The Fight

DISCLAIMER: Not mine, no harm intended, no profit made.


The Fight


“Legolas, down!”

Elladan watched to make sure the golden head heeded his warning as Legolas ducked beneath the swing of an Orc’s sword.

Seeing that his lover was momentarily safe, Elladan continued to fight, swearing vigorously while keeping an eye on Mirkwood’s Prince. Legolas wasn’t being careful enough, which was dangerous when there were too many Orcs and too few of them. He, his brother, and the golden Prince were going to have a tough time getting out of this one, but they would do it, if Legolas would just keep his wits about him.

But no, the darling of Mirkwood was too busy showing off to fully comprehend the danger he was in.

“Elrohir, would you go over there and help him!” Elladan yelled to his twin, who rolled his eyes in response.

“You shouldn’t worry so much, mother dear,” Elrohir grinned, chopping off an Orc’s arm. “Your baby boy is going to be just fine. Just relax, and enjoy the sport.”

Calling his brother several names in three different languages, Elladan decided to take care of this himself and slowly carved a path towards the golden Prince.

“Legolas!” he shouted, slicing his sword across and Orc’s stomach and spilling its guts onto the ground.

“Elladan, what are you doing?” Legolas snarled, maneuvering his body so he didn’t end up hurting the Elf. “You’re going to get us both killed!”

“I’m trying to save your life!” Elladan yelled, swinging furiously in every direction, and hitting an Orc with every swing.

“I wasn’t aware that my life needed saving!”

“If you’d stop with the fancy swordplay and just start killing the bastards, you’d be aware of how close you are to getting your pretty head removed from those lovely shoulders, and that’s not something I want to see happen!”

“This is not my first battle!” he said angrily, thrusting his sword through an Orc’s heart, then had to use his leg to push against the corpse and pry the blade free.

“You could have fooled me.”

“Wouldn’t take much!”

“Arrogant little Elfling!”

“Domineering Human!” he shouted back, putting as much contempt as he could muster into the final word.

“I’m going to make you regret that one,” Elladan growled as he caught sight of his brother surrounded by four of the enemy. “I’m going to be right back. Stay alive until then!”

Elladan began to make his way to Elrohir, but when he didn’t hear a snide remark from Legolas, he paused to look over his shoulder. “Legolas?”

There wasn’t a single strand of golden hair to be found.

“Legolas!”

Torn between the missing Prince and his brother, Elladan lifted his head with a frustrated shout and rushed towards Elrohir. The last of the Orcs had focused on the single Elf, but together the two were able to finish them off. The twins stood for a moment, panting as they tried to catch their breath, their eyes watching for any movements from the twitching limbs that weren’t simply the death throes of Orcs.

As he looked around, a frown creased Elrohir’s forehead. “Where’s Legolas?”

Elladan flinched, also searching the battlefield. “I don’t know. He was there one second, and the next. . .”

Despite his earlier words mocking his brother’s concern, Elrohir was immediately struck with a wave of fear for their golden lover. “Damnit, Elladan! You were supposed to be watching him!”

“I was trying!” the twin snapped. “But in case you didn’t notice, we were surrounded by Orcs!”

Seeing his own panic reflected in his brother’s eyes, Elrohir gathered his anger and took a deep, calming breath. “Let’s not overreact, not yet. Where’d you leave him?”

Elladan gestured to his left with his sword and the brothers stumbled through the bodies, blue-violet eyes frantically searching for a single strand of golden hair.

“Legolas!” Elladan shouted, voice laden with desperation.

“Legolas!” Elrohir shouted, echoing his brother.

They began pulling at piles of Orcs to see if their missing lover was buried under the bodies. As they began flinging aside torsos and legs, Elladan caught sight of a familiar tunic and gave an excited yell. “Over here!”

Elrohir leapt over a pile of dead and helped his brother clear the wreckage from Legolas’s body. The golden Prince coughed as the pressure was eased from his chest, freeing his lungs so he could breathe again.

“Bout time,” he gasped as the twins pulled him to his feet. “I don’t know if it was their weight or their smell that was smothering me, but my stomach wasn’t going to take much more of that”

He turned to grab his sword from the puddle of gore and wiped it off on an Orc’s tunic. Standing up, he looked at the twins and froze. They were quiet, which was always a good sign that they were unhappy, and they were scowling, another good sign. Or a bad one, considering the situation.

Legolas blinked innocently at them. “Something wrong?”

Blue-violet eyes narrowed.

“Something’s wrong.” Legolas sighed. “All right, what is it this time?”

The brothers turned on their heels, then stomped and splashed their way across the battlefield. Legolas stared at them for a few seconds, then sheathed his sword, turned on his heel, and stomped and splashed in the opposite direction.

It took the twins a moment to realize that there was no voice calling after them, no sound of feet running to catch up. When they finally stopped and looked behind them, Legolas was already nearing the edge of the forest.

“Now where does he think he’s going?” Elrohir mused, having returned to his bemused self now that Legolas was safe.

“I think he’s mad at us.”

“Mad? At us?”

“Yes, Elrohir,” Elladan said, nodding slowly. “Mad at us.”

“Well that’s just ridiculous. What is he thinking?”

“I imagine he’s thinking we should go after him and ask him that ourselves.”

Elrohir looked at the retreating back and tilted his head thoughtfully. “I think we should wait for him to come to us.”

“He’s not going to like that.”

“Considering the alternative would be running after him, don’t you think it would be better for us if we waited for him?”

“I think it would be better for us if we went after him, especially since there’s nothing I prefer more after a battle than to relieve a little tension,” Elladan said, glancing suggestively over his twin’s body, and Elrohir rolled his eyes.

“Can’t you control yourself at all?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never had to before.”

“Try.”

“Why should I? You’re alive and well. He’s alive and well. Is there some connection here that I’m missing?”

“He’s acting like a child.”

“And we aren’t?”

“You were furious with him before!”

Elladan shrugged. “I’ve recovered.”

“Well, I’ve decided that I haven’t. He has no reason to be angry with us! We weren’t the ones found buried under a pile of Orcs.”

“But—”

“No.”

“But—”

“NO!”

Elladan glared at his brother. “You’ll be begging for us to go after him before the night is out.”

“The only begging around here is going to be from him. I am not going to yield to this immature ploy!” Elrohir turned on his heel and began walking way from his brother, but in a direction caddy-corner from that of Legolas and his twin.

“Fine! Then be an unyielding bastard on your own!” Elladan shouted, starting to walk away from them both, then stopped and swore. He paced back and forth for a few minutes, muttering harshly under his breath as he fought with his conscience. If he didn’t love them so much, he might have been severely tempted to just leave them to sulk on their own. But since he did love them, and he still wanted to rid himself of his post-battle tension, he’d simply have to find a way to bring the pair together.

Elladan sighed. He would have to fall in love with the moodiest pair on Middle Earth. As he could sense Elrohir was nowhere near ready to relent, he first decided to see if he could appease the golden Prince.

Elladan found Legolas kneeling by a stream, trying to wash the Orc blood from his skin. Legolas refused to acknowledge his arrival except for the further down-turning of his mouth. The raven-haired Elf knelt down next to him and dipped a hand into the stream.

“You missed a spot,” he said softly as he reached up to wipe a drop of the foul blood from Legolas’s forehead.

A cloud of silence surrounded them and Elladan forced himself to wait patiently until the golden Prince was ready. It didn’t take long.

“Am I a child?” Legolas asked, staring intently at the running water before him. “Is that what you see when you look at me? A little Elfling to be coddled and locked away from the slightest hint of danger?”

“Legolas, no!” Elladan exclaimed, clutching the pale hands between his own. Where on Middle Earth would his love have gotten that insane impression? he wondered, knowing better than to ask aloud. “That’s not what we think at all!”

The green eyes rose to meet his, and Elladan flinched at the hurt reflected there.

“Then why don’t you trust me?”

“My beautiful love,” he said reaching up to brush a nonexistent strand of hair from Legolas’s face, giving himself an excuse to caress the soft skin. “We do trust you, but it is because we love you so much that we can’t help worrying about you or fearing for your safety. Especially when we’re surrounded by Orcs.”

“But you don’t act like this towards Elrohir,” Legolas protested, “and he doesn’t act like this towards you.”

“Of course we do,” Elladan grinned. “Why do you think we’re always arguing or picking on each other when we fight? It’s our way of keeping an eye on each other.”

“Yeah, but you do that even when there aren’t any Orcs around.”

A spark of mischief appeared in the Elf’s grin. “You’ve seen the way Elrohir reacts when being teased. Do you think I’m going to limit myself to that kind of fun only when our lives are in danger?”

“By teasing him like that, your life is always in danger,” Legolas said in a wry voice, a near-smile starting to curl his lips, hinting that it wanted to make itself known, but not sure if the rift had yet been repaired. “Elladan, you can’t keep treating me like this, or I’m going to end up resenting you, and then hating you, and I don’t want to do that. I want us to be together, and happy. You two are going to have to change.”

Elladan looked at him with wide, pathetic eyes. “Do we really have to?”

“Yes.”

“All right,” he sighed, sliding an arm around Legolas’s waist, “I’ll talk to Elrohir about it.” He wondered just how he was going to bring this up with his brother, but recalling the pain in the beautiful green eyes, he knew he’d have to find a way. “Legolas?”

“Hmm?” he responded, content now that Elladan’s body warmth was adding to his own.

“How long have you felt this way?”

Legolas was quiet for a moment, then looked up into the blue-violet gaze and answered, “A long time.”

“Then why didn’t you say anything?”

He sighed, resting his head against Elladan’s. “At first I thought it was somewhat endearing having the two of you looking over my shoulder all the time. Then it grew irritating. Then I decided it to have a little fun with it and laugh it off, and that was working, until today. You had no right to be angry, which made me angry, and I realized I’d let it go on too long.”

Elladan nuzzled his lover’s neck, holding him close. “You want us to trust you, but you need to feel free to trust us. You have to tell us when something is bothering you.”

“I know, and I will,” he said, leaning into the Elf’s touch. “And having agreed to this, I feel I should inform you that something is bothering me right now.”

“Then tell me what it is, lovely one, and I will do everything in my power make amends.”

“The problem, my dusky Prince,” Legolas said, quickly pushing Elladan down and pinning him to the ground, “is that there is not near enough of your skin touching mine.”

“I can see how that would be a problem,” Elladan grinned, raising his head to reach for Legolas’s mouth, but the golden Prince kept his lips just out of reach. He placed a feather-light kiss on the right corner of Elladan’s mouth, then placed a feather-light kiss on the left. He flicked his tongue across the underside of Elladan’s pouting lower lip, then over the crease above his upper lip.

“Legolas. . .” The name was a prolonged moan as it passed through Elladan’s throat and the golden Prince chuckled as he bestowed the much desired kiss on his needy lips.

Elladan wrenched his hands free from Legolas’s grasp to wrap arms and legs around his golden lover, leaving no space between them as their bodies writhed together. A blissful purr rose from Legolas’s chest and he reached between them to rub a hand over the bulge between Elladan’s legs.

The raven-haired Prince growled at the partial contact, needing more now that he was finally going to get rid of his post-battle stress. “Still not enough skin touching,” Elladan muttered as he began wresting the green leggings over his lover’s backside. He hadn’t even managed to get two inches of silky skin freed before he stopped, his entire body going tense.

“Elladan?” Legolas asked, arching an eyebrow in amusement. There weren’t a lot of things that could stop Elladan, especially while they were in this condition, but of those. . . Legolas’s amusement faded as he sensed the cause of the sudden distress in his lover.

Two pairs of Elven eyes turned to see Elrohir watching them, his blue-violet gaze darkened to the color of the deepest midnight.

“Enjoying yourselves?”

“Mmm. . .” Legolas smiled, forcing himself to relax. “Yes, quite.”

Elrohir’s scowl deepened. “So I see.”

“It turns out Legolas has good reason to be mad at us,” Elladan said, making no effort to move, but talking quickly to keep his twin from leaving. “We’ve been treating him like a child’s plaything, but in our defense, he’s made no effort to inform us that he is not just an object, but a living creature with feelings and thoughts of his own. Having sorted that out and agreeing to behave better in the future, I can honestly say that, yes, we are enjoying ourselves.”

“But we would be enjoying ourselves even more if you were with us,” Legolas said with pleading eyes as he looked up at the twin.

Elrohir gazed down into those wide green eyes, the lower lip trembling just the right amount to evoke pity in his heart and actually make him feel guilty for not having jumped them the moment he’d found him. He sighed, shaking his head. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you.”

“We’re full of ideas,” Elladan grinned while his brother fixed his gaze on him.

“We’re certain everything is worked out?”

Elladan nodded. “Legolas promised to inform us when we’ve gone too far, and we’ve agreed to respect his abilities in a manner that manages to not to compromise our natural instincts to grab onto him and never let him go.”

Elrohir stared down at his two lovers and allowed a smile to cross his face. “Well, then, I guess that just about solves everything. So, are you ready to move on?”

“Move on?” Legolas’s eyes widened in confusion. “Move on to where?”

“I have no intention of spending any more time within the vicinity of an Orc graveyard. Once we’re about ten miles from here, then we can relax and not have to worry about—”

Though they knew their lover was most likely teasing, Elladan and Legolas decided not to give Elrohir the opportunity to prolong this torture and tackled him. Within seconds, he was laughing as they stripped the clothes off of him in order to find more spots to tickle. In the midst of their play, however, Legolas made sure he found the opportunity to give Elrohir a much deserved kiss, showing him with his lips the depths of his love, and reassuring himself that things were fine between them.

Elrohir smiled, brushing a lock of gold away from Legolas’s face. “Love you, too. And yes, we’re fine. Now, don’t you think your mouth would be better used elsewhere?” he said, gently pushing the golden Prince’s head down below his waist, and Legolas smiled.

“Yes, love,” he said, and put his mouth to work while Elladan grinned, relieved that he was finally going to get what he wanted--both of his lovers not just happy, but together.

[Completed March 31, 2004]