It was not dawn yet, but Legolas was restless. He came to check the door again, the closed study door, and found Riddel there, also apparently lacking in sleep. The man was not quite old, but had a maturity which the other servants seemed to lack. Perhaps that was why Legolas liked him more than he did the other servants, but it could also have been that the Elf noticed the servant’s real care for his king.

“So he did not leave his study? I don’t expect he had his dinner?” Riddel’s answer did not surprise Legolas and he wondered if he should interfere in Aragorn’s brooding. He would have, had he not been the cause of it. Now he opted to look after the babe. Later he would make sure that breakfast was ready to be taken to the king’s study.

Aragorn awoke in his chair, near the window, his faced touched by the first golden rays. He blinked, preferring to continue sleeping, but the sight outside caught his attention. The same earth that changed its face last night renewed itself now. It looked younger somehow, lighter in this early morning light, like a child being rediscovered.

A child, and Aragorn’s thought raced to his first-born. In Legolas’ care still, he knew and was relieved at once. The agitated sleep had brought him little comfort, no answers, but a momentary forgetfulness. For a split second he thought Legolas had gone back already. Not a logical thought, he knew, but since when were fears logical? And this was fear, he now grasped.

The tension in his muscles was evident, and Aragorn forced himself to relax by leaning back and breathing deep, slow breaths. It was not Legolas’ feelings that amazed him. No. It was that when confronted by them, he did not know how to define his own. The options that lay before him in this regard had still not shaped themselves, and all through this long night, Aragorn was dancing around them, nearing and moving back away almost in tides. It tired him and he was getting nowhere, without even the ability to see where it was that he was trying to reach.

His weariness gained on him. He closed his eyes, and a light sleep fell upon him. Memories started pouring out through his dream, memories of many things, of many places, that all remained as dreams for him since his coronation and, not much later on, his wedding.

Aragorn’s eyes shot open to discover that the day outside had progressed, as had his memories in his sleep, and like the sound of a distant bell - still resounding beyond the horizon, even after it stopped chiming - the thought of his coronation came to him. Gandalf’s hands, stroking with one clear motion the crown upon his head, turning to the crowd, walking past the people whom he cherished, one by one; and then came Legolas.

Legolas had been clad in a beautiful outfit in which he shone even more than usual. A sound, maybe the beating of his own heart, came back to Aragorn, just as Legolas had stepped aside to reveal Arwen. He could tell, now that he looked at her, that he had kissed her that day as he would never do again. There was a passion in him that day toward her that was later subdued into quiet lovemaking. It was never bad, but now he saw that it was lacking. What was it lacking? That thud, that blurry thud in his chest.

A new wave of guilt would have washed over him, were it not for the need to correct what was still in his power to change. He had done wrong to one, but he would do right this time. He had loved Arwen. He always had and would, but she was not the one he was in love with.

The door opened slowly. Legolas raised his head from the infant he was holding, without stopping the flow of his Elvish lullaby. Aragorn entered with a faint smile upon his lips, one which grew stronger, if not wider, at the sight. “He really is attached to you.”

“Shhh… speak lower. He has almost fallen asleep.” Legolas stood near the cradle, rocking the babe in his arms. “I’ll lay him down and we shall speak, but not in here.” Aragorn nodded in agreement, and quickly, though not abruptly, leaned toward the baby to kiss his cheek.

Legolas was the first out of the door, and first to lead their way into a private hall, down that same corridor. He opened the door before Aragorn, and after entering himself, turned back to close it. Before he reached the door, he found his hand being pulled away from the doorknob, and into a tight hold in Aragorn’s hand, while the man shoved the door closed with his other hand. “Forgive me,” Aragorn asked in a low voice.

“Forgive you?” Amazement was clear in Legolas’ voice. “What would I forgive you for? What have you done, that you should be forgiven?” With the same resolve that had been his own unique creation, once he set his mind to it, Aragorn did not back out, nor did he let go of his stunned friend. “It was my own fault for not understanding. Please, forgive me. Let me make it up to you, for my foolishness...”

“Aragorn, what are you talking about?” The strong hand that descended from the doorknob to Aragorn’s side now rose again, on its way to take hold of Legolas’ chin. “You are not the only one in love, Legolas, just the only one with sight clear enough to see it.”

And with that, Aragorn brought a great torture to Legolas. Although his very being sang at the touch – Aragorn’s touch – in that intimate spot, he knew that it was weakness, his own weakness that would take hold of him, if he caved in to his desire for the man, long kept at bay, when Aragorn would seek him out of need and loneliness. “Aragorn, just the other day you spoke of Arwen...” He was immediately hushed by a thumb moving across his lips. Aragorn looked deep in Legolas’ eyes and told him his mistake, “She was a love, a love and nothing more than that, and I was a fool for not understanding. Legolas, I don’t know when I fell in love with you, or why I could not see it, but I do know now. Please, believe me.”

And though he wanted to, because he wanted to, Legolas didn’t. The thumb moving in slow circles over his mouth was replaced with Aragorn’s lips, sweet and moist. Tickling. Awakening sensations.

He did not know, Legolas thought as he struggled with himself, Aragorn did not know what it meant for the Elves to go to bed with one another. It was more than wedding vows. It was the dedication of the heart and soul to another person. If Legolas’ love had hurt until now, then when Aragorn awoke from this phase of delusion, when he wanted a return to mere friendship, then Legolas’ love would pain him, would tear him apart, until it killed him.

And yet, those lips...Those lips that grew hungrier in their demands, that moved deeper, opening his mouth. Those kisses now reciprocated by his own, his lips parted by a tongue and an eagerness to feel Aragorn entirely. He could not push away this man whom he had loved for so long. This man with whom he would go to bed now, who will be the ruin of him, whom he could learn to hate before his dying was complete.

And for the second time since he arrived at Minas Tirith, Legolas decided to take a chance, whatever the consequences. Beyond all the love he needed from Aragorn, he was not able to take from Aragorn, from his love, the solace that the man had requested of him, even if he did not fully understand what it was he asked of the Elf.

Already Aragorn’s hands began to roam deep into the blond hair, just beneath the braids, along the earlobes, and to those pointed peaks, and all the time, devouring Legolas’ mouth, seeking out its warmth, then drawing back and allowing passage into his own.

Aragorn drew back from Legolas and moved his kisses to the side, along the strong jaw line, down to the neck, exploring the taste, the small twists and motions of muscle beneath liquid-white skin, then up again, following the hot rush of blood in the veins, and towards one pointed peak. “Aragorn,” the whisper from Legolas’ mouth was barely that, “It feels so...” and a gasp for air. Legolas had not known anyone before this man, had never known Aragorn could make him feel the way he did, a feeling he would not be able to describe, not in all his immortal years, but he had passed on that, and he passed on words and on any other sound as he gave in to his own end. Slowly and relentlessly, Aragorn guided their bodies to the floor, to the white fur carpet, so soft, in front of the burning fireplace. Legolas knew not how Aragorn had managed it, but there they were, lying in his soft, white and blazing destruction.

And what a sweet destruction it was, as Legolas moved his hands to the nape of Aragorn’s neck, feeling through the silky brown hair, clenching it when the man found the most sensitive spot in his ear, just beneath the upper fold of that pointed peak, never to be of the same innocence that once it was.

Everything in Legolas’ body pulsed, and to this rhythm he wrapped his legs around Aragorn’s, ground against him, as though unsure, as though he could inflict his passion on Aragorn with this frenzied movement, and it was good. Legolas almost purred but again ran out of breath. It was good, his hands now feverishly undoing his love’s clothes, no buttons, no rips, he peeled the clothes to reveal Aragorn layer by layer, and noticed a small vial of oil that rolled out of the stripped clothes, possibly just borrowed from the infirmary. And there was a mental note that Legolas needed to make but couldn’t, while Aragorn’s hand came forward to catch the vial, to open it with one determined motion of his thumb.

“Legolas, may I...” The question’s end was buried into the white chest, above which Aragorn’s mouth hovered, now leaning in, kissing, now sucking with urgency on one nipple, now the other, and Legolas moved his head to signal yes without a single noise, but his chest heaved up and down, to Aragorn’s mouth, then teasingly away from it, as the man drew back to drench his fingers in the oil.

“Ahh,” but it was a quiet scream, and already Aragorn’s finger was inside Legolas, thoroughly massaging in all directions, then slowly searching towards one, almost finding it, drawing back and inserting another finger, a third, all moving inside Legolas, whose fingers dug deep into Aragorn’s back, deeper. He could feel his love’s golden brown color stinging at his skin, then beneath his skin, his fingers beneath Aragorn’s skin, digging at his essence, and all the while a lamentation sang in his head.

One ankle around each shoulder, they were falling perfectly into place. Aragorn stopped to kiss Legolas. What a gentle kiss it was, with such tenderness that it brought tears to Legolas’ eyes. “If I hurt you, say so.” And with this instruction Aragorn began a journey into Legolas’ core, filling him slowly, judging the pain that the Elf wouldn’t admit from the movements of his tilted head, until he was fully immersed in the hot, burning flesh. He stopped again to look at the sight of beauty beneath him, the memory of the coronation floating back, not even close to this, to the radiance of the face, of the white skin, played out by the fire’s flames, and Aragorn could not believe how good it was. Legolas’ eyes met his.

Legolas saw it there, in Aragorn’s eyes, nearly black, and a sense of joy overcame him. He had not believed it, but it was true. Aragorn drew back from within him as Legolas held on tighter to him with arms, with legs, with a torrid kiss that he demanded from his lover, and then Aragorn plunged in, into a rhythm so beautiful, dictated by Legolas’ hip thrusts against him, the thrusts in which the Elf pulled Aragorn towards him, inside him; it was so good. He made sure to plunge at that particular point each time, in and out and deeper in, as though he were feeling Legolas with every fiber of his body, of his soul, of something beyond both. He felt the edge. Any moment now he would look over it and to the other side, and he took Legolas by his manhood with him.

To be continued...