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It was a quiet winter’s night when Annatar showed Celebrimbor his fangs. He sat on Celebrimbor’s bed arrayed in whites and grays, linens and silks, the firelight playing on his skin. Celebrimbor sat facing him with one hand on his knee and the other in his mouth. A finger hooked behind Annatar’s bottom teeth, and another traced enamel from the gum down to the point of the fang where Annatar’s canine should’ve been. Where, indeed, Celebrimbor had thought it was yesterday, because yesterday he hadn’t known Annatar was a vampire. “Don’t vampires have fangs?” he’d said in disbelief half an hour ago, and Annatar had said, “Nobody sees my fangs unless I want them to.”
Annatar wanted him to. He’d lowered them onto the bed together and opened his mouth wide, and his canines had blurred, become what Celebrimbor now touched. Celebrimbor bent his finger to press the tip of it against the fang’s point, sharp and stinging as a needle, and wondered how hard he’d have to press to draw blood.
Annatar’s fingers curled around his wrist and tugged his hand away. A string of saliva, gleaming orange in the light, swung between Annatar’s lips and Celebrimbor’s hand for a moment, two moments, then broke. Celebrimbor said, “How does it work? Hiding them.”
“Magic,” Annatar said.
“Magic, magic,” Celebrimbor muttered. Even with a vampire sitting in front of him, he didn’t believe in magic. All apparently magical phenomena could be explained, reduced to the natural world in which they lived. He believed that as deeply as the rest of his family believed in their gods and spirits.
“I thought you’d be afraid of me,” Annatar said.
“Should I be?”
Annatar seized Celebrimbor. His arm wrapped Celebrimbor in a vice grip, and his knee pinned Celebrimbor’s legs to the mattress, and two stinging needles pricked Celebrimbor’s neck.
Celebrimbor caught his breath. “Should I be?” he said again. Their shadows fell on the wall behind them: two lovers embracing. “Any man might stab me with a knife kept up his sleeve. How is this different?”
“Most men aren’t murderers. I am.”
The words were whispers against Celebrimbor’s skin. He sank dizzily into Annatar’s arms. “I knew you were no angel,” he said, working saliva onto his tongue so his voice didn’t fail him, “even before I met you. My cousin warned me about you. He didn’t know you were a vampire, but he saw that you were a bad man.”
Annatar’s lips, soft and without a hint of teeth behind them, kissed Celebrimbor’s neck. Celebrimbor couldn’t move, couldn’t so much as hold up his own weight, until Annatar drew away and the strange lightheaded feeling—thrill or the fear Celebrimbor had thought himself immune to—retreated with him.
“Then you are a strange man to have welcomed me, Tyelperinquar.”
Celebrimbor laughed weakly. “It’s Telperinquar,” he said, and, “My cousin isn’t right about everything. Men cannot be bad or good. You have a bad past, and no wonder: you were cursed by Morgoth as so many men were. But what is our work about if not healing?”
“Fool,” Annatar said.
He always spoke so when he thought Celebrimbor was growing saccharine optimistic. The utter familiarity of it made way for relief. “Also,” Celebrimbor said, “I want to study you.”
Annatar’s fangs blurred again, became unnaturally straight but human teeth. “Absolutely not,” he snapped, the exact melodramatic offense Celebrimbor had been aiming for. With a smothered smile, Celebrimbor leaned in to murmur soothing apologies against Annatar’s lips.