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Chapter Text

Dawn breaks and the dough already rises.

You are covered up to your elbows in butter, cinnamon, powdered sugar, and flour. In no particular order of importance. Your brand new bakery stands quiet and discreet on the edges of the Woodland Halls, tucked away near a glade–out of sight of most patrols, and unfortunately, foot traffic.

Most. Not all.

A rustle creeps in from the open window, and a particular blonde prince materializes, bathed in crimson light.

He walks in, eyes wandering around the cottage, examining every corner closely.

“Here for breakfast, your highness?”

“No. I am just enforcing the perimeter.”

You hum in response, cracking a small smile. He eyes one of the cinnamon twists already on the counter with the intensity of an orc battle. Legolas wanders around the cabin, fingers grazing over the crammed wooden tables and chairs.

You clear your throat. “Your highness.”

He turns to look directly at you, sapphire gaze meeting yours. “Yes?”

“Does the perimeter now include hovering over the cinnamon twists?”

He coughs, ignores your question, and buys two of them. For threat analysis.

The next morning, a familiar face peers at the freshly baked display of cinnamon twists and buttery buns. He looks positively enraptured.

“My lord Legolas,” you say, kneading the dough, flour dust filtering through the golden rays of the window “I trust the threat analysis was successful?”

“What?” He looks up at you, caught off guard. His face shifts as he remembers the previous encounter, masquerading his confusion with the ease of practiced grace.

“Indeed.” he says, voice smooth and level. He pauses. “No threat has been detected.”

“Then my cinnamon swirls will not count as seized goods, I hope?”

“No, no. I am here for..” he pauses again, eyes darting around the cabin. “Pest inspection.” He nods, as if to affirm himself. 

You look straight at him. As far as you know, there is only one pest in this bakery, and he is currently ogling the front counter.

“Of course.” You nod, gravely. “Go right ahead.” You move aside, and clear the way for him into your baking space. You turn away to hide your smile. He walks forward with purpose and poise, stepping right onto a sack of flour.

Once the cloud of white and your laughter settles, he brushes off the flour as if it was part of the inspection.

“The ingredients are clean.” He states.

Two cinnamon rolls disappear with him, to “study their structure”. One is gone before he is out of the door.

Word spreads fast in Thranduil’s court that Prince Legolas is haunting your bakery as if it was sacred ground. He shows up every morning like clockwork, each time with a new excuse. He leaves each morning with two cinnamon twists or butter buns, and in varying degrees of “covered in powdered sugar”. 

Complaints filter in through the grapevine of the prince smelling like cinnamon. Constantly. During council meetings, aides have asked if he has taken up a new hobby. During training drills, the smell makes everyone leave early for lunch. A guard reports that he detected Legolas’ scent “before he entered the room”. Thranduil apparently deems it undignified for an heir of the Woodland Realm.

You continue baking, lack of foot traffic no longer a problem.

What does become a problem, however, is the King himself arriving at your doorstep with court guards as if he is raiding a criminal den and asking, with impressive restraint, “Is my son…working here?”

He is painfully polite, accusation lacing his tone.

You bow your head in greeting. 

“Your highness.” You look around at the armed guards crammed into your tiny cottage, armor clinking, tracking in dust and dirt from the forest. “No. I just bake bread. Alone.”

Thranduil’s eyes narrow ever so slightly.

“Enchanted, no doubt.”

You laugh lightly at the accusation. “I can assure you the only enchantment here is yeast.” You take one of the cinnamon swirls and hand it to him. “If pastries worked so well, half of Arda would bend the knee to bread by now.”

He takes it gingerly, and hands it promptly to one of his aides, who examines it as if holding a cursed artifact. He smells it, and takes one cautious bite.

It is then that Legolas walks in, humming to himself, ending one of his “patrols”. He pauses mid stride as he sees the King, the palace guards, and you, all staring him down amid cinnamon scented interrogation.

His eyebrow twitches.

“Ada? What are you doing here?”

“I could ask the same of you.”

Legolas coughs, the tips of his ears turning pink. “I am examining the structural integrity of our local vendors.”

“And I am arresting a sorcerer. Do hand in that report when you return.” He turns, and Legolas panics. 

“No! Their buns are unrivaled!”

The cottage falls silent. Legolas, realizing what he said, turns a shade of crimson previously known only to berries. Thranduil looks mortified. The guards all look away, as if the walls and ceiling have suddenly caught their attention. The aide chokes on the cinnamon swirl he ate. You almost drop the tray you are holding.

“I meant– the cinnamon–” he stammers, doubling down. There is no dignified way to double down.

“Please stop.” Thranduil’s face reminds you of a painting whose soul departed his body. Nobody moves. The back of your neck heats up under your tunic, cheeks flushing. 

The aide, recovering from his choking fit, whispers into Thranduil’s ear.

The following day, a new decree is issued, addressed only to the heir of the Woodland Realm, that “forbids unnecessary bakery visitation”.

For approximately one sunrise you have a peaceful existence, kneading dough and sprinkling sugar over buttery delights.

Legolas appears at your back door the next morning with all the subtlety of a crashing warg. You open the door, armed with a saucepan, only to be met with golden hair, blue eyes, and pink ears. 

He mutters something about “tracking unusual squirrel activity”. Wordlessly, you hand him a warm cinnamon swirl. 

You can see right through his act, but seeing him with a dusting of powdered sugar on his cheek and wafting cinnamon from paces away is… rather endearing. You keep this observation to yourself.

“The squirrels are moving normally now.” 

You smile. 

You keep a few pastries aside for him every morning. None for the king. 

Chapter Text

You decide that the rose bush in the gardens needed a light pruning. And that you wanted to be useful. You even “read” something about it once. Skimmed, perhaps, but half a scroll is still better than nothing. The minute Legolas catches you with a pair of shears, he trails you to the gardens, to supervise. Except, he cannot supervise silently.

“You’re doing it wrong.”

“There’s no wrong way to prune. You start with the dead buds and leaves.”

He shakes his head, face grave. “You have to shape the plant first.”

You look at him with a deadpan expression. “The plant already has a shape. Plant.”

His sigh is long-suffering, and full of regret for following you into the garden. “Here,” he takes the shears to demonstrate his technique. He prunes a single tiny bud that was leaning inwards. 

You grab the shears back. “Inefficient.” You prune a large dead head, and it falls to the ground with a soft thwop.

“Brutish.” he snatches the shears again, and lops off another wonky bud. It lands beside the one you just pruned.

Both of you reach for one stem at the same time, the thorns of the rose disagreeing with both of your techniques. Neither of you are left with fingers fully intact.

Royal gardeners walk past, whispering of “civil unrest in the rose quarter”. Your duel continues as you prune more and more of the plant, until Legolas’ sleeve becomes the next accidental victim. Several gasps fill the garden as the piece of fabric lands beside dead leaves and rosebuds, both of you freezing in your tracks. 

“The tailors won’t be happy about this.” he says, mouth set in a thin line. 

“I think we may have a bigger problem on our hands.” 

He looks up at your words, eyes widening in horror. 

The prized hybrid rose that the gardeners were carefully breeding for months, stood…scraggly. Only a scattering of roses remained on the plant.

The head gardener, face white as a sheet, staggers over to the two of you beside the butchered bush. “Please,” he begs, “Leave it be.” The elf looks on the verge of passing out.

You let go of the shears, sidling away from the petal-covered carnage, cheeks heating. Legolas looks equally as guilty, clutching the shears like they were personally responsible for the massacre, face flushed, sleeve missing.

The unofficial name adopted by the Gardener’s Guild for the new bloom becomes Bloody Fool. Both of you are no longer allowed in the rose gardens without supervision.