Parental Consent: Part IV
by Honesty
-----

The edge of the thicket still seemed a little too far away. Legolas could feel Neldorion staring at the back of his neck, and wondered what his older brother must be making of the scene. And the other Dwarf - what would he think?

"What happened to your arm?" he asked under his breath, as they made their way slowly towards it.

"Nothing grave. A scratch, only." Gimli's voice was unmistakably evasive.

"A *scratch*? It would take nothing less than an axe to cause a scratch such as that!"

"Yes," Gimli said flatly. "Shall we say just that my father was not pleased?"

Legolas raised an eyebrow. "I think that is understood." Gimli, at least, had had the tact not to mention his own hagridden appearance.

They entered the cover of the thicket, and Legolas saw Gimli glance around dubiously at the tangle of brambles that filled it, and then shrug, his face resigned. 

"Will it serve? I know it is hardly the greensward of Lórien"

"I think a barracks privy would serve right now, if it gave us a measure of solitude."

"A barra-" Legolas bit off the outraged exclamation, and then started to laugh. "My dear Dwarf, I knew there was a reason I had missed you so greatly." He swooped gracefully to his knees to seize Gimli tightly in an embrace, careful of the injured arm. "I have missed you exceedingly, in fact - more than I would have believed possible."

Kneeling thus, they were level. He felt Gimli bring his one good arm up round his shoulders, drawing them together for their first kiss in ... oh, almost a week. It felt so much longer. "They must be dull indeed in Mirkwood, for you to say so." Gimli eased himself down onto the dirty, prickly forest floor, not releasing Legolas as he did so. "But you are well?" he asked doubtfully. 

Legolas gave a brief, fractured laugh. "Oh Gimli! I fear my poor father has driven me half witless." He slid down so that he could lay his head against the broad sholder, and closed his eyes momentarily, letting himself drink in scent of his lover - the smell of new earth and old leather. Here of all places he could be peaceful.

"My poor witless Elf," he heard Gimli say fondly, turning to look at him so that the long dark beard brushed against his forehead. "I always said your kind's deadliest weapon was your habit of talking others to death."

Legolas laughed in spite of himself, and then sighed, and of their own accord his fingers tangled themselves in Gimli's beard. He felt Gimli's hand caressing his hair, and looked up into his face, into the strange secret depths of the dark eyes ... and then, by common unsaid consent, their lips met.

It was some ninety seconds by the clock before they again drew breath, and both cast sudden guilty glances back in the direction of the clearing.

"Are they returning?"

"Not yet. I would imagine my father still has more than enough to say for himself." He laughed, and for the first time it was his old, carefree laugh. "Surely we have many more hours before we must part again."

"I would not be so sure. My own sire has certain was of his own of curtailing others words."

"Your wound - I see! But what happened?"

"Do not ask, I beg you," Gimli said quickly, and then immediately relented. "It is a shameful thing: to be beaten in combat by your drunken, aged father."

The words were spoken a shade too lightly to fool an Elven ear, and Legolas reached out once more to pull him into a long kiss. "Who can fathom the ways of parents," he asked understandingly. "Not I."

They lay still and quiet for long minutes, curled around each other like pups in the hay. "Perhaps we could elope," Legolas said lazily, "while our sires decide what is to be done with us."

"Perhaps. But where would we go?"

"To East Lórien, perhaps? It is not so far, and I know that Lord Celeborn would gladly receive us."

"Aye," Gimli said thoughtfully. "He would not be the only one, alas. I fear Haldir would also be pleased to see us."

"Well ... perhaps." Legolas contemplated mischief for a moment, and then decided to risk it. "He did say maybe a threesome..."

He felt Gimli's good arm tighten slightly around him.

"A threesome? There wouldn't be room enough for him."


* * *


It was a truly ludicrous situation to be stuck in, of course. 

Neldorion gave an irritable sigh, not for the first time that day. Between his idiot father and his idiot brother he was helpless. Stuck here - on the edge of Mirkwood with only a silent Dwarf for company, and his brother off canoodling with another Dwarf out in the bushes.

What chance was there, after all, that Legolas was likely to be alert enough to hear his father's approach before he returned? What with that Dwarf of his with him, precious little - and Neldorion did not relish the trouble that would come his way when the two fathers returned.

He glanced up suddenly, to find the red-bearded Dwarf watching him. 

And there was someone else who would be in dire disgrace if the two lovebirds were caught. Neldorion knew little of Dwarvish customs, but he strongly suspected that the Dwarf would be facing a sterner punishment than curfew and harsh words.

He examined the Dwarf for a moment, his eye drawn instinctively to the bright red beard. No Elf ever had hair that colour - indeed he'd never seen such a colour among any of the free peoples. And the length!

He looked closer, at the ornate braids woven into it, and the two neat prongs in which it ended, carefully trimmed to be equal in length. It looked softer than it had any right to be, too - more like wool than bristle. Was that, he wondered, what poor Legolas had fallen for? 

A Dwarf's beard? Surely not! If any more ridiculous thing existed under the Sun Neldorion had yet to encounter it-

He gave a sudden start, realising that the Dwarf had caught him watching, and was now matching him intently, glance for glance.

"What's your name." That, he supposed, was an overture of friendship, Dwarf-style. Though it could just as easily have been a simple request for information or a precursor to a duel to the death. One never knew with those people.

"Neldorion," he said, hoping the Dwarf did not understand Sindarin. <<Clown Prince of Mirkwood,>> he added silently. <<Greenwood the Great, Eryn Lasgalen and whatever else dad's calling it today.>> He jerked a thumb towards the wood. "He's my brother, alas!"

The Dwarf weighed him up. "Gróin Fróinul."

"Gróin?" Neldorion raised an eyebrow at the name, and the Dwarf scowled.

"I have heard the jokes already," he growled, "And none of them were clever even the first time around. It was a common Dwarvish name long before the anatomists began their shameful trade."

"Peace! I do not mock," Neldorion said quickly. "In fact I hardly have the right! When they render my name in Westron, they call me 'son of a beech'."

To give him credit, Gróin neither laughed nor smiled. "Families are cruel things."

"Yes ... which reminds me..." Neldorion peered towards the thicket momentarily, to the two dim figures he could see within it, locked together in a seemingly endless embrace. He sighed. "Much as it pains me to own it, they do make rather a sweet couple, in a strange kind of way."

"They are right together," Gróin said shortly. "Even a simpleton can see that."

<<Right.>> A strange way of putting it - as if their love were the only possible solution to an equation, or the correct resolution of a dissonnance. Neldorion shrugged. "Simpletons, yes. Parents appear to have more trouble with the concept. But what now? I suspect we have an unconscionably long wait ahead of us, and I for one would welcome some way of whiling away the time. Wait!" He fished in the light bag he had brought with him, and from its depths brought a small wineskin. "I do have some berry wine here, to ease the long hours of waiting. Will you partake with me?"

The Dwarf eyed it suspiciously, and then reached for his own pack, and drew out a stone flask. "I thank you," he said, with more warmth than he had spoken before. "But I have liquor here myself." He unscrewed the stone stopper, and Neldorion caught a whiff of a pungent heady smell that all but set his head reeling.

"What is it?"

"We call it horak."

"May I try some?" Neldorion regretted the question the moment he had spoken it. Everyone knew the Dwarves were an acquisitive, grasping people, not at all inclined to share their property with others, even among their own kind. And besides, he was not at all sure he wanted to taste something quite that strong.

But Gróin shrugged, and passed the flask over to him. 

Neldorion drank a mouthful, and nearly dropped the flask, coughing and choking with his eyes watering. It was a few moments before he regained the power of speech.

"You people drink that for *pleasure*?" he said incredulously.

Gróin's took the flask back from him, a little proprietorially. "No," he said. "We drink it for distraction from our woes."

Neldorion considered this for a moment. "Well," he said thoughtfully. "If that is its purpose it is certainly ... effective." He picked up his own flask. "Here," he said. "I should be interested to know what you think of Elven wine."

The Dwarf took the flask warily, as if suspecting trickery. He tasted it, frowning. "Sickly. It would be good, if it were not so sweet."

"Perhaps it is. We find it consoling, when faced with unpleasant tasks. Perhaps-"

Unbidden he retrieved his wineskin and picked up Gróin's stone flask in his other hand.

"What are you doing?" Gróin did sound annoyed now, but that could not be helped.

"An experiment." He poured a little of the horak into his wineskin, and then transferred the contents back into the stone flask, before pouring it back, and then back again. "Some of the best evenings of my life have been spent in the company of mixed liquors. You never know quite what you will find until you try it. There!"

He passed the stone flask back to Gróin, and took a long swig from his wineskin, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. "Now *that*," he said happily, if a little unsteadily, "is a drink that will cure any ill." He took another swig. It was light and sweet, but there was a fire in the liquid that burned all the way down to his belly. He was starting to feel a little woolly-headed as well.

Gróin picked up his flask cautiously and looked into it suspiciously before taking a sip. "Not bad." He sounded a little surprised. "Strong ... and yet sweet. Perhaps you are wise, Prince Neldorion." He took another mouthful, and Neldorion could not resist a smile. He took another mouthful.

It would have been churlish not to join him, so Neldorion took another gulp from his own flask, and then a second, because it really tasted very good. 

There was probably, he remembered, a very good reason why drinking something so strong would not be a sensible idea right now. Something like that. It really didn't seem terribly important, though, so he drank again, looking across to where Gróin was watching him, with those strange deep eyes of his. His eyes fell again on the mass of red hair that crowned the Dwarf's chin.

"Have I ever told you," he said muzzily, "how very fascinating your beard is?"


* * *


The mood in the valley a hundred yards away was beginning to be distinctly darker. Glóin sat glumly on a rock, his axe lying neglected on the ground, while Thranduil was pacing restlessly to and fro, his fists clenched.

"There must be *something* we can do!" he burst out angrily for about the seventh time in five minutes. They had been through all the possible scenarios they could think of, time and time again, and every time had failed totally to find a course of action that would work, without violating either Glóin's code of honour or Thranduil's sense of decorum. "There *must* be."

"We have checked everything already," Glóin pointed out unhelpfully. "There isn't."

"We can't have thought of everything. There *must* be something left."

"We could kill them."

"But surely-"

"Very well then - banish them! It comes to the same thing."

"Banish them! What good would that do?"

"It would get rid of the problem."

"But you don't understand," Thranduil almost wailed. "I would never live it down! If they knew that my own son, and a Dwarf-!"

"Is it our fault that our sons have no taste?"

"Well - no."

"Then stop fretting. You can always tell the world that you are giving him the opportunity to colonise - oh, somewhere many miles from here."

"And how am I supposed to explain away the fact that my youngest son is sleeping with a -"

"There is no call for vulgarity," Glóin growled angrily. "Explain nothing. That is the Dwarven way. Rather leave your son to address the personal questions. In fact Gimli will leave Erebor as soon as Thorin will give him leave to go."

There was a long, rather sullen silence. It was not ideal; in fact it was a long way from ideal. But what else was there to be done?

"Very well," Thranduil said weakly. "You are quite right, Glóin, my friend. It cannot be helped. It is no fault of ours that our sons are so peculiar."

"No, it is not." Glóin climbed heavily to his feet and picked up his axe again, testing the edge with his thumb. "Now let us collect our willful offspring and tell them how very merciful we are being to them."


* * *


"Legolas?"

"Mmmmm?"

"I think we ought to get back?"

"Mmmm ... nah. Why?"

"Something to do with our fathers' return, perhaps. Even *I* can hear them, and you say I am nearly deaf compared to an Elf."

Legolas sat up abruptly, staring over Gimli's shoulder. "What? Oh *no*!"

Gimli twisted round to stare through the brambles at whatever it was had thus caught his lover's attention. "Gróin ... and -" Not to mention their two fathers barely fifty yards away. He stopped speechless for a few seconds, staring open-mouthed at the spectacle that met his attention. "That," he said flatly, "is not good." 

It was not merely not good. It was downright catastrophic. For almost a minute, the two could do no more than stare, horrorstricken, at Neldorion and Gróin, and the figures of Thranduil and Glóin as they approached. 

"What should we do?" 

Legolas thought for a moment. "We should go back. They may need our help."

"Our fathers? Or Neldorion and Gróin."

"Both. Your father has an axe with him, remember."

"That," Gimli said firmly, "is a fact I am unlikely to forget in a hurry." He struggled to his feet, a little encumbered by several stones' worth of Elf lying across his legs. "Move, idiot Elf - if you would not have me carry you."

Legolas jumped quickly to his feet and put an arm briefly round Gimli's shoulder. "Ah well," he said softly. "We have seen greater dangers than these, master Dwarf. Come! Let us face the music together."



END



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