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Legolas sat and watched Gimli slowly take her hair down: undo all of her braids, one by one, until at last her coarse, unruly red hair flowed free over her shoulders.
She was wearing only her underclothes, everything else put to the side, and now, with her hair down, in the dim light of the dusking sun, she looked so vulnerable and different, it made something in Legolas’s heart clench.
She had followed her here, after everything: by both spoken and unspoken agreement, they had decided to not part ways. Legolas had made noise about needing to see to her family first, before she could pay heed to her promise: but it had been more of a perfunctory protest than anything, and they’d both known it, as they’d set out for the Glittering Caves.
Legolas cared little for the Glittering Caves; certainly not as much as Gimli did, who’d talked about little else as they’d ridden on, day after day, on Arod; and now they lay before them, a vast expanse of rock and stone and glimmer Gimli saw a future and her life’s work in, and still Legolas cared not enough for them to let her eyes stray from Gimli’s form.
“Let me,” she said to Gimli, who was carding through her hair with her fingers; and Gimli made a noise of assent and turned her back to Legolas, baring her fiery curls to Legolas’s touch.
Her touch was soft, gentle. She could have used the brush she always carried with her, but she used her fingers instead, to feel the texture of Gimli’s hair under them.
This, too, was an unspoken understanding, or so she thought. Hair was important to Dwarves; it was important to an Elf, certainly, and so she’d asked Aragorn, eventually.
She wondered, sometimes, if she should say something, speak aloud their gestures of courtship: she hadn’t before, because there had always been another day that could be their last, another battle, another bout of strategy, another moment of fear, another possibility of dear ones lost.
But now the evening was calm, and they were right before the Glittering Caves, and beyond them lay only Gimli’s promise of a shared journey to Fangorn; there should be no fear or obstacles left, and yet she found herself quiet as her fingers glided through Gimli’s hair.
If Gimli were another Elf, Legolas would not have had to ask; but then, if Gimli were another Elf, they might not be here at all.
Gimli was not Elven in any way: she was short and stocky, with wide shoulders and well-formed arms, heavy with muscle from working a forge and swinging an axe; she never wore dresses, even on formal occasions, and her freckled arms and legs were hairy in a way no Elf’s would be.
She was everything Legolas’s family would disapprove of, if they saw them together now: and everything Legolas could ever have wanted for herself.
Her fingers had stopped their carding almost without her realisation, and she let out a soft breath and leaned her head against Gimli’s strong back. She had to fold herself over to do it; even sitting down, the height difference between them was tremendous.
“What troubles you, Legolas?” Gimli asked, voice deep and soft: she hadn’t called Legolas ‘Master Elf’ or any other names since they’d left for Rohan, after their victory, and Legolas shuddered under the intimacy of the address.
It wasn’t like she’d minded the way Gimli had addressed her, before: none of the Elves she knew would have ever chosen such a masculine form of address for her, and there was something freeing in Gimli only differentiating between capable and not-capable, heavy and light-footed, and not all of the distinctions a race as old as hers clung to while riding the tides of the ever-changing passage of time; and still, Gimli saying her name flew delicious through the evening air, the melodic syllables wrapping themselves all around Legolas.
She let her arms come around Gimli’s waist, holding her. They’d held each other many times before, atop Arod: but this was the first time she reached out for it on solid ground, and it felt daring, and new.
Daring enough to let her say, “I would whittle you a bow, if you let me. I know you have no use for bows, but it is traditional, among my people.”
“A people of killing spiders,” Gimli said, understandingly. She was silent for a moment, then: “A fine gift, and a fine tradition. I would smith you bejewelled beads for your hair, if you let me. I know you wear little jewellery, but it is traditional among Dwarves.”
“I could wear them upon formal occasions,” Legolas said, slowly. “I am afraid they might hinder my sensitive hearing if worn during hunts.”
Gimli’s strong, callused hands came to lie on top of hers. When she spoke again, her voice was quiet. “Tell me only what you might wear every day, and I will make it for you. I will gift you the finest of jewellery, the finest of weaponry or armour, if only you ask. It would be my honour to see you don a thing I have made for you with my very own hands, so that every Dwarf may read the craftsmanship of Gimli, Glóin’s daughter, upon you.”
Legolas was quiet for a long moment. She was resting against Gimli in a way any Elf might have done with a friend: if it weren’t for Gimli’s open hair, and how Legolas’s hands had been permitted to touch it, and the words just now spoken between them.
She no longer felt like she needed to worry whether her intentions were felt, need a beating thing in both their hearts.
She had seen Gimli’s hands make fires and fell enemies, sure and steady and violent: but the calluses on them were crafter’s calluses, not those of a warrior.
“It would be my honour, to wear your mark,” Legolas said softly: as much of a confession as she could ever hope to make, when she could still scarcely believe that she might actually get to have this, and keep it.
Keep it, at least for a time; already, her mind was galloping off with thoughts of building Gimli a boat, and sailing her right into immortality, and curse whoever might try to stop them.
But for now, this: “Good,” Gimli said, an emotional rumble to her voice, and Legolas held her, and thought about the bow she would make her; and thought about becoming one, right here in the Glittering Caves, a union every one of her kin would understand to be binding; and left it at the thought, because she didn’t know enough about Dwarven wedding customs yet to make the suggestion, and had only just worked herself up to her arms around Gimli’s waist without Arod as her excuse.