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“Do you need a ride?” A slick silver car pulled up alongside Kili.
He was trudging home from practice, Fili’s scarf wrapped tight around his neck, but his coat was thin and the wind was bitter even though it was March. Usually Fili picked him up, but there was a second shift open at the diner and they couldn’t afford to let that kind of thing slip away. This morning, Fili had dumped the scarf over his head over Kili's protests of being sixteen not six and now he was fiercely grateful for the ratty smoky thing.
“Go away,” he muttered, too tired and cold to be willing to be fucked with. That kind of car belonged to a certain kind of person and none of them would give him a ride.
“You sure?” The window rolled down and Tauriel peered out at him. “It’s really cold out.”
“Oh, um...”
Tauriel with her long red hair and perfect skin and white teeth and an arrow that never missed the mark. She was the only girl on the archery team and Kili often sat out so she would get a fair amount of time. Coach was sort of an asshole that way. She was a part of the golden clique, a year older and as mysterious to him as the moon. But she wouldn’t be the kind of girl to offer a ride then drive off laughing.
“Get in,” she popped the door.
“I’ll ruin your upholstery.”
“You’re wet, not covered in shit. Get in.”
He got in.
“Thanks.”
“You live on Blue Mountain Road, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Why didn’t you come out with us if you didn’t have a ride? We could have gotten something to eat then dropped you off.”
“Um,” he shrugged, “the team is...we’re not friends.”
“We’re not?”
He slunk down in the seat, “You know they don’t like me.”
“They just don’t know you. You never give us a chance. Anyway, you’re the best shot on the team.”
“No way! You never miss and you do those trick shots-”
“Okay, you’re the best guy on the team,” she grinned.
“I wish I could do that behind the back thing you do.”
“I could show you,” she shrugged. “It isn’t actually hard.”
“Right, whatever. No one can do that."
They talked about the team a little and just when Kili was starting to relax, they drove up his street. His house was small and the walkway was broken. His mother’s flowers weren’t blooming yet and the yard just looked muddy.
“This is me,” he mumbled.
“Okay,” she glanced up at the house. “Isn’t anyone home?”
“Fili has to work. Mom and Dad too. It’s...I usually don’t go out with the team because I make dinner for everyone.” He swallowed. "You probably don't care, sorry-"
“Do you want some help?”
“You cook?”
“No,” she got out. “But I’m good at cutting things.”
The house was tidy and warm, at least. He kicked off his boots and tried not to think too hard about her actually being in his house. She didn't seem to fit there, too tall, too otherworldly to be in the same place as his mother's ceramic pig collection. In the kitchen, sitting at the table with a knife, dicing things fine. She was good with a knife, but apparently she was terrified of raw chicken.
“If you eat it, you should be able to touch it,” Kili laughed as her face screwed up.
“When I eat it, it isn’t covered in salmonella.”
When the chicken went into the oven, he made a pot of coffee and they drank it together at the table.
“Won’t someone miss you at home?” He asked when the cuckoo clock started shouting.
“No,” she rubbed her thumb over a the rim of her mug, “my aunt doesn’t care really. Usually I wind up going over to Legolas’ place after school. Even though his father always looks at me like I’m going to get fingerprints all over everything.”
“I thought you and Legolas...” He trailed off.
“No! Oh my god, no. He’s like my bratty little brother,” she rolled her eyes and a weird pressure lifted off his chest though it couldn’t be hope. There was no hope to be found here, he told himself sternly. “He can’t even braid his own damn hair.”
“Fili either,” Kili blurted. “I do it for him.”
“Yeah? I always thought his were really neat. You can do french ones?”
They wound up talking about braiding and then about archery more and then music. She got up reluctantly when her phone buzzed like an irritable bee.
“This was nice.” She seemed to really mean it too.
He walked her to the door and she hesitated and he tried to find something to fill the silence.
“Thanks for the ride,” he settled on.
“You’re welcome.”
And then she was gone in a cloud of sandalwood. He thought it would be a memory, one of those happy golden moments that made the interminable grind of school better. But then the next time he had to walk home there was her car.
And the next.
And the next.
She liked cooking, she claimed, despite the fact that all she did was dice things while he did the rest. She liked the coffee he made. He learned how to make her laugh and how she sometimes wasn’t good with words either. Sometimes they just sat quiet together and he was so happy, he could have busted. Each time she stayed, it was later and later until it was inevitable she met his family. They treated her with suspicion and stilted hospitality. She barely seemed to notice it, returning his parents wary looks with smiles and offers of help.
“Just be careful,” Fili said to him as they got ready for bed.
“Of what? She’s my friend.”
“Maybe. But she can’t be anything more. Not with her the way she is and us the way we are.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” Kili gritted out. “She’s better than me, a thousand times better.”
“No fucking way. It’s you that’s better than her,” Fili thumped him on the shoulder. “You’re a Durin!”
“Right,” Kili went to bed with prickling heat behind his eyelids.
And maybe that would have been the end of it. Except that Tauriel was brave. Braver than Kili could ever hope to be. She kept on coming over and talking to him at practice, until the rest of the team couldn't stop pretending that he didn't exist if they wanted her to show them her tricks. Then one day in spring, she plopped herself down at one of the empty chairs at his lunch table and stayed. Stayed even though Ori couldn’t string two words together around her and Gimli kept going on and on about his latest Dungeons and Dragons character, long after they’d stopped listening.
“You’re crazy,” he told her.
“Nah, you’re friends are nicer than mine.”
Just like cooking dinner and the rides home, she kept on coming back. Came back so often that Kili realized she wasn’t hanging out with her own friends nearly at all anymore. He wasn’t the only one that noticed.
“Tauriel,” Legolas approached the table with an expression usually reserved for dogshit on the bottom of a shoe, “what are you doing?”
“Eating lunch.”
“With these people?”
“None of them told me I shouldn’t eat fries or my thighs would start touching,” she deliberately took one of Kili’s fries and bit it neatly in half. “They suck.”
“You...suck.” Legolas retorted lamely.
Two days later he was back.
“I hate when you’re right,” he pulled out a chair turned it around and sunk into it, about eight times cooler than Kili had never managed without even trying.
“That’s a lot of hate,” she patted him on the shoulder. “What happened?”
“They said I was getting a pimple! Me! A pimple!”
Gimli stopped mid-sentence, apparently noticing their guest for the first time, “One pimple? I’ve got fifteen on my nose alone. You wouldn’t know a pimple if it swelled up on your ass.”
“Thanks,” Legolas smiled tightly. “You don’t need to cheer me up. Anyway, you can’t see a pimple on you under all that ridiculous gingerness.”
“Thanks! Best beard in the school,” Gimli stroked it proudly. "My level fifteen dwarf warrior has one just like it."
"You're only level fifteen? I've had a seventy elf mage for months," Legolas sniffed. "That's pathetic."
"I've got three seventies! I just like trying to new combinations."
"Oh yeah, prove it. What server are you on?"
“What just happened?” Kili mouthed over Legolas’ head.
Tauriel winked and smiled that one in a million smile. Kili fell a little deeper in love, but he was used to that. He was so far under now that he thought it might be the best way to drown.
Time marched on. Legolas and Gimli came to some kind of accord that included late night Warcraft sessions that left them both wild eyed and over caffeinated at lunch. The archery team disbanded in the face of finals. Kili didn’t see Tauriel for five days and it tore into him with meathooks. This was what the rest of his life would be like, he realized. Summer would pass with him working as busboy to Fili’s waiter, sneaking cigarettes behind the dumpster with him. She would spend her summer as a lifeguard and forget all about him.
He left his last test with dread weighing him down. It was all over.
“There you are!” She appeared out of nowhere in a little red bikini top and cut off denim shirts, the roof her car pushed down. “Get in, we’re going to the lake.”
“We are?”
“I don’t have a swimsuit.”
“I stole one from your dresser. Nice Playboy, by the way.”
“It’s my brother’s,” he decided death would be better than this.
“Uh huh, you creeper. Here.” She whipped his trunks at him. “Get in the car.”
He got in the car. He’d probably have gotten in the car if it was on fire.
The lake was deliciously, blessedly freezing. Enough to keep his treacherous body from reacting to her cutting through the water like she owned it. They raced back and forth, her the clear winner.
“You’re a lead weight,” she teased and pushed herself onto the dock. He settled beside her. While she wrung her hair out, he stole a look at her long neck and the nimble fingers.
“Can’t help it. Durins aren’t swimmers.”
“You’re always doing that.”
“What?”
“Looking at me. And not...doing anything about it.”
“Oh, oh...I,” he groaned, “no. I don’t- I’m not perving on you. You’re just awesome and really fucking beautiful and...you’re my friend. My best friend. And I just ruined it, didn’t I?”
“No, you idiot,” she elbowed him. “I’ve been trying to get you to kiss me since the first time I picked you up.”
“Don’t do that,” he buried his face in his hands, “don’t just lie to make me feel better.”
“I don’t do that. I never lie.”
“But I’m me and you...you’re you.”
“I have no idea what that means,” she huffed.
“You’re just...perfect and smart and kind. You can do whatever you want. You’ll probably leave this place the second you graduate and do something brilliant. And I’ll still be here, washing grease out under my nails with the rest of them.”
“Don’t you dare,” she snapped, grabbed his wrists and pulled his hands away. “Not you.”
“Dare what?”
She looked furious, eyes overbright and flushed bright red, “All that shit...you’re so much better than that. You’re...you’re supposed to see me. To get me. We’re supposed to be the same you and me.”
“The same?” He blinked at her.
“Yeah, you idiot. We’re the same,” she let him go in one abrupt annoyed movement.
He’d never considered it that way. All the places they were just alike instead of so radically different. There was archery, fries and braiding sure, but also the way they were always there for their friends and would do any wild thing that popped into their heads. They were daredevils, who liked silences. They both didn’t get the grades they should because they preferred to be outside to doing homework. They were friends for a reason, he realized. Not just because she was brave and wanted to thumb her nose at her old clique.
“I guess we sort of are,” he hesitated then reached out and put his hand over hers. “I’m sorry.”
“You shouldn’t talk bad about yourself. Or your family. I’m jealous of it. How much you all care about each other. How hard you all work to help each other. I wish I had that. More than you wish you had my money,” she didn’t pull away and her hand was warm under his.
“I don’t want your money,” he leaned in. “I just wanted you.”
“Then kiss me, stupid.”
She tasted like cherry lip balm and his neck hurt from craning upwards before long, but it was worth it. They saw a lot of each other that summer. By the end of it, Kili had even saved up enough for a rusted out Jeep of his own. They drove it down to the beach and she got sunburned over the bridge of her nose. She helped him fix the transmission and got grease under her nails. They had a hard road ahead, but whenever it got him down, Kili thought about her peeling nose and cherry lip balm. Even years later, most of the time that was enough. And if it wasn't, he'd get her to come down to the garage and kissed her over a purring engine while Fili catcalled them. That always did the trick.