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Findaráto stretched out on the sand, the water lapping gently at his bare feet, and reached his arms over his head, exulting in the warmth of seashore, the smell of salt, and a day of relative freedom.
Ulmo watched him, smiling. Findaráto’s mass of golden hair was snarled by the wind, his skin brown and rosy and freckled, and his lithe and beautiful young body was stretched out, bare and unashamed, before him.
Feeling the weight of the Vala’s gaze on him, Findaráto pushed himself upright and smiled. “You say a lot, for one who says very little,” he said, brushing a bit of seaweed from his hair.
Ulmo affirmed this by saying nothing, but sending a little rill of waves up the beach to wash lightly over Findaráto’s thighs. Findaráto let out a bright, gasping laugh at the sensation, and Ulmo watched as goose bumps broke out over his skin.
“You’re teasing me.” Findaráto kicked his toes lightly at the surf, sending drops scattering into the air. “Teasing, and not talking, and making me speak for both of us, and Turukáno already says I talk too much.” He stood up, brushing sand from his arms and legs as if about to depart, but Ulmo knew from the elation in Findaráto’s stance that he had no plans to leave. Instead, he waded carefully into the surf, letting the sea wash the sand from his skin, gasping a little at the cool water, until he stood submerged to his waist, and Ulmo sent a gentle eddy to encircle his hips.
Findaráto shivered. “They will wonder where I am,” he said, looking at Ulmo. “I should go back. My mother has told me not to miss a third dinner running.” Ulmo said nothing, watching the ends of Findaráto’s hair catch in the waves and then float there, pulled heavy and straight by the water. Findaráto asked the question quietly, as if inquiring the answer of himself. “Why can’t I bring myself to go?”
And now Ulmo moved towards him, a few powerful beats of his tail bringing him within an arm’s reach of Findaráto. The young Elf did not shrink back – he never had – and Ulmo stretched out a hand to brush over his cheek.
He let his tail become legs, strong and powerful and well muscled, but did not bother to give himself further raiment but skin and scales, and he felt where Findaráto’s wide eyes landed on him. Carefully, almost fearfully, Findaráto reached out tentative hands to stroke curiously over Ulmo’s chest, moving over the sleek muscle to his waist, where some scales still remained, trailing down to his sex. Ulmo stretched out wide, webbed hands to encircle Findaráto’s waist, and he could feel the young Elf shudder under his touch. He let his fingers spread, loosen, letting Findaráto know he could release him, but Findaráto whispered, “No, keep…keep touching me.”
Ulmo looked down at him, tilting his head to the side inquiringly.
Findaráto reddened, a flush moving up his chest, and Ulmo watched the blood rise in him like a warm current. “I do not mind you touching me,” said Findaráto in a whisper still, as if still not daring to raise his voice. “I crave… I crave touch.” He closed his eyes, and Ulmo could feel shame rising from him. “I am told it is normal for the young to feel the stirrings of desire, but I do not think most feel it like this.” He opened his eyes again, and Ulmo could see the desperation in them. “Surely it is not normal, to want this strongly! To want…all sorts of things. Surely it is depraved. My friends, my cousins, my brothers, they betray no such urges, nothing this powerful. I fear I am the only one.” Ulmo touched Findaráto’s flushed cheeks, and Findaráto leaned into the coolness of his touch. “Perhaps I am vain to think I am unique. But I feel so…so alone.” His voice caught. “I try to fight it, suppress it, to fix my mind on a future marriage, or the creation of children, the urges we are taught to treasure. But in my dreams…” He raised his face, and Ulmo felt him trembling beneath his touch. “I dream so many things. I want so many things. And I want, I need,” his voice broke again. “I want to be touched.” He said it like a plea, like a prayer, and Ulmo was loathe to deny him.
He moved closer, his body brushing against Findaráto’s in the water, and even if his thumb hadn’t been pressed to Findaráto’s pulse point, he would have known his arousal. He bent down and covered Findaráto’s mouth in a kiss, a sea-salt kiss, a cold and quenching kiss, and Findaráto made a noise of surprise and need, and then opened his lips like a drowning man seeking air, begging for Ulmo’s tongue.
Ulmo denied him nothing.
He brought Findaráto to a grotto, a safe and secret place, a place of green and gold shadows; a place where he could lay Findaráto down gently, a place where the salt did not tug and roughen their skin, a place where he could press him to a soft bed of kelp and take the taste of Findaráto’s own salt onto his tongue.
They lay together, and Findaráto clung to him, fear as palpable as desire in his young body. Ulmo stroked his hair and called the waves to rush a soothing song against the walls. Findaráto shivered in his arms, and then laughed, a characteristic sound. “I have never done this before,” he confessed. “I have heard the ribald songs and stories, but I do not know…” his voice faltered a little. “I do not know exactly what to do. Much less with one such as you.” His eyes, the color of the sea, fixed on Ulmo, full of desire and worship and a little bit of fear.
And then Ulmo spoke, for the first time, his voice as low and mighty as the ocean. “Then I will show you.”
The sea is strong, even when it is gentle; the sea soothes as it stings; the sea is forceful and willful and wild, but so too does the sea cradle those dear to it. Ulmo moved into Findaráto with the rhythm of the waves, easing his length inside him inch by inch, slowing but not stopping as Findaráto panted and cried out and clutched at his shoulders. Findaráto’s spirit was so bright as to be tangible, and Ulmo lost himself in it, engulfed himself in Findaráto’s youth and beauty and the timbre of his voice as he moaned.
And though it went against everything he had ever promised himself, Ulmo swore to himself that wherever he could make Findaráto’s dreams a reality, he would.