#nothing gets done ohh and certainly not drawing anymore... sad....

[zebratimw]

2021

[soyeahitsmiddleearth]

Dimension Jumping Pt. 5

Comforting a grieving hobbit and time get everyone ready to go out!

Via the genius idea from katzrfsoa / Kat88

There's been mention of the reader not wanting to take the groups out, for fear of the public's reaction... so what about a cosplay convention? it would give the Reader the perfect excuse to allow them out, and they would wear their original clothes 

----

This morning has been uneventful for the most part.

Breakfast passed by without issue and now everyone is off doing their own things.

You looked outside and took a peek in the guest room, but you still can't find him.

Sam, Merry, and Pippin are playing a board game you showed them; Legolas is doing his meditation sleep thing; Boromir and Aragorn are discussing something; and Gimli is stacking bread on Legolas' leg to see how long it takes until he notices.

Frodo, however, is missing at the moment.

Right as you were considering telling the others of his disappearance, however, you heard some shuffling from your hall closet.

You open the door carefully and take peer inside, not wanting to startle the small hobbit, and at first you don't see him.

There's more shuffling and you hear a quiet sniff, followed by soft sobs, and you then realize he's hiding behind the shelf.

The door makes a soft clicking sound when you close it, and right away the quiet cries cease. You didn't want to alert him with the door, you wanted to do it yourself, but it's too late now, so you just go with it.

"Frodo?" You call in a gentle voice, staying by the door incase he wants you to go.

"Y-Yes?' He calls back, not moving from his spot.

His voice is thick with emotion, and the sadness in his tone makes your heart ache painfully. And when you walk closer and see him huddled up behind the shelf, your heart breaks a little for him.

He hastily rids his cheeks of any evidence of his sorrows, though the puffiness around his eyes and constant sniffles don't much help his cause, and looks at you with a false smile.

"Frodo, why are you crying?" You ask with furrowed eyebrows, kneeling down in front of him so you may look at him at eye level (mostly).

"It's nothing." He tells you quickly, looking away from your compassionate face with the same sad frown on his lips.

When you don't move to get up or leave, his gaze slides back over to you and he realizes that you're not going to leave unless he straight up tells you to go away. This makes him sigh, but truthfully, he doesn't want you to go away. Not really. For having company in a time of sorrow always mends suffering.

"I... did not have a proper time to mourn Gandalf. I've been so caught up in the oddity that is this place that I almost forgot my sorrows altogether, but then this morning is all... came rushing back." He explains with a surprisingly even voice.

While he speaks you cross your legs and listen along intently, your hands folded neatly in your lap. When he finishes, you reach forward and place your hand atop his with a gentle touch, "I didn't know him, but I can tell he was very dear to you. Honestly, I can't offer much advice, but I can tell you that keeping it all bottled up inside is not a good idea."

He looks at you with that sad face when you speak, and it prompts you to continue, "Also, I know everyone else can be pretty overwhelming or they just don't understand, and I want you to know that I'm always here to listen if you're feeling down, okay?"

Your words draw a small smile from the grieving hobbit and it elicits a similar grin from you.

"Thank you, Y/N. I... actually do feel a little better."

"I'm glad."

---

After your discussion with Frodo you rejoin everyone back out in the main room and let him recollect himself, going right onto your laptop to get some work done.

You're idly scrolling through a scholarly article you need to research when you see it.

An advertisement for some sort of comic book, cosplay, convention... thing in the area (no wonder you've been seeing so many oddly dressed people recently).

At first you almost scroll past it, but then you get hit with the brick of knowledge and a lightbulb goes off in your head.

"Yes!" You scream, successfully scaring everyone in the room and Penny who is sitting with you for once. "Ohh, my god. This is freaking perfect!" You exclaim, clicking on the link to get some more information.

Your eyes practically soak up everything on the information page, and, once you've skimmed through all of it, you look up with a bright smile on your face.

Literally all of them are looking at you like you've grown two heads, but you only clap your hands together a few times. "Guys, I just had a huge brain moment!"

The joke goes over their heads as per usual, but you don't let that deter you.

"Huge brain moment?" Pippin asks in confusion, looking at his cousin like he thinks he heard it wrong or something.

"Yes! I've figured out a way to take everyone out!"

That certainly gets their attention.

"You have?" Sam asks exuberantly, dropping his game piece so he can turn towards you and pay perfect attention.

"I have, yes," you start, continuing once you're 100% sure they're all paying attention, "So here's the thing, I knew that I could take out you tall boi's without issue besides having to find a hat for Legolas here, and I could explain that Gimli here has dwarfism," you pause at that and realize it may be offensive to him, but you continue once more, "but I also knew that there's no way I can explain away the hobbits, and then I found this gem."

You turn the computer so it faces all of them, but they only look more confused.

"There's a convention thing in town for the next week, and it's the perfect opportunity for me to bring everyone out! We just have to dress up the hobbits a bit and pretend that they're children."

At your explanation you receive multiple pleased smiles, and it serves to make you feel even better about your idea. "And you can all wear your normal clothes, too. And if someone asks who you are... I'll figure out a game or something you guys can use as an alias."

"Are you sure that will work?" Aragorn asks with furrowed eyebrows, sitting up from his spot in your arm chair.

"Um, like, maybe 98%." You confirm with a shrug, "It's better than 88% though."

He doesn't seem like he disagrees with you, so you look back at your laptop again and start to look for ideas to make them more believable as humans.

---

3 hours of research later, and you've successfully compiled a completely fool proof plan to smuggle this merry band of bizarre boys out of your house.

What you've decided is that you'll put some makeup over Legolas' pointy ears to make them look more fake since the concept of elves is not lost in this world. Boromir and Aragorn can go as themselves, and you'll put some makeup on the hobbits much like you will Legolas (they'll be children elves since there are no hobbits in your world) and tell everyone who asks how they look so good that you're a professional makeup artist.

Gimli, fortunately for you, was the easiest to come up with something for next to the other two humans of this group. You can just tell people he has dwarfism and that's why he chose to go as a dwarf character.

Everything is in order except for what you're going to do, though you suppose you should match their theme and be some sort of renaissance, maiden, lady, thing. You'll figure it out, though you do need to make sure it's convincing like theirs.

You decided to, instead of putting it off, go ahead and start working on finding a costume to match theirs.

A couple of searches later and you come across a really pretty dress that looks to fit their style, and when you show it to them they give you the thumbs up, so you order it with express shipping so it should arrive tomorrow.

It's a lovely flowy medieval dress *just look up flowy medieval dress and go to images, there are some good examples there*, and you feel excited just looking at it. Of course, there's no guarantee that it'll be the best quality, but it's got great reviews and you certainly paid a hefty sum for it.

After that's done with you head to your bathroom to see what makeup you've got, and you find that you don't really have any theatrical/special effects makeup. You're going to need skin colored wax makeup, powders, and contour stuff.

You're no makeup artist, obviously, but luckily for you, your goal is to make them look less realistic, so it should be easy enough.

It's surprisingly easy to figure out what you need to make them as convincing as possible, and pretty soon you've got a nice little list going on that outlines each thing you need.

Since you don't want to delay anymore, you head out of your bathroom and grab your bag while putting on your shoes, "Legolas, I'm leaving now if you wanna come with." You suggest since he stated his desire to join you in the one of the last chapters (:o).

When you call his name he looks over at you quickly, smiling a bit at your offer, "Yes, but you said I need a hat."

"Oh yeah! I have one, just gimme a sec." You tell him, walking over to a drawer.

When you open said drawer, you find a grey beanie with ease and toss it over to him, "Here ya go. Make sure it covers your ears... and uh, tuck your hair up into it too if you don't mind."

He does as you say with ease and, surprisingly, he looks just as good with shorter hair as he does longer hair.

It sticks kinda awkwardly at first, so you waltz on over and gesture for him to crouch down so you don't have to reach up.

Once again he does as you request and leans down so you may fix it.

You adjust it a bit to make sure it won't fall first, and then you smooth it back a bit so it'll also look stylish. And once you're done you take a step back and smile at him brightly.

"All done! Let's go!"

---

He seemed rather fascinated in the way your car works first and foremost, but once you got him to look out his window instead of watching you, his excitement quickly turned into awe.

When you both get to the ULTA store he follows you without hesitation and asks some hushed questions about things he sees, like the light up signs, other passing cars, stoplights, and some other things.

You, of course, answer each question happily and lead him inside, holding the door open for him while he enters and looks around the brightly lit up makeup store.

Right away you head towards the general direction of the nose and scar wax (it's multi purpose, don't judge me), forgetting to make sure that Legolas follows you.

When it does occur to you, however, that the blond elf didn't come after you, you panic.

You turn in a circle and only stop when you see him standing with some ladies who practically have hearts in their eyes.

Unconsciously you breathe a sigh of relief and head over with the wax in your little basket, immediately reaching up to wrap your arm around his, "I got the first thing on my list, come on."

The girls stop their giggles and flirting as soon as you show up and look genuinely surprised.

You give them a smile and nod in acknowledgement, not wanting to make them feel bad over something so silly before turning with your arm still around his own and walking him over to look at some contour stuff and other things.

They make some snide comments when you turn your back about you being a 'clingy girlfriend' and 'not pretty enough to be with a model like that', but you only ignore it and relish in the fact that you didn't make them feel bad over something as silly as a cute guy in a makeup store.

"Why are those women talking about you like that?" He asks in a whisper, leaning down so only you will hear his question.

You look up at him with a bit or surprise since you didn't expect him to pick up on that, before you smile, "They're attracted to you, and they think that I was being selfish with taking you away from their advances."

"Selfish? Advances?" He looks confused, but you only smile and turn back to the display case.

"Don't worry your pretty little head over it, Leggy my boy."

"Leggy?" He asks slowly, looking at you in confusion.

"Leggy." You confirm with a nod with a distracted hum.

It isn't much later that you have everything you need, and so you go to the checkout and buy everything.

"Going to the convention?" The girl at the counter asks with a smile.

You smile back and nod your head, glancing up at Legolas before looking back at her, "That obvious?"

"No of course not, just the items in your basket always fly off the shelves around convention time." She replies with a giggle, ringing up all your items.

"Well, that's fair." You muse, putting your card into the reader to pay for it.

Once everything is in order she hands you your receipt and adds, "Maybe I'll see you there."

"Maybe!" You chirp back happily, liking the nice conversation going on here.

"You and your boyfriend have a good day now!"

You elect to ignore that.

---

On the way home you pretend to not notice the black car following yours and make small talk with the elf, answering some more of his questions and speaking idly on different things.

"There are so many odd, interesting things here..." He comments after a while, glancing out the back window. "Are you aware that, that car has been following us for the past 10 minutes?"

You nod and hum as an answer, "Mmhm, it's just Brian. He's probably trying to figure out who you are."

The blond knits his eyebrows together and glances back to look at the car again, "Should I do something about it?"

"The only thing you can do is ignore it. He went from lowercase 's' stalker to uppercase 's' since you guys arrived, and it'll only get worse if you intervene." You mumble, trying not to look in the rearview mirror at him. "It's fine."

"You don't seem to think it's fine." He challenges in the same even tone, turning in his seat towards you.

Instead of answering his question you look at him while you stop at a light and grumble, "I told you to put your seatbelt on."

"It's uncomfortable."

"I don't care."

"I will be fine."

"Not if we get into a crash, you won't."

The two of you stare each other down before he slowly reaches up and buckles his belt, never breaking eye-contact.

"Good boy." You coo in a way-too sweet voice.

"Anyways, I know we said as much before, but you needn't worry about that man while we're here." He continues despite your obvious subject change.

"I know." Your reply is softer and less defensive this time, for you really do appreciate it, "Thank you."

He looks surprised at your sudden gratitude, and his expression shows as much "For what?"

"For being you. For looking out for me. All of you."

This time he smiles and says no more.

---

When you both get back to your house you immediately put everything in your bathroom and get onto your laptop to view some techniques on theatrical and movie makeup, Pippin and Merry on either side of you while they view through the pictures and videos with you.

"That one looks interesting." Merry pipes up suddenly, pointing at a person to wolf makeup transformation.

"Yep, and way past anything I can do."

This pattern of going through pictures and viewing clips goes on for a little while until they two hobbits depart to have lunch, meanwhile you continue on so that tomorrow will be a success.

You're both excited and nervous at the same time, wanting to see how it'll all turn out but also dreading it incase something goes wrong.

You know the most important thing is to have a positive mindset about it, but it's kinda hard sometimes during your more anxious moments.

Also, there's the issue of Brian possibly following all of you...

Nah, that'll be a problem to think on for tomorrow.

"What time will we leave tomorrow?" Aragorn asks from his usual spot on the rocking chair, Penny still nestled in his lap as per usual.

"Around the morning. I bought the tickets already so we won't have to stand in line for too long... Hopefully."

"Thank you for working so hard so that we may see more of your world." He comments suddenly, stroking his hand down her fluffy back.

You tilt your head to the side and smile a bit, "You don't have to thank me."

"No, I do. You have seen to our every need and we no doubt pose to be a huge burden. Thank you, really."

His words make you flush slightly, and you look away shyly.

You've grown to care about all of them, so of course you would do anything to keep them comfortable at this point. More than anything you're just glad they see how much you're trying to make things easy on them. It feels nice being recognized for your efforts.

Plus, the added protection from Brian is pretty sweet.

"Anything for you guys."