So, do you… do you… I mean… Are you like… married?” Isaac corrects himself
immediately, “Stupid question, of course not, you can’t be.” But not before his
words cut through both Thranduil and Arafel with the blade of millennia. “We
were. We are”, Thranduil’s thoughts are clear in Arafels mind. “Until the world
ends”, her thoughts echo back to him. This is all it ever takes, an
unpredictable sentence, or a certain angle at which light hits a tree, and a
rip in time opens up for them, and they’re falling… falling. Tumbling back
through slideshows of time folding back onto themselves, the weight of all of
their lives crushing their bones.
Swimming back up to the surface of the 21st century seems accidental. Thousands
of years rewound in a flash leave scars in the shape of each other’s
fingernails in their palms and their knuckles white. Melissa is explaining to
Isaac how they were thrown out of the house at sixteen after somebody told
their parents about them making out. Isaac is asking if it was true, he’s
probably been asking for some time.
“Does it matter?”, Thranduil replies. He answers more to shake of the past of
himself than anything. “We didn’t deny it so it became the truth. The truth is
that nobody saw us making out. They saw us kiss, on a dare and for money. The
truth is we could have pressed our lips together in an innocent peck and taken
the money. The truth is we didn’t. The truth is our tongues were in each
other’s mouth, out teeth clashing, biting, licking and swallowing each other’s
blood, and we didn’t stop until somebody pulled us apart and there was almost
2,000 dollars under our feet.” Thranduil pauses, remembering.
“And a room full of other people making out”, Arafel adds.
“The truth is we had been sleeping together since we were thirteen, but we were
careful. Nobody knew.” This is what he says. What he does not say is the
iceberg under the waterline. At thirteen the nightmares began.
Thranduil and Arafel had been unusual children, aloof, anti-social, emotionally
cold and unresponsive, almost exclusively interested in the flora and fauna and
becoming reticent to downright hostile if company of other children was forced
upon them. But they hit, or rather exceeded, all developmental milestones,
walking before they were brought home from the orphanage, reading by the age of
four, and no psychological evaluation could show anything at all amiss. In fact
as they entered their early teenage years, they seemed to became more “normal”.
They were still essentially antisocial and very close, but nobody considered
this very strange for twins, more so adopted twins in a household of super rich
parents in which a biological child had just been born. Also, they had a circle
of friends, or so it seemed. To Arafel and Thrandul it was always clear that
they were only people who wanted or needed something from them, but the
relationship was mutually beneficial, they wanted and needed things as well.
They were strange children, but overall, as things were, nothing prepared them
for the series of events that began unfolding in their thirteenth year. It
began with nightmares. Thranduil was being burned by dragon fire. Arafel was
watching. Over and over again, night after night. The dream made no sense, it
was anchored to nothing they recognized. But they woke up screaming.
Eventually, with black circles under their eyes and half-delirious from lack of
sleep, they talked about the dreams. After that, more often than not, they fell
asleep holding each other, trying to stay awake. The dreams still came, but it
was better waking up screaming in your twin’s arms than alone. Understanding
each other’s torment, they became fiercely protective of each other. Their
relationship changing into what it is today came completely naturally to them.
The first time they kissed and didn’t stop until they couldn’t breathe, the
first time Arafel bit her brother hard enough to draw blood and both of them
wanted more, the first time he, instead of grinding against her until he
spilled across her belly, held her hips in place and pressed the head of his
erection against the entrance of her vagina, and she wrapped her legs around
his back and nodded, and when he said it would hurt told him not to hold back,
they did it all as their bodies led them, instinctively. Their minds followed,
without resistance, and without anguish, as easily as breathing.
Soon other dreams followed. Then waking visions. Out scraps a coherent
narrative began emerging. At first, it was like a story one would read in a
book, distant and unreal. But over the next several months, the story slowly
seeped under their skin, into their bones, and took on the quality of memory.
Both gradually and all at once, Thranduil and Arafel remembered being Thranduil
and Arafel. As if their bodies merged with the reincarnated spirits of
themselves, they were no longer thirteen year old children, they were 8,000
year old king and queen of the Eldar. And over the next year, they remembered
everything.
Consequently, naturally, their already precarious relationship with the world
and the people around them began disintegrating. The relationship with their
parents went from carefully orchestrated pretense of normality to open war with
a battle line drawn down the middle of the house which neither side crossed,
with Melissa caught on the cracked, unstable ice in between, never knowing
which piece was safe to step on. Thranduil and Arafel still indulged Melissa
because they understood the consequences of living on shifting ice surrounded
by a frozen sea. They still went to school and somehow, miraculously, exceled
in their studies, but they rarely came home. Nobody knew what they did and whom
they hang around with, but, always slim, they were now skeletal with haunted
sunken eyes rimmed in perpetual black circles.
The school took notice and called their parents, who didn't. The parents, once
bothered, yelled and screamed, and failing that pleaded. Thranduil and Arafel
sat and stared back at them wordlessly with blank expressions upon their faces.
Psychologists shook their heads, declared the issue to be a typical teenage
rebellion phase, and advised that since they were doing well in school, it
would be best to just let them be.
So, they were left alone. And it was what they needed. They maintained the bare
minimum of interaction with the human society and spent the rest of their time
in the nearby forest. It gave them space and time to experiment with this
century’s drugs and figure out how to manage the nightmares. And it gave them a
place to be with each other, free from human morality and judgment, a thing
they needed then, in those first several years when they weren’t sure of
anything. Perhaps most importantly, it calmed them. It made them feel stable,
substantial, like they were actually made of flesh and bone. Because in those
early years the world felt very unstable outside and inside them and they
always felt like dust, here one minute, easily gone the next. No matter how
many times they’d lived through it, the initial onslaught of the return of
memory was as disorienting as it was nearly paralyzing. They needed time. If
asked to explain what exactly they needed time for, Arafel and Thranduil would
say that they needed time to grieve. A grief so much more complicated than what
a human can feel, weighted by too much time and too many things which should be
whole irreparably severed. The feeling also always passed. Two years later, at
sixteen, they were ready.
“After they kicked us out, we didn’t care who knew. Everybody knew.
Interestingly, people paid to watch us together, and to fuck us. A lot.
“Twincest”, it turns out, pays well in the 21st century. It paid for rent, for
school, for drugs. Daddy was right after all, we were whores. And we were great
at it.”
With that Thranduil gets up, extends his hand to Arafel, who takes it
gracefully and rising from her chair says, “Well, it’s been a pleasure, but we
must be going.”
Melissa and Isaac stumble to their feet as well, Melissa grabs for Arafel’s
hand, “You will go see mom and dad tomorrow?”
“Yes, yes”, Arafel extracts her hand, “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight! Thank you!”, Melissa’s and Isaac’s voices echo after them.
Thranduil doesn’t bother looking back, or replaying.
Outside, a taxi is waiting for them, Thranduil must have called it, Arafel is
pleased. Once inside, they both breathe deeply, happy to be alone. He lays his
head in her lap, on the side, looking forward, “I can’t believe we’re going to
a fucking wedding. “
Arafel strokes his hair. “Don’t think about it. There may not even be a
wedding, who knows.” Thranduil laughs, “Is that a jinx?” Arafel laughs.
“Do you feel like going home?”, he adds after several quiet minutes pass.
“No.”
He directs the driver to abandon the original destination and drive them around
the city instead, then settles back into Arafels lap, his arm curled around her
thigh.
She leans her head back against the seat, her fingers combing through his hair.
It has begun raining.
Long minutes, closing in on an hour pass in silence.
“Do you think we made a mistake?”
Arafel doesn’t need clarification. “For us we did”.
He nods not turning to look at her, “But for him we did not.”
When the word arrived that every one of their race had to decide the course of
the remainder of their lives, Legolas was already in Valinor. Of his mother he
remembered little and knew less, probably for the better. Thranduil and his son
had parted on dubious terms over a century before, but had not been close since
Legolas was a youth. In fact, Legolas barely tolerated him. Thranduil neither
knew how to be a father, nor had time, nor had honestly tried. He couldn’t look
at his son without wanting to tell him the truth he could never tell. Moreover,
neither Arafel nor Thranduil wanted a child; they never should have been
parents. They knew that. They had a child simply to protect the Greenwood
throne, a cosmic joke in the end. And Legolas suffered mightily as a result. He
would suffer no more on their account. It was the deciding factor in their
resolution to forsake the Undying Lands, their immortal lives and the company
of most of their kin. Legolas was happy without them, and they would let him
go. Forever. On their last night together, Elrond called Thranduil something
along the lines of an insufferable, obstinate idiot of whom nothing else could
be expected. Thranduil closed his eyes, kissed him on the forehead, and asked
him to look after his son.
They are both lost in the same thoughts. Thranduil recites, slow and low and
Arafel joins him. Long pauses mark the end of each sentence.
“So crawl until the sun goes down.
I'll never wear your broken crown.
I took the road and I fucked it all away.
In that twilight, our choices sealed our fate.”
They are quiet for a long time again. Then Arafel speaks, “I don’t know, T, I
don’t think we were born to be happy. I think we were born for a purpose.”
“That purpose ended thousands of years ago. We are impostors in a world in
which we are no longer relevant”, he tilts his head to look at her.
“In a world which doesn’t want us, certainly. But does it not need us? We are
stuck here. There are others like us, although not many. The rest of us who
remained here have long ago fused with the very fabric of the Earth. Why would
they have given us this as a choice if there wasn’t a reason for it?”
“To cull the worthy from the forsaken without doing it themselves. Think. Which
ones of us were less likely to chose Valinor? The ones who have never been
there, those of us whom they have always called The Fallen.”
“The Fallen… There’s a difference between an accident of stumbling bat
blindness, contemplated in mournful songs, regrettable madness of confused
crossroads, and impotent fury of the unrequited, and the silent. And mistaken
parabolas, misread allegories, riddled non-riddles. Inversions in negatives and
cinematographic freeze-frames. Versus a flight, on not exactly faery wings,
inverted towards the sky, in immaculate reflection. And unforgivable smiles,
lacking apology, regret, or redemption. Illuminated by the moon's silver
strings, falling on shattered parking lot glass, to mesmerize, to bind a moment
of comprehension. And reflect, unknowing, the judgment attempted, and sometimes
delivered. The difference is spoken in a word - Deliberate.”
The last time Thranduil has seen Arafel’s eyes shine like this, lit by an
otherworldly fire, he’d give his immortal life to forget. He sits in her lap,
his legs folded under him framing hers, he takes her hands into his, all of his
movements automatic, unconscious, to keep her close to him, anchored here, to
this world, to him.
He asks her, “What then are we here for still?”
“The same thing we have always been here for, T”, her eyes focus on his face
again, to his relief no longer floating in space, “To hold back the decay.
Black Wizards. Black smoke. There is no difference.”
“And no magic rings, as always.” Once Thranduil starts laughing he can’t stop.
It starts full of irony, sadistic and dark, but then it turns honest, light,
like silver moonlight breaking through dark clouds. Arafel hasn’t heard him
laugh like that in an age, and after a while, she’s laughing too. Their
foreheads pressed together.
“Some places we've already fallen”, Arafel whispers against his lips. He bites
her bottom lip. She licks the blood from it. “Others we haven't”, she
continues, slipping her tongue in between his lips then withdrawing it quickly.
“Others we never will.” She takes the rubber band tying his hair out, shakes
his hair loose, tangles her fingers into it. He grabs the back of her neck,
claiming her mouth in a deep, possessive kiss.
Chapter End Notes
     I am honestly sorry regarding the super-long pauses between chapters.
     I still am committed to this story, (un)fortunately life happens in
     between. Thank you for your patience.
***** You will always be a whore (Room 544) *****
Arafel pulls him by the hair so that his neck is bared to her, licks a slow
path from his collar bone to his ear, pauses a moment then bites into his neck
right through the still bruised flesh and unhealed scars. Thranduil emits a
silent scream and grinds himself into her pelvic bones, hard. She drinks
through the newly torn skin, her body and mind igniting. He lets her get her
fill then pulls her mouth to his, licks his blood of her lips, off her tongue,
then guides her back to his neck. As she laps at the profusely bleeding wound,
he whispers in her ear, “You know I love you with my blood on your lips”. No
more than she loves it in her mouth. She’s drowning in it, in him. And he, he’s
drunk on the image in his mind and high on the pain which cuts him like a
razorblade.
When she briefly opens her eyes, Arafel catches a worried look on the face of
their driver in the rearview mirror, and ignores it. If he becomes concerned
enough, he’ll start yelling. Which he does, when Thranduil pushes her down
horizontal on the back seat flipping her onto her stomach in one quick
movement. The driver’s words follow quickly, “No sex! No sex!”
Thranduil digs into his pocket, comes up with a $100 bill, hands it to the
driver and smiles so that the man can see him, “We won’t leave a mess, I
promise. And you can watch as long as you don’t crash.”
The driver examines the bill, decides it’s real, looks back with a grin, “Yes,
boss. It’s all good.” The entire exchange is over in under a minute.
Thranduil gives him a thumps up, then puts him out of his mind.
He pulls his sister’s trousers half way down her thighs her legs pressed
together by the skin-tight jeans and releases his now fully erect and throbbing
cock from the confines of his own equally tight jeans. He uses one hand to
spread her buttocks apart, felling how very wet she is, and the other to guide
himself inside her. Arafel helps by raising her ass to meet him. He slips fully
inside her easily and wraps an arm around her abdomen to keep her close to him.
His other arm is across her chest, in between her breasts, his hand around her
neck, applying enough pressure that he’ll probably leave marks but not enough
that she can’t breathe. Most of his weight is resting on her, their bodies in
full contact.
Their movements are minimal but efficient. He is so deep inside her that every
one of his thrusts brings the tip of his penis to the end of her cervix. It
hurts; it tares her open, fragments her, makes her dig her nails into his hips
as she pulls him into her. And she loves being so completely owned by him. He
couldn’t make her feel more like his possession if he put her in cuffs and tied
her in ropes. His words, spoken into her ear between hisses and moans, “Mine…
You will always be mine”, emphasize what they both feel.
“Always”, Arafel replies. She is the quieter of the twins. When her brother
reaches climax and floods her cervix with his seed, he screams. The scream
ending only when he bites into her shoulder still fucking her, feeling her
vaginal walls spasming in response to his release, her body shaking. Still
inside her, he sits up, holds her to him sitting in his lap. He kisses her, his
lips bloody. Arafel returns the kiss eagerly, whispers to him against his lips
to keep fucking her. He slides his hands over her ribs to her hips and holding
her still continues to drive into her feeling another orgasm approaching.
Arafel puts her head on his shoulder, her arms bent backwards around his ribs
and meeting behind his back. She’s bent like a bow. Thranduil catches the taxi
driver sneaking backwards glances and grinning, but his attention’s all for his
sister. And when Arafel clenches her muscles again, he pulls her all the way
down and explodes inside her for the second time. This time, they remain bound
and still for long minutes. When they finally separate, the promise to keep the
back seat clean is honored. As Arafel sits and pulls her jeans back up, not a
drop of her brother’s semen leaks out of her. And won’t, not this time.
“Did you enjoy the show?”, Thranduil asks the driver, who, momentarily stunned,
nevertheless replies truthfully, “Yes, boss, yes.”
“Good. Please take us home now.”
As the car takes them through the rainy streets, brother and sister hold each
other close and doze off and on, content, the world forgotten.
When they arrive home, they go directly to bed, leaving their clothes in a pile
at the foot of the bed. They fall asleep almost immediately wrapped safely into
each other.
Thranduil wakes up as usual, entangled with his sister. And in the twenty
seconds before Arafel wakes, he makes a decision, that bastard who calls
himself their father will not lay eyes let alone his filthy hands on her today
or ever again. He will go see the piece of shit alone.
Of course there is no way Arafel will go along with that unless he makes her.
So, he doesn’t say anything. She senses that something’s on his mind, even that
something’s amiss, but Thranduil’s thousands of years of pretending that
everything’s fine can confuse even her enough to not be able to figure out what
precisely is the matter. Her brother is moody, understatement. It could be
anything, and she, like the rest of the world, will have to wait until he feels
like talking. She leaves for work with a feeling of deep unease bordering on
worry, but all she can get out of him is a confirmation that he’ll pick her up
at 5 o’clock and then they’ll go meet the assholes, aka. parents coming up with
some sort of plan on the way.
Thranduil, in the meantime, doesn’t think at all about what he will do. He’s
already decided and would rather not think about it. He makes one phone call,
to Melissa, ordering her to have their mother out of the hotel room from 5:30
in the afternoon and back, with Isaac in tow, between 6:30 and 7. Melissa has
the brains not to ask why, and only asks if it will be very bad. Thranduil
laughs, “You do want it to be effective, don’t you?” When Melissa verifies that
she does, he whispers, “The worst”. He hangs up, puts the entire thing out of
his mind and focuses on his work for the rest of the day.
At 4:30 he calls Arafel. She’s surprised; they don’t call each other at work
unless something important happens. He can hear a note of worry in her voice
and swallows guilt he could choke on. Because worried Arafel, even hysterical
Arafel is better than that fucking monster laying his fucking paws on her. So
lies come easily, “Listen, I am going to go see the assholes alone. I have a
plan.”
Silence.
When the silence stretches for 3 or 4 minutes, when it becomes clear that
Arafel won’t or can’t say anything, Thranduil adds, “I’ll be home by 8:00.”
Silence.
Finally Arafel’s barely audible “Ok” comes through the line. It feels like ice
against his skin.
If they were in the same room, there would be an argument, which is why he lied
this morning. At a distance, Arafel simply agrees. Because she knows him
completely. Because the decision’s already been made, the battle already lost.
So he adds, “Don’t worry, please.” Knowing that she will. And that she will
feel guilty because he was doing this for her.
“See you at 8:00”, she hangs up.
Thranduil slams his office door shut, takes a bag of coke out of his pocket,
empties half of it on his desk, makes six long lines with a ruler, the nearest
apt thing he sees and a gift from some pharmaceutical company, and inhales them
in rapid succession using a cheep pen which he’s emptied of the ink and taken
the caps off. Then he throws the pen against the wall shattering it into
pieces. Tosses back three oxys because his head hurts and leans back in the
chair waiting for the drugs to hit him, preferably like a thunderbolt.
Outside, Ian raises his hand to knock on the door then hearing something
shatter thinks better of it and walks away. Thranduil doesn’t often lose his
temper at work. In fact, usually he’s the definition of cool. However, from the
one or two times his people have seen him angry, they’ve learned that nothing
is so important that it can’t wait until the next day.
Arafel launches the phone across her office where by dumb luck it hits her
blazer hunging on the back of the door and doesn’t shatter. She laughs. But
it’s the kind of mirthless laughter which turns into tears. Arafel cries only
when it’s about her brother and only when she sees him walking into some
bullshit and can’t stop it. Then she cries for crying about it, because
Thranduil, like her, is an adult entitled to making his own decisions. Now
angry, she wipes the tears, plasters her bitch face back into place so that
anyone looking sees what they expect and at 5:05 walks out of the building.
For a fraction of a second she contemplates going to the hotel, the devil take
Thranduil’s plans and choices, and Melissa too. Then she turns the car in the
other direction, away from downtown.
She drives with music blasting until she arrives at the gates of a heavily
guarded mansion in the hills overlooking the city. The armed guards let her
through. As do the ones at the front door. She leaves her keys with the valet.
On the second floor of the enormous house decorated with a lot of money and a
surprising level of taste, the owner of the establishment extracts himself from
the company of several whores and two business associates to greet her with
wide open arms and a big and honest grin upon his broad, deceptively good-
natured, face, “Hey A, sweetheart, long time no see, what you been up to?”
Arafel smiles, genuinely. She gives him a kiss on the cheek and lets him fold
her into his big, heavily muscled arms, “Work, D, work. How you been?”
D lets her go, steps back and circles her assessing her like a filly he’s
thinking about purchasing and nodding his approval. Arafel, in a tight fitting
light beige skirt which hits right above her knees, matching six inch heels and
a fitted white blouse purposefully unbuttoned to show of just the top of her
cleavage, doesn’t move and doesn’t flinch. “So… What brings you here today?”,
he asks standing in front of her placing his hands on her hips.
“You know what brings me here”, Arafel answers looking directly into his eyes
but from under her eyelashes, her voice honey.
D rubs his chin, smiles, “Yea, yea, just kidding with you…”, talks over his
shoulder, “J, go on get some of the good shit for my girl here.”
Arafel smiles, “Thanks D.”
“You know that’ll cost you, right?”
Arafel begins unbuttoning her shirt.
The worn out phrase, “It’s complicated” nevertheless most accurately describes
Arafel’s and Thranduil’s relationship with D’Angelo, known to most people as
simply “D”. They’ve known each other for a very long time. When the twins ended
up homeless and were selling their bodies for a night in a cheep motel and
dirty drugs cut with anything from baking soda to rat poison, when they took
naps on park benches or didn’t sleep for days, D’Angelo, some ten years older
then them, and already relatively high up the chain in the local drug
enterprise, picked them up off the street. He gave them a place to live inside
a house only marginally less grand than that from which they had been kicked
out, which could not be compared to his present day palace. He provided them
with clean drugs but never gave them enough of anything to become full-blown
addicts. He taught them how to walk the tightrope between daily or near daily
drug use and hopeless addiction which ruled ones entire existence. In return,
they became his whores for hire. He hired them out to select, high-paying
individuals, couples, and parties, usually together, very rarely individually.
He always sent body guards with them, sometimes he even went himself. He
charged extravagant rates for them and let them keep half the money. He
probably saved their lives. He probably sealed their coffins. He kept them
safe. He also gave them everything they needed to survive in the gutters for
the rest of their lives. They never his the proverbial rock bottom, so they had
no interest in climbing out. Truth be told, either way, they probably never
would.
When they finished high school, they had enough money to move away and start
college. He let them. He understood that it was important for them to leave the
city, to start over some place new. But they never lost touch with D. He
continued booking most of their clients. And when Arafel and Thranduil found
out that their parents had moved away, and spent most of their time abroad,
they came back. They had careers now, they had money, they bought their own
place to live, but they came right back to D’Angelo for drugs.
D welcomed them back with open arms. But he didn’t want their money. He wanted
their bodies. At first they refused, they didn’t sell their bodies any more. He
wasn’t offended. But after a few years and several ugly experiences, Thranduil
and Arafel realized that legit pills and good coke they could buy, but pure
heroin was not so easy to find. D fucked Thranduil first agreeing to
Thranduil’s ultimatum that he could have him but not Arafel. Until one day
Thranduil was too sick to get out of bed, and Arafel went to see D’ Angelo
alone. Thranduil broke half the flat afterward, but he didn’t let go of D’s
drugs. And so it goes. They love him. They hate him. They fuck him. And they
always come back, eventually. He supplies them with the best dope in town and
never forces them to do anything. They never refuse anything he asks of them
either. Fair’s fair.
So Arafel strips slowly but without hesitation to approving hisses from the men
and encouraging shouts from some of the women and remains standing in the
middle of the room wearing nothing but her heels.
D takes her hand and leads her towards a chair positioned opposite the U-shaped
sofa the rest of the party is lounging on. He unbuttons his shirt and sits legs
wide apart. Arafel catches the clue and kneels in front of him undoing his belt
and zipper. Of course D does not wear any underwear, he never does, and his
already mostly erect cock springs free against his stomach. Arafel licks the
underside from the base of his balls to the tip. D hisses putting his hand on
the back of her head. She takes him into her mouth and goes half way down
before coming back up. After she repeats the motion several times, D pushes her
head all the way down to the base and holds her there for about half a minute
grinding into her mouth. When he lets her back up, Arafel doesn’t even let go
of him just takes a deep breath, and plays with the tip using her tongue. He
pushes her back down, then holds her head still between both hands and fucks
her mouth, his cock reaching deep into her throat. Arafel holds still. When he
slows down, D mutters, “Damn girl, you and your brother have the best mouths”.
Arafel looks up at him and smiles as she licks precum of the tip, “That’s why
we get the best drugs”. D half laughs, half grins. Arafel puts her mouth around
him again. This time when he thrusts into her, he doesn’t even hold her head in
place. Arafel, even used to her brother, is not used to the length of time and
the force D uses. Her head is pounding, her neck hurts and her throat’s on fire
by the time D finally pulls out and shoots semen all over her breasts then
forces her to take him into her mouth again and swallow the other half of the
load, as he strokes her hair and calls her his good girl.
Having licked him clean, one of D’s demands, Arafel wipes her mouth with the
back of her hand and sits on her heels waiting for further instructions. D’s
just laughing, seated, satisfied, repeating, “Damn girl, you’re good… you’re
good…” Arafel laughs, “Does that mean I can go?”
D nods, lifts her up into his lap, gives her a kiss on the cheek and whispers
in her ear so that no one else hears, “Tell him I’d love to have you both,
together, some day soon.” Which translates into he wants Thranduil here as well
because he wants to fuck them. Thranduil asked him to please not do that with
Arafel unless he did them both. D agreed, in fact he preferred it. Having them
both opened up so many possibilities; D didn’t think he’d ever get bored of
them.
“I will. Thanks, D.” With that, Arafel slips back into her clothes without
looking at anybody in the room, partly because she really doesn’t give a shit
partly because her mind is exclusively preoccupied with the heroin which is
being handed to her; D’s being generous, to be taken as bribe. Within the next
three minutes, she is in her car and driving home.
Thranduil leaves his office around 5:15, well on the way to being dangerously
fucked up. He drives with music blasting so he can’t hear his thoughts, or his
heart. He arrives at the hotel at 5:35, a 45 minute drive. He calls Melissa,
“When are you coming back?” “6:45 exactly.” “Perfect”, he hangs up thinking how
the little bitch can miraculously get her shit together when it’s in her best
interest to do so, must be an inherited trait. He’s never hated the stupid,
egotistical, parasitical lot of them more. He wants to talk to his sister. No,
he wants to be with his sister. He spreads two lines on the dashboard with his
credit card instead. Sits back and synchs his thundering heart to the beat of
the music, both crashing together through his brain. He pops a β-blocker,
because he doesn’t want to be just another coke head dead of a heart attack, at
least not today. Thranduil is a master of street pharmacology, overdoses and
counter-measures are his specialty.
At 5:45, he is knocking on the door to room #544. The bastard that calls
himself his father, in this lifetime, opens the door. And glares at him like
he’s an apparition. Or a nightmare. He’s probably both. Thranduil throws on a
grin, undeterred, “Hello father, won’t you let me in?”
Eventually his father staggers away from the door and manages a snippy, “You’re
early. Your mother and sister won’t be back for another two hours.” He’s
speaking to Thranduil’s back. Thranduil’s made his way to the bar and is making
two drinks, a scotch on the rocks for his father and an ice cold vodka for
himself.
He turns around handing the glass to his father, “I’m not early, I wanted us to
have some time alone.” His voice is low, seductive. His father swallows hard
and takes the glass. Thranduil makes sure their fingers touch. It’s like
electric shock to his father, but he manages to ask, “Why?” Then he looks at
him the shock having worn off and adds, “You’re trashed.”
Thranduil shrugs, leans against the back of a sofa in the over-the-top suite,
licks his lips, “Hm… For old times’ sake…”
His father shudders visibly, looks at him asking “What is the game you’re
playing”, but only says, “Last time I saw you, you threw me out of your home.”
“That’s because you were insulting Arafel in our home. Whom, by the way, you
will never see again.”
“You’re still fucking your sister then”, his father’s replies accompanied with
derisive laughter.
Thranduil doesn’t skip a beat, “Yes, I am.”
“Did she do that to you?”, his father points at the horrible bruises and
unhealed bite marks clearly visible on Thranduil’s neck. He didn’t bother
trying to make them less obvious in any way today.
“She did.”
“You’re both fucking sick.” The disgust in his father’s voice is palpable.
“Hm.” Thranduil puts his index finger in his mouth and sucks on it watching his
father under lowered eyelashes.
His father watches him intently. He looks entranced. Thranduil smirks. His
father nearly empties his glass in one gulp to shake of the sight of his
adopted son, whom he, to his utter disgust, finds that he wants to burry his
cock inside, still, now, after all this time. Rape him, subdue him, tear him
apart. Just like all those years ago. And when Thranduil was too battered, when
he worried that abusing him further may necessitate a trip to the hospital
where his injuries would be impossible to explain, he went for his sister. She
was easy to hurt as well.
Thranduil’s voice comes like an echo, “You didn’t think we were sick when you
fucked us, daddy.”
His father, exceptionally fit for a man in his mid 60s, turns on him lightning
fast, grabs him by the throat and screams inches from his face, “Don’t you
fucking talk to me like that, boy.”
Thranduil doesn’t even try to fight him or defend himself, even though he could
throw him across the room and split his skull open easily, so easily. Instead
he smiles and reaches for his father’s groin, where, as he suspected, he finds
a bulge in the shape of his father’s balls and a semi-hard cock. He presses and
gropes the man. His father inhales deeply and relaxes the hold on his throat.
“Or when you made us open our mouths for you.” He fully anticipates the
tightening of the hand around his throat, which follows. But his father does
not remove the hand Thranduil keeps on his cock hardening under increasing
pressure and circular movements.
Suddenly, Thranduil’s head is yanked backwards by his ponytail and his father’s
fingers are forcing their way into his mouth. “Did you come here to be reminded
that you’re a whore? That you’ll never be anything but a junkie whore? I don’t
care what you have. I don’t care about the letters behind your name. I don’t
care who respects you, or fears you. You will always be trash.”
If he could, Thranduil would be dying of laughter. How to explain to this moron
to whom appearances are everything that he doesn’t care what he calls him or if
it’s true. So he sucks on his fingers and lets him pull him down to his knees
between the sofa and himself, and in the brief moments in which both of his
father’s hands are busy releasing his now fully erect cock, Thranduil manages
to insert, “But I’m the best blow job you’ll ever have, daddy.” A split second
later his father thrusts into his mouth. Thranduil’s head hits the sofa behind
him and is held there by his father’s hips, his full length buried in his son’s
throat.
As an eleven and twelve year old child, Thranduil used to gag and choke when
used like this; now he opens his throat easily. A whore indeed. And while his
father holding onto the back of the sofa for extra leverage, in order to
inflict maximum pain and discomfort upon his son thrusts hard and without pause
into his mouth and throat, Thranduil wonders idly what time it could be.
And then, like a wish, the door opens, jolly conversation fills the room
momentarily before dead, frozen silence descends. Thranduil and his father,
balls deep in his son’s throat, are in profile in full view from the entrance
to the suite.
The father moves into action first. Still completely hard, he pulls up his
trousers, securing the zipper, buttons and belt and moves towards his wife,
daughter and Isaac. Chaos ensues. Their mother becomes hysterical, screaming at
her husband not to touch her, screaming at Thranduil, who is now sitting on the
floor thoroughly amused, and finally running off into one of the bedrooms in
tears, her husband after her giving Thranduil a murderous look.
Thranduil shrugs, then gets up, performs a mock bow towards Melissa and Isaac,
and steps out the door with a “Have a nice evening, dear family.”
Melissa runs after him. She catches him three doors down in the middle of
snorting coke off his keys. She turns bright red, stares at the floor, fumbles
with her words.
He snaps at her, “What?!”
“I…I…I just wanted to thank you.”
Thranduil waves her off with his hand, turns to go.
“Wait…please…”, Melissa’s voice is near breaking. He turns around despite
himself, keys just leaving his nose again.
This time she manages not to look at the floor, “How did you get him to do
that?”
“Your pretty little head can’t put that together?” He’s in no mood to be kind.
“Did it look like something he’d never done before?”
Melissa stares at him for too long, and he’s turning to leave laughing the
laughter of the righteous or the completely mad, when she finally understands,
and hands to her mouth half-speaks half-whispers, “Oh my God… Oh my God… How
long?”
“Since we were ten. That’s the best kept secret in the family.” He’s stopped
laughing.
“You mean mother…”, she doesn’t finish the sentence.
“Yea, the bitch knew.”
They’re six feet away now, and Melissa all of a sudden runs up to him and hugs
him. Thranduil doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t want to be touched. He
doesn’t want to be pitied. He doesn’t want to be having this conversation any
more. He removes her arms and gently pushes her away from him. And she doesn’t
try to approach him again. She only asks him, “Why did you do it?”
“Because it was effective.”
Melissa nods. Because not only is Thranduil, and by extension his sister, so
much worse than Isaac, but their father, and mother, are so much worse then
them both. She thanks him again then seeing that he wants to go, turns back
towards room #544.
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