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Jun. 29th, 2021 09:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
roselightfairyFor all my complaining, though, I did get something written yesterday to project my misery onto a fictional character. I revised it today and put it up on AO3, but I'm also putting the text here because...I can.
It's based on me playing with the fact that canonically elves are very resistant to cold. They are probably also resistant to heat, but . . . what if they're not? Or what if, even if they are, there are mysterious Elf Magic Reasons for them not being resistant?
Anyway, ficlet below the cut.
Legolas returned to their little house in Ithilien at sundown with his shirt thrown over one shoulder and his leggings rolled up to his knees.
Gimli laughed as he approached, whipping the twisted cloth from over his shoulder and drawing it across his gleaming brow, leaving smears of mud amidst the wisps of hair that had escaped the tight knot on his head. “You will take after Gollum, next, crying against the Yellow Face!”
Legolas made a sign with one hand that might have been either an indication to wait or a rude gesture; instead of entering through the door, he made a sharp turn around the tree that formed one of the pillars of their home, following the stream that flowed behind their house to the spring that formed its source.
Gimli shifted in his cushioned seat, leaning out the open window to follow Legolas’s motion and laughing again as he knelt beside the spring and bent to plunge his whole head and part of his shoulders into the water with a great splash.
He emerged gasping and dripping, dashing a hand at the wisps now plastered to his forehead, but his splutterings bore the sound of relief. He dunked the shirt into the water next, withdrew it as a dripping mass, and wrung the sodden fabric over his shoulder with another grateful gasp.
The water sluiced over his shoulders and down his chest in rivulets, paths that drew Gimli’s eye. He traced one particular path with some interest, a drop making its slow, trickling way from the hollow of Legolas’s collarbone and down the defined muscles of his chest, but flicked his eyes up and away as Legolas approached his window-seat at last, schooling his face into a mischievous smile. He had taken to reading for hours on these languid summer Ithilien days – indulging in what finally, truly felt like a holiday – but now he closed his book to give Legolas his full – if teasing – attention. “So,” he said, propping his arms – still doubly clad in shirtsleeves and in jerkin – against the sill. “You had not been swimming already, then! I wondered. I could practically see my reflection in the sheen of your face when you arrived.”
Legolas made a face at him, but his voice echoed Gimli’s teasing when he responded. “No, I thought I would wait for my husband to swim with me. Surely the water would be to your liking! I can introduce you, first, if you would like.” Quick as a horse’s tail, he whipped the shirt out from behind his back, flicking it in the direction of the window.
Gimli yelped and ducked out of the way of the spray of water – not quite fast enough. He found the summer days in Ithilien pleasantly warm – enough to bathe his feet in the stream, perhaps, but not enough to forgo his daily preference for shirtsleeves or heated water. But it hardly mattered today: the droplets of water were hardly even cool as they hit him, already warmed from Legolas’s skin and the evening air.
Still. “So kindly was your offer made,” he said, smearing warm water across his brow with the swipe of a hand, “and yet I must decline it.” The weather was not too warm for shirtsleeves, let alone for bathing in the chill spring that fed into the Anduin – nothing like the natural hot springs in the depths of Erebor. “But I will accompany you, if you wish.” Watching Legolas bathe was pleasure enough, but that was not the only tantalizing possibility the spring offered. These summer days, the times when Legolas was willing to engage in any sort of bedsport were few and far between; he hardly even wanted Gimli to touch him when they lay in bed together, save for a hand thrown over his side or a back against his own – but after a bath in cold water . . . Well, Gimli could bear a bit of dampness for the opportunity.
“I would not have it otherwise,” said Legolas, and without another word he stripped off his leggings in a single deft motion and plunged his whole body into the spring.
Well. That sight was enough to make Gimli close his book for good and follow him out, shedding his jerkin into a crumpled pile in a sunbeam on the floor as he went.
“I do not understand you,” he said, after, as they lay on the bank beneath the spreading boughs and sinking sun. The sun had dried them both in moments – Gimli rather quicker, for he was only damp from Legolas’s skin – and now the long dry grasses prickled at his neck and back through his unbraided hair and the clothing he had donned again. However much assurance Legolas might give that his folk would not pass unannounced, he had little desire to lie unclad in the forest. Legolas, however, lay sprawled and gloriously naked, long tree-shadows moving in dappling patterns over his brown skin and low-late rays gleaming off his hair until it shone like obsidian.
He had never looked so at home in a forest, Gimli thought, looking over at him, nor so beautiful in the dimming light, and yet his brow shone again with sweat and every limb stretched out in opposite directions, as if to reach as far from his body as possible. He rested a hand lightly on Legolas’s thigh, reveling in sun-warmed skin and pliant muscle beneath his touch, and then withdrew it again before Legolas could utter any complaint. “You claim you crave a home beneath the trees and the sunlight, and yet you perspire in the summer and pine for cool weather. I do not see why you complain so about the stone of Aglarond – surely your youth in caverns makes you better suited to them than to the forest here!”
Legolas was silent for so long that Gimli began to worry he had offended him – that his words, meant only in fun, had struck to the heart. His face, always so readable, was expressionless, his eyes closed, lashes resting peacefully against his cheeks. Just as Gimli was stirring himself to sit up, scrambling in his mind for some word of apology – but how should he apologize for a slip he did not understand? – Legolas took a deep breath, his chest expanding visibly with the motion, blades of dry grass showering from its surface.
“Perhaps,” he said – soft, almost dreamy. “Mirkwood was certainly cooler than Ithilien – as you know well.” Gimli did know it well, though at the moment he was more preoccupied with Legolas’s slip in using the word “Mirkwood.” He had often wondered if the error was as unthinking as it seemed. “And that is the land my body knows as home. But my heart . . .”
His voice trailed off; he opened his eyes at last, brown topaz in the light, but distant in a way Gimli knew too well. His head tilted slightly – in the direction Gimli knew could only be west, as though the needle in the compass of Legolas’s soul had erred irrevocably, always tilting towards the sea.
The thought was a pang through his heart as well as Legolas’s, and he could finish the sentence well enough: my heart knows no home this side of the sea. Legolas did not say the words – perhaps he knew the pain they might cause, but it hurt no less in Gimli’s thought than in his voice.
“I see,” Gimli began, gruff, but Legolas shook his head and Gimli subsided, clamping his lips around any useless words as Legolas drew a hand across his sweat-gleaming brow, took another deep breath, and began again.
“I wish to be close to this land,” he said: carefully, thoughtfully, selecting each word with as much delicacy as if he were withdrawing a living sapling from a pile of dead brush. Gimli had seen his deft hands do such a thing before, and he felt suddenly as though he were a sapling, his own heart cradled with as much tenderness. “I wish to learn its ways, to attune my soul to its song. For so long, I knew only the rhythms of Mirkwood – the song in the wind, the heartbeat in the trees – and it knew me as its kind. And so the chill was no hardship to me, the darkness no barrier. Here . . .” He waved a hand about, as if to take in the long-reaching trees, the dry scraggle of herb-bushes, the spring that had run for weeks before Legolas had permitted Gimli to touch its water. “I do not know the land, not yet, and more importantly it does not know me. It does not know how to welcome me, how to sing to me, and I do not know its rhythms. And so we are not in harmony yet.” That last word came out in a long rush of air; his gesturing hand fell heavy to the grass with a dull resignation. “But I would learn them. And I hope that when I do so, the welcome will not fall so hard.”
Legolas had spoken enough of Ithilien – of his love for the land, long-pressed and hard-won, of his desire to make it a home where he could belong – that Gimli could hear what lay unspoken beneath the words: the reminder of all Legolas gave up, every day, and all that he still fought so hard to gain. Just as he tolerated Gimli’s arm over his sweating side at night, the stone of Aglarond pressing upon his head, for the sake of closeness with Gimli – so he would bear the sun of this land, because he yearned so to be near to it.
Because he yearned to be near to something.
Legolas’s hand lay still in the grass, fingers limp; Gimli fumbled for it and wrapped his own around it. It was warm in his, blistered from a day of hard work, palm damp – but Legolas did not pull away; rather, the fingers laced with his and pressed gently to welcome his grip. And there – this hand was more home than any caverns of stone or forest of sunlight ever could be. If Legolas could do this for Gimli, then he could do it for himself.
“Then you will,” said Gimli, “and Ithilien will be the more beautiful for it.” He lifted the hand to his lips, let his beard tickle across Legolas’s fingertips until beside him, the elf’s mouth curved up at last into a smile. “I know it.”
“Thank you,” Legolas murmured. “You must know what that means to me.”
Gimli could never know – not fully – but he did not need to know to answer this. “I do,” he said softly. “I know all I need to.”
And when he lowered their joined hands to the grass again, Legolas did not pull away.
It's based on me playing with the fact that canonically elves are very resistant to cold. They are probably also resistant to heat, but . . . what if they're not? Or what if, even if they are, there are mysterious Elf Magic Reasons for them not being resistant?
Anyway, ficlet below the cut.
Legolas returned to their little house in Ithilien at sundown with his shirt thrown over one shoulder and his leggings rolled up to his knees.
Gimli laughed as he approached, whipping the twisted cloth from over his shoulder and drawing it across his gleaming brow, leaving smears of mud amidst the wisps of hair that had escaped the tight knot on his head. “You will take after Gollum, next, crying against the Yellow Face!”
Legolas made a sign with one hand that might have been either an indication to wait or a rude gesture; instead of entering through the door, he made a sharp turn around the tree that formed one of the pillars of their home, following the stream that flowed behind their house to the spring that formed its source.
Gimli shifted in his cushioned seat, leaning out the open window to follow Legolas’s motion and laughing again as he knelt beside the spring and bent to plunge his whole head and part of his shoulders into the water with a great splash.
He emerged gasping and dripping, dashing a hand at the wisps now plastered to his forehead, but his splutterings bore the sound of relief. He dunked the shirt into the water next, withdrew it as a dripping mass, and wrung the sodden fabric over his shoulder with another grateful gasp.
The water sluiced over his shoulders and down his chest in rivulets, paths that drew Gimli’s eye. He traced one particular path with some interest, a drop making its slow, trickling way from the hollow of Legolas’s collarbone and down the defined muscles of his chest, but flicked his eyes up and away as Legolas approached his window-seat at last, schooling his face into a mischievous smile. He had taken to reading for hours on these languid summer Ithilien days – indulging in what finally, truly felt like a holiday – but now he closed his book to give Legolas his full – if teasing – attention. “So,” he said, propping his arms – still doubly clad in shirtsleeves and in jerkin – against the sill. “You had not been swimming already, then! I wondered. I could practically see my reflection in the sheen of your face when you arrived.”
Legolas made a face at him, but his voice echoed Gimli’s teasing when he responded. “No, I thought I would wait for my husband to swim with me. Surely the water would be to your liking! I can introduce you, first, if you would like.” Quick as a horse’s tail, he whipped the shirt out from behind his back, flicking it in the direction of the window.
Gimli yelped and ducked out of the way of the spray of water – not quite fast enough. He found the summer days in Ithilien pleasantly warm – enough to bathe his feet in the stream, perhaps, but not enough to forgo his daily preference for shirtsleeves or heated water. But it hardly mattered today: the droplets of water were hardly even cool as they hit him, already warmed from Legolas’s skin and the evening air.
Still. “So kindly was your offer made,” he said, smearing warm water across his brow with the swipe of a hand, “and yet I must decline it.” The weather was not too warm for shirtsleeves, let alone for bathing in the chill spring that fed into the Anduin – nothing like the natural hot springs in the depths of Erebor. “But I will accompany you, if you wish.” Watching Legolas bathe was pleasure enough, but that was not the only tantalizing possibility the spring offered. These summer days, the times when Legolas was willing to engage in any sort of bedsport were few and far between; he hardly even wanted Gimli to touch him when they lay in bed together, save for a hand thrown over his side or a back against his own – but after a bath in cold water . . . Well, Gimli could bear a bit of dampness for the opportunity.
“I would not have it otherwise,” said Legolas, and without another word he stripped off his leggings in a single deft motion and plunged his whole body into the spring.
Well. That sight was enough to make Gimli close his book for good and follow him out, shedding his jerkin into a crumpled pile in a sunbeam on the floor as he went.
“I do not understand you,” he said, after, as they lay on the bank beneath the spreading boughs and sinking sun. The sun had dried them both in moments – Gimli rather quicker, for he was only damp from Legolas’s skin – and now the long dry grasses prickled at his neck and back through his unbraided hair and the clothing he had donned again. However much assurance Legolas might give that his folk would not pass unannounced, he had little desire to lie unclad in the forest. Legolas, however, lay sprawled and gloriously naked, long tree-shadows moving in dappling patterns over his brown skin and low-late rays gleaming off his hair until it shone like obsidian.
He had never looked so at home in a forest, Gimli thought, looking over at him, nor so beautiful in the dimming light, and yet his brow shone again with sweat and every limb stretched out in opposite directions, as if to reach as far from his body as possible. He rested a hand lightly on Legolas’s thigh, reveling in sun-warmed skin and pliant muscle beneath his touch, and then withdrew it again before Legolas could utter any complaint. “You claim you crave a home beneath the trees and the sunlight, and yet you perspire in the summer and pine for cool weather. I do not see why you complain so about the stone of Aglarond – surely your youth in caverns makes you better suited to them than to the forest here!”
Legolas was silent for so long that Gimli began to worry he had offended him – that his words, meant only in fun, had struck to the heart. His face, always so readable, was expressionless, his eyes closed, lashes resting peacefully against his cheeks. Just as Gimli was stirring himself to sit up, scrambling in his mind for some word of apology – but how should he apologize for a slip he did not understand? – Legolas took a deep breath, his chest expanding visibly with the motion, blades of dry grass showering from its surface.
“Perhaps,” he said – soft, almost dreamy. “Mirkwood was certainly cooler than Ithilien – as you know well.” Gimli did know it well, though at the moment he was more preoccupied with Legolas’s slip in using the word “Mirkwood.” He had often wondered if the error was as unthinking as it seemed. “And that is the land my body knows as home. But my heart . . .”
His voice trailed off; he opened his eyes at last, brown topaz in the light, but distant in a way Gimli knew too well. His head tilted slightly – in the direction Gimli knew could only be west, as though the needle in the compass of Legolas’s soul had erred irrevocably, always tilting towards the sea.
The thought was a pang through his heart as well as Legolas’s, and he could finish the sentence well enough: my heart knows no home this side of the sea. Legolas did not say the words – perhaps he knew the pain they might cause, but it hurt no less in Gimli’s thought than in his voice.
“I see,” Gimli began, gruff, but Legolas shook his head and Gimli subsided, clamping his lips around any useless words as Legolas drew a hand across his sweat-gleaming brow, took another deep breath, and began again.
“I wish to be close to this land,” he said: carefully, thoughtfully, selecting each word with as much delicacy as if he were withdrawing a living sapling from a pile of dead brush. Gimli had seen his deft hands do such a thing before, and he felt suddenly as though he were a sapling, his own heart cradled with as much tenderness. “I wish to learn its ways, to attune my soul to its song. For so long, I knew only the rhythms of Mirkwood – the song in the wind, the heartbeat in the trees – and it knew me as its kind. And so the chill was no hardship to me, the darkness no barrier. Here . . .” He waved a hand about, as if to take in the long-reaching trees, the dry scraggle of herb-bushes, the spring that had run for weeks before Legolas had permitted Gimli to touch its water. “I do not know the land, not yet, and more importantly it does not know me. It does not know how to welcome me, how to sing to me, and I do not know its rhythms. And so we are not in harmony yet.” That last word came out in a long rush of air; his gesturing hand fell heavy to the grass with a dull resignation. “But I would learn them. And I hope that when I do so, the welcome will not fall so hard.”
Legolas had spoken enough of Ithilien – of his love for the land, long-pressed and hard-won, of his desire to make it a home where he could belong – that Gimli could hear what lay unspoken beneath the words: the reminder of all Legolas gave up, every day, and all that he still fought so hard to gain. Just as he tolerated Gimli’s arm over his sweating side at night, the stone of Aglarond pressing upon his head, for the sake of closeness with Gimli – so he would bear the sun of this land, because he yearned so to be near to it.
Because he yearned to be near to something.
Legolas’s hand lay still in the grass, fingers limp; Gimli fumbled for it and wrapped his own around it. It was warm in his, blistered from a day of hard work, palm damp – but Legolas did not pull away; rather, the fingers laced with his and pressed gently to welcome his grip. And there – this hand was more home than any caverns of stone or forest of sunlight ever could be. If Legolas could do this for Gimli, then he could do it for himself.
“Then you will,” said Gimli, “and Ithilien will be the more beautiful for it.” He lifted the hand to his lips, let his beard tickle across Legolas’s fingertips until beside him, the elf’s mouth curved up at last into a smile. “I know it.”
“Thank you,” Legolas murmured. “You must know what that means to me.”
Gimli could never know – not fully – but he did not need to know to answer this. “I do,” he said softly. “I know all I need to.”
And when he lowered their joined hands to the grass again, Legolas did not pull away.
