FIC: First Touch (#28 of 50passages)
Title: First Touch
Fandom: Lord of the Rings
Characters: Elrohir / Legolas
Prompt: 028 ("Under the shadow of bushes leaning out over the water they halted and drew breath.")
Word Count: 2, 035
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Legolas notices that something is changing in Greenwood, and Elrohir’s relationship with the prince rises to a new, most unexpected level.
Author's Notes: My first one for the challenge! Set around T.A. 850, when Mirkwood was still called Greenwood the Great. An out-take from a WIP.
Under the shadow of bushes leaning out over the water they halted and drew breath.
“Think you that we have lost them?” asked his companion, a slender hand reaching up and undoing the leather thong holding his long golden mane in check, which had come half off during their escape.
“This is your wood, you should know,” Elrohir responded, a trifle tersely. “How did we not detect their approach?”
Legolas finished re-tying his hair before replying gravely, “They should not have.” His gaze scanned the surrounding forest, and despite the shade Elrohir could see the brightness of his eyes. “My father will not admit it,” he continued, twice as quiet. “But we no longer know the wood as well as we may think. A shadow lies upon it now; light as an Eagle’s breath, and seeming to be but a temporary overcast, yet my heart tells me it will grow worse. Far worse.”
“Is that what has been worrying you?” Elrohir asked, recalling his friend’s increasing quietness and wish for solitude.
“Among other things,” answered the Wood-Elf with characteristic evasiveness. “Are you injured?”
“Nay.”
“Apart from that gash bleeding into your leggings?”
Elrohir rolled his eyes, a gesture he and his twin had picked up from his father. “It is a surface wound. I will check and bind it when we rest for the night.”
“Then do so now, for I judge it unsafe to venture any further.” Before Elrohir could open his mouth to protest, Legolas had dropped his pack onto the ground and began rummaging inside for the medicine kit. “If we set out at first light tomorrow, we should achieve my father’s halls long before sundown. I must tell my brother of this; he sees further than our father, and has already ordered all our warriors to travel in groups, and never at night, not even on the road.”
“Does a pair constitute as a group, then?” Elrohir asked dryly.
Legolas threw him a look before extracting the kit from his pack and handing it to the Half-Elf. “Nay, but even I thought that two skilled warriors such as ourselves should be safe enough. That we were attacked not far from the road and by larger numbers of spiders than I have ever seen in daylight worries me greatly.”
Now Elrohir was worried, too. The sudden appearance of two large spiders almost above them was shocking enough, but he and Legolas could have handled them easily enough. Yet just as they engaged the two, another three, even larger spiders had scuttled out from the forest behind them. Looking back, he remembered how well Legolas had adapted to the situation, and had immediately changed tactics from attacking to defending and searching for a gap through which to escape, the moment he saw that they were outnumbered with the possibility of more spiders appearing. He found himself gazing at his companion with greater respect.
Sensing his gaze, Legolas met it with his own and asked, “What is it?”
Smiling, Elrohir said, “You will make a great captain, one day.”
To his surprise, the Legolas looked embarrassed and slightly discomfited. “My thanks for the compliment, but my brothers are the captains. I am only an archer.”
This self-effacement puzzled Elrohir. “For one who bears such a reputation as yours, my friend, you are unexpectedly humble.”
Legolas coughed, the pink stain on his fair face growing more prominent. “And what reputation may this be?”
“Why, a heart-breaker, of course!” At Legolas’ look of surprise, Elrohir chuckled, “Just because we live on the other side of the Misty Mountains does not mean we do not hear the tales from the other elven lands. The wandering companies bring us much in the way of news and gossip.”
Legolas laughed lightly, though still looked rather pink. “I suppose I do have quite a reputation, don’t I? And normally I am not so embarrassed about it, but something about you…” He suddenly stopped, eyes widening. “Oh… I… I must unstring my bow!”
Elrohir frowned, a bit puzzled at how important this chore seemed to be for his friend, who proceeded to do it with his full concentration and taking a great deal of care. Well, he was an archer, after all, and his weapon was obviously very important to him.
Wanting to make himself useful, Elrohir got out their rations, checked their equipment, and looked about their impromptu camp until Legolas finished his task. Then they ate their dinner, a very simple, tasteless fare that nonetheless gave their elven bodies sufficient sustenance for journeying.
Legolas had insisted on taking first watch, so Elrohir laid himself down on the hard, leaf-strewn ground.
“So, why do you do it?” he murmured.
“Do what?” he sensed Legolas looking at him sharply in alarm.
What was the matter with his friend? “Gain the affections of all the unmarried ellyth in your father’s realm?” he continued, pretending he hadn’t noticed Legolas’ exaggerated reaction. He supposed that Legolas must be overanxious about the increasing number of spiders in Greenwood.
“Oh.” He felt his friend relaxing once more. “I am not sure. At first I enjoyed the attention, and it was certainly very flattering. But after a time I realised that most of those females only wish to be wed to a son of the King. I would have stopped, then, but my father began pressuring me to find a wife, as all my brothers have. So I obliged him, in a way.”
“It is not easy, to be the younger son,” said Elrohir softly.
For a few heartbeats, Legolas was silent, and then he whispered, “No. It is not.”
“No matter what you do, either your brother has done it better, or your father calls it unconventional.” Elrohir sat up, gazing sympathetically at his friend. “Sometimes anger is better than no attention at all.”
Legolas looked at him with some amazement. “You understand,” he whispered, then dropped his eyes. “I never thought anyone would.”
Elrohir nodded, and reached out to grasp Legolas’ hand, giving comfort without words, as was a warrior’s way. Afterward, he would think back and wonder why he did not let go. But Legolas’ thumb suddenly caressed his fingers, as light as an Eagle’s breath, and he found himself transfixed by those bright eyes.
There was a blur of movement, and Elrohir suddenly found himself lying flat on his back, looking up at Legolas, who had straddled him and was bent over him, his face inches away. Elrohir saw now that the light in those eyes were from a fire burning fiercely within, and he felt the heat of it caress his face, suffusing through his body.
“Legolas,” he whispered, and was rewarded with a kiss.
At first it was utter sweetness, not unlike kissing a maiden, save for the strength and fire he could sense Legolas holding back. When his friend drew away, both of them were breathing unevenly.
Elrohir whispered, “I have never done this.” Then his hand reached out and pulled Legolas’ head back down again. The second kiss was less gentle, but he could still sense the other’s restraint. A part of him urged him to stop, to move away when it was still possible to excuse himself as being momentarily overcome. He knew that Legolas would release him, and never speak of it again, if he gave any sign of resistance or protest.
But another part of him, deep beneath his thundering heart and racing blood, wanted to feel what Legolas was holding back, wanted to know it, though with all the trepidation and curiosity of a child reaching his hand out towards an open flame for the very first time.
His last rational thought was, Elladan always said that my curiousity would be my downfall. Then he parted his lips, and after a second of stillness, Legolas slid inside.
Suddenly Elrohir could feel nothing beyond the merging of their mouths and the warmth and weight of Legolas’ lithe body on top of his. A low sound came deep within his chest. A silken curtain descended around them, and Elrohir belatedly realised that he had undone Legolas’ hair-tie. At first his hands only cradled Legolas’ head, venturing no further than the neck. But then he felt a hand travelling down his chest, and an archer’s nimble fingers locating and manipulating his nipples through his tunic.
Emitting something between a gasp and a moan, Elrohir allowed his hands to wander down Legolas’ back. Where in previous such situations he had always encountered soft, smooth female flesh, the feel of strong taut muscles reminded him of who his partner was. There could be no denying that the Elf on top of him was male. And a very well-developed one, a small voice in his mind felt obliged to add. For a second he came to himself a little, and he felt a little trill of alarm. But then Legolas’ mouth released him and moved to envelop his ear in a searing wet heat, and he lost himself once more to the pleasurable sensations the other was causing to streak through him.
“No.”
Elrohir wouldn’t have heard the whisper if Legolas’ had spoken right into his ear. The tongue exploring his earlobe gave one last lick before withdrawing, and Elrohir found himself looking dazedly up at Legolas, who had moved off of him and sat a few paces away, watching him carefully. Speechless, Elrohir found it strangely comforting to see that his friend was breathing hard as well, his eyes a little unfocused.
“Forgive me, Elrohir,” Legolas whispered, refusing to meet his gaze. “I know… I should not have…”
“We should not have,” the son of Elrond found himself saying. He was shocked, yes, and more confused than he had ever felt before, but he was also quite sure that Legolas could not take all the blame for the… for what they were doing.
For a long moment, they could only stare at each other. Once his heartbeat had settled down, Elrohir thought that he could still feel his friend’s lips on his, and the taste of Legolas lingered on his tongue, being too recent for memory.
“I am sorry,” Legolas whispered once more, and curled into himself. “I have resisted for so long… but then you touched me… please, Elrohir, do not let my father know. I will give you anything…”
Elrohir gaped in shock. Forgetting all of his own worries, he approached the trembling prince and pulled him into a comforting embrace. “Legolas,” he murmured. “I do not understand what- what happened here, just now, but I had a hand in it, too. It has not harmed either of us, and I daresay it does not affect the security of your realm, so it is certainly no business of your father.”
This seemed to comfort Legolas a little, though he still kept his eyes to the ground. “What if this is a- a sickness brought on by the darkness in the wood?” he continued. “What if there is an evil in me that is giving these… unnatural impulses?”
Elrohir rested a finger below Legolas’ chin and lifted his head up. “Does it feel evil?” he asked gently. “Does it feel wrong? What does your heart tell you?”
Uncertainty danced within those bright eyes, but finally Legolas whispered, “My heart tells me that it is not wrong, that it is not evil.”
“And so does mine.” The Half-Elf smiled. “I cannot say that I am entirely untroubled by this, but you have no right to take full responsibility for it. Let us leave it for tomorrow, then.”
Legolas nodded, and drew back, and offered Elrohir a smile worthy of the Sun herself. He had always seen his friend’s fairness of face, but it struck him now in a way it never had before. He attributed it to… the kiss they had shared.
The kiss. Or kisses, to be precise. He still could not get his mind around the notion that he had kissed another male.
As he bedded down once again for the night, another, more troubling notion materialized.
He wanted another kiss.
Elrohir blinked, then pushed the thought away into the night, and welcomed the embrace of dreams with the taste of his golden-haired archer still upon his lips.
Fandom: Lord of the Rings
Characters: Elrohir / Legolas
Prompt: 028 ("Under the shadow of bushes leaning out over the water they halted and drew breath.")
Word Count: 2, 035
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Legolas notices that something is changing in Greenwood, and Elrohir’s relationship with the prince rises to a new, most unexpected level.
Author's Notes: My first one for the challenge! Set around T.A. 850, when Mirkwood was still called Greenwood the Great. An out-take from a WIP.
Under the shadow of bushes leaning out over the water they halted and drew breath.
“Think you that we have lost them?” asked his companion, a slender hand reaching up and undoing the leather thong holding his long golden mane in check, which had come half off during their escape.
“This is your wood, you should know,” Elrohir responded, a trifle tersely. “How did we not detect their approach?”
Legolas finished re-tying his hair before replying gravely, “They should not have.” His gaze scanned the surrounding forest, and despite the shade Elrohir could see the brightness of his eyes. “My father will not admit it,” he continued, twice as quiet. “But we no longer know the wood as well as we may think. A shadow lies upon it now; light as an Eagle’s breath, and seeming to be but a temporary overcast, yet my heart tells me it will grow worse. Far worse.”
“Is that what has been worrying you?” Elrohir asked, recalling his friend’s increasing quietness and wish for solitude.
“Among other things,” answered the Wood-Elf with characteristic evasiveness. “Are you injured?”
“Nay.”
“Apart from that gash bleeding into your leggings?”
Elrohir rolled his eyes, a gesture he and his twin had picked up from his father. “It is a surface wound. I will check and bind it when we rest for the night.”
“Then do so now, for I judge it unsafe to venture any further.” Before Elrohir could open his mouth to protest, Legolas had dropped his pack onto the ground and began rummaging inside for the medicine kit. “If we set out at first light tomorrow, we should achieve my father’s halls long before sundown. I must tell my brother of this; he sees further than our father, and has already ordered all our warriors to travel in groups, and never at night, not even on the road.”
“Does a pair constitute as a group, then?” Elrohir asked dryly.
Legolas threw him a look before extracting the kit from his pack and handing it to the Half-Elf. “Nay, but even I thought that two skilled warriors such as ourselves should be safe enough. That we were attacked not far from the road and by larger numbers of spiders than I have ever seen in daylight worries me greatly.”
Now Elrohir was worried, too. The sudden appearance of two large spiders almost above them was shocking enough, but he and Legolas could have handled them easily enough. Yet just as they engaged the two, another three, even larger spiders had scuttled out from the forest behind them. Looking back, he remembered how well Legolas had adapted to the situation, and had immediately changed tactics from attacking to defending and searching for a gap through which to escape, the moment he saw that they were outnumbered with the possibility of more spiders appearing. He found himself gazing at his companion with greater respect.
Sensing his gaze, Legolas met it with his own and asked, “What is it?”
Smiling, Elrohir said, “You will make a great captain, one day.”
To his surprise, the Legolas looked embarrassed and slightly discomfited. “My thanks for the compliment, but my brothers are the captains. I am only an archer.”
This self-effacement puzzled Elrohir. “For one who bears such a reputation as yours, my friend, you are unexpectedly humble.”
Legolas coughed, the pink stain on his fair face growing more prominent. “And what reputation may this be?”
“Why, a heart-breaker, of course!” At Legolas’ look of surprise, Elrohir chuckled, “Just because we live on the other side of the Misty Mountains does not mean we do not hear the tales from the other elven lands. The wandering companies bring us much in the way of news and gossip.”
Legolas laughed lightly, though still looked rather pink. “I suppose I do have quite a reputation, don’t I? And normally I am not so embarrassed about it, but something about you…” He suddenly stopped, eyes widening. “Oh… I… I must unstring my bow!”
Elrohir frowned, a bit puzzled at how important this chore seemed to be for his friend, who proceeded to do it with his full concentration and taking a great deal of care. Well, he was an archer, after all, and his weapon was obviously very important to him.
Wanting to make himself useful, Elrohir got out their rations, checked their equipment, and looked about their impromptu camp until Legolas finished his task. Then they ate their dinner, a very simple, tasteless fare that nonetheless gave their elven bodies sufficient sustenance for journeying.
Legolas had insisted on taking first watch, so Elrohir laid himself down on the hard, leaf-strewn ground.
“So, why do you do it?” he murmured.
“Do what?” he sensed Legolas looking at him sharply in alarm.
What was the matter with his friend? “Gain the affections of all the unmarried ellyth in your father’s realm?” he continued, pretending he hadn’t noticed Legolas’ exaggerated reaction. He supposed that Legolas must be overanxious about the increasing number of spiders in Greenwood.
“Oh.” He felt his friend relaxing once more. “I am not sure. At first I enjoyed the attention, and it was certainly very flattering. But after a time I realised that most of those females only wish to be wed to a son of the King. I would have stopped, then, but my father began pressuring me to find a wife, as all my brothers have. So I obliged him, in a way.”
“It is not easy, to be the younger son,” said Elrohir softly.
For a few heartbeats, Legolas was silent, and then he whispered, “No. It is not.”
“No matter what you do, either your brother has done it better, or your father calls it unconventional.” Elrohir sat up, gazing sympathetically at his friend. “Sometimes anger is better than no attention at all.”
Legolas looked at him with some amazement. “You understand,” he whispered, then dropped his eyes. “I never thought anyone would.”
Elrohir nodded, and reached out to grasp Legolas’ hand, giving comfort without words, as was a warrior’s way. Afterward, he would think back and wonder why he did not let go. But Legolas’ thumb suddenly caressed his fingers, as light as an Eagle’s breath, and he found himself transfixed by those bright eyes.
There was a blur of movement, and Elrohir suddenly found himself lying flat on his back, looking up at Legolas, who had straddled him and was bent over him, his face inches away. Elrohir saw now that the light in those eyes were from a fire burning fiercely within, and he felt the heat of it caress his face, suffusing through his body.
“Legolas,” he whispered, and was rewarded with a kiss.
At first it was utter sweetness, not unlike kissing a maiden, save for the strength and fire he could sense Legolas holding back. When his friend drew away, both of them were breathing unevenly.
Elrohir whispered, “I have never done this.” Then his hand reached out and pulled Legolas’ head back down again. The second kiss was less gentle, but he could still sense the other’s restraint. A part of him urged him to stop, to move away when it was still possible to excuse himself as being momentarily overcome. He knew that Legolas would release him, and never speak of it again, if he gave any sign of resistance or protest.
But another part of him, deep beneath his thundering heart and racing blood, wanted to feel what Legolas was holding back, wanted to know it, though with all the trepidation and curiosity of a child reaching his hand out towards an open flame for the very first time.
His last rational thought was, Elladan always said that my curiousity would be my downfall. Then he parted his lips, and after a second of stillness, Legolas slid inside.
Suddenly Elrohir could feel nothing beyond the merging of their mouths and the warmth and weight of Legolas’ lithe body on top of his. A low sound came deep within his chest. A silken curtain descended around them, and Elrohir belatedly realised that he had undone Legolas’ hair-tie. At first his hands only cradled Legolas’ head, venturing no further than the neck. But then he felt a hand travelling down his chest, and an archer’s nimble fingers locating and manipulating his nipples through his tunic.
Emitting something between a gasp and a moan, Elrohir allowed his hands to wander down Legolas’ back. Where in previous such situations he had always encountered soft, smooth female flesh, the feel of strong taut muscles reminded him of who his partner was. There could be no denying that the Elf on top of him was male. And a very well-developed one, a small voice in his mind felt obliged to add. For a second he came to himself a little, and he felt a little trill of alarm. But then Legolas’ mouth released him and moved to envelop his ear in a searing wet heat, and he lost himself once more to the pleasurable sensations the other was causing to streak through him.
“No.”
Elrohir wouldn’t have heard the whisper if Legolas’ had spoken right into his ear. The tongue exploring his earlobe gave one last lick before withdrawing, and Elrohir found himself looking dazedly up at Legolas, who had moved off of him and sat a few paces away, watching him carefully. Speechless, Elrohir found it strangely comforting to see that his friend was breathing hard as well, his eyes a little unfocused.
“Forgive me, Elrohir,” Legolas whispered, refusing to meet his gaze. “I know… I should not have…”
“We should not have,” the son of Elrond found himself saying. He was shocked, yes, and more confused than he had ever felt before, but he was also quite sure that Legolas could not take all the blame for the… for what they were doing.
For a long moment, they could only stare at each other. Once his heartbeat had settled down, Elrohir thought that he could still feel his friend’s lips on his, and the taste of Legolas lingered on his tongue, being too recent for memory.
“I am sorry,” Legolas whispered once more, and curled into himself. “I have resisted for so long… but then you touched me… please, Elrohir, do not let my father know. I will give you anything…”
Elrohir gaped in shock. Forgetting all of his own worries, he approached the trembling prince and pulled him into a comforting embrace. “Legolas,” he murmured. “I do not understand what- what happened here, just now, but I had a hand in it, too. It has not harmed either of us, and I daresay it does not affect the security of your realm, so it is certainly no business of your father.”
This seemed to comfort Legolas a little, though he still kept his eyes to the ground. “What if this is a- a sickness brought on by the darkness in the wood?” he continued. “What if there is an evil in me that is giving these… unnatural impulses?”
Elrohir rested a finger below Legolas’ chin and lifted his head up. “Does it feel evil?” he asked gently. “Does it feel wrong? What does your heart tell you?”
Uncertainty danced within those bright eyes, but finally Legolas whispered, “My heart tells me that it is not wrong, that it is not evil.”
“And so does mine.” The Half-Elf smiled. “I cannot say that I am entirely untroubled by this, but you have no right to take full responsibility for it. Let us leave it for tomorrow, then.”
Legolas nodded, and drew back, and offered Elrohir a smile worthy of the Sun herself. He had always seen his friend’s fairness of face, but it struck him now in a way it never had before. He attributed it to… the kiss they had shared.
The kiss. Or kisses, to be precise. He still could not get his mind around the notion that he had kissed another male.
As he bedded down once again for the night, another, more troubling notion materialized.
He wanted another kiss.
Elrohir blinked, then pushed the thought away into the night, and welcomed the embrace of dreams with the taste of his golden-haired archer still upon his lips.