#Rule of Gondolin no. 1: Nobody gets any work down while Eärendil is near

[finnritter]

Of Glorfindel, Ecthelion and the duties of a fun uncle

Thank you so much @glorfindel-28 for sending me this wonderful prompt:

"Maybe Glorfindel and Ecthelion being full fun uncles to Earendil and idril being fond and or done with them?"

I had a lot of fun with this, as did those dorks. And apparently I am back on my "cheerful fluff and nothing else"-agenda, but tbh, I have 0 regrets, I'll be writing angst again soon enough.

“Look”, Glorfindel said and Ecthelion turned to see the Lord of the House of the Golden Flower sit cross-legged on the ground, holding two sticks to the forehead of the happily babbling baby in his lap and thus giving the child very angry eyebrows. “He looks just like you.”

“Remarkably so”, Ecthelion said. “You know that this is the son of the princess, right?”

“The princess whom both of us had sit in our lap and tried to feed porridge while the only thing she wanted to eat was our hair, yes”, Glorfindel shot back. “We are more or less this little one’s great uncles.”

“Mediocre uncle, in your case”, Ecthelion said, stretching his shoulders after a long morning of guard duty and took off his helmet. A little smile was playing around his lips, even though the rest of his expression was stern as always when he was working.

Glorfindel threw the sticks away before little Eärendil could stick them up his nose.

“Wrong”, he corrected. “I’m the fun uncle. He will love me when he grows up.”

“Until you accidentally drop him from somewhere and his enraged father almost throws you all the way over the ocean back to the Blessed Realm, you mean.”

“That happened one time, and Idril found it funny. And besides, Tuor is a far more eased father than Turgon was in his day. Maybe it is a mannish thing.”

“It is very telling that you are stating whatever this defence is supposed to be, instead of counting on not letting the little guy fall at all.”

Glorfindel made a non-commital noise and held up the child at arm’s length, looking into his bright, sea-blue eyes under the long, soft lashes.

“Eärendil Idrilion, I promise I will never let you fall from anything. Not even when I’m dangling you out of a window while you try scaling my arm until you inevitably slip.”

“So that is what you were attempting back then.”

“It was on ground-level. And again, she had fun.”

“I would hope so.” Ecthelion finally set his helmet down into the grass beside his friend and sat down as well, telling himself that it would be just for a moment. “Otherwise you really would not deserve your title.”

It was quiet for a while, and Ecthelion fondly watched as Glorfindel was focussed on running his fingers through the baby’s soft, light hair while Eärendil was drooling onto his own tunic.

Then:

“Do you think he will ever have hair as great as mine? He does look a little like me, doesn’t he?”

Ecthelion wasted not even a thought before answering. “He is much cuter.”

Glorfindel ignored this, mostly because it was true.

“Would you ever want to have children?”

“I see no need, as long as I have you.”

Glorfindel smiled to himself and let Eärendil chew on his little finger.

“I know that this was probably meant as an offence, but I will just see it as a love-confession”, he said, before retracting his hand from the curious mouth and carefully set the baby into Ecthelion’s lap as if to prove a point.

They were sitting like this for a while, Ecthelion getting used to the warm, wriggling weight in his lap as Glorfindel leant back and stared into the blue sky and enjoyed the mild summer air. Ecthelion would have almost thought him asleep, had he not shortly later sat up and taken his friend’s helmet into his hands and setting it, almost thoughtlessly, over the baby’s head. Even though he held it steady long before it could even put a little bit weight on him, Eärendil vanished into it up until his shoulders and cooed curiously.

“Suits him”, Ecthelion said.

“We should make him a tiny little helmet. It would look so adorable.”

“Also good in case you let him fa-”

“Would you stop bringing that up!”

Eärendil animatedly turned his head into the direction of the raised voice. Glorfindel booped him on the nose and the child laughed and reached for his finger.

“He is already very adorable”, Ecthelion said, to no one in particular, and freed the child from the helmet, taking it out of Glorfindel’s hand in turn.

“He has already completely wrapped you around his little finger, has he not?”

“Maybe.” Ecthelion looked down at the smiling boy, and then over to his knowingly grinning friend. “But I will definitely be his responsible uncle to balance you out.”

…

Four years later, Ecthelion was chasing a manically shrieking toddler down the halls. The child’s short legs surely should have been losing to him, but he was small and could squeeze through the tiniest nooks and hide behind almost every corner so that his pursuer lost valuable seconds each time. And so it was the child that reached the doors of the study first, where he all but threw himself at a figure sitting at one end of the big table, while Ecthelion let off the deepest growl he could muster without actually sounding terrifying.

“Oh no, my Golden Knight! Help me defeat this vicious dragon!”, Eärendil cried and Glorfindel instantaneously drew his sword, which was actually just a long, wooden ruler that he had used to draw a supply table just a moment ago. A task that, as Ecthelion knew, he hated, which was probably why he was so quickly engaged.

It could also have been due to Ecthelions frighteningly real growls, though, which Eärendil answered with his own fierce battle cry. Ecthelion was rather glad that no one else was currently in the room, considering how much noise they were making.

Glorfindel, in all of his knightly glory (apparently), did not seem to care much for it, either way. With a mighty leap he was landing on the table, sword-surrogate pointed at his best friend.

“You will regret ever chasing my valorous squire. I will slay you, fell beast of old!”, he shouted.

Eärendil used the distraction to dart past the dragon and under the table, just to re-emerge at its other side. There he raised his small wooden shield, which had been given to him by Galdor and which he currently loved deeply enough to even take it into bed with him every evening).

This was how Idril, who chose that exact moment to enter the study, found them.

They all looked at each other in silence for a while, until Glorfindel dramatically clutched his free hand to his chest.

“Oh no, it’s the evil witch”, he lamented, with a meaningful gaze to Eärendil, who did him the favour and gasped in playful shock. The evil witch raised an eyebrow.

“Oh please, my knight, will you defeat her, too?”, he asked wide-eyed, but Glorfindel regretfully shook his head.

“My sword can do nothing against her powers of evil magic. Our only chance is hoping that our enemies will distract each other enough for us to be able to flee.”

And thus he hoped off the table, grabbed Eärendil around the waist and fled the scene.

Ecthelion cleared his throat.

“My Lady, about the reports you needed from me-”

“Don’t even try to seem dignified, Lord Ecthelion. I saw you chasing him through the halls like a maniac just five minutes ago.”

She smiled, her eyes bright and teasing, and Ecthelion nodded gravely.

“Well, that was what I meant to explain. The event you are referring to might be part of the reason why my reports are not quite finished yet.”

Idril laughed. “Oh? Our most responsible lord, slacking?”

“I will get them to you this evening. But being a fun uncle comes with a lot of responsibility, you see.”

“I do” She cocked her head. “What do you think, should we give the Golden Knight and his little squire a surprise? They will never be able to stand against the might of the evil witch and the dark dragon all at once.”

“It would be a pleasure, my Lady.”