Chapter Text
“Why don’t you just tell him?”
Lee jumped at the voice, unexpected as it was. He looked up to find Ian smiling down at him. Ian motioned to the unoccupied seat next to Lee and the American nodded that it was fine for him to sit there. Ian took the seat, setting his cup of coffee down in front of him, a lit cigarette poised between his lips as he took a drag.
“Tell who what?” Lee did, however, have a pretty good idea who and what Ian was talking about already.
Ian shook his head, but a slight smile graced his face nonetheless. “I am speaking of Richard.” His voice, in spite of the smile on his face, was rather full of authority and stern. “And you know bloody well what I mean.”
Lee’s mouth moved for a few moments much like a fish’s when it was out of water before he finally realized how ridiculous he must look and snapped it shut. He couldn’t help wondering how Ian knew about Richard and him.
“I see things,” Ian answered. Lee was now wondering if the man could read minds as well. “I am an astute study of people and the human condition and I have had a great amount of training over the years. I can see the way the two of you look at each other. I can see how your body language changes when the other is around. I have also observed the differences in Richard from when you are here to when you are not, and the transformation is conspicuous. The others notice as well, but I suspect they do not know the true reason why.”
Lee swallowed hard, his eyes shifting once again to the man across the room. Richard and the other dwarves were sitting at a table in the cafeteria having just come in from running from spiders and being wrapped up in webbing. Some of it still clung to their beards, wigs, and clothing. Lee wasn’t due on set until the next day, so he had come to the cafeteria for something to eat and was half-reading an old copy of a Hemmingway book he had been in possession of since he was much younger. Hemingway, amongst others, had helped him get over his dyslexia from a young age. They still gave him comfort on occasion.
Richard had looked up at him several times since coming in, their eyes meeting, and Lee was happy that he could see a glint that was still truly Richard in his blue eyes, hidden as it were underneath the gruff exterior of Thorin. Lee had smiled at him ever so slightly in those instances, trying to convey through his own eyes so much in those brief periods, before the other man’s attention was called away by his companions and their constant chatter and joviality. It did not happen very often, especially when there were so many other people around, but it was an acknowledgement that Lee appreciated.
“I –” Lee honestly did not know what to say, so instead he just shook his head and put his cheek to his palm propped up on the table by his elbow. “I don’t know if he is ready for how I feel about him.”
Ian took a sip of his coffee, smoke billowing from his nostrils like it would from a dragon. “And how do you feel about him?”
“I think…that I am in love with him. No,” Lee protested, shaking his head fervidly. “I love him. I am sure of that. I am completely and utterly certain in how I feel about him and that I want more.” Lee had to fight to keep his voice down, to keep it from traveling through the room to unwelcome ears, though he thought he would have to bellow into a bullhorn to be heard over the ruckus the dwarves were causing. “And I know he feels the same way; he just doesn’t know how to tell me.”
“And you fear that if you tell him, you will scare him away.” Ian looked Lee in the eye. His blue eyes were twinkling, but his smile was a bit sad. Sadness like he understood what Lee was going through and wished that he didn’t have to. “I would not hesitate to say that he does feel the same way you do, but he is like a child in certain things. His daunting ability not to see his own worth is staggering to behold. I believe his problem now is that, deep down, he can’t understand why you are with him and that leads to him thinking that you will walk away, because to him you have every right to do so.”
“He thinks – He thinks he isn’t good enough for me?” Lee didn’t detect the tad bit of shrillness that had entered his voice.
“When something comes along that is too good to be true,” Ian began, choosing his words carefully. “Let me put it this way: you came along and did what he has believed all his life would happen when he found that one person to be the center of his life. The one person he could connect completely with. You have changed him. You have altered how he thinks and sees things. You have, in a good way, turned his world upside down. He was at a point, up to the very moment he met you, where he was convinced that would not happen. That it was too late for him. And now here you are and he is having trouble having faith in the fact that what is between you will not be taken away from him again, that it is not just a way for the universe to taunt him and show him what could have been and then laugh in his face.”
Mulling over everything Ian had just said, Lee sat back in his chair, his fingers absently fiddling with the bent edge of the book cover, stealing glances through his lashes at the man across the room that held his heart. Yes, the other man was probably right. Lee knew what he had to do. He just had to figure out how to go about it.
“Thank you, Sir Ian,” Lee said sincerely with a small smile. He was thankful that Ian did not sound as cryptic as he did when he was Gandalf, but he kept that to himself.
“Not a problem, dear boy. I’m always here if you need me.” Ian’s chuckled good naturedly. “Now. Off you go. Let an old man enjoy his cigarette and coffee for a moment before he has to go round up a bunch of unruly dwarves.”
The loud roar of laughter from the dwarf table brought more than a few pairs of eyes their way, so it was the perfect opportunity for Lee to take one final look at Richard, who was smiling at whatever antics his cast mates were up to, before leaving the cafeteria. He had plans to make.