Inspired by behind-the-scenes LOTR (specifically that one clip where Orlando Bloom gives his horse a little kiss on the nose) and my need for more Gimli hurt/comfort. Maybe one day I will clean it up, but I don't have the patience tonight, so this is what you get.
Legolas and Gimli, gen but with hints of more in the future, Paths of the Dead, light angst.
...
Stabling a horse should not take so long.
Gimli shifted from one foot to the other in the doorway of the small inn room he would be sharing with Legolas, fighting the urge to glance behind him as though to ensure that the room was truly empty. After days of long hard travel, he still felt the chill of the Dead at his back, the stir of displaced air from the shapeless ripple of their presence. They were gone now, or had seemed to disperse – but how could something without form be trusted to truly vanish?
He shivered, rubbing at his arms, the chill swarming like ants over the skin of his back. He must trust their absence, must he not? After all, their presence had been real enough.
Aye, real indeed – he shuddered again at the memory of that shapeless mass exploding at last into form behind him, beside him, spears and swords flashing into being in the gleam of sunlight, fighting with the ferocity of ten men each – but it was not the fighting that stayed with him. The source of that fear was not their blades, but something deeper – something that clawed at his gut in that primal birthplace of screams: the horror of something that was and was not: something without stable form, that left impression without taking space –
Even in his thoughts, he could not put words to it, and that elusiveness of description only added to the distrust.
Around him, Aragorn’s Ranger companions made their way down the halls, returned from stabling their horses to find their own rooms. They were finished, it seemed, worn from fighting and the long ride preceding it and ready to snatch the first night of rest any of them had had in days at this small inn in Pelargir – and yet still Legolas did not return.
I will just see our friend settled, he had said to Gimli, with a hand on Arod’s nose. Go find us a room, will you not? I will join you soon.
Soon, he had said, and yet the last of the Dunedain trickled in and still there was no sign of him, and Gimli found he could not bear to settle in alone.
How long had it been since he had been alone? Months since Rivendell and the privacy of his own room there, certainly. There had been Lothlórien, of course, but that had only been perhaps a fortnight ago, for all that it felt like so much less – and even then, he had rarely been alone, for Legolas had always accompanied him.
The question was not, perhaps, how long it had been since he had last been alone – but how long since he had not had Legolas at his back, at his side. A few short weeks only since Lothlórien, and already he felt as though he had known the elf all his life. His steady presence, his soothing words – they were the only thing that had kept Gimli with the Company through that long, hard, freezing ride with the Dead at his back –
Gimli closed the door behind him, tucking the key away in his breast pocket, and set off for the stables.
Ah, but his muscles ached with every step – the twinge in his hips and chafing burn between his thighs from days on horseback, a position he had never intended to know so intimately; the stretched-out ache between his shoulder blades from swing after swing of his axe. He had not felt these aches in days, too busy accumulating new ones by curling up so tightly in his bedroll at night that he could not feel the chill of the Dead, by clinging to Legolas’s waist during the day, his face buried against the elf’s back. But they were present now, making themselves known on their first – and only – night of real rest before they must make their way forth again tomorrow, sailing to Gondor.
At least these boats would be larger than the tiny leaflike canoes they had paddled down the Anduin. And at least he might have a rest from the horse’s back.
A few words from the innkeeper set him on the path to the stables, though he could have found his own way from smell alone. He had grown accustomed to the scent of horse in the last few days, but the scent was intensified in the stables, with all the horses gathered together: hay and dust and dung and sweat. Most of the beasts seemed sleepy as well, he noticed as he passed, and it was no wonder – for all that he felt the ride of the last few days, he had at least not been the beast of burden!
Legolas had settled Arod in a stall at the far end of the stable. The horse seemed well groomed, at least to Gimli’s untrained eye, but Legolas stood still beside him, passing a brush over his back in slow, almost dreamlike circles.
Gimli stood still for a moment, watching the almost hypnotic motion of the brush. It was strangely peaceful; he could be almost lulled to sleep – and for a moment he wondered if Legolas was asleep, in that strange way of elves. But no – after a moment, Legolas sighed deeply and turned to face him, his face drawn as Gimli had rarely seen it, eyes and mouth folded in tired lines.
For a moment, there was no sound but the quiet shuffling and snorting of horses, and Gimli forgot why he had come to seek Legolas as the silence stretched between them. But at last he found his voice again and took a few steps forward. “Not settled yet, hm?”
“Not - ? Oh.” Legolas looked at the brush in his hand and then gestured with it in a half-shrug that sagged as quickly as his attempt of a smile. “I was merely . . .” He trailed off.
Gimli waited for him to finish, but Legolas only gazed at him – no, through him, his eyes vacant as sleep again. As though he had forgotten he was speaking.
Gimli cleared his throat, and Legolas started as if out of a dream, his eyes focusing again, but did not speak – so Gimli took it upon himself. “You said you meant to settle our friend,” he said. “He seems well settled, unless I miss my guess.”
“Yes,” murmured Legolas. “He is . . . I was only – thinking.”
“Thinking?” Gimli prodded. For the first time in days, some emotion other than his own misery was returning to him – concern for whatever this strange mood might mean. “Will you share your thoughts with a friend?”
Legolas let the hand holding the brush fall to his side and took a few steps, but stopped at Arod’s head and began to stroke his nose instead. “Perhaps . . .” he said. Arod whuffed and nuzzled his head into Legolas’s hand, and Legolas gave the smallest of smiles and murmured something in elvish.
Gimli hid his fond smile behind a snort. “I meant myself, not the horse, Master Legolas,” he said. “Come, now, what troubles you? There is a hard road ahead, but the Dead have left us, at least.”
“The Dead do not trouble me,” Legolas said vaguely, and then as though he had heard his own words, his head snapped up. “Oh! But” – And then he was turning to face Gimli in full at last, his eyes clear as though he finally saw him. “Yes, they have left us. And how do you fare now, Gimli?”
Gimli’s cheeks heated under the warmth of his regard. He had not meant – but then, at least Legolas seemed present in the moment at last. “I am well enough,” he mumbled. “But if it is not the Dead, it seems something is amiss with you. Will you not come back to our room and unburden yourself to me?”
Legolas let out a long, sad sigh. “I think not,” he said, “not yet. It is still too near, and I do not know what it means – but yes, I will come back with you. Thank you for coming to fetch me; I do not know how long I would have stayed here.”
“Too long, doubtless,” said Gimli. “Our friend deserves his rest as well as we do; he has run hard these last days and endured more than any horse of Rohan ever ought.” For Arod too had loathed the ride with the Dead. Gimli approached him cautiously – he did not feel as at ease with the horse as Legolas did, but he thought they had reached an understanding in the last two days. And sure enough, Arod whuffed gently, a gust of warm air over Gimli’s outstretched palm, and let Gimli pat him cautiously on the nose as well.
“He does, and he has,” Legolas said softly. He took in a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh, his shoulders slumping. “Very well; you are right. I will leave him in peace and come with you. Good night, my friend,” he said to Arod, and leaned in to press his lips to the horse’s long flat nose.
The sight made something in Gimli go soft and loose, but he forced himself to hide it behind a laugh. “Such a farewell!” he made himself say. “You will see him in the morning!”
Legolas shrugged and laughed a little. “He deserves it,” he said, and then he was eyeing Gimli speculatively.
The gleam in his eye made something in Gimli’s belly clench, but before he could speak, Legolas was coming toward him, stopping only to drop the brush into a bucket of grooming tools, and taking his face between both hands. Gimli had no time to react before Legolas had leaned down and pressed a kiss to his forehead as well, directly between his brows.
His lips were there and away in a moment, but Gimli swore he could still feel them tingling, a print against his face. “What was that for?” he managed to splutter, pretending amusement even as his bones threatened to melt and leave him a puddle on the straw floor.
Legolas looked at him for a moment longer, some strange combination of melancholy and tenderness in his eyes, and then shook his head. “Everything,” he said simply, and slung an arm around Gimli’s shoulders, turning them both towards the entrance to the stable and letting it rest there as they made their way together back towards the room.
Only moments before, he had wondered if the chill of the Dead would ever be banished – but now, Gimli thought he had never felt so warm.
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