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ironmandeficiency · 1 year

Text

sending memes

pairing: legolas / modern!reader

word count: 2153

summary: it was remarkably easy to fall in love with the elven prince. unfortunately, it was somewhat harder to actually convey said feelings. that’s when you decide to use memes

req: can i have legolas x reader with "sender quotes a poem that reminds them of receiver"? -@micheleamidalajedi

a/n: leave it to me to turn soft romance prompts into bullshit 😂i had to tweak it just a smidge but i think it's fine. mistor is gn sindarin for strayer/wanderer, aluon is gn sindarin for wholesome, & meril means artist or poet in woodelven sindarin

in the beginning, the elves had no idea what to do with you. you were far too brash and loud for court and had very little formal training in just about anything useful. your clothes were strange and there were dozens of words in your vernacular they didn’t understand, and several of your mannerisms threw the elves of the greenwood into tizzies.

your consensus was that they tolerated you simply because you knew things you shouldn’t, like the events of the first age and personal details about king thranduil that never saw the light of day.

some elves surprisingly enjoyed your presence very early on and jumped on the opportunity to learn about where you came from. of this number was legolas, a very adept learner who was easy on the eyes (and your heart, but that’s neither here nor there).

you’ve been in middle earth for a few years now, having jumped on the chance to stay and never return to a world slowly deteriorating. once you told the elves about various tragedies that had struck your earth in the past hundred years alone, even thranduil was terrified at the prospect of sending you back.

so now you were somewhat fluent in sindarin and best friends with a prince; oh, how the turntables.

“mistor!” your elvish name was cheerfully shouted across the training arena. “watch this!” aluon’s voice was immediately recognized and it brought a smile to your face. he had been one of your very first friends in middle earth and despite his youth (for an elf), was placed on your royal guard for if you ever ventured beyond the greenwood. he was what you would call a cinnamon roll.

“okay, i’m watching!”

aluon was currently practicing with his throwing knives, his bow resting against the side of a training dummy. for all the praise a bow and arrow got from elves, he preferred his knives just a bit more.

he threw one last look over his shoulder to make sure you were indeed watching him before throwing the blade in his hand with a resounding “YEET!”

the knife landed directly in the bullseye because of course it did.

you could barely congratulate him on his aim and joke execution for your cackling, arms holding your stomach as if your body were truly coming undone. his laughter joined yours soon after, the two of you leaning on each other while trying (and failing) to catch your breath.

legolas has known you long enough to know that where boisterous laughter is heard, you’re likely the culprit. this is why his footsteps guided him to the training arena in the royal wing, the one reserved for himself, his father, and their most trusted friends and guards.

to his non-surprise, you and aluon were wheezing on the ground at some unknown joke. he approached you both with a smile of his own, sturdy hands helping you to your feet. “mellon nin, what lightens you so?”

“aluon was throwing knives and went ‘YEET!’ and he hit the center of the target!” the cackling returned with renewed strength as you mimicked the motion and raucous screech of the four letter word.

ah, the practice of yeeting. you explained the word to him very early into your presence here and he found himself using the term on the odd occasion, much to your delight.

but legolas, as polite and regal as he was, felt the embers of friendly competition light in his chest. it wasn’t about the aim of aluon’s throws, as logical but slightly unfounded as that claim would have been.

it was truly about your laughter. he wanted to be the reason you lit up with such mirth, he wanted to be responsible for the joy in your eyes.

with all the princely decorum he could muster, he armed himself with his bow, notched an arrow, and let it fly directly into the wooden handle of aluon’s blade.

then, with a straight face, he dabbed.

tauriel was a hard elf to get ahold of. as captain of the guard, she was always busy, flitting about while completing all sorts of duties.

but finally, two weeks after legolas made a show of dabbing in the training arena, you found her in a rare moment of rest. you knocked on the door to her rooms and when she opened it, you walked right inside and plopped yourself on the nearest chair.

“ugh tauriel! finally, i’ve been trying to talk to you for ages!”

she smiles warmly, always having been one to enjoy the mannerisms that made you so intensely human. “it’s good to see you too, mellon nin,” her chuckle is soft and sincere. “what do you need?”

you sighed, snatching a throw pillow from the chaise you were on and reclining back in a way reminiscent of a therapist’s office. “i need advice about legolas.”

her smile turned to a knowing smirk. “ah, so you finally see what the entire kingdom already knows.”

“what do you mean ‘the entire kingdom knows’? what do they know?!”

“ah, i see i was mistaken.”

your resulting floundering was amusing to the redhead.

“i’m serious tauriel, i need your help!” you thought it useless to play coy and being vague would get you nowhere, so you told her exactly what you needed to know. “i need to know how to go about asking him on a date, or whatever it is that elves do when they’re interested in someone.”

“well,” she began, “if i know him as well as i think i do, he wouldn’t want you to conform to elven traditions to please him.”

“what’s that supposed to mean?” at this point, you were beginning to question why you came to tauriel for help, seeing as she was being ridiculously cryptic and strangely unhelpful. “in case you forgot, he’s royalty. i can’t exactly woo him with ridiculous memes and call it a day.”

she nodded. “why not? if that is a regular human courting tradition where you’re from, why would he not find it acceptable? it’s part of who you are, and one could only call themselves a worthy suitor if they appreciate those things about their intended.”

okay, she had a little bit of a point. not that you would tell her so, of course. “but i can’t text him memes at ungodly hours of the night, there still is a lack of cell phones to contend with.”

for someone so smart and otherworldly, tauriel thought, you were rather oblivious when your feelings got in the way of your common sense. “then do those things in a different way. as you’ve told me before, there’s more than one way to skin a cat.”

after a few moments of silent pondering, you realized what she was hinting at. “i can draw the memes! or, well, i can ask meril for assistance in the matter, since i’m not quite used to using quills and such.” tauriel thought she could see the gears turning in your head (if that was indeed the right analogy).

she shouldn’t have been surprised when you leaped from her chaise and wrapped her in a tight hug. humans in your world must be a bit more affectionate than the ones she was vaguely familiar with, “thank you thank you thank you! i’ll let you know how it goes! bye!” with that abrupt exit, tauriel watched you fondly as you sprinted from your rooms, probably heading to the library where you could find meril.

legolas was fletching arrows when a courier appeared in his line of vision with a bow. “my prince, a letter for you.” he accepted the outstretched letter with a nod, wondering what it could possibly be.

the parchment was familiar to him, being the very same quality that occupied his own writing desk in his chambers. the only momentary pause was seeing that the few words were written in westron, underneath a drawing of a radish with a tiny face.

“you’re… radishing?” it took him a moment to dissect the pun, shoulders shaking minutely when the meaning fully registered. then his eyes caught your signature on the bottom of the page and his smile grew wider. he folds your letter neatly and tucks it into a pocket. when he goes back to his rooms next, he will deposit it securely on his desk to keep it safe.

the radish is the first of many of these pictures he receives from you, he soon learns that in the world you came from, they’re called “memes” and can convey any number of things depending on the content and context.

during dinner one evening, you passed him a napkin that he unfolded to find another vegetable drawing, this time a smiling carrot, with the words “i carrot a lot about you” that turned the tips of his ears pink. if his father noticed the blush he gave no indication of it.

your memes varied in artistic talent (he would know meril’s penmanship anywhere) but all carried the same intention, which seemed to be making him flustered at the most inopportune times. another thing he learned about memes was that they were frequently sent back and forth between two people.

his own visit to meril seemed to be long overdue.

meril has lived for several thousand years in service to the greenwood. yet, in all her centuries of knowledge and experience, she’s never seen two beings dance around feelings with the same grace as prince legolas (or lack thereof, where you were concerned).

you taught her what memes were and provided descriptions of what you deemed “templates” for her to draw, master copies of a certain type of meme where the meaning of the meme changed depending on the text. it was a very interesting affair, if she did say so herself. they became more popular throughout the kingdom thanks to your influence, so much so that the prince himself came to her one day with an odd request.

“i need you to help me compose a meme worthy of mistor’s laughter.” he looked serious as he ever did, grim determination set in every pore of his face. none would know that he was simply trying to make a meme.

“you need to be more specific, your highness. your dear mistor can find humor in nearly everything around them. in fact, yesterday afternoon, they spilled nearly a month’s worth of ink onto a single piece of parchment and laughingly called it the thirteenth reason.”

legolas smiled at the story before his mind fully processed what she said. “they’re not my- thirteenth reason for what? what were the other twelve?”

meril shrugged, walking towards what became your desk in the library soon after your arrival. many of the templates were strewn about its surface haphazardly, half-finished memes next to their matching templates. “you should find everything you need here, your highness. if mistor arrives before you’re gone, i shall keep them occupied.”

“thank you. i greatly appreciate your help.”

finding blank parchment and a quill, he dipped into your ink jar and quickly got to work.

you generally never got letters. any missives you received from various elves were dubbed simply as messages that just happened to be written, which is why being told there was a letter for you had you perplexed. it wasn’t like modern earth discovered how to send carrier pigeons to middle earth in the few years you’ve lived in the greenwood.

instead of asking the courier several questions about the contents of the letter, you simply bid him thanks and quickly tore into it.

the wax seal of the royal line was recognized in seconds. thranduil wouldn’t waste his time writing anything out that he could simply tell you in person with a summons to wherever he happened to be.

that left legolas, and the thought made you giddy just thinking about it.

you registered that there were words written to you, but paid them no mind for the moment. what truly gave you surprise was the fact he used a template. you knew this because you recognized the format; a young girl standing in front of several other people who were giving her audience, a display board just behind her.

this bitch sent you a lisa simpson meme.

after a moment of bewilderment, you actually read the words that were just behind her.

“mistor’s laugh makes the plants grow stronger and could replace the sun with their joy”

you could tell that towards the end he worried about having enough room for all the words in the square with how they got just a smidge smaller. but that didn’t matter to you in the slightest, not when he wrote such a romantic sentiment solely for you. your giggles were the furthest thing from dignified but you didn’t care.

you had a prince to find (and hopefully kiss, if things went your way).

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