Work Text:
Tauriel is helping close up the office when her phone chirps to announce a new text.
"Booty call," Bilbo smirks up at her.
"Hardly." Though he is right about the text being from Legolas. Tauriel's social life has always been limited and predictable: stagnant might be the unkind description. "His shift is over and he wants me to meet him at the fairgrounds."
"Go ahead."
Tauriel isn't sure that she wants to go, truth be told. The state fair always brings a flood of extra patients into the office. It's been a long day, and the workload is only going to get worse as the week drags on. "Maybe after I-"
"Get, you," Bilbo chides, fingers maintaining their assault on his keyboard. His ability to type flawlessly while tracking multiple conversations borders on the supernatural. "I'm almost done filing this batch of claims, and it'll take me fifteen minutes to restock the exam rooms. I'll be out the door right behind you."
"Are you sure?"
"Positive." When Bilbo senses her wavering, he adds, "You can buy me lunch tomorrow."
Tauriel gets along well with Bilbo -- no one lasts long at Dr Greenleaf's office who doesn't -- but she's learned by now to look beneath his genial nature and generosity for ulterior motives. He's a habitual meddler, even if it's just to apply an encouraging nudge here and there. She could stand to get out for a bit and unwind. It's just that a crowded, noisy fair wouldn't have been her first choice.
"You're on," she decides, gathering her purse to fish out her keys.
"Have fun, sugar plum -- but don't do anything I wouldn't!"
"Not possible. You're incorrigible."
Pushing his tortoiseshell glasses up from where they've slid down his nose, Bilbo somehow manages not to miss a keystroke. "Damned right."
~~~~~
Dale is one of those places they refer to as "close-knit", which in Tauriel's case means that her boss's dad was the doctor who delivered her mom, who babysat the office manager when he was a kid. She's been back in town for a little under a year, but she remembers what a big deal the fair always was, and it's only grown since then. Dale's population pretty much doubled overnight: motels are booked solid for miles around, there's lines in the stores and waits at the restaurants, and she gets stuck in an actual traffic jam heading home to change out of her scrubs.
Back roads get her to the fairgrounds without much hassle, and the day crowd has cleared out enough that she nabs a decent parking space. Legolas is waiting outside the east gate with the promised ticket, which is more like a guest pass and admittedly a perk for volunteering at the first aid station.
"Been waiting long?" she asks as they shuffle through the turnstile.
"Not really." He's taken the time to swap out his bright red staff tee for a polo shirt. "Hungry?"
"Not really. We had a rush through lunch and I ended up eating late."
Legolas nods. "Anything interesting?"
As Bilbo tells it, Legolas has always been a familiar face around his dad's office, but this summer he's taken a more active interest in day-to-day operations. Bilbo swears it's because Tauriel is working there, while Tauriel thinks it's because he's settled into med school, getting good grades. He's still got a couple years to graduation, never mind his residency, but there's already talk of him joining the practice as a junior partner.
(She tries not to think about the part where dating a doctor is even more inadvisable than dating the doctor's son.)
"The usual sprains and abrasions," she answers. Anything worse gets sent to the ER, as Legolas knows. "You?"
"That plus two broken arms, eight instances of heat exhaustion, and a suspected outbreak of food poisoning." He musters a faint smile. "Avoid the giant turkey legs."
"I... was planning to."
They've known other since high school. Or rather, she could have picked him out of a crowd, and he claims he remembers her. They were in different classes, never really spoke. She doesn't think they would have had much in common back then. At times like this she's reminded that, outside of work and medicine, they still don't.
She has no idea what he expects out of the evening: if he'll be content to talk over cotton candy, or wander through the exhibits, or if he'll want to ride everything that goes fast and upside down and looks like it's held together with duct tape and giant bobby pins. Heaven forbid he insist on winning her one of those monstrous stuffed animals. He's not the type to settle for the little consolation prize.
"So..." Legolas angles for an information kiosk to take a map, which he only pretends to read before trying to hand it to Tauriel, but she's already snagged one of her own. "Ah. Anything catch your fancy?"
The exhibit halls are closing soon, and somehow Tauriel thinks Legolas wouldn't enjoy roaming the livestock barns. She isn't in the mood to be bombarded by sales pitches, so strike the area where the commercial sponsors have their booths. What's left? Antique farm machinery? Sheep dog demonstration? The midway?
"What the hell, old tractors," Tauriel says, and gets her first inkling that something's wrong when Legolas accepts that with flicker of relief.
He follows her lead even though he's the one who volunteers here every year and could probably navigate the place blindfolded. It soon becomes clear that he's distracted, if not bored. He barely looks at the equipment, doesn't read any of the placards, and doesn't notice when Tauriel turns them back down a row they've already visited.
"What?" she finally snaps.
"Hm?" Legolas has the grace to look guilty, or maybe it's that he's been stewing in guilt and she's just startled him enough to make his mask slip. "Sorry, are you ready to move on? Where next?"
"What's going on?"
He shifts a step away from her as if wary, and Tauriel realizes he hasn't touched her once this evening. Not even a peck on the cheek in greeting. "I-" They've always been honest with each other, and the apologetic look he gives her says he's not going to stop, even if he might want to. "Are you sure you want to do this now? Here?"
As John Deere is her witness, she does. She thinks she knows what's coming. Maybe it's cruel to make him do it in public, but the evening's already shot. "No point in putting it off. It's not like the ambiance has any bearing on what you need to say."
Legolas wets his lips and tucks a stray piece of flaxen hair behind his ear. "I know we said we'd try to keep this going." He waves a hand between them, so elegant and languid, like his father. (Hands like that should belong to a surgeon, she's always thought. They're wasted in family medicine.) "It's just... I've been thinking. The next year is going to be rough. I'll be doing clinicals... I'll be lucky to scrape together enough sleep, let alone time for a relationship."
She doesn't remind him that he was the one who'd wanted to try the distance thing. She'd agreed because Legolas is all too attractive and highly intelligent and also by some goddamned miracle a decent person. He's become her friend. What they have- had was comfortable and uncomplicated.
His eyes plead for a reaction, and when she has none to give he stumbles on. "It wouldn't be fair to keep you hanging like that. You should be free to-"
"Pursue other options?" Tauriel finishes. If her voice comes out leaden, that's better than cold. The worst part is, she's not even surprised, not really.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to do it like this."
No, that's the worst part. He is genuinely sorry, enough so that she thinks they'll be able to remain friends. It would sound crass if either of them were to say it aloud, but the hope stretches between them all the same.
"Do you still want to-" Whatever he sees on her face makes him cut that thought short. "Would you like me to drive you home?"
"I'll be fine," Tauriel says. "Besides, you'd have to come back for your car."
"I bet Bilbo would rescue me if I asked nicely enough."
"He would, but do you really want to listen to him bitch the whole time about the old man not driving?" It's one of Dr Greenleaf's many idiosyncrasies. He bikes or walks to work, is fine letting others chauffeur him around, but refuses to get behind the wheel himself.
Legolas winces. "Not particularly. At least let me walk you out to the lot. It'll only take me a minute to swing by the aid station and grab my things."
"I'd prefer to be alone right now," Tauriel tells him, then softens it by stepping in and raising on her toes. She has to consciously turn her aim away from his mouth, landing a quick buss on his cheek. It's the way she might kiss a brother, if she had one, and she's relieved when it doesn't feel ridiculously awkward. "I might stop at the store first, but I'll text you to let you know I got home safe."
"Thanks." He nods to himself a few times, and he isn't looking at Tauriel anymore, merely near her, like he thinks she deserves to be the one to walk away but doesn't want to watch her go.
She'll see him again, at least one more time before he heads back to school, but she knows instinctively that this is the memory that'll stick: bright green tractors, long shadows cast by the sinking sun, pale blue eyes shutting her out.
She performs an about-face and takes the first step.
~~~~~
Tauriel does want to be alone, but she finds that she doesn't want solitude, so she heads for the busiest part of the fair to lose herself in the crowd. The smell of grease and sugar and generator exhaust permeates the air, oddly enough making her stomach stir in interest. She browses the food vendors, deciding which horrible deep fried sacrilege-on-a-stick to buy before she leaves. Bilbo would tell her that, having just come through a breakup with minimal visible damage, she deserves it.
Wandering onto the midway is an assault of another kind. It's been years since she's been to a carnival of any kind and she's forgotten how loud they can be. She pushes through a section of the more intense rides, the kind with seizure-inducing light displays synchronized to thirty year old hair metal anthems cranked up to eleven. The music competes with the clack and groan of heavy machinery and the shrieks of the passengers.
The midway is laid out in a giant semicircle. She's abandoned her map, but if she remembers correctly, following it will spit her out again near the exhibit halls. She halts once she's left the worst of the music and noise behind, shuts her eyes and counts through a few deep breaths while the crowd parts and flows around her. Her pace is much slower when she begins moving again.
She's going to miss Legolas, but she's grateful things fell out the way they did. She promised to give herself at least a year back in Dale to figure out if she could begin to put down roots of her own, or if she needs to sever the last of her ties, sell her grandmother's old house and get the fuck out. Ten months in, she knows two things: one, the decision is going to require more time; and two, she's comfortable at Dr Greenleaf's office despite being overqualified for most of the work he has her do. (She was in the nurse corps for chrissakes.) He and Bilbo and Bard comprise a strange little surrogate family, whether they know it or not, and it'd be nice to include Legolas some day. So long as the breakup remains polite and nobody feels compelled to take sides, nothing else has to change.
There's a third thing Tauriel knows, but it's not a new discovery, more like a fear she's finally acknowledged. She doesn't like comfortable, never wants it to last long enough to find out what happens when it stops being enough.
She thought she was following the outside arc of the midway, but her lapse in attention fetches Tauriel up in a dead end. It's a little space tucked away behind the fun house, quieter and nearly deserted, the music reminiscent of something you'd hear tinkling from an ice cream truck. She's wandered into kiddie land.
It's late for the very young crowd, and most of the rides stand chained off, motionless and dark. The remaining operators have turned one ride into their personal dining table, passing around takeout cartons as they sit crammed in the tiny cars made of metallic glitter fiberglass. They fervently ignore Tauriel in the hope she'll return the favor.
There's one exception. The Woodland Express sits at the mouth of the cul-de-sac. Its operator is pacing there, trying to lure customers away from the fun house with the most enthusiastic huckster act Tauriel's seen on the entire midway, and he doesn't even have a wall of ugly stuffed animals to unload.
What he does have is the faintest touch of a brogue to his voice (if it's not part of the act). A sinuous geometric tattoo peeks out beneath his sleeve when he waves at potential targets. The faded tee shirt boasts a brand logo she doesn't recognize, and it fits him like he's had it since high school. She puts him in his early twenties, pegging ages something she's good at thanks to her job. The bit of dark stubble on his face looks lazy and casual rather than artful.
Warm brown eyes catch her staring. He turns her direction, smile redoubled. "Ah! What's your pleasure, miss?"
The urge to correct him is reflexive, despite that she's longer an officer and he's a civilian.
Blissfully unaware, he continues, "Let's see, there's Myrtle and Minty and that one's Aloysius," pointing to the ride's garishly painted ladybug and grasshopper and dragonfly in turn. "I, er, can't remember the last one so we'll call him Ralph," he says of the caterpillar. "Or maybe it's a girl -- I'm not about to check. Ralphina?"
A snort escapes Tauriel.
"Quite right, that's too silly. Either way, just Ralph."
She's the wrong age and the wrong size and in the wrong mood entirely to even consider riding in a google-eyed lime green caterpillar (tentatively) named Ralph. The operator looks so hopeful though, like it would make his entire month if she would agree. All she has to do is stop resisting those eyes and say one little word. Is that too much to ask?
Christ on bicycle the guy is good. Engaging him is a losing proposition. The situation calls for a silent, strategic withdrawal.
"No, no. Wait, please!" He pushes his hands toward Tauriel as if he's trying to stall her with the force and scrambles to the ride's control booth.
Some potent and unfortunate curiosity makes her blow her chance at escape, trailing him at a safe distance instead. He's found a piece of paper and a magic marker and he's scribbling furiously. When he's finished he holds the sign up for her and waggles his eyebrows.
Tauriel reads aloud, "It's been 4 day since our last vomit-related incident." She's disgusted enough to smile.
"That's a terrible lie," he confides. "I've no idea how long it's been. I'm watching the Woodland Express today for a friend."
She's standing at the ride's safety fence before she before she grasps what's happening.
Aware that his mark is not won over just yet, the operator coaxes, "Come on, you look like you could use some cheering up. And by cheering up I mean going in sedate circles with a gentle breeze in your face." He places one hand across his chest with absolute sincerity. "I know everything there is to know about going in circles. And while you might achieve a similar effect on the Rocking Racers over there, I wouldn't really recommend it."
"Why not?" Tauriel has to ask.
"It's haunted," the operator mock-whispers. "Shocking tragedy it was. Wait, no, that's on the list of things I'm not allowed to say, even when there are no small children present."
She could almost believe in the existence of such a list.
"It smells funny," he amends. "No funny smells aboard the Woodland Express. So, what do you say? Grasshopper? You strike me as a grasshopper type."
"Dragonfly."
"I meant dragonfly."
Just like that Tauriel is being let through the gate and ushered up to Aloysius. She's usually good at gauging people's heights, too, but up close the guy is shorter than she realized. She's got three or four inches on him, same as she does on Bilbo. What threw her was the operator's build. Again, he doesn't look it from a distance, but he's compact and solid, the kind of muscle that comes from constant use.
By the appearance of the other ride operators, the job can't be all that physically demanding.
The guy holds out his hand for Tauriel to step onto the platform, as if he was a coachman helping her into a carriage. She certainly needs no assistance yet accepts it anyway, for reasons she refuses to examine.
The dragonfly's seat is a tight fit, but if she twists sideways she has enough legroom that her knees don't feel like they're bent up to her chin.
"Raise your arms, please."
When the guy leans to latch the safety bar across her lap, Tauriel catches a whiff of fake strawberries. His shampoo? His hair is undercut, the long top part bound back in a messy knot.
"Ooh, the safety spiel. This is my favorite part. Hello and welcome to the Woodland Express! In the interest of safety, we ask that keep your hands and feet inside your critter at all times," he recites, walking around the ride to check the other cars. "Please remain seated while your critter is in motion, and do not attempt to exit your critter until it has come to a full and complete stop." His circuit ends near the control booth. Grinning, he gives Tauriel a thumbs-up and waits for her to roll her eyes and return the gesture before starting the ride.
The machinery grinds to life, lifting Tauriel's dragonfly with a gentle lurch. She closes her eyes after she drifts past the control booth the first time, absorbing the sensation of the promised breeze rustling her hair. The ride doesn't just go in circles. There's a rocking component to the motion that reminds her of a hammock, or a canoe turned broadside into mild waves.
It could be relaxing if it wasn't over too soon. Tauriel only opens her eyes when she hears the operator unlatching the safety bar.
"Sorry. It's on a timer, else I would have let it run longer." He's pointedly not looking at her when he offers, "You're welcome to go again."
She can only nod.
"I'll have to let you off and back on. It's against the rules for passengers to ride through."
His hand is there once more for Tauriel to take stepping down, and it doesn't dip in the slightest when she leans a good bit of her weight onto it. She doubts he even noticed.
"I think I will try the grasshopper this time."
"Minty, excellent choice."
The second trip she keeps her eyes open, seeking him out every time she swings by the control booth, but their gazes never meet. He's too busy staring past the end of the cul-de-sac, through the tall chain link fence that borders the midway to the staging area beyond. It's as if he's allowing her privacy to sort out whatever he imagines is going on in her head -- not that it's any of his business, and how dare he notice that she's off-kilter in the first place.
Irritated is good. Tauriel will take irritated over introspective and nostalgic any day.
When the ride halts she gropes for the latch and lets herself out.
"Now you're doing my job for me. That's hardly fair." The operator crosses his arms at her and leans against Ralph the caterpillar, well out of her path. The insinuation is clear: she can find her own way out of the safety fence.
On a hunch, Tauriel heads for the gate with the large exit sign.
She does feel a little better, she realizes. It merely fuels her irritation, which in the short-term can only improve her mood. She's not about to thank the operator and spoil her own illusion, but she wants to give him something, some acknowledgement for his inadvertent good deed. A smirk should do it, thrown back over her shoulder as she reaches the exit, just to highlight the ease with which she found it on her own.
The looking back over her shoulder bit goes as planned, but she doesn't get her smirk off in time.
"You know," the operator calls, "there's a special award we give only to the most dedicated and intrepid riders who manage to tame all four Woodland Express critters." He pats the caterpillar's rump. "You're halfway there. It'd be a shame to quit now."
Damn it all to hell.
"Fine. Let's do this."
Tauriel picks Ralph for her third go because she knows a challenge when it slaps a giant caterpillar on the ass. She won't back down. Every time she spins past by the control booth she makes sure to glare at the operator, which startles him at first, but by the third go-round she's glaring and not blinking and he's doing the same and how in the fuck did she get into this bizarre staring contest with Shorty the Wonder Carny? She's even at a disadvantage thanks to that gentle breeze in her face, but she has a window of respite every loop when all he can see is the back of her head, and she uses it to blink furiously in preparation for the next pass.
He's cracking up when he comes to let her out. She permits him to do it properly, taking his hand and everything. She can be gracious because she's not the one wheezing and clutching her side and surely that's proof of her victory.
"Last one. What's her name again?"
"Myrtle," he supplies.
Tauriel repeats, "Myrtle." She pokes the ladybug in the eye and climbs aboard.
It's a shame she doesn't have one of those little consolation prize stuffed animals. Just once, she'd like to throw something at the guy as she swings past the booth. (Really, what would he do, kick her off the ride?) Nothing that would hurt, mind, or damage the equipment. There's a pack of tic-tacs sitting in the bottom of her purse at home that would have been perfect.
The ride starts moving again and her pulse picks up the tiniest bit as she wonders if he might try something this time. If the Woodland Express has a lost and found, it's bound to be full of hideous stuffed animals. The guy works on the midway; his aim is probably vicious.
She is absolutely not prepared to watch him leave the booth, walk toward the moving ride, then in one burst of motion vault onto the critter in front of her ladybug. It happens to be Aloysius the dragonfly, whose wings form a flat-ish platform for the dumbass to lean out over as he faces backwards to talk to Tauriel.
"That has got to be against the rules."
"Terribly." He settles down on his elbows and puts his chin in his hands. "Unsafe as well. I'm a professional; don't try this at home."
"Professional insurance risk, maybe."
The guy favors Tauriel with an oddly soft, secret smile. "I am the king of going in circles. Well, the prince. A prince. Circle royalty at any rate. What I'm trying to say is that I'm not about to injure myself hopping on and off a slow ride like this." He pauses to consider something, then nods. "Yeah, my uncle would die of shame if I did."
Was he watching the Woodland Express for his uncle? No, he'd said friend. Still, the mention of relatives didn't fit with the carnivals of her juvenile fantasies, filled with orphans and runaways and loners who might not fit anywhere else but still managed to find something like family.
Damn it, she swore she wasn't doing nostalgia.
"Does the Prince of Circles have a name?"
His eyes widen slightly, and there's a telling hesitation before he responds. "It's Kili."
"Tauriel," she says, watching Kili's smile fade from near-manic to something more natural, if tinged with uncertainty. It seems she's found the trick to shutting him up, but without the stream of repartees the silence goes weird, fast. "So... read any good books lately?"
Shaking himself, he jumps back in. "Not a book, but this morning someone left one of those religious tracts on the ride. It went on and on about how we're sinners and going to hell and I suspect the drawings weren't meant to be as entertaining as they were." He holds the dramatic pause a tick too long. "That wasn't you, was it? Please tell me it wasn't you."
"It wasn't me," Tauriel says. "Do you find a lot of strange things left behind on rides?"
"Oh, definitely. Some of the good ones I've heard, um... dentures. An unopened jar of mayonnaise. A live baby chicken -- possibly an escapee from the poultry exhibit." He debates a second before adding, "Underwear is more common than you'd think."
"Yikes. I could have done without that knowledge."
"You asked."
"And now I'm sorry I did."
Kili pushes himself upright as a squealing sound accompanies the ride beginning to slow. He opens his mouth, then shuts it again on whatever he was going to say.
Tauriel sympathizes. She's all out of critters, and he's out of excuses to keep her in his presence. If they proceed as tradition dictates, he'll make a painful attempt to pick her up, and she'll decline in an equally awkward fashion. At best, he'll accept her answer without being a pushy dickbag, and she'll manage to let him down easy without explaining that there are extreme lapses of judgment and then there's fucking some guy she met on the midway not an hour after breaking up with her ex.
Even Bilbo would draw the line there.
Kili jumps off the dragonfly before the ride has fully stopped. He turns in place but otherwise doesn't move from where he nailed his landing; and there's just enough momentum left for Tauriel's ladybug to draw alongside him before halting.
It's possible Tauriel is the tiniest bit impressed. She doesn't dare admit it, pretends instead that she didn't even notice his stupid trick.
If he's disappointed he doesn't let it show. In fact, he's wearing an absent expression as he lets her out of the car, and there's no hand this time to help her down. Once she's on her feet, he takes one step backwards, then a second larger one. The distance de-emphasizes the difference in their heights.
Tauriel begins to wonder if she didn't misread the situation. Was he flirting at all or was it all part of his act? Why did she assume that he wasn't already seeing someone? (Carny or no, he wouldn't be lacking for offers with those pecs.) It could be he's just not interested; maybe she isn't his type.
Fuck. She hates it when she second-guesses what ought to be a basic social interaction to death. Worse, at some point in the future she's going to insist on dissecting the carcass to see if she can figure out where she went wrong.
Kili chews on his bottom lip, and it's distinctly not in the gathering-his-courage kind of way. He might be plotting his own escape.
"I guess this is my stop," Tauriel throws out a little desperately.
"Yeah. Unless you can think of a reason you'd want to go again? I mean, I can't," he backtracks at once. "You're probably dizzy by now, and listening to this hellish music for more than five minutes is enough to drive anyone bonkers."
The music thing explains a lot, she can't say. She wouldn't be able to strike the right balance between teasing and flirtation and insult. Instead she tries, "It's not that bad."
"I suppose not. There's always worse." Kili finds his smile. "It could be 'Cherry Pie' for the eleventy-billionth time."
"Oh god, they were playing that when I went past the ride that looks like an upside down lawn sprinkler."
"Ah, the Vominator."
"That reminds me, you might want to avoid the giant turkey legs for a while."
"I'll consider myself warned."
"Thanks," Tauriel says. "Not about- I mean, thank you." For convincing her to ride in a google-eyed lime green caterpillar named Ralph, and being funny, and nice, and not aggressively hitting on her (no matter the reason for his restraint).
Kili bows, actually bows to her, one arm across his stomach and the other making a flourish out to the side. He looks like he belongs on a stage. "It was my pleasure."
For the second time in one evening, Tauriel turns her back on a tableau that will stick in her memory and walks away.
She makes it as far as the line for the fun house.
"Tauriel, wait!" Kili was running, but he slows to jog once he's sure he caught her attention. "You forgot something."
Smooth, very smooth. She's only carrying keys, phone, and a small wallet, and she knows she left none of them behind. Whatever he intends to give her, the gesture itself charms her.
"Hold out your hand."
She does without hesitation, and he presses a large sticker to the back of it, his thumb smoothing circles over the vinyl to make sure it'll stay put.
"There, it's official."
"Woodland Express All-Star," she reads. It even has cartoony versions of all the critters, and- "I'll be damned. The caterpillar is named Ralph."
Kili winks at her, grinning like a loon. "If, you know, by some chance you were to find yourself back at the fair later this week and felt like taking the critters for another spin..."
"Will you be watching the ride all week?" Tauriel asks, because she can still feel the sweep of his thumb on her hand, and he's letting his eyes drink up the sight of her. She'll be kicking herself five minutes from now if she doesn't at least leave the possibility open.
"Ah. No. If I'm not here, ask my friend Bifur. He'll point you in the right direction."
"Okay," Tauriel says.
Kili repeats, "Okay." He drifts backwards, passably suave until he collides with the end of the fun house line. Then he's apologizing profusely for the toes he stepped on and Tauriel is only laughing a little; and when he finally does leave, he can't resist stealing one last glance at her over his shoulder.
She knows because she stood and watched him go.