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To Lady K4: How did you know what I was going to do with Paris? My God, are you psychic or something?
MORE FANDOM (Thanks to a LegolasRockz123 for inspiring the title)
“Baby, baby, whenever you’re near…”
Boromir, behind the wheel of Aragorn’s Toyota, gave a furtive glance about him to make sure that nobody he cared about impressing was anywhere near the car. The coast was clear; he turned the music up and began to hum along.
“I hear a symphony…a tender melody…”
The Toyota, with quite an unnecessary amount of fuss from the engine, turned onto Fantasia Lane. Boromir could see Aragorn and someone blond who wasn’t Legolas on the front porch of number 9, sipping at something brown in glasses. Hurriedly changing the radio over to a punk station, which was currently playing a punk-ified version of the Cheers theme, Boromir pulled up in the driveway, accidentally knocking over a few trash cans in the process.
A tender melody was most certainly not what was coming from inside the house – the mingled sounds of construction and Fleetwood Mac emanated from the open windows, two things that did not mix well. Boromir opened the door and stepped out onto the driveway, which was currently covered with an alarming amonut of sawdust.
“Please tell me you remembered to get Windex,” Aragorn called in greeting, “Frodo is in a foul mood.”
“He’s only in a foul mood because he can’t do any cooking,” Boromir responded, throwing open the trunk with a force that made Aragorn wince, “and who’s playing Fleetwood Mac?”
“Gimli.”
“Aragorn, forgive me if I’m right, but Gimli doesn’t know how to work a CD play- oh, hello.”
The last part was directed at the blond person who wasn’t Legolas who was, in fact, Westley from Princess Bride, across the street. Westley, who was taking a rather large sip from his glass at the time, raised a heralding hand. Aragorn stood, stretching, and came down the front path, presumably to help carry in groceries.
“You did remember to hit the dashboard every time you turned on your indicator?” Aragorn asked anxiously, examining his Toyota.
Boromir eyed the Toyota with distaste. “That car is useless, Aragorn, it’s even worse than Gimli’s Saturn.”
Aragorn stared at him, apparently horrorstruck. “Nothing is worse than Gimli’s Saturn.”
“All right, but still – ”
“This car has been with me forever!” Aragorn’s eyes took on the manic look that always indicated a tirade. “We’ve been through thick and thin – we moved to Fandom in this car, I’ll have you remember! We moved everything in it, even all the boxes of Gandalf’s old Chucky collectibles!” He sounded slightly tearful. “Don’t you remember any of that, Boromir? Don’t you remember, or did you just want to forget? I love this car!”
“You steal Legolas’ Lexus every chance you get.”
“Well, I can’t meet Ghostbusters without a nice car, can I, they all drive Deloreans,” Aragorn said reasonably. “Except when we’re in the van, of course, then they drive the van.”
Boromir stared at him, then wisely hefted a bag of groceries in one hand and went into the house.
He came across Frodo first, scrubbing madly at a burn mark on the wall with a portable CD player on. Seeing Boromir, Frodo ripped off his headphones and glared at Boromir.
“Who lived here before us?!” he snarled. Boromir took a step backwards. Frodo was generally a very mild-mannered hobbit; to see him snarling was frightening, to say the least.
“Reign of Fire,” said a voice to the left. They turned to see Westley lounging against the wall. “That was before the Reclassification, of course, when they moved to Action-Adventure Avenue.” He grimaced in an irritatingly dashing manner. “I have faced pirates, giants, ROUS’s, death, miracles, and pompous pigs, but I have never seen anything like those dragons.”
Neither Boromir nor Frodo could think of anything to say to this, so Frodo put his headphones back on and Boromir simply said “Ah” in an interested way and continued in the direction he had been going. He liked Westley well enough, and enjoyed their frequent swordfighting discussions and anecdotes, but there were occasions when Westley completely and utterly bewildered him. He supposed this air of slight madness came from living in Fandom since the eighties, and particularly on Fantasia Lane, where there was always something not-quite-right hanging about, but it was still unnerving.
Entering the construction area, Boromir nodded to Walter Fielding, barely resisting the temptation of remarking that it looked as though the construction crew was doing more harm than good, as he was certain those holes in the wall hadn’t been there before. Walter, who looked more as though he were just watching people work rather than working himself, tipped his hat good-naturedly.
“Did you know there was a whole nest of cockroaches in here?” he shouted over the roar of a power drill. “They’re all dead now, fortunately, or you’d have to pay for worker’s comp as well.” He grinned.
Boromir shouted something incoherent about pansies in response, and continued out to the porch, which was currently serving as their kitchen. Legolas and Gimli were settled on two of the porch chairs, Legolas playing Tetris (the only video game he didn’t object to) on a Gameboy and Gimli nodding his head enthusiastically to Fleetwood Mac. Boromir deposited the groceries in the large china cupboard that Aragorn had found on eBay, which was currently serving as their pantry. A moment later, Aragorn himself bustled in with the other bag of groceries.
“There’s someone at the door for you,” he said to Legolas.
“Who?”
“I haven’t ever seen him before. Looks like you, only with dark hair,” Aragorn added helpfully.
Legolas sat bolt upright. “What?” he hissed, his teeth clenched.
“No, Legolas, it’s not Will, I’d have recognized him, wouldn’t I?”
“What do you mean, you’d recognize him?” Legolas said accusingly. “You don’t spend that much time around him, do you?”
At that moment, Sam came through the door, whistling “Big Rock Candy Mountain”. Legolas shot Aragorn, who looked like a deer in headlights, a purely venemous glance, threw down his Gameboy, and exited stage left.
In the hall, Westley was watching Frodo scrub at the burn mark with a look of gentlemanly amusement on his face. “You’ll never get those marks off, my friend,” he told Frodo, but Frodo had his headphones on again and, fortunately, didn’t hear. Frodo took his housekeeping very seriously, and the suggestion that he couldn’t get a mark off was a suggestion that was not to be made. Legolas and Westley bowed cordially to one another, and Legolas glided into the foyer, every inch the composed Elven prince that he had not been a moment before.
“Paris!”
“Good afternoon, Legolas,” the Greek prince said with regal warmth. “I find you well, of course?”
“Very well, and yourself?” The two princes gave each other their best imperial smiles, which were oddly similar, although each was trying hard to outdo the other. The tension between Legolas and Paris was nowhere near the frightening animosity between Legolas and Will Turner; however, there was a certain princely rivalry between the former pair, which never evolved past a gracious competition.
“I am very well indeed.” Paris smiled.
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“Bloody hell!”
Bludgers flying through the windows were one thing, and could be stopped with a quick wave of the wand, but sharp Greek arrows were quite another thing, a point which was being made very clear as one of said arrows embedded itself in the tree behind Aragorn.
“Off the archery range!” Gimli shouted gruffly. Aragorn lifted his sunglasses peevishly and kicked Gollum away from his lemonade and whiskey as he stood. Westley, who had grown bored of watching Frodo clean and consequently been recruited as arrow retriever and part time cheerleader, strode towards him.
“They’ve got quite good aim, haven’t they?” he said pleasantly to Aragorn, pulling the arrow out of the tree with some effort. “Although personally, I believe your Elven friend is a bit more accurate. He has had three thousand years to practice, after all.”
Aragorn grunted, dragging his lawn chair away from the “archery range” while trying to keep his lemonade and whiskey from spilling. Westley flung the arrow back in the general direction of the archers and followed.
“I didn’t come round just to get in everyone’s way, you know,” he said confidentially.
“You’ve been doing a bloody good job of it all afternoon,” Aragorn snapped.
“I wanted to ask you something,” Westley continued, as though Aragorn hadn’t spoken. He ducked as another arrow, this one Elven, whizzed over his head.
“Does it involve an invisible man sleeping in your bed?” Aragorn asked, unable to resist.
“Fortunately, no. It’s a tad more mundane than that, although I don’t believe any part of Fandom life can truly be called ‘mundane’, as I’m certain you’ll agree.”
“All right,” Aragorn said, a bit uneasily. He had learned the difficult way that, whenever anyone pointed out the inherent strangeness of Fandom, it meant that they were going to involve him in what was probably a very bad idea.
---------------------
Night stole over Fantasia Lane like some sort of big dark thing. Bats flapped about blindly; owls hooted; there was the occasional small explosion from a few of the houses.
The Fellowship were seated in the television room, watching What Not to Wear, much to the concern of the more butch among them (Aragorn and Boromir, namely, with a hint of Gimli on the side, and the suggestion of Merry and Pippin). Legolas wore a look of supreme smugness on his face, which wasn’t much different from his usual expression, although the smirk was a bit wider and more visible. Aragorn was seated on the far opposite end of the room from Legolas, shooting the Elf nervous glances every so often that everyone else in the room completely failed to ignore. Merry and Pippin were home from work, and snickering madly over whatever malevolent item of torture they had received on discount that day. Digget was asleep in his dog bed. All in all, the scene was unusually quiet.
One by one, the members of the Fellowship got up and went to bed, until it was only Aragorn and Legolas left (unless, of course, one counted Gandalf, but no one ever really bothered to do so, so it was rather a moot point). Eventually, Legolas turned off the television and stood.
“I suppose I’ll be going to bed, then,” he said, turning towards the door. Aragorn stood abruptly.
“Er…Legolas.”
“Yes?” Legolas turned back to face Aragorn again. The Man looked frightened, which didn’t make any sense, as Legolas currently wasn’t armed and was in a good mood.
“You’re my best friend, aren’t you?”
“I suppose so, yes.”
Aragorn considered. It wasn’t exactly the immediate and unquestionable “yes” he’d been hoping for, but then again, he was dealing with an Elf.
“So…you couldn’t, er, you couldn’t hate me, could you?”
“I’m certain I could,” Legolas said matter-of-factly. “But at the moment, I do not.” His eyes took on a hardened glint, and he crossed his arms warningly. “Why, pray tell, are you asking?”
“I’ve…I’ve agreed to something.” Aragorn raised his head defiantly. “I’ve agreed to do something with Westley.”
“What you do with Westley is none of my business.”
“No, no, it’s – it’s a swordfighting thing. A club, sort of.”
“All right.”
“And…we’ve made a list of prospective members. We’re just going to have them all round here tomorrow, to ask them to join and such.”
“All right.”
“And…er…” Aragorn crossed the room in three strides and gripped Legolas by the upper arms to prevent any personal damage to himself. “You have to promise you won’t kill me.”
“I can’t promise until you tell me what you’re trying to tell me.”
Aragorn leaned very close to Legolas’ pointed ear and whispered something. The yell that followed shook not only the Fellowship’s house, but the houses on either side and across the street as well.
“YOU WHAT?!”
AUTHOR’S NOTE: All right! Again, sorry if it’s a bit short, but I promise I’ll have more when three weeks have gone by. Erggh…three weeks…I’m terribly terribly sorry, all my friends (and my loyal cactus)!
