Work Text:
“Do you and Galadriel have any plans over Christmas?”
It was a question that Elrond had been asked many times over the past few weeks and whenever he thought about it, he felt a mixture of emotions.
Happiness, excitement, nervousness, stress.
It was their first Christmas as a couple and Elrond wanted to make it special. Neither of them had celebrated Christmas with a significant other before so neither had any idea about what they should or shouldn’t be doing to celebrate the festive season together romantically.
From buying gifts to wrapping them, to decorating a tree, to cooking an elaborate meal to eat on Christmas day. To singing carols and sledding in the snow. Elrond was overwhelmed which Christmas traditions he and Galadriel should adopt as their own for Christmas and it was trying to guess what he thought she would like to do which made him feel stressed.
Their relationship was also still fairly new, they hadn’t even gotten to the stage of moving in together yet, although they had each given the other a key to their respective homes.
So, when he was walking through the Lindon Christmas market and saw that there were real Christmas trees for sale, he had it in his mind that decorating a tree for Galadriel to come home to see would be a nice surprise.
He rushed through the market, buying thick strands of tinsel, buying as many glass ornaments for the tree as he could and somehow, with an aching back, had managed to haul the tree and his shopping bags back to Galadriel’s place.
Elrond knew that she would be out for the majority of the day, she had been complaining about sore muscles due to her long training days in Gil-Galad’s northern army. He had already picked the perfect spot, the space in her bay window was always empty, and a decorated, lit Christmas tree would look beautiful for passing elves to look at from the outside. The tree was already up but looked out of place without the lights, the tinsel and ornaments decorating it.
But what he hadn’t anticipated was just how stressful decorating a Christmas tree could be.
In the first few hours since arriving back at Galadriel’s, he had managed to tangle the lights, smash a few ornaments and tangled the tinsel strands together. He cursed, he took a break, he felt his blood pressure rise and his body temperature warm, that he didn’t even realise that the sun had set outside the window.
“Elrond?” came a familiar voice, a door closing behind her.
He looked up, his heart racing anxiously. With hurried movements, he scurried to try and clear up some of the mess that he had made, his hands rushing to pick up the coloured glass ornaments and strings of tinsel that he had scattered around Galadriel’s small lounge. But despite his attempts to quickly clean up, his task had failed.
Galadriel stood in the doorway, her blue eyes wide as she examined the mess scattered across her living room. From the fir needles scattered across the wooden floorboards, to the thick tinsel that glittered in the light, to the shimmering glass ornaments that lay delicately across her sofa and table wrapped in tissue paper.
“What’s all this?” she asked softly.
“I-I’m sorry, I-I wanted to do something nice for you! I thought that by getting your place decorated nicely it would give you a nice surprise to come home to after a hard day of training…but I couldn’t work out how to decorate the tree properly, the lights got tangled, the tinsel is wrapped among other bits of tinsel and I can’t untangle it, I’ve smashed a few ornaments because my co-ordination-“
But as he rambled and apologised, Galadriel simply smiled, her eyes lit up in gratitude for his gesture. She dropped her bag to the floor and walked across her lounge until she stood in front of him.
“I never knew that red and gold tinsel would suit you so much.” She teased, her hands pulling small strands of tinsel out of his curly hair.
Elrond flushed and dropped the tinsel he was holding to the floor, letting out a defeated sigh. He felt utterly idiotic for thinking that he could do something nice for Galadriel and start a tradition to mark their first Christmas together and hope it would be a lasting tradition.
“I’m sorry, I’ll clean up and go-“
“Don’t be silly, Elrond.” Galadriel whispered reassuringly.
He looked down at her, his eyes wide.
“But I’ve made such a mess-“
“Which can be cleaned up. Why don’t we decorate the tree together? I’m sure between the two of us we can work out how to untangle lights and put them on the tree together.” Galadriel suggested.
Elrond relaxed at her words, silently chastising himself for not thinking about decorating the tree with her in the first place. But together, they got to work. Galadriel sat cross legged on the floor, her coffee table pushed to the nearest wall to allow the floor space, whilst Elrond swept up the shattered glass ornaments that had once scattered the floor. Eventually, Galadriel had managed to untangle the strand of lights, and they worked together to wrap them around each section of the tree that Elrond had chosen for her home.
A few curse words in Sindarin were shared, along with some laughter and high fives once the lights had been successfully wrapped around the tree. Next, they worked on wrapping the tinsel over different sections of branches before hanging the different coloured glass ornaments on the tree.
“I like the different colours you chose.” Galadriel commented, hanging a silver ornament on the tree.
“I chose gold ornaments because they reminded me of your hair. I chose the blue ones because they reminded me of your eyes…” Elrond mumbled.
“I’d like to go and choose some of my own for the tree tomorrow, some that will remind me of you.” Galadriel stated warmly.
“What colours would you choose?” Elrond asked curiously.
“Green because you like being outdoors, so it will remind me of your love of nature. Perhaps some silver because they’d remind me of your eyes.” Galadriel replied.
Elrond felt a burst of happiness as they finished hanging ornaments on the tree. Galadriel bent down to plug the lights into the socket as Elrond placed a golden star at the very top of the tree. As Galadriel stood to full height, the lights twinkled and shone as Elrond wrapped his arms around her waist.
“Thank you for doing this, Elrond. I think this is the start of a nice Christmas tradition for us.” Galadriel whispered.
As Elrond placed a light kiss to her forehead and they admired the beauty of their first Christmas tree, he knew in his heart that she was right. This was just the start of a nice Christmas tradition.