coffee-and-connections-zine

[sun-snatcher]

Your take of Círdan being an old man who enjoys pestering people is my absolute fave bc yeah if I was the oldest elf alive I'd be a little shit half the time too for funzies

( credits to the lovely @peregrintook for this beautiful gifset ! )

✵ — WATER-DAMAGED!

summ.  Elrond arrives at Círdan’s workshop. He finds his heart instead. or:  The Herald and the Artisan fall in love. pairing.  elrond peredhel / f!reader  w.count.  1.2k (a lil baby!) a/n.  set in s2e1, friends-to-lovers kinda , fluff galore , mutual pining , Círdan being a thirdwheel (but highkey enjoying it because he’s a little shit like that)

       YOU’RE QUICK TO attempt to bundle Elrond up like a child when he’d arrived. 

Frantic, almost, at the sight of Lindon’s renowned Herald— drenched to the bone, head-to-toe, and dripping river water from his mess of curls, leaving puddles and a wet track wherever he went on the stone of the workshop.

“He’s not here yet,” is what you’d said, when he’d urged you for Master Círdan. The shipwright had gone off to appraise proper timber for the frames of the vessels prepared for Valinor, now that High King Gil-Galad has decreed preparations to set sail. 

“But he should return by nightfall, latest. So will you please sit down, Elr—”

“I cannot,” he overrides, wholly unconvincing through the chatter of his teeth. “You’ll be at risk if I stay.”

You blink. “…From who?”

“I—”

In the distance, a horse whinnies. 

Elrond tenses instantly.

“…Are you— hiding?” you realise, as he springs to his feet to make headway for the sidedoors. “Elrond, wait!”

“Thank you, truly, for your kindness, but I cannot allow the King’s Guard—”

“That was just Silef,” you say incredulously, muscling the door back shut and stubbornly standing in his way. “My mare, remember? From the stables just uphill?” 

A pause. 

He listens with pricked ears: gates of a stable door squeaking; hooves clopping from paddock ground onto pasture grass; the sound of grain and feed being chewed on, after a moment's pass. A notable absence of marching Elven armour and feet stamping its way downhill towards him. 

Just Silef. You’re right. He’d been paranoid. 

“Á quildessë, Elrond,” comes your quiet voice, gentler now as you chase to meet his anxious gaze. “I will make sure no one comes into this workshop, unless it’s Master Círdan himself,” you assure, resting your hands on his forearms. “Just please, sit down. You’re shaking.” 

…He is. He hadn’t even realised. 

It might have been adrenaline, or the bite of the cold from wind and water— but he’s trembling, nonetheless, like a leaf. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, much, much later, when you’d stoked the coals of the workshop hearth to life, and set him upon a wooden seat beside it.

From the open foyer of the atelier, the sea-reflected hues of the setting sun does little to hide the tentative worry in your features. Your voice is as gentle as the lap of tidewater. “There’s nothing to apologise for.”

“I shouldn’t have… barged in.” 

I shouldn’t have involved you in the first place, and put you at risk for treason for harboring a dissenter.

The firelight paints your face in soft, flickering licks of ochre as you tenderly dry off the dampness in his hair, the water trickling down his face. “You were afraid,” you reason generously.

(You don’t tell him that he looks adorably… pitiful. With eyes like that of a kicked puppy, almost. Even worse that he looks half-drowned.)

Elrond doesn’t argue. You’ve always been a kind friend to him. So, so kind. Ever-ready and steadfast to extend an olive branch, impervious to tactlessness, or even offence, from the sheer tenacity of your patience. Elrond has always admired you for it. Elrond has always—

Liked you. Cared. Loved.

(Too much to allow himself to let you get caught in this tangle he’s been forced into.)

He lays a hand over yours, and you pause mid-wipe of a droplet down his lined jaw. His eyes are shut briefly, as if falling into the comfort of your touch— candid indulgence. It makes your heart stutter.

That you’re allowed a quiet moment to admire him this close, so much so you can see the rings of sundering blue in his eyes; or to touch him this affectionately, so much so you could feel the very change of temperature on his skin— 

You think you’ve been blessed with a handsome vision by the Valar themselves.

“You must be curious,” he says, voice a low murmur. His palm swallows yours entirely. His fingers are warm by now. (You shouldn’t notice such details— but you do. You’re an artisan, after all. Or perhaps hopeless romantic is a better suited term?) “But this is beyond even me.”

He slides your hand down, much to your dismay, and uncurls the pouch he’s been clutching onto since he arrived. Now that it’s infront of you, there’s a pull to it you can’t quite understand.

You reach, almost too keenly— 

—but you close his fingers around it instead.

If Elrond had shown any surprise, you didn’t notice. 

“Must be why you’ve sought out Master Círdan,” you muse, looking up at him. “If it’s beyond you, it’s most certainly beyond me, a mere shipwright’s apprentice.”

“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” Elrond adds quickly, realising how he must have come across. 

“I know,” you laugh, before he can take off into a tangent. (It’s bright and musical to Elrond’s ears— thinks if he could drown in its sound, he would have done so willingly.) “You forget I know you.”

Not entirely, he doesn’t say. You don’t know how much my heart sings to be near you. How much your presence— or the very thought of you, even— have always brought comfort to me. 

You don’t know how much I’ve been resisting the urge to kiss you since you first sat me down by the fire.

He feels a little smile coming, the kind he couldn’t help, that would light his whole face whenever he cast his gaze on you. “You do, don’t you?” he whispers, voice sinking into something almost— nostalgic, at the sudden unravelling of old memories shared with you throughout the age.

“Well, when it comes to Kingdom politicians…” you shrug teasingly. “As much as I’m allowed to be privy to.”

He barely laughs, too busy looking at you with rapt, reverent attention. It curls a timidness in your heart. “You are allowed all of me. Always.”

Something takes wing in your chest. Butterflies, maybe. Doves taking flight in your ribcage. 

As are you, to me.

At least, that's what you would’ve said, had your ears not caught the distant clop of hooves headed downwind towards the river edge. “Master Círdan is here,” you say instead, diverted. You recognise the huff of his steed anywhere.

You watch Elrond perk up and tune into the approach: the rustle of saddle and stirrups, the shuffle of robes and footsteps. When the doors squeak open and shut, the Kingdom’s shipwright finds the Kingdom’s herald standing in the heart of his own workshop.

“Elrond,” he says, by way of greeting. There’s naught a hint of surprise in his voice— Círdan had felt a call louder than the sea long before he’d arrived, and now he can understand it’s carried in the herald’s charge. “Have you come to seek a certain apprentice of mine?” he asks, regardless.

It’s playful. Knowing.

“He seeks you, Master Círdan,” you answer politely, rounding from the corner where you’d grabbed your spare pelerine cloak to pass to Elrond. “Here, to keep warm.”

“Thank you.”

You bow your head to them both. “I shall be at the lighthouse just across.”

Your fingertips brush against Elrond’s hand as you leave. It tarries; merely a millisecond— enough, however, for Círdan’s keen eyes to catch— before he watches you depart through the sidedoors to give them the privacy they needed. 

Elrond's hand flexes reflexively. Longingly.

A beat passes.

“…Are you sure it is still me you seek?” Círdan muses, brows shot to his hairline.

The tips of Elrond’s ears burn.