Chapter Sixteen

Faramir wasn't at school the next day, but Eomer and Eowyn reported that he had gotten to their house late last night. When they had left, he was still curled up sleeping in Boromir's arms, who he hadn't let go of since he got there.

Kili was distracted the entire day, worrying that Faramir might be angry with them when he did get back. He wasn't going to regret what they did regardless, but he hoped he hadn't lost Faramir as a friend.

He'd understand if he was mad, though. Kili knew that he didn't like people knowing about what his first dad did to him. Even if Fili said it wasn't his fault, he still didn't like the looks he got from people once they knew. But then there were people like Fili and Dad and Pop, who all knew but didn't give him the looks. Those people were worth putting up with all the others.

He wanted to be one of those people for Faramir.

He was anxious the next day to get to school, hoping Faramir would be back.

Fili rolled his eyes at him as he tied his schools. "I swear, you're like an overgrown puppy," he said, standing up and grabbing his backpack.

Kili made a face at him but grabbed his hand as soon as he had his bag and dragged him out of the house and down the street. "Hurry up!" he urged. "I want to talk to Faramir before class."

The blond sighed but picked up his step anyway. Kili threw him a grateful look.

They got to school in record time, which only meant they had to wait around for the rest of their friends to arrive. Kili shifted his weight nervously, not turning his eyes away from the direction he knew Faramir would be coming from.

"He's not going to be mad, you know," Fili said suddenly, putting a calming hand on his shoulder.

"He might be," he argued, not looking at him.

Whatever Fili might have said was lost, though, as Faramir came into sight with Aragorn walking beside him. Kili gave a cry before running forward to meet them. Aragorn shot him a smile before walking ahead of the two younger students. Kili nodded at him gratefully before turning to Faramir with a sheepish look.

"You look a lot better," he said. And he did. Faramir didn't look as tired or tense or anything. He was still a little pale and looked too thin, but he didn't seem as… worn.

Faramir gave him a small smile. "I think things are going to be a lot better now."

Something inside of him relaxed at the words. "You're not… upset, are you? That we told our parents about your dad?" he asked still, needing to clear the air.

Faramir frowned. "I hadn't even thought about being upset," he admitted. "Everything's kinda happened pretty fast. I don't know how I feel about you all going to your parents without telling me, but I'm happy to be be back with Boromir and I think staying with Elrond and Gilraen is going to be okay."

"It's my fault we didn't tell you what we were going to do," Kili confessed. "Don't blame anyone else if you're gonna be mad about it. I convinced them it would be better."

He tilted his head in response. "That would be the only thing I could maybe be upset about, but why didn't you want to tell me what you planned?"

Kili bit his lips and looked down at his shoes. "I thought it'd make you act differently around your dad and he'd get suspicious. My first dad was always suspicious of me when I acted any different."

A look of understanding crossed Faramir's face and he abruptly pulled Kili into a hug. "We're both going to be okay," he said firmly, pulling away and giving Kili a serious look. He smiled at Kili before leading them both towards where the rest of their friends were gathered.

Kili couldn't help but shoot admiring glancing at Faramir throughout the day. The amount of strength in the other boy amazed him. When he had left his first family, he hadn't thought it was going to be okay. It had taken him a long time, and no small amount of help from Fili, to think that.

Faramir, though, seemed to be taking everything in stride. As the days went by, he became more like the Faramir Kili had come to know last year, except more, somehow. Kili didn't really understand how the other boy could bounce back so fast. How could he be so accepting of what happened already? How could he have already moved past it?

It had taken Kili years to put what his first dad did behind him, and he still wasn't really sure he had. How could Faramir do it so fast? Was there something wrong with Kili that made it so hard for him?

When he had voiced his concerns to Fili, his brother had shaken his head.

"I don't know if Faramir is actually past what his dad did to him," he had said thoughtfully. "But your situations are different. He's always had his brother there for him. Things were worse this summer because Boromir was gone, but now they're back together."

Kili had understood better after that. Faramir was acting like things were normal because, for him, things had gone back to normal because he was with his brother again.

Kili could definitely relate to that.

So things settled down after that. The upside of everything was that Fili and Kili's two groups of friends seamlessly merged together as the year progressed. Aragorn and Faramir became better friends simply by living together, and because they both shared lunch with Gimli and Legolas, the four of them grew closer. Tauriel and Eowyn were practically joined at the hip at times, with Eomer usually standing not too far off. Truthfully, it sometimes seemed as if his friends were better friends with Fili's friends than they were with him, but seeing as how he and Fili were together whenever they weren't in class, he really couldn't complain too much.

It came as a surprise, then, when Legolas invited him, Faramir, and Gimli over for a sleepover for his birthday.

"My father told me to only invite people in my class," he had explained with a shrug. "Besides, it's been a while since it was just us, right?"

Which is how he had ended up at the Greenleaf residence, sitting amid a pile of sleeping bags, munching pizza with the three of them plus Tauriel, who steadfastly refused to be excluded when Thranduil had tried to tell her that girls shouldn't attend boys' slumber parties.

"It's not a slumber party!" Legolas protested immediately, ears burning red. "Slumber parties are for girls!"

"It's a slumber party," Tauriel said with a roll of her eyes. "And boys can have them same as girls can. And it doesn't matter that they're all guys. They're all gay anyway!"

Kili was so blindsided by that that he didn't know how to react and just stared at Tauriel in confusion. He looked at the other boys to try and figure out what his reaction should be. Legolas face had gone completely pink and he wasn't looking anyone in the eye. Faramir looked nervous but defiant, and Gimli had the same easy-going look on his face as normally did.

They didn't seem to be denying it. How could all of his friends be gay without him knowing it? And why did they think he was? He hadn't really shown interest to anybody. Was it just because his dads were gay? Kili didn't think it worked like that…

Thranduil, though, seemed to accept it in stride and left them alone without further argument to Tauriel.

"I didn't know you were all gay," Kili commented as soon as they were alone. "Why didn't anyone tell me?"

"Nobody told anyone. Tauriel just has a big mouth," Legolas said, scowling at her.

"It's not like it matters," Faramir reasoned, looking a bit more confident now that it was out there and no one reacted badly.

"So you all knew that you all were gay?" he asked, still confused. "How?"

"I didn't know we all were," Faramir admitted. "Knowing makes me feel a little bit better though."

"I kinda had a feeling," Gimli said with a shrug.

"I'm not gay though," Kili stated uncertainly.

"Really?" Tauriel said, eyebrows raised in surprise.

"I-I don't think so?" he stammered out, a little worried at how surprised she was. Was he gay and didn't know it? Shouldn't he know? "How are you supposed to know?"

"What do you mean? You just know whether you like boys or girls!" she cried in exasperation.

"I don't like anybody like that…"

"Of course, you do," Legolas said, rolling his eyes. "Everyone likes someone like that."

"I don't?" he said, worried now. Was there something wrong with him?

"Really?" Tauriel said skeptically. "There's no one you'd like to, I don't know, hold hands with or kiss or something?"

Kili's mind flashed back to the kiss he shared with Fili almost two years ago but pushed that thought away. Fili was his brother. Tauriel meant something different.

He shook his head. "Who do you like then?" he challenged, trying to divert attention away from himself.

"Eowyn," she answered promptly. "And Faramir likes Eomer, and Gimli and Legolas like each other."

"Tauriel!" Legolas cried in outrage, face tinged pink as he tried to not look at Gimli. Kili didn't think he had anything to worry about, though, because Gimli was smiling at him and he was pretty sure that that would work out in Legolas's favor. Faramir's ears were flaming red, but he gave no other reaction to his crush being revealed so callously.

"But we were talking about you," she told Kili, ignoring Legolas's anger. "Surely there must be someone. Have you ever kissed anyone?"

"Yes!" he said defensively before flushing in mortification. He didn't want to tell them about that. "I mean, no!"

"You have!" she cackled in excitement. Faramir and Gimli were looking at him in askance as well. Even Legolas was distracted enough from his own annoyance to give him a curious look. "Who?"

"It's not important," he mumbled.

"You have to tell us!" Gimli said eagerly. "When did it happen? Why didn't you tell any of us?"

"Almost two years ago, before I knew any of you," he muttered, face burning. "Can we please not talk about it?"

"Was it not good?" Faramir asked in concern.

"No, it was great!" Kili protested immediately. "I just, don't want to talk about it."

"We're not going to let it go until you tell us who it was with," Tauriel stated with a smirk. "Do we know them? We must or you wouldn't be trying to keep it a secret."

"Was it your friend Ori?" Legolas guessed.

"No."

"Well then who was it?" Tauriel demanded.

"Fili, okay!" he finally cried in defeat, glaring at them. "Can we drop it now?"

"You kissed your brother?" Faramir asked in confusion.

"That doesn't count," Tauriel said, exasperated. "Brotherly kisses aren't what we were talking about."

"It wasn't really a… brotherly kiss," Kili admitted.

"But… you're brothers?" Gimli stated, an odd look on his face.

"We weren't technically brothers then," he defended. "This was before my dad and his uncle got together and we moved in together."

"Wait, so you and Fili aren't real brothers?" Legolas questioned, looking confused. "Like, there's no blood relation?"

"I'm only seven months younger than he is. How did you guys not realize that?" he asked incredulously. "But he's still my brother."

"Yeah, we know, whatever, but you don't share the same birth parents?" he clarified.

"We just assumed you did," Faramir said. "I mean, your names are so similar and you're so close…"

"Our names are a coincidence," Kili replied with a shrug. "And we only had each other when we were in foster care together so of course we're close."

Tauriel smirked. "So do you like Fili?"

His eyes widened. "We're brothers!"

"Only because you call yourselves brothers," she pointed out. "If you wanted to call yourselves boyfriends, you could do that too."

He rolled his eyes. "We've always been brothers. I'm not going to give that up because you think I'm supposed to like someone."

She shrugged. "Maybe you don't like him, but you're gonna like someone one of these days."

"And when I do, I'll make sure to tell you nothing," he warned, causing the other boys to laugh.

They abandoned their pizza then and Legolas brought out a deck of Uno cards. In retaliation for the earlier conversation, the boys all teamed up to make Tauriel lose, but she held her own even with them all against her, helped out by a series of what Kili thought were unfairly lucky hands.

And if Gimli and Legolas sat a little closer than usual, well, Kili did say a word.

Tbc…

A/N: So two things. So a few things. First, I'd like to assure all of you that the end-game is still Aragorn/Legolas and Gimli/Ori, but I wanted to throw in a very slight middle-school romance between Gimli and Legolas before things got too dramatic in high school.

Second, Spring Break is coming to an unfortunate end, so these daily updates of my stories will not be happening anymore. I should still update every two or three days, though, so keep an eye out!