Work Text:
The surrounding darkness was timid when the fellowship reached the mines, as if the very shadow it cast observed your every move, like you were unwelcome, an unwanted guest. Bold and harsh had been the steps of your companions until now, yet the air was unsettling, and you could hear how their movements had lessened, as if the very ground they walked on would falter if only a step was misplaced. Perhaps it would, you thought. The slight creaking noise—as if the stones beneath your feet wailed into the fraught silence—made you increasingly aware of how frail these mountainous structures had become with age.
Wondrous though they were, yet you gazed upon their greatness with a tugging at your heart which you couldn’t place, only that the walls held a certain sadness that simmered behind every rock, behind every corner. Did they grieve with your companion, you wondered, casting a careful glance at Gimli where he had huddled himself into a corner, shoulders heaving with sorrow, eyes brimming with tears that ought not to fall. A quiet kind of pain, one which tears through your body slowly, cruel in its own way, for it stuck with you until it frayed your bones, marked their way through your soul.
Such a revelation would have destroyed you, you thought as your gaze dropped, thinking it better to let him be, not wishing to prod at his freshly drawn wound. It seemed you weren't the only one who thought so, for the others had retreated for the time being, their chests moving beneath their blankets timidly, as if aware even in sleep of the unearthliness that had become more potent the further you had wandered.
You thought it to be a real shame to find the halls of Moria so desolate, reeking with forgotten memories, yet tainted with a smell that reminded you of old, bloodied rags. A certain sweetness clung to it, yet something acidic seeped in, ready to eat away at the fibers of the fabric. It made a chill traverse the expanse of your skin, and you found yourself increasingly appreciative that you needn't tread through this place on your own.
“It will pass,” a hushed voice spoke beside you, quiet yet seeming so loud in the silence that had settled over the fellowship—your friends remaining curled in cloaks and shadows, distant and unmoving.
“I’m not so sure,” you said, giving Gimli one last look, your brows drawing deep shadows to rest over the valleys of your face.
Warmth suddenly radiated from beside you when Legolas seated himself on the damp ground, and it was a welcome change, still finding yourself rigid from the frost that had found its way into your skin and settled deeply inside. Welcomed, yet unnerving, and you found your eyes dancing wildly at the darkness that spread its hold before you, not entirely too sure where to look.
But, you would come to find that you needn't decide, for you felt the nimble touch of something soft against your face. It was unwavering, the way his fingers hesitantly pressed onto your cheek, his eyes steady yet tinged with something that sent a shiver through you when he gazed at the small cuts littering your face.
“You are hurt,” he stated, thumb trailing down, careful to avoid the slivers that tainted it.
A few moments passed, the steady beating in your heart pulsing loudly, just as if someone had grabbed it and held it right beside your ear. His movements had then turned unsure, a flash of recognition drawing over his face as he withdrew his hands. A deep ache settled in the pit of your stomach, and if it was in disappointment of losing his touch, you dared not admit for yourself, for it would speak too clearly—and you didn't want to open yourself to the wounds it could create.
It lingered in the air, the tension that never seemed to disappear when you strayed close to one another. Small hidden glances, ones who dared not be obvious yet seemingly not able to pull away for even the shortest of time. Small prickles, like hundreds of nails breaking the thin, first layer of your skin, were in moments like that present, as if sensing the nearness of the other. Yet it wasn't painful, it was pleasant, and the feeling never ceased to disappear.
“Oh,” you said, the word more breathy than you liked. “It’s alright.”
His words reminded you of your path here, and how it never occurred to you how harshly the weather fought from such a height from as it did on the passage of Caradhras, how it seemed much darker—almost eerie—the growing threat from beyond the clouds only making the sight appear as if all light had been removed from the world. It made you feel small, the towering mountain walls casting shadows which cut grimly through the pass way, coloring the snow beneath you in a grayish blue that looked none the colder than it actually was. For it was cold, the type of chill that settles deep within you, relentless in its torture and brutal in its jeering.
You had despised every small, melting flake that thought the already frigid skin on your face had been a great place to land upon. It made the decision of venturing into the mines much less daunting, for you decided that anything was better than that—even if that meant treading through the dark, dwarfish corridors that to any but themselves appeared cold and menacing. Beautiful, of course—like so many terrible things are, in their own strange way—yet all the more alluring as another gust of wind had slipped through the cotton of your tunic, as if it were made of nothing but paper. A taunt, you had stated to yourself, a taunt from nature against your very sanity as if it wasn’t already hanging on by a very thin, very frail piece of thread.
“Turn back!” the booming yell of Gandalf had cut through the roaring wind, and if it wasn’t for the sheer force that always clung to the edges of his voice, you wouldn’t have heard him as the stones crashed against the other, the splinters falling around you like rainfall. “We’ll have to go through the mines!”
You passed a hand over your face mindlessly as you remembered the rocks that had scattered from the impact, the darkness which gave upon you in the room extinguishing any chance of glancing at your reflection, whether it was at the blade of your dagger or the grimy, slinky pools of water. Yet you winced when the touch irritated the sore edges lining the red cuts; scratchy and small you'd come to find but their amount made the pain more extensive than you originally thought.
Once more, you felt your hand encased by one much larger, ending your wandering exploration abruptly in dismay. “It is better to leave it be,” he mumbled, eyes trailing over your face till they met yours, faltering when he realised your gaze was already set upon him. “You should be more careful.”
Your first instinct would be to face him with malcontent, as you would any that opposed your ability to defend yourself, yet the vulnerability behind his words made you hesitant, your thoughts fraying inside your mind. There was a certain tenderness behind it that bled through the cracks of his voice, blurred the edges of what he should have meant and what he actually implied. It might’ve been on purpose, or it might have been a moment of weakness; a short, futile attempt to cover what you shouldn’t know, shouldn’t hear.
A few moments passed, a short silence settling over you. It wasn’t uncomfortable, per se, yet a strain filled the air, flickering slightly around like small bursts of static. It was as if something in the air was waiting, watching, filling the spaces around you till it grew shallow in suspense. The faint rustling could be heard nearby, the scrape of a shifting foot, but it all faded, neither here nor there anymore. You tried not to look, tried not to let your eyes wander. Truly, you did. But your curiosity was too grand, a poor habit that now seemed so incredibly unwished for.
“I am careful,” you whispered eventually, though the words came out later than you’d like and softer than intended—barely a breath, like you’d forgotten how to speak. “Mostly.”
Peeking through your lashes, you saw the slight tug of his lips—not a smile, not really—but something faint. “Then I dread to see what you look like when you are reckless.”
A sound so soft it hardly deserved the name of laughter rose in your chest, and his head turned towards you, like the sound surprised him. “Do you jest with me, Legolas?”
There it was again—that nearly smile. Yet his eyes were too serious. Too still.
“No,” he said. “I only find it a shame to see such cruelty taint your delicate skin.”
You had meant to scoff, to tease, to brush it of—but something in the way he said it made your skin feel too tight. It was his words, and the way he looked at you, as if he tried to convey that what he said held such a truth it couldn’t be anything other than factual. What could you say in return, you thought, your mind frozen from the suddenness of what he said, the unexpectedness of it not failing in hushing your lips.
You looked away first. And yet you didn’t move.
“Are you cold?” he asked, suddenly, and you knew it for what it was—a bridge. A gentle way to ask may I stay? A way to hide the question neither of you wanted to ask aloud.
“A little,” you admitted. It wasn’t just a little, for the coldness from before seemed to have settled deep in your bones, coursed through every muscle until it felt like your whole body tried to fold into itself to regain any sense of warmth, of normality.
His movement was immediate, draping his cloak over your shoulders without asking, without waiting for your permission. It still held warmth to it, still bathed in the heat from his skin that never seemed to feel the chill that settled as dusk came or when snow fell. You envied it, but you also gazed upon it in wonder—a quiet amazement that such a thing could be possible, for it seemed so far away to you, so unfamiliar. Yet the scent was comforting, and you believed it held no right to still cling to him in a place so devoid of growing things such as this.
“You will warm up soon,” he said quietly, meeting the ends of the cloak at your front so not the smallest wisp of air could penetrate, yet he did it slowly, and you wondered if he did it in wish for the moment to be prolonged.
“Thank you,” you said, eyes flickering up to his face a few times. “The weather on that mountain wasn’t kind.”
He hummed, tucking the cloak carefully beneath the bend of your legs. “Yet the air is fouler in these halls,” he mumbled. “I fear we traded one danger for another.”
His voice held no hesitation, but it did little to quiet the anxiety coiled in your chest. The thought of threading deeper into these shadowed corridors—trapped with no chance to turn back—settled heavy in your chest. That was what you feared the most: not the darkness itself, but the forward motion of it. The certainty that retreat was no longer an option, that what lay ahead was neither foretold nor safe.
“You are frightened.”
It was more a statement than a question, eyes boring into yours when you gazed up at him.
“I’d be a fool if I wasn’t,” you said, fingers tightening around the edges of the cloak as it began its slow descent down your sides. But your voice betrayed you—it wavered, soft with something too hopeful, too unsure, belaying the brave acceptance your words tried to claim.
Legolas was kept leaning over you, yet his motions had stilled, close but not quite touching—the careful distance he always kept. He seemed carved from the quiet, a piece of the dark given breath and golden hair as his profile caught the faint silver light of a dying fire—sharp and unreal, as if he had stepped out of a dream. One moment his gaze was distant, unreadable as it always seemed to be—and then it shifted, a vulnerability drawing up the confines of his face as he leaned in closer, not quite touching but close enough for your skin to pulse with the nearness.
Your breath caught—his own one warming your cheek, his thumb ghosting your sides, eyes dipped low and dangerous—and you found that you couldn’t look away. A certain look glazed over then, as if trying to convey something that could only be told by feeling rather than something spoken, and you found yourself leaning in closer as if it would make his message clearer, as if by doing so you could crawl through his head and read every thought that crossed his mind.
“Do not be afraid,” a hushed, barely there mumble of words. “There is not a moment where my eyes stray from you.”
His lips were soft, and they held a kind of tenderness that crawled up your body in a small—slow yet grasping—hold, leaving behind tingles that made you want to curl into yourself to hide from their onslaught. It was featherlight, yet bruising—welcomed, and yet somehow illicit—and it didn’t fail to make your hands tremble where they had risen from the ground, holding them in front of you as an imaginary shield stemming from the suddenness of the elf's advance. Hanging in the air, your head rested against the stony wall, and you weren’t sure if it was in an attempt to escape his grasp or have him lean in closer, to feel his body nearer when his arm trespassed your futile blockade.
Leather was the first thing that reached your nose. Not the sharp bite of a polished saddle or new boots, but something lived in—damp, softened, dark. The kind of scent that clung to old gloves left out in the rain, like something remembered rather than new, warmed by the heat of his body. Yet there was a breath of lightness to it, like cold sunlight when it touches the high mountain air—crisp and unmoving, yet beneath it something that didn’t belong to time. A stillness. Patience. As if time had settled on him like dust and never stirred again. Not dead, not stale—just… paused.
He shifted, slow and sure, and your shoulder jumped when you felt the light touch—as if testing the shape of you—pressing against the curve of your waist. The palm was warm, long fingers bleeding through your vast layer of clothes, and it sent such warmth that small shocks of heatwaves traveled throughout your body. He leaned closer as the wall behind you welcomed his weight, the other arm reaching across, bracing against the stone just above your shoulder, caging you as his body seemed to fold into you. Not crushing nor towering, but present, larger than you in a way that felt quietly devastating.
There was no room to move—not because he held you down, but because your limbs had frozen shut, as if your flesh had turned to clay. Yet the beating of your heart seemed too loud, too alive, and you felt him everywhere—his shoulders grazing yours, the broad stretch of his chest pressing against your own, his knee that had shifted just enough to bracket your thigh and the quiet strength like a tension in his limbs, a coiled stillness as though he was holding back more than just a breath. He moved too gracefully, too quietly, too much like wind to seem human—but now, pinned in the cradle of his arms, feeling the lean strength of his body, it occurred to you that this was not the grace of something untouchable—this was the quiet grasp of something so devastatingly real.
You arched, just slightly, as if your spine was being drawn upwards by an invisible string. It wasn’t by any means a drastic move—just a soft, instinctive pull of your chest into his, one which he met whereas his hand, once still yet twitching against your waist, followed the subtle curve of your body to curl around your back. It didn’t fail to make a small, quiet gasp travel from the back of your throat, pure and true, for the anticipation building up inside your chest was welling over and you found it too much to handle, his sudden affection nauseating.
Your hand, which had been faltering in the air until now, flushed suddenly with blood—sharp and stinging as your fingers finally dared to move. Tentative at first, as if afraid to break the spell, you reached for him. A light caress glided over the expanse of his arm, trailing up the soft fabric of his tunic, and beneath it: heat, sinew, and tightly coiled restraint that tensed beneath your wandering touch. They followed along the path to his shoulder, and the motion made his lips against yours deepen, pulling you further into his hold as if your touch had prodded an old wound inside him.
And his hair was silken, like fine-spun starlight, threading around your fingers as you grazed the roots, tangled gently in the braids that followed the curve of his head. You let them rest there for a while—then, you let them graze downward mindlessly, just barely across the curve of his ear as they wandered, anchoring themselves as his mouth moved over yours, to convince yourself that this wasn’t some sort of dream, that the stone at your back was real and the ground beneath you not made of air. One finger—curious— slipped too high, too light.
A breath caught sharp in his throat, and then—before you could apologize—he flinched. Not away, no, but inward. Not a moan, not a groan, just a scrunch of his face, a twitch of his brows. His lips parted from yours by a hair’s breadth, just enough for air to pass between you as his mouth remained slightly open, a breath escaping him—a soft, involuntary puff of air, warm and shaken. An unsteady heart, a quick pulse, a warmth shared, and his eyes remained half-lidded, dazed as he looked at you, like sight might ruin it—too bright, too close to be real.
“I lebid gîn… díheno nin” His words came out low yet scratchy, trembling, as if they were unraveling from the back of his throat. Strained, yet something much deeper hid behind it, like an ache simmering beneath the surface of his voice.
It was but a short moment he strayed from you, for surrender brimmed inside him, and you—gods, you felt it all. The flutter came first—deep in the caverns of your belly, featherlight and stuttering, growing wildly as he kissed you once more, deeper this time, yet not with the careful reverence of before but something more desperate, his hand sliding further down to grasp at your hips with a tenderness that felt so unfamiliar to you, yet the thought of it had warmth blooming throughout your chest.
Deepened, it became something that pulled at the root of the spine and curled beneath the ribs. No longer was it only the meeting of mouths, but mouths seeking and asking, and his parted yours, and you let him, breath catching on the hinge of a sigh.
Then—
A voice, sudden and sharp, carved into the silence like a blade.
“I have found the way!”
Gandalf's voice, distant but clear, echoed through the darkness, and you found yourself breaking apart—slowly, like waking dazed with wide eyes, pupils blown like ink dropped in milk, from a dream. Time floated slowly as if you’d been pushed underwater, Your mouth hovered, still near, still breathing the same breath, inhaling the same air.
Yet the silence that followed was thick as you stared at him, lips parted, red and bitten and his hand lingered on your jaw, thumb grazing the corner of your mouth with lidded eyes gazing through eyelashes as if in a haze, as if still entangled deeply in your web. His fingers shifted slightly, not to tighten but to remain, a touch both reverent and selfish—spurred on by the softness of your eyes, the faint tremble in your throat betraying the chaos behind your stillness. And something in you quivered—not from fear nor doubt, but from the thought that what just unfolded between you could not be folded away as easily as it had begun. No undoing, no swallowing it whole.
A second voice now—--Boromir's low groan, followed by the rasp of a chainmail, the scrape of boots on stone.
You broke apart—this time in haste. Space was filled between you, a space that would be deemed appropriate as your gaze fell to the movement behind you, then away again, hand brushing the hair that had fallen wildly over your face back with sudden urgency. You caught the flicker in his gaze—the way it dropped to your lips again, just briefly, as if pulled towards a memory. There was no hint of a smile, nor a try to speak, just a short meeting of eyes, although something flickered behind them, brief and half-guarded, yet he said nothing, and you found that he didn’t need to for the moment had spoken loudly enough to convey what might always had been the outcome no matter which road you would have taken.