The severe pounding on my door shook me out of the consuming intensity of my thoughts.  "Lij?  You coming?" Sean Astin called through the door.  "We're just waiting on you."

I looked myself over in the mirror once more, studying my half-dressed state.  I had only managed to slide into a pair of dark blue jeans before I got distracted.  I could feel the plush carpet between my bare toes.  I didn't answer Sean right away.  Instead I stood there, looking at myself in the mirror, but when I met the intense blue of my own mirrored eyes, I shut them and swallowed hard.  "Be just a sec," I called back, reminding myself to breathe again.  "Yeah, I'm ready," I finished in as strong a voice as I could muster.  Sean opened the door then and found me there, standing in front of the mirror, eyes still shut tight.  I felt, rather than heard, him enter the room and walk over to me.  I felt his eyes on me, calm and friendly and curious, the way we always were with one another, and he said with a smile in his voice, "You don't look ready to me."

I opened my eyes and without looking in the mirror again, turned to face him.  "No, I am.  I'm ready.  Just need to finish dressing."  Sean nodded and sat down on the bed, watching me quietly.

With Sean's eyes on me, I had no more time to brood.  I pulled a clean t-shirt over my head and followed that with a light blue sweater that would probably end up being way too hot at the club, but it looked good right then, and at that time "right then" was all I was worrying about.  I ran a hand over my head and decided my short sandy hair was on its own that night, then I grabbed a jacket, slid my feet into sandals, and stood next to the door.

"C'mon, Sean, I said I was ready, let's go," I chided, smiling.

Sean smiled back, came over to me and looped his arm through mine.  "Away we go then," he said, and we left.

The club was hot and dark, and technically I still wasn't old enough to be there, but that wasn't a problem, not that night.  I wasn't sure why not cause fuck I was fairly certain I looked like I was maybe 15 years old, even though I was just short of 21.  Maybe my eyes were finally starting to give my age away.

It was one of those nights where my eyes never got used to the dark, and whatever I was drinking -- bought for me by Sean who does not look 15 -- was stronger than I anticipated and I found myself blurred early and ready for anything -- and before I really re-figured out where I was, there was something -- someone -- there behind me, nudging me out to dance.

So I went.

Without looking back.

The someone followed me close onto the dance floor, and as my head spun to the music and my blood beat loud in my ears, louder than the incredible bass pounding through the speakers we danced by, I felt hands on my hips and lips on my neck and I didn't question any of it.  The hands were soft and strong and warm -- and familiar -- and soothing against the harsh reality of the club and the spinning in my head and the roar in my ears.  They eased over the dark blue denim of my jeans, rubbing gently over all the right places, and were followed by an arm curling possessively and deliciously around my waist.  I let it happen.  I swam around in all the sensations.  The lips kissing my neck were soft and strong and warm, too, and a tongue licked along my flesh, followed by teeth tugging at the collar of my sweater to expose more of me to lick at.  Those lips kissed a fiery path across the back of my neck and I closed my eyes tight against the blur of the room and the spin of the loudness all around me.

It was one of those nights where I didn't ask questions.

I just was.

And from the depths of my being, my wish, my true desire came out in a thoughtless, pant-filled breath:  "Orli."

Even in the fog of my desire I felt the lips on my neck curve into a smile.  Soft kisses were placed all the way up to my earlobe which was quickly captured and nibbled, gently, causing me to pant his name again.  He answered me that time.  Into my ear he breathed, "Lij," and quick as lightning, Orlando Bloom, to whom the hands and the lips had belonged all along, had me backed against the wall.

He held me there against the wall through the press of his body against mine but more by the force of sheer desire.  I could feel that same desire racing through Orli's veins as he pressed his thigh between my legs, pushing me into the wall, making the two of us one there in the dark corner of a smoky club, indistinguishable to any one else there.  We became part of the shadow.  We melted into it.

The spin of the room stopped and so did time as I felt him lick along my jaw to my chin and down to the hollow of my throat.  He nibbled there a moment and my breath caught where he kissed.  I let it out in a whoosh when his hand strayed from my hip where he had been holding me to the front of my jeans.  Orli rubbed me a little, up and down along my fly, and his own desire became even more evident as he pressed closer to me.  "Lijah," he breathed, once, softer than a prayer.  Before I could breathe again, his lips captured mine.  I was trapped in the intense softness of the kiss, the blissful intrusion of his tongue as it lapped against my own, tasting me, claiming me, the completion of a dream.  His mouth moved gracefully over mine, soft but still demanding, teasing but never tentative, all fire and passion in a moment, but never with the intention to burn.  I felt Orli slip back, away from me, but it was only so he could lick along my bottom lip before he claimed it, too, as his own.  He tugged my bottom lip into the dampness of his hot mouth and branded me forever as his.  The searing heat of Orlando's tongue spoiled me forever for any other kiss.  I tasted true passion that night, and I knew even in that moment that I would never kiss another quite like that again.

In the smoke of the club, I thrust one of my hands deep into the back pocket of Orli's tight black pants.  The other I let slide around his neck where it stroked the soft hairs along his neck and pulled him closer to me, deeper into the abyss into which I was rapidly plummeting.  I wanted to bring Orli with me.

And in his kiss I felt he wanted to come.

It had been the kind of night where my eyes never really took to the dark or to the smoke, but when Orli's eyes found mine as our lips parted, I could not deny the fire I saw there -- which I knew to be mirrored in my own.  The flash of his eyes, their intense sparkle, I knew to be the reflected fire of my own soul, a fire which I'd long been searching for in myself but which could only be found in another.

It was more than a mirroring.

It was love.
 

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