Reach

Mellow Soulmate AU.  The beginning of an arc that began back in February.  I'm too lazy to make a real summary.  This is the prequel, of sorts, to "Bewitching", "Languid" and "Settle", but is also then related to "Run", "Tactile", "Hurt" and "Indirect".  Yeah, something like that.  Takes place to the east of even Mirkwood in the Third Age.

Disclaimer: I own not the Silmarillion

Pairings: Amras x Daeron

Characters: Daeron, Amras (mentions Beren, Lúthien, Celegorm and the Valar)

Warning: non-canon compliant, non-canon relationships, slash, rarepair plz, hints at the Kinslayings, prejudice, racism and xenophobia, soul-mates, sexual undertones

Song: If Today Was Your Last Day

Words: 1,223
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reach (verb): to stretch out, extend; to touch or grasp by extending a part of the body (as a hand) or an object; to make an impression on
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/reach

Every line and angle of the stranger spoke of golodh descent.  If anything, the hunter was every recherche cliche Daeron imagined a hot-blooded deep-elf to be.  Tall of body, broad of shoulder and searing to the touch.  Too bright to look upon directly but too distracting to look away for long.

Something terrifying, sculpted from unyielding marble with a heart that might as well have been stone.  A monster that could as easily rip him asunder and devour his innards hungrily as it could kiss him and cradle his body close with tenderness in that powerful grip.

And yet he was inexorably drawn despite.

Would see the vibrant shade of hair and wish to run his fingers through its curls, relishing how they clung as vines to his hand, lavishing their silky attention to his skin.  Would take notice of the spattering of freckles on pale skin and wonder how long it would take to count each and every one, memorizing their patterns across those noble cheeks and the long, elegant nose.

Would look at the eyes, the only green and lively glimmer in a creature made purely of fire and rage, and would want so very painfully.  To hold that face in the cup of his palms and find every different shade of verdant in those depths.  To watch the lashes of russet widen as his fingers played along the thin lines of pale lips, judging their softness against his musician's calluses.

To see their searing, branding heat cool and soften with passion as bodies--slick and hungry and writhing--twined their way together and never came apart.

It was in Daeron's very dreams, the essence of that stranger.  The deep hum of his voice echoing in the shadows.  The swift and methodical movements of his conservative hands.  The length and dexterity of his long, white fingers.

Even Lúthien, in all her otherworldly, ephemeral grace and presence, had never incited this level of need and admiration from the most animalistic corners of his spirit.  This itching, burning feeling beneath his skin that seemed to want to claw its way out.  That screamed for him to follow the hunter through the forest, to grasp him and throw him down into the grass to rut like an animal upon the flexing muscle and tendon of that lithe, lust-worthy form.

What he felt for Lúthien had been quiet and pure.  There had been lust, but little.  More had it been her enchanting beauty and her sweet--if naive of self-centered--disposition that had drawn him forth from willing seclusion.  And Daeron had been more the best friend and confident--more the overbearing and overprotective older brother--than ever had he been her lover in even thought.

It was, in part, this difference, so primal and intrinsic, that made him nervous.

That had him backing away when those green eyes glanced toward his hiding places, though his feet dragged with the urge to stay and surrender to longing.  That had him keeping silent whenever the urge to voice his presence or sing softly in pleasure rose as a caged bird within his chest.

This was not Lúthien.  This was a nameless golodh.  A stranger with the unholy fire.

Dangerous.  Frightening.

Exhilarating.

Part of him wanted so badly to step forward.  The rest of him wanted to run away and hide.  To turn a blind eye to the truth swinging an open hand toward his exposed cheek.  To pretend that the world still revolved around the songbird voice and sky-tinted eyes of a woman far out of his reach.

He did not want to let her memory loose and watch it flutter away upon painted wings.  He did not want to search for another butterfly to find that only those with black, bent and battered wings were slow enough to catch and claim as his own.

But Daeron knew, too, that in the past hiding had brought nothing but suffering upon his withering heart and spirit.  Long nights lost in tense thought, staring up at the stars and wishing hopelessly that some miracle might happen to bring him together with her.  Longer days watching her dance to his voice, their arts entwining as beautifully as he dreamed their hearts and bodies might if only she would glance upon him twice...

Only she had fallen in love with another.  Was destined for another.

Could he really do that again?  Could he watch his soul's fated in darkness and silence, praying for an answer from the cold and silent Valar that might never come?  Could he wait until all had slipped through his fingers and again he stood alone in the wide world, his image growing thinner with each passing moment as the longing simmered down into grief and regret?

Could he stand by and watch another take his place, as had been the case with Lúthien twice over?  Could he simply pretend, for all of eternity, that his will was not shattered and the pieces not crushed to glassy dust?

Could he torment himself that way for a second time when something could be done to stop that awful, free-falling trajectory toward the crags and rocks hundreds of feet below?

Or could he reach out and grasp, for the first time, his truest desire and feel his hands close about its softness?  Shoving aside the fear of pain and rejection, of discovering something black and infected with poison beneath the lovely porcelain exterior.  Forcing himself to take the first step toward happiness that the deepest wells and pits of his soul strived toward for purification and salvation.

In the end, it was but a simple choice.

Daeron stood in the shadows, watching the quick, darting movements of the hunter with his wind-blown and untamed mane of vehement red and his eyes more alive than all the forest and the sky and the earth put together.  He stood and watched in silence, thinking back to the days he had spent observing Lúthien but never speaking of his great love for her until it was far too late.  Until they were ripped apart and cast to separate ends of the world.

No happiness would come if he drew back and cowered now.  This much he knew.  If he did not even dare to attempt to grasp, even blindly, at that prize which all sought in their deepest of hearts, there would be nothing but emptiness.

If he did not reach, this chance--as had all others before it--would slip away into the shadows and become lost to his sight in the thick mist of twilight.  And, this time, there would be no second chance waiting just around the corner of time's great line, for there was but one fated in all the world who could complete him.  Who could make his entire being burn and ache to combine and join and erase the jagged edges left in their wake with nothing more than a presence and a distant touch.

With his pulse throbbing deep in his throat, Daeron watched.  And waited.  And reached.

When all was quiet and the world held its breath in wonder, he parted his lips to sing.
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Once again, forgive me.  Physics.  Urgh...

I'm not ranting today.  The song is If Today Was Your Last Day by Nickelback.  If you listen to the song, the correlation between the lyrics and the story should be readily evident.  In any case, I love this song but just don't currently have the energy to rant about it.  Just know that it keeps me going on days when all I feel like doing is curling up into a ball until the earth swallows me whole.

The end.  Bedtime.