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“Hey,” says Voronwë, grinning sheepishly, his left hand wiggling a bit in what looks like an aborted wave.
Elemmakil stares.
It takes ten full seconds for him to get his breathing back under control. Well. Stranger things have happened. Although, he has to admit, right now he can’t really think of anything stranger than Voronwë fucking Aranwion, standing on top of his apartment’s rickety staircase, his hair unkempt and eyes too bright, everything else hidden in the shadows.
Also, there’s the fact that Voronwë’s right hand is currently clutched by a tall, bearded man like it’s his goddamn lifeline. And the guy’s fucking huge.
“I’m just gonna,” Elemmakil stammers - yeah, real intelligent - and takes a step back. “Wanna come in?”
He regrets the words almost the second they leave his mouth. It’s two o’ clock in the middle of the night. For all he knows, Voronwë Aranwion went MIA three years ago, halfway across the world, along with a ship stuck full of Navy officers. The man smiling at him could be a hallucination. A ghost. And that’s not even taking his companion into account.
But he’s already moving into his living room, sweeping notes and sketches off the couch, some subconscious part of his mind furiously calculating whether he has any teabags left. It’s unlikely. He probably does have some leftover takeout in the fridge, though. Behind him, he can hear the couch cushions squeaking in protest, and he flicks on the light.
“Sorry for showing up like this,” Voronwë starts.
“s’alright,” he says, then louder: “It’s all right. You know. Anytime.”
Voronwë sags into the couch, his friend - friend? - hovering nervously near the armrest, and now that the light’s better, Elemmakil can see that he’s wearing practically rags. A dirty hoodie and a pair of ripped jeans that could either have been blue or black, at the time of purchase, boots caked with mud. (He thinks back to the rain two days before.) His cheekbones stand out twice as sharp as his liking. He’s got wrinkles at the corner of his eyes. His friend, covered as he is in a grey coat five sizes too big - and ain’t that a feat - doesn’t look any better.
But by God, he’d forgotten how utterly good Voronwë can look, with his brows drawn stern like that. He’d forgotten the way his mouth twists whenever he’s anxious, the slight lilt in his voice - only to have it come crashing back.
“I can explain,” Voronwë says, his hands wrung together on his lap, “please.”
That’s when Elemmakil makes his decision to postpone rational thinking.
“Shower first,” he sighs, closing the distance, and grabs Voronwë by his forearm. “Eat second. You don’t have to explain anything, not to me.”
He shoves Voronwë bodily into his bathroom, and belatedly realizes he’s forgotten the other guest. He turns, mumbles something about waiting a sec, and finds himself straight at the end of a wide-eyed gaze. Those eyes are an impossible blue, and so, so, heartbreakingly young.
It works out, somehow.
He’s taller than Voronwë, and probably much broader, now, but his sweatpants and t-shirts should fit just fine. He leaves a change of clothes just outside the bathroom door, and then proceeds to not think about the boxers, no, nope, no way in hell. Trying to find clothes big enough for the Other Guest, who’s still hovering by the couch, proves to be a suitable distraction.
“Is it cold? You could ditch the coat, you know,” he says, hoping his voice doesn’t sound as nervous as he feels.
He’s rewarded with a tense laughter.
“You don’t even know who I am,” points out the Other Guest.
Elemmakil shrugs. “Neither do you, I should think.”
Oh well. He has baggy shorts somewhere in the closet, and it’s not like his shirts can’t stretch. He can turn up the heat and throw out anything that rips.
The water’s still running in the bathroom, and his apartment has thin walls; the lack of conversation isn’t that alarming. He manages to find the clothes in record time, eyes the Other Guest, and decides not to provide underwear. The Guest looks all too happy at the prospect of changing, anyways. Then, to avoid any unnecessary awkwardness, Elemmakil shifts to the kitchen. He can heat up whatever leftovers he has, and he’s got enough fillings to put together edible sandwiches-
“You’re, uh, Elemmakil, right?”
“Voronwë talk about me?” He plugs in the microwave on his second try. He’s moving almost by muscle memory now, one perk of his life being ‘friends visiting in all sorts of indecent hours’.
“Talk about home, at all?”
“Just a little. He’s been helping me out since we left Nevrast.”
Elemmakil can’t help tensing a little at that. Nevrast’s been one gigantic strip of nuclear wasteland, ever since the great SCWR blowup a decade ago, and despite the fact that he does know there are no ghosts in that place... Radiation’s not a pleasant thing to think about, especially not at, say, two thirty a.m.
Neither is infiltration.
“You’ve come a long way,” he says, since he shouldn’t be surprised, he’s not, but he’s also not a fucking interrogator.
“Um, I actually started off in Dor-lómin,” says the Guest, and Elemmakil really needs to shut up and call his cousin, he should’ve the moment Voronwë showed up, but the water hasn’t stopped running and the Guest hasn’t jumped on him yet and he does have his pill lodged in a tooth. Also, if this really is an elaborate ploy to get at him, this particular operative looks rather dumb.
“So who are you?” he asks. His jaw flexes slightly.
He swears he’d never expected the answer. He has proof. If he had, why the hell would he have been standing there with a highly breakable plate filled with scalding noodles?
As it is, he ends up dropping it right on his feet.
“I’m Tuor, son of Huor, of the House of Hador.”
It’s not working out after all.
Sunlight’s just filtering through the blinds when Elemmakil sets down his mug. Voronwë looks clean, well-fed, and relatively relaxed, and Tuor with a shaved face is a Tuor who’s barely more than a kid. Twenty-something. Remarkable, how these Edain grow.
“So,” Elemmakil says, without much hope. “I was thinking about contacting Ecthelion. About, you know, what to do with you.”
Voronwë gives him a deeply unimpressed glare.
“Elemmakil, it’s beyond time you started making your own damn decisions.”
Elemmakil slips out of the apartment to make the call. Beyond time or not, his guests are asking about Gondolin.
This is a fucking mess.