Title: Icarus

Author: Lelattha(Artemis554@aol.com)

Rating: let's call it PG-13

Warnings: We'll say its movieverse, just to be safe (I keep getting afraid I'll mess up according to the books).  It's also told in present tense, second person (but don't be afraid to read it!).  Also, this isn't AU.  The characters don't have wings; I'm just making a sorry attempt of a metaphor.

Pairing: Aragorn/Boromir

Please tell me what you think!

In your imagination, you can see your hands peeling silver paint off the darkening leaves and twisting it over slender fingers until they look like nothing but moonlight and shadow.  Then you would pull it across your entire body until he was unable to see you, incapable of laying his eyes on the dip between your shoulder blades (they seem charred-as if you fell from your wings when you were one thousand feet up and came like a meteor into the Golden Wood).  You cannot turn around to look at him; you cannot affix your gaze to his and drink in the pale skin and beard drawn carelessly around it.  But you still see it, remembering his breath on your chin and his hands clutching your shoulders as he whispered fiercely that night when you struggled in his grasp.

Aragorn's steps are almost undetectable, but you can feel him draw near, taking your forearm and pulling at it gently.  He murmurs, "Why have you been running?"

You find that you are unable to answer him.  He might have asked something simpler, such as "When did you start to run?" (The first time he laughed, pressing his forehead against yours), He might have asked, "How long have you been running?" (Since you found the emotions that rose inside of you, since you found that you were intoxicated by the play of light on his forehead and the shadows stretched tight across his skin).   But he has always followed behind, refraining from asking you simple questions and waiting for your emotional conflict to resolve itself.

Now he turns you around to face him, you are forced to meet his piercing eyes and he wraps his hands around your shoulders, keeping his elbows bent at rigid angles, even as it was a few days ago.  Again, you feel the rebellion rising inside you, the feeling that you are trapped and unable to keep him from coming closer.  You fight to subdue these emotions, knowing that you want him to be closer to you than he is, and knowing that if he did advance, you would be unable to withstand it.  All you can think to do is hold your breath (maybe that will keep your inner explosion at bay).

Aragorn seems to know what is happening to you; he regards you for a moment and then leans forward and slides his mouth up against yours.  For what seems like an age but can only be an instant, you do not care anymore.  You lose yourself completely; you cannot tell where his figure ends and yours starts—

Sensations explode inside you, you feel that you are an animal caught in a small corner of your cage; you realize what you have done and you reach your hands up to his soft shirt and shove away, stumbling backward over the mossy ground.  Your limbs are trembling.  For a few seconds, you hate yourself with an inconceivable power.  You hate yourself forgiving in, and you hate yourself for breaking away.

Aragorn is not angry.  He watches you tear yourself open, revealing wounds that he thinks he can heal.  He whispers, "Why do you always run, Boromir?"

You think about it then, truly think about it rather than pretending to like you have every other time you were presented with such a question.  And then you know why.  You can look straight into his face (shining from the light of an internal sun) and you will feel no shame in revealing the simple truth.  "How could I have ever tasted the sweetness of standing still?"

You turn and walk away, feeling his eyes on your back, resting in that same place between your shoulder blades.  As they travel the length of your spine, you realize that your wings have fallen with you, one thousand feet from the beauty of the sky.