notanightlight:

After what has most likely been a year of having these prompts sitting in my inbox, I am finally doing some writing on the five word prompts. It you want to read a better formatted version, it’s posted to AO3 right here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/3626280/chapters/17791954

(Warning, brief scene that may be reminiscent of PTSD)

Long before they moved in together, Gimli knew that Legolas had strange sleep patterns, to say the least. In fact, he knew it before they even started dating.

The very first time he met Legolas it became apparent.

Gimli had overslept for his eight AM anthropology lecture, and was forced to sneak into the back of the lecture hall as quietly possible or face professor Peredhel’s withering glare of doom. He snagged the first open seat he saw, grateful for the measure of anonymity granted by the large class size. A glance at his watch told him the professor was at least a good twenty minutes into his lesson.

With a voiceless curse, Gimli dug into his backpack for a notebook and pencil.

“Hey,” he whispered to the guy sitting next to him, just barely audible over professor Peredhel’s droning, “Can I take a peek at your notes?”

The guy didn’t respond. In fact, he didn’t appear to have noticed at all, just kept staring down at professor Peredhel’s Powerpoint slide.

If there hadn’t been a quiz scheduled for the next day, he wouldn’t have kept bothering, but as it stood Gimli really needed to get caught up. He cleared his throat and tried again.

“Sorry to bug you, but I really don’t want to fall behind, and I just need a quick peek…” Gimli trailed off as he got a better look at the guy.

His classmate was the picture of relaxed boredom; tall frame slouched in his seat, pencil held loosely in lax fingers, and pale eyes staring straight ahead with an unfocused gaze. The tiniest of snores slipped past his lips.

Gimli knew his jaw was hanging open, but he didn’t really care. He gave the guy a slight poke in the side and watched in fascination as he jerked in surprise, blinking rapidly as he came back to awareness.

“What?” the guy asked, a frankly adorable confused expression on his face.

“I think you were… asleep,” Gimli replied, “with your eyes open.”

A blush spread from the guy’s cheeks all the way to the tips of his ears.

“Oh, um, yeah. That happens sometimes,” he admitted, “Thanks for waking me.”

“I was just trying to borrow your notes,” Gimli said with a wry grin.

The guy looked down at his notebook, gaze running over the trail of graphite that had traveled off the paper and onto the desk.

“I think I only got the first two slides, so I might not be much help,” he told Gimli with a sheepish smile of his own.

Gimli shrugged.

“That’s alright. This makes me feel much better about showing up late,” he replied, “I’m Gimli, by the way.”

“Legolas,” his classmate responded, “Glad to meet you, Gimli.”

And that had been the beginning of it all. Neither of them did well on the following quiz, but they began sitting together from that point on.

Gimli found Legolas to be engaging, with a wicked sense of humor and genuinely interesting outlook on life. Sure, some mornings Legolas was completely wired, and on others he was practically a zombie, but Gimli only caught him sleeping with his eyes open two other times in class. By midterm, they were firmly friends.

Over the course of their friendship, Gimli learned several other things about Legolas’s bizarre relationship with sleep. For example, Legolas sometimes went days without sleep with very few outward signs until he hit day three. Legolas was also capable of falling asleep in any place imaginable once sleep finally caught up to him.

(Gimli swore he once caught Legolas fall asleep on the way to class while still walking.)

Eventually close friendship and mutual attraction led to a romantic relationship. Which, of course, led to several more discoveries about Legolas’s sleep habits once they began sleeping together.

Gimli learned that Legolas was a bit of a sleep talker, although everything he said appeared to be in some strange language known only to Legolas’s unconscious mind.

(Legolas jerked sharply in his sleep, grabbing Gimli’s arm with an outstretched hand. “Gimli, meleth-nin—” Legolas mumbled, eyes moving restlessly behind his lids.

“Yes, yes,” Gimli said, patting Legolas’s hand fondly, “meleth to you too.”

Legolas mumbled a few more words of sleepy gibberish before settling back into restful stillness. Gimli simply shook his head, smiling as he went back to his book.)

He also learned that Legolas had a little bottle of melatonin pills that sat mostly untouched on his nightstand. They were supposed to help regulate his sleep pattern, but Legolas avoided taking them until the absolute last resort for a single reason; the dreams.

Legolas already had some of the most bizarre and vibrant dreams Gimli had ever heard about. Usually they were amusing.

(“We worked at Disney, and I think you were Donald Duck, because you had a sailor hat, but no pants. And that alligator with the clock kept trying to catch me. You know, the one that wanted to eat Captain Hook, except it want to eat me and there were like, ten of it! And every time I tried to get away I’d hear that ticking and have to start running again. It was horrible Gimli! Alligators chased me at Disney! It’s supposed to be a happy place!” Legolas explained in a rush, his hair still a tangled mess of bed head.)

But sometimes, Legolas’s dreams were unsettlingly vivid. More often than not, nights when he took his melatonin also brought these dreams with them. He called them “story dreams” because they were like walking into another life; some wild adventure from the pages of a fantasy novel. What’s more, they were consistent. Legolas described them like recalling distant memories, and always seemed to carry the echo of them around for days afterwards.

(“I had a dream about my father, except he wasn’t the father I have now,” Legolas explained, eyes distant. “He was tall, and his hair was blonde like mine. I remember he was wearing some kind crown, and his ears… There was something about his ears…”

He accepted the warm cup of tea Gimli offered him, and gave him a wan smile.

“You know, it was strange how badly I wanted him to be proud of me,” Legolas continued.

“You know your father is proud of you,” Gimli tried to assure him.

Legolas’s brow furrowed.

“Yeah, but… I wanted that one to be proud of me too.”)

Some of the story dreams were frightening in their intensity.

(Gimli was shocked into wakefulness by Legolas thrashing besides him. Legolas’s eyes were squeezed shut and his teeth gritted together painfully tight. Small distressed noises were forced from his throat as he twisted in the sheets, body as tense as a bowstring.

Gimli flicked on the bedside lamp in a hurry, flooding their bedroom with light.

“Legolas! Legolas!”

Legolas snapped into wakefulness with a gasp.

“Gimli?” His eyes frantically sought out Gimli’s, breath coming in hard pants.

“I’m here, I’m here. You’re alright,” Gimli tried to soothe him, pulling Legolas into his arms.

Legolas shivered under his palms.

“We were in a battle in the rain,” Legolas began, letting the events of that night’s dream tumble out in a rush. “We were fighting an army of monsters, and there was blood everywhere. People were dying, and we had to just keep fighting over their fallen bodies. It was awful, Gimli! We were losing, I knew we were losing and that we were going to die in this place. And then I couldn’t find you anywhere, Gimli! I didn’t even know if you were still—”

Legolas cut himself off viciously, clinging to Gimli tighter as his shoulders shook.

“It was just a dream, Love. We’re safe,” Gimli promised, glaring at the little bottle of pills sitting innocuously on the nightstand.

“Just a dream.”)

When Gimli woke up, Legolas was already sitting up on the side of the bed, staring out the window. He was very still, but his body was relaxed.

“Legolas?”

Legolas took a deep breath.

“You were old, Gimli,” Legolas explained, already knowing the next question that would be asked, “Your beard was long again, but this time it was as white as the snow. We were living in a small house. I think we built it, even. And I could see the ocean from the window…”

Gimli moved to sit next to his boyfriend, but didn’t interrupt. He simply smoothed some of the long hair out of Legolas’s face. It was so much longer than it was when they first met. He’d never asked why Legolas decided to grow it out.

“For some reason, I knew I was going to outlive you. But there was such a sense of peace, Gimli. Like we were just savoring every moment we had together. I think we’d been together for decades.”

Gimli didn’t know what to say. He just looked at the small wistful smile on Legolas’s face and wished, not for the first time, that he could somehow have a window into this private world of his. Despite all of the pain the dreams could bring there was something about the depth of the happier ones.

It was a pointless wish, though.

They were only dreams.

END.