PROMPT: "I've been in love with you since you first moved in and I finally built up the courage to knock on your door but when you answered you had just woken up and didn't have a shirt on so I ran away"
Eomer's doesn't believe in love at first sight.
It's not that he doesn't believe in love at all, but not that instant 'oh-it's-you' nonsense. He can scarcely deny it, after all, considering that he lives amongst a veritable herd of happy couples-Eowyn and Faramir, Aragorn and Arwen, Eothain and his wife, Legolas and Gimli, Merry and Pippin and their respective girlfriends-but they'd all come together in the normal fashion. Knowing each other first. The awkward first date, meeting the family...you know. Things sane people do before jumping into a relationship.
"I'd known Wilfled for a week before I knew she was it for me," Eothain reminds him, arm slung around his smiling wife's shoulders. "Love isn't logic, Eomer."
"It should be," he grumbles. "How on earth can you just-look at someone, and decide they're it? What if they're a serial killer? Or Dunland United fan?"
"You're just a cynic," Eowyn says, poking him between his ribs with the unerring accuracy she's honed over twenty four years of being his annoying little sister. "One day some girl is going to knock you on your ass, and I'm going to have the immense pleasure of saying 'I told you so'."
"Don't hold your breath," he says.
A month later, he's coming back from work, more than a little irritable and ready to kick someone's ass-hopefully Legolas's-in pool, only to nearly run smack into a woman laden down with what looks like to be an entire apartment's-worth of boxes.
"Helle, woman!" He cries. "Haven't you heard of making more than one trip?"
He can just make out a pair of dark brown eyes peeking out from over the top of a box. Her voice is muffled when she answers, saying, "I have, actually. But I left my keys upstairs and I can't reopen the lobby door otherwise…"
Feeling like an ass, he holds out his arms. "Here. Give me a load. No sense in you breaking your neck before you've moved in."
She holds tight to her own boxes, but waves him towards the slightly smaller pile that's currently holding the door open. Eomer gathers what he can-Bema, some of these boxes are heavy-and follows her slightly hesitant steps up the stairs.
The mystery woman lives on the floor below him, in what used to be Eothain's apartment before he married Wilfled. She tells him where to set his boxes before taking a few steps towards the kitchen and abruptly stopping.
"I know I shouldn't ask you for another favor," she says, still only her eyes visible and voice muffled, "but would you mind taking this box off of the top? I think it's my dishes."
Rolling his eyes, he ambles over, lifting the box with ease.
Without the box in the way, her face comes into view. Brown eyes crinkled in amusement, a sheepish grin curling the corners of a very pink mouth, a smattering of freckles across flushed cheeks that are framed by loose waves of dark brown, very soft looking hair.
Shit.
"Thanks," she says, in a voice that's every bit as lovely as she is, "I know I shouldn't hurry, but the Gondor-Umbar game is on later, and I want to get my TV unpacked by then-"
Oh, Bema. Eowyn was going to be merciless.
Alright so yes, Lothiriel-Faramir's cousin Lothiriel, because of course the world is that fucking small-is gorgeous, and sweet, and a football fan to boot, but that doesn't mean he's in love with her.
Eomer thinks he's told himself that at least three times a day, every day, since he'd helped her move into her apartment. It doesn't help that she insists on cooking him dinner as a thank you, or that she has an uncanny ability of sensing when he's had a shitty day at work, often turning up with an "extra six-pack she just happened to have lying around" or leaving a plate of obscenely good cookies outside his door after a late shift.
She goes out of her way to talk to him in the lobby, grinning up at him as he grumbles about Rohan's latest match, Aragorn's most recent match-making attempts, Merry and Pippin's ill-fated attempts to run their food truck efficiently.
"For Bema's sake, Eomer," Eothain groans, as Eowyn grins, sharklike, from over his shoulder, "you fancy her, and she clearly fancies you. Ask her out!"
But he's seen Lothiriel with the rest of them, too. She's every bit as affectionate, every bit as kind, with all of their mutual friends as she is with him. She doesn't flinch away from Eowyn's fouler moods, knows when to intervene with some of Pippin's more inane antics, is permitted the high honor of telling Boromir when he's being too "Denethor-ish" for his own good without getting her head bitten off.
He has no doubt she's fond of him, but Lothiriel is fond of everyone.
He knows it's bad when they're all crowded into Lothiriel's apartment, watching the highly anticipated Gondor-Rohan game. He's been a fan of the team since he was old enough to walk, and winning this game would give him bragging rights over Faramir and Aragorn for a year.
And all he wants to look at is her.
"Oi, Eomer," cries Pippin, "quit making moon-eyes and-"
Mercifully, someone-Eomer suspects the too-innocent looking Legolas-drives his elbow into Pippin's stomach before he can finish.
"You're hopeless, big brother," Eowyn murmurs, low enough just for him to hear. "Please, take pity on yourself and ask her on a date."
"You just want to be able to say 'I told you so'," Eomer retorts.
Eowyn wrinkles her nose. "Well," she says, "that's not the only reason-"
She shrieks when he pinches her, swatting him back in retaliation, but she doesn't bring it up again. That night, anyways.
Two days later, he's woken by loud knocks on his door. The culprits are revealed to be a grinning Aragorn, Gimli, and Eothain, with a much more sedate Legolas lingering behind them.
"What's this?" He asks, immediately on edge.
"An intervention," Eothain declares.
"Inter-no. No, Eothain, dammit-"
"Too late, lad," croons Gimli, stepping to his other side to better box him in, "you gave us no choice."
It takes all three of them to force him into one of his nicer shirts and he's fairly certain Gimli nearly succeeds in ripping out half of his hair with a brush until Legolas takes over, muttering something about 'presentation' that makes him even more uneasy than anything else they've forced him into.
"There," Aragorn declares thirty minutes later. "You'll do."
"Piss off," Eomer hisses, but when a grinning Gimli forces him in front of the mirror, he can't help but agree.
"Deep breaths, Eomer," Eothain drawls, "just remember: you only get one first chance to successfully ask out the love of your life without stuttering-"
Punching his best friend in the gut actually helps with the ridiculous churning sensation in his stomach.
It's still somewhat early, for a Saturday morning, but he can't handle sitting in his apartment anymore with the four meddlers from Hell grinning at him, so he finds himself standing outside of Lothiriel's door.
Alright, Eomundson, he thinks. Moment of truth.
His knock sounds terribly, awfully loud in the morning stillness of the hall. The only sound louder is the frantic thrum-thrum-thrum of his heart in his ears.
Oh, Bema, she wasn't home. Relief and disappointment swoop in his stomach; relief, because he feels like an utter idiot, dressed up in his nicest clothes, and disappointment, because if she wasn't home, she'd spent the night somewhere else, which pretty much renders him asking her out a moot point-
"Sorry, sorry, coming!" Comes Lothiriel's voice through the wood, and then the door's being wrenched open, and-
Eomer thinks his brain might make an audible sound of incomprehension, because she's here, yes, beautiful and bright as always, but she's also standing in front of him in a bra and shorts and nothing else and-
He thinks he says something, an unintelligible jumble of sorry-I'll-come-back-later-oh-Bema-is-that-lace before he high-tails it back up the stairs.
Legolas offers him an arched eyebrow when he hurls himself back into the apartment, chest heaving.
"Bema, man, what happened?" Eothain asks, clearly baffled. "There's no way she said no-"
All five of them jump at the sudden knock on the door.
"Eomer?" Lothiriel's voice is muffled in the same way it had been the first day he'd met her. "I know you're there, I would have seen you out front if you'd left!"
"Shit," he hisses. "I'm not here, I'm moving to bloody Harad and changing my name-"
Gimli starts for the door, but Eomer is bigger and quicker, and lunges for the shorter man. Eothain curses, joining in the fray as Aragorn and Legolas edge around them towards the door.
The sound of it opening stops their tussle. Cursing every one of them in his head, Eomer looks up from where he has Gimli in a headlock, and meets Lothiriel's eyes.
She bursts into laughter, slumping against the doorway as they hurry to untangle themselves.
"Oh, what I'd give for a camera," she gasps, "the looks on your faces-"
Gimli and Eothain chuckle, but Aragorn and Legolas have their eyes on Eomer, and both grimace at his expression.
"I think our work here is done," Aragorn says, bending to offer Eothain a hand up. "Shall we go, gentlemen?"
Gimli starts to complain, but a sharp look from his boyfriend silences him. They shuffle out, single-file, with only Eothain pausing to offer Eomer a thumbs up from behind Lothiriel's back.
Eomer pinches the bridge of his nose, willing this hellish day to be over.
He nearly jumps at the soft brush of a hand over his, pulling his away from his face. Lothiriel is peering up at him, concern mingled with mirth in her expression. "Now," she says, "would you care to explain what that was all about?"
She's put a shirt back on, thank Bema, so he feels slightly less likely to swallow his tongue. "If I say no, will you let it go?"
"No," she says, smiling softly. She still has his hand in hers and he stifles a gulp when she laces her fingers through his. "Because I have a guess, but I really, really don't want to be wrong."
Eomer blinks. Looks at her-really looks at her.
"Oh, helle," he says, "they're going to be insufferable."
Lothiriel's smile is radiant and she steps closer to wrap her arms around his waist. "You still should ask, you know. I've only been waiting for you to since you helped me unpack my apartment-"
He pinches her, lightly, grinning when she gives a squeak, and kisses her before he can talk himself out of it. It feels right and good and Bema, why did he wait?
"Are you free?" He asks, when they break apart to breathe.
"When?" She says, brushing her nose against his.
Tonight. Tomorrow. Any day. Everyday.
Her laugh makes him realize he's said that out loud, and he wants to sink into the floor until she kisses him again and says, "Yes. To all, actually."
("I told you so," says Eowyn, a week later.
Eomer can't bring himself to mind.)