There’s a difference between Link saying that marriage doesn’t matter to him anymore and marriage actually not mattering to him anymore.
I genuinely believe that Link has convinced himself he doesn’t need to be married, but deep down, it’s important to him, it’s important for him to have that traditional family, and that’s okay. The problem is, Amelia doesn’t want that, and that’s okay too.
I have always been an Amelia and Link fan (until Kai showed up), but sometimes, it’s okay to recognize that relationships aren’t meant to be forever, and that just because they don’t last forever, doesn’t mean the relationship was a failure. Because it wasn’t. They brought Scout into the world and will spend the rest of their lives being great co-parents to him. But I don’t see Amelia and Link having a future, they want two different things, and will just grow to resent each other if they try to make themselves work.
Characters : @linasofia x Thorin, @laurfilijames x Fíli, me x Ori
Words: 1,7 k
Warnings: trauma, truth, and tension
Previous chapters
My appetite vanished, but I forced myself to shove another forkful into my mouth to gain some time. Had I heard him right?
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to curse at you, but I mean it Jia…There have been invitations – to that party, to that bath – and kisses – oh, so many kisses – and songs, but then again you fainted and have not brought it up after…I…just don’t know what you want, exactly, from me?” Ori looked up, sauce stuck to his chin, and his eyes were so dark and wet that I thought they’d spill over like an ancient inkpot at any moment, pouring black ink all over the paperwhite skin of his cheeks.
“I don’t know either anymore – at this point -,” I admitted slowly, “I wanted you to notice me – in the beginning – but since then I’ve messed up the timeline and it’s all so much more difficult than I would have expected…”
“Notice you?”
Ori stared at me blankly, stunned into speechlessness by my words. “Jia, there was no way not to notice you,” he groaned, covering my cold hand with his – surprisingly – warm palm.
“I have told you before that I am not exactly good at this stuff, so I was hoping to ask you to be my partner for English Lit; I might have found the courage of inviting you for a drink afterwards as a way of saying thank you and maybe, just maybe, you might have smiled at me like you do when I speak in front of the class. I had a plan, Jia, but you went and burned through the stages,” he went on, sighing deeply, “there are things I would have wanted to tell you later because I am not exactly proud of them.”
“I’m sorry,” I squeaked as I understood that I had put the cart before the horse in the most ludicrous way imaginable.
“You don’t have to,” I started, but his eyes – stern and honest at the same time – made me fall back into silence immediately. I had lost my chance, I had wasted my window of opportunity, and now, all that was left for me to do was to sit and listen to what he had to say.
“Here goes: Hi, my name is Ori. I am an orphan, I have been raised by my oldest brother Dori, my middle brother has been arrested more times than we’d like to admit, but he’s not a bad kind. I dream of being a librarian and an author. I have never had a girlfriend because girls don’t take me seriously and I’m a bit puny. Thranduil is right; I am poor and – probably – rather ugly.”
He took a deep, steadying breath. “Hi, my name is Ori and I have been in love with you for 2 months, 1 week and,” he checked his watch, “76 hours.”
“I am sorry the food was so bad,” Thorin scratched his head, “but this is really good. What do I owe you ladies?”
Tova looked up from the long noodle she was trying to suck into her mouth as elegantly as she could and frowned; the chill running down her spine told her that she was on thin ice once again, so she cocked her head slowly.
“You don’t owe us anything, we can invite our men to dinner, Thorin. Don’t tell me you’re old-school like that?” She tried to infuse her voice with a hint of humour, but his face remained serious.
“Tova, I do not need handouts,” he grumbled, shame driving a slight blush into his high cheeks that only heightened his discomfort.
“Neither do we. We have settled the expense between us,” she lifted one hand when he wanted to interrupt her, “and that is our right. Please, do not strip our pride from us in order to protect yours.”
That gave him pause for a moment; it took a few seconds, but he finally admitted that Thranduil’s words had hurt him.
“My mother died, and my father has disappeared. Can you imagine what it is to have a dead-beat dad? Dís and Frerin were so young still and I have always wondered if I could have done anything to prevent all of this from happening.”
Tova sighed under her breath, she had not known that his family history was quite that tragic, but it explained why someone that beautiful would turn out to be so terribly stern and serious…and starved for love.
“I have done well on my own, at least I’d like to think so, I have suffered the disrespect and the insults with stoic magnanimity this far, but…” he looked out the window in search of the right words.
“You have kept to yourself, yes, I have noticed,” Tova prompted him gently.
“I have,” he sighed, “I wanted to come talk to you a thousand times, but you looked so beautiful and self-possessed. What if I liked you and you found out about all those things? I could not bear it to grow fond of you and lose your good opinion because of things I had no influence on.”
“Why would you be fond of someone so easily swayed?” Tova grinned, leaving her half-eaten food be and rounding the table to sit down on his lap again, facing him and encircling his thick neck with her forearms.
“You deserve better, you know?” Thorin said as she dropped her forehead against his, inviting that tender caress of his thumb along her jaw once more. “I have learned from Fí’s mistake.”
“What mistake is that, Thorin?” Tova looked up, searching his eyes for an answer.
“Oh, he got entangled with that girl who has shown up at the barbecue,” when he saw Tova’s surprised look, he chuckled, “and he thought I didn’t know, but of course I did. It’s for me to know these things. She’s too good for him and he suffers a great deal under the invisible and unbreachable divide between them.”
Grazing his lips with hers tenderly, Tova purred: “You’re all overthinking this. Lo has forced Jia to bring her along and when your cousin asked her for a date, for a ride, for more beer, she has happily complied. Heavens, Thorin, we’ve played Truth or Dare with him.”
His hands wandered up her ribs and his mouth was sucking at her jaw playfully, but she tried to keep her thoughts together.
“Thorin, I am serious, when did you ask – outright ask – for anything that we did not willingly provide or hand over?”
He seemed to ponder that for a moment, before shaking his head slowly as nothing came to mind.
“I will take you out on a bike-trip, if you want to?” she invited in a seductive voice, “I will take you up to the rocky cliff overseeing the lake and I’ll hold you there when the sun drops into the water like a ball of fire.”
“I’d like that very much, I enjoyed it,” he agreed readily enough, a bit taken aback by her taking the lead.
“Good, that is a done deal then, hmm? Now, we both have classes tomorrow, let’s get some rest,” she grinned opening her laptop and turning on the show that she watched exclusively with him.
“Sorry to be a klutz,” Thorin said after a few moments of playing idly with her hair, “but I need to ask explicitly: Do you want to be my girlfriend then?”
“Oh my stars, I have never heard anything quite as stupid as this, Fí,” Lo laughed after a few moments.
“Yes, I do appreciate that you’re less curated than the men I know at home and – sure – I call you all those things in my mind, very lustfully if I may add, but that doesn’t mean that I do not respect you.”
He groaned: “I’ve never said that, Lo, I know that you have fun with me, but you cannot tell me that you’d see a future with someone standing in front of a forge the whole day.”
“And why the hell not?” Lo cried out, annoyed by his delusional misconception.
“You are beautiful, you are smart, you are precious beyond anything I’ve ever owned or will own. I have a younger brother and a single mother to take care of, I do not want to be seen as someone who’s mooching of a woman so out of his league it isn’t even funny,” he exclaimed desperately.
“You are also beautiful and smart, and I adore your brother. I’d love to meet your mother, but you’ve never been good enough to introduce me to anyone. Maybe you’re only playing me, telling your cousins in a few years about that silly little rich girl you used to take for a spin once in a while?” she spat back.
“You are taking the piss, after you drop me like a misshapen lump of iron, I’ll never speak your name again,” his voice dropped, “because it would hurt too much to have come so close to catching a star in my hand only to have it trail past.”
“Oh, I’m a star now? Mister Purest-of-Sunlight, you really dare telling me that I am somehow too good for you?” Lo knew that she was hiding her palpitating, trembling heart behind the veil of feigned anger that held her tears at bay.
“Come riding with me,” she asked – out of the blue – when she remembered her pact, “I have just the stallion for you. You and him, you’ll get along great, stubborn, beautiful, idiotic creatures that you both are!”
And then his mouth crashed onto hers, tasting like tomato sauce and lust, his hands buried in her hair, tugging at it hard as the shell called pride, that hid and protected his heart, cracked under her passionate repudiation of his doubts.
“Whenever you want, princess,” he purred against her lips, cupping her ass now and lifting her into his arms effortlessly.
“Anything? I hardly think that would be possible right now…” Lo laughed, giving his nose an affectionate ‘boop’ and slinging her arms around his neck.
“You know that I am here to serve you, don’t you?” he grinned back with a wink.
"The feeling of potential love for someone. When you dont actually love them, but you know you could. You realise that you could easily fall in love with them. Almost like the bud of a flower, ready to blossom but it's just not quite there yet. And you like them a lot and you think about them often, but you dont love them. You could though, you know you could."
