A/N: A very short Aragorn/Legolas ficlet. If slash is not to your liking, please don't read. Unbetaed, so all mistakes are mine.
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The night has fallen as any other before this.
The Elf is lying still on a bed of shrivelled leaves, his head in the pool of pale light his hair creates. His beauty is like a hole in the canvas of the ground, brightness radiating from it under the dark trees. His eyes are empty, behind the blue veil of his sleep he is cutting across the distant woods of the North. Dreams are wrapped thick and impenetrable upon him.
The Ranger has knelt beside the Elf. His gaze falls on the fair creature like water, heavy and unrestrained. It flows along the curve of the white neck, into the furrows of the torso, pouring on the formations of the slender limbs.
This is the wild he longs to wander in.
Aragorn's hand moves to the face of his friend. The fingertips brush the smooth cheek lightly, they trace the outline of the parted lips, the delicate ear. He lets the sight of the Elf flow into him, fill the space of longing within him. His desire is stirred. Legolas moans faintly, the sound is caught in the night air and absorbed into the black voids around them.
Legolas stirs in his sleep, but the hazy veil never leaves his eyes.
Aragorn climbs on top of him, his knees on either side of Legolas' legs. He wants. He needs.
He leans in to kiss the Elf's lips. He tastes the moist warmth, the sweet scent of woods and air. It is also the scent of time, of shared memory, of love and lust and things unsaid, long cherished but never come true. Legolas' lips make tiny movements, they respond from across the distance of his sleep. His body is stimulated by the man's closeness, it reaches out, it weeps for the man's touch. Aragorn gasps as he feels Legolas' hard arousal against his own.
This would be a precious bliss were it true, not created through dreams, twisted reflections of this living night the Elf will not recognise once awake. Now every movement of his is an enemy the man must escape quietly, be still and wait for it to go away. A deep sigh, an almost unnoticeable twitch in the corner of the soft mouth, a blink – and then the Elf is still again, a leaf after a breeze has shaken it. The Ranger lets out a deep, prolonged breath. He does not move. He waits.
He waits.
In his wait are present years lived and choices made, every choice coloured by a ting of bitterness for relinquishment. Hopes held and others abandoned shift around him like shadows, moving, transforming, but never leaving, always there, always. His heart is bound to the light of Evenstar, but likewise it is bound to the shadows of Mirkwood, dark and rustling, those that filter her light and sculpt its shape as it falls on him.
Carefully, slowly Aragorn pulls away, his eyes never leaving the Elf's face. He climbs off his friend and stands up, returning to his watch. A whisper hangs in the chill of the night.
"I shall not speak the words, unless you close the distance between us first by uttering them."
And in his sleep, Legolas' eyes dew in disappointment as the hand that has been holding his own slips away, and no matter how he feels around for it, it escapes him. He cannot see who has carved out the shape of his heart he never knew himself.
Hours later, when he wakes up to take his watch turn and let Aragorn go to sleep, a butterfly smile will leave his lips and flutter in the air, and he will not look at his friend any differently, and Aragorn will lie down and pretend to sleep.
And the dawn will break just as any other before this, the stars will still be in the sky, and no mark will be left in this world of what lingers between them, unspoken.
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