Beta: Ireth. Thanks, hun!
000
I cannot sleep.
Night has passed though it is not fully dawn, yet I cannot sleep. I give up fighting wakefulness and turn to look at you instead, memorizing your features, though I already know them so well. Today you are returning to your own home, and we will not see each other for some time, for I too, must leave. But for now we are together, your eyes are glazed in reverie, and I am utterly content to watch you. I wonder if you would laugh to hear how much I enjoy looking upon you in these stolen moments, when you seem so young, so innocent. Being with you fills me with joy, for when we are together, I am complete.
Still I cannot help but wish for more. I want all of you. Your heart. Your soul. As I will gladly give you mine. As I already have.
The first time I saw you I felt this.
You had just come to Imladris for the first time. I remember how the sunlight glinted off your hair, how you moved so gracefully as you walked forward to greet us, how your eyes were filled with curiosity and delight as you glanced about the courtyard, how you smiled softly when we greeted you. You were the very meaning of masculine beauty. And when our gazes met, I knew. You were the one I had been waiting for. There was intelligence in your eyes, and humor, and warmth. And I wanted you. Oh, how I wanted you.
When I went to your room that night I was more than a little uncertain of your reaction. Was I being presumptuous? Had that truly been interest in your eyes as they met mine repeatedly in the Hall of Fire? Perhaps it was a figment of my overheated imagination, or you were merely being friendly. But when you let me into your room and shut the door behind me, there was no mistaking where the night would lead.
I can still vividly recall everything about that first time we came together. I only have to close my eyes and feel the touch of your hands upon me, the smoothness of your skin as I discovered you, my name upon your lips as I held you in my arms. My hunger that night was such as I had never known.
It is a hunger that remains with me still.
Thoughts of you haunt me when we are apart. I wonder when I will see you again, and if you are as eager for our reunions as I. Do you lie awake at night and remember, not only our couplings, but the times we have spent getting to know one another, the conversations, the half-hearted archery contests, and the quiet afternoons at the waterfall, when there is no need for anything but your presence?
And I long for you. In my darkest hours, when I am bent on vengeance and only killing heats my blood . . . then is when I need you the most. Only you can comfort me, can make me believe that I am more than what I have let myself become. For you are my dearest friend as well as my lover. You offer so much of yourself in that regard.
I wish that were enough for me, but it is not. Not now. I need to know you are mine. Forever.
When we are together I am filled with hope, yet plagued by doubt. Do you care for me, as I do for you? Sometimes I catch a fleeting look of tenderness and longing in your eyes as you regard me, and I wonder if there is more to your feelings than you let on. Then again, perhaps I am only seeing things. Perhaps I want to believe that your feelings mirror my own. Do they? If I wake you now, Legolas Thranduilion, and ask you, what would you say?
What would you say if I woke you and whispered the words that are in my heart: Do you know how much I love you?