Written for Day One of Gigolas Week on tumblr (check it out! all entries are tagged 'gigolas week'). The prompt was, "First Times."

Not related to the Sansûkh universe.

I hope you enjoy!

...

Some Other Beginning's End

The first time Gimli sets eyes upon the Elf, he is less than impressed. He looks exactly like the rest of them: tall, pale and inscrutable. Not a whisker on his chin nor a line on his face. He is blank, a white unwritten canvas, with no distinguishing features or marks upon him to denote a personality at all.

Then he turns slightly, his eyes narrowing in distaste as Gimli stands and pledges his blade and the strength of his arm to the service of the Ringbearer. The Elf's lip curls the slightest amount as he looks at Gimli, and his nose lifts into the air ever so minutely.

No, Gimli is not impressed in the slightest.

The first time Gimli touches the Elf is in fear and anger and grief.

He is weeping, and his axe is in his hand but it has not felt so heavy since he was a child. He cannot see properly in the gloom for the tears in his eyes. The great white coffin lies before him, and his cousin is dead – dead and gone. His cousin is dead. His uncle is dead. They are all dead.

His anger is a blaze that is swiftly growing to consume his sight. Gimli cannot lift his axe, not yet. He must kneel here, paralysed with grief and horror, as Gandalf reads the litany of the dead from the book written in Ori's swift elegant hand. Ori, who is dead.

Then there is shouting and the drums are pounding, and Gimli's axe is abruptly lighter than air.

He roars and screams his defiance, and in his mind's eye a kindly old Dwarf winks and chuckles at him, ruffles his hair and calls him 'little kinsman'. His uncle ties off the last of his braids after he has served his time in the training rooms and earned his axes as a warrior. His friends lift tankards and sing raucous songs and cheer and jeer and shout at Gimli when he is drunk and foolish enough to dance.

Blood flies through the murk and Gimli's nostrils are filled with the scent of it and it is not enough. These orcs are not enough. They must pay and pay and it will never, never be enough.

Then the Elf is holding the crook of his arm and shouting into his face, and it takes all of Gimli's willpower not to send his blade into that pretty golden head. He pauses, muscles screaming, breath whistling hot and acid through his mouth, teeth bared in an animal snarl.

"Come along, Master Dwarf!" the Elf cries. His light voice is no longer calm and unruffled. Gimli can see the whites of his eyes. "Come, lest we make a meal for goblins!"

"My kin, my family," Gimli weeps, and his tears run into his beard and Durin only knows what he looks like. A mad Dwarf, fey and wild, the villain of all the old Elvish tales. "Leave me, Elf! Get you gone!"

The Elf's hand tightens upon the softer flesh inside Gimli's elbow, and suddenly he is made aware that Elves are far, far stronger than they look.

"Curse the stubbornness of Dwarves! You are of our Fellowship and I will not leave you behind! Come, leave your kin – or join them!"

Gimli stares up at the Elf, who towers over him. His face is no longer unwritten and blank and smooth as parchment: he is twisted in fear and anger.

Gimli shakes the Elf away. "I will lead," he growls. He places one hand upon Balin's tomb for the briefest of instances, and lets his eyes glance over the bones of Ori slumped against the white stone.

His axe leaps in his fist.

Then he turns and charges blindly after the sounds of Boromir's boots, his eyes stinging with fresh tears and his teeth clamped together in a rictus of pain.

The inside of his elbow is warm.

The first time Gimli embraces the Elf, he cannot believe he has done so.

He is weary as he has never been before, and his legs ache beyond all reason. His face is windburned and reddened along his cheeks, and his lips are so chapped they have begun to crack and bleed. He has left the rooms given them for the minute, pleading a need for solitude. Aragorn has sought the bathhouse. Gimli will go there soon enough, but in the meantime he has begged pipe and weed from the Wizard. The taste is a comfort.

Edoras is cold and bleak and the winds howl around the solitary mountain, screaming in his ears. He can see the distant mountains in the sunset: the fading light stains them purple.

Gimli is so tired, and he misses the mountains.

"Three days," Legolas says, and sits beside him. Even the Elf's flawless skin is dry-looking, and his hair is limp with his sweat. Somehow Gimli never thought that Legolas would sweat, like any other creature of flesh. Still, compared to Aragorn and Gimli, he is pristine – poor Aragorn looks like he has been dragged through sharp rocks and drenched in oil. "Three days and nights, no food, and barely a rest. Once I would have made mock of your ability to keep up, Master Gimli. No more. I knew the limitations of Elves and Men: never again will I question the endurance of the Dwarves."

Gimli smiles around the stem of the pipe. "I thank you, Master Legolas. My legs do not, but I thank you."

"Do you suppose we may dispense with the 'master'?" Legolas asks, leaning his elbows upon his knees and looking up at the stars. "We are united in a common purpose now. I would count you a friend."

"And it is cumbersome to say every time," Gimli adds, and he looks out at the mountains and he aches.

"Yes, that also," Legolas says, and his laughter is soft and private.

"Let us be rid of it then," Gimli decides, and he grins at Legolas.

Legolas grins in return.

Gimli is tired, and he is homesick, and for that perhaps he can be excused for what he does next. He leans over until his shoulder touches that of Legolas, and slaps that bird-boned Elven back companionably. "Aye, then friends we are."

Then he cocks his head, waiting.

"What do you hesitate for?" asks Legolas curiously.

"The world ending," Gimli says reasonably, as though stating the obvious. "A Dwarf and an Elf have declared themselves friends: surely the sky must come toppling down? Do the mountains crumble? Is the sea coming to swallow us, do you suppose?"

Legolas exclaims wordlessly, and then his laugh rings out loudly and freely, like the peal of a silver trumpet over the darkening valley. "Oh, most cynical Dwarf!" he says merrily. "Do you always play the sceptic? Is pessimism your default state of being?"

"I am rarely disappointed with the world," Gimli affirms, and he grins some more. "It lives up to my expectations on a regular basis."

His hand rises again without his conscious control until it is touching Legolas' back, resting there comfortably. There are no secrets to be kept beneath a Dwarf's fingers. Legolas wears no armour, only light buckskin and green cloth. Gimli's hands can make out the difference between etchings upon a bead in full darkness – to feel the outline of Legolas' skeleton underneath such thin and flimsy stuff is no challenge at all. The bones are light and thin under a layer of warm living skin. So narrow and elegant they feel like bird bones.

Gimli, in comparison, is an ox – thick with massive bone and muscle, densely compacted into his short frame. He is squat, unlovely. No grace for him; no, nor elegance. He is heavy and broad, thickset and bullish, strong in the manner of a beast of burden. Shaggy is his mane, and his cheeks are windburned and his lips cracked from the sun.

He sucks upon the pipe-stem and looks out at the distant mountains.

Legolas carelessly throws his arm over Gimli's shoulders in return, and leans back to look up at the stars. "Well, I would not change you, distrustful and pessimistic though you are," he says, still smiling.

"Oh, very flattering," Gimli says mockingly, but he leans into the Elf despite himself. Legolas' hair is limned with silver in the starlight, edged with blushing gold from the swift-fading sun.

"No, I would not change you," Legolas repeats, and he tips his head, birdlike and delicate, until the side rests gently atop Gimli's. "You are my friend, are you not? We have now decided and the pact is made. You may not retract it now, for I have heard you say so, my friend! Ah yes, my friend Gimli."

Gimli is holding the Elf. He blinks, and his hand is clutching the pipe-stem so tightly he fears he could crack it, and somehow their arms have found their way around the other, and they look up at the stars together. He can smell Legolas' hair, and hear his breath.

"Birds and oxen," he murmurs, and he looks out at the purple-tinged mountains.

They too shine silver in the starlight.

The first time Gimli kisses the Elf they are kneeling in mud and filth and blood.

The battle is over! It is over and they have both survived, and Minas Tirith stands glowing in the shaft of sunlight that cracks through the glowering black clouds. It is over and Gimli can scarcely believe it. He tears off his helmet and leans back to laugh at the cloud-filled sky, the blood matting his hair and running into his eyes. It is over. It is over, and Gimli is alive and Legolas is singing and the Men cheer and they are free – Gondor is saved! It is over!

Legolas turns to him and Gimli laughs uproariously at his grimy face. His smile is as bright as blazing sunlight beneath the coating of muck, and Gimli reaches out without thinking and wipes some of it away from the fine-boned face, his thumb lingering along a sharp, hairless jawline.

Legolas smile does not falter, and his hand rises to grip Gimli's thick-boned wrist. "How many?"

Gimli laughs again, his head throwing back. "Do you know, I lost count!"

Legolas appears to find this quite as funny as Gimli does, and together they giggle helplessly as Legolas sinks to his knees in the mud. The sun is warm as it has not been these many months, and Gimli basks in it and in the laughter of the Elf both.

"So did I!" Legolas gasps, and Gimli cannot breathe, he is laughing so hard. He chokes, leaning forward, his hands on his knees and his axe sliding from his nerveless, weary fingers. His guffaws are strangled, his stomach aches from swinging the blade over and over through the dreadful day and night. Surrounded by ghouls and orcs; the memory of the noble fallen still fresh in his mind, Gimli cannot breathe for laughter and sudden tears.

"Aragorn, where..." Legolas manages, and Gimli nods, waving one hand towards where he last saw their friend without straightening upright. He does not think he can manage it, not yet. He is so weary, and his head feels heavy, and the sunlight is warm.

Legolas peers closer. "Gimli, are you well? You hide no injury?"

Gimli shakes his head and grabs Legolas' shoulder to steady himself. "A little weary, perhaps. But no, I have suffered no hurt."

"Good," Legolas says, and he traces a long thin finger along Gimli's hairline where he bled at Helm's Deep. "Good. I find I cannot bear it when your blood has been spilled."

Legolas' voice sounds subtly different. Gimli would not have known that, once – but now he prides himself on knowing the differences. He manages to lift his heavy head to frown with concern at the Elf. "And you? Legolas, are you all right lad?"

Legolas does not answer immediately, and a freezing fear grips Gimli even as he reaches out and grasps both of the Elf's shoulders in his hands, gripping tightly. "Tell me you are all right!"

"Peace, peace, dearest of friends!" Legolas says, his hands rising to once more grasp Gimli around his wrists. Even his long fingers cannot remotely close around them. "I am unharmed. I was simply relieved that you were likewise uninjured."

Gimli leans forward until his forehead presses against Legolas'. "It will take more than the might of Mordor to bring me down," he says gently.

"Thank Elbereth for that," Legolas breathes, and it s the simplest easiest thing in the world to lean forward and kiss him: once, twice. Softly, as though he held naught but air under his hands and as though the mud and blood-spattered Elf were a vision that had to fade.

"You are filthy," Legolas murmurs as Gimli draws back, his brow still pressing close to Legolas'.

"So are you," Gimli returns, equally quiet. "This is a battlefield."

"You have always been a battlefield, mellon nîn," Legolas says, and Gimli laughs once more before kissing the Elf again.

The first time Gimli makes love to the Elf the world is about to begin again.

It is not the first time Gimli has lain with another, though he is trembling with nerves. He feels as clueless as a sixty-year-old. He once spent a summer between the thighs of a lovely young widow of Dale who had beautiful breasts and a soft, warm stomach, a delightful laugh and callused clever fingers. And there was his friend and fellow-student of the axe whose beard was a soft contrast to the hardness and strength of his body and loins. He was fond of them both – cared for them both, in his way. But not this way. Not like this.

This is the first time that Gimli will lie with another and know that his heart is irrevocably lost.

Legolas is so beautiful. He shines in the early morning light that spreads out over the White City, and Gimli cannot breathe. He feels as though he has strayed into someone else's life. This Elf, this beautiful, beautiful Elf, cannot be sitting opposite him, unclad, his hands buried deep in Gimli's beard. This is not for him: this is just a fever-dream, brought on by the mead at the wedding.

Legolas gently unthreads a bead from Gimli's beard, sliding it down the coarse and crinkly hair. Then the next, and then the next. His eyes follow his movements as though he would be content to spend forever lost in Gimli's hair, slowly unbinding it and rebinding it, his hands warm where they venture near Gimli's chin.

Finally the beads are gone, and Legolas' hands move freely through the fall of beard. "Once I thought it red," Legolas murmurs, and Gimli frowns.

"It is red," he says. "And will be so for a century more, Mahal willing..."

"Nay, my love," Legolas says, and in one swift lithe movement he curls and folds and unstretches to lay his head upon Gimli's lap, looking up at his ceaseless hand that still cards through Gimli's beard. "Nay. Here is the colour of the oak, and here is the warm chestnut. Here is the colour of beech leaves in autumn, and the sun has bleached this strand golden."

Gimli can only look down at the Elf in amazement. The pale white-gold head is lying in his lap, the face turned slightly towards his hairy belly, and those long long limbs have curled around him as though he is a rock to cling to.

Legolas sifts his hand through the longer, softer fall of Gimli's hair. "So many different colours," he muses, and smiles. "And once I thought to call it 'red', and that was all."

"Legolas," Gimli chokes.

Legolas' other hand slides over until he has taken Gimli's hand in his own. "I do not know any more than this," he says serenely. "Should we take the next step, we will be married in my people's eyes. But I want that. I want you. Gimli, will you not touch me?"

Legolas is the one love he has waited for, strange and wonderful and lovely. Legolas is waiting for him now.

He feels oddly huge as he slides his arm beneath Legolas' head and lifts it. His hands are so large compared to Legolas', for all that he is shorter. He is stout and furred and stocky and broad with dense muscle, and Legolas is whiplike as a willow-switch and light as air as he brings the Elf's mouth up to his.

They have kissed so many times, but this is different.

"I love you," he tells Legolas, and then he kisses him once more. "You are my One, my love, my fated. I am yours, Legolas, I am yours forever. I love you, love you, love you."

"Gimli," Legolas gasps against his mouth, and Gimli surges forward to wrap both his hands around that fine-boned head.

"Everything I have ever done has led to finding you," Gimli says, and the smoothness of Legolas' hair beneath his hands is as intoxicating as the smoothness of his lips. Phrases stutter from Gimli's mouth between kisses, and Legolas' breath is hot upon his face. He feels lightheaded. "I will show you. Tell me if I do not please you. I would not hurt you for all the world. My jewelled one, my mad dancing Elf, my darling."

"You could never displease me," Legolas says, and he sounds drunk. His long arms wind around Gimli's neck and cling tightly.

Gimli laughs softly. "I should like to have heard you say that a year ago, Legolas my love. I would have thought you mad."

Legolas smiles against Gimli's next kiss, and then he is pulling himself upright to press his narrow, hairless chest against Gimli's. "A year ago, I thought your hair was red," he murmurs.

Legolas has never done more than kiss, and he is endearingly eager to learn. He listens to Gimli's soft rumbled explanations, and nods quickly. His expression of astonished pleasure is precious to Gimli, and so he goes about putting it upon Legolas' face as often as possible.

The Elf is glorious as he arches back. A tongue placed to a nipple makes him speak fervently in his own language, and the same tongue to the back of his knee makes his eyes roll back. He adores being kissed upon the neck so much it feels as though he would happily wait for the next Age as long as Gimli's lips remained there. His hands flutter about the Dwarf's body, clumsy in their impatience and inexperience, torn between the urgency of their bodies and the endlessness of Elven time. When Gimli's mouth closes over his erection, he wails loudly enough to have the Dwarf cursing and pressing two fingers into that wide mouth even as it spills forth with liquid Elvish words that make him hard as adamant. That is not his usual reaction to that language, not at all.

"You sing very prettily," Gimli tells him, panting. Legolas' chest heaves and his eyes flare, and he sucks hard upon Gimli's fingers in retaliation.

Gimli groans. He has gone untouched, and the beat of his heart echoes the throb in his groin.

"Hold now," Gimli says, and strokes the fair hair away from pointed ears that have flushed pink as coral in the cool grey dawn. He is so beautiful – and Dwarves have ever loved beauty. "There is more, if you would try it."

Legolas' eyes widen. "More?" he manages to say around two thick Dwarvish fingers. Gimli removes them and nods.

"You could take me."

Legolas seems confused. "But I thought you were..."

"Not this time, my beauty," Gimli says, and he lowers himself beside the Elf, careful not to press his whole weight upon him. Legolas is stronger than he appears by far, but Gimli knows he is heavy. "I would not take you now. It would not be a pleasure to you, it would be a cruelty."

"Then we will do so another time," Legolas says breathlessly, and his hand wanders down Gimli's torso, fingers dancing amongst the whorls of hair. "You are generous in every way, a feast for my every sense: I cannot imagine you being otherwise."

Gimli laughs, and Legolas's hand presses to his jumping stomach muscles as though trying to capture every vibration. "We will try it another time, aye. But now..."

"You have... done so before."

"Aye," Gimli says, and breathes deeply. "A friend, nigh-on forty years ago. He was not you."

"I cannot understand how you have done this with another," Legolas confesses, and the light in his eyes is dimming.

"Legolas!" Gimli sits up, and turns to lean over the Elf's face, his elbows pressing down heavily in the pillows. "A Dwarf loves once. Do you hear me? Once. What has come before was but bodies and heat. This..."

"Once," Legolas echoes, and then he is pressing up against Gimli's mouth again, kissing him with all his might and main. "Gimli," he says in a halting voice. "The more I learn of you...it humbles me. Please, my glorious Dwarf. Show me. Teach me. Love me."

"Gladly," he growls. "I would be honoured."

"No." Legolas breathes and watches with glittering eyes as Gimli sits back upon his legs to reach for a heretofore neglected jar. "I am the one who is honoured, meleth nîn."

Gimli pauses and looks down, and the shine in those strange Elven eyes is the gleam of tears. Legolas is beautiful spread out before him, skin glowing like starlight and his hair like bleeding gold upon the pillows. His limbs are long and odd and narrow, and Gimli is so large and yet so small before him. He smiles. "You will like this," he promises, and his smile broadens into a grin. "I'll wager I can last longer than you."

Legolas' laughter is far too loud for the early morning hours, and Gimli cannot bring himself to care.

The first time Gimli weeps for the Elf they are in sight of his home.

A year of desperation and despair, of doubt and danger, and now the Mountain rises before them from above the trees of Mirkwood (no, no mustn't call it Mirkwood any longer) and Gimli cannot help but gaze upon it in relief.

Legolas notices, of course. Legolas sees everything. "You must be pleased to see Erebor once more," he says over his shoulder. Beneath them, Arod whickers at the sudden sound of his voice.

"As pleased as you were to enter your blasted wood, Elf," Gimli retorts, and he palms Legolas' hip in apology for his sharpness. It is not Legolas' fault that the trees press in on him.

"Are you eager to be home?"

"Aye, eager enough," Gimli concedes. He will miss Legolas fiercely. They have not spent more than a few hours apart since the final battle. "Do you not look forward to seeing your family and friends?"

Legolas is quiet for a while, and Gimli begins to worry. He is mocked regularly for worrying, but in truth he cannot help it. Legolas has lived for century upon century before ever meeting the son of Glóin, he knows it well. But now the son of Glóin loves him, and that makes all the difference in the world.

"Oh stop it, worrisome Dwarf," Legolas says. "Do you think I cannot feel you fretting back there? I will greet my family with all joy and gladness. However, I do not look forward to explaining to my father that the beads in my hair are more than mere decoration."

Gimli grins broadly. "That should give him a shock or two."

"And how will you explain the new ink upon your chest or the braids in your hair, meleth nin?" Legolas retorts. Gimli snorts loudly and lets his hand wander down to Legolas' thigh.

"You have a point."

"Indeed I do." Legolas harrumphs, tossing his head back in vindication. Blond hair swings against Gimli's face. Where once it would annoy him, now he presses his cheek against the warm, narrow back and inhales deeply.

"There is more, love," Gimli says against the silky fall of hair. "Come on, let it out then."

"Whomsoever it was who said that Dwarves were dull and inattentive creatures needs to have their head examined," he hears Legolas mutter, and then a long-fingered hand is pressed over his own where it squeezes just above Legolas' knee. "I cannot dissuade you, can I?"

"Not a chance," Gimli says cheerfully. "Spill it, lad."

Legolas sighs, and then he leans back into Gimli's embrace. Arod chuffs at the redistribution of weight but he continues on regardless; their steadfast horse of Rohan. "I find I am apprehensive not for myself or for my love for you," he says slowly, "but for my father's happiness. He does not know I have heard the call of the gulls. He will be grief-stricken to know it. He will be amazed that I have lost my heart so late in my life: Elves usually find their spouses within their first century, and I am well past that. He will be afraid and angry for me, knowing that the one I love must one day..."

"This is about mortality, isn't it," Gimli interrupts, his heart sinking. This conversation has been chewed to death, as far as he is concerned, and never fails to make him wish desperately for an ale.

"Aye, in part," sighs Legolas, and Gimli feels a dim flicker of pride at that word. He has taught an Elf to answer like a Dwarf. Has any other ever done such a thing?

"I will not let you die," Gimli vows, as he has vowed every single time. "You will not die. I will follow you wherever you go. I will live forever if that is what it takes."

"I know you will," Legolas says, and his head falls forward to shield his face with the curtain of his hair, his beads clacking. "I do not doubt it."

Gimli's hand tightens around Legolas' thigh, his other arm curling around the slender waist. He rests his forehead against Legolas' back, and he loves his Elf, he loves him.

He wishes he were not mortal.

"I will tell your father so," he says staunchly, and Legolas' laugh is a silent earthquake beneath his cheek.

"I look forward to that," he says, and lifts Gimli's hand to his lips to kiss it gently. "That will be quite the sight to see, I expect."

They ride on through the murky forest, hoofbeats echoing in the mist. Gimli presses as tightly as possible against the strong, lean body – as tall and deadly as a bow himself – and holds onto his dark thoughts. Legolas is not meant to follow him into the ground. His body will not decay and his gold will not tarnish. That is not what he was born for. Gimli is made for darkness and for stone and for the long cold sleep before the renewal of all things, but Legolas is a fey thing of songs and starlight, and he will live. He will live.

He is an Elf, and he will live.

Gimli holds onto his tears, but one manages to slide into his beard anyway.

"Are you sure?" Legolas asks, and the longing in his eyes is so strong that Gimli cannot help but ache for him. He has seen that longing grow over the years until it is a nigh-physical weight that Legolas must drag with him everywhere he goes. The sea calls, and finally he may answer. "There will be no other Dwarves, and you will be surrounded by Elves and Elves alone. You will not hear your own songs nor your own tongue, and none shall understand all your ways save myself – and I understand only imperfectly. Further, many will distrust you..."

"The Lady will be there," Gimli replies calmly. "She can speak Khuzdul, though with an ancient accent. You know the only word I care to remember; the most important name of all. As to the rest, if I must be a Dwarf alone so be it, and if I can win over your kin I can win over anyone. And you shall be there, and what more do I need?"

"Are you sure?" Legolas presses, and he bites at his lip. Gimli dislikes that habit – that is his job, to bite at Legolas' lips.

"Do I ever say aught that I do not mean?" Gimli says, and he runs a thumb over Legolas' lips. They are slightly parted and Legolas looks up at him from his place by his knee, awe blazing in his face. "Tch! You know better than that."

"I will never doubt you again," Legolas says, and he threads his hands into Gimli's beard to bring him forward. It is no longer red, nor even a myriad of colours that may be called red from a distance. Great thick streaks of white have appeared in his hair over each temple. They are rapidly growing.

"I told you, my dear," Gimli murmurs, and he kisses his Elf with as much promise as he can. "I told you I would follow you wherever you would go."

"It will be the first time a Dwarf has set foot upon the Blessed Lands," says Legolas.

Gimli smiles and presses his forehead against Legolas' just as they had that first time, standing amidst mud and blood on a battlefield long ago. "Oh, my mad, darling Elf," he says softly. "What is another first time, when there have been so many?"

END.

Title from Seneca (4BC - 65AD), "Every new beginning is from some other beginning's end."