"Heart", Double Arts (Kili/Elraine)
Title: Heart Author/Artist: shegra Rating: PG13/R Prompt: Double Arts - Kili/Elraine - clumsy undressing, first time - something oddly romantic Word count: 492
She fumbled with her clothes over her elbows, head bent, a flush hard and furious on her cheeks. It was hard doing this with someone else's eyes on you, someone else standing too close and shedding his own clothes too fast--but not, it sounded, any more gracefully. Kili mumbled something embarassed, hopping, and managed to kick off his boots.
Elraine gave a weird little hiccup of a laugh and put her hands over her mouth, the fabric pulling against her stomach. "Need--need help?" She asked shyly, and her pulse was rapid and thick, in her throat and wrists and the pit of her belly, because he'd taken off his shirt without complications and his skin was smooth and close and no doubt warm, and it had been so many aching years since she'd really been able to touch.
"Nah," he said, and mock-scowled. "I can take off my own clothes. You need help?" And there was his huge, almost-sly grin, and he touched her arm with one finger, just inside her elbow, and she jumped so violently she knocked his hand aside and it brushed the side of her breast.
And then she said, "oh," and couldn't help the little sound she made, and it was a little awkward and she was breathing too fast and his eyes were so, so wide.
"Elraine," he said, and hesitated, and then said, "do you mind if I--"
"No," she said, and he gave her a look.
"I haven't even said--"
"I don't mind," she said, and took a deep breath, which distracted him. Before she could finish, he pulled on the hand he still held and she stumbled into him.
"I can help," he said--she heard him somewhere over the roaring of her ears--and with her chest pressed against his, began carefully working at finishing the laces. Elraine pressed her burning face into his collarbone out of sheer instinct and listened to the cloth fall away. He put his hands on her waist and said, "wow."
She looked up at him, too tense, biting her lip.
He said, startlingly unselfconscious, "I think you're really beautiful."
"I--I--" Elraine didn't think she could blush any harder without fainting.
Kili grinned his bright, crookedly wicked grin. "When somebody compliments you, you say something nice back."
"Oh," she said, and for a moment lost her voice. You could save the world, or maybe I think you might be the kindest person I know or, deeper down, somewhere that belonged to only her--not duty or death--there was something that said, I love you.
"It's okay," Kili said, smile gentler now. "I don't mind. It was just a tip."
Before she could protest and find the words, he bent and kissed her. And it was a sweet kiss, his mouth moving against hers, the soft velvet slide of skin as his lips parted, and his thumbs moved against her side and she shivered all over and leaned into him.