#or to copy/paste off me if they'd rather set their own terms lmao

[tathrin]

Kiss #17, please (to distract)? Thank you!

Absolutely, and what an appropriate choice to send when I'm trying to distract myself from what I'm supposed to be doing lol (thank you). Anyway, prompt taken from this; anyone can feel free to send other numbers in at any time.

Legolas was fidgeting. Gimli glanced over sideways, a concerned frown furrowing underneath his beard. It was not the motion itself that had caught his attention: Legolas was by nature a creature of near-constant motion, a trait that seemed to be shared by all Wood-elves. They were like the trees they loved so much, ever swaying in some breeze that only they could feel; ever rustling like the whisper of thin green leaves overhead.

This was not that sort of motion; this was fidgeting. This was nerves.

Gimli could tell the difference at a glance, after so many years (he was not actually sure how many years anymore; time was a strange thing in the Undying Lands) of their companionship. Legolas's usual motion was soft and winding, like a gentle summer breeze. These fidgets, as he twisted his long bark-brown fingers together, were short and sharp and miserable.

He was nervous. It showed in the tension of his smooth and beardless face, in the darting glances of his bright grey eyes, and most of all in the twiddling of those spindly fingers.

Gimli reached over and covered Legolas's hands with one of his own, broad palm stilling the much longer, thinner digits with ease. Legolas looked over and gave him a grateful smile, but the skittering tension did not leave his eyes.

"You are distressed," Gimli said. He kept his voice low, although he knew that the other elves near them would hear well enough; elvish senses were too keen to be so easily avoided. But Gimli knew too that the others were all preoccupied with their own thoughts, and would not pry without cause. "Why?"

"I have never met him before," Legolas replied in a murmur. He curled one of his hands up around Gimli's, lacing their fingers together. "What if he...what if he is disappointed by me?"

"How could anyone be disappointed in you?"

That instinctive response merited Gimli another brief flash of a grateful smile, but this one was gone even faster than the first. "Oropher was a great Elf Lord," Legolas replied softly. "A leader even before he was crowned a king. He is spoken of with respect even by the Noldor—or some of them, at least; and that is no small thing, for us of the Woodland Realm."

"True enough," said Gimli, his words slow as grinding stone, "but I do not see why any of that should give you cause to fret, my dear."

Legolas swallowed. "I am so small, Gimli, compared to that. What if he is disappointed to meet a grandson who is so much less?"

"Ridiculous," Gimli snapped. "Legolas, you are being as foolish as a Took—no, moreso; for Tooks at least can recognize their own worth. You are a treasure among elves, my dear, and I do not say that only because you are my treasure."

Legolas could not restrain a watery laugh at that, and Gimli smiled to see it.

The smile passed quickly, though, and the frown returned, deeper now than before. "Do you fear that he will be disappointed to find that you have chosen a dwarf?"

"What?" Legolas gaped at him. "Of course not!"

"No?" Gimli raised an eyebrow. "He was an elf of Doriath, was he not?"

The tips of Legolas's ears colored. "That—yes," he admitted. "But what of it? Doriath was a long time ago, and the dwarves that fought there were not your kin. And they certainly were not you." He shook his head, his golden braids bouncing in irritation. "Besides, name an elf in all of Aman who has not fallen in love with you."

Gimli bit his lip to restrain his smirk. "I can name several," he said.

"That you have met?" Legolas retorted, and Gimli could not stop the short bark of a guffaw that slipped past his beard.

"Indeed, yes!" he chuckled. "Many look upon me with grudging tolerance at best, and you know it."

"None whose opinions are worth counting," Legolas said loftily.

Gimli smiled at him. "Fair enough," he allowed. "Your grandfather's opinion, however, is one that we would both value, I think."

"Nellglind adores you. And he died much closer to the events of which you allude than Oropher."

Gimli granted the truth of that statement with a nod, and decided that now was not the time to point out that Oropher's husband had not exactly been enamored of Gimli immediately upon meeting him. Instead he said, "Well, if you are not concerned that he will be displeased to see me by your side, then I cannot imagine what could possibly be the source of this fretting."

"I am not sure that it has a source," Legolas muttered. He drew his knees up before him where he sat on the slope of the low, grassy hill outside the Halls of Mandos where the elves of Greenwood had gathered to wait for the return of their first king. "Only that this is the first time that I will have been here to see one of my family Return from Death, and I find myself plagued by an anxiety over it that I cannot name."

Gimli nodded his understanding of that, too. "Well," he said, "as I understand it, you will not have long to wait, my love. Soon he will be back among the living, and you will meet, and he will adore you I am sure—even as I do."

He silently considered the merits of making himself scare for Oropher's actual arrival, however; of giving the legendary Elvenking a few minutes to meet his grandson on Legolas's own merits before confronting him with the reality of Legolas's dwarven husband. It seemed not just the prudent course of action, but the polite one, too. After all, while Gimli was indeed part of Oropher's family now, Oropher did not know that yet. Let him meet the grandson he did not yet know he had first, and then his dwarven grandson-in-law.

Things would no doubt go much smoother for all of them, then.

But they had a few minutes yet before the Doors of the Halls of Mandos opened, and his elf was still nervous.

So Gimli raised his other hand and caught Legolas's narrow chin and drew his beardless face down to him for a long, slow kiss. Legolas fairly melted into Gimli's arms, all the tension of his long limbs running out of him like iron set too long over a hot forge.

"Thank you," he murmured.

"Anytime, my love," Gimli replied, and pressed a second, softer kiss against Legolas's now smiling lips.

Of course, that was the moment that Oropher took to actually walk out of the Halls.