Chapter Text
With a shove, Fili got the last clean shelf slotted into the fridge. A lone can of pickles sat in the door and he considered sweeping it into the trash.
“Seriously, Fi,” Kili leaned into the doorframe. “It’s go time. You’re killing me with this.”
“The Great Stink of ‘74 is gone, but not forgotten,” Fili braced himself on the door and pushed up.
“I refuse to say I’m sorry again, let it go,” Kili rattled Marigold’s keys. “We’re going now.”
“Did you-”
“Everything is in Marigold except you and me. I even packed your leg. So let’s go.”
“Fine,” Fili reached for his cane and did a neat pivot out of the kitchen, brushing up against Kili as he went. He caught brine, a rumor of an early morning trip to the ocean clinging to Kili’s skin. “I would’ve gone with you.”
“You were sleeping,” Kili shrugged it away, turning away. “C’mon.”
Marigold wasn’t what she had been, the old girl had lost her flamboyant paint job and gained a more sedate powder blue. Kili spent more time repairing her than she did on the road.
“You think she’ll last the trip?” Fili touched the passenger door, ran his fingers over where her racing stripe had once gleamed.
“I told you she would,” Kili bit out with more venom than Fili was prepared for. “Just...she will. She’ll make it.”
Fili frowned at him, but Kili had already turned away, making his way around to the driver’s side. From inside, Bonnie barked and leapt to swipe a wet nose mark across his window.
“Everyone’s rushing me today,” Fili grumbled to himself. Once inside the van, Bonnie climbed into his lap and curled herself up for a nap. Her muzzle had gone grey and her step was no longer so springy, but otherwise she was still his scrappy pup. He rested his hand over her chest, content to feel her heart fluttering under his palm.
“Got your route?” Kili fished out a pair of sunglasses and shoved them on before Fili could catch his eye.
“Yeah, you sure you don’t want to pick a stop?”
“No,” the engine started, reluctantly at first then purring to life. “There’s nothing I want to see.”
Considering that Kili had pushed for the trip in the first place, Fili wasn’t sure what to make of that. He pulled his map from the glove box. It was crisply new, a route marked with the soft tip of a pencil ready to be wiped away at a moment’s notice.
“We can still get plane tickets,” Fili offered.
“This way...” Kili started, but didn’t finish.
“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”
Kili put his foot on the gas without a word. They peeled away from the curb, away from their carefully built life and back down the road. With frown, Kili reached out a snapped on the radio, filling the tense air with David Bowie and the morning DJ’s rambling advertisements. Fili fought the urge to look back as they left San Francisco behind.
They had traveled since their big trip all those years ago, long weekends spent travelling the California coastline or venturing into Mexico. Overnighters to see Tauriel were regular events, marked with favorite restaurants and campsites along the way. Kili yearned for those outings, full of nervous joy in the days running up to their departure and all wide grins behind the wheel.
Although, this was the first time they were going back to Wyoming. Fili set his foot up on the dash, steadying Bonnie as she shifted over his thighs with a grumble. It had been at the back of Fili’s throat to ask for it for years. A lingering desire to return to the home that had taken them in with such ease, but there was always something stopping him. Some other thing to preoccupy them, somewhere else to go and some new memory to make.
He’d never stopped writing to Eowyn. Their letters were long and rambling, more diary entries than dialogue. Often Faramir and lately, Boromir, would trail notes in the margins or bundle in sheet music. From Aragorn there was nothing, but an oily smudge on some of the papers, places where he might’ve read through them before putting the letter into the box. They were hardy, sustaining things and after he read them, Fili felt as though he’d tucked into one of Faramir’s stews.
Idly, Fili took out a coin and practiced dancing it over his knuckles. He wanted a cigarette so bad he could half-taste the nicotine, but Kili had the pack and damned if he was going to ask for it.
Bowie gave way to the BeeGees and Kili’s hands were so tight on the wheel that his knuckles were blanched white.
Fili could feel the warning pangs of a phantom foot cramp, the tension worming into his hindbrain. The coin shivered and fell into his palm. He leaned forward and snapped off the radio, worry intensifying when Kili didn’t seem to notice the abrupt silence.
“If you’re going to San Francisco,” Fili sang softly, “be sure to wear some flowers in your hair. If you’re going to San Francisco, you’re going to meet some gentle people there.”
Bonnie snuffled and rolled into his stomach.
“For those who come to San Francisco, summertime will be a love-in there,” Kili sang back, his voice a pale shadow. “In the streets of San Francisco, gentle people with flowers in their hair.”
“All across the nation, such a strange vibration,” they went on together, harmony between Fili’s baritone and Kili’s tenor, “People in motion, there's a whole generation with a new explanation people in motion, people in motion...”
Kili broke off, a burr choking him into silence, so Fili finished it for him.
“For those who come to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair,” Fili reached across the divide, rested his hand on Kili’s thigh. “If you come to San Francisco, summertime will be a loving day.”
One hand slid from the steering wheel to lay over Fili’s knuckles.
“Flowers,” Kili choked out. “Something else with flowers, please.”
So Fili sang the folk songs that Kili never listened to on the radio. The songs that ran through them both now like veins of gold in a mine. He sang about lemon trees and soldiers come and gone. He sang about man’s shortcomings and civil rights. He sang about bells and hammers and shining lights. Eventually, Fili turned his palm upward and their fingers laced tight together.
When he couldn’t think of another, he let the last clean note stutter into silence.
“You going to tell me what this is all about?” Fili dared to ask.
“Give me a day,” Kili squeezed hard then released his hand altogether, shifting so the long curtain of his hair obscured his mouth. Surreptitiously, Fili wiped away their conjoined sweat on his shirt. “I just...I don’t think I can say it out loud yet.”
Gut punched, Fili tore his gaze away from Kili’s shielded face to the view scrolling past the window. He counted cars and tried not to imagine the worst. Surely this wasn’t the way it ended? Not with the two of them exactly where they should be, their baggage long ago squared away and their fierce edges sanded down.
“Are you hungry?” Kili asked, some liquid measure of time later.
“No,” Fili closed his eyes against Kili, against the growing ache in a foot no hand could rub and against the blazing sun that pierced through the windshield.
He dozed off. If nothing else, Vietnam had taught him how to summon sleep and wrap himself in the break of unconsciousness. The real world didn’t entirely fade away, he couldn’t help, but be aware of Marigold’s clicking engine and the return of the radio. At one point, Kili tugged the map from his fingers, doubtless preferring to navigate with paper folded over the steering wheel then dealing with whatever new knot had tied itself between them.
When Marigold rumbled to a stop, Fili reluctantly pried open gummy eyes. Bonnie was already prancing, pawing at the door until he swung it wide enough for her to wiggle out. He followed her more slowly, head muzzy.
“Here,” Kili was kneeling down beside the van, holding Fili’s prothstetic.
“Hurts,” Fili muttered, cupping a hand around Kili’s shoulder.
“Sorry,” Kili didn’t look up like he normally would, but he was fast with the straps now and Fili didn’t mind cedeing him the task once and a while. “What’s up with this lake anyway?”
It was a nice enough lake, large and placid. Bonnie gleefully peed on a rock before charging back to them.
“It’s Donner Lake,” Fili explained. “I thought you’d-”
“Donner Lake?” Kili stood up in a flash, new appreciation in his voice. “I didn’t realize it was so close.”
“Morbid,” Fili teased, gently, gently.
“Yeah,” Kili didn’t tease back, only walked closer to the shore. “Guess so.”
Fili took his time heading down to the shore, heading the ache and his sleep clogged head. By the time he reached the water, Kili had discarded his shoes, rolled up his pant legs and waded into the water.
“Cold?” Fili asked mildly.
“Not really,” Kili tucked his hands in his pockets. “Can you imagine it? How desperate they must’ve been?”
“I prefer not to.”
“To be reduced down to that,” Kili tilted his face up to the sun, rays catching on the first hints of grey scattered in his dark mop. He was only thirty-four, but Fili could see the marks of age staining his brother’s eyes and lips, drawing away incrementally the vitality that he so loved. “To only the need to survive...”
“It’s not as glamorous as it sounds.”
“It’s still living though. It’s still...something.”
“You think? When you have to live with what you’ve done afterwards?”
“What did you do?”
Fili wrapped his arms around himself, and stared out over the water.
“I came home to you, asshole.”
Bonnie deposited a seriously moldy tennis ball at Fili’s foot. When he tossed it into the lake, she gave him an exasperated look and mournful bark, but it was worth it to see the water splash up and catch Kili unaware.
“We’re a half hour of Reno,” Kili mumbled as he slogged back towards shore. “Mind if we stop for the night?”
“But we were having so much fun,” Fili said flatly.
“Figured you’d be excited. Get to fleece some shitheads at poker.”
“What the fuck? Do you want to fight? I mean if you really want to have it out, let’s go, but you better give me a damn good reason first!”
“I don’t!” Kili threw up his hands. “I’m sorry...really. Just...let’s go, okay? I don’t want to be here anymore. It’s giving me the creeps.”
“Fine,” Fili gritted out. Hackles raised, he was spoiling for a good fight now. No one got under his skin like Kili, could make him so crazy so quickly. Had he just been thinking about smoothed edges? They still caught each other all over like thorns sometimes, provoking blood and lust hot in their stomachs.
by the time they reached the first likely looking hotel in Reno, Fili was fit to burst. As soon as reasonably possible, he stuck his hand into Kili’s tight pants pocket and fished out the pack of cigerettes.
“Hey!” Kili jumped back, nervous eyes scanning the parking lot for onlookers.
“Go get us a room, if you care so much about being seen,” Fili snapped. Unfairly, but fuck it. He took a drag and half-collapsed against the van in relief. It never seemed like a problem to let Kili hold onto them until it was and then he forgot all over again, preferring the convenience of not having to remember to buy more.
“Fine,” Kili stormed off.
“Got a light?” Someone asked and Fili took his eyes off Kili’s retreating back to find a pair of scrawny teenagers looking expectantly at him.
“Your mom know you’re smoking?”
“Bought me my first pack,” the taller one said with a grin.
“What the fuck ever, here.” Fili flipped them his back up matchbook. “Take it. Try not to burn down the hotel.”
“Thanks! HEY, FRODO!” The smaller one ran off, carrying the matchbook. “Come have a light!”
“Shut up, Pip!” Two more teenagers, sitting on a roof a car flailed uselessly at him.
The four of them gathered in a tight circle, then pulled away with four lit cigarettes and the same haunted expression. Fili frowned.
“We’re in room 38,” Kili announced, pulled up short. “What?”
“Look,” Fili indicated the group with his chin. “That sit right with you?”
Kili looked. Looked again.
“Something’s wrong.”
“What do you think?”
“I’ve got it.”
Fili waited, watching Kili approach with a low key greeting. The kids bunch up, wary-eyed and and their hands shoved too deep in their pockets. With that easy manner that had cajoled Fili back from the brink more times than he cared to count, Kili turned the stiff scared bodies into relaxed curves. Eventually, he turned back to Fili and the boys trailed after him like ducklings.
“Think we got enough to front for a second room?” Kili asked. His sunglasses had been tucked away and now Fili could see eyes red rimmed with weeping.
“Of course,” Fili said, too soft, betraying himself as the anger seeped away.
“Okay,” Kili offered a faint smile. “They need some help getting to D.C.. Figured...well. Get ‘em as far as Wyoming then figure out the rest. Their car works alright, but there’s not enough for much else.”
“I brought some cash for emergencies. Think this counts.”
United in purpose, they settled the boys into the room next to theirs and ordered them three large pizzas which were promptly devoured. Their story came out in snatches, the escape from their small town and the discovery of a world a little bigger than they bargained for. One accidental drug smuggling incident later and they were running across the country to get state’s evidence back where it belonged. It was all a little fantastical and, Fili suspected, half-made up at least. Still, they were scared kids with no money.
“Maybe Faramir still has some contacts,” Kili mused when they finally got into their own room and closed the door firmly behind them.
“They’ll probably be gone in the morning. Least they got a decent meal and a roof for one night.”
“Cynical, Fi.”
“Reality is cynical then.”
Kili took a shower to wash off the lake muck while Fili watched a sitcom rerun. The shower ran for a long time and when Kili finally emerged, his eyes were redder than before.
“Can we sleep?” He asked, little boy weary.
Fili opened his arms wide and let Kili settle into him. He kissed the crown of his head, ran his hand down the beloved spine, and listened to the clamor of voices next store smooth into silence.