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Of all the ways to spend a Friday morning, sitting in an MIU waiting room with a mostly thawed bag of peas on his face was probably the worst. Probably. There had been that barrel incident his first year of uni. At least the MIU was mostly dry (though the peas were starting to drip).
In his pocket his mobile vibrated against his leg, the screen lit up with a single line of text: hahahahahahahahahaha
Kíli had never considered himself much of a planner, his mother had always dismayed of it, but he figured that so long as he was stuck waiting for the foreseeable future, planning how to best kill Fíli was probably the best use of his time. He told Fíli as much in his reply, albeit a bit more colorfully, and tacked on last time i help your bf while ur away for good measure. Satisfied that he’d at the very least made his brother feel guilty—for being away if not for laughing at his misfortune—he glanced up hoping to catch a nurse’s eye.
He hadn’t wanted to come in at all. He’d assured Ori he’d fallen from worse heights, that it wasn’t anything paracetamol couldn’t make right, but Ori had pecked and pinched until Kíli had accepted the ride to the MIU and agreed he’d have someone take a look at his head. Bloke couldn’t take a small unscheduled nap on his kitchen floor without some people making fuss.
Some days Kíli deeply regretted ever letting Ori play with them that day they first met, by the old swing set down the road from the council estate they’d all lived at back then.
“You’re dripping.”
Kíli was pulled out of his reverie before he could wander too far down the dark path of Fíli and Ori’s frankly irresponsible and inconsiderate love for one another by the waiting room’s newest arrival.
He was immediately torn between gratitude to Ori for forcing the stupid bag of peas on him in the first place and giving her a reason to talk to him at all and the deep, illogical mortification that he wasn’t holding something cooler than peas. Like a raw steak. The girl met his eye and didn’t drop it and Kíli was suddenly aware of how long he’d gone without breathing so much as a how-you-do, staring like a gutted trout.
“Huh?” He finally said intelligently, fighting all at once the urge to simply smother himself with the melting peas in question.
“You’re dripping.” She said again, pointing at the dark spot on his shirt where the water had landed.
“Oh,” he pulled the bag away from his face, flicking beads of water on the floor, “Right, sorry, I—um—here,” he made a swing for the nearest trash bin and thankfully managed to make the shot without completely embarrassing himself some more. “It was mostly decorative at this point anyhow.”
That earned him a thin smile. She was, Kíli thought to himself, very pretty (beautiful a very Ori-like voice supplied in his head, the word you’re looking for is beautiful, and Kíli didn’t bother disagreeing. This was, in and of itself, probably a sign he needed to have his head checked for damage as he was arguing and conceding to himself now). Even if she did have mud drying on her face and her clothes and in her hair—and was that a twig?
Without his peas to occupy himself with Kíli wasn’t entirely sure what to do. He let his eyes roam the waiting room but didn’t find anything more interesting than this time than he had upon his initial inspection. Same off-white ceiling tiles, same linoleum flooring, same arrangement of slightly worn furniture, same tired-looking staff with the same low murmur of conversation underlying the whole thing.
He dropped his eyes to his shoes. His head hurt, and he already knew his face was going to look like he’d gone three rounds with a cinderblock, but his nose had stopped bleeding in the ride over and—she was missing a shoe.
The cuff of her track bottoms had been rolled up and her ankle was wrapped in one of those gel packs, fixed in place with a proper bandage. Her toes were long and the little one was a bit crooked compared to the others, but there were scattered freckles and her nails were painted a metallic emerald green. Her foot moved and he couldn’t honestly say how long he’d been staring or how long she knew he’d been staring at her foot—he could hear his mum already, going on about manners and using them. Kíli cleared his throat, “So what are you in for?”
“I would have thought this spoke for itself.” She gestured at her bandaged ankle with a self-deprecating tilt of her head. Her red hair was falling loose of its braid and that was definitely thistle caught in there—not that Kíli was any better a sight, his face being what it was at the moment and his own hair still pulled back in a messy knot at the top of his head from when Ori had called him down the hall this morning.
Kíli gave a small shrug with his less stiff shoulder. “I wouldn’t want to presume.”
She nodded solemnly but her mouth curled into a smile. “How courteous of you.”
“I’ve just learned. I once met a man who’d had his finger bitten clean off in a pub fight though you wouldn’t have guessed it from the look of him.”
“Spend a lot of time down at the A&E?” she asked wryly, brushing a stray piece of hair from her face, wincing a bit at the motion.
“A bit,” he admitted sheepishly, “My mother says I’m reckless. In my defense, it’s usually not my fault. This for example,” Kíli said, pointing at the side of his face, “Is my brother’s fault.” Her eyes widened a little at that and Kíli rushed onward, “He didn’t hit me or anything! I just mean, if he’d bought a decent ladder I wouldn’t be here right now.”
“Victim of a wobbly ladder?” she asked, laughter lacing her voice. She shifted forward a little in her chair, face pulling in a grimace. She glared at her foot as though it were a source of every disappointment she’d ever experienced.
“Alright?” Kíli knew it was a stupid question given where they were but she shook her head, features smoothing out a little as she settled back into her seat. “You were saying you fell off a ladder.”
Kíli laughed, harder than he should have given the state he was in. “Not really. It’s that reckless bit I mentioned earlier.”
She eyed him curiously, “You’re not one of those people who try scaling poorly constructed bookshelves and get crushed beneath them are you?”
Kíli managed to catch himself before he could shake his head, “Not quite there yet. Maybe next time. Afraid I disappointed my primary school teachers terribly this morning. Ori, that’s one of my flat mates, he’s on the shorter side. And normally when he sets the smoke detector off my brother’s there to play knight errant, but this morning it was just little ole me and well, I couldn’t reach it. And we don’t have a ladder, which is Fíli’s fault I assure you, so I had to make due. Couldn’t quite reach from a chair, so I put the chair up on the kitchen table.” She laughed outright at that, startling herself in seemed and certainly the people around them.
“At least I got the smoke detector.” It was currently in pieces back in their kitchen.
She smiled brightly, still laughing a little. “It’s the little victories that matter.”
Kíli smiled widely in return. “Now that’s my sad story, what’s yours?”
Her smile turned rueful at the question and she worried the end of her braid. “You’d never believe me. I was there and I’m not sure I believe it yet.”
“Try me.”
She stared at him for a long second, taking his measure, and thankfully didn’t find him wanting. “I was running and—I honestly don’t know where it came from.”
“A bicyclist?”
“A deer.”
Kíli bit the tip of his tongue while his brain worked through the words. “You hit a deer?”
She pulled on the end of her braid and leaned forward again, “No! It hit me! I was running and it just jumped out of the trees and knocked me over.”
Kíli blinked a few times in quick succession. She was still looking at him, eyes skeptical, mud drying in ashy brown patches all over her clothes and skin, her bare foot elevated between them and there wasn’t really anything else for it. He laughed. It was certainly shaping up to be the kind of morning for it.
“Bambi took you down?”
She sighed at that but there was a smile on her face again, “It was at the very least Bambi’s mum.”
“Kíli Durinson.” One of the nurses called from the front desk and Kíli rose, wincing at the aches and pains it set off across his body. The table-chair makeshift ladder was definitely not going down as one his finest moments. “That would be me.” He said, disappointed that their conversation was drawing to a close. Her own eyes darted towards the front desk and he wondered if she was just waiting for him to go away. Fíli was always telling him he was hopeless at reading people.
Kíli took a step back and her eyes darted back to him, one of her long fingers twisting around the end of her braid until it came undone all together. “I’m Tauriel.” She said, and it sounded almost like a decision. “It was nice meeting you.” She smiled again (she had a nice smile) and Kíli couldn’t help smile in return, pain in his face be damned.
“Likewise.”
-
“Only you would try to pull in hospital.” Fíli crowed into his ear, the sound of far away traffic blaring behind him. Kíli groaned, trying very hard to keep still. The pain seemed to grow rather than lessen with every passing hour and all of Kíli’s attempts to rest, or simply stop existing, weren’t enough to stop the dull throb that persisted eveywhere. “I was not—I was making conversation, being amiable, not that you would know anything about that sort of thing.”
That just set Fíli off again, and for all that Kíli’s head was pounding, there was the comfort of familiarity to the sound, at the very least.
“You know Ori’s all broken up about this, y’know.”Fíli finally said once he’d caught his breath, “Hope you’re not laying it on too thickly.”
Kíli groaned again, hoping to convey that he was being nothing less than a model patient and noble friend. Kíli had happily accepted the bag of vegetable medley Ori had procured from Sainsbury’s especially for Kíli’s face. “It’s not your fault the floor took a liking to me.” Kíli had reminded him, hoping he’d make his point better now than he had this morning with pieces of bloody tissue sticking out his nose. Ori had fidgeted but at least admitted he was glad Kíli had such a hard head. “Made to take a beating.” Kíli had joked and sent Ori back to his books before he did something unbearable like try to apologize.
Not that he bothered telling any of that to his brother, opting to groan again instead.
“Are you seeing her again?” Fíli asked already jumping back to the previous topic.
“No way is there?” Kíli picked tiredly at a loose thread on his pillowcase. “Barely got her name, never mind her number.”
Fíli tutted over the line, “Better luck next time little brother.”
-
Next time, as it turned out, was at a quarter pass nine on a Tuesday night in the biscuit aisle of the nearby Tesco. Fíli had polished off the last of the Jaffa Cakes that morning and now Kíli stood contemplating whether to go with pink wafers or custard creams.
“I always liked the cow biscuits myself.”
He caught his elbow on the shelf edge turning to face her. Because of course it was her, who else would find him in the biscuit aisle while he was dressed in Ninja Turtle pajama bottoms. The right side of his face was still a kaleidoscope of bruises, though he supposed there was the added benefit that the heat rapidly spreading across his face wouldn’t show through all that much. Hopefully.
Tauriel stood nearby, balanced awkwardly between the crutch she was leaning on and the basket of groceries hanging from her other arm. She was remarkably tall, at least a head taller than Kíli standing and he couldn’t keep the smile off his face once the shock of seeing her again faded a bit.
“Sure you want to risk wild animals right now?” he asked and she huffed in annoyance under her breath. He didn’t doubt she’d heard her fair share of jokes regarding spill on the path. “Supposed I walked in to that one.” She mumbled and shot him a look before he felt any need to comment on her choice of words.
“Can I help?” he motioned towards the basket on her arm and there was an awkward exchange of courtesies and groceries. “How’s the leg then?” he asked, somewhat at a loss for words. All the time thinking about what he could have said to her in the waiting room and not a single word to show for it now.
“It looks worse than it is.” Tauriel said tapping the floor with the end of her crutch, “Mostly getting the hang of this thing. How are you getting along?”
“Great. I keep telling people they should see the other guy.”
There was an overly long pause and Kíli found himself half-missing the concussion if only to have an excuse to let his mouth runaway from him.
“So I—”
“Do you—”
They shared a nervous laugh and stopped again, waiting for the other to carry on and when neither did, starting again at the same time.
“No you—“
“It’s alright—“
Tauriel brushed her hair back, revealing a rather red ear, and cleared her throat. “Sorry, I just—I was—there’s a coffee shop around the corner from here and—well it’s not open now but maybe tomorrow. I mean it will be opened tomorrow— and if you’d like, we could meet. There. Or another day. Or somewhere else. If you’d like.”
She seemed a bit surprised by herself and Kíli, holding two grocery baskets and still biscuit-less, couldn’t say he was less so.
“The Hill?” he said rather stupidly, referring to the small, comfortable café down the road.
Tauriel brightened, “Oh you know it!”
“Yeah, yeah,” Kíli nodded, and all at once realized he’d never given a proper answer. “And yes! I mean, of course, tomorrow I would love to. Noon? Or whenever works best for you? Here I can give you my number and you can tell me and—“
Tauriel laughed again, a sound Kíli was growing very fond of, and she looked considerably more relieved (if a bit redder) and added his number to her mobile.
“Now just promise me you won’t climb any furniture between now and then and it’s a date.”
A moment later his own mobile buzzed and he made sure to save the number under her name. Hands down best Tesco run of his life.
“Deal.”
-
End