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"And here I have found, what I sought not indeed, but finding I would possess forever.”
J. R. R. Tolkien
⊱ꕥ⊰
Wisps of white caress the air. Particles, interspersed with light, flourish as they disintegrate to rejoin air displaced from lungs wrought with joy. They curl around the leaves, floating steadily upwards before the breeze catches them, carried forth in their gentle winds.
A pass of the pipe, briar wood smooth in hand as the mouthpiece kisses pale lips for a lengthy inhale—
“What is in this?” A wheeze, followed by deep, desperate coughs from the tall elf perching in the sun-warmed grass next to him. Sebastian laughs as he eases the wood from the trembling hand not clutched to heart.
“A little something from the garden, I should’ve warned you.” He smiles apologetically, rubbing soothing, flat-palmed circles into Ominis’ back whilst the elf regains his composure. It’s not often that he sees his friend in such a state of involuntary vulnerability—a rare moment as precious as any entrusted to him. “Don’t usually see you cough like this.”
“I don’t, usually,” Ominis splutters, straightens his back, and allows air to greet his lungs as he wipes ill-fated moisture from his eyes.
“I seem to remember it differently.” Sebastian retreats back into the green embrace of the earth upon the reassurance of a gentle smile. “The first time I offered you my pipe, you had the same reaction.” He chuckles at the memory: all the elegance lost with a bend of the waist, the tremor of shoulders and a wretched choke as Ominis convulsed. Not that it had stopped him before, nor would it now as the elf took another hit.
“As any might have upon their first taste of pipe-leaf.”
“Fair.” Sebastian draws in another puff, unwilling to waste precious smoke.
“Let me try again.” True to the memory, Ominis extends his hand in the general direction of Sebastian’s voice, hovering mere inches from where his usually calculated precision would have him end.
Quirking a brow, he fixes the elf with a bemused expression before handing him the pipe once more. “Careful this time.”
It’s almost too endearing—the dismissive wave of an elegant hand, the tucking of a strand behind his pointed ears, and the grounding inhale as Ominis steels himself for a repeat experience. It seems not many things change, not that elves ever truly did.
Ominis puffs carefully this time, mindful in his experimentality as he allows the new fragrance to unfold within, the smoke curling in his lungs the same as it had in the air they breathed so easily.
The wispy coils traverse elven lips slowly, with as much care as they’d been coaxed in, easing the tension from an expression wonderfully serene. Sebastian admires him with a slow blink, feeling his chest swell at the sight of sweet novelty.
“Good?”
“Good.”
“I thought you might like it.” Sebastian smiles, endeared by the gentle hum reverberating from his friend as he indulges again. “Been growing it for a while, I’d looked forward to sharing it with you.”
“With me?” Ominis tilts his head, as if to hear him better.
“Nobody I’d rather share a pipe with.” He’ll be damned if he misses the flit of unfocused blues in his direction, the languid creep of heat on the elf’s cheeks mirroring his own at the admission.
It’s no lie that Sebastian eagerly awaited every return of his friend to the Shire, but it’s not a truth he would readily admit. The stretches of time during which Ominis travelled Middle-Earth always felt arduous. Even when Sebastian’s own existence was wrought with comfort and a want for nothing, he found that he could not dismiss the longing that manifested deep within his belly. It was a craving that stayed with him during his friend’s absences, lingering despite the waning of many moons.
He long searched for a meaning to his conflicting feelings—denied words to emotions, to tugs of affection. Perhaps it was the rare pleasure of seeing the ephemeral peace on Ominis’ face whenever he came to stay, or the reassurance that he was alive and well, or maybe it was simply the sight of the sun cascading over his skin, reflecting in his eyes so crystalline, and melting into his hair until it resembled a waterfall of liquid gold.
Dreams can mirror none of his beauty, nor capture the essence of his presence, nor mimic the sedulous softness of his touch.
Dreams cannot allow Sebastian the joy of feeling silk cascade through his fingers, nor allow him mingled breaths and lingering embraces.
This is as close as he can get. He hates it.
“I thought about staying for a few days,” Ominis muses as he leans back next to Sebastian, arm propping him up in a beautiful silhouette. A blow of smoke to his face snaps Sebastian out of the trance as he tries to greedily recollect it into his own lungs. “If you would have me.”
“Of course!” Sebastian breathes, eyes wide, heart aflutter. “You’re welcome to stay with me.”
“If that is alright with you, I wouldn’t want to impose, I, ah—” Ominis sinks further into the grass with another puff of smoke, relaxation deflating him, poise evaporating. “I am weary. I have crossed many mountains and many rivers, and trodden many plains, even into the far countries of Rhûn and Harad where the stars are strange.”
“You should rest,” Sebastian replies warmly.
“I would like that.” Ominis smiles, eyes falling shut as his body gives in to the call of the earth. His legs sprawl out, blades of grass undoubtedly tickling the lithe limbs with their tender touch.
“For as long as you’d like. You know you have a place with me.”
“I do, my friend.”
Oh, how Sebastian yearns to touch. To reach out and hold the elf that his dreams always sought, but restraint is his master, and he a fool, taught to resist. He picks at a leaf fallen from the willow tree, disintegrating it between his fingers instead.
With a loosened grasp, Ominis extends him the pipe once more, deigning to share in sweet intoxication, yet his fingers linger when Sebastian finally accepts the bowl gratefully.
A careful balancing act allows Sebastian to free his other hand, taking the pipe from joined hands and letting his fingers curl around ones larger than his. Sebastian exhales shakily, grounding himself with a puff of the leaf to ease his nerves.
With a smile on his lips, Ominis intertwines their fingers further, lacing them together like a woven thread. Sebastian dares not to lose his composure to the unity. He attempts to channel his thoughts and focus on their surroundings: the whispers of winds rustling the leaves in sweet serenade, the harmonic song of birds in accompaniment, the tickle of grass against skin. None of it is enough to drown out the dissonance of the heart beating within.
He braces himself to disintegrate, but there is no collapse. Now that he’s allowed to touch, he grants the sense permission to feel—Ominis’ fingers are pleasantly cold, delicately slender, unbelievably soft. Sebastian braves a run of his thumb along skin so pale that it’s near translucent, allows himself a sigh of finally as his hand slides down a smooth palm, tempting fate as his index finger dips beneath the cotton sleeve.
Pressing into the pulse, he feels it race. His eyes trail up in vain to find no answer in an expression unreadable. Had he made a mistake?
The pale of Ominis’ throat bobs as he swallows heavily, “The pipe.” It’s a whisper, devoid of resolve.
“Oh, right,” Sebastian chuckles nervously before taking a deep drag, allowing the weed to calm his heart before he hands the pipe over once again.
Ominis takes it from him eagerly—inhales the smoke as if it were air—crosses his legs in the grass to steady himself upright and waits. Sebastian melts meanwhile, witnesses seconds go by in absence of the white wisps as he observes. He’s never seen the elf in such a state before—perhaps this blend isn’t right for him?
When Ominis finally releases, he deflates. Chest full of air hollowing out as he bends over, elbows resting on his knees, back slouched. He takes a second, smaller inhale, and allows for the worries of the world to dissolve.
“Careful now, not too quickly.” Sebastian reaches for the pipe, already propped against thin lips for another inhale. “You’re gonna get dizzy.”
“I’ll be fine,” Ominis mumbles, a gentle tremor in his voice.
Sebastian quirks a brow as his smile turns lopsided—he knows to trust his friend in matters of self-control and discipline, yet worry prickles his gut all the same. Smoke blows into his face in the form of a quivering ring, a ghostly garland welcoming him to the legendary lands of Valinor, and he cannot stop the laughter bubbling forth. The elf smiles gently as he pulls from the pipe again.
“I know you will.” Sebastian inhales the wayward wisps, breathing as one with Ominis. “But as you always say, there’s something to be said for slow relaxation.” He falls back onto the grass demonstratively, arms and legs sprawling out to ease ache from his limbs.
Sebastian cannot help staring up at the elf adoringly—blond tresses framed by a halo of light, an otherworldly glow accentuating Ominis’ divinity. With a beauty so pure, Ominis may be a direct descendant of the Ainur, but Sebastian knows better. The goofy giggle that escapes the elf does nothing to break the illusion, pulling Sebastian further in with a gleaming smile that cleanses him of all his worries, all his fears.
It calls to him as sweetly as an elven song and, under the guise of pure enchantment, he allows himself to reach forth again and lay his hand upon the elf’s cheek. Warmer than his hand is the breath that dances along his wrist, hitched to the tune of utter bewilderment.
“Sebastian…” It sounds like a question, yet Ominis leans into the touch, as if to cradle him with his face. Sebastian barely laughs at the reversal and strokes the angle of his cheekbone with the calloused pad of his thumb.
“You are beautiful,” he mutters, voice drenched in earnesty. If the world felt less fuzzy, perhaps he could’ve contained himself—respected the boundaries they’d established aeons ago, when the fear of losing a friend still sounded stronger than the fear of losing anything that could’ve been. But fear holds nary a place when he yearns this much.
Ominis laughs, carefree and unobstructed, “The leaf must be muddling your mind.” It’s a tease from lovely lips, but it will not discourage him.
It emboldens him, instead, as he runs his thumb along the seam of Ominis’ mouth. “If that may be the case, then I don’t want to think straight.”
Ominis shudders, closes his eyes, and Sebastian allows himself to take note of the way that heat rises to the elf’s cheeks once again through touch alone. He feels the quiver in delicate lips, feels the way that supple skin sings a song of flames wherever his fingers dance in their leisurely exploration.
“I’ve always admired you, not just for your beauty, your words, or your wisdom, but for everything that you are,” Sebastian whispers as he sits upright, seeking closeness from where he is perched. “You are kind and dignified, thoughtful, unbelievably gentle.”
Ominis’ breaths stutter, shoulders sagging in beguiled relaxation as he listens. His hum reverberates, enveloping Sebastian whole from where their skin connects and suddenly, the world fades. Every road travelled, mountain crossed and river braved, all for this very moment in which he finally finds the centre of his universe.
“Your eyes glitter like water on a sunny day—calm, healing.” A second hand joins the first, steadying the elf’s face as Sebastian runs careful pads over close-lidded ponds. “I would lose myself in their depths every day that you turn my way.
“Your brows.” He breezes a touch through the hills, rustling the soft hair like grass, “Stern, yet welcoming.” Sebastian cannot contain a chuckle as they meet in a frown—tickled by his travels, no doubt.
“Your moles, aligned with the heavens above”—he connects the dots, tracing a phantom constellation into the peak of Ominis’ cheek—“glory.”
Ominis ghosts a smile. “What kind of glory?”
“Any that you desire.” Sebastian returns it in kind, a mere mirror of an expression so chrysalis, stuck between hope and happiness.
“You know it was never glory that I sought,” Ominis breathes, in what seems like an attempt to collect the pieces of his composure that Sebastian had gently whittled away. “But friendship.”
“Which you have found.”
“Thank you.” The tone carries water to lands ravaged by drought, yet Sebastian would yearn to stay parched if it meant that rain would never fall from these clouds.
“It is a privilege that a hobbit like I should be allowed to bask in your company,” Sebastian whispers with confidence, hopeful that softened sounds breach deeper than those loud. “You are beautiful, truly.”
The uncertainty shines plainly on Ominis’ face, and Sebastian knows that the elf always shied from compliments, was troubled to accept praises and affections that might ravage him. He allows his hands to linger, light strokes smoothing over elven features to soothe the unsettled winds raging beneath his skin.
Before he can think to sever the link that joins them now, two larger hands envelop his own, the churchwarden pipe all but forgotten in the grass as their world is engulfed in the haze of a glorious blaze. To hold the world between his hands, yet shy from realising his dreams, he thinks, is a different kind of strength.
“The privilege is mine,” Ominis sighs softly as he leans closer, urging Sebastian’s hands to press more firmly into the sweet skin through the cup of his own. “Forgive me for my forwardness.” He releases Sebastian’s hands, letting delicate fingers traverse the length of Sebastian’s arms to find his nape.
With as much finesse as his dreams foretold, Sebastian feels the elf’s hands explore his face—to see him for the very first time. He never insisted for the elf to touch him, never deigned to ask, and it’s a pleasant reassurance that dares hope to flutter deep within his belly.
“You are also beautiful.” Ominis smiles once he is satisfied, but the hands don’t abandon Sebastian. One travels back to his nape, and he wonders what a silly scene they paint—a hobbit and an elf, cradling each other’s faces in familiar caress.
Laughter breaks through the hazy veil in a beautiful song of unity. They giggle and titter, breaths shared between heaving chests as they eradicate the space that divides them, drawn ever closer by undeniable gravity.
Sebastian’s snicker is quickly quelled when Ominis leans their faces together, burying the graceful slope of his nose into a plush cheek. He inhales deeply, nuzzles into the warmth of Sebastian’s skin, and exhales leisurely. It tickles, yet it feels like a kiss.
The bloodrush in Sebastian’s ears drowns out the chirping of a bird in the willow above. His heart beats a piacere —even tempo all but forgotten as it searches for a new rhythm that unites them, to make sense of the feelings washing over him. The flickering flames of candlelight he played with in his childhood had nothing on the intoxicating blaze against his cheek as Ominis continues to breathe in the essence of him. Sebastian frets over the scent, hoping it’s no less than all the things he knows Ominis finds pleasant—parchment adorned with ink, glowing embers of cedarwood, fragrant herbs and warm chamomile.
Were Sebastian to ignite from this, he would crumble to ash happily.
An eternity passes before he remembers his limbs, eases consciousness back into the tingling appendages and wills his toes to wiggle in the grass. It’s not nearly distracting enough with the beautiful elf still buried into him, so he gives up on regaining his composure and anchors himself to the hands grasping him.
“Ominis?” Sebastian entwines their fingers once more, reassured that he will not collapse, before turning his head slowly. It’s a lapse of judgement practised in slow-motion as he forgets their positions, forgets to breathe when his lips cascade over something tender and soft—
“I’m sorry, I—” he tries to pull back, sobering near instantly, but Ominis’ hands keep him in place. They refuse to let go, and the tremble of his own evaporates any shred of strength he might’ve tried to muster, to separate from the Ainur holding him.
“It’s all right,” Ominis mumbles, his hushed words causing their lips to greet again in infinitesimal flutters. “It’s all right.” He repeats, barely above a whisper, before pulling Sebastian imperceptibly closer. It’s an embrace of lips that tastes like finally, like close, but not close enough, like I’ve waited for this since the day we met and I never want to feel anything else ever again.
Aeons of preparation could never have prepared him for this—slightly chapped lips that he could only describe as perfect, a taste of smoky herbs underlined by a core sweetness that he would gladly taste for the rest of his days, and a scent that could bring him to realms beyond reality, were he to allow himself to get lost within.
The kisses that greet him are filled with adoration, gentle pecks that increase in frequency as Ominis shifts ever closer to him, seeking to bury himself in Sebastian’s arms. Sebastian could never deny the elf any request, so he wraps those very arms around shoulders much broader than his, and pulls Ominis in until the space between them ceases to exist.
It feels like an eternity lived without breath when his lungs finally start to protest, yet Sebastian finds the will to pull back when he feels the elf’s lips begin to tremble. He leans their foreheads together, feeling the heat radiating from Ominis’ skin against his in a rebirth of what they could become.
Moments pass as Sebastian revels in the quiet cacophony of their beating hearts, their unsteady breaths seeking to calm the thoughts running free in his head like a spooked herd of sheep. Ominis’ hands trickle down his chest in a waterfall made of fire, until he finally wraps them around Sebastian’s waist, unwilling to separate, loath to let him leave.
“I—” Ominis stutters, and Sebastian thinks he might die from the adorable display of crumbling composure. “I have always felt so different around you. Light and free.”
“Yeah?” Sebastian breathes, unsure of what else to say.
Ominis hums in affirmation, “I used to think it was simply the pipeweed, mellowing my thoughts, soothing my loins.” His eyes flutter open, half-lidded moons unfocused as elegant lashes curtain them. Impossibly beautiful.
Sebastian forgets to breathe, intent on soaking in every word from the elf’s mouth gifted to him. He allows his hand to smooth a crease in the fabric at Ominis’ back in favour of finding futile words.
“Sebastian, I—” the hesitation in Ominis’ voice chokes him, makes his heart beg for release. “It was you this whole time—it’s you who makes me feel this way.”
The air forces its way back into Sebastian’s lungs, alleviating the burn as he sags in relief. He buries his gentle hand further into the folds, dares not to let go of the elf endeared in his embrace. “I’m glad I could ever make you feel safe.”
“You make me feel more than safe.” Ominis seeks for him, brushes their noses together with careful affection. “You make me feel everything.”
Sebastian can’t help the smile, can’t help the happy chuckle that escapes, and it’s a sobering contrast to Ominis’ solemn tranquillity. He ventures to kiss the elf again and is met in his conquest with no amount of hesitation—claimant and beneficiary all the same.
He thinks there are no words to justly reply to the elf’s confession, but the barbaric need for air is his fiend, and so he attempts. “You also make me feel everything.” A mirror of ineloquence, but it’s all Sebastian can muster, all that he needs to say to see the light eclipse Ominis’ face.
Moments linger as they dissolve—an unmaking, to remake anew. When hands eventually stray to search for briarwood, only few puffs are shared between the two of them. They breathe in unison while Sebastian’s heart chases the clouds in the skies above. It swells with the glimmering of a hope that he will not ascend alone—that they will float together, at last.
When the sun finally begins its weary descent, Sebastian extinguishes the pipe’s glowing embers and coaxes the elf back into the grass to lie beside him. He entangles their hands and revels in the moment as Ominis hums a gentle tune of distant lands, growing ever more quiet until his beautiful eyes finally fall shut.
It’s everything that Ominis needs and everything that he deserves, so Sebastian lulls him into peaceful slumber with calming circles traced into supple skin. He picks a fallen leaf from the sprawling tresses, counts his lucky stars as he watches the elf bask in the evening glow.
It’s a sight he wants to never forget—Valinor on Arda—and as his own eyes grow weary, he swears to cherish it.
Perhaps, if the Valar permit, he would one day wake up to it.
